Russian courts detain blogger and fine politician

Russian authorities detained a prominent blogger and fined a veteran opposition politician on Friday, July 17, in a coordinated crackdown on critics ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for September.

Blogger Ilya Remeslo, 42, was detained in St. Petersburg on suspicion of spreading false information about the Russian military, a charge that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. According to state media, he was being transported to Moscow for a court hearing. Remeslo, once a staunch pro-Kremlin activist who had testified against the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, shocked the political establishment in March by publishing a viral manifesto titled "Five reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin." In it, he denounced the president and the war in Ukraine, calling for Putin to be tried as a war criminal. Shortly after its publication, Remeslo was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for approximately one month, an episode he later described as retaliation for his criticism.

Separately, a court in the Moscow region fined opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin 1,000 rubles for displaying extremist symbols. The case stemmed from a 2023 social media post that...