Russian law

Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who is serving a two-and-half-year jail term in a penal colony outside Moscow, said on March 15 he was locked up in a "real concentration camp".

Russian police on March 13 arrested around 200 opposition politicians and municipal deputies at a Moscow conference as authorities tighten the screws on Kremlin critics ahead of parliamentary elections.

The United States on March 2 imposed sanctions on senior Russian officials in a coordinated action with the European Union as U.S. intelligence concluded that Moscow orchestrated the near fatal poisoning of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

Ambassadors of 27 European Union nations have agreed further anti-Russian sanctions over the situation around Russian blogger Alexey Navalny, a source in one of the delegations told TASS on Monday.

New EU sanctions against Russia due to the situation around Alexey Navalny will be officially approved next week, President of the European Council Charles Michel said at a press conference following the first day of the EU online summit.

A Moscow judge on Feb. 20 upheld a ruling to jail top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, as he lost two court cases in one day and was headed for more than two years in a penal colony.

Residents of Moscow and Saint Petersburg on Sunday staged Valentine Day's flashmobs in residential courtyards and public squares, lighting their phone flashlights in support of jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny.

Russia is ready to cut ties with the EU if Brussels initiates it, but for its part, Moscow is calling for cooperation, the Russian Foreign Ministry told TASS on Friday.

Russia has issued an arrest warrant that covers a swath of other former Soviet republics for one of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny's closest allies, a Moscow court said on Wednesday.

The video, shot by a man detained in a Moscow protest, shows a group of people jammed into a police minibus. One of them says on the recording that they had already been held there for nine hours, with some forced to stand because of overcrowding and no access to food, water or bathrooms.