With the Kremlin seeking PR triumphs to mark the six-month anniversary of an unexpectedly arduous war, Russian police have detained a leading opposition figure for challenging the government’s Ukraine narrative. Yevgeny Roizman (pictured above), the former mayor of Ekaterinburg and one of the last high-profile opposition leaders still at large, was seized from his home and taken into custody by masked men simply for referring to Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine by its rightful name: an invasion.
Under draconian new censorship laws, Roizman faces a potential prison sentence of up to five years for the crime of “discrediting” the Russian army, joining over 220 Russians facing the same charge. Since March, Russia’s war-time legislation has led to over 3,800 people being charged for criticising the war effort, a crime whose punishments range from a one-million ruble fine to a 15-year prison sentence for “spreading false information” about the conflict.
While subjecting its own citizens to excessively harsh sentences for absurd charges, Russia expresses hypocritical outrage when its nationals are imprisoned overseas for serious crimes, often employing rogue diplomacy in attempts to secure their freedom.
Hostage-taking diplomacy to free arms dealer
The Kremlin’s war-time justice system has certainly not stopped at targeting Russian nationals. In February, just days before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, authorities arrested US basketball star Brittney Griner upon her arrival in Russia for illegal possession of cannabis oil, for which she has been given a politically-motivated 9-year prison sentence.
As with Griner, Russia previously imprisoned former US marine Paul Whelan to 16 years on highly dubious espionage charges to use him as a bargaining chip.
Both of these powerplays have had the same goal: securing the release of notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. Bout, the so-called “Merchant of Death,” built a global arms trading empire selling Soviet-era stockpiles to warlords and militant groups across Africa and Asia. In 2008, Bout was arrested in a DEA string in Thailand, where he had organised an arms deal with agents posing as Colombian FARC rebels seeking weapons to use against US Air Force pilots. After his extradition to the US, Bout received a 25-year sentence on conspiracy charges.
Russia’s diplomatic offensive has been deeply hypocritical. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov decried Bout’s case as a “glaring injustice,” while its government and media have baselessly called for his freedom. But this outrage likely has much less to do with “justice” than Bout’s suspected ties to Russian military intelligence, as well as his government’s alleged support of his empire. The fact that the US and Russian governments are currently negotiating a prisoner exchange involving Griner and Whelan for a criminal of Bout’s stature is the real injustice.
Interfering in high-profile Kuwaiti fraud cases
The Russian government has recently interfered in another globe-trotting criminal case involving a high-profile citizen, Marsha Lazareva. Since 2017, Lazareva has faced a series of fraud charges in Kuwait in relation to her former role as an executive of Kuwaiti investment firm KGLI and its investment fund, the Port Fund (TPF).
Lazareva’s legal woes began when she was arrested on suspicion of embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars from a TPF asset sale in the Philippines. Since late 2019, Lazareva has been evading arrest in the Russian embassy in Kuwait, where she continues to maintain her innocence. She has even submitted a legal claim asserting that the Kuwaiti authorities had violated her rights under the Russia-Kuwait Bilateral Investment Treaty. However, a Kuwaiti court has recently ruled against her, with Salah Al-Massad, the head of Kuwait’s Fatwa and Legislation Department, claiming that the Kuwaiti government has been granted $3.8 million in legal costs.
As with Viktor Bout, the Kremlin has attempted diplomatic maneuvers on Lazareva’s behalf, with Putin and his Foreign Ministry requesting that Kuwait’s ruling emir order her release, in addition to pursuing a mutual extradition agreement with Kuwait. Yet Kuwait has thus far resisted Russian pressure to its justice system in the Lazareva case.
Dangers of Russia’s prisoner diplomacy
In addition to its stark hypocrisy, Russia’s foreign prisoner diplomacy is deeply unbalanced. This “false equivalency” problem is perfectly illustrated by the recent US-Russia prisoner swap agreed in April.
Trevor Reed, a former US marine who received a 9-year sentence in 2019 for allegedly assaulting police officers after a night of drinking in Moscow, was traded for Russian national Konstantin Yaroshenko, arrested in Liberia in 2010 on drug trafficking conspiracy charges and extradited to the US, where he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Previously, Russia had the gall to push for Yaroshenko’s release while rejecting US attempts to negotiate Reed’s freedom, as well as to publicly decry the former’s conviction “on very dubious charges.”
Russia’s lack of regard for human rights and criminal justice unfortunately gives it the upper hand in this type of diplomacy, allowing it to free Russian citizens convicted of serious, strongly-evidenced and international-scale crimes in exchange for wrongly detained nationals of rival countries. Even more worryingly, Russia’s success in prisoner exchange negotiations risks setting a dangerous precedent that could inspire other governments to wrongfully and excessively imprison foreign citizens.
Since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the weaponisation of Russia’s judiciary has made the prisoner diplomacy playing field between Russia and its enemies even more skewed than before. As Russia’s global pariah status becomes entrenched, the risk of the Kremlin wrongfully detaining foreign nationals to gain leverage for releasing its globe-trotting criminals could increase. Governments must therefore increase their vigilance to this malicious practice, while ensuring that their justice systems remain resilient to Russia’s diplomatic offensives.
Image (Brittney Griner) By Lorie Shaull – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/…
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