Meduza’s latest daily newsletter: Monday, September 2, 2024 Dozens of teachers prosecuted for opposing the war, Ukraine’s largest drone attack in Russia so far, and Putin meets with schoolchildren

The war against Ukraine

• 💥 Ukraine carries out largest drone attack against Russia so far: Ukraine targeted 16 of Russia’s regions with drones on Saturday night, according to Russian officials, in what appears to have been the largest drone attack in Russia since the start of the full-scale war. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, its air defenses “destroyed and intercepted” a total of 158 drones. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said that two drones were shot down near an oil refinery in the Kapotnya district, causing a fire to break out. Downed drones also reportedly sparked a fire at a power plant in the Tver region. The Russian authorities did not report any deaths or injuries caused by the drones. Ukraine has not commented on the attack.
• 💥 Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities leave at least one dead: Russian troops attacked Ukraine’s Kyiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv regions with 23 drones and 35 missiles of various types early Monday morning, according to the Ukrainian authorities. In Kyiv, the assault damaged multiple buildings and vehicles and left two people injured, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. According to Refat Chubarov, the chairman of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis, the capital’s Islamic Cultural Center was damaged. In the Kharkiv region, a private house and an apartment building were damaged and a 65-year-old man was killed, Governor Oleh Syniehubov reported.
• 💥 Belgorod comes under fire: The Ukrainian military carried out a missile attack on the Russian border city of Belgorod on Monday morning, according to Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov. He said multiple buildings were damaged, including a kindergarten that was “almost completely destroyed.” Gladkov didn’t report any casualties at the kindergarten, but he announced that schools in the area will hold online classes for the rest of the week as a precautionary measure. In the nearby village of Dubovoe, one woman was reportedly injured as a result of the attack. On Sunday, Ukrainian shelling reportedly injured 11 people in the Belgorod region.

🪖 As Ukrainian defenses falter under simultaneous Russian attacks, the Kursk offensive risks plunging Ukraine into a strategic crisis (10-min read)

Russian forces are pressing on with their offensive in southern Donbas. Outnumbered and facing simultaneous attacks on multiple fronts, Ukrainian defenses are struggling to hold their ground. The Russian group which had been advancing from Avdiivka toward Pokrovsk unexpectedly launched a major attack southward, toward the city of Selydove. This maneuver created a crisis in Ukraine’s defenses further east, around Karlivka, which fell to Russian control by August 30. Additionally, Russian troops have intensified their offensive from Marinka and Krasnohorivka toward Kurakhove, a key logistics hub for Ukraine in southern Donbas, and are also advancing in the area between Vuhledar and Kurakhove.

Despite this escalating crisis, which could have severe strategic consequences for Ukraine, the Ukrainian command continues to deploy reserves to its Kursk operation in Russia. There, Ukrainian troops have managed to advance a few more kilometers north and west of Sudzha.

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Russian politics and human rights

• ✏️ Over 100 teacher prosecutions for opposing the war: The Russian authorities have opened at least 106 misdemeanor cases and 23 felony cases against teachers for opposing the full-scale war in Ukraine, according to an investigation by OVD-Info. Fifty-nine percent of these teachers were ultimately fired or, in just two cases, suspended from teaching. Twenty-two of them ended up leaving Russia, with five emigrants leaving specifically to escape criminal charges. More than 50 of the prosecutions were the result of a third party reporting a teacher to the authorities, and in 22 cases, these reports were filed by students or their parents. “For those who remain in their jobs, it’s impossible to openly express their political views,” the investigation’s authors write. “They’ve had to resort to compromises and the use of Aesopian language [to express opposition to the war].”
• 🚫 Russia charges past winner of Kremlin-sponsored contest with ‘propagating terrorism’: The Russian authorities have issued an arrest warrant for Makara Nikolayev, a 20-year-old who won the Russian government’s “My Country — My Russia” competition in 2020, on charges of “propagating terrorism,” the Telegram channel Baza said on Monday. The charges were reportedly filed in response to an online comment in which Nikolayev expressed support for Ukraine and called on Russians to join the Russian Volunteer Corps, a unit of Russian nationalists fighting on the side of Ukraine. According to the website of his former high school, Nikolayev’s entry to the competition was a new method for searching WWII archives that he created in order to find information about his great-grandfather, who disappeared during the war.

🏫 An ‘Important Conversation’ with Putin

To mark the first day of the academic year, Vladimir Putin visited a school in Russia’s Tuva Republic on Monday to lead a discussion as part of the government’s “Important Conversations” lesson series. In his opening speech to the students, the president spoke about the 10,000 Tuva residents that he said are fighting in Ukraine, likening them to the Tuvan soldiers who fought in WWII. Then, on this ominous note, he addressed the school’s first graders, saying that while the “whole world has hitherto revolved around them,” they now have responsibilities, which he called the “first step to adult life.”

Putin also gave a shout-out to the students’ “peers from the Kursk, Bryansk, and Belgorod regions” who were attending class remotely or in new schools due to what he called “the circumstances” (referring to Ukraine’s cross-border incursion and other attacks on Russian territory). “Rest assured our armed forces will do everything possible to restore normal life in these regions and for these children. I’m confident they will succeed,” he said. During the discussion that followed, Putin opined on vaping (“lowers reproductive function”), Algerian Olympic boxer Imane Khelif (he repeated the conspiracy theory that she is transgender), and foreign languages (interest in Mandarin is “growing,” and Putin’s “young relatives speak it fluently,” but students should “not abandon English”).

As the world turns

• 🔎 Authorities in South Korea launch probe into Telegram: Seoul police have launched a pre-trial investigation into Telegram over its possible complicity in the distribution of sexually explicit deepfake content, according to the country’s Yonhap News Agency. Reuters reports that the probe follows “public and political outrage over digital deepfake pornography” in South Korea and that, according to local media, these materials often appear on Telegram. On August 24, Telegram’s founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in Paris, and last week, he was indicted on a range of charges including complicity in the spread of child sexual abuse images.
• 🐳 RIP to an alleged spy whale: A beluga whale suspected of working for Russian intelligence was found dead off the coast of Norway this weekend, according to the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. Speculation about the whale’s affiliation with Moscow first began in 2019, when he was discovered near the Norwegian county of Finnmark wearing a GoPro harness that read “Equipment St. Petersburg.” This earned him the nickname Hvaldimir (“Hval” means whale in Norwegian). According to the Norwegian fishing authorities, Hvaldimir was unusually comfortable around humans, suggesting he had spent time in captivity. Marine biologist Sebastian Strand told journalists that the whale was seen alive the previous day and that the cause of his death had not yet been determined.

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