The way in which a political regime treats its opponents is usually a fairly accurate indicator of its nature. This principle was borne out in Russia by the appalling 19-year prison sentence handed down to Alexei Navalny on August 4. The aberrant charges of "rehabilitating Nazism" and "extremism" also proved once again what has become of a rogue justice system, commandeered to keep out for as long as possible the man who, before an attempted poisoning in 2020, had set out to expose the massive corruption at work in Vladimir Putin's power vertical.
Navalny, who is languishing in a "special regime" penal colony where he is constantly subjected to abuse, still has more to face from his accusers. Charges of "terrorism" have yet to be brought against him. These will undoubtedly earn him additional years in prison, however unfounded they may be.
In the same week, on August 2, the crushing machine that the Russian justice system has become upheld the exorbitant sentence handed down to journalist Ivan Safronov, sentenced to 22 years in prison for "high treason" in 2020. Two days earlier, the highest sentence pronounced against an opposition figure in recent years – 25 years in a penal colony, for "high treason" – was also upheld against political activist and journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza. The latter has been physically weakened by further attempts to poison him, which have been unconvincingly refuted by a regime that consistently leaves a disturbing number of violent deaths in its wake.
This parody of justice doesn't fool anyone. It has become even more of a caricature of itself since the invasion of Ukraine and the Kremlin's failure to forcibly transform Kyiv into a docile satellite of Russia. With the difficulties encountered on the ground, the Kremlin's repressive shift has become even more pronounced and widespread. The Wall Street Journal's Russia correspondent, Evan Gershkovich, has been detained since March on "espionage" charges. He is the first American journalist to be subjected to such treatment since the end of the Cold War.
But these admirable free thinkers are not the only ones to be struck down in this way. Each sentence condemns Russia a little more to being a country of silence or absence, since according to Putin, the only alternative to prison is exile. Like Navalny's 2021 arrest after being hospitalized abroad for a poisoning attempt, Kara-Murza was apprehended as soon as he returned to Russia in 2022, after the invasion of Ukraine: He knew he would be tried and sentenced in a completely discretionary manner.
Both understood that exile condemns one to silence just as effectively as fear does, stripping dissidents of even the slightest legitimacy. Despite his imprisonment, Navalny continues to fight, persistently denouncing the tragic error of his country's invasion of Ukraine. Like his peers, Navalny is making a stand, convinced that the Russian judicial system is piling up years of imprisonment against him that far exceed the life expectancy of Putin's regime.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.