From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Russia’s New Threats to Exiles: Seized Assets and Forced Returns   
   By Anton Troianovski, Feb. 1, 2024, New York Times   
   In Bangkok this week, members of an antiwar Russian-language rock group were   
   fighting deportation to Russia, detained in what supporters described as a   
   cramped, hot, 80-person immigration holding cell.   
      
   On Wednesday in Moscow, the lower house of Parliament passed a law that will   
   allow the Russian government to seize the property of Russians living abroad   
   who, in the words of the legislature’s chairman, “besmirch our country.”   
      
   The two developments, though thousands of miles apart, reflected the same grim   
   calculus by the Kremlin: Using new legislation and apparent diplomatic   
   pressure on other countries, it is turning the screws on Russia’s sprawling   
   antiwar diaspora.   
      
   “Historic Russia has risen up,” Putin said at a meeting with backers of   
   his presidential campaign on Wednesday, reprising his contention that the time   
   has come to cleanse Russian society of pro-Western elements. “All this scum   
   that’s always    
   present in any society is being slowly, slowly washed away.”   
      
   Under the law, any Russian, even those in exile, found to be engaged in   
   “crimes against national security” — including criticizing the invasion   
   of Ukraine — could have their assets confiscated. Mr. Putin is expected to   
   sign the law, though it is    
   not yet clear how widely or aggressively the Kremlin plans to use it.   
      
   But the law’s quick passage — it sailed through the rubber-stamp State   
   Duma unanimously — is another signal that the Kremlin, having stamped out   
   dissent at home, is increasingly turning its attention to criticism from   
   abroad. Hundreds of thousands    
   of Russians fled after the war began, including many celebrities who can still   
   reach their fans through platforms like YouTube, which remains accessible   
   inside Russia.   
      
   Among the first to feel this increasing pressure are popular performers who   
   have drawn large audiences in places popular with Russian émigrés like Dubai   
   and Southeast Asia. In recent weeks, Russian antiwar celebrities have accused   
   Thailand and    
   Indonesia of bending to Russian pressure to cancel their shows, while an   
   antiwar rapper found himself banned from re-entering the United Arab Emirates,   
   his adopted home.   
      
   The most dramatic case unfolded after members of the rock group Bi-2,   
   originally from Belarus and one of Russia’s most popular bands, were   
   arrested in Thailand last week for an immigration violation. Their supporters   
   said Russian officials spent days    
   pushing Thailand to deport some of them to Russia, where the musicians could   
   have faced prosecution for criticizing the war.   
      
   By Wednesday, the rockers had escaped that fate thanks to the intervention of   
   Israeli and Australian diplomats, who arranged for all seven band members to   
   be deported to Israel, according to the group’s lawyer, who requested   
   anonymity for security    
   reasons. (Four are citizens of Israel, and one of Australia.)   
      
   The extent of the Kremlin’s efforts to get the rockers sent to Russia was   
   not clear, but on Tuesday, the group said in a statement that the Thai   
   authorities had canceled an earlier plan to deport some of them to Israel   
   after Russian diplomats visited    
   the immigration center where they were being held.   
      
   Analysts and human rights advocates consider the case a stark demonstration of   
   the Kremlin’s increasingly aggressive efforts to punish Russians speaking   
   out against Mr. Putin abroad — especially when they do so in non-Western   
   countries that are    
   interested in maintaining good relations with Moscow.   
      
   “This is a special operation,” said Dmitri Gudkov, an exiled Russian   
   opposition politician who is close to Bi-2, referring to what he described as   
   Russia’s efforts to get the band members sent to Russia. “Their task is to   
   grab someone big outside    
   the country to show that they can grab anyone, anywhere.”   
      
   The rock group’s brooding hits are part of the soundtrack of the early Putin   
   era, and in later years the group was rubbing shoulders with the Russian elite   
   at marquee events — performing, for example, at Mr. Putin’s annual   
   economic conference in St.   
    Petersburg in 2019. But by last year, Bi-2’s lead singer, Igor Bortnik, was   
   writing that Putin’s Russia evoked “only disgust and squeamishness.”   
      
   Russia’s Foreign Ministry denied interfering in the Bi-2 case in Thailand,   
   but it referred to the band members soon after their detention as “sponsors   
   of terrorism.” A Russian lawmaker, Andrei Lugovoi, said the country was   
   awaiting Bi-2’s    
   deportation “with open arms” and predicted: “Soon they’ll be playing   
   and singing on spoons and metal plates, tap dancing in front of their   
   cellmates.”   
      
   (Mr. Lugovoi is no stranger to Russian intervention abroad, having been   
   charged by Britain in 2007 with poisoning a Putin critic in London.)   
      
   Thailand, which has stuck to a largely neutral stance on the war in Ukraine   
   and is a prime destination for Russian tourists, said it was following   
   established procedure. Asked by a reporter on Wednesday about the potential   
   deportation to Russia of Bi-2    
   band members, the country’s foreign minister, Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara, said   
   that if they are found to have “committed illegal acts,” then Thailand   
   “has to follow the process.”   
      
   The band released a statement from its concert organizer, VPI Event,   
   acknowledging that it had failed to obtain the right visas for the band’s   
   Jan. 24 show on the Thai island of Phuket. But VPI asserted that the Thai   
   authorities’ decision to arrest    
   the performers — rather than sanction the concert organizers — was   
   unusually harsh.   
      
   “We are making every effort to free the performers, but we are facing   
   unprecedented pressure at every stage,” the company’s statement said while   
   the musicians were still behind bars, adding that shows in Thailand by two   
   other Russian antiwar    
   performers had been canceled in recent weeks. “The campaign to cancel   
   concerts under pressure from the Russian consulate began in December.”   
      
   Some pro-Kremlin figures have started praising Russia’s Ministry of Foreign   
   Affairs for getting more aggressive in putting pressure on antiwar Russians   
   abroad.   
      
      
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