Gazprom Refuses to Name and Shame Russian Authorities Falling Behind on Bills Moscow Times
March 29, 2017
Russian energy giant Gazprom has refused to name and shame regional governments for falling behind on their gas bills.
Previous press releases by the company had turned the spotlight on authorities who refused to pay up.
Gazprom’s last debt report in 2016 slammed local governments in Russia’s North Caucasus, reporting that officials in the region owed more than 48 billion rubles ($845 million)—more than 80 percent of all money owned to the company across Russia as a whole.
This year, the company took a less-confrontational approach, declining to name its main debtors despite a rise in outstanding payments. “Overdue payments remain an urgent problem,” the company said in a press release. “In 2016, it grew by about 6 percent, amounting to 161 billion rubles ($2.84 billion) as of January 1, 2017.”
Some have seen the change as part of a bid to appease Chechen leader Kadyrov after he locked horns with the energy company last month.
Kadyrov, whose government forms a vital part of Russia’s North Caucasus region, accused Gazprom of using “worn out” equipment. He said that the company’s “bad management” forced the Chechen people to live in “19th century conditions.”
“People pay for light, for gas, but the money just doesn’t get there,” Kadyrov said.
The Chechen government has long waged a campaign to see local energy assets handed over to Kadyrov’s safekeeping.
The Kommersant newspaper reported in February that Russian oil giant Rosneft could sell its assets to the Chechen republic in a multi-billion dollar deal.
The Chechen government also took control of property belonging to Chechenneftekhimprom—the state-owned company that controls the republic’s oil-refining and petrochemical industry—in December 2015 after repeated requests to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
_______________________
That’s certainly a curious article.
I was walking round town the other day and came across several instances of Gazprom’s engaged in quite the opposite behavior, that is, naming and shaming ordinary flat dwellers to their neighbors for the money they had failed to pay the gentle folks who “hold[] the world’s largest natural gas reserves.”
The funny thing is that the worst gas-bill shirker in this particular block of flats, the bourgeois wrecker who lives in flat no. 48, owes mighty Gazprom the equivalent of a whopping 35 euros. The bastards in flats no. 35 and no. 41 owe a bit over nine euros each, but they’ve already been tied to the same whipping post as the foreign saboteur in no. 48.
The circumstances at a nearby block of flats is a bit more dire. Flat no. 58 has seemingly gone rogue, racking up an unseemingly debt of 245 euros. And yet Gazprom, which, as the Moscow Times article, above, suggests, has learned the lesson that discretion is the better part of wisdom, has also ratted out flat no. 9 for owing it the equivalent of eight euros fifty cents.
So the takeaway is that if you’re a North Caucasian republic, you can get away without paying your gas bill, which, I imagines, amounts to more than nine euros a month.
For the record, my monthly gas bill amounts to a little over six euros a month and I always pay it on time, such a fervid patriot am I.
But not everyone is conscientious as I am, as I saw a bit further down the same street, where Gazprom had named and shamed packs of shirkers wholesale—alas, to no avail.
Sigh. These folks don’t want to pay their rates at all, apparently.
А “mixed martial arts” fight between eight-, nine-, and ten-year-olds never hurt anyone.
We beat the hell out of each other in the schoolyard, although it wasn’t televised, sadly.
Later, some of us grew up to be policemen or joined the armed forces. Meaning, some of us grew up to be people who do important work in our country by keeping the inferior races down, with a couple of dozen pistol shots to head and chest, if necessary, or traveling to foreign countries to kill their people by the thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands because they had the misfortune of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time, although they never harmed a hair on any of our curly imperial heads.
Kadyrov has the right idea. He is training his own children and Chechnya’s children for the day when he and his army of Russian patriots will have to descend on the metropole and rip the empire’s “fifth column” and “national traitors” limb from limb.
And he is broadcasting it on TV so that all these enemies and traitors can see that he and his people are getting ready to come after them.
Only a person completely off their rocks would call this “stability.”
For the last seventeen years, Putin has been concocting a Vesuvius-like social, economic, and political volcano that will soon blow up in everyone’s face. Worldwide. The people of Aleppo have already been hit by future seismic aftershocks from this belated volcanic explosion. Who will be next?
Kadyrov Children’s Televised MMA Bouts Prompt Criticism In Russia RFE/RL
October 6, 2016
Russia’s ombudswoman for the rights of children says she has sent an official query to the children’s ombudsman in the North Caucasus region of Chechnya after state television broadcast mixed martial arts (MMA) fights between children.
Anna Kuznetsova made the announcement on October 6, two days after three sons, all aged between 8 and 10, of Chechnya’s Moscow-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov won their fights in the cage during a so-called exhibition bout in Grozny.
Ten-year-old Akhmad beat another boy by a technical knockout.
Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “If all of this is true, then probably a live broadcast of a child’s knockout is the reason for the proper supervisory authorities to closely look into this matter.”
The chairman of Russia’s MMA Union, Fyodor Yemelyanenko earlier called the fights “unacceptable,” saying the children risked permanent injury and psychological harm.
Yemelyanenko said children under the age of 12 should not be allowed to take part in any MMA fights and that anyone under the age of 21 must wear a helmet and protective gear, which was not the case in the fights involving Kadyrov’s sons.
He also expressed concerns that the children’s fight was shown on state television.
Kadyrov posted a video of the bouts on his own Instagram account.
Kadyrov’s cousin Adam Delimkhanov, who is a Russian lawmaker, lambasted Yemelyanenko for the criticism, calling him “a coward.”
“Whoever the man is, he will have to be accountable for every word he uttered regarding my dear nephews,” Delimkhanov wrote on Instagram on October 6.
Kadyrov was inaugurated on October 5, his 40th birthday, to a new term as Chechnya’s leader.
Pop singer Seal performs for Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and other VIP guests during a ceremony to mark Kadyrov’s 35th birthday and City Day celebrations in Grozny, Chechnya, October 5, 2011.
“Chernovik”: Man Who Complained to Putin about Kadyrov Has House Burned Down in Chechen Village of Kenkhi Mediazona
May 13, 2016
According to Chernovik, the house of local resident Ramazan Dzhalaldinov, who had complained to Vladimir Putin about the Chechen authorities, had his house burnt down late on the night of May 12 in the village of Kenkhi, in Chechnya’s Sharoy District.
As Dzhalaldinov’s wife told Chernovik, around midnight, masked men entered the house. They said they had come to rescue them. The women and three daughters were put in a car, but later were thrown out under a bridge.
“And the house was set on fire. Residents of the village have been forbidden to say anything on the topic under threat of their houses being set on fire,” she said.
A few weeks ago, Ramazan Dzhalaldinov recorded a video appeal to President Vladimir Putin in which he spoke about the poor living conditions in the villages, the houses left destroyed after the two military campaigns of 1994-1996 and 1999, and the corruption of local officials. After posting the video, Dzhalaldinov left the republic.
In late April, the other villagers corroborated Dzhalaldinov’s complaints to a correspondent for TV Rain. Afterwards, villagers who had spoken with the reporter were detained by Chechen security forces.
On May 6, Ramzan Kadyrov, acting head of Chechnya, visited the village of Kenkhi and spoke with several residents, who once again confirmed what Dzhalaldinov had related in his video message.
Kadyrov promised to repair roads and tower complexes in three months, supply the village with natural gas lines, and build mosques in the Sharoy District.
After Kadyrov’s visit, Grozny TV aired a report in which it was claimed that “residents of the village publicly condemned the conduct of [their] countryman” Ramazan Dzhalaldinov.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, Belgian actor Jean-Claude Van Damme, and American actress Hilary Swank look on during a ceremony to mark Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s 35th birthday and City Day celebrations in Grozny, Chechnya, October 5, 2011. Photo by Maxim Shipenkov/EPA
ECtHR Rules in Case of Zarema Gaisanova, Who Disappeared without a Trace in Chechnya Mediazona
May 12, 2016
Gaisanova disappeared in 2009 after a special security operation personally led by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. According to human rights activists, Gaisanova, an employee of the Danish Refugee Council, was abducted and probably murdered.
