The Buryats Made Them Do It

This is Vladimir Kara-Murza, speaking at the French Senate:

There is another reason why the Russian Defense Ministry recruits so many members of ethnic minorities [to fight in the war against Ukraine]: as it turns out, because it is psychologically really difficult for [ethnic] Russians to kill Ukrainians. Because we are one people. We are very close peoples, as everybody knows. We have nearly the same language, the same religion, and centuries of history in common. But if it’s someone from another culture, allegedly it’s easier [for them to kill Ukrainians]. I hadn’t really thought about it before. I thought the reasons were primarily economic. But after what [a colleague who spoke about the Buryats] said, I started thinking about it too.

A screenshot of the video Ms. Khazagaeva cites in her Facebook post

You did get that, friends? It’s so difficult, so unbearable for ethnic Russians to kill you Ukrainians that Buryats and Chechens have been doing all the work for them — because [Buryats and Chechens] are beasts and savages. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

By the way, [Kara-Murza] refers to Buryats and Chechens as “those ethnic minorities.”

In other words, all eleven years [of Russia’s war against Ukraine], the Buryats, who number under four hundred and fifty thousand people, including children and the elderly, have been attempting to kill the forty million Ukrainians. It transpires, however, that the hundred million ethnic Russians have had it “psychologically difficult” all those eleven years. They are mere victims of this war, which is something “those [other] ethnic groups” want. Don’t get them wrong: ethnic Russians love you Ukrainians like brothers!

You have explained everything so clearly, Mr. Kara-Murza. I have literally just a couple of follow-up questions. Excuse me, has it also been the Buryats who have been launching missiles at Ukrainian cities? And the creatures who on Russian television rejoice at the deaths of Ukrainian children in Kryvyi Rih, are they also members of these same ethnic minorities?

I’m sorry, but I have another question. The whole world knows what the Pskov paratroopers did in Bucha. Do you have any ideas how to repaint them as Buryats? Although it would probably be a bit difficult, since “your lads” have already been testifying.

One more question. The other day, 7 April, was the thirtieth anniversary of the Samashki massacre. Eighty people, mostly children, women and old people, were burned alive in Samashki, and hundreds of people were killed in total. This is not to mention the forty thousand Chechen children killed in the two [Chechen] wars. Excuse me, did the Chechens shell themselves? Ethnic Russians are totally incapable of that, aren’t they? To hell with what Tolstoy wrote in Hadji Murat. Tolstoy was a renegade.

Oh, I’ve gotten a little carried away. Two million people were killed in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. They say that’s where the notorious practice of “mopping up” villages, leaving mass graves in their wake, originated. I’m sorry, who did the killing in Afghanistan? Was that the Buryats too?

Good Lord, where do you get so many of them?

The only thing I don’t understand is how the idea of the “Russian world” could have emerged, since you ethnic Russians live in love and friendship with all countries. It must have been the Chukchi who overdid it on that front.

I also don’t understand why it is the ethnic Russians who do ballet, but it is the non-Russians who make war.

P.S. Thanks to the lovely Olga Arles for her [translation] of Kara-Murza’s full speech.

///

Updated, 13 April. I have replaced the picture originally below the post with a video featuring the entire quotation by Kara-Murza. Thanks to the good people who provided the AI translation. It shows that Kara-Murza’s words, whether presented in expanded or abridged form, bear the same message: ethnic Russians don’t want to kill Ukrainians, and it’s easier for non-Russians to do it. Because we ethnic Russians and the Ukrainians are one and the same, but we’re not the same as those non-Russians. It matters not a whit that Kara-Murza referenced someone else’s observation. What matters is that he voiced this idea personally and voluntarily, and that he confirmed his commitment to it by saying that it has given him pause for thought too. Think about it. A Russian politician (as Kara-Murza fancies himself), while visiting the parliament of a major European country, says that it is mainly Buryats who want the war. He says this on the record in a place where every word uttered potentially has legal force. He said it not in a bar, not on a beach, but in the French Senate, where decisions on sanctions are made.

I have not emended the text of my original post, dated 12 April.

Source: Julia Khazagaeva (Facebook), 11 April 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader.

On 10 April 2025, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee heard the testimony of Vladimir Kara-Murza, vice-president of the Free Russia Foundation and a former Russian political prisoner. A Russian politician and opponent of Vladimir Putin, Kara-Murza survived two poisoning attempts, in 2015 and 2017. In April 2023, he was sentenced to 25 years in a penal colony by the Russian justice system after criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He was released on 1 August 2024 in a prisoner exchange. In his testimony to the senators, he stressed the autocratic and violent nature of Putin’s regime. He called on the European Union to maintain its sanctions against Russia, and to bring its weight to bear on peace negotiations in Ukraine. He maintains the hope that the country will soon become democratic.

Source: Public Sénat (YouTube), 10 April 2025. Annotation translated, from the French, by the Russian Reader

Alexander Skobov: “We Are Witnessing a Disgusting Attempt at a Purely Imperialist Collusion Between Two Predators”

Today, the 1st Western District Military Court sentenced 67-year-old dissident Alexander Skobov to 16 years in prison and fined him 300,000 rubles (just over $3,500). Skobov, who first faced criminal prosecution in the USSR, was convicted under charges of “participation in the activities of a terrorist community” (for his involvement with the Free Russia Forum, a Russian opposition conference abroad) and “justification of terrorism” (for his social media posts and articles). Mediazona publishes Skobov’s closing statement from today’s trial—a passionate speech in which he continues to openly support Ukraine, defies persecution and denounces judges as accomplices of Putin’s war crimes.

I will not dwell on the fact that the investigation has branded the organisation I have the honour of belonging to, the Free Russia Forum, as a terrorist community. There has been no official ruling from any government body recognising the Free Russia Forum as such. For now, it is merely an “undesirable organization.”

But I have little interest in all this petty mumbling. I prefer to speak about what truly matters. What matters here is the platform of the Free Russia Forum, a platform I was directly involved in shaping, and one that distinguishes the Free Russia Forum from most other opposition organisations.

