Meduza’s latest daily newsletter: Wednesday, September 4, 2024 The lives of Putin’s alleged sons, how Chechnya forces gay men to go to war, and a school propaganda video describes Russia in 2054

The war against Ukraine

• 🔎 Hundreds still missing in the Kursk region: More than 500 people who were declared missing after the start of Ukraine’s cross-border offensive in Russia’s Kursk region have since been found, acting Governor Alexey Smirnov said on Wednesday. The governor didn’t say how many people remain missing, but the search-and-rescue volunteer organization Liza Alert reported on Tuesday evening that at least 698 people who went missing in the region last month had still not been found. In mid-August, Liza Alert announced that it would stop publishing information about specific individuals who went missing in the Kursk region in order to “protect missing persons’ relatives from scammers.” Around the same time, the Russian social media service VKontakte blocked a group where users were posting information about their missing relatives in Sudzha.
• 📈 Online searches for army contracts on the rise: Interest in military service contracts increased by an average of 36 percent across Russia in August, according to a new analysis of Yandex search statistics from Verstka Media. The surge comes after Putin more than doubled the sign-on bonus issued by the federal government to new soldiers in late July, raising it from 190,000 rubles ($2,200) to 400,000 rubles ($4,500), in addition to recommending that regional governments offer new recruits an additional 400,000 rubles.
• ⛓️ Russian inmate with intellectual disability to become army cook: A Russian man with an intellectual disability who’s serving a 10-year prison sentence on treason charges says he plans to become a cook for Russian troops in Ukraine, according to the human rights organization Department One. “Tomorrow they’ll take me to the special military operation to serve as a cook, and then I’ll go home to my family, my mom, my cat, and my sister Dasha,” Alexander Matkheev wrote in a recent letter to a volunteer, using the Kremlin’s euphemism for the full-scale war. The 26-year-old was convicted in April of this year of trying to join the Ukrainian military. Journalists from Mediazona later determined that the “recruiter” he was in contact with had ties to the Russian FSB. Department One noted that the charges Matkheev was convicted under make it illegal for him to sign a contract with the Defense Ministry.
• 🪖 Chechnya blackmailing gay men into joining army: For the last two years, authorities in Chechnya have been coercing gay men into joining the war in Ukraine, according to the human rights group SK SOS. The organization said on Wednesday that it’s aware of at least seven cases in which Chechnya’s security forces blackmailed gay men into joining the army by threatening to launch criminal cases against them and reveal their sexual orientation to their cellmates. The practice reportedly began in early September 2022, before Vladimir Putin announced Russia’s mobilization campaign. At least one of the men forced to enlist has been killed, SK SOS said.

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Meanwhile in Russia

⏳ The future as Moscow sees it

In the first lesson this year of “Important Conversations,” the “patriotic” course designed by the Russian Education Ministry, students across the country were shown a video titled “30 Years Forward” that describes what Russia will purportedly be like in the year 2054. Agentstvo Media posted the video along with a list of its main predictions. According to the clip, by 2054:

• Russia will become “the most important link in a multipolar and just world”;
• People in every country will know and love Russian culture, literature, music, film, painting, and theater;
• Russia will build a high-speed train that goes from Vladivostok to Moscow (a journey that currently takes about six days) in just 12 hours;
• Russia will “complete” the “import substitution process”;
• The Northern Sea Route in the Arctic will become safe, comfortable, and will bring “substantial funds” to Russia’s state budget.

🏰 Meet the Putin brothers

Russian President Vladimir Putin has two sons with his long-rumored romantic partner, former Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva, alleges a new investigation from the Dossier Center that cites a member of the family’s personal staff. The children, named Ivan and Vladimir Jr., were reportedly born in 2015 and 2019.

According to the report, the boys spend most of their time at Putin’s residence in Valdai, north of Moscow. They don’t attend school with other children; instead, they have a team of nannies, governesses, trainers, and Federal Protective Service officers who accompany them “around the clock.” The brothers live in the complex’s main house with their parents, while their nannies and other staff live in separate buildings. They also have their own drivers and travel between buildings almost exclusively by car, despite everything being within walking distance. Occasionally, according to Dossier, other kids visit the residence (often children of Kabaeva’s friends), though everybody who visits is required to first be quarantined for two weeks. Putin sometimes plays hockey with Ivan in the evenings at the property’s private rink.

Dossier’s journalists found what appears to be a job listing for a live-in English teacher for Putin’s sons on the website of an agency called English Nanny. The ad notes that the family “lives in isolation” and “prefers candidates with a South African passport” and that the teacher will be forbidden from leaving the territory where the family lives. The salary offer is 7,700 euros ($8,512) per month. The boys also reportedly study German, and the report identifies one of their longtime German teachers as Sofia Bozic, a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina who’s around 32 years old and has made 25.3 million rubles (over $280,000) working for the family over about four years.

Putin and Kabaeva “often have opposing views” about what the children should be taught, according to the investigation, but plan for them to continue studying at home with private teachers. The couple rarely speaks directly with their sons’ teachers and trainers; more often, Kabaeva’s cousin, Olesya Fedina, communicates with them while pretending to be the boys’ mother. Also among the family’s sore spots is the fact that Ivan, the older son, is a fan of Disney cartoons and enjoys pretending to be characters from them (Putin has publicly criticized “modern Western cartoons,” arguing that Soviet cartoons are more edifying).

As the world turns

🇲🇳 What Mongolia’s decision to defy an international warrant for Putin’s arrest and welcome him with open arms means for the country and the Kremlin (13-min read)

The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) decision to issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin back in March of 2023 has thrown a bit of a wrench into the Russian president’s travel plans. On Monday, however, Putin landed in Mongolia — an ICC member state obligated to arrest him if he steps foot in the country. But instead of executing the warrant, the Mongolian authorities welcomed Putin with open arms, and the next day, he left the country unimpeded. Meduza explains what consequences Mongolia may face for disregarding international law, whether this defiance might encourage other nations to follow suit, and what this development could mean for the Kremlin.

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