The Real Russia. Today.

What comes after Vladimir Zhirinovsky?

Tuesday, April 12, 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.

Major recent events in Russia and Ukraine

• 🚨 Medvedchuk is caught: President Zelensky announced that Ukrainian special forces have apprehended Viktor Medvedchuk, the pro-Russian Ukrainian politician charged with treason who escaped house arrest four days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion. He is considered a close personal friend of Vladimir Putin, who is the godfather of Medvedchuk's youngest daughter.
• 🤥 Putin and friend ponder Bucha: During a joint press conference on Tuesday with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, after visiting the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Vladimir Putin called allegations of Russian war atrocities in Bucha, outside Kyiv, a “fake” story. Lukashenko said the massacre is actually a British “psychological special operation.” Additionally, Putin accused the U.S. of bombing hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan and in Raqqa while Islamic State militants occupied the Syrian city.
• ⚖️ Mostly good news for the DOXA editors: A judge in Moscow sentenced four former editors at the student journal DOXA to two years of wage garnishment (or community service if they are unemployed) and a three-year ban on administering websites. Their offense was supposedly inciting minors to join unpermitted protests in January 2021 against the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexey Navalny. The editors — Armen Aramyan, Alla Gutnikova, Natalia Tyshkevich, and Vladimir Metelkin — spent nearly a year under restrictions tantamount to house arrest. Everyone was freed in court, except for Tyshkevich, who is currently serving a separate 15-day jail sentence for posting an image of the Ukrainian coat of arms on Instagram in 2017. Though house arrest is typically counted toward convicts’ sentences, the court in this case did not factor in time already served.
• 🕯️ Ukraine’s updated civilian death toll: Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the UN Human Rights office has recorded the killings of 1,892 civilians, including 152 children. “Most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes,” officials said.
• 🔎 Muratov’s assailants: Despite the suspension of its reporting, the newspaper Novaya Gazeta broke its silence on Tuesday and published a report about the two men who attacked editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov aboard a train on April 7. Nikolai Trifonov, the man who allegedly threw red paint laced with acetone at Muratov, remains at large and the police have issued no arrest warrant, despite an abundance of surveillance evidence. Novaya Gazeta discovered that Trifonov has links to a veterans’ group.
• ⚖️ Poisoned twice, now jailed again: A court in Moscow sentenced opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza to 15 days in jail for supposedly disobeying a police officer. He suffered apparent poisonings in 2015 and 2017. In February 2021, a Bellingcat joint investigation with The Insider and Der Spiegel found that Kara-Murza was followed by the same FSB unit that allegedly poisoned Alexei Navalny.
• 🔒 Et tu, Huawei? The AppGallery has dropped support for Russia’s Mir payment system. The Chinese company Huawei’s app store previously removed apps for several sanctioned Russian banks, including Otkritie, VTB, and Promsvyazbank.
• 🍔 Finders keepers: Lawmakers from Russia’s ruling political party have submitted legislation to the State Duma that would impose external management on the Russian assets of any foreign companies that so much as announce that they are exiting the Russian market, provided that there are “no obvious economic reasons,” the decision is based on “anti-Russian sentiment,” and the company’s activities significantly influence the stability of Russia’s economy.
• 👋 The brain drain continues: Russian political scientist and public intellectual Ekaterina Schulmann says she’s left Russia and moved to Germany for a year-long appointment at the Robert Bosch Foundation.

🪖 In the Russian town of Azov, Meduza meets refugees who escaped besieged Mariupol (15-min read)

More than 4.6 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion. Most of these refugees have gone to Europe. But according to the Russian Defense Ministry, more than 500,000 Ukrainians were evacuated to Russia. This includes residents of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics,” as well as inhabitants of Mariupol — a port city that Russian troops have kept under siege since early March — and other settlements controlled by Kyiv. The Ukrainian authorities have accused Russia of carrying out forced evacuations and coercing Ukrainian refugees into applying for Russian passports. In a dispatch from Azov, a town in Russia’s Rostov region, Meduza talks to refugees from Mariupol about escaping the besieged city and their plans for the future.

🗳️ As the Kremlin considers replacements to lead Russia’s right-wing ‘opposition,’ some strategists want to ditch the party altogether (5-min read)

With the death of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Kremlin seeks someone to replace him as the leader of the political party LDPR, the nation’s loyalist right-wing alternative to United Russia. At the moment, the main candidate for Zhirinovsky’s role appears to be LDPR’s acting leader in the State Duma, Leonid Slutsky (the same politician whom multiple women journalists have accused of sexual harassment). Meanwhile, sources told Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev that the Putin administration is considering a gradual “disposal” of the party altogether.

Yours, Meduza