The nation’s leader sets the precedent, and the vast majority of the others follow right along in step.  Including the police.

Last Tuesday in Moscow, a trio of cops beat a man to death.  Two days later, this time in St. Petersburg, a second man met the same fate.  The week before, attorney Sergei Magnitsky died in prison after being denied medical treatment, and Putin’s cops claimed they didn’t even know he was sick, as if they thought that was an excuse.

Bloody Russia.  When Britons use that phrase, it carries a double meaning that we would adopt here.  Both “covered in blood” and “filthy, stinking, rat-invested.” That’s Russia in a nutshell.

The fundamental truth about Vladimir Putin’s Russia is simply this:  The police and the government are far more dangerous to your life than the criminals.

Since Putin came to power, over 3,700 people have disappeared in Chechnya, and 60 mass graves with over 3,000 bodies have been discovered.  That’s one person every single day of year for the past nine years.  Meanwhile, from Galina Starovoitova to Natalia Estemirova, anyone who spoke out against this barbarbic campaign of mass murder has likewise been liquidated.  Putin, of course, continues to enjoy massive approval in opinion polls and Russia’s freely talk about his return to power as “president for life.”

And yet, just as in the time of Stalin, the people of Russia, cowering in their dark corners like rats, continue to give Putin overwhelming support in polls and at the ballot box.  Just as they turned a blind eye to Stalin’s purges — or even turned in their neighbors — they now stand mute as their fellow citizens are butchered left and right.  They give Putin absolutely no reason to think he cannot simply go blithely on with his killing spree until every single person who dares to disagree with him is dead.

What words can we use to properly condemn this craven cowardice, this betrayal of Russia’ s chidren and of its past?  We can find none.  We can only say that the horrific suffering soon to be visited upon the people of Russia is richly deserved, and pray that the minority of Russians who are still willing to stand up for justice like real patriots will somehow get through to their countrymen before Russia breathes her last.