As of: February 23, 2024, 8:59 p.m
By: Richard Strobl
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Press
Split
Vladimir Putin rules Russia with an iron hand.
This is now shown by an investigative study.
Terrifying parallels to the Soviet Union become clear.
Moscow – The elections in Russia seem to be casting their shadows ahead.
Vladimir Putin gives the impression that he is currently taking even harder action against his opponents.
The death of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in particular caused an international stir.
His family accuses Putin of murder.
The Russian power apparatus then openly took action against Navalny's supporters.
According to afp
information , more than 150 people were
sentenced to short prison sentences for public expressions of grief.
Some of them are said to have even been sent to the Ukrainian front as punishment.
And Navalny’s mother also reports “blackmail”.
The authorities urged her to bury her son quickly and inconspicuously.
Putin's brutal system in Russia: study shows "extent of repression"
But even if the Navalny case is currently causing a great stir, it does not appear to be an isolated case.
The murder of a Russian defector in exile on the Mediterranean - according to intelligence information at the hands of Russia - also represents a new quality of repression. Almost at the same time, a well-known military blogger critical of the Kremlin dies mysteriously.
It seems that shortly before the election, Vladimir Putin no longer wants to take any risks.
According to sociologist Maxim Alyukov from King's College in London, Navalny's death could also send a message to all opponents in Russia: "Resistance is futile," the scientist told
Business Insider
.
Russian police arrested mourning Navalny supporters after they laid flowers at a monument to victims of political repression in honor of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
© Collage: IMAGO / SOPA images // dpa/Pool Sputnik Kremlin/AP |
Dmitry Azarov
In this situation, the question arises: Why are there no major protests against Putin's system in Russia?
The Kremlin-critical investigative team
Proekt
investigated this question.
When analyzing the data, they came up with frightening results.
One answer to the question about the lack of protests is the “extent of repression that the authorities” are carrying out in Russia.
Russia under Putin's strict hand: numbers show oppression
The journalists examined criminal and administrative cases in Russia from 2018 to 2023.
This corresponds to the period of Putin's fourth term in the Kremlin.
Even according to the “most conservative estimate,” at least 116,000 people were subjected to some form of persecution during this period.
Thousands of people have been prosecuted for what human rights activists consider to be repressive crimes.
These include extremism, justifying terrorism, spreading knowingly false information, and discrediting the army.
If you add people who refused to fight in Ukraine as well as those who are accused of treason, espionage and the like, you get significantly more oppressed people, according to the report.
11,400 people were charged and 105,000 people were fined.
According to the information, this number is certainly not exhaustive.
Putin's coercive state Russia: “Like in the Soviet Union”
What this means only becomes clear by comparing it with Soviet times.
According to
Proekt
, the numbers of convictions are higher than the cases of persecution during the USSR era in the selected comparison periods in the post-Stalin era.
At that time, people were persecuted for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”.
The investigative team points out that many people were subjected to “prophylaxis” during the Soviet era.
So you were warned without being directly charged.
Between 1967 and 1974, 120,000 people were affected.
If one takes the above figures from the last six years under Vladimir Putin, the journalists conclude that today's figures are at least comparable to those of the Soviet Union.
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The conclusion of the study, which was also reported by the
Moscow Times
: “The modern Russian government actively uses similar methods (...).
As in the Soviet Union, dissidents are dismissed from universities and jobs, forced out of the country, and those who do not want to leave are forced to publicly apologize and swear allegiance to the authorities."
(rist)