In the Bolotnaya Square case, on 4/10 the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled Russia must pay 12,500 euros compensation to imprisoned Yaroslav Belousov; on 5/10 the Supreme Court annulled the criminal records of two activists prosecuted in the case; on 27/10, Aleksei Gaskarov was freed after completing a 3.5-year jail term. On 7/10 Viktor Kapitonov was violently detained by police as he held a solitary picket in memory of Anna Politkovskaya. On 11/10 the ECtHR ruled the right of assembly of Garry Kasparov was violated in 2007. On 14/10 Roman Roslovtsev was jailed for 20 days for a one-person protest.

Right of association 

On 4/10 the International Memorial Society said the Justice Ministry had designated it a ‘foreign agent.’ On 10/10 a district court in Samara upheld the Ministry of Justice's August decision to designate the American Alumni Club a foreign agent. On 10/10 Moscow City Court upheld a July ruling on liquidation of the Golo Association for Voters’ Rights. On 20/10 the FSB detained seven alleged members of banned Islamic group Tablighi Jamaat (Messenger's Assembly) in Tatarstan. On 24/10 Igor Nagavkin, detained leader of a regional branch of For Human Rights, ended his hunger strike in custody. On 26/10 a court fined the Levada Center 300,000 roubles for refusing to register as a ‘foreign agent’.

Freedom of expression 

On 3/10, blogger and journalist Anton Nosik was fined 500,000 roubles for extremism. On 5/10 the Kremlin defended Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky who verbally abused researchers who challenged official Soviet war-time history. On 7/10, Ukrainian journalist Roman Sushchenko, detained on 30/9, was charged with espionage. On 11/10 the website Deti-404 supporting LGBT teenagers was blacklisted by Roskomnadzor. On 11/10 the ECtHR awarded journalist Ruslan Makarov 1,500 euros compensation for being forcibly committed to a psychiatric institution. On 17/10 Memorial Human Rights Centre recognized Chechen journalist Zhalaudi Geriev as a political prisoner. On 18/10 Moscow City Court upheld a ruling to launch a defamation case against Aleksei Navalny brought by Pavel Karpov, who is on the Magnitsky sanctions list. On 24/10 theatre director and actor Konstantin Raikin criticized censorship of the arts. On 27/10 an Ekaterinburg court ruled blogger Ruslan Sokolovsky, facing prosecuted for playing Pokémon Go in church, broke his house arrest rules by speaking to his girlfriend, and remanded him in custody. On 25/10 Vitaly Mansky, director of a documentary film about North Korea said eight Moscow theatres refused to screen the film.

North Caucasus 

On 3/10 five Chechen men went on trial in Moscow accused of killing Boris Nemtsov. On 5/10 Ramzan Kadyrov was inaugurated for another term as head of the region of Chechnya. On 9/10 police said they had shot dead 8 militants in Chechnya. In Dagestan, security forces killed three militants on 10/10; at least three militants on 12/10; and two men wanted for alleged terrorist activities on 17/10. On 17/10 about 40 women staged a protest in Makhachkala, demanding information about missing relatives. On 24/10 the North Caucasus Regional Military Court sentenced Dagestani Islamic cleric Magomednabi Magomedov to prison on charges of inciting hatred and terrorism. On 13/10 police in Kabardino-Balkaria said they killed three armed men.

Ukraine 

On 12/10 the PACE condemned ‘Russian aggression’ in eastern Ukraine. On 12/10 the FSB arrested members of an alleged ‘terrorist cell’ in Crimea, believed to be members of the banned organization Hizb ut-Tahrir. On 21/10 Ukrainian Justice Ministry said Russia had refused to transfer film director Oleg Sentsov, sentenced to 20 years in prison for organizing a terrorist group in Crimea. On 26/10 Amnesty International condemned as a ‘travesty of justice’ the Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold on appeal the conviction of Ukrainians Stanislaw Klykh and Mykola Karpyuk for killing Russian soldiers in Chechnya in the 1990s.