Check out La Russophobe's latest installment on Publius Pundit, where she reviews the Kremlin's assault on the Russian-Chechen Friendship Association, an early indication of how the Kremlin plans to use last year's Law Against Extremism to shut down opposition political organizations. Reader comments on the best way to deal with this ever-increasing outrage are most welcome; as we also report today, the Kremlin is simulatenously moving to attack formal political parties, denying them access to the 2008 political process. What we are seeing is nothing less than the formalization of the neo-Soviet state, and it's quite horrifying.

Some people (well, morons) accuse LR of hating all Russians. But it's obvious this isn't true. The above post, for example, is a tribute to a Russian, Stanislav Dmitrievsky, and LR has published many tributes to other Russians in the past whom she greatly admires. For instance: Anna Politkovskaya, Marina Litvinovich, Yevgenia Albats, Yulia Latynina, Svetlanna Gannushkina and Lidia Yusupova. She will never have enough praise for them or for their thousands upon thousands of supporters in Russia. The Russians she hates are the ones who actively oppose them and, like Martin Luther King, even more the ones who passively sit by and enable the rise of malignant little trolls like Vladimir Putin, who loves Russia the way a spider loves a fly (to paraphrase Politkovskaya in the New Yorker).

NB: LR's new chatbox has already begun to acquire content. A commenter has posted a link which purports to show the luxurious interior of Vladimir Putin's version of air force one. Check it out!