Let me remind you that this platform is built on three principles. First: we stand for the unconditional return to Ukraine of all its internationally recognised territories occupied by Russia, including Crimea. Yes, Крим це Україна. [Crimea is (part of) Ukraine — TRR.]

Second. We support all those who are fighting to achieve these goals—including citizens of the Russian Federation who have voluntarily joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

And third. We recognise any form of war against Putin’s tyranny inside Russia, including armed resistance. Of course, we are deeply disgusted by the methods of ISIS, when innocent people are targeted, as was the case in Crocus City.

But are the Kremlin’s war propagandists a legitimate target? The Free Russia Forum has not formally debated this issue or adopted any resolutions on it, so what I say next reflects my personal position alone.

I believe that propagandists such as TV host Vladimir Solovyov deserve the same fate as Hitler’s chief propagandist Julius Streicher, who was hanged by the Nuremberg Tribunal. Until these outcasts of the human race are brought before a new Nuremberg Tribunal—and as long as this war continues—they remain legitimate military targets.

For me, the comparison between Putin’s and Hitler’s propagandists is not mere rhetoric. Much of my public writings has been devoted to proving the inherently Nazi nature of Putin’s regime—a regime with which peaceful coexistence is fundamentally impossible.

I appeal now, as I have before, first and foremost to Europe, which should remember the origins of the current European system. Since 1945, Europe has been building a world in which predators no longer prevailed, a world based on the principles of law, justice, freedom, and humanity. Europe had achieved much on this path and seemed to have rid itself of massacres and territorial redistributions forever.

Europe once believed that this safe and prosperous world was securely protected by a great powerful ally across the ocean. Today, this world is being torn to splinters by two scoundrels on both sides: the Kremlin and Washington. People with pro-fascist values have come to power in the United States.

We are witnessing a disgusting attempt at a purely imperialist collusion between two predators. An even more despicable collusion than the Munich Betrayal of 1938. If Putin’s annexations are legalised, it will spell disaster for civilization. Europe, you have been betrayed. Wake up and go fight for your world!

Death to the Russian fascist invaders! Death to Putin, the new Hitler, murderer and scoundrel! Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!

I usually end my speeches with these words. But today I will be further asked whether I plead guilty.

Well, I am the accuser here.

I accuse Putin’s corpse-stinking clique of planning, unleashing, and waging an aggressive war. Of committing war crimes in Ukraine. Of orchestrating political terror in Russia. Of corrupting my people.

And now, I ask the servants of Putin’s regime present here, mere cogs in the repressive machine: do you find yourselves guilty of complicity in Putin’s crimes? Do you repent?

And with that, I’ve said all I needed to say.

Source: “‘I am the accuser here—I accuse Putin’s corpse‑stinking clique’: Closing statement of dissident Alexander Skobov, sentenced to 16 years in prison,” Mediazona, 21 March 2025

A Russian military court sentenced Soviet-era dissident Alexander Skobov to 16 years in prison on charges of justifying terrorism and being a member of a terrorist organization, the exiled news outlet Mediazona reported Friday.

Skobov, 67, was arrested in April on allegations that he justified an attack on the Russian-built Crimea Bridge in an online post and was a member of the Lithuania-based liberal opposition platform Free Russia Forum, which Russian authorities have outlawed as “undesirable.”

A military court in St. Petersburg convicted Skobov on both charges and sentenced him to serve his time in a maximum-security prison.

Prosecutors had requested an 18-year sentence for Skobov, whose health had deteriorated significantly during pre-trial detention.news

In a defiant last statement in court, Skobov condemned both Russian and U.S. leaders as “predators” engaged in an “imperialist conspiracy” in Ukraine.

“Death to the Russian fascist invaders! Death to Putin, the new Hitler, the murderer and scoundrel! Glory to Ukraine!” Mediazona quoted Skobov as saying.

“I’m the one blaming you here. I accuse Putin’s ruling clique, which stinks of corpses, of preparing, unleashing and waging an aggressive war,” Skobov added.

Russia’s Justice Ministry designated Skobov as a “foreign agent” in March 2024. He is among the few outspoken critics of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine to remain inside the country despite the risk of facing criminal charges under wartime censorship laws.

A dissident since the late 1970s, Skobov was convicted twice and subjected to punitive psychiatric treatment for “anti-Soviet propaganda.”

Source: “Military Court Jails Soviet-Era Dissident Skobov 16 Years for ‘Justifying Terrorism,’” Moscow Times, 21 March 2025

Alexander Skobov: What It Means to Be Anti-War and Anti-Fascist

The complete text of Alexander Skobov’s speech during closing arguments at his trial today (18 March 2025). Video: SOTAvision

Those who have been following my trial will certainly have noticed that the position of my lawyers and my position are not quite the same. We have emphasized different things, and we have slightly different objectives. My lawyers have sought to draw attention to a problem that is identified in the reports of international organizations as the abuse of anti-terrorist legislation to restrict the freedom of expression, the freedom of speech.

This problem does exist, and in some quite decent countries, particularly the European countries. The European approach to this problem has differed from the American one. The United States of America has the First Amendment of the Constitution, which expressly prohibits any limitations on freedom of speech. In the wake of the severe trauma wrought by the Second World War, the European countries took a somewhat different path. They introduced measures to restrict the dissemination of ethnic hatred, ethnic superiority, and ethnic inferiority — all the ideas associated with Nazism. A whole system of restricting freedom of speech has arisen out of this. Europe has sought a reasonable balance between freedom of speech and its restriction.

I do not regard this experiment as successful. Freedom of speech either exists or it doesn’t exist. Any restrictions on it will always lead to abuse, no matter how well intentioned. The very idea of prohibiting people from condoning anything or anyone is flawed in principle. It means forbidding people from thinking and feeling. Lawyers have the inalienable right to seek to condone their client any way they can, but so does any human being.

Only this whole story has nothing to do with us. There is no abuse of anti-terrorist legislation in Putin’s Nazi Russia. There is legislation explicitly aimed at quashing all expression of disagreement with the authorities. Under this legislation, a theatrical production about the horrible fate of women who were tricked by ISIS fighters into joining their war as their wives is deemed “condoning terrorism.” Those complicit in the guilty verdict against Yevgenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petriichuk have no souls, they are undead, but the law itself is worded in such a way that it can be interpreted this way. Can we speak the language of law with a state which has adopted a law like this and deploys it in this way? Of course we cannot.

