– Murdered –
A former deputy prime minister, Boris Nemtsov became a leading critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the 2000s.
The politician opposed Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and the Kremlin’s military support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Nemtsov was assassinated in February 2015 near the Kremlin. He was 55 years old.
His supporters accused Chechen leader Ramzan Kadirov of ordering the assassination, though he denies it. Five Chechens were convicted of the murder.
Four years earlier, in October 2006, another opponent of President Putin and Kadirov was assassinated. This is Anna Politkovskaya, shot down at the entrance to her building in Moscow.
The journalist from Novaya Gazeta, the country’s main independent media, documented and denounced the crimes of the Russian army in Chechnya for years.
– Arrested –
Alexei Navalni, a 46-year-old anti-corruption activist, was poisoned in 2020 in Siberia, which he blamed on the Kremlin. The Russian authorities deny any responsibility.
He was hospitalized in Germany and detained when he returned to Russia in January 2021. Navalni has been serving a nine-year prison sentence since March on fraud charges.
The opponent continues to denounce the Kremlin and described the attack in Ukraine as a “tragedy” and a “crime against humanity”.
Another imprisoned opponent, Vladimir Kara-Murza, 41, claims to have survived two poisonings due to his political activities.
He was arrested in April and accused of spreading “false information” about the Russian army. He was also accused of “high treason”, a crime punishable by 20 years in prison.
Another influential critic, Yevgeny Roizman, 60, a former mayor of Yekaterinburg, was arrested in August. Authorities accuse him of “discrediting” the army, although he has been released pending trial. He faces three years in jail.
– Exiles –
Most of the opponents who remained in Russia are in jail. The others fled the country.
One of them is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oil magnate who spent ten years behind bars in the early 2000s. Since his release in 2013, he has lived in London, where he finances opposition platforms.
Many Khodorkovsky supporters left Russia in 2021 as the crackdown intensified. The offensive in Ukraine the following year also multiplied the departure of opponents from the country.
– “Foreign agents” –
In recent years, dozens of media outlets, NGOs, journalists, activists, or artists have been declared “foreign agents.”
The status must appear systematically mentioned in all publications, under pain of sanctions.
The NGO Memorial, a pillar of human rights and co-awarded in October with the Nobel Peace Prize, was dissolved by the Russian authorities for violating this controversial law. The decision sparked a spate of convictions.
