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The Real Russia. Today. A very long wait in Vladivostok

Source: Meduza

Thursday, April 8, 2021

  • Vladivostok family receives apartment after nearly 50 years on social housing waitlist
  • Open source analysts trace Russian troops to an army camp in the Voronezh region — on the border with government-controlled Ukrainian territory
  • Ukraine says it will no longer visit Minsk for peace talks. Is this another sign of future conflict?
  • News briefs: Navalny, Ukraine, a governor’s pivot, and those rotten, no good Slovakians

Feature stories

⌛ Waiting since 1972 (515 words)

In 1972, Elena Safonova’s parents moved into a barrack in Russia’s far-eastern city of Vladivostok. They applied for social housing and were put on a waitlist, where they remained for the rest of their lives. At one point, six Safonov family members were living in that same barrack. Though Elena’s parents have since passed away, she continued the family’s fight for social housing. On April 7, a Vladivostok court satisfied a claim from municipal prosecutors, who had confirmed that the Safonov family had been waiting for adequate housing for nearly 50 years.

🛡️ ‘More offensive than defensive’ (550 words)

Russian troops are concentrating in a new army camp in the Voronezh region, reports the Moscow-based Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT). Based on open source analysis, CIT determined that Russian forces are setting up camp about 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Ukraine — in an area that borders territory controlled by Kyiv, not the self-proclaimed people’s republics. While CIT describes this position as “more offensive than defensive,” its analysts still believe that this “threatening” deployment may very well be an effort to ratchet up the pressure on Kyiv and Washington.

🕊️ Goodbye, Minsk (1,000 words)

Kyiv will no longer be sending its delegation to Minsk for negotiations within the framework of the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine (TCG). The reason? “Belarus today is under the influence of Russia and Kyiv has no trust in this territory.” This was announced by Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Reznikov on Monday, April 5 — his pronouncement came against the backdrop of an ongoing escalation of the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Meduza spoke with sources close to the Ukrainian leadership to find out whether these statements could threaten the entire negotiation process.

News briefs

🎂 Tomorrow in history: 83 years ago tomorrow, on April 9, 1938, Viktor Chernomyrdin was born outside Orenburg. Russia’s former prime minister and one-time (very briefly) acting president, Chernomyrdin died in 2010 at the age of 72. Chernomyrdin was known in Russia and Russian-speaking countries for his language style, which contained many memorable malapropisms, aphorisms, and idioms.

Yours, Meduza