Russian activists and journalists discovered threatening messages painted on the doors of their apartments after Vladimir Putin delivered a speech calling for a “self-cleaning of society” of “scum and traitors. “
“Don’t betray your country, whore,” reads a message painted white on the door of a journalist’s apartment.
Anna Loiko, a journalist for the opposition online news site SOTA, which largely covered the anti-war protests in Ukraine, was one of the victims. Activists Dmitry Ivanov and Olga Misik also won those messages, which included the “Z” symbol that Russia tried to use to build nationals for its all-out war against Ukraine.
“This is the message left to me by the nameless ‘defenders of the fatherland,'” Ivanov wrote on Telegram next to a photo of his disfigured door.
“My apartment underwent procedures,” Misik joked on Twitter.
The unnamed messages come less than 24 hours after Putin’s speech on Wednesday that publicly applauded the “self-cleaning of society” that occurred in Russia in the wake of the Kremlin’s devastating war on Ukraine. Many prominent Russians have left the country, while many have been arrested and charged for protesting Moscow’s aggression.
Claiming that the West counts on “national traitors” in internal Russia to divide the country with its “slave consciousness,” Putin has targeted those who have echoed the foreign community’s calls to avoid war. He criticized those with ties to the West and accused them of approaching Europe and the United States by feeling they belong to a “higher caste. “
The other Russians “will be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and simply spit them out like a fly that flew into their mouths,” he said.
“I am convinced that such an herbal and obligatory self-purification of society will only be our country, our solidarity, our team spirit and our ability to respond to all challenges. “
On Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov subsidized the comments and gave the impression of verifying reports that activists and news hounds had been intimidated through messages painted with bombs.
“Well, you know, in such difficult times and in such guilty and emotionally augmented situations, many other people show their true colors. And many other people show themselves. . . as traitors. They disappear from our lives,” Peskov said in an interview with Meduza.
Some of those other people simply leave the country, while others “break the law” and are punished for it, he said, adding that: “This is how the cleansing [that Putin spoke of] happens. “
When asked if Putin’s perception of “cleanliness” had anything to do with acts of vandalism opposed to those opposed to the war, he replied that it was probably only the result of the “emotional” expression of other people than the president.
“Many need the president not only emotionally, but significantly. They are the overwhelming majority. “
While stifling the denunciation of the war in its country, the Kremlin also defied on Thursday an order of the United Nations court not easy for Moscow to end its war against Ukraine.
Peskov told Russia’s RIA Novosti News that the Kremlin would “ignore this decision. “
“The foreign court has a concept such as the consent of the parties. In this case, it’s anything we can’t take into account,” he said.