The demonstration last February offended many Russian
Orthodox Christians. But Putin has been criticised by U.S. and
European leaders over what they saw as disproportionate jail
sentences imposed on three Pussy Riot members. Their trial was
also seen by Putin’s critics as part of a clampdown on dissent.

The Moscow court said it had based its ruling on conclusions
by a panel of experts who studied the video, showing band
members in colourful mini-skirts and ski masks dancing in front
of the altar of Moscow’s main Russian Orthodox cathedral.

Judge Marina Musimovich said the footage “has elements of
extremism; in particular there are words and actions which
humiliate various social groups based on their religion”. She
said it also had calls for mutiny and “mass disorder”.

The verdict said that free distribution of the video could
ignite racial and religious hatred.

The court’s ruling applies to other videos released by the
band, including a performance in Moscow’s Red Square, where
calls for mass disorder could be heard. Such calls were not made
inside the church.

The websites are now likely to be included in a state
register and could be blocked if the banned content is not
removed.

The Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor said that
once the court decision takes effect it will monitor how it is
implemented.

Three members of Pussy Riot convicted in August of
hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for their “punk
prayer”, which the Russian Orthodox Church has cast as part of a
concerted attack on the church and the faithful.

The women said the protest, in which they burst into Christ
the Saviour Cathedral and called on the Virgin Mary to rid
Russia of Putin, was not motivated by hatred and was meant to
mock the church leadership’s support for the longtime leader.

Band members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina are
serving two-year jail sentences over the protest last February.
A third member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, walked free last month
when her sentence was suspended on appeal.

“To me this is a clear attribute of censorship – censorship
of art and censorship of culture, of the protest culture which
is very important for any country, let alone for Russia,”
Samutsevich told reporters outside court.

“Now of course the fact that they will be blocking all Pussy
Riot videos as I understand, all photos – this is horrible.
Naturally, I will lodge an appeal and I will try to do it
today,” she added.

Putin, a former KGB officer who has cultivated close ties
with the Orthodox church over 13 years in power, has rebuffed
Western criticism about the prison terms meted out.

Russia’s prison authority took action after video footage appeared on the Internet showing men in uniform hitting and kicking a prisoner who has his hands tied behind his back and his trousers down.

Some of the violent footage, in which the inmate’s pleas for mercy are ignored after he falls to the floor, was shown on Russian television on Thursday.

Russia’s human rights ombudsman said such abusive treatment has become almost “routine” and needed the government’s urgent attention because it discredited and weakened the state.

The prison authority said the inmate had behaved “extremely provocatively”, disobeyed orders and refused to exchange civilian clothes for a prison uniform at the start of a 3-1/2 year jail sentence for robbery and assault.

Acknowledging the guards at a prison in the southern city of Novocherkassk had used excessive force and violated the prisoner’s rights, it said three guards had been detained and three others were under investigation.

“The suspects, both simultaneously and taking turns, delivered multiple blows to the convict’s head and body with their hands and feet,” Valery Chekryshev, a senior regional investigative official, told on state television.

Reports of people being mistreated in custody are still frequent, six months into Putin’s third, six-year term as president. He was first elected president in 2000.

“This kind of treatment of people in custody is becoming something like the routine in our country,” the human rights ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, told state-run Rossiya-24 television.

In one particularly brutal case, human rights activists say Sergei Nazarov, an unemployed man of 52, died in March after being beaten by police officers and sodomized with a champagne bottle during questioning over a minor offence.

CALLS FOR REFORM

Such reports have increased demands for Russia’s leaders to carry out reforms to strengthen the rule of law that were promised by Putin’s protégé Dmitry Medvedev, whose four-year presidency ended in May.

Police, prison guards and other law enforcement officers who abuse people in custody “discredit the state, and thus weaken it”, Lukin said.

The trial of three members of the Pussy Riot punk band over an anti-Putin protest in a church last February has also renewed criticism over Russia’s justice system, which human rights activists say is open to political manipulation.

