Russian prisons today
05/20/23 • 43 min
1 Listener
Russia is notorious for its political prisoners, and the authorities have only added to this population by adopting numerous laws since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine that outlaw most forms of anti-war self-expression. Figures like journalist Ivan Safronov and opposition politician Alexey Navalny were already locked up before the full-scale invasion, and now they’re joined by politicians like Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza. As relatively unknown activists are dragged into court for minor anti-war actions and the Kremlin takes hostages like American journalist Evan Gershkovich, Russia’s prison system is regularly in the news, but how is it actually built and what’s life like for those inside and their loved ones on the outside?
For answers, Meduza turns to Professor Judith Pallot , the research director of the Gulag Echoes project at the University of Helsinki’s Aleksanteri Institute (you can find the project’s blog here), and journalist Ksenia Mironova, the cohost of the Time No Longer (Времени больше не будет) podcast, where she interviews experts and the friends and relatives of political prisoners. Mironova is also the partner of Ivan Safronov, another journalist now serving a 22-year “treason” sentence in prison.
Timestamps for this episode:
- (1:48) A word from The Beet
- (6:31) How big is Russia’s prison population?
- (11:01) The prison system’s history of “reforms”
- (17:48) Is today’s system reverting to the Gulag?
- (20:00) Conditions behind bars
- (28:19) Comparing the Russian and Ukrainian prison systems and appreciating civil society’s oversight
- (34:05) Ksenia Mironova on the lives of political prisoners and their partners
Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно
Russia is notorious for its political prisoners, and the authorities have only added to this population by adopting numerous laws since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine that outlaw most forms of anti-war self-expression. Figures like journalist Ivan Safronov and opposition politician Alexey Navalny were already locked up before the full-scale invasion, and now they’re joined by politicians like Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza. As relatively unknown activists are dragged into court for minor anti-war actions and the Kremlin takes hostages like American journalist Evan Gershkovich, Russia’s prison system is regularly in the news, but how is it actually built and what’s life like for those inside and their loved ones on the outside?
For answers, Meduza turns to Professor Judith Pallot , the research director of the Gulag Echoes project at the University of Helsinki’s Aleksanteri Institute (you can find the project’s blog here), and journalist Ksenia Mironova, the cohost of the Time No Longer (Времени больше не будет) podcast, where she interviews experts and the friends and relatives of political prisoners. Mironova is also the partner of Ivan Safronov, another journalist now serving a 22-year “treason” sentence in prison.
Timestamps for this episode:
- (1:48) A word from The Beet
- (6:31) How big is Russia’s prison population?
- (11:01) The prison system’s history of “reforms”
- (17:48) Is today’s system reverting to the Gulag?
- (20:00) Conditions behind bars
- (28:19) Comparing the Russian and Ukrainian prison systems and appreciating civil society’s oversight
- (34:05) Ksenia Mironova on the lives of political prisoners and their partners
Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно
Previous Episode
Ukraine’s fight inside Russia, behind enemy lines
Bloggers and news outlets in Russia are abuzz with speculation about what could be the start of Ukraine’s long-awaited spring counteroffensive. Experts have had months to speculate about what shape the counteroffensive might take and what its chances of success are, but recent attacks in Moscow, Crimea, and border regions raise other questions about how the Russian authorities are guarding territories that are, from Kyiv’s perspective, behind enemy lines.
To learn more about how Russia defends against Ukrainian drone attacks and special operations, and what these tactics mean for Kyiv’s war effort, Meduza spoke to military analyst and Foreign Policy Research Institute senior fellow Rob Lee and investigative journalist and The Insider editor-in-chief Roman Dobrokhotov.
Timestamps for this episode:
- (4:21) Were the May 3, 2023, drone strikes on the Kremlin a Russian false-flag operation or a Ukrainian special operation?
- (9:09) How hard is it to track UAVs?
- (12:16) The war’s growing symmetry
- (18:30) The costs of a drone attack fleet
- (23:02) Attributing attacks inside Russia and Crimea
- (25:46) The effects of bombings inside Russia
- (29:04) The state of Russia’s homeland defenses
Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно
Next Episode
The Russian Internet at war
After February 24, 2022, when many Western Internet companies withdrew from Russia, and the Russian state itself outlawed other online platforms, the RuNet’s future seemed uncertain. How would Russia’s Internet market develop? Where would the authorities turn for the technology needed to pursue “digital sovereignty” and more advanced censorship tools?
More than a year later, the RuNet hasn’t collapsed, Russia’s biggest Internet tech company Yandex posted almost $136 million in profits last year, and Russia’s means of policing of online speech are more hidden from the public than ever. At the same time, Yandex is carving itself up, selling off assets and moving entire divisions abroad to stay competitive internationally. And networks like YouTube and Telegram, which host a lot of content the Kremlin hardly welcomes, are still available in Russia.
To get a sense of the current state of the Russian Internet and online free speech in Russia today, The Naked Pravda turns to Dr. Mariëlle Wijermars, a CORE fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki and the coauthor of the recent article “Digital Authoritarianism and Russia’s War Against Ukraine.” Meduza also spoke to Sarkis Darbinyan, the senior legal expert at RosKomSvoboda, an Internet watchdog that’s monitored the RuNet since the early days of the Kremlin’s coordinated online censorship.
Timestamps for this episode:
- (4:41) The Russian state’s ongoing efforts to court prominent bloggers
- (10:43) Facebook and Instagram in Russia today
- (12:28) The story behind RosKomSvoboda
- (14:26) How Russia’s Internet censors are getting smarter
- (16:58) Roles for artificial intelligence in Internet censorship
- (18:35) What Russia might block next
- (21:03) How Russian law enforcement find, flag, and prosecute illegal online speech
- (24:16) Global trends in Internet censorship
Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно
If you like this episode you’ll love
Episode Comments
Generate a badge
Get a badge for your website that links back to this episode
<a href="https://goodpods.com/podcasts/the-naked-pravda-64361/russian-prisons-today-30257107"> <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/badges/generic-badge-1.svg" alt="listen to russian prisons today on goodpods" style="width: 225px" /> </a>
Copy