Decision by the Yabloko Federal Political Committee of 24 November, 2023, published on 5 December, 2023

Photo: Yabloko Congress, 2019 / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

After 24 February, 2022, repressions in Russia against those who disagree with the government’s policies sharply intensified.

According to the project “Support for Political Prisoners. Memorial”, there were 426 political prisoners in Russia (343 in connection with the exercise of the right to freedom of religion, and 83 people unrelated to it) at the beginning of 2022, and 615 people (416 and 188 persons, respectively) as of November 22, 2023. According to OVD-Info and Mediazona, since February 24, 2022, at least 19,840 citizens have been detained for expressing an anti-war position; at least 8,122 people have been brought to administrative responsibility under Article 20.3.3 of the Administrative Code (“Discrediting the use of the RF Armed Forces”), and at least 774 people were subjected to criminal prosecution in connection with their anti-war position.

The basis for political repression were the laws on punishment for “fakes” and “discrediting”, making it criminal to publicly express an opinion, that does not coincide with the official one, about what is happening during a special military operation.

The practices of considering cases under the relevant articles in courts demonstrates that almost always, with rare exceptions, decisions are made on criminal or administrative punishment, with the virtual release of the prosecution from the need to actually prove guilt (for example, discrepancy between the opinion of the accused and the official position of the Ministry of Defence is considered as the “evidence of guilt” in the cases of “fake news”), relying on dubious “expertise” and discarding any arguments from the defence side.

With the same deliberately accusatory bias, courts are conducting cases on “extremism”, “creation of an extremist community”, “undesirable organisations”, “high treason”, “justification of terrorism” and other articles of the Criminal Code used for political persecution of opponents of the government.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, those accused of criminal charges are kept in pre-trial detention centres for many months before trial, despite the absence of a public danger and ignoring the health status of the accused.

The result was the emergence of many new political prisoners.

Among those imprisoned for their anti-war stance are our friends and colleagues, members of the Yabloko party. Journalist from Abakan Mikhail Afanasyev was sentenced to 5.5 years in prison. St. Petersburg resident Vasily Neustroyev has been in a pre-trial detention centre since June of this year and faces up to 15 years in prison. The leaders of the Yakut and Kamchatka branches of the party, Anatoly Nogovitsyn and Vladimir Yefimov, were found guilty of “discrediting the army” and sentenced to a fine of 200,000 roubles each. The case of the leader of the Vologda branch of Yabloko Nikolai Yegorov, also accused of “discrediting”, has been sent to court recently, he is under recognizance not to leave the town. Our friend and colleague Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in a maximum security penal colony.

The list of political prisoners that continues to grow includes Alexei Gorinov and Ilya Yashin, Yury Dmitriyev and Alexei Navalny, Andrei Pivovarov and Olga Smirnova, Vsevolod Korolyov and Victoria Petrova, Yevgenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petriychuk and many others. Alexandra Skochilenko has just been sentenced, her “case” has become the most blatant example of the court ignoring even current norms of law.

There are also such among the new political prisoners whose political position Yabloko does not share. But they are persecuted by the authorities not for real actions that are dangerous to society, but for expressing their position, for being opponents of the authorities, and therefore classified as political prisoners.

The growth of political repression is accompanied by a creeping rehabilitation of Stalinism, monuments to Stalin are being erected, the implementation of the State Policy Concept for perpetuating the memory of victims of political repression, approved in 2015, has actually been stopped, monuments in memorial cemeteries where victims of political terror are buried are being destroyed and dismantled with the connivance of the authorities.

Yabloko regards these developments as a destruction of respect for the law and justice, as a degradation of the judicial and law enforcement system and a real threat of a return to the practices of mass-scale political terror.

We demand the release of all political prisoners, the repeal of the repressive laws adopted in recent years, the review of all decisions based on them and the prosecution of all those involved in political persecution.

Grigory Yavlinsky,

Chairman of the Federal Political Committee,

Yabloko