Category: war and peace

Simon Pirani: No Path to Peace in Ukraine Through This Fantasy World

The Russian army’s meagre successes in Ukraine – such as taking the ruined town of Avdiivka, at horrendous human cost – have produced a new round of western politicians’ statements and commentators’ articles about possible peace negotiations.

Hopes are not high, because the Kremlin shows no appetite for such talks. Its actions, such as nightly bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure, speak louder than political and diplomatic words on all sides.

The desire and hope for peace is widely shared, and I share it too. How can it be achieved?

Among “left” writers, the “campists” and one-sided “anti-imperialists”, who deny Ukraine’s right to resist Russian aggression, say that peace talks could start now … if only the western powers did not stand in the way. (By “campism”, I mean the view that the world is divided simplistically between a western imperialist camp dominated by the US, and another camp comprising China, Russia and other countries, in which some progressive potential resides.)

Mariupol, after the siege. Photo: ADifferentMan / Creative Commons

The “campist” case is made by literally ignoring what is actually going on in Ukraine, and Russia, and focusing – often exclusively – on the political and diplomatic shenanigans in western countries.

In this blog post I will look at seven recent articles by “campist” writers. All of them call for peace talks; and all claim that the main obstacle is the western powers.  

I will cover (1) the selection of subject matter by these authors; (2) what little they actually say about peace negotiations; and (3) why the claim that the western powers sabotaged peace talks in April 2022 is less convincing than they believe it to be.

The seven articles are: “Europe sleepwalks through its own dilemmas” by Vijay Prashad (Counterpunch, Brave New Europe, Countercurrents and elsewhere); “Exit of Victoria Nuland creates opportunity for peace in Ukraine” by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies (Common Dreams, Morning Star, Consortium News and elsewhere); “Ukraine: Pope pipes up for peace” by Andrew Murray (Stop the War coalition); “Where are the righteous Ukraine partisans now?” by Branko Marcetic (Brave New Europe); “Diplomacy is the art of compromise: that’s what’s needed for peace in Ukraine” by Alexander Hill (Stop the War coalition); “US repeatedly blocked Ukraine peace deals; is it rethinking its strategy yet?” by John Wojcik and C.J. Atkins (People’s World); and “The Grinding War in Ukraine Could have ended a long time ago” by Branko Marcetic (Jacobin).

Selection of subject matter 

None of the seven articles says one word about Russia’s political system, its politicians’ nationalist rhetoric or its war economy, which are among the central causes of the war. Not a word. Only one of the articles (Alexander Hill’s) attempts to assess Russian war aims; one more (Andrew Murray’s) makes glancing reference to these.  

Only one of the articles (Hill’s, again) touches on what Ukrainian people are thinking or doing. None of the other six articles says a word about this, despite Ukrainian popular resistance being, by any measure, a key factor in the war.

Only one of the articles (Hill’s, again) says much about what has happened on the battlefield. One more (Branko Marcetic in Jacobin) has one paragraph on Ukrainian battlefield losses, but no mention of Russian losses. Two more (Murray’s, and Wojcik and Atkins’s) have very brief references to this.

While saying almost nothing about what is going on in Ukraine, or Russia, all seven articles discuss statements by western politicians, diplomats and/or military leaders. At length.

Five of the articles (by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies, by Hill, by Wojcik and Atkins, and two by Marcetic) focus on a peace deal that was supposedly on the table in April 2022, and claim that western politicians, who twisted president Zelensky’s arm, wrecked it (see last section). On the other hand, only two of the articles (Hill and Murray) make any suggestion about what peace talks might look like (see next section).

Dear readers, I can hear you say: but you have just picked seven articles at random. No. It’s a fair sample. I searched the largest-circulation English language “left” web sites; these were the most visible articles by don’t-support-Ukrainian-resistance writers.  

The key point is that none of these writers mention how the Kremlin works. No reference to Vladimir Putin’s attitude to the world, or whether it has changed. No assessment of the deranged nationalist, even genocidal, rants about Ukraine by him, his close colleagues and high-profile Russian TV personalities. No mention of whether Russia can be considered an imperialist power or not. Not a word about the way that its invasion of Ukraine not only breached international agreements and laws, but also offends the principle of nations’ right to self-determination that socialists have held dear since the 19th century.

It is telling, too, that these “campist” writers have no interest in what Ukrainian people say or do. Nor Russian people. They don’t pretend to look at the interaction of social, political and economic forces. They are concerned largely – some of them, exclusively – with the western elite. They see themselves as its opposite and its nemesis. Russian or Ukrainian soldiers, Russian anti-war protesters, Ukrainian trade unionists on the front line, Ukrainian refugees – these are bit part players in a drama played out in Washington, London and Berlin.

The result is a fantasy world that bears only indirect relation to reality.

When I say “campists”, I mean a very narrow group among “left” writers, who embrace a fake “anti-imperialism”, historically descended from 20th century Stalinism.

They do not speak for the labour movement more broadly, or for the millions of people in western countries who think of themselves as “left wing”, or who vote for Social Democratic parties. These are powerful forces for change. But the “campist” influence is dangerous and divisive.

Of course many journalists in the mainstream press also focus exclusively on this elite world of diplomats and politicians. But they usually see themselves as part of it. The “campists” sees themselves in opposition – but only to the western powers, the US above all. For them, the American empire is the only empire worth fighting.

Whether Russia might have traits of empire, whether China might seek to construct some sort of empire, whether bloodthirsty dictators like Bashar al-Assad are tied to imperial interests – all this is excluded from the conversation. Real struggles that confront the American empire, such as the Palestinians’, are welcomed; those that face other enemies, such as Ukrainians resisting Putin, or Syrians and Palestinians resisting Assad, are shunned.

What could peace negotiations look like

Andrew Murray writes:

Moving from ceasefire to a permanent peace will of course be challenging. Russia will need to accept a sovereign and independent Ukrainian state, and Ukraine will have to accept remaining outside NATO and self-determination for minorities within its borders.

The Stop the War coalition, in which Murray is a leading voice, sets out its policies in the form of calls for UK government action. So it’s fair to assume that this, too, is a call for the UK government to take a particular stance – in this case, the most pro-Russian stance possible. Going through the points in turn:

1. “Russia will need to accept a sovereign and independent Ukrainian state” is meaningless. It did so, in the Belovezha accords that dissolved the Soviet Union (1991), and the Budapest memorandum under which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons (1994). Since 2014 Russia has been pounding Ukraine militarily, in breach of those agreements. Any attempts to stop the fighting in Ukraine diplomatically would have to start by recognising that reality – which is why a peace treaty, as opposed to a ceasefire or simply “freezing” the conflict, is extremely unlikely.

2. “Ukraine will have to accept remaining outside NATO” is essentially a demand for NATO to allow Russia to decide which states join (why no objection to Finland and Sweden?!). The UK government may indeed be cynical enough to take such a position, but why should the labour movement encourage it to do so? What sort of solidarity is that with the Ukrainian population – which before 2014 was in its vast majority opposed to NATO membership, but has largely come to see it as the only security arrangement that can prevent their country being invaded again and again?  

