Moscow Threatens Activists From Numerically Small Nations With Up To 20 Years In Prison – OpEd |
When Moscow arrests activists in the capital or in one of the major non-Russian republics, journalists and diplomats generally will at least cover the story; but when the center does so against numerically small indigenous nations who live far beyond the ring road, that often does not happen.
As a result, the Russian authorities can be especially brutal in their cases, confident that they won’t face outrage and that what they do to these human communities will serve as a warning to others that a similar fate awaits even larger communities as ever more people in the West accept as normal what the Putin regime is doing.
That makes the case of nearly two dozen activists from these numerically small groups who were arrested a week ago and charged with being members of a terrorist organization especially important (