Contributions to the Biography of Vladimir Vladimirovich

On Friday, July 8, sixty-year-old Aleksei Gorinov, a lawyer and municipal councillor from Moscow, was sentenced to seven years in prison for "spreading false information" about the Russian army. His "crime" was a public statement at an April meeting of the municipal council of Moscow's Krasnoselsky district, in which he condemned the decision to organize a dance competition "while a war is taking place in Ukraine, where children are dying." More than two months of detention and the threat of a harsh prison sentence did not break Gorinov's rebellious spirit. During the trial, he held a sign in the glass cage that read: "Do you still need this war?"

Gorinov is the first individual to be convicted under the draconian law passed by the Russian parliament less than a month after the start of the aggression against Ukraine, imposing strict penalties on anyone who "spreads false news" about Putin's "special military operation." His conviction is only the tip of the iceberg and a new warning to anyone daring to publicly criticize the official narrative of "denazification" of the neighbouring country.

Next in line is Ilya Yashin, one of the few opposition politicians still remaining in the country. Yashin faces up to ten years in prison for discussing the massacres in Bucha on social media. Before Gorinov and Yashin, thousands of Russian citizens had already been arrested, detained, and sentenced to short "administrative" prison terms for peacefully protesting against the aggression in the early weeks of the war.

Repression did not start with the war. "You must know that Russians are trying. Quietly, they go to prison for 10, 15 years," said members of the Pussy Riot collective during a recent concert in Ljubljana, where they performed as part of the Lesbian Quarter festival. Civil society in Russia has been completely dismantled through a ruthless and systematic campaign by the authorities that began years before February 24 of this year. Many civil society activists were forced to seek refuge abroad or fell silent at home. All influential human rights organizations have been labelled "foreign agents" or "undesirable organizations" by the Kremlin regime, meaning that any Russian citizen who cooperates with them risks imprisonment.

The same has happened with the media. Those few that survived Putin's years-long crackdown, including the murders of several prominent journalists, shut down after the war in Ukraine began. For all these reasons, claims—also echoed by official Ukraine—that all Russian citizens are to blame for the war because they supposedly support Putin should be taken with caution. While opinion polls indicate he enjoys majority support, in a country like today’s Russia, one likely thinks twice before responding to an "anonymous" survey.

The real picture is likely different. To understand why many Russian citizens condemn Putin’s policies, we must recall what he has been doing for over two decades—not just to neighbouring countries, but to Russian society and its citizens.

Let us remember how Putin came to power. Just a month after Boris Yeltsin appointed the until-then-unknown FSB officer as prime minister, explosions rocked apartment buildings in Moscow, Volgodonsk, and the Chechen city of Buynaksk in September 1999, killing 300 people. At the end of September, Putin blamed Chechen terrorists for the bombings, unfazed by the fact that just a day earlier, local police had caught and arrested three FSB agents planting explosives in another apartment building in Ryazan. The official investigation later "concluded" it had been a drill. Mere coincidence, supposedly.

Putin used the explosions as a pretext to bomb Grozny and start the Second Chechen War. Just a few months later, this propelled him into power when, on New Year's Eve 1999, Yeltsin appointed him as his successor. In the spring 2000 elections, Putin, still riding the wave of war-fuelled popularity, won with 53% of the vote. It is a lesson he seems eager to repeat today with the war in Ukraine.

Whether or not Putin orchestrated the bombings remains an open question. But Andrei Kovalyov, a Russian dissident, chair of the Human Rights Commission, and a Duma member who led the investigation, was convinced he did. Kovalyov, whom I had the opportunity to meet personally, strongly opposed Russian aggression in Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014. In March 2010, he authored the manifesto "Putin Must Go." He passed away in August 2021 at the age of 91.

Unlike the apartment bombings, the Beslan school siege in September 2004 and the Moscow theater hostage crisis in Dubrovka two years earlier were undoubtedly carried out by Chechen terrorists. Yet two facts stand out in both cases. First, the reaction of Russian security forces, which in both instances resulted in massive casualties. In Beslan, over 330 people died, mostly children; in Moscow, 170 of the 850 hostages perished. That many died due to the way the rescues were conducted is beyond dispute. Many Moscow hostages suffocated from gas released into the theatre, though the official investigation never identified who released it.

