#Yulia Galyamina

[russianprotesters]

⭕️ "Pavel is not a victim, he is a hero" : Pavel's acquaintances and politician Yulia Galyamina* performed at a memorial concert for Pavel Kushnir in Moscow "We are holding our concert underground, it is a sign of our times. One day we will gather in huge halls in memory of Pavel. Pavel is not a victim, he is a hero. He is a man who consciously committed a heroic act," said Galyamina, who helped organize the concert. Another colleague of the musician spoke about the uniqueness of Kushnir's talent: "The man played inside out, backwards. At the same time, it was an absolutely natural state, no desire to please anyone. A person who is so gifted is not capable of promoting himself anywhere, he can only continue to realize his talent. He could not cause even the slightest harm to anyone, but the car crushed him without looking." Next, Julia, who knew Pavel in life, spoke: “Pavel was and will remain the kind of person that once you see him, you will never forget. People who did not know him closely perceived him as a person who was, to some extent, far from the universal human norm. But when you got into his deep inner world, you forgot about it.” The girl shared several stories from Pavel’s life: for example, once he refused to take his fee because he thought that he had not performed well enough. Olga, who had been friends with Pavel for 25 years, read a letter he sent her at the age of 18: “Sometimes I feel like a rope of ridiculous thickness and terrible length and I don’t see my beginning and don’t believe in my end <...> Someone’s hot hand sometimes slides over mine, someday I will dare to grab and hold it and open my eyes, stuck together from someone else’s bloody pus, and then the light, as before, will strike them with new, furious force, and understanding will replace fear.” At the end, the opera singer performed two memorial prayers: Ravel’s “Kaddish” and Schubert’s “Litany”. At the end of the concert, a recording of Pavel Kushnir's voice on the radio and his performance of a melody on the piano were played. "It was. It will be," - with these words Pavel concluded his performance.

https://t.me/rusnews/65187?single

[mariacallous]

With more than 98 percent of precincts reporting, Vladimir Putin has claimed a fifth presidential term, collecting more than 87 percent of the ballots with official turnout above 74 percent. Putin’s closest rival, Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party, failed to crack even five percent. The voting itself presented no surprises. Putin has held power in Russia for nearly a quarter century, and his next term in office runs to 2030 when he’s free to run for reelection yet again, thanks to constitutional amendments adopted in 2021. Meduza breaks down the weekend’s protests, ballot-box sabotage, and violence.

’Noon Against Putin’

With Sunday’s voting outcome a forgone conclusion, the only unknowns were what, if any, protest activity might occur. Former St. Petersburg municipal deputy Maxim Reznik devised a scheme that became known as “Noon Against Putin,” calling on the president’s opponents to synchronize their voting at 12 p.m. on Sunday, March 17. The plan’s premise was that Russia now prohibits all opposition demonstrations, but voting allows a public assembly without violating the authorities’ lockdown. “Noon Against Putin” won Alexey Navalny’s endorsement and the support of prominent opposition members in exile, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Dmitry Gudkov, Yulia Galyamina, and others.

“Noon Against Putin” crowds were spotted across Russia, beginning in the Far East and moving westward as voting continued. Meduza tracked midday lines outside voting precincts in Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk, Perm, Yekaterinburg, Tomsk, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other cities. 

At embassies abroad, where Russians could assemble openly with anti-Putin, anti-war political banners, voters lined up at noon in Vilnius, Riga, Yerevan, Tbilisi, Belgrade, Podgorica, Paris, Brussels, Barcelona, ​​London, Lisbon, Bishkek, Astana, Tel Aviv, The Hague, and other cities. One of the largest crowds assembled in Berlin, where Alexey Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalanaya, voted after waiting in line for roughly six hours. An eyewitness told Meduza that he overheard Russian embassy staff discussing Navalnaya’s presence and debating whether they could prevent her from entering the building to vote. (The officials decided that they couldn’t stop her.)

Voter intimidation

A day before Sunday’s noon campaign, numerous readers told Meduza and Agentstvo Media that they’d started receiving threatening messages on Telegram and Signal from automated bot accounts. The messages accused the individuals of supporting “extremist ideas” and demanded that they vote “without long lines.”

Journalist Andrey Zakharov examined several dozen of these reports and concluded that the messages targeted people who shared two conditions: (1) they were registered to vote in Moscow or had been removed from their local precinct’s voter list, and (2) they had publicly traceable ties to Alexey Navalny or his Anti-Corruption Foundation. Zakharov found that “sympathies” with Navalny included attending his burial in Moscow, suggesting that surveillance cameras or other footage were used to identify them.

Before voting began, state prosecutors in Moscow responded to Internet chatter about “Noon Against Putin” by issuing a warning that any “unpermitted demonstrations” with the aim of “violating election laws” and preventing “the free exercise of voting rights” were punishable by up to five years in prison. By the end of voting, monitors at OVD-Info counted more than 86 arrests in 21 different cities across Russia.

