How Russian laws smother dissent

Dissent is not tolerated in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

For years Kremlin critics have faced a host of laws which could be used against them, and since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that toolbox of measures has swelled in size.

The laws target basic rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly – even though they are enshrined in Russia’s constitution.

The repressive nature of the punishments, often disproportionate to the offence, harks back to the methods of the old Soviet Union.

The law used most widely against critics of the war in Ukraine is the criminal offence of spreading “deliberately false information” about the Russian army.

It was rushed through parliament shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was “urgently needed because of the absolutely unprecedented information war waged against our country”.

According to prominent Russian human rights group OVD-Info, more than 300 people have since been charged or convicted under it.

Even though the law mentions “false” information, it has been used against people who highlight crimes that are well-documented but denied by Russia.

Ilya Yashin is one of the most high-profile critics of the war to be convicted under this law. The former head of a Moscow disctrict council was given eight and half years in jail for a live stream on YouTube in which he urged an investigation into the murder of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.

In April 2023, prominent opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in jail on charges of treason and spreading “false information” about the Russian army.

His case was partly based on a speech in which he accused Russian troops in Ukraine of committing war crimes by using cluster bombs in residential areas and bombing maternity hospitals and schools.

The law has also been applied to Russians with far smaller public profiles.

Russian-language tutor Raisa Boldova, 61, was handed a suspended one-year community service sentence for posting critical comments about attacks on civilians in Ukraine, including the bombing of the Mariupol maternity hospital.

In an echo of a chilling Soviet practice of confining dissidents to mental hospitals, the court also ordered her to undergo a compulsory psychiatric evaluation.

Another recent law penalises “discrediting” the Russian army, and it has been applied to a broad variety of actions interpreted either as support for Ukraine or criticism of the war.

These include:

• Wearing clothes in the blue-and-yellow colours of the Ukrainian flag
• Writing anti-war slogans on cakes, as did pastry chef Anastasia Chernysheva
• Dyeing one’s hair blue-and-yellow or listening to Ukrainian music
• Displaying anti-war posters with messages ranging from “No War” to eight asterisks – the number of Russian letters that spell “No War” – or even just a blank sheet of paper.

A village priest in Kostroma region was fined for discrediting Russia’s armed forces after praying for peace and mentioning the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”.

Russia’s “foreign agents” law allows restrictions to be imposed on critics without convicting them of any wrongdoing.

Individuals or organisations that have criticised or scrutinised government policies are targeted if they are deemed to have received money from abroad – even from a relative – or merely to be under “foreign influence”.

The label has to be attached to all public communications, a practice designed to undermine trust in them and one that resembles the Soviet practice of branding dissidents “enemies of the people”.

Among Russia’s “foreign agents” are election monitor Golos, prominent pollster Levada Centre, rights group OVD-Info, a movement of wives of mobilised soldiers called The Way Home and numerous independent news websites and journalists including Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov.

Books written by so-called foreign agents have started to disappear from shops and libraries.

A “foreign agent” label can make life difficult – but being declared “undesirable” amounts to an outright ban.

All manner of organisations have been banned from Russia in this way – from the NGO Greenpeace to London-based think-tank Chatham House, as well as a number of key Russian media outlets.

Late opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation was disbanded after being declared “extremist” – another label used to effectively erase individuals and organisations from public life.

Navalny himself was handed a lengthy prison sentence and died in jail in February 2024. His widow says he was killed by President Putin. Several of Navalny’s lawyers were themselves arrested on charges of extremism.

In Russia, anyone who wishes to hold a demonstration needs permission from the authorities. If the rally is critical of the government, that is practically impossible.

“One-person pickets” are allowed, but many are regularly shut down – ostensibly because of Covid restrictions.

One man was fined for wearing blue-and-yellow shoes – seen as a violation of laws regulating political demonstrations. And a journalist from Vologda Region, Antonida Smolina, was visited by police after someone complained about photographs she had posted online showing her posing in a yellow coat against a blue sky.

Other actions outlawed in Russia include “disrespect” for the authorities and calls for sanctions to be imposed on the country.

According to Natalia Prilutskaya of Amnesty International, the Kremlin uses laws to “legitimise repression”, partly by exploiting the vague wording of some Russian laws.

“This vagueness allows law enforcement structures to qualify basically any activity as a forbidden activity, or at least it makes it easier,” Ms Prilutskaya told the BBC.

Dmitrii Anisimov, spokesman for Russian human rights group OVD-Info, argues that laws are a particularly important for the Kremlin because of the way Russia’s security apparatus functions.

“The Russian security community is fairly bureaucratic and it needs legal norms for their actions,” he said. Legislation used by the security services had been “deliberately designed in a way that makes their application simple and widespread”, he added.

Ms Prilutskaya says it all adds up to a general climate of repression, which she blames on President Vladimir Putin.

“The ambitions of one person have brought Russia to the edge of a really deep abyss,” she said.