Both tragedies were also used by Putin to further consolidate his grip on power. After Beslan, he "reformed" the constitution, stripped power from Russia’s regions, and reinforced what he called a "vertical of power." Following the Dubrovka tragedy, Putin, annoyed by critical reporting from the last independent national TV network NTV, replaced its leadership and completely subordinated its editorial policy.

Media control was not limited to reshuffling staff but also involved shutdowns and murders of journalists. The best-known case is the October 2006 murder of Anna Politkovskaya, but the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a partner of the Council of Europe’s platform for journalist protection, has documented 82 journalist killings in Russia, most of them after Putin came to power. Other sources cite even higher numbers.

Mysterious deaths also befell political opponents and other individuals deemed dangerous by the Kremlin. Boris Nemtsov in 2015, Boris Berezovsky in 2013, Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova in 2009, Sergei Magnitsky in 2009, Sergei Yushenkov in 2003, and Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned with radioactive polonium in 2006 in a London hotel. Litvinenko likely died because he and Berezovsky prepared a report blaming Putin for the September 1999 bombings. Berezovsky was one of the Russian oligarchs who opposed Putin and paid for it with his life.

Others, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, were imprisoned or exiled. The rest are loyal cronies who, in exchange for their allegiance, became obscenely wealthy at the Russian people’s expense and are allowed to enjoy their riches as long as they remain silent and financially support Putin and his policies.

Even a brief and incomplete contribution to Vladimir Vladimirovich’s biography cannot omit his stance toward homosexuals—not because they are the only minority targeted by his authoritarian paradigm, but because homophobia, in alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church, has from the start been politically instrumentalized to justify and reinforce his domestic authoritarianism and the narrative of conflict between the "pure Russian nation" and the "degenerate liberal West."

All of this is, of course, just a snapshot and far from a complete political profile of Vladimir Putin. But it is enough to conclude that his invasion of Ukraine was no tragic accident or response to external threats, but the logical culmination of his vision for Russia and its role in the world.

The road to aggression against neighbouring states was paved by years of systematically destroying freedoms and oppressing Russian citizens. Putin is a man who launched a war to rise to power, and he evidently believes that only through war and conflict can he maintain and strengthen that power. From Chechnya, through Georgia, Syria, the annexation of Crimea, and now the full invasion of Ukraine.

Those who, even with the best intentions, view Putin as some kind of modern Brezhnev, a gruff Soviet or Russian leader who, despite all his barking and blustering, retains a minimum of rationality and readiness for reasonable negotiation, cannot and must not ignore this fact. Putin is not Brezhnev. Conflict and war are the foundation of his regime.

That does not mean we should not negotiate with him. On the contrary, every effort should be supported to end this senseless bloodshed as soon as possible. But there will be no lasting peace if negotiations begin with concessions at others’ expense—concessions that reward and embolden aggression—and with naive appeals to reason and moderation, which Putin lacks and openly despises.

Even more should this record of "accomplishments" give pause to those who, in their own countries, staunchly defend democracy, political freedoms, equality, human dignity, media freedom, civil society, social justice, and the fight against corrupt elites, yet in the context of Russian aggression against Ukraine, explicitly or implicitly seek to relativize or even justify the raging fury and imperialist ambitions of a repressive autocrat, a corrupt oligarch king, a bigot, nationalist, and homophobe. Because, well, what about…

In doing so, they not only betray their own principles but also all Russian citizens who have lost their freedom in opposing Putin’s policies, and some even their lives. People who see in Putin a leader who will punish the corrupt West and establish a new, fairer world order should seriously reflect on whom they are backing. "In Russia, we have a new Hitler," said Masha Alyokhina of Pussy Riot to The Guardian recently. Reductio ad Hitlerum? I dearly hope that’s all it is.