David Satter, who has been reporting and writing on Russia since the bad old days of the Soviet Union, has been blocked from entering the country, as he recounts in his article on today’s Wall Street Journal opinion page. He is the first journalist to be expelled from the country since the Cold War. His expulsion tells you something about the sinister character of the regime of Vladimir Putin, something that he has been writing about for years.

I first met Satter on trips to observe the Russian elections of 1996 and 2000 sponsored by the Jamestown Foundation. He took a dark view of developments in Russia even amid the mood of optimism in the mid-1990s. What I find most shocking, however, is his writings on the circumstances in which Putin came, suddenly, to power in late 1999. Here is his characterization in today’s article: