Mr. Nobody and His Critics

Nobody About Nothing

Russian films don’t win Oscars every time out, so I finally made up my mind to watch the movie Mr. Nobody Against Putin. It turned out that the film wasn’t about a school, the war, Russia, or Putin—it’s Pavel Talankin’s film about himself. The film begins with him and ends with him. He’s in almost every scene in between. And it goes on like that for ninety minutes.

I don’t know if you can call a film a documentary when the vast majority of its scenes are staged. I suppose you can, but the Academy’s members know best. I’m not a film critic, and my opinions are purely those of an amateur. I’m a mere viewer.

I was amazed by how tacky the self-promotion was. I mean, it is just off the charts. Here comes the protagonist, taking what he calls a “super risk”: he tapes the letter X on the school’s windows over the letter Z. He claims that the X is a symbol of protection for Ukrainian refugees. (?) And here he is, secretly but on camera, ripping the Russian flag from the school’s roof, as witnessed by a cameraman* and Talankin himself. And there he is getting a haircut—a charming, intimate detail, certainly vital for understanding the current state of affairs Russia’s regions. When the toilets in the school’s bathroom flashed on screen, I feared that Talankin would be in the starring role there too, but that didn’t happen, thank God.

It’s funny that Talankin has arranged the books in his home by the color of their spines, and it’s even funnier that, while looking every bit the diehard undergrounder and following the orders of a mysterious overseas handler, he messes around with hard drives that must be smuggled out of the country. We’re living in the twenty-first century, so what prevents Talankin from uploading at least a few gigabytes of video footage to the cloud or transferring it via FTP, instead of lugging the hardware through customs? But I get it: that would not be cinematic, and the documentary would have suffered.

Whether the documentary suffered because Talankin filmed children and adults without informing them of his objective is a question for the Academy’s members. Perhaps this is acceptable in the American cinema, but journalists are obliged to honestly tell interviewees on whose behalf they are interviewing them and to what end.

I’m not arguing with the fact that Talankin’s film won an Oscar. If Barack Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize for the color of his skin, and Bob Dylan got a Nobel Prize in Literature for his songs, then why shouldn’t Pavel Talankin get an Oscar for a docudrama about Pavel Talankin? It’s all good.

Something else makes my blood boil. It’s not even the profanity that is liberally sprinkled throughout the film. That’s just how the characters express their folksiness. I get that. What makes my blood boil is the extraordinary ease with which Talankin switches from serving the regime as a propagandist to a new job on a new project. Before he was hired to make the film, he faithfully played the despicable role of a Putin propagandist, organizing and filming pseudo-patriotic productions on orders from his superiors. He sends reports to the Ministry of Education. He reshoots when the first take doesn’t turn out. He corrects the teacher who repeatedly fails to pronounce the word “denazification”—and again, he does take after take. Everything has to look perfect. That’s the job. He gets paid for it.

It would be fine if Talakin didn’t get it, like the moronic history teacher who garners so much screen time in the film. But no, Talankin gets it all. He films what he himself calls “show lessons.” He admits that he works in propaganda: “It wears me out.” While filming a pro-war car rally he laments, “I have to play by their rules.” Why does he have to play by their rules? Is there no other way for him to make a living? He cannot fail to realize that he’s just as much an obedient cog in the propaganda machine as the history teacher. Only Talankin’s caliber is smaller, and his threads are thinner. He doesn’t explain why he has to play by their rules. But it’s obvious anyway, and there’s a universal explanation for it: honest work pays less and demands a heavier workload. The entire propaganda machine in an authoritarian regime is based on this. There’s always a way out if you want out.

But then something clicked, Talankin’s fortunes changed, and now all the video footage he had painstakingly compiled was put to a new use. Up until that point, he had worked in the field of pro-government propaganda; now he would work to expose it. Why not kill two birds with one stone? Everything must be put to use, not a single frame should be wasted.

People sometimes do suddenly acknowledge the harmfulness of their work and make a complete U-turn. Such things do happen, thank God. But if they do it sincerely, and not for opportunistic reasons, their conscience torments them over their past deeds; they suffer, and they seek to atone for the past through their new endeavors. They don’t gloss over the mistakes they have made in life. Such people are instantly recognizable: they do not flaunt their rewards, they take no delight in newfound fame, and they often pay a heavy price for the new path they have gone down. Talankin’s is a different case entirely. His is merely an elegant segue from one cushy job to another. In that sense, we can certainly congratulate Mr. Nobody on his success.

* Podrabinek’s is the only review of Mr. Nobody Against Putin which I’ve read that mentions the mysterious second cameraman (who is clearly a consummate professional), although they were apparently on location in Karabash for months on end. In the film’s credits, they are identified only as “Anonymous,” but their palpable presence is not otherwise mentioned or explained, not even in the film itself. ||||| TRR

Source: Alexander Podrabinek (Facebook), 18 March 2026. Translated by the Russian Reader

MR.NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN?

Many years ago, as a graduate student at UMICH in Ann Arbor, I took two semesters on Nabokov with the late Omri Ronen – one of the most extraordinary intellectual experiences I had there, and that’s saying something.

We spent a great deal of time on Lolita, especially its dialogue with Dostoevsky’s “cult of feelings,” and on Humbert Humbert as a “romantic” yet profoundly unreliable narrator. Ronen often emphasized that while it is natural to sympathize with a narrator who claims to be in love, Nabokov refuses to do the reader’s ethical work for them. Humbert Humbert is a criminal who destroys Lolita’s life – something she herself makes clear by the end (“He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.”) The reader’s task is not to be disarmed by his rhetoric, but to remain morally alert and to imagine the experience of his victim.

Watching Mr. Nobody Against Putin and reading its reception, I could not help but think just how thoroughly this lesson seems to be missed by those celebrating the film and its narrator, who is every bit part and parcel of the phenomenon he set out to document.

The film centers overwhelmingly on Pavel Talankin’s feeeeeelings, granting them disproportionate narrative space, something not uncommon in Russian films about Russia. His attachment to Karabash and its people, to the textures of Russian life (the ugly Soviet prefab panel blocks that have gained a somewhat romantic vibe among the younger Russians, the harsh winters, etc.) is rendered with great sympathy. So too is the school environment. But Talankin’s commitment to “loving” the bleak, the outwardly ugly, and the brutal is not just an aesthetic quirk — it’s a moral stance. What is strikingly absent in all of it is Ukraine and its people, which is only briefly mentioned as a destination, not a society under attack. Russian children are not just being indoctrinated to volunteer, to be mobilized, and to die, they are being prepared to kill and that is what they do in Ukraine — something, which is not even once mentioned.

There is also an obvious schism between the reality Talankin documents and the way he interprets it. In his account, he appears to be the only figure with agency — the only one capable of making meaningful choices — while everyone else is stripped of agency and reduced to a passive recipient of propaganda. Even the sinister history teacher, the school’s most zealous and vicious propagandist, is described as “brainwashed.” But if that is the case, who, exactly, is doing the brainwashing? These are the very people who inculcate cynicism, cowardice, and doublethink in their students, they are actors in this process, not victims, and they do have moral choices, just like everybody else. (It is also worth noting that the community is neither visibly poor nor destitute — undercutting the familiar explanation that people volunteer to kill because poverty leaves them no choice.)

Again, this is not just an aesthetic imbalance, but also a moral one, with the focus remaining on “our” suffering, “our” losses, “our” children, not what we and these children have done to others. As a result — just as Omri Ronen warned his sophomore Nabokov students — the aggressor is sentimentalized, and his perspective eclipses that of his victims.

P.S. I also watched Ksenia Sobchak’s documentary about so-called “black widows” — women who marry Russian soldiers, often under dubious circumstances (with grooms heavily intoxicated), and later claim substantial compensation after their deaths. In contrast to Pavel Talankin’s film, it’s really hard to sympathize with any of the people on the screen. Sobchak’s role within the Kremlin’s propaganda ecosystem is well documented; what is worth briefly noting here is how thoroughly this story (and Russian “society” at large) is framed as a story about women: as caregivers, opportunists, con-artists, bereaved wives, or negligent, alcoholic mothers and grandmothers who affect the fates of men, entirely at their disposal.

Men, by contrast, are consistently infantilized, cast as troublemakers, drifters, habitual drinkers, and absent fathers with no clear purpose in life. But invariably “nice”: women say (posthumously) that they are sorry for them (again, barely a reference to what these men did to Ukrainians). In this framing, war supplies these men what their civilian lives lack: purpose, agency, a “heroic”, manly identity, a sense of belonging, and a handsome income – leaving behind, in the end, something for the women to remember them by.

