Confronted with the lawlessness of the Russian policemen, representatives of the progressive Russian society in the capital began to speculate where all this came from and what sins had befallen the inhabitants of «almost European cities». Some of them, like Oleg Kashin, as we recall (https://golosislama.com/news.php?id=35880), did not think it necessary to shy away from double standards and immorality in such reasoning, believing that the methods that were permissible to use against «savages» in the conquered outskirts could not be applied to «Russian Europeans». Unlike him, Kirill Martynov, the editor of the political department of «Novaya Gazeta,» understands that there is a phenomenon called the «boomerang of violence,» which, once thrown somewhere, tends to come back.
And in his article published yesterday, entitled «From Propaganda to Baton: How Ukraine Returned to Us,» he tries to explain where this boomerang came from. However, although the author’s answer to this question is clear from the title of the article, it is worth noting that he tries to talk about the Caucasus at the beginning of the article. In our opinion, this is unconvincing, because instead of discussing the tactics of law enforcement agencies, which he talks about in the article and which have already been used there, he arbitrarily switches to Ukraine and tries to justify that something extraordinary happened only there.
For example: «Violence was reimported from the territory of eastern Ukraine to Moscow in the form of two practices. On the one hand, there is the specific police brutality that we see on the streets of Moscow every week. If in the past people were tortured in police stations, so to speak in private, now the beatings become public — there is nothing to be afraid of. Only, just in case, those who beat people hide their faces: as if it were not a certain person with a truncheon, but the whole state unleashing its power on the citizens».
In other words, in Mr. Martynov’s opinion, public and demonstrative repressive methods of law enforcement appeared for the first time during the conflict in Ukraine. We are afraid to ask: Was the destruction of Grozny, with all its peaceful population, both Chechen and Russian, by Russian aviation and artillery not public and demonstrative enough for Mr. Martynov? Or when, in front of hundreds of eyewitnesses, young men who were inconvenient to the law enforcement authorities and in many cases denied their involvement in the armed underground were locked up and then, despite their desire to surrender, shot with heavy machine guns, destroying the houses in which they were trapped — was this violence not public and demonstrative enough?
Martynov continues: «On the other hand, there is an intensive import of symbolic violence — the kind that on the one hand dehumanizes the opponents of power, turning them into a faceless mass of ‘Maidanites,’ and on the other hand provides justification for any cruelty towards this mass.» But haven’t similar methods been used for years against «Wahhabis», allegedly on Russian territory and against Russian citizens? So why doesn’t Mr. Martynov want to admit that before the merciless machine collapsed on the residents of the Russian capital, it was not only tested in Ukraine, but had already been used extensively in Muslim regions of Russia?
«We could not stop the conflict with Ukraine, and now the war is coming home to us,» concludes the editor of the political department of «Novaya Gazeta,» and this statement is both right and wrong. It is good that you regret not being able to stop the war in Ukraine. But in general, gentlemen, you have been mistaken for exactly 20 years, which separate the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2014 from the first war, with which everything began and which is now coming to your (our) home — in 1994, in Chechnya.