The Kremlin has long orchestrated Russia’s court system as an instrument for oppression and propaganda, using a veneer of legality to silence critics and to impose its version of events.
In December, for example, Russia’s Supreme Court liquidated the country’s most prominent human rights group, Memorial, ruling that its work chronicling Josef Stalin-era brutality had distorted the Soviet Union’s historical image.
Months earlier, a Moscow court had condemned the political and anti-corruption organizations founded by Alexei Navalny as "extremist,” eventually sentencing the opposition leader to nine years in prison.