In an unusual move, prosecutors requested that the Moscow mayoral candidate be let go pending appeal so he could participate in the race in the fall. The sudden about-face could reflect possible confusion in the Kremlin about how to handle the case of President Vladimir Putin’s No. 1 enemy.

Several thousand people noisily took over the streets outside the Kremlin after Thursday’s verdict, braving the threat of arrest and heavy fines. The prosecutors’ decision was seen as an attempt to soothe unexpected public anger and lend legitimacy to a vote widely expected to be won by a Kremlin-backed incumbent.

The popular blogger who has exposed high-level corruption and mocked the Kremlin would not immediately say if he would stay in the race, expressing resentment over what he characterized as political manipulation.

After the decision, he emerged from the caged-off defendants’ section of the courtroom. He hugged his wife, and thanked the supporters who had protested his conviction on Manezhnaya Square next to the Kremlin, clapping hands and chanting “Freedom!” and “Putin is a thief!”

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, embraces his wife Yulia, as he was released in a courtroom …

Dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, he said his release was a result of Thursday’s protests. He claimed his conviction and sentence “had been vetted by the presidential administration … but when people came out on Manezhnaya, they rushed to go back on that decision.”

Judge Ignatiy Embasinov supported the release, saying that Navalny’s incarceration would “prevent him from exercising his rights of being elected,” to cheers from Navalny’s supporters.

The release comes with the condition that Navalny not travel outside Moscow and extends until appeals of his conviction are completed.

Navalny’s lawyer Olga Mikhailova described the decision by the prosecution to act in the defense’s interest as unprecedented.

Outside the court, Navalny was greeted by supporters, one of them offering him blini — Russian pancakes — a sarcastic play on the name of the judge who sentenced him, Sergei Blinov.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, right, and his former colleague Pyotr Ofitserov, left, are …

Navalny said it’s “impossible to predict” whether Friday’s decision could raise the chances of his acquittal on appeal. He also said he has not yet decided whether to continue his mayoral campaign.

“I’m not some kitten or a puppy that can be thrown out of election, say, ‘you’re not running’ and later say ‘yes, let’s get him back in.’ I will get back to Moscow and we will talk it over with my election headquarters,” he said.

Presentation of the appeal and the decision by the court for the Kirov region took little more than an hour, a sharp contrast to the droning 3 ½-hour verdict reading and sentencing in a lower court the previous day.

That harsh ruling provoked immediate anger. The U.S. and EU both criticized the ruling within hours, arguing that the case appeared to be politically motivated.

The unsanctioned protest in Moscow looked small compared to the massive anti-Putin demonstrations that attracted more than 100,000 in the fall of 2011 and the beginning of the following year. But unlike those protests, which were allowed by the authorities, the participants in Thursday’s rally braved the threat of heavy fines and prison sentences.

People hold a poster of opposition figure Alexei Navalny , as they gather in support of him in Mosco …

The protest rally briefly blocked traffic on a busy Moscow street, as demonstrators shouted “This city is ours!” More than 200 people were briefly detained, and about a half of them are expected to face fines.

More than 50 were also briefly detained in St. Petersburg and smaller rallies were held in several other Russian cities Thursday

Navalny rose to prominence among the opposition during a series of massive protests in Moscow against Putin’s re-election to a third presidential term in March 2012.

He first earned notice by blogging about his investigations into corruption at state-owned companies where he owned shares, reaching hundreds of thousands of people. He and his team of lawyers and activists have plumbed property registers abroad to identify top officials and lawmakers who own undeclared foreign assets and hold foreign citizenship.

Navalny’s blog quickly became an Internet sensation not only because of his exposures but because of its engaging illustrations, funny images and witty catchphrases. It was Navalny who first called the dominant United Russia party “the party of crooks and thieves,” a phrase that still dogs Kremlin loyalists.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, seen through a cage window, gestures while speaking in a c …

The opposition leader’s investigations targeted a wide circle of Putin loyalists — from members of Parliament to state bankers — threatening to discredit the system of governance he has built.

