The Real Russia. Today.

Sex trainers and RussiaGate, Moscow's penthouse family, and the unintended results of indirect mayoral elections

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

This day in history (39 years ago): On January 22, 1980, nuclear physicist and Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov was arrested on his way to work in Moscow and exiled without trial to the closed city of Gorky (modern-day Nizhny Novgorod). In December 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev allowed Sakharov and his wife to return to Moscow, where Sakharov died three years later.

‘Sex trainers’ who leaked Deripaska yacht footage are unexpectedly released from Moscow jail
Leaked audio records allegedly show how Oleg Deripaska's associates plotted the arrest of the ‘sex trainers’ who claimed to have ‘RussiaGate’ dirt on him
Alexey Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation wants felony charges against Oleg Deripaska, saying the billionaire bribed police to prosecute a ‘sex trainer’
How relatives of Moscow’s deputy mayor earned billions on city contracts, amassing a fortune in real estate
Political scientist Stanislav Shkel says Russia's loss of direct mayoral elections is actually a problem for regional and federal officials
Political analyst Valery Solovei has a timeline for the collapse of Russia as we know it, and it's happening soon, supposedly
News briefs: draft dodgers, another strange church obsession, siding against Grozny, a very bad flight, hands off the Kurils, and another push to escape Chechnya

“Nastya Rybka” 💄

On January 22, a Moscow court unexpectedly freed the “sex trainers” Anastasia Vashukevich (also known as “Nastya Rybka”) and Alexander Kirillov (“Alex Leslie”). The two were arrested on January 17 at Sheremetyevo Airport in connection with a prostitution investigation.

According to lawyer and human rights activist Pavel Chikov, prosecutors brought no charges against either Vashukevich or Kirillov, and the two were promptly released on their own recognizance. “They were just released, and we’re waiting for the investigator to inform us when they need to appear again in court,” Kirillov’s lawyer, Svetlana Sidorkina, told reporters.

How did Anastasia Vashukevich go from a Thai jail to a Rusian jail? Read Meduza's report here.

🤝 Lock her up!

Opposition politician and anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny announced on Monday that he has learned about recordings of telephone calls apparently involving Oleg Deripaska and some of Deripaska's associates. Navalny says an anonymous source contacted him “a couple of months ago” with several tapes uploaded to YouTube. Navalny says he believes the recordings are authentic, arguing that the voice on file sounds like Deripaska's. He also points out that Deripaska filed a lawsuit in the town of Ust-Labinsk (where the billionaire is registered) demanding that Russian Internet service providers block access to this data.

There are three different audio recordings: one about the seizure of a water bottling plant, and two about Anastasia Vashukevich (“Nastya Rybka”), including one call that includes people named “Tatiana,” “Georgy,” and “William” talking about Vashukevich’s arrest in Thailand. In the recording, Georgy insists that everyone in Vashukevich’s group needs to be “locked up,” while William points out that Thai law doesn’t imprison “sex trainers.” Georgy then says Vashukevich’s group could be charged with illegal business activities, instead.

In February 2018, when Vashukevich, her associate Alexander Kirillov (who goes by the name “Alex Leslie”), and eight participants in their “sex training” group were arrested in Thailand, they were initially charged with illegal business activity. The 10 suspects were acquitted in April, but subsequently charged with conducting illegal sex work. After pleading guilty, everyone in the group was sentenced to probation and deported.

🎧 Who are the voices on the tapes?

Alexey Navalny believes that the “Tatiana” in the audio recording is Tatiana Monegen, the secretary general of the Russian branch of International Chamber of Commerce (which has close ties to Oleg Deripaska). Navalny says “Georgy” is likely Georgy Oganov, the former spokesman for Russia’s U.S. embassy, a board member at Deripaska’s “Basic Element” industrial group, and one of Deripaska’s advisers.

In February 2018, Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) published an investigative report about Deripaska’s yachting excursion with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Prikhodko. The report was based largely on photographs and videos shared on Instagram by Vashukevich, who was present on the yacht, apparently as an escort. Shortly after the report was released, Thai police arrested Vashukevich and her associates. She says she believes the two events are linked.

⚖️ The lawsuit

On January 22, FBK asked Russia’s Federal Investigative Committee to press felony charges against the billionaire Oleg Deripaska. In a statement shared online on Tuesday, Navalny’s organization said Deripaska and several of his associates are responsible for “ordering” and “bankrolling” a prostitution case against Vashukevich and Kirillov. According to FBK, Deripaska and his associates committed bribery, while the police officers pursuing the case accepted bribes and unlawfully prosecuted Vashukevich and Kirillov.

