Tag: Alexei Navalny

Death of Alexei Navalny decimates the Russian opposition

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The death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has further diminished a rapidly shrinking Russian opposition, which has seen its members assassinated, sentenced to lengthy prison terms or forced into exile as Russian President Vladimir Putin makes it clear he will not tolerate challenges to his regime. 

It was widely feared that Alexei Navalny was risking his life by positioning himself as Putin’s most vocal critic in an increasingly repressive Russia, even challenging him for the presidency in 2018. 

Navalny narrowly survived being poisoned with novichok – a group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union – in 2020 and spent months recuperating in Germany. He earned admiration from Russia’s disparate opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia the following year.

His death comes just a day before the official launch of campaigning ahead of a new round of presidential elections set for March 15-17.

Putin oversaw changes to the constitution in 2021 that will allow him to run for two more six-year terms, meaning he could stay in power until 2036. Putin is already the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who died in 1953.

On December 8 Putin announced his candidature for re-election and is widely expected to win, given the lack of political alternatives and the Kremlin’s iron grip on the state apparatus. 

Those who have been brave enough to defy Putin ahead of the vote have been stymied by legal challenges.

Former legislator Yekaterina Duntsova was barred in December from challenging Putin when the Central Election Commission said it was refusing to accept her nomination, citing errors in submitted documents that included misspelled names. Duntsova said she would appeal the decision at the Supreme Court and appealed to the Yabloko (Apple) party to nominate her as a candidate after the party’s founder and leader, Grigory Yavlinsky, said he would not be challenging Putin for the presidency. 

Duntsova has said she wants to see a more “humane” Russia that is “peaceful, friendly and ready to cooperate with everyone on the principle of respect”.

Another anti-war candidate, Boris Nadezhdin, was also disqualified from the vote. Russia’s Supreme Court on Thursday rejected legal challenges to the ruling but Nadezhdin said he would appeal and file a further claim against the electoral commission’s refusal to register him as a candidate.

“I don’t give up and I won’t give up,” he said.

An Arctic prison

Navalny was Putin’s most vocal critic and the one who garnered the most international recognition, winning the EU’s Sakharov Prize for human rights in 2021.

Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin found a way to remove him from the running. Navalny was sentenced to 19 more years in prison in August last year for extremism. He was already serving a nine-year term for embezzlement and other charges that he maintained were politically motivated.

Navalny briefly disappeared in December from the IK-6 prison colony in the Vladimir region, some 250 kilometres east of Moscow, where he had spent most of his detention. His disappearance provoked widespread international alarm, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken releasing a statement on X shortly before Christmas to say he was “deeply concerned about the whereabouts of Aleksey Navalny”.

After sending hundreds of requests to detention centres across Russia, Navalny’s allies managed to locate him. In a series of sardonic messages published on X shortly thereafter, Navalny said he was “fine” and “relieved” that he had arrived at his new – and much more remote – Arctic prison.  

A BBC reporter said Navalny “looked to be fine” when he appeared via video link at a court hearing the day before his death.

 

A decimated opposition

Putin’s critics have long had the unfortunate habit of dying prematurely.

Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, 48, was an investigative reporter at top independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and a fierce critic of the war in Chechnya. She was shot dead in 2006 at the entrance to her Moscow apartment block. Five men were sentenced and imprisoned over her death in 2014; one of them, a former policeman, was pardoned and released last year after fighting in Ukraine.

Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent turned Putin critic, died after drinking green tea laced with the radioactive isotope polonium-210 at a London hotel in November 2006, six years to the day after he fled Russia for Britain. In a 326-page report on his death, a UK judge said the killing was “probably approved” by Putin.

Opposition politician and former deputy PM Boris Nemtsov was shot dead near Red Square in Moscow in 2015. At the time of his death, the 55-year-old Nemtsov was working on a report that he believed proved the Kremlin’s direct involvement in the pro-Russian separatist rebellion that had erupted in eastern Ukraine the year prior.

Read moreThe mysterious fates met by Putin critics

 

The leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, led a brief but dramatic march on Moscow last June after becoming an increasingly vocal critic of Putin’s handling of the war in Ukraine. After hours of uncertainty the rebellion fizzled, and Prigozhin reportedly agreed to go into exile in Belarus. 

He died in a private plane crash two months after launching his aborted challenge. Grenade fragments were found in the bodies of victims at the crash site, according to the Kremlin. 

Others have found themselves behind bars, serving lengthy prison sentences. Amid the war in Ukraine, a law criminalising “discrediting the Russian armed forces” was adopted on March 4, 2022; in the three days that followed, more than 60 cases were opened against those accused of violating the new law, “the vast majority” of them peaceful anti-war protesters, according to Human Rights Watch. 

Russian political activist and former journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, 42, was sentenced last April to 25 years in prison for publicly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He was convicted of treason and spreading “false” information about the Russian military, among other charges. 

Kara-Murza, a member of the rapidly shrinking group of opposition figures who remain in Russia, said he was determined to be a voice against both Putin and the invasion of Ukraine.

State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel condemned the sentencing. “Mr. Kara-Murza is yet another target of the Russian government’s escalating campaign of repression.  We renew our call for Mr. Kara-Murza’s release, as well as the release of the more than 400 political prisoners in Russia,” Patel said at the time.

Read moreLast remaining voices of the Russian opposition are being silenced amid war in Ukraine

The death of Navalny further weakens a Russian opposition already decimated by death and imprisonment, with others having fled into exile over fears for their safety. 

There are almost “no options for expressing criticism” in Russia, where repression has reached a scale “unequalled since the end of World War II”, Russia expert Cécile Vaissié of Rennes-II University told FRANCE 24 shortly after Kara-Murza was sentenced. 

But she said a few voices do remain, and their presence in Russia carries “symbolic weight” – even if they are prevented from wielding any real power.     

Read more‘Putin has decided to become the new Stalin’: Exiled Russian dissident Vladimir Osechkin

(AFP, AP and Reuters) 



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The unexpected upside of Russia’s liberal candidate who was not to be

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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.

Boris Nadezhdin’s role was to be a certified loser. Yet, as hopeless and uninspiring of a candidate he was, he unwittingly gave Russian liberals hope, Aleksandar Đokić writes.

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After a week of what could be described as peak cheap court drama at its finest, the last liberal potential candidate for the Russian presidential election, Boris Nadezhdin, has been finally rejected by the country’s Central Electoral Commission.

In a tense administrative showdown of the opening week of February, Nadezhdin first submitted 104,700 signatures necessary for his candidature to be approved, since he isn’t running as a representative of a parliamentary political party. 

The Central Electoral Commission, the bureaucratic body which formally decides whether aspiring candidates fulfil the criteria to run in the elections or not, then went on to scrap 9,147 of those, or more than the legally allowed 5% of invalid signatures. 

