Only about 1% to 2% of Russian political prisoners were released in the prisoner exchange agreed with the West on 1er August. While 16 prisoners — most of them public figures or dual nationals — have been released, hundreds of others — often with less media coverage — continue to languish in prison. This repression by the Putin regime has certainly intensified in the last two years, but its roots go back well before the start of the war in Ukraine.
“What we’re seeing today didn’t come out of nowhere,” said Dan Storyev, news director of the English-language version of OVD-Info, a human rights media organization that documents the repression in Russia.
“Vladimir Putin has built this repressive machine over time, throughout his reign, by silencing the media, repressing, exiling and killing activists, journalists and political figures.”
It was only with the war in Ukraine that the eyes of the international community turned more intently to this severe repression, but all the warnings were there before, he notes.
The change in tone of the Putin regime was clearly felt from 2011, analyses Natalia Morozova, lawyer for the Human Rights Defense Center Memorial, the organization born from the ashes of the NGO Memorial, closed in Russia in 2021 by the Putin regime.
After the difficult 1990s, the 2000s brought more lightness to the lives of Russians with, among other things, a greater opening of borders and the advent of the consumer society. At that time, “Vladimir Putin made a kind of pact with civil society, saying: you can enjoy this beautiful life, but on condition that you are not interested in politics.”
Awakening and repression
But then, in September 2011, Putin, then prime minister, announced his intention to return to his post as president, ceded in 2008 to Dmitry Medvedev, so that the latter could take over as head of government. A toss-up that was, to say the least, undemocratic. Then, in December of the same year, Putin’s United Russia party managed to retain an absolute majority of seats in the Duma, at the cost of probable electoral fraud.
“Civil society woke up, and that’s how the first wave of protests under Putin began,” says Natalia Morozova, now exiled in France. A few months later, in the summer of 2012, the regime responded by adopting a law against “foreign agents,” designed to sideline organizations receiving support and funding from abroad.
History then repeated itself. “After each wave of protest, there were repressions and new laws that further limited the possibility of action.”
Another layer of repression was added in the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022, this time to crush any public dissent to the war. A person spreading “false information about the armed forces,” that is, information that broke with the official party narrative, could now face up to 15 years in prison.
Political and religious prisoners
This acceleration of the Russian repressive machine has been accompanied, over time, by an evolution of the typical profile of the political prisoner. “Before the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, one of the most targeted groups was religious people, particularly Jehovah’s Witnesses,” reports Dan Storyev. “Over the last two years, the main targets have become people who are opposed to the war.”
According to Memorial, there are currently at least 1,402 people being prosecuted for political or religious reasons in Russia, of whom at least 771 are behind bars. OVD-Info, which uses broader criteria to list political prisoners, paints an even darker picture: 2,748 people are currently being prosecuted in Russia for political or religious reasons, of whom 1,327 are in prison. Since 2012, the organization has counted 4,328 victims of Russian repression.
Amnesty did not participate
16 political prisoners held in Russia and Belarus released on 1er August in exchange for eight Russians convicted in the West for various crimes, including murder and espionage, thus representing a tiny proportion of the prisoners languishing for ideological reasons in Russian prisons.
In this context, what allows a political prisoner to stand out from the crowd and end up on an exchange list? According to Natalia Zviagina, director of Amnesty International’s Russia office, “these would be those who have received the most support from international organizations and whose cases have received the most media coverage.”
In the case of the prisoner exchange of 1er August, no non-governmental organization participated in the negotiations, she says. “Amnesty was not involved, and I can say that no other NGO was. It was a negotiation between states,” she assures after speaking in Berlin, when the political prisoners arrived, with her colleagues from other organizations.
Mixed feelings
On Memorial’s side, Natalia Morozova indicates that the organization never asked for its co-president, Oleg Orlov, to be released on 1er August, be exchanged. “We pleaded for his release and his case was widely publicized,” she said. The main person concerned, who had received a sentence of two years and eleven months in prison — less than that of other political prisoners — would have difficulty accepting having been exchanged.
“I saw him two days after his release. And the biggest question he kept repeating was: why me and not so-and-so who is sick or so-and-so who will not survive,” the lawyer reports.
Ilya Yashin, also released on the 1ster August, also reportedly has mixed feelings. This political opponent of Vladimir Putin recalled, in a press briefing, having mentioned several times that he did not want to be on an exchange list. “The Kremlin representatives willingly included my name, because for them, my exchange essentially means expulsion,” he said.
“It’s very difficult for me emotionally, because I understand that I was freed at the cost of freeing a murderer. [Vadim Krassikov, un agent des services de sécurité russes, condamné à la prison à vie pour l’assassinat d’un séparatiste tchétchène]. »
The question therefore arises: by agreeing to release real criminals in exchange for political prisoners, is the West not encouraging Russia to continue to fill its jails with innocent people, who thus become bargaining chips?
The answer is far from simple. But we must not lose sight of the fact that the political prisoners who have been released “will be the leaders of tomorrow’s free Russia,” Dan Storyev emphasizes. It is therefore in the West’s interest that they are on the job to oppose Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime, he adds.