From the editor
When Russia is having domestic problems, we have to worry about what the Kremlin might do to fill the airwaves on state TV and radio. Complaining about Ukraine is becoming tedious after more than seven years of war. It’s background noise that won’t rouse passions any more. Russia is reporting new record high levels of daily Covid deaths – 887 today. Keeping official numbers just below 800 is apparently no longer realistic. That’s the second-highest number in the world after the United States. The mock election, which at least served as a distraction for a few months, is over. So what might be a change of subject? One possibility is tensions in the Balkans.
Serbia transported armour vehicles to the border with Kosovo and flew fighter jets over
The EU is desperately hoping that a new crisis in relations between Serbia and Kosovo will soon be resolved. Serbia sent troops to the border with the country that it does not recognise in a dispute over the expiry of the validity of UN licence plates. Russian ambassador to Serbia Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko visited an army barracks close to the border together with Serbian Defence Minister Nebojša Stefanović. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has also been touring the Balkans and said she was very concerned during a press conference with Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti in Pristina.
Earlier this week Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said on a talk show that he had told NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in a phone call, “We will wait 24 hours for you to react as NATO and if the pogrom against our population continues, Serbia will react.” Vučić reminded NATO officials that Serbia has 14 Russian MiG-29 fighter jets. “They thought I was joking,” he added.
The alleged injustice of the outcome of the civil war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s is one of Vladimir Putin’s favourite topics. The Kremlin regularly rages that NATO bombed Serbia, with no mention of the horrific ethnic cleansing by the Serbs that preceded this or ended as a result. Russia does not recognise Kosovo’s independence and uses the issue in various contexts to either condemn separatism or illustrate the West’s alleged double standards in allowing Kosovo to break away from Serbia but not regions of eastern Ukraine that were occupied by Russian militants.
The licence plate issue is being used as a pretext by Serbia, backed by Russia, to claim that Kosovo is “provoking” its larger neighbour. This is identical to language used by the Kremlin when it talks about the conflicts in Georgia or Ukraine. It’s hardly likely that Vučić would be escalating without Russia’s endorsement and encouragement. Whether solving the licence plate dispute will make any difference is unknown. If the Kremlin wants to spark a war in the Balkans, it will do everything possible to make that happen. Then propagandists Dmitri Kiselev and Vladimir Soloviev will have something to talk about, and it’s not going to be Russians themselves who pay the price if there’s another bloodbath.
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Communists protest against election results
Last Saturday Communists in Moscow and other cities held protests against the “stolen” election, and in particular the results of electronic voting in the capital that overturned many of their wins in paper voting. About a thousand people gathered in Moscow’s Pushkin Square to listen to speeches and shout that they wouldn’t recognise the results. The gathering was supposed to be a legitimate meeting with MP Valery Rashkin, but police treated it as an unauthorised protest and have detained numerous people who called for people to participate. Later in the week police surrounded the Communist Party’s offices in Moscow to prevent their lawyers from filing a lawsuit challenging the election results, and the party’s lawyer Muhamed Bidzhev was subsequently given a 10-day jail sentence. Former political prisoner and coordinator of the Left Front Sergei Udaltsov, Moscow city councillor Sergei Tsukasov and sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky were also jailed for 10 days on charges of calling for unauthorised protests. In Yekaterinburg four members of the Other Russia/National Bolshevik party were jailed for 15 days for protesting against the election results.
Navalny and aides face new criminal charges
The Kremlin has brought new criminal charges against Alexei Navalny and several of his top aides for “running an extremist group” and has added exiled aide Leonid Volkov to the country’s wanted list. In a statement Russia’s Investigations Committee said that Navalny created his Foundation for Fighting Corruption in 2014 or earlier and subsequently set up regional offices around the country “to carry out extremist activity aimed at changing the bases of the constitutional structure of the Russian Federation, undermining the public security and state sovereignty of the Russian Federation.” However, Navalny’s organisations were only designated as extremist earlier this year.