Source: Ksenia Krimer (Facebook), 18 March 2026. Thanks to Alexandr Wolodarskij for the heads-up.

Hello! This week we cover how Oscar-winning documentary, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, went down inside Russia, and why it’s caused a stir among both the Kremlin’s backers and its critics.

Russians fight over Mr. Nobody

Earlier this month, Russia won the Best Documentary Oscar for the first time in more than 80 years. Well, sort of. The statuette went to Mr. Nobody Against Putin, a Danish-Czech production directed by Pavel Talankin, a young teacher from a small town in the Urals, who documented pro-war propaganda inside Russia’s school system. Western critics were enthusiastic about its take on the militarization of schools amid the invasion of Ukraine. Russian officials and propaganda outlets were, unsurprisingly, not so keen on the film. But interestingly, even some anti-war campaigners have criticized the movie, accusing Talankin of making a shallow diatribe that did not advance our understanding of Russia’s wartime propaganda machine.

The documentary tells the story of educator and school videographer Talankin and his school in Karabash, a small industrial town of about 10,000 people in the Urals region of Chelyabinsk. Talankin, now 35, was a highly respected teacher in his hometown. In 2018, he won the regional “Leader of the 21st Century” competition, his students won an award at a local festival for a movie shot under his direction, and in 2021 the town’s mayor praised a virtual model of Karabash that Talankin’s students had created in Minecraft.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Talankin was assigned to film propaganda lessons in which children were taught Kremlin talking points about the war’s supposedly noble aims, and the unfairness of the West towards Russia. Talankin and US documentary filmmaker David Borenstein got in touch via an online advert in Russia seeking people whose lives had been changed by the invasion. The videographer offered to use the footage he was obtaining as part of a joint documentary. Talankin carried on working and then eventually smuggled hard drives containing two-and-a-half years of footage out of Russia.

The clips from the propaganda lessons — called “Conversations about Important Things” in Russia — were the centerpiece of the film. In one scene, a teacher, reading a propaganda script, struggles to pronounce the words “denazification” and “demilitarization”, two of the official reasons the Kremlin gave for its war. In another, a history teacher (the film’s main antagonist) tells children how in the near future France and Britain will soon face economic collapse as people there are already starving due to sanctions on Russia. Another scene shows mercenaries from the now defunct private Wagner militia advising children how to throw grenades.

What Talankin showed from one school in a provincial town is the same as what’s happening in thousands throughout Russia. After the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the state embraced mass propaganda in education. Lessons with war veterans were already commonplace, as were issuing Kremlin-approved justifications for the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the seizure of Ukrainian territory. Watching the film, it’s easy to imagine how the exact same “Conversations about Important Things” are happening right across Russia on a daily basis from Moscow to Vladivostok.

The award was [a] surprise, with US film The Perfect Neighbor going into the Oscars as the favourite. According to renowned Ukrainian producer Alexander Rodnyansky, Mr. Nobody Against Putin won out for its portrayal of a “dumbing down mechanism” that could be applied in multiple countries.

However, despite winning the most prestigious documentary prize on offer, there are many who are openly critical of the film — and they are by no means limited to supporters of the war and Putin’s regime. Several recurring complaints crop up. They include that Borenstein compiled the movie “for export” — targeting foreign audiences and festival juries — and that its success closed the door for any chance of a more powerful study of what is happening in Russian schools. In Russia, everybody knows about propaganda in educational institutions (for example, we wrote about it here) and, to them, this film does not offer anything new or go deeper than what has been widely reported. Doubters also say the film suffers from artificiality — especially in Talankin’s monologues. Some scenes, such as the tearing down of a Russian flag or the posting of the “Z” symbol backing the invasion in school windows — seemed staged to many critics.

Respected fact-checker Ilya Ber published a detailed analysis with several complaints that was widely shared on Russian-language Facebook groups. The claim that UNESCO described heavily polluted Karabash as the “dirtiest town on Earth” is not backed up by any documents and is simply an urban myth circulated in the Russian press. The film portrays children being checked with metal detectors as a symbol of a military dictatorship when, in fact, it’s standard procedure in Russian schools ahead of final exams and has nothing to do with the war. Finally, Ber questioned the underlying narrative that Talankin was in danger. He worked in a school where everyone knew his views, nobody denounced him and after the Oscars, pirated copies of the movie are widely available on VK, Russia’s equivalent of Facebook that is closely watched and de facto controlled by the authorities.

The filming of children without parental consent for use in the documentary is another sore point — and the one that Russia has officially latched on to. From an ethical point of view, all subjects should provide documented consent to take part in filming, and minors cannot be filmed without the permission of their parents or guardians. This is precisely the argument the Russian authorities are using and the Presidential Human Rights Council filed a complaint with the Oscars organizers alleging violation of children’s rights.

On the other hand, Talankin was not filming secretly. Children and parents knew they were being filmed for both the local education ministry and for his own projects. “It’s funny that all these years he would come around, film us, and say we would be on the BBC. We laughed at him like he was an idiot. And now he’s going to the Oscars. I don’t think he really believed it himself,” said one graduate of the school, speaking before the awards ceremony. “I knew they were filming me because we often had conversations on camera and it was some kind of lifestyle thing. I didn’t see anything wrong with it,” said another.

Of course, the film has many fans. Movie critic Ekaterina Barabash (who fled Russia while under house arrest for criticism of the authorities) noted that it was well made and gave a unique view inside the regime. Fellow critic Anton Dolin wrote that nobody had ever depicted the workings of propaganda with such chilling clarity. Political analyst Alexander Baunov felt that the fact Talankin filmed in the town where he was born, raised and had been living and working made his testimony especially valuable.

In Karabash, they prefer not to mention the film. According to Talankin himself, “a year ago, when the film came out, FSB officers came to the school and said: ‘This man wasn’t here, this film never existed. You don’t comment on the film, you don’t talk to this man,’”. He said that he’s considered a traitor in the town — a view shared by some propaganda outfits (1,2).

Most national pro-government media outlets have simply ignored the film, which was Russia’s first documentary Oscar for more than 80 years (in 1943 the award went to Moscow Strikes Back). Russian online movie service Kinopoisk, operated by IT giant Yandex, chose not to translate the film’s title into Russian in its live coverage of the Oscars ceremony.

Why the world should care

Despite all the criticism, Talankin managed to show Western audiences something that they had not seen before: exactly how brainwashing works in Russian schools. To Russian viewers, this was no surprise. Reports of propaganda lessons still frequently appear on school social media pages and in news roundups.

Source: Denis Kasyanchuk, “Everybody Against Mr Nobody,” The Bell, 24 March 2026. Translated by Andy Potts. The Bell‘s always informative and sometimes thought-provoking biweekly newsletters used to be free and were delivered to my inbox in whole. Last year, though, they went behind an extravagantly expensive paywall ($189 for a yearly subscription), and I have ignored them. But I was already prepping this omnibus post when a sneak preview of this week’s first newsletter popped into my email, and I couldn’t resist spending one dollar on a one-month trial subscription (which will revert to $18.90 monthly at trial’s end).

The Russian Reader will never be paywalled over, although it does bleed money like a sieve and is in need of your financial support. I have exactly one active donor, NK, who has faithfully and encouragingly sent me twenty dollars every month for the last three years. Why should they keep doing all the heavy lifting on their own? ||||| TRR

Russia Shoots Down Santa Claus

“Happy New Year, Russians!”: Santa Claus Shot Down Over Moscow by Russia’s Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost)

Source: Kolokol XXI (Telegram), 27 December 2024 + Yandex Video. Thanks to Sergey Abashin for the heads-up.

Pro-Kremlin Telegram channels on Friday circulated a New Year’s video depicting Russian air defense systems shooting down Santa Claus’ reindeer sleigh.

The video, first shared by the Pul N3 Telegram channel, begins with Santa flying over central Moscow to the tune of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

“Hi, Russians! Here are your presents,” says Santa Claus, sipping a Coca-Cola as the camera zooms in on his sleigh, which is loaded with rockets bearing NATO logos.

“Happy New Year,” Santa says before a missile shoots into his sleigh, causing it to explode mid-air.

Ded Moroz and Russian airpower. Image courtesy of Moscow Times

The scene then shifts to a military control room where a Russian serviceman and Ded Moroz — Russia’s version of Santa Claus — monitor the action on a screen as a traditional Russian folk tune plays.

“Is it done?” Ded Moroz asks the headset-wearing serviceman.

“Yes, it’s done. The target was destroyed,” the serviceman replies.

“Good. We don’t need any kind of foreign stuff [in our skies],” Ded Moroz says, embracing the serviceman. “Happy New Year!”

