Independence Day

A roadside fireworks stand in Soledad, California, 28 June 2023. Photo by the Russian Reader

When issuing diplomas, colleges in Ingushetia now require graduates to sign a summons to the army or refuse to accept the conscription notice and face possible administrative and criminal charges, Fortanga was told by a source close to one college.

“To get a diploma, you need to sign a conscription notice. Otherwise, you will not receive a diploma no way no how. Either you accept the conscription notice, or you sign a waiver . That is, accepting the notice means you have to join the army, while turning it down means saying ‘Hello, prison, here I come,'” the source said.

According to the source, the practice was introduced after the director of the college in Nizhnie Achaluki reported, at a meeting involving the head of the republic Mahmud-Ali Kalimatov, that thirty students had been drafted from his institution into the army. Subsequently, military enlistment officers and government officials “jumped on the bandwagon,” the source claims.

Students are being forced to come to colleges in person to get their diplomas, the source added. That is, young men cannot receive them by mail or ask that they be handed over to a family member or a proxy.

When the graduate refuses to sign the conscription notice, a report is immediately drawn up and signed by witnesses. First-time offenders face administrative charges under Article 21.5 of the Administrative Offenses Code (i.e., “Non-fulfillment of military registration duties by citizens”) and a fine of 500 to 3,000 rubles. Repeat offenders face criminal charges under Article 328 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code (i.e., “Evasion of military and alternative civil service”) and a fine of up to 200,000 rubles, forced labor, arrest, or imprisonment for up to two years.

Ingush lawyer Kaloy Akhilgov noted that the legality of such a practice “depends on the procedure for issuing a summons.”

“Educational institutions can only serve conscription notices, not issue them themselves. That is, first the military enlistment office must send the notice to a specific citizen, and after that the organization can hand it to the student,” he explained.

For those who want to avoid receiving a military conscription notice , the lawyer recommended that after completing their bachelor’s or master’s degree, they take postgraduate leave until August 31 and file the relevant paperwork with the military enlistment office. “Then they should not be bothered during the [current] spring conscription drive. And such ‘automatic’ draft notices issued along with diplomas lose their significance,” he added.

Source: “Colleges in Ingushetia only issue diplomas with a summons to the army,” Fortanga, 3 July 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Marina Ken for the heads-up.

[…]

Mark, 26 years old: a former engineer turned waiter in Yerevan
Before I left Russia I was building a career: I was a senior fire and security systems engineer. Such people are needed everywhere: it’s a fairly good position. I worked in government agencies, so I was served my conscription notice directly at work. However, I had never served in the military: I had a deferment due to health reasons.

That was October seventh: I usually have a hard time remembering dates, but this was like in a movie since it divided my whole life into before and after. At night, I packed all my things and moved to another apartment, then I flew to Turkey and from there to Armenia.

It’s amazing: my grandfather is Armenian, but I had never been to Armenia before then. The authorities have even confirmed that I can get citizenship. But if I get it while I’m still eligible for military service, I will have to serve in the Armenian army for two years. And if you evade military service you can be banned from leaving the country or imprisoned. I went to the local draft board, and they told me straight up: come back in a year to get your citizenship. So that’s what I’ll do.

A short time before the mobilization, I was offered the chance to rent an apartment near Rybatskoye subway station in Petersburg for fifteen thousand rubles a month. I was sitting at the dacha, thinking about how I would rent this apartment, how I would invite friends over to my place—everything was good. But the next day the mobilization was announced, and my parents said to me, “Maybe you should leave?” I thought it over for a long time, and didn’t talk to anyone for several days. Then the conscription notice was delivered. Almost all of my friends supported me [in my decision to leave]. I had this conversation in the smoking room with a colleague, who told me, “I’m not going anywhere, I’ll sue. If push comes to shove, I’ll fight within the system.” In the end, he was drafted.

I had savings, so I didn’t work for six months. I tried to get a job as a technician or engineer in my field, but the old boys network is quite strong in Armenia: it is unlikely that they would hire a person off the street, and one who isn’t Armenian at that. And you need to know Armenian for any serious job. For a while I was depressed that I couldn’t find a job, that I had had everything squared away, but here I was nobody. I was a highly qualified specialist, but now I was unemployed. It was a big blow to my pride. At my old job, they waited another six months for me to return.

At first I went to work as a courier at Yandex Delivery. Maybe it is still possible to do the job on scooters and bicycles, but it is absolutely impossible. I had to walk 40-50 kilometers a day. I came home on the third day, soaked my feet in a basin, and sat there for several hours. There is an inadequate system of fines and impotent support staff that knows nothing. All couriers want to protest, both in Yerevan and in Moscow.

The delivery job was so hard on me that I even wanted to go home. I was in such a depressed state that the part of my brain that is responsible for the comfort zone was activated: “Yes, everything is fine, everything has already quieted down, and I have a home there.” I know several people who have returned [to Russia] after working such jobs. I even called my boss in Petersburg and asked if they’d hired someone to replace me, but they already had.

