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The Real Russia. Today. Terrorism rumors persist in Magnitogorsk, Christ comes to St. Petersburg’s Manege, and BuzzFeed's bombshell

Source: Meduza

Friday, January 18, 2019 (Meduza's newsletter will return on Tuesday, January 22. Happy MLK Day, Americans!)

This day in history (93 years ago): On January 18, 1926, Sergei Eisenstein's film “Battleship Potemkin” premiered in Moscow. The movie didn't reach the United States until December 5.
  • Reports are still circulating that a deadly apartment collapse in Magnitogorsk was really a terrorist attack, but there are some problems with this story
  • Oleg Kashin says the Kremlin's ‘anti-popular’ rhetoric is a self-inflicted wound
  • Rare immersive exhibition of Christian wooden sculpture opens in St. Petersburg’s Manege
  • News briefs: drugs, logos, Facebooks and Twitters, airport draggings, Putin's untrustworthiness, and secret info
  • Read it elsewhere: BuzzFeed's #RussiaGate smoking gun, Stephen Sestanovich on Deripaska, and Lincoln Pigman on cyber insecurity

About those Magnitogorsk terrorism rumors... 💥

ISIS has belatedly claimed responsibility for an explosion that shredded an apartment building in Magnitogorsk on December 31 and killed 39 people. The terrorist group says it was also involved in a deadly minibus fire the following night. Immediately after this announcement, Russia’s Federal Investigative Committee reiterated that a gas leak is the leading explanation for what caused the apartment collapse. Since the tragedy, several news outlets have reported unverified rumors that the supposed gas leak was actually the work of terrorists. On January 18, even more details about a potential terrorism link emerged. Meduza summarizes what various sources have claimed about the Magnitogorsk apartment collapse.

164 Karl Marx Prospect

The official story: A gas line in one section of the 10-story apartment building exploded early in the morning on December 31. Officials found no traces of explosives in the debris. The incident is being investigated as negligent homicide. The authorities have not said in which apartment the explosion originated or whether there are any suspects in the case.

The unofficial story: The explosion was a terrorist attack. Someone planted a bomb in one of the apartments. Sources told the website Znak.com that investigators may have discovered bomb traces. According to Komsomolskaya Pravda and Baza, the bomb was apparently detonated in Apartment 315 on the second floor, which the owner reportedly rented often to out-of-towners through a real estate listings website. According to Federal Emergency Management Agency records, there were two Tajikistani men occupying the apartment at the time of the explosion. Baza says a friend of the apartment’s owner — a woman named Antonina — gave the keys to “some Tajiks,” who supposedly brought an RDX explosive device into the apartment. The men reportedly planned to wait until New Year’s Day, but the bomb went off early by accident. Baza suspects that one of these Tajikistani men was present in the apartment at the time of the blast, accusing investigators of scrubbing his name from the list of victims.

The rub: Sources told Moskovsky Komsomolets that there were no Tajikistani men in Apartment 315. Neighbors told the newspaper that a woman living on the ninth floor planned to rent the apartment for her son on New Year’s Eve. Moskovsky Komsomolets says the explosion actually happened in Apartment 317 on the third floor (Znak.com has also attributed the blast to this floor), where a “jealous husband” may have deliberately caused a gas leak.

The minibus explosion on Karl Marx Prospect

The official story: On January 1, a minibus experienced a “gas equipment malfunction” that exploded the car and killed all three passengers. Asked under what statute the incident is being investigated, Chelyabinsk officials redirected Meduza to the Federal Investigative Committee’s central office in Moscow. We never heard back.

The unofficial story: The minibus was full of terrorists trying to evade the police, and the chase ended in a shootout that killed all three men and set their vehicle ablaze. The first news outlets to report this story were Znak.com and 74.ru, which pointed to eyewitness footage shared online that shows the minibus on fire and features a series of loud pops similar to gunshots (some viewers also claim to be able to see armed men in the video). Baza says the whole district where the minibus exploded had been sealed off by police in order to capture the suspected terrorists, and the men were trying to break through.

