According to Gazeta.ru, the court ordered Shein, a member of the party A Just Russia, to pay a 20 thousand ruble fine (about 600 USD) for the supposed march along the Volga River in the southern city of Astrakhan on June 12 – a Russian holiday.

“I’m a pioneer,” the politician said ironically to the website, adding that he planned to appeal the sentence at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Still, Shein will have to pay the fine for now, since failing to do so could lead to criminal persecution under Russian law.

Shein had originally submitted a notice to local authorities about his plan for the march, but it was rejected without an alternative proposed location, which Russian law requires authorities to provide. Shein then issued calls online: “Don’t meet at 6:00 at the Volga embankment and don’t hold a march.” Several hundred people did show up, including Shein. The group was broken up by police, and Shein was briefly detained before being told to appear in court later to face charges.

During the trial, police witnesses claimed that they broke up the group because Shein was “shouting slogans” and walking along the river with the group. They did not specify what exactly the deputy was shouting, and witnesses differed on where exactly the people were located and at what time they were there.

According to the defense, there were many people out with their families along the river for the holiday just to walk around, and many approached Shein not as a march organizer, but simply because he is a famous local politician and was singing. “The group of acquaintances, including Shein, was walking around; people had a Russian flag and a flag of the Astrakhan District; people were singing songs. After some time, police officers approached Shein and asked him to stop ‘this,’ and when he asked what exactly, they responded: ‘you know.’ Personally, Shein did not scream any slogans and didn’t violate order; the police nevertheless forcefully brought him to the station,” one witness said.

Despite the contradictions between witness testimonies, the court convicted Shein of organizing a march and fined him 20 thousand rubles. The minimum fine under the new law that went into effect on June 12 – the same day of the march – is 10 thousand rubles; the maximum is 300 thousand rubles.

Shein’s lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, said that the odds were always stacked against the defense. “It’s a normal affair for a Russian court to convict someone of violating the regulations on holding rallies on the basis of a single police report. And, even when the defense presents a video that refutes it, the court doesn’t take it into consideration,” he said.

The difference now is that while such blind faith in police used to result in fines against activists of only a thousand rubles, now it will be at least ten times that amount. “The government is trying in this way to break up protests from the inside. They’re blocking the last opportunity that people have to express their opinions on what’s happening in the country, so protests are becoming radicalized, and, possibly, will go underground,” said the lawyer.

A group of supporters of former Astrakhan mayoral candidate Oleg Shein from the A Just Russia party were gathered on the southern city’s central square when provocators from a pro-Kremlin youth group began to harass them. When police refused to intervene, the protesters were forced to defend themselves.

News of the arrest came from activist Georgy Alburov, who posted numerous photographs of the rally on Twitter.

Also through Twitter, A Just Russia deputy Dmitry Gudkov reported that Yashin was released later Wednesday evening. It was unclear if he faced any charges or if any of the provacators had also been arrested.

Earlier in the day, deputies from A Just Russia left the State Duma in protest after receiving an unsatisfactory answer from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in regards to Shein’s hunger strike.

When A Just Russia leader Sergei Mironov asked what Putin thought about the situation, Putin responded that he didn’t know all the details but had “been informed about all of it.”

Putin continued to respond to other questions as the A Just Russia members left the hall. When a loud murmur arose, Putin complained that he found it “difficult to communicate.”

Oleg Shein began his hunger strike on March 15 after losing what he says was a corrupt mayoral election. The winner, Mikhail Stolyarov, is a member of Putin’s leading United Russia party. A number of supporters have joined Shein in his strike. Gudkov told RIA Novosti on Wednesday that the ex-candidate’s condition has since markedly deteriorated.

While Astrakhan regional governor Aleksandr Zhilkin has said that a reelection would be the best way to end the dispute, Stolyarov would have to agree. The latter has thus far refused, arguing that even if there were some falsifications during the election, the majority of Astrakhan residents still supported him.

One of the conclusions that can be reached from the December 4 elections is that the “Party of Swindlers and Thieves” has, once again, brilliantly lived up to its name. Cheating and thievery have ceased to even be an open secret, and it involved not only the massive falsifications that the party of power needed in order to hold on to their crumbling power vertical, but also the sharp rise in civil activeness, with large number of people unexpectedly refusing to play the role of silent viewers in the Kremlin’s marionette theater.

Experts in electoral math will soon undoubtedly be able to show us graphics of United Russia’s actual results. The unnatural vote spread across the various regions of the country, along with the numerous violations documented by observers at polling stations and in electoral commissions, will provide irrefutable evidence that Churov’s agency worked to over-fulfill their plan at the rate of a Stakhanovite.