The video’s release comes just days after an Azerbaijani passenger plane crashed in western Kazakhstan, with reports suggesting it was shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile.

Source: “Pro-Kremlin Media Share Video Showing Russian Missile Shooting Down Santa’s Sleigh,” Moscow Times, 27 December 2024

Late Pozner

A multifaceted portrait of lifelong Kremlin propagandist and relentless self-promoter Vladimir Pozner in his ninetieth year, with guest appearances from several useful idiots.

Vladimir Pozner. Photo: picture-alliance/dpa, courtesy of DW

The director general of Russia’s Channel One, Konstantin Ernst, announced on Wednesday, 18 September, the return of TV presenter Vladimir Pozner to the air after a long break with a new show called Turkish Notebook. Pozner’s eponymous program stopped airing on Channel One after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

On 12 September, in an interview with Forbes, the journalist said that he had been offered jobs by western TV channels, but declined because he had been asked to “speak out about Putin and politics in a certain way.” After the interview, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov called Pozner “a staunch patriot of his country.”

Pozner first spoke out about Russia’s war against Ukraine in February 2023 at an online conference at the U.S.-based Ubiquity University. At the time, he acknowledged the Russian president’s responsibility for invading Ukraine, but also accused the west of seeking to expand NATO and said that U.S. President Joe Biden had allegedly been “seeking a conflict” with Vladimir Putin.

Source: Liza Lambrecht, “Channel One Announces Pozner’s Return to the Airwaves,” Deutsche Welle Russian Service, 18 September 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

This Summit on Ukraine is being convened on the first anniversary of the Russian military operation into Ukraine to secure a land bridge to Crimea which was launched Feb 24, 2022. The Ukraine war has actually been going on since 2014 when the United States staged a coup in Ukraine to overthrow a regime maintaining Ukraine as a neutral nation and replacing it with a regime that was anti-Russian and pro-US which immediately began waging war against the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine where the population is 80% Russian. In response, the Russians armed the local populations and seized Crimea. Military conflict has been going on since then and continues to the present day.

What is distinctive about the war in Ukraine is that it is between the two superpowers — The [sic] US and Russia — both of which are armed with nuclear weapons and both of which have threatened to use them. The world is thus in the most dangerous period since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 when the US and Russia almost went to nuclear war. What is also distinctive is that the war is being conducted as the world faces runaway climate change and there is an urgent necessity for the US to be working with the Russians to solve critical global challenges.

This Summit is being co-sponsored with Code Pink, a feminist grassroots organization working to end U.S. warfare and imperialism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and redirect resources into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming programs.

Moderators:

Jim Garrison, Convener of Humanity Rising, with Jodie Evans, Co-Founder of Code Pink

Special Guests:

Vladimir Posner [sic] is a veteran journalist, bestselling author, and documentary filmmaker. He is the host of the top-rated weekly current affairs program on Channel One, Russia’s largest television network. Named the “Voice of Moscow” by CNN, Pozner is a regular commentator on Russia and the history of the Cold War in Western media. Mr. Pozner has won multiple Soviet, Russian, and American awards, including three Emmy certificates, ten TEFY [sic] awards (the Russian equivalent of the Emmy) and several international awards. He is internationally recognized and ranks among the most respected people in the television profession in Russia today.

[…]

Source: “Humanity Rising Day 641: Summit on Ukraine I: Overview of the War,” Ubiquity University (YouTube), 27 February 2023

Veteran Soviet-Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner is set to return to state television more than two years after his long-running program was taken off the air following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian media reported Wednesday.

Pozner, 90, had hosted his weekly interview show “Pozner” on Channel One since 2008, but it was canceled shortly after the February 2022 invasion. He later claimed Channel One pulled the program in order to make room for war coverage.

Although Pozner has not publicly taken a stance on Russia’s invasion, he has suggested that western refusal to block Ukraine’s NATO ambitions played a role in the conflict’s escalation.

Channel One head Konstantin Ernst announced Monday that the network’s fall season lineup would include Pozner’s new show, “Turkish Notebook,” as reported by the RBC business news outlet.

Pozner said in an interview with Forbes Russia last week that his production team completed an eight-episode documentary series on Turkey, which they submitted for Ernst’s approval.

Unlike his former interview program, which had featured guests from former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to current Russian Security Council Head Dmitry Medvedev, Pozner’s new project appears to steer clear of political issues, similar to his live events across Europe this year, co-hosted by former late-night talk show host Ivan Urgant.

In the Forbes interview, Pozner said he had received offers to work abroad if he denounced President Vladimir Putin and spoke out on Russian politics. He declined, stating that such actions “are not journalism, but something else entirely.”

Pozner gained international recognition during the Cold War for his TV appearances, where he often explained Soviet policies and viewpoints to Western audiences. During perestroika, he hosted televised discussions between audiences in the Soviet Union and the U.S. together with American journalist Phil Donahue, who passed away last month.

Source: “Vladimir Pozner to Return to Russian State TV After 2-Year Hiatus,” Moscow Times, 18 September 2024

AMSTERDAM — A live event headlined by two Russian television celebrities has sparked controversy in the Netherlands, with critics decrying the presence of what they call Russian propagandists on European stages during Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

Veteran Channel One host Vladimir Pozner and late-night talk show host Ivan Urgant’s European tour, called “The Travels of Pozner and Urgant,” kicked off in Amsterdam on Tuesday and will be followed by stops in Zurich, Berlin and Frankfurt.

The show is described as an evening with the two men, who co-hosted several travel shows, as they reflect on stories from their trips around the world.

Though billed as an apolitical event, politics has overshadowed much of the discussion surrounding it.

Critics have slammed the Amsterdam theater for hosting “Russian propagandists” and allowing them to profit by performing in Europe, calling it a “stab in the back” of the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who fled to the Netherlands because of Moscow’s invasion.

Others say that banning events based on politics would be stooping to the level of the Kremlin, which has silenced independent journalists, activists and artists inside Russia.

Around 25 protesters, several of whom wore Ukrainian flags around their shoulders, stood outside Theater Amsterdam in the rain as attendees arrived, shouting slogans like “Shame on you,” “Russians go home,” “Russia is a terrorist state” and “Russian propaganda kills.”

“I think you can hear why,” said Anna, a young woman from Ukraine who has been living in the Netherlands for two years, when asked why she was at the protest.

“We have to stop… Russian propaganda because it’s dangerous,” she said. “It’s important not only for Ukraine, but it’s important for everybody. Because it’s a really abusive country.”

Pro-Ukrainian protesters outside the Amsterdam venue of Pozner and Urgant’s stage show earlier this year. Photo: Moscow Times

In the theater lobby before the sold-out show, some attendees took photos of protesters through the glass windows. Others could be heard discussing the news over glasses of sparkling wine.

“I was surprised at how our [fellow attendees] reacted — they looked away [from the protesters]. I looked right at them,” said Alisa, a Russian emigre who was going to the show with her friend.

“Many of the people who came to the show do not support the war, and we have a negative view of the war, of course,” she said. “The aggression in the crowd was frightening. We had fingers pointed at us and such. It’s good that there are police here.”

On the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Urgant, who is often likened to U.S. late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, posted a black square to his Instagram account with the caption “Fear and pain. No to war.”

Although his show was taken off the air almost immediately afterward, he has since remained silent about the war. He did not respond to the Moscow Times’ request for comment.

Pozner, meanwhile, rose to fame in the West during the Cold War for his television appearances where he would explain the Soviet Union’s views and policies, a role he would later describe as “propaganda.”

His interview show on Channel One, which was watched by millions and often compared to “Larry King Live,” stopped airing after the invasion of Ukraine. He later said this was a move by the channel to make room for coverage of the war.

In a 2016 debate with Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, Pozner said: “Yes, censorship exists [in Russia]. And I accepted it. I could have slammed the door [closed the show] and done nothing at all. But I believe that I am doing something useful for society. I’m making people think.”

Though he has neither criticized nor supported the war in public, Pozner has suggested that the West bore responsibility for Moscow’s invasion because it refused Russia’s demand to block Ukraine’s path to NATO membership.

When asked about the protesters outside the venue, Pozner told the Moscow Times that it was “their right” to express their opinion but declined to comment further.

Theater Amsterdam declined to comment for this story, instead referring the Moscow Times to a May 24 statement published on its LinkedIn page.

In its statement, the theater said it “stands for freedom of speech, creative expression and a safe environment for everyone who embraces the arts.”

“These performers have indicated that their program has nothing to do with the war and want to share their performance in an atmosphere of peace and freedom,” the theater said, noting that its staff had received threats and intimidation over the event.

