The War on Terror

This is not the first time the editors of our local newspaper have “platformed” the lies of the mendacious and violent fascist butcher Vladimir Putin.

1. US warns that Russia will invade Ukraine. General disbelief, daily Russian mockery. (December 3 2021-February 24 2022)

2. Russia invades Ukraine, kills tens of thousands of people, kidnaps tens of thousands of children, commits other ongoing war crimes (February 24 2022-present)

3. Russia blames US for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (March 2022-present)

4. US warns of terror attack in Moscow. Putin denies any risk and mocks the United States. (March 7 and March 19 2024).

5. Terror attack near Moscow, ISIS takes responsibility, Russia meanwhile kills Ukrainian citizens with drones and missiles as it has for more than two years. (today, March 22 2024)

6. Russia’s security apparatus, focused on bringing carnage to Ukraine, has failed in Moscow. Russia’s leaders, focused on demonizing the US, did not protect Russians. What next? Where to direct the blame?

7. It would not be very surprising if the Kremlin blames Ukraine and the United States for terror in Moscow and uses the Moscow attack to justify continuing and future atrocities in Ukraine.

Source: Timothy Snyder, “Moscow Terror: A Chronology That Might Predict,” Thinking about…, 22 March 2024

This past Friday, 22 March, a horrifying terrorist attack took place in Crocus City Hall in the outskirts of Moscow. Islamic State plausibly claimed responsibility.

Earlier that day, Russian authorities had designated international LGBT organizations as “terrorist.” Also earlier that day, Russia had carried out massive terror attacks on Ukrainian cities. Those actions reveal the enemies Putin has chosen. As the attack on Crocus City Hall demonstrated, his choices have nothing to do with actual threats facing Russians.

Russia and the Islamic State have long been engaged in conflict. Russia has been bombing Syria since 2015. Russia and the Islamic State compete for territory and resources in Africa. Islamic State attacked the Russian embassy in Kabul. This is the relevant context for the attack outside Moscow. The horror at Crocus City Hall obviously has nothing to do with gays or Ukrainians or any other of Putin’s enemies of choice.

Putin had publicly dismissed the real threat. The United States had warned Russia of a coming attack by Islamic State. The United States operates under a “duty to warn,” which means that summaries of intelligence about coming terrorist attacks are passed on, even to states considered hostile, including (to take recent examples) Iran and Russia. Putin chose to mock the United States in public three days before the attack.

People reasonably ask how a terror attack could succeed in Russia, which is a police state. Regimes like Russia’s devote their energy to defining and combating fake threats. When a real threat emerges, the fake threats must be emphasized. Predictably (and as predicted), Putin sought to blame Ukraine for Crocus City Hall.

What if Russians realize that Putin’s designations of threats are self-serving and dangerous? What if they understand that there are real threats to Russians ignored by Putin? He has devoted the security apparatus to the project [of] destroying the Ukrainian nation and state. What if Putin’s obsession with Ukraine has only made life worse for Russians, including by opening [t]he way to actors who are in fact threats to Russian life, such as Islamic State?

These are the questions Putin must head off. It is not easy, however, to blame Ukraine for Islamic State terrorism. Putin’s first media appearance, nearly a day after the attack, was far from convincing. The specifics he offered were nonsensical. He claimed that the suspects in the terrorist act were heading for an open “window” on the Russian-Ukrainian border.

The term “window” is KGB jargon for a spot where the border has been cleared for a covert crossing. That the leader of the Russian Federation uses this term in a public address is a reminder of his own career inside the KGB. Yet Putin had obviously not thought this claim through, since a “window” must involve a clear space on both sides of the border. For escaping terrorists, it would be the Russian side that opened the window. By speaking of a “window” Putin indicated that the terrorists had Russian confederates preparing their exit, which he presumably did not mean. It seems that Putin was hastily making things up.

Setting aside the “window” business, though, the whole idea that escaping terrorists would head for Ukraine is daft. Russia has 20,000 miles of border. The Russian-Ukrainian part of it is covered with Russian soldiers and security forces. On the Ukrainian side it is heavily mined. It is a site of active combat. It is the last place an escaping terrorist would choose.

And there is no evidence that this is what happened. Russia claims that it has apprehended suspects in Bryansk, and claimed that this means that they were headed for Ukraine. (Western media have unfortunately repeated this part of the claim.) Regardless of whether anything about these claims is true, Bryansk would suggest flight in the direction of Belarus. Indeed, the first version of the story involved Belarus, before someone had a “better” idea.

In moments of stress, Russian propaganda tries out various ways to spin the story in the direction preferred by the Kremlin. The reputed suspects are being tortured, presumably with the goal of “finding” some connection to Ukraine. The Kremlin has instructed Russian media to emphasize any possible Ukrainian elements in the story. Russian television propaganda published a fake video implicating a Ukrainian official. The idea is to release a junk into the media, including the international media, and to see if anything works.

Amidst the flotsam and jetsam are those who spread Russian propaganda abroad, who try out versions more extreme than Putin’s. Putin does not directly deny that Islamic State was the perpetrator — he simply wants to direct attention towards Ukraine. But actors outside Russia can simply claim that Ukraine was at fault. Such actors push the discussion further than the Kremlin, and thereby allow Russia to test what might work abroad.

As a result, we have a bizarre discussion that leads to a harmful place. Islamic State claims responsibility for Crocus City Hall. The Islamic State publishes dreadful video footage. Russia cannot directly deny this but seeks help anyway in somehow pushing Ukraine into the picture. Those providing that help open a “debate” by denying that Islamic State was involved and making far more direct claims about Ukraine than the Kremlin does. (This brazen lying leads others to share [a] Islamic State perpetration video (don’t share it; don’t watch it). So the senseless “debate” helps Islamic State, since the reason it publishes perpetration videos is to recruit future killers.)

Meanwhile, Russia’s senseless war of aggression against Ukraine continues. In its occupied zones, Russia continues to kidnap Ukrainian children for assimilation and continues to torture Ukrainians and place them in concentration camps. It continues to send glider bombs, drones, cruise missiles and rockets at Ukrainian towns and cities.

On the same day as the attack at Crocus City Hall, Russia carried out its single largest attack to date on the Ukrainian energy grid, leaving more than a million people without power. Among other things it fired eight cruise missiles at the largest Ukrainian dam. Russia attacked the city of Zaporizhzhia (the consequences are in the four photos) and other cities throughout Ukraine.

