The Real Russia. Today. Russian stocks tumble, Bastrykin bears his soul, and a Moscow university's faculty apologizes

Monday, April 9, 2018

• Russian stocks tumble in the aftermath of the latest U.S. sanctions
• Meduza reviews the latest tycoons “designated” by the Treasury Department
• Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russia's Federal Investigative Committee, bears his soul in a lecture
• Moscow university faculty openly apologize to students for deleting footage of the Kremlin's spokesman making some wild comments
• Putin got way better campaign coverage from Russia's media than anybody
• Russians will parade two old U.S. tanks fished out of the Barents Sea
• North Korea's foreign minister is in Moscow this week
• An activist tries to keep Leonid Slutsky's sexual harassment scandal alive
• Moscow's mayor faces off against an opposition district councilman over conscription
• More community service for Russia's “most dangerous” poet
• The State Duma considers going after individuals who share “fake news”

Story of the Day: Russia's Black Monday 📉

According to the newspaper Vedomosti, the Russian businessman targeted by new U.S. sanctions have lost an estimated $3.3 billion in wealth since last Friday, when the Treasury Department “designated” its latest targets. The biggest losers were Oleg Deripaska (whose worth dropped $1.3 billion to $4 billion), Viktor Vekselberg (who dropped $956 million to $13.6 billion), Suleiman Kerimov (who lost $956 million), Andrey Skoch (who lost $94 million), and Vladimir Bogdanov (who lost $58 million).

Down down down

• “Russian stocks headed for their biggest drop in four years and the ruble slumped the most in the world after the U.S. slapped new sanctions on Kremlin-connected billionaires and tensions with the U.S. spiraled following the latest chemical attack in Syria.” ~Bloomberg
• “The ruble fell to a low of 59.82 RUBUTSTN=MCX against the dollar, its weakest level since November last year. The dollar-denominated RTS index .IRTS was down more than 11 percent, and the ruble-based MOEX Russian index .IMOEX fell by more than 9 percent, their lowest levels since September and November respectively.” ~Reuters
• Trading of Deripaska's En+ Group, which manages Deripaska's assets, was temporarily halted in London after its stock lost almost a quarter of its value.
• “The giant aluminum producer owned by Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska plunged 50 percent in Hong Kong trading after U.S. sanctions cast doubt on the future of the company’s banking and trading relationships.” ~Bloomberg

The Russian government says it will provide support to the companies sanctioned by the United States last Friday. According to Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, Moscow regularly assists the country’s “leading companies,” which employ thousands of people. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev later reiterated the government’s plans.

🤭 What the heck happened?

On Friday, April 6, the U.S. announced its latest sanctions against Russia. The U.S. Treasury Department’s new “designations” target seven Russian “oligarchs” and 12 companies they own or control, 17 senior Russian government officials, and a state-owned Russian weapons trading company and its subsidiary, a Russian bank. Washington says the measures are a response to “a range of malign activity around the globe” conducted by the Russian government, which operates “for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a press release.

The new list, which is supposed to single out “those who benefit from the Putin regime and play a key role in advancing Russia’s malign activities,” focuses on individuals and companies that work with the Russian government or in Russia’s energy sector. Washington also sanctioned Rosoboronexport and its subsidiary the Russian Financial Corporation for collaborating with the Syrian government.

Meduza compiled a list of everyone and everything swept up in the Treasury Department’s new sanctions. Read about all the businessmen, top managers at state companies, and state officials. What do these sanctions actually do? And what is the “Kremlin list”? “Taking on Russia's ‘oligarchs’: Meduza looks at the businessmen, state officials, and companies targeted in the latest U.S. sanctions”

Professor chief investigator 🎓

Alexander Bastrykin isn’t just a secret poet and the head of Russia’s Federal Investigative Committee — he’s also a newly appointed professor at St. Petersburg State University. In this capacity, he delivered his first lecture on Saturday, April 7, treating students to a bizarre, somewhat rambling speech.

Things Alexander Bastrykin said in his Saturday lecture

• The son of Oleg Deripaska (yes, the beleaguered billionaire) was one of the young men who climbed a lamppost in Moscow’s Pushkin Square on March 26, 2017, during an anti-corruption protest organized by Alexey Navalny. “Screaming ‘Down with corruption!’ isn’t really for you, Deripaska’s son,” Bastrykin said. (According to Forbes, Deripaska’s two children are worth an estimated $2.6 billion.)
• If the government weren’t constantly extending economic amnesties, Deripaska would already be under criminal investigation in Russia. “In the 1990s, they carved up the economy through corruption, outright banditry, and deception. The state pretended that this era was over and forgave everyone,” Bastrykin complained, accusing certain “investigators and judges” of showing mercy when true patriotism called for punishment.
• The Russian government should stop granting amnesties. Instead, it should implement a policy of “total confiscation,” even going after “the mother-in-law and mother’s friends” (referring to Russian elites’ habit of hiding assets with family members). Russia needs to get international cooperation back on track, as well, in order to stop the rich from fleeing to Britain with all their wealth. “At least so their accounts are seized and sent here,” Bastrykin explained.
• Russia “built up its sovereignty thanks to military might, but the economy remains very weak.” Bastrykin said he would ditch the oligarchs and turn to small businesses to fix this problem.
• The shopping center in Kemerovo burned down in part because a children’s play area cut costs by using cheap foam blocks from China, instead of more expensive fireproof toys from the United States. “An American block costs $120, and a Chinese block is 20 cents. But it burns easily,” Bastrykin said.
• Long-time FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover is one of Bastrykin’s idols.
• Bastrykin currently manages 16,000 investigators and that’s plenty. He doesn’t want command of a theoretical Joint Investigative Committee whose staff could reach 60,000 people. He said he currently gets as many as 1,500 complaints against his own subordinates every week, but it’s still too soon to talk about liquidating the Investigative Committee, he argues, because the agency is still fairly new.