In lieu of waving banners and shouting in crowds, many opposition voters resorted to “spoiling” their ballots. People scrawled anti-Putin, anti-war slogans on the paper, wrote the names of Alexey Navalny and Yulia Navalnaya, wrote Navalny’s dying wish, “Don’t give up,” and so on. Other messages on ballots read, “Love is stronger than death,” “Putin is a usurper, thief, and murderer,” and at least one person drew a steaming pile of feces over Putin’s name. Meduza collected photos of these ballots here.

Scammer sabotage

By Saturday morning, police had opened more than a dozen felony cases in response to individuals who sprayed dye, ink, or paint into ballot boxes. Some people even started fires, and one woman reportedly lost her arm while setting off a firecracker. According to media reports, the suspects arrested in these incidents say they were coerced into these acts by telephone scammers who fooled them out of their personal savings and then offered to return the money in exchange for sabotaging the local voting precinct. Attempts to damage ballot boxes were reported in Moscow, Simferopol, Volgograd, Novosibirsk, Rostov, and Karachay-Cherkessia. 

There hasn’t been a uniform police response to these incidents. For example, in Yekaterinburg, a chemical scientist who teaches at Ural Federal University was arrested after spraying green dye into a ballot box. She says scammers told her this was the price for returning her life savings of 15 million rubles ($162,100). Officials let her off with charges of disorderly conduct. On the other hand, a 20-year-old woman in Moscow is now in pretrial detention awaiting felony charges after spraying the same substance into a ballot box at her precinct.

Battlefront voting

Throughout Russia’s three-day presidential voting, the Belgorod region remained under regular drone attack and rocket fire. Ukrainian attacks disrupted voting on several occasions and killed at least two civilians, including a 16-year-old girl, according to Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.

In territories that Russia invaded and annexed after February 2022, early voting kicked off ahead of March 15. Officials allowed residents to cast ballots using whatever identification they presented, including Ukrainian passports. Voting was conducted in the presence of soldiers. In Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, official turnout ranged from 83 to more than 88 percent.

[jrljohnsonsrussialist]

RUSSIALINK: "Russian Congress Seeking Inspiration From Medieval History Is Quashed by Authorities: The crackdown is being seen as a sign that the Kremlin is playing closer attention to local power structures ahead of fall elections" - Moscow Times

RUSSIALINK: “Russian Congress Seeking Inspiration From Medieval History Is Quashed by Authorities: The crackdown is being seen as a sign that the Kremlin is playing closer attention to local power structures ahead of fall elections” – Moscow Times

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Uliana Pavlova – VELIKY NOVGOROD, May 26, 2021) Yulia Galyamina knew she might be arrested on Saturday for organizing a meeting of independent municipal deputies in Veliky Novgorod, Russia’s ancient seat of self-government. She just didn’t expect it to happen so fast. Within 30 minutes of the start of the two-day Zemsky Syezd, or Congress, a name chosen in a…

[russianreader]

All in a Day's Work

All in a Day’s Work

TV Rain has made the following list of people and places in Moscow raided and searched today (January 27, 2020) by the Putinist security forces. Thanks to Darya Apahonchich for the heads-up. \\ TRR We made a list of all police searches today. As of now, we know that the security services have raided the following: Navalny’s apartment in the Maryino district of Moscow An apartment rented by…

[russianwave]

Russian Protest Vocabulary

протестное настроение - Mood to protest, Discontent

Акция - Any kind of event, act, action, or promotion, also stock

Акция протеста - protest, literally a protest action

Демонстрация - Demonstration, can also mean a show of something 

Манифестация - Big public demonstration, in some contexts this also means ‘manifestation’

Скандировать - To chant

“Свободу политзаключенным” - “Free political prisoners”

Митинг - A rally

Митинговать - To rally

Митингующие - Protestors, participants

Ура! - Hurrah!

Долой! - Down with them

Протестный марш - Protest march

Шествие по городу - Procession around town

Пикет - picket

Пикетчик - A picketer

Пикетирование - Picketing

Пикетировать - To picket

Одиночный пикет - One person picket, Solo protest, 

Задержание - being detained

Автозак - prison truck

Наручниках - handcuffs

Пластиковых хомутах - Zip ties, plastic clamps

“Я – против!” - “I’m against it!”

Example sentences:

В Москве прошли задержания после несанкционированной акции протеста против принятия поправок к Конституции - In Moscow participants were detained after an unsanctioned protest against the constitutional amendments

Участники акции выстроились в очередь, чтобы поставить подписи против поправок - Participants in the event stood in line to register their disapproval of the amendments.

Мы всегда ходили с друзьями на первомайские демонстрации - My friends and I always marched in the May Day demonstrations.

