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

Degenerate Art

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“…and wandering amongst people / is hope’s little band, / conducted by love.” Photo: *Bumaga* reader

“What can I do? What would it change? Who would care? Who would help me? What do I see when I look around? What do I mean?” Part of the installation *I Dissent, Therefore I Am*. Photo: a Bumaga reader

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NUMB3RS (Wages of War)

Illustration by Danny Berkovskii for *Mediazona*. Source: *New Tab*

Aided by a team of volunteers, journalists at Mediazona and the BBC’s Russian Service have identified 41,731 Russian soldiers killed in the war in Ukraine using open sources. This number includes employees of the Wagner mercenary group, but it does not include those who fought on Russia’s side in military units fielded by the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics,” the BBC noted in an article published on Friday, 12 January.

According to the article, more than 1,100 Russian military personnel killed in the war were under 20 years of age. Since the State Duma approved amendments to the relevant laws, in April 2023, thus permitting 18-year-old high school graduates to sign military service contracts, 48 Russians born in 2004 and five born in 2005 (who were thus “barely 18 years old” when they enlisted) have perished in the war.

As of 11 January, 2,377 airborne troops, 913 marines, 537 members of the Russian National Guard’s special forces, 450 members of the GRU’s special forces, 206 military pilots, and 77 FSB and FSO officers have been killed in combat operations.

The BBC points out that the number of casualties among those who voluntarily signed a contract to serve in the Russian armed forces has increased in recent months. Thus, volunteers, prisoners, and private mercenary company “recruits” now account for 37 percent of all confirmed losses 0n the Russian side. Another 12 percent of the identified casualties were draftees (of whom 5,005 died in Ukraine and 62 in Russia).

Source: Yevgeny Zhukov, “Journalists have confirmed the deaths of 41,700 Russian soldiers in Ukraine,” Deutsche Welle Russian Service, 13 January 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

According to Ukrainian intelligence, the Russian forces in Ukraine currently consist of 462,000 military and 35,000 National Guard troops, responsible for the functioning of the occupation regime. This number of troops allows the Russians to carry out rotation — to withdraw units and subdivisions and bring them to the front line.

Source: Monique Camarra, “Jan 13: E-Stories,” EuroFile, 12 January 2024

When looking for a new advertising/PR agency in Ukraine in autumn 2023, PepsiCo made it a condition for a potential partner to exclude any mention of the war, or support for Ukraine and its army in future communications, according to a brief seen by B4Ukraine.

“NO: mention of war, hostilities, aggression, military personnel (from Brand side), Armed Forces of Ukraine. NO: support Ukraine and the army. NO: negative connotation, creating a feeling of ‘unsafe,’” states the “Pepsi restrictions” section of the brief.

The B4Ukraine Coalition contacted Pepsi offices in Ukraine and the US to ask for comment on this article but at the time of publication had not received any response.

In the meantime, the October 17 message on PepsiCo’s Instagram page announced that “PepsiCo volunteers distributed food kits to 1,200 families in the city of Borodyanka, whose homes were destroyed.” The message does not specify who exactly brutally destroyed the homes of these people.

Perhaps because PepsiCo’s Russia net profit increased by 333% to $525 million last year and the company paid about $115 million in taxes to the Kremlin? Treating such contributions as support for the economy of the aggressor state, Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) in September included PepsiCo in the list of international sponsors of war.

PepsiCo produces soft drinks, juices, chips, snacks, dairy products and other food products under the main brands Chester’s, Chipsy, Lay’s, Mirinda, Pasta Roni, Pepsi, Propel, Sandora, 7Up, Simba, Snack a Jacks, Sonric’s, Tropicana, etc.

The company has 19 factories, about 20,000 employees, 40,000 agricultural workers, and 600 open vacancies in Russia, according to the NACP.

The company announced the cessation of advertising activities and the production of some beverages in Russia in March 2022, while still allowing other products, such as infant formula and baby food to be sold, in order, as PepsiCo put it, “stay true to the humanitarian aspect of its business.” Yet in fact, the company continues the production and distribution of chips, snacks, and soft drinks. According to Bloomberg, PepsiCo’s revenue rose 16% in Russia and profits quadrupled, and the soda maker said operations in Russia accounted for 5% of consolidated net revenue for 2022, up from 4% a year earlier.

Now the iconic Pepsi cola is sold under the Evervess-Cola brand, although regular Pepsi Cola is still easy easily purchasable in Russian supermarkets due to the so-called parallel imports, when goods are imported without the manufacturer’s permission.

At the beginning of September last year, PepsiCo came under fire over its Russian business when the firm’s products were dropped by the Finnish parliament and Scandinavian Airlines’ operator SAS, and already on September 21, ironically, [a] Russian missile damaged a PepsiCo plant near Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.

A global [c]oalition of civil society organizations, B4Ukraine, is calling on PepsiCo to exit Russia ASAP and for the US government to issue a business advisory, warning US businesses of the growing legal, reputational, and financial risks of doing business under military control in Russia.

Source: “‘No support for Ukraine and its army’: PepsiCo restricts mentions of war in its PR,” B4Ukraine. Thanks to Monique Camarra (EuroFile) for the heads-up.

The war has markedly changed the Russian economy. Moscow has had to adjust its policy to fund its armed conflict against Kyiv, maintaining its military apparatus and police force, and integrating the territories it has annexed from Ukraine. These priorities have necessitated significant spending commitments that collectively threaten Russia’s economic stability. The Kremlin will spend six percent of GDP (more than eight percent when combined with spending on national security) on the war in 2024. This is more than the 3.8 percent of GDP that the United States spent during the Iraq war, although it falls short of the prodigious sums the Soviet Union allocated during the years of stagnation and its invasion of Afghanistan (18 percent of GDP).

