Dark Matter contained a re-recorded version of his Emmy award-winning song ‘It’s a Jungle Out There’, which was used as the theme song for the television series Monk. The album tells countless humorous tales. However, one of its most memorable cuts is the track ‘Putin’, which sees Newman sarcastically attack the Russian president.
The song pokes fun at Putin’s efforts to appear macho, with Newman singing, “And when he takes his shirt off/ He drives the ladies crazy/ When he takes his shirt off/ Makes me wanna be a lady.” A chorus of ‘Putin Girls’ chime in to sing, “Putin if you put it/ Will you put it next to me?”
To accompany the scathing lyrics, Newman uses chaotic instrumentation that sounds like the perfect theme for a cartoon villain. The musician explained that he wrote the song when “all those pictures were appearing of him with his shirt off, and I couldn’t understand why. What did he want?”
He continued: “I think it was just personal vanity of some kind, like he wanted to be Tom Cruise. It wasn’t enough to be the richest and most powerful. He wanted to be the most handsome and a superhero, throwing young people around and wrestling.”
Newman claims that he originally wrote a much harsher version but had to tone down the insults. In 2018, the song won the singer his seventh Grammy, this time for the relatively obscure category of Best Arrangement, Instrumentals and Vocals.
Source: Aimee Ferrier, “Remembering Randy Newman’s satirical warning about Vladimir Putin,” Far Out, 14 October 2022
“RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA HAS MADE ITS WAY into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” That acknowledgement from Michael McCaul, Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was echoed a few days later by Michael Turner, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. “It is absolutely true, we see, directly coming from Russia, attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.” Among the falsehoods that GOP members of Congress are repeating is the notion that the Ukraine war is actually a battle between NATO and Russia. “Of course it is not,” Turner told CNN. “To the extent that this propaganda takes hold, it makes it more difficult for us to really see this as an authoritarian versus democracy battle.”
What makes it even more difficult to see reality plainly is the presence in the GOP of dunderheads like Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who gushed to an Alabama radio show that “Putin is on top of his game,” while scorning U.S. media accounts of Russian behavior. “The propaganda media machine over here, they sell anything they possibly can to go after Russia.” Tuberville may be the dimmest Putin booster on the Hill, but he is hardly lonely.
It has been two months since the Senate passed, in a 70–29 vote (including 22 Republican yes votes), a $95 billion foreign aid bill that included $60 billion for Ukraine. The Republican-controlled House, by contrast, has been paralyzed. Stories leak out that Speaker Mike Johnson, apparently influenced by high-level briefings he’s received since capturing the gavel, has changed his posture and wants to approve the aid. But Johnson leads, or is at least is the titular congressional chief, of a party that contains a passionate “Putinwing,” and so he dithers. This week, Volodomyr Zelensky has warned that Ukraine will lose the war if the aid is not approved. Yet Johnson is heading not to Kyiv but to Mar-a-Lago.
Pause on that for a moment. The Republican party is now poised to let a brave, democratic ally be defeated by the power that the last GOP presidential nominee save one called “without question, our number one greatest geopolitical foe.” One member of Congress has sworn to introduce a resolution to vacate the speaker’s chair if Johnson puts aid for Ukraine on the floor. And the entertainment wing of conservatism—most egregiously Tucker Carlson—has gone into full truckling mode toward the ex-KGB colonel in the Kremlin.
It’s worth exploring how the Republican party, the party of “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” became the party that now credulously traffics in blatant Russian disinformation while it flirts with betraying an important ally—along with all of its principles.
To some degree, people’s foreign policy inclinations are reflections of their domestic views. During the later years of the Cold War, large numbers of liberals and Democrats were more sympathetic to leftist regimes like Cuba (see Bernie Sanders) and Nicaragua (see Michael Harrington) than were conservatives and Republicans. I wrote a book about liberal softness toward left-wing authoritarianism and, though I haven’t yet read it, I gather that Jacob Heilbrunn’s new book does some similar spelunking about conservatives’ tolerance for right-wing dictators. Certainly some conservatives were more inclined than any liberal to go easy on South Africa because it was perceived to be a Cold War ally. On the other hand, Republican administrations did push allies to clean up their act on corruption, democratic elections, and other matters where they could (as for example in El Salvador).
Trump’s particular preferences and ego needs play a starring role in the GOP’s devolution. Cast your minds back to 2016 and the revelation that the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee. To rebut this damaging development, Fox News conjurers got busy inventing a tale about CrowdStrike, the company that documented the hack, alleging that the servers had been mysteriously moved to Ukraine so that the FBI could not examine them. In his infamous phone call with Zelensky, Trump fished out this debunked nugget and asked Ukraine’s president, who was then already fighting Russia in the Donbas, to do him a favor before he released the weapons Congress had approved:
I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike. . . . I guess you have one of your wealthy people. . . . The server, they say, Ukraine has it. I would like to have the attorney general call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.
This was bonkers. As the Mueller report made clear, the FBI did get all the data regarding the DNC hack. There was never a shred of evidence that the servers were moved to Ukraine, and in any case physical control of the servers was unnecessary. But what was Zelensky supposed to say? He promised to look into it just as a courtier to a mad king will say, “Yes, your majesty, we will look into why your slippers are turning into marshmallows when the sun goes down.”
As Fiona Hill told me, Tom Bossert, Trump’s first homeland security advisor, tried “a million times” to disabuse Trump of this Ukraine myth, as did CIA Director Gina Haspel, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs, and many others, to no avail. It was, Hill notes, “a too-convenient fiction.”
Because Trump regarded any implication that he had received assistance from Russia as impugning his victory, he latched onto the idea (perhaps whispered by Putin himself in one of their many private conversations) that, yes, there had indeed been foreign interference in the election, but it was Ukraine boosting Hillary Clinton, not Russia aiding Trump. Now, it’s true that Ukraine’s friends reached out to Clinton, but why wouldn’t they? Trump’s campaign manager was Paul Manafort, a paid agent of Viktor Yanukovych, the ousted pro-Putin Ukrainian leader.
Trump nurtured his misplaced grudge for years. Recall that when Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Trump’s initial response was that it was a “genius” move.
I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, “This is genius.” Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine—of Ukraine—Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. He used the word “independent” and “we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.” You gotta say that’s pretty savvy.
A non-sociopath would say it was raw aggression of the worst kind. A normal Republican of the pre-Trump mold would have been outraged at the attempted rape of a peaceful, democratic neighbor.
Most Republican officeholders are not sociopaths, but they take their marching orders from one and have adjusted their consciences accordingly. The talking point J.D. Vance and his ilk favor is that they cannot be concerned about Ukraine’s border when our southern border is also being invaded. Of course it’s absurd to compare immigrants looking for work or safety to tanks, bombs, and missiles, but that’s what passes for Republican reasoning these days. In any case, it was revealed to be hollow when Biden and the Democrats offered an extremely strict border bill to sweeten aid for Ukraine, and the GOP turned it down flat.
Russia’s fingerprints are all over the Republicans’ failed attempt to impeach (in all senses of the word) Joe Biden. Their star witness, Alexander Smirnov—who alleged that Hunter and Joe Biden had been paid $5 million in bribes by Burisma—was indicted in February for making false statements. High-ranking Russians appear to be his sources.
Whether the subject is Ukraine, Biden’s so-called corruption, or NATO, Putin seems to have pulled off the most successful foreign influence operation in American history. If Trump were being blackmailed by Putin it’s hard to imagine how he would behave any differently. And though it started with Trump, it has not ended there. Putin now wields more power over the GOP than anyone other than Trump. GOP propagandists indulge fictions that even many Russians can see through: Ukraine is governed by Nazis; Russia is a religious, Christian nation; Russia is fighting “wokeness.”
Republicans are not so much isolationist as pro-authoritarian. They’ve made Hungary’s Viktor Orbán a pinup and they mouth Russian disinformation without shame. Putin must be pinching himself.
Putin recommends reviving ‘Come On, Girls!’ contest, following Uralvagonzavod’s example
Following his visit to the Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk regions, President Vladimir Putin instructed regional heads to explore the initiative.
This isn’t the winner of the Come On, Girls! contest in Nizhny Tagil, but a stock image that Rabota.ru figured was good enough.
The list of the head of state’s mandates includes holding corporate Come On, Girls! contests, as is already being done at Uralvagonzavod in Nizhny Tagil, where Putin met with the event’s winner.
Top officials have until November to submit a report detailing how they have implemented the mandate.
Come On, Girls! was a televised Soviet competition that aired from 1970 to 1987. Members of particular professions competed both for the title of best specialist and in creative contests.
During the same visit to Uralvagonzavod, it was suggested to Putin that excursions by schoolchildren to industrial enterprises be made mandatory. For the time being, authorities are drafting labor education lessons for pupils modeled on the Soviet system.
The trailer to A Shaman’s Tale (Beata Bashkirova & Mikhail Bashkirov, 2024). Thanks to Pavel Sulyandziga for the heads-up
A Shaman’s Tale
A modern-day shaman sets out across Siberia to Moscow on a protest march and is gradually joined by others. How will the Russian authorities react?
