October 17–21

“Vladimir Vladimirovich, all these years I hoped and continue to hope for your mercy and ability objectively, having discarded the political component, to understand and show compassion,” Alla Pichugina in open letter to Vladimir Putin

October 18, Tuesday

In Samara, the bailiff department arrested the ex-head of the Voice-Volga region of the Lyudmila Kuzmina Association. The tax service accuses Kuzmin of tax evasion in 2010-2012 from a grant from the American International Development Agency (USAID), which organized the work of observers in the regions and which the Federal Tax Service refused to consider a donation.

Alla Pichugina, the mother of Alexei Pichugina, sent an open letter to Vladimir Putin with a request for pardoning her son. A former UKOS Security Service was convicted in 2007 for a life sentence on charges of murder of the mayor of Nefteyugansk Vladimir Petukhov. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that the letter reached the Kremlin.

October 19, Wednesday

Gulagu.net project coordinator Anton Drozdov was released after unknown people tortured him for about 4 days. Drozdov invited a man to his house, who promised to provide information about the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia, after which he was poisoned and abducted. The founder of Gulagu.net Vladimir Osechkin associated the abduction with the fact that Drozdov has recently helped assemble information about corruption and the mafia in the UFSIN of Primorye.

October 21, Friday

The Presnensky court placed the former leader of the Russian movement prohibited in Russia Dmitry Demushkin under house arrest until December 21. On Friday morning, after Demushkin submitted an application for the Russian march on November 4, he was detained and brought to the court, where a change in preventive measure was discussed at the meeting due to violation of the non-departure subscription.

Employees of the Investigative Committee came with a search to the press secretary of the organization “Legal Initial Initial Infantry” Ksenia Babich. They also handed her a summons about the call for interrogation in the case of the press secretary of the Right Sector organization* Artem Skoropadsky, her classmate at the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University. The operatives took two computers and a mobile phone, and also searched for evidence of communication with the Right Sector*. The case against Artem Skoropadsky for the “organization of the activities of an extremist organization” (Article 282.2 of part 1 of the Criminal Code) was instituted at the end of September.

* The organization is prohibited in Russia as extremist.