Aleksei Navalny
On 22/4 Aleksei Navalny said he has been denied access to the Internet in an effort to prevent him from publicizing a letter from Yves Roche letter to prosecutors stating the company had not been defrauded or incurred any damages. (RFE/RL, 24/4)

On 22/4 a Moscow district court found Aleksei Navalny guilty of slandering Moscow City Duma Deputy Aleksei Lisovenko, who alleged that Navalny posted a message on his Twitter account referring to Lisovenko as a ‘drug addict’. (RFE/RL, 22/4)

On 24/4 a Moscow court extended the house arrest of Aleksei Navalny by six months. (RFE/RL, 24/4)

Freedom of expression
On 21/4 rights ombudsman Ella Pamfilova criticized a bill that to impose new restrictions on the internet. (HRO.org, 21/4)

On 22/4 the State Duma adopted amendments to counter-terrorism legislation, including a new law on “Internet users called bloggers” requiring bloggers with more than 3,000 daily visitors online to register with Roskomnadzor, the state body for media oversight. (Human Rights Watch, 24/4)

On 22/4 Pavel Durov, founder of VKontakte announced he had left Russia after he was forced to sell his ownership shares in VK, which now rests in the hands of two pro-Kremlin oligarchs, Alisher Usmanov and Igor Sechin. (RFE/RL, 24/4)

Ukraine
On 21/4 the U.S. State Department released photographs purportedly linking armed men who seized government buildings in Ukraine to Russian special forces. President Putin has called claims of such Russian involvement ‘nonsense’. (RFE/RL, 21/4)

On 21/4 pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine detained Simon Ostrovsky, a reporter for the online news site Vice News. He was freed 24/4. (The Moscow Times, 23/4; RFE/RL, 24/4)

On 22/4 Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev was told he was barred from entering Crimea for five years. (RFE/RL, 22/4)

Vladimir Zhirinovsky
On 21/4 members of the Presidential Council on Human Rights called for the prosecution of Vladimir Zhirinovsky for having urged his staff to rape a pregnant journalist when speaking in the State Duma on 18/4. (HRO.org, 21/4)

New laws on non-Russian citizens
On 21/4 it was reported President Putin had signed into force laws simplifying procedures for Russian speakers in the ex-USSR to obtain Russian citizenship and obliging migrant workers to know the Russian language. (RFE/RL, 21/4)