Post-Putin Russia

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Tverskaya Street, Moscow, Mar. 26, 2017/Wikipedia

Navalny, the film, was the subject of a program last week at the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute. 

Other topics came up.

The Kennan's Izabella Tabarovsky  moderated discussion of the "thriller," as she called it, with Leonid Volkov, Alexei Navalny's former chief of staff, and  Maria Pevchikh, head of investigations for the Anti-Corruption Foundation. 

Navalny established the Foundation in 2011 which the Moscow City Court extinguished last June.

Ms. Pevchikh urged that sanctions on Russia remain: "Putin should not be able to get away with what he did."

"Keep pushing until the outcome is there."

Putin should be subjected to [a special] tribunal. 

A former ambassador to/from (?) Moldova asked the panel how to avoid now the "illusion" experienced in the 1990s that the Soviet Union would become more democratic after the nation's 1989 upheaval.

Mr. Volkov said, "we do not know."  It makes no sense to speculate until Putin is gone.  When Stalin died, it took three years to figure out his successor.  All his lieutenants started killing each other.  Right now, none of Putin's lieutenants are strong enough to become a leader. They are all very weak, hating each other.  It  will take three years at least to sort things out. No one knows the lieutenants.

Ms. Pevchikh: No one knows either, the exact number of Russians who have died in the war.  If you trust the government, the number is one to two thousand.  Russia's evening news about Ukraine lasts about 58 minutes. As far as the Russian ship sinking in mid-April, "they" just said "it went down and there was a fire." 

"A Russian soldier's life is worth nothing to Putin," Ms. Pevchikh said.  He has made the Russians think their sons' lives are nothing since "a life is worth sacrificing."

Only the poorest get conscripted, and so far, Putin is quite successful...at home.

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At the think tanks: Russia's political prisoners, a talk

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 Izabella Tabarovsky, the moderator, and Sergey Davidis at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C., April 23, 2019/Photo by Patricia Leslie

 At the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on Tuesday afternoon, the head of Russia's Political Prisoners Support Program said the nation has 263 "political" persons in jail, arrested on vague charges stemming from Russia's Criminal Code. 

It is an “incomplete number,” said Sergey Davidis, also a member of the Council at the Memorial Human Rights Center in Moscow. Since “we are conservative in our approach,” the actual number is probably two or three times 263, he said.


The prisoners support group determined the number 263 by researching official documents and other materials.

Among those jailed are two journalists and many persons from Ukraine.  One prisoner, Mr. Davidis said, has been sentenced to 20 to 22 years for participating in the "Chechen war." (Wikipedia identifies two Chechen wars: 1994-1996 and 1999-2006.)

Another prisoner, a “random person,” was sentenced to eight to ten years.  Researchers have identified four others on the list who are jailed for “random” reasons. Some have lawyers.

Of the 263, 186 have been identified as religious minorities; 60 are affiliated with Jehovah's Witnesses. So far, the maximum prison sentence has been 24 years.

None of the prisoners condone violence, often mentioned in the Russian Federation Criminal Code as a reason for arrest. The prisoners have expressed “no signs of violence.” They practice opposition peacefully, Mr. Davidis said, when they disagree with authorities.

“The aim of the state is scare the society …and frighten people,” he said. “It’s important for the state to send [the people] a signal.” Persecution in the Russian Federation is “rather uneven.”

Izabella Tabarovsky, the moderator, and Sergey Davidis at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C., April 23, 2019/Photo by Patricia Leslie

He cited several articles from the Criminal Code which are used to arrest political prisoners: Article 212.1 is related to punishment for those engaged in “mass riots,” and Article 318, for violence against an officer.

Article 354 ("Public Appeal to Unleash An Aggressive War”) is "seldom used" to arrest anyone, but still it is “obviously dangerous” and can be used to arrest those who attempt to incite the public.

Articles 280 and 282 (“not widely cited”) concern extremist activity, behavior, and freedom of expression. Article 205 describes acts of terrorism, punishment and recruiting others to commit terrorist activities. 

Questions from the audience were invited near the close of the one hour session. One person asked if Russia has prisoner quotas and Mr. Davidis answered that several factors are involved but sometimes, yes, there are “real quotas” which “vary from region to region.”

Another questioner asked about prisoner exchanges between Russia and Turkey. Mr. Davidis confirmed that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan had exchanged two Russian criminals jailed in Istanbul for murdering four Chechens, for two Tatars jailed for religious beliefs, an uneven exchange the questioner noted.

The Kennan website states: Mr. Davidis was educated in sociology at Moscow State University and in law at Moscow State Law Academy. For many years, he was a participant and one of the organizers of the democratic opposition movement. His research interests are closely related to activities to support political prisoners in Russia, and he studies the sociological and legal aspects of politically motivated deprivation of liberty, in particular, in the context of world practice and international norms.

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