When you’re getting started in a country, I advise everyone to go to work as waiters. You have to carry plates and interact with people, but we all know how to do that. And you have to memorize the menu. I speak to foreign tourists in English or Russian, and I tell Armenians that I am learning the language, and they are always understanding. I tell them, “Come back in six months, and we’ll chat,” and they’re happy that I’m learning their language. Sometimes even Armenians who don’t know Armenian themselves come in and ask for a Russian menu. I even asked once, “How’s that?”

I think I lucked out: I’m treated well, we have a very friendly atmosphere, the cooks teach me Armenian, and everyone is always supportive and understanding. The money is enough to live on. And they treat me well as a Russian. Today, a client, a friend of the owner, gave me a teach yourself Armenian book in a beautiful paper bag printed with Armenian letters.

Very many young researchers and decent specialists have left Russia. This is sad, of course, but it is natural after such actions on the part of the state. It was pretty hard to swallow the whole thing. You can say it was pride, that, like, you’re going have to work in completely different jobs. I don’t like the buzzword “relocatees”—we are all migrants.

I am learning the language and I can already make myself understood: Armenian is not as difficult as it seems. When I learn the language, I will return to my profession, because it will stand me in good stead wherever I go. Naturally, emigration is not at all what I’d imagined. But this is our new home, and we have to learn to live here. Remarque has a book about emigration, Shadows in Paradise. A lot of people who also moved after wars became very strong personalities: it is an incredible experience. It is so intense that when you look through time into the past, you feel so much more mature, so different as a person, that you regard everything differently. So I’m even grateful to fate for these changes.

Source: Masha Koltsova, “‘I recommend everyone become a waiter after moving to a new country’: men who left Russia due to mobilization on changing professions and living a new life,” Current Time (Radio Svoboda), 3 July 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

A farewell ceremony was held at the Serafimovskoe Cemetery in St. Petersburg for four soldiers of the Neva Battalion who perished during the special military operation, the governor’s press service reported on July 3. The funeral was attended by the city’s head, Alexander Beglov, and the speaker of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, Alexander Belsky.

The deceased men—Mikhail Sokolov, Roman Galinsky, Mikhail Manushkin, and Sergei Isayko—were posthumously awarded the Order of Courage. In his speech, Beglov said that the men had been killed in heavy fighting.

“They are continuers of Russia’s military glory. We are proud of our fellow townsmen. Petersburg shall cherish their memory,” the governor said.

After the start of the special operation, the Smolny’s press service began publishing news about the deaths of Petersburgers in the Donbas, accompanying them with a mention of the condolences expressed by Beglov. Later, the release of such reports was abandoned for a long time. In December, Beglov unveiled a plaque on the facade of School No. 369 in memory of army officer Alexander Zhikharev, who perished in the SMO. In February, the governor and education minister Sergei Kravtsov met with Zhikharev’s relatives, and in March the school was named in his memory.

Source: “Petersburg says goodbye to four volunteers killed in SMO,” ZAKS.ru, 3 July 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

In the wake of Zhenya and Sveta’s kangaroo court hearing, what I’ve been thinking about for several days is that we forget the golden rule of all convicts—“Don’t believe, don’t be afraid, don’t ask”—and thus hand them the tool for coercing us.

You can’t show them your vulnerabilities or reveal your desires and fears. (Don’t ask!) This information will be used to intimidate and torture you. (Don’t be afraid!) Or it will be used for bargaining: they will promise to go lighter on you in exchange for your cooperation and will certainly deceive you. (Don’t believe!)

Source: Elena Efros (Facebook), 4 July 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader. Ms. Efros, a well-known human rights activist, is the mother of imprisoned theater director Zhenya Berkovich. Thanks to Ivan Astashin for the heads-up.

Petersburgers Picket in Support of Ingush Political Prisoners

ingush picket-1 “We are with Ingushetia for rights and against the lawlessness of the authorities! Crackdowns won’t stop us.”

“Putin Has Not Retreated, But Nor Have the People”: Petersburgers Picket in Support of Ingush Political Prisoners
Anastasia Belyayeva
Gorod 812
October 24, 2019

In Petersburg, a series of solo pickets was held in support of Ingush activists, who were jailed after rallies protest the redrawing Ingushetia’s border with Chechnya. The picketers consider the situation in the republic critical, dubbing the arrests in the wake of the protest rallies the “Ingush Bolotnya Square case.”

The protests in Ingushetia kicked off in the autumn of 2018 after Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, then-head of Ingushetia, and Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Chechnya, signed an agreement ceding large parts of Ingushetia to Chechnya, including land on which Ingush ancestral towers are located. Outraged by this secret deal, the Ingush populace launched a series of well-attended protest rallies in Magas, the Ingush capital. Activists and elders argued the decision was illegal and appealed to Vladimir Putin. The matter made it to the Russian Constitutional Court, which sided with Kadyrov and Yevkurov. The protests in the Ingush capital continued, eventually leading the authorities to arrest and charge activists.

ingush picket-2 “Free the political prisoners! #Ingushetia #TheIngushAreNotAlone.”

