The constitution provides for freedom of speech and press; however, government pressure on some media constrained coverage of certain controversial issues, resulting in numerous infringements of these rights.
While the government generally respected citizens’ right to freedom of speech, some regional and local authorities used procedural violations and vague legislation to detain persons who criticized the government. State-controlled media frequently did not cover human rights, high-level corruption, opposition political views, and the conduct of federal forces in the North Caucasus. In other cases the government used direct ownership, or ownership by large private companies with government links, to control or influence major national media and regional media outlets, especially television. There were reports of self-censorship in the television and print media, particularly on issues critical of the government.
Freedom of Speech: The government at times restricted the ability of individuals to criticize the government publicly or privately or discuss matters of general public interest without reprisal. For example, on March 1, an Arkhangelsk court convicted Ivan Moseyev, a professor at Northern Federal University and member of the Pomor ethnic minority, for “insulting the dignity of the Russian ethnic group” and sentenced him to a fine of 100,000 rubles ($3,100). Moseyev’s conviction was based the inclusion in his work of the sentences, “What are you doing to us? You are millions of cattle while there are only 2,000 of us!” The court interpreted the term “cattle” to be an insult to Russians.
During the year the government instituted several laws that restrict freedom of speech. On June 30, President Putin signed two laws, one that prohibits the distribution of material that promotes nontraditional sexual relationships to minors and another that criminalizes the intentional or public offending of religious sentiments. The former, the so-called propaganda law, effectively criminalizes public assembly and expression in support of LGBT equality, provides heavy fines for violations, and could also result in the suspension of activities of organizations or 15 days in jail (plus deportation) for foreign offenders. Human rights groups criticized the “blasphemy law” for being vague and ambiguous; violations of the law are punishable by heavy fines or a prison term of up to three years.
On December 30, President Putin signed a law criminalizing “calls for separatism.” Under the law violators face a fine of up to 306,700 rubles ($9,500) or jail terms of up to five years for making public calls for action aimed against the country’s territorial integrity.
On December 5, an Archangelsk court convicted two LGBT activists, Nikolai Alexeyev and Yaroslav Yevtushenko, of violating the ban on so-called propaganda of nontraditional sexual relationships to minors and fined them 4,000 rubles ($120). The activists had picketed a children’s library with a sign that stated, “Gay propaganda does not exist. People do not become gay, people are born gay.”
Press Freedoms: The government or state-owned or state-controlled companies directly owned more than 60 percent of the country’s 45,000 registered local newspapers and periodicals. The federal or local governments or progovernment oligarchs completely or partially owned approximately 66 percent of the 2,500 television stations, including all six national channels.
Independent news outlets running stories critical of the government often faced retaliation for such coverage. On April 30, the Omsk Oblast government suspended the accreditation of journalists of the Omsk Television Company and the regional news agency Omsk Inform after the outlets reported on disagreements between city and oblast governments. The regional government accused the journalists of “destabilizing the sociopolitical situation in the region.”
Many newspapers ensured their financial viability by agreeing to various types of “support contracts” with government ministries, in which the newspapers agreed to provide positive coverage of government officials and policies in news stories. Absent direct government support, independent news publications reported difficulty attracting advertising and securing financial viability, since advertisers feared retaliation if their brands became linked to publications that criticized the government. In one example, on June 8, REN TV, a privately owned and independently operated television outlet, ceased operations in Bashkortostan after the regional government-affiliated broadcaster terminated its contract with the station. Local representatives of REN TV’s owners claimed that authorities ordered the shutdown after the outlet reported news stories unfriendly to the Bashkortostan regional government.
According to the Glasnost Defense Fund (GDF) and other NGOs, authorities used the media’s widespread dependence on the government for access to property, printing, and distribution services to discourage critical reporting. They reported that approximately 90 percent of the print media relied on state-controlled entities for paper, printing, and distribution services and that many television stations were forced to rely on the government for access to the airwaves and office space. The GDF also reported that officials continued to manipulate the price of printing at state-controlled publishing houses to pressure private media rivals.
