As Vladimir Putin burns bridges and
makes his country increasingly
unpopular internationally over his instigation of war in
Ukraine, polls have shown that the Kremlin leader’s domestic
approval rating has climbed to a staggering 88 percent.
There’s been plenty of analysis of this surge noting Russians’
desire to return to the glory of the good ol’ Soviet days, but some
are skeptical and believe there are other reasons people are
ostensibly uncritical of their government. Perhaps the person who
understands this best is Russia’s most prominent libertarian
activist, journalist, and elected official, Vera Kichanova. (You
can read her
Reason interview here.) Yesterday, she penned an
article in Forbes
detailing the opposition and the chilling effects of the
government has on it:
Not all of us Russians believe Vladimir Putin’s propaganda
machine. While the Western media broadcasts images of pro-Kremlin
protesters supporting Russia’s military actions in Ukraine, rarely
are anti-war demonstrators like myself mentioned. In March, 50,000
of my fellow countrymen went out in the streets of Moscow, holding
Russian and Ukrainian flags side-by-side, in protest of our
government’s aggressive actions in Crimea.
Kichanova states that Putin does have support from many, but it
is generated by misinformation spread through Russia’s sizeable
state-owned media.
According to a new
law that Vladimir Putin has just signed, anti-war Russians
like myself risk receiving up to five years in prison for speaking
out about the innocent people being killed with our taxes.
Previously, participating in a non-permitted rally was an
administrative infraction. Now, if a protester is detained in a
demonstration for the second time, he or she becomes a criminal. I
myself have been arrested six times for peacefully protesting, once
as a reporter. I had all my documents with me, but the police
simply ignored the fact I was doing my job. With propaganda
gathering momentum and taking its terrible toll, opportunities for
real journalism are gradually disappearing as lies force out the
truth.
Indeed, a tragedy that’s being
widely overlooked by the West during the Ukrainian war is the
crackdown on Russia’s domestic political opposition. Russia, which
has already been ranked by Freedom House as “not
free” and has a notoriously high death rate among
journalists, recently introduced a law
requiring bloggers to register with the government and another
prohibiting
people from accessing the Internet anonymously. Earlier this month,
Russian prosecutors gave Slon, a news site for which
Kichanova writes, a 24-hour notice to remove one of her articles
about anti-Kremlin separatists in Siberia. One of the nation’s most
vocal anti-corruption advocates and politicians, Alexei Navanly
(whom I speculated could become “the Ron Paul of Russia” in
an article here), has also been
censored by the Putin regime. In the newly-Russian Crimea, the
native Tatars’ political leaders
have been exiled for spurious reasons.
For more Reason coverage of the conflict in Ukraine and
related issues, click
here.
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