RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – Dec 23, 2009
TODAY: Supreme Court annuls Lebedev arrest; Butyrka prisoner talks about his experiences; business as usual in Moscow despite harsh weather; mono-city of Revda to be closed down; START treaty speculation; Stalin, Gaidar.
The presidium of Russia’s Supreme Court, in line with a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, annuled the 2003 arrest of Platon Lebedev as part of a case against former Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Roman Popkov, who led the Moscow branch of the banned National Bolshevik party, talks about the time he spent in pretrial detention in Butyrka – where Sergei Magnitsky was also imprisoned. ‘[T]his cell block, in fact, is a torture cell block […] They throw people there with a single aim — to break them, to sap their health.‘ A second priest has been murdered in the Moscow region this month. As England’s transport network collapses under snowfall, a spokesman at Domodedovo airport in Moscow ‘explained sardonically: “Winters tend to happen every year so we can usually predict when they start and therefore prepare ourselves.”‘ Bloomberg reports that Russia is going to close down the mono-city of Revda and relocate its 9,500 residents.