In past years, Vladimir Putin has hosted an annual televised call-in for Russian citizens to ask him various questions. For the first time, this year’s conference featured no such citizens, and instead took the form of a four-and-a-half-hour press conference. While the general consensus seems to be that the event was overwhelmingly boring, reactions to some of Putin’s particular statements are worthy of mention. Below are some responses to the press conference by analysts, politicians, and journalists, all gathered from Gazeta.ru and Kasparov.ru.

Aleksei Makarkin, Deputy Director of the Center for Political Technology:

The main thing in Putin’s address was the mass media. The questions did not used to be so incisive, and moreover, if the president responded, then it was a definitive response. He no longer observes these rules. Some of his answers contained counterattacks, and sometimes he said he wasn’t informed of the issue.

In regards to the anti-Magnitsky law, he gave the impression that he really wanted to sign it, but at the same time wanted to leave a little leeway to have the possibility of backing off from this law.

Not one of his statements was surprising. The goal of this press conference was to retain his supporters. When he answered a question from Gazeta.ru, he was not so much addressing the publication’s readers, but his own supporters, in order to demonstrate that the president is strong.

Mikhail Vinogradov, Director of the Petersburg Policy Foundation:

There was no clear message here.

The questions were more striking than their answers, just like during Dmitri Medvedev’s television interview. The main issue in the press conference was the rebirth of public political life; the press spoke up, and not just the servile ones like Izvestia. The situation is reminiscent of the end of the ’80s, when the press became the country’s key opposition force.

Boris Nemtsov, Co-Representative of Parnas, Member of the Opposition Coordination Council:

I really liked Putin’s statement about Serdyukov today. It turns out that he isn’t a swindler or a thief, since there hasn’t been a court decision yet. But Magnitsky is a swindler and a thief, and [Hermitage Capital Management head William] Browder is a swindler and a thief, despite the fact that there hasn’t been a court decision.

It’s obvious that the war on corruption is a complete fake; they won’t give up their own… I was also struck by [Putin’s statement] that Magnitsky had passed away, and hadn’t been tortured. Although it’s true that after his death they found marks of torture on his body, and his fingers had been crushed. These lies struck me deeply….

Sergei Obukhov, State Duma Deputy from the Communist Party:

Such boredom! Four and a half hours of banality and repetition. Nothing stuck in my memory, everything was predictable. Putin is maintaining the status quo.

In regards to the anti-Magnitsky bill – that which he organized, he answered. It is not as if the Duma came up with this bill; it was, of course, the presidential administration. All of this is psychotherapy that has nothing to do with real politics.

Ilya Yashin, Co-Representative of Solidarity:

Putin says: “We do not have authoritarianism.” And just as swiftly: “I could easily change the constitution.” This is some sort of comedy club, not a press conference.

Ilya Ponomarev, State Duma Deputy from A Just Russia:

The most striking thing to me was the female journalists who asked questions.

Katya Vinokurova, Diana Khachaturian, and Masha who said “Thanks, Vova!” all showed with the same conversational manner just how much attitudes toward the acting president have changed in this country. Secondly, it is very important that the issue of yesterday’s law [on banning US adoptions of Russian children] came up seven times, and the people who asked those questions deserve a gracious bow. Thanks to that, the chances of the president vetoing this bill have risen considerably.

Yevgeniya Albats, Editor-in-Chief of the New Times:

I was certain that he would act like this during the press conference. He basically said: we’re not going to cave to public opinion. The scariest part is that Putin genuinely thinks that how it is in Russia is how it is everywhere. That is unfortunate. He genuinely does not understand basic things.

Masha Gessen, Author and Journalist, US News & World Report:

The most common thing people say to me after my meeting with Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin: “But no, it’s impossible that he didn’t know about you and your book. He’s a security services guy! They would have had to prepare him!” But did he have to prepare for today? To repeat facts and figures, to rehearse answers to totally predictable questions? Enough overestimating this guy. There are already plenty of people who agree that he’s a miscreant. What people still need to understand is that he’s not a very smart miscreant, standing at the head of a behemoth that is utterly casting off the last vestiges of professionalism and the general ability to function. It is a state apparatus built in the image and likeness of its leader: evil and stupid.

Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov had these harsh words for President Vladimir Putin on the day of his annual address to the Russian Federation Council:

Approaching the President’s Address
December 12, 2012
Boris Nemtsov

The fact that Putin is going to give his address on Constitution Day is conspicuous and cynical. This man, who has persistently and purposefully destroyed our constitutional rights with remarkable diligence over the past twelve years, has now decided, in truly hypocritical fashion, to time his speech to coincide with this holiday.

He swore on the constitution – thrice – that he will fight for our rights, but really he was mercilessly trampling over it all that time.

Putin’s oprichniki continue to do this with growing intensity every single day. Take, for instance, December 11. Raids were carried out on the apartments of our fellow oppositionists Taisiya Aleksandrova, Anna Kornilova, and Yury Nabutovsky. The main reason for the raids was their participation in seminars on electoral monitoring. The seminars were in Latvia, which gave the Investigative Committee reason to see the event as preparation for a “colored revolution,” as General Markin, unblinking, announced in a measured tone.

Another thing happened as well – the release of all the figures in the so-called “gambling case,” including all the judges, investigators, and police officers who covered up illegal gambling businesses in outer Moscow, were declared to be “socially close” to the regime and sent home.

But do you remember theft of 5.4 billion rubles from the state budget that Sergei Magnitsky uncovered, instead of throwing the butchers who tortured Sergei in jail, these defenders of thieves and murderers are trying to scare Americans with asset freezes in the Russian Agricultural Bank and their property in the Nizhny Novgorod region.

A tough symmetrical response to the Magnitsky law would have been to immediately remove their children from American universities, immediately close their accounts in American banks, and immediately sell the property they own in the West.

Only then would I believe in the sincerity of the theatrical rage among these Zuganovites, Mironovites and Zhirinovskyists. The end of the day was marked by the absolutely prevocational, one hundred percent anti-constitutional decision by the government not to allow the Freedom March.

The provocateurs from the Kremlin and Moscow City Hall want clashes, they want arrests, they want to frighten free citizens. We have been through this many times before, on the 31st of the month and on other dates. They will not break us. On December 15 at 15:00, I will be on Lubyanka Square. The weather will be bright. Exactly for us free people.

Gennady Gudkov
Former State Duma Deputy, A Just Russia party
Votes: 26,973
Rank: 14

About 170 thousand people said they were prepared to choose the leaders of the opposition, and more than 80 thousand took part in the election. That’s a lot. It speaks to the fact that there’s a mood for protest in Russia, and that protest movement supporters number in the tens of thousands. I even think that it’s in the hundreds of thousands. For its first time, the election was entirely successful, although, of course, it wasn’t free of mistakes.

Our main task is to express the will of the people, who right now want real, not decorative, changes in our country, who don’t want to live in an atmosphere of lies and falsifications, who don’t want Russia to have an illegitimate government, and who don’t want the country to be imbued with an atmosphere of double standards and hypocrisy.

Undoubtedly, it’s going to be difficult for the members of the Council to agree with each other. But I think that we can resolve this issue.

Boris Nemtsov
Co-representative, RPR-PARNAS
Votes: 24,623
Rank: 16

The elections went well; they were good, and honest. I feel that this is a unique experience. It’s the first instance of electronic voting in Russian history, where the most active, non-apathetic people, with a sense of personal dignity, took part. Naturally, I’ll be glad to work on the Coordination Council, and I’m going to do what’s necessary for the resolutions from Bolotnaya Square and Sakharov Prospect to become real-life documents. I feel totally comfortable in my rank between Navalny and Udaltsov. We need to understand that our ranks on this list are our places in line behind bars. I’m sixteenth. This also makes me glad. It doesn’t entail access to the budget, property, or a television set. It’s more like a ticket to repression. I should mention that I’m the only person on the Coordination Council with experience working in provincial government, the only governor, the only vice prime minister, the only deputy chairman of the State Duma, the only head of a faction. It seems to me that there were all sorts of moments while I was in those posts where my experience can be helpful.

