Hello and welcome to the intelligence from the economist. I'm your host, Patrick Lane,

filling in for Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events

shaping your world. In Russia, daily coronavirus deaths are at their highest ever, but for

President Vladimir Putin, the pandemic has proved useful for suffocating dissent. Political

opponents are being locked up in record numbers. We take a special look at the state of the

opposition, including the young women who are taking up the fight. And in China, today

it's single-stay, an annual excuse for an almighty online spend-explurge. This year it's

happening in the midst of a crackdown on the country's tech companies, but will that make

any difference? First, on Tuesday, Liliya Chenishiva, a Russian opposition activist, was

arrested in the central city of Ufar. Her offense, working for opposition leader Alexei

Navalny, while his organisation was still legal. She faces up to 10 years in prison. The

same day Sergei Zouyef, the 67-year-old head of Russia's top liberal university, was taken

from house arrest to a prison cell. Mr Zouyef had just had an operation for a serious

heart condition. It was a move thought to be intended to force a false confession in

their fabricated case. In Russia, more than 10% of the national budget is spent on internal

security. But despite the rising number of arrests, people continue to stand up to President

Vladimir Putin's increasingly repressive machine.

Repression in Russia really has intensified over the past year. The watershed was the poisoning

of Alexei Navalny and his subsequent arrest. And since then, repression really has grown

in response to also growing discontent and protest.

Akadi Ostrovsky is the economist's Russia editor.

Independent media, human rights activists, journalists are being labeled foreign agents

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