By all accounts, United Russia’s objective results even across the entire country aren’t above 30 percent, and in Moscow and St. Petersburg the party in power suffered a crushing defeat, loosing not only to the Communist Party, but even, most likely, to A Just Russia. This casts doubt upon the professional integrity of our so-called sociological services, whose “public opinion polls” predicted just a week ago that United Russia would have the support of 53 percent of the population. But if the Foundation for Public Opinion and the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion aren’t ashamed of their Kremlin-provided roofs, then one would hope to hear from the Levada Center, which holds its reputation more dear, an explanation as to why their predictions turned out to be even more optimistic than the final results of Mr. Churov’s agency.

Another result of December 4 is that we can be certain that the period of social apathy that Russian society succumbed to ten years ago is now a relic of the past.

But today’s main question, of course, is about the readiness of the systemic opposition to begin a fight against United Russia’s dictate. It would be naive to say that the Communist Party, LDPR, or United Russia together with Yabloko are going to achieve a full nullification of the falsified elections, but the people who voted for them have the right to expect, at minimum, a demand to hold a recount where mass violations are uncovered, and the criminal prosecution of officials guilty of committing and hiding these crimes.

In addition, the systemic opposition is going to have to resolve the question of fielding candidates for president. Now that it’s been spooked, the government is going to try to minimize its risks and prevent the rise of any notable figures who are capable of uniting the protest electorate, which is exploding in front of their eyes. It’s not worth waiting for any revelations from the Communist Party or LDPR. Although, the Communists are completely capable of finding a more suitable candidate than Zyuganov, who feels at home in his comfortable role as the government’s sparring partner. But for A Just Russia, if it is, contrary to expectations, prepared to challenge the Putin regime, one potential solution comes to mind. Oksana Dmitrieva, whose success in a presidential election is something out of a science fiction novel – at least in the two capitals – could become the candidate whose presence makes a second round entirely plausible.

The events of the forthcoming week will put an end to the dispute that the nonsystemic opposition has been having for the past several months. The various plans of action for December 4 rested on one key point of disagreement: whether or not conditions exist where the Kremlin-fed systemic opposition could agree upon a bunt against Putin. A more favorable situation than the present is impossible to imagine.

If Mironov and Ko demonstrate their readiness to begin a fight to dismantle the regime by unleashing a real pre-electoral campaign attacking the national leader with the same principles with which they were ready to “flush the Party of Swindlers and Thieves down the toilet,” then I will be ready to publicly admit my mistake in judging the ineffectiveness of existing electoral mechanisms.

But if the actions of the systemic opposition lead to the emasculation of popular protest and turn out to be just a storm in a teacup that ends with the redistribution of Duma portfolios and financial flows, then I expect that my opponents will publicly admit that it is impossible to change the Putin regime within any sort of framework of electoral procedures and will begin to join in with our collective efforts to create an alternative list of voters. Incidentally, this is one of the very rare cases where I’d like to admit that I’m wrong…

Predicable as it may be, then, it was nevertheless surreal to hear the news on Sunday that the Kremlin-loyal opposition party A Just Russia had been charged with violating public transportation laws for a bus advertisement that officials say contained “agitation against United Russia.” Under Russian law, it is illegal to spread negative propaganda against a political party or candidate, and it was on this basis that the charges were filed. But while A Just Russia had recently taken up the slogan “For Russia Without Swindlers and Thieves” and included it in the offending ad, there was no explicit mention of United Russia itself. The Russian authorities, it seems, have begun to take the connection between United Russia and “swindlers and thieves” for granted.

A Just Russia candidate Alena Popova posted a scan of the official charges online. The red check indicates the article the ad supposedly violates, reading “advertisement information (interior, exterior) without client’s agreement;” the handwriting reads “agitation against United Russia.”

“Many participants of the forum, including myself, were confronted with the fact that mobile phone service entirely disappeared at the entrance to the camp in the Khimki Forest,” Belyakov said on the website of A Just Russia on Tuesday. “Certain police officers told me under condition of anonymity that ‘jammers’ are definitely being used. They even told me where one of them was.”

Belyakov added that he took photographs and video footage of the devices used to jam cell phone service.

“I’ve already sent Ministry of Internal Affairs Chief Rashid Gumarovich Nurgaliyev a deputy inquiry demanding an explanation of the goal of the operation to suppress the mobile phone signal in the Khimki Forest,” he said.

ITAR-TASS reported late on Tuesday that the Ministry of Internal Affairs is denying that any jamming devices were used at Anti-Seliger and accused Belyakov of speaking “rubbish.”

