Russia’s police state showed its real face in latest protest crackdown

Police in St Petersburg during a pro-Navalny rally. Despite the peaceful nature of the rallies, numerous episodes of unjustified police violence, brutality and even torture were registered. Photo: Sofia Ivanova (pseud.)

Gliuz, who is affected by a severe eye disease, was kept for 13 hours in a St Petersburg police station, despite the fact that, according to Russian law, people with disabilities cannot be detained for more than three hours. “I have always been opposing the arbitrariness of law enforcement and what happened that day reinforced my conviction even more,” Gliuz says.

Navalny as the catalyst of the protests

The arrest of Russia’s main opposition leader, and his two years and eight months sentence in a penal colony, were accompanied by the largest nationwide protests in Russia for a decade. Despite the largely peaceful nature of the rallies, the authorities did not hesitate to unleash an unprecedented wave of repressive measures, thus sending a clear message: there can be no dialogue with Navalny’s movement. In the last few years, the anti-corruption activist emerged as the informal leader of Russia’s non-systemic opposition – a term that indicates oppositional forces that operate outside the official political establishment, largely subservient to the Kremlin.

Last summer, Navalny’s popularity received a boost after he survived a poisoning attempt, which the activist blames on the FSB, Russia’s security services. After a period of recovery in Germany, Navalny flew back to Moscow where he was immediately detained at the airport. The Russian authorities accused him of violating a 2014 suspended sentence for fraud, which the European Court of Human Rights had previously defined as politically motivated. Following Navalny’s arrest, his team released a bombshell video about a lavish palace allegedly belonging to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, which racked up 120 million views over a few weeks.

As a result of these events, tens of thousands of people took the street of Moscow and St. Petersburg. This time, large numbers even gathered in the usually more passive Russian province. While Navalny was the catalyst of the protests, the majority took to the street against political prosecution and government corruption. “I do not really sympathize with Navalny as a politician, but I can say that I support him as a person who is a victim of injustice”, said Gliuz.

The Empire strikes back

Ahead of the protests, authorities already declared them to be unlawful, and prepared to respond by flooding the streets with riot police. The main city centres of Moscow and St Petersburg were shut down. Armoured vehicles blocked the main streets and several metro stations were closed for “technical reasons”.

“The main goal of such a deployment of forces was clearly to intimidate people, dissuading them from taking the streets,” notes Kirill Shamiev, a PhD candidate at the Central European University, specialising in Russia’s civil-military relations. The crackdown was the harshest Russia has witnessed over the last decade. According to the independent monitoring organisation OVD-info, around 11,000 people were detained across the country in two consecutive weekends of protests. Despite the peaceful nature of the rallies, numerous episodes of unjustified police violence, brutality and even torture were registered.

According to Tatyana Stanovaya, founder of the political analysis firm R. Politik, the authorities’ reaction indicates that Navalny’s movement in Russia is being de facto outlawed. “Russia’s security apparatus was given carte-blanche to deal with Navalny’s movement as a threat to national security,” she says. That, according to Stanovaya, would support allegations of the FSB’s involvement in Navalny’s poisoning last August.

Yet, riot police did not just target Navalny’s supporters and other protesters. Numerous journalists covering the events and random bystanders were also detained. In the aftermath of the protests, hundreds of citizens were locked up in overcrowded police stations, often in reportedly degrading conditions. Pre-emptive measures were also deployed to stifle the protests and dissuade citizens from participating in future ones. The coordinators of the rallies were targeted with pre-emptive detentions, searches and interrogations. Reports came out on how Russian universities forbid students from participating in the rallies by threatening them with expulsion.

Russia’s state TV channels unleashed an impressive information campaign ahead of the protests, framing them as illegal riots, emphasising the potential danger posed to minors and the potential career risks for young people participating in them. According to the state TV narrative, the rallies were organised by western intelligence agencies supporting Navalny in order to destabilise Russia.

