‘We Will Kill You’: How Russia Silenced Its Antiwar Movement
By Evan Gershkovich, Apr. 6, 2022
Alexander Teplyakov wanted to speak out against the war
in Ukraine but feared landing in prison if he took part in
a public protest. So the Russian activist designed an antiwar
sticker featuring Russian and Ukrainian flags and the phrase
“NO TO WAR” & posted & distributed thousands of them around Moscow.
He got into trouble anyway. Russian police hauled the 23-year-old
into the Presnensky district police station on March 1, according
to a copy of his police records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Teplyakov said he was repeatedly beaten over the head by one officer
while in custody. A second officer pressed a pistol to his leg and
coerced him into divulging the name of a fellow activist, he added.
“He starts screaming at me to start writing,” Teplyakov said in a
phone interview. He said the police officer threatened him, saying,
“We will kill you right now.”
Teplyakov was sentenced to 10 days in jail after being convicted
on a charge of disobeying the police, according to a copy of a
court ruling. He left for Tbilisi, Georgia, the day after he was
released from custody—joining tens of thousands of Russians who
have fled the crackdown on dissent and the fallout of economic
sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A new Russian law prohibiting referrals to the military campaign
in Ukraine as a war or an invasion and mass arrests of protesters
have largely eliminated visible signs of dissent inside Russia
against the war. Large numbers of Russians opposed to the war
have chosen to be exiled.
The Kremlin has welcomed the departures of critics.
“Many people are showing themselves to be what we in Russia
like to call traitors,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said
in mid-March. “They disappear from our lives on their own. Some
resign from their jobs, some withdraw from their professional
lives, and some leave the country and move to other places.
That’s how Russia is cleansed.”
The Kremlin can count on the support of many Russians. Putin’s
approval rating rose to 83% at the end of March, from 71% a
few days before Russian troops moved into Ukraine, according to
independent Russian pollster Levada Center.
What began as a robust protest movement in Russia, with 1000s
of activists taking part in protests or handing out antiwar
literature, has now faded. The last major antiwar rally was on
March 13, and the streets have been mostly quiet since. Small
protests broke out and around 200 protesters were detained in
several cities on Sunday after revelations emerged about potential
war crimes in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, according to the OVD-Info,
an independent rights group.
Over 15,000 antiwar protesters have been arrested since the
start of the invasion, OVD-Info said, and 900 of them have
received jail sentences averaging 10 days. Independent Russian
media has carried accounts of mistreatment of detainees and of
people who say they were fired from their jobs for speaking out.
“They’ve instilled strong fear in people,” Maria Kuznetsova, OVD-Info’s spokeswoman, said.
Russia’s Interior Ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Authorities have launched 8 criminal cases under the new law
that forbids the use of the words war or invasion to describe
the conflict in Ukraine, said Damir Gainutdinov, head of the Net
Freedoms Project, a nonprofit rights group. Among those charged
include journalists, government employees, a style blogger and a
63-year-old pensioner living outside the Siberian city of Tomsk
with 170 followers on her Telegram channel.
Net Freedoms Project has also tracked over 200 cases of Russians charged—under an older law—with discrediting Russia’s armed forces,
a violation carrying a fine of up to 1 million rubles, equivalent
to almost $12,000. Repeat offenders risk landing in prison for up
to 3 years.
One 25-year-old woman said that when she was detained at a
Moscow police station after participating in an antiwar demo, a
police officer said he'd put her in a cell and allow other prisoners
to rape her. The Journal reviewed a copy of her arrest record.
A rep of the police station said he wasn’t authorized to comment.
The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, didn’t respond
to requests for comment.
“He said that we don't deserve to live in this country, that it’s
time for us to get out of here, that in Russia nothing will change,
Putin will always be in power, we are traitors,” the woman said.
She was one of 3,400 people across the country arrested on March 6
for protests, according to the Interior Ministry.
In Vladivostok, a port city on Russia’s Pacific coast, Anastasia
Kotlyar is scheduled to be tried by a court in mid-April on charges
of violating Russia’s protest laws and refusing to cooperate with
the police. She said she and her boyfriend plan to then leave the
country as soon as possible.
Kotlyar was arrested on March 13, according to a copy of police
records reviewed by the Journal. During her interrogation, she
said a police officer slammed her head on the table. She suffered
a concussion and spent six days at Vladivostok’s Clinical Hospital
No. 2, according to a copy of her med report reviewed by the Journal.
The report said Kotlyar was “injured while being detained.” Reached
by phone, the hospital confirmed that Kotlyar had been hospitalized
there. Vladivostok’s police department didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. The Interior Ministry didn’t respond to
requests for comment.
The 25-year-old activist, who helped Russian opposition leader
Alexei Navalny organize antigovernment rallies in her hometown
in recent years, said she has been fined and detained repeatedly
for violating Russia’s protest laws and thinks it is now too
dangerous for her to stay in the country.
Kamran Manafly, a 28-year-old teacher at Moscow’s School No. 498,
posted on Instagram that he would stand by his antiwar views after
his school instructed teachers to push the government line on the
war in Ukraine. “I don’t want to be a mirror of state propaganda,”
he wrote on March 8.