В Хабаровском крае прошли массовые демонстрации в поддержку арестованного губернатора - In the Khabarovsk region mass demonstrations were held in support of the governor, who had been arrested.

В день годовщины революции они пошли с красным флагом на манифестацию - On the anniversary of the Revolution they took a red flag and joined the demonstration.

Собравшиеся скандировали “Свободу политзаключенным” и “Позор Кремлю!” - The protesters chanted “Free political prisoners!” and “Kremlin, For Shame!”

Первого мая с утра мы всей школой должны были собраться на праздничный митинг - On May Day the whole school had to gather in the morning for a celebration.

Если ты поучаствовал в митинге, то как минимум тебя надо избить, а по возможности и посадить - If you went to the rally, they’d at least beat you up and then put you in jail if they could, too

Страна изменилась: алкаши стали наркоманами, жулики ушли в коммерцию, придурки возглавили партии и беспрерывно митинговали - The country had changed: drunks became drug addicts, crooks went into business, idiots headed up parties and rallied non-stop.

Учителя проводят регулярные пикетирования администрации области и грозят забастовкой  - Teachers picket the regional center building regularly and threaten to go on strike

“Чем же недовольны пикетчики?” - “What are those picketers so unhappy about?”

Таганский суд оштрафовал муниципального депутата Юлию Галямину на 200 тысяч рублей за одиночный пикет в поддержку журналиста Ильи Азара - The Taganka Court fined city deputy Yulia Galyamina 200,000 rubles for her solo picketing to support journalist Ilya Azar.

[All of this vocabulary including the example sentences have been gathered from The Moscow Times Article ‘How to Protest, From A to Zip Tie CuffsThe Word's Worth’. The article also comes with audio.]

[xhemilbeharaj]

Protestoi kundër Putinit, dënohet 2 vjet burg me kusht

Protestoi kundër Putinit, dënohet 2 vjet burg me kusht

Opozitarja ruse, Yulia Galyamina u dënua sot me dy vjet burg me kusht. Ajo u dënua për shkelje të shpeshta të ligjit gjatë organizimit të protestave të opozitës. Galyamina është këshilltare në administratën e qytetit të Moskës dhe një kritike e Kremlinit. Ajo mori pjesë në fushatën kundër ndryshimeve kushtetuese që i mundësuan presidentit të Rusisë, Vladimir Putin, të qëndronte në pushtet deri…

[qingdynastyempiredaily]

Moscow city councillor given suspended 2-year sentence over protests

Moscow city councillor given suspended 2-year sentence over protests

December 23, 2020 MOSCOW (Reuters) – Yulia Galyamina, a Moscow city councillor and critic of the Kremlin, was given a a two-year suspended jail term on Wednesday after being found guilty of repeatedly violating rules for organising opposition protests. Galyamina, who took part in an opposition campaign against constitutional reforms this year that could allow President Vladimir Putin to remain in…

[45news]

