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By the time the man’s body left the morgue the next day, Donald J. Trump was president-elect of the United States.
Russia Releases One Bolotnaya Prisoner
July 15, 2016
Sergei Krivov in court during his trial in 2013.
Sergei Krivov, one of more than 20 Russians convicted of violating public order during a demonstration against election fraud in 2012, has been released from prison upon completion of his three-year, nine-month sentence.
Activists reported on social media on July 15 that Krivov had left Prison Colony No. 6 in Bryansk Oblast and was on his way to Moscow.
Several thousand Russians demonstrated on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow on May 6, 2012 against the reelection of President Vladimir Putin, and there were clashes with police during the event.
The investigation into the disorder and subsequent trials have come to be called the Bolotnaya Case.
Krivov was sentenced to four years in prison, including time already served, in February 2014, but an appeals court later reduced that sentence by three months.
During his trial, he complained that he had been beaten and he held two hunger strikes. He filed numerous complaints about treatment and conditions during his time in prison, which his lawyers say prompted his transfer to a facility with even worse conditions.
An appeal for his early release was rejected in March.
Two Bolotnaya detainees – Aleksei Gaskarov and Dmitry Ishevsky – remain in prison. Two others – Dmitry Buchenkov and Maksim Panfilov – are being held in pretrial detention. Last month, a court extended their term of detention until September.
http://www.rferl.org/a/russia-bolotnaya ... 60146.html
Russia’s Freedom Fighter: Sergei Krivov
By Vlad Burlutskiy
Sergei Krivov is a political prisoner under Putin’s regime whose example inspires me to continue my fight for human rights and freedoms in Russia. Krivov wanted Russia to be a free and democratic country with “government of people, by the people and for the people.” He became an activist with the People’s Freedom Party and the opposition movement Solidarnost. He participated in numerous street protests, including the infamous demonstration on May 6th, 2012, when tens of thousands took to the streets to protest against human-rights violations to demand new democratic parliamentary elections. The rally was brutally suppressed by Putin’s riot police, with hundreds arrested. Sergei tried to protect one of the protesters, who was being severely beaten by a riot policemen. Then police beat Krivov but let him go.
Krivov held numerous protests to support the imprisoned activists who became known as the “May 6th prisoners.” He also participated in rallies in support of the Magnitsky Act, named after the murdered Russian lawyer who exposed corruption by high-ranking Putin’s officials. He filed complaints and petitions. According to Sergei, who more than a few times served as an election monitor, the election falsifications that he witnessed became “the point of no return” for him.
Krivov was arrested in October 2012, on the dubious charges of participation in “mass riots.” He did not plead guilty, and has regularly filed petitions in an effort to prove his innocence. While in pre-trial detention, Krivov undertook two hunger strikes. During one of these hunger strikes, Krivov was taken to court by force, in violation of medical guidelines for the treatment of detainees. He fainted several times in the courtroom, yet the judge refused to allow doctors in the courtroom.
Krivov was sentenced to serve four years at a general regime penal colony for his fight for freedom and human rights. His plight should serve as a wake-up call to the world about the destruction of human rights in Russia, and all who care about freedom and democracy should unite to demand his release by the Russian authorities.
Vlad Burlutskiy is a civic and political activist from Russia who fled the country last year due to increasing threats. He is a representative of the Free Russia Foundation, an organization which aims to rebuild freedom and democracy in Russia.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... -2015.html
Update, June 20, 2014
On June 20, the Moscow City Court heard an appeal filed by eight Bolotnaya protesters - Andrey Barabanov, Yaroslav Belousov, Aleksandra Dukhanina (Naumova), Sergey Krivov, Denis Lutskevich, Aleksey Polikhovich, Artiom Saviolov and Stepan Zimin - against the guilty verdict issued in February on charges of mass rioting and violence against police. The sentence was slightly reduced in respect of two of the eight defendants: Sergey Kryvov now 3 years and 9 months (instead of 4years), and Yaroslav Belousov gets 2 years and 3 months (instead of 2.5 years). “This is a serious miscarriage of justice, as the charges were clearly disproportionate and politicized” said Hugh Willimason, Europe and Central Asia Director at Human Rights Watch.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/08/18/rus ... lawed-case
Moscow court jails seven anti-Putin Bolotnaya activists
24 February 2014
Russian police officers detain an opposition activist outside a court room in Moscow, Russia, on Monday, where hearings opposition activists detained in a May 2012 rally at Bolotnaya Square in Moscow were sentencedImage copyrightAP
Image caption
More than 100 people were detained as they protested outside the courtroom during Monday's hearing
A court in Russia has sentenced eight protesters for rioting and attacking police at a demonstration against Vladimir Putin's inauguration for a third presidential term in 2012.
