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The Real Russia. Today. Tuesday, March 7, 2023

Source: Meduza

The invasion of Ukraine

🪖 Halting Russia’s invasion before 2024 is possible, but only if the West learns to be bolder and more decisive (19-min read)

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is now a protracted war that looks likely to devolve into a stalemate. Given what we know about the conflict’s combat dynamics and force structure, however, it’s unclear if either side would ever admit to being stuck. A definitive military victory looks just as unlikely for Ukraine as for Russia, but ending the war with a relative sense of success is far more probable for Kyiv and its Western partners, though it remains hypothetically possible for Moscow. Meduza explains why this is the case.

🪖 New video appears to show Russian soldiers executing a Ukrainian POW after he says ‘Glory to Ukraine’ (3-min read)

On March 6, a video surfaced online that appears to show the murder of a Ukrainian POW by Russian soldiers. At the start of the clip, a man is seen standing and smoking. Someone out of frame says, “Film it.” The man then says, “Glory to Ukraine,” after which the sound of gunfire is heard, and the man falls to the ground.

⚖️ A recent court case forced Russian officials to answer uncomfortable questions about the war in Ukraine (6-min read)

In October 2022, Mikhail Benyash, a lawyer from Krasnodar who used to represent activists and protesters in court, was declared a “foreign agent” by the Russian authorities. On February 17, 2023, Benyash was reported to have been disbarred. But a week earlier, on February 10, a Russian court heard his appeal against the “foreign agent” designation. Unsurprisingly, the appeal was denied, but the hearing did force the Russian Justice Ministry to respond to some uncomfortable questions about the aggressive nature of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Benyash sent Meduza the documents from the case. In English, we’re publishing some excerpts from the court transcript.

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Meanwhile in Russia

  • 🧳 The 2023 Yalta International Economic Forum will be held in Moscow (due to “certain logistical peculiarities”)
  • 🌊 Vladivostok water main bursts, leaving 30,000 people without heat and flooding streets
  • 👨‍👧 More than 55,000 people have signed a petition demanding the return of Masha Moskaleva (the 13-year-old girl was placed in an orphanage when her father was prosecuted after she made an anti-war drawing in school)
  • ⛓️ Former Economic Development Minister Alexey Ulyukayev (“an elderly gladiator with his cardboard sword”) is free again after 5.5 behind bars on a dubious bribery conviction (he’s now working as an economic expert at the Gaidar Economic Policy Foundation)
  • ⚖️ Student activist Dmitry Ivanov was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison for posting and reposting anti-war content on his Telegram channel, including reports about Russian atrocities committed in Ukraine (his formal crime was sharing information not approved by the military)

💰 Team Navalny ties propagandists and journalists alike to Mayor Sobyanin’s ‘slush fund’

Researchers at Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) released a new investigation on Tuesday examining the Moscow mayor’s alleged “slush fund,” alleging that both notorious propagandists and supposed opposition figures take the city’s money to promote Sergey Sobyanin. The investigation takes aim at several usual suspects like Russia Today editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan and her husband, conservative television executive Konstantin Malofeev, and tabloid publisher Aram Gabrelyanov, but ostensibly independent actors (including many of Navalny’s old rivals) get just as much attention: namely, journalist and socialite Ksenia Sobchak, radio journalist Alexey Venediktov, and Yabloko Moscow branch deputy chairman Kirill Goncharov.

Without explaining how it obtained the information, FBK says it studied more than 100,000 bank transactions and found that the figures in its investigation accepted large amounts of city money to place ads for Sobyanin’s projects, post flattering comments on social media, and promote the mayor’s urban beautification efforts. Much of the money reportedly flowed through Moscow’s “Moi Raion” program.

The investigation also flags “strange sociological polling” ordered by the Mayor’s Office, often during election season, with the money traceable to pro-government candidates through fees paid to various campaign managers.

🗳️ (Opinion) Andrey Pertsev argues that Russia’s party system is mimicking the party politics of East Germany (KIT)

Despite the Putin regime’s ever-growing authoritarianism, the president himself has always rejected the idea of returning to a one-party system. Russia’s political parties remain included in the nation’s political process, albeit only formally, and they appeal to different segments of the population, expanding the reach that any one ruling party could have. At the same time, explains journalist Andrey Pertsev, party figures in Russia support the president’s policies unanimously and think of themselves “as a single organism.”

Russian party politics today is modeled on the system that prevailed in East Germany during the Cold War, where Moscow fielded “spoiler” groups and erected various barriers and filters to candidacy for public office, reducing elections to “a ritual symbolizing society’s total unity” (Pertsev cites historian Dmitry Mironov’s work on East German politics). After taking over as domestic politics czar, Vyacheslav Volodin launched the All-Russian Popular Front, an ill-fated project that tried to copy the GDR’s National Front (which empowered the Socialist Unity Party of Germany to dominate politics). But Volodin’s Front failed to become a full-fledged political institution. Pertsev attributes this to United Russia’s lack of noteworthy figures and also to missing mechanisms — namely, the fact that Russia banned electoral political blocs back in 2005. (At the time, the policy was intended to protect United Russia against coalitions of weaker challengers.) Volodin also failed to recruit the Communist Party and Just Russia, which a decade ago still had some life left in them.

Despite the All-Russian Popular Front’s flop, Pertsev says the presidential administration itself (and certainly not United Russia) has emerged as the nation’s ruling party, controlling the entire political system “under the brand of the war.” Today, political parties’ role (according to Putin) is to provide “powerful ideological support to any decision by the Kremlin.” As a result, Russia has five parties with formally different ideologies that are, in reality, loyal to the regime unconditionally, like in East Germany.

Pertsev concludes by noting that there are still some “bursts of party independence” today from old party leaders like Gennady Zyuganov and Sergey Mironov, who enjoy long relationships with Putin and still cling to some agency in minor personnel and financial matters. The next generation of party leaders, however, will be even more “accommodating” to Putin and desperate to demonstrate “exclusive devotion” to Russia’s patriotic movement. For example, the new head of LDPR recently advocated “forgetting” all partisan differences during the war in Ukraine and joining together in a single “patriotic movement.” Before long, this trend could lead to the emergence of a “conglomeration of super-obedient parties” that the presidential administration manages openly and directly, says Pertsev.

As the world turns

  • 🐴 A stallion reputedly owned by Ramzan Kadyrov is stolen from its Czech stable (16-year-old thoroughbred is nicknamed Zazou and worth $18,000)
  • 💥 Media reports on Tuesday cited unpublished investigative findings by U.S. and German officials (described as “inconclusive” and “breakthrough,” respectively) about the Nord Stream pipeline bombings, suggesting that “pro-Ukraine individuals or entities” and “a small team of saboteurs” were responsible for the September 2022 incident (no evidence has emerged directly tying the attacks to the Russian government, and the Ukrainian government denies any involvement)

🇬🇪 Mass protests break out in Georgia after parliament approves first version of ‘foreign agents’ bill (2-min read)

On March 7, Georgia’s parliament passed in the first reading a bill to establish a “foreign agents” registry. The bill, titled “On transparency of foreign influence,” received votes from 76 deputies and was opposed by 13, according to the news site Novosti-Gruzia. The proposed legislation would require all non-commercial legal entities and media agencies that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad to register as “foreign agents.”

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