Tag: Russian dissidents

Who are other Russian dissidents besides the late Alexei Navalny?

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The sudden death of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most formidable antagonist has left an open wound in Russia’s political opposition.

Alexei Navalny, 47, was the Kremlin’s best-known critic at home and abroad. Before he died in a penal colony Friday, the anti-corruption crusader, protest organiser and politician with an arch sense of humour became the subject of an award-winning documentary. His channels on YouTube had millions of subscribers.

Navalny also was the first opposition leader in Russia to receive a lengthy prison sentence in recent years. There would be others, heralding a crackdown on dissent that became more punishing with the invasion of Ukraine. In the three years since Navalny lost his freedom, multiple prominent dissidents were imprisoned, while others fled Russia under pressure.

Many of them nevertheless persisted in challenging Mr. Putin — organising abroad, pushing for sanctions on Russia, supporting like-minded Russians in exile or continuing to speak out from behind bars.

These are some of the key remaining figures:

Navalny’s core team

Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh. Most Russian opposition figures are currently either in prison or in exile abroad. File
| Photo Credit:
AP

Colleagues at the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which Navalny founded in 2011 to expose political corruption, and his other close associates often had to work without him. Even before he was imprisoned in January 2021, Navalny was subject to regular arrests and long jail stints.

In 2020, he was poisoned with a nerve agent, spent 18 days in a coma and recuperated in Germany for weeks. His prison term included more than 300 days in isolation, with communication possible but difficult from a punishment cell.

His closest associates — top strategist Leonid Volkov, head of investigations Maria Pevchikh, foundation director Ivan Zhdanov and spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh — also faced unrelenting pressure and prosecution in Russia. In recent years, all left the country and worked from abroad, providing political commentary and the foundation’s signature YouTube exposes of political corruption.

They kept pushing for Navalny’s release from prison, organised protests and mounted a campaign to undermine Mr. Putin’s image in Russia ahead of a presidential election he is almost certain to win next month.

“Alexei was awesome,” Mr. Volkov wrote Sunday on X, formerly Twitter. “He was a natural politician, very talented, very efficient. And from himself and from everyone around him, he demanded one thing: not to throw in the towel, not to give up, not to despair. … This is what he wants from us now. His life’s work must prevail.”

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Exiled Russian businessman and opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky poses during an interview in London. Mr. Khodorkovsky, who now lives in London, is one of several Russian opposition politicians trying to build a coalition with grassroots anti-war groups across the world and exiled Russian opposition figures. File

Exiled Russian businessman and opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky poses during an interview in London. Mr. Khodorkovsky, who now lives in London, is one of several Russian opposition politicians trying to build a coalition with grassroots anti-war groups across the world and exiled Russian opposition figures. File
| Photo Credit:
AP

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, 60, is a former tycoon turned Russian opposition figure in exile. Mr. Khodorkovsky spent a decade in prison in Russia on charges widely seen as political revenge for challenging Mr. Putin’s rule in the early 2000s. He was released in 2013, shortly before Russia hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. A surprise pardon from Mr. Putin on the eve of the Olympics was widely seen as an effort by the Kremlin to improve Russia’s image in the West.

Mr. Khodorkovsky was flown to Germany and later settled in London. From exile, he launched Open Russia, an opposition group that ran its own news outlet, supported candidates in various elections, provided legal aid to defendants facing politically motivated prosecutions and had an educational platform.

Open Russia and its activists the country faced constant pressure from the authorities; some were prosecuted in Russia, and one of its leaders, Andrei Pivovarov, is currently serving a four-year prison term.

The group eventually shut down, but Mr. Khodorkovsky continued his vocal criticism of the Kremlin. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago this week, he and other prominent Putin critics, including chess legend Garry Kasparov and former lawmaker Dmitry Gudkov, formed the Antiwar Committee, a broad opposition alliance that opposes the invasion and seeks to undermine Mr. Putin.

Vladimir Kara-Murza

Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza gestures standing in a glass cage in a courtroom. File

Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza gestures standing in a glass cage in a courtroom. File
| Photo Credit:
AP

Once a journalist and now a prominent opposition politician, Vladimir Kara-Murza, 42, received the longest single sentence handed to a Kremlin critic in Mr. Putin’s Russia — 25 years on charges of treason. He is serving the sentence in a Siberian penal colony and has been repeatedly placed in solitary confinement.

