#Alexei Navalny in hospital

[justforbooks]

Patriot by Alexei Navalny

The late Russian activist’s memoir is an insightful, sharp, even humorous account of his fight against Putin’s regime – and a warning to the world

Alexei Navalny was watching his favourite cartoon show, Rick and Morty, when he suddenly felt unwell. He was 21 minutes into an episode where Rick turns into a pickle. The late Russian opposition leader was on a flight back to Moscow after campaigning ahead of regional elections in the Siberian city of Tomsk in August 2020. Something was clearly wrong, and Navalny staggered to the bathroom.

There, he recalls, he had the grim realisation: “I’m done for.” He told a sceptical steward that he’d been poisoned and then lay down calmly in the aisle, facing a wall. Life didn’t flash before his eyes. Instead, he compares his experience of death – or near-death, as it turned out – to something from a dark fantasy. It was like being “kissed by a Dementor and a Nazgûl stands nearby”.

He is clear who gave the order to kill him with the nerve agent novichok: Vladimir Putin. Navalny calls Russia’s president a “bribe-taking old man” and a “vengeful runt” who sits on top of a “sinister regime”. The assassins were members of the FSB, the KGB’s successor agency. Navalny spent 18 days in a coma, waking up in hospital in Germany.

It was while recovering in Freiburg that he wrote the first part of his extraordinary memoir, Patriot. The second section consists of letters from prison, following his January 2021 return to Moscow, when he was dramatically arrested at the airport. Navalny says he embarked on an autobiography knowing the Kremlin could finish him off. “If they do finally whack me, this book will be my memorial,” he notes.

It took three years for his gallows humour prophecy to come true. Navalny died in February this year, his likely murder taking place in an Arctic penal colony. He was 47. Prison documents hint he was poisoned and the authorities removed the evidence: clothes, vomit, even snow he had come into contact with.

This is a brave and brilliant book, a luminous account of Navalny’s life and dark times. It is a challenge from beyond the grave to Russia’s murder-addicted rulers. You can hear his voice in the deft translation by Arch Tait and Stephen Dalziel: sharp, playful and lacking in self-pity. Nothing crushes him. Up until the end – his final “polar” entry is on 17 January 2024 – he radiates indomitable good humour.

Patriot includes a manifesto for how the country might be transformed: free elections, a constitutional assembly, decentralisation and a European orientation. Days before his murder, he predicted the Putin regime would crumble, while acknowledging the resilience of autocracies.

Trained as a lawyer, Navalny first attracted attention as a transparency activist. He bought shares in notoriously corrupt oil and gas companies and asked awkward questions at shareholder meetings. The Kremlin controlled TV and most newspapers, so Navalny wrote up his exposés online. In 2011 he founded FBK, an anti-corruption organisation which grew into a grassroots national movement run by volunteers. He expresses pride at the way his campaigns encouraged young Russians to take part in opposition politics. Police detained him for the first time in 2011 when he attended protests against rigged Duma elections. Undaunted, he stood two years later to be mayor of Moscow, coming second, before finding himself in an “endless cycle” of rallies, arrests and spells in custody.

The Kremlin’s response to all this was vicious. His brother Oleg was jailed after a fake trial, a provocateur threw green gunk at Navalny, blinding him in one eye. In 2016 he tried to run for president. His videos – of Putin’s tacky Sochi palace and former president Dmitry Medvedev’s dodgy schemes – attracted millions of views. Navalny writes movingly about his wife, Yulia, – whom he met on holiday in Turkey – as a soulmate throughout this period.

Given his understanding of Putin’s Stalinist methods, why did he return to Moscow? His answer is that the struggle to make Russia a normal state was “my life’s work”. He wasn’t prepared to dump his homeland or his convictions, he says. At first, jail conditions were bearable. Well-wishers sent sacks of letters and a tiramisu cake. In one dispatch, Navalny ponders the “amazing ability of human beings to adapt and derive pleasure from the most trivial things”, such as instant coffee.

Behind bars, he chatted to his cellmates and read. He preferred Maupassant to Flaubert and enjoyed Oliver Twist (though he wonders if Dickens got working-class dialogue right). The FSB spied on him 24/7; his warders wore body cameras and barked commands.

As conditions worsened, he made fewer diary entries. More criminal “convictions” piled up – for insulting a war veteran and for extremism. He was shuffled from one penitentiary to the next. Meanwhile, “perverted” prison staff refused to treat his back pain, prompting a hunger strike. He was categorised as a flight risk and woken throughout the night, put in a tiny punishment cell and denied his wife’s letters.

None of these privations stopped Navalny from denouncing Putin’s all-out invasion of Ukraine as an “unjust war of aggression”. The reason for the war is Putin’s desire to hold on to power at any cost, and an obsession with his “historical legacy”, he writes. Critics regard Navalny as a closet nationalist. But Patriot calls for Russia to withdraw its troops, respect Ukraine’s 1991 borders and pay compensation.

During one of Yulia’s visits, Navalny told her there was a “high probability” he would never get out of prison alive. “They will poison me,” he said. “I know,” she replied. He sketches out what this means – no chance to say goodbye, never meeting his grandchildren, “tasseled mortar boards tossed in the air in my absence”. Maybe an unmarked grave. His philosophy: hope for the best, expect the worst. His death is a terrible loss, for Russia and for all of us.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[warningsine]

In one of the most competitive races in years, 20 Days in Mariupol won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature tonight, earning director Mstyslav Chernov an Academy Award to go with a Pulitzer Prize.

The film from the Associated Press, PBS’ Frontline and GBH came into the night a slight favorite but faced a tough test from fellow nominees Bobi Wine: The People’s President, The Eternal Memory, Four Daughters, and To Kill a Tiger. The documentary, which premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, centers on the harrowing siege of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol in the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country. Thousands of civilians were killed in Russia’s assault.