Inside the theater sat Olga — a woman from Lviv, a Ukrainian city near the Polish border described by the Kremlin and Russian propagandists as an alleged hub of “Russophobia” — who moved to Amsterdam because of the war.

Speaking in Russian, she told the Moscow Times that she felt “embarrassed” to be at the event.

“I’ve been following Urgant and Pozner for about 15 years and I wanted to see them in person,” she said.

“Only here did I find out that Pozner supported the war,” she continued. “If I had known [beforehand], there’s no way I would have come.”

Source: Samantha Berkhead and Pyotr Kozlov, “Outrage in Amsterdam as Russian TV Celebrities Take the Stage,” Moscow Times, 29 May 2024. The emphasis is mine. \\\ TRR

“I dream of it happening, but I don’t think it will happen,” is how Vladimir Pozner responded when we asked him whether admits the possibility of returning to the television airwaves. In an interview with “Forbes Talk,” the journalist and TV presenter, whose eponymous program on Channel One has not been broadcast since the beginning of the “special operation,”* confessed that he misses this work very much. He told us why (with one exception) he has remained silent and not spoken about politics since 2022, what he has been doing all this time, and what he fears nowadays.

Vladimir Pozner’s full interview with Forbes Russia is much more interesting than its quoted highlights, below, but even more interesting, to me, were the inserted ads, which say a lot about the magazine and its readership. \\\ TRR

Vladimir Pozner is a Soviet and Russian journalist and TV presenter. He was born in Paris to a Russian immigrant and a Frenchwoman. In 1952, he moved to the Soviet Union, where he worked as a secretary for [the famed children’s poet] Samuil Marshak. He began his journalistic career as a commentator on the Soviet State Committee for Radio and Television’s North American service. Pozner became famous thanks to his debut on TV: in the 1980s, he and his U.S. colleague Phil Donahue co-hosted the “space bridges” between Leningrad and Seattle and, later, Leningrad and Boston. In the 90s, Pozner presented several original programs on U.S. television. He then returned to Moscow, where he did the political talk show Vremena (“The Times”) and the eponymous program Pozner. Several of his series about different countries have also been broadcast, including such programs, co-presented with Ivan Urgant, as England in General and in Particular and Single-Storey America.

Why Pozner remains silent

“The fact that you have me today [for an interview] is an absolute violation of my rules. It happened only because I owe you a debt, and I am used to repaying debts: I promised that I would give you an interview, and here I am giving it. I’m not going to talk anymore; I’ve made this decision for myself: no interviews, no statements, no comments, and so on. With rare exceptions, if I suddenly feel that there is some use in it, that it’s really worth doing, that it might be useful.

“I just decided for myself that the circumstances are such that I had better abstain for the time being. Especially since I am ninety years old, a time when people are usually long retired, and nobody asks [them], ‘Why are you retired?’ So I’m kind of retired.”

What he’s been doing for the last two and a half years

‘I’ve been thinking; I’ve been writing. I am writing a book. You know, Tolstoy once said, ‘If you can’t write, don’t write.’ That’s quite right, and a lot of people should have followed that advice. And I was not writing, but when I felt that I couldn’t help but write, I started writing. Don’t ask me what this book is about—I don’t like to talk about that at all.

“I’ve written a lot of books, but I reckon I’ve [actually] written [only] one [real book]. My very first one is Parting with Illusions, which is a serious work. The others have amused me and been enjoyable to me, and maybe to the reader, but I don’t consider them serious literature. This [new] book is definitely a serious book, and I don’t know how well it will turn out. Writing is quite difficult and painful for me personally. You weigh every word, but then the next day you read what you have written, and you are horrified. Sometimes you are happy [with what you’ve written], but very rarely.

“In addition, our team shot a large eight-part film about Turkey. It is good to go. We submitted it to Channel One, where it was approved, and now we are waiting on Mr. Ernst’s judgement (Konstantin Ernst, CEO of Channel One — Forbes).

“That’s what I’ve been doing. Well, and I have done [other] little things. I have done speeches, and I have been invited to talk to different, rather closed audiences. And then, of course, quite unexpectedly, there has been the duet with my close friend Ivan Urgant, in which we decided to reminisce about how we shot [our television travel series]. We did test runs in Dubai first and somewhere else. The success was tremendous, which, frankly speaking, amazed me, because we don’t do anything so spectacular: I don’t sing, and Vanya doesn’t dance. And then we started doing it seriously, because there were offers. We performed in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Berlin, and Geneva. It was a triumph: people gave us standing ovations. So now we have fifteen more shows booked. A whole tour, or as they used to say, a ‘stint.’”

Is it hard for Pozner not to be on TV?

‘The word ‘hard’ is so [strong], but I do miss it a lot. I love it very much—it’s my thing. Pardon my immodesty, but I think I’m very good at it. And of course I wish I could [be on television], but that’s just the way it is. It’s a very hard question [whether it will be possible to return to television]. Generally speaking, I dream of it happening, but I don’t think it will happen. That’s the only answer I can give.

“The thing is that I made my first memorable appearance on Soviet TV screens at the age of fifty-nine, you know? [Other] people [my age] were getting ready to retire, but that was when I was debuting. I think that maybe that is why I still have this drive, this desire. I want [to work on air], but you know, you can’t always get everything you want. You have to make some compromises sometimes, or even admit defeat.

“There were offers [of work from western television channels]. I won’t name specific names, but they came from more than one country. But there was a condition! And the condition was this: ‘You must first speak out about Putin and about politics,’ and in a particular way. I said, ‘Look, that is not journalism; that is something else.’ They said, ‘Those are the terms.’ I said, ‘No. Thank you very much, but my answer is no.’”

“This society is [sic] held together by fear and faith”

“I was brought up by my quite pro-Soviet father and had a lot of faith in those ideas. I was almost nineteen years old when I arrived in the Soviet Union, and I became convinced that what my father had told me and the reality were different things. But I tried to persuade myself that it’s not a pure experiment, after all, that it’s not a laboratory experiment. It was a complex country with a complex history, and you had to understand that, you had to make concessions, and so on and so forth.

“This went on for quite a long time. I was a propagandist, not a journalist. I was a propagandist in the purest sense, trying to prove this was the right system and the best system. The first blow to my ideological edifice, a serious blow, came in ‘68 [when the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia]. And although I came up with an argument as to why [the invasion] was necessary, in my heart I realized that something was wrong.

“Gradually, my faith began to demand proof (although faith doesn’t require proof), but I failed to find it. By about the mid-1970s, I had come to the firm conclusion that this society is [was] held together by two things: it was held together by fear and by faith, which are like epoxy glue. That glue held it together, but not very well, and if it stopped holding it together the thing would fall apart. And this thing—I mean the Soviet Union—did in fact fall apart, and not because of Reagan; that’s nonsense. It was because people stopped being afraid and people stopped believing, and it was much more vital that they had stopped believing.

“That was completely unexpected to me. I guess I thought it would happen, but not as quickly as it did happen.”

What he fears at ninety

“I’m afraid of going blind: I can’t imagine how I’ll live in the world blind. I’m afraid of going mad without knowing I’m mad, that I’ll be taken somewhere and locked up, that I’ll think I’m normal and everyone will think I’m crazy. That is what I’m afraid of; there is that fear. I’ve had cancer twice: I’m not afraid of it. But I am afraid of [madness], and I’ve been afraid of it for a long time, not because I’m ninety years old. I am afraid of sharks, as you know, regardless of my age.

“But [what am I afraid of] because I’m ninety? The only thing that’s already happening, and it’s hard—you know, you have to pay for everything, nothing is free—you get older and you lose loved ones, you outlive them. You live longer than your close friends, and so now Phil [Donahue] is gone. And Phil isn’t the only one. I’m quite afraid that more and more very close people will pass away and I’ll live on. It’s horrible.

“You know, this was what I thought: if it happens that I realize I’m not interested [in life] anymore, then I’ll find a way to end this stupidity. But I’m very, very interested.”

* When they publish materials about the special operation in eastern Ukraine, all Russian media outlets are required by Roskomnadzor to use information only from official Russian federal sources. We cannot publish materials which refer to the ongoing operation as an “attack,” “invasion,” or “declaration of war,” unless these are direct quotations (per Article 57 of the Federal Law on Mass Media). If a media outlet violates this requirement, it may be fined five million rubles, and its website may be blocked.

Source: Anton Zhelnov, “Vladimir Pozner to Forbes: ‘Sometimes you have to admit defeat,’” Forbes Russia, 12 September 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

The War on Terror

This is not the first time the editors of our local newspaper have “platformed” the lies of the mendacious and violent fascist butcher Vladimir Putin.