Her interests were represented at the ECtHR by the Memorial Human Rights Centre and the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre (EHRAC, London). In Russia, the case was handled by lawyers from the Joint Mobile Group of human rights activists in Chechnya.
The ECtHR ruled that the Russian authorities were responsible for Gaisanova’s abduction and probable death. The court found that Article 2 (right to life), Article 3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment), and Article 5 (right to liberty and security) of the European Convention on Human Rights had been violated.
Translated by the Russian Reader. Photo courtesy ofGigapica
Hello! One of the main events of the past week for us was not Putin’s “Direct Line,” but the arrest of a man who spoke with Putin a year ago. Anton Tyurishev, a construction worker at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East, complained to the president that he and his mates were not being paid their wages. Putin promised to get to the bottom of it, but a year on nothing had changed. Tyurishev promised that in response protests would kick off. Later, he was summoned to the police station, where the “Law on Rallies” was read out to him. The day before the “Direct Line” broadcast, he was detained and sent to jail for five days, allegedly, for swearing in public.
Criminal Prosecution
The new defendant in the Bolotnaya Square Case, Maxim Panfilov, who suffers from Tourette’s syndrome and yet was taken into police custody, is not getting the medicines he needs. Instead, he is being administered substitutes that do not alleviate his condition. Panfilov has been appointed an outpatient psychiatric examination. The investigator has agreed to let defense attorneys attend it.
Ildar Dadin, convicted of “multiple violations of the rules for holding public events,” was convoyed from Moscow to Petersburg right on his birthday, which means he will serve his sentence in Leningrad Region.
Ildar Dadin
Last week, it transpired that Magomednabi Magomedov, imam of the Eastern Mosque in Khasavyurt, had been arrested, accused of incitement to terrorism and inciting religious and ethnic hatred. Magomedov, who was transported from one place of confinement to another over several days, complained he had been tortured. Pretrial detention facility officers had beaten him and forced him to kneel, demanding that he confess to the charges.
Euromaidan participant Alexander Kostenko, convicted of harming a Berkut riot police officer, was transferred to solitary confinement shortly before a hearing where his request for parole was to be examined. Naturally, Kostenko’s parole request was rejected.
Alexander Kostenko
It seems soon Alexei Navalny will have no allies who are not undergoing criminal prosecution. Ivan Zhdanov, head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s legal service, and a candidate for the council of deputies in the Moscow suburb of Barvikha, has been charged with evading conscription.
Freedom of Assembly
In Ulyanovsk, police diligently searched for activists who had blocked a road in connection with construction of a residential complex. They visited one activist at work, and telephone another and asked him to report for questioning. When he demanded an official summons, they threatened him with criminal charges. Administrative charges have been filed against three people.
In Volgograd, the leader of the regional Union of Entrepreneurs and Freight Haulers has been slapped with three administrative charges for calling people to a protest rally before the rally was authorized. The court threw out two of the three charges, while the third resulted in a fine.
In Podolsk, three men attacked Maxim Chekanov, a past participant of protest rallies. The incident began when they called Chekanov by name, asked him questions about the “Kiev junta,” called him a “Banderite scumbag,” and then invited him to go round the corner. During the ensuing fight they smashed Chekhanov’s face.
Popular Chechen singer Hussein Betelgeriev, who disappeared in late March, has returned home beaten. It is unknown where he was all this time. Relatives and friends suggest he was abducted, and connect the abduction with his comments on social networks and the fact he ignored the call to attend a pro-Kadyrov rally on March 23.
OVD Info is an independent human rights media project dedicated to political persecution in Russia. We are engaged in daily monitoring of detentions at public events, and publish information about other kinds of political persecution. We believe that information liberates and protects, and analyzing the data we collect can help change the situation for the better in the future.
Editor’s Note. OVD Info sends out a weekly email news roundup, in Russian, to its supporters. I thought that, despite its brevity, this week’s roundup provided a fairly eloquent picture of the state of affairs in this country at present and not just this particular week. You can sign up to the mailing list by going to the bottom of any page n the OVD Info website and entering your email address where you see the phrase ПОДПИСАТЬСЯ НА РАССЫЛКУ.
