EXPLAINING THE STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN RUSSIA |
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Hello and welcome back to the Digest. |
Today we are talking about the war. |
In solidarity, Dan Storyev |
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Donate to OVD-Info to keep us running |
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Trigger warning:
This is a newsletter about Russian repressions. Sometimes it will be hard to read. |
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On Tuesday we marked 1,000 days of Putin’s full-scale war on Ukraine. The war has shattered countless lives, murdering Ukrainian civilians, destroying families and shattering the security order in Europe. To this day, I can’t go through a day without thinking about the war and its consequences. The presence of war infiltrates daily life, even when I am not in Ukraine.
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In the early months of the full-scale invasion I returned to Ukraine as a reporter. I saw firsthand the land where generations of my family lived given to dehumanizing destruction. This made me seek a career that would — even in a minuscule way — hasten an end to the conflict, and advocate for peace and democracy in the region.
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Damaged church in Izyum, Ukraine, 2022 / Photo: Dan Storyev |
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OVD-Info was it, because I saw that in order to carry out its criminal war in Ukraine the Kremlin has relied on a ruthless campaign against dissidents within Russia: a war on two fronts. The invasion was preceded by an attack on civil society structures and the jailing of Alexei Navalny — a gradual destruction of liberties paving the way for the invasion. OVD-Info and other Russian human rights organizations are key in Russia’s struggle against authoritarianism. And I believe that only a democratic transformation within Russia can ensure not just the end of the Ukraine invasion, but an end to the Kremlin’s imperialist aspirations around the globe.
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“We are for peace” — police detain anti-war protester in St Petersburg, 25 February 2024 / Photo: David Frenkel, Mediazona |
Once the Kremlin’s forces invaded, the repression at home only intensified. The war is used as a justification for purging the nation of whoever the Kremlin considers a fifth column. Repression has been unleashed against the thousands of Russians who could not stay silent about the Kremlin’s atrocities — even though they knew that the punishment would be immense
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And the punishment has indeed been immense — jail, torture, murder. There is a reason so many Russians have left the country and are now living in exile around the world, fugitives from their own government. The average prison term for anti-war dissidents this year has been 75 months. We currently know of over 1,000 people persecuted under the criminal code. These people made the honorable choice to stand up against the war they viewed as unconscionable: with protests, graffiti, social media posts, poems, and Molotov cocktails. They are refuting the Kremlin’s notion that this is a war fought for the preservation of and by the Russian people, exposing the invasion for what it is — a criminal act driven by greed and lust for power.
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Ilya Baburin, a 24-year-old Novosibirsk resident, was sentenced to 25 years behind bars for allegedly preparing an arson attack on a military recruitment centre that was never committed. |
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The recent analytics of political persecutions based on computational analysis of the most recent data |
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Let’s go deeper here, continuing the theme of the first section. Anastasia Berezhinskaya is yet another casualty of Putin’s domestic war against all who dare to speak out against atrocities in Ukraine. She is a Moscow-based theater director and a mother of two small children, whose husband is an epileptic. Even though Anastasia’s role as primary caretaker of her family is apparent, a military court nevertheless sentenced her to 8 years behind bars for “spreading false information about the military and justifying terrorism”.
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Her crime was posting on social media that the war is criminal. More specifically, she used the perennially-monitored and state-controlled VKontakte network to make dozens of anti-war posts over the past two years, in some of them calling for Vladimir Putin himself to be killed. |
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Anastasia Berezhinskaya with her husband at Moscow's 2nd Western District Military Court, 14 November 2024 / Photo: SOTAvision |
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The court actually considered the 8 year sentence for the mother of two to be a soft punishment — taking into account her children and her varied health issues that include a mental disorder. The prosecutors asked for 10. |
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The scary thing about this case to me is that I don’t even know what else to write about Anastasia except that she wanted to work in a theater “where security services don’t try to infiltrate, where directors and writers are not put in jail”. She did not have a high media profile or a massive campaign to support her and not a lot is known about her. Even her final words in court were laconic: “your Honor, I have nothing to say and nothing to add. I will accept whichever decision you make”. She thus runs the risk of becoming a faceless name in the terrible statistic of repression.
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Anastasia Berezhinskaya at Moscow’s 2nd Western District Military Court, 14 November 2024 / Photo: SOTAvision |
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Berezhinskaya’s case fits into certain trends we track — repression of those brave enough to post opposition opinions in VKontakte, repression against anti-war activists... But beyond these trends there are real people and real stories. For me, as a researcher and as a writer, it is of paramount importance to bring these stories into the collective consciousness. For me, it is a way to honor these dissidents, to ensure that their sacrifice still means something, that it doesn’t go unnoticed. Dealing with huge numbers — 1,000 — seems overwhelming sometimes, and I am thankful to the community we have built with the Dissident Digest for continuing to support our work.
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I am thankful to those of you who still care about jailed dissidents, to those of you who donate to us, and keep an eye on what we have to say. And to those of you who write letters to the jailed dissidents — making sure that they are never forgotten and that they don’t have to face the system alone. |
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The Digest is created by OVD-Info, written by Dan Storyev, edited by Dr Lauren McCarthy |
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