The Real Russia. Today. Russia's risks in Venezuela, the latest Internet crackdown legislation moves forward, Deripaska's escort may have been with the FSB

Thursday, January 24, 2019

This day in history (41 years ago): On January 24, 1978, the “Kosmos 954” Soviet satellite reentered Earth's atmosphere after a malfunction the year prior, scattering radioactive debris over northern Canada and prompting an extensive cleanup operation known as “Operation Morning Light.”

• What does Russia stand to lose in Venezuela?
• The Russian Duma is set to outlaw ‘fake news’ and insulting the government. How is this going to work?
• RTVI digital director Ilya Klishin thinks he knows why Russia's media space is going off script
• Columnist Oleg Kashin says Deripaska's escort was working for the FSB, and now she's a genuine political prisoner
• Navalny launches labor union to hold regional officials accountable for Putin's salary promises
• Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich sentenced to 13 years in prison

Sunk investments 🤝

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has once again slammed “progressive Western society” for flouting “international law, state sovereignty, and the principle of noninterference.” The latest catalyst for these truth bombs is the presidential crisis in Venezuela, where the U.S. and others have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the new acting leader, following protests that have already killed more than a dozen people. Moscow’s support for President Nicolás Maduro, whose landslide 2018 reelection is now in question, is no surprise, given Russia’s massive loans to Venezuela. What does the Kremlin stand to lose, if Guaidó comes to power? The website The Bell studied this question, and Meduza summarizes that report.

Money money money

Russia has spent an enormous amount of money in Venezuela to support close ties with the regimes led by Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro. According to an investigation published in August 2017 by Reuters, Moscow issued at least $17 billion in loans and credit lines between 2016 and 2017, becoming Venezuela’s “lender of last resort.” After Maduro’s most recent visit to Moscow in December 2018, he announced that Russia would invest more than $5 billion in Venezuela’s oil industry, more than $1 billion in its mining industry, and send more than 661,000 tons of grain. Perhaps fortunately for Russia, this money wasn’t released before the current presidential crisis.

The relationship has had some turbulence, however. Two years ago, Venezuela fell behind on payments for a $1-billion loan issued in 2011 to buy Russian military goods, before settling on a 10-year $3-billion deferment plan. Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA is repaying almost all its debt to Russia with oil, but these shipments aren't always on time, and Moscow has complained that Caracas never seems to fall behind schedule with its obligations to China.

By 2013, Russia's arms exporter Rosoboronexport had sold roughly $11 billion in arms to Venezuela — again mostly on credit. In 2006, the company agreed to invest $474 million in the construction of factories to build Kalashnikov weapons and ammunition, but corruption has derailed the process and these plants are still inactive, even though they were due to come online last year.

You've got a friend in me

What does Russia get in return for all this trouble? First, there’s the international publicity. In an era of sustained sanctions and attempted isolation by the West, Moscow takes the friends it can get. Chavez visited Moscow eight times between 2006 and 2013, Maduro has come four times over the past 5.5 years. First as deputy prime minister and later as Rosneft president, Igor Sechin has been the Kremlin’s point man in Venezuela, visiting Caracas once or twice a year since the mid-2000s.

Venezuela was the only major country to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia (apparently Sechin's personal negotiating feat), and Maduro’s rhetoric on Crimea has been sympathetic to Moscow (though Caracas hasn’t formally recognized Russia’s annexation).

Snarling at the Monroe Doctrine

In terms of military presence, Russia has struggled to convert its partnership with Venezuela into a meaningful alliance for its armed forces, but Russian bombers have flown to Caracas three times (in 2008, 2013, and 2018), alarming the United States and disrupting Washington's generally uncontested hegemony in the Western Hemisphere.

A national security threat?

In exchange for all the credit its coughed up, Rosneft has also acquired minority shares in five joint ventures with PDVSA. In another challenge to the United States, Rosneft also signed a deal in 2016 giving it 49.9% of the U.S.-based refiner Citgo as collateral for a $1.5 billion loan to PDVSA. If Rosneft moves to take ownership of these shares, the U.S. government could try to block the acquisition on national security grounds, leading to “a compelling standoff between Venezuela, Russia, and the U.S.,” according to Forbes.

Be respectful and don't lie, or else 🚨

On January 24, the State Duma voted to approve the first reading of two bills that place certain limits on freedom of speech in Russia. One essentially prohibits citizens from publishing unreliable news stories on the Internet while applying the same prohibition to news outlets both online and in other media. The other penalizes using the Internet to express disrespect to society, the government, the Russian state’s official symbols, the Constitution, and other sources of legal authority in a particularly obscene or irreverent way. Both bills were introduced in mid-December and will likely be modified to some degree in the amendment process that will precede their second reading. However, there is little doubt that both bills will pass in some form. In a special report, Meduza answers the following questions:

• What does “unreliable news” mean?
• What counts as socially significant information?
• How can I tell whether I’m reposting a reliable story or a fake one?
• Will people be punished for spreading fake news?
• But what was that about bad-mouthing the government?
• Could you give me a specific example of “indecent” speech?
• How will people be punished for all this?
• But they can put people in jail?
• But how do they define the difference between administrative and criminal violations?
• Don’t these bills violate Russians’ constitutional rights?
• How are Russian authorities explaining the impulse for introducing these limits on freedom of speech?

