Perhaps that’s not surprising, given Putin’s preemptive
strike against the last standing widely-available independent source of news in
Russia, the cable TV station Dozhd (“Rain”). Last week, Dozhd was pulled from
all cable providers in Russia, ostensibly because it ran an on-line poll that
was critical of the Soviet handling of the WWII blockade of Leningrad. As excuses
go, this is thin gruel. Clearly Putin did not want Russians to be distracted by
real news during the Olympic celebrations.
Yesterday in Moscow, the police arrested 41 people after
they staged a public protest of the closure of Dozhd. Most Russians will
probably never know.
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