The Real Russia. Today.

Navalny gets another 30 days in jail, xenophobia rebounds in Russia, and Roskomnadzor wins another court case

Monday, August 27, 2018

This day in history. On August 27, 1922, the first issue of the Soviet magazine Krokodil (Crocodile) was released as a satirical supplement to the Workers' Gazette.

Anti-corruption leader Alexey Navalny gets a month in jail for protesting Putin's reelection, will miss planned rally against pension reform
Russia's Justice Ministry again refuses to register Alexey Navalny's opposition political party
New polling shows a resurgence of xenophobia in Russia
A jailed district official outside Moscow who helped trash protesters now faces a second set of criminal charges
10,000 copies of a Russian school notebook feature a greeting from the local mayor (who was just arrested for bribery)
Russian hackers are suspected of targeting the world’s most senior Orthodox Christian figures
Medvedev strips Moscow State University’s faculty and students of right to amend school’s charter
Moscow Arbitration Court dismisses lawsuit against federal censor over cloud computing disruptions caused by Russia's Telegram ban
Another police informant emerges in a controversial case against an alleged Russian extremist group
Police in Kaliningrad charge local autistic man with hate speech for posting a sexist Internet meme

In the jailhouse now ⚖️

In a familiar scene, a Moscow court sentenced Alexey Navalny to 30 days in jail on Monday, August 27, convicting him of the misdemeanor offense of organizing an unpermitted protest on January 28 to promote a “voters’ boycott” of the March 2018 presidential election (where Vladimir Putin ultimately claimed almost 77 percent of the vote). Police briefly detained Navalny on January 28, and then formally pressed charges on February 22. His hearing was scheduled to take place in March, but it was postponed indefinitely, apparently until the authorities needed a reason to throw him back in jail.

Navalny’s latest jail sentence will keep the anti-corruption activist from attending a September 9 protest against the government’s plan to raise the retirement age. The nationwide rallies will take place on the day the country holds regional elections. (In Moscow, city officials have again refused to issue a permit to Navalny’s supporters.)

The judge refused to postpone the hearing to give Navalny’s lawyers time to read the 219-page case file. The judge also refused to admit as evidence any of the video surveillance footage submitted by the defense, allowing just a single witness called by Navalny’s attorneys: a man who testified that Navalny did not resist arrest when detained by police in downtown Moscow on January 28. The court refused to dismiss the case, even though Navalny was not one of the activists who submitted the original permit request to Moscow City Hall.

Navalny’s most recent trip to jail was in May, after he was arrested at an anti-Putin rally on May 5 and sentenced to a month behind bars for disobeying police orders and organizing an unpermitted protest.

Better luck next time 🗳️

Russia’s Justice Ministry has once again refusedto register anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny’s political party, citing yet another disqualifying technicality. Officials say Navalny’s team failed to include a full copy of their party’s charter in their application to resume the registration process, attaching only a list of the most recent amendments. Navalny told the news agency Interfax that his paperwork strictly adhered to Russia's rules and regulations, and he vowed to challenge the Justice Ministry’s decision in court.

How long has Navalny been at this?

Navalny has been trying to register a national political party since 2012. Each time his supporters submit the necessary paperwork, the Justice Ministry finds excuses to delay or reject the application. On multiple occasions, “spoiler parties” have emerged, stealing the name of Navalny’s party and forcing him to start the registration process all over again. His current effort is called “Russia of the Future.” In late December 2017, federal election officials refused to register Alexey Navalny’s presidential candidacy on the grounds that he is still serving a felony probation sentence. According to election laws, Navalny is ineligible for elected office until at least 2028. A pollby the Levada Center in February 2017 showed that 47 percent of the country knew Navalny’s name, though 83 percent of these people said they wouldn’t vote for him. Navalny won a surprising 27.2 percent of the vote in the 2013 Moscow mayoral race, nearly forcing a runoff against incumbent Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, who’s expected to win reelection easily in September 2018.

Xenophobia is in again 😨

Xenophobia in Russia has grown by 12 percent in the past year, according to a new national survey by the Levada Center. Thirty-two percent of respondents said they endorse banning the immigration of Roma into Russia — up 15 percent from a year earlier. The same attitude toward Chinese people grew from 15 to 31 percent, toward Vietnamese people from 12 to 26 percent, toward Central Asians from 19 to 25 percent, toward people from the Caucasus from 22 to 23 percent, toward Ukrainians from 8 to 17 percent, and toward Jews from 4 to 12 percent. This year and last year, slightly more than a quarter of respondents (28 percent) said they don’t support any kind of immigration bans based on nationality or ethnicity.

