“We must erase those symbols, the V and the Z, and whoever sticks them in our vehicles must be put in jail. A totalitarian regime is never as firm as it was before it collapsed." Over the past year Russian citizens have suffered the consequences of the Kremlin's intervention in Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands fled Russia to avoid being mobilized. Those who stayed live in a bearable parallel reality after the government measures that have so far prevented economic collapse. And those who protest are repressed. In Russia, allegations like the one above against the Kremlin can only be heard in court, during trials against activists, opponents or ordinary citizens accused of discrediting the armed forces.
The above words were pronounced by the journalist Maria Ponomarenko last week in her last word turn before the judges who in Barnaul (Altai Krai) sentenced her to six years in prison for a post she published on Telegram on March 17, 2022 saying that Russian forces had shelled the Mariupol theater, where hundreds of civilians had taken refuge. The Russian Defense Ministry had denied having anything to do with it and accused Ukrainian "nationalists" of the bombings.
Vladimir Putin signed the law against spreading "fake news" about the army shortly after sending troops to Ukraine. Since then, this rule, which can punish the offender with up to 15 years in prison, has conditioned Russian opposition to the Kremlin's plans in Ukraine and has reduced it to practically zero.
Pável Chíkov, head of the NGO Ágora, counted up to December 180 criminal charges opened for this cause. This week, Alexander Bastrikin, head of the Russian Investigation Committee, under the Kremlin, told the Tass agency that to date “152 criminal cases have been initiated, in which 136 people have been prosecuted. 53 criminal cases have been presented to justice, 16 sentences have already been handed down”.
It has affected both leading political opposition figures (Ilya Yashin, sentenced to 8.5 years in prison) and activists (artist Sasha Skochilenko faces 10 years in prison if convicted of changing price tags in St. Petersburg from a supermarket for messages for peace) or to ordinary citizens (in Arkhangelsk, university student Olesia Krivtsova is under house arrest for an Instagram post about the Crimean bridge explosion in October). To citizens who have stayed in Russia and to others who have left the country: Well-known journalists Alexander Nevzorov and Veronika Belotserkovskaya have recently been sentenced in absentia to 9 years in prison.
All these cases are an unequivocal message for those who, in the first months of the special military operation , the euphemism used officially in Russia, were willing to show their faces and demonstrate. “From the beginning we carried out anti-war protests as an organization. In accordance with the new laws that reduce freedom, we were forced to stop carrying them out,” Oleg Orlov, from the historic outlawed NGO Memorial, winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, explained to La Vanguardia a few months ago.
Today there is only a vague memory of some protests that the enormous police repression ended up blurring. From time to time, you can still see in Moscow a green ribbon that someone forgot pinned to a window or a tree branch. Few know that for a few days it was used as a symbol of a resistance that today is totally silent.
Silent are also the few spontaneous displays of rejection, as when anonymous citizens left flowers next to a statue of the Ukrainian poet Lesya Ukrainka after a Russian attack on the city of Dnipro this January. And the police continue to arrest those who still dare to step forward. According to the NGO OVD-Info, more than 19,500 people have been detained since February 24, 2022 for demonstrating against the war and military mobilization.
From time to time little rays of hope appear. Grigori Yavlinski, founder of the liberal Yabloko, the only opposition party still active, wrote an article a few weeks ago in the magazine Nóvaya Rasskaz-Gazeta, one of the many media banned or blocked in Russia. In it, he insisted on achieving peace, an objective marked by his training.
Peace "in practice can only be implemented if at least Putin, Zelensky, Biden and the leaders of the EU and NATO want to do it." But he regrets that "to date all parties intend to continue hostilities on a large scale, mistakenly counting on a military victory, which in modern conditions is unattainable for anyone," wrote the veteran politician. And he ended with an emotional “Reflect! Stop!"
During the first cold war, going through the iron curtain was accompanied by a strange feeling, having arrived in a parallel world, where many things were familiar but were totally different. Something similar is slowly happening in today's Russia. Except for the regions close to the Ukrainian border (Belgorod, Kursk, Bryansk), in Russian cities it seems that life goes on as if thousands of people were not dying a thousand kilometers away.
