The Real Russia. Today. Russia's Baltic propaganda outlets fess up, Yandex caves to the courts, and Mail.ru makes trouble for ‘Putin's party’

Thursday, August 30, 2018

This day in history. On August 30, 1958, Anna Politkovskaya was born in New York City. She would become one of Russia's most famous investigative reporters, until her murder in October 2006 at the age of 48. Politkovskaya would have turned 60 today.

• Following investigative report by BuzzFeed, network of pro-Kremlin news outlets in Baltic states suddenly admits to being run by Russian state
• Yandex caves to Russian courts in piracy case
• Will Putin's retirement plan cost 500,000 million or 3.2 trillion rubles more than the State Duma's current bill?
• Yandex Maps pulls the poop, toilet, and monkey emojis, after users plaster Moscow with embarrassing location reviews
• Human rights group is temporarily spared eviction in St. Petersburg
• Russian human rights official wants to know if guard was joking when he pointed out ‘the torture room’ during prison tour
• Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki want proof before they let Russia's ruling political party advertise itself as ‘the president's choice’
• Old editors return to Forbes Russia after its sale to a new owner
• Crooner Joseph Kobzon dies at the age of 80
• Alexey Navalny's researchers dig up lavish real estate owned by the mother-in-law of Russia's Pension Fund director

Fessing up 📰

Either immediately before or shortly after the publication on August 29 of an investigative report by BuzzFeed News, Re:Baltica, and Postimees, the news outlet BaltNews finally admitted to being owned and operated by the Russian state through the Rossiya Segodnya media agency. “Skype logs and other documents offer a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine,” the investigative story begins, laying out the breadcrumbs in a byzantine evidence trail that connects three pro-Russian news websites to Moscow's state-run media.

The report catalogs how staff at Rossiya Segodnya dictated approved topics and pushed certain materials for publication. Current and former editors from BaltNews’ outlets in Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania generally refused to speak to BuzzFeed News, Re:Baltica, and Postimees, saying only that there were “information-sharing” agreements in place with the Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti. BaltNews.lv chief editor Andrejs Jakovlevs, however, denied directly that any money was ever exchanged, and said he was never told what to write.

But money is certainly changing hands now. “The information agency BALTNEWS is registered with [Russia’s] Federal Service for the Supervision of Communications, Information Technologies, and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) as of August 17, 2018,” Jakovlevs’s website says today. “The owner of the site Baltnews.lv is the international news agency Rossiya Segodnya.”

The website for the Estonian branch of BaltNews now says the same thing, but this message nonetheless was absent from the site as of August 25, eight days after its registration with Roskomnadzor, but still four days before the investigative report, according to records available on the Internet Archive’s “Wayback Machine.” It was only just before or shortly after the August 29 investigative report that BaltNews revealed that its owners are in Moscow.

Yandex caves to the courts ⚖️

Russia’s federal censor threatened to block Yandex’s video service, following an August 24 verdict by the Moscow City Court ordering the website to remove all hyperlinks to pirated content from its search results. Earlier this month, several television stations filed lawsuits against Yandex, where links to pirated copies of their content often appear in the first search results. Vadim Subbotin, the deputy head of Roskomnadzor, said his agency would begin instructing Russian Internet service providers to block Yandex’s video search engine on the evening of August 30, if the company didn't purge its search results of links to the pirated videos. He warned that he didn't know what effect this would have on Yandex’s other services.

Have it your way

Hours before Roskomnadzor said it would act, Yandex complied with the orders from the Moscow City Court, removing from its video search results hyperlinks to pirated content identified by Gazprom Media. Spokespeople for Yandex told Meduza that the company still contests the court ruling and plans to file an appeal. In a press release, Yandex also warned that some of the hyperlinks removed from its search results may have redirected users to legal content, possibly reducing Gazprom Media's online traffic.

Is Yandex playing Telegram's game?

The cases bear similarities (both companies dispute the demands made of them by the authorities), but Yandex is far bigger and more entrenched in Russia. Also, Yandex merely contests the application of Russian laws, not their inherent constitutionality, arguing that regulations against online piracy apply to the owners of sites that host or mirror pirated content, and can’t be enforced against Internet search engines. An official statement published by the company on August 29 says censoring Yandex’s search results will still leave the content “available on other search engines, social networks, and so on.” Yandex points out that it offers only legal audio and video content through its own dedicated services.

Why is this happening to Yandex now?

