Meduza’s latest daily newsletter: Tuesday, July 30, 2024 The State Duma’s Tuesday legislative bonanza, labor shortages and empty shelves, prisoner-swap rumors, and Russian cellular companies warn that YouTube is going away

Russia’s State Duma passes loads of legislation

🥤 Alexey Stakhanov didn’t need Red Bull, kids

Citing health risks to children of high-dose stimulants, Russian lawmakers have adopted the second reading of legislation that would ban the sale of energy drinks to minors, effective March 2025. The legislation also grants regional authorities the power to restrict the sale of energy drinks in spaces used for educational, medical, cultural, and sports purposes. (The original draft of the law would have banned the sale of energy drinks in containers greater than half a liter and started enforcement on September 1, 2024.)

🪪 Line up and hand in your blogger IDs, kids

Lawmakers adopted the second and third readings of amendments that would require bloggers with more than 10,000 subscribers to deanonymize themselves to the federal government. It’s still unclear exactly what personal data these bloggers must share, but the news agency TASS reports that enforcement will focus on the administrators of channels on Telegram, which has become the Russian Internet’s most important platform for politics. Bloggers who refuse to register with the authorities will be barred from monetizing their channels through advertisements or other promotions and reposting their content will become prohibited. 

In 2017, Russia’s federal censor abandoned its effort to register individual bloggers and pivoted instead to enforcing restrictions on so-called “information-dissemination organizers,” in other words, social networks instead of their users.

⚖️ Lawmakers move forward with ban on snuff-film ‘trash streamers’

State Duma deputies adopted the second and third readings of legislation banning so-called “trash streams,” introducing new criminal liability for bloggers who solicit viewers for donations in return for acts of depravity and violence captured in live snuff videos. Under the law, distributing “trash stream” content will become illegal, and crimes committed during these broadcasts can be prosecuted as aggravated offenses under 10 different felony statutes. Convicted “trash streamers” will face steep fines and the possible confiscation of their electronic equipment.

In Russia, “trash streams” usually feature bloggers abusing drugs and alcohol or performing humiliating or violent acts in return for donations from viewers. The initiative to outlaw “trash streams” has gained momentum since late 2020 when a woman died during a broadcast by Stas “Reeflay” Reshetnyak after he beat her and locked her outside in the cold without clothes. Reshetnyak was later sentenced to six years in prison for malicious bodily harm. (In February 2024, he was transferred from a maximum security prison to a correctional labor facility for good behavior and showing contrition.)

💱 Lawmakers turn to crypto to beat sanctions

The State Duma adopted the second and third readings of legislation that would establish a right to crypto-mining for specially registered businesses and entrepreneurs. Additionally, individuals who stay within set energy consumption limits would be legally permitted to mine cryptocurrency without registration. Lawmakers also removed language from the bill that would have banned organizing the circulation of cryptocurrency (which would have effectively shut down all Russian crypto exchanges and exchangers). 

The draft law’s supporters say it is designed to unleash Russia’s cryptocurrency capacity, which could serve as “a tool for circumventing sanctions” and as a potential high-tech export. (Separate draft legislation would permit the Bank of Russia to begin experimenting with the creation of a platform for using cryptocurrencies in international payments.)

The war in Ukraine

• 🎶 No translation for ‘lai, lai, la-la-la-la-la-lai’: Andriy Danylko, the Ukrainian performer behind the popular musician and drag persona Verka Serduchka, is defending his continued use of the Russian language. In an interview with Latvian television this week, Danylko described Russian as an important lingua franca in Eastern Europe and an integral part of his own upbringing in Poltava. “Why should I tear down myself?” he asked, adding that his songs written in Russian don’t feel the same when performed in Ukrainian translation.
• 📽️ Hands off Khamatova: Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has unpublished its calls to bar Russian actress Chulpan Khamatova from the Venice Film Festival next month. Officials privately apologized to Ukrainian film producer Alexander Rodnyansky, who publicly defended the Russian actress. Khamatova previously maintained a good relationship with President Putin, working with the Kremlin on multiple charity projects, but left the country and condemned the full-scale invasion of Ukraine after February 2022. (In Khamatova’s latest movie, Quiet Life, directed by Greek filmmaker Alexandros Avranas, she plays opposite Grigory Dobrygin as a Russian family struggling to win political asylum in Sweden.)

🕯️ How Russia’s technological advances have led to higher civilian casualty rates in Ukraine in recent months (7-min read)

The rate of civilian deaths from Russian attacks in Ukraine’s frontline regions has risen significantly in recent months, according to calculations by journalists at the outlet Verstka. The civilian casualty count saw an especially sharp increase in the Kharkiv region after Russia launched its new offensive there in May, and the Donetsk region had more civilian deaths in May and June than in any other month so far this year. According to Verstka’s estimates, Russian attacks on Ukrainian-controlled territories killed at least 806 civilians and injured at least 3,585 more in the first half of 2024. Meduza shares key points from Verstka’s report on the new tactics and technologies Russia is using to overcome Ukraine’s defenses.