The politicisation of the rule-of-law

The authorities’ most effective tool to counter the protests, however, was the judicial system, which, according to critics of the regime, have become increasingly politicised. In the aftermath of the rallies, around 9,000 administrative cases and 90 criminal cases were opened all over Russia. Most of them involved charges of extremism, hooliganism and violation of COVID-19 restrictions. As reported by OVD-info, evidence of police brutality did not result in any charge against the officers involved. The organisers of the protests were the ones hit the hardest: Navalny’s top aid, Lyubov Sobol, was sentenced to house arrest for violating COVID-19 rules, while an arrest order was issued against Navalny’s chief of staff, Leonid Volkov, who now lives in exile in the European Union. Volkov was accused of inciting minors to take part in illegal protests.

At times these cases were based on ridiculously absurd charges. Sergey Smirnov, editor in chief of news website Mediazona, for example, was sentenced to 25 days of administrative arrest (later reduced to 15 days) for sharing a tweet that showed the time and date of a rally in support of Navalny. “When the interests of the state are at stake, the court’s decisions do not depend on the rule of law, as it should be, but rather on the signals coming from the presidential administration,” says Ivan Pavlov, a lawyer and leader of Team 29, a human rights organisation. “The authorities are still using old Soviet methods, intimidating people with criminal cases and administrative arrests,” he adds.

The formal reason given by authorities to justify the mass arrests was that rally organisers failed to obtain the necessary permission and for violating COVID-19 restrictions on mass gatherings. However, Russian authorities’ record of arbitrarily denying these permits to the anti-systemic opposition stretches back well before the pandemic emerged.

“Authorities always find some excuse for denying us the permission to conduct meetings in public spaces,” Irina Fatyanova tells me. She is the coordinator of Navalny’s headquarter in St. Petersburg.

 In recent months, the Russian parliament has been increasingly approving a number of measures which critics see as intentionally designed to stifle mass protests. One approved in December makes blocking street traffic a criminal offense, punishable with imprisonment for up to a year. Following the protests, Putin signed a new law that significantly increased punishment for disobeying security officials.

Is there a new hope for Navalny’s opposition?

The harsh crackdown of protests has had the desired effect: Navalny’s allies were forced to put their protests on hold. “Intimidation tends to work and people now stay at home because they do not want to get hit with batons,” Stanovaya says. “The government showed that force is on its side.”

Sources closed to the Kremlin revealed to Reuters that the Kremlin is ready to deploy even more force against protesters if deemed necessary. Nevertheless, Navalny’s allies evaluate the protests as “a success” and the unprecedented deployment of security forces as the sign of the regime’s weakness. “It is clear to me that authorities are scared,” Fatyanova tells me. She is convinced that the police brutality will motivate more people in the future to join Navalny’s cause.

The movement is now preparing for the State Duma elections which will take place in the autumn. “By making sure that real opposition candidates will make it into the Duma, we can stop more repressive laws to be adopted,” Fatyanova adds. “And if the voting will be falsified, even more people will take the streets,” she concludes.

According to political scientist Margarita Zavadskaya, the more the regime depends on the loyalty of the law enforcement apparatus, the more difficult it is to scale down repressions. “The regime itself becomes hostage of this repressive loop in which increasing resources are directed to fund the security apparatus,” she says.

However, thinking that Putin’s legitimacy is solely based on the loyalty of the law enforcement apparatus would be a mistake. Despite a decade of falling living standards and a stagnating economy, the Russian president can still count on a solid 64 per cent approval rating, according to independent pollster Levada Center. On the other hand, only five per cent of the public trusts Navalny as a politician; and only 22 per cent of Russians approve the protests. “For now, the popular support for the non-systemic opposition is too small,” Stanovaya says.

As noted by Zavadskaya, Putin’s Russia, compared to most other authoritarian regimes, is relatively wealthy. When we also factor in the loyalty of the security apparatus and political elite, Putin is likely to stay in power for the foreseeable future. “Unfortunately, this type of regime tends to enjoy significant longevity,” Zavadskaya concludes.

Giovanni Pigni is an Italian freelance journalist focused on politics and conflicts in the post-Soviet space.

Alexei Navalny, Russia protests, Russian politics, St. Petersburg