re: #101 Obdicut

Putin’s guys beat up journalists with some regularity too, don’t they?

Depends on who you mean by “Putin’s guys”. E.g. are Kadyrovites Putin’s guys? In a limited sense, yes (he closes eyes to their crimes), and there were quite a lot of murders of journalists in Chechnya. Were those who beat up Oleg Kashin Putin’s guys? Well, nobody knows who beat him up, so one can’t say. So it is in many other cases of crimes against journalists. So there isn’t explicit evidence for, you know, some organized group of thugs who target journalists on Putin’s orders. On the other hand the very system created by Putin is quite hostile to honest journalism on all levels, due to corruption and authoritarianism, so while it can’t be said that “Putin’s guys” beat up some journalist or another (in most cases), being an honest journalist in Putin’s Russia is quite dangerous. One could tentatively present this case as one of the other such cases, due to the mere fact that it happened in Russia, but I suggest that this could happen in any country, since it is, after all, motivated by religious fanaticism. What is troubling is that as big a honcho as an imam of the main Russian mosque approves of this crime.