Nadezhdin appealed the decision, but the bureaucrats ultimately rejected his complaint on Thursday.

In the end, there will be just four candidates running for the post of Russia’s supreme leader, all of them representatives of parliamentary parties, which are eligible to run by default. 

All other candidates, except Vladimir Putin himself, had their hopes dashed by the Central Electoral Commission. 

Putin’s official rivals for the 17 March election will be LDPR’s Leonid Slutsky, Nikolay Kharitonov of the Communist Party, and New People’s Vladislav Davankov.

All of them constitute what is known as loyal opposition; in other words, they’re window dressing, as Putin can’t be the only candidate, it’s against the Constitution and the optics are rather bad. 

The message out of the Kremlin to Russians is, the bare bones of democratic pretence must be maintained.

Hardly the leader we need

On the other hand, Boris Nadezhdin himself was not what one would call a leader of the liberal or any kind of opposition by any means at all. 

Over the years, he has repeatedly participated in political talk shows broadcast on Russian federal TV channels, as a handpicked representative of what was supposed to be “liberal opposition”. 

He was on the infamous Vladimir Solovyov’s show more than once, whose rants can only be compared to those of Hans Fritzsche, the Nazi star radio host, later convicted of war crimes by the Nuremberg tribunal. 

Nadezhdin also frequently took part in other federal TV talk shows such as Pyotr Tolstoy’s “Time Will Tell” and was a guest on Yevgeny Popov’s and Olga Skabeeva’s “60 Minutes” program. 

All of the “journalists” mentioned above went on to join Putin’s United Russia party and renounced any semblance of journalist integrity. The democratic world has also sanctioned them in the meantime.

Nadezhdin’s political background is in line with his previous, but more successful colleagues from the ranks of Putin’s technocratic elite of today, such as the influential post-Soviet mainstay Sergey Kiriyenko, known as one of Boris Yeltsin’s former prime ministers. 

Nadezhdin was also a member of Boris Nemtsov’s team at the end of the 1990s when the liberal wing of Russia’s political system had its last hurrah. 

Nemtsov was assassinated late into Putin’s era, refusing to submit to autocratic rule, like many of his peers did. 

Nadezhdin went on to change several mainstream liberal parties in Russia while Putin was already in power. 

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He worked with Putin’s former Minister of Finance Alexey Kudrin and took part in the primaries of Putin’s United Russia party in 2015 but was defeated. Then, in 2021, he unsuccessfully ran in the parliamentary elections as the representative of the Just Russia party, which was by then an openly alt-right political organisation completely loyal to Putin.

Supporting the platform, not the face on the posters

In essence, Nadezhdin as a political figure bears no importance. Putin’s administration could’ve picked anyone out of several other characters ready to perfectly fill his shoes as representatives of the loyal liberal opposition. 

What matters for Russian society and bears mentioning is the effect which Nadezhin’s failed candidacy achieved — an effect which even Nadezhdin himself couldn’t have hoped for.

In another twist of cynical irony, his last name happens to contain the word “hope”. And all of a sudden, traces of hope appeared, albeit briefly.

For the first time since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian liberal public dared to show its collective face on the streets of the big cities. 

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Long queues of people who wanted to give their signatures and show support for his candidacy could be seen as early as the beginning of this year.

This was mainly achieved by the real liberal opposition, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Alexey Navalny’s associates, unexpectedly standing behind his candidacy. 

From then on, it didn’t matter in the slightest whether Nadezhdin was coopted by Putin’s administration or not; he still ran on the anti-war and pro-democracy platform and the large number of people supporting him did so because of the issues and not out of affection for him as a political leader. 

Maybe hope does die last after all

What came to be was the next best thing to protest in Russia’s middle-class circles. 

For the first time, in the middle of totalitarian Russia, liberals took to the streets, stood next to each other, likely conversed on political issues and no force could scare them away. This is a big deal for Russia’s atomised big-city segment of society.

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Liberal support for Nadezhdin grew so much, that he was realistically seen as a runner-up in the coming elections, an outcome Putin’s administration did not want to see happening. 

Nadezhdin’s role was to be a certified loser, garnering no more than 1-2% of votes, thus demonstrating to fragmented and disenchanted Russian liberals that they were isolated and few in numbers. 

The snowball effect of grassroots support for Nadezhdin annihilated the premise of Putin’s team, so when the first independent polling results came out, giving Nadezhdin a projected share of no less than 10%, it was clear that his project was to be cancelled and his candidacy refused. 

By then, however, it was already too late to erase the positive social effect Nadezhdin’s candidacy had caused. 

The decision of the Russian liberal opposition turned out to be the right one, for a change. 

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Nadezhdin had achieved what they could not. He brought Russian liberals out of their kitchens, where serious matters in Russian society are commonly discussed, and into the open. 

And as hopeless and uninspiring of a candidate as he was, he unwittingly gave Russian liberals hope.

Aleksandar Đokić is a Serbian political scientist and analyst with bylines in Novaya Gazeta. He was formerly a lecturer at RUDN University in Moscow.

At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at [email protected] to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.

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Navalny’s penal colony in the Arctic is direct heir to Russia’s Gulag

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Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, currently serving a 19-year prison sentence, has been transferred to a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle. The IK-3 penal colony, located in Kharp in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1,900 km (1200 miles) northeast of Moscow, is considered to be one of the toughest prisons in Russia. Penal colonies are descendants of Soviet-era Gulags, the notorious Stalin-era labour camps where thousands of Russians lost their lives.

For three weeks his family, allies and lawyers had no news of him. But on December 25, there finally came word from jailed Kremlin critic Navalny. He resurfaced on social media platform X with a string of sardonic posts to say he had been transferred to a prison north of the Arctic Circle. 

Navalny, 47, founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), has been behind bars since early 2021. In August, a court extended his prison sentence to 19 years on extremism charges. He has now been transferred to the IK-3 prison colony of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region, nearly 1,900 kilometres north-east of Moscow. 

At the beginning of December Navalny disappeared from the IK-6 prison colony in the Vladimir region, some 250 kilometres east of Moscow, where he had spent most of his detention. His disappearance even provoked alarm from the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who posted a message on X before Christmas, saying he was “deeply concerned about the whereabouts of Aleksey Navalny”.

Read moreRussian opposition leader Navalny goes missing as Putin seeks re-election

After sending hundreds of requests to detention centres across Russia, Navalny’s allies on Monday said they had managed to locate him, adding that Navalny’s lawyer was able to visit him.  

In a series of sardonic messages published on X on Tuesday, Navalny said he was “fine” and “relieved” that he had arrived at the new prison.  

“I am your new Santa Claus. Well, I now have a sheepskin coat, an ushanka hat (a fur hat with ear-covering flaps), and soon I will get valenki (a traditional Russian winter footwear). I have grown a beard for the 20 days of my transportation,” he said. 