MOSCOW—Yegor Zhukov is the face of a new generation of Putin opponents using social media as well as student rallies to stand up to the regime. On Sunday night, he was beaten up outside his home in Moscow hours after posting a YouTube video criticizing Putin. In a statement to the police, he said: “I have not suffered any property damage, but my face is broken.”An image of the 22-year-old’s bruised face, with bleeding lips and a swollen eye, has already gone viral online—an instant new symbol of Putin’s latest crackdown.The country’s leading opposition figure, Aleksey Navalny, was already comatose in a hospital bed in Berlin, fighting to regain consciousness after what German doctors describe as exposure to a poisonous substance whose effects are consistent with a nerve agent. This has been a summer of doom for Putin’s opponents. The Russian president prevailed in a constitutional referendum in July, which is likely to keep him in power until 2036. Since then, Russians have watched bloody police crackdowns on protesters in Belarus, including alleged cases of torture and rape, ordered by Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator now being aided and abetted by Putin. Last week, the country was horrified to wake up to the news of Navalny’s poisoning in Siberia. The attack on Zhukov—who is really just a kid—only added to a widespread sense of repression. On Sunday, Zhukov posted a video on his YouTube channel, which has 227,000 subscribers, about a crackdown against Putin’s critics at his university, the Higher School of Economics. The school used to be a bastion of free speech in a country where that is increasingly rare.Zhukov, who was arrested last year during anti-government protests and threatened with eight years in prison, was due to begin his studies on the Masters program this fall. The video was posted in response to university administrators who abruptly told him that he would not be enrolled this year, even though he had already been accepted and had paid to start the course.Almost 200,000 people online watched Zhukov say: “Clearly, no professional person, who is serious about political science, would describe Vladimir Putin’s regime as effective.”  Within hours, the student opposition leader was badly beaten outside his house in Moscow by unknown assailants. In the two decades of the Putin era, Russia has seen crackdowns on the media, human rights defenders, and opposition parties. Universities are the latest target. Professors and students believe potential students are blacklisted from enrolling at the Higher School of Economics by the FSB, Russia’s successor to the KGB. “Authorities must be aware of Russia’s history: students have always united in political movements,” former Higher School of Economics professor and founder of Transparency International, Yelena Pamfilova, told The Daily Beast. “There is a giant crisis and not only in Russia: people in trouble, like Zhukov, want to call police for help but there is no trust for police and that is very dangerous.” Intellectuals have long used the Higher School of Economics as a safe space where progressive political and economic ideas could be formulated and shared. “Recently, all professors with skeptical attitudes toward the government have lost their contracts,” Zhukov said. “Our opposition student media was deprived of its status as a student organization.”Last summer, Zhukov, who is morer libertarian than liberal, joined protests triggered by numerous violations at Moscow City Council elections. He was arrested and charged with public appeals for extremism. He could have been sentenced to eight years in prison, but he became a cause célèbre with thousands of students, professors, and ordinary Russians protesting that the charges should be dropped. The case against him was eventually dismissed but the university took action to avoid a repeat of the controversy, and in January all students and university staff were banned from making any political declarations in public or engaging in political activity. Zhukov believes the university was forced to make these announcements by the authorities. “The government got scared of our unity, that we were together with the university’s management. It is hard for me to believe that people who for years built ‘the most liberal university of the country,’ all of a sudden turned into the guardians of the government,” he said. It is unclear who or what scared the university management into the sudden policy change, but some of its best professors stopped working, including Yulia Galyamina, a linguist and opposition leader. Police broke her jaw, cracked her teeth, and gave her a severe concussion when she took part in a protest.  Yelena Lukyanova, another professor who left the university, said kicking out Zhukov had forced the crackdown into the public eye. “At least they told the man everything openly, while all we heard was some indirect hints,” she wrote on social media. Lukyakova and three other former professors have started “the Free University,” an independent educational project free of political pressure and censorship. “There will be no ‘disloyal’ students at the Higher School of Economics, we spoke about these horrible changes six months ago, and here is the nail in the coffin of my alma mater,” wrote former student Roman Kiselyov-Augustus on Facebook. “They can ban you from studying for your political activity.”Zhukov returned home on Monday still badly bruised, but doctors said there would be no lasting damage from the attack. From the hospital, he had repeated the favorite slogan of former Putin nemesis Boris Nemtsov: “Russia will be free.” The Russian opposition leader was assassinated beneath the walls of the Kremlin in February 2015, when Zhukov was 18 years old. In neighboring Belarus, crowds are also demanding freedom after discredited elections. More than 100,000 protesters marched across the bridge in Minsk to the presidential residence, demanding Lukashenko’s resignation on Sunday. The Kremlin had stayed quiet for the first couple of weeks of the protests, while hundreds of Belarusians were detained, many beaten and tortured. Putin has since signaled growing support for the Lukashenko regime. To demonstrate Moscow’s backing, Putin called Lukashenko on Sunday with birthday greetings, while a crowd of protesters was outside chanting, "Happy birthday, Lukashenko, you are a rat!"Putin has also promised to send men from Moscow to help Lukashenko “halt extremist activity in the republic if an urgent need arises,” a spokesman said.Veteran human rights defender and chairwoman of the Civic Assistance Committee, Svetlana Gannushkina, said the two autocrats from the former Soviet Union had been emboldened by President Donald Trump’s calls to violently put down protests in the U.S. “Looking at Trump, they think it is OK to solve problems with the opposition outside of the rule of law,” she said. “In Russia the first target for the Kremlin’s reprisal is always the intelligentsia. Until recently, Zhukov’s university, the Higher School of Economics, was the source of progressive liberal ideas. Clearly it was an unpleasant place for the authoritarian government.” Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/31KfZcx

[mariacallous]

Activist, politician, and academic Yulia Galyamina was fired from her position as professor in the Department of the Theory and Practice of Media Communications at the Institute of Social Sciences of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), after new provisions to the law on “foreign agents” took effect. Galyamina posted her dismissal notice on Facebook.

The document states that Galyamina was fired because of a ban on “foreign agents carrying out educational or pedagogical activities in state organizations.” The provision came into effect on December 1.

Galyamina believes that this is likely “the first instance of the firing of a foreign agent after the adoption of this new, discriminatory law.”

They offered to transfer me to a non-pedagogical and non-research position. But, obviously, that’s an entirely different profession. I can teach students, but I’m not prepared to become, for example, a career development specialist, as they suggested to me. So after being fired, I’m thinking about what to do. And meanwhile I’ll greet the New Year in my new status as basically unemployed.

Amendments to the legislation on “foreign agents,” which took effect on December 1, deprive people with this status of a significant portion of their civil rights. Among other things, they are banned from working in the government and being members of electoral commissions, as well as from organizing public events and educating minors.

