At 75, Anatoly Roshine, originally from Lobnya, a dormitory town on the outskirts of Moscow, is the teasing type. When the police came to his home to search him on March 15, he had carefully hidden his pack of placards, a souvenir of twenty years of protests, at the top of a cupboard. “They were particularly lazy, he says. Apart from my phone and my computer, they only found my Ukrainian flag. You would have seen the head of the FSB representative when he fell on it!” Anticipating this moment, the activist had placed a few symbols on his desk, including a copy of the work of George Orwell, 1984. “They signed their report on a photo of my father in uniform, while he was fighting the fascists with the Red Army! But they saw no contradiction there,” the old man is surprised.
He precisely denounces what he considers to be a contradiction. Russia, which claims to be at the head of an anti-fascist fight, is, according to him, “fascist”. It is also his posts on the subject, published on social networks, which have earned him the wrath of justice. He is accused of having designated the Kremlin’s “special operation” of “war”, “of military aggression” and of having accused the Kremlin of carrying out a “policy of fascism”. “I admit that I did not know that the police were watching me so much. When the FSB arrived at my house, they already knew my passwords! But I assume, and I will repeat it as often as necessary, the regime present day is fascist.” Anatoly Roshin is prosecuted under Article 280.3 on “repeated discrediting the army”. It is this law, which appeared the day after the Russian offensive in Ukraine, which forces the population not to publicly criticize the February 2022 invasion. For having done so, the activist risks up to three years in prison.
But this retiree from the aeronautics industry, known as the white wolf in his city, has no regrets. “When I post my messages and discuss them with other Internet users, it does me a lot of good, it helps me not to go crazy.” At his side, his wife observes him, silent, slightly anxious, but admiring like a teenager. She accompanies him during all his trials.
Nearly 20,000 arrests since February 2022
Last May, Anatoly Roshine had an appointment in court for a first instance hearing. A young Belarusian, who lives not far from the court, had made the trip to support him. “I no longer know how to oppose all this. If I demonstrate in the street and I am arrested, I can be deported to my country. Over there, I risk spending my life in prison. So I try to support local activists by coming to their hearing”, he confides, while waiting for the court. Welcome support for these shadow activists who sometimes appear alone in court. When the president finally enters the room, she announces… a postponement of the hearing. Anatoly Roshine’s lawyer could not come. “I’m lucky to appear free, I could find myself there, he says, showing a large iron cage intended for the defendants placed in pre-trial detention. But that will not prevent me from saying that Russia has an attitude fascist in Ukraine and that this war must stop!”
Born in 1948, Anatoly Roshine is nevertheless a true patriot. During his career, he contributed to the design of the Mi-26, the heaviest helicopter ever built in the world, widely used by the Russian army. He recalls with relish how the KGB closely watched engineers’ foreign connections at the time. “We traveled, welcomed foreign delegations. Already, the security services knew everything about my communications!” Since then, with a generous retirement as few Russians perceive, he has become the eccentric character of the city, with his long, gray hair, tied in a duvet, occupying his retirement with the activism of a convinced pacifist. “Since Chechnya, I have never ceased to oppose the war and Putin’s actions. I often stood in front of the town hall, on the main avenue of Lobnya, with my signs. Hundreds of people, who were returning from Moscow, passed in front of me”, recalls the retiree. With his messages demanding the release of Alexeï Navalny or the independence of Belarus, he made himself known to the hostile vigilantes of the town hall. “One of them has links with the FSB. He sends them photos of me when he sees me. Since last year, demonstrations, even solitary ones, have been prohibited. support for the war. They watch it as something precious,” he quips. The pensioner will know, in mid-June, during a third hearing, if he will go to prison or not.
According to OVD Info, an NGO that lists all arrests and hearings, nearly 20,000 Russians have been arrested since February 2022 for having, like Anatoly Roshine, protested against the war. The organization records an average of 80 hearings per week in the country. Lioudmila Razoumova and Alexandre Martinov, aged 56 and 64 respectively, were sentenced to six and a half and seven years in penal colony respectively last March. They are considered by OVD Info and the Memorial organization as political prisoners. The authorities accuse them of “vandalism”. Revolted against the war, these two inhabitants of Tver, 150 kilometers north of Moscow, tagged in the surrounding villages “Putin = Hitler”. An unforgivable act for justice. During an appeal hearing at the end of May, Lioudmila spoke, for the time of a deliberation, from her colony, via videoconference. “For me, the most important thing is that a person who lives in a free country must be able to express his opinions. He must not be in prison for speaking out against the war, as anyone who thinks healthy !”
Accustomed to spending their weekends in nature, this couple suffers from confinement. The woman is crying, she regrets not being able to see the sky from her cell and not being able to talk to her children anymore. She does not understand what caused her this pain. The videoconference is of poor quality, a shrill sound prevents him from hearing what is happening in the courtroom. Reading his report, the prosecutor clears his throat, pronouncing “Putin = Hitler”, embarrassed. The couple’s lawyers, provided by OVD Info, defend their clients clumsily, while the president shows bad faith. Sometimes, she slips little notes to her neighbors while giggling, like a schoolgirl. In the audience, Lilia Manirina, from the opposition Yabloko party, is overwhelmed with emotion at the sight of such injustice. However, she spends her weeks in the courts. Every month, she organizes at the headquarters of her political movement an evening dedicated to writing letters to political opponents. She confides the bottom of her thought: “I feel really bad, I miss the demonstrations. I am like a dead person. I cannot express myself and give my opinion, it is as if I lived in a prison in These people need us, but apart from writing letters and going to hearings, I don’t know how to help them anymore…”