Category: zeitgeist

In Plain Sight

Accused terrorist Shamsidin Fariduni, with bruising on his face, inside a Moscow courtroom.
Photo: Yulia Morozova/Reuters via the New York Times

It seems that one of the consequences of this tragedy [i.e., the terrorist attack on the concert hall in suburban Moscow] has been the legalization, or legitimization, of torture. Torture existed before, but it was concealed and formally condemned. Now torture is openly praised and flaunted, and state institutions, including courts, do not react in any way. Another step towards fascization.

Source: Sergey Abashin (Facebook), 25 March 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Warning: this newsletter contains numerous descriptions of violence and torture.

People are tortured every day in Russia. For a long time we have been hearing about torture in penal colonies and police departments from victims and human rights activists. Mops and electric shockers have been mentioned in reports in the independent media and in the accounts of people who were subjected to violence, but the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) and the police themselves have usually denied the accusations. Even in today’s Russia, however, the courts have periodically tried to imprison law enforcers who have tortured people, such as those implicated in the Karelian penal colony case, the Yaroslavl case, and the Saratov prison hospital case.

The terrorist attack in suburban Moscow has changed everything.

On 22 March, gunmen killed at least 137 people at the Crocus City Hall concert venue outside Moscow. They set fire to the building and left before the police arrived. Law enforcers have already detained suspects, and the Z bloggers have been salivating over the photos and videos of their abuse at the hands of the authorities. Never before have we had such flagrant acknowledgement of torture.

“The law enforcers have often covered their tracks by sweeping stories of torture under the rug, and we were told that there was no torture, that the reports were nonsense,” Sergei Babinets, head of the Crew Against Torture, said in an interview with Mediazona. “But since yesterday it seems as if there is a path to making torture a little more public.”

Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev (whom propagandist Margarita Simonyan dubbed the “ringleader” of the terrorists) was brought to his arraignment hearing with bruises on his face and remnants of a bag around his neck. He had no bruises at the time of his arrest, and the bag could have been used by law enforcers to strangle Mirzoyev. When the judge announced the pretrial restraint measures (Mirzoyev was remanded in custody to a pretrial detention center) Mirzoyev could not stand up. Instead, he leaned against the wall of the “fish tank” in the courtroom.

Saidakrami Murodali Rachabalizoda was brought to the hearing with his head bandaged. A law enforcer had cut off his ear when he was detained and tried to make him eat it. Neo-Nazi Yevgeny “TopaZ” Rasskazov of the nationalist subversive group Rusich announced an auction for the knife that was allegedly used to cut off Rachabalizoda’s ear.

The third detainee, Shamsidin Fariduni, was also apparently tortured. Telegram channels associated with law enforcement circulated a photo of Fariduni lying on the ground with his pants pulled down and law enforcement officers standing over him. There are wires from a field telephone attached to his groin. Such wires are used to electrocute detainees. (They have been used, for example, on detained Ukrainians in the occupied territories.) And someone is also stepping on Fariduni with a foot shod in an army tactical boot. Fariduni arrived in court with a swollen and beaten face.

Muhammadsobir Faizov. Photo: Alexandra Astakhova/Mediazona

Finally, the fourth detainee, Muhammadsobir Faizov, came to the court from the intensive care unit in a wheelchair. He could barely speak, and was hooked up to a catheter and a urinal. One of his eyes was injured. For the duration of the hearing, his doctors—two women in ambulance corps uniforms who had arrived with Faizov—were asked to leave the courtroom.

Why is this happening? Sergei Babinets argues that law enforcers could have been affected by the absence of major terrorist attacks in recent years.

“Many people were simply not ready for it—not ready emotionally, not ready psychologically, not ready on various fronts. And people may have started to lose their nerve due to this. That’s why there have been calls to reinstate the death penalty, to locate all the guilty parties and execute them, for example,” he said.

Аccording to Babinеts, Russian aggression in Ukraine has also played a role.

“The normalization of violence may have aggravated the situation with torture. We can see that law enforcement officers are really starting to let themselves go more,” he said.

