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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Seems Like Old (Soviet) Times

Yesterday in Moscow, a chilling sign of the times appeared: A giant banner accusing five prominent Kremlin critics of betraying Russia was unfurled Friday from a building in Moscow. Among those featured on the sign, which hung from the Dom Knigi bookshop on Novy Arbat, opposite the offices of liberal-leaning radio station Ekho Moskvy, were anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, and opposition politicians Ilya Ponomaryov and Boris […]

Yesterday in Moscow, a chilling sign of the times appeared:

A giant banner accusing five prominent Kremlin critics of betraying Russia was unfurled Friday from a building in Moscow.

Among those featured on the sign, which hung from the Dom Knigi bookshop on Novy Arbat, opposite the offices of liberal-leaning radio station Ekho Moskvy, were anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, and opposition politicians Ilya Ponomaryov and Boris Nemtsov.

Musicians Andrei Makarevich and Yury Shevchuk also featured on the banner alongside two suit-wearing creatures with the same heads as the extraterrestrials from the 1979 sci-fi film “Alien.”

Makarevich, from Soviet-era band Mashina Vremeni, and Shevchuk, leader of the DDT rock band, have both criticized Russia’s annexation of the Black Sea Crimean peninsula via social media and personal blogs.

One of the creatures is holding a briefcase emblazoned with a white ribbon — a symbol synonymous with the 2011-2012 anti-Putin demonstrations in Moscow.

The banner, which was soon removed, was printed with the words “The fifth column, aliens among us.”

Unpatriotic Russians, in other words. Dissent is treason in Putin’s Russia.

This is not going to end well for anybody.

UPDATE: Pushback from readers, including this one:

Dreher, you really should stick to topics that you know about….Russia isn’t one of them.

Are you aware of who Navalny is? Are you aware that he has long been on the payroll of the USA?

What would you call an American who was paid by Russia to engage in the overthrow of the American Government? An opposition activist?

Are you aware of who Boris Nemtsov is? Do you know his background? Do you know how he obtained his wealth during the Yeltsin years? Do you know who he is tied into from the West in his shady dealings?

Stop reading western journos like Douhat or Coates who don’t know anything about Russia and try and actually learn the recent history.

Here are a two recommendations for you:

1. “Casino Moscow” by Andrew Brezinski (Zbig’s nephew who dropped a ‘z’ from his surname). It’s about his time as a reporter in Russia during the Yeltsin Era, where he saw upfront the insanity that accompanied the plundering of the country, including by Nemtsov.

2. “Godfather of the Kremlin – Boris Berezovsky and the looting of Russia” by Paul Klebnikov. Here you’ll learn about the building of the oligarchy during that era and how men like Berezovsky used the Chechen Mafia to eliminate rivals through bombings and assassinations. Klebnikov, a writer for Forbes Magazine, paid for this book with his life, as even the UK Telegraph accuses Berezovsky of ordering the hit.

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