JRL NEWSWATCH: “Dark days again in Russia. For prisoners, an endless carousel of absurdity” – Washington Post
“To understand Russia today, it is necessary to reach back to Stalin’s Great Terror …. Everyone was scared[,] even Communist Party theorists … ‘frightened out of their wits like rabbits’ [as described by one commentator.] … [Similarly, today] Russian security services are grabbing people arbitrarily and imprisoning them for criticism of … Putin or his barbaric war against Ukraine. [According to two other commentators] … the … FSB[] has been turned into ‘a far more expansive arm of an increasingly ruthless state. In its sweeping reach into domestic society, foreign affairs, and the military, the FSB has begun to look less like … the KGB[] … [and more like] something much scarier: the NKVD, Stalin’s notorious secret police, which conducted the great purges of the 1930s.’ There have been 16,403 detentions [for] … taking a stance against the war in Ukraine ….”