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Category: Russia

  • The Russian Alternative: How Moscow is capitalizing on US Retreat in Palestine, Israel   

    Israeli anxiety was palpable when it was reported that Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was not contacted by the new American President, Joe Biden, for days after the latter’s inauguration. While much is being read into Biden’s decision, including Washington’s lack of enthusiasm to return to the ‘peace process’, Moscow is generating much attention as a possible alternative to the United States by hosting inner Palestinian dialogue and conversing with leaders of Palestinian political groups.

    Indeed, a political shift is taking place on both fronts: the US away from the region and Russia back to it. If this trend continues, it could only be a matter of time before a major paradigm shift occurs.

    The Israelis are rightly worried at the potential loss of the unconditional support of their American benefactors. “There are 195 countries in the world, and … Biden has not contacted 188 of them,” Herb Keinon wrote in The Jerusalem Post on February 2, adding, “but only in Israel, people are concerned about the significance of this delay”.

    The concern is justified as Israel has been designated as Washington’s most prominent ally for many years, both in the Middle East and globally.

    It is unclear whether the relegation of Netanyahu during Biden’s early days in office is an indicator that Israel — in fact, the entire region – is no longer an American priority or a warning message to Netanyahu who has rallied for years in support of the Republican Administration of Donald Trump.

    Thanks to Netanyahu’s foreign policy miscalculation, support for Israel has, in recent years, become an unprecedented partisan issue in US politics. While the overwhelming majority of Republicans support Israel, only a minority of Democrats sympathize with Israel, as recent public opinion polls revealed.

    While it is true that Netanyahu’s behavior in recent years earned him special status within Republican ranks thus making him persona non grata among Democrats, it is equally true that the US seems to be divesting from the Middle East altogether.

    According to Politico, reporting on the Biden Administration’s initial days in office, a major restructuring has already taken place among the staff of the US National Security Council, flipping the previous structure “where the Middle East directorate was much bigger than it is now and the Asia portfolio was managed by a handful of more junior staffers.”

    However, it is not only Washington that is shifting its geostrategic center of gravity. Russia, too, is undergoing a major restructuring in its foreign policy priorities. While Washington is retreating from the Middle East, Moscow is cementing its presence in the region, which began gradually in its calculated involvement in the Syrian conflict in 2015. Moscow is now offering itself as a political partner and a more balanced mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.

    Like the US, Russia might not necessarily see its political involvement as a precursor to actually ending the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though Moscow insists, unlike Washington, on the centrality of international law and United Nations Resolutions in the quest for a just peace. Writing in the Polish Institute of International Affairs, Michał Wojnarowicz argues that Russia’s involvement in Palestine and Israel is consistent with its overall strategy in the Middle East, aimed at building “a network of influence among regional actors and boost its image as an attractive political partner.”

    A variation of this view was offered in the New York Times in 2016, when Moscow began working to translate its strategic gains in Syria to political capital throughout the region. It was during this time that the American-sponsored peace process had reached a dead end, giving Russia the opportunity to float the idea of a Moscow-sponsored talk between Israel and Palestine.

    “Russia’s new-found Middle East peace push, part of President Vladimir V. Putin’s reinsertion of Moscow into the region in a profound way after years of retreat, seems to be about everything but finding peace in the Middle East,” a NYT op-ed argued. “Instead, it is about Moscow’s ambitions and competition with Washington.”

    At the time, Netanyahu rejected the Russian overture, in the hope that a Republican Administration would grant Israel all of its demands without making any concessions. The Palestinians, including relatively isolated movements like Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, found in Moscow a welcoming environment and a crucial international power that is able to balance out Washington’s blind support for Israel.

    Despite Israel’s refusal to engage with the Palestinians under Russian auspices, many Palestinian delegations visited Moscow, culminating, in January 2017, in a political breakthrough when rival Palestinian factions, Fatah, Hamas and others, held serious talks in the hope of bridging their differences. Although the round of talks did not bring about Palestinian unity, it served as Russia’s political debut in a conflict that has fallen squarely within the American geopolitical space.

    Since then, Russia has remained very involved through well-structured efforts championed by Putin’s Special Envoy, Mikhail Bogdanov. These efforts are channeled through three different areas: inner Palestinian dialogue, Palestinian-Israeli dialogue and, of late, dialogue within the Fatah movement itself. The latter, especially, is indicative of the nature of Moscow’s involvement in the multi-layered conflicts at work in the region.

    Even when Palestinian groups are finalizing their previous agreements in Cairo, top Palestinian officials continue to coordinate their actions with Moscow and with Bogdanov, personally.

    Russia’s credibility among Palestinian groups is boosted by similar credibility among ordinary Palestinians as well, especially as it emerged in January that they will be receiving the Russian Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, scheduled to be available in the Occupied Territories in the near future.

    Moreover, while Washington publicly declared that it will not roll back any of Trump’s actions in favor of Israel, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, is pushing for an international peace conference on Palestine, to be held in the coming months.

    The US now has no other option but to slowly retreat from its previous commitments to the peace process: in fact, the region as a whole. As is often the case, any American retreat means a potential opening for Russia, which is now laying claim to the role of peace broker, a seismic change that many Palestinians are already welcoming.

    This article was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2021 at 1:22am and is filed under Israel, Joe Biden, Palestine, President Vladimir Putin, Russia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russian Blogger Bairov Jailed After Covering Navalny Protest In Buryatia

    The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is urging Russia to immediately release a journalist and blogger who was detained after attending a rally in support of jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny in the eastern region of Buryatia last month.

    “Russian authorities should release journalist Dmitry Bairov, drop all charges against him, and allow journalists in Russia cover political protests freely and without a fear of being prosecuted by the state,” Gulnoza Said, the media watchdog’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, said in a statement on February 10.

    Said called on law enforcement to “ensure safe conditions for journalists who are doing an important job, not intimidate them with arrests on trumped-up charges.”

    Bairov is the founder of Respublika Buryatia, a YouTube channel with about 26,000 subscribers in which he and other bloggers post commentary on local sociopolitical issues and alleged corruption. He is also a freelance correspondent for The Communist Of Buryatia newspaper.

    On January 28, Bairov was detained in Ulan-Ude, a city in Buryatia, and sentenced to 25 days in detention for his alleged participation in a January 23 nationwide demonstration in support of Navalny.

    Bairov denied the charge, saying he was at the rally as a journalist for his YouTube channel and on assignment for The Communist Of Buryatia.

    His wife told the CPJ that Bairov went on hunger strike on January 29 to demand a fair trial.

    On February 1, the Supreme Court of Buryatia denied Bairov’s appeal, after which he continued his hunger strike and also refused to drink liquids, Yekaterina Bartayeva said.

    Three days later, Bairov stopped the hunger strike as he was hospitalized with intense stomach pain and fatigue, according to Bartayeva.

    She said her husband was discharged from hospital and transferred back to a detention facility in Ulan-Ude on February 8.

    In a February 5 hearing, the Supreme Court of Buryatia ruled not to count the days Bairov spent in hospital toward the 25 days of his sentence, Bartayeva said.

    Bairov’s prosecution came amid an ongoing crackdown on Navalny’s associates and protesters calling for his release from prison.

    Navalny was arrested on January 17 upon his return to Russia from Germany, where he was being treated for a nerve-agent poisoning that he says was ordered by President Vladimir Putin, which the Kremlin has denied.

    On February 2, the anti-corruption campaigner was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison for violating the terms of probation while recuperating in Germany in a case that has caused domestic and international outrage.

    He had been serving a suspended sentence relating to an embezzlement case that he has called politically motivated. Given credit for time already spent in detention, the court said the Kremlin critic would have to serve 2 years and 8 months behind bars.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Germany Offered U.S. ‘Dirty Deal’ On Nord Stream 2, Eco-Group Claims

    An environmental and consumer protection group says the German government offered U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration financial support of up to 1 billion euros ($1.21 billion) in a bid to prevent Washington from sanctioning the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

    According to a document published by Environmental Action Germany (DUH) on February 9, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz offered the funds for the import of U.S. liquefied natural gas in a personal letter addressed to his counterpart at the time, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

    It was dated August 7, 2020, and included the offer in an attached “non-paper.”

    Sascha Mueller-Kraenner, the DUH executive director, called it a “scandal” and a “dirty deal at the expense of third parties.”

    According to the paper, the German government offered to invest in developing LNG terminals in Wilhelmshaven and Brunsbuettel on Germany’s North Sea coastline.

    In return, Washington was allegedly asked to permit the “unhindered construction and operation of Nord Stream 2,” a Baltic Sea pipeline set to double deliveries of natural gas from Russia to Germany.

    The Finance Ministry in Berlin did not initially comment on the matter, although a spokesman said a statement was being prepared.

    The pipeline, which is nearing completion, is intended to carry 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year from Russia to Germany, but work was halted in December 2020 following the threat of sanctions from Washington.

    The United States and several European countries have said the pipeline will increase Europe’s energy dependency on Russia, bypass Ukraine, and deny Kyiv a lucrative source of transit revenue.

    About 150 kilometers of pipe transiting Danish and German waters must be laid to complete pipeline controlled by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom.

    U.S. President Joe Biden has called Nord Stream 2 a “bad deal for Europe.”

    With reporting by dpa

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • From A Cyanide Tooth To KGB Micro-Cameras, Iconic Soviet Spy Relics Going Under The Hammer

    Collectors looking for a piece of Cold War history will get their chance this weekend when a trove of real-life Soviet spy gadgets goes under the hammer at an auction in California.

    Miniature cameras, microphones hidden in cigarette packs, pens, and rings, and even a poison-filled tooth are among the items to be auctioned at U.S.-based Julien’s Auctions on February 13.

