{"id":16738,"date":"2024-03-09T12:48:53","date_gmt":"2024-03-09T12:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/09\/as-a-fifth-term-for-vladimir-putin-looms-russia-is-stepping-up-its-war-on-its-own-people\/"},"modified":"2024-03-09T12:48:53","modified_gmt":"2024-03-09T12:48:53","slug":"as-a-fifth-term-for-vladimir-putin-looms-russia-is-stepping-up-its-war-on-its-own-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/09\/as-a-fifth-term-for-vladimir-putin-looms-russia-is-stepping-up-its-war-on-its-own-people\/","title":{"rendered":"As a fifth term for Vladimir Putin looms, Russia is stepping up its war on its own people"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

On February 26, one of Russia\u2019s longest-serving human rights activists stood up at the end of his trial in a Moscow court and offered his uncensored\u00a0verdict on\u00a0Russian\u00a0democracy. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe state in our country is once again controlling not only social, political and economic life, but is now claiming full control over culture, scientific thought, and is inserting itself in private life.\u00a0It\u2019s becoming all-pervasive,\u201d said Oleg Orlov,\u00a0a 70-year-old who was on trial for \u201cdiscrediting the army.\u201d <\/p>\n

Powerful voices like Orlov\u2019s are becoming a rarity in Russia, where high-profile opponents to President Vladimir Putin and his ruling elite are\u00a0now mostly either in exile, in prison, or dead. <\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 accelerated a process already two decades in the making \u2014 the erosion of democratic freedoms, media independence and civil society\u00a0at home. With the war now in its third year, and\u00a0Putin set to be re-installed for a fifth term in a tightly-controlled election\u00a0next week,\u00a0there are signs that\u00a0this\u00a0process is picking up speed once again. <\/p>\n

Orlov, co-founder and co-chair of Memorial, a Nobel Prize-winning human rights organization set up in the\u00a0Soviet Union\u2019s\u00a0twilight years, knew he had nothing to lose. <\/p>\n

The day after his speech in court,\u00a0he was sentenced to\u00a0<\/strong>two and a half years in prison. Discrediting the army\u00a0is just\u00a0one of several new offenses added to Russia\u2019s penal code\u00a0since the\u00a0invasion of Ukraine. <\/p>\n

Orlov\u2019s so-called crime was committed\u00a0just over\u00a0a year earlier,\u00a0when\u00a0he\u00a0 published an article in a French online newspaper\u00a0titled\u00a0\u201cThey Wanted Fascism, They Got It.\u201d\u00a0After his sentencing, Amnesty International called him a \u201cprisoner of conscience\u201d and called for his immediate release. <\/p>\n

Russian human rights group OVD-Info says more than 260 people are currently serving jail terms in\u00a0the country\u00a0for crimes related to\u00a0taking\u00a0an anti-war stance.\u00a0The group has recorded almost 20,000 detentions, and while most of those were at the beginning of the war, there is still a steady stream.\u00a0They\u2019re\u00a0not large numbers in a country of 140 million people, said\u00a0OVD-Info\u00a0lawyer and analyst\u00a0Darya Korolenko, but just enough\u00a0to make\u00a0for\u00a0an effective deterrent. <\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just known opposition figures or activists\u00a0who are being targeted. <\/p>\n

The wartime censorship laws \u2014 discrediting the army, or the more serious offense of knowingly spreading \u201cfalse\u201d information about the army \u2014 have turned social media into a minefield. <\/p>\n

Platforms\u00a0are\u00a0closely\u00a0monitored by the FSB,\u00a0which acts as Russia\u2019s secret service, said\u00a0Konstantin Eggert, an exiled Russian journalist who was\u00a0among many\u00a0added to Russia\u2019s ever-growing list of \u201cforeign agents\u201d last year.\u00a0He believes the grip on social media will tighten further. <\/p>\n

Evgeniya Mayboroda, a pensioner in her early 70s from Shakhty, a town less than 50 km\u00a0(around 30 miles)\u00a0from the Ukrainian border, found herself unable to conform to that uniform ideology. According to OVD-Info, she was\u00a0\u00a0arrested and\u00a0fined\u00a0in early 2023\u00a0for alleged anti-war social media posts. <\/p>\n

In January, she was jailed for five and a half years for spreading \u201cfalse\u201d information about the army.\u00a0Russian independent news outlet Mediazona reported she was convicted after two reposts on VKontakte\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Russia\u2019s version of Facebook\u00a0\u2014\u00a0including one about Russian troop deaths. <\/p>\n

In this climate, old practices are creeping in, like Soviet-style denunciations.\u00a0In early February, 67-year-old Moscow pediatrician Nadezhda Buyanova was accused by a young patient\u2019s mother of calling her husband \u2014 who had recently been killed\u00a0in the war \u2014\u00a0a \u201clegitimate target for Ukraine.\u201d <\/p>\n