But there are disturbing signs that everything is changing. On their way to work, many Muscovites continue to stop by Starbucks to pick up their morning coffee or a Dunkin Donuts cafe for a quick breakfast. The problem is that they are now called Stars Coffee and Donutto. You look up and in the office building where there used to be an Ikea or Decathlon billboard, now a huge Z and other patriotic messages are drawn.
After February 24, 2022, the Moscow we knew is becoming a parallel Moscow, as the authorities try not to make the changes too noticeable. It is part of the process of adapting to the sanctions and the exit of more than a thousand Western companies.
In grocery stores there is no longer Coca-Cola, nor Pepsi, nor Sprite, to name the best known. The factories of these and other brands have been sold to Russian businessmen who continue to produce the same products under different names. The McDonald's chain was bought by a Russian businessman and renamed Sabroso y Punto. Ikea has just announced the sale of its four factories.
Despite the warlike earthquake, the population that was not affected by the military mobilization in October has barely noticed a tremor. Because?
The explanation may be that the catastrophic forecasts that many analysts and observers made about the Russian economy under the pressure of sanctions have not come true. The experts of the Russian Central Bank expected in March a drop in GDP of 8%, annual inflation above 20% and an average annual rate of 110 rubles per dollar. But none of that happened. There was no banking crisis, because the Kremlin and the Central Bank took drastic measures to plug any holes and prevent currency from leaving the country.
Russia has also helped its main economic resource: the export of hydrocarbons. Together they allowed the ruble to recover from its March plunge and inflation to be contained. In the first six months of the intervention in Ukraine, Russia made a piggy bank of $158 billion from the sale of energy products, according to Finland's Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air. Moscow found in the Asian markets, especially China and India, an alternative to losing customers in Europe.
In the first months of the conflict, the sanctions hardly affected hydrocarbon exports, the professor at the University of California in Los Angeles Oleg Itzhoki explained in the Meduza media. Only the US imposed an embargo on Russian oil, but supplies there were small, while the European Union continued to buy oil and gas.
At the end of the year, Putin announced a drop in GDP of 2.5%. Much less than the best forecasts of months before. In addition, the IMF has predicted that this year Russia may even have growth. In January he stated that the Russian economy will grow by 0.3%, when his previous forecasts indicated a drop of 2.3%. For 2024, it forecasts growth of 2.1%. Deduction in Moscow: Russia has resisted.
With these figures Andrei Belousov, Russian Deputy Prime Minister, said two weeks ago that Russia could emerge from recession this year 2023. And the Ministry of Economic Development stated in a statement that "the Russian economy is confidently overcoming the barriers of sanctions from countries hostile”.
Another reason why many Russians have not noticed the change too much is that many of the western products, in theory affected by the sanctions, continue to arrive in the country. This is due to the so-called "parallel imports", allowed by the Government.
In the context of the fight against intellectual piracy, in 2002 Russia prohibited products from entering the country without the corresponding license or permission of the manufacturer or rights owner. That ended last year, when Moscow decided that it was no longer illegal to import a long list of products, including iPhones, cars or skins, through third countries – such as Kazakhstan.
Will Russia continue to resist and many Russians continue to live in this kind of alternative limbo?
The situation may begin to change. On December 5, the EU applied the full embargo on Russian oil, and from this February 5, on derivative products. Also on December 5, the G-7 “price ceiling” began to operate, setting the maximum price at which ships and insurers can transport Russian oil at $60 per barrel. That made the Kremlin's coffers begin to feel the pressure. In January, the fiscal deficit skyrocketed and state revenue from energy sales fell by 46%.
Another challenge that Russia will have to face is the drop in consumption, aggravated by uncertainty. In a December report, Natalia Orlova, Alfa Bank's chief economist, predicted that the economy will contract by 6.5% in 2023 due to the slowdown in consumption, less investment and the loss of export potential.
But forecasts are just that, forecasts sometimes influenced by our own desires. With them or without them, this year Russia has definitively distanced itself from the West and, as in that first cold war, it is already walking in parallel.
