Why are Russians not Protesting?
First, realize the regime perceives citizens in the streets as chaos. Why have the legal means of protest increasingly closed down over the last ten years? A fantastic piece of data journalism appeared in the Russian space. Will these journalists now be charged for discrediting the army?
Realize when you read these statistics the Russian criminal system has a near 90 percent conviction rate for everything, not just this. It’s a system where, at times, it’s better to save some money and not fight the court. It’s a careful form of theater where prisoners' rights are nearly nonexistent. So first, what are the offenses under the article passed last year for discrediting the army:
He shouted “Glory to Ukraine” and “No to War”, passing near the poster “Za Russia! It’s true for us!” He held a poster with the inscription “They died, aren’t everything so unambiguous?” The state now considers these and thousands of other ways to express its protest against the war to be “discrediting the army.” The Avtozak LIVE team studied exactly how Russian judges hand over sentences, analyzed the texts of more than 5,000 court decisions and decisions of appeal instances under Article 20.3.3 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation, which appeared in March 2022. We tell you how this article closed the last legal ways of protesting to citizens.