A prominent Kremlin opponent, former MP Dimitri Gudkov, has left Russia for fear of being the victim of political persecution. Three months before the September parliamentary elections, a significant number of activists critical of the Kremlin are under house arrest, have left the country or are already in prison on charges that they consider fabricated to prevent them from doing politics.
The most prominent of them is Alexéi Navalni, 45, who after being poisoned last year today is serving two and a half years in prison for an old conviction for fraud. This Monday the Russian authorities have returned him to the Pokrov colony, a hundred kilometers from Moscow, from the prison hospital where he has been recovering after his hunger strike last March.
Navalni returns to his prison after recovering from the hunger strike in a prison hospital
“Several sources close to the presidential administration have informed me that if I do not leave the country, the false criminal cases against me will continue until I am arrested,” wrote Gudkov, 41, on Sunday on Telegram, announcing that he had gone to neighboring Ukraine. “If I stay, license has been given to resolve the Gudkov issue,” he added.
The politician was arrested last week for a fraud case for the non-payment in 2015 of the rent of an underground commercial space. This crime is punishable by up to five years in prison. He was released after two days without charge.
This case was understood among the opposition as an increase in pressure from the authorities. “The fabricated ‘subway case’ was opened solely to prevent me from running for election and kicking myself out of the country before the vote,” wrote Gudkov from Ukraine on Telegram.
The invented ‘case of the underground tunnel’ was opened only to prevent me from running for election and kicking myself out of the country
A day earlier, the anti-Kremlin activist Andréi Pivovárov (39 years old), former director of the Open Russia movement, recently self-dissolved to avoid pressure on its workers, was arrested in St. Petersburg. Accused of collaborating with an “unwanted organization”, as Open Russia was declared in 2017, Pivovárov could be sentenced to six years in prison.
Open Russia was founded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once the richest man in Russia, owner of the now defunct Yukos oil company. Arrested in 2003, he was accused of fraud and was in jail for ten years until he was pardoned by the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. Since then, he has lived in exile.
Among the opponents who have left Russia in recent years are several collaborators of Navalni and his NGO, the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Among them is his strategist Leonid Volkov, who left the country in 2019 after the opening of an accusation for money laundering against the foundation. Ivan Zhdanov, the director of that organization, has left Russia this year. In March, he denounced his father’s arrest as a way of putting pressure on him.
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