Galyamina was declared a “foreign agent” at the end of September.

[jrljohnsonsrussialist]

RUSSIALINK: "Hand It Over: Court Awards Moscow City Transport 1.2 Million Rubles in Suit Against Opposition Politicians" - Kommersant/ Maria Litvinova

RUSSIALINK: “Hand It Over: Court Awards Moscow City Transport 1.2 Million Rubles in Suit Against Opposition Politicians” – Kommersant/ Maria Litvinova

“Alexei Navalny, Lyubov Sobol, Ivan Zhdanov, Yulia Galyamina, Ilya Yashin, Alexander Solovyov, Oleg Stepanov, and Vladimir Milov must jointly pay Moscow City Transport (Mosgortrans) 1.2 million rubles [approx. $18,000] for … traffic stoppages during the ‘unauthorized’ protest rally on July 27 in Moscow. … [according to a] ruling … by the Koptevo District Court on [a] lawsuit brought by Moscow…

[courtneytincher]

A Battered Professor Leads Moscow’s Growing Grassroots Protests Against Put

HandoutMOSCOW—Yulia Galyamina’s unraveling life illustrates all too well the risks of opposition politics in Russia, even on a local level.  Police broke her teeth and jaw and gave her a serious concussion in 2017 when she was caught in a violent street protest. She has suffered from pain in her jaw ever since. Undaunted, Galyamina struggled this summer to take part in a Moscow City Council election scheduled for September.  On Tuesday she called The Daily Beast on the phone from a police van driving her away from the Russian capital to jail in the provincial town of Mozhaisk. Galyamina is a 46-year-old linguistics professor at a prestigious university here and on the phone she sounded almost as if she were lecturing students about the dying Ketsky language. But clearly she had a message she wanted to get out.Go Inside Moscow’s Poisonous History of Covert Assassinations“I have a few minutes left before they take my phone away and cut me off from all communication with my supporters,” she said.Earlier in the day, a court arrested her and eight other key opposition leaders for calling on protesters to stage a rally in downtown Moscow without government authorization. To support the verdict, the judge read aloud a dozen or so of Galyamina’s Facebook posts about opposition demands to allow independent candidates, including herself, to run in September. Now from the van she told The Daily Beast, “Putin and [Moscow Mayor Sergey] Sobyanin must be afraid of responsible citizens and I am not surprised to get arrested—I always knew that criminal prosecution would be the price for my opposition activity.”Putin’s Russia has seen many courageous women fighting against injustice. But instead of embracing their constructive criticism, the Kremlin chose to silence them with police clubs and prison bars. There have also been several brilliant women, including journalist Anna Politkovskaya and activist Natalia Estemirova, who fell victim to assassins. But more women join the demonstrations. Last weekend, for instance, a 17-year-old protester named Olga Misik sat cross-legged in the street and read articles from the Russian Constitution to riot cops arrayed around her about “the right to assemble peacefully, without weapons, hold rallies, meetings, demonstrations and marches.” The image already is an icon of protest.Alexei Navalny ‘Poisoning’ Comes at a Critical Moment in Moscow ProtestsTwo years ago I visited Galyamina at the Botkin Hospital in Moscow, where she was recovering from a concussion. She had severe headaches after a Moscow OMON (Special Police) cop smashed her face. Then, too, it was striking to see pale Galyamina on the phone from her hospital bed, calling for her supporters to come out to the next rally. At the time, crowds of demonstrators had turned out in the center of Moscow’s to fight against the city hall’s renovation plan for the displacement of residents from hundreds of apartment blocks slated for demolition. People did not want to move from the central districts to the outskirts of the capital.Handout“Factories closed, leaving millions without jobs—but at least people had their apartments, their property,” Galyamina told me at the hospital in 2017. “The new law allows the state to deprive thousands of Moscow families of their beloved apartments and move them to wherever officials want.”Last year Galyamina won a seat in the Moscow municipal elections. Residents of Temiryazevsky region, where she sat on the district council, know their candidate well. She led her electorate in battles about fundamental causes in local politics like saving Dubki Park from development and demanding garbage recycling.  She was building her political platform on that public support to run for the Moscow City Duma, a regional parliament, in September this year. “We spent last month collecting almost 4,000 signatures from Yulia’s supporters but authorities rejected hundreds of real voters to ban her from running for the election,” Nikolay Kosyan, one of Galyamina’s supporters, said. Kosyan was angry, as are many young activists protesting in the streets in support of the arrested leaders. “When the mayoral office realized that we had actually collected real signatures and not fake ones, they still decided to shut her up in fear of her powerful spirit.”On Saturday Galyamina became a hero for thousands of protesters. Facing rows of National Guard riot police, she said: “You are working for a fascist power, for those who rule for money, not for your sake,” she told men covered in body armor. “The men in power grow fat, while you work for kopecks [pennies]. You beat women, you beat sick people. Do you realize what you are doing?” Galyamina continued in a lecturing tone while the police looked like mischievous, slightly terrified students. (Video here in Russian.)Galyamina was wearing her usual red dress and a white jacket and was holding a little Russian flag in her hands. “I am a woman, I feel ashamed of you, strong men, who beat ordinary people—these people came out to the streets, because they strive to have independent institutes of power, which would not rob people like you,” the deputy continued. Ten minutes later two policemen grabbed her, twisted her arms behind her back, and dragged her away from the rally. Back in 2013, the Russian opposition leader Aleksey Navalny won 27 percent in a mayoral election in Moscow, even without access to state television channels, coming in second after the incumbent from the ruling United Russia party, Sergei Sobyanin. This time, apparently, Sobyanin wants to avoid the mistake of allowing a strong opposition showing. Nine key candidates for September election are currently behind bars. So is Navalny.Galyamina had been playing by the rules. She collected the necessary number of signatures in her support but authorities turned her candidacy down, claiming signatures were falsified. Police detained up to 1,400 protesters on Saturday, Russian courts opened 200 legal cases against the opposition.“She is stubborn and she is good at creating responsible communities in Moscow,” her friend Denis Bilunov, a political scientist, told The Daily Beast. “The Kremlin is scared of Galyamina.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

