All the retrospective, self-aggrandizing, virtual handwringing I have been seeing on Russophone social media in recent days, occasioned by the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, seems obscene on the part of people who have had nothing whatsoever to say, good or bad, about Russia’s signally destructive role in shoring up Assad’s brutal dictatorship in Syria.
What’s the difference between 1968 and now?
The difference is that the Czechs and Slovaks were “white” “Christian” Slavs, while Syria is, unfortunately, populated by people that Russians, many of whom hilariously regard “political correctness” as the greatest threat to civilization, would tend to think of as “blacks,” which is a term of real racist abuse in Russian.
Worse yet, most of those “blacks” are Muslims.
Syrians are thus sub-humans and, as such, were put in their place by a superior “white” nation.
Maybe very few Russians actually have bothered to think this through explicitly, but there is almost no evidence the vicious Russian bombing of opposition-held towns in Syria has bothered much of anyone in Russia at all, so the rest of us are free to impute any and all motives whatsoever to their actions and inaction. And remember, on this sad anniversary, that at the time only something less than a dozen brave Russians opposed the invasion of Czechoslovakia publicly. {TRR}
Center “E” Surveilled Belgorod Family or Nine Months via Camera Hidden in Flat OVD Info
August 24, 2018
In Belgorod, officers of the Center for Extremism Prevention (aka Center “E”) watched a married couple for nine months using a camera hidden in their flat, reports TV Rain, citing defense attorney Anton Omelchenko.
The couple was suspected of involvement with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. A court gave Center “E” permission to use the camera for three months on three occasions.
“Law enforcement agencies put hidden cameras in homes to record people playing. Criminal charges were filed as a result. One of the cases in Belgorod simply slayed me: a married coupled in a one-room flat who were under surveillance for nine months round the clock. Everything was really noted in the case files. The couple would watch TV and say something negative about the regime, and the field officers would immediately write down, ‘Criticized regime.’ There was a complete transcript of the entire surveillance. I also found this shocking,” Omelchenko told the TV channel.
Since their case has not yet been heard in court, Omelchenko did not name the couple who were under surveillance. It is known they have left Russia.
Diana Smirnova, Defender of the Woodlands in the Lenin’s Farm District of Krasnodar, Detained: Police Crackdown Continues Ecological Watch on the North Caucasus
August 25, 2018
Anzhelika Mastyayeva, after she allegedly “assaulted” a logger in July 2018.
The police had previously filed trumped-up charges against environmentalist Anzhelika Mastyayeva, claiming she had assaulted a logger. Prior to this, they had detained Mastyayeva without any legal grounds and held her for six hours in the lock-up at a police station.
This time, the police targeted Diana Smirnova, who had also vigorously defended the forest belt from the Tkachov family’s loggers and had testified at Mastyayeva’s court hearing.
At seven in the evening yesterday, two policemen arrived at Smirnova’s home. One of the officers was beat cop Alexander Sergiyenko, who had cooked up the case against Mastyayeva. The policemen asked Smirnova to come to the station with them for questioning regarding an allegedly unpaid fine. They assured here they would bring her back home in short order. However, Smirnova had no idea about any outstanding fines, since she had not been convicted of any administrative offenses.
Smirnova’s three-year-old daughter cried when her mother was driven away, but this did not stop the policemen.
However, instead of questioning Smirnova about the nonexistent unpaid fine, they took her from the Lenin’s Farm district to Karasunsky District Police Precinct at 205 Stavropol Street in Krasnodar and arrested. Smirnova was jailed overnight in the precinct’s detention facility. She was told she would be jailed until her court hearing.
An EWNC activist was able to phone the front desk of the Karasunsky District Police Precinct at +7 (861) 231-7071. He received confirmation Smirnova had been detained and charged with violating Article 20.25 of the Russian Federal Administrative Offenses Code (“Evasion of an Administrative Punishment”), although a search of the database of enforcement proceedings showed Smirnova had no outstanding fines.
Andrey Rudomakha, EWNC coordinator, had this to say about the incident.
“The people who run the Coastal Noncommercial Dacha Association are extremely vindictive. It was not enough they did not give a damn about the law, the wishes of local residents, and the deal they made with Krasnodar city hall, and cut down the forest belt. Now they have been harassing people who had the moxie to defend their own environment, since the forest belt that was cut down was the only green area near their homes.
“However, judging by the actions taken against Mastyayeva and Smirnova, who were charged with administrative offenses out of the blue by the beat cop Sergiyenko, the police are being used as a tool of revenge. The police used a special trick in their lawless raids on the homes of Mastyayeva and Smirnova. The former was arrested on a Saturday, while the latter was arrested on a Friday evening, times of the week when it is extremely hard to find defense lawyers. Why arrest a very young woman and mother of a small child late in the evening and jail her overnight in the pretrial holding tank, even if it were true she hadn’t paid a fine? The only point of all this is to intimidate the locals, to discourage them from wanting to defend their rights,” Rudomakha said.
Read more articles on ENWC’s website about the destruction of the woodlands in Lenin’s Farm (in Russian). For more information on the case of Diana Smirnova, call Anzhelika Mastyayeva, member of the Lenin’s Farm residents pressure group, at +7 (965) 470-8444, or Police Inspector Alexander Sergiyenko, who detained Diana Smirnova, at +7 (999) 437-3516.
Thanks to Andrey Rudomakha for the heads-up. Photos courtesy of EWNC. Translated by the Russian Reader
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This realtor’s video about the charms of Lenin’s Farm makes it clear why sharks like the Tkachov family have sunk their teeth into the neighborhood.
Diana Smirnova
Anzhelika Mastyayeva, after she allegedly “assaulted” a logger in July 2018.
The Russian Reader 