More than 700,000 Russians are behind bars and rights activists regularly complain of poor living conditions, cases of torture, beatings and disease in prisons.

Allegations of abuse in jail are also in the spotlight following a protest by about 250 inmates at a prison in the Ural Mountains town of Kopeysk on Sunday.

Human rights activists said the inmates demanded an end to beatings, humiliation and demands for bribes. Prison authorities said the only demand they made was for the release of fellow inmates from a punishment cell, and that eight police were wounded trying to disperse a crowd of relatives outside.

International concern was also fuelled by the 2009 death in pre-trial detention of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who said he was being punished by the same officers he accused of stealing $230 million through fraudulent tax refunds.

The United States is preparing to pass legislation to “name and shame” Russian human rights violators as part of a broader bill dropping Cold-War era trade restrictions.

Magnitsky said he was denied the medical attention he needed over almost a year in jail and the Kremlin’s own human rights council said he was probably beaten to death.

(Additional reporting by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Timothy Heritage and Alison Williams)

France became the first European power to recognize Syria’s new opposition coalition as the sole representative of its people and said on November 13 it would look into arming rebels against President Bashar al-Assad once they formed a government.

Medvedev, who stepped down as president in May to make way for Vladimir Putin, said such a decision was “unacceptable”.

“The desire to change a political regime in another state through recognition of some political force as the sole sovereign representative seems to me not entirely civilized,” Medvedev told French journalists in an interview cleared for publication on Monday.

Medvedev echoed Putin’s statements that Russia takes a neutral stance and is not seeking to prop up Assad, saying that “Russia supports neither Assad’s regime nor the opposition.”

“But … the question is how right it is to … decide to support another political force if that political force is in direct confrontation with the officially recognized government of another country. And from the point of view of international law, it seems to me that is absolutely unacceptable.”

Russia and France have been sharply at odds over Syria during a conflict activists say has killed more than 38,000 people since protests began in March 2011. France and other Western states have criticized Russia for vetoing three U.N. Security Council resolutions aimed to pressure Assad.

DEFENDS RUSSIA

Medvedev is to meet French President Francois Hollande and Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault during his two-day visit, the first meeting of an intergovernmental commission since Putin and Hollande took office in May and Medvedev and Ayrault took up their posts. Most meetings are expected to occur on Tuesday.

Medvedev said that Russia, which holds 41 percent of its gold and forex reserves in euros, has been closely following the crisis management of the EU, which accounts for half of Russia’s foreign trade.

“We are following it with suspense because sometime it seems to us that our European partners lack energy and will in their decision-making,” Medvedev said.

Medvedev also accused France of setting up administrative barriers for Russian investors, often viewed in the West with suspicion over the origin of their money made in controversial privatizations of the 1990s.

“It is time to relax and understand that most Russian businessmen are law-abiding people who made their money in an honest way, and this money can be invested in any assets, including French ones,” Medvedev said.

He defended new laws Kremlin critics have described as a crackdown on dissent since Putin’s election to a six-year third term, and contended Russia has advanced democracy since a wave of opposition protests began last December by allowing more parties to contest elections.

Some analysts believe Medvedev may not hold his job for much longer. But Medvedev said he felt “comfortable” as prime minister under Putin – a reversal of their roles from 2008-2012, though Putin was always seen as calling the shots – and repeated that he did not rule out seeking the presidency again.

(Reporting by Gleb Bryanski; Editing by Douglas Busvine, Steve Gutterman and Paul Simao)

Ahead of a Paris visit next week by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, France’s culture and foreign ministries said in a joint statement that Moscow had agreed to review the plan, which is close to President Vladimir Putin’s heart.

“The Russian Federation has decided a provisional suspension of its request for a construction permit,” the statement said. Wary of diplomatic sensitivities, a government official insisted a compromise would be reached.

In Moscow, the Kremlin’s property management department said it would study ways to make the planned building “harmoniously fit the surrounding landscape.”

The project to build a church and cultural centre in central Paris was endorsed in 2010 by then-President Nicolas Sarkozy but at the time the design was only in an embryonic stage.

