The Real Russia. Today. Russia loses another warplane in Syria and Israel is caught in the crossfire, Primorye's race weighs on Putinism's solvency, and gays aren't a social group in Sverdlovsk

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

This day in history. On September 18, 1934, the USSR did something the United States never did: it joined the League of Nations. Like the League itself, the Soviet Union's membership was short-lived, ending in expulsion in December 1939 after Moscow invaded Finland.

• Putin says loss of a Russian warplane to Syria's air defense during an Israeli attack was due to ‘tragic accidental circumstances’
• A military expert explains what could have led Syria to shoot down a Russian warplane
• Three top managers quit two popular tabloid media outlets with famously close ties to the Russian police
• Pyotr Verzilov was reportedly expecting an investigative report about the murder of three Russian documentary filmmakers on the day he was apparently poisoned
• Gubernatorial challenger in Primorye who narrowly lost under suspicious circumstances says he won't settle for lieutenant governor
• Vedomosti editorial says saving Tarasenko in Primorye is essential to Putinism
• Russian police say gay people aren't protected against hate speech because they're ‘not a social group’

15 dead in Syrian friendly fire incident ✈️

Moscow has blamed Israel for the destruction of an Ilyushin Il-20 Russian military surveillance plane by Syrian air defense and the deaths of 15 Russian servicemen aboard the aircraft. According to Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov, four Israeli F-16s bombed the city of Lattakia on the evening of September 17, without warning Moscow, “creating a dangerous situation for surface ships and aircraft in the area.” The Israeli jets allegedly used the Ilyushin Il-20 as cover against Syrian air defense, resulting in a Syrian S-200 missile striking and destroying the Russian plane. Wreckage of the Ilyushin Il-20 was discovered roughly 17 miles west of Lattakia.

“We regard these provocative actions by Israel as hostile,” Konashenkov warned, adding that Russia “reserves the right to respond adequately.”

Vladimir Putin later softened Moscow's position, cautioning the public against comparing the incident to the Russian Sukhoi Su-24 jet deliberately shot down by the Turkish Air Force in November 2015. “Here, it appears to resemble more closely a chain of tragic accidental circumstances, because an Israeli plane did not shoot down our plane,” Putin said.

How could this have happened? A military expert speculates.

Before dawn on September 18, Syrian air-defense forces shot down an Ilyushin Il-20 Russian military surveillance plane over the Mediterranean Sea, killing all five servicemen aboard. Russia’s Defense Ministry later blamed the incident on the Israeli Air Force, which earlier that night carried out airstrikes against multiple targets on the Syrian coast. According to Moscow, the Syrians were aiming for an Israeli F-16 jet and accidentally hit the Russian aircraft. Israel, meanwhile, says its planes were already back in Israeli airspace when the Ilyushin Il-20 was shot down. At Meduza’s request, Gazeta.ru military analyst, air-defense specialist, and former Joint Staff employee Mikhail Khodarenko explains how the Syrians could have destroyed an allied warplane.

All this happened because Syria’s combat crews didn’t actually know the situation in the airspace above the battlefield. And it was of course due to the fact that they committed a whole series of live-fire mistakes. Most importantly, when acquiring a target, they should have carefully determined its nature and statehood. Apparently, this wasn’t done. They also should have determined its coordinates, and obviously they didn’t do this, either. Carrying out live fire without this data is impossible.

Because the S-200 missile system has certain features, we can hypothesize about what might have happened. For example, these missile systems are perfectly capable of firing based on what is called monochromatic-radiation mode, which does not determine the distance to a target, and acquisition and destruction occurs entirely through angular coordinates. The target-indication screens on S-200s are very small — no bigger than a matchbox. Without precise information about the distance to a target, mistakes are possible. To change the firing mode to determine the target’s distance, you must select the “range ambiguity” option. But this takes a certain amount of time, and the Syrians apparently were in a hurry to fire their weapon, so they didn’t bother checking the range. They opened fire without understanding whom they were targeting.

It’s also possible that the rocket’s homing-system failed, sending it into frequency-search mode and leading it to lock onto a nearby object with the largest reflective surface — in this case, the Ilyushin Il-20. We can’t speculate about a friend-or-foe identification system, because we don’t know if one was installed. And we have absolutely no clue if the combat crew activated it.

At the end of the day, we simply lack sufficient data to form any serious hypothesis. In fact, other than anti-aircraft fire and the plane’s destruction, we know nothing. But this was likely a mistake by specific people on the combat crew: the group’s commander, the target-acquisition officer, the guidance operator, and the launch officer. The equipment, as a rule, was probably not at fault.

Whose version of events is more believable? Russia’s or Israel’s? Well, let’s start with the question: Who shot down the plane? It wasn’t Israel, after all, but a Syrian combat crew that made a mistake, didn’t understand what it was doing, and destroyed the wrong target. But if Israel had warned Moscow earlier about its actions, [Russia] would have probably withdrawn its aircraft from the active combat zone. So indirect fault lies with the Israelis, as well.

So long and thanks for all the clicks 👋

On Monday, September 18, two news projects launched by Aram Gabrelyanov lost top managers: chief editor Alexey Potapov and CEO Anatoly Suleimanov quit the tabloid Life.ru, and Nikita Mogutin left the popular Telegram channel Mash. Suleimanov spent less than a month as CEO, taking the job in August, when Gabrelyanov himself stepped down. Gabrelyanov maintains his 25-percent stake in National Media Group, which reportedly owns Life.ru, and Mogutin says he recently sold off his 51 percent in Mash.

