Putin’s Witch Hunt Targets ‘Foreign Agents’ and Intellectuals

By Published on July 9, 2015

The Russian president’s witch hunt to stamp out Western influences is full of dangerous contradictions for scientists, students, and the future of Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is on the attack again, this time against “foreign agents”: Russian NGOs and non-governmental organizations, supposedly serving the interests of foreign states. But his offensive—some are calling it a witch-hunt—goes deeper than that. Many intellectuals here see it as little more than the coming of new-generation thought police.

One of the persecuted institutions, the Moscow-based non-profit Dynasty Foundation, a group financing many scientific projects in Russia, had to stop its activities last month and announced on Wednesday it was shutting down altogether. Meanwhile, Putin complained at the Council on Science that too many Russian specialists were leaving to work abroad. He blamed foreign funds that were “sucking up like vacuum cleaners” many talented Russian graduates, when in fact Dynasty, among others, helped Russians stay in Russia to do their research.

Making the official line sound even more confusing, the president admitted that Russian scientists should not be limited to the concept of doing everything themselves, without foreign help; Putin stressed that “intellectual isolation could lead to degradation.”

Read the article “Putin’s Witch Hunt Targets ‘Foreign Agents’ and Intellectuals” on thedailybeast.com.

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