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

Alexander Krichevsky of Izhevsk: Six Years in Prison for a Comment

In September 2024, Alexander Krichevsky, a 58-year-old resident of Izhevsk, posted a lengthy comment on a Chechen opposition blogger’s Telegram channel. In the comment, Krichevsky compared Putin and the “FSB clique” to a “darkness” which must be destroyed. The security forces deemed this statement incitement to murder the president and FSB officers. They monitored the man and intercepted his internet traffic. Last December, Krichevsky was detained and remanded in custody to a pretrial detention center despite his ailments and the fact that he is confined to a wheelchair. His ailing mother was placed in a care home, where she died a month later. Today, at the Central District Military Court in Yekaterinburg, where Krichevsky’s case is being heard, the prosecutor requested that he be given the maximum sentence of six years in prison.

“That is why we listen to him, because he is not afraid—he’s a ray of freedom in a kingdom of darkness! And only together will we destroy this darkness, only when we understand that we have only one enemy—Putin and his FSB clique. . . . Both you and we must destroy this enemy to continue living as peaceful neighbors,” 58-year-old Izhevsk resident Alexander Krichevsky wrote in a chat on the channel of opposition Chechen blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov aka Abu Saddam Shishani, on 11 September 2024.

This was Krichevsky’s response to a user who had asked Abdurakhmanov himself in a chat: “Tumso, aren’t you afraid that Kadyrov’s people might find you?”

When questioned in court, Krichevsky said that he was sure he was responding to the user personally, not writing in a public chat. He repeated many times that he had only figurative “destruction” in mind and had been trying to “reconcile” Abdurakhmanov’s readership by pointing out that they had only one enemy.

“Of course, I wasn’t even thinking about physically destroying such a large number of people and didn’t understand how [what I wrote] would even look. Apparently, my love for pretty words—all those rays of light and other nonsense—let me down. I was thinking in terms of games: when a person plays checkers or chess, they destroy their opponent’s pieces. Roughly speaking, that was the image I had in my head,” Krichevsky said in court.

The FSB operative who discovered Krichevsky’s comment saw it not as criticism alone, but also as a “public call to murder the president of the Russian Federation and officers of the Federal Security Service.”

The same conclusion was reached by Polina Komova, a philologist and expert at the Ministry of Internal Affairs Forensic Center in Udmurtia. She acknowledged in court that the word “destroy” could have other meanings “depending on the context,” but in her opinion it could be understood only in its literal meaning—that is, “to end [someone’s] existence, to exterminate”—in Krichevsky’s comment.

“He was planning a terrorist attack involving self-detonation”: wiretapping and arrest

The security forces began monitoring Krichevsky in early December 2024. It emerged in court that the FSB had requested data on his calls and connections from Rostelecom and learned that on 11 September, when he wrote the comment, he had accessed Telegram from home. Megafon provided the security forces with information about the base stations in the area where Krichevsky’s phone number pinged that day.

On 5 December 2024, the Supreme Court of Udmurtia gave the FSB permission to tap Krichevsky’s phones, and a few days later it approved “gathering information from technical communication channels and acquiring computer information.” A few days before Krichevsky’s arrest, operatives monitored his apartment to “document illegal activities.” The report states that Krichevsky did not leave his home.

On 19 December 2024, Krichevsky was detained and sent to a pretrial detention center. He described his arrest to journalists.

“There was a knock on the door at seven in the morning, and seven people came into [our] small flat: five FSB officers and two eyewitnesses. I opened the door myself. They immediately sat me down on a chair in the hallway. My ailing mother was lying there, barely alive. They said, ‘Can you hand over [your phone]?’ They tried to intimidate me once: ‘If you refuse, we’ll take you away and charge you with additional offenses.’ I realized that resistance was futile. I gave them the phone, and they looked at it and took what they needed.”

The social media comment charges against Krichevsky were accompanied by an FSB report containing much more serious, but in effect unproven, allegations. The document states that, according to “intelligence,” Krichevsky, who opposes the “state’s political course” and the conduct of the “special military operation,” supported radical Islamists fighting for Ukraine and was planning to convert to Islam and carry out a terrorist attack in Udmurtia “by blowing himself up with cooking gas.” The court never did hear what this report was based on.

“None of my comments or my own thoughts bear this out. When I heard this business about blowing myself up . . . In this case, everything that the prosecutor has just read aloud is pure speculation on the part of the investigators. None of my quotes corroborates it,” Krichevsky said in court.

Judge Alexander Raitsky simply reminded Krichevsky that the case centered on a single [social media] comment, which the defendant himself did not disput, and that the court would evaluate the evidence in the deliberation room.

The case file also contains another comment by Krichevsky from the same written exchange: “Many empires have collapsed in this world. I myself foresee the end of the Russkies [rusnya]. I don’t feel sorry for them: let them collapse with a bang. That’s where they belong. I myself hate these FSBniks, pigs [cops], and other scum who suck the blood of our homeland and shit on our neighbors.”

The security forces deemed this “a statement containing a negative assessment of the group of persons sharing the profession of Federal Security Service officers and police officers,” but it was not included in the indictment.

Responding to the judge’s question about this comment, Krichevsky said that he sometimes tried to “adapt” to the rude tone of the conversation [on the Telegram channel’s chat].

“My mother died four weeks after my arrest”: wheelchair-bound in a detention center

Krichevsky had worked as a systems administrator in Izhevsk before his arrest.

As a child, Krichevsky had moved with his family from Udmurtia to Rostov-on-Don. After high school, he enrolled in medical school, but in 1989 he broke his spine and had to drop out because his left leg was paralyzed and he had lost feeling in his right leg. After a long period of rehabilitation, he was able to walk again, but was unable to recover fully: he had a severe limp and had difficulty going up stairs.

Krichevsky said in court that his father had committed suicide on 11 September 2008.

“He had terminal cancer. He was in serious pain and turned to me because I was in medical school. He wanted me to tell him what poison he could use to commit suicide. I refused to do it. Then, two days before his death, I noticed he was sharpening a knife in an odd way. He died in a rather original way, if that word is appropriate in this situation—he stabbed himself in the heart with a knife,” Krichevsky told the court.

In early 2010, during a trip to Thailand, Krichevsky broke his left leg, which had been paralyzed since his [accident in 1989]. He underwent surgery at a local hospital, but he could not stay in hospital for long because his visa had expired. Krichevsky returned to his hometown of Izhevsk, where he underwent a second operation, but his condition only worsened.

