Russia’s Pride

KYIV, Ukraine — In the early 2000s, I was still a kid. Every summer, my grandma and I would travel to visit her relatives in Tuapse, a city in southern Russia on the Black Sea’s coast.

We took the ‘platzkart,’ the cheapest sleeper train where strangers shared one open space with no compartments, and always brought our own bed linen because it cost us less that way. The train stopped at what felt like every small town along the way. With a border crossing, the journey stretched well past twenty-four hours.

My grandma Lilia looked forward to every summer, as the children had a holiday from school. She skimped on everything just to save up for this trip. Soon, she would see her sister, and they would spend the whole summer together, just like they used to when they were kids.

I had no idea that twenty years later, I would watch that same city burn and feel nothing but satisfaction.

Today I woke up to news that Ukrainian long-range drones had attacked Russian oil refineries in Tuapse for the third time in the past two weeks — the latest in a campaign that has shut down the plant, destroyed the majority of its storage tanks, and left Russia’s only Black Sea refinery incapacitated with no signs of recovering

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has already said that Ukraine’s partners asked him to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries during the war in the Middle East. In their view, these strikes could further drive up the prices of oil and other energy resources, which have already reached record highs in recent months. The Ukrainian side, however, believes the impact on prices is limited because Russia still has restricted capacity to export its oil. So it will continue striking Russian oil, as this is one of the most effective ways to put pressure on Moscow.

At first glance, mockery and gloating over destruction deep inside Russia may seem cruel to many. But for me, it is the logical conclusion of a shattered identity — and a story about how war destroys not only homes but the very possibility of remembering anything good about the enemy.

Until my teenage years, I would spend the entire summer in a village called Nebug in Russia. It was just 17 kilometers from Tuapse, where our relatives owned a huge plot of land with several small houses, some of which they rented out to vacationers. From there, we often made trips to Tuapse, wandering between the nearby towns and soaking up every bit of the coast.

My relatives’ property in Nebug was massive. The house was located at the foot of a mountain, and if you headed down the stone steps, you would find yourself right by the river, which led you straight to the Black Sea. My distant cousin and I would come back inside at lunchtime to eat and then head right back to the water. Sunburned, skinny, and exhausted.

The best part was escaping to the wild beach to snorkel and explore the underwater world. When you’re ten, there’s nothing more captivating than that. Or we’d tie bits of sausage to a stick to bait crabs. The kittens living under the bridge got a share of that sausage, too. We had to smuggle it out in our mouths at breakfast so the grandmas wouldn’t scold us.

I still remember when Putin was elected president for the first time in 2000.

My relatives were overjoyed, and my grandma celebrated along with them. I was still too young to understand much, but from their conversations, I gathered that Russia was a “better” country than Ukraine. For the first time in my life, I felt ashamed of where I was from.

I was still holding on to those memories. They were my happy place. But in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, the last thread connecting me to my grandmother was gone, and communication with our relatives dwindled to almost nothing.

In 2022, they called and told us not to worry, promising that “Russia will save you very soon.” They were sincerely convinced that we were trapped in the clutches of ‘Ukro-Nazis.’

We’ve never picked up the phone since then.

Over the past two weeks, black smoke has stretched for dozens of kilometers from Tuapse. The city has seen ‘oil rains,’ coating it in black soot and ash. Russian authorities asked residents not to leave their homes and even announced an evacuation on several streets near oil refineries.

Ukraine has struck this facility multiple times. The recent strikes were the most devastating — waves of drones, fires that burned for days, 28 out of 47 storage tanks destroyed or seriously damaged. The port stopped functioning.

The consequences are felt across Russia. Production cuts, refineries shutting down one after another, gasoline prices up over 20 percent. Russia is losing around $100 million every single day, which means $100 million that will not be spent on shells, missiles, or soldiers killing Ukrainians.

The Tuapse refinery is the region’s main oil export hub. When it functioned properly, it processed 240,000 barrels a day, most of it shipped to China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Turkey. With Middle Eastern oil supplies disrupted, major buyers like China and India dramatically increased their imports from Russia, thereby massively boosting Russia’s fossil fuel revenues. In the first quarter of 2026, 90 percent of Russia’s crude exports went to China and India alone.

Russia found its window of opportunity in the chaos of the Hormuz crisis — oil prices up, buyers desperate, and sanctions suddenly weakened. But Ukraine is closing that window.