Seven of the "Bolotnaya" activists received prison terms of up to four years. An eighth, the only woman on trial, received a suspended sentence.
Outside the court in Moscow, police detained about 200 people who rallied in support of the defendants.
The activists were convicted on Friday.
But the judge delayed sentencing until Monday - sparking speculation that the Kremlin was trying to avoid negative publicity ahead of Sunday's closing ceremony for the Sochi Winter Olympics.
Amnesty International called Friday's guilty verdicts a "hideous injustice" which came at the end of a "show trial".
About 650 activists were detained following clashes with police at an anti-Kremlin protest in Moscow's Bolotnaya Square, a day before Mr Putin was due to be sworn in for a third term as president in May 2012.
Criminal proceedings were subsequently started against 28 individuals.
'Harsh'
Anti-Putin protesters accused of instigating mass riots at Bolotnaya square stand inside the defendant cage in Zamoskvoretsky district court in Moscow during their trial on MondayImage copyrightAFP
Image caption
The male defendants were held handcuffed in a cage for Monday's hearing
During Monday's hearing, the accused men were held handcuffed in a cage.
Sergei Krivov, Artyom Savyolov, Stepan Zimin, Aleksei Polikhovitch, Andrei Barabanovto, Yaroslav Belousov and Denis Lutskevich were jailed for between two-and-a-half and four years.
An eighth activist, Alexandra Dukhanina, the only woman on trial, was given a suspended sentence.
The [defendants'] shared blame is established and proved
Judge Natalya Nikishina
All have been in custody since their arrest except for Dukhanina, who was held under house arrest.
Prosecutors had requested jail terms of five to six years.
Yaroslav Belousov - who received a two-and-a-half-year sentence - claims a yellow spherical object he is accused of throwing at police was just a lemon.
His lawyer, Dmitry Agranovsky, said the sentences were excessive.
"The sentences are harsh and inappropriate. They were issued based on the political situation, not on the nature of the charges," he said, according to the AFP news agency.
But AFP quoted Judge Natalya Nikishina as saying that the defendants "took part in mass riots; their shared blame is established and proved".
Among the protesters detained outside the court on Monday were Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, members of protest group Pussy Riot and fierce critics of Mr Putin, who were recently released from prison under an amnesty.
Many of the protesters chanted "freedom" and "Maidan", in a show of solidarity with the activists in Ukraine's Independence Square, also known as the Maidan.
However, opposition leader Alexei Navalny distanced himself from events in Ukraine, saying that Russian had its own battle for freedom.
"Maidan is not important here. Maidan was in another country, citizens of another country were fighting for their freedom. The question is now for us whether we are ready to fight for our freedom, that's all."
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26323760
The Strange Case Of The Russian Diplomat Who Got His Head Smashed In On Election Day
How did Sergei Krivov die? And why did the NYPD close the case?
Ali Watkins
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Originally posted on Feb. 15, 2017, at 6:21 a.m.
Updated on Feb. 15, 2017, at 9:58 a.m.
NEW YORK — He was found just before 7 a.m. on Election Day, lying on the floor of the Russian Consulate on the Upper East Side.
The man was unconscious and unresponsive, with an unidentified head wound — “blunt force trauma,” in cop parlance. By the time emergency responders reached him, he was dead.
Initial reports said the nameless man had plunged to his death from the roof of the consulate. As journalists rushed to the scene, consular officials quickly changed the narrative. The anonymous man had not fallen dozens of feet from the roof of the consular building, they said, but rather had suffered a heart attack in the security office, and died.
By the time the man’s body left the morgue the next day, Donald J. Trump was president-elect of the United States.
By the time the man’s body left the morgue the next day, Donald J. Trump was president-elect of the United States. It was the culmination of a sensational, bitterly divisive political campaign that US intelligence agencies would later say Russia actively sought to manipulate and skew in Trump’s favor. With the election results, the world had turned upside down, and the death of the man at the consulate quickly faded from view.
