When charismatic opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was gunned down on a bridge near the Kremlin in February 2015, more than 50,000 Muscovites expressed their shock and outrage the next day at the brazen assassination. Police stood aside as they rallied and chanted anti-government slogans.
Memorial estimates there are nearly 680 political prisoners in Russia. Another group, OVD-Info, said in November that 1,141 people are behind bars on politically motivated charges, with over 400 others receiving other punishment and nearly 300 more under investigation.There was a time after the collapse of the Soviet Union when it seemed Russia had turned a page and widespread repression was a thing of the past, said Orlov, a human rights advocate since the 1980s.
"Back then, it seemed an incredibly term. I couldn't even imagine that I would ever get out," she said.When Putin regained the presidency in 2012 after evading term limits by serving four years as prime minister, he was greeted by mass protests. He saw these as Western-inspired and wanted to nip them in the bud, said Tatiana Stanovaya of Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
Moscow's annexation of Crimea in 2014 from Ukraine created a surge of patriotism and boosted Putin's popularity, emboldening the Kremlin. Authorities restricted foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations and rights groups, outlawing some as "undesirable," and targeted online critics with prosecutions, fines and occasionally jail.
Open Russia, an opposition group backed from abroad by Khodorkovsky, also had to shut down, and its leader, Andrei Pivovarov, was arrested. Kremlin critics were imprisoned, and their prominence didn't seem to matter. Navalny eventually got 19 years, while another opposition foe, Vladimir Kara-Murza, got the harshest sentence of 25 years for treason.
Independent news sites were largely blocked. Many moved their newsrooms abroad, like the independent TV channel Dozhd or Novaya Gazeta, with their work available to Russians via VPNs. It doesn't always work. Last week, thousands of people defied scores of riot police to mourn Navalny at his funeral in southeastern Moscow, chanting "No to war!" and "Russia without Putin!" -- slogans that normally would result in arrests.A trucking company from B.C.'s Lower Mainland that accused three former drivers of "time theft" cannot claw wages back from any of them, the province's small claims tribunal has decided.