The Real Russia. Today.

Friday, July 8, 2022

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Major recent events from Meduza’s News Feed

• 🍟 Running out of french fries, post-McDonald’s fast-food chain blames bad a potato harvest
• 🏳️‍🌈 State Duma speaker calls for total ban on ‘gay propaganda’
• 👮 FSB agents arrest Russian Customs Academy vice-rector and several others in drug bust
• 🪦 Volunteers and journalists confirm deaths of more than 4,515 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine

Feature stories

• ⚖️ Russia’s criminalization of antiwar dissident gets real with a seven-year prison sentence
• 🎧 New podcast episode: Kadri Liik explains how the invasion of Ukraine canceled Russia’s modernization
• 🚧 How the Kremlin has tapped Russian regions to rebuild Ukraine’s scorched earth

Moscow official Alexey Gorinov handed seven years in prison for ‘disinformation’ about Russia’s military (7-min read)

On July 8, a Moscow court sentenced municipal deputy Alexey Gorinov to seven years in prison for spreading “false information” about the Russian army. The 60-year-old was charged with violating military censorship laws introduced after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. His crime? Calling the invasion a war during a session of the local assembly where he is a deputy. Throughout the trial, Gorinov insisted that his statements reflected nothing more than his personal opinion. But Judge Olesya Mendeleeva, who has presided over a number of high-profile cases, found him guilty, nevertheless. Gorinov’s verdict marks the first time a Russian court has sent anyone to prison for sharing “disinformation” about the military. Here is his story.

The Naked Pravda: ‘Putin’s archaic war’ and the Russia we lost (28 minutes)

Meduza welcomes European Council on Foreign Relations Senior Policy Fellow Kadri Liik for a discussion about her recent article, “Putin’s Archaic War: Russia’s Newly Outlawed Professional Class – And How It Could One Day Return,” where she argues that the invasion of Ukraine is “effectively de-modernizing Russia” and derailing processes that could have put the country on a less aggressive, more professional path. A specialist in Russian domestic and foreign policy and in relations between Russia and the West, Liik joined The Naked Pravda to address the issues she raised in her essay.

Meduza unravels the Kremlin’s pricey ‘patronage’ scheme for rebuilding the Donbas (6-min read)

In May, Putin’s First Deputy Chief of Staff Sergey Kiriyenko announced that Russian regions would serve as “patrons” responsible for rebuilding cities and towns in the Donbas. Kiriyenko, whose portfolio now includes both domestic and Donbas policymaking, underscored that this decision came from the president himself. Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev sheds light on how this “patronage” system is supposed to work and why most Russian regions were less than eager to be a part of it.