Kadyrov Is Not Chechnya
Grigory Tumanov Snob
January 26, 2015
Kommersant newspaper correspondent Grigory Tumanov has returned from a trip to Grozny and reports everything you hear about modern Chechnya and its bloodlust is a myth invented by Ramzan Kadyrov
Photo: Dmitry Korotayev/Kommersant
If you said the pro-Ramzan Kadyrov rally, held last Friday in Grozny, was a kind of vote for Kadyrov, you would have to admit it was a failure. It has long been argued the event was meant to hide some of the Chechen leader’s deeper problems, and he had begun to haggle with Moscow not by offering stability in exchange for a free hand, but by offering the explosive situation in the region. But on the ground it turned out all the stories about how, as soon as Kadyrov resigns and loosens his grip, the entire republic would secede from Russia, immediately impose sharia law, and establish a free Ichkeria are a myth.
I remember January 19, 2015, in Grozny: the rally for the Prophet, which had also been organized not without the involvement of the local authorities, to put it mildly. The vast majority of the people at the rally had, of course, never seen any Charlie Hebdo cartoons on the web, the cartoons that sparked the brutal murders of the magazine’s journalists. Despite this, however, from early morning there was a huge traffic jam even on Chechnya’s border with the neighboring republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan. Yes, there were state employees. Yes, ralliers were bussed into Grozny. Yes, there were quotas and roll calls, and prototype placards imposed by the higher-ups, and campaigning in dean’s offices. It is odd, of course, to try and assess the degree to which those people went involuntarily to the Heart of Chechnya Mosque that day, but it should be said they stayed on the square both at twelve o’clock to perform the midday prayer and afterwards.
Several days later, every other car was still sporting a “We Support the Prophet!” placard. It made sense. How, in a Muslim region, would you say no to the question, “Are you going to the rally for the Prophet?” You wouldn’t say it, of course.
“I have not seen the cartoons, but I am a Muslim, so I have no choice but to come out. Rally or no rally, how could I not come out? For some reason you all say we should not be offended by cartoons about something that matters to us. But why should you decide for us? You don’t believe in it!” one rally attendee told me.
It was a conclusive victory for Kadyrov. People really did come out for the rally, driven not only by official lobbying but also by their own indignation. So it was a great way for Kadyrov to announce his candidacy for the post of chief defender of Muslims in Russia.
Photo: Said Tsarnayev/RIA Novosti
Contrary to the official Instagrams posted by Chechen officials and Kadyrov himself, it turned out that the personal pull exerted by the head of the republic was still not comparable to that of Muhammad. The Chechen Interior Ministry reported that over a million people gathered on the squares of Grozny last Friday. This is not true. I stood on the roof of the judicial department of the republic’s Supreme Court and saw with my own eyes that there were hardly 100,000 people in attendance. And as soon as the officials moderating the rally announced it was over, all those one hundred thousand people literally evaporated from the square. It was impressive. I was especially touched by the way that people who were not employed in the state sector proudly said they would not be going to the rally.
“Oh no, I am going to stock up on potato chips and sunflower seeds and plop down on the sofa. If it is a day off, then let it be a day off. No one is going to force me to come out for the tsar,” a private entrepreneur in Grozny told me.
“Maybe we will not be allowed to work on this day, but we are not going anywhere, so if you suddenly feel like some tea, stop by,” the proprietors of a kebab place near the hotel where I stayed told me on the eve of the rally.
While it was true there was no smoke coming from their grills the next morning, all the place’s employees were in fact at work, watching with curiosity as state-sector workers carrying placards shuffled by them on their way to the Heart of Chechnya Mosque.
Yes, everyone with whom I spoke in the crowd on the square spouted off rote phrases about how Kadyrov had raised the republic from ruins, and that he needed support, since Ilya Yashin had launched a real vilification campaign against him. But it was no less impressive to see how people squinted and smiled ironically as they said this, to see placards embossed with slogans about Kadyrov and against Navalny just lying in the flowerbeds after the rally, and how policemen quickly tried to clean them up when they noticed the interest they aroused among photojournalists.
