The Real Russia. Today.

The Kremlin's pop-music quest, Sobyanin's re-election propaganda, and a bombed pension center

Friday, August 3, 2018

This day in history. On August 3, 1952, the Summer Olympics wrapped up. This was the Olympic debut for both the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (as well as Indonesia, Israel, and Thailand).

The Kremlin is supposedly looking for Russia's next patriotic pop star, and it reportedly wants Monetochka
An investigative journalist claims a popular comedian is making re-election propaganda for Moscow's mayor
As Russia prepares to raise its retirement age, a Pension Fund office in Kaluga is bombed
An Alaska man washes up in Russia after a disastrous rafting trip
A mole in the U.S. embassy in Moscow and thousands of new North Korean laborers arrive in Russia, despite U.N. sanctions
Russia wants answers from Facebook about users' data security
Barnaul police charge yet another ‘extremism’ suspect who mocked religious sentiments
The former mayor of Yaroslavl says, yes, Russia's prison system is awash in torture and rape
Calls for independent group of journalists to investigate death of Russian film crew in Africa
The man convicted of killing former Russian Colonel Yuri Budanov is dead

The Moscow mayor's secret propagandist? 🤔

Russian journalist Alexey Kovalev, the brains behind the muckraking website NoodleRemover, has published evidence that the stand-up comic and videoblogger Danila Poperechny is responsible for a viral advertising campaign to promote Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin’s re-election. The animated videos celebrate various urban improvements throughout the capital in recent years, lauding Sobyanin’s qualities as a mayor.

In May 2018, NoodleRemover offered $100 in cryptocurrency to anyone who could provide information that would identify the authors behind a viral ad titled “Sobyanin's Lover Talks About Expensive Presents, PG-16,” where a woman's voice seductively describes the city's infrastructure projects as if they were gifts to the mayor's mistress. Kovalev says he obtained the information about Poperechny from an anonymous source and paid an undisclosed amount of money for the evidence. (Meduza does not pay its sources for information and considers this practice to be unethical, though we made an exception in December 2017 for this story.)

Kovalev says two of 12 planned videos have reached YouTube, so far, attracting several thousand views and dozens of supportive comments. An entire “animated documentary film” is apparently on the way, too. Pro-Kremlin media figures like Rossiya 1 talk show host Vladimir Solovyov and Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent Dmitry Steshin have also shared the videos.

According to the information Kovalev obtained, the videos are the work of a YouTube studio run by Danila Poperechny and Ilya Fadeev, who previously served as press secretary for the pro-government projects “Stop Kham” and “Khryushi Protiv.” Kovalev says Poperechny is also responsible for a video last year that compared the anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny to Adolf Hitler. (The public's reaction to the video was so negative that its creators quickly deleted it from YouTube, but not before others saved it and shared copies.)

🤣 Poperechny's response

Responding to Kovalev’s allegations, Poperechny ridiculed the idea that he runs “some secret propaganda studio,” denying that he is involved in the Sobyanin videos and arguing that the advertisements look more like the work of Yuri Dyagterev’s My Duck’s Vision studio (read more about this project here). Poperechny confirmed that he did work briefly with Ilya Fadeev at the studio Davai Laima, but he insists that he quickly ended this collaboration when Fadeev started giving interviews claiming to be one of the studio’s co-founders. Poperechny says Kovalev's investigative report is clearly a “planted story” designed to tarnish his reputation.

Danila Poperechny launched his career as a screenwriter and animator for the videoblogging association Spasibo, Eva! (Thanks, Eve!), but he left the project after it became known that the creators had ties to the Kremlin. Today, Poperechny is widely considered to be a moderately oppositionist blogger. His YouTube channel has almost two million subscribers.

Why the Kremlin wants to clone Monetochka 🎤

According to a new report by the independent television station RTVI, the Kremlin is responsible for coordinating the “Nashestvie” (Invasion) music festival, which wraps up on August 5, and views the event as a way to mobilize “grassroots patriotic” musicians. “The Kremlin decided against artificially manufacturing heroes for the country’s youth, and they’re trying to find ready-made ‘stars’ there [at the festival], and then produce them,” RTVI says.