Military spending has even eclipsed social spending—currently less than five percent of GDP—for the first time in Russia’s post-Soviet history. This pivot toward a militarized economy threatens social and developmental needs. The four annexed regions of Ukraine have already received the equivalent of $18 billion, and in 2024 almost $5 billion is expected to be transferred from the federal budget to regional budgets. No other regions in Russia receive this level of investment, which only increases interregional inequality. Rather than restore dilapidated housing in Russia, the Kremlin prefers to spend money on building houses and roads in annexed territories, to replace the houses and roads that Russian troops destroyed during their brutal invasion.

Russian industry has been transformed, with defense sectors now overshadowing civilian industries. The defense sector’s enterprises are now operating at a fever pitch and, as a consequence, any surge in demand is likely to force prices to rise because of the sector’s inability to increase supply. The military sector is receiving a disproportionately high amount of government spending, and it is also siphoning off labor from the civilian workforce, leading to an abnormally low unemployment rate of 2.9 percent. Before the war, Russia’s unemployment rate typically stood at around four to five percent. The military and public sectors now employ 850,000 more people than in late 2022–23. The invasion of Ukraine also prompted about 500,000 Russians to emigrate in 2022, driving shortages of qualified specialists and blue-collar workers.

Meanwhile, living standards have risen across Russia, and the percentage of Russians living below the poverty line has dropped to 9.8 percent, the lowest since 1992. Naturally, there are regional variations, and areas that have sent a significant number of their men to fight in Ukraine—including Altai Krai, the Altai Republic, Buryatia, Chechnya, and Dagestan—have witnessed the fastest income growth in low-income groups. This relative increase in prosperity can be expected to continue as Moscow disburses funds to the families of the deceased and wounded.

Overall, the Kremlin wishes to maintain an illusion of normality and even increasing prosperity for its citizens. The distortions in the labor market have pushed up salaries in military industry, as well as in civilian manufacturing, because of the need to compete to attract workers from well-paying military plants. Moscow is, meanwhile, making high payments to soldiers and people mobilized to fight in Ukraine, which are driving consumption. At the same time, thanks to a supply of cheap credit, the government is handing out subsidized mortgages, that are, for the moment, shielding families from economic reality.

Source: Alexandra Prokopenko, “Putin’s Unsustainable Spending Spree: How the War in Ukraine Will Overheat the Russian Economy,” Foreign Affairs, 8 January 2024

Elsewhere there are signs that the invasion of Ukraine may have disrupted the Russian economy more severely than the frothy party scene suggests. The Olivier salad, a mayonnaise-drenched confection of root vegetables, sausage and boiled eggs, is a staple at every table during the holidays. This winter the price of eggs suddenly rocketed (no one is quite sure why, but it may have been because farms were short of labour since so many workers have been conscripted or left the country). In some regions people cannot afford a box of six eggs and have to buy them individually. One pensioner even raised this with Putin during the president’s annual end-of-year call-in with the public. Putin promised to look into it.

Source: Kate de Pury, “Gucci is cheap and eggs are pricey in Russia’s surreal economy: War spending has Russians partying like it’s 2021. But some are also stockpiling dollars,” 1843 Magazine (The Economist), 10 January 2024

In the two years that have passed since the start of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, residents of Ukraine have become less likely to use the Russian language, according to a press release on the outcome of research done by the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in cooperation with the University of Bath and the Technical University of Munich, which was published on Wednesday, 10 January.

Language plays a leading role in the identity of post-Soviet Ukraine, the authors of the study say. Many Ukrainians are fluent in both Ukrainian and Russian. And yet, only a few years ago, 50 to 60 percent of the country’s residents called Ukrainian their principal language of communication. After the Maidan protests in late 2013, sparked by then-Ukrainian President [Viktor] Yanukovych’s refusal to sign an association agreement with the EU, and Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea in 2014, more Ukrainians abandoned Russian.

[…]

The researchers explore this trend in a study published in the journal Communications Psychology. Using artificial intelligence and statistical analysis, they examined more than four million messages posted by 63,000 Ukrainian users on the social network X (formerly Twitter) between January 2020 and October 2022.

According to the study’s authors, users began switching from Russian to Ukrainian even before the large-scale Russian invasion, but this trend increased dramatically after the war began. In their opinion, this change in user behavior was a political reaction to events. Users wanted to distance themselves from both support for the war and Russia as such, so they started using Ukrainian en masse.

Source: Sergei Gushcha, “Ukrainians use Russian less since war began,” Deutsche Welle Russian Service, 10 January 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

The full-scale war in Ukraine, which began almost two years ago, has led to increased violence in Russia itself. Military personnel with PTSD and criminals recruited into combat return from the front and maim and kill people in civilian life. Sometimes conversations about the war even end in violence. Mediazona and New Tab have uncovered over thirty criminal convictions for assaults and murders that occurred during quarrels about the “special military operation.” (The courts use the official wording for the war as mandated by the authorities.)

In Berdsk, Novosibirsk Region, draftee Khuler Mongush stabbed Nikolai Berezutsky, a passerby. The latter had asked Mongush why he was going to Ukraine. Saying that he was going there “to defend the Motherland,” the mobilized man attacked Berezutsky. Mongush was sentenced to eight years in prison for murder.