The number of people who said they support the ethno-nationalist slogan “Russia for Russians!” has nearly doubled in the past year, from 10 to 19 percent. On average, Russian cities with larger populations are more likely to support discriminatory hiring and renting practices against ethnic minorities. Moscow is leading the way here, with 63 percent of the city expressing “understanding” of or outright support for this kind of discrimination.

Does this mean Russia’s future is nationalistic?

Today’s level of xenophobia in Russia, according to the Levada Center, is still lower than in October 2013, just before Moscow’s relations with the West turned openly hostile (following the invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea). Alexander Verkhovsky, the director of the “Sova” human rights group, told Vedomosti that Russians seem to focus their anger and animosity on one target at a time, typically against either ethnic minorities or the West.

Rebounding xenophobia, Verkhovsky speculates, could be the consequence of diminished anti-Western rhetoric from the Kremlin. He also points out that Vladimir Putin has managed to remain a teflon president, avoiding the hatred directed at the Russian state that reigned in the 1990s. The resurgence of xenophobia today might also indicate that Russians anticipate economic hardships and a scramble for increasingly scarce economic opportunities, says Verkhovsky.

Trash politics 🚯

Things have gone from bad to worse for Alexander Shestun, the head of the Moscow region's Serpukhovsky district. Previously charged with abusing his authority, he now faces new criminal charges that he stole and laundered roughly 150 million rubles ($2.3 million) through several real-estate companies that he allegedly headed while in office. In jail since April 2018, Shestun started a hunger strike on July 30 and was hospitalized on August 27, claiming that he’s being framed by political enemies. On the first set of charges alone, Shestun faces up to 10 years in prison.

What’s so special about yet another Russian official behind bars on corruption charges?

Alexander Shestun has been unusually loud about criticizing his captors. Even before he was arrested, Shestun published a video appeal to Vladimir Putin, saying that Moscow Governor Andrey Vorobyov was gunning for him, allegedly threatening to put him in prison and confiscate his home, if he didn’t resign. Vorobyov supposedly wants him out because Shestun opposes the transformation of the Serpukhovsky district into a municipal precinct and he objects to further waste shipments from the city to Serpukhov’s over-capacity “Lesnaya” landfill. Other prominent men in the Moscow region have also encountered sudden problems with the law, after lending their support to locals protesting against unwanted trash dumps. In mid-August, FSB agents raided the home of Artem Lyubimov, a businessman in Volokolamsk who’s helped organize demonstrations. He’s been accused of hiding American citizenship.

A lesson in awkwardness 🏫

This May, school children in Orenburg received little notebooks with a message from their mayor, Evgeny Arapov. “Dear friend!” the text begins. “The most important thing now is to study well! [...] I hope you make your parents, your school, and our town proud!” The only problem with the notebooks is that Mayor Arapov was arrested in mid-August for extorting 600,000 rubles ($8,915) in bribes from a local businessman for favoritism in the city’s construction industry. Investigators also found four million rubles (almost $60,000) in Arapov’s office.

“The only thing we can do is either tear out the page or paste something over it,” says Vladimir Ukhov, the local businessman who produced 10,000 copies of the notebooks, apparently without the participation of Orenburg’s City Hall.

Hacking God ☦️

“The Russian hackers indicted by the U.S. special prosecutor last month have spent years trying to steal the private correspondence of some of the world’s most senior Orthodox Christian figures, The Associated Press has found, illustrating the high stakes as Kyiv and Moscow wrestle over the religious future of Ukraine. The targets included top aides to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who often is described as the first among equals of the world’s Eastern Orthodox Christian leaders. [...] The AP’s evidence comes from a hit list of 4,700 email addresses supplied last year by Secureworks, a subsidiary of Dell Technologies.” Read the story at The Associated Press.

Shut up, students 🎓

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has issued a government order stripping Moscow State University’s faculty and students of the right to amend the school’s charter. Medvedev’s decision removes completely the following text from the document: “The university’s charter and amendments to it are adopted by a conference of academic and pedagogical staff, representatives of other staff categories, and students.” The only group now empowered to amend the school’s charter is the academic council, pending the federal government’s approval. Russia’s president directly appoints and dismisses the rectors of Moscow State University and St. Petersburg State University.

