A couple dining at a restaurant in Krasnodar were detained by police after another customer called police to complain that the two young men had expressed their disapproval of the war in a private conversation, The Moscow Times reported.

Russian policemen put the two men face down on the floor, put handcuffs on them and held them for an hour, and then took them to the police station, according to the young men.

The couple was accused of violating public order and detained for the night.

They pointed out that the police directly said that they detained them for speaking out against the war.

Such restrictions indicate that Russia is on the verge of totalitarianism, political scientist Abbas Gallyamov believes.

“An important difference between authoritarianism and totalitarianism is that in the first case, the public expression of oppositional sentiments may be prohibited, but the personal opinion expressed in private conversations is of no interest to anyone. In totalitarianism, even words spoken in private and not intended for outside ears are punished. Russia is moving towards totalitarianism,” Galyamov said.

In Russia, the police often detain dissidents, including for complaints against them. However, administrative or criminal cases are usually initiated against them for publicly expressing their position.

A teenage girl from Russia criticized the war in Ukraine on social networks

For example, in December, the Ministry of Internal Affairs detained 19-year-old student Olesya Kryvtsova. Two of her classmates wrote complaints about her.

Russian officials added Olesya Kryvtsova to a list of terrorists and extremists along with ISIS, al-Qaeda and the Taliban after she posted an Instagram message about the Crimean Bridge bombing last October in which she, like Russia, criticized the invasion of Ukraine.

Kryvtsova, a student at Arkhangelsk University (a city in northwestern Russia), also faces criminal charges of defamation of the Russian military for allegedly publishing a post allegedly critical of the war in a student discussion group on the Russian social network VK.

Currently, Kryvtsova is under house arrest in her mother’s apartment in Severodvinsk, Arkhangelsk region, with access to the Internet and other means of communication prohibited.

Read here the most important information from 341st day of the war in Ukraine