Gazprom Media (the holding company that owns the TV networks now suing Yandex) apparently has more pull than pop musician Viktoria Voronina or the Eksmo publishing company, both of which have filed past lawsuits against Yandex for sharing hyperlinks to pirated copies of their intellectual property. Previously, television stations have filed lawsuits broadly demanding the removal or censorship of online pirated content. What’s different about the new case is that it targets Yandex directly.

Pricing Putin's plan 👛

Russian federal officials haven’t quite settled on a price tag for Vladimir Putin’s amendments to a plan that would raise the country’s retirement age. After the president’s national address on Wednesday, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said the modified pension reform package would cost an extra 500 billion rubles (more than $7.3 billion) in additional spending over the next six years. Hours later, however, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova went on network television and said that Putin’s decision to raise women’s retirement age by five years instead of eight will cost the state an extra 3.2 trillion rubles ($47 billion). In addition to cutting women a break, the president also called for keeping various benefits for different categories of pensioners. Golikova’s cost estimate apparently does not take into account this other spending.

No monkeying around 🐒

Yandex Maps users will no longer know the joy of writing location reviews in poop, toilet, monkey, or demon emojis. Russian Internet users noticed on August 29 (a day after the website launched a new Maps function) that these less flattering options had suddenly disappeared from Yandex’s emoji keyboard. A spokesperson for the company told the website The Village that the experimental location reviews allow the use of 124 different emojis, some of which Yandex might change, from time to time.

The new Yandex Maps feature lets users choose three emojis for location reviews, which are then aggregated for specific places. This system immediately led to several embarrassing reviews for popular Moscow landmarks, like Zaryadye Park (🍆👊💦), Spartak Stadium (🐷⚽️🏆), and the Kremlin (🐒🚽💸).

Memorial lives to be evicted another day in St. Pete 🏚️

The human rights group Memorial won’t be kicked out of its office in St. Petersburg — not yet, anyway. For more than 20 years, the group has operated out of an old building on Razyezhaya Street, where its lease renewal was suddenly rejected earlier this month. Responding to an inquiry by city council member Boris Vishnevsky, Governor Georgy Poltavchenko revealed on Thursday that St. Petersburg’s Property Relations Committee has suspended the termination of Memorial’s lease while it conducts additional inspections of the building in question. A final decision on the matter is expected by late September.

What’s so special about Memorial?

Recognized as a “foreign agent” nationally, Memorial has faced intense persecution in Chechnya, where the group’s local leader, Oyub Titiev, was arrested in January on suspicious drug-possession charges. His case even prompted Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov to declare the territory “off limits” to “human rights activists, terrorists, and extremists.” Chechen officials have also pressured Memorial’s landlord in Grozny. In Karelia, the local Memorial chief, Yuri Dmitriev, is now being prosecuted for child abuse in a controversial retrial.

No laughing matter 😦

Buryatia’s human rights commissioner, Yulia Zhambalova, would like to know more about the cell described to her during a recent prison tour as “the torture room.” Zhambalova has filed formal requests with the district attorney’s office and the local branch of the Federal Penitentiary Service, asking for more information about the mysterious room at Correctional Facility No. 2 in Ulan-Ude. During her inspection of the prison, she says a guard pointed to an empty cell and said it was for torturing inmates. Without any explanation, the guard later vanished from the tour, and the deputy warden suggested that he’d suddenly left on vacation. Other prison staff reportedly told Zhambalova that the remark about a torture room was only a joke.

What’s so special about a “joke”?

Russian prisons are notoriously rough, but the public has been especially conscious of the prison system’s human rights abuses in the wake of multiple torture scandals. In July, the newspaper Novaya Gazeta sparked the current wave of publicity by leaking video footage of more than a dozen guards beating an inmate in Yaroslavl. In mid-August, Meduza counted more than 50 reported cases of torture by Russian prison and law enforcement officials — all within the past eight months.

Most recently, on August 30, federal investigators in Belgorod opened a criminal case, following media reports about the torture of three inmates at a prison in Valuyki. What Zhambalova overheard may well have been a joke, but her concerns are not without merit.

Prove it ⛔

The Russian social networks Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki have rejected new advertisements from United Russia, where it claims to be “the president’s party.” A source in one of the political party’s regional offices told the website Znak.com that Mail.ru Group, which owns both networks, is demanding documentation that President Putin supports United Russia, though there’s no law requiring such evidence. “They insist on their right to reject any promotional materials. For Mail.ru, the silent agreements reached inside the president’s administration aren’t an executive order,” the source said.

Why is United Russia only now positioning itself as Putin’s party?

It’s no mystery that United Russia is Vladimir Putin’s primary vehicle for legislative politics. The president has always maintained some distance from the party, however, posing as a leader “above partisanship.” As the group that single-handedly pushed through the first draft of unpopular reforms that will raise the retirement age, however, United Russia is in need of a serious endorsement.

Earlier this month, the magazine RBC reported that the Kremlin finally agreed to let the party advertise Putin’s support ahead of September 9 elections in Irkutsk, Vladimir, and Yekaterinburg — all places where United Russia’s popularity with voters has plummeted recently. Putin’s administration is reportedly considering similar assistance in Arkhangelsk and Ulyanovsk.

New owners and old faces 🤝

The embattled news outlet Forbes Russia now has a shiny, new owner and old, returning editors. Alexander Fedotov’s media group ACMG has sold the magazine to Magomed Musaev, the son-in-law of former Dagestani leader Ramazan Abdulatipov. Nikolai Mazurov will come back as chief editor, and former chief editor Nikolai Uskov has signed on to be the publication’s new editorial director.

What’s the big deal about a media outlet changing hands?

Forbes Russia has been a right mess for the past few months. The newsroom temporarily went on strike, after management refused to pay them their salaries. Fedotov quarreled with Uskov in court, but the two have now reportedly dropped their lawsuits. In late July, the Forbes Russia editorial board appealed to state prosecutors about the disappearance of an article from the August issue about the family business of Ziyavudin and Magomed Magomedov. Afterwards, Fedotov promptly fired Nikolai Mazurov and hired Andrey Zolotov, who had no experience working in business journalism. The editorial board then called on Forbes Media to reject Zolotov’s appointment.

How did Forbes Russia end up such a mess?

In late 2015, the German publishing house Axel Springer was forced to sell Forbes Russia to a Russian enterprise because of legislation adopted in 2014 that limits foreign ownership in media outlets to 20 percent. When ACMG acquired the publication for a rumored $7 million, Alexander Fedotov told RBC that he would seek to “depoliticize” the magazine, which is exactly what led to his newsroom meddling.

So long, Joe 🎵

Crooner Joseph Kobzon passed away on Thursday at the age of 80, leaving behind a legacy marked by musical acclaim and sometimes controversial politics. Decorated with more than half a dozen state honors from multiple countries, Kobzon’s career as a popular singer spanned 60 years.

Active in politics since 1989, Kobzon served as a deputy in the USSR’s Supreme Soviet and was elected to the State Duma in 1997, becoming the first deputy chairman of the parliament’s Culture Committee in 2011. In March 2014, he was one of 500 Russian entertainers who signed a letter openly supporting Moscow’s “reunification” with Crimea, and he repeatedly visited and performed in rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine, earning him a travel ban from EU and Ukrainian officials and a loss of his Ukrainian state honors. Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky once famously stated that Moscow could never impose truly reciprocal sanctions on the EU because “Europe simply lacks any stars as big as Kobzon.”

Jeepers creepers, where'd you get that real estate? 💰

He’s currently behind bars, serving out a 30-day jail term, but Alexey Navalny is making himself heard in Moscow this week, nevertheless. On Thursday, the Anti-Corruption Foundation published its latest investigative report about alleged government corruption, revealing that Russian Pension Fund director Anton Drozdov’s mother-in-law owns a lavish country home outside Moscow worth an estimated 400 million rubles ($5.9 million). The property was apparently a gift from Drozdov’s wife in late December 2009, handed over just a few months after she acquired it. By having his wife transfer the real estate to her mother, Drozdov managed to keep it off his assets declarations. Navalny’s team says Drozdov’s family owns nearly a billion rubles ($14.6 million) in real estate.

How often does the Anti-Corruption Foundation release these reports?

All the doggone time. Russian officialdom, moreover, appears to be so corrupt that Navalny’s investigative team is able to roll out reports about public figures who have only recently become relevant in the news (like Anton Drozdov in the context of the national debate about pension reform).

Earlier in August, the Anti-Corruption Foundation reported that State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin’s 82-year-old mother owns a 230-million-ruble ($3.4-million) apartment in Moscow, as well as nearly a dozen small businesses. Volodin says he and his mother got rich more than a decade ago by selling their shares in a company that makes sunflower oil and mayonnaise, walking away with a combined $200 million. Navalny says media reports from 2014 and 2017 show the value of these shares was roughly 10 times less, however.