Body of missing US student Catherine Serou found in Russia
Last edited Sun Jun 20, 2021, 07:47 AM - Edit history (1)
Source: Agence France-Presse
Man arrested after body of former US marine is discovered in woods near Nizhny Novgorod
Agence France-Presse
Sat 19 Jun 2021 21.12 EDT
Russian investigators have detained a man on suspicion of murder after finding the body of a foreign woman identified by media as a missing American student.
Russian news agencies identified the woman as 34-year-old US citizen Catherine Serou.
Earlier this week, investigators said that a 34-year-old foreign woman who lived just outside Nizhny Novgorod, a city 420km (260 miles) east of Moscow, had gone missing after getting into an unidentified car.
They said she had moved to Russia in 2019 to enrol in a master’s programme in law at Nizhny Novgorod’s Lobachevsky State University.
On Saturday, the investigative committee, which probes major crimes in Russia, said it found the “missing foreign student”.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/20/missing-us-student-catherine-serou-russia-body-found-nizhny-novgorod
American Student and Former Marine Catherine Serou Found Brutally Murdered in Russia
Catherine Serou’s mother told The Daily Beast that she frantically tried to find her daughter after an ominous message just before she went missing this week.
Anna Nemtsova
Published Jun. 19, 2021 3:17PM ET
MOSCOW—The U.S. Marine forces trained Catherine Serou to survive in combat, and she did during in the war in Afghanistan. The 6-foot-tall blonde was athletic, hard-working, intellectual, an artist, a photographer and studying law at a Russian university. But it was a car ride in a sleepy provincial Russian town, Bor, in the region of Nizhny Novgorod that she did not survive: after going missing on Tuesday, her body was found in the woods this weekend. The car’s driver, 43-year-old Aleksey Popov, stands accused of her murder.
Serou went missing on the eve of a summit between President Biden and President Vladimir Putin. The fate of two other former U.S. Marines detained in Russia came up at the meeting, giving the timing of her disappearance a hint of politics, and a hope she might be still alive and under arrest. Instead, it was a crime story. Not long before the tragedy, Serou told her mother she had made up her mind to stay and live in Russia. “She enjoyed Nizhny Novgorod so much, she loved her life in a Russian family, her friends at the University,” her mother, Becci Serou, told The Daily Beast in a phone interview.
Becci Serou expected her daughter’s call on Tuesday. They were supposed to build a website together for Catherine’s business, where she taught English. But after 7 pm Moscow time, Becci was not able to reach her daughter on the phone. “I came out of my own class and found a message from Catherine, it said: ‘In a car with a stranger. I hope I’m not being abducted,’” Becci said. “I realized she had sent me that note 40 minutes before I found it. I tried to reach her but her phone was off. Later police tracked her phone in the woods near the town of Bor.”
Earlier that day, Catherine visited a beauty salon in downtown of Nizhny Novgorod, then returned home to her room in a rented apartment in the small Soviet factory town of Bor, just across the Volga river. “I could not sleep for three nights, thinking if she got away from him— her being a strong athlete, trained to survive,” the mother told The Daily Beast in an interview before police determined Catherine’s grim fate.
More:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/american-student-and-former-marine-catherine-serou-found-brutally-murdered-in-russia
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Re: Russian studies -
There will always be those who work to forward freedom at great costs to themselves. IMO one key to making that happen is understanding the status quo.
As an aside, Albert P. Blaustein was professor of law at Rutgers School of Law. He authored numerous scholarly works on the subject of constitutionalism including a six-volume work on the U.S. Constitution entitled Constitution of Dependencies and Special Sovereignties. Blaustein helped draft more than 40 constitutions worldwide and visited many of those countries. In 1991, he helped to write the constitution for the Russian Republic.
Only his little kingdom? 
If he does happen to step into their "daily lives" they should try protesting publicly. See how that works out for them. But I would caution to stay away from window ledges and tea they didn't make themselves. Buy a geiger counter. It may save their lives.