You tell me mistakes / Are part of being young... 🎙

Twenty-one faculty members past and present in the media department at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics publicly apologized to the university’s students for deleting footage of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s March 29 appearance at the school. The instructors acknowledged that the department violated the journalistic ethics it teaches when Sergey Korzun interviewed Peskov for his educational program without agreeing in advance if the conversation would be on the record. After Peskov made several incendiary remarks about women and sexual harassment, he told the school that his comments were off the record, and the unreleased footage of his appearance was promptly deleted.

Sergey Korzun tells a different story. Korzun says he and Peskov agreed in advance that the March 29 conversation would be off the record. Afterwards, when confronted about the scandal, Korzun amused a classroom of students by reciting a line of criminal jargon, explaining that “a man keeps his word.”

Just another Putin advantage 📺

Election monitors from the “Golos” movement say Vladimir Putin received unfair campaign coverage from the Russian mass media. According to Golos, 46 percent of all reports about Putin ahead of the election were “positive,” while there was no “negative” coverage whatsoever. Pavel Grudinin, who finished a distant second in the March 18 presidential election, endured largely negative coverage (55 percent of all reports mentioning his name) and a completely absence of “positive” coverage.

The lend-lease bears parade fruit, 73 years later ⚓️

In July 2017, Russia’s Northern Fleet fished out the battered remains of two U.S. tanks from the “Thomas Donaldson” at the bottom of the Barents Sea, where it was sunk by a German U-boat in 1945. On Sunday, April 8, one of the Sherman tanks was airlifted to Vladivostok, where it will be restored and placed in the city’s May 9 Victory Day parade. The other tank will feature in St. Petersburg’s holiday parade.

• Between 1942 and 1945, as a part of the “lend-lease policy,” the United States sent 4,000 Sherman tanks to the Soviet Union to aid in the war against Nazi Germany.

Land ho, Yong-ho 🇰🇵🇷🇺

North Korean Foreign Affairs Minister Ri Yong-ho is in Moscow this week. His visit is expected to last from April 9 to 11, and he’s scheduled to meet with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, to discuss bilateral cooperation and security on the Korean peninsula.

Keeping the Slutsky scandal alive 🙅‍♀️

In an effort to sustain the campaign against State Duma deputy Leonid Slutsky, whom multiple women journalists have accused of making unwanted sexual advances, human rights activist Alena Popova has launched a website called “No to Harassment!”

The website features an appeal to Russia’s Attorney General, demanding an investigation into the allegations against Slutsky, as well as an appeal addressed to Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, stressing the country’s need for legislation against sexual harassment. Visitors to the site are encouraged to copy these texts and email them through the official web portals for the Attorney General’s Office and the State Duma.

Popova’s website also urges people to sign a Change.org petition published by Kristina Potupchik, a former Kremin youth spokesperson, calling for a criminal investigation against Slutsky. At the time of this writing, the petition has more than 36,360 signatures.

Alena Popova is a co-founder of the women’s movement “Project W” and a co-author of draft legislation against domestic violence. On April 2 and 3, Popova was detained three times outside the State Duma building for picketing with a cardboard cutout of Leonid Slutsky. After her third detention, police formally charged her with violating Russia’s laws on public assemblies.

The mayor versus the deputy 🥊

Ilya Yashin and Segrey Sobyanin don’t get along. Just as soon as lawmakers in the State Duma adopted the first reading of legislation that would require young men to appear for conscription (even if they don’t receive a draft summons), the Moscow mayor dismissed Yashin from his position as chairman of the conscription commission in the Krasnoselsky district, where Yashin heads the local council. Yashin says he plans to challenge Sobyanin’s decision to appoint Mikhail Biryukov in his place. According to the law, only Yashin or his deputy can chair the local conscription commission.

Russia's most dangerous poet gets more community service ⚖️

Remember Alexander Byvshev, Russia’s “most dangerous” poet? This week, a judge sentenced him to 330 hours of community service for supposed hate speech, because of a poem titled “To Ukraine’s Independence.” Prosecutors wanted him imprisoned for two and a half years. Police in the Oryol region have opened multiple criminal investigations against Byvshev because of his poetry. He used to be a schoolteacher, until an “extremism” conviction stripped him of the right to work as an educator.

You have the right to remain silent, fake newsies 🗞

Lawmakers in the State Duma are reportedly kicking around the idea of “personifying” responsibility for the spread of fake news. Deputy Sergey Boyarsky (who previously co-sponsored requirements that social networks establish legal representation in Russia and legislation against the dissemination of unverified information on social networks) told TASS that industry representatives have suggested introducing individual responsibility for spreading fake news and other inaccurate information. Boyarsky admitted, however, that the proposal needs some “polishing.”