    This “is the world’s first and most comprehensive auction event offering some of the rarest and most important artifacts from the U.S, Soviet Union, and Cuba during the Cold War era ever to be assembled and offered at auction,” the auction house said in an announcement on its website.

    The entire collection from New York’s short-lived KGB Espionage Museum, which opened in January 2019 but closed last year due to the pandemic, will be at the centerpiece of the auction, it says.

    Among the various items available during the auction onsite in Beverly Hills and via the Internet will be devices used to store microfilm or other documents, including cuff links, high-heeled shoes, hollowed-out coins, and even a “rectal concealment capsule.”

    Other items on sale include a fake tooth containing deadly cyanide and a replica of the umbrella used in 1978 in London to fatally poison Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov.

    Alongside the gadgets, spy enthusiasts also will have the opportunity to acquire Cold War relics such as letters signed by Cuba’s communist revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.

    “From the entire KGB Espionage Museum collection to obscure U.S. and Soviet space-race artifacts to never-before-seen items from Cuba and their revolution, these stunning objects offer a fascinating look at the geopolitical, economic, and cultural upheaval of that time, whose impact resonates more than ever in this election year,” said Darren Julien, president and chief executive officer of Julien’s Auctions.

    Other objects on sale relate to the U.S. space program, including vintage astronaut equipment and “footage of various fecal and urine collection devices being tested in low-gravity environments.”

    With reporting by AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Moscow Authorities Refuse To Extend Gogol-Center Theater Contract For Director Serebrennikov

    MOSCOW — Well-known Russian film and theater director Kirill Serebrennikov, who was convicted in a controversial embezzlement case last year which many considered politically motivated, will leave the Gogol-Center theater in Moscow after city authorities refused to extend his agreement.

    Serebrennikov, whose contract expires on February 25, wrote about the situation on Instagram on February 9, expressing his gratitude “to all my friends, students, and enemies for the unique experience that helped me to learn many things.”

    “The Gogol-Center continues to live as a theater, as an idea. Because theater…is more important and wider, which means it is more durable than various officials and circumstances, and even more important and wider than its creators. Try to keep the theater alive and have liberty as a necessity for you,” he wrote.

    Serebrennikov has led the Gogol-Center since its creation in 2012 on the basis of the Moscow Gogol Theater.

    Many of Serebrennikov-directed performances, such as Thugs, Metamorphoses, A Dream In A Summer Night, Little Tragedies, etc., have been extremely popular among Muscovites.

    Last June, a court in Moscow found Serebrennikov guilty of embezzlement and handed him a suspended, three-year prison term and fined him 800,000 rubles ($10,500).

    Serebrennikov’s co-defendants, theater producers Yuri Itin and Aleksei Malobrodsky, were also found guilty of embezzlement and received three-year and two-year suspended sentences, respectively. Both also received steep fines.

    The fourth defendant, former employee of the Culture Ministry, Sofia Apfelbaum, was found guilty of negligence.

    The court also ordered Serebrennikov, Itin, and Malobrodsky to repay nearly 129 million rubles (some $1.7 million) that the court concluded they had embezzled.

    Serebrennikov has been hailed as a daring and innovative force on Russia’s modern art scene, potentially putting him at odds with cultural conservatives, and has protested government policies in the past.

    He has taken part in anti-government protests and voiced concern about the growing influence of the Russian Orthodox Church in the country.

    Serebrennikov’s arrest in August 2017 drew international attention and prompted accusations that Russian authorities were targeting cultural figures who are at odds with President Vladimir Putin and his government.

    Prominent Russian and international actors, writers, and directors have expressed their support for Serebrennikov and his colleagues. Many regarded the case as politically motivated.

    Serebrennikov, Itin, Malobrodsky, and Apfelbaum were accused of embezzling state funds that were granted from 2011 to 2014 to Seventh Studio, a nonprofit organization established by Serebrennikov, for a project called Platforma.

    All four have denied any wrongdoing.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Top EU Diplomat Warns Russia Heading Down ‘Authoritarian Route’

    The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, says his visit to Moscow last week showed that Russia is heading down a “worrisome, authoritarian route” that closes off democracy and the rule of law.

    Speaking to the European Parliament to report on his trip to the Russian capital, Borrell said on February 9 that the Kremlin has no intention of developing constructive relations if human rights are part of the conversation.

    “They are merciless,” Borrell said after visiting Moscow from February 4-6.

    “The current power structure in Russia, combining vested economic interests, military and political control, leave no opening for democratic rule of law,” he added.

    Relations between Moscow and the EU have been sorely strained by Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea and its support for separatist formations waging a war against Kyiv in parts of eastern Ukraine, the EU’s rejection of a disputed presidential election in Belarus and its criticism of a brutal crackdown by the government of strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka, and other issues.

    Most recently, the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny with a military-grade nerve agent, and his subsequent detention upon returning from Germany where he was being treated for the attack, has put relations between the 27-member bloc and Russia at a crossroads.

    Borrell said Russia was trying to drive a wedge between some EU members and that while further policy steps may include new sanctions, the bloc must avoid permanent confrontation with Moscow.

    “It will be for the member states to decide the next steps, but yes, this could include sanctions,” Borrell said, noting concrete proposals will likely be discussed at an EU foreign ministers’ meeting on February 22 and at an EU summit in March.

    Based on reporting by Reuters and dpa

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Navalny Spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh Remanded Under House Arrest

    A Moscow court has rejected an appeal by Kira Yarmysh, spokeswoman of jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, against her detention.

    The press service of Moscow courts said on Telegram that the Moscow City Court on February 9 upheld a lower court’s decision to place Yarmysh under house arrest.

    Yarmysh, along with nine other associates and supporters of Navalny, have been charged with publicly calling Moscow residents to violate sanitary and epidemiological safety precautions.

    The group was detained in late January on the eve of unsanctioned mass rallies against Navalny’s arrest. Most of them have since been placed under house arrest.

    If found guilty of the charges against them, they face up to 2 years in prison.

    On February 8, the Memorial Human Rights Center in Moscow recognized the group as political prisoners.

    The 44-year-old Navalny was arrested on January 17 after returning to Russia from Germany where he was treated for a nerve-agent poisoning that he says was ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, which the Kremlin has denied.

    More than 10,000 people were rounded up by police during nationwide rallies protesting Navalny’s arrest in more than 100 Russian towns and cities on January 23 and January 31.

    On February 2, Navalny was found guilty of violating the terms of his suspended sentence relating to an embezzlement case that he has called politically motivated. The court converted the sentence to 3 1/2 years in prison. Given credit for time already spent in detention, the court said the Kremlin critic would have to serve 2 years and 8 months behind bars.

    The court’s ruling caused new mass protests across the country that were also violently dispersed by police.

    More than 1,400 people were detained by police in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other Russian cities on that day.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russian COVID Deaths In 2020 Two Times Higher Than Earlier Estimate

    The number of Russians killed by the COVID-19 last year was twice as high as previously thought, amounting to the world’s third-highest death toll for 2020, according to figures released by the country’s national statistics agency.

    A total of 162,429 Russians died of the virus in 2020, the Rosstat agency said on February 8, the same day as the government coronavirus task force’s data said 77,068 people had died since the beginning of the pandemic, including deaths that occurred in the past month and this month so far.

    Rosstat’s count of coronavirus-linked deaths includes cases where the virus wasn’t the main cause of death and where the virus was suspected but not confirmed.

    The government task force’s figures only include cases where COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, was confirmed as the cause of death, a counting method which has been repeatedly criticized in the West as Russia’s tally of confirmed coronavirus cases became one of the world’s largest.

    According to Rosstat, December accounted for the highest number of deaths since April — 44,435. That’s when infections in Russia soared and officials regularly reported over 27,000 new coronavirus cases daily.

    Rosstat’s data also showed that the number of deaths from all causes last year grew by 323,800, or nearly 18 percent, compared to 2019.

    The statistics office found that Russia’s population shrank last year by its highest level in 15 years.

    Russia has recently eased some of its pandemic restrictions, saying the situation has improved.

    Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has allowed nightclubs and restaurants to open after weeks of being closed.

    More people are also allowed in theaters, cinemas, and concert halls.

    Children have also been permitted to return to school and students to attend universities.

    Russia has reported more than 3.9 million confirmed coronavirus cases, the fifth-highest tally in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University.

    With reporting by AP, dpa, and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Memorial Human Rights Center Recognizes Navalny’s Associates, Supporters As Political Prisoners

    The Moscow-based Memorial Human Rights Center has recognized 10 associates and supporters of jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny as political prisoners.

    In a February 8 statement, Memorial said it had recognized as political prisoners the individuals detained on the eve of unsanctioned mass rallies against Navalny’s arrest in late-January and charged with publicly calling for the violation of sanitary and epidemiological safety precautions.

    The 10 include, Navalny’s brother Oleg Navalny, Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, municipal lawyers Dmitry Baranovsky, Konstantin Yanauskas, and Lyusya Shtein, the chief of the Physicians’ Alliance NGO Anastasia Vasilyeva, a leading member of the Pussy Riot protest group, Maria Alyokhina, a coordinator of Navalny’s team in Moscow, Oleg Stepanov, Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh, and an activist Nikolai Lyaskin.

    The majority of these people were placed under house arrest. If found guilty of the charges, each person faces up to two years in prison.

    “The persecution of protesters on the grounds of violating sanitary and epidemiological restrictions looks especially cynical while thousands of peaceful demonstrators are being detained and transported in tightly filled police vehicles and kept in police stations in conditions that even further expedite the spread of the illness,” Memorial said in its statement.

    A day earlier, more than 100 Russian actors, directors, writers, musicians, poets, and scholars issued an open letter addressed to the nation, authorities, and political parties, to protest against the violent crackdown on the rallies and calling the persecution of the demonstrators “a real shame for Russia’s judicial system.”