Sentencing Navalny is the latest move in a multipronged crackdown on dissent that followed Putin’s inauguration, including arrests of opposition activists and repressive legislation that sharply increased fines for participants in unsanctioned protests and imposed tough new restrictions on non-government organizations.

The charges against Navalny dated back a few years when he worked as an unpaid adviser to the provincial governor in Kirov, 760 kilometers (470 miles) east of Moscow. Prosecutors said he was part of a group that embezzled 16 million rubles’ ($500,000) worth of timber from state-owned company Kirovles.

The defense said co-defendant Pyotr Ofitserov’s company bought the timber from Kirovles for 14 million rubles and sold it for 16 million rubles in a regular commercial deal. Navalny’s lawyers presented invoices proving the transactions.

None of the managers at Kirovles who appeared in court, except for former Kirovles Director Vyacheslav Opalev, testified that Navalny defrauded the company.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, seen through a cage window, gestures while speaking in a c …

Navalny insists Opalev framed him out of revenge: Navalny had recommended that Opalev be fired and that officials investigate potential corruption in his company.

Opalev got a suspended sentence in an expedited trial in December after pleading guilty to conspiring with Navalny.

MOSCOW: A U.S. diplomat was ordered Tuesday to leave the country after the Kremlin’s security services said he tried to recruit a Russian agent, and they displayed tradecraft tools that seemed straight from a cheap spy thriller: wigs, packets of cash, a knife, map and compass, and a letter promising millions for “long-term cooperation.”

The FSB, the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB, identified the diplomat as Ryan Fogle, a third secretary at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, detaining him briefly overnight.

It alleged that Fogle was a CIA officer trying to recruit a Russian counterterrorism officer who specializes in the volatile Caucasus region in southern Russia, where the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects had their ethnic roots.

Fogle was handed over to U.S. Embassy officials, declared persona non grata and ordered to leave Russia immediately. He has diplomatic immunity, which protects him from arrest.

The State Department would only confirm that Fogle worked as an embassy employee, but wouldn’t give any details about his employment record or responsibilities in Russia. Some officials also referred inquiries to the CIA, which declined comment.

Fogle was the first American diplomat to be publicly accused of spying in Russia in about a decade. While relations between the two countries have been strained, officials in both Washington andMoscow sought to play down the incident.

The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul to appear Wednesday in connection with the case. McFaul said he would not comment on the spying allegation.

Russian officials expressed indignation the U.S. would carry out an espionage operation at a time when the two countries have been working to improve counterterrorism cooperation. “Such provocative actions in the spirit of the Cold War do nothing to strengthen mutual trust,” the Foreign Ministry said.

Russia’s Caucasus region includes the provinces of Chechnya and Dagestan. The suspects in the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings — Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his elder brother, Tamerlan, who was killed in a manhunt — are ethnic Chechens. Tamerlan spent six months last year in Dagestan, now the center of an Islamic insurgency.

U.S. investigators have been working with the Russians to try to determine whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev had established any contacts with militants in Dagestan.

Despite the end of the Cold War, Russia and the United States still maintain active espionage operations against each other. Last year, several Russians were convicted in separate cases of spying for the U.S. and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences.

But Tuesday’s case had espionage elements that seemed more like “Spy vs. Spy” than Ludlum and le Carre.

Russian state TV showed pictures of a man said to be Fogle, wearing a baseball cap and a blond wig, lying face down on the ground. The man, without the wig, was also shown sitting at a desk in the offices of the FSB, the Federal Security Service.

Two wigs, a compass, a map of Moscow, a pocket knife, three pairs of sunglasses and envelopes of 500 euro notes (each bill worth $649) were among the items the FSB displayed on a table.