On the Osar stage, Chernov, a native of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, thanked his collaborators and said, “This is the first Oscar in the Ukrainian history. And I’m honored.” But with rising emotion, he quickly added, “I’m honored, but probably I will be the first director on the [Oscar] stage who will say, I wish I would never make this film. I wish to be able to exchange this [for] Russia never attacking Ukraine, never occupying our cities.”

The Oscar audience applauded as Chernov continued, “I wish to give all the recognition to Russia not killing tens of thousands of my fellow Ukrainians. I wish for them to release all the hostages, all the soldiers who are protecting their lands, all the civilians who are now in their jails. But I cannot change the history, cannot change the past. But we all together, among you, some of the most talented people in the world, we can make sure that the history record is set straight and that the truth will prevail and that the people of Mariupol and those who have given their lives will never be forgotten. Because cinema forms memories, and memories form history. So thank you all and thank you all. Thank you Ukraine, Slava Ukraini.“

The director shared the Oscar with producers Michelle Mizner and Raney Aronson-Rath. Chernov previously won the Pulitzer for his coverage of the war in Ukraine, an assignment in which he faced the risk of death on a daily basis. Documenting the war meant leaving behind his wife and two young daughters.

20 Days in Mariupol opens with a scene of a Russian tank swiveling its gun barrel toward a hospital, where Chernov and his team looked down from an upper floor.

“Exactly in that moment in the film, this moment of uncertainty, the moment when tanks are shooting at the residential areas, when the hospital is surrounded and we are trapped, I’m thinking about my family, about my daughters, the fact that I probably will not make it out alive,” Chernov told Deadline in an interview last month.

It was the second year in a row that the Oscar winner for Best Documentary Feature winner delivered an implicit rebuke of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The 2023 victor in the category was Navalny, Daniel Roher’s film about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died last month while being held in an Arctic prison.

Billions of dollars in aid for Ukraine’s war effort against Russia have been tied up for months in Congress. President Biden made another urgent plea for passage of the aid bill during his State of the Union address last week. “If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not,” the president said. “But Ukraine can stop Putin if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons it needs to defend itself. That is all Ukraine is asking.”

[workersolidarity]

🇺🇸⚔️🇷🇺 🚨

U.S. PRESIDENT BIDEN SLAMS RUSSIAN PRESIDENT PUTIN AFTER FAR RIGHT-WING RUSSIAN ACTIVIST ALAXEI NAVALNY'S DEATH IN RUSSIAN PRISON

📹 🤡 U.S. Great-Grandfather and Clown in Chief President Joe Biden slams Putin over the death of Far Right-wing political activist Alexei Navalny's death in a Russian prison, using his death as an opportunity to call for more funding for Kiev's failing war in the east of the country.

The U.S. President had nothing to say about the death of the American and Chilean journalist, Gonzalo Lira, in a Ukrainian prison just weaks ago, even after publishing videos earlier in the year begging the U.S. government to intervene before he was tortured to death. Sadly, he died as a result of untreated pneumonia in a Ukrainian prison hospital.

Alexei Navalny, though supported by Western governments and raised up as an "anti-corruption" activist, especially by the United States, was known in Russia as a self-described "certified nationalist" who called Muslims "flies and cockroaches" who needed to exterminated.

Navalny was serving a prison sentence of 19 years for offenses involving "extremism", with some early sources saying he died from a blood clot, losing consciousness after taking a walk and found by prison staff soon after. Prison medical doctors pronounced Navalny dead after arriving soon after.

Kremlin spokesperson, Dimitry Peskov told reporters Friday that medical personnel with Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) are "taking all the steps that need to be taken in such a situation," adding that medical personnel with the FSIN were investigating Navalny's cause of death and will inform the Russian President of their results.

#source1

#source2

#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[tomorrowusa]

A documentary about Russian war crimes committed early in Putin's invasion of Ukraine is up for an Oscar.

A documentary made by three of the last journalists to escape Mariupol as Russian forces destroyed the city in spring 2022 has been nominated for an Academy Award.

The documentary “20 Days In Mariupol,” made by Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka and Vasilisa Stepanenko and co-produced by Michelle Mizner and Raney Aronson-Rath of the Associated Press, was nominated in the Best Documentary Feature Film category at this year’s upcoming Oscars. The documentary tells the story of the first days of the Russian invasion of Mariupol, which is now fully controlled by Kremlin forces after a merciless assault that left tens of thousands of people dead. While Russia has blamed Ukraine for the city’s destruction, “20 Days In Mariupol” is a unique chronicle of what actually happened in the early days of Moscow’s full-scale invasion. Ukrainian citizens survived in basements, their food and water supplies cut off, while Kremlin troops bombed hospitals, theaters, and other civilian infrastructure. The 96th Academy Awards ceremony will be held on March 10 in Los Angeles. Last year, a film about imprisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny won in the documentary category.

Unlike "Barbie", "Oppenheimer", and "Maestro", the film “20 Days In Mariupol" can currently be viewed free online at YouTube.

After watching that, I feel Vladimir Putin should spend the rest of his days in a sealed room with a Ramsay Bolton wannabe.

Today is Day 700 of Putin's 3-day "special operation".

