From the editor: Leaving Khabarovsk and Putin’s rotten system for Australia
Daria, a 39-year-old user interface designer who prefers not to give her surname, grew up in Khabarovsk and moved to Brisbane, Australia in 2014. Last year her home region in Russia’s Far East erupted in protests after its governor, Sergei Furgal, was arrested on historic murder charges and taken to jail in Moscow to await trial. Daria supports the protests there and Alexei Navalny’s efforts to bring democracy to Russia, but she is also glad that she achieved her childhood dream of getting out of the country for a better life. Recently she became an Australian citizen and started to express her views on Twitter at @brush_tool in the light of rapidly increasing political repressions in Russia.
Daria and her family experienced poverty in the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. “Poverty, mess, chaos, and the feeling of abnormality – ‘it shouldn’t be this way, it’s wrong’,” were her childhood memories, she told me. “That feeling really became persistent after the murder of [TV journalist] Vlad Listyev... I was 13. Everyone around was saying government killed him, it was obvious, and everyone was talking about leaving the country. A lot of people around me left then. Emigration became not only a norm but a life goal basically. Political murders started to happen one after another… Everyone knew that but was paralysed.”
One of Daria’s photographs of Khabarovsk from December 2010
At the age of 18 Daria got a job as a graphic designer in a print shop. She did a degree in computer science while continuing to work. Daria also participated in a group that rescued stray animals. “I saw no point in being active in politics because I thought there was no choice,” she said. “We had a kind of movement coordinated through the web, where all the people who cared for animals tried to help each other, to attract attention to the problem of cruelty and the uncontrolled breeding of dogs and cats in the city.”
Daria’s diploma and her knowledge of English made her eligible for Australia’s immigration programme. “It’s a beautiful but tough land,” she said of Russia’s far east. “Cold, windy winters and muggy sweaty summers with floods. Hellishly remote, although not at all deprived of civilisation thanks to intense mining in the region. For the majority of people there’s no life but survival, a constant battle for making it through another day, month, year. But when you are born into this you think it’s just the way it is and there is no way to change it, only to escape if you are lucky - basically the mindset of a prisoner as I understand now.”
Russia’s democratic prospects ended abruptly after Boris Yeltsin handed over to Vladimir Putin in 1999. “Putin came to power the same way Stalin did, via criminal manipulations,” Daria said. “No elections ever felt fair since. Very quickly he filled all the institutions with his people and intimidated the rest. No one around me would even go to vote, because everyone thought it was a useless exercise. Everyone knew the results up front.” But Putin is only the tip of the iceberg in a mafia system, Daria thinks. “I wonder sometimes what it would be like if Gorbachev stayed in power and there was a gradual transition of the country out of the planned economy? That probably would have been the best option, but he didn’t get to spend 20 years in power to do that,” she said.
In Australia Daria appreciates the level of trust that people have for each other. “The system is works – not without hiccups, but immensely better than in Russia – so if you do something wrong there will be consequences, so people are not as alarmed and distrustful as in Russia,” she said. “In Russia you are basically on your own. You are on alert all the time because of criminals and because of the police – everything and everyone is against you there. Here, when I realised I can have a tote bag and not be scared someone is going to steal my stuff out of it; when I called the police on a noisy neighbour and they weren’t irritated at me – these things made me cry tears of relief.”
Navalny has posed a threat to Putin because of his ability to organise and win support without having to intimidate or bribe people, Daria thinks. “He has the qualities of a true leader and his movement has nothing in common with Yeltsin’s drunk coup,” she said. “That’s the parallel Putin is trying to push now which has no basis whatsoever. Yeltsin took the country when it was the most vulnerable, Gorbachev wasn’t a fighter, he was an enthusiast. Navalny is fighting an aggressive and armed criminal mob, clenching their jaws on the country’s resources like a pack of pitbulls.”
Sergei Furgal was elected governor of Khabarovsk in 2018 as a member of Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s LDPR, and no one expected him to become an opponent of the Kremlin, Daria said. “He unexpectedly started to do good, right things for people. He became hope… Putin’s mob hates when people get hope, when they start to get what they should be getting in a country that’s so rich with resources. That could create a precedent of fair money distribution and prove they’re lying and stealing the money, all of them. There’s a whole criminal system he stood up against just by being a somewhat decent person. He’s not an angel by any means, but even this basic level of care for the region’s problems is unfathomable for people there. He went against the mob’s rule, disclosed that there was money to spend on schools, infrastructure, basic things. There’s nothing more devastating than getting a glimpse of hope and having it taken away from you… People just lost it.”
