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The court in Tomsk, Siberia, sent opposition politician Xenia Fadejova to a penal colony for nine years. Authorities there found Navalny’s former chief of staff and a representative of “extremism” guilty in connection with activities linked to opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Fadeyeva was among a few Navalny allies who decided to stay in Russia after his movement was declared “extremist” and working with him faced severe reprisals under new Russian laws. The police arrested the politician in December 2021. She was then placed under house arrest. She has been in custody since November of this year.
The head of the naval staff network, Leonid Volkov, said he had previously asked Fadeyeva to leave Russia. “She wrote to me that she is afraid, but that she is a deputy and has to think about the voters, she has her district, she has responsibilities – she cannot leave her voters and her work in the Tomsk City Duma,” Volkov said Information from the independent server Meduza.
The courts have also previously sent to prison the former coordinator of the naval staff in Ufa, Lilija Čanyshev, and the head of a similar staff in Barnaul, Siberia, Vadim Ostanin. Navalny himself was sentenced to 19 years in prison for extremism in the summer, as he was already in prison at the time due to other previously imposed sentences.
Putin’s critics behind bars
“I admit my guilt: I have not managed to convince enough people how great the threat the current Kremlin regime is to the world,” Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza said in his closing speech. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in April.
Alexei Navalny was sentenced to nine years in prison last year for fraud and contempt of court. Seznam Zpravy offers an updated profile of the Russian opposition leader, originally published in August 2020, when he was poisoned with Novichok.
It is the fate of the opposition leader that has caused controversy in recent weeks after his colleagues were unaware of any information about his condition and whereabouts. However, he confirmed this on the platform on Tuesday Xthat he was taken to a penal colony beyond the Arctic Circle.
Seven years for reading anti-war poetry
As the election approaches, the Kremlin is trying to consolidate its favor as fatigue grows from a war with no clear prospect of an end. He is paying even more attention to the suppression of opposition voices than before, and high penalties send clear signals.
On Thursday, a court in Moscow sentenced two poets who publicly recited anti-war poems to seven and a half years in prison. Prosecutors accused artists Artyom Kamardin and Yegor Shtovbavov of discrediting the army after they criticized the “partial” mobilization through poetry readings in Moscow’s Triumphal Square (formerly Mayakovsky Square), which in the past has been a venue for readings and speeches by served dissidents.
Recent developments show that Russia’s repressive machinery shows no signs of slowing down. On the contrary, they are part of a growing political crackdown in which Russians are being convicted on increasingly absurd and confusing charges, the Washington Post summarized.
Upcoming presidential elections
The protracted war in Ukraine, the Wagner Group’s march to Moscow and Western sanctions are making life more difficult for Russians. In recent months, several events could have upset Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Nevertheless, the polls continue to give him strong approval among Russians, and with the presidential election approaching, it doesn’t look as if anything could upset the generally accepted scenario: namely, that this is the man who is leading a conquering and bloody war in Ukraine will be at the helm of Russia for the next six years.
According to Russian rights group Perva Otdel, 2.5 times more treason cases were carried out in 2023 than in the previous year. OVD-Info, another human rights group, has registered 776 criminal cases against citizens for anti-war protests or statements since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In fact, shortly after the war began, the Kremlin passed laws prohibiting the spread of “false information” about the military and making it virtually impossible to make a public statement about the war that differed from the official narrative.
Even subtle expressions of disapproval became dangerous for the Russians. Last month, a St. Petersburg court sentenced artist and musician Alexandra Skocilenko to seven years in prison after she replaced several price tags in supermarkets with anti-war slogans.
Prominent opposition voices will then have to expect even higher ratings. In April, a Russian court sentenced journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, former coordinator of the opposition movement Open Russia, to 25 years in prison. It was founded by the former richest Russian and later prisoner of the regime, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who now lives in exile. Kara-Murza also worked closely with opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated in 2015.
⚡Russia imprisons two poets for reading anti-war poems.
A Moscow court sentenced two men to prison for taking part in a public reading of poems against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on December 28.https://t.co/V9hWW1W11P
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) December 28, 2023
In the fall, a Moscow court sentenced journalist Ivan Safronov to 22 years in prison for allegedly collaborating with the Czech secret service.
For the Kremlin, a special wave of protests are represented by mothers and wives of mobilized soldiers, who are increasingly expressing their dissatisfaction with the conditions faced by their loved ones at the front.
“They claim to be a patriotic movement loyal to the regime. They are not trying to overthrow Putin. “But they still express disapproval and raise unpleasant questions about the competences of the Ministry of Defense and the Kremlin,” Russia expert Jenny Mathers from the University of Aberystwyth in Wales previously told SZ.
In addition to arresting opposition figures, the country has also silenced independent media and added various groups to authorities’ lists as “foreign agents” and “undesirable organizations.”
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