The woman filed an official report\u00a0and\u00a0Buyanova was arrested, her modest Moscow apartment ransacked by police. <\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s powerful investigative committee ordered a criminal case be opened on charges of spreading false information about the army. Buyanova, who denies the charges, is out on bail, but is now suing to try to get her job back. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe climate is fed by the mainstream media that everyone is a spy and a traitor, foreign agent, everyone wants to destroy Russia, destroy your home,\u201d\u00a0said\u00a0Korolenko. \u201cPeople fear that they will lose what they care about. So they try to protect this.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u2018Deeper and deeper into this darkness\u2019<\/h2>\n

With mainstream Russian media now entirely state-controlled, the authorities are targeting other forms of expression \u2014 the arts, literature\u00a0and\u00a0culture. Orlov argued\u00a0in his courtroom speech\u00a0<\/em>that\u00a0<\/em>this is yet more proof\u00a0of\u00a0Russia \u201csinking deeper and deeper into this darkness\u201d at an ever-quickening pace. <\/p>\n

He listed\u00a0evidence from the last\u00a0four\u00a0<\/strong>months alone, including: the branding of the\u00a0LGBTQ movement as extremist, new rules prohibiting students at Moscow\u2019s prestigious Higher School of Economics from citing people on Russia\u2019s growing list of \u201cforeign agents\u201d in their work, and the effective banning of many modern authors. <\/p>\n

One of those authors is Grigory\u00a0Chkhartishvili,\u00a0who goes by the\u00a0pen name Boris Akunin. One of Russia\u2019s most popular modern literary figures, a master of the historical detective genre, he\u2019s been living in exile since 2014 \u2014\u00a0but that has not insulated him from Russia\u2019s crackdown.\u00a0In December, Akunin was added to Russia\u2019s \u201cterrorist and extremist list\u201d for allegedly justifying extremism and spreading false information about the Russian army. <\/p>\n

Despite Akunin\u2019s regular public criticism of Putin and the war,\u00a0that move\u00a0was apparently triggered by what he sees as an orchestrated setup\u00a0\u2014\u00a0a\u00a0prank call by Russians posing as Ukrainians, later posted online, in which he\u00a0was\u00a0tricked into\u00a0expressing his opposition to the war and his willingness to help Ukraine. <\/p>\n

In response, his main publisher in Russia announced it would not be releasing new copies of his books, and a major network of bookstores pulled them off its shelves. In January, Akunin was labeled a foreign agent, and\u00a0in\u00a0early February\u00a0a Moscow court issued an arrest warrant for him for allegedly justifying terrorism and spreading false information about the Russian army. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Russia that I remember was not like this,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cIt was a troubled, chaotic democracy, an interesting country where a lot of things were happening. Now, it has become totally Kafkaesque, Orwellian.\u201d <\/p>\n

For many in Russia\u2019s disparate dissident community, the death of Alexey Navalny, Putin\u2019s most prominent critic, was the last stop on the country\u2019s journey back to authoritarianism. Akunin\u00a0said he\u00a0believes\u00a0it\u00a0is clear evidence\u00a0the Kremlin\u00a0is no longer even trying to hide the lengths it will go to stamp out dissent. <\/p>\n

Russia did not make the mass arrests or carry out a violent crackdown\u00a0at\u00a0Navalny\u2019s funeral last week, as many of the activist\u2019s supporters had feared,\u00a0but no one should\u00a0be fooled by that, said\u00a0Andrei\u00a0Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist and expert on the Russian intelligence services. <\/p>\n

Borrowing an effective tool from the days of\u00a0Covid-19\u00a0regulations, he said,\u00a0Russian authorities simply relied on surveillance from Moscow\u2019s many facial recognition cameras, as well as plainclothes officers from the Center for Combating Extremism, a unit of Russia\u2019s interior ministry. <\/p>\n

Arrests of those who laid flowers\u00a0at makeshift memorials\u00a0and attended\u00a0Navalny\u2019s funeral have continued\u00a0for\u00a0days after the event, and in one case,\u00a0according to\u00a0OVD-Info,\u00a0a Moscow\u00a0resident\u00a0arrested on March 5\u00a0was told he had been spotted on security camera footage. <\/p>\n

Soldatov\u00a0said this is\u00a0this reaction stems from an\u00a0official paranoia\u00a0in Putin\u2019s Russia,\u00a0an\u00a0\u201can incessant obsession with the fragility of the state,\u201d fueled by history and made worse by the war in Ukraine,\u00a0as well as\u00a0<\/strong>the impending election. <\/p>\n

It all goes back to the \u201ctwo historical traumas of 1917 and 1991,\u201d he\u00a0said\u00a0\u2014 the Bolshevik revolution and the collapse of the USSR. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t understand why two Russian empires basically collapsed for no apparent reason,\u201d he said. \u201cSo everything you can do to prevent this is justifiable.\u201d <\/p>\n

In his final words to the Moscow court,\u00a0Orlov\u00a0echoed that sentiment. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe authorities are even at war with the deceased Navalny,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cThey fear him, even when he is dead.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On February 26, one of Russia\u2019s longest-serving human rights activists stood up at the end of his trial in a Moscow court and offered his uncensored\u00a0verdict on\u00a0Russian\u00a0democracy. \u201cThe state in our country is once again controlling not only social, political and economic life, but is now claiming full control over culture, scientific thought, and is <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16738","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}