TODAY: Activists protest in Moscow against rally-related detentions; Navalny calls Bastrykin a ‘foreign agent’; Sobchak money will not be returned; Olympics committee head slams Lukashenko ban; harvest forecasts will suffer; Russian journalist barred from embassy over Magnitsky Act; international tribunal orders return of Yukos investment to Spanish company.

Hundreds of opposition supporters (the police say 500-800, the opposition say 3,000) gathered in Moscow yesterday to demand the release of activists arrested prior to Vladimir Putin’s third presidential inauguration, leading to at least four detentions.  On the same day, two further activists were arrested for their participation in an anti-Putin protest in May, a signal that the Kremlin is ‘hardening its stance toward the opposition’.  Alexei Navalny says that Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin fits the label of ‘foreign agent’ for concealing his real estate interests in the Czech Republic.  A recent (and allegedly misleading) VTsIOM poll says that 64% of its respondents opposed foreign-funded NGOs that are ‘politically active’ in Russia.  But, says Michael Bohm, ‘these NGOs serve the Russian people much more than they do foreign interests’.  A Moscow district court refused to order the return of the $1.5 million in cash seized from Ksenia Sobchak’s apartment in a raid last month.