In an interview with The Bell, Suleimanov said he left the news outlet to develop a project that Life.ru recently abandoned: an open platform with user-generated content that appeals to a broader audience than Life.ru’s typical “oorah-patriots.” Specifically, Suleimanov said this necessitates making the platform available to “your various Navalnys” and “anti-Navalnys,” referring to the anti-corruption politician who built his public visibility using blogs.

Throughout the interview, Suleimanov compared his open-platform project to Yandex Zen (an automated personal recommendations service), while insisting that he’s working on something different. Refusing to name his investors, Suleimanov revealed that they aren’t previously involved in the media and are wealthy enough to appear on Forbes’ list of Russia’s richest people. Currently, the project’s team has just four staff members, including Suleimanov.

Suleimanov said the new project won’t seek a mass-media license from the Russian authorities, arguing that “a license restricts media outlets more than it benefits them.” The new platform will host a variety of content, including “investigations, reports, and the day’s trends presented in a fun way.”

Suleimanov also partially confirmed a claim by The Bell’s unnamed source that he quit Life.ru because the company’s principal shareholder — Yuri Kovalchuk — started interfering in the newsroom and “fulfilling the Kremlin’s interests” after Gabrelyanov left. It’s unclear what this means, given that Life.ru has always been a regime-loyal media outlet.

Verzilov was waiting on research ⌛

The day he suddenly fell ill with symptoms suggesting he was poisoned, Mediazona publisher and Pussy Riot member Pyotr Verzilov was supposed to receive the final report on an investigation into the deaths of three Russian documentary filmmakers in the Central African Republic, two sources told the newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Verzilov nearly joined the expedition to collective evidence of Russian mercenaries’ activities in the country; he apparently had booked his plane tickets, but decided at the last minute to participate in a protest during the final game of the FIFA World Cup that landed him in jail for 15 days.

After reporter Orkhan Dzhemal, director Alexander Rastorguyev, and cameraman Kirill Radchenko turned up dead on July 30, Verzilov found foreign specialists working in the region and secured money to fund an investigation into the murder.

The journalists planned to film the giant Ndassima gold mine, which is reportedly being developed by the company “Lobaye Invest” and guarded by the “Wagner” private military company — two companies associated with Evgeny Prigozhin (the same catering magnate with close Kremlin ties and his own “troll factory”). Lobaye Invest supposedly “represents Russia’s interests” in CAR. The journalists planned to meet with a member of the UN peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic, who was supposed to help them get access to the mines.

On September 11, paramedics brought Verzilov to Moscow’s Bakhrushin City Clinical Hospital, where he was treated at the toxicology wing before being transferred to the Moscow Sklifosovsky Institute on September 13. Two days later, he was transferred to a hospital in Berlin, where doctors announced on September 18 that “it’s highly likely that this could have been poisoning.” German physicians still haven’t identified the toxin, however, saying that it “could have been medicines or natural substances.”

“Buzz off” 🐝

Andrey Ishchenko says he’s rejected an offer from acting Primorye Governor Andrey Tarasenko to serve as his lieutenant governor. “I told them to buzz off,” Ishchenko told the newspaper Kommersant, saying he was approached by “people from Tarasenko’s entourage.” (Tarasenko’s spokespeople did not confirm the offer.)

On Sunday, September 18, Ishchenko narrowly lost Primorye’s runoff gubernatorial race to Tarasenko, after a last-minute shift in the race, when the incumbent governor suddenly and suspiciously pulled ahead.

On September 18, Russia’s Central Election Commission announced that 100 percent of voting precincts had reported their results, cementing Tarasenko’s victory with 49.55 percent of the vote (0.5 percent higher than Ishchenko). Federal election officials did not, however, say if they consider these results to be final. Russian Central Election Commissioner Ella Pamfilova previously teased the possibility that her agency might not recognize the reported tally. 

Editorial commentary

In a (paywalled) text published in Vedomosti on September 18, Maria Zheleznova argues that the authorities stole Ishchenko’s victory to protect the political system’s faith in Vladimir Putin, following the president’s personal “blessing” of Tarasenko’s election victory. Allowing the Communist challenger to win would have necessitated a series of short-term “technocratic” steps to contain the new governor and shore up the establishment’s standing in other “troubled” regions, but more importantly it would have created the more difficult task of repairing the “ideological balance” provided by Putin’s infallibility.

LGBT on the QT 🏳️‍🌈

Anti-extremism police officers in the Sverdlovsk region say gay people aren’t a social group and therefore aren't protected against homophobic hate speech. That was the response to Anna Plyusnina, a lawyer for the LGBT Resource Center, who alerted the authorities to comments posted by Internet users on local news websites that insult gay people, advocate “conversion therapy,” and threaten gay people with physical violence.

After reviewing the threats, the authorities concluded that they were “not addressed to any group of people on the grounds of ethnic, racial, religious, or social identity,” and therefore do not violate any laws, including laws against extremism.

Anti-extremism officials say Plyusnina can take her case to the district attorney or to the courts, if she disagrees with their decision, but Plyusnina told the website Znak.com that she doesn't want to perpetuate Russia's growing tendency to lock up Internet users. She says she doesn't want the perpetrators prosecuted, and is only trying to ensure that the hateful comments are deleted.

Russian police aren’t usually so cautious about enforcing the country’s criminalization of hate speech, so much so that a national campaign has emerged to reduce the offense to a misdemeanor. The campaign, however, has not produced results. In recent years, the authorities even extended hate-speech protections to chauvinist patriots (vatniki), judges, and police officers. In September 2018, police in Omsk charged a feminist woman with inciting hatred against “men” because she joked online about “asses and pussies” in a dozen blog posts shared between 2013 and 2016.