BE INFORMED
Subscribe for the latest
updates of Free Russia
Please join us for an in-person discussion on The Plight of the Kremlin’s Political Prisoners on Monday, October 30 from 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm at the Victims of Communism Museum located at 900 15th St NW in Washington, DC. The event will give a voice for those who can no longer speak for themselves and will include an interactive exhibit featuring photos and quotes of prominent political prisoners held by the Kremlin.
Space is limited, RSVP is required. The conversation is public and on-the record, members of the press are welcome.
The event will mark the International Day of Political Prisoners and feature substantive updates by:
- Sergei Davidis, Head of Political Prisoners Program, Memorial Human Rights Center;
- Evgenia Kara-Murza, Advocacy Director at Free Russia Foundation;
- Mariana Katzarova, the UN Special Rapporteur on Russia;
- MEP Andrius Kubilius, the Standing Rapporteur on Russia at the EU Parliament;
- Karinna Moskalenko, Russia’s leading human rights lawyer, Founder of the Center de la Protection Internationale; and
- Vadim Prokhorov, lawyer for political prisoner Vladimir Kara-Murza.
Expert presentations will be followed by an extensive Q&A session with the audience. The discussion will be moderated by Natalia Arno, President of Free Russia Foundation. To reserve your spot, please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/743473939567?aff=oddtdtcreator
Speakers’ Bios:
Andrius Kubilius is a Lithuanian politician and a Member of the European Parliament (MEP). He served as Prime Minister of Lithuania from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012. He was the leader of the conservative political party Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats. Kubilius became a member of the pro-independence Sąjūdis movement, which favored separation from the Soviet Union. He later became the Executive Secretary of the Sąjūdis Council. Soon after the re-establishment of Lithuania’s independence, Kubilius was elected to the Seimas (parliament). Since then, Kubilius has been an active figure in Lithuanian politics. Kubillius is the current Standing Rapporteur on Russia at the EU Parliament.
Mariana Katzarova (Bulgaria) was appointed as Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Russian Federation by the UN Human Rights Council on April 4, 2023. Ms. Katzarova led the UN Human Rights Council’s mandated examination of the human rights situation in Belarus in 2021-22. During the first 2 years of the armed conflict in Ukraine (2014-16), she led the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission team in Donbas as head of the regional office in Eastern Ukraine. For a decade she headed the Amnesty International investigations of human rights in Russia and the two conflicts in Chechnya. Ms. Katzarova founded RAW in WAR (Reach All Women in War) in 2006 after working as a journalist and human rights investigator in the war zones of Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya. At RAW, she established the annual Anna Politkovskaya Award for women human rights defenders working in war and conflict zones. She was Advisor to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on combating human trafficking, and a senior advisor at the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe).
Evgenia Kara-Murza is a Russian human rights activist and wife of political prisoner Vladimir Kara-Murza, the twice-poisoned Russian opposition leader, imprisoned since April 11, 2022 for speaking out about the war on Ukraine. She worked as a translator and interpreter in Russian, English, and French for pro-democracy NGOs including the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, the Institute of Modern Russia, and Pen America. She subsequently joined her husband Vladimir at Free Russia Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan international organization supporting civil society and democratic development in Russia. Advocating for human rights accountability and promoting civil society and democratic change in Russia, she serves as FRF Advocacy Director.
Sergei Davidis is Head of Political Prisoners Support Program and Member of the Council at the Memorial Human Rights Center in Moscow, Russia. He was educated in Sociology at Moscow State University and on Law at Moscow State Law Academy. For many years, he was a participant and one of the organizers of the democratic opposition movement. His research interests are closely related to activities to support political prisoners in Russia, and he studies the sociological and legal aspects of politically motivated deprivation of liberty, in particular, in the context of world practice and international norms.
Karinna Moskalenko is Russia’s leading human rights lawyer. She was the first Russian lawyer to take a case to the European Court for Human Rights and won the first ever case against the Russian government at the court in Strasbourg. She founded the Center for International Protection in Russia in 1994. She is a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group. While some of her clients are household names: Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Garry Kasparov, Igor Sutyagin, Alexander Litvinenko to name a few, she has also represented countless victims of human rights abuses. She won more than 100 cases including AH & others v. Russian Federation where she was representing the rights of American families who were in the process of adopting children when Russia banned US adoptions with their so-called Dima Yakovlev law. Karinna moved her family to Strasbourg in 2006 where she founded the “Center de la Protection Internationale,” a human rights litigation NGO focused on litigating cases in international courts, which has filed and won more than 500 cases on behalf of its clients. For nine year, Karinna was a Commissioner for the International Commission for Jurists for which she is an Honorary member. Currently she is a head of the experts’ group, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council for the UN High Commissioner working on the UN mandated examination of human rights situation in Belarus. Vadim Prokhorov is a Russian human-rights lawyer who has defended critics of the Kremlin, including prominent opposition politicians and anti-corruption campaigners. He has defended many human rights activists, such as Boris Nemtsov, Ilya Yashin, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Vladimir Bukovsky. Prokhorov’s work as a lawyer has made him an important figure in the human rights field, as the Russian government has increasingly suppressed public dissent and oppositional work. This increase in governmental repression gravely impacted Prokhorov’s work, who has been representing human rights defender and opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza for the last ten years. Currently, Vadim Prokhorov continues his advocacy to protect the Russian opposition, political prisoners in Russian courts – online from abroad.
Free Russia Foundation, along with our staff, expresses our deep concern and indignation at the final verdict delivered today, July 28, 2023, by the Stavropol Court in the Russian city of Pyatigorsk, regarding the participants of the “Ingush Case.”
The verdict remains unchanged since December 2021 when Akhmed Barakhoev, Musa Malsagov, and Malsag Uzhakhov were each sentenced to 9 years in a general regime colony. Ismail Nalgiev, Bagaudin Khautiev, and Barakh Chemurziev received 8-year sentences each, while Zarifa Sautieva was sentenced to 7.5 years. They were all found guilty of using violence against representatives of the authorities, establishing an extremist group, and participating in its activities.
The appeal trial lasted for over half a year, with the defense lawyers presenting their arguments for 12 days during the debates. In contrast, the prosecutor’s speech was remarkably brief, lasting only five minutes, where he simply read out the arguments from the objections, which were concise and fit on just a few sheets of paper.
This stands as one of the most significant political cases in Russian history. It all started on March 27, 2019, when a rally against the alteration of Ingushetia’s administrative border with the Chechen Republic in Magas led to a crackdown on the Ingush opposition. Consequently, administrative cases were initiated against hundreds of participants in the people’s protest, and dozens of them faced criminal charges.
The Memorial Center, an organization that monitors politically motivated cases, has officially designated all those convicted in the “Ingush Case” as political prisoners. According to Sergei Davidis, who serves as the co-chairman of the Memorial Center, this case stands out as one of the most unprecedented political cases in Russian history. He states, “Civil society leaders are being accused merely for being civil society leaders. There is no fabrication involved; instead, they are trying to twist perfectly legitimate actions into criminal acts.”
Free Russia Foundation shares the same perspective as Memorial and urges the international community to take notice of this blatant violation of human rights.
The verdict handed down to the participants in the “Ingush Case” is a true mockery of justice, primarily because the prosecution was unable to demonstrate that the oppositionists had actually formed an extremist group. Additionally, there was a failure to provide evidence of any criminal conspiracy to incite violence against law enforcement personnel. Throughout the indictment, words such as “probably,” “presumably,” and “maybe” were frequently employed, undermining the strength of the case. Notably, the word “approximately” was used more than ten thousand times
A few years back, Ingushetia demonstrated to the entire nation that it was possible to conduct multi-day protests with thousands of people in a peaceful manner, without jeopardizing law and order. However, the Kremlin viewed this as a display of free thinking that clashed with the current regime’s control, leading them to take punitive action against the organizers of the peaceful protest. This move was intended to send a warning to residents of other regions in Russia, showcasing the potential consequences they might face for seeking justice.
The criminal case brought against the organizers is undeniably politically motivated, with the aim of maintaining power and suppressing public activism from critics of Putin’s regime. The verdict delivered today represents yet another step in the direction of quashing constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms of not only the people of Ingushetia but also citizens across Russia as a whole. It highlights the authorities’ attempt to curb any form of public activism and dissent.
Free Russia Foundation calls for the immediate release of all individuals unjustly convicted in the “Ingush Case.” Furthermore, we demand that the officials responsible for their unwarranted persecution be held accountable and brought to justice.
We urge the international community, human rights organizations, and all those who stand for freedom and justice to demonstrate their solidarity with the participants in the “Ingush Case.” It is crucial to support their fight for justice and the protection of human rights. Freedom and justice are fundamental and non-negotiable values, and any violation of these principles demands a resolute response and unified support.
We cannot afford to remain indifferent to the ongoing situation, and by coming together in solidarity, we can work towards fostering a truly democratic society.
Free Russia Foundation is closely following the news surrounding the activities of the Wagner Group inside Russia with grave concern.
The events themselves, the diverging agendas advanced by various Russian power groups, and how they may unfold in the coming days are highly dynamic and uncertain. What is clear is that the political situation in Russia is extremely unstable and volatile, with the potential to escalate quickly and posing risks far beyond Russian borders.
This development, however, is a logical evolution of the lawlessness, violence, and corruption purposefully harnessed by Putin in order to remain in power and brutally wielded against Russian civil society in the form of repressions, and against the people of Ukraine in the form of military aggression.
Free Russia Foundation calls on the democratic world to provide Ukraine with all it requires for a decisive victory on the battlefield against Russian forces and to strengthen its commitment to pro-democracy Russians, both in-country and those forced into exile—as the two prerequisites for peace and stability in the region.
On June 5-6, 2023, the European Parliament in Brussels at the initiative of Lithuanian MEP Andrius Kubilius and others, hosts a two-day conference “The Day After”, with the participation of over 200 representatives from Russia’s anti-war and opposition groups, journalists, prominent cultural figures, as well as European politicians.
On June 5, 2023, Natalia Arno, President of Free Russia Foundation spoke at the European Parliament in Brussels. In her opening remarks to the inaugural session of the Brussels Dialogue— Roundtable of EU and Democratic Russia Representatives, Ms. Arno described the heroic efforts by Russian civil society to stop the war and stand up to Putin’s regime; and called for a closer cooperation between Russian and European democratic forces to support Ukraine’s victory and ensure a lasting peace in Europe.
Below is the transcript of her full remarks.
Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished members of the European Parliament and EU institutions, esteemed representatives from across the transatlantic community, and my dear friends and colleagues who are selflessly fighting for a free and democratic Russia,
Thank you all for being here today. My special thanks to the MEP from Lithuania, Standing Rapporteur on Russia, Andrius KUBILIUS and to Shadow Rapporteurs – Messrs. CIMOSZEWICZ, GUETTA and LAGODINSKY – and their amazing teams who worked tirelessly to gather us all for this historic event. We are thankful for a very timely realization at the EU level that we, pro-democracy anti-war anti-regime Russians, are an important actor in efforts to stop the war and the key force in transforming Russia into democracy.
The Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February shook the world with its brutality and aggression, wretchedly echoing World War II. This war has been the first war watched on social media, brought to our living rooms– with every brutal death, every destroyed hospital, every orphaned child—staring into our face, breaking our heart, hundreds of times per day. But it’s not something that only exists on a computer screen. The reality on the ground is both unspeakable destruction and human cruelty that defies who we crave to be as humans. This war is black and white. The fight between the evil and the good, between the dictatorship and the democratic world with Ukraine on the front lines. There are no half tones, no moral ambivalence. Just like Hitler, Putin is perpetrating a criminal atrocity not only against Ukraine, but against freedom, democracy and our civilized way of life.
This war is a huge tragedy for Ukraine, but it is also a catastrophic disaster for Russia. It’s a tragedy for so many Russians who understand what this war is, and it’s a tragedy that there are so many Russians who don’t understand it at all.
This war has forced the world to take a new look at Russia. What is this country and who are these people engaged in unspeakable acts of brutality? Who are these people who passively watch as their army kills and destroys without any reason? They must be pure evil reincarnated!
As the world, in pain and anger, looked for ways to respond, some of your governments shut your borders to all Russian passport holders, cancelled air traffic from Russia, pulled out businesses, denied services to all Russians, equated all Russians to Putin. We understood the reason for this.
But let me remind you something. The Russian civil society and independent media were the first victim of Putin’s regime. We were the first ones to warn about the dangerous, corrupt, criminal, murderous nature of Putin’s regime. We were those telling you that his internal repressions will lead to external aggression. We were those who exposed the Kremlin’s export of corruption, influence campaigns in Europe and elsewhere. We were those who discovered Prigozhin’s factory of trolls and other disinformation tricks. We were the ones pleading the West not to enable Putin, not to operate with “realpolitik” and “business as usual”. In Putin’s war against freedom and democracy, Russian civil society has always been one of his priority targets. Many of us have paid a terrible price ourselves – losing our homeland, in many cases losing our freedom to imprisonment and to some of us, losing lives or family members.
While we often hear there are no good Russians, I know many. All of us who are here today were invited by the European Parliament for our merits. We and our colleagues have moved mountains. Hundreds of us here represent civil society organizations, media outlets, grassroots initiatives with dozens of thousands activists and journalists in our networks. We communicate to millions through our YouTube and Telegram channels, newspapers, programs, and events. All of us are in exile now.
Inside Russia, many keep resisting, too. According to OVD-info, a portal tracking activism inside Russia, since the full-scale invasion there have been only 25 days without arrests for anti-war protests. There is the story of a Siberian grandmother— anti-war activist Natalia Filonova from my native Republic of Buryatia, whose special needs son was taken away from her in retribution for her protests and sent to a remote orphanage, while she herself is in jail awaiting trial. Another political prisoner Ilya Yashin, has just published a story about Natalia Filonova. Yashin himself is in jail for 8.5 years for telling the truth about Bucha.
Another real Russian patriot is a dear friend and man whom most of you know personally— Vladimir Kara-Murza, who has survived two assassination attempts by Putin’s regime, two comas, and still went back to Russia to testify to what is right and what is true. He is now in prison on a Stalin-era 25year sentence.
Yesterday it was the birthday of Alexey Navalny who also survived Novichok poisoning and is slowly being killed in prison.
All these names and many others will be mentioned at this conference and shouldn’t be forgotten. There are tens of thousands of documented stories like these. Tens of thousands of “good” humans arrested and prosecuted for their anti-war and pro-democracy stance.
Why am I telling you all of this? In hopes that you see that Russian civil society was the first front in Putin’s war on democracy and peace. As Western leaders dined and shook hands with Putin for 20 years, as Europeans accommodated Putin’s regime in exchange for cheap energy, as they offered citizenships to his associates, Putin was busy eradicating the Russian political opposition, independent media and civil society.
Today, we address a pressing issue that lies at the heart of our shared destiny and demands our immediate attention and decisive action. Through all this shock from the devastating tragedy that we are all experiencing, I want to bring to you a message of resilience, hope and an urgent plea for solidarity. We, pro-democracy anti-war anti-regime Russians, are not only first victims of Putin’s regime, and not only targets for friendly fire and problems for your governments because we need visas and bank accounts, but most importantly, we are agents of change. Not foreign agents or undesirables as the Kremlin labels us, but agents of change, agents of the Russian people and Russia’s future. We are the part of the solution. We are the ones who are willing to transform Russia, to make it normal and civilized.
No doubt that Ukraine will win, but after the war it won’t be easy. We understand doubts about Russia’s democratization prospects, but we, pro-democracy anti-war anti-regime Russians, can’t afford to believe that freedom and democracy is not possible in our home country. Democracy in Russia is the only guarantee of sustainability of Ukraine’s victory and a key factor of stability and security in Europe and globally.
Those of us invited to this event have been working tirelessly as supporters of change for years. Our collective resume includes rallies against media capture and Khodorkovsky’s arrest in Putin’s early days, election observation missions proving massive fraud in all levels of elections throughout the country, “Dissenters Marches”, rallies on Bolotnaya and Sakharova and many other squares throughout the country and throughout the years, against the annexation of Crimea and invasion to Eastern Ukraine then and the full-scale invasion now. Our collective resume includes advocating for sanctions, both personal and sectoral, advocating for enforcement of sanctions and for making it harder for the Kremlin to circumvent them. Our collective resume includes assistance to Ukraine – evacuations from the war zone, search for Ukrainian POWs, litigation and advocacy on behalf of Ukrainian hostages of Putin’s regime held in Russian jails, cooperation on international justice mechanisms including the Tribunal and on documenting war crimes, humanitarian assistance to Ukrainians including shelters, clothing, medication. Our collective resume includes huge efforts by Russian independent media, bloggers, influencers, grassroots initiatives to tell the truth about this brutal war, to disseminate the factful information, to counter Kremlin’s narratives, to influence public opinion inside Russia. Our collective resume also includes discussions on how to achieve political transition, how to conduct sustainable reforms, how to make deputinization and even desovietization of Russia.
We are not Europe’s headache, we are your asset. We ask our European partners to use our expertise, because nobody knows Russia better than us. Nobody knows Putin regime and his methods better than us. Nobody knows the Russian people better than us. Individually we do a lot. Collectively as a Russian pro-democracy anti-war movement we can do even more. With your solidarity, with the support of the democratic world, we can win. Working together is a force multiplier.
When I looked on your website yesterday, the main stated aims of the European Union within its borders are: to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its citizens.
How do we promote peace now? We do everything we possibly can to make sure Ukraine wins this war. But it is clear, that until there is a real political change in Russia, until democracy and civil rights are reestablished for the Russian people, until Putin’s regime is brought to justice, no lasting peace is possible. It’s very practical for the Western democracies to support, strengthen and grow us— inside and outside of Russia.
I am here to call on the EU as a community— to give voice to pro-democracy anti-war Russians at European institutions. Regular sessions of this conference, new report on Russia by the EU Parliament, EU Special Representative for Russia and other working mechanisms are important to discuss plans on reconstructing Ukraine after the war, prosecuting war criminals, and reforming Russia after Putin. So that Russians inside Russia see that Putin is wrong— the West does not seek to destroy Russia, and that Russians who are for democracy are not outcasts but are embraced by the international democratic community.
We need a coherent Europe-wide strategy on how to stabilize the Russian civil society— save us from peril, prevent us from quitting the fight, help us mobilize and engage Russian society. This means clear legalization policies; some standard approach to our ability to work and travel. That means the end of the punitive measures such as denial of services that are not only counterproductive but also are illegal under the EU law. That means judging us on the basis of our values and our actions, not on the basis of our citizenship and nationality. That means support of our programs and initiatives.
In this room there are Russians from different regions and organizations, of different backgrounds, with different opinions and you might see some debates and disagreement throughout the program, but we have one unified position: Ukraine must win the war, and Russia must change from the inside to be a reliable and stable partner for the democratic world. Russia must return to its fundamental values of producing great poets, composers, physicists, and philosophers instead of being hackers, invaders, and war criminals. We in this room are here to join hands with our European partners and work with you to make this happen.
While traveling abroad recently, Free Russia Foundation’s president fell ill under circumstances that cause great concern. The matter is under investigation.
The health and safety of our staff and beneficiaries are our paramount concern.
Free Russia Foundation continues its work for a free, democratic, peaceful and prosperous Russia, reintegrated into the international community as a constructive and positive actor.
Dear colleagues and friends,
Today, on April 17, 2023, the Russian judicial system handed down a monstrous sentence to Vladimir Kara-Murza, a politician, journalist, historian, our colleague and friend — a 25-year prison sentence, which effectively means the rest of his life. The verdict was reached based on false accusations, despite the absence of any evidence to support them.
We are at a loss for words to express our outrage and indignation at this unjust and merciless verdict. This is a clear act of revenge, without any basis or justification. The Putin regime no longer even attempts to make its accusations appear plausible. This is not merely a kangaroo justice, but rather a repeat of Stalin’s criminal statutes, his allegations, and his sentences. It is a new version of the year 1937. The Russian authorities are repeating the errors of the past, and leading the country directly towards the Gulag. In one of his letters from prison, Vladimir Kara-Murza wrote, “When evil is not recognized, condemned, and punished, it will inevitably return. This is the terrible lesson that post-Soviet Russia has taught the world.”
Many of us know Vladimir Kara-Murza not only as a public figure but also as a hero, a fighter for freedom and justice in Russia, and a close associate of Boris Nemtsov. Despite surviving two severe poisonings in 2015 and 2017, which brought him close to death, Vladimir continued to fight for the freedom and rights of Russian citizens. However, his health has significantly deteriorated since being imprisoned, and he is experiencing a loss of sensation in his limbs. Before our eyes, Vladimir Kara-Murza, a true patriot of Russia, is slowly dying in prison and may become another victim of Vladimir Putin’s regime.
The trial of Vladimir Kara-Murza was a ploy to silence his voice and remove him from the path of those who are willing to maintain their power in Russia at any cost. This is a clear act of political revenge from the Kremlin, in response to his longstanding pro-democracy stance and opposition activities, his active participation in advocating for personal international sanctions under the Magnitsky Act, and his public criticism of Vladimir Putin’s war on the people of Ukraine.
Vladimir Kara-Murza is a prisoner of conscience and must be released immediately and unconditionally. The criminal charges against him must be dropped.
Free Russia Foundation is urging the international community, public figures, and human rights organizations to increase their pressure on the Kremlin to release Vladimir Kara-Murza from detention, or to exchange him as part of humanitarian programs. We invite everyone to join our #FreeKaraMurza campaign and condemn this unjust sentence. We strongly believe that only through unity and solidarity can we secure Vladimir’s freedom.
We also want to express our support for Vladimir Kara-Murza and his family during this difficult time for them.
Free Russia Foundation will continue to fight for freedom and democracy in Russia until fundamental rights are reinstated. We encourage all Russian citizens to remain courageous, not to succumb to threats, and to resist evil. Justice will always be on the side of truth and freedom, and light will inevitably overcome darkness.
Today the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on several Russian officials responsible for the incarceration and prosecution of Vladimir Kara-Murza, a politician, journalist, human rights activist, and prisoner of conscience. The update from the U.S. Treasury Department included the names of six Russians who faced sanctions: Oleg Sviridenko, Ilya Kozlov, Elena Lenskaya, Danila Mikheev, Diana Mischenko, and Andrey Zadachin.
Oleg Sviridenko, the Deputy Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation, supervised the department for NGOs in the Russian Ministry of Justice, which is responsible for placing individuals on the register of “foreign agents.” Elena Lenskaya is the judge of the Basmanny District Court in Moscow who ordered Kara-Murza’s detention. Andrei Zadachin is the prosecutor of the Investigative Committee, who ruled to initiate a case of “fakes” against the politician. Danila Mikheev is the Director of the “Independent Expert Center for the Development of Humanitarian Expertise,” whose expertise has formed the basis of a number of criminal cases against Russian opposition figures. In the case against Mr. Kara-Murza, Mikheev acted as an expert and provided a report that served as the basis for the prosecution. Diana Mishchenko is the judge who issued the initial order for Kara-Murza’s arrest and sentenced him to 15 days in jail. Ilya Kozlov is the judge who rejected Kara-Murza’s appeal of Mischenko’s administrative detention order.
The sanctions imposed by the U.S. include asset freezes and entry bans into the country for individuals responsible for human rights violations and suppression of the Russian opposition activist’s freedoms.
“The U.S. Treasury joins our many national and international partners in calling for Vladimir Kara-Murza’s immediate and unconditional release,” said Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson. “His arbitrary detention is another instance of the Kremlin manipulating Russia’s legal system to silence dissent. Kara-Murza, Alexei Navalny, and so many others in Russia who are unjustly imprisoned are not forgotten, and we will continue to promote accountability for perpetrators of these abuses on the international stage.”
In 2022, U.S. senators and leading human rights organizations called on President Biden to impose sanctions on those responsible for Kara-Murza’s unjust imprisonment. Amnesty International recognized Kara-Murza as a prisoner of conscience in May 2022, and in September of that year, Senators Jim Risch and Robert Menendez urged President Biden to make determination on whether Kara-Murza’s arrest constituted a gross violation of human rights and whether sanctions would be imposed on those responsible. Last October, Human Rights First formally recommended sanctions to the U.S. Treasury Department and State Department, identifying 13 Russians involved in Kara-Murza’s arrest and prosecution. In November 2022, Canada became the first country to impose sanctions on the persecutors of the Russian opposition activist.
The politician has been imprisoned in Russia since April 2022 and has been facing continuous expansion of charges against him. Initially, he was accused of spreading false information about the Russian military (under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), which was initiated after his speech at the Arizona State House of Representatives in the United States where he referred to the bombing of residential areas and social infrastructure facilities in Ukraine. He was later charged under Article 284.1(1) of the Criminal Code for participating in the activities of an “undesirable” organization and subsequently charged with high treason (under Article 275 of the Criminal Code) for making three public appearances in Lisbon, Helsinki, and Washington, D.C., where he criticized the Russian authorities. If convicted, Vladimir Kara-Murza could face up to 25 years in prison.
In December 2022, Kara-Murza was prohibited from talking to his children on the phone by the prosecutor, who claimed that such conversations “could create a real threat to the proper conduct of criminal proceedings, as well as interfere with the production of the case.”
In March 2023, Vladimir Kara-Murza’s was placed in a punishment cell. His health deteriorated, and he began to lose sensitivity in his feet. His lawyer Vadim Prokhorov stated that his client had developed peripheral polyneuropathy as a result of two severe poisonings with military grade chemical agent.
Vladimir Kara-Murza has been involved in political activities for over 20 years. Together with Boris Nemtsov, one of the leaders of the Russian opposition, he actively contributed to the promotion of the so-called “Magnitsky List” in the U.S. in 2012. The document launched the practice of personal sanctions against Russian officials involved in the violation of basic human rights for the first time. On February 27, 2015, Nemtsov was shot right outside the Kremlin. Kara-Murza himself nearly died in May 2015 as a result of severe poisoning with military grade chemical agent at the direction of Putin’s government. In 2017, he was hospitalized again with similar symptoms. In honor of the assassinated Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Kara-Murza organized a series of renaming of streets and squares in world capitals where Russian embassy buildings are located.
In 2022, Kara-Murza was awarded the Václav Havel Prize for Human Rights and the German Axel Springer Stiftung Prize for Courage. In 2023, the Estonian Foreign Ministry handed over the state award for Vladimir Kara-Murza – the Distinguished Service Cross II degree – to the politician’s wife, Eugenia. In letters and articles that Vladimir Kara-Murza regularly writes from SIZO No. 5, he often emphasizes that he does not regret anything, as “the price of silence is unacceptable.” He also expresses support for Russian political prisoners and their aspirations to end the war in Ukraine.
Dear colleagues and friends,
Today we are marking a dark date — the anniversary of the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, one of the most tragic events in the history of modern Europe. This senseless and brutal act of aggression has taken lives of tens of thousands, destroyed cities and villages, and rendered deep wounds that will take a long time to heal.
We express our deepest condolences to all those affected by this unfathomable tragedy — to those residents of Ukraine who lost their loved ones, friends, homes, and livelihood.
Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine has gone on since the morning of February 24, 2022. Russian military is launching airstrikes against military and civilian infrastructure, destroying not only airfields, military units, or oil depots, but also power plants, schools, kindergartens, hospitals, and churches. The shelling of residential areas is carried out with artillery, multiple rocket launchers, and ballistic missiles, in violation of the rules of warfare, moral standards, and religious precepts.
On this day, we remember the victims of this tragedy and express our deepest sorrow to the families and friends of the victims. The hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians dead and wounded, the millions of broken lives, and the cities razed to the ground — they cannot be brought back nor forgotten. We remember those who continue to languish in the shadow of the war, suffering from its consequences.
We denounce the aggressive policy of Putin’s regime as the main cause of this war. For years, the Kremlin had conducted hybrid operations, violating Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity with impunity. Free Russia Foundation condemns Vladimir Putin and his accomplices for their role in perpetrating countless crimes against humanity. International law and Ukrainian sovereignty are inviolable and should never be threatened by other states.
Today we recognize not only the pain, loss, and suffering, but also the courage and resilience of Ukrainians who defied evil and stood shoulder to shoulder to defend their homeland. When Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, his delusional plan was for the Russian military to capture Kyiv in three days. One year later, the Russian military is nowhere near achieving that objective. We express our admiration and unconditional solidarity with the people of Ukraine who fearlessly fights for their rights to life, freedom, and independence. We pledge our support in this struggle every step of the way.
We are grateful to the Russian anti-war activists and organizations who are courageously speaking out against this war and Putin’s aggressive policies, to those who said without equivocation “No to war!” We commend the Russians who continue to fight to end this conflict. Ending this war is an absolute prerequisite for any positive future for the Russian nation.
We must not remain silent or inactive in the face of Putin’s regime and its aggressive foreign policy. Such complacency will only serve to bolster his hold on power and further his expansionist agenda. We call on our fellow compatriots in Russia to take action against Putin’s rule using all available methods, to disseminate information about the situation in Ukraine and human rights violations in Russia, to support independent media and journalists, and to endorse anti-war initiatives. Let us stand together in solidarity and fight for a better future, free from the clutches of tyranny.
We demand an immediate and unequivocal end to the inhumane war that has plagued Ukraine, and we call for the swift withdrawal of all Russian troops. Furthermore, we firmly assert that those responsible for the heinous crimes committed during this conflict must be held accountable for their actions and face justice to the fullest extent of the law.
We urge all those who cherish peace and democratic ideals to join efforts for ending this senseless violence and offer unwavering support to those who strive for freedom and human rights of Ukrainian citizens. Light will always triumph over darkness.
In May 2015, a report titled “Putin. War” was launched in Moscow, detailing the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea and direct involvement in the military conflict in Donbass. The work on this report had been originally initiated by Boris Nemtsov, a charismatic leader of the Russian opposition, who tragically assassinated in the center of Moscow before he could finish it. His allies, including politician Ilya Yashin, who has been recently sentenced to a lengthy prison term in a clear case of political persecution, completed the report. Its preamble is a powerful call to action: “We should mass-print this report and give it out on the streets. Let us tell the Russian people how Putin started this war.”
The war. Since 2014, this menacing word has been encroaching, like a dark cloud, on European skies, until it finally exploded in 2022, raining down on Ukraine with thousands of rockets, destroying cities, killing and wounding civilians, sending millions of refugees away from home. February 24, 2022—the day the Kremlin began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine—has divided the life of millions into before and after.
The past year has been life-changing for many. Last December, few could have imagined that the Donbass conflict would turn into an all-out war in the heart of Europe, precipitating humanitarian, energy, and other crises of global scale. With the onset of war, in Russia, we have seen a disturbing deterioration of state institutions, a massive wave of repression against dissidents, an imposition of military censorship, an increasingly unhinged propaganda, and a dramatic exodus of the Russians who opposed the war. The main challenge—the crisis of confidence—has emerged against the backdrop of Russia’s blatant violation of international treaties, norms, and human decency, but has not reached its peak yet. This war has also exposed flaws and failures that we all, as humankind, will be confronting for years to come.
Since its inception in 2014, Free Russia Foundation has been setting off alarms about the Kremlin’s growing aggression that threatens not only Russian citizens, but the entire world. On February 24, 2022, we strongly condemned Russian authorities’ criminal decision to launch an unprovoked, aggressive war against sovereign Ukraine. Russia’s forceful seizure of another country’s territory, its war crimes, and nuclear blackmail cannot be justified under any circumstances.
The invasion of Ukraine was shocking, painful, and profoundly traumatic for all of us. Yet, instead of incapacitating us, it strengthened our resolve, giving us new energy and purpose. Ending the war and alleviating the suffering it has unleashed became our focus. Since day one of the war, we have been campaigning to tell the truth about Putin’s war in Ukraine to the Russian people, spearheading efforts to free Ukrainian citizens taken hostage by the Kremlin, and assisting Russian activists, journalists, and politicians in exile so that they could continue their pro-democracy and anti-war efforts.
Helping Ukrainians brutalized by the war has been our priority. FRF has organized over 60 evacuation missions from the war zones in Kyiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhya, Kramatorsk, and others, taking to safety thousands of people—and their pets. We purchased medical equipment for Ukrainians in need, sending from the U.S. 200 tactical turnstiles (CAT), 70 equipped first-aid kits (IFAK), 70 anti-burn stickers, 70 breathing tubes; from Israel 105 emergency bandages, 110 anti-blood patches, 50 hemostatic bandages; from Turkey 80 walkie-talkies, and from Poland over 200 sleeping bags. We were sending tourniquets and drones to Ukraine.
On June 12, Free Russia Foundation coordinated anti-war rallies in 80 cities across 37 countries, striving to amplify Russians’ anti-war voices, show activists inside Russia that they are not alone, that there is international support for their fight, and counter the Kremlin propaganda’s claim that all Russians approve of the war.
On June 16, the Foundation launched an international campaign—#NOTOWAR / #НЕТВОЙНЕ—to unite voices of the Russian speakers around the world and help stop the war. In the wake of the Kremlin’s suppression of domestic dissent, this campaign calls on Russian diasporas and Russians in exile to speak out against the war—including on behalf of those Russians who, for objective reasons, cannot openly express their views. Through protests, information campaigns, and human rights activities, we pressure Russian authorities to withdraw troops from Ukraine, demonstrating the presence of a global anti-war Russian-speaking community. Our campaign includes both expert analyses and stories of ordinary Russians who have been affected by the war.
In September, the announced partial mobilization in Russia triggered a second wave of emigration. According to some estimates, between 150,000 and 1,500,000 citizens left the country—potentially amounting to the largest exodus in Russia’s recent history. Due to the drastic nature of this emigration wave, many Russians faced serious challenges along the way—from visa issues to financial hardships to acute emotional and psychological crises. FRF addressed this situation by providing legal and counseling support as well as drawing attention of European officials, diplomats, and journalists to these issues. Our legal aid program reached over 600 citizens of Russia and over 500 residents of Belarus. We helped several ethnic minority groups to evacuate thousands of people to Kazakhstan and Mongolia.
In the second half of 2022, Free Russia Foundation opened Resource Centers throughout Europe—in Berlin, Tallinn, Vilnius, and Tbilisi. These are public spaces where exiled anti-war Russian activists as well as Ukrainian activists working on humanitarian projects can get much needed assistance. Resource Centers offer legal aid and counseling, hold discussions, and organize anti-war events. We hope that these spaces will help build a strong global community committed to promoting democratic values, advancing peace, and facilitating political change in Russia.
The persecution of Vladimir Kara-Murza, our former colleague (until August 2021) and Russia’s prominent politician and human rights activist, has been another unhappy development in 2022. Vladimir was detained in April in front of his apartment building in Moscow. At first, he was charged with an administrative offense—for allegedly disobeying police orders. Criminal charges were consequently added to his case. Vladimir was accused of disseminating false information about the Russian military (this charge referred to his March 15 speech at the Arizona House of Representatives, in which he said that the Putin regime “is dropping bombs on residential areas, hospitals and schools” in Ukraine). Next, he was charged with collaboration with an “undesirable organization” on the account of his organizing a roundtable in support of political prisoners at the Sakharov Center in Moscow in October of 2021.
Finally, in October, an additional criminal charge was brought against Kara-Murza — high treason. This accusation is based on three public speeches he had given abroad, including one in which Vladimir had said that Russia was persecuting political opposition and introducing total censorship. The charge of high treason for public speaking is a cynical cover for the Putin regime’s persecution of the freedom of speech. This high-profile political case is clearly designed to fully silence Russia’s pro-democracy movement.
In response to these outrageous attacks on Vladimir, Free Russia Foundation has launched a global campaign calling for his release. Hundreds of media outlets around the world covered his case. Human rights organizations, U.S. and European politicians, Russian opposition leaders and international opinion leaders issued statements in Vladimir’s support, condemning his political persecution.
This campaign has been spearheaded by his wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, who became FRF’s Director for Advocacy in 2022. Evgenia has spoken in support of Vladimir and all Russia’s political prisoners at hundreds of meetings with stake holders and opinion leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. Her speeches were heard at forums and conferences in the U.S. and Europe and in the interviews with CNN, BBC, The Washington Post, Deutsche Welle, Voice of America, and many others. Public and political figures, such as Steven Cohen, William Browder, Irvin Cotler, Tom Malinowski, Roger Wicker, Robert Menendez, Michael McFaul, Ben Cardin, Marco Rubio, Dick Durbin, Vladimir Milov, Garry Kasparov, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Lyubov Sobol, Sergey Aleksashenko, and many others joined the fight for Vladimir’s freedom. A group of the U.S. senators made a joint appeal to President Joe Biden, calling for action, under the Magnitsky Act, against those responsible for Vladimir Kara-Murza’s persecution.
Despite Vladimir’s arrest, decades of his anti-war and pro-democracy work have not been disrupted. He continues to write and share his work with the world through his lawyer. His resilience is truly inspiring. In recognition of his efforts, Vladimir has been the recipient of several international prizes and awards. In October, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) announced that its most prestigious award, the Václav Havel Prize for Human Rights, would be given to Vladimir. In November, the Geneva-based UN Watch also awarded him with its highest prize — the Morris B. Abram Human Rights Award. Vladimir dedicated this award to the thousands of people who had been arrested or detained in Russia for protesting Putin’s war in Ukraine.
This year, our team welcomed a prominent Russian pro-democracy politician, Vladimir Milov, as Vice President for International Advocacy. Vladimir is a recognized opposition leader, member of Alexey Navalny’s team as well as an economist and energy expert. Under Vladimir’s leadership, FRF continues combating autocracy and repression in Russia and countering aggression that the Putin regime unleashed on Ukraine and Belarus. Vladimir Milov is well-known for his unequivocal anti-war stance. In April 2021, he left Russia for Lithuania following persecution of Navalny’s organizations. In February 2022, he categorically condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On May 6, 2022, Russia’s Ministry of Justice added the politician to its blacklist of “foreign agents.” Milov is a regular guest on CNN and CNBC, and is often cited by The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal.
