This was Russia today, Thursday, October 17, 2024 Zelensky says Ukraine will consider nukes without NATO membership, Russia’s ‘childfree propaganda’ ban moves forward, and a top politician blames a film for the Soviet collapse
Howdy, readers! In case you were wondering, Vladimir Putin attended multiple meetings today, including an appearance at a sports training center for disabled Ukraine War veterans.
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Today’s main story: How the Ukrainian authorities try to control the country’s media industry
Meduza spoke to Ukrainian officials, journalists, and media experts about how the authorities have worked to suppress this critical reporting and shape public opinion to suit their interests.
Zelensky’s neverending telethon: On the second day of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s president issued a decree creating a “United News telethon” to “counteract Russian propaganda.” Since then, six of the country’s major TV networks have participated in a single, round-the-clock broadcast, each producing its own content and airing it during an allotted time slot.
A major takeaway: It’s not hard to find signs that the telethon has damaged Ukraine’s media pluralism. “Against the backdrop of two years of full-scale war, the [telethon’s] parliamentary guest policy has degenerated into an information dictatorship by the authorities,” one source told Meduza.
Newsroom meddling: In November 2023, the Zelensky administration installed new leadership at the state media outlet Ukrinform, which began trying to impose partisan coverage guidelines, such as a blackout of reporting on statements from former Ukrainian Armed Forces commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
The Ukrainian authorities have even drafted the peskiest reporters. Multiple sources from the Ukrainian media market told Meduza they were aware of cases in which draft orders were used to pressure journalists. The authorities have also used this tactic in reverse, offering some journalists exemptions from military service.
Not all doom and gloom: Ukraine does indeed have problems with freedom of speech, but the same journalists who talk about “shameful cases” of government suppression insist that the country is addressing these issues, however tough it is. “Journalistic freedom is alive — despite everything that’s happening,” that reporter told Meduza.
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(2) Meanwhile, in Russia
🩸 Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov reportedly discussed his involvement in the Wildberries-Russ merger controversy with Vladimir Putin during the president’s visit to Grozny in August. Sources claim that Putin expressed disappointment in Suleyman Kerimov, saying the senator had “made many promises but done nothing” with the company.
- This information from journalist Yulia Taratuta’s sources complicates media reports that Putin personally approved the merger and suggests why Kadyrov has felt comfortable challenging it publicly. The same sources speculate that Kadyrov fabricated Kerimov’s supposed assassination plot against him as an excuse to declare a “blood feud” that’s forced Kerimov to restrict his travel and remain largely at home under guard. (TV Rain, YouTube)
🤰 Pregnant women seeking care at prenatal clinics in the Tver region will now receive an unsolicited letter from the local Russian Orthodox Church head, Vitaly Ermakov, where he describes abortion as a choice between “saving or killing your own baby” and urges mothers to find “inspiration” in the story of the Virgin Mary’s birth. (7x7, Telegram)
⚖️ Former Health Ministry official Yevgeny Brun was sentenced to seven years in prison on Thursday for embezzling 137.7 million rubles ($1.4 million) in public funding for the procurement of drug and alcohol dependency tests. From 2009 until his arrest in August 2022, Brun served as the Health Ministry’s chief freelance narcologist. (Interfax)
🚫 Officials in Tomsk dismantled memorials erected last month to honor victims of Soviet political repressions at a local site where roughly 9,000 people were executed in the 1920s and 1930s. The city did not approve the installation and threatened in late September to remove it. (TV2)
👪 The State Duma unanimously adopted the first reading of legislation banning “childfree propaganda” and a related bill introducing fines for promoting “the refusal to have children.” Supporters argue that “the ideology of childlessness” degrades social institutions, erodes traditional values, and fosters population decline.
- Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin previously dressed down the members of New People, a small minority party, for expressing opposition to the draft law, suggesting that opposition would result in ejection from the legislature. (Interfax)
- “Destructive information in general” could be the State Duma’s next target if Deputy Speaker Anna Kuznetsova delivers on her vow to work with science and education officials to draft a catch-all prohibition. (Interfax)
⚖️ An appellate court outside Moscow has extended the prison sentence ordered for Yaroslav Shirshikov, the public relations professional in Yekaterinburg convicted of “justifying terrorism” in social media comments about the assassination of z-blogger Vladlen Tatarsky. Shirshikov’s sentence is now five years instead of two.
