The Real Russia. Today. Babchenko, Babchenko, Babchenko — plus defrauded coinvestors and a rising Russian pop star

Friday, June 1, 2018

• Lots more about the Arkady Babchenko story: questions about the evidence, a “gunman” comes forward, the suspect claims to be working with counterintelligence, and here's what we know about the “Russian source”
• RIA Novosti Ukraine's chief editor asks Putin to save him from Ukrainian prison
• Meduza reviews a game-changing new pop album by a breakout musician
• Roman Abramovich withdraws his application to obtain a UK investor visa
• Ramzan Kadyrov says he's bringing 94 children home from Iraq
• Putin's next live call-in show might put governors and cabinet officials on the spot
• The Kremlin moves to tackle Russia's “defrauded coinvestor” problem sooner than planned
• After being implicated in a bribery scandal, a top Moscow investigator reportedly resigns
• Moscow says the democratic opposition can hold another mass protest on June 10

The Babchenko operation

🤔 Questions about the “evidence”

On May 29, police in Kiev reported the murder of the Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko. A day later, however, Babchenko appeared at a press conference held by Ukraine’s National Security Service, revealing that his death had been staged to flush out the man allegedly recruited by Russian intelligence to organize his killing. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about this enormously convoluted story. Meduza reviews some of the biggest.

What are these big questions? Why couldn’t they arrest the suspect earlier? Why did they need to stage Babchenko’s murder at all? Why did the dossier given to the hitman contain such an old photo of Babchenko? Couldn’t they have gotten a more recent picture off the Internet? Why would the suspect have hired the same hitman all at once to carry out multiple crimes that were so different? Why have Ukrainian officials decided that a Russian intelligence agency is behind the plot against Babchenko?

Read our story here: “Kiev says Russian intelligence tried to kill 30 people in Ukraine, and wow there are a lot of unanswered questions”

🔫 Say hello to the apparent “gunman”

Ukrainian citizen Alexey Tsymbalyuk says he’s the man who was allegedly hired to kill the Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko. The news agency UNIAN identifies Tsymbalyuk as a veteran of Ukraine’s “Anti-Terrorist Operation,” meaning that he fought against pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

According to Ukrainian officials, the man hired to kill Babchenko reported the murder plot to the authorities himself, working with investigators in a special operation to capture the organizer. The supposed hitman is described as a veteran of Ukraine’s war in the east.

👉👈 German vs. the SBU

Late on May 31, a Kiev district court placed the businessman Boris German under arrest for allegedly organizing the attempted murder of the journalist Arkady Babchenko. At the trial, German offered up his own version of events, and it’s radically different from the story we’ve heard from Ukraine’s National Security Agency and the Prosecutor’s Office, which jointed staged Babchenko’s death.

What happened, according to Boris German. Six months ago, German was contacted by an old acquaintance from Moscow who “works at a Putin foundation, organizing unrest in Ukraine.” German reported this to Ukrainian counterintelligence, and was told to learn more about the flow of Russian money into Ukraine funding certain politicians and “terrorist groups.” When he was asked to arrange Babchenko’s murder, an “Anti-Terrorist Operation” veteran named Alexey Tsymbalyuk was selected because he is a former monk and would never kill an unarmed man. Ukrainian counterintelligence knew that Tsymbalyuk would “run straight to the National Security Agency” because “that’s what they were trained to do at the front.” Once this happened, counterintelligence knew Babchenko’s murder would be staged. After Babchenko’s death was reported, German received a list from his Russian contact with the names of another 30 targets, which he handed over to Ukrainian counterintelligence. All these actions were documented. The operation was a secret because there are many “moles” in Ukraine’s National Security Agency who leak information to Russia.

What happened, according to Ukraine’s National Security Agency and the Prosecutor’s Office. Boris German isn’t a counterintelligence agent. The case evidence completely refutes his testimony. In early April, the veteran Alexey Tsymbalyuk appealed to the police, saying that he’d been hired to kill Arkady Babchenko. Tsymbalyuk was then brought in on the authorities’ “secret investigative actions.” Boris German paid him a $14,000 advance and gave him an extra $1,000 to buy a weapon with a silencer. Babchenko’s murder was staged so Tsymbalyuk could get the list of 30 additional targets from German. That list was received, after which German was arrested.