‘Climate as a tool of repression’ 

But Navalny’s mocking words belie the harsh reality of his new prison accommodation. 

In Kharp, Navalny will have to content with temperatures as low as -40°C in winter. His access to emails and visiting rights will be severely restricted.  

“Although Navalny is always provocative and always retains his sense of humour, he has health problems, and will have to grapple with the isolation, even torture that exists in some Russian prisons,” said Sylvie Bermann, who served as French ambassador to Russia from 2017 to 2019. 

“Weather conditions are very harsh, much harsher than in previous colonies,” said Marc Élie, a researcher specialising in the history of the Soviet Union at the Centre for Russian, Caucasian and Central European Studies (CERCEC) in France. 

“There’s little light for six months of the year, and in summer you’re attacked by mosquitoes and midges,” he said. 

The IK-3 penal colony is one of 700 labour camps currently operating in Russia, where some 266,000 inmates are currently detained – a relatively low figure compared to the near 420,000 prisoners in 2022.  

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early last year, Moscow has sent some 100,000 inmates to fight on the frontline.  

“In Russia, you have four types of detention: the open-type colony, in which inmates are very free; the general regime, in which the majority of inmates are locked up in barracks; the severe regime, with tighter restrictions, notably on visiting rights; and the exceptional regime, in which Navalny finds himself,” Élie said, adding that “this last regime is reserved for the most dangerous prisoners, those sentenced to life imprisonment or those whose death sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment”.  

Experts on Russia view these penal colonies as part of the legacy of the Gulag, the concentration camp system that deported more than 20 million people during the Soviet era. Although the Gulag officially disappeared after Stalin’s death in 1953, some of its features live on in today’s prison system.  

Founded in 1961, the IK-3 penal colony – also known as Polar Wolf – was built on the site of the former 501st Gulag. 

“The prison system retained a number of features dating back to the Stalinist era, particularly the idea of [using] the climate as a tool of repression,” said University of Strasbourg lecturer Emilia Koustova.  

“These are also very isolated places. For three weeks, no one knew where Navalny was. The use of arbitrary [detention], which has been in place since the Stalinist era, is aimed at severing the ties between prisoners and their loved ones. This severing of ties becomes a means of repression and terror, or blackmail,” said Koustova.  

Before his transfer to IK-3, Navalny was subjected to multiple periods of solitary confinement.  

Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said last October that he spent a total of “236 days” in a small isolation cell.  

Putin’s punishment 

Considered by Putin as his main political foe, Navalny continues to pay the price for his relentless criticisms of the Kremlin’s despotic regime.  

Before his arrest in January 2021, Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in August 2020, requiring emergency hospitalisation and lengthy rehabilitation in Germany.

Putin denied any involvement in the operation, stating at a news conference that If Russian security services had wanted to poison Navalny, “they would have finished the job”. 

“Putin clearly has a very particular attitude towards Navalny, he never mentions his name. There’s a desire to disregard him while pursuing him relentlessly. His transfer to a colony characterised by a particularly harsh regime is representative of this,” said Koustova, who is also on the board of the human rights NGO Mémorial France. 

Navalny’s transfer also comes three months before Russia’s next presidential election, in which Putin is running. 

“Alexei Navalny will no longer be able to get his political message across on this issue,” Koustova said. 

Putin’s bid for another six-year term in office, authorised by the 2020 constitutional referendum, would appear to be a mere formality in the absence of opposition.  

The last opponents who tried to unseat Russia’s strongman such as Andrei Pivovarov, ex-director of the Open Russia movement, and 38-year-old opposition figure Ilya Yashin, have been killed or imprisoned. 

Read moreLast remaining voices of the Russian opposition are being silenced amid war in Ukraine

According to Mémorial France, whose central body was dissolved by the Russian Supreme Court in September 2021, there are currently more than 500 political prisoners in Russia as of 2022. 

Last Saturday, the Russian Electoral Commission banned former TV journalist Ekaterina Duntsova, 40, from standing in the upcoming election, citing 100 “mistakes” on her application form.  

“In truth, there is no credible opposition, not to mention the fact that many people of her (Duntsova) generation are very much in favour of Vladimir Putin’s re-election. He has every chance of being re-elected with a fairly high turnout,” Bermann said 

The Russian presidential election is scheduled for March 17, 2024. 

This article has been translated from the original in French.



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Russian opposition leader Navalny goes missing as Putin seeks re-election

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Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny did not appear at a scheduled court hearing on Monday and has not been seen or heard from in 15 days. Amid speculation that he has been secretly moved to another prison or is seriously unwell, the UN has raised concerns of an “enforced disappearance” that would coincide with the launch of President Vladimir Putin’s campaign for re-election in March 2024. 

In the Russian region of Vladimir, 100 kilometres east of Moscow, Alexei Navalny was scheduled to appear in court on Monday, if only via video link from the detention centre where he has been held since 2021. 

Judges were to hear seven cases against the opposition leader, who is serving an almost 30-year sentence after being found guilty of crimes including fraud, slander and extremism.  

When he failed to appear in court, the judges decided to push back the hearings “until Navalny’s whereabouts are ‘established’,” his press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, posted on social media platform X.

She said Navalny’s team contacted nearly 200 pre-trial detention centres in Russia hoping to track down the opposition leader, but without success. 

‘Enforced disappearance’

Navalny’s team last heard from him on December 5. Lawyers were refused access to see him in prison on December 6 with no explanation, Yarmysh said. 

But Navalny’s failure to appear even at a court hearing has ratcheted up international fears over his wellbeing.

“I am greatly concerned that the Russian authorities will not disclose Mr. Navalny’s whereabouts and wellbeing for such a prolonged period of time which amounts to enforced disappearance,” said Mariana Katzarova, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Russian Federation, in a December 18 statement.    

Navalny’s disappearance seems conveniently timed. Putin on December 8 announced his candidature for Russia’s presidential election on March 17, 2024, and is widely expected to win. 

Putin oversaw changes to the constitutional in 2021 that allow him to run for two more six-year terms, meaning he could stay in power until 2036. He is already the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who died in 1953.

Navalny has risked his life by positioning himself as Putin’s most vocal critic in an increasingly repressive Russia. He survived being poisoned with novichok – a group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union – in 2020 and spent months recuperating in Germany.

Another Putin critic and leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, died in a private plane crash two months after launching an aborted march on Moscow.

While there are legitimate fears over Navalny’s safety, another likely reason for his disappearance may be more mundane. 

“It is very common for prisoners to disappear for several weeks while being transferred [between prisons],” said Oleg Kozlovsky, Russia specialist at Amnesty International. “The most likely hypothesis is that he has been transferred to a special colony somewhere far from where he was held until now.” 

