The Real Russia. Today. Q&A on the INF Treaty, crippling The New Times, and Vladimir Kara-Murza’s missing lab results

Friday, October 26, 2018

This day in history. On October 26, 1842, future Russian war artist Vasily Vereshchagin was born in Cherepovets. His most famous works include “The Apotheosis of War” (a giant pile of skulls), “The Road of the War Prisoners” (birds scavenging the remains of Turkish POWs), and “Defeated: Requiem” (a priest performing a service in a field of dead soldiers). Vereshchagin died at the age of 61 in Manchuria.

• Meduza answers all your questions about the apparently doomed INF Treaty
• Diplomacy expert Alexey Arbatov outlines a way to save arms control
• Moscow court slaps independent magazine with crippling 22-million-ruble fine for late paperwork
• Alexey Navalny’s lawyer is fined 250,000 rubles for promoting protests through YouTube while abroad
• RFE/RL ask why the FBI won’t release Vladimir Kara-Murza’s lab results
• Chechnya’s ruler and Ingush civic leaders have reportedly hugged it out and made amends

The questions about the INF Treaty that you’re too afraid to ask 🚀

On October 20, President Donald Trump announced that the United States will withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which prohibits Russia and the U.S. from developing or deploying missiles with short or intermediate ranges. After Trump’s declaration, National Security Adviser John Bolton flew to Moscow for talks with Vladimir Putin, and in an interview with the newspaper Kommersant Bolton blamed Russia for the collapse of the arms control agreement, saying the Kremlin has violated the treaty constantly. Moscow, for its part, has also accused Washington of breaking the agreement. Meduza takes a look at why two countries with thousands of intercontinental missiles should want rockets with shorter ranges, who’s more to blame for the agreement’s disintegration, and what will happen, if the INF Treaty really is scrapped. Behold the questions answered in this text:

• Why does Russia or the U.S. want short- and intermediate-range missiles? How are they any more dangerous than intercontinental missiles?
• Why did the United States and Soviet Union agree to ditch these missiles?
• Did they really destroy all these missiles?
• Do other countries have short- and intermediate-range missiles?
• Why does the U.S. accuse Russia of violating the INF Treaty?
• Why does Russia accuse the U.S. of violating the INF Treaty?
• Where and when might the U.S. and Russia deploy new missiles, once the INF Treaty is in the dustbin? Will these weapons be more powerful than the rockets Moscow and Washington destroyed?What about all the other deadly nuclear weapons?

🤝 Arbatov offers a way back from the brink

In an article for the Carnegie Moscow Center, Alexey Arbatov (the head of the Center for International Security at the Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations) argues that the collapse of the arms control framework between Russia and the U.S. could “unleash chaos” and leave everyone far less safe. Arbatov lays out several potential ways Washington and Moscow could salvage the INF Treaty, describing the main obstacles as “political.”

Fines, fines for everyone

⚖️ Bad news for The New Times

On October 26, Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court fined the independent magazine The New Times and its chief editor, Evgeniya Albats, 22 million rubles ($335,000) for failing to report the outlet’s funding in a timely manner to federal media regulators. Albats and her lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, argue that the statute of limitations had already expired in the misdemeanor case, saying that the authorities only decided to pursue the charges seriously after October 22, when Albats hosted anti-corruption activist and opposition politician Alexey Navalny on her radio show.

The New Times used to receive support from the Press Freedom Foundation, which is financed largely by the entrepreneur Boris Zimin. In July 2015, the Russian government designated Zimin’s foundation as a “foreign agent.” In April 2018, State Duma deputy Nikolai Ryzhak suddenly demanded an investigation into The New Times’s funding, leading to allegations that the magazine was late with its transparency paperwork in 2017. Because the statute of limitations on this offense is just three months, the first judge returned the case to prosecutors, who promptly filed an appeal in the Tverskoy District Court.

The district court called for a retrial on October 25 around noon, and the hearing miraculously took place three hours later in a small claims court, without Albats or her lawyer being present. The verdict was a 22-million-ruble fine: a sum of money that is equal to the magazine’s annual operating costs, Prokhorov told Meduza, and therefore means the end of The New Times, if the outlet can’t win in appellate court or crowdfund the money.

✊ Out-of-body experiences

Earlier this week, police arrested Ivan Zhdanov, the lawyer for Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, and on October 26 a court fined him 250,000 rubles ($3,800) for organizing nationwide political protests on September 9 (many of them unpermitted) against the government’s plans to raise the retirement age. Zhdanov managed this feat despite being outside the country on September 9. Officials say his appearance on a live-streaming YouTube channel qualifies as illegal incitement.

According to Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff, Russia’s justice system cannot legally prosecute people for misdemeanors committed abroad, comparing it to arresting someone in Moscow for jaywalking in Rome.

What do Kara-Murza’s lab results say, G-Men? 🔬

“The FBI has refused to release laboratory results into the suspected poisoning of anti-Kremlin activist Vladimir Kara-Murza last year, frustrating his congressional supporters and deepening the mystery behind his illness. Amid the official silence from the FBI, Kara-Murza, who has lobbied for U.S. sanctions against Russian officials, now says he is trying to use freedom-of-information laws to access his own test results,” says a special report by Mike Eckel and Carl Schreck for RFE/RL. “The efforts to access the FBI’s conclusions regarding Kara-Murza’s illness come amid growing concern about suspected poisonings and deaths involving Russian activists, businessmen, and, most famously, Russian double agent Sergey Skripal.” Read the story here.

They’ve got hurt feelings 😢

The street protests in Magas against a controversial Chechen-Ingush border agreement have fueled recriminations between Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov and several prominent Ingush civic leaders. After a series of public statements that amounted to “why don’t you come to my territory and say that to my face!” Kadyrov, Chechen Parliament Speaker Magomed Daudov, and State Duma deputy Adam Delimkhanov came in a massive motorcade to the town Karabulak, where they met protest organizer Akhmed Barakhoev at the home of former Ingush Interior Minister Akhmed Pogorov.

The mood was apparently tense outside the house, where the Chechen delegation’s cars tried to block the road as hundreds of locals swarmed the scene, but Pogorov later announced that everyone involved had apologized to one another for exchanging barbs publicly. They then prayed together, knocked back some tea, and went home.