From the editor: Russian opposition journalist welcomes Dozhd crackdown
Latvia has cancelled exiled Russian TV station Dozhd’s licence to broadcast after one of its presenters, Alexei Korostelev, said the channel had been helping Russian troops with equipment and basic necessities at the front. Dozhd had previously shown a map labelling Crimea as Russian territory and had described Russian forces as “our army”. Korostelev was fired and the channel claimed his statement wasn’t true, but this wasn’t enough for its hosts. Dozhd, which left Russia after the invasion of Ukraine in February, is now also unable to broadcast in Lithuania and Estonia but is continuing to produce content on YouTube.
Sasha Sotnik being detained in Moscow for his journalistic work in September 2014
Independent Russian journalist Sasha Sotnik, who himself fled Russia with his wife and two children in March 2018, has no sympathy for Dozhd, unlike many Russian opposition activists who have expressed anger at Latvia’s decision. They include Alexei Navalny, who commented from prison that Latvia had made a “mistake” based on a “lack of information”. Sotnik, however, has written to the Dutch Foreign Ministry to warn that Dozhd is a “Kremlin influencer”. The channel’s headquarters are in the Netherlands.
On his popular YouTube channel Sotnik-TV, Sotnik, 54, conducted vox pops on the streets of Moscow and regularly called Vladimir Putin’s regime “fascist” following the 2014 annexation of Crimea and invasion of Donbas before leaving the country. He first went to Lithuania and now lives in Slovakia, where he continues to make YouTube videos about Russian politics and the war despite still receiving threats such as one suggesting he would be killed with a sledgehammer by Wagner members. He told me via email why he thinks Dozhd helps the Kremlin more than the opposition, and what he predicts will eventually happen to Russia.
“It isn’t just about Dozhd, but a special plan to imitate opposition media that was working for a long time in Russia and a while ago moved to the West,” Sotnik wrote. “There was one newspaper (Novaya Gazeta), one TV channel (Dozhd), one radio station (Ekho Moskvy) and a few tame bloggers.” He named Maxim Kats, Ksenia Sobchak and Ilya Varlamov as examples. “They did their work in Russia and then turned out to be unnecessary due to the absolutely successful fascist-isation of society and change in the internal political agenda. The system had got what it needed inside Russia.”
These journalists left Russia after the invasion and, according to Sotnik, now try to convince the West that they should be supported as opposition, while in fact enabling the Kremlin. Sotnik also believes that former Russian state TV employee Marina Ovsyannikova, who held up an anti-war sign during a live broadcast, was doing this to manipulate public opinion outside Russia. His views are controversial but are shared by most Ukrainians. Whether or not directly sponsored by the Kremlin, a “soft” Russian opposition in the West poses no real threat to the Kremlin and sometimes leans towards views that resemble Putin’s. The sense of outrage that Latvia could make its own decisions about Dozhd suggest that the Russia opposition are almost as imperialist as Putin himself.
The invasion of Ukraine has shown that Putin’s regime is a reflection of the essence of Russians as post-Soviet people, Sotnik told me. “The worst part is that in Putin’s 23 years in power two generations of poorly educated people twisted by and fed on ‘Ruscist’ ideas have already grown. When Putin dies they will choose another Putin for themselves, who is even worse. If the collective West doesn’t recognise its responsibility for the Putinism it nurtured (as there were times of active friendship and resets!), if it doesn’t force this population to become ‘civilised’, it will be very bad. These savage people with nuclear weapons – and not only nuclear ones – will certainly one day use them… It’s better to defeat the empire now, while it’s weak, and take on the responsibility for returning it to the civilised path through external governance. That’s expensive and difficult. But it will be more expensive and difficult to deal with the consequences of a real nuclear conflict if we don’t destroy this persistent Bolshevik-criminal system now.”
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Russians waste lives fighting for Bakhmut
Intense fighting has been taking place around the small city of Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast, which Russia appears determined to take despite massive losses. Bakhmut has been almost razed to the ground by Russian missiles as the Kremlin’s troops have attempted to charge forward in WWI-style trench warfare, being mowed down in the process by Ukrainian machine guns. “Russia has prioritised Bakhmut as its main offensive effort since early August 2022,” the UK’s Defence Ministry said in an intelligence update. “The capture of the town would have limited operational value. The campaign has been disproportionately costly… There is a realistic possibility that Bakhmut’s capture has become primarily a symbolic, political objective for Russia.”
Putin commented this week that the aim of the “special military operation” is to protect people, and said that he ordered strikes on Ukraine’s infrastructure because Ukraine “started” the aggression with an attack on the bridge to Crimea in October.
Ilya Yashin sentenced to 8 ½ years in prison
A court in Moscow today sentenced opposition politician Ilya Yashin to 8 ½ years in prison for “spreading fakes about the Russian army” for talking about the Bucha massacre on YouTube. Yashin smiled and gave a V for victory sign to his supporters who packed into the court during the hearing. Judge Oksana Goryunova quoted Yashin as commenting on Bucha, “An absolutely post-apocalyptic picture. Like in a horror film.” She also pointed out that Yashin had posted a picture of the anti-Vietnam war sign “Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity” on Facebook.
Russian troops murdered an estimated 419 civilians in Bucha outside Kyiv, evidence of which emerged after they withdrew from the town in April. Yashin has spoken out against Putin for many years, including leading protests in August 2019 against the refusal to allow independent candidates into local elections in Moscow.
Brittney Griner released in exchange for Viktor Bout
US basketball star Brittney Griner has been released from a Russian prison where she was serving a nine-year prison sentence handed down in August for allegedly carrying hashish oil at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. Griner was exchanged for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who had served 12 years of a 25-year prison sentence in the United States. It is the second high-profile prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration, the first being the release of Trevor Reed for convicted drug smuggler Konstantin Yaroshenko, who has now been appointed to a Russian government advisory post. US citizen Paul Whelan, arrested in Russia in 2018 and sentenced to 16 years in prison for espionage in 2020, told CNN on the phone after Griner’s exchange that he was disappointed the government had not done more to secure his own release.
Mikhail Fridman reportedly arrested in London
A 58-year-old man named in Russia as billionaire Mikhail Fridman, founder of the Alfa Group conglomerate, was arrested in London on Dec. 1 and later released on bail. According to a statement from the UK’s National Crime Agency, a major operation was conducted “to arrest a wealthy Russian businessman on suspicion of offences including money laundering, conspiracy to defraud the Home Office and conspiracy to commit perjury.” The man was arrested at what the NCA described as his multi-million pound residence by officers from the agency’s Combatting Kleptocracy Cell.
“A 35-year-old man, employed at the premises, was arrested nearby on suspicion of money laundering and obstruction of an NCA Officer after he was seen leaving the address with a bag found to contain thousands of pounds in cash,” the statement said. A 39-year-old man was also arrested in relation to the case for offences including money laundering and conspiracy to defraud.
Fridman stepped down from the boards of Alfa Group and international investment company LetterOne after he was sanctioned by the EU over the invasion of Ukraine. He has lived in London since 2015.
Mr. Sasha Sotnik, unfortunately, speaks too softly about the russians. It would be very accurate to say that all well-known russian media are agents of the kremlin, they are doing the work of introducing the "russian world" into our democracies, and in the worst case, they want to divide the territories of russia for themselves, these people are representatives of the russian savages.