Saturdays afternoon

Thousands of people gathered in downtown Moscow, Russia on Saturday, August 10, 2019 to demand that opposition and independent candidates be included on ballots for next month’s Moscow City Duma election. Photo: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters.

Psephology

Russian judicial authority has frozen all bank accounts of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) — the NGO founded and led by Alexei Anatolievich Navalny — after all its executives have been put under investigation for money laundering and tax evasion by Russia’s Investigative Committee. Even as interrogations and house-to-house searches are underway around Moscow, from his jail cell Navalny called the people to stand up for their rights and their country. Thus, in his message entitled: “Beasts tremble — we fall into a swoon. FBK has no fear” (readable online on his website), he exorts his friends and associates to deal with any intimidation, because, after all, nothing is so scary as the fear of fear, whilst in this case, he says, “Everything is like in Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky’s tale ‘Cock-the-Roach’”.

Actors take part in Probka Mira, a street performance depicting a traffic jam in Muzeon Park of Arts in Moscow, Russia. Photo: 新华社 (Xīnhuá News Agency)/Barcroft Media.

Shakespeare Through Oxford Glasses

Riot police detain would-be opposition candidate Lyubov Eduardovna Sobol in central Moscow, Russia. It was only one among hundreds of arrests on Saturday, August 3, 2019 in an attempt to shut up a mass rally which had been banned by authorities. Photo: Dmitry Serebryakov/AP.

Roundtrip

Russian opposition leader Alexei Anatolievich Navalny (pictured above after treatment) is back in jail after being discharged Monday from hospital — against the wishes of his doctor — with a diagnosis of contact dermatitis, following his recovery for a sudden and acute form of allergy, which his friends and associates insist in regarding as a possible poisoning worth further observation. Navalny himself gave his own account of his night at Moscow’s No. 64 Municipal Clinical Hospital. Photo: navalny.com.

Second Skin

Russian opposition leader Alexei Anatolievich Navalny (pictured above, while appearing in a Moscow courtroom on July 24) has been taken to hospital on Sunday morning from jail, where he was serving a 30-day sentence after being arrested last week for calling an unauthorised mass protest against the exclusion of opposition candidates from Moscow City Duma election. His spokespeople said he suffered symptoms of acute skin allergy, not excluding the possibility of a poisoning by chemical agents. No official medical bulletin has yet been issued from the hospital. Photo: Pavel Golovkin/AP.

Microtargeting

Russian police arrested hundreds of people in Moscow on Saturday, ahead of a mass rally protesting against the exclusion of opposition candidates from next fall’s elections for Moscow City Duma. The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) — to all effects the successor agency to the USSR’s Committee for State Security (KGB) — does apparently believe that a foreign hand is responsible, seeking to destabilise and undermine Russia.