On Friday Russia fired, in all, eighty-eight missiles and sixty-three explosive drones into Ukraine. And that represents just a single day (if an unusually bad one) of a Russian war of terror in Ukraine that has gone on for more than two years.

Putin is responsible for his mistakes inside Russia. And he is at fault for the war in Ukraine. He is trying to turn two wrongs into a right: into his own right to define reality however he likes, which means his right to kill whomever he chooses.

Source: Timothy Snyder, “Moscow Terror (2): The Claim and the Blame,” Thinking about…, 24 March 2024

It is obvious that the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall on the evening of 22 March 2024, during which 133 people were killed, according to the official count, has clear goals and objectives. A week before Putin’s “election” I wrote that, after receiving a “mandate from the people,” Putin would unleash a mass terror campaign. But for this, of course, he needs a decent and obvious excuse. The exemplary terrorist attack in broad daylight in politically unreliable Moscow is intended to convince society that “decisive action” is what it needs now.

Why would Putin do that? It’s simple logic. Come hell or high water he has to win the war he has unleashed. This is obvious, for it is a matter of self-preservation. If Putin does not win, he is a weakling, a lowlife, and at the same time the person to blame for hundreds of thousands of deaths not only of Ukrainians, but also of Russians. It is clear that he will not last long in this state. Not to mention such a trifle as his sick, wounded ego, repeatedly insulted by Ukraine. But victory would wipe everything out, because victors are not judged, Putin is convinced, taking his cue from his idol Catherine the Great.

So, Putin has to have victory at any cost. But two things have long prevented him from achieving it: 1) his numerous domestic enemies, and 2) a lack of “manpower” in the ranks of the army.

Putin intends to solve problem number one by means of a mass terror campaign against malcontents, especially since he has long been urged to do so by a well-rehearsed chorus of heralds, from Dmitry Medvedev and General Gurulyov to a host of other, lower-ranking epigones of contemporary Russian fascism. Guessing the mood of their Führer, they demand that, at very least, he restore the death penalty; at most, that he carry out “total executions of the terrorists and crackdowns against their families” (per the latest quotable quote from Medvedev).

We can only guess at this point whether Putin’s forthcoming terror will exceed Stalin’s body count or whether the current ruler in the Kremlin will limit himself to “merely” increasing the number of prison sentences meted out to dissidents by a factor of two and carrying out demonstrative executions of dozens or hundreds of his fellow citizens. But there is no doubt that a serious expansion of such tactics is on his agenda.

Putin will solve problem number two through a mass mobilization. This is nothing new either. Piling hundreds of thousands of soldiers into the enemy’s trenches is a time-honored tactic practiced by both the Russian and Soviet military, and, as Putin has seen, it has worked well in the “meat assaults” on Avdiivka, Bakhmut, Severodonetsk, and many other small Ukrainian towns. But these towns are nothing compared to the million-strong cities of Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and Odesa, not to mention the three-million-strong Kyiv. So there must be massively more cannon fodder. The second problem is directly related to the first.

Combined with large-scale crackdowns, the mobilization is sure to proceed more vigorously this time round.

As a bonus for the Kremlin, this terrorist attack diverts public attention (at least for a while) from such things as Russia’s largest-ever strike on Ukraine, involving a hundred and fifty missiles and drones, which happened just a day before the events at Crocus City Hall.

I’d now like to talk about other explanations of this terrorist attack. Looking through the news related to it, I honestly could not help but marvel at the comments of certain respected colleagues, opposition Russian analysts, who easily took the bait about IS, Islamist terrorists, and the other nonsense that the FSB obligingly leaked to the public in the first hours after the attack through the Russian media and Telegram channels.

To clarify, certain people of “non-Slavic ethnicity” were chosen to directly perpetrate this heinous crime. There are hundreds of thousands of Tajik, Uzbek, and Kyrgyz migrant workers in Russia, EVERY ONE of whom is literally turned inside out by the Russian Interior Ministry upon arriving in Russia, including with regard to their attitudes to radical Islam and similar things. The Russian secret services thus have the broadest selection of perpetrators available for such a terrorist attack.

Let us ask ourselves an elementary question: how could Islamist radicals purchase not only assault rifles and pistols but also the flamethrower with which the terrorists torched the unfortunate audience members at Crocus City Hall without the knowledge and support of Russian “law enforcement”? Is such a thing possible in today’s Russia, and in Moscow to boot? If someone thinks that it is possible, I would simply remind them that when members of Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party tried to buy weapons somewhere in the Altai Territory back in the 2000s, their plan was instantly exposed. The idea of Tajiks buying assault rifles and flamethrowers in today’s militarized Russia, which is chockablock with surveillance cameras and special services, is a bad joke.

Let me also remind you that the initial semi-official Russian explanation was that the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall was revenge on Russia for its actions in Syria and Chechnya. Seriously? So, it matters not a whit that the Russian army and its air force have not conducted any active operations in Syria for two years now? If you have not been paying attention during this time, let me just remind you that the Kremlin is certainly not concerned with Syria right now. For the last two years all Russian armed forces, including those operating from military bases in Syria and in Armenia, have been deployed in destroying Ukraine. There have been no large-scale military operations in Chechnya for almost twenty years.

However, as it turned out, all this argumentation was completely superfluous, because my gullible colleagues were made to eat their lunch by Putin himself and his favorite propagandist, Margarita Simonyan. As a shadow of her “boss” (as she herself dubs Putin), Simonyan naturally cannot afford to indulge in improvisations not vetted by him, and especially at such a crucial moment. On her Telegram channel, she bluntly pointed out who, in her (and therefore her boss’s) opinion, had organized and perpetrated the terrorist attack: “It wasn’t IS. It was the Khokhols.”

The “boss” himself, who was supposed to address the nation in the early hours after the terrorist attack, unexpectedly postponed his address by twenty-four hours. The delay appears to have been caused by technical blunders. Obviously, organizing the details of a terrorist attack is not Putin’s pay grade. It is clear that in such cases the relevant special services are simply given the go-ahead from the top brass. They are told to do their job. The operation was entrusted, of course, to professional hatchet men. As usual, they made a miserable mess of it. You need a large-scale terrorist attack? The Russian security services always have two or three dozen Tajiks on hand for this purpose, who can be hastily given their marching orders, paid, and… And that’s basically it. The Tajik passport found in a car allegedly belonging to the terrorists is, of course, a masterpiece. It is clear that no terrorist, as he sets off to carry out an attack, ever forgets to take his passport with him. It was meant as a helpful hint to law enforcers, and also so decent folk would know whom to hate. It is strange that the business card of the already half-forgotten Dmytro Yarosh was not found in the car as well.

