This was Russia today, Thursday, October 24, 2024 Putin hints that reports of North Korea’s military intervention are true but doesn’t recall Trump’s threat to bomb Moscow, and Russia reportedly provided targeting data to Houthi rebels
Howdy, readers! Ready your ears and podcasting app of choice for our next Naked Pravda episode, which is now in the editing phase but due out soon. This week, we spoke to Renée DiResta, an online disinformation expert and associate research professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.
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Today’s main story: Russia makes key gains on seven fronts as Ukraine suffers its hardest week on the battlefield this year
A terrible week in an awful year: Russian troops made significant gains on several fronts. South of Kupyansk, they advanced to the Oskil River, splitting Ukrainian forces in that area. They also crossed the Siverskyi Donets–Donbas Canal, reaching the southern outskirts of Chasiv Yar, potentially setting the stage for a swift assault on the city.
That’s not all: In another operation, Russian forces breached Ukrainian defenses near Toretsk, advancing to the city’s western outskirts. They also forced Ukrainian forces to abandon a wide “pocket” between Selydove and Donetsk — a position Ukrainian troops had used to shell Donetsk and the Donetsk-Pokrovsk highway. The Russian army has nearly encircled the key city of Selydove and has pushed into Kurakhove, another logistics hub in southern Donbas. Meanwhile, Ukraine has been unable to halt Russian attacks on several fronts in the Kursk region, forcing Ukrainian troops to pull back toward Sudzha.
(2) Kremlin tells propagandists to promote anti-dollar BRICS payment system and push U.S. election conspiracy theories in latest media guidelines
Meduza’s scoop: We obtained a copy of the Kremlin’s instructions for how the country’s state-funded and pro-government media should cover this week’s BRICS summit — Russia’s biggest chance to host world leaders since February 2022 and a huge opportunity for Vladimir Putin to demonstrate that he isn’t the global pariah his Western critics claim.
Some examples from these guidelines? Well, they tell propagandists to frame Russians’ purchasing patterns as a sign that Western sanctions are failing. They also call for the media to promote the conspiracy theory that the U.S. government plans to engage in widespread election fraud to ensure Kamala Harris is elected in November.
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(3) Meanwhile, in Russia
👮 Anti-extremism police in Kazan arrested a local teenager on Thursday for anti-government graffiti in the city. Fifteen-year-old Sevastyan Sultanov could reportedly face felony charges, though nothing is yet official. (7x7)
- Three days earlier, the opposition group Team Navalny shared images received from “campaign office volunteers in the streets of Kazan” showing graffiti with the name “Navalny” and the phrase “Putin means war and poverty!”
🗳️ A certain Russian senator repeatedly referred to Yulia Navalnaya as an “enemy” in comments during a Thursday session of the Federation Council’s Commission on Protection of State Sovereignty, offering a sinister description of Navalnaya’s recent vow to run for Russia’s presidency after Vladimir Putin’s rule ends. The senator deliberately avoided using Navalnaya’s name, mimicking Putin’s refusal to utter her late husband’s name aloud until after he died in prison. (Agenstvo Media)
⚖️ A Moscow court sentenced poet Vyacheslav Malakhov to two years in prison for accusing Russian soldiers of violating the tenets of Orthodox Christianity in a Telegram post. He apologized for his comments, attributing them to childhood trauma as a witness to Tajikistan’s civil war. (Mediazona)
- After police arrested Malakhov earlier this year, they forced him to spend three weeks at a psychiatric hospital, where he was tied to a bed and fed unknown medications.
🚨 Police arrested three demonstrators in a town outside Chelyabinsk after roughly 100 protesters gathered outside the home of a man suspected of stabbing a local taxi driver to death. The angry crowd shouted anti-Roma comments and accused the authorities of sending all the town’s protectors to fight in Ukraine. (74ru)
- By the end of the night, the suspect — a 17-year-old member of the town’s Roma community — and another person of interest were in custody. Additionally, two men involved in the public confrontation were hospitalized with gunshot wounds.
💥 A Russian National Guard convoy in Grozny was attacked on Thursday, killing one soldier and injuring another. The assailants weren’t immediately identified. (Interfax)
💰 The Russian government’s spending on VPN services spiked 683 percent in the first nine months of the year to 14.1 billion rubles ($145.1 million) — though the authorities are likely using the technology not to circumvent Internet censorship but to defend against DDoS attacks and encrypt their online traffic, experts believe.
