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14 Navy sailors dead in submarine fire, the travails of an FSB general, and massive flooding in Irkutsk

Tuesday, July 2, 2019

This day in history: 166 years ago, on July 2, 1853, the Tsar's army crossed the Pruth River into modern-day Romania. The British empire, fearful of expanding Russian imperial power in Asia, responded by sending a fleet to keep the Ottoman Empire out of Russian control. The result was the Crimean War. By the time peace was declared in 1856, war reporting had been revolutionized, and the British public regarded the Russian state as a serious threat for the first time.

Deep-sea fire kills 14 Russian Navy sailors
A retired FSB general hides $5 million in illegally earned cash and gets more than he bargained for
Amid global extreme weather events, Russia's Irkutsk region faces deadly floods
Golunov updates: New report gets clicks, case remains without suspects, and Putin asks for drug enforcement reports
News briefs: Two major art museums merge and Russia gets a human rights fine

14 dead 🎖️

Ivan Timofeyev / Photobank Lori The navy base in Severomorsk.

14 submarine sailors serving in the Russian Navy have died after a fire broke out on their research vessel, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported today. The sailors died due to toxic fumes emitted by burning materials on the vessel. The victims of the fire have not yet been named. The fire broke out in Russian waters on July 1 while sailors were researching the floor of the Pacific Ocean in the interests of the Russian Navy. The Defense Ministry noted that the fire has now been extinguished and the vessel transported to a navy base in Severomorsk. Sources offered conflicting information on the incident, with some saying the fire took place on a submarine and others pointing to an underwater base. Meanwhile, the local blogger who broke the news of the fire was asked to take down his reporting and post official comments instead.

Read Meduza's report on the fire: “Deep-sea fire kills 14 Russian Navy sailors”

Corruption at its most ironic 🤑

Alexander Pastushkov, formerly the second-in-command at the FSB’s Capital Construction Division, was rumored to have made far more money than his official income would have brought in. Prosecutors were investigating his finances, but two rogue kidnappers beat them to the punch. After they tortured Pastushkov and forced him to show them a hidden location where five million dollars in cash was stored in plastic containers, the kidnappers blew almost half of the money on lavish entertainment. Ultimately, both the kidnappers and the kidnapped got into legal trouble.

Read Meduza's summary of the case: “Kidnappers forced a retired FSB officer to point them to $5 million in hidden cash. While he recovered in a hospital, a court confiscated his house.”

Fatal flooding 🌊

Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, has published satellite images of areas in the Irkutsk region where a state of emergency has been declared due to mass flooding. This photograph was taken on June 29, 2019. Since June 25, more than 6,600 homes have flooded in the region, displacing more than 32,000 people. As of July 2, 18 deaths have been reported in the flooding, and more than 200 people have been hospitalized due primarily to hypothermia.

Experts have connected the root causes of concurrent extreme weather events such as similar flooding in the Midwestern United States and a record-breaking heat wave in Europe to the ongoing climate crisis. Russia’s own Environmental Ministry warned last year that disastrous environmental events are already taking lives in Russia at an escalating rate. Nonetheless, Russia currently occupies fourth place in global rankings of carbon dioxide emissions, and its government has left that position unchanged while repressing climate activism.

New Golunov updates 👱

Meduza correspondent Ivan Golunov’s most recent report on corruption in the Moscow funeral industry has been viewed in Russian more than 1.5 million times in the 24 hours since it was released. The posting of the report on Meduza’s website accounted for about 550,000 of those views.

Meanwhile, the criminal drug distribution case under which Golunov was charged and later released for lack of evidence remains open. After Golunov was cleared, law enforcement officials were left to find the true source of the drugs that the journalist said police had planted in his possessions. However, prosecutors said no suspects in the case have yet been found.

That’s not to say the Golunov case has not affected Russian drug policy overall. Vladimir Putin has ordered a reexamination of law enforcement practices that are currently applied to Russian drug cases and closer attention to possible police violations in those cases.

Read the full updates:

In other news

Yours, Meduza