In the Irkutsk Region, farmer Maxim Khalapkhanov was drinking with an acquaintance, who began ridiculing the state of the Russian army during the war. Khalapkhanov eventually got angry and killed the acquaintance with a knife, whose handle was decorated in the colors of the Russian flag, and drew the letter Z on his stomach with a fireplace poker. Khalapkhanov was sentenced to seven years in a high-security penal colony.

Anton Rakov, a resident of Orenburg, was drinking with a new acquaintance. They began arguing about the war. Rakov did not like what his interlocutor was saying and killed him. While his victim breathed his final breaths, Rakov recorded a video with the dying man in the background, shouting, “This is what will happen to anyone who disagrees with me!”

Viktor Konnov of Zlatoust beat up a friend who said something nice about Ukraine, while Ivanovo resident Mikhail Vitruk received two and a half years in a penal colony for beating up his girlfriend, who allegedly called him a “Nazi” while they were watching the news.

In 2020, Mikhail Taskin attempted to shoot three people over a parking space and was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony, whence he was freed by the Wagner Group. Taskin spent several months in combat, where he lost a leg, eventually returning to his native village of Nerchinskiy Zavod in the Transbaikal Territory. In August 2023, he got into a fight at a local cafe. Taskin mocked the waitresses and promised to “hump all of them.” The incident ended in a brawl, and the police detained five people, but not Taskin was not among them. His sister and the local authorities argued that the disabled man had been assaulted by “opponents of the war.” But the news website Regnum discovered that two of the detainees were certainly not against the war because they had been involved in patriotic campaigns in the region.

It is not only drinking buddies and casual acquaintances who quarrel and fight over the war. Mediazona and New Tab turned up no less than seven court rulings in cases where the defendants and the victims were members of the same family. Vladimir Tofel from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky killed his nephew during an argument about the war. Yuri Makarkin stabbed his son, while Anna Cheremnova, a resident of the Altai Territory, stabbed her husband.

The experts asked for comment by Mediazona and New Tab argue that these are signs of a deep split within society, and the policy of the authorities does not help society to overcome this fissure. On the contrary, the hysterical rhetoric of propaganda only heightens the degree of intolerance, and people are increasingly willing to maim and kill each other.

Source: WTF (Mediazona) newsletter, 10 January 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Small Acts of Defiance

The town’s coroner and mortician, Dr. Ivan Malinin, a Russian immigrant who barely spoke English, performed the autopsy on Williams at the Tyree Funeral House. Malinin found hemorrhages in the heart and neck and pronounced the cause of death as “insufficiency of [the] right ventricle of [the] heart.” Malinin also found that, apparently unrelated to his death, Williams had also been severely kicked in the groin during a fight in a Montgomery bar a few days earlier in which he had also injured his left arm, which had been subsequently bandaged. That evening, when the announcer at Canton announced Williams’s death to the gathered crowd, they started laughing, thinking that it was just another excuse. After Hawkshaw Hawkins and other performers started singing “I Saw the Light” as a tribute to Williams, the crowd, now realizing that he was indeed dead, followed them.

Source: “Death of Hank Williams,” Wikipedia

Hyvästi Suomi!

This can be translated as “Goodbye, Finland,” or it can be translated as “Adieu, Finland.” The correct translation will depend on our neighbors.

Source: “News Roundup” email newsletter (Delovoi Peterburg), 24 November 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

Finland has temporarily closed all but one of its eight passenger crossings to Russia in response to an unusually high inflow of migrants for which the Nordic country accuses Moscow.More than 700 migrants from nations such as Yemen, Afghanistan, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria, have in the past couple of weeks entered Finland via Russia. Helsinki says Russia is funneling migrants to the border, a charge the Kremlin has denied.

Having last week closed four border stations, Finland overnight closed all remaining passenger crossings except its northernmost one, Raja-Jooseppi located high north in the Arctic region, for a month.

Raja-Jooseppi opened its gates for traffic this morning and will continue to accept asylum applications during its four daily opening hours, the Finnish Border Guard said.

No migrants arrived overnight outside opening hours, it added.

The Border Guard is stepping up patrolling along the length of its 833-mile frontier with Russia.

It will get additional resources for the task from the European Union’s border agency Frontex, which said on Thursday it would deploy 50 border guard officers and other staff to Finland along with equipment such as patrol cars to bolster control activities.

Source: “Finland closes passenger border crossings with Russia,” NBC News, 24 November 2023

What are the benefits for Russia?

HS: Russia wants to create an image of a hostile West that is of benefit to the Russian leadership. Finland has not fit this image in the past, but now they are trying to build it. Relations between Finland and Russia are at a turning point. The Russians have realised that they do not know Finland after all. They want to see who Finland cooperates with and at the same time try to stir up discord within Finnish society. Building a new relationship will be a long-term process.

JS: Russia can create a fortress mindset due to a perceived ‘threat’ from the West. Finland’s eastern border is becoming a useful confrontational narrative for the Kremlin. When the same narrative is repeated, a kind of protection mechanism kicks in and even sceptics will start to believe it.

Source: “What is Russia hoping to achieve with hybrid tactics on the Finnish border?” Yle News, 21 November 2023

The Front Lawn, “Claude Rains” (1989)

Claude Rains in Casablanca

He was the French Police Inspector

A functionary through and through

A small man

Remember at the end out on the airstrip

He could have tried to stop them

Ingrid Bergman and her friend from the French Resistance

But he pretended not to see

It was a small act of defiance

As the storm broke in the distance

He was on their side after all.