🇷🇺 Who is Boris German’s “Russian acquaintance”?

Using the “SPARK” business-analytics system, the newsletter The Bell dug up information about a man named Vyacheslav Pivovarnik, finding that he manages or owns shares in five Ukrainian legal entities. One of these companies is Public Security Service of Ukraine LLC, which Pivovarnik cofounded with Sergey Eremeyevich Deyev, who’s mentioned in news reports as an expert at a Russian organization called the National and International Security Foundation. This entity was headed by the Soviet general Leonid Shershnev, until he died in 2014. Shershnev founded the nationalist foundation “Russians” and the Center for Assistance to Compatriots From Novorossiya and Ukraine.

The Bell also managed to find a link between Pivovarnik and German: the former was the general director of “Ruscon-Ukraine,” which was owned by a foreign company called “Energy Trade Services LTD.” This was presumably the British company “NRV TRADE SERVICES LTD,” whose director is Boris German. Pivovarnik and German are also friends on the social network Odnoklassniki.

Ruscon-Ukraine is a joint venture with the Russian container operator Ruscon, which is owned by former State Duma deputy Sergey Shishkarev. The Russian news media has tied Shishkarev to former Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who now heads the Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities.

Putin, help! 🇺🇦🗞

The chief editor of RIA Novosti Ukraine is asking Vladimir Putin for help. Kirill Vyshinsky, who has both Russian and Ukrainian citizenship, was arrested last month in Kiev on charges of treason. Ukraine’s National Security Agency says Vyshinsky was carrying out subversive activities on the Kremlin's behalf. Vyshinsky says he renounces his Ukrainian citizenship (he sent a special note to Petro Poroshenko about this), and he wants Putin to bring him home.

Russian federal investigators are treating Vyshinsky’s arrest as an illegal obstruction of journalism and the knowing prosecution of an innocent man.

And now for some weekend listening 🎧

On May 25, Elizaveta Gyrdymova — aka “Monetochka” (Lil’ Coin) — released a new album called “Raskraski dlya Vzroslykh” (Coloring for Adults). Just two years ago, Monetochka made a name for herself with a collection of amusing songs uploaded to the social network Vkontakte, where she sings and plays piano. With “Raskraski,” however, Monetochka has fashioned her own tone and musical language, transcending what made her an Internet sensation. She’s now a national pop star. Meduza editor Aleksandr Gorbachev explains how this happened.

• Read the album review here: “A 19-year-old musician just released the best Russian pop album of the year. Seriously.”

Abramovich is fed up with the Brits 🇬🇧

The Chelsea soccer team has halted plans to build a £500 million ($666.1 million) stadium in south-west London after Roman Abramovich, its Russian oligarch owner, withdrew his application to obtain a UK investor visa. Abramovich, who has not been in London while his immigration status has been in limbo, withdrew his UK visa renewal after it was held up for several weeks by British authorities who are enforcing new and extensive checks on the sources of applicants’ wealth, according to a report by The Financial Times.

• Read the story here.

Ramzan Kadyrov is against collective punishment, from now on 🤥

Ramzan Kadyrov, the ruler of Chechnya, announced late on Thursday that his office has nearly secured the return of 94 children from Iraq whose mothers have been imprisoned on charges of terrorism. “Their mothers stumbled, going down the wrong path, and have been sentenced to many years in prison or life, but children aren’t responsible for the actions of their parents,” said Kadyrov, whose security forces in Chechnya regularly mete out collective punishment against families when even one relative is suspected of aiding armed insurgents.

There will reportedly be 49 children returning in the first wave. Kadyrov says the paperwork for 25 of these minors has already been completed. The process for returning the other 45 individuals is “very complicated,” Kadyrov warned, but he promises to do everything possible to bring them home.

