The Real Russia. Today. Moscow steps up its regulatory rhetoric against the U.S. media; Meduza takes a deep look at Russia’s ‘YouthArmy’; and Alexey Navalny defies a new court order

Story of the day: Russia’s threats against the U.S. media

If Moscow imposes sanctions on American media outlets, it won’t happen any sooner than the end of the year, according to Russian Senator Konstantin Kosachev, who says a Federation Council commission on defending state sovereignty is currently weighing the government’s options and narrowing down its alternatives.

• On October 9, Russia’s Justice Ministry sent official warning letters to the U.S. media outlets Golos Ameriki (Voice of America), Radio Svoboda (Radio Freedom), Nastoyashee vremya (Current Time), Faktograf (Polygraph), Krym.realii (RFE/RL’s Crimea edition), Kavkaz.realii (RFE/RL’s Caucasus edition), and Idel.realii (RFE/RL’s edition targeting Russia’s wider Volga-Ural areas).
• The Justice Ministry’s letters indicated that Moscow could declare these media outlets to be foreign agents. Russia’s Foreign Ministry has previously said the government is preparing retaliatory measures against American law enforcement’s decision to order Russia Today to register as a foreign agent.
• On October 6, sources told the news agency Interfax that the Russian Attorney General’s Office is considering even stricter measures against the U.S. media, possibly declaring some outlets to be “undesirable organizations,” which would result in an outright ban (unlike the “foreign agent” designation). Moscow could even ban CNN.
• On October 10, Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, announced that CNN has corrected “trivial procedural violations” that resulted in an official warning a week earlier. Roskomnadzor chief Alexander Zharov warned, however, that his agency would “continue to monitor” the U.S. news network.

Welcome back from Columbus Day, Americans! What’d you miss over the weekend?

Russia’s nationwide protests on Putin’s 65th birthday, in photos. Saturday’s protests in 80 cities across Russia turned out very different, depending on the city. Some demonstrations had permits, while others did not. In some places, Alexey Navalny turned out just a few dozen supporters, while hundreds hit the streets in other cities. The biggest rallies took place in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where the police responses were in stark contrast: almost no one was detained in Moscow (though the rally was unsanctioned), while St. Petersburg law enforcement executed a harsh crackdown on protesters. Meduza summarizes Saturday’s activism.

Meet the “YouthArmy,” Russia’s new hope for military-patriotic education. Since September 2016, Russian youths have had the opportunity to participate in “Yunarmiya” (YouthArmy), a “military-patriotic movement” created with support from the Defense Ministry. Organizers say more than 140,000 Russians between the ages of 8 and 18 have already signed up. In a special report for Meduza, Kazan-based journalist Ilnur Sharafiyev takes a deeper look at what YouthArmy is all about, learning about its wide but largely hollow presence across the country, and about allegations that some schoolchildren have been forced to join its ranks. Read the story in English.

How’s Otkritie’s restructuring going?

The heads of Russia’s Central Bank are reportedly calling up the heads of Otkritie’s biggest creditors and asking them to return their money to the bank, or at least to stop withdrawing their money, according to the newspaper Vedomosti, which says Central Bank Deputy Chairman Vasily Pozdyshev even offered to send guarantee letters, though “they took his word for it.” The newspaper spoke to several financial experts who worry that this kind of behavior could violate Russian antimonopoly laws, as the Central Bank operates simultaneously as both a regulator and Otkritie’s owner.

• In late August, Russia’s Central Bank announced the reorganization of the banking group “Otkritie,” one of the largest financial institutions in the country, with hundreds of billions of rubles on its accounts. The group is now under the ownership of the so-called Banking Sector Consolidation Foundation, which the Central Bank controls. Meduza wrote about the market implications of this unusual arrangement. Read the story in English.

Russia’s future smart toasters will be patriots

Part of the government’s new “Digital Economy” program reportedly calls for the creation of Russia’s own operating system for the “Internet of things” (IoT), which is what offers connectivity of smart devices, systems, and services, like heart monitoring implants, biochip transponders, and a wider mix of hardware, software, and more. The idea reportedly belongs to representatives of Sberbank, and a prototype is expected by late 2018.

Action in Yulia Latynina’s 🚘+🔥=🛫 case

Police have opened a criminal investigation into an arson attack on the car of journalist Yulia Latynina, who fled the country this September, after unknown men set fire to her vehicle and nearly burned down her home. The fire occurred on September 3, two months after unknown assailants smeared her home with a foul-smelling substance. Police have not said if they have identified any suspects.

Team Navalny’s never-ending legal troubles 👨‍⚖️🇷🇺

Police detained and released Roman Rubanov, the director of Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, in connection with the group’s refusal to delete parts of its investigative report about alleged corruption involving Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and billionaire Alisher Usmanov, who won a defamation lawsuit against the organization. The foundation had until late August to remove mentions of Usmanov from a documentary film posted on YouTube and a written report shared on its website, claiming that Usmanov paid bribes to Medvedev by donating real estate to a charity controlled by the prime minister’s old classmate.

• Rubanov is required to return for further questioning on October 13. He wrote on Twitter that a bailiff threatened to lock up Alexey Navalny for refusing to obey the court order.
• Rubanov wasn’t the only Navaly ally hauled into court by police this week. Sergey Boiko, Navalny’s campaign organizer in Novosibirsk, was sentenced to four days behind bars on Tuesday for staging an unsanctioned protest on October 7, as part of the Navalny campaign’s nationwide Saturday demonstrations.

The ECHR rules against Russia, again 👨‍⚖️🇪🇺

The European Court of Human Rights has issued another ruling against the Russian government, ordering Moscow to pay more than 285,000 euros to 20 relatives of people killed in a police raid on a suburb outside Grozny, Chechnya, in February 2000, which resulted in the reported deaths of as many as 60 people, including women, children, and elderly persons. This marks the third time the ECHR has awarded money to the victims of this assault.

• Earlier in October, the European Court awarded the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta more than 3,300 euros for a 2005 Russian lawsuit it says violated the outlet’s freedom of expression. That same day, the court also awarded a Russian citizen more than 13,600 euros in compensation for what it determined was an unfair extremism conviction. This was the first time the ECHR ever ruled on an extremism case.

A fatal crash at Russia’s airbase in Syria

An Su-24 bomber crashed during takeoff at Russian Khmeimim airbase, killing the crew. The aircraft was reportedly leaving for a bombing mission. Preliminary reports blame the crash on a technical malfunction.

• This marks the third non-combat loss of a Russian military aircraft in Moscow’s Syria operation. In 2016, two military planes crashed while trying to land on the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier. In both incidents, the pilots managed to eject.
• Also, in December 2016, a Defense Ministry Tu-154 crashed in the Black Sea, while travelling to Latakia to deliver medical supplies to Tishreen University Hospital. All 92 people aboard were killed, including 64 members of the Alexandrov Ensemble choir and Russian humanitarian worker Elizaveta Glinka.

More than 1 million people

This is the number of Russians who were forced to stop what they were doing and leave a building being evacuated over the past month, in response to a wave of anonymous bomb threats that have been sweeping the country, an unnamed source in the government told the news agency RIA Novosti. In the last week alone, 115 facilities were evacuated in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

• On October 5, Russian Federal Security Service chief Alexander Bortnikov said his agency has identified the perpetrators behind the mass bomb threats: I can say definitively that these are Russian citizens. It’s four individuals currently located abroad,” Bortnikov said.