NP - Vladimir Putin's Russia

[David Morris]

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/12/valdmir-putins-russia-criticize-government-and-your-family-will-be-locked-penal-c

Valdimir Putin's Russia: Criticize the Government and Your Family Will Be
Locked Up in a Penal Colony

The show trial of one of Valdimir Putin's chief political critics ended
today. He was convicted and banned from political office for ten years, but
the sentence was suspended and he immediately joined a protest march upon his
release. So what happened next?
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/world/europe/aleksei-navalny-convicted.html>

The police in Moscow briefly detained the anticorruption crusader and
political opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny on Tuesday as he tried to
join an unauthorized, antigovernment rally, just hours after a Moscow court
had given him a suspended sentence on criminal fraud charges. *Yet, in a
sign of how unwilling the authorities are to make a martyr of Mr. Navalny,
they said later that the police were merely escorting him back to his home,
Interfax reported.*

Well, that's not so bad. Maybe Putin is lightening up a bit. Except for one
little thing:
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/30/alexei-navalny-sentenced-thousands-expected-protest-putin>

*His brother Oleg was jailed for three and a half years for the same
offence*....Navalny’s supporters said the Kremlin was returning to the
sinister Soviet-era practice of punishing the relatives of those it
disliked. Upon hearing the verdict, mumbled quietly by the judge, Yelena
Korobchenko, Alexei Navalny rolled his eyes and looked at his brother.

....Oleg Navalny is the father of two small children and a former executive
of the state-owned postal service. *Unlike his better known brother, he has
never played a role in the Russian opposition movement. His imprisonment in
a penal colony seems to echo the Soviet-era practice of arresting the
relatives of “inconvenient” people.*

So they let Aleksei go free in order to keep him from being a martyr, but
tossed his brother into prison as a hostage to his good behavior. Charming. A
spokesman admitted that Putin
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-opposition-leader-navalny-found-guilty-but-avoids-prison-1419924438?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories>
"had
been aware of the Navalny case, but that Tuesday’s ruling 'isn’t important
enough to merit a special report' to the president." I actually believe
this. For Putin, it's just another day at the office.
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