....”people there are afraid to speak out in opposition in fear they will end up in prison, or worse, dead.”....
Sounds like the Clintons wouldn’t you say?
The only opposition afraid to speak out against Putin are the Yeltsinian oligarchs that want they’re control back so they can bring their buddies back in to rape the countries people as they did after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Thesse thugs of the likes of Vladimir Gusinsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Alexander Smolensky, Pyotr Aven,and Vladimir Vinogradov crippled the country and it’s people.
Certainly Putin has his own Oligarchs but at least Putin is taking care of the country and it’s people who certainly support Putin.
Are you serious? There is a list from here to the moon of people who wound up dead or ended up 'missing' in Russia and beyond. One such recent person was the founder of RT (Russia Today), one of Russia's largest if not the largest state-controlled "news and information" outlets. The guy had been found dead in a Wash DC hotel room in Nov 2015. RT reported that there were no signs of a struggle. That he had died of a heart attack.
Then this came out 5 months later...
A former aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin found dead in a Washington hotel room was killed by a blunt force trauma to the head, U.S. authorities said Thursday.
Mikhail Lesin, 57, was found dead on the floor of his room in Dupont Circle on November 5.
Autopsy results show that he died from “blunt-force injuries of the head,” according to a joint statement Thursday from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and Office of the Chief Medical Examiner reported by NBC Washington, but the exact manner of death was undetermined.
Also contributing to his death were “blunt-force injuries of the neck, torso, upper extremities and lower extremities,” the statement said.
Russian media originally reported that Lesin, a former government minister, had suffered a heart attack. ...”
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/mikhail-lesin-ex-putin-aide-died-blunt-force-trauma-washington-n536456
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Here are some earlier stories on the case...
Nov 2015...
Vladimir Putin's media Svengali who was found dead in DC hotel was 'murdered for being an FBI informant'
"Nicknamed the 'Bulldozer', Lesin was one of the key props of the Putin presidency, personally masterminding a wide-ranging media crackdown which has left the vast majority of Russian TV stations and newspapers obedient to the Kremlin."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3315994/Vladimir-Putin-s-media-mastermind-dead-DC-hotel-murdered-FBI-informant-alive-claim-Russians.html#ixzz3rOUopg7Q
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"RT [Russia Today] has been called a propaganda outlet for the Russian government[10][11][12] and its foreign policy[10][11][13][14] by former Russian officials[15] and by news reporters,[16] including former RT reporters.[17][18][19]
It has also been accused of spreading disinformation.[20][21][22]
The United Kingdom media regulator Ofcom has threatened RT with sanctions because of repeated violations of its rules on impartiality.[23]
The network states that it offers a 'Russian perspective' on global events.[24]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_%28TV_network%29
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The following article is from last December (2014)
"Mikhail Lesin has stepped down as head of major state-controlled media holding Gazprom-Media, the company said late last week.
Gazprom-Media, whose holdings include independent radio station Ekho Moskvy, said Lesin's resignation was due to family reasons, Russian media reports said Friday.
The holding's board of directors will finalize his resignation at an upcoming meeting, Gazprom-Media was cited by Ekho Moskvy as saying. No replacement has been named.
Earlier, a flurry of reports of Lesin's imminent resignation appeared on Russian news wires, all based on undisclosed sources and giving divergent accounts of the motive.
Forbes Russia cited sources in the media and government as confirming the resignation, with one of the individuals claiming that the decision was made personally by President Vladimir Putin."