Alexander Gabyshev, a shaman from Yakutia in the Russian Far East, has a revelation: God has chosen him to be a crusader, whose role is to exorcise a demon – Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin – from the Kremlin. He’s willing to sacrifice his life to fulfil this task, which will lead to a new and bright future for Russia. Alexander’s walking pilgrimage captures the attention of many people as well as the police. He discusses his ambitious plan with passers-by in remote parts of Siberia and with lorry drivers travelling on the endless roads. His 8,000 km journey offers a mosaic of current pro- and anti-Putin opinions, and highlights the social instability in both the eastern and the western parts of Russia.
Five years ago, in the spring of 2019, Alexander Gabyshev, who calls himself a warrior shaman, set out on foot from Yakutsk to Moscow. When he arrived in the Russian capital, he wanted to perform a ritual to exorcise Vladimir Putin from the Kremlin. Along the way he was joined by kindred spirits, and he held numerous protest rallies.
The shaman’s trek was cut short: Gabyshev was detained on the border of Buryatia and the Irkutsk Region and charged with “calling for extremism.” In October 2021, a court ordered him to undergo compulsory treatment at a special psychiatric hospital.
The Memorial Human Rights Centre placed Gabyshev on its list of political prisoners, and Amnesty International recognized him as a prisoner of conscience. Despite an international campaign in his defense, the shaman remains in a psychiatric hospital.
The documentary film A Shaman’s Tale details Alexander Gabyshev’s plight. It was made by documentary filmmaker Beata Bashkirova (née Bubenets) and her husband, playwright Mikhail Bashkirov, who live in France. Bashkirova joined Alexander Gabyshev on his trek, while Mikhail Bashkirov wrote a play about the shaman. Performances of the play at Moscow’s Theatre.doc were disrupted by Putinists. This was not Bashkirova’s first clash with ultra-patriots: in 2017, screenings of her documentary film Flight of the Bullet, about the soldiers of the Ukrainian Aidar Battalion, fighting in Donbas, were disrupted in the same way.
This conversation with Beata Bashkirova for the Radio Svoboda programme “Cultural Diary” was recorded after the film’s premiere at the One World International Film Festival in Prague.
Beata, how did you meet the shaman Gabyshev?
I first heard about the shaman in March 2019, when he had just set off on his journey. At that time he was not yet known throughout Russia, but he was beginning to gain popularity in Yakutia and in the Amur Region. He initially gained popularity thanks to truckers: they shot videos [of him] and posted them on their own network, then on YouTube. When I went to Yakutia in the spring to look for an idea for a film, my friends sent me videos of the shaman, recommending him as my future protagonist. But I decided to film him only in June. That was when Vlad Ketkovich, an independent documentary film producer, contacted me. He had made many political films and not only offered to be my producer, but also contributed his own money to my project. We dreamed of making a road movie about the shaman, of filming for two years on the roads of Russia. It was a beautiful idea, which unfortunately didn’t come to pass, because it ended up being film about the political crackdown. In recent years, nearly all films from Russia are about that.
Did you become friends with the shaman?
Yes, we developed a very good relationship. When we were filming in Yakutsk, we were probably among the people closest to him.
He didn’t mind you filming?
He welcomed us filming: he wanted more people and different people to talk about him, to spread his ideas. He was accompanied by a lot of bloggers, and journalists were heavily filming him. Although in the beginning he didn’t let us in so easily. The distrust was not on his part, but on the part of his entourage. They were wary of us, but later everything was fine.
Gabyshev and his squad marching toward Moscow
The shaman is certainly a charming man. But you can’t say that about some of the people in his entourage, judging by your film. Colourful personalities, I guess, always attract strange people, to put it mildly.
Yes, he had a very motley entourage, and he realised it himself. He gave everyone who joined him fabulous nicknames. He called his first two companions Raven and Angel. One was a good, happy man of the new world (the shaman divided the world into the new world and the old world), while other was a man of the old world, a dark character; he had been in prison before, he was this maverick. Raven had many conflicts with other members of the squad. The shaman told me often that yes, there are very different people walking with me, but this is Russia, you have to accept them as they are. Yes, they are different, everyone has their own peculiarities, not all of them are the nicest people in the world, but at the same time they are not the most terrible evil, which they all oppose.
In the film, Gabyshev tries to explain to a Japanese journalist how he became a shaman. Why did he decide to go to Moscow and exorcise the demon Putin?
The poster for the film “A Shaman’s Tale”
He studied at university and served in the army: he had an ordinary life. Then he got married, but his wife was quite ill and died, and that was a huge blow to him. For some time he went to live in the woods: he lived there for several years. Naturally, he knew who Putin was, but he was not interested in politics. As he says, at some point he heard the voice of God telling him that Putin was a demon and you should go and exorcise him from the Kremlin. It was a very clear thought, a realisation that this was his mission. It didn’t come to him in 2019, when he set out, but much earlier. He started preparing years before his trek, but he prepared in secret; he didn’t tell anyone that he had this mission. He practised martial arts — not to fight, but for the spiritual benefits.
And for quite a long time he travelled unhindered, and the authorities didn’t immediately realise what was happening?
Yes, in fact, not many people took it seriously at first: everyone thought it was a joke. But then people started joining him. A few months later, when we were walking with him, there were thirty people with him, and new people were joining every day. His squad grew quite quickly. Two theories as to why he was stopped. The first is that after a few months there would have been hundreds of people walking with him, and that would have been a political threat. But the second theory is that the authorities were afraid of his mystical power. The closer he got to Moscow, the worse things went for Putin, the more protests kicked off. The protests in Belarus began around the same time. Putin was allegedly having health problems — again this is a matter of rumor. So, perhaps, the shaman has now been exiled to the farthest point from Moscow, not even to Yakutsk, but even farther away. That is, as he got closer to Moscow, the Russian authorities lost their grip on things.
Yes, they say there is a lot of superstition in the Kremlin. And in your film, the lawyer Pryanishnikov also explains that the authorities were afraid of the shaman’s mystical power.
That the authorities are superstitious is, of course, a hypothesis — Putin doesn’t perform rituals for us, and there are a lot of myths around this. It is known that one of his closest associates, Shoigu, is a Tuvan and he practices shamanism. So it is quite possible. My Yakutian acquaintances often said that an acquaintance of their acquaintance performed rituals for Putin himself. But, of course, this is all very secret and impossible to prove. I would not claim that Putin performs shamanistic rituals.
Did you have the feeling that Gabyshev actually has supernatural powers?
The first time was in 2020. When the year 2020 came, the shaman kept saying: guys, new times have come, everything will be different now, this year the worldview of all people on the planet will change. And in 2020 there was a pandemic, and mankind did indeed transit into another reality. His words proved prophetic.
Filmmaker Beata Bashkirova
People who met Rasputin spoke of his incredible magnetism. They say the same thing about many prophets and magicians. Did you feel something similar when you conversed with Gabyshev?
He is very kind and very open, and there were people in his entourage who believed in his mystical power. I am a rather skeptical person in this sense, but still I noticed a good energy emanating from him.
Did people in his entourage regard him as a prophet, as a saint?
Yes, of course, there were people in his entourage who believed primarily in his mystical power. The Moscow crowd, the opposition-minded liberal intelligentsia, basically sympathised with him, but regarded him ironically. If we’re not talking about Moscow, but about the rest of Russia, I had impression that people believed in his mystical power.
When you presented the film in Prague, you compared Gabyshev with Navalny. This is a quite unusual comparison: in Moscow, few people would agree that these people are cut from the same cloth. Why do you think it is possible to put their names in the same sentence?
At the time, it had been forty days since Navalny’s death. Navalny in his last years seemed like a loner who was fighting the system. Our protagonist is also a loner who fights the system. In this way, I think, they are similar.
Were you present at the moment when his journey to Moscow was finally thwarted?
That was 19 September, and I was not with him on that day. Eyewitnesses say it happened at night, and very quickly. For the first few days nobody knew where he was; there were various rumours. Then it transpired that he was in Yakutsk. We met almost immediately, and he was in pretty good spirits despite what had happened.
Why did they decide to permanently isolate him?
He was going to set out again in the spring. Members of his squad had come to see him. I don’t know whether that’s why they decided to shut him down permanently.
Maybe it was the New York Times article, the attention from the West?
Maybe, but that was in September. The first time he was detained, in the spring of 2020, he was taken away from his home, but then he was released. They finally decided to close him down in early 2021.
The Shaman in the Theatre.doc production of A Shaman’s Tale
In the film, you show excerpts from a performance about the shaman at Theatre.doc. Did your husband direct this production based on his own play?