A 2017 Amnesty International report explains that the size of Russia and the remote location of penal colonies “means that prisoners must be transported over great distances” during transfers, with journeys often taking a month or more.

Prisoners are typically moved between colonies on dedicated trains without being told where they are going, and “in conditions that often amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”, the Amnesty report found.

Carriages are overcrowded and passengers can lack access to sleeping spaces and toilets for the duration of the journey. “Conditions are reportedly worse than in normal cells in pre-trial detention which are worse than in correctional colonies and below international standards,” the rights group wrote.

‘Special regime’

Navalny has been at risk of this type of long-distance transfer since his most recent sentencing on August 4, during which he was found guilty of “extremism”, adding 19 more years to his sentence.

His new sentence also specified a change in detention conditions, moving Navalny from the “strict regime” penal colony in Vladimir to a more secure “special regime” colony, reserved for the most dangerous prisoners.

Under special regime conditions, “there are harsher restrictions on how often you can have contact with [the] outside world, how many calls you are allowed to make and how many packages you can receive”, Kozlovsky said.

“He will also be in stricter isolation and, of course, much further away from Moscow, meaning it’s going to be even tougher for his lawyer and family to see him.”

It will also be much more difficult for Navalny to continue his vocal opposition to Putin. Even from a “strict regime” prison, Navalny was able to communicate with a global audience and mount an opposition to the Russian leader.

In a video released on Navaly’s website on December 7, he urged Russians to vote for any candidate “except Vladimir Putin”.

“The current crackdown on both leading dissidents and grassroots activists is so severe that it would seem logical that the authorities are seeking to restrict Alexei Navalny’s access to the outside world as much as possible,” said Morvan Lallouet, a specialist in contemporary Russia at the University of Kent and co-author of “Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future?”

“It is fairly amazing that he has been able to get so much out in today’s Russia,” agreed Stephen Hall, a Russian politics expert at the University of Bath.

“My bet would be that someone in the administration has decided this was a good moment to transfer Navalny and therefore he will be missing for around a month.”

Health concerns 

Navalny’s failure to appear at his court hearing has raised new concerns over his health. He has reportedly been kept in unsanitary conditions and repeatedly confined to isolation cells, which, his team says, has taken a toll on his health.

In a rare show of defiance, more than 200 Russian doctors signed an open letter in January calling on Putin to “stop abusing” Navalny in prison by “deliberately” harming his health.

In early December, Navalny’s team said he collapsed in the solitary cell in which he was being held and needed an IV to recover.

It is possible that his disappearance means that Russian authorities “are trying to hide a deterioration in Navalny’s health”, said Lallouet.

“[But] we are staying optimistic and hoping that he is just being transferred between penal colonies.”

This article was adapted from the original in French. 



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Putin says no peace in Ukraine until Russia’s goals are achieved

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The Russian president was speaking at an end of year press conference, which was somewhat overshadowed by the peculiar disappearance of jailed former opposition leader Alexeï Navalny.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has said there will be no peace in Ukraine until his goals are achieved – and said those objectives remain unchanged.

Putin was speaking at a year-end news conference on Thursday which offered the leader an opportunity to reinforce his grip on power.

Giving rare detail on what Moscow calls its special military operation, Putin dismissed the need for a second wave of mobilisation of reservists to fight in Ukraine – a move that proved deeply unpopular in the past.

He said there are some 617,000 Russian soldiers currently there, including around 244,000 troops who were called up to fight alongside professional Russian military forces.

The Russian president, who has held power for nearly 24 years and announced recently he is running for reelection, was greeted with applause as he arrived in the hall in central Moscow.

Putin did not hold his traditional press conference last year after his military failed to take Kyiv while the Ukrainian army retook swaths of territory in the east and south of the country.

But with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy now forced to plead for more US aid, a stalling counteroffensive and reports of fracturing Western support for Ukraine, the Russian president has decided to face the media once more.

It seems, though, that the broadcast remained heavily choreographed and more about spectacle than scrutiny.

This year, ordinary citizens had the chance to phone in questions along with those asked by journalists – and Russians submitted queries for Putin over a two week period.

It was the first time Putin, who has heavily limited his interaction with foreign media, has faced multiple questions from Western journalists since the fighting in Ukraine began.

The press conference opened with questions about the conflict in Ukraine and highlighted concerns some Russians have about fears of another wave of mobilisation. In September 2022 Putin ordered a partial military call-up as he tried to boost his forces in Ukraine, sparking protests.

“There is no need,” for mobilisation now, Putin claimed, because 1,500 men are being recruited into the Russian army every day across the country. He said, as of Wednesday evening, a total of 486,000 soldiers have signed a contract with the Russian military.

Putin reiterated that Moscow’s goals in Ukraine – “de-Nazification, de-militarization and a neutral status” of Ukraine – remain unchanged.

He spelled out those loosely defined objectives the day he sent troops to the country in February 2022.

“De-Nazification” refers to Russia’s allegations that the Ukrainian government is heavily influenced by radical nationalist and neo-Nazi groups – claims derided by Kyiv and the West.

Putin has also demanded that Ukraine remain neutral – and not join the NATO alliance.

“There will be peace when we will achieve our goals,” Putin said, repeating a frequent Kremlin line.

His appearance was primarily aimed at a domestic audience and is a chance – performative or otherwise – for him to personally resolve the problems of ordinary Russian citizens ahead of the 17 March election.

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Putin fielded questions on Thursday from a group of children in Russian-annexed Crimea concerned about the leaking roof and mould in their sports hall as well as from a woman who addressed him as “my favourite president,” to complain about the spiking price of eggs.

State media said that as of Wednesday, about 2 million questions for Putin had been submitted ahead of the broadcast.

Journalists lined up for hours in freezing temperatures to get into the venue and some donned traditional dress, including elaborate hats in order to catch Putin’s attention. Many journalists also hold placards, prompting the Kremlin to limit the size of signs they can carry during the news conference, which often lasts about four hours.

Is Putin a shoo-in at the next election – and where is Navalny?

In the absence of real opposition, methodically eradicated by the Kremlin, Putin’s victory in March 2024 seems obvious.

The conference comes at a time when his main detractor, the imprisoned anti-corruption activist Alexeï Navalny, has not been heard from for more than a week.

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Last known to be serving a 19-year prison sentence for “extremism”, nobody has been able to track him down.

There are rumours that he may have been transferred to a penal colony with even harsher conditions, potentially an effort by the Kremlin to tighten his isolation as Putin fights his presidential campaign.

Earlier this week, worries spread about Navalny’s whereabouts after officials at the prison facility east of Moscow said he was no longer on the inmate roster.

Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh confirmed that his associates and lawyers have been unable to contact him for a week. Prison officials claim he has been moved from the jailhouse – but didn’t give further details.

