Editor’s note: Frida Gitis Former CNN producer and correspondent and world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to the Washington Post, and a columnist to the World Politics Review. Her views expressed in this comment are her own.view more opinions On CNN.
CNN
—
These images are a cinematic and chilling message to the world, but they’re not at all what Russian President Vladimir Putin intended. Another Russian prisoner, a young woman in a white jacket, is seen being led away by masked guards. The prisoner is 33-year-old dual American and Russian citizen Ksenia Karelina, who blindfolds herself with her knitted hat while a man in uniform handcuffs her wrists and takes her into a dark stairwell. It seemed like he was doing it. She eventually appears in the custody of a Russian court.
This is the latest effort by the Kremlin to intimidate. But in his attempts to exercise and project his strength, Putin reveals fear. Why would the absolute ruler of a nuclear-armed state think it necessary to imprison Karerina?
News of the arrest in Russia of the dual citizen, who works as an esthetician in Los Angeles while pursuing her passion as a ballerina, broke around the same time as the opposition leader’s death. Alexei Navalny in a penal colony in the Arctic. Navalny brings democracy to Russia, exposes Putin’s corruption, brutal.
But Karerina? How is she a threat to Putin?
President Putin does not seem to tolerate the smallest sign of opposition, even if it is imaginary.
Several Russians were arrested for holding up blank papers in the early days of President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, after thousands more were jailed for openly protesting Russian aggression.
Karelina’s employer announced that she had been arrested on charges of treason. Her crime was allegedly donating $51.80 to Razom, a US charity supporting Ukraine.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor agency to the notorious KGB, seemed to acknowledge this, saying her crime was “providing financial assistance to a foreign country in activities contrary to the security of our country.”
If convicted of treason, she could spend decades in a Russian prison.
Karelina became a U.S. citizen in 2021. Her boyfriend, Chris Van Helden, told CNN that she is apolitical, doesn’t watch the news, and that she has nothing to do with the war. He bought her a ticket to Russia as a birthday present so she could meet her 90-year-old grandmother, her parents, and her sister.
Perhaps President Putin has become more anxious and more domineering towards Russian citizens, visitors, and even those who have left the country.
What began as an authoritarian leader eroding democratic norms appears to be morphing into the most dangerous kind of totalitarian dictator: the terrifying kind.
In addition to interrogating President Putin, security forces arrested Russians who had doubts about the war in Ukraine. Hundreds of people were arrested for trying to pay homage to Navalny, and others were arrested for trying to lay flowers in his memory.
Mr. Navalny has been handed over to the judicial system as part of efforts to silence him and thwart his influence. But as long as he lived, he would never be silent.
One by one, some of Putin’s most famous critics have died. Of course, Russian investigators never blame the government. Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was also shot near the Kremlin. Journalist and human rights defender Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in the elevator of her apartment building. Navalny’s cause of death is still unknown. There are countless others. (The Kremlin denies all allegations of involvement).
It has become increasingly dangerous for U.S. citizens, including Russian nationals, to visit the country. Several Americans are behind bars, including WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was released after making a deal with a notorious arms dealer. Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan was sentenced to 16 years in prison on charges of espionage, which he vehemently denies, and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was sentenced almost a year ago He is being held in Yekaterinburg, the same city where Karerina was arrested, on charges of espionage. Russian authorities have revealed some of the evidence.
President Putin appears to be interested in trading Gershkovych for Vadim Krasikov, a convicted murderer in Germany who is serving a sentence in 2019 for the murder of a Chechen Georgian exile. What German courts called “state-ordered murder.” In other words, it was an assassination ordered by the Kremlin. (The Kremlin denies this.)
Simply put, Americans should leave Russia.
However, leaving Russia does not guarantee safety.
According to the rights group Freedom House, Russia has become one of the world’s biggest perpetrators of transnational repression. While many of Putin’s critics appear to have died in various mysterious circumstances within Russia, many of Putin’s critics and perceived critics also meet their end abroad.
In late February, Spanish police discovered Maxim Kuzminov’s body near the city of Alicante. Kuzminov, a Russian defector, fled to Ukraine in a military helicopter. He told reporters that he was against war.
Spanish intelligence told local media there was no doubt that the Kremlin was behind his death. Officially, the government says it is awaiting the results of the investigation. According to Spanish media, police said the man was shot six times and then hit by a car.
Russia says it is not aware of the incident. But after Kuzminov’s defection, the head of a foreign intelligence service called him a “moral corpse.” Freedom House said Russia relies heavily on “instrumental assassination” and “carries highly aggressive cross-border repression operations abroad.”
The British government has concluded that Russian agents used radioactive polonium to kill exiled intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko in London. In 2018, two more Russian police officers were charged with nearly killing dissident Sergei Skripal and his daughter with a nerve agent in Salisbury, England.
Get our free weekly newsletter
Freedom House said the attack “occurred against the background of numerous unexplained deaths of prominent Russians in exile.” In many cases, the cases may not result in a conviction, but the use of radioactive isotopes and nerve agents clearly points to the Kremlin, even if Moscow feigns ignorance, Freedom House added. .
Whatever Russia thinks about the arrest of the esthetician and semi-professional ballerina, President Putin’s Repressive regimes lower the bar for what is tolerated and raise the bar for response. Donating to pro-Ukrainian charities is a crime of treason, punishable by 20 years in prison. Criticism of the war or Putin could lead to death in a Russian prisoner of war camp.
The Kremlin has made Russia off-limits to foreign visitors and is threatening its own citizens abroad, while still pursuing a neo-imperialist war of conquest in Ukraine.