Claude Rains gave the order to collect the usual suspects

And the camera came in close up on his face

He watched as the plane left the airstrip

Like hope leaves a dying man

But he hung on to the choice he’d made

Claude Rains

Claude Rains

Claude Rains

Claude Rains

I saw a new film the other day

And it was set at the start of a nuclear war

The actors weren’t as good as Claude Rains

But then there was nothing that they could do

All of their small acts could count for nothing

As the storm broke in the distance

Not much to make a film about

Source: “Claude Rains,” The Front Lawn: Lyrics

Civic Council named “undesirable organization” in the Russian Federation

The Prosecutor General’s Office added us to this list on November 3, exactly one year after we announced the creation of our Mobilization Center. We have openly stated that we are working to ensure that the Russian Federation in its current form, with its current government and all that this government calls the state, ceases to exist.

Today it is the Russian state that is criminal, and armed struggle against it is legitimate and necessary. So the Prosecutor’s Office and the Justice Ministry are formally correct: we are their enemies.

In fact, our status as an undesirable organization has not changed anything. Supporting the Civic Council within Russia was also a criminal offense before we were give this status, just like all other independent political and civic activities. The Russian authorities hand down approximately the same prison sentences for making [anti-war] comments on social media and engaging in armed resistance. So, we propose fighting effectively, rather than commenting in vain.

We have to resist intelligently, so we suggest that our supporters inside Russia observe the rules of information security and be vigilant.

We do not accept donations payable to Russian bank cards and do not have accounts in Russian banks.

We are not urging you to attend protest rallies right now. The time to go to the public squares will come later.

We invite those who are ready to take up arms to fight, fully aware of the consequences.

For those who do not want to stay on the sidelines but cannot fight for various reasons, there are other ways to support our cause:

donating money, including anonymously through crypto wallets (including Monero)
providing information to our OSINT service
disseminating information about the opportunity to volunteer

To volunteer for the Siberian Battalion, fill out this form.

Anyone who wants to make a donation should go here. All options are a help to us.

Anyone who wants to help with information or other work inside the Russian Federation should write to us at civic_council@proton.me.

Sincerely yours,

Civic Council, an undesirable organization in the Russian Federation

@obserwujący

P.S. We suggesting giving us the special status of “an organization readying the overthrow of the Putin regime.”

Source: Civic Council (Facebook), 23 November 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

Foreign luxury brands are closing their flagship stores on Nevsky Prospect, but they could be replaced by Russian fashion retailers, say market participants.

Analysts expect a reduction in rental rates on Nevsky Prospect.

According to sources cited by Kommersant-SPb and NF Group, Breitling, Fendi, Omega, Rolex, and Salvatore Ferragamo have already vacated their spaces in downtown Petersburg. Louis Vuitton has the same plans. Market participants ascribed the mass exodus of luxury sellers to political pressure in the brands’ home countries and logistical and supply chain challenges.

“Luxury retailers initially took a wait-and-see attitude, but now it has become clear that there are no prospects for stabilizing the economic situation in the medium term,” said a source who spoke to Kommersant-SPb.

KNRU development director Polina Fiofilova noted that western brands that have been operating in the fashionable part of Nevsky Prospect for years have driven rents “sky-high” and inflated the expectations of landlords.

In the first half of 2023, the rates per square meter in this locale ranged from 2,600 to 6,700 rubles per month (VAT included), while in the adjacent Telezhny Lane they amounted to 2,500 to 5,200 rubles per square meter per month. Local fashion retailers simply would not be able to afford such rents, analysts said.

Nevsky Prospect is still empty. Despite a reduction in vacancies compared to the peak period, their level remains quite high, thus generating pressure on rental costs, added Mikhail Burmistrov, CEO of the agency Infoline Analytics.

As Delovoi Peterburg wrote earlier, despite the departure of a number of foreign brands, fashion retail sales increased by nine percent, a nineteen percent increase compared to the same period last year. But the average receipt remained at the level of last year or even decreased.

In period from July to September, ten international brand stores opened in Petersburg shopping centers. Most of the new boutiques belong to the fashion segment.

Three new Turkish clothing brand stores opened in Petersburg, along with Quiksilver (Australia), Mark Formelle (Belorussia), Woolrich (USA), Yamaguchi (Japan), Liu Jo (Italy) and two Stockmann’s stores (Finland).

We reported in October that the Italian clothing brand OVS would return to Petersburg after a ten-year hiatus.

Source: “Western luxury brands close Nevsky Prospekt boutiques en masse,” Delovoi Peterburg, 20 November 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

Rosstat reports that the retail price of bananas increased to 143 rubles per kilo for the first time since it has been tracking their price. Compared to October last year, the cost of bananas increased by 47 percent, which was the biggest single-month increase since 2000. Oranges led the price growth among fruits: in October, they rose in price to 209 rubles per kilo, or by almost 80% year on year. Fruit prices were affected by the weakening of the ruble, which led to an increase in suppliers’ purchase prices and a rise in the cost of logistics, according to market participants. Albina Koryagina, a partner at NEO, a consulting company, says that last year the Russian authorities controlled the growth of retail prices for socially significant products, including bananas (aka “the poor people’s fruit”), as much as they were able, but this year retailers can no longer afford to hold down prices “even when pressured.”

Source: Moscow Times Russian Service, daily news roundup, 24 November 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

4,121 criminal absence without leave [AWOL] cases have been delivered to Russia’s military courts since the start of the military mobilization in September 2022, as reported on Friday, November 24, by Mediazona, which studied information available on the websites of the military courts.

