The Real Russia. Today.

Lukashenko’s secret authorization, plus Tatiana Stanovaya forecasts Navalny’s future and Vladimir Slivyak considers free speech and national context

Friday, January 15, 2021 (Meduza’s newsletter will return on Tuesday, January 19, 2021. Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Americans!)

Leaked recording implicates Lukashenko in authorizing use of lethal force against Belarusian protesters
Opinion and analysis: Stanovaya and Ryklin guess what comes next for Navalny, and Slivyak thinks Russians just don’t grasp the U.S. context
News briefs: Alexey Navalny’s homecoming, Prigozhin’s latest stunt, and YouTube vs. Kadyrov

Feature stories

👮 ‘Use your weapon’ (1,200 words)

President Alexander Lukashenko authorized the Belarusian security forces to use lethal force against opposition protesters, according to an alleged recording of the country’s deputy interior minister obtained and published by the organization “By_Pol.” A self-described “union of the security forces of Belarus,” By_Pol is made up of ex-security officers who have defected to the opposition. In addition to disclosing Lukashenko’s alleged instructions to police officials, the newest recording leaked by the group reveals plans to build “resettlement” camps and apparently confirms that the special forces mortally wounded a protester in Minsk on the day after the 2020 presidential elections.

Opinion and analysis

👮 What comes after Navalny’s arrest

Tatiana Stanovaya, political expert — Telegram

Unless the Putin administration intervenes directly at the last minute, it seems all but certain that the police will arrest Alexey Navalny if he returns to Moscow on Sunday, as planned. The opposition figure’s long-term freedom, however, is still unresolved and rests largely on the degree of public backlash to his arrest. The Kremlin will be in no hurry to reach a final decision here, says Stanovaya, and it would be ideal to release him while maintaining the constant threat of imprisonment (though the Federal Security Service will advocate a hardline response). Navalny’s apparent fearlessness challenges the Putin administration’s political control, but the authorities can still resort to “hostage-taking,” if Navalny is genuinely willing to sacrifice himself.

The public backlash will be important not just in terms of guiding Kremlin policy but also because it could provoke divisions within Russia’s political elite (Stanovaya cites Sergey Chemezov’s delicate criticism of Moscow’s crackdown during city elections in 2019) among officials concerned the FSB’s growing mandate to implement repressions.

👮 There’s a lot riding on Navalny’s homecoming

Alexander Ryklin, columnist — *Republic*

Navalny’s arrest at the airport on Sunday is assured, but the Kremlin doesn’t have to pursue any of the felony allegations against him. Agencies like the Federal Penitentiary Service file lawsuits not necessarily on the Putin administration’s orders but in order to give the Kremlin extra options. While most analysts argue that the Russian authorities no longer care at all about backlash from the global community, Ryklin argues that Moscow still worries about attracting investment and delaying further economic downturn. That said, the public’s response domestically will be most decisive. Mass street protests are the anti-Kremlin opposition’s only remaining mechanism to force the Kremlin’s attention, and the response to Navalny’s looming arrest will demonstrate the current state of Russia’s civil society.

🚫 Russians miss the context of Trump’s Twitter ban

Vladimir Slivyak, co-chair for the Russian Ecodefense environmental group — *VTimes*

Russians are likelier than Americans to view Donald Trump’s suspension on Twitter as a criminal violation of free speech because (1) they don’t realize that the First Amendment prohibits state, not private, censorship, and (2) because they fail to grasp the context surrounding the outgoing president’s history of using social media to spread falsehoods and incite people to violence. The Russian perspective’s context, says Slivyak, is that free speech exists almost exclusively online for Russians (or at least that’s how they experience it). When Russians treat Trump’s exile from social media as a breach of American values, they are demanding that the U.S. conform to Russia’s vision of America.

Slivyak also worries that pro-Kremlin and independent media outlets endanger free speech in Russia by failing to moderate fringe voices (like neo-fascists) and by allegedly catering to financial sponsors (without naming Ekho Moskvy, he says the radio station boosts the Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation). The news media, he says, needs to guarantee compliance with rules limit “destructive” speech while balancing society’s “different forces.”

Other news in brief

🛬 Good luck at Vnukovo on Sunday! (375 words.) The Moscow airport where Alexey Navalny is expected to return home on January 17 is barring journalists from filming his arrival and warning (350 words) supporters against gathering on the premises for an unpermitted rally.
👮 Navalny’s friends and allies. (240 words.) Pavel Zelensky, a member of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, has been remanded in custody on extremism charges until February 28. The charges concern two tweets.
😢 Crocodile tears. (280 words.) Kremlin-linked catering magnate Evgeny Prigozhin has offered to pay to build a memorial at the site where Russian journalists Alexander Rastorguyev, Orkhan Dzhemal, and Kirill Radchenko were murdered in the Central African Republic. According to the Dossier Center, the deadly attack was professionally planned and possibly concealed by individuals controlled by Prigozhin himself.
⚽ Another channel bites the dust. (200 words.) YouTube has blocked the channel of FC Akhmat Grozny, a Russian professional soccer team linked to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

🚀 Tomorrow in history: 52 years ago tomorrow, on January 16, 1969, the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 performed the first-ever docking of manned spacecraft in orbit, the first-ever transfer of crew from one space vehicle to another, and the only time such a transfer was accomplished with a space walk.

Yours, Meduza