There are two stories out today that caught my attention. What they have in common is a brutal Russian crackdown on anyone who strays from the approved narrative about the war in Ukraine. First up, you may have heard about Russia big advance in Avdiivka, Ukraine. After months of trying to take this relatively small town, they finally did it. It was Russia's first real progress on the ground since the Wagner group took Bakhmut last year.

But this big victory came at a significant cost. A pro-Russian military blogger released what he claimed were the real casualty number from the battle. He was immediately hounded by the Russian military and pro-Russian propagandists. As of today he is reportedly dead by suicide.

The blogger, Andrei Morozov, claimed in his post that Russia had lost 16,000 men and 300 armored vehicles in its assault on the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, which the Russians captured last week. He deleted the post on Tuesday after what he said was a campaign of intimidation against him.

The following morning, Mr. Morozov published a series of posts on Telegram  outlining the complaints he had received from Russian military command and Kremlin propagandists about his exposé. In the posts, he threatened to end his life.

Here's a bit of what Morozov wrote yesterday about how he was pushed to remove his post about troop losses and how he was told there were lots of people eager to execute him.

Having finished scaring me, pressuring me, convincing me, making sure that in front of them is a person who is not afraid of anything or portrays it very convincingly, many people in my life gave me their last argument - “You won’t change this!”

Today I talked to a man who, knowing me a little, started right away with this. “You won't change this. The elections will be held, and the changes will begin.” I didn’t tell him the meme “Putin and expensive gasoline - 20 years of solving the problem,” let him, I think, look for himself. Look at this meme, Comrade Colonel.

Today, Comrade Colonel, on your order, I was forced to delete the post from my telegram channel “They write to us from Ioannina.” And your command forced you to give this order, relying on good old army collective responsibility. If it doesn’t remove it, we won’t provide supplies. Shells. Copters. New tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. And he, your command, was forced to do this by political prostitutes led by Vladimir Solovyov, who are pissing themselves to come and pull the trigger. Well, I'll do it myself. I will shoot myself if no one dares to take on this trifling matter. And they will give you tanks and copters.

It turned out that I cannot serve under your command, under the command of a man who took over a decapitated brigade in a critical situation in a critical area and “removed” the situation, I cannot serve under you and, at the same time, tell the truth. Demand that the military prosecutor's office in St. Petersburg listen to the shell-shocked soldier near Avdeevka. And, perhaps, other similar soldiers who saw everything and know everything, but cannot tell because they are intimidated.

And it appears he really did shoot himself, having grown tired of having to lie to preserve whatever is left of Vladimir Putin's honor.

Meanwhile, in Spain a Russian defector definitely did not kill himself. Instead it looks like he was targeted, probably by Russian mobsters.

The pastel-hued village where Russian pilot Maksim Kuzminov settled on the coast of Spain must have seemed a world away from the war he thought he had escaped last year when he defected to Ukraine. But the discovery of his bullet-riddled body last week appeared to deliver a menacing new signal from Moscow that those who cross the Kremlin — no matter how far they flee from the war’s front lines — should never consider themselves safe.

Kuzminov was killed in a barrage of gunfire and then run over with his own vehicle by assailants who then used the car to escape, according to Spanish authorities, Ukraine security officials and Spanish media reports...

“It is a reminder for everyone who is in exile and actively in opposition to the regime — they are all on somebody’s list,” said Eugene Rumer, a former senior U.S. intelligence official who directs the Russia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace...

A former U.S. intelligence official said the killing of Kuzminov raises questions of “whether Western intel services have done enough to encourage Russian defections and provide for the security of defectors,” something that “should be a top priority for a variety of obvious reasons.”

You can add to this the death of Alexi Navalny at an Arctic prison and the arrest of a ballerina with dual US/Russian citizenship for treason and it seems Putin is really feeling pretty untouchable right now. Anyone who stands up to him in the slightest way winds up dead or in prison.