The FSB also produced a typewritten letter that it described as instructions to the Russian agent who was the target of Fogle’s alleged recruitment effort. The letter, in Russian and addressed “Dear friend,” offers $100,000 to “discuss your experience, expertise and cooperation” and up to $1 million a year for long-term cooperation. The letter also includes instructions for opening a Gmail account to be used for communication and an address to write. It is signed “Your friends.”

“If this is genuine, then it’ll be seen to be appallingly bad tradecraft — being caught with a ‘How-to-be-a-Spy 101’ guide and a wig. He would have had to have been pretty stupid,” said Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University who studies the Russian security services.

A third nurse managed to save two patients and they were the only three thought to have survived, the state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing the Health Ministry.

Police said the fire, which broke out at about 2 a.m. local time (7 p.m. Eastern, 2300 GMT) in the one-story hospital in the Ramenskoye settlement, was caused by a short circuit, RIA Novosti reported.

A photograph on the website of the emergency services showed a building consumed by flames.

The emergency services also posted a list of the patients indicating they ranged in age from 20 to 76.

MOSCOW: Russia on Saturday named 18 Americans banned from entering the country in response to Washington imposing sanctions on 18 Russians for alleged human rights violations.

The list released by the Foreign Ministry includes John Yoo, a former U.S. Justice Department official who wrote legal memos authorizing harsh interrogation techniques; David Addington, the chief of staff for former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney; and two former commanders of the Guantanamo Bay detention center: retired Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller and Adm. Jeffrey Harbeson.

The move came a day after the United States announced its sanctions under the Magnitsky Law, named for Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was arrested in 2008 for tax evasion after accusing Russian police officials of stealing $230 million in tax rebates. He died in prison the next year, allegedly after being beaten and denied medical treatment.

Neither Washington nor Moscow put high-ranking or politically prominent figures on their lists, perhaps aiming to limit the effect on U.S.-Russian relations that have deteriorated, despite President Barack Obama’s initiative to “reset” relations with Moscow.

The Magnitsky law infuriated Russian authorities, and parliament quickly passed a retaliatory measure than banned Americans from adopting Russian children. Russia also has banned U.S. funding for any non-governmental organization deemed to be engaging in politics.

“I think that both sides showed a definite restraint because in Washington and in Moscow there were hotheads demanding to inflate the list to an unthinkable size,” parliament member Vyacheslav Nikonov, who focuses on foreign affairs, was quoted as saying by the news agency Interfax.

The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying there also is a “closed part” of the list of banned Americans and that the United States knows of its existence. The U.S. law in turn allows the administration to compile a separate classified list of Russian officials subject to visa bans.

The public U.S. list includes Artem Kuznetsov and Pavel Karpov, two Russian Interior Ministry officers who put Magnitsky behind bars after he accused them of stealing $230 million from the state. Two tax officials the lawyer accused of approving the fraudulent tax refunds, and several other Interior Ministry officials accused of persecuting Magnitsky, also were on the list. Absent were senior officials from Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s entourage whom some human rights advocates had hoped to see sanctioned.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement Saturday that the U.S. sanctions struck “a strong blow to bilateral relations and joint trust.”

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow said it had no immediate comment.

Also on Russia’s list are 14 Americans whom Russia says violated the rights of Russians abroad. It does not give specifics of the alleged violations, but includes several current or former federal prosecutors in the case of Viktor Bout, the Russian arms merchant sentenced in 2012 to 25 years in prison for selling weapons to a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist group. One FBI agent and four U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents also are on the list.

“It’s important that the criteria on which the Russian list was composed differ fundamentally from the Americans’. On the Russian list, including the closed part, are people actually responsible for the legalization of torture and indefinite detention of prisoners in Guantanamo, for arrests and unjust sentences for our countrymen,” Ryabkov was quoted as saying.

CHELYABINSK, Russia: As a small army of people worked to replace acres of windows shattered by the enormous explosion from a meteor, many joked on Saturday about what had happened in this troubled pocket of Russia.

One of the most popular jests: Residents of the meteor were terrified to see Chelyabinsk approaching.

