The Real Russia. Today.

Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Latest news

• 🗳 Russian authorities to hold ‘referendum’ in Zaporizhzhia region in September as planned
• ☢️ International Atomic Energy Agency mission arrives in Zaporizhzhia for nuclear plant inspection
• 🗳 Navalny associates announce plans to release ‘Smart Vote’ recommendations for September elections

Feature stories

• 🎭 Gorbachev: A Soviet Hamlet?
• 🛂 Goodbye, EU visa facilitation agreement with Russia
• ⚖️ Why the authorities targeted journalist Ivan Safronov with treason charges

Scholar Artemy Kalinovsky suggests a Shakespearian perspective on Mikhail Gorbachev’s legacy (9-min read)

Like the USSR itself, the last man to lead the Soviet Union is now gone. As people around the world remember Mikhail Gorbachev’s life and his impact on world history, many struggle to make sense of his legacy. In a guest essay for Meduza, Professor Artemy Kalinovsky — the author of “A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan” and “Laboratory of Socialist Development: Cold War Politics and Decolonization in Soviet Tajikistan” — recalls his own archival work at the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow and asks the question: Was the USSR’s final leader a modern-day Hamlet?

The EU has suspended its visa deal with Russia. Here’s what that means. (6-min read)

EU foreign ministers have agreed to completely suspend the bloc’s visa facilitation agreement with Russia. “This will significantly reduce the number of new visas issued by the EU member states. It’s going to be more difficult, it’s going to take longer,” said the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, when announcing the decision in Prague on Wednesday, August 31. According to Borrell, the EU has seen a significant increase in border crossings from Russia into neighboring countries since mid-July. “This has become a security risk for these neighboring states,” he added. Legal scholar Paul Kalinichenko told Meduza that in all likelihood, the agreement won’t be terminated — just suspended until there is a “change in circumstances.”

Questions asked and answered: What does suspending the visa deal change? Who will have to provide additional documents? Will visa processing times remain the same? What else will change for ordinary Russian travelers? Does the suspension of this agreement affect the issuance of long-term visas? Does the decision come into force immediately? Can countries in the Schengen zone bar entry to Russian citizens with visas issued by other states? Can individual countries further restrict the issuance of Schengen visas? Will additional visa restrictions be introduced in the future?

Human rights lawyer Ivan Pavlov on why the Russian authorities are targeting ex-journalist Ivan Safronov (6-min read)

In July 2020, former Kommersant journalist Ivan Safronov was arrested on treason charges. Over two years later, on August 30, 2022, state prosecutors requested that Safronov be sentenced to 24 years in a high-security penal colony. Safronov stands accused of revealing “state secrets,” even though all of the information he allegedly revealed to Western intelligence agencies is free to access on the Internet. In the leadup to Safronov's sentencing, which is set to take place on September 5, Meduza spoke to human rights lawyer Ivan Pavlov, who served on Safronov's defense team until the Russian authorities charged him with disclosing details from a preliminary investigation. Pavlov explained why he thinks the authorities targeted Pavlov, why now, and how the case compares to others he's worked on.

Opinion and analysis

🛢 The real danger to the Putin regime’s future is gay energy

Leonid Gozman, columnist (Novaya Gazeta): Most of Russia’s adversaries are either incapable or not interested in open war. For all its notorious Russophobia, NATO is merely responding to the Kremlin’s actions from a defensive position (even when it ships weapons to Ukraine and imposes economic sanctions). The real existential threat to Russia is the technological progress that is diversifying Europe’s energy market and erasing Moscow’s ability to blackmail using oil and gas. When Putin recently joked that renewable energy is “nontraditional” like the LGBT community, he only demonstrated the Russian state’s backwardness. The authorities’ hostility toward progress is also evident in their animosity against science and education.

▻ Meduza’s notes: While Putin’s jab at renewables combines homophobia and technological skepticism, it also indicates that the Kremlin takes Europe’s energy transition seriously enough to feel threatened. Gozman also ties the president’s mockery to the authorities’ persecution of some scientists and educators, but the link between these phenomena isn’t clear beyond the fact that both involve technology and development.

🪖 Ukraine is grinding down Russia’s occupation but not relying on a full-scale military collapse

Yulia Latynina, columnist (Novaya Gazeta): Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive hasn’t yet begun in earnest, but some Russian soldiers are already retreating, even when faced only with reconnaissance expeditions. Kyiv’s troops are firing older missiles for now, holding their best weaponry in reserve, but the military still suffers from a serious lack of armored vehicles, which is why Ukraine will “grind down” Russian occupation forces and rely on partisan attacks behind enemy lines rather than attempt a more direct assault against a target like the city of Melitopol. Russian troops — particularly the airborne forces — “are not suited to sitting in trenches under artillery fire,” and these conditions will ultimately demoralize the soldiers. Russia’s internal military problems, however, are just a “bonus” to Ukraine’s fundamental attrition strategy.