All of today’s Chechnya is a myth invented by Kadyrov. The bloody seriousness and the obsession with sports and Islam are a myth. Another such myth is the stability Kadyrov provides, thus reining in the unbearable craving of Chechens for secession from Russia and terrorism. Talking about politics in the republic frightens everyone, especially talking about politics with reporters. There is the risk you will find yourself on a treadmill with your pants pulled down. Both critics and supporters of the regime agree on the main point, however: the wars are over, the bombing has stopped. However, if you get both critics and supporters to talk, all of them will admit that the choice between nocturnal visits by men in cars with KRA license plates [i.e., marked with Kadyrov’s initials] and Russian bombing raids is not great.
Photo: Dmitry Korotayev/Kommersant
Ruslan has a cafe. If you walk down Putin Avenue and then turn into the courtyards, walk past the houses, go down into a basement, and push the door with a yellow sign featuring a guitar, inside you will find something resembling the Mos Eisley Cantina in the first Star Wars movie. The place is terribly smoky, and there are strange groups of people sitting all round it. Only the drum kit is empty. The alien band that produced the whimsical sounds in the movie has been replaced by a young boy now quite long-windedly showing his support for FC Bayern Munich, whose match is on the telly.
Ruslan was a physical education teacher and was about to get housing in a dormitory when the first Chechen campaign started. On the day Russian forces stormed Minutka Square, he was trying to find bread. Ruslan says he cannot eat supper without bread.
Ruslan also cannot live without the blues. While he never has learned to play the guitar, he knows so many artists by heart it would blow your mind. The cafe is not even a business to him but the chance to live as he likes. Sometimes, friends come to the bar and perform jam sessions, and a bottle of cognac can always be found for regulars.
“Around the New Year it was totally excellent here. Everyone would dance until dawn to Pink Floyd, and they were barely standing when they would go home early in the morning,” says Ruslan.
He understands that even in Moscow a blues cafe is a very niche establishment, not to mention Grozny, but this is how he wants to live.
“I would have long ago earned money from the cafe by showing football matches and letting customers make bets. It is quite profitable, but in Chechnya you are not allowed to engage in bookmaking. It is permitted all over Russia, but here it is forbidden. It is forbidden, and that is that. Why should I regard this as normal?” he says, incensed.
Here it is not the custom to say out loud that there is anything wrong with Kadyrov, but the cafe owner does not like having to choose between war and autocracy.
“Look, no one here has any illusions. By all means, let it be Ramzan and Ramzan. But could they just leave us in peace? I want to work in peace, not to be hassled by anyone. People have nothing to eat, but all day long they show on the telly how Kadyrov went for a sleigh ride, what car he drove and where. It is like a reality show,” says another resident of Chechnya, who has a small business.
For him, the pro-Kadyrov rally was an additional irritant. I do not know whether some good people in Moscow actually explained to the Chechen leader he should not appear before his happy people on Friday or maybe he figured it out himself, but I heard a fair number of jokes about the big theatrical production without the main character on stage.
On the eve of the rally, there were rumors in Grozny that now as never before Kadyrov had to demonstrate people’s gratitude to him, and so the presence of media at the rally that were not subordinate to local authorities was undesirable. Allegedly, the nervousness of the local government had reached such levels that members of patriotic youth clubs had been instructed to seek out federal and foreign journalists in the crowd and prevent them from doing their jobs any way they could.
Ultimately, this did not happen, but such a nervous atmosphere could hardly have arisen if the leader were confident if not in the people’s absolute loyalty then at least in its absolute fear.
Some wonder what to do with the republic’s zombified population when Kadyrov goes. But it turns out that nothing in particular has to be done at all. Kadyrov is not Chechnya, and the Chechens are not the pumped men in camouflage you see in the Instagrams, signed with nicknames ending with the number 95 [i.e., the regional code for Chechnya on Russian license plates].
These are people who are insulted to hear they are wasting Moscow’s money. These are people who are afraid men will come for them in the night. These are people who want to open the kinds of cafes they want to open, and who do not want to stand holding identical placards at eight in the morning instead of going to work, and who do not want war. And what sets them apart from the vast majority of Russian citizens (it has become all the rage lately to oppose the two groups) is that they remember war quite well.
Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade AK for the heads-up. See Sergey Abashin’s recent comment on the same topic, as posted on this website.
“Captives of the Caucasus: #Kadyrov Is a Russian Patriot.” A mash-up by Anatoly Veitsenfeld of a famous scene from the beloved Soviet comedy Kidnapping, Caucasian Style (Leonid Gaidai, 1967) and the recent social media campaign by pro-Kremlin celebrities, who have been photographed holding pieces of paper with this message printed on it. Thanks to Comrade EM for the heads-up.
Everyone has been getting drawn into the virtual fight with Kadyrov. I, too, have been outraged by what has been said and done in Chechnya. But I am afraid of certain hasty generalizations that have already begun to take shape amongst the “opposition” (by which I also mean a certain detachment from the authorities, not necessarily confrontation with them).
First, it is shortsighted to turn the fight against the, so to speak, Kadyrovshchina into a fight with the Chechens. This is the principle of collective guilt all over again. We are falling into the same trap without solving the problems but only aggravating them. Kadyrov does not represent all Chechens. There are many people opposed to him, both moderate liberals and more aggressive radicals. The majority of people simply live their local lives and keep their mouths shut. They are occasionally dragged off to pro-Kadyrov rallies and forced to hold placards and shout slogans, but that does not mean they are ardent Kadyrov supporters. We just need to keep this in mind.
Second, the current regime in Chechnya is not something “Islamic,” “Caucasian,” “Asian,” and so forth, epithets that many liberals have been quick to pin on it, thus reproducing the white man’s colonial language. The Kadyrovshchina is a projection of the regime in the Kremlin. The Kremlin created it, the Kremlin has financed it, the Kremlin controls it, and one of the reasons it has done this has been to divert attention from itself. The current Putin regime and the Kadyrov regime, as part of the former, are not some kind of “Asian backwardness.” They are the peculiar system that emerged in the wake of Soviet modernization, with all its illusions, unfulfilled projects, traumas, and its incapacity for recycling this legacy in the post-Soviet period. As a consequence, we see a strange modern archaism or peripheralization.
Third, jettisoning Chechnya and punishing the Chechens can hardly solve the problem. Where we would jettison them? How would we punish them? We need to change the regime in the Kremlin, to establish a whole new regime in Russia, to create new development programs or programs for overcoming peripheralization, and as part of these programs think about how the former borderlands, colonies, and Third World can be included in this development, rather than building a wall they will beat against until they smash it.
Sergey Abashin is British Petroleum Professor of Migration Studies at the European University in Saint Petersburg. His most recent book is Sovetskii kishlak: Mezhdu kolonializmom i modernizatsiei [The Soviet Central Asian village: between colonialism and modernization], Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2015. Translated by the Russian Reader
Promo flyer for the exhibition Mikhail Domozhilov, Militiaman’s Pass, ARTOFFOTO Gallery, Saint Petersburg, January 15-February 3, 2016. Courtesy of the gallery
This morning I got an urgent message from a friend, alerting me to the fact a funny sounding exhibition of photographs was underway at a downtown photo gallery I had never heard of.
It was true, as my friend pointed out, that the announcement for the show, an exhibition of portraits of Eastern Ukrainian pro-Russian separatist fighters (opolchentsy), taken by Petersburg photographer Mikhail Domozhilov, sounded quite dicey politically, as posted on the website of the exhibiting gallery, ARTOFFOTO.
It sounded a little less outwardly partisan when translated into English and printed on the flyers I would later find lying on a windowsill in the gallery:
“The self-proclaimed and still unrecognized state [of the] Donetsk People’s Republic appeared as a result of a civil war in Ukraine in April, 2014. The Donbass People’s Militia became the driving force of the new republic. In the year that passed after the declaration of the DPR, its militia transformed from an anarchic group of super activists [sic] divided into small groups and willing to go weaponless and die for an idea into a regular army with all its necessary attributes—[a] code [of military conduct], subdivisions [sic] and their chiefs, headquarters and machinery.