The fireball that streaked into the sky over this tough industrial city at about sunrise Friday was undeniably traumatic. Nearly 1,200 people were reported injured by the shock wave from the explosion, estimated to be as strong as 20 Hiroshima atomic bombs.

But it also brought a sense of cooperation in a troubled region. Large numbers of volunteers came forward to help fix the damage caused by the explosion and many residents came together on the Internet — first to find out what happened and soon to make jokes.

Chelyabinsk, nicknamed Tankograd because it produced the famed Soviet T-34 tanks, can be as grim as its backbone heavy industries. Long winters where temperatures routinely hit minus-30 Celsius (minus-22 Fahrenheit) add to a general dour mien, as do worries about dangerous facilities in the surrounding region.

In 1957, a waste tank at the Mayak nuclear weapons plant in the Chelyabinsk region exploded, contaminating 23,000 square kilometers (9,200 square miles) and prompting authorities to evacuate 10,000 nearby residents. It is now Russia’s main nuclear waste disposal facility. A vast plant for disposing of chemical weapons lies 85 kilometers (50 miles) east of the city.

“The city is a place where people always seem bitter with each other,” said music teacher Ilya Shibanov. But the meteor “was one of the rare times when people started to live together through one event.”

“For most people, it’s a good excuse for a joke,” he said.

It also is why Shibanov quickly concocted a rap video that got wide Internet attention, including the lines: “”Pow, pow, pow — everything flew and factory windows crumbled. This Friday the bars are going to be full, so be ready for the aftermath.”

But for many, it’s provided a reason to roll up their sleeves and get to work repairing the more than 4,000 buildings in the city and region where windows were shattered, or to provide other services.

More than 24,000 people, including volunteers, have mobilized in the region to cover windows, gather warm clothes and food, and make other relief efforts, the regional governor’s office said. Crews from glass companies in adjacent regions were being flown in.

Gov. Mikhail Yurevich on Saturday said that damage from the high-altitude explosion —believed to have been as powerful as 20 Hiroshima bombs — is estimated at 1 billion rubles ($33 million). He promised to have all the broken windows replaced within a week.

But that is a long wait in a frigid region. The midday temperature in Chelyabinsk was minus-12 C (10 F), and for many the immediate task was to put up plastic sheeting and boards on shattered residential windows.

Meanwhile, the search continued for major fragments of the meteor.

In the town of Chebarkul, 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Chelyabinsk city, divers explored the bottom of an ice-crusted lake looking for meteor fragments believed to have fallen there, leaving a six-meter-wide (20-foot-wide) hole. Emergency Ministry spokeswoman Irina Rossius told Russian news agencies the search hadn’t found anything.

Police kept a small crowd of curious onlookers from venturing out onto the icy lake, where a tent was set up for the divers.

Many of them were still trying to process the memories of the strange day they’d lived through.

Valery Fomichov said he had been out for a run when the meteor streaked across the sky shortly after sunrise.

“I glanced up and saw a glowing dot in the west. And it got bigger and bigger, like a soccer ball, until it became blindingly white and I turned away,” he said.

In a local church, clergyman Sexton Sergei sought to derive a larger lesson.

“Perhaps God was giving a kind of sign, so that people don’t simply think about their own trifles on earth, but rather look to the heavens once in a while.”

In Chelyabinsk, university student Ksenia Arslanova said she was pleased that people in the city of 1 million generally behaved well after the bewildering flash and explosions.

“People were kind of ironic about it. And that’s a good thing, that people didn’t run to the grocery store. Everyone was calm,” the 19-year-old architecture student said. “I’m proud that our city didn’t fall into depression.”

As Chelyabinsk began its healing process, residents of San Francisco, on the other side of the planet, worried that they might be next. A science institute in Northern California says it has received numerous reports of a bright streak of light over the San Francisco Bay area on Friday night.