    The letter does not mention Navalny’s name, but among other issues, the text mentions his persecution and the mass arrests of his supporters in recent weeks.

    “We call on the goodwill of the people, all our fellow citizens, to join the condemnation of violence against political opponents, to raise their voices to defend civil peace, democracy, and a decent life, and [we call on] representatives of the authorities to return to the boundaries of constitutional law and order,” the letter says.

    Navalny, 44, was arrested on January 17 after returning to Russia from Germany where he was treated for a nerve-agent poisoning that he says was ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, which the Kremlin has denied.

    More than 10,000 people were rounded up by police during nationwide rallies protesting Navalny’s arrest in more than 100 Russian towns and cities on January 23 and January 31.

    On February 2, Navalny was found guilty of violating the terms of a suspended sentence connected to an embezzlement case that he has called politically motivated. The court converted the sentence to 3 1/2 years in prison. Given credit for time already spent in detention, the court said the Kremlin critic would have to serve 2 years and 8 months behind bars.

    The court’s ruling caused new mass protests across the country that were also violently dispersed by police. More than 1,400 people were detained by police in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other Russian cities on that day.

    With reporting by Ekho Moskvy

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russia Expels Albanian Diplomat In Tit-For-Tat Move

    Russia says it is expelling an Albanian diplomat in a tit-for-tat move after Tirana told a Russian diplomat to leave for allegedly violating lockdown rules instituted for the coronavirus pandemic.

    The Foreign Ministry said in a statement on February 8 that the first secretary of the Albanian Embassy in Moscow had been declared “persona non grata” and ordered to leave the country within 72 hours.

    The move comes more than two weeks after the Albanian government announced it was expelling the first secretary of the Russian Embassy in Tirana, citing “repeated” violations of pandemic restrictions by the diplomat since April 2020.

    The Albanian Foreign Ministry said senior representatives of the Foreign Ministry first addressed the matter with the Russia ambassador in Tirana, but the diplomat continued to break lockdown rules.

    In its statement on February 8, Russia’s Foreign Ministry called the Albanian decision a “provocation” and said that its diplomat was expelled “under a completely contrived pretext.”

    It accused the Albanian authorities of “playing along with anti-Russian forces” to gain “political points” ahead of parliamentary election in April.

    In 2018, Albania expelled two Russian diplomats, saying their activities were not compliant with their diplomatic status.

    Tirana resumed diplomatic relations with Moscow in 1991, 30 years after the country’s then-communist regime severed previously close ties with Russia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • What Do Russians Think About Navalny?

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • German Minister Warns Against Linking Fate Of Navalny With Nord Stream Pipeline

    German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier has cautioned against linking Moscow’s treatment of jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny to the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

    In remarks published on February 7 by the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, Altmaier voiced support for continuing construction of the nearly finished pipeline.

    “Business relationships and business projects that have existed for decades are one thing and serious human rights violations and our reactions to them are another,” Altmaier said.

    He was echoing remarks on February 5 by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who also said she did not want to see the two issues conflated.

    Navalny was sentenced on February 2 to nearly 3 1/2 years in prison after a Moscow court ruled he had violated the terms of his parole, a charge he rejected.

    The 44-year-old anti-corruption crusader was arrested on January 17 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he was treated for a nerve-agent poisoning that he says was ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    More than 1,400 people were detained by police in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities after the court ruling on February 2. More than 10,000 were rounded up by police during nationwide protests in more than 100 Russian towns and cities on January 23 and January 31.

    Rattled by some of the biggest anti-government protests in years, Moscow has accused the West of hysteria and double standards over Navalny and told it to stay out of its internal affairs.

    Meanwhile, the company behind the Nord Stream 2 project said on February 6 that it was continuing construction of the gas pipeline, laying pipes south of the Danish island of Bornholm.

    The company said that the work was proceeding in line with permits that have been issued.

    The pipeline-laying vessel Fortuna started work in the Danish exclusive economic zone on January 24, and after testing and preparation has begun construction, the company said.

    The pipeline is intended to carry 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year from Russia to Germany, but work was halted in December following the threat of sanctions from the United States.

    Washington opposes the effort to bypass Ukraine in delivering gas to Europe, denying Kyiv a lucrative source of revenue. The United States has also said the pipeline will increase dependence on Russia for energy supplies, with President Joe Biden calling Nord Stream 2 a “bad deal for Europe.”

    About 150 kilometers of pipe transiting Danish and German waters must be laid to complete pipeline controlled by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom.

    On February 5, Merkel said Berlin would continue to support the completion of the pipeline despite Russia’s recent crackdown on anti-government protesters and Moscow’s expulsion of European diplomats from Russia.

    With reporting by dpa and Bild am Sonntag

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The world’s bad guys are winning. Is anyone going to stand up to them? | Simon Tisdall

    From the coup in Myanmar to the autocratic regimes in China and Russia, western values are under increasing threat

    Blame Joe Biden for not stepping in more quickly, or Donald Trump for encouraging authoritarian rulers. Blame Barack Obama for lifting sanctions. Easier still, blame China for propping up a military junta and putting profit before people.

    The International Court of Justice warned of ongoing genocide, but nobody was saved. UN security council members argued endlessly about what to do. The finger of blame also points at Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel heroine turned sellout.

    Related: Joe Biden talks tough on putting the world to rights. But can he deliver?

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • EU Foreign Policy Chief Wraps Up Russia Visit Amid Criticism Over Response To Navalny Protests

    EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has completed his three-day trip to Moscow amid criticism of Russia’s response to anti-government protests.

    The European External Action Service (EEAS) said in a February 6 press release that Borrell addressed a number of issues with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, including the “deteriorating human rights situation in Russia and the deliberate attempts to silence critical voices, NGOs, and civil society.”

    Borrell reiterated the European Union’s “strong condemnation of the recent sentencing of Aleksei Navalny, which followed his illegal detention and assassination attempt by a chemical nerve agent on Russian soil.” Borrell repeated calls by Brussels for the opposition politician’s “immediate and unconditional release”

    The EU official also “strongly condemned” Russia’s February 5 decision to expel three diplomats from EU states for allegedly participating in anti-government rallies held after Navalny was jailed upon his return from months of treatment abroad for his nearly fatal poisoning. The opposition politician and anti-corruption activist has accused President Vladimir Putin of ordering the assassination attempt.

    Borrell rejected the allegations that the diplomats from Sweden, Germany, and Poland had conducted activities incompatible with their status, and called on Moscow to reconsider the decision.

    Regarding Navalny being sentenced this week to nearly three years in prison related to a previous fraud conviction, Borrell said that the implications of the Moscow court decision would be discussed by EU foreign ministers later this month.

    The EEAS statement also said that EU diplomats were in contact with Navalny’s lawyers during Borrell’s visit.

    Borrell also discussed Russia’s actions in Ukraine, where Moscow has seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and supported a separatist conflict against Kyiv, and called on Russia to “respect the democratic choice of the people of Belarus and other conflicts in the neighborhood.”

    Moscow has given its support to Alyaksandr Lukashenka despite the refusal by the EU and other Western countries to recognize him as president. Mass protests have been held weekly since Lukashenka declared himself the winner of the country’s August 20 presidential vote, leading to thousands of arrests and documented cases of violence against demonstrators.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Consortium Resumes Laying Pipe For Nord Stream 2

    Efforts have resumed to complete the last underwater section of the controversial Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline.

    The international consortium behind the Russia-led project began laying pipes on February 5 in Danish waters.

    The pipeline is intended to carry 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year from Russia to Germany, but work was halted in December 2020 following the threat of sanctions from the United States.

    Washington opposes the effort to bypass Ukraine in delivering gas to Europe, denying Kyiv a lucrative source of revenue. The United States has also said the pipeline will increase dependence on Russia for energy supplies, with President Joe Biden calling Nord Stream 2 a “bad deal for Europe.”

    About 150 kilometers of pipe transiting Danish and German waters must be laid to complete pipeline controlled by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom.

    On February 5, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin would continue to support the completion of the pipeline despite Russia’s recent crackdown on anti-government protesters and Moscow’s expulsion of European diplomats from Russia.

    Based on reporting by Reuters and dpa

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • No Rallies Planned For Navalny, But Police Raids, Detentions Continue In Russia

    The authorities in Russia reportedly continued to detain supporters of jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny and closed the center of the country’s second-largest city even though no anti-government rallies were planned.

    Snow removal equipment was used to block access to central St. Petersburg on February 6, where large rallies against Navalny’s jailing were held the last two weekends. Subway stations in the city center were also closed and police reportedly said that 30 raids were conducted against opposition supporters.

    The blockades in St. Petersburg were gradually removed in the late afternoon.

    Police action was also reported elsewhere, including in Vladivostok, where more than 100 demonstrators were arrested during anti-government and pro-Navalny rallies on January 31.

    The homes of a number of activists, opposition politicians, and journalists were raided on February 6 in relation to an investigation into the blockage of roads ahead of a previous rally in the city, on January 23.

    Video published by police in the Far East city reportedly showed the arrest of blogger Gennady Shulga at his home, with his head being pushed to the floor in front of an animal’s food dish. Local media reported that a small rally held in Vladivostok on February 6 was dwarfed by police.

    Demonstrations have been held in more than 100 cities nationwide after Navalny, a well-known anti-corruption crusader and Kremlin critic, was arrested upon his return to Russia on January 17 following months of treatment abroad for a poisoning he says was ordered by President Vladimir Putin.

    Navalny was in court twice this week. On February 2, he was sentenced to nearly three years in jail after a court converted a suspended sentence relating to fraud into jail time.

    The second case, in which he is accused of defaming a World War II veteran in comments he made on Twitter, has been postponed. Navalny has accused Russian officials of “fabricating” the slander case relating to the comments he made about several people who appeared in a pro-Kremlin video.