President Zelensky in Bucha, April 2022

3. “Self-determination for minorities within its [Ukraine’s] borders.” This is a distortion of the principle of the right of nations to self-determination, historically embraced by socialists. Self-determination includes the right to secession. (It is relevant that Russia killed tens of thousands of people in Chechnya in the early 2000s, to help ensure that this right would not be exercised.)

From 2014, the extreme right in Russia called for the establishment of a new state, “Novorossiya”, in south-eastern Ukraine, effectively a demand for “self-determination” of Russian people there – but the Kremlin refused to support this. Moscow was aware that the vast majority of Russian-speaking Ukrainians neither wanted “self-determination” nor regarded themselves as Russian. The exception was Crimea, where a referendum on annexation by Russia (a strange type of “self-determination”) was held under military occupation.

Long before 2014, there had been support in eastern Ukraine for greater autonomy within the Ukrainian state, and distrust of Ukrainian nationalist politicians in Kyiv. The Kremlin did its best to whip up divisions among Ukrainians on this basis. It engaged in a long campaign of disinformation, claiming to support the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine. (I wrote about this e.g. here.) But on a diplomatic level, until 2022, the Kremlin pretended that the Russian army was not present in Ukraine, although it was, and left the status of the Luhansk and Donetsk “republics” vague. All this changed in 2022, when the Kremlin recognised the “republics” and invaded Ukraine.

In 2022, people in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhyia voted – sometimes literally looking down the barrel of a soldier’s gun, and always under the shadow of the biggest military operation in mainland Europe since world war two – on accession to the Russian federation. This is the Kremlin’s version of “self-determination for minorities within Ukraine’s borders”. The Stop the War coalition has been conspicuous in its failure to denounce this violent abomination.

Why, then, demand that the UK government raise the issue of “self-determination for minorities” in peace talks? Andrew Murray can not believe there is the least chance of them doing so. The point is to preserve the fantasy world in which “campism” lives, in which Russian imperialism, Russian assaults on democratic rights and the Kremlin’s distortion of democratic principles for its political ends do not exist.

Alexander Hill writes:

The key outcome [of peace talks] will be the separation of the Russian-dominated Donbass and Crimea from the remainder of Ukraine – something that will hopefully be the cornerstone of a lasting peace in the region.

Although Hill clearly favours a ceasefire, and the Stop the War coalition opposed the Russian invasion in 2022, that is not what is under discussion here. Hill is envisaging the outcome of peace negotiations. Why endorse the imperial power’s demands in this way? Where is the evidence that, if these demands are met, “lasting peace” will ensue? How is this in the labour movement’s interests or the interests of international solidarity?

What happened in April 2022

The idea that peace talks have been blocked solely by the western powers – rather than by Russia’s war strategy – has been repeated over and over again by the “campists” over the past two years. They claim, in particular, that a deal was on the table in Istanbul in April 2022, that Ukraine was ready to sign, but that Boris Johnson, then UK premier, visited Kyiv and persuaded president Zelensky not to do so.

This version of events was demolished by Volodymyr Artiukh and Taras Fedirko in October 2022. They showed that the single source for the claim, a report in Ukrainska Pravda, had been misinterpreted, and that a mass of evidence suggested that the talks failed due to Ukrainian and Russian political factors, and the dynamics of military operations. Commentators who focus on “a magic turning point when everything could have gone otherwise” ignore that “in Russia’s repertoire, diplomacy has consistently been subordinated to the use of force”, they wrote. I urge readers to read this thoughtful, rounded argument.

Recently, accounts of the Istanbul talks have surfaced from people who were involved: the former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, and the Ukrainian politicians Davyd Arakhamia and Oleksiy Arestovich. The “campists” have cherry-picked lines from these sources to revive their narrative.

Branko Marcetic of Jacobin claimed that an interview given in July last year by Bennett, who had been in touch with the Russian and Ukrainian governments, was a “bombshell”. Bennett said that in April 2022 there had been “a good chance of reaching a ceasefire”, and when asked “had they [who?] not curbed it”, “he replied with a nod”.

While it is unclear what that nod meant, and who “they” referred to, Bennett’s statement that the April deal was killed off by the revelation of the Russian army’s massacre of civilians at Bucha, outside Kyiv, is unequivocal. In Marcetic’s own words:

“Once that [Bucha] happened, I [Bennett] said, ‘It’s over,’” he recounts. Bennett pointed to the potential for such an atrocity to emerge and derail the political prospects for peace in Ukraine as proof of the importance of making haste on negotiations at the time. The Pravda report likewise pointed to Johnson’s visit as only one “obstacle” to peace, with the discovery of the Bucha killings the other.

Marcetic, writing in early August last year, chose not to look more widely at the circumstances in which Bennett gave his interview. Shortly beforehand, in June, the leaders of Comoros, Senegal, South Africa and other African nations had met with both Zelensky and Putin to propose peace talks. Putin had told them that one of their proposed starting-points for talks – accepting Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders – was unacceptable. (During this meeting, Putin held up what he claimed was the draft of the April agreement, although this has not been published before or since.)

A proper account of the failure of peace initiatives would mention not only the western powers, who of course influence decision-making in Kyiv (in recent months increasingly to constrain the war effort), but also Russia’s real intentions. Marcetic ignores that.

In November last year, Wojcik and Atkins sculpted another piece of evidence that Boris Johnson, and the western powers, were the obstacle to peace, from an interview with Davyd Arakhamia, one of the leaders of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party. They quoted Arakhamia reflecting on the Istanbul talks as follows:

“[The Russians] were ready to end the war if we accepted neutrality like Finland once did. And we were ready to make a commitment that we would not join NATO. When we returned from Istanbul, [then-British Prime Minister] Boris Johnson came to Kiev and said: ‘Do not sign anything with them at all; just go to war,’” Arakhamia said.

Now let’s look at what Arakhamia actually said, as reported by the Russian opposition web site, Meduza. Wojcik and Atkins have cut out a key passage, after the words “would not join NATO”. I have put it back, in bold type.

“They actually hoped until nearly the last moment that they could press us into signing this agreement, adopting neutrality. That was their biggest priority. They were willing to end the war if we took on neutrality, like Finland once did, and gave assurances that we wouldn’t join NATO. That was essentially the main point. Everything else was cosmetic and political embellishments about ‘denazification’, the Russian-speaking population, blah blah blah,” Arakhamia said.

When asked why Ukraine didn’t agree to Russia’s terms, Arakhamia was resolute:

First of all, to agree to this point, we would have to change the [Ukrainian] Constitution. Our path to NATO is written into the Constitution. Second of all, we did not and still do not trust the Russians to keep their word. This would only have been possible if we had security guarantees. We couldn’t sign something, walk away, everyone would breathe a sigh of relief, and then [Russia] would invade, only more prepared this time — because the first time they invaded, they were actually unprepared for us to resist so much. So we could only work [with them] if we were 100 percent confident that this wouldn’t happen a second time. And we don’t have that confidence.

