TODAY: Two political opponents of the Kremlin associated with Kasparov are harassed, one receives asylum, another is held in a psychiatric ward. Aleksanyan will not be released from jail for treatment. US worried that Russia could use financial clout to achieve political goals. OSCE may refuse to monitor next elections. Roman Nikolaichik, an anti-Kremlin activist and parliamentary candidate for The Other Russia, is being held in an isolation ward at a psychiatric hospital in Busharevoin in what supporters say is “a return to a Soviet-era punishment.” Ukrainian officials have granted asylum to Aleksandr Kosvintsev, a Russian journalist who alleges that he was harassed in his home country after taking up a leadership role with a political opposition group affiliated with Garry Kasparov. A Russian court has suspended the trial of Vasily Aleksanyan, the ailing former executive of the dismantled oil giant Yukos, but refused to release him from jail for treatment. His lawyer said he could not get proper treatment in custody and the Moscow-based group For Human Rights denounced the ruling as a “demonstration of the government’s inexorable cruelty.”