The forum, dubbed “Anti-Seliger,” was held in the Khimki Forest outside Moscow from June 17-20. According to organizers, the goal of the event was to give oppositionist, environmental, and other activists an opportunity to share their experiences and learn from one another. Approximately 3000 people took part.

Over the course of the forum, lectures were given by prominent journalists, political analysts, and human rights activists, including Leonid Parfyonov, Artemy Troitsky, Stanislav Belkovsky, Oleg Kashin, Aleksei Navalny, Yelena Panfilova, Valery Panyushkin, and Igor Chestin.

Anti-Seliger was organized as an alternative to Seliger, an annual forum held by Russia’s Federal Agency for Youth Issues (Rosmolodezh) and the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi. Seliger is notorious for its grotesque displays of anti-oppositionist propaganda; past targets of harassment have included United Civil Front leader Garry Kasparov, leading human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva, and Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves. Nashi leaders have admitted that the group – and, by extension, the forum – were created “to prevent an Orange Revolution” ahead of Russia’s 2008 presidential election. According to public records, Rosmolodezh head Vasily Yakemenko plans to spend no less than 178 million rubles ($6.37 million USD) on Seliger 2011.

Gennady Gudkov, State Duma Deputy from A Just Russia

In conditions where there’s hydrochloric acid in the pool, it’s going to be difficult to win, considering that our opponent is swimming with paddles in clean water, and we’re in a pool of hydrochloric acid. With the kind of administrative and bureaucratic support that United Russia has, it’s going to be difficult to compete with the party in power. The elections are very dirty – dirtier than in March. In Chelyabinsk, for example, federal employees are being forced to vote in several different areas. We’ve been informed about this.

We’re counting on victory in the municipal elections of a number of outer-Moscow cities and on good results in several regions. If the elections were even a tad bit honest, United Russia would have joined the opposition long ago.

Sergei Mitrokhin, Yabloko Party Leader

It’s difficult to make predictions in our electoral process. I think there’s going to be ballot-stuffing in United Russia’s favor everywhere. How many will be stuffed, nobody knows. If it’s too few, then the governors, mayors, and regional administrative leaders will be risking their posts.

During the March campaign, we had good results in Tula in the Tverskaya region. There’s a positive trend, but there are no grounds at all to say that the elections will be honest. There’s going to be massive absentee voting in Chelyabinsk.

Boris Nadezhdin, Political Council Member of Right Cause

In the places where our tickets had good chances, they were removed [from the ballots]. This happened, for example, in Kazan and Kostroma. We have tickets left in Magadan and Chelyabinsk; I’m counting more on Chelyabinsk. Because first of all, a very scandalous campaign is going on in Chelyabinsk, and secondly, we are participating alongside Yabloko, and that means the chances of either party winning decrease considerably.

Andrei Andreyev, State Duma Deputy from the Communist Party

Currently I’m in Magadan, working on the elections. The electoral campaign is extraordinarily dirty and cynical. Magadan television, and the channel MTK in particular, is heaping utter garbage onto the three parliamentary parties besides United Russia.

Ilya Yashin, Solidarity Bureau Member

It wouldn’t be right to talk about the chances of the candidates, since this country has long since ceased to have elections, and instead there’s an appointment process reminiscent of elections only in appearance.

Candidates from the non-systemic opposition can participate in elections in order to hurt the government’s reputation, but they can only achieve success in the case that the system malfunctions – as happened, for example, in Tver and several other regions.

Yevgeny Shevchenko, Representative of the Patriots of Russia:

We see the chances of our regional branches in participation in the elections positively, since they accomplished very good work. However, the news from the regions gives some cause for alarm. We are cautious about the fact that party tickets were taken off the ballots for unsubstantiated reasons. We have fewer complaints than in previous years. Clearly, the regional authorities have finally listened to the president and have begun to create the conditions for competition in the regions, but there is lawlessness in the municipal elections in a whole swath of regions.

Sergei Ivanov, State Duma Deputy from the LDPR:

I see the chances for the LDPR in the elections as very good. We’ve been up against the administration’s resources since 1989, and we always find our voters.

Aleksandr Khitshteyn, State Duma Deputy from United Russia:

I can only say what work I do, and I’m in charge of elections in Samara. I’m convinced that United Russia candidates will get the majority of the mandates in city duma elections. As far as the elections for mayor are concerned, I’m convinced that Dmitri Azarov will win – what’s more, in the first round. The campaign has been sufficiently calm. Naturally, what’s unpleasant is the use of administrative resources by the current mayor, Victor Tarkhov.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty sums up the primary controversies over the bill:

Russian media sources say the law would allow the FSB to warn citizens that their behavior could create conditions that could lead to a crime — even in cases where there are no legal grounds to hold them criminally responsible. It also provides for fines against citizens who disobey FSB officials or in any way hinder their work.