According to 74.ru and Baza, the vehicle’s license plate (В919ТЕ174) belonged to a certain Makhmud Dzhumaev. Baza says his body was discovered in the snow near the burned-out minibus. Sources say the remains of Alisher Kaimov and Almir Abitov were found inside the vehicle. One of these men was supposedly the one who got the keys to Apartment 315. Federal agents then raided the homes of Dzhumaev’s wife and Abitov’s mother.

The rub: Meduza’s correspondent in Magnitogorsk visited the site of the exploded minibus just two hours after the fire was first reported. The vehicle was parked near 96 Karl Marx Prospect, facing the building where Baza says Dzhumaev lived. Based on these observations, the minibus exploded while driving toward the supposed police line, not away from it.

The bomb at the “Continent” shopping center

The official story: The authorities have not commented on these reports or any other rumors concerning alleged bomb plots at malls in Magnitogorsk.

The unofficial story: On January 3, Znak.com wrote that a homeless man sifting through the trash outside the “Continent” shopping center (a little more than a mile from the collapsed apartment building) found and unintentionally defused a bomb attached to a cell phone. Baza says it was actually two men who discovered the explosive device — one of whom was named Salavat, who alerted the police and said that it appeared sometime between 10:00 p.m. on December 31 and 9:00 a.m. on January 1. Searching the phone’s call records, officials identified Dzhumaev and the minibus plate number registered in his name.

The evacuation of 91 Lenin Prospect before dawn on January 2

The official story: The authorities have not commented on the reported evacuation. Residents told Meduza that they were forced to leave their apartments without explanation. They were moved into buses, where they waited until dawn, before returning to their homes.

The unofficial story: The evacuation was part of a special operation to find and capture the terrorists responsible for blowing up 164 Karl Marx Prospect. 74.ru says neighbors living at 93 Lenin Prospect heard gunshots, and police allegedly chased a suspect inside 91/1 Lenin Prospect. According to Baza, Alisher Kaimov rented Apartment 37 at 93 Lenin Prospect, where he supposedly lived with Dzhumaev, Abitov, and “several others.” A neighbor claims the men brought home a gas cylinder, and in the evenings she could hear “sawing sounds” from the apartment.

After searching the apartment, Federal Security Service agents reportedly removed packages containing a white mixture (Baza suspects this was RDX). In the apartment, officials also supposedly found explosive devices that the terrorists planned to hide “throughout the city” on December 31. The plot fell through, however, when the accidental detonation at 164 Karl Marx Prospect put Magnitogorsk on high alert.

The rub: At the time of the evacuations, Meduza’s correspondent was directly outside 91 and 93 Lenin Prospect. Building 91 was cordoned off and residents had been moved outside, but 93 Lenin Prospect was still open. Just a few hours before federal agents supposedly discovered an apartment full of explosives, there wasn’t even a police line.

Kashin says the Kremlin is playing its unpopularity all wrong 📉

In an op-ed for Republic, columnist Oleg Kashin parses the rise of “anti-popular” rhetoric from top officials, arguing that the Kremlin mismanaged the lead-up to recent pension reforms.

Kashin’s article has two main arguments: (1) recent insensitive outbursts by figures like Rosnano head Anatoly Chubais (about cheap electricity spoiling Russians), Central Bank First Deputy Governor Sergey Shvetsov (about Russian fairy tales breeding freeloaders), and Finance Minister Anton Siluanov (expressing surprise about the backlash to raising Russia’s retirement ages) represent an “unprecedented communication failure” between the state and society, and (2) the Kremlin should sacrifice more officials below Putin by having them propose unpopular reforms, so the president can swoop in and play the populist, nine times out of ten. Specifically, Kashin thinks the Kremlin’s underlings should advocate unpopular policies without insulting the public and perpetuating rhetoric that makes the state seem heartless.