On October 23, each of the picketers on Nevsky Prospect in Petersburg raised the Ingush flag and help up placards demanding the release of the jailed activists and a reconsideration of the decision to redraw the republic’s borders with neighboring Chechnya.

“We have come out today in downtown Petersburg to draw attention to a problem that the government has tried to hush up,” activist Marina Ken told Gorod 812. “We want to give people the chance to find out what has been happening in Ingushetia. The decision to redraw the borders was not made by ordinary people but by the authorities, and many dissenters are now in jail. People must understand that the problem concerns each of us as citizens of one country.”

None of the picketers was detained, although police checked their papers and photographed their placards.

ingush picket-4 “Free Musa Masalgov, co-chair of the Ingush National Unity Committee!”

Currently, over thirty people who opposed the redrawing of the Ingush-Chechen border have been jailed in remand prisons in different parts of the North Caucasus. They have been charged with calling for riots (as punishable by Article 212.3 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code) and engaging in life- and health-threatening violence against law enforcement officers (punishable under Article 318.2 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code). At the same time, a hundred people have been convicted on administrative charges. Many of the jailed activists have complained of poor conditions in prison and torture at the hands of the authorities. According to other activists and relatives of those who have been jailed, many of them have not been allowed to see their lawyers, while hearings in their cases have been held without them.

ingush picket-3 “Free Bagaudin Hautiyev, lawyer and chair of the Ingushetia Youth Organization Coordinating Committee!”

One of the most high-profile cases is that of political activist Zarifa Sautiyeva, who has been charged with violence against police officers. She has been jailed since July, and recently a court extended her term in custody until December 11, 2019. Activist Hava Hazbiyeva, who took part in the picket, believes many of the arrests are unlawful.

“Zarifa, for example, was just doing her job by broadcasting from the protest rallies. The charges against her have nothing to do with the truth. Besides, she has been constantly moved from place to place without explanation. Among the jailed activists are two elderly men, Ahmed Barakhoyev, an Ingush elder, and Malsag Uzhakhov, chairman of the Council of Teips of the Ingush People. Malsag has severe asthma and diabetes, so being in jail is real torture for him. He constantly suffers from elevated blood pressure and nausea, and he cannot breathe when he is transferred from one remand prison to another. However, we don’t observe any signs of an active investigation. The authorities are seemingly just playing dirty tricks,” she said.

Today’s crisis actually has deep roots, according to picketer Asan Mumji.

“In the twentieth century, the Ingush were subjected to severe repression, something that is remembered in nearly every Ingush family. People were then murdered by the thousands, but the current actions of the authorities are also a real crackdown. The Ingush people do not want to give up their land for any reason. Putin has not retreated, but nor have the people. By the way, the rumors that the Ingush want to join Georgia are a wild provocation. People have been acting within the law, wanting to right the wrong that has been done to them.”

All photos courtesy of Gorod 812. Translated by the Russian Reader

I Am Ingush

elizaveta_alexandrova-zorina Elizaveta Alexandrova-Zorina. Courtesy of Ponedelnik

I Am Ingush
Elizaveta Alexandrova-Zorina
Radio Svoboda
September 24, 2019

In Russia, there is a political crackdown in full swing that almost no one talks about—not because it is happening somewhere other than Moscow, but because it is happening in the North Caucasus. Popular protests in Ingushetia forced Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the head of the republic to resign, triggered a wave of criminal prosecutions, and still have the republic agitated. In the rest of Russia, people say it is a Caucasian affair, something in which they should avoid getting involved. And yet many Ingush believe the events in Magas in spring 2019 were the starting point for all the recent protest campaigns, from Shiyes to Moscow. At the very least, the protests in Ingushetia were the largest in Russia since the fair elections rallies on Bolotnaya Square and Sakharov Avenue in 2011–2012.

The arrests and prosecution of protesters in Moscow have been dubbed a “new” Bolotnaya Square case. Russian and international journalists alike have written a great deal about the case, and each of the defendants has been lavished with attention by human rights defenders. There are long queues of people waiting to take turns in solo pickets, and flash mobs are held in solidarity with Konstantin Kotov. Actors have rallied around Pavel Ustinov, while teachers produced an appeal in support of Yegor Zhukov. The clergy, the Union of Cinematographers, and PEN Moscow have sent official letters on behalf of the defendants, while Stephen Fry, Herta Müller, and a whole host of foreign politicians and cultural figures signed an open letter. Only Mediazona and OVD Info have been covering the events in Ingushetia, however, while the only aspect of the protests there and the fallout from them that has been discussed on the Runet is the fact that certain Ingush police officers went over to the protesters and have subsequently been criminally prosecuted for their actions.

In point of fact, Ingushetia’s version of the Bolotnaya Square case is quite as massive as the real thing. Criminal charges have been filed against thirty-three people, most of whom have been in remand prison for many months. Another forty people are under investigation. The investigators reportedly have an extended list of 150 people they would like to charge: Ingushetia is a small place, and it is hard to keep such things secret for long. We should also add to this catalog a reporter who covered the protests. Apparently, the police planted heroin on him and then tortured him to try and force him to testify.