The final plans, with five golden domes and a wavy glass roof that would share the skyline with the nearby Eiffel Tower, were described by Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe as “ostentatious” and unsuited to a U.N.-listed world heritage site.

Russia bought the land for the church and cultural center in 2007, a 4,000-square-metre plot less than a kilometer (mile) from the Eiffel Tower and overlooking the Seine.

Paris already has a Russian Orthodox Church, the St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, but this reports to the Patriarch in Constantinople and lies outside the control of Moscow.

Putin has been pushing to increase the Moscow Patriarchy’s influence abroad, especially in areas with large expatriate Russian communities.

He viewed the reunification of the New York-based Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) and Moscow in 2007 as one of his biggest achievements as a Russian leader.

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow came under criticism in Russia after he openly sided with Putin during his recent presidential campaign, calling his rule “a miracle of God”.

Public opposition to the church’s increasing political engagement culminated in an anti-Putin performance by female punk band Pussy Riot inside the country’s main Christ the Saviour cathedral in Moscow. Two band members are now in jail.

With 165 million members, the Russian Orthodox Church is the second largest in Christianity after the 1.3-billion strong Roman Catholic Church. Its profile has risen both at home and abroad since the end of Soviet communism in 1991.

(Additional reporting by John Irish; Editing by Brian Love and Mark Heinrich)

Higher unemployment and budget revenue shortfalls were
likely to result from moves to cut some import duties to comply
with WTO rules, Putin said, making domestically produced goods
less attractive to cash-strapped consumers and businesses.

“We should understand that the initial period in WTO will
require a serious adjustment of our economy,” Putin told his
Security Council convened to discuss risks posed to national
security by the World Trade Organization membership.

Russia’s domestic animal farming, agricultural machinery,
medical equipment, automotive, pharmaceutical, textile and food
sectors were particularly at risk, he said.

“Because of the negative trends in the global economy, the
risks linked to Russia’s WTO obligations have grown,” he said.

Russia joined the global trade club in August after 18-year
negotiations. Putin said entry talks were helped by the global
economic crisis which made developed economies more willing to
make concessions in order to gain access to new markets.

The president said Russia’s so-called mono-cities, where at
least 25 percent of the economically active population work at a
single enterprise, were particularly threatened by measures
resulting from the country’s WTO membership.

About 15 percent of the 143 million population live in about
300 mono-cities, a heritage of the Soviet planned economy.

Such cities are potential hotbeds for social unrest and
during the 2008-09 economic crisis the government spent lavishly
and sometimes applied political pressure on owners trying to
keep the enterprises they were built around afloat.

However, overall WTO membership remained positive for the
country’s economy, said Putin, who did not question any of
Russia’s WTO obligations and added Russia should defend its
interests in the organisation.

Putin, whose health has recently been under close scrutiny
amid reduced appearances and cancelled foreign trips, stuttered
during his speech saying “Russia will always lag behind” instead
of “Russia will always defend its interests”, mixing two similar
Russian words.

NORMAL RELATIONS NECESSARY

The Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev also told reporters
on Wednesday a U.S. bill, known publicly as the “Magnitsky
list”, was also discussed at the meeting but noted it would not
threaten Russia’s national security.

The bill would require the names of people believed
involved in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for equity
fund Hermitage Capital who died in jail in 2009, are published,
their U.S. visa applications denied and assets frozen.

Patrushev said the U.S. needed normal trade relations with
Russia “for its own sake” while the bill was dictated by the
U.S. domestic political agenda. He warned that Russia had
“something to respond with” in case the bill was passed.

Government sources say Moscow is also getting ready to
contest European Union energy rules, known as the Third Energy
Package, which restrict Russian gas giant Gazprom’s
control over its European pipeline assets.

The EU, Russia’s largest trade partner, has criticised
Russia’s plans to levy scrappage fees on imported vehicles and a
ban on European live animal imports. The dispute has affected
work on the Russia-EU framework agreement.

