Arguably, protests in Russia are like snowballs in Hell. This is why I’ve written so many commentaries over the years hailing democratic rebels with a lost cause.
For example, I refer you to
- “Putinization: President Putin Reforming Russia in His Own Image,” March 25, 2005
- “Vladimir Putin Sends Political Dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky Off to the Gulag!” June 1, 2005
- “Putin Probably Ordered the Hits [on dissident spy Alexander Litvinenko and investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya]. But No One Will Do Anything About It!” November 28, 2006
- “Fated Assassination of Russian Opposition Leader Boris Nemtsov,” March 1, 2015
- “‘Putin had the hammer thrower, Alexei Navalny, thrown in jail … again,’” March 2, 2018
- “Pussy Riot: Russia’s ‘Vlad the Poisoner’ Strikes … Again,” September 19, 2018
More to the point, given the above, you’d be forgiven for thinking that people protesting in Russia might as well be howling at the moon.
Yet the people protest.
Thousands of people marched in the Russian far eastern city of Khabarovsk on Saturday for the third weekend in a row, protesting at President Vladimir Putin’s handling of a regional political crisis that has sparked demonstrations.
Residents of the city, around 3,800 miles and seven time zones east of Moscow, are unhappy about the July 9 detention of the wider region’s popular regional governor, Sergei Furgal, who was arrested on murder charges he denies.
His detention, which his supporters say was politically motivated, has triggered more than two weeks of street protests, creating a headache for the Kremlin which is trying to troubleshoot a sharp COVID-19-induced drop in real incomes and keep a lid on unrest as the economy stutters.
(Reuters, July 25, 2020)
I just hope Putin does not decide to deal with them the way he dealt with people protesting in the Russian region of Chechnya. If that’s too far back in time, consider that the war his “little green men” perpetrated more recently in eastern Ukraine was a blood bath. This would be a blood flood…
In any event, the commentaries cited above and this picture shown below demonstrate that I’ve been hanging with Russian protesters for years. (Friends will attest that I wear one of those at least twice a month.)
I truly wish them well.
Related commentaries:
Putinization… Khodorkovsky… Litvinenko…
Nemtsov… Navalny… Pussy Riot… Ukraine…
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