Putin’s invasion of Crimea and Donbass that he launched in 2014 was “spiteful aggression in response to Ukraine picking its own way,” Daria said. “A sign of utter incompetence and detachment from reality. But there was no surprise though, they are thugs, what else would you expect from thugs... They behave on international political arena like they are a bunch of gangsters in a ghetto. There could have been some geopolitical reasons to be worried about Ukraine’s choice, but that should have been solved via diplomacy, not war. You know, like adult intelligent people do.”
Daria thinks the world should follow Navalny’s advice and take stronger action against Putin. “If they don’t want his corruption net to expand any further, they need to recognise him as an international criminal and a persona non-grata, as well as chase his cronies out of every corner of the world,” she said. “I know there’s a potential for Russia to be a great place, but it will take an immense amount of work to get all the parasites out of the governing systems, the whole structure is rotten… I’ve had a couple of encounters with some local administration personnel through my work in Khabarovsk - this is some cleaning in comparison to which the purge of the Augean Stables looks like a walk in a park. I don’t know how much action and energy it would require getting this poison out of the system, if it’s possible.”
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Victory Day parades go ahead
Victory Day parades took place across Russia on May 9, with few Covid precautions in evidence. Unusually Vladimir Putin mingled with the large crowd of spectators on Red Square, shaking hands with veterans and posing for photographs with them – maskless the entire time. The only foreign leader who attended the parade in Moscow was Tajik President Emomali Rahmon. Putin earlier expressed support for Tajikistan in the wake of the recent conflict on the border with Kyrgyzstan in which dozens of Kyrgyz citizens, including children, were killed and houses were burned down. Small groups of Russians abroad – mainly employees of embassies and their families – also participated in “Immortal Regiment” marches, including in New York and Copenhagen, that ostensibly commemorate people who were killed in World War II but also serve as a propaganda exercise for the Kremlin.
Teenager kills nine at Kazan school
19-year-old Ilnaz Galyaviev, a university dropout, has been jailed ahead of trial for killing seven children and two teachers – both women – at a school in Kazan, Tatarstan. Galyaviev legally purchased the same kind of hunting gun that was used by the 18-year-old attacker at Kerch Polytechnic College in occupied Crimea in 2018 in a rampage that killed 20 people. Galyaviev had started a Telegram channel a few days before his attack, announcing anonymously that he was God and intended to wipe out “human rubbish” before committing suicide. In court he said little other than to plead guilty.
Russian officials responded to the attack by calling for more laws to regulate the internet. Tatarstan’s children’s rights ombudsman Irina Volynets said the problem was a lack of a state ideology, and that a state ideology should be included in the Russian constitution. Pro-Kremlin broadcaster Vladimir Soloviev discussed with a guest on his radio show the absurd possibility that Ukraine’s SBU security service could have been behind Galyaviev’s attack. Putin said there should be a review of gun licensing laws, although he said the same thing after the Kerch massacre.
More activists convicted
The crackdown on Putin critics continued unabated during the 10-day May holidays. On May 2 St. Petersburg art activists Pavel Krisevich and Anastasia Mikhailova set up an exhibition of paintings on the theme of repressions in Arts Square near the Russian Museum, and were detained by police who also confiscated the paintings. Krisevich was subsequently jailed for 10 days and Mikhailova for eight days for “organising an unauthorised event”.
Former Yekaterinburg mayor Yevgeny Royzman, who is an outspoken opposition activist, has been jailed for nine days for a tweet in which he encouraged people to protest in support of Alexei Navalny on January 31 (reduced to one day on appeal). He was also ordered to do 30 hours of compulsory work for participating in another protest in support of Navalny on April 21. Previously he was fined 20,000 roubles ($270) for participating in the January 31 protest. Khabarovsk priest Andrei Vinarsky has been jailed for 25 days for participating in the protest in support of Navalny on April 21. He has previously been detained multiple times for participating in protests in support of former governor Sergei Furgal, who was arrested last year. Khabarovsk resident Alexei Kadin has been jailed for 15 days for participating in the same protest.
Also in Khabarovsk street artist Maxim “Hadad” Smolnikov, whose graffiti expresses anti-government sentiment, has been sent into custody ahead of a trial over a post on VKontakte in 2018 that sympathised with the 17-year-old boy who blew himself up in front of the FSB building in Arkhangelsk in October that year. Smolnikov is one of many Russians facing criminal charges of “justifying terrorism” for their posts about this incident. Meanwhile courts have recently issued fines to VKontakte and Telegram for failing to delete posts encouraging protests in support of Navalny.
