The Real Russia. Today.

China’s quiet withdrawal from Russia, Natalia Poklonskaya keeps rocking the boat, a wartime exodus, and the downfall of Yandex’s independence

Friday, May 6, 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
• Government-encouraged charity for Ukrainians that would rather be elsewhere
• How Kremlin pressure poisoned Russia’s first-rate Internet giant

Major recent events in Russia and Ukraine

• ☦️ Holy bystanders: Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, declared on Friday that “the church can never take the side of any political force when a confrontation between them arises.” Referring to the church as “a peacekeeping force,” the Patriarch said clergy members should respectfully refuse to take orders from state authorities. Despite the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Kirill recently claimed that Russia “has never attacked anyone.”
• 📡 Communication breakdown: The collaborationist government in the Kherson region says local telecommunications have been restored. Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, reported that the quality of communications available in Kherson has declined significantly as a result of damage to fiber-optic cables.
• 💸 Kadyrov’s disappearing rubles: In 2021, Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov reported 14.3 times less income than a year earlier: 26.5 million rubles ($398,480) versus 381.2 million rubles ($5.7 million).
• ⛑️ Evacuations continue in Mariupol: Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk confirmed that another 50 people (“women, children, and the elderly”) successfully left the Azovstal iron and steel works in Mariupol, where the city’s last defenders and a group of civilians have been sheltering for weeks. Further evacuations are planned. Russian officials said the refugees were transferred to the custody of the UN and International Committee of the Red Cross “for delivery to selected places of temporary accommodation.”
• 🤫 Shhhhhhhh: “Chinese tech companies are quietly pulling back from doing business in Russia under pressure from U.S. sanctions and suppliers, despite calls by Beijing for companies to resist overseas coercion,” reports The Wall Street Journal. The businesses include PC giant Lenovo Group Ltd. and smartphone and gadget maker Xiaomi Corp., though these companies have refrained from making public statements about the war or their gradual withdrawal from Russia.
• 🪖 Very nearly beyond the pale: Former State Duma deputy and post-annexation Crimean Attorney General Natalia Poklonskaya (now an official at Rossotrudnichestvo, which works primarily with “compatriots living abroad”) met on Friday with the mothers of conscripts sent into battle in Ukraine contrary to orders by President Putin. Poklonskaya, who has come close to criticizing the invasion of Ukraine, said in a post on Telegram that many of the soldiers never returned from the frontlines. Those who did come back fear they could be redeployed to fight, several mothers told Poklonskaya.
• 🛫 A wartime exodus: More than 3.8 million Russians left the country in the first three months of 2022, according to data published this week by Russia’s Federal Security Service, as reported by The Moscow Times. It’s unclear how many of these people have since returned home, but these numbers are significantly higher than during the time period in 2021.

💡 Opportunities for Ukrainian writers and journalists: (1) The Harriman Institute, the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, and Global Centers Paris announced three 12-month residencies for Ukrainian applicants, offered for the year 2022-23. The application deadline is May 10. (2) The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) is accepting applications for its Democracy Fellowship, a year-long in-residence fellowship program for Ukrainian journalists and scholars who are unable to continue their due to the war. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

💰 Public-sector employees in Russia urged to donate to murky ‘fundraisers’ for Ukrainian refugees (7-min read)

In the lead up to Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the authorities in the self-proclaimed “Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics” announced mass evacuations to Russia. Now, after ten weeks of all-out war, roughly a million Ukrainians have been forced to flee to Russian territory. As Meduza reported previously, civilians living in areas occupied or blockaded by Russian troops have been forcibly evacuated to Russia and brought to “filtration camps.” In mid-April, the Russian Cabinet allocated nearly 439 million rubles ($6.5 million) from the country’s reserve fund for the accommodation of these refugees. However, in a number of Russian regions, public-sector employees are being urged to donate part of their paychecks to purported “fundraisers” in support of displaced Ukrainians.

🔎 How Russia’s invasion of Ukraine tore Yandex apart (30-min read)

In late April, Russian Internet giant Yandex announced it was selling its news service, Yandex.News, and its personal recommendations service, Yandex.Zen, to the social networking company VKontakte (VK). VK is run by Vladimir Kiriyenko, son of Russian presidential administration First Deputy Chief of Staff Sergey Kiriyenko. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began, these products (just like Yandex overall) have faced a barrage of criticism for misleading millions of users by withholding credible information about the war while leaving up inaccurate information from pro-Kremlin sources. Meduza special correspondent Svetlana Reiter tells the story of how a once-progressive news aggregator ruined Yandex’s reputation, caused an employee exodus, and landed its deputy CEO on sanctions lists.

Yours, Meduza