This year Vladimir Milov published several important papers: “The EU’s Relations With a Future Democratic Russia: A Strategy”, “Beyond the Headlines: The Real Impact of Western Sanctions on Russia”, “Yes, It Hurts: Measuring the Effects of Western Sanctions Against Russia”. A series of his articles were also written for FRF and published on the Foundation’s website, among them — “What is the Russian Public Opinion regarding Putin’s war against Ukraine?”, “Saying “Nothing Will Ever Change in Russia” is not Only Unhelpful, It is Wrong”, “Russian Society is in the Midst of a Profound Transformation not Captured by Traditional Opinion Polls”.
Free Russia Foundation continues to integrate the insights acquired through our “field” work into studies and reports. This year, we have released the following reports: “Russian Emigrants: The Cost of Freedom,” “The Russian Economy and Sanctions: Who’s Who?”, “A Case for Supporting Free Democratic Russia,” “Russia-Turkey Relations in the Context of War in Ukraine,” “Yandex — the Kremlin’s Weapon Against Democracy,” “Decolonization in Real Time: Why the World Should Support Russians Running from Mobilization.” We have also penned profiles of political prisoners in Russia. Hundreds of posts on our social media accounts have focused on exposing the truth about the war in Ukraine, repression and censorship in Russia, highlighting the activities of the anti-war movement in Russia and the work of the Foundation.
In early December, our organization celebrated its eighth anniversary. Back in 2014, Free Russia Foundation first announced itself to the world as a group of activists supporting civil society and democratic development in Russia. In just a few years, we have grown into a powerful global movement uniting hundreds of talented professionals—civil society activists, human rights advocates, entrepreneurs, scholars, politicians, and journalists. What unites us is the vision that a free and peaceful Russia should and can be part of a secure and prosperous international community. It is our willingness to devote time, knowledge, and experience to achieving a common goal that has contributed to the Foundation’s success.
In 2022, the threat posed to the world by the Putin regime became evident to many. With its nuclear blackmail, this personalist authoritarian regime now endangers not only the neighboring nations but the entire world. In his 22 years in power, Vladimir Putin managed to largely insulate his regime from external challenges and secure his position in power for life. His regime destroyed the opposition and the independent media, subjugated the elites, and instilled fear in the Russian public. He also uses the war to ramp up repression and strengthen control over the country, signaling willingness to escalate internationally as well.
At Free Russia Foundation, we are convinced that an end to this conflict and a lasting peace in the region are only possible if we work together towards this goal. We believe that Ukrainian people will prevail, and the resolute anti-war stance of many Russians gives us hope. We will continue to fight against the Putin regime, following our vision of the future where Russia can become a beacon of peace and prosperity.
On the morning of October 10, the Russian military launched missile strikes against Ukrainian cities. They targeted Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi, Ternopil, Lviv, Zhytomyr, Kremenchuk, Kryvyi Rih, Konotop, Odessa, Rivne, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Poltava. According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, more than 80 rockets were fired at the territory of Ukraine. A total of eleven people were killed and dozens were injured.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that the strikes were carried out strictly against military, communications, and energy facilities in Ukraine. This is not true: museums, philharmonic halls, business centers, residential buildings, parks, and public transport stops are not military targets. One video circulated on social media shows a huge shell crater on a children’s playground. Fear, death and destruction have once again come to the capital of Ukraine. This is yet another demonstration of the Kremlin’s absolute cruelty and Vladimir Putin’s determination to continue his inhuman war against the sovereign state and its people.
We are deeply shocked by today’s large-scale missile attacks of the Russian Armed Forces on Ukrainian cities, which have caused widespread damage and resulted in the death and injury of many innocent people. We mourn the victims and express our sincere condolences to all Ukrainians who have suffered today.
The Russian Federation’s escalation of war in Ukraine is unacceptable and must cease immediately. We call on world leaders, governments, and international human rights organizations to pressure the Kremlin to stop attacks on civilian infrastructure, withdraw Russian troops from Ukraine, and resume diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the war. We also demand that Vladimir Putin and all those involved in today’s attack be prosecuted for war crimes.
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties, Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatski, and Russia’s Memorial HRC.
The Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties is engaged in promoting human rights and democracy in the country, assistance programs for “Kremlin prisoners” — Ukrainian political detainees held in Russian jails, investigation of war crimes, tracing missing citizens, and providing assistance to thousands of Ukrainians affected by the war unleashed by the Putin regime.
Ales Bialiatski was one of the initiators of the democratic movement that emerged in Belarus in the mid-1980s. He devoted his entire life to the promotion of democracy and peace in his country. The Human Rights Center ” Viasna,” which he founded in 1996, collected information about those detained at the protests and torture in detention centers, provided help to the victims of law enforcement excesses.
Memorial, Russia’s most important human rights organization, was founded in 1987 by a group of likeminded activists who wanted to commemorate the victims of Soviet-era political repression. Members of the movement created a complex of sites dedicated to the victims of repression, and held demonstrations, exhibitions, and seminars on the subject of state terror. The first chairman of Memorial’s board was Andrei Sakharov, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
In announcing the winners, Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, stated that “the Peace Prize laureates represent civil society in their home countries. They have for many years promoted the right to criticise power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens. They have made an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human right abuses and the abuse of power.”
Natalia Arno, president of Free Russia Foundation, in congratulating her fellow human rights activists on their award, noted that the protection of civil liberties should be the space that can still unite the citizens of post-Soviet countries, dragged by the will of one man into the most grievous of conflicts.
“I welcome the decision of the Nobel Committee and salute all the laureates for the recognition of their merits. The award goes to people who embody not only the struggle for truth and justice, but also the very fundamental notion of freedom. It is also an indication of the plight of civil society in our countries, divided by the will of one man and now separated by history for decades to come. Just look at where we are today: the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, headed by Oleksandra Matviychuk, has been investigating the thousands of war crimes committed by Putin’s army on Ukrainian soil since February; Viasna, Belarus’ leading human rights organization, has been demolished, with Ales Bialiatski and many of its staff arrested; Memorial has been fined and liquidated, its assets have been seized by the authorities, and its team has been forced to flee the country. But I believe that we will not allow this regime to finally destroy our lives and the historical destinies of our peoples. Protecting basic human rights is still the space that unites us in 2022. I congratulate you, colleagues! Peace, freedom, and justice to our countries!”
Today, Russian media outlets have reported that new charges of high treason (Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code) have been filed against opposition politician, human rights activist, and journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza.
Vladimir Kara-Murza’s attorney Vadim Prokhorov confirmed that the charges of state treason have been filed against the politician on three counts. They allege speeches criticizing the Russian authorities at public events in Lisbon, Portugal; Oslo, Norway; and Washington, DC. According to the lawyer, the speeches, that indeed took place, posed no threat to the security of Russia, on the contrary, they were aimed at protecting the interests of Russia and its citizens and at correcting the current catastrophic situation.
The pro-democracy leader faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Vladimir Kara-Murza has pleaded not guilty.
Natalia Arno, president of Free Russia Foundation, in her comments on the new charges expressed outrage at the illegal prosecution of Kara-Murza. “Charges of state treason for public speeches are absurd especially with regards to Vladimir, who is globally recognized as a true patriot of Russia and revered for his work in defense of the interest of the Russian people and democratic principles.”
Arno noted that Vladimir Kara-Murza served as Foundation’s Vice President, but was relieved from that position on August 3, 2021. “This decision was made by our board in recognition of the fact that Vladimir had been spending most of his time working in Russia, that was his main focus and his plan,” she explained.
The Foundation considers the criminal case against Vladimir Kara-Murza fabricated and politically motivated, a retribution for his work in support of human rights and his courageous quest against Putin’s autocracy.
“It has been absolutely clear from the very beginning that the detention and persecution of Kara-Murza is part of the wider campaign by the Russian authorities to punish and suppress any dissent,” said Natalia Arno.
“Today, accusations of discrediting the Russian military and participating in activities of an undesirable organization have been further inflated by charged of high treason, one of the most severe criminal offenses that can send a person to prison for decades. Vladimir Kara-Murza is a Russian patriot who has fought for many years for a prosperous future for his country. For this, the Kremlin tried to kill him twice, but, having failed to achieve its aim, arrested him and is now persecuting him on false charges that could lead to years of unjust imprisonment.
This is a tragic case that shows us the ways Vladimir Putin’s dictatorial regime is suppressing all opposition in order to sow fear among Russians and remain in power at any cost. For years, Vladimir Kara-Murza has been one of the most consistent and determined advocates of democracy and human rights in Russia. His bogus arrest only underscores the importance of the idea of justice for the people of Russia and Ukraine, who have suffered too long from the actions of the Kremlin kleptocracy.” Free Russia Foundation, which supports Russian activists, journalists, and human rights defenders, considers the charges against Vladimir Kara-Murza unjust and politically motivated, and calls for his immediate and unconditional release. We demand the Russian authorities to stop manipulating the law to achieve false, illusory goals that destroy the very foundations of democracy and international security.
On Friday, September 30, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the heads of the self-proclaimed “Luhansk People’s Republic” and “Donetsk People’s Republic,” as well as the occupation administrations of Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, signed treaties in the Kremlin on “joining Russia.”
Free Russia Foundation strongly condemns the decision of Vladimir Putin and his administration to continue the illegal annexation of the occupied territories in Ukraine. The forcible change of international borders at the expense of another sovereign state and the so-called “referenda” that preceded it are a serious violation of the foundations of international law and cannot be recognized under any circumstances.
Natalia Arno, president of Free Russia Foundation: “Today Vladimir Putin has de facto announced the illegal annexation of the occupied territory of a sovereign state. The signing of this treaty is a blatant violation of the fundamental norms of international law and the Charter of the United Nations, of which Russia is a member. Such actions by the Russian President, together with previously announced military mobilization and nuclear blackmail, only lead to an escalation of the conflict and new human sacrifices. In the modern world, borders cannot be redrawn at gunpoint. Russia’s actions are illegal and unacceptable to the civilized world.”
Free Russia Foundation, which provides support to Russian activists, journalists, and human rights defenders, calls on all countries and international organizations to join us in resolute and public condemnation of Russian military aggression and its illegal actions to tear away the territory of sovereign Ukraine. We urge you to call on the Kremlin to cease its hostilities and leave the territories it has seized.
On September 20, 2022, the occupation authorities of the self-proclaimed republics “LNR” and “DNR” and other occupied territories of Ukraine, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, hastily announced that they would hold “referendums on joining Russia” in the near future. The authorities of the “LNR” and “DNR” added that the vote will take place as early as this week, from September 23 to 27, 2022.
On the same day, the Russian State Duma introduced the concepts of “mobilization,” “martial law” and “wartime” into the Russian Criminal Code. The deputies voted for the law in the third reading unanimously — all 389 of them. Now voluntary surrender, looting and unauthorized abandonment of a unit during combat operations will result in imprisonment.
From the first day of the war unleashed by Putin’s regime and its allies against independent Ukraine, Free Russia Foundation, which supports Russian activists, journalists, and human rights activists forced to leave the country because of direct security threats, has condemned the crimes of Putin’s regime against independent Ukraine. We respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of states and consider human life and freedom to be of the highest value.
The forthcoming “referendums”, mobilization, and martial law are a collapse of the whole system of “Putin’s stability,” the illusion of which the Kremlin has been trying to maintain since the beginning of the full-scale war with Ukraine. Vladimir Putin is preparing to blatantly violate international law once again and launch an attack on democracy and freedom in Ukraine and Europe. Any statements by the Kremlin that residents of the occupied territories of Ukraine want to become part of Russia are false.
Three decades ago, the Ukrainian people proclaimed the independence of their state. Since 2014, the world has seen that Vladimir Putin has undermined Ukraine’s sovereignty and any attempts at anti-war protest in Russia through military force, repressive legislation, false statements, and massive state propaganda. Despite all the suffering inflicted on Ukraine, Putin has failed to achieve this goal: Ukrainians continue to show fortitude and determination to defend their country at any cost, and Russian anti-war resistance continues despite repression.
We consider any attempts to tear away Ukrainian territory through so-called “referendums” categorically unacceptable and call on state institutions and international human rights organizations to join the demand for an immediate end to the war and the liberation of the occupied territories. Any war brings suffering to humanity and endangers peace. We will not allow a totalitarian dictatorship to prevail and we will continue to fight for Ukraine’s independence and Russia’s democratic future.
September 1, 2022. Washington, DC. Free Russia Foundation announces the appointment of Russian politician, publicist, economist, and energy expert Vladimir Milov as FRF Vice President for International Advocacy.
In her announcement of Vladimir’s new role, Natalia Arno, President of Free Russia Foundation, remarked: “I am delighted to welcome this distinguished Russian civil society leader to our team. I am certain that Vladimir will become our force multiplier and make a profound contribution to FRF’s mission, including strengthening civil society in Russia, standing up for democracy defenders who oppose war, both inside and outside the country, building coalitions and mobilizing supporters. Vladimir Milov’s professional skills and extensive experience in human rights advocacy will help us come up with effective and innovative approaches to combat the authoritarian regime and repression that the current Russian government has unleashed against citizens of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.”
Vladimir Milov was born on June 18, 1972. From 1997—2002 he worked in government agencies, more than 4 years of which were in senior positions, from assistant to the Chairman of the Federal Energy Commission to the Deputy Minister of Energy of Russia.
Vladimir Milov has bravely and publicly called out the authorities for monopolizing the economy, and encroaching into public and political life of Russian citizens. Milov’s profile as an opposition leader rose thanks to his joint project with Boris Nemtsov. The report titled “Putin. Results,” condemned the activities of the Russian government during Putin’s presidency. In 2010, Mr. Milov headed the Democratic Choice movement, which later served as the basis for the creation of a political party with the same name.
In 2016, Mr. Milov became an associate of the unregistered presidential candidate Alexei Navalny. On May 11, 2017, he began hosting a weekly segment on the economy, “Where’s the Money?” on the NavalnyLIVE broadcast on YouTube.
In April of 2021, he left Russia for Lithuania amidst persecution of Alexei Navalny’s organizations. In February of 2022, he categorically condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On May 6, 2022, the Russian Ministry of Justice added Vladimir Milov to the list of media outlets considered as “foreign agents.” Vladimir Milov is a regular guest expert for the world’s leading media outlets — CNN, CNBC, The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal.
Russian pro-democracy politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, who’s been in jail since April for allegedly spreading “disinformation” about the Russian military, now also stands accused of “carrying out the activities of an undesirable organization,” which names Free Russia Foundation in the newly filed charge.
Free Russia Foundation, unconstitutionally designated as an “undesirable” organization by the Russian government in June 2019, did not organize an event on political prisoners in Moscow in 2021. FRF does not have any presence or programs inside Russia. Additionally, FRF has never conducted any work in the State of Arizona.
FRF strongly condemns the new charges brought against Vladimir Kara-Murza by Russian authorities and demands the dropping of all charges against him and calls for his immediate release.
“All actions of the Kremlin directed against Russian opposition politicians and activists have nothing in common with establishing the truth. They are instead aimed solely at getting rid of opponents of Putin’s regime,” FRF President Arno stated.
Russia is not Putin. We are Russia.
We aim at sharing this message with our friends around the world — therefore, in cooperation with Boris Nemtsov Foundation we are launching “Russians for Change” fundraising campaign.
We are going to be telling the stories of active pro-democracy anti-war Russians who have not lost their hope. US nationals also participate in this campaign: Francis Fukuyama, investigative journalist Casey Michel, and alumni of Boris Nemtsov Foundation media school.
Thank you for your donation:
The Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom honors the political legacy of Boris Nemtsov, a Russian liberal opposition politician assassinated in Moscow in 2015. It promotes freedom of speech and education along with the vision that Russia is a part of Europe.
In the temporarily occupied territories of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, in addition to the killing of civilians and horrific destructions carried out by the Russian army: a severe violation of the norms of international law in the form of abduction of Ukrainians into the territory of Russia has been taking place.
Prior to being interned, Ukrainians are placed in so-called “filtration camps” where they are subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment.
All these actions violate the Hague Conventions and constitute an international crime.
We plan to collect information about such abduction cases, put it in written pleadings, and submit them to the International Criminal Court.
If you have been subject to abduction (internment), please, fill in the form via the link.
By FRF Team
On February 24, 2022, over 100 deputies from different regions of Russia signed an open letter to the fellow citizens and condemned the military conflict with Ukraine. By March 5, the letter had been reportedly signed by 276 deputies of representative bodies of state power and local self-government. But due to the introduction of criminal and administrative liability for “discrediting the armed forces of the Russian Federation,” the names of the signatories have been since redacted.
The most noticeable dissent against the Kremlin’s decision to invade Ukraine has been shown by the members of the Communist party:
- On February 26, CPRF members, State Duma deputies from the Samara Region and the Omsk Region, Mikhail Matveyev and Oleg Smolin, respectively, publicly raised concerns about the war. They were joined by Vyacheslav Markhaev, CRPF member from Buryatia, who condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on his Facebook page.
- On February 27, CPRF activists launched an anti-war initiative; anti-war groups appeared on VKontakte and Telegram. This work is reportedly done by members of regional and city branches of the party and the Komsomol throughout Russia. At the very core of the initiative are members of the Marxist Tendency movement.
- A Meduza source close to the party leadership in one of the Russian regions, called the war in Ukraine “imperialist” and noted that its conduct and support is contrary to the ideology of the Communist Party.
- Anti-war statements on social media were made by the Komsomol branches in Penza, Novosibirsk, Moscow and Saratov, but they were all removed within hours.
- The anti-war groups were later made non-public; regional party leaders also demanded that members left these groups. Some members reported the internal party order not to speak publicly about the war at all.
- Consequently, members who spoke against the war were expelled from the party, others were pressured, e.g.:
- In late February, in Komi, head of the Communist Party faction Viktor Vorobyov said in a statement on his Telegram channel that “what is happening in Ukraine has no justification in international law.” Vorobyov was stripped of his speech rights in the State Council for two meetings.
- Also in February, in Vladivostok, City Duma deputy Viktor Kamenshchikov resigned from the party and announced his readiness to lay down his deputy mandate due to disagreement with the invasion of Ukraine. “I am against war in principle,” he was quoted to have said.
- In March, Voronezh deputy Nina Belyaeva condemned the special operation, which resulted in her expulsion from the party and a criminal case against her.
- Also in March, in the Arkhangelsk region, the Communist Party expelled five members of the party for their anti-war appeals, including Alexander Afanasyev.
- Two more Communist party members were stripped of their membership in the Tambov Region.
- In late May, deputy of the legislative assembly of Primorsky Krai, Leonid Vasyukevich, publicly demanded that Putin withdraw troops from Ukraine (he was supported by four other party members): in response, the CPRF promised to apply “the toughest measures.” In June, Vasukevich and a fellow party member Gennady Shulga were expelled from the party.
Some members of other parliamentary parties also voiced their opposition to the war:
- In March, the deputy of the Ivanovo Regional Duma (the Just Russia–Patriots–For Truth), Sergei Shestukhin, refused his mandate, because “the political struggle in the country is over.” Earlier, the Ivanovo authorities wanted to remove his powers due to errors in old tax filings, and the party expelled him because of a post criticizing the special operation in Ukraine.
- Also in March, the head of the Penza branch of the Just Russia–Patriots–For Truth, Anna Ochkina, resigned on the grounds of “the abolition of democracy.”
- In April, at the Moscow City Duma’s meeting, Sergei Mitrokhin, former head of the Yabloko party, spoke publicly against the war.
- In April, St. Petersburg deputy Vladimir Volokhonsky during a meeting of the municipal council condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and called on the deputies of United Russia to “leave this party as quietly as possible,” since they are responsible not only for the government’s actions committed earlier, but also for the war crimes that are taking place on Ukrainian soil now.
In addition, the Yabloko party, which doesn’t have Duma representation, but holds a handful mandates in the Russian regions, has articulated its anti-war position since day one in its official statement. However, this position comes at a cost: one of its representatives, chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod branch Oleg Rodin, had to leave Russia after he discovered he had been under surveillance. This was preceded by Yabloko’s campaign against the war in Ukraine and the attack on the party’s regional office.
By FRF Team
The new bill on local self-governance in Russia, which is currently under review at the second
reading in the State Duma, was introduced on December 16, 2021–almost two months before
Russia started a full-fledged war against Ukraine. The sponsors of the bill are pro-Kremlin United
Russia party deputies Pavel Krasheninnikov and Andrei Klishas, authors of several other
antidemocratic laws.
The bill was first introduced in 2020, around the same time as Putin’s government was pushing
through the illegal Constitutional amendments and aims to replace the existing federal law on
local self-governance adopted in 2003. The new law envisions two major changes:
- governors are empowered to single-handedly appoint mayors and unilaterally remove
them from office; - rural and urban settlements are abolished, and local government is transitioned to a
single-level system. By 2028, these administrative units are to be merged with the city or
municipal districts within the borders of the current municipal localities.
Putin’s regime justifies these changes as a way to increase self-governance efficiency by
consolidating financial, organizational, personnel and other resources.
The bill has been met with resistance in the State Duma, especially by the members of the
Communist and Just Russia parties. Following the first reading, 700 amendments were
submitted. The review is still ongoing, and the second reading was moved to the Duma’s fall
2022 session.
According to some Russian political experts, the new law will essentially deprive the Russians
living in small urban areas of political power. Others point out that the law will simply reflect
the existing political realities on the ground—that is, the fact that residents of small
municipalities and rural areas do not possess real political power anyway.
June 29, 2022. Washington, DC. The coalition of pro-democracy anti-war Russians launched the Secretariat of European Russia in Brussels. Free Russia Foundation is one of founding members of this coalition.
The group will facilitate an efficient flow of communication and coordination between the EU and pro-democracy Russians. It will be assisting the EU structures to develop the Russia policy initiatives that would help stop the war in Ukraine, support the Russian civil society and activists, and catalyze political change inside Russia.
With the permanent representation in Brussels, this initiative will strive to achieve a much stronger position of the Russian civil society and pro-democracy activists as legitimate, capable, responsible, and responsive actors that inform European policymakers on the latest developments in Russia and critical foreign policy issues, help the EU to formulate and implement a smart Russia policy and contribute to a significant political change inside Russia. The Secretariat will make an important contribution to addressing the war consequences and help Russian civil society, both in-country and in exile.
Attendees of the inaugural event included Natalia ARNO, Free Russia Foundation (FRF); Grigory FROLOV, FRF VP; Vladimir MILOV, FRF Senior Fellow; Dmitry GUDKOV, Anti-War Committee (online); Anastasia BURAKOVA, “The Arc” project (online); Evgenia CHIRIKOVA, Activatica; Alexander SOLOVYEV, Foundation for Democratic Development. The event was hosted by MEP Andrius Kubilius, standing rapporteur on Russia in the European Parliament. The launch was attended by MEP Miriam Lexxman, MEP Sergey Lagodinsky, MEP Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, representatives of the EEAS, NATO HQ, Globsec, EPP HQ and others.
Natalia Arno, Free Russia Foundation President: “Policy of the European Union is a key factor when it comes to demanding an end to the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, a release of the regime’s political prisoners, or catalyzing political change inside Russia. Therefore, Free Russia Foundation and other members of the Secretariat of European Russians that have extensive understanding of the Russian internal processes, unite to advise the EU on specific steps that can influence decision making inside Russia”.
Contact:
Vladyslava Smolinska
WASHINGTON, DC, June 22, 2022. Free Russia Foundation—a 501(c) 3 headquartered in Washington, DC whose mission is to support Russian pro-democracy activists and organizations by improving their access to expertise, information, funding and decision-makers required to bring about positive change in their country— announces the addition of two new members to its Board of Directors.
Ambassador Sarah E. Mendelson is a revered development and human rights policy practitioner whose Russia-focused experience includes a National Democratic Institute post in Moscow and work on the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From October 2015 until January 2017, she served as the US Representative to the Economic and Social Council at the United Nations. Between 2010-2014, Ambassador Mendelson worked as Deputy Assistant Administrator at USAID directing programs on democracy, human rights, and governance. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of over 70 scholarly and public policy publications, Ambassador Mendelson received her BA in History from Yale University and her PhD in political science from Columbia University.
Tom Firestone is a legal expert specializing in transnational financial crimes and corruption investigations. He is the co-chair of the White Collar & Internal Investigations unit at the Stroock law firm and a member of the firm’s National Security/CFIUS/Compliance Practice Group where he serves as the liaison with the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the Department of Treasury and other U.S. agencies. Mr. Firestone’s areas of competence include the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and other sanctions laws, the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and other anti-money laundering laws, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), and other federal criminal statutes related to business crime and national security. He advises clients on the issues related to the Russian war in Ukraine, including sanctions compliance, OFAC licensing, and assessing the risks of doing business in Russia. Mr. Firestone has represented clients in proceedings before Interpol and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Tom previously worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, where he investigated and prosecuted transnational organized crime. While with the Department of Justice, he also served as the Resident Legal Advisor and Acting Chief of the Law Enforcement Section at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and twice won the U.S. State Department Superior Honor Award. He has testified as an expert before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and the UK House of Lords and is recognized by Best Lawyers in America in the area of white-collar criminal defense. He is fluent in Russian and reads Polish and Bulgarian.
“We are immensely grateful to Ambassador Mendelson and Mr. Firestone for lending their unparalleled expertise to the work of Free Russia Foundation at this truly historic moment,” said FRF President and Founder Natalia Arno in her statement. “Today, Russian civil society is fighting for its survival. The two decades of Russia’s gradual slide toward authoritarianism have given way to an all-out repression, stripping Russian citizens of their innate rights, instilling terror and apathy. The brutal, senseless war unleashed against Ukraine by the illegitimate regime of Vladimir Putin and the international sanctions levied in response to this military aggression against Russia have dramatically reshaped the operating environment for Russian pro-democracy activists and movements. We are confident, that with Amb. Mendelson’s and Mr. Firestone’s insight and ingenuity, our foundation can devise innovative and effective ways to support Russian civil society and help it reclaim its role as the main driver of the country’s political development.”
The addition of Amb. Mendelson and Mr. Firestone to FRF Board brings its total size to a lucky number 13. Other Board Members include David J. Kramer (Chair), Paige Alexander, Ellen Bork, Ralf Fücks, Toomas Ilves, Ian Kelly, Sergey Aleksashenko, Alina Polyakova, Daniel Treisman, Andrew Wood, and Natalia Arno (President and Founder, ex officio). Learn more about FRF Board here.
Jun 16, 2022. Washington, DC. Free Russia Foundation (FRF) launches a global #NOTOWAR / #HETBOЙHE campaign to unite Russian voices all around the world and call for an end to the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine. Following the Russian government’s crackdown on domestic dissent, this campaign encourages Russian diasporas and exiles to speak out against the war also in the name of Russians inside the country who are unable to voice their opposition to the war.
Through protest, communication and advocacy actions, organizers of the campaign will press Russian authorities to withdraw its troops from the territory of Ukraine in its internationally recognized borders by demonstrating that there is a global community of Russian people who are actively opposed to this war.
This campaign launches today, on Thursday 16th June, and will be supported by content from both experts and everyday Russians who have been affected by the war.
On June 12, 2022, our movement helped to coordinate anti-war rallies that took place in 80 cities, 37 countries. FRF wants to make Russians’ anti-war voices heard in the streets where they cannot be beaten and on those online platforms that cannot be silenced.
Natalia Arno (President of Free Russia Foundation): “This campaign gives a voice to many Russian people who oppose the war. Free Russia Foundation will always stand up for the best interests of pro-democracy anti-war Russians both inside and outside of the country. Through our global network of campaigners, organizers and activists, we will give the voice for the voiceless.”
Evgenia Kara-Murza (Advocacy Coordinator at Free Russia Foundation): “You shouldn’t be afraid because fear makes us silent. When you are silent in the face of something monstrous, you are complicit.”
Contact details
Who: Vladyslava Smolinska
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +1(929) 533-40-26
Information
Free Russia Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernment nonpartisan 501c3 organization supporting civil society and democratic development in Russia. The organization is headquartered in Washington, DC, and has offices in Kyiv and Lviv (Ukraine), Warsaw (Poland), Tbilisi (Georgia), Berlin (Germany), Prague (Czech Republic), Tallinn (Estonia) and Vilnius (Lithuania).
Photos from the rallies on June, 12, 2022
Tbilisi, Georgia
Washington, DC
London, UK
Free Russia Foundation online
Russians across the world are watching with horror as Putin’s Russia wages a brutal war against the sovereign state of Ukraine. Thousands of us have spoken out directly against the war, both inside and outside of Russia. This aggression against Ukraine is unleashed by Putin and his corrupt elite. Russia does not need it. The criminal war that the Kremlin is waging on behalf of all Russians is bringing death, suffering and pain to the Ukrainian people. This crime also leads to devastating economic, cultural, social, and personal consequences for Russian-speakers around the world.
This week, Free Russia Foundation is launching a global #NoToWar campaign. Our goal is to unite the voices of Russians in different countries and demand an immediate end to this pointless war. We want to show people in Russia itself, in Ukraine, and throughout the globe that there are many of us and we will not stop fighting. This campaign will go live with a hero film on Thursday 16th June, and be supported by content from both experts and everyday Russians who have been affected by the war.
Free Russia Foundation encourages all activists to take part in this campaign — we want the voice of truth to be heard. We want the voice of Russians opposed to war to be sounded loud and clear. That every action we take will amplify that voice, and that, ultimately, it will sound louder than the voices of lies and propaganda in Russia itself and become the starting point of the change we all seek.
Natalia Arno (President, Free Russia Foundation): “This campaign will help the voice of Russians who oppose the war to grow louder. Free Russia Foundation has as its primary goal a unification of Russians so that together we can stop the war against Ukraine and put an end to the war that Putin’s regime has been waging for decades against Russia itself and each of us.”
Russia’s brutal assault on Ukraine has now gone on for over three months. The Kremlin continues hiding the extent of injustice it is committing against the Ukrainian people, and it’s hiding the true cost of the war to the Russian people— including the number of those killed in action.
The official numbers that are released, however, indicate that ethnic minorities from economically disadvantaged regions of Russia are disproportionately represented among casualties. It was Christo Grozev of Bellingcat who was among first suggesting that losses among “non-Slavic” troops from remote regions were disproportionately high.
The Russian media outlet Mediazona, together with a team of volunteers, has examined more than 1,700 reports on the deaths of Russian soldiers in Ukraine, and it turned out, that, in absolute numbers, natives of Muslim Dagestan and Buddhist Buryatia are in the lead among the casualties. And if we compare these data with the population size of the Russian regions, the national republics are again the leaders: the top three in the number of killed soldiers per 100 thousand people are Buryatia, Tyva and North Ossetia. Residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg, which together account for more than 12% of the country’s population, are virtually absent from the casualty reports.
The Kremlin takes advantage of the fact that the national republics are some of the poorest and most socially and economically depressed parts of the country. In 2020, Buryatia ranked 81st out of 85 regions of Russia in terms of quality of life. The neighboring Irkutsk region was in 55th place. According to the republican statistics department, 20% of residents in 2020 had incomes below the subsistence minimum. In 2013, it was slightly better at 17.5%. In 2019, Ulan-Ude ranked last in quality of life among 78 cities with a population of 250,000 or more. In a region with a salary of 20 thousand rubles, young people have two choices: either go look for jobs in the harsh Arctic region or the bustling Moscow, or join the military as a contract mercenary. But even there, men from republics like Buryatia, Tuva, Dagestan, and Chechnya are at the bottom of the pay scale. Military insiders say that their salaries in warzones are set at about 250 thousand a month.
In the first days of the war, videos showing Russian prisoners of war with non-Slavic appearance began to circulate on social networks. Later — and even before the Russian Defense Ministry officially confirmed the first combat casualties — several regional governors announced the deaths of their fellow countrymen. In early March, when the first coffins arrived in Buryatia, the head of the republic, Alexei Tsydenov, attended several funerals. He was accompanied by TV cameras and journalists. The obituaries were published on the main pages of the regional media. Then the burials began to take place almost every day, and Tsydenov stopped going. Since mid-March, the names of those killed in Buryatia have been published only in provincial newspapers or on the social media communities.
Buryats make up only 0.3 percent of the Russian population, but among those officially killed they constitute 2.8 percent. Dagestan surpasses Buryatia in the number of war deaths, but Dagestan’s population is three times larger.
At the end of March, the head of Buryatia, Alexei Tsydenov, gathered artists at the Buryat Opera and Ballet Theater and delivered an address about the “special military operation.” After the speech, the Buryat Drama Theater spokesman Batodalay Bagdaev asked the official: “There is a guard of honor No. 1 on Red Square. Have you ever seen a ‘narrow-eyed’ person there? There’s a clear selection there — blue-eyed, tall, Slavic-looking guys. Our fellow countrymen with bowed legs and large cheekbones are barred from the guard of honor. And if they’re going to die, they’re going to die.”
As voices from the audience shouted, “Bastard!” he asked Bagdaev to turn off the microphone, and shortly thereafter Vladimir Rylov, the director of the Buryat Opera and Ballet Theater, took the floor. “I would like to respond to this scoundrel who humiliates the Buryat people in front of me at my theater. We are all Putin’s Buryats! We will not allow the country to fall apart. If we now reproach the country’s leadership with the fact that, yes, there are killed, there are wounded, there are casualties — we will betray those killed and wounded. Then they have died for nothing. Only victory will be their redemption!”
After February 24, many people of non-titular ethnicities in Russia began searching for their souls, connecting to their ethical roots and examining their identity— and felt compelled to disassociate themselves from Moscow, its war, and unite with their fellow countrymen in this stance. Several formal ethnic anti-war movements have emerged, such as the Free Buryatia Foundation, which aims at ending the war, combating Kremlin propaganda, and ridding the Buryats of the involuntary burden of being “the main mascots of the Russian world.”
According to Alexandra Garmazhapova, the president of the Free Buryatia Foundation and seasoned journalist, the Buryats have a bad reputation in Ukraine. When Putin unleashed the war in Donbass, soldiers from Buryatia were often sent there to fight under the guise of so-called local militiamen and miners. There was a notorious interview that Novaya Gazeta conducted with 20-year-old tank crewman Dorzhi Batomunkuyev, a young man who was badly burned in the battle near Debaltsevo and talked about how the Russian authorities had sent Buryat contract soldiers there to fight in secrecy. And in 2015, the “Network” movement (a branch of the pro-Kremlin “Nashi” movement) recorded a crass video entitled “The Appeal of Putin’s Buryat fighters to the panicking people of Ukraine.” In the video, which went viral, Irkutsk Buryats promised Ukrainians that their economy would “plunge into the crotch of Conchita Wurst.”
“Then the Ukrainian media started actively writing about the Buryats. They used the phrase “the Putin’s military Buryats.” This narrative was very much amplified, memes on the subject going viral. Already with the start of the current invasion, some Ukrainians began to say that they are prepared to fight Russia to the last Buryat. This is very upsetting. We have a small nation and it’s no good that it has such an image,” says Garmazhapova.
Soon after the massacre in Bucha, fakes began to circulate on the Internet that it was Buryats who committed the atrocities there, and these posts were accompanied by photos of Yakut soldiers with the flag of the Sakha Republic, taken in 2018 in the military unit in the Far East where they had served. Why would anyone want to shift the blame for the mass murders onto the Buryats? The answer may sound utterly cynical: it is convenient for the Russian propaganda to blame everything on the national minorities of the Russian Federation who went out of their way to obey orders. After all, it is so advantageous to convince Ukrainians that their enemies are not Russians, but Buryats (as well as Yakuts, Chechens, Dagestanis, and other peoples of the Russian Federation), and that they should fight not against Russia, not against the Russians, but against the peoples colonized by Russia.
The Free Buryatia Foundation came about quite naturally. Maria Vyushkova, a Buryat woman living in the United States, went to a rally in San Francisco on February 28 with a “Stop Putin” banner. She decided to come out in protest when she realized that there were many of her countrymen waging war in Ukraine — she had been receiving such news since the first days of the invasion of the neighboring country by Russian troops.
Her action was followed by several other events in other countries — held by representatives of the Buryat diaspora, who began to coordinate their actions. People came out with “Buryats against Putin’s war” posters and flags of Buryatia. “At the rallies we were constantly being asked what organization we represented. So we decided to make the Free Buryatia Foundation. War, like a vampire, sucks the young blood out of my people — and of course I have reconnected with my identity much deeper now. It has become very important to me to assert that I am a Buryat and I am against the war,” Vyushkova told “The Cold” media outlet.
Ten people are now on the team of the foundation, all outside of Russia. People from inside Russia constantly apply to the organization, but the foundation does not want to endanger their fellow countrymen and reminds them of the law on fakes about the Russian army, which can lead to up to 15 years in prison.
In addition to the publicity campaigns, the foundation provides legal advice, drafts instructions for military personnel who want to avoid being sent to war, and advocates for sanctions against regional officials, such as Buryatia’s head Alexei Tsydenov and deputies of the People’s Khural, who have expressed support for the war. Activists have released several anti-war videos: “We are triggered by the goal of ‘denazification of Ukraine. We ourselves constantly face discrimination in our country — where is the denazification of Russia?”
The organization asserts that the leaders of Buryatia are fully responsible for what is happening, because the function of the regional government is to protect its people. Alexei Tzydenov has clearly failed this function, and moreover, he contributes to the deaths. Free Buryatia Foundation is preparing sanctions lists, which it plans to submit to international institutions.
“We have an activist from New York, Tuyanna Lubsanova. She has mobilized, I think, her whole family and all her Buryat friends from there. We ended up with 19 people in the first video. We thought that would be the end of it, we had no far-reaching plans. But suddenly other Buryats, living in different countries — from Germany, from Poland, and from America as well, started writing to us. And we realized that we needed to make more videos. We’ve recorded four videos, and now we’re preparing a fifth,” says Alexandra Garmazhapova.
How are Buryats supposed to promote the ideas of the “Russian world” if they themselves, living in Russia, constantly are victimized by xenophobia and racism? According to Garmazhapova, a psychological factor is probably involved. “Buryats feel that participating in the war gives them an opportunity to ‘elevate themselves’ up to Russians. They are willing to forget this discrimination so that in the fight against the “bad Ukrainians” the Russians will recognize them as equals. I can’t explain it any other way,” she says.