My case is fundamentally different from the case against Berkovich and Petriichuk, as well as from the numerous cases against people who limited themselves to voicing moral condemnation of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. My case is not about freedom of speech, its limitations, and the abuses of these limitations. My case is about the right of a citizen in a country waging an unjust war of aggression to utterly and completely take the side of the victims of the aggression. It is about the right and duty of a citizen in a country waging such a war.

This right is covered by the category of natural law because it cannot, in principle, be regulated by legal norms. All warring states regard going over to the side of their armed enemy as treason. And the aggressor never recognizes himself as the aggressor and calls the robbery and plunder in which they engage “self-defense.” Can we prove legally to the aggressor that they are the aggressor? Of course not.

But Putin’s Nazi dictatorship is an aggressor of a special kind. Having legislatively declared a war a “non-war,” it regards all armed opposition to its aggression as “terrorism.” It does not recognize the existence of a legitimate armed opponent at all. The obligatory reports of the Russian high command persistently refer to the Ukrainian army as “militants.” Does this have anything to do with law? Of course not. But war, in principle, is not compatible with law. By its very nature, the law is a constraint on violence, while war is violence without restraint. When the guns talk, the law is silent.

My case has to do with my involvement in the armed resistance to Russian aggression, even if only as a propagandist. The goal of all my public statements has been to achieve a radical expansion of military assistance to Ukraine, up to and including the direct involvement of the armed forces of NATO countries in combat operations against the Russian army. For the sake of this goal I refused to emigrate and deliberately went to prison. What I say carries more weight and resounds more loudly when I say it here.

Borrowing the wording of the so-called Criminal Code of the so-called Russian Federation, all these actions constitute assistance to a unfriendly foreign power in generating threats to the national security of the Russian Federation, as described in the current Criminal Code’s article on high treason. Why was I not charged with violating this article, nor with violating the many other political articles in the current Criminal Code, charges which should have been brought against me for my publications? The most important of my publications were never included in the indictment, although I had the opportunity to make sure that the investigation was acquainted with them. In addition, the investigation was aware that I had made personal donations to purchase lethal weapons for the Ukrainian army and publicly encouraged others to follow my example. This is the kind of thing for which the authorities now automatically charge people with high treason.

Why didn’t they do it? I think that they didn’t do it not only due to the overloaded repressive apparatus, human laziness, and the typical aversion of Russian authorities to legal norms in general, including their own legal norms. They are our legal norms, they would say. We do what we want with them, we enforce them when and if we want to enforce them. We call the shots.

But there is another reason. Even among the people who have morally condemned the Russian aggression and risked going to prison for it, there are not many who have dared to take the side of the victims of the aggression. The dictatorship is afraid that there will be more such people, and it is afraid of “bad” examples. So it has had a stake in not amplifying my voice too much and not mentioning the specifics of my case, which I have just mentioned. I have tried to focus the public’s attention on these selfsame peculiarities.

Unlike my lawyers, I really have not tried to prove to the aggressor that they are an aggressor who has violated all internationally recognized legal norms. It makes as much sense as discussing human rights with Hitler’s regime or with Stalin’s similar regime. By the way, maybe the judge can recall which article of the Criminal Code criminalizes equating Stalin’s regime with Hitler’s.

But my lawyers and I are unanimous that my case cannot be considered outside the context of the ongoing war. It is a part of this war. And my lawyers’ attempts to speak the language of law with the aggressor’s authorities only illustrate once more that when the guns do the talking, the law is silent.

Free speech is not the issue in my case. In this war, speech is also a weapon that also kills. The Ukrainians write my name on the shells annihilating Putin’s lowlife who have invaded their land. Death to the Russian fascist invaders, death to Putin, the new Hitler, a murderer and scoundrel! Glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes! I rest my case.

Source: Darya Kostromina (Facebook), 18 March 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader

Prosecutors have requested an 18-year prison sentence for Russian dissident Alexander Skobov, whose trial on charges of justifying terrorism over a social media post he wrote about the Ukrainian bombing of the Crimean Bridge is coming to an end in St. Petersburg, independent news outlet Bumaga reported on Tuesday.

Requesting Skobov be given a six-year sentence for justifying terrorism, as well as a 12-year sentence for “involvement with a terrorist community”, prosecutors also asked the court to ban Skobov from administering websites or Telegram channels for four years and to fine him 400,000 rubles (€4,500). Having openly criticised the regime of Vladimir Putin and opposed both Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Skobov was arrested in April over a social media post he wrote about the Ukrainian bombing of the Crimean Bridge, which connects Russia to the annexed peninsula.

Skobov had previously said that the destruction of the bridge was “extremely important from a military-political standpoint” and called a failed Ukrainian attempt to destroy it a “shame”. He had also been fined for his links to the pro-democracy Free Russia Forum, an organisation deemed “undesirable” and thus effectively outlawed in Russia. The Free Russia Forum condemned his detention, calling it “arbitrary”, and demanding his immediate release.

Now 68, Skobov is a well known Soviet-era dissident who was part of the New Leftists opposition movement in the late 1970s. He was forced to spend two three-year stints in a psychiatric hospital, a common fate for political dissidents at the time, for publishing the anti-government magazine Perspectives and for participating in protest actions.

Having been deemed a “foreign agent” by the authorities, Skobov nevertheless refused to leave Russia, despite pleas from his family to leave. While in pretrial detention, Skobov’s health in general, and eyesight in particular, have deteriorated rapidly.

Source: “Prosecutors request 18-year prison sentence for Russian dissident’s social media post,” Novaya Gazeta Europe, 18 March 2018

Ilya Yashin: The Basics

Our strange post-truth era turns everything upside down and paints black as white. It is vital that we remember the basics and not lose our bearings to avoid going crazy.

