The Real Russia. Today. The backstory on ‘foreign agent’ Marina Butina, Russia's expanding Browder investigation, and Navalny loses another political party

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

This day in history. On July 18, 1812, the Treaties of Orebro ended the Anglo-Russian War (1807–1812) and the Anglo-Swedish War (1810–1812). Also, in 2014, many in the world woke up to news that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 had been shot down the day before over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

• Meduza looks at what we know about Maria Butina, supposedly Russia's latest undeclared foreign agent
• Russian officials want to question several top U.S. officials about Bill Browder's alleged high crimes
• The Kremlin's transcript of Putin's remarks in Helsinki redacts an admission that Russia was responsible for Crimea's separatist referendum
• Russia's debate about pension reforms heats up, as deputies are reportedly told to shut up about Putin, and several regions register objections to the draft legislation
• Russia is no longer among the major foreign holders of U.S. government securities
• Trump reportedly wanted the latest Russian election-hacking indictments announced before his meeting with Putin (rather than after)
• Cambridge Analytica data from Facebook may have been accessed from Russia
• Putin liquidates a government ‘restricted-access administrative entity’ in a town where British reporters think novichok may have been manufactured
• The FSB prohibits Russian fishing companies from using foreign vessels for transport
• After seven years, Slovakia extradites suspected member of Shamil Basayev’s old terrorist group to Russia
• 39 percent of Russian entrepreneurs say corruption levels declined over the past year
• Russian officials reject yet another attempt by Navalny to register a political party

Russia’s gun-loving (undeclared) foreign agent 🔫

On July 16, the U.S. Justice Department announced the arrest of a 29-year-old Russian woman named Maria Butina. She is accused of conspiracy against the United States and promoting Russian state interests as an unregistered “foreign agent.” The founder of the social organization “Right to Bear Arms,” Butina is considered closed to Alexander Torshin, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Central Bank and a former senator in Russia’s Federation Council. According to U.S. officials, Torshin allegedly oversaw Butina’s actions in the United States. Meduza reviews what we know about this woman and the charges against her.

• Read our special report: “Meet Maria Butina, the FBI’s Russian gun nut undeclared foreign agent”

The big guy said the Browder manhunt is back on 👮

The Russian Attorney General’s Office has named several American state officials and intelligence officers wanted for questioning in the criminal case against Hermitage Capital founder Bill Browder. The list of names includes former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who was denied a Russian visa in June 2014 and subsequently banned from entering the country for his supposed “active participation in the destruction of the bilateral relationship and relentless lobbying in favor of a campaign to pressure Russia,” Foreign Ministry officials told Reuters at the time.

According to the Russian Attorney General’s Office, the U.S. State Department “compiled internal memos in 2009 and 2010 from Moscow about the investigation into the Magnitsky case.” The Russian agency’s official spokesman, Alexander Kurennoi, told the news agency Interfax on Tuesday that McFaul is one of the Americans suspected of involvement in Browder’s illegal activities. Russian officials are reportedly prepared to “file another formal request to question these people.”

Who else is on the list? The list of names also includes Homeland Security Department official Todd Hyman (who testified in a deposition against Prevezon, a Russian company accused of laundering proceeds from the fraud uncovered by Sergey Magnitsky), Svetlana Engert (who supposedly stole criminal case materials from Russia), Alexander Shvartsman (who supposedly oversaw Browder's stay in the U.S.), Jim Rote (a supposed CIA agent acting as Browder's “financial manager”), Robert Otto (who supposedly served as deputy director of a U.S. intelligence agency until January 2017), David Kramer (who recently served as an adviser to the U.S. State Department), Jonathan Wiener (a long-time aide to John Kerry and an adviser on national security), and Kyle Parker (a recent U.S. State Department official), according to Kurennoi.

At Monday’s summit with Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to let American investigators participate in the questioning of Russian citizens accused by the U.S. Justice Department of interfering in the 2016 presidential election, if the Americans agree to hand over British citizen Bill Browder. Russian courts have twice sentenced Browder in absentia to nine years in prison for alleged tax evasion, fraud, and deliberate bankruptcy.

Pesky pronouns 📜

The Kremlin doctored its official transcript of Putin's remarks to journalists, following his meeting on Monday in Helsinki with U.S. President Trump, redacting the word “we” from Putin's statement about the 2014 referendum in Crimea that led to Moscow's annexation of the peninsula: “We believe [we] held the referendum in strict compliance with international law and the UN Charter.” In video posted on the Kremlin's website, you can still hear Putin use the words “we carried out,” however. The English-language translation posted by the Kremlin, meanwhile, still reflects what Putin actually said: “We believe that we held a referendum in strict compliance with international law and the UN Charter.”

Pension mayhem

🤫 Shut up, deputies

State Duma deputies have reportedly been told to refrain from criticizing Vladimir Putin on Thursday, during debate on the first reading of legislation that would raise Russia’s retirement age. According to the newspaper Vedomosti, citing a source close to the Communist Party’s leadership, similar instructions have been issued regarding Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, though lawmakers apparently have slightly more room to speak critically about him.

Representatives of the Communist Party, “Just Russia,” and Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party have all denied that any such restrictions are in place. Communist deputy Yuri Afonin speculates that the rumor is a planted story intended to shift the public’s attention from pension reform to a supposed Kremlin conspiracy.

😡 Not happy about this

Twelve regions across the country — Dagestan, Chechnya, Yakutia, Kamchatka, Irkutsk, Kemerovo, Omsk, Oryol, Yaroslavl, and Russia’s Jewish autonomous regions, as well as Moscow — have formally objected to the plan to raise the retirement age. The chairman of the State Duma’s Labor, Social Policy, and Veterans’ Affairs Committee previously claimed that 77 of Russia’s 85 regions had formally responded to the pension initiative, and supposedly none of them objected to the legislation.

