They came for a sick physicist. Ivan Fedotov, a hockey star, had a film crew with him as he left practice. They came for the man who was reelected to the board of the gas company.
In Russia, nearly anyone is now considered a criminal.
The recent string of arrests across the country has signaled that the Kremlin is going to tighten the screws on Russian society even more. It looks like it is a result of Putin declaring in the early weeks of his war in Ukraine that Russia needed to cleanse itself of pro-Western traitors.
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The 71-year-old commentator who continues to speak out against Putin and the war said in a phone interview from Moscow that every day felt like it was the last.
Many of the loudest Putin opponents who stayed in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine were already in jail. Each of the recent targets was an outward-looking Russia that Putin described as an "existential threat" They were taken into custody in a way that made waves.
The physicist was so weak that he couldn't eat when he entered the hospital for treatment. He was flown to a Moscow jail by the Federal Security Service after they accused him of being a traitor. He died in jail.
The son of a man who was killed by the FSB wrote on social media that his father had died. They didn't allow us to say goodbye.
The son of a physicist in Novosibirsk said that his father had hired students to work in his lab to discourage them from going abroad to work.
He said in a phone interview that the family has to pay for the return of the body.
It wasn't clear why the FSB targeted the man. According to state media, he was jailed on suspicion of espionage. Critics of the Kremlin say that it's part of a campaign to crack down on freedom of thought. Anatoly Maslov, who was arrested on suspicion of treason last week, is still in custody.
At the same time as the arrests came, the head of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration was arrested for fraud.
The 62-year-old was not a public critic of the Russian government. He was reelected to the board of Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, just last week, after joining more than 300 senior academic officials in signing a March open letter calling Russia's invasion of Ukraine a "necessary decision." He had a reputation as a systemic liberal who was working within Putin's system to try to get it to be more open and pro-Western.
It turned out that his ties to the Kremlin weren't enough to save him from a fraud case that has already ensnared the rector of another leading university and that critics said was designed to snuff out dissent in Russian academia.
Gozman was a government adviser in the 1990s and said that people with knowledge are an enemy of the government. The truth is not an ally here.
A political scientist who taught at the academy until April described it as the educational hub for most of the country. She said that it showed that ideological purity was becoming a priority for Russian authorities.
The Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin is where Schulmann is now a fellow. Affirmative loyalty may not be allowed here.
Putin has said a lot.
He believes that Russians must be committed to living and working in Russia. He told an economic conference that real, solid success and a feeling of dignity and self-respect only happens when you tie your future and your children's future to your Motherland.
The news that Fedotov, the goalie of Russia's silver-medal national hockey team at the Beijing Olympics in February, signed a contract in May with Philadelphia was likely to have been seen as a challenge.
Russian media reported that Fedotov was going to leave for the United States this month.
He was stopped by a group of men, some in masks and camouflage, and taken away in a van as he was leaving a practice session.
Russian news agencies say Fedotov dodged military service. Russian men under the age of 27 must serve for a year. According to RIA Novosti, Fedotov had been taken to a Russian navy training base.
His choice to play in the United States rather than stay in Russia was seen as the reason for the elaborate detaining. RIA Novosti quotes a Soviet sports veteran as saying that he wouldn't be surprised if they put him on a submarine and sent him out to sea. He won't leave after that.
A common thread running through the recent arrests was their seemingly cruel nature. He said that such behavior is more likely to be rewarded than reprimanded by the state.
The system is built in such a way that officials are rarely punished for excessive brutality. Too much soft tissue can be. Any given official wants to show great strength.
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