The Real Russia. Today. A week after the Karabakh truce, plus the strategic challenges ahead in the South Caucasus and Putin’s double standards on sovereignty

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

• How Russian rock and hip-hop have shaped society’s relationship with law enforcement
• A quick guide to the latest developments in the aftermath of the six-week war in Nagorno-Karabakh
• Opposition neighborhood in Minsk marks third day without running water
• Volunteers from Russia’s coronavirus vaccine trials are conducting their own studies of its effectiveness
• Opinion and analysis: Prokofiev skewers Russia’s elites, Kortunov enumerates the strategic challenges in Karabakh, Shulika bemoans a loss of leadership, and Stanovaya calls out Putin’s double standards
• News briefs: foreign-agent candidates, presidential immunity, Svetlana Prokopyeva catches a break, and Putin’s next two terms come into focus

Feature stories

👮 From ‘police’ to ‘cops’ to ‘trash’

Police officers play a prominent role in modern Russian music across genres, from Soviet chansons to present-day avant-garde pop. But who are they? Just regular guys? Reluctant cogs in a corrupt machine? Or real enemies? Artem Rondarev, a professor at the Higher School of Economics, discusses how the police have been depicted in Russian music over the years.

🛡️ After the truce

One week has passed since Yerevan and Baku announced the ceasefire that ended six-weeks of deadly conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Since then, Russian peacekeepers have entered the region and Azerbaijan is preparing to take control of nearly half of its territory on December 1. Meanwhile, in Armenia, protests are continuing over the truce, which is widely perceived as a capitulation, and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is facing increasing pressure to resign. Meduza breaks down the latest developments since the signing of the Nagorno-Karabakh truce on November 10.

🚰 Thirsting for democracy

The Novaya Borovaya neighborhood in north-east Minsk, home to about 15,000 people, has been without running water for three days straight. The authorities say they are working on restoring the water supply, but many local residents believe the utilities services are sabotaging the repairs as punishment for the strong support for the Belarusian opposition among residents in the neighborhood — 90 percent of whom voted for Alexander Lukashenko’s rival, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, during this year’s presidential election.

🔬 Searching for antibodies

On August 11, Russia announced the registration of the world’s first coronavirus vaccine, dubbed “Sputnik V.” That said, studies of its effectiveness are not yet complete: there are more than 40,000 volunteers taking part in the ongoing Phase III clinical trials, 75 percent of whom received the vaccine while the rest were given a placebo. Official data on the study has yet to be released, but some of the volunteers are already sharing their experiences and test results in a Telegram chat group created specially for this purpose. This information is serving as the basis for “amateur studies” of the vaccine; determining its side effects, monitoring antibody levels, and figuring out who got the placebo and who was given the actual shot. To find out more, Meduza talks to the chat group’s creator, Vladimir Rusetsky — a programmer from Omsk who volunteered for Russia’s coronavirus vaccine trial together with his wife.

Opinion and analysis

👑 Russia’s lowdown, dirty, predatory elites

On November 17, the newspaper Novaya Gazeta released a report by Alexandra Dzhordzhevich and Vladimir Prokushev cataloging how many prominent members of Russia’s political and state corporate elite have managed to install their children in similarly fancy positions. Dzhordzhevich and Prokushev look at 10 individuals who have pulled this off: “Almaz-Antey” chairman Mikhail Fradkov, Putin classmate and Seychelles honorary consul Victor Khmarin, Federal Financial Monitoring Service director Yuri Chikhanchin, former Kremlin chief of staff Sergey Ivanov, Security Council Secretary and former Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev, Senator Elena Mizulina, Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Trutnev, Federation Council Chairwoman Valentina Matviyenko, former Federal Protective Service director Evgeny Murov, real estate appraiser and big-time government contractor Alexey Shaskolsky, and state company “Goznak” director Arkady Trachuk.

