Russia

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s decision to begin a hunger strike in protest against the conditions she and her fellow prisoners endure inside Russia’s modern gulag will, doubtless, be met with a measure of scorn or lack of sympathy by some. After all, there were plenty of people who thought Pussy Riot – the Russian band of which Tolokonnivoka is the most high-profile member – got what they deserved last year. Not all of these hanging judges live in Russia either. To recap: three of Pussy Riot’s members were imprisoned last year having been convicted of, essentially, embarrassing the Orthodox Church and Vladimir Putin. The band’s methods may not be to everyone’s tastes but some

To Kensington last night, to celebrate Russia Day at the glorious mansion of the noble, kind and august ambassador. There was patriotic music, oratory of great distinction and the crowd rejoiced; or so the propagandists will have it. Tongues loosened as the Russian Standard flowed. John Whittingdale, Commissar of the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee, was ripe for gossip: ‘If half of what I hear is true it will be quite a show trial,’ he told me. ‘There is all sorts to come out yet.’ Whatever was he talking about? Guests were reluctant to discuss the forthcoming G8 summit in Northern Ireland. I hear that the Russian delegation’s travel plans

Part 1 “Russian Justice” A judge at Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court stopped the trial of Sergei Magnitsky (above) yesterday – but not because the defendant was dead. Magnitsky’s demise was of no concern to the judge. It did not bother him in the slightest. The court merely postponed proceedings until 4 March when the world will see something rarely seen since the Middle Ages: a prosecutor arraigning a corpse. The Putin regime – that mixture of autocracy and gangsterism – is desperate to discredit the late Mr Magnitsky and his employer, Bill Browder of Hermitage Capital. If you don’t know the story, I’ll explain why. Browder exposed corruption in Russian

I’m thoroughly enjoying the playground spat between the USA and Russia. The Americans have banned Russians with dodgy human rights records from visiting the country, but have no such objection to travellers from Iran, Pakistan or Somalia dropping by, no matter how psychopathic they might be. In retaliation, the Russkies have voted to halt their most valuable export to the USA – that of small Russian children, who are used by middle class Americans as mantelpiece ornaments and garden furniture. I assume that adopting a little black child from, say, Malawi, is now considered a little de trop. Whatever, there seems to be a yearning, on both sides, for this

You rarely hear people defending the European Court of Human Rights. It is, according to British mythology, a meddlesome beast populated by dimwit judges of dubious foreign provenance whose rulings are invariably ninnyish, ignorant and intolerable in equal measure. I prefer to think of the court as the last protector of individual rights often threatened by hostile governments. Sometimes that hostile government is our own. The court – and really this cannot be stressed often enough – offers protection from the state. Restraining government’s worst instincts is a noble calling and if our judges cannot or will not do it then praise be that the european justices are not so

A surprisingly large turn-out last night for the launch of the Conservative Friends of Russia, given the recent ‘Pussy Riot’ trial mess. A notable absence from the Kremlin ambassador’s garden was Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the group’s Hon. President. There was also a distinct absence of parliamentarians. Lumbering up to the plate was John Wittingdale, whose proclaimed love of the motherland goes beyond his Russian girlfriend. The Chairman of the Culture Select Committee has been known to be close to the country for years and extolled his love of Russian literature to the two hundred strong crowd. He mentioned the latest Putin controversy and did indeed declare himself a music fan.

So, two years in prison for the members of Pussy Riot as a consequence of their foul and insulting behaviour inside a church. The western world is outraged and takes the severity of the sentence as evidence that Russia is a totalitarian state where everyone does as Putin wants. Thank God we’re not like that over here, huh? We live in a democracy where one is free to lampoon all religious belief without punitive action descending upon us by the state. Which will be news to Andrew Ryan, among others – he was sentenced to 70 days in jail for setting fire to a copy of the Koran. And the two men who received one

One of the happiest things about writing for the Spectator is that there is no editorial line. Indeed the editor is always pleased by an intra-mural rammy. So there’s this: Dennis Sewell’s argument that Pussy Riot, the only all-girl Russian punk band you’re likely to have heard of, have been asking for trouble and deserve some of the trouble they’re receiving is the lamest sort of counter-intuitive, concern-trolling journalism. It helps pay the bills, mind you, so there’s that too. Having typed the obligatory “Of course Putin is ghastly” paragraph (or, as Sewell puts it, the Russian president is “a nasty, unscrupulous weasel” which, perhaps unwittingly, makes Putin seem a