By ILYA V. PONOMAREV
APRIL 15, 2015
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Early in the morning on Monday last week, a phone call woke me. It was a friend from Washington, a political consultant who follows Russia closely: “There’s a billboard with your picture facing the Kremlin. It’s huge. Sending you the pic, in case you didn’t see it yet.”
My smartphone vibrated a second time, with the image: There, on the facade of a 10-story Stalinist-era building on Moscow’s central Tverskaya Street, were the words “National Traitor,” across a photo showing me, smiling. “I kind of like the picture, but not so sure about the message,” I told my friend, in an attempt at levity.
The next day, the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament, voted to lift my legislative immunity so that I can be prosecuted on charges of misappropriation of public funds and then removed from office. The charges were trumped up, in a fashion typical for modern Russia.
My real crime: I was the lone dissenter, in March 2014, when the Duma voted, 445 to 1, to approve the annexation of Crimea. My vote made headlines across the West, where my distaste for President Vladimir V. Putin is well known. I am an entrepreneur and an outspoken advocate of the use of technology to make government more transparent. I was democratically elected to represent Novosibirsk, Russia’s third-largest city. I once worked for one of Mr. Putin’s chief rivals, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, who was imprisoned from 2003 to 2013. I took part in mass protests against Mr. Putin’s rule in 2005 and 2012. Over the years I’ve received too many threats to keep count.
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