[shattered-pieces]

The former head of Navalny's campaign headquarters, Leonid Volkov, was attacked in his ego at home in Vilnius. This was reported by the ex-press secretary of Alexei Navalny, Kira Yarmysh. "They broke the window in his car with a hammer and sprayed tear gas in his eyes, after which the attacker began to beat Leonid with a hammer. Now Leonid is at home, the police and an ambulance are on their way to him," she wrote. After that, doctors arrived and decided to hospitalize the victim. "The news about the attack on Leonid Volkov is shocking," said the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania. "Relevant bodies are working. The guilty will have to answer for their crime," added the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, Gabrielus Landsbergis. "The key risk now is that we will all be killed. Well, it's quite an obvious thing," Leonid Volkov told the publication on the evening of March 12, a few hours before the attack. In the photo: Volkov is taken to the hospital by ambulance. It is obvious that Putin and his agency have moved on from state terrorism and consider it possible to organize attacks and murders of undesirables in the countries of the European Union. We wish Leonid a speedy recovery and appropriate protection and safety measures! European law enforcement agencies should take comprehensive measures to detain and arrest all Putin agents, killers and their accomplices. The time has come to put an end to this resolutely and universally. No Putin's terror! We are not afraid and they will not intimidate us!✊🏻 UPD "The great terror of a small dictator has begun" - this is how Khristo Grozev commented on the attack on Volkov. "Activists, journalists and just free-thinking people - be careful. Do not be afraid, but be careful. Don't make it easier for brainless bandits," Grozev added on X social networks.

[ruminativerabbi]

Heroes

I was troubled, but also very moved, by the death of Alexei Navalny, the personality at the core of the resistance movement in Russia struggling to oppose the dictatorial and oppressive policies of the Putin regime. What exactly happened is not at all clear. At the time of his death, Navalny was imprisoned in a penal colony in Western Siberia in a place called Yamalo-Nenets near the Arctic Circle. According to the warden, he was taking a walk just two weeks ago after telling some guards that he didn’t feel at all well. And then he collapsed. The prison authorities claim to have done all they could to resuscitate him, but were, they said, regretfully unsuccessful, as result of which regretted unsuccess he was dead by mid-afternoon. His body was then held for well over a week and then finally released to his family for burial. And so ended the life of one of the world’s true heroes, a man who not only put his life on the line to stand up for his beliefs, but who personally embodied the struggle for human rights in today’s Russia. Yehi zikhro varukh. May his memory be a blessing for his co-citizens in Russia and for us all.

There’s a lot to say about Navalny, but the detail—one among many—that is particularly resonant with me has to do with his return to Russia in 2021, an act that was as noble as it was death-defying. By 2021, of course, Navalny had a long history of being a thorn—and an especially sharp one at that—in the side of Vladimir Putin. He had led countless demonstrations against the Putin government. He repeatedly accused, certainly correctly, Putin of engineering his own victories whenever he stood for re-election as Russia’s president. And he openly opposed the war against Ukraine.

Navalny tried several times to gain a foothold in the bureaucracy he so mistrusted. He ran for mayor of Moscow in 2013. And then he ran for president of Russia in 2018, a move that was in and of itself daring given that he had previously been found guilty of embezzlement, which detail would normally have disqualified him from running for elected office despite the fact that there appears to be no reason to think that the verdict was just or reasonable. But the real reason Navalny was such a problem for Putin was that he appeared to be unfazed by the forces of government, including the Russian judiciary, that were openly and brazenly arrayed against him. And so the government eventually took matters to a new level.

In 2020, on a flight to Moscow, Navalny took ill and ended up on a ventilator in the Siberian city of Omsk, where his airplane had been obliged to make an emergency landing. It didn’t take doctors long to realize that he had been poisoned. (It later came out that his clothing, including his underwear, had somehow been suffused with the Novichok nerve agent, a poison known to have been used by Russia in the past to murder dissidents abroad.) Eventually, the German government, acting unilaterally, sent an airplane to Omsk to bring Navalny to Germany. Amazingly, this actually worked. And it was in Berlin that doctors at the famous Charité Hospital determined with certainty that Navalny had been the victim of an unsuccessful attempt on his life and that he had definitely been poisoned. Remarkably, his life was saved and he recovered. And then, in January of 2021, he returned to Russia.

Because Navalny had been convicted in a 2014 trial that was almost certainly politically motivated and unjust, he had theoretically been forbidden to leave Russia even for medical treatment. And so was he arrested at the Moscow airport upon his return to Russia and imprisoned to await a judge’s decision about his future. And it was just a month after that, in February of 2021, that a Moscow judge decreed that his suspended sentence, minus time served, would be replaced with an unsuspended one and that Navalny would have to serve two and a half years in a Russian prison. He was sent to one prison, then to another. Eventually, the government determined that it did not want to face a freed Navalny in less than three years and so began new proceedings against him again, this time charging him with fraud and contempt of court. In March of 2022, just two years ago, he was found guilty of all charges and sentenced to nine years in a maximum security prison. And then, because even nine years was apparently not long enough, Navalny was put on trial again last summer and sentenced to an addition nineteen years on extremism charges. And so he ended up in the Arctic Circle prison in which he died two weeks ago at the age of forty-seven.

Navalny’s is a long, complicated story. But the one detail that stands out to me, the single part of the story that is the most resonant with me—and with my lifelong interest in the concept of heroism—has to do with Navalny’s decision in January 2021 to leave safety in Berlin and return to Russia. He had every reason to expect that he would be arrested upon return. He had no reason to suppose that any future trials to which he would be subjected would be just. He surely knew not to expect clemency or mercy from Vladimir Putin, the man behind all the juridical procedures overtly and unabashedly designed to silence him. And yet he chose to return—not specifically, I’m sure, because he wanted to die or because he wanted to participate in yet another crooked trial, but because he saw himself as a moral human being who had been granted the opportunity to inspire his co-citizens to demand justice and freedom for themselves and for their nation.