Although from a Western perspective it sounds suspicious, prison transfers in Russia are notoriously secretive.

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Authorities rarely provide information about the whereabouts of inmates for weeks until they reach another facility and are given permission to contact relatives or lawyers.

Earlier this year, another prominent opposition figure, Andrei Pivovarov, also went missing during a prison transfer. His transfer, from a detention centre in Russia’s southern region of Krasnodar to a penal colony in the northwestern region of Karelia, took about a month.

Once at a new facility, prison officials there are legally obliged to notify relatives or lawyers within 10 days, but Kira Yarmysh said they can hardly be expected to follow the rules in Navalny’s case.

“They will try to hide him as long as possible,” she explained to the AP.

“I guess this was made deliberately to isolate Alexei during this period of time so he wouldn’t be able to influence all these things in any way, because everyone understands – and Putin, of course, understands – that Alexei is his main rival, even despite the fact that he is not on the ballot.”

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Asked on Tuesday where Navalny is, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov snapped that “we have neither a desire nor an opportunity to track down inmates.”

Commenting on US expressions of concern about Navalny, Peskov said in a conference call with reporters that he has been convicted and is serving his sentence, adding that “we consider any interference, including by the United States, inadmissible.”

Navalny, 47, has been behind bars since January 2021, when he was arrested upon his return from Germany where he had recuperated from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.

Navalny, who campaigned against official corruption and organised major anti-government protests, has rejected all charges against him as a politically motivated vendetta.

The loss of contact with Navalny was particularly worrying, given that he recently fell ill, Yarmysh said. She said prison officials had given him an IV drip when he felt dizzy and he had to lie on the floor of his cell.

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While Putin’s reelection is all but certain, given his overwhelming control over the country’s political scene and a widening crackdown on dissent, Navalny’s supporters and other critics hope to use the campaign to erode public support for the Kremlin leader and his military action in Ukraine.

Since the start of his imprisonment, he has continued his scathing attacks on the Kremlin in comments his associates posted to social media.

“I guess they decided that it would be smarter for them to send him as far away because he’s still too loud and too present in the public field,” Yarmysh said.

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Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny jailed for 19 more years

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Russian President Vladimir Putin refuses to refer to Alexei Navalny by name even, typically calling him “that gentleman”.

A Russian court convicted imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny of extremism charges and sentenced him to an additional 19 years in prison Friday. 

Navalny is already serving a nine-year term on a variety of charges that he says were politically motivated.

The new charges against the politician relate to the activities of Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation and statements by his top associates.

Amid the war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has unleashed a wave of unprecedented repression of dissent, reminiscent of the Soviet era.

Almost all major opponents have now been thrown into prison or driven into exile. Thousands of ordinary citizens have also been prosecuted for denouncing the conflict, some receiving heavy sentences.

After the sentencing, a tweet posted on Navalny’s account called on Russians to resist Vladimir Putin’s regime:

“The sentencing figure is not for me. It is for you. You, not me, are being frightened and deprived of the will to resist. You are being forced to surrender your country of Russia without a fight to the gang of traitors, thieves, and scoundrels who have seized power. Putin must not achieve his goal. Do not lose the will to resist.”

A longtime opponent of the Russian president, Navalny was hounded by the authorities before the Ukraine invasion, but his fate has worsened since.

He was imprisoned on his return to Russia at the beginning of 2021, after surviving an assassination attempt by poisoning he attributes to the Russian security services. 

He has since been sentenced twice on charges his supporters say are trumped up. 

Navalny, regularly placed in solitary confinement and faced with health problems, said on Thursday he expected a “long, Stalinist sentence”.

“The formula to calculate it is simple: what the prosecutor asked for, minus 10-15%. They asked for 20 years, they will give 18 or something like that,” he said in an online message conveyed by his relatives. 

International reaction

Posting on Twitter, the European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said Navalny was sentenced for “legitimate political and anti-corruption activities”, and said the verdict “demonstrates the continued instrumentalisation of the Russian legal system”. 

The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, also took to Twitter to condemn what he called a “sham trial” and praise Navaly’s “courage to speak critically against the Kremlin”. 

Both Michel and Borrell reiterated the EU’s call for Navaly’s immediate and unconditional release.  

The US State Department joined them in that call and condemned Navalny’s new sentence as “an unjust conclusion to an unjust trial”. 

“For years, the Kremlin has attempted to silence Navalny and prevent his calls for transparency and accountability from reaching the Russian people”, it said. “By conducting this latest trial in secret and limiting his lawyers’ access to purported evidence, Russian authorities illustrated yet again both the baselessness of their case and the lack of due process afforded to those who dare to criticize the regime”.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk said Navalny’s new sentence “raises renewed serious concerns about judicial harassment and instrumentalisation of the court system for political purposes in Russia” and called for his release.

Navalny made a name for himself investigating corruption in Putin’s circle. 

Many outside Russia came to know him from the Oscar-winning, self-titled documentary based on the events related to his poisoning with a nerve agent in Russia and the subsequent investigation in 2020. 

However, he is criticised by some for statements seen as “racist” and “imperialistic” made in the past. 

His Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK) was effectively banned in 2021 for “extremism”.

The 45-year-old lawyer turned blogger has become a fierce critic of Russia’s war in Ukraine, railing against the conflict from his prison cell. 

During his trial, he mocked the “tens of thousands of dead in the most stupid and senseless war of the 21st century”.

“Sooner or later (Russia) will recover. And it depends on us what it will rely on in the future,” he added.

The Kremlin presents Navalny as a simple criminal, trying to separate legal proceedings from politics. 

Navalny is able to bring messages to the outside world through his lawyers. He often recounts prison life and denounces, usually ironically, the harassment he suffers. 

He claims to have been sent into solitary confinement 17 times, where he was forced to listen to speeches by Putin.

The Russian president refuses to refer to him by name even to this day, typically calling him “that gentleman”. 

The conditions of Navalny’s detention could worsen further following Friday’s verdict. Prosecutors have called for his transfer to a penal colony with a “special regime”. 

These prisons have a sinister reputation in Russia and are usually reserved for the most dangerous criminals and lifers.

Navalny’s legal marathon also risks not stopping on Friday. He is also being prosecuted for “terrorism” in another case. Few details are known at this stage but he risks life in prison.

‘Optimistic spirit’

The politician is currently serving his sentence in a maximum-security prison — Penal Colony No. 6 in the town of Melekhovo, about 230 kilometres east of Moscow.

He has spent months in a tiny one-person cell, also called a “punishment cell,” for purported disciplinary violations, such as an alleged failure to button his prison clothes properly, introduce himself appropriately to a guard or to wash his face at a specified time.

Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh told The Associated Press said prison officials once again placed Navalny in the punishment cell right after his closing arguments in late July and that he was released from it only on Friday for the verdict hearing.

