Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Putin has smeared the Russian people

In the Life&Arts section of the Financial Times Weekend there is a riveting story of Russian journalist Natalia Sindeyeva.

The 50 year-old journalist was in her late teens, early 20s during the period of Perestroika. She set up her own television station, which concentrated on western pop music. The station, TV Rain (or Dozhd) gradually moved to news and politics and reported on some of the atrocities committed by the Russian army in Chechnya when most other sations had nothing to say.

Rain has been closed down and Natalie is now living in Turkey, where she hopes to reestablish TV Rain.

She describes how Putin during all his years in leadership closed down all opposition to him.

Sindeyeva explains how it is very difficult to demand heroism  from people under totalitarianism.

She talks about it not just being collective guilt but collective complicity.

“What Putin has done is smear everyone, so you become part of it even without doing anything.

The article is written by Max Sheldon, who is the FT Moscow  bureau chief.

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