HandoutMOSCOW—Yulia Galyamina’s unraveling life illustrates all too well the risks of opposition politics in Russia, even on a local level.  Police broke her teeth and jaw and gave her a serious concussion in 2017 when she was caught in a violent street protest. She has suffered from pain in her jaw ever since. Undaunted, Galyamina struggled this summer to take part in a Moscow City Council election scheduled for September.  On Tuesday she called The Daily Beast on the phone from a police van driving her away from the Russian capital to jail in the provincial town of Mozhaisk. Galyamina is a 46-year-old linguistics professor at a prestigious university here and on the phone she sounded almost as if she were lecturing students about the dying Ketsky language. But clearly she had a message she wanted to get out.Go Inside Moscow’s Poisonous History of Covert Assassinations“I have a few minutes left before they take my phone away and cut me off from all communication with my supporters,” she said.Earlier in the day, a court arrested her and eight other key opposition leaders for calling on protesters to stage a rally in downtown Moscow without government authorization. To support the verdict, the judge read aloud a dozen or so of Galyamina’s Facebook posts about opposition demands to allow independent candidates, including herself, to run in September. Now from the van she told The Daily Beast, “Putin and [Moscow Mayor Sergey] Sobyanin must be afraid of responsible citizens and I am not surprised to get arrested—I always knew that criminal prosecution would be the price for my opposition activity.”Putin’s Russia has seen many courageous women fighting against injustice. But instead of embracing their constructive criticism, the Kremlin chose to silence them with police clubs and prison bars. There have also been several brilliant women, including journalist Anna Politkovskaya and activist Natalia Estemirova, who fell victim to assassins. But more women join the demonstrations. Last weekend, for instance, a 17-year-old protester named Olga Misik sat cross-legged in the street and read articles from the Russian Constitution to riot cops arrayed around her about “the right to assemble peacefully, without weapons, hold rallies, meetings, demonstrations and marches.” The image already is an icon of protest.Alexei Navalny ‘Poisoning’ Comes at a Critical Moment in Moscow ProtestsTwo years ago I visited Galyamina at the Botkin Hospital in Moscow, where she was recovering from a concussion. She had severe headaches after a Moscow OMON (Special Police) cop smashed her face. Then, too, it was striking to see pale Galyamina on the phone from her hospital bed, calling for her supporters to come out to the next rally. At the time, crowds of demonstrators had turned out in the center of Moscow’s to fight against the city hall’s renovation plan for the displacement of residents from hundreds of apartment blocks slated for demolition. People did not want to move from the central districts to the outskirts of the capital.Handout“Factories closed, leaving millions without jobs—but at least people had their apartments, their property,” Galyamina told me at the hospital in 2017. “The new law allows the state to deprive thousands of Moscow families of their beloved apartments and move them to wherever officials want.”Last year Galyamina won a seat in the Moscow municipal elections. Residents of Temiryazevsky region, where she sat on the district council, know their candidate well. She led her electorate in battles about fundamental causes in local politics like saving Dubki Park from development and demanding garbage recycling.  She was building her political platform on that public support to run for the Moscow City Duma, a regional parliament, in September this year. “We spent last month collecting almost 4,000 signatures from Yulia’s supporters but authorities rejected hundreds of real voters to ban her from running for the election,” Nikolay Kosyan, one of Galyamina’s supporters, said. Kosyan was angry, as are many young activists protesting in the streets in support of the arrested leaders. “When the mayoral office realized that we had actually collected real signatures and not fake ones, they still decided to shut her up in fear of her powerful spirit.”On Saturday Galyamina became a hero for thousands of protesters. Facing rows of National Guard riot police, she said: “You are working for a fascist power, for those who rule for money, not for your sake,” she told men covered in body armor. “The men in power grow fat, while you work for kopecks [pennies]. You beat women, you beat sick people. Do you realize what you are doing?” Galyamina continued in a lecturing tone while the police looked like mischievous, slightly terrified students. (Video here in Russian.)Galyamina was wearing her usual red dress and a white jacket and was holding a little Russian flag in her hands. “I am a woman, I feel ashamed of you, strong men, who beat ordinary people—these people came out to the streets, because they strive to have independent institutes of power, which would not rob people like you,” the deputy continued. Ten minutes later two policemen grabbed her, twisted her arms behind her back, and dragged her away from the rally. Back in 2013, the Russian opposition leader Aleksey Navalny won 27 percent in a mayoral election in Moscow, even without access to state television channels, coming in second after the incumbent from the ruling United Russia party, Sergei Sobyanin. This time, apparently, Sobyanin wants to avoid the mistake of allowing a strong opposition showing. Nine key candidates for September election are currently behind bars. So is Navalny.Galyamina had been playing by the rules. She collected the necessary number of signatures in her support but authorities turned her candidacy down, claiming signatures were falsified. Police detained up to 1,400 protesters on Saturday, Russian courts opened 200 legal cases against the opposition.“She is stubborn and she is good at creating responsible communities in Moscow,” her friend Denis Bilunov, a political scientist, told The Daily Beast. “The Kremlin is scared of Galyamina.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

