The Closing of Russia

Nadin Brzezinski
5 min readMay 18, 2023
Crimean train derailment, war on the rails

Two things are happening at the moment. The first is that Russia sees more train derailments within the Federation and near the front lines. The second is the arrest of members of the opposition. Neither is a surprise, and they are connected. These are also coming within an environment where the Russian army is failing to perform.

So let’s deal with the opposition first. This is via MO:

The oppositionists who remained in the Russian Federation are being searched allegedly because of their connection with the “terrorist” Ponomarev. Versions of the security forces in the pro-government media are filled with fakes

According to RIA Novosti, searches are taking place in five regions. In Moscow, the security forces came to the politician and associate professor of Moscow State University Mikhail Lobanov, former mundeps from Yabloko Galina Filchenko and Nodari Khananashvili, and journalist Alexander Kalinin. The pro-government media call them associates of politician Ilya Ponomarev and point to their participation in the “Congress of People’s Deputies” organized by Ponomarev. There is a lot of untruth in these reports, their acquaintances and interlocutors in the opposition told MO.

🔹 Lobanov denies any connection with Ponomarev. A message appeared on Lobanov’s Telegram channel stating that the politician “does not know and does not…

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Nadin Brzezinski

Historian by training. Former day to day reporter. Sometimes a geek who enjoys a good miniatures game. You can find me at CounterSocial, Mastodon and rarely FB