News of yet another tragic death has emerged from Russia’s dungeons. This time, the victim was Alexander Kondratov — a production designer and winner of the TEFI and Golden Eagle awards for the television series Liquidation.

Kondratov had been living in Kyiv since 2012. He made the mistake of returning to Russia for one simple reason: to renew his international passport. But instead of receiving a new passport, he was detained and then subjected to an entire series of so-called “revolving-door arrests.”

What does this tell us? That first, there is a person who, for whatever reason, has displeased the so-called law enforcement agencies. Only afterwards do they begin looking for a crime to charge that person with.

That is precisely why this convenient practice exists: a person is repeatedly arrested on fabricated pretexts, preventing their release, while investigators search for any possible excuse to bring criminal charges. Not on the basis of a proven crime, but on the basis of suspicions directed at someone who has already been designated an enemy.

In Kondratov’s case, this carousel of arrests continued for more than 70 days. Eventually, they found something to use against him — at least six online publications. And just like that, the accusation of high treason was ready.

But he did not live to see the final outcome.

Alexander Kondratov, aged 52, died after being transferred from a pretrial detention center to Botkin Hospital. According to a doctor’s verbal statement, the cause was a heart attack. However, his lawyer was shown neither the body nor the medical death certificate. The exact circumstances of his death remain unknown.

But there is another question in this story that I find difficult to answer.

How does it even occur to people, especially those who have lived outside Russia for many years, to return there? Is it really still not clear that the country they once knew ceased to exist long ago?

There is North Korea. There is Afghanistan under Taliban rule. And then there is Putin’s Russia, which has finally revealed its true face.

And this is no longer the same Putin who once, with an angelic expression, would speak almost in a single breath about the need to protect the media from government pressure, ensure the independence of the courts, and safeguard citizens’ rights.

All of that belongs to the past. We are now facing an entirely different reality.

In Russia, an entire class of people has effectively emerged against whom a principle expressed in a famous phrase attributed to Dzerzhinsky now seems to apply: “The fact that you are not yet in prison is not your achievement. It is our failure to do our job.”

And this is already a genuine class war. A war against those who can be classified as enemies on the basis of the most indirect signs. It is not even necessary for someone to have committed a crime. It is enough that they lived in the wrong place, associated with the wrong people, wrote the wrong things, or simply failed to fit the authorities’ definition of loyalty.

After that, it is merely a question of time and the technical work of investigators. Find a publication, discover a suspicious connection, come up with a suitable legal charge — and if nothing can be found, simply keep the person behind bars until something turns up.

The days when courts were supposed to establish the truth, and high treason had a specific legal meaning, seem to be long gone in cases like these.

Now it is not so much treason against the Motherland that exists, but treason against Putin’s regime. And that is a fundamental difference.

Because the Motherland and Putin are not the same thing. Yet in the system he has built, that distinction has practically disappeared. Disagreement with the authorities is increasingly presented as a crime against the state, while disloyalty to the ruler personally is treated as betrayal of the country.

And it no longer matters whether you are an artist, a journalist, a scientist, or an ordinary citizen. It does not matter how much you have contributed to your country’s culture, what awards you have received, or how far removed you are from politics.

There is only Putin, his power, and the rules of the game that he sets himself. And anyone who refuses to play by his rules and dance to his tune risks becoming an enemy of the state.

And from that point on, everything depends on how long it takes to find a criminal charge to pin on them. And whether they manage to survive until trial.

Source: Telegram channel “Politzek-Info” — link to the post.