Sergei Kovalev, dissident who clashed with Yeltsin and Putin, dies aged 91

Chronicler of Soviet abuses of power founded human rights group and served seven years in prison camp

A trailblazing Soviet dissident who was sent to a prison camp for his human rights campaigning and clashed with Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin over Russia’s democratic backsliding has died at age 91.

Sergei Kovalev, a chronicler of Soviet abuses of power, co-founded the Soviet Union’s first public, independent human rights group in 1969 and later served seven years in the notorious Perm-36 camp, returning to Moscow in 1986 only by an order of Mikhail Gorbachev.

Related: Jonathan Steele: ‘I came to Russia a political correspondent and left a crime reporter’

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This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.