#Russias #exmayor #doesnt #fear #jail
Yevgeny Roizman is trying to hide his sadness behind a mountain of work at his charity fund in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg, where visitors are lining up to see him.
Roizman, who was Yekaterinburg’s mayor between 2013 and 2018, is Russia’s last prominent opposition figure still in the country and not behind bars.
Russian society is suffering from a historic crackdown on dissenters as Moscow advances its military intervention in Ukraine.
All top opposition figures are either in prison, like Roizman’s friend Alexei Navalny, or in exile.
Roizman, who has openly denounced President Vladimir Putin and his campaign in Ukraine, says he knows he could be arrested at any moment.
“I’m under no illusions,” the tough opposition politician in red moccasins told the AFP news agency.
“But I’m not afraid either.”
The tall and athletic 59-year-old first made a name for himself as an anti-drug activist fighting Russia’s severe drug epidemic.
As mayor, he made himself accessible to his constituents and received the city’s most needy people to help them solve their problems.
He resigned after the authorities postponed the mayoral election, but he is still closely involved in the work of his charity.
Every Friday, the ex-mayor welcomes people to his foundation in the center of Russia’s fourth-largest city.
Requests range from help finding a job to buying Zolgensma, the world’s most expensive drug used to treat children with spinal muscular atrophy.
– ‘Come what may’ –
On a recent Friday afternoon, AFP saw several dozen people waiting to speak to the opposition politician, including a family with an autistic child, a few admirers and a crying woman who wanted to emigrate because of Russia’s offensive in Ukraine.
Roizman said he was afraid to speak to his friends and acquaintances in Ukraine because he “feels insanely guilty”.
“What can I wish for the Ukrainians?” he said.
“I can ask their forgiveness and wish them strength and courage.”
He said he and like-minded Russians understood that they were helpless in the face of “absolute evil.”
But he said he was convinced that sooner or later “justice will prevail”.
This Friday one of his daughters was getting married, so the former mayor commuted back and forth in the office all day.
Roizman said he will not give in to the pressure and will continue to speak out and help people.
“Do what you must, come what may,” he said.
The noose around Roizman tightens.
He was recently fined three times for condemning Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine.
Opposition colleagues Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza were recently arrested and are now in custody for discrediting the Russian army. Both face a ten-year prison sentence.
Roizman’s admirers are concerned.
“We’re afraid they’ll lock him up like everyone else,” said Yevgenia Kuzmenkova, who traveled from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk.
“So we came to him and shook his hand before he was followed,” said the 36-year-old, who had traveled with her husband.
– “anti-propaganda”
Roizman’s path to opposition glory has been somewhat controversial.
Born to a Jewish engineer father and a Russian nanny, he served a prison sentence in his youth.
He became an entrepreneur in the 1990s, when Yekaterinburg was an epicenter of gang warfare.
In 1999 he co-founded a foundation called City Without Drugs and a drug rehabilitation center in Yekaterinburg.
Rights activists have questioned the center’s methods, including handcuffing addicts to their beds and forcing heroin users to go cold turkey.
However, its supporters report a decrease in drug-related deaths since the foundation’s inception.
Roizman was an MP between 2003 and 2007. In 2013, he snatched the mayoral seat from the Kremlin and became the most high-profile opposition mayor in Russia.
After his resignation, he never missed an opportunity to needle the Kremlin.
He has a penchant for harsh language and has peppered Twitter with profanities to mock officials, much to the delight of his followers.
“It’s short and brutal anti-propaganda,” he said.
The use of profanity – which can result in hefty fines in Russia – helps expose “the true nature” of the official line, he added.
As a literature lover, Roizman reflected on the difficulty of translating swear words into foreign languages.
He recalled a conversation he once had with a prominent Slavist about translating works by the French Renaissance writer Francois Rabelais, known for his gallows humor.
He interrupted the interview to attend his daughter’s wedding and then returned.
When two young women arrived with abandoned kittens, he immediately turned to the new task.
“Do we have to find them a home then?” he said. “That is our main task.”
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