Before the arrests kicked off, 317 people were convicted under the administrative law on “unauthorized” protest rallies and fined between 10,000 and 20,000 rubles [approx. 150 to 300 dollars]. That is a lot of money for people in Ingushetia, where a quarter of the able-bodied population earns less than 10,000 rubles a month.

Around a hundred grassroots activists have been harassed—police have searched their homes, interrogated them, and detained them—and some have lost their jobs. Even the new law about “fake” news has been employed: Murad Daskiyev, an Ingush elder, was fined for the fact that, in his appeal to Ingush lawmakers, he wrote about the possible elimination of the republic due to another redrawing of its borders with neighboring republics, despite the fact the many people there actually do see the constant “pruning” of Ingushetia as just that: an attempt to get rid of Ingushetia.

Ingush activists told me it was strange I had come. They said no one in Moscow was interested in what was happening in Ingushetia. As they put it, people in Moscow think the “wogs” were trying to divvy something up, but the conflict does not concern them. In their coverage of the protests in Magas, national Russian media managed to shift the emphasis from anger at the authorities to the supposedly ethnic conflict between Chechens and Ingush. This can not just be put down to the skill of the propagandists.

In August, during the so-called indefinite picket—which began as a way to support demands to release the imprisoned Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, but later encompassed the Crimean Tatars, historian Yuri Dmitriev, the New Greatness case, the Network case, and the Moscow case—I stood holding a placard decrying the crackdown in Ingushetia. A poster calling for a one-to-one prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine usually elicited a positive reaction from passersby, while a placard that read “No to the war with Ukraine!” generated lots of arguments. When they saw me holding up placards about the Crimean Tatars and the Ukrainian sailors, people were sometimes ready to attack. But the placard about Ingushetia could just as well have been invisible. Only once did some policemen lazily inquire about what was happening in Ingushetia because they didn’t know. And one passerby, a woman, asked her husband what was written on my placard.

“Something about Ingushetia,” he replied.

“Oh, Ingushetia,” she said.

On the contrary, people in Ingushetia follow the news from Moscow closely. They post articles and photographs on social media and discuss the arrests of protesters. I was constantly asked about what was happening in Moscow and what would happen to the protesters arrested there on criminal charges. I was ashamed of the fact I was surprised by their attention to the Moscow case.

In Moscow, you strike up the most pleasant acquaintances in paddy wagons and police stations during protest rallies because the most interesting, best-educated, and most concerned people end up there. It’s the same way in Ingushetia: the republic’s finest people are behind bars and on the lists of police investigators.

Six people, whom the authorities have identified as “leaders” of the protests, have been charged under an article of the Russian criminal code that stipulates a maximum sentence of ten years in prison for “organizing violence that threatens the life or health of public officials in the performance of their duties.” Since they have no criminal records, they could be sentenced to a “mere” five or six years in prison.

Barakh Chemurziyev worked for ten years in the department of economics at the University of Economics and Finance in St. Petersburg. He researched corruption and embezzlement of government funds by officials in the Yevkurov administration. Chair of the Ingush branch of the Red Cross, Musa Masalgov has devoted thirty years of his life to charity work. Malsag Uzhakhov, 67, is chair of the Council of Teips of the Ingush People, while Ahmed Barakhoyev, 65, is an Ingush elder and member of the Ingush National Unity Committee. Ismail Nalgiyev, a blogger and grassroots activists, held solo pickets in solidarity with his arrested countrymen, later joining their ranks himself. Zarifa Sautiyeva is a researcher and deputy director of Memorial, a museum complex dealing with the deportation of the Ingush in 1944.

Another activist, Akhmet Pogorov, former head of the Ingushetia Interior Ministry and anti-corruption researcher, is on the federal wanted list. In their last video, posted on YouTube, he and Chemurziyev outlined one of the corruption schemes used by the Yevkurov administration. A month later, they found themselves among the “organizers of the riots.”

When people post the names of the protesters arrested in Moscow, they express outrage over the fact that an actor, a “harmless” programmer, and a 26-year-old man with kids could have been singled out by the authorities. When journalists are targeted, they call it an attack on free speech. But is no one outraged by the arrest of a museum curator? Of two old, sick men who could die in remand prison? (Barakhoyev and Masalgov’s chronic illnesses have worsened since they were arrested and jailed.) Is a deliberate crackdown on public figures and civic activists not an attack on political freedoms?

In Moscow, the slogan “Stop feeding the Caucasus!” has been popular. The Ingush told me it would be great if people called for an end to feeding the elites in the Caucasus. They added I should be sure to write that the protests in Magas were not only about land but also about official lawlessness and corruption in the republic. In Moscow, the ostensible trigger for the protests was the disqualification of independent candidates who wanted to stand in elections to the Moscow City Duma, but people actually protested corruption and the endless reign of the current regime. Similarly, in Ingushetia, outrage over the transfer of land to Chechnya mushroomed into an anti-corruption movement.

