Category: journalism

Important Stories

The following two stories turned up next to each other in my inbox several mornings ago. The first story (about the hidden costs of common areas in Petersburg’s new estates) was promoted as its “Article of the Week” by the business daily Delovoi Peterburg, whose chronicles of post-Soviet capitalism on the march in my favorite city I have been reading and sharing here for two decades, usually against the grain. The second story (about how the authorities in Kaliningrad hushed up the recent death by self-immolation of an antiwar protester at the city’s main WWII memorial) was published by the exiled investigative journalism website Important Stories aka IStories, which is celebrating its sixth birthday. Seemingly written on different planets in different languages, they give an accurate sounding of the bewildered, muted condition of the “Russian soul” (i.e., Russian society) after four-plus years of a vicious, genocidal war unleashed by a thoroughly corrupt “post-fascist” dictatorship. ||||| TRR

Photo: Sergei Yermokhin/Delovoi Peterburg

When she buys a flat—a fifty-square-meter flat, for example—a tenant also gets into the bargain several hundred square meters of lobbies, corridors, and stairways, for whose upkeep she will pay monthly. Those same square meters determine whether she will be able to squeeze past her neighbor in the lift lobby, whether it is easy to push a pram into the building , and whether coming home is a pleasurable experience.

The common areas are the only part of the apartment block the buyer does not choose although she passses through them every day.

How many square meters are not allocated to flats

The proportion of sellable space in apartment blocks depends primarily on their category.

“In the comfort class, the average is sixty-five to seventy percent; in the business segment, sixty to sixty-five; in the premium class, sixty; and it’s fifty to sixty for the elite class,” explains Olga Ryankel, head of residential property research at Nikoliers.

ELEMENT product director Alexander Matyushkin cites a target figure of up to seventy percent in his firm’s projects, with the actual average standing at around sixty-five percent

Lenstroytrest reports a ratio of seventy-five to eighty-two percent, and considers this to be balanced. According to Maxim Zhabin, development director at the Edino Group, the range for market heavy hitters hovers between sixty-five and eighty-five percent.

“If a developer artificially ‘squeezes’ common areas for the sake of the ratio, this is usually interpreted in practice as cutting corners on the facilities,” he says.

What constitutes non-residential space

An increase in total floor area is determined not by a single factor, but by a combination of factors, and the contribution of each depends on the project category and architectural designs.

In the mass-market segment, the primary contributors to floor area are landings, corridors, and stairwells. And yet, an increase in the number of lifts expands the non-sellable area by fifteen to twenty percent, smoke-free stairwells add a further eight to ten percent, and complexly designed building exteriors also increase the non-sellable perimeter, notes Matyushkin.

Zhabin also cites lift lobbies and stairwells as primary factors, adding to them the utility areas and entrance lobbies.

Optional spaces the developer includes over and above the standard requirements comprise a separate category.

Natalia Kukushkina, head of product and analytics at the CDS Group, differentiates between two categories of common spaces.

“The total floor area includes both essential elements, such as stairwells, basements, entrance lobbies, and communal facilities on each floor, spaces without which a building cannot be constructed, as well as spaces added at the developer’s discretion. These may include non-essential spaces such as spacious lobbies, coworking spaces, pram storage rooms, gyms, swimming pools, communal terraces on top floors, and so on.”

Where comfort ends and excess begins

Ultimately, each developer decides for themself how much common space to include in their project. Yekaterina Zaporozhchenko, chief executive officer at PRO Aparty, suggests a specific indicator: arrears on maintenance fees exceeding ten percent are a sign that residents do not feel the spaces they are paying for are value for their money.

“There should be just enough common spaces for them to be used, and the maintenance budget should not exceed the average figures for the segment,” she explains.

Yudita Grigaite, marketing director at Lenstroytrest, is convinced that excessive common space increases costs and operational burdens without adding any value.

Matyushkin highlights the reverse risk: excessive optimization is also dangerous. A shortage of lifts or narrow corridors diminish the quality of the built environment more than is apparent when a tenant is purchasing an apartment.

“A well-designed common space sets down a clear daily route from courtyard to flat without imposing unnecessary obstacles, and it provides practical arrangements for dealing with prams and deliveries, adequate ventilation and lighting, and clearly defined areas of liability,” says Zhabin in describing the working model.

Inefficiency arises when maintenance costs are high yet residents are unclear about what exactly they are paying for.

How square meters of common space are converted into a line item on the bill

The ratio of sellable space to total floor area translates into two figures residents encounter on a regular basis: the price per square meter at the time of purchase and the maintenace charges they pay after they move into their flat.

The math is straightforward: the higher the percentage of common space, the more expensive each square meter of living space. Developers figure the cost of building and finishing common space into the price of flats.

“The ratio between living space and total floor area directly impacts both the cost of a square meter and future operating expenses, all of which are reflected in the maintenance rates. Therefore, a building’s economic model should be balanced. The comfort of the common areas should be in line with the project’s class and the buyer’s expectations, while maintenance costs should be reasonable,” says Anzhelika Alshayeva, commercial director at the KVS Group, when asked to describe the process.

The difference in maintenance bills among segments is tenfold.

According to PRO Aparty, the difference ranges from sixty to six hundred rubles per square meter. Kukushkina warns of the scenario that this gap generates in practice.

“All additional expenses in a maintenance bill are regarded as too high, and some residents absolutely refuse to pay them. Ultimately, a building might end up with a swimming pool which is closed, a common terrace which is not cleaned, and facade lighting which is turned off.”

The third factor is density which, as Zhabin reminds us, is manifested in “queues to the lift, acoustics, and the amount of traffic in the courtyard,” that is, in factors which are not visible when potential buyers look at flats but which are felt daily.

What buyers don’t see

Ryankel notes a systemic problem in the mass-market segment: prams.

“Unfortunately, the spaces for storing prams and bikes are not separated n the majority of new apartment blocks, ultimately giving rise to a conflict of interests and the impossibility of organizing the space comfortably. And yet, developers often mention a pram storage area without specifying its size. As a result, a space of just seven square meters ends up trying to accommodate prams, bicycles, and tires.”

“Up to eighty percent of the user experience is shaped not inside their flat, but on the way there: from the building’s entrance to their front door. This includes logistics, how the lift works, acoustics, traffic flow, and the convenience of the infrastructure,” says Matyushkin.

There is also a time-related factor that is not taken into account at all when purchasing a flat.

Zaporozhchenko points out the costs of renovating furniture in common areas and maintaining the building’s utility systems after five to seven years, as well as keeping the building’s exterior clean—expenses that no buyer factors into their budget when signing the contract.

Zhabin adds that without a cleaning schedule and proper ventilation even the most luxurious finishes in a building’s entrance lobby will cease to feel “upscale” after a few years.

According to the market players surveyed, pressure on profit margins in the mass-market and comfort-class segments will soon compel developers to increase the share of floor space sold while maintaining visible indicators of quality, such as high ceilings in lobbies and high-quality finishes in entrance areas.

Club-style venues—coworking spaces, community centers, and gyms—will remain a key marketing tool, but some of them will be switched to a fee-based model or be leased out to external management companies on a commercial basis to ease the burden on utility bills.

The gap between rates in the mass-market and premium segments will continue to grow, along with the number of conflicts over maintenance bills in buildings whose infrastructure is at odds with the financial solvency of its residents.

Source: Pavel Nikiforov, “The non-residential building: what the tenant gets along with the flat,” Delovoi Peterburg, 5 May 2026. Translated by the Russian Reader

Information about the self-immolation of a resident of Kaliningrad born in 1988 in protest against the war was first published in an open report of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service. The authors of the report did not disclose the name of the deceased. We managed to find out the details of the incident together with Delfi Estonia and Lithuanian broadcaster LRT. We reconstructed what happened based on Russian Investigative Committee documents, conversations with Okunev’s relatives and colleagues, and European security sources.

Five CCTV cameras are installed in front of the 1200 Guardsmen Memorial in Kaliningrad, the USSR’s first monument to soldiers killed in the Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945. In the center of the memorial is the Eternal Flame. From time to time, various incidents occur near the memorial, which are then widely reported in the local news, and their perpetrators become the subjects of criminal cases. Since last year, for the “desecration of war memorials,” a sentence of up to five years in prison has been [stipulated].

Thus, in February this year, a drunken Kaliningrad resident wanted to light a cigarette from the fire and warmed his feet over the flames. In January 2026, a couple of residents stole a basket of flowers from the monument. In September 2025, another couple had sex at the memorial.

Six months before that, around 5 am on February 24, 2025, 37-year-old Kaliningrad resident Alexander Okunev burned himself alive at the memorial to 1200 Guardsmen in protest against the war — and no one found out about it.

“He was sitting in a corner, not where all the people were”

In the 2010s, Kaliningrad earned the title of the protest capital of Russia, and a series of large-scale rallies even led to the replacement of Governor Georgy Boos.

However, since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, the city has not exhibited any notable protest activity. In the first days of the invasion, a wave of anti-war actions swept through Kaliningrad. At one point, the city became a leader in the number of protocols issued for “discrediting” the army. But almost immediately, protests died down as they did throughout the country. Igor Luzin, a Kaliningrad activist and former employee of Navalny’s local headquarters, explains that the “political field” in Kaliningrad has been cleaned up just like the rest of Russia.

Alexander Okunev was not an activist. He avoided talking politics at work (he was a sysadmin at a firm selling retail equipment), did not argue about the full-scale war with his family, and apparently was not active on social media. Okunev had almost no friends, had no girlfriend, and lived alone.

He practically did not talk to his colleagues, could ignore even his superiors: he could keep silent in response to a greeting or not answer the questions. At corporate parties, New Year’s Eve, for example, he tried not to leave his office.

“Was sitting there in a corner, not where all the people … Somehow always in himself, lived his own life,” recalls his former colleague. “Closed. Strange.” However, there were no complaints about his work: “His programmer’s brains were cool”. His colleague believes that Alexander could have made a good career, “but it feels like he didn’t care much about money”. When Okunev decided to quit (about six months before the incident), everyone was upset.

“We asked him, have you found another job? No. Are you going somewhere? Maybe. No one had any idea what or why he left,” says his former colleague. Acquaintances call Okunev “kind, responsive, fair”: “He always helped everyone”. He was fond of origami, and when one of his colleagues had a birthday, he could secretly put “some flowers” on their table. Regarding his hobbies, people close to him say that he liked to watch movies and ride a bicycle.

After the dismissal, Okunev really did not find another job. “Sat at home, practically did not communicate with anyone,” heard his ex-colleague.

Cleanup

Having decided on such a desperate protest act as self-immolation, Alexander Okunev did not seem to be trying to attract attention. Maybe he was afraid that someone could stop him. But he obviously chose the date (the anniversary of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine) and the place (the main war memorial in the city) for a reason. Perhaps the time too: the Russian missile struck Kyiv on February 24, 2022, began just about five in the morning.

Okunev’s charred corpse, despite the numerous cameras at the memorial, was discovered by a random passerby only at around 6:40 a.m. The snow appears to have been spray-painted with the words “No to War”. Employees of the investigative department for the Leninsky district of Kaliningrad went to the scene. In the report of the events of the night, Okunev’s self-immolation is mentioned along with reports of two other corpses and a ninth-grade girl who had left home.

The incident was reported to the head of the city administration, Elena Dyatlova. She immediately took everything under her control, the European intelligence officer knows. She was assisted by Evgeny Maslov, head of the local service for the protection of cultural heritage. The main thing for them was to quickly get rid of the body and the words on the snow — the officials were worried mostly that journalists would know what happened. The Minister of Culture and Tourism of the Kaliningrad Oblast, Andrey Yermak, was especially worried that the self-immolation took place near the monument of the Great Patriotic War — too symbolic.

