Russia's President Putin always dreamed of a Soviet Union 2. In at least some respects, his country is approaching the defunct Soviet state, which bodes ill for most Russians. A cover photo of the Novaya Gazeta illustrates the whole tragedy: in the dead of night, four ballet dancers stumble hand in hand in front of a gigantic fireball, as in Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" ballet, which in Soviet times regularly flickered across the screens during disasters.
The last major independent newspaper in Russia wrote about the mushroom cloud this Wednesday: "The edition of 'Novaya' corresponds to all the rules of the amended Russian penal code." The Duma approved the new rules last Friday and is considering nothing less than total censorship of the reports . Anyone who spreads "fake news" about the Russian military, i.e. calls the war in Ukraine a war, eg draconian prison sentences.
Many of Russia's critical media outlets have been blocked or have ceased to function since the law was passed, including well-known radio station Ekho Moskvy and television station Dozhd, whose staff said goodbye with a "no to war" and a historic recording of "Swan Lake." Facebook and Twitter were also blocked, and many foreign media temporarily suspended their reporting from Russia. It is obvious: the murderous war against Ukraine is accompanied by massive internal repression. While persecution and physical attacks on journalists are not new in Russia, the Novaya Gazeta alone has killed five journalists since its inception, but at least some independent reporting has been possible.
Now anyone who doesn't support President Vladimir Putin is under suspicion, as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has demanded. Newspaper.” “It has pushed the boundaries of what was previously possible and imaginable, nothing is impossible anymore,” said the Russian reporter, who fled abroad overnight. He can hardly be surprised anymore.” Soon his access to the information will be free In prison it will be like me, so none at all: The former KGB agent once described his disappearance as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe in 20 Russia in the In the last years of the Soviet era and in the wild years that followed, Putin has been draconically persecuting since the protests against his re-election in 2012.Demonstrators were jailed, and many NGOs and independent media had to brand themselves as "enemy agents" for several years, reminiscent of the darkest days of the Soviet Union. Since the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, this course has intensified at a dizzying pace. Anyone demonstrating against the so-called “special operation” in Ukraine will be taken away immediately.
In the first eleven days of the war alone, security forces in Russia arrested more than 13,000 demonstrators. And it is probably no coincidence that the human rights organization Memorial, which was founded in the glasnost era and dealt with Stalinist crimes, among other things, was finally banned at the end of February. "Like so many things right now, white is becoming black and black is becoming white," he says.
Irina Scherbakow, head of Memorial, on Deutschlandfunk. Similarly, the Russian writer and journalist Alisa Ganiyeva suggests. The invasion of Ukraine led to "rapid, hyper-accelerated growth in repression and dictatorship" in the country, he told the German Press Agency. The silence of independent voices in his country is a "great catastrophe," he said. “Millions of people poisoned by the powerful poison of Putin's propaganda are now without an antidote.In the future, Russians will soon have to make a terrible choice: "Either remain silent and retract our own previous words, or go to jail, or try to enter internal emigration in a kind of parallel language."
In addition to internal repression and the closure of independent information, there are the consequences of sanctions. These affect almost all areas and are increasingly closing the country.