Mr. Kara-Murza was an associate of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, another fierce Putin critic who was assassinated near the Kremlin in 2015. A few years before that, Mr. Kara-Murza and Mr. Nemtsov lobbied for passage of the Magnitsky Act in the U.S. The law was a response to the prison death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who had exposed a tax fraud scheme. It authorised Washington to impose sanctions on Russians deemed to be human rights violators.

Mr. Kara-Murza survived what he believes were attempts to poison him in 2015 and 2017 but kept returning to Russia despite concerns that it might be unsafe for him to do so. Since his April 2022 arrest, he has continued to speak out against Mr. Putin and the war in Ukraine in multiple opinion columns and letters written from behind bars. His wife, Yevgenia, has also actively campaigned to secure freedom for him and other jailed Kremlin critics.

Ilya Yashin

Russian opposition activist and former municipal deputy of the Krasnoselsky district Ilya Yashin gestures, smiling. File

Russian opposition activist and former municipal deputy of the Krasnoselsky district Ilya Yashin gestures, smiling. File
| Photo Credit:
AP

Ilya Yashin, 40, refused to leave Russia despite the unprecedented pressure authorities applied to stifle dissent. He said that getting out of the country would undermine his value as a politician.

Mr. Yashin, an uncompromising member of a Moscow municipal council, was a vocal ally of Navalny’s. He eventually was arrested in June 2022 and later sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison for “spreading false information” about the Russian military, a criminal offence since March 2022.

The harsh sentence didn’t silence his sharp criticism of the Kremlin. Mr. Yashin’s associates regularly update his social media pages with messages he relays from prison. His YouTube channel has over 1.5 million subscribers. In a prison interview with AP in September 2022, Mr. Yashin urged ordinary Russians to help spread the word, too.

“Demand for an alternative point of view has appeared in society,” Mr. Yashin told the AP in written answers from behind bars.

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Russia’s three wars have made peace with Putin impossible

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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.

Putin’s regime is an existential threat to European civilization. If Russia wins in Ukraine, it will not stop, just as Hitler did not stop when he captured the Sudetenland. Putin will go further and won’t rest until he destroys the Western world, Leonid Gozman writes.

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Hopes for Kyiv’s relatively quick victory have not materialised and the war between Russia and Ukraine has dragged on — though this is certainly not the fault of the Ukrainians. 

The war is becoming polarising and demands for negotiations and compromise are increasingly frequent.

Those hoping for a compromise with Vladimir Putin do not fully understand the nature of his regime or him as a person.

Compromise with Putin is impossible, and any peace agreement will not lead to peace, but rather to a temporary ceasefire that Putin will use to build up his forces for a new attack.

No peace with someone who wants you dead

Putin started this war not to resolve a specific issue — there were no unsolvable contradictions between Russia and Ukraine — but to destroy Ukraine as a subject of politics, language, and culture. 

He repeatedly stated that there was never such a thing as Ukraine to begin with, that it was “invented” by Vladimir Lenin, that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, and that the Ukrainian language does not exist. 

He believes it. In Putin’s mind, destroying Ukraine is not at all aggression, but a return to a normal order. 

That is why Ukrainians can’t agree with Putin — or as Golda Meir said, “You cannot negotiate peace with someone who has come to kill you.”

Since it would be politically inviable to openly declare the destruction of Ukraine as the goal of the invasion, the Russian authorities constantly changed their war aims.

They first aimed to ensure the right to speak Russian in Donbas — which no one encroached on — then destroy biological laboratories designed to make Russian women infertile, allegedly created in Ukraine with the help of the United States. 

After came “denazification” and finally, in Dmitry Medvedev’s words, the fight against Satan. 

Putin finds your lack of gratitude disturbing

It is true: today, Russian propaganda does not talk about the goals of the war at all. For Russia, war is no longer the means, but a natural state.

The war with Ukraine is only one of three that Putin’s regime wages. The second one, no less important, is the war for the revival of the Empire. 

While the Kremlin has been preparing for it for a long time, it entered the active phase in 2008, when Russia captured 20% of Georgia’s territory. 

Putin, of course, does not seek to occupy all the countries formerly part of the Russian Empire, but he does demand special rights and control over their foreign policy. 

Russia takes every opportunity to destabilise its neighbours, from utilising the Russian diaspora to bribing politicians and organsing coups. 

Putin will never give up his “rights” to the Empire. He believes that any territory where Russian soldiers shed blood should be part of Russia or its sphere of influence, and people living there should be eternally grateful to Russia. 