1. US warns that Russia will invade Ukraine. General disbelief, daily Russian mockery. (December 3 2021-February 24 2022)

2. Russia invades Ukraine, kills tens of thousands of people, kidnaps tens of thousands of children, commits other ongoing war crimes (February 24 2022-present)

3. Russia blames US for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (March 2022-present)

4. US warns of terror attack in Moscow. Putin denies any risk and mocks the United States. (March 7 and March 19 2024).

5. Terror attack near Moscow, ISIS takes responsibility, Russia meanwhile kills Ukrainian citizens with drones and missiles as it has for more than two years. (today, March 22 2024)

6. Russia’s security apparatus, focused on bringing carnage to Ukraine, has failed in Moscow. Russia’s leaders, focused on demonizing the US, did not protect Russians. What next? Where to direct the blame?

7. It would not be very surprising if the Kremlin blames Ukraine and the United States for terror in Moscow and uses the Moscow attack to justify continuing and future atrocities in Ukraine.

Source: Timothy Snyder, “Moscow Terror: A Chronology That Might Predict,” Thinking about…, 22 March 2024

This past Friday, 22 March, a horrifying terrorist attack took place in Crocus City Hall in the outskirts of Moscow. Islamic State plausibly claimed responsibility.

Earlier that day, Russian authorities had designated international LGBT organizations as “terrorist.” Also earlier that day, Russia had carried out massive terror attacks on Ukrainian cities. Those actions reveal the enemies Putin has chosen. As the attack on Crocus City Hall demonstrated, his choices have nothing to do with actual threats facing Russians.

Russia and the Islamic State have long been engaged in conflict. Russia has been bombing Syria since 2015. Russia and the Islamic State compete for territory and resources in Africa. Islamic State attacked the Russian embassy in Kabul. This is the relevant context for the attack outside Moscow. The horror at Crocus City Hall obviously has nothing to do with gays or Ukrainians or any other of Putin’s enemies of choice.

Putin had publicly dismissed the real threat. The United States had warned Russia of a coming attack by Islamic State. The United States operates under a “duty to warn,” which means that summaries of intelligence about coming terrorist attacks are passed on, even to states considered hostile, including (to take recent examples) Iran and Russia. Putin chose to mock the United States in public three days before the attack.

People reasonably ask how a terror attack could succeed in Russia, which is a police state. Regimes like Russia’s devote their energy to defining and combating fake threats. When a real threat emerges, the fake threats must be emphasized. Predictably (and as predicted), Putin sought to blame Ukraine for Crocus City Hall.

What if Russians realize that Putin’s designations of threats are self-serving and dangerous? What if they understand that there are real threats to Russians ignored by Putin? He has devoted the security apparatus to the project [of] destroying the Ukrainian nation and state. What if Putin’s obsession with Ukraine has only made life worse for Russians, including by opening [t]he way to actors who are in fact threats to Russian life, such as Islamic State?

These are the questions Putin must head off. It is not easy, however, to blame Ukraine for Islamic State terrorism. Putin’s first media appearance, nearly a day after the attack, was far from convincing. The specifics he offered were nonsensical. He claimed that the suspects in the terrorist act were heading for an open “window” on the Russian-Ukrainian border.

The term “window” is KGB jargon for a spot where the border has been cleared for a covert crossing. That the leader of the Russian Federation uses this term in a public address is a reminder of his own career inside the KGB. Yet Putin had obviously not thought this claim through, since a “window” must involve a clear space on both sides of the border. For escaping terrorists, it would be the Russian side that opened the window. By speaking of a “window” Putin indicated that the terrorists had Russian confederates preparing their exit, which he presumably did not mean. It seems that Putin was hastily making things up.

Setting aside the “window” business, though, the whole idea that escaping terrorists would head for Ukraine is daft. Russia has 20,000 miles of border. The Russian-Ukrainian part of it is covered with Russian soldiers and security forces. On the Ukrainian side it is heavily mined. It is a site of active combat. It is the last place an escaping terrorist would choose.

And there is no evidence that this is what happened. Russia claims that it has apprehended suspects in Bryansk, and claimed that this means that they were headed for Ukraine. (Western media have unfortunately repeated this part of the claim.) Regardless of whether anything about these claims is true, Bryansk would suggest flight in the direction of Belarus. Indeed, the first version of the story involved Belarus, before someone had a “better” idea.

In moments of stress, Russian propaganda tries out various ways to spin the story in the direction preferred by the Kremlin. The reputed suspects are being tortured, presumably with the goal of “finding” some connection to Ukraine. The Kremlin has instructed Russian media to emphasize any possible Ukrainian elements in the story. Russian television propaganda published a fake video implicating a Ukrainian official. The idea is to release a junk into the media, including the international media, and to see if anything works.

Amidst the flotsam and jetsam are those who spread Russian propaganda abroad, who try out versions more extreme than Putin’s. Putin does not directly deny that Islamic State was the perpetrator — he simply wants to direct attention towards Ukraine. But actors outside Russia can simply claim that Ukraine was at fault. Such actors push the discussion further than the Kremlin, and thereby allow Russia to test what might work abroad.

As a result, we have a bizarre discussion that leads to a harmful place. Islamic State claims responsibility for Crocus City Hall. The Islamic State publishes dreadful video footage. Russia cannot directly deny this but seeks help anyway in somehow pushing Ukraine into the picture. Those providing that help open a “debate” by denying that Islamic State was involved and making far more direct claims about Ukraine than the Kremlin does. (This brazen lying leads others to share [a] Islamic State perpetration video (don’t share it; don’t watch it). So the senseless “debate” helps Islamic State, since the reason it publishes perpetration videos is to recruit future killers.)

Meanwhile, Russia’s senseless war of aggression against Ukraine continues. In its occupied zones, Russia continues to kidnap Ukrainian children for assimilation and continues to torture Ukrainians and place them in concentration camps. It continues to send glider bombs, drones, cruise missiles and rockets at Ukrainian towns and cities.

On the same day as the attack at Crocus City Hall, Russia carried out its single largest attack to date on the Ukrainian energy grid, leaving more than a million people without power. Among other things it fired eight cruise missiles at the largest Ukrainian dam. Russia attacked the city of Zaporizhzhia (the consequences are in the four photos) and other cities throughout Ukraine.

On Friday Russia fired, in all, eighty-eight missiles and sixty-three explosive drones into Ukraine. And that represents just a single day (if an unusually bad one) of a Russian war of terror in Ukraine that has gone on for more than two years.

Putin is responsible for his mistakes inside Russia. And he is at fault for the war in Ukraine. He is trying to turn two wrongs into a right: into his own right to define reality however he likes, which means his right to kill whomever he chooses.

Source: Timothy Snyder, “Moscow Terror (2): The Claim and the Blame,” Thinking about…, 24 March 2024

It is obvious that the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall on the evening of 22 March 2024, during which 133 people were killed, according to the official count, has clear goals and objectives. A week before Putin’s “election” I wrote that, after receiving a “mandate from the people,” Putin would unleash a mass terror campaign. But for this, of course, he needs a decent and obvious excuse. The exemplary terrorist attack in broad daylight in politically unreliable Moscow is intended to convince society that “decisive action” is what it needs now.

Why would Putin do that? It’s simple logic. Come hell or high water he has to win the war he has unleashed. This is obvious, for it is a matter of self-preservation. If Putin does not win, he is a weakling, a lowlife, and at the same time the person to blame for hundreds of thousands of deaths not only of Ukrainians, but also of Russians. It is clear that he will not last long in this state. Not to mention such a trifle as his sick, wounded ego, repeatedly insulted by Ukraine. But victory would wipe everything out, because victors are not judged, Putin is convinced, taking his cue from his idol Catherine the Great.

So, Putin has to have victory at any cost. But two things have long prevented him from achieving it: 1) his numerous domestic enemies, and 2) a lack of “manpower” in the ranks of the army.

Putin intends to solve problem number one by means of a mass terror campaign against malcontents, especially since he has long been urged to do so by a well-rehearsed chorus of heralds, from Dmitry Medvedev and General Gurulyov to a host of other, lower-ranking epigones of contemporary Russian fascism. Guessing the mood of their Führer, they demand that, at very least, he restore the death penalty; at most, that he carry out “total executions of the terrorists and crackdowns against their families” (per the latest quotable quote from Medvedev).

We can only guess at this point whether Putin’s forthcoming terror will exceed Stalin’s body count or whether the current ruler in the Kremlin will limit himself to “merely” increasing the number of prison sentences meted out to dissidents by a factor of two and carrying out demonstrative executions of dozens or hundreds of his fellow citizens. But there is no doubt that a serious expansion of such tactics is on his agenda.