Moreover, when we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we wouldn’t sign anything with them at all, and that we should just fight.

Oh dear! The really important part – that Ukraine needed guarantees that Russia would not once again break its word and invade – went missing!!

This reminds me of Soviet censors who, when a Communist party leader fell out of favour, would cut the unhappy has-been out of official photos. Snip snip snip.

Arakhamia’s statement, in full, suggests that, with Russia’s brutal invasion at its height, the Ukrainian side needed a more substantial security guarantee than Putin’s piece of paper.  

Of course, what Arakhamia said should be treated with scepticism, as should all statements from all politicians. But it shouldn’t have vital parts surgically removed, to make it say the opposite. All the more care is needed, given the efforts by Russian state propagandists to distort Arakhamia’s meaning.

In March this year, Benjamin and Davies cited a third source – Oleksiy Arestovich, Zelensky’s former spokesman – in support of the claim that Putin’s Istanbul deal had been negotiated and “already had the champagne corks popping in Kyiv”. Again a politician, and one whose words need to be treated with special care. Readers should read his interview themselves.

But to pretend that Arestovich’s account shows that the western powers wrecked the peace talks is deceitful. Asked if Johnson twisted Zelensky’s arm, Arestovich says:

I don’t know exactly if that is true or false. He came to Kiev but nobody knows what they spoke about except, I think, Zelensky and Boris Johnson himself. I think it was the second of April, and I was in Bucha the next day. The president got in [to Bucha] one day later. […]

Arestovich here underlined his point that: “The president was shocked about Bucha. All of us were shocked about Bucha. […] Zelensky completely changed face when he came into Bucha and saw what happened.”

My conclusion is not that news of the Bucha massacre alone changed Zelensky’s mind. My best guess is that Bucha, combined with the other brutal Russian offensive operations in progress – especially the attack on Mariupol – focused the minds of Zelensky and others on the issue of security guarantees outside of NATO. And they could not see clearly what these were.

Despite the importance attached to Bucha by Bennett, Arakhamia and Arestovich, none of the “campists” mention it – except for that one dismissive reference by Marcetic (see above). They live in a fantasy world where Russian imperialism is absent, and its crimes of no consequence.

And that is not really a problem about Ukraine, but about the deep political malaise of a section of the western “left”. There is no path to real international solidarity and effective anti-imperialism through this fantasy world. And no path to peace either. SP, 8 April 2024.

Download this article, and a linked one, as a PDF

□ A linked article: Palestine, Ukraine and the crisis of empires 

Source: Simon Pirani, “No path to peace in Ukraine through this fantasy world,” People and Nature, 8 April 2024. Reprinted here with the author’s kind permission.

Sergei Chernyshov: “It Is Impossible to Run a Normal College in an Abnormal Country”

Novocollege, a private educational institution in Novosibirsk, will close, its founder Sergey Chernyshov announced in a video posted on YouTube on Saturday, 27 April. According to him, the college and its subsidiary projects—Novoschool and Inotext Foreign Language School—will close in July 2024, immediately after the academic year is over and all paperwork has been completed.

Explaining the motives behind the decision, Chernyshov said that the college remained the only educational institution in Russia where “there had never been a single propaganda event” and where “[people] spoke openly about their attitude to what was happening.”

“I believed and still believe that my colleagues [at other colleges and schools — editor, DW] bear a huge blame for normalising the war in our country: for [holding] Important Conversations, [making students write] letters to the front, handing out [military draft] summonses, for engaging in propaganda and celebrating former murderers and rapists as heroes. None of this has ever occurred at Novocollege,” he said.

A screenshot of Novocollege’s website

“It is impossible to run a normal college in an abnormal country”

According to Chernyshov, over the past year the college has been subjected to constant inspections from various government agencies, which have made it almost impossible to keep the college running. Meanwhile, many of the college’s lecturers and students would be willing to take part in “patriotic” events in exchange for accreditation and state-issued diplomas, the former head of the institution said.

Under such conditions, Chernyshov sees only two options for Novocollege. The first is to turn it into “a typical Russian college with propaganda that is ingratiating to officials, a beautiful cover, and what they want to hear from it.” The second is to recognise that “it is impossible to run a normal college in an abnormal country.”

In June 2023, Novocollege was denied government accreditation, despite the fact that the college had scored the necessary number of points and fulfilled other formal requirements. Chernyshov himself was placed on the list of so-called foreign agents by the Justice Ministry in May of last year, after which he resigned his administrative duties at the educational institution.

Source: Jean Roffe, “Novosibirsk’s Novocollege announces closure,” Deutsche Welle, 28 April 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Sergei Chernyshov, “‘It’s impossible to run a normal college in an abnormal country’:
Novocollege is shutting down” (in Russian; no subtitles)

For a modern and free college to run well, modern and free people are a vital prerequisite.

If we now polled the students and teachers at [Novocollege] about whether they would be willing to hold Important Conversations, invite veterans of the so-called special military operation to visit, applaud the speeches of propaganda ministers, and march to patriotic songs in exchange for accreditation and government-minted diplomas, how many people would vote in favour? I am quite bitter to admit it, but I think it would be a majority.

We acknowledge that it is impossible to run a normal college in an abnormal country. Neither I nor my colleagues (many of whom have left [Russia] due to the threat of mobilisation or arrest; many of whom have had family and friends arrested or killed) can pretend that everything is normal. No, everything is not normal. Even if all our colleagues in education pretend that things are normal, I repeat: no, things are not normal.

Therefore, I am announcing that Novocollege, Novoschool, and Inotext Foreign Language School will cease operations as of July 2024, immediately after the end of the academic year, graduation, and [completion of] all paperwork.

And yet, there are unique teams of students and teachers at Novocollege who have voiced their willingness to continue working, knowing that the external pressure will only increase, that the college will increasingly not resemble the country in which it operates, and that there will most likely never be any accreditation. They are primarily at the Tomsk branch and in the distance learning department. Perhaps there will be other teachers and their students who are willing to continue to live and study with a team of free normal people—and we will help them organise their work.

Source: Sergei Chernyshov (YouTube), 27 April 2024. Annotation translated by the Russian Reader

Adios, America!

“Adios, America! Now it’s only this way (tacos). End of story.”

This ultra-patriotic gem was just beamed to me by my fellow Petersburg psychogeographer V., who found it forlornly pasted up in the former “party zone” on Dumskaya and Lomonosov streets in downtown Petersburg, a quarter which was thoroughly purged last year by the local powers that be for no good reason.

A quick scan of the QR code leads to the now-equally shuttered website El-Chapo.rf. According to the restaurant review site Restoclub, El Chapo is “closed indefinitely.” But what it must have been back in its heyday, during the first year of Russia’s glorious war against fascist Ukraine and its Western puppet masters!

