The Real Russia. Today. Russia's ‘municipal filter’ knocks out Primorye's gubernatorial darling, Kashin raises an eyebrow at classroom flashmobs, and Prigozhin's Africa adventures

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

This day in history. At 6:45 p.m. on November 20, 1962, the U.S. government announced the end of the naval blockade of Cuba, effectively ending the Cuban Missile Crisis (though Soviet nuclear tactical rockets remained in place for another two days). About five months later, the U.S. removed the last of its Jupiter missiles from Turkey.

• Russia's ‘municipal filter’ locks out the candidate who probably won Primorye's invalidated September gubernatorial election
• Mother asks Russian governor to refund local daycare center, and he tells her to ‘hire a nanny’
• Oleg Kashin thinks classroom flashmobs pose risks to Russian journalism
• Yulia Latynina says the latest allegations against Browder mean Moscow is sweating a new investigation in London
• Alexander Prokopchuk's likely Interpol presidency might not be the disaster people fear, experts tell RFE/RL
• Controversial Moscow housing construction halts, temporarily, following protests
• Mercenaries address a collective appeal to the International Criminal Court, asking for war crimes charges against PMC organizers in Russia
• Bloomberg digs deep into Evgeny Prigozhin's mining and mercenary ventures in Africa

Down and out 🗳️

He needed signatures from at least 140 municipal deputies to make the ballot, and he submitted paperwork with 147 endorsements, but Andrey Ishchenko has come up short in Russia’s Primorsky Krai, after election officials tossed out thirteen signatures.

In a runoff gubernatorial race held this September, Ishchenko was leading at the polls until a suspicious last-minute surge by the incumbent. The results were later invalidated and a new election is now scheduled for December 16, but the Communist Party (Ishchenko’s party) decided not to field a candidate in protest. He decided to run anyway as an independent, but that means he needed to pass Russia’s “municipal filter.” Election officials will finalize the ballot on November 24.

Why were 13 signatures scratched off Ishchenko’s list? According to officials, 11 of the municipal deputies who endorsed him had already endorsed another candidate in the race. Another two people who signed his paperwork apparently are not actually municipal deputies.

Hire a nanny, lady 🤱

We all lose our tempers occasionally on social media, but very few of us are also the governor of Karelia, a northwestern region of Russia that borders Finland. Artur Parfenchikov can claim both these honors, after telling off one of his constituents this September, when she asked the government to restore childcare services in her remote town.

Parfenchikov’s press secretary now says the governor regrets “getting emotional” with Anna Vlasova, a mother who contacted him online and complained about the closure of her town’s daycare center, due to public spending cutbacks. Parfenchikov now apparently plans to visit the village of Suoeki, where Vlasova lives, and “solve the issue on the spot.”

The governor took a slightly different tone in early September, when he told Vlasova that her town is simply too small to justify state spending on childcare. “Take the full three years of maternity leave [half of which would be unpaid], work something out with the grandmas, hire a nanny — do what everyone does. But enough of these ‘comments’ already. Aren’t you bored yet? When the child turns three, take him to Suoyarvi [16 miles away],” the governor wrote on Vkontakte. When Vlasova complained that appealing to Parfenchikov was useless, he answered, “Of course it’s useless. Maybe you’re child’s father or his grandpas should be getting involved here.”

As the newspaper Novaya Gazeta points out, a higher retirement age and the rising profile of domestic political issues in Russia has made the public especially sensitive to state officials’ outbursts and gaffes online. For example, in early November, Sverdlovsk regional youth policy department director Olga Glatskikh fielded a question about insufficient public funding for children’s projects, telling a room of women that the government owes parents nothing. “The state didn’t ask you to have kids,” Glatskikh said. In October, Saratov’s (now former) regional labor minister, Natalia Sokolova, said 3,500 rubles (about $50) should be enough to meet senior citizens’ “physiological needs,” encouraging pensioners to subsist on cheap pasta.

Oleg Kashin has his doubts about classroom flashmobs 👩‍🏫

In an op-ed for Republic, columnist Oleg Kashin shares his skepticism about what he says is the latest “new media” trend to sweep Russia: videos recorded secretly in classrooms by students, showing teachers and administrators berating youngsters for questioning the Putin regime. Responding to a recent incident at a high school in Siberia (where a student wrote “Putin is a thief” on a chalkboard, prompting a tirade from an elderly history teacher), Kashin criticizes the independent media’s handling of these stories, arguing that reporters seem to be interested primarily in drumming up support for anti-Putin activists. Kashin says these episodes are ultimately ordinary generational confrontations (between “the past” and “the future”), but journalists exaggerate the “flashmob” angle and treat these incidents like mass protests.

Kashin believes viral classroom videos are a distinct news medium that hasn’t yet matured (not unlike early blogs or social networks). In other words, the “marketers, spin doctors, and paid trolls” haven’t yet arrived, but it’s only a matter of time, he argues. If Kashin is right, this means Russia’s “protesting public” is about to lose its monopoly on revelatory classroom videos, and we can expect to see staged leaks from schools that fuel reports about “Navalny recruiting kids for the U.S. State Department” and so on. This genre of news has accrued too much public trust, while being extremely vulnerable to manipulation, not to be misused, Kashin says.