The government supposedly placed its highest hopes in Elizaveta Gyrdymova — aka “Monetochka” (Lil’ Coin) — but the musician suddenly dropped out of the concert last month, as a wave of entertainers said they’d rather not perform for organizers with close ties to the Russian Defense Ministry. According to RTVI, Nashestvie’s organizers see Monetochka’s exit as a “smart PR stunt.” “We’re applauding her and laughing,” the festival’s media director, Sergey Gorbachev, told the network.

The Kremlin supposedly hopes to crown new music celebrities through the “VysotskyFest” tournament, which will hold its semifinal round at a special stage at the Nashestvie festival. Putin endorsed the contest in January 2018, and his deputy chief of staff, Sergey Kiriyenko, apparently adores Vladimir Vysotsky's music. (The Kremlin appreciates that Vysotsky appeals both to patriotic and opposition-minded Russians.) A source close to the Putin administration told RTVI that Kremlin officials hope someone like Monetochka will win the tournament. “Her lyrics are loaded with patriotism, but it’s sincere and it wins you over,” the source said.

The Nashestvie festival typically has traditional, patriotic overtones. Last year, for example, ahead of Russia’s presidential election, at the Kremlin’s suggestion, the organizers staged a “joke rehearsal” for the vote, electing Leningrad front man Sergey Shnurov as the festival’s president. Ella Pamfilova, the head of Russia’s Central Election Commission, personally verified the results.

Russia's pension bomb 💣

Around 4 a.m. in the city of Kaluga, somebody set off a small bomb outside the front entrance of the local Pension Fund office, damaging the door and building’s exterior. Video posted online shows that the front window was blow out and some of the outside tiling destroyed. According to preliminary reports, the blast was caused by standard ammunition, not a homemade explosive device. A source in the city’s police department told the news website Kaluzhskie Novosti that officials will press felony hooliganism charges, “or something like that.” Despite the bomb, the Pension Fund office operated normally on Friday, welcoming visitors through a back emergency exit. The regional television station NIKA TV initially reported that spent AK-47 rounds were discovered at the blast site, but the network later deleted this story.

In mid-July, the State Duma adopted the first reading of controversial legislation that would raise Russia's retirement age from 60 to 65 for men by 2028, and from 55 to 63 for women by 2034. Public opinion polls show that Russians largely oppose this proposal.

An American abroad ⛵

Russian officials are providing medical care to John Martin, the U.S. citizen who lost his way while sailing the Yukon River in Alaska two weeks ago. On August 1, Martin turned up in the Chukotsky District, where border guards intercepted him in his one-man raft. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told reporters on August 3 that the U.S. consulate in Vladivostok has been informed about its missing countryman, who hails from Anchorage. “Due to difficult weather conditions and a lack of navigation tools, he spent several days at sea and then ended up on Russian territory,” Zakharova explained.

Initial reports in the Russian media speculated that Martin had been aiming for China and reached Russia by mistake. News outlets also circulated inaccurate claims that the American planned to seek political asylum in Russia.

Oh, those tricky Russians

🕵️‍♀️ A mole in Moscow

A suspected Russian spy was employed for more than a decade at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow before being fired last year. The woman, a Russian national, worked for the U.S. Secret Service for years before she came under suspicion during one of the State Department regional security office's routine security reviews in 2016. Read the story at CNN.

🛬 Open borders

Russia is letting thousands of new North Korean laborers enter the country and issuing fresh work permits — actions U.S. officials say potentially violate United Nations sanctions aimed at cutting cash flows to Pyongyang and pressing it to give up nuclear weapons. Read the (paywalled) story at The Wall Street Journal.

Russia wants answers from Facebook, thanks to The New York Times 📳

Following a June report by The New York Times, Russia’s federal censor (Roskomnadzor) has asked Facebook to provide information about its data-sharing partnerships with mobile-device manufacturers, wherever these companies might have obtained users’ private information. Roskomnadzor’s letter to Facebook is a response to concerns expressed by the “Association of Professional Social Media and Messengers Users,” which reportedly asked Russia’s censor to investigate the possibility that Facebook leaked Russian users’ private data.