When I saw the news about Tuapse burning, I felt nothing for the people there. No grief, no worry about my relatives there. Just satisfaction.

I found a term — ‘schadenfreude.’ It’s a German word made up of two parts: Schaden — ‘damage’ and Freude — ‘joy.’ Literally, pleasure from someone else’s misfortune. Researchers at Emory University identify three forms of this emotion. Aggression-based is the satisfaction of seeing someone you actively hate suffer. Rivalry-based is the pleasure of watching a competitor fail. And justice-based, where a person feels that someone’s misfortune is a deserved consequence of their own actions.

What I feel is the third one.

Living in circumstances you can’t control, like war, people often feel a deep sense of powerlessness. But when Ukrainians see Russians also facing the consequences of their country’s actions, it creates a sense of reclaiming at least some control over the situation. It feels well-deserved, like finally, Russians are experiencing at least a fraction of what Ukrainians go through every day.

For twelve years — since the occupation of Crimea — my relatives chose not to notice the war in Ukraine, posting Russiaʼs propaganda on their social media. Not the war in Donbas, not the missile strikes, not the mass graves.

They went to the beach. They drank beer. They posed for photos in occupied Crimea.

The environmental disaster unfolding in Tuapse, with water, soil, and air polluted, seems to go unnoticed by Russian officials. Neither Putin nor other high-ranking officials have reacted to the catastrophe.

The only ones I pity are the animals. They have no part in this war. They are being widely contaminated by fuel oil from the ‘oil rains.’ Water from puddles or troughs, where stray cats and dogs might drink, can be dangerous for animals.

So, do I have the right to feel joy when my family i[n] Russia suffers? I think I do. Not because I hate them for who they are. But because for twelve years they chose not to see.

I can remember the smell of the sea in my childhood, and still know exactly what is on fire: the war machine that kills my people.

Source: Kateryna Antonenko, “Why I am happy when oil prices rise,” The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak, 28 April 2026. I subscribe to The Counteroffensive and am happy to depaywall their articles for my purposes here, but I would suggest you subscribe to them too. ||| TRR

In this week’s bulletin: Ukraine defence update/ Ukraine and Palestine/ Russia “Spring” trial/ Try Me For Treason: the film/ Russia fails to silence Crimean Tatars/ Could Belarus join war?/ Kherson torture diary/

News from the territories occupied by Russia:

Russia banned the voice of the Crimean Tatars — the Mejlis — 10 years ago, but failed to silence it (Crimea Platform, April 26^th)

Russian FSB tortured Kherson men and fabricated “terrorism” case against them (Meduza, 24 April)

26-year-old Ukrainian sentenced to 22 years for alleged ‘plan to kill’ a Russian occupation prison chief (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 24^th)

Russian occupation court sentences 66-year-old doctor to 14 years for supporting Ukraine through war bonds (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 24th)

Mission Discusses the Situation of Women’s Rights in Temporarily Occupied Crimea (Crimea Platform, April 24th)

EU Imposes Sanctions on Individuals Involved in Illegal Excavations in Crimea and the Militarisation of Ukrainian Children (Crimea Platform, April 24th)

The Face of Resistance: Crimean Tatar Activist Seyran Murtaza (Crimea Platform, April 24th)

From hell: the secret diary of a Ukrainian imprisoned and tortured by the FSB in Kherson (Mediazona, 23 April)

Russia stages fourth ‘trial’ of 67-year-old Crimean political prisoner to ensure he dies in captivity (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 23^rd)

Russia abducts Crimean Tatar trying to see dying aunt and accuses her of ‘treason’ for donations to Ukrainian Army (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 22^nd)

Birthday of illegally imprisoned Andrii Kuliievych (Crimea Platform, April 22^nd)

Weekly Update on the Situation In Occupied Crimea (Crimea Platform, April 21^st)

Ukrainian ex-military man sentenced to 18 years in Russian-occupied Crimea on surreal ‘treason’ charges (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 21st)

Russia’s war for demographic control (Engelsberg Ideas, April 14^th)

News from Ukraine:

How Ukraine solved the hardest problem in defence (Exponential View, April 24^th)

Miners’ union new organisation near the front line (Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine, 8 April)

War-related news from Russia:

