The Real Russia. Today. The Patriarch’s lands, an audit in Omsk, and America kaput

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

• New Proekt investigation uncovers millions of dollars in real estate belonging to Patriarch Kirill and his family members
• Khabarovsk’s acting governor on local protests, his predecessor, and taking inspiration from tyrants
• Omsk regional health authorities launch audit after hospitals turn away ambulances with COVID-19 patients
• Opinion and analysis: Lukyanov on international security, Petrov on the Valdai Forum, Nikonov on China’s rise and America’s decline, and Trenin on the opportunity of Russian weakness
• News briefs: gagged doctors, forbidden gay cinema, Putin throws more money at COVID, closing the Golunov-case proceedings, and Chechnya’s Muhammad initiative

Feature stories

💰 Huge tracts of land

Roughly 225 million rubles ($2.87 million) in real estate around Moscow and St. Petersburg belongs to the high priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, and two of his second cousins, according to a new investigative report by website Proekt. The Church has never initiated proceedings over the real estate owned by Patriarch Kirill and his family members, but it’s worth noting that the Patriarch has at his disposal more than 20 residences belonging to various religious organizations under the Russian Orthodox Church. The newspaper Novaya Gazeta also says he also owns a chalet in Switzerland and allegedly owns shares in various properties throughout Russia.

📅 100 days of Degtyarev

To mark his first 100 days in office as Khabarovsk’s acting governor, Mikhail Degtyarev granted a lengthy interview to the website Znak.com. Among other things, he talked about the ongoing protests in the region, his predecessor Sergey Furgal, and why he looks up to Ivan the Terrible. Here’s what he said, in brief.

🚑 ‘We couldn’t get an answer anywhere else’

On Wednesday, officials in Omsk announced an internal investigation at the regional health ministry and suspended Deputy Health Minister Anastasia Malova for the duration of the audit. This decision came after multiple ambulances brought COVID-19 patients to the health ministry building in Omsk a day earlier after all the city’s hospitals stopped admitting new patients.

Opinion and analysis

🕊️ Don’t waste your breath, Moscow

In an op-ed for Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Council on Foreign and Defense Policy chairman Fyodor Lukyanov complains that no major power but Russia currently demonstrates any willingness to negotiate on international security. While he acknowledges that China “acts like it has no role here,” Lukyanov spends most of the article arguing that “deep paranoia” in the U.S. about all Russian diplomatic initiatives prevents any progress (though he says the Republicans’ aversion to nearly any military limitations is also key). 

Lukyanov cites Moscow’s recent readiness to cooperate and make concessions on arms control (extending the New START treaty with some of the Trump administration’s preconditions, suspending the deployment of short- and medium-range missiles in Europe, and developing a joint cybersecurity response), which has only provoked ridicule in the U.S., where the Kremlin is now considered a fundamentally unreliable partner. Europe, meanwhile, has lost its interest in “pacifying” the Americans because it no longer fears being caught in a shooting war between Washington and Moscow, says Lukyanov.

In this atmosphere, Lukyanov says Russia is better off “saving its strength” until the world is prepared to talk again.

🎭 The Valdai Forum has become a joke

In an op-ed for VTimes, Political-Geographic Research Center director Nikolai Petrov argues that Russia’s annual Valdai Club Forum has lost its exclusivity and much of its relevance. Putin has become too toxic for many mainstream Russia experts in the West and the forum itself has started appealing more to domestic audiences and recruiting non-Western panelists from China, Iran, and Southeast Asia. Petrov even seems to imply that Putin shows some signs of cognitive decline or “semantic failure,” judging by his failure to respond coherently to two questions about relations with Germany (including a juicy softball from Alexander Rahr).

⚔️ Goodbye, America

In an article based on his Valdai Club speech, published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, State Duma deputy Vyacheslav Nikonov (the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov, incidentally) lays out the myriad reasons he believes the United States is a doomed, dysfunctional, failed state compared to the shining glory of China. Despite the next century obviously belonging to Asia, the U.S. stubbornly refuses its new “number two” status and is instead committed to the “double containment” of both China and Russia. America won the last superpower showdown, sure, but this time it’s up against too much economically, militarily, culturally, or any other way you slice it.

In arms control, Nikonov notes that Beijing won’t agree to any limitations until it’s achieved strategic parity with Washington, which is still a ways off. A long-term confrontation suits the Chinese just fine, however, given the nation’s more patient, ancient culture, which is better equipped for strategic thinking. America will try to rally an alliance against Beijing, but the other Asian states either aren’t interested (India), are too weak (Japan), or need the Chinese economy too desperately (Australia). In Europe, the U.S. will have more success unifying against Russia, but this will only chase Moscow closer to Beijing, adding strategic military strength to China’s economic ascendancy. Russia, after all, “is not inferior to America militarily.”