Gazprom will also develop other East Siberian fields, such
as Kovykta, to feed the eastern route.
Russia has long eyed pipeline gas exports to China, the
world’s top energy user, but the two neighbours have been unable
to agree on pricing, funding and routes.
There has also been delay in decision-making in China ahead
of a once-in-a-decade change of political leadership.
Russia has planned to ship as much as 68 billion cubic
metres of gas to China.
Miller told reporters that there is a “positive dynamic” in
China talks. ]]> http://blogs.reuters.com/gleb-bryanski/2012/10/29/gazprom-unveils-38-bln-gas-project-to-conquer-asia/feed/ 0 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/27/us-russia-opposition-idUSBRE89Q0AV20121027?feedType=RSS&feedName=everything&virtualBrandChannel=11563 http://blogs.reuters.com/gleb-bryanski/2012/10/27/russia-activists-arrested-after-opposition-council-meets/#comments Sat, 27 Oct 2012 16:36:32 +0000 Gleb Bryanski http://blogs.reuters.com/gleb-bryanski/?p=534 MOSCOW (Reuters) – Three prominent opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin were detained at a protest in central Moscow on Saturday that followed the first meeting of a new opposition body elected in an online vote.

Police arrested politicians Alexei Navalny, Ilya Yashin and Sergei Udaltsov as they tried to take part in a march of several dozen opposition supporters after the inaugural session of the newly-formed Coordination Council.

The Council, which met in a Moscow cafe, is tasked with trying to mount a structured challenge to Putin, who assumed the presidency in May for a six-year term.

“They gave us the mandate of trust and made us responsible for coordinating efforts of dozens, hundreds, thousands and millions of people who want positive changes in our country,” said Navalny, a popular blogger who collected most of the votes.

While Putin has faced spirited dissent since returning to the presidency for his third term, his critics have so far failed to make significant inroads into his grip on power.

More than 81,000 people took part in the vote, underscoring the scale of the challenge the opposition faces in a country with a population of 142 million people.

After some bickering on Saturday, the new group of 45 leaders agreed to hold the next rally in December to mark the anniversary of the first anti-Putin protests.

Opposition supporters shouted “Shame!” as police ushered Navalny, Yashin and Udaltsov into police vans. The three tweeted calls for their supporters to come to the police station in central Moscow where they were being held.

Their arrests follow the detention this month of activist Leonid Razvozzhayev who said he was abducted in Ukraine and tortured.

Kremlin critics in Russia and abroad say the detentions signal a crackdown on dissent since Putin started his new term.

“Reports about new arrests of democratic opposition activists in Moscow. Many signs points at a much harsher regime attitude,” Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt wrote in his Twitter microblog.

KREMLIN SCORNFUL

The Kremlin, which has so far ignored the opposition vote, poured scorn on the Council’s first session saying that the new leaders were not capable of proposing a constructive agenda or moving the country forward.

“The fact that the opposition is debating how to mark the anniversary of its protests shows that they are looking into the past, not the future,” Interfax quoted Aleksei Chesnakov, one of the leaders of pro-Kremlin party United Russia, as saying.

Sergei Mironov, leader of left-leaning Just Russia party which holds 64 seats in the parliament, threatened to expel two of his party members who were elected in the Council and said anti-Kremlin protesters were turning into a sect.

Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov told his party congress that he had warned leftist Udaltsov against siding with “liberals” like Navalny and Yashin who dominate the Council.

Police said the three activists arrested on Saturday were detained for public order violations. It said the protest was not sanctioned by Moscow authorities, as required by law.

While pro-Kremlin television channels barely mentioned the Coordinating Council meeting, they gave plenty of air time to the launch of billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov’s new party Civil Platform which pledged to pursue a liberal economic agenda.

Prokhorov, a tycoon whose fortune is estimated by Forbes magazine at $13 billion, said he will now hand over the management of his business assets to partners and focus on politics.

The businessman challenged Putin in the March election, but critics said he had been picked by the Kremlin as a token opposition figure. He collected almost 8 percent of the vote.

