Samuel Ramani

Last Thursday’s prisoner exchange with the US was a rare victory for human rights in Russia. Vladimir Kara-Murza, the Vice Chairman of Open Russia and protégé of slain opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, was freed from his 25-year sentence for treason. Ilya Yashin, a liberal politician who called Vladimir Putin a ‘war criminal’ and said Russia’s wartime censorship laws were unconstitutional, saw his eight-and-a-half-year sentence terminated. The chairs of the shuttered human rights organisation Memorial Oleg Orlov and Sasha Skochilenko are also embracing their newfound freedom.  Despite only just escaping Putin’s draconian prisons, the eyes of these human rights crusaders are firmly on Russia’s future.

Russia has launched five waves of missile strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructures since 10 October. These strikes have damaged or destroyed almost half of Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure and made blackouts a way of life across Ukraine and neighboring Moldova. Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has aptly accused Russia of ‘weaponising winter’ against Ukraine and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that Russia will not ‘calm down’ as long as it has missiles. Russia’s deployment of a warship capable of carrying Kalibr missiles to the Black Sea suggests that the worst may be yet to come for Ukraine’s war-ravaged cities.