 I’ve written in this space, although not too recently, about my boundless admiration for Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was safe and sound in New York when the Second World War broke out, but who made the noble (and eventually fatal) decision to return to Germany and there to try to inspire people to resist Nazism and to turn away from the path of ruinous and fascist barbarism down which the Nazi government was intent on leading the nation. (To revisit my comments about Bonhoeffer from 2011, click here.) Here was, in my eyes, a true hero: a man fully committed to his own ideals who made the conscious decision to leave the safe haven he had already found and to travel to a land that would probably, and which eventually did, kill him. To me, that decision to risk everything to attempt, even quixotically, to do good in the world represents the essence of heroism. It came to naught, of course. He did a lot of good for a lot of people, but, in the end, he paid the big price. On April 8, 1945, just a month before the end of the war, Bonhoeffer was tried on the single charge of treason in a court set up in the Flossenbürg concentration camp. There were no witnesses. No evidence against him was brought forward, nor was a transcript of the proceedings made. He was found guilty, apparently on Hitler’s personal order, and executed the next day in a way that was specifically intended to maximize his personal degradation and agony. (Eric Till’s 2000 movie, Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace, is a worthy attempt to tell Bonhoeffer’s story even if the director couldn’t quite bring himself to depict the barbarism of Bonhoeffer’s final moments in any detail, let alone explicitly. For a more detailed account of his life, I recommend Eric Metaxas’s 2020 biography, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy, which I read a few years ago and enjoyed immensely.)

So, two men who lived scores of years apart, who spoke different languages, who came from different countries. One, a political man fully engaged by the political process. The other, a man of God fully in the thrall of his own calling to preach God’s word in the world and to inspire others to seek justice and to act righteously. But both heroes in my mind—both fully safe in a place their tormentors could not reach them and yet both of whom made the decision to return to their separate homelands to seek out in those places the destiny to which each felt called. Would I have left New York in 1939 or Berlin in 2021 to risk my own life to follow the destiny I perceived to be my own? I’d like to think I would have. Who wouldn’t? But we don’t all have it in us to act that boldly, to risk everything to be ourselves fully and in the most noble way possible. To be a man in full—or a woman in full—is never quite as easy in real life as it sounds as though it should be on paper. And that is why I admire those two men, Bonhoeffer in his day and Navalny in ours—and their willingness not merely to talk the talk, but truly—and at their own mortal peril—to walk the walk. May they both rest in peace!

[songsofprotestpeacerevolution]

Pussy Riot — MAMA, DON’T WATCH TV / МАМА, НЕ СМОТРИ ТЕЛЕВИЗОР (ANTI - WAR SONG)

(Until I can find an unblocked by youtube version, you will have to click on the watch on youtube in the above)

STATEMENT This song is our statement against the war that Putin started in Ukraine. 

On 24th February 2022 Russia began a wide scale military attack on Ukraine. Russian bombs and rockets destroyed Ukrainian homes, schools, hospitals, wrecking towns and destroying lives. We believe that Putin’s regime is a terrorist regime, and Putin himself, his officials, generals and propagandists are war criminals. 

The chorus is based on the words of a captured Russian conscript soldier who, in a telephone conversation with his mother, said "Mom, there are no Nazis here, don't watch TV." Russian propaganda daily poisons the hearts of people with hatred. 

Those who oppose Putin are imprisoned, poisoned with military poisons and killed. The tradition of political poisoning for more than 100 years, "laboratory x" - the first laboratory of military poisons created by the NKVD. Opposition figures of anti-government movements became victims of the "experiments". Putin and the FSB are proud of this "tradition" and continue it: Alexander Litvinenko, Sergei Skripal, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Pyotr Verzilov, Alexei Navalny. 

Russia has continued its military aggression on the territory of Ukraine since 2014, when Russian troops annexed Crimea and began the occupation of the Donbass region. Every day since then Ukraine has had to fight for the right to live and for freedom, fight to guarantee its sovereignty. 

During all these years, the international community has looked for compromise and conducted business with Russia, at the same time sponsoring Putin’s cruel war. The Kremlin receives billions of Euros from the sale of oil and gas and each day this money converts into Ukrainian blood. 

We call for: 1. An EMBARGO on the purchase of Russian oil and gas, on the sale of weapons and police ammunition to Russia. 2. ARREST the western bank accounts and property of Russian officials and oligarchs and introduce personal sanctions against them. 3. An INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL to try Vladimir Putin, employees of Russian state propaganda, army officers and everyone who is responsible for the genocide of the Ukrainian nation. Мы обращаемся к тем, кто в России: Пожалуйста, не участвуйте в этой войне! Не берите повестки, не ходите в военкоматы, не слушайте пропаганду! Каждый жест против этой войны важен.

[mariacallous]

Vladimir Rumyantsev, a 61-year-old boiler worker and an amateur radio operator in Vologda, set up a home broadcast station so that he could listen to content remotely while he took walks near his home. After February 24, when Russia invaded Ukraine, he started to broadcast anti-war content from various sources, including Meduza. Though it’s not clear than any of Rumyantsev’s neighbors ever tuned into his DIY station (whose broadcast range was just several hundred feet around his home), police officers arrested him this summer and charged him with spreading “deliberately false information” about the Russian armed forces. On December 23, a judge sentenced him to three years in prison.

A Vologda court sentenced 61-year-old Vladimir Rumyantsev, who works as a stoker, to three years in prison on charges of spreading “fakes” about the Russian army.

Rumyantsev was found guilty of spreading fakes “for reasons related to political hatred or enmity related to any social group.” 

According to the judge, Rumyantsev posted six video clips “with deliberately false information about representatives of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine looting, killing, and raping civilians, and destroying hospitals, maternity hospitals, schools, and kindergartens” on his VKontakte page. In addition, during a week in April 2022, he “broadcast on a certain radio frequency” similar “known false information.”

