The New Russian Police State Putin Style

So this is some of what happens to those who speak out in Russia today.  From the New York Times:

. . . For six hours the men — a squad from the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation — tore apart the apartment, neither removing their masks nor dropping their weapons. “You know what’s going on,” one of them chided her. “If you had married a good K.G.B. man, it would be another story.” They teased her by reading love letters from an ex-beau aloud in front of Yashin. And they humiliated her by sending a man to shadow her to the bathroom. Millions of Russians had seen Sobchak in various stages of undress before, but for the first time this was not a performance of her own making. In Sobchak’s safe, the officers reportedly discovered nearly one million euros and half a million dollars in dozens of envelopes. The state, Sobchak said when she described the episode to me in late June, had found its jackpot — and made, Sobchak believes, its intentions clear. “Whether it’s prison or exile,” she said, “they’re out to silence me.”
On that same June morning, several leaders of the opposition in Russia also had their homes raided by investigators. But Sobchak stands apart: in this new time of troubles, as Putin settles back into the Kremlin for his third term as president, few Russians more closely embody the state of the country today — in both its prospects and its hazards — than Sobchak. She has money and, with more than 470,000 followers on Twitter (making hers one of the most popular private Russian accounts), a following. And she is staking both resources in the fight for, as she puts it, “a better way to live.” . . .