Opinion: Moscow's silly police

How the politicization of crime squanders Russian law enforcement

In a recent opinion piece for the newspaper Vedomosti, columnist Pavel Aptekar argues that the Kremlin's efforts to distract the public from economic troubles with rhetoric about “domestic enemies” has led to irrational, downright absurd policing trends. Meduza translates Vedomosti's text here.

Russia's growing politicization of everyday life and criminalization of civic activism has meant that the country's law enforcement agencies are dealing with more and more cases that previously would have been considered absurd.

In his recent report to the Federation Council about the work of the Attorney General's Office in 2015, Attorney General Yuri Chaika claimed, for instance, that supporters of the Ukrainian nationalist group “Pravyi Sektor” tried to organize a coup in Russia using pages (that have been blocked by Russian censors) on the social network Vkontakte. Chaika also reported that more than 7 tons of sanctioned food were destroyed in 2015, warning that more than 19,000 tons of banned cheeses were still imported into Russia due to the lapses of regulators and customs officials. Of course, the attorney general also discussed work that is genuinely significant to law enforcement, but another two focuses of his report—the growth of extremism and terrorist threats, and the rise of crimes tied to corruption—can today also be considered politicized. Extremists and corrupt officials are important categories of Russia's “domestic enemies” that are necessary to mobilize society and divert its people's attention away from the country's economic crisis.

The number of recorded violations of Russia's laws against corruption and protocols to eliminate corruption (386,000 and 79,000, respectively) are staggering. As a rule, however, the battle against these crimes primarily targets the consequences, and not the root causes, of corruption and conflicts of interest. The number of individuals convicted under criminal codes against corruption rose insignificantly in 2015, while sentencing for giving bribes remained much higher than convictions for receiving bribes.

The number of people convicted for terrorist crimes, meanwhile, grew by 35.8 percent to 1,538 cases. And convictions for extremism rose 27.7 percent to 1,329 cases.

The Attorney General admits that part of the growth of crimes in this area is the result of amendments made in 2013 and 2014 to Russia's criminal code, which expanded the range of criminal offenses (in particular, incitements to separatism, and forms of terrorism, as defined in revisions to criminal-code article 205). The crime spike is due also to hundreds of cases against individuals charged with participating in terrorist groups banned in Russia (the number of which also rose). The number of convictions against Russia's key laws against extremism, articles 280 and 282, rose 35.3 percent between 2014 and 2015, from 357 cases to 483, according to the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court. In 2014, 10 people were convicted of inciting terrorism in Russia. Last year, that figure rose to 26.

Alexander Verkhovsky from the Sova human rights center notes that there's been a dramatic spike in the share of “extremism” convictions for remarks published on the Internet. Verkhovsky says this is due to the relative ease with which police can open and close investigations into extremism. Going online, finding some harsh comments, opening an extremist case, and finding the author is easier than preventing or suppressing real crimes. And prosecutors are even searching the libraries actively, looking for extremist literature.

Clearly, law enforcement agencies and intelligence units get direct political instructions, but they're also more than happy to join this campaign, in order to win the state's approval and expand their “food supply.” Stories about fighting Pravyi Sektor online, or pushing back against imported cheeses, will find receptive ears in the Senate. But it's a shame this work is wasting hundreds of prosecutors, police officers, investigators, and detectives.

This text was translated from Russian by Kevin Rothrock.