How Putin controls Russia: State-sanctioned stochastic terrorism.

[DetlefK]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-putin-regime-is-forcing-russias-best-and-brightest-into-exile?ref=home

The family’s nightmare began in 2016 when mobs of trolls attacked Latynina on social media after she published an article in Novaya Gazeta about “Putin’s chef,” billionaire caterer Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is also the Russian president’s go-to guy for such nefarious activities as internet-based attacks on American presidential elections and mercenary armies for deployment in Africa and the Middle East.

“Get out of Russia, we’ll breathe easier without your liberal stink,” one of the posts said. Soon, ugly words turned into ugly actions: Latynina’s attackers followed her for weeks until, in August 2016, somebody poured excrement all over her as she was on her way to the radio station Echo of Moscow.

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But Russians may know Latynina best for her weekly Echo of Moscow show “Access Code,” interpreting the Kremlin’s commands and ideology and often flaying Russia’s leadership.

Latynina is also a staff writer at Novaya Gazeta, five of whose journalists have been murdered.

As Pavel Kanygin, a leading journalist at Novaya Gazeta, told The Daily Beast that after the disgusting attack on Latynina, the paper demanded an investigation, but nothing happened. “When we speak with authorities about violence against our colleagues, we hear, ‘When you criticize the state, you should be ready for a reaction.’ Those in power are pointing at the door, as if to say, ‘Whoever does not like us, can leave.’”

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One day the brakes on Latynina’s car stopped working. Then, one night in the summer of 2017 Latynina and her parents, aged 77 and 79, were awakened by a suffocating gas filling their residence. Later a forensic study showed that the attacker used a non-lethal military grade chemical weapon. Yulia’s mother Alla Latynina told The Daily Beast that in the following few months she fell ill twice with pneumonia, which she believed was a result of the gas attack.

The Latynina haters clearly wanted the family to leave the country: they set the family’s vehicle on fire, once again in the middle of the night. Yulia’s mother woke up and saw her husband running around their burning SUV trying to find some way to put out the fire.

“That was a horrifying scene. I was scared that the vehicle might blow up when he was near it,” she said.

Shortly after the incident, the family left for Europe. “The FSB was no longer protecting its ‘monopoly over violence,’” Yulia Latynina told The Daily Beast in a recent interview, referring to the classic position of security services in authoritarian states. “In fact, the regime found a new modus operandi—it consistently farms out violence to various thugs to maintain plausible deniability.”

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Last month, Petr Verzilov, one of the Pussy Riot activists, said he was poisoned after receiving an important email relating to an investigation into the mysterious deaths of three Russian journalists in the Central African Republic. Verzilov moved abroad for treatment.

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In 2015 a group of assassins gunned down the man at the heart of the Russian opposition, ex-vice prime minister Boris Nemtsov, right by the Kremlin wall. It was a demonstrative gesture: the criminals showed that no federal security service was there to protect the leading critic of President Putin.

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“My friend Mikhail Beketov, editor of a local paper, was beaten severely and died; my husband was beaten and lost vision in one eye, the FSB and some social workers came to my door, asking about my children,” Chirikova told The Daily Beast.

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Voronenkov testified against the Kremlin’s ally, ex-Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, and his wife knew retaliation was inevitable. “On the day my husband testified, I rushed to the airport in fear of persecution,” Maksakova told The Daily Beast.

In March last year, Voronenkov was gunned down in the streets of Kiev. Even then, Moscow did not leave Maksakova in peace. State TV channels, aiming to humiliate her, tell viewers again and again how wrong she was to abandon her home country.

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“I am not surprised. Historically, Russian totalitarian regimes treated their celebrities as property, demanding that exiled talents return or destroying them with propaganda,”