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The Kremlin has stepped up its efforts to ban independent news sources. Prosecutors have called Meduza, a popular news site, “undesirable,” so that anyone who helps or promotes it can be prosecuted.
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By Alan Yuhas
Moscow court has abolished one of Russia’s oldest rights Russian prosecutors have banned paintings of one of the exiled journalists, calling her an “undesirable organization. “
And on Friday, President Vladimir V. Putin used Holocaust Remembrance Day to reiterate false claims justifying the invasion of Ukraine, as his government used state levers to suppress independent voices and how Russians view war.
The Kremlin’s new push this week to quell dissent comes as the war nears the end of its first year, with Western officials estimating more than 100,000 casualties on the side. Russia and Ukraine are engaged in a fierce war of attrition in eastern Ukraine, seeking to rebuild their forces before spring, when they are more likely to attempt a primary offensive.
Russian bombing has killed at least 8 civilians in 24 hours in eastern Ukraine, scene of the heaviest fighting in recent months, Ukraine said on Friday.
“The enemy is intentionally destroying our towns and villages,” regional army governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram. “Civilians who are not concerned about the protection and functioning of critical infrastructure in the domain will have to evacuate. “
But according to the Russian government’s conception, the Russian public would know nothing about those losses, the devastation caused by Russian missile attacks or the waves of men sent to frontal attacks through Russian commanders. Since the war began, the Kremlin has dismantled Russia. independent media, forcing organizations that had survived decades under Putin to leave the country and cut off access to Facebook, the BBC and other information resources.
On Thursday, Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office designated Meduza, a popular independent news site, as an “undesirable organization,” meaning those who communicate with its employees, “like” its content or even a percentage of its articles threaten criminal prosecution.
The site’s activities “pose a risk to the foundations of the constitutional order and security of the Russian Federation,” the Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement.
The resolution may limit the ability of Latvia-based Meduza news hounds to talk to others inside Russia who now have an explanation for why to worry about retaliation. new conditions. We will continue to inform our readers, millions of whom are still in Russia, about the occasions.
The European Union condemned the resolution, calling it “a serious politically motivated attack on press freedom. “He also denounced the decision of a Moscow municipal authority to terminate the leases of the Sakharov Center, a museum committed to the history of Soviet abuses.
The two cases, the US diplomatic service said, came on a marked “dark day for Russian civil society and a new low point in the Kremlin’s destruction of the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens. “
However, those are just two of the many moves taken in this direction through the Russian government this week. A Moscow city court ordered the closure of the Moscow Helsinki Group, one of the country’s oldest human rights groups, in a resolution it condemned through the UN human rights office. The resolution “is yet another blow to human rights and the country’s civic space,” said Marta Hurtado, a spokeswoman for the office.
Meanwhile, a thief case has been opened against Pyotr Verzilov, the editor of the independent online site Mediazona, he said Thursday, adding that he is accused of “spreading lies about the Russian military. “Verzilov, who left Russia before the war, said the allegations stemmed from his publications in Bucha, Ukraine, where journalists and investigators uncovered evidence of atrocities committed by Russian forces.
And Roskomnadzor, Russia’s web regulator, has limited itself to CIA and FBI websites, according to state news firm Tass, which said no explanation had been given as to why the sites were blocked.
In the absence of independent media, many Russians rely on television, where popular channels are owned by the state or businessmen on terms with the Kremlin, and all announce the M government. Putin and his war. Emails leaked through Russia’s largest state media corporation last year showed that, at times, Russia’s military and the main security service, the FSB, directed and pleaded with state media workers to paint the invasion in a positive light.
The correspondents, presenters and television presenters repeated Mr. S. Claimants for months. Putin that one of the objectives of the invasion is the “denazification” of Ukraine. Putin falsely claimed that Ukraine’s leadership is ruled by “neo-Nazi” officials, even though Ukraine’s democratically elected president is Jewish and has long called the 2014 Ukrainian revolution a fascist coup.
Speaking to mark Remembrance Day, Putin said that “forgetting history classes leads to the repetition of terrible tragedies,” then connected the history of the Holocaust with the war in Ukraine. He accused “neo-Nazis in Ukraine” of crimes against civilians and “ethnic cleansing,” and said Russians were there to fight “especially this evil. “
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, in his own Remembrance Day message, also spoke of the horrors of the Holocaust in connection with the war, did not stand up to Russia or Mr. Putin.
“Today we defend the determination of the world coalition that stopped Nazism,” Mr. Zelensky, “and today we repeat it even more forcefully than before: never return to hatred, never return to indifference. “
Other Ukrainian government officials have been more direct. Andriy Yermak, one of the president’s most sensible advisers, said the tragedy of the Holocaust “should have served as a warning to prevent further crimes against humanity. “
“But today, in the heart of Europe, a genocide of Ukrainians is taking place,” he wrote on Twitter. “We won’t forgive or anything. “
Ivan Nechepurenko, Cassandra Vinograd, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Carly Olson and Matthew Mpoke Bigg contributed to the report.
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