“My knee wouldn’t straighten. They tried to do something about it, but because I had spinal injuries, my knee spasmed, and it remained crooked and they couldn’t do anything about it. And my hip didn’t recover either; I also had a fractured hip,” Krichevsky told the court.

Since then, Krichevsky has been confined to a wheelchair. Other ailments have also emerged: kidney problems, emphysema, and head tremors.

“I don’t know whether it’s early Parkinson’s combined with Alzheimer’s, or something else,” Krichevsky said.

Krichevsky had been living with his elderly mother and caring for her since 2016. Last year, she was hospitalized with a complex fracture. After she was discharged, she was unable to walk, and Krichevsky would help her to sit up and do breathing exercises in order to prevent pulmonary edema and bedsores. After Krichevsky was arrested, the woman was sent to a care home. She died of a pulmonary edema a month later.

“They apparently left her lying in bed at the care home. When a person lies in a horizontal position for a long time, they develop a pulmonary edema. That’s what my mother died of,” he said in court.

While in pretrial detention, Krichevsky formally lost his Group I disability status, which he had prior to his arrest, and so he was unable to obtain a medical examination.

According to Krichevsky, a neurologist at the Izhevsk detention center promised to send him to a hospital, but instead Krichevsky was transferred to another pretrial detention center. “I thought they were taking me to a hospital, but they took me first to Perm and then to Yekaterinburg. They basically lied to me when they said they were taking me to a hospital,” he said on the stand.

Krichevskny never did get any medical attention: “We’ll only help you if you’re dying, [they said.] Otherwise, just sit there and suffer.”

“Radical views and hostility toward the current government”: trial and pleadings

Krichevsky’s trial was postponed five times in a row: it took a long time to bring him in his wheelchair, first to Detention Center No. 1 in Yekaterinburg, and then to the court. He was brought to the hearings late, and had to spend four to five hours in the police van, where, according to Krichevsky, the temperature was the same as outside.

At the beginning of the trial, Krichevsky filed a motion requesting that he be assigned an inpatient forensic examination and treatment. He said that he had never been examined by a neurologist at the Yekaterinburg detention center, only by a GP. He was taken for examination to the local medical unit, which was not equipped for people with disabilities: there was a “big step” in front of the toilet and sink which he could not get over. As a result, the doctors only checked his reflexes and sent him back.

In their medical report, the doctors at the detention center stated that Krichevsky had no disability and that his overall health was satisfactory, meaning that he was able to take part in the court hearings.

Before the proceedings, Krichevsky again requested to be sent for treatment, “in accordance with the neurologist’s recommendation” in Izhevsk, but Judge Raitsky denied the request, seeing no need for it. Prosecutor Artem Terentyev also asked that the request be denied, as it went “beyond the scope of the criminal case under consideration.”

During the trial, the prosecutor asked that Krichevsky be imprisoned for six years in a medium-security penal colony. The prosecutor stressed that the defendant had “radical views” and was “hostile toward the current government of the Russian Federation and its officials,” and that he had written the offending comment at a time when the mobilization had not yet been completed. The prosecutor considered these to be aggravating circumstances.

The prosecutor cited Krichevsky’s “poor health” as a mitigating circumstance.

You can support Alexander by writing him a letter.

Address:
Russian Federation 620019 FKU SIZO-1, GUFSIN of Russia for the Sverdlovsk Region • Sverdlovsk Region, Yekaterinburg, Repin Street, 4 • Alexander Anatolyevich Krichevsky, born 1967

You can also send letters through the online service Zonatelecom.

Source: Vasily Besspalyi, “Wheelchair user from Izhevsk sentenced to six years in prison for comment about Putin; his mother, sent to nursing home after his arrest, dies a month later,” Mediazona, 22 December 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader. Since letters to Russian prisoners are vetted by prison censors, they must be written in Russian or translated into Russian, something that can done more or less handily using an online machine translator like Google Translate. Please write to me if you need help or advice. ||||| TRR

Eating Kimchi in Public

So the Korean Hyundai factory workers were racially profiled and yesterday SCOTUS said racial profiling is now constitutional. The workers were reported to ICE because someone saw a bunch of foreign workers. That is racial profiling.

Yesterday’s news made me think about when I was little and went on road trips with my family. My parents always insisted on preparing and eating Korean food at rest areas along the way. This was before Korean food became more well-known and I remember that if there were people nearby who could smell our food, they often made faces and comments about the smell. Eating kimchi in public was always an interesting experience back then. This was just embarrassing, but does the new Supreme Court ruling mean that in this scenario, it is now something much more ominous we should be worried about?

Now someone could call ICE on a foreign-looking family eating foreign-smelling food in a rest area. When ICE shows up we now would have to show papers to prove we are citizens based on a racially motivated tip, is that our reality? Also, remembering that my mother never became a citizen but had a green card and probably speeding tickets so she would have been deportable under the current regime? What if I can’t prove my citizenship because I don’t carry my passport or naturalization papers, I am detained until I can prove my citizenship and they have the legal authority to do all of this now?

Lawyers, please help me understand. Is this our reality now? Is eating kimchi in public while Korean enough to get ICE called on us?

And I want to add that racial profiling has always been used against Black Americans and to a lesser degree other less white adjacent communities forever in this country, whether it was deemed constitutional or not. This is not new for Black Americans and others and something I have to acknowledge.

Source: Son Mun (Facebook), 9 September 2025

Source: Clarence Patton (Facebook), 9 September 2025

Clubbing

In the wee hours of Sunday, 4 May, Russian security forces raided concerts in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, at which, among other things, they asked attendees about their attitude to the war, local media have reported.

In Yekaterinburg, law enforcement officers interrupted a concert at the club Syndrome. As the musicians were performing, people in uniform came on stage, halted the concert, and asked the concert organizers to turn on the lights, concertgoers told the Telegram channel Svet. Ekaterinburg.

“People were ordered to stand facing the walls and told that there would be a document check. [The police] checked everyone’s documents, tattoos, and elbows, asked about their attitudes to left-wing radical movements and to the SMO (the war in Ukraine—ed.), and they checked the messenger apps on their phones. After the check, people were taken outside and ordered to scram,” said one of the guests.

Another clubgoers told the news website E1.RU that police locked him in a paddy wagon, confiscated his phone, and checked his contents. Police insulted the detainee and refused to explain the reasons for the check. According to eyewitnesses, police and Russian National Guard officers took part in the raid. Those agencies declined to comment on this report.