Required Reading: Russia’s new mandatory history textbook offers a glimpse of the present (The Insider, April 28^th)

Russian losses in the war updated (Mediazona, 24 April)

Toxic smoke and ‘oil’ pours from fire at Russian oil terminal (Meduza, 24 April)

Censorship is reshaping Russia’s publishing industry (The Insider, 24 April)

Putin restores Soviet secret police founder Dzerzhinsky’s name to FSB Academy (Ukrainska Pravda, April 22^nd)

The Verdict on Spring: The Vesna Case (Russian Reader, April 21^st)

Security forces raid Russia’s largest publisher and detain its CEO in ‘LGBT propaganda’ case (Novaya Gazeta, April 21^st)

Analysis and comment:

Russian ministry spokeswoman in lying attack on Latvian “Nazism” (The Insider, 25 April)

Zelensky claims danger: Might Belarus join Russia in the war? (iStories, 22 April)

Some facts: Ukraine, Russia, Palestine and Israel (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, 21 April)

Research of human rights abuses:

Growing up waiting for their fathers: photo exhibition on children of Crimean Tatar political prisoners opens in Berlin (Zmina, April 20^th)

How to prevent torture in places of detention: ZMINA held a specialised training (Zmina, April 21^st)

ZMINA joined the presentation of the Crimea Global outcomes and the discussion of plans for 2026 (Zmina, April 17^th)

Upcoming events:

Sunday 17 May: premiere of Try Me For Treason, the film. In-person premiere in London: 6.30pm, Upstairs room, the Lucas Arms, 245a Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8QY (arrive for drinks from 6.0pm). Youtube premiere at 8.0pm. Information at trymefortreason.org.

This bulletin is put together by labour movement activists in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. To receive it by email each Monday, email us at 2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com. To stop the bulletin, reply with the word “STOP” in the subject field. More information at https://ukraine-solidarity.org/. We are also on Twitter, Bluesky, Facebook and Substack, and the bulletin is stored online here.

Source: News from Ukraine Bulletin 193 (27 April 2026)

The Finnish Defence Forces will construct permanent combat positions in the Kymenlaakso region, which borders Russia.

The combat posts will be erected during May exercises of the Finnish Coast Guard, the Finnish Navy’s press office announced on Wednesday, 29 April.

“The fortifications built will remain in place after the exercises. Due to the construction work and the exercises, construction equipment will be present in and around the port of Klamila, checkpoints will be set up, and public access will be restricted,” the statement said.

The exercises will take place across a vast area of the Finnish coastline, including Kotka, Hamina, and Virolahhti.

The “vast” area in question can be traveled by car in 45 minutes. Snapshot of Google Maps by the Russian Reader

The exact locations of the combat positions have not been disclosed.

It is understood that they will be constructed from reinforced concrete modules, and some of the fortifications will consist of underground bunkers.

Finland has been building a fence along its border with Russia and plans to complete the bulk of the work by early autumn this year.

Estonia is fortifying its border with Russia with bunkers. The country’s Ministry of Defense has announced plans to construct 600 concrete structures by the end of 2027. They are modular structures that are buried underground.

In April, the Estonians began digging a twenty-kilometer-long anti-tank trench in Setomaa Parish, which borders the Pskov Region’s Pechora District.

Source: “Finnish Army setting up combat positions near border with Russia,” Delovoi Peterburg, 29 April 2026. Translated by the Russian Reader

Guerillas Gone Mental: Why the Russian Secret Services Forced Kristina Snopp and Her Husband to Leave Russia

Refusing to Cooperate with the FSB and Pictures of Putin: The Story of a Couple Seeking Political Asylum in Georgia
Sofia Rusova
OVD Info
August 22, 2018

Kristina Snopp and her husband, Denis. Photo courtesy of Ms. Snopp and OVD Info

A young married couple from Krasnodar Territory have applied for political asylum in Georgia. So far, they have had two interviews with the immigration service. The couple are certain that if they weresent back to Russia they would face criminal charges and prison sentences. Sofia Rusova discovered how a reporter at a municipal newspaper and her bike mechanic husband attracted the notice of local FSB agents and the police.

Refusing to Cooperate with the FSB
“I am Kristina Snopp, and I am afraid to return to Russia.”