But the point is that this special operation were certainly not meant to spoil relations with the Islamic world. Russia’s allies—Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas—might take offense.

In addition to the domestic agenda we mentioned above, the terrorist attack was meant to firmly link the globally condemned villains of IS with Ukraine in world public opinion.

This was why Putin’s speech on the terrorist attack was postponed for almost twenty-four hours. The dictator’s dodgy mind was deciding how to clean up the mess made by his numbskulls and tie up the loose ends. That is, to tie IS (or any other Islamists) to Ukraine. And he probably thinks he has figured out how to do it. As he put it, [the terrorists were trying to escape through] “a window prepared for them on the Ukrainian side of the border.”

All these tricks of Putin’s are painfully obvious to people capable of thinking, but he doesn’t care about that. Moreover, having sensed a change in the mood of his American “partners” (remember the reports that the U.S. has been pressuring Ukraine to stop hitting Russian oil refineries, and the fact that for almost two months no American aid has arrived in Ukraine and it is not known whether it will arrive in the future), Putin makes a high-pitched appeal to all countries to unite against this inhuman evil—that is, against Ukraine + Daesh.

Another very important point from Putin’s speech, indicating that he is paving the way for a mass terror campaign at home, is that he called the shooting of civilians at Crocus City Hall nothing more or less than “a blow to Russia, to our people.” He, his propagandists, and the Russian media have already established the link between Islamist terrorists and Ukraine. The next logical step is to claim that those Russians who support Ukraine are direct and immediate supporters of the terrorists who struck “a blow to Russia, to our people”—that is, that they are enemies of the people.

To be honest, all of this is as monstrous as it is predictable. I will repeat what I have said many times before: as long as Putin is alive and in power, things will get even worse and even scarier.

Source: Alexander Zhelenin, “The terrorist attack at Crocus City: who benefits from it and what will happen next,” Republic, 23 March 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Higher

The Higher School of Economics (HSE) has forbidden applicants applying to its journalism program from quoting “foreign agents.” Any mention of people with this status or their publications will cause the results of admissions exams or interviews to be annulled, the university’s regulations say.

Applicants are also obliged to comply with the law “On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to their Health and Development.” They are thus not permitted to use materials “promoting” LGBT, “gender reassignment” and “denying family values” in their admissions applications.

A screenshot of the anti-“LGBT” and anti-“foreign agents” clause in HSE’s regulations for the oral interview taken by applicants to its bachelor’s program in journalism.

The application to HSE’s bachelor’s program in journalism involves undergoing a “creative test”: applicants [discuss] a “literary or sociopolitical” topic. The regulations state that the future journalists must demonstrate “an original position and awareness of current events and problems.”

Russian laws do not prohibit using and disseminating materials published by “foreign agents,” and only registered media outlets are obliged to flag individuals and organizations who have been designated as such.

Journalist Renat Davletgildeyev, who once served on HSE’s admissions committee, explained that in years past, applicants were, on the contrary, encouraged to mention the media outlets now designated “foreign agents.”

“I remember when we used to administer these exams at Vyshka [HSE’s nickname in Russian] and would give applicants the maximum score if they quoted the cool journalists and the media outlets who today make up the bulk of ‘foreign agents’ (in other words, the list of honest and cool journalists and media). I feel sorry for my alma mater. But it’s long been clear where things were headed,” he wrote.

[Last week], it transpired that the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg had announced that the use of feminitives by students was unacceptable. The leaders of student organizations were warned that the presence of such words even in conversations on social networks would be tantamount to involvement in the “international LGBT movement,” which has been deemed an “extremist” organization by the Russian authorities.

Previously, the HSE fired several lecturers for their anti-war stance, banned the remaining instructors from talking about political topics, and installed surveillance to monitor them, said Igor Lipsits, doctor of economics, who resigned his post at the university. According to him, cameras were installed even in classrooms under the pretext of “quality control,” but in reality they were meant to censor and purge instructors who did not agree with the Kremlin’s policy.

Source: “Higher School of Economics Applicants Banned from Quoting ‘Foreign Agents,'” Moscow Times Russian Service, 31 January 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Russia Reads

A young man on the Nevsky Prospect in Petersburg reads a book by Friedrich Engels whilst handing out discount coupons to the nearby so-called Lego Museum. Source: Marina Varchenko (Facebook), 9 November 2023

“‘The Arab world is not just beautiful ethnic costumes, exquisite dishes, and other One Thousand and One Nights-type stuff, but also brutal dictatorships, poverty, a high tolerance of violence, and sometimes outright racism and religious fanaticism. According to my observations, however, this second facet is almost always bracketed off by Europeans when describing the countries of the “global South” or is guiltily dished up as a consequence of the traumatic colonial past.’ Essayist Andrei Sapozhnikov (“Department of Culture”) connects the abnormally high support for Hamas’s invasion of Israel in the Western world with this peculiarity.”

Source: Email newsletter from the online Russian magazine Republic, 8 November 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

Together

While the emergence and flowering of Spanglish in the US is no surprise, the fact that Rusglish has taken root in Russia itself should give us pause for thought. The affliction is particularly fierce among the country’s creatives and journalists.

“Запускать свой бизнес в ритейле — задача не из лёгких. Особенно если нет релевантного опыта. Отличным решением может стать развитие бизнеса в партнёрстве с более опытным игроком по модели франчайзинга“.

“Launching your business in retail is not an easy task. Especially if there is no relevant experience. A great solution could be to develop a business in partnership with a more experienced player on the franchise model.”

Source: Emailed invitation to a “business breakfast” from the business daily Delovoi Peterburg, 23 October 2023. All the bolded words are in Rusglish in the original.

Sixteen years ago today, I launched this website by translating and posting the artist and writer Pavel Pepperstein’s reflections on “post-socialism” as “ecosocialism.” They are cheeky and provocative and non-intuitive and thus, in retrospect, emblematic of the stories and viewpoints from today’s Russia that I knew were roundly ignored in English-language media and that I wanted badly to make available to the wider world.