    After more than 10,000 protesters were detained during nationwide anti-government demonstrations on January 23 and 31, a close aide to Navalny held off on announcing any new protests.

    “We will properly organize them and definitely hold another big one in spring and summer,” Leonid Volkov announced on a YouTube live stream.

    Russia will hold key parliamentary elections on September 17. Navalny and his team are encouraging citizens to vote for politicians running against candidates from the pro-Putin United Russia party.

    With reporting by dpa

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russian Rights Group Warns That Detained Gay Men Face ‘Mortal Danger’ In Chechnya

    The Russian LGBT Network has warned that two young gay men from Chechnya who were seized in Nizhny Novgorod and driven by car back to the North Caucasus region face “mortal danger.”

    The Russian NGO reported on its Telegram channel on February 6 that Salekh Magamadov, 18, and a 17-year-old companion had arrived at a police station in Gudermes after being detained by Federal Security Service (FSB) officers earlier this week.

    The reason for their detentions in Nizhny Novgorod remains unknown, the LGBT Network reported on its website, adding that one of its lawyers was not being granted access to the detainees prior to their interrogation.

    RFE/RL is not revealing the identity of the second man because he is a minor.

    The LGBT Network helped both men leave Chechnya and settle in Nizhny Novgorod in July. After police arrived at their apartment on February 4, one of the men contacted the NGO asking for help and its emergency-assistance coordinator reported hearing screaming from unknown people in the background, the LGBT Network wrote on its website.

    After arriving on the scene, a lawyer for the LGBT Network noticed that a scuffle had taken place in the men’s apartment and was able to confirm that the two men had been detained by police and were being taken by car to Gudermes, Chechnya.

    The LGBT Network became involved in the men’s case after they were both detained in April 2020 in Chechnya, the Russian region ruled by Kremlin-backed strongman Ramzan Kadyrov.

    According to the LGBT Network the two men had been illegally detained at a notorious prison in the Chechen capital in relation to their involvement as moderators on the opposition Telegram channel Osal Nakh 95.

    The two were tortured and humiliated by Chechen special police, according to the rights group, and were later seen in videos published on the Internet in which they can be seen apologizing, apparently under duress, saying “they weren’t men.”

    The predominantly Muslim region of Russia’s North Caucasus was in 2017 accused of carrying out a brutal “purge” targeting sexual minorities, despite Kadyrov’s denials and claims that “we don’t have any gays” in Chechnya. In 2019, the LGBT Network reported a second wave of persecution against gays.

    “They are tired and frightened,” LGBT Network spokesperson Time Bestsvet told AFP on January 6. “All this time they were being pressured to refuse a lawyer.”

    According to Bestsvet, the father of the detained minor was being pressured to refuse to let his son see an attorney. Bestsvet said the rights group was working to gain access to the men, whom he said faced “mortal danger.”

    “There have been cases when relatives brought back to Chechnya people that we had evacuated and then these people would die or, we can say, were probably murdered,” Bestsvet said.

    With reporting by AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • U.S. Maintains Firm Stance On Turkey’s Purchase Of Russian Missile Defense System

    U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is maintaining the previous administration’s tough line against NATO member Turkey’s purchase of a major Russian missile defense system.

    “Our position has not changed,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said at a briefing on February 5. “We urge Turkey not to retain the S-400 system.”

    Turkey bought the S-400 system from Russia in 2019 after failing to agree terms with the United States on the purchase of U.S. Patriots, the air defense system of choice for most NATO member states.

    The purchase strained ties between Washington and Ankara and prompted U.S. warnings that such military cooperation with Moscow was incompatible with NATO. The United States also warned that it would endanger the security of U.S. military technology and personnel as well as that of Turkey.

    After Turkey moved ahead with the purchase, the United States suspended its participation in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program while it continued to negotiate with Ankara.

    Turkey further angered the United States in October by testing the Russian-made system. The Pentagon said at the time that the test risked serious consequences for the U.S.-Turkish relationship, and the State Department said the test was unacceptable and a “clear step in the wrong direction.”

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said then that the tests would continue without Ankara asking Washington for permission.

    In December, the United States announced sanctions, including a ban on all U.S. export licenses to the Presidency of Defense Industries (SSB) as well as an asset freeze on its president, Ismail Demir, its vice president, and two employees.

    Russia called the sanctions another example of “illegitimate, unilateral coercive measures” by the United States.

    “Turkey is a longstanding and valued NATO ally, but their decision to purchase the S-400 is inconsistent with Turkey’s commitments as a U.S. and NATO ally,” Kirby said.

    Turkey has had multiple opportunities over the last decade to purchase the U.S. Patriot system and instead chose to purchase the S-400, “which provides Russia revenue, access and influence,” he said.

    Erdogan had expressed hope in January of reaching a compromise with Biden that would allow Ankara to be reintegrated into the F-35 fighter jet program, but contacts between the new American administration and Turkey have been limited.

    While Ankara said on earlier this week that Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin and U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan had expressed wishes for greater cooperation, on Biden has not yet spoken with Erdogan since becoming president.

    With reporting by AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Week In Russia: Courts, Crackdowns, And A Clouded Future

    There was an air of inevitability about the prison sentence handed down to Aleksei Navalny this week — and a sense of foreboding about its potential consequences, short-term and long. It’s a combination that has become familiar over Vladimir Putin’s 21 years in power, stretching back at least as far as his decision, almost a decade ago, to return to the presidency after a four-year break.

    Here are some of the key developments in Russia over the past week and some of the takeaways going forward.

    Some of the biggest events that have shaped Russia over Vladimir Putin’s 21 years in power have seemed to come out of the blue, even if underlying factors existed in advance: The Beslan school seizure in 2004, for example — a surprise attack that led to the deaths of 334 people, including 184 children, and then to a Kremlin campaign to tighten control over the country.

    Other developments, such as those widely seen as decisions by Putin, seemed inevitable — or at least, came to seem inevitable as they approached, even if millions of Russians and a smaller number of Russia-watchers may have hoped against hope that they would go the other way, like baseball fans willing a home-run ball hit by the opposing team to go foul.

    It happened in September 2011, when Putin revealed his plan to return to the presidency the following year, after stepping down into the prime minister’s post in 2008 and steering Dmitry Medvedev into the Kremlin to avoid violating the constitution.

    It happened in a different way last year, when Putin — who had long signaled that he would take some other path to keep a hold on power after 2024 — made clear in March that he would hand himself the right to run for two more six-year terms by changing the constitution he had so carefully avoided violating, and then secured that option in July.

    In both cases, the decisions caused dismay for Russians who had been hoping for change, reform, and a new direction for a country that Putin has now dominated since 1999 — and undermined Putin’s repeated assertion that he’s in it more for the people, not for power itself.

    And in both cases, they sparked fears — which soon turned out to be well-founded — of new crackdowns, tighter screws, and a further narrowing of the space for dissent to be voiced and civil society to gain purchase.

    A wave of protests in 2011-12, sparked in part by Putin’s decision to return to the Kremlin, led to dozens of prosecutions on what Kremlin opponents said were absurd and unfounded charges in the so-called Bolotnaya Case, a reference to the Moscow square where a large protest was held on the eve of Putin’s inauguration to a third term in May 2012.

    And now, in the eyes of many in Russia and abroad, it has happened again: On February 2, two weeks and two days after Navalny returned to Russia following treatment in Germany for a near-fatal nerve-agent poisoning he blames on Putin, a court ordered the opposition politician and anti-corruption activist to be imprisoned for 2 years and 8 months.

    ‘Don’t Pretend You’re Making Decisions’

    As the court date approached, it had seemed increasingly clear that Navalny would be handed the full sentence requested by the state — and that’s what happened. At a hearing colored by absurdities on a charge he denounced as absurd, the Kremlin foe was ordered imprisoned for 3 1/2 years in prison, minus 10 months for time served.

    Everything the state had said and done since Navalny’s return — from raiding the homes of his allies to baselessly accusing the United States of inciting protests in his support — seemed to point to the Kremlin foe getting the maximum or more: He still faces a potential fraud charge that could lead to an additional 10-year prison sentence.

    And he was back in court for yet another case on February 5. Charged with slandering a World War II veteran and others who were featured in a promotional video for the constitutional amendments that cleared the way for Putin to seek two more six-year terms if he wants, Navalny pushed back by accusing the Kremlin of fabricating the case and trotting out the 94-year-old man for propaganda purposes.

    Navalny also delivered a concise rebuke against the judge in the case, and against a justice system in which verdicts in politically sensitive trials cases are widely believed to be handed down by the Kremlin, saying: “You are a person playing a judge. Don’t pretend that you’re making decisions here.”

    And this time, the fears of a further crackdown were borne out even before the February 2 hearing took place. At protests nationwide on January 23 and January 31, police detained some 10,000 people — an unprecedented number, even given the fact that the rallies were Russia’s biggest in years — beating some with truncheons and making frequent use of electric shock batons.

    The violence persisted on February 2, as riot police chased protesters though the streets of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other cities, detaining more than 1,400 people.

    ‘Increased Pressure’

    The violent police response to overwhelmingly peaceful protests seemed to add to evidence of the accuracy of predictions that the adoption of the constitutional amendments would further empower hard-liners in Putin’s ruling apparatus while dealing fresh setbacks to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.

    The visual evidence of this development was stark: Footage of more than two dozen detainees cramped into a cell meant for eight — some of them, in a piece of dark irony, held for allegedly violating COVID-19 restrictions — and of police pressing detainees into the muddy slush of Moscow’s streets or tasing people as they frog marched them to detention.

    While the outcome of Navalny’s hearing on February 2 may have come to seem inevitable, the longer-term consequences are less predictable — but grim forecasts prevail.

    “The current ruling is only the first part of a saga,” Russian political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya tweeted shortly after the court decision.

