I really don’t want to gloat, or even tell Vsevolod Chaplin the entirely fair thing: “and not so long ago, this system suited you perfectly.”
I won’t spend long arguing with the ridiculous phrase, “They don’t even try to cut off Putin’s critics from speaking this brazenly.” The last time I was on Channel One (Russia’s main state TV channel) as a guest rather than as the target of lies was sometime around 2005, on a news program (I remember it clearly: the show Man and Law, where I spoke about corruption in Moscow’s construction sector).
My main complaint about Fr. Vsevolod Chaplin in connection with his post complaining about censorship is this: why force your way into the media only to tell half-truths or simply be hypocritical? To lecture “the gentlemen journalists” and “especially the patriots” about ethics (and who exactly are these “patriots”? Kiselyov? Solovyov?).
If Father Vsevolod has really decided to turn toward the truth and say what ought to be said, then he should write it plainly:
A godless, deceitful власть of graspers and pagans worshipping the golden calf has now been established in Mother Russia. This power is anti-people, anti-Russian, and anti-national. It crushes everyone who opposes it (liberals, conservatives—it makes no difference), and it denies me, Father Vsevolod Chaplin, access to the mass media because it fears the truth I can tell. I, Father Chaplin, curse this regime of thieves and call on everyone to fight it. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.