In Russia, discrimination in one way or another affects everyone who does not meet the “standard of Russianness” on ethnic, religious, racial grounds. It is well known that the national question in Russia is a painful and unresolved problem. On the one hand, the Constitution was written in the name of “a multinational people, united by a common destiny in their land.” The authorities regularly cite this multinationality. Vladimir Putin at the beginning of the war, speaking about Nurmagamed Gajimagomedov, a Lak man from Dagestan who died in Ukraine, stated: “I am a Russian, <…> but when I see examples of such heroism, <…> I want to say: I am a Lak, I am a Dagestani, I am a Chechen, an Ingush, a Russian, a Tatar, a Jew, a Mordvin, an Ossetian.”
On the other hand, at a press conference in 2018, when asked by a journalist of the GTRK “Dagestan” Elena Yeskina, whether the president notices that in a large multinational country only “pretty babies with blond hair and big blue eyes” are shown on television and that in the Kremlin regiment the “unspoken criterion” is Slavic appearance, Putin replied, “It is just your perception.” More recently, on April 20, the president publicly mocked the Bashkir language by distorting the name of a cafe in Ufa as “iPad, halyava.”
Ruslan Gabbasov, head of the Bashkir National Political Center, says that the Russian Federation has long been essentially a unitary country. His assessment is even harsher: “The Russian Federation is not a federation at all, but a colonial-type empire.” The national republics have been stripped of their sovereignty, their constitutions rewritten under the Kremlin pressure and brought into line with the Russian Constitution. In 2017, speaking in Yoshkar-Ola, the president declared that the Russian language is “the natural spiritual framework of the country,” “everyone should know it,” and it is unacceptable to reduce the level and time of the Russian language teaching. A year later corresponding amendments were inserted to the Law on Education, which linguists and language activists opposed.
“The state languages of the national republics are relegated to the level of second-rate languages on their territory. Now, for a Bashkir child who wants to study his native Bashkir language at school, the parents have to write an application for choosing the language, and if there are not more than seven such applications in the class, the language is not taught. In urban schools, where Bashkir children are not so strongly represented in numbers, they are deprived of the opportunity to study their native language. The Russian language, however, which is not native to the Bashkirs, is studied on a mandatory basis. Where Bashkir state language is studied, it is taught only one hour a week, which is catastrophically insufficient. Russian literature is compulsory, but Bashkir literature has long ceased to be taught as a separate discipline,” said Ruslan Gabbasov.
The strengthening of national identity against the backdrop of war is a natural way to distance oneself from Kremlin politics and rhetoric, says journalist and regionalism researcher Todar Baktemir. “Moscow sends people to fight in Ukraine. Would an independent Kazan (capital of Tatarstan) do that? I don’t think so, because the Tatars as a political nation have no claims against the Ukrainians,” he explains.
On April 21, Alexandra Kibatova, a student of the Higher School of Economics, went out on the Moscow Arbat with a poster in Mari language: “Mylanna sogysh ogesh kӱl” — “We don’t need war.” The police detained her and filed a report on discrediting the Russian Armed Forces.
Kibatova came from the village of Krasny Bor in the Agryz district of Tatarstan, where Tatars, Russians and Maris live. With her action, she wanted to express her disagreement with the policies of the Russian authorities. “The rhetoric of propaganda is built on defending the idea of the Russian world, but what does it mean to be Russian? Can all people in Russia be equated with Russians? I was born in a Mari family, for my parents, especially for my father, national identity is very important, this mindset was absorbed in me as well. Russian culture is also an important part of me, it’s what we all breathe in Russia. But it was important for me to say that I don’t support Russianness,” the student told “Idel.Realii” media outlet.
Since the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army, numerous campaigns emerged containing anti-war statements in the national languages of the peoples of Russia. Alisa Gorshenina, an artist from Nizhny Tagil, came out on a picket in April with a white rose in her hands. Ribbons with the inscriptions “Epir vӑrҫa hirӗҫ!” and “Kirәkmi begә suhysh!” were attached to the flower. Translated from Chuvash and Tatar, it means “We’re against the war!”
Gorshenina made another artistic piece where on a huge coat she wrote anti-war inscriptions in 14 languages — Tatar, Komi, Bashkir, Karelian, Chuvash, Udmurt, Altaian, Khakass, Buryat, Kumyk, Avar, Mokshan, Nanai and Sakha. She captioned the photos of this work “Hearing Russia’s Voices.”
In early March, Ruslan Gabbasov asked the head of Bashkortostan, Radiy Khabirov, to issue a decree “to ensure that our Bashkir boys do not go to war in Ukraine. “If this war is at Putin’s will, our Bashkortostani guys should not participate in it. Issue an order that our guys should not be sent to war. Show your wisdom and willpower. Show your will, the way President of Tatarstan Shaimiyev did when he issued an edict for Tatar boys not to be sent to Chechnya. How many Bashkir boys’ lives do you have to lay down before you understand that this war is not ours? Have the courage to refuse to let Putin send our guys — regardless of nationality — to Ukraine. This is not our war, and our guys should not die there,” Gabbasov said.
On May 8, the international conference “Forum of Free Peoples of Russia” took place in Warsaw. The event was attended by representatives of the Tatar and Bashkir communities, as well as other peoples of Russia, who were described by the organizers of the event as “enslaved by Russian imperialism.” Tatar activist Nafis Kashapov, who represented the “Free Idel-Ural” public platform at the forum, described the work he and his associates have carried out in Tatarstan over the past 30 years. He mentioned projects that included the production of educational literature in the Tatar and Russian languages. The Tatar representative expressed dismay with the situation in Russia. He believes that what is happening in Ukraine should encourage the Tatars to rethink many important issues.
In 2013, the Kalmyk Aldar Erendzhenov and his wife created the clothing brand 4 Oirad, which popularizes the culture of indigenous peoples. After the start of the war, a billboard appeared in the capital of Kalmykia supporting Russian troops with the inscription “I am Kalmyk, but today we are all Russians.” When Erendjenov saw it, he got the idea to produce items with the “Nerussky” (“Non-Russian”) print, referring to nationalist T-shirts with the inscription “I am Russian” in stylized Cyrillic script. “It’s a response to the Russian world, because we actually have our own non-Russian world. We wanted to make the word ‘non-Russian,’ which is used as an insult, positive. I’m not Russian, and I’m proud of it,” says the designer.
At the end of April, Aldar Erendzhenov decided to emigrate to Mongolia. This decision was due to the numerous threats that the designer began to receive after the start of Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine. The authors of the denunciations believe that the word “non-Russian” insults the state-forming people. “We are receiving threats. The propaganda media accuse us of inciting ethnic hatred and threaten us with a criminal case. We see activists in Kalmykia getting their tires slashed and their cars set on fire, and the police do nothing,” Erendzhenov says.
The year 2021 is remembered for the unprecedented activity of civil society in Kalmykia. After a three-year break, a congress of the Oirat-Kalmyk people was held here and a public court was established for the first time. At the same time, the hopes for change after the election of Batu Khasikov were replaced by complete disappointment in him. The head of Kalmykia turned out to be one of the most isolated governors, unwilling to make contact not only with members of the public, but also with deputies.
On March 10, 2022, the Oirat-Kalmyk people opposed the war by signing an appeal to the Russians and residents of Kalmykia. The appeal, signed by the leader and his three deputies, says that over the last 400 years Oirat-Kalmyks have participated in all military conflicts on the side of Russia, but they don’t need a war with Ukraine. On March 30 the Elista city court of Kalmykia fined the deputy chairman of the congress of Oirat-Kalmyk people Aducha Erdneyev 30 thousand rubles for signing an anti-war letter. A protocol was drawn up against him for “discrediting” the Russian military (Article 20.3.3 of the Administrative Code).
Despite unprecedented repression, national minority activists in Russia continue their work, because their task is to stop the hostilities and human sacrifices.
According to Alexandra Garmazhapova of the Free Buryatia Foundation, all the words of the Russian authorities about the need for so-called “denazification” of Ukraine are lies. “Almost immediately I had a cognitive dissonance: okay, we will get rid of the Nazis in Ukraine, but who will get rid of them in Russia?”
The Free Buryatia Foundation invited subscribers to share their stories about racism in Russia. There are now more than a thousand and a half such stories. As these stories show, the experience of the peoples of Russia is more a story of disunity than unity. “The standard slurs — ‘churka,’ ‘chinese,’ ‘hach,’ ‘narrow-eyed’ — were heard by almost everyone who wrote to me. As someone who has a strong oriental appearance, I thought that only “narrow-eyed” people got it. This is why I was surprised by the reports from Udmurts, Chuvashs, Mordvians, Marians, and Karelians who wrote that they’ve been taught their entire lives that it’s shameful to be an Udmurt. The peoples living in Russia have much more in common with Ukrainians than they may realize. In Soviet times, all languages except Russian were declared peasant languages. And if the Ukrainians get their language back, the Karelians or Buryats have it very bad… People think that racist outbursts are forgotten, like remarks about a bad haircut, but they are not. It hurts for years to come. Because they insult your whole species, your history, your essence. And thanks to the Kremlin, who talked about denazification, for reminding us who we are. And we are non-Russians. And this is normal,” says Alexandra Garmazhapova.
Since day one of the full-scale war unleashed by Putin’s regime and its supporters against the sovereign state of Ukraine, Free Russia Foundation, which supports Russian activists, journalists, and human rights defenders forced to leave Russia because of direct security threats, has changed the operation of its regional offices, mobilizing resources and capabilities in support of international efforts to end the war, restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and counter the lies and propaganda of the Kremlin.
The Free Russia Foundation team, which include many Russian citizens—political immigrants, living in various countries around the world, condemns the crimes of Putin’s regime against the sovereign state of Ukraine. We respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all states. We consider the annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbass, and the occupation of Georgia—crimes. As citizens of Russia, we share responsibility for the actions of the Russian authorities, who commit crimes against humanity on behalf of all Russians. We regret that many Russians, susceptible to propaganda and misinformation, have supported the aggression against Ukraine.
Since February 24, we have intensified education campaigns throughout Russia. Dozens of Russian activists from different countries participate in these campaigns. We will not let fascism, dictatorship and lies prevail and will continue to fight for a democratic future for Russia.
Many Russians around the world, including thousands of Russian activists, journalists, human rights defenders with whom we have been working for years, are also engaged in this work. Our main task, what the entire democratic world expects of us, what Ukrainians expect, and what no one will do for us, is to unite all Russians who oppose war, inside and outside Russia, to develop common strategies of resistance and to act jointly, shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine and the entire civilized world.
Over the years we have been able to contribute to the creation of a successful vibrant community of democratically minded Russians and representatives of the anti-war movement in many countries. These are Russians who have always opposed the imperialist ambitions of the Kremlin, who want and need to live in a free European Russia. In the past few months, since February 24, we have involved hundreds of them in active work on various important issues.
A new stage in our work is the creation of resource centers in a number of key countries, which, together with our offices, will become platforms where activists, journalists, and human rights defenders can find safe places for active joint efforts, planning and implementation of pro-democracy and anti-war initiatives and projects, assistance, and necessary support. We approach the creation of these centers with a heightened focus on the safety of the activists themselves, as well as on the possible risks for the countries with growing concentration of Russian political immigrants. Like the Foundation’s offices, these centers will promote democracy, counter misinformation, and integrate Russian activists into local and international formats and communities.
Natalia Arno
Grigory Frolov
Egor Kuroptev
Dmitry Valuev
Nikolay Levshits
Anton Mikhalchuk
Nina Aleksa
Pavel Elizarov
Nadia Valueva
Vladimir Zhbankov
Aleksey Kozlov
Evgenia Kara-Murza
Rarely does a Friday in Russia these days go by without another round of Kremlin repression of prominent members of civil society. It seems, however, that last Friday was a record-breaking week for the number of big names sanctioned by the Russian authorities.
The Case of Vladimir Kara-Murza
On April 22, 2022, Judge Elena Lenskaya of the Basmanny Court has ordered Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent public figure and journalist, one of the initiators of the Magnitsky Act (2012), to remain in custody until June 12. On the same day, the Ministry of Justice recognized him as a “foreign agent.” The criminal case against him was opened for alleged “false statements ” against the Russian army, motivated by political hatred (point e, part 2, article 207.3 of the Criminal Code).
Vladimir Kara-Murza is a prominent Russian opposition politician, journalist, and former chairman of the board of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom. As a reminder, on February 11, 2021, an investigative effort publicized that a group of FSB officers, who have been implicated in the poisoning of politician Alexei Navalny and several other people, also made two attempts to poison Vladimir Kara-Murza in 2015 and 2017. This conclusion was made by investigative teams at Bellingcat and The Insider, which discovered that FSB officers shadowed Kara-Murza on his trips.
The politician is represented by lawyers Olga Mikhailova and Vadim Prokhorov. According to Prokhorov, the reason for the criminal case against Kara-Murza was his March 15, 2022 address before the House of Representatives of the State of Arizona. Kara-Murza’s lawyers, as well as the defendant himself, cannot explain why, out of a series of his public speeches in the United States, the IC has chosen that particular one.
According to the ruling on the initiation of criminal proceedings, Kara-Murza “has knowingly spread false information under the guise of reliable reports, containing data on the use of the Russian Armed Forces to bomb residential areas, social infrastructure facilities, including maternity homes, hospitals and schools, as well as the use of other prohibited means and methods of warfare during a special military operation in Ukraine, thus causing substantial harm to the interests of the Russian Federation”.
The content of Kara-Murza’s speech in question is not much different from the Anti-War Committee’s first declarations, and is, in fact, a brief critical analysis of the 23-year development of Vladimir Putin’s regime. The Basmanny Court zoomed into the following statement made by Kara-Murza: “…today, the whole world sees what Putin’s regime is doing to Ukraine. It is dropping bombs on residential areas, on hospitals and schools… These are war crimes that were initiated by the dictatorial regime in the Kremlin.”
Independent resources pointed out that the translation of the speech was not made by a professional interpreter, but by a certain Danila Mikheev, who had consulted as an “expert” on several other cases against the opposition on behalf of the IC.
Kara-Murza faces between five to ten years in prison. He has plead not guilty. The court has admitted personal testimonies of the deputies of the Moscow City Duma Mikhail Timonov, Maxim Kruglov and Vladimir Ryzhkov.
“I have never committed any offenses or crimes, and all the documents of the investigation have nothing to do with reality. I am an honest politician and journalist, I have been working for more than twenty years, and all this time I have continued to exercise my right to express my opinion,
guaranteed by the Constitution,” Vladimir Kara-Murza himself said in his statement in court. “I categorically deny any involvement in any crimes. There is no corpus delicti in these documents, and my entire case is 100% political from beginning to end. All of this is an attempt to point me to my political position, to which I am entitled <…> Despite the repressive laws that were passed in March of this year, I have no intention of hiding or fleeing anywhere. My whole life and my activity prove that I am not going anywhere. I ask you to appoint a measure of restraint not involving detention,” said Kara-Murza.
Vladimir was arrested on April 12 under Article 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (noncooperation with a police officer). On April 11, Kara-Murza was detained near his home and taken to the Khamovniki Police Department, where the politician spent the night awaiting trial. The reason for his detention was that he allegedly “behaved inappropriately at the sight of police officers, changed his trajectory, accelerated his step and tried to run away at their demand to stop.” This became known from the police reports published by the lawyer.
The criminal case against Kara-Murza is expanding rapidly. As early as 12 April, when the politician was arrested for 15 days for “disobeying a police officer,” a report on the discovery of “crime” was lodged with the IC’s desk. On the same day, Mr. Zadachin, the investigator of the Investigative Committee, examined the report and demanded to open an investigation. Ten days later, the politician was taken from the detention center in Mnevniki for questioning, and then immediately to court.
Now his wife, translator Yevgenia Kara-Murza, is fighting for Vladimir’s freedom. She left her job at international organizations to help him and continue his political activities.
“Frankly, we knew it could happen at some point. He had already been poisoned twice, there had been attempts on his life, he barely survived. Now they will hide all the opposition figures behind bars so that they can’t work, continue their activities effectively, and Volodya is very effective,” says Yevgeniya Kara-Murza.
Vladimir Kara-Murza is known to political leaders around the world as a tireless advocate for the Magnitsky Act. This crucial document, adopted in the United States in 2012, allows for the imposition of sanctions on those responsible for “extrajudicial killings and other gross human rights violations.” It now includes those who, according to the U.S., were involved in the death in custody of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who had uncovered a scheme to steal 5.4 billion rubles.
It is believed that the two poisonings of Kara-Murza were revenge for the fact that he and Boris Nemtsov lobbied the U.S. (and later Canada and the European Union) to pass this document. As a result, sanctions were imposed on employees of the FSIN, the General Prosecutor’s Office, the Investigative Committee of Russia, and judges. Later, the list was expanded to include the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov; Andrei Lugovoi, a deputy (who is suspected of poisoning Alexander Litvinenko in London); and other Russian politicians and officials.
“The Magnitsky Act is passed every day in a new country, sanctions are imposed, we saw this at the beginning of the war. Yes, if these sanctions had been imposed seven or ten years ago, there would not have been a war. But the fact that such legislation was passed in different countries made it possible to impose sanctions very quickly after the invasion began. The work of Vladimir is very effective, and he is, of course, very troublesome to them. His poisonings in 2015 and 2017 were clearly linked to his activities aimed at having personal sanctions imposed on the murderers and thieves of this regime <…> Vladimir is an honest, up to his bones honest, decent, absolutely inflexible in matters of principle. He is a true patriot of his country. He says that as a Russian politician he should be where people fight evil. And he believes that he has no moral right to call on people to fight if he himself is safe. For him, the two concepts are incompatible — if he calls for a struggle, he must be at the forefront of that struggle. Again, absolute honesty. To himself, first of all,” said Yevgenia Kara-Murza.
Just before his arrest Kara-Murza in an interview to CNN predicted that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would lead to Putin’s downfall. “It’s not just corrupt, it’s not just kleptocratic, it’s not just authoritarian,” he said of the Putin government. “It is a regime of murderers. It is important to say it out loud.”
International Reaction
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement on his twitter account that the U.S. is “troubled” by Kara-Murza’s detention. He called for his immediate release.
In a statement on Friday, The Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan said Kara-Murza has “repeatedly risked his safety to tell the truth about Vladimir Putin’s heinous violations of human
rights” and said the charges against him were for a “sham offense.” He added, “Americans should be infuriated by Putin’s escalating campaign to silence Kara-Murza. … And everyone who values press freedom and human rights should be enraged by this injustice and join in demanding Kara-Murza’s immediate release.”
“We are deeply concerned for our friend Vladimir Kara-Murza’s personal safety, and we call on Russian authorities to release him immediately,” said Michael Breen, President and CEO of Human Rights First. “Putin and his regime have shown themselves to be willing to break any law, domestic or international, to suppress political opposition at home and subjugate neighboring countries like Ukraine. We call on all of democracy’s allies to oppose criminal behavior like this to protect human rights in Russia, Ukraine, and around the world.”
“Vladimir is not a criminal but a true patriot motivated by the potential of a democratic future for Russia and freedom for its people. He must be allowed access to his lawyer and should be released immediately,” reads a joint statement by Helsinki Commission Chairman Sen. Ben Cardin, co-chairman Rep. Steve Cohen and ranking members Sen. Roger Wicker and Rep. Joe Wilson.
New “Foreign Agents”
On April 22, 2022, the Russian Ministry of Justice also added eight more people to the register of “foreign agents”.
The list includes prominent independent journalists and political observers— the former editor-in-chief of the “Echo of Moscow” radio station Alexey Venediktov, the publicist Alexander Nevzorov, journalist Sergei Parkhomenko, the authors of Radio Liberty Yekaterina Lushnikova, Arthur Asafyev and Vladimir Voronov, sociologist Viktor Vakhshtayn, LGBT activist Yaroslav Sirotkin.
Opposition politicians Leonid Volkov and Vladimir Kara-Murza were added to the “foreign agents” registry, the latter’s case was described above. This became known when the Basmanny Court in Moscow arrested Kara-Murza in the case of “false reports” about the Russian military. According to the Ministry of Justice, Volkov and Kara-Murza were engaged in political activities in the interests of Ukraine.
Alexey Venediktov immediately said that he would file a lawsuit to protect his honor and dignity “against the person who signed the decree” to include him in the register of media outlets that perform the functions of a foreign agent. According to the journalist, there are no reasons for
including him into the list. He said that at the moment he is waiting for the Ministry of Justice to justify and prepare a suit because “this is a criminal offense — insult and slander”.
Journalist Alexander Nevzorov wrote in his Telegram channel that he was completely indifferent to the status assigned to him by the Russian authorities and predicted their defeat in the war against Ukraine.
Sergei Parkhomenko learned about his inclusion in the register during a live broadcast on YouTube and said that he was quite calm about it, because he understood that the process of inclusion in the list of “foreign agents” had turned into a conveyor system.
Until now, there had been 142 designated persons and entities (including outlets, journalists, and activists) on the “foreign agents” list. The last time it was updated on April 15, 2022, nine people were added to the list, including the blogger Yury Dud, political analyst Ekaterina Shulman, and
cartoonist Sergei Elkin.
On April 5, 2022, the authorities for the first time added a new registry of “individuals who perform the functions of a foreign agent.” Journalists Yevgeny Kiselyov and Matvey Ganapolsky, who had worked in Russia in the past and now work in Ukraine, were included on it. Like Kara-Murza and Volkov, they also have Ukraine as a source of foreign funding. Now there are four people on this registry.
Like media “foreign agents,” “individual foreign agents” must mark their public materials and appeals to government agencies with a note on the status, as well as regularly report to the Ministry of Justice on their income and expenditures. The penalties for violating the requirements under the new register are more severe. Whereas the Criminal Code provides for penalties ranging from a fine of 300,000 rubles to two years in prison for media “foreign agents,” “individuals” can be imprisoned for up to five years.
“We, the undersigned leaders in legislatures around the world – the duly elected democratic voices of our constituents and countries – unreservedly condemn the arbitrary arrest of Vladimir Kara-Murza and call for his immediate release.”
On Monday, April 11th, Mr. Kara-Murza was detained by Russian Security Services as he was about to enter his home following an international media interview, arrested on the false charges of not obeying the police. He has since been charged under the new law criminalizing opposition to the invasion of Ukraine, and is now facing up to 15 years of imprisonment.
A violation of the Russian constitution and of the country’s international legal obligations, the arbitrary arrest of Mr. Kara-Murza – who is also a UK citizen, a US Permanent Resident, and a Senior Fellow at a Canadian institution – represents the continued criminalization of freedom in Putin’s Russia. United in common cause, we call for an end to Putin’s punitive persecution and prosecutions of Russian civil society leaders, the release of Mr. Kara-Murza and all political prisoners, and the expansion of targeted Magnitsky sanctions against Russia’s architects of repression.
Vladimir Kara-Murza has emerged as one of Russia’s most respected democratic opposition leaders, a noted public intellectual and voice of conscience. He has testified before our Parliaments, and represents the very best of what Russians stand for and the country that Russia can aspire to be. Targeted for his principled leadership, Mr. Kara-Murza has survived two assassination attempts, and nonetheless continues to shine a spotlight on the Russian people’s opposition to Putin and his war of aggression.
The unjust imprisonment of Mr. Kara-Murza is emblematic of the crimes perpetrated by Putin’s regime against both the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, and the international community more broadly. Left unchecked, its internal repression has often morphed into external aggression, with the atrocities in Ukraine being the latest and most pernicious manifestation in a long line of wars, murders, thefts, corruption, disinformation and election interference. We must stand with those heroes on the front lines, like Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is putting his life on the line in defence of our shared values, sacrificing his freedom to help others secure theirs.
While Russia’s leading defender of political prisoners has now regrettably become one himself, we pledge to not relent in our efforts until he is free, bringing the same dogged determination to securing his release as he has brought to building a better Russia. Our shared commitment to human rights, democracy, and the rule of law demand no less.
Contacts:
Honourable Irwin Cotler, PC, OC, OQ, Ad.E Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights +1 514.735.8778 [email protected]
Natalia Arno Free Russia Foundation +1 202.549.2417 [email protected]
Endorsements
Zygimantis Pavilionis, Deputy Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Lithuania; Former Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Lithuania (2020-22); International Secretary of the Homeland Union/Lithuanian Christian Democrats
Robert Menendez, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Marco Rubio, Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Transnational Crime, Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights, and Global Women’s Issues; member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States
Mario Diaz-Balart, Member of the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations of the United States; Chairman of the US Delegation to the Transatlantic Legislators Dialogue; Member of the U.S. Delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and Vice-Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Transatlantic Relations (PCTR) of the Political Committee
Ali Ehsassi, Chairman of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights; Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development of Canada Anita Vandenbeld, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development; Member of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of Canada
Garnett Genuis, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development of Canada Heather McPherson, Member of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights; Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development of Canada
Heidi Hautala, Vice-President of the European Parliament Klára Dobrev, Former Vice-President of the European Parliament (2019-2022); Member of the European Parliament Urmas Paet, Vice-Chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament; Former Foreign Minister of Estonia
Andreas Kubilius, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament; Standing rapporteur on Russia; Former Prime Minister of Lithuania
Guy Verhofstadt, Member of the European Parliament; Former Leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (2009-2019); Former Prime Minister of Belgium
Anna Fotyga, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament; Secretary-General of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party; former Foreign Minister of Poland
Radosław Sikorski, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament; former Foreign Minister and Minister of Defence of Poland
Frances Fitzgerald, Member of the European Parliament; Former Deputy Head of Government of Ireland; Former Minister of Justice of Ireland
Rasa Juknevičienė, Member of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence of the European Parliament; former Minister of Defence of Lithuania
Csaba Molnár, Member of the European Parliament; Former cabinet Minister of Hungary
Raphael Glucksmann, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament; Vice-Chair of the Subcommittee on Human Rights; Chair of the Special Committees on Foreign Interference in All Democratic Processes in the European Union
Bernard Guetta, Vice-Chair of the Subcommittee on Human Rights; Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament
Viola von Cramen-Taubadel, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament; member of the Special Committees on Foreign Interference in All Democratic Processes in the European Union
Thijs Reuten, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament
Mounir Satouri, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament
Michael Gahler, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament
Juozas Olekas, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament
Ioan-Dragos Tudorache, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament
Petras Austrevicius, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament
David Lega, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament
Miriam Lexmann, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament
Javier Nart, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament
Charlie Weimers, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament
Eugen Tomac, Member of the Subcommittee on Human Rights of the European Parliament
Attila Ara-Kovács, Member of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence of the European Parliament
Sergey Lagodinsky, Vice-Chair of the Committee on Legal Affairs of the European Parliament
Morten Løkkegaard, Member of the Special Committees on Foreign Interference in All Democratic Processes in the European Union
Ausra Maldeikiene, Member of the European Parliament
Ivan Stefanec, Member of the European Parliament
Liudas Mazylis, Member of the European Parliament
Vlad Gheorghe, Member of the European Parliament
Jan-Christoph Oetjen, Member of the European Parliament
Sándor Rónai, Member of the European Parliament
Nicolae Ștefănuțăm, Member of the European Parliament
Nils Ušakovs, Member of the European Parliament
Pavel Fischer, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Security of the Czech Republic
André Gattolin, Vice-Chair of the Senate Committee on European Affairs of France
Gabor Grendel, Deputy Speaker of the National Council of the Slovak Republic
Kerstin Lundgren, Deputy Speaker of the Swedish Riksdag and Foreign Affairs Spokesperson of the Centre Party
Margareta Cederfelt, President of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Parliamentary Assembly; Former President of Parliamentarians for Global Action; Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Swedish Riksdag
Michael Roth, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag
Nils Schmid, Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag and Foreign Affairs Spokesperson of the Social Democratic Party
Ulrich Lechte, Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag and Foreign Affairs Spokesperson of the Free Democratic Party
Ines Voika, Deputy Speaker of the Latvian Seimas
Rihards Kols, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Latvian Seimas; Representative of the Latvian seimas to the OECD
Michal Kaminski, Deputy Speaker of the Polish Senate
Bogdan Klich, Chairman of the Foreign and European Affairs Committee of the Senate of Poland
Samuel Cogolati, Deputy Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Belgian Parliament
Charlie Flanagan, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Ireland; former Foreign Minister
Tom Tugendhat, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom
Mark Pritchard, Member of the National Security Strategy Committee of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom; Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party Parliamentary Foreign Affairs & Defence Committee;
By Vlada Smolinska
Over the weeks since the start of Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine, the world has witnessed in horror massive, purposeful, and unremorseful violations of international humanitarian law perpetrated against the people of Ukraine by Russian armed forces. Convicting those responsible for carrying out flagrant crimes against international law in Ukraine, in particular war crimes, is not just a matter of keeping faith with high moral standards and the rule of law by the international community, but is an existential imperative for global governance.
Evidence of new crimes is uncovered every day, and these crimes are ongoing. As you are reading this text, the world is learning about the horrific events in towns and villages 20 km from Kyiv – in particular, Bucha and Irpin — liberated from Russian occupiers. Ukrainian civilians – men, women, and children – shot dead in the back of their heads, with their hands tied behind their backs, lying on the ground in the streets for weeks. Bodies trampled by Russian tanks. Toddlers raped and tortured to death. Family members forced to watch. Mass graves with at least 280 people executed have been found. Accounts of Russians shooting unarmed civilian refugees as they tried to evacuate cities and villages occupied by Russia soldiers.
As the world is processing, shell-shocked, the photos of the Russian genocide in tiny Bucha, we must remember that an even greater catastrophe is unfolding in Mariupol –– a city the size of Miami. Russia’s forces have besieged the city for over a month now, leaving residents without water, food, and electric power, under constant shelling and bombing. Residential buildings, hospitals, schools, kindergartens have been intentionally leveled to the ground by air strikes.
Most of the sites hit by the Russians in Ukraine were clearly marked as in-use by civilians. This includes Mariupol maternity hospital and Mariupol theater, clearly marked with the word “дети” — Russian for “children” — in huge letters visible from the sky. As a result, the number of civilians killed could be as high as 25, 000 according to the Mariupol Mayor’s advisor.
Yet, Russia has not stopped there. On April 11, in Mariupol, Russian armed forces used chemical weapons, presumably sarin — a nerve agent prohibited by international law, against both military and civilians. Exposure to Sarin is lethal even at very low concentrations, such that death can occur due to suffocation from respiratory paralysis within one to ten minutes after direct inhalation of a lethal dose, unless antidotes are quickly administered. People who absorb a non-lethal dose, but do not receive immediate medical treatment, may suffer permanent neurological damage. Mariupol residents subjected to prolonged siege do not have access to medical treatment. While the standard recommendations for civilians exposed to chemical weapons attacks are to close all the windows and remain close to a source of running water, residents of Mariupol no longer have either glass windows or running water.
That Russian armed forces were prepared to employ chemical weapons in their military assault against Ukraine was foreshadowed by their typical false-flag information line accusing the Ukrainian side of readiness to use chemical or biological weapons. The United States and United Kingdom highlighted the propaganda approach and its meaning, issuing warnings that the Russians likely intended to employ such devices themselves and assign blame to Ukrainian defenders.
Russia’s deliberate genocide of the Ukrainian population, including Mariupol residents, is readily discerned. In the wake of the initial international outcry in response to the horrific tragedy of Bucha, Russia deployed mobile crematoria in Mariupol to cover up its crimes.
Carla Del Ponte, the former chief prosecutor of United Nations war crimes tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, asserted there were clear war crimes being committed by Russians in Ukraine and called for an international arrest warrant to be issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
President Biden publicly called Putin a war criminal. U.S. Secretary of State Blinken declared that the U.S. government assessed that members of Russia’s forces had committed war crimes in Ukraine.
Now, these powerful words must be followed with effective actions. Putin must be brought before a tribunal to be tried and sentenced for his crimes. Russia as a State must be held responsible for each and every violation of international law, including the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993.
Bring Putin and his Regime to Justice
Putin’s regime proclaimed “denazification” to be the main goal of its war — what they call a “special military operation” — against Ukraine. Yet even a superficial examination of the situation and history dispels this ruse.
The official transcript of Day 68 of the Nuremberg Tribunal, established at the end of the Second World War to try and convict Nazi leaders, says: “Before their retreat from Mariupol the German occupational authorities burned down all the 68 schools, 17 kindergartens…and the Palace of the Pioneers.”
Reading this passage, one gets an eerie sense that the quote describes the present. With the single exception of the Soviet-era Palace of Pioneers, the contemporary Russian Nazis have followed in the footsteps of the original German Nazis.
All these are horrendous, fully documented crimes that warrant prosecution under international criminal law:
- Killing of tens of thousands of civilians, including children and volunteers who were bringing food and water to people in need;
- Using chemical weapons;
- Wantonly targeting for destruction Mariupol hospitals, homes, schools and kindergartens; and
- Shelling of people moving through the so-called “green corridors” (for humanitarian evacuation to safety).
There is a critical issue to keep in mind with respect to bringing Russians to justice for their crimes –– the International Criminal Court (ICC) lacks status to prosecute Russia’s leaders and military personnel because Russia is no longer a signatory to the Rome Statute establishing it.
In theory, the UN Security Council (UNSC) could ask — and thus empower — the ICC to investigate these offenses. However, Russia is a UNSC Permanent Member and would most definitely veto any such motion.
A more viable option thus would be the establishment of a special tribunal to prosecute the crime of aggression in Ukraine — a Ukrainian “Nuremberg Tribunal”.
The Precedent of the Nuremberg Tribunal
On August 8, 1945, after the end of the World War II, the Allied powers — the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union — established the International Military Tribunal (IMT) to consider cases of crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit any of those crimes.
The Allies chose Nuremberg, Germany, as the venue for the trial owing to its role as the epicenter of the Nazi propaganda rallies leading up to the war. Nuremberg was supposed to symbolize the death of Nazi Germany.
While more than three quarters of the city lay in rubble, there was one facility in Nuremberg — the Palace of Justice — that was sufficiently spacious and undamaged to accommodate the trial. Thus, in November 1945, the court convened in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg.
When the trial began, there was no electricity, no water supply, and no sewage in Nuremberg. So the Allies assigned highest priority to early resolution of these critical issues for the resident Germans themselves. Democratization, denazification, and demilitarization followed the reconstruction works. Realizing that their well-being depended on the occupying authorities, the Germans were more accepting of the Tribunal.
The outcome of the Nuremberg Tribunal set an important precedent. New categories of crimes were defined: the crime of genocide, killing of groups, crimes against humanity, the killing of individuals. It established the concept that rule of law stands above any individual state and that criminals among a nation’s top officials can and would be prosecuted, tried, and convicted.
Why is Mariupol the right place for a tribunal
Mariupol holds profound symbolism within the chronicles of the Russo-Ukrainian war. It is a city that will forever preserve in history the horrific crimes of the Russian Federation against Ukrainians and Ukraine. Lives lost forever, young girls — some under the age of 10 — tortured and raped by the Russian army, destroyed hospitals, residential buildings, schools, and kindergartens.
This is not the first time that Mariupol has had to fight back Russian forces. In 2014, when Russia occupied Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine, Mariupol was occupied for a month by Russia’s army and Russia-backed forces. However, the situation in the city back then cannot be compared to what hundreds of thousands of Mariupol residents are facing now.
“Before the barbarity of the killing of children, of innocents and unarmed civilians, there are no strategic reasons that hold up,” — Pope Francis said in his Sunday Angelus address regarding Russia’s army having besieged and attacked the city named in honor of Mary. The only thing to do is “to stop the unacceptable armed aggression before it reduces the cities to cemeteries”, — he added.
Once Russian military aggression has been defeated, an international coalition must be prepared to help Ukraine rebuild Mariupol. Greece and Italy has already made such proposals. And, as the rebuilding takes place, a war crimes tribunal must be held in the city.
Putin himself, those who issued criminal orders, and those who carried out such orders — those who personally used force, inflicted torture, or otherwise criminally abused civilians, as well as conducted other crimes in violation of international law, humanity, and common decency in Ukraine –– must bear full responsibility in accordance with international law.
The best way to hold those responsible is via a special war crimes tribunal, following the example of Nuremberg.
The best place to administer such justice is Mariupol.
Many in the West have been easily convinced by assertions that an overwhelming majority of Russians support the war. Such claims are based on the interpretation of recent opinion polls, including the latest poll by the Levada Center which came up with shocking figure of 81% supporting the war. Many far-reaching conclusions and generalizations are articulated based on this data— that Russians are hopeless as a nation, that the problem is not just with Putin but with the whole Russian society espousing imperialistic, chauvinist worldviews, and so on.
I would like to warn against drawing such conclusions from the raw wartime polling data, as it may result in severely misguided policy choices for which the West will pay dearly.
Besides the obvious challenges related to conducting reliable polls within the context of a brutal totalitarian regime in time of war, examination of the survey’s methodology uncovers a lot of nuances.
Let’s look at the latest Levada poll stating that “81% of Russians support Putin’s war”. When asked whether they follow the events related to Putin’s “special operation”, only 29% of respondents said they follow them “quite closely”. This detail alone should give us a pause, as the poll primarily reflects Russians’ unawareness of what’s really going on in Ukraine.
For Westerners, it is difficult to imagine the kind of propaganda and disinformation bubble that characterizes the Russian information space. This misreading of the environment, naturally, feeds the shock and grief in response to the polling data churned up, a profound disbelief that Russians can possibly support such barbarity.
It begs to be reminded that in Russia, the television tells people every day that what’s going on is not a war but a ‘limited scale military operation’. Russians have grown desensitized to military operations over the past few years— with continuous reports on the operations in Donbas, Crimea, Syria, Georgia, Abkhazia, Ossetia. Practically an entire decade has passed under the shadow of some war going on in the background somewhere. As long as they are not affected directly, Russians just don’t pay much attention to foreign operations anymore.
This is what the Levada poll actually reflects. The 81% of popular support for Putin’s war should never be mentioned without the second figure— the meager 29% who follow the events in Ukraine closely.