This was how the 32-year-old reporter from Tuapse prefaced her asylum request to the Georgian authorities. Snopp and her husband, Denis Snopp, are currently living in a refugee center in Georgia. Snopp made the decision to leave Russia after she learned her posts on the social media network VK had been examined for “extremism” and “insulting religious believers.”

Snopp never wanted to be involved in politics. She was never a member of a political party, permitting herself to have opinions only on a few issues like religion, the environment, and Russia’s foreign policy. If she did attend protest rallies, they mainly had to do with ecological issues. Like many residents of Tuapse she protested construction of a bulk shipping terminal by the company EuroChem in 2011.

Back in 2014, Snopp received a call on her mobile phone from an FSB officer who introduced himself as Denis. He wanted to talk with her.

“For around two hours, he grilled me about the people with whom I interacted. Moreover, he asked personal questions about my beliefs, what organizations I was involved with, and why,” Snopp recounts.

“I’m a very inquisitive person. I’m really interested in world religions and, at the time, I was hanging out with people from different confessions, with the Hindus (yogis), Muslims, Protestants, and pagans in our area. FSB agent Denis was really interested in information about people who practiced religions other than Russian Orthodoxy. He suggested I cooperate with the FSB in combating ‘cults.’ I turned him down. Denis copied down my details and said we should stay in touch, and I should contact him if I found out something new. He told me people in Russia should be religious believers, moreover they had better be Russian Orthodox Christians, since it was the ‘state religion and the most correct religion,’ as he put it. Denis also asked me questions about my political views. I replied I was basically uninterested in politics.”

As the saying goes, if you are not interested in politics, politics is interested in you. Roughly a month after the first informal meeting, the FSB agent came to the offices of the newspaper Chernomorye segodnya [Black Sea Today], where Snopp worked, and tried to make contact with her coworkers.

Chernomorye segodnya
In 2012, Snopp officially began working at Chernomorye segodnya, the local newspaper. After Russia’s conflict with Ukraine, the editorial policies of national media outlets changed radically. This change also affected the tiny newspaper in Tuapse. When she publicly criticized Putin’s foreign policies on social networks, local internet forums, and in discussions with friends, Snopp attracted the close scrutiny of her editors and once again came to the attention of Tuapse’s intelligence services.

“I was concerned about it, since I believed Russia’s actions were mean and unfair to Ukraine. Moreover, I had friends in Ukraine, who wrote to me on social networks about the real state of affairs there, about the presence of Russian troops in Crimea and Donbass, and the lawlessness they were perpetrating even as President Putin denied it was happening. I published posts on my page on VK in which Putin was compared with Hitler,” Snopp says.

Her editors at Chernomorye segodnya knew about Snopp’s stance on Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. When she labeled it annexation outright, her editor, Alexei Chamchev, said, “Then, what are you doing here? Leave the country.”

According to Snopp, her job became more and more emotionally complicated. The newspaper published numerous commissioned articles meant to defame specific people, as well as articles that openly encouraged hatred of Ukrainians and praised Russian politicians. Snopp would refuse to work on these articles. She mainly wrote about daily news, and cultural and religious events.

Devastated Tuapse
In 2015, under a pseudonym, Snopp published articles about environmental conditions in Tuapse on the website Proza.ru and VK. She wrote about environmentally harmful industrial facilities, the increase in incidences of cancer and high levels of unemployment in the city, and how city hall hushed up the problems.

“At press conferences, I would post straight, tough questions to regional ecologists who argued that all the indicators were well within the norms. My boss knew about it, of course. When I arrived in Tuapse as a student in 2001, the city was still beautiful and thriving. Lots of tourists visited the city. Gradually, the industrial estates expanded so much they literally consumed all the beauty of those places. The ugly oil tanks, the industrial buildings, the fumes, steam, and chemical dust produced by the factories, and the oil waste pouring into the river and the sea have disfigured and poisoned my beloved city. There is a lot to say about the harm caused to the locals,” says Snopp.

Dismissal from the Newspaper
There were no actual reasons to fire Snopp from her job at the newspaper, but immediately after the 2016 New Year’s holiday, she was urged to quit her job on her own, as it were.

The photograph that supposedly led to Kristina Snopp’s dismissal from her job. Courtesy of Ms. Snopp and OVD Info

The ostensible cause for her dismissal was a playful, artsy photo shoot in which Snopp and her husband, dressed in black leather, portrayed Satanist metalheads, an inverted pentagram hanging in the background.

“The editor told me privately the real reason I was fired was something else. People in city hall had long been advising him to get rid of such a politically unreliable reporter,” says Snopp.

Krasnodar
After her dismissal from the newspaper in Tuapse, Snopp and her husband moved to Krasnodar. Snopp thought she would have no trouble finding work in the big city. At first, she looked for jobs in journalism. She had dozens of interviews and completed various assignments, but she was constantly turned down.

Snopp decided to write for her own pleasure while earning money another way. She got a job as a shop clerk at a tobacco chain store. Soon, however, the proprietor got a phone call from an anonymous caller who informed him Snopp was a member of an “extremist” organization. She was fired.

In February 2018, police officers telephoned Snopp’s relatives and her husband’s relatives, demanding they provide them with the couple’s exact address.

“On February 14, police showed up at Denis’s workplace. They wanted to see me as well. Denis called, and I went there. We were not given an official written summons. Nothing was explained to us. We were told we would have to go to the Interior Ministry’s main office for Krasnodar Territory. Police Captain Denis Polyantsev assured us both it was no big deal. He just needed information from us. However, Polyantsev joked I could have been as famous as Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, meaning my amateur punk rock group Guerillas Gone Mental, which I founded in 2012. According to Polyantsev, it was the group that had provoked suspicions of ‘extremism,'” says Snopp.

A photo of Kristina Snopp’s punk rock group Guerillas Gone Mental. Courtesy of the band’s VK page

The couple were delivered to the Center for Extremism Prevention (Center “E”), whose officers asked about posts Snopp had published three years earlier on a social media page that had been deleted. Among the posts was a demotivator in which Putin was compared with Hitler, and parallels were drawn between Nazi Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938 and Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Questions were also asked about post critical of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), for example, a demotivator in which an ROC priest blesses a missile dubbed Satan.

“I regarded these posts and cartoons more as political satire, the reaction of a concerned citizen to events in Russia. I had no intention of insulting anyone. Nevertheless, the Interior Ministry’s forensic examiners decided that by posting the cartoons I had incited hatred toward the president, Russian patriots, and Russian Orthodox Christians. I was shown a thick folder containing screenshots of my posts from various years and forensic findings I was not allowed to read,” says Snopp.

A photo of Kristina Snopp holding what looks to be a skull. According to a police forensic examination, the skull was real. Photo courtesy of Ms. Snopp and OVD Info

A photograph of Snopp holding a skull, taken in a cemetery during an amateur goth style photo shoot she published on her VK page, also caused suspicion among police officers. Polyantsev told Snopp forensic experts who examined the photos determined it was a real human skull. However, the online album containing the photos was captioned, and the captions clearly explained the skull was a fake. To be more precise, it was a piggy bank, purchased for 500 rubles at a souvenir stand in the railway station market in Tuapse.

Snopp says Polyantsev constantly put pressure on the couple during their questioning. He cited facts from her life and the lives of her relatives, suggesting he knew everything about them.

“Alas, my husband and I were so out of it that we went to the meeting without lawyers. We didn’t think about it from a legal viewpoint. We did not ask for copies of the summons, the forensic examinations or our own testimony. Basically, we had no written proof of what happened to us. However, the Russian police operate this way quite often, aware most people are illiterate when it comes to the law and lose their cool in these circumstances. Besides, we did not have the money to pay the fee the lawyer initially requested,” recounts Snopp.

Almost a month later, Polyantsev telephoned Snopp again. He informed her that the case file, containing her posts on VK, had been sent to Tuapse. She would need to go meet a police investigator on March 20, 2018, a meeting at which she would be given an official summons. Snopp realized if she signed for receipt of the summons, she would also be made to sign a form releasing her on her own recognizance and would probably be charged with several crimes, including “extremism.”

Snopp left Russia on March 18, the day of the last presidential election. Soon afterwards, her husband, who had stayed on in Krasnodar to work, got a call from Polyantsev, who told him that if he did not tell investigators where his wife was, he would be accused of harboring a criminal. Several days later, Denis Snopp left Russia as well.

When they arrived in Georgia, Kristina and Denis Snopp applied for political asylum. They have had their second interview with immigration officials.

Translated by the Russian Reader