Owen Matthews - The regime Putin has turned distinctly carnivorous in 2023, and that process ratcheted up by degrees after massive protests gripped the streets in 2012

Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, before the invasion of Crimea in 2014, before the Bolotnaya protests of 2012, Russia was living through so-called ‘vegetarian’ times. But the regime has turned distinctly carnivorous in 2023, and that process ratcheted up by degrees after massive protests gripped the streets in 2012. Independent news organisations like TV Rain, Echo Moscow, Meduza and Novaya Gazeta were marginalised but not outright banned. Participants in those media projects were monitored and harassed, but not arrested and exiled. Public protest was punished, but sentences could be counted in days and months, not years or decades. The opposition led by Navalny could even field candidates in local elections. Now the state is red in tooth and claw once more. Oppositionists face a terrible dilemma – Save your skin and fight on or try to maintain your honour and be buried in the prison system, from which you may never emerge.

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Owen Matthews is a British writer, historian, and journalist. His first book, Stalin's Children, was shortlisted for the 2008 Guardian First Book Award and the Orwell Prize for political writing. He is a former Moscow and Istanbul Bureau Chief for Newsweek. Owen is half-Russian, speaks the language to a native level and studied Modern History at Christ Church, Oxford. From 2006 to 2012 he was Newsweek's Moscow Bureau Chief and is now a Contributing Editor at the magazine. In 2014 he reported for Newsweek on the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, and this year wrote one of the first substantial books on the 2022 full-scale war: Overreach: Inside Story of Putin's War Against Ukraine.

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LINKS:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-terrible-choice-facing-russias-opposition-stay-or-go/

https://twitter.com/owenmatth

https://www.linkedin.com/in/owenbmatthews/

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