The Daily - Inside Russia’s Crackdown on Dissent

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

Days after Russia invaded Ukraine, the Kremlin made it a crime to oppose the war in public. Since then, it has waged a relentless campaign of repression, putting Russian citizens in jail for offenses as small as holding a poster or sharing a news article on social media.Valerie Hopkins, an international correspondent for The Times, tells the story of Olesya Krivtsova, a 19-year-old student who faces up to 10 years in prison after posting on social media, and explains why the Russian government is so determined to silence those like her.Guest: Valerie Hopkins, an international correspondent for The New York Times, covering Russia and the war in Ukraine.Background reading: Oleysa’s story has underlined the perils of using social media to criticize the war in Ukraine.The authorities are determining who will take custody of a 13-year-old girl whose single father has been sentenced for “discrediting” the Russian Army.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. Days after Russia invaded Ukraine, the Kremlin made it a crime to oppose the war in public. And since then, it's waged a relentless campaign of repression, putting Russian citizens in jail for offenses as small as holding a poster or sharing a news article on social media. My colleague Valerie Hopkins has been reporting inside Russia on those who continue to speak out, despite the risks, and explains why their government is so determined to silence them. It's Tuesday, April 11th. Valerie, tell me about this reporting you've been doing about dissent in Russia. Well, as we've discussed before on the show, Sabrina, I've been trying to understand how Russians really view this war. We know there's a

sizable group that fully and completely support the war. And the images that we see quite often in the West and in Western media are of people enthusiastically supporting the war, clapping for Putin, waving flags at the rallies, and sending their boys off to fight with cheering. But actually, you know, being on the ground in Russia, you can slowly find a different picture emerging. And what is that picture? Traveling around Russia the past six months, I've been actually surprised by how many people tell me that they hate this war, including many who, once they find out I'm a foreigner, usually in hushed tones or quietly, tell me, like, they really want me to know that most people that they know don't support this war,

that not all Russians support this war, that they're ashamed and that they're really sad about what's going on, even if they feel powerless to do something about it. And actually, a recent poll even showed that 20 percent of Russians openly admit to opposing the war. But Valerie, how should we think about that number? You know, we're not seeing mass protests on the street. The Russian government doesn't really seem to be under that much public pressure to change course in its war in Ukraine. Right. It's a lot of people, but they're not exactly visible. And that's because since the very beginning of the war, the Kremlin has made it very, very dangerous to speak out.

As soon as the war started, the Kremlin immediately banned news that wasn't state-controlled. You could be arrested for saying the word war or holding it on a poster or writing it in an article. Instead, you're supposed to call it the quote-unquote special military operation. But it didn't stop there. There's been a year-long crackdown, and it feels like the stakes are constantly rising, and the circle of people being targeted is constantly widening. So for me, I've been really wanting to focus on this crackdown and the people who are being swept up in it. Because I actually think that if you look really closely,

it tells you something about the nature of the Kremlin's power in Russia. How much it fears that a small group of open dissenters has the potential to grow into a much, much bigger one. So let's talk about those people, Valerie. Who are these Russians who are voicing their opposition to the war despite these really dire repercussions? You know, these really dire repercussions? You know, they're actually all really different people. You might think there's like a profile, but there are sort of middle-aged guys in the provinces,

young, hip, highly educated college students. There's a lot. But one of the cases that really stuck out to me was a teenager named Olesya Krivtsova. She lives in a town outside of Archangelsk, very close to the Arctic Circle. And for our first interview, actually, a colleague of mine went and met her in her home on a windy day in February. I connected over a call on the messaging app Telegram. So, Alicia is 19. She's a student at University in Arkhangelsk, studying advertising and public relations.

