RFE/RL: Jailed Russian journalist Ivan Safronov will not be able to talk to his lawyer, Ivan Pavlov, who has himself been charged with illegal revealing details of the case launched against the journalist. Pavlov wrote on Telegram on July 26 that because investigators questioned Safronov last week as a witness in the case launched against him, he, in accordance with an earlier decision by a Moscow court, cannot now communicate with his client.
The Moscow Times: Russia’s state internet watchdog on Monday blocked 49 websites linked to jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, including his personal website where he published investigations into alleged high-level corruption that have sparked nationwide protests in recent years. Roskomnadzor’s actions come one week after it blocked the website of a prominent legal group that represented Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) in the case that saw it banned as “extremist,” as well as stock-photo sharing website Pixabay.
RFE/RL: A court in Russia’s Siberian region of Yakutia has confined to forced psychiatric treatment a shaman who was stopped by authorities several times in his attempts to march to Moscow by foot “to drive President Vladimir Putin out of the Kremlin.” Aleksei Pryanishnikov, a lawyer for Aleksandr Gabyshev, told RFE/RL that the Yakutsk city court ruled on July 26 that Gabyshev poses an “extreme danger” to society and “needs to be forcibly treated in a specialized hospital under permanent supervision.”
Human Rights in Ukraine: Russia has lodged its first ever inter-state application at the European Court of Human Rights [ECHR], with a series of claims against Ukraine. There seem no grounds for taking any of the accusations seriously, however two are of particularly staggering cynicism. After sending the BUK surface-to-air missile carrier to Donbas where it was used to down Malaysian airliner MH17 and kill all 298 passengers and crew on board, Russia has brought a claim against Ukraine for not having closed its airspace. It is also accusing Ukraine of not providing water to Crimea which it invaded in February 2014 and has been illegally occupying since.
