Russia appears to be stepping back into the bad old days. Gary Kasparov, former chess champion and current thorn in the side of the Putin-led, mafia-style Russian kleptocracy, has been arrested after engaging in a protest assembly. About 100 other people were also rounded up by the police. When supporters gathered outside the police station Kasparov was being held in, police waded into the crowd with truncheons flailing.
MOSCOW — Police detained Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion who now leads one of Russia's strongest opposition movements, and at least 100 other activists Saturday as they gathered for a forbidden anti-Kremlin demonstration in central Moscow.
About 200 Kasparov supporters later gathered outside the police station where he was being held, shouting "freedom for political prisoners." After about an hour, police waded into the crowd, beating some demonstrators with truncheons and kicking them, offering sarcastic good wishes the crowd was forced to disperse.
The demonstration, one in a series of so-called Dissenters' Marches, increased tension between opposition supporters who complain the Kremlin is cracking down on political dissent and authorities who vow to block any unauthorized demonstrations. A similar march planned for St. Petersburg on Sunday also has been banned.
Pretty soon there newly refurbished gulag should be opening up. If Kasparov lives that long. Given the way strange "accidents" keep happening to critics of Putin and his merry band of cutthroats, that is a real possibility.
