TODAY: Sunday motorists protest the Kremlin, Putin supporters gather on Saturday; Duma backs off on Churov; Yabloko says newspaper office attacked, files lawsuit over Yavlinsky bid; doctor charged over Trifonova death; Agora’s 850 counts of activist persecution; Russia seeking to prevent regime-change in Syria; Lavrov calls for Kuril referendum. 

Sunday afternoon saw a rally of 200-300 (according to police) or 3,000 (according to organisers) drivers in cars decorated with ribbons, banners and anti-Putin slogans (calling him the ‘yellow earthworm’ and referencing rumours of his Botox treatments) driving around Moscow’s Garden Ring Road.  RFE/RL has some images.  Saturday saw a pro-Putin rally in Yekaterinburg of ‘thousands’, many of whom were bussed in ‘from outlying towns in the Urals industrial belt’.  The event was marked by ‘a notable lack of enthusiasm’, says this piece.  State Duma deputies maintain that elections official Vladimir Churov and United Russia are guilty of falsifying election results, but have have backed off from earlier calls that Churov should resign.  On the question of liberal nationalists, who believe that the opposition movement needs the nationalist movement in order to succeed.  The Yabloko party says that the office of its regional newspaper, the Vecherny Krasnokamsk weekly, has been destroyed following a firebombing attack.  The party is also in the process of filing a lawsuit against the Central Elections Commission in response to the refusal to validate Grigory Yavlinsky’s presidential bid.