Kremlin blames Russian dissidents for ‘explosions and assassinations’
Joel Gehrke
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Russian dissidents are carrying out “explosions and assassinations” in defiance of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, according to a top ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Terrorism is back on our streets, in our cities,” Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev complained on social media. “Here’s the creme de la creme of our non-systemic opposition: It’s waging war on its own people, it’s engaged in explosions and assassinations.”
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Medvedev, who held the Russian presidency for one term under Putin, issued that denunciation in the wake of a bombing that killed a pro-war blogger associated with the Wagner Group. The Putin lieutenant cited a spate of incidents to justify the idea of a new crackdown on Russian dissidents, such as jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was imprisoned in Russia after surviving an assassination attempt reportedly carried out by Russian FSB officers.
“There can be no talks with terrorists,” wrote Medvedev. “They will be exterminated like rabid dogs foaming at the mouth.”
The motivations behind the plot that killed the Wagner Group ally, Vladlen Tatarsky, remain in dispute. Russian officials arrested a young woman named Daria Trepova who reportedly delivered a figurine that detonated and killed Tatarsky in the midst of a party at the cafe, which is owned by Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.
“She was really just set up and used,” a man identified as her husband, Rylov, told the Insider, a Russian media outlet. “There is one very important point that she told me several times: she was sure that this thing would allow access to a person. That is, it was not something that should have exploded.”
The explosion marked the second bombing that appeared to target a proponent of the war since Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year. Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent imperialist political philosopher named Alexander Dugan, was killed in a car bombing in August.
Putin has imposed draconian censorship laws to criminalize anti-war activism or any criticism of the Russian military. Yet the Kremlin has been jolted by a pair of incidents that exposed the distaste for the war lurking behind that censorship regime — first a leaked recording of a conversation between putative loyalists angry about the consequences of the war and then with the surfacing of a Russian defector identified as an officer in the Federal Guard Service who spoke out this week to urge former colleagues to “come forward, support me” in exposing the corruption around Putin.
“I cannot believe that our citizens support this war. I’m sure they don’t,” the defector, identified as former Federal Guard Service captain Gleb Karakulov, told an independent Russian website backed by Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky. “If it is the case with you, why are you silent? State it as loudly as you can, directly to the Kremlin, personally to Putin. The Constitution guarantees the right to peaceful assembly, rallies, and marches. Even if Putin stays in one of his many bunkers, he would definitely be told that the people are against the war.”
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Medvedev mentioned the “Khodorkovsky outfits” alongside Navalny and two other opposition leaders whom he branded as “petty terrorists and murderers” to be targeted by the Russian state.
“They deserve no mercy or forgiveness,” he wrote. “This is what supreme justice is all about.”