- Almost 70 percent of this VPN spending was attributed to three contracts issued by Moscow’s Department of Information Technology. (Kommersant)
⚖️ A Moscow court has registered a misdemeanor case against Meduza special correspondent Elizaveta Antonova on charges of “participating in an undesirable organization” (in this case, they mean Meduza). On Instagram, Antonova dismissed the allegations, writing, “Well, I’m off to change [my daughter’s] diaper.” Antonova covers socio-political topics in Ukraine for Meduza. (Mediazona)
(4) The Ukraine war
🇺🇸 Vladimir Putin says he “doesn’t recall” Donald Trump threatening to attack Moscow if Russia invaded Ukraine, disputing the former U.S. president’s claim in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal where he claimed that he once told the Russian leader, “Vladimir, if you go after Ukraine, I am going to hit you so hard, you’re not even going to believe it. I’m going to hit you right in the middle of fricking Moscow.”
- Speaking at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Putin said threatening Russia “is pointless because it only emboldens us.” He dismissed Trump’s “fricking Moscow” claim to the WSJ as empty campaign rhetoric but also welcomed the former president’s vow to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. (Interfax)
🇰🇵 The 12,000-strong North Korean force sent to Russia will reportedly operate in the Kursk region, disguised as Buryat and Yakut ethnic minorities, to help expel Ukrainian occupation forces, according to Ukrainian intelligence. Meanwhile, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service has identified the group as North Korea’s Eleventh Army — an elite unit known as the “Storm Corps.”
- Moscow is expected to leverage its experience leading government troops, Iranian-backed forces, and militias in Syria, hoping to overcome command and control issues with the North Korean unit. (The Financial Times)
🔍 Ukraine’s Prosecutor General has launched an investigation into the alleged execution of four Ukrainian POWs by Russian troops in the occupied Donetsk region. Officials in Kyiv say the Ukrainian National Guard soldiers were captured on October 6 and interrogated on video. The next day, Ukrainian troops regained their positions and discovered their comrades’ bodies. Officials have also notified the U.N. and the International Committee of the Red Cross. (Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine)
🇰🇵 Without offering a formal verification, Vladimir Putin embraced rumors about North Korean soldiers entering Russia to assist in the war against Ukraine. On Thursday, he told journalists that any satellite images showing these soldiers are “a serious matter” and must “reflect something” if they exist. Putin also cited Russia’s new strategic partnership treaty with North Korea, saying its implementation framework is still developing. (Komsomolskaya Pravda)
- Earlier on Thursday, Russia’s State Duma ratified the “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty” with Pyongyang. The agreement enters force once both nations exchange ratification documents.
🇩🇪 German Chancellor Olaf Scholz officially slammed the door on Ukraine’s immediate NATO membership request, telling journalists, “It is important to realize that a country at war absolutely cannot become a member of NATO.” (Deutsche Welle)
(5) As the world turns
🛰️ Billionaire Elon Musk has been in “regular contact” with Vladimir Putin since late 2022, several current and former U.S., European and Russian officials told journalists. (The Wall Street Journal)
- The two men reportedly discuss “personal topics, business, and geopolitical tensions,” including issues as specific as the Russian president’s request to avoid activating Starlink satellite Internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping. (St not secured permission to offer Internet service in Taiwan.)
- Given Musk’s deep business ties with U.S. military and intelligence agencies, his contact with Putin has reportedly raised national security concerns within the Biden administration.
🇾🇪🇮🇷 With Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps acting as the intermediary, Russia reportedly provided targeting data from its satellites for Yemen’s Houthi rebels as they attacked Western ships in the Red Sea with missiles and drones earlier this year. (The Wall Street Journal)
- WSJ's expert sources say the alleged data sharing shows Moscow's commitment to "undermining the U.S.-led Western economic and political order" and forcing Washington's attention away from Ukraine.
🇩🇪 German police have charged a 57-year-old Russian national with murdering two Ukrainian soldiers who were in Germany recuperating from combat injuries. The killer’s motive was reportedly “wounded national pride,” amplified by intoxication. (Deutsche Welle)
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