According to an explanatory note posted on the State Duma’s website, the law is necessary due to a sharp rise in extremist activity. The note cites figures from the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor-General’s Office claiming that extremist crimes rose by 30 percent from 2007 to 2008.

The note also criticized the media for propagating “individualism, violence, and mistrust of the state’s capacity to protect its citizens, effectively drawing young people to extremist activities.”

Ilya Ponomarev, a lawmaker from the Duma faction of A Just Russia, calls this hyperbole, saying that the government’s figures on extremist activity are inflated.

“They often label absolutely normal social activists as extremists,” Ponomarev says. “And when the authorities are faced with a real threat to public safety they are helpless. Neither preemptive warnings nor fines will solve this problem.”

There is no shortage of examples of the Russian authorities using accusations of extremism as an excuse to stifle dissent. Federal officials routinely harass protesters, conduct raids of homes and offices, hinder legal forms of protest, and in some cases will block opposition websites, not to mention the torture accusations from Amnesty International.

Speaking to the newspaper Kommersant, Lev Levinson of the Russian non-governmental Institute for Human Rights said that the bill would shift responsibilities currently held by state prosecutors to the police, a move he said was both unnecessary and dangerous. “This is precisely what the fight against dissent is apparently turning into,” he said. “That today the chekisti (referring to the FSB) don’t have the authority to issue warnings doesn’t mean in the least that there aren’t feasible ways to prevent crime.” Levinson added that while prosecutors act as a sieve to prevent abuses when issuing warnings about extremism, the FSB would not.

All in all, said Levinson, the initiative would “untie the hands of FSB officers,” and abuses by the agency can consequently be expected to grow.

In a statement responding to the Moscow metro bombings, Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front reminded readers of the steps taken over the past ten years by the Russian government in the name of fighting terrorism and extremism, pointing out that, given the bombings, they have not been ideally effective.

The tragic events that occurred in Moscow on March 29, 2010, could be appropriated by the current government for an even larger infringement of the rights and freedoms of citizens of the Russian Federation. The apartment bombings in Moscow, Buynaksk, and Volgodonsk in the fall of 1999 triggered the beginning of a second military campaign in Chechnya and immediately provided Vladimir Putin with the necessary ratings for victory in the 2000 presidential elections. As a result of the terrorist attacks in the Dubrovka Theater in October 2002 and in Beslan in September 2004, elections for governors and regional leaders in Russia were abolished. And today, after the events of March 29 in Moscow, it is obvious that these measures did not increase the safety of Russia’s citizens in the least.

No matter how much this new bill might look like a continuation down that same path, any opposition to the bill is unlikely to keep it from passing given that United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party lead by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, holds an overwhelming majority in the State Duma,.

Demonstrations were held in about 50 cities across the country, but even the largest in the cities of Irkutsk and Vladivostok consisted of no more than 2,000 people. Organizers in Irkutsk, which included the liberal Yabloko party, the opposition Solidarity movement, and a variety of human rights organizations, had originally projected that 10,000 people would be taking part in the demonstration.

Approximately 70 people were detained in Moscow, where several hundred people turned out for a protest on Pushkin Square that had earlier been banned by city authorities. Sergei Udaltsov, leader of the Left Front political movement, was among those detained and said on Sunday that he plans to file a criminal suit against the city authorities for causing massive disorder, beating detained protesters, and using pepper spray to disperse the crowd.

Oppositionists complained that there was no reason for the city to ban their peaceful protest, which was largely focused on calling for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov to resign. One of the protesters who turned up at Pushkin Square was detained for holding a sign reading “Zhukovsky or a new Cherkizon?” referring to the controversial government shutdown of a Moscow market last summer that put tens of thousands of merchants out of work. However, when the protester showed the police his identification as State Duma Deputy Anton Belyakov, a member of the party A Just Russia, the police not only released him but put began voicing agreement that it was indeed about time for Mayor Luzhkov to go.

