“In prison, critics become heroes”

She can’t go back to Russia. That would be too dangerous. Maria Kuznetsova (24) now lives in Georgia. During the video interview, she sits at a wooden table. A gas stove next to her. Behind her an Ikea photo. Russian authorities have arrested her several times, searched her home and looted her workplace. The domestic secret service FSB interrogated them for hours.

Her friends – well-known opposition figures such as Andrei Pivovarov, Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza – were imprisoned and tortured. There is a complaint against Maria for being a member of an “undesirable organization”. She works as a spokesperson for OVD-Info, a Russian NGO that documents human rights violations and helps political prisoners.

Why are so few Russians protesting the war?
Maria Kuznetsova: Many no longer believe that protest is of any use. They demonstrated last year when Alexei Navalny was arrested. That led to nothing. In 2011 and 2012, after Putin returned to the presidency, there were huge protests. That didn’t change anything either. But there are new forms of resistance. More and more people are boycotting their work. There is also a medical movement that issues certificates so that people can stay at home.

If no one demonstrates, Putin will remain in power.
No one outside of Russia has the right to tell the Russians what to do. You don’t share their risks.

However, no one takes to the streets…
That is not true. We know of more than 2,500 people who have been arrested since the mobilization began. Most of them are women – exactly 1775, so 71 percent. Men usually stay at home because they are sent to war as punishment.

You don’t notice that much in the West.
Because there are hardly any mass protests. At large gatherings, many are beaten and imprisoned. That is why the protests are now decentralized. People standing alone somewhere, maybe with a banner. This makes it more difficult for the police to arrest anyone.

Who organizes this?
No one. All the organizations that used to plan demonstrations have been broken up. Anyone who led protests is in prison or in exile. Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation, the democratic movement Vesna or Open Russia: they were all disbanded.

According to a poll by Levada, the only independent polling station in Russia, 73 percent of the population supported the war in October.
In an authoritarian state, there are no truthful polls. We should not pay attention to numbers, but to trends. And the trend is that support for the regime is declining. But we must be aware that only a minority supports or disapproves of the war. Most are somewhere in between.

We always talk about Putin’s war. Isn’t the Russian people also guilty?
Of course there are those who welcome war. This is due to propaganda and censorship. The older generations only get their information from television. More than 140,000 websites have been blocked. But many human rights organizations have been reporting and warning about developments in Russia for years. Let’s take last year’s parliamentary elections as an example. Even then we had the feeling that something was not right. The repression was enormous. Many organizations such as Memorial were banned. That would not have been necessary because of the elections alone.

Did you expect a war?
no. But we knew something bad was about to happen.

OVD-Info wants to end the repression in Russia. At the moment this seems unrealistic.
Yes that’s right. But our goal is that no one should be left alone with the system.

How does your organization try to help?
We have a hotline and a Telegram bot, a computer program that responds automatically. We also provide legal advice and send lawyers to more than 50 regions in Russia. That does help. The police withhold food, refuse to go to the toilet or take smartphones from detainees. With lawyers on site, there are fewer violations. Because the police are afraid of lawyers.

Why should the police be afraid of lawyers?
You give us information and we publish everything. The media is the only thing that helps in an authoritarian regime. Because the laws are useless – especially in remote areas. The police officers there are not used to public attention. Sometimes we call to call the police continuously. Sometimes they get so annoyed that they say, “Okay, we’ll do whatever you want. But stop!” Russia is big. The Kremlin’s long arm doesn’t control everything.

All independent media in Russia have been crushed. How come OVD-Info still exists?
We have no legal status. We were actually part of Memorial, the organization that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. We shared the bank account and office space. But in 2021 Putin liquidated Memorial. Since then he couldn’t undo anything. More than 7000 volunteers from all over the world help us. Going against such a decentralized system is impossible. Most of us hide our faces. Only our lawyers sometimes face criminal charges.

How many are in prison?
No one.

No one?
The government prefers when opposition members emigrate. When they are in prison, they become heroes. Everyone knows Alexei Navalny. The second reason is: a political prisoner is like a curse to the system. Many prison directors have locked up an activist and are now in a cell themselves. Because the activist could find out how corrupt they are.

How can prison activists expose violations?
You have lawyers. Lawyers are allowed to enter prisons. That’s the main reason. But detainees are also allowed to make calls via the landline. Of course, the guards can block the line if they think you’re saying something inappropriate. But sometimes they are distracted or have other things to do. Then the detainees can tell what is going on.

How can OVD-Info help to end the war?
We protect the citizens. Thanks to us, protesting is less dangerous. We guarantee that people will at least get help and be heard.

Do you think Russia will ever be a free country again?
That would mean it was once free – a question in itself. Many in Russia, especially in the big cities, support democratic values. But most seem indifferent. You are in a spiral of silence. We don’t know what they think. The future is difficult to predict.

That doesn’t sound encouraging.
I’m sorry: there are no right answers in a dictatorship.