I had no idea, then, that this adventure would last sixteen years or that, as of today, this blog would balloon to 2,500 entries. I did, however, have more than a presentiment that things were going badly in the Motherland and would probably get much, much worse. While I have never tried to avoid staring into this burgeoning (and, now, almost total) political darkness, I also have always been determined to focus on the anti-Putinist, non-Putinist, and “a-Putinist” side of public opinion, cultural production, and politics.

What this has meant, practically speaking, is that even sixteen years later and amidst a terrible war that has, seemingly, riveted the world’s attention to the Russian regime and its enemies, I am often the only English-language media outlet to cover certain stories from the deep Russian grassroots in the so-called provinces, especially stories involving non-violent and direct action anti-regime and anti-war protests. I have commented many times in the past why such stories are ignored.

Whatever the case, though, my focus on extraordinary “ordinary” Russian battlers from the back of beyond, that is, on people who are remote from the Moscow-Petersburg opposition elites (even when they might even live in one of the two capitals) has meant that, sixteen years later, I’m still struggling to get over the million-views hump, and my admittedly modest attempts at fundraising have mostly fallen flat. There is not much place for people like me and my Russian heroes in a profoundly anti-democratic and celebrity-mad world like ours.

This is not a preface to a tearful farewell. Although changes in my paid-work life mean that, for the immediate future, I won’t be posting here as often as I’d like, the value of the Russian Reader as an archive of a Russia that, perhaps, will never come to be, is still enough that I plan to keep it here and available to you all for as long as I’m able.

But it has become increasingly hard for me to report stories like the one below about Olga Nazarenko, an incredibly fierce anti-war protester from Ivanovo who died under extremely murky circumstances two weeks ago. What is hardest of all is the now almost overwhelming sense I have that these stories matter to almost no one, neither inside Russia nor outside of it. ||| TRR

A Russian anti-war protester who became a symbol of resistance to the Kremlin has died following a mysterious fall.

Local media said Olga Nazarenko died in hospital after a “fall from a height” two weeks ago that was described as an accident.

Several Kremlin opponents have been killed in falls and an anti-war activist in Rostov, southern Russia, also died this year in police custody from alleged torture.

On Facebook, tributes blamed Ms Nazarenko’s enemies for her death.

“Cursed are the cannibals who devour our finest,” one person wrote. Another said: “Our unbending Olga. Did they kill you?”

Friends also speculated she had fallen from a tree.

Ms Nazarenko was well-known for her stubborn anti-war protests and had featured in several opposition media reports and videos.

She had staged weekly one-person protests, despite being regularly detained by the police. She had also been attacked in the street and had lost her job as an associate professor at a local medical university because of her protests.

Hundreds of thousands of Russians have fled since the Kremlin banned anti-war protests but Ms Nazarenko, who was married with an adult daughter and a young son, told the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that she felt it was her duty to stay.

Source: James Kilner, “Kremlin gets blame as anti-war activist Olga Nazarenko dies after mystery fall,” Irish Independent (msn.com), 22 October 2023

Business Models

Source: The Bell

While I’ll be the first to admit that The Bell‘s weekly newsletters are worth far more than the fifteen minutes or so it takes to read them, I can’t imagine that they’re worth $168 a year. I subscribe to way too many print and online newspapers and magazines than are good for me or which I have the time to read, but most of those subscriptions cost me far less $168 a year (in fact, most of them cost less than $30 a year).

The only one that costs more is the “newspaper” put out by the style councillors at the Economist (at $192.50 a year, the last time I paid my rates), and that’s probably a rip-off too. But it’s a rip-off that sends me 78 pages of usually super-informative reporting and provocative commentary a week (and in impeccable English!), plus any number of daily and weekly newsletters. (I’ve quoted one of them, below.)

On the other hand, The Russian Reader is free to read (and will always be free) and usually comes out more than twice a week. At last count, I’ve received $448.50 in donations so far this year.

That’s my “business model.”

It’s not even remotely sustainable, of course, but I’d rather take on more part-time jobs (as I’ve been doing recently) than suddenly be seized by the moxie to charge any of you $168 a year for what has always been a labor of love. My foolishness, though, should never deter any of you from sending me donations, however small or large. ||| TRR

Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin concluded several hours of talks at the Vostochny spaceport in Russia’s far east. No details were made available, but before the meeting analysts speculated that North Korea may offer Russia artillery ammunition in exchange for missile or satellite technology, in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. Mr Kim toasted his host’s health, and predicted that Russian troops would win a “great victory” over their adversaries, according to reports in Russian state media.

Source: “The World in Brief” newsletter (The Economist), 13 September 2023

“We Love You, Uncle Zhenya”

I went to see the spontaneous memorial to Prigozhin on Zolnaya [“Ashes”] Street [near the former (?) Wagner Center office building in St. Petersburg]. I have to say that what I saw impressed me. People kept coming and coming—young dudes and girls, men who were slightly older, and some people even had their kids with them. They brought flowers. They stood and looked for a long while. Some got down on their knees, and this one young dude crossed himself and genuflected. A Chinese guy was videotaping the whole scene and talking in Chinese, but it troubled no one. That’s him sporting a rucksack and filming point-blank the woman in the hat who is putting what looks like a whole bush of roses in a vase.

Source: Marina Varchenko (Facebook), 26 August 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

Hello, dear Moscow Times readers! This is your weekly newsletter, and we’re kicking off with the (near-certain) death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the man dubbed Vladimir Putin’s “chef.”

However, Prigozhin gained notoriety not for his culinary talents, but for his business ventures. He set up several enterprises that were extremely vital to the Russian authorities. The most well known were the private military company Wagner and the “troll factory” in Olgino, a suburb of Petersburg, which was used as a tool for influencing the information space in the Russian Federation and the world.

Trolls are fantastic creatures, and they vanished of their own accord, you might say, but apparently it was Vladimir Putin who put the kibosh on Wagner. The rowdy band of freewheeling mercenaries, who took their orders from god knows whom, has come to end.

We should recall, of course, that Prigozhin took a long time admitting that Wagner and the Olgino trolls worked for him. He acknowledged this obvious fact only in the midst of the war, and this was the first step toward the mutiny of 23 June and his (near-certain) death on 23 August. The public owner of an effective resource can either use it or give it up. Prigozhin didn’t feel like giving Wagner away—that is, transferring it to the command of the Defense Ministry (and take an oath, as Vladimir Putin has now ordered)—and so the strange mutiny that had such supremely serious political consequences happened, and, later, the Embraer jet plane crashed in the Tver Region. (It was the first time this type of plane had an accident involving fatalities.)

