Ovd-Info and support for Russian dissidents: “Today those on the fringes of society rise up against Putin”

By Maria Chiara Franceschelli

OVD-Info is an independent Russian organization for the protection of human rights and support for political and persecuted prisoners, founded in 2011. Declared a “foreign agent” a year ago, since its founding OVD information played a key role in protecting dissident civil society. A large and extensive team of professionals and volunteersoffers free legal advice online and by phone 24 hours a day for people who have been arrested or stopped for political reasons. Lawyers present in all major Russian cities also offer free trial services to people in prison, which often take place directly and where defense is not always guaranteed by the state. OVD-Info therefore does essential investigative, research, data collection and dissemination work, providing detailed information on arrests, detentions, judicial and criminal proceedings, but also on the shaping of street protests, police tactics and abuses. (among which torture is frequent) and, more generally, on all the various aspects of the political repression of the Putin regime.

Even in these months, faced with thewave of protests broke out in many Russian cities after the invasion of Ukraine and violently repressed by the authorities, the organization has played a key role in supporting the dissident civil societyand, which in the Putin regime finds very little room for manoeuvre, due to a process of progressive erosion of freedoms started twenty years ago. In these days one started new wave of protests after the announcement of partial mobilization. With Maria Kuznetsovaspokesperson for Ovd-Info, we clarified the crucial aspects of Ovd-Info’s work in an increasingly rigid context and the phenomena we are observing.

How has your work changed since the beginning of the “special military operation” in Ukraine? How did you manage the situation and support those protesting against the regime?

This was certainly the biggest challenge for us. There were protests everywhere, not just in big cities, and in remote areas it is more difficult to find lawyers to collaborate to help prisoners, also due to the foreign agent status assigned to the organization.

At the same time, we had long suspected that something great and terrible was going to happen. In recent years as the crackdown on the press, organizations and political dissidents became increasingly heavy, it became clear that the government wanted to limit as much as possible the potential for mass protests in response to something shocking to come. That thing was the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and at the time of the protest, there was no coalition, united opposition front in Russia that could support the citizens and channel the protests. And so the demonstrations were dispersed, disorganized and the repression very efficient.

Did the war and the protests drive more people to actively support you?

The positive is that more than 6,500 volunteers have joined Ovd-Info since the beginning of the war, and this has allowed the structure to handle the workload. Of course, these are not people who want to work for us full time, but who are willing to collaborate from time to time when the need arises. In some cases, we direct our volunteers to other similar initiatives they need. There are many people who want to support those who protest.

As of April, the protests subsided, but the repression did not end. There were over 260 criminal charges against citizens who spoke out and over 4,000 criminal and administrative charges against people who “discredited the Russian military”. Street protests are the tip of the iceberg: it is essential to understand that, if the demonstrations stopped, Putin’s machine of repression continued to run at full speed, with arrests, intimidation, violence.

What has changed since the beginning of the war? Who are the highest risk categories right now?

In recent years, the Russian government has tightened its grip on civil society, targeting mainly independent journalists and political activists. Many people ended up in prison, but many also left the country: this is what Putin wants. The government does not want journalists in prison who can tell the foreign press about the state of the prisons, the justice system and the treatment they suffered when they got out. He wants the catalysts for the protests, and also those who can give voice to them, outside the country. For the most part, it was. Now, the government’s crackdown is mainly focused on ordinary citizens. In the last few months, and also in the last few days, after the announcement of the mobilization, we have registered thousands of arrests in remote places, small towns. They are not the traditional centers of protest: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg. The government is now tightening the peripheral areas, the aim is to scare citizens who want to rebel: “if the Kremlin comes here, in a small provincial town, then it is not safe anywhere”.

What are the main difficulties of your work?

Precisely because of these changes, we are trying to find collaborators in regions where we are less present, but it is difficult. Fortunately, part of our work is feasible remotely, so for consulting the only problem is to let us know. The biggest problem, however, is concrete, and that is when the police do not allow our lawyers to enter police stations or courts. There anything can happen, over the years we have collected evidence and testimonies: torture, beatings, removal of passports, people forced to sign declarations and documents by force… In the last few weeks alone, there were more than 50 cases in which our lawyers could not log in. The police’s motivations in these cases are anti-terrorist protocols… As for the safety of our professionals and volunteers, thanks to the nature of their work and the numerous precautions we take (especially in terms of computer security and control and reconnaissance technologies), very few times our employees have had problems specifically because of their work at Ovd-Info. On the other hand, many of us have open legal questions related to political activity…

In your opinion, what will happen in the near future in Russia, in terms of civil society and protests?

The forward mobilization upset everything. Putin radically changed the narrative of the war in Ukraine that he himself had created: according to the propaganda, this was a non-war, a special operation. The government betrayed the implicit pact that, in exchange for arbitrary power and strong social control, it would essentially leave its citizens alone. From one day to the next, citizens who were previously convinced that the Putin regime would not have touched them found themselves at the forefront, in a war that, paradoxically, does not yet exist for the regime.

Russian propaganda is pervasive, highly effective, all-pervasive. With the new law against fake news, it became even more difficult to find information from within the country. The internet is controlled and censored, almost all independent newspapers were forced to close. To find information about the conflict, you have to look for it, and sometimes even looking is dangerous. There were many who didn’t know what was really happening in Ukraine. Now many people have understood what is happening, that there is no “special operation”, but there is a bloody war going on, and that they are going to fight it. People, fearful for their own safety, either understand what is happening or are no longer able to ignore it.

The protests of these days are in new, “non-traditional” areas: they are not the large urban centers, which in the last twenty years have been the scene of protests against Putin and in favor of liberal democracy, of human rights, carried out in the middle of the classroom. Now more remote areas are protesting: Dagestan, Yakutia, Buryatia. National republics, areas that have long been impoverished and with very few resources, which the regime uses to feed an unprepared army. it is a new type of mobilization, which has different horizons and is linked to other, older conflicts, even of an ethnic nature, which involve center-periphery relations. We are facing an important shift in collective action. We have to increase our skills, change our perspective, understand new struggles, create new alliances, starting from the margins that are rising.