Babinets adds, however, that there is no point to this violence.

“Torture most often leads to the torturer obtaining the information he wanted to obtain initially,” he said. “If they want a person to confess that they had been working, for example, for the Ukrainian army, they can be tortured until they confess. It is impossible to effectively investigate crimes in this way.”

Source: “Torture has gone public,” WTF? newsletter (Mediazona), 25 March 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

It’s more than two decades since I read the late Stanley Cohen’s ground-breaking States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering (2001). In the introduction, Cohen recalls his own experiences growing up in apartheid South Africa, when he asked himself why his own outrage at the injustice he observed all around was not reflected in the society around him:

Why did others, even those raised in similar families, school and neighbourhoods, who read the same papers, walked the same streets, apparently not “see” what we saw. Could they be living in another perceptual universe — where the horrors of apartheid were invisible and the physical presence of black people often slipped from awareness? Or perhaps they saw exactly what we saw, but just didn’t care or didn’t see anything wrong.

Cohen went on to become a sociologist and a lifelong human rights activist. States of Denial was a valiant attempt to bring his discipline to bear on the subject of why people become become ‘everyday bystanders’ of atrocities who ‘block out, shut off or repress’ troubling or disturbing information to the point when they ‘react as if they do not know what they know.’

Some of these observations related to Israel, where Cohen moved in 1980. A Zionist in his youth, Cohen opposed the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and became a strong critic of Israeli repression of the Palestinians. In his book, he describes his work with the Israeli human rights group B’Ttselem on the torture of Palestinian detainees and the obstacles it encountered:

Our evidence of the routine use of violent and illegal methods of interrogation was to be confirmed by numerous other sources. But we were immediately thrown into the politics of denial. The official and mainstream response was venomous: outright denial (it doesn’t happen); discrediting (the organization was biased, manipulated or gullible); renaming (yes, something does happen, but it is not torture); and justification (anyway ‘it’ was morally justified). Liberals were uneasy and concerned. Yet there was no outrage.

Cohen returned to the UK in 1996, and died in 2013, but were he alive today, I suspect he would have recognized the ongoing devastation of Gaza as a textbook example of the ‘politics of denial’. According to the latest figures from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the IDF has killed more than 31,988 people, most of whom are women and children, with another 7,000 buried in the rubble, and wounded 74,188. To put these figures in perspective, this February civilian casualties in Ukraine were estimated at 10,582 dead and 19,875 injured since the Russian invasion began on 24 February 2022.

So in just under six months, Israel has killed more civilians in Gaza than Russia has killed in two years. It has destroyed or damaged more than 60 percent of Gaza’s housing stock, 3 churches, 224 mosques, 155 health centres, 126 ambulances. Nearly 2.3 million Palestinians have been displaced, and 1.1 million people are facing ‘catastrophic levels of food insecurity,’ which threatens to become a famine.

All this has been done with the indirect support or direct collusion of the United States government, the European Union, and the British government. Despite the outpouring of rage and horror on the streets of so many cities across the world, liberal democracies that claim to uphold an international order based on human rights and universal moral norms have ‘known and not known’ what has been taking place in front of their eyes.

Many of these governments once railed against ‘dictators killing their own people’, and used atrocities and human rights abuses as a moral lubricant for liberal ‘interventions’ and ‘ humanitarian’ wars to prevent ‘massacres’ and ‘bloodbaths.’ Apart from a few tepid words of condemnation, when the obscenity of what is unfolding became too much to ignore, these same governments have enabled Israel to inflict incredible carnage on a mostly unarmed and defenceless population.

None of is taking place in secret. In February, Amnesty claimed that ‘Fresh evidence of deadly unlawful attacks in the occupied Gaza Strip…demonstrates how Israeli forces continue to flout international humanitarian law, obliterating entire families with total impunity.’ Israeli soldiers routinely post tweets and TikTok videos of themselves gleefully blowing up Palestinian homes, wearing Palestinian lingerie and women’s dresses, humiliating Palestinian prisoners made to strip down to their underwear, and generally exulting in the destruction.

