Letter From the Editors

This week, a local RFCP branch became embroiled in a scandal when one “vigilant citizen” reported alleged “extremist activity” at the office of the party’s regional committee in Lipetsk. According to NG, a subsequent search by Center for Combating Extremism officers resulted in a haul of the entire print run of a news bulletin, as well as various computers and storage devices. A few days later, local RFCP official Sergei Tokarev received a summons for failing to obtain the proper permit to hold a public event with voters in the courtyard of a building. According to political analyst Vladimir Slatinov, the root of the problem is the local committee’s criticism of Lipetsk Province Governor Igor Artamonov, which, he says, the authorities view as “crossing the double yellow line.”

Although Gennady Zyuganov did decry the situation, saying that “muzzling people” is both “futile” and “harmful,” no RFCP head honchos swooped in from Moscow to defend the Lipetsk Communists. The reason for this, expert Konstantin Kalachov asserts, is that the RFCP Central Committee is “not prepared to escalate relations with the ruling authorities, even in just one region.” Thus, he says, leaders have settled on a “halfway defense” to “rein in the party’s overzealous and overindependent chapter by proxy.”

Whatever “extremist” activities the RFCP’s Lipetsk regional committee is engaged in, they must be relatively mild in comparison to the extremist threat emerging in Afghanistan. As political analyst Abdussamad Samadi writes in NG, there are reports out of Afghanistan that Mexican cartels are helping to finance Al Qaeda training camps there. According to Samadi, this blurring of the lines between organized crime and international terrorism is now posing a threat to Russia’s security balance as terrorist groups may move into Central Asia along drug trafficking routes.

Indeed, as Meduza reports, four Tajik citizens are currently on trial in Russia for carrying out last year’s Crocus City Hall attack. Another 15 people (of differing nationalities) are being tried as accomplices. Investigators say that the attack, which killed and seriously injured scores of people, was organized by ISIS‑K. But, according to Meduza, Russian officials, including Putin, continue to assert that there is a “Ukrainian connection” to the attack, a charge Ukraine denies.

Speaking of Ukraine, that country found itself isolated from the “peace process” as US special presidential envoy Steve Witkoff made his fifth visit to Moscow to meet with Putin. As Nikolai Pershin writes in Novaya gazeta Europe, the invitation was Putin’s attempt “to drag out the negotiating process as much as possible***to keep Trump from making any abrupt moves,” such as imposing astronomical tariffs on raw materials. It’s unclear what, if any, progress Witkoff made with Putin. But, following the meeting, Trump, who just can’t seem to resist the pull of what Dmitry Novikov calls “the deal of a lifetime,” delayed the tough sanctions and, to the immense astonishment of literally everyone, announced poorly formed plans for a summit in the “Great State of Alaska.” But with Russia seemingly refusing to budge on its territorial demands, there is little hope the summit will result in an option Ukraine can accept.

Finally, in an article for Republic, Konstantin Gaivoronsky looks back on the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to answer the question of why the bombings even had to occur at all. The reason, he concludes, is that “in July 1945 neither Churchill, Stalin, nor Truman were interested in ending the war as soon as possible” and, in fact, “artificially prolonged it.” He ends his article with a quote from Vera Brittain: “I venture to prophesy with complete confidence that the callous cruelty which has caused us to destroy innocent human life***will appear to future civilization as an extreme form of criminal lunacy with which our political and military leaders deliberately allowed themselves to become afflicted.” As the half-measures of current political leaders prove, our civilization has not reached that point yet.