Putin's Russia



Russia has been out of the spotlight for a while with everything else that's been going on in the world, but this report in The Sunday Times suggests that President Putin's regime is as repressive as ever.

Alexei Navalny, the country's best-known opposition figure, has been under house arrest for the past year and now his brother has been given a lengthy prison sentence which has been widely reported as a cynical move to 'persuade' Alexei to drop his political activities. 

‘Putin’s blackmail won’t silence me’


Mark Franchetti - The Sunday Times
Lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny with his wife, Yulia (Evgeny Feldman/AP)

RUSSIA’S most prominent opposition figure has vowed “not be silenced” after his brother was jailed for 3½ years on apparently trumped-up charges in an attempt by the Kremlin to intimidate him.

Since late February last year Alexei Navalny, 38, has been under house arrest and for months he was banned from using the internet or a phone.

Vladimir Putin’s fiercest and most tenacious critic, he remains defiant: last week in protest against his house arrest — a detention he says is illegal — he tweeted a picture of an electronic bracelet that had been placed on his ankle, which he cut off with a knife.

Next he challenged the authorities by going out to buy milk, only to be pounced on by three undercover policewho ordered him back home.

Tensions will come to a head tomorrow when Navalny plans to go to work at the offices of his anti-corruption foundation for the first time in almost a year. The outing is likely to end with his arrest or prosecutors bringing fresh charges.

“I understand the risks but I will not be silenced,” Navalny said in his first interview since he and his brother Oleg were convicted of embezzlement charges last month in a trial widely condemned as a travesty of justice.

“The choice for me is simple: to stop politics and leave my country or continue fighting for a better, more democratic and less corrupt Russia. For me there can be only one way, to stay the course, no matter what they throw at me. I won’t be cowed. Putin wants absolute power and tolerates no dissent — we can’t give in to that.”

Speaking in the kitchen of his two-bedroom flat in a working-class suburb of Moscow as his young son and teenage daughter played next door, Navalny was scathing about the Kremlin’s decision to hand him a suspended sentence but jail his brother.

Oleg, 31, a father of two young children who has never been involved in politics, is now languishing in Butyrka, one of Russia’s most infamous prisons. The brothers were convicted of defrauding a branch of the cosmetics firm Yves Rocher, although the company has said that no crime was committed against it.

Vladimir Putin takes a tough line against critics

“To jail Oleg instead of me is the vilest of decisions the Kremlin could have taken in this case,” said Navalny who in 2013 was convicted in a separate fraud and embezzlement case and handed a five-year suspended sentence that was also widely condemned as politically motivated.

“It’s cowardly blackmail. They know they can’t silence me, so they go after my family. He’s being turned into a hostage. It’s painful for me to be sitting at home while he’s in prison, but to be silenced would be to let them win.”

His wife, Yulia, agreed: “There’s no other way,” she said. “One can’t give in to people like these.”

A lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner who in 2013 came second in elections for Moscow mayor, Navalny — who keeps a “Putin thief” sticker on his laptop — has been at the centre of a Kremlin crackdown that has gathered strength since the crisis erupted last year over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and military involvement in Ukraine.

Dozens of Putin critics have been jailed, forced into exile or placed under house arrest. Draconian new legislation has been passed to clamp down on internet dissent and Russia’s last independent television station has been broadcasting from an improvised studio in a flat after the Kremlin ordered it to be evicted from its offices.

Prosecutors are known to be preparing two other cases against Navalny — one in which he is accused of stealing a painting, the other of embezzling funds from his own mayoral election campaign. He said he expects Putin to become even more repressive as Russia enters a recession.

Navalny came to prominence during mass anti-Putin demonstrations in Moscow between 2011 and 2013. Smart, charismatic and known for his corruption exposés of Kremlin insiders, he has since become a thorn in the president’s side.

Supporters of Alexei Navalny hold a rally in Moscow

“Putin is kept in power by a system of thieves and scoundrels, one of corruption and propaganda,” said Navalny, a prolific blogger and tweeter. “We’re told that his popularity rating is 80% — it’s a myth.

“He’s in power because he won’t allow a proper opposition, fair elections and a free media.”

Some Russian liberals have criticised the opposition leader for his nationalist views. He has called for stricter regulation to limit illegal immigration and is opposed to the mass subsidies Moscow sends to the Caucasus — especially Chechnya, which he warns is being turned into an Islamic republic.

“My views are not extremist in any way; in Europe they’d be seen as mildly conservative,” he said.

Asked if he worries about the Kremlin’s next move against him, Navalny, who harbours presidential ambitions, said: “Persecution has become our life — it’s not easy but we’ve become used to it. It won’t work; they won’t shut me up.”

@stforeign

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