“From this day I will only engage in political activity and nothing else,” Prokhorov told his supporters. “There is an opinion that here one can either be with the Kremlin or with the Coordination Council. This is not true.”

(Reporting by Gleb Bryanski; Editing by Rosalind Russell)

The Executive Committee of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a loose group created as the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, said earlier this month the summit was due to take place in Turkmenistan on November 2.

“The (new) dates are being confirmed. They are being agreed with all the presidents,” said CIS spokeswoman Vera Yakubovskaya. She declined to give any reason for the postponement.

The Kremlin dismissed talk that Putin had been sidelined from foreign trips after government sources told Reuters he was suffering from back trouble that could require surgery.

The sources said the Russian leader’s schedule was being cleared for early November, including the postponement until late December of a trip to India that had been expected soon.

Putin, a judo black belt who is known for stunts that show off his physical prowess throughout his almost 13 years in power, was first seen limping in September when he hosted an Asia-Pacific summit in Russia’s Far East.

Putin’s spokesman said at the time his boss had pulled a leg muscle.

A recent documentary showed him swimming long distances, working out in a gym and eating raw quail eggs and cream cheese for breakfast.

The former KGB officer could rule Russia until May 2024, according to the constitution.

“LIFE BRINGS CHANGES”

Speculation increased when Putin failed to travel to Pakistan for a four-nation summit on Afghanistan this month or to make an expected trip to Turkey. None of these trips had been officially announced by the Kremlin.

“Many dates which the media reported as fixed were in fact not fixed. Life brings changes and it concerns plans for visits. A lot of information has been misinterpreted by the media,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told reporters.

On Friday Putin sent a video message to participants of a Congress of Compatriots in St. Petersburg, attended by Russians who live abroad.

Putin, who turned 60 this month, made ties with neighboring ex-Soviet states his priority when he returned to the Kremlin in May for a third presidential term.

A decree issued hours after his swearing-in called for closer integration of the ex-Soviet space a “key foreign policy direction” and reiterated plans for a Eurasian Economic Union, based on a Customs Union with Kazakhstan and Belarus.

Putin hosted CIS leaders in the Kremlin a week after his inauguration, making it the first major international event of his new term in office. He traveled to ex-Soviet Belarus before going to Europe.

(Reporting by Gleb Bryanski; editing by Andrew Roche)

Putin, who began a six-year presidential term in May and
turned 60 on Oct. 7, was seen to be limping at an Asia-Pacific
summit in the Pacific port of Vladivostok in early September.

Putin, a former KGB officer who enjoys vast authority at the
head of Russia’s so-called ‘vertical’ power structure, has long
cultivated a tough-guy image that wouldn’t sit well with a
lengthy period on sick leave.

Three government sources have told Reuters in recent days
that Putin was suffering from back trouble. One said it would
require surgery in the near future.

Sources said the Russian leader’s schedule was being cleared
for early November, including through postponement until late
December of a trip to India that had been expected soon.

“This does not correspond to reality,” Putin’s spokesman
Dmitry Peskov told Reuters. He said Putin did not have a back
problem and did not plan to take time off.

“You can see that he is having daily meetings,” Peskov said.
He said the earlier limp had been a “sports injury”.

Putin did not travel to Pakistan for a planned four-nation
summit on Afghanistan earlier this month and did not make an
expected trip to Turkey. One source said Medvedev was expected
to travel to Turkmenistan in Putin’s stead next week.

“The chief is not well,” said one of the sources, who spoke
on condition of anonymity. Another said Putin had been seen
recently wearing a back brace.

“No one has announced this formally, but everyone knows that
foreign visits are being cancelled because of his illness,” one
said.

Peskov denied the visits had been cancelled. He said the
visit to India would take place on the set date in late December
and “no other dates have been officially announced”.

HEALTHY IMAGE

A judo black belt, Putin has in recent years been filmed
riding bare-chested on a horse, diving in the Black Sea, skiing
in the Caucasus and fighting wildfires from an airplane.

His apparent fitness helped bring him early popularity
because of the stark contrast with predecessor, Boris Yeltsin,
who was sometimes drunk in public and had heart surgery when
president in 1996.