On December 11, President Putin signed a decree closing the country’s largest government-owned news agency, RIA Novosti, which had been known for its balanced coverage. The decree replaced RIA Novosti with an organization called Russia Today, under the leadership of Dmitriy Kiselyov, whom observers noted had a strong progovernment bias.
Violence and Harassment: As of November 1, the GDF reported three killings of journalists during the year, 63 attacks on journalists, four attacks on media offices, 67 detentions of journalists by law enforcement, 24 prosecutions of journalists, 34 threats against journalists, and 19 politically motivated firings of journalists.
On July 9, unknown persons killed Akhmednabi Akhmednabiev, who was Novoye Delo’s deputy editor in chief and a Caucasian Knot correspondent, outside his home in Makhachkala. Akhmednabiev endured repeated threats and attempts on his life after his name appeared on an anonymous hit list distributed throughout Makhachkala in 2009. The list also included the names of eight other journalists. A second journalist on the list, Gadzhimurad Kamalov, was similarly killed in Makhachkala in 2011. As of November authorities had not made any arrests in the case.
During the year two journalists died from injuries sustained during attacks in previous years that rights groups believed to be retaliation for their work. On April 8, independent journalist and editor of the weekly Khimkiskaya Pravda, Mikhail Beketov, died. In 2008 unknown assailants seriously beat Beketov, who had frequently criticized local authorities for construction projects. On December 16, Sochi journalist Arkadiy Lander, beaten in 2010 by unknown assailants, died. He had been a frequent critic of city authorities and corruption.
There were reports of physical assaults against journalists during the year. In one instance assailants brutally beat two journalists in Novosibirsk within a week of each other in April. On April 1, an unidentified assailant beat unconscious Andrey Chelnokov, head of the Novosibirsk Journalists’ Union. Chelnokov, who had previously received threats due to his reporting, was missing for 10 days before being found with a concussion, broken nose, and broken ribs. On April 8, two masked men attacked Boris Komarov, president of Uniton-Media, a company that owns several news media outlets, in his office parking lot. Komarov suffered a concussion and a broken jaw in the attack and was hospitalized for more than a month. Police did not make arrests in either of these cases.
On November 26, a court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced journalist Sergey Reznik to 18 months in prison on a series of unrelated charges: insulting a public official, bribery, and deliberately misleading authorities. The insult charges stemmed from blog posts in which Reznik accused a judge of corruption and nepotism. The other two other charges were that he falsely reported to police that he was the recipient of threats and that he bribed a mechanic in a car shop to obtain a vehicle inspection sticker. Since early 2012 Reznik had been receiving threats by telephone from anonymous individuals who demanded that he cease publishing his articles. On October 22, two unidentified men attacked Reznik with baseball bats and shot at him with a pistol. Although not hit by the bullets, he suffered head and neck injuries from the beating. The assailants fled after persons walking nearby responded to calls for help by Reznik’s wife. At year’s end authorities had not made any arrests in the case of the attack against him. Reznik was appealing his own conviction.
There was no progress in establishing accountability in a number of high-profile killings of journalists, including the 2004 killing of Paul Klebnikov and the 2009 killing of Natalia Estemirova.
On July 24, the trial of five suspects in the 2006 murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya began. The suspects included Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, who allegedly arranged the killing by hiring three brothers--Rustam, Ibragim, and Dzhabrail Makhmudov--to kill her, and former police officer Sergey Khadzhikurbanov allegedly to provide logistical support for the killing. Despite the 2012 conviction of Dmitriy Pavlyuchenkov for organizing the murder, the identity of the person who ordered Politkovskaya’s killing remained unknown.
On December 12, a Moscow appeals court overturned the conviction of two men accused of the 2012 attack on journalist Yelena Milashina. A court had earlier sentenced the men to two years in prison. Milashina had appealed the verdict, as she continued to maintain that the convicted men did not commit the attack.