▻ Meduza’s notes: Latynina isn’t the first to channel the “not yet begun to fight” energy of Captain John Paul Jones. In July, Vladimir Putin said, “We haven’t even started anything in earnest.” It’s unclear if this is a rationalization for failing to achieve objectives or a credible warning that escalation is coming. Due in part to requests for “radio silence” from Kyiv, in addition to the usual fog of war, it’s been hard to judge what is actually happening along the front lines in Ukraine. While Latynina mentions retreating troops, this week’s closest headline news concerns Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of Russia’s occupation government in the Kherson region, who recently fled to Voronezh.

✈️ A rocky road ahead for Russian civil aviation

iStories, editorial: Though the Transport Ministry managed to save the country’s civil aviation by ordering Russian airlines to expropriate the aircraft they were leasing from foreign companies, the industry’s future outlook remains grim. It’s an exaggeration to say that Russian aviation has been cut off from the outside world, but the loss of routes to popular Western destinations has squeezed airlines’ profits, while sanctions complicate basic maintenance and create the risk of planes being seized abroad. As a result, Turkish Airlines is now the main carrier of Russians abroad — “a situation that’s unique for the world of civil aviation, where stiff national protectionism reigns.”

To keep its fleet in the air, Russia will need to rely chiefly on repairing planes using spare parts, but this approach is still difficult, as foreign companies (even in China) will avoid doing business with Russian airlines for fear of being hit with secondary sanctions. As a result, Russian airlines will have to fall back on more dangerous policies without the safety certification processes used around the world.

▻ Meduza’s notes: iStories argues that China’s future aviation will have the capacity to supply Russian airlines with the needed refurbishments, but the editors say the Chinese industry needs at least another decade to reach this level of development. Presumably, the notion here is that Chinese airlines will become big and autonomous enough by this point that Western secondary sanctions are no longer the obstacle to doing business with Russia that they are today.

🐉 America must patiently convince Russia that China will eat it

Risk analyst Dmitri Alperovitch and historian Sergey Radchenko (Foreign Affairs): To confront Moscow’s expansionist impulses, the U.S. should dust off the containment strategy it used to win the Cold War, though this time “it would be naïve to expect Russia to disintegrate as the Soviet Union did.” Washington’s best option is to wait for the Kremlin to realize that its aggression in Europe ultimately costs more than it gains, draining funding for human capital development, provoking Western punishments, and — most importantly — “leading it to the bleak future of becoming a vassal of China.” While exercising its patience, the West must also “stave off” Russia’s total collapse to avoid “a bloody civil conflict that might destabilize Eurasia for years to come.” (Alperovitch and Radchenko acknowledge that the regime looks secure today, but the “appearance of calm may be misleading.”)

While waiting for a more reasonable Russian leadership, the West must also accept that “a liberal democratic state” after Putin is not a “historical inevitability.” In other words, the U.S. shouldn’t let “the expectation of eventual democratization” guide policy. That doesn’t mean, however, that Washington can’t “expedite the emergence of a less belligerent Russia” (namely, by “encouraging Russians to at least imagine” a kinder future and promoting “messaging” that highlights China’s self-interested motives).

▻ Meduza’s notes: While many pro-Kremlin pundits fawn over Beijing’s rapid economic development, apparently sustainable authoritarian government, and anti-American rhetoric, the mainstream view in Moscow is that “turning eastward” will replace markets lost in the West and open new trade opportunities. Openly worrying that closer ties to China will reduce Russia’s sovereignty is still relatively rare outside opposition and ultra-nationalist political circles. (See Alexey Chekunkov’s essay in RBC.)

🐅 Integration with the East is Russia’s balancing act

Alexey Chekunkov, Russia’s Development Minister of the Far East and the Arctic (RBC):

Russia is in the midst of a “turn to the East,” but the shift is taking place in the context of a global, inevitable “rupture” between the “so-called West” (which benefits from the current world order) and the “so-called East” (where the rest of humanity lives). Chekunkov suggests that Russia’s reorientation is more of a “natural balancing” after Asia’s economic ascendancy than a complete break with the West. Moscow’s goals in the East shouldn’t be limited to replacing Western export routes or finding channels for parallel imports — Russia has the capacity to restart its entire economic model and achieve the same rapid growth as Asian countries.

But Chekunkov also acknowledges several challenges Russia will face in trying to mimic the Asian tigers: Chinese agricultural protectionism is an obstacle to Russian food exports, Russia lacks access to the same investment levels (and private investments) that fueled Asia’s economic boom, and Russia has struggled to pivot from military industrial development (like atomic energy and space exploration) to civilian technologies. But Chekunkov ultimately concludes that Russia has the concentrations of capital, natural resources, and export revenue needed to kickstart the economy.

▻ Meduza’s notes: Chekunkov’s optimism contrasts sharply with warnings from Alperovitch and Radchenko that cozying up to Beijing will result in Russia becoming a Chinese “vassal.” Chekunkov justifies Russia’s rising integration with Asia on economic grounds, while critics (like Alperovitch and Radchenko) emphasize the geopolitical costs of granting Beijing more influence (“China has […] grudgingly respected the Kremlin’s significant role in Central Asia,” but this will change, they say). Especially since the invasion of Ukraine, experts have argued that Russia’s security elites (not its economic managers) exert the most influence on Kremlin decision-making. Maybe the “vassal” warning resonates more with Moscow’s siloviki?

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