Yes, my husband wrote the play, and he and I staged it together. It was an experimental work. We decided to make a puppet show, a fairy tale, because the shaman conceived his own story as a fairy tale: he gave fairy tale names to all the folks who accompanied him, and he gave Putin a fairy tale name. That was the reason for our fairy-tale production, which did not last long, because on opening day pro-Kremlin provocateurs came and tried to disrupt it. Every time [the play was performed], they put obstacles in the way: they would come in a big group, stage a performance in front of the theatre, call the police, and start shouting from the auditorium during the performance. The owner of the premises where Theatre.doc was located became afraid that he would face consequences nd broke his lease with the theatre. It became apparent that we wouldn’t be able to perform the play.
Beata, when did you leave Russia?
We left in late March 2022.
And it was only in France that you decided to edit the film?
The film had been in post-production while we were still in Russia. The shaman predicted that he had to reach Putin in 2021, because otherwise there would be a catastrophe not only for Russia but for the whole world. Principal filming wrapped in early 2020, but we realised we had to wait. We were editing the film and discussing it with the producers. The producers suggested releasing the film in 2020, when it became clear that the shaman would not be allowed to go [to Moscow], but we understood that the story was not finished: the drama had already been defined by the shaman himself, and we would have to wait until 2022. The events that followed affected how I saw the story; I started to look at it differently, if we’re talking about the mystical aspects. The shaman had been right: he was talking about war. He was saying that there would be a physical war, not a spiritual war, if he wasn’t allowed to reach Moscow. It’s amazing that somehow he knew all the dates.
Did he have a premonition there would be a war in 2022?
He spoke about the fact that mankind, Russia had two ways to evolve. The first way was the good way, the happy way. If he were allowed to reach the Kremlin, Putin would simply resign peacefully, the regime in Russia would change, and then people would move to a new level. If they didn’t let him [reach the Kremlin], a dark path would ensue, the path of warriors, and that meant war. He didn’t say that there would be a war between Russia and Ukraine. He said that there would be a war and only by military means would it be possible to overthrow Putin.
He’s been transferred from one hospital to another several times. What is happening to him now?
He is in a psycho-neurological clinic in the Maritime Territory (Primorsky Krai). Since this system has several levels, the lawyer is trying to ensure he is transferred to Yakutsk, where he can be released through the court. A legal fight is now underway that is aimed at achieving his release step by step.
At first they held him in a high-security facility and tried to “treat” him with haloperidol?
At the very beginning, in Yakutsk, he was given harsh drugs that did have a negative effect on him. Things in the Maritime Territory are now easier: they give him medication, but it’s not so heavy.
You wrote that he knew about the film’s premiere in Prague and conveyed his greetings to the audience. Are you able to correspond with him?
Yes, we communicate through intermediaries; the lawyer Pryanishnikov has the most access to him. His friends talk to him on the telephone from time to time: he is able to call once a week.
What’s his condition? Haloperidol and other serious drugs can be very harmful to a person’s health.
Fortunately, they are not injecting him with these drugs now. He always tries to be in a cheerful mood. You can write him a letter or send him a card. He is very much encouraged by the thought that people remember him. He is, of course, happy that the film has come out because it is a continuation of the message he preached. His emotional state is also very much affected by whether his mission can be completed.
For several years he had many supporters who were will to march with him to Moscow. Did this circle disperse or has the core group remained intact?
We can say that the core has been preserved. For example, Viktor Yegorov (aka Father Frost), who makes videos (you can watch them on YouTube), is constantly in touch with him. Other Yakutian friends of his also continue to support him. There were those who walked with him, and those he met on the road, but there was also the rest of Russia, which did not walk with him, but followed him via YouTube. People still even ask me about him, and so I feel like there are a lot of people who remember him and support him.
“Father Frost from the Shaman’s Squad Appeals to Vladimir Putin,” 25 September 2019 (in Russian; no subtitles)
Did you ever suspect that he might be mentally unwell?
No, never. He’s a fairly well-educated man, he has a broad outlook, and he is quite self-deprecating. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I haven’t detected any mental abnormalities in him. I much more often encounter people on the streets who are crazier looking than he is.
It is quite difficult to make films on Russian topics nowadays: Russian directors are viewed with suspicion in Europe because they are seen as representatives of an aggressor state. Was it complicated for you to make this film?
Yes, it was indeed difficult to make the film because of the tendency towards boycotting. I think that this boycott helps Russian propaganda first of all, because the voices of independent, opposition filmmakers are not heard, but the voices of the propagandists, who cannot be influenced by this boycott, are heard. Consequently, propaganda wins out in the information sphere. The boycott of Russian culture works in favour of Russian propaganda, it seems to me.
Will Russian viewers be able to see your film?
We’re in the festivals stage of screening now. The film will later be shown on Current Time, but it’s hard to say when yet. Current Time broadcasts to a Russophone audience, and so one will be able to watch the film on the internet in Russia.
First broadcast in 1981, this Hidden Treasure play by Dennis Potter stars Denholm Elliott as Harris and Ian Ogilvy as James. It has not been heard for over 40 years.
In a dingy flat in Moscow, he sits alone — a traitor to his family, his friends, his colleagues. Then the international press descend upon him and he gives his first interview — an interview which brings forth terrible, haunting memories.
Adapted for radio and directed by Derek Hoddinott A BBC World Service Drama production
With thanks to Keith Wickham, Dr Steve Arnold, Ruby Churchill, Louisa Britton, Alison Hindell, Matthew Dodd, Claire Coss, Carl Davies, Helen Toland, Richard Culver, Andrew Jupp, James Peak, BBC Archives and the Radio Circle.
On Sunday, Representative Michael R. Turner (R-OH), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said it is “absolutely true” that Republican members of Congress are parroting Russian propaganda. “We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Turner was being questioned about an interview in which Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Russia specialist Julia Ioffe that “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” McCaul blamed right-wing media. When asked which Republicans he was talking about, McCaul answered that it is “obvious.”
Catherine Belton and Joseph Menn reviewed more than 100 internal Kremlin documents from 2022 and 2023 obtained by a European intelligence service and reported in the Washington Post today that the Russian government is running “an ongoing campaign that seeks to influence congressional and other political debates to stoke anti-Ukraine sentiment.” Kremlin-backed trolls write fake “news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions” while claiming that “Biden’s policies are leading the U.S. toward collapse.”
Aaron Blake pointed out in the Washington Post that Republicans are increasingly warning that Russian propaganda has fouled their party. Blake notes that Russia specialist Fiona Hill publicly told Republicans during the 2019 impeachment inquiry into Trump that they were repeating “politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests,” but Republicans angrily objected.
Now Senators Mitt Romney (R-UT), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and John Cornyn (R-TX) and a top aide to Senator Todd Young (R-IN), as well as former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and even Trump’s vice president Mike Pence, have warned about the party’s ties to Russia. Former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) has said the Republican Party now has “a Putin wing.”
Trump has hinted that he has a plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Yesterday, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Michael Birnbaum reported in the Washington Post on the details of that plan: he would accept Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the Donbas region. He refuses to say how he would negotiate with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, who has been adamant that Ukraine will not give up its territory to an invader, or Russia president Vladmir Putin, who has claimed all of Ukraine, but after meeting with Trump last month, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said Trump told him he would accomplish “peace” by cutting off funds to Ukraine.
Trump’s team said Orbán’s comment was false, but it is worth noting that this plan echoes the one acknowledged by Trump’s 2016 campaign director Paul Manafort as the goal of Russian aid to Trump’s campaign.
Fiona Hill told the Washington Post reporters that Trump’s team “is thinking…that this is just a Ukraine-Russia thing…rather than one about the whole future of European security and the world order.”
Trump’s MAGA loyalists in the House of Representatives have held up funding for Ukraine for six months. Although a national security supplemental bill that would fund Ukraine has passed the Senate and would pass the House if it were brought to the floor, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) refuses to bring it to the floor. The House returns to work tomorrow after a two-week recess but is so backed up on work that Johnson is not expected to bring up the Ukraine measure this week.
Clint Watts, the head of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, told the Washington Post’s Belton and Menn: “The impact of the Russian program over the last decade…is seen in the U.S. congressional debate over Ukraine aid…. They have had an impact in a strategic aggregate way.”
Each Wednesday we tell you what material has been the most interesting for one of the residents [sic] of the Delovoi Peterburg Experts Club, a reader, or one of our employees.
Today, Zurab Pliyev, first deputy director general of Northern Capital LLC, shared an article with us.
“Putin’s final result in the presidential election was 87.28%”
During the recent Russian presidential election, we were honored to be part of the team that ensured the smooth operation of 248 polling stations in St. Petersburg. Our company was responsible for their catering for all three days.
We catered hot meals for all polling station employees, election commission members, observers, and representatives of law enforcement agencies free of charge.
And we read this article in Delovoi Peterburg with a sense of pride that we had also made a contribution to the way those three days came off.
Article of the week:
Putin’s final result in the presidential election was 87.28%
Source: Delovoi Peterburg “Article of the Week” email newsletter, 27 March 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader
Vladimir Putin won the Russian presidential election with 87.28% of the vote. The final vote count was announced by the head of the Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova.