Even China’s political system now looks “more capable and cohesive” than the rotting corpse of the American establishment. Constitutional political institutions in the U.S. don’t even function anymore, says Nikonov, and the “Deep State” is responsible for the real decision-making (including the war against China). American society, moreover, is too polarized for a sustained foreign conflict and even the specter of a “Chinese menace” isn’t enough to reconsolidate the nation. In fact, the U.S. is far more vulnerable to interference from abroad than it is capable of destabilizing China, regardless of Western meddling in Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang.

Even Chinese higher education is catching up to America’s vaunted universities, which are often just “places where Russian professors teach Chinese students.” The United States might still have the upper hand online, thanks to the Internet’s infrastructure, but China has its own impressive cyber-arsenal. In terms of soft power and global influence, race riots and Washington’s uniquely miserable handling of the pandemic have destroyed any illusions about America as the world’s “guiding star.” Even the U.S. news media is no longer regarded “anywhere in the world” as free or fair.

America’s only options, says Nikonov, are rapprochement with China and Russia or obsolescence.

🔥 Russia’s post-Soviet weakness is really an opportunity

In an article for the Carnegie Moscow Center, director Dmitri Trenin argues that the current unrest in parts of Russia’s post-Soviet periphery should serve as a wake-up call to Moscow: the days of empire and regional hegemony are gone, but that means the Kremlin is now free to pursue diplomacy and alliances that are mutually beneficial. If Moscow finally learns this lesson, Trenin is confident that Russia could emerge safer and better liked in its own backyard.

Trenin says the protests in Belarus present an opportunity for Russia insofar as Alexander Lukashenko can no longer keep Moscow at arm’s length while vying for neutrality in Europe. His regime now has no options in the West, which gives the Kremlin more room to influence policy in Minsk and guide the future of Belarus. To expand Russian influence, Moscow will need to work more actively with Belarusian elites outside the Lukashenko administration and even with the general public, which has consolidated around demands for justice and sovereignty — two principles the Kremlin will need to accommodate. Unfortunately for Russia, it currently lacks the talent and training needed for this delicate work.

In Armenia, Trenin says the lessons of the renewed war over Nagorno-Karabakh necessitate certain “corrections” in Moscow’s relationship with Yerevan: (1) the voluntary nature of their alliance means that Russia must comply if Armenia ever wishes to jettison its Russian military base (though Trenin questions the base’s utility for Moscow, and it’s unclear why Armenia would even consider this, as it confronts both Turkey and Azerbaijan), and bilateral reciprocity dictates that Yerevan can’t expect to enjoy completely independent foreign policy if its national defense relies on a Russian bailout; (2) Russian decision-makers need to act on the knowledge that the war in Karabakh lures militants and terrorists from throughout the region, threatening the North Caucasus, as well as Abkhazia and South Ossetia; and (3) Moscow will need to negotiate with regional powers like Iran and Turkey to resolve conflicts in the Caucasus, so long as the U.S. is preoccupied and the EU is incapable of action.

Trenin says the unrest in Kyrgyzstan is the “most predictable” of all the chaos on Russia’s periphery. He doesn’t see major lessons for Moscow in President Sooronbay Jeenbekov’s ouster, though he believes recent events should remind Russia how deeply Kyrgyzstan’s elites are entangled in drug trafficking from Afghanistan. In its future relations with Bishkek (particularly when it comes to determining Russian economic aid), the Kremlin should stress the importance of settling disputes among elites and cracking down on illegal narcotics, says Trenin.

Other news in brief

• 🤐 Shut your mouth, doc. Russia’s Health Ministry has ordered head physicians and medical institutions under its jurisdiction to coordinate any public comments about the coronavirus with the ministry. On October 26, medical workers in Kurgan appealed openly to President Putin, asking for military aid to assist overwhelmed local hospitals in the fight against COVID-19.
• 🏳️‍🌈 Think of the children! A court in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug fined a former film festival director for violating Russia’s “gay propaganda law” by screening Ksenia Ratushnaya’s film “Outlaw,” which features a gay main character.
• 💰 Mo’ money. During a government meeting on Wednesday, Vladimir Putin allocated another 10 billion rubles ($127 million) to regional officials to help fight the spread of COVID-19.
• ⚖️ Prying eyes. State prosecutors are asking to close the trial of the police officers accused of staging Meduza correspondent Ivan Golunov’s false arrest to both the media and the public.
• ☪️ In His name, from their wallets. Chechnya’s Akhmat Kadyrov Foundation is offering 100,000 rubles ($1,265) to each family that names children born on the night of October 29 after the Islamic Prophet Muhammad or his family members. The announcement follows the Chechen leadership’s spat with France over a French history teacher who was murdered after a lecture on free speech that featured Muhammad cartoons.

💥 This day in history: 64 years ago today, on October 28, 1956, a de facto ceasefire came into effect in Hungary between armed revolutionaries and Soviet troops, who began to withdraw from Budapest. Over the next few days, according to Communist sources, more than 200 Hungarian Working People’s Party members were lynched or executed. On November 4, a larger Soviet force returned and soon crushed the revolution.