Exiled Navalny aide Ivan Zhdanov, also charged in the case, posted on Instagram: “Opening a criminal case for all our past activity is total madness. Each time I don’t believe that they can drag something like this into court, but each time they are able to surprise with their complete lawlessness. And it’s clear what’s changed: before they tried to start criminal cases with the impression that there was no politics in the cases against us, like ‘fraud,’ ‘failing to obey court rulings’ and ‘impeding voter rights’. But now they’ve started a simply openly political case.” Zhdanov added that this would make it easier to force Google and Apple to shut down the Navalny team’s information channels, by claiming they were violating the law.
Meanwhile in Vladimir Valery Lavrov has been sentenced to 18 months in prison in yet another case on a charge of “injuring a policeman” at a protest in support of Navalny that took place in the city on January 23. In Khabarovsk Navalny’s former coordinator Alexei Vorsin has been given a three-year suspended sentence for “repeatedly violating the laws on protesting”.
Top independent outlets designated as foreign agents
Russia’s Justice Ministry has added an array of independent outlets and individuals critical of authorities to its list of “foreign agents,” including MediaZona and OVD-Info, which have steadfastly covered years of protests and repressions. MediaZona’s editor-in-chief Sergei Smirnov was also designated as a foreign agent individual. The outlet’s publisher is former Pussy Riot and Voina group activist Petr Verzilov. OVD-Info has tried to document every politically-motivated arrest or violent assault in Russia and has provided advice to protesters on what to do if they are detained.
MediaZona and OVD-Info said they would challenge their foreign agent status in court, although they had little hope of success. In a statement translated into English OVD-Info said, “We are sure that the campaign launched by the authorities against civil initiatives and the media is disastrous not only for the Russian civil society but also for the state itself. But above all, this campaign will hurt people: in the case of the media, their readers who risk being left without alternative sources of information, and in the case of human rights projects, those whose rights are violated may find themselves facing the system alone.”
Yesterday the parents and wife of investigative journalist Roman Dobrokhotov were subjected to searches and questioning in a case against him for “illegally crossing the border” out of Russia after his passport was confiscated in a libel case this summer and he fled the country. Dobrokhotov’s wife and children stayed in Moscow. The editor-in-chief of The Insider has worked closely with Bellingcat to expose Russia’s involvement in the shooting down of MH17 in July 2014 and the poisoning of the Skripals and Navalny.
Cyber security expert jailed on treason charge
Ilya Sachkov, the 35-year-old founder of cyber security firm Group-IB, has been sent to jail in Moscow to await trial on a treason charge. Sachkov had won state prizes and met Putin in 2019, telling the Russian president that his company was “four times better than” Kaspersky. Putin’s spokesman Dmitri Peskov claimed that Sachkov’s arrest wouldn’t have any effect on the business climate in Russia.
An online profile of Sachkov says: “Ilya Sachkov is a member of various international associations, such as the International Information Systems Forensics Association (IISFA), the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), and the Honeynet Project. He is also a member of cybercrime expert committees in the State Duma of the Russian Federation, the Council of Europe, and the OSCE… In 2010, he became the first Russian to win the Digital Crimes Consortium award for his contribution to international exchange of experience in the field of computer forensics. In 2015 and 2016 he received EY Entrepreneur of the Year National Award in IT-related categories… In 2016, [the] Group-IB CEO ranked among the brightest young entrepreneurs under 30 according to Forbes magazine.”
Migrant activist threatened with deportation
Valentina Chupik, a refugee from Uzbekistan who runs an organisation in Russia that assists migrants, has been held at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport for several days while authorities decide on whether to deport her. She has been told that she has been banned from entry to Russia until 2051. Chupik has said that she is afraid security services in Uzbekistan will arrest and possibly kill her. Russian police raided her home in Moscow Oblast, where her 84-year-old mother is bedridden, while Chupik was in custody.