Russia Signals Modest Retreat as Outcry Builds Over Protests Crackdown

(Bloomberg) -- Russian prosecutors appealed to drop the prison sentence in a case that sparked widespread outrage, the latest sign that the authorities are sometimes willing to reverse themselves in the face of public pressure.

Many of Russia’s leading theater and movie personalities rallied around Pavel Ustinov, an actor who received a 3 1/2-year sentence on Monday for injuring a national guard officer in anti-Kremlin protests last month.

Prosecutors Thursday asked the court to change his sentence to one that doesn’t involve prison time, saying that while they view his guilt as proven, the original jail term was excessively harsh, Tass reported. They also called on the judge to release Ustinov on his own recognizance pending the appeal hearing Monday, according to a court spokeswoman.

The apparent U-turn is the latest by the Kremlin, which has of late shown a willingness to back down when public outrage extends beyond the usual opposition figures. In June, authorities reversed themselves in the face of mounting public pressure in the case of investigative reporter Ivan Golunov, who was arrested on bogus drug charges. In Ustinov’s case, the court refused to consider video evidence that may have exonerated him.

“The actors’ guild defended its own,” said Evgeny Minchenko, a Moscow political consultant who works with the Kremlin. “I don’t regard this as the system thawing. Ustinov and Golunov were vivid examples of being framed, and that’s why they resonated in society.”

‘Tactical Concession’

Ustinov, 23, was convicted of dislocating a national guard officer’s shoulder during an unsanctioned protest in Moscow on Aug. 3. The judge refused to admit video evidence that he didn’t resist arrest and, instead, was looking at his phone, not participating in the demonstration when several officers in riot gear tackled him on one of the capital’s central squares.

“The level of public indignation in the Ustinov case is impossible to ignore,” said Konstantin Kostin, a former Kremlin official who now heads a think tank that works with the government. “If you do not undertake systematic efforts to develop and adopt modern criminal legislation and reform the law-enforcement system, but rather try to resolve the most critical and high-profile cases manually, there will be more such incidents that will become a trigger of public irritation.”

A reversal on Ustinov doesn’t mean a change of policy toward the political opposition to President Vladimir Putin. The head of Russia’s National Guard, Viktor Zolotov, called for a suspended sentence for the actor while complaining a five-year sentence was too light for a little-known blogger jailed for a tweet that a court found threatened police families, RIA Novosti reported.

Elsewhere, the crackdown on critics continued apace. Thursday, opposition politician Leonid Volkov said the head of Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, Ivan Zhdanov, was detained for encouraging participation in unsanctioned protests. The group’s offices have been raided around the country this month and the homes of its employees searched as the police seek evidence for a money laundering investigation.

The authorities detained thousands while forcefully breaking up protests this summer, and several have received lengthy prison sentences for participating in the rallies.

“Ustinov’s case is a tactical concession while maintaining a tough line,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

--With assistance from Ilya Arkhipov.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jake Rudnitsky in Moscow at jrudnitsky@bloomberg.net;Evgenia Pismennaya in Moscow at epismennaya@bloomberg.net;Stepan Kravchenko in Moscow at skravchenko@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Gregory L. White at gwhite64@bloomberg.net, Natasha Doff

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