Journalists who uncovered various forms of malfeasance also faced harassment, either in the form of direct threats to their physical safety or threats to their security or livelihood, often through legal prosecution.
On May 23, police arrested Sochi journalist Nikolai Yarst on drug possession charges after a routine traffic stop. Many human rights groups and other local journalists believed that police planted the drugs in the car in retaliation for Yarst’s critical reporting on a local scandal that implicated members of the Sochi police. Yarst claimed that he had previously received threats from police to stop his reporting on the story or face reprisals. As of October Yarst remained under house arrest, and no date had been set for his trial.
On January 25, the Investigative Committee for Karelia resumed its criminal extremism investigation into the 2012 case of blogger and activist Maxim Yefimov, requesting additional expert analysis of a blog post in which Yefimov criticized the Russian Orthodox Church. Yefimov remained outside the country at year’s end, having fled threats of psychiatric incarceration in 2012.
Censorship or Content Restrictions: The government continued to use legislation and decrees to curtail media freedom.
The GDF reported there were 32 attempts to censor the media through October, compared with 46 in all of 2012. On May 15, the entire journalistic staff of Zarechnyy TV, a local television channel in Zarechnyy City, Sverdlovsk Oblast, resigned in protest of the city mayor’s demands on the channel. The mayor insisted that Zarechnyy TV limit its political news and reporting and instead lobby on behalf of the city’s largest enterprise, the state-owned Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Plant. The journalists attempted to form a new outlet, but local authorities prohibited the sole local television provider from broadcasting its material.
The law provides an expansive definition of extremism and gives law enforcement officials broad authority to suspend media outlets that do not comply with the law’s restrictions. The Ministry of Justice continued to expand its list of “extremist” materials to include 2,096 items as of October 4.
By law authorities may close any organization that a court determines to be extremist, including media outlets, and the organization cannot challenge the court’s decision. The Federal Service for Oversight of Communication and Information Technology (Roskomnadzor) routinely issued warnings to newspapers and internet sources suspected of publishing extremist materials. Two warnings in one year were enough to initiate a closure lawsuit. Human rights groups reported that the real impact of this practice was hidden, because journalists and editors, although never prosecuted directly, tended to censor themselves.
On July 2, the Nizhniy Novgorod court, after examining a book about human rights abuses by Russian forces during the Chechen Wars for extremism, ruled that the book was not extremist. The ruling on the book, whose author was human rights activist Stanislav Dmitriyevskiy, was confirmed on appeal.
During the year the government also used laws against obscenity to censor independent media. On October 31, Roskomnadzor stripped the Rosbalt news service, known for its independent coverage, of its mass media operating license. Roskomnadzor stated that Rosbalt had used inappropriate vocabulary on its website by posting a link to a YouTube video. The video in question contained an interview that contained profanity. Rosbalt removed the video less than 24 hours after being notified of the offending language.
Officials or unidentified individuals sometimes used force or took other extralegal measures to prevent the circulation of publications critical of government officials. The GDF reported that as of September 1, officials made 29 attempts to seize or prevent distribution of publications. On February 19, police in Perm Kray seized the entire 1,600-copy run of the regional newspaper Perm Neighbors due to its alleged inclusion of unfavorable reporting on local authorities and political parties. The newspaper’s editors commented that the edition included information about all the candidates running in Perm’s Duma elections in addition to analysis and predictions of how the outcome would affect the kray’s governor.
Libel Laws/National Security: Officials at all levels used their authority, sometimes publicly, to restrict the work of journalists who criticized them, including taking legal action for alleged slander or libel. The law places limits on free expression on national security grounds, notably in statutes addressing antiextremism and treason.
On December 13, a Moscow court convicted the news magazine The New Times and one of its reporters of libel, for allegedly defaming two Moscow judges in an article claiming they had engaged in plagiarism in their academic dissertations. The court ordered the magazine to pay 500,000 rubles ($15,500) to each judge in damages, and journalist Zoya Svetova was fined 100,000 rubles ($3,100). The New Times was appealing the ruling at year’s end.
