This is just one affair among others in Russia, but it has caused more noise than the previous ones. In mid-November, a senior doctor was accused by the mother of a patient of having made comments favorable to Ukraine. Result: the pediatrician was sentenced to five and a half years in prison by the Russian justice system. She is far from being the only one. In September, a 46-year-old hairdresser was accused by her neighbor of spreading false information about the Russian army. Others may be prosecuted for “discrediting the use of Russian armed forces.”
These cases reflect an increasingly tense climate in Russia: denunciations are increasing among the population to unmask opponents of the war in Ukraine, or political adversaries who disagree with the propaganda discourse fueled by President Vladimir Putin. Some will seek personal benefits in exchange for their services, while others believe that their surveillance acts will contribute to the public good. This wave of denunciations helps the government repress dissent and better identify the country’s “enemies”. Note that cultural environments are particularly targeted, according to THE World : theaters and operas find themselves obliged to censor themselves “to respect the Kremlin’s narrative mold”.
The Russian rights group OVD-Info has registered 21 criminal prosecutions in politically motivated cases based on whistleblowers since Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Reuters Eva Levenberg, group lawyer. The latter, who lives in Germany, revealed that OVD-Info knew 175 other people who had been the subject of administrative charges for having “discredited” the Russian army, following denunciations during the same period. Among them, 79 individuals were fined several thousand rubles. Reuters was unable to independently confirm the figures provided by Eva Levenberg.
More than 20,000 people arrested
For his part, Vladimir Putin’s speech is clear: he assumes that the country is engaged in a proxy war with the West and that citizens must help eliminate internal enemies. Since the beginning of the invasion in Ukraine, according to OVD-Info, authorities have arrested more than 20,000 people for various forms of anti-war statements or demonstrations, and initiated criminal proceedings against 1,094 of them .
“Freedom of expression in Russia was already under threat, but a few days after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Vladimir Putin took it to a whole new level,” recalls the BBC. Result: the Russian internet policeman, Roskomnadzor, claimed to have received 145,000 reports from citizens in the first half of 2022.
In the process, the head of the Kremlin promulgated a repressive law intended to silence or punish critics while insisting that the Russian people “will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors, and spit them out like a gnat which accidentally flies into their mouths. The last dissident Russians have been warned.