Kremlin Rules For Opposition Leaders Have Changed — Ben Judah

From 2004-2011, there was a set of unspoken rules for opposition leaders: you could run for office, but know you would never win and you wouldn't be thrown into prison for opposing the government unless you were an oligarch such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, said Ben Judah, a journalist and author of "Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin."

Russian opposition leaders such as Alexey Navalny and his associates were confident they would never be arrested, or shot and that Putin would never go after their families.

This is no longer the case, said Judah. The rules of opposition politics in Russia have changed.

Hromadske International's Ian Bateson and Angelina Kariakina spoke with Ben Judah via Skype on Sunday, March 22, 2015.