So I just want to remind you that:

Vladimir Putin is a dictator, murderer, and war criminal.
It is immoral and outrageous to work on Putin’s behalf and aid him.
The Russian army’s invasion of Ukraine is unlawful and unwarranted.
Ukraine is the victim of aggression.
Russia is a police state: it stifles dissent and persecutes its citizens for dissenting.
Any individual who resists Putin’s regime deserves our encouragement.
Alexei Navalny and Boris Nemtsov are Russian heroes.
There should be a regular transition of power in all countries.
Human rights are universal.
Human life is priceless.

Source: Ilya Yashin (Facebook), 6 March 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader

Ruslan Siddiqi: “You Could Call Me a Partisan”

A Russian and Italian citizen, an electrician from [the Russian city of] Ryazan, an industrial tourist, a bike traveller, an anarchist and a partisan — all this can be said about 36-year-old Ruslan Siddiqi. In the summer of 2023, he dispatched four drones with explosives to attack the Diaghilev military airfield near Ryazan, and in the autumn, he decided to act “from the ground” — damaging railway lines with two bombs and derailing 19 freight train wagons. Siddiqi is currently awaiting trial in a Moscow pretrial detention centre, with the prospect of a life sentence hanging over him. In these letters to Mediazona, he explained why he decided to “take up explosives”, how a fox spoiled his first sabotage, and how torture by field telephones (known as “tapiki” in slang) differs from torture by tasers. (The security forces used both against him.)

The letters were published by Mediazona in Russian, and translated by Giuliano Vivaldi. Please copy and repost.

Attacking a military airfield: “I took four drones with explosives to the field on a bicycle”

The hum of the Tupolev Tu-22 and Tu-95 aircraft outside my window coincided with the strikes on Ukraine, and this determined my choice of target: Diaghilev military airfield, just ten kilometres from home. I lived with my 80-year-old grandmother and understood how hard it was for the elderly and sick without heat and light in winter. As I filled a tub with hot water, I thought about those deprived of basic amenities a thousand kilometres away, because of someone’s geopolitical ambitions. Yet at the same time they talk about “fraternal nations” and say that “Russia is not at war with civilians”.

*Ruslan Siddiqi in court. Photo: Solidarity Zone*

Continue reading →

Alexander Skobov: Closing Statement at Trial

Alexander Skobov’s closing statement at trial:

I was brought up in the Soviet Union to believe that when a malicious, cruel aggressor attacks civilians, you have to take up arms and go do battle with him, and that if you cannot bear arms, you help the people who are doing battle and call on others to do the same.

All my work as a political commentator has been about calling on people to go do battle with the aggressor which has attacked Ukraine, to assist Ukraine with weapons and ammunition.

No one had attacked or threatened Russia.

It was Putin’s Nazi regime which attacked Ukraine, only because of the megalomania of the regime’s ringleaders, because of their inhuman thirst for power over all they survey.

Murdering hundreds of thousands of people is their way of bolstering their self-esteem. They are degenerates, scum, and Nazi riffraff.

The guilt of Putin’s Nazi dictatorship in plotting, unleashing, and waging a war of aggression is obvious and does not need to be proven. We also do not need to prove our right to offer armed resistance to this aggression on the battlefield and in the aggressor’s rear. It would be laughable to expect this right to be acknowledged by a regime which tosses people in prison for morally condemning its aggression out loud. All legal means of protesting Putinist Russia’s aggression have been eliminated.

My calls to resist the aggressor’s regime with armed force have caused me to be charged with terrorism.* I won’t deign to argue with the aggressor’s officials even if they claim my actions constitute pedophilia. Russia’s courts have long ago shown themselves to be appendages of the Nazi tyranny and seeking justice from them is pointless. I will never stand up before these people, who are the lackeys of murderers and scoundrels.

I see no point in arguing with puppets of the dictatorship about how conscientiously they execute their own laws. In any case, these laws are the laws of a totalitarian state and their aim is to stifle dissent. I do not recognize these laws and I will not obey them.

I also have no intention of appealing any rulings made by or actions taken by representatives of the Nazi regime.

The Putinist dictatorship may murder me, but it cannot force me to stop fighting against it. Wherever I find myself, I will keep calling on honest Russians to join the Ukrainian Armed Forces. I will keep calling for airstrikes on military facilities deep in Russian territory. I will keep calling on the civilized world to inflict a strategic defeat on Nazi Russia. I will keep trying to prove that the new Hitler’s regime must be routed militarily.

Putin is the new Hitler, a vampire driven insane by impunity and drunk on blood. I shall never grow tired of saying, “Crush the viper!”

Death to the murder, tyrant and scoundrel Putin!

Death to the Russian fascist invaders!

Glory to Ukraine!

[Grani.Ru:] Thanks to Alexander Valeryevich’s dedicated wife Olga Shcheglova (pictured above). Thanks to SotaVision for filming at the Petersburg military court (Skobov is participating in the trial via video link from Syktyvkar). Thanks to those who didn’t unsubscribe from Grani.Ru after it closed. It’s as if Skobov timed his brave deed to coincide with the final moral collapse of numerous media brands. And yet he will be heard by a handful of his contemporaries. But he has already gone down in history.

* Skobov has been charged with “publicly calling for terrorism,” “publicly condoning terrorism or promoting terrorism using the mass media, including the internet” and “organizing a terrorist community and participating in it.” If Skobov is convicted on these charges, he faces a maximum penalty of ten to fifteen years in prison and fines of up to one million rubles (approx. 9,500 euros) — TRR.

Source: Grani.Ru (Facebook), 15 January 2025. Translated by Thomas Campbell (aka the Russian Reader)

The Storming of Grozny: Thirty Years Later

A Chechen refugee in front of her destroyed apartment building
in downtown Grozny, February 17, 1995. Photo: Reuters (via Julia Khazagaeva)

On the thirtieth anniversary of the storming of Grozny, the liberal Russian media reminded the Russophone audience that there had been such a war—the Chechen War. When I see this title, I don’t even open the movie, I flip through it. A couple of excerpts are basically enough for me to be convinced that these people have still understood nothing after three decades. Even over the three years of the recent, utterly treacherous imperial war in Ukraine, the obvious facts about what Chechnya means to Russia have not became obvious to them.