August 02, 2019 at 10:22AM via IFTTT

[russianreader]

Stanislava Novgorodtseva: Portraits of Angry Muscovites

Stanislava Novgorodtseva: Portraits of Angry Muscovites

“The Regime Has No Feedback from the Populace”: What Are People Saying Who Support the Candidates Barred from the Moscow City Duma Elections? Photographer Stanislava Novgorodtseva took photos of angry Muscovites, trying to find out what it was they wanted July 27, 2019

Viktor, 21, student and programmer. “Ideally, I would like to see all the candidates who were illegally barred put on the ballot…

[courtneytincher]

Moscow bars opposition candidates from city council election despite protests

Moscow authorities have barred 57 candidates from running for city council, including several prominent critics of the Kremlin-backed mayor, despite days of opposition protests.  The Moscow electoral commission has registered 233 candidates for September's election of 45-seat council, it said on Wednesday, the vast majority of them members of parliamentary factions loyal to Vladimir Putin's administration. One-fifth of prospective candidates were turned away, however, mainly due to alleged problems meeting a draconian requirement for supporting signatures. Candidates not from a parliamentary party must gather the signatures of 3 per cent of all voters in their district, or about 5,000 people, within a three-week period. Those denied included former liberal MPs Gennady and Dmitry Gudkov, allies of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and Ilya Yashin, an ally of murdered opposition activist Boris Nemtsov who has investigated corruption and malfeasance as head of a municipal district board. Meanwhile, dozens of candidates from the ruling United Russia party, who are running as nominal independents as the faction's ratings continue to fall, had their signatures accepted and were registered. Less than one-third of the population now supports United Russia, according to a state poll last week.  Supporters of opposition candidates have been protesting every evening since Sunday, when hundreds gathered outside the electoral commission. Police forced the crowd away from the building, beating some with batons and detaining 38 people. A major protest is planned for Saturday. Ivan Zhdanov and Lyubov Sobol, allies of opposition leader Alexei Navalny whose candidacies have been rejected, confront police outside the electoral commission on Sunday Credit: Pavel Golovkin/AP Disqualified candidate Yulia Galyamina, a university lecturer who spent Sunday night in jail, told The Telegraph and other journalists the next evening that Muscovites were “now in the same kind of glass cell, except they feed us better, the beds aren't so short and there are fewer cockroaches”. “Outside this cell, they're destroying our city, our environment, medicine, education and most importantly they're destroying our political rights,” she said.  Candidate Lyubov Sobol, who was also detained and later denied registration, has been staging a hunger strike since Sunday.  The controversy has drawn unprecedented attention to election of the rubber-stamp city council. While the council has limited powers to oversee Europe's second largest city, it does approve the annual budget and can, if it gathers the signatures of 25 per cent of voters, initiate a vote to recall the mayor.   In an episode reminiscent of Gogol's Dead Souls, electoral officials claimed that disqualified candidates had submitted signatures that were misspelled or were for ineligible or even dead voters.  But many living voters including well-known academics and journalists have complained that their signatures for opposition candidates were declared fake.   "Smile if you're against Putin." A few hundred at the latest protest against the disqualification of opposition candidates before Moscow city council election. Word is half dozen candidates will be registered but not the best-known ones. @IlyaYashin says he's already been barred pic.twitter.com/QO1GwQC4VI— Alec Luhn (@ASLuhn) July 15, 2019 “Dear friends, something very unpleasant has happened to me. The thing is, I don't exist,” sociologist Grigory Yudin wrote on Facebook after his signature was reportedly ruled a forgery. “My mom, hundreds of neighbours in my district and thousands of other Muscovites don't exist along with me. We are all ghosts.”  Mr Yashin said last week electoral officials had analysed the 15,000 signatures submitted by him and two other candidates in a mere seven hours and 20 minutes, which would suggest that they checked each signature in less than two seconds. At yet another protest on Wednesday evening, people in the crowd took turns stepping onto a ledge to speak, calling on fellow residents to demand an end to “lawlessness”. “You will give us honest elections!” and “Put Putin's gang on trial!” they chanted.   Ms Galyamina said she would appeal her disqualification, adding that Saturday's protest was vital to increase pressure on the authorities. “If we have people's support, we will be able to do something,” she said. “If we don't, it will be impossible to do anything, because our courts are not just.”

