From the editor
Russia’s bombing of Kryvyi Rih and Odesa and shelling of a rescue boat in flooded Kherson Oblast this week are just the latest examples of the atrocities that the country continues to commit in Ukraine on a daily basis. The missile strike on Tuesday on residential buildings in Kryvyi Rih, Volodymyr Zelensky’s home town, killed 11 people and injured 39 more. The city was hit again on Thursday, while on Wednesday Russia launched four cruise missiles at Odesa from a ship in the Black Sea, killing at least three people and damaging a McDonald’s restaurant and a church. Another three people were killed and 10 injured in the shelling of the boat.
Ukrainian troops liberate the village of Blahodatne in Donetsk Oblast
Just a day before the attack on Kryvyi Rih Vladimir Putin had expressed bewilderment that Russian residential buildings have been targeted by drones and shelling in recent weeks. Drinking champagne at a Russia Day reception on June 12 he said, “But why, to put it bluntly, is the enemy hitting residential areas? For what? Why? What’s the point? Humanitarian targets. Incredible. There is no military sense.”
Russia’s random and senseless attacks came as Ukrainian forces announced they had liberated some villages from Russian control at the start of their counteroffensive. Ukraine claimed to have liberated the villages of Storozheve, Blahodatne, Neskuchne and Makarivka in Donetsk Oblast, although fighting was still raging in the vicinity. Troops raised Ukrainian flags amid destroyed buildings. There can hardly be any question of life returning to normal there in the near future.
Meanwhile Putin is trying to shore up relations with his remaining allies, meeting Alexander Lukashenko and reportedly deploying the first nuclear weapons in Belarus and hosting the St. Petersburg Economic Forum with guests Alexander Dugin, Karin Kneissl (the former Austrian foreign minister who danced with the Russian president at her wedding), Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune. He will also be watching the fate of Donald Trump closely, especially now that his good friend Silvio Berlusconi is no longer with us. Will Trump become a convicted criminal, return as president, or both? As someone wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, seeing an ex-president arrested and arraigned should make Putin feel more than a little uncomfortable.
You can receive this newsletter once a month for free, or sign up here for a weekly subscription for just £3.99 ($5) a month or £45 a year. I’m keen to hear what you’re interested in, so if you have tips or questions please contact me at sarahnhurst@gmail.com. You can follow me on Twitter at @XSovietNews.
Duma passing law banning gender and sex changes
The Duma is in the process of passing a law that would ban Russians from having sex-change surgery, taking hormones or other medication to transition to another gender and also from officially changing their gender on identification papers. All 365 MPs voted for the bill in its first reading. “We hope that the Health Ministry will not come up with any amendments, arguing about concern for people,” Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin commented, adding that “all this fornication” should be banned. The Kremlin has increasingly focused its propaganda on the supposed depravity of the West as evidenced by campaigns for transgender rights, echoing Republican talking points in the United States.
Anti-war activist dies in jail after torture
Activist Anatoly Berezikov, 40, has died in jail in Rostov-on-Don after his lawyer Irina Gak alleged police broke his ribs, tortured him with tasers and threatened to kill him. When she came to the jail to visit him on June 14 she saw his body being loaded into an ambulance. Berezikov had been jailed multiple times since May 11 for putting up stickers calling on Russian soldiers in Ukraine to surrender. All of Gak’s complaints about Berezikov’s treatment were rejected by a federal judge and a treason case was being prepared against him. In response to a call from the human rights organisation OVD-Info, a jail employee said the activist had committed suicide.
Former Navalny organiser and Molotov cocktail thrower get long sentences
A court in Ufa has sentenced the former head of Alexei Navalny’s HQ in the city, Lilia Chanysheva, to 7 ½ years in prison for “organising an extremist group”, although Navalny’s organisations closed down as soon as they were declared extremist. Chanysheva had asked the judge not to give her a long sentence because she wanted a chance to have a child. She has been held in jail since her arrest in November 2021.
Meanwhile a court in Moscow sentenced Vitaly Koltsov to six years in prison for throwing a Molotov cocktail at a police van in May last year. A jury had found Koltsov not guilty of the attempted murder of the 12 officers in the van, but guilty of property damage and using force against representatives of the authorities. Koltsov had argued in court that he had no motive to kill because it would have discredited his political ideas and discouraged neutral people by being too radical, while the officers could simply have been replaced by others in any case.
Russian activist arrested in Kyrgyzstan
Left Resistance activist Alena Krylova has been arrested and jailed in Kyrgyzstan after Russia opened a criminal case against her for creating and participating in an extremist group. A court in Moscow ordered Krylova’s arrest in absentia last November. Her colleague in the group, Darya Polyudova, who protested in support of Ukraine for many years, was jailed for six years in May 2021 for “justifying terrorism”. Earlier this month Kyrgyzstan extradited Alexei Rozhkov to Russia. Rozhkov was one of the first Russians to commit an arson attack against a military recruiting office, in Yekaterinburg in March last year. He was arrested at the time on a charge of property damage, before the attacks were recategorised as terrorism, and allowed out on bail.
American arrested in Moscow on drugs charge
US citizen Michael Travis Leake, known as Travis, 51, who has been living in Moscow for several years, has been arrested on a charge of distributing drugs to minors. Leake, a former paratrooper and musician, said he had no idea what the charges were about. He is the latest American to be arrested in Russia for potential gain by the Kremlin, with WSJ Moscow correspondent Evan Gershkovich being held in jail on an espionage charge.
Boris Nemtsov Prize awarded to political prisoners
This year’s Boris Nemtsov Prize for Courage has been awarded to five Russian political prisoners who oppose the war in Ukraine. Last year the prize went to Volodymyr Zelensky. This year’s winners are Barnaul journalist Maria Ponomarenko, serving a six-year prison sentence for posting about the Russian attack on the drama theatre in Mariupol where children were sheltering; 18-year-old Moscow activist Maxim Lypkan, in jail awaiting trial for his anti-war posts; Komi history teacher Nikita Tushkanov, serving a sentence of five years and five months for “justifying terrorism” for his posts about the explosion on the Crimea bridge; 63-year-old Mikhail Simonov from Moscow, serving a seven-year sentence for posting about Russia killing civilians in Ukraine; and 62-year-old Vologda factory worker Vladimir Rumyantsev, serving a three-year sentence for operating a radio station that told the truth about the war.
Elizabeth Gilbert withdraws novel after Ukrainian outrage
US author Elizabeth Gilbert, famous for her memoir Eat, Pray, Love, has announced that she is withdrawing her forthcoming novel The Snow Forest after its condemnation by Ukrainians. The novel is about a religious fundamentalist family surviving for decades in the Siberian wilderness in the Soviet era. Gilbert said she “received an enormous, massive outpouring of reactions and responses from my Ukrainian readers expressing anger, sorrow, disappointment and pain about the fact that I would choose to release a book into the world right now, any book, no matter what the subject of it is, that is set in Russia”. Gilbert’s decision was not universally welcomed, with many non-Ukrainian commentators saying that creativity should not be affected by current events.