At the same time that the invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin continues with the persecution of all those who do not agree with its postulates. The latest victim of this campaign is Leonid Gozman, arrested this Monday for comparing Stalin to Adolf Hitler.
“Hitler is absolute evil, but Stalin is even worse. The SS was criminal, but the NKVD was even more terrible, as the Chekists killed their own. Hitler declared war on humanity. The communists declared war on their own people“, Gozman had written in a message posted on his Facebook account last April.
As reported by his lawyer, the opponent, who had already been arrested in July for failing to report his Russian-Israeli dual citizenship, spent the night in a central Moscow police station, after being arrested under the article 13.48 of the civil code on the identification of actions committed by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
This is a new law promulgated by Putin last year, and approved by the Duma or Chamber of Deputies, which prohibits such comparison. Gozman, who was arrested as he was leaving the hospital, now faces a sentence of 15 days administrative arrest or pay a cash fine.
At 72 years old, the president of the liberal movement Unión de Fuerzas de Derecha, signed in 2014 a manifesto against the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea by Russia. After the beginning of the Russian military campaign in Ukraine, he left Russia, but returned in May, when he was declared a “foreign agent”.
200 opponents arrested
Since the invasion began, Russian authorities have brought more than 200 criminal cases against citizens who oppose the war. Last week, the police arrested the former opposition mayor of Yekaterinburg, Leonid Roizmannfor discrediting the Russian Army, while two other well-known opponents, Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murzaare in preventive detention for spreading false information about the Armed Forces.
In addition, the former director of the Open Russia organization, Andrei Pivovarov, was sentenced to four years in prison in June for participating in an “undesirable organization”. And he is not the only one who has ended up in prison. The most notorious case is that of the Muscovite deputy Alexei Gorinov, sentenced to seven years for denouncing the death of Ukrainian children and call for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.
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