Anna Derinova

As the late afternoon approached at Moscow’s Lubyanskaya Square on Saturday, several thousand Russian opposition supporters, young and old, began laying flowers at the Solovetsky Stone, a memorial to the victims of Soviet-era political oppression.More

Three months have passed since more than 100,000 people peacefully took to the streets in Moscow on June 12 to demand a “Russia without Putin.” Since then, however, the government has tightened the screws and undertaken obviously undemocratic steps such as imposing huge fines for unauthorized demonstrations; classifying international NGOs as foreign agents; reviving the notorious Soviet libel law; opening politically motivated criminal cases against opposition leader Alexey Navalny, May 6 protesters and other “public enemies”; and finally, of course, imprisoning the women of Pussy Riot.More

The anti-Putin dissent that has been brewing inside Russia for the past year finally reached the global mainstream last week when three women from the Russian punk band Pussy Riot were convicted of “premeditated hooliganism … motivated by religious hatred” and sentenced to two years in prison.More

Moscow’s second March of Millions took place on Tuesday despite two severe storms that struck the capital — one was of meteorological origin, while the other came directly from the Kremlin, in the form of a new and unconstitutional law promising huge fines and penalties for participation in street protests.More