Russia's anti-war people still defiant

On Friday 4 March, Russia introduced a new law was introduced allowing up to 15 years of imprisonment for promoting “fake” messaging about Ukraine — including on placards, making public protesting potentially much riskier. Yet Sunday 6 March saw large protests across the country, and social media channels (for those still able to access them) were flooded with images and videos of tasered bodies, protestors packed into riot vans like sardines, and one particularly shocking recording of a young woman being beaten by a police officer in Moscow for refusing to cooperate during her interrogation.

In Solidarity 626, I reported an OVDinfo statistic that over 5,000 people had been arrested since 24 February in connection with anti-war protests. A week later, that same figure is now over 13,000. The silver lining is that, for the time being, the Russian people do not appear to be bending under the considerable strain of police violence and state repression. The protests continue en masse, and the Russian anti-war movement remains an incredibly impressive force, both in its support for the Ukrainian people, and its hatred for the absurd violence and naked imperialism of the Russian president.

The Russian government has stepped up its repressive measures against the infrastructure of the country’s liberal opposition and independent press, too.

On 28 February, Memorial International, an NGO dedicated to cataloguing and preserving records of repression and mistreatment in the USSR, was formally liquidated by the Supreme Court after a denied appeal. On 3 March, Memorial’s now-defunct offices were searched by law enforcement officials for eleven hours. After the mass-designation of “foreign agents” over the last year, Putin’s government seems ready to take more concrete action to quash dissent — all it needed was a plausible excuse to begin.

Early March has seen a media crackdown unlike anything in recent memory, which has focused primarily on the internet as a means of accessing information on Ukraine and the protest movement. The government blocked the websites of over twenty independent news sources for their “fake” (accurate) reporting on the “special operation” (war) in Ukraine. Two of the sites, Dozhd (which also runs a major TV channel) and Znak.com, have decided to stop their work altogether.

Most of the journalists from these sites, fearing the increasing risk of staying in the country and continuing their work, have either already left Russia or are busy making arrangements to leave. The social media sites Facebook, Twitter and TikTok, as well as the Apple and Google app stores, have also now been blocked within Russian territory. The majority of the blocked sites are still operational, and accessible through the use of a VPN, but a large portion of the population will lack either the technological know-how or the willpower to go through a lengthy installation process, and instead they will be left at the mercy of the state-approved narrative.

Alexey Navalny, the figurehead for Russia’s last wave of protests in summer 2020, has utilised his ongoing trial as a means to agitate. Navalny noted in the courtroom that the new laws against organising protests could only result in a prison sentence — a fairly tame threat for a man serving an effective life sentence already. He encouraged Russian people to protest against the invasion on every weekday at 7pm, and at 2pm on weekends, in the main square of their respective cities. Vague and unorganised calls to protest are not ideal, but for the most part people still seem to have found means of gathering and arranging large numbers to protest.