Russian leftist dissident critical of war designated a ‘terrorist’

Prominent Russian sociologist and leftist political activist Boris Kagarlitsky was designated a “terrorist” on Monday, weeks after being arrested under an article that forbids public calls for terrorist activities using the Internet.

Since starting the war in February 2022, Russia has made it a crime to “discredit” its armed forces and cracked down on those who oppose what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine.

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Kagarlitsky, 64, known as a dissident since Soviet times, has repeatedly spoken out against the war in a magazine he edited and on his YouTube channel.

Kagarlitsky, who teaches at the private Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences, had already been designated a “foreign agent” since 2018, and on Monday he appeared on a list of registered “terrorists” on the website of Russia’s Federal Financial Monitoring Service.

He was detained last month by the FSB security service and remanded in custody for two months in the city of Syktyvkar, 1,000 km (620 miles) northeast of Moscow.

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