Almost any decent Russian would point out to you, of course, that bombing towns chockablock with civilians was a bad thing to do and foul play. Carrying out mop-ups in villages and burying the victims in mass graves was also outrageous. But then the exclamation “but!” is sure to follow. They will tell you about Chechen bandits, forged letters of credit, and the intransigent Dudayev. Yes, it was wrong to destroy a third of Chechnya’s population, this notional Russian would lament, but the Chechens were bad eggs themselves and were asking for it.

If you ever do open a Russian [documentary] film reconstructing the events in Chechnya thirty years ago, you will find that it is about the enlisted lads who on New Year’s Eve 1994 were thrown into the epicenter of hell. Not properly trained to shoot or drive a tank, alone against hordes of heavily armed rebels, they were unfortunate sons of the Motherland: may their memory live forever. This artistic device is deployed, for example, by the Maxim Katz-affiliated project Minute by Minute. The [YouTube] channels Current Time and Popular Politics have also recalled this selfsame “Chechen War.”

Minute by Minute, “The New Year’s Eve Storming of Grozny: A Minute by Minute Reconstruction” (December 31, 2024)

Semantically, the construction “Chechen War” operates the same way as the coinage “captive of the Caucasus.” It conceals the aggressor, suggesting we look at the object of the aggression as the aggression’s cause. In this logical trap, Chechnya seems to have gone up in flames by itself. It was its inhabitants who shelled and bombed themselves silly. It was not Russia that invaded the Caucasus, it was the Caucasus which for some reason held Russia’s soldiers in captivity. It is not without reason that when people say “he was killed in Chechnya,” it is the place where he was killed that appears to be the malefactor. The listener is not prompted to wonder what this soldier was doing under arms in a foreign land. It is as if Chechnya had shown up in Samara and killed an innocent tanker.

When we think, write and say “Chechen War,” we automatically interpret it from the point of view of the colonizer and the aggressor. We accept the interpretation imposed by Moscow, which insists that Chechnya is part of Russia, not a sovereign country it attacked. If Russia is not mentioned in the nomenclaturee of this historical event, Chechnya is automatically read as an undeniable part of the empire, and the conflict itself sounds akin to the November Uprising or the Tambov Rebellion.

In fact, it was the Russo-Chechen War which began on December 11, 1994. The war deserves to be identified as such both in terms of the nature of the hostilities and the status of the warring parties, because by the time the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria was invaded by Russian troops, it had been three years since it had legally, by popular vote and a declaration of independence, withdrawn from the USSR on an equal footing with the RSFSR. The Chechens had NOT been part of the newly minted Russian Federation for a single day.

The independent journalist Vadym Zaydman has written about this better and more clearly than anyone else. There is no need to paraphrase him when I can instead quote what he has written:

“At the time of the USSR’s death/colllapse, Chechnya was no longer legally related either to the defunct Soviet empire or to the RSFSR. By that time the Chechen-Ingush ASSR had existed as a Union Republic for over a year. Thus, by definition it could not be a part of the Russian Federation, as proclaimed on December 25, 1991. When the Russian Federation was born, Chechnya was initially not a part of it.

“Russia itself did not regard Chechnya as part of Russia during this period. On March 31, 1992, the Federation Treaty was incorporated into the Russian Constitution. It changed the status of autonomous republics to sovereign republics within the Russian Federation. The treaty was signed by representatives of twenty federal subjects of the Russian Federation. Neither the Chechen-Ingush Republic nor Chechnya was involved in the treaty.

“It was only in the wake of the notorious events of October 1993, when Yeltsin was adopting a new Russian constitution, that he unilaterally incorporated Chechnya into the Russian Federation. In fact, Yeltsin committed a fraud like the one committed by the Russian authorities when, after the Soviet Union’s collapse, they declared Russia a member of the UN Security Council as the USSR’s legal successor, although Russia was not even a rank-and-file member of the UN. Ukraine and Belarus were members of the UN, but Russia aka the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was not! Having incorporated Chechnya, a year later Russia started to establish ‘constitutional order’ in Chechnya as its own fiefdom! Clever, isn’t it?!”

End quote.

The term “Chechen War” is thus as illegitimate as the use of the term “Ukrainian War” is unacceptable. Ukrainians would not allow the latter, and the entire civilized world would not agree to it. For everyone, the current war is the Russo-Ukrainian War. But the same thing should happen in our minds when describing the war in Chechnya. It is the Russo-Chechen War.

Many Russians would understandably prefer it go down in history in a more modest way—ideally, not as a war at all, but as a “special military operation,” or a “counter-terrorist operation,” for it is the security forces, not the simple folk, who are responsible for such operations. “SMO” and “CTO” sound mundane and localized, like a police “amber alert,” nor are they freighted with collective guilt and responsibility. Most vitally, if correlated with these Putinist terms, western sanctions come to be regarded as an exorbitant and unwarranted punishment, since they make “ordinary people suffer.”

Why do you think various Putinist and anti-Putinist institutions have spent the last three years relentlessly measuring public opinion on whether Russians want war? Yes, it’s simple: because of the sanctions—and Russia’s slightly tarnished image in the eyes of the international community. But if the West is shown the relevant polls quite often and reminded that “public opinion polls don’t work in a totalitarian society,” this mantra will work like a charm the thousandth time. It will then be much easier for Brussels officials to explain to themselves and their electorate why they are lifting restrictions: because they oppress an already “downtrodden” civil society, which in no way wanted war, but which was forced by Putin to want it.

Meanwhile, to answer the question of how much the Russian populace shares its leadership’s imperial mindset, it is enough to take the case of the Russo-Chechen War. From the sociological viewpoint, it is a scientifically pristine experiment. In 1994 (as in 1999, when the second phase of the war began) there was no totalitarianism in Russia. There were no western sanctions, and there were no Russian émigrés criticizing the regime from abroad. U.S. President Bill Clinton expressed “concern” when he learned that civilians were being killed in Chechnya. France supported the establishment of constitutional order on Russia’s own territory. They all thought that the new Russian Czar Yeltsin was better than any Communist, even if he fought like one.

