Meet Oleg Kozlovsky. As pictured, he’s just emerged from 13 days in Russian prison. Oleg is the leader of a protest movement called Oborona (it means “Defense” in Russian) and he was arrested on March 6th for doing nothing more than walking down the street.

Granted, he was on his way to take part in a protest demonstration against the inauguration of Dimitri Medvedev as Russia’s third “president.” Kozlovsky believes the election was rigged both by stuffing the ballot boxes and excluded candidates from the ballot. But he hadn’t gotten anywhere near the demonstration when he was preemptively arrested by dictator Vladimir Putin’s secret police.

He was then railroaded into jail on evidence alleging he had committed two different acts of illegal civil disobedience at two different times. He was denied visitation and access to his lawyer, and immediately launched a hunger strike in protest. That’s why he looks so emaciated in the photograph.

Released on May 19th, his term of imprisonment precisely prevented him from taking part in the formative meeting of a new shadow parliament organization he had been instrumental in forming. Coincidence? I think not.

But it was Kozlovsky who had the last laugh, however. Because hours before his release the day’s edition of the Washington Post hit the streets, and it carried an op-ed essay written by Kozlovsky. In it, Kozlovsky excoriates the Kremlin’s rogue regime for imposing “the stability of the Gulag” on Russian civil society, and calls for mass grassroots opposition.

Little wonder, then, that the Kremlin feels it needs to act preemptively to silence this valiant young Russian leader. Can you imagine how many op-ed pieces he might have published if he hadn’t been restricted by imprisonment?