Blair Ruble: Putin’s punitive theater of the absurd
Police officers stand guard during an unauthorized rally in support of Alexei and Oleg Navalny in central Moscow on Dec. 30, 2014.
On the evening of Dec. 30, 2014, just as two dozen or so patrons were settling into their seats at a purposefully ramshackle basement theater in central Moscow to watch a film about the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, police officials and a television crew entered the hall, declared a bomb threat and asked everyone to evacuate.
