The Real Russia. Today.

Thursday, July 7, 2022

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 from Meduza’s News Feed

• ⚖️ Prosecutors want Moscow municipal deputy imprisoned for seven years for spreading “false information” about invasion
• 👮 Former Meduza journalist now a fugitive from the law
• 🪖 Putin supports Russian troop status for LNR/DNR militia in Ukraine
• 🪖 Mothers accuse war correspondent of getting their sons killed on the frontlines
• ⚖️ Brittney Griner throws herself on the mercy of the court (and backdoor diplomacy)
• 🚑 Fatal missile strike on Kramatorsk
• 🌾 Turkey releases Russian ship reportedly carrying Ukrainian grain
• ⏸️ Russian military apparently confirms “operational pause” in Ukraine
• 🪖 Ukrainian troops hoist national flag on Snake Island
• 🚒 Forest fires prompt state of emergency in Khabarovsk

Feature stories

• 🧭 The moral dilemma of saving Russia’s economy
• ✊ Russia’s most significant anti-war initiatives
• 🎭 How Moscow lost the Gogol Center

How Elvira Nabiullina and her team have tried to save Russia’s economy amid war and sanctions (15-min read)

In the aftermath of Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, experts warned that Western sanctions might tank the ruble, threaten the Russian state’s capacity to pay public employees, and cripple the national economy. So far, however, the financial system is holding out. Russia has avoided a run on its banks, and the ruble now trades for more dollars and euros than at any time since 2015. This relative stability is largely the result of the policies pursued by Elvira Nabiullina, the chairwoman of Russia’s Central Bank, which now operates in wartime conditions. Meduza examines how Nabiullina and her deputies have managed Western sanctions, and what moral dilemmas the Central Bank’s leadership faces while the Kremlin wages a full-scale war against Ukraine.

A guide to the most important anti-war initiatives in Russia and abroad (18-min read)

Russia has been waging an all-out war against Ukraine for more than four months. During this time, many Russian citizens have openly supported the so-called “special military operation,” but an anti-war movement has also been growing across Russia and abroad. The combined audience of Russian Telegram channels that oppose the war is more than 250,000 people (according to data from Antiwarriors, an independent anti-war project). Together with the editors of the capacity building project Teplitsa: Technologies for Social Good, Meduza rounds up the most significant anti-war initiatives that have emerged since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The rise and fall of Russia’s premier avant-garde theater (7-min read)

On June 29, Moscow’s Culture Department dismissed the heads of three theaters. Among them were the leaders of Gogol Center, Alexey Agranovich and director Alexey Kabeshev. Both are associates of the venue’s founder, well-known director Kirill Serebrennikov. After nine years of successful work, the theater will change not only its management, but also its name: it will now be known as the Gogol Drama Theater. And it will be headed by Anton Yakovlev and Alexander Bocharnikov, who have no relationship with the previous leadership. For Meduza, theater critic Anton Khitrov explains what the Gogol Center meant to its audience and what its closure means for the Russian theater world.