On June 2, The New York Times reported that Facebook has formed data-sharing partnerships with Apple, Samsung and dozens of other device makers, “raising new concerns about its privacy protections.”

Don't you dare laugh in Barnaul 🙏

The police in Barnaul don’t exactly welcome the mockery of religion. Late last month, officials opened felony extremism cases against two local Internet users: a 23-year-old woman who joked about religion and race, and a 19-year-old man who shared a meme about Jon Snow’s resurrection on Game of Thrones. On August 3, law enforcement went for the hat trick and charged local 38-year-old man Andrey Shashein with extremism for sharing a picture showing Jesus Christ asking Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill for the time. In so many words, Kirill tells the Christian Lord to buzz off. Despite a lack of concern from experts who reviewed this meme and several others Shashein posted on Vkontakte, and without a court order, Barnaul police have reportedly frozen his bank accounts while they investigate his supposedly criminal Internet behavior.

In 2012, the Russian Orthodox Church’s official website published a photograph that removed Patriarch Kirill’s enormously expensive wristwatch (a Breguet!), but observant Internet users spotted the watch’s reflection in the table at which the Patriarch was seated. The church later apologized for retouching the photo, but the incident has forever haunted the organization as evidence of its apparently unChristian opulence.

Prison torture in Yaroslavl 🚪

Evgeny Urlashov, the former mayor of Yaroslavl now imprisoned on controversial bribery charges, wrote in a letter published on August 3 by the local website 76.ru that torturing inmates is an everyday occurrence at prisons and jails across the country. “They beat [prisoners] mercilessly with clubs, fists, and legs. They make them squat for four to eight hours, no matter their age or health,” Urlashov wrote, commenting on a video released last month that shows more than a dozen guards torturing inmate Evgeny Makarov at a prison in Yaroslavl. The former mayor says there were so-called “press huts” at the city’s Number 1 pretrial detention center back in 2016, where inmates were tortured into confessing to whatever charges they faced. Some were beaten and others were even raped, Urlashov says.

In August 2016, Evgeny Urlashov was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison for extorting large bribes. In March 2018, he appealed to President Putin for a pardon. Last month, the newspaper Novaya Gazeta published a 10-minute video showing 17 prison guards torturing inmate Evgeny Makarov. Since the video was released to the public, federal officials have arrested 12 of the guards who took part in the incident.

Another effort to investigate a Russian film crew's demise in Africa 🌍

Maxim Shevchenko announced on Thursday that an independent group of Russian journalists will carry out their own investigation into the deaths of Orkhan Dzhemal, Alexander Rastorguyev, and Kirill Radchenko, who were killed in the Central African Republic on July 30, while filming a documentary about Russian mercenaries in the area. Based on statements Shevchenko made to the radio station Ekho Moskvy, it’s not clear if the independent group already exists.

According to Shevchenko, the investigation into the murders should be conducted by “a group of independent war correspondents and professionals with combat experience, including members of the armed forces” and friends of the killed journalists.

Calling on Russian state officials to support the creation of the independent group, Shevchenko noted that the former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky (who financed the documentary expedition to Africa) is already assembling a team of journalists to investigate the murders. Shevchenko didn’t specify, however, if he believes his independent group should collaborate with Khodorkovsky’s group or work in parallel.

Budanov's convicted killer is no more ⚰️

Yusup Temerkhanov, the man convicted of killing the former Russian Colonel Yuri Budanov, has died in prison of heart failure. In 2013, Temerkhanov was sentenced to 15 years behind bars for the murder of Budanov, who in 2003 was convicted of killing a Chechen woman named Elza Kungayeva and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Budanov went free in 2009 on early probation and was shot eight times in June 2011 outside a notary’s office in Moscow. Temerkhanov categorically denied that he carried out the murder.

Yours, Meduza