Putin will solve problem number two through a mass mobilization. This is nothing new either. Piling hundreds of thousands of soldiers into the enemy’s trenches is a time-honored tactic practiced by both the Russian and Soviet military, and, as Putin has seen, it has worked well in the “meat assaults” on Avdiivka, Bakhmut, Severodonetsk, and many other small Ukrainian towns. But these towns are nothing compared to the million-strong cities of Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and Odesa, not to mention the three-million-strong Kyiv. So there must be massively more cannon fodder. The second problem is directly related to the first.

Combined with large-scale crackdowns, the mobilization is sure to proceed more vigorously this time round.

As a bonus for the Kremlin, this terrorist attack diverts public attention (at least for a while) from such things as Russia’s largest-ever strike on Ukraine, involving a hundred and fifty missiles and drones, which happened just a day before the events at Crocus City Hall.

I’d now like to talk about other explanations of this terrorist attack. Looking through the news related to it, I honestly could not help but marvel at the comments of certain respected colleagues, opposition Russian analysts, who easily took the bait about IS, Islamist terrorists, and the other nonsense that the FSB obligingly leaked to the public in the first hours after the attack through the Russian media and Telegram channels.

To clarify, certain people of “non-Slavic ethnicity” were chosen to directly perpetrate this heinous crime. There are hundreds of thousands of Tajik, Uzbek, and Kyrgyz migrant workers in Russia, EVERY ONE of whom is literally turned inside out by the Russian Interior Ministry upon arriving in Russia, including with regard to their attitudes to radical Islam and similar things. The Russian secret services thus have the broadest selection of perpetrators available for such a terrorist attack.

Let us ask ourselves an elementary question: how could Islamist radicals purchase not only assault rifles and pistols but also the flamethrower with which the terrorists torched the unfortunate audience members at Crocus City Hall without the knowledge and support of Russian “law enforcement”? Is such a thing possible in today’s Russia, and in Moscow to boot? If someone thinks that it is possible, I would simply remind them that when members of Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party tried to buy weapons somewhere in the Altai Territory back in the 2000s, their plan was instantly exposed. The idea of Tajiks buying assault rifles and flamethrowers in today’s militarized Russia, which is chockablock with surveillance cameras and special services, is a bad joke.

Let me also remind you that the initial semi-official Russian explanation was that the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall was revenge on Russia for its actions in Syria and Chechnya. Seriously? So, it matters not a whit that the Russian army and its air force have not conducted any active operations in Syria for two years now? If you have not been paying attention during this time, let me just remind you that the Kremlin is certainly not concerned with Syria right now. For the last two years all Russian armed forces, including those operating from military bases in Syria and in Armenia, have been deployed in destroying Ukraine. There have been no large-scale military operations in Chechnya for almost twenty years.

However, as it turned out, all this argumentation was completely superfluous, because my gullible colleagues were made to eat their lunch by Putin himself and his favorite propagandist, Margarita Simonyan. As a shadow of her “boss” (as she herself dubs Putin), Simonyan naturally cannot afford to indulge in improvisations not vetted by him, and especially at such a crucial moment. On her Telegram channel, she bluntly pointed out who, in her (and therefore her boss’s) opinion, had organized and perpetrated the terrorist attack: “It wasn’t IS. It was the Khokhols.”

The “boss” himself, who was supposed to address the nation in the early hours after the terrorist attack, unexpectedly postponed his address by twenty-four hours. The delay appears to have been caused by technical blunders. Obviously, organizing the details of a terrorist attack is not Putin’s pay grade. It is clear that in such cases the relevant special services are simply given the go-ahead from the top brass. They are told to do their job. The operation was entrusted, of course, to professional hatchet men. As usual, they made a miserable mess of it. You need a large-scale terrorist attack? The Russian security services always have two or three dozen Tajiks on hand for this purpose, who can be hastily given their marching orders, paid, and… And that’s basically it. The Tajik passport found in a car allegedly belonging to the terrorists is, of course, a masterpiece. It is clear that no terrorist, as he sets off to carry out an attack, ever forgets to take his passport with him. It was meant as a helpful hint to law enforcers, and also so decent folk would know whom to hate. It is strange that the business card of the already half-forgotten Dmytro Yarosh was not found in the car as well.

But the point is that this special operation were certainly not meant to spoil relations with the Islamic world. Russia’s allies—Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas—might take offense.

In addition to the domestic agenda we mentioned above, the terrorist attack was meant to firmly link the globally condemned villains of IS with Ukraine in world public opinion.

This was why Putin’s speech on the terrorist attack was postponed for almost twenty-four hours. The dictator’s dodgy mind was deciding how to clean up the mess made by his numbskulls and tie up the loose ends. That is, to tie IS (or any other Islamists) to Ukraine. And he probably thinks he has figured out how to do it. As he put it, [the terrorists were trying to escape through] “a window prepared for them on the Ukrainian side of the border.”

All these tricks of Putin’s are painfully obvious to people capable of thinking, but he doesn’t care about that. Moreover, having sensed a change in the mood of his American “partners” (remember the reports that the U.S. has been pressuring Ukraine to stop hitting Russian oil refineries, and the fact that for almost two months no American aid has arrived in Ukraine and it is not known whether it will arrive in the future), Putin makes a high-pitched appeal to all countries to unite against this inhuman evil—that is, against Ukraine + Daesh.

Another very important point from Putin’s speech, indicating that he is paving the way for a mass terror campaign at home, is that he called the shooting of civilians at Crocus City Hall nothing more or less than “a blow to Russia, to our people.” He, his propagandists, and the Russian media have already established the link between Islamist terrorists and Ukraine. The next logical step is to claim that those Russians who support Ukraine are direct and immediate supporters of the terrorists who struck “a blow to Russia, to our people”—that is, that they are enemies of the people.

To be honest, all of this is as monstrous as it is predictable. I will repeat what I have said many times before: as long as Putin is alive and in power, things will get even worse and even scarier.

Source: Alexander Zhelenin, “The terrorist attack at Crocus City: who benefits from it and what will happen next,” Republic, 23 March 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

But Will It Con the Kids in Kathmandu?

Source: Russian House in Kathmandu (Facebook), 6 April 2023

Source: Los Angeles Popcorn Ceiling Removal

Source: Shutterstock

P.S.

Source: Saint Javelin (Twitter), 31 March 2023. Thanks to Monique Camarra (EuroFile) for the link.

P.P.S.

[…]

First, if you know someone who might like this newsletter, please forward it to them.

Next, the story. I know many people this week are focused on the killing of Russian blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in St Petersburg. We are working on that (stay tuned).

But I want to talk about the long-term impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine and the social crisis it has caused in my country.

In this case, it’s about Ukraine’s teachers, who are facing serious salary cuts against a backdrop of high inflation, prices, rents and costs of basic services.

It’s a story about who is paying the price of Russia’s war, which has caused hundreds of billions of dollars of direct and indirect damage to Ukraine.

To do it, I spoke to teachers, local officials and trade union activists to find out how the Ukrainian government is being forced to pursue austerity – and what that means for hard-working people across the country.

I found that some local authorities are managing to pick up the shortfall in central grants – while others just can’t do it, as tax income has dropped off following the invasion.

Either way, local officials know it’s political suicide to fire people en masse, and have to scramble and scrape to get through the funding shortfall.

But it feels like a crisis postponed – rather than solved.

Read our story

Source: oDR Weekly Newsletter, 6 April 2023

Outshined

This tool is called a chicken debeaker. It does exactly what you would expect with a name like that…it partially removes the beaks of chickens in order to reduce cannibalism, egg cracking, and feather pecking. This debeaker would be plugged into an electrical outlet which would heat the opening, like a hot guillotine. The chicken would then be held in place by a human with their beak in the opening. The human would then close the opening by stepping on the foot pedal on the ground thus trimming off a portion of the chicken’s beak. Debeaking is a common practice today in many egg laying facilities although the ethics of this practice has been called into question by many opponents of debeaking.

Source: Murray County Historical Museum, Facebook, 18 October 2022. Lightly edited to eliminate typos.

These handsome kids aren’t studying Russian.

We are announcing a contest for the most interesting story about how you learn Russian!

To enter, you need to publish a post or shoot a video in which you talk in Russian how and why you started learning Russian. You can tell us what difficulties you have encountered and what funny stories have happened to you during your acquaintance with the “great and mighty” language. If you have something to share, then we are waiting for your post.

Be sure to tag the Rossotrudnichestvo account and add the hashtags #ILearnRussianRS #RussianHouse #Rossotrudnichestvo.

