Yesterday morning, I learned of the arrest of Evan Gershkovich, a journalist from wall street journal, which occurred in Yekaterinburg, a city in Russia. He is accused of espionage. “He was caught red-handed! launches Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, at a press conference.
I then text one of the only Russian journalists I still know in Moscow. We will call her by the fictitious name of Lilia to preserve her safety. Lilia knows Evan very well. “Come now, espionage! He has lived here for five years, he worked for the local English-language newspaper Moscow Times and then Agence France-Presse. He is a professional who knows the rules of the game very well. Like everyone else, he knew he was being watched 24/7. I just hope they quickly want to exchange him for a Russian prisoner on the western side because otherwise trials like this here are hellish and you risk 25 years in prison! »
“And you, how are you, Lilia? Little dots gallop on my phone and his message appears: “For a year, I have lived knowing that I can be arrested at any time, I live with the fear that any FSB agent will show up in my apartment. My phone was tapped. I had to change it twice. Yet I had the impression that working for international media gave me a form of protection, that the press center of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs offered us a certain security. Not anymore. »
Evan Gershkovich is the first journalist accused of espionage from the new Russia and even from the Soviet Union.
It took me back to when I lived in Moscow in 1991, it was still the USSR. I remember that September evening, in the midst of amorous distress, when I called a friend in Montreal. Throughout the conversation, we heard breathing, pan sounds, as if a guy somewhere wanted to tell us that he was there with us. It was almost likeable.
I took it for granted at that time that I shared my life with the Secret Service. I couldn’t believe the waste of time, money and energy that it must have cost the State.
One day I went to Kostroma, a forbidden town because of the military. Upon my return, I had been treated to a small reprimand from the “guardian angel” of Canadian journalists in front of a coffee in the press center of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Nothing more. In the twilight of the Soviet Union, the surveillance of the KGB, in total loss of authority, was as much folklore as it was inoffensive.
Today, however, this return of repression via the FSB successor to the KGB, in the era of facial recognition and artificial intelligence, is terrifying. It plays in the minds of a population that rediscovers its old defense reflexes from the time when the state was totalitarian.
“The Duma, our parliament, has been nicknamed ‘the mad printer’ because it passed nearly 200 more repressive bills in less than a year! Lilia tells me. These laws cover a wide range and can be interpreted in all sorts of ways. The Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is replete with grounds for arrest: state treason, spreading unreliable information about the armed forces (fake news), ban on discrediting the army, actions deemed terrorist, ban on rehabilitating Nazism. Let’s not forget that the Ukrainian leadership, by the Kremlin’s definition, is a reincarnation of the Nazi government.
Lilia continues: “Have you seen all these people who have been arrested in a year? Twenty-two thousand people! We arrest you for one like. »
As I was texting Lilia, news broke that a Moscow train worker had been sentenced to seven years in a penal camp for mourning the death of women and children and making reference to the war on Facebook. Recently, a father was sentenced to two years in prison because of a drawing by his 12-year-old daughter denouncing the conflict in Ukraine. She was placed in the orphanage. There is also the case of this young couple who criticized the Russian invasion at the restaurant, denounced by their table neighbors and handcuffed in front of all the customers. There is also the mind-blowing story of Sergey Vedel, arrested for criticizing the government in a telephone conversation. His lawyer maintained that the conversation was private. The judge dismissed her argument saying she was not private since an FSB agent was listening to her! Every day, social media reports dozens of stories as surreal as each other.
“Even the Russian equivalent of the Cercle des fermières does not escape surveillance, maintains Rémi Hyppia, expert on post-Soviet Russia. In 20 years in power, Vladimir Putin, the former KGB agent, has extended the tentacles of the state throughout Russian society and this has accelerated with the invasion of Ukraine. We sow doubt and fear, we nip any dissent in the bud. »
“At home, they say it’s time for purges, once again, for arrests, black cars and secret police leather coats arriving at your house in the middle of the night. In short, the time of lejovchina explains Lilia to me, referring to Nicolaï Lejov, supreme leader of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, ancestor of the KGB and the FSB. And Russia is sinking deeper and deeper into great darkness at the cost of its citizens. As if we were going back to square one in one of the worst totalitarian states of the last century.