“Historic Russia has risen up,” President Vladimir V. 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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.”
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