The Morning After

In the news...opposition leaders are called in for interrogation after raids on their homes and offices, while the head of the Investigative Committee threatens a journalist.

To those commentators who have been talking about Putin 2.0 and looking forward to the Russian President’s renewed approach to power, the events in Moscow over the last few days must come as an unpleasant set back. To me, they come as an expected shock, but a shock nonetheless. The raids against the opposition leaders conducted on Monday before the rally scheduled for Russia’s Independence Day on June 12^th is, unfortunately, only part of the story. The scandal involving Novaya Gazeta’s Sergei Sokolov and the head of the Russian Investigative Committee Aleksandr Bystirkin exposes a much more sinister side of power in the country, in which free press is not only under pressure, but direct attack.

Today, the editor-in-chief of Novaya, Dmitri Muratov, published an open letter to Bystirkin, calling for guarantees of safety for his staff, following the publication by lifenews.ru website of the conversation between Sokolov and Bystirkin that allegedly took place on June 4 this year. In this short excerpt recoded by the journalist, he begins with an apology for his emotional accusation of Bystirkin’s patronage of a man responsible for destroying evidence concerning the deaths of twelve members of a criminal gang in November 2010. Instead of a two year sentence, the ex United Russia deputy was fined 150,000 roubles. According to Muratov, on a way back from a trip, Sokolov was driven to a forest, Bystirkin appearing shortly. The head of the IC dismissed the security officers and took Sokolov into the woods, expressing his dissatisfaction with Novaya Gazeta, including the activities of the murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya. (Her own experience in Chechnya, when she was abducted by the Russian Federal Forces, driven to a secluded spot and put through a mock execution for her critical coverage of the Russian crimes against the Chechen population is well known. Her actual murder remains unsolved.) Bystirkin is heard saying that such accusations of affiliation with the mafia caused in the good old days. He then, allegedly, threatened not only Sokolov, but also his family, if the paper refused to publish a redress. Careful not to make a bad situation worse, Muratov claims that he believes that this was merely an emotional breakdown on the part of the official, and would like an apology so that both sides can get over the heated argument without any tragic consequences. Meanwhile, Sokolov and his family had left Russia, fearing for their safety.

Now, today is not 1993, and this is not some distant province of Russia. Aside of being the head of the Investigative Committee, Bystirkin holds a doctorate in law, and is a university professor with many distinguished publications to his name. He is a colonel- general of the judiciary, decorated with two state medals. He also studied with Putin. The corruption and crime in the law enforcement forces is nothing new – it even makes it on the pro-government Channel One news. But if this man, who is responsible for the highest law authority in the country, has the power to threaten an opponent, and then suggest, only half jokingly, that he himself will be in charge of the murder case, crosses all boundaries. No, let me correct myself: there is no more visible legal boundaries remaining. Amen. Suffices to say that today, five Echo Moscow journalists were detained outside the offices of the Investigative Committee before they even began the protest in support of Novaya’s position. They were sitting on the pavement, writing on the banners they brought alone, when they were led away by the police. Luckily, all five were released without charge. So far.

The situation surrounding the opposition figureheads has received coverage in the West, even provoking censure from the US State Department and the European Union. Here is why: on Monday morning the blogger Alexei Navalny and Ksenia Sobchak – an infamous It-girl turned avid anti-government protestor awoke to the sound of armed men knocking down their doors. Navalny wrote today that all electronic equipment was taken from his flat, including his children’s’ photo cameras and some old pagers he hadn’t used since 1994 and kept as a souvenir. The search continued the next day after Navalny spent six hours answering questions at the, you guessed it, Investigative Committee offices, in his RosPil office, which has been sealed until further notice. The blogger claims that his apartment door has been practically sawed in two. 

It probably doesn’t help his case that today, Navalny filed a formal complaint with the European Court of Justice regarding claim of 5.4 billion roubles government theft investigated by his team. In 2010, European Parliament agreed on sanctions that prohibited travel for Russian officials that were listed in the so-called Magnitsy File. (If you remember, the lawyer who alleged tax-fraud sanctioned by numerous Russian officials in 2007, died in police custody just days before the one year limit he could be held without trial expired.) In October 2011, a Moscow court ordered Navalny to pay 100,000 roubles to Vladelen Stepanov and his wife, both mentioned in the Magnitsky list, and to retract the video posted on the RosPil website with details of their crimes. Navalny’s countersuit was declined in December 2011. So this is his next step. Brave? I think so.

The situation with Ksenia would have been amusing, given her celebrity status, had it not had such sinister possible consequences. The ‘Russian Paris Hilton’ has been active in the Millions March movement that started in December, and apparently the search in her apartment was provoked by the fact that another opposition figure, Ilya Yashin, suspected of organising mass protests under Article 212 of the Russian Federal Law (maximum sentence of ten years, nonetheless), is living on the premises. The TV-presenter, still in her nightdress, watched fifteen armed men ransack her home. But what was aimed as an act of intimidation turned nasty when over a million Euros were found stuffed into 100 separate envelopes in the safe. Unable to produce a viable explanation for where she has gotten all this money from – her lawyer was not allowed onto the premises – Sobchak now faces an unfavourable scenario: either the money is hers – after all, her deceased father, Anatoly Sobchak, the powerful mayor of St. Petersburg who took Putin under his wing in the 1990s, was a very wealthy man. But tax evasion is prosecuted in Russia when needs be, and a criminal sentence can be brought if the offender refuses to pay the fine. What is worse, given the way the money was distributed, is that it could have been indeed meant as sponsorship of the protests, which would make her liable under Article 212. Ksenia has already been dismissed as a host for a popular MTV-style show the previous month, as she claims, for her political activity. Now, she has spent hours answering 56 questions along with Yashin and Navalny and the IC, her passport confiscated. And this is Putin’s goddaughter – keep that in mind.

The protests went on without them, regardless. Thousands of people came out into the streets of Moscow – as the political analyst Gleb Pavlovky thinks, at least 15-20% spurred by the raids against the opposition leaders. There were no clashes, and the dreaded OMON kept its distance, and even, according to a Moskovky Komsomolets journalist, was even polite. The mood in the crows was perceptively different from the previous ‘walks’ – more tense, more political. Sergei Udaltsov, who refused to show up for interrogation scheduled an hour before the start of the rallies, unveiled a united opposition Manifesto, in which he called again for the release of political prisoners, concrete political reform, parliamentary and presidential re-elections, adding that ‘Russia will be free!’ to mass cheers. Boris Nemtsov, writing in his blog, said that he could not have imagined that 22 years after he helped vote Russia’s Declaration of Independence into law, he would witness a search in his home and offices. Udaltsov eventually left to be interrogated, and his parents’ flat was searched, along with Navalny’s in-laws home, where his wife’s 85 year-old grandmother was frightened into a stutter by threats to break down the door she refused to open to strangers.

The acute feeling of a bad hangover one gets reading these stories is only part of this narrative. The excitement the country felt when Putin replaced the ever-drunk, slurring Boris Yeltsin is long over and there are no idealistic illusions left. But this arrogance, this disrespect for the Russian people is a hefty mistake. If the Tandem had listened to the opposition from the start, maybe showed some even pretend interest in their claims, maybe this storm would have blown over. But now, with such direct aggression and shameless, personal abuse of power, the people are getting angry. Parallels to Stalin’s 1937 purges are trending all over the internet. And the story where a corrupt government violates basic human rights – to freedom of expression, to a decent education, to minimum wages, to affordable healthcare, to a fair justice system and an ability to choose leaders – rarely ends well. For everybody.