The government of Russian president Vladimir Putin has widened its crackdown on the opposition to the Putin regime, imprisoning two more Kremlin critics and barring opposition parties from being included on ballots in upcoming elections by declaring their parties “extremist groups.”

According the the AFP (Agence France-Presse), the Russian government arrested and jailed Dmitry Gudkov and Andrei Pivovarov, two prominent opposition leaders.  Pivovarov was pulled off a flight scheduled to take off for Warsaw, Poland.  A court later ruled that Pivovarov, the executive director of a recently disbanded pro-democracy group called Open Russia, must be jailed for two months prior to his trial.  From a self-imposed exile, the founder of Open Russia announced that the group was being disbanded for the safety of its members in an effort to avoid political prosecution.

Gudkov was arrested on an allegation that he failed to pay off an old lease, a charge that could lead to a sentence of five years in prison. 

In addition, a Russian court is considering a motion from Putin’s administration that jailed dissident Alexi Navalny’s Russia of the Future group is an “extremist group,” meaning that people who belong to the group can be treated as criminals and domestic terrorists.

In coordination with these law enforcement and judicial actions, the Federal Council, Russia’s equivalent of the US Senate, voted to bar members from designated “extremist groups” from being listed as candidates for any elected office on ballots.  The vote was 146 to 1, with one other member abstaining from the vote; Putin’s United Russia party controls 142 seats on the Council, which has 170 members.  The measure would essentially allow the Federal Assembly or Putin-appointed judges to decide who gets to be listed on the ballots.