The Real Russia. Today. A new podcast episode about Moldova’s new prez, plus Kynev dissects the Power Vertical’s damage to Russia’s governors

Monday, November 30, 2020

• Fake quote attributed to future U.S. Secretary of State spreads from Wikipedia to the Russian media
• Prosecutors pull Hitler stamps off the shelves in Russia’s Oryol region
• Journalists ask Kremlin spokesman to explain why Putin isn’t social distancing during the pandemic
• Photo: Hundreds arrested across Belarus as Sunday opposition protests continue
• Putin calls out officials in Siberia for removing their hats in sub-zero weather
• New podcast episode: Maia Sandu’s win and what it means for Moldova
• Opinion and analysis: Kynev weighs the Power Vertical’s democratic damage, Mikirtumov philosophizes that Russians subsist on ‘imperial pleasures,’ and Proekt deciphers the essence of Putinism
• News briefs: the crucifixion guy again, a penny for your tortured thoughts, secrets for solo-citizens only, and partial condemnation of the Novichok attack on Navalny

Feature stories

💬 Unreliable sources

Before U.S. President-elect Joe Biden formally announced Antony Blinken as his pick for Secretary of State, an anonymous Wikipedia editor took it upon himself to modify Blinken’s Wikipedia page. The editor beefed up the section on his attitude towards Russia and its President Vladimir Putin, throwing in a quote attributed to Blinken for good measure. The quote was quickly picked up by Russian and Ukrainian media and it spread across social networking sites. As it turns out, however, Antony Blinken never actually spoke those words.

✉️ Hitler kaput

Prosecutors in Russia’s western Oryol region have managed to get postage stamps featuring a portrait of Nazi Germany’s leader Adolf Hitler withdrawn from sale. According to the head of the Karelia-based community organization that printed the stamps, they were meant to underscore the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Local state prosecutors, on the other hand, concluded that the stamps violate Russia’s federal law banning the use of Nazi symbols.

🤝 Controlled interaction

During a press conference on Friday, November 27, journalists asked Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov why, in the midst of a global pandemic and a spike in coronavirus cases across Russia, footage has aired of President Vladimir Putin walking around without a mask and even shaking hands with people. Here’s what Putin’s press secretary had to say.

👮 Hundreds arrested across Belarus as Sunday opposition protests continue

Law enforcement officers arrested more than 300 people across Belarus on November 29, during the country’s most recent Sunday opposition demonstration, dubbed the “March of Neighbors.” According to the Vyasna (Spring) Human Rights Center, the majority of the arrests took place in Minsk. Police officials in the Belarusian capital reported roughly 250 arrests. Protests against the official results of the 2020 presidential elections, which saw Alexander Lukashenko remain president for a sixth consecutive term, began in Belarus on August 9. Ever since, opposition demonstrators have traditionally held their largest protests on Sundays.

🥶 ‘Seriously, get dressed’

Vladimir Putin got after a group of officials in Siberia for removing their hoods and hats while on a teleconference with him on Sunday, November 29. The officials were standing outside in sub-zero weather, and they kept their heads uncovered for the duration of the meeting despite the cold and the president’s urging to keep warm.

“The Naked Pravda”: Moldova’s new president 🎧

On November 15, Moldovan citizens at home and abroad came out in record-breaking numbers to cast their ballots in the run-off vote of the country’s 2020 presidential elections. In the end, former Prime Minister Maia Sandu defeated incumbent President Igor Dodon, becoming Moldova’s very first woman president-elect. For the election’s bankstory and to find out what we can expect from Maia Sandu during her presidency, “The Naked Pravda” spoke to four experts on Moldova about the country’s socio-political landscape, the 2020 vote, and the future of Chisinau’s foreign policy: Gina Lentine, Alina Radu, Ana Indoitu, and Ellie Knott.

• “The Naked Pravda” comes out on Saturdays (or sometimes Fridays). Catch every new episode by subscribing at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or other platforms. If you have a question or comment about the show, please write to Kevin Rothrock at [email protected] with the subject line: “The Naked Pravda.”

Opinion and analysis

👑 Castrated by the Power Vertical

In an op-ed for VTimes, political expert Alexander Kynev says the Kremlin expanded its power vertical nationally under Putin to weaken nepotism and corruption in regional governments at the expense of democratic accountability and local initiatives. Today, the Kremlin not only handpicks the country’s governors (who eventually cruise through carefully managed elections), but these officials have little freedom over their own administrations. As a result, governors are held publicly responsible for policies designed and implemented by the federal government.

In the 1990s, governors ruled like mafia bosses, co-opting rivals whenever possible to build informal networks that eroded the rule of law. By contrast, today’s so-called “young technocrats” (whose real defining characteristic isn’t their age or governing philosophy but the fact that they parachute into regions without ever establishing local roots) don’t share power with anyone and seek only to crush all opponents.

Kynev acknowledges that Russia’s new technocracy has some advantages, but he stresses that technocrats typically flounder in a crisis because they cannot reliably draw support from local elites or the public itself. Even the governors have little incentive to stray from Moscow’s instructions by responding to grassroots needs. In other words, Russia’s technocracy is a recipe for stagnation. 

To prevent the return of the regional autocrats and plutocrats of the 1990s, Kynev says the federal government ought to invest instead in democratic procedures and checks and balances that hold officials accountable to their constituents and before the law. Unfortunately, Russian officials are too worried about losing their heads today to think about the country’s future, Kynev says.

💉 A social contract shattered by Sputnik V

In an op-ed for Republic, philosopher Ivan Mikirtumov argues that a kind of imperialist schadenfreude underpins Russians’ loyalty to the Kremlin. In a long and winding text, he argues that the regime draws on the public’s belief that somebody else out there (subalterns of all stripes, both foreign and domestic) is being somehow exploited or humiliated to sustain their own well-being. Moscow’s plans to share its coronavirus vaccine with the world, however, shatter this social contract, says Mikirtumov, who also claims that Russians delighted in the “imperial pleasures” of withholding more substantial aid to Armenia in its recent war with Azerbaijan. 

🙈 The Putin regime’s real purpose

Building on its recent investigative reports about how members of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle have amassed large fortunes, the website Proekt argues in an editorial that the Putin regime’s central fixation is to hide and obfuscate its illicit, illegitimate past and present with whatever high-minded rhetoric is available in any given moment, whether it’s state paternalism or Soviet revanchism. Putinism is most of all a costly cover-up, says Proekt, to conceal the luxuries bestowed on the president’s lovers, the billions of dollars amassed by his friends and relatives, and the entire Putin clique’s close ties to bonafide violent criminals in Russia’s turbulent 1990s.

Other news in brief

• 🤕 Whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar! Two strangers attacked Russian activist Pavel Krisevich at the railway station in Tver. Krisevich is the guy who “crucified” himself outside the FSB’s headquarters on November 5 to protest against political persecution.
• ⚖️ Take your pennies and go. A court in St. Petersburg has awarded a teenager about $650 in compensation for being tortured by police officers. The victim had sued for 50 time more money.
• 🛂 Patriots only. Vladimir Putin has submitted a draft law to the State Duma that would ban any state officials and military personnel with access to state secrets from acquiring foreign citizenship.
• 🧪 Twenty-nine percent of everybody. Fifty-six of the 193 countries belonging to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have condemned the “Novichok” nerve agent poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny.

🛰️ This day in history: 56 years ago today, on November 30, 1964, the USSR launched the “Zond 2” probe — Moscow’s sixth spacecraft to attempt a flyby of Mars. Communications were lost with the probe in May 1965, but its trajectory presumably took it within 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) of Mars on August 6, 1965.