The main task now is to put a stop to the repression. I don’t see any other tasks. We need to begin our session not with organizational questions, but precisely with questions having to do with freeing political prisoners, including some who have been jailed very recently, such as Leonid Razvozzhayev and Konstantin Lebedev. I fear that we’re going to have to work on this for the course of the entire year, and work very hard.

Difficulties that the Council might face include repression against its members. This is already happening. Of those who were voted onto the Council, Razvozzhayev and Daniil Konstantinov are behind bars. We need to do everything so that the members of the Council can move about, work, and remain free. The rest are resolvable issues; they’re nothing compared to freedom and repression. So far, in, for example, the Organizational Committee for the protest movement, we’ve managed to come to agreement with each other one way or the other, although it wasn’t simple. Now there are many people who took part in organizing the protests who’ve been voted onto the Council. There are new people as well. It seems to me that the responsibility we have before the people who voted for us, plus the tasks that we are obligated to resolve, should evoke feeling in even the most mettlesome people. We have to be reserved, stubborn, persistent, and calm if we’re going to achieve anything. Of course, there are very many people who want to make us quarrel and split us apart, but there’s always going to be a lot of people like that. Nevertheless, over the course of the year, all attempts to do that have failed. I hope that this is always going to be the case.

If we divide the Coordination Council into factions, I think that the liberal-democratic one would be the largest. Kasparov, Yashin, and I, along with our whole liberal wing – Vladimir Kara-Murza, Piontkovsky, Parkhomenko, Bykov, and Gelfand, of course, have liberal-democratic views. I think that more than half of the Council consists of people with these views. Some of them don’t advertise it much, but still, if you look at their “political compasses,” you can understand – it’s clear from their attitudes towards private property, privatization, and so on.

PARNAS made an official decision not to participate in the Coordination Council elections, and so we, the members of PARNAS, took part in them in a private capacity. But since our representation on the Council is rather significant – at the very least, it’s Yashin, Kara-Murza, and I – I think that cooperation is inevitable. This might not be laid out in any official documents, but it’ll just become the fact of the matter. PARNAS Co-representative Vladimir Ryzhkov is one of the authors of the Bolotnaya and Sakharov Prospect resolutions, which are a main task for the Coordination Council, and he will bring them to life. To be honest, I don’t know how we couldn’t cooperate.

Sanction Putin’s Criminals

On Thursday, the U.S. Senate will hold a hearing to discuss the accession of Russia to the World Trade Organization and the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment that impedes American trade relations with Russia. The Obama administration has portrayed it as little more than overdue Cold War housekeeping while touting the imagined economic benefits for American farmers that could result from freer trade with Russia.

But the reality on the ground in today’s authoritarian Russia is far more complex. We support the repeal, both as leaders of the pro-democracy opposition in Russia and as Russian citizens who want our nation to join the modern global economy. It is essential, however, to see the bigger picture of which Jackson-Vanik is a part.

The “election” of Vladimir Putin to the presidency is over, but the fight for democracy in Russia is just beginning. At both major opposition meetings following the fraudulent March 4 election, we publicly resolved that Mr. Putin is not the legitimate leader of Russia. The protests will not cease and we will continue to organize and prepare for a near future without Mr. Putin in the presidency. Getting rid of him and his cronies is a job for Russians, and we do not ask for foreign intervention. We do, however, ask that the U.S. and other leading nations of the Free World cease to provide democratic credentials to Mr. Putin. This is why symbols matter, and why Jackson-Vanik still matters.

The new U.S. ambassador to Russia is Mike McFaul, who has a long and accomplished career as a champion for democratic rights. But he’s now become the principal architect of the Obama administration’s attempt to “reset” U.S.-Russian relations after the Bush presidency, and he has recently been pushing the case for repealing Jackson-Vanik. Earlier this week he told an audience at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., that there is “no relationship” between the repeal of Jackson-Vanik and the promotion of Russian democracy. “If you don’t believe me,” he said, “ask [Alexei] Navalny,” the Russian blogger who has become one of the charismatic new leaders of Russia’s democracy movement.

