Addressing an audience of generals, senior officials and even Orthodox Patriarch Kirill gathered at the Russian Defense Ministry on Tuesday, December 19, Vladimir Putin praised the “consolidation of society” behind Russian troops fighting in Ukraine. However, this “consolidation” does not seem to be so complete yet, since the Kremlin boss has once again questioned a “fifth column” “around which we have constantly pirouetted,” thereby increasing the danger of a new phase of repression . To illustrate: the day before, the name of a Russian writer was associated with the qualification “terrorist” for the first time.
Read also the interview with Boris Akunin: Article reserved for our subscribers “Putin is trying to rebuild the empire, but it is an impossible mission”
In exile in London, where he has lived since 2014, Boris Akunin discovered his new status from afar. On Monday, the federal financial intelligence service Rosfinmonitoring added him to the register of “terrorists and extremists,” which resulted in his accounts being blocked. On Tuesday, police conducted a high-profile search of Zakharov's publishing house, which distributes his works, and confiscated unsold copies. According to the pro-government online media Gazeta.ru, her publishing house Ast and several bookstores announced on December 15 that they would withdraw the sale of all their books after an investigation was opened against them for “discrediting” the Russian army.
Boris Akunin, real name: Grigori Shalvovitch Tchkhartishvili, born in Georgia in 1956 before moving to the Russian capital at the age of two, is a popular novelist in Russia. A historian of Japanese civilization, a graduate of the Institute of Asian and African Countries of Moscow State University, he is the author of numerous essays and historical crime novels, in particular “The Adventures of the Hero Erastus Fandorine” (published in France by Presses de la Cité). Life in the Tsarist era, which led to adaptations in plays and television series. He also wrote A History of Russia, a nine-volume compilation tracing the country's developments up to the revolution of 1917.
“Another step towards totalitarianism”
After leaving Russia following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, he repeatedly took a stand against the war in Ukraine from London, where he lived for ten years. “Insanity has won,” he wrote on Facebook on the first day of the conflict, February 24, 2022. Russia is ruled by a deranged dictator and, worst of all, obeys his paranoia. »
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