Regular raids by law enforcers in Russia

In St. Petersburg, law enforcers raided a rave party at the [underground] club Kontrkult. A source close to the police told Ren TV that the reason for the raid was that the event had not been “sanctioned.” According to the news website 78.ru, partygoers had their documents checked and were searched for banned substances. The publication adds that the event’s organizers were detained. This has not been officially confirmed.

Footage of the raid on Kontrkult, as posted on the Telegram channel SHOT

Similar raids on various establishments have happened regularly in Russia in recent months. Law enforcers have carried out several raids on fitness centers, in which people were issued military conscription board summonses. Similar raids have been carried out against migrant workers, who also had their documents checked and summonses handed to them, along with members of the LGBT community, who have been declared “extremists” in Russia.

Source: Daniil Sotnikov, “Law enforcers raid clubs in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg,” Deutsche Welle Russian Service, 4 May 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader

Nizhny Tagil anti-war protester Yekaterina Sergeyenko. Photo: Mezhdu Strok, via Svet.Ekaterinburg

💬 Student from Nizhny Tagil fined 120,000₽ in criminal “defaming” case

In Nizhny Tagil, 21-year-old student Yekaterina Sergeyenko has been sentenced for “defaming” [the Russian army]: she was fined 120,000 roubles [approx. 1,280 euros]. According to the news agency Mezhdu Strok (“Between the Lines”), criminal charges were filed over the young woman’s comments in the “Incident Nizhny Tagil” group on the social network VKontakte.

Vechernye Vedomosti reports that at the time she posted the comments, Sergeyenko had a prior administrative conviction for painting sixteen pacifist slogans on buildings in the city. This fact influenced the decision to file criminal rather than administrative charges against her.

Judge Oksana Belkina of the Tagilstroy District Court found Sergeyenko guilty. Although the verdict has not yet entered into legal force, the fine, according to Mezhdu Strok, has already been paid.

Source: Svet.Ekaterinburg (Telegram), 4 May 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader

Free People of Voronezh

On 22 April 2025, Voronezh police raided the homes of activists believed by Center “E” [Russia’s “anti-extremism” police] to be connected to the Telegram channel Free People of Voronezh. The searches also involved severe beatings and threats, and some of the activists were forced to record videos supporting Putin and the war in Ukraine. Almost all the activists had previously been prosecuted on political charges, but now they feel so intimidated that they are afraid to file a torture complaint against the police.

A 38-minute video was posted on the Free People of Voronezh channel on 16 April 2025. The video itself was viewed by less than three hundred people. In the video, four activists—Grigory Severin, Nadezhda Belova, Yuri Avsenyev, and Alexander Zheltukhin—discuss the news before jogging along an embankment of the Voronezh River. The genre is the “coffee klatch”: using the news as a springboard, the friends talk about the problem of alcoholism, apathy in society, increasing drug use, and the overall sense of doom and gloom.

Activists of the Telegram channel Free People of Voronezh:
Grigory Severin, Alexander Zheltukhin, Yuri Avsenyev, and Nadezhda Belova

Nadezhda Belova sums up the video’s content at the very beginning.

“To cut it short, everything is bad, but it will get worse. To put it in a nutshell, the situation in this place is at the terminal stage,” she says.

She argues that Russia is inevitably moving in the direction “North Korea”—toward a mothballed, rotten dictatorship, because Russians “somehow still support it and want to live in it.” Belova has reason to be pessimistic: even before the war, the state had charged her with “condoning terrorism” for comments she had made on social media in the wake of Mikhail Zhlobitsky‘s [suicide] bombing of the Arkhangelsk FSB. in 2020, a military court sentenced Belova to pay a fine of 400,000 rubles. She was on Rosfinmonitoring’s list of “terrorists and extremists” for several years, and her family had to leave their home village and rent a flat in Voronezh, as their fellow villagers did not support Belova in her fight against the unjust charges.

The video posted on the Telegram channel Free People of Voronezh on 16 April 2025

“Again, the whole of Voronezh is covered with drug adverts. The law enforcement agencies run protection for [the illegal drug trade], and if they didn’t run protection for it, there wouldn’t be these adverts. At my neighborhood Pyaterka [convenience store], right at the entrance, there is a graffito painted in color on the doorstep: ‘Buying a stash is like going out for bread,'” says Alexander Zheltukhin. In previous years, Zheltukhin was fined for picketing against Belova’s persecution and arrested for protesting in support of Navalny. “And if it was not protected, I would argue, by the selfsame FSB, who probably take a percentage from it—”

“Watch out! You are discrediting the FSB,” Belova says, interrupting him. “I don’t agree! It cannot be!”

Caveats and omissions run through the entire conversation. The activists know that any free speech is potentially dangerous in today’s Russia, and they try to cover their bases whenever possible. (Spoiler: it didn’t work).

“They say it’s impossible not to confess”

A few days later, on 22 April, police raided the homes of all four people involved in the run, as well as those of other Voronezh activists. Searches were done at eight locations, allegedly connected with Free People of Voronezh. In most cases, the law enforcers acted extremely harshly. They used handcuffs and stun guns, beat people, intimidated the activists and their families, and emotionally abused them.

All the members of Belova’s family were shot with a stun gun. Belova later posted photos of her own bruises and the bloody marks on the bodies of her husband and son on Facebook. The police confiscated all their electronic devices and turned upside down their rented flat, which the landlady demanded that the Belovs vacate immediately after the search. The police threatened to send the son, a university student, to the war, and after the search, a policeman recorded a repentant video featuring Belova.

“Off camera, the [policeman beating Belova’s husband] says, ‘Do you support the [special military operation]?’ I say, ‘Yes.’ He says, ‘Do you support Putin?’ I say, ‘Yes.’ It’s light fare, but disgusting, especially when I saw a stun gun pressed against my son’s leg,” Belova told Okno.

The police recorded similar video “confessions” by several other people [caught up in the raids].

After the searches, Zheltukhin ended up in hospital with five broken ribs and several damaged vertebrae. He told OVD Info that he had tried to escape from the “punitive operation” and fell from the roof of a village house: “I broke my ribs when I fell, apparently, and they hit me [on those ribs]: it hurts a lot.” The police put a bag over his head and shocked him with a stun gun. His friends later photographed Zheltukin at hospital: his face was covered with bruises.

