From the editor: Ukrainian free spirit will prevail, a Russian woman in London believes
Even in the UK some Russians who oppose the war in Ukraine are reluctant to speak freely because their employer might not like it. This is the case for “Anna”, who works for a financial institution in London with business in Russia. Nevertheless she agreed to comment anonymously about her experiences since the invasion started on February 24, to do what she can to let people know that not all Russians endorse the killing.
Russians in London protesting against the war on June 12
“I have not been to Russia since the war started, but I have relatives there who are both pro- and anti-Kremlin,” Anna wrote via Twitter DM. “A lot of acquaintances in Ukraine and I appreciate that they find it harder and harder to respond to calls and messages from us. I helped organising some crowdfunding for Ukraine from my laptop and it was hacked shortly after with a Russian flag and St. George ribbon flashing across the screen. An IT friend said the FSB must be monitoring.”
Russians in Russia refuse to talk about the war at all, Anna said. “They pretend nothing is happening. When I tried to have a meaningful discussion with my pro-Kremlin relatives they asked if I am being paid to spread Western propaganda. My situation is quite common because Russian propaganda painted us all as traitors. People there lack a basic understanding of political fundamentals. The Russian regime now ticks ALL 14 points of [the definition of] a fascist state, but they still believe they are saving the world from Ukrainian and Western fascists. There was a case when a woman in Russia killed pigeons after propaganda said that the birds spread diseases created in Ukrainian labs.”
For a while Anna had Ukrainian refugees staying with her and her family: a mother with an 18-year-old daughter and a 17-year-old son. The boys played football together. “Watching them we started crying silently,” she said. “Without exchanging comments we knew the reason why we got so emotional. Next year our boys would have been required to go and fight each other on the real battlefield if we were in Russia and Ukraine. It is inhuman what the Kremlin is doing to Ukrainians and it is inhuman what it has done to Russians.”
Russia has not been repatriating all the bodies of its soldiers killed in Ukraine, and unlike during the wars in Chechnya their mothers are more reluctant to look for them, Anna believes. “I am the mother of a potential soldier (hope it would never happen), and I would go through minefields to look for him and that Ukrainian boy who stayed with us,” she said. “To me there is no difference between these two boys. What makes me feel and think differently to those mothers in Russia is that I am not subjected to horrendous Russian propaganda.
“My pro-Kremlin relatives say that I just switched from Russian propaganda to the Western one. They may be right, however if Western propaganda allowed me to remain human and preserve the main human values I do not mind being programmed by it. It was a well calculated approach by the Kremlin to keep people in poverty and under fear of losing everything, restricting access to better education in order to turn them into a sort of obedient ‘commodity’. A hidden genocide of Russians has been going on for years and it created the population of those whom we saw invading Bucha and creating other atrocities. I think the West should fight for the minds of young Russians.”
Anna’s colleagues at work avoid discussing the war, she said. Elsewhere in London there are mixed reactions. “For the avoidance of doubt, I agree with Ukraine when it questioned whether it is acceptable for financial institutions to continue trading with Russia. I often buy groceries in a Polish shop. The other day I spoke Russian to my son in the shop and the Polish lady gave me a stern look. It was the only moment like that. In May I met a Ukrainian man in London who was fully pro-Kremlin. It was a shock. He worked in Curry’s as an IT consultant, helped me with setting up a new laptop. We had a few awkward moments when we realised that I was a Russian supporting Ukraine, while he was the complete opposite.”
Anna believes that the large-scale protests in Khabarovsk Krai that continued for months after the arrest of former governor Sergei Furgal in July 2020 were partly due to the fact that thousands of Ukrainians had been deported to the far east by Stalin. Her grandmother was one of those sent to the region as a child. “We do not have any other explanation for such a phenomenon of strong and long-lasting protests in Khabarovsk apart from the fact that the free spirit of Ukrainian/Cossacks genetics revealed itself 100 years after the Stalin repatriation and it was miraculously timed ahead of the invasion and the latest wave of forced deportation of Ukrainians to Russia’s far east,” she wrote. “If Ukraine does not manage to recover its children and take them back home, these children will bring the spirit of freedom with them to Russia and, no doubt, it will manifest itself later on as happened in Khabarovsk. Blood is thicker than water.”
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Brittney Griner sentenced to nine years in prison
A court in Khimki, Moscow Oblast sentenced US basketball star Brittney Griner to nine years in prison and fined her a million roubles ($17,000) yesterday after finding her guilty of drug smuggling. As she was being led out of court she responded to a journalist asking how she felt, “I love my family.” Griner, 31, had less than a gram of cannabis oil in her luggage when she was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Feb. 17. Griner plays for Phoenix Mercury in the WNBA and had been playing for UMMC Yekaterinburg in the off season since 2014.
Appeals court in Kyiv reduces Russian soldier’s sentence
An appeals court in Kyiv has reduced the life sentence of 21-year-old Russian soldier Vadim Shishimarin to 15 years in prison for the murder of a 62-year-old civilian at the start of the invasion. Shishimarin’s lawyer had argued that there were mitigating circumstances as he was allegedly following orders and confessed to the crime. The leniency could also demonstrate that Ukraine is fairer than Russia’s puppet “Donetsk People’s Republic,” which has already sentenced three foreigners to death for fighting for Ukraine. A British aid worker, Paul Urey, also died in captivity there.