The most creative rally was held in Kaliningrad, where an anti-government protest of about 10,000 people had taken place in January. The stage was set for Saturday to see about 30,000 participants, when city officials relegated the protest to a sports arena instead of the open city center as organizers had wanted, on the basis that a farmers market was planned for the original location. Fearing what could happen if violence was to break out in an enclosed area, local opposition leader Konstantin Doroshok agreed to cancel the rally after holding negotiations with Kaliningrad Governor Georgy Boos. As part of their deal, a four hour question-and-answer session was held in Kaliningrad at the time when the rally was intended to occur, in which the governor and Doroshok took part.

Left on their own, however, a group of activists organized on the social networking website Vkontakte and rallied on the market in the early afternoon. Given that the governor had acquired the nickname “the Tangerine” among Kaliningrad oppositionists, the protesters held the fruits above their heads and called for Boos and Putin both to step down. Approximately 1000 people turned out for what has since been dubbed the “tangerine flash mob.”

Other rallies, consisting of between a few dozen to several hundred participants, were held in St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Kazan, Yaroslavl, and other cities across the country.

The newspaper quoted Sergei Filatov, leader of the liberal Yabloko party, as having obtained photographs and video of how the votes were paid for: In a car parked next to a voting station in Tula School #52, unknown persons wrote down voters’ information and then paid them in cash after completing the early voting process.

According to Filatov, voters were given 500 rubles (about $17) to vote for United Russia, and 100 rubles ($3.40) to vote for A Just Russia, an opposition party loyal to the Kremlin.

Some voters had complained that they did not receive the money promised to them after voting, since the car had taken off by the time they were done. Other witnesses have filed statements with the local police bureau confirming that a massive campaign to buy up votes was apparently underway. Yabloko, meanwhile, is preparing to file a complaint with the regional electoral committee.

Moreover, a Kommersant correspondent reported that agitators from United Russia had come to his house the day before, offering 300 rubles ($10.24) to vote for their party.

The news is the latest in a number of controversial incidents involving the upcoming elections. A number of opposition parties have been altogether banned from ballot in various cities, and others have been facing pressure from the Central Electoral Commission.

Regional elections are set to take place throughout Russia on March 14, and follow last October’s scandalous regional elections that triggered an unprecedented walkout by opposition party leaders in the State Duma in light of widespread allegations of voter fraud. President Dmitri Medvedev admitted at the time that the elections were “not sterile,” but refused to annul them all the same.

The leaflet in question picture Sergei Mironov, who heads the party A Just Russia and is also speaker of the parliamentary Federation Council, and calls on voters to “fight against administrative power.” The Central Electoral Commission (TsIK) ruled on Wednesday that picturing Mironov violates electoral regulations that prohibit public officials from taking advantage of their official positions.

TsIK member Yevgeny Kolyushin of the Communist Party pointed out, however, that there had been complaints that the Kremlin-backed United Russia party was using pictures of President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin the same way on their own promotional posters. If A Just Russia had violated electoral regulations, then United Russia clearly did as well.

According to TsIK representative Vladimir Churov, this was not the case: United Russia had every right to use the images of the president and prime minister. United Russia member Sergei Kostenko, who holds a non-voting seat on the TsIK, explained that since neither Medvedev nor Putin were not directly identified on the posters as president or prime minister, no laws were violated.

A representative of A Just Russia argued that Mironov himself was not identified as Federation Council Speaker on the party’s leaflets, but the TsIK insisted that the phrase “administrative power” along with Mironov’s face was an indication of his post all the same. The decision was made apparently in spite of the fact that if the TsIK was correct, then A Just Russia’s leaflets would actually be implying that voters should fight against its party’s own leader, as opposed to looking to Mironov as someone who will fight against administrative authority.

Mironov, who is a long-time Putin ally, became embroiled in political scandal last month when he criticized the prime minister’s budget. A volley of colorful back-and-forth insults began to fly between A Just Russia and United Russia, and Mironov declared that he would be moving his party more towards the actual opposition. While the opposition itself had a mixed reaction to the controversy, some analysts argued that for Mironov to see criticizing Putin as politically advantageous was at least indicative that the prime minister’s famously high popularity was not as safe as it once was.

A Just Russia is not the only party facing a government crackdown in the run-up to the elections. The Sverdlovsk regional election committee has banned the opposition parties Yabloko and Just Cause from appearing on the ballot, arguing that more than half of the signatures submitted with Yabloko’s application were “unauthentic” or “invalid.”

The March 14 elections will follow regional elections last October that were fraught with accusations of gross violations that gave United Russia sweeping wins across the country. A Just Russia was among three opposition parties at the time that staged a walkout from the State Duma, protesting blatant cases of fraud that independent bloggers were able to statistically document. President Dmitri Medvedev met with party leaders in response, but insisted that although the elections were “not sterile,” they would not be annulled.