The number of politically motivated cases in Russia has significantly risen over the past five years, reaching a record of 700 cases in 2022, the first year of the war in Ukraine. Today, more than 1,000 people are in jail or prison in Russia for political reasons, according to the human rights media project OVD-Info.
But these numbers don’t give the full picture of what happens to those who do not agree with Russian policies. In this episode, we will discuss the people who are politically persecuted: their profile, the reasons for their persecution, how the Russian justice system treats them, and how the war in Ukraine has changed political prosecutions.
Joining us are lawyer Olga Podoplelova, OVD-Info analyst Dariya Korolenko and OVD-Info's English-language editor Dan Storyev.
The projects and stories mentioned in this episode can be found here:
- OVD-Info’s weekly Dissident Digest
- Letters Across Borders, OVD-Info’s letter-writing tool
- OVD-Info’s database of political persecution in Russia
- Yegor Balazeikin, the 17-year-old imprisoned for six years, featured in the Dissident Digest
- Vladimir Rumyantsev, an elderly boiler operator sentenced to three years for an anti-war radio broadcast, featured on OVD-Info
- Activist Lev Skoryakin, who was kidnapped in Kyrgyzstan, in the Dissident Digest
- Sasha Skochilenko in the Dissident Digest
- Interview with Ilya Yashin
Russia on the Record is a podcast where Moscow Times journalists, independent experts and ordinary Russians reflect, analyze and explain what’s going on in Russia right now. You can listen to us on the following platforms:
