400 euros for saying Zelensky is attractive: the Soviet ghost of denunciations returns in Russia

MoscowOlga, a retiree from Moscow who had gone to spend a few days at a spa in the Caucasus, didn't expect to end her vacation in a police station. Especially not after joking in the cafeteria that she found Volodymyr Zelensky "an attractive man." It was December 2022, and since the start of the war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin had hardened his stance terribly. Laws to prosecute comments against the invasion or in favor of UkraineOlga was betrayed by a waitress she'd been having an affair with a while earlier. FSB (formerly the KGB) agents were quick to show up at her door, arrest her, and eventually sentence her to a fine of over 400 euros for discrediting the army.

A recent survey by the consulting firm FOM revealed that one in four Russians (24%) would report their neighbors if they heard them criticizing the war or the army, while another 20% prefer not to respond. One in seven Russians also says they would report an offensive comment about Putin to the authorities. According to Dmitry Anisimov, spokesperson for OVD-Info, a leading Russian organization that tracks political persecution, who spoke to ARA, in the last three years there has been "a significant increase" in people being persecuted for anti-war activities "because someone had informed the police."

This trend has opened the door to turning snitching into a way to settle scores over neighborhood disputes, street arguments, or family feuds. The case of Ana and Irina, two neighbors from Korpikiulya, a small town south of St. Petersburg, is one of many. The former ended up being tried for spreading false news about the army, a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Irina denounced her for allegedly sending images of mutilated soldiers and burning tanks, although Anna denies this. Behind it, however, lies a history of interfamilial resentment stemming from a land dispute.

For Russians of a certain age, this spy climate inevitably evokes the days of Stalinism. "Soviet attitudes survive," laments social psychologist Anastasia Nikolskaya in ARA. "I doubt young people display this behavior, but older people still do," he says. Or as Nina Khrushchev, a professor of international relations and great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, puts it, "It's a Soviet practice, but at the same time it has to do with the Russian genetic code, with fear, with trying to protect ourselves at the expense of others."

The paradigm of this resurgence of denunciations is embodied by a man from Yekaterinburg who called himself Anna Korobkova and who compulsively denounced the opinions of regime opponents online or in the media. In the first year and a half of the invasion, this dilettante sycophant, whose real name was Ivan Abaturov, reported more than 2,000 messages to the authorities, which he found intolerable, before one of his favorite victims, the anthropologist Aleksandra Arkhipova, discovered his identity.

Absurd accusations

After three years of war, the crime that has had the most unfortunate outcome is that of discrediting the army. It's a catch-all for the most diverse absurdities: someone showing a blank sheet of paper or a sheet of paper with eight asterisks (which the judges interpret as a way of encoding the expression "no to war" in Russian, clean sheath); a man who bought sausage from the Miratorg supermarket chain and crossed out its letters torg to leave in sight Mir, "peace" in Russian; a boy walking with the book War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy; a girl wearing a clothing patch with a dove of peace drawn on her coat; a priest who referred in a homily to the sixth commandment of Orthodox tradition, "Thou shalt not kill"; or the thousand and one combinations of yellow and blue of the Ukrainian flag, in sneakers, earrings, cakes, dyed hair, or repainted park benches.

These offenses are punishable by an administrative fine ranging from approximately 300 to 600 euros, half of an average salary in Russia. However, the OVD-Info spokesperson warns that the sum of two infractions of discrediting the army entails the opening of a criminal case. "It is the most common instrument of repression, and this administrative sanction can end up landing you in prison for five, seven, or ten years," Anisimov notes.

More than 11,000 accusations

Since the outbreak of the war on February 24, 2022, police have charged more than 11,000 people with discrediting the Russian armed forces, according to OVD-Info. Officers and whistleblowers found a goldmine on social media, a space "totally controlled by law enforcement," in the words of the agency's spokesperson. Posts on VKontakte, the Russian Facebook, top the list of the most targeted activities, ahead of comments on the same posts and comments on online videos.

In these three years, a total of 20,088 people who had taken a stand against the war have been arrested. People like Olga, who sadly recalls the spa episode. The fine didn't hurt at all, compared to the contempt of those around her, who began calling her "crazy," "an enemy of the people," or "a traitor to the homeland." "My husband told me, 'What you have to do is be quiet,'" she explains. "That's probably the right thing to do, but I'm a chatterbox." And yet, she refuses to give up: "I love Russia and I'm not going anywhere. I'm just scared that I won't be able to peacefully express my opinion."