TODAY: Golos ordered to cease activities; gay rights group head fined; vague laws permit Kremlin control; protesters detained marking Khodorkovsky’s birthday; TNK-BP shareholders say Sechin manipulated market; Gazprom to pay Ukraine for gas transit; Norway overtakes Russia as EU gas supplier; Snowden still in Moscow.

Golos, the independent elections watchdog, has been ordered to cease its activities for six months, in connection with its failure to register as a ‘foreign agent’ under the new law for NGOs.  Anna Anisimova, the head of gay rights group Vykhod, was fined $9,100 yesterday in connection with the same law.  The director of the Center for Protection of Media Rights says that this week’s blockage of major news websites for allegedly publishing information about bribery (neither Komsomolskaya Pravda nor Gazeta.ru were informed of which pages caused the blocks) was ‘expected’, because the legislation used to impose the block ‘is so vague and lacks any technical regulation’.  Human Rights Watch agrees regarding the vagueness of current legislation which, it says, ‘ensure[s] government control over just about any organized activity relating to public life’.  Marking Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s 50th birthday yesterday, which he celebrated in jail, the Moscow Times explores his ongoing political influence.  ‘Several small protests were held across Russia’ in his support, with 40 people briefly detained in central Moscow for participating in an unauthorised pro-Khodorkovsky rally.  Presidential council member Andrei Nazarov has confirmed that Khodorkovsky is not eligible for economic amnesty.  The eviction of For Human Rights from its offices in Moscow is being probed by prosecutors – Lev Ponomaryov discusses the events of the eviction here.