Everything was settled by 9:15 am. Traces of the incident were removed, and authorities were relieved to report to the local governor and other local officials that no one had seen anything, the source of IStories Media said.

Information about the self-immolation of an unnamed Kaliningrad resident first went public only along with a report by Estonian intelligence in the winter of 2026: “On the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale war, at five o’clock in the morning on February 24, 2025, a man born in 1988 wrote ‘No to War’ in the snow near the monument to a Russian soldier in Kaliningrad and set himself on fire in protest.”

None of the Kaliningrad media ever reported the news. There were no local or propaganda Telegram channels or other social media posts about Okunev. [Alexander’s] family did not spread the word about the incident either. “What’s the point of somehow publicizing and telling all this? What for?” one of them told reporters.

“There is another way”

An acquaintance of Okunev says that on the eve of his suicide, he behaved “absolutely normally.” There was no hint of what he was going to do, and “what happened came as a shock to everyone.” Okunev’s relatives speak of some “expert examinations” conducted as part of the investigation, which found that “there was no outside influence” on A[l]exander. The family was questioned by the local Investigative Committee; the police came to Okunev’s former colleagues for a “character [profile]” but came away with “Worked well, did not communicate with anyone.”

A close friend of Okunev recounted to IStories Media the content of his suicide note.

“He wrote that there is another way. Apparently, he meant a world with peace. And he didn’t want to live in the world we have, so he made this decision… But we are all aware that world peace is a utopia.”

The note also shows that Okunev understood that “most likely, it will not be in the news anywhere, it will not be widely covered anywhere,” the source tells IStories Media.

Elena Maslova, head of the Kaliningrad administration, and Evgeny Maslov, head of the cultural heritage protection service, have not responded to journalists’ requests.

Culture Minister Andrei Yermak replied that he was not familiar with the results of the investigation of this “accident”, so he would not comment on anything. He expressed confidence that law enforcement agencies “will comment on the situation as soon as the investigation is finalized.”

“These people are afraid not of the people, but of their superiors”

In January 1969, the self-immolation of Jan Palach, a philosophy student at Charles University, brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets and became a symbol of resistance to the Soviet occupation in Czechoslovakia. The self-immolation of street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi provoked mass protests in Tunisia, which eventually led to the resignation of the country’s president.

In Russia, the self-immolations of journalist Irina Slavina and Udmurt scientist Albert Razin did not lead to any notable collective action. Could Okunev’s suicide have provoked some protest if people had learned about it?

Sociologist Margarita Zavadskaya thinks not.

“Self-immolation is a powerful symbolic act,” she says, “but public outrage alone is not enough to trigger large-scale collective action under conditions of severe repression and limited access to information.”

So why did the Russian authorities try so hard to conceal information about what happened? To prevent “protest contagion” and imitation, she explains. Moreover, such an anti-war suicide contradicts the government’s theory of a universal public consensus on war. And local officials would look incapable of maintaining control in the eyes of their superiors.

Political scientist Ekaterina Shulman also does not believe that fear of further protests was behind the Kaliningrad authorities’ actions.

“Local authorities are not afraid of the people, not of protests. They are afraid of their superiors,” she says, “they were afraid to hear: ‘You oversaw, allowed a scandal, there are media publications, what do you eat your bread for?'”

“Authoritarian regimes are afraid of symbolic sparks. They understand that a single act of protest may not cause an immediate mass movement, but can become a moral symbol around which scattered anxiety and discontent begin to crystallize,” says Lithuanian political scientist Nerijus Malukiavicius. “That is why such regimes seek to ‘clean up’ the scene, silence history, and discredit the victim.”

Source: Maria Zholobov et al., “He Burned Himself Alive to Protest Russia’s War in Ukraine. The State Tried to Erase Him,” Important Stories, 6 May 2026. A disturbing caveat appears above the English-language version of the article: “AI based translation. If you find a mistake, please highlight it and press Ctrl + Enter.” ||||| TRR

Killing the Spirit of Radio

Rush, “Spirit of the Radio” (1980)

In a strongly worded decision this week, a federal judge ordered that the Voice of America — its mission to provide news for countries around the world largely shut down for the past year by the Trump administration — come roaring back to life.

Whether or not that actually happens is anybody’s guess.

The government filed notice Thursday to appeal U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth’s order two days earlier to put hundreds of VOA employees who have been on paid leave the past year back to work. Lamberth had ruled on March 7 that Kari Lake, who was President Donald Trump’s choice to oversee the bureaucratic parent U.S. Agency for Global Media, didn’t have the authority to reduce VOA to a skeleton.

The Voice of America was established as a news source in World War II, beaming reports to many countries that had no tradition of a free press. Before Trump took office again last year, Voice of America was operating in 49 different languages, heard by an estimated 362 million people.

Trump’s team contended that government-run news sources, which also include Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, were an example of bloated government and that they wanted news reporting more favorable to the current administration. With a greatly reduced staff, it currently operates in Iran, Afghanistan, China, North Korea and in countries with a large population of Kurds.

Lamberth, in his decision, said Lake had “repeatedly thumbed her nose” at laws mandating VOA’s operation.

Time to turn the page at VOA?

VOA director Michael Abramowitz said legislators in both parties understand the need for a strong operation and have set aside enough funding for the job to be done. “It is time for all parties to come together and work to rebuild and strengthen the agency,” he said.

Don’t expect that to happen soon. “President Trump was elected to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse across the administration, including the Voice of America — and efforts to improve efficiency at USAGM have been a tremendous success,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly. “This will not be the final say on the matter.”

Patsy Widakuswara, VOA’s White House bureau chief and a plaintiff in the lawsuit to bring it back, said that “restoring the physical infrastructure is going to take a lot of money and some time but it can be done. What is more difficult is recovering from the trauma that our newsroom has gone through.”

It’s an open question whether the administration wants a real news organization or a mouthpiece, said David Ensor, a former Voice of America director between 2010 and 2014. “We don’t know — maybe no one does at the moment — what the future holds,” he said.

The administration’s efforts over the past year to bolster friendly outlets and fight coverage that displeases them offer a clue, even though Congress has required that Voice of America be an objective and unbiased news source. This week it was announced that Christopher Wallace, an executive at the conservative network Newsmax who had previously spent 15 years at Fox News Channel, will be the new deputy director at VOA. Abramowitz didn’t know he was getting a new deputy until it was announced.

Widakuswara wouldn’t comment on what Wallace’s appointment might mean. “I’m not going to pass judgment before seeing his work,” she said.

While Lamberth ordered more than a thousand employees on leave to go back to work, it’s not clear how many of them moved on to other jobs or retired in the past year. The judge also said he did not have the authority to bring back hundreds of independent contractors who were terminated.

One employee who left is Steve Herman, a former White House bureau chief and national correspondent at VOA and now executive director of the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation at the University of Mississippi. Despite the court decisions, he questions whether the Trump administration would oversee a return to what the organization used to be.

“I’m a bit of a pessimist,” Herman said. “I think it’s going to be very difficult.”

An administration loath to admit defeat

Besides fighting to shut it down, Trump is loath to admit defeat. Last week, the White House nominated Sarah Rogers, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, putting it more firmly within the administration’s control. Her nomination requires Senate approval.

“Is Marco Rubio’s State Department going to allow objective journalism in 49 languages?” Herman asked. “I don’t think so. I would want that to happen, but that’s a fairy tale.”

In the budget bill passed in February, Congress set aside $200 million for Voice of America’s operation. While that represents about a 25% cut in the agency’s previous appropriation, it sent a bipartisan message of support, said Kate Neeper, VOA’s director of strategy and performance evaluation. Besides being a plaintiff with Widakuswara in the lawsuit to restore the agency, she has helped some of her colleagues deal with some of their own problems over the past year, including immigration issues.

“There is a lot of enthusiasm for going back to work,” she said. “People are eager to show up on Monday.”

The hunger for information from Voice of America in Iran when he was director was a clear example of what the organization meant, Ensor said. Surveys showed that between a quarter and a third of Iran’s households tuned in to VOA once a week, primarily on satellite television. Occasionally the government would crack down and confiscate satellite dishes, but Iranians could usually quickly find replacements, he said.

“I believe in Voice of America as a news organization and as a voice of America,” Ensor said. “It was important, and it can be again.”

Source: David Bauder, “Judge orders Voice of America be put back together again. What are the chances that will happen?” Associated Press, 20 March 2026

4’42”, a found audio piece captured in my car while listening to KSPB, 91.9 FM, Pebble Beach, on 23.03.2026

Who are we?

KSPB, Pebble Beach, 91.9 FM is a commercial-free, student-run, radio station, that has been broadcasting from Stevenson School in Pebble Beach for over 40 years.

The station is student run and includes staff positions, from webmaster to program director. Before applying for a live show on air, each student is required to take a class to learn about Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations, and how to operate the station independently. The students decide the genre of music for their specific show, but the general programming is alternative rock with specialized shows featuring hip-hop and international music. However, some students prefer to run their own talk shows.

With its connection to the Public Radio Satellite System (PRSS) the station fills out its schedule with content from the BBC World Service, American Public Media, and other public radio producers such as WAMC (Albany) and KCRW (Santa Monica). It also obtains content from its affiliation with the Public Radio Exchange (PRX).

KSPB has listeners in five counties in California – Monterey, Santa Cruz, San Benito, Santa Clara and San Mateo – with a potential total listenership of more than 1 million. Also, with the recent addition of streaming, KSPB is now available worldwide!

Source: kspb.org

R.E.M., “Radio Free Europe” (1981)

R.E.M. disbanded back in 2011. But the seminal indie-rock group is back with new five-track EP “Radio Free Europe 2025,”containing previously unreleased tracks and a new remix of the song. Proceeds from the vinyl pressing will benefit the U.S. government’s Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which are under attack from the Trump administration.

The EP, coming more than four decades after the 1981 release of “Radio Free Europe” on college radio, coincides with the 75th anniversary of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as well as World Press Freedom Day (which falls on May 3). Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was established 75 years ago and currently broadcasts news and information in 27 languages to 23 countries where a free press is either banned by the government or under threat.

Members of R.E.M. said the mission of promoting free expression has always resonated with the band.

“Whether it’s music or a free press — censorship anywhere is a threat to the truth everywhere,” Michael Stipe, lead singer and founding member of R.E.M., said in a statement. “On World Press Freedom Day, I’m sending a shout-out to the brave journalists at Radio Free Europe.” Bassist Mike Mills added, “Radio Free Europe’s journalists have been pissing off dictators for 75 years. You know you’re doing your job when you make the right enemies. Happy World Press Freedom Day to the ‘OG’ Radio Free Europe.”

Despite the song’s name, Mills says in the liner notes to the two-disc edition of R.E.M.’s “And I Feel Fine… The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982–1987” that it has “nothing to do” with the broadcaster: “We just liked the title.”

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty president and CEO Stephen Capus said in a statement, “To me, R.E.M.’s music has always embodied a celebration of freedom: freedom of expression, lyrics that make us think, and melodies that inspire action. Those are the very aims of our journalists at Radio Free Europe — to inform, inspire, and uphold freedoms often elusive to our audiences. We hold dictators accountable. They go to great lengths to silence us — blocking our websites, jamming our signals, and even imprisoning our colleagues.”

In March, President Trump issued an executive order seeking to dismantle Voice of America, which oversees Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and others. The broadcasters have won court rulings to reverse Trump’s move but the White House has withheld funding, leading to layoffs and uncertainty at the outlets. On Tuesday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore $12 million in congressionally appropriated funding for Radio Free Europe.

On Friday, the heads of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks sent a letter to Trump officials urging them to restore funding “immediately.” That came as Radio Free Asia laid off most of its staff. “Our journalists are terrified that the withdrawal of support from their employers will lead to harassment, prison, and worse,” they said in the letter, per CNN. “We urge you to restore our funding immediately before further irreparable reputational harm is done to the United States — and before innocent lives are needlessly and recklessly lost.”