Two hours later, he got a call from the school’s director, Tamara Gorodzeyko, a Moscow city councilor, telling him to take the post
down or quit. He was fired three days later, according to a copy
of his dismissal letter reviewed by the Journal, for committing
an “immoral offense.”
Manafly, who's since left Russia, said that 2 years ago Gorodzeyko
told him she was proud of him for having gone to the U.S. to
apprentice at a school there.
“It was a different country. Now you feel it in the educational
system, in lessons. It’s becoming totalitarian,” Manafly said.
Moscow’s School no. 498 and Gorodzeyko didn’t respond to requests for comment.
There are other factors that explain why the protest movement
fizzled out. State control over the airwaves allowed the govt to
sell its narrative, which depicts the Russian military as liberating Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine from nationalists. Levada on
Thursday published a poll showing that 81% of Russians back the
military campaign, but it also found that 35% are paying
“practically no attention” to the war.
The govt also spent last year dismantling Russia’s already
embattled opposition. Authorities jailed Navalny for 3.5 years,
banned his organizations as “extremist,” and closed several other opposition networks. In late March, a court extended Navalny’s
prison sentence by another 9 years. All of his top lieutenants
have been jailed or have fled the country.
“Putin deliberately destroyed all structures that could have
built these kinds of collective actions. Now it’s clear he did
this because he was preparing for war,” said Greg Yudin, a
political scientist at the Moscow School of Social and
Economic Sciences.
Not all antiwar activists are fleeing.
Dmitry Ivanov, the activist who Teplyakov identified as helping
distribute antiwar stickers, said that while police officers
haven’t approached him he understands the risks of staying in
Russia. The 22-year-old student at Moscow State U. said the
letter Z—which in Russia has become a symbol of support of the
war—was recently spray painted on his front door. This claim
couldn’t be independently verified, but dozens of opposition-
minded people have reported similar acts of vandalism since
the start of the invasion.
Ivanov said he's focusing his efforts not on protesting but
on private conversations with friends, colleagues, relatives
and neighbors. He believes it will take time for real info
about the war to bubble to the surface, saying facts such as
the true fatality toll of Russia’s soldiers will become clear
only in coming months. While Russia has said 1,351 of its
soldiers have died in the fighting, the U.S. has estimated
that as many as up to 7,000 Russian troops have been killed.
“This is my motherland, my country. I live here. I'm a taxpayer,”
Ivanov said. “I don’t see a reason to hide and run away.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-will-kill-you-how-russia-silenced-its-antiwar-movement-11649237478
‘We Will Kill You’: How Russia Silenced Its Antiwar Movement
By Evan Gershkovich, Apr. 6, 2022
Alexander Teplyakov wanted to speak out against the war
in Ukraine but feared landing in prison if he took part in
a public protest. So the Russian activist designed an antiwar
sticker featuring Russian and Ukrainian flags and the phrase
“NO TO WAR” & posted & distributed thousands of them around Moscow.
He got into trouble anyway. Russian police hauled the 23-year-old
into the Presnensky district police station on March 1, according
to a copy of his police records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Teplyakov said he was repeatedly beaten over the head by one officer
while in custody. A second officer pressed a pistol to his leg and
coerced him into divulging the name of a fellow activist, he added.
“He starts screaming at me to start writing,” Teplyakov said in a
phone interview. He said the police officer threatened him, saying,
“We will kill you right now.”
Teplyakov was sentenced to 10 days in jail after being convicted
on a charge of disobeying the police, according to a copy of a
court ruling. He left for Tbilisi, Georgia, the day after he was
released from custody—joining tens of thousands of Russians who
have fled the crackdown on dissent and the fallout of economic
sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A new Russian law prohibiting referrals to the military campaign
in Ukraine as a war or an invasion and mass arrests of protesters
have largely eliminated visible signs of dissent inside Russia
against the war. Large numbers of Russians opposed to the war
have chosen to be exiled.
The Kremlin has welcomed the departures of critics.
“Many people are showing themselves to be what we in Russia
like to call traitors,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said
in mid-March. “They disappear from our lives on their own. Some
resign from their jobs, some withdraw from their professional
lives, and some leave the country and move to other places.
That’s how Russia is cleansed.”
The Kremlin can count on the support of many Russians. Putin’s
approval rating rose to 83% at the end of March, from 71% a
few days before Russian troops moved into Ukraine, according to
independent Russian pollster Levada Center.
What began as a robust protest movement in Russia, with 1000s
of activists taking part in protests or handing out antiwar
literature, has now faded. The last major antiwar rally was on
March 13, and the streets have been mostly quiet since. Small
protests broke out and around 200 protesters were detained in
several cities on Sunday after revelations emerged about potential
war crimes in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, according to the OVD-Info,
an independent rights group.
Over 15,000 antiwar protesters have been arrested since the
start of the invasion, OVD-Info said, and 900 of them have
received jail sentences averaging 10 days. Independent Russian
media has carried accounts of mistreatment of detainees and of
people who say they were fired from their jobs for speaking out.
“They’ve instilled strong fear in people,” Maria Kuznetsova, OVD-Info’s spokeswoman, said.
Russia’s Interior Ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Authorities have launched 8 criminal cases under the new law
that forbids the use of the words war or invasion to describe
the conflict in Ukraine, said Damir Gainutdinov, head of the Net
Freedoms Project, a nonprofit rights group. Among those charged
include journalists, government employees, a style blogger and a
63-year-old pensioner living outside the Siberian city of Tomsk
with 170 followers on her Telegram channel.
Net Freedoms Project has also tracked over 200 cases of Russians charged—under an older law—with discrediting Russia’s armed forces,
a violation carrying a fine of up to 1 million rubles, equivalent
to almost $12,000. Repeat offenders risk landing in prison for up
to 3 years.
One 25-year-old woman said that when she was detained at a
Moscow police station after participating in an antiwar demo, a
police officer said he'd put her in a cell and allow other prisoners
to rape her. The Journal reviewed a copy of her arrest record.
A rep of the police station said he wasn’t authorized to comment.
The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, didn’t respond
to requests for comment.
“He said that we don't deserve to live in this country, that it’s
time for us to get out of here, that in Russia nothing will change,
Putin will always be in power, we are traitors,” the woman said.
She was one of 3,400 people across the country arrested on March 6
for protests, according to the Interior Ministry.
In Vladivostok, a port city on Russia’s Pacific coast, Anastasia
Kotlyar is scheduled to be tried by a court in mid-April on charges
of violating Russia’s protest laws and refusing to cooperate with
the police. She said she and her boyfriend plan to then leave the
country as soon as possible.
Kotlyar was arrested on March 13, according to a copy of police
records reviewed by the Journal. During her interrogation, she
said a police officer slammed her head on the table. She suffered
a concussion and spent six days at Vladivostok’s Clinical Hospital
No. 2, according to a copy of her med report reviewed by the Journal.
The report said Kotlyar was “injured while being detained.” Reached
by phone, the hospital confirmed that Kotlyar had been hospitalized
there. Vladivostok’s police department didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. The Interior Ministry didn’t respond to
requests for comment.
The 25-year-old activist, who helped Russian opposition leader
Alexei Navalny organize antigovernment rallies in her hometown
in recent years, said she has been fined and detained repeatedly
for violating Russia’s protest laws and thinks it is now too
dangerous for her to stay in the country.
Kamran Manafly, a 28-year-old teacher at Moscow’s School No. 498,
posted on Instagram that he would stand by his antiwar views after
his school instructed teachers to push the government line on the
war in Ukraine. “I don’t want to be a mirror of state propaganda,”
he wrote on March 8.
Two hours later, he got a call from the school’s director, Tamara Gorodzeyko, a Moscow city councilor, telling him to take the post
down or quit. He was fired three days later, according to a copy
of his dismissal letter reviewed by the Journal, for committing
an “immoral offense.”
Manafly, who's since left Russia, said that 2 years ago Gorodzeyko
told him she was proud of him for having gone to the U.S. to
apprentice at a school there.
“It was a different country. Now you feel it in the educational
system, in lessons. It’s becoming totalitarian,” Manafly said.
Moscow’s School no. 498 and Gorodzeyko didn’t respond to requests for comment.
There are other factors that explain why the protest movement
fizzled out. State control over the airwaves allowed the govt to
sell its narrative, which depicts the Russian military as liberating Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine from nationalists. Levada on
Thursday published a poll showing that 81% of Russians back the
military campaign, but it also found that 35% are paying
“practically no attention” to the war.
The govt also spent last year dismantling Russia’s already
embattled opposition. Authorities jailed Navalny for 3.5 years,
banned his organizations as “extremist,” and closed several other opposition networks. In late March, a court extended Navalny’s
prison sentence by another 9 years. All of his top lieutenants
have been jailed or have fled the country.
“Putin deliberately destroyed all structures that could have
built these kinds of collective actions. Now it’s clear he did
this because he was preparing for war,” said Greg Yudin, a
political scientist at the Moscow School of Social and
Economic Sciences.
Not all antiwar activists are fleeing.
Dmitry Ivanov, the activist who Teplyakov identified as helping
distribute antiwar stickers, said that while police officers
haven’t approached him he understands the risks of staying in
Russia. The 22-year-old student at Moscow State U. said the
letter Z—which in Russia has become a symbol of support of the
war—was recently spray painted on his front door. This claim
couldn’t be independently verified, but dozens of opposition-
minded people have reported similar acts of vandalism since
the start of the invasion.
Ivanov said he's focusing his efforts not on protesting but
on private conversations with friends, colleagues, relatives
and neighbors. He believes it will take time for real info
about the war to bubble to the surface, saying facts such as
the true fatality toll of Russia’s soldiers will become clear
only in coming months. While Russia has said 1,351 of its
soldiers have died in the fighting, the U.S. has estimated
that as many as up to 7,000 Russian troops have been killed.
“This is my motherland, my country. I live here. I'm a taxpayer,”
Ivanov said. “I don’t see a reason to hide and run away.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-will-kill-you-how-russia-silenced-its-antiwar-movement-11649237478
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