Fyodor Orlov, 36, was also beaten; after the experience, he says that he “did it all to himself.” He inflicted all the bruises and abrasions on himself, blindfolded himself with a scarf and sat like that for two hours, and fell into a briar bush on his own; there are photos of his back, entirely covered with flecks of blood. “Then someone—that is, I—drew a sex organ on my bald head just for fun,” he told OVD Info. The law enforcers also threatened to cut off one of his fingers, leaving behind telltale scratches.

“It was quite rough. As rough as possible, to the point that they say that now they understand why people confess to crimes they did not commit. Because, they say, it’s impossible not to confess. Orlov has several hundred stun gun marks [on his body]. Several hundred! They drove him into the woods. He thought they were taking him there to kill him,’” says Pavel Sychev, 38.

Sychev is a Voronezh activist and political consultant. He knows the administrators of the Free People of Voronezh channel from his past work as an activist: they crossed paths at pickets, but do not keep in close contact. Sychev’s home was also searched on 22 April, but there was no violence.

“[The police] search my home, as a rule, without breaking the law, and they never use force against me or my family. They have been coming to my home every year since 2022. These are just routine searches. I have always been searched as a witness in criminal cases to which I don’t even have an indirect connection,” says Sychev. “There is a federal case [for example, the case against Grigory Melkonyants and other activists of the Golos movement—Okno], and they do a series of searches all over the country, and they come and search my house for good measure.”

“Evil loves silence”

It is unlikely that the new series of searches was occasioned by the latest video posted on the Telegram channel. Our sources suggest, rather, that the reason for the raids was that Free People of Voronezh constantly writes and speaks about people convicted on charges of high treason and terrorism (for sabotaging railroad switch boxes, cell towers, etc.). The channel admins treat these people as anti-war resisters. For law enforcers, on the contrary, they are criminals convicted of violent crimes.

The formal pretext for the series of searches on 22 April was the criminal case, on charges of repeated discrediting of the army, brought against Grigory Severin. As follows from the indictment, while serving his sentence in a penal colony [he had been sentenced to two and half years in prison for “publicly calling for extremism”; he served his time and was released last autumn—Okno], Severin discredited the Russian armed forces. After the search, he was detained and placed under arrest.

Sychev believes that this criminal case was “canned.”

“You see, in Russia we have the practice of ‘desk drawer cases.’ Meaning you already have a criminal case against you: the entire case file is ready in advance, and it is lying in a desk drawer, waiting for its day to come. In the case of Severin, his first case was also ‘in a desk drawer.’ When he was arrested, it transpired that the entire case file had been readied a year earlier.”

It is not known what prompted the police to pull the case file from the drawer right now. But the fact that Severin faces prosecution does not surprise Sychev in itself.

“Everyone who knows Grigory, even in passing, realizes that he is a man who will not stay quiet. If anyone asks him directly how he feels about this or that situation, he will answer directly, even if the answer risks criminal charges. He is a man who will always try to prove to everyone the viewpoint which he espouses and defends. As far as I know, the first ‘discrediting of the armed forces’ case against him came from his explaining his philosophy of life to traffic police officers who had pulled him over. The second charge came from telling his cellmates about his stance. This in the order of things for him: he does not keep silent; he speaks openly, directly. So it was a matter of time. When a person speaks openly about a very dangerous and sensitive topic—and in our country the ‘special military operation’ is a sensitive topic—there are many chances that sooner or later they will be prosecuted.”

On the same day, a criminal case was opened against 65-year-old activist Yury Avsenyev, another person involved in the run along the Voronezh River embankment. His home was also searched on 22 April, but he was released on his own recognizance. Avsenyev is suspected of “publicly calling for extremism.”

The Voronezh activists who fell victim to the police brutality have not yet worked up the courage to file complaints, and they fear excessive publicity.

“They are really spooked,” says Pavel Sychev. “The information I have now is that they will not file torture complaints, but I don’t know, maybe someone will persuade them to do it. They are very much afraid that if they do it, the law enforcers won’t be reprimanded in any way, but will just come and take revenge on them. They are all convinced that they will be killed. I told them that evil loves silence, and if you don’t react now, there is a greater chance of a repeat than if you do. But they said it’s very easy to judge from the outside when you haven’t been tortured. ‘We are afraid that they might do something to us,’ [they say].”

Our sources note that such official lawlessness had not previously occurred in Voronezh. Usually, searches at the homes of political activists and arrests were carried out by the book, without violence. The only widely known case of official lawlessness ended in criminal charges against the police officers involved and monetary compensation for the victims. In May 2018, criminal investigators Sergei Kosyanenko and Oleg Sokolovsky tortured university students Maxim Grebenyuk and Sergei Troyansky, hoping to force them to confess that they had stolen a mobile phone. The students were held at Police Station No. 4 in Voronezh’s Comintern District for six hours in handcuffs and strangled with a plastic bag. They refused to incriminate themselves, and afterwards they documented their injuries and filed a torture complaint with the Investigative Committee. In 2021, Grebenyuk was awarded one million rubles, and Troyansky, 500,000 rubles, in compensation for their suffering.

The Voronezh police’s current brutality may be due to the proximity of the front, suggests a source who requested anonymity. The fact is that, since the start of the full-scale invasion, Voronezh law enforcers have regularly been seconded to the so-called new territories, the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

“There are quite big problems with the law in those ‘new territories.’ And the practices that are used there are inhuman, I think. When they come back here, to their native land, they simply do not reconfigure themselves,” says our source, who is not connected with the Free People of Voronezh Telegram channel. “They consider themselves above the law. They think that they are involved in a good cause, and they can torture bad people for the sake of the good cause. When a person has tried their hand at it once, when they realize that they can get away with it absolutely scot-free, then it is quite difficult to put the brakes on, and it will grow.”

Source: “‘Terminal stage’: Voronezh law enforcers brutally beat activists during searches,” Okno, 29 April 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader

Olga Menshikh: “A Society Sick with Fear Cannot Be Happy”

**Olga Menshikh. Photo: Alexandra Astakhova/Mediazona**

A panel of three Moscow City Court judges, chaired by Irina Vasina, upheld the verdict in the criminal case against anesthesia nurse Olga Menshikh on charges of disseminating “fake news” about the Russian army: eight years in prison for two posts on the Russian social media network VKontakte, per Article 207.3.2.e of the Criminal Code. This is the longest sentence on these charges handed down to a woman. The following is an abridged version of Menshikh’s statement at today’s court hearing.

You and I understand everything quite well: we are all adults here. You shall say that this is not a frame-up, that it’s the norm. Nevertheless, we understand that there is a more serious organisation* which has ordered this [verdict], and they do things as they see fit regardless of these frame-ups.

