OF THE
TIMES
[...] Tatyana Molokanova, a lawyer for Daria Sosnovskaya, told Current Time television on August 13 that her client was hospitalized after complaining of headaches and bruises on the top of her head that she suffered while being arrested at the protest on August 10.Commenting on the whole of the demonstrations, the Kremlin had this to say:
Russian civil rights lawyer Pavel Chikov of the legal-aid group Agora added that Sosnovskaya has been diagnosed with a concussion.
"This diagnosis was made by doctors at Moscow Hospital 67, where she was informed late on August 12," he said. Rallies held each of the past four Saturdays to demand that officials allow independent candidates on the ballot in the upcoming municipal vote have resulted in thousands of arrests and condemnation of the heavy-handed tactics police are using against mostly peaceful protesters.
The police crackdown has been called one of the harshest in recent years against an opposition that has grown more defiant while denouncing Russian President Vladimir Putin's hold on power.
In the Kremlin's first comments on the crackdown, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov on August 13 called the police response "justified" and downplayed the significance of the protests.
[...]
At one point in the video footage, the woman appears to try to kick a police baton lying on the street as one of the officers is trying to pick it up.
The uniformed officer staggers the woman with a punch to her stomach and grabs the baton from the ground before shoving her into the police van seconds later.
The video has added to growing outrage at home and abroad over a decision by officials to block opposition candidates from running in elections for Moscow's city council.
Russia's Interior Ministry said on August 12 that it was setting up an investigation of the incident.
Local media have quoted the National Guard as saying that the officer who punched Sosnovskaya is not a member of the Russian National Guard's units.
It is not clear which law enforcement unit the officers belong to.
Russian officers are rarely disciplined for using excessive and disproportionate force against demonstrators.
On August 11, Chikov offered a reward of 100,000 rubles (about $1,500) for help identifying the officer who punched Sosnovskaya.
Protests happen all over the world, so it's wrong to call the recent demonstrations in Moscow a 'political crisis', the Kremlin's spokesperson said. He insisted that police were right to intervene, preventing riots in the city.
Several protests involving thousands of people have been staged in the Russian capital in recent weeks, demanding that a group of disqualified opposition candidates be allowed to run in the city council election in early September. Some of the rallies were unsanctioned and broken up by riot police.
"We disagree with calling these developments a political crisis," President Vladimir Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Tuesday, adding that anti-government rallies are common in many countries, including European states.
"It's not a crisis. We see protests going on all over the world," he said.
Putin did not publicly comment on the protests, but Peskov said the president is well aware of the situation and does not view it as something out of the ordinary. Putin receives reports on the matter, as he does with many other issues in Russia, his spokesperson stated.
Peskov pointed out the difference between the peaceful sanctioned protests and the times when protesters break the law. The official said the police are duty-bound to intervene, preventing attempts to "instigate riots."
"The rough actions by law enforcement are absolutely justified" under such circumstances, Peskov said. Several protesters were detained and charged with fighting police and throwing bottles at them.
At the same time, the breaking up of the unsanctioned protests also prompted allegations of police brutality. In one case, a man's leg was broken while he was being detained. In a separate incident, an officer punched a young woman in the stomach. She filed a report afterwards, and Moscow police launched an internal probe of the incident.
Dmitry Peskov said that applying excessive force against the protesters is "completely unacceptable," and all such allegations must be "duly investigated and then brought to court."




Comment: CCTV reports that HK police have arrested 149 people at the airport in recent days. They apparently don't watch how US and EU police handle protests!
The authorities' strategy is perhaps to give these democrazy fanatics as much rope as possible, but Chinese police are unbelievably restrained.
They're surely going to start cracking heads soon? Then these moronic middle class SJWs will get a real taste of what it's like to live in Western Democracy...
UPDATE 00:30 CET
It looks like Beijing could be making its move...