Cuba apparently experienced a phenomenon similar to the meteorite that detonated over Russia this week, island media reported, with startled residents describing a bright light in the sky and a loud explosion that shook windows and walls.

There were no reports of any injuries or damage such as those caused by the Russia meteorite, which sent out shockwaves that hurt some 1,200 people and shattered countless windows.

Cuba apparently experienced a phenomenon similar to the Chelyabinsk meteor several days earlier, island media reported, with startled residents describing a bright light in the sky and a loud explosion that shook windows and walls.

In a video from a state TV newscast posted on the website CubaSi late Friday, unidentified residents of the central city of Rodas, near Cienfuegos, said the explosion was impressive.

“On Tuesday we left home to fish around five in the afternoon, and around 8 p.m. we saw a light in the heavens and then a big ball of fire, bigger than the sun,” one local man said in the video.

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday warned foreign-funded non-government organizations against meddling in the country’s affairs.

Putin also angrily lashed out at recent U.S. criticism of the Russian-led post-Soviet alliances.
Speaking at a meeting with top officials of the main KGB successor agency, Putin mentioned what he described as “recent nervous statements about integration processes in the former Soviet lands.”

While Putin didn’t name any names, he appeared to refer to a statement by former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who said in December, while still in the job, that Russian-led regional alliances represent an attempt to restore the Soviet empire.

Putin has described the existing economic and security groupings of ex-Soviet nations as precursors to a stronger Eurasian Union, which he pledged to form by 2015. He insisted the new alliance would help Russia and its neighbors boost economic efficiency and compete more successfully in global markets.

Putin said Thursday that efforts at closer economic and political integration between Russia and its neighbors “can’t be stopped by shouts or calling down.” He told officials of the Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, they must be prepared to thwart foreign attempts to derail the integration plans.

“They may use various instruments of pressure, including mechanisms of the so-called ‘soft power,'” he said. “The sovereign right of Russia and its partners to build and develop its integration project must be safely protected.” Putin, who won a third presidential term in a vote last March, has taken a tough posture toward Washington, accusing the U.S. State Department of fomenting protests against his rule in order to weaken Russia.

After Putin’s inauguration in May, the Kremlin-controlled parliament quickly rubber-stamped a series of repressive laws that sharply hiked fines for taking part in unauthorized protests, extended the definition of high treason and required non-government organizations that receive foreign funding to register as “foreign agents,” a term that sounds synonymous to spies in Russian. Leading Russian NGOs have vowed to ignore the bill, which also allows an unlimited number of inspections and checks that could paralyze the activities of NGOs.

Putin on Thursday strongly defended the bill in language that reflected the Kremlin’s view of NGOs as an instrument of Western pressure.

“No one has the monopoly of speaking on behalf of the entire Russian society, let alone the structures directed and funded from abroad and thus inevitably serving foreign interests,” he said. “Any direct or indirect meddling in our internal affairs, any forms of pressure on Russia, on our allies and partners is inadmissible.”

While Putin avoided direct reference to the U.S., FSB director Alexander Bortnikov said, according to Russian news agencies, that Washington and its allies last year “raised geopolitical pressure on Russia, whom they continue to view as a major rival in the international arena.”

Putin said the FSB last year exposed 34 foreign intelligence officers and 181 of their agents. He didn’t name the countries they were spying for.

MINSK, Belarus: The powerful Soviet Union may still exist after all — at least on paper.

Former Belarusian leader Stanislav Shushkevich says a historic 1991 document that proclaimed the death of the Soviet Union is missing from the archives.

Shushkevich discovered that the document was gone while working on his memoirs. He said he believes it was stolen — possibly by a former Belarusian official — probably with the intention of selling it to a collector.

“It’s hard to believe the disappearance of a document at such a level, but this is a fact,” Shushkevichtold The Associated Press.

Officials with Belarus’ government and the Russia-dominated alliance of ex-Soviet nations confirmed late Wednesday that they only have copies.