On social media, Navalny’s associates urged supporters to come to Melekhovo on Friday to express solidarity with the politician.

About 40 supporters from different Russian cities gathered outside the colony, one of them told the AP in the messaging app Telegram. Yelena, who spoke on condition that her last name was withheld for safety reasons, said the supporters weren’t allowed into the colony but decided to stay outside until the verdict was announced: “People think it’s important to be nearby at least like that, for moral support. We will be waiting.”

Navalny was ordered to serve the new prison term in a “special regime” penal colony, a term that refers to the Russian prisons with the highest level of security and the harshest inmate restrictions.

It wasn’t immediately clear when he would be transferred to such a colony from the Melekhovo prison. Yarmysh said Navalny’s lawyers will definitely appeal the verdict, so it will not take effect until the appeal is ruled on.

Russian law stipulates that only men given life sentences or “especially dangerous recidivists” are sent to those types of prisons.

The country has many fewer “special regime” colonies compared to other types of adult prisons, according to state penitentiary service data: 35 colonies for “dangerous recidivists” and six for men imprisoned for life. Maximum-security colonies are the most widespread type, with 251 currently in operation.

Still, Navalny is “always in this optimistic spirit,” Yarmysh said. “It seems to me that he is probably the biggest optimist among all of us,” she added. “This happens because Alexei is absolutely convinced in what he’s doing and confident that he is right. This, of course, helps him cope with everything and continue doing what he does.”

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Racist or revolutionary: The complex legacy of Alexei Navalny

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Controversy surrounds some of what the Russian opposition leader – currently imprisoned in Moscow – has said in the past.

Alexei Navalny is a many-sided man.

The 45-year-old is a lawyer turned blogger, YouTuber, protest organiser, anti-corruption activist and face of Russia’s opposition. 

He is currently in prison in Russia on charges of extremism, which supporters say are politically motivated. 

Speaking in court recently, Navalny added yet another face to his character by urging his fans to campaign against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

What identity is paramount depends on who you ask, explains Jade McGlynn a researcher specialising in Russian politics at King’s College London.

For Russian supporters – mostly social media-savvy young people – Navalny is a rare figurehead for anti-establishment feeling.

Many outside Russia came to know him from the Oscar-winning, self-titled documentary based on the events related to his poisoning with a nerve agent in Russia and the subsequent investigation in 2020.

That helped cement Navalny’s identity as a powerful opponent of Vladimir Putin and elevated him in the eyes of the West. The Russian president refuses to refer to him by name even to this day, typically calling him “that gentleman”. 

‘Not a Western liberal democrat’

Yet there is a darker side to him, some say. 

Navalny’s ‘ideal’ image conflicts with his past remarks, McGlynn tells Euronews, pointing to his controversial views on Muslims in the Caucasus, Georgians and Central Asian migrants in Russia.  

“Immigrants from Central Asia bring in drugs [to Russia],” Navalny said in an interview in 2012, defending what he described as a “realist” visa requirement for “wonderful people from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.”

While he has reflected on some of these past remarks, they frequently re-surface, causing some to question if Navalny is what many in the Western world think he is.  

Navalny’s controversial statements stem from his political origins in the nationalist movement, according to McGlynn. 

“He used to attend the Russian march, a very far-right nationalist group generally behind the slogan of ‘Russia for ethnic Russians’. Anybody who expects Navalny to be an ideal Western liberal Democrat has been mistaken,” she tells Euronews. 

His ultra-nationalist sentiment was prominent in a video dating back some 17 years filled with xenophobic comments. 

“Everything in our way should be carefully but decisively removed through deportation,” Navalny said in the video dressed as a dentist, comparing immigrants to dental cavities. 

Amnesty International stripped the opposition leader of the “prisoner of conscience” status based on this clip. It reversed this decision in 2021, recognising an “individual’s opinions and behaviour may evolve over time” in a statement.   

Kremlin cheerleaders have also sought to discredit Navalny, with Russia’s state-owned RT channel publishing a thread by freelance columnist Katya Kazbek that blasted him as an “avowed racist” and accused supporters of “whitewashing” his nationalism.

‘Nobody in Georgia cares what he thinks now’

Navalny has apologised in the past. But this has not been good enough for some groups outside Russia, particularly Georgians. 

“The Georgian public felt betrayed by Navalny after the 2008 Russo-Georgian war,” says Kornely Kakachia, Political Science Professor at Tbilisi State University. 

“Everyone expected Navalny to be anti-Putin and anti-imperialist, but he supported the invasion.” 

Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, accusing its neighbour of committing genocide against Russian speakers in the border regions. Others say Russia actually invaded to further its geopolitical interests and assert regional dominance. 

The European Court of Human Rights later penalised Russia in 2023 for human rights abuses, including civilian murders, looting, illegal detention and torture, during the fighting. 

Kakachia says the Georgian public now perceives Navalny as in the same bracket as Putin, largely due to his support for the war and calling Georgias “rodents”. 

Navalny’s lack of criticism of Russia’s imperialistic policy has further bolstered the sentiment and “nobody in Georgia cares what he thinks”, according to Kakachia. 

“Georgian national interest is not wanting to be part of any new empire that derives from the old Soviet playbook. Navalny’s comments indicate he’s not against the regime in that regard,” he adds. 

His incendiary comments on immigrants and Georgians re-surfaced when Navalny’s daughter, Dasha Navalnaya, was invited to speak at Georgetown University in May 2023. 

Students filed a petition against the speaker selection, calling for a meritocratic appointment and that “being anti-Putin doesn’t imply being a pro-democratic, anti-war, and liberal leader.” 

Following the backlash, two new speakers were added by the university to diversify perspectives, refusing to “disinvite” Navalnaya. 

Anti-corruption and the route ahead

Navalny’s political ideology, however, doesn’t impact his popularity within Russia, since his stance against corruption and oligarchs strikes the chord, McGlynn says.

“Not all Navalny supporters are pro-West. In fact, many of them are very angry, with countries like the UK and the US for facilitating that top-level corruption,” she adds. 

Despite the criticisms against him, Navalny’s efforts to challenge Putin – an act that almost got him killed – is laudable, according to McGlynn.  

“It was heroic to go back and investigate topics that are completely off limits relating to Putin’s wealth and the wealth of the elite,” she says.  

Navalny has repeatedly accused Putin and his inner circle of “sucking the blood out of Russia,” by developing Russia into a “feudal state.” 

Putin, on the other hand, has continuously dismissed Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), terming the movement a “boring pseudo-investigation.” 

The future route for Navalny in Russian politics depends on his release at a personal level, but the broader movement is what matters, McGlynn insists. 

“There is definitely a populist streak [behind Navalny],” she says. “That means we are missing some other important actors and the political movement as a whole.”



