TODAY: Women’s Day public holiday; North Caucasus voting fraud; Navalny says Pussy Riot detention is ‘cruel’; Putin dismisses opposition – again, Peskov defends police; League of Voters refuse to recognise election result; UK MPs want Magnitsky officials sanctioned.  Teen suicide.

Today is a holiday in Russia to mark Women’s Day.  The Guardian writes on three of this year’s exemplary Russian women, Olga Romanova, Ksenia Sobchak and Irina Yasina.  The Independent reports that Sobchak’s online Russian talk show interviewed a girl who claimed she was offered $150 to cast five votes for Putin in Moscow.  But Russia was actually ‘complimented by international observers on the quality of its electoral rolls,’ notes Mary Dejevsky.  Either way, fraudulent results appeared not just in Chechnya: ‘Many of the other republics in the troubled North Caucasus region also polled improbably high pro-Putin results on improbably high turnouts.’  Alexei Navalny’s response to the arrest and detention of members of punk band Pussy Riot was to mock both the band and the charges. ‘Is their offense so publicly dangerous to keep them behind bars? Obviously not. Are there circumstances ruling out keeping them in detention? Obviously yes.’ He called their 60-day detention ‘senseless and horrible cruelty’, given that both detainees have young children.  Dmitry Peskov called the group’s performance ‘disgusting’.