The Real Russia. Today. How the Russian news media links migrants to violent crime

Tuesday, November 23, 2021

• International news: Shoigu claims nuclear drills at Russia’s doorstep, and Patrushev comments on refugees in Belarus
• Opinions on Russia, Ukraine, and the West from Kadri Liik, Tatiana Stanovaya, and Simon Saradzhyan
• Draft legislation on QR-code vaccine passports has caused a split in the Russian Cabinet — and the Kremlin isn’t too keen on it either
• Public policy: Putin’s stalled transportation reforms, and executions for vaccine dodgers in Ryazan
• Study finds that Russia’s pro-Kremlin media is more likely than ‘foreign agent’ news outlets to associate migrants with violent crime
• Law and order: blocking iStories, acquitting a Jehovah’s Witness but seeking prison for others, Safronov’s second lawyer flees Russia, Sachkov begs Putin to go home, and an environmentalist is attacked in Siberia

International

• ☢️ Defense minister says U.S. bombers are practicing nuclear strike against Russia (Sergey Shoigu shared this information during a meeting with his Chinese counterpart. Shoigu reiterated to reporters that Moscow’s “strategic partnership” with Bejing is especially important given the “increasing geopolitical turbulence and rising conflict potential in different parts of the world.”)
• 🛂 National Security Council secretary says West flooded Belarus with migrants after failing to unseat Lukashenko from power (Nikolai Patrushev told Argumenty & Fakty that Western military interventions turned Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Syria into refugee crises. Then he claimed that the migrants now assembling at the Belarusian-Polish border are “the result of external pressure on Belarus.” Patrushev also includes Ukraine on the list of states ruined by Western meddling, and he warns that “millions of Ukrainians” could spill over the borders “at any moment.”)
• 🧠 Opinion: European Council on Foreign Relations senior policy fellow Kadri Liik says Putin ‘isn’t trying to bring down the West’ (Liik argues that mutual misinterpretations of intentions drive most of the current conflict between Russia and the West, nurturing visions of “outdated motives” and “conspiracy where there might be chaos.” Russian foreign policy is now a panicked “experimental” response to a multipolar new world order that doesn’t suit Moscow’s interests as well as the Kremlin once hoped. Ukraine is the exception in all this, and Russian fears about Washington transforming the nation into a military base or encouraging Kyiv to retake the Donbas by force, mixed with the Kremlin’s “high emotions and unrealistic expectations,” make the conflict a “genuine cause for alarm.” “That makes the correct reading of intentions even more crucial,” she concludes.)
• 🧠 Opinion: political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya says the Kremlin is potentially ready to ‘secure the situation’ in Ukraine militarily even without any pretext (She says Putin is being fed intelligence that suggests Kyiv might stage a violent provocation to try to retake Donbas territory. The Donbas itself, however, is of little importance to Russia; the territory matters as a tool to affect Ukrainian foreign policy, but it’s losing potency here, hence Moscow’s panic.)
• 🧠 Opinion: Russia Matters founding director Simon Saradzhyan says Putin’s potential meetings with Biden will determine whether Russia formally invades Ukraine next year (He argues that Putin’s troop deployment decision-making is rational, not emotional, and depends on three conditions: a clear, acute threat to Russian national interests, reasonable hopes of success, and exhausted non-military options. “Only Condition 3 is absent for now.” If Russia does invade, costs in blood and treasure will likely prevent Moscow from doing more than marginally expanding separatist territories — the minimum needed to “send a strong signal” that Kyiv and the West “need to accommodate Russia’s desire for guarantees of a neutral Ukraine.”)

Public policy

🛂 QR-code vaccine passports: ‘Nurses’ vs. the ‘economists’ (5-min read)

In mid-November, the State Duma received a package of bills that would require Russians to present QR-code vaccine passports in order to take flights and trains, and access public events, stores, cafes, and restaurants. The two draft laws were submitted by the Russian Cabinet and had the potential to enter force as soon as February 1, 2022. Now, all these plans have stalled — as it turns out, the legislation won’t go to the Duma floor for a vote for another month. Meduza sheds light on the high-level tensions behind this delay.

More in public-policy news

• 🚍 Putin’s ambitious plan to develop public transportation in Russia’s regions stalls (despite the president’s approval, a mix of opposition from inflation-worried Finance Ministry liberals and the regions’ own bureacratic unpreparedness is delaying the allocation of the funds needed to beef up the nation’s fleet of buses)
• 💉 Regional lawmaker in Ryazan says Russians who buy forged vaccine certificates should be executed, and he will pull the trigger himself (he later explained his outburst as an emotional response to his wife’s death from COVID-19)

Law and order

🧕 News media patterns: Inciting xenophobia (2-min read)

A new joint investigation by iStories and Novaya Gazeta assesses allegations that “foreign agent” media outlets are responsible for “deliberately criminalizing” migrants in news coverage. In late September, a senior police official leveled this accusation, implying that foreign funding fuels popular mischaracterizations of Russia’s migrant community. To test this theory, iStories and Novaya Gazeta used neural network analysis to map the sentiments most often attributed to migrants in news reports over the past two years by Telegram’s most popular pro-government channels (Karaulny, RT, Readovka, Solovyov, Mash, RIA Novosti, and Lenta) and “foreign agent” channels (Meduza, Dozhd, and Mediazona). The evidence contradicts the Interior Ministry’s claims.

• 👮 Russian censor threatens to block iStories over joint investigation with outlawed Proekt (iStories has already unpublished the report, which was about Rostec CEO Sergey Chemezov’s connections in the waste removal industry)
• ⚖️ Court in Vladivostok hands down first-ever acquittal to a Jehovah’s Witness charged with extremism (this follows a Supreme Court ruling establishing that joint worship practiced by Jehovah’s Witnesses “does not constitute a crime” and should not be considered extremist activity)
• ⚖️ Prosecutors in Seversk seek long prison sentences for Jehovah’s Witness charged with extremism (how the judge rules should indicate if the acquittal in Vladivostok was a fluke or a sign of what’s to come)
• 👮 Second lawyer for journalist charged with treason is forced into exile (Evgeny Smirnov joins Ivan Pavlov in Georgia. Both human rights attorneys defended Ivan Safronov, who’s been in remand prison since July 2020, awaiting trial for allegedly leaking national security secrets to Czech intelligence. Smirnov faces a disciplinary case based on a complaint filed by the FSB.)
• ⚖️ Cybersecurity executive Ilya Sachkov, now jailed on treason charges, appeals to Putin, asking to be transferred to house arrest (He compares his case to the Dreyfus affair, when a French artillery officer of Jewish descent was falsely convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for sharing military secrets with the Germans. Sachkov’s case is classified, and the nature of his supposed treason remains unverified.)
• ⚒️ Three men beat up environmentalist activist in southwestern Siberia (Sergey Sheremetiev, who leads a campaign against local coal mining, says his assailants ordered him to stop posting things online and threatened him with arson. A former regional lawmaker may have accompanied the attackers.)