Dance bar with Mexican cuisine on Lomonosov Street. El Chapo serves Mexican cuisine: quesadillas with oyster mushrooms, burritos with shredded beef and shrimp in coconut. To try the spicy chimichanga tortillas with meat, you have to sign a special contract. Here they mix cocktails based on tequila, rum and house-made tinctures. At the bar you can have your photo taken with local star Frida the Pig. El Chapo hosts DJ sets and parties, and plays Mexican rap, funk, and sometimes disco.

The once lively (and, in the early 2000s, avowedly ethnically and internationally tolerant) Dumskaya bar district is indeed now a ghost town, as witnessed by another snapshot which V. sent to me. ||| TRR

After breathing a sigh of relief, this was the first question that popped in my head:

Who are the 112 U.S. representatives who thought it was a great idea to unilaterally disarm Ukraine, an ally that is fighting for its survival against a U.S. adversary?

The list was published almost immediately.

Image

My reflection is not about these particular people in particular, but the fact that in Washington, and in capitals across Europe, a hefty number of our democratically elected representatives are brazenly siding with Russia, a totalitarian state which has the aim of not only weakening our democracies but bringing defeat to our entire system and the international rules based system. They are siding with the destruction of a sovereign state, Ukraine, and the occupation of its territory and citizens.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is in the company of Matteo Salvini (head of the League), Giuseppe Conte (former Italian PM), and so many other European politicians who may be motivated to side with Russia for a variety of reasons. It speaks to the penetration of Russian capture in some cases, or industrial and commercial interests influencing our political base. Since Russia has no ideology at the present time, I’m assuming they agree with the neo-realist worldview which would see large states eat up smaller ones by force simply because they can, throwing out the entire concept of state sovereignty.

If they have been captured and are working for a foreign adversary, there is no indication that any of them (at least in Italy) are under investigation. The only way we can rid our system of elected representatives working openly in the interests of an adversary to the detriment of our national interests is to vote them out. In Italy, that isn’t possible because even if a head of a party loses an election, he/she can still remain in their place and continue working in the interests of Russia: see Salvini and Conte.

This is why I am overjoyed that the House has belatedly passed the aid to Ukraine bill, but unspeakably frustrated with our inability to rid ourselves of people who are ready to throw our security, and Ukraine, under the bus.

Dmitri Medvedev meltdown: He’s hoping for a civil war in the U.S.

No one doubted that American lawmakers would approve “aid” to a gang of neo-Nazis. It was a vote by the joyous bastards of the state:

a) in favour of continuing the civil war of the divided people of our formerly united country;

b) for maximising the number of victims of this war.

We will win, of course, despite the 61 billion bloody dollars that will mostly go down the throats of their insatiable military-industrial complex. Strength and Truth are behind us.

But in view of this Russophobic decision, I cannot but wish with all sincerity that the United States would plunge into a new civil war as soon as possible. Which, I hope, will be cardinally different from war of the North and the South in XIX century and will be conducted with application of planes, tanks, artillery, MLRS, all kinds of missiles and other weapons. And which will finally lead to the ignominious collapse of the vile evil empire of the XXI century – the United States of America

Source: Monique Camarra, Eurofile, 21 April 2024

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev became the first Russian to get the brand new iPhone 4, which are to go on sale on Thursday.

The Russian leader received the smarthphone [sic] as a present from Apple CEO Steve Jobs during his visit to the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California.

At 9.3 mm the iPhone 4 is 25 percent thinner than its predecessors and the thinnest smartphone on the market. The gizmo also boasts a state of the art battery, with seven hours of talk time and 300 hours of standby.

According to the Russian mobile operator Beeline, the brand new device may appear on the Russian market no earlier than September.

During his visit to the Silicon Valley the Russian leader also visited the U.S. office of the Russian search engine Yandex.

The Yandex Labs center, based in Paolo Alto, California, is involved in scientific projects concerning mainly the optimization of online search technologies and other advanced research activities.

The president was accompanied by Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh and the chief technology officer of the Silicon Valley-based Yandex Labs, Arkady Borkovsky.

Source: “Medvedev becomes first iPhone 4 owner in Russia,” Sputnik, 23 June 2010

Volunteers

The St. Petersburg Natural Resources Management Committee has stopped signing up volunteers willing to carry gray toads across the road at the Sestroretsk Wetlands Wildlife Preserve. The committee was able to recruit the number of volunteers it needed in a single day.

The committee itself reported the end of the volunteer enrollment, thanking all those who had responded to the call to help the amphibians.

“Registration has been temporarily suspended, as enough volunteers have been recruited for the coming weeks,” the committee stated in its message.

Delovoi Peterburg learned that officials received an unprecedented number of calls and appeals during the day. Six hundred volunteers signed up to save the gray toads.

The largest population of gray toads in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region lives in the Sestroretsk Wetlands. Annually in early spring, they migrate en masse to the eastern shore of the Sestroretsk Reservoir to lay their eggs before returning to the forest [sic]. They cross the highway during their migration and can be hit by passing cars.

The Sestroretsk Wetlands Wildlife Reserve announced on April 8 that it was recruiting volunteers to ferry the amphibians over the road. Volunteers are allowed to carry amphibians across the highway after special training. Passersby who have not been trained are asked not to touch the toads, as improper actions can traumatize the amphibians and even cause their death.

Specialists consider toads to be particularly useful amphibians. According to scientists, toads consume about three times more pests than do frogs.

Source: “Smolny’s call to save toads in Sestroretsk causes stir among Petersburgers,” Delovoi Peterburg, 8 April 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Photo, above, courtesy of Delovoi Peterburg via vk.com/infoeco_spb.

Alexander Demidenko

Russian volunteer Alexander Demidenko, who helped Ukrainian refugees [cross the border with Russia], has died in a pretrial detention center in the Belgorod Region, report Vot Tak and iStories, citing sources. It is claimed that Demidenko died on April 5, but news of his death was made public only today, after his lawyer had informed the deceased man’s wife and son.

The cause of death has not been reported, and there have been no official comments from the authorities yet.

Alexander Demidenko had been in custody since mid-October [2023] on charges of illegal arms trafficking. According to iStories, the authorities were planning to transfer Demidenko to St. Petersburg, where he was to have been charged with more serious crimes.

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the 61-year-old Demidenko had attended anti-war pickets and helped Ukrainian refugees return to their homeland, driving them to the border and hosting them at his home. As many as 900 people who needed a place to sleep stayed in his home, as the border checkpoint was often closed due to shelling, Mediazona writes.

Demidenko disappeared at the Kolotilovka border checkpoint in the Belgorod Region on 17 October [2023]. According to volunteers, he had driven an elderly woman to the checkpoint, but in the parking lot he was stopped by two members of the the territorial defense forces. Subsequently, communication with Demidenko was lost.

Three days later, police officers brought Demidenko home and conducted a search, during which they allegedly found a grenade and detonator fuses from the 1940s. There were numerous bruises on Demidenko’s body.

On 20 October, Alexander Demidenko was jailed for ten days on administrative charges of drinking alcoholic beverages. He was released on 31 October, but the next day he was detained again and jailed for thirty days. During the second administrative arrest, he was arraigned on charges of illegal weapons trafficking and remanded in custody in the pretrial detention center.