Putin’s formal role as head of state and his position at the
pinnacle of power in Russia, where his blessing is seen as
indispensable for everything from legislation to oil deals,
makes any illness or medical treatment highly sensitive.

At a meeting with foreign analysts and journalists at his
residence outside Moscow on Thursday, he did not appear to be in
pain but, as in other recent public appearances, leant forward
in his seat, putting weight on his right forearm.

At the Asia-Pacific summit in Vladivostok in September, he
was also caught by TV cameras complaining to Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov that he was on restricted diet.

The summit followed an episode in which Putin flew in a
delta-winged light aircraft with a flock of cranes that had been
bred in captivity, in an attempt to train them to migrate.

At the time, Peskov said that Putin had pulled a leg muscle
but that he had not sustained the injury in the crane flight.

In power as Russia’s president or prime minister since 1999,
Putin could remain in the Kremlin until May of 2024, when he
would be 71 years old, if he seeks and wins re-election in 2018.

His election to a new term in March after four years as
prime minister followed the biggest opposition protests of his
rule, prompted by suspicions of fraud in a December 2011
parliamentary election won by his ruling United Party.

Putin said on Thursday that, although the deal ran counter
to efforts to constrain the state’s role in the Russian economy,
he backed it because of a shareholder conflict between BP and
the billionaire co-owners of Russia’s No.3 oil firm.

Rosneft’s takeover of TNK-BP, expected to close in the next
six months, would create the world’s largest listed oil company
with daily output of 4.6 million barrels in oil-equivalent
terms.

“The government and I had mixed feelings when this project
came up,” Putin told a meeting with foreign analysts and
journalists at his residence outside Moscow. “The fact that a
company with state participation was increasing its market share
at the expense of its foreign partner was a minus.”

In the deal, announced on Monday, Rosneft will pay $27
billion in cash and stock for BP’s one-half stake in TNK-BP. BP
will then plough $4.8 billion back into buying Rosneft stock to
end up with a stake of nearly 20 percent.

Rosneft also reached an outline deal with the four
Soviet-born tycoons that own the other half of TNK-BP – Mikhail
Fridman, German Khan, Viktor Vekselberg and Len Blavatnik – to
buy out their stake for $28 billion in cash.

More than a dozen western banks have agreed to provide
around $15 billion in financing to pay for the BP leg of the
deal, but it remains unclear how Rosneft will finance the second
part of the transaction to buy out the tycoons’ AAR consortium.

A senior Western banker advising Rosneft was in Moscow on
Thursday for meetings to put together deal financing, according
to a source familiar with the matter.

DESIRE TO SELL

The deal represents an ambitious gambit by Rosneft CEO Igor
Sechin, who has been close to Putin for two decades. But it has
encountered resistance from liberal ministers in Prime Minister
Dmitry Medvedev’s government.

Putin, who has a history of conflict with the business
“oligarchs” who amassed vast wealth in the controversial
privatisations of Soviet assets in the 1990s, said the sale by
the billionaire quartet was made on their own initiative.

“They expressed their desire to sell their part,” he said.

There were positive aspects to the deal, he said, such as
BP’s presence as a minority shareholder with seats on the
Rosneft board to help boost transparency. BP’s stake purchase
amounted to privatisation of a sort, he added.

BP paid $8 billion for a one-half stake in TNK-BP in 2003
and, factoring dividend payments of $19 billion it has received
since, stands to make a total of nearly six times its original
investment.

Putin cautioned at the time of the original deal that the
50-50 partnership structure might not work and repeated that
line on Thursday: “They did not agree, they did not solve their
issues and all their work went from one conflict to another,” he
said.

BP had come to the Russian government several times to ask
for help to resolve the shareholder conflict.

“We tried not to get involved but when BP managers came to
me and the government and said we want to cooperate with Rosneft
we could not say no,” said Putin.

“We had a difficult choice. In the end we have agreed with
the proposal of Rosneft and BP that they will work together.”