“This episode is about transition and transformation, about a shaky equilibrium between belonging to one country and to another, utopic in its essence. And also about the self-identification of the participants throughout the conflict. In several months former miners, builders, mechanics have become professional warriors, and a new, extreme reality has replaced the ordinary one. With major destruction[], artillery shelling and [a] non-continuous front, these people suddenly found themselves in the middle of historical events and news reports.
“This episode includes several close-up portraits of militia members in mobile studios at military and training bases, as well as on [the] frontlines.”
(English-language flyer for the exhibition Mikhail Domozhilov, Militiaman’s Pass [Opolchenskii Bilet], ARTOFFOTO Gallery, Bolshaya Konyushennaya, 1, Saint Petersburg, January 15–February 3, 2016)
It was also true that the photographer, Mr. Domozhilov, had shown a penchant in his career for subjects that might be characterized as rightist, such as this fascinating series on the ultras for Petersburg’s Russian Premier League side, FC Zenit.
The ultras series featured virtuosic albeit historically and aesthetically coded works such as this.
Mikhail Domozhilov, From the series Ultras, 2010. Courtesy of the photographer’s website
On the other hand, Mr. Domozhilov’s tearsheets included portraits, just as compelling, of pro-Ukrainian fighters on the Maidan in Kyiv.
But I did not think it fair to pronounce judgement on the work on the basis of a couple of websites, so I set off into the winter wonderland that Petrograd has become in the last week to see the show for myself.
The Chechen operation was a series of bloody war crimes by the federal forces (and by the insurgents, but what can we demand of them now, when some of them are gone, and the rest are in Aleppo?) When you take pride in the Chechen War, you are proud of the abductions and torture. You are proud of the Tochka-U missile that fell in the middle of the Grozny market. You are proud of the tens of thousands (only according to official statistics) of civilians killed.
You are proud of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya for telling the truth about the war. You are proud of the occupation regime established there on the bayonets of your fathers and funded by your taxes. You are proud of the “pacification” of Chechnya at the cost of Kadyrov’s terrorist dictatorship, which is quite similar to the most odious Middle East regimes, like that of good old Bashar Assad.
As long as the terrorist regime concerned only the Chechen themselves, you were barely indignant. You only squeamishly wondered that such a wild region bore the name of Russia. You did not ponder the fact the police chief’s teenage bride, Luiza Goilabiyeva, was actually a Russian citizen, and that your fathers had fought for her right to have a Russian passport. You did not think that Adam Dikayev, forced to humiliate himself by walking on a treadmill in his underpants, was just as much a citizen of Russia as was, for example, Vlad Kolesnikov, who was driven to suicide.
But now it suddenly transpires that Kadyrov’s terrorist dictatorship has been terrorizing not only the Chechen people but all of Russia. I hope now the time has come to realize what pride in the bloodiest war in recent Russian history has come to. It has come to the fact the proud son of a great father mutters something into a camera held by one of Kadyrov’s gunman, trying not to stray from the prepared text.
So this does not happen again, we have to realize, among other things, that Konstantin Senchenko and Adam Dikayev are in the same boat, and the Chechen War is not our pride but our greatest shame.
Translation and photo, above, by the Russian Reader
__________
Critic of Chechen leader Kadyrov ‘apologises profoundly’ BBC News
January 16, 2016
A Russian politician who criticised Ramzan Kadyrov, the Russian-backed Chechen leader, has made a “profound” apology.
Konstantin Senchenko, a local politician in Siberia, had posted criticism of Mr Kadyrov on Facebook.
However, Mr Senchenko then posted a grovelling apology, leading to widespread speculation that he had been forced to do so.
Mr Kadyrov also uploaded a video of Mr Senchenko apologising on to Instagram.
In it Mr Senchenko is seen to say: “I apologise profoundly.”
“I was wrong—I let my emotions get the better of me,” he adds.
‘Disgrace’
The row began on Tuesday when Mr Kadyrov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, branded some members of the opposition “enemies of the people and traitors” and called for them to be put on trial.
Mr Senchenko then wrote a Facebook post critical of Mr Kadyrov, calling him a “disgrace to Russia” and saying he should “get lost.”
He also implied that Mr Kadyrov was corrupt and ill-educated.
