Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin, whose pre-trial detention was extended by a further six months by a Moscow court on Wednesday, risks becoming the latest in a long line of Kremlin critics sentenced to harsh prison terms – risking up to 10 years in prison for condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Others were killed or narrowly escaped death, while still others went into exile. Here is a list of Putin’s most famous critics.
DEAD
Boris Nemtsov, a Kremlin critic and former deputy prime minister, was shot dead in 2015 as he walked home across a bridge in Moscow near the Kremlin. Five Chechen men were convicted of Nemtsov’s murder, but the mastermind behind the murder was never found.
Nemtsov’s allies pointed the finger of blame at the Kremlin, as well as Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who denied the accusation. The charismatic orator attacked Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and regularly took part in opposition protests. He was 55 years old at the time of his death.
In 2006, the murder of a journalist Anna Politkovskaya outside his home in Moscow, he had already shocked the world. Politkovskaya, a journalist for Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s largest independent newspaper, was a fierce critic of the Kremlin’s tactics in Chechnya.
The newspaper’s editor Dmitry Muratov dedicated his Nobel Peace Prize this year to Politkovskaya and other Russian journalists who have been killed for their work.
Other Putin critics narrowly escaped death.
PRISONERS
The most important Russian opposition politician, Alexei Navalnywas poisoned with Novichok, a nerve agent made by the Soviet Union, during a trip to Siberia in 2020. He underwent treatment in Germany and returned to Russia in January 2021, where he was arrested when he landed at a Moscow airport.
The 46-year-old opponent is serving a nine-year prison sentence for embezzlement. Navalny denounced Putin’s Ukraine offensive from prison, calling it a “tragedy” and a “crime against my country”.
Vladimir Kara Murza, an opposition politician, was arrested in April for spreading “false” information about the Russian military. He was later charged with high treason and faces up to 20 years in prison. Kara-Murza, 41, says he was poisoned twice.
In August, Yevgeny Roizman, former mayor of Yekaterinburg, was arrested for his criticism of the Russian attack on Ukraine. After his arrest sparked protests, the 60-year-old politician was released pending trial on charges of “discrediting” the Russian military.
BANGLINGS
Some of Putin’s critics have been abroad for years, such as the former oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent 10 years in prison after challenging the Russian leader early in his reign. Based in London, Khodorkovsky has funded media projects critical of the Kremlin.
Many of Navalny’s prominent allies fled Russia after their organizations were banned as “extremists” last year.
But the decision to send troops to Ukraine, sparking unprecedented domestic repression, proved to be the last nail in the coffin for the Russian opposition movement.
Russians resisting Moscow’s attack on Ukraine are now scattered around the world, with many fleeing to Europe and Israel.
Television presenter and animator Maxim Galkin, the husband of Russian pop icon Alla Pugacheva, has become an unlikely leading voice against Ukraine’s assault on social media. The 46-year-old television star, based in Israel, regularly denounces the offensive of the Russian army on her Instagram account.
FOREIGN AGENTS
Despite a rare intervention by Pugacheva – widely regarded as untouchable – Galkin is labeled a “foreign agent”. The label, which has connotations dating back to the Stalin era, has been used by authorities to ramp up pressure on critics.
Putin recently tightened the draconian “foreign agent” law of 2012.
Many journalists and major independent media in Russia have been condemned with this label, which has made their daily lives much more difficult.
All major independent media organizations in Russia were shut down or suspended.
Other popular figures speaking out from Moscow against the Ukraine offensive, such as the very popular rappers Oxxxymiron and Noize MCjust like the exiled science fiction writer Dmitry Glukhovsky – were also labeled as “foreign agents”.
Source: DN