    Navalny is likely to face further charges, she wrote, while “other groups will face increased pressure — liberal media, NGOs, opposition-minded activists, and average citizens.”

    For security agencies like the Federal Security Service (FSB), “Navalny and the people who have marched in recent weeks are nothing less than enemies of the state and a tool for foreign meddling and interference,” Stanovaya wrote. “That excludes the possibility of dialogue or concessions let alone the legitimate right to protest.”

    For the time being, street protests may not play much of a part in the struggle that heated up with Navalny’s return to Russia. In an unexpected announcement on February 4, his top associate said that no new protests were planned for this weekend — and probably none for weeks or months.

    “If we come out every week, we will have a thousand more arrested and hundreds beaten,” Volkov said.

    Protest Pause

    Volkov suggested that Navalny’s supporters would seek to stage a small number of big protests in spring and summer — and that the focus would be on weakening the ruling United Russia party and other Kremlin-backed forces in the elections to the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, which must be held by September 19.

    Meanwhile, he indicated, they would encourage Western governments to turn up the pressure on the Kremlin, saying the goal was that “no world leader talks to Putin about anything other than Aleksei Navalny and his release.”

    That seems unlikely. The new U.S. administration reached an agreement with Russia to extend the New START nuclear-arms limitation pact, which had been set to expire on February 5, and has signaled that it will be tough on Putin’s government — but not to the point of limiting dialogue to a single issue.

    During a visit to Moscow that was the first of its kind since 2017 and was marred by Russia’s decision to expel three European diplomats it claimed participated in the protests, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said he voiced the EU’s “deep concern and reiterated our appeal [for Navalny’s] release and the launch of an impartial investigation of his poisoning.”

    But Borrell said that there were no proposals of additional EU sanctions against Russia at this point. He also hailed Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, which trial results published this week indicated is safe and effective, and said he hoped it could be certified for use in the bloc — a development that would be a major success for the Kremlin.

    Volkov’s remarks put off further tests of the opposition’s strength and stamina, and seemed to hand a powerful victory to Putin. The big question: Will it be Pyrrhic in the long run?

    One thing to consider in pondering that question is the opinion polls — and what they don’t necessarily mean.

    Observers who dismiss Navalny’s challenge to Putin point to the president’s approval ratings and other poll numbers, contrasting them with Navalny’s far lower figures.

    One thing such comparisons tend to overlook is that Navalny is not running against Putin in an election — he was barred from doing that in 2018, five years after he came in second to the Kremlin-backed incumbent in a Moscow mayoral election, with nearly 30 percent of the vote.

    And while the protests that followed Navalny’s return focused on calls for his release, many of the demonstrators have said they came out not to back him as much as to voice dissatisfaction with Putin’s government and support what its vocal foe is calling for, such as curbing corruption, making citizens safe from the predations of the state, and holding democratic elections.

    ‘Divide And Polarize’

    In any case, observers say that opinion-poll numbers can be deceptive because respondents are more likely to voice support for a politician who is already in power, and also point out that the margins are narrowing in some cases.

    According to a January survey by the independent Levada Center pollster, Putin’s job approval rating was 64 percent. That is almost two-thirds, but it is lower than it was in November 2020, far lower than the high-80s numbers recorded in 2014-15.

    A separate Levada poll conducted in January indicated that 19 percent of Russians approve of Navalny’s activities, while 56 percent disapproved.

    Journalist Leonid Ragozin cautioned against drawing far-reaching conclusions, writing on Twitter that the result “looks pretty good [for Navalny] for an authoritarian country where [the] economy is in fairly good shape.”

    “Russia’s ‘aggressively-obedient’ majority can change orientation practically overnight when things go awry,” Ragozin wrote.

    It’s unclear whether and when that might happen, of course — but in the meantime, analysts warn, tensions are likely to increase.

    “The authorities will resort to repressions but they are no longer able to consolidate people around Putin,” Stanovaya wrote. “That effort will, in turn, deeply divide and polarize society with all the attendant, unpredictable consequences.”

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Halt To Opposition Protests In Russia Leaves Some Activists ‘Seething’

    After two weeks of police beatings, thousands of arrests, and a wave of criminal prosecutions whose reach is only just becoming apparent, allies of imprisoned Kremlin foe Aleksei Navalny have called an end to the anti-government protests they incited over the course of three consecutive weeks.

    “If we continue to go out each week, we’ll continue to get thousands arrested and hundreds beaten,” Leonid Volkov, a top Navalny aide, told supporters in a YouTube video announcing the decision. “That’s not what we want, and that’s not what Aleksei asks of us.”

    The protests ended the day Navalny was sentenced to over 2 1/2 years in prison on February 2, and Volkov said his allies would continue to fight for his release — prioritizing “foreign policy methods,” including pressuring Western leaders to impose sanctions, while not shirking from street rallies down the line.

    “We won’t run out of reasons, and we won’t run out of demands,” he said.

    Anger Over Decision

    But the statement, which came as hundreds of protesters languish in squalid jails awaiting trial, immediately prompted indignation. Navalny supporters took to social media to voice their anger over what some perceived as capitulation.

    “These guys had no revolutionary ambitions after all,” Artur Moskvin, a self-professed activist of over 30 years, wrote on Facebook. “I was always ready to be a simple foot soldier. But not the type of foot soldier whom brilliant generals send to clear a minefield at the price of our corpses.”

    Navalny, charged with defaming a World War II veteran, attends a court hearing in Moscow on February 5.

    Navalny, charged with defaming a World War II veteran, attends a court hearing in Moscow on February 5.

    “I understand the decision of Navalny’s team,” tweeted Russian journalist Oleg Kozyrev. But, he added, “people are seething over the arrests, the beatings, and the detention camps. They’re emotional, and they got an answer based on logic — not one based on emotion.”

    Rallies for Navalny’s release swept Russia on January 23 and 31, with smaller demonstrations erupting in Moscow and St Petersburg the night of Navalny’s sentencing. The authorities cracked down, often using violence to disperse the largely peaceful crowds and arresting over 11,000 people.

    Unnamed sources close to the Kremlin told Reuters on February 4 that authorities believe they can easily ride out further nationwide rallies and are ready to use yet more force against demonstrators if necessary.

    “This is just a warm-up,” one source told the news agency.

    In an interview with RFE/RL, Ruslan Shaveddinov, a project manager for the Anti-Corruption Foundation and one of its few employees not behind bars or under house arrest, said that Navalny’s team acknowledged the disappointment among some supporters but argued that many had misconstrued Volkov’s words.

    “People should watch the video instead of paying attention to the headlines,” he said. “We’re not stopping our work for a second. We’ll be working every day to get Navalny out.”

    Push For Sanctions

    Shaveddinov confirmed that Navalny’s team would urge Western leaders to impose further sanctions on Russian officials close to President Vladimir Putin and those seen as complicit in state corruption or human rights violations.

    The Anti-Corruption Foundation e-mailed a letter to several top U.S. officials in January listing 35 individuals whom they’d like to see sanctioned, including billionaire businessmen Roman Abramovich, Alisher Usmanov, and Oleg Deripaska.

    In the meantime, Russian lawmakers are preparing to debate legislation that would make it a crime to call for sanctions against Russian citizens.

    Political analyst Abbas Gallyamov told RFE/RL the decision to put protests on hold is strategically sound but risks angering those who braved bitter cold and police batons to make their voices heard.

    “If they upped the tempo now, people would quickly burn out emotionally,” he said. “But public discontent is not going anywhere, and it will only grow, so we can expect more unrest in the summer.”

    Shaveddinov said Navalny, who was back in court on February 5 charged with defaming a World War II veteran who promoted a dubious national plebiscite on extending Putin’s rule last July, had endorsed Volkov’s message in comments passed on by his lawyer. The work of his team would continue in his absence.

    “The first task is to help people behind bars. We need to get them all out,” Shaveddinov said. “We’ll also continue our anti-corruption investigations, and we’ll continue what Aleksei Navalny asked us to do: preparing for the crucially important fall elections.”

    The parliamentary vote expected in September has long been a target for the embattled opposition, which hopes to seize on Putin’s falling approval rating and widespread grumbling over falling real wages to break the political stranglehold of the ruling United Russia party. Ahead of that election, Shavedinnov insists, more demonstrations are inevitable.

    “There’s no magic button that can start and stop protests,” he said. “People come out not because they’re called on by Volkov or Navalny. They come out because they see injustice, they see what’s happening in our country. Reasons to protest won’t go away — the authorities’ actions made sure of that.”

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • RFE/RL Appeals Russian Court-Imposed Fines Linked To Controversial ‘Foreign-Agent’ Law

    MOSCOW — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Inc. (RFE/RL) has appealed a string of Russian court decisions to fine several of the broadcaster’s Russian-language endeavours and the general director of its operations in Russia for allegedly failing to comply with new restrictions under the country’s controversial “foreign-agent” law.

    RFE/RL’s lawyers on February 5 filed the appeals against the decisions by the Tverskoi District Court in Moscow to approve several administrative protocols submitted by Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor “for noncompliance by the media performing the functions of a foreign agent with the requirements of the law on labeling information disseminated by them.”

    Among other things, the law on foreign agents requires certain news organizations that receive foreign funding to label content within Russia as being produced by a “foreign agent.”

    RFE/RL’s lawyers stated in their appeals that Roskomnadzor’s moves prevent journalists from performing professional activities and contradict the Russian Constitution and laws on media by restricting competition.

    The appeals also say that censorship is officially banned in Russia, stressing that Roskomnadzor’s orders will “distort the essence of reports [and] change the way they are received by the audience.”

    According to the lawyers, following Roskomnadzor’s requests would create distrust and rejection of the reports and materials of RFE/RL’s projects, while many of the requests cannot even be technically executed.

