Russian President Vladimir Putin Opens the Pandora’s Box
Calculated Moves and Unintended Consequences
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When President Vladimir Putin of Russia publicly eulogized mercenary tycoon Yevgeny Prigozhin as a man with complicated fate, his critics inside Russia got the message.
Loud and clear.
The Russian President is more than ready to complicate the fate of his critics and anyone who challenges him inside Russia anytime he wants. It is a tradition inside Russia, to offer everlasting peace to President Putin’s critics.
Political leaders Sergei Yushenkov and Boris Nemtsov were killed in 2003 and 2015. The current opposition leader, Navalny, is counting the bars in his cell, seemingly forever. Journalist Anna Politkovskaya was brutally murdered in 2006; she wouldn’t stop turning the light on the darker aspects of the Russian military’s actions in Chechnya.
We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it’s total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial — whatever our special services, Putin’s guard dogs, see fit. — Anna Politkovskaya
When you possess the audacity to pen words like these, naturally, they won’t find favor in the eyes of the Russian President. Former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko was gifted with a radioactive life. Russian double agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned with Novichok.
The use of banned substances by Russia during its covert operations in foreign territory feels like a message from the Kremlin. Everything seems to convey a message to someone. The eulogy Putin delivered for Prigozhin is a message to the elite and Russian ultranationalists to fall in line.
On June 24th, following Prigozhin’s capture of Rostov-on-Don and his initiation of the mutiny, Putin…