We interviewed people in the know about the moods among Russia’s elites to find out how they were taking the “chef’s” demise. We went further, though, asking several people who kept a close eye on Prigozhin’s rise and (alas, literal) fall to explain the meaning of the story that has unfolded before our eyes.

The first explanation comes from an observer in civil society who claims that the plane crash was caused by underlings going farther than they had been ordered to go. In fact, this observer argues, Putin did not want Prigozhin dead. Without his trolls and without Wagner, which had ceased to operate in the RF and had begun to be transferred to Defense Ministry-controlled outfits in Africa, Prigozhin was no threat to Putin. However, there were people (in the GRU, most likely) who believed that Putin would be pleased if they brought him the mutineer’s head on a plate.

The risks are the same as in the case of the late [Boris] Nemtsov [assassinated near the Kremlin in 2015]. After his untimely death, Prigozhin’s significance as a symbolic figure could increase and thus serve as a consolidating factor. We cannot rule out the possibility that Prigozhin’s memory will lead to the creation of something bigger than what emerged around the man during his lifetime.

The second explanation comes from an observer in the defense sector, who argues that we’re seeing a repeat not of Nemtsov’s murder, but of the death of Polish president Lech Kaczyński in 2010. (The official Polish Tu-154 plane carrying him and other Polish officials crashed while attempting to land in Smolensk, Russia. Many Poles believe that the plane was brought down by a bomb planted onboard by the Russian secret services.)

The hit squad didn’t go too far. On the contrary, [Prigozhin’s plane crash] was a carefully planned operation that was brought off nearly flawlessly. Although we can claim that such things don’t get done without Putin’s consent, there is no way to prove it.

The third explanation comes from a political spin doctor and frequent guest on YouTube channels. He wonders why everyone has decided that the passenger manifest and the presence of his personal effects [at the crash site] is sufficient to prove that Prigozhin was killed. We cannot rule out the possibility that Prigozhin and Putin made a deal and that Yevgeny Viktorovich will be the Kremlin’s secret weapon. I’m joking on this point, of course. But Russian realities are such that a man dies he shakes off all the bad stuff that happened in his life, and people focus on his admirable qualities. Look at Stalin: his bloodthirstiness and lack of principle have been forgotten, and no one remembers the terrible mistakes he made while running the country. He’s a winner, a victor. Stalin and Prigozhin cannot be compared, but nor can we deny that Prigozhin has been the most auspicious commander in the Ukraine war.

The fourth explanation comes from an opinion journalist and writer who asks us to the recall the Russian fairytale about the vixen and the thrush. The vixen terrorizes the thrush by threatening to kill its fledglings. First the vixen asks the thrush to give it something to drink, and then it asks the thrush to feed it, so the thrush helps it to steal food and beer. (The analogy here with the “chef” is obvious.) The sated and drunken predator then orders the thrush to make it laugh, and so the thrush alights on the heads of two peasants, father and son, who cripple (and even kill) each other whilst trying to beat the thrush. (Thus recalling the Olgino trolls and their work on the US elections, for example.) After the vixen has laughed its fill, it says to the thrush, Now scare me! The thrush raises a mutiny against the fox—oh, sorry, it gets hunting dogs to attack the vixen. Depending on which version of the fairytale you find, the vixen either gets killed or escapes the attack, but it is genuinely frightened.

Vladimir Putin wanted to have an alternative both to his own generals and to the supremely dangerous Kadyrovites. He came to count on Prigozhin to carry out sensitive missions both in Africa and the RF, but failed to take into account the man’s ambitions and got carried away. When Putin was faced with Prigozhin as an actual threat, he had to defend himself in earnest.

Source: Moscow Times Russian Service, weekly email newsletter, 27 August 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

Russian Media Monitor, “Propagandist blames US, Ukraine and NATO for Prigozhin’s crash,” 24 August 2023
Thanks to Monique Camarra (EuroFile) for the heads-up)

Mykola Honchar lives in a crumbling stone house in what is left of a tiny hamlet of eastern Ukraine. The town was attacked by Russian forces in June of last year, as the Wagner mercenary forces were spearheading a renewed offensive.

Even before the Kremlin set Wagner loose to wreak havoc in Ukraine, the Russian campaign was notable for its brutality. But from the moment Wagner forces entered the war in April 2022, they earned a special reputation for bloodlust from civilians and soldiers alike.

To Mr. Honchar, the death this week of Wagner’s leader, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, responsible for so much carnage in the war, would be fitting — a violent end to a violent life.

“He has blood on his hands,” said Mr. Honchar, 58. “If there is a god, god will figure out what to do with him.”

Even in a war in which civilians were shot dead in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, and the town of Mariupol was bombed into oblivion, Wagner and Mr. Prigozhin cultivated an image of brutality.

A video was promoted across Wagner-affiliated social media of the execution of one of Mr. Prigozhin’s own soldiers with a sledgehammer after he was captured and then released by the Ukrainians in a prisoner swap. While in custody, the prisoner had taped an interview saying he did not believe in Russia’s war.

“A dog receives a dog’s death,” Mr. Prigozhin said in the video.

By the time Ukraine regained Mr. Honchar’s village of Bohorodychne, Mr. Honchar was one of only two people left living in the village, once home to around 800 people.

The other person was Nina Honchar, his 92-year-old mother. He had stayed there despite the danger to take care of her. She died earlier this month.

He does not know if Wagner fighters were among the occupiers. “I did not ask for their documents,” he said. But he recalls seeing Russian fighters, who appeared to be on drugs, wandering around town in their underwear, their bodies covered with prison tattoos.

Wagner amplified its force by recruiting prisoners. After Wagner left the battlefield in June of this year, the Russian military continued the use of convicts as part of newly formed “Storm Z” units along the most dangerous front line positions.

To Mr. Honchar, it hardly matters under what banner the soldiers fought. The legacy of Wagner and Russian forces, he said, are one and the same: death, destruction and ruin.

“My brother and his wife were torn apart by shells,” Mr. Honchar said. Before he could bury them, he had to collect their body parts. “There was no skull, his hands were scattered,” he said of his brother.

Once he collected what he could find, he wanted to bury them in the local cemetery but it was under constant attack and too dangerous. He laid their remains in a trench and covered them with dirt.

When his 80-year-old neighbor died, he buried her in the crater of the shell that killed her.

