In Soviet days, Russian dissidents were some of the bravest people in the world. They still are. And so are those who defend them — their lawyers. One such, for 25 years, was Vadim Prokhorov. He has defended Boris Nemtsov (murdered in 2015), Vladimir Kara-Murza (Nemtsov’s deputy, now in prison), Ilya Yashin (also in prison), and others. Last April, Prokhorov himself was on the verge of being arrested. And he fled Russia.
He writes about this in an article published three days ago: here.
Alexei Navalny is perhaps the best-known political prisoner in Russia. As Prokhorov points out in his article, three of Navalny’s lawyers were arrested last October. A fourth lawyer happened to be traveling abroad. She stayed there. Last week, the Russian authorities charged her in absentia.
• It is interesting that Putin’s state even bothers with the charade of trials. Of course, the Soviets did just the same. Is the charade for foreign consumption? Home consumption? Some of each? And, as we have seen, the state goes after lawyers even when they are beyond Russia’s borders.
A report from Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty tells us the following:
A Moscow court on January 26 issued an arrest warrant on a charge of distributing “fake” information about Russia’s military for self-exiled Russian lawyer Mark Feigin, who has defended noted Russian and Ukrainian activists …
Obviously, a lot of people in the Free World admire Putin’s state, and root for it. (There were many, many such people in Soviet days, too. I knew a number of them.) But what a vicious, nasty dictatorship it is.
• I am grateful to the U.S. ambassador to the OSCE — who does not forget Kara-Murza or the other political prisoners:
• Above, I mentioned Russia’s borders. The BBC’s man in Moscow notes something interesting:
Putin can be sneaky and deceptive, obviously, but he can also be amazingly candid — amazingly candid about his views and aims. I wish Westerners would listen to him more. I honestly do.
• An article from the Associated Press: “Convicted former Russian mayor cuts jail time short by agreeing to fight in Ukraine.” The story begins,
A disgraced former Russian mayor convicted of bribery had his prison sentence cut short after signing a contract to fight with Russia’s military in Ukraine, local media reported Sunday.
Oleg Gumenyuk, who served as mayor of the far eastern city and cultural hub of Vladivostok between 2018 and 2021, was convicted last year of accepting bribes worth 38 million rubles (about $432,000) and sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment.
However, he was released after agreeing to bear arms and fight as part of his country’s military operation in Ukraine …
Huh. Maybe they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse? (By the way, “military operation” is an interesting phrase. It is, of course, a war of conquest — of national and cultural obliteration.)
• Putin’s state has some celebrity friends among Americans. One of them is Steven Seagal, the actor. Another is Scott Ritter, who has had a dramatic and checkered career: Marine, U.N. weapons inspector, sex offender. This is some of the latest:
It is consoling, in a way, to know that there have always been such people: people from free countries who go on to support dictatorships and terror movements. It is, you could say, creepy, abhorrent, and human, all at the same time.