Navalny’s team also wants a new prostitution investigation launched against Deripaska, arguing that the billionaire organized the “systematic casting, logistics, accommodations, and prostitution services” for himself and his associates, “including state officials for the purposes of bribery.”

The penthouse family 💰

Moscow Deputy Mayor Pyotr Biryukov’s relatives bought a massive penthouse in the “Legend of Tsvetnoy” complex. These apartments typically sell for about 1.5 billion rubles ($22.7 million). Biryukov and his family own massive real estate near Moscow, including mansions, guest houses, and a stable. Businesses owned by the Biryukovs and their partners have always been linked to Pyotr Biryukov’s work for the city. Two major Moscow developers’ success is also linked to the Biryukov family.

Read Meduza's special report here: “How relatives of Moscow’s deputy mayor earned billions on city contracts, amassing a fortune in real estate”

The peanut gallery

🗳️ Shkel says the death of mayoral democracy is a headache for everyone

In an op-ed for Republic, political scientist Stanislav Shkel argues that the erosion of direct mayoral elections in Russia is having unintended consequences for regional and federal officials. Shkel says the mere absence of widespread protests doesn’t mean the dismantling of direct elections is popular, and he believes that last fall’s gubernatorial upsets were partly the result of voters refocusing their anger on officials at higher levels of the state.

How long have direct mayoral elections been withering in Russia? Though the process started in 2005, open elections really started disappearing after 2014, when regions were granted the right to switch to appointment processes. In 2012, more than half the cities in the country still elected their mayors directly. By 2015, this figure had dropped to 22 percent. By 2017, it fell further to 8.7, before rebounding slightly last year to 11 percent (which Shkel says is evidence that the authorities realized they’d gone too far).

In addition to the fact that appointed city managers are inherently less accountable to the public, Shkel says these officials are typically less able to resolve conflicts among local elites because those groups are able to hijack the appointment process, replacing public politics with “backroom deals and personnel bargaining.” In the city of Solikamsk, for example, an elected mayor served nine years in office, successfully mediating between the two local manufacturing giants (Uralkali and Solikamskbumprom). When direct elections were canceled, however, the latter company captured control over the appointment process and the city’s future leaders failed to mediate in good faith.

Supporters of indirect mayoral appointments say the process empowers city council officials, but Shkel says his research data show that appointed mayors are merely incentivized further to establish control over city councils by meddling in council members’ own elections.

☄️ Solovei says the end is nigh, again

In an op-ed for Republic, political analyst Valery Solovei has outdone himself with another tale of gloom and doom for the Russian Federation. Solovei says Russia faces a cataclysm in 2020, as the political elite pushes ahead with three main goals: (1) reforming Russia's socio-economic system while preserving its foundations, (2) “preparing for a war” with the West that could come in the early 2030s, and (3) mobilizing the country’s domestic resources to rearm and modernize the national infrastructure.

Solovei says these priorities don’t reflect the popular will, which is increasingly frustrated with the Putin regime and totally unwilling to “mobilize” for further confrontation with the West. Solovei argues that voters put aside their frustrations with Putin ahead of his reelection last March, hoping to “renew” the social contract in place throughout his presidencies. Instead, the Kremlin raised Russia’s retirement ages, “irreversibly” damaging the system’s popularity, Solovei claims.

The coming collapse will be an opportunity for populists more than leftists, Solovei says, arguing that Russia’s “age as a nation,” “low energy,” and small share of young people make a long violent class conflict unsustainable. The conditions are ripe, however, for the overthrow of a weak state, he says.

As Russia’s “dying middle class” and working class “revolutionize” and “radicalize,” the Putin regime’s state apparatus will “deteriorate progressively,” leading to a loss of control at all levels. Solovei says failures like the Salisbury nerve-agent attack and bad polling numbers are just early signs.

But there’s a thin silver lining, Solovei says: (1) the violent phase of the coming conflict will likely be short, (2) the experience of Putinism will have disabused both Russian society and Russian elites of their faith in the usefulness of authoritarianism, and (3) the absence of influential separatist forces in Russia and the unity encouraged by a single currency, language, and culture will help keep the country from breaking apart.

News briefs

Yours, Meduza