From the editor
Russia has been rounding up the few remaining independent journalists and human rights activists in the country this week, its actions taking place under the radar as atrocities in Ukraine and the violent death of Transport Minister Roman Starovoit make the headlines. The FSB conducted searches and made arrests in at least 12 regions, investigating alleged treason and other offences.
One of the photographs published by the FSB from their search of the offices of 7x7
Starovoit, 53, apparently shot himself dead last weekend after driving his Tesla to a car park in Odintsovo, Moscow Oblast. Before the news was announced Vladimir Putin relieved him of his duties on Monday morning and appointed Starovoit’s deputy, Andrei Nikitin, as his replacement. Starovoit was a former governor of Kursk Oblast and it was thought that he was likely to have been arrested after his successor as governor of the region, Alexei Smirnov, was arrested for embezzlement and testified against him. A source who saw Starovoit’s body in the morgue said there were fresh bruises on his body and that he may have died a day or more earlier than officially stated. No cameras obtained footage of Starovoit leaving his home on his last journey, and Putin did not send a wreath to his funeral.
In the Republic of Komi the FSB raided the offices of the outlet 7x7, which Russia’s Justice Ministry has designated as a foreign agent. They published photographs of Russian banknotes and journalists’ notebooks that hardly indicated anything out of the ordinary, as well as a wall with a US and Canadian flag hanging on it. The outlet’s former director, who is also one of the founders of the Revolt Centre cultural institution in Syktyvkar, 36-year-old Pavel Andreyev, has been charged with treason, accused of receiving money from foreign security services to harm Russia. He is alleged to have had “secret contacts with NATO agents”. Andreyev left Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The executive director of the Revolt Centre, Darya Chernyshova, who also worked as a manager for 7x7 until 18 months ago, was arrested in Syktyvkar and charged with violating the rules for a foreign agent. A court released her ahead of trial with a ban on entering the Revolt Centre and communicating with its employees, as well as using the internet and phone and receiving correspondence by post.
The FSB also questioned and confiscated devices from journalists Alexei Sabelsky in Veliky Novgorod, Yekaterina Tkacheva, a Sotavision correspondent in Kaliningrad and Valery Potashov in Karelia, and human rights activists Svyatoslav Khromenkov in Irkutsk, Irina Protasova and Olga Vasilieva in Yoshkar-Ola. Khromenkov helps people who have been tortured in prison. FSB officers with automatic weapons burst into his home at 6.30 am on Tuesday morning, he said on Telegram.
Meanwhile in Moscow the managing director of the Moscow Art Theatre and Mikhailovsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, businessman Vladimir Kekhman, has been charged with large-scale embezzlement and allowed to await trial with an agreement not to leave the country. When he took on the leadership of the Moscow Art Theatre in 2021 he removed pro-Kremlin producer Eduard Boyakov and writer Zakhar Prilepin, who has boasted about fighting in Ukraine. The Kremlin used an embezzlement charge in 2017 to remove film and theatre director Kirill Serebrennikov from the Gogol Centre in Moscow.
No one should be surprised any more that Russia’s regime is fully Stalinist, and the only question that remains is whether it is riskier to be a critic of the Kremlin or a loyal ally, because many of the latter also come to brutal ends when they fall out of favour. The answer is that it’s risky either way, because the system is designed to keep just one person truly comfortable in his seat, and that person is of course Vladimir Putin.
You can receive this newsletter twice 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 X at @XSovietNews.
Trump loses patience as Russia kills more civilians in Ukraine
Donald Trump has said he will make a “major statement” about Russia on Monday amid signs that he now backs Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sanctions bill and the sending of weapons to Ukraine. “We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said in a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.” The US president also claimed that he didn’t know who had made the recent decision to halt shipments of weapons to Ukraine, and threatened a 10 percent tariff on all BRICS countries. Trump still has not announced any tariffs on Russia, although he has threatened a 50 percent tariff on Brazil, which he links to the prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro.
Russia continues to kill Ukrainians indiscriminately in attacks all over the country. On Saturday a Russian drone struck a car in the village of Odnorobivka in Kharkiv Oblast, killing eight-year-old Oleh Antonov instantly and seriously injuring his four-year-old brother. The boys’ father was also injured and their mother went into shock. A family photo showed Oleh holding a picture he had painted of blue and yellow hands, a sunflower and an ear of wheat with the words “For peace”. Also on Saturday a woman in Kupiansk, Kharkiv Oblast, was killed in a Russian attack, and another 15 people were injured.
On Sunday night Russian drones struck Odesa, killing at least one person. The city was subjected to another drone strike this morning that killed a horse. Standing in front of a burning stable the horse’s owner, crying, said today was the worst day of her life. On Wednesday a Russian drone struck a home in the village of Pravdyne in Kherson Oblast, killing a one-year-old boy. Later that night a Russian missile strike on Kyiv killed 22-year-old police officer Mariia Dziumaha, who served in the city’s metro system. This morning a Russian attack on Kharkiv killed one person and injured 14 others, damaging a maternity hospital that had to be evacuated.
Military commander gets prison sentence for embezzlement
A military court has sentenced former deputy chief of Russia’s Armed Forces General Staff Khalil Arslanov to 17 years in prison for allegedly embezzling 6.7 billion roubles while overseeing contracts for portable radio stations. Arslanov, 61, insisted during his trial that the radio stations had no market value as they were intended for use by the army. He was arrested in February 2020 and held in jail until his trial.
Man killed and another sentenced for pro-Ukraine actions
A military court has sentenced an unnamed 35-year-old man from Naberezhnye Chelny, Tatarstan, to 22 years in a maximum-security prison for treason and participating in a terrorist organisation. The FSB described the man as an “opponent” of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and claimed that he belonged to a militarised group coordinated by Ukraine’s security services. He allegedly entered a defence plant, likely the Remdizel plant in Naberezhnye Chelny, and gathered intelligence about the armoured vehicles it makes. Meanwhile authorities in Saratov Oblast have killed a man they say was planning to blow up a railway bridge on behalf of Ukraine. They claimed he was armed and resisted arrest.
Cadet kills commander, Wagner contractor arrested for sexually assaulting a minor
Ilya Kazantsev, a 20-year-old cadet at Ryazan’s paratroopers’ academy, has been arrested on suspicion of murdering his commanding officer, 24-year-old Ivan Selin, who fought in Ukraine. Kazantsev allegedly damaged Selin’s parachute in the storage room and the officer died in a jump. Selin had reportedly beaten and humiliated his subordinates.
In Perm Krai 49-year-old Anatoly Tyulenev, who fought for Wagner in Ukraine, has been arrested for inciting a 14-year-old girl to drink alcohol and sexually assaulting her. Tyulenev invited the girl, the granddaughter of a neighbour, to his home to drink with him. He accompanied her back to her grandfather’s but she woke up in the middle of the night when he touched her and the girl ran outside and called the police. Tyulenev was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2016 for multiple crimes, including causing an injury that led to death. In May 2023 he was released to fight in Ukraine, where he was wounded and subsequently pardoned by Vladimir Putin.