[…]

Source: Matt Carr, “In Plain Sight: Atrocity Denialism and the Destruction of Gaza,” Matt Carr’s Infernal Machine, 26 March 2024

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

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

Mark Teeter: A Day of Sadness Past Any Telling of It

I never met Alexei Navalny, although we have (or had) a number of mutual friends, as you’d expect. And while his death was not a surprise — this regime had tried to kill him before, but he survived, literally miraculously — it was still a shock when news of it came yesterday morning.

You may have heard AN referred to as “Russia’s Nelson Mandela.” Commentators here have also been invoking Martin Luther King and several other Americans (on a list to which I would add RFK) in an effort to give U.S. listeners/readers a sense of how this loss may affect several generations of Russians.

What those comparisons cannot convey is how much the shock and loss register on a personal level. I am sure that millions of Russians today feel as though they’ve lost a family member — for some immediate, for others more distant — but in any case a relative, someone who was “one of ours” …and who they can’t quite believe is really gone, never to show up again at their homes, at a peace rally or in some live link on their laptops/phones/etc. And doubtless many Russianists abroad, like me, are experiencing a version of that same feeling: an almost palpable sense of personal loss.

Over recent years I have described AN more than once as the only person who, if the nation proved very lucky, might just be able to bring the place to its senses following the prolonged and self-inflicted disaster that has defined Russia in the first quarter-century of the new millennium. But here we are: the nation has not been very lucky (it seldom is), and all of us — Russians, Russianists and the rest of the world — can only mourn the passing of a genuine Russian праведник (PRA-ved-neek; a righteous man) and regret that the country has missed the slim yet credible “Navalny chance” that he represented. 

I am discouraged about the near-term future — meaning the country’s prospects overall as well as my own chances of returning to Moscow and our little family there (both wife and grandson continue OK, thanks) as long as the current President for Life remains either above ground or unincarcerated. But I am also trying to stay focused on AN’s injunction, which figures near the end of last year’s Oscar-winning Navalny documentary and is now being cited widely in various media. It goes, in paraphrase, “If they do kill me, it will be a sign of weakness, not strength. So don’t despair — that’s not allowed! — and keep up the good fight.”

AN’s daughter Dasha is, as you may know, an undergrad at Stanford. Somehow this picture cheers me up a little today.

Source: Mark Teeter, email newsletter to family and friends, 17 February 2024. Thanks to Mark for his kind permission to reproduce it here. Mark is not only a proud alumnus of Stanford University, but he also played a role in welcoming me to Russia for the first time, in 1994. He describes my own feelings about Navalny’s death to a tee. ||| TRR

ALEXEI NAVALNY (1976-2024): Покойся с миром / R.I.P.

“Alexei Navalny, Russian opposition leader, dies in prison”

For Russians, Russianists and friends of the nation everywhere, a day of sadness past any telling of it.

Source: Mark H. Teeter (Facebook), 16 February 2024

The Late Photographer Dmitry Markov’s Final Instagram Post

Photographer Dmitry Markov’s final post on Instagram, filed from the town of Alexandrov in Russia’s Vladimir Region

We met Andrei when we were walking in Alexandrov’s bedroom district. He had gone out to get a bottle of vodka from a taxi driver and bumped into us on the narrow snow-covered path at the entrance to his two-storey apartment building.

“You should stop digging for drug stashes here, there’s nothing to find.”

We explained that we were tourists and asked whether we could visit his house. It transpired that Andrei had come home from the special military operation but was planning to go back. He was a drinker. He offered us buckwheat, sausages and tea and told us we couldn’t say no. First he took care of us. He heated the food, boiled water, and served us a simple lunch. Only then did he sit down, open the bottle, and pour himself some vodka.

“Aren’t you scared of dying?” I asked him.

He was silent for a long time before replying.

“I’m scared of watching people die.”

And then he wept.

