Police in Moscow arrested Yekaterinburg resident Dmitry Bakhtin on Monday after he staged a one-man protest on Red Square in an effort to convince the Russian authorities to provide lifesaving medication to his three-year-old son, according to the news outlet Sota. A journalist from Sota who was covering the protest was arrested as well.
Bakhtin has been arrested multiple times in the past for protesting, including on Red Square. Bakhtin’s son, Misha, suffers from spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), and the medication he requires, risdiplam, is one of the most expensive medications in the world. Bakhtin has previously said that a year’s worth of the medicine costs 14 million rubles (about $140,000).
These things always puts it into perspective. On one hand you have Germany under Hitler, China, Russia where protesting gets you vanished, on the other hand you have Poland, Hungary, USA where you can do what you want. Weights twice as heavy on the people in the more free nations to not protest their government’s terrorism and/or facism.