This is a really important point; there is something of a cottage industry in curating barking mad clips from Russian TV (of which, in fairness, there is no lack) and suggesting (a) this is the norm and (b) everyone is tuning into this nonsense.
Yes, it's horrific that there are…

Comprehensive, terrifying account of the Russian agents and technology behind Havana syndrome, a brain disease caused deliberately by electric waves
theins.ru/en/politics/27…

This is such a grim read by Arkady Ostrovsky on the barbarism of life inside Putin’s gulag system for Vladimir Kara-Murza - who is a British citizen as well as such a passionate fighter for Russian democracy dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1…

Fellow gloomy Brits: read this excellent, upbeat and clear-eyed piece on immigration and assimilation by my colleague Joel Budd in The Economist

If this is failure, 'it would be nice to know what success looks like'

economist.com/britain/2024/0…

Before his arrest a year ago, Evan Gershkovich wrote that working in Russia means watching people you know getting jailed. It keeps happening. I often saw journalist Antonina Favorskaya in court hearings, a memorial for Prigozhin, etc. She was recently detained, her home searched

There’s one extraordinary front page today in Russia which sums up Moscow’s attempts to link Ukraine and the West to the Crocus City concert hall massacre. #ReadingRussia

Great scoop by Bloomberg Russia team. Putin was told there is no Ukraine link on the terrorist but continues to argue the opposite. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Russian security forces have been leaking videos of their torture of the Moscow attack suspects ever since they captured them

- one with an ear sliced off, another had an emergency operation, one was electrocuted (commonly reported by detainees)

To do this so openly is new

As predictable as night following day. 'The FSB reported the detention of 11 people involved in the terrorist attack. They were heading to the Russian-Ukrainian border and had contacts on the Ukrainian side' kommersant.ru/doc/6592725?fr…

I'd hoped that this didn't need to be said: we can condemn the Kremlin's vicious war in Ukraine AND show compassion for civilians caught up in a terrorist massacre. Most people know this full well, but they aren't always the loudest on social media

It wasn't an 'election' in Russia; stop using that word.
It was an orchestrated propaganda exercise designed to convince Russians, and the rest of us, to ignore the catastrophe Putin has inflicted on his nation. 300,000+ Russian men are dead and wounded for no reason at all.

For the first time, Putin named Alexei Navalny by name and confirmed that an exchange was being prepared.

Quote:

“A few days before Mr. Navalny’s departure from life, some colleagues told me, not administration employees, some people said that there was an idea to exchange Mr.…

Very strong piece by Timothy Snyder.

'Strongman rule is a fantasy. Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won't. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it.'
open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p/t…

The whole system is now beating the 84-87% range. Putin has surpassed Lukashenko (he was drawn 80%) and is approaching Turkmenistan's results - 90-92%.

Putin's ritual acclamation turns into a battle of images. The result of this 'election' with no choice is pre-determined. What follows is not. My take on the three-day special voting procedure.
economist.com/europe/2024/03…

Midday in Moscow. A queue suddenly forms at the polling station we’re at. One man tells me: “It was important for me to see the faces of other people here, to see I am not alone in my political views.”

Putin's ritual acclamation turns into a battle of images. The result of this 'election' with no choice is pre-determined. What follows is not. My take on the three-day special voting procedure.
economist.com/europe/2024/03…

Putin craves international legitimacy and markets himself as a global player to Russians & to the elites as someone who represents their interests to the West. The so-called elections are a sham that Western democracies must not recognize.

Here're 3 reasons why🧵

Could well be a sign that 🇷🇺 operatives have been instructed to be even more aggressive against opposition personalities everywhere. Beware! This was in Vilnius 🇱🇹.

Arkady Ostrovsky And Kuzio is, of course, lying about Navalny supporting the annexation of Crimea and war vs. Ukraine (and vs. Syria). See for e.g.
twitter.com/RG_Horvath/sta…