Institute

• The 41-year-old, who holds Russian and British passports, was originally detained in April 2022 and charged with criticising the Russian army.
• But the charge list was subsequently expanded to include treason and working for an undesirable organisation.
• He has also been involved in anti-regime parties and think tanks including the Institute of Modern Russia and the Open Russia Foundation.
• He was a key proponent of the Magnitsky Act, which enabled the US government to freeze the foreign assets of Russian elites.

Opposition decapitated

• In this respect, we’ve gone beyond the 1970s – all the way back to the 1930s.
• There has been a long history of opposition leaders and anti-Putin activists being killed or persecuted.
• The removal of opposition figures and the constitutional changes introduced in 2020, which effectively mean that Putin can remain in power until 2036, are strong indications of the president’s desire to remain in power indefinitely.
• The Kremlin routinely manipulates the political process to ensure it retains power via controlling the Russian media and even via “virtual politics”, where fake parties are created in a fiction designed to divide any opposition to Putin’s regime.

Consolidation of a police state

• Putin’s heavy-handed approach has even led to children being arrested in Moscow in March 2022 for laying flowers outside the Ukrainian embassy.
• Another child, Masha Moskaleva, now 13, who drew a anti-war picture and was denounced to the authorities by her school principal, was sent to an orphanage.
• In early March 2022, the Russian parliament passed legislation giving 15-year prison sentences for spreading “false information” about the Russian military.
• Meanwhle in late March, the Wall Street Journal’s Russia correspondent, Evan Gershkovich, was arrested and charged with espionage.