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Why aren’t there any mass protests against Putin in Russia?

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By Aleksandar Đokić, Political scientist and analyst

The answer is obvious: maybe Putin’s machinery isn’t that good at breaking Ukraine’s defences, but it is incredibly competent at cracking the skulls of Russian opposition activists, Aleksandar Đokić writes.

“We have never moved in concert with the other peoples. We are not a part of any of the great families of the human race; we are neither of the West nor of the East, and we have not the traditions of either.” 

These are the words of one of Russia’s first dissidents, Petr Chaadaev, written in the first half of the 19th century. 

This Monday, another Russian dissident and famous journalist, Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of much-persecuted newspaper Novaya Gazeta, gave a speech in the European Parliament, emphasising that Vladimir Putin has closed Russia’s window into Europe. 

Just like in previous centuries, the Russian intellectual elite finds itself in a struggle for or against Europe.

In many ways, the world’s largest country has indeed always been a part of the continent, as Europe is a mosaic of different cultures and historical experiences.

In Russia, Europe is a symbol of modernity, of being in touch with the times and not falling behind. 

Add to this the two main currents that have always existed in Russian culture: one ardently pro-Western, and another fiercely anti-Western.  

When Russian intellectuals mention Europe, they do this profoundly only in terms of wanting or not wanting to live in the same era and in line with the same principles as most of the continent. 

Today, Europe means democracy, and being anti-Europe and anti-European in Russia means being on the side of political serfdom.

Known knowns and unknown unknowns

Yet, there are many Russias, and the fact is that Russian society has always been elitist, further emphasised by the fact that those on the outside often only discuss the elite parts of Russian society. 

The elite in Russia is also a very broad concept that doesn’t apply only to those with political power or substantial material wealth. 

Russia’s elite is also cultural or scientific, with artists and scientists being adored and venerated by urban, educated people. Russia even produces intellectual rappers like Oxxxymiron.

On the other hand, there are regular people which the Russian elites think of as “the masses”. 

Throughout Russian history, these “masses” were considered ignorant, dangerous or corrupted by those above them, yet endowed with the mystical “Russian soul” — strong in spirit but condemned to constant suffering — inside.

Russia is built upon such myths, one atop the other, with these hard-to-believe archetypes being presented to the curious Western observers as fact and then seeping into Western popular culture.

It’s too late to demonstrate

In reality, Russia is not a mystery. That’s just one more Orientalist perspective we have to overcome. 

Its social groups aren’t that different than most in Eastern Europe, teeming with right-wing populism. The only thing that’s different is that Russia used to be an empire, and other Eastern European peoples didn’t have this privilege.

This is a major part of the equation that can be easily glossed over when contemplating the fact that Russians missed the moment to protest when Putin started to strengthen his authoritarian grip on the country, even as he was keeping up the benevolent monarch façade.

Asking Russians why they don’t protest now is not really a good question. 

The answer is obvious – there is already a brutal autocratic regime in place, with every instrument to crush even larger protests and put the demonstrators to torture.

Maybe Putin’s machinery isn’t that good at breaking Ukraine’s defences, but it is incredibly competent at cracking the skulls of Russian opposition activists.

The Bolotnaya protests and other far less significant blips

But the question should rather be, “Why have Russians allowed this system to be constructed in the first place?” 

Putin wasn’t born an emperor, he carefully and gradually structured what he calls the “vertical of power”. 

Russian society mostly slept through this phase, only to awaken for a brief period of time when Putin was to return as sovereign once more, replacing the unconvincing lame duck Dmitry Medvedev. 

Enter the Bolotnaya protests, which culminated in December 2011.

These demonstrations didn’t attract the crowds needed to form a critical mass. Putin solidifying his grip on power didn’t prompt Russian opposition to create a united front, either. 

Afterwards, the only significant wave of protests was seen during the 2019 Moscow Duma protests. 

Yet, the Russian opposition leaders and liberal intellectuals alike fondly remember the two protests against the annexation of Crimea in 2014, which led nowhere and were far less meaningful than the Bolotnaya or the 2019 demonstrations. 

Craving someone like Putin

Not only is it too late to protest now — Putin would have to be given a good beating abroad by Ukraine and its allies, coupled with a strike in the back domestically by his own elites in order to leave power. 

Let’s face it: it was already too late to protest, even in 2014.

The last chance Russia had was when Putin was completing his “rokirovka”, or reshuffle, with Medvedev. 

So why didn’t Russians turn out in the hundreds of thousands back then? The answer can be found in the aforementioned empire complex. 

Putin didn’t impose his will on Russian society. 

Most of it craved a figure such as Putin — a heavy-handed leader coming from the security apparatus — to bring back order from the chaos of the 1990s, to help the state get up from its knees, and to return it to its lost glory and beyond the condition of present-day embarrassment. 

A mirage of the nation’s might

While their country was considered a global superpower, the citizens never really had much to their name. 

Russia’s people were mostly poor throughout history: the harsh climate, combined with centralised resources and power in the hands of the few, made sure of this.

The only thing the Russian serfs had — first as Soviet disenfranchised citizens and after that, the impoverished majority caught up in the whirlwind of freedom and financial speculations of the 1990s — was the state’s might. 

Putin gave them a mirage of this and added something as a bonus: the high tide of rising oil prices in the first decade of the 2000s, fuelling the rise of the urban middle class in the country’s largest cities such as Moscow, St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg. 

The ancient Roman political elite had bread and circuses. Putin gave his people tanks and shopping malls.

Neither the rich nor the poor wanted to cause a stir

Russian society was further split down the socioeconomic line. First, there were the poor people from the provinces, with towns and villages that look like they were teleported to our time directly from the Middle Ages.

Across them sat the self-centred urbanites, always on the hunt for the newest fancy cars or brand-name clothes. 

Neither wanted to cause a stir. The poor wouldn’t because they were dependent on the state for meagre welfare checks. 

Most also believed in the myth of a resurgent Russia and the better-off because they had mortgages and credits to pay, as debts from vacationing and shopping were constantly piling up. 

The obscene bumper sticker “We can do this again”, putting the World War II triumph against Nazism in a demeaning sexual context, started to appear on middle-class cars around Moscow during this period. 

Even the well-to-do liked to feel like they belong to a glorious state while frivolously travelling around the globe.

Who was left to protest back then when it mattered — back when Putin wasn’t a mad emperor but an aspiring autocrat? 

A different Russia or another North Korea?

It was only the most spirited, activist-minded Russians who were extremely interested in politics and committed to protesting for a better Russia as a calling. 

We saw these people in the streets even in 2022, when around 20,000 Russians were arrested for demonstrating against the war at the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

Putin’s repressive apparatus got rid of almost all of them, too.

When Alexey Navalny’s team called for Russians to protest his unfair and targeted imprisonment on 4 June, only around a hundred activists in the whole country turned out to protest.