Moreover, when one examines the range of support from “full” to “partial”, the picture becomes even more complicated. Solid support for the war (“definitely support the Russian military action in Ukraine”) stands at 53%. Given the conservative estimate that 10-15% are against the war but are afraid to answer questions honestly, the actual support for the war is below 50%. The rest of what’s bundled under support is a partial, or conditional support (“closer to supporting than opposing”)— light blue on the Levada graph below.
Among Russians under 40, this group is above 30%, and among Russians younger than 25 it stands at 42%. That’s a large portion of the Russian society, which is confused about what’s going on, is leaning toward supporting the government propaganda, but at the same time isn’t fully sure about this stance.
This is a profound point that begs reiterating—even after years of heavy bombardment with poisonous propaganda, more than a third of “supporters” aren’t really sure. This gives us a good reason to double down on the counter-propaganda efforts. If members of this group are purposefully targeted with truthful coverage of the events, there’s a decent likelihood that they may change their minds.
The disparities between age categories are significant.
Admittedly, the respondents in the age group of 55+ are the most entrenched supporters of Putin’s war, and at that, most informed supporters — 39% say that they follow the war “quite closely”, and 76% of others who follow less closely are added (as opposed to just 29% and 64% overall respectively). The support of the war among older Russians is not only the highest, but also quite deliberate — seniors watch TV and truly believe it. That’s the bad news.
The good news is, that, once we look beyond this demographic group, the support for Putin’s war is drastically different. Among Russians younger than 25, only 29% “definitely” support the war. Among Russians aged 25-39 —just 42%. Putin’s support here diminishes.
When asked about the reasons for supporting the “military operation”, Russians generally do not come up with narratives of bloodthirsty imperialism. Only 21% of those who support the war echo Putin’s “denazification” argument, and just 14% speak of the need to contain NATO enlargement and “demilitarize” Ukraine. These figures are the percentage of those who support the war, not the overall percentage of Russians—which will be even smaller, in the range of 10-15%. It means that a large number of people does not buy into Putin’s geopolitical propaganda constructs.
Higher frequency responses include “protection of Russian-speaking peoples” (43%) and “preventing an attack on Russia” (25%)”. It means that Putin’s propaganda has been successful in instilling the sense that Russia is besieged, and Russian-speaking peoples are under threat. Similar narrative surrounded the 1980s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. People were told that that if the USSR hadn’t invaded, the U.S. would, and would place missiles to target them. However, even in the 1980s, the support for that argument steadily dissipated as the Soviets realized that the reality of the Afghan war was very different from what TV told them.
The point is, even among supporters of the war, the prevailing rationale is defensive, not that of aggression.Russians do not share Putin’s worldview, nor his motivators of imperialism and conquest. They have been duped by the propaganda into thinking that Russia is “under attack”. These fallacies will become evident to them over time, and the support will fade.
Now, let’s turn to the domestic context for these poll results. Russia has just adopted a number of harsh laws threatening up to 15 years in prison for criticizing the actions of the Russian military. Every day, at their places of employment, people are subjected to government-mandated lectures and warned to not even dare to express opposition to Putin’s “military operation”. When they come home in the evening, and their stationary phone rings, and they are asked whether they support the war, it is fear that may be the main driver for their responses. Notably, pollsters report a skyrocketing number of refusals from respondents to talk and dropped calls.
How many of those dropped calls can be interpreted as anti-war voices? A group of independent Russian opinion polling experts led by Alexandr Romanovich from the Kvalitas Opinion Polling Center, has conducted an experiment comparing the results of polling by phone with anonymous street polling. Their conclusion is that the real proportion of respondents who are against war is substantially higher, often in the range of 10-15%, but they are afraid to speak when conversation is not anonymous. (The data can be found here.) Similar conclusions can be drawn from a list experiment that is presented here.
Given a significant proportion of anti-war minded people who refuse to answer questions as part of polls, it’s clear that the “solid” support for Putin’s war— without reservations and conditions— is much lower than 53% cited by the Levada poll discussed in the beginning of this piece. Or, to put it simply, it is well below 50%.
None of this is to categorically assert that there is no sizable aggressive portion of the Russian population that supports the war. There is. Many members of the Russian diaspora have been deeply disturbed in recent weeks by conversations with their Russian relatives and acquaintances, who have been aggressively channeling Putin’s propaganda verbatim as heard on TV. We don’t know how many exactly take the aggressive pro-Putin stance currently— according to the available data, it can be anything up to 30-40%. But not 50%, and quite certainly not 70% or 80%.
Why is it so dangerous to amplify the message that “70% or 80% of the Russians support the war”? There are two major problems which create serious long-term negative consequences. Firstly, believing in the non-existent “70-80% pro-war majority in Russia” is a prelude to giving up efforts to inform the Russian society and attempts to change the public opinion in Russia. If successful, such efforts would open a “third front” against Putin. In addition to the Ukrainian resistance and Western sanctions, Putin would face domestic political challenges, which will help weaken him and may contribute to his demise. On the contrary, if the domestic “third front” is not established, Putin will remain completely free to behave as he will in Ukraine and beyond. That is an opportunity that the democratic West simply can’t afford to squander.
Secondly, the Russian civil society is further alienated by such generalizations. The message they are getting now is “because 80% of you support the war, you’re all guilty and bad”. Without question, all Russians— even those who have opposed Putin’s regime and his policy of perpetual war for a long time —will bear some collective responsibility for Putin’s actions, which is an inevitable consequence of the scale of Putin’s barbaric attack. But purposefully alienating the Russian people now contributes to the consolidation of public opinion around Putin, strengthening him. Paradoxically, the more some commentators in the West and in Ukraine blast all Russians as “hopeless imperialists by genetic code”, the easier it is for Putin to consolidate resources to continue his attacks on Ukraine. On the other hand, if Russian public opinion shifts and people start to openly question his policies, Putin may be forced to adjust his actions.
Our data shows that the interest in points of view alternative to what the Russian propaganda is saying on the war has grown significantly in the recent weeks. The monthly audience of the Navalny Live YouTube channel in March exceeded 20 million people, the great majority of them from inside Russia. That’s comparable with the audiences of state television channels. The number of subscribers of the MilovLive YouTube channel has jumped by about a quarter since the start of the war and is nearing 400,000— and this is just one of the many channels providing the point of view on the war diametrically opposed to Putin’s propaganda.
Putin understands this. Since the beginning of the war, he has quickly criminalized spreading of the truth about the war, and doubled down on censorship. People are arrested for simply standing on the street with anti-war posters quoting Lev Tolstoy’s books. Why would he do that, if he has the full backing of his people?
This presents us with a great opportunity. Feedback from Milov YouTube viewers suggests that some of them have been able to convince even the most hardline supporters of Putin that something is wrong. Not to mention the “grey zone”: people who don’t pay enough attention, are unsure, etc.
Again, it’s helpful to recall the experience of the USSR in the 1980s: in the early years of the war in Afghanistan, people were unaware of its scale and negative consequences, they thought it was some sort of limited operation in their genuine interests, military servicemen were escorted to war by their families with honors. But by mid-1980s, it was all gone, and people cursed the Soviet leadership for getting involved in Afghanistan.
Without doubt, Putin’s propaganda is effective, and its roots run deep. But this weed can be uprooted. Many passionate and talented Russians— opposition activists, journalists, public opinion leaders— have practical ideas on how to break through an information blockade. These efforts are currently in demand and successful, against all the odds. The West needs to support them, and to calm down the hotheads rushing to throw out the baby with the bathwater, labeling all Russians as “hopeless imperialists”. They are not. They can be an important ally of the free world in defeating Putin. Let’s make it happen.
Buryat activists have launched a campaign calling for the end of the Russian war on Ukraine. The campaign aims to break through the Kremlin propaganda.
Background
Since the Donbas war, ethnic Buryats from Siberia have been dubbed as the “Putin’s Buryat warriors.” It all began with the Donbas war, where the Kremlin, advancing its Novorossiya project sent Russian armed forces posing as local Donetsk separatists. And while a soldier from Pskov was visually difficult to discern from a Donetsk miner, Buryats with their clearly Asian appearance, really stood out from the local population. This is when these Buryats were humorously called the Donbass Indians.
In Spring 2015, a 20-year-old Buryat tank crew member Dorzhi Batomunkuev, who had been severely burnt in combat in Logvinovo, gave an interview to the Russian Novaya Gazeta newspaper, in which he characterized Russian President Vladimir Putin as an insidious man who asserts to the entire world that “our military is not there,” and in reality, is pulling a fast one on the sly. Dorzhi confirmed that there are, in fact, Russian soldiers in the Donbas.
In Summer 2015, a Kremlin-backed project “The Net” released a video on behalf of “Putin’s Buryat warriors,” featuring several young men and women who attempted to contest reports in the media that Buryat soldiers participate in the military conflict in Eastern Ukraine. The crude video address is perhaps most memorable with its assertion that “the Ukrainian economy is free falling into the European pubic area of Concita Wurst,”—amplifying the Kremlin’s narratives tying European values to its supposed moral decay as manifested in acceptance of LGBTQ+ communities.
Members of the Kyiv Buryat community published a civilized counter, but lacking the hype, it did not go viral.
And just like that, we got to the point, where in February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, and once again, numerous videos featuring Buryat POWs started to pop up on social media. Initially, supporters of the “special operation” dismissed as fake the video with an unidentified young man saying that he is a Buryat. However, the soldier’s mother has confirmed that the video is of her son— Sergey Ochirov. And then she staged a solitary protest on the main square of the Buryat capital, holding a sign “No War.”
In an ironic historic twist, an ethnic Buryat Yuriy Ekhanurov served as Ukraine’s Prime Minister in 2005-2006 and headed Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense from 2007-2009.
Breaking Through the Kremlin’s Propaganda
Buryats who are not thrilled with being appropriated as “the Russian World” mascots, launched a campaign, releasing a new video each week, featuring Buryats who demand for the war to stop.
Due to the absurd new Russian laws, according to which even uttering “No to War” is interpreted as “discrediting the activities of the Russian military”— a transgression that comes with a real and lengthy prison sentence, the videos mainly feature Buryats who live outside of Russia.
Dozens of Buryats have already recorded videos, including Buryats born or living in Ukraine. The campaign’s authors have collected enough materials for a series of videos.
At this point, Buryats are the only ethnic minority of Russia who has initiated this type of campaign.
An activist Victoria Maladaeva who resides in San Francisco could not remain silent having “interacted with many of her friends living in Buryatia and realizing how brutally effective was the Kremlin’s propaganda.”
“I wanted to break through to the Russian citizens, to my compatriots, and to tell them that the war is not about the joy of victory. War is always grief, death, injuries, traumas and fear,”— she explains.
“I hope that from the mouth of fellow Buryats at least some hear the voice of truth, the voice of freedom. I also wanted to support those who in horror had already realized what’s going on and tried to tackle propaganda and its toll among family members. I am now being asked to forward these videos so that others can show them to their mothers, to other family members,”- says Maladaeva who continues to collect videos from others who oppose the war via her Instagram account.
Maladaeva has left Russia a few years ago fleeing racism.
Russia is not Qualified to Lecture Ukraine on Anti-Fascism
Vladimir Budaev who was involved in producing the anti-war videos had himself experienced racism in Russia. He is genuinely incensed that the Kremlin broadcasts as the main purpose of invading Ukraine its de-Nazification. Budaev feels that Putin should start out by “de-Nazifying Russia.”
Aleksei Kim, another participant in the video campaign, also raises the problems of racism and xenophobia suffered by minorities in Russia.
According to Kim, in 2017, in Moscow, “out of the blue, a group of 7 assaulted him, kicking, proclaiming that Russia is for Russians and Moscow is for Muscovites.” None of the bystanders interfered to defend the young man, and when he came to a police department, they recommended that he does “not meander in unfamiliar neighborhoods.”
The participants of the anti-war video campaign are befuddled by the fact that non-Russians are sent to Ukraine to defend “the Russian World.”
“To save “the Russian World” the government is sending people from remote regions, people who are not of Russian ethnicity. This war cannot be justified in any way. It is cruel and senseless, as is the totalitarian regime of Russia, which has persisted for over 20 years. But right now, this regime is harming not only the Russian citizens, but also the citizens of Ukraine,” — points out Dari Mansheeva.
“In Ukraine, the Russian state right now is conducting a senseless war, not needed by anyone, and is sending Buryat soldiers there. And I just don’t understand— why are they supposed to die there! I don’t want the families of my compatriots to receive death notices in the mail. I don’t want my people to pay in blood for someone’s military adventurism! I believe that this war is a crime,”— states Maria Vyushkova.
“I am against my compatriots being shipped over there like cannon fodder to satisfy the ambitions and perverted fantasies of the mentally ill Putin,”— adds Budaev.
Notably, in 2015, in St. Petersburgh, the Russian government hosted an International Russian Conservative Forum, where they hobnobbed with European neo-Nazis who use swastika as their symbol, praise the Third Reich and peddle theories on Jewish conspiracy.
The Kremlin’s efforts to befriend the Western ultra-Rights is a well-known fact, which makes its current demands to de-Nazify Ukraine even more absurd.
Putin Should be Tried at an International Tribunal
Journalist Evgenia Baltatarova who was forced into exile to Kazakhstan underscores: “I am against the war in Ukraine. It is my conviction that Russia is the aggressor in this war. The war must end as soon as possible. And Putin must be subjected to a trial at an international tribunal.”
One of the anti-war campaign’s videos features the daughter of a famous Buryat writer African Balburov—Arina Stivrinya; as well as Kyiv-based Yulia Tsyrendorzhieva, Tatyana Vynnyk and a Buryat-Ukrainian family – the Tikhonovs. Nikita Tikhonov, points out that in Ukraine “there are no fascists, there are no Banderites, and this war is to the benefit of just one person.”
Buryats insist that the war for “the Russian World”— is not their war. And they know all too well what it is like to be “liberated”— within the framework of the “Russian World.”
How the Kremlin intimidates Russian citizens who speak out against war and persecutes them through new repressive laws
The “special military operation” in Ukraine, which the Kremlin has prohibited calling a war, has shocked the Russian society. Protests are taking place daily, and people are speaking out on social media. Putin’s government has responded to these actions with more repression.
In the first weeks of the war in Ukraine, the Russian authorities launched an unprecedented campaign of pressure against Russians who oppose the war. After the outbreak of hostilities, the State Duma adopted, in record time, a law banning activities that “discredit” the Russian armed forces, effectively outlawing any statements that deviate from the official line on the “special military operation.” At the same time, the authorities began blocking social networks and independent media, cracking down on protests, and putting more pressure on people who oppose the war through their employers. Most independent media outlets covering the war have been blocked. Many media outlets have stopped working or refused to cover the topic because of the adoption of a law imposing imprisonment for up to 15 years for “disseminating false information about the actions of the Russian armed forces.” The main social networks — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter — were also blocked by the authorities.
Below are the most important things that are happening to Russian civil society right now.
Silencing of the Media
On February 24, 2022, the Kremlin’s censor agency Roskomnadzor informed the media that when preparing materials concerning a “special military operation,” they must use only the information and data received from official Russian sources. Otherwise such media outlets can be fined up to 5 million rubles for disseminating knowingly false information under Article 13.15 of the Code of Administrative Offences. In addition, such materials are subject to immediate blocking in accordance with Article 15.3 of Federal Law № 149-FZ “On Information, Information Technology and Information Security”, which was amended in late 2021 to tighten censorship.
On February 26, 2022, Roskomnadzor sent notices demanding to restrict access to “inaccurate information” to 10 media outlets (among them were Echo of Moscow, Mediazona, The New Times, TV Channel Dozhd, and others). Among the reasons for the restriction, Roskomnadzor indicated that these media outlets distributed “materials in which the ongoing operation is called an attack, an invasion, or a declaration of war.” A similar notice was sent to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, with claims to the article “Russian Invasion of Ukraine (2022)”.
After that, some media outlets began adding notes to their materials stating that, at the request of Roskomnadzor, they were quoting information about the war in Ukraine based on Russian official sources.
By March 4, Roskomnadzor had blocked 16 media outlets in Russia: Meduza, BBC Russian Service, Deutsche Welle, Current Time, The New Times, The Village, DOXA, Taiga.info, Dozhd, Echo of Moscow, TV2, Radio Liberty, and six related projects: “Idel.Realii,” “Siberia.Realii,” “Sever.Realii” and “Radio Azatlyk.”
On March 6, it became known about the blocking of the media outlets Mediazone and Republic, as well as websites of Snob, Sobesednik, Agent, 7×7, Echo of Moscow in Chelyabinsk, and Echo Kavkaza.
Later, due to numerous blockages and the threat of criminal prosecution, many media outlets have announced closure. The online journal “The Village” has released a statement about the office closure in Russia. TV Channel “Dozhd”, Tomsk agency TV2, Znak.com, Bloomberg, CNN, BBC,ABC, CBS and CBC and others announced a temporary suspension of work in Russia.
Radio station “Echo of Moscow” has also stopped broadcasting. Yet, the decision to close the radio station was made not by the editorial board, but by the board of directors controlled by the state corporation Gazprom. Frequency of “Echo of Moscow” was transmitted for broadcasting to the state channel Sputnik.
Media outlets The Bell, Novaya Gazeta, It’s My City, Republic, Snob, Advocate Street, Silver Rain Radio and others decided not to cover Russia’s armed hostilities in Ukraine and delete (or change) existing publications on this topic.
On March 21, 2022, the Euronews website and the broadcasting of the TV channel itself were blocked in Russia.
According to the RoskomSvoboda project, which tracks updates to Roskomnadzor’s registry of banned sites, more than 500 different resources have been blocked in total since the war began.
Attack on the Social Media
In addition to silencing the traditional media, the authorities began restricting access to popular social networks. Thus, the Prosecutor General’s Office has recognized that the social network Facebook was involved in violations of the fundamental rights and freedoms of Russian citizens. The corresponding decision was made following Article 3.3 of the Federal Law “On measures to influence persons involved in violations of fundamental human rights and freedoms, rights and freedoms of citizens of the Russian Federation” in connection with the “discriminatory actions” of the administration of this social network (owned by the American company Meta Platforms Inc.) to impose restrictions on the accounts of individual Russian mass media such as “Lenta.ru”, “Zvezda” and “RIA Novosti”. In this regard, Roskomnadzor first began to slowdown traffic, then restricted access, and then blocked Facebook in Russia.
Roskomnadzor also blocked Twitter. The agency considered that false information about military operations in Ukraine is being distributed on the social network. In addition, Roskomnadzor demanded that TikTok exclude military content from the recommendations for minors and explain the reasons for the removal of news stories published on the official account of “RIA Novosti”. Subsequently, TikTok itself restricted its work in Russia due to increased legal risks.
Roskomnadzor also demanded that Google and YouTube remove “fakes” about the situation in Ukraine, distributed as contextual advertising.
Instagram Facebook’s parent company, Meta, was declared an “extremist organization” by the Prosecutor General’s Office on March 11, 2022, and Instagram was banned in Russia.
On March 21, Tverskoy District Court of Moscow satisfied the request of the General Prosecutor’s Office and declared “extremist organization” the company Meta, which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram, as well as the messenger WhatsApp. At the same time, the court decided to block both of the company’s social networks. The decision to declare Meta “extremist” will take effect in a month if the company does not challenge it in court, or immediately after an appeal if the company loses. But the decision to block Facebook and Instagram went into effect immediately.
From now on, Russian media outlets must not display the logos of Meta, Facebook and Instagram. They will have to mark Meta as a banned organization in the Russian Federation.
Blocked media outlets, however, continue to operate and many Russians keep reading them using anti-blocking tools, such as VPN clients or plug-ins. In addition, the Tor browser in traffic obfuscation mode is used to bypass blocking. Telegram news channels are extremely popular: the number of subscribers of some of them has exceeded one million these days.
Harsher Punishment for “Discrediting” the Military
On March 2, 2022, amendments to the Criminal Code and the CAO were introduced to the State Duma, providing for penalties for:
1. public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation;
2. public actions discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, including calls for uncoordinated public events;
3. calls for sanctions against Russia.
The public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the Russian armed forces as a new type of crime is now provided for in Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code. The punishment varies from a fine of 700 thousand rubles to imprisonment for three years and under aggravating circumstances up to five years. For the same acts that have entailed aggravating consequences, a penalty of up to 15 years in prison may be imposed (with deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or engage in certain activities for up to five years).
The new article 20.3.3 of the CAO establishes punishment for public actions “discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation” in the form of a fine of up to 50 thousand rubles for citizens, up to 200 thousand for officials and up to 500 thousand for legal entities. In the presence of qualifying signs (among them are calls for “unauthorized” public events, as well as the creation of a threat to the life and health of citizens, public safety, etc.), the fine increases to 100 thousand rubles for citizens, up to 300 thousand for officials and up to 1 million for legal entities.
If a person brought to administrative responsibility under this article repeatedly commits such an act within a year, criminal liability ensues following the new Article 280.3 of the Criminal Code. Punishment varies from a fine of 100 thousand rubles to imprisonment for up to three years (with deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or engage in certain activities for the same period). If these actions caused death by negligence and/or harm to the health of citizens, property, mass violations of public order and/or public safety, or interfered with the functioning of life support facilities, transport or social infrastructure, credit institutions, energy, industry or communications facilities, the maximum penalty increases up to a fine of 1 million rubles or imprisonment for up to five years (with deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or engage in certain activities for the same period).
According to the new article 20.3.4 of the CAO, calls for sanctions against Russia are punishable by a fine of up to 50 thousand rubles for citizens, up to 200 thousand for officials and up to 500 thousand for legal entities. In case of repeated violations within a year, a person will face criminal liability under the new Article 284.2 of the Criminal Code. The maximum penalty for this crime is imprisonment for up to three years (with or without a fine).
The State Duma and the Federation Council approved the amendments on March 4, and on the same day Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law that criminalized “fakes” about the actions of Russian military personnel.
The Ominous Letter Z: War Propaganda Inside Russia
The first pictures and videos of Russian military vehicles with obscure markings appeared on social networks a few weeks before the start of the war. The Latin letter Z, with or without a square, was the most common, but a V was also seen. Most likely, the letters were used as tactical markings to distinguish equipment from different Russian military districts — but in a few days Z and V (but especially Z) became almost the official symbols of the “special operation.”
The Russian Defense Ministry itself has issued no public explanation, and when it finally released several posts mentioning Z and V in its social networks, it did not become any clearer. The markings of military equipment in these statements were used in propaganda slogans: for example, “Zakanchivayem voyni” (“we finish wars”) or “Za mir” (“For Peace”) (first in the usual spelling, and then with the replacement of the Cyrillic Z and V in the hashtags with the Latin Z and V).
Russian gymnast Ivan Kulyak, who took third place at the March 5 competition in Doha, went to the awards ceremony with the letter Z on his uniform (the International Gymnastics Federation demanded to open a disciplinary investigation in connection with “shocking behavior” of Kulyak). The governor of the Kemerovo region Sergey Tsivilev announced that since March, 2 the name of the region will be written as “KuZbass” in the official materials of the regional government. According to Tsivilev, Z is “a sign of support for our fighters” involved in the “military special operation” in Ukraine. The letter Z was put on the logo on its website by the Legislative Assembly of the Kemerovo region.
At the same time, events were organized in several Russian regions in support of the “special operation” in Ukraine, with participants lining up in the shape of the letter Z.
Two events in Kazan were particularly discussed. First, on March 5, the local children’s hospice lined up its wards with the letter Z. Then, on March 9 in the Kazan Mall an action took place, in which students of Kazan State Institute of Culture (KazGIK) took part: dressed in white hoodies with St. George ribbons pinned on them in the form of letter Z, students were throwing in the air their right and left hands alternately with clenched fist and chanting the slogan “For peace!”
There have been cases of pro-war actions and demonstrations. On March 6, 2022, a motor rally in support of the “special operation” in Ukraine was held in 12 regions of Russia. In some regions, people — mostly from a state-financed organization such as schools and hospitals — lined up in the shape of the letter “Z” for a photo.
The letter Z was also found on the door of his apartment by film critic Anton Dolin, who announced his departure from Russia on March 6, as well as a theatre critic Marina Davydova.
On March 18, 2022, a rally of many thousands was held in Moscow to commemorate the eighth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea. A concert at a full Luzhniki Stadium with star supporters of Russian power was shown on all major Russian TV channels. President Vladimir Putin, speaking in a million and a half rubles down jacket, began his speech with a quote from the Constitution, continued by acknowledging Russia’s merits in developing Crimea, and then once again explained the need for a military operation in Ukraine. Then Putin quoted the Bible: “There is no greater love than that someone should give his life for his friends.” This, as it turned out, was about Russian servicemen who “help, support each other, and if necessary, like a brother cover their own body from a bullet on the battlefield,” Putin concluded.
War propaganda has also touched the youngest Russians. In the first days of the war, Russian schools received recommendations for conducting lessons for students from grades 7-11 about the war in Ukraine. These lessons were supposed to convey the official point of view of the government about the reasons for the “special military operation”, as well as to condemn anti-war rallies to the children. The training manual sent to teachers quotes the speech of President Vladimir Putin and emphasizes that there is not a war, but a “special military operation”, which is a “forced measure” taken to “save people” and “deter nationalists who oppress the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine”.
On March 3, the Ministry of Education held an All-Russian open lesson “Defenders of Peace”, where schoolchildren were presented with the background of current events in the official interpretation and also explained what danger the “NATO infrastructure” poses to Russia and how to distinguish lies from the truth.
In addition, similar conversations were recommended to be held at some Russian universities. For example, on March 1, 2022, Saint Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation (SUAI) published a decree calling to take “measures to prevent crimes and other anti-social activities of students” and “to ensure that the educational work aimed at the formation of students all-Russian civil identity, patriotism, civic responsibility, a sense of pride in the history of Russia, the preservation of historical memory, respect for the memory of defenders of the Fatherland and the exploits of Heroes of the Fatherland.”
The administrations of some Russian universities, including Moscow State University, have publicly expressed support for Russian military actions in Ukraine.
On March 21, 2022, a resident of Krasnodar city was fined with 30 thousand rubles under article on discrediting Russian military. He spit in the letter Z in the form of a St. George’s ribbon. In court, Alexander Kondratyev confirmed that he spit in the letter Z, which he perceived as a swastika, and that “spitting on a swastika does not discredit the armed forces. Kondratyev did not admit guilt, but “explained that by his actions he wanted to show his attitude towards the special operation conducted by the Russian military, in which people from both sides were killed.”
Squashing Anti-War Initiatives
A broad anti-war public campaign, despite the official rhetoric of the authorities, manifested itself quite noticeably from the very beginning taking various forms.
Petitions, open letters and statements against the war were being launched on the Internet. A petition created by human rights defender Lev Ponomarev on the Change.org has gained more than a million signatures. At the moment, there are around 100 such documents from representatives of various professions and other associations of citizens. The Economist analyzed 50,000 posts on Twitter and Instagram using the hashtag #nowar, determined the geolocation of 7,000 of them and found publications in 83 Russian regions and 50 cities all over the country — the geography and scale of support are unprecedented.
After the publication and dissemination of such statements, reports began to arrive concerning visits by law enforcement officers to the people and organizations that signed the petitions.
There are also some cases of dismissals. Managers and employees of state-funded or government-affiliated structures — theatres, museums, or large companies — resign due to moral considerations and disagreement with the policies of organizations. There are examples of forced dismissals and pressure on employees of various institutions who spoke out against the war.
A special attitude was also shown to the citizens of Ukraine. Ukrainian citizens detained at anti-war rallies since February, 24, 2022, are being questioned separately by security forces. Two citizens of Ukraine, permanently residing and working in Moscow, applied for legal assistance because of the district police officer’s visit. He asked questions about their purposes of staying in Russia, collected their data, photographed the documents, motivated the procedure with the “war with Ukraine”, warned against “information on the Internet” and suggested not to interfere “in things like sabotage and terrorism.”
On February 27, 2022, it became known that more than 10 Ukrainians living in Russia were detained, allegedly for violating migration legislation.
Marina Ovsyannikova of the news outlet Channel One, who broke into a live broadcast of Russia’s state TV channel during prime time on March 14 with an anti-war poster was arrested and fined for inciting people to participate in protests. In addition, the Investigative Committee launched an investigation into her case.
The Russian authorities Refuse to Approve Anti-War Rallies. Police Unleashes Violence Against Protesters
The authorities of Russia’s largest cities consistently refuse to permit anti-war actions and individual pickets, explaining this by the continuing pandemic of the coronavirus. At the same time, “OVD-Info” stresses that virtually all other events involving large gatherings of people have long been held without restrictions.
The number of arrests at rallies is unprecedented. Between February 24 and March 13, almost 15,000 people were detained in 155 cities across Russia. The reasons for the detentions were not only mass actions, but also any other forms of protest, such as the use of anti-war symbols, laying flowers or dressing in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. The detentions, contrary to legal requirements, were also carried out by unmarked security forces.
In addition, the police meticulously look for any anti-war statements of any kind. This includes personal correspondence on the devices of detainees and even bystanders. While vandalism can be prosecuted regarding anti-war graffiti, arrests and administrative prosecution can be initiated for placing pacifist symbols on clothing or backpacks.
Criminal Prosecution
As of March 12, 2022, 21 criminal cases are known, allegedly related to the people’s reaction to a “special military operation” in Ukraine. Detailed information about cases is not always available.
At least six cases have been initiated against people who took part in anti-war rallies. All of them were initiated under the article on the use of violence against a representative of the authorities (Article 318 of the Criminal Code provides for punishment, depending on the part from a fine of up to two thousand rubles to imprisonment for up to 10 years). Three cases were initiated in St. Petersburg, two in Yekaterinburg, one in Moscow.
On March 16, 2022 the Investigative Committee announced the first criminal cases under the article on “discrediting” the army. The defendants are two residents of the Tomsk Region and Nika Belotserkovskaya, a well-known blogger and influencer. The latter, according to the agency, “discredited the state authorities and the armed forces. According to the IC, Belotserkovskaya is currently abroad; the issue of her international wanted list is being resolved.
Veronika Belotserkovskaya commented on the opening of the case: “I have been officially declared a decent person!” She continues to write about Ukraine and says that she will not be intimidated.
Probably the most high-profile criminal case brought to trial so far is that against the famous Russian publicist and social activist Alexander Nevzorov. On March 22, 2022, the criminal case was opened on article “public dissemination of intentionally false information about the actions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”
According to the investigation, on March 9, 2022, Nevzorov published “deliberately false information about the intentional shelling of a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on his page on Instagram, which is banned in Russia, and on March 19 on his YouTube channel. The publication was accompanied by unreliable photos of civilians injured by the shelling. The sources of distribution of these images are the Ukrainian media.” The statement of the Investigative Committee notes that measures are being taken to establish the whereabouts of Nevzorov. According to the media, Nevzorov himself, like many other Russian journalists and public figures, left Russia.
Free Russia Foundation has compiled a list of Russians who had participated in Vladimir Putin’s pro-war rally that took place on March 18, 2022 at Luzhniki stadium in Moscow.
The event was held in support of the brutal war that Russia has been waging against Ukraine for over three weeks now killing thousands of civilians in Ukraine, including children, bombing residential buildings and hospitals.
The list consists of Russian opinion leaders and celebrities – propaganda bullhorns – who with their activities promote the war crimes of the Russian Federation in Ukraine.
Concert hosts
- Maria Eduardovna Sittel – Russian television presenter and an anchor on the Vesti program at Russia 1
- Dmitry Viкtorovich Guberniev – Russian TV presenter, sports commentator of TV channel Match TV, Confidant of Vladimir Putin
Concert speakers and orators
- Dmitry Anatolyevich Pevtsov – Russian theater and film actor, singer, musician, teacher, Member of the State Duma, member of the «New People» (political pro-Putin party) faction
- Vladimir Lvovich Mashkov – Russian theater and film actor and director, screenwriter, film producer, public figure. Artistic director of the Moscow Theater Oleg Tabakov, Confidant of Vladimir Putin
- Artem Vladimirovich Zhoga – the commander of the Sparta Battalion, a pro-Russian separatist force that is involved in the Russo-Ukrainian War. The father of ex-commander of the Sparta Battalion Vladimir Artemovich Zhoga, who was killed in in Ukraine 05 March 2022
- Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova – Russian civil servant, diplomat. Director of the Information and Press Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (MFA of Russia), spokesman and official representative of the MFA of Russia
- Margarita Simonovna Simonyan – Propagandist, Russian journalist and media manager. Editor-in-Chief of the RT TV channel, of the Rossiya Segodnya international news agency and of the Sputnik news agency, Confidant of Vladimir Putin
- Tinatin (Tina) Givievna Kandelaki – Russian journalist, TV presenter, producer, public figure, founder of the cosmetic brand ANSALIGY, Deputy General Director of Gazprom-Media and Managing Director of Gazprom-Media Entertainment Television, Acting Director of the TNT TV channel
- Victor Anatolyevich Polyakov – Russian aircraft engineer, Deputy General Director – Managing Director of PJSC UEC-Saturn of the United Engine Corporation Confidant of Vladimir Putin
- Vladimir Abdualievich Vasilyev – Deputy of the State Duma
- Sergey Mikhailovich Mironov – Deputy of the State Duma
- Alexey Gennadievich Nechayev – Deputy of the State Duma
- Alexey Yakovlevich Shloknik – The Museum of the Great Patriotic War, Director
- Yaroslav Yevgenyevich Nilov – Deputy of the State Duma
Singers and celebrities
- Polina Sergeyevna Gagarina – Russian singer, songwriter, actress, model, Confidant of Vladimir Putin
- Oleg Mikhaylovich Gazmanov – Russian singer, actor, composer, poet, producer, specializing in patriotic songs, Confidant of Vladimir Putin
- Nikolay Vyacheslavovich Rastorguyev – Vocalist, soloist, the lead singer of the Russian group Lyube, Confidant of Vladimir Putin
- Vitaly Feoktistovich Loktev – Keyboardist, bayanist, Lyube group
- Alexander Erokhin – Drummer, Lyube group
- Sergey Pereguda – Guitarist, Lyube group
- Dmitry Streltsov – Bass player, Lyube group
- Alexey Tarasov – backing vocalist, Lyube group
- Pavel Suchkov – backing vocalist, Lyube group
- Alexey Vladimirovich Kantur – backing vocalist, Lyube group
- Vasily Georgievich Gerello – Russian opera singer, soloist of the Mariinsky Theater
- Natalia Yuryevna Podolskaya (Natalla Padolskaja) – Belarusian and Russian pop singer
- Timur Ildarovich Yunusov (Timati) – Russian rapper, singer, record producer, actor, and entrepreneur. Confidant of Vladimir Putin
- Anastasiya Vasilevna Makeyeva (Malkova-Makeyeva) – Russian theater, film and dubbing actress, singer, fashion model, TV presenter
- Moscow Cossack Choir
- Marina Firsova – Soloist of the Moscow Cossack Choir
- Ksenia Babikova – Soloist of the Moscow Cossack Choir
- Antonina Kochergina – Soloist of the Moscow Cossack Choir
- Maria Korneva – Artist of the Moscow Cossack Choir
- Andrey Kargopolov – Artist of the Moscow Cossack Choir
- Svetlana Chebanko – Soloist of the Moscow Cossack Choir
- Anton Kornev – Soloist and director of the Moscow Cossack Choir
- Anna Valyavina (Goncharova) – Soloist of the Moscow Cossack Choir
- Artem Limin-Kosachev – Soloist of the Moscow Cossack Choir
- Sergei Zhuravlev – Soloist of the Moscow Cossack Choir
- Natalia Alexandrovna Kachura – concert performer, artist-vocalist of the Music and Drama Theater. M. M. Brovun (Donetsk, DPR)
- Victoria Petrovna Dayneko – Russian singer and actress
- Ballet by Alla Dukhovaya “Ballet Todes” – Russian dance group and a network of schools-studios for teaching dance art
- Nikolay Viktorovich Baskov – Singer
- Sergey Evgenievich Zhukov – Singer
- Alexander Vladimirovich Oleshko – Actor
- Alexander Felixovich Sklyar – Singer
- Dmitry Vadimovich Kharatyan – Singer
- Yaroslav Dronov (SHAMAN) – Singer
- Oksana Vladimirovna Nechitaylo (Sogdiana) – Singer
- Anna Sergeyevna Tsoy – Singer
- Evgeniy Nikolayevich Prilepin (Zakhar Prilepin) – Writer
- Evgeni Viktorovich Plushenko – Figure skater
- Adelina Dmitriyevna Sotnikova – Figure skater
- Svetlana Sergeyevna Zhurova – Speed skater
- Svetlana Vasilyevna Khorkina – Artistic gymnast
- Alexander Gennadiyevich Legkov – Cross-country skier
- Dina Alekseyevna Averina – Rhythmic gymnast
- Arina Alekseyevna Averina – Rhythmic gymnast
- Alexander Alexandrovich Bolshunov – Cross-country skier
- Evgeny Mikhailovich Rylov – Swimmer
- Viktoria Viktorovna Listunova – Artistic gymnast
- Vladimir Evgenyevich Morozov – Figure skater
- Victoria Alexandrovna Sinitsina – Figure skater
- Nikita Gennadyevich Katsalapov – Figure skater
On February 24, 2022, the Russian military invaded Ukraine by order of Vladimir Putin. Since then, protests against the war have not stopped inside Russia. Russians demand an end to the military invasion of Ukraine and peace between two countries. In response, the government has brutally suppressed protests, and attempted to intimidate people with new draconian laws.
Arrests at Protests. The human rights media outlet OVD-Info estimates that by March 7, 2022 over 13,500 people had been detained at anti-war rallies in Russia. Human rights activists say that this is more than at the rally in support of Alexei Navalny that took place in January 2021.
Detentions at the March 6 rallies were among the largest and most brutal since the anti-war campaign began. Over 5000 people were detained in 56 Russian cities; some of the detainees were physically assaulted, dragged by the hair, doused with water and antiseptic and tasered. The “Protest Apology” project recorded more than 30 complaints about the unjustified use of force and special means by officers of the MVD and Rosgvardiya.