76,277,708 people voted for Putin.
After all the votes were tabulated, the candidate from the Communist Party Nikolai Kharitonov garnered 4.31%, the leader of the LDPR Leonid Slutsky received 3.2%, and the candidate from New People, Vladislav Davankov, got 3.85%, Pamfilova said.
Earlier, the CEC had announced a record-high turnout in the history of presidential elections in [post-Soviet] Russia.
The 2024 presidential election also was the first multi-day campaign in the history of [post-Soviet] Russia. It was possible to vote for the new [sic] head of state on March 15, 16 and 17.
The regions of the Northwestern Federal District were among the worst in terms of turnout in the Russian Federation. The lowest turnout for the presidential election was in the Komi Republic, at 58.52%. Karelia, where 60.08% voted in the election, was also among the five regions with the lowest turnout.
Northern Capital LLC’s cabbage pasties are only 75 rubles a pop. Photo courtesy of Delovoi Peterburg
The presidential election was held, a decisive event not only for the future of the country, but also for every Russian citizen. Over the course of three days, Russian citizens chose a worthy candidate for the post of the head of state, and, according to experts, the turnout at polling stations was the highest in the history of [post-Soviet] Russia.
The catering service Northern Capital LLC also compiled its own statistics for the three days of elections. The snack bars at the 248 polling stations were supplied with the most relevant and necessary items. Current and future voters enjoyed pancakes, pastries, pies, and drinks. For the Central District alone, Northern Capital produced 23,679 baked goods. Polling station workers, election commissioners, law enforcers, and election observers did not go hungry either. At the behest of Zurab Pliyev, first deputy director general of Northern Capital LLC, they were provided with free hot lunches and beverages.
“We consider it our duty to continue and support the tradition of snack bars at polling stations, which has passed from generation to generation. We want to maintain that special election atmosphere that makes the celebration a family affair. The snack bar is the second largest component of the process. That is why we made sure that there was a wide variety of high-quality and tasty food not only for voters, but also for those who directly implement the electoral process,” said Zurab Izrailovich Pliyev, first deputy director general of Northern Capital LLC.
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.
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.
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.
This security footage of apparent ballot stuffing at a polling station in Petersburg was released by the Petersburg [Elections] Observers movement on their Telegram channel on 20 March. The polling station was later identified as No. 5, housed in School No. 260 in the city’s Admiralty District. The women shown doing their patriotic duty to prolong Russia’s current fascist regime were identified by another source as school teachers.
Vladimir Putin was re-elected as Russian president. Officially it’s his fifth term in the Kremlin — although in practice it’s six if we include his stint pulling the strings as prime minister. The official results have Putin polling even higher than predicted, taking 87% of the vote. That figure looks utterly implausible and places Putin among the likes of Asian, Middle Eastern and Central Asian autocrats. The election itself went ahead against a tense background, with Ukrainian shelling and attempted incursions into Russia’s border regions along with on-going drone attacks on Russian oil refineries.
The official election result is already out — Vladimir Putin secured 87.28% on a turnout of 77.44%. Both those numbers are record highs since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And both are about 10 percentage points up on 2018 (when Putin polled 76.8% on a 67% turnout). This suggests that the Kremlin’s political managers were tasked with delivering a significant increase in Putin’s popularity. That in itself is not surprising: in the current circumstances an autocrat needs to demonstrate how his people have rallied around the flag.
Initial research by journalists and independent experts suggests the vote could have been the most heavily falsified in the history of post-Soviet Russia. Analysis by IStories and Ivan Shukshin, a researcher and activist with the Golos vote monitoring NGO, estimated that around 22 million of the 76.3 million votes cast for Putin were “anomalous.” In other words, almost a third of Putin’s official tally could have been false.
Their methodology is based on analyzing the turnout and vote shares at individual polling stations, using the central election commission’s official data. Districts with higher turnouts also have larger vote shares for Putin — a fact which suggests ballot-stuffing since the two shouldn’t be strongly correlated. IStories and Shukshin didn’t include results in Moscow, where online voting makes the analysis trickier. A third report by Novaya Gazeta Europe said as many as 31.6 million votes — almost half of Putin’s total — could have been fake.
Many experienced observers of Russian politics (1,2) believe that election organizers in provincial Russia “overdid it” this time round. Most pre-election leaks of the Kremlin’s vote strategy featured more modest targets. In spring 2023, for instance, RBC wrote that the Kremlin wanted to secure 75% of the vote on a 70% turnout. A few months later, Meduza wrote that regional authorities were advised that they should secure at least 80% of the vote for Putin. The final pre-election opinion polls conducted by state pollster VTsIOM (which also represent indirect instructions to regional election officials for polling day) showed Putin’s result was at the initial target level of 75%.
The record result places Putin firmly among his fellow autocrats. In free democratic elections, it’s a rare anomaly for a candidate to poll even at 60-70%. Only once, in extreme circumstances, have we seen more than 80% in a democratic country — a huge protest vote that gave France’s Jacques Chirac 82% in a presidential run-off against Jean-Marie le Pen in 2002, the BBC reported. In Russian history, Putin still has something to aim for if we look back to Soviet times. The turnout in 2024 was slightly higher than when Boris Yeltsin was voted president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1991, but there is still some way to go to match the Stalin era of 100% turnout in votes to appoint new deputies.
Since Putin was re-elected in 2018, voting in Russia has become even less transparent, and offered greater opportunities for fraud. Remote electronic voting was conducted in 29 Russian regions. Some 70% of the 4.7 million voters registered to vote online apparently cast their votes on the first of the three-day poll. Monitoring violations at physical polling stations is an almost impossible task. The Central Electoral Commission stopped broadcasting live footage from monitoring cameras in polling stations after the pictures from 2018 had depicted numerous violations and led observers to conclude that the scale of ballot stuffing was so great that the real result could not be determined in at least 11 regions.
The 2024 poll also differed from Putin’s two most recent victories in the selection of candidates who ran against the Kremlin leader. In 2012, political strategists allowed businessman Mikhail Prokhorov to stand, proposing that Russia’s marginal liberal opposition would consolidate around him. And in 2018, that same role went to TV presenter Ksenia Sobchak. But this time round there was no acceptable liberal candidate. Even the little-known politician Boris Nadezhdin, who timidly spoke out against the war in Ukraine, was denied registration. On the ballot were only Putin’s “rivals” from the systemic opposition parties. All of them have been equally supportive of Russia’s repressive turn, backing various crackdown measures that have come before the State Duma in recent years.
The extras in the 2024 race — Communist Nikolai Kharitonov, Vladislav Davankov of New People, and Leonid Slutsky of the LDPR — polled less than 12% combined. That’s slightly less than communist candidate Pavel Grudinin managed on his own in 2018. The 75-year-old Kharitonov’s 4.3% was better than the youthful Davankov’s 3.8%, while Slutsky, the unsuccessful heir to charismatic populist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, trailed in last with 3.2%.
Despite intimidation by the authorities, many Russians went to polling stations across the country and abroad at noon on 17 March as part of the Noon Against Putin protest, which was conceived as one of the few safe ways for Russians to voice their dissent. After all, it is hard to punish people for going to a polling station on election day and queueing.
The protest was the brainchild of Maxim Reznik, a former member of St. Petersburg’s legislative assembly, and it was endorsed by Alexei Navalny. After the opposition politician was murdered in a Russian penal colony, his supporters and other Kremlin opponents urged Russians to take part in Midday Against Putin.
This time round the last day of the election fell on the end of Shrovetide, and the powers that be tried to take advantage of it. For example, in Tomsk, they organized Shrovetide festivities at one of the polling stations to generate “hustle and bustle.” In Arkhangelsk, local restaurants were forced to cook pancakes for free distribution at the polling stations. Festivities were also organized, for example, in Moscow Region, Perm, Chuvashia, Murmansk Region, and Kamchatka.
Investigative journalist Andrei Zakharov quoted an anonymous agitator who, along with his colleagues, was tasked with “inviting people to a Shrovetide party in a park while also suggesting they take their [internal] passports with them in order to vote. It’s not far to the polling station.”
Those who decided to take part in the noonday protest were intimidated by fake mailings. As early as 13 March, some users in Russia received messages purporting to be from Navalny supporters postponing the Noon Against Putin protest to late Sunday. On Saturday, some Muscovites got messages accusing them of supporting “extremist ideas” and demands to vote “without waiting in line.”
There was also intimidation from actual law enforcers. The Moscow Prosecutor’s Office issued three warnings about the danger of the protest and possible criminal chargers against the protesters.
In spite of this, people in Russia and around the world came to the polling stations at noon on 17 March.
The huge queues abroad attracted a lot of media attention. Just look at the number of people at [Russia’s] diplomatic missions in Almaty and Bishkek. In European countries, people stood in line for many hours.
The long waits at polling stations abroad were sometimes caused by the deliberately slow work of the election commissions. For example, in Riga, voters were let in two at a time, although there were six voting booths and four polling station officials available. Voting was also delayed because many embassies and consulates banned cell phones, searched voters as they entered, and made them temporarily surrender their belongings.
