The Non-Political Political Arrest of Nikita Belykh in Russia

A Russian governor has been arrested on bribery charges. The country’s Investigative Committee, which takes charge of all high-profile cases, announced the news on its Web site on Friday. Like several top-level Russian government agencies, the Committee has a bizarrely prominent spokesman, Vladimir Markin, who writes press releases in the first person. This time he wrote, “I’d like to chill the fervor of all the colleagues and supporters [of the accused], who are sure to get hysterical: crimes of corruption have no political shade.” The governor, Nikita Belykh, once headed a liberal opposition party, and Markin knew that the case would likely to be interpreted as political. He was right: the BBC and the Associated Press reports on the arrest noted Belykh’s opposition credentials in their third paragraphs.