Here, for example, is a quotation from my case file: “Olga Sergeyevna Menshikh causes her fellow citizens to feel anxious, afraid and worried, to feel undefended by the state’. I cause that!? I am an absolute loner with a mum who is eighty-six years old, and I have no other interests in life. What can I say? These words in no way apply to me. I completely deny them and consider them slander.

But these words perfectly describe the well-known organisation, known as the FSB, which I have just outlined for you. […] Back in the day, serious conclusions were not drawn about the architecture of the seventy-year utopia, which murdered millions of its own citizens and citizens of other countries and collapsed during an attempt to repair it, but then suddenly rose up and went at it again. Crush what was not crushed earlier! ‘Crush them!’ is the watchword of the day.

Who should be crushed, I want to ask you, your honours? The peasants, whom you destroyed long ago? The hegemon [i.e., the proletariat], whom you long ago turned into a drunkard? Do you want to crush the intelligentsia? Do you want to crush business? How do you plan to live? What have I been observing in Detention Centre No. 6 right now? I just sat for four hours with the nicest businesswoman. You have been clamping down on businesspeople of all stripes.

I have seen all kinds of people here. Lawyers and doctors serving long sentences, mothers with many children, with three or four children, incarcerated here without verdicts. And just now I came in from the corridor, where a disabled woman in a wheelchair was being sent off to a penal colony. Pensioners and young people are held here on completely trumped-up charges. Do you want to crush them, to trample on their lives so as to make others afraid? Is that what you want to do? You want to crush them so that everyone is afraid because you were ordered to do it? Have them be afraid, have them sit in prison.

Well, this is what I want to tell you calmly. A society sick with fear cannot create, cannot be happy, cannot live, cannot love to the fullest, cannot reproduce. You consider it quite necessary for us to reproduce. But [society] cannot reproduce amid this fear. A wild goose never laid a tame egg. This fig tree will die out, you shall kill it off.

This entire fear machine has only one aim: destroying all of us. So many people, so many civilised people were destroyed, that I cannot list their names. I will only quote a great novel. Having worked in the medical field myself, as someone who took patients quite seriously, I will quote the great novel Doctor Zhivago, about Doctor Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago. By the way, he dies before he reaches the age of forty.

Here is what the great diagnostician Yuri Zhivago says: “Microscopic forms of cardiac hemorrhages have become very frequent in recent years. […] It’s a typical modern disease. I think its causes are of a moral order. The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune.”**

Yuri Andreyevich uttered these words exactly a hundred years ago. And so, concerning this organisation, which we all know quite well: a dead man coming back to life cannot make anyone happy. Even when he was alive, he brought happiness to no one. He turned a lot of folk into dead people, and now he is raising another generation suffering from PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, which is quite hard to treat.

What can I say? I am sorry. I feel sorry for you, I feel sorry for me. I feel sorry for the people in this detention centre. I feel sorry for the women, for the children. Dear honourable judges and prosecutors, we are all in the same boat. I rest my case.

* In the first part of her statement, Menshikh talks about how she believes the FSB was behind her criminal case from the beginning — Mediazona.

** Translated by Max Hayward and Manya Harari — TRR.

Source: “‘A society sick with fear cannot be happy’: a statement by nurse Olga Menshikh, sentenced to eight years in prison for two social media posts about the war,” Mediazona, 5 April 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader, who urges you to donate money to Mediazona to support their vital mission as they stand on the brink of financial collapse, and to support my own work here by reposting and sharing these dispatches with friends and comrades.

A court in Moscow on Thursday sentenced a 59-year-old nurse to eight years in prison for social media posts opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Olga Menshikh was accused of spreading “fake” information about the military with two VKontakte posts that condemned Russian strikes on Vinnytsia, Ukraine, that killed 28 people in July 2022 and Russian troops’ mass atrocities against civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha.

Menshikh denied her guilt, with Mediazona reporting she had 15 followers and that her account may have been breached.

Moscow’s Dorogimolovsky District Court found Menshikh guilty of spreading “fake news” about the Russian military’s actions abroad and handed her an eight-year sentence in a prison colony.

Menshikh was an anesthetic nurse at the Pirogov National and Medical Surgical Center, where Mediazona said she had treated Russian soldiers wounded in Ukraine.

The outlet said Menshikh had faced several administrative arrests and fines for anti-war social media posts and her support for the late Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

Russia has cracked down on anti-war protests, the independent press and social media platforms since launching what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine in 2022.

Source: “Moscow Nurse Jailed 8 Years for Anti-War Posts,” Moscow Times, 3 October 2024

Julia Khazagaeva: I Am Just a Mom with Three Kids

The statements about the war made by Muscovite political exiles cause public indignation because what they say is at odds with the horror of the situation. Instead of taking to European podiums and demanding decisive action to defend Ukraine, they ask [European officials] to lift sanctions against Russians and mumble helplessly about “one nation.”

It is obvious that, for the fourth year running, Russia has been waging not just a war against Ukraine on the front lines, but a bloody, boundless campaign of terror. Nearly every day Russian missiles kill [Ukrainian] civilians, including children. Ukrainian soldiers who surrender unarmed are executed on the spot by the Russians, or are even ritually beheaded. But you continue to talk about Russia’s “democratic future,” ignoring the fact that the entire country, including schoolchildren, has been slaving away at destroying the Ukrainians.

I am not a politician, just a microblogger who cares about current events. But even I remember InformNapalm’s OSINT investigation which showed that the Russian fighter planes bombing Ukraine are still equipped with French avionics. Without this unique equipment, Russia’s Su-30SM fighter planes are blind and cannot fly. Russia obtains this equipment through Kazakhstan, thus bypassing sanctions. The report came out a year ago. I don’t know what the situation is like now, but warplanes are still taking off from Russian airfields.

Why couldn’t you have talked about that in the French Senate? Especially since, a week earlier, a Russian missile fired from a fighter plane and packed with shrapnel killed twenty people, including nine children, in Krivyi Rih. The photo of a young [boy] in a coffin, whose face had been riddled by the tiny metal shards, is impossible to forget.