Source: Dmitry Markov (Instagram), 6 February 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Second-Class Sentient Beings

“We are children of a mute country.” Graffiti on a wall in Petersburg, 11 February 2024.
Identity of photographer suppressed for their own safety.

Last night I dreamt I was taking a long exam to see whether I “met the standards of the biological species.” The examining committee was chockablock with priests, Cossacks, and members of the ruling party.

A bust of Stalin stood on the table. The flag was hung upside down, meaning, that is, that it was the Serbian flag. The anthem played, with the Soviet lyrics, but everyone was staring at their smartphones.

I wrote my answers along with other candidates for the title of human being. Then a female robot arrived, introducing herself as Marusya. She collected the answer sheets and shook hands with everyone. The sheets were fed into something that looked like a coconut with eyes. It was an artificial intelligence, and it was the chief examiner.

The scores popped out almost instantly. To qualify as a human being, you had to get 75% of the answers right. I didn’t do so well: 28%. Everyone was divided into two groups—those who had passed the exam and those who hadn’t. Both groups walked one by one to different doors. Those who passed were congratulated and immediately accepted into the party, while those who failed had their passports confiscated and were issued a green (?) certificate identifying them as “second-class sentient beings.”

We walked out the door. The new party members went to a banquet hall, while the “beings,” me included, took off their clothes and donned identical uniforms, which were also green. The words “second class” were embossed on the breast pocket.

That’s when I woke up.

Source: Marina Varchenko (Facebook), 11 February 2024. Translated by Hecksinductionhour

“Our characters find themselves trapped in confined spaces where both physical and emotional tensions escalate.”

“The Cop Party,” an early edition of The Russian Reader, which started life as a series of happenings.
Pushkinskaya 10 artists’ squat, Petersburg, circa 1995

What’s the point of this flash mob? The nostalgia of aging people for their own youth? The illusion of normality in a situation of growing abnormality? The illusion of solidarity in a situation where all sociability is disintegrating?

Source: Sergey Abashin (Facebook), 6 February 2024. Translated by 21 Jump Street

Hundreds of thousands of Instagram users responded to a recent prompt asking them to post pictures of their younger selves. Photo quality varies.

Most of the photos are slightly faded. The hairlines fuller. Some feature braces. Old friends. Sorority squats and college sweethearts. Caps and gowns. Laments about skinny jeans and other long lost trends.

This week, Instagram stories the world over have been awash with nostalgic snapshots of youthful idealism — there have been at least 3.6 million shares, according a representative for Meta — as people post photos of themselves based on the prompt: “Everyone tap in. Let’s see you at 21.”

The first post came from Damian Ruff, a 43-year-old Whole Foods employee in Mesa, Ariz. On Jan. 23, Mr. Ruff shared an image from a family trip to Mexico, wearing a tiny sombrero and drinking a Dos Equis. His mother sent him the photo, Mr. Ruff said in an interview. It was the first time they shared a beer together after he turned 21.

“Not much has changed other than my gray hair,” he said. “I see that person and go, ‘Ugh, you are such a child and have no idea.’”

Mr. Ruff created the shareable story template with the picture — a feature that Instagram introduced in 2021 but expanded in December — and watched it take off.

“The amount of people that have been messaging me and adding me on Instagram out of nowhere, like people from around the world, has been crazy,” Mr. Ruff said.

[…]

Source: Sopan Deb, “‘Let’s See You at 21’ Puts Fun Spin on the Unrelenting March of Time,” New York Times, 1 February 2024

Maybe it’s not all so bad, and millions of people just wanted someone to see them as young and hot 21-year-old guys and girls who had everything ahead of them, all doors were open, and there were no obstacles to achievement. It’s good if these photos amuse them, rather than drive them to despair, if the person in the photo hasn’t achieved what he or she dreamed of at 21.

On the other hand, by scrolling through their Facebook feed with the “I am 21” flash mob, users see hundreds and thousands of photos of unknown people in foreign cities that mean nothing to them. What is the practiccal point of this flash mob? For users of Facebook, who have been posting numerous photos for years, there is no point.