The lack of gratitude angers and makes Putin even more aggressive.

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Risking global war to gain global respect

However, the main war for Putin is the one with the West, where Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and threats to Poland are just episodes. 

According to the Russian leadership, the West (or “Anglo-Saxons”) has always humiliated Russia, seeking to conquer or slow down Russia’s development. 

The motive of humiliation or lack of respect is fundamentally important to Putin. And, even when Russia did not yet exist, this was not so much of an inter-country struggle but a spiritual confrontation between the world’s good, embodied by Russia and the Russians, and evil, that is the West. 

Now, just as before, so the story goes, the West hates Russia, seeking to undermine its unity and destroy the country as a whole, and is ready to risk a global war for this.

The idea of a global confrontation with European civilization did not emerge immediately after Putin became president. 

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Putin began as a Westerniser and perceived integration of Russia into the “First World” as his mission. 

That did not work out, but Putin also did not strive to join the modern West, but rather the West of the Yalta Conference times, when the great powers could divide the planet among themselves. 

And since returning to the past turned out to be unattainable, Putin, while remaining in G8, began to pursue an anti-Western policy, hoping to lead the world’s anti-American sentiment. 

But that did not work out either: neither China, Turkey, nor Iran accepted him as the leader. That was the time when the wars began: Putin decided to gain global respect and recognition with military force.

The reign of failure and indifference

Putin needs this war for both domestic and psychological reasons. 

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His reign has been plagued by failures: the demographic situation is worsening, the technological gap is increasing, the quality of life is falling, and it is not possible to solve any of Russia’s most pressing problems. 

Contrary to popular belief, there is no support for his policies or him personally. 

People are indifferent; they have come to terms with Putin and his actions and do not feel any enthusiasm about it. 

The defeats at the front or what is declared as victories do not provoke a public reaction, and neither did Putin’s ICC arrest warrant or the drone attack on the Kremlin. 

The war with no end allows Putin to suppress discontent — we were attacked, the enemy is on the doorstep — and not think about the failures, instead plunging into the world of illusions completely, where he has been in recent years.

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Peace on Earth can only be achieved if the Putin regime is destroyed

For Putin, peace is impossible. The task of maintaining control over Russia and preserving self-respect is solved only in conditions of war. 

Peace will make the population realise the meaninglessness of their sacrifices and, most importantly, give elites an opportunity to express, in one form or another, their dissatisfaction with Putin’s policies, catastrophic both for them and the country but beneficial to Putin and his entourage. 

The dissatisfaction of the elites has been accumulating for years. Therefore, no matter what the costs are, Putin will continue the war, using any negotiations as a respite. 

This is exactly what Adolf Hitler would have done if, at the end of the war, the anti-Hitler coalition had agreed to a peace agreement with him. 

He could no longer help but fight; a stable peace meant the end of his power. It is the same for Putin. 

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He does not need peace, but only a truce. And peace on Earth, as in 1945, can only be achieved if the regime of Vladimir Putin is destroyed.

Therefore, the supply of Western weapons and financial assistance to Ukraine is not charity, but self-defence. 

The Putin system is an existential threat to European civilization. If Russia wins in Ukraine, it will not stop, just as Hitler did not stop when he captured the Sudetenland. 

Putin will go further and won’t rest until he destroys the Western world.

Leonid Gozman, Ph.D. is a Russian liberal politician, psychologist and political scientist, and a professor at Lomonosov Moscow State University in Moscow until 2020. Now in exile, Gozman was declared a “foreign agent” in 2022, then arrested and spent a month in prison for opposing the war in Ukraine.

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Don’t ban Russians. Ban Putin’s imperialism instead

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The destructive and hawkish ideology of Vladimir Putin and his mafia state cronies should be persecuted just like any other aggressive and undemocratic system of beliefs, Aleksandar Đokić writes.

Each time a case of verbal or physical abuse by Russian-speaking people against either Ukrainian refugees or liberal and outspoken citizens of the EU is reported, a new wave of debate revolving around banning tourist visas for Russian citizens appears. 

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This kind of backlash is to be expected as long as Russia’s war of aggression rages on in Europe. 

Many Europeans are rightfully outraged by the criminal, atrocities-riddled actions of the Russian state, in turn feeling threatened by anything remotely Russian. 

While it is a human reaction, it can at times resemble the dread of anything Muslim, Arabic, or even remotely Middle Eastern in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

Is this blanket response truly justified, or is it a knee-jerk reaction based on black-and-white thinking? 

