Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who is the president of Russia, serving since 2012 and previously from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as prime minister from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012: He is the longest-serving Russian or Soviet leader since Joseph Stalin.
Yevgeny Maksimovich Primakov was a Russian politician and diplomat who served as Prime Minister of Russia from 1998 to 1999. During his long career, he also served as Foreign Minister, Speaker of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, and chief of the intelligence service. Primakov was an academician (Arabist) and a member of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky was a Soviet and Russian human rights activist and writer. From the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, he was a prominent figure in the Soviet dissident movement, well known at home and abroad. He spent a total of twelve years in the psychiatric prison-hospitals, labour camps, and prisons of the Soviet Union during Brezhnev rule.
Andrey Nikolayevich Illarionov is a Russian economist and former senior policy advisor to Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, from April 2000 to December 2005. Since April 2021, he is a senior fellow at the non-governmental organization Center for Security Policy, which is based out of Washington, D.C. in the United States.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Kara-Murza is a Russian-British political activist, journalist, author, filmmaker, and former political prisoner. A protégé of murdered Russian dissident Boris Nemtsov, Kara-Murza is vice-chairman of Open Russia, an NGO founded by the exiled Russian businessman and former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which promotes civil society and democracy in Russia. He was elected to the Coordinating Council of the Russian Opposition in 2012, and served as deputy leader of the People's Freedom Party from 2015 to 2016. He has directed two documentaries, They Chose Freedom and Nemtsov. As of 2021, he serves as Senior Fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. He was awarded the Civil Courage Prize in 2018.
They Chose Freedom is a four-part TV documentary on the history of political dissent in the USSR from the 1950s to the 1990s. It was produced in 2005 by Vladimir Kara-Murza.
REN TV is a Russian free-to-air television network. It was founded on 1 January 1997 by Irena Lesnevskaya and her son, Dmitry Lesnevsky, who had been running REN TV as a production house for other national Russian television channels. Though it focuses mostly on audiences aged between 18 and 45 years old, the network offers programming for a wide range of demographics.
The 2006 Georgian–Russian espionage controversy began when the Government of Georgia arrested four Russian officers on charges of espionage, on September 27, 2006. The Western and Georgian media sources report that relations between the two post-Soviet nations have significantly deteriorated after Georgia and NATO agreed to hold talks on closer relations.
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was a British-naturalised Russian defector and former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) who specialised in tackling organised crime. A prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he advised British intelligence and coined the term "mafia state".
Andrey Andreyevich Piontkovsky is a Russian-Georgian scientist and political writer and analyst, a member of International PEN Club. He is a former member of the Russian Opposition Coordination Council.
John Ross Beyrle is an American diplomat. A career Foreign Service Officer and specialist in Russian and Eastern European affairs, he served as Ambassador of the United States to the Russian Federation from July 3, 2008, until January 10, 2012, and as Ambassador to Bulgaria from 2005 to 2008.
Lyudmila Mikhaylovna Alexeyeva was a Russian historian and human-rights activist who was a founding member in 1976 of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group and one of the last Soviet dissidents active in post-Soviet Russia.
"Putin Must Go" is a Russian website and public campaign organised for the collection of signatures to an open letter demanding the resignation of President Vladimir Putin. The campaign was started on the Internet on 10 March 2010 by Russian opposition activists, including several Russian artists.
Sergei Adamovich Kovalyov was a Russian human rights activist and politician. During the Soviet period he was a dissident and, after 1975, a political prisoner.
Angus Roxburgh is a British journalist, broadcaster, former external PR consultant to the Russian government, and singer-songwriter.
The 2011–2013 Russian protests, which some English language media referred to as the Snow Revolution, began in 2011 and continued into 2012 and 2013. The protests were motivated by claims of Russian and foreign journalists, political activists and members of the public that the election process was fraudulent. The Central Election Commission of Russia stated 11.5% of official reports of fraud could be confirmed as true.
Vladimir Rostislavovich Medinsky is a Russian political figure, academic and publicist who served as the Minister of Culture from May 2012 to January 2020. He has the federal state civilian service rank of 1st class Active State Councillor of the Russian Federation. He is a member of the General Council of the United Russia party.
The Coordination Council of the Russian opposition was a non-governmental political and civic body that existed in 2012—2013. Elections to the council were held on 20—22 October 2012. The Coordination Council of the first convocation was elected for one year, after which new elections were expected. However, they did not take place, and in October 2013, the council actually ceased to exist.
Anton Borisovich Nossik was a Russian journalist, social activist and blogger. Sometimes he is called one of the godfathers of the Russian Internet or the first Russian-language blogger. He was an editor for the Russian online news publications Vesti.ru, Lenta.ru, Gazeta.ru and NEWSru.com.
Trump: The Kremlin Candidate? is a documentary film first broadcast by the program Panorama on BBC One, and first aired in the United Kingdom on 16 January 2017, four days before the Inauguration of Donald Trump. It examined links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies and the relationship between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. It features investigative journalist John Sweeney, who journeyed to Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, and the United States during the course of his research. Sweeney had prior experience on the subject matter, having interviewed Trump in 2013, and Putin in 2014. The film was directed by Matthew Hill, Tomiko Newson, and Nick Sturdee.