The news outlet Sever.Realii reports that Rumyantsev has worked his whole life in various roles at factories; he was also a trolley-bus operator and, more recently, a boiler worker. One of his hobbies is radio engineering; a few years ago, he started broadcasting on his own frequency. His radio transmitter, which he bought on AliExpress, broadcasts a signal a few dozen meters (several hundred feet) from his apartment. Before the full-scale war, Rumyantsev rebroadcast music and radio plays, but after February 24, he started to send out political material from anti-war channels — including Meduza, Radio Liberty, and Ekho Moskvy.

Rumyantsev created his own radio station for himself, so that he could listen to broadcasts while taking walks near his home. In court, he emphasized that the station was “only the result of attempts to wire my own apartment for radio.” It’s unclear whether anyone besides Rumyantsev tuned in to his frequency — the investigation couldn’t find a single other listener among residents of neighboring buildings.

Radio Liberty claims that Rumyantsev informally named his radio station Radio Vovan. Speaking on the podcast “Hi, You’re a Foreign Agent,” journalist Sonya Groysman said that he put a Vovan Media logo on videos uploaded to his YouTube channel.

Rumyantsev maintains his innocence, but he did not hide in his testimony the fact that he feels “extremely negative” about Russian authorities’ actions and about Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.

Prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Rumyantsev to six years in prison, calling him “politically unreliable” and highlighting that he has attended protests in support of opposition politician Alexey Navalny and been fined twice, for a total of 60,000 rubles (around $850 USD), for “discrediting” the army. 

The police arrested Rumyantsev in the summer, and he’s been in jail ever since. According to the court’s ruling, one day in pretrial detention counts for two in prison, meaning that Rumyantsev’s prison term will end in late 2024. His defense attorneys say they plan to appeal the verdict, pointing out that the only evidence in the case was a linguistic examination carried out by an expert hired by the police; the court ignored the defense’s request for an independent examination.

Rumyantsev is the fourth person to receive prison time under Russia’s new ban on “fakes.” Of the previous three, two were politicians. In May, Alexey Gorinov, a municipal deputy from Moscow’s Krasnoselsky District, was sentenced to seven years behind bars. In early December, the former head of the same municipal council, Ilya Yashin, was sentenced to eight and a half years. Another sentence — of two and a half years — was handed out to Alexander Tarapon, a resident of the Crimean city of Alushta, who hung a sign reading “Here lives a war criminal” on the gates of a relative who served in Russia’s National Guard.

The news outlet OVD-Info reports that there has been a total of 124 felony cases concerning “disinformation” in Russia this year. The courts have not yet heard the majority of them. The most common punishment in cases that have reached judges is community service.

[quotesfrommyreading]

Pressure on social media companies dates back to 2015, when a law came into force obliging them to store the personal data of Russian users on Russian territory and giving the government the power to fine them, or close them down, for not doing so. None of the Western companies have complied, which led to the closure of LinkedIn in 2016. Google, Meta and Twitter have collectively been fined more than $600,000 since the start of 2020.

It was in 2016 that requests from the Russian government to Google to remove videos from YouTube and to block certain search results began to rapidly increase. The company's transparency reports show that over the last 10 years it has received more such requests from Russia than the rest of the world combined - Google says a third of them relate to "national security".

Like the other Western companies, Google complies with some Russian requests but not with others.

Efforts to control the spread of undesirable information on social media accelerated further in early 2021, after the return of Alexei Navalny to Russia from hospital in Germany, where he had been treated for poisoning with the chemical weapon Novichok.

Navalny was immediately arrested, leading to unsanctioned protests in Moscow, St Petersburg and other cities, which supporters widely advertised on social media.

This prompted angry complaints from Roskomnadzor. The posts were quickly removed from the third most popular social network in Russia, VKontakte (or VK.com), owned at that point by oligarch Alisher Usmanov, the former Arsenal football club shareholder.

But Western social networks were less accommodating, so Roskomnadzor started taking them to court and fining them.

Its next step, in March, was to slow down traffic on Twitter, for its refusal to delete these and other posts. Pictures and videos, in particular, became slower to load.

And later in the year it persuaded Google and Apple to remove from their stores a tactical voting app, designed to help Navalny sympathisers unite behind a single candidate in local elections, thereby maximising the chance of defeating the candidate of the ruling United Russia party.

The head of Navalny's team, Ivan Zhdanov, denounced the companies for what he described as "a shameful act of political censorship".

He later tweeted part of a letter from Apple, which pointed out that prosecutors had said the app was enabling illegal "interference in elections" and that media regulator Roskomnadzor had warned the company that it was promoting an "extremist organisation"

  —  How Russia tries to censor Western social media

[adrl-pt]

Solidarity March "Together against Putin and the war", November 17, 2024

On November 17, we gathered at the memorial to Alexei Navalny and walked with the music of artists who spoke out against the war to Restauradores square with our white-blue-white protest flags, a banner against Putin and Putinism, and posters in support of Ukraine, in support of political prisoners and Ukrainian prisoners of war, against the war, Z-fascism and dictatorships. And also with posters reminding us of Alexei's sacrifice and fight. We believe that he will return through the fight against Putinism of each of us and you.

Historian Tamara Eidelman and journalist Dmitry Kolezev took part in the rally, it was reported on the Dozhd TV channel, and announcements were posted by several Portuguese media outlets. https://www.youtube.com/live/WhGZH4xz7VA?t=2314

The participants shared their impressions, called for more active participation of Russians in the fight for the liberation of Russia and in helping Ukraine, to convince friends and relatives even if they resist. They talked about hope and that hope and freedom need to be trained, like another muscle. And also that we need to learn how democratic institutions work by participating in the work of local associations, and that the memorial in memory of Alexei is an advance that we will have to return through the active growth of anti-Putin resistance.