The courts have already made rulings in 3,470 of the cases. “Most AWOL cases result in suspended sentences. The percentage of such rulings is sixty-three for volunteer soldiers, while for mobilized [conscripted] soldiers, it is slightly lower—fifty-six percent,” the article says. A suspended sentence, it notes, makes it possible to return a serviceman to the front.

In addition to criminal AWOL cases, Mediazona found 317 cases of disobeying orders, 96 cases of desertion, 54 cases of assaulting a commanding officer, and 42 cases for other offenses on which the authorities have doubled down during the mobilization.

According to the infographic published by Mediazona, the most cases were launched in the Moscow Region (309), the Rostov Region (224), and the Maritime Territory (181). 123 cases were launched in Moscow, and 116 in St. Petersburg.

Source: Jan Roffe, “More than 4,000 criminal AWOL cases launched in Russia,” Deutsche Welle, 24 November 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

Coming Out

The Justice Ministry has filed a lawsuit with [Russia’s] Supreme Court asking it to declare LGBT an “extremist organization.” The first hearing should take place on November 30. Officials have detected in the activities of the “movement”—even though LGBT is not a community—the “incitement of social and religious discord.”

At the same time, NTV broadcast a story claiming that LGBT individuals are easily recruited by Ukrainian security forces. The program even showed arrested “LGBT activists” who, according to the propagandists, wanted to simultaneously burn down military recruitment offices, send money to the Ukrainian army, and join the Free Russia Legion. There are obvious holes in the story’s veracity, but viewers will be left with a clear conclusion: those who support LGBT individuals are ready to fight against Russia.

Meanwhile Vladimir Putin unexpectedly made a statement in defense of LGBT people. He said that they are also “part of society.” But journalist Farida Rustamova noted that the fight against LGBT might be part of Putin’s re-election campaign.

“Extremist” status provides the state with tons of possibilities for censorship and new court cases. This can be seen through the example of other “extremist organizations” that were essentially invented by the authorities.

For instance, in 2020 the Justice Ministry declared AUE an “extremist organization.” AUE is a teenage subculture; the acronym stands for “Arestantskii uklad edin” [“Prison order universal”]. No actual organization exists—there’s a bunch of adolescents across the country who are in various ways aesthetically and ethically excited about the life of people adjacent to the criminal world. The name first got wide publicity thanks to an article in Novaya Gazeta.

In any event, now the security forces can launch criminal cases on extremist grounds against people who are already in prison. They say they are establishing “AUE cells” in prison colonies. There are no actual cells—but there is a new way of putting pressure on incarcerated people who have already been disenfranchised.

The Justice Ministry also invented the so-called Columbine terrorist movement. Columbine is the name of an American school where two teenagers killed thirteen people in 1999. Subsequently, “columbine” became the term for all mass shootings in schools. No actual subculture exists. But now you can get sent to prison for twenty years for involvement in the “terrorist organization.” And a journalist can be fined if, when writing about the latest school shooting, they fail to mention that the shooters belong to the “terrorist organization”—even though this must, of course, be proven.

So belonging to an “extremist LGBT movement” that doesn’t actually exist is an excellent lever for putting the squeeze on anyone you like—from LGBT individuals to someone who draws a a picture of a rainbow.

Ksenia Mikhailova, a lawyer for the LGBT group Coming Out, told Agentstvo News that the new lawsuit completely criminalizes working in organizations that support gay people. For instance, directing a LGBT organization could get you ten years in prison, while working there could get you eight years. Ksenia Prosvirkina, a lawyer at OVD Info, thinks that even old social media posts expressing support for the LGBT community will end up counting as a “continuing violation.”

Prosvirkina notes that symbols like the rainbow could lead to getting fined up to a million rubles or four years of prison. Valeria Vetoshkina, a lawyer for First Department, thinks that in the worst possible scenario, belonging to LGBT might be interpreted by the authorities as involvement in the activities of an extremist organization.

The Justice Ministry lawsuit is far from the first move against LGBT individuals on the Russian government’s part. Over the past year and a half alone, both “LGBT propaganda” of any kind and transgender transitioning have been prohibited.

At a recent report to the UN, Deputy Justice Minister Andrei Loginov said that there is no discrimination against LGBT people in Russia. “The rights of LGBT citizens in Russia are protected by the appropriate statutes.” How this jibes with the lawsuit brought by the ministry where Loginov works is unclear (evidently, not at all).

Source: “It looks like Russia is finally prohibiting absolutely everything connected with LGBT,” I Don’t Get It newsletter (Mediazona), 17 November 2023. Translated by the Fabulous AM

Alexander Bakhtin: Justice Is Putin Behind Bars

Alexander Bakhtin (right) says farewell to his mother after his trial. Photo: SOTA via Mediazona

Today, the Mytishchi City Court sentenced 51-year-old animal rights activist Alexander Bakhtin to six years in a penal colony. He was charged with disseminating “fake news” about the Russian army over three VKontakte (VK) posts written in the spring of 2022—about the possible blockade of Kyiv, about the murders of civilians in Bucha, and about Ukrainian volunteers who risked their lives saving homeless animals during the war. In addition to the time in the penal colony, the court ordered Bakhtin to undergo compulsory outpatient treatment supervised by a psychiatrist. The prosecution’s expert witness claimed that Bakhtin “could not have been fully cognizant of the actual nature and social danger of his actions and control them.” Mediazona publishes excerpts from Bakhtin’s rebuttal of the charges, which he asked to be entered into the case file before the verdict was announced. After reading these notes, readers will be able to assess for themselves the clarity and consistency of the convicted man’s thoughts.

