The two were detained on August 22 in downtown Moscow together with Solidarity co-leader Boris Nemtsov under the pretense that they were attempting to stage an unsanctioned march. While the city authorities had given sanction to the oppositionists to hold a rally, they refused to sanction a march. As Nemtsov noted on his blog on August 20:

Can you imagine such absurdity as that, on Flag Day, demonstrators are banned from carrying the state flag through the streets of the capital?

Is there such a country in the world?

It turns out that there is.

It’s called Putin’s Russia.

Flag Day is celebrated in Russia to commemorate the decision to return the tricolor as the national symbol in place of the Soviet Red Army flag. The date of August 22 denotes the day that Boris Yeltsin waved a white, blue and red tricolor at a rally following the August 1991 coup d’état attempt against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that, despite failing, hastened the fall of the Soviet Union.

According to RIA Novosti, rally participants gathered on Sunday to mark the holiday as sanctioned, but then proceeded to walk down the street holding a large Russian flag at Nemtsov and Shneyder’s behest. The two men were then detained by police; Ponomarev was detained several hours later.

On Tuesday, a Moscow court threw out the case against Nemtsov, which had accused him of insubordination to a police officer. The ruling was made due to lack of evidence from the police. Nemtsov told journalists that the decision “attests to the fact that [I] was detained illegally.”

Ponomarev, however, was sentenced on Wednesday to three days of detention on the same charge. Judge Mikhail Pronyakin said that the ruling took into consideration the fact that the 69-year-old rights advocate had previously served time on similar charges, referring to a three-day sentence he received following an unsanctioned demonstration in memory of victims of the Beslan school massacre. A court later ruled that it had been illegal for the authorities to refuse to sanction the demonstration.

Solidarity activists, including Nemtsov, held protests outside of Ponomarev’s holding facility on Thursday throughout the day.

Reports came out late on Thursday that Shneyder had also been sentenced to the same term under the same charge.

The event is planned to be held on August 22 on Pushkin Square, and the mayor’s office had initially agreed to the event. However, a press release from the mayor’s office on Thursday stated that the organizers had only submitted the paperwork to hold a rally, not a concert.

Organizer Mikhail Shneyder was told by the city’s bureau for event management and safety that there’s no way to hold a rally and a concert at the same time. “You’re announcing all over the place that you’re holding a rally-concert, but that kind of format for an event does not exist. You will not be allowed to hold a concert and set up a covered stage,” Shneyder quoted the bureau as saying.

“I know that that kind of format doesn’t exist,” the organizer explained in response. “The law stipulates just a rally, but it’s for us to decide who is going to appear at our rally and how; if we want, we’ll call on a Buddhist and he’ll arrange 20 simultaneous chess matches.”

Regardless of any legal ambiguities, the organizers plan to go on with the show. Scheduled to be present are the groups DDT, OtZvuki My, Televizor, Padla Bear Outfit, and Barto. Journalist Artemy Troitsky agreed to host the event.

Yury Shevchuk, leader of DDT and an outspoken Kremlin critic, said the band had already purchased tickets to Moscow and was coming to the event for certain.

“Leap frog between the Moscow authorities – that’s a normal affair,” Shevchuk told Kasparov.ru. “We’re going to Moscow with an acoustic lineup and we’ll see there whether or not they’re going to let us play. That’s the kind of weather we have nowadays – either hot or cold.”

Yevgenia Chirikova, leader of the movement to defend the Khimki Forest, insisted that the Moscow authorities had no legal right to ban their event. “I don’t know a single law that would ban setting up a stage for a rally. The authorities’ quibbles are entirely baseless,” she said.

“Let them not allow the people to hear Shevchuk and demonstrate to everyone that they are inflexible and unpopular politicians,” the activist went on. “We have been supported by musicians of the very highest caliber, and a smart civil servant wouldn’t think to bother us.”

The felling of the Khimki Forest began this past July. An expressway from Moscow to St. Petersburg is planned to take its place. Ecologists and activists have spoken out strongly against the project, insisting that it violates the law.