September 28:
Duma opposition member Ilya Ponomaryov was banned from speaking in the body’s chamber for a month after offending the body's majority party. His offense, according to RIA-Novosti, was the use of the phrase “crooks and thieves,” a description widely used by opposition activists to describe the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. The official charge against Ponomaryov was “publicly using crude, offensive expressions that damaged the dignity and honor of other State Duma deputies and other people.”
In a show of unity with Kremlin interests, a Russian Orthodox bishop held a service in the Arctic to lower a “holy memorial capsule” into the sea at the North Pole. The metal capsule bears the inscription “With the blessing of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, the consecration of the North Pole marks 1150 years of Russian Statehood.” Russia’s attention to the Arctic increased over the last months, as one conservative think-tank suggested renaming the Arctic Ocean the “Russian Ocean,” and the Kremlin announced plans to base MiG-31 interceptor aircraft in the region by the end of 2012. The Telegraph suggests Russia’s leaders are eager to claim the disputed territory to gain access to the hydrocarbon deposits off its northern coast.
September 30:
A day before the appeal hearing for the jailed members of the punk band Pussy Riot, the Russian Orthodox Church released a statement asking for conditional clemency for the women. If the women display “penitence and reconsideration of their action,” the statement said, it “shouldn't be left unnoticed.” According to the Associated Press, many analysts believe the statement reflects the church's interest in ending the controversy over the women’s arrests—an interest shared by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who said days earlier that keeping them in jail any longer would be “unproductive.” Hopes for leniency are tempered, however, by the discussion in the country’s parliament of a new bill that would make “offending religious feelings” a crime carrying a five year prison sentence. “There is always at least some minimal hope for common sense and that the court will act in accordance with the law,” said a family member of one of the jailed women. “But given the political situation in Russia, we can’t depend on a legal sentence.”
October 1:
The appeal itself was delayed a week, however, after one of the punk band’s members fired her lawyers. Prosecutors objected to the delay, reports the Associated Press, claiming that the move was a stall tactic, but the appeal hearing was moved to October 10. The band member, Samutsevich, did not give a reason for firing her lawyers, and announced that she’d found another, but had not yet signed a formal contract.
October 2:
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is expected to call for a presidential election in the coming months, after his party lost the majority in the country’s parliamentary elections. Bidzina Ivanishvili, head of the Georgian Dream bloc that won 55 percent of the vote, will now assume the position of Prime Minister as his party assumes the majority of the seats in Georgia's parliament. The BBC reports that Saakashvili is permitted to remain in office until the scheduled presidential elections next year, but is expected to call for the election now that his party has lost control of parliament. Russian officials were quick to applaud the result, and one Duma official was quoted as saying “[a]nything that would keep Saakashvili further away from the instruments of power is a plus for Russian-Georgian relations.”
October 4:
In a reveal similar to the discovery of the Russian spy ring in 2010, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that it uncovered a group of Russian agents smuggling microchips out of the United States. The chips themselves are fairly commonplace in the United States, reports the New York Times, and are even available commercially, though they require a license to export. The requirement is designed to limit the chips’ use, as they can be utilized in missile guidance systems, radar, police surveillance equipment, and even bomb triggers. Eight individuals are in custody in connection with the smuggling, facing up to twenty years in prison. The Russian foreign ministry was careful to note that the charges involved are not technically espionage-related. They “have no relation in any way with intelligence activity,” said the Russian Information Agency, while another official noted that the crime of failing to register as an agent of a foreign government can also apply to lawyers and lobbyists.