The Real Russia. Today. Meduza reports from the site of a major school shooting in Crimea, Navalny accepts Zolotov's ‘duel’ challenge, and Putin talks heaven and nuclear war
Thursday, October 18, 2018 (Meduza's daily newsletter will be on hiatus tomorrow, returning Monday, October 22)
This day in history. On October 18, 1867, the United States took possession of Alaska, after buying it from the Russian Empire for $7.2 million ($105 million in 2016), or about 2 cents per acre, on March 30 that same year.
- Meduza reports from the Crimean city rocked by a school massacre
- Photos from the Kerch Polytechnic College
- Republic editorial says Russians and Crimeans are shell-shocked by the war with Ukraine
- Navalny accepts National Guard director's ‘duel’ challenge, but the latter says his timing is ‘disgraceful’
- Putin shares his thoughts about ‘aggressors’ and ‘martyrs’ in any nuclear strike against Russia
- Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service refuses to apologize for beating, raping, and forcing inmates to build cottages for some officials
- Someone sent a severed goat’s head and a threatening note to a Russian independent newspaper
“How were we supposed to know what was in his head?” 🏫
Shortly before noon on October 17, an eighteen-year-old student at Kerch Polytechnic College in eastern Crimea detonated a homemade bomb in the school’s lunchroom. Vladislav Roslyakov then roamed the building, shooting everyone he could from a legally purchased hunting rifle. Roslyakov murdered five teachers and 15 students — a list of the victims’ names was made public on October 18 — before turning the gun on himself. Meduza special correspondent Irina Kravtsova traveled to Kerch, to find out how this small Crimean city is weathering the aftermath of the massacre.
😨 A shell-shocked nation
In an editorial, the website Republic argues that Russians are reluctant to see the Kerch massacre in the context of the fears created by Moscow's undeclared war against Ukraine. Some worry about retaliation from Kyiv for the annexation of Crimea, while others are afraid Russia will stage new special operations to re-mobilize the public. Events over the past four years have had an unknown effect on young minds, Republic warns, adding that adults have also proved to be generally impressionable and prone to various conspiracy theories. Most Russians, the website says disappointedly, will likely be content to view the school shooting as another Columbine-like tragedy.
Challenge accepted ⚔️
Anti-corruption activist and opposition politician Alexey Navalny has accepted the “duel challenge” from National Guard director Viktor Zolotov, but the latter’s spokesman is not happy. “I think it’s blasphemy. It’s self-promotion on people’s bones. It’s really beyond the pale,” Valery Gribakin, one of Zolotov’s advisers, told the radio station Govorit Moskva, adding that Zolotov hasn’t seen “Navalny’s latest opus” and doesn't plan to watch it.
In an interview with the magazine RBC, Gribakin called Navalny’s decision to publish his response to Zolotov on October 18 — a day of mourning, following a massacre at a college in Crimea — “a disgrace.”
In his response to Zolotov, Navalny accused the National Guard director of being a thief, an accomplice to Boris Nemtsov’s assassination, and a national embarrassment. Instead of fighting, Navalny proposes a debate on a national television network, and he's given Zolotov a week to think it over.
- On September 11, Zolotov threatened to beat up Navalny in a fist fight, in retaliation for an investigative report by the Anti-Corruption Foundation that claims the National Guard intentionally bought food supplies at marked-up prices from a company owned by a former Interior Ministry official. At the time of Zolotov’s challenge (presented in a bizarre video shared online), Navalny was in jail for “illegal protesting.”
What, no virgins? ☢️
On October 18, Vladimir Putin took part in the annual Valdai Discussion Club. At one point during his remarks, the Russian president tried to explain why Moscow’s military doctrine on nuclear weapons doesn’t support preventive strikes. Putin’s comments provoked laughter in the audience.
Sorry not sorry 🙇
Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) has refused to issue an apology to inmates at prisons and pretrial detention facilities in Orenburg, where prisoners have endured serious abuse by guards. In a letter to FSIN deputy director Valery Maximenko, Timur Rakhmatulin (who heads the Orenburg branch of the “Committee Against Torture”) asked for a formal apology to the abused inmates, after Maximenko personally apologized to Evgeny Makarov, an inmate tortured at a Yaroslavl prison.
In his letter, Rakhmatulin cited criminal charges against guards at a prison and detention center in Orenburg, where officials allegedly forced prisoners to build summer homes for them, while beating them and raping some inmates, leading to one man's death.
Rakhmatulin asked that the victims or their families receive written apologies from Sergey Porshin, the head of the FSIN’s Orenburg regional branch. Instead, Rakhmatulin got a response from the agency’s legal department stating that top officials aren’t required to apologize for the official misconduct of their subordinates.
Secret admirers 💝
Someone wants to scare the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta. On October 18, a basket appeared outside the paper’s newsroom. Inside was a severed goat’s head and a note reading, “To Novaya Gazeta’s chief editor. Greetings to you and Korotkov!” A day earlier, a funeral wreath was delivered to the office, attached to a note that said, “Denis Korotkov is a traitor to the Motherland.”
Novaya Gazeta says there’s a defamation campaign against Korotkov underway that claims the journalist endangered soldiers’ families by publishing the personal information of Russian pilots currently serving in Syria.
The newspaper rejects allegations that it exposed Russian pilots’ personal information, and has filed a police report in response to the threats against Korotkov. “We have only two weapons: publicity (which is why we continue to do our jobs) and the law. The police are required to do everything they can to give us the protection of the law,” the newspaper argued in an editorial on Thursday.
Yours, Meduza