How did this “genre” get its start? In the spring of 2017, large numbers of high school and college students attended a wave of anti-corruption protests across the country, beginning a national debate about the generational politics. These “new, unexpected citizens,” as Meduza called them in a January 2018 retrospective, flipped on its head a lot of common thinking about Russia, relocating democratic and anti-Kremlin hopes from Moscow’s “creative class” to young people nationwide.

Is Kashin right that journalists exaggerate the flashmob element in these classroom scandals? Kashin says the “Putin is a thief” chalkboard incident outside Krasnoyarsk is more “provincial oddity” than full-fledged scandal, arguing that a dozen Internet posts doesn’t amount to a social movement. According to Current Time, as of November 15, students at schools in Buryatia, Krasnodar, Nizhny Novgorod, and elsewhere have taken the “Putin Is a Thief Challenge.”

Bill Browder, poisoner extraordinaire

🙏 Yulia Latynina is thankful

In an op-ed for Novaya Gazeta, columnist Yulia Latynina argues that Moscow’s latest allegations against Bill Browder are a ridiculous, likely preemptive “information artillery barrage” against London, in anticipation that the British authorities will reopen their investigation into the death of Alexander Perepilichny, the whistleblower who died suddenly in England six years ago, at the age of 43, after collapsing while jogging. On November 19, the Russian Attorney General’s Office accused Browder of involvement in the supposed poisoning of two allies and three adversaries: Sergey Magnitsky and Alexander Perepilichny, and Octai Gasanov, Valery Kurochkin, Sergey Korobeinikov.

According to Latynina, Russian officials likely put together this case in response to mounting tensions with Great Britain, following the March 2018 nerve agent attack against Sergey Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury. “London isn’t joking around anymore,” Latynina writes. “Thanks to [the Attorney General’s Office], we now know that Skripal wasn’t the only one poisoned with Novichok, and Perepilichny wasn’t the only one who had traces of a rare toxin in his stomach.”

👮 Interpolthetic

Experts told RFE/RL that the next Interpol president will likely exert only “minimal” influence over everyday operations, as the position is “more or less an honorary role.” That’s welcome news to those who fear Alexander Prokopchuk, a senior official in the Russian Interior Ministry, will probably win Interpol’s next presidency at the General Assembly meeting in Dubai on November 21. The president’s lack of real power, moreover, should come as no surprise, given that Interpol’s own website says its secretary-general — currently former senior German police official Jurgen Stock — is “effectively the organization's chief full-time official.” Still, though, Prokopchuk would have some clout to throw around “on alleged breaches of the organization's charter.” Read Carl Schreck’s report here.

(That Moscow construction from yesterday is halted, for a couple of days) 🚧

Remember yesterday’s story about protests against construction work at a residential apartment complex in Moscow? The PIK Group announced on November 20 that it is suspending construction at the Kuntsevo site, presumably until November 22, when Russia's Supreme Court will consider a lawsuit against the demolition and building work.

What you can't legalize, prosecute for war crimes ⚖️

Frustrated with the stalled effort to legalize private military companies, a group of Russian mercenaries and military veterans is asking the International Criminal Court to prosecute Russia’s PMC organizers and facilitators for war crimes. Evgeny Shabaev, the chairman of the All-Russian Officers’ Assembly, told Radio Svoboda on November 19 that the initiative has the support of 357 delegates from 52 regions across the country, representing 18 different social groups.

According to the appeal to the ICC, Russian private military companies have suffered hundreds of casualties in recent years, despite the fact that the Federation Council denies the existence of Russian mercenary groups, and the Defense Ministry says officially that PMCs are banned by the Constitution. Russian mercenary veterans, meanwhile, say they’ve seen combat in eastern Ukraine, Libya, the Central African Republic, Gabon, Sudan, Yemen, and other countries in Asia and Africa. Specifically, the officers’ group wants Russian PMC leaders prosecuted for the “enforced disappearance of persons” (i.e., illegal imprisonment).

Why are mercenary vets trying to get their own industry prosecuted? Russian soldiers of fortune have complained for years that their profession is kept in legal limbo (technically illegal, but supported in practice) so they can be denied the benefits and honors awarded to military personnel, and also prosecuted, if they go running their mouths about covert operations abroad. For instance, Sergey Kirvenko, a member of the Presidential Human Rights Council, told Radio Svoboda that he supports the ICC appeal because lawmakers have treated mercenaries unjustly, he says, by refusing to legalize their work.

Prigozhin on the march 🌍

“The secretive businessman known as Vladimir Putin’s ‘chef’ for his Kremlin catering work is alleged to have helped Russia seize parts of Ukraine, turn the tide in the Syrian war and meddle in U.S. elections. Now he’s reaching deep into Africa with an army of mercenaries and spin doctors in tow to cash in on his newfound expertise,” writes Bloomberg in a new long-read report on Evgeny Prigozhin. The article looks at his operations in 10 African countries, where he trades security services for mining rights and corporate perks.

Prigozhin’s business empire reportedly had a hand in electing Zimbabwe’s new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, and selling weapons to Joseph Kabila’s regime in the Congo. Prigozhin’s mercenaries are apparently closely involved with preparations for the first-ever, still-unscheduled Russian-African summit, which is expected to include more than 50 heads of state.