Police officers said the death of Sergei Krivov — his name revealed here publicly for the first time — looked natural, and listed the case as closed.
But who was Krivov? And how did he really die? Three months after he was found dead, as tensions between the US and Russia reach a fever pitch, the New York City medical examiner isn’t sure he had a heart attack after all.
The Russian Consulate at 11 E. 91st St. in New York City on Feb. 6, 2017. Ben King / BuzzFeed News
As far as paper trails go, dying is a messy thing, even under normal circumstances. But in the months since Krivov’s death, it’s proven nearly impossible to find out how he died, who he was, and how, if at all, federal authorities were involved in any investigation.
English-language news reports said Krivov, identified then only as a 63-year-old Russian national and Manhattan resident, was a security officer. But a November report from Sputnik, the English-language Russian media outlet, says he was a consular duty commander.
That position is no ordinary security guard. According to other public Russian-language descriptions of the duty commander position, Krivov would have been in charge of, among other things, “prevention of sabotage” and suppression of “attempts of secret intrusion” into the consulate.
In other words, it was Krivov’s job to make sure US intelligence agencies didn’t have ears in the building.
As far as paper trails go, dying is a messy thing, even under normal circumstances.
The duty commander would also have had access to the consulate’s crypto-card — the top secret codebreaker used to encrypt and decrypt messages transmitted between the consulate and other Russian channels. It was likely Krivov who helped transmit cables in and out of the heavily guarded building.
Despite being described as a Manhattan resident by the NYPD, Krivov is a phantom in public records. No one with his name, or any iteration of it, has lived in Manhattan for years, and the only other two Krivovs listed in New York state didn’t return calls asking if they knew a Sergei (in the NYPD’s files, Krivov’s name is not transliterated as “Sergei” or “Sergey” but as the less common “Cergej”). Neither were listed as related to one. An NYPD officer looking at the case file told BuzzFeed News no family was listed.
The NYPD told BuzzFeed News the responding officers were in contact with “whoever was in charge of the consulate” for information regarding Krivov.
But when BuzzFeed News went to Krivov’s address, listed in the NYPD’s files, at 11 E. 90th St., it wasn’t a residence. It’s a Smithsonian-owned office building for its neighboring Cooper Hewitt design museum. It’s located a block behind the Russian Consulate, which is at 9 E. 91st St. One of the consulate’s public entrances is 11 E. 91st St.
Asked about the discrepancy, the NYPD insisted that 11 E. 90th St. was the address they had been given for Krivov, apparently by Russian consular officials.
“No one is living here — this is where my desk is right now,” a Smithsonian employee at the address said when BuzzFeed News called.
It’s unclear how thoroughly or for how long the NYPD investigated Krivov’s death. Multiple officials declined to offer any details about the investigation. Several officers told BuzzFeed News the case is listed as “closed.”
“The narrative of the story is kind of vague, it’s not saying much,” one officer said, scanning the incident report with BuzzFeed News on the phone. “With all cases like this, it is investigated by the detective squad,” he said. “For some reason it was closed out.”
A separate officer said the case was listed as “no criminology suspected, natural causes.”
The medical examiner’s office, though, says their investigation of Krivov’s death remains open.
“The cause and manner of death are pending further studies,” said Julie Bolcer, a spokeswoman for the office. “There are no results to share yet.”
After BuzzFeed News published this story, the Medical Examiner’s office said that, while it did continue investigating the cause of death, the office had determined Krivov died naturally.
“This is a natural death,” Bolcer said. “We are doing advanced studies to characterize the details of the underlying disease.”
Further, the office said it is not unusual for the NYPD to close the case despite the lack of a clear cause of death, since the office had said the death was not suspicious. Toxicology tests were completed, the office continued, and the results were not going to be related to the death.
But others who spoke with BuzzFeed News said his disconnect between the medical examiner’s office and the NYPD is not normal. In standard practice, a death investigation would not be formally closed by police officers until the medical examiner had reached a determination on the death.
“It’s open until you can get a cause of death….there has to be a complete circuit with a case,” said Marq Claxton, a former NYPD investigator. “That case is going to stay open until there’s a final determination, it could be a homicide, it could be something, it could be accidental or whatever.”