Corruption in Ingushetia starts at the very top. Everyone knows there that the federal authorities take a five to ten percent kickback from subsidies to the region. The looting continues when the money trickles down to the local authorities. And there is rampant bribery everywhere: people pay bribes to get good marks on school exams, medical care, and jobs.

Here is a typical story, one of hundreds. In 2013, the largest flour mill in Russia was built in Karabulak with five billion rubles from Rosselkhozbank, money referred to as “private investments.” A portrait of Putin was draped on the building, a grand opening was held, and press releases were sent to the national media. The mill was supposed to employ 1,500 people, but since it opened, the mill has only employed security guards. So there the mill stands, a monument to corruption in Russia. A grain farmer I know complained he had to take his crop straight from the field to the distilleries, where he sold it for seven or so rubles a bushel since there was no place to store and process it.

Ingushetia has the highest unemployment rate in Russia, and finding work there is not only difficult but also expensive. They say a posting in the Emergencies Ministry costs 350,000 rubles [approx. 5,000 euros], while a nurse’s job runs you around 50,000 rubles. 64,000 people were on the books as employees of state enterprises, when in fact they did not work for them and did not even know they worked for them. Besides, the population of Ingushetia is only around half a million people.

Ingushetia is one of the five poorest regions in Russia. It suffers from poverty and ruin, lawless security forces and high officials who pilfer the budget with impunity. It was no wonder protesters chanted slogans against corruption, against Yevkurov and his administration, from the outset of the protests. Nor was it any wonder Yevkurov practically issued an order in public when he said the protesters should be put in prison.

One of Yevkurov’s ministers, now an adviser to the new head of the republic, who celebrated the Eid in a most unexpected way—with vodka and women in the courtyard of his own hotel—explained to me why people protested.

“They’re a bunch of crooks who were paid.”

“Who paid them?”

“The west, maybe?” Who else pays people in Russia to protest? Who doesn’t like the fact that Putin has made Russia strong? So they’re the ones who pay.”

Ingushetia is like Moscow, only worse. Yevkurov ordered a crackdown on the protesters because he was sick and tired of anti-corruption slogans and accusations he had looted Ingushetia. And then there is the Kremlin, which sends a signal to the entire country that any opposition movement will face a brutal crackdown. Consequently, thirty-three people await their sentences. And sentenced they will be, not least because, for some inexplicable reason, the Russian public, opposition activists, and foreign correspondents could not care less about them.

All anyone does nowadays is talk about the defendants in the Moscow case, throwing in a few other political prisoners for good measure. People say they did nothing wrong, that the charges against them are trumped-up, that the authorities ordered law enforcement to put them away. But what about the Ingush case? Is it not a frame-up? Did the accused do something wrong?

You often hear that people only defend their own kind: journalists defend other journalists, actors intercede on the behalf of other actors, lecturers at the Higher School of Economics show their solidarity with a student at the Higher School of Economics. The authorities threatened to frame Ingush journalist Rashid Maysigov on drug charges, and then they did it. They also tortured him with electrical shocks to force him to testify. I have not seen a single newspaper with the front-page headline “I Am/We Are Rashid Maysigov.” When it came to Maysigov, journalistic solidarity broke down for some reason. Nor will the folks who adorn their social media account profile pictures with slogans like “I Am Yegor Zhukov,” “I Am Ivan Golunov” or “I Am Konstantin Kotov” ever write “I Am Zafira Sautiyeva” or “I Am Musa Masalgov.” What is wrong with Sautiyeva and Masalgov? Are they the wrong sort of people? Are they from the wrong ethnic group?

I like the slogan used by the solo picketers outside the presidential administration building in Moscow; “I Am/We Are the Whole Country.” I like the fact that the placards are inscribed with the names of people who are being persecuted right now for protesting peacefully or literally for no reason at all. But the names Sautiyeva, Masalgov, Barakhoyev, Uzhakhov, Nalgiyev, Chemurziyev, Pogorov, Maysigov, Katsiyev, Pliyev, Dzeytov, Dugiyev, Myakiyev, Gagiyev, Vishegurov, Bapkhoyev, Badiyev, Oziyev, Ozdoyev, Oskanov, Dzyazikov, Tomov, Azhigov, Muzhakhoyev, Khamkhoyev, and Aushev are not on these placards.

Are you certain you are the whole country? Have you forgotten anyone?

Elizaveta Alexandrova-Zorina is a Moscow writer and journalist. Thanks to Jenya Kulakova for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

The Persecution of Malsag Uzhakhov

malsag_uzhahov — **Malsag Uzhakhov. Photo courtesy of Memorial Human Rights Centre**

Malsag Uzhakhov, Chairman of the Council of Teips of the Ingush People, to Remain in Police Custody Until December 25
Yessentuki City Court Today Extended His Arrest for Three Months
Memorial Human Rights Center
September 24, 2019

Malsag Uzhakhov, born 1952, has been accused of organizing violence, threatening to the life and health of public officials, per Articles 33.3 and 318.2 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code, during clashes between protesters and the security forces in Magas on March 27, 2019.