We talked about our plans: an auction to support of fundraiser for hospitals and schools in Ukraine, an art exhibition with an auction in favor of Ukraine, and a conference that we want to hold. In order for us to succeed, we need volunteers. If you want to help us, please write to info@adrl.pt.

And be sure to help sharing the fundraiser that we are making together with Russian anti-war activists from other countries. Activists in Spain found portable power stations that were officially requested by Ukrainian hospitals and schools at wholesale prices. Snow has already fallen in Ukraine, we need to collect the required 100,000 euros as quickly as possible. https://antiwarcommittee.info/en/energy-for-life/

Don't forget to subscribe to our social networks and check the schedule of events on https://adrl.pt/en website.

[fredborges98]

Alexei Nalvany* - mais um soco no estômago na política externa brasileira!

*Prêmio da Paz de Dresden ou "Angstgegner"; um "adversário de dar medo" para o presidente Vladimir Putin.

Baseado no artigo da agência de notícias DW de Roman Goncharenko | Jens Thurau de 12/05/2024.

Por: Fred Borges

Ex- Coordenador e Professor do Curso de Graduação em Relações Internacionais da Estácio de Sá e da UNIFACS.

A política externa brasileira do atual governo se prostituiu para ditadores e ditaduras.

Condizente com o perfil totalitário, corrupto do atual presidente e seus diplomatas da esquerda maldita.

O Itamaraty se tornou uma pocilga de porcos prontos para o abate.

Essa política privilegia ditaduras e ditadores como Putin.

A Rússia se tornou uma ditadura onde grupos extremistas do Deep State se aproveitam dos benefícios de uma legitimidade imoral que persegue, aprisiona, faz " desaparecer" pessoas que se opõe ao governo.

Um desses opositores, como de costume foi " desaparecido" e muitos outros irão ser " desaparecidos"!

Seu nome: Alexei Nalvany.

Navalny, nascido em 1976, durante anos chamou a atenção para a corrupção e os abusos no seu país natal e assim ganhou fama em todo o mundo. Ele sobreviveu a um atentado contra sua vida e ainda retornou ao seu país de origem.

Como blogueiro, Navalny alcançou milhões de pessoas, especialmente russos mais jovens, com seu humor sutil. Lutou contra a corrupção no país e contra o governo de Vladimir Putin. Ao fazer isso, ele fez muitos inimigos poderosos. O Kremlin fez tudo o que pôde para mantê-lo fora da política. No entanto, Navalny conseguiu organizar os seus seguidores em todo o país.

Navalny iniciou sua carreira como empresário e advogado. No final da década de 1990, quando tinha vinte e poucos anos, juntou-se ao partido liberal de esquerda "Yabloko", mas foi expulso em 2007 devido a conflitos com a liderança, mas também por causa das suas opiniões nacionalistas. Posteriormente participou ativamente de um movimento dessa tendência, por isso também gerou polêmica nos meios de oposição.

Seu envenenamento em 2020 atraiu ampla atenção internacional. Navalny foi levado de avião para Berlim, onde foi tratado com sucesso no famoso hospital Charité e sobreviveu. Ele culpou o serviço secreto interno russo e Putin pessoalmente pela tentativa de assassinato contra ele. Mesmo assim, quando se recuperou, decidiu retornar à Rússia.

Ele foi detido no aeroporto de Moscou e posteriormente condenado a 19 anos de prisão. Ele disse que não se arrepende de ter voltado. Em dezembro de 2023, ele foi considerado desaparecido por várias semanas. Mais tarde foi revelado que ele havia sido levado para um campo de prisioneiros no norte da Sibéria. Ele já suspeitava que iriam mantê-lo isolado antes das eleições presidenciais de março deste ano. Como esperado, Putin foi "reeleito".

Eloqüente mesmo no tribunal.

O opositor queixava-se repetidamente da violação dos seus direitos na prisão. No final, Navalny também aproveitou as audiências judiciais para criticar duramente o sistema autoritário de Putin e a guerra de Moscovo contra a Ucrânia. Alexei Navalny travou uma batalha desigual. Semanas após a sua morte, o próprio Putin confirmou que os preparativos para uma troca de detidos tinham começado pouco antes. Por que isso não ocorreu ainda não está claro. Nem se isso for realmente verdade.

A Rússia continua a lutar brutalmente contra os críticos.

Mesmo após a morte de Navalny, o regime russo continua a usar de grande brutalidade contra os críticos.

Os apoiantes britânicos de Navalny expressaram recentemente preocupação com a saúde de um dos colaboradores mais próximos do falecido opositor, Vladimir Kara-Mursa. O homem, de 42 anos, foi condenado a 25 anos de prisão em abril de 2023 por “alta traição”. Ele já havia acusado a Rússia de “crimes de guerra” na Ucrânia durante um discurso nos Estados Unidos. É a pena de prisão mais longa alguma vez imposta a um crítico de Putin. Tal como Navalny, a sua família e advogados afirmam que o serviço secreto russo tentou envenená-lo em 2015 e 2017. Desde então, ele tem sofrido graves problemas de saúde.

"Navalny tornou-se um perigo para Putin".

A associação Amigos de Dresden Alemanha, que atribui o prémio, explica a sua escolha da seguinte forma: "Navalny repetidamente colocou o dedo na ferida da ditadura russa e tornou-se o maior perigo para Putin e o seu regime. É por isso que ele se tornou" numa posição política prisioneiro cuja morte representa as inúmeras pessoas que estão comprometidas com a liberdade e a democracia na Rússia."

O prémio pretende também comemorar todos os anos o bombardeamento de Dresden pelos aliados a 13 de fevereiro de 1945, há 79 anos, tentando contrariar a apropriação do aniversário pela extrema direita.