    “These fines represent nothing less than a state-sponsored campaign of coercion and intimidation, targeting a media company whose editorial independence is protected by law,” RFE/RL’s Regional Director for Europe and TV Production Kiryl Sukhotski said.

    “Our audiences in Russia have long depended on RFE/RL to be trustworthy, credible, and factual; to be an alternative to disinformation and spin. These qualities are, and will always remain, at the core of RFE/RL’s reporting,” Sukhotski said.

    Russian regulators have singled out RFE/RL, whose editorial independence is also enshrined in U.S. law, over other foreign news operations in Russia.

    An independent nonprofit corporation that receives funding from the U.S. Congress, RFE/RL has not complied with the “foreignagent” law, while the mounting fines could potentially force the company to shutter its presence within Russia.

    The February 5 appeal regards the court’s January 27 decisions regarding the first four protocols that imposed a total of 1.1 million rubles ($14,500).

    At this moment, the combined fines overall total 7.15 million rubles ($94,000), a sum that may increase as court decisions on Roskomnadzor’s other protocols targeting RFE/RL are pending.

    Roskomnadzor’s protocols target four of RFE/RL’s Russian-language projects — its main service for Russia, Radio Liberty; the Current Time TV and digital network; and Siberia.Reality and Idel.Reality, two regional sites delivering local news and information to audiences in Siberia and the Volga-Urals.

    RFE/RL also says that the law on foreign agents puts its journalists at risk for criminal prosecution.

    U.S. Republican and Democratic lawmakers recently called for new sanctions against Moscow if the Kremlin moves to enforce the stringent restrictions and punishing fines that threaten RFE/RL’s news operations in Russia.

    Since early in Vladimir Putin’s presidency, the Kremlin has steadily tightened the screws on independent media. The country is ranked 149th out of 180 places in the World Press Freedom Index produced by Reporters Without Borders.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russia slams US president, ‘very aggressive rhetoric’

    Kremlin,

    The Kremlin on Friday slammed Joe Biden’s “very aggressive rhetoric” after the new US president said Washington’s relationship with Moscow would change and demanded opposition politician Alexei Navalny’s release.

    “We’ve already said that we will not heed patronising statements of this sort. We will not do it,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

    “This is very aggressive and unconstructive rhetoric.”

    President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman acknowledged a “huge amount of differences and different approaches to key issues” but he also indicated that Moscow wanted to continue cooperation with Washington under Biden.

    “We expect to see Americans’ political will to continue cooperation where this serves our interests,” he said.

    In toughly worded remarks pivoting from his predecessor Donald Trump’s muted approach to Moscow, Biden on Thursday warned of “advancing authoritarianism” in China and Russia.

    He said the United States would no longer be “rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions” and demanded the release of Putin’s jailed critic Navalny who this week was sentenced to nearly three years in prison on old embezzlement charges.

    Biden said there were areas where he was willing to work with the Kremlin, notably the New START treaty on curbing nuclear weapons, which the two countries extended for five years this week.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • Blinken Warns Lavrov That U.S. Will Respond ‘Firmly’ To Russian Malign Actions

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned Russia that the new U.S. administration will respond “firmly” to Russian actions against the United States and its allies.

    The State Department said Blinken issued the warning in a February 4 telephone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

    “The Secretary reiterated President [Joe] Biden’s resolve to protect American citizens and act firmly in defense of U.S. interests in response to actions by Russia that harm us or our allies,” the State Department said in a statement.

    “This includes the release of Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed so that they are able to return home to their families in the United States,” it added.

    In June 2020, a Russian court sentenced Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, to 16 years on espionage charges, which he has vehemently rejected.

    Reed, another former U.S. marine, was handed a nine-year prison sentence in July for allegedly assaulting two police officers, a charge that he refused to admit.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (file photo)

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (file photo)

    The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Lavrov told Blinken that Moscow was open to a normalization of bilateral relations.

    The State Department said Blinken and Lavrov discussed this month’s extension of the New START nuclear arms-control treaty and “the need for new arms control that addresses all of Russia’s nuclear weapons and the growing threat from China.”

    Russia and the United States formally extended New START, the last remaining arms-control pact between Washington and Moscow, for another five years — just days before it was set to expire.

    The treaty limits the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads at 1,550, deployed strategic delivery systems at 700, and provides for a verification regime.

    Former U.S. President Donald Trump had made a failed attempt to negotiate limits on other categories of nuclear weapons and to add China to the treaty.

    Blinken has said the extension of the treaty provides time for Moscow and Washington to negotiate a new verifiable arms-control arrangement while ensuring that the United States can monitor and verify limits on Russian strategic nuclear arms.

    The State Department statement said Blinken also raised the issue of “Russian interference” in last year’s presidential election that brought Biden to the White House, Moscow’s “military aggression” in Ukraine and Georgia, the poisoning of jailed Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny, and the recent SolarWinds hack of U.S. government systems.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Top Doctor At Omsk Hospital Where Navalny Was Treated Dies Suddenly

    A top doctor at the hospital in Omsk where opposition politician Aleksei Navalny was treated immediately after his poisoning last summer has died, the hospital and regional Health Ministry said on February 4.

    Sergei Maksimishin, who was the deputy chief physician for anesthesiology and resuscitation at Omsk emergency hospital No. 1, died in his ward from a heart attack, the press service of the regional Health Ministry told Open Media. He was 55.

    Navalny was treated in the same intensive care unit after he was poisoned in August.

    The hospital said Maksimishin “suddenly passed away,” according to a statement quoted by CNN. It did not provide the cause of death.

    Navalny, 44, was initially admitted to the acute poisoning unit of Omsk emergency hospital No. 1 on August 20 after he became ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow.

    Navalny was put into a medically induced coma and evacuated to Germany, where he spent five months recovering from the poisoning. Tests in Europe determined that the toxin was from the Novichok family of Soviet-era nerve agents.

    Maksimishin did not give any press briefings at the time of Navalny’s hospitalization.

    Initially, doctors publicly admitted that the cause of Navalny’s illness was a poisoning, but then denied that it was.

    The former chief physician of the Omsk hospital, Aleksandr Murakhovsky, was responsible for communicating with the press while Navalny was a patient there and told reporters that the reason for Navalny’s grave condition was “metabolic disorders.”

    In November, Murakhovsky was appointed head of the Ministry of Health in the Omsk region.

    Murakhovsky said in a statement that Maksimishin worked at the hospital for 28 years and saved thousands of lives.

    “He brought people back to full reality. We will miss Dr. Maksimishin very much. He left too early and because of this the pain of loss is especially bitter,” Murakhovsky said in the statement, which was quoted by CNN.

    After returning to Russia last month, Navalny was detained and this week sentenced to nearly three years in prison for violating the terms of his probation on a previous sentence.

    His jailing has sparked international condemnation, including from the European Union and the United States.

    With reporting by RFE/RL’s Russian Service and CNN

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Biden Says ‘America Is Back’ In Major Foreign Policy Speech

    U.S. President Joe Biden outlined his foreign policy vision in a speech at the State Department on February 4, vowing to confront “authoritarianism” in China and Russia while reengaging with the world and allies.

    Declaring “America is back, Diplomacy is back,” Biden announced a reset of foreign policy and described how his administration will seek to lead in the world after four years under President Donald Trump.

    In a series of policy announcements, Biden said he would halt a redeployment of troops stationed in Germany, end U.S. support for offensive operations to the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen, and increase the refugee cap to 125,000.

    He also signaled a desire to rebuild alliances frayed under Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, saying that U.S. leadership and engagement are need to address global challenges such as climate change and the coronavirus pandemic.

    The new president made remarks to foreign service officers before delivering a broader foreign policy speech.

    On Russia, Biden said he warned President Vladimir Putin in their first call that the days of the United States “rolling over” to Russia’s “aggressive actions” have come to an end.

    “I made it clear to President Putin, in a manner very different than my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions — interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens — are over,” Biden said.

    “We will not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia and defend our vital interest and our people,” Biden said.

    His comments on Russia come as Washington and its European allies barrel toward fresh tensions with Moscow over the jailing of opposition politician Alexsei Navalny.

    Biden demanded Russia release the anti-corruption campaigner, describing his detention as “political.”

    A Moscow court this week ordered Navalny to serve nearly three years in prison after he returned to Russia in January from Germany, where he had been receiving treatment for a nerve agent poisoning he blames Putin of ordering.

    More than 10,000 Russian protesters have been arrested demanding Navalny’s release.

    “The Russian efforts to suppress freedom of expression and peaceful assembly are a matter of deep concern to us and the international community,” Biden said.

    “Mr Navalny, like all Russian citizens, is entitled to his rights under the Russian constitution. He’s been targeted for exposing corruption. He should be released immediately and without condition,” the U.S. president said.

    Biden said Washington and Moscow could still cooperate in some areas, pointing to the New START arms control treaty the two sides extended by five years this week.

    China also had a prominent place in his speech as the Biden administration seeks to pursue a pivot of U.S. economic, political, and military power to the Asia-Pacific region.

    Biden called China the United States’ most serious peer competitor, but said he is ready to work with Beijing when it is mutually beneficial.

    “We will…take on directly the challenges posed [to] our prosperity, security and democratic values by our most serious competitor, China,” Biden said.

    “We will confront China’s economic abuses, counter its aggressive course of action to push back China’s attack on human rights, intellectual property and global governance,” he said. “But we’re ready to work with Beijing, when it’s in America’s interest to do so.”

    With reporting by AFP, dpa, AP, and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Macron Renews Call For Dialogue With Russia, Floats Himself As Broker In U.S.-Iran Talks

    French President Emmanuel Macron has renewed his call for dialogue with Russia despite what he called its “huge mistake” in jailing opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, and offered to be an “honest broker” in talks between the United States and Iran.