In many cities, plain-clothed law enforcement officers detained protesters and took them to police vans. They often used excessive force. The anonymity created conditions for abuse of power and helped avoid criminal responsibility.
In Novosibirsk, a woman detained at the rally said that she was beaten by the police (she was taken out of the Tsentralny department by paramedics and her leg was injured). At the metro stop “Ploshchad Revolutsii” in Moscow, riot police pinned a man on the floor, pressed him with knees and hit him several times in the head with fists. At Moscow’s Lubyanka Square, police officers demanded to check passersby’s cell phone contents — they threatened arrest in case of refusal.
Detainees at anti-war rallies in various cities say that in police stations they have their cell phones taken away and not allowed to contact lawyers. At Moscow’s Brateevo police station at least three detained girls were beaten by police. They were doused with water and hit on their faces and bodies. “We were beaten on the legs, on the head. They poured water over us. They ripped off the mask, ripped the phone out of hands and threw it against the wall twice. At the end, they picked up the phone, wiped off the fingerprints. They grabbed me by the hair and pulled me around. They yelled at me. There were two girls in the office and they just watched the torture,” said 26-year-old Muscovite Alexandra Kaluzhskikh. In the recording she made, one of the officers can be heard threatening to torture the girl with electric shocks. “Putin is on our side. You are the enemies of Russia, you are the enemies of the people ***** [f**k you]. You’ll ******** [be beaten] here and that’s it. We’ll get a bonus for this,” says the policeman.
Protest participants are charged with violation of the rules of participation in the action (Part 5 of Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code), repeat violation of the rules of participation in the action (Part 8 of Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code), organization or conduct of an action (Part 2 of Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code), disobedience to a legal requirement of the police (Article 19.3 of the Administrative Code), public actions, aimed at “discrediting the use of the armed forces” (Article 20.3.3 of the Administrative Code).
All detainees face fines from 2 thousand to 300 thousand rubles and arrest up to 30 days.
New Draconian Laws. On March 4, 2022, the Russian State Duma convened for an emergency plenary session. Among other things, the deputies adopted in the second and third readings a bill on amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses and the Criminal Code. The initiatives introduced punishment for disseminating “knowingly false information about the activities of the Russian Armed Forces” and “for discrediting the use of the Russian forces”. In order for these changes to enter into force as quickly as possible, they were carried out under an accelerated procedure.
According to the text of the law, the crime without aggravating circumstances involves a fine of up to 1.5 million rubles and imprisonment of up to three years. If “official position” was used in spreading “fakes,” there was a “mercenary motive” or a motive of “political, ideological, racial, national or religious hatred,” the person faces a fine of up to five million rubles or five to 10 years in prison. If the distribution of “fakes” led to serious consequences, the case could lead to imprisonment for 10 to 15 years.
What does “discrediting the use of the armed forces” mean? It is “public actions aimed at discrediting the use” of the Russian army, including public calls to prevent its use. Whether this will mean, for example, participation in an anti-war rally, it is not yet clear, but it is very likely.
The Kremlin is hiding the true cost of war from its people. Ukrainian presidential office reported more than 12,000 dead Russian soldiers, while the Russian Defense Ministry does not confirm these figures. During the first week since the start of the war, it never published data on casualties, and on March 2, it named the losses of the Russian army in Ukraine for the first time. According to the ministry, 498 soldiers were killed and 1,597 wounded during the hostilities. This data has not been updated since then. At the same time, in all publications of government agencies and pro-Kremlin media, it is forbidden to call this conflict the word “war”: only the term “special military operation” is used.
It is also still unclear which soldiers are involved in the operation. Russian authorities claim that only contract soldiers have been sent to the war. The Ukrainian side regularly reports about dozens and even hundreds of captured Russian soldiers, many of whom are not contract soldiers, but regular conscripts.
This is indirectly confirmed by evidence that in mid-February, the parents of soldiers serving in military units in various parts of Russia began to contact the Russian Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers. They all reported the same thing: their sons were either forced to urgently sign a contract or sent to military units located near the border with Ukraine. According to the law, if an enlisted man is ready to go to war under contract, he can sign it one month after the start of military service, but in practice the contracts were signed under pressure, the soldiers’ relatives claim.
The Russian Defense Ministry also does not tell mothers where and how to find their sons. Behind the impersonal figure of 498 people are the tragedies of specific families who, as if they had been instructed in advance, are told “this is a fake,” even when relatives bring in pictures and videos of their loved ones in captivity. There are cases when mothers of killed Russian soldiers receive a death notification, but the military unit keeps claiming that the soldier is in training. “We have no such information,” this phrase has become the universal answer of any officials and military the mothers.
News about the victims can only be learned from reports by regional authorities or from posts of condolence published by their friends and relatives. It was the same during the war in Donbass in 2014-2015, and it was the same during the Syrian campaign.
By March 7, 2022, according to data of human rights project “Network Freedoms”, 60 people had been detained under the new law in 16 Russian cities: St. Petersburg, Kostroma, Samara, Krasnoyarsk, Novorossiysk, Orel, Taganrog, Kaliningrad, Krasnodar, Voronezh, Elista, Vladivostok, Yaroslavl, Kemerovo, Anapa, Simferopol.
Some of the detainees are also facing charges for participating in an unauthorized rally (Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code) and violating the law on “fakes” (Article 20.3.3 of the Administrative Code). Seven of them have already been fined between 30 and 60 thousand rubles, reports “Network Freedoms.”
NGS42 reported that on March 6, 2022, a resident of Kemerovo was fined 60 thousand rubles for calling for an anti-war rally. On the same day, a fine of 30 thousand rubles was imposed on Irina Shumilova, a resident of Kostroma, who staged a solitary picket with a poster “This war is a special operation on your taxes, and we fundraise for the medical treatment of children by SMS-messages”. According to “Network Freedoms”, no linguistic expertise was conducted in Shumilova’s case, and the police officer making the arrest said that he detected an appeal to protest in the fact that the words “war” and “special operation” were highlighted on the poster.
Another resident of Kostroma region, priest Ioann Burdin, head of the Church of the Resurrection in the village of Karabanovo, was also detained. He was charged with anti-war preaching and publishing a link to the “No to War” petition on Change.org on the parish website. “Burdin V.V., being in a public place, in the premises of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ, during his religious service in the presence of about 10 worshipers committed public actions aimed at discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, which conduct a special operation on the basis of the decision of the President and the resolution of the Federation Council of the RF Federal Assembly”, — said the protocol according to «Mediazone» media outlet.
Vera Kotova, a resident of Krasnoyarsk, was fined 30 thousand rubles. She was tried for writing “No to War” on the snow. The police report states that she “wrote on the snow by removing the snow cover from the granite base of the monument to Lenin: “No to War.”
The Russian State Goes After Children. On March 3, 2022, the Russian Ministry of Education held an all-Russian open lesson, “Defenders of Peace,” at which schoolchildren were lectured on “why the liberation mission in Ukraine is a necessity.” Shortly before that, principals of educational institutions across Russia directed teachers to hold daily class hours dedicated to the war in Ukraine and relations between the two countries — and sent them teaching guides that referred to the war as a “special operation.”
On March 7, 2022, it was reported that in Moscow, police came to the home of sixth-grader Kirill (surname withheld at the request of his mother) after a history lesson where the war with Ukraine was discussed, and the boy was asking questions. Kirill and his mother Natalia told “Novaya Gazeta” about it.
The lesson, where the teacher decided to discuss the Russian “special operation”, took place on March 4. According to Kirill, not only he, but a few of his classmates asked questions about the war. The consequences for them are not reported.
Among other things, Kirill asked why Putin started a war in Ukraine. To which the teacher said that it was a “special operation.” When asked how to get the government to agree to a rally against the actions of the government itself, she, according to the schoolboy, “did not give a clear answer”.
After class Kirill shouted “Glory to Ukraine!” in the hallway and was supported by other kids, the boy told reporters.
According to the mother of the schoolboy, after the class, she received a call from an unknown number and was invited to the police department for a conversation about her son. Kirill’s class master invited her to school for a meeting with the juvenile affairs inspectorate. Natalya did not show up for the conversation and took her son out of school.
On March 7, when Kirill was alone in the apartment, two police officers came to the schoolboy’s home. The boy did not open the door, so the police turned off the electricity in the apartment and left, leaving a “summons for questioning” under the door.
There is also another scandalous story involving children. On March 2, 2022 in Moscow police detained two women and five of their children, aged seven to 11, who had come to lay flowers at the Ukrainian Embassy. The detainees were first held in a police truck, then brought to the Presnenskoe police station.The authorities first wanted to keep the parents and their children overnight at the police station, but later they let them go. A trial and fines are ahead, and the parents are afraid — the police officers shouted at them, threatening to deprive them of their parental rights.
Internet and Social Media Blockade. On March 2, Roskomnadzor blocked the websites of the Ukrainian Ministry of Health and Border Guard Service and several dozen Ukrainian media outlets in Russia, including TCN channel, Segodnya, Zaxid, Ukrinform, Censor.net, Vesti.ua, Depo.ua and Delo.ua, among others.
By March 4, Roskomnadzor had blocked 16 media outlets in Russia: Meduza, BBC Russian Service, Deutsche Welle, Current Time, The New Times, The Village, DOXA, Taiga.info, Dozhd, Echo Moskvy, TV2, Radio Liberty, and six related projects: “Idel.Realii,” “Siberia.Realii,” “Sever.Realii” and “Radio Azatlyk.”
On March 6, it became known about the blocking of the media outlets Mediazone and Republic, as well as websites of Snob, Sobesednik, Agent, 7×7, Ekho Moskvy in Chelyabinsk, and Ekho Kavkaza.
Before that, Roskomnadzor issued a statement in which it demanded that the media should write about the war in Ukraine, relying only on official Russian sources, otherwise the agency threatened to block them and impose fines of up to five million rubles. The Krasnoyarsk-based media outlet Prospekt Mira, and Echo Moskvy, InoSMI, Mediazona, The New Times, Dozhd, Svobodnaya Pressa, Krym.Realii, Novaya Gazeta, Zhurnalist, and Lenizdat immediately received cautions from the agency.
After Russia passed a law on criminal liability for “fakes” about the actions of the Russian army, a number of media outlets announced that they had stopped working (in particular, Znak.com) or refused to write about the war (in particular, Novaya Gazeta and Snob).
Roskomnadzor also restricted Russians’ access to Facebook and Twitter.
Blocked media outlets, however, continue to operate and many Russians keep reading them using anti-blocking tools, such as VPN clients or plug-ins. In addition, the Tor browser in traffic obfuscation mode is used to bypass blocking. Telegram news channels are extremely popular: the number of subscribers of some of them has exceeded one million these days.
By Free Russia Foundation Team
More than a week has passed since Putin declared his “special military operation.” The rest of the world refers to it as “war on Ukraine.” Along with Ukraine, Putin is rapidly destroying Russia. The West may be unable to appreciate the extent of the tragedy unfolding inside Russia right now, as its economy collapses, and the society feels the hatred of the entire world.
It’s not a war — it’s a “special operation”
This week, Putin has completed his task of eliminating Russia’s independent media. In the late nineties, a fresh TV channel NTV used to broadcast a satirical program “Puppets,” which poked fun at prominent government figures. In the first decade and the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, on the same channel, viewers could watch the protests taking place on Bolotnaya Square and at the polls during the 2012 presidential elections.
Putin has skillfully seized control of the Russian television, depriving citizens of the opportunity to soberly assess the situation both inside the country and the implications of Putin’s foreign policy. Today, only “Putin’s” journalists are allowed on the airwaves. There, they create an alternative reality and suppress the truth. Notably, the name of the opposition leader Navalny is never mentioned on TV. Television is the only source of information for many Russians. This is true for most retirees, for example, who find it hard to “learn the Internet.”
Elections in Russia have also been hijacked. No independent, liberal or democratic candidates are allowed to participate in elections. And if they somehow make it onto the ballot, numerous schemes have been developed by authorities to prevent them from attaining the minimum threshold, leaving him or her with a measly 1 to 4% of the vote. As a result, political forces cannot unite to coordinate a mass protest similar to the Ukrainian “Maidan.” Those who do join protests end up in jail and are even assassinated.
Right now, the Russian authorities are dealing a lethal blow to independent media. The TV Rain channel has decided to halt its broadcasting. This decision was made in response to the amendments adopted by the State Duma on imprisonment for “public dissemination of knowingly false information about the use of the armed forces of the Russian Federation.”
The punishment includes both a fine of 1.5 million rubles and 15 years in prison.
Even the word “war” is considered to be “knowingly false information”. This is why Roskomnadzor issued a warning to “Novaya Gazeta.”
On March 2, “Ekho Moskvy” was forced to stop broadcasting.
The “Silver Rain“ radio station also stopped broadcasting.
As of March 4, 2022, all of the following media outlets have been blocked: “Dozhd”, Taiga.info, DOXA, “Echo Moskvy”, “Present Time”, The New Times, “Crimea. Realii”, “Ukrainian Pravda”, “Gordon”, “Interfax-Ukraine”, The Village, TSN, “Segodnya”, UNIAN, “Zerkalo Nedeli”, Vesti.ua and Zaxid.
Novaya Gazeta, Lenizdat.ru, Mediazone, Svobodnaya pressa, Journalist, and Wikipedia have received warnings.
This is not a laughing matter. The authorities are imposing censorship, banning the words “war,” “attack,” and “invasion.” Information about the shelling of Ukrainian cities and the deaths of Ukrainian civilians caused by the Russian army has been declared untrue and is prohibited from dissemination. It is now forbidden to call the ongoing operation an attack, an invasion, or a declaration of war.
Kremlin’s media oversight agency Roskomnadzor mandates the media to cite only Russian government sources in their coverage of these events. Journalists breaking with this practice face real prison sentences.
Along with the blocking of media platforms, Russian authorities are also slowing down Meta social networks, and in particular, Facebook. They are also restricting Twitter. On March 2, RoskomSvoboda reported on the supposed blocking Youtube in Russia. The same “slowdown” is taking place on Youtube. Users from Russia were unable to load static elements of YouTube, such as avatars and artwork. Roskomnadzor denies any slowdown of service.
All Google advertising banners that, in the judgement of the Russian authorities, spread inaccurate information, have stopped working.
These developments do not only cut off the Russian civil society from truthful information, but also deny Russians the opportunity to show the world that they are, in fact, against the war.
Protests
On the ill-fated date of February 24, 2022 Russians began to protest Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Some protests got off to an early start amid news of the alleged invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops. However, when the reports were confirmed, civil society exploded.
Online petitions and open letters began to appear, appealing to Putin and the world to stop the fighting in Ukraine.
People take to the streets
At the time of writing on March 3rd, a total of 7,634 people have been detained at protests in 115 cities since February 24th. Of the total, 3,608 protesters were detained in Moscow, and 2,599 were detained in St. Petersburg.
Statistics of the human rights project “OVD-Info“ (updated in real time).
Number of detainees at protests against the war with Ukraine
Due to the intensification of the protests, the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation began to issue warnings. Under Article 275 of the Criminal Code “Treason,” Russians now face up to 20 years in prison for providing virtually any assistance to Ukrainians. I would like to provide some specifics, however, as often happens in the Russian Federation, the department’s wording is rather vague. “State treason” can now apply to people who provide advisory assistance (whatever that means), as well as financial, material, technical and “other” assistance. Using the phrase “other assistance,” the Prosecutor’s Office can include anything that it wants.
On march 3, 2022, the Prosecutor General’s Office made an official announcement promising to initiate criminal charges against those who take part in protests— under Part 2 Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (participation in the activities of an extremist organization).
“Amid an unprecedented information attack on the Russian Federation, appeals to citizens to hold supposedly peaceful “anti-war” actions are spreading on the Internet.
It must be noted that the source of many such appeals are associations that, due to their extremist activities, have been banned in the territory of the Russian Federation by a court decision,” the agency writes.
Russians face from 2 to 6 years in prison under this article of the Criminal Code.
Over the course of the past week, the police visited the homes of activists and participants in anti-war actions on a daily basis. All have been charged with participation in an unauthorized mass event (Part 5 Article 202.2 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation, carrying fines of 10-30 thousand rubles, or arrest for up to 15 days). Some people are charged under part 8 of the article, with “repeated violation of the rules for holding mass events,” for which the punishment is a fine of up to 300 thousand rubles or imprisonment of up to 30 days.
During the rallies, the police are also detaining journalists. This happens despite the fact that the journalists observe the law (by wearing a special vest, and carrying a statement of their assignment, a press card and a media badge). On March 2nd, the police detained two Sota correspondents for more than 7 hours, attempting to charge them with organizing an unauthorized event (part 1 of Article 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Violations).
The police also detained journalists from Novaya Gazeta, Radio Liberty, 93.ru, TASS, Pskov Gubernia and many others.
The police regularly use violence during arrests. Children, the elderly, and mothers with infants are detained.
Initially, the anti-war rallies were spontaneous, but on March 2nd, the politician Alexei Navalny, who is in prison, called upon all Russians to attend daily rallies against the war with Ukraine.
“Don’t wait another day, no matter where you are – in Russia, in Belarus or on the other side of the planet. Come out to the main square of your city every weekday at 7 p.m. and at 2 p.m. on weekends and holidays.”
Even before the military conflict began, a number of Russian oppositionists, including Alexei Minyaylo and Dmitry Tsorionov (Enteo), had applied to the Moscow City Hall to hold an anti-war rally of 150,000 people on March 5th in Moscow.
The “Vesna” movement from St. Petersburg had also announced that they would hold an all-Russian anti-war rally on March 6th across the country.
“The all-Russian protest rally will take place on March 6th. We will meet at 15.00 in the central squares of all Russian cities to express our protest. We have every right to do so according to the Constitution.”
Green ribbons began to appear on the streets of Russian cities, as a symbol of the protest promoted by Vesna.
From Olympian to deputy
Among those who disagree with the need to send troops to kill are members of a variety of professions.
The organization “We are not alone“ has compiled a list of open letters against the war from members of various professions. The site is updated every day as new letters appear.
Here are a number of examples of open letters:
— IT workers: 32,050 signatures;
— Correspondents of Russian media. This letter was penned by “Kommersant” journalist Elena Chernenko, for which she was removed from the Ministry of Foreign Afffairs press pool.
— Doctors: 11,650 signatures;
— Students and university staff: 14, 850 signatures.
In total, “We Are Not Alone” has recorded 62 open letters and more than 160,700 signatures from members of professional communities.
In addition to letters from professional associations and unions, political activists have created several petitions, both for Russians and for the international community. The largest of these is the petition “Stop the War on Ukraine!“ created by Russia’s oldest human rights activist, Lev Ponomarev. As of this writing, 1,166,617 people have signed the petition.
On February 24th, Ponomarev was detained, allegedly for organizing an anti-war protest. He received a fine of 30,000 rubles.
On March 3rd, he went to the prosecutor’s office to have a report drawn up for having failed to note “foreign agent” at the bottom of the petition. He was attacked by journalists of the pro-governmental NTV channel.
The international civil society organization “Avaaz” launched the international petition “Stop This War.” At the time of writing, 2,272,973 people have signed the petition.
Civil society activist Dmitry Ratner launched the petition “Impeach Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin“. At the time of writing, 273,560 people have signed the petition.
Prior to the start of hostilities, the “Yabloko” party launched the petition “NO WAR“. It is also possible to leave a signature in the offices of the party. On March 2nd, the Nizhny Novgorod office was attacked and the premises were vandalized.
Conclusion
Hundreds of thousands of Russians are speaking out against the war. Thousands of Russians are detained every day at anti-war rallies. Government agencies are threatening the media and ordinary citizens with decades in prison.
Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of other Russians have been misinformed through years of brainwashing by pro-government propaganda. The independent media outlets that could fight the propaganda are either blocked, or forced to stop broadcasting, or to leave Russia altogether. The journalists of independent media outlets that have not yet been blocked are being detained.
Despite the censorship and the threat of criminal charges, Russian citizens are taking to the streets, reporting about the reality of the war on social media and are trying to convince the public that this is no “special operation of liberation,” but the very real war that it is.
By Yury Krylov, Contributing Author, FRF
The situation around Russian threat against Ukraine keeps tensions high globally. The atmosphere in Donbass escalated dramatically on February 18, when the Kremlin-controlled leaders of the self-proclaimed and internationally unrecognized DNR and LNR republics publicly asserted that Kyiv was preparing an assault (the Ukrainian authorities categorically deny such intentions) and announced the evacuation of some residents of these regions to Russia. Shooting resumed on the front line. U.S. President Joe Biden forecasted that “Russia may launch an invasion in the next few days,” and the Kremlin reiterated its demands for security guarantees.
The State Duma’s Appeal to the Russian President
On February 15, 2022, the Russian State Duma appealed to President Putin to officially recognize the independence of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. The resolution was introduced by deputies from the Communist party, but representatives of other parties also voted for it.
United Russia party prepared an alternative draft of the resolution. It was more cautious and stipulated that parliament should first consult with the Foreign Ministry and then apply to the President. In the end, United Russia’s proposal received only 310 votes, while the Communists’ resolution received 351.
“The deputies of the State Duma appeal to you, Mr. Vladimir Vladimirovich, to consider the issue of recognition by the Russian Federation of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic as autonomous, sovereign and independent states, as well as the issue of holding negotiations with the leadership of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic as soon as possible to create a legal basis for interstate relations, ensuring regulation of all aspects of cooperation, including security issues,” — it says, among other things, in this document.
After summarizing the results of the vote, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said that the parliament’s appeal to the president to recognize the DNR and LNR would be signed immediately, after which it would be sent to Vladimir Putin.
The Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics declared independence from Ukraine in May 2014 after a majority of participants in referendums held in the regions supported the adoption of acts of self-determination for the DNR and LNR. Diplomatically, the two Donbass republics are recognized only by South Ossetia, a partially recognized state in the Caucasus.
Vladimir Putin himself commented on the Duma address during a press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who visited Moscow for talks on the escalating situation around Ukraine. According to Putin, when voting on the issue of recognition of the DNR and LNR, deputies were guided by “the opinion of their voters,” which they “subtly feel.”
The Evacuation of DNR and LNR Citizens to Russia
On the evening of February 16 and morning of February 17, OSCE observers reported about 500 explosions near the line of contact in the east of Ukraine, which is several times higher than on previous days.
On the morning of February 18, 2022, the leaders of the LNR and DNR republics announced the evacuation of their residents to Russia. Denis Pushilin, head of the DNR, said that women, children and the elderly would be evacuated first. According to him, the evacuees will be accommodated and provided with everything they need in the Rostov region. After Pushilin’s appeal, sirens went off in Donetsk, and city residents lined up at ATMs. Soon the evacuation was announced in the Luhansk People’s Republic. Its head Leonid Pasechnik urged residents who had not been mobilized and were not involved in the provision of social and civil infrastructure to leave for Russia as soon as possible.
A few hours after the announcement of the evacuation, Pushilin said in a new speech that “it is going to full-scale war” and expressed the opinion that the number of refugees to Russia could reach hundreds of thousands. The DNR Emergencies Ministry said that it was planning to evacuate about 700,000 people. First buses with refugees left the republic around 8 p.m.
Both leaders of the self-proclaimed republics of Donbass explained the need for evacuation by rising tensions in the region. Pasechnik, citing “intelligence data,” said that the “Ukrainian aggressor” was planning provocations on the line of contact and a “deep breakthrough” into LNR territory.
Putin ordered to provide each person arriving from the self-proclaimed DNR and LNR in Rostov Region with 10,000 rubles. And in the Rostov Region, which borders on Ukraine, an operational headquarters was set up to coordinate the evacuation from the DNR and LNR.
Remarkably, the heads of the DNR and LNR recorded their video messages announcing the evacuation as early as February 16. The timestamp contained in the metadata of the videos was publicized by Bellingcat investigator Arik Toller. The head of DNR Denis Pushilin, in particular, draws attention in his speech that he said it “today, on February 18”. The folder, in which Passechnik’s address was filed, was entitled “Mongoose throw”.
By Monday evening, February 21, 2022, more than 60 thousand people had already crossed the border with Russia. A state of emergency was introduced in the Voronezh region and a state of heightened readiness in the Ryazan region.
Ukraine’s Response
Ukraine rejected accusations of preparing sabotage and invasion operations in Donbass. “We categorically refute Russian propaganda reports about allegedly offensive operations by Ukraine <…> Ukraine does not conduct or plan any such actions in Donbass. We are fully committed exclusively to a diplomatic settlement,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted. The commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, said that the statements of the “occupation administrations” of Donbass about the attack of the Ukrainian military are not true.
On February 19, 2022, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky spoke at the Munich Security Conference, emotionally expressing his grievances against both Russia and the West. Western countries, according to Zelensky, are not doing enough to restrain Vladimir Putin.
Zelensky said he was initiating consultations within the framework of the Budapest Memorandum, which provides guarantees of Ukraine’s security and territorial integrity in exchange for its renunciation of nuclear weapons. The Budapest memorandum was signed on December 5, 1994 by Great Britain, Russia, the United States and Ukraine. The document came into force in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Other states pledged to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and refrain from using force against it in connection with the removal of nuclear weapons from its territory.
The Ukrainian president also offered Russian leader Vladimir Putin a meeting. “I don’t know what the president of the Russian Federation wants, so I suggest a meeting,” he said.
International Reaction
On February 18, 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden delivered an address on the situation around Ukraine in which he said that, according to his sources, Vladimir Putin had already made a decision about a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine. The speech was broadcast live by the White House.
The American leader believes that Kyiv is being tried to be provoked in the Donbass. He is confident that Russian troops remain close to the borders with Ukraine: according to him, they are planning an invasion within days. Biden noted that the U.S. is not going to send its military to Ukraine but assured that Washington will continue to support Kyiv.
“There is no point in Ukraine attacking. Russia continues to fabricate claims that Ukraine is preparing to attack Russia. This is a classic that Russia has already used,” Biden said.
Before his speech, Biden had time to discuss the situation with the leaders of NATO countries —Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Canada, the alliance itself and the EU.
The White House also reminded that in case of Russia’s military aggression, the US would impose sanctions on the biggest Russian financial institutions and state-owned companies, as well as on a number of industrial sectors.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called an invasion inevitable and warned of “the biggest war in Europe since 1945.”
On February 20, French and Russian presidents Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin held telephone talks to discuss the situation in Ukraine. Macron and Putin agreed to intensify diplomatic work— the ultimate goal should be a summit to define a new peace and security architecture in Europe. The presidents also agreed to resume work in the “Normandy format.”
Against this backdrop, the airline Lufthansa announced that it would suspend flights to Kyiv from February 21 to 28, 2022. The carrier will also suspend flights to Odessa. At the same time, Austrian Airlines said it would stop flights to Kyiv and Odessa from February 20 until the end of the month. Suspension of commercial flights gravely harm the Ukrainian economy.
On February 19, the German and Austrian authorities urged their citizens to leave Ukraine due to a possible Russian invasion.
What’s Happening Right Now
Early Monday morning, February 21, 2022, the heads of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to recognize their independence.
“On behalf of the entire people of the Donetsk People’s Republic, we ask you to recognize the DNR as an independent, democratic, legal and social state,” said DNR head Denis Pushilin.
The heads of the DNR and LNR also asked Putin to conclude treaties of friendship and partnership with the republics after the recognition of independence.
Shortly thereafter, Putin commenced an emergency meeting of the Russian Security Council. The Russian leader said that he convened the meeting to discuss the situation in Donbass. All of its participants supported the recognition of the independence of the DNR and LNR.
Head of the Federal Security Service Alexander Bortnikov spoke about “two sabotage groups” on the border between Russia and Ukraine and “a captured Ukrainian military man,” as well as about the 68,500 refugees arriving in Russia from Donbass.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke about more than 40 bombings in Donbass “overnight alone,” damaged infrastructure, and Donetsk residents left without water.
At the end of the meeting, Putin said that he had heard his colleagues’ opinions and promised that “a decision will be made today.”
On the same day, Vladimir Putin addressed the Russians. He explained why Russia recognized the DNR and LNR. The president spoke for about an hour, during which he shared his own very bizarre history of Ukraine, denying grounds for its statehood. In the first part of the address, Putin spoke in detail about the collapse of the USSR, which resulted in an independent Ukraine; lamented the corruption and high utility bills in modern Ukraine; said that aggressive actions in Ukraine are supported by foreign special services; and added that Ukrainian authorities can build nuclear weapons and that NATO bases are “actually deployed on Ukrainian territory.”
Ukraine’s accession to NATO, Putin said, poses a direct threat to Russia’s security. “That is why I have decided to recognize the independence and sovereignty of the DNR and LNR. I am sure the citizens of Russia and all patriotic forces of the country will support me,” Putin concluded. Immediately afterward, television broadcasted the footage of the signing of treaties with the LNR and DNR in the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin also issued an order for the Russian Armed Forces to “perform peacekeeping functions” in the self-proclaimed republics of Donbass.
On February 22, the United States threatened new sanctions against Russia over its recognition of the LNR and DNR. “Putin wants the world to go back in time, when there was no United Nations and the world was ruled by empires. But the rest of the world has moved on. It’s not 1919, it’s 2022,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. permanent representative to the organization, told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council. According to her, with his latest actions, Vladimir Putin “ripped the Minsk agreements to shreds.”
The United Kingdom, Canada and the European Union also announced their intention to impose new sanctions against Russia. The United Kingdom said that it might increase military aid to Ukraine. According to DPA and Der Spiegel, the sanctions could include 350 Duma deputies who voted for the recognition of the DNR and LNR, as well as Russian banks with ties to Donbass. The EU sanctions provide for the freezing of assets on the territory of the association and a ban on entry into the EU.
President Joe Biden signed a resolution prohibiting investments in the DNR and LNR, as well as the import of goods, services or technologies from there. The document implies blocking the US property of people associated with the DNR and LNR, and also allows imposing sanctions against those who decide to operate in the self-proclaimed republics. The document said that Russia’s decision threatens the national security and foreign policy of the US.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an address to the nation that Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders would remain the same. He stressed that the country was pursuing a peaceful path but was ready to defend itself. Ukraine demanded an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, the OSCE and the “Normandy quartet.” The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry condemned Russia’s decision, saying that it violated the basics of international law and the UN Charter, as well as Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry also asked Volodymyr Zelenskyy to consider severing diplomatic relations with Russia.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel said that “the recognition of two separatist regions in Ukraine is a blatant violation of international law, Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and the Minsk agreements. Polish President Andrzej Duda called on NATO and the EU to act tough on Russia to “stop the aggressor.” Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Shimonite said that Putin’s actions “put Kafka and Orwell to shame.”
On Tuesday, February 22, Great Britain imposed sanctions against Gennady Timchenko, Boris Rotenberg and Igor Rotenberg — Russian oligarchs and close personal associates of Vladimir Putin. Five Russian banks also fall under British sanctions. The assets of these individuals and companies in Britain will be frozen, Boris Johnson said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that the certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline would be halted indefinitely due to the recognition of the DNR and LNR.
And the final news: the Federation Council allowed Putin to deploy Russian troops to the DNR and LNR. At the same time, the documents signed by Putin and the heads of the LNR and DNR do not specify the boundaries within which the republics are recognized. Representatives of the LNR and DNR stated that it could be the borders of Luhansk and Donetsk regions, some of which are controlled by Ukraine.
Free Russia Foundation, on behalf of the global movement of pro-democracy Russians, stands in solidarity with the people of Ukraine in their pursuit of freedom, peace and self-determination.
We condemn the hostile actions of the illegitimate regime of Vladimir Putin and his accomplices threatening Ukraine with military and hybrid operations and upending the European security.
We call on the international community to act decisively to end the Kremlin’s military provocations internationally and its domestic repression against the Russian civil society.
Roskomnadzor’s ultimatum: a new round of censorship in Russia
On February 1, 2022, dozens of independent media outlets received a 24-hour order from Roskomnadzor (Russian Federal Service for Supervision in Information and Communications) to remove news and materials related to investigations by Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.
TV channel Dozhd was ordered to remove six specific articles. Radio station Echo of Moscow— thirty-four posts. Meduza media outlet received a list of seventeen items, Znak.com—thirteen, The Village—eight, the Saratov newspaper Svobodnye Novosti —nine, and Bumaga from Saint Petersburg— three. Radio Liberty may have set a record with a notice enumerating 40 posts ordered for removal by Roskomnadzor; letters have also been received by the Ukrainian, Tajik, Kazakh, and Tatar-Bashkir services of the radio station.
The information that the Russian government finds so offensive mainly deals with real estate owned by officials and their families, including the head of Roskosmos Dmitry Rogozin, presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, State Duma deputy Leonid Slutsky, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, and Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev. Among the materials that Roskomnadzor demanded to be urgently removed were also FBK’s investigation into a luxury palace near Gelendzhik allegedly custom-built for Putin.
On January 28, 2022, Roskomnadzor also alerted the Office of the Prosecutor General that the outlets “disseminate materials from an organization whose activities are banned under the law against extremism.” In 2021, Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation was designated as foreign agent, extremist organization and banned in Russia.
Many of the outlets complied with Roskomnadzor orders to avoid having their online resources blocked. Tikhon Dzyadko, editor-in-chief of Dozhd, wrote in a Telegram post that he views such developments as an undeniable act of censorship, but “the blocked site would prevent the media from reporting on the following investigations,” he added. In addition, the Navalny investigations targeted by Roskomnadzor have been distributed on many platforms “and in general everywhere on the Internet,” he noted. Meduza, Echo of Moscow, Znak.com and other editorials have also removed publications under the threat of being blocked in Russia.
However, Radio Liberty and Current Time TV channel refused to remove articles about Navalny’s investigations. Jamie Fly, director of the media corporation, said that Radio Liberty would not comply with Roskomnadzor’s demands. “We will not allow the Kremlin to dictate our editorial decisions,” he said. The corporation called the Roskomnadzor’s demands “a blatant act of political censorship.”
Alexey Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Yarmysh called Roskomnadzor’s demands an act of censorship. “Absolutely pure naked evil that everyone resents by reading about it in history textbooks. And now it’s all in reality before our eyes,” the Navalny associate tweeted.
Roskomnadzor is the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling and censoring Russian mass media. The service has repeatedly been accused of attempting to censor the Internet and violate freedom of speech by blocking websites and services under the pretext of not transferring data to Russia from foreign web servers or “protecting children from harmful information” or directly criticizing the activities of the Russian Government or Parliament.
Censorship and violations of the right to freedom of speech are expressly prohibited by Article 29 of the Russian Constitution, but Clause 4 contains an exception to the rule that the legislature has the right to restrict the right to disseminate information by a federal law, which is regularly used by Roskomnadzor.
Why the Navalny Team’s Investigations Are Important Not Only to Russians
Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation investigated corruption in the highest echelons of the Russian government, big business, and regional elites.
The Foundation was created by Navalny in 2011. According to its website, its only source of funding over the years has been donations from supporters. The organization employed approximately 40 people who searched for and uncovered corrupt schemes and cases of illicit enrichment, and drafted complaints to the Investigative Committee of Russia, the Prosecutor’s Office, and the municipal services.
Since 2013, the FBK has released over 80 investigations, making serious waves in the public opinion. FBK’s documentary “Putin’s Palace.The Story of the Biggest Bribe” received over 120 million views and became the most viewed non-interactive content on Russian-language YouTube, as well as the record-breaker in the number of positive user ratings in the Russian YouTube segment.
Alexey Navalny has consistently emphasized that corruption is not only one of Russia’s main problems, but also one of the most important issues for the entire world. “After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the global ideological confrontation, it was corruption— in its classic definition of ‘the use of one’s official status for personal gain’— has become the universal basis for the new authoritarian international to blossom, from Russia and Eritrea to Myanmar and Venezuela. And corruption has long ceased to be only an internal problem of these countries. It is almost always one of the main causes of the world’s problems that the West faces,” Navalny wrote in his 2021 column published in major Western media outlets.
An important aspect of corruption in authoritarian countries— and Russia is a prime example here— is its use of the financial infrastructure of the West— 90% of the money stolen by an autocrat is stored there. According to Navalny himself, the FBK investigations should not only open Russians’ eyes to corruption in Russia, but also encourage Western leaders to show determination and political will towards Russian corrupt officials who take their assets to the West and legalize them there.
Alexey Navalny has expressed dismay that the FBK investigations do not seem to trigger action by Western tax authorities and prosecutors. “The US, the UK and Germany have excellent tools and laws for fighting foreign corruption. Guess how many cases were opened after the investigations of our Anti-Corruption Foundation, which is now qualified by Putin’s government as an extremist organization? That’s right, not a single one. Even Western law enforcement agencies behave cautiously with corrupt foreign officials,” Navalny reports.
Navalny’s team’s meticulously documented investigations churn up materials that could serve basis for the introduction of more precise sanctions —not only against law enforcement officials, but also against oligarchs and corrupt businessmen from Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and beyond. This is how Navalny describes it: “Until personal sanctions are imposed on the oligarchs – first and foremost from Putin’s entourage, who is a role model for corrupt officials and businessmen around the world – any anti-corruption rhetoric from the West will be perceived as a game and a hollow talking point. There is nothing more frustrating than seeing the names of colonels and generals of special services no one has ever heard of on another sanctions list, but not seeing the names of those in whose interests these colonels are acting. Putin’s oligarchs who run “state-owned” or formally private companies are not businessmen, but leaders of organized criminal groups. Right now the Western establishment is acting like Pavlov’s dog. You show them a secret service colonel, they shout, “Punish him!” You show them an oligarch who pays the colonel, and they shout, “Invite him to Davos!”
Perhaps this issue will move forward thanks to the Navalny List, a 2021 listing of 35 individuals from the upper echelon of Russia’s elite implicated in corruption and human rights abuses, as well as those directly linked to the poisoning and imprisonment of the Russian opposition leader. The list was compiled thanks to years of hard work by the FBK team. On September 24, 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives approved an amendment to tighten anti-Russian sanctions in the new fiscal year’s defense budget. The House of Representatives bill calls the list’s members “Russian kleptocrats and human rights violators.”
