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The crackdown on Russian opposition has grown in recent years, notably with the arrest of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and many of his supporters in 2021, but the number of political incidents is now snowballing. . Students, essayists, theater directors, former police officers and many others have been sentenced to prison terms.
Rights group OVD-Info reports that nearly 20,000 people have been detained for opposing the war. At least 537 people, including children and pensioners, have been criminally charged. The majority are subject to new laws, in particular provisions that criminalize the distribution of “false information” about the military.
OVD-Info spokesperson Maria Kuznetsova said, “What we are seeing is completely unprecedented.” “I have never seen numbers like this in Russia,” she said.
Incidents of treason are also on the rise. Historically, such cases have typically involved military personnel and scientists, and have been investigated and kept confidential for many years. But in recent months, civilians have been prosecuted, many of them linked to Ukraine.
“It is important for the authorities to maintain the image of a collective ‘enemy’ whose members are rebels, Ukrainians, some ‘neo-Nazis’, minorities and, of course, traitors to the Motherland,” it said. Dmitry Zaire said. Beck, Head of the First Division of Rights Organizations. Zairbek said the number of treason cases has surged this year. He said 30 cases have been confirmed through open source, but the number is likely higher.
Following a surge in crackdowns and treason, US journalist Evan Gershkovic was arrested in March on suspicion of spying. It is the first such incident since the Cold War.
Below are some of Russia’s most distinctive wartime political prisoners and those with the longest prison sentences. Their case is only a fraction of the cases currently being prosecuted.
Russian-British human rights activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Washington Post contributor, was sentenced last month to 25 years in prison for treason and other charges. The charges were based on his speeches abroad and public criticism of the war.
Kara-Murza likened his prosecution to a Stalinist show trial. “I know there will come a day when the darkness over our country will disappear,” he said at the sentencing. “And our people will tremble wide-eyed at the terrible crimes committed in their name.”
Russian journalist Ivan Safronov was tried on secret evidence last year and sentenced in September to 22 years in prison for treason. A former journalist for the Russian newspapers Kommersant and Vedomosti, he is believed to have been targeted for revealing details of Russia’s sale of fighter planes to Egypt. He was the first journalist to be convicted of treason in Russia since 2001.
In a recent letter from the Krasnodar prison, Mr. Safronov told the Post that ordinary people should not be forced to endure what they have endured. “Once you’ve had an experience like this, you can’t get away from it,” he wrote.
Opposition politician Ilya Yashin was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison in December for posts on social media condemning atrocities committed by Russian troops in Bucha, Ukraine.
Yashin was one of the few vocal opponents of aggression who decided to remain in Russia after the invasion. “If that person stays, the anti-war voice will resound louder and become more persuasive,” he says. At his sentencing, he said he had no regrets. “It is better to spend 10 years in prison as an honest man than to be silently ashamed of the blood the government has shed.”
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who survived an attempted Novichok poisoning in 2020, was first sentenced to more than two years in prison the following year. With new charges, he could be sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Navalny continues to criticize Putin in prison for war, corruption and abuse of power. His supporters say they fear for his life. Since his detention, his weight has rapidly decreased, his family has been denied visits, and he has been held in solitary confinement for up to 15 days at a time.
Ukrainian-Russian police officer Sergey Veder was sentenced last month to seven years in prison for spreading “fakes” about the military. The charges were based on criticism of the war in private conversations with friends over wiretapped phones.
In the days after the invasion, Vedel, a former driver who worked at the Moscow police headquarters for nearly 20 years, voiced his concerns to friends. “We think we’re fighting fascism, but there’s no fascism there,” he told one person.
Moscow city councilor Alexei Gorynov was convicted last year of undermining the military’s credibility. He opposed the war at a Congressional meeting. Golinov refused to plead guilty. He continued his criticism during his trial. During his sentencing, he held up a placard reading “Do we still need this war?”
“I am convinced that this war, where the lines between good and evil are blurring, is the shortest route to dehumanization,” he said.
Journalist Maria Ponomarenko was found guilty of spreading “fakes” in a Western Siberian court after she posted about the Russian bombing of the Mariupol Theater last year that killed hundreds of civilians. A mother of two children was sentenced to six years in a penal colony.
At her sentencing, she declared herself a patriotic pacifist. Under the Russian constitution, she said, she had done nothing wrong. “There has never been a totalitarian regime as powerful as it was before its collapse,” she said.
Five weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, LGBTQ+ musician Alexandra Skochilenko, who has never been politically active, walked into a St. Petersburg supermarket and began sticking notes criticizing the war on price tags.
“Russian forces bombed an art school in Mariupol where about 400 were hiding from artillery fire,” said one article. “Military action in Ukraine has pushed weekly inflation to its highest level since 1998. Stop the war,” read another. A fellow shopper reported Skochilenko to the police, and the trial continues. She could be sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Evgeny Bestuzhev, a political scientist and essayist from St. Petersburg, was accused in November of spreading “hoaxes” about the Russian military in dozens of anti-war posts on social media. Bestuzhev, who reportedly suffered from multiple chronic illnesses and had several heart attacks, could face up to 10 years in prison.
Theater director Evgenia Berkovich was arrested on May 4 and held in pretrial detention along with fellow playwright Svetlana Petrichuk on charges of “justifying terrorism”. The accusations are related to the play “Finist: The Brave Falcon,” about a Russian woman who joined Islamic State, which premiered two years ago and won a National Theater Award last year. The play was reportedly found to contain elements of ISIS ideology and “ideology of radical feminism,” according to experts’ opinion.
Her case is the first high-profile criminal case related to theater since Soviet times. The offense carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison. “Don’t make me Joan of Arc!” she wrote to her friend in custody. “I’m a girl. I want to go home. I want prosecco and a thick steak.”
Robin Dixon and Natalia Abakumova contributed from Riga, Latvia.
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