The Real Russia. Today. The Putin-Trump summit, Moscow's humiliating municipal filter, and sexual harassment in Siberia
Thursday, June 28, 2018
This day in history. On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip mortally wounded Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, precipitating events that would trigger the First World War and the eventual collapse of the Tsarist Empire.
- Trump and Putin are finally getting their summit
- Trump praises Russia's handling of the 2018 FIFA World Cup
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Meduza reports on how Moscow's “municipal filter” works on the ground in this year's mayoral race
- Historian and human rights activist Yuri Dmitriev is back under investigation
- Romania's alleged spy in Russia says she's been framed
- Sexual harassment allegations complicate a massive environmental scandal in Siberia
- Ukraine's human rights commissioner is denied access to Oleg Sentsov, again
- Russia's Supreme Court refuses to call the Syrian War a “war”
- The Finance Ministry tweaks proposed reforms to Russia’s duty-free threshold on imported online purchases
- Vkontakte cracks down on a nasty “slut-shaming” World Cup trend
- 52 human rights organizers endorse a statement saying that Russia's Internet policies are a global threat
The summit cometh 🕊
The Kremlin made it official on Thursday: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will meet for direct talks on July 16 in Helsinki. The meeting will take place the day after the FIFA World Cup final. According to the Kremlin’s press release, Moscow plans to discuss “the current state of Russian-American relations and the prospects for their further development, as well as current international issues.”
On June 27, Donald Trump’s mustachioed national security adviser, John Bolton, visited Moscow and met with Vladimir Putin, who stressed that Russia has never sought a confrontation with Washington and suggested steps to restore bilateral relations. Putin said Bolton’s visit “offers hope” that U.S.-Russian relations might recover sometime soon. “I hope we can talk today about what we can do on both sides to restore full-fledged relations on the basis of equality and respect,” the Russian president said.
👍 Heckuva job, Puty
“I think they’re doing a fantastic job with the World Cup right now. It’s in Russia, and I will tell you that it’s exciting. [...] And they have really done a fantastic job with the World Cup. It’s exciting even if you’re a non-soccer fan. I’m a soccer fan a little bit, but I don’t have much time.” ~ U.S. President Donald Trump, June 27, 2018
The ugly reality of Moscow's “municipal filter” 🤢
On the evening of June 26, at the Moscow Municipal Council building, mayoral hopefuls met for a second time with municipal deputies to give speeches and try to convince the elected officials to endorse their candidacies. According to the city’s “municipal filter,” in order to appear on the ballot in September, mayoral candidates need the support of 110 deputies: at least one deputy in 110 different municipalities across Moscow. Candidates have until July 3 to rally the necessary signatures, and there are another two gatherings with municipal deputies scheduled before the deadline. Even before the June 26 meeting, opposition candidate Ilya Yashin announced that he won’t be able to overcome the municipal filter. Incumbent Mayor Sergey Sobyanin and several others who say they’re running for mayor didn’t bother to attend Tuesday’s event. Meduza special correspondent Taisiya Bekbulatova, who's been following the candidates’ meetings with Moscow municipal deputies, did make the trip.
Yuri Dmitriev is back under investigation 🕵
The Russian authorities are again investigating the historian and human rights activist Yuri Dmitriev for alleged violent sexual actions. The case comes two weeks after the Karelian Supreme Court overturned his acquittal on child pornography and sexual abuse charges. On the evening of June 27, police officers detained Dmitriev as he tried to leave the city of Petrozavodsk. If convicted, he faces between 12 and 20 years in prison.
Dmitriev is the 62-year-old director of the Karelian branch of the human rights organization “Memorial,” whose activists and scholars have faced police persecution across Russia.
On April 5, the Petrozavodsk City Court found Dmitriev not guilty of charges related to his adopted 12-year-old daughter, though it also sentenced him to 2.5 years probation for the supposed illegal possession of a weapon. Dmitriev’s lawyer is sure that state prosecutors pressured his client's adopted daughter and her grandmother into challenging the acquittal. Local prosecutors also appealed the ruling.
For background on Dmitriev, read: “Russian officials have overturned the acquittal of a human rights activist. Prosecutors are seeking new testimony from his 12-year-old daughter.”
Romania's “woman on the inside” 🕵️♀️
Investigators have formally charged the “Inter” executive board member Karina Tsurkan with spying for the Romanians, her lawyer told reporters on Thursday. Tsurkan maintains her innocence, claiming that her “integrity” on the job provoked an effort to remove her.
Karina Tsurkan is a Romanian citizen. Russian investigators believe that she passed intelligence to Romanian agents about Inter’s foreign energy projects, including information about negotiations to supply electricity to separatist-controlled areas in eastern Ukraine.
Siberia's illegal dumping controversy just got even more toxic 🙅
Natalia Sokolova, the head of the Federal National Resources Management Service’s State Environmental Supervision Agency, has accused Nikolai Samutin, an expert for the Health Ministry’s Strategic Planning Center, of sexual harassment. Samutin is the same expert who recently charged Rosneft, Lukoil, and other major oil companies with illegal dumping in Siberia.
Sokolova says she reported the incident to her supervisors, and the agency has apparently launched an internal review. Sokolova says she’s even been assigned security guards. Samutin denies the allegations, saying he’s only seen Sokolova “three times in his life, at different conferences.”
