The Head of Russia's Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, is
proposing legislation to make any public pronouncements that “falsify Russian
history” to be considered acts of extremism, writes Bastrykin in an article for
the magazine Kommersant-Vlast.
By the falsification of history, Bastrykin means, for example, any denial
of the results of the 2014 referendum on Crimea's status to either remain a
part of Ukraine or to join Russia. Using the referendum as justification,
Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula.
To counteract this sort of extremism, the Investigative Committee Head is
proposing a series of measures to expand state regulation and to deepen access
to information. For example, law enforcement agencies would have the right to
access internet users' personal information in order to maintain cybersecurity.
Publicly provided internet connections would be regulated to block extremist
websites.
Bastrykin also believes there needs to be an administrative (i.e.
non-judicial) procedure for blocking extremist websites, for example radical
nationalist websites. If the owners of the website believe their web content
has been unfairly blocked, the “let them appeal to the appropriate agencies to
in court and thereby prove their innocence,” writes Bastrykin.
Bastrykin also accuses the “US and its allies” are conducting “hybrid
warfare” against Russia and a series of other countries for the past decade.
Hybrid warfare—a blend of media misinformation, intelligence, politics, and
straight-forward military actions—is recently a term most often used to describe Russia's
actions in Ukraine and Crimea. Bastrykin says it is precisely the opposite;
it is the US that is conducting hybrid warfare.
The Head of Russia's Investigative Committee uses US hybrid warfare to
explain practically all of Russia's current problems. “Hybrid warfare… has
caused the deep devaluation of the ruble, falling real incomes, the decline in
industrial production, and the recession in the economy.”
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