The following is from today's Sankei Sho.
Note from * is mine.
At the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia's host country won 33 medals.
Two years later, a shocking article appeared in the New York Times.
Dozens of people, including 15 medalists, were doping or using banned substances.
Athletes were given a mixture of three different drugs, which switched nearly 100 urine samples at local laboratories under the direction of the Sports Ministry.
Grigory Rodchenkov, the head of the Russian testing laboratory, testified the fraudulent tactics in detail and with specificity.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) immediately launched an investigation, revealing the Putin regime's systematic doping violations and cover-ups.
Rodchenkov had fled to the U.S. then, and two of his aides died on Russian soil.
It is also a deadly accusation.
A former soldier who served in Russia's invasion of Ukraine published a memoir against the war on the Internet last month.
He exposed Russia's barbaric practices, including being sent to the battlefield without proper food and repeatedly pillaging the area.
The author, Pavel Filatiev, 34, was a member of a unit based on the Crimean Peninsula.
He was wounded by shelling and wrote the book while undergoing medical treatment.
This month, he was found to have fled to France.
Mr. Filatiev spoke of the atrocities that killed numerous civilians on state-run television.
He said that publishing his memoirs could lead to a sentence of 15 years in prison if he returns to his country.
No, instead, his life is in danger.
Many people branded as "traitors" by the Russian authorities have died tragic deaths.
Last week, the mysterious accidental death of the chairman of an oil company that had criticized the war was reported.
*The Asahi Shimbun and its followers are the same roots of a totalitarian state that eliminates people who are inconvenient to it without a second thought.
