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Q: Can you share a little about your background and the circumstances that led you to human rights work in Russia?

{MK}: I have a background in international relations, so I was always interested in the world's problems and trying to understand what was happening. But in 2017, Alexei Navalny, who was then the leader of the Russian opposition, made a documentary about the corruption of then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, and it sparked huge protests. That was my first time going to a protest—I was 19. That was when I saw massive police brutality for the first time; they were beating women and taking people into police vehicles who were just standing there doing nothing, maybe chanting at most.

For some reason I never expected that, because I was not that interested in what was happening inside Russia at the time. I thought, “we’re okay, we are not starving. People have phones, internet, and everyone is getting an education.” So, I didn't care that much before. But after that, I started to learn much more about what was happening in my own country.

I first got involved with the electoral observation movement. We went to villages and small towns to be independent observers. We got kicked out by police a lot, and we witnessed falsifications firsthand. After being involved in electoral politics, when it became basically prohibited with COVID and this regime became more and more oppressive, I transitioned into human rights with OVD-Info, which is an organization that helps all protesters in Russia.

OVD-Info was set up specifically to send lawyers to police stations to make lists of all the people detained there, so their relatives can find out where they are and bring food for them or wait for them to get out. We were also helping political prisoners who are mostly prosecuted for freedom of speech and freedom of association. And mainly now they do that with war-related cases.

Q: Has OVD-Info run into hindrances preventing it from operating, or experienced resistance or pressure from government?

{MK}: So, the year before the war, after Alexei Navalny was arrested in 2021, we had huge protests all over Russia that were spread out over four months. I think 20,000 people were detained after that, and OVD-Info and its parent organization, Memorial, were helping all of them. We were then recognized as a “foreign agent.” We are still allowed to operate, but there are many constraints now. While it’s just a political label, people are afraid to work with us now.

Three months before the war, our website was blocked. They messaged all of our social media, including Twitter (as it was known then), asking us to delete our accounts, but we declined. Twitter wrote to us, and we provided documentation that we are doing human rights work—and they actually verified us. So, it actually helped us in a way. But they blocked our website, stating that we were expressing extremist ideas to underage children, because I suppose it's the internet, so underage children can use it. It was logic like that. However, the government still has not officially prohibited the organization fully.

"Many large Western tech companies are cooperating with Russia’s censorship agency to this day."

There was a huge international scandal last year because the Russian government sent a notification to YouTube to delete OVD-Info’s channel. YouTube actually then sent a notification to OVD-Info, and it seemed like YouTube was actually considering blocking an entire channel. After that, many journalists reached out to them, and YouTube ultimately declined to delete our channel because it was, I guess, too much of an issue. But it was the first case in Russia when authorities tried to block an entire YouTube channel. Many large Western tech companies are cooperating with Russia’s censorship agency to this day.

Q: Now that you've built so much experience in this realm, can you share what goes into an effective advocacy campaign—especially in countries and regions where it is difficult to do this kind of work?

{MK}: One thing about authoritarian regimes, including Russia but probably excluding China and North Korea, is that most are still afraid of both domestic and international publicity, so it is important to get the word out. For example, when Russia tried to block YouTube a few months ago, it actually generated massive outrage inside Russia among non-political people, because kids watch videos on YouTube, moms watch cooking videos, and so on—so Putin unblocked it. Internationally, they still need allies in the United Nations. So, they will pretend that they are not that bad, and that they still have a human face, so as to not generate too much negative international publicity. They still want to trade, they still want to have international relations, and they don't want to be seen as criminals—although, I guess in the case of Russia, it's too late.

With censorship being imposed severely in Russia, and especially with the war now, most media organizations are not able to operate on the ground. Of course, the internet helps, especially after COVID, although you would need some tools to get around all the blockings. But, for example, Apple blocked almost all free VPNs at Russia's request, and Russians cannot pay for most VPNs, because Russian bank cards are not accepted in the world anymore. Now it's almost impossible to get a VPN if you don't know how to set up your own server. Sure, software engineers can do that, but how many of us are software engineers? The fact that Apple cooperates with the Russian government so much is very concerning.

