“NO MATTER WHAT happens, get Kasparov.” So shouted one riot officer Saturday during the violently disrupted Dissenters’ March in Moscow, according to David Nowak of the Moscow Times, one of the few newspapers left in Russia that doesn’t have its reporting redacted by the Kremlin. When Nowak asked another officer why “seemingly peaceful bystanders” were being hauled off the streets at random and arrested, he was told, “Do you want me to [expletive] beat you with a baton?”

Welcome to life under Vladimir Putin, in which political opposition is met with swift and arbitrary punishment, and not even a tendentiously arrived at 70 percent approval rating is enough to satisfy executive confidence.

Recommended Stories

We lost the house. We refuse to surrender the gavel early. Here’s our plan

Electoral disaster sets off new war over populism in the GOP

Democrats’ most vulnerable rental seats in 2028