Today in Sochi two members of Pussy Riot were arrested and quickly released. Ioffe calls the Russian government idiotic:
Something tells me that heads are going to get bopped at the local police station. The local cops probably got the tip that Pussy Riot was in town and were told to make the problem go away. Panicking about messing up Putin’s Sochi party, they made the situation far worse, given the group’s brand recognition in the West and the number of foreign journalists swarming the place and bored of covering ski jumps.
Simon Shuster wonders if this is a preview of things to come:
The arrest was the latest indication of a possible post-Olympic crackdown in Russia that seems to have begun even before the closing ceremony of the Games. On Monday, Russian authorities forbade the country’s leading opposition activist Alexei Navalny from visiting Sochi during the Olympics. Later that night, the Kremlin’s leading television channel, Rossiya, which is the official Olympic broadcaster in Russia, aired an hour-long propaganda film accusing opposition figures and activists of being traitors on the payroll of the United States, which the film compares to Nazi Germany.
The tweet seen above, from one of the women who was arrested, reads: “Masha Alyokhina, another member of Pussy Riot and I are being taken to the Blinovo [police] station for being in Sochi.”
The Dish 