What is truly ‘Russian’, after all?

For starters, how do we define someone being “Russian”? Is a “Russian” any person holding a passport of the Russian state? 

Around a fifth of the Russian population is of non-Russian ethnicity and there are a lot of cases of unreported (in the official census statistics) dual or mixed identities, that came about historically due to the presence of many different cultures and nations in what is today the territory of the Russian Federation. 

Unless we engage in the dubious practice of determining one’s actual ethnic identity in their name, it is very hard to determine who is “Russian”, and if our aim is a blanket ban on all travel from Russia itself, we will end up hurting many of those who aren’t ethnically Russian at all or do not associate themselves with the Russian state.

This kind of oversimplification of ethnic identity that would result in holding a grudge against perceived ethnic Russians or any person who speaks Russian as a mother tongue would be a serious step back and away from the ideals embraced by the European states of today.

Democratic political systems cannot participate in such practices, reminiscent of the long-forgotten phrenology. 

What political systems can ban is an ideology which inspires and feeds these unwanted behavioural patterns, especially hatemongering, warmongering, or any verbal or physical act of demeaning people based on their identity and background.

This is why European countries should ban Russian imperialism as an ideology, and persecute it like they persecute other forms of extremist ideologies such as Neo-Nazism or violent extremism. 

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Travelling on a tourist visa doesn’t have to mean it’s for pleasure

This brings us to the main point: why are we still debating tourist visas for Russians after 19 months of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine?

Why do we constantly and exclusively debate the presence of Russian tourists in Europe, when millions of Russian nationals have been emigrating to the West for decades prior to the war against Ukraine and have already become citizens of various Western countries? 

Some of these people remain proponents of Russian imperialism and spread it online or through political activism without any consequences or punishment by law. Yet, we still seem to be more infuriated by tourist visa holders.

But tourism is a luxury, not a right, correct? Yes and no. 

Viewed solely as an act of receiving pleasure from breaking the habits of mundane life by travelling to a different and exciting place — it is certainly a luxury. 

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When viewed as an escape route from a repressive autocratic system that is in place in Putin’s Russia, it ceases to be a luxury and starts to be a necessity. 

For some, leaving Russia on a tourist stamp in their passport was the only way to not end up in the country’s terrifying and intentionally harsh prison system, or worse. For others, it meant not being forced to pick up a gun and participate in the aggression in the neighbouring country.

Some might rightfully ask, but aren’t there procedures for people like that to receive political asylum, besides using tourist visas? There are, but they have proven to be very ineffective, as they haven’t produced tangible results in the last year and a half. 

What European and other Western states have not done yet is come up with a clear policy on what they would like to see from the holders of Russian passports they keep letting in.

Let’s attract the best and the brightest instead

A major gain for Europe and the West would be to focus on attracting two groups of people holding Russian passports: highly skilled specialists (with their families) and members of the educated progressive circles, including youth. 

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Instead of debating tourist visas, which can be taken away at any moment by political decree, the Western states should adopt a unified political demographic strategy toward the Russian Federation.

If swift administrative procedures are put in place which would make it possible to provide an accessible escape route to those holders of Russian passports with a desire to emigrate to the West, while possessing either highly valued skills or a progressive worldview, the question of tourist visas wouldn’t even come up. 

This kind of strategy would deal a political and demographic blow to Putin’s Russia, while simultaneously strengthening the democratic world, both economically and morally. 

While Russia would further deteriorate, already trapped in its own quagmire, the West would once again become a haven of liberty, and the Russian youth would fight to be a part of it tooth and nail.

It’s all about persecuting Putin’s imperialism

In the heat of the moment, it is easy to forget that the free world is not in a struggle against everything and everyone Russian. 

The battle is being waged between the ideal of the free, democratic order and the Russian revanchist state, whose official propaganda partly relies on the bellicose ideology of Russian imperialism.

The destructive and hawkish ideology of Vladimir Putin and his cronies should be persecuted just like any other aggressive and undemocratic system of beliefs, no matter if its proponents are Russian tourists or already naturalised immigrants from the USSR or Russia. 

A strategy, which would attract progressive holders of Russian passports and give the West the upper hand in the political strife against the most dangerous challenger to peace in Europe today, is direly needed.

In the meantime, let’s keep in mind that a European tourist visa is often the only way for those Russians who refuse to participate in Putin’s mafia state to escape the consequences of saying “no” to its toxic, murderous face. 

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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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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