In Russia, people were also searched in many polling places after dozens of incidents of attempted arson and spoiling ballot boxes with paint (the handiwork of phone scammers) took place. “First, two policemen search the bags [of voters] very thoroughly outside. I even had to show them my deodorant stick,” a reader of Dmitry Kolezev’s Telegram channel from Moscow wrote.
Due to the [long] queues in Riga, Vienna and Yerevan, for example, the polls were kept open for at least another hour [after they were to have been closed]. But in Berlin, the embassy was immediately closed, prompting the people gathered there to stage an impromptu protest. One of the staffers at the diplomatic mission danced a little jig as they shouted “Shame!”
The queues were de facto protest rallies. People lined up outside polling stations in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Arkhangelsk, and Sochi. Officials tried to persuade them to cast their votes on electronic terminals — it is easier to rig the vote that way — but people took paper ballots and either voted for someone other than Putin or defaced them by writing on them such things as “Love is stronger than hate,” or “You have the blood of Ukrainians on your hands, scumbag” (the latter remark was addressed to Vladimir Putin).
As it turned out, nobody interfered with the queues; the police were not violent and did not detain anyone. Most of the detentions that did occur were of independent observers and members of elections commissions who had tried to prevent violations. According to OVD Info, 17 March was “relatively calm.”
The election’s outcome surprised no one in a country where wartime censorship has virtually been introduced. Vladimir Putin took more than 87% of the vote according to the official count — a result almost like that of Central Asian dictators, and greater than that of [Belarusian dictator Alexander] Lukashenko.
The main outcome was that many Russians took advantage of the procedure as one of the few remaining opportunities to safely speak out against Putin and his policies. And they saw that they were not alone.
In a third video, another man detained by law enforcement agents identified himself as Rajab Alizadeh.
A man off camera asked him: “When you fled from Moscow, you had weapons. Where did you throw them? There or here?”
Alizadeh, whose face and shirt were covered in blood and whose head was wrapped in medical gauze, said “somewhere along the road,” but could not recall exactly where he and his accomplices left their weapons.
An unverified graphic video shared online showed what was said to be Alizadeh lying face down on the ground as Russian law enforcement agents cut off his ear, which, if confirmed, could explain why the man’s head was wrapped in bandages in the interrogation video.
In his state of the nation speech, President Vladimir Putin announced the launch of the national project “Time of Heroes” for veterans and current participants of the special operation by Russian troops in Ukraine.
Photo: Pixabay courtesy of Rabota.ru
Servicemen with university degrees, managerial experience, and no criminal records can apply to the personnel program. The head of state called such people the country’s “true elite” and argued that they should “lead regions, enterprises, and the largest public projects.”
The program will kick off on March 1. Veterans will be trained per the standards of the School of Governors and the Leaders of Russia competition, and ministers and heads of enterprises will act as their mentors.
Currently, all participants of the special military operation also enjoy priority hiring, and their employers also receive benefits.
Crimean Solidarity journalist and activists arrested, their families terrorized, in new Russian offensive against Crimean Tatars (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 6th)
Ominous denials a month after Crimean Tatar father abducted by Russian FSB (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 6th)
Reshat Ametov and 10 years of Russia’s systematic torture, abductions and killings of civilians for supporting Ukraine (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 4th)
Russia passes huge conveyor belt sentences against Ukrainians tortured for propaganda videos (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 4th)
All’s fair in art and war: Russia’s plunder of Ukrainian museums (The Insider, February 29th)
I never met Alexei Navalny, although we have (or had) a number of mutual friends, as you’d expect. And while his death was not a surprise — this regime had tried to kill him before, but he survived, literally miraculously — it was still a shock when news of it came yesterday morning.
You may have heard AN referred to as “Russia’s Nelson Mandela.” Commentators here have also been invoking Martin Luther King and several other Americans (on a list to which I would add RFK) in an effort to give U.S. listeners/readers a sense of how this loss may affect several generations of Russians.
What those comparisons cannot convey is how much the shock and loss register on a personal level. I am sure that millions of Russians today feel as though they’ve lost a family member — for some immediate, for others more distant — but in any case a relative, someone who was “one of ours” …and who they can’t quite believe is really gone, never to show up again at their homes, at a peace rally or in some live link on their laptops/phones/etc. And doubtless many Russianists abroad, like me, are experiencing a version of that same feeling: an almost palpable sense of personal loss.
Over recent years I have described AN more than once as the only person who, if the nation proved very lucky, might just be able to bring the place to its senses following the prolonged and self-inflicted disaster that has defined Russia in the first quarter-century of the new millennium. But here we are: the nation has not been very lucky (it seldom is), and all of us — Russians, Russianists and the rest of the world — can only mourn the passing of a genuine Russian праведник (PRA-ved-neek; a righteous man) and regret that the country has missed the slim yet credible “Navalny chance” that he represented.
I am discouraged about the near-term future — meaning the country’s prospects overall as well as my own chances of returning to Moscow and our little family there (both wife and grandson continue OK, thanks) as long as the current President for Life remains either above ground or unincarcerated. But I am also trying to stay focused on AN’s injunction, which figures near the end of last year’s Oscar-winning Navalny documentary and is now being cited widely in various media. It goes, in paraphrase, “If they do kill me, it will be a sign of weakness, not strength. So don’t despair — that’s not allowed! — and keep up the good fight.”
AN’s daughter Dasha is, as you may know, an undergrad at Stanford. Somehow this picture cheers me up a little today.
Source: Mark Teeter, email newsletter to family and friends, 17 February 2024. Thanks to Mark for his kind permission to reproduce it here. Mark is not only a proud alumnus of Stanford University, but he also played a role in welcoming me to Russia for the first time, in 1994. He describes my own feelings about Navalny’s death to a tee. ||| TRR
ALEXEI NAVALNY (1976-2024): Покойся с миром / R.I.P.
Our team is thrilled to present an incredible interview featuring Yana, a 28-year-old Ukrainian volunteer who has recently returned from Avdiivka. It’s a highly illustrative story showcasing how people, specifically young Ukrainian women, continue to support Ukrainian troops on the most dangerous frontlines. If you’re curious about what’s happening in Avdiivka and wish to hear a firsthand account from a location typically closed off to journalists and the general public, look no further. We found her answers insightful, so don’t miss out!
FI (Frontelligence Insight): Hello! Could you please provide a brief introduction and tell us more about yourself?
Y (Yana): My name is Yana, and I am 28 years old. Before the full-scale invasion, I worked in the construction industry as a manager of construction projects. I dedicated a lot of time to learning English and took additional courses in ArchiCAD and LIRA-SAPR. A significant part of my free time and, in general, my life, was devoted to studying and improving my knowledge in the field of design. However, after February 24, everything changed. All construction projects that were planned for 2022-23 were canceled and frozen. Currently, I am busy in the field related to my economics education.
FI: How and when did the war start for you?
Y: The war began for me in 2014. It was a very challenging period during which I experienced depression. I constantly felt unwell both physically and morally. Of course, this affected the learning process, at times impacting my performance, interaction, and communication with people. I worked with a psychologist. It was a huge blow for me to realize that, 1000 km away from where I was living, studying, and currently residing, the most terrible thing was happening – war. It was surreal for me that while I was performing mundane actions, someone was dying, someone was getting injured, homes were destroyed. It was shocking to see that despite these events, people could calmly attend classes, go to work, cafes, and clubs.
A part of what I loved was forever lost in 2014. It tore me apart to think that while I was attending an accounting class, there were ongoing military actions in the Donbas region. It was also challenging because many people said, “They themselves called for the Russian world,” “They wanted Putin,” “It’s because of them that there’s a war.” These were people who never knew the history of Eastern Ukraine and never understood it.
FI: When and why did you decide to become a volunteer?(In Ukraine, the term “volunteer” refers to individuals engaged in providing military and humanitarian aid to both military personnel and civilians. These volunteers contribute by fundraising, purchasing, and delivering essential goods to military units and civilians on the frontlines.)
Y: It seems that, like many others, it all started for me with weaving camouflage nets. Yes, there were requests for them, and we were told how important it was and how it helps our defenders. It was enough for me as a second-year student at that time. But, as I shared earlier, I found these events deeply painful, and I wanted to do more. I spent my entire scholarship on supporting the Armed Forces of Ukraine (ZSU). It wasn’t about large-scale fundraising; I didn’t inquire about who was buying what and why. We had local volunteers and civic organizations in Chernivtsi (which are still active), and I financially supported them. It was important to me. At that time, intense battles were taking place in Donetsk Airport (DAP), Debaltseve, Ilovaisk, and so on. It was heart-wrenching, and I felt the need to be somehow involved in providing assistance.