Looming over the village is the Church of the Holy Mother of God, ‘Joy of All Who Sorrow.’ With its sky blue walls visible for miles around and majestic golden domes, it was once a draw for tourists and pilgrims.

Now its walls are blasted apart, one dome has tumbled to the ground and the gold leafing blasted away from another.

[…]

Source: Marc Santora, “In a Gutted Village, No Tears For Prigozhin,” New York Times, 27 August 2023, p. 9

“Incompatible with the Prestige of a University Student”

The St. Petersburg State University Ethics Commission has ruled that a statement made by Alexandra Zaitseva, a first-year student and editor of the student media outlet Studen, was “incompatible with the prestige of a university student.” Another student media outlet, Lupa and Pupa, has publicized the incident.

The Details. Zaitseva was summoned to appear before the commission on July 7. Initially, the hearing was supposed to be held online, but the university subsequently changed the format to in-person and refused to change it back. According to Zaitseva, this was done so that she would be unable to record the hearing.

The Reasons. In June, an anonymous denunciation of Alexandra Zaitseva was posted in St. Petersburg State University’s virtual guestbook. The author of the denunciation did not like Zaitseva’s post on VKontakte about the expulsion of Mikhail Belousov’s students from the university’s history faculty.

“In this publication, she talks about the ‘vile and unjust expulsion,’ in her opinion, ‘of the students implicated in the sensational Belousov affair.’ In addition, she publicly insults other students (‘a bunch of bastards shouting goida on PUNK at night’) while obviously demeaning and voicing disdain for the patriotic citizens of our country,” the denunciation reads.

St. Petersburg State University replied that they had contacted “law enforcement agencies” and called a hearing of their ethics commission.

The Decision. “We consider A.N. Zaitseva’s behavior incompatible with the prestige of a St. Petersburg State University student,” the St. Petersburg State University Ethics Commission ruled.

Zaitseva told Bumaga that she believes she will be expelled. “I guess the outcome is pretty obvious. Although, I can’t say for sure—no order has been issued yet,” the student said.

The ethics commission members did not like the fact that Zaitseva had given a comment to TV Rain. According to them, in this way the young woman “once again displayed her openly negative attitude towards the university of which she is a student.”

Just prior to the hearing, St. Petersburg State University had banned university employees from giving comments and interviews to “foreign agent” media outlets.

The commission ruled that Zaitseva had violated the second and third paragraphs of the University Student’s Code, i.e., “To represent the university in extracurricular settings with dignity” and “To honor teachers, respect colleagues and students, maintain friendly relations both inside and outside the University, [and] contribute to the creation of an environment of mutual understanding and cooperation.”

“Apparently, the authors really don’t fancy the idea that someone might have principles: this is the only explanation why such a large piece of the text is devoted to them, and not to an analysis of my post,” Zaitseva said in reaction to the commission’s decision.

Source: “St. Petersburg State University student summoned by ethics commission over statement about expelled history faculty students,” Bumaga, 18 July 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

The leadership of St. Petersburg State University (SPBGU) has fired Mikhail Belousov, a professor at the university’s History Institute, for committing an “immoral act” by speaking out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The university posted its decision on its website.

The university’s decision followed an investigation, during which university leadership confirmed that Belousov had circulated materials “discrediting” the Russian army, and “insulting the memory of those killed while fulfilling their military duty.”

“Belousov’s behavior violates the university’s moral traditions and generally accepted ethical norms, his actions are out of keeping with his and the university’s prestigious positions,” the document detailing the university’s decision says.

Petersburg publication Rotunda says the university began investigating Belousov and his students after Russian official and social media channels circulated screenshots of messages, allegedly written by the professor and his students, openly criticizing the war in Ukraine while the university was mourning one of its students, Fyodor Solomonov, who was killed in Ukraine.

Source: “St. Petersburg State University fires history professor for criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” Meduza, 3 June 2023

Seven students of the previously dismissed associate professor Mikhail Belousov were expelled from the Faculty of History of St. Petersburg State University, Bumaga reports, citing sources at the university. They were among the ten people who were previously called to the ethics commission. The remaining three will have “some kind of meeting with the vice-rector for educational work.”

One of the expelled students told the publication that he would challenge the decision of the university.

At the end of May, Z-channels circulated screenshots with messages in which Belousov allegedly condemned the “internal” symbolism and said that “a direct and open approval of rashism is disgusting.” It was alleged that the associate professor wrote all this in the context of discussing the death of St. Petersburg University student Fyodor Solomonov in the war in Ukraine.

On June 3, Belousov was fired, and a group of his students were summoned to the ethics committee, which ruled that they “considered it appropriate to make fun of” Solomonov’s death instead of “showing normal human feelings.” It was also decided that the students’ actions were “incompatible with the status of a student at St. Petersburg State University.”

In October last year, associate professor Denis Skopin was fired from the same university for participating in a rally against mobilization, calling it an “immoral act.”

Source: “‘Paper’: St. Petersburg State University expelled seven students. Earlier, the university ethics commission condemned them for mocking a student who died in the war in Ukraine,” Russian Free Press, 16 June 2023

Terribly Far

This is the premiere of Terribly Far, a new program by Lyudmila Savitskaya.

We will talk about what is happening to people who are terribly far from Moscow and St. Petersburg. Who are terribly far from the congresses, conferences and conflicts of opposition leaders. Who are terribly far even from popular YouTube channels and shows. Who are also terribly far even from Telegram.

Why does this matter? It matters because otherwise we won’t understand how the country got to this point and why some Russians volunteer to fight in the war.

In this episode, you’ll learn what worries Russians more than Prigozhin’s rebellion, why the Baltic Sea in Kaliningrad is becoming bloody, in which city it is easiest to encounter wild bears on the streets, and the job you have to land to make a dream salary of 8,000 rubles [approx. 80 euros] a month.

00:10 Why this program is needed

02:05 “We support the president, but where is the water?!” On Prigozhin and the water in Kostroma

06:06 There is no money to pay mail carriers in Buryatia

09:26 People in Kaliningrad are trying to save the Baltic Sea from pig’s blood

12:44 People in Tomsk are fleeing from bears on the streets

15:20 Taxis in Penza risk sinking underwater even after a normal rain shower

16:18 Why all this matters even in wartime

Subscribe to our channel, where we talk about the problems of ordinary people. And if you live beyond the Moscow Ring Road and are facing trouble right now, write to us at:

strashnodaleki@gmail.com

We will definitely tell our viewers about it. Because we do care.

