Russian opposition figure and former executive director of the pro-democracy organization “Open Russia,” Andrei Pivovarov, said in an interview that Serbia seems to be heading down a path that will lead it to become what Russia is today.
Pivovarov, who spent three years in prison in Russia on charges of working with “undesirable organizations”, stated that the way certain events are unfolding in Serbia clearly mirrors the situations that have led to the current state of affairs in Russia.
“From what I can see – how civil protests are portrayed, how elections are organized, how pressure is applied to the media, how it has become more complicated for journalists to work, and from the rhetoric I see in domestic politics – it really resembles what happened in Russia. People take it lightly and ask why they should be afraid, but I’ll remind you that Russia went down the same path,” said Pivovarov.
“There were many criticisms from the West that we, as civil society organizations, didn’t do enough, but I must say that the troubling signs were already appearing in the early 2000s when protests were organized against the closure of independent television stations. Back then, people weren’t sentenced to long prison terms for participating in protests, but there was already electoral manipulation.”
Pivovarov added that, at the time, these issues seemed like minor inconveniences because the economy was advancing.
The loss of civil rights
“God forbid Serbia follows the same path, because that was the policy of our government – we’re improving the economic situation of the people, so stay out of politics. Unfortunately, Russian society accepted that bargain, and it resulted in the loss of civil rights. The fact is that we are now living in a country that has attacked another, and Russian citizens are now feeling the economic downturn and the struggle for survival. When you look at the results of public opinion polls, you see that people are uncertain about their future,” he explained.Andrei Pivovarov emphasized that in both Russia and Serbia, people “literally from their mother’s milk” adopt the belief that Russians and Serbs are friendly and brotherly nations. He believes that their shared goal should be “for autocratic regimes in Europe and the world to become part of the past, and for Russia and Serbia to become democratic societies”.
As a reminder, Pivovarov led the opposition group associated with former Russian oligarch and longtime Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Due to its activities, “Open Russia” was designated as an “undesirable” organization, and in 2021, it ceased its activities in Russia to protect its members. That same year, Pivovarov was arrested at Saint Petersburg airport.
He was tried under the law on “undesirable organizations,” which was passed in Russia in 2015. He was sentenced to four years in prison and served three years and two months until a prisoner exchange between Russia and the West on August 1st. He spent the last year and seven months in solitary confinement.
He added that he is convinced the actions of Aleksandar Vulin and wiretapping in Belgrade contributed to his arrest and that he believes the entire operation could not have been carried out without the knowledge of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, N1 writes.
E.Dz.
