russia qr code
It’s not looking good, guys. Sorry.
Authorities send a clear message: resistance to cattle tags will not be tolerated.

The unofficial leader of St. Petersburg's QR code resistance, businessman Alexander Konovalov, has been arrested and will remain in custody for two months while he awaits his trial.

Authorities claim Konovalov was involved in a bribery scheme. The cops reportedly carried out an hours-long search of the businessman's home before (maybe after?) cuffing him.

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With Konovalov now sitting in jail, St. Petersburg governor Alexander Beglov has essentially decapitated the city's anti-QR code movement. Perhaps more importantly, Beglov no longer has to worry about Konovalov posting rude photographs and hashtags on Instagram.
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Your humble Moscow correspondent has spent the whole day brooding over this deeply troubling (but entirely predictable) turn of events; we will probably need a day or two to organize our thoughts and write them down. In the meantime, we were impressed by the observations made by well-known Russian LiveJournalist El Murid:
A hundred, even two hundred establishments in a city of five million that have joined the boycott of the apartheid system is not enough. Therefore, the authorities waited, then carried out a punitive operation on the institutions themselves, and now they are clearing out the "instigators". [...]

[The system's] existence is at stake, as the success of the [QR code] protest would have called into question the very right of the regime to power. Therefore, no illusions are needed — they will kill if they feel threatened.

Therefore, the rate of development, the rate of growth of resistance structures is the main and determining factor in such a struggle. The protesters will either build up their structure faster than the regime can destroy it, or the protest will be crushed.

Two hundred [non-compliant] establishments in a month is nothing. Therefore, the protest was crushed. The necessary condition — the accelerated growth of the structure of the protest — was not met. Hence the result.
It's hard to disagree.

Russia is doubling down on the omicron scam, so we expect these kinds of crackdowns will become the norm.

First they came for Konovalov. Who's next?