Source: “Terribly Far No. 1: Pigs vs. People | Prigozhin and Hot Water | Bears on the Streets,” Open Media (YouTube), 7 July 2023. In Russian, with Russian captions. Annotation translated by the Russian Reader

__________________

The Usvyaty District of the Pskov Region belongs to the ethnographic area known as Poozerye (Lakeland). There used to be many folk musicians there, the most famous of whom was the singer Olga Sergeeva (1922-2002).

Ekaterina Trusova (maiden name Kozintseva, tracks 1-7) is a garmon (Russian button accordeon) player living in Usvyaty. She was recorded at the Usvyaty House of Culture on December 12, 2021.

The other two musicians featured on this album belong to a previous generation and were recorded by Ekaterina herself in the 1990s on a home cassette tape recorder. The cassettes were digitized by Alexander Yuminov (KAMA Records) in 2022.

Sofya Rubisova (tracks 8-13) is a folk singer from the village of Sterevnevo, Usvyaty District.

Dmitry Kozintsev (tracks 14-17) is Ekaterina’s father, a garmon player from the village of Pysi. Unfortunately, the recordings of him are of poor quality, as the tape in the cassette turned upside down. But we still decided to include them in the album.

Another album from the area, from the village of Tserkovishchi, can be found here.

Source: Antonovka Records (Bandcamp), 8 July 2023. I’ve lightly edited the original annotation to make it more readable. ||| TRR

__________________

Branded “foreign agent,” Yaroslavl media outlet announces closure

YARNOVOSTI announced it was suspending its work on July 7. The publication had been running for over ten years. It covered the inhabitants of Yaroslavl, corruption, problems with public amenities, and politics.

In June, the Justice Ministry had declared YARNOVOSTI a “foreign agent.” None of its employees agreed to work under this label. The editors said that during its entire existence it had not received “a kopeck” of foreign funding.

“Of course, we expected to continue working, but, as Vladimir Putin said, nothing lasts forever. We are still getting to the bottom of what happened on June 2: we have made all possible and even impossible inquiries, and have drawn up the paperwork for the court,” the media outlet’s editorial team wrote.

Source: 7 x 7 (Telegram), 7 July 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader. As of this writing, YARNOVOSTI seems to have shut down its website, but its page on VKontakte is still functioning. In its latest post there, published on 7 July 2023, it informed readers of the decision to suspend its work.

Support openDemocracy’s Coverage of Ukraine, Russia, and the Region!

Hi everyone!

So, oDR – openDemocracy’s Ukraine, Russia and wider region team – is at severe risk of closure.

What can I say apart from the fundraising has not been lucky, to put it mildly.

But we’re fighting: a huge last-ditch effort to turn the ship around and keep some of the best journalists, researchers and activists writing for our audience.

To do that, we’ve launched a crowdfunder to help match £50,000 we’ve already raised from private donors. This will buy us time to sort the long-term financing we need.

I’m not sure if folks want to hear about why we’re important, so I’ll be brief:

– Ukrainian journalists writing about Russia’s war

– Belarusian journalists writing about Russia’s war

– And Russian journalists writing about Russia’s war

And that’s aside from our brilliant collaborators in Central and South Caucasus.

So please help us spread the word, and help us keep fighting. There are so many important causes right now, so if you can’t afford – just push this on to people who can.

Source: Tom Rowley (Facebook), 28 June 2023. I just made a donation to oDR’s crowdfunder via PayPal, and I would urge you to do the same. ||| TRR

Dear readers,

openDemocracy’s dedicated coverage of Russia and Ukraine is one of our greatest achievements. But now, the team behind that work is under threat of closure.

The two of us helped to found openDemocracy in 2001 to make a space for a global conversation about justice, human rights and democracy and how they are threatened by unaccountable power. Today, at its core is our project on Russia, Ukraine and the wider region.

The project provides an irreplaceable space for voices from the region that do not represent official Ukrainian, Russian, European or American interests.

It gives prominence to Ukrainian journalists reporting Russia’s invasion and its brutalities, alongside threats to economic rights, social welfare and independent journalism
It provides an extremely valuable platform for coverage of Russia from Russian journalists and writers in Russian as well as English
It publishes Ukrainians, Russians and Belarusians who are fighting for democracy alongside one another, creating a framework for analysis and exchange that is unique during the pain of Russia’s war
And because, thanks to openDemocracy, the coverage is translated into Spanish and Portuguese without a paywall, readers across Latin America can learn directly about the experience of what is unfolding

With three million readers annually, and a world-wide reputation, the coverage, grouped together here, is needed more than ever.

It is put together by a small team. Focusing on publishing original, vital, stories on the impact of the Ukraine invasion, whilst keeping everyone secure from the consequences of war as well as Covid, means they have struggled to raise the vital funding essential to survival.

We have to reignite funding fast – very fast. In fact, immediately.

Or the brilliant team – Katia, Tom, Valeria, Polina and Tanya – will be made redundant.

We are doing everything we can to secure, enhance and deepen their work.

Please join us.

We have already secured match-funding of £50,000 from private donors. Now we urgently need your help to unlock this money. Every £10, €10 or $10 you donate will be matched.

£100,000 will give us the time to negotiate with foundations to ensure this project enjoys a long life – long-enough to outlast Putin!

When Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006, John le Carré was furious and headed a funding campaign for openDemocracy:

Let’s support openDemocracy to the hilt. Intelligent, unbought, unspun opinion, uncomfortable but necessary truths and a lot of good horsey argument: heaven knows they are in short enough supply!

We love the ‘horsey’. A master of words, le Carré appreciated that some of our articles are untamed. But that’s because they are unbought and unspun.

Never, ever, has there been a greater need for this than now with respect to Ukraine and Russia. Please help the team publish necessary truths, on-the-ground reporting, much needed level-headed debate, and even good horsey argument, so that the irreplaceable media space they have created survives and grows.

So please, send us £50, €50 or $50 or more if you can; £/€/$25 if that’s possible; or whatever you can. Every donation will be gratefully received.

