The Real Russia. Today.

Draft ‘counter-sanctions’ are a go, Russia's latest ‘criminalization,’ and Dmitry Medvedev's big budget plans

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

• Lawmakers adopt a first reading of sweeping new “counter-sanctions”
• Meduza examines how the government plans to criminalize the observance or even promotion of Western sanctions
• Moscow's legal system bends over backwards to justify the blocking of Telegram
• Mikhail Khodorkovsky loses a censorship lawsuit
• The Cossacks who attacked anti-Putin protesters in Moscow might not get off so easily
• Kemerovo starts demolishing what's left of the shopping mall where 60 people burned to death in March
• Dmitry Medvedev has multi-trillion-ruble plans for the next five years, and he needs pension money to pay for it
• The Dutch government ditches Kaspersky Lab anti-virus software
• Ukrainian agents raid Russian newsrooms in Kiev
• Navalny wins another ECHR case

Russia's just getting started with its ‘counter-sanctions,’ baby 🇺🇸🇷🇺

On Tuesday, 410 State Duma deputies unanimously adopted the first reading of legislation that would grant the Russian government the authority to impose sweeping new “counter-sanctions” against the U.S. and other countries. Lawmakers are expected to vote on the legislation’s second reading as soon as Thursday, May 17.

Apparently at the Kremlin’s insistence, the second reading of the legislation reportedly ditches a list specifying which imported goods to ban in retaliation for Western sanctions, in favor of an open-ended endorsement that would allow the president to ban any products or raw materials that are not vital goods unavailable in Russia. Medical care groups have expressed concerns that the government will nonetheless ban pharmaceuticals that aren’t made anywhere but America.

Several medical care nonprofits have addressed a joint letter to the speaker of the State Duma and the chairperson of the Federation Council, asking lawmakers to exclude medical supplies explicitly from the proposed counter-sanctions. The letter reportedly warns that a new boycott could affect medicines not technically registered in Russia but vital to patients nonetheless, as well as different medical equipment and supplies used by hospices and clinics that are otherwise unavailable in Russia.

That’s not all. Lawmakers are also close to voting on a bill that would impose criminal penalties on anybody who observes or even promotes Western sanctions. The legislation has won the endorsement of the speakers of both houses of parliament, the State Duma’s first deputy speakers, the heads of all political parties with seats in the Duma, the federal government, and Russia’s Supreme Court. If adopted, the law would criminalize a common form of activism among Russia’s democratic opposition. Meduza asks and answers 12 questions about this legislation here: “The Russian authorities want to jail people for observing or even promoting Western sanctions”

The mad, mad, mad, mad world of RuNet regulations

⚖️ Damn the Telegram, full speed ahead

In the Twilight Zone of Russian Internet censorship, Moscow’s City Court revealed on Tuesday that the Tagansky District Court’s ruling to authorize the blocking of Telegram hasn’t yet formally “entered legal force” because Telegram filed an appeal. Roskomnadzor will continue to block the instant messenger, however, because the district court’s verdict demands its immediate enforcement, and that ruling hasn’t been overturned. In other words, the verdict hasn’t technically “entered force,” but officials started enforcing it immediately because that’s what the judge wanted.

Is your head spinning? Well embrace the twirling, because we only learned all this when the Moscow City Court accidentally wrote on its website that the Tagansky District Court’s April 13 ruling “entered force” on May 15 (thirty days after the verdict). It hasn’t.

👨‍⚖️ MBK's luck is no better

A Russian court has rejected a lawsuit by the former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky against the government’s decision to block Khodorkovsky.ru and three related websites. In court, a representative for the Attorney General’s Office explained that all four outlets were banned because they linked to materials on Open Russia’s website. Khodorkovsky founded Open Russia and transformed it into a political organization after going free from prison and fleeing Russia in 2013.

The agency previously outlawed the British-registered “Open Russia Civic Movement” as an “undesirable organization.” At the time, officials said this wouldn’t affect the legally distinct domestic social movement “Open Russia.” Neither the Attorney General’s Office nor Roskomnadzor were able to tell Open Russia’s lawyer in court what content the website needs to delete, in order to be unblocked.

