The Russian human rights NGO Memorial told AFP that the repression orchestrated in Russia is underestimated, with thousands of Russians and Ukrainians imprisoned in politically motivated cases.
Sergei Davidis, head of the program to assist political prisoners of this 2022 Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization banned in Russia, notes in particular that some 7,000 Ukrainian civilians are detained by the Russian authorities, taking up a count from the NGO Center for civil liberties, based in kyiv.
Sergei Davidis also counted several hundred cases for “high treason” and “sabotage” opened in Russia since the invasion of Ukraine and “thousands” more for refusal to serve on the Ukrainian front.
Added to this, according to Davidis, are dozens of Ukrainian soldiers taken prisoner and prosecuted in criminal cases in Russia instead of being treated as prisoners of war.
It also adds some 1,300 prisoners for political reasons recorded by the Russian organization OVD-Info.
“It is possible to say that there is a political motivation and a violation of the rights of these people in almost all of these cases,” Sergei Davidis told AFP.
Memorial’s list of political prisoners held by Russia currently includes 778 names. But it does not include the increasingly numerous cases which are classified secret.
This list of 778 names is only “the tip of the iceberg”, underlines Sergei Davidis, because Memorial cannot establish “with certainty” the status of many prisoners, due to lack of access to their files or even to know their existence.
“We are trying to create, alongside the list of political prisoners, other, more complete lists of people prosecuted for political and illegal reasons,” explains Mr. Davidis.
Since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian government has carried out intensified repression against any opposition, real or supposed, to its invasion of Ukraine.
Almost all of the Russian opposition figures are in exile, in prison or dead, like the Kremlin’s number 1 adversary, Alexeï Navalny, who died in February in an Arctic penitentiary.
According to NGOs and media, Russian security services regularly torture detainees, particularly Ukrainian prisoners.
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