In addition, he has been charged with establishing and/or managing an organization whose activities involved inducing people to refuse to perform their civic obligations or commit illegal acts, per Article 239.2 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code.

If found guilty of the first charge, Uzhakov could face up to ten years in prison, while the maximum sentence for the second alleged offense is three years in prison.

Uzhakov’s custody extension hearing was supposed to take place yesterday, but his defense counsel had moved to have his client take part in the hearing via video link since he was unwell and his condition could have deteriorated if he were transported to Yessentuki from the remand prison in Vladikavkaz.

It transpired that the courtroom was not equipped for video links, so the hearing was postponed to today.

“The term in police custody was extended without any grounds whatsoever,” said Uzhakov’s defense counsel, Jabrail Kuriyev. “Police investigators presented the court with the same documents they presented during the initial custody hearing and the extension hearing on June 6, and they made an identical petition to the court. This runs counter to the recommendation made by the Russian Supreme Court on December 19, 2013, that fresh, updated evidence as to the necessity of keeping accused persons in police custody has to be presented every time an extension is requested. Contrary to this recommendation, no new evidence was presented to the court. The decision to extend Uzhakhov’s arrest was made on the basis of conjectures and assumptions that he would somehow prejudice someone if he were released from remand prison.”

“While he was being taken from the Vladikavkaz Remand Prison to Yessentuki, they had to try and lower his blood pressure twice. They stopped along the way and he was sick. Malgas’s health is poor. His blood pressure was also high during the hearing, even though he had taken a pill. When the court retired to chambers, his pressure was 180. We thought about giving him a shot to bring it down. His blood sugar is two or three times higher than it should be,” Kuriyev said.

At around six in the morning on April 19, 2019, armed security forces officers in masks detained Uzhakhov at his home in the village of Barsuki in Ingushetia’s Nazran District. They took Uzhakhov to Nalchik, where he was placed in a temporary detention center.

On April 20, the Nalchik City Court remanded him in custody for two months, until June 18. The same day, he was charged with violating Article 318 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code.

On June 6, the Nalchik City Court extended Uzhakhov’s arrest for three months and seven days, until September 25.

Uzhakhov’s lawyer appealed both extensions, but his appeals were turned down.

On June 20, Uzhakov was charged with another offense per Article 239.2 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code.

Before and after his arrest, Uzhakov was charged and convicted several times of administrative offenses for his involvement in “unauthorized” protest rallies. Kuriyev managed to have some of the fines for these convictions canceled.

On September 11, Kuriyev reported that Uzhakhov’s health had taken a turn for the worse. On September 13, he reported that his client had suffered two heart attacks in a week and needed medical treatment.

Memorial has recognized Uzhakhov and five other leaders of the Ingush protest movement as political prisoners.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Denis Sokolov: Police Feudalism in Russia

medieval A scene from a protest against the government’s raising the pension age, September 9, 2018, Saint Petersburg. Photo by Anton Vaganov. Courtesy of Reuters and Republic

Police Feudalism
Denis Sokolov
Republic
July 15, 2019

Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, former head of Ingushetia, was “upmoted” to the Defense Ministry, but Russia’s police machine has continued to persecute protesters in Ingushetia. On July 12, Rashid Maysigov, a correspondent with the website Fortanga, was arrested. When police searched his house, they found, allegedly, the now-obligatory “package containing a white substance” and—apparently, to make the image of Maysigov as a troublemaker complete—leaflets calling for Ingushetia’s annexation by Georgia lying on a coffee table. In the wee hours of July 13, Zarifa Sautiyeva, deputy director of the Memorial for the Victims of Repressions in Nazran, was arrested. Sautiyeva has risen to prominence as one of the female leaders at the protest rallies in Magas, the capital of Ingushetia, in 2018–2019. Sautiyeva was charged with complicity in violence against the authorities. This is the first case when a woman has been sent to the remand prison in Nalchik, in neighboring Kabardino-Balkaria, as part of the continuing investigation of the Ingushetian protests. On July 14, Russia’s federal media watchdog Roskomnadzor blocked Fortanga, the main source of news about the protests.

Zarifa Sautiyeva. Courtesy of Caucasian Knot

What’s Good for Jupiter
There is one thing the arrests of Ingush and Circassian activists, the searches in the homes of people who protested construction of a church in a Yekaterinburg park, the fines meted out to people who marched in solidarity with Ivan Golunov on June 12, the New Greatness case, the arrests for “extremist” posts on the VK social network, and the harsh arrests of protesters outside the Moscow City Elections Committee on Sunday have in common.

