The Real Russia. Today.

Sanctions, sanctions, sanctions, Telegram's blockchain debut, and Chechnya's modest proposal

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Moscow mocks new U.S. sanctions over proliferation violations
Russian lawmakers want to punish foreign election meddlers
Businesses could get new secrecy privileges to guard against U.S. sanctions
Telegram prepares to launch its first blockchain service
Chechnya's parliament wants a Constitutional amendment to keep Putin around
Arkady Dvorkovich could inherit Skolkovo
A court rejects a house-arrest transfer request in the “Seventh Studio” case
Putin says he can't help Kirill Serebrennikov make it to Cannes
Meduza reports on an unlikely exoneration at a trial in Dagestan

Peek-a-boo, Uncle Sam 🙈

🇸🇾 The Yanks admit it

The Russian Foreign Ministry says new U.S. sanctions against six Russian organizations (imposed for allegedly violating nonproliferation measures in Iran, Syria, and North Korea) are Washington’s “trivial way of getting even” for “the fiasco” that was an allied airstrike on government installations in Syria on April 14. By sanctioning missile-defense training centers in Russia, Moscow says the U.S. acknowledges that Russian missile defense stationed in Syria was able to knock out most of the American rockets launched on April 14.

The Foreign Ministry also mocked the U.S. State Department for targeting some Russian entities that are already named in older American sanctions. “They thought they could threaten us again with something that didn’t scare us the first time,” the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

🇬🇧🇺🇸 Punishing those meddlesome meddlers

Lawmakers in the State Duma are planning to introduce amendments that would again expand the reach of the so-called “Dima Yakovlev law,” which the government passed in 2012 to authorize measures against people allegedly responsible for violating Russian citizens’ rights. The law itself was a response to the U.S. Magnitsky Act, which imposed visa restrictions on Russians believed to be involved in human rights crimes. The latest revisions to the Dima Yakovlev law would allow officials to target “foreigners who interfere in Russian elections.”

A lawmaker who helped write the new legislation says it would allow officials to outlaw any foreign organization that is found guilty of interfering in Russia’s elections. The State Duma apparently plans to target American and British organizations most of all. “These countries are legally allocating billions of dollars to interfere in our political life and our elections, and it goes unpunished,” deputy Mikhail Emelyanov told the news agency Interfax.

A gift that keeps giving. Russian officials have used the Dima Yakovlev law to prohibit American families from adopting Russian children, to ban “political activity” by nonprofit institutions receiving funding from the U.S., and to outlaw activities by nonprofits that “threaten Russian interests.”

🤝 Hiding Russia's deals

Russia’s Economic Development Ministry has prepared legislation that would allow companies to hide certain transactions and the composition of their executive boards from investors. The government would have final say regarding the specific circumstances under which such secrecy would be permitted. The draft law was reportedly developed in response to a government order on April 17 to develop ways to support Russia’s “systemic enterprises.”

In late 2017, federal officials allowed state companies to hide procurement data about suppliers and subcontractors. The Defense Ministry, Federal Security Service, and Foreign Intelligence Service were also temporarily permitted to make all purchases in total secrecy. These measures, like the Economic Development Ministry’s new proposal, are reportedly meant to help Russian institutions evade Western sanctions.

Telegram's next phase begins soon 💰

The instant messenger Telegram has created the first service in its future blockchain platform “TON” (Telegram Open Network) and the company is testing it privately, two sources told the newspaper Vedomosti. “Telegram Passport” will allow users to save encrypted copies of all their identification documents, which can then be sent instantly to Telegram’s various partners. The new service could be up and running as soon as the summer, says Vedomosti.

Telegram has already raised $1.7 billion from private investors for a blockchain platform that is supposed to usher in “a whole new economy” full of goods and services that can be purchased using Telegram’s cryptocurrency: “Grams.”

What’s the big deal about Telegram? In mid-March, the instant messenger had a reported 200 million users worldwide, including about 40 million people in Iran. Telegram had roughly 14 million users in Russia. In April, both the Iranian and Russian governments started trying to block Telegram.

Putin 4.0 🤖

⌛️ Putin 5.0?

Chechen lawmakers have proposed a Constitutional amendment that would allow presidents to serve three, not two, consecutive terms. The Chechen Parliament was scheduled to consider the initiative on Thursday, May 10. In April, Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov called for reforms that would allow Vladimir Putin to remain in office beyond 2024, saying that there’s currently “no alternative” to Putin, who won a record 76.6 percent of the vote in his March 2018 re-election.

In 2008, when Putin last finished two consecutive terms (before presidential terms were extended from four to six years), he “stepped aside” for Dmitry Medvedev’s placeholder presidency, serving as his prime minister. In 2012, they reversed roles in what’s become known in chess parlance as “The Castling.”

👋 It's been swell, Arkady

Acting Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich won’t join Dmitry Medvedev’s new cabinet, and the newspaper Vedomosti says he might be put out to pasture as the next head of the Skolkovo Innovation Center, which he helped found with then President Medvedev in 2010. Dvorkovich is already a member of Skolkovo’s board of trustees.

Since the beginning, the billionaire Viktor Vekselberg has served as Skolkovo’s president, but that arrangement might need to change, in light of American sanctions announced in April against “Russian oligarchs.” As a result, the U.S. government has frozen as much as $2 billion in assets controlled by Vekselberg’s Renovo Group conglomerate. To weather the storm, Vekselberg has asked the Russian government for refinancing help, preferential treatment, and a boatload of tax breaks.

Artists incarcerated 🎭

On Thursday, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court refused to consider transferring Alexey Malobrodsky, the former director of the Gogol Center, to house arrest. Prosecutors asked the court to reject the transfer request by state investigators, dismissing claims by Malobrodksy’s lawyer that his client’s health has deteriorated in pretrial detention. “This attempted murder will come back to haunt you,” Malobrodksy told the prosecutor. The court rejected a similar petition by investigators on April 27.

Malobrodksy was arrested last summer for his suspected involvement in the embezzling of state funding in the “Seventh Studio” case. He is the only suspect still in pretrial detention. The other suspects now under house arrest are stage director Kirill Serebrennikov, Russian Academic Youth Theater director Sofia Apfelbaum, Seventh Studio general director Yuri Itin, and former Seventh Studio head accountant Nina Maslyaeva. Producer Ekaterina Voronova fled Russia and is wanted by police. Maslyaeva is the only suspect who has confessed to the charges.

🤷‍♂️ Putin is sorry not sorry

Also on May 10, the French authorities revealed that Vladimir Putin has rejected their request to facilitate Kirill Serebrennikov’s attendance at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Putin reportedly said he would be happy to help the festival, “but the Russian justice system is independent [from the executive branch].” Serebrennikov’s new film “Leto” (Summer) was screened on May 10 and reportedly got a standing ovation.

An unlikely (and possibly only temporary) exoneration ⚖️

In September 2016, police officers detained a man trying to leave Dagestan, and charged him with complicity in the murder of a federal judge. For three days, the police subjected 21-year-old Gadzhi Musayev to such torture that he lost the use of one of his hands, stopped seeing out of his left eye, and couldn’t walk normally for a month. Musayev had been targeted because his religious brother had tried to go to Syria, and he would live in pretrial detention until late April 2018, when a court in Dagestan unexpectedly acquitted him, though prosecutors have already appealed the verdict to the republic’s Supreme Court.

Musayev’s story captures the excesses, incompetence, and brutality of “anti-extremism” law enforcement in Russia’s North Caucasus. Read it here: “A man in Dagestan spent two years behind bars on various charges — all because his brother tried to go to Syria — before a Russian court suddenly acquitted him”

Yours, Meduza