The contest will run from October 15 to November 15. On November 22, we will announce three winners on our social media accounts. They receive an annual subscription to the electronic and audiobook service ru.bookmate.com.

Good luck!

Source: Russian House in Kathmandu, Facebook, 19 October 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader. A quick search revealed that the image used, above, is a stock image entitled “Studying with my boyfriend.”

The Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation (Russian: Федеральное агентство по делам Содружества Независимых Государств, соотечественников, проживающих за рубежом, и по международному гуманитарному сотрудничеству), commonly known as Rossotrudnichestvo (Russian: Россотрудничество), is an autonomous Russian federal government agency under the jurisdiction of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and cultural exchange. Rossotrudnichestvo operates in Central Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe (but mostly in the Commonwealth of Independent States).

The agency was created from its predecessor agency by Presidential decree, signed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on 6 September 2008, with the aim of maintaining Russia’s influence in the Commonwealth of Independent States, and to foster friendly ties for the advancement of Russia’s political and economic interests in foreign states.

According to OECD estimates, 2019 official development assistance from Russia increased to US$1.2 billion.

Rossotrudnichestvo was assessed by expert observers to be organising and orchestrating synchronous pro-Russian public rallies, demonstrations, and vehicle convoys across Europe in April 2022 in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Demonstrations were held simultaneously in Dublin (Ireland), Berlin, Hanover, Frankfurt (Germany), Limassol (Cyprus), and Athens (Greece).

Source: Wikipedia

Soundgarden, “Outshined” (1991)

Well, I got up feeling so down
I got off being sold out
I’ve kept the movie rolling
But the story’s getting old now
Oh yeah

Well I just looked in the mirror
And things aren’t looking so good
I’m looking California
And feeling Minnesota
Oh yeah

So now you know
Who gets mystified
So now you know
Who gets mystified

Show me the power child, I’d like to say
That I’m down on my knees today
Yeah it gives me the butterflies, gives me away
‘Til I’m up on my feet again

Hey I’m feeling
Oh I’m feeling
Outshined, outshined, outshined, outshined
Oh yeah

Well someone let the dogs out
They’ll show you where the truth is
The grass is always greener
Where the dogs are shitting
Oh yeah

Well I’m feeling that I’m sober
Even though I’m drinking
Well I can’t get any lower
Still I feel I’m sinking

So now you know
Who gets mystified
So now you know
Who gets mystified

Show me the power child, I’d like to say
That I’m down on my knees today
Yeah it gives me the butterflies, gives me away
‘Til I’m up on my feet again

I’m feeling
Oh I’m feeling
Outshined, outshined, outshined, outshined

Ooh yeah

Outshined

So now you know
Who gets mystified

Show me the power child, I’d like to say
That I’m down on my knees today
Yeah it gives me the butterflies, gives me away
‘Til I’m up on my feet again

Oh I’m feeling
Oh I’m feeling

Show me the power child, I’d like to say
That I’m down on my knees today
And yeah it gives me the butterflies, gives me away
‘Til I’m up on my feet again

Oh I’m feeling
Oh I’m feeling
Outshined, outshined, outshined, outshined

Source: Chris J. Cornell, “Outshined,” as quoted by Musicxmatch

It’s Not as Far from Kathmandu to Mariupol As It Is from Mariupol to Cape Cod

Russia builds apartment buildings in Mariupol

Specialists from Russian Ministry of Defense have started construction of 12 residential buildings in Mariupol in June 2022. About 2.5 thousand residents will occupy more than a thousand apartments in new five-storey buildings. The flats will be fully renovated.

Commercial and non-commercial property and social facilities, such as shops, will be on the ground floors. There will be recreation areas, children’s and sports grounds with full equipment, including play and exercise facilities.

In Mariupol, it will be one of the first such complexes.

#Russia #DPR #IDA

Source: Russia House in Kathmandu, Facebook, 17 July 2022

Screenshot of the response to my Google query

[…]

So, what’s to be done? The United States needs to open a diplomatic channel with Moscow to get a clearer sense of what would be an acceptable settlement for all parties. Right before the invasion, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman indicated “possible support” for an approach in which Ukraine would pledge military neutrality and give up its bid for NATO membership. If it will stop the suffering of ordinary Ukrainians, why should the United States not encourage Ukraine to put that back on the table now? Given its ongoing struggles with corruption and undemocratic practices, Ukraine is still far from meeting the democratic criteria of NATO membership anyway.

Promises of unlimited support only embolden what is starting to be seen as the Ukrainian president’s “reckless stubbornness” in outright rejecting the possibility of territorial concessions. President Biden has repeatedly expressed that there are limits to U.S. assistance — it does not help Ukraine to pretend otherwise. It is rare that a war ends in total defeat, and it is not realistic to expect Moscow will fully retreat. U.S. policy must now shift to embrace this reality, and plan for the months ahead when deep divisions within the Western coalition grow, and when, in a lopsided war of attrition, Ukraine might lose even more ground.

Source: Mark Hannah, “It’s time for a US push to end the war in Ukraine,” Responsible Statecraft, 18 July 2018

Mark was born and raised on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He received a BA from UPenn, an MA from Columbia, and a PhD from USC’s Annenberg School. His doctoral research examined international transitions of journalism from statist to capitalist media models.

Mark worked on John Kerry’s presidential campaign and the 2008 Obama campaign. During the Obama administration, he regularly provided political and policy analysis on MSNBC, FOX News, and CNBC. His writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, TIME Magazine, PBS, Politico, The Huffington Post, NBCNews.com, and elsewhere.

His knowledge about the role which media play in driving — and sometimes thwarting — democratic progress was what first caught the eye of EGF. And Mark was excited by the innovative and important work being led by Allyn Summa and Ian Bremmer at the new organization. Mark wanted to work in the world of ideas, but also knew that world all too often seemed unapproachable to most Americans. He wanted to help foster a conversation around the urgent foreign policy challenges our country currently confronts. EGF has enabled him to do just that.

He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two young sons. After a childhood on Cape Cod, he enjoys spending as much of his free time as possible at one beach or another. He is learning to whittle, but despite being from a long line of carpenters, has found it to be quite challenging. He loves reading, and George Saunders, Philip Roth and Marilynne Robinson are among his favorite authors.

Source: “About: Team: Mark Hannah, Senior Fellow,” Eurasia Group Foundation website

What strikes me as particularly undeniable is that the absence of the feeling of belonging to a class is characteristic of children of the bourgeoisie. People in a dominant class position do not notice that they are positioned, situated, within a specific world (just as someone who is white isn’t necessarily aware of being so, or someone heterosexual). Read in this light, Aron’s remark can be seen for what it is, the naive confession offered by a person of privilege who imagines he is writing sociology when all he is doing is describing his own social status. I only met him once in my life, and immediately felt a strong aversion towards him. The very moment I set eyes on him, I loathed his ingratiating smile, his soothing voice, his way of demonstrating how reasonable and rational he was, everything about him that displayed his bourgeois ethos of decorum and propriety, of ideological moderation.

Source: Didier Eribon, Returning to Reims, trans. Michael Lucey (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2013), p. 100

[…]

Kateryna burst into tears when describing how she saw some 2,000 dead bodies with her own eyes. The shooting made it impossible to go in and help, despite the desperate pleas of bystanders.

“Russian units were occupying our flats, and I saw them shooting at civilians from the streets from the apartments. I was travelling around with a medical kit, trying to evacuate them to the main hospital, but then the Russian soldiers captured it too, using the patients and medical staff as human shields.”

On her last day in Mariupol, the road was destroyed, so she had to travel on foot. She saw a car that had hit a tree, with the driver already dead inside.

But then she spotted a teenage girl sitting in the back of the car. “Get out, we need to leave, they’re bombing here,” Kateryna told the teenage girl. On the other side of the car, a woman was lying in a pool of blood, moaning.

She realised that these were the girl’s parents, but she knew that with projectiles flying overhead she could only help one person — so she had to make the horrifying choice between saving the mother or the daughter.

Seeing that the younger woman was still able to walk, she chose the daughter. When she got her down the stairs of the shelter, Kateryna saw that the woman’s shirt was so full of blood that she was not able to wring it out.

When she was finally evacuated from the Black Sea port city, thousands of dead bodies were still on the streets, but she received messages from friends saying that Russian soldiers forced the remaining civilians to clean up the bodies to hide their crimes.

Now safe in Warsaw, Kataryna believes she will never forget what she has seen.

[…]

Source: James Jackson, “‘I was praying we would die quickly,’ Mariupol survivor says,” Euronews, 12 July 2022

Red Flag

As of the morning of May 1, around a hundred billboards featuring the image of the iconic pensioner who gained famed after the events in Ukraine [sic] had been installed in different districts in Petersburg. Fontanka.ru has analyzed the scale of this visual statement. The news-related intrigue lies in the fact that state agencies have nothing to do with the campaign.