None of them have anything to do with keeping the peace and administering justice. They are rituals meant to mark the territory of a class. Equipped with firearms and badges, Russia’s new service aristocracy enthusiastically shows unarmed civilians without badges their place. The statistics for “ritual” criminal charges—drugs charges, “extremism” charges, and weapons possession charges—speak for themselves. The willingness of law enforcement officers to beat up arrestees harks back to hazing in army barracks and the prison practice of “registering” new inmates by ritually humiliating them.

Russia’s political elite—the siloviki, the officials who control financial flows, organized criminals, and insider businessmen—live by other rules. They are governed by other articles in the Russian criminal code and have other means of resolving conflicts. The fight against corruption and economic crimes is the political weapon that has replaced elections up and down Putin’s “power vertical.” The number of criminal cases against high-ranking officials and officers of the Interior Ministry, the FSB, and the GRU has risen exponentially.

Particularly touching are several cases that are interrelated, according to reporters who covered them. The first case involves the arrests of FSB Colonel Kirill Cherkalin and two of his accomplices on April 25, 2019. They were charged with fraud, i.e., they forced a businessman to hand over a share, worth 490 million rubles [approx. $7.8 million], in a company. Cherkalin was also charged with taking an $820,000 bribe for “protection.” The second case is the flight abroad of Valery Miroshnikov, deputy head of the Deposit Insurance Agency (ASV). Allegedly, he and Cherkalin had cooked up a scheme for making money from the restructuring of banks. Finally, there is the arrest of an entire gang of FSB special forces officers and K Directorate officers: they robbed a bank while on duty, so to speak. Several officers from Alpha, the FSB’s special forces unit, decided not to return from an assignment in the North Caucasus, going to ground instead.

Now that is the sporting life, the life of a medieval knight. A jail sentence for posting the “wrong” thing on social media or attending a peaceable protest rally cannot compare. What is good for Jupiter is bad for the bull. The new division of Russia into quasi-medieval estates is borne out by the fact that, unlike their victims, police officers get suspended sentences for cooking up “drugs” cases, not actual prison time.

The number of businessmen who have been “skimmed” by being charged with economic crimes has skyrocketed. In a report entitled “The Fortress Subsides,” Kirill Rogov recently cited data on the sharp increase in the number of economic crimes investigated by the FSB. We do not need statistics, however, to understand the implications of the attack on Sergei Petrov, the arrest of Michael Calvey, and similar cases.

The Siloviki Revolution
What we are talking about is not the ruling regime’s collapse but its logical evolution, the emergence of a new Russian state. The runaway growth of cases in which criminal prosecution has been used to combat competitors and extract feudal rent from various social groups, including grassroots activists, businessmen, and other siloviki and officials, could point to a qualitative transformation of the social order in Russia. Eliminating competitors for fiefs can, however, be regarded as a form of political competition, while squeezing rents from vanquished regions and sectors is something akin to the victor tasting the fruits of victory. This is borne out by Vladimir Vasilyev’s administration of Dagestan, where the new order entailed a complete purge of the regional bureaucracy and an invasion of officials from more advanced Tatarstan. In other regions, on the contrary, the siloviki revolution has come off more quietly.

The actions of the special services in Ingushetia, Dagestan, and other regions of Russia enables us to make certain generalizations about the new political reality.

First, Russian law enforcement’s apparatus of violence has gradually turned into a ritual apparatus of violence. Planting drugs, “extremist” pamphlets, ammunition or (when a system insider has been targeted for arrest) marked bills on victims has nothing to do with real criminal investigations. They are parts of the arrest ritual, informal parts of the processual code. All that remains is for the State Duma to draft the relevant amendments and vote them into law. Aside from the main program, the arrest ritual contains supplementary messages for the civilian populace: “We will arrest your women,” “We will beat your children and send them to jail,” “All resistance to the punitive machine will be punished disproportionately,” “When a regional head is dismissed or a journalist is released, it does not mean protesters have won,” and so on.

Second, in recent years, the Russian state has been reduced to a police apparatus of violence. All other branches of government are its appendages and palace retinue. At the same time, the state has devised a completely modern media policy. Field officers arrest the regime’s undesirables, and the press services of the security forces voice the “official position” while anonymous Telegram channels, social media forums, and dubious websites leak the “real” reasons for the arrests to the hoi polloi.

For example, the Circassian activist Martin Kochesoko was arrested for possession of marijuana. The police who detained him rubbed his hands in the weed just in case, while the Telegram channels that get their information from law enforcement authorities told readers about Kochesoko’s links with foreign foundations and his dangerous love for federalism.

Third, the police machine is hierarchical, and it is organized on the principle of feudal vassalage. Each police unit has its own turf, its own sectors, its own fief, whether it is a bank, an oil company, the Deposit Insurance Agency, the war in Donbas or the Chinese markets in Moscow. This fief should automatically become a hereditary or corporate fiefdom. Ingush law enforcement officers cannot operate in Moscow or neighboring republics without getting special permission. Zarifa Sautieyva was arrested only when she showed up in her home region. Moscow avoids meddling in the affairs of vassals for no good reason. Ramzan Kadyrov wants jurisdiction over all Chechens, including Chechens in exile, and he gets it.