A separate medical examiner official said Krivov’s body had been released the day after his death, but declined to say to whom the body was released. That the medical examiner no longer has the body, but testing continues, suggests toxicology screening of tissue or blood samples.
It’s not necessarily uncommon for toxicology tests to take weeks or even months to come back. The medical examiner’s office would not specify the kind of further testing being done.
None of the five major funeral chapels or funeral homes in upper Manhattan knew of any recently deceased person named Krivov. The New York City Health Department declined BuzzFeed News’ request to search for records related to Krivov’s death, saying that by standard practices, any search had to be requested by a family member. The city’s burial desk, which tracks documentation from funeral homes, said it only files paperwork and doesn’t have a searchable database.
The NYPD denied BuzzFeed News’ request for the incident report, saying the request did not contain enough details, including the date, precinct, and location of Krivov’s death, or the incident number. BuzzFeed News’ request in fact included all of that information. A separate denial said the incident report “is not a public record and can only be obtained through due process of law (Court Ordered Subpoena).”
According to experts and former police officers, incident reports are not generally withheld by the NYPD.
“The incident report, after an investigation is closed, typically that is releasable,” said Michael Morisy, the founder of MuckRock, a nonprofit organization dedicated to government transparency and records laws. “It’s really weird that they would categorically state that was rejected…incident reports are not broadly exempt from public records law.”
In a last-ditch effort to find where Krivov’s body may have been taken, BuzzFeed News called Aeroflot airlines, the only major carrier with direct flights between New York and Moscow. Aeroflot would not say whether it had flown a body from New York to Russia in the days following Nov. 8. Information about body transports, it said, was classified and could only be released by a government entity.
The exterior of 11 E. 90th St. on Feb. 6, 2017. Ben King / BuzzFeed News
As police made their way to the consulate that Election Day morning, Americans’ interest in Moscow had reached a fever pitch of Cold War–era proportions, fueled by a near-constant barrage of reports detailing a wide-ranging Russian intelligence operation that the US intelligence community says was designed to undermine the US election.
It stands to reason that Krivov, who was nearing the upper end of the mortality curve for Russian men, may have died a completely natural death, and that much of the hand-wringing over the incident is due to bureaucratic red tape rather than suspicious circumstances.
But given the unique circumstances — and a backdrop of plummeting US–Russia relations — the lack of information has done little to quell theories. The more questions that were asked about Krivov, the less people wanted to talk.
“No one seems to want to discuss this,” one law enforcement source said, after reaching out to other law enforcement officials to see what they had heard about the case.
In the hours following Krivov’s death, the NYPD had said it would identify him following notification of his family. When BuzzFeed News asked for his identity months later, police immediately said the request would have to go to through the US State Department.
The State Department, after being initially responsive, abruptly told BuzzFeed News it wouldn’t help, and said the information would have to come from the Russian Consulate.
“No one seems to want to discuss this.”
“I’m not sure why they would or would not want to share this,” one State Department official said in a follow-up phone call, referring to the NYPD and the State Department. A New York police officer eventually gave BuzzFeed News Krivov’s name.
The incident — and the lack of information surrounding it — has raised eyebrows in Washington.
Two sources to whom BuzzFeed News spoke, who requested anonymity to discuss the probe, said Krivov appeared to be a heavy drinker, which law enforcement concluded led to his natural death.
“I don’t think there’s anything there,” one US intelligence official said.
The State Department also refused to say whether Krivov was registered as a foreign agent, how long he had been in the US, what his immigration status was, and whether they had any contact with the Russian mission regarding his death.
When asked about the incident, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: “Are you serious?” She continued: “He had heart problems, he had heart attacks. It’s weird that your outlet is interested in this.”
“The employee of the Consulate General of Russia Sergei Krivov passed away on November 8, 2016,” the consulate told BuzzFeed News. “An American doctor that was admitted to the Consulate General stated without a doubt that the death was by natural reasons. Medical examiners are currently establishing the cause of his death, but it is believed that the man suffered a heart attack.”
The FBI said it was not involved in investigating Krivov’s death. It declined to comment further and deferred to the NYPD.
The NYPD did not give BuzzFeed News an official comment on the investigation. BuzzFeed News spoke with the NYPD several times for this story, including with the precinct involved in the incident and the NYPD’s public affairs office.