R.E.M.’s “Radio Free Europe 2025” is available to stream and download now. A limited-edition, 10-inch orange-vinyl pressing is available for pre-order now exclusively via the official R.E.M. store and independent record stores; it will be released Sept. 12. Proceeds from all vinyl sales will go to RFE/RL, an editorially independent nonpartisan and nonprofit corporation.

Released through Craft Recordings, the “Radio Free Europe 2025” EP was overseen by the band’s original producer Mitch Easter. The record opens with the 2025 remix by Grammy-winning producer Jacknife Lee (U2, Snow Patrol, Taylor Swift, The Killers), who also produced R.E.M.’s final two studio albums, “Accelerate” and “Collapse Into Now.” Lee “gives the track a fresh take while staying true to its indie-rock DNA,” according to Creative Recordings. Rounding out the EP are four of Mitch Easter’s original 1981 recordings: the Hib-Tone single mix of “Radio Free Europe,” its flip-side “Sitting Still,” the “Wh. Tornado” demo, and Easter’s never-before-released 1981 remix “Radio Free Dub.”

In 2009, “Radio Free Europe” was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry for “setting the pattern for later indie-rock releases.”

Formed in 1980 in Athens, Georgia, R.E.M. had a three-decade run of multi-platinum sales before amicably disbanding in 2011. Over the course of their career, R.E.M. released 15 studio albums, won three Grammys, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2007) as well as the Songwriters Hall of Fame (2024).

Here’s the track list for the new EP:

Radio Side

  1. Radio Free Europe 2025 (Jacknife Lee Remix)*
  2. Radio Free Dub (Mitch Easter 1981 Remix)*

Liberty Side

  1. Radio Free Europe (Original Hib-Tone Single)
  2. Sitting Still (Original Hib-Tone B-Side)
  3. Wh. Tornado (From Cassette Set) **

* Never before released
** First time on digital and vinyl

R.E.M., “Radio Free Europe 2025 (Jacknife Lee Remix) RFE/RL Dispatch” (2025)

Source: Todd Spangler, “R.E.M. Releases New ‘Radio Free Europe’ EP, With Proceeds Benefiting Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Amid Trump Cuts,” Variety, 2 May 2025

In the 1970s, at the height of Soviet jamming of the BBC, the most coveted short-wave radios in the USSR were made by the VEF factory in Latvia – which was then part of the Soviet Union.

A generation of young Russians grew up learning how to twist the dial with great precision, to find whichever BBC signal had somehow bypassed the howling and whistling of the jammers. When you found it, it a window opened into a whole other world – of uncensored news, literature and western pop music, all coming to you live from London.

Those days are long gone. The jamming stations have all closed down. The VEF factory doesn’t make radios anymore. And Latvia is now an independent country. But since the start of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the information space in Russia has been shrinking.

A new generation of Russians are now having to fight to stay connected to the world. And our team has to battle internet blocking and shutdowns to keep on reaching them. Four years ago, the Russian Service Moscow newsroom had to leave Russia but their work continues in exile, and their new home by a twist of fate just happens to be in Latvia.

Over the past eighty years history often seems to have repeated itself.

Take the first ever Russian Service radio news bulletin from 24 March 1946. The news reader was the splendidly named Mrs Sonia – Betty – Horsfall. The top story was all about Iran – and the ongoing negotiations for Soviet troops to withdraw after their wartime occupation.

Now it’s the US-Israeli war on Iran that’s dominating the news. And to reach audiences in Russia in 2026, we have to tell the story in a myriad of ways across different platforms. Our website is blocked in Russia – as are YouTube, Instagram, Facebook Tiktok, and WhatsApp. The messenger app Telegram used to be our only uncensored way of getting information in and out of Russia. But not any more.

These days Russians can only reach the BBC website and social media channels – and many other banned sites – by using VPNs – virtual private networks, which allow them to bypass the censors. Everyone from young people to the shortwave radio generation has had to learn how to do it. “But what will we do if they start blocking VPNs and shutdown internet access altogether?” one of our team asked the other day.

It’s a question we often ask our colleagues in BBC News Persian, who are now reporting the war on their country despite an almost complete internet blackout in Iran. We have so much to learn from them – and increasingly, sadly, so much in common with them.

We had to leave Russia in 2022 because it was no longer safe for our staff to continue doing their jobs there. Even calling Putin’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine a war, was against the law.

Getting nearly 50 shell-shocked BBC Russian journalists, their families and their pets out of Russia and into Latvia now feels like the easy bit. Building new lives, learning a new language, and finding new ways to keep reporting Russia from the outside has been a much tougher challenge.

“The thing that’s really helped is knowing we’re all in this together and we can all support each other,” says one of our team.

But everyone has paid the price for carrying on. No-one can travel safely back to Russia. Home and family have become unreachable. Reunions have to happen in third countries.

And even in exile our staff are still being pursued. Eight have been designated ‘foreign agents’ by the authorities in Russia – required by law to put disclaimers on all their published work, taken to court and fined in absentia for failing to comply, heading inevitably towards criminal prosecution.

“If I get a criminal record in Russia, then the list of places where I can safely meet my Mum is going to get even shorter,” one colleague told me the other day.

There have already been cases of Russians discovering too late that they’re on the international wanted list in countries friendly to Moscow.

When the Russian Service first went on air, Winston Churchill had just made his famous post-war speech warning that an iron curtain was coming down over Eastern Europe. In 2026 a digital version of that iron curtain has come down again.

The post-revolutionary emigres and the Cold War exiles who lead the Russian Service in those earlier radio days, have now been replaced by a new generation who never thought that one day it would be their turn to leave.

“The Russia I grew up in has completely disappeared,” says one of our ex-Moscow team. “In the blink of an eye the freedom, the possibilities, and the excitement have all gone. I don’t want to think that I’ll never go back,” she adds “But right now it’s hard to believe.”

Russians clearly want more than their state-controlled news media is currently giving them and after 80 years, I hope our first newsreader Mrs Horsfall would be proud to see how many of them still trust the BBC.

This story was broadcast on ‘From Our Own Correspondent’, on BBC Radio 4 on 21 March 2026.

Source: Jenny Horton, “BBC News Russian at 80: Still here, still growing, still battling the censors,” BBC News Russian, 24 March 2026. This report was added to the original post on 24 March 2026. ||||| TRR

The Mote and the Beam

The same “gotcha!” news item (as below) on RIA Novosti’s Telegram channel

ROME, March 18 — RIA Novosti. Our correspondent has discovered that the Ukrainian Embassy in Italy has made a typo on its official website, misspelling the name of its host country.

According to the information at the bottom of the web page (which includes contact details and links to online resources), the Ukrainian diplomatic mission is located in the “Italian Rebublic.” The Italian word Repubblica is spelled with a b instead of a p — Rebubblica.

Source: “Italy referred to as ‘Rebubblica’ on official website of Ukrainian Embassy in Rome,” RIA Novosti, 18 March 2026. Translated by the Russian Reader

Anton, a 44-year-old Russian soldier who heads a workshop responsible for repairing and supplying drones, was at his kitchen table when he learned last month that Elon Musk’s SpaceX had cut off access to Starlink terminals used by Russian forces. He scrambled for alternatives, but none offered unlimited internet, data plans were restrictive, and coverage did not extend to the areas of Ukraine where his unit operated.

It’s not only American tech executives who are narrowing communications options for Russians. Days later, Russian authorities began slowing down access nationwide to the messaging app Telegram, the service that frontline troops use to coordinate directly with one another and bypass slower chains of command.

“All military work goes through Telegram — all communication,” Anton, whose name has been changed because he fears government reprisal, told POLITICO in voice messages sent via the app. “That would be like shooting the entire Russian army in the head.”

Telegram would be joining a home screen’s worth of apps that have become useless to Russians. Kremlin policymakers have already blocked or limited access to WhatsApp, along with parent company Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Microsoft’s LinkedIn, Google’s YouTube, Apple’s FaceTime, Snapchat and X, which like SpaceX is owned by Musk. Encrypted messaging apps Signal and Discord, as well as Japanese-owned Viber, have been inaccessible since 2024.

Last month, President Vladimir Putin signed a law requiring telecom operators to block cellular and fixed internet access at the request of the Federal Security Service. Shortly after it took effect on March 3, Moscow residents reported widespread problems with mobile internet, calls and text messages across all major operators for several days, with outages affecting mobile service and Wi-Fi even inside the State Duma.

Those decisions have left Russians increasingly cut off from both the outside world and one another, complicating battlefield coordination and disrupting online communities that organize volunteer aid, fundraising and discussion of the war effort. Deepening digital isolation could turn Russia into something akin to “a large, nuclear-armed North Korea and a junior partner to China,” according to Alexander Gabuev, the Berlin-based director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

In April, the Kremlin is expected to escalate its campaign against Telegram — already one of Russia’s most popular messaging platforms, but now in the absence of other social-media options, a central hub for news, business and entertainment. It may block the platform altogether. That is likely to fuel an escalating struggle between state censorship and the tools people use to evade it, with Russia’s place in the world hanging in the balance.

“It’s turned into a war,” said Mikhail Klimarev, executive director of the internet Protection Society, a digital rights group that monitors Russia’s censorship infrastructure. “A guerrilla war. They hunt down the VPNs they can see, they block them — and the ‘partisans’ run, build new bunkers, and come back.”

The app that runs the war

On Feb. 4, SpaceX tightened the authentication system that Starlink terminals use to connect to its satellite network, introducing stricter verification for registered devices. The change effectively blocked many terminals operated by Russian units relying on unauthorized connections, cutting Starlink traffic inside Ukraine by roughly 75 percent, according to internet traffic analysis by Doug Madory, an analyst at the U.S. network monitoring firm Kentik.

The move threw Russian operations into disarray, allowing Ukraine to make battlefield gains. Russia has turned to a workaround widely used before satellite internet was an option: laying fiber-optic lines, from rear areas toward frontline battlefield positions.

Until then, Starlink terminals had allowed drone operators to stream live video through platforms such as Discord, which is officially blocked in Russia but still sometimes used by the Russian military via VPNs, to commanders at multiple levels. A battalion commander could watch an assault unfold in real time and issue corrections — “enemy ahead” or “turn left” — via radio or Telegram. What once required layers of approval could now happen in minutes. Satellite-connected messaging apps became the fastest way to transmit coordinates, imagery and targeting data.

But on Feb. 10, Roskomnadzor, the Russian communications regulator, began slowing down Telegram for users across Russia, citing alleged violations of Russian law. Russian news outlet RBC reported, citing two sources, that authorities plan to shut down Telegram in early April — though not on the front line.

In mid-February, Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadayev said the government did not yet intend to restrict Telegram at the front but hoped servicemen would gradually transition to other platforms. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said this week the company could avoid a full ban by complying with Russian legislation and maintaining what he described as “flexible contact” with authorities.

Roskomnadzor has accused Telegram of failing to protect personal data, combat fraud and prevent its use by terrorists and criminals. Similar accusations have been directed at other foreign tech platforms. In 2022, a Russian court designated Meta an “extremist organization” after the company said it would temporarily allow posts calling for violence against Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine war — a decision authorities used to justify blocking Facebook and Instagram in Russia and increasing pressure on the company’s other services, including WhatsApp.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov, a Russian-born entrepreneur now based in the United Arab Emirates, says the throttling is being used as a pretext to push Russians toward a government-controlled messaging app designed for surveillance and political censorship.

That app is MAX, which was launched in March 2025 and has been compared to China’s WeChat in its ambition to anchor a domestic digital ecosystem. Authorities are increasingly steering Russians toward MAX through employers, neighborhood chats and the government services portal Gosuslugi — where citizens retrieve documents, pay fines and book appointments — as well as through banks and retailers. The app’s developer, VK, reports rapid user growth, though those figures are difficult to independently verify.