Why add limits to an already-controlled situation?

The government has offered no explanation for the restriction of student and faculty rights at Moscow State. The university’s closest brush with anything resembling “student unrest” took place earlier this summer, when some students objected to the “fan zone” built on campus for soccer fans to watch FIFA World Cup games. Opposition to that project landed a few students in trouble with the law, but the case was eventually dismissed.

No damages 💸

The Moscow Arbitration Court has dismissed a lawsuit against Russia’s federal censor and Finance Ministry claiming five million rubles (almost $75,000) in damages because of Roskomnadzor’s scattershot approach to banning IP addresses in its effort to block the instant messenger Telegram. The company “Investor” says it was targeted by accident, leading to a service disruption and loss of business. In April, Roskomnadzor blocked millions of IP addresses operated by the cloud-computing providers Amazon, Google, and Digital Ocean, interrupting a wide array of Russian online businesses.

Is there no stopping Roskomnadzor?

Despite criticism from business groups saying that the federal censor is abusing its authority, Roskomnadzor hasn’t run into serious obstacles in its campaign against Telegram. The agency started unblocking some Google and Amazon subnets in May, apparently trying to reduce its collateral damage, but in early August the Supreme Court’s appellate bench sided with the FSB against Telegram, upholding the legal grounds for the censorship campaign.

New but not so great 👮

The newspaper Novaya Gazeta says its learned the identity of another police informant who helped build the controversial extremism case against the “Novoe Velichie” (New Greatness) extremist movement. The lawyer for one of the suspects told journalists that a woman named Olga Pshenichnikova went by the code name “Koshka” (Kitty). Pshenichnikova allegedly socialized with the group’s members early on and reported back to the police. After leaving the group, a man named Alexander Konstantinov (going by the name “Ruslan D.”) supposedly replaced Pshenichnikova as the authorities’ mole. Relatives of the suspects say Konstantinov acted as the group’s accountant and framed the other members for plotting acts of extremism. Novaya Gazeta claims that the police had another three informants embedded in the Novoe Velichie movement.

Who cares about a bunch of hoodlum teens?

According to the suspects and their parents, what police say was a dangerous extremist movement was in fact a loose social group that emerged from like-minded teens hanging out at the same McDonald’s. Investigators believe the youngsters were plotting to “overthrow Russia’s constitutional order,” using leaflets and Telegram chat messages. Ten people now face felony charges in the case, including two young women — Anna Pavlikova and Maria Dubovik — whose mothers mobilized a civic movement that successfully pressured the authorities into transferring the girls from jail to house arrest. Dmitry Poletaev, a 30-year-old man who’s also a suspect, hasn’t been so lucky. On August 19, he made a desperate (and, so far, fruitless) public appeal for help to get out of jail.

Unlike Vkontakte, house pets never betray you 👨‍⚖️

A year ago, police in Kaliningrad charged a local man with hate speech because of a sexist picture he shared online. The suspect, 27-year-old Artur Smirnov, has been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, and his mother has spent the past 12 months lobbying the district attorney’s office to close the case against her son. In 2014, Smirnov uploaded a picture of a man punching a woman in the face, captioned, “Unlike women, house pets never betray you.” The man shared the picture in a Vkontakte community called “Hatred for Women” that had “no more than three members.” Police have allegedly pressured Smirnov to confess to the charges or risk pretrial detention. His mother says his health has deteriorated over the past year.

Is no one in Russia sick of prosecuting harmless online haters?

In mid-August Vkontakte’s parent company, Mail.ru Group, urged the government to decriminalize the sharing of harmless Internet content (including posts, reposts, “likes,” and comments), and also asked state officials to amnesty Internet users convicted of nonviolent crimes under Criminal Code articles 282 (extremist hate speech) and 148 (offending religious sensitivities). A similar initiative has the support of Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova, Russia’s Communications Ministry, and even the Russian Orthodox Church. This isn’t the first effort to repeal Article 282, however, and Vkontakte — despite its recent show of support for the decriminalization of online hate speech — makes these prosecutions possible by cooperating with Russian law enforcement.

Yours, Meduza