A Russian academic under criminal investigation for "extremism" said today the Kremlin was using new restrictions on freedom of speech to snuff out the last remnants of liberty in Russia.
Prosecutors summoned Andrei Piontkowsky this week for questioning over allegedly extremist statements in books he wrote that are scathingly critical of President Vladimir Putin.
A visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, a US think tank, and a veteran commentator on Russia in the Western media, Piontkowsky is a member of an opposition party but has never previously been linked to extremism charges.
"There is this triangle: If you are an opponent of Mr Putin you are an extremist, if you are an extremist you are practically a terrorist, and so on," Piontkowsky said in a telephone interview from Washington. "This is a very serious attack on the last remnants of freedom," he said.
Piontkowsky is the author of provocative political works. Prosecutors have not said which passages they consider may be extremist. His 2005 book "For the Motherland, for Abramovich, Fire!" includes a claim that Mr Putin, who once served as a KGB spy in east Germany, was nicknamed "Stasi" by acquaintances and describes his rule as "a gunshot aimed at Russia's head".
Piontkowsky's is the most high-profile case to date in which prosecutors have used new laws, adopted by the pro-Kremlin parliament last year, which widened the legal definition of extremism. Under the new laws, acts such as "the abasement of national dignity" and the "public slander of a state official" are defined as extremism, which can be punishable by a hefty prison sentence.
Mr Putin's critics say the laws are part of a drive, led by a hawkish camp inside the Kremlin, to stamp out dissent in the run-up to a parliamentary election in December this year and a presidential vote in 2008.