I'm a vegan, I'm a feminist. She's a vegan and a feminist, and she's living like a pretty normal life of a young person in Russia at the beginning of 2022. She didn't really consider herself to be an activist. I got the sense that, like most university students, she's kind of finding herself and figuring out what she cares about. But when the war in Ukraine started, she thought it was so incredibly senseless that she had to speak out. Like many young Russians,

she talked to her family and friends about it, and most of them agreed with her that the war was wrong. And she starts doing some quiet acts of protest. A month into the war, she got this pretty intense tattoo of Vladimir Putin's face on the body of a spider with blood dripping down the fangs. Whoa. Yeah. It's on her leg and it has a caption that says, Big Brother's watching you. But at this point, she's not speaking out publicly, right?

No, no, you know, she has her social media channels, which she keeps private. But at a certain point, it became apparent for many Russians that this war was not going to end anytime soon. And last May, she actually decided to do something publicly for the first time. On May 9th, it's when Russia celebrates Victory Day, the end of World War II, and a really important time for Russia's national psyche. And probably one of the biggest national holidays in Russia. Right, the day that, in the Kremlin's telling, the Soviet Union saved the world from fascism. Right, Sabrina.

But this year, with a war going on in Ukraine, this year the holiday hit her differently. It made her so angry that Russians are celebrating peace while bombing people in Ukraine. So Alesia made some leaflets with her friends, and the message was, World War II veterans also live in Ukraine, and they are dying from shelling now. This war must end. So what happens? She and her friends make these leaflets. What do

they do? Well, she actually goes around the city putting them up in different houses and residential complexes. And then they all went home. But the next day, the authorities came to her apartment. They'd seen the license plate of the car that she and her friend were using as they drove around the city distributing these things. And who exactly came to her apartment? Like, was it the police? No, they were people from what's called the Center-E, the Russian Center for Combating Extremism,

what Alesia refers to as the political police. And she said they forced her to apologize personally to the armed forces of Russia on camera. They actually had a video camera with them that she had to talk on? Yes, and when I've seen them around Russia, they always have tiny little handheld cameras. And what happens to her? I mean, do they give her some kind of ticket or warning or something? So because this was her first offense, something that's known as административка in Russian, she was fined. But it will stay on her record. And basically that comes with a warning of if you do anything like this again, you will have a criminal

trial and the penalties are much higher and include prison time. So this is really, I mean, it's a first warning, but it's a very important first warning, right? Because if you do something a second time, you could face prison. Exactly.

And so naturally, she completely scales back her activity. She Exactly. And so naturally, she completely scales back her activity. She doesn't go to any protests or do anything else more publicly and limits herself to speaking out on Instagram occasionally and feels pretty safe doing that because her account's private. But as it turns out, even that was a step too far. And how exactly is posting a private message to Instagram a violation? Well, fast forward a few months to December 26. She stayed up all night preparing for finals. stayed up all night preparing for finals.

She finally goes to sleep around 7 a.m. Her mom leaves for work. And all of a sudden she hears a voice in her apartment. She thinks maybe it's her grandma checking on her. But it's not. It's actually the Russian authorities. A swarm of men yelling at Alessia to get down on the floor. And while she's face down,

she looks up and sees a man holding a sledgehammer above her head. A sledgehammer? Yes, her mind is racing. And she thinks they might actually kill her. But she started trying to think, and she thought, okay, maybe there's so many people here that wouldn't just kill me in my own home. And she realized that they were just trying to intimidate her.

They take her down to the station eventually, and that's when they tell her that she's being investigated, not only for discrediting the Russian armed forces, but also for justifying terrorism. Whoa, so what is that about? There was actually a group of Alesya's classmates who had been paying very close attention to what she was posting on Instagram

and actually had reported her to the authorities for some of her anti-war posts. Basically, a group of her friends had snitched on her. Yep. And, you know, there was one post in particular that they brought to the attention of the authorities. It was after the Ukrainians bombed a bridge connecting Russia with Crimea. And what she said was she understood why Ukrainians were rejoicing about it. It's really this post that becomes the center of the allegations against Alicia. And four of her classmates are the key witnesses in the prosecution's case against her,

in which she faces a prison sentence of up to 10 years. 10 years. Did you talk to the students who turned her in? Well, I tried to. There was this group chat in which some of the students were discussing whether or not they would denounce Alesia. And I actually saw some of the screenshots. And one of the students at one point during this debate says, denunciation is the duty of a patriot. Wow. And I actually got his phone number, and I tried to call him.

