We lost our humanity. We lost our dignity. We got punished for something we did not do.

Amazing sports stories from the BBC World Service tells the story of the Black 14.

Our young lives were flipped upside down. Search for amazing sports

stories wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Hello I'm Stephen Saka and

welcome to this special episode of the documentary from the BBC World Service.

I host the BBC's Hard Talk Podcast in-depth hard-hitting interviews with newsmaking personalities.

Now, 2024 is a big year for elections worldwide.

In some countries that means political uncertainty,

a whiff of change in the air, but not in Russia.

Russians will vote for a new president in March with zero expectation of a shift in the

established order.

Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia as President or Prime Minister for all of this century.

There is every prospect of him staying in the Kremlin until 2036. Ruthless repression of dissent has

been Putin's hallmark. Over the course of the last decade and more I've spoken to

the few prominent Russians ready to make a

stand against Putinism to look back on their words and their fates is telling

as the ballot boxes are again readied in Russia. On the

16th of February this year Russian authorities announced the death in prison of

the opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny.

That news sent shock waves around the world, but perhaps it wasn't a surprise.

Navalny was by no means the first Putin opponent to die an untimely

death.

...