In keeping with the principle of the presumption of innocence, it is not for me to prove that the materials I published are true, but for the prosecution to prove that these materials are “knowingly false.” But it was not proved who exactly committed the [war] crimes, which means it was not ascertained whether my actions constituted a crime.

Censorship is prohibited by the Constitution of the Russian Federation, and this Constitution is directly applicable [to my case]. Human rights can be restricted in the Russian Federation only when a nationwide state of emergency and martial law have been declared. But they have not been declared, which means that publishing materials that challenge the stance of the Defense Ministry is not a punishable offense.

I committed the actions that I am charged with in order to inform and familiarize my readers with an alternative point of view to the one that was then disseminated in the Russian media. At the same time, realizing that Ukraine’s official media are also an interested party in this conflict, I tried mainly to find information on the internet not in the official Ukrainian media, but as directly reported by local residents of Ukraine on their pages in social networks and online forums. My ultimate goal was to make what contribution I could to stopping this war, because, for example, the First Chechen War in 1996 was, as I believe, halted largely due to Russian society’s negative attitude towards it.

If we speak of “hatred and enmity” (as encountered in my posts in the form of harsh epithets directed at the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation), then these epithets do not apply to all [members of] the Armed Forces, but only to those [members] who employed various kinds of violence against civilians in Ukraine, or to those individuals who unleashed this war or called for unleashing it—that is, to war criminals. Perhaps, in terms of “generally accepted” definitions, those negative epithets of mine do apply to all their members, but I do not agree with this interpretation because, as follows from the findings of the forensic psychiatric commission, I am also generally partial to subjectivism, including when employing various definitions. So when I was asked by a psychologist to symbolically depict the concept of “justice,” I drew Putin behind bars. And when the psychologist asked me what that had to with justice, I replied that this was what justice looked liked to me right at that moment.

The severity [of a crime] should be defined by its effects. But can the prosecution prove that my publishing these posts produced any specific effects? For example, that they caused someone to lose their faith in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and commit an illegal action? At the time of my arrest, I had a little more than sixty friends on VK, and each criminal episode had about 100 views. There are no victims in the case. I myself stopped publishing these posts around the summer of 2022 precisely because they had no effect. By that time, the overwhelming majority of Russian citizens had already made up their minds about this war. Some of them sincerely supported the Russian authorities, while others supported them for opportunistic reasons (in order not to lose their jobs, etc.). Huge numbers of people were intimidated (including by disproportionate punishments meted out for anti-war stances) and kept quiet. Quite a large number of people emigrated from the Russian Federation altogether, while a huge number of Russians decided that this war did not concern them at all. Thus, not only my posts but also anti-war publications in general were unable to change anything, unfortunately. It was only on the battlefield that matters were decided.

If my posts are so socially dangerous, then why was my VK page not blocked for such a long time?

You can write a letter to Alexander Bakhtin through the Zonatelecom or FSIN-Pismo, or by regular mail to:

Bakhtin Alexander Sergeyevich (born 1971)
219 ul. Gorval, SIZO-2
Volokalamsk, Moscow Region 143600 Russian Federation

Mediazona thanks Nikita Spivak, a lawyer with OVD Info, for the opportunity to read his client’s manuscript.

Source: Nikita Sologub, “Justice is Putin behind bars: what Alexander Bakhtin, sentenced to six years for three posts about the war, said in court,” Mediazona, 11 August 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader. People living outside of Russia will find it difficult or impossible to send letters to Russian prisons via the FSIN-Pismo and Zonatelecom services or regular mail. In many cases, however, you can send letters (which must be written in Russian or translated into Russian) via the free, volunteer-run service RosUznik. Mr. Bakhtin has not yet appeared on their list of supported addressees, however. You can ask me (avvakum@pm.me) for assistance and advice in sending letters to him and other Russian political prisoners.

This Iranian Life

Photo: Sergei Yermokhin/Delovoi Peterburg

Petersburg is getting ready to welcome groups of visa-free travelers from Iran. It could increase the tourist flow to the city by as much as eight percent.

The Economic Development Ministry reported that Russia has completed the procedure of exchanging lists of tourist organizations with China and Iran for the early launch of bilateral intergovernmental agreements on visa-free group tourist trips. In preparation for this, the St. Petersburg Tourism Development Committee and representatives of the hospitality industry held a series of “Welcome to St. Petersburg!” field presentations in the largest cities of the Islamic Republic of Iran—Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz. The events were attended by over 250 professionals from the country’s tourism industry.

“The people of Iran love to travel. The interest of the citizens of this country in Petersburg has been growing noticeably lately. The field events, realized as part of the national project ‘Tourism and the Hospitality Industry,’ provide Petersburg tourism industry professionals with a unique opportunity to establish new contacts with Iranian colleagues and, of course, increase interest in our city,” says Sergei Korneyev, chair of the St. Petersburg Tourism Development Committee Sergey Korneev.

On May 26, St. Petersburg welcomed the first passenger flight from Tehran, operated by Meraj Airlines, and on June 1, a direct flight from Iranian capital to St. Petersburg was made by Russia’s Nordwind Airlines. “Previously, when there were direct flights from Iran only to Moscow, trips were planned to the two cities at once. Now that direct flights have been established, tourists from Iran will be able to go straight to Petersburg and its suburbs,” says Yana Kozhevnikova, a partners and agencies specialist at tour operator Bon Tour.

Next year, Petersburg is planning to send a cultural and business mission to its Iranian sister city of Isfahan. Hossein Nasr, head of the Isfahan Association of Tour Operators, spoke of the need for vigorous development of tourism between the two cities. “Events where new connections can be established are very important to us. Representatives of the relevant companies in our city held constructive talks with their Petersburg colleagues, and this is a good foundation for strengthening relations and mutually increasing the tourist flow in the future,” he said.

