The Real Russia. Today. Russia's biggest floating dock becomes its biggest sunken dock, Ingushetia's Constitutional Court throws down, and the FSB goes hunting for database leakers

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

This day in history. On October 30, 1905, Tsar Nicholas II reluctantly issued the so-called “October Manifesto,” promising basic civil rights and an elected parliament called the Duma, in response to a wave of mass political and social unrest earlier that year.

• The floating dock administering repairs to Russia's only aircraft carrier isn't floating anymore
• Ingushetia’s Constitutional Court says the controversial border deal with Chechnya is unconstitutional. Does that mean the protesters have won?
• Russian federal agents allegedly arrest Border Service official for selling information from the closed database that helped identify the Salisbury suspects
• Pro-Kremlin activists reportedly trash the Nemtsov memorial (again), this time destroying the wreath left by John Bolton
• Elizaveta Nesterova on the continued fallout from Novaya Gazeta's sensationalist reporting about online suicide groups

Got my head out the window, and my big feet on the ground 🚢

At the 82nd Ship Repair Yard in Murmansk, floating dock PD-50 — one of the largest floating docks in the world — sank. The accident occurred before dawn on October 30, as the “Admiral Kuznetsov” Russian aircraft carrier was exiting the dock. According to the news agency SeverPost, two tower cranes collapsed during the incident, one falling onto the ship. Here are the highlights:

• Four people were injured in the accident, and one person is still unaccounted for
• A sudden electric outage caused the accident
• The Admiral Kuznetsov sustained damage, as well
• The ship's repairs will supposedly remain on schedule
• In December 2011, there was a fire aboard a nuclear submarine at the 82nd Ship Repair Yard in Murmansk

Read the full report here at Meduza.

Live and die by the typo ⌨️

On October 4, Ingushetia’s Parliament approved an agreement with the neighboring Chechen Republic redrawing parts of their shared boundary. The controversial deal sparked mass protests in Ingushetia, where demonstrators argue that the agreement unfairly divides the borderlands. The deal’s opponents say Ingushetia shouldn’t cede any territory to Chechnya. On October 30, the Ingush Constitutional Court ruled that the border agreement violates Ingushetia’s Constitution. Meduza looks at whether this decision could be enough to force the Ingush authorities to abandon their deal with Chechnya. Here are the highlights:

• Yes, Ingushetia has its own constitution
• The Ingush government is required to preserve Ingushetia’s territorial integrity
• Changing Ingushetia’s borders without considering public opinion is forbidden
• The views of local residents must be established in a referendum
• Despite the courting ruling, the agreement with Chechnya isn't necessarily null and void
• Ingush head Yunus-bek Yevkurov, Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov, and Vladimir Putin still have a few tricks up their sleeves
• There's a typo in Ingush law that could make all the difference

Read the whole story here at Meduza.

A rumored crackdown leads to rumored arrests 🚨

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has reportedly carried out a massive review of the private detectives and state officials who allegedly sell information from closed databases. A source familiar with the situation told the news agency Rosbalt that the FSB has conducted more than 60 raids in the investigation.

The same source claims that the FSB has arrested a State Border Service employee in Russia’s Northwestern Federal District and a staff member at a Federal Tax Service branch. “The first [suspect] supposedly sold information about foreign travel by [Alexander] Petrov, [Ruslan] Boshirov, and several others,” the source told Rosbalt, clarifying that the arrests, however, are tied to leaking information about other persons, not the “Salisbury tourists.”

The British authorities identified Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov as the men likely responsible for poisoning double agent Sergey Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, this March. Investigative reporters at Bellingcat and The Insider used extracts from different closed databases to compile evidence that these two suspects are actually two Russian military intelligence agents named Alexander Mishkin and Anatoly Chepiga.

No respect 🕯️

Members of the pro-Kremlin SERB movement reportedly destroyed the Boris Nemtsov memorial at the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge in Moscow, maintained at the site of the politician's murder in 2015. According to the website MBKh Media, the group showed up on October 30, led by Igor Beketov, and proceeded to tear apart the wreaths and portraits left to commemorate the assassinated deputy prime minister. The men reportedly vandalized and then removed the wreath left recently by U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton, as well. (Bolton visited the bridge on October 23 and left a wreath with a note reading, “From the American people.”)

When the activist guarding the memorial asked nearby police officers for help, he was allegedly threatened with being “sent to the loony bin.” Beketov later told the magazine RBC that his organization had nothing to do with the latest destruction of the Nemtsov memorial, which has been attacked and rebuilt repeatedly over the past three and a half years. On YouTube, for instance, there's footage of SERB members trashing the Nemtsov bridge memorial on September 8, 2018.

Reckless reporting 🐋

In a new article published on the website Coda Story, journalist Elizaveta Nesterova looks at the phenomenon of online “suicide groups,” more than two years after reporting by the newspaper Novaya Gazeta made the issue a national scandal in Russia. Nesterova spoke to several people whose lives were changed by the panic that followed the 2016 report (a son whose aunt and father have severely limited his Internet use, a young woman who spams suspected online bullies, and a teacher who tracked her students’ community affiliations), suggesting that Novaya Gazeta’s questionable journalism (which included threatening sources into cooperating) not only prompted another draconian law from the State Duma, but also fueled unhealthy paranoia among parents.

What are these online suicide groups? An investigative report by Novaya Gazeta in 2016 stoked fears in Russia that communities on the social network Vkontakte were bullying vulnerable youths into abusing and ultimately killing themselves. The most notorious group was supposedly the “Blue Whale” community. In 2017, the State Duma adopted legislation imposing harsher penalties for encouraging someone through the Internet to kill themselves, even in cases where there is no actual victim. One careless remark published online is now technically enough to land someone in prison for up to 15 years.