Outside the Russian Consulate on Feb. 6, 2017. Ben King / BuzzFeed News
Krivov’s place of employment — a palatial stone compound in Manhattan’s posh Upper East Side — has long been one of the premiere spy hotspots in the decades-old espionage war between the US and Moscow. Where many aficionados would understandably expect Washington, DC, to be prime real estate for cloak-and-dagger theater, New York City is oft-trodden territory, not least for its hosting of the United Nations.
It is unknown whether Krivov worked with Russian or US intelligence agencies. His work may not have even put him near any intelligence operations that were being run out of the consulate.
According to FBI court documents from 2015, the foreign arm of the Russian intelligence service, the SVR, likely keeps a secure office space inside the Manhattan consulate where Krivov worked.
In criminal documents filed against Evgeny Buryakov, Igor Sporyshev, and Victor Podobny — three undercover Russian foreign intelligence agents working in New York City — the bureau described “a secure office in Manhattan used by SVR agents to send and receive intelligence reports and assignments from Moscow (the ‘SVR NY Office’).”
The criminal complaint does not say specifically that the “SVR NY Office” is in the Manhattan consulate, but the document does say it is “located within an office maintained by the Russian Federation in New York, New York.”
It’s an open secret, US intelligence officials say, that the consulate is a staging ground for Russian intelligence operations. It’s also a coveted target for US agents. And its importance, officials say, has been underscored as US intelligence agencies try to get their arms around the Russians’ sweeping operation to manipulate the US election.
“That’s always a target,” the US intelligence official said of the Manhattan consulate.
In an unprecedented report issued in early January, on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, the intelligence community writ large detailed the concerted Russian effort to manipulate and undermine the US election. Key to the intelligence community assessment were a multitude of intelligence channels, including signals intelligence — or SIGINT — like intercepted electronic communications or IP addresses. The specifics of where that SIGINT came from, and what it consisted of, remain secret.
BuzzFeed News has filed a FOIA request with the NYPD for the police report on Krivov’s death, and any related paperwork. That request was received, but a determination has not yet been made as to whether the department will provide them.
Maybe those documents will provide insight into a death that, for now, remains a mystery. Nov. 8 began with his death, and ended with one of the most contentious political upsets in history. After that, Sergei Krivov simply vanished. ●
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/th ... .hbqMAloz9
Meet the seven Russian operatives who have dropped dead during Donald Trump-Russia scandal
By Bill Palmer | February 20, 2017 | 2
Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, dropped dead today in New York of an apparent heart attack. That may not stand out as suspicious on its own, until one considers that he’s the second Russian diplomat to drop dead in New York in the past few months – and the last one, Sergei Krivov, was also said to have died of a heart attack despite his skull having been bashed in. Even more bizarrely, since Russia’s rigging the election for Donald Trump exploded in scandal, a whopping seven Russian diplomats and operatives have mysteriously dropped dead.
Back in January, a thirty-page dossier was leaked to the public which detailed all the supposed ways in which Russia was blackmailing Trump. Two weeks later Oleg Erovinkin, a former KGB General who had helped a former MI6 agent to assemble the dossier, turned up dead in the back of a car in Russia. While it hasn’t been proven, many have suspected that Vladimir Putin had Erovinkin taken out in revenge for Erovinkin’s complicity in exposing Putin’s blackmail scheme. But even more Russian bodies have been dropping.
Sergei Mikhailov, who was believed to have been a U.S. intelligence asset within the Russian government, was dragged out of a meeting in Russia with a bag over his head and is now almost certainly dead as well.
Back in January, Russian diplomat Andrey Malanin was found dead in his Athens apartment. And we all recall the Russian Ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, being murdered on live television. Additionally, Russian diplomat Petr Polshikov was found shot to death in Moscow. That adds up to seven bodies now having dropped since the Trump-Russia scandal exploded.
How many of these seven deaths of Russian diplomats and Russian operatives are connected to the Donald Trump-Russia scandal? That’s not yet clear. Some of the deaths, such as Erovinkin and Mikhailov, have much more strongly demonstrated connections to Trump-Russia than others. But bodies don’t generally drop like this without a reason. How many of his own people has Vladimir Putin now eliminated while trying to cover up the Trump-Russia scandal?
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/mee ... sier/1613/
