Speaking at TED, Nadya Tolokonnikova, founding member of Pussy Riot, has a powerful message for Russians today: Resisting the authority of Vladimir Putin is an option. It’s a choice. Of that, Tolokonnikova has already provided ample proof. For more than a decade, the members of Pussy Riot have staged high-profile protests in Russia … and paid the price, with time served in prison. As she puts it, “Courage is an ability to act in the face of fear. And some of us have chosen to live courageously.” That example is what makes her a threat:
The reason why I became a threat to the system, not because of any actual physical power that I have, but because courage is contagious. And any act of speaking the truth can cause incalculable transformations in social consciousness. And we all have this power. It’s a moral act to use this power. You may or may not achieve the results that you wanted, but there is eternal beauty in trying to find truth, in risking everything you’ve got for what’s right…
As always, she saves choice words for Putin: “Vladimir Vladimirovich, the Kremlin walls became your prison walls. You have already lost. You know it. That’s why you’re so afraid. You lost in spirit.” Now we just need Russians at home, and Ukrainians on the battlefield, to make the implicit explicit.
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This woman doesn’t seem to know (or pretends she doesn’t) that Putin has the largest rate of popular support of any politician today.
He intended and thought he could absorb Ukraine and its people into Russia. Certainly the remaning Russian pensioners who yearn for a return of a Stalinist Russia approve of his goal but now we know that will NEVER happen. Just deaths of Ukrainians and Russians and insane destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure.
You cannot be serious…Just where? Among the Siberian bears and deluded nationalists? The Kremlin butcher is responsible for the demise of 200,000 of his own youth alone. And “this woman” (whose name is Nadya Tolokonnikova, btw) has the guts which your hero could only dream about.
Huh? Putin doesn’t have majority support in Russia? Who told you? CNN, the Washington Post, The Times?
CC: You may be surprised, but some of us have actually studied and lived the history. Putin has the same ‘popular support’ which one Ceausescu or Stalin commanded – rigged elections, self-imposed dictatorial rule, complete press censorship, wide network of secret police which results in imprisonment or death of anyone who dares to speak up. We know what happened to all those cults of personality and how they went down in history. Once this happens to your hero, the Red Square won’t be able to hold all those millions rejoicing. P.S. I suggest you skip the education by OANN and Breitbart, and perchance peek into the first-hand accounts of the ever-growing number of Russian dissidents. For starters, please pull out the Foreign Policy report, titled “Putin Needs Repression to Run an Unpopular War”.