In Moscow well-known 19-year-old activist Olga Misik has been convicted of vandalism along with her friends Ivan Vorobievsky and Igor Basharimov for splattering paint on a security booth in front of the Prosecutor-General’s Office in an action in support of political prisoners in August last year. Misik became famous worldwide when she read the Russian constitution to riot police at a protest in 2019. All three were sentenced to restrictions on their freedoms, with Misik receiving the longest term of two years and the two men slightly less. They will be confined to their homes every night and banned from leaving their cities during that period. Misik came to court wearing a judge’s wig to ridicule the Russian justice system.
Russian forces kill Uzbek citizen in Crimea
Uzbek citizen Nabi Rakhimov, 51, was shot dead at his home outside Simferopol, occupied Crimea, by law-enforcement officers during a search they were conducting on May 11. His wife Sokhiba Burkhanova was detained and ordered to be deported with or without their two school-age children. Rakhimov and his family lived in the Crimean Tatar village of Dubki and Crimean Tatars held a funeral for him. In July 2014 Rakhimov was awarded damages against Russia by the European Court of Human Rights for his detention the previous year when authorities tried to return him to Uzbekistan. In 2010 he was charged in absentia with “attempting to overthrow the Uzbek state’s constitutional order.”
Russia releases Ukrainian prisoner
Russia has released Ukrainian Oleksiy Chyrniy after he served seven years in prison for allegedly planning terrorist attacks in Crimea. Chyrniy, a history teacher, was one of three opponents of Russia’s occupation of the peninsula who were arrested together with film director Oleg Sentsov. He said that he was tortured into confessing on Russian TV after his arrest. He served his full sentence, while Sentsov was released in 2019 after serving five years of a 20-year sentence.
US embassy stops issuing visas
The US embassy in Moscow has stopped issuing non-immigrant visas after Putin decreed that embassies and consulates of “unfriendly countries” would not be allowed to hire local staff. The embassy said it was cutting staff by 75 percent. Additionally Russia expelled 10 US diplomats, including embassy spokeswoman Rebecca Ross, in response to sanctions that the US imposed for interference in the 2020 election.
Scientists express doubts about Sputnik vaccine results
An international group of scientists who wrote an open letter last September questioning the results of the Sputnik vaccine’s trials that were published in The Lancet have written a second letter with additional doubts. “Restricted access to data hampers trust in research. Access to data underpinning study findings is imperative to check and confirm the findings claimed,” they wrote. “It is even more serious if there are apparent errors and numerical inconsistencies in the statistics and results presented. Regrettably, this seems to be what is happening in the case of the Sputnik V phase 3 trial.”
The scientists found some “highly coincidental results” in the published data and also questioned the trial screening and diagnostic processes and numbers of trial participants. “In line with our earlier concerns with the phase 1/2 results and the substandard reporting of the phase 3 interim results, we invite the investigators once more to make publicly available the data on which their analyses rely,” the letter’s authors wrote. “We also invite the Editors of The Lancet to clarify the consequences of further denying access to the data needed for assessing the results presented, should the authors still deny it,” they added.
Russians suspected in DarkSide pipeline attack
Russian criminals are suspected to be running the DarkSide gang that caused havoc in the United States with a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline. The gang claims to be “apolitical” and only motivated by money, but it is unlikely that it could operate in Russia without at least tacit approval from authorities. Joe Biden has commented that the Russian government has some responsibility to deal with DarkSide and that he is going to raise the issue in a meeting with Putin that is likely to take place next month.
Ukraine charges Putin ally with treason
A court in Kyiv has placed pro-Russian politician and oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk under house arrest on a treason charge and ordered the removal of his passport. Medvedchuk, 66, has a close relationship with Putin and is an MP and chairman of the Opposition Platform-For Life party. Following the election of Joe Biden as US president Ukraine also sanctioned Medvedchuk and his wife, Oksana Marchenko and froze their assets, and sanctioned three TV stations believed to be owned by the oligarch. Former Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, who is currently chairman of the United Russia party, commented that Medvedchuk was being subjected to a witch hunt over “mythical crimes”, the purpose of which was to improve the ratings of Ukraine’s leaders. "In a country where they have closed down opposition media, where opposition parties do not exist, a totalitarian regime has been formed," Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said of the latest developments in Ukraine on his Telegram channel.