Hello? I'm listening. My name is Valeria. And he answered the phone, but as soon as I identified myself as a journalist and told him I was writing about this case, he hung up. But then I went to Alesya's university. I wanted to see what other students thought about this case. And I wanted to see, you know, what kind of effect it had on the campus.

So I went to the university with a photographer colleague and we split up. Good afternoon. Excuse me, are you a student here? And I started introducing myself to some students, and it was a little bit strange. Some people were just automatically hesitant to talk, but most people just kept saying they had no idea about the case, that they'd never heard of it, that they didn't know what I was talking about. And at first I thought, how do they not know? And I came away with the impression that on a campus of this size, it would be pretty impossible not to know about it. And that showed me the extent of the chilling effect that this had on the student body.

And then all of a sudden I got a message from my colleague who wrote to me that she saw someone following us, probably from the FSB, the Russian Intelligence and Security Agency. But someone following you? Yeah. I mean, this happens when you travel in the Russian regions, but it's always a bit nerve-wracking because you don't know what consequences it has on the people that you're talking to. I really want to make sure that no one I talk to gets harmed because they talk to me. they talked to me, so... Once I knew I was being followed,

I said goodbye and realized that my chances of getting more students to talk were pretty slim. But eventually, I was able to talk to the head of Olesya's department at the university. He's 42 years old and he's in favor of the government and in favor of the war. He actually wrote a negative character reference for the prosecution, even though Alessia said

she's never met him. Oh, wow. So he's part of the case, sort of, in a way. Yes. And what did he tell you? So I asked him what he thought about Alessia and what he thought of the case, especially, you know, at an academic institution where students should be free to debate things.

He said that he thought there should be limits to the kind of debate students could have. And mostly he described Alesia as having been ideologically hypnotized, meaning that like she had been exposed to too much dangerous sort of Western propaganda, films, movies. He actually said that in wartime, you know, soft power like that

can be weaponized and is dangerous and that Western culture should be restricted in Russia. So he was saying, basically, that Alesya had been brainwashed. Brainwashed by westernness.

Yeah. And he also said that the informers, you know, the students that turned her in, he referred to them as part of a healthy immune response to a wound or a disease in society.

He basically compared Alessia's public distaste for the war to a bacteria or an infection. an infection. And he said these students were part of the organism of a healthy immune system of a society that were actually, you know, making sure that the society didn't get more sick to prevent contagion. Exactly. He said the system worked exactly as it was supposed to.

We'll be right back. We'll be right back. So, Valerie, where did Alesia's case stand when you interviewed her back in February? When I first talked to her, she was under house arrest awaiting trial. She had to wear an ankle bracelet that tracked her location. It was right across on her other leg from her Putin tattoo. And she wasn't allowed to use any technology. So she felt super alone.

Actually, her mom was kind of her only lifeline to the world. And she said that, in general, she was really scared and that every night before she would go to bed, she and her mom would hug and say goodbye because they kind of never knew what would happen the next day. So she really could be taken away at any minute. Right. And I mean, she had to go to court hearings every month. And she was hoping that they would let her defend herself. But she knew that they could also just actually put her in jail immediately. So she kept a packed bag at all times that she would take.

And what are those court hearings like? Well, a few days after I talked to her the first time, I actually traveled to our hangout to attend one of those hearings because I thought it would be probably my only chance to really talk with Alesia in person and see her. my only chance to really talk with Alesia in person and see her. And we were brought into a pretty small courtroom, a big cage where the defendants normally sit,

takes up half the room. And Alesia was there, and, you know, seeing her really underscored to me how young she is. She's wearing a butterfly headband and, you know, a long skirt. She's quite petite. And we were waiting for the proceedings to start when something kind of unexpected happened. A Russian TV crew approached me and started asking me repeatedly, rapid fire, like, what was I doing there? Why was I interested in the case? What do you think about the war in Ukraine? Do you support Western weapons being used against Russian soldiers?

