Roughly a week ago we here at Racket got bad news from our partners at the Substack site “Russian Dissent.” Boris Kagarlitsky, a soft-spoken academic and writer I met in the nineties who is a primary contributor to the “Dissent” site, has been arrested by the FSB. I made calls to Russia today and an initial report in the Moscow Times is true: Boris has been removed to a facility in Syktyvkar, in the republic of Komi, 1300 kilometers from his home in Moscow. The offense is supposedly “justifying terrorism,” based on a short, unremarkable article he wrote on Telegram last October.
Boris has supporters in Moscow and a lawyer. We’re trying to arrange additional aid, and will have more information soon. Our world grows more ridiculous by the hour.
Sorry to hear that. An example of what we in the USA have to look forward to unless we can get the tyrant-adjacent Democrats out of office.
No First Amendment in Russia. The New York Times would approve.