Five Strikes Against The Kremlin.
Strike One: “Chaika”
Case in focus: an investigation into the business activities of the family of Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika. The investigation mainly focuses on the official’s sons Artem and Igor.
Release date: 12/01/2015
Number of views on YouTube: 25 million
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXYQbgvzxdM
Contents:
Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) published a huge investigation about the family of Prosecutor General Yury Chaika. It is mainly about his eldest son, Artem Chaika.
Artem Chaika owns the posh Pomegranate hotel in Greece on the Halkidiki peninsula. Olga Lopatina, the former wife of Deputy Prosecutor General Gennadi Lopatin, also owns a stake in the hotel. The FBK staff believes that their divorce is a formal one, as she still wears a wedding ring.
Olga Lopatina is a co-owner of the Kuban Sakhar company, shares in which belong to the wives of Sergei Tsapok and Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz – leaders of the Kushchevskaya organized crime group, who committed the brutal murder of 12 people, including four children, which shocked Russia.
Artem Chaika has a villa in Greece where construction is continuing. Nearby, Olga Lopatina is building a villa for herself. FBK examined her tax returns from her time as the wife of Deputy Prosecutor General (up until 2011) and found that Lopatin earned 18 million rubles – not enough to buy part of a hotel and a villa.
Artem Chaika owns a house in Switzerland worth about three million dollars. At the same time, he lists the Swiss address of his more humble home in all the documents. Artem Chaika keeps money in Swiss accounts.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Artem Chaika seized the Verkhne-Lenskoe River Shipping Company in the Irkutsk region and appropriated 12 ships. That’s how Yury Chaika’s son allegedly earned his first capital, which he exported to Switzerland. The FBK investigation details the entire embezzlement scheme.
Artem Chaika has a holding company with a turnover of hundreds of millions of dollars. He buys assets randomly: he has salt and sand mining, construction, brick-making, and law offices.
The business structures of the youngest son of the Prosecutor General, Igor Chaika, were able to get government contracts worth 300 billion rubles.
Domestic and international reaction:
According to a mid-December 2015 study by the Levada Center, 38 percent of Russians knew about the film “Chaika” in one way or another. At the same time, 82% of Russians who have heard of the film consider the corruption schemes and connections with criminal groups described in the film to be typical for the modern Russian authorities.
In his official statement on December 3, Prosecutor General Yury Chaika called the film a fraud, and the facts presented in it untrue.
On December 7, Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the information from the film did not arouse the Kremlin’s interest.
On December 8, 2015, the Anti-Corruption Foundation filed a complaint against Artyom Chaika with the Swiss Prosecutor’s Office based on suspicions of money laundering. The complaint mentioned Artyom and Igor Chaika, the sons of the Russian Prosecutor General, as well as other individuals, firms, bank accounts, and real estate allegedly connected to them. In order to exclude any bias in the verification, the prosecutor’s office assigned the investigation to a special police unit in Lugano, which investigates “white collar” crime. The investigation confirmed that the individuals named in the complaint were in Switzerland and were connected to the company mentioned in the complaint. However, no money laundering facts were identified. Later, Artyom Chaika received a notification from the Swiss prosecutor’s office that there were no claims against him. Also, based on his own petition, Artyom Chaika received a notice from Greek officials stating that the transaction he had conducted in Greece to purchase a hotel on the island of Halkidiki was legal.
Strike Two: “He Is Not Dimon To You”
Case in focus: An investigation into the multibillion-dollar property and corruption schemes used to enrich Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, formerly President of Russia.
Release Date: 03/02/2017
Number of views on YouTube: 44 million
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrwlk7_GF9g&t=2090s
Contents:
The investigation “He Is Not Dimon To You. Palaces, Yachts, Vineyards – Dmitry Medvedev’s Secret Empire” deals with the real estate and expensive hobbies of then-Prime Minister Medvedev in Russia and abroad. The film is divided into 10 parts – “chapters”, each lasting about five minutes. The majority of episodes deal with the assets of the “Dar” charitable foundation and its related companies. The chairman of the foundation’s supervisory board is Ilya Eliseev, an old acquaintance and classmate of Medvedev’s, who is referred to in the film as Medvedev’s key confidant. The film shows that, on the one hand, Medvedev is acquainted with the foundation’s management and uses the foundation’s property for recreation, while, on the other hand, the foundation is filled with contributions from Russian oligarchs.
According to the authors of the investigation, the image of an official who no one takes seriously has been created artificially. In reality, Medvedev is “the creator and head of a huge, multi-level corruption scheme. According to the FBK, the house on Rublevka District of Moscow, worth about 5 billion rubles, was a gift from oligarch Alisher Usmanov to structures associated with Medvedev. The FBK called this “gift” a “bribe.”
According to the anti-corruption activists, Medvedev is also connected to another estate on Rublevo-Uspensky Drive, as well as a residence in Kursk region, a mansion in St. Petersburg, two estates by the sea in Krasnodar Krai, a mansion near Sochi, vineyards near Anapa (Krasnodar Krai, Russia) and in Italy, and an estate in Ivanovo region of Russia (already announced by Navalny’s supporters last year).
The FBK investigation also disclosed two yachts registered in the names of people close to Medvedev. Navalny’s supporters claim that the funds of the foundations and companies that the head of the government controls total at least 70 billion rubles. In addition to Usmanov, the sources of this money include shareholders of the gas company Novatek Leonid Mikhelson and Leonid Simanovsky, as well as Gazprombank and Bashneft. Most of the funds, according to FBK, are withdrawn to offshore accounts.
Based on this information, Navalny accused Medvedev of creating a “multi-level corruption scheme” and “taking bribes from the oligarchs.” He said that thousands of people are involved in “servicing the schemes” and that his real estate is “guarded by state security services.”
Reactions:
Following the release of the film, FBK sent a statement to the Russian Investigative Committee demanding that criminal charges be filed against Dmitry Medvedev and billionaire Alisher Usmanov for bribery. Navalny accused the Russian authorities of failing to respond appropriately to the investigation and called for rallies across Russia to “ask the authorities to answer our questions about corruption.” On March 26, 2017, tens of thousands of people marched in several dozen Russian cities for mass anti-corruption protests, which were then repeated on June 12, 2017. The protesters’ main demand was the resignation of Dmitry Medvedev from his post.
On April 5, at a plenary session, the State Duma refused to support the CPRF party’s proposal to contact law enforcement agencies and verify the information presented in the FBK investigation.
On April 4, 2017, Dmitry Medvedev called the FBK investigation “rubbish, nonsense,” collected “according to the principle of compote,” and on April 19, he said that he would not “comment on the absolutely false products of political crooks.” For his part, Alisher Usmanov filed a libel suit against Navalny and FBK. On May 31, 2017, the Lublinsky District Court in Moscow ordered Navalny to retract the information in the investigation and remove the publications about Usmanov.
Navalny refused to comply with the court’s decision and appealed.
At the moment, materials about this investigation have been removed from the websites of most Russian media outlets at the request of Roskomnadzor and under the threat of blocking.
Strike Three: “Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov transports dogs on a private plane”
Case in focus: in two investigations, the FBK found that Deputy Prime Minister Shuvalov has a private jet for transporting dogs, as well as a large amount of luxury real estate
Release dates: 07/14/2016 and 03/06/2018
Number of views on YouTube: 2.5 million (1st investigation), 7.5 million (2nd investigation)
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx8ZqZtjyT4
Second Investigation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbRoZyuOijk
Contents:
The Anti-Corruption Foundation published an investigation showing that Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov spends 130 million rubles a year on flights on a private jet and another 40 million on transporting his wife’s dogs to participate in foreign shows.
The FBK staff found that a member of the Russian government may own a $50 million Bombardier Global Express plane, which Shuvalov uses as a private jet. In the summer of 2018, it was also reported that Shuvalov’s family actually also owns a Gulfstream G650 aircraft with an estimated value of about $70 million.
Most often (18 times a year) the plane flew to Salzburg, Austria, where Shuvalov’s wife owns real estate. It was found that sometimes a private plane flew this route several times a week. The FBK investigation noted that the service of a one-way flight to Salzburg on a private plane costs from $40,000.
Olga Shuvalova, the wife of the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, confirmed to FBK the fact of flights with dogs on a private plane: “We take our dogs to exhibitions on our declared plane. By the way, of international level, to defend the honor of Russia”.
The investigation also revealed that Shuvalov’s money manager is buying up an entire floor of apartments in a high-rise on Moscow’s Kotelnicheskaya Embankment – 10 apartments worth about 600 million rubles. The fund previously wrote about Deputy Prime Minister’s London apartment of about 500 square meters and costing about 700 million rubles, as well as a luxurious Rolls-Royce for 40 million rubles.
Shuvalov’s family also occupied the former state summer residence of CPSU Politburo member Mikhail Suslov in the Odintsovsky district near Moscow on the area of about 7.5 hectares. The Italian architect Giuliano Moretti was in charge of designing the buildings, and the official’s neighbors include billionaires Roman Abramovich and Suleiman Kerimov.
Reactions:
Some economic observers believed that Shuvalov caused great irritation to the public by his indifferent attitude to the problems of ordinary citizens and the obvious “inter-class gaps.” Negative assessments of Shuvalov were given by opposition politician Vladimir Milov, who once worked with Shuvalov, drawing attention to the fact that he “does not hesitate to show money,” unlike his former boss Alexander Voloshin.
Shuvalov resigned as first deputy prime minister of the Russian government on May 24, 2018, and was appointed by the Russian president as chairman of Vneshekonombank. It was reported that “the investigations did not affect the official’s career and are not related to his possible departure from the government.”
Strike Four: “I Know All Those Who Tried To Kill Me”
Case in focus: A two-part video narrative about the secret group of assassins who tried to poison Alexey Navalny with a deadly chemical agent
Release Date: 12/14/2020 and 12/21/2020
Number of views on YouTube: 26 million (1st investigation), 29 million (2nd investigation)
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smhi6jts97I
Second investigation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibqiet6Bg38
Contents:
On December 14, 2020, The Insider, Bellingcat and CNN, with the participation of Der Spiegel and FBK, released a joint journalistic investigation. According to its conclusions, eight employees of the FSB special group followed Alexey Navalny for several years and poisoned him with Novichok warfare agent.
The investigators established the identities of the employees involved in the poisoning by comparing cell phone billing data with offline databases.
By analyzing airline flight records, investigators found that members of the group had flown to dozens of Russian cities where Navalny had flown to since 2017 – usually two or three operatives went on each trip, their lineup constantly alternating. They bought tickets under real and fictitious names, and tried to fly not on the same flights as Navalny, but on parallel ones, often from other Moscow airports. The main activity came in 2017 (when Navalny announced his intention to run for presidency) and then in 2020.
Navalny himself, commenting on the investigation, called what happened “state terrorism.”
At the end of December 2020, the second part of the investigation came out: Navalny called an FSB officer and recorded a conversation with him, saying that this conversation was an actual confession by a Russian special services officer of his participation in an assassination attempt.
Domestic and international reaction:
The poisoning of Navalny caused an international outcry and became a turning point in modern Russian history.
Even before the release of the investigation, on September 3, 2020, the European Union Foreign Affairs Office issued a declaration in which on behalf of all 27 EU member states, as well as Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Northern Macedonia, Montenegro, Georgia and Ukraine condemned in the strongest terms the attack on Alexey Navalny. German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a statement calling the attempt on Navalny’s life an attempt to silence him, “a crime against the basic values for which we stand.” Boris Johnson, for his part, said that the poisoning of Navalny “shocked the world” and called Russia’s use of chemical weapons “outrageous.” On October 15, “for the use of chemical weapons for the attempted murder of Alexey Navalny,” the European Union imposed sanctions against FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov and five other high-ranking Russian officials and security officers, as well as against the state-owned plant that was involved in the development of Novichok. On the same day, the United Kingdom announced similar sanctions.
According to the EU, the poisoning of Navalny was possible “only with the consent of the presidential administration” and with the participation of the FSB. Navalny himself believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally behind the attempt on his life. Putin himself characterized the investigation as “legalization of materials from the American secret services,” and said that if the Russian secret services had wanted to poison Navalny, they would have completed the case.
On December 23rd, a U.S. State Department spokesman accused the FSB of poisoning Navalny and the Russian leadership of creating conspiracy theories around him.
In mid-January 2021, Navalny returned to Russia. He was detained at the airport on suspicion of violating his probation in the Yves Rocher case. According to the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service, Navalny failed to report to his place of residence several times, as required by law for those sentenced to probation. Navalny himself indicated that he had been unable to do so because he had been undergoing rehabilitation in Berlin after being poisoned. On February 2 the politician was sentenced to two and a half years in a penal colony, after which several more criminal cases were initiated against him.
On August 20, 2021, on the anniversary of the poisoning of Navalny, Britain imposed sanctions on seven FSB officers it believes were involved in the poisoning. The U.S. imposed sanctions against nine FSB officers. In addition, the U.S. announced a second round of sanctions against Russia for the use of chemical weapons in the poisoning of Navalny, under which the U.S. imposed additional restrictions on exports of nuclear and missile-related products and technologies, as well as restrictions on imports of certain Russian firearms and ammunition.
Strike Five: “Putin’s Palace”
Case in focus: An investigative documentary about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s personal, incredibly expensive “mini-state” on the shores of the Black Sea.
Release Date: 01/19/2021
Number of views on YouTube: 121 million
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipAnwilMncI
Contents:
The documentary “A Palace for Putin” tells the story of a 17,700 square meter palace for the Russian president built on the Black Sea near Gelendzhik. According to the FBK, its construction was financed by state and private companies connected to Putin’s friends through corrupt schemes. The FBK estimated the total amount of money spent on the palace and the vineyards around it to be at least 100 billion rubles.
The authors of the investigation managed to unravel the complex web of property relationships around the palace. The data they collected showed that the palace belongs to Putin’s nephew, and its maintenance is entrusted to old cronies of the Russian president: former KGB employees.
The area of the palace complex is 68 hectares, and 7,000 hectares of land around the palace (including the airspace) is a closed area under the jurisdiction of the FSB. The film claims that the Russian president’s residence near Gelendzhik was built in 2010 and has an underground ice palace, an “aquadiscotheque,” a concert hall, a church, an 80-meter bridge “for the approach to the tea house” and a tunnel to descend from the palace to the sea.
Domestic and international reaction:
Vladimir Putin, commenting on the investigation, stated that the palace had never been registered in his name and did not belong to his close relatives. In response, Navalny’s team pointed out that neither Putin’s brother-in-law Nikolai Shamalov, in whose name the palace was registered, nor Putin’s great-nephew Mikhail Shelomov, who was managing the construction site, were indeed close relatives under the Russian Family Code. Later, the owner of the facility called himself a businessman longtime acquaintance of Putin’s Arkady Rotenberg. He claimed that he was building an apartment hotel.
According to the Levada Center, of those who have seen the film, are aware of its contents, or have heard about it, the attitude toward Putin has worsened; 3% of those who have improved; 80% of those who have not changed. At the same time, 17% are certain that the content of the film is true; 38% believe that it is similar to the truth, but it is difficult to verify; and 33% are certain that it is not true.
The film caused widespread resonance and outrage in almost all of the world’s major media outlets. Many Western journalists were shocked by the size of Vladimir Putin’s alleged palace, which is 39 times the size of the Principality of Monaco.
According to experts, the investigation was a serious blow to the position of the authorities and the image of the Russian president. It has also seriously broadened Navalny’s audience, allowing him to collect additional donations from sympathizers.
The investigation about Putin’s palace was a serious hit to the Kremlin, after which any actions by the authorities against Navalny were perceived as retaliation for the investigation. And so it happened: Alexey Navalny was detained at Sheremetyevo airport on January 17, 2021, immediately after returning from Germany, where he had undergone treatment and rehabilitation after severe poisoning. He was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison.
In the winter and spring of 2021, there were mass street protests in Russia – protests related to the detention of Navalny and rallies in his support. Police and Rosgvardia officers detained a record number of people at these events. The law enforcement agencies acted harshly; criminal proceedings were instituted against dozens of protesters.
Many of Navalny’s supporters were also put under investigation, or forced to leave Russia in a hurry. The politician’s structures are now considered extremist and banned in Russia. Any individual who has in any way helped or expressed sympathy for the opposition leader is now barred from running for a seat in the State Duma for several years.
On June 9, 2021, the FBK in Russia was recognized as an extremist organization and liquidated by court order.
Alexei Navalny addresses supporters on the anniversary of his detention, as rallies were held all over the world demanding his release. A year ago, he bravely returned to Russia, having recovered from the Novichok poisoning — and was immediately detained by the government.
Opposition politician Alexei Navalny called on his fellow Russians to be brave and fear nothing. On the anniversary of his return to Russia after his rehabilitation in Germany, he published a post on his Instagram page (https://www.instagram.com/navalny/p/CY01DoLoJec/)
“Having served my first year in prison, I want to tell everyone the same exact thing that I shouted at the crowd near the court, when the guards were taking me to the back of the truck: Don’t be afraid of anything. This is our country and we have no other. The only fear that should remain is that we may allow our homeland to be looted by a bunch of liars, thieves and hypocrites; that we surrender without a fight, voluntarily, forfeiting both our future and the future of our children. Thank you all very much for your support —I can feel it,” Alexei Navalny addressed his supporters in an emotional post.
“There are a lot of honest people in Russia—tens of millions. There are far more of them than is commonly thought. But it is not honest people who scare the authorities— disgusting then, and even more so now— but those who are not afraid. Or rather, to be more precise: those who are afraid, but overcome the fear,” he wrote.
He said that the year since his return to Russia flew by quickly. All this time Navalny remained behind bars.
“I do not know when my cosmic journey will end and whether it will end at all — just last Friday I was told that another of criminal cases against me goes to court. And there’s another one coming up —charging me as an extremist and a terrorist. So, I’m one of those “astronauts” who doesn’t bother counting the days until the end of the sentence. There is no point in counting. There have been people who spent 27 years in prison.
But I find myself in this group of “astronauts” because I tried my best to pull this end of the rope. I pulled to this side those among the honest ones who did not want to or could no longer be afraid.
I did it, I do not regret it for a second, and I will continue to do it,” Navalny wrote.
Navalny’s Arrest and What Happened in Russia Over the Year
On January 17, 2021, Russian politician Alexei Navalny was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport after returning to Russia from Germany, where he was being treated for poisoning with the Novichok nerve agent. Navalny spent the following year in custody: first in the Matrosskaya Tishina prison, and then in prison no. 2 in Pokrov in the Vladimir region. The formal reason for his imprisonment was parole violation. The authorities claim that while Navalny was treated in Germany, he failed to register with the Federal Penitentiary Service as required by the sentence from the “Yves Rocher” case.
According to the parole violation sentence, the politician must be released no later than fall 2023. However, several other criminal cases have been brought up by the government against him, including one for creating an “extremist community”. According to prosecutors, Navalny has created an “extremist community,” the purpose of which was to “discredit the state authorities.” Under this article Navalny faces up to 10 years in jail.
In addition, in late 2020, Navalny was charged with criminal fraud— the case is expected to be heard in court in late January or early February 2022. According to prosecution, Navalny had spent 356 million rubles collected as donations for the activities of non-profit organizations headed by him for personal needs. The fraud case is combined with the charges of insulting Judge Vera Akimova, who presided over the trial on the case of “defamation of a veteran.” The criminal case on “defamation of a veteran” was opened after Navalny called the heroes of RT TV channel’s propaganda video about amendments to the Constitution, in which Ignat Artemenko, a 94-year-old veteran of the World War II, appeared, “corrupt lackeys” and “traitors”. The Investigative Committee considered that Navalny’s comment attacked the veteran’s honor and dignity. The court sentenced Navalny to a fine of 850 thousand rubles.
In the winter and spring of 2021, mass rallies in support of Navalny were held in Russia, resulting in mass detentions. In June, Navalny’s political network was declared “extremist organization” by a Russian court.
Navalny’s headquarters throughout Russia have been decimated, with dozens of their members either under arrest or forced to leave Russia, including Leonid Volkov, the former head of Navalny’s federal headquarters; Ivan Zhdanov, director of FBK; and Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer for the foundation. On January 14, Leonid Volkov and Ivan Zhdanov were added to the list of terrorists and extremists. During the entirety of 2021, repressions in Russia continued to intensify: dozens of organizations and citizens, including media outlets and journalists, were declared foreign agents, and opposition activists were put behind bars.
Free Russia Foundation estimates that more than 1,500 activists and journalists left the country in 2021. This estimate includes only “political” emigrants.
At the end of 2021, the European Union recognized Alexei Navalny and awarded him the Andrei Sakharov Human Rights Prize. Navalny’s daughter, Darya Navalny, attended the ceremony to accept the prize on behalf the imprisoned politician. “This is a message to the tens of millions of citizens of my country who continue to fight for a better life in Russia,” she said, speaking at the European Parliament.
In January 2022, it was announced that CNN and the streaming service HBO Max had produced and intend to stream a documentary, “Navalny,” about the Russian opposition leader. The movie, with the tagline “Poison Always Leaves a Trace,” was created by Canadian documentary filmmaker Daniel Roher. The film’s synopsis says it is about “a courageous and controversial presidential contender who is willing to sacrifice everything to bring reform to his homeland.” The film’s premiere date has not been disclosed. Navalny wrote on Instagram from prison: “The film is ready, and you will definitely see it before I do.”
Navalny in Jail: Deteriorating Health, Hunger Strike, Doctors’ Denial of Access, and Torture by Prison Authorities
In March 2020, Navalny filed a formal complaint stating that prison authorities purposefully deprived him of sleep. Navalny said he was woken up eight times a night by guards asking him to confirm to a camera that he is still in his prison cell. Navalny also complained that he was not allowed to read newspapers or have any books including a copy of the Quran that he planned to study.
Navalny’s lawyers said that he was suffering from health problems, including a loss of sensation in his spine and legs, and that prison authorities denied Navalny’s requests for a civilian physician, claiming his health was “satisfactory”. On March 31, Navalny declared a hunger strike demanding proper medical treatment. On April 6, six doctors, including Navalny’s personal physician, Anastasia Vasilyeva, and two CNN correspondents, were arrested outside the prison when they attempted to visit Navalny whose health significantly deteriorated. On April 7, 2021, Navalny’s attorneys claimed he had suffered two spinal disc herniations and had lost feeling in his hands, prompting international outrcy. Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International accused Vladimir Putin of slowly killing Alexey Navalny through torture and inhumane treatment in prison.
On April 17, it was reported that Navalny was in urgent need of medical attention. Navalny’s personal doctor Anastasia Vasilyeva and three other doctors, including cardiologist Yaroslav Ashikhmin, petitioned prison officials to grant them immediate access, stating on social media that “Our patient can die any minute”, due to an increased risk of a fatal cardiac arrest or kidney failure “at any moment”. Test results publicized by Navalny’s lawyers showed heightened levels of potassium in the blood, which may signal cardiac arrest, and sharply elevated creatinine levels, indicating impaired kidneys.
The following day, his daughter called on Russian prison authorities to let her father be checked by doctors in a tweet. Prominent celebrities such as J.K. Rowling and Jude Law also addressed a letter to Russian authorities asking to provide Navalny with proper medical treatment. U.S. President Joe Biden called his treatment “totally unfair” and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that the Kremlin had been warned “that there will be consequences if Mr. Navalny dies.” The European Union’s head diplomat Josep Borrell stated that the organization held the Russian government accountable for Navalny’s health conditions. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, also expressed her concern for his health. However, Russian authorities rebuked such concerns by foreign countries. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russian prison officials are monitoring Navalny’s health, not the president.
On April 19, Navalny was moved from his cell to a prison hospital, according to the Russian authorities, for a course of “vitamin therapy”. On April 23, Navalny announced that he was ending his hunger strike on the advice of his doctors and as he felt his demands had been partially met. His newspapers are still being censored as articles are cut out before the newspaper is given to him.
On May 20, Navalny’s ally Ivan Zhdanov reported that Navalny had “more or less” recovered and that his health was generally satisfactory. On June 7, Navalny was returned to prison after fully recovering from the effects of the hunger strike.
In early November 2021 Navalny’s former prison-mates described his harassment in detention. An independent Russian TV channel Dozhd broadcast an interview “Torture for Navalny: Who Surrounded Him in the Penal Colony, How They Compromise Him and Break Him”. In the expose, former inmates at the Pokrov’s Correctional Facility Number 2, described the torture and abuse targeting Navalny.
Dozhd reporters spoke with former convicts Nariman Osmanov and Yevgeny Burak, who served time in the same quarters as Navalny. According to Osmanov, this unit was put together by authorities before the arrival of the opposition leader to the prison, and with each of the prisoners a conversation had been held in advance. Osmanov said that all prisoners in the brigade were instructed not to communicate with the politician and record each of his steps on a daily basis.
“Naturally, we suffered with him. Mentally, I still haven’t recovered, to be honest,” Osmanov told reporters. According to him, Navalny tried to talk to him, but he stopped these attempts.
During the hunger strike, which Navalny held from March 31 to April 23, inmates brought a bag of sausages into the barrack and roasted the sausages on the premises, perhaps with the intent to seduce Navalny with the smell of the food, which is not allowed could have only been done with the permission of authorities.
On another occasion, a detainee was placed in the same cell as Navalny, and later taken to the sanitary unit and declared to have a contagious form of tuberculosis.
Osmanov claimed both events had been staged and he managed to tell Navalny about that.
Another prisoner, Yevgeny Burak, talked about a movie screening that was held for the colony’s inmates on Navalny’s birthday, June 4. The movie insinuated that Navalny is a homosexual— which, in Russian prisons, would expose an inmate to grave danger of physical and sexual abuse by other inmates. The movie was attempting to discredit and threaten Navalny. These claims have been corroborated by Osmanov.
After Navalny returned from the hospital warden to the regular prison cell, he was again precluded from sleeping for several days — an inmate was roomed in the same cell with him and “made different sounds,” and all this was done on the instructions of the colony’s leadership, Osmanov claims.
Global Support
To mark the anniversary of Alexei Navalny’s arrest, his supporters rallied in dozens of cities around the world to call for his freedom. Pickets and rallies were held in Russia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, the United States, Switzerland, Denmark, New Zealand, France, Canada, Norway, Belgium, Estonia, Australia, Spain, Finland, Georgia and other countries.
The U.S. Congress released a statement on the anniversary of Navalny’s arrest (https://www.csce.gov/international-impact/press-and-media/press-releases/helsinki-commission-marks-one-year-anniversary)
Helsinki Commission Chairman Sen. Ben Cardin (MD), Co-Chairman Rep. Steve Cohen (TN-09), Ranking Member Sen. Roger Wicker (MS), and Ranking Member Rep. Joe Wilson (SC-02) wrote:
“In the past year, while Alexei Navalny has remained unjustly imprisoned, the Kremlin has doubled down on its absurd persecution of his anti-corruption organizations as ‘extremist’ /…/ Nevertheless, Mr. Navalny’s colleagues, friends and allies, in the face of grave threats, continue to risk their own freedom to expose Putin’s thuggery across Russia.”
“Putin would not have gone to the trouble to imprison Alexei Navalny unless he perceived a serious threat to his power,” said Co-Chairman Cohen. “Mr. Navalny and his team across Russia were instrumental in revealing the ill-gotten gains of Putin and his cronies. This tells you all you need to know about why they are a target.”
“During his imprisonment, Alexei Navalny has used his own suffering to call attention to the plight of the hundreds of other political prisoners in Russia,” said Sen. Wicker. “We have not forgotten him or others who are persecuted for their beliefs, and we look forward to a Russia in which they finally are free.”
“Despite the Kremlin’s attempts to push Alexei Navalny out of public view and prevent him from challenging Putin, we will not stop calling for his release,” said Rep. Wilson. “Russians who challenge Putin should not have to fear for their safety in their own country.”
“A Man Has Entered the Cage with a Tiger.” What Russian Public Figures are Saying on the Anniversary of Navalny’s Arrest
Vladimir Milov
“It’s been a tragic year. I don’t think it’s right to put it in the category of defeat, because the authorities had pretty obvious goals— to completely isolate Navalny from society. And it didn’t succeed. As you can see, we constantly get his messages of hope even from the colony, even from prison. The second goal was to completely destroy his team. And that also failed, although many of them had to go into exile, but we continue not just to work, but to influence the political situation in Russia <…> So we continue to fight. Of course, we received a very serious hit, but we have withstood, we are fighting, I am sure that we will win in the end.”
Kirill Rogov
“What a great man Navalny is. How great that he flew to Moscow a year ago. What a sensitive politician.
Have you looked in history books? There’s a lot of it there. At first, for a few years, everyone will say: Why did he do it? It made no sense, he miscalculated, he set us all up, do you see what happened as a result? But then. Everyone will say: can you imagine, it didn’t seem to make any sense, it seemed that he miscalculated, there were those who said “he set us all up”.
The Man went into the tiger’s cage, the Man puts his head into the beast’s mouth. And the beast is thinking— do I bite off the head and show everyone, which is all they expect, that I’m a bloodthirsty scumbag, or do I not bite it off and appear weak?
A man risking his life is high stakes, it’s memorable for decades, if not more. History is made up of these actions. Here we have another entry in Russian history. Our backbone.”
Viktor Shenderovich
“When he returned a year ago, Alexei Navalny acted as a courageous man and a professional politician. Putin wanted to drive him out of the country, that’s why he allowed him to leave for treatment. Since Navalny could not be killed, Putin tried to throw him out of the country this way. He didn’t succeed. At the cost of his freedom, luckily, not his life, Alexei Navalny remains a huge factor in Russian politics even in prison. If he were free now, but outside, abroad, he would not be a factor in Russian politics.
He has acted as a politician, as a courageous, responsible and consistent man. The price he pays for his confrontation with Putin is enormous. It is not only the time he has spent in jail, but also his health. That said, Navalny is indeed Vladimir Putin’s number one political opponent.”
Fedor Krasheninnikov
“I believe that the return of Alexei Navalny was the catalyst that forced Putin’s regime to finally throw off its mask and unleash repressions against the entire class of political activists, human rights defenders, independent journalists and opposition activists. There is no point in talking about any kind of hybridity: we are dealing with an authoritarian police dictatorship that is actively using terror against its opponents as a permanent practice. Vladimir Putin’s main goal is to remain in power, and intimidation is a method for achieving this goal.”
Boris Akunin
Today is a year since Alexei Navalny has been behind bars. He will, of course, get a new sentence (they might even kill him), but the winner in this war of one man against the whole machinery of the police state is already clear. And that’s exactly what Alexei does, every day and every hour: he holds the front line. The first part of the oath— “one for all”— is done. Now it’ s time to fulfill the second part.
Ilya Yashin
“Exactly one year ago, Navalny flew to Moscow. They tried to kill him there, tried him in absentia, and made sure that he wouldn’t even think about returning to Russia. And as soon as Alexei crossed the border, they immediately snapped handcuffs on his hands.
Today again everyone will discuss— was it really necessary to take that risk? Was there a point in voluntarily going to jail? Maybe he should have stayed in exile? But the truth is that the question was never framed that way. There were no meetings, no discussions about Navalny’s return to his homeland. Because almost the first thing he said when he came out of his coma was, “I will definitely go back to Russia.”
And I understand very well why he did that. Many of us think that the point of Navalny’s work is to expose crooks and thieves in power. But this is a shallow view. The point of Navalny’s work is to demonstrate by personal example: in Russia, it is possible to live without fear, without hunching one’s shoulders or lowering one’s eyes. It is possible to remain a free man in an unfree country.
And when each one of us learns not to be afraid, the country will change very quickly. Navalny sets an amazing example of courage, and I am proud to call him my friend and comrade. And I believe he has a great future. Freedom to Alexey Navalny!”
Free Russia Foundation expresses solidarity with the people of Kazakhstan in their aspiration to reclaim the right to direct the political and economic course of their nation.
We condemn the use of violence by government forces against peaceful protesters, and mourn the loss of life resulting from the brutal put down.
Free Russia Foundation, and specifically the Russian citizens among us, fervently oppose the Kremlin’s decision to send military forces to prop the authoritarian and thieving regime of Kazakhstan whose people languish in poverty and suffer from environmental woes while its elites top the global wealth ratings.
We are outraged by the lack of moral clarity in the official statements coming from the Western democratic nations— once again underscoring the profound corrosive influence that authoritarian regimes have been able to exert through corruption of western institutions and cooptation of Western elites.
International Memorial Society, which documents Soviet-era repressions, was charged with breaching a law on foreign agents, as well as “whitewashing Nazi criminals” and “distorting the image of the USSR as a terrorist state.”
What Happened this Week
By a December 28, 2021 ruling, Russia’s Supreme Court dissolved the “Memorial” International Historical Educational Charitable and Human Rights Society, satisfying petition by the Attorney General’s Office, which charged that the organization repeatedly violated Russia’s laws on “foreign agents” by failing to disclose its “agent” status in content shared on social media.
In his closing statements, prosecutor Alexey Zhafyarov accused Memorial of “distorting the image of the USSR as a terrorist state” and said the group “whitewashes and rehabilitates Nazi criminals.”
“Why are we now, descendants of the victors, forced to watch impunity for traitors to the homeland, Nazi collaborators? Why, instead of being proud of the country that won the war and liberated the entire world, we are being asked to repent for our, as it turned out, hopeless past? Probably because someone is paying for it. That is the real reason behind the aversion with which Memorial vehemently denies its status as a “foreign agent”. That is the real reason why an organization that claims the honorable role of the nation’s conscience does not really want to be reminded in every publication that they are paid for. And if we take these motives into account, the state has requirements to consider that the repeated disregard of the requirement of the law to indicate the status of a ‘foreign agent’ is a gross violation of the law,” the prosecutor opined theatrically.
Representatives of Memorial rejected the claims of the General Prosecutor’s Office, insisting that there are no legal grounds for closing down the organization.
Henry Reznik, a prominent Russian attorney representing Memorial, emphasized at the end of his statement that “Memorial contributes to the health of the nation. And to remove it from our history would be to promote the idea that the state is always right.
Another Memorial advocate, Maria Eismont, said the organization was dedicated to fighting for the openness of information, yet was accused by prosecutors of hiding the truth. She quoted George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” to describe the prosecution’s case, saying: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
After the ruling, Jan Raczynski, chairman of the board of “International Memorial”, asserted that the organization intends to appeal the verdict, and if necessary, will file an appeal with the ECHR. He also noted that there would be no changes in the work of the organization until the appeal is considered.
After the announcement of the verdict, Memorial supporters chanted “Shame!” outside the court. Earlier same day, the police arrested several Memorial supporters gathered near the court building who held up signs with slogans such as “Hands off Memorial.”
On December 29, 2021, a day after Russia’s Supreme Court dissolved the Memorial International Historical Educational Charitable and Human Rights Society, the Moscow City Court ordered the closure of the Memorial’s Human Rights Center, satisfying petition by city prosecutors who argued that the organization’s financial activities are “non-transparent.”
Prosecutors claimed the Memorial Human Rights Center “justified the activities” of several Islamist terrorists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Artpodgotovka left-wing nationalists by naming them as persons persecuted for religion and as political prisoners.
Prosecutors criticized the organization for supporting uncoordinated protests allegedly aimed at “destabilizing the country.” They also accused Memorial of receiving foreign funding from Britain, Norway, the Netherlands, and other countries, as well as of compiling a list of political prisoners maintained by Memorial. All of this, according to the prosecutor’s office, is aimed at forming a negative attitude toward the judicial system of the Russian Federation.
Defense lawyers for Memorial say they plan to appeal the ruling.
Final court deliberations seem to have been deliberately set for the very end of the year, with the expectation of minimal public attention. But the plan failed. On December 29, a crowd of over a hundred gathered near the courthouse, chanting slogans in support of Memorial.
Russian and International Reactions to the Court Ruling
On December 28, 2021, International Memorial issued an official statement regarding the decision of the Russian Supreme Court.
“The decision of the Supreme Court has once again confirmed that the history of political terror, organized and directed by state power, remains for Russia not an academic topic of interest only to specialists, but an acute problem of our time. Our country needs an honest and honest appraisal of its Soviet past; this is the key to its future. It is ridiculous to assume that the judicial liquidation of the International Memorial will remove this issue from the agenda. All of Russian society needs to remember the tragedies of the past. And not just Russian: the memory of state terror unites all former Soviet republics.”
Memorial assured that it will appeal the Supreme Court’s decision. “And we will find legal ways to continue our work,” the organization added. “Memorial is not an organization, it’s not even a social movement. A memorial is a need of Russian citizens for the truth about its tragic past, about the fate of many millions of people. And no one will be able to ‘liquidate’ this need.”
“Even by the standards of the year 2021, the liquidation of Memorial is an extraordinary event. It is monstrous. The only meaning of the destruction of Memorial is in the brazen demonstration of force… The Supreme Court decision shatters the delicate balance Russian society has been holding for decades,” says a statement from the authoritative Russian newspaper Meduza. “You can try to change attitudes toward history, but you can’t cancel history. Those who fight the past have no future.”
Nyuta Federmesser, head of the Moscow Palliative Care Center and founder of the Vera Hospice Foundation, called the court decision “a disgrace to live with at about the same time.” “Memorial was founded by Academician Sakharov. Memorial is one of the country’s most worthy endeavors. Memorial is memory. Memory cannot be liquidated, it cannot be killed,” she stated.
Boris Vishnevsky, deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, directly accused Vladimir Putin of closing the Memorial. “How the heirs of the executioners are afraid of those who keep the memory of the crimes. And yes, this decision could not have been made without the consent (or initiative) of Putin. He is the direct perpetrator of it,” Vishnevsky stressed.
Renowned Russian human rights lawyer Ivan Pavlov, who fled Russia in September after authorities charged him with disclosing state secrets when he was representing a journalist charged with treason, said the verdict sends a message that anyone engaged in activism faces possible prosecution. “Yes, it’s a new, dark and difficult era, but it will end, too,” Pavlov encouraged.
Writer Viktor Shenderovich called the liquidation of Memorial “an empty fuss”. “Who can forbid us to remember our dead? The murderers are making a fuss in vain,” he pointed out.
