The Real Russia. Today.

Civilian life in wartime Ukraine

Monday, May 2, 2022

For ongoing coverage of the invasion of Ukraine and its consequences back in Russia, follow Meduza’s live updates. Please note that the authorities are now blocking our website in Russia, and we’re turning to you, our global audience, for financial support.

In today’s newsletter:

• Latest news
• The indignities of Russia’s refugee ‘filtration camps’
• Opinion: Maxim Trudolyubov dissects the flaws in geopolitical thinking
• New podcast episode: civilian life in some of Ukraine’s most war-torn areas
• Navalny’s press secretary wrote a second novel and talked to Meduza about the writing process

Major recent events in Russia and Ukraine

• 🚛 Undeclared cargo: An aide to the mayor of Mariupol says members of the Russian armed forces have been using the same trucks that bring humanitarian aid to the city to transport the bodies of dead civilians to mass grave sites.
• 🤰 Think of the children: Russia’s birth rate has fallen to its lowest point in 22 years, according to figures released by the Federal State Statistics Service, as reported by The Moscow Times. Russia’s natural population decline has also accelerated to 264,300 people per quarter of the year — faster than at any time throughout post-Soviet history. Falling real incomes appear to be discouraging mothers from having more than one child, reports the Times.
• 🔎 Identifying Bucha’s butchers: Investigative journalists at Agentstvo reviewed records from leaked databases and spoke to acquaintances of Sergey Kolotsei, the first man directly accused by Ukraine’s Attorney General of participating in the killings committed by the Russian military in Bucha. Officials in Kyiv say Kolotsei commands a Russian National Guard unit based in Ulyanovsk, though Agentstvo’s sources identify him as a resident of Mazyr in Belarus. Friends say he’s never served in the armed forces, and available records seem to corroborate that he’s never been a soldier. In an interview, Kolotsei also stated that he hasn’t left Belarus in more than two years. Ukrainian officials shared footage showing him at a courier service in Mazyr mailing a car-trunk lid to an address in Ulyanovsk (ostensibly sending home goods stolen while in Ukraine), but Kolotsei says he merely sold a part from his own car to someone in Russia.
• 🕹️ No politics on the minimap: During a DOTA 2 gaming competition over the weekend, Virtus.pro’s Ivan Moskalenko was caught drawing the “Z” symbol of support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over the in-game minimap, leading the tournament’s organizers to disqualify Moskalenko’s entire team. Virtus.pro subsequently terminated its contract with the player “for his diminishing actions that led to disqualification from the tournament and caused a great deal of harm to our relationship with the worldwide esports society.”
• 🏖️ A patriot on holiday: A day after threatening on evening television to sink Great Britain with nuclear weapons, Russian state TV pundit Dmitry Kiselyov was spotted vacationing at a five-star beach resort in Dubai.
• ⚖️ Free to air in Latvia: A Latvian court overturned the state regulator’s decision to ban five Russian television networks. The agency says it will challenge the ruling, arguing that the Russian stations constitute a threat to Latvia’s “information space.”
• ☢️ Splitting from Rosatom: The Finnish energy company Fennovoima has terminated its contract with the Russian state firm Rosatom to build a nuclear power plant on Finland’s west coast, citing delays, Rosatom’s “inability to deliver the project,” and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
• 💸 Tinkov’s fire sale: After criticizing the war in Ukraine, billionaire Oleg Tinkov was pressured to sell his 35-percent stake in one of Russia’s biggest banks (which he founded) in what he describes as a “desperate sale, a fire sale,” he told The New York Times. He’s now hired bodyguards and moved to an undisclosed location, fearing for his life.
• ⚖️ Plans for POWs: Sources told the human rights project Gulagu.net that the Kremlin is allegedly considering adding 500 Ukrainian prisoners-of-war to Moscow’s Victory Day parade on May 9. The same source says the Putin administration is planning a grand war tribunal for prisoners captured in Ukraine, supposedly modeled on the Nuremberg Trials, in an attempt to stage a massive show trial designed to convince the Russian public that their military is fighting Nazis in Ukraine.
• 💸 Google’s deep pockets: Google’s lawyer said in Moscow court on Monday that the company has paid 9 billion rubles ($127.8 million) in legal penalties to the Russian state (just since December) for blocking the right-wing TV network Tsargrad on YouTube.
• 🚌 No solidarity on the bus: Last week, a bus driver in Ulan-Ud had a passenger arrested when she refused to exit the vehicle after calling his “Z” sign a “fascist” display. Retiree Natalia Filonova told Current Time that what shocked her most was how none of the other bus riders defended her.
• 🪖 A rumored war declaration: U.S. and European officials told journalists on Monday that they believe Vladimir Putin could formally declare war on Ukraine as soon as May 9, Victory Day, allowing Moscow to declare a full mobilization and draw on Russia’s reserve forces. U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Monday that there is “good reason to believe that the Russians will do everything they can to use” May 9 for propaganda purposes.

🛂 The Ukrainian refugees forced to travel through Russia on their way to safety (28-min read)

On April 30, Russian state media reported that over a million refugees (many of whom were forcibly removed and brought to “filtration camps”) had entered Russia from Ukraine, including from the territory of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics.” Some have managed to continue on to Europe, but not without difficulty; getting out of Russia requires undergoing numerous invasive searches and interrogations, and some people have even been forced to appear in propaganda videos. Meduza spoke with several people from Mariupol and Rubizhne (a city in the Luhansk region) about the indignities they had to endure to get away from Russia twice.

🧠 How the ‘geopolitical worldview’ among dictators and scholars alike enables the unthinkable in Ukraine (8-min read)

Those who unleashed and support the war with Ukraine think about the world in a certain way. They see a map with borders, spheres of influence, objectives, and targets. Next to each country on this imaginary map is an index of its “sovereignty.” There are powerful and independent “superpowers,” there are ordinary “great powers,” there are regional powers, and then there are the “regular” countries. But the map makes no room for people; on this scale, human beings are simply invisible. In the following essay, Meduza “Ideas” editor Maxim Trudolyubov argues that this geopolitical vision only makes sense if you’re viewing the world through crosshairs.

🪖 The Naked Pravda: Civilian life in wartime Ukraine (40 minutes)

The past nine weeks of all-out war have completely upended civilian life throughout Ukraine. After withdrawing from around Kyiv and Chernihiv in late March, Russian forces are ostensibly refocusing their invasion on taking Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions. With many cities, towns, and villages already in dire humanitarian situations, civilians living in these areas are faced with the difficult choice of attempting to evacuate or bracing themselves for an escalated offensive. Meanwhile, residents of the Kyiv region are clearing the wreckage Russian forces left behind and trying to adjust to a “new normal.”

For insight into civilian life in some of Ukraine’s most war-torn areas, Meduza turned to two Ukrainian experts who have been reporting on the ground throughout the war: Maria Avdeeva, research director at the European Expert Association, and journalist and Public Interest Journalism Lab co-founder Nataliya Gumenyuk.

📖 Alexey Navalny’s press secretary discusses books and personal responsibility in times of war and emigration (13-min read)

In the novel “Harassment,” the protagonist navigates unwanted attention from her boss. The story’s author, Kira Yarmysh (the longtime press secretary of imprisoned opposition leader Alexey Navalny), wrote most of the book in Moscow while under house arrest as a “restraining measure” for violating Russia’s draconian pandemic lockdown restrictions. Last summer, Yarmysh left Russia; she now lives and works abroad. Meduza literary critic Galina Yuzefovich spoke with Yarmysh about her new book, Navalny’s role in her literary career, and what she believes opponents of the Kremlin’s policies should do now.

Yours, Meduza