EDITORIAL: Putin Knifes the Infant RuNet

EDITORIAL

Putin Knifes the Infant RuNet

Georgia:  35

Russia: 52

If we were talking international basketball scores, those would be good numbers for Russia.  But we’re not. We’re talking Internet freedom, as analyzed by Freedom House.  The higher the score, the less the freedom.

FH reviewed Internet access among a group of 37 countries around the world, and found that Georgia ranks #12 in the group, in the top third and right behind South Korea, while Russia ranks #22, right behind Rwanda and well into the bottom half of all countries surveyed.  In the group of nations designated by FH as “partly free” only four have lower scores than Russia (including Egypt at 54 and Pakistan at 55).  The USA’s score is 13, surpassed in the group only by Estonia.

Twice as many Russian bloggers were arrested in the most recent survey period compared to the last one. Russia’s rank fell three places since the prior survey, and its score got much worse, from 49 in 2009 to 52 in 2011.

If course, it may not matter much how free or unfree Russia’s Internet is, because according to FH two-thirds of the Russian population has no Internet access at all.

EDITORIAL: Once again, Putin sticks the knife into Medvedev and Twists

EDITORIAL

Once again, Putin sticks the knife into Medvedev and Twists

We’ve previously documented the ongoing efforts of Vladimir Putin’s henchman (and namesake) Vladmir Frolov to undermine the authority of Dima Medvedev at every opportunity with vicious attacks on his comptetence.  And now he’s done it yet again, reaching for a new low in poisonous treachery.  Mr. Medvedev should be afraid. Very afraid.  His days are numbered.

EDITORIAL: Putin, Sticking it to Medvedev

EDITORIAL

Putin, Sticking it to Medvedev

Vladimir Putin’s English-language mouthpiece and bagman (and namesake) Vladimir Frolov has launched yet another of his vicious submarine attacks on “president” Dima Medvedev.

Putin has many reasons to root for the economy to fail.  It weakens his oligarch rivals, it devastates the population and makes it even more craven and vulnerable, it justifies ever more draconian levels of state control and, most importantly, it allows him to scapegoat Medvedev, justifying his return to the formal corridors of power as “president” for life.

EDITORIAL: Frolov Plumbs new Depths

EDITORIAL

Frolov Plumbs new Depths

Two weeks ago, the streets of Moldova exploded in flames.  Thousands of outraged Moldovans took to the streets directly flouting the authority of the Communist regime and sending out echoes of the street protests in Ukraine that marked the famous “orange revolution” that, for the clan of KGB spies that populates the Moscow Kremlin, were terrifying.  Russia has been desperately seeking to control the Moldovan state and wedge free a strip of territory along its eastern border in manner very similar to what it tried in Georgia with Abkhazia and Ossetia, with the obvious ultimate goal of resabsorbing the entire country.

The Putin regime reacted with frenzy and panic. Russia’s Foreign Minister wildly accused the protesters of being “pogrom-makers” and state-controlled television portrayed them breathlessly and continuously as criminals and agents of foreign countries.

“The Moscow authorities are afraid of spontaneous mass protests in the regions…and for this reason Russian television is showing what is happening in an exclusively negative light,” said Russian political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin.   Yevgeny Volk of the Heritage Foundation agreed:  “If the economic situation in Russia deteriorates, such a rebellion could become really possible. Young people will suffer the most from the economic collapse… and this is what the authorities are most afraid of. It’s a serious challenge for the leadership.”

But you’d never know about any of this by reading the crazed rantings of Kremlin stooge Vladimir Frolov in his most recent Moscow Times column.

EDITORIAL: Annals of Vladimir Frolov — of Russophile Rats and Sinking Ships

EDITORIAL

Annals of Vladimir Frolov — of Russophile Rats and Sinking Ships

You know things are getting plenty bad in Vladimir Putin’s Russia when you see Russophile rats like Vladimir Frolov start to panic.  Once again, he’s written a Moscow Times op-ed column which looks for all the world like a  shot by Putin through his Frolov mouthpiece across the bow of Dmitri Medvedev, another salvo in an effort to blame Medvedev for the country’s economic collapse and use his “failure” as an excuse to return to Russia as “president” for life.

EDITORIAL: More Shameless Lies from Neo-Soviet Stooge Vladimir Frolov

EDITORIAL

More Shameless Lies from Vladimir Frolov

Writing in his latest Moscow Times column about the recent gas war between Russia and Ukraine, Kremlin stooge Vladimir Frolov wrote: “It looks like Russia won this one for sure.”

It’s hard to know where to begin listing the fatally dishonest flaws in this assertion (just plug his name into the search engine in our sidebar if you are unfamiliar with his litany of past lies). The aggressive manner in which these neo-Soviet freaks seek to bury the truth, prevent Russia from reforming and ultimately destroy the country in the same manner that the USSR was destroyed is deeply disturbing, to say the least, especially since he works with the Kremlin on its PR propaganda and spends most of the column praising the effectiveness of that propaganda.   The Moscow Times routinely allows Russian businessmen with close Kremlin ties to write op-ed columns that are more like undisclosed advertisements, and this practice is utterly deplorable.

EDITORIAL: Annals of Vladimir Frolov, Pathological Neo-Soviet Liar

Kremlin stooge Vladimir Frolov

EDITORIAL

Annals of Vladimir Frolov, Pathological Neo-Soviet Liar

Surely one of the most shamelessly mendacious Russia commentators in the world is Vladimir Frolov; you know all you need to know about him when you know that regularly publishes his pro-Kremlin propaganda tracts on Russia Blog, which we’ve repeatedly discredited as the blatant Putin shill it is, and Russia Profile, which is actually operated by the Kremlin itself.  We’ve previously exposed the relentless torrent of lies issued by Frolov (indeed, that Publius Pundit piece appears on the first page of the Google return when Frolov’s name is searched on their engine), but on September 22nd, Frolov, seething with neo-Soviet hatred and bile, published an op-ed in the Moscow Times in which he plumbed new depths of dishonesty.

Frolov called the U.S. Secretary of State “bizarre” for suggesting that it was a bad idea for Russia to isolate itself. He argued that, quite to the contrary, isolation is a fine idea, and proclaimed:  “Russian leaders are taking sweeping measures to insulate the economy from the financial contagion that is now sucking the United States into an economic black hole.”

Frolov is, of course, lying. His frenzied pathology of anti-Western loathing and jealousy, needing to use words like “bizarre” and “contagion,” is plain for all to see, as is the extent to which it blinds him not only from basic facts but also from the ability to see how embarassingly transparent the resulting lies really are.