“Under the banner of victory!” All images courtesy of *Fontanka.ru*

In the early hours of May 1, identical posters bearing the image of the famous pensioner holding a Soviet banner were officially installed in about one hundred outdoor media displays in Petersburg.

News about the woman broke out back in April, when she went out with a red banner to greet servicemen in Ukraine, confusing them with Russian soldiers. Her age, her deed, the reaction of the Ukrainian soldiers, and the video that went viral on the Net immediately turned her into a symbol of victory. The old woman’s face has appeared on DPR postage stamps, graffiti artists began to draw her in different cities in Russia, and so on. Even the Russian Federation’s delegate at the UN Security Council talked about her.

Currently, the images of the heroic old woman have been installed in the Central, Admiralty, Petrograd, Vyborg, Maritime, Kalinin, and Moscow districts. These include both large billboards and typical demonstrative surfaces [sic] along the roadways.

The urban spaces chosen for this campaign can be analyzed. The images have been installed near places of authority: on Suvorov Prospekt, next to the Smolny [Petersburg city hall], the seat of the Leningrad Region government, and the Interior Ministry building; on Tapestry Street, near the FSB building; on Horse Guards Boulevard, near St. Isaac’s Cathedral; and around the monument to Alexander Nevsky, outside the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

However, many similar phenomena [sic] have popped up on Moscow Prospekt, Pulkovo Highway, and the October and Vyborg embankments.

Fontanka.ru has learned that state (regional or federal) agencies did not pay for the campaign. Petersburg advertising market insiders, on terms of confidentiality, informed our correspondent that they had heard about the proposal from representatives of a private individual in mid-April. “It’s definitely a businessman. We are sure of this at least, since we called each other when we began receiving preliminary inquiries,” one of the insiders said.

As for the scale, according to the information we have obtained, the order received was for the placement of one hundred billboards at an approximate cost of around ten million rubles [approx. 139,000 euros]. “And that’s if they got a discount,” one source added. Several of our experts more or less agreed with this figure.

If someone in the advertising market has more accurate information, Fontanka.ru is ready to listen to it with a full guarantee of anonymity.

Source: Fontanka.ru, 1 May 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader

A Cult of Dementia

Putin’s red-brown ideology has taken the worst of Nazism and Bolshevism and mixed it with the cartoonish oligarchy from Dunno on the Moon. The final product has no equals anywhere in the world.

Just think about it. For several months now, Russian propaganda has been chewing over the image of a traitorous old Ukrainian woman who was waiting for the invaders with a Soviet flag. Compassionate Ukrainian soldiers gave her food, but took away her flag. That’s the whole story.

But no, the story didn’t end there. In Russia, the crazy old woman was made a real hero, and her image began to appear on buildings. But the occupiers have driven themselves into an ideological trap: no one except such “young Komsomol women” was looking forward to seeing them in Ukraine. The invaders were not greeted with flowers and bread, but were treated to Molotov cocktails and poisoned pies.

If you think about this story more deeply, the old lady with the Soviet flag perfectly reflects the main watchword of Putin’s Russia, its underlying doctrine, and the true purpose of invading Ukraine: our lives have sucked and we won’t let anyone else live either.

She is thus undoubtedly a hero to Russia, as is Pavlik Morozov. Russia has nothing to offer the world. It offers a rollback to the past and endless attempts to cash in on lost “greatness” instead of progress, old age instead of youth, betrayal instead of loyalty, and humiliation instead of pride. So, an old woman holding a Soviet flag is the most accurate symbolic depiction of modern Russia.

It’s funny, because the propagandists don’t care about Russian pensioners or about veterans of the Second World War. Old people in Russia live out their days (they live them out, they don’t live) in want and humiliation, in terrible conditions and hopelessness.

Source: Andrey Churakov, Facebook, 2 May 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader

Z Is for Zombie Box

The Putinist Zwastika now graces the halls of Petersburg’s renowned physics and maths magnet School No. 239, writes Alexander Rodin, an alumnus who says that he will now try and get his alma mater excluded from all international projects including the school Olympics in maths and physics, and that he is sure that all his fellow alumni (some of whom I know) share his sense of shame at this turn of events. Thanks to PZ for the link.

The Zombie box. Smart people have been trying to persuade me that it is not a matter of propaganda at all, but that it has to do with the peculiarities of Russian culture and history, or with the psychology of the Russian populace, with complexes and resentments. As for the latter, I don’t really understand how one can deduce a particular reaction to current political events from such general categories as “culture,” which consists of many different things, nor do I really understand how so many complexes and resentments about Russia and the world naturally arise in the head of a specific person who mainly thinks about their own everyday problems. But as for the former — that is, propaganda — there is no theory for me here. Instead, there is the daily practice of observing my nearest and dearest: how this dark force literally enchains them, how this poison contaminates their minds, how these people repeat verbatim all the stock propaganda phrases and figures of speech, passing them off as information and arguments, and how they lose the ability to hear objections. Perhaps it isn’t the Zombie box that is the matter, but just in case, I advise you to turn it off and try to expel Saruman from your brains.

Source: Sergey Abashin, Facebook, 21 March 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader

_______________

Vladimir Putin’s speech at the concert and rally in Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow, 18 March 2022

Putin Marks Crimea Anniversary, Defends ‘Special Operation’ in Ukraine in Stadium Rally
Moscow Times
March 18, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin led a pro-government rally that was beset by “technical difficulties” and reports of people being forced to attend.

The event marking the eighth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which is not recognized by most countries, came three weeks into Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that has sparked fierce international condemnation.

“We have not had such unity for a long time,” Putin said, referring to the “special military operation” in Ukraine as he addressed the crowd of about 95,000 and another 100,000 outside the stadium, according to the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.

Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium was awash with Russian tricolor flags as snippets from Russia’s military insurgency in Crimea flickered across the stadium’s screens, accompanied by songs that celebrated the success of Russia’s military.

A number of guest speakers, including RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, spoke from a stage emblazoned with the phrases “For Russia” and “For a world without Nazism.”

Many guest speakers were wearing orange-and-black St. George’s ribbons in the shape of a Z, a new symbol of support for Russia’s Armed Forces in the wake of the invasion.

Putin’s impassioned speech defended Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, citing the need to protect those in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region from a so-called “genocide.”

“This really was genocide. Stopping that was the goal of the special operation,” said Putin, who was wearing what has been identified as a $15,000 parka.

But the broadcast of his speech came to an abrupt end as Russia 24, the channel broadcasting the event, switched to footage of a military band playing on the same stage.

Russian state television is tightly controlled and such interruptions are highly unusual.

The Kremlin later said that the broadcast was “interrupted due to technical problems on the server.”

Reports prior to the event stated that many of those in attendance had been forced to attend, with state employees used to bolster the annual celebration’s numbers.

“They stuck us in a bus and drove us here,” one woman told the Sota news outlet outside the stadium.

Meanwhile, a photo shared by the Avtozak Live news channel suggested that event-goers were offered 500 rubles to show up to the event.

Videos circulating on social media showed streams of people leaving the stadium some 20 minutes after the event had started.

Crowds were subject to rigorous security checks when entering the stadium, as the atmosphere in Moscow remains tense amid the Kremlin’s decision to launch a military operation in neighboring Ukraine that many Russians have voiced opposition to.

The event’s strict guidelines also banned any symbols associated with Ukraine or the West, according to an unconfirmed report by the Baza Telegram channel.

Despite what appeared to be a festive mood in the crowd, a number of independent journalists were detained near the stadium, according to Sota, all of whom were later released.

In addition to referencing the Bible, Putin closed his address by invoking naval commander Fyodor Ushakov, who is now the patron saint of Russia’s nuclear bomber fleet.

“What a coincidence that the special military operation should fall on [the commander’s] birthday,” the Russian president said, as onlookers whooped in agreement.

Tag: Russian propaganda

Russia Shoots Down Santa Claus

Late Pozner

A multifaceted portrait of lifelong Kremlin propagandist and relentless self-promoter Vladimir Pozner in his ninetieth year, with guest appearances from several useful idiots.

Why Pozner remains silent

What he’s been doing for the last two and a half years

Is it hard for Pozner not to be on TV?

“This society is [sic] held together by fear and faith”

What he fears at ninety

The War on Terror

But Will It Con the Kids in Kathmandu?

It’s Not as Far from Kathmandu to Mariupol As It Is from Mariupol to Cape Cod

Red Flag

Z Is for Zombie Box

#We’re Not Ashamed!