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Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin led an armed rebellion against the Russian military – and walked free. Others who merely voiced criticism against the Kremlin weren’t so lucky.
On Tuesday, Russia’s main domestic security agency, the FSB, said it had dropped the criminal investigation into last week’s revolt, with no charges against Prigozhin or any of the other participants, even though about a dozen Russian troops were killed in clashes.
The Kremlin had promised not to prosecute Prigozhin after reaching an agreement with him that he would halt the uprising and retreat to neighboring Belarus. That came even though President Vladimir Putin vowed to punish those behind the rebellion.
Asked about this U-turn by The Associated Press during a conference call with reports on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment.
Prigozhin’s escape from prosecution – at least for now – was in stark contrast to how the Kremlin has deals with anti-government protests like speaking out against the war in Ukraine or challenging Putin’s rule.
When asked about it, Peskov cited Putin’s “will … to prevent the events from developing according to the worst case scenario,” along with promises and guarantees given to Prigozhin.
SELECTIVE PROSECUTION
Ivan Pavlov, a prominent lawyer who has worked on many high-profile cases involving the FSB, told AP that “laws don’t work in Russia, and if they do, it’s very selective.”
The reason, Pavlov said, is “political expedience.”
That the case against Prigozhin was dropped is “nothing short of a disgrace.”
Imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been thrown into an isolation cell at the penal colony where he is serving nine years for minor transgressions of prison rules.
“I would love to see Navalny’s face at the next court hearing over incorrectly buttoning (his prison garb) when it he is told that an armed rebellion case was closed because the person implicated in it agreed to leave to Belarus,” said Navalny ally Georgy Alburov in a tweet on Tuesday.
When Navalny learned about the rebellion from his lawyers during a court hearing, he said he thought it was a joke.
“They were telling me about the seizure of Rostov, the helicopters that had been shot down, and the armed column heading for Moscow … I kept expecting someone to suddenly yell ‘You got punk’d!’ But no one did,” a social media post by Navalny said.
