Russia Unleashes A Sweeping Crackdown

The Federal Security Service building in Moscow. Critics say the agency is behind a nationwide crackdown on the Kremlin’s opponents. © Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

New York Times: As Putin Era Begins to Wane, Russia Unleashes a Sweeping Crackdown

PSKOV, Russia — After a teenager blew himself up inside a branch of Russia’s secret police near the Arctic Circle late last year, a freelance journalist hundreds of miles to the south drew what she thought was “an obvious and banal” conclusion in her weekly radio commentary.

Her conclusion — that relentless repression by Russia’s security forces is radicalizing Russian youth — now has the journalist, Svetlana Prokopyeva, facing up to seven years in jail for “publicly inciting terrorism.”

Even the Kremlin’s own Human Rights Council, protested that Ms. Prokopyeva had done no such thing and, from her home office in the ancient Russian city of Pskov, had been merely trying to explain the forces that push people toward extreme acts, not to encourage them.

Yet, the case rolls on, adding a Kafkaesque twist to the increasingly assertive actions of a security apparatus seemingly bent on proving the Kremlin’s harshest critics right when they say that Russia has taken a dangerous turn as President Vladimir V. Putin serves out what is supposed to be his final term.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: Russia's security apparatus still exists, and it has not shaken its Kafkaesque past. But the results of the current crackdown have been different. It is not instilling fear among the young, and it is only galvanizing the opposition. And as I mentioned in a July 30 post, this crackdown only proves to Russians on how out of touch the Kremlin has become to what its people want .... Has The Kremlin Lost Touch On What Russia Wants? (July 30, 2019).