“They didn’t just leave people to fend for themselves — you could say they led them by the hand through that adaptation by offering alternatives,” said Levada Center pollster Denis Volkov, who has studied Russian attitudes toward technology use. The strategy, he said, has been to provide a Russian or state-backed alternative for the majority, while stopping short of fully criminalizing workarounds for more technologically savvy users who do not want to switch.

Elena, a 38-year-old Yekaterinburg resident whose surname has been withheld because she fears government reprisal, said her daughter’s primary school moved official communication from WhatsApp to MAX without consulting parents. She keeps MAX installed on a separate tablet that remains mostly in a drawer — a version of what some Russians call a “MAXophone,” gadgets solely for that app, without any other data being left on those phones for the (very real) fear the government could access it.

“It works badly. Messages are delayed. Notifications don’t come,” she said. “I don’t trust it … And this whole situation just makes people angry.”

The VPN arms race

Unlike China’s centralized “Great Firewall,” which filters traffic at the country’s digital borders, Russia’s system operates internally. Internet providers are required to route traffic through state-installed deep packet inspection equipment capable of controlling and analyzing data flows in real time.

“It’s not one wall,” Klimarev said. “It’s thousands of fences. You climb one, then there’s another.”

The architecture allows authorities to slow services without formally banning them — a tactic used against YouTube before its web address was removed from government-run domain-name servers last month. Russian law explicitly provides government authority for blocking websites on grounds such as extremism, terrorism, illegal content or violations of data regulations, but it does not clearly define throttling — slowing traffic rather than blocking it outright — as a formal enforcement mechanism. “The slowdown isn’t described anywhere in legislation,” Klimarev said. “It’s pressure without procedure.”

In September, Russia banned advertising for virtual private network services that citizens use to bypass government-imposed restrictions on certain apps or sites. By Klimarev’s estimate, roughly half of Russian internet users now know what a VPN is, and millions pay for one. Polling last year by the Levada Center, Russia’s only major independent pollster, suggests regular use is lower, finding about one-quarter of Russians said they have used VPN services.

Russian courts can treat the use of anonymization tools as an aggravating factor in certain crimes — steps that signal growing pressure on circumvention technologies without formally outlawing them. In February, the Federal Antimonopoly Service opened what appears to be the first case against a media outlet for promoting a VPN after the regional publication Serditaya Chuvashiya advertised such a service on its Telegram channel.

Surveys in recent years have shown that many Russians, particularly older citizens, support tighter internet regulation, often citing fraud, extremism and online safety. That sentiment gives authorities political space to tighten controls even when the restrictions are unpopular among more technologically savvy users.

Even so, the slowdown of Telegram drew criticism from unlikely quarters, including Sergei Mironov, a longtime Kremlin ally and leader of the Just Russia party. In a statement posted on his Telegram channel on Feb. 11, he blasted the regulators behind the move as “idiots,” accusing them of undermining soldiers at the front. He said troops rely on the app to communicate with relatives and organize fundraising for the war effort, warning that restricting it could cost lives. While praising the state-backed messaging app MAX, he argued that Russians should be free to choose which platforms they use.

Pro-war Telegram channels frame the government’s blocking techniques as sabotage of the war effort. Ivan Philippov, who tracks Russia’s influential military bloggers, said the reaction inside that ecosystem to news about Telegram has been visceral “rage.”

Unlike Starlink, whose cutoff could be blamed on a foreign company, restrictions on Telegram are viewed as self-inflicted. Bloggers accuse regulators of undermining the war effort. Telegram is used not only for battlefield coordination but also for volunteer fundraising networks that provide basic logistics the state does not reliably cover — from transport vehicles and fuel to body armor, trench materials and even evacuation equipment. Telegram serves as the primary hub for donations and reporting back to supporters.

“If you break Telegram inside Russia, you break fundraising,” Philippov said. “And without fundraising, a lot of units simply don’t function.”

Few in that community trust MAX, citing technical flaws and privacy concerns. Because MAX operates under Russian data-retention laws and is integrated with state services, many assume their communications would be accessible to authorities.

Philippov said the app’s prominent defenders are largely figures tied to state media or the presidential administration. “Among independent military bloggers, I haven’t seen a single person who supports it,” he said.

Small groups of activists attempted to organize rallies in at least 11 Russian cities, including Moscow, Irkutsk and Novosibirsk, in defense of Telegram. Authorities rejected or obstructed most of the proposed demonstrations — in some cases citing pandemic-era restrictions, weather conditions or vague security concerns — and in several cases revoked previously issued permits. In Novosibirsk, police detained around 15 people ahead of a planned rally. Although a small number of protests were formally approved, no large-scale demonstrations ultimately took place.

The power to pull the plug

The new law signed last month allows Russia’s Federal Security Service to order telecom operators to block cellular and fixed internet access. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said subsequent shutdowns of service in Moscow were linked to security measures aimed at protecting critical infrastructure and countering drone threats, adding that such limitations would remain in place “for as long as necessary.”

In practice, the disruptions rarely amount to a total communications blackout. Most target mobile internet rather than all services, while voice calls and SMS often continue to function. Some domestic websites and apps — including government portals or banking services — may remain accessible through “whitelists,” meaning authorities allow certain services to keep operating even while broader internet access is restricted. The restrictions are typically localized and temporary, affecting specific regions or parts of cities rather than the entire country.

Internet disruptions have increasingly become a tool of control beyond individual platforms. Research by the independent outlet Meduza and the monitoring project Na Svyazi has documented dozens of regional internet shutdowns and mobile network restrictions across Russia, with disruptions occurring regularly since May 2025.

The communications shutdown, and uncertainty around where it will go next, is affecting life for citizens of all kinds, from the elderly struggling to contact family members abroad to tech-savvy users who juggle SIM cards and secondary phones to stay connected. Demand has risen for dated communication devices — including walkie-talkies, pagers and landline phones — along with paper maps as mobile networks become less reliable, according to retailers interviewed by RBC.

“It feels like we’re isolating ourselves,” said Dmitry, 35, who splits his time between Moscow and Dubai and whose surname has been withheld to protect his identity under fear of governmental reprisal. “Like building a sovereign grave.”

Those who track Russian public opinion say the pattern is consistent: irritation followed by adaptation. When Instagram and YouTube were blocked or slowed in recent years, their audiences shrank rapidly as users migrated to alternative services rather than mobilizing against the restrictions.

For now, Russia’s digital tightening resembles managed escalation rather than total isolation. Officials deny plans for a full shutdown, and even critics say a complete severing would cripple banking, logistics and foreign trade.

“It’s possible,” Klimarev said. “But if they do that, the internet won’t be the main problem anymore.”

Source: Ekaterina Bodyagana, “Inside the race to cut Russia off from the global internet,” Business Insider, 16 March 2026

Andrei Khrzhanovsky: Even Tel Aviv Hipsters Can Commit Genocide

Andrei Khrzhanovsky. Source: social media

Son of the renowned filmmaker Ilya Khrzhanovsky, anthropology graduate and activist Andrei Khrzhanovsky moved to Israel in 2022. He almost immediately adopted a pro-Palestinian stance in the Middle East conflict, dubbing Israel’s actions genocide, and Zionism an ethnically supremacist idea. He says he is fighting for the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank due to his sense of guilt over the war in Ukraine. He spoke with Marina Berdichevskaya about his radical stance and his conflicts with his family.

Andrei Khrzhanovsky, 26, has been living in Israel since 2022. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he found himself in Tel Aviv with his entire family, including his famous father, grandfather, and grandmother. When the time came to fly home, there was nowhere to go. On February 24, Ilya Khrzhanovsky had begun circulating a petition, condemning the invasion of Ukraine, among cultural figures. Andrei flew to Georgia and applied there for Israeli citizenship.

Since March 2022, Andrei X, as he likes to be called, has enthusiastically plunged into the weeds of Israeli life and quite quickly chosen a side: he has taken up activism and, so he claims, journalism, on behalf of “the most vulnerable group on Earth at the moment,” the inhabitants of the West Bank. At the same time, Andrei has been doing battle with “the genocide in Gaza” and on this score has found himself at odds with his father, who has repeatedly said that, in the wake of 7 October 2023, he has felt himself to be Israeli first and foremost.

We talked at length and quite emotionally about how the profoundly erudite Khrzhanovsky, who has a degree in anthropology from the University of London, has decided to atone for the collective guilt of generations for world colonialism. Andrei happily juggles concepts and historical facts and is sure that this is the only way to do things: to always stand up for the downtrodden and to never succumb to propaganda. Whether he himself is suspectible to propaganda is an open question. Ah, yes. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of Republic or its editors—nor should they.

“The closer you are to the empire’s center, the greater the blame”

— Let’s begin with where you live. Your Facebook page says you live in Jericho. Is this true?

— Nowadays, I don’t stay anywhere longer than a few days in a row. I rent a flat, but I won’t divulge its location, because I get several death threats a day. I come home once every month and a half for a couple of days and then I hit the road again. Yesterday, I came from Bethlehem.

—  How do people on the West Bank relate to you? Do they understand that you have an Israel passport?

— I’ve never had any problems with this because this is a political conflict, not an ethnic one. I speak with Palestinians deep in Area A (the West Bank is divided into three areas; Area A, which makes up seventeen percent of the West Bank, is wholly controlled by the Palestinian Authority — Republic) whose relatives have been killed, who have done time in prison. Israel fosters the illusion that all Palestinians want to kill all Jews. But this isn’t an ethnic conflict, and not even a religious one at the end of the day.

— In February of last year you said in an interview, “When the war in Ukraine began, I had an enormous sense of guilt that I hadn’t done more [to stop it]. That’s why I’ve thrown myself into all political activism here.” You explained your activism in terms of not wanting to “squander another country.” Where does such a young man come by a sense of personal guilt for what is happening in and with a country? After all, many Russian nationals, especially the remainers, reject the very principle of collective guilt.

Karèn Shainyan, interview with Andrei Khrzhanovsky and Artyom Nikitin (in Russian, with no subtitles)

Today’s episode of Who Am I After This? is very sensitive for me personally. The conversations with its two subjects, leftists and human rights activists, were the hardest and most emotional in the whole project because they both touch on a very painful personal conflict of loyalties for me. This is the only episode where there are two protagonists at once: journalist Andrei Khrzhanovsky and architect Artyom Nikitin. Quite handsome and young, both moved to Israel after the war in Ukraine began, and both travel to the West Bank to support the local Arab [sic] population, even and especially now, when there is a war in [sic] Israel.

Source: Karen Shainyan (YouTube), 2 February 2024

— Before February 2022 we all lived in a magical reality of sorts: there was a dictatorship in Russia, seemingly, but no one was getting killed, as it were; everything was sluggish, we had to tackle corruption and so on. But there was no sense of the disaster that any dictatorship represents. This illusion personally crumbled for me on 24 February 2022. The disaster started then, and then intensified after the genocide in Gaza began. Over the past few years, the feeling has only grown in me that we are all to blame for what is happening; some more, some less. The closer you are to the empire’s center, the greater the blame.

— And when did you personally start counting down that blame?

— If we speak of the entire timeline, there were three moments. The first was 24 February 2022. The second was an article by Yuval Abraham (an Israeli journalist and co-director of the Oscar-winning film No Other Land — Republic), based on conversations with soldiers fighting in Gaza who admitted that they had been tasked with firing on civilian targets. And the third was the morning when I woke up, opened Instagram, and saw the video of a man in Gaza burning alive after an IDF strike on a hospital.

Andrei Khrzhanovsky. Source: social media

— How did you get involved in political activism in Israel?