One of the most important things about the internet and being interconnected is having more policy around Big Tech. Again, Apple and Google are still often compliant with Putin's censorship. They do the same in India, because India is a huge market for them. They want to keep their profits. And that's sometimes the simplest way in which authoritarian regimes are enforced. In the U.S., not allowing censorship on the internet is probably one of the things that can help both here and abroad.

Q: Can you tell us about your work at ����vlog����, and your research with Erica Chenoweth at the Nonviolent Action Lab?

{MK}: At the Nonviolent Action Lab, the question we are most interested in right now and what we've been trying to understand this past year is why we no longer see democratic transitions in the world. They almost fully stopped after the Arab Spring. We now have better education everywhere, we have internet everywhere, you can learn English for free anywhere, but this actually didn't help at all. Instead, it seems that authoritarian leaders—after seeing the power of social media and how it can spread revolution through a region—started to learn and actually adapted so well that they can now prevent such events.

"...We've been trying to understand this past year is why we no longer see democratic transitions in the world. They almost fully stopped after the Arab Spring."

The success rate of any peaceful movement now is very low. It's lower than we ever saw throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. What we are starting to understand from talking to people from different regions is that there really seems to be an emerging authoritarian alliance where these regimes help each other, because they understand that they now face a more connected world—and these regimes also learn from each other very well.

For me, it was probably easiest to see in my region because to this day in post-Soviet Union countries, many people were born in the Soviet Union, they still speak Russian, and they all know each other. After Russia began its “foreign agent” laws, this spread throughout the region—Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Poland, and Hungary all adopted it. They look at each other and borrow their techniques. They learn a lot. They help each other a lot. And this is something that human rights organizers, protesters, and opposition elites still don't fully understand. But these governments have built a lot of resilience.

Q: You're currently in your final year of your MPP at ����vlog����—what are you looking forward to after you graduate?

{MK}: Interestingly enough, I now feel like I can actually contribute a lot in the United States after the presidential election. When Pete Buttigieg recently spoke at a JFK Forum event at ����vlog����, he noted that people in the U.S. don't know how to deal with the issues we now face, and they should learn from people who do know. I have had a lot of Americans approach me and ask how to deal with misinformation and how to spot early signs of power abuse.

I have an internal alarm system that works much quicker than people from countries who never experienced power abuse or restrictions on freedom of speech. And I’m hearing the same from people throughout ����vlog���� who are from African and South American countries who have worked on human rights there. It seems that it's time now for us to guide and teach people how to deal with these kinds of situations, unfortunately.

"I have had a lot of Americans approach me and ask how to deal with misinformation and how to spot early signs of power abuse."

But the most important thing about all of this in the United States is that the system is not based on real repression. It's mostly based on fear, and people start to shut down by themselves. When in reality, now is actually the time to build movements and civil society resilience. However, this is not an obvious thing for people who never experienced that.

Q: You mentioned an internal alarm system—from your perspective, what are some things in the U.S. that are setting this off for you?

{MK}: First of all, I would say anticipatory obedience and the fact that, for example, some media outlets decided not to endorse Kamala Harris because they were guessing what was coming. That's why they decided to shut up in advance, and I suppose that's a very clear example of what's happening. For journalists, they will be faced with a huge choice: Are we covering the new administration in a way that ensures we maintain access to them, or will we be prohibited from having access to them after our first article? This is the choice people face in many other countries.

The most important thing to understand is that, even in Russia now, it's 80% fear and 20% repression. They cannot punish or imprison everyone. The real difficulty is when people give up, become depressed, decide to emigrate, and ultimately do not to do anything.

In Moscow, once we had those large protests, we suddenly understood that the police can only arrest about 1,000 people at a time. After that, they just don't have the space anymore. Once we realized that, people became bolder and we saw less apathy, because the chances of being arrested was so low in a city of 13 million people. We saw the police putting people into police vans and then letting them go within minutes because they don't have anywhere to put them. Apathy in the population is the worst thing to have, because that's what these governments use against us. We can take a few weeks now to recuperate, but after that, we must resume our work.