The coffins of 15-year-old Nikita Perekrest and his cousin, 16-year-old Kostiantyn Novik. Nikita’s father serves in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and his mother took Kostiantyn in after his parents were killed. The two boys were outside in the yard when the Russian army struck Kryvyi Rih. Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP/Scanpix/LETA, via Meduza

I realize that none of Moscow’s so-called opposition activists have the courage of political prisoner [Vladimir] Bukovsky and demand that Ukraine be given missiles to target Lubyanka. But you could launch investigations into the schemes by which Russia circumvents sanctions and obtains not only components for its fighter planes but also foreign chips for its missiles. You could demand that the Bosphorus be closed to Russia’s shadow fleet, which brings Putin the revenue to produce new missiles. Finally, you could show solidarity with Ukraine at least in word [if not in deed] and stop embarrassing yourself by repeating the impersonal and irrelevant slogan “No War.” You could do a lot of things in your safe havens. But instead you just wait for Putin to die and are not even ashamed to say so. Meanwhile, it is not so much the Ukrainians or the decolonizers who are waiting for you to act as it is your own fellow Russian citizens, who have not yet lost their minds and are basically living under occupation in Russia.

///

As for the ridiculous claim that it is easier for non-Russians to go to war and that is why they make up the majority [of soldiers] in the [Russian] army, according to the analytical resource buryatmemorial.org, a total of 2,425 people from Buryatia have been killed in the “special military operation” as of March 2025. And you’ll pardon me, but hardly half of them are ethnic Buryats (as you can see from the photos). This is due to the fact that ethnic Buryats constitute no more than 31% of the republic’s entire population. According to Ukrainian figures, Russian losses have already lost 933,000 men in the war. Even if we multiplied the figures for Buryatia by ten, its war dead would still roughly amount to two and a half percent of the total. I emphasize that the Buryats are an ethnic minority in their own land.

A screenshot of the website buryatmemorial.org, showing the names and faces of Buryatia’s war dead

According to Caucasian Knot, as of March 2025, 233 men from Chechnya, 121 from Ingushetia, 104 from Karachay-Cherkessia, and 112 from Kalmykia have been killed in the special military operation. Again, we can multiply this figure by ten for the sake of statistical rigor, but we still get hundredths of a percent of the total losses.

To put an end to the topic of Vladimir Kara-Murza’s ridiculous misinformation drop, yes, I saw yesterday’s post by the activist Anastasia Shevchenko, from which it follows that she was the mysterious “colleague” who shared with Kara-Murza the “observation” that it may be easier for non-Russians to go to war, while Russians find it psychologically difficult to kill Ukrainians due to their cultural affinity. Anastasia writes that the source of this hypothesis was not even her, but a third party who voiced this conjecture in a private conversation. Do you realize what has happened? This was not a scientific observation; no studies or surveys of Russian POWs were done that would indicate such a trend. This “information” came from the bush telegraph and was repeated by a [Russian] opposition politician in the French Senate, where decisions are made on the basis of the words people utter. And even after the ruckus that this delusional phrase caused among the public, no apology or explanation has been forthcoming from the politician.

Again, I am just a mom with three kids who left Russia to avoid supporting the war. In exile, I wash floors and clean other people’s houses so that I can send at least thirty dollars [a month] to the Ukrainians so they can buy drones. At night I write social media posts and read decolonial literature. I try to do anything I can to stop my former country from murdering innocent people. In my opinion, I have the right to demand that those who call themselves politicians, who have the bully pulpits and the opportunities, do something meaningful to ensure that Russia can no longer wage war.

There is nothing more important right now.

Source: Julia Khazagaeva (Facebook), 14 April 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader

Serial Denouncer Denounced

Ivan Abaturov (social media image via RFE/RL)

Social anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova conducted an investigation and concluded that Anna Korobkova, renowned for her numerous denunciations of people advocating anti-war stances, is probably a pseudonym of Ivan Abaturov, a journalist from Yekaterinburg. The BBC Russian Service has published the results of Arkhipova’s research.

Arkhipova assembled more than seventy letters, addressed to various institutions and agencies, in which Korobkova accused doctors, teachers, human rights activists, and journalists of “discrediting” the Russian army and called for them to be brought to justice. Among the denouncer’s victims are a doctor at a clinic who made a comment to [banned opposition channel] TV Rain, the mother of an enlisted soldier killed in the war, and Arkhipova herself. In one case, a student was expelled from a university after it received a denunciation alleging that he had been involved in “unauthorized protest rallies.”

In early December 2024, Arkhipova found a page about Korobkova on Wikipedia. With the assistance of linguists, she did a comparative analysis and found that the author of the Wikipedia article was probably the same person who had written the denunciations signed by Korobkova.

Arkhipova and the investigative journalists were able to identify the author of the Wikipedia article. It turned out to be a journalist from Yekaterinburg, Ivan Abaturov.

Abaturov, as the article points out, had already been at the center of a whistleblowing scandal. In the summer of 2022, Sergei Erlich, director of the publishing house Nestor History, said that Abaturov had allegedly detected “false information about the USSR’s actions during the Second World War” in one of his company’s books. Consequently, law enforcement officials visited Nestor History’s offices.

Abaturov himself has never concealed his attitude to denunciations. In 2019, he wrote on social media that “a journalist under Stalin was a walking prosecutor’s office” and that he wanted to be one too.

When asked by a BBC correspondent whether he had been writing denunciations under the name “Korobkova,” Abaturov replied on VKontakte: “Hello. You are mistaken.” Consequently, he stopped replying to messages, and the BBC was unable to reach him by phone.

Since the beginning of their country’s full-scale war with Ukraine, Russians have filed 2,623 complaints with law enforcement agencies about anti-war statements made by their fellow citizens, the investigative journalism website Important Stories (iStories) calculated in June on the basis of open source data. So-called LGBT propaganda (487 complaints) and Russophobia (250 complaints) ranked second and third, respectively, as grounds for denunciations.

According to Important Stories, seventy percent of the complaints were written by subscribers of the anonymous Telegram channel Mrakoborets, which specializes in tracking down anti-war activists. The channel’s daily norm is a minimum of three complaints on its pages on the social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki (“Classmates”). Yekaterina Mizulina, head of the Safe Internet League, had personally written 148 denunciations, while sixty were penned by pro-Kremlin activist Vitaly Borodin.

Source: “The serial denouncer ‘Korobkova’ turns out to be a male journalist from Yekaterinburg,” Radio Svoboda, 26 December 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Darya Apahonchich and Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up.

[…]

In the autumn of 2022, executives at the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) received a letter signed “Anna Vasilievna Korobkova.” It began as follows: “I fully support the special operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on Ukrainian territory. I am against all violations of the law.”