Russia bombs Mykolaiv bus stop, kills grain tycoon and wife; 53 Azovstal POWs killed
Last Friday Russia shelled a bus stop in Mykolaiv, killing seven people and injuring numerous others. On Sunday Russia killed grain tycoon Oleksiy Vadaturskyy and his wife Raisa in more shelling of Mykolaiv. Vadaturskyy was the founder of Nibulon, one of Ukraine’s largest grain producing and exporting companies. This occurred while the first ship was transporting Ukrainian grain out of the country since the invasion, under an agreement with Russia brokered by Turkey. Russia has been blocking exports of Ukrainian grain and stealing harvested crops, transporting them by road for its own use and resale.
Also last Friday Russia claimed Ukraine had shelled a POW camp in Olenivka, Donetsk Oblast with the US-supplied HIMARS missile system, killing 53 Ukrainians who had been captured at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol. No Russians were killed. It is far more likely that Russia’s Wagner contractors mined the premises to kill the POWs to destroy evidence that they had been tortured. At the same time reports have emerged from Russian soldiers who say they refused to continue fighting in Ukraine and were held in a basement in occupied Luhansk Oblast, where Wagner contractors beat them with batons to try to force them to return to the front.
Police Ombudsman group founder jailed for five years
A court in Moscow has sentenced Vladimir Vorontsov, the founder of a group called Police Ombudsman that monitored abuses within Russia’s police forces, to five years in prison for allegedly distributing pornography and insulting authorities. Vorontsov was also stripped of his rank of police major and banned from hosting websites for 10 years. He had served in the police for 13 years, resigning in 2017 when he launched Police Ombudsman on VKontakte. Police employees wrote to him with requests for help and stories about incidents they had experienced. Vorontsov was arrested in a dramatic raid on his home in May 2020, and due to time served in pre-trial detention counting for more than time in prison, he may only have about 18 months left on his sentence.
Teacher given suspended sentence for speaking about war
A court in Penza has given 45-year-old Irina Gen a five-year suspended sentence and banned her from teaching for three years after convicting her of “spreading fakes about the army”. One of Gen’s eighth-grade pupils reported her to police, recording her saying that Russia bombed a maternity hospital in Mariupol, wanted to overthrow the Ukrainian government and shot down MH17 in 2014. She was explaining why her pupils couldn’t go to the Czech Republic for a sports competition.
“Bombing a maternity hospital in Mariupol, why don’t we introduce a Victory Day over the maternity hospital, I think we should,” Gen said in the classroom. “We started bombing western Ukraine. Western Ukraine. I don’t understand, what has western Ukraine got to do with anything? They wanted to reach Kyiv, overthrow Zelensky and the government. This is a sovereign state, they have a sovereign government. The blitzkrieg didn’t work.”
US charges Russian with recruiting Americans in three states
The US Department of Justice has charged Russian citizen Alexander Ionov, based in Moscow, with conspiring to have US citizens act as illegal agents of the Russian government, “orchestrating a years-long foreign malign influence campaign that used various US political groups to sow discord, spread pro-Russian propaganda, and interfere in elections within the United States,” according to a statement. The charge carries a penalty of up to five years in prison.
Ionov is the founder and president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR), an organisation headquartered in Moscow and funded by the Russian government, the statement says. Working under the supervision of the FSB Ionov allegedly recruited political groups in the US states of Florida, Georgia and California. “For example, in January 2016, Ionov guaranteed financing for – and ultimately funded – a four-city protest tour undertaken by US Political Group 1 [based in St. Petersburg, Florida] in support of a ‘Petition on Crime of Genocide against African People in the United States,’ which it had previously submitted to the United Nations at Ionov’s direction,” the statement says. Ionov’s group also supported unnamed candidates in Florida elections.
“In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, US Political Group 1 repeatedly hosted Ionov via video conference to discuss the war, during which Ionov falsely stated that anyone who supported Ukraine also supported Nazism and white supremacy,” the statement says. “In a report to the FSB, Ionov explained that he had enlisted US Political Group 1 to support Russia in the ‘information war’ unleashed by the West.”
Ionov was also involved with a US Political Group 2 based in Atlanta, Georgia, and a Group 3 based in California “whose primary goal was to promote California’s secession from the United States,” the statement says. “In January and February of 2018, Ionov supported US Political Group 3’s efforts – led by the organization’s founder (UIC-6) – to orchestrate a protest demonstration at the California Capitol building in Sacramento,” the statement continues. “Ionov partially funded the efforts and attempted to direct UIC-6 to physically enter the governor’s office. Later, Ionov sent various media reports covering the demonstration and US Political Group 3’s broader efforts to FSB Officer 1, writing that FSB Officer 1 had asked for ‘turmoil’ and stating ‘there you go.’”
The leader of the California secession movement, Louis Marinelli, lived in Russia for several years before leaving earlier this year. In his own statement published in response to the indictment he admits to working with Alexander Ionov but denies that the Russian had control over his group’s activities. “I have been able to speak more candidly about the Russian government ever since my family and I abruptly left that country prior to its unjustified invasion of Ukraine. Slava Ukraini,” Marinelli concludes. An interview with Marinelli about why he left Russia was published in the Jan. 21 issue of The Russia Report.