Chasing down dissidents in Russia

The St. Petersburg artist and activist Alexandra Skochilenko faces up to ten years in a penal colony. For almost two weeks she has been in custody for “public dissemination of knowingly false information about the actions of the Russian armed forces”. She is accused of replacing several price tags on shelves in a supermarket with labels containing information about Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

resistance to indifference

Skochilenko wanted to protest against Russia’s war in the neighboring country, which is officially called a “military special operation”. She had been performing at concerts and designing flyers since the end of February. She had not expected that an actually harmless subversive act in the supermarket would immediately lead to criminal proceedings.

But after apparently a customer of the supermarket reported the incident to the police, initiated this extensive investigation and set a trap for Skochilenko with the help of a friend. In police custody she was humiliated as she was released from custody in a letter about the motivation for their actions wrote. The judge found the action confused citizens and caused tension in society; therefore pre-trial detention is required. According to those around her, the young artist suffers from severe celiac disease; however, the prison administration refuses to give her the necessary diet.

The case sounds disturbing, but it is just one particularly striking example of the harshness with which the Russian authorities are cracking down on opponents of the war in Ukraine. The fact that Skochilenko was denounced by a fellow citizen also fits into the current social picture in Russia. Any suspicious word in public or even on the phone about the Russian war in the neighboring country can be dangerous.

Harsh interpretation of the law

The paragraph of law that criminalizes the “discrediting of the Russian armed forces” has only been in force since the beginning of March. At least 38 criminal proceedings have already been initiated; around 1300 people are held accountable in the milder variant of the same accusation, which establishes an administrative offence. Hardly ever had repressive laws led to such a number of proceedings so quickly.

The list of seemingly absurd trials keeps getting longer: in Ivanovo, north-east of Moscow, two citizens gave free copies of George Orwell’s novel “1984” to passers-by. In Moscow, a man with an excerpt from Leo Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” posed in front of the Moscow memorial to the victims of the occupation of Kiev in World War II. They were all forgiven.

As always, the application is very arbitrary. It is neither always comprehensible who is affected and who is not, nor do lawyers see a logic in when the case is “only” an administrative offense and when the investigators initiate criminal investigations. It is also clear that within the paragraph in the penal code, the more severe version with a potentially longer imprisonment was usually chosen recently. It’s about deterrence, about setting a strong example in a short time to all those who spread a description of events in Ukraine that deviates from the official statements of the Ministry of Defense and, above all, the role of Russian soldiers in the war.

Bloggers and journalists who, according to the authorities, published “false news” about the course of the war or the armed forces are particularly affected. Numerous independent journalists saw this coming even before these censorship laws came into force and therefore left the country. There is no longer an independent media that is not blocked.

Two journalists known for their critical research in the province, Mikhail Afanasyev from the Siberian region of Khakassia and Sergei Mikhailov from the Altai, are in custody. A St. Petersburg journalist faces the same fate. Media manager Ilya Krasilshchik, against whom criminal proceedings have been initiated for publishing on Telegram about Bucha’s murders, has been abroad since the end of February.

Poisoned twice – now in custody

The best-known case to date, however, concerns Vladimir Kara-Mursa, an important figure in the Russian opposition. He has been in custody since last Friday. He, too, is charged with the harsher part of the paragraph about the “discrediting” of the army. The police arrested him on a pretext and had him sentenced to prison. Meanwhile, criminal proceedings were opened against him. He is accused of making an appearance before members of the Arizona state legislature about the war in Ukraine. He spread fake news and expressed “political hatred”.

It is no coincidence that the investigators used these statements, made in a foreign language in front of a foreign audience, as an opportunity to take action against Kara-Mursa. The activist has been a thorn in the side of the authorities for years because he spent years campaigning in the US – where his family lives for security reasons – and in Europe for sanctions against Russian officials who violate human rights in Russia. He was one of the driving forces behind the first US sanctions of this kind in response to the death in prison of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

Twice Kara-Mursa survived severe poisoning, which could later be attributed to the same Russian secret service death squad that carried out the assassination of Alexei Navalny. Unlike Navalny, Kara-Mursa works more in the background; he coordinated opposition groups and lobbied for their concerns abroad. But he insisted on returning to Russia again and again. This is the only way he can be politically effective. Now he too is likely to disappear behind bars for years.

The hunt for those who think differently is increasing

However, the drastic censorship laws are not enough for Russian officials. Behind every dissenter, behind every statement by a regime opponent, they sense foreign influence. An amendment to the media law, for example, envisages expanding the penalties for “discrediting” the army and ultimately criminalizing any reporting that does not exclusively reflect the official point of view. To this end, the Attorney General’s Office should be able to revoke editorial licenses and journalists’ accreditations and close the offices of foreign media in Russia without a judicial decision. Only the communists have so far clearly opposed the project.

At the same time, the application of the law on “foreign agents” is to be expanded. On the one hand, companies should also be able to get the status. On the other hand, for private individuals who are branded with it, proof of foreign financing is no longer necessary. It is enough to receive alleged foreign aid or influence – or simply to be related to someone already classified as an “agent”. The examples of those who have been declared “foreign agents” in recent weeks – among them the longtime editor-in-chief of the now closed radio station Echo Moskvy, Alexei Venediktov – confirm that it is only about branding dissidents.

In the division of society into good and bad (“national traitors”) promoted by Vladimir Putin and his propagandists, this is more than just an annoying attribution. On Monday, Putin presented to the General Prosecutor’s Office an alleged assassination plot against leading Russian television propagandists, uncovered by the FSB and organized by the Ukrainian secret service.

Commentators critical of the regime dismissed the scenario presented as completely implausible. But they also see it as a worrying beacon. The “plot” serves to inflame anti-Ukraine and anti-war sentiment and distract attention from the army’s failures. Putin instructed the Attorney General’s Office to take even more consistent action against “extremists” and their alleged attempts at sedition, which were controlled from outside. The “special operation” against Ukraine is radicalizing Russian domestic policy. The hunt for those who think differently is likely to gain momentum.