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The Real Russia. Today. The cold, hard truth of investigative reporting in modern-day Russia

Source: Meduza

Thursday, April 15, 2021

  • Lyubov Sobol handed one-year suspended sentence for trespassing at the apartment of Navalny’s alleged poisoner
  • Roman Anin, whose home and newsroom were raided by federal agents last week, explains the challenges of investigative journalism in Russia today
  • Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation investigates the Russian president’s ‘most secret’ official residence
  • Don’t miss it: Novaya Gazeta’s Doxa-inspired Friday front page
  • News briefs: New U.S. sanctions, a secret deadly raid in Yekaterinburg,

Feature stories

⚖️ ‘A classic Putinist trial’ (660 words)

On Thursday, April 15, a Moscow court handed down a one-year suspended sentence to opposition figure Lyubov Sobol for trespassing on the property of Konstantin Kudryavtsev — one of the FSB agents implicated in poisoning Alexey Navalny. Kudryavtsev didn’t testify in the case and he wasn’t present during the trial; his family members, who were considered the victims in the case, testified instead. Following the verdict, Sobol declared the proceedings “a classic Putinist trial” and asserted that she plans to challenge the ruling. The opposition politician also insisted that she still plans to run in the parliamentary elections this fall.

🔎 Not everyone has what it takes (1,000 words)

Roman Anin says part of his job is knowing to expect a visit from the authorities at any moment. When federal agents showed up at his Moscow apartment last week, however, he wasn’t immediately sure why they’d come. Officials searched his home for almost seven hours, working until midnight, before questioning him for a few hours more. It was only the next day when he learned that a separate team had also raided the iStories newsroom on Friday. The searches are part of an investigation into a case of alleged privacy invasion “committed through abuse of office.” Anin is currently listed as a witness, but he believes he could face felony charges himself. The trouble stems from an investigative report Anin wrote in 2016 when he was still a reporter at the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, where he revealed that Olga Sechina (then Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin’s wife) owned one of the most expensive luxury yachts in the world. Meduza spoke to Anin about the raid on his home, why this case has suddenly returned, and what it means for other investigative journalists in Russia.

🏰 Putin’s favorite dacha (715 words)

Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (the FBK) has released a new investigation into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “most secret” official residence — a luxury lakeside mansion located near the town of Valdai. According to the report, the residence is part of a massive property that’s only partially state-owned. The FBK claims that the mansion itself is located on land that Russia’s Presidential Administrative Directorate leases from “Praym LLC” — a company allegedly belonging to Putin’s “personal banker” Yuri Kovalchuk.

Don’t miss this

✊ Tomorrow’s cover of Novaya Gazeta features a full-page photograph of the three journalists at the student journal Doxa detained earlier this week and placed under house arrest, pending felony charges for supposedly inciting young people to attend unpermitted protests. The newspaper’s cover reads, “Dictatorship’s main friend is silence. Dictatorship’s main enemy is youth.”

News briefs

🚉 Tomorrow in history: 104 years ago tomorrow, on April 16, 1917, after almost 17 years in exile, Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia, arriving by train in Petrograd and giving a speech to Bolshevik supporters condemning the Provisional Government and again calling for a continent-wide European proletarian revolution.

Yours, Meduza