Beneath the Instagram video of Mr Senchenko’s subsequent apology, Mr Kadyrov wrote “I accept,” and added five smilies.
His own incendiary statement on Russia’s opposition is still displayed on his official website, unaltered, the BBC’s Sarah Rainsford reports from Moscow.
Mr Kadyrov took charge of Chechnya with Kremlin support in 2007, and continued a long fight against Islamist rebels.
In exchange for loyalty to Russia, the authoritarian Chechen leader has been allowed to maintain his own security force and has largely had a free hand to run the southern Russian republic as he sees fit.
Human rights groups accuse Mr Kadyrov’s security forces of abuses, including torture and extrajudicial killings.
When Will We Hear “Shoot Them like Mad Dogs”?
Boris Vishnevsky echo.msk.ru
January 13, 2016
“Enemies of the people,” “traitors,” “nothing is sacred,” “dancing to tune of western intelligence services,” “tried, with maximum severity, for sabotage.”
These are not snippets from a 1937 edition of Pravda or a speech made at a Party meeting during the same period.
This is how Ramzan Kadyrov, head of the Republic of Chechnya, speaks of the opposition to Vladimir Putin and his regime.
For a complete resemblance to Stalin’s time all we are lacking are references to “monsters,” “humanity’s garbage,” and a “despicable bunch of scoundrels,” and demands to “wipe them off the face of the earth” and “shoot them like mad dogs.”
But never say never. We might hear these phrases soon as well.
Equating the opposition with a hostile force is a key feature of a totalitarian regime, which Russia is building at an accelerated pace.
In a normal country, after making such statements, Kadyrov, Jr., would be booted out of office overnight, at least.
In a normal country, however, he never would have been able to take office.
Boris Vishnevsky (Yabloko Party) is a deputy in the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
Putin ally says opposition should be tried as enemies of the people
Andrew Osborn Reuters
January 13, 2016
MOSCOW (Reuters) – One of Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s most high-profile allies has accused the opposition of trying to exploit the economic crisis to destabilize the country, using Stalin-era rhetoric to suggest unnamed individuals be put on trial for sabotage.
Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya, called the liberal opposition, which has only one lawmaker in the 450-seat parliament, enemies of the people, a phrase recalling language used during the reign of terror unleashed by Soviet leader Josef Stalin in the 1930s.
“Representatives of the so-called … opposition are trying to profit from the difficult economic situation,” Kadyrov told reporters, according to a statement issued by his office late on Tuesday.
“Such people need to be regarded as enemies of the people and traitors. They should be put on trial, with maximum severity, for sabotage.”
Opposition figures and rights activists said they were alarmed by his words with some suggesting the police should look into them.
Mikhail Kasyanov, one of the opposition’s leaders and a former prime minister, said: “There is no such concept in our constitution, but from Soviet history it is widely known that in Stalin’s time that is what they called anyone who thought differently … and that such people were liquidated.”
Battered by low oil prices, Western sanctions and a falling ruble, real incomes are on the slide in Russia for the first time in Putin’s 15 years in power, presenting the Kremlin with a challenge of how to stop discontent bubbling over.
Kadyrov made his remarks ahead of a Russia-wide parliamentary election in September amid so far only limited signs of social discontent.
Sergei Ivanov, Putin’s chief-of-staff, said on Tuesday “radicals and extremists” must be prevented from getting into parliament in that vote, raising fears among the opposition that they will find it harder to contest such elections.
Kadyrov, leader of Chechnya since 2007 and Putin’s most high-profile ally in the mostly Muslim North Caucasus area of southern Russia, did not name the opposition figures he thought should be put on trial.
Starved of access to state media and restricted by strict laws on protests, Russia’s liberal opposition is still reeling from the murder last year of Boris Nemtsov, one of its leaders.
One of the suspects awaiting trial for carrying out Nemtsov’s murder, Zaur Dadayev, used to serve in Chechnya’s police and was described by Kadyrov after the killing as a “true patriot of Russia.”
Nemtsov’s daughter has said she wants police to question Kadyrov in connection with the case. Kadyrov told a Russian radio station in October the idea he was a suspect was “total nonsense.”
The Russian Reader 