Later, my mother and I started preparing homemade treats, and I delivered them to the military hospitals in our city. Every Tuesday, I would enter a random ward to visit the soldiers. There was a period when I consistently donated and supported the army without hesitation. Again, my mother always assisted me—whether it was making Easter bread for the soldiers or baking Christmas cookies to send to the front lines.
When the full-scale invasion began, on February 25th, my father and I filled our car with essential items and headed to the Territorial Defense headquarters in our city. We collected items for units that were being prepared and sent to the East. We were also helping civilians – by evacuating people from Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Kyiv oblast, and evacuating animals, transferring them to Europe. Only when I completed my second higher education in May 2022 did we start going on humanitarian missions directly to the frontlines.
FI: What is the essence of volunteering and who are volunteers?
Y: The essence of volunteering is perhaps in selfless work, in ongoing activities aimed not at gaining profit or any other additional benefits. Volunteering is, above all, the opportunity to influence environment, to initiate one’s own projects, and to change the country. When people become volunteers, they not only get a chance to express themselves, get new knowledge and skills, but also strive to make the lives of others better.
I believe that each person who calls themselves a “volunteer” has their own motives that prompted them to engage in this activity. For me, it is primarily patriotism and the fact that my country is at war. Parts of our land are immersed in pain, suffering, and blood. And then, it is about fulfilling the needs of the less fortunate, gaining new experience in working with people, organizing, and conducting various social projects.
Currently, the activities of the majority of volunteers and volunteer organizations in Ukraine are focused on helping the military, supporting refugees, and assisting people affected by the war. Because this is our own, our homeland, and I simply cannot comprehend or accept how one can be indifferent to this movement in such challenging times.
FI: You’ve been to many cities and villages that were destroyed by Russian forces. What impressed you the most during your volunteer trips?
Y: Oh, here one could talk for days and nights because for almost 2 years of trips to the front and near-front cities and villages, there were many different situations and moments when I could cry and scream from pain and despair, when we laughed, probably hysterical laughter, when we said goodbye to life dozens of times and rejoiced because an important evacuation had succeeded, and when we scolded ourselves for arriving late.
I approach each of our trips calmly. For me, it’s like going to work, with one important nuance. I perceive it as work because I go to various locations to work with civilians and the military, to help them.
This time, I’ll share just one incident from our recent trip. We were working specifically along the Mariinka direction, and we entered the village of Maksymilianivka, just 5 km from Mariinka, or more precisely, the stones and ruins left of it. Before the war, 3000 people lived there; now, there are probably around 100. Maybe more, maybe less – it’s hard to count accurately because it’s constantly under shelling, and people hide in their homes, rarely coming out. In Maksymilianivka, they don’t allow entry without an escort; everyone is checked at the checkpoint. And it was the last day of our trip: we traveled to Avdiivka and its surroundings, Bakhmut direction, Vuhledar direction – everywhere destruction, grief, no communication, and here we enter a house in Maksymilianivka, and there’s light. It so impressed me, and I said to my colleague, “Wow, there’s light here, it’s a real miracle!” In the midst of terrible devastation in the village, constant shelling, lack of communication, and internet just 5 km from the front line, we saw light in a house. The thing is, electricians stay there, and despite the constant threat of artillery, MLRS shelling, and Orlan drones, these people work until the last moment and provide light to the people who stay in the village. Our people will probably never cease to amaze me.
FI: Let’s talk about the painful – Avdiivka. Tell me about your personal impressions from the recent visits.
Y: Avdiivka is my personal pain and a wound that has probably been with me all my life. Working and helping in Avdiivka – I mean both the military and civilians – is like living another life. Perhaps, after the war, I will write a book about it because so much has been experienced there. A lot of things that I cannot always talk about, and things that need to be told and shown to those who come after us, so that these things and stories are not forgotten.
I remember Avdiivka differently, in every season, and, of course, it hurts every time… as if for the first time when, instead of a city, I see piles of rubble and construction debris, and on the way to the city, instead of the outlines of a giant industry, I see clouds of black-black smoke from the next shelling…
I’m not saying it for the last time because I know that we will still work in the Avdiivka direction – and the last time I was there on my birthday.
On November 18, we woke up at 4 in the morning to load humanitarian aid for civilians and equipment for the military, so that by 6:00, a maximum at 6:30 AM, we would already be in the city. Avdiivka now is 22 km of a constantly shelled road. There are sections where enemy UAVs are actively working, so, as we say, we need to “skip” quickly. We entered without headlights, quickly, with open windows in the car to hear enemy UAVs.
The landscape in Avdiivka changes every night. Dozens of air strikes per day turn the city into complete ruins. There are fewer and fewer places for shelter, constant “KABs” (Guided Aerial Bombs), the scariest thing imaginable, when a building collapses like a house of cards before your eyes – I’ve seen that only in apocalyptic movies.
If you work with civilians: humanitarian aid and evacuation – everything needs to be done in the morning and very quickly. After the morning, the Russians fly with Orlans (recon UAV); they observe, and determine where there are groups of people (3 or more), from which building smoke is coming from a home stove, and KABs target it. Just damned scum waging war on absolutely unarmed and defenseless people.
It’s very hard for me when through the window of a burned, black building with broken windows, I see remnants of life – a small intact chandelier that will never shine again, winter clothes on the shelves that no one will ever wear, and neatly arranged books.
But every damn time we enter this city, and at the entrance, Ukrainian flags greet us, it adds strength and motivation to move forward. I want everyone, both here and around the world, to realize the price we pay to see these blue-yellow flags in Avdiivka, and what irreparable losses we suffer. When I see our tired, exhausted soldiers who clearly say, “It’s hard, but we’re fighting,” I understand that we have no right to get tired and stop. I’m ready to sacrifice my health, but I will be sure that I did everything to protect and help the bravest people in our country and our city, Avdiivka.
FI: In your opinion, why is Avdiivka so important for the Russians?
Y: Avdiivka, like a bone in the throat of our enemies, has remained an impregnable fortress. Unfortunately, this fortress is now forced to defend itself. As they say now, “capturing Avdiivka is purely a political goal” for these damn Russians and Putin in particular. They need victories. But a victory over what? Over peaceful people who have been deprived of their homes or because they destroyed the entire city?!
Avdiivka is the gateway to Donetsk. From there, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have the opportunity to control the presence of the enemy in the oblast center, even by preventing them from moving certain vehicles and ammunition around the city. So, of course, they want to push the front line away from Donetsk. Another point, Avdiivka is probably the only defensive area that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have not lost from 2014 to 2022. That is, during the time when there were large and difficult battles for Soledar, Bakhmut, Lysychansk, Severodonetsk, etc., their advances in Avdiivka were insignificant. Only the surrounding settlements from Avdiivka were lost to the Russians, and that was very long and very difficult for them. And another logistical component. I believe and will always believe that Avdiivka is a symbol of resistance. Probably even the Russians understand this, and that’s why they are pushing so hard in this direction. You have to look at the map and understand that Avdiivka is precisely that outpost that, from 2015 to the present, has practically not moved forward or backward. It’s a strong defensive zone that has been fortified.
FI: Do you agree with the opinion that when the Russians cannot quickly surround a city, they systematically destroy it?
Y: Yes, I often think about it… Bakhmut, Popasna, Rubizhne, Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Svatove, Kremenna, Mariinka, Vuhledar, Mariupol, Avdiivka, Krasnohorivka, Siversk, Soledar, and so on… and these are just the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk that Russia has destroyed, erased below the foundations. Once peaceful, flourishing, industrial or not, these cities may never be rebuilt. And how many villages? It’s impossible to count. Millions of destroyed homes and millions of shattered human lives.
And when they write in their damn publics about the “liberation” of Donbas, I am disgusted with this phrase. Because it is total destruction. In some points of Avdiivka, the destruction is so catastrophic, but it is still being bombed, that I can no longer remember what this city looked like before. Avdiivka is a city where no building is suitable for even a major reconstruction. Also, a key location in Avdiivka was the AKHZ – once the largest coke-chemical plant in Europe, and a city formed around it. If the plant cannot be restored, there will be no more Avdiivka. All the industry of Avdiivka is destroyed, ruined, and brought to a state where it simply can never function again. Probably, this is what they seek – to destroy even the industrial potential of this region so that after the war, it will be simply unusable. These are absolute degenerates, despicable degenerates with nothing sacred, who just, for the sake of entertainment or idiocy induced by imperialist propaganda, destroy everything: schools, hospitals, kindergartens, abandoned warehouse buildings, residential and non-residential buildings.
School in Avdiivka
When there is no success on the battlefield, they show their vile power through terror against civilians and through the total destruction of the city. Take, for example, Popasna – they just destroyed the city and announced that they would not rebuild it, and now they are using it as a military base.
FI: I know that many Ukrainians trust you and constantly try to help. Do you feel foreign aid from ordinary citizens or organizations?
