The Real Russia. Today. Monday, July 11, 2022
Please note that the authorities are now blocking our website in Russia, and we’re turning to you, our global audience, for financial support.
Major recent events from Meduza’s News Feed
- ⚕️ Treason-accused scientist who died in jail was misdiagnosed in police paperwork
- ⚖️ Russian contract soldier discharged for refusing to fight will have day in court
- 🪖 Russia captures prominent Ukrainian human rights activist and army volunteer
- 📺 Ukraine’s richest man to transfer media assets to the state
- 👮 Russia’s Justice Ministry endorses Chechen crackdown on opposition group
- 🦠 Moscow officials will maintain ban on public assemblies until pandemic’s formal end
- 🛩️ Kursk residents report drone-filled skies
- 🔍 Navalny group announces new international organization
- 📃 Russia expands simplified citizenship process to all Ukrainians
- 🕯️ Airstrike against Kharkiv kills at least three people and injures dozens more
- 🏳️🌈 Russia moves closer to banning all “gay propaganda”
- ⚖️ Court in Nizhny Novgorod fines activist for writing “special operation” in scare quotes
- ⚖️ Prosecutors want Moscow court to dissolve Journalists’ and Media Workers’ Union
- 👺 Oligarch Evgeny Prigozhin again utilizes “right to be forgotten” on Yandex
- 💥 Using HIMARS, Ukraine attacks 14 warehouses and bases behind enemy lines
Feature stories
- 🕵️ Spy games between the FSB and Russia’s libertarian movement
- ⭐ Why Putin won’t share the limelight with his generals
When the FSB asked Vsevolod Osipov to become a spy, he saw little choice but to say yes. Then he became a double agent. (9-min read)
On May 27, 2021, the Moscow authorities showed up at the apartment where 19-year-old Libertarian Party member Vsevolod Osipov lived with his mother. After searching the premises, they arrested Osipov for “blocking the roads” at a January 31 rally in support of opposition politician Alexey Navalny. At the police station, one officer looked familiar to Osipov. He soon realized the man had infiltrated the Libertarian Party and protested alongside him in January as an undercover agent — and that the man now wanted him to do the same thing.
The pro-Kremlin media downplays the role of Russia's military leaders in Ukraine — because they make Putin nervous (6-min read)
Russia’s pro-government media regularly reports on the Russian military’s “achievements” in Ukraine but mentions of the specific commanders responsible are extremely rare. Judging by reports from Russia’s propaganda outlets, it would seem that the generals themselves spend all their time either receiving medals from Vladimir Putin or giving medals to their subordinates. That, Meduza has learned, is no accident: Putin is personally opposed to the idea of any top military leaders getting too much glory as a result of the war in Ukraine.