🇫🇮 Finland’s president says it’s time to get Moscow in the room

Finnish President Alexander Stubb told the French newspaper Le Monde that the war has reached a “moment” when Kyiv and Moscow should begin direct negotiations. Stubb argued that the “principle of reality” dictates that Russia should be involved in the next round of talks if the negotiations will also involve China and countries in the Global South. On July 11, Bloomberg reported that the Zelensky administration plans to invite Russian representatives to its next peace summit, which Kyiv hopes to organize before the U.S. presidential election in November. 

Stubb said Ukraine’s military position has improved in the past two months, as Kyiv gets more equipment and financing assistance, while Russian troops have failed to make significant breakthroughs despite heavy losses. Stubb insisted that Russia’s withdrawal from occupied Ukrainian territory is a requirement for peace, but he said it would be wrong to make this a precondition for negotiations. In response, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova mocked Finland’s recent NATO membership and claimed that Ukraine’s negotiating position has steadily weakened since Russia’s full-scale invasion (implying that Kyiv could have avoided the war altogether).

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Russian domestic affairs

• 🔥 Up in smoke, not to the stars: A fire destroyed roughly 800 square meters (more than 8,600 square feet) of a Roscosmos manufacturing facility in Yekaterinburg on Tuesday. The plant reportedly specializes in developing and mass-producing radio-electronic equipment and control systems (including those in the Soyuz-2 launch vehicles).
• 💔 Russia’s wealthiest woman files for divorce: Wildberries founder Tatyana Bakalchuk is dissolving her marriage to Vladislav Bakalchuk amid a merger with the outdoor advertising operator Russ Group, reportedly with plans to (1) form a new online marketplace capable of challenging Amazon and Alibaba and (2) build an international payment system that can bypass the financial messaging network SWIFT (to which several Russian banks have lost access since February 2022). Last week, in a bizarre publicity stunt, Mr. Bakalchuk visited the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, and complained that his marriage was in danger because of a “hostile takeover” at Wildberries. Kadyrov vowed to intervene in the merger, denouncing its architects as “devils,” though the deal reportedly has the personal approval of Vladimir Putin.
• 📺 Russian cellular companies warn that YouTube is going away: Two of Russia’s biggest telecommunications operators — MTS and Beeline — have started warning clients about possible YouTube access interruptions. In messages to customers, the two companies repeated claims from government officials who blame the sudden slowdown in YouTube speeds on Google abandoning its cache equipment in Russia. Last week, State Duma deputy Alexander Khinstein admitted that federal censors are actually responsible for throttling YouTube, though he quickly walked back his comments after the Kremlin refused to comment on his remarks.

🛒 Labor shortage leads to empty shelves at some retail stores in Russia

X5-group-owned grocery stores in Yaroslavl, Rybinsk, Kovrov, and the Kostroma and Ivanovo regions have started suffering from shortages of water, bread, cereals, flour, and spices. The news outlets Mash and Kommersant report that the empty shelves are due partly to labor shortages caused by a recent spike in the persecution and deportation of Central Asian migrant workers. A source in Yaroslavl’s Agriculture and Consumer Market Ministry told Kommersant newspaper that the “staffing problem” has been solved already, but the stores’ supply chain won’t return to normal for another three weeks.

In April 2024, a Moscow arbitration court suspended X5's shareholder rights in its Russian subsidiary after the latter was designated as a protected “economically significant organization.” The court transferred X5’s shares in its subsidiary to the subsidiary itself in a redomiciliation designed to force the owners of Russia’s biggest retailer into Russia’s own legal jurisdiction. 

As the world turns

• 🇧🇾 Krieger gets clemency: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has granted a pardon to Rico Krieger, the German national sentenced earlier this month to death by firing squad for a series of alleged crimes, including terrorist attacks, mercenary activities, and more. Lukashenko described his deliberations on the pardon as a “most unpleasant matter in the fate and life of a president.” Last week, Belarusian state television aired a 17-minute segment about Krieger that featured an interview with him from prison where he described himself as a victim of the Ukrainian intelligence community’s manipulations. In the broadcast, Krieger also criticized the German government for failing to help him during his trial.
• ⛓️ Kremlin and White House keep mum on possible swap: Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment when asked on Tuesday about rumors of an imminent exchange involving half a dozen Russian political prisoners recently inserted into Russia’s nebulous penitentiary transfer system. When asked directly if a potential swap with the West might include American journalist Evan Gershkovich, Peskov said, “We don’t comment on this topic.” Similarly, White House national security spokesman John Kirby declined to comment about a possible prisoner swap when asked by Puck News journalist Julia Ioffe, saying, “I think you can understand we wouldn’t want to mess anything up to prevent there from being a positive result.” (Ioffe mentions Vladimir Kara-Murza among the prisoners who might be exchanged.)
• 🏦 Raiffeisen says its Russia divestment is accelerating: Austria's Raiffeisen Bank International is making “drastic reductions” to its business in Russia, the bank said in its quarterly earnings announcement on Tuesday, reports Reuters. More than two years since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, RBI is the largest Western bank still active in Russia and has been under mounting pressure from the European Central Bank to cut its business there. According to RBI’s statement, “Initial consequences for customers, such as restrictions in payments, have already taken effect.” (The bank says it’s still working to sell or spin off its Russia unit but offered no specific timeline for the process.)

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