The internet and radio were more independent than print media and television. Despite increasing attempts by the government to monitor and control the internet, it remained a space for free expression. Threats to internet freedom included physical attacks on bloggers; politically motivated prosecutions of bloggers for “extremism,” libel, or other crimes; blocking of specific sites by national and local service providers; distributed denial of service attacks on sites of opposition groups or independent media; monitoring by authorities of all internet communications; and attempts by security services and some regional authorities to regulate content. The internet was widely available to citizens in all parts of the country, although connection speeds varied by region. According to Internet World Stats, 47.7 percent of the country’s population had internet access.
Under a 2012 law, the state mass communications watchdog agency Roskomnadzor maintained a federal blacklist of internet sites, and in August the law was expanded to include sites that hosted intellectual property infringing content such as films and television shows. The law’s stated aim is to protect children from offensive information on the internet. Roskomnadzor required internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to web pages that the agency deemed offensive or illegal. This included information that was already prohibited, such as items on the Federal List of Extremist Materials, but it also held blog owners responsible for the content in the comments section of their pages. The Pirate Party of Russia, an unofficial political party that monitored the blacklist, reported that nearly 99 percent of the blocked sites--all but 450 of the 35,500 on the list--did not have illegal content.
On December 30, President Putin signed a law that gives the prosecutor general or the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media the authority to demand that internet providers block websites that promote “extremist” information or “mass public events that are conducted in violation of appropriate procedures.” The law was scheduled to come into effect on February 1, 2014.
On May 28, authorities placed VKontakte, the county’s largest social network, on the federal internet blacklist, disrupting access to the site for approximately six hours. On September 19, they blacklisted Facebook and gave it three days to remove unspecified “illegal content” hosted on its website. They removed Facebook from the blacklist after the offending pages were deleted.
On January 11, popular blogger Rustem Adagamov received a notice from Roskomnadzor threatening to blacklist his live journal blog if he did not delete a post about recent events in India, in which a Tibetan activist attempted self-immolation to protest the arrival of the president of China. Roskomnadzor found that the post constituted propaganda for suicide, prohibited in the country. Livejournal ultimately blocked the post’s accessibility from within the country but allowed it to be accessed from abroad.
In many regions local prosecutors’ offices and courts ordered ISPs to block content on the Federal List of Extremist Materials and the federal internet blacklist. In Chechnya press reports indicated that the site YouTube had been blocked since July 2012 on antiextremism grounds.
During the year authorities prosecuted bloggers for allegedly “extremist” content they published online. On August 15, the Murmansk Oblast Investigative Committee charged blogger Aleksandr Serebryanikov with extremism. Serebryanikov was the owner of the online news agency Blogger 51, which was critical of the Murmansk regional government. Authorities did not allow Serebryanikov to release information on his own case, and he denied all charges.
There were multiple reports that authorities fined libraries, schools, and internet clubs during the year for failing to block adequately content listed on the Federal List of Extremist Materials or covered under the law defending children from harmful information.
The government continued to employ a “system for operational investigative measures” (SORM), which requires ISPs to install, at their own expense, a device that routes all customer traffic to an FSB terminal. The system enables police to track private e-mail communications, identify internet users, and monitor their internet activity.
Academic Freedom and Cultural Events
While the government generally did not restrict academic freedom, there were exceptions.
Authorities often censored or shut down cultural events or displays they considered offensive and in some cases initiated criminal proceedings against those responsible. On August 27, police raided the Museum of Power in St. Petersburg and seized satirical paintings of President Putin, Prime Minister Medvedev, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, Duma deputy Elena Mizulina, and St. Petersburg legislator Vitaliy Milonov. Two days later the artist sought asylum in France, fearing prosecution; on September 4, police detained the museum’s director, releasing her after four hours. In a related case, Marat Guelman, head of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Perm, reported on June 20 that he had been fired the day after he opened an exhibit containing art featuring satirized caricatures of the 2014 Sochi Olympics.