Fourth, Moscow can recall regional governors and replace one viceroy with another, but the Kremlin has no intention of stopping the punitive machine because there is nothing else left of the state. The inert, corrupt, and hierarchical police machine has become the caste of security forces (siloviki), a parody of medieval knights. Initially, it saw itself as owning all of Russia; later, it has divided the country into fiefdoms according to unwritten rules. It is not only the Kremlin that wants it this way. Russia’s punitive machine has an “on” switch, but no “off” switch. The only recent exception to this rule is the Ivan Golunov case. This case had many idiosyncrasies, however. His supporters were able to free the arrest reporter partly by following the special rules for the regime’s insiders.

Finally, police feudalism and the Russian state are the same things. When protesters appeal to the Russian constitution and the rule of law, the state regards this as an attack on its sovereignty. The constitution, the courts, and the laws belong to the state. The state or, rather, its beneficiaries will do as they like with these privatized institutions. This machine can be employed for private commercial ends or political goals, but it is forbidden to change the regime and disband the service aristocracy.

Feudal Zombies
If these generalizations are valid, we must thoroughly reexamine the strategies of ethnic and grassroots movements. It is naive and pointless to seek justice from the Leviathan.

Ethnic movements can never find support in the current system because a police state is unable to negotiate. It simply does not have the option of negotiating with unarmed people who are not endowed with the proper authority in the shape of badges. Therefore, the most reasonable demand made by the Ingush activists so far is the demand to release political prisoners. They must be freed from the punitive system’s jurisdiction.

We can say the same thing about grassroots movements, authentic local government, and democratic elections. They are possible only in the absence of police feudalism. Tackling Russia’s new service aristocracy is a separate, thorny issue that neither Putin nor the person who succeeds him can solve even if they wanted to solve it. The system is not amenable to reform. It can only shrink, gradually devouring itself.

Police feudalism is so obsolete, however, it is hard to imagine it will be able to maintain itself for long. We need to think about how to organize public life without these time travelers from the past; we must know what to do when this army of skeletons vanishes into thin air. As soon as we have a notion of what institutions and public organizations are needed, how much it would cost to build them, and who would be ready to invest in new political projects, this will happen spontaneously and inevitably.

Translated by Thomas Campbell

The FSB’s Tall Tales

FSB Head Talks of Terrorist Attacks Prevented on Election Day
Russian Security Services Have Prevented Six Terrorist Attacks So Far This Year, Including at Polling Stations on Election Day and a Mall in Saratov
Yeveniya Malyarenko
RBC
April 10, 2018

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FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov. Photo by Sergei Guneyev. Courtesy of RIA Novosti and RBC

During the first quarter of 2018, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) prevented six terrorist attacks. FSB director Alexander Bortnikov made this claim during a meeting of the National Anti-Terrorist Committee (NAC), reports TASS.

According to Bortnikov, all the attacks were stopped in the planning stage. However, Bortnikov intimated that insurgents had hoped to carry out some of the attacks at polling stations in Ingushetia and Bashkortostan during the March 18 Russian presidential election. Thus, in February, as part of a counter-terrorist operation in Ingushetia’s Nazran District “that encountered armed resistance,” Bortnikov said, “two bandits who were supporters of Islamic State” (an organization banned in Russia) were killed while planning an attack.

In March, FSB officers detained two members of a “radical right-wing group” in Bashkortostan. As Bortnikov stressed, both individuals were planning to carry out terrorist attacks at polling stations in Ufa. Subsequently, two “high-powered” homemade explosive devices were seized in the homes of the detained individuals.

In addtion, as Bortnikov reported, FSB officers eliminated several members of another IS cell while trying to detain them.

“They were planning to carry out a terrorist attack at a shopping mall in Saratov,” Bortnikov explained, stressing the security services had discovered weapons and a homemade explosive device containing the equivalent of nearly three kilos of TNT in the possession of the alleged terrorists.

Translated by the Russian Reader

NB. When reading this account of the FSB’s alleged successes in preventing terrorist attacks, it is hard not wonder whether its stats for the first quarter of 2018 included the yeoman’s work the agency has done in unmasking the would-be terrorists of the so-called Network and the New Greatness movement, two organizations that were, allegedly, planning nothing less than armed insurrection nationwide.

The only problem is all the real evidence points to the FSB’s having fabricated these terrorist organizations from whole cloth, in the first case, torturing eight utterly harmless antifascists in Penza and Petersburg into confessing their nonexistent guilt and, in the second case, embedding undercover agents in a tiny, loosely aquainted group of people, who were just as harmless, and actively encouraging them to establish an equally fictitious “militant group.”

When you know the gory details of these stories, you find it is plausible that Director Bortnikov’s tales of the FSB’s derring-do in Ingushetia and Bashkortostan are convenient fictions, too.

Judge for yourself. Or, if you don’t believe me or the two dozen translated articles listed below, read about the Penza-Petersburg “terrorism” case in Newsweek. TRR