The Russian opposition today is thin and fragmented. Most are either living in exile, imprisoned or have been killed.
– Russia’s already tightly controlled political climate has hardened recently, and especially since the full-scale invasion, says SVT’s foreign reporter Carl Fridh Kleberg.
Convicted of treason
Last Monday the Russian regime critic was sentenced and opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza for treason and 25 years in a penal colony. This after speaking out about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Markku Kangaspuro, director at the research center Alexander Institute in Helsinki, says Svenska Yle that the long sentence should serve as a warning to other oppositionists who dare to raise their voice.
– Kara-Murza, like (Alexei) Navalny, has exposed the corruption within Russia’s ruling party and Putin’s inner circle.
Navalny’s health
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny was sentenced to another nine years in a Russian prison as recently as a month ago. His health is said to have deteriorated drastically the last two weeks.
Other prominent Russian opposition figures of the past 20 years include journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in 2006, and anti-regime politician Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead in 2015.
The former oligarch and Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky spent ten years in prison before he was pardoned and chose to leave Russia in 2013.
Hear foreign reporter Carl Fridh Kleberg talk about three heavyweights in the Russian opposition, in the video above.
