The Real Russia. Today.

Monday, May 13, 2024

🕊️ Former top U.S. diplomat Victoria Nuland talks to Meduza about winning in Ukraine by remaining tough on Putin and getting real about Chinese ‘neutrality’ (20-min read)

In March 2024, Victoria Nuland stepped down as State Department under-secretary for political affairs, ending her tenure as the third-highest-ranking U.S. diplomat. Early in her career, from 1991 to 1993, Nuland worked at the American embassy in Moscow and was responsible for relations with Boris Yeltsin's government. Later, as America’s assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, she visited the center of Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity and publicly supported the demonstrators. Standing in the Maidan in Kyiv, Nuland even handed out cookies, which soon became a meme in Russia symbolizing supposed U.S. political interference. From the first days of the war in Ukraine, she helped develop Washington’s response to the Russian invasion. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described Nuland’s work as “indispensable to confronting” Russian aggression. Meduza special correspondent Lilia Yapparova spoke to Victoria Nuland about the current state of the war in Ukraine, Russia’s claimed justifications for the invasion, and the future of the West’s relationship with Moscow.

🪖 Why would Putin choose Andrey Belousov, an economist, as Russia’s new defense minister? (5-min read)

Sergey Shoigu’s nearly 12-year tenure as Russia’s defense minister ended unexpectedly on Sunday when President Vladimir Putin removed him from his post and reassigned him to the country’s Security Council. Then, in a move that surprised even government insiders, Putin nominated Andrey Belousov, a longtime presidential economic advisor, as Shoigu’s successor. Belousov is a civilian with no direct military ties, raising questions about the rationale behind his appointment. Some observers have speculated that he may have been brought in to overhaul military spending and ensure the Russian army is adequately resourced for the ongoing war in Ukraine. The independent outlet Verstka spoke with government insiders and political scientists to get their take on what Belousov’s appointment could mean for the future of the Russian military.

🪖 How Russia’s pro-war bloggers reacted to Putin’s sudden replacement of Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu (6-min read)

In a surprise reshuffle on Sunday, Vladimir Putin removed Sergey Shoigu from his post as Russia’s defense minister, where he had served since 2012. Set to replace him is Andrey Belousov, a longtime presidential economic adviser who’s been a deputy prime minister since 2020. According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the shakeup is part of a bid to better integrate the country’s defense spending into its overall economy: putting a civilian economist at the helm of of the Defense Ministry, he said, will make the agency more “open to innovation.” Russia’s pro-invasion military bloggers and “war correspondents” reacted cautiously to the news, with most of them trying to find reasons to be optimistic about the president’s decision to entrust the ministry to an economist heretofore unknown in Z-world. (Hardly any of them mentioned Shoigu, who’s replacing Nikolai Patrushev as Secretary of Russia’s Security Council.) Meduza shares some notable reactions to the news from the Russian pro-war blogosphere.

🎧 View of the Kremlin: Parsing the cabinet shuffle (40 minutes — in Russian)

On the latest episode of Meduza’s Russian-language podcast View of the Kremlin, hosts Alexandra Prokopenko and Andrey Pertsev discussed the surprises in Vladimir Putin’s new government cabinet. The hosts say that the president held Mikhail Mishustin in some suspense, forcing him to stew for several days before nominating him for reappointment. Throughout his tenure as prime minister, Mishustin has benefitted from massive state spending, first during the coronavirus pandemic and now during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. With “inflated government spending,” it’s easy to be a popular state official, after all. Prokopenko and Pertsev also note that Mishustin has cracked down on a phenomenon that plagued Dmitry Medvedev’s government: subordinates running to the president to go over the prime minster’s head.

Of course, Andrey Belousov replacing Sergey Shoigu as defense minister is the big shocker of the new government. Prokopenko and Pertsev describe him as a committed Keynesian who’s spent years advocating for the state economic interventions that are now federal wartime policy. Putin has reportedly kept Belousov around partly as a counterweight to the more liberal, more mainstream economists in the Central Bank and Finance Ministry. The appointment of another civilian to oversee the defense ministry is designed to deny the army its own “subjectivity” and prevent the emergence of a favorite among the joint chiefs who might compete against Putin for the military’s support. Putin also transferred control over Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation from the Defense Ministry to the presidential administration, meaning that he will personally oversee Russia’s military-technical cooperation with other countries.

Other insights from Prokopenko and Pertsev:

• Despite Putin’s rhetoric, he hasn’t created any new cabinet positions devoted specifically to the war or to Russia’s newly annexed territories.
• Governorships have proven not to be a great “career elevator” except when officials have other attributes, like preexisting connections to influential figures like Kremlin domestic policy czar Sergey Kiriyenko or the billionaire Rotenbergs.
• Rumors are spreading on some Telegram channels that Denis Manturov, now appointed to be the cabinet’s first deputy prime minister, might become the government’s “shadow prime minister” (now that Putin has removed from the cabinet the combined position of deputy prime minister and industry and trade minister, which Manturov held in the last government).

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• 🪖 Belousov says Russia must do more for its fighting men: In an address to the Federation Council’s Defense and Security Committee on Monday, Defense Minister nominee Andrey Belousov told senators that benefits awarded to soldiers fighting in Ukraine are insufficient. He praised the military for raising salaries and bonuses for servicemen but indicated that one of his first priorities in office will be to improve healthcare coverage for soldiers and expand benefits for their dependents, as well as reduce red tape overall.
• 💥 As Kharkiv offense accelerates, Moscow says intercepted Ukrainian missile’s fragments kill civilians: Sunday explosion causes apartment building in Russia’s Belgorod to partially collapse, killing 15. (On Monday, more downed Ukrainian missiles injured seven civilians in Belgorod, according to the local governor.)
• ⚖️ Saltanat Nukenova’s killer heads for prison: Former Kazakhstani economy minister sentenced to 24 years for wife’s murder
• ⚖️ A lucky break for a convicted Telegram extortionist: The Moscow City Court has revised a lower court’s sentence imposed in February on a Telegram channel adminstrator convicted of trying to extort 800,000 rubles ($8,730) from Vasily Brovko, the director for special operations at the Russian defense conglomerate Rostec. Sergey Sadovov’s 2.5-year sentence is now probation instead of prison. He is one of several Telegram channel administrators arrested and prosecuted since late 2022 in connection with Rostec’s efforts to bring police pressure against tabloid journalists and various critics on Telegram.
• ⌛ Putin had reportedly had enough of his longtime defense minister: Three sources told Bloomberg News that Putin “finally lost patience” with Sergey Shoigu’s inability to “prosecute the war amid rampant corruption,” though the two two men reportedly maintain “warm personal relations.”
• 💥 Bakhmut all over again: Kharkiv regional police chief Volodymyr Tymoshko said on Monday that the city of Vovchansk has come under its heaviest fire since the start of Russia’s invasion. He told reporters that the Russian military is now bombarding Vovchansk with artillery and guided bombs and reducing it to rubble, “turning it into something like Bakhmut or Marinka” (which Russian troops captured in scorched-earth battles). 🍝 Don’t speak ill of Russia’s pasta boss: Former Chelyabinsk Governor and owner of the Makfa pasta manufacturer Mikhail Yurevich is suing the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company and two media figures who staged a talk show in mid-April the featured numerous corruption allegations against the former official. Yurevich fled Russia in 2017 before he was arrested in absentia for accepting a large bribe while in office. His new lawsuit claims defamation, invasion of privacy, and attempted pressure on the court ahead of a ruling on the state seizure of his assets.

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