Terrorist Attacks In Moscow: Citizens Under Double Threat

35 are said to be killed in blasts at two of the Moscow’s busiest metro stations–Lubyanka and Park Kultury. I am shocked by this tragedy like everybody in Moscow. I and my friends are calling citizens to come at 9 PM to Mayakovsky Museum (Lubyanka metro, exit to Myasnitskaya St.) with flowers and candles to mourn the victims.

It is too early to say who organized this terrorist attack. Russian bloggers discuss mainly two versions: Chechen rebels and the state security services. However weird it may sound, the latter version is at least as popular as the former one. In any case, the police and FSB were so corrupted and so busy fighting the opposition that they didn’t find time for the terrorists. By the way, chief of Moscow police was going to spend this day in Moscow City Duma promoting a bill introducing imprisonment for participants of banned peaceful rallies. He must have considered them the biggest danger for Moscow citizens. No surprise terrorists feel less restricted in Moscow than human rights activists.

Whoever organized this attack, the government will surely try to use this tragedy to further “tighten the screws” and secure their own power–the way they did after Beslan hostage crisis in 2004. The only question is what exactly they are going to do.

Civil solidarity is now needed more than ever: to show that we are stronger than the terrorists (whoever terorrists are) and to defend our freedom from those who failed to defend our security.

Advertisement

United Russia on Me

A funny news item appeared a few days ago at United Russia’s official youth site. Their author Ilya Ukhov condemns me using Stalin-times newspaper language. I am called there “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” and my bio is retold like this:

Oleg started his illegal activities early: when he was 16, he joined a rat pack called Amnesty International, which is known for its furius support for different kinds of separatists, convicted by Russian courts spies as well as different petty criminals.

…In 2005 [Kozlovsky] founded Oborona–a kind of a youth fuse for organizing unrests and destabilization of the social-political regime. But the fate wasn’t so fortunate for the brainchild of foreign puppeteers.

Police has stormed his flat that was used for gatherings of liberal thugs and storing extremist literature.

We see with our own eyes establishing of liberal censorship, this lying and multiheaded hydra…

etc. etc.

If you read Russian, you’ll enjoy this article in original.

Is There Alternative to Engaging with Dictatorships?

Wall Street Journal published a piece called Obama’s Foreign Policy Paradox describing numerous challenges and problems the new American administration faces in its new approach to foreign relations that is, engaging with instead of teaching authoritarian countries. Matthew Kaminski quotes my skeptical comment to the (unintended) outcome of this policy:

How does the new image of America look from abroad? Not always the way Mr. Obama presumably intended. Human-rights activist Oleg Kozlovsky runs Oborona (Defense) in Moscow. “The political culture in authoritarian countries, at least in Russia, is such that if Obama looks for compromise, they won’t answer with good will,” he says. “They see you as weak and push for more. They see it as a carte blanche to repress their own people.” This applies as well to Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. Perhaps not coincidentally, human rights are deteriorating most glaringly in countries currently deemed “strategic partners” of the U.S. such as China and Russia.

What do you think about Washington’s policy towards Russia? Is it going to work or fail? What should the West do with authoritarian countries?