So we asked Mr. Navalny, who, along with several other members of the opposition leadership, signed a letter cited by Mr. McFaul calling for the removal of Russia from Jackson-Vanik. “Of course no one in Russia is foolish enough to defend Jackson-Vanik,” he told us. “But we also understand that it should be replaced with something else. And we said as much in our letter when we recommended the passing of the Magnitsky Act, as has been done in Europe.”

Mr. Navalny is referring to the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011, which was introduced in the U.S. Senate last May with wide bipartisan support. Named for the Russian attorney who died in police custody in 2009 while investigating official corruption, the Magnitsky Act would bring visa and asset sanctions against Russian government functionaries culpable of criminal and human rights abuses.

“Such legislation is not anti-Russian,” Mr. Navalny explained. “In fact I believe it is pro-Russian. It helps defend us from the criminals who kill our citizens, steal our money, and hide it abroad.”

It will not be easy to match the legacy of Jackson-Vanik. On March 15, 1973, Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson introduced the amendment on the Senate floor. It focused on a specific human-rights issue—the right of Soviet Jews to leave the U.S.S.R. The amendment’s greatest opponent was then-National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, who worried it would upset his vision of détente with the Soviets and instead advocated “quiet diplomacy.” In contrast, the Russian dissident and Nobel Laureate Andrei Sakharov praised the amendment as a “policy of principle” that would further détente, not hinder it. The well over one million émigrés who escaped the repressive Soviet state would surely side with Sakharov.

Jackson-Vanik is a relic and its time has passed. But allowing it to disappear with nothing in its place, and right on the heels of the fantastically corrupt “election” of March 4, turns it into little more than a gift to Mr. Putin. Our economy, like our people, will never truly flourish until Mr. Putin and his mafia structure are expunged.

Moreover, if economic engagement is the best way to promote an open society, why does the Obama administration not forge a free-trade pact with Iran instead of levying sanctions? Russia will be joining the World Trade Organization regardless of what the U.S. does. But WTO membership will not undo Mr. Putin’s monopolization of political and economic power. If Mr. Putin and his oligarchs believed for an instant that the WTO might weaken their grip, they simply would stay out.

The Obama administration is not only attempting to overturn a law, but also its spirit. As Mr. Kissinger did 39 years ago, Amb. McFaul is trying to make the case that human rights should not get in the way of realpolitik and the business of doing business. He reminds us that the State Department already has its own secret list of banned Russian officials, and so nothing more need be done. But the entire object of such laws is to publicly shame and punish the rank and file of Mr. Putin’s mob so they know the big boss can no longer protect them.

The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act is an example of such legislation. Replacing Jackson-Vanik with it would promote better relations between the people of the U.S. and Russia while refusing to provide aid and comfort to a tyrant and his regime at this critical moment in history. This, too, would be a policy of principle.

Messrs. Kasparov and Nemtsov are co-chairs of the Russian Solidarity movement.

A version of this article appeared Mar. 15, 2012, on page A15 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Right Way to Sanction Russia.

Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and now co-leader of the People’s Freedom Party (Parnas), used Monday’s unprecedented meeting to read Medvedev a list of resolutions made at a series of massive anti-government protests that have swept through Moscow in the past few months. The resolutions call for various reforms to Russia’s political system.

The oppositionist also gave Medvedev a list of 37 political prisoners and asked for them to be pardoned, particularly noting Taisiya Osipova, Sergei Mokhnatkin, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.

Perhaps surprisingly, Medvedev indicated that he was at least somewhat aware of Osipova’s case.

“If anybody is pardoned, then I’ll consider the meeting with Medvedev not to have been in vain,” Nemtsov said afterwards.

Throughout the meeting, he along with Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov and Parnas co-leader Vladimir Ryzhkov stressed the importance of free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections.

The oppositionists also made it clear that they were not looking to foment revolution in Russia. In their estimation, Russia has already had more than its fair share of revolutions, but the current government itself is provoking a revolutionary mood within Russian society because of its insistence in remaining in power.

When Nemtsov asked Medvedev to introduce an amendment banning one person from holding presidential office in Russia more than two times, the president answered that he had previously considered this and still may before the end of his term.

Besides Nemtsov, Udaltsov, and Ryzhkov, the meeting was also attended by Konstantin Babkin of the Party of Action, Russian All-National Union representative Sergei Baburin, For Our Homeland co-leader Mikhail Lermontov, Green Party leader Anatoly Panfilov, National Women’s Party leader Galina Khavraeva, and several others prominent oppositionists.

Olga Kurnosova, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the United Civil Front, said that protesters gathered on Pionerskaya Square and shouted slogans including “Power to the millions, not to millionaires!” “Putin, step down!” and “We are for fair elections!”

Along with Kurnosova, Oksana Dmitrieva from A Just Russia and leading opposition politician Boris Nemtsov made speeches at the rally.

While the protest had been sanctioned by city authorities, witnesses reported that around ten armored military trucks were seen making their way towards the center of the city on Sunday morning.

In addition, police briefly detained Nemtsov at the Moskovsky train station and demanded an explanation for his trip to the city.

According to Grani.ru, the police presented Nemtsov with a document labeling him as a “leader of extremists.” The opposition leader was released after explaining that he had come to participate in a sanctioned rally.

The incident compacted Nemtsov’s fears that he is being watched. “The police continue to follow me earnestly, and I suspect that my freedom could soon come to an end,” he said.

Accusations of “extremist” activity are commonly used by Russian government authorities to persecute or marginalize opposition politicians.

Also on Sunday, the Russian Central Electoral Commission rejected an application by fellow opposition leader Eduard Limonov to run for president.

The commission stated that the rejection was based on a lack of minutes from a meeting that is required by law to be held in support of the candidate.

Limonov denounced the decision as politically motivated and promised to challenge it in court. On December 15, the oppositionist found himself without a physical place to hold the meeting, since the hall he had rented was abruptly closed for “urgent repairs” the day of the meeting.

The announcement came on Saturday during the second day of a congress of Putin’s United Russia party and was received by a standing ovation by the 11,000 members present.

He added that current President Dmitri Medvedev “can create an effective management team as the head of the Russian government,” meaning that he would name Medvedev as prime minister during his own presidency.

Analysts have clashed over which member of Russia’s ruling tandem would run in the upcoming elections since the day Medvedev was elected. All but confirming the long-held belief of many Kremlin critics that Medvedev was doing little more than keeping the seat warm for Putin to return to office four years later, Putin made clear that “an agreement over what to do in the future was reached between us several years ago.”

Russian law only allows the same person to be president for two consecutive terms, but also allows that person to run again after a “hiatus” period. As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty points out:

Putin’s victory in March is a virtual certainty, given both his popularity and Russia’s tightly controlled political system. It would set the stage for him to serve two six year terms, which would keep him in the Kremlin until 2024, meaning he could end up running the country longer than Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, whose 18-year rule became synonymous with socioeconomic decay.

Analysts are also split as to whether Putin and Medvedev differ in regards to policy, as opposed to fronting mere cosmetic or other orchestrated differences to lend the regime a veneer of legitimacy. Nevertheless, Medvedev had garnered a number of loyal supporters over the years and they were none too pleased with what Gleb Pavlovsky of the Foundation for Effective Policy called “Medvedev’s political capitulation.” As the New York Times puts it:

One of Mr. Medvedev’s closest aides, Arkady V. Dvorkovich, vented via Twitter during the United Russia event, remarking, first, “there is no reason for happiness,” and then “now it is time to switch to the sports channel.” The influential political consultant Gleb O. Pavlovsky, whose longstanding contract with the Kremlin was severed this spring, gave one of the sharpest comments.

“The fact that the president, as a politician, betrayed those who believed in him — that is political self-annihilation, and he has the right to do it,” Mr. Pavlovsky said. He called the move “a blow to the prestige of the institution of the presidency in Russia.”

Several politicians and analysts gave their takes on the announcement to Gazeta.ru.

Gleb Pavlovsky, head of the Foundation for Effective Policy

“This is Medvedev’s political capitulation. It’s possible that it was voluntary and possible that it wasn’t. It’s unclear what sort of pressure we’ve hit up against here. But there’s a unique fact: the post of the president of a nuclear power is being transferred by private dealings. We have no reason to believe that Medvedev was lying when he said he was ready to run for president. It’s possible that his position changed due to the influence of a certain factor.

“If he’s a real politician, he needs to explain why he made this decision and why he felt that his own presidency was unsuccessful. If not, then it’s unclear what he’s doing at the head of United Russia’s candidate list.”

Sergei Mironov, leader of A Just Russia

“All these years, we have had serious problems with the work of the government. And bigger ones with the United Russia party… We maintain our previous positions: our party will not support the candidate forwarded by United Russia. And so we’re in no rush. Let our opponents rush… in regards to the fact that Medvedev is heading the Duma list – watch the video footage of the faces of the United Russia members and see if they look happy about it or not.”

Aleksei Malashenko, member of the Carnegie Moscow Center

“When this decision was definitively made is already meaningless, but it seems to me that it happened not at all long ago, after the forum in Yaroslavl. Everything came to that, although there were still grounds for speculation. What became definitively clear was that our political life is a swamp. And the US and the European Union have already looked to Putin to gauge things for a long time. The most interesting thing now, the only intrigue, is who’s going to become prime minister. There isn’t 100% certainty that the decision for it to be Medvedev is definitive. There’s expectation of pension system reform and a high rise in taxes. And it’s the prime minister who gets the most flack.”

Boris Nemtsov, co-leader of the unregistered People’s Freedom Party

“Putin is a pure provocateur: he is provoking the Russian people to a revolt.

He is provoking the Russian people with his irremovability, provoking the Russian people to come out into the streets and begin to act like they do in countries where the institution of the turnover of government has been destroyed. After a month, the Central Bank will announce how much money has disappeared. Trust me, I am rarely mistaken: $100 billion. That’s my analysis – $100 billion and the emigration of 500-800 thousand people.

“The country is going to experience a certain amount of sluggish development, but this is very bad… Unhappy Russia: Putin is back until his death. I don’t know how long he’s going to live. Either Russia will die first or Putin will – I don’t know. I’d prefer all the same that Russia remained.

The new movement, which is called Vote Against Them All, will ask Russians to come to the polls and put a big cross over their ballots on voting day for State Duma deputies on December 4. The goal: to have at least seven percent of the total votes cast be marked in this manner, thus crossing the threshold necessary for a party to gain seats in the Duma.

At the head of Vote Against Them All is Boris Nemtsov, former deputy prime minister and coleader of the unsuccessfully registered People’s Freedom Party. Other members include writer Dmitri Bykov, satirist Viktor Shenderovich, leading environmental activist Yevgenia Chirikova, lawyer Vadim Prokhorov, and journalists Pavel Sheremet, Olga Romanova, and Vladimir Korsunsky.

As was discussed during the group’s recent three-hour meeting, the campaign will ask Russian citizens “not to sit at home, go to the voting stations, cross out their ballots and write something like ‘down with the swindlers and theives.'” Given that many oppositionists are on an unofficial black list that bars them from being shown on television, the movement is limited to distributing pamplets, posting materials on the internet, and holding demonstrations to spread their message.

Elections in Russia are notoriously corrupt. Despite its falling popularity, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party routinely sweeps regional, federal, and local elections amidst widespread accusations of fraud from both Russian and international watchdog groups. Opposition parties are routinely denied the right to officially register, thus effectively banning them from fielding candidates. Frequent rhetoric from officials about reforming the system has generally come to naught.

Executive Director Olga Kurnosova of the oppositionist United Civil Front said Nemtsov and seven other activists (including herself) were detained at an apartment complex in St. Petersburg’s Petrovsky district on August 15 while distributing anti-Matvienko flyers and calling on residents to vote against the highly unpopular governor in her bid for a local council seat that would allow her to take up the position of Federation Council Speaker.

According to Kurnosova, members of a pro-Kremlin youth group, who were “coordinated” by an aide to powerful city legislator and United Russia party member Vyacheslav Makarov, attacked the oppositionists and pelted them with eggs.

When some of the oppositionists got into a car, “unknown young people” surrounded them, began throwing produce at their vehicle, and “acted aggressively in general.” Police standing nearby did nothing in response to the situation, even helping the attackers.

“We tried to drive away but the police began to stop us and pull us out so that the Nashi members could throw stuff at us,” Kurnosova explained. “At the same time, they didn’t touch the attackers. The Nashi members broke our camera and tried to climb into the car and grab our flyers. The police didn’t react at all.”

The political news website ZakS.ru reported that pro-Kremlin activists threatened to slash the tires of one of their correspondents as well as of Representative Konstantin Yershov from the St. Petersburg branch of the People’s Freedom Party (Parnas), which is co-led by Nemtsov.

On August 14, Nemtsov was also arrested under similar circumstances while canvassing against Matvienko in St. Petersburg’s Krasnenkaya Rechka district.

Matvienko was nominated for the post of Federation Council Speaker by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev earlier this summer. In order for her to accept the post, she must be officially voted in as a representative of a particular region in Russia, which then in turn must vote for her as speaker.

According to Kasparov.ru, Matvienko plans to run on the United Russia party platform in Krasnenkaya Rechka and Petrovsky.

Representatives of the political opposition, who have been intent on providing Matvienko with some competition, have been unable to officially register as candidates. Therefore, the Solidarity opposition movement, also co-led by Nemtsov, and the Other Russia opposition party have begun campaigns calling on locals to vote against Matvienko and any other candidates associated with United Russia.

According to Nemtsov, who says he only learned of the ban today, the about-face was influenced by today’s resolution by the European Parliament criticizing Russian authorities both for refusing to officially register his political party and for introducing the travel ban.

“Seven hundred deputies – every single faction and party in the European Parliament – demanded the immediate annulment of the ban on my ability to travel outside of the country,” Nemtsov said in response to the announcement. “Naturally, Putin’s corrupt entourage got scared that it would be banned from Europe in return.”

The opposition leader said that decisions made by European institutions have a serious influence on the Russian government and that “this resource has to be used.”

“Here [in Europe – ed.] they have children, bank accounts, real estate, yachts that they ride on,” Nemtsov said of Russian civil servants. “They need to be brought to their senses precisely through Europe; they don’t understand anything else. As a matter of fact, this was a very optimistic incident; this needs to be kept up.” He added that other parts of the European Parliament’s resolution could be carried out in Russia under due pressure from Europe.

The Federal Bailiff Service, which first denied the travel ban altogether, said that an enquiry had concluded that the ban had been “premature” and would now be lifted.

According to Kasparov.ru, the ban was initiated by businessman Gennady Timchenko, who accused the two politicians of failing to fulfill a judicial order to change two remarks in their opposition report “Putin. Results. 10 Years” that he says damaged his reputation.

The ruling ordered Nemtsov and Milov to publically retract their assertion that Timchenko used his friendship with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to become a billionaire. While a retraction was published in the newspaper Kommersant, “Mr. Timchenko was unhappy that the font was too small in that retraction, so he demanded that we should be kept inside the country for six months,” Nemtsov explained to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

While providing an unexpected but immediate benefit to the two oppositionists, the European Parliament’s resolution was first of all dedicated to a scathing criticism of Russia’s recent refusal to register their new political party, Parnas, thus preventing its representatives from participating in upcoming elections for the State Duma and presidency.

Parnas’s predicament united virtually every political faction in the European Union, with the resolution garnering support from liberals, socialists, conservatives and members of the Green Party.

The document calls on Russian authorities to lessen the requirements for new parties to register and to guarantee equal conditions for all parties and candidates during upcoming electoral campaigns, including access to television broadcast media.

As a general rule, many oppositionists – including Boris Nemtsov, Garry Kasparov, Eduard Limonov and others – are not allowed to be shown on Russia’s state-controlled television.

Commenting on the resolution, Estonian Deputy Kristiina Ojuland said that “Putin has until September to come to his senses, although it’s already clear how the rails to the future State Duma have been laid.”