Freedom of speech is complicated in Russia.
“You can be assassinated for being an investigative reporter in Russia and that happens periodically,” Randall Stone professor of political science and the director of the Skalny Center for Polish and Central European Studies at the University of Rochester, told host Evan Dawson when he recently appeared as a guest on WXXI’s Connections.
Yet, Stone notes, Russia still allows for more openness, discussion, and freedom of expression than some authoritarian countries. “It does have elections, periodically. And those elections matter, at least at the local and regional level.”
Stone, an expert on Russia and US-Russian relations, recently returned from a trip to Russia where he met with US and Russian foreign policy experts, the editor of the opposition newspaper New Times, and the former Russian ambassador to the US, Sergei Kislyak, who is a key figure in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