In November, it was reported that Demidenko had also been charged with high treason. His lawyer, however, denied these reports. The volunteer’s stay at the pretrial detention center was extended several times on the original weapons charges.

Source: “Volunteer Demidenko, who helped Ukrainians, dies in pretrial detention center,” Radio Svoboda, 8 April 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Photo of Mr. Demidenko, above, courtesy of Radio Svoboda, via social media.

The War on Terror

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Degenerate Art

The FSB has opened a criminal case on charges of “high treason” against artist and former Mediazona publisher Pyotr Verzilov. The details of the case are not yet known, but as part of their investigation, law enforcers raided the homes of a number of artists and activists across Russia. Many of those whom the law enforcers raided are not personally acquainted with Verzilov.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, people identifying themselves as FSB officers searched the home of Petersburg artist Katrin Nenasheva and her girlfriend Natasha Chetverio. Nenasheva was taken away for questioning, while Chetverio was released, but both had their electronic devices confiscated. The homes of artist Sasha Blot, Party of the Dead activist Kristina Bubentsova, illustrator Vladlena Milkina, and architect Alexandra Kachko were also searched in St. Petersburg.

Law enforcers simultaneously raided the apartments of Verzilov’s mother Yelena, members of the art group Yav, actionist Anastasia Mikhailova (an associate of the artist Pavel Krisevich), and Pussy Riot members Rita Flores, Olga Pakhtusova, and Olga Kuracheva. The latter two were involved in the action “The Policemen Enters the Game”: along with Verzilov, they ran out onto the field of a Moscow stadium during a World Cup match there.

In Moscow, a female acquaintance of the artist Philippenzo (who is now in exile) was taken from her flat. The Yekaterinburg artist Ilya Mozgi and the Ulyanovsk artist Ilya Kholtov were both taken away for questioning after their homes were searched. Nizhny Novgorod artists Artem Filatov and Andrei Olenev were questioned. Samara artist Denis Mustafin’s home was searched. Although he was not at home, his mother’s computer was confiscated.

Some of these have already been released from interrogation (Nenasheva and Kholtov, for example), while others are still being questioned. It is known that most of them have now been designated as “witnesses” in the case against Verzilov. Many of them were asked about their connection to Verzilov: many did not know him personally and had never had much contact with him. Kristina Gorlanova, the former director of the Urals branch of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, located in Ekaterinburg, whose home was also searched, said that she had “heard nothing” about the “artist” who occasioned the search.

It is still unclear what gave rise to the criminal case. Under new legislation, however, switching to the enemy’s side during a war can be considered “state treason” can be considered as switching to the enemy’s side during a war. In an interview with Yuri Dud last year, Verzilov admitted that he had originally traveled to Ukraine as a documentary filmmaker, but now he was at the front “as a military man.”

“Verzilov: Inside [the] War,” vDud, 5 October 2023. In Russian, with English subtitles

Many of the artists whose homes were raided may never have been involved in Verzilov’s activities, but they themselves have produced works about current events in Russia and Ukraine. We wrote last year about the works of Yav and Philippenzo. Mustafin was fined for flying a a Russian flag inscribed with the phrase “Today is not my day” outside the Ministry of Defense in Moscow on 12 June 2022. Milkina made a public art piece about “people who are scared” on a Petersburg square and T-shirts with the word “Peace” on them.

Source: “Law enforcers raid homes of artists and actionists on eve of elections,” WTF? newsletter (Mediazona), 12 March 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Petersburg artists find ways to get their messages across even amidst strict censorship. They mount underground apartment exhibitions, “tiny pickets” on city streets, and exhibitions and performances in the woods. It all smacks of the Soviet guerrilla art and actionism from which the international stars of post-Soviet conceptualism later emerged.

Bumaga explores how street art shows have gained popularity in Russia, how guerrilla art has changed in recent decades, and how today’s actionists resemble the organizers of the notorious Bulldozer Exhibition.

“I’m for peace!” Photo: Tiny Picket (Instagram)

Street exhibitions have been around since the 1960s. One of the first such projects was dubbed “the Soviet Woodstock”

Guerrilla street exhibitions in Russia date back to the so-called unofficial art scene of the 1960s and 1970s. Pursuing the idea of coupling art and ideology, the authorities forced undesirable artists out of public art life.

In 1962, Nikita Khrushchev cracked down on the exhibition 30 Years of the Moscow Union of Artists, at the Moscow Manege. The Soviet premier wanted to expel all of its participants from the CPSU and the Union of Artists, although almost none of them were Party or Union members. Artists and connoisseurs reacted to political censorship in the USSR by forming an artistic underground, meaning that the most progressive art was exhibited at apartment exhibitions and in salons.

The 1970s witnessed open confrontation between the art and the world authorities. The most flamboyant members of the artistic underground were the Lianozovo school, who gathered and held exhibitions in a barrack in Moscow’s Lianozovo neighborhood. The leader of the group, Oscar Rabin, organized one of the most infamous guerrilla street exhibitions in the history of Russian art, which later became known as the Bulldozer Exhibition. On 15 September 1974, the artists staged a show of paintings in a vacant lot in Moscow’s Belyayevo Forest. The authorities sicked police on the participants and attendees and destroyed the show with bulldozers.

This crackdown on artistic expression triggered an international uproar, and the Soviet authorities made concessions. Two weeks later, the artists were allowed to hold an officially sanctioned exhibition featuring an expanded list of participants in Moscow’s Izmailovo Park.

This time the police were tolerant towards the artists and their guests: no one was detained. The exhibition lasted for several hours and, thanks to the beautiful weather, it turned into a big picnic. Western journalists dubbed the event “the Soviet Woodstock.”

Soviet unofficial artists continued this tradition, and one art group published 14 volumes documenting their activities

However, the underground’s victory at the Bulldozer Exhibition was not unequivocal. Unofficial art continued to defend its right to exist at an exhibition in the Beekeeping Pavilion at VDNKh (February 1975), at the Preliminary Apartment Previews for the All-Union Exhibition (spring 1975), and at an exhibition in the House of Culture Pavilion at VDNKh (September 1975).

These exhibitions were sanctioned, but the authorities still created a number of organizational obstacles for the artists. For example, only those artists who had a Moscow residence permit were allowed to show their work at the House of Culture. In addition, the authorities made the condition in which the artists worked unbearable: during the mounting of the show, the temperature in the pavilion topped forty degrees Celsius. Thirty-eight works were banned by the censorship commission. It is not known how many works were exhibited, ultimately, but a total of 145 artists participated in the show.

After the scandals provoked by the “unofficial” artists’ public appearances, the authorities began pursuing a policy of legalizing alternative art. In May 1976, the Painting Section of the Graphic Artists Committee was established, primarily to monitor and control the ideologically dangerous underground.

We should keep in mind that we do not have information about every single Soviet-era guerrilla exhibition. Many were held without leaving any trace in contemporary newspapers and other documents.