— I had an approximate, general notion of what was happening here when I turned up here. I grew up in the Russophone media space after all. But when I arrived I realized that I had to figure out what was happening. I started reading books and talking to people. The more I researched, the more horrified I was. Suddenly, I found out about the status of Palestinians in East Jerusalem: their land was annexed, but they weren’t granted [Israeli] citizenship. To get into the Shuafat refugee camp, which the Israelis annexed and surrounded with a wall, Palestinians have to go through a security checkpoint. The sheer number of different methods for constructing a state based on ethnic supremacy is insane.

Continue reading “Andrei Khrzhanovsky: Even Tel Aviv Hipsters Can Commit Genocide” →

Paywalls, Firewalls, and “Extremist Content”

Source: Screenshots of an email from The Bell, 21 July 2025, and pro.thebell.io. I “subcsribe”* to a fair number of newspapers, magazines, and online media outlets. None of them would dare to charge me $348 or even $189 for a mere two newsletters a week. That The Bell asks so much for its meager output gives you an idea of how much it was previously receiving, directly or indirectly, from “grant funding for media outlets like us,” that is, from the U.S. government. ||| TRR

* The same typo was in last week’s “abbreviated version” of Russia, Explained.

A growing chorus of pro-Kremlin figures is speaking out against a proposed law that would impose fines for accessing or searching for online content labeled “extremist” by Russian authorities.

The bill, which was passed in its first reading in the lower-house State Duma on Thursday, envisions fines of up to 5,000 rubles ($64) for individuals who “knowingly” view or search for banned content. It does not specify how such activity would be detected, prompting concerns from experts about increased surveillance and possible abuse by law enforcement.

Yekaterina Mizulina, head of the Kremlin-aligned Safe Internet League, said the legislation could backfire on police, as well as those who support the Kremlin and help authorities in their crackdown on dissent.

“We actively monitor this kind of [“extremist”] content and share findings with law enforcement as part of our chartered mission,” Mizulina wrote on Telegram.

“What’s most striking is that under the draft law, even Interior Ministry officials monitoring such content could technically be acting illegally. And any private citizen who reports, say, [potential school shooters] to law enforcement could also face fines,” she added.

Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the state-funded RT news network, also criticized the bill.

“Dear government, tell me, plz, how are we supposed to carry out investigations and throw shade on all types of extremist groups like FBK if we are barred from even reading about them?” Simonyan wrote on Telegram, referring to Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, which Russia outlawed in 2021.

“I hope there will be changes,” she added.

Amnesty International, a London-based NGO, earlier decried the bill as “vague and overly broad,” warning that it enables arbitrary enforcement.

“Once again, the Russian authorities are disguising their relentless persecution of dissent as countering ‘extremism,’” said Marie Struthers, Amnesty’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia director.

“In today’s Russia, ‘extremist’ materials could be anything from a book promoting same-sex relationships to social media posts by opposition groups,” Struthers added.

The Kremlin on Thursday declined to comment on the controversy surrounding the bill, but acknowledged that the “issue has clearly sparked a strong public reaction.”

Authorities in Moscow currently maintain a list of around 5,500 banned “extremist” materials, including books, religious texts, songs, films and other media.

If lawmakers pass the bill and President Vladimir Putin signs it into law, it would take effect on Sept. 1.

Source: “Pro-Kremlin Figures Decry Bill Criminalizing Access to ‘Extremist’ Content,” Moscow Times, 17 July 2025. The Russian Reader was banned and blocked in Russia in July 2022 (with WordPress’s connivance), as chronicled here, here, and here.

“The Squadron Did Not Notice the Fallen Fighter”

Silly little fly was burning on a candle
Burning the small fry, smoke that is so tender
Little star has fallen into the puddle by the steps
The squadron did not notice the fallen fighter

The dead one did not live, the sick’s not kicked the bucket
The seer was not blind, the sleeper is still tucked in
Merry beating brave hearts (in Morse code would tell)
The squadron did not notice the fallen fighter

No-one was more dear, no-one was more pretty
No-one was more pained, no-one was more happy
There was no beginning and there was no end
The squadron did not notice the fallen fighter

— Eric Boros, “The Squadron,” from Secondhand Guitar, released February 3, 2014 • Music and words: Yegor Letov • Translation by Szarapow

Source: Vialka (Bandcamp). Thanks to Szarapow for the heads-up.

For months, Elvira Kaipova had not heard from her son Rafael, a Russian soldier deployed in Ukraine.

Military officials responded to her repeated questions about his whereabouts by saying he was on active duty and therefore incommunicado. Then, late last November, two days after they again made that assertion, she learned that he had gone missing on Nov. 1 — from a Telegram channel that helps military families.

“We lost your son,” Aleksandr Sokolov, the officer in Rafael’s unit in charge of family liaison, told her when she traveled to its headquarters in western Russia.

“Lost him how?” she says she responded, alarmed and angry, especially when the officer explained that after Rafael had failed to check in by radio, a search had proved impossible. “How do we search for him?” she says the officer told her.

Variations on that grim scenario have been repeated countless times since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The Russian Ministry of Defense lacks any formal, organized effort to track down legions of missing soldiers, according to bereaved families, private organizations that try to assist them and military analysts. Relatives, stuck in limbo, fend for themselves with scant government information.

The ministry itself declined to comment for this article. Mr. Sokolov, the liaison officer, said in a text message: “You do realize that I can’t comment on anything.”

Even if Russia and Ukraine reach a peace agreement, the hunt for missing soldiers is expected to endure for years, if not decades.

[…]

Source: Neil MacFarquhar and Milena Mazaeva, “Message From the Russian Military: ‘We Lost Your Son,’” New York Times, 3 May 2025

Last year was the deadliest for Russian forces since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine: at least 45,287 people were killed.

This is almost three times more than in the first year of the invasion and significantly exceeds the losses of 2023, when the longest and deadliest battle of the war was taking place in Bakhmut.

At the start of the war, losses happened in waves during battles for key locations, but 2024 saw a month-on-month increase in the death toll as the front line slowly edged forward, enabling us to estimate that Russia lost at least 27 lives for every square kilometre of Ukrainian territory captured.

The BBC Russian Service, in collaboration with independent media outlet Mediazona and a team of volunteers, has processed open source data from Russian cemeteries, military memorials and obituaries.

So far, we have identified the names of 106,745 Russian soldiers killed during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The true number is clearly much higher. Military experts estimate our number may cover between 45% and 65% of deaths, which would mean 164,223 to 237,211 people [have been killed].

20 February 2024 was the deadliest day for Russian forces that year.

Among the casualties were Aldar Bairov, Igor Babych and Okhunjon Rustamov, who were with the 36th Motorised Rifle Brigade when four Ukrainian long-range HIMARS missiles hit a training ground near the city of Volnovakha in occupied Donetsk.

They had been ordered to line up for a medal ceremony. Sixty-five servicemen were killed, including their commander Col Musaev. Dozens more were wounded.

Bairov, 22 and from Buryatia in eastern Siberia, had studied to be a food sanitation specialist but was drafted for mandatory military service and then signed a contract to become a professional soldier.

In February 2022 he went to fight in Ukraine and was part of the battle for Borodyanka during his brigade’s advance towards Kyiv in March 2022. The town was almost completely destroyed. Ukrainian sources say Russian soldiers were involved in the execution of civilians.

Aldar Bairov (left), Okhunjon Rustamov (C) and Igor Babych were all killed in a strike on 20 February last year

Okhunjon Rustamov, 31 and from Chita in Siberia, had worked as a welder after serving a mandatory term in special forces. He was mobilised during a partial draft in October 2022.

Unlike Rustamov, Igor Babych, 32, had volunteered to go to war. He had worked with adults and children diagnosed with cerebral palsy, helping them with physical therapy until April 2023.

In total, 201 Russian soldiers died on that day, according to our data.

A few hours after the strike on the training ground, then-Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu met Vladimir Putin to bring him news of military success from the front line.

There was no mention of the training ground attack, nor was there any word from the Ministry of Defence in its daily reports.

A relative of Okhunjon Rustamov said she had already buried three close family members over the course of the war. “In December 2022, my husband died. On 10 February 2024, my godfather. And on 20 February my half-brother. From one funeral to the next.”

In our analysis, we prioritised exact dates of death for soldiers. If that wasn’t available, we used the date of the funeral or the date the death was reported.

In the first two years of the war, 2022 and 2023, Russian losses followed a wave-like pattern: heavy fighting with high casualties alternated with periods of relative calm.

In 2023, for example, most casualties occurred between January and March, when Russian forces attempted to capture the cities of Vuhledar and Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast.

In the first year of the full-scale invasion, according to our calculations, Russia lost at least 17,890 soldiers. This number does not include losses from Russia’s two proxy forces in occupied eastern Ukraine.

In 2023, the number rose to 37,633.

In 2024, there was no period showing a significant fall in casualties. Bloody battles for Avdiivka and Robotyne were followed by intensified assaults towards Pokrovsk and Toretsk.

In August 2024, Russian conscripts were killed when Ukrainian forces stormed over the border into the Kursk region. From August 6 to 13 alone, an estimated 1,226 Russian soldiers died.

However, the heaviest overall losses occurred during a slow Russian advance in the east between September and November 2024, according to leading US military analyst Michael Kofman.

“Tactics emphasised repeated attacks with dispersed assault groups, using small infantry fire teams, which increased overall casualties relative to terrain gained,” he explained.

After almost two years of intense fighting, Russian forces seized the logistical hub of Vuhledar in Donetsk on 1 October 2024.

According to estimates by the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW), from September to November 2024, Russian forces captured 2,356 square kilometres of Ukraine.

Even then, Ukrainian forces at the front did not collapse.

The cost of this advance was at least 11,678 Russian military deaths.

Actual losses figures are likely higher. We have only accounted for soldiers and officers whose names appeared in publicly available obituaries and whose dates of death or funeral fell within this period.

Overall in 2024, according to ISW, Russia captured 4,168 square kilometres of land.

If we assume that our figure of 45,287 confirmed deaths in 2024 is about 40% of the full number, then the total number would be closer to 112,000 fatalities last year.

This means that for each square kilometre captured, 27 Russian soldiers were killed, and this does not include the wounded.

How losses are changing recruitment

Russia has found ways of replenishing its depleted forces.

“Russian recruitment also increased in the second half of 2024 and exceeded Russian casualties, allowing Moscow to generate additional formations,” says Michael Kofman.

One-time payments to soldiers signing new contracts were increased in three Russian regions. Combat salaries for volunteer soldiers are five to seven times higher than the average wage in most regions.

We also class as volunteers those who signed up to avoid criminal prosecution, which was allowed by law in 2024.

Volunteers have become the fastest-growing category of casualties in our calculations, making up a quarter of those we have identified.

In 2023-2024, thousands of volunteers who signed contracts with the Ministry of Defence were sent to the front lines only 10–14 days later. Such minimal training will have dramatically reduced their chances of survival, experts say.

One Russian republic, Bashkortostan, has seen the highest numbers of casualties, with 4,836 confirmed deaths. Most were from rural areas and 38% had gone to fight with no military experience.

The one-time payment for signing a Russian army contract in Ufa is 34 times the region’s average salary of 67,575 rubles (£600).

Calculating deaths from open source data will always be incomplete.

This is because the bodies of a significant number of soldiers killed in the past months may still be on the battlefield and retrieving them presents a risk to serving soldiers.

The true death toll for Russian forces increases significantly if you include those who fought against Ukraine as part of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.

An assessment of obituaries and reports of searches for fighters who have lost contact suggests between 21,000 and 23,500 people may have been killed by September 2024.

That would bring the total number of fatalities to 185,000 to 260,700 military personnel.

CLARIFICATION 5 May 2025: This story has been updated to make it clear that the figure of 27 losses per sq km is based on an estimated number of deaths last year of about 112,000.

Source: Olga Ivshina, “How Russia took record losses in Ukraine in 2024,” BBC News Russian, 4 May 2025. This article was also published on Substack on 6 May 2025.