In late May, Kadyrov announced that a “mass collection of DNA material” would be conducted in Chechnya to establish the parentage and citizenship of children born in the Middle East whose mothers have been arrested there. Since last fall, Kadyrov has organized the repatriation of more than 100 women and children detained in Syria and Iraq. These women reportedly returned to Russia after promising to appear in court, if prosecutors decided to bring any criminal charges related to their activities abroad, and at least one woman was sentenced to prison after coming home.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, 50 to 70 Russian women are currently imprisoned in Iraq on charges of involvement in ISIS. They are accompanied by more than 100 children. In late April, nineteen of these women were sentenced to life in prison for ties to ISIS.

Putin-o-rama gets innovations 📺

Regional officials have reportedly been warned that they better be at the office on June 7, when Vladimir Putin holds his next marathon live call-in show. Sources tell the magazine RBC that this year’s show will feature live conference calls with governors and members of his cabinet. The president will reportedly turn to the new format when he wants to discuss a particular complaint submitted by a member of the public. (In these call-in shows, Putin spends hours answering citizen-submitted questions with encyclopedic expertise.)

The BBC’s Russian-language service previously reported that this year’s call-in show would be the first in a decade to ditch a live studio audience. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later confirmed that this year’s show would adopt “technical innovations,” but he didn’t offer any details.

The Kremlin wants to speed up reforms to end the scourge of “defrauded coinvestors” 🏗

To fight the spread of “defrauded coinvestors,” Russian officials are considering a complete ban on the sale of unfinished housing. Sources told the newspaper Vedomosti that the new policy could take effect by 2020, with the imposition of some new restrictions as soon as the end of this year.

New regulations on shared-equity construction in Russia are due to enter force on July 1, 2019, whereby people buying homes in unfinished apartment complexes will transfer the money to escrow accounts with banks. Developers will only be able to collect this money after delivering the home to the buyer.

Market experts say unfinished apartments can be 30 to 40 percent cheaper, and only state companies currently have the resources and credit access to build housing complexes entirely on their own.

For years, the Russian government has been trying to solve the problem of “defrauded coinvestors”: people who paid money for new apartments, but were never able to move in because construction on these homes never finished. According to various estimates, there are somewhere between 40,000 and more than 100,000 “defrauded co-investors” in the country today. In November 2017, Vladimir Putin ordered the government to develop a plan that would enable the country to abandon shared-equity construction projects entirely within three years.

Meduza published a special report on this social problem in April. Read it here: “Worn to the bone and left alone: ‘Defrauded co-investors’ are one of Russia's biggest protest movements, but that hasn't helped”

You won't have Moscow's top investigator to kick around anymore 👋

Alexander Drymanov, the head of Moscow’s Investigative Committee, has reportedly submitted his resignation, sources told the magazine RBC. Drymanov took the job in December 2015, after managing the agency’s criminal investigations department, where he worked cases involving war crimes.

Drymanov’s name has come up in a bribery scandal involving the mobster Zakhariy Kalashov, known as “Young Shakro.” Three investigators in Moscow have been accused of accepting a bribe to free one of Kalashov’s men from pretrial detention. In December 2017, federal agents searched Drymanov’s home and office, after one of the suspects said he gave the bribe to Drymanov. The FSB did not press charges, however, because his special police status means only Investigative Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin can bring charges against him.

In March 2018, testifying at a trial against one of the suspects, Drymanov said the police actions against him were illegal and vowed to lodge a complaint with Attorney General Yuri Chaika and the State Duma.

Moscow says, fine, you oppositionists can protest again ✊

Moscow city officials have approved a mass protest at Sakharov Prospekt. Activists have a permit to assemble up to 10,000 people on June 10, when they plan to demonstrate against Russian law enforcement’s “abuse of authority.” Organizers say they’re rallying against political persecution, criminal sentences for people who repost certain online content, the justice system’s over-broad definition of “extremism,” and the mass detention of activists.

The organizers are human rights activist Lev Ponomarev, former Duma deputy Gennady Gudkov, and Parnas member Mikhail Shneider. The demonstration has been endorsed by the political parties Yabloko, Parnas, and Civic Initiative.

In late April, several thousand people gathered at Sakharov Prospekt to protest the government’s decision to block the instant messenger Telegram.