The Real Russia. Today. Pavel Kanygin on why Zakharchenko was assassinated, Russia says Navalny's YouTube videos are U.S. election meddling, and a governor kills a bear

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

This day in history. On September 4, 1934, the Russian baritone singer Eduard Khil was born in Smolensk. An honored musician at home, Khil became an international phenomenon in 2010, when the discovery of a 1976 recording of him performing a non-lexical vocable version of the song “I Am Very Glad, as I'm Finally Returning Back Home” transformed him into “Mr. Trololo.” Khil died in June 2012.

• Questions you're too embarrassed to ask about rebel politics in eastern Ukraine
• Russian state officials think Alexey Navalny's YouTube videos qualify as American election meddling
• A Russian governor shot and killed a sleeping bear, but his administration says it was all by the book
• Anti-extremism police officer in Russia’s North Caucasian Federal District faces criminal case after allegedly torturing a man
• Russian lawmaker wonders if a mentally unbalanced, ‘homesick’ cosmonaut drilled that hole into the International Space Station

Why was the separatist leader of Donetsk assassinated? 🤔

On August 31, a bomb ripped through a cafe in Donetsk, fatally wounding Alexander Zakharchenko, the separatist leader of the unrecognized Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR). Russian officials immediately blamed the assassination on the Ukrainian authorities. At Meduza’s request, Novaya Gazeta correspondent Pavel Kanygin — who’s reported extensively on the conflict in eastern Ukraine, including on the ground during the height of the armed conflict — explains who stood to profit most from killing Zakharchenko and what we should expect, now that he's dead.

• Prominent figures in the Donbass are killed all the time. Is Zakharchenko’s murder part of this trend?
• Why was Zakharchenko killed? What are the leading theories?
• So what happens now? Could Zakharchenko’s killing renew the military conflict?
• So now there will be a struggle for power in the DNR? What about in the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR)?
• Was Zakharchenko genuinely popular in Donetsk?

The real meddlers 📺

Russia’s Central Election Commission has sent a formal letter to Google complaining about Alexey Navalny using YouTube to distribute information about pension-reform protests on September 9, when the country holds nationwide regional elections. The letter was addressed to Larry Page, the CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, Central Election Commission member Alexander Klyukin told the Federation Council’s Commission for the Protection of State Sovereignty.

Klyukin explained that “Mr. Navalny acquires advertising tools from Google,” which he uses to spread information on YouTube about political protests planned for September 9. The letter to Page says it is illegal to stage these demonstrations on Election Day.

Where's Navalny right now? Alexey Navalny is currently serving a 30-day jail sentence for organizing “unpermitted protests” in January. Police apparently timed his arrest to prevent him from attending his coalition’s September 9 demonstrations against the authorities’ plan to raise the country’s retirement age.

The Central Election Commission’s press service later clarified that its outreach to Google “is nothing more than an explanation about information work,” saying that it mails out such letters all the time.

Nevertheless, Russia’s federal censor, Roskomnadzor, slapped Google with an official warning, telling the company that it shouldn’t make its resources available for illegal activities during elections. Vadim Subbotin, the agency’s deputy director, says the Russian authorities will consider it “direct interference in Russia’s internal affairs” and an attempt to meddle in the country’s “legitimate democratic elections,” if Google doesn’t respond. Subbotin says Google should stop distributing “any content that promotes events that violate [Russian] election laws.”

Representatives from Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service and Attorney General’s Office have sent similar letters to Google. Russia’s Foreign Ministry says it has also informed its American colleagues that U.S.-based information resources “are within an inch of violating Russian election law.” Andrey Nesterenko, a senior Russian diplomat, says Moscow is compiling a list of all attempts by the United States to meddle in Russia’s elections.

