Garry Kasparov is spending five days in jail for protesting Russia’s new ballot access law, Richard Winger reports. Kasparov is leader of The Other Russia, a confederation of opposition parties.

He’s in near total isolation, unable to see relatives and colleagues or even make a phone call.

Other Russia runs a blog on a dot-org, so we’ll still hear from them after thugs shut down the .ru page.

High-five to the Russian opposition. Responding to an earlier post by Danny, I asked how parties would respond to the new institutional environment - especially a 7% threshold and needing 50,000 members for ballot status. What’s more, Putin rendered retail politics nearly useless by eliminating single-member districts last summer. Other Russia is clearly a strategy for dealing with these hurdles.