Russian politician Grigory Yavlinsky stated that with this decision the Russian authorities declared themselves the successor of the Stalinist and Soviet regime. “Memorial was liquidated because it tells the truth. It is a transition from an authoritarian regime to a totalitarian regime. This is another step toward war,” he said in a statement.
Dmitri Gudkov, an opposition politician, stressed that the Russian court’s decision in the Memorial case is absolutely worthless for civil society. “Except that they will not destroy the memory, nor will they be able to declare political prisoners as criminals in the eyes of society. And the fact that we are declared a war of extermination is not news. Only we will win in the long run: they will simply die out in the long run.”
Condemnations of the ruling poured in from rights advocates and political figures around the world as well.
U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan called the ruling “a blatant and tragic attempt to suppress freedom of expression and erase history.” Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, called the decision “heart-breaking” in a tweet. Denmark’s foreign minister, Jeppe Kofod, said Memorial’s liquidation “is another step in the deplorable degradation of human rights” in Russia. And Sam Zarifi, secretary general of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, called it “another step toward darkness” for Russia.
Over the past month, dozens of Russian and international organizations, politicians, scientists, and cultural figures have also spoken in support of Memorial. Among them were Nobel Peace Prize laureates, Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, and Mikhail Gorbachev, the first president of the USSR.
What Memorial Stands for and What it Symbolizes
The Memorial International Historical Educational Charitable and Human Rights Society, known simply as Memorial, is Russia’s oldest and most authoritative and respected human rights organization.
Memorial was established in the late 1980s during the “perestroika” reforms in the USSR. Between 1987 and 1990, while the USSR was still in existence, 23 branches of the society were set up and became active. When the Soviet Union collapsed, branches of Memorial in east and south Ukraine remained affiliated with the Russian network. By 2018, Memorial had more than 60 branches and affiliated organizations throughout Russia, with a quarter of them established in 2014 or later.
The organization was set up by Soviet dissidents — including renowned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov — during the final years of the Soviet Union. It is focused on researching and documenting the Soviet abuses in the gulag, a vast web of prison camps where political prisoners toiled and died, many of them executed on the basis of concocted evidence.
Memorial has developed an archive of the case files of more than 60,000 Soviet victims of state repressions, its searchable database containing 3 million names of victims, and its database with the names of nearly 42,000 people who worked for the Soviet secret police from 1935 to 1939, when repression peaked.
International Memorial was added to the “foreign agents” registry in October 2016.
The organization’s human rights wing, Memorial Human Rights Center, faced a similar court hearing to address charges of justifying terrorism and extremism, which could also result in its liquidation. The center focuses on contemporary human rights abuses. It released a tally of the 419 political prisoners jailed in Russia several months ago, and it has helped more than 1,500 Russians take their cases to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, to challenge rights abuses by Russian authorities
The Biggest Achievements of Memorial
Preserving Historical Memory
Since 1988, Memorial has been collecting personal effects of victims of political repression and their relatives. Over 33 years, the collection has accumulated tens of thousands of letters, photographs, items of clothing and other artifacts that tell about the Great Terror in USSR.
Memorial is also a scientific institution, which constantly replenishes the database of the politically repressed; it already contains more than three million records on the victims of terror. In archive of the organization it is possible to find lists of people shot in Moscow; lists of those sentenced to the highest measure of punishment by Stalin’s personal order; more than thousand memoirs about GULAG camps from its prisoners and workers; information on personnel structure of NKVD. The “Topography of Terror” project gives the memory of repression a geographical dimension: it is a directory of places in Moscow and the Moscow region associated with political terror. In addition, Memorial researches the repressions against religious groups, Russian Germans, and Polish citizens.
Commemoration of Victims of Repressions
One of the society’s first initiatives was to erect a monument to the victims of political repression in the USSR. It was decided to start with the collection of signatures. They were collected on the Arbat and Pushkinskaya Square, and when the police started detaining the agitators, they moved to clubs, theaters and concerts. After six months, the activists had several hundred thousand votes. By that time, the Memorialists had already decided that their goal was not just to erect a monument, but to create a whole memorial complex with a museum, an archive, and a library.
The memorial was opened on the Memorial Day of the victims of political repressions — October 30, 1990. So the relatives of the victims of repressions got a place where they could bring flowers and honor the memory of their relatives. In 2007 near Solovetsky stone an action “Return of Names” took place during which all people who wished could read out loud the names of victims of political terror. Memorial came up with the idea of this action as a counterweight to the official rallies. Since then it has been held annually.
Assistance to Refugees and Victims of Military Conflicts
Although Memorial was initially conceived as an educational organization, its members soon realized that they could not do no more than study the past and ignore the current political agenda. Thus in 1991 the independent Memorial Human Rights Center emerged. Its work was constantly expanding: in addition to political prisoners, Memorial members dealt with contemporary military conflicts, prepared reports from hot spots, searched for and released hostages from the First and Second Chechen wars.
Svetlana Gannushkina, who cooperated with Memorial on the problems of refugees, participated in the creation of the Human Rights Center. In 1996 she succeeded in separating the work with migrants within the framework of the Center for Human Rights into a separate field, with reception offices in the regions; this is how the network Migration and Law came into being (by 2021, 33 reception offices opened throughout Russia). Over time, there were fewer people fleeing the war conflicts, but the work of the organization did not end: the Human Rights Center focused on labor migrants who found themselves in terrible conditions in Russia.
Defending Human Rights in The North Caucasus
Memorial’s Human Rights Center has been one of the leading rights watchdogs in the North Caucasus, opening an office in Grozny in 2000, when thousands of civilians were falling victim to kidnappings, torture, and so-called “sweeping-up” operations by both Russian federal forces and local militia groups. Memorial was forced to close its Grozny office after the 2009 killing of activist and board member Natalya Estemirova, who was personally investigating cases of kidnapping and murder. Oleg Orlov, the head of Memorial HRC, was sued for defamation after accusing Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov of orchestrating Estemirova’s assassination but was eventually acquitted. At a time when virtually no independent voices remain in Chechnya, Memorial continues to publish near-daily bulletins on human rights abuses in the North Caucasus.
Defense of Political Prisoners and Critics of the Regime
Throughout its existence, Memorial has provided legal and moral support to jailed government opponents in Russia, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Aleksei Navalny, Belarus’s Ales Byalyatski, and Andrei Barabanov, Aleksei Gaskarov, and other participants in 2012’s Bolotnaya Square protests. Memorial also maintains a closely watched list of political prisoners, fighting with Kremlin regime.
How the Kremlin Started its Prosecution of Memorial
The early 1990s were perhaps the only relatively peaceful period in Memorial’s history. To this day, some Russian human rights activists consider those years a “golden era,” a time when legislators listened to them and the security forces agreed to cooperate.
The pressure on Memorial intensified rapidly in the 2000s, especially in the Russian North Caucasus. In 2007, Memorial’s Oleg Orlov and journalists from REN TV were kidnapped from a hotel in Ingushetia and beaten up. The crime was attributed to unspecified “destructive forces” — no charges were laid. In 2009, Memorial human rights advocate Natalya Estemirova was kidnapped and murdered in Chechnya. The perpetrators were never found.
The pressure hasn’t let up since. Just a few years ago, the head of Memorial’s Chechnya office, Oyub Titiyev, was arrested for alleged drug possession. A week after his arrest, Memorial’s office in neighboring Ingushetia was burned down. The rights group decided to shut down its Chechnya office for security reasons.
After the start of Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term, the battle against Memorial and other human rights organizations became part of state policy in Russia. The law on “foreign agents” was adopted in 2012; the Memorial Human Rights Center was blacklisted as a “foreign agent” a year later. Its parent organization, Memorial International, was slapped with “foreign agent” status in 2016.
The Karelian branch of Memorial was deprived of its head in 2020: historian Yury Dmitriev was sentenced to 13 years in a strict regime penal colony on charges of child sex abuse. On December 27, 2021 Dmitriev’s sentence was increased by two more years: from 13 to 15 years. Memorial says that the case was a fabricated and politically motivated one. Dmitriev was responsible for drawing up lists of the repressed in Karelia and conducting search operations at the sites of the shootings. In the late 1990s, a search group led by Dmitriev discovered execution pits in the Sandarmoh woods where the victims of 1937-1938 repressions were buried.
Finally, on November 11, 2021, the Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office has asked for the liquidation of International Memorial. The organization was accused of violating the legislation on “foreign agents,” specifically the absence of appropriate labeling in its materials.
During a recent meeting with the Presidential Human Rights Council, Vladimir Putin responded to a question about the federal case against International Memorial by pointing out that the group accidentally listed three Nazi combatants among the victims of the Stalinist Terror. Memorial’s executives say the group’s shortage of resources makes such errors possible, and researchers do their best to correct any inaccuracies as quickly as possible. Human rights activists warn that the Russian authorities want to establish a monopoly on all sensitive topics. “Unfortunately, the government is aiming to subjugate dangerous spheres,” says Memorial’s Sergey Bondarenko. “There can be remembrance. But it shouldn’t include any independent, [non-government] organizations. Everything should be understood by the authorities.
On December 22, 2021 Dmitry Zimin, a Russian philanthropist, who was renowned globally for his strong support of science and education as key pillars of the societal progress, passed away in Switzerland. His son Boris Zimin announced it on his Facebook page.
Dmitry Zimin was 88 years old.
His son specified that Zimin had been battling an illness. “My father was a great lover of life and lived a great life. Thank him for everything, for what he created, for what he was <…> He left in full consciousness, peaceful, a little sad about us and life, but still with relief — he had been seriously ill for the last few months,” wrote Boris Zimin.
Dmitry Zimin was born in Moscow in 1933. He graduated from the Department of Aircraft Radioelectronics at the MAI. In the early 1960s he joined the Radio-Technical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where he rose from laboratory chief to director of the Radio-Technical Equipment Development Center. He was involved in scientific research and published more than 100 scientific papers, including some of his own inventions.
Since the early 2000s, Dmitry Zimin had been involved in charitable work. He created the Dynasty Foundation in 2001, almost immediately after he resigned as CEO of VimpelCom. Zimin gave away almost all of his earnings — “with the permission of his family” — to a charitable foundation, from which none of his relatives are allowed to receive money. He formulated its mission as follows: “search and support of talents, their ideas and projects in the field of natural and social sciences.”
Zimin believed that one of the main problems of Russia is “washing out” of the intellectual elite from the country: “It is not only about financing, which is also a very important issue, but it is more about creating an atmosphere of creativity, an atmosphere of freedom. <…> So far we are witnessing degradation. <…> So far we see degradation. Personally I do everything that depends on me to solve this problem — I gave almost everything I had, trying to support scientists.”
The foundation awarded grants and scholarships to young scientists-physicists, mathematicians, and biologists. In addition, Dynasty sent young researchers to international scientific programs and helped organize scientific conferences in Russia.
The first thing the foundation did in 2002 was to award grants and scholarships to young physicists. Research projects are funded by the Scientific Council of the Foundation through scholarship (5400 rubles per month for one year) and grants (10800 rubles per month for three years). Candidates of Science can receive support of 19500 rubles per month, Doctor of Science — 26000 rubles. In 2014 alone, 92 Russian physicists received support from the foundation.
Since 2004, the foundation has organized an annual all-Russian competition for teachers of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. Winners are selected by university students votes. In 2014, about 500 teachers received grants of 38,000 rubles each; the four winners of the Award for Excellence in Education received 150,000 rubles each. Since 2009 there has been a contest of educational projects for schoolchildren: the scientific council of Dynasty selects clubs, science schools, and science tournaments, which receive from 300 to 600 thousand rubles in financial aid.
Since 2006, Dynasty has published 83 popular science books, including “God as Illusion” by Richard Dawkins, and “Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond. The Foundation distributes all the books released to libraries throughout Russia.
In addition to natural sciences and mathematics, Dynasty has supported the Liberal Mission Foundation since 2005, whose mission was “to develop and disseminate liberal values and ideas in Russia.” Under the leadership of Yevgeny Yasin, the foundation held roundtables and published collections of articles. In 2004, the Liberal Mission published the book “Down Vertical Path”, and in 2013, the book “Law and Power.”
In 2012-2014, Dynasty invested more than 300 million rubles annually in scientific and educational projects.
In 2015, Zimin announced the liquidation of the foundation. This happened because the Ministry of Justice included Dynasty in the list of so-called “foreign agents.” The “foreign agents” registry also included the Russian Media Support Foundation “Sreda”, which was created by Dmitry Zimin’s son Boris. After that, the organization decided to liquidate.
In 2016, Dmitry Zimin and his son founded the Zimin Foundation, an international NGO that supports education and science around the world.
Zimin was the first and only Russian citizen to be awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy for his social investment work. He was conferred an Honorary Doctorate Degree by the Tel Aviv University in Israel. Zimin was also recogninzed by the Russian Ministry of Science and Education “For Commitment to Science.” He established the prestigious literary award Premya Prosvetitel (“Enlightener Prize”), which annually awards prizes to the best authors of popular science books in Russian language. Zimin established the Dynasty Library project to translate and publish over 100 international works on popular science in Russian language. In addition to the monetary prizes (700,000 rubles), the laureates receive the opportunity to widely distribute their texts — the Foundation is buying up 500 books by the finalists for distribution to Russian libraries.
As a side event to the Biden’s 2021 Summit for Democracy, Free Russia Foundation, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group hosted a conversation of the outlook for democracy and human rights in Russia, concrete steps that must be taken to advance this agenda, and ways the international community can support this agenda.
The discussion featured three prominent members of Russian civil society:
- Vladimir Milov, Russian opposition politician;
- Vasily Gatov, USC Annenberg Center on Communication, Leadership, and Policy; and
- Evgeniya Chirikova, Activatica.org.
The December 2021 Summit for Democracy convened global leaders from 110 nations and partners to lay out new commitments to human rights and a democratic renewal. The summit served as a platform to non-governmental voices from civil society, independent media, activists, and the private sector to detail their priorities, demands, and goals for democratic progress.
Not surprisingly, Putin was excluded from the list of summit invitees. The Putin regime’s actions —through grave human rights violations, endemic corruption, and hybrid aggression— have threatened democratic actors and institutions globally and intensified its domestic repression.
We must remember, however, that Putin’s government does not represent the Russian people and does not speak for the Russian people. Events of the past few months have shown that Putin’s government is undergoing a crisis of legitimacy and the political transition phase has begun. The Russian civil society remains committed to the pursuit of democracy despite brutal repressions at home and waning support from the international community.
On November 18, 2021, US Congressmen Steve Cohen (D-TN), Co-Chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, known as the Helsinki Commission, along with the Helsinki Ranking Member Joe Wilson (R-SC), introduced a Congressional Resolution to end recognition of Vladimir Putin as president of Russia.
Free Russia Foundation applauds this principled public stance, sees it as the only position appropriately reflecting the criminal and murderous nature of Putin’s regime, and calls on all Members of the US Congress and the Biden Administration to adopt the policy of non-recognition of Vladimir Putin and his illegitimate government.
The resolution makes the case that Putin’s continuation in office after May 7, 2024 would be illegitimate. It asserts that the amendments to the Constitution of Russia, one of which provides for Putin’s so-called zero term limit and allows him to run for president in 2024 and 2030, were adopted in violation of international conventions, as well as through extensive fraud during the so-called popular vote last year.
Cohen and Wilson call Russia’s 2020 constitutional plebiscite “the most manipulated vote” in the country’s modern history. Their resolution decries ballots cast at “park benches, car trunks and shopping carts” during weeklong voting period with people prodded to polling centers in the midst of COVID-19 outbreak.
“Any attempt by President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin to remain in office beyond the end of his current and final term on May 7, 2024, shall warrant nonrecognition on the part of the United States,” the resolution states.
Kremlin’s Reaction
The resolution struck a nerve back in Moscow and has evoked an immediate and vehement reaction from the Kremlin, with each statement, however, using the same precise formulation as coordinated from the top.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov denounced the proposal as “aggressive” meddling in Russia’s domestic affairs.
“We consider this interference in our affairs and we’re convinced that only Russians can determine who and when should be president of Russia,” says Peskov. Peskov added that the State Duma deputies will not leave this proposal unanswered.
The Russian Federation Council said that if Congress passes the resolution, it will “lead to a rupture in relations between Russia and the United States.” The document itself was called “interference in the election.”
Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council of Russia Konstantin Kosachev said that “it’s a little early this time the Americans started interfering in the presidential elections in Russia.” Kosachev called what was happening interference in Russia’s internal affairs “in its purest form” and a provocation that could disrupt the emerging improvement in relations between the countries.
Andrei Klishas, chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Law, pointed out that only the Russian people can recognize or not recognize Putin as president of Russia. “If the president decides to take part in the 2024 elections and is elected by the citizens of our country, everyone, even the most sullen Russophobes in the U.S. Congress, will recognize this,” he said.
Ironically, in the past two years, the Kremlin has effectively neutralized the Russian civil society and independent political forces through massive repressions, disenfranchising even by most conservative estimates at least 9 million Russians from participating in elections —thusly denying Russian citizens the choice that they now extol with regards to Putin’s tenure.
Today, Putin is the second-longest serving head of state in Europe, after Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus. Notably, in 2018, Putin publicly stated that he was not going to hold the post of president for more than two consecutive terms and denied the possibility of his participation in the 2030 election.
Having held on to his power through various schemes for over twenty years, in 2020, Putin signed into law constitutional amendments allowing him to run for reelection twice more, potentially extending his presidency to 2036. Amendments to the Constitution of Russia solved so-called the “2024 problem” that was connected with end of Putin’s presidential powers in 2024. More than 200 amendments were introduced to the Russian Constitution last year. The amendments were widely criticized both in Russia and abroad.
By Yury Krylov
The United States has added Russia to the list of countries implicated in “egregious violations of religious freedom,” a move that comes as ties dip to their lowest since the Cold War. This is reported on the website of the U.S. State Department.
In addition to Russia, the list includes China, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Eritrea and Myanmar. According to the Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the situation with violations of religious freedom in these countries “is of particular concern.”
Algeria, Comoros, Cuba and Nicaragua have been placed on a watch list.
“The United States will not waiver in its commitment to advocate for freedom of religion or belief for all and in every country,” Blinken said in a statement. “In far too many places around the world, we continue to see governments harass, arrest, threaten, jail, and kill individuals simply for seeking to live their lives in accordance with their beliefs.”
Antony Blinken stressed that the U.S. will continue to push governments to correct deficiencies in local laws and hold those responsible for violations accountable.
Earlier, the US State Department had criticized the Russian court over the imposition of prison terms for the followers of Jehovah’s Witnesses (an organization recognized as extremist and banned in Russia). The denomination was banned in Russia in 2017 under allegations of “extremism,” and hundreds of worshippers have been jailed since. According to Jehovah’s Witnesses, 257 criminal cases have been launched against the members of the group, 559 men and women have been charged with extremism, and 70 believers are currently incarcerated. Among those classified by Russia as extremist and banned are also a Muslim group Hizb ut-Tahrir and The Church of Scientology.
On November 4, 2021, 35 OSCE Participating States[1] invoked the Vienna Mechanism and addressed human rights concerns regarding actions by the Government of Belarus, noting the mutual accountability shared amongst OSCE Participating States for full implementation of their OSCE commitments. It requested “concrete and substantial responses” to eight questions that summarised its principal concerns regarding the human rights situation in Belarus.
On 12 November 2021, Free Russia Foundation lodged a submission to the OSCE entitled “Concerning the Decision of 35 OSCE States to Invoke the Vienna Mechanism in Relation to Serious Human Rights Violations in Belarus.”
The submission was addressed to all 57 OSCE Participating States (including Belarus), as well as Helga Maria Schmid, OSCE Secretary General; Margareta Cederfelt, President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly; Matteo Mecacci, Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights; and Wolfgang Benedek, OSCE Rapporteur under the Moscow Mechanism on Alleged Human Rights Violations related to the Presidential Elections of 9 August 2020 in Belarus.
Free Russia Foundation has observed that the Government of Belarus has been unresponsive to OSCE concerns and has no intention to answer the questions. Belarusian civil society, on the other hand, is precluded from responding due to its well-founded fear of retribution and further persecution. Accordingly, Free Russia Foundation prepared this submission articulating responses to the eight questions by the 35 OSCE States.
The Submission asserts that:
- No steps have been taken by Belarusian authorities to investigate allegations that the right to freedom of peaceful assembly is being unduly restricted, that individuals are being arbitrarily detained or arrested, and that numbers of political prisoners are increasing.
- On 26 August 2021, the Investigative Committee of Belarus announced that it would not criminally investigate or prosecute allegations by 680 persons regarding allegations of torture and other crimes under international law.
- Belarusian authorities incite hate and intolerance towards representatives of any political views that contradict the state and that their lack of a proper legal response to hate crimes creates an atmosphere of impunity for offenders.
- Belarusian authorities have hindered the ability of civil society and media actors to document and report on human rights concerns in Belarus and persecuted individuals and groups attempting to do so.
- Belarusian authorities have facilitated irregular migration (to other OSCE Participating States) which puts vulnerable people at risk, impacts on their human rights, and has a destabilizing effect on regional security. In doing so, they use people in a vulnerable position as an instrument of pressure on other countries.
- Belarusian authorities have disregarded its OSCE membership obligations by failing to substantively respond to human rights concerns identified by OSCE Participating States.
- The Government of Belarus has closed at least 185 organizations, arbitrarily arrested dozens of their associates and taken no meaningful steps to engage with civil society. Further, it has taken no steps to respond to the recommendations contained in the 5 November 2020 report under the Moscow Mechanism.
Free Russia Foundation (4freerussia.org) is an international NGO dedicated to advancing democratic development and supporting civil society with centers in Kyiv, Ukraine; Tbilisi, Georgia; Prague, Czechia; Berlin, Germany; Vilnius, Lithuania; and Washington, DC, US.
The submission was prepared in cooperation with Scott Martin of Global Rights Compliance (‘GRC’). GRC is an international LLP working on international human rights, international humanitarian law and environmental law matters throughout the world.
[1] Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Montenegro, The Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and the United States.
Over 100 Russian human rights activists and artists, as well as 60 members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) have signed the appeal in support of the Memorial Rights Group. Among signatories are writers Dmitry Bykov, Viktor Shenderovich and Lyudmila Ulitskaya, actress Liya Akhedzhakova, rights activists Andrei Babushkin, Nikolai Svanidze and Natalia Yevdokimova, politicians Lev Shlosberg, Grigory Yavlinsky, Dmitry Gudkov, Ilya Yashin, Andrei Nechaev and many others.
The petition stresses the importance of continuing the human rights association’s mission of preserving the memory of victims of the USSR repressions:
We, the creators and staff of educational projects, book publishers and editors, protest the persecution of the Memorial Society, the oldest non-governmental organization in Russia today.
Since 1989, Memorial has investigated the history of state terror in the twentieth-century Russia and commemorated its victims. Memorial is a museum, archive, and library; it hosts discussions, lectures, exhibitions, and books; and organizes the annual “Return of Names” campaign. Memorial is the repository of the historical memory of our society, the foundation for its healthy development and its future”— a November 15 statement signed by activists and scholars said.
“Today this future is in danger. Persecution of political opposition, civic organizations and independent journalists has become the norm. New Russian laws are at odds with civilized understandings of the law. The rector of one of Russia’s best universities has been imprisoned on manufatured charges… We demand the release of political prisoners and the repeal of unlawful repressive laws. Our country is in trouble, and we must unite to protect its future”, it added.
On November 15, the Kremlin’s top spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not comment directly the case of Memorial, but opined that Memorial “has been having problems for a long time in terms of following Russian laws.”
In the first four days since its launch, nearly 25,000 Russians have signed the online petition called “Hands Off Memorial!”. Over the weekend, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned the moves to close Memorial and demanded Russian authorities stop using the illegal Foreign Agent law to persecute and intimidate the organization.
Case Background
On November 11, 2021, Russian human rights group Memorial received a notice from the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. According to it, the Office of the Russian Prosecutor General has requested the Supreme Court to shut down the international branch of the country’s most prominent and respected human rights group for failure to comply with requirements of the illegal law on “foreign agents” (in particular, its requirements for labeling).
Putin’s government uses the new “foreign agents” designation to target whom it perceives as foreign-funded organizations engaged in political activity and affiliated persons.
The post on the website of the Supreme Court states that the Prosecutor’s Office also demands the liquidation of the organization’s subdivisions — a human rights center, an archive, a library and a museum.
A court hearing is scheduled for November 25, 2021.
Memorial itself has characterized the General Prosecutor’s order as “a political decision to destroy civil society” focused on “the history of political repression and the defense of human rights.” The group believes there are no legal grounds for liquidating the organization.
“We have repeatedly stated that the law was originally conceived as a tool to crack down on independent organizations, and insisted that it should be abolished,” Memorial said in a statement. “The decision to abolish International Memorial is politically motivated. It aims to destroy the organization which deals with the political repressions of the past and fights for human rights today.”
Late last month, Memorial said that the number of political prisoners in Russia has risen sharply in recent years. It listed more than 400 political prisoners, including top Kremlin critic and opposition leader Alexey Navalny who survived a poisoning attempt with Novichok nerve agent last year.
Recently Russia declared the rights group “Russian LGBT Network” a “foreign agent,” along with lawyer Ivan Pavlov and “Team 29” Lawyers’ Association.
About Memorial
Memorial was established in the late 1980s during the “perestroika” reforms of the USSR. Between 1987 and 1990, while the USSR was still in existence, 23 branches of the society were set up and became active. When the Soviet Union collapsed, branches of Memorial in east and south Ukraine remained affiliated to the Russian network.
By 2018, Memorial had more than 60 branches and affiliated organizations scattered across Russia, with a quarter of them established in 2014 or later.
The branches advance the same mission of upholding human rights, documenting the past, and marking Days of Remembrance for the victims of political repression. Over the past twenty years Memorial has built up an online database of the victims of political repression in the USSR. Its fifth version contained over three million names and yet it was estimated that 75% of the victims had not yet been identified and recorded. International Memorial was added to the “foreign agents” registry in October 2016.
On November 10, 2021, a prominent Russian opposition activist Lilia Chanysheva was put under a two-month arrest on charges of her alleged participation in the activities of an ‘extremist organization’— Alexey Navalny’s network.
Chanysheva’s home in Ufa, Bashkortostan, was raided early in the morning of November 9, after which she was detained, and later— arrested. This is the first arrest of a member of Alexey Navalny’s network on charges of extremism after it had been declared an ‘extremist organization’ earlier this year.
Lilia Chanysheva has refrained from participation in Navalny’s network after its official disbanding in April 2021— well before the court decisions designating Alexey Navalny’s network ‘extremist’ were made. This arrest is clearly a revenge for her past activities which were not illegal at the time. Punishing people for legal political activities is against even Putin’s Russia’s laws.
Chanysheva was one of the most prominent regional activists of Navalny’s network, chairing Navalny’s regional HQ in Ufa, Bashkortostan from 2017 until Navalny’s regional network was disbanded in April 2021. Before joining Navalny’s Presidential campaign in 2017, she used to work at Deloitte’s local office as an auditor. Later, she ran for an Ufa City Council seat, but was banned from election by authorities. Chanysheva had gained prominence as a major public opinion leader in particularly authoritarian Bashkortostan and was demonstrably law-obedient, advocating only legal means of political struggle, such as participation in elections.
During the court hearing on November 10, 2021 in Ufa, Chanysheva announced that she is two weeks pregnant (she had recently gotten married). She had never had any intention to leave Russia and has made no plans to do so, despite a clear threat to her safety, and with many of her former colleagues having left the country out of concerns for safety. Nonetheless, the Russian kangaroo court has issued a baseless verdict, placing Chanysheva in detention, despite the fact that she presents no public danger, was involved exclusively in legal activities, and had no intention to abscond.
Chanysheva’s arrest is yet another manifestation of a new wave of political repressions in Russia, as it is the first major arrest of a prominent figure from Alexey Navalny’s network since Navalny’s organization had been declared ‘extremist’. The arrest is even more disturbing, given the fact that Chanysheva had suspended her political activity a while ago, and is clearly being punished retroactively for her past, fully legal activities. It is worth considering serious sanctions against Russian authorities for this new concerning step of escalation of political repressions in Russia.
On November 11, 2021, Russian human rights group Memorial received a notice from the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. According to it, the Office of the Russian Prosecutor General has requested the Supreme Court to shut down the international branch of the country’s most prominent and respected human rights group for failure to comply with requirements of the illegal law on “foreign agents” (in particular, its requirements for labeling).
Putin’s government uses the new “foreign agents” designation to target whom it perceives as foreign-funded organizations engaged in political activity and affiliated persons.
The post on the website of the Supreme Court states that the Prosecutor’s Office also demands the liquidation of the organization’s subdivisions — a human rights center, an archive, a library and a museum.
A court hearing is scheduled for November 25, 2021.
Memorial itself has characterized the General Prosecutor’s order as “a political decision to destroy civil society” focused on “the history of political repression and the defense of human rights.” The group believes there are no legal grounds for liquidating the organization.
“We have repeatedly stated that the law was originally conceived as a tool to crack down on independent organizations, and insisted that it should be abolished,” Memorial said in a statement. “The decision to abolish International Memorial is politically motivated. It aims to destroy the organization which deals with the political repressions of the past and fights for human rights today.”
Late last month, Memorial said that the number of political prisoners in Russia has risen sharply in recent years. It listed more than 400 political prisoners, including top Kremlin critic and opposition leader Alexey Navalny who survived a poisoning attempt with Novichok nerve agent last year.
Recently Russia declared the rights group “Russian LGBT Network” a “foreign agent,” along with lawyer Ivan Pavlov and “Team 29” Lawyers’ Association.
About International Memorial
Memorial was established in the late 1980s during the “perestroika” reforms of the USSR. Between 1987 and 1990, while the USSR was still in existence, 23 branches of the society were set up and became active. When the Soviet Union collapsed, branches of Memorial in east and south Ukraine remained affiliated to the Russian network.
By 2018, Memorial had more than 60 branches and affiliated organizations scattered across Russia, with a quarter of them established in 2014 or later.
The branches advance the same mission of upholding human rights, documenting the past, and marking Days of Remembrance for the victims of political repression. Over the past twenty years Memorial has built up an online database of the victims of political repression in the USSR. Its fifth version contained over three million names and yet it was estimated that 75% of the victims had not yet been identified and recorded.
International Memorial was added to the “foreign agents” registry in October 2016.
Five Russian lawyers have been put on the list of foreign agents, the Russian Justice Ministry announced on Monday, November 8, 2021.
On Monday, November 8, the Justice Ministry declared Ivan Pavlov a “media foreign agent” along with four other former employees from his now-closed organization Team 29 — Maxim Zagovora, Valerya Vetoshkina, Elena Skvortsova, and Maxim Olenichev.
Also, the Ministry has added the Russian LGBT Network to its registry of “unregistered public associations performing the functions of a ‘foreign agent’.” According to the Ministry, the Russian LGBT-network was sponsored by the Sfera charity fund for social and legal assistance.
Pavlov, commenting on the Justice Ministry’s decision, said that “becoming a “foreign agent” nowadays is almost like receiving the State Prize for special services in the field of freedom of speech and information. He promised to appeal the actions of the Ministry of Justice in court.
Pavlov himself is now in Georgia.
Who is Ivan Pavlov?
The lawyers’ association “Team 29” is led by Ivan Pavlov, who has defended Alexey Navalny’s organization. Pavlov has been under criminal investigation since April when the Kremlin accused him of disclosing investigation information relating to one of his clients.
Navalny himself is in prison for parole violations over an embezzlement case he says is fabricated. He was arrested in Moscow earlier this year after flying back from Germany where he had been recovering from a nerve agent Novichok poisoning.
Pavlov also was the attorney of former journalist, Roscosmos adviser Ivan Safronov. In April 2021, Pavlov was charged with leaking classified trial data from the treason case against Safronov. He fled Russia in September, after which authorities put him on a wanted list.
What is The Russian LGBT Network?
The LGBTQ+ rights group Russian LGBT Network is best known for helping evacuate people fleeing persecution in Chechnya. The group’s operator, the charitable foundation Sfera, was registered as a “foreign-agent NGO” in 2016. After that, it continued working as a crisis group under the name “North Caucasus SOS.”
The movement has 17 regional offices throughout Russia, from Moscow to the Primorsky region, with HQ in St. Petersburg.
By Vladimir Milov, Expert of Free Russia Foundation, Russian prodemocracy politician, publicist, economist and energy expert
According to Freedom House, global freedoms and democracy have been retreating for 15 consecutive years. While the conventional wisdom points to the imperfections of the democratic systems themselves as the main reason, coordinated and orchestrated efforts of global autocratic regimes have played the key role in this process. Equipped with advanced technology and commanding trillions of dollars derived from unprecedented economic growth of the past few decades, contemporary autocracies are capable not only to suppress the natural demand for democratization from their own societies, but also to go on the global offensive. They interfere with domestic policies of the democratic societies, launch cyberwars, propaganda and disinformation attacks, sow division, civic apathy and distrust in democratic institutions, paving the way for new authoritarian trends in societies previously considered solid democracies.
These efforts are well-coordinated. Autocracies continuously learn from each other, adopting ‘best practices’ of oppression to be used against their own societies— sharing the data harvested through surveillance, leveraging law enforcement mechanisms and physical policing hardware, to coordinating cyber and disinformation attacks.
Several autocracies, which should have fallen under the pressure from their own societies demanding democratic changes, have managed to stay afloat and keep dictatorships in place merely due to massive and coordinated support from foreign powers. Syria, Venezuela, Belarus, Myanmar— these regimes wouldn’t hold, were it not for a coordinated intervention of autocratic foreign powers such as Russia, China and Iran to save them.
The international community should recognize this trend as a grave breach of national sovereignty and address it head-on. Allowing autocracies to continue such anti-democratic interventions will lead to their rapid proliferations, taking down fragile democracies one by one like dominoes.
Global coordination to defend democracies against autocratic onslaught is a matter of self-preservation for democratic systems. Such coordination should be formalized in structure and be continuous, and not pop up ad-hoc at summits. It should be organized along the following vectors of effort:
1. Coordinating international political positions and legal actions
It is extremely important to counter global anti-democratic actions of autocracies in the international public space and legal forums.
Systemic interference by autocracies in domestic politics of democratic countries, or interventions of foreign autocratic powers to protect dictatorial regimes like Venezuela, Syria, Belarus or Myanmar have not been raised even once at the U.N. Security Council or other important international bodies.
The democratic world must muster the courage to acknowledge the autocratic threat for what it is and address the systemic nature of the problem at the global stage.
We must develop an international legal framework to punish political interference in domestic affairs of democratic countries. Sanctions should be adopted against autocracies complicit in interventions aimed at saving individual dictatorships despite broad democratic aspirations of the people.
We must clarify the definition of national sovereignty. Autocracies interpret national sovereignty as the right of those who have grabbed power to do as they wish within their national borders. This interpretation contradicts even their own constitutions and national statutes who assert that sovereignty is derived from the free will of the people.
2. Coordinating defense against attacks on democracy
Permanent mechanisms should be established to facilitate information exchange and coordinate best response to autocratic cyberwars, disinformation and propaganda wars, weaponization of migration, drug traffic sponsored by autocracies, and other malign activities in specific areas.
3. Using economic power to halt the autocratic offensive
Democracies dominate the global economy, generating well over 70% of the global GDP. Therefore, they command an enormous economic leverage over autocracies. If used collectively and wisely, this leverage can proof to be powerful enough to create both the incentives for nations to join the democratic community, as well as effective checks on the aggressive behavior of the autocracies. Some ways in which economic leverage can be used include:
- Promoting free trade and investment between democratic nations first, to make sure that democracies enjoy the advantages of free flow of goods, services and investment to a significantly higher extent than autocracies;
- Promoting human rights clauses to free trade and investment agreements as a universal approach— which would end the debate as to whether oppressive regimes should be allowed access to free trade, defining the boundaries purely in legal terms. So far, human rights clauses to FTAs is an option which remains mostly on paper— but can emerge as a powerful leverage over global trade and investment processes.
4. Reaching out to civil societies of the oppressed world
Democracies should clearly distinguish between autocratic regimes and their oppressed peoples— who also want to join the world of democracies but are denied the opportunity to realize their aspiration by brutal self-proclaimed autocratic rulers.
The democratic world should coordinate efforts aimed at:
- Providing global access to free information for oppressed peoples living under autocratic regimes— an extremely important goal, especially in the environment of intensified efforts by autocrats to block their populations from access to free information;
- Providing a wide range of legal and other forms of support to the oppressed people living under autocratic regimes;
- Addressing the demand of the people of non-free societies for enlightenment, education on the principles and foundations of democracy, self-government, and other forms of knowledge that will help them build prosperous democratic societies in the future;
- Actively working with global diasporas of the non-democratic nations to help them become forces of positive change in their own societies;
- Creating new international justice mechanisms for peoples of the non-free societies who lack legal and judicial protection in their own countries, especially important as autocracies have been actively retreating from international justice mechanisms like ECHR, Roman Statute of the ICC, etc.
5. Preventing access to potentially oppressive technologies
Democracies should improve the coordination of their efforts to prevent access for autocracies to products and technologies which can be used to enhance oppressive techniques against their own societies. It is no secret that the bulk of technologies and tools used for domestic repression used by autocracies— from public space surveillance to sophisticated hacking tools to police hardware— originate in the democratic world.
The democratic world should monitor the markets of oppressive tools and techniques and develop an effective mechanism of collective sanctions against domestic producers of equipment and technology, who supply these products to autocratic regimes to be used for malicious purposes.
6. Coordinated sanctions for human rights abuses
Sanctions against individuals and entities involved in human rights abuses in autocratic countries will be more effective if coordinated across the democratic world. Particularly effective are the sanction tools which prevent exports of corrupt capital from autocracies to the free world where money and property is protected by the rule of law. There is an urgent need to develop mechanisms like the Global Magnitsky Act to send a clear signal to autocrats— you and your family cannot count on a good life and well-being in the democratic societies with corrupt money earned through repression and attacks against the democratic world.