Y: Yes, as strange as it may sound, during this terrible war, there are pleasant moments, such as meeting incredible and strong people or receiving feedback from people. Trust from the community is the best thing anyone can receive. And of course, I am very pleased to receive trust and support from my fellow citizens and from foreigners. Getting help and support from the civilized world is very valuable to us. I always mention and sincerely thank Ukrainians abroad and foreigners in general for supporting the Avdiivka front. Sometimes people, when they see where we are going, how and where we work, say, “I want to help the defenders of Avdiivka!” I repeat, this is very important to me. It is important that the world sees the crimes that the Russians are committing in the once-small industrial city of Avdiivka.
Avdiivka is currently closed to journalists, so it is important to show how the city lives and fights, that there are still civilians here, and that the Russians are committing genocide against them. I am very grateful to everyone who supports our fundraisers for the defenders of Avdiivka, and to those who simply support me with warm words and wishes for success, because now it is more dangerous in Avdiivka than ever.
FI: How can one help the defenders of Avdiivka? Are there any urgent needs that need to be addressed?
Y: Today, once again, I spoke with servicemen from the 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade, who have been firmly defending this direction since March 2022. The primary need is for combat equipment! There is also a shortage of personnel. Additionally, there is a constant need for drones: daytime, nighttime, strike, and FPV drones for installing surveillance cameras on various objects. Maximum unity and concentration of efforts are required. We must show that we are a reliable and worthy support for our defenders on the front lines.
FI: After the war, what would you like to do?
Y: Certainly, I would like to return to my former job in the construction industry. I hope to resume working in the field of design. However, it is very difficult to imagine what life will be like after the war. In any case, I can never go back to my previous life. Our work will continue in one way or another, with a lot of tasks in the de-occupied territories, working with civilians, and humanitarian missions. But yes, along with that, I would still like to engage in design.
FI: What places would you recommend for foreigners to visit in Ukraine?
Y: Currently, this is a very difficult and painful question for me because dozens of places I would recommend to visit to immerse oneself in the culture, better understand the locality, and experience the uniqueness of the region are unfortunately either destroyed, no longer exist, or are in temporary occupation.
Of course, I would like to recommend visiting Donetsk – as we used to call it, the “City of a Million Roses.” Or Soledar, there was something to be surprised about in Soledar: remnants of the ancient Permian Sea, industrial objects, steppe landscapes, vast lakes, and even “Martian landscapes.” And, of course, the salt mines. There, the descent is almost 300 meters deep, where there used to be a salt mining museum, a salt football field, a naturally occurring salt crystal the size of a human, sculptures created by local craftsmen, and a special hall for symphonic concerts. I also really liked the Avdiivka quarry, or as the locals called it, the “Maldives of Avdiivka.” They used to extract quartz sand there. The former industrial zone eventually turned into a local landmark. It had clean and cool water. But many, many other places were destroyed and ruined by the Russians.
So, I would recommend visiting the Carpathian Mountains. Take a walk through the wooded hills and blooming meadows, and definitely climb the highest mountain – Hoverla.
If you enjoyed reading this, please consider supporting our defenders in Avdiivka – you can find more information on Yana’s account, or can directly contact her.
Russian troops are trying, for example, to capture Avdiivka. The bulge in the front line it forms enables the Ukrainians to easily strike at Donetsk, thus complicating logistics for the Russian military.
Both Ukrainian and western media write that the undoubted, albeit small, successes of Russian troops in Ukraine are primarily due to the huge number of soldiers and officers whom the high command dispatches to certain death, apparently, without the slightest pity or doubt. Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov was infamous for this terrible “tactic,” which today’s General Staff has adopted as a precept in its own military campaign.
The terrible loss of Russian soldiers and officers bothers no one, however. And Dmitry Medvedev (it is not very clear why he is the one) reports constantly about the new cannon fodder which he has succeeded in herding off to the front.
Is it a lot? No, it is not enough for Vladimir Putin, who has signed a decree ordering the authorities to recruit more cannon fodder, another 170 thousand men.
The dolphins got it good: they can just swim off when their cages are flung open by a powerful storm in Crimea. Russians have nowhere to swim, and nothing to swim for. War and murder shower a lot of money on a Russian man or his widowed family, and the war suddenly gives meaning to his hopeless existence.
Medvedev’s figures make it clear that the mobilization which everyone so feared will most likely not happen. And this means that it will not harm political developments, as it did last year.
But the authorities will not permit the men who were mobilized last year to go home, contrary to their promises.
The grass widows continue to demand the return of their men. They even wrote a manifesto, but all for naught.
Writer Denis Epifantsev suggests that the liberal opposition take advantage of the situation by getting involved and trying to assist both the wives of the mobilized and [pro-war] journalists in pushing their thoughts and arguments to their logical conclusion, thus regarding them as temporary and vital allies in informing the indifferent masses about the regime’s crimes. But no is likely to listen to him.
It takes a massive sum of money to feed, arm, and equip such a mob of men (i.e., the military) who are neither doing useful work nor are being taxed. They already figure in the Russian Federation’s budget for 2024: it is the highest expenditure on the army since the Soviet era.
Political scientist and economist Vladislav Inozemtsev argues that the Russian Federation will be able to weather even such fantastic expenditures for some time, but wonders whether the west will have enough patience to continue supporting Ukraine.
By the way, we must also take into account the embezzlement factor. Rosfinmonitoring head Yuri Chikhanchin reported to Putin that money allocated for defense spending has been cashed out! No surprise, eh?
Russian forces are intensifying attacks on the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, seeking to encircle Kyiv’s troops there as Moscow’s war in Ukraine grinds on.
The fighting is reminiscent of a battle for another eastern city, Bakhmut, which fell to Russian forces last May after months of brutal urban combat.
Since Moscow launched its renewed offensive around Avdiivka in October, Ukraine’s top general and Western military experts have made downbeat assessments of Ukraine’s ability to break Russian lines.
In Kyiv and Western capitals, there is an acknowledgement that Russia’s full-scale invasion more than 21 months ago, which Moscow calls a “special military operation”, could drag on into a much longer war.
WHAT IS AVDIIVKA?
Avdiivka, which had a pre-war population of around 32,000, has been a frontline city since 2014, when it was briefly occupied by Moscow-backed separatists who seized a swathe of eastern Ukraine in what Kyiv and the West.
Avdiivka, much of it now damaged, is home to Ukraine’s largest coke plant, a Soviet-era facility which before the war was one of Europe’s top producers of the fuel.
The plant, which Moscow says is being used by Ukrainian forces as a base and weapons storage facility, is now the primary focus of Russian attacks.
Located just north of the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk in the industrial Donbas region, Avdiivka hosts deeply entrenched Ukrainian defences.
Today, just 1,500 residents – many sheltering in cellars and basements – are estimated to remain in Avdiivka, where officials say not a single building remains intact.
FIERCE FIGHTING
Ukrainian and Western analysts say Russia’s renewed offensive on Avdiivka, its largest operation since the assault on Bakhmut, is proceeding at an extremely high human cost.
In a Nov. 27 update, British military intelligence said the fighting had contributed to “some of the highest Russian casualty rates of the war so far”.
“Every day there are new fresh forces, regardless of the weather, regardless of anything – of losses,” one member of Ukraine’s 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade told Radio Liberty.
“But no matter what, they keep crawling, literally over the bodies of their own.”
Andrei Gurulyov, a Russian lawmaker and retired military officer, has said the offensive has shown the need for Russian forces to improve their ability to attack.
Russian war bloggers, whom the Kremlin’s media handlers have brought under tighter control, have acknowledged heavy losses on their own side but pointed to significant Ukrainian losses too.
The main war bloggers’ collective account on the Telegram messaging service – “Operation Z: War Correspondents of the Russian Spring” – has given its more than 1.3 million followers detailed accounts of what it says is the steady but hard-won progress of Russian forces in Avdiivka.
It has described how they have been using air strikes with targeting assistance from special forces, artillery, drones, helicopters, tanks and infantry against heavily dug-in Ukrainian troops.
Semyon Pegov, a prominent Russian war blogger who has attended Kremlin meetings with President Vladimir Putin, has described Avdiivka, which Russians call Avdeevka, as “a fortress” with numerous concrete-reinforced bunkers.
Pegov, who has likened the fighting to trench warfare in World War One, said Russian forces took control of Avdiivka’s industrial zone in recent days and that Russian cluster munitions were inflicting “huge losses” on Ukrainian forces.
The Russian defence ministry issues spare but regular updates. Unlike late Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose forces spearheaded the assault on Bakhmut, it does not offer predictions or set out its aims.
WHAT’S AT STAKE?
Both sides see Avdiivka as key to Russia’s aim of wresting full control of the two eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk – two of the four Ukrainian regions Russia says it has annexed but does not have full control of.
Avdiivka is seen as a gateway to Donetsk city, about 15 km (9 miles) to the south, whose residential areas Russian officials say have been regularly shelled by Ukrainian forces.
Pushing Ukrainian forces out of Avdiivka would be seen as enlarging the amount of territory Russia controls and making Donetsk city safer.
Seizing Avdiivka could boost Russian morale and deal a psychological blow to Ukrainian forces, which have made only incremental gains in a counteroffensive launched in June.
