Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) tweeted at 11:46 AM on Sun, Apr 10, 2022:
In Moscow today, police arrested Konstantin Goldman for standing outside Red Square beside Kyiv’s “Hero City” monument with a copy of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” in hand (Go to Rothrock’s twitter account to see the photo).
In reports leaking out of Russia here and there, and in the text of Putin’s own propaganda, many Russians are turning against teachers, neighbors, and family if they merely voice a question about the war in Ukraine. Putin’s War has driven thousands of Russians from their own country either because they were being hunted or because they saw a Russian future as utterly blighted. His propaganda is succeeding, for now: “The last few sources of actual war reporting in Russia have disappeared. It takes violence by thousands of Russians to suppress those with a mind and the will to speak it in public. Russians reading poems are arrested. Russians who carry signs with Bible passages are arrested. Russians who carry signs with only asterisks are arrested. Russians wearing hats in blue and yellow, the colors of the Ukrainian flag, are arrested. Russians who carry anti-fascist signs are arrested.”*
In Tuesday’s New York Times (April 12, 2022):
“The Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza has been detained in Moscow after criticizing President Vladimir V. Putin for the invasion of Ukraine.
In interviews in recent days with MSNBC and CNN, Mr. Kara-Murza blasted the Kremlin for shutting down all independent news media outlets in the country and criminalizing even the act of calling the invasion of Ukraine a war.
Mr. Kara-Murza was poisoned twice in recent years with undetermined toxins that sent him into comas that lasted days and left him with neurological damage.
Asked in the interviews whether he feared for his safety, Mr. Kara-Murza said that it would be too demoralizing for all opposition figures to leave the country, that he belonged inside Russia and that leaving would be exactly what the Kremlin hoped he would do.”
This is the logic of Russia now: Ukraine is Putin’s War. Anyone who protests the War is Putin’s enemy. Arrest them. Disappear them. Kill them.
And still individuals will say No. Their courage is stunning, almost beyond imagining. If they’re lucky, they face a place of cold and darkness, a boot to the head, towers and dogs. If they spur Putin’s special venom, they will die. They know this. They have no illusions.
These Russians deserve our respect, and truth be told, our gratitude and love — they give us hope in our common humanity.
*Timothy Snyder