- Shirshikov was with Evan Gershkovich during the Wall Street Journal reporter’s work in Yekaterinburg and was among the first to report Gershkovich’s disappearance in March 2023. Police arrested Shirshikov a month later for his Tatarsky comments. (It’s My City)
🙏 Rauf Arashukov, an imprisoned former Federation Council member from Karachay-Cherkessia, has publicly appealed through his Instagram page to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov for help for his family. Arashukov apologized for his past “mistakes” but did not specify what help he seeks. (Rauf Arashukov, Instagram
- Police arrested Senator Arashukov in January 2019 in the middle of a Federation Council session on charges of organizing contract killings and leading a criminal organization. In December 2022, he was sentenced to life in prison.
- Ramzan Kadyrov was reportedly instrumental in promoting Arashukov to Russia’s Senate, but the two fell out of favor when Arashukov tried to oust one of Kadyrov’s relatives serving as the head of the Federal Road Agency’s North Caucasus branch. (RBC)
⚖️ Russians who have left the country and committed offenses “against the country’s national interests” could lose their property, official documents, and other items and privileges under draft legislation submitted to the State Duma by Tatarstan’s State Council. The bill’s explanatory note explains that the authorities need new tools because it’s impossible to apply “preventative” police measures for emigres. (Russia’s State Duma)
🛗 Artem Zhoga, the former “Donetsk People’s Republic” commander recently appointed to serve as Vladimir Putin’s presidential envoy to Russia’s Ural Federal District, has also landed a seat on the Board of Trustees at the relatively independent Yeltsin Center. Zhoga joins the board automatically because of his envoy position. (Yeltsin Center, Telegram)
📽️ The 1989 film Interdevochka contributed to the USSR’s collapse, according to State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, who recalled the movie as an example of harmful popular culture that he seeks to suppress.
- Interdevochka (or Intergirl) is a Soviet-Swedish drama about a woman in Leningrad who turns to prostitution to earn the money she needs to emigrate. (Meduza)
💰 Kirill Shamalov, President Putin’s former son-in-law, is the eighth and latest board chairman of the infamous “Ozero” dacha cooperative, which Putin and his close friends created in the 1990s. (iStories, Telegram)
- All the cooperative’s members — including Shamalov’s father — went on to fabulous wealth and/or senior government positions.
👮 Former Otkritie Bank board chairman Dmitry Romaev is now wanted by police for large-scale embezzlement. On Thursday, officials added his name to federal and international wanted lists. The authorities have released no further details about the case. (RBC)
(3) The Ukraine war
☢️ Ukraine will turn to nukes if it can’t get NATO membership to defend itself against Russia, according to Volodymyr Zelensky, who revealed that he said as much to presidential candidate Donald Trump at their recent meeting in New York City. (Hromadske)
- Zelensky’s “victory plan” calls for an immediate NATO membership invitation and “non-nuclear deterrence” against Russian aggression.
☦️ Fighting between parishioners of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate erupted on Thursday at St. Michael's Cathedral in Cherkasy, a city in central Ukraine, after the latter group locked itself inside in protest against the cathedral’s transfer in June to OCU. (Meduza)
🇺🇸 In a decision expected to delay Kyiv’s acquisition of a full squadron ready for the battlefield, the U.S. is reportedly “refocusing its training of Ukrainian F-16 pilots on younger cadets rather than experienced air force members.” (The Wall Street Journal)
🇺🇸 Stephen Hubbard, the 72-year-old American national sentenced to almost seven years in prison for alleged mercenary work in Ukraine, has been regularly mistreated and tortured in Russian custody, according to a freed Ukrainian POW who was Hubbard’s cellmate. (AFP)
🚨 Meduza shares photos from in and around Kurakhove, where Ukraine is attempting an evacuation as the Russian army advances from two directions. (Meduza)
(4) As the world turns
⚓ The U.K. government announced “the largest package of sanctions to date against Putin's shadow fleet of oil tankers,” designating 18 ships used for oil transport and four for LNG. British officials say the tankers named in the new sanctions transported $4.9 billion in the past year. (U.K. Government)
🛢️ Russia’s shadow fleet is polluting the world’s waterways, according to a joint investigation by POLITICO and the not-for-profit journalism group SourceMaterial, which found at least nine instances of these covert vessels leaving spills since 2021. The report details spills off the coast of Scotland and into the Adriatic Sea. (POLITICO)
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