{"id":2233787,"date":"2024-04-30T15:30:03","date_gmt":"2024-04-30T19:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/putin-has-vast-vulnerabilities-the-free-russia-foundation-wants-to-reveal-them-to-the-west\/"},"modified":"2024-04-30T15:33:33","modified_gmt":"2024-04-30T19:33:33","slug":"putin-has-vast-vulnerabilities-the-free-russia-foundation-wants-to-reveal-them-to-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/putin-has-vast-vulnerabilities-the-free-russia-foundation-wants-to-reveal-them-to-the-west\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin&#8217;s Major Weaknesses: Free Russia Foundation Aims to Expose Them to the West"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fputin-has-vast-vulnerabilities-the-free-russia-foundation-wants-to-reveal-them-to-the-west%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2233787&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The Free Russia Foundation, led by \u2064Natalia Arno, highlights Putin&#8217;s vulnerabilities, emphasizing \u200btheir neglect in the West. Arno exposes Putin&#8217;s oppressive tactics, \u2063including unjust \u200bimprisonments and restrictions on freedom of expression. She contrasts the regime&#8217;s\u200b tactics with the lack\u2064 of true democratic values and \u2062the severe consequences faced by \u200bcritics like Vladimir \u200bKara-Murza.\u200b The \u2063Free Russia Foundation, under Natalia Arno&#8217;s leadership, sheds light on Putin&#8217;s weaknesses, underscoring the Western indifference towards them. Arno reveals Putin&#8217;s repressive strategies, such as arbitrary incarcerations and constraints on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/project-veritas-strips-cnn-naked\/\" title=\"Project Veritas Strips CNN Naked\">free speech<\/a>. She points out\u2063 the regime&#8217;s anti-democratic \u2062practices and \u2063the harsh reprisals endured by dissenters like Vladimir Kara-Murza.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Henry Kissinger was my professor at Harvard, back in the early 1960s. The biggest thing I remember from many courses with him was his statement that Americans excel in our capacity for self-criticism, including exploring our weaknesses. What we aren\u2019t good at is assessing the vulnerabilities of our adversaries.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a thought that would resonate with <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.justsecurity.org\/author\/arnonatalia\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Natalia Arno<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, founder of the Free Russia Foundation, an organization that advocates for democracy in Russia. In her view, Putin has an unending collection of weaknesses, and we in the West aren\u2019t giving these weaknesses enough attention.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you were to talk with her, one of the first points she\u2019d bring up is her view that the West has the false perception that Russians don\u2019t want or deserve democracy. \u201cThis is, of course, not true,\u201d she states. \u201cThe Putin regime keeps people from expressing their true views, and they do it using fear, propaganda, and jail. I know of a case where a woman made an anti-Putin comment on Facebook and ended up with a 20-year jail sentence.\u201d <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In her view, a strong and secure regime doesn\u2019t have to use these techniques. She points out that while under the dictator Stalin there were millions of political prisoners, under Brezhnev or Gorbachev the numbers were smaller, in the dozens. Under Putin, however, the number of political prisoners is in the thousands. In the case of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/secy-antony-blinken-condemns-disinformation-from-russia-china\/\" title=\"Secy. Antony Blinken condemns disinformation from Russia, China\">anti-war protestors<\/a>, 20,000 were detained and many of them jailed. \u201cYou could be jailed,\u201d she asserts, outrage in her voice, \u201cjust for putting flowers on the grave of the opposition leader, Navalny.\u201d <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">She knows of individuals who ended up in jail simply for holding up a copy of Tolstoy\u2019s War and Peace. I asked Arno, \u201cWhy would a book by one of Russia\u2019s greatest literary figures land a person in jail?\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Her answer? \u201cThe book has the word \u2018war\u2019 in it, and just that three letter word can get a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/breaking-president-trump-gives-pardons-to-73-individuals-and-commutes-another-70-sentences-steve-bannon-is-included\/\" title=\"BREAKING: President Trump Gives Pardons to 73 Individuals and Commutes Another 70 Sentences \u2013 Steve Bannon Is Included\">15-year sentence<\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Arno knows that jail time in Russia is far more of a threat than it would be in the West. She\u2019s familiar with the experience of her friend and colleague, politician, journalist, and historian Vladimir Kara-Murza. For criticizing Putin, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_730803\" style=\"width: 837px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\">\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-730803\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">ALEXANDER NEMENOV\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">His time is being spent in a small, dimly lit cell with bare concrete walls. The food is close to inedible. Often, it\u2019s a mound of spoiled cabbage, covered with brown and black spots, and accompanied by a rank, sour, rotten egg smell that comes from bacteria and molds. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mr. Kara-Murza was also poisoned twice, in 2015 and in 2017, adding to his ailing health. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Worse, he has severe and painful neuropathy that is a death sentence unless he receives treatment. He\u2019s not getting the treatment. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Arno is certain that a strong and popular regime doesn\u2019t need to hold power using this kind of control-by-fear. Other reasons she cites for seeing Putin\u2019s regime as weak include:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Foreign investment has fled<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Western technology Russia needs to maintain important industries, such as petroleum, is no longer available<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Millions of the best educated Russian workers have left<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Of Russia\u2019s 190 ethnic minorities, many know that they are as much as 40 times more likely to die on the Ukraine battlefield than are the ethnic Russians. This breeds rage and incites calls for leaving the Russian Federation<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Russia has to invest so much money in repression that the standard of living is low<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Natalia and the Free Russia Foundation are working to let Russians know there\u2019s an alternative to Putin\u2019s autocratic rule. She and her colleague are using social media, messengers, anti-war coalition efforts, and partisan means like printing out information from the internet and stuffing these leaflets in mailboxes to let Russians know that with democracy, they can have freedom from fear, freedom from war, and prosperity instead of poverty.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cWe are not building bridges,\u201d she says. \u201cWe are building tunnels.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> * * *<br \/> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/> <\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mitzi Perdue, Fellow at the Institute of World Politics, is a journalist reporting from and about Ukraine. She has visited multiple times, has many local contacts, and has more than 100 published articles on Ukraine<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the early 1960s, I studied under Henry Kissinger at Harvard. His impactful lesson highlighted American proficiency in self-criticism but pointed out our shortcomings in evaluating our adversaries&#8217; vulnerabilities. This notion left a lasting impression, emphasizing our need for introspection and strategic assessment beyond our borders<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2987,"featured_media":2233788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2024\/04\/GettyImages-2149692194.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2233787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2024\/04\/GettyImages-2149692194.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2987"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2233787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2233788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2233787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2233787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2233787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}