Mykola Bielieskov of the National Institute for Strategic Studies, an official think-tank in Kyiv, said taking Avdiivka would not “decisively” tip the situation in Moscow’s favour but “would make the situation more tenable for occupied Donetsk as a major Russian logistics hub.”
Bielieskov believes the campaign to capture Avdiivka is mostly driven by what he called the Kremlin’s eagerness to “strengthen the hand of Western sceptics” who are calling for a cut in military and financial support for Kyiv, citing the limited impact of billions of dollars in military aid.
I went to see the spontaneous memorial to Prigozhin on Zolnaya [“Ashes”] Street [near the former (?) Wagner Center office building in St. Petersburg]. I have to say that what I saw impressed me. People kept coming and coming—young dudes and girls, men who were slightly older, and some people even had their kids with them. They brought flowers. They stood and looked for a long while. Some got down on their knees, and this one young dude crossed himself and genuflected. A Chinese guy was videotaping the whole scene and talking in Chinese, but it troubled no one. That’s him sporting a rucksack and filming point-blank the woman in the hat who is putting what looks like a whole bush of roses in a vase.
Hello, dear Moscow Times readers! This is your weekly newsletter, and we’re kicking off with the (near-certain) death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the man dubbed Vladimir Putin’s “chef.”
However, Prigozhin gained notoriety not for his culinary talents, but for his business ventures. He set up several enterprises that were extremely vital to the Russian authorities. The most well known were the private military company Wagner and the “troll factory” in Olgino, a suburb of Petersburg, which was used as a tool for influencing the information space in the Russian Federation and the world.
Trolls are fantastic creatures, and they vanished of their own accord, you might say, but apparently it was Vladimir Putin who put the kibosh on Wagner. The rowdy band of freewheeling mercenaries, who took their orders from god knows whom, has come to end.
We should recall, of course, that Prigozhin took a long time admitting that Wagner and the Olgino trolls worked for him. He acknowledged this obvious fact only in the midst of the war, and this was the first step toward the mutiny of 23 June and his (near-certain) death on 23 August. The public owner of an effective resource can either use it or give it up. Prigozhin didn’t feel like giving Wagner away—that is, transferring it to the command of the Defense Ministry (and take an oath, as Vladimir Putin has now ordered)—and so the strange mutiny that had such supremely serious political consequences happened, and, later, the Embraer jet plane crashed in the Tver Region. (It was the first time this type of plane had an accident involving fatalities.)
We interviewed people in the know about the moods among Russia’s elites to find out how they were taking the “chef’s” demise. We went further, though, asking several people who kept a close eye on Prigozhin’s rise and (alas, literal) fall to explain the meaning of the story that has unfolded before our eyes.
The first explanation comes from an observer in civil society who claims that the plane crash was caused by underlings going farther than they had been ordered to go. In fact, this observer argues, Putin did not want Prigozhin dead. Without his trolls and without Wagner, which had ceased to operate in the RF and had begun to be transferred to Defense Ministry-controlled outfits in Africa, Prigozhin was no threat to Putin. However, there were people (in the GRU, most likely) who believed that Putin would be pleased if they brought him the mutineer’s head on a plate.
The risks are the same as in the case of the late [Boris] Nemtsov [assassinated near the Kremlin in 2015]. After his untimely death, Prigozhin’s significance as a symbolic figure could increase and thus serve as a consolidating factor. We cannot rule out the possibility that Prigozhin’s memory will lead to the creation of something bigger than what emerged around the man during his lifetime.
The second explanation comes from an observer in the defense sector, who argues that we’re seeing a repeat not of Nemtsov’s murder, but of the death of Polish president Lech Kaczyński in 2010. (The official Polish Tu-154 plane carrying him and other Polish officials crashed while attempting to land in Smolensk, Russia. Many Poles believe that the plane was brought down by a bomb planted onboard by the Russian secret services.)
The hit squad didn’t go too far. On the contrary, [Prigozhin’s plane crash] was a carefully planned operation that was brought off nearly flawlessly. Although we can claim that such things don’t get done without Putin’s consent, there is no way to prove it.
The third explanation comes from a political spin doctor and frequent guest on YouTube channels. He wonders why everyone has decided that the passenger manifest and the presence of his personal effects [at the crash site] is sufficient to prove that Prigozhin was killed. We cannot rule out the possibility that Prigozhin and Putin made a deal and that Yevgeny Viktorovich will be the Kremlin’s secret weapon. I’m joking on this point, of course. But Russian realities are such that a man dies he shakes off all the bad stuff that happened in his life, and people focus on his admirable qualities. Look at Stalin: his bloodthirstiness and lack of principle have been forgotten, and no one remembers the terrible mistakes he made while running the country. He’s a winner, a victor. Stalin and Prigozhin cannot be compared, but nor can we deny that Prigozhin has been the most auspicious commander in the Ukraine war.
The fourth explanation comes from an opinion journalist and writer who asks us to the recall the Russian fairytale about the vixen and the thrush. The vixen terrorizes the thrush by threatening to kill its fledglings. First the vixen asks the thrush to give it something to drink, and then it asks the thrush to feed it, so the thrush helps it to steal food and beer. (The analogy here with the “chef” is obvious.) The sated and drunken predator then orders the thrush to make it laugh, and so the thrush alights on the heads of two peasants, father and son, who cripple (and even kill) each other whilst trying to beat the thrush. (Thus recalling the Olgino trolls and their work on the US elections, for example.) After the vixen has laughed its fill, it says to the thrush, Now scare me! The thrush raises a mutiny against the fox—oh, sorry, it gets hunting dogs to attack the vixen. Depending on which version of the fairytale you find, the vixen either gets killed or escapes the attack, but it is genuinely frightened.
Vladimir Putin wanted to have an alternative both to his own generals and to the supremely dangerous Kadyrovites. He came to count on Prigozhin to carry out sensitive missions both in Africa and the RF, but failed to take into account the man’s ambitions and got carried away. When Putin was faced with Prigozhin as an actual threat, he had to defend himself in earnest.
Russian Media Monitor, “Propagandist blames US, Ukraine and NATO for Prigozhin’s crash,” 24 August 2023 Thanks to Monique Camarra (EuroFile) for the heads-up)
Mykola Honchar lives in a crumbling stone house in what is left of a tiny hamlet of eastern Ukraine. The town was attacked by Russian forces in June of last year, as the Wagner mercenary forces were spearheading a renewed offensive.
Even before the Kremlin set Wagner loose to wreak havoc in Ukraine, the Russian campaign was notable for its brutality. But from the moment Wagner forces entered the war in April 2022, they earned a special reputation for bloodlust from civilians and soldiers alike.
To Mr. Honchar, the death this week of Wagner’s leader, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, responsible for so much carnage in the war, would be fitting — a violent end to a violent life.
“He has blood on his hands,” said Mr. Honchar, 58. “If there is a god, god will figure out what to do with him.”
Even in a war in which civilians were shot dead in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, and the town of Mariupol was bombed into oblivion, Wagner and Mr. Prigozhin cultivated an image of brutality.
A video was promoted across Wagner-affiliated social media of the execution of one of Mr. Prigozhin’s own soldiers with a sledgehammer after he was captured and then released by the Ukrainians in a prisoner swap. While in custody, the prisoner had taped an interview saying he did not believe in Russia’s war.
“A dog receives a dog’s death,” Mr. Prigozhin said in the video.
By the time Ukraine regained Mr. Honchar’s village of Bohorodychne, Mr. Honchar was one of only two people left living in the village, once home to around 800 people.
The other person was Nina Honchar, his 92-year-old mother. He had stayed there despite the danger to take care of her. She died earlier this month.
He does not know if Wagner fighters were among the occupiers. “I did not ask for their documents,” he said. But he recalls seeing Russian fighters, who appeared to be on drugs, wandering around town in their underwear, their bodies covered with prison tattoos.
Wagner amplified its force by recruiting prisoners. After Wagner left the battlefield in June of this year, the Russian military continued the use of convicts as part of newly formed “Storm Z” units along the most dangerous front line positions.
To Mr. Honchar, it hardly matters under what banner the soldiers fought. The legacy of Wagner and Russian forces, he said, are one and the same: death, destruction and ruin.
“My brother and his wife were torn apart by shells,” Mr. Honchar said. Before he could bury them, he had to collect their body parts. “There was no skull, his hands were scattered,” he said of his brother.
Once he collected what he could find, he wanted to bury them in the local cemetery but it was under constant attack and too dangerous. He laid their remains in a trench and covered them with dirt.
When his 80-year-old neighbor died, he buried her in the crater of the shell that killed her.
Looming over the village is the Church of the Holy Mother of God, ‘Joy of All Who Sorrow.’ With its sky blue walls visible for miles around and majestic golden domes, it was once a draw for tourists and pilgrims.
Now its walls are blasted apart, one dome has tumbled to the ground and the gold leafing blasted away from another.
The Russian Reader 