Maybe the Cossacks won't get off so easily... ✊

Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court fined a member of a Cossack group for disorderly conduct at an anti-Putin rally on May 5. The name of the man’s organization hasn’t been revealed, but a source told the news agency Interfax that the fine was 1,000 rubles (about $16).

On May 5, groups of Cossacks fought and harassed opposition demonstrators at Pushkin Square, as police officers mostly looked the other way. Journalists later discovered that Moscow City Hall has signed several contracts with Cossack organizations to “ensure public safety” at mass rallies. City officials insist that they didn’t call on the Cossack groups to disperse the May 5 protesters.

On May 10, Maxim Shevchenko announced that he was leaving the Presidential Human Rights Council in protest against the group’s supposed refusal to discuss the violence on May 5 publicly. The council denied Shevchenko’s allegations, saying that it was simply waiting on answers from law enforcement. On May 14, the council formally called for an investigation into the attacks on anti-Putin demonstrators in Moscow and other cities.

Demolishing Kemerovo's death trap 🛍

Construction crews in Kemerovo have started tearing down the burned wreckage of the “Winter Cherry” shopping center, where a fire on March 25 killed 60 people, including 40 children. The mall’s primary owner, a local confectionery works, donated the premises to the city, buying out the minority shareholders that objected to the demolition. The city plans to open a public square on the grounds by September 1.

After the fire in Kemerovo, Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry announced a series of nationwide inspections. In mid-April, the agency said it had discovered fire-safety violations at half of the shopping centers it inspected. These inspections have led to the temporary closure of almost a third of all the shopping centers in Russia, according to the newspaper Kommersant. Almost half of the closed malls are relatively small shopping areas built or last remodeled in the 1990s. Sources told the newspaper that the closures could cost businesses more than half a billion rubles ($7.9 million) a month in lost revenues.

Big plans for all that pension money 💰

According to a leaked copy of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s next five-year budget plan, the government intends to spend 25 trillion rubles ($403.8 billion) on 13 “national projects.” The big-ticket items repeat many of the priorities of Medvedev’s own presidency and build on development goals laid out in President Putin’s latest executive orders. The biggest projects on the list are new roads (8.4 trillion rubles), demography (3.6 trillion rubles), and infrastructure (1.8 trillion rubles). The government also plans to devote significant resources to the fight against cancer and “the digital economy,” providing more broadband Internet connections to public sector facilities.

Planned federal budgets already allocate 17 trillion rubles ($274.6 billion) to the new “national projects,” and the remaining 8 trillion rubles ($129.2 billion) could come from the savings the government would incur, if it raised Russia’s retirement age, according to the newspaper Kommersant. Dmitry Medvedev recently said his cabinet will advocate raising the age at which Russians can start collecting social security.

Europe vs. Russia 🥊

🇳🇱 The Dutch have had enough

The Dutch government announced on Monday that it’s ditching anti-virus software made by Kaspersky Lab “as a precautionary measure,” in light of the Russian government’s “offensive cyber-program that targets among others the Netherlands and Dutch interests.” Officials say they’re worried that Kaspersky Lab might be compelled to comply with Russian state interests because it’s based in Moscow. In 2017, the U.S. Homeland Security Department banned the use of Kaspersky Lab software by the U.S. federal government. Britain’s National Cyber Security Center warns agencies and organizations not to use Kaspersky anti-virus software if they’re guarding classified information.

• Read the whole story at Reuters.

🇺🇦 Raiding Russia's “propagandists”

On Tuesday, Ukrainian national security agents raided the Kiev offices of RIA Novosti and Russia Today, temporarily detaining the journalists present. RT chief editor Margarita Simonyan speculated that the police actions were retaliation for Moscow opening a bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian mainland. Ukrainian officials say the raids are part of an investigation into “media structures under the control of the Russian Federation.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov condemned the crackdown, promising “reciprocal measures.”

🇪🇺 More euros for Navalny

The European Court of Human Rights has ordered the Russian government to pay 2,000 euros ($2,385)to the anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny for illegally refusing to issue him a passport to travel to Bonn in 2015 to attend a trial against Sergey Maksimov (the infamous “Hacker Hell”), who hacked and leaked Navalny’s private emails.

Navalny has repeatedly appealed cases in Russia to the ECHR, which found procedural violations in his two biggest trials: the “Yves Rocher” case and the “Kirovles” case.

Yours, Meduza