JRL NEWSWATCH: “A Summer of Unprecedented Brutality in Moscow” – The New Yorker/ Masha Gessen

“… Moscow [recently] has seen an unprecedented number of large, confrontational protests … met with unprecedented brutality …. [While] the Kremlin has been cracking down on dissent for seven years … arrests continue to multiply, prison terms grow longer … brutality becomes more brutal. Once in a while, the cruelty … comes into sharper focus. … prosecutors tried to strip two sets of parents of … parental rights because they took children to the protests. … police took a Moscow man from his home in the evening, leaving a sleeping twenty-month-old child alone. … Things just keep getting worse. … The intimidation operation is big. … reportedly [with] eighty-four detectives …. rushing [protest-related criminal] cases … at breakneck speed. … Why is the regime unleashing such spectacular and effortful fury on a few candidates for offices with no power and next to no chance of winning in rigged elections? A common interpretation[: …] the Kremlin is scared. … Putin’s popularity is slipping … [E]ven a rigged election can stress the system to the point where its rusty structures give. … [Putin’s] system … is so opaque … we will not know how thoroughly it has rusted until it actually collapses. …”

Click here for: “A Summer of Unprecedented Brutality in Moscow” – The New Yorker/ Masha Gessen