A cloud over Russia’s civil society
Thirty-five years ago, on Jan. 22, 1980, Andrei Sakharov was detained by KGB agents on a Moscow street and packed off to Nizhny Novgorod, then called Gorky. The decision to send the human rights defender and winner of the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize into internal exile came as relations with the West deteriorated after the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan a month earlier. Today, history is being repeated as the Russian government mounts a legal attack on human rights and civic organizations — including an institution created to preserve Sakharov’s legacy — at a time when Moscow’s relations with the world are strained by its involvement in a war in neighboring Ukraine.… Seguir leyendo »