Yegor Letov, “The Squadron Did Not the Fallen Fighter” (1990)

Source: YouTube

Глупый мотылёк 
Догорал на свечке
Жаркий уголёк
Дымные колечки
Звёздочка упала в лужу у крыльца…
Отряд не заметил потери бойца

Мёртвый не воскрес
Хворый не загнулся
Зрячий не ослеп
Спящий не проснулся
Весело стучали храбрые сердца…
Отряд не заметил потери бойца

Не было родней
Не было красивей
Не было больней
Не было счастливей
Не было начала, не было конца…
Отряд не заметил потери бойца

Source: Grazhdanskaya Oborona Official Website

Closer to the Edge: Plagiarism Disguised as Gonzo Journalism

A screenshot of Closer to the Edge’s homepage (22 March 2025)

Plagiarizing other people’s reporting and translating and bravery, as Closer to the Edge has done with Russian dissident and political prisoner Alexander Skobov’s closing statement and just-concluded trial, is despicable. I looked at the “About” page on their Substack and discovered this bit of sophistry as an explanation of their journalistic highway robbery:

As for sources—sure, we could lace every article with footnotes and hyperlinks, but let’s be real: a name and a citation don’t mean much in a world where half of Washington is reading scripts written by billionaires and lobbyists. Sources can be biased, corrupt, cherry-picked, or outright fabricated, and if you need proof of that, just look at the gibbering circus act that is the modern Republican Party. These are people who think “alternative facts” are a valid concept and that the guy who bankrupted a casino somehow knows how to fix the economy. You think they care about good sourcing?

Besides, bogging our writing down with a mess of citations and academic formalities would wreck the flow faster than a Senate hearing on TikTok. Our job isn’t to hand-hold people through a bibliography—we’re here to tell the story as it is, from the trenches, with all the blood, chaos, and absurdity intact. If you want a research paper, head to JSTOR. If you want the truth with its teeth bared, you’re in the right place.

It’s telling that Closer to the Edge is clueless about the egregious circumstances of Skobov’s actual trial. They paint a vivid picture of Skobov confronting the judges and other shameless Putinist law enforcement officials directly in the courtroom: “On March 21, 2025, the 67-year-old Soviet-era dissident walked into a Russian courtroom, stared down the agents of Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship, and set himself ablaze in words.”

In fact, Skobov took part in the trial via video link from an empty courtroom in Syktyvkar, while the judges meted out their verdict against him over a thousand kilometers away in Skobov’s hometown of St. Petersburg, without looking Skobov in the eye or even breathing the same air as he breathed.

So much for “tell[ing] the story as it is, from the trenches.” ||| TRR

US Aid, Russia, and Ukraine

US aid suspension hits Russian independent media and NGOs

The decree by US President Donald Trump’s decree halting American aid to foreign countries and suspending the work of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) hits exiled Russian media and NGOs hard. For many organizations and publications, grant funding is the sole means they have of ensuring their continued existence.

As soon as the new US administration announced the suspension of all international aid programs, there was panic among the Russian emigrant community. Most exiled Russian NGOs and media rely on grants as their major—and sometimes sole—source of funding, with a significant chunk coming from Washington. The topic has been high on the agenda for Russia’s opposition and anti-war communities— though only behind the scenes. Affected NGOs and media outlets do not want to admit publicly that they receive American funding, as it could lead to criminal prosecution by the Russian authorities. They are also reluctant to publicly discuss financial problems.

Dozens of organizations are under threat from within the Russian-language anti-war diaspora community, including those who help persecuted individuals to leave Russia, try to protect minority rights and bring accurate information about the war to audiences within Russia. According to the Moscow Times, citing a source in Washington, up to 90 organizations have already lost their funding. As one example, The Ark, which offers temporary housing, legal aid, psychological support and other assistance to Russians forced to flee their homeland, immediately lost half its budget.

Former political prisoner Andrei Pivovarov (released in the summer 2024 prisoner exchange) wrote that Trump’s decree would lead to the cancellation of one-off events and the abandonment of long-term projects. “You can cancel a conference, but you can’t, for example, stop paying the rent. You can’t tell your landlord: ‘wait, Trump will work it out’. He’ll just cancel the contract. And many simply do not have the kind of safety net that can pay for these three months, or raise money via crowdfunding,” he explained. “It will be even more difficult with people. There are many countries where residency is tied to a work contract, and if there is no money for that it raises questions about the basis for extending [residency].”

Russian propaganda channels are jubilant. For decades they have been telling Russians that the opposition lives on Western money and carries out orders from abroad. Trump’s decree offers them a great opportunity to say that these claims have now been proven and that “independent” media is nothing of the sort. Of course, nobody on the pro-Kremlin side is bothering to look at the details of how Western grant funding actually works. Maria Zakharova, a representative of Russia’s Foreign Ministry, has already claimed that USAID forced “countless grant-eaters” to remain silent about alleged Ukrainian war crimes.

Not all funding for Russian civil society came from US state grants.  Private foundations as well as European governments also support Russian initiatives. But removing perhaps a quarter of the support from Russian journalists and organizations can only lead to ever more fierce competition for the remaining funds—not every project will survive.

Why the world should care

Trump’s radical measures are hitting activists and NGOs around the world. Russian organizations and media outlets, cut off from their homeland, face greater problems than many as they have far fewer sources of alternative funds.

Written by Peter Mironenko, translated by Andy Potts and edited by Jake Cordell

Source: The Bell (newsletter), 3 February 2024

If Russia had a wish list, it would include gutting the DOJ and FBI to eliminate counterintelligence operations and successful prosecutions, crippling U.S. sanctions enforcement by weakening the Treasury Department, fracturing America’s alliances to isolate the U.S. on the global stage, and dismantling USAID to eliminate vital democratic and humanitarian aid programs worldwide. That wish list is now being fulfilled—not by the Kremlin, but by Elon Musk and Trump.

Each of these attacks is a direct blow to U.S. national security and global influence but I’m going to focus on the dismantling of USAID—a move that Russian officials and state media are openly celebrating.

This isn’t just about shutting down an aid agency; it’s about deliberately weakening U.S. power while handing a geopolitical victory to authoritarian regimes in Moscow and Beijing.

Gutting USAID—A Gift to Russia

With Trump’s full backing, Musk has taken aim at USAID, calling it “a criminal organization” that “needs to die,” and branding the agency “a viper’s nest of radical left Marxists who hate America.” Shortly after, he announced that Trump had personally agreed USAID should be shut down.

Now, its funding is frozen, employees are locked out of headquarters in Washington, lawmakers are barred from entering the USAID building, and critical aid programs are being dismantled.

USAID is set to be merged into the State Department, but it will be a shell of its former self—stripped of its resources, workforce, and influence, ensuring it can never have the same impact.

For decades, USAID has been a pillar of American influence abroad, supporting independent journalism, anti-corruption initiatives, election monitoring, and providing critical, life-saving humanitarian assistance across the globe. It has played a key role in countering Russian, Iranian, and Chinese influence, providing a lifeline to civil society organizations resisting authoritarian regimes or strengthening their democracies. Now, that support is disappearing.

Russia’s reaction? Celebration as Kremlin propagandists and state officials are jubilant. And they’re right—USAID has been one of the biggest obstacles to its authoritarian expansion. With its demise, Russia gains a clearer path to spread its influence, undermine democracies, and prop up pro-Kremlin regimes worldwide.

Who Benefits from USAID’s Collapse? Russia and China

The closure of USAID isn’t about cutting spending—it’s about weakening U.S. global influence while empowering our adversaries. With American aid disappearing, nations that once relied on USAID for support will turn to Russia and China for funding.

This is a seismic shift in global power. Russia and China will step into the vacuum left by the U.S., using economic leverage to expand their authoritarian agendas. This is exactly what Moscow and Beijing have wanted for decades—and Trump and Musk are delivering it on a silver platter.

At the same time, Musk is propping up pro-Kremlin far-right parties across Europe—or, as I like to call them, ‘Kremlin projects’—while interfering in the elections and internal affairs of our allies.

Trump and Musk Are Lying—USAID Was Critical

Trump and Musk have claimed USAID was corrupt and ineffective. That’s a lie. USAID has been one of the most scrutinized and audited agencies in the federal government, and their accusations are baseless and an excuse to dismantle a tool that supports democracy, transparency, and independent governance.

The truth is simple: dismantling USAID doesn’t benefit the American people—it benefits authoritarian regimes. Its closure will leave a vacuum that Russia, China, and other adversaries will quickly fill.

Their claims of “fraud” are just a smokescreen for a broader effort to undermine democracy and erase America’s ability to support those fighting for freedom worldwide.

Musk’s Expanding Control Over Federal Systems

Simultaneously, Musk’s influence over the federal government is growing at an alarming rate, giving an unelected, unvetted billionaire, and his unvetted associates unprecedented access to highly sensitive data. His aides have locked career federal workers out of their systems at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, effectively cutting off access to vital personnel records and personal information.

Meanwhile, his team has gained unauthorized access to General Services Administration systems, deploying AI tools to reshape the agency in ways that remain undisclosed to the public. Adding to these alarming developments, Musk’s handpicked allies—including unvetted college students—have taken over Technology Transformation Services, which manages critical government IT systems, sparking chaos and raising significant security concerns.

Musk and his unvetted, unelected team now have access to everything— our Social Security records, Medicare payments, tax filings, federal employee data, and other sensitive and classified files. Even our children’s information is now in their hands.

What will Musk do with it? Who will he share it with? This isn’t hypothetical—it’s a direct national security threat and threat to all of us and we need immediate answers.

Demand Accountability

We cannot allow this to happen without a fight. Contact your Senators, Representatives, and local officials and demand answers:

  • Did Trump give direct authorization for Musk to have access to sensitive government systems and all our private data?
  • What safeguards exist to prevent him from sharing Social Security numbers, tax filings, and federal employee records with foreign actors or private interests?
  • What steps are being taken to prevent further infiltration in government operations?
  • Who is ensuring our personal, financial, and national security data isn’t exploited for political or corporate gain?

Flood their phone lines, send emails, and make noise on social media platforms. We need answers because none of us want a billionaire beholden to Russian and Chinese interests to have our private info.

Source: Olga Lautman (Substack), “Elon Musk and Trump Shutting Down USAID—A Gift to Russia,” 3 February 2025

The website of the United States Agency for International Development went dark over the weekend and employees were put on leave, as Elon Musk said Monday that President Donald Trump wanted to shut down the largest disburser of U.S. foreign aid. The remarks were made by Musk during a live stream discussing the work of his government task force, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, that he was announced to be leading by the president. Media reports meanwhile said that USAID could be absorbed into the State Department while many of the projects its supports – from health to infrastructure and disaster-relief programs – would be slashed significantly. USAID spending equals less than 1 percent of the federal budget.

The United States Agency for International Development, USAID for short, is the biggest dispenser of U.S. foreign aid, according to the federal website Foreignassistance.gov. It disbursed almost $44 billion in the fiscal year of 2023 (latest available), with $16 billion going to Ukraine. The number represents more than 60 percent of all U.S. foreign aid listed on the website. The agency pays out only economic aid, with military aid being handled by the Department of State and the Department of Defense.

After Ukraine, USAID payments were predominantly going to the Middle East and Africa in 2023. Ethiopia, Jordan, Afghanistan and Somalia all received more than $1 billion from USAID that year. U.S. aid recipients are found all over Latin America, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. Together with the Department of State/Defense spending, which focuses on the Middle East even more due to military aid components, it is the widest-ranging U.S. foreign aid paid out.

Source: Katharina Buchholz, “Where USAID Is Going,” Statista, 3 February 2025

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to tie military aid for Ukraine to access to the country’s rare earth resources, calling it “very selfish and self-centered,” Spiegel reported on Feb. 4.