Enjoying the full favor of the international community, Russia razed Grozny to the ground along with the remnants of its civilian population on New Year’s Eve 1994. This did not cause any outcry in Russian society. The first protest rally in Moscow took place on January 10, 1995: organized by Yegor Gaidar, it was a partisan affair and sparsely attended. Noticeable civil protests against the war in Chechnya would not begin until 2001—that is, five years later. [My comrade Antti Rautiainen, who was very much in the thick of things in those years (he was a co-organizer of the first antiwar street protest in Moscow, in November 1999), has pointed out to me (in a comment to Ms. Khazagaeva’s original post in Russian) that the biggest protest in Moscow against the Second Chechen War took place in January 2000, not in 2001 — TRR.] However, even then, according to Radio Svoboda, which interviewed passersby, “Muscovites were in no hurry to join the protesters: everyone was rushing about their business.”

Protests during the first phase of the Russo-Chechen War were isolated and (one might say) personal in nature. From the very first days of the invasion, the Soviet dissident, Russian human rights activist and Russian human rights commissioner Sergei Kovalev traveled to Grozny. He tried to stop the bombing of the city. In March 1995, he was removed from the post of human rights commissioner for supporting the “wrong” side. TV news presenter Svetlana Sorokina took liberties on air: after a commercial break she emotionally remarked that “no laundry detergent can wash clean the conscience of the Russian generals.” Independent Chechnya and its legally elected presidents Dzhokhar Dudayev and Aslan Maskhadov were subsequently supported by Valeria Novodvorskaya. Boris Nemtsov tried to stop the war by circulating a petition [which was allegedly signed by a million Russians—TRR]. But there was no grassroots public outrage in Russia, apart from the campaign led by the mothers of the conscripts, neither in the first phase of the war, much less in the second.

This was how sociologist Yuri Levada described attitudes to the war in Chechnya in 2001: “Sentiments against the war are strong in [Russia], but unfortunately we cannot overestimate their significance. The fact is that many people think that more decisive actions, with greater loss of life, perhaps could have led to success. Disavowing the war does not exclude, for example, approving such savage measures as ‘mop-ups,’ which are now quite difficult for the authorities in Chechnya and Russia to cope with. So, an unwillingness to continue the war is an expression of fatigue, not an expression of conscious, directed protest.”

Sociologist Lev Gudkov described Russians who supported Chechnya’s return to the bosom of the empire as follows: “They are younger and better educated Russians who argue that the Chechens must be crushed at any cost and this problem must be solved by force, that no negotiations with Maskhadov are possible, that he represents no one, and that there is only one solution—the total, crushing defeat [of the Chechens]. On the contrary, those who argue that it is necessary to seek a peaceful resolution however possible, including entering into negotiations with Maskhadov, are people of an older age, somewhat wiser and more experienced, and in this sense more tolerant, inclined to recognize Chechnya’s independence as long as the war is brought an end.”

So when Russian liberals, society’s cream of the crop, write and talk about the “Chechen War,” you now know their attitude toward the empire and its conquests. Were it not for the unprecedented western sanctions for invading the European country of Ukraine, you would be surprised to learn what Russians really think about the war. As a gentleman who left Russia twenty years ago once told me in a private conversation: “I still feel sorry for our guys. After all, the Ukrainians have killed more Russians in this war than the Russians have killed Ukrainians.”

Source: Julia Khazagaeva (Facebook), 4 January 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader

“I Can’t Stifle My Feelings”: Petersburg Translator Elena Abramova Faces Criminal Charges over Two Antiwar Pickets

A court in St. Petersburg has begun hearing the case against translator Elena Abramova, who has been charged with repeatedly “discrediting” the Russian army because she engaged in public protests brandishing placards that called for the release of Alexei Navalny and all other political prisoners, and an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine. Because of the criminal case against her, Abramova is no longer permanently employed, although she has stayed in Russia.

Elena Abramova was born and raised in Magadan. Her parents met as students at a teachers institute. Her mom worked as an insurance agent, and her dad, Arnold Yeryomenko, was a Russian language and literature teacher. In the late 1980s, Yeryomenko was imprisoned for two and a half years over his manuscript “October Vanquished,” which detailed “his thoughts on the regime, the Soviet government, and the Soviet legacy.” The family does not have the text of the manuscript: although Abramova’s mother asked the FSB for a copy, she was told that the document had been lost.

“I don’t know for sure whether Dad planned to publish his manuscript officially, or if he was hoping [to publish it] in samizdat. But he definitely talked about it, and someone in his entourage was aware of its contents. That someone was probably an informant, which is how the KGB found out about the manuscript. Informers probably think they are doing something useful in this way, so they inform on people,” Abramova says.

Yeryomenko spoke at protest rallies and led a pro-democracy movement in Magadan, which “held meetings with supporters, but was not involved in electoral politics.” He was asked to run for office but declined.

“I don’t think Dad had any political ambitions. Power never appealed to him. He had his job, which he enjoyed, he spent time with his family, and he read a lot — we had a very extensive library. In short, he had other interests,” says Abramova. “My father’s principled position was that the individual human being had supreme worth. There should be no pressure [on the individual], no compulsion to [hold particular] views or [adhere to] any particular ideology. He always advocated for de-ideologizing society, for the possibility to freely voice one’s thoughts, to speak out freely, to freely participate in peaceful political campaigns. This is what we lack now.”

Yeryomenko’s political activism peaked in the mid-1980s, after he was released from prison, and waned in the 1990s.

“My family welcomed the fall of the Soviet Union,” says Abramova. “I had to wear a Young Pioneer tie for a year, and I remember how we constantly made up excuses to avoid wearing it: that it was supposedly in the laundry, or something else was the matter. When it was all over, I remember the feeling of relief that now I wouldn’t have to do it: there was something contrived about it. I thought that now we would be able to live in peace, without these tokens of the Soviet regime. It seems to me that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when that short period of freedom dawned, many people just relaxed. It was such a contrast with the past that everyone wanted to get on with their own lives finally, to enjoy the advantages that became available after the regime changed.”

Abramova says that her own views, on the one hand, come from her family, although she was not particularly interested in politics before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Her father died in 2008, and five years later she left her job at a large gold mining company and moved to St. Petersburg, where she got a job as a translator. She was buried in her own cares, including working and raising a child.

