Ben Stewart - Don't Trust, Don't Fear, Don't Beg

While Russian state communism was dead, authoritarianism was not. Putin instituted a system of state capitalism in which wealth and power were concentrated in the hands of billionaire businessmen who were handed control over the nation’s industries. As long as they did not challenge the regime and allowed the government to benefit from the riches flowing into their coffers, they were left to their own devices. When one of those oligarchs, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, owner of Russia’s biggest oil company and the country’s richest man, intimated that he might challenge Putin for the presidency, he was jailed on trumped-up charges. His company was broken up and distributed among Putin’s supporters.

By 2007 about half of the Russian government’s revenue came from oil and gas – double the amount when Putin took power [74] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/energy.htm – and the Kremlin saw exploitation of the Arctic as key to its hold on power into the future. That year Artur Chilingarov planted his Russian flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole and claimed the Arctic for Moscow, provoking angry responses from other Arctic states. [75] http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/countries-lay-claim-to-arctic-in-battle-for-oil-and-gas-reserves-2087040.html

‘I don’t give a damn what all these foreign politicians… are saying about this,’ said Chilingarov. ‘If someone doesn’t like this, let them go down themselves and try to put something there. Russia must win. Russia has what it takes to win. The Arctic has always been Russian.’ [76] http://origins.osu.edu/article/russia-and-race-arctic

Sini writes a letter to the people across the world who are calling for her freedom.

The early winter is here in Murmansk, it has snowed a couple of days already. I spend a lot of time looking out through the window. When the sun shines it makes me think of you all supporting us, it makes me happy and makes me smile. When it is snowing, I think about the Arctic, the sea ice, the beautiful nature up here, and it gives me strength, it gives this all meaning… I think about climate change, and I don’t regret it, not even for a second. I would do all this again. All this and much more…

But her cell is beginning to smell.

In every corner, under the bed, on the shelf above her bunk, there are plastic bags containing uneaten boiled potatoes. When she comes back from the gulyat the stench hits her square in the face. It’s obvious she’s hoarding potatoes, any fool could tell. Popov hasn’t been back yet, but she knows it won’t be long. She’s desperate now, certain she’ll be sent to the kartser the moment the governor does the rounds and sniffs the air in her cell. And so it is that one morning, just before a scheduled meeting with her lawyer, Sini scurries around the room pulling potatoes from bags and filling her pockets with them.

A guard opens the door and leads her down the corridor to the meeting room. Sini shuffles into a seat opposite her lawyer, Larisa, a provincial woman with a loud mouth and a garish trademark green synthetic top embroidered with golden dragons. She has already demonstrated great courage in her constant efforts to get Sini the food she needs.

‘How are you?’ she says.

‘Larisa, I need you to help me.’

‘I’m trying Sini, we’re all doing our best.’

‘No, I mean with something special. I need you to do something right now.’

‘What’s wrong Sini?’

‘The head of the prison, he’s crazy. He hates me.’

The guard is standing by the door, staring into the middle distance.

‘Why does he hate you?’

‘Because… because I don’t eat all of his potatoes.’

‘He hates you for that?’

‘He went crazy, I think he wants to put me in a punishment cell. I need you to help me.’

‘How?’

Sini eyes the guard then slowly, silently, she draws a potato from her pocket and holds it under the table. ‘Please, take this. Take it out with you when you leave.’

Larisa’s forehead scrunches up. ‘Take what?’

‘I’m holding it now.’

Larisa narrows her eyes then feels for Sini’s hand under the table. Her fingers explore the contents of Sini’s palm, a confused expression breaks over her face then suddenly she jerks her hand away and pushes her chair back.

‘Sini,’ she whispers.

‘What?’

‘You want me to smuggle potatoes out of the prison?’

Sini nods urgently. ‘Yes, exactly.’

‘Sini, I can’t. If they caught me I’d be in big trouble. We both would. I’d be thrown off the case. I’d lose my licence.’

‘So you can’t do it?’

‘No, Sini. I can’t.’

‘Really?’

‘Smuggle potatoes? No. I can’t.’

Sini slides the potato back into her pocket. ‘Okay,’ she says, trying to smile but wiping a tear from her cheek. ‘I understand.’

The legal team has lodged appeals against the continued detention of the Arctic 30. The activists know the hearings are imminent, but none of them holds out hope that they’ll be freed. ‘Appeals don’t work,’ says Vitaly, Dima’s cellmate. ‘There’s no such thing as an appeal. If they decide they’re going to keep you, they keep you. If they decide to let you go, they just let you go.’

Roman’s appeal is the day before his birthday. It’s three weeks since the ship was raided and he’s hoping for a present in the form of justice but, as soon as he sees the face of the judge, he understands everything. The man’s face is frozen. Roman’s lawyer tells him that the judge has a pre-printed text to read out when the time comes to deliver the verdict. He just needs to put down the name of the defendant, because everything has already been decided.

Roman is not at court, instead he is in a cell in SIZO-1 watching the hearing through a video conference link. After the evidence has been presented, the judge declares that he will now retire to carefully consider the merits of this complicated case. He orders the courtroom to be vacated. Then something odd happens. Everybody leaves the court so only the judge is left, but they forget to switch Roman off. So he’s sitting there looking up at the judge. The man is supposed to be deliberating, thinking about what decision to make. But instead he clambers up onto his dais and swings his legs like a child in a playground. Then he jumps down, crosses the empty courtroom and collapses into the prosecutor’s chair. He spins himself around then leaps up and falls into the defence lawyer’s chair, spins around again, then sits down on a bench in the public gallery and takes off his gown. He sits silently for a moment, fiddling with the collar of the gown, then he glances up at the screen above his head. Roman is looking down on him with vague, perplexed amusement. The judge brings a hand to his mouth and cries, ‘ Dermo! ’ – ‘Shit!’ – then jumps up and presses a button. The screen goes blank.

At the start of Kruso’s hearing the judge accidentally starts reading out the judgement instead of the indictment, before the evidence is even presented. The defence makes a challenge against the judge, alleging she’s biased. The judge goes away to consider the challenge against herself, comes back, declares that after careful consideration she’s concluded that she is in fact not biased, that she was merely reading out preparatory notes for the ruling, and that therefore her impartiality is not in question.

As Phil walks into the courtroom he slips a hand into his pocket and draws out a matchbox. The guards push him into the cage and lock the door. Phil looks around, anxious for sight of a familiar face. He spots one of the Greenpeace support crew – someone who must remain anonymous, so we’ll call her Mona. She stands on her toes and cranes her neck so she can see Phil over the cluster of photographers surrounding the cage. Their eyes meet, Mona nods and Phil nods back. She slips a cigarette from a packet and sticks it between her lips then shakes a matchbox and sniffs. One of the photographers steps back and examines the back of his camera, scrolling through pictures, and Mona slips into the empty space and thrusts a hand between the bars. Phil clasps it and shakes it firmly, a guard breaks through the photographers and pushes Mona back, snatching the cigarette from her mouth and remonstrating in Russian. Mona shrugs.