October 24, 2012 By Citizen M

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Oct 24, 2012

TODAY: Ukraine filed a missing person report for Leonid Razvozzhayev; Duma expands legal definition of treason; E.U. court orders compensation for ex-Yukos security chief; analysis of Rosneft’s acquisition of TNK-BP, Vekselberg now richest man in Russia; Poland blocking Russian investments, disappearing watches.

Charges were filed against opposition member Leonid Razvozzhayev yesterday for plotting mass riots, but he says he only confessed because interrogators threatened to harm his family.  A refugee organisation in Ukraine apparently filed a missing person report for Razvozzhayev after he failed to return from a lunch break during legal counseling, supporting his claims that he was kidnapped.  The State Duma has expanded its legal definition of treason to enable those who collaborate with ‘international organisations’ to be prosecuted and punished with up to 20 years in prison.  The Federal Security Service says the new penalties are supposed to prevent foreign intelligence services from using international organisations ‘as camouflage’, but the Kremlin’s human rights commission says the rules would only make sensein a country with an iron curtain’.  The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Russia violated the rights of former Yukos security chief, Alexei Pichugin, after he was arrested ‘without reasonable suspicion’ and detained for two years before his trial, and has ordered the state to pay him $12,355 in damages.  The E.U. Parliament recommends that the European Council impose sanctions against officials linked to the death of Sergei Magnitsky.