Russia: Hostage Taking is Back
Oleg’s greatest crime is, of course, that he is Navalny’s brother. Even the prosecution had actually sought a lesser punishment for him (8 to Alexei’s 10), so his more serious sentence is hard to interpret as anything but an attempt to use him as a hostage. This is unlikely to work on previous experience, but it will also be a worrying signal to the Russian elite. Up to now, after all, while it has been no secret that the “law” is used as an instrument of political control and business rivalry, “noncombatants” have generally been considered exempt. Whether or not the Kremlin wanted to signal more generally that this is no longer the case, there will inevitably be wider concerns. I wonder how many oligarchs, minigarchs and the like will be revisiting plans to relocate family members abroad, a kind of “human flight” to mirror the rampant capital flight visible as they try to get their assets out of the Kremlin’s and their rivals’ reach…