You're reading: RFE/RL: Russian activist’s jailing ‘intended to isolate him’ on election day

RFE/RL: Russian activist’s jailing ‘intended to isolate him’ on election day

Published Feb. 28, 2018 at 5:10 pm

Protesters shout slogans during an unauthorized opposition rally in central Moscow on June 12, 2017. Some 200 people were detained on June 12, 2017, by police at opposition protests called by Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, said a Russian NGO tracking arrests. "About 121 people were detained in Moscow up to this point. In Saint-Petersburg - 137," OVD-Info group, which operates a detention hotline, wrote on Twitter. / AFP PHOTO / Mladen ANTONOV

Photo by AFP

A Russian opposition activist who has been ordered jailed for 25 days says the sentence is intended to keep him out of action during the March 18 presidential election.

A court in St. Petersburg handed down the ruling against Andrei Pivovarov, the local leader of the Open Russia NGO, on February 27.