Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed Thursday to crush anybody who tries to divide Russian society as he hailed the effectiveness and unwavering loyalty of his country\u2019s powerful law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n
Putin has escalated a decades-long crackdown on civil society, independent media and opposition amid his military offensive in Ukraine, with dissent and criticism of the Kremlin outlawed and punishable by years-long prison sentences.
\n\u201cThose who try to intimidate people, to split our society, to play on religious or national feelings will never succeed,\u201d Putin said in a video message posted by the Kremlin.
\nRussia regularly uses such language to describe those who oppose the Kremlin, including domestic critics who Moscow paints as being Western spies or puppets.
\nPutin was marking Russia\u2019s \u201cInvestigation Officers\u2019 Day\u201d and paid tribute to various Russian law enforcement agencies, including the Investigative Committee and the FSB security services, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB.
\n\u201cInvestigators show unconditional loyalty to the Fatherland and our people,\u201d Putin said.
\nCritics of the Kremlin say Russia\u2019s focus on investigating and prosecuting its domestic political opponents and rivals have left it blind to genuine security threats.
\nIn March, armed gunmen killed more than 140 at a Moscow concert hall in the country\u2019s most deadly terror attack in almost two decades.
\nThe incident came just days after warnings from Western intelligence agencies that Putin publicly rejected as \u201cblackmail\u201d and an attempt to \u201cdestabilize our society.\u201d
\nISIS group claimed responsibility, but Putin and other officials tried to link the massacre to Ukraine, without providing any evidence.
\nHaving stamped out dissent and passed strict military censorship laws that make criticism of the military illegal, Putin has repeatedly claimed Russian society is united behind his offensive on Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed Thursday to crush anybody who tries to divide Russian society as he hailed the effectiveness and unwavering loyalty of his country\u2019s powerful law enforcement agencies. Putin has escalated a decades-long crackdown on civil society, independent media and opposition amid his military offensive in Ukraine, with dissent and criticism of the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28851"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28855,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28851\/revisions\/28855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}