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Article: Totalitarian wannabes.(Commentary)(Op-Ed)
- Article from:
- The Washington Times (Washington, DC)
- Article date:
- March 8, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Canary in a coal mine - that's the state of the Russian press today. The new Russian leadership under acting President Vladimir Putin - culminating in a Potemkin election taking place March 26 - is slowly sucking the oxygen of free expression out of Russia. When that is gone, Mr. Putin will undoubtedly set his sights on other hard-won rights of the Russian people. All this barely 10 years after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Somehow, the only people who don't seem to get it are the president of the United States and the secretary of state (well, perhaps a few woolly-headed European leaders, too). Mr. Clinton has welcomed Mr. Putin as "a man we can do ...