A Cold Wind Blowing?

in late july, one of Russia’s most prominent opposition leaders, the non-partisan anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, who possesses an acerbic sense of humor and movie star looks, was accused of embezzling 16 million rubles. He could face a multi-year jail term.

The move against Navalny is one of many signals late this summer that Vladimir Putin has had enough of protest shenanigans and is tightening the screws.

Navalny, who rose to prominence as an anti-Putin campaigner rather recently, after steadily growing the audience for his anti-corruption blog, was already accused once of causing material losses to a timber firm in Russia’s Kirov region. Several years ago, he served as an advisor to the region’s liberal governor, Nikita Belykh.

This summer, however, the Kirov probe was resurrected and ratcheted up a notch, including addition of the embezzlement charge, which carries a jail term of up to 10 years.

“In our country, anyone can be jailed,” Navalny told Dozhd channel after learning of the charges. “As we remember, Khodorkovsky was successfully accused of personally stealing all our oil.”

Just prior to this new probe, a flurry of legislation rammed through the Duma in record time set exorbitant fines for illegal gatherings, slapped the “foreign agent” label on many NGOs – including veteran organizations involved in issues like human rights and election monitoring -- and made libel and slander a criminal offense, with fines of up to five million rubles.

This “repressive package” of laws, as critics termed it, also included a measure that creates a blacklist of websites deemed bad for children, due to their pornographic or otherwise dangerous content. While the cause makes the measure sound noble, experts warned that the instruments the law proposes to fight internet pornography could pave the way for internet censorship of any site or cause. In protest, Russian Wikipedia shut down for a day. This did not faze Russian lawmakers, however, who overwhelmingly approved the bill.

“The flags have been repositioned, some protesters will get scared and retreat. Also it will be more difficult to examine the actions of the authorities and to criticize them,” Vedomosti daily said in an editorial after the bills soared through the legislature and were signed by President Putin.

The wider public, however, was presented with a far more positive evaluation of the laws, as television channels said that the slander bill would help celebrities counter the psychological abuse they suffer at the hands of media, and fines for unsanctioned rallies were needed to avoid events like the May 6 protest, which turned violent.

In keeping with the interpretation that May 6 was a criminal riot, at press time investigators placed some 15 people under pre-trial arrest for allegedly using violence against the police at the rally. When an activist asked President Putin to explain why some of the people were arrested, when they were not even in Moscow on May 6, the President said, without batting an eye: “Did you write to the prosecutor’s office? Well, you should write again.”

Several activists who were warned that the police wanted to interrogate them about their actions on May 6 fled Russia to avoid arrest. At least one individual sought political refugee status abroad.

самовар топит (literally, “the samovar is stoking”) – Russian labor camp jargon meaning the investigator has assembled incontrovertible proof.