    Amid lasting tensions between the West and Russia, Macron has long pushed for a working relationship with Moscow under President Vladimir Putin and renewed his commitment to the strategy during a question and answer session with the Atlantic Council think tank on February 4.

    His latest comments come as Moscow continues to ignore international calls to release Navalny, who on February 2 was sentenced to jail for almost three years for violating the terms of parole while recovering in Germany from a nerve-agent poisoning in August 2020. The Kremlin critic accuses Putin of ordering his poisoning — a charge rejected by Russian officials.

    “I think this is a huge mistake, even for Russian stability today,” Macron said of the Moscow court’s ruling, which critics say aims to silence Navalny.

    But the French president also said that he favored dialogue with Moscow because Russia is “part of Europe.”

    It was “impossible” to have peace and stability in Europe without being able to negotiate with Russia, he said.

    The West’s relationship with Russia has been severely strained over a variety of issues including Moscow’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, its support for separatists in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, election interference, and hacks that the European Union, the United States, and other countries have pinned on the Kremlin.

    ‘Honest Broker’

    On Iran, Macron offered himself as a “honest broker” in talks between Tehran and Washington in order to revive a landmark nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

    “I will do whatever I can to support any initiative from the U.S. side to reengage in a demanding dialogue, and I will…try to be an honest broker and a committed broker in this dialogue,” he said.

    In 2018, former President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of a landmark 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers, and started imposing crippling sanctions on Iran as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign aimed at forcing the country to negotiate a new agreement that would also address the country’s missile programs and its support for regional proxies.

    In response to the U.S. moves, which were accompanied by increased tensions between Iran, the United States, and its allies, Tehran has gradually breached parts of the pact saying it is no longer bound by it.

    U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on February 1 said that the new administration of President Joe Biden is willing to return to compliance with the 2015 accord if Iran does, and then work with U.S. allies and partners on a “longer and stronger” agreement including other issues.

    The next day, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters that the U.S. administration would be “consulting with our allies, consulting with our partners, consulting with Congress before we’re reaching the point where we’re going to engage directly with the Iranians and [be] willing to entertain any sort of proposal.”

    Price was responding to comments made by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif suggesting that the United States and Iran take synchronized steps to return to the nuclear accord.

    Iranian officials have insisted that the United States should make the first move by returning to the agreement, which eased international sanctions in exchange for curbs on Iran’s disputed nuclear program.

    They have also said that the country’s missile program and regional policies are off the table.

    Macron argued in favor of new negotiations with Iran that would also place limits on Iran’s ballistic missile program and include Israel and Saudi Arabia.

    The two Iran foes were fiercely opposed to the 2015 deal and supported Trump’s decision to pull the United States out.

    “We have to find a way to involve in these discussions Saudi Arabia and Israel because they are some of the key partners of the region directly interested by the outcomes with our other friends of the region,” Macron said.

    With reporting by AFP and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Biden Says He Warned Putin U.S. Will No Longer Look The Other Way

    U.S. President Joe Biden says he has warned Russian President Vladimir Putin that the days of the United States “rolling over” with regard to Russia’s transgressions have ended.

    “I made it clear to President Putin, in a manner very different than my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions — interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens — are over,” Biden said on February 4 in a speech to the State Department in Washington during his first visit to the country’s diplomatic nerve center.

    He also urged Russia to release opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, adding: “We will not hesitate to raise the cost to Russia.”

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • In Navalny Protests, The Kremlin Finds A Familiar Target To Blame: The U.S. And The West

    Just two days before Moscow was roiled by the biggest anti-government protests since the Soviet collapse, Vladimir Putin went public with the target of his blame:

    Hillary Clinton.

    “She set the tone for some opposition activists, gave them a signal, they heard this signal and started working actively,” Putin said on December 8, 2011, speaking about the then-U.S. secretary of state.

    “We are all grown-ups here. We all understand the organizers are acting according to a well-known scenario and in their own mercenary political interests,” Putin, who was prime minister at the time, told supporters without providing evidence to back the claims. “Pouring foreign money into electoral processes is particularly unacceptable.”

    Fast forward nearly a decade.

    Russia is now roiled again by some of the biggest nationwide protests in years, possibly since 2011-12. And while the demonstrations nearly a decade ago were mainly in big cities, the protests over the past two weekends — prompted by the jailing of opposition activist and anti-corruption crusader Aleksei Navalny — are wider in scope, reaching more than 140 cities and towns across the country’s 11 time zones.

    And after a Moscow judge on February 2 ordered Navalny imprisoned for more than 2 1/2 years, protesters again took to the streets of the Russian capital, in some cases enduring brutal bludgeoning at the hands of riot police.

    Who’s to blame for all of this? In the Kremlin’s eyes: The United States. Again.

    “Gross U.S. interference in the internal affairs of Russia is a proven fact, as is the ‘promotion’ of fakes and calls for unauthorized actions by Internet platforms controlled by Washington,” the Foreign Ministry said in a post to Facebook on February 1, assigning specific blame to the new U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken. No evidence was provided for any aspects of the claim.

    On the one hand, it’s a reversion to the mean, political observers said: the Kremlin sees foreign meddling in popular unrest, despite substantial evidence it is in fact powered by Russians’ dislike of endemic government corruption, stagnating wages, economic troubles, as well as fatigue with Kremlin foreign policy — and Putin.

    On the other hand, the comments — from the Foreign Ministry and Kremlin — could signal a darker turn for government policy: a xenophobic pulling-up-the-drawbridge; the growing primacy of security agencies like the Federal Security Service (FSB) in domestic policy making; and a wider effort to purge domestic opposition by portraying it as a tool in the hands of foreigners out to destroy Russia.

    In 2011, the protests were seen by the government merely as a political crisis, said Konstantin Gaaze, a sociologist at the Moscow School for Social and Economic Sciences. Now, he said, the protests are seen as a revolt engineered by the CIA.

    WATCH: No Food, No Lawyer, Threats, And Humiliation: Russians Detained During Navalny Protests Recount Mistreatment

    “It’s the same rhetoric as in 2011, but darker, and with much more nuance, in terms of them thinking there is a ‘Fifth Column,’” Gaaze said.

    “The difference is now the thinking is: ‘there are CIA spies inside Russia; Navalny and his team are in the country, all of them are CIA agents; Russians don’t have real reason to be unhappy but so they are under CIA control,’” he added.

    The first round of protests on January 23 was sparked by Navalny’s arrest upon returning to Moscow from Germany, where he was treated for a nerve-agent poisoning he blames on Putin. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov pointed to U.S. statements which called for authorities to allow Russians to protest peacefully.

    Such statements “indirectly constitute absolute interference in our internal affairs,” he said, and are “direct support for the violation of the law of the Russian Federation, support for unauthorized actions.”

    The Foreign Ministry, which has offered no evidence to bolster its accusations, homed in on a routine U.S. Embassy announcement cautioning U.S. citizens about the potential for unrest.

    “They had to behave in [the] traditional way: to accuse the USA in the igniting of protests,” Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said in an e-mail. “This is a traditional Ukraine-like scenario. A ‘Nuland-inspired-Maidan’ mantra.”

    That’s a reference to Victoria Nuland, then the assistant U.S. secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, who travelled to Kyiv late in 2013 and handed out cookies and bread to demonstrators at the Maidan protests roiling the Ukrainian capital.

    She became a major target for Kremlin messaging that baselessly accused Washington of engineering the protests, which ultimately pushed pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych from power in February 2014.

    Kolesnikov said the Kremlin overlooks the fact that Russians protesting may have their own straightforward motivations that have nothing to do with alleged foreign interference.

    “But now, like in case of Khabarovsk, there were no signs of foreign intervention,” he said, referring to protests held in the Far Eastern city since June 2020 over the sacking and arrest of a popular local governor.

    Foreign Agents

    Putin has been accusing the United States and other Western countries of trying to undermine Russia since his first term, in 2000-04. As far back as 2011, when his decision to return to the presidency the following year was a catalyst of the protests, the Kremlin signaled that “forces from without” would be considered a threat and a priority for targeting.

    Back in the Kremlin 2012, Putin signed Russia’s first “foreign-agent” law, targeting organizations that receive funding from abroad and are deemed by the government to be involved in political activity.

    Since then, it has been gradually expanded to include media outlets as well as individual bloggers and journalists, including several RFE/RL news divisions within Russia. There are scores of entities and individuals now listed on the Justice Ministry’s official registry.

    WATCH: What’s Next For Navalny And Russia’s Beleaguered Opposition?

    An overlapping measure adopted in 2015 known as the “undesirable organizations” law calls for banning any foreign or international organization that is deemed by authorities to have undermined Russia’s security or constitutional order.

    Navalny started gaining wide national attention during the 2011-12 protests, and since then Russian state media have gone out their way to try to discredit his investigations. His Anti-Corruption Foundation, known as FBK, was officially labeled as a foreign agent in 2019, and later was shut down.

    “The simple psychological trick that the Russian authorities are using against the FBK is that the organization is working in the interests of foreign powers,” said Maksim Trudolyubov, the editor at large of the newspaper Vedomosti and a fellow at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute in Washington. “Russia’s state-run channels are losing influence to social media, but television is still able to get the Kremlin’s message out and sow enough doubt for the mass audiences to trust an outspoken Kremlin critic.”

    Now And Then

    In 2011-2012, Gaaze said, the protests were more isolated and limited: “a bunch of guys in their 30s living in big cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, freelancers, IT people, they were stricken by the global economic crisis.”

    “It was a middle-class riot,” he said. “It was a big deal for Moscow, the Kremlin, St. Petersburg, but it wasn’t a big deal for the country.”

    Today, however, “these are the first nationwide, anti-Putin protests in the history of Russia,” he said. “Protests aren’t limited to special megapolises, now not limited to a certain class. It happened in Samara, Ufa, it happened in places where there aren’t [normally] protests.”

