Tomorrow, June 9, I’ll be in Kostroma. If you’d like to talk, come to Architect Rybnikova Square at 6:00 p.m. We’ll discuss everything, and I’ll answer all your questions.
To our surprise, the Kostroma authorities have become extremely agitated over my visit and this small meeting. They can’t sit still and are showing remarkable inventiveness.
As you may remember, 4 billboards were stolen there the very same night they were put up. We immediately filed a report with the Kostroma branch of the Interior Ministry. They forwarded it to the police precincts responsible for the addresses where the billboards had stood. The police have set to work with great diligence: they are questioning the advertising contractors who installed the billboards. They say it will be hard to find them, even though the whole city knows the posters were stolen on the mayor’s office’s orders.
We’ve just received news that our radio ad has also been pulled—from the local Europa Plus station. It only ran for two days. The formal reason given was that the rally had not been approved. Needless to say, we received approval from city hall back in the middle of last week.
The Kostroma authorities are also printing and distributing leaflets like these.
I’ve written about this many times, and I’ll say it again: the most astonishing thing is that they really do hold meetings with the governor and draw up minutes that read: 1. Produce ten thousand fake leaflets about Ukraine. Assign responsibility for distribution to the municipal improvement department. 2. Steal the billboards. Responsible: head of such-and-such department.
They hold fewer meetings about Kostroma’s wrecked roads—really, roads that are barely there at all—than they do over the visit of a representative of the opposition supposedly of no interest to the public.
And that’s why this is how we live.
So, come along. The meeting has been approved by the authorities, and the weather is supposed to be decent.