The Moscow Times: Russia on Wednesday confirmed 40,443 Covid-19 infections and a new pandemic record of 1,189 deaths.
Amnesty International: Reacting to the news Dimitrovgrad City Court today dismissed a request by prison authorities to subject human rights activist Yan Sidorov to three years of harsh probation conditions upon his release today. Responding to the court’s decision, Amnesty International’s Moscow Office Director Natalia Zviagina said: “This is a huge and undeniable victory for Yan Sidorov, and for all those who have supported him through four years of politically motivated detention. We welcome the court’s decision to dismiss the deplorable attempt to impose further restrictions on Yan’s freedom – this must spell the end of the string of injustices he has been subjected to. Yan Sidorov should never have been imprisoned in the first place. He is a prisoner of conscience who has endured years of punishment simply for peacefully exercising his rights to freedom of expression and assembly.”
RFE/RL: Ivan Safronov, a prominent former Russian journalist accused of high treason in a case widely considered to be politically motivated, has been placed in solitary confinement for allegedly violating the detention center’s internal regulations. A member of the Public Monitoring Commission in Moscow, Boris Klin, said on November 3 that Safronov was placed in the punitive isolation cell for three days for attaching a TV antenna to his cell’s wall to improve the quality of a television set, which is not allowed.
RFE/RL: A court in Russia’s Republic of Bashkortostan has sentenced noted activist Ramila Saitova to three years in a colony settlement after finding her guilty of calling for extremist activities. The Kirov district court in Bashkortostan’s capital, Ufa, handed down the verdict and sentence on November 3. Judge Azamat Bikchurin also banned Saitova from being an administrator for any online social networks for two years.
RFE/RL: A court in Siberia has sentenced an Orthodox priest to 10 days in jail — his sixth jail term — for publicly expressing support for the former governor of the Khabarovsk region, Sergei Furgal, who was arrested on murder charges that he and his supporters have rejected as politically motivated. Khabarovsk-based journalist Tatyana Khlestunova told RFE/RL on November 3 that a court in the Far Eastern city found Andrei Vinarsky guilty of repeatedly violating the law on mass gatherings.
RFE/RL: Noted Turkmen opposition activist Azat Isakov, who for several years has lived in Russia’s Moscow region, has been reported missing after mysteriously disappearing last month.
The Guardian: Gennadiy Shukin, Taymyr, Russia: I was born in 1962 in a family of deer herders in Taymyr, on a peninsula in the very far north of Russia. I am part of the Dolgan community: we are an indigenous Russian group and there are around 6,000 left of us living in the tundra. Growing up, the Soviet Union tried to deny us our traditional way of life, but since then climate change has become the biggest challenge to our survival.
