It’s a familiar science-fiction premise: people find themselves trapped under a transparent but impenetrable dome. They seem to be right there, close by, and yet at the same time completely cut off, living by the laws of that dome.
A person can be put in a cell only by court order, and that order must be formalized in the form of a verdict. Oleg was sent to Butyrka (a Moscow pretrial detention prison) not merely without a verdict, but even without the operative part of that verdict.
On December 31, his lawyer filed a complaint over this; today, the Tverskoy Court found an elegant solution to the problem: it simply refused to consider the complaint.
Once again, it’s basically: “You understand how this works — those words in the codes and constitutions don’t apply to you.”