Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a dangerous place for journalists who work independently rather than for the Kremlin. Their deaths, which are not infrequent, are “scantily investigated and rarely brought to any conclusion,” as British journalist Peter Preston put it in 2012.
Russia under Putin, an unreformed former KGB officer, is not a free country. Those who criticize the new czar face reprisals, not all of them violent. In one case, the official youth group, armed not only with the resources of the state but also its information apparatus to identify its target, chained a gigantic wooden penis sculpture to the top of a car owned by an entertainer who had been critical of Putin. Amusing though this might seem, it was a message of intimidation that a government would not deliver to a citizen in a free society. The “Putin Youth” have also been known to lure critics and political opponents into bugged rooms with prostitutes.
And then there are many violent and mysterious deaths. Credible but not proven accusations abound that Putin or his underlings acting on their own were behind the assassination of opposition leader and outspoken Putin critic Boris Nemtsov this year. Another journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, was murdered, perhaps as a macabre gift, on Putin’s birthday in 2006.
Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in Britain by Polonium-210, a highly radioactive element not available to most people. Scotland Yard sought the extradition of the alleged perpetrator, but Putin prevented it and the bad guy is now a member of parliament in Moscow.
After exposing a massive tax fraud by members of Putin’s kleptocratic oligarchy, Sergei Magnitsky was beaten in prison and allowed to die without medical care.
More typically, those who defy Putin or expose the corruption rampant in his government face trumped up criminal charges such as for money laundering or even murder. This is how Putin uses the power of the state to silence the opposition.
This litany of tyranny is relevant in America today because Donald Trump, who once claimed falsely to have met Putin, has praised Putin. Responding to Putin’s mischievous praise for the loose-cannon GOP candidate, Trump at one point called the Russian leader “highly respectable” and asserted that no one has proven his involvement in the death of journalists. He added of Putin, “at least he’s a leader.”
It’s true that police have not followed a trail of blood to Putin’s door, but judging the post-Soviet dictator is not a task where a presumption of innocence applies. Leaders entrusted with the levers of state power in a republic have slid low when their only defenses are defiant ripostes of “Yeah, so what?”, or “Really?, prove it.”
Americans would be rightly outraged if critics of President Obama were suddenly to start dying under mysterious circumstances or find themselves in prison on trumped-up charges, as do their counterparts in Putin’s Russia.
Like so many of Trump’s crass remarks, his comments about Putin probably stem from his ignorance. But it is more than that, too. It stems also from his arrogant indifference toward matters of importance, and to his instinctive pandering and demagoguery.
A significant minority of Trump’s supporters are avowed white nationalists who tend to be outspoken fans of Putin. (Curiously, thanks to Russia’s twentieth experiment in Soviet socialism, Putin also gets a pass from some left-wing Americans as well.) Trump is simply currying more favor with his fans.