Psychologists have long ago explained why people dump so many photos, including selfies, onto social networks: they have a need for constant approval and a desire to escape from unpleasant reality into a beautiful and easy virtual world where everything is fine. They’re also a means of communicating, showing off, and flirting. And if the “retro,” “things used to be better,” or “how young we were” option is enabled, nostalgic group sobs, likes, and reposts are guaranteed.

“We don’t think about artificial intelligence when we post our photos on social media, simply because the vast majority of us have no idea how neural networks are trained, or how algorithms work. We just wonder why topical ads jump out at us immediately when we think of something, but then we forget about it. Artificial intelligence isn’t Skynet from the Terminator movies at this point, but it’s something we’re going to be dealing with more and more. And protecting our personal information should worry us more than before,” says data science expert Yevgeny Galin. “Putting personal photos in the public domain is no toy or form of entertainment. We don’t know who could use them and for what purposes. I have no doubt that those purposes are illegal. And I wouldn’t count on social networks being conscientious about privacy policies. There’s nothing private on the internet. Facebook is already pretty good at recognizing faces and tagging people in photos.”

Training AI to recognize faces even in poor-quality black-and-white photos from the last century is proceeding by leaps and bounds. In many countries, identifying individuals with street surveillance cameras is already almost permitted by the constitution. And artificial intelligence is dependably replenishing the database of inhabitants of cities, countries, and continents. After all, it is so easy, especially if people post info about themselves on the World Wide Web.

Public figures who post their photos may well be involved in some kind of scam using deepfake technology.

Yes, we may be once bitten, twice shy, but caution in this case can’t hurt.

Source: Dina Vishnevski, “I’m 21: Facebook’s nostalgic flash mob is just a simulator for AI,” kp.ua, 7 February 2024. Translated by 21 Jump Street

I Apologize

Once upon a time, apologizing on camera was a Chechen and Belarusian practice. Since the outbreak of full-scale war, the Russian authorities have also adopted this method of putting pressure on dissenters, especially in music and pop culture. Here are some examples from the last year.

Underdog and La Virgen bars

To whom: the police.

For what: for holding a charity event to aid Ukrainians.

Quote: “We apologize, including to all law enforcement officers who had to be involved in these events because of us and waste their time.”

Did it help: Yes, the security forces have left the bars alone.

Rapper Scally Milano

To whom: Yekaterina Mizulina, head of the Safe Internet League.

For what: for mentioning drugs in his songs.

Quote: “We have to be role models, but ones with the right values. I urge all performers to be responsible. The moment has come to change everything for the better, and I want to have an impact on this.”

Did it help: Yes, Mizulina gave the rapper another chance: he had his a picture taken with her and deleted some of his songs from streaming services. The security forces stopped disrupting his concerts.

Rapper Loqiemean

To whom: to everyone.

For what: for protest songs.

Quote: “I spent time in prison. More precisely, I spent five days under arrest in a pretrial detention center. On this occasion, I have to shore up my opinion about the complaints about the pots.* I was wrong: I should not wish harm to my army, because the army is inseparable from the people. And I am an inseparable part of this people.”

Did it help: yes, apparently. Roman Khudyakov (which is the rapper’s real name) has stopped making public appearances, however.

*[In a video recorded on 23 March 2022, Loqiemean is shown baking meat in clay pots and saying that he would like those who bombed an apartment building in Odessa to be cooked in clay pots. On 1 May , Yekaterina Mizulina posted this video on her Telegram channel, captioning it as follows: “But we definitely do not need such concerts in Russia. Let him perform at home in his kitchen.”]

Singer Charlotte

To whom: the police.

For what: for anti-war statements and burning his passport.

Quote: “I was mistakenly obsessed with false information [voice-over: “Why were you brought here?”] I had a misfire in understanding what was happening.”

Did it help: no. Charlotte has been charged on four criminal counts, including “disseminating fake news about the Russian army” and “discrediting the Russian army.” He’s now under arrest in a pretrial detention center.

