The Associated Press - Putins Opponents: Enemies of the People

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"Many people in Russia simply don't believe that Russia has a future."

Table of Contents

Overview

When Vladimir Putin took the reins of Russia on New Years Eve 1999, television could be worth watching for serious, wide-ranging current-events discussions and occasional political satire. The parliament had a small but vigorous opposition contingent, of which Boris Nemtsov was a star. Anna Politkovskaya was reporting with bravery and dismay about the Chechnya conflict, security agent Alexander Litvinenko was wrestling his conscience over his agencys actions and Mikhail Khodorkovsky was turning his attention from amassing wealth toward promoting political reform.

Now TV news doesnt challenge the Kremlin, reduced to reciting the government line or spraying vitriol at the West. The parliament has opposition in name only and Nemtsov is dead by assassination. Politkovskaya also fell to an attackers bullets, while Litvinenko succumbed to poison. Khodorkovsky survives, in exile, but only after a decade of living death in prison while his oil company was torn apart and the pieces fed to the state.

Under predecessor Boris Yeltsin, life also could be dangerous for the inquisitive and independent-minded: politician Galina Starovoitova was assassinated, purportedly for angering the military intelligence service, and many journalists who reported on provincial business and political maneuverings were murdered. Most infamously, Yeltsins order to dissolve an uncooperative parliament in 1993 led to the armed siege of the building and more than 180 deaths. Yet by the end of his rule, true pluralism seemed to be slowly coming.

Putins rule instead saw the political borders contract. He imposed a system known by the forbidding term managed democracy, which exploited Russians weariness with a decade of post-Soviet disorder to justify tightening control. The moves against independent TV and Khorodkovsky were cast as righting the wrongs of tycoons who had gobbled up state assets at low prices; penalties for unauthorized demonstrations were harshened to discourage public disorder, even though protests rarely had brought trouble; new restrictions were placed on non-governmental organizations that received money from abroad, playing to the wide belief that Western cabals aimed to destroy Russia from within. A law banning propaganda promoting gay rights to minors drew on fears that foreign degenerates threatened a pious countrys moral fiber.

Putin skillfully invoked Russians sense of their country as noble but chronically beleaguered and unappreciated. He has ominously warned of a fifth column working against Russia; no names were named, but the implication is that opponents of his rule are unprincipled saboteurs.

So although Putins hand is not visible in any of the deaths of opponents, critics see its shadow. They say that he is effectively the intellectual author of the killings, by encouraging a fierce chauvinism and intolerance of dissent.

Putins opponents havent vanished, but they live in narrowing straits. Alexei Navalny, who famously characterized Putins United Russia as the party of crooks and thieves, remains free despite being convicted of dubious fraud charges. But his less-known brother was sent to prison in the same case, sending a chilling message to activists that Russia may be reviving the Soviet practice of cracking down on the inconvenient by punishing their relatives. The Dozhd television station still challenges the Kremlin, but has lost its cable subscribers and has been forced to move to a far smaller studio to continue a marginal presence on the Internet.

Putin once was famous for carefully crafted photo opportunities that portrayed him as bold and manly. As conditions for the opposition deteriorate, these appearances are rare. He may feel that his rule now is so insuperable that he no longer needs to put on a show of power.

- Associated Press Moscow Correspondent Jim Heintz has covered the entirety of Putins presidency.

Introduction

People stand around as workers carry the coffin of Boris Nemtsov during a farewell ceremony at the Sakharov center in Moscow, Russia. Mourners are lining up outside a Moscow human rights center for the funeral of murdered Nemtsov. a charismatic Russian opposition leader and sharp critic of President Vladimir Putin, who was gunned down on February 27, 2015 near the Kremlin, March 3, 2015. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

Russian Opposition Faces Gloomy Future

March 3, 2015

By Laura Mills and Vladimir Isachenkov

After paying their final tributes Tuesday (March 3) to slain Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, many members of Russia's beleaguered opposition are looking into the future with gloom.

The sadness and loss that drew thousands to Nemtsov's funeral is unlikely to add vigor to the small and marginalized opposition, or dent the broad public support for President Vladimir Putin.

Many believe that his shooting death on a bridge near the Kremlin wouldn't have been possible without official involvement, and that sends a chilling signal to government opponents, who fear it could herald a new, brutal era of reprisals.

Thousands of mourners and dignitaries filed past Nemtsov's white-lined coffin, and many wept as they offered flowers.

"He was our ray of light. With his help, I think Russia would have risen up and become a strong country," said 80-year-old Valentina Gorbatova.

So many came that when the viewing ended after its scheduled four hours, a line still stretched for hundreds of meters (yards) outside the hall named for the Soviet-era dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov.

Mourner Marsel Shamsudinov said he had come from Kazan, 700 kilometers (450 miles) east of Moscow, to show that unlike the vast majority of Russians who watch nothing but state-run TV, there are people "who do think and see that the government system is unfair and that we need to change a lot in our country."

But while feelings of anger and grief ran strong at the funeral, few believe that the opposition - fragmented and weakened after years of relentless crackdowns - could pose a serious challenge to Putin, who is supported by 85 percent of Russians, according to recent polls.

Kremlin critics say the virulent nationalist propaganda on state television, which cast the 55-year-old Nemtsov and other liberals as Western stooges, helped prepare the ground for his killing on Friday night (February 27).

Nemtsov had been a deputy prime minister under Russia's first elected president, Boris Yeltsin, who touted him as his likely successor before opting instead for Putin. Although his influence in mainstream politics vanished, Nemtsov had remained one of Putin's most vehement critics. In a radio interview a few hours before his death, he denounced the president for his "mad, aggressive" policies in Ukraine.

Opposition leader, former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, foreground, arrives to attend a burial ceremony at Troekurovskoye cemetery in Moscow. One by one, thousands of mourners and dignitaries filed past the white-lined coffin of slain Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, many offering flowers as they paid their last respects to one of the most prominent figures of Russia's beleaguered opposition, March 3, 2015. (AP Photo/Denis Tyrin)