There won’t be any significant protests in Russia until the elites, at least in part, turn their backs on Putin and call the people to the streets. 

If this moment comes — and it’s no longer a wild fantasy but a realistic possibility — we will see literally a million people in Red Square. 

The alternative is turning Russia into a larger version of North Korea, isolated from the rest of the world and dependent on China. 

If this scenario unfolds, we won’t be witnessing meaningful protests in Russia for years to come.

Aleksandar Đokić is a Serbian political scientist and analyst with bylines in Novaya Gazeta. He was formerly a lecturer at RUDN University in Moscow.

At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at [email protected] to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.

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Last remaining voices of the Russian opposition are being silenced amid war in Ukraine

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Voices raised against the Kremlin are increasingly being silenced as Russia this week handed jail sentences to two prominent opponents of the current regime: Russian-British national Vladimir Kara-Murza was handed a 25-year prison sentence on Monday and a Moscow court on Wednesday dismissed Ilya Yashin’s appeal.

Russian political activist and former journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, 41, was sentenced on Monday to 25 years in prison for publicly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He was convicted of treason and spreading “false” information about the Russian military among other charges. According to the Moscow Times, Kara-Murza’s defence attorney has fled the country over fears of imprisonment.  

Kremlin critic Ilya Yashin, 39, lost his appeal on Wednesday against an eight-and-a-half-year prison sentence that was handed down last year. The longtime ally of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny was also found guilty of spreading “false information” regarding the war in Ukraine.  

Both men will soon join Navalny – as well as another 527 political prisoners jailed since February 2022, according to the OVD-Info rights monitor – behind bars. Meanwhile, US journalist Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested on espionage charges, remains in pre-trial detention after his appeal was rejected on Tuesday.  

As the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissenting voices intensifies, Russian lawmakers on Tuesday approved a bill that would see life sentences handed to those convicted of treason amid a wave of toughened censorship laws.

A law criminalising “discrediting Russian armed forces” was adopted on March 4 last year; in the three days that followed, more than 60 cases were opened against those accused of violating the new law, “the vast majority” of them peaceful anti-war protesters, according to Human Rights Watch. 

The Russian opposition, weakened by a recent series of imprisonments and forced exile, is on the verge of extinction. There are almost “no options for expressing criticism” in Russia, where repression has reached a scale “unequalled since the end of World War II”, according to Russia expert Cécile Vaissié of Rennes-II University. But she says a few voices remain, whose presence in Russia carries “symbolic weight”.     

Last remaining voices  

One of those last voices belongs to Yashin’s lawyer, Maria Eismont, who also worked as part of Kara-Murza’s defence team. Eismont, 47, is one of the last liberal lawyers left in Russia willing to defend opponents of Vladimir Putin’s regime. Decrying the harshness of the court decision on Kara-Murza’s case, Eismont vowed to appeal the 25-year sentence, the longest ever handed to a political opponent. 

Russian human rights activist and former chairman of the now-disbanded Memorial Human Rights Centre, Yan Rachinsky, called the sentence “monstrous”, adding that it reflected the authorities’ fear of criticism and “marked a difference between today’s Russia and civilised countries”.  

In late March, an investigation was launched into Rachinsky’s colleague and Memorial co-founder Oleg Orlov over accusations of discrediting Russian forces in Ukraine. A March 21 statement from Memorial said Orlov was detained and questioned after police searched his home before subsequently being released. 

Although Memorial was shut down by the authorities in December 2021, Rachinsky and Orlov remain in the country. Hailing them as “Russian heroes”, Vaissié said they offer a courageous example at the risk of “being arrested at any moment”. 

Meanwhile, others are also facing imprisonment. The former mayor of Yekaterinburg, Yevgeny Vadimovich Roizman, spent 14 days behind bars in March over a social media post relating to Alexei Navalny. Currently under surveillance, Roizman is awaiting trial on charges of “discrediting” the Russian army, for which he could face at least three years in prison. Despite the looming threat, Roizman remains active on social media and continues to participate in the drugs treatment programme that he helped expand during his time in office. 

When artists speak out 

Dissenting voices are also being heard in artistic circles. The frontman of the 1980s rock band DDT, Yuri Shevchuk, has also spoken out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

During the band’s concert in May last year, Shevchuk told a crowd of 8,000 fans that “the motherland, my friends, is not the president’s ass that has to be slobbered and kissed all the time. The motherland is an impoverished babushka at the train station selling potatoes”. 

The outspoken Kremlin critic’s continued presence in the country alone “sends a clear signal to Russians opposing the war, which reminds us that love for one’s country doesn’t equate to support for the ruling power”, Vaissié said. 

After a police interrogation, Shevchuk was subsequently fined 50,000 rubles ($815) for his on-stage protest, according to the Moscow Times.  

Other artists have also chosen to remain in Russia to protest the current regime, including rights activist and poet Elena Sannikova, who publicly recited a poem evoking Soviet-era repressions on Monday at the Sakharov Center. Labeled as a foreign agent by Russian authorities, the centre is being forced to vacate its premises by the end of the month after nearly 30 years in operation. At the centre’s last event, Sannikova told Muscovites that “David will defeat Goliath, and a new dawn will break.” 

Not quite silenced yet 

While most independent organisations have left Russia since the Ukraine war broke out, human rights defence and media group OVD-Info continues to operate in the country. Founded in 2011 by journalists Grigory Okhotin and programmer Daniil Beilinson, the organisation continues to collect data on local political repression despite part of its team fleeing the country. 

Even Navalny continues to speak out against Putin’s regime from his prison cell, thanks to messages passed on by his lawyers. Denouncing Kara-Murza’s 25-year prison sentence as “shameless and simply fascist”, Nalvany said in an audio recording released by his team that he was “deeply outraged” by the court’s decision.  

Citing speeches made by Kara-Murza and Yashin during their respective trials, Vaissié said “ethical” statements like these represent a “way of setting an example”. Before his sentencing, Yashin addressed Putin directly as he urged the Russian president to “stop this madness immediately”.  

“You must admit that your policies regarding Ukraine have been an error,” he implored. “You must get the Russian troops out of Ukraine and start working on a diplomatic resolution of this conflict. Remember that every new day at war means new casualties. Enough!”

Kara-Murza, meanwhile, remained hopeful in his last statement to the court before the verdict, when defendants usually ask for acquittal. Kara-Murza said his fate had already been decided, but that “the day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate”.  

“This day will come as inevitably as spring follows even the coldest winter. And then our society will open its eyes and be horrified by what terrible crimes were committed on its behalf. From this realization, from this reflection, the long, difficult but vital path toward the recovery and restoration of Russia, its return to the community of civilized countries, will begin.”

This article was translated from the original in French.

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