Thank you,

Anthony Barnett & Susan Richards

Source: openDemocracy. I just made a donation to oDR’s crowdfunder via PayPal, and I would urge you to do the same. ||| TRR

International Children’s Day (June 1)

Important Stories • “Putin, Lvova-Belova and their crimes: how Ukrainian orphans are registered as Russians” • 31 May 2023

The Russian authorities have been removing children en masse from occupied Ukrainian territories and do not consider it a crime. But the International Criminal Court in the Hague thinks differently, accusing Vladimir Putin and Russian children’s ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova of war crimes—namely, the illegal deportation of minors from Ukraine.

Orphans and children left without parental care have been sent all over Russia, even to the Far North. Important Stories found out how this system works and how abducted Ukrainian orphans are forcibly turned into Russian nationals.

[…]

Timecode

00:00 Why Putin and Lviv-Belova have been accused of kidnapping Ukrainian children

01:12 How 2,500 new children appeared in Russia’s database of orphans

02:32 The story of Sasha from Donetsk and his two sisters

03:56 The environment in which Ukrainian children are raised in Russia

05:23 “The children categorically refused to go to the Far North, where we live”

07:12 “The parents were killed there. The children told us terrible things”

07:48 Ukrainian orphans are provided with housing, for which Russians spend years on the waiting list

08:39 “There have never been such crimes in the history of humankind”

Source: Important Stories (YouTube), 31 May 2023. Annotation translated by the Russian Reader

SOTA • “Putin is readying young people to rebuild the army” • 31 May 2023

It won’t be possible to wage wars forever, but Putin is trying very hard. Since February 24, 2022, the lives of young people have changed. Starting in kindergarten, children are now taught that serving in the army is the best job in the world, and that the most beautiful thing in life is dying for the good of the Motherland.

[Endlessly repeat the message that] Russia is surrounded by Nazis, the whole world is against it, its soldiers are defenders, and you’re good to go. You’ve raised a whole new generation of soldiers.

This assembly line for producing soldiers has existed for several years. Even before the war, schoolchildren were inspired with imperialism and a desire to go to war. Now, however, everything has reached new levels. Military parades are organized in kindergartens. Schoolchildren are taught to dig trenches, shoot, and render first aid in combat. And university students are trained to serve in the military.

See more about how children are turned into soldiers in our new video.

Source: SOTA (YouTube), 31 May 2023. Annotation translated by the Russian Reader

A ruined building of the Burenevo Auxiliary Boarding School for Mentally Retarded Children.
Village of Burnevo, Priozersk District (Leningrad Region), 2021. Photo: Olga Matveeva/Republic

“Hello Irina Alexandrovna! This is your pupil writing to you. I decided to write to you. Please write a letter here so that they let me go on my own, whatever date you need, so that I can study from the beginning of the school year, that is, beginning September 1. Say hello to everyone at the school. When you write the letter, address it to the 11th department… Irina Alexandrovna what was the reason you sent me to the mental hospital again. I told you that I would remain at camp…”

This is an excerpt from a letter written by a pupil to the director of the Burnevo Auxiliary School for Mentally Retarded Children. I found the letter in his personal file.

In 1970, the Priozersk Sanatorium Forest School was reorganized into an auxiliary boarding school for mentally retarded children. According to the school’s fact sheet, “Forty-eight mentally retarded children studied [sic] at the school. Ten of them are disabled. All of the children are from at-risk families. Classes are held in one shift, five days a week. On weekends and holidays, ten to fifteen of them, mostly orphans, stay. There are twelve of them in the school.”

It seems that many of the pupils were not mentally retarded or disabled, but they were neglected. Sergei, a resident of the village of Burnevo, spoke to this fact: “Half of the children there were sick, while half of the healthy ones were from dysfunctional families. I attended this school until 1970, and my mother worked there as a minder.”

The school was closed in 2005 due to poor epidemiological conditions. There was only stove heating in the building, and the water was pumped from the lake. The school consisted of several buildings. In the main building there were four classrooms, a teacher’s room, a curriculum office, and the director’s office. There were sleeping quarters in a wooden building. Carpentry workshops, sewing workshops, a recreation and sports equipment room were located in separate buildings. There was also a medical unit with an isolation ward and a speech therapist’s office. There I found an archive containing the personal files of the school’s graduates.

“His grandmother telephoned. She said that her grandson was very bad, it was hard to deal him, his socks were wet and dirty. He gave a jacket to a girl, but lied to his grandmother that he had dropped it off at the laundry. At the class meeting, it was decided to refer him to the psychiatrist to prescribe treatment.”

“Slava ended up the border zone this summer: he told the border guards that he was flying in a spaceship. I had a frank talk with him. He still wants to go see his mother in Vyborg (she does not live with their family). He didn’t find her, got lost, and ended up in the border zone. Slava, smiling, told how me he deceived a border guard and a policeman. Slava was referred to a psychiatrist, who detected no abnormalities.”

“Oleg systematically wipes the dust from his bed badly. This was discussed at a class meeting. There are no results.”

“If children skip classes, they should be reported to the police without delay.”

These are quotes from pupil observation logs. Along with memos, letters, and assessments, they were kept in the students’ personal files. These records about the children were kept for years—from the first grade to graduation. Perusing them, you begin to imagine these children, how they lived, what they worried about, what they did. Their childhoods are written down in slim notebooks. You watch them grow up and go out into the world, or to a psychoneurological residential treatment facility, or to prison.

For bad behavior, children were referred to a psychiatrist and prescribed treatment. There is no data on how many orphans are placed in psychiatric clinics nowadays. The roots of what is happening in this system to this day must be sought in the past.

This project is based on archival materials and interviews with graduates of the Burnevo Auxiliary School for Mentally Retarded Children whom I managed to find.

[…]

Source: Olga Matveeva, “‘A slight degree of imbecility’: the stories of graduates of an auxiliary boarding school for mentally retarded children,” Republic, 31 May 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

A girl paints a pebble during an event to mark the International Children’s Day in Vladivostok, Russia, June 1, 2023. (Photo by Guo Feizhou/Xinhua)

Students from a special education school perform during an event to mark the International Children’s Day in Vladivostok, Russia, June 1, 2023. (Photo by Guo Feizhou/Xinhua)

A girl draws during an event to mark the International Children’s Day in Vladivostok, Russia, June 1, 2023. (Photo by Guo Feizhou/Xinhua)

Teachers and students in traditional attire dance during an event to mark the International Children’s Day in Vladivostok, Russia, June 1, 2023. (Photo by Guo Feizhou/Xinhua)

[…]

Source: “Int’l Children’s Day marked around world,” Xinhua, 1 June 2023