I was pretty shocked, I have to say, and I was stunned, and my heart was beating pretty fast. But I told them that I was just doing my job like they should be. Wait, were they there to cover the Alicia case, or were they there to talk to you? Like, why were they asking you these questions? I don't actually think they were there to cover Alicia's trial, because they didn't ask her any questions when she spoke to the press ahead of the trial, and they also left almost as soon as it started. Oh, wow. So it was kind of hard to tell what they were up to exactly,

but the hearing itself was relatively uneventful. And in the end, the judge decided to leave Alicia under house arrest. the judge decided to leave Alesia under house arrest. But then later that night, I realized why the television crew was interviewing me. The exchange I had with the Russian TV reporters was part of a segment on the local news about foreign interest in Olesya's case. Why is this your business? Olesya Krivtsova, journalist

Yes, it's my job. I'm just here like you. Thank you. That's all. So you were on television? Yes. And, you know, they presented us this like boring bog standard procedural case and not like a teenager on terrorism charges for an Instagram story on her private account.

Olesya Krebtsova, who is suspected of criminal crimes, was arrested. So at this point, your reporting on Olesya is really starting to come under the same kind of scrutiny as the dissent itself, right? Well, it's certainly coming under scrutiny. You know, it drove home to me the ideaent itself, right? Well, it's certainly coming under scrutiny. You know, it drove home to me the idea that actually, you know, the Kremlin is so focused on this, that it's not just the dissenters themselves, but also the people covering them and sending their message out into the world.

Because inside Russia right now, it's very hard to get information about these dissenters. right now, it's very hard to get information about these dissenters. And the international media are actually one of the few groups of people left able to report on it. So what's next for Alesia? When does she go to trial? Well, I stayed in touch quite frequently with her mom because Alesia is not allowed to use technology. And then all of a sudden, one day last month, her mother called to tell me that she had some pretty major news. Alesia had managed to escape Russia and made it to Vilnius, Lithuania. Wow. She was ecstatic.

And so when I was finally able to speak to Alesia directly a few days later from Lithuania, she told me a little bit about what happened. She said that there's this secret network of activists who help to spirit people out. It's really underground. She had to like completely disguise herself into a different person. She was wearing a man's like big, ugly coat. And there was a sort of hopeful tone to our call. You know, we were talking, she was actually walking around in Vilnius.

She was staying in like a group apartment where people were sleeping. And you could hear the birds chirping. Spring had arrived also for her. And she's walking around, taking in her surroundings and, you know, seeing just those Ukrainian flags hanging everywhere in Vilnius. And also LGBTQ rainbow flags. Very different from Russia. Yes, that's all banned in Russia. What did she tell you?

Like, why did she decide to leave? Well, she told me that at first she felt really determined to stay and fight. But she said she realized that at these court hearings that would essentially decide her entire future and her fate. Nobody was actually listening to her. Nobody was taking her seriously. She realized that nothing she could say would change anything. And she decided to leave because she became desperate. She said that she knew it would be really painful.

Her grandmother was old and sick, and she knew that by leaving, she actually might never see her again. And considering that Alessia is not going to spend the next 10 years in a Russian penal colony, she's got off pretty well, you know? But even a best-case scenario in this case means losing your home country, your home, your family, your mom, you know, the life you are building for yourself. But she also said that the real heroes are the someone who resisted, but who ultimately fled, right? But whether she goes to prison or flees the country, in both cases, it's ultimately a win for Putin.