In an op-ed complementing this research, columnist Dmitry Prokofiev blames Russia’s economic stagnation and rising social inequality on its “predatory” elites, arguing that upward mobility threatens the country’s rulers, which is why the government doesn’t encourage a stronger middle class. To support this point, Prokofiev even cites a 2006 policy essay by current First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov warning that a stronger middle class would be a national security risk because it would drive Russians to demand better wages and higher quality goods beyond the existing economy’s capacity.

Prokofiev says the Russian elite has “completed its formation” and begun “stable reproduction,” fueling an endless reshuffling of senior officials and nepotistic hirings and promotions — all out of sight from the public. In other circumstances, this personnel stability might be the consequence of a more professional civil service, Prokofiev acknowledges, but he says even an uncorrupted meritocracy quickly degrades without the check of public political competition.

🛡️ A tactical triumph in Karabakh with a few strategic stipulations

In a new article, Russian International Affairs Council director-general Andrey Kortunov offers the Kremlin a pat on the back for its tactical gains in Nagorno-Karabakh, before enumerating six strategic challenges born in the trilateral settlement with Armenia and Azerbaijan: 

(1) Russia’s peacekeeping mission will be a costly and difficult balancing act amid likely provocations that could include terrorist attacks; (2) Moscow has taken the one post-Soviet conflict where its interests overlap with the West and proceeded alone, shouldering the costs and any blame for problems ahead; (3) despite all the talk of partnership with Turkey, Ankara’s growing regional role represents an undeniable challenge to Russia; (4) it’s going to take a lot to repair Russia’s seriously damaged alliance with Armenia; (5) the Karabakh war’s irregular nature (with all its undeclared, informal combatants) shows how unprepared existing conventions are when it comes to regulating and mitigating modern warfare; and (6) the truce revives military force as a potential solution to frozen conflicts in the former USSR. 

On this last point, Kortunov echoes a recent op-ed by Leonid Bershidsky, adding that the Karabakh conflict may be unique, meaning that its lessons don’t apply in other wars, but he says there will always be hotьheaded people who want to try anyway.

From the depths of social media

• 🕊️ Blogger and columnist Kirill Shulika is furious that Russia’s Foreign Ministry is busy talking about the coronavirus pandemic while Moscow’s leadership throughout the former USSR is crumbling. Even during the 1990s, Shulika claims, Russia was the ruling regional power, but the Putin regime, he says, has lost its favor and influence in Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, and the South Caucasus (where “Turkish flags now fly”). 
• 🕊️ Commenting on Putin’s November 17 interview about the Karabakh conflict, political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya says Putin’s recognition of Azerbaijani sovereignty (e.g., Baku can choose its own allies and reclaim its own territory) stands out against Moscow’s refusal to extend such privileges to Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. The difference, she says, is that Azerbaijan’s ambitions don’t threaten Russian interests, and Turkey is a partner, not an adversary. Stanovaya says she’s increasingly convinced that the Kremlin tailored its Karabakh policy in order to “flog” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan for courting the West.

Other news in brief

• 🗳️ Designated candidates. The Federation Council’s Commission on Protecting State Sovereignty has proposed a draft law that would make it possible for the federal government to label certain election candidates as “foreign agents.”
• ⚖️ The untouchables. State Duma deputies have approved a bill on expanding immunity for former Russian presidents in its first reading.
• ⚖️ She’s suffered enough. A court in Pskov upheld a lower court’s decision to throw out a defamation lawsuit against journalist Svetlana Prokopyeva brought by a linguist who contributed expertise to allegations that Prokopyeva justified terrorism. (Prokopyeva subsequently accused the linguist of unethical behavior.)
• 🗳️ And now for the endgame. Lawmakers have introduced draft legislation codifying the most controversial piece of Russia’s recent constitutional amendments: reforms that would allow Vladimir Putin to seek another two terms in office.

💔 This day in history: 117 years ago today, on November 17, 1903, the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party split into two groups: the Bolsheviks (Russian for “majority”) and Mensheviks (Russian for “minority”). Confusingly, the Mensheviks were actually the larger faction, but it’s all about branding, folks.