“I lived my life. Now I look back and recall that my interest in politics emerged not so long ago, and it was provoked by the outbreak of hostilities to a large extent. Before that, I was aware of certain events, of course, and I had opinions on certain issues. I was simply shocked when I heard that [the war in Ukraine] had beguin. At that moment, I was not up to speed at all, I didn’t folloow in detail what was going on. When I saw [the President’s televised] address [announcing the war], I didn’t even realize what was happening. I couldn’t believe that such a thing was even possible, and it took me several days to just to get my head around it. I read news feeds like crazy and watched YouTube. It was a complete surprise, I didn’t think it would happen. The catastrophe is that people are being killed every day,” Abramova says.

Abramova held her first protest picket in late 2022. At the time, she was not only reading news about the hostilities in Ukraine but also following the political trials [in Russia].

“Ilya Yashin was sentenced on December 9. I decided that I had to protest publicly. Although it would be a purely symbolic gesture, I had to do it because I was ashamed. I was ashamed that my country had been plunged into such chaos and darkness. I didn’t know when it would end, and it was clear that this solo picket wouldn’t change anything, but it was a public statement I had to make, which I had to make against all the odds, despite the restrictions. I was a bit scared: I had no prior experience of solo pickets. I had gone to rallies in support of Navalny, and after [Boris] Nemtsov was murdered. But I had not been to the protest rallies that were held at the very outset [of the war]. I was not subscribed to any [social media] communities and didn’t know where they were held, who had made arrangements with whom, or where to go. But this time I decided that I had to go out,” says Abramova.

Abramova’s first picket lasted for only five minutes, although the site — the square outside the Mariinsky Palace — was not very crowded.

“[I stood for] five minutes, maybe a little longer. I soon noticed law enforcement officers approaching me — slowly, demonstratively slowly, as it seemed to me. They detained me quite politely, they weren’t rude. But there was one man in civilian clothes, in a tracksuit, who was also at the police station later, and he asked the most questions. While I was standing there, I saw someone from the opposite side of the street taking a picture of me. Some people walked by and said “thank you” — it was a young couple, I think. Others pretended not to notice. My placard that time out read “No War.” A couple of months later, in February [2023], a court hearing took place, at which I was fined 30,000 rubles [approx. 380 euros at the time],” Abramova recalls.

Abramova was sentenced to another fine for taking part in a protest rally against the military mobilization, and in late April 2023 she held another solo picket outside Gostiny Dvor. She was able to stand there for a few seconds before she was detained. She held her third picket on [June 4], the birthday of politician Alexei Navalny.

“I took up my position on the Field of Mars, were there were no police officers at all. Later, I went to Gostiny Dvor, where I was detained immediately. An arrest sheet was drawn up for the second picket, but the case did not go to court. After I left the station, they telephoned me and asked me to come in for ‘additional testimony.’ They probably realized this was already my second arrest. But it was not listed in the arrest sheet, and so I declined to go in. After my third picket I was taken to the same station, and this time the police pulled my rap sheet and opened a criminal case against me,” says Abramova.

Several men in balaclavas, an investigator, and Center “E” officers (officers from the Interior Ministry’s “anti-extremism” unit) soon came to search Abramova’s home.

“I said I had to get dressed, and they said I literally had five seconds to do it. I began to get dressed, but they were banging on the [front] door and practically breaking it down. My child was asleep, so I woke him up, told him not to worry, and explained there was going to be a search. When they were already inside the apartment they behaved themselves, but they confiscated my phone and didn’t even let me call work to warn them I wouldn’t be coming,” says Abramova.

During the investigation, it came to light that the criminal case against Abramova had been launched illegally. Since she is a voting member of an election commission, a criminal case can only be initiated through a special procedure, which had been violated. Formally, then, the case against Abramova was launched twice: first in the summer of 2023, and again in May 2024.

The criminal case against Abramova is currently being heard in court. According to Russian law, for two antiwar pickets she faces a huge fine, forced labor, or up to five years in a penal colony. Abramova attends the court hearings and has no intention of leaving Russia.

“I don’t see any use for myself abroad. I had difficulties finding work in St. Petersburg, especially after the criminal case was opened and I was fired, back in September of last year. I missed a day of work because of the search, and I was immediately asked to turn in my resignation. It was a commercial firm, and the management was probably afraid of scrutiny from law enforcement. But still, I can’t imagine what I would do if I weren’t in Russia. I think that there may come a time when people will need to be here, but the people who need to be here won’t be here. And then, even if I leave, I can’t stifle my feelings. I also feel my share of the guilt for what is happening — for my indifference and lack of involvement. And the pain over the fact that my country unleashed a war against a neighboring country would still remain. I would still have to live with it. Changing locations wouldn’t affect this much,” says Abramova.

Source: “‘I can’t stifle my feelings’: criminal charges for two antiwar pickets,” Radio Svoboda, 1 January 2024 (originally published by Okno). Translated by Thomas Campbell

Serial Denouncer Denounced

Ivan Abaturov (social media image via RFE/RL)

Social anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova conducted an investigation and concluded that Anna Korobkova, renowned for her numerous denunciations of people advocating anti-war stances, is probably a pseudonym of Ivan Abaturov, a journalist from Yekaterinburg. The BBC Russian Service has published the results of Arkhipova’s research.

Arkhipova assembled more than seventy letters, addressed to various institutions and agencies, in which Korobkova accused doctors, teachers, human rights activists, and journalists of “discrediting” the Russian army and called for them to be brought to justice. Among the denouncer’s victims are a doctor at a clinic who made a comment to [banned opposition channel] TV Rain, the mother of an enlisted soldier killed in the war, and Arkhipova herself. In one case, a student was expelled from a university after it received a denunciation alleging that he had been involved in “unauthorized protest rallies.”

In early December 2024, Arkhipova found a page about Korobkova on Wikipedia. With the assistance of linguists, she did a comparative analysis and found that the author of the Wikipedia article was probably the same person who had written the denunciations signed by Korobkova.

Arkhipova and the investigative journalists were able to identify the author of the Wikipedia article. It turned out to be a journalist from Yekaterinburg, Ivan Abaturov.

