The Real Russia. Today.

Monday, September 12, 2022

Latest news

• ⚖️ Multiple Russian voters charged with ‘discrediting’ the army after writing anti-war slogans on ballots
• 💥 Residents of several towns in Rostov region report powerful explosion
• 🕯 At least 1,000 civilians reported killed in Izyum
• 👮 Two suspects in Ilya Ponomarev case flee Russia after police raids
• 🏳️‍🌈 Ksenia Sobchak allegedly being checked for violation of ‘gay propaganda’ law
• ✊ Municipal deputies in Moscow and St. Petersburg demand Putin’s resignation
• 🕵️ FSB ‘stages’ murder of two Russian occupation officials
• 🇲🇪 Montenegro proposes halting visa agreement for Russian citizens
• 🪖 Russian Defense Ministry claims 4,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed in counteroffensive
• 🪖 Chechen ruler criticizes Russian military for retreating from occupied cities in Ukraine. ‘Explain yourselves!’
• ☢️ Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station is now in full ‘cold shutdown’

Feature stories

• 📺 ‘Heavy losses’ for Ukraine, the ‘feats’ of Russian soldiers, and ‘fake news’ from Kyiv: How Russian state TV reported on Ukraine’s counteroffensive (3-min read)
• 🗳 Feigning democracy: Andrey Pertsev breaks down the winners and losers of Russia’s 2022 regional elections (6-min read)
• 💰 ‘Help with self-identification’: A Russian presidential fund is handing out millions to projects supporting the war in Ukraine (9-min read)
• 🗳 ‘There’s no talk of November anymore’: Moscow’s plans to hold ‘referendums’ on annexing Ukrainian territories have been ‘put on hold indefinitely’ (2-min read)
• 🗳 Pre-marked ballots, a leaky ballot box, and at least 19 arrests: The key takeaways from Russia’s first elections since the full-scale war began (5-min read)
• ⚡️ Zelensky to Russia: ‘No lights or no you? No you.’ Russia hits ‘critical infrastructure’ in Ukraine. Five regions without power. (4-min read)
• 🪖 From ‘here for good’ to ‘an operation to curtail’: A brief timeline of statements from Russian officials in the leadup to Ukraine’s Kharkiv counteroffensive (2-min read)

Opinion and analysis

👹 Why everybody is sick of Russia’s turbo/ultra-patriots

Michael Nacke, journalist and host of YouTube broadcast launched by Team Navalny (Telegram): If the U.S. permits Ukrainian troops to fire HIMARS missiles at targets inside Russia (specifically, at the Belgorod International Airport, which Nacke says is now a full-fledged military airbase used to attack Kharkiv), it would be the Belgorod civilian population’s “salvation,” not destruction, because it would lead to a more precise counterattack with less collateral damage. “If you are very concerned about the civilians in the Belgorod region (as I am, in principle), then you should also hope very much that the U.S. lifts its restrictions on HIMARS use on Russian soil,” argues Nacke.

▻ This talk of bombing Belgorod is part of Nacke’s feud with Telegram’s “turbo-patriots”: Hours before this post, Nacke condemned pro-invasion bloggers for “gloating” about Russian attacks against the electricity grid in Ukraine, saying that this act of “idiotic terrorism” will “hopefully” convince Washington to endorse HIMARS strikes inside Russian territory. Incidentally, other members of Team Navalny, like Leonid Volkov, have been more reluctant to advocate military attacks against Russian targets (though the entire group is adamantly opposed to the invasion).

▻ The Kremlin has problems with these “ultra-patriots,” too: Last week, three sources close to the Kremlin told journalist Ekaterina Vinokurova that the same pro-invasion bloggers have become a thorn in the side of the Putin administration, as well, not for gloating about war crimes but for criticizing Russia’s military decision-making and advocating even more aggressive tactics. According to Vinokurova’s report, these bloggers’ attempts to “dictate to the Kremlin their agenda and opinions on the special operation” have annoyed Moscow most of all.