Charlotte, “Posh or Not” (2019):
“When I see a person, I look into their eyes
It doesn’t matter what you look like
It’s important what you’re talking about
When I don’t see a person, I look up at the sky
It doesn’t matter what I look like
It’s important what I’m talking about”

Blogger Nastya Ivleeva, singer Philip Kirkorov, rapper Vacìo, and others

To whom: everyone.

For what: for an “almost naked” party, at which the guests were dressed scantily; Vacìo even came wearing only a sock over his penis.

Quotes:

Vacìo: “I want to say that I don’t support LGBT people in any way and didn’t want to make any propaganda about it. I condemn LGBT supporters. I apologize for offending the feelings of other people and for being involved in such a terrible video at such a difficult time for our country.”

Philipp Kirkorov: “I went through the wrong door. Yes, I knew about the event, had received an invitation, promised to come and came, but I didn’t know about the nature of the events that would take place behind that door. And so I left.”

Ksenia Sobchak: “I can tell you for sure for myself, my friends, I definitely did not want to offend anyone. If someone is offended by my appearance, I apologize for it.”

Did it help: We don’t know yet. It seems that the backlash against Ivleeva and her guests is still underway.

Source: WTF (Mediazona) email newsletter, 28 December 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

Hüsker Dü, “I Apologize” (1985)

MOSCOW, Dec 28 (Reuters) – A rapper who attended a celebrity party with only a sock to hide his modesty has been jailed for 15 days, sponsors of some of Russia’s best known entertainers have torn up their contracts, and President Vladimir Putin is reported to be unamused.

An “almost naked” party at a Moscow nightclub held at a time when Russia is engaged in a war with Ukraine and the authorities are pushing an increasingly conservative social agenda, has provoked an unusually swift and powerful backlash.

A video clip of Putin’s spokesperson listening to an explanation from one of the stars who attended has been circulating online. Baza, a news outlet known for its security services contacts, has reported that troops fighting in Ukraine were among the first to complain after seeing the footage and that photographs of the event reached an unimpressed Putin.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson, on Wednesday asked reporters to forgive him for not publicly commenting on the burgeoning scandal, saying: “Let you and I be the only ones in the country who aren’t discussing this topic.”

Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said that the event had “stained” those who took part, but that they now had a chance to work on themselves, according to the Ura.ru news outlet.

The fierce backlash from the authorities, pro-Kremlin lawmakers and bloggers, state media, and Orthodox Church groups has been dominating the headlines for days, displacing stories about rising egg prices and allowing people to let off steam by railing against the show-business elite instead.

The party, in Moscow’s Mutabor nightclub, was organised by blogger Anastasia (Nastya) Ivleeva and attended by well-known singers in their underwear or wearing skimpy costumes who have been staples on state TV entertainment programmes for years.

DOUBLE APOLOGY

Ivleeva, who has since become one of Russia’s most recognised names, is seen in one clip showing off an emerald-studded chain around her backside worth 23 million roubles ($251,000) at a time when some Russians are struggling to get by.

She has since issued two public apology videos for the event which spanned Dec. 20–21.

In the second tearful apology, released on Wednesday, Ivleeva said she regretted her actions and deserved everything she got but hoped she could be given “a second chance.”

Nastya Ivleeva’s second social media apology for the “almost naked” party, posted on Wednesday

Her name has since disappeared as one of the public faces of major Russian mobile phone operator MTS, the tax authorities have opened an investigation that carries a potential five-year jail term, and a Moscow court has accepted a lawsuit from a group of individuals demanding she pay out 1 billion roubles ($10.9 million) for “moral suffering.”

If successful, they want the money to go to a state fund that supports Ukraine war veterans.

“To hold such events at a time when our guys are dying in the (Ukrainian) special military operation and many children are losing their fathers is cynical,” said Yekaterina Mizulina, director of Russia’s League for a Safe Internet, a body founded with the authorities’ support.

“Our soldiers on the front line are definitely not fighting for this.”

