Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that “new mass repression” in Russia, similar to the Soviet era, was “unacceptable” as the Kremlin suppressed any criticism of the attack in Ukraine, AFP reported.

“When we talk about victims of political repression, we talk about very different people. There are those who were really opponents of the Soviet system, and those who were supporters and ended up behind bars for various domestic political reasons,” he said.

“There were people who got there completely by accident. All this is important, but the main thing for us is that all this does not happen again in the history of our country, because it had a huge and heavy impact on our people and our state,” he continued, quoted by the Interfax agency.

“Such deprivation of rights is unacceptable if we want our country to have a future,” Putin added, speaking during a meeting of the Human Rights Council, an advisory body under the Kremlin.

Since the Russian military offensive against Ukraine at the end of February 2022, the judicial authorities have been severely punishing citizens who oppose the conflict by word or deed. For these reasons, thousands of Russians were fined or sentenced to long prison terms.