RIGA, Latvia — There was a message to all Russians in the first cases under Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hunt for what he calls “scum and traitors.”
That message is that no one is too small to escape notice.
Authorities arrested an Interior Ministry technician for talking privately on the phone. They also nabbed people holding blank placards inferring opposition to the war; a woman wearing a hat in Ukraine’s yellow-and blue colors, and a Siberian carpenter in Tomsk named Stanislav Karmakskikh who was holding a poster of an 1871 Vasily Vereshchagin artwork called “The Apotheosis of War.”
A popular food blogger, Nika Belotserkovskaya, was among the first three to face charges under Russia’s law against “fake” war news after her Instagram feed went from truffles and rosé to posts about Ukraine refugee children. (She is outside Russia.)
The speed of Russia’s transformation to Soviet-style “self-purification” has been astonishing. When Russia invaded Ukraine last month, state TV went to wall-to-wall propaganda blaming Ukrainian “neo-Nazis” and “nationalists.” Now, shadowy pro-Putin figures are daubing the words “traitor to the motherland” on the doors of peace activists and others.
A pile of animal excrement was left outside the door of St. Petersburg activist Daria Kheikinen on Friday, and a severed pig’s head and an anti-Semitic slogan was left Thursday at the door of Alexei Venediktov, editor in chief of the now-disbanded liberal radio station Echo of Moscow. The station was forced to close earlier this month by state-owned Gazprom, which controlled its board.
Websites with names have sprung up encouraging Russians to denounce “traitors,” “enemies,” “cowards” and “fugitives” who oppose the war.
One of the first three people charged Russia’s tough wartime censorship law was Marina Novikova, a 63-year-old pensioner with 170 Telegram followers. A day after the invasion, she fixed her gaze on the camera, a lock of red hair flopped over one eye. “Those who want to think and can think will be able to get out of darkness,” she said from the closed Russian nuclear city Seversk (formerly Tomsk-7).
In what she called a “shock psychotherapy” session, she said Russians “all approved the war in Ukraine. This is our silent, total agreement.”
Others have headed from the borders. Actors, celebrities, business executives, singers, dancers, writers. IT workers and independent journalists are among those who have left Russia.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/26/russia-media-putin-ukraine/