Russia’s Civic Chamber, headed by former Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin, has also filed formal objections to the current legislation, arguing that the draft bill fails to specify what calculations will determine the relationship between higher retirement ages and pension benefits’ annual inflation adjustments, as well as under what conditions Russia’s pension system will be balanced in the long term. Kudrin’s group also warns that the legislation doesn't consider how the government’s planned measures to boost life expectancy will affect how many Russians live to claim their pensions.

What's all this about? In June, the Russian government submitted draft legislation to the State Duma, establishing a plan to raise the country’s retirement age from 60 to 65 for men by 2028, and from 55 to 63 for women by 2034. Public opinion polls show that Russians largely oppose this proposal, and one of the most common objections is that people fear they won’t live to collect their pensions under the new system. Russia has witnessed relatively small but nationwide protests against the pension age hike.

Stories from other outlets

👋 So long, U.S. securities

“Russia is no longer listed among the major foreign holders of U.S. government securities, according to a report released in Washington. Once among the top 10 foreign owners of Treasuries, the country’s holdings of U.S. bills, notes, and bonds in May fell to $14.9 billion, below the $30 billion threshold for inclusion on the Treasury Department’s monthly report of major holders.” Read the story at Bloomberg.

🤔 He wanted it to happen that way

“President Donald Trump gave the go-ahead to announce new Russian election-hacking indictments before his meeting with Vladimir Putin rather than after — in the hopes it would strengthen his hand in the talks, according to accounts from people familiar with the decision. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein went to Trump last week and offered him the choice: before or after the Putin summit on Monday in Helsinki? Trump chose before, ultimately putting the issue into the spotlight just 72 hours before the high-stakes meeting, the people said.” Read the story at Bloomberg.

🔗 Cambridge Analytica's Russia connection

“Damian Collins, the Conservative MP leading a British parliamentary investigation into online disinformation, told CNN that a British investigation found evidence that the data, collected by Professor Aleksandr Kogan on behalf of Cambridge Analytica, had been accessed from Russia and other countries. The discovery was made by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), Britain's data protection authority, Collins said.” Read the story at CNN.

The laboratory story 🔬

Vladimir Putin has signed an executive order liquidating the government’s “restricted-access administrative entity” in Shikhany. In April, The Times reported that a laboratory in this town manufactured the novichok nerve agent allegedly used to poison Sergey Skripal and his daughter. Mikhail Babich, the former head of Russia’s state commission on chemical weapons, promptly denied the story. “We know where all the bases that stored chemical weapons were, and Shikhany wasn’t one of them,” Babich said, clarifying that such weapons were stored elsewhere in Saratov “but not in Shikhany.”

Brinkmanship ⚓

The FSB border service has prohibited fishing companies from using foreign vessels to transport their products, the All-Russian Fishermen’s Association told the newspaper Kommersant. The group’s president, German Zverev, says the new policy will force the Russian fishing industry to spend an additional 12 billion rubles ($190 million) a year and could drive up consumer prices on fish products. According to the association’s estimates, in the Northern Fishery Basin alone, roughly 70 percent of the fishing ships are foreign.

Welcome home, Aslan 🛬

Slovakia has extradited a suspected member of Shamil Basayev’s old terrorist group to Russia, after holding him in custody for seven years. Russian federal agents say Aslan Yandiev organized and committed several terrorist attacks in 2006 in Vladikavkaz, killing four people and injuring dozens more. Russian officials say he emigrated in 2010 using false documents. A year later, Slovakian police arrested him. Yandiev’s lawyers protested his extradition back to Russia, denying the terrorism charges against him. Killed in 2006, Shamil Basayev was one of Chechnya’s most infamous terrorists.

The Business Barometer of Corruption 🤝

The latest polling from Russia’s Chamber of Commerce shows that 39 percent of the country’s entrepreneurs say they believe corruption levels in Russia declined over the past year. According to the group’s “Business Barometer of Corruption,” 9.5 percent of business people say there was more corruption in the past year, and 31.8 percent reported no change in Russia’s corruption levels. In last year’s survey, only 25 percent of entrepreneurs said they noticed a decline in corruption.

According to the business people polled by the Chamber of Commerce, entrepreneurs typically encounter corruption when obtaining licenses, interacting with state inspectors, and when bidding on state procurement contracts. According to this year’s survey, 40 percent of Russian business people say the government’s anti-corruption efforts are ineffective.

Navalny's party is rejected, yet again 🗳️

The Russian Justice Ministry has suspended the political party registration of Alexey Navalny's group “Russia of the Future,” citing what Navalny called in a blog post “baseless and contradictory” reasons.

In mid-June, Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation submitted paperwork to the Justice Ministry to register a new political party. The group’s founding convention took place in mid-May, when Navalny was serving out a month-long jail sentence for organizing unpermitted anti-Putin protests on May 5. The group kept the party’s name a secret until the last moment, trying to prevent “spoiler parties” from stealing their name and blocking their registration for a third straight time.

Navalny has been trying to register his own political party for the past five years. First he tried to establish “The People’s Alliance,” and then came “The Progress Party.” The Justice Ministry refused to register these groups, saying it never received copies of registration documents from regional offices in more than half the regions in Russia (a requirement for registering a national political party). Navalny’s most recent rejection was in January 2018, and he is challenging that decision in the European Court of Human Rights.

Navalny has had to change his initiative’s name several times because political opponents keep stealing the name and registering their own groups, blocking his applications. In 2013, the political consultant Andrey Bogdanov snatched away the name “The People’s Alliance,” and in 2018 one of Navalny’s former associates teamed up with Bogdanov to steal “The Progress Party.”