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Believing There Is an Opposition Movement in Russia Is Naive
All across Russia, citizens sick and tired of the tyrant Vladimir Putin are pouring green ink (“zelyonka,” which is used to disinfect minor cuts and abrasions) into ballet boxes, ruining the votes that had been previously cast. Others are scribbling the name of the recently deceased and imprisoned opposition politician, Alexey Navalny, across their ballots, making them unusable.
In more extreme cases of civil disobedience, citizens of all ages are tossing Molotov cocktails at polling stations and even inside the stations. In the photo above, an elderly woman voted and lit her ballot on fire, causing a small blaze. In the second image, the blaze quickly got out of control.
All of this seems quite heartening, indeed. In conversations all over the “free-thinking” world — and say what you want, citizens in Europe, North America, and even many countries in South America and Africa are not forbidden by their governments from having opinions that don’t align with the government — will be tossing back happy-hour cocktails and praising the efforts of the Russian opposition. I imagine myself at each of these watering holes across this celebratory universe, and I want to be the rain on the parade —…