Collective Actions, a group led by Andrei Monastyrsky, did a huge amount of work in this sense. The artists compiled fourteen volumes documenting their Trips to the Countryside — actions during which various events took place in particular landscapes, including installations, performances, and minimalist interventions in nature. By going outdoors, the artists showed that art could be implicated in the space outside galleries and museums. Another important feature of the performances was the inclusion of viewers in the works: their participation and reactions were part and parcel of the conceptual actions. The way the actions were staged encouraged the spectators to focus on the processes of anticipating and comprehending the happenings. That is, the spectacle itself was an occasion for reflection, a statement meant to spark a dialogue.

In [1977], for example, Collective Actions simply hung a red banner between trees in the woods. The banner read: “I HAVE NO COMPLAINTS AND I LIKE EVERYTHING, ALTHOUGH I’VE NEVER BEEN HERE AND KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THESE PARTS.”

Collective Actions, Slogan (1977). Photo courtesy of New East Digital Archive via Bumaga

Guerrilla exhibitions are still organized nowadays, many of them dedicated to political prisoners

As a rule, guerrilla exhibitions and actions have a political agenda, so their organizers can be punished quite severely, even by Russian standards.

Nevertheless, there is activity in this field. For example, on 5 August 2023, Petersburg activists mounted an open-air exhibition on the Sestroretsk Ecotrail on the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Sandarmokh [sic], a tract in the forests of Karelia where victims of the Great Terror were shot and buried in mass graves. Fifty works hung in the open air for a record time — almost an entire day.

Placards in support of Tyumen Case defendant Kirill Brik (left) and the release of political prisoners (right) at 2023 guerrilla exhibition in suburban Petersburg. Photos courtesy of 123ru.net via Bumaga

Several placards were also hung in the woods outside Petersburg this winter — for example, on December 10, Human Rights Day, the work I Dissent, Therefore I Am. And in January, an installation featuring a quotation from the Bulat Okudzhava song “Hope’s Little Band” was mounted outside the city.

“…and wandering amongst people / is hope’s little band, / conducted by love.” Photo: Bumaga reader
“What can I do? What would it change? Who would care? Who would help me? What do I see when I look around? What do I mean?” Part of the installation I Dissent, Therefore I Am. Photo: a Bumaga reader

In 2022, Petersburg hosted Carte Blanche, an international guerrilla street art festival. In addition to street works, a stationary exhibition at the abandoned Sailors Palace of Culture on Vindavskaya Street attracted great attention; it featured over twenty artists, including Vladimir Abikh, Maxim Ima, and Slava PTRK. That same autumn, Petersburg hosted the underground exhibition Continuity, dedicated to political prisoners of the past and present, including the victims of the Great Terror and those caught up in the Network Case. Some of the works were made by political prisoners themselves using improvised means and materials while they were incarcerated in pretrial detention centers and penal colonies.

Contemporary street exhibitions continue the Soviet tradition, but the state’s reaction to them has become tougher

Today’s guerrilla exhibitions in many ways are a continuation of the Soviet and post-Soviet tradition. The Bulldozer Exhibition can hardly be called an artistic event also. It was also a political event. It was a challenge to a repressive regime, “the first and most significant collective performance,” as art historian Yevgeny Barabanov wrote.

Since 2022, such exhibitions also have not only aesthetic but also political goals. Although in the Soviet and post-Soviet years, “unofficial” exhibitions, albeit with certain restrictions, could be legitimated [sic], since 2022, the state does not even attempt to compromise with artists.

Moreover, crackdowns against artists who voice alternative opinions have reached a new level. In 1991, the Moscow actionist Anatoly Osmolovsky and his group E.T.I. used their bodies to spell an indecent word for the phallus [khui] on Red Square. After the action, Osmolovsky was detained and threatened with charges of “malicious disorderly conduct.” However, thanks to the petitions submitted to the authorities by his art world colleagues and the Memorial Society, Osmolovsky was soon released.

Nowadays, petitions and statements of support are not enough to get artists acquitted. Sasha Skochilenko was sentenced to seven years in prison on charges of disseminating “fake news” about the Russian army. The young woman replaced price tags at a Perekrestok chain grocery store with anti-war messages.

Source: “Placards in the woods and art shows in flats: how this differs from Soviet guerrilla art,” Bumaga, 12 March 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Time of Heroes

In his state of the nation speech, President Vladimir Putin announced the launch of the national project “Time of Heroes” for veterans and current participants of the special operation by Russian troops in Ukraine.

Статья на медиа «Просто работа»
Photo: Pixabay courtesy of Rabota.ru

Servicemen with university degrees, managerial experience, and no criminal records can apply to the personnel program. The head of state called such people the country’s “true elite” and argued that they should “lead regions, enterprises, and the largest public projects.”

The program will kick off on March 1. Veterans will be trained per the standards of the School of Governors and the Leaders of Russia competition, and ministers and heads of enterprises will act as their mentors.

Currently, all participants of the special military operation also enjoy priority hiring, and their employers also receive benefits.

Source: Andrei Gorelikov, “SMO veterans will participate in the ‘Time of Heroes’ personnel programme: According to the President, they should take up ‘elite’ positions,” Just Work (Rabota.ru), 29 February 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

News from the territories occupied by Russia:  

Ukrainian journalist and former editor abducted from Russian-occupied Henichesk  (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 8th)

Russia sentences Ukrainian marine to 20 years for defending Mariupol  (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 8th)

‘It wasn’t like this before Russia came’ The state of healthcare in Ukraine’s occupied territories after two years of war (Meduza, March 7th)

‘When I was evacuated, I only had a pair of trousers, shoes, a jacket and my documents’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 6th)

Another wave of searches and detentions of Crimean Tatars (Crimea SOS and others, 6 March)

Crimean Solidarity journalist and activists arrested, their families terrorized, in new Russian offensive against Crimean Tatars  (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 6th)

Ominous denials a month after Crimean Tatar father abducted by Russian FSB  (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 6th)

Russia’s abuses against civilians in the occupied territories of Ukraine: event during the UN Human Rights Council  (Zmina, March 6th)

Absence of law and international control (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 6th)

UN records 104 cases of pro-Ukrainian Crimeans abducted in past 10 years  (Ukrainska Pravda, March 5th)

Reshat Ametov and 10 years of Russia’s systematic torture, abductions and killings of civilians for supporting Ukraine  (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 4th)

Russia passes huge conveyor belt sentences against Ukrainians tortured for propaganda videos (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 4th)

All’s fair in art and war: Russia’s plunder of Ukrainian museums (The Insider, February 29th)

Source: News from Ukraine Bulletin no. 88, 11 March 2024

Don’t Stomp on the Ants, Sweetheart

KING CITY, Calif. — A group of men in masks opened fire at an outdoor party in central California, killing four people and injuring three others Sunday evening, police said.

Police responded to a reported shooting around 6 p.m. in King City and found three men with gunshot wounds who were pronounced dead in a front yard, the King City Police Department said in a statement.

Four other people sustained gunshot wounds, including a woman who died after being transported to Mee Memorial Hospital in King City, about 106 miles (170 kilometers) south of San Jose.