🧑‍🏫 Not much sympathy for Russia’s captured teachers, but the politicians are the real scum

Dmitry Kolezev, journalist (Telegram): The Russian teachers who traveled to occupied Ukraine to implement Moscow’s new curriculum (and were subsequently captured by Ukrainian troops after Russian occupation forces retreated) were probably lured by financial opportunity and politicians’ promises that Russian annexation was inevitable. Kolezev expresses some ambivalence about the fact that these teachers will face up to 12 years in prison for war crimes, noting, “Nice job, coming to work on occupied lands,” before adding, “But the main responsibility here still lies with the Russian politicians who brainwashed and deceived them.” He ultimately stresses that United Russia party official and Senator Andrey Turchak comes out of this looking especially “idiotic,” having advocated annexation referendums in the Donbas just before Ukraine’s counteroffensive made them impractical.

▻ ‘War criminals’ in the classroom: On Monday, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk announced that teachers in occupied areas who agreed to teach Russia’s curriculum will face felony prosecution for war crimes. Vereshchuk’s remarks sounded primarily like a warning to instructors who still have a chance to flee alongside retreating Russian troops (as well as in the towns that occupation forces haven’t yet abandoned), but she also said that captured Russian teachers and Ukrainian collaborators alike will be prosecuted. Kyiv is denying prisoner-of-war status to these teachers and won’t include them in any swaps with Moscow.

🧑‍🏫 Russia’s classroom retreat should embolden civil society

Marina Vinogradskaya, journalist (Novaya Gazeta): Russian education officials recently withdrew war-related lessons from a new patriotic curriculum, following criticism from parents and teachers’ groups. Vinogradskaya says the public backlash may have contributed to the authorities’ decision, though it’s also possible that the Russian military’s setbacks on the battlefield simply make it too risky now to direct students’ and parents’ attention to the frontlines in Ukraine. Or maybe education officials merely realized how poorly designed and “illiterate” the new curriculum actually was! Whatever the case, the retreat in the classroom signifies another defeat for Kremlin propaganda and serves as “important experience” for Russian civil society in opposing the authorities, says Vinogradskaya.

▻ Setbacks at home and on the battlefield: In the context of Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive, it becomes easier and more common to perceive any policy decision by the Kremlin that doesn’t maximize “patriotic” ambitions as part of Russia’s potential defeat in the war. In other words, the Putin administration faces a risk of cascading events.

🧫 Russian political culture isn’t atypical, but information distortions do normalize government loyalty

Grigorii Golosov, political scientist (Holod Media): Tackling philosopher Joseph de Maistre’s axiom that “every nation gets the government it deserves” (and how the concept is used today against Russians under Vladimir Putin), Golosov explains that “political culture” (the refinement of what thinkers in past centuries imagined when writing about “national character”) is fundamentally dynamic and determined largely by the public’s interest in politics and the information available for the formation of views and convictions. People generally care about politics only when it starts to affect them directly, he says. In these moments, previously peripheral political cultures can rapidly become mainstream.

In Russia’s case, the state’s control of the mass media “distorts” the dichotomy found in democracies between “ruling” and “opposition” political groups, making support for the Kremlin “the natural position” for the politically conscious. In other words, Russia’s “mass consciousness” isn’t atypical — it’s merely subjected to authoritarian distortions.

Golosov concludes by arguing that Russians’ “desire to trust their government” and tendency to “identify themselves with their own state” isn’t necessarily a bad thing, given that these underpinnings of a stable political culture could be what allows Russia to rebuild itself as a freer country without collapsing into chaos and violence that would threaten global security.

▻ Golosov is pushing back against critics who would “cancel” all Russian political culture: Opposition to the invasion of Ukraine can escalate to condemnations of Russians as a nationality. Some critics simultaneously condemn both Russia as an autocracy and Russians for supporting or even electing Vladimir Putin. In this essay, Golosov describes Russians as caught without democracy’s information dichotomy, which “naturalizes” government support. To this argument, he adds that Russia’s otherwise normally functioning political culture could be a safety net the world will need for reforms in Russia without cataclysmic violence.

🚨 Meduza needs your support to break through Putin’s propaganda

If you like what you see here and believe that our independent reporting about Russia and the war in Ukraine merits support, please consider donating to Meduza. Recurring pledges are best, but any contribution helps sustain our work. Act now and contribute here.

Besides donations, you can also assist Meduza by sharing this newsletter with any friends or colleagues who might be interested in our news coverage. Forward them this email or sign them up directly using this hyperlink (they will need to verify their subscriptions before actually receiving our newsletter). And please consider encouraging others to donate to Meduza, as well. And, of course, thank you!