Because it's one less voice of dissent. Like, he's trying to cleanse the country of anybody who has the potential for political opposition. What about the people Alessia's calling the real heroes, the people who don't escape and go to prison? What about them? The government has detained more than 20,000 Russians since the start of the war. And I've reported on a few of those cases. I remember one sentencing that I went to about a month ago that really stuck with me of a man named Dima or Dmitry Ivanov. On the surface, his case is a lot like Alesia's. He's also a student. He's 23. And his crime was actually reposting information from Western media about the killings in the Ukrainian cities of Bucha

and Mariupol. And, you know, Sabrina, it's actually really fascinating now that these trials for anti-war activists are one of the few places that like-minded people can actually gather in public and show their opposition to the war. So many people come in support. I think at Dima's sentencing, there was probably about 100 people. And they do this even though the court keeps track of who appears as a spectator. It's customary in a Russian courtroom for the accused to say a final word,

a statement, you know, before the sentencing. — He said, we can't stop the war right now, but that doesn't mean that we're powerless. I want each of you to think about what they can do personally. Our problem is our inability to take the initiative and find like-minded people. We're used to following leaders and waiting for orders. Don't wait. Act. Become volunteers.

Help refugees. Support political prisoners. Form horizontal ties. Meet your neighbors, colleagues, and classmates. Set common goals and achieve them together. Don't walk by when someone needs your help. We like to repeat the words, Russia will be free. But Russia, it's us. Then he continued, we like to repeat the words, Russia will be free, like a mantra. But Russia is us, and what it will be depends on us only. Russia will be free because we will make it that way.

And right after the speech, the judge delivered the sentence. Eight and a half years in prison. She asked him, do you understand the sentence? He said he did. And then the guards led him away. So Valerie, going back to the beginning of our conversation, you know, why the Kremlin is so afraid of resistors like Dima and Alesia, it's essentially because they're showing a path forward for Russians who disagree with the war, but until now have been too afraid to act on that. Like that 20% we were talking about. Dima is essentially saying here,

you don't need to go to jail, but you do need to act. Do something small. Meet people, talk. And that is very threatening to the state because the Kremlin knows that that kind of thing is contagious. Like the rector at Alesis University said, if it's left unchecked, it can spread.

Yeah, for the Kremlin and for Putin especially, you know, it's existential for them to maintain the image that they do have broad support, that the war has broad support, and they are doing more and more to try to force everyone to get in line or at least not do anything that would pierce that image. And if this war is going to end,

there's a very high chance that it will come from people like this. And that's something Dima knows. And that's something the Kremlin also knows. I think it's what Putin fears the most. link to a news article about a Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gershkovich. He'd just been arrested in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. He was accused of spying. And it was the first time since the Cold War an American journalist had been arrested and charged like this. I'm looking at your text. You said, this is very, very bad. And then you said, I'm on my way to the airport. That's true.

It's really painful. Evan and I were good friends in Russia. So his arrest came as a complete shock. I left Russia some hours after the charges were announced, and so did some other Western reporters. And that just means there'll be fewer people paying attention to the trials of political prisoners like Dima, listening to him give his last word, and fewer people really trying to understand how ordinary Russians feel about how their country is changing. listening to him give his last word, and fewer people really trying to understand how ordinary Russians feel about how their country is changing.

And in this way, Russia becomes even less knowable, even more difficult to penetrate and understand. Exactly. Valerie, thank you. Thank you, Sabrina. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. A mass shooting at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky, Monday morning left four employees dead and nine people wounded.

This is awful. I have a very close friend that didn't make it today. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said he knew several of the victims. And I have another close friend who didn't either, and one who's at the hospital that I hope is going to make it through. The gunman, an employee of the bank, was killed by police. And in Nashville, the city council on Monday voted unanimously to return Democratic lawmaker Justin Jones to the statehouse. Voters in District 52 elected Justin Jones to be their voice at the statehouse. And that voice was taken away this past week.

So let's give them their voice back. The move comes four days after Jones and fellow Democrat Justin Pearson were expelled for leading a gun control protest from the floor of the House. Votes are in. Mr. Clark, close the machines, take the vote. Aye. Within an hour, Jones was sworn in and back at his seat in the Republican-controlled legislature that had voted him out. controlled legislature that had voted him out. Today's episode was produced by Claire Tenesketter, Will Reed, and Muj Zeghi, with help from Alex Stern. It was edited by Michael Benoit, with help from Patricia Willans.

Contains original music by Alicia Baitube, Diane Wong, Dan Powell, and Marian Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Anastasia Varashova provided translation. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. We'll see you tomorrow.