Abaturov, as the article points out, had already been at the center of a whistleblowing scandal. In the summer of 2022, Sergei Erlich, director of the publishing house Nestor History, said that Abaturov had allegedly detected “false information about the USSR’s actions during the Second World War” in one of his company’s books. Consequently, law enforcement officials visited Nestor History’s offices.

Abaturov himself has never concealed his attitude to denunciations. In 2019, he wrote on social media that “a journalist under Stalin was a walking prosecutor’s office” and that he wanted to be one too.

When asked by a BBC correspondent whether he had been writing denunciations under the name “Korobkova,” Abaturov replied on VKontakte: “Hello. You are mistaken.” Consequently, he stopped replying to messages, and the BBC was unable to reach him by phone.

Since the beginning of their country’s full-scale war with Ukraine, Russians have filed 2,623 complaints with law enforcement agencies about anti-war statements made by their fellow citizens, the investigative journalism website Important Stories (iStories) calculated in June on the basis of open source data. So-called LGBT propaganda (487 complaints) and Russophobia (250 complaints) ranked second and third, respectively, as grounds for denunciations.

According to Important Stories, seventy percent of the complaints were written by subscribers of the anonymous Telegram channel Mrakoborets, which specializes in tracking down anti-war activists. The channel’s daily norm is a minimum of three complaints on its pages on the social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki (“Classmates”). Yekaterina Mizulina, head of the Safe Internet League, had personally written 148 denunciations, while sixty were penned by pro-Kremlin activist Vitaly Borodin.

Source: “The serial denouncer ‘Korobkova’ turns out to be a male journalist from Yekaterinburg,” Radio Svoboda, 26 December 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Darya Apahonchich and Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up.

[…]

In the autumn of 2022, executives at the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) received a letter signed “Anna Vasilievna Korobkova.” It began as follows: “I fully support the special operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on Ukrainian territory. I am against all violations of the law.”

The letter concerned an interview that Alexandra Arkhipova, who had worked for many years as a senior research fellow at RANEPA, had given to the channel TV Rain, which had been designated a “foreign agent” by Russian authorities. (At the time of the interview, the TV channel had not yet been designated an “undesirable organization.”)

In her denunciation, “Korobkova” asked the university to dismiss Arkhipova for “immoral misconduct,” which, in her opinion, consisted in the fact that in the interview with TV Rain she had “disseminated false information discrediting the Special Military Operation [sic] on Ukrainian territory.” Korobkova also suggested that the university send the evidence against Arkhipova to the prosecutor’s office.

“Korobkova” was outraged that Arkhipova did not interrupt TV Rain presenter Anna Nemzer when the latter had called the “special military operation” a “war” (“thus showing she agreed with Nemzer’s false opinion”), mentioned Facebook without mentioning that it had been designated an “extremist organization” in Russia, and uttered the phrase “before the war I would ask.”

“This is a lie, as there is no war,” the letter said.

Upon seeing the text of the denunciation, Arkhipova was surprised by how long and detailed it was. Korobkova’s letter took up two pages, and even the time codes for the points in the interview at which Arkhipova had said certain things that angered Korobkova were noted. As a folklorist and social anthropologist who works extensively with different texts, Arkhipova was struck by the structure of the denunciation and the specific language in which it was written.

“I was reading this denunciation to friends, discussing it as a phenomenon of contemporary political culture, when one of my colleagues looked at me sadly and took a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. He unfolded it and read aloud a denunciation. It had the same wording, and was also signed ‘Anna Vasilievna Korobkova,'” Arkhipova tells the BBC.

[…]

Source: Amalia Zataria, “‘I want to be a walking prosecutor’s office’: who hides behind the identity of serial denouncer ‘Anna Korobkova’?” BBC Russian Service, 26 December 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Alexander Skobov: Behind Bars in the USSR and Putin’s Russia

The number of Russians who find themselves behind bars for opposing the authorities who launched the war with Ukraine grows by the day. There are hundreds of political prisoners in the country. We try to remind our readers about these people every chance we get. Today, Mediazona’s David Frenkel tells the story of Alexander Skobov, 67, a historian from St Petersburg, a defendant in the last criminal case against ‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda’ in Soviet history, a convinced Marxist, and a veteran of the dissident movement, who after decades has found himself on a very familiar path: searches, arrest, psychiatric ward, jail.

Alexander Skobov is one of the most experienced political prisoners in Russia. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was twice sent to a psychiatric hospital for compulsory treatment: the first time as an editor of samizdat, the second time for slogans in favour of political prisoners, which Skobov wrote on the walls of Leningrad houses.

Almost half a century later, in April 2024, the authorities came after him again. Skobov was accused of ‘justifying terrorism’ because of his post about the explosion on the Crimean Bridge and sent to a pre-trial detention centre. In protest, he refused to take his glasses and medication with him. Later, an article on participation in a ‘terrorist community’ was added to the charge, and Skobov was transferred from St Petersburg to Syktyvkar.

“We were left alone for a long time. The reasoning being: we’ll die out on our own. Or we’ll leave and live out the rest of our lives off the once acquired (quite deservedly) political and moral capital. The blow came to other people, most of them much younger,” he wrote from the pre-trial detention centre.

Skobov maintains an active correspondence in pre-trial detention. He discusses philosophical and political topics, his letters are even published in historical journals. Write to Alexander, argue with him, disagree with him, I’m sure it would be valuable to him. The only thing is that his wife asks that the letters to him be written in 18-point Sans Serif font. Skobov can’t even see his own texts well: he first drafts them on the back of used sheets of paper and then blindly transfers the texts to the reply form.

Address:

167028, г. Сыктывкар, поселок Верхний Чов, д. 99 , ФКУ СИЗО-1 УФСИН России по Республике Коми. Скобову Александру Валерьевичу 1957 года рождения

Please write letters in Russian, otherwise the prison censors won’t let them through. You can send letters online via a special services called PrisonMail.

You can also write in English, using the websites Letters Across Borders and Lifeline, two projects by OVD Info, a media outlet and human rights defense group.

Source: Mediazona, 29 November 2024. I lightly edited the text, above, for clarity’s sake. Featured image courtesy of the Moscow Times. ||| TRR