“We don’t know where the original is,” said Vasily Ostreiko, the head of the archive department of the Commonwealth of Independent States, which has its headquarters in Minsk, the Belarusian capital. “We have a copy of that document. It’s certified in line with international standards, but it’s still a copy.”

The document’s disappearance reflects the chaos that surrounded the 1991 demise of the Soviet Union, a superpower of 300 million people that sprawled over nearly a dozen time zones and encompassed what is now 15 nations.

On Dec. 8, 1991, Shushkevich hosted Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk for secret talks at a government hunting lodge near Viskuli in the Belovezha Forest. The trio signed a deal declaring that “the U.S.S.R. has ceased to exist as a subject of international law and geopolitical reality” — defeating Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempts to hold the Soviet Union together.

The agreement also announced the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose alliance joined by nine other Soviet republics that month.

Gorbachev resigned on Dec. 25, 1991, and the Soviet Communist empire that ruled with an iron fist for almost 70 years ceased to exist.

Russia’s foreign ministry said it was “deeply concerned” by the Syrian claims and that it was taking “urgent measures” to clarify the situation.

“If this information is confirmed, then we are dealing with unprovoked strikes against targets located on the territory of a sovereign state, which brazenly infringes on the UN Charter and is unacceptable, no matter the motive used for its justification,” said a ministry statement.

The strident Russian statement came after the Syrian army accused Israel of launching a strike at dawn on Wednesday targeting its military research centre in Jamraya, near Damascus.

“Israeli fighter jets violated our airspace at dawn today and carried out a direct strike on a scientific research centre in charge of raising our level of resistance and self-defence,” the general command said.

The warplanes entered Syria’s airspace at low altitude and under the radar, the army said, adding that two site workers were killed.

“They… carried out an act of aggression, bombarding the site, causing large-scale material damage and destroying the building,” state television quoted the military as saying.

Residents told AFP that six rockets hit the complex, leaving it partially destroyed, causing a fire and killing two people.

The army, meanwhile, denied reports that an Israeli air strike had targeted a weapons convoy from Syria near the border with Lebanon.

The attack came after Israel expressed concerns that Damascus’s stockpile of chemical weapons could fall into the hands of Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah group, an ally of Assad’s regime, or other militant organisations.

Israel, whose officials have said such that a transfer would be a casus belli and likely spark an attack, has refused to comment on the attack.

The United States, which is currently hosting Israeli military intelligence chief Aviv Kochavi, also declined to comment.

s well as concerns about Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, Israel has accused Syria of supplying long-range Scud missiles to Hezbollah.

It has also warned about the dangers of other advanced weaponry falling into the Lebanese militia’s hands, such as anti-aircraft systems and surface-to-surface missiles.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian police detained 20 people on Friday when gay activists tried to stage a “kiss-in” outside parliament to protest against a draft law banning the promotion of homosexuality among minors.

Police hauled away the protesters shortly before the lower house, the State Duma, was due to hold the first of three readings of the legislation, witnesses said.
Supporters of the law, some of them identifying themselves as Russian Orthodox Christians, cheered as the police stepped in and threw eggs at the protesters. Police confirmed that 20 people had been detained.
If approved by the two houses of parliament, and signed by President Vladimir Putin, the law would ban the promotion of gay events across Russia and impose fines on the organizers.
Putin’s critics say it is the latest in a series of moves to appeal to conservative voters and consolidate support for him since his return to the presidency last May after a wave of protests against him in cities such as Moscow and St Petersburg.
Gay rights activists and human rights campaigners say the main aim of the law is not to protect children but to curb the rights of homosexuals.
“Animosity towards gays and lesbians is widespread in society, and the Duma, which has approved a number of unpopular laws, hopes it can win some popularity with an anti-gay law,” veteran rights campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva told Reuters.
Supporters of the law say it is needed to prevent gay parades and television and radio programs that support gay couples, describing this as homosexual propaganda which affects the development of children in Russia.
(Writing by Gabriela Baczynska, Editing by Timothy Heritage)