Dmitry Tyurin, head of the commercial department at the international transfer ordering service I’way, argues that cooperation in the field of tourism between Iran and Petersburg opens up significant prospects for both sides. “This cooperation will bring many benefits both to the city and to business. An increase in the number of tourists will lead to an increase in the load on infrastructure facilities, thus contributing to the growth of profits and the development of the city’s economy. And the variety of needs and preferences among Iranian tourists will generate new opportunities for entrepreneurs involved in the hotel business, restaurants, souvenir shops, and travel agencies. In addition, the development of cooperation with Iran can contribute to the strengthening of diplomatic and cultural ties between the countries. The influx of Iranian tourists will enable local residents and entrepreneurs to better understand Iranian culture,” he says.

According to political scientist Inna Litvinenko, the willingness of Iranian tour operators to send tourists to Petersburg points to large-scale prospects for developing the tourism sector and related sectors of the city’s economy.

“First of all, it will affect the hotel and restaurant business, airlines, and tourist agencies. The growing interest in visiting Petersburg is explained by the Northern Capital’s rich historical legacy, its geographical location, and the concentration of business flows. Visa-free agreements with Iran will increase the tourist flow by 5–8%, and the word-of-mouth effect on neighboring Islamic states will also kick in, making it possible to achieve a 12–15% increase in tourists by the end of 2024. Another obvious plus will be the influx of investments into actively developing industries—construction, the hotel and restaurant business, and the service sector,” predicts Litvinenko.

Source: Elizaveta Sumriakova, “Eastern tilt: visa-free agreement with Iran will increase tourist flow to Petersburg,” Delovoi Peterburg, 24 July 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

I was just flying from Leningrad to Istanbul, and the coach of an Iranian football team was seated next to me. I had this feeling like I was in the movie Cabaret. On the other hand, if I had said to him, ‘Well, how’s it going with the ayatollahs?’ he could have said to me, ‘And how’s it going with Putin?’ He got up in the middle of the flight and handed out our poor northern apples to his players while I drank white wine. We caught each other’s eye and smiled at each other. For the last hour, he studied English on his phone using an Iranian app. The good guys will beat the bad guys.

Source: Nikolay Konoshenok (Facebook), 24 July 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

The Russian state is keen to foster loyal young people. We have already recounted how the authorities have clamped down on liberal universities and brought them to heel, rewritten school history textbooks, and shut down independent educational projects. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Today, the website Protocol and the YouTube channel RZVRT claimed that college students in Tatarstan’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone have been made to assemble [Iranian] kamikaze drones. They face expulsion and a fine of 1.5 million rubles if they refuse to do it. Students also have to play paintball, and the losers are forced to dig trenches and are “executed” with paintball guns. Two cases of suicide have already been reported. In addition, the college management tricks female students from African countries into doing the dirtiest menial labor.

“‘Alabuga: producing death with the hands of death.’ The second part of Protocol and RZVRT’s joint investigation of Alabuga. We talk about how students are forced to dig trenches and assemble Iranian Shahed drones, about how students from African countries were lured into applying to the college through Tinder, and about how the leadership of the special economic zone treats students.” Protocol (YouTube), 24 July 2023 (in Russian)

This is not the only such case. The authorities in Russia have recently been inspired by the idea of free child labor, including for the needs of the army fighting in Ukraine.

Thus, on July 20, the State Duma immediately passed in its second and third readings a bill on “community service” for schoolchildren. Children will now have to clean classrooms, plant trees at school, and help in the library on a “voluntary-compulsory” basis. Permission from parents will no longer be required for this. Commenting on the new law, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said that “only through labor can one cultivate an attitude to many issues that [the child] will later need to solve. The child will grow up different. Harmony will come.”

“Community service” goes hand in hand with the militarization of schools. During “basic training” lessons, children will learn how to pilot drones. “Today’s army is not only the Kalashnikov assault rifle, but also advanced unmanned vehicles,” said Federation Council member Artyom Sheinin.

From September 1, military training will be introduced for pupils in grades ten and eleven. Among other things, children will practice military greetings, drilling, handling small arms, combat actions, and first aid during hostilities.

And the name of subject itself, “Fundamentals of Security and Vital Activity,” in which schoolchildren study the basics of military affairs, has been changed by the State Duma to “Fundamentals of Security and Protection of the Motherland.”

There are also serious changes to the history curriculum. In September, high school students will get new textbooks featuring chapters about the “special military operation.” They will be told that:

Kiev “secretly colluded with NATO.”
Peace in Crimea was preserved by the “polite people”, that is, by the unidentified Russian soldiers who seized the peninsula in March 2014.
It was the West’s fault that new “Minsk agreements” were not signed.
Ukraine wanted to get its hands on nuclear weapons.
The war, which was the Kremlin’s only option, has “consolidated society.”
There is a “fake news industry” in the world that allegedly lies about the Russian army’s actions in Ukraine.

Schoolchildren will also be made to read excerpts from Putin’s speeches and look at a map of Russia that includes the occupied territories in Ukraine.

The refusal of State Duma deputies to raise the lower limit of the draft age from 18 to 21 is part and parcel of the same series of initiatives for turning schoolchildren into propagandized soldiers. Deputies claims that there are a lot of young people who want to go to serve right after leaving school. Meanwhile, universities are raising tuition fees, effectively introducing income barriers to higher education.