The peanut gallery

📺 Klishin says it's strange days for Russia's media

In an op-ed for Vedomosti, RTVI digital director Ilya Klishin argues that Russia’s media space is experiencing a “strange” event, as critical news coverage becomes more common and prominent public figures attack each other openly more frequently. Klishin cites several examples in a trend he says began in 2018 and is still accelerating: Rusnano head Anatoly Chubais vs. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Gazprom vs. the Chechen courts, Senator Andrey Klishas vs. RT chief editor Margarita Simonyan, insensitive outbursts by officials like Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova (about measuring poverty) and Finance Minister Anton Siluanov (about pension reform), and uncharacteristically critical coverage by the state media of utility debts, the Kuril Islands, and more.

Why has bickering and unflattering coverage returned to Russia’s airwaves? Klishin says it’s a combination of two factors: (1) the Kremlin is deliberately sacrificing lower political figures to divert some of the rising backlash to Putin’s current presidential term, and (2) politicians’ interests are diverging and state journalists sense that the Kremlin is losing its grip on the system, and both groups are adopting their own survival strategies for a future after Putin.

💄 Kashin says Rybka is a former FSB sex worker and bonafide political prisoner

In an op-ed for Republic, columnist Oleg Kashin argues that “sex trainer” Anastasia Vashukevich (“Nastya Rybka”) should be considered a political prisoner, not a tabloid sideshow. Kashin says Vashukevich’s “strange,” reckless behavior before and after Navalny's exposé indicates that she believed she was safe from reprisals by someone as rich and powerful as Oleg Deripaska. According to journalist Sergey Kanev’s source in Russia’s prostitution world, Vashukevich apparently worked with the Federal Security Service. Kashin says this means the FSB likely used her to attack Deripaska and Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Prikhodko. When the agency got what it wanted from these individuals, the FSB did what it does with any expendable resource and cut Vashukevich loose.

The prostitution case against Vashukevich in Moscow suggests that Russia’s authorities have actively turned on their former call girl, Kashin argues. Whether the motivation is “corruption” or staging a cautionary tale for potentially loose-lipped sex workers, the state is now persecuting Vashukevich, Kashin says, which makes her a political prisoner. (A day after Kashin’s article was published, Vashukevich and Alexander Kirillov were released on their own recognizance from pretrial detention in Moscow.)

Navalny wants to fight for Putin's promised salary raises ✊

Anti-Corruption activist and opposition politician Alexey Navalny is launching his own labor union for public sector workers. Navalny says his new organization will advocate the pay raises Vladimir Putin promised millions of government employees in a series of executive decrees issued in May 2012.

The president’s “May Orders” instructed the government to raise salaries for civil servants (including doctors and teachers) to between 100 and 200 percent of the average pay in their regions, but local officials often find loopholes to shortchange workers, Navalny argues. The new labor union will offer legal help to civil servants who want to sue for their missing income, and the organization will also file complaints with state regulators.

Navalny says the union is not a partisan project, assuring potential members that their personal political leanings are irrelevant to the organization’s mission of holding regional officials accountable for the president’s executive orders.

Thirteen years ⚖️

A Kyiv court has sentenced Viktor Yanukovich, the former president of Ukraine, to 13 years in prison. Yanukovich was convicted of treason and of complicity in the initiation of an aggressive war. He was acquitted of violating a statute concerning infringement on Ukrainian territorial sovereignty. The Obolonsky District Court wrote that the former president was guilty of “aiding a foreign government — specifically, the Russian government — in conducting seditious operations against Ukraine.” His sentence is set to begin from the moment of his arrest.

However, when or whether that arrest will take place is far from certain. Since 2014, Yanukovich has resided in Russia, and both his trial and his sentencing took place in absentia. Federal prosecutors in Russia have already refused a request for the Ukrainian ex-president’s expatriation, saying the charges against him are politically motivated.

According to the BBC’s Russian Service, Yanukovich’s attorneys have vowed to challenge the ruling in both Ukrainian and international court. Alexander Goroshinsky, who is one of those attorneys, reportedly called the decision “a PR stunt, an attempt at agitation designed for the current election campaigns by individual interested parties.” Presidential election campaigns are ongoing in Ukraine, with former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko leading recent polls.