O que dizer sobre o governo e a política externa brasileira?

No mesmo paralelo, estava recebendo ou oferecendo honras de chefe de Estado ditadores, e como sempre faz levando vantagem em tudo que faz, estava, o analfabeto funcional na sua quinta reciclagem com governantes e ditadores da esquerda, com as respectivas temáticas:

Cuba.Como se tornar um ditador milionário de esquerda.

Rússia. Como implantar o terror.

Venezuela.Como distribuir a pobreza.

Colômbia.Como ser um terrorista- presidente.

Nicarágua( EAD).Como matar 100% da oposição.

Todos com certificado de pós-graduação.

Nada mal, para a pocilga chamada Itamaraty!

Só resta aos brasileiros que ainda têm coragem e são realmente patriotas perguntar:

Quem será nosso Angstgegner?

Se tiver para nascer, esqueçam, não se iludam, pois se depender das escolas públicas ou privadas de Relações Internacionais onde diplomatas institucionais ou empresariais são formados ou qualquer escola, academia, instituição pública ou privada de ensino fundamental, médio ou superior, pela qualidade do que é ensinado jamais teremos líderes capazes de desafiar ladrões ou corruptos!

[justforbooks]

Alexei Navalny, who has died suddenly aged 47 while in prison, was Russia’s best-known campaigner against high-level corruption. For many years he was the leading critic and opponent of President Vladimir Putin and his political party, United Russia.

Repeated arrests, jail sentences and physical assaults did not deter Navalny from digging up financial scandals, which he published on his blogs and X feeds as well as YouTube. In a 2011 radio interview, he described United Russia as a “party of crooks and thieves”, which became a powerful and popular mantra on social media and at political protests.

Repression did not stop him attracting enthusiastic crowds in support of opposition politicians in local elections in cities across Russia. Occasionally he ran for office himself, most notably in 2013 for the mayoralty of Moscow, when the official result gave him 27% of the vote – which he said was rigged so as to deny him victory.

In 2016, Navalny launched a campaign for the 2018 presidential election but was barred by Russia’s central election commission due to a prior criminal conviction. In 2017 he was attacked with a spray, leaving him partially blind in one eye. In 2019 Navalny fell ill in prison, from what he claimed was poison. His most dramatic brush with death came in 2020 at the end of a political campaign trip through Siberia, when he was taken seriously ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. His condition was so grave that the pilot made an emergency landing in Omsk, where he was rushed to hospital. Navalny’s wife and supporters asked for him to be taken to Germany, where they felt he would be better treated.

The Russian authorities agreed and Navalny was flown to the Charité hospital in Berlin, where toxicology tests showed traces of the nerve agent novichok in Navalny’s body. Russian officials complained that the test results were not made public nor disclosed to them. Navalny recovered and was released from hospital after a month.

He decided to convalesce for several weeks in Germany. Russian court authorities announced that if he returned late to Moscow he would be jailed for breaking the terms of a probation order. The threat was seen as a device to deter Navalny from returning to Russia in the hope, as the authorities saw it, that in exile his influence would rapidly decline.

Showing great courage, but defying the advice of his family and friends, he flew back to Moscow in January 2021, accompanied by his wife and dozens of journalists, and was arrested on landing. His Anti-Corruption Foundation promptly published on YouTube an investigation with pictures of a luxury multimillion-dollar mansion on the Black Sea, which they dubbed Putin’s palace.

Navalny’s stock had never been higher at home or abroad, and when a court gave him a two-and-a-half year sentence, western political leaders, including the US president, Joe Biden, protested openly and imposed sanctions. But Putin was determined to destroy him politically.

In 2022, Navalny was sentenced to an extra nine years after being found guilty of embezzlement and contempt of court. In 2023, he was given a further 19 years in prison on extremism charges.

Navalny was born in Butyn and grew up mainly in Obninsk, a small town south-west of Moscow. His mother, Lyudmila, worked as a lab technician in micro-electronics and then moved to a timber-processing factory. His father, Anatoly, a Ukrainian, was in the military. In addition to Russian, Alexei learned Ukrainian through spending summers with his grandmother near Kyiv. He gained a law degree (1998) at the Peoples’ Friendship University in Moscow.

In 2000 he joined the United Democratic party, known as Yabloko. Under its leader, Grigory Yavlinsky, the party stood for liberal and social democratic values. Navalny gained an economics degree at the Financial University (2001), and from 2004 to 2007 served as chief of staff of the Moscow branch of Yabloko. A charismatic speaker, he was attracted by the concept of television debates, and in 2005 founded a social movement for young people, with a name taken from the Russian word for yes, DA! – Democratic Alternative, which was active in the media.

Navalny started to move gradually to the right, and in 2007 he was expelled from Yabloko after clashing with Yavlinsky over Navalny’s increasingly nationalist and anti-immigrant views.

He then co-founded a movement known as Narod (The People), which aimed to defend the rights of ethnic Russians and restrict immigration from Central Asia and the Caucasus. A year later he joined two other Russian nationalist groupings, Movement Against Illegal Immigration (MAII) and Great Russia, in forming a new coalition called the Russian National Movement.

It made little impact and Navalny turned his attention to journalistic muckraking. His main outlet was a blog, LiveJournal. In 2010 he published leaked documents about the alleged theft by directors of millions of roubles from the pipeline company Transneft. The following year he exposed a scandalous property deal between the Russian and Hungarian governments. He decided to establish the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which continued until his death.

