The Real Russia. Today. With tech tycoon’s extradition, the U.S. reportedly lands its ‘highest-level Kremlin insider in recent memory’

Monday, January 3, 2022

• International: (opinion) Leonid Radzikhovsky says there’s no way Putin will invade Ukraine, (opinion) Anne Applebaum says Putin’s endgame has always been to invade Ukraine, Bloomberg says Vladislav Klyushin could provide U.S. with documents on DNC hack and the Skripals’ poisoning, Ukrainian journalist Roman Tsymbaliuk flees Moscow after 13 years, and (opinion) Alexey Makarkin explains why Finlandization wasn’t so hot for the Finns
• Law and order: Holod Media investigates how Russia introduced stricter libel laws in response to the #MeToo movement, Putin dismisses a senior investigator with a heckuva résumé, and Team Navalny says the hotel security team was swapped out in Tomsk two days before Navalny’s poisoning
• Society: Moscow is spending a boatload to restore a Stalin mural, and comedians tell Mediazona about their profession’s growing pains

International

🤡 (Opinion) Putin is more Chaplin’s Great Dictator than Hitler

In an essay for The Insider, columnist Leonid Radzikhovsky rejects speculation that Vladimir Putin intends to invade Ukraine, arguing that the Russian president is only interested in drumming up international attention. The value of human life has changed too dramatically since the 1930s, says Radzikhovsky, to justify the deaths that would result from a full invasion.

As evidence, he argues that the economy-stopping lockdowns of the coronavirus pandemic were not implemented during the Spanish Flu, when lives were less valued. World War II began within six years of Hitler’s rise to power, while Putin has led Russia for more than two decades without such adventurism, Radzikhovsky says. But Putin is getting what he wants: the American media is begging him for interviews, and Russia’s “geopolitical show” is inflating the Kremlin’s international importance.

🚨 (Opinion) ‘Alarm bells’ about Russia are finally ringing louder in Washington than Kyiv

In an article for The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum argues that Western “operational” and “strategic” intelligence has caught up to the practical awareness in Ukraine about Russian aggression. Unfortunately for Kyiv, she explains, the Americans and Europeans still entertain unrealistic hopes for a diplomatic or sanctions-based solution, rejecting the Ukrainians’ learned understanding that “their conflict with Russia will involve [more] violence.” “Deterrence works,” says Applebaum, lamenting that Washington waited too long to begin arming Ukraine against further Russian invasion (“Obama never took Russia seriously” and “Trump was on Putin’s side in the global contest between autocracy and democracy”).

“Seen from Kyiv,” writes Applebaum, “the Western attitude toward Russia also looks incredibly naïve.” This is because Putin’s “endgame is always the same: reinforce his autocracy, undermine democracies — all democracies — and push Russian influence as far as it will go.” The Kremlin’s aim, she argues, is to “remove American influence from Europe and everywhere else, forever.”

Applebaum describes the Kremlin’s diplomatic messaging as “nonsensical posturing” designed to justify invasions “of Ukraine or the Baltic states, or who knows where else, sometime in the future.” Focusing on Vladimir Putin’s personal motivations, Applebaum describes Russian decision-making as “emotional” (“not strategic”) and “also ideological.” She says Ukrainian democracy and prosperity are “personally intolerable” to Putin and would undermine his own regime in Russia by leading Russians to “envy their Ukrainian neighbors.”

⚖️ Bloomberg says U.S. officials were just handed ‘highest-level Kremlin insider in recent memory’ (journalists say Russian tech tycoon Vladislav Klyushin could have access to documents relating to the DNC hacking and the assassination attempt on the Skirpals)

🛫 Ukrainian journalist leaves Russia after 13 years, following ‘personal safety threats’ (Moscow prosecutors summoned Roman Tsymbaliuk for questioning in early December on suspicion of inciting hatred against Russians and the Russian authorities, though officials soon dropped the inquiry. Back in Ukraine, Tsymbaliuk said he has no plans to return to Russia because he doesn’t wish to “become the Kremlin’s hostage.”)

⛔ (Opinion) Alexey Makarkin says Finland’s insistence on right to join NATO is meant to signal rejection of any restoration of Soviet foreign policy norms (The recent talk of “Finlandization” as a solution to Russia’s problems with Ukrainian sovereignty provokes bad memories in Helsinki about Soviet-era domestic interference and obstacles to Marshall Plan assistance and joining the European Economic Community.)

Law and order

⚖️ Russia’s response to #MeToo: Stricter libel laws?

Studying the case numbers in Russia involving defamation lawsuits and allegations related to sexual assault, journalists at Holod Media explore how Russian lawmakers responded (at least in part) to the global #MeToo movement by “radically tightening” libel laws. Holod’s report begins with the story of Mikhail Umanets, a man in the Komi Republic who attacked a woman in public and got off with a small fine but landed in prison for calling a woman a “cheap escort” in posts on social media. Umanets’s sentence made him the first person in a decade to be sent to prison in Russia for libel. His criminal record helped facilitate the judge’s ruling, but the new legislation adopted by the State Duma played the “deciding role,” says Holod.

The decision to decriminalize libel by reducing it to a misdemeanor was a short-lived liberal reform instituted in the twilight of Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency. Within a few months of Putin’s re-election as head of state, libel became a crime again, albeit without prison penalties. In December 2020, however, lawmakers reintroduced incarceration for libel cases, making it even easier to lock up convicts than it had been before the reforms in 2011.

Police inaction in response to women reporting sexual assault drives some women to speak publicly about these attacks. Russia’s stricter libel laws, however, make this risky, as one woman in Holod’s story learned when she found herself on trial for blogging about being abused by her ex-boyfriend.

When it comes to policing “false allegations of sexual assault” in Russia, between 40 and 50 percent of convicts are women — far more than in criminal convictions overall (where women make up just 13–14 of the total). This divergence is even more pronounced when it comes to criminal suspects: more than 50 percent of the people involved in “false allegations” investigations are women, while women are just 16 percent of all criminal suspects in Russia.

At the same time (somewhat undercutting the report’s own narrative), Holod points out that most of Russia’s libel cases are private prosecutions where the acquittal rate is surprisingly high. Each year, there are just a couple dozen “serious” criminal cases, meaning that it is impossible to say definitively that libel involving sexual assault has become a more “female” offense, concludes Holod.

👋 Putin removes top investigator who oversaw major cases against anti-Kremlin opposition (Major General Rustam Gabdulin led probes into the Kemerovo shopping center fire and a school shooting in Perm, as well as investigations into Alexey Navalny’s movement)

👀 Team Navalny member says Navalny’s hotel in Tomsk changed its security guards, two days before he was poisoned (Maria Pevchikh revealed the discovery in a YouTube broadcast, explaining that the team received the information after announcing cash rewards for tips related to how Navalny was poisoned in August 2020 before boarding a plane for Moscow)

Society

💰 Moscow city government will spend almost $270k to restore Stalin mural (Thought to be lost in the renunciation of Stalin’s personality cult in the 1950s, the painting was rediscovered in 2013. Last November, the city spent $35k to design new equipment needed to display the mural.)

🎭 Comics tell Mediazona that their profession has exploded in popularity recently, attracting police attention that’s prompted a wave of censorship (five standup comedians acknowledged the reverberations of crackdowns on individual comics like Idrak Mirzalizade, who says he is researching VR platforms and performing for Russian speakers outside Russia since his deportation)