Speaking after an informal meeting of European leaders in Brussels, Scholz reportedly stressed that Ukraine should first be helped to “get back on its feet” and that its resources should be used for reconstruction after the war.

This comes as Trump told reporters on Feb. 3 that he was seeking a deal where Ukraine would “secure what we’re giving them with their rare earths and other things,” though he did not specify which materials Washington is targeting.

A source in the Presidential Office told the Kyiv Independent that sharing Ukrainian resources with allies is already part of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s “victory plan,” which has been presented to foreign leaders, including Trump.

Trump’s remarks come amid uncertainty over the future of the U.S. aid to Ukraine.

The U.S. has provided $65.9 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, with assistance remaining unaffected by the current aid freeze, Zelensky confirmed on Jan. 25. Non-military programs run by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have lost funding under the new administration.

USAID has provided Ukraine with $2.6 billion in humanitarian aid, $5 billion in development assistance, and over $30 billion in direct budgetary support. In response to the funding cuts, Ukraine’s parliamentary committee on humanitarian and information policy has begun consultations with European partners to temporarily replace U.S. funding.

Under Scholz’s leadership, Germany has become Ukraine’s second-largest military donor after the U.S. However, the chancellor has resisted providing Taurus long-range cruise missiles, citing escalation concerns.

Scholz has also blocked the proposed additional security assistance for Ukraine worth 3 billion ($3.09 billion) euros unless it is covered by additional government borrowing.

The plan, backed by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, included three additional Iris-T air defense batteries, 10 howitzers, and more artillery ammunition.

Source: Tim Zadorozhnyy, “‘Selfish’ — Scholz blasts Trump’s aid-for-rare earths Ukraine plan,” Kyiv Independent, 4 February 2024

The Storming of Grozny: Thirty Years Later

A Chechen refugee in front of her destroyed apartment building
in downtown Grozny, February 17, 1995. Photo: Reuters (via Julia Khazagaeva)

On the thirtieth anniversary of the storming of Grozny, the liberal Russian media reminded the Russophone audience that there had been such a war—the Chechen War. When I see this title, I don’t even open the movie, I flip through it. A couple of excerpts are basically enough for me to be convinced that these people have still understood nothing after three decades. Even over the three years of the recent, utterly treacherous imperial war in Ukraine, the obvious facts about what Chechnya means to Russia have not became obvious to them.

Almost any decent Russian would point out to you, of course, that bombing towns chockablock with civilians was a bad thing to do and foul play. Carrying out mop-ups in villages and burying the victims in mass graves was also outrageous. But then the exclamation “but!” is sure to follow. They will tell you about Chechen bandits, forged letters of credit, and the intransigent Dudayev. Yes, it was wrong to destroy a third of Chechnya’s population, this notional Russian would lament, but the Chechens were bad eggs themselves and were asking for it.

If you ever do open a Russian [documentary] film reconstructing the events in Chechnya thirty years ago, you will find that it is about the enlisted lads who on New Year’s Eve 1994 were thrown into the epicenter of hell. Not properly trained to shoot or drive a tank, alone against hordes of heavily armed rebels, they were unfortunate sons of the Motherland: may their memory live forever. This artistic device is deployed, for example, by the Maxim Katz-affiliated project Minute by Minute. The [YouTube] channels Current Time and Popular Politics have also recalled this selfsame “Chechen War.”

Minute by Minute, “The New Year’s Eve Storming of Grozny: A Minute by Minute Reconstruction” (December 31, 2024)

Semantically, the construction “Chechen War” operates the same way as the coinage “captive of the Caucasus.” It conceals the aggressor, suggesting we look at the object of the aggression as the aggression’s cause. In this logical trap, Chechnya seems to have gone up in flames by itself. It was its inhabitants who shelled and bombed themselves silly. It was not Russia that invaded the Caucasus, it was the Caucasus which for some reason held Russia’s soldiers in captivity. It is not without reason that when people say “he was killed in Chechnya,” it is the place where he was killed that appears to be the malefactor. The listener is not prompted to wonder what this soldier was doing under arms in a foreign land. It is as if Chechnya had shown up in Samara and killed an innocent tanker.

When we think, write and say “Chechen War,” we automatically interpret it from the point of view of the colonizer and the aggressor. We accept the interpretation imposed by Moscow, which insists that Chechnya is part of Russia, not a sovereign country it attacked. If Russia is not mentioned in the nomenclaturee of this historical event, Chechnya is automatically read as an undeniable part of the empire, and the conflict itself sounds akin to the November Uprising or the Tambov Rebellion.

In fact, it was the Russo-Chechen War which began on December 11, 1994. The war deserves to be identified as such both in terms of the nature of the hostilities and the status of the warring parties, because by the time the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria was invaded by Russian troops, it had been three years since it had legally, by popular vote and a declaration of independence, withdrawn from the USSR on an equal footing with the RSFSR. The Chechens had NOT been part of the newly minted Russian Federation for a single day.

The independent journalist Vadym Zaydman has written about this better and more clearly than anyone else. There is no need to paraphrase him when I can instead quote what he has written:

“At the time of the USSR’s death/colllapse, Chechnya was no longer legally related either to the defunct Soviet empire or to the RSFSR. By that time the Chechen-Ingush ASSR had existed as a Union Republic for over a year. Thus, by definition it could not be a part of the Russian Federation, as proclaimed on December 25, 1991. When the Russian Federation was born, Chechnya was initially not a part of it.

“Russia itself did not regard Chechnya as part of Russia during this period. On March 31, 1992, the Federation Treaty was incorporated into the Russian Constitution. It changed the status of autonomous republics to sovereign republics within the Russian Federation. The treaty was signed by representatives of twenty federal subjects of the Russian Federation. Neither the Chechen-Ingush Republic nor Chechnya was involved in the treaty.

“It was only in the wake of the notorious events of October 1993, when Yeltsin was adopting a new Russian constitution, that he unilaterally incorporated Chechnya into the Russian Federation. In fact, Yeltsin committed a fraud like the one committed by the Russian authorities when, after the Soviet Union’s collapse, they declared Russia a member of the UN Security Council as the USSR’s legal successor, although Russia was not even a rank-and-file member of the UN. Ukraine and Belarus were members of the UN, but Russia aka the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was not! Having incorporated Chechnya, a year later Russia started to establish ‘constitutional order’ in Chechnya as its own fiefdom! Clever, isn’t it?!”

End quote.

The term “Chechen War” is thus as illegitimate as the use of the term “Ukrainian War” is unacceptable. Ukrainians would not allow the latter, and the entire civilized world would not agree to it. For everyone, the current war is the Russo-Ukrainian War. But the same thing should happen in our minds when describing the war in Chechnya. It is the Russo-Chechen War.

Many Russians would understandably prefer it go down in history in a more modest way—ideally, not as a war at all, but as a “special military operation,” or a “counter-terrorist operation,” for it is the security forces, not the simple folk, who are responsible for such operations. “SMO” and “CTO” sound mundane and localized, like a police “amber alert,” nor are they freighted with collective guilt and responsibility. Most vitally, if correlated with these Putinist terms, western sanctions come to be regarded as an exorbitant and unwarranted punishment, since they make “ordinary people suffer.”

Why do you think various Putinist and anti-Putinist institutions have spent the last three years relentlessly measuring public opinion on whether Russians want war? Yes, it’s simple: because of the sanctions—and Russia’s slightly tarnished image in the eyes of the international community. But if the West is shown the relevant polls quite often and reminded that “public opinion polls don’t work in a totalitarian society,” this mantra will work like a charm the thousandth time. It will then be much easier for Brussels officials to explain to themselves and their electorate why they are lifting restrictions: because they oppress an already “downtrodden” civil society, which in no way wanted war, but which was forced by Putin to want it.

Meanwhile, to answer the question of how much the Russian populace shares its leadership’s imperial mindset, it is enough to take the case of the Russo-Chechen War. From the sociological viewpoint, it is a scientifically pristine experiment. In 1994 (as in 1999, when the second phase of the war began) there was no totalitarianism in Russia. There were no western sanctions, and there were no Russian émigrés criticizing the regime from abroad. U.S. President Bill Clinton expressed “concern” when he learned that civilians were being killed in Chechnya. France supported the establishment of constitutional order on Russia’s own territory. They all thought that the new Russian Czar Yeltsin was better than any Communist, even if he fought like one.

Enjoying the full favor of the international community, Russia razed Grozny to the ground along with the remnants of its civilian population on New Year’s Eve 1994. This did not cause any outcry in Russian society. The first protest rally in Moscow took place on January 10, 1995: organized by Yegor Gaidar, it was a partisan affair and sparsely attended. Noticeable civil protests against the war in Chechnya would not begin until 2001—that is, five years later. [My comrade Antti Rautiainen, who was very much in the thick of things in those years (he was a co-organizer of the first antiwar street protest in Moscow, in November 1999), has pointed out to me (in a comment to Ms. Khazagaeva’s original post in Russian) that the biggest protest in Moscow against the Second Chechen War took place in January 2000, not in 2001 — TRR.] However, even then, according to Radio Svoboda, which interviewed passersby, “Muscovites were in no hurry to join the protesters: everyone was rushing about their business.”

Protests during the first phase of the Russo-Chechen War were isolated and (one might say) personal in nature. From the very first days of the invasion, the Soviet dissident, Russian human rights activist and Russian human rights commissioner Sergei Kovalev traveled to Grozny. He tried to stop the bombing of the city. In March 1995, he was removed from the post of human rights commissioner for supporting the “wrong” side. TV news presenter Svetlana Sorokina took liberties on air: after a commercial break she emotionally remarked that “no laundry detergent can wash clean the conscience of the Russian generals.” Independent Chechnya and its legally elected presidents Dzhokhar Dudayev and Aslan Maskhadov were subsequently supported by Valeria Novodvorskaya. Boris Nemtsov tried to stop the war by circulating a petition [which was allegedly signed by a million Russians—TRR]. But there was no grassroots public outrage in Russia, apart from the campaign led by the mothers of the conscripts, neither in the first phase of the war, much less in the second.

This was how sociologist Yuri Levada described attitudes to the war in Chechnya in 2001: “Sentiments against the war are strong in [Russia], but unfortunately we cannot overestimate their significance. The fact is that many people think that more decisive actions, with greater loss of life, perhaps could have led to success. Disavowing the war does not exclude, for example, approving such savage measures as ‘mop-ups,’ which are now quite difficult for the authorities in Chechnya and Russia to cope with. So, an unwillingness to continue the war is an expression of fatigue, not an expression of conscious, directed protest.”

Sociologist Lev Gudkov described Russians who supported Chechnya’s return to the bosom of the empire as follows: “They are younger and better educated Russians who argue that the Chechens must be crushed at any cost and this problem must be solved by force, that no negotiations with Maskhadov are possible, that he represents no one, and that there is only one solution—the total, crushing defeat [of the Chechens]. On the contrary, those who argue that it is necessary to seek a peaceful resolution however possible, including entering into negotiations with Maskhadov, are people of an older age, somewhat wiser and more experienced, and in this sense more tolerant, inclined to recognize Chechnya’s independence as long as the war is brought an end.”

So when Russian liberals, society’s cream of the crop, write and talk about the “Chechen War,” you now know their attitude toward the empire and its conquests. Were it not for the unprecedented western sanctions for invading the European country of Ukraine, you would be surprised to learn what Russians really think about the war. As a gentleman who left Russia twenty years ago once told me in a private conversation: “I still feel sorry for our guys. After all, the Ukrainians have killed more Russians in this war than the Russians have killed Ukrainians.”

