Putin’s machine of repression has become fully carnivorous – though the Kremlin has so far resisted calls from parliamentarians and propagandists to reinstate the death penalty for treason. ‘They are killing Navalny in prison,’ said his associate Maria Pevchikh. Navalny himself, in jail since his return to Russia in January 2021 after recovering from novichok poisoning in Berlin, served his 12th spell in solitary confinement this month, was beaten up by prison guards and suffered sudden weight loss and acute stomach pain that made his allies suspect another attempt at slow poisoning. Local councillor Ilya Yashin lost his appeal against an eight-and-a-half-year sentence for ‘discrediting the military’. Earlier this month activist Vladimir Kara-Murza was convicted of treason and sentenced to a staggering 25 years in jail. Save your skin and fight on, or keep your honour and be buried in the prison system? There’s no easy answer He remained free to goad the Kremlin with videos detailing massive corruption and run candidates in local elections until his poisoning by Russian secret police in August 2020. Even Alexei Navalny, the opposition’s highest profile leader, received a highly unusual suspended sentence after his conviction on trumped-up fraud charges in 2013. Public protest was punished, but for the most part with sentences in days and months, not years or decades. Before 2022, independent news organisations like Dozhd TV, the New Times and Novaya Gazeta were marginalised but not banned.
There was a time before the invasion of Ukraine when even the Kremlin’s opponents would talk of living in ‘vegetarian’ times.
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