Kashin says pension reform was a watershed moment in the Putin era that ended the regime’s promise of “sausage in exchange for freedom,” becoming the first time since Russia’s Yeltsin years that the state “took conscious steps that worsened citizens’ lives,” arguably killing the myth that Russians can have it all under Putin.

Thirty wooden figures ☦️

Mike Vilchuk / Manege

Thirty wooden figures rest in central St. Petersburg’s famed Manege exhibition hall with various expressions of suffering on their faces. Most of them depict Christ: he sits with his cheek resting against his hand, blood smeared on his face below a crown of thorns. These, however, are no ordinary Christ figures, and not only because many are displayed with a neon halo suspended behind their heads. The Manege’s “Christ in the Dungeon” exhibit combines a little-known genre in the history of religious art with a fully immersive contemporary installation. This is the first Russian exhibit to display a large group of wooden religious sculptures in one place, and it brings together dozens of rarely seen works from 14 regional museums.

Semyon Mikhailovsky, the exhibit’s curator, is also the rector of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts and the Commissioner of Russia’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale. He first encountered the wooden Christ figures of Russia’s provinces on the cover of a book he received as a child. In a written statement, Mikhailovsky described the profound effect the images had on him even then. “I was surprised by the Savior’s unusual posture, the strange gesture and the face with intense features, especially wide Asian cheekbones,” he said. Later, Mikhailovsky was compelled to see the sculptures for himself. “When I saw them in reality, I was stunned. I was struck by the corporality and physicality of the figures: bones, muscles, skin folds, even blood stains, and particularly the faces that express so much suffering, humility and sacrifice...”

The Russian Orthodox artistic tradition may be better known for its icons than its sculpture, but cultural commentators say that makes the Manege’s current exhibition all the more special. The St. Petersburg cultural outlet Sobaka commented that “icons speak to celestial life” while these “wooden sculptures with the facial features of people from the heart of Russia speak more easily to life on Earth.” The Village affirmed that even in the time of their creation between the 17th and 19th centuries, these sculptures stood out because they all depict a particularly human moment in the Christ narrative. “Christ in the Dungeon” or “the Midnight Savior” waits, imprisoned, for his captors to take him to the Golgotha to be crucified.

When the opportunity arose for Mikhailovsky to display a collection of Midnight Savior sculptures in the Manege, he teamed up with architect Anton Gorlanov and designer Anna Druzhinina. Together, they fought for permission to display the figures without a barrier that would distance them from viewers and to transform the Manege’s exhibition space into a full-blown installation complete with light and sound. Now, the exhibition hall is a dark labyrinth of fencing that symbolizes the biblical dungeon. Noise-absorbing walls reflect moving projections of rural woods, and ambient sound completes the atmosphere. The neon halos add a contemporary touch.

The sculptures and their anonymous makers bring multiple centuries of Russian history to the Manege. In 1722, the Holy Synod issued a prohibition against solid religious figures due to their similarity to pagan idols. While churches in larger cities began destroying their sculptures, provincial ones, most famously in Perm, were more likely to preserve theirs. The Synod’s fears were not entirely unfounded: The Village reported that while some sculptors were likely trained on Greek and Gothic European models, others were entirely untrained and worked their craft with inspiration from retellings of the Gospel and pagan artistic traditions. In the Soviet era, the Midnight Savior sculptures saw a wave of conservation efforts because state representatives viewed them as symbols of common people oppressed by religion. Now, they are available for the first time for visitors to experience as both religious and artistic objects.

News briefs 📰

Read it elsewhere

  • “President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.” (BuzzFeed News)
  • “A move to block sanctions relief has been defeated, averting a likely spike in global aluminum prices but also spotlighting the tough road ahead for Congress in shaping policy on Russia.” (Stephen Sestanovich in The Council on Foreign Relations)
  • “Regime change has gone digital. [...] The Internet is the playground of criminals and terrorists. [...] The Internet fosters moral decadence. [...] As the United States confronts its own cyber insecurity, it’s not alone; Moscow is just as cyber-phobic.” (Lincoln Pigman in The Washington Post)

Yours, Meduza

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