The three injured men were transported to Natividad Hospital in Salinas, police said.

Several people were at the party outside a residence when three men with dark masks and clothes got out of a silver car and fired at the group. The suspects, who were not immediately identified, then fled the scene in the car.

The investigation is ongoing, police said.

On Monday French lawmakers will vote on whether to enshrine in the country’s constitution a “guarantee” of women’s “freedom” to have an abortion. They will meet at a joint session of the lower and upper houses of parliament in Versailles, a rarely convened body known as the Congress. A constitutional revision requires three-fifths of the votes. 

Such cross-party support is widely expected. Last Wednesday the French senate, which is controlled by the opposition centre-right, voted overwhelmingly in favour of the bill. The revision also enjoys backing from the governing centre and the opposition left. Emmanuel Macron, the president, wants women’s freedom to have an abortion to be made “irreversible”. French politicians of all stripes have worried about the potential for a future rolling-back of such guarantees—especially since America’s [sic] Supreme Court overturned the ruling that protected abortion rights there in 2022.

Sources: Spanishdict.com daily newsletter, 4 March 2024; Monterey Herald, 4 March 2024; Time, 4 March 2024; The Economist daily newsletter, 4 March 2024; the YouTube channels of The Insider (“Navalny’s Last Rally”) and Novaya Gazeta (“The Most Emotional Statements of People Who Came to Say Goodbye to Alexei Navalny”), with thanks to Tiina Pasanen; Andrei Bok (Facebook), 2 March 2024; Duolingo; random internet stock image.

Vyacheslav Luthor: A “Wallflower” Sentenced to Ten Years in Prison for “High Treason”

Vyacheslav Luthor, as seen in his online CV at Careerist.ru

The Second Western District Military Court in Moscow sentenced Vyacheslav Luthor, a bank clerk from St. Petersburg, to ten years in prison after finding him guilty of charges of high treason, secret collaboration with the representative of a foreign power, and involvement in a terrorist organisation, over his alleged attempt to join the [pro-Ukrainian] Free Russia Legion. Despite the fact that the courts usually hear such cases in closed chambers, our correspondent was able to attend one of the hearings. Thus, it transpired that last summer Luthor had been contacted by a recruiter who promised him a new job, a high salary, and assistance moving abroad.

Born and raised in Krasnoyarsk, Vyacheslav Luthor is thirty-three years old. According to his CV, he graduated from the local affiliate of the Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics and Informatics (MESI) in 2014, before working as an accountant in the local state statistics bureau and as a manager in real estate and trading companies. After moving to Petersburg, he took a job at Bank Saint Petersburg, which is also listed as Luthor’s place of work on his hidden VKontakte page.

The case against the bank clerk came to light last summer. On 29 July 2023, Mediazona found a record of his arrest on the website of Moscow’s Lefortovo District Court. At that time the charges of high treason and involvement in a terrorist organisation were listed there. Apparently, the charges were updated during the investigation, and so the Second Western District Military Court was asked to try Luthor on three charges: attempted high treason, confidential cooperation with the representative of a foreign power, and involvement in a terrorist organisation.

Previously, “high treason,” as defined by Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code, was rarely charged, but after the outbreak of the full-scale war, involvement in combat on the Ukrainian side (or an attempts to go there to fight) and donations to the Armed Forces of Ukraine were equated with “high treason.” Also, a new article on “confidential collaboration” with foreigners—Article 275.1—was inserted into the Criminal Code.

2023 was a banner year in Russia for charges of “high treason,” according to Mediazona.

Last year, as Mediazona has discovered, at least 107 people were accused of high treason (Article 275), espionage (Article 276), or collaboration with foreign powers or organisations (Article 275.1). Many such cases are classified, so the actual number of people charged with these crimes may be higher.

The human rights project Department One wrote that sixty-three high treason cases and seven cases of collaborating with foreigneers were submitted to lower trial courts. Verdicts have already been handed down in thirty-seven cases. All of them were guilty verdicts.

Unlike the high treason cases of previous years, which were mainly transferred to Moscow, courts in the regions began hearing these cases in 2023, human rights activists note. According to our calculations, more than seventy percent of such cases are now being heard outside Moscow, in the places where the crimes were allegedly committed, but the arrests and indictments are usually made in the capital.

This is what happened to Vyacheslav Luthor. Before he was placed in a pretrial detention centre, he had been jailed twice on administrative charges: on 11 July 2023, for minor disorderly conduct (Luthor was accused of “using foul language, shouting loudly, and waving his hands” at the airport) and on 14 July 2023, for disobeying police officers (Lutor was jailed for fifteen days for allegedly refusing to show his passport to law enforcers). He was to be released from the special detention centre on the day he was sent to the pretrial detention centre on the criminal charges.

“He asked me to keep my fingers crossed for him”: the testimony of coworkers

The Second Western District Military Court began hearing the case against Vyacheslav Luthor on 5 February. The state’s case was made by prosecutors Igor Potapov and Dmitry Nadysyev.

Trials on charges of treason are held in closed chambers and members of the public are not allowed to attend them, but our correspondent was able to get inside the courtroom at the only open hearing. That day, the court questioned the prosecution witnesses’s from Petersburg via video conference, and it was from these interrogations of Luthor’s former colleagues that it transpired that the bank clerk was accused of having ties with the Free Russia Legion and attempting to leave the country to fight on the Ukrainian side. Luthor himself has denied his guilt.

Luthor’s boss described her attitude to her former employee as “neutral.” She said that last summer Luthor had asked for time off from 10 July to 19 July in order to fly to his hometown of Krasnoyarsk to deal with “family problems.” According to the investigation, Luthor had probably planned to leave Russia on these dates.

Responding to a question from Prosecutor Nadysyev, the defendant’s former supervisor said that she had never spoken to Luthor about politics or the war in Ukraine.

“Tell me, did Luthor ever come to work dressed in military-style clothing?” the prosecutor asked.

The supervisor replied that he came to the bank in regular clothes — a shirt and trousers. When asked by defence lawyer Yulia Kuznetsova whether Luthor had talked about the Free Russia Legion and his desire to leave to fight in Ukraine, she also answered in the negative.

“I didn’t know what this organisation was doing and didn’t pay much attention to it,” the witness said.

“Did Vyacheslav Alexandrovich inform you that he was going to be involved in combat?” the defence counsel clarified.

“No,” the witness replied, and then she added that the word “legion” made her suspicious, as it could be associated with military action.

A female colleague of the defendant said that Luthor had asked her to come with him, but she had turned him down. The woman noted that she had advised him to refrain from the trip, although she did not completely believe that he would dare to go, as she regarded Luthor as a “wallflower.” The prosecutors then petitioned the court to have the testimony given by the same witness during the investigation read aloud due to “significant discrepancies.” The defence counsel objected. Luthor himself, a large man with short hair and dressed in a warm jacket, supported all of his defence lawyer’s motions and answered the court’s questions briefly.