The forced diversion and landing in Minsk of a May 23, 2021 Ryanair flight en route from Greece to Lithuania, and the subsequent arrest of dissident Roman Protasevich who was aboard the flight, by the illegitimate Lukashenka regime pose an overt political and military challenge to Europe, NATO and the broad global community. NATO members must respond forcefully by demanding (1) the immediate release of Protasevich and other political prisoners in Belarus, and (2) a prompt transition to a government that represents the will of the people of Belarus.
The West’s passivity in the face of massive, continuous and growing oppression of the Belarusian people since summer 2020 has emboldened Lukashenka to commit what some European leaders have appropriately termed an act of “state terrorism.”
The West has shown a manifest disposition to appease Putin’s regime —Lukashenka’s sole security guarantor. It has made inappropriate overtures for a Putin-Biden summit and waived Nord Stream 2 sanctions mandated by Congress. These actions and signals have come against the backdrop of the 2020 Russian constitutional coup, the assassination attempt against Navalny and his subsequent imprisonment on patently bogus charges, the arrests of close to 13,000 Russian activists, and the outlawing of all opposition movements and activities. All this has led Putin and Lukashenka to conclude that they eliminate their political opponents with impunity.
Today’s state-ordered hijacking of an international passenger airplane—employing intelligence agents aboard the flight, and accomplished via an advanced fighter-interceptor—to apprehend an exiled activist, underscores that violation of human rights is not only a domestic issue, but a matter of international safety and security. Western governments unwilling to stand up for the victims of Putin’s and Lukashenka’s regimes are inviting future crimes against their own citizens.
Absent a meaningful and swift response, the escalation of violence and intensity of international crimes committed by Lukashenka’s and Putin’s regime will continue, destabilizing the world and discrediting the Western democratic institutions.
The Free Russia Foundation invites submissions to The Kremlin’s Influence Quarterly, a journal that explores and analyzes manifestations of the malign influence of Putin’s Russia in Europe.
We understand malign influence in the European context as a specific type of influence that directly or indirectly subverts and undermines European values and democratic institutions. We follow the Treaty on European Union in understanding European values that are the following: human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and respect for human rights. Democratic institutions are guardians of European values, and among them, we highlight representative political parties; free and fair elections; an impartial justice system; free, independent and pluralistic media; and civil society.
Your contribution to The Kremlin’s Influence Quarterly would focus on one European country from the EU, Eastern Partnership or Western Balkans, and on one particular area where you want to explore Russian malign influence: politics, diplomacy, military domain, business, media, civil society, academia, religion, crime, or law.
Each chapter in The Kremlin’s Influence Quarterly should be around 5 thousand words including footnotes. The Free Russia Foundation offers an honorarium for contributions accepted for publication in the journal.
If you are interested in submitting a chapter, please send us a brief description of your chapter and its title (250 words) to the following e-mail address: [email protected]. Please put The Kremlin’s Influence Quarterly as a subject line of your message.
Please join Free Russia Foundation for an expert brief and discussion on latest criminal operations conducted by Russia’s GRU worldwide with:
- Christo Grozev, Bellingcat— the legendary investigator who uncovered the Kremlin’s involvement, perpetrators and timeline of Navalny’s assassination attempt.
- Jakub Janda, Director of the European Values Think Tank (the Czech Republic) where he researches Russia’s hostile influence operations in the West
- Michael Weiss, Director of Special Investigations at Free Russia Foundation where he leads the Lubyanka Files project, which consists of translating and curating KGB training manuals still used in modern Russia for the purposes of educating Vladimir Putin’s spies.
The event will take place on Tuesday, May 11 from 11 am to 12:30pm New York Time (17:00 in Brussels) and include an extensive Q&A with the audience moderated by Ilya Zaslavskiy, Senior Fellow at Free Russia Foundation and head of Underminers.info, a research project on post-Soviet kleptocracy
The event will be broadcast live at: https://www.facebook.com/events/223365735790798/
- The discussion will cover Russia’s most recent and ongoing covert violent operations, direct political interference, oligarchic penetration with money and influence;
- GRU’s structure and approach to conducting operations in Europe
- Trends and forecasts on how data availability will impact both, the Kremlin’s operations and their investigation by governments and activists;
- EU and national European government response and facilitation of operations on their soil;
- Recommendations for effective counter to the security and political threats posed by Russian security services.
On May 6, 2020, at least five YouTube channels belonging to key Russian opposition leaders and platforms received notifications from YouTube that some of their content had been removed due to its being qualified as “spam, deceptive practices and scams”.
They included:
Ilya Yashin (343k YouTube subscribers)
Vladimir Milov (218k YouTube subscribers)
Leonid Volkov (117k YouTube subscribers)
Novaya Gazeta (277k YouTube Subscribers)
Sota Vision (248k YouTube Subscribers)
Most likely, there are other Russian pro-democracy channels that have received similar notifications at the same time, and we are putting together the list of all affected by this censorship campaign.
The identical letters received from YouTube by the five account holders stated:
“Our team has reviewed your content, and, unfortunately, we think it violates our spam, deceptive practices and scams policy. We’ve removed the following content from YouTube:
URL: https://votesmart.appspot.com/“
YouTube has removed urls from descriptions of videos posted on these accounts that linked to Alexey Navalny’s Smart Voting website (votesmart.appspot.com).
By doing this, and to our great shock and disbelief, YouTube has acted to enforce the Kremlin’s policies by qualifying Alexey Navalny’s Smart Voting system and its website as “spam, deceptive practices and scams”.
This action has not only technically disrupted communication for the Russian civil society which is now under a deadly siege by Putin’s regime, but it has rendered a serious and lasting damage to its reputation and legitimacy of Smart Voting approach.
In reality, Smart Voting system is not a spam, scam or a “deceptive practice”, but instead it’s a fully legitimate system of choosing and supporting candidates in Russian elections who have a chance of winning against the ruling “United Russia” party candidates. There’s absolutely nothing illegal, deceptive or fraudulent about the Smart Voting or any materials on its website.
We don’t know the reasons behind such YouTube actions, but they are an unacceptable suppression of a constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the Russian people and help the Kremlin’s suppression of civil rights and freedoms by banning the Smart Voting system and not allowing free political competition with the ruling “United Russia” party.
This is an extremely dangerous precedent in an environment where opposition activities in Russia are being literally outlawed; key opposition figures are jailed, exiled, arrested and attacked with criminal investigations; independent election campaigning is prohibited; and social media networks remain among the very few channels still available to the Russian opposition to communicate with the ordinary Russians.
We demand a swift and decisive action on this matter from the international community, to make sure that YouTube corrects its stance toward Russian opposition channels, and ensures that such suppression of peaceful, legal pro-democracy voices does not happen again.
On April 15, 2021, President Biden signed new sanctions against a number of officials and agents of the Russian Federation in connection with malign international activities conducted by the Russian government.
The list of individuals sanctioned by the new law includes Leonid Mikhalyuk, director of the Federal Security Service in the Russian-occupied Crimea.
A report issued by Free Russia Foundation, Media Initiative for Human Rights and Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union in December 202, identified 16 officials from Russian law enforcement and security agencies as well as the judiciary operating on the territory of the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula currently occupied by the Russian Federation. These individuals have been either directly involved or have overseen political persecution of three prominent Crimean human rights defenders – Emir-Usein Kuku, Sever Mustafayev and Emil Kurbedinov.
Leonid Mikhailiuk is one of these officials. He has been directly involved and directed the repressive campaign in the occupied Crimea, including persecution of innocent people on terrorism charges and massive illegal searches. The persecution of Server Mustafayev was conducted under his supervision. As the head of the FSB branch in Crimea, he is in charge of its operation and all operatives working on politically motivated cases are his subordinates.
Within the extremely centralized system of the Russian security services, Mikhailiuk is clearly at the top rank of organized political persecution and human rights violations.
Free Russia Foundation welcomes the new sanctions and hopes that all other individuals identified in the report will also be held accountable.
April 8, 2021
We, the undersigned, are shocked and troubled by the most recent news of Alexei Navalny’s condition in prison.
Russia’s leading opposition figure is reported to suffer severe back pain with losing sensitivity in parts of his legs. It is no more than six months since he survived a vicious poisoning attack with a nerve agent that has long-term crippling effects on his health. In prison, he is systematically denied any medical treatment. On top, prison guards wake him up every hour at night, a practice amounting to torture by sleep deprivation according to his lawyers. This is why medical experts called on the Russian authorities to allow Mr. Navalny’s treatment and why he himself now resorted to a hunger strike. Let’s not forget: Mr. Navalny’s incarceration itself is a travesty of justice – he was formally sent to prison for not checking in with Russian authorities on a fabricated case (as confirmed by European Court of Human Rights) when he was recuperating in Germany from poisoning and subsequent coma.
Russian authorities with its secret services tried to kill Alexei Navalny last August, they may now be attempting the same, in a slower, even more cynical way.
Europe has offered Alexei Navalny a place to recover from the attempt at his life. Specialized labs in Germany, France and Sweden confirmed the assassination attempt used Novichok, an internationally banned chemical weapon. Angela Merkel personally met Mr Navalny in hospital and many other Western leaders expressed their solidarity after the poisoning attack. We need to intervene again.
We urge Russia to immediately allow medical treatment of Alexei Navalny and release him from prison. We call on the EU Council as well as EU member states’ leaders to reach out to Russian authorities to request the immediate release of Alexei Navalny, which was mandated by European Court of Human Rights’ decision in February 2021. In addition, we demand the EU Council task EU ambassador to Russia to conduct, together partners from the UK, Canada and the US, a visit of the prison facility and meet Alexei Navalny. It is critical now that Alexei Navalny’s fate became the symbol of injustice many thousands face because of increasing brutality of Russian regime against its own citizens.
In December 2020, the EU launched its Global Human Rights Sanction Regime modelled on so-called Magnitsky Act. This law has been inspired by one Sergei Magnitsky, a brave Russian lawyer who was tortured to death in prison in 2009 – he was systematically denied treatment when he developed a serious medical condition. We still can act now in case of Alexei Navalny so we avoid commemorating later.
Marek HILSER, Senator, Czech Republic
Andrius KUBILIUS, MEP, EPP, Lithuania
Lukas WAGENKNECHT, Senator, Czech Republic
Žygimantas PAVILIONIS, MP, Lithuania
Miroslav BALATKA, Senator, Czech Republic
André GATTOLIN, Senator, France
Mikulas BEK, Senator, Czech Republic
Nicolae ŞTEFĂNUȚĂ, MEP, Renew, Romania
David SMOLJAK, Senator, Czech Republic
Petras AUŠTREVIČIUS, MEP, Renew, Lithuania
Tomas FIALA, Senator, Czech Republic
Liudas MAŽYLIS, MEP, EPP Lithuania
Zdenek NYTRA, Senator, Czech Republic
Dace MELBĀRDE, MEP, ECR, Latvia
Jan SOBOTKA, Senator, Czech Republic
Matas MALDEIKIS, MP, Lithuania
Jiri RUZICKA, Senator, Czech Republic
Bernard GUETTA, MEP, Renew, France
Jaromira VITKOVA, Senator, Czech Republic
Rasa JUKNEVIČIENĖ, MEP, EPP, Lithuania
Petr OREL, Senator, Czech Republic
Tomasz FRANKOWSKI, MEP, EPP, Poland
Miroslava NEMCOVA, Senator, Czech Republic
Hermann TERTSCH, MEP, ECR, Spain
Premysl RABAS, Senator, Czech Republic
Aušra MALDEIKIENĖ, MEP, EPP, Lithuania
Ladislav KOS, Senator, Czech Republic
Attila ARA-KOVÁCS, MEP, S&D, Hungary
Sarka JELINKOVA, Senator, Czech Republic
Erik MARQUARDT, MEP, Greens, Germany
Pavel FISCHER, Senator, Czech Republic
Pernille WEISS, MEP, EPP, Denmark
Helena LANGSADLOVA, MP, Czech Republic
Roberts ZĪLE, MEP, ECR, Latvia
Jan LIPAVSKY, MP, Czech Republic
Klemen GROŠELJ, MEP, Renew, Slovenia
Pavel ZACEK, MP, Czech Republic
Riho TERRAS, MEP, EPP, Estonia
Ondrej BENESIK, MP, Czech Republic
Miriam LEXMANN, MEP, EPP, Slovakia
Frantisek KOPRIVA, MP, Czech Republic
Sandra KALNIETE, MEP, EPP, Latvia
Petr GAZDIK, MP, Czech Republic
Jerzy BUZEK, MEP, EPP, Poland
Tomas MARTINEK, MP, Czech Republic
Janina OCHOJSKA, MEP, EPP, Poland
Jan BARTOSEK, MP, Czech Republic
Eugen TOMAC, MEP, EPP, Romania
Jan FARSKY, MP, Czech Republic
Ivan ŠTEFANEC, MEP, EPP, Slovakia
Roman SKLENAK, MP, Czech Republic
Krzysztof HETMAN, MEP, EPP, Poland
Frantisek VACHA, MP, Czech Republic
Ivars IJABS, MEP, Renew, Latvia
Marek VYBORNY, MP, Czech Republic
Franc BOGOVIČ, MEP, EPP, Slovenia
Zbynek STANJURA, MP, Czech Republic
Radvilė MORKŪNAITĖ-MIKULĖNIENĖ, MP, Lithuania
Petr FIALA, MP, Czech Republic
Raphaël GLUCKSMANN, MEP, S&D, France
Vít RAKUSAN, MP, Czech Republic
Juozas OLEKAS, MEP, S&D, Lithuania
Jaroslav VYMAZAL, MP, Czech Republic
Assita KANKO, MEP, ECR, Belgium
Adela SIPOVA, Senator, Czech Republic
Radosław SIKORSKI, MEP, EPP, Poland
Róża THUN UND HOHENSTEIN, MEP, EPP, Poland
Javier NART, MEP, Renew, Spain
Andrzej HALICKI, MEP, EPP, Poland
Alexander ALEXANDROV YORDANOV, MEP, EPP, Bulgaria
Ondřej KOVAŘÍK, MEP, Renew, Czech Republic
Andreas SCHIEDER, MEP, S&D, Austria
Leopoldo LÓPEZ GIL, MEP, EPP, Spain
Sergey LAGODINSKY, MEP, Greens, Germany
Antonio LÓPEZ-ISTÚRIZ WHITE, MEP, EPP, Spain
Marketa GREGOROVA, MEP, Greens, Czech Republic
Lolita ČIGĀNE, MP, Latvia
Marko MIHKELSON, MP, Estonia
Renata CHMELOVA, Czech Republic
Bogdan KLICH, Senator, Republic of Poland
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 25, 2021
Contacts:
Honourable Irwin Cotler, PC, OC, OQ, Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights
+1 514.735.8778
Natalia Arno, Free Russia Foundation
+1 202.549.2417
TRANSATLANTIC INTERPARLIAMENTARY STATEMENT
On unprecedented mass arrest of Russian pro-democracy leaders on March 13, 2021
“We, the undersigned members of the foreign affairs committees of legislatures around the world – the duly elected democratic voices of our constituents and countries – unreservedly condemn the unprecedented mass arrest of Russian pro-democracy leaders.
A violation of the Russian constitution and of the country’s international legal obligations, these unjust and arbitrary arrests are an assault on the last bastion of the Russian democratic movement. United in common cause, we call for an end to Putin’s punitive persecution and prosecutions of Russian civil society leaders, the release of all political prisoners, and the imposition of targeted Magnitsky sanctions against Russia’s architects of repression.
The crimes perpetrated by Putin’s regime against the Russian people and against the international community have been deadly and are well-documented. Left unchecked, its internal repression has often morphed into external aggression. Wars, murders, theft, embezzlement, nuclear blackmail, disinformation, election interference — they are so numerous and now so well-known, that we feel no need to enumerate all of them in this letter. Under the cover of Covid restrictions, we have seen a further intensification of these trends.
Last year, Putin’s regime illegally amended the Russian constitution, executing a constitutional coup, allowing Putin to stay in power indefinitely and thereby formalizing the Russian transition to authoritarianism.
In January, he arrested Aleksey Navalny, who was punished with a nearly three-year prison term for not meeting his parole obligations because he was out of the country convalescing from a state-sponsored assassination attempt. Putin then brutally suppressed the nation-wide protests that emerged in Navalny’s support, arbitrarily arresting thousands, and launching criminal prosecutions against them.
On March 13th, security services entered a perfectly lawful Congress of elected municipal deputies and detained nearly 200 people for not adhering to the Kremlin’s command of how to interact with local constituents. In today’s Russia, disagreeing with Putin is not tolerated, and those who do find themselves in jail or worse.
Some of those detained included elected leaders like Ilya Yashin and Maxim Reznik, pro-democracy reformers Andrey Pivovarov and Anastasia Burakova, and popular politician Vladimir Kara-Murza. Mr. Kara-Murza is a top public intellectual and opposition leader whose transformative work on behalf of the Russian people has had a global resonance. His vision and values – eloquently conveyed with a uniquely compelling moral clarity and commitment, often before our respective legislatures – led to his earlier being targeted by the regime for assassination, attempts on his life that he survived twice. The work of such courageous leaders continues to be a source of inspiration in our pursuit of collective peace, security, and dignity for all.
For a society to succeed it must have a set of principles and values that guides it. Most notably, this includes a legal system that honors the rights of all its people and not solely for those who deem themselves leaders and the sycophants who profit from them.
Sadly, these recent developments demonstrate yet again that only Putin’s criminality and impunity prevail in Russia today. The way the regime runs its politics is indistinguishable from the way it runs its foreign policy and its business dealings. To indulge such malign behavior by the Kremlin toward those it disagrees with is to encourage its corrosive behavior in all these other areas.
The democracies of the world have a choice: maintain a normal relationship with a rogue state, continuing to send the message that its treatment of its own citizens is to be overlooked, and its malicious activities are to be condoned. Or, sending a clear and compelling message: that until the Kremlin reverses its troubling trajectory, the current status quo will be unacceptable. This includes targeted sanctions against Putin and his corrupt and criminal cronies – such as canceling access to our banking system, business ties, and safe harbor in our best neighborhoods and schools – ensuring that they cannot enjoy the liberties in our countries that they deny their compatriots in theirs.
For the sake of a free Russia and a free world, we trust democracies will make the right choice.”
Rasa Jukneviciene, Member of the European Parliament
Andrius Kubilius, Member of the European Parliament
Miriam Lexmann, Member of the European Parliament
Pavel Fischer, Chairman of the Committee of Foreign Affairs, Defence and Security of the Senate of the Czech Republic
Marko Mihkelson, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Parliament of Estonia
Richards Kols, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Seimas of the Republic of Latvia
Žygimantas Pavilions, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania
Bogdan Klich, Senator, Chairman of the Foreign and European Union Committee of the Senate of the Republic of Poland
Eerik Niiles Kross, Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Parliament of Estonia
Emanuelis Zingeris, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania
Benjamin L. Cardin, Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation; Chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission)
Bill Keating, Member of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Relations and Chair of the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, Energy, and the Environment
Brian Fitzpatrick, Member of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Relations
Kimberley Kitching, Senator, Chair of Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee, Deputy Chair of Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee, Parliament of Australia
Chris Bryant, Member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the UK Parliament
Bob Seely, Member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the UK Parliament
Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent Russian pro-democracy advocate, was closely tracked by an FSB assassination squad when he suffered perplexing and near-fatal medical emergencies that sent him into coma in 2015 and 2017, establishes a new investigation by the Bellingcat group.
Documents uncovered by Bellingcat show that this is the same assassination squad implicated in the August 2020 assassination attempt on Alexey Navalny and whose member has inadvertently confirmed the operation in a phone call with Navalny.
Bellingcat has also established the FSB unit’s involvement in the murder of three Russian activists, all of whom died under unusual but similar circumstances.
Taken together, these independent nongovernment investigations establish the fact of systemic, large-scale extrajudicial assassinations carried out by Putin’s government against its critics inside and outside of Russia, including with chemical weapons banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Free Russia Foundation calls on the international community to formally investigate and prosecute Putin’s government for these crimes.
Free Russia Foundation calls on the Biden Administration to direct the FBI to release investigation materials surrounding the assassination attempts against Vladimir Kara-Murza that have been denied to him thus far.
Free Russia Foundation calls on the international community to articulate measures to compel Russia to free Alexey Navalny from his illegal incarceration where his life remains in dire danger.
Continued detention of Navalny is illegal and he must be freed immediately. Suppression of peaceful protests and mass arrests of Russian citizens must stop, and the Kremlin must release all those illegally detained and imprisoned on political motives. Free Russia Foundation calls on the international community, the US and European leadership, to move beyond expressions of concern and articulate a set of meaningful instruments to compel the Kremlin to stop its atrocities.
On January 17, 2021, Putin’s agents arrested Alexey Navalny as he returned to Russia from Germany where he was treated for a near-deadly poisoning perpetrated by state-directed assassins.
Navalny’s illegal arrest constitutes kidnapping. He is kept incommunicado from his lawyer and family at an unknown location and his life is in danger.
Free Russia Foundation demands his immediate release and an international investigation of crimes committed against him by Putin’s government.
On January 14, 2021, the European Court of Human Rights published its decision on the case “Ukraine v. Russia”. The Grand Chamber of the Court has recognized complaints No. 20958/14 and No. 38334/18 as partially admissible for consideration on the merits. The decision will be followed by a judgment at a later date.
The case concerns the consideration of a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights related to Russia’s systematic administrative practices in Crimea.
The admissibility of the case is based on the fact that, since 2014, the Russian Federation has exercised effective control over the territory of Crimea, and, accordingly, is fully responsible for compliance with the norms of the European Convention on Human Rights in Crimea. The Court now needs to determine the specific circumstances of the case and establish the facts regarding violations of Articles of the Convention during two periods: from February 27, 2014 to March 18, 2014 (the period of the Russian invasion); and from March 18, 2014 onward (the period during which the Russian Federation has exercised effective control over Crimea).
The Court has established that prima facie it has sufficient evidence of systematic administrative practice concerning the following circumstances:
- forced rendition and the lack of an effective investigation into such a practice under Article 2;
- cruel treatment and unlawful detention under Articles 3 and 5;
- extending application of Russian law into Crimea with the result that, as of February 27, 2014, the courts in Crimea could not be considered to have been “established by law” as defined by Article 6;
- automatic imposition of Russian citizenship and unreasonable searches of private dwellings under Article 8;
- harassment and intimidation of religious leaders not conforming to the Russian Orthodox faith, arbitrary raids of places of worship and confiscation of religious property under Article 9;
- suppression of non-Russian media under Article 10;
- prohibition of public gatherings and manifestations of support, as well as intimidation and arbitrary detention of organizers of demonstrations under Article 11;
- expropriation without compensation of property from civilians and private enterprises under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1;
- suppression of the Ukrainian language in schools and harassment of Ukrainian-speaking children under Article 2 of Protocol No. 1; 6
- restricting freedom of movement between Crimea and mainland Ukraine, resulting from the de facto transformation (by Russia) of the administrative delimitation into a border (between Russia and Ukraine) under Article 2 of Protocol No. 4; and,
- discriminating against Crimean Tatars under Article 14, taken in conjunction with Articles 8, 9, 10 and 11 of the Convention and with Article 2 of Protocol No. 4 to the Convention.
Cases between states are the rarest category considered by the ECHR. Almost all cases considered in Strasbourg concern individuals or organizations and involve illegal actions or inaction of the states’ parties to the Convention. However, Art. 33 of this Convention provides that “any High Contracting Party may refer to the Court the question of any alleged violation of the provisions of the Convention and its Protocols by another High Contracting Party.” In the entire history of the ECHR since 1953, there have been only 27 such cases. Two of them are joint cases against Russia, both of which concern the Russian Federation’s aggression on the territory of its neighboring states, Georgia and Ukraine.
While 2020 gave us unprecedented challenges, it created transformative changes in the way we work and communicate. The hours of Zoom calls seemingly brought us all closer together as we got a glimpse into each other’s makeshift home offices along with interruption by kids and the family pets. Remote work also made us appreciate human interactions, in-person events and trips much more!
As 2020 comes to an end, we want to especially thank our supporters who continued to believe in our mission and the value of our hard work, and we hope the coming year brings all of us progress and growth for democracy throughout the world. We’d also like to thank our partners and staff in the U.S. and abroad, and we know how hard everyone has worked under difficult world changes to achieve so many of our objectives this year.
We send our best wishes to all who have stayed in the fight for democratic reforms and for the values of basic human rights. We look forward to a new year with the hope of many positive changes to come.
– Natalia Arno and the Free Russia Foundation team.
On December 11, 2020, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Fatou Bensouda, issued a statement on the preliminary examination of the situation in Ukraine by the ICC Office of the Prosecutor.
According to the findings of the examination, the situation in Ukraine meets the statutory criteria to launch an investigation. The preliminary examination of the situation in Ukraine was opened on 24 April 2014.
Specifically, and without prejudice to any other crimes which may be identified during the course of an investigation, Office of the Prosecutor has concluded that there is a reasonable basis at this time to believe that a broad range of conduct constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity within the jurisdiction of the Court have been committed in the context of the situation in Ukraine.
These findings will be spelled out in more detail in the annual Report on Preliminary Examination Activities issued by the Office and include three broad clusters of victimization:
1. crimes committed in the context of the conduct of hostilities;
2. crimes committed during detentions;
3. crimes committed in Crimea.
These crimes, committed by the different parties to the conflict, were sufficiently grave to warrant investigation by Office of the Prosecutor, both in quantitative and qualitative terms.
Having examined the information available, the Prosecutor concluded that the competent authorities in Ukraine and/or in the Russian Federation are either inactive in relation to the alleged perpetrators, or do not have access to them.
The next step will be to request authorization from the Judges of the Pre-Trial Chamber of the Court to open investigations.
The Prosecutor urges the international community, including the governments of Ukraine and Russia, to cooperate. This will determine how justice will be served both on domestic and the international level.
We remind you that on September 21, 2020, Free Russia Foundation sent a special Communication to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (the Hague, the Netherlands) asking to bring Crimean and Russian authorities to justice for international crimes committed during the Russian occupation of Crimea.
Comment by Scott Martin (Global Rights Compliance LLP):
As Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda reaches the end of her tenure as Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, she announced yesterday that a reasonable basis existed to believe that a broad range of conduct constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity had been committed in relation to the situation in Ukraine. One of the most consequential preliminary examinations in the court’s short history, the Prosecutor will now request authorization from the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber to open a full investigation into the situation.
Anticipating that the Prosecutor’s request will be granted, the ICC Prosecutor’s office will be investigating the second group of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Russian Federation (the situation in Georgia being the other). This would make Russia the only country in the world facing two separate investigations at the ICC for crimes under its jurisdiction.
The Free Russia Foundation invites submissions to The Kremlin’s Influence Quarterly, a journal that explores and analyzes manifestations of the malign influence of Putin’s Russia in Europe.
We understand malign influence in the European context as a specific type of influence that directly or indirectly subverts and undermines European values and democratic institutions. We follow the Treaty on European Union in understanding European values that are the following: human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and respect for human rights. Democratic institutions are guardians of European values, and among them we highlight representative political parties; free and fair elections; an impartial justice system; free, independent and pluralistic media; and civil society.
Your contribution to The Kremlin’s Influence Quarterly would focus on one European country from the EU, Eastern Partnership or Western Balkans, and on one particular area where you want to explore Russian malign influence: politics, diplomacy, military domain, business, media, civil society, academia, religion, crime, or law.
Each chapter in The Kremlin’s Influence Quarterly should be around 5 thousand words including footnotes. The Free Russia Foundation offers an honorarium for contributions accepted for publication in the journal.
If you are interested in submitting a chapter, please send us a brief description of your chapter and its title (250 words) to the following e-mail address: [email protected]. Please put The Kremlin’s Influence Quarterly as a subject line of your message.
On 21 September 2020, the Free Russia Foundation submitted a Communication to the International Criminal Court Prosecutor’s Office (in The Hague, Netherlands) seeking accountability for Crimean and Russian authorities concerning international crimes perpetrated during Russia’s illegal occupation of Crimea. The Communication was prepared in cooperation with Global Rights Compliance and Center for Civil Liberties and is based on a focused inquiry conducted over the past year. In our inquiry, we documented crimes as part of a systematic, planned attack by the Russian state against civilians and groups in Crimea in order to discourage them from opposing the illegal occupation of Crimea and to force their departure from the peninsula. Crimes against civilians included unlawful arrests, beatings, torture, enforced disappearances, and other inhumane acts causing severe mental and/or physical pain. In particular, the crimes targeted the Crimean Tatars, a native ethnic group who had only recently returned to their homeland, having previously been forcefully and brutally displaced by the Soviet Union in 1944.
One of the principal coercive acts was the illegal detention and concomitant violence before, during, and after the imprisonment of political prisoners. Most of those detained were arrested by Russian and Crimean authorities on terrorism charges, but it was their legal, pro-Ukrainian advocacy that led to their imprisonment. In addition, trials of those arbitrarily detained were conducted in wholesale disregard of their fair trial rights. For example, some of those illegally imprisoned were denied a speedy trial, access to independent lawyers, and the opportunity to defend themselves against their arrest in a courtroom.
In order to force those illegally detained to confess to crimes they did not commit, Russian and Crimean authorities also perpetrated acts of torture and cruel or degrading treatment, the levying of additional charges against them, even more inhumane prison conditions, denial of communications with their families and threats made against them, enforced disappearances, and even, in at least one case, a mock execution.
Other inhumane acts include “punitive psychiatry” and the denial of adequate prison conditions, including the following: (i) feeding people inedible food or, at times, no food at all; (ii) facing severe overcrowding in prisons; (iii) denial of regular water supply; (iv) threats of assault against them by prison cellmates; and (v) adding pork to food – prohibited for observant Muslims. Further, medical attention was systematically inadequate or denied for many individuals.
Concerning acts of torture, it was perpetrated by different Russian authorities, including the FSB. Allegations include the use of electric shocks in an effort to get an accused to confess. One was beaten in the head, kidneys, arms and legs with an iron pipe. With another, fingers were broken. Still another endured spinal bruises and having a plastic bag placed over his head to the point of unconsciousness. Further, threats of sexual violence against a detained man were made. Murder as well. Hands were broken, teeth were knocked out in still another.
Trials were largely held behind closed doors for illegitimate reasons, and many of the witnesses were secret not only to the public but also to the Accused. Further, credible allegations exist that, at times, there were FSB or other agents in the room, silently instructing witnesses what to say and how the judges should rule. This adds credence to words, according to the Kyiv Post, heard by Arsen Dzhepparov from a senior FSB lieutenant who stated “I will prove by all possible – and impossible – means that [an Accused is] guilty – even if he isn’t guilty”.
Concerning the crime of persecution, nearly all of these deprivations of fundamental rights were carried out with discriminatory intent. Specifically, these groups were targeted due to their political view – namely, by peacefully opposing the illegal occupation of their country. Some were targeted on ethnic grounds or religious grounds on the basis of their Crimean Tatar background.
War crimes, another group of crimes punished at the ICC, were also perpetrated in addition to or in the alternative to the crimes against humanity. This includes the crime of torture, outrages against personal dignity, unlawful confinement, wilfully depriving protected persons of the rights of a fair and regular trial, and the transfer of the occupying power of parts of its population into the territory it occupies or the deportation of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory.
All these crimes had the ultimate objective of the criminal enterprise – the removal of pro-Ukrainian elements out of Crimea and the annexation of Crimea into the Russian Federation without opposition, including the installation of pro-Russian elements, which include the emigration of more than 70,000 Russians, the illegal imposition of Russian law in the occupied territory, forcing Russian nationality on many Crimeans, and the appropriation of public property.
Ultimately, we hope that all the information gathered by the ICC in the context of its preliminary investigation will lead the ICC to investigate mid- to high-level Russian and Crimean officials on this basis. The international community expects responsible global leadership that follows the rule of law and expects it – no matter the situation – to be respected, especially from a state that is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. When this fails to happen, the international community must demand accountability. We hope that an investigation can be opened and responsible officials of the Russian Federation will be investigated. After an investigation that conforms to international best practices, responsible persons should be charged with the systematic perpetration of international crimes.
Today, the German government has announced that Russian pro-democracy leader Alexey Navalny was poisoned by Novichok. Novichok is a deadly nerve agent developed by the Soviet government chemical weapons program and used on several occasions by the Russian government to kill its critics in the recent years.
To restate the obvious, Novichok is a poison that can only be accessed with the authority of the Kremlin. Therefore, today’s announcement by German officials directly implicates the Kremlin and Putin in the high-profile assassination attempt on Navalny.
The choice of Novichok was not just a means to silence Mr. Navalny, but a loud, brazen and menacing message sent by Putin to the world: dare to criticize me, and you may lose your life.
The announcement by the German government of its intent to formally notify the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (‘OPCW’) of the use of Novichok against Navalny is a meek bureaucratic half-measure that fails to acknowledge the extraordinary threat to human life posed by Putin’s regime everywhere. Taken together with Angela Merkel’s promise earlier this week to help Putin finish his Nord Stream 2 pipeline despite an international outcry amounts to condoning the poisoning and normalizing it into a new modus operandi where Putin’s murders go unpunished. Free Russia Foundation urges the leaders of the EU, its Member States and the U.S. Government to take an urgent and drastic action to punish the perpetrators of this heinous crime not only to serve justice, but to establish a powerful deterrent against new attacks by Putin’s regime globally.
We are deeply concerned with information recently distributed by the well-respected authoritative source Center “Dossier.” According to “Dossier,” the Kremlin is using Russian political expert Sergey Mikheev and consulting company “Politsecrets” to manipulate Georgian society, distribute disinformation and anti-democratic narratives, undermine Georgia’s Western aspirations, and interfere in free and fair elections in Georgia scheduled for October 2020.
(more…)
Free Russia Foundation is gravely concerned about the life and safety of Alexey Navalny. (more…)
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY SHOULD REACT IMMEDIATELY AND STRONGLY TO RIGGED PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS AND MASSIVE VIOLENCE OF SECURITY FORCES AGAINST PEACEFUL PROTESTORS IN BELARUS (more…)
Free Russia Foundation stands in staunch solidarity with the People of Belarus. (more…)
22 июля Московский городской суд рассмотрит апелляционную жалобу фонда «Свободная Россия»* на решение Тверского суда, отказавшегося отменить постановление Генпрокуратуры о признании организации «нежелательной» на территории России.
(more…)
On June 2, 2020, Free Russia Foundation hosted a congressional discussion on the Fate of Crimean Tatars in the Aftermath of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. (more…)
On Monday, April 20, 2020, numerous virtual protests took place throughout Russia, including several cities with populations of over a million of inhabitants.
Free Russia Foundation announces the opening of its new chapter in Prague, the Czech Republic. (more…)
On February 21, 2020, on the second day of the Winter Session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, a side event was held in Vienna on the problem of political prisoners in the OSCE area. (more…)
Prague will rename the square in front of the Russian embassy in honor of the Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov. The ceremonial renaming will take place on February 27, the same day when the Russian opposition leader was assassinated five years ago. (more…)
On December 2, 2019, Free Russia Foundation marks its fifth birthday.
Free Russia Foundation supports a protest letter to CFR over a tainted donation from a Kremlin-connected oligarch Len Blavatnik
On September 16, 2019, the “Human Dimension Implementation Meeting (HDIM)” will take place in Warsaw. (more…)
Jeremy W. Lamoreaux
Three Requirements for Democracy
The history of humankind has been dominated by authoritarian-type governments, with democracies considerably less common for a number of reasons, three of which I would like to emphasize here. Firstly, democracy only functions properly when the populace is informed and engaged on political issues. In the case of a direct democracy, the executive is directly responsible to, and derives his authority directly from the people. This type of democracy requires the people to be well-informed about laws affecting them, and to participate in the political process to pass and amend those laws.
(more…)
On 8 September 2019 Russia’s largest cities – Moscow and St. Petersburg – will hold elections, respectively, for the City Duma and municipal councils. (more…)
Working group of the “Coalition for Sovereign Elections” calls International community to give strong immediate reaction on aggression of the Kremlin in Georgia. (more…)
FRF was reportedly one of 30 organizations subjected to phishing attacks on the highly-encrypted ProtonMail servers and remains under a barrage of Kremlin propaganda amid massive protests in Moscow. (more…)
The political crisis in Moscow is unraveling at a dizzying speed, and it is doing so along the worst possible scenario. (more…)
Pro-democracy Russians appeal to the world leaders and international community to condemn Kremlin’s repressions and the recent attack on civil liberties. (more…)
The Free Russia Foundation team and the Board of Directors are grieving together with our friend and Vice President Vladimir Kara-Murza and his family on the loss of his father, Vladimir Kara-Murza, a very talented Russian journalist. (more…)
On June 28, 2019, Free Russia Foundation hosted a conference Finding Practical and Principal Approaches to Countering the Kremlin’s Influence Campaigns While Upholding Sanctity of Free Speech at the Hague, Netherlands. (more…)
Vladimir Kara-Murza, Vice President of the Free Russia Foundation, stated during his presentation at a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council that in the past four years, the number of political prisoners in Russia has increased by six times. (more…)
In response to the designation of the Free Russia Foundation as an “undesirable organization” by the Russian Ministry of Justice on June 28, Freedom House issued the following statement: (more…)
The Free Russia Foundation is a non-profit pro-democracy organization striving for a free Russia. We seek and support positive changes in our home country. We are ‘desirable’ among those who value democracy and human rights and, for that, we know we are in good company with 15 other honorable organizations. (more…)
Dear friends and colleagues,
Our new groundbreaking report “MISRULE OF LAW: HOW THE KREMLIN USES WESTERN INSTITUTIONS TO UNDERMINE THE WEST” has been published online today: https://www.4freerussia.org/misrule-of-law/ (more…)
This publication is the product of an initial effort undertaken by Free Russia Foundation in 2018 to stimulate public discussion of Russian scenarios, mitigate the likelihood of a bad surprise or missed opportunities, and support the country’s transition to a more positive future. (more…)
