"Russian leaders 'have now chosen an ideological course — you can even call it a national idea — to search for external and internal enemies,' Lev A. Ponomarev, a veteran activist, said in an interview with Dozhd TV. Lyudmila M. Alekseyeva, a human rights advocate, told the news service Interfax that she had 'a feeling that they are again pulling down the Iron Curtain.' Earlier this week, the United States Agency for International Development announced that it would end its 20-year-old program in Russia at the Kremlin’s request. On Friday, the Moscow office of Radio Liberty, which is financed by the American government, announced that it was ending medium-wave broadcasts because of a tough new media law that prohibits such broadcasting when more than 48 percent of an outlet’s founders are foreigners. The station will continue its broadcasts online."

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