In pics: Russian opposition leaders who are still alive but behind bars

Vladimir Putin is anticipated to secure his fifth term as the Russian President this month. Throughout the last decade, his rule has been surrounded with controversies and alleged curtailing of freedom of speech and assembly, aimed at individuals deemed as challenges to the Kremlin, and limited access to numerous independent news sources. (Photo: AFP)

Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny died at the Arctic prison colony on February 16 where he was serving a 19-year-term. Known as a staunch Putin critic, his death was blamed on the Russian president drawing severe criticism and protests in various parts of the world. (Photo: AP)

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent opposition figure, received the harshest sentence for a Kremlin critic in modern Russia, being convicted of treason in April 2023. The charges arose from his 2022 speech in Arizona denouncing Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Kara-Murza, a former journalist and associate of the slain Putin critic Boris Nemtsov survived two poisonings, attributing them to Russian authorities. Sentenced to solitary confinement in Omsk, he was later moved within the city. (AP)

Ilya Yashin, a notable Kremlin critic who chose to remain in Russia during the war, was arrested in June 2022 and sentenced to 8 ½ years in prison for allegedly spreading false information about Russian soldiers. The charge was based on a YouTube livestream discussing civilian casualties in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha after Russian forces withdrew in March 2022. Yashin, a Moscow municipal council member and ally of Alexei Navalny, continues to voice sharp criticism of the Kremlin from prison. Despite the sentence, his social media pages are regularly updated by associates, and his YouTube channel has over 1.5 million subscribers. In a letter to AP from prison in September 2022, Yashin said, “so far the authorities have failed to shut me up.” (AP)

Andrei Pivovarov, the former head of the opposition group Open Russia, was detained in 2021 after authorities labeled the organization "undesirable" and disbanded it. As he tried to leave Russia, he was pulled off a plane in St. Petersburg and accused of activities associated with the banned group. Pivovarov, who aimed to run for parliament, rejected the charges as politically motivated. Despite being in pretrial detention, he conducted a campaign but failed to make it to the ballo received a four-year prison sentence in July 2022 during the Ukraine war. (AP)

Lilia Chanysheva, former head of Alexei Navalny's office in the Bashkortostan region, was arrested in November 2021 after Navalny's Foundation for Fighting Corruption and its regional offices were labeled "extremist organizations" in a court ruling months prior. Convicted in a closed-door trial, Chanysheva received a 7.5 year prison sentence in June 2023 for charges including calling for extremism and forming an extremist group. She was also fined 400,000 rubles . Chanysheva, asserting the charges are politically driven, now faces authorities seeking to increase her sentence to 10 years, as reported by Russian media. (AP)

Oleg Orlov, a human rights advocate and co-chair of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group Memorial, was sentenced to 2 .5 years in prison by a Moscow court in February. The 70-year-old was convicted for "repeatedly discrediting" the Russian military due to an article criticizing Russia attack on Ukraine. Orlov, known for his activism since 1995 when he offered himself as a hostage during a Chechen rebel hostage crisis, had initially received a fine in October 2023. The prosecution, dissatisfied with the leniency, appealed for a harsher punishment. (AP)

Alexei Gorinov, a Moscow municipal council member, became the first person sentenced under a law penalizing the spread of "false information" about the Russian military post-Ukraine invasion. Arrested in April 2022 for criticizing the war, he received a seven-year prison term after expressing skepticism about a children's art competition amid the conflict. Gorinov, with a chronic respiratory condition, endured deteriorating health during six weeks in solitary confinement and is still recovering in a penal colony in the Vladimir region. (AP)

In Russia, not only politicians but also ordinary citizens face increasing repression for criticism or opposition. Human rights advocates compare the current suppression to the Soviet era, with instances such as a man jailed for criticizing the government on his ham radio, a poet assaulted for an anti-war poem, and a woman committed to a psychiatric facility for condemning the invasion on social media, reported AP. (Photos: AP)