The letter concerned an interview that Alexandra Arkhipova, who had worked for many years as a senior research fellow at RANEPA, had given to the channel TV Rain, which had been designated a “foreign agent” by Russian authorities. (At the time of the interview, the TV channel had not yet been designated an “undesirable organization.”)

In her denunciation, “Korobkova” asked the university to dismiss Arkhipova for “immoral misconduct,” which, in her opinion, consisted in the fact that in the interview with TV Rain she had “disseminated false information discrediting the Special Military Operation [sic] on Ukrainian territory.” Korobkova also suggested that the university send the evidence against Arkhipova to the prosecutor’s office.

“Korobkova” was outraged that Arkhipova did not interrupt TV Rain presenter Anna Nemzer when the latter had called the “special military operation” a “war” (“thus showing she agreed with Nemzer’s false opinion”), mentioned Facebook without mentioning that it had been designated an “extremist organization” in Russia, and uttered the phrase “before the war I would ask.”

“This is a lie, as there is no war,” the letter said.

Upon seeing the text of the denunciation, Arkhipova was surprised by how long and detailed it was. Korobkova’s letter took up two pages, and even the time codes for the points in the interview at which Arkhipova had said certain things that angered Korobkova were noted. As a folklorist and social anthropologist who works extensively with different texts, Arkhipova was struck by the structure of the denunciation and the specific language in which it was written.

“I was reading this denunciation to friends, discussing it as a phenomenon of contemporary political culture, when one of my colleagues looked at me sadly and took a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. He unfolded it and read aloud a denunciation. It had the same wording, and was also signed ‘Anna Vasilievna Korobkova,'” Arkhipova tells the BBC.

[…]

Source: Amalia Zataria, “‘I want to be a walking prosecutor’s office’: who hides behind the identity of serial denouncer ‘Anna Korobkova’?” BBC Russian Service, 26 December 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Playing the Victim: The Schlosberg Controversy

Lev Schlosberg’s lengthy interview with Ksenia Sobchak, released last week, predictably kicks off with a discussion of his condemnation of his former allies. In August of this year, Lev Schlosberg lashed out on Facebook at the emigrant liberals who had welcomed the Ukrainian army’s offensive in the Kursk Region, calling writer Dmitry Bykov, journalist Sergei Parkhomenko, and politician Garry Kasparov comrades in the “someone else’s blood” party. His post sparked a freewheeling discussion, demonstrating once again to both onlookers and participants how far apart they were, even though they are still citizens of the same country. While the outcome of the Russian-Ukrainian military conflict will supposedly be determined by the newly re-elected Donald Trump, the Kremlin has long since won the war on the invisible front.

Caution: Sobchak, “Lev Schlosberg: Why is it important for a politician to stay in Russia?” (in Russian; no subtitles)

It was beyond the strength of the majority to resist the Kremlin’s propaganda. How fortunate for the minority, who had honestly declared before the war that they had no soul, only a paycheck.

Three months later, Schlosberg felt the need to continue the conversation, choosing as his interlocutor Ksenia Sobchak, about whose views on war and peace there can be no two opinions: what Vladimir Putin finds ambiguous also seems ambiguous to the breeding bulls in his herd. But the question is why the veteran democrat Schlosberg decided to hang a huge bell around his neck next to the “foreign agent” disclaimer. Was it vanity or fear? As becomes clear in the first half hour of the high-minded conversation, however, the cause, as always, is run-of-the-mill stupidity. Schlosberg really thinks what he says. It is even sadder to watch his rantings than it is to watch the criminal proceedings against him.

Explaining his stance as a compassionate fellow traveler (which, as we remember, can be summarized in Akhmatova’s famous line about one’s own people, on whose side one should be both in happy times and during the Special Military Operation), Schlosberg recalls Leo Tolstoy’s famous essay “Bethink Yourselves!,” published in 1904 after the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War. According to Shlosberg, love for a fragile peace distinguishes the authentic Russian writer from the fake one. For this reason, Shlosberg has no hesitation in ejecting Dmitry Bykov from the company of engineers of Russian souls, and, it seems, from the human race altogether. A similar fate befalls the other participants of the Free Russia Forum. Typically, Sobchak, an experienced investigator-slash-provocateur, cajoles Lev Markovich into making public his entire list of traitors to the Motherland (probably to check it against the firing squad list, lest there be an extrajudicial error).

It is worth nothing that all the ideological opponents mentioned by Schlosberg* did not differ much from the great elder from Yasnaya Polyana in their appeals to the silent audience. Since then, however, much water (demagoguery) has flowed under the bridge, along with the lives of millions of people. No wonder that the cardboard humanism of the captive Yabloko Party now looks, if not ridiculous, then simply ugly. Schlosberg and Yavlinsky suggest that we still eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge, which was chosen as the symbol of their so-called political association. And it seems to have been known for a long time that this fruit is a pure stage prop, a fruit plate from a Moscow Art Theater performance, but its contents continue to rot and to reek, frankly.

“Myth: that Ukraine remains a victim doesn’t fit the historical facts”:
Lev Schlosberg, as featured on Ksenia Sobchak’s YouTube program (via Republic)

We are all victims of this war, Schlosberg claims. Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, the United States and Europe had the same opportunities to prevent the war. “But the mincemeat of history cannot be cranked backwards,” he continues, indulging in inventive parallels, “the cutlet will not turn back into the cow.” Yes, of course, the “Russian World” will never be the same again, but only because thinkers like Schlosberg, as Circe did to Odysseus’s companions, have been turning Russians into ungulates with their pseudo-Christian speeches. It is other people, of course, who have been leading them to the slaughter, but the Yabloko Party, alas, bears a considerable share of the blame.

Dubbing himself “the people,” Schlosberg wants to escort the popular masses on a journey to the end of the night, i.e., he suggests that they wander together until they are blue in the face in the pitch darkness and sprinkle the ashes of their ideals on each other’s heads, even though they should sprinkle “mother earth” on their heads. Schlosberg imagines collective euthanasia as a therapy in which there is no room for hatred. What’s the difference between dying with calls to love one another on your lips and dying while calling for violence? There is a difference, Schlosberg contends. In the first case, our church cemetery will finally become a true “brotherly” [i.e., mass] grave.