Deadlier than the av-er-age governor 🐻

On September 3, YouTube user Dmitry Larin shared a three-minute video showing Irkutsk Governor Sergey Levchenko killing a bear. Set in a snow-covered forest, the footage shows the governor on a hunting trip with several other men. He’s handed a loaded rifle and later fires multiple shots into a bear’s lair. The men then start shaking his hand, congratulating him. Before the video ends, a bear’s corpse is dragged out from its lair by a rope tied around its neck. In bright read text, captions accompanying the footage read: “A sleeping bear is shot at point-blank range” and “Any hunter, indeed any decent human being, can judge for themselves what happens here.”

The YouTube account that posted the video belongs to someone calling himself Dmitry Larin, who’s never shared anything else on the website. At the time of this writing, the video has more than 28,000 views. Some of the most popular comments posted by YouTube users call Governor Levchenko an “animal torturer,” “a beast,” and a “vile killer.”

Offended by the footage, State Duma deputy Nikolai Nikolaev, who heads the parliament’s Natural Resources Committee, announced that he has appealed to Russia’s Interior Ministry and Attorney General’s Office, asking that they evaluate the governor’s actions. Nikolaev says Levchenko’s behavior “is worthy of neither a governor, a Siberian, nor a man.”

Hunting in Russia is illegal when carried out in violation of the federal government’s special restrictions, according to Criminal Code Article 258. By order of the Natural Resources Ministry, it’s against the law to hunt brown bears in the winter, and permits are only issued between March 21 and June 10 and also from August 1 to November 30. Hunting illegally in groups is punishable by up to five years in prison.

Irina Alashkevich, Governor Levchenko’s press secretary, told the news agency TASS that the video was recorded in November 2016 at a game reserve in the Irkutsk region. She says the hunters had a permit, and attributed the recent publication of the footage to mudslinging ahead of elections for the region’s legislative assembly on September 9.

Nikolai Tereshchenko, the head of a hunting farm in Irkutsk and one of the men accompanying Governor Levchenko in the video, told the website IrkutskMedia that the hunt was legal. Tereshchenko insists that the bear was an “insomniac” that posed a danger to people. “To prevent any casualties, we did this. The dogs tracked his scent and drove the animal into its den,” he explained.

He tortured the wrong guy 👮

Anti-extremism police in Russia’s North Caucasian Federal District decided to torture the wrong man recently, and now at least one officer has been charged with abusing his authority. Federal investigators revealed on September 4 that they’ve opened a case against Rustam Zhiletezhev, following a complaint filed by someone living in Karachay-Cherkessia, who says he was tortured into giving false testimony. Medics later recorded bruising and evidence of electroshock on the victim’s body. According to the Telegram channel Mash, the victim was Guzer Khashukaev, the former director of the company “Gazprom Gazoraspredeleniye Cherkessk.”

Is this kind of thing rare?

Lately, there’s been a slew of criminal cases filed against abusive law enforcement and prison guards. For example, investigators have pressed charges against staff at prisons in the Zabaykalsky Krai and in Yaroslavl, where video footage of one inmate’s torture leaked in July, sparking the authorities’ current nationwide crackdown.

Meduza recently compiled a list of all reported torture cases in Russia this year, finding more than 50 reported before mid-August. While officials are prosecuting dozens of cases, however, many remain un-investigated and ignored.

Homesick ... in space! 👨‍🚀

Russian State Duma deputy Maxim Suraev says the hole discovered last week in the “Soyuz” Russian module aboard the International Space Station may have been drilled deliberately by a mentally unbalanced, homesick cosmonaut.

“We’re all living people, and we might all want to go home, but going about it like this is completely disgraceful. If this was some cosmonaut’s trick (and we can’t rule it out), then this is very bad,” Suraev stated on September 4. He says the drilling equipment necessary to make the hole is available on board the space station, and points out that crew members aren’t monitored around the clock.

On August 30, Houston and Moscow noticed a drop in pressure aboard the ISS. Crew members later discovered the hole and German astronaut Alexander Gerst was kind enough to cork it with his finger, while his colleagues rigged a less-flesh-based plug made of rubber and vacuum-proof sealant. Russia’s national space agency says it’s still investigating whether the hole was drilled deliberately or in error, on the ground or in orbit.