In Russia, critiquing the Ukraine war could land you in prison

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started last February, Mikhail Lobanov, a local political activist in the Moscow suburb of Ramenki, put a little sign on his balcony that said “No War.”

It sat there for months, apparently unnoticed, until one day police arrived at his door to arrest him.

Mr. Lobanov, a candidate for the Communist Party in last year’s municipal elections, is not the sort of person who is used to running afoul of Russian laws. But now he finds himself among the nearly 4,000 prosecutions under a pair of new laws that make it punishable to spread any “fake news” about Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, or to make any statement that authorities deem to “defame” Russia’s army or officials.

A growing number of cases involve people speaking informally in workplaces, classrooms, social media, and even in church. The effect is to put people on their guard, even in private settings, creating an atmosphere of pervasive fear that has not been widely felt in Russia since Soviet times.

“These are clearly oppressive laws intended to suppress any criticism related to the war,” says Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the Sova Center in Moscow, a human rights organization that specializes in the study of extremism. “The law on defamation is particularly odd, since defamation is normally a civil matter. Where there is criminal prosecution, it can only be aimed at suppressing criticism.”

“A bureaucratic machine is at work”

For most of the Putin era, average Russians had little to fear from any slip of the tongue or errant social media post, even as the state was selectively cracking down on avowed Kremlin opponents and pro-Western voices. Over the past nine months, it’s become a minefield for many more people, since the new laws are vague enough to trap almost any political speech, and law enforcement agencies seem bent on creating examples.

According to a study by the independent Public Verdict Foundation, about half of those arrested since the laws came into effect in March were charged with some kind of overt anti-war activity, such as attending a rally or displaying anti-war symbols.

But there have also been cases of people getting convicted for merely holding up a piece of blank paper in a public place, or a placard containing stars or asterisks rather than words. According to the group, Moscow-area peace activist Anna Krechetova was convicted and fined 50,000 rubles ($800) for carrying a sign that said “fascism will not pass.” Several people have been arrested for simply dressing in the yellow-and-blue colors of the Ukrainian flag.

Mr. Lobanov, after a sweep of his social media posts uncovered two more apparent infractions in his political commentary, spent 15 days in prison and paid 45,000 rubles in fines. Now, he is braced for more trouble.

“Once you get into politics in any form these days, I guess you have to expect this,” he says. “The police tell me it’s nothing personal, but they get lists from above and have to follow instructions. The courts just rubber stamp whatever they’ve been told. A bureaucratic machine is at work. ... So far, I think I’ve gotten off rather easy.”

Alexei Onoshkin, an anti-war activist in the Volga city of Nizhni Novgorod, has seen a lot worse. He was arrested in August after authorities uncovered a social media post of his alleging that Russia had bombed a drama theater in the city of Mariupol where people were taking refuge. He was charged under the criminal part of the law on defamation and held in a SIZO (pretrial detention center) for several weeks until a court medical commission declared him insane and had him transferred indefinitely to a prison hospital.

In a voice message to the Monitor, Mr. Onoshkin also seemed to be bracing for worse to come. “Conditions in the hospital are better than in the SIZO, and the food is better, but my mood is heavy,” he said. “In my view it’s a blatant disgrace to put a person into prison, and then into a prison hospital, for political reasons.”

“It’s absurd, disproportionate punishment”

Experts say the current level of repression appears to be working, at least from the authorities’ point of view.

“I think it’s rather effective,” says Mr. Verkhovsky, the Sova Center director. “At first a big part of these prosecutions were for some street action, such as pickets or graffiti. But since summer it’s mostly about writing in social media. People who want to protest have been pushed from the streets to the internet. I don’t think the government’s purpose is to silence all criticism, but they do want to stop any public or organized expressions of it. In that, they seem to be succeeding.”

Most of the cases so far have resulted in fines of up to 100,000 rubles ($1,600). Repeat offenders, such as journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who made headlines with an on-air protest back in March, can get prison terms. Ms. Ovsyannikova, currently facing a potential 10-year sentence for public protest, appears to have fled the country.

It’s hard to know how many people have been imprisoned under the criminal provisions of the two laws, but it is probably several dozen. The now banned human rights organization Memorial, which was co-awarded a Nobel Prize earlier this year, maintains a list of several hundred nonviolent dissenters that it regards as political prisoners. Most of those are being prosecuted for “religious reasons,” such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Islamists, but 116 are listed as “non-religious” offenders presumably being prosecuted for political reasons.

One such person is Alexei Gorinov, an opposition deputy of the Moscow City Council, who was sentenced to seven years in prison for distributing “fake information,” after he posted on YouTube a speech he made criticizing the war.

“It’s absurd, disproportionate punishment, clearly intended to suppress any public discussion of the war,” says Sergei Davidis, a lawyer with Memorial. “The basic meaning behind it is that a person must know that the information he is spreading is false, while the truth is what state bodies declare it is. Thus the state demonstrates what people can hear and what they cannot. Thus, Alexei Gorinov, who publicly declared that there is a war, and children are dying in it, has been put into prison for seven years.”

As long as the war continues, the environment for public freedoms is likely to deteriorate, says Mr. Verkhovsky.

“The government doesn’t really need to tighten the laws, but they will probably grow tougher,” he says. “There is a kind of repressive inertia at work. And Russian lawmakers always feel like they should be doing more. So, this atmosphere will probably just keep getting worse.”