The court granted the prosecutors’ testimony. In her [original] testimony to investigators, the witness had described her correspondence with Luthor in more detail. In it, he said that he had been contacted by a representative of the Free Russia Legion, who had offered him a high salary, and explained his offer to her to go with him by the fact that the recruiter needed two people. In addition, Luthor had specified to her that he would be working in the “frontline zone.” Then he asked if she had acquaintances at the Almaz-Antey military plant [he probably had in mind the company’s Obukhov Plant in St. Petersburg], and afterwards advised her to stay away from it. Luthor himself confirmed in court that he had written this to the witness.

Another colleague of Luthor’s who was questioned in court could not remember what exactly he wrote to her, apart from the fact that he had been invited to work for the Free Russia Legion. Consequently, her [original] testimony during the investigation was also read out in court. When questioned, she had said that in late June 2023, Luthor wrote to her that while he was on sick leave, he had been contacted by “a certain organisation” that offered him a job in Poland. He later clarified that his contact in the “legion” told him that he needed to leave Russia, where a “civil war was about to kick off.” He explained that he was being “actively recruited” and had been asked to “go work in reconnaissance.”

On 5 July, he asked her to “keep [her] fingers crossed for him so that he comes back safe and sound.” The witness said that she “disliked” Luthor. She did not take what he said seriously, thinking he was making things up. Luthor once again confirmed that he had sent the messages.

Human rights activists from Department One have written that people accused of high treason are often “provoked” by Russian law enforcers themselves.

“FSB officers and field agents find those who are subscribed to the Legion’s social media channels (not only the real ones, but also fake ones), and [ask them to] send them messages via bot or fill out a questionnaire to join.”

The provocateurs then introduce themselves as members of the Free Russia Legion, the Russian Volunteer Corps, or the SBU [Security Service of Ukraine], and ask the victim to do something: to take pictures of a military recruitment centre or an FSB building, to paste up [anti-war] leaflets, to set fire to a military recruitment centre or buy equipment, and then to fly to Turkey via a particular airport.

“The FSB denies they are involved in these provocations,” wrote Department One. “The[ir] official position in the courts is that it was allegedly done by the Ukrainian special services.”

The human rights activists also noted that the provocateurs sometimes write even to random people who have not voiced their opinions about the war on social networks. They “initiate friendly chats, introduce themselves as people who work on behalf of Ukraine, and ask [their correspondents] to do something.”

“He was constantly being provoked”: the mother’s testimony

“I’m alarmed — I haven’t seen my son for eight months,” was the first thing the defendant’s mother said when the judge asked how she was feeling.

Luthor’s mother, an energetic red-haired woman, had flown to Moscow from Krasnoyarsk to testify in the first hearing. In court, despite the fact that she had a hard time hearing the questions posed to her, she described Luthor’s childhood and their home life in detail. Even the prosecutor’s provocative question about her attitude to the “special operation” did not trip her up. Clearly understanding where Prosecutor Potapov was going, she said that she and her son considered what had occurred inevitable, but both of them were in favour of a peaceful end to the conflict between the two countries.

“What is your relationship with your son like?” the judge asked.

“It’s very good,” the woman assured him.

According to Luthor’s mother, her son has “a total aversion to violence, so there were problems with that at school.”

“He was constantly being provoked, and he asked his father to help him with it, but [he] has a father who believed that he had to defend himself,” the witness said.

According to his mother, Luthor did not serve in the army due to illnesses, and was not interested in military affairs or martial arts.

“We tried to send him to wrestling as a child, but after two classes he was kicked out for skipping. He just can’t hit [another] human being,” she said.

“My son never wanted to fight, he was afraid of it. He dreamed of travelling around the country and the world, even buying a trailer and driving it,” the witness said.

She said her son has hypertension, “a high degree of vascular and cardiac complications,” a stomach ulcer, and occasional panic attacks. Both she and Luthor’s father had medical conditions “galore”: [the father] had his knee joint replaced with an implant and was scheduled to have the other one replaced soon, but due to his small pension he still had to work despite his aching knees.

“He’s very nice,” the witness continued her account of her son. “He and I are close, and in terms of our views as well. He and I are not of this century: we are very trusting. He couldn’t pass a single beggar by.”

She added that Luthor had been afraid of [the military] mobilisation, although “there were no grounds [for this fear],” and he was not against leaving [Russia] if he had the opportunity.

She said that around the beginning of July he had stopped answering her calls, although they usually contacted each other every day. The mother went to the police and was told that Luthor had been detained for using foul language at the airport, although, according to her, Luthor did not swear as a matter of principle.

The witness said that her son liked his job at the bank and was very fond of Petersburg, where he had gone on her advice. She said that she did not know about his plans to travel abroad and that she was even going to visit him in August.

The prosecutor’s questions made it clear that at some point Luthor had asked his parents to help him pay off a debt.

“Tell me, what was the story when fraudsters allegedly stole money from your son’s [bank] card and you had to sell your property to cover the debts?” asked the prosecutor.

“‘Property’ is too strong a word, but we had to [sell] part of it. It was at MTS Bank,” Luthor’s mother replied. “We sold the garage and just part of that sum—”

“Well, what was the amount? Was it large?” asked the judge, interrupting her.

“Approximately two hundred [thousand rubles],” she replied.

“And did you discourage your son from filing a law suit or going to law enforcement [to tell them] a fraud had been committed?” the judge asked.

“Well, yes, I said it was useless,” she replied.

After the judge sighed heavily, the witness repeated that they were very gullible and she herself had fallen victim to fraudsters.

“Did you contact law enforcement?”

“Yes. They managed to recover part [of the money].”

“You see,” added the prosecutor.

“The rest is being earned back by my husband,” the witness said in conclusion. She was dismissed from the stand, and the journalists were asked to leave the courtroom.

Luthor’s trial took only five hearings, four of which were held in closed chambers. On 28 February, the prosecution asked the court to sentence Luthor to fifteen years in a high-security penal colony. The very same day, the court handed down the sentence: ten years of imprisonment, of which Luthor will spend the first two years in a closed prison, serving out the remaining eight years in a high-security penal colony.

Source: Anna Pavlova, “10 years for correspondence: how attempting to join the Ukrainian armed forces is prosecuted as high treason—the case of a bank clerk from St. Petersburg,” Mediazona, 28 February 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Defenders of the Fatherland Day

Hi! This is Sasha from Just Work. We ‘re looking forward to the long Defenders of the Fatherland Day weekend. On this holiday, I would like to remind you that not only men, but also women can be defenders. Not only soldiers, but also firefighters, rescuers, doctors, and programmers — all those who help people in their daily lives and protect them from any even the most unusual threats.

Remember, delivery people were the heroes in 2020. They helped us during the quarantine, delivering food when going to the shop was not so easy. Delivery people were the real defenders during covid. You can’t argue with that.

Come talk to us on Telegram channel Workish about work, life and stuff. We’re always there.

“Putin identified the number of unemployed — And spoke about labour migration”

Source: Just Work (Rabota.ru) newsletter, 23 February 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader