Russian President Vladimir Putin will obtain, barring an enormous shock, un new six-year time period within the presidential elections which will probably be held from March 15 to 17.
As common, the election will probably be held with out actual opposition from Putin's potential rivals suffered dying, imprisonment or exilelike Alexéi Navalni, who died in mid-February in a jail.
Under is the scenario of the principle Russian opponents.
Alexei Navalny
A number one critic of Vladimir Putin for greater than a decade, Alexei Navalny was harassed, poisoned and imprisoned. He lastly died on February 16, aged 47, in an Arctic penal colony, the place he was serving a 19-year sentence for “extremism”.
His supporters and lots of Western leaders blamed Putin for his dying, which some known as an “assassination” after three years in jail.
A former Moscow lawyer, this anti-corruption activist suffered a extreme poisoning in 2020, which he blamed on the Kremlin. When he returned to Russia in January 2021, after recovering in Germany, he was instantly banned.
His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, who lives in exile overseas, vowed to proceed her husband's combat and known as on Russians to “unite” in opposition to Putin.
Boris Nemtsov
Former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov turned one in every of Putin's main critics within the 2000s. Lower than a 12 months after opposing the annexation of Crimea, Nemtsov was killed in February 2015 with 4 bullets in his again on a bridge a couple of meters from the Kremlin. He was 55 years previous.
His supporters accuse Chechen chief Ramzan Kadyrov of giving the order, which he denies.
5 Chechens have been convicted for this homicide, with out the perpetrator being formally recognized.
Ten years in the past, in October 2006, journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered within the foyer of her constructing in Moscow. A member of the editorial workers of Novaya Gazeta, the nation's main impartial media outlet, he had been documenting and denouncing Russian navy crimes in Chechnya for years.
Oleg Orlov
Different opponents have been jailed, reminiscent of Oleg Orlov, a determine within the protection of human rights and the emblematic NGO Memorial, sentenced in late February to 2 and a half years in jail for condemning the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
Vladimir Kara Murza
Vladimir Kara Murza, 42, a veteran opposition determine, claims to have survived two poisonings. In April 2023, he was sentenced to 25 years in jail in a closed-door trial for spreading “false data” concerning the Russian navy.
He’s serving his sentence in Siberia.
Ilya Iachin
That very same month, Ilia Iachin, 39, was sentenced on attraction to eight and a half years in jail for reporting on the “killing of civilians” within the Ukrainian city of Bucha, close to Kiev, the place the Russian navy was accused of atrocities. which Moscow denies.
Igor Guirkin
Opposition nationalist Igor Guirkine, 53, a former pro-Russian separatist commander in jap Ukraine who turned a critic of Russian authorities, was sentenced in January to 4 years in jail.
Two shut mates of Navalny, Lilia Chanicheva and Ksenia Fadeieva, are serving jail sentences for “extremism”.
Different circumstances
In response to the NGO Memorial, there are at present greater than 250 “political prisoners” in Russia.
A lot of the important opponents who stay in Russia are imprisoned. Others fled or went into exile, like former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, included on March 6, 2024 within the checklist of “terrorists and extremists”.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oil tycoon, spent ten years in jail for opposing Putin within the early 2000s.
After his launch in 2013, the previous oligarch settled in London, from the place he funds opposition platforms.
A lot of Navalny's supporters have left Russia lately, pushed by a pointy acceleration of repression because the February 2022 offensive in Ukraine.
Russia can be growing stress on exiled dissidents. In February, an investigation was opened in Russia in opposition to the author Boris Akunin, exiled in London since 2014, for “spreading false data” concerning the military and “calling for terrorism”.
One other punishment in opposition to opponents is to designate them as “international brokers”.
That is what occurred in February with Oleg Orlov, ex-exiled Prime Minister Mikhail Kasianov and Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief Dmitri Muratov.
A pillar of human rights safety in Russia, the NGO Memorial, winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, was dissolved by Russian justice in late 2021 for violating the legislation on “international brokers”, which imposes strict obligations administrative.
Russian justice additionally ordered the dissolution of a number of associations with vital opinions such because the Sakharov Heart in August 2023 and earlier with the Moscow Helsinki Group and the Sova Heart.