Many of the party’s famous participants have recorded apologies, including journalist Ksenia Sobchak whose late father Anatoly was once Putin’s friend and boss.

SOCIAL CONSERVATISM

The scandal comes at a time when Putin, who is expected to comfortably win another six-year term at a March election, has doubled down on social conservatism, urging families to have eight or more children, and after Russia’s Supreme Court ruled that LGBT activists should be designated as “extremists.”

Nikolai Vasilyev, a rapper known as Vacio who attended wearing only a sock to cover his penis, was jailed by a Moscow court for 15 days and fined 200,000 roubles ($2,182) for propaganda of “non-traditional sexual relations.”

Other more famous names have had concerts and lucrative state TV airtime cancelled, contracts with sponsors revoked, and, in at least one case, are reportedly being cut out of a new film.

The scandal has angered those who support Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Standing outside the Bolshoi Theatre on Thursday, Nadezhda, one Moscow resident, told Reuters she was outraged and thought those who took part should be punished and not shown on TV anymore.

“If you’re partying at least don’t film it,” she said. “At such a difficult time (for Russia), they should at least be ashamed. Aren’t they ashamed before those who are fighting for us?”

Alexander, another Muscovite, said those who attended had not broken any law and were free to do as they pleased at what was a private event.

But one woman who said her nephew had lost both legs in combat wrote in a post to the League for a Safe Internet that the stars should pay for prosthetic legs for her relative and others to make amends.

“That would be a better apology,” the unidentified woman wrote.

($1 = 91.6205 roubles)

Source: Andrew Osborn, “Russian stars’ semi-naked party sparks wartime backlash,” Reuters, 28 December 2023

In her first social media post about the scandalous party, released five days ago, Nastya Ivleeva wasn’t apologetic or teary-eyed at all. ||| TRR

The situation around the “naked party in Moscow,” in the course of which the Russian patriotic crowd has canceled many quite pro-regime figures, quite tellingly illustrates the degradation of Russian society. Previously, there were two realities: the reality of official propaganda, and a parallel reality in which there was “contemporary art,” “kinky parties,” and “Knife magazine.” In exchange for symbolic loyalty to the regime, one could gain comparative individual freedom.

Now that time has come to an end. There will be no individual freedom even for the chosen ones. The only freedom that remains for Russians is the freedom to vote for Putin and the freedom to apologize to Kadyrov.

There is something incredibly funny about the fact that Russian culture, after all its sobbing about imaginary [culture] “cancellation” [on the part of the west], has finally joyfully taken the plunge and canceled itself.

Source: Aleksandr Wolodarskij (Facebook), 28 December 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

It Takes a Village

A portrait of the perfect Russian family, per Global Orthodox

State Duma drafting law that would prohibit the promotion of childlessness

The State Duma is drafting a law that would prohibit the “promotion of childlessness,” according to an RIA Novosti interview with Irina Filatova, a member of the Duma’s cross-party working group on the defense of traditional values. The MP emphasized that the draft law does not touch on the personal beliefs of individuals, explaining that it specifically targets destructive propaganda in the information space. In the autumn of 2022, lawmakers in Bashkortostan introduced a similar draft law. The bill’s author described the consciously childless lifestyle as a “foreign ideology” and accused its supporters of causing population decline. They argued that it degraded public institutions and eroded traditional values. At the time, the authorities had decided to investigate why, despite financial subsidies and campaigns to prohibit the “propagation of the childfree ideology,” Russians were unwilling to have children.

[…]

Russians will be taught to resist western influence beginning in kindergarten

The Federation Council’s committee on the defense of state sovereignty held a hearing on countering interference in Russia’s internal affairs “through youth policy.” The senators [sic] came to a unanimous decision about the need to give the younger generation a “vaccination” against foreign influence from an early age. Alexei Chesnakov, the head of the research council at the Center for the Political Climate, proposed creating a “registry of negative phenomena” and incorporating sovereignty protection into “children’s political education programs.”

Source: Moscow Times Russian Service, daily newsletter, 12 December 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader