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.

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.

The Deputy Chairman of the parliamentary Federation Council of Russia has proposed legislation to ban profanity throughout the country, reports Regions.ru.

Mikhail Nikolayev, a representative from the far-eastern Russian Republic of Sakha, said that a special law could be adopted to impose a ban on uncensored public speech.

“Profanity should cease to be a part of our everyday life,” said the senator.

The proposed legislation is modeled off of a similar ban that has already existed for several years in Belgorod, a city south of Moscow where nightclubs close at 10 pm.

According to Nikolayev, the law against profanity “prohibits expressions in public places, at work, and when communicating with one another.”

Violating the ban would result in a large fine, and Nikolayev stressed that in Belgorod, “the effect from these measures is already palpable.”

Anyone found swearing in Belgorod currently receives a fine from between 500 and 1500 rubles (about $16 to $50), depending on who witnessed the incident. Swearing in front of children, for example, would result in the highest possible fine.

The measure is not the first time Russian legislators have attempted to regulate aspects of public speech. Fearing that “poor grammar enters the subconscious,” members of parliament set to work last April to develop a measure that would regulate the use of internet slang.

The president had asked the parliamentary Federation Council the day before for an expansion of his authority to deploy troops on foreign soil.

An amendment to a piece of defense legislation that the president signed in November required a special decree from the Federation Council for foreign deployment of troops. Until that point, the legislation only allowed troops to be used abroad as part of the war against international terrorism or in accordance with international agreements.

The Federation Council’s announcement on Wednesday would allow the president himself to make a decision on the use of troops abroad to deflect or prevent aggression from another country, to defend Russian citizens abroad, or to fight pirates.

The initial motivation to amend the defense legislation was the military conflict between Russia and Georgia in August 2008. At the time, Russia had explained its controversial participation in the war as the defense of its citizens residing in the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Both Russia and Georgia blamed each other for instigating the war, while a recent report from the European Union blames both countries in gross violations of international law.