In March 2018, the Russian Health Ministry’s Strategic Planning Center uncovered evidence that several major oil companies have been illegally dumping drill cutting waste in the Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets autonomous okrugs, inflicting an estimated 500 billion rubles ($7.9 billion) in environmental damages. Samutin later confirmed to reporters that the Strategic Planning Center’s acting director had written a letter to the head of the Federal National Resources Management Service, demanding that he fire several top officials in his agency.
Sokolova led the commission that launched an unscheduled inspection of the National Resources Management Service’s Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug branch in mid-May, finding violations in waste recycling, which appeared in later reports by the Health Ministry’s Strategic Planning Center.
Sentsov is fine, probably 🤷
Ukrainian Human Rights Commissioner Lyudmyla Denisova has struck out again. On Thursday, she tried once more to visit Oleg Sentsov at his Siberian prison, but officials turned her away for a second time, stating that Moscow and Kyiv still haven’t agreed to the terms of her sitting down face-to-face with Russia’s most famous Ukrainian political prisoner. Denisova’s first attempt to meet Sentsov was on June 15.
You know who did meet with Sentsov? Again? Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova! She says Sentsov’s health is “satisfactory” after 45 days of hunger striking, but she admitted that “there is still concern” for how events could “develop.”
Ending the Syrian war in the blink of an eye ⚖
Russia’s Supreme Court has refused to recognize the war in Syria as a war. Rejecting an appeal by 10 Syrian citizens who were denied temporary asylum in Ivanovo, the court ruled on June 27 that “the events taking place on Syrian territory have the specific characteristics of a counter-terrorist operation, not a classic military confrontation.” On these grounds, Russia’s Supreme Court concluded that the plaintiffs could not have suffered “individual persecution” or “inhumane treatment.”
The Syrian Civil War began in 2011. According to the United Nations, roughly five million Syrians had fled the country by 2017 — more than half of them went to Turkey, while many others left for Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan.
In the fall of 2015, Russia intervened militarily in Syria, officially in order to fight terrorists from ISIS. Several Western countries have accused Moscow of using the war against ISIS to conceal its real goal: rescuing the Assad regime. During a live call-in show in early June, Vladimir Putin defended the military intervention as an invaluable opportunity for Russia’s armed forces to gain experience on the ground. The president also reasoned that “it’s better to fight them over there, than here in Russia.”
Amazon subprime 📦
The Finance Ministry has reportedly tweaked its proposed reforms to Russia’s duty-free threshold on imported goods bought online, according to the magazine RBC. The new plan would lower the threshold to 500 euros ($579) a month per customer, as of July 1, 2018. Starting on July 1, 2019, the policy would change from monthly import totals to individual package values, with the new threshold set at 100 euros ($115) per parcel, but not to exceed 200 euros ($231) in a single month.
Officials in the finance and communications ministries previously drafted reforms that would have postponed lowering the duty threshold to 500 euros a month until January 1, 2019, and the 100-euro-per-parcel change would have come without monthly restrictions.
In Russia today, you can buy up to 1,000 euros ($1,154) or as much as 31 kilograms (68 pounds) in a month from foreign online stores without paying a special tax of 30 percent (not to exceed four euros per kilogram, or $2.10 per pound).
On June 18, Finance Ministry tax and customs policy head Alexey Sazanov official reportedly said the threshold on duty-free online purchases would fall to 500 euros a month as soon as July 1, 2018, though an unnamed ministry representative later clarified that this is still under debate. According to Vedomosti, Russia’s Federal Customs Service also wants the duty-free threshold lowered, advocating a 20-percent tax on all purchases from foreign online stores.
Vkontakte cracks down on “slut-shaming” World Cup trend ✌
Vkontakte has issued warnings to the administrators of groups created to shame Russian women for consorting with foreign soccer fans come to watch the FIFA World Cup. Representatives of the social network told the newspaper Vedomosti that Vkontakte has demanded stricter moderation of the comments and content posted in these communities.
One of these warnings went out to the administrators of the community “Buceta Rosa” — a group created on June 19 after several Brazilian tourists fooled a Russian woman into chanting the Portuguese phrase “buceta rosa” (pink pussy). The group’s members share photos of Russian women interacting with foreigners, and the comments on the images are often insulting and sometimes threatening.
One of the community’s administrators (a 27-year-old man named Anton, who refused to reveal his surname) told Meduza that he doesn’t believe his group violates the rights of the women in the photos shared on “Buceta Rosa.” “Everything was shared either by the girls themselves or their lover-friends,” he said.
Fears of “foreign meddling.” In mid-June, Tamara Pletneva, the chairperson of the State Duma’s Family Affairs Committee, warned Russian women against having sex with visiting foreigners during this summer’s FIFA World Cup, saying that they’ll be abandoned and left to raise their children alone. Citing the USSR’s experience from 1980, when Moscow hosted the Summer Olympics, Pletneva told the radio station Govorit Moskva: “These kids suffer for it later, and they’ve suffered since Soviet times.” Just to keep things edgy, she also threw in a racist insight, saying, “It’s alright when it’s within one race, but...” before clarifying that she “isn’t a nationalist.”
Roughly a million soccer fans from foreign countries are expected to visit Russia during this summer’s soccer tournament.
A global Internet threat 🌍
“The Russian Federation is pursuing policies that are significantly and rapidly encroaching online freedoms affecting not only the rights of people living in Russia but Internet users everywhere.” ~ Oral statement on Internet freedoms in Russia, signed by 52 human rights organizations
- Read the whole text here.
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