Source: Julia Khazagaeva (Facebook), 4 January 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader

Thе New Year Spirit

“Bring back the New Year spirit”: Igor Stomakhin, Moscow, 2024

Faithful to its avant-garde nature, Noise Cabaret premieres the immersive series Dialogues, based on the philosophical works of Plato, on December 25. Alexander Khudyakov turns ancient Greek philosophy into a lively, witty and provocative dialogue with the audience.

Along with his partner Ivan Wahlberg, Khudyakov, who not only acts in the project but directs it, will guide the audience through the labyrinths of Plato’s thought. What is justice? Where is the line between existence and non-existence? What is the true nature of love? These and many other fundamental philosophical questions will serve as starting points for reflection and debate.

Dialogues is a series of interactive performances in which each viewer is involved in a philosophical discussion consisting of adapted texts by Plato and actorly improvisation, meaning that the way the performance goes depends on the audience’s involvement. Each new performance is a separate chapter dealing with a specific philosophical problem, so you can join the series at any stage. The first episode deals with the concept of justice.

Noise Cabaret plans to invite Petersburg celebrities to enrich the conversation with the audience with their own opinions and views.

Khudyakov shared the idea behind the project.

“We wanted to do a story related to people talking in a bar. But just people talking to each other is not interesting. There has to be a big focus. When I studied Plato, I was interested in several aspects of his philosophy. It would have been wrong to limit ourselves to a single topic. So the idea to make a series arose: take Plato, read him, and discuss the themes he raises in the Socratic dialogues.

“We plan to produce a new episode every two or three months. There’s no pretense here that we’re serious scholars of Plato’s philosophy: it’s more of an excuse to talk to people about difficult topics, to air the Dialogues and reflect on them. And a bar is a place where you can talk about all sorts of things, including philosophy.”

Source: Fontanka.ru, 23 December 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Russians spent almost 6 billion rubles on Ozempic generics in 2024

Semaglutide-based drugs are commonly used for weight loss

In the first ten months of 2024, Russians spent 5.9 billion rubles [approx. 52 billion euros] on over one million packs of generic versions of the drug Ozempic (semaglutide), according to DSM Group, as reported by Vedomosti.

Among the most popular generics are Geropharm’s Semavic and Promomed’s Quincenta. The original drug Ozempic stopped [sic] official supplies to Russia in December 2023, opening the market to domestic analogues.

2024 was a record year for drugs in this category. By comparison, in 2023, Russians spent only 297 million rubles on Ozempic, buying 20 thousand packs. In 2022, they spent 1.9 billion rubles (256 thousand packs); in 2021, 758 million rubles; and in 2020, 76 million rubles.

Semaglutide-based drugs are used to treat diabetes but have recently been gaining popularity as weight loss drugs, which has also contributed to their sales growth in Russia.

Source: ASTV.ru, 21 December 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

St. Petersburg will open a new metro station this week, Governor Alexander Beglov announced Thursday, marking the former Tsarist capital’s first new metro station in five years.

The Gorny Institute metro station, located on Vasilievsky Island, will extend the fourth (or “orange”) line westward. It will begin operations at 9:00 a.m. on Friday, with its vestibule open for both entry and exit, Beglov said.

“The opening of Gorny Institute is a milestone,” the governor wrote on Telegram, noting that the city had overcome “significant challenges” during the station’s construction.

Beglov thanked President Vladimir Putin, metro builders, engineers and residents of St. Petersburg for their patience and support, calling the station’s completion the “first results” of sustained efforts to advance the city’s metro system.

The station’s opening comes after years of delays. Initially scheduled for completion in 2015, its opening was postponed to 2018 and later to 2022. Construction efforts were further overshadowed by a fatal scaffolding collapse in June 2020 that killed one worker and injured another.

Gorny Institute is the first station to open since 2019, when three others — Prospect Slavy, Dunayskaya, and Shushary — were inaugurated.

St. Petersburg’s metro is currently made up of five lines and 72 stations. However, it has expanded slowly over the years, in stark contrast to Moscow’s burgeoning metro system, which this year opened eight new stations.

Source: Moscow Times, 26 December 2024

[…]

In trying to grasp the tonality of the film [Anora], I am reminded of a line from Francis Bacon: “You can be optimistic and totally without hope.” The situation the characters find themselves in, being at the mercy of the rich, is totally without hope. The “hopeful” version of the script would be one in which Vanya does stand up to his parents and runs off with Ani, even at the price of losing his wealth—this is the film’s narrative lure. Or maybe another where the ruthless capitalist mother gains a grudging respect for her tough daughter-in-law, like in the last season of Fargo. But despite its grim closure, the impression the film gives is far from dreary or pessimistic. The hopeless optimism of Baker’s cinema lies in the sheer life that seems to almost burst out of the filmic frame, and, especially, his deep care for his characters, even Vanya.

Source: Aaron Schuster, “The Ethical Dignity of Anora,” e-flux Notes, 20 November 2024

In the fall of 2023, with the goal of understanding what is really happening with Russian society during wartime, the Public Sociology Laboratory team went on ethnographic research trips to three Russian regions—Sverdlovsk, Krasnodar and Buryatia. Over the course of a month, PS Lab researchers observed how people talk about the war and how it affects daily life in cities and villages. In addition, they recorded sociological interviews with local residents. PS Lab has compiled three detailed ethnographic observation diaries (more than 100,000 words apiece) and conducted 75 in-depth interviews. Overall, it has managed to collect truly unique data that provides an idea of what people say and think about the war in everyday situations, and not only when answering researchers’ questions.

The full text of the report is book-length and written in a book-style format: it consists of seven chapters, introduces many characters, and allows readers to be fully immersed in contemporary wartime Russia. The following summary, meanwhile, highlights the main analytical conclusions.

  • Russian society remains politically demobilized and deideologized. Despite the prevailing opinion that it is strictly militarized, we see that the war has become routine and therefore a disregarded part of reality. For example, compared to the first years of the war, the amount of prowar symbolism in public spaces has decreased in all three regions. The war has neither become a source of new ideas in the cultural life of cities or villages nor been integrated into familiar and already-established cultural formats. The war is not discussed in public places, including, with rare exceptions, local online communities.
  • In spontaneous conversations, Russians rarely discuss the overall goals and causes, criminality, or justifications of the war. They are concerned with the impact of the war on their everyday lives. When they talk about the war, they mostly talk about the same things they discussed before the war, for example, everyday difficulties, money, or ethics. Men more often discuss topics that are considered “masculine” in society, such as the technical side of the war, and women usually talk about “feminine” topics, such as how war destroys families.
  • Participation in various types of prowar volunteering and organized assistance for the military, which are often cited as an example of the mobilization and militarization of Russian society, is rarely motivated by people’s firm support for the “special operation.” It is usually associated with pressure from the administration, community moral norms (concerning mutual assistance), and/ora desire to help loved ones, rather than a wish to make victory for Russia more likely. Observation of volunteers’ activities show that while working, they do not discuss the war or politics, rather choosing topics that are personable and relatable to them: prices, pensions, families, and/or stories related to the volunteer centers.
  • Despite all these similarities, the war is perceived slightly differently in different regions. The peculiarities of each region’s view owe to factors like the number of military units and penal colonies from which prisoners are recruited, proximity to the combat zone, the prosperity of the region and the availability of decent jobs, the density of social ties, the circulation of news transmitted by friends on the front lines, etc. In other words, the differences in perceptions of the war are attributable mainly to the peculiarities of life in the regions before the invasion of Ukraine.
  • The conflict between opponents and supporters of the war is gradually subsiding, while the rift between those who stayed in Russia and those who left is growing. This is happening both because the shared experience of living through a difficult situation within the country is becoming more important for many Russians than any differences in viewpoint, and also because people are discussing the war less.
  • At the same time, the waning conflict between opponents and supporters of the war does not always mean more social cohesion. Since people are trying to live as if the war is nonexistent and the government does not talk about any losses or problems associated with the war, all negative consequences of the war are either normalized or pushed into the realm of “personal problems” that are not discussed with anyone and that everyone must deal with on their own.
  • Overall, many people do not feel able to influence political decisions. Therefore, they are increasingly distancing themselves from the war. They understand that they cannot change government policy, but they retain at least some control over their private lives—and therefore they are immersed in them. Over time, not only apolitical Russians but even sure opponents of the invasion experience this powerlessness and, as a result, some of them accept the new reality while continuing to condemn the war internally.
  • Consequently, many Russians are increasingly distrustful of political news from a broad range of sources. Instead, they put their trust in local media. Local problems and news seem much more important and relevant to them. Moreover, they feel that, unlike the war, local issues are at least sometimes within their ability to influence.
  • At the same time, the war is weighing people’s emotional state. Many of our interlocutors admit that they experience anxiety, tension, uncertainty, fear, even if these things are not usually spoken about openly. The departure of sons and husbands to war makes women “scream at the top of their lungs.” However, people rarely share such emotions with others, and if they do, they do so in groups with close friends.
  • Many Russians who are not interested in politics may justify or condemn the war depending on the communicative context.
  1. They tend to non-emotionally justify the war through normalization (“there are always wars”) or rationalization (“it was necessary”) when asked about it directly in more formalized settings, such as research interviews.
  2. They are more likely to criticize the war when prompted to think about how it negatively affects them as ordinary Russians. This criticism differs from that of war opponents. For opponents, the war is a moral crime against Ukraine, whereas for apolitical Russians, the war is seen as something that destroys Russian society and harms ordinary people. However, this criticism does not lead apolitical Russians to question the war’s necessity or inevitability, nor does it extend to criticizing the Russian government.
  3. They tend to emotionally justify the war when confronted with traditional anti-war narratives. When Russia is accused of committing moral crimes against the Ukrainian people, they often take such accusations personally and attempt to defend their own dignity.
  • Some people have experienced a strengthened sense of national identity, and sometimes a demand for greater solidarity arises. It’s important to note that this increased sense of national identity does not lead Russians to adopt the official imperial brand of nationalism. Unlike the Kremlin, ordinary people live in a world of nation states, not in a world of imperial fantasies (according to which Ukraine is not a real state and Ukrainians are an inferior people).
  • A feeling of uncertainty is what truly unites Russians today. Despite the fact that people choose various strategies to cope with this feeling, it still significantly complicates the ability to plan one’s life and plunges Russians into pessimism.

Thus, on the one hand, the formerly extraordinary nature of the war is giving way to normalization: the war is gradually becoming something ordinary, another unremarkable part of the surrounding world. In a sense, many Russians resist both the Kremlin’s attempts to turn ordinary citizens into ideological supporters and the attempts of the anti-war liberal opposition to force society to actively experience guilt and fight. On the other hand, the war constantly reminds us of its existence, creating new threats, new anxieties, and new reasons for discontent in Russians.

Source: Public Sociology Laboratory (The Russia Program), December 2024

Dear readers!
Times are tough, and the key in this case is holding on in every sense.
No one says it’s easy.
But it’s not so hard either.
The other day I asked Vladimir Putin whether he expected anything more from himself in the outgoing year.
But I want to ask you: do you expect anything more from yourself in the coming year?
We need to expect things. We need to want things. It’s a way of holding on to ourselves. Of looking after ourselves. Of not losing ourselves. And even of finding ourselves.
A hard sign (“Ъ”) will never be a soft sign (“Ь”)!
Happy incoming New Year!
Let’s not be on the defensive!

Andrei Kolesnikov, Special Correspondent, Kommersant Publishing House

Source: Email from Kommersant, 31 December 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. The so-called hard sign, which the Bolsheviks dropped from the Russian Cyrillic alphabet in 1918, has been the logo of Kommersant since the newspaper’s relaunch in January 1990. Andrei Kolesnikov has been the newspaper’s special Kremlin correspondent — that is, its chief Putinversteher — for many years. Of course he’ll deny it all when push comes to shove and Putin goes, and he’ll point of course to the cynical, jocular (but ultimately loyal) way he’s written about the Russian dictator and war criminal all these years.