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Russian atrocities in the village of Bogdanivka

Monday, April 18, 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
• Meduza reports from outside Kyiv on at least three murders and two rapes committed outside Kyiv by Russian occupiers
• The death toll for the Moskva warship comes into focus thanks to comments on social media and to journalists from sailors’ parents
• After a year under (what was effectively) house arrest, journalist and activist Alla Gutnikova shares her plans
• New podcast episode: the war from the Russian North Caucasus

Major recent events in Russia and Ukraine

• 🪖 The battle for the Donbas: Ukrainian state officials say the Russian military has launched a major offensive along the entire frontline in the Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv regions, pounding the region with airstrikes and heavy artillery.
• 👰 Another mother-in-law joke: The pro-Kremlin TV network Tsargrad released an “investigation” claiming that Volodymyr Zelensky’s mother-in-law lives in a luxury Moscow apartment. The reporters ignored the fact, however, that the woman in their story is 12 years younger than Zelensky’s actual mother-in-law. (The woman at the center of Tsargrad’s bogus report merely shares the same name as Zelensky’s mother-in-law, Olha Kyiashko.) After being mistaken for the Ukrainian president’s mother-in-law, Kyiashko said she now fears for her safety in Moscow.
• 👮 Thought police: Russian police have now opened nearly a 1,000 “discrediting the armed forces” cases against peace activists, bloggers, and ordinary people. Repeat offenses can be prosecuted as hate crimes, punishable by up to three years in prison.
• 🕯️ Bucha’s murdered Navalny: When they occupied the town of Bucha, outside Kyiv, Russian soldiers reportedly killed a man who is apparently a distant relative of the imprisoned opposition leader Alexey Navalny. Executed on March 12, possibly because of his surname, Illia Navalny shared a great grandfather with Alexey Navalny.
• ☠️ Guerilla journalism: The independent news outlet Mediazona has ceased all compliance with Russia’s required “foreign agent” warnings, replacing its notice to readers with a plea for crowdfunding.
• 🔎 Internet cleansing: Citing Russian media regulations, the Internet search giant Yandex has removed hyperlinks to Meduza, Instagram, Facebook, and other banned resources, purging the search results it shows to users in Russia. Vkontakte has also modified its search results to comply with Russian censorship.

Russian soldiers raped and murdered Ukrainian civilians in the village of Bogdanivka (45-min read)

The world continues to learn about the atrocities committed in Ukraine’s Kyiv region in the weeks before Russian troops retreated from the area in late March. Together with news outlet Astra, Meduza discovered that in one village alone — Bogdanivka, in Kyiv’s Brovary district — at least three murders and two rapes occurred during the Russian occupation. To get an accurate picture of these (and other) crimes, we spoke with local residents, compared their accounts, and reconstructed the events that occurred in the village between March 8 and March 29, when Russian troops were in Bogdanivka.

At least thirty-seven dead: Parents of Russian sailors aboard the Moskva leak information about their sons killed in Ukraine’s missile strike (4-min read)

According to a source close to the command of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, 37 crew members died aboard the Moskva — the warship that sank in the Black Sea last week, after it was hit by multiple Ukrainian cruise missiles. Meduza reviews what we know about the deaths and disappearances of the warship’s sailors (several of whom were draftees).

Doxa editor Alla Gutnikova on the year she spent under house arrest — and what she plans to do next (14-min read)

On April 12, Moscow’s Dorogomilovo District Court sentenced four former editors from the student magazine Doxa to two years of corrective labor and banned them from "administering websites." The pretext for the case was a video showing the editors condemning the persecution of other students for supporting opposition politician Alexey Navalny. The editors spent the following year under a “ban on certain activities”; for example, they were prohibited from leaving their apartments for more than two hours a day and from using the Internet. Meduza spoke with Doxa editor Alla Gutnikova about what life was like under the ban.

🎧 The Naked Pravda: The Russian North Caucasus during the Ukraine War (18 minutes)

The Russian North Caucasus has played a special role in the invasion of Ukraine. Journalists estimate that at least 60 men from Dagestan died fighting for Russia by March 23, indicating that this republic had lost more soldiers, by far, than any other region in Russia. In terms of public messaging, Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov has been one of the loudest cheerleaders for the “special operation,” rattling his saber at every opportunity and declaring the seizure of Ukrainian territories before it’s actually happened. Across the North Caucasus, one of the most crucial factors when it comes to military service is the absence of alternatives. Unemployment is higher in this region than anywhere else in Russia. It’s the highest of all in Ingushetia, where it exceeds 30 percent.

To find out more about the war’s impact here, The Naked Pravda turned to Ingush journalist and activist Izabella Evloeva and independent political and security analyst Harold Chambers. (Also, Meduza extends a special thanks to journalist Katie Marie Davies for her assistance with dubbing parts of this episode.)

Yours, Meduza