President of Russia Vladimir Putin appears to have embarked on a purge ahead of the March presidential election.
In addition to war opponents, religious groups, gender and sexual minorities, political opponents and even war bloggers who praise war get a cold ride.
Russian researcher Jussi Lassila The Foreign Policy Institute states that Russia currently has an unprecedented number of political prisoners, the most since the leader of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin reign of terror.
– The large number of political prisoners tells about the fear of the Russian regime, which has turned into a dictatorship, towards dissidents.
During the war in Ukraine, which began in February 2022, at least 19,747 people have been sentenced in Russia for their views on the war, according to an independent monitoring of human rights issues OVD info statistics.
– It has become increasingly difficult for Putin’s administration to reconcile different opinions, and Putin now has no choice but to try to protect his position, Lassila reflects.
In December alone, a total of 27 people were sentenced for opposing the war in Ukraine. In addition, the courts handed down 10 sentences for inciting terrorism. Trials have also taken place against supporters of the war.
In November, an artist from St. Petersburg Sasha Skotshilenko33, was sentenced to seven years in prison for pasting anti-war stickers in place of price tags in a grocery store.
Anti-war activist Darya Trepova, 26, faces a 30-year prison sentence for the terrorist attack in St. Petersburg. A well-known war blogger was killed in an attack in a cafe Maxim Fomin.
An ex-FSB officer who participated in the annexation of Crimea in 2014 Igor Girkin, 53, is accused of inciting extremism. Girkin has announced that he will participate in the presidential race from behind bars.
Leader of the Left Front movement Sergei Udaltsov, 46, was arrested in January for writing justifying terrorism. In his writing, Udaltsov criticized Putin, but declared himself a supporter of the Russian invasion.
Russia is now increasingly in the way of North Korea, Lassila believes.
The expert considers it likely that the persecution of the political opposition will continue and intensify even after the presidential election.
How do Russians feel about Putin?
Despite everything, about 79 percent of the respondents in the survey of the state research center at the end of December stated that he was confident Putin to act as president.
On the other hand, the independent organization Chronicles the opinion poll shows, that support for Putin’s war in Ukraine is weakening. According to a poll conducted in October, about a third of the respondents supported the war.
According to the survey, 40 percent of Russians already support the withdrawal of the Russian armed forces from Ukraine.
In the light of the numbers, the situation seems paradoxical: Russians still give their support to Putin, even though the Kremlin has launched unprecedented political persecutions and Putin is waging an unpopular war in Ukraine.
Russian researcher Lassila says that there is a simple explanation for the phenomenon: questioning.
Putin’s support seems much lower when asked differently.
– When the question is formulated to ask which politicians do you trust the most, Putin’s support is around 30 percent.
The figure roughly corresponds to the number of Russian war supporters.
– For a Russian, the question of trust in Putin is not particularly meaningful, Lassila explains.
Traditionally, in Russia, trust in institutions is weak and even the presenters of opinion polls are viewed with suspicion.
Even if a person has an opinion, they don’t want to tell it to an unknown questioner.
For example, the rebellion of the mercenary company Wagner in midsummer made visible how opinion polls don’t really say anything about the stability of Putin’s support or the commitment of the respondent.
In 2023, the leader of the mercenary company Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin argued with the Russian Ministry of Defense.
On Midsummer, Wagner started a surprise rebellion.
On June 23, 2023, Prigozhin’s mercenaries marched determinedly from southern Russia towards Moscow.
The Kremlin froze. Putin gave a speech in which he threatened to punish the rebels.
The situation seemed to develop unfavorably from the Kremlin’s point of view, until the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko signed up as a peace negotiator between Wagner and the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Wagner’s fighters stopped. The rebellion was over in less than a day and bloodshed was avoided.
Three months later, Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner company, died in an unexplained plane crash.
According to Lassila, what was significant about Wagner’s rebellion was how a party using armed power constituted a serious internal threat, the likes of which has not been seen in post-Soviet Russia.
The events also revealed how passively the elite stand behind Putin.
– The Russian administration understands the dependence of its own position on Putin, but when Putin’s system experiences a strong threat, no active group is formed behind Putin. Rather, apathy gets stronger and nobody dares to do anything, Lassila states.
After Wagner’s rebellion, the basic structure of Putin’s regime has not changed. Therefore, Lassila considers it possible that some part of Russia’s violent apparatus could start a replica of the rebellion.
What explains Putin’s strong position?
According to Lassila, the weakness of Russian civil society and the apolitical nature of Russians support Putin.
– There would have been numerous opportunities for Putin’s struggle for power in the early 2000s, if there had been a more active civil society and interest in politics, says Lassila.
According to the expert, the stabilization of Putin’s position in the grip of power is in many respects the result of unfortunate coincidences.
The economic distress of the 1990s and the corruption of politics caused Russians to become disillusioned with democracy. Later, the Chechen wars further reinforced the need for a strong leader.
– Tasteless and odorless Putin didn’t seem like a threat to political opponents, but he was the opposite of a drunkard To Boris Yeltsin.
Finally, Putin was also lucky because the Russian economy grew strongly in the early 2000s as world oil prices rose.
According to Lassila, Putin created an image of himself as irreplaceable, but he is not a strong leader.
– When civil society has been weak, the leader doesn’t have to be particularly strong to stay in power, explains Lassila.
– He has only been adept at exploiting the weaknesses of Russian society and the surrounding elite.
Putin will probably use them again during the spring presidential elections.
Theoretical sociology researcher Viktor Vahštain has also been interviewed for the story.
You can discuss the topic on 26.1. until 23:00.