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

Moscow authorities have barred 57 candidates from running for city council, including several prominent critics of the Kremlin-backed mayor, despite days of opposition protests.  The Moscow electoral commission has registered 233 candidates for September's election of 45-seat council, it said on Wednesday, the vast majority of them members of parliamentary factions loyal to Vladimir Putin's administration. One-fifth of prospective candidates were turned away, however, mainly due to alleged problems meeting a draconian requirement for supporting signatures. Candidates not from a parliamentary party must gather the signatures of 3 per cent of all voters in their district, or about 5,000 people, within a three-week period. Those denied included former liberal MPs Gennady and Dmitry Gudkov, allies of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and Ilya Yashin, an ally of murdered opposition activist Boris Nemtsov who has investigated corruption and malfeasance as head of a municipal district board. Meanwhile, dozens of candidates from the ruling United Russia party, who are running as nominal independents as the faction's ratings continue to fall, had their signatures accepted and were registered. Less than one-third of the population now supports United Russia, according to a state poll last week.  Supporters of opposition candidates have been protesting every evening since Sunday, when hundreds gathered outside the electoral commission. Police forced the crowd away from the building, beating some with batons and detaining 38 people. A major protest is planned for Saturday. Ivan Zhdanov and Lyubov Sobol, allies of opposition leader Alexei Navalny whose candidacies have been rejected, confront police outside the electoral commission on Sunday Credit: Pavel Golovkin/AP Disqualified candidate Yulia Galyamina, a university lecturer who spent Sunday night in jail, told The Telegraph and other journalists the next evening that Muscovites were “now in the same kind of glass cell, except they feed us better, the beds aren't so short and there are fewer cockroaches”. “Outside this cell, they're destroying our city, our environment, medicine, education and most importantly they're destroying our political rights,” she said.  Candidate Lyubov Sobol, who was also detained and later denied registration, has been staging a hunger strike since Sunday.  The controversy has drawn unprecedented attention to election of the rubber-stamp city council. While the council has limited powers to oversee Europe's second largest city, it does approve the annual budget and can, if it gathers the signatures of 25 per cent of voters, initiate a vote to recall the mayor.   In an episode reminiscent of Gogol's Dead Souls, electoral officials claimed that disqualified candidates had submitted signatures that were misspelled or were for ineligible or even dead voters.  But many living voters including well-known academics and journalists have complained that their signatures for opposition candidates were declared fake.   "Smile if you're against Putin." A few hundred at the latest protest against the disqualification of opposition candidates before Moscow city council election. Word is half dozen candidates will be registered but not the best-known ones. @IlyaYashin says he's already been barred pic.twitter.com/QO1GwQC4VI— Alec Luhn (@ASLuhn) July 15, 2019 “Dear friends, something very unpleasant has happened to me. The thing is, I don't exist,” sociologist Grigory Yudin wrote on Facebook after his signature was reportedly ruled a forgery. “My mom, hundreds of neighbours in my district and thousands of other Muscovites don't exist along with me. We are all ghosts.”  Mr Yashin said last week electoral officials had analysed the 15,000 signatures submitted by him and two other candidates in a mere seven hours and 20 minutes, which would suggest that they checked each signature in less than two seconds. At yet another protest on Wednesday evening, people in the crowd took turns stepping onto a ledge to speak, calling on fellow residents to demand an end to “lawlessness”. “You will give us honest elections!” and “Put Putin's gang on trial!” they chanted.   Ms Galyamina said she would appeal her disqualification, adding that Saturday's protest was vital to increase pressure on the authorities. “If we have people's support, we will be able to do something,” she said. “If we don't, it will be impossible to do anything, because our courts are not just.”

July 17, 2019 at 06:16PM via IFTTT