The Real Russia. Today. Russia’s options for ‘upping the pressure’ on Ukraine and the West

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

• Russia and Ukraine: Opinions from Georgy Chizhov, Dmitry Stratievsky, Fyodor Lukyanov, and Andrey Kortunov; plus mass graves in the Donbas, a journalist is imprisoned in Crimea, and a Ukrainian pop star lands in hot water for visiting occupied lands
• Domestic dealings: The hammer comes down on Rolf and Petrov, Russia’s prison service raises the data drawbridge, and Moscow’s police come for conspiracy theorist Valery Solovey

Russia and Ukraine

🧠 Meduza asks foreign policy experts to weigh in on the prospect of Russia recognizing the breakaway ‘republics’ in eastern Ukraine (12-min read)

On February 15, the Russian State Duma sent a motion to President Vladimir Putin calling for diplomatic recognition of the pro-Russian “republics” in eastern Ukraine. In turn, Putin gave an evasive, informal response: the lawmakers, he said, were “guided by public opinion” and Russians’ widespread sympathy for the inhabitants of the Donbas — however, this issue should be resolved on the basis of the Minsk agreements. At the same time, Putin made sure to recall that Ukraine hasn’t fulfilled its obligations under the accords. To help make sense of this new gambit, Meduza turned to a number of foreign policy experts — they believe that (for now) the threat of “recognition” is nothing more than another means of upping the pressure on Ukraine and the West.

🪦 Russian federal investigators open criminal probe into five mass graves allegedly discovered in the Donbas containing the victims of ‘indiscriminate shelling’ in 2014 by Ukrainian government forces (There are supposedly at least 295 bodies in these graves. It’s estimated that the war has killed nearly 15,000 people. The separatists claim roughly 9,000 of these casualties, but this number is contested.)

⚖️ Simferopol court sentences freelance journalist who worked for local RFE/RL affiliate to six years in prison for possession of grenades (Vladislav Esipenko says his conviction is political persecution against the Ukrainian free press. He initially confessed to the charges but later recanted, saying that he’d been beaten and tortured into incriminating himself.)

👩‍🎤 Pop singer withdraws as Ukraine’s Eurovision 2022 representative after backlash for visiting post-annexation Crimea (Alina Pash attended a wedding on the peninsula in 2015 and claims to have entered legally from Ukrainian-held territory, but Border Control records are destroyed after five years. In an Instagram post explaining her exit from the song competition, she said she wished to escape “this virtual war and hate.”)

Russia’s domestic dealings

⚖️ Court orders car dealer Rolf to pay $258.3 million to federal government because founder Sergey Petrov allegedly managed the company in secret while serving in the State Duma (Petrov has remained abroad since 2019, avoiding criminal charges for supposedly illegal withdrawals of large sums of money to foreign bank accounts. Russia’s biggest car dealer, Rolf announced in December 2021 that it is being sold to the rival company KeyAuto.)

🔒 Following months of leaked footage documenting widespread inmate torture, Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service will spend $3.6 million on new data-security equipment (the new hardware will ensure permanent deletion of certain records and raise new barriers to unauthorized access)

🔮 Known for his wild conspiracy theories, political analyst Valery Solovey is detained by police for questioning (he and his son are reportedly wrapped up in an investigation into felony hate speech)