Russia's Communist Party Crackdown: A Sign of Things to Come?

Hello and welcome to Regions Calling , your guide to developments beyond the Russian capital from The Moscow Times. This week, we unpack the motives behind the ongoing crackdown on members of Russia’s Communist Party in the Altai region and what it signals for this September’s parliamentary elections. But first, here is the latest news from the regions: Ingush political prisoner Akhmed Barakhoev was released from a penal colony in Yaroslavl after serving five years on charges linked to 2019 protests against a controversial land-swap deal between his native republic of Ingushetia and Chechnya . Musa Malsagov, another protester, was released the same day. At least 200 people gathered at Ingushetia’s Magas Airport on Wednesday to greet Barakhoev on arrival, prompting authorities to redirect his flight to neighboring North Ossetia-Alania , according to local reports. Barakhoev, 71, and fellow community elder Malsag Uzhakhov were the oldest defendants in the high-profile case triggered by the 2019 protests. Uzhakhov, 73, is expected to be released from prison later this year. At least 19 people were arrested across five regions of Russia and Moscow for publicly commemorating the second anniversary of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s death, human rights watchdog OVD-Info reported . Seven of the detentions took place in Ufa, the сapital of the republic of Bashkortostan . Chechnya ’s Supreme Court overturned the most recent sentencing of Zarema Musaeva, the jailed mother of exiled critics of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Musaeva, who has been in detention since January 2022, was sentenced to three years and 11 months in prison for allegedly assaulting a prison guard in August last year, a charge she and her family deny. She will await the retrial of her case in a pre-trial detention center. In the Ukraine-bordering Belgorod region , which has faced weeks of utility outages due to Ukrainian airstrikes on energy infrastructure, authorities vowed to organize emergency commissions to handle a surge of complaints after Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov warned that the regional capital would not have hot water until April.