Children must learn in advance how to shoot, assemble deadly drones, pilot them, and love the Motherland. The Russian state doesn’t seem to need anything else from them.

Source: “Children are forced to march in formation, assemble drones, and study Putin’s speeches,” I Don’t Get It newsletter (Mediazona), 24 July 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

Counting the Dead

The Russian authorities do not talk about the casualties its forces have sustained in the war with Ukraine. The last time the Ministry of Defense reported on them was in September 2022, and even then the official figures diverged considerably from estimates by independent researchers. The Kremlin now says that they trust only the figures from the Defense Ministry. The trouble is that there are no figures from the Defense Ministry.

So how many Russians have been killed since the start of the full-scale war with Ukraine in February 2022?

A new investigation by Mediazona, Meduza, and Dmitry Kobak (who teaches machine learning at the University of Tübingen) provides at least approximate figures.

Journalists at Mediazona and the BBC have been counting losses by monitoring obituaries in local media, posts on social media, and new gravestones in cemeteries. They have compiled a list of names, and while it certainly does not reflect the entire state of affairs, it does give us a rough idea of the number of the casualties sustained by the Russian army and Russian PMCs.

But there is another source of data on deaths in Russia—the registry of inheritance cases, in which notaries register all information about deceased Russians who have left behind an inheritance. Since last year, the number of inheritance cases involving deceased men, especially young men, has increased dramatically. Inheritances cases do not account for everyone killed in the war, but even this increase makes it possible to ascertain the real figures for excess male mortality—that is, the actual number of war dead. The authors of the investigation describe in detail how they have unearthed this data.

The tally takes into account the mortality of men under fifty years of age. There are no women at the front, just as there are almost no servicemen much older than fifty there. The journalists also compared their estimates with obituaries: it turned out that the increase in the number of entries in the register and the number of deaths correlate with each other. Moreover, Rosstat’s information about mortality for 2022 also matches these data. (Rosstat have not yet published any information about mortality rates for 2023.)

So, around 25,000 Russian men under the age of fifty perished in the war in 2022. At the same time, the discrepancy that thus arises with Rosstat’s data on excess mortality is only four percent, which is within the margin of error.

Between 24 February 2022 and 27 May 2023, approximately 47,000 Russian men under the age of fifty were killed in the war.

This figure accounts only for servicemen, mercenaries, and convicts killed. It is impossible to count the number of those killed in the DPR and LPR.

The Russian army has also sustained other casualties, for example, men have been wounded, some of them seriously wounded, which are irretrievable losses.

The number of seriously wounded men has been estimated approximately, and the approximate proportion of them to men who have been killed is one to one-point-seven. This means that, in total, at least 125 thousand Russian servicemen have either been killed or seriously wounded during the full-scale war with Ukraine. This is greater than the losses sustained by the Soviet and Russian armies in all the other wars they have fought, from Korea to Chechnya, since the Second World War.”

Source: I Don’t Get It newsletter (Mediazona), 10 July 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader. The emphasis is that of the authors.

How Russians Are Forcibly Conscripted

“Summer in Petersburg”: photo by Marina Varchenko

The Russian security forces have been increasingly organizing dragnets to sweep up potential army recruits. This is occurring amidst a full-scale war with Ukraine in which the Russian army has suffered heavy losses.

There are more and more accounts of these roundups. Mediazona, for example, details how a 25-year-old Muscovite, employed in the IT business in Moscow City, was lured to a meeting with police officers and military enlistment officers through the classified ads website Avito, on which the young man was selling headphones. He was quickly sent to serve in the Moscow Region, despite being diagnosed with bronchial asthma.

The Movement of Conscientious Objectors recounts how the police simply broke into the apartment of conscripts Yevgeny Komarov and Ivan Dubenko and sent them to the assembly point. Dubenko was first strangled, and then, threatened with rape, forced to sign his military service card, as required for conscription.

Another story relayed by the Movement involves a young man with hypertension and anxiety-depressive disorder who went to the military enlistment office to undergo a medical examination and get a postponement, but instead was sent to the assembly point the very same day. Mahmudjon Nurov, on the contrary, was simply detained at the Izmailovskaya metro station and immediately sent to the military enlistment office. In the Kursk Region, the military commissars took an even simpler approach: they allegedly assembled everyone whom the medical commission had declared unfit for service, confiscated their telephones, and sent them off to serve in the army.

The Russian army needs conscripts: during this draft, which lasts until July 15, the authorities have been charged with drafting 150,000 thousand men, and so the military enlistment officers have teamed up with the police to go out and catch potential recruits. The practice is, in fact, illegal, and the prosecutor’s office has repeatedly confirmed this, but the law has not prevented police officers from going to factories and shops in search of young men allegedly fit for service. Fortunately, so far no one has received electronic draft notices through Gosuslugi [the Russian state services website]: they should begin to be issued during the next conscription campaign.

Here is how you can protect yourself as much as possible in the current circumstances:

• Do not go to the military enlistment office in person. Everything you need to learn from them can be done by mail or by an acquaintance with a power of attorney.

• If you are served a draft summons in person (military enlistment offices retain this right), refuse to take it.

• Don’t sign anything and seek legal assistance. You can file a lawsuit appealing mobilization and conscription orders through the bot “I’m Not Going!” While the court is considering your suit, you cannot be inducted into the army.

• Fill out an application for alternative civilian service in advance. Both those who have been served with draft notices and those who have been mobilized have such an opportunity.

Source: “How are Russians forcibly enlisted in the army? What should you do if they try to enlist you?” I Don’t Get It newsletter (Mediazona), 29 June 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader