Two members of Russia’s anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot have fled the country to avoid prosecution for staging a protest against President Vladimir Putin at a church altar, the band said yesterday.

The website of the Moscow court that jailed three members of the punk band Pussy Riot has been hacked.

Three members of the provocative punk band Pussy Riot have been found guilty of hooliganism, in one of the most closely watched cases in recent Russian history.

Members of the Pussy Riot girl band yesterday likened themselves to dissidents from the Soviet era yesterdat, saying their trial for performing an anti-Kremlin stunt in a church was unjust, but that nobody could take away their inner freedom.

Russian police have uprooted an occupy protest camp in central Moscow that had recently become a centre of opposition activity.

THE Russian protest movement yesterday vowed there would be new demonstrations this week after a leading anti-Kremlin activist was given a fresh jail sentence following the latest mass rally against Vladimir Putin.

Russia’s long dominant party appeared likely to lose its edge as voters across the sprawling country cast ballots for Parliament today, many of them frustrated over corruption and the gap between ordinary Russians and the super-rich.

RUSSIA’S political parties enjoy “free and equal competition” ahead of tomorrow’s parliamentary election, President Dmitry Medvedev insisted, as voters complained of record violations by the Kremlin party and the only independent election monitoring group was prosecuted.

Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin was sued for libel in a Moscow court today in a rare case of the Kremlin-loyal justice system agreeing to hear a case against him.

A Russian policeman was today convicted of shooting dead a snowplough driver who scratched his car.

TWO Russian art curators who angered church leaders with an exhibition that included images of Christ as Mickey Mouse and Lenin were convicted yesterday of inciting religious hatred, but escaped prison sentences.

Two Russian art curators who angered church leaders with an exhibition that included images of Christ as Mickey Mouse and Lenin were convicted today of inciting religious hatred, but escaped prison sentences.

Officials say a Moscow court has sentenced a former manager of the Yukos oil company to 15 years in prison on embezzlement charges.

A Moscow court sentenced seven young Russian men to prison today for murdering 19 people in a string of hate attacks.

A MOSCOW court reversed its earlier decision and barred the public and media from the trial of three men accused of murdering investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya after jurors complained press coverage could put them at risk.

Exiled Russian plutocrat Boris Berezovsky was today convicted by a Moscow court of embezzling millions of dollars from national airline Aeroflot and sentenced to six years in prison.

A Moscow court sentenced former chess champion Garry Kasparov to five days in jail today for leading an opposition protest.

Opposition leader and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov has been released by a Moscow court after detention in connection with a banned demonstration earlier today.

Russian bailiffs announced today that they were moving to collect more $600m (€488m) from jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky that was awarded by a Moscow court, a Russian news agency reported.

A court sentenced a police captain to seven years’ jail today for negligence in failing to prevent the bombings last year of two Russian passenger jets that killed 90 people aboard.

A Moscow court has today declared tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky guilty of an array of charges including fraud and tax evasion, and sentenced him to nine years in prison minus time already served.

The Moscow court reading the verdict in the trial of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky today said it considers him guilty of fraud, but under a section of the criminal code that offers a slightly lesser sentence than the original charge.

Yukos tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky returns to court for a fourth day for the gruelling reading of the verdict in his fraud case today, with his frustrated lawyers speculating that the numbing pace is aimed at killing interest in the biggest trial in post-Soviet Russia.

THE Moscow court reading the verdict in the politically charged trial of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky adjourned yesterday without pronouncing a final decision, postponing the process into a third day.

A Moscow court today ordered a freeze of the main assets of the Yukos oil company.

A British-based bank is suing Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, his Sibneft oil company and another former director of a now-defunct Russian firm that owes £9.37m (€13.3m) to the bank.

A Moscow court has barred the embattled Russian oil giant Yukos from holding an emergency shareholders meeting next week.

US stocks raced ahead in a late surge of bargain hunting today, as oil prices stepped back from their highs.

Investors shrugged off rising crude futures today to capture bargain-priced shares, sending the Nasdaq composite index up 2% ahead of Google Inc.’s much-anticipated initial public offering of stock.

A Moscow court has ruled that Russia’s richest man and Kremlin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky will be tried next week on fraud and tax evasion charges.

A Moscow court ruled today that Russia’s richest man, oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, will be tried with another key shareholder in beleaguered oil company Yukos and set a hearing date for next week.

Russia’s richest man, oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, appeared in a Moscow court today for the first substantive hearing in a case that threatens to bring down the business empire he built.

A Moscow court rejected a 30-million-rouble (€874,000) lawsuit by ballerina Anastasia Volochkova over a newspaper report that implied she had been sacked by the Bolshoi Ballet because she was overweight, news reports said.

A Moscow court today rejected a 30-million-rouble (€874,587) lawsuit by ballerina Anastasia Volochkova over a newspaper report that implied she had been sacked by the Bolshoi Ballet because she was overweight, news reports said.

A Moscow court today sentenced Russian arms control researcher Igor Sutyagin to 15 years in prison for spying for the United States.

TED WALH’S Top Strategy can stamp himself the best four-year-old timber-topper in the country by giving weight and a beating to his rivals in this afternoon’s Panoramic Restaurant Juvenile Hurdle at Punchestown, assuming the meeting passes an early morning inspection.

MARK GRANT is in virtually unstoppable form at present and the Co Tipperary-born jockey brought his tally for the Limerick Christmas festival to five by partnering a double at the popular Greenmount venue yesterday.

A Moscow court ruled today that prosecutors can keep Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia’s richest man and former chief of the country’s largest oil company, jailed another three months during an investigation on charges widely seen as politically motivated.

Ballerina Anastasia Volochkova triumphantly returned to Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre today, after a more than two month long battle to be reinstated in the company.

JESSICA HARRINGTON was very pleased with Moscow Court's winning performance in the INH Stallion Farms EBF Novice at Thurles yesterday.

THE biggest surprise about yesterday’s featured Kevin McManus Bookmaker Novice ’Chase at Cork wasn’t that Golden Row scored in a canter, but rather the fact the layers offered him at 4-7.

THE MIGHTY TIGER can put English invader, Pearl Of Love, firmly in his place in the Group Two Gallileo Futurity Stakes at the Curragh this afternoon.

IT would be wrong to get carried away after a horse has just won a his first race, but you couldn’t but be impressed by Aidan O’Brien’s newcomer, Magritte, who took the Irish Stallion Farms’ EBF Maiden unextended by five lengths at Tipperary yesterday.

A Moscow court today rejected six of the 24 lawsuits filed against the city government for moral and material damages suffered in the terrorist seizure of a Moscow theatre.