Ilya Yashin, a long-time Russian political activist, always knew there would be a price to pay for the 2011–12 mass protests against “national leader” Vladimir Putin’s long rule. But what he hadn’t counted on was the ferocity of the Kremlin’s payback for those memorable afternoons, when the squares and boulevards of central Moscow echoed with the chant “Russia without Putin!”
“We knew back then that the demonstrations would provoke a reaction from the authorities,” said Yashin, a close associate of Boris Nemtsov, the outspoken opposition leader gunned down in Moscow last month. “But I could never have imagined that things would …read more
Source: Newsweek