    But now, instead of merely sowing doubt, the message has hardened into outright accusations of treachery. And the Kremlin’s rhetoric has escalated to exaggerate an imaginary foreign threat, Gaaze said, because it is the security services like the FSB that are driving policy making.

    “The guys from the FSB: they’re deciding how we are going to deal with this CIA black-op,” he said.

    Key to that is discrediting Navalny by trying to paint him as a foreign agent, and the wider protests as a foreign-engineered plot.

    “For them, Navalny and the people who have marched in recent weeks are nothing less than enemies of the state and a tool for foreign meddling and interference,” Tatiana Stanovaya, a political researcher and founder of R. Politik, a Russia-focused think tank, said in a post to Twitter.

    Just days before the February 2 court hearing, a grainy black-and-white secret surveillance camera video circulated on the state TV channel Rossia-1, on the TV channel formerly known as Russia Today, and other outlets. It purported to show a Navalny lawyer meeting with a diplomat from the British Embassy in Moscow.

    Margarita Simonyan, the head of Russia Today, which has rebranded itself as RT, has called for Navalny to be prosecuted for treason. After the judge’s order to send Navalny to prison, she praised the move.

    It was a proper reaction, she said, to “what Western secret services and the so-called civilized world are trying to do to Russia” — overthrow the Putin government. She provided no evidence to back up the charge.

    Analysts say one motive of such remarks could be to instill patriotic sentiment in the police and security officers confronting and thwarting protesters, assuring them that they are protecting Russia from foreigners.

    “The security services aren’t just breaking up protests anymore; they’re on the front line, resisting a revolution sponsored by foreign enemies whose aim is to destroy Russia,” Aleksandr Baunov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said in an article published after Navalny’s return to Russia.

    Denis Volkov, deputy director of the Levada Center, an independent polling agency, said that for many Russians, there’s a persistent belief that the West had interfered in politics in Ukraine, and more recently, in Belarus. But less so in Russia.

    Trying to delegitimize genuine opposition by trying to tie it to foreign forces isn’t as widely effective anymore, he said.

    “It’s working to a limited extent, but mainly for the older generation who are watching TV,” Volkov said. “When people can look around them, they can see the reasons for the public dissatisfaction” — and that blunts any Kremlin accusation about foreign meddling,” he said.

    “The Kremlin is using it too often, it already doesn’t work anymore,” Volkov said.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Counselors Or ‘Commissars’? Motive Under Scrutiny As Russia Moves To Protect School Kids From ‘Destructive Influence’

    MOSCOW — In late January, as Russia was being rocked by a wave of protests sparked by the January 17 arrest of opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, the country’s education minister addressed the upper chamber of parliament, the Federation Council.

    “How are children supposed to achieve the goals that have been set for them? What can influence their world view and at what moment of their lives?” Sergei Kravtsov asked lawmakers on January 27. “What can be done to prevent the possibility of anyone exercising a destructive influence on children?”

    His questions came in the context of comments by state officials and reports by Kremlin-controlled media outlets that appeared aimed, despite a lack of evidence, at portraying Navalny and other protest organizers as being bent on luring minors into the streets to oppose the government.

    As part of the answer, Kravtsov announced a program called Navigators of Childhood, which aims to create a new position in Russian schools called “adviser to the school director for upbringing [‘vospitaniye’ in Russian] –and work with student organizations.” The term “vospitaniye” denotes the process of raising and educating children with proper behavior for integration into adult society.

    Some observers, however, see the initiative as an effort to keep school-aged Russians away from anti-government protests. Officials have been warning minors to steer clear of street demonstrations since 2017, when teenagers were among the tens of thousands who demonstrated after Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation released a viral video expose of lavish homes allegedly owned or used by then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

    Opposite Effect?

    Political analyst Konstantin Kalachyov said that if the aim was to prevent teenagers from attending rallies, it could backfire. He suggested that the authorities should avoid any effort to introduce “political commissars” — a term for the functionaries who sought to ensure Communist Party loyalty and discipline in the army and the workplace in the Soviet era — into Russia’s schools.

    “If some sort of political commissars or ‘upbringers’ appear in schools and start explaining to children the danger of participating in protests, it will only stimulate their interest in such things,” Kalachyov told RFE/RL.

    Konstantin Kalachyov

    Konstantin Kalachyov

    The Navigators of Childhood initiative will roll out nationally in 2022, but is already being implemented in 10 test regions, from Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea to the Pacific island of Sakhalin. One of the locations is the city of Sevastopol in Crimea, the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula that was seized by Russia in 2014.

    The project is being managed by the Russian Movement of Schoolchildren (RDSh), which — despite its grassroots name — was created on the order of President Vladimir Putin in 2015 as part of his youth initiative aimed at “the formation of the personality on the basis of the prevailing values of Russian society.”

    The RDSh is headed by 33-year-old Irina Pleshcheva, who formerly worked for the pro-Putin All-Russia Popular Front (ONF), the Moscow region administration, and the pro-Putin Nashi youth movement.

    In comments to RFE/RL, Pleshcheva said that the plan for school advisers was not a response to the protests that swept Russia after the jailing of Navalny, who was arrested upon arrival from Germany, where he had been treated for an nerve-agent poisoning in Siberia in August that he blames on Putin.

    “This project is already six months old,” she said. “We began it last year. You might recall that the State Duma (the lower parliament chamber) last May held discussions on the project of patriotic education and these positions were announced then.”

    Protesters rally for Navalny's release in Perm on January 23.

    Protesters rally for Navalny’s release in Perm on January 23.

    She said the purpose of the initiative was to improve communications with children and to convey their concerns to the authorities. “I know that, besides education, our children get very little out of school,” Pleshcheva said. “They do not have any other opportunities, including the opportunity to interact normally with one another outside of social media. On top of this, we now have the pandemic, which has imposed many restrictions. Teachers say they simply don’t have time for the children.”

    She told RFE/RL the new counselors will develop extracurricular activities together with schoolchildren, giving as examples computer gaming, civic volunteer programs, and monitoring school-meal programs.

    “In general, schoolchildren are not very interested in politics,” she said. “If you look at TikTok, even during the last few weeks, when children were provoked into going to protests, you see that children there are more interested in the latest dances or memes or who is in love with whom. During puberty, children are interested in other things besides politics.”

    ‘They Need To Be Integrated’

    “We are not talking about political education, but about communicating with children,” Pleshcheva added. “The point of that communication is to be able to answer questions that interest them.”

    Pleshcheva told the newspaper Kommersant that the new counselors “will have to know the language and memes of children, to watch the same livestreams and films that they watch, to listen to the music that they listen to, to be active in social media, and to understand video and computer games.”

    According to Kommersant, she said that particular attention would be paid to children who had been detained at unsanctioned demonstrations so that “they wouldn’t feel that we are angry with them or that they are abandoned.”

    “They need to be integrated into RDSh projects,” she added.

    The RDSh plans to offer a salary supplement of 15,000 rubles ($200) per month to the new counselors, who will be recruited from current teachers and people about to graduate from pedagogical institutes. Those selected will pass through a 106-hour training program. The expectation is that some 2,500 counselors will pass through the program the first year and begin working in some of the country’s more than 40,000 schools.

    Analyst Kalachyov predicted that the new initiative would likely share the fate of Nashi, a Kremlin-backed youth group that was prominent a decade ago but no longer exists. “It ended long ago and many of its activists are now opposition-minded,” he said. “They were disappointed with the future that was depicted for them but was never realized. Their expectations were raised, and they were disenchanted.”

    Child psychologist Svetlana Kachmar was also skeptical. “I see that this project is being run by people who used to be in Nashi,” she told RFE/RL. “But as soon as that organization was no longer propped up or given financing, it disappeared from our daily life. Society didn’t accept it.”

    School Psychologists Cut

    “I am sure that the new workers will not be sufficiently trained to speak with children about politics,” Kachmar said. “And our children are not so stupid that they won’t see when they are being pressured or notice when some information is being foisted off on them.”

    Kachmar added that schools have recently cut the number of psychologists, speech therapists, and other such professionals in Russian schools. “We should ask the Education Ministry why they cut from the schools all forms of this kind of support but now they are trying to cover their tracks and introduce these new positions,” she said. “We must demand the return of real specialists.”

    Vsevolod Lukhovitsky, head of the professional organization Teacher, said the project would likely fail because too few people would be willing to take on the work for 15,000 rubles a month. “I think our bureaucrats will forget about this in a few months,” he said.

    According to a survey conducted during the mass anti-Putin demonstrations on January 31, less than 2 percent of the participants were under the age of 18. Sixty-six percent of participants were aged 18-35.

    Written by Robert Coalson based on reporting from Moscow by Lyubov Chizhova of RFE/RL’s Russian Service

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Prosecutor Seeks Five-Year Prison Term For Russian Activist Shevchenko

    The prosecutor in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don has asked a court to sentence Anastasia Shevchenko, an activist with the Open Russia opposition group, to five years in prison for her involvement in the activities of an “undesirable organization.”

    Shevchenko’s lawyer, Sergei Badamshin, said on Telegram that the prosecutor made the request during the trial on February 4.

    The “undesirable organization” law, adopted in May 2015, was part of a series of regulations pushed by the Kremlin that squeezed many nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations who received funding from foreign sources.

    The Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office declared Open Russia “undesirable” in 2017.

    In 2019, Human Rights Watch said those who support the group had come under “increasing pressure” from the authorities.

    Shevchenko, who has been under house arrest since January 2019, is the first Russian charged with “repeated participation in the activities of an undesirable organization.”

    Previously, violations of this law were punished under administrative law. If convicted, Shevchenko could face up to six years in prison.

    After she was initially arrested in January 2019, Shevchenko was allowed at the last minute to see her eldest daughter in the hospital shortly before she died.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.