The Real Russia. Today. Alexander Beglov is just the worst, Sergey Petrov is often the best, and Made-in-Russia apps

Friday, June 28, 2019

This day in history: 71 years ago, on June 28, 1948, Russian filmmaker Sergei Bodrov was born in Khabarovsk. Bodrov’s films “Prisoner of the Mountains” (1996) and “Mongol” (2007) were both nominated for Academy Awards. His son, film star Sergei Bodrov Jr., died tragically in 2002 at the age of 30.

• Meet St. Petersburg Acting Governor Alexander Beglov, who just might be the Kremlin’s worst candidate in this fall’s elections
• How Sergey Petrov went from anti-Soviet officer to market kingpin to person of interest
• Communications Ministry drafts proposal to pre-install Russian-made apps on smartphones and tablets before sale
• Stories about Russia from the Wilson Center, The New York Times Magazine, BBC Newsnight, Reuters, and The New York Times

The regime’s gaffe machine 🤐

In the fall of 2019, 16 Russian regions will hold gubernatorial elections. The strangest and most widely discussed campaign among them is taking place in St. Petersburg, where voters will select new municipal legislators and the city’s governor. In dozens of precincts, local elections are being organized in secret, and groups of muscular men have stood in line at registration offices to make sure opposition candidates can’t turn in their paperwork. Russia’s Central Election Commission has threatened to cancel St. Petersburg’s local legislative races, and even the Kremlin doesn’t seem to believe in Alexander Beglov, the regime’s candidate for governor. Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev has done his best to explain what’s going on in Russia’s cultural capital.

Read Meduza‘s report: “Meet St. Petersburg Acting Governor Alexander Beglov, who just might be the Kremlin’s worst candidate in this fall’s elections”

The entrepreneur who changed how the world sees Russia 💰

“Rolf” founder Sergey Petrov, whom police charged on June 27 with illegally withdrawing money to an offshore company, has spent his whole life fighting against “the regime” in Russia and dreaming about liberalism’s ultimate victory. After becoming a leader of the country’s auto market, he joined the parliamentary opposition and started working to develop civil society. Meduza looks back at the career of one of Russia’s most successful entrepreneurs, who has no plans to return home, while threatened with felony criminal prosecution.

Read Meduza‘s report: “How Sergey Petrov went from anti-Soviet officer to market kingpin to person of interest”

Communications Ministry drafts proposal to pre-install Russian-made apps on smartphones and tablets before sale 📱

Russia’s Communications Ministry has developed a proposal that would amend Russian communication laws to mandate the pre-installation of Russian-made apps on mobile devices sold within the country. Vedomosti received a draft of the proposal and reported that it would soon be released for public comment.

The document argues that it would provide equal access for Russian apps to the global market. The details of the plan, including the specific apps and devices involved, would be set by the Russian executive branch.

The Communications Ministry had previously rejected a similar proposal from the Federal Antitrust Service (FAS). The FAS had said Microsoft and Intel also came out against the idea of pre-installing Russian apps while the Russian companies Megafon, Mail.ru Group, and MTC supported it and Yandex said it would not have negative consequences. Such pre-installation can currently occur only on Android devices and as part of a commercial agreement.

After news of the proposal to expand pre-installation broke, a source in the Communications Ministry told TASS that the idea stemmed from internal disagreements in the Ministry and would likely not even be brought forward for consideration in the State Duma.

Read it elsewhere

• 👮 “Another Link in the Chain: The Kremlin’s Punishment of Businessmen Continues” (Maxim Trudolyubov argues that the criminal investigation into Sergey Petrov “is a reminder of the fundamental insecurity that underlies the existence of Russia’s most powerful people, both in business and in politics.”)
• 🔮 “What Does Putin Really Want?” (Sarah Topol writes, “Russia is dead set on being a global power, but what looks like grand strategy is often improvisation — amid America’s retreat. [...] Russia did not break the back of the international world order, as much as it recognized the opportunities created by American withdrawal...”)
• 🕵️ “Skripal Poisoning: Did Third Russian Suspect Command Attack?” (Bellingcat worked with BBC Newsnight on a new investigation into Denis Sergey (“Sergey Fedotov”), a GRU officer who allegedly coordinated the operation to poison Sergey Skripal with his colleagues Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga.)
• 🕵️ “Western Intelligence Hacked Yandex to Spy on Accounts” (Hackers working for Western intelligence agencies broke into Russian internet search company Yandex in late 2018, deploying a rare type of malware in an attempt to spy on user accounts, four people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.”)
• 🤳 “What It’s Like to Be a Teenager in Putin’s Russia” (Daria Navalnaya’s YouTube series gets a spotlight at The New York Times, before she moves to California and begins her undergraduate education at Stanford University.)