He also went back into electoral politics, leading street protests over unfair practices by United Russia. Navalny urged people to vote any way they liked in the 2011 parliamentary elections, including for the Communist party, so long as they voted against United Russia. He was tempted to run against Putin in the 2012 contest for the presidency, but said the ballot would be rigged. After the poll, he led several anti-Putin rallies in Moscow and was briefly arrested.

The following year Moscow was to elect its mayor. Navalny registered as one of six candidates. The next day he was sentenced to five years on embezzlement and fraud charges. Initially he called for an election boycott, but when he was released on appeal he changed his mind. Some analysts speculated that Putin wanted him to run to make the electoral contest look genuinely open. Navalny lost to the incumbent mayor and Kremlin ally Sergei Sobyanin, but claimed to have won. In 2016 he announced he would stand against Putin in the 2018 presidential contest. More arrests and repression followed.

Navalny’s nationalism put him in agreement with Putin on one major issue: Crimea. The territory had been ceded to Ukraine in 1954, but in 2014 Putin used force to reincorporate it into Russia. Navalny said he would not return it to Ukraine if he had the power to do so. Like Putin, he argued that Ukraine was an artificial construct. “I don’t see any kind of difference at all between Russians and Ukrainians,” he said, while admitting his views might provoke “horrible indignation�� in Ukraine.

However, his agreement with some of Putin’s views on Ukraine did not bring him to support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. That March, Navalny released a statement from jail. Through his spokesman he urged Russians “to overcome their fear” and take to the streets and demand a “stop to the war” against Ukraine. He called Putin an “obviously insane tsar”. “If in order to stop the war we have to fill prisons and paddy wagons with ourselves, we will fill prisons and paddy wagons with ourselves.”

“Everything has a price, and now, in the spring of 2022, we must pay this price. There’s no one to do it for us. Let’s not ‘be against the war’. Let’s fight against the war.” At the end of 2023 he was transferred to the remote penal colony at Kharp, north of the Arctic circle.

In 2000 he married Yulia Abrosimova, and she and their daughter, Daria, and son, Zakhar, survive him.

🔔 Alexei Anatolievich Navalny, politician and anti-corruption campaigner, born 4 June 1976; died 16 February 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[panelki]

Lithuania Says Russian Special Services Involved in Volkov Attack Lithuania on Thursday said it suspects Russian special services were behind an attack on Russian opposition figure Leonid Volkov earlier this week and called the incident an act of "political terrorism." Volkov, a close ally of late Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny, was briefly admitted to the hospital after he was repeatedly struck with a hammer outside his home in Vilnius late Tuesday. Read more | Subscribe to our channel

[russianprotesters]

https://t.me/sotavisionmedia/26384

Artist Elena Osipova went on a picket in memory of Alexei Navalny and was detained 77-year-old artist Elena Osipova held a picket in Catherine Square with a poster in memory of Alexei Navalny, after which she was detained by police and taken away in an unknown direction. Elena Osipova is a famous St. Petersburg artist. Despite her advanced age, she vehemently opposes the war and regularly comes out with artistic posters and paintings that she draws herself. In May 2023, Elena Osipova was hospitalized at the Mariinsky Hospital with a stroke.

[swldx]

BBC 0432 23 Feb 2024

12095Khz 0359 23 FEB 2024 - BBC (UNITED KINGDOM) in ENGLISH from TALATA VOLONONDRY. SINPO = 55445. English, ID@0359z pips and newsroom preview. @0401z World News anchored by Neil Nunes. An American company has made history by becoming the first commercial outfit to put a spacecraft on the Moon. Houston-based Intuitive Machines landed its Odysseus robot near the lunar south pole. A massive fire has killed at least four people in a high-rise residential block in the Spanish city of Valencia, emergency services say. The blaze engulfed a 14-storey block in the Campanar neighbourhood and spread to an adjoining building. Firefighters were seen rescuing people from balconies, and nineteen are believed to be still missing. US President Joe Biden has held a private, emotional meeting with the widow and daughter of Alexei Navalny in California, as his administration prepared to announce fresh sanctions against Russia over the death of the Kremlin opposition leader. South Korea raised its health alert to the highest level on Friday after a mass walkout by trainee doctors this week, while the prime minister said public hospitals would extend working hours to respond to growing strains on the medical system. Almost two-thirds of the country's young doctors have walked off the job to protest a government plan to admit more students to medical schools, forcing hospitals to turn away patients and cancel procedures, and raising fears about further disruption to the medical system should the dispute drag on. The head of the embattled U.N. agency that assists Palestinian refugees warned Thursday that it is at a "breaking point," and its ability to assist millions of Palestinians is "seriously threatened." "It is with profound regret that I must now inform you that the Agency has reached breaking point, with Israel’s repeated calls to dismantle UNRWA and the freezing of funding by donors at a time of unprecedented humanitarian needs in Gaza," Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini wrote in a letter to the president of the U.N. General Assembly. Without new funding, he said UNRWA’s operations across the region will be severely compromised starting in March. President Macky Sall says April 2 will be the end of his mandate as president of Senegal. But he also said that first, a national dialogue is needed before setting up a new presidential election date. France’s Interior Minister has asked for a Tunisian imam to be stripped of his French residence permit, after authorities were alerted to his anti-French preaching. Interior Minister Gerarld Darmanin said that Mahjoub Mahjoubi, an imam in Bagnols-sur-Céze, near Avignon, in the south of France, would be deported to Tunisia. Kiwi recovering in New Zealand due to conservation efforts. @0406z "The Newsroom" begins. Backyard fence antenna w/MFJ-1020C active antenna (used as a preamplifier/preselector), Etón e1XM. 250kW, beamAz 315°, bearing 63°. Received at Plymouth, MN, United States, 15359KM from transmitter at Talata Volonondry. Local time: 2159.

[siddysthings]

Navalny’s body found bruised in Arctic morgue