I am a city deputy in St. Petersburg, elected as a representative of the liberal party Yabloko, my country has been waging a terrible war against Ukraine for more than a month.

I should be punished for that sentence alone.

My country has ordered its citizens to call this war a "military special operation," while law enforcement officials consider any other designation as spreading false information about the Russian army.

The repressions have increased greatly.

According to the law enforcement organization OVD-Info, as of March 20, 15,000 people have been arrested in Russia, and as of March 31, 400 criminal records for “fakes” have been issued, with sentences of up to fifteen years in prison.

Because of this, many political activists and members of the opposition have left the country.

Most of these people were already under pressure from the authorities, had their houses searched or faced criminal proceedings, or had been threatened physically.

I myself was seriously considering leaving the country when, on March 5, after more than two weeks of daily protests, I found out that 80 people had been prosecuted for “false alarms” (which could carry up to five years in prison).

The homes of many of my friends and acquaintances were searched, electronic equipment was confiscated from all of them, and some were taken away for interrogation.

I knew all the names of those involved.

Autocracy made war possible

Since 2000, Vladimir Putin has destroyed the incomplete but existing system of separation of powers.

An example: Everyone who is arrested has a right to a defense.

In Russia, organizations (the best known are OVD-Info and “Apologie des Protests”) have been set up to provide legal assistance to many of those who have been arrested.

The police and the courts didn't like that because the qualified lawyers portrayed the prosecutors as idiots.

The arrest reports often contained fictitious information that could be refuted by witness statements or video recordings.

So the prosecutors invented the "fortress" plan for the police, which was the security level in an armed robbery, to keep lawyers out.

Would the invasion have happened if Russia had been a democratic state?

Certainly not.

But despite the destruction of independent media, democratic institutions, the removal of political competitors, a significant section of Russian society opposes this war.

Opinion polls do not reliably reflect attitudes in an authoritarian system, especially in times of war.

All the more remarkable are the words of Putin's press spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, that a quarter of Russians do not approve of the war.

Peskov's job is to strengthen autocracy with every word.

And he admits such a high percentage of anti-war!

If a quarter of the Duma deputies spoke out against the war, if a quarter of the media reported freely and honestly about the war, then we would have a different country.

The political, ethical, diplomatic and economic consequences of February 24th are destroying Russia.

This process is unlikely to be reversible without erecting a stable corset of democratic institutions to prevent such a concentration of power in the hands of a revanchist and imperialist president.

The only source of possible democratization is the 25 percent Peskow spoke of.

This 25 percent means that despite the propaganda dominating 100 percent of television programs, Russia has strong internal resources for democratization.

In the last five years there has been an increase in participation in city parliamentary elections.

All political forces - Yabloko, urban projects, the structures of Khodorkovsky's "Open Russia",

the Navalnyi Staffs – were particularly active at the bottom of the political pyramid.

And successfully so, despite the colossal disruptive maneuvers of the administrative vertical through electoral fraud, political pressure, the blocking or smearing of candidates.

In Moscow and Saint Petersburg there are now a total of five hundred democratic deputies.

But this process also affects the regions.