Is Russia Leading a Regional Authoritarian Trend

?

19 January 2011

Russian opposition leaders Boris Nemtsov, right, and Eduard Limonov, face the media in Moscow after they were released from detention, Jan 17, 2011

In Ukraine, one former minister is in jail, another is enjoying political asylum in the Czech Republic, and the former prime minister is fighting legal charges of misspending state money.

Next door in Belarus, the harshest political crackdown seen in Europe in years, has landed four presidential candidates in prison.

And in Russia, judges working blocks from the Kremlin sentenced two charismatic opposition leaders, Mikhail Khordokovsky and Boris Nemtsov, to jail.

In response, Amnesty International charged Russia with "strangling" the rights to freedom of assembly and peaceful protest.

Is there a coordinated clampdown on freedoms in these three nations, the Slavic core of the old Soviet Union?

From New York, émigré Russian scientist Yuri Mayarshak says yes. "A few days ago we had simultaneous, almost simultaneous persecution of opposition in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Of course, it could be a coincidence, but a chance of such a coincidence is not very likely, indeed."

But to analysts on the ground in Minsk, Moscow and Kyiv, each government is following its own dynamic.

Russian analyst and editor Fyodor Lyukanov said, "To be frank, I do not see any connection between those trends." Lyukanov said the Kremlin’s top concern is to win parliamentary elections later this year and presidential elections the following March.