Source: Zinaida Pronchenko, “Caution, Schlosberg: how to properly take last communion,” Republic, 11 November 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

There used to be a Three Hierarchs Street in Kyiv. It was renamed after the October Revolution, of course. In 1919, it was called Victims of the Revolution Street in memory of the Bolsheviks who had been led down it to their executions. The street bore this tragic name until 1955, when someone competent finally showed up at city hall and explained to them how the name was ambiguous. City hall agreed and renamed it Heroes of the Revolution Street. But you can’t fool the people, and so the name “Victims of the Heroes of the Revolution” stuck to the street like glue. Old-timers still referred to it as they had in the old Soviet days. “Can you tell me how to get to the outpatient clinic?” “Go straight down Victims of the Revolution….” In the early 1990s, when the powers that be were getting rid of abominable “Red” place names, the street was given back its old name, Three Hierarchs Street.

I was reminded of this by the recent incident involving Lev Schlosberg, who explained in an interview with Ksenia Sobchak that Ukraine cannot be considered a “victim” [zhertva]. This has happened in the context of the Yabloko Party’s now-familiar cry “Both of you stop immediately!” Here is what Schlosberg said, verbatim:

Ukraine is resisting. State and individuals are victims [zhertva] until the minute, until the second they start resisting. Ukraine started resisting on the morning of February 24 [2022]. It is a resistance supported by dozens of foreign countries with their money, their equipment, their specialists, with everything they have. This had led to the fact that Ukraine has equalized the situation. Today, the military forces — the combined military forces of Ukraine (taking into account the allies, their weapons and their money) and the combined military forces of Russia — are roughly equal. Whoever resists is not a victim [zhertva]. A victim [zhertva] does not resist. A victim [zhertva] allows itself to be killed. The myth that Ukraine is a victim does not fit the historical facts. If Ukraine were a victim, Ukraine would not exist now. It would simply not exist.

Of course, we could go on at length about Shlosberg and the Yabloko applesauce* in his head, but he has gotten enough pushback. He has talked a load of nonsense and still goes on, so God be his judge. “Why do we listen to him? Let’s eat him.” I’m in favor of not listening to anyone at all, since there came a point when everyone started talking in commonplaces. Schlosberg is no exception: his leitmotif is well rehearsed and has long been familiar. But this paragraph about victims and non-victims is peculiar. Not politically peculiar (not at all), but it is quite peculiar as a mirror reflection of illiteracy.

Lev Markovich managed to cram a lot of nonsense into one paragraph, both about equalizing the situation and about western assistance. But that’s not what I have in mind. What I have in mind is the fact that even the well-spoken Schlosberg has no linguistic sense at all, as it turns out. And he’s not alone in having this handicap, although it is not remotely acceptable for him as a politician to have it.

The whole passage about the victim, I think, meant the opposite of what its author was been lambasted. He was rightly lambasted, generally, but he didn’t mean to strip Ukraine of its status as a victim of aggression. “Victim of aggression” and “sacrificial victim” are different things. The concept of the sacrificial victim is as old as sacrifice itself and is widely employed in the Old Testament as an inalienable part of the love for God. The Old Testament is chockablock with sacrifice, beginning with Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac.

It would be odd, of course, to assume that Schlosberg was talking about biblical connotations in his conversation with Sobchak (and it is doubtful the interviewer has ever thoughtfully read the Bible), but it is almost certain that this was the notion of zhertva which he had in mind. A sheep to the slaughter is apparently Lev Markovich’s idea of a textbook victim. The sheep does not resist: that’s a fact. Ukraine has been resisting, and that’s also a fact. From Schlosberg’s point of view, it all makes sense. If he had said that Ukraine was not a victim of aggression, then he would have become a deserving punching bag forever. But he wanted to make a graceful compliment to Ukraine while not deviating from Yabloko Party’s twee “peace and good will to all — just stop shooting!” In the Old Testament sense of the word, Ukraine is truly not a victim: it is a heroic scrapper, a country as hard as nails. But what Schlosberg said was understood as it should have been understood.

A politician should know the value of words and the cost of his linguistic blunders. The Schlosberg incident is such an obvious example of linguistic deafness that it should be included in political rhetoric textbooks — someday, of course, not now. A politician should realize that words addressed to the public are always heard as they are commonly understood, and that few people will use zhertva [“victim”] in the Old Testament sense [of “sacrifice”].

Once upon a time, a rookie journalist was brought on at the newspaper where I worked. His first article was about a theater event that had turned out to be a chummy gathering at which only the in-crowd got the jokes. The article ended with the following sentence: “The result was an event only for those who could get to it through the box office window.” I immediately pictured a man trying to Winnie-the-Pooh his way through a tiny window. When the journalist noticed that I was editing the sentence, he was indignant.“Why?! It’s clear as it is,” he said, “it’s about the people who managed to get their hands on complimentary tickets.” “Yes,” I replied, “it is clear. But not immediately clear, like it should be.” The guy held a grudge against me for a long time, not understanding the point of my objection.

The feeling for language is an innate thing, like a sense of pitch. But if it is weak, it must be trained, just like the sense of pitch. Andrei Mironov, who sang countless songs on screen and on stage, had no ear for music, but he worked until the point of exhaustion, singing the same lines a hundred thousand times until he could hit the notes. Only the people close to him and the directors who worked with him knew that he lacked a sense of pitch.

When I hear an advertisement for “tonal cream” [foundation cream], I am amazed at how one could fail to anticipate that every other person would hear “anal cream.” We can attribute this to a common lack of linguistic pitch, of which there are countless examples. It is essentially a habitual neglect of language, of its purity. “Anal cream” is a harmless example. “Phyto tea for women with hog uterus” [i.e., Orthilia secunda, or wintergreen, whose common name is matka borovaya] is basically harmless, too, just like most of the complete misunderstandings of “how our words will be heard” which we encounter at every turn.

Altai No. 2 Phyto Tea for Women with “Hog Uterus” [Wintergreen]

The Schlosberg incident is a quintessential example of the damage which carelessness can do to a public figure. Lev Markovich already has a catastrophically dwindling number of allies, given his inappropriate Leopold the Cat-like appeals and dubious patriotic outbursts. After his latest musings, this number has precipitously plunged. “Alas, they didn’t understand me,” the annoyed Schlosberg must say, playing the victim.

* Although the Yabloko Party‘s name was derived from the surnames of its three founders (Grigory Yavlensky, Yuri Boldyrev, and Vladimir Lukin), the word thus formed, yabloko, means “apple” in Russian. |||TRR

Source: Ekaterina Barabash, “Playing the victim: the Schlosberg incident as a textbook example of linguistic deafness,” Republic, 12 November 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader