id
int64 1
96.6k
| title
stringlengths 0
276
| time_published
unknown | organization
stringclasses 21
values | url
stringlengths 35
381
| body
stringlengths 10
88.4k
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Securing the TikToker vote. Moscow’s authorities plan to use TikTok to promote Kremlin-backed candidates during the 2021 elections | "2020-12-18T20:52:53" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/12/18/securing-the-tiktoker-vote | Political strategists working for the Russian authorities are planning to use the video-sharing app TikTok for campaigning in Moscow ahead of the 2021 State Duma elections. The hope is that a presence on the popular app can be used to encourage apolitical young people to vote for Kremlin-backed candidates. The spin doctor that "sold" the Moscow authorities on the idea claims to have successfully used the app during this year's regional elections, though most of the videos under the corresponding campaign hashtag have nothing to do with the vote.
Using TikTok to campaign for the 2021 State Duma elections was the brainchild of political spin doctor Dmitry Gusev, a founder of the Bakster Group agency, who has long worked with the Presidential Executive Office and the Moscow Mayor's Office, a source close to the Putin administration told Meduza.
Today, Gusev is one of the key figures involved in Moscow City Hall's informal election campaign headquarters, a source close to the internal political bloc at the Moscow Mayor's office said. According to him, Gusev is responsible for the social media and, in part, the media orientation of the campaigns of Kremlin-backed candidates in the Russian capital.
A Meduza source close to the Putin administration explained that Gusev's suggestion was approved since politicians are expected to have a presence on all social networking sites. That said, not all sites, TikTok included, are considered suitable for every single candidate.
In particular, TikTok is set to be used to promote the campaigns of Kremlin-backed candidates from United Russia, who are running for election to the State Duma in Moscow's single-mandate constituencies. Their campaign slogans, which are still under development and have yet to be approved, will be turned into hashtags that TikTokers will be encouraged to use when they post their videos.
According to a Meduza source close to the Kremlin, Gusev "sold" the idea of using TikTok for campaigning in Moscow based on his campaign work with Dmitry Makhonin — the former acting governor of the Perm Krai who ended up winning the gubernatorial elections in the fall of 2020.
Makhonin's TikTok campaign mainly involved an account called Razvivayem Prikamye ("We're Developing Prikamye"), which uploaded videos under a corresponding hashtag #РазвиваемПрикамье. Accounts with the same name popped up on Facebook and Instagram, where they posted positive news stories about the regional authorities and their initiatives.
The Razvivayem Prikamye account's first TikTok was a video challenge featuring an auto-tuned track that repeats the phrase "we're developing Prikamye." This audio was then picked up and used in about two dozen videos — but most of them had nothing to do with Makhonin's election campaign (instead the backtrack was picked up for dog and cat videos, as well as for dances, skateboarding videos, and even a photo montage of cities in the Perm Krai).
Most of these videos have no more than a few thousand views and a handful of likes. At the time of this publication, the original TikTok had 45,000 views and 705 likes, and the Razvivayem Prikamye account had 661 subscribers. While there are quite a lot of videos that use the corresponding hashtag, most of them have nothing to do with the Perm Krai or its development. In total, videos under this hashtag were seen by 975,000 TikTok users.
Almost immediately after the elections, videos using this hashtag stopped cropping up, and the pages on Facebook and Instagram stopped posting before election day on September 13. Nevertheless, Dmitry Makhonin won the election with 75.7 percent of the vote.
According to a political strategist working with a Kremlin-linked autonomous non-profit called Dialogue, the video challenge had all the hallmarks paid content and, in all likelihood, the TikTok campaign hardly contributed to the number of votes Makhonin gained. "From the point of view of an electoral effect, the result is rather negative, but from the point of view of reporting to the customer, the indicator is probably not bad — one million views for the hashtag," the source explained.
As Meduza previously reported, the Moscow authorities are seriously worried about the potential impact of Alexey Navalny's strategy during the 2021 race. During the 2019 Moscow City Duma elections, candidates supported by Navalny's Smart Vote strategy won in 20 of the 45 single-mandate constituencies. Currently, the Putin administration considers eight of the capital's 15 districts as potentially problematic during the 2021 vote. And this is precisely where TikTok is expected to help them claim victory.
The Moscow Mayor's Office has already made one very unsuccessful attempt to whip up the youth demographic: ahead of the capital's 2019 mayoral election, rappers Timati and Guf recorded a collaborative music video called "Moscow." Guf rapped about his love for the city, while Timati sang the praises of Moscow's incumbent Mayor Sergey Sobyanin. The video gained 1.4 million dislikes on Youtube — a record-breaking number for the Russian-language version of the site at the time. Timati ended up deleting the video and Guf issued an apology, saying that he didn't know about the political intent behind the project. |
2 | Russian sapper killed during demining in Nagorno-Karabakh | "2020-12-18T18:51:24" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/news/2020/12/18/russian-sapper-killed-during-demining-in-nagorno-karabakh | A Russian sapper was killed in Nagorno-Karabakh while demining roads near the city of Shusha, Interfax reported on Friday, December 18, citing the Russian Defense Ministry.
"An explosive device was detonated. As a result of the explosion, an officer from the International Mine Action Center's demining group was seriously injured. The serviceman was promptly given medical assistance. The officer died of his injuries while being transported to the hospital," the defense ministry said, as quoted by Interfax.
Russia sent nearly 2,000 peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh after Armenia and Azerbaijan signed an agreement ending renewed hostilities in the unrecognized republic on November 10. |
3 | Russia’s Health Ministry announces talks with Germany on joint production of Russian coronavirus vaccines | "2020-12-18T18:15:19" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/news/2020/12/18/russia-s-health-ministry-announces-talks-with-germany-on-joint-production-of-russian-coronavirus-vaccines | Germany is prepared to cooperate with Russia on the production of Russian vaccines against the coronavirus, German Health Minister Jens Spahn told his Russian counterpart Mikhail Murashko during a phone conversation on Friday, December 18.
"According to the agreement reached, in the near future Russian and German experts will soon hold working talks to try to find production facilities for the joint production of Russian vaccines," the Russian Health Ministry reported in a press release.
The health ministry's statement did not specify which Russian vaccines were discussed.
Mass vaccination campaigns began in Moscow on December 5 and, according to the health ministry, all of Russia's regions have been provided with doses of Sputnik V as of December 14. The vaccine's developers maintain that it's more than 90 percent effective and 100 percent effective against severe cases of COVID-19. |
4 | Tech giants beware. Russian lawmakers seek significantly harsher fines for Internet companies that fail to comply with censorship orders | "2020-12-18T17:52:10" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/12/18/tech-giants-beware | The Russian State Duma's state-building and legislation committee has approved amendments to a draft law on fines for Internet companies that fail to comply with orders from Russia's federal censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, Interfax reports. In particular, tech companies that do not restrict access to and/or remove content banned in Russia could face fines tied to their annual revenue. For major companies, this could mean penalties in excess of millions or even billions of dollars. The lawmakers behind the proposal underscored that foreign companies like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are usually the ones responsible for these types of violations.
In the approved amendments to the draft law, Russian lawmakers have proposed making repeated violations committed by hosting providers punishable by maximum fines ranging from 5 to 10 percent of the company's revenue, with a minimum penalty of four million rubles (about $54,500). In its original form, the bill contained no mention of penalties tied to company revenue: it simply outlined fines for legal entities ranging from four to eight million rubles (about $54,500 to $109,000).
The authors of the amendments suggested tying fines for website providers and owners who fail to remove information banned in Russia to income level, as well. In such cases, the maximum fine for legal entities would range from 10 to 20 percent of their revenue for the year, with a minimum penalty of eight million rubles ($109,000). In its original form, the bill outlined fines for legal entities ranging from 8 to 15 million rubles (about $109,000 to $204,000).
According to the authors of the bill, foreign companies — including Internet giants like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter — violate Russia's legal requirements more often than others. According to Roskomnadzor, as of April 2020, YouTube had failed to remove 10,482 pages containing banned content, Twitter had failed to remove 1,462 pages, Instagram — 1,435, and Facebook — 362.
Who will be responsible for paying the fines — the company's head office or its representative offices in Russia — remains unclear. For example, YouTube's parent company, Google, has its own Russian LLC. According to open data, this company's revenue amounted to 74.9 billion rubles (about $1.02 billion) in 2019. In this case, it could face a maximum fine of nearly 15 billion rubles ($204 million). But if lawmakers were planning to impose penalties on the company's head office, Google could face fines .
Previously, Russian courts have repeatedly fined the American company Google LLC for refusing to filter content banned in Russia — the penalties imposed on the company thus far have ranged from 700,000 to three million rubles (about $9,525 to $40,830).
Facebook and Twitter do not have representative offices in Russia. In 2019, Facebook's revenue was $70.7 billion (the amount it earned in Russia remains unknown), so presumably it could face a maximum fine of more than $14 billion. Twitter's income last year was $3.46 billion, which means it could face a maximum penalty of around $700 million. |
5 | ‘I want to say thank you to Putin personally’. Moscow lawmaker Yulia Galyamina’s final statement in court as she faces three years behind bars for protesting | "2020-12-18T16:39:00" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/12/18/i-want-to-say-thank-you-to-putin-personally | On Friday, December 18, Moscow's Tverskoy District Court held deliberations on the case of Moscow City Duma deputy Yulia Galyamina, who is facing for repeatedly violating the "rules on conducting public events." Galyamina, who is also a lecturer at Moscow's Higher School of Economics (HSE), became the subject of a criminal case due to her involvement in an unauthorized protest opposing amendments to the Russian constitution on July 15, 2020 (law enforcement officers arrested more than 100 people at the demonstration). She was also fined several times for taking part in protests ahead of the Moscow City Duma elections during the summer of 2019. State prosecutors are now seeking a three year prison sentence for the Moscow lawmaker. Here is the final statement that Yulia Galyamina made in court today.
Dear friends, I want to start my final statement with the word "thank you." Thank you to everyone who supports me: to my family and friends, my team and colleagues, fellow teachers and students, deputies, politicians, and of course, my voters, present and future, from different parts of our motherland. To the millions of people who I represent in this court.
So I want to say thank you to those who persecuted me, as well: the police officers, officers, and the FSB officers, the investigators, judges, their assistants, the prosecutors, the Presidential Executive Office, and Vladimir Putin personally. You not only helped me see how many people came to my defense. You not only made me stronger by giving me the experience of resilience and the ability to enjoy life, no matter what. You proved to the entire country that I really am a threat to you.
I am teacher, a municipal deputy, a politician who advocates for non-violent change, for honest political competition, for a decent life for people. I, a woman, pose a threat to a man, who, it would seem, enjoys all possible power. But this man is still just a little man, who is afraid of soft, feminine power. He's afraid because, as yesterday's show Putin's annual press conference showed, he has absolutely nothing to offer the people of Russia other than cheap pasta and violence.
I, unlike my persecutors, offer all of us a future. I am proposing a future in which each person in our country, wherever they live, would be able to live with dignity: earn decent money, buy good food and clothes, travel, heal their relatives, and teach their children. And while feeling free and safe.
It's precisely for such a future — the future of normal life, the normal Russia of the future — that the 16 million Russian citizens who supported against the amendments to the constitution voted for. Against the amendments that were designed to deprive us of that future. And, mind you, it's precisely for this campaign against the amendments, meaning, for our common future — that I'm on trial.
To achieve the future that we are all dreaming about, we need for officials not to make decisions for the people, but rather just to fulfil their will. For them not to cut down forests and parks, not to build landfills, not to erect high-rise ghettos, not to amalgamate hospitals, not to switch to online education exclusively, not to build digital surveillance systems, not to take resources from the regions and local governments, not to destroy small- and medium-sized businesses, and not to take money from pensioners and the parents of large families. A system in which entities decide the life of millions is abnormal. As abnormal as the coronavirus epidemic.
After all, people have the right to decide how their life, their world, their future, will be built. But for this, any person needs their representatives in power. People who promote the interests of every Russian citizen to the administrations of the country's rural settlements, cities, and regions. The interests of everyone — of the ones sitting in this courtroom and of those who don't even know what's happening here. The interests of every ordinary Russian, not Putin and his entourage. We need for our representatives in power to be the most active from among us ordinary, living people. Politicians who we can run into at a neighborhood store, and not Kremlin puppets in cars with flashing lights and dead meat inside.
Who can ensure that power becomes the power of the people and for the people? There are thousands of women and men across the country who are becoming leaders of change, leaders of perseverance, leaders of a normal future. Everyone who dreams of this future should unite around them.
They don't simply want to return power to the people, but they are already doing a lot to achieve this, getting elected as local deputies, leading charity organizations, creating useful, lively businesses, organizing campaigns to protect the environment…Those people who already want to protect historical heritage or socially unprotected and persecuted people.
By interacting with these drivers of change, I am inspired to go further. And so I look at today's trial without fear. It doesn't matter whether I am free or in prison, whether I can personally continue to be a deputy or not, I know for sure that this movement won't be stopped. And I will work to make this noticeable to every citizen of Russia, to resonate with every soul. And inspire everyone to take a step towards the future.
We must remember that despite all of the obstacles and resistance from the Kremlin, 2021 is a real chance to turn the tide. If we miss this chance, the next one will appear only in . Therefore, all of us together need to unite our efforts and make next year's elections decisive. And not only the State Duma election, but also the regional and local ones. We need a general civil monitoring project for the vote, maximum support for candidates, and truly massive participation in the elections. Only a massive turnout will be able to break the machine of falsification and make it so that ordinary, normal people have their representatives in power at all levels. Because this is our right, this is our country, this is our life, and our future.
I would also add at the end of my final statement that the three years that the prosecutors have asked for me now are exactly the three years that separate us from the 2024 elections. I think these three years will give me a great chance to become the most popular politician in Russia. And take part in Russia's presidential elections. |
6 | Hackers target ‘IStories’ investigative journalists following Putin’s press conference | "2020-12-18T14:12:05" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/news/2020/12/18/hackers-target-istories-investigative-journalists-following-putin-s-press-conference | The online accounts of six journalists from the investigative outlet IStories were targeted by hacking attempts after Russian President Vladimir Putin's press conference yesterday, IStories reported on Telegram.
During the early hours of Friday, December 18, someone tried to hack journalist Dmitry Velikovsky's Facebook account, as well as the Telegram accounts of IStories editor-in-chief Roman Anin, and editors Olesya Shmagun and Roman Shleynov. The Facebook accounts of journalists Alesya Marokhovskaya and Irina Dolinina were hacked on the morning of December 18.
The six journalists targeted are the authors of a recently published investigation about the business dealings of Putin's alleged former son-in-law, billionaire Kirill Shamalov. Eight journalists worked on the investigation in total, including Meduza editor Denis Dmitriev.
We note that in the case of Roman Anin, the unknown individuals were able to obtain a two-factor authentication code, bypassing Roman's SIM card, but these unknown individuals weren't able to correctly enter the password for second factor.
In the investigation, IStories revealed that Kirill Shamalov acquired a 3.8 percent stake (valued at an estimated $380 million) in Russia's largest petrochemical company, Sibur, for just $100. This took place just months after his 2013 wedding to Katerina Tikhonova, a woman widely believed to be Russian President Vladimir Putin's daughter.
During his annual press conference on December 17, Putin commented on the IStories investigation, claiming that the outlet obtained Shamalov's emails from the U.S. State Department. Putin added that Shamalov acquired his stake in Sibur according to the rules that were in place for all top managers at the company at the time. Several hours later, Shamalov made similar statements to the press.
In response, IStories editor-in-chief Roman Anin stated that Putin "allowed himself to slander journalists and baselessly accuse them of working for Western intelligence services." "We live in Russia, we don't hide behind pseudonyms, we sign our names and we are prepared to prove every word with a document," Anin added. |
7 | ‘It’s always a choice’. ‘Bellingcat’ lead investigator Christo Grozev explains how his team unmasked the Russian agents who tried to kill Alexey Navalny | "2020-12-18T14:06:22" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/12/18/it-s-always-a-choice | On December 14, 2020, Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny published a video on YouTube, titled "I Know Everyone Who Tried to Kill Me," where he named the Federal Security Service agents he says are responsible for poisoning him in Tomsk on August 20. Navalny attributed the discovery to Christo Grozev, Bellingcat's "chief and very cool investigator from Bulgaria," who recently contacted him with the message: "You know, I think we've found the people who tried to kill you." Navalny's own Anti-Corruption Foundation then joined the investigation, retracing Grozev's steps and verifying his findings. Meduza special correspondent Liliya Yapparova spoke to Grozev about how he managed to track down a "secret and completely separate" group inside the FSB, why he's certain these men are responsible for the attempt on Navalny's life, and what he expects next in this story.
Alexey Navalny had uninvited company for the past three years — at least eight federal agents followed him nearly everywhere, whenever he left Moscow, according to a new investigation by Bellingcat and its media partners. In an interview with Meduza, Bellingcat's lead Russia investigator, Christo Grozev, described two basic theories to explain why Navalny was watched so closely before he was nearly poisoned to death: either the FSB team had orders to be ready to kill him when instructed, or the agents were trying to assassinate him all along.
Readers can draw their own conclusionsLeading experts on chemical weapons told Bellingcat that "optimal dosage" with nerve agents is tricky business when "in the field," and Navalny's assailants had reason to act cautiously. There's some evidence that Navalny was poisoned last year with the same substance that nearly killed him this August: Aboard a plane in 2019, he says he experienced the same acute discomfort that preceded his violent illness and coma. A few months earlier, moreover, his wife Yulia was also suddenly albeit briefly unwell. Both of these incidents, Grozev told Meduza, could very well have been the result of the FSB's attempts to find the dose needed to kill Navalny as delicately as possible.
The poison used against Navalny, which medical experts later narrowed down to a "Novichok-class" nerve agent, would have taken effect almost immediately, but Navalny suspects he was exposed through a suspiciously bad-tasting cocktail, the night before his symptoms began. If this is true, Grozev says the substance must have been "micro- or nano-encapsulated" — coated with something to delay the body's absorption of the poison.
For all its apparent efforts involving Alexey Navalny, the FSB team of operatives and toxin specialists seems to have other assignments, as well, though the agents clearly focused on Navalny after 2017 (when he declared his intention to challenge Putin for Russia's presidency). Grozev says the agents he identified often visit cities that don't intersect with Navalny's travels, with frequent stops in the North Caucasus, where militants and armed separatists remain a thorn in the authorities' side. Grozev says the FSB team might be poisoning other oppositionists on these trips, as well, which he will explore in his next investigative report.
Grozev says Bellingcat adopted a "conservative" editorial approach to the evidence it collected showing the FSB's involvement in the attempt on Navalny's life. Even the report's headline — "FSB Team of Chemical Weapon Experts Implicated in Alexey Navalny Novichok Poisoning" — deliberately stops short of direct accusations. At the same time, Grozev says there is "no innocent explanation" for why a group of specialists trained in medicine and chemical weapons traveled under assumed identities and then used a secure network to communicate with Russia's Novichok experts immediately before Navalny was poisoned and then with experts in mass spectrometry (who could explain how long a poison's traces remain detectable), immediately afterward. "Any court would convict these people," says Grozev.
Bellingcat proved that these FSB agents followed Navalny in Tomsk on the day he was poisoned, just as these men had tailed him 37 times before. "We leave it to the reader to decide if they tried to kill him," Grozev told Meduza.
Following the dataGrozev stumbled onto the FSB operatives when he expanded his research into the use of Novichok by military intelligence agents in Russia, building on a Bellingcat investigation that identified the "Signal Scientific Center" as the heart of the Kremlin's clandestine chemical weapons program. "We realized that agents called precisely these scientists for consultations at peak moments, just before Novichok poisonings," says Grozev.
When Bellingcat conducts this kind of work, says Grozev, it identifies about 70 percent of the telephone numbers that apparently belong to federal agents through GetContact or some other leaked database available on Russia's black market. For more subtle evidence, the researchers turn to leaked archives like "Larix" for credit records, employment histories, past convictions, and flight itineraries. Many FSB agents complete long tours of service in Russia's Border Guard, explains Grozev, which can offer further corroboration when tracking down operatives.
To investigate Navalny's case, Grozev returned to the telephone records Bellingcat obtained in its work on Russia's chemical weapons lab, the Signal Scientific Center. According to these documents, the facility's director, Arthur Zhirov, had a history of calls with someone identified by GetContact as "Alexey Podlipki FSB" — apparently a reference to a small village outside Moscow, where the Federal Security Service has no official presence. These communications spiked on July 6, 2020 — a date that held no significance, as far as Navalny and the public record were concerned.
Wondering if he'd missed something, Grozev contacted Navalny in mid-November and asked if anything had happened on this day. It turns out that Navalny's wife Yulia became suddenly ill on July 6 while vacationing in Kaliningrad. Navalny didn't publicize the incident when it happened because he didn't understand it himself. "This was the first moment when I realized that it seemed we'd found something," Grozev told Meduza.
The cellular records Bellingcat acquired on Russia's black market make it possible to geolocate specific calls and data transfers by triangulating the different tower connections used in these communications. Grozev told Meduza that Bellingcat typically maps this out manually, after using MySQL (an open-source relational database management system) to remove records of calls and data usage that occurred on weekends, holidays, or late at night. The result, he says, is a fairly reliable picture of where these men spent their work hours.
The telephone records show that the suspected agents frequented two locations: an FSB research institute on Varga Street in Moscow believed to work with chemical weapons and an area near Podlipki. Using Wikimapia, Bellingcat discovered that this second location leads to another secret FSB facility, solving the mystery of "Alexey Podlipki FSB." According to Wikimapia users, the KGB once used the Podlipki grounds to develop missile technologies. Today, Grozev says, the laboratory serves as an unofficial extension campus for the FSB's Varga Street facility, which manufactured the poisons used against Soviet dissidents, according to former KGB General Oleg Kalugin, who now lives in the United States.
Bellingcat bases much of its conclusions on surges in calls between experts at Signal and the suspected FSB agents who tailed Navalny across Russia. Grozev acknowledges that the calls could have been about anything (there were lots of telephone conversations on Defender of the Fatherland Day in February, for example, presumably about the holiday), but the timing and the sequence of communications before and after the attacks against Navalny strongly suggest, he says, that these discussions concerned Novichok.
After using phone records to single out a handful of suspected FSB agents, Bellingcat guessed that the operatives who followed Navalny around the country likely traveled under assumed identities using false, albeit only somewhat modified names and birthdates (a lazy but typical practice in Russia's intelligence community). Grozev says his team began its work with airline records by "blindly and randomly" purchasing black-market passenger manifests for flights booked by Navalny and his staff. When Bellingcat realized that the federal agents traveled in groups, almost always a day before or after Navalny, Grozev bought more flight records and repeated his search for the FSB agents' aliases. As a pattern emerged, his work gained precision.
Grozev says the phone records obtained by Bellingcat indicate that Navalny's FSB surveillance team stayed abreast of his travel plans by communicating frequently with the agency's officers stationed at airports, who have direct access to Russia's ticket-reservation databases.
When looking for federal agents involved in a supposed assassination operation, Bellingcat adjusts its search algorithms to filter out travelers on flight manifests who don't fit the FSB's pattern. Grozev says he calibrated his search parameters to exclude people traveling with apparent family members (other passengers with the same surname) and anyone who booked their tickets well in advance. A rich travel history also reduces the odds that someone is using an FSB alias because the agency generally doesn't bother to invent deep records, says Grozev. This is especially true, he adds, with special units like the team that pursued Navalny, where looping in the additional colleagues needed to counterfeit long personal pasts can compromise an operation's secrecy and risk leaks.
According to Meduza's own calculations, an investigation like Bellingcat's report on Navalny's alleged FSB assailants could have cost as much as 1 million rubles ($13,630). A source in Russia's data-leak market told Meduza that a single geolocation request costs 25,000 rubles ($340), while the call history for one phone number can be as much as 80,000 rubles ($1,090). Flight passenger manifests, meanwhile, run about 10,000 rubles ($135) apiece.
Grozev says Bellingcat has to conserve its resources, pursuing only the most important investigations. Sometimes, the organization even has to abandon certain leads because its funding doesn't permit all avenues of information gathering. "And we refuse to work with the foundations that would give us money for such work," he adds.
When tracking Navalny's poisoners, Bellingcat researchers had to watch out for "poisoned" data. For example, Grozev says one source sold him a flight manifest listing 177 passengers, while another archive acquired elsewhere showed 179 passengers. The two extra names, it turns out, "were the most interesting." To avoid being led astray by tampered records, Grozev says Bellingcat acquires databases from different dealers without revealing the information it seeks. "For 10 phone records, we buy from 10 different dealers," he explains. Researchers can never rely on individual dealers for very long. "After several investigations, Russian counterintelligence realizes which sources to use to start feeding us ‘tainted' data," Grozev told Meduza.
When investigating intelligence officers, Grozev says Bellingcat tries to avoid using data leaked by rival agencies. These dealers often stand out by deviating from the usual time it takes to fulfill an order. "If it's suddenly too short or too long, something's off," he says. After Bellingcat releases a major report, many sources often cut ties with its researchers. Following the investigation into Navalny's poisoning, for example, the organization lost access to several dealers. "Even though they've said they don't want to talk to us anymore, we're going to make sure they're okay," Grozev says.
Grozev admits that he struggles with the ethical implications of working with stolen personal data. In Navalny's case, he argues that these tactics are ultimately in the prevailing public interest because they were required to expose not just a group of attempted murderers but also a secret government unit devoted to hunting down the Kremlin's political enemies using dangerous chemical weapons. "I believe that we at Bellingcat occupy a niche between journalism and the law enforcement agencies that aren't doing their jobs either because, as in the West, they can't or they don't want to, or because, as in Russia, political pressure makes it impossible," Grozev told Meduza, comparing his brand of investigative reporting to the ambulances we allow to speed through city streets.
Before exposing individuals' personal data, Grozev says he needs to be completely sure that he hasn't made a mistake in his research. Bellingcat's report on Navalny's poisoners, for example, singles out eight suspected FSB operatives, but Grozev says his team was able to identify 15 agents in total. In the end, he says he decided to reveal the names of only the individuals for whose actions he could conjure no innocent explanation.
Grozev says he and his wife disagree philosophically about the disclosure of government officials' personal information. "She believes it's not worth releasing the private information of people who are just doing their jobs — the people the state told, ‘Go do this.' I'll never agree with that. It's a choice. It's always a choice. Even in the Soviet Union, it was a choice," Grozev told Meduza.
A comedy of errorsThough Bellingcat's investigation into the FSB's operation against Navalny reads like a spy thriller, one of the most shocking things about the story is closer to comedy: the agents aided researchers repeatedly by making basic mistakes, like bringing a personal cell phone on a secret mission. But these errors don't surprise Christo Grozev. "Imagine it," he says. "You're there and you need to call a colleague but you don't have his number in the burner phone set up specially for the trip to Tomsk. So you turn on your main cell phone to look up the number you need, disabling the mobile connection, the second the screen lights up." Even that, however, would have been enough to register a tower connection, leaving a digital trail for anyone who knew where to look.
Grozev says the phone records show IP-channel data indicating that the agents also used an online messenger (ironically, the American-owned WhatsApp) and more secure lines for some conversations. "Apparently, they went with unsecured lines only for non-confidential calls, thinking it was probably enough to protect whatever they discussed," he says. In a sense, they were right: Bellingcat can only guess about the content in these communications.
Russia's intelligence community is presumably tempted to erase its agents' information from the databases Bellingcat uses, but Grozev says this isn't as simple as it sounds. "Purging doesn't always solve the problem because sometimes the absence of something is evidence itself. When you remove something, you're leaving new evidence," he explains, adding that Russia's military intelligence started restoring its agents' "RossPassport" data after realizing that blank records raise altogether new suspicions.
For all its failings, Russian counterintelligence theoretically has the power "to destroy Bellingcat forever," Grozev admits. All the Kremlin needs to do is unearth some evidence of the organization's supposed ties to Western spy agencies — the secret collaboration to which Bellingcat's critics constantly allude. If this partnership existed, Russia's hackers should have little trouble proving it.
In fact, Grozev says he has a "low opinion" of the West's intelligence agencies. If they knew what Bellingcat regularly discovers, he says, the CIAs of the world would leak the information to more established news outlets, like The New York Times. More importantly, he adds, Western intelligence agencies would inform their own governments, leading to better-educated sanctions that target Russia's modern-day chemical weapons program, instead of its Soviet remnants.
This comedy of errors isn't entirely a tale of bad ideas. Grozev acknowledges that the FSB has concocted some brilliant schemes to thwart sleuths like him, but the agency's poor execution held success at bay. For example, Grozev says the FSB once introduced an algorithm that fed Bellingcat researchers "RossPassport" photos of other people who physically resembled federal agents, concealing the operatives' real portraits. "Essentially," he explains, "they devised a way to poison the entire system with fake pictures. It was a good idea!" Unfortunately for the FSB, its computer whizzes forgot to add a gender filter. When Bellingcat's searches started returning photos of women, the team knew something was up. "A good idea, but bad execution," says Grozev. |
8 | Kremlin spokesman reiterates Putin’s statements about Russian intelligence surveilling Navalny | "2020-12-18T13:45:54" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/news/2020/12/18/kremlin-spokesman-reiterates-putin-s-statements-about-russian-intelligence-surveilling-navalny | During a press briefing on Friday, December 18, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented on President Vladimir Putin's statements about why the Russian intelligence services "ought to keep an eye" on opposition figure Alexey Navalny.
Peskov told reporters that Russia's intelligence agencies "keep an eye" on anyone who is in contact with foreign intelligence services or calls for a violent change of government.
Vladimir Putin spoke about the fact that the intelligence services keep an eye on those who are in contact with the intelligence services of other governments. And to that I can add that of course the intelligence services are keeping an eye on those who make statements calling for a violent change of power, and so on — which can be interpreted as a violation of the current legislation. Intelligence services keep an eye on such people around the world.
During his annual press conference on Thursday, December 17, Putin commented on a journalistic investigation that implicated a special FSB sub-unit in . Putin called the investigation a "legalization of materials from the American intelligence services." He also noted that Russian intelligence ought to keep an eye on Navalny because he allegedly enjoys the support of U.S. intelligence. "But this in no way means that it's necessary to poison him, who needs that? You see, if they'd wanted to poison him, they would have finished the job," Putin said. |
9 | ‘He slandered us’. Journalists respond to Putin’s allegations linking their work to Western intelligence agencies | "2020-12-17T19:13:28" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/12/17/he-slandered-us | During his annual press conference on December 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin commented on two major journalistic investigations — both of which came out in December and concerned the president directly. The first report, published by the investigative outlet IStories, had to do with the business dealings of Putin's alleged former son-in-law, Russian billionaire Kirill Shamalov. The second investigation — a joint effort by Bellingcat, The Insider, Der Spiegel, and CNN — identified a team of FSB operatives who had been following opposition figure Alexey Navalny for years — and, apparently, were involved in poisoning him with a Novichok-type nerve agent back in August. Putin said that both investigations were the "legalization of materials from the American intelligence services." In conversation with Meduza, the journalists behind these reports respond to Putin's allegations.
Putin's responses were expected. When journalists with documents prove corruption on the part of the first family, he always attributes it to an attack from the West and the intelligence services. He did that when we published the Panama Papers. He's doing it now.
The other thing is that he went too far. Whereas before Putin said that publications were ordered by customers from abroad, this time he directly accused journalists of working with intelligence agencies. This, of course, is slander and untrue.
I think that, unfortunately, the president has a distorted picture of the world. He sees enemies, conspiracies, and the intelligence services everywhere. The truth is, the authors of this article don't work for any Western intelligence agencies. These are young authors — journalists from Yaroslavl, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, St. Petersburg, and Magadan. These are people who love their country. But, unfortunately, this country has been ruled by one person for 20 years now. If a person is in power for 20 years and nothing limits his power, his picture of the world is greatly distorted. This majorly impacts the adequacy of one's perception of the world. He thinks that everyone is seeking revenge against him and wants to plot against him.
In addition, he judges the outside world by how things work in Russia. After all, if he Putin really orders Perviy Kanal CEO Konstantin Ernst or VGTRK CEO Oleg Dobrodeev to bark, they will bark. And he thinks that's how it works everywhere. That if in America president-elect Joe Biden tells someone from CNN to bark, they will start barking — but that's not the case. He is under the delusion that independent journalists are always fulfilling an order from someone.
This time he said "these guys" — meaning the authors of the article, me and my colleagues — are from the intelligence services. If the president, as the highest official in the country, makes such statements, then he ought to ground them in something, bring facts. We, as the journalists who he is accusing of something, can back up any of our statements with documents, we can come to any court in the world and legitimately prove our position. The president is allowing himself to make unsubstantiated claims. In my opinion, he simply slandered me and my colleagues.
Putin gave an absurd response. He basically didn't refute anything that we wrote. Apart from our conclusion that the people from the FSB were there to poison Navalny. Everything else he actually fully confirmed.
Putin said that they didn't poison him Navalny. But there are two, big, problematic holes in this answer. First off, if Navalny was only under surveillance, how does he explain the fact there were doctors and chemists near him? There is no logic here.
I'm sure Putin understands that he's lying when he says that our investigation is a "legalization of materials form the American intelligence services." I don't think that FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov could afford to deceive Putin. I think he looked at who was verifying the data and who received the list of passengers on Navalny's flights. He must have seen immediately that journalists requested this information. Hence, Bortnikov knew that journalists were doing an investigation. He wouldn't lie to Putin. Meaning Putin lied to everyone when he said this was intelligence agencies.
Saying that Western intelligence services did the investigation is less embarrassing and less inconvenient for the Kremlin than saying it was journalists. The Kremlin thinks: "Intelligence services? Well yes, it's bad that they caught us. It would be much worse if we were caught by journalists." That is to say Putin lied here deliberately.
With his response to our investigation, Putin has significantly limited the work of his surrogates: TV host Vladimir Solovyov and Life News. How can they create narratives in such a limited form as the one Putin presented? It will be difficult for them to figure out a harmless way to present these stories.
And for us, now it will be important to simply prove the part that Putin called incorrect. We need to prove that the FSB specifically tried to poison Navalny. It's always good when journalists are given a concrete task. We have it. We will be working on it in the coming days. |
10 | Putin’s former son-in-law comments on recent investigation into his business dealings | "2020-12-17T17:25:17" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/news/2020/12/17/putin-s-former-son-in-law-comments-on-recent-investigation-into-his-business-dealings | In conversation with RBC, Putin's alleged former son-in-law, billionaire Kirill Shamalov, commented on a recent journalistic investigation alleging that he acquired hundreds of millions of dollars in shares in Russia's largest petrochemical company (Sibur) for just $100.
The conditions for my participation in the program Sibur's incentive program for top management didn't differ from the conditions for … other top managers. This circumstance allows me to focus public attention on the fact that any claims about the uniqueness of my position in the stock options program don't correspond to reality, are speculative in nature, and aimed at discrediting my business reputation.
Previously, the head of Sibur, Dmitry Konov, confirmed that Shamalov did in fact pay just $100 for a 3.8 percent stake in the company, but he also maintained that the deal came with several conditions. Shamalov, like other top managers who participated in the program, took on a proportional share debt belonging to the company Themis Holdings, which owned Sibur shares.
In its report, the investigative outlet IStories wrote that Shamalov acquired the 3.8 percent stake in Sibur back in 2013, just months after his wedding to Putin's alleged daughter, Katerina Tikhonova. Shamalov himself estimated the market value of his stake in Sibur at $380 million.
Shamalov later purchased an additional 17 percent stake in Sibur from Putin's longtime friend, billionaire businessman Gennady Timchenko. However, amid his divorce from Tikhonova in 2017, Shamalov sold the shares in Sibur that he had purchased from Timchenko, which, according to Bloomberg, he initially received as a guarantee of Putin's trust.
During his annual press conference on December 17, Putin commented on the IStories investigation into Shamalov's business dealings during his marriage to Tikhonova. He said that Shamalov's emails were handed over to journalists by the U.S. State Department and called the investigation itself a "pastiche." Putin noted that he had not read the investigative report in full. |
11 | Warm and fuzzy Russia. The highlights from Putin’s annual press conference, in a nutshell | "2020-12-17T16:52:48" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/12/17/warm-and-fuzzy-russia | On Thursday, December 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin held his sixteenth annual marathon press conference — albeit via video link. He answered questions from journalists for nearly five hours straight, covering everything from Russia's "Sputnik V" coronavirus vaccine, to the latest allegations about opposition figure Alexey Navalny's poisoning, and New Year's benefits for families. Here are the highlights, in a nutshell. |
12 | Russian lawmakers propose changes to bill on housing for children of Soviet repression victims | "2020-12-17T15:42:57" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/news/2020/12/17/russian-lawmakers-propose-changes-to-bill-on-housing-for-children-of-soviet-repression-victims | A group of lawmakers from Russia's State Duma have put forward changes to the existing bill on amending the law "On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression," Vedomosti reported on Thursday, December 17.
The changes were proposed by Galina Khovanskaya from the party A Just Russia, Sergey Shargunov from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), and Nikolai Gonchar from United Russia.
The State Duma approved the bill in question in its first reading back in November. In its current form, the draft law allows the regional authorities to retain power over housing compensation for victims of Soviet-era political repressions, effectively meaning that the "children of the Gulag" will continue to be placed on general waiting lists for social housing — a process that can take decades.
The lawmakers have proposed amending the bill so that victims of repressions receive payments for housing from the federal authorities within a one-year period, lawyer Grigory Vaypan explained to Vedomosti.
According to lawmaker Galina Khovanskaya's estimates, the number of victims of political repression in need of housing is no more than 500 families. These are mainly former residents of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Krasnodar, in addition to 51 families from Sevastopol. Solving the problem will require 2.5 billion rubles (approximately $34.3 million), Khovanskaya told Vedomosti.
The government left this question to the mercy of the regional authorities. As a result, the regional authorities gained the right to put victims of repression in the line for receiving housing in accordance with the usual procedure. Thus, repressed people — mostly elderly people over the age of 70 — have to wait 25–30 years to receive housing from the state.
In December 2019, Russia's Constitutional Court ruled in favor of three daughters of repressed Moscow residents who were requesting compensation for housing lost when their families were deported from the Russian capital. The Russian high court demanded changes to the legislation, affirming that rehabilitated victims of political repressions, as well as any children born in the Gulag system or in exile, have the right to receive housing in the cities where their families lived at the time of the repression.
In the summer of 2020, the government submitted a draft law to the State Duma on preserving the powers of the regional authorities on the issue of housing allocation. A Just Russia party leader Sergey Mironov and lawmaker Galina Kovanskaya put forward an alternative bill, proposing that the children of repression victims be allocated housing at the expense of the federal government within a clearly specified one-year period. The State Duma rejected this bill.
In September 2020, two UN special rapporteurs appealed to the Russian authorities to provide housing compensation to the children of victims of Soviet era political repressions within two years. |
13 | German prosecutors question Navalny at the request of the Russian authorities | "2020-12-17T15:03:24" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/news/2020/12/17/german-prosecutors-question-navalny-at-the-request-of-the-russian-authorities | On Thursday, December 17, Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny reported that he had spent the day being questioned by German prosecutors at the request of the Russian authorities. Navalny reported this on Twitter, without specifying what he was asked during the interrogation.
Earlier, the Russian Attorney General's office had sent the German authorities several requests for legal assistance regarding Alexey Navalny's "hospitalization" in Berlin this summer. According to the German authorities, Navalny was with a Novichok-type nerve agent. However, the Russian authorities continue to maintain that there are no grounds for launching a criminal investigation into the attack.
On December 14, Bellingcat, The Insider, CNN, and Der Spiegel published an investigation implicating a special FSB sub-unit in poisoning Alexey Navalny with a Novichok-type nerve agent, after following him for several years. Navalny himself concluded that such an operation couldn't have been carried out without the approval of FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov and Russian President Vladimir Putin. |
14 | Just keeping an eye on him. Putin dismisses poisoning attack allegations, repeating claims about Navalny’s ties to U.S. intelligence | "2020-12-17T14:33:18" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/12/17/just-keeping-an-eye-on-him | During Russian President Vladimir Putin's annual press conference on Thursday, December 17, a journalist from the online outlet "Life" asked him about the of opposition figure Alexey Navalny. "This week an investigation about Alexey Navalny came out. Why hasn't a criminal case into his poisoning and who poisoned him been opened, tell me, please?" the correspondent asked, referring to a joint investigation that implicated the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in the poisoning attack. Here's how Putin responded, word-for-word.
As for, then, this patient, meaning the one at the Berlin clinic. I have already spoken about this repeatedly, I can only repeat some things. Well, I know about the investigation. Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov actually just told me about the latest fabrications in this regard yesterday, about the information from our intelligences officers and so on. We understand perfectly what this is. … This isn't some kind of investigation, it's the legalization of materials from the American intelligence services. What, we don't know that they're location tracking, or what? Our intelligence services understand this very well and they know it. FSB officers know it and other special bodies know it. And they use phones in places where they think they don't have to hide their place of stay and so on.
If that's the case — and I assure you, that is the case — this means that this patient at the Berlin clinic enjoys the support of the U.S. intelligence services in the present case. And if this is correct, then it's curious. Then, of course, the intelligence services ought to keep an eye on him. But this in no way means that it's necessary to poison him, who needs that? Ha-ha. You see, if they'd wanted to poison him, they would have finished the job. And so…His wife appealed to me and I gave the command to release him for treatment in Germany immediately. At that very second. |
15 | Troll wars. Facebook takes down rival networks from Russia and France for attempted interference in African countries | "2020-12-16T17:03:24" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/12/16/troll-wars | Facebook has removed three networks originating in Russia and France for violating its policy against foreign interference, the company reported on Tuesday, December 15. According to Facebook, these networks were responsible for carrying out "coordinated inauthentic behavior" targeting multiple countries in North Africa and the Middle East. While Facebook has removed Russian "troll factories" for similar activities in the past, the company says this case is unique due to the apparent rivalry that developed between the French and the Russian campaigns.
On December 15, Facebook announced that it had identified and removed two "troll factories" targeting residents of numerous countries in Africa and the Middle East. These networks carried out actions coordinated from Russia and France — and according to Facebook, this is the first time their team has identified two campaigns competing for influence in third countries. What's more, it's the first case where the social network has identified and blocked a group of trolls acting in the interests of a Western government.
Facebook's investigation linked the Russian network to individuals associated with the past activities of the Internet Research Agency (also known as the St. Petersburg troll factory) and other entities connected to Russian catering magnate . The French campaign was traced to individuals associated with the French military. In total, Facebook removed 63 accounts, 29 pages, and 7 groups belonging to the Russian network, and 84 accounts, 6 pages, and 9 groups belonging to the French campaign. They also removed one Instagram account belonging to the Russian side, as well as 14 belonging to the French.
Both the Russian and the French networks primarily targeted the Central African Republic (CAR), where presidential elections are set to take place at the end of December. In addition, the Russian accounts were actively involved in Madagascar, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and Mozambique, while the French accounts targeted Mali, Niger, Burkina-Faso, Algeria, and Chad. Facebook also removed a third, separate network of Russian accounts operating independently in North African countries.
Facebook noted that both campaigns used similar tactics in the CAR. The French accounts wrote positive commentary about France's influence on the country's security, while warning about Russian plans to interfere in the upcoming presidential vote. In turn, the Russian trolls wrote about Russia's fight against terrorism in North Africa, plans to supply the "Sputnik V" vaccine to the region, and criticized France's foreign policy. Both campaigns also left critical comments on each other's posts, including mutual accusations of publishing fake news.
As Reuters underscores, the activities of the two campaigns hardly had any influence on the general mood of Facebook users in the region, since neither group managed to attract a significant audience. "They looked like two troll teams arm wrestling, with nobody else really paying attention," social media analyst Ben Nimmo told Reuters.
The Central African Republic is set to hold presidential elections on December 27. It is believed that Russia is supporting the incumbent candidate, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra. During Touadéra's first term, companies linked to Prigozhin received several major contracts in the CAR — in particular, for diamond mining and security (this hasn't been officially confirmed; three Russian journalists investigating the activities of the Prigozhin-linked private military company Wagner were murdered in the CAR in 2018). Since the Central African Republic is a former French colony, countering Russian business interests in the country is an important part of Paris's general policy of maintaining its influence in the region. |
16 | The second time around. Latest mortality statistics reveal that the fall coronavirus wave was worse for Russia | "2020-12-16T15:28:54" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/12/16/the-second-time-around | Last week, the Russian Federal Statistics Service (Rosstat) published new data on mortality in all of the country's regions, revealing that 30 percent more people died in October 2020 than in that same month last year. This data shows that the coronavirus pandemic's second wave in Russia this fall was in fact more serious than the first wave in the spring: it appears that in September and October the number of deaths linked to the coronavirus was nearly the same as during the period from April to August. In addition, Russia remains ranked among the top-five countries with the highest death tolls from the coronavirus in the world.
Please note! All Meduza content about the coronavirus pandemic is free to distribute according to Creative Commons CC BY 4.0. In other words, you can republish this stuff! (Except for any photographs featured in our stories).
What data did Rosstat release?Rosstat publishes data on the number of deaths per month, which allows for the calculation of and a lot of other data related to spread of COVID-19 — including the actual number of people who have contracted the disease (asymptomatic cases included).
During the coronavirus pandemic, the excess mortality rate has emerged as the most accurate data on the epidemic. Even Russian officials rely on it: recently, a source in the federal government familiar with the work of the operational headquarters for fighting the coronavirus told Meduza that this is the most accurate data that the authorities have.
Data on mortality is also considered difficult to manipulate: Rosstat obtains these numbers from local registry offices, where death certificates are issued to relatives of the deceased. And families can't hold funerals without obtaining death certificates.
In theory, not all excess deaths are related to the coronavirus itself necessarily: for example, some portion could be attributed to the fact that medical care for other illnesses has worsened during the pandemic. But in practice it turns out that in 90 to 100 percent of cases in 2020, excess deaths in Russia are linked to the coronavirus infection in one way or another. This is evidenced by reports from the country's few regions where the data on excess mortality has been analyzed in detail (for example, the Moscow Health Department has been working on this since April).
The main drawback of Russia's excess mortality data is that its publication is significantly delayed and its not broken down by week, let alone by day. Rosstat publishes its reports 35 to 40 days after the end of the month, which is compounded by the fact that on average, deaths from the coronavirus occur 20 to 25 days after infection. The data being so delayed means it can't be used to accurately predict how the epidemic will develop in the future, or even understand how it's developing now. Countries in Europe publish (incomplete) data every week and then update the numbers later on.
That said, Rosstat's data is perfectly sufficient for assessing general trends, identifying where the coronavirus death tolls have been manipulated, and making rough forecasts about the near future.
Who's distorting the coronavirus statistics the most?Many of Russia's regions have been underreporting the number of deaths from COVID-19. Meduza uncovered more than a dozen regions that were clearly not only providing made-up mortality figures to the public database Stopcoronavirus.rf, but also to classified government registries.
Judging by Rosstat's data for October, the Republic of Bashkortostan (Bashkiria) remains Russia's biggest manipulator — the region underestimated its mortality data more than 100 times over. So it's safe to say that the republic's official figures don't correspond with reality at all. According to Rosstat, Bashkortostan saw 1,601 excess deaths in October 2020 compared to October 2019. Meanwhile, official reports stated there were only nine deaths in the region that were connected to the coronavirus in some way.
Neighboring Tatarstan and several other regions are not far behind Bashkortostan in terms of the severity of the apparent manipulations. And even the number of excess deaths in Moscow, which is considered one of the most honest regions in terms of coronavirus statistics, has exceeded the number of COVID-19 deaths reported on the Stopcoronavirus.rf database more than two-fold.
On average, during various months, the data on excess deaths across Russia exceeded the number indicated in the operational reports on the website Stopcoronavirus.rf four to seven times over (in October there was a 6.5-fold difference).
The methodology for determining post-mortem diagnoses plays a big role here. In the spring, the federal center decided that all deaths among COVID-19 patients should be carefully investigated. As such, the final cause of death is only declared after an autopsy aimed at establishing the links between the deceased's primary condition (for example, the coronavirus infection), complications from other diseases, and their death. Since the coronavirus often exacerbates other diseases, which can ultimately lead to a patient dying from these complications, COVID-19 may not be considered the main cause of death. According to the Russian Health Ministry's guidelines, pathologists are expected to put down the most severe (and most resource-demanding) illness as the original cause of death.
As Meduza uncovered this summer, the broad interpretation of such rules has allowed chief physicians at hospitals in a number of regions — often not of their own free will, but rather at the behest of the local authorities — to manipulate the COVID-19 statistics by attributing the deaths of coronavirus patients to other causes.
Cases where COVID-19 is considered the original cause of death.Cases where COVID-19 was not the main but rather the "other cause of death" and was "essential in the development of an underlying disease and its fatal complications." Cases where COVID-19 didn't cause any complications at all (for example if a person with stomach cancer dies after being diagnosed with a mild case of the coronavirus). Today, pathologists in Russia are required to list the coronavirus as the original cause of death or as a condition that significantly affected the course of another disease in almost all cases. But in practice, even in Moscow, a third of the deaths among coronavirus patients in October were classified as cases where the person "died from other causes" after testing positive for the coronavirus (maintaining that the latter diagnosis did not significantly impact the course of the primary disease).
That said, in many regions, such as Bashkortostan, it seems as though those who have died from the coronavirus aren't being classified in any of the above groups at all.
How many people have died in Russia during the pandemic? And how many have been infected with COVID-19?The number of excess deaths in Russia until the end of October was 164,057 people. In all likelihood, this figure is close to the actual death toll from COVID-19.
In October, there were 47,777 excess deaths in Russia. The combined total for September and October is 79,443, which isn't much less than all of the previous months of the pandemic put together — the country saw 84,614 excess deaths from April to August.
According to Stopcoronavirus.rf, the official mortality rate in November was 66 percent higher than in October. The number of excess deaths will likely be higher too. As such, one can presume that a significantly larger number of people died from the coronavirus in Russia this fall than during the spring and summer.
Based on the excess mortality rate, one can roughly the actual number of people who have been infected with COVID-19 in Russia since the start of the pandemic. It turns out that as of the end of October, more than 24 million Russians, or about 16 percent of the population, had "come in contact" with the virus.
If Russia were to maintain the same monthly excess death rate as in October, by the end of the year 26 percent of the country's coronavirus patients will have recovered. However, it's worth noting that the mortality rates in November and December are likely to be higher. Most of Russia's regions are just approaching the peak of the infection; in Moscow, which remains the epicenter of the epidemic, the number of cases is likely to remain about the same; no longer increasing, but not decreasing as of yet.
How does Russia compare with other countries? Is it on the brink of a crisis?Russia has already been ranked among the top-five countries in the world with the most coronavirus victims. But it's hard to say where exactly Russia should fall on this list — the number of deaths from COVID-19 is being underestimated around the world, and data on excess mortality, as in Russia, is collected with delays. In all likelihood, the only countries with death tolls higher than Russia's are the United States, Brazil, Mexico, and possibly India.
However, Russia isn't being threatened with a demographic crisis comparable to that of the 1990s and the early 2000s as of yet. Even if the number of deaths in November and December is two-thirds higher than in October, the country's total death toll for the year will be a little more than 2.1 million people. That's 300,000 more than in 2019, but still less than the worst year of the demographic crisis — 2003, when 2.365 million people died.
On the other hand, the population decline will be very significant: Russia's birth rate hasn't compensated for mortality since 2016. And, judging by Rosstat's data, it has continued to decline in 2020 — down 57,000 from January to October compared to the same period in 2019.
The decline is approaching the scale of the crisis seen at the turn of the twenty-first century: if October's trends persist, it will exceed 680,000 people — or 2.1 million deaths per 1.41 million births. For comparison, the worst decline Russia has seen since the collapse of the USSR was 958,000 in 2000; in 2019, it was minus 317,000. However, there may be some "compensation" at the end of the epidemic — mortality rates may decrease slightly due to the number of people who were already seriously ill but died prematurely from the coronavirus in 2020.
Demographic statistics aside, however, the situation facing individual families is much more tragic. Indeed, mainly elderly people with serious underlying conditions die from COVID-19. However, as research from Harvard Medical School has shown, if it weren't for the coronavirus, those who died in the United States would have lived another 13 years on average. There are no comparable statistics for Russia as of yet. |
17 | St. Petersburg deputies call on Russian FSB to investigate operatives implicated in Navalny poisoning | "2020-12-16T14:21:54" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/news/2020/12/16/st-petersburg-deputies-call-on-russian-fsb-to-investigate-operatives-implicated-in-navalny-poisoning | Three deputies from St. Petersburg's legislative assembly have sent an appeal to Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Alexander Bortnikov, demanding that his office look into the information outlined in a recent journalistic investigation about the of opposition figure Alexey Navalny.
The statement was signed by St. Petersburg deputies Maxim Reznik, Mikhail Amosov, and Boris Vishnevsky. As Vishnevsky wrote on Facebook, deputies from Moscow, Pskov, Karelia, and other Russian regions will also be sending similar appeals to the FSB.
The deputies are demanding the launch of a criminal case under article 277 of the Criminal Code ("encroachment on the life of a statesman or public figure") against the operatives from the special FSB sub-unit implicated in Navalny's poisoning.
"What's the point of reporting a possible crime by FSB officers to the FSB?" — they ask me...Yes, we aren't very naive people. And we understand how meager the chance of the opening of a criminal case is...And nevertheless, we are addressing the FSB...They will have to answer us — about whether an inquiry was carried out, whether the people mentioned in the investigation were questioned, and whether they really are FSB officers, whether they really performed all of the actions that were written about.
On December 14, Bellingcat, The Insider, CNN, and Der Spiegel published an investigation implicating a special FSB sub-unit in poisoning Alexey Navalny with a Novichok-type nerve agent, after following him for several years. Navalny himself concluded that such an operation couldn't have been carried out without the approval of FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov and Russian President Vladimir Putin. |
18 | Russia’s foreign minister dismisses investigation implicating FSB in Navalny poisoning | "2020-12-16T14:01:01" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/news/2020/12/16/russia-s-foreign-minister-dismisses-investigation-implicating-fsb-in-navalny-poisoning | Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has dismissed a recent investigative report connecting the of opposition figure Alexey Navalny to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). Lavrov commented on the investigation during a press conference in Zagreb on Wednesday, December 16, which was reported on by Interfax.
All this news is amusing to read, but the manner in which it is presented says only one thing: that our Western partners don't have any ethical standards and lack any skills of normal diplomatic work and are unwilling to comply with international legal norms when it comes to establishing facts.
According to the foreign minister, Moscow is "already accustomed" to Western countries "announcing accusations against Russia in the media, be it hackers, or be it some kind of sensation about the double and even triple poisoning of Navalny." "It turned out that the first time his wife was poisoned," Lavrov noted.
And the logic is this: they say, we announced for example, new facts that were discovered by the German special services about Navalny's poisoning, but Moscow has been silent for two days already. If Russia is silent, it means she's guilty. In my opinion, the flaw in this approach is obvious to any sane person.
On December 14, Bellingcat, The Insider, CNN, and Der Spiegel published an investigation implicating a special FSB sub-unit in poisoning Alexey Navalny with a Novichok-type nerve agent, after following him for several years. Navalny himself concluded that such an operation couldn't have been carried out without the approval of FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The investigation also says that about two months before Navalny's poisoning in Tomsk, this same group of FSB operatives attempted to poison him in Kaliningrad, causing his wife Yulia to fall mysteriously ill.
Navalny released a video about the investigation on his YouTube channel, which gained more than six million views within the first day. The Kremlin has yet to comment on the investigation: Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov cancelled his daily press briefings on December 15 and 16. |
19 | As if none of it ever happened. The story of Alexander Vasilevich, a Belarusian businessman and gallery owner who became an enemy of the state before Lukashenko visited him in a KGB jail | "2020-12-15T16:33:06" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/12/15/as-if-none-of-it-ever-happened | It's been four months since mass protests against President Alexander Lukashenko (Alyaksandr Lukashenka) started in Belarus. Police have arrested thousands and judges have convicted hundreds. People across different professions, including journalists and entrepreneurs, now have personal experience with political repression. Alexander Vasilevich (Aliaksandr Vasilevich), a gallerist, co-owner of an advertising agency, and co-founder of the digital newspaper "The Village Belarus," is one of the businessmen targeted by the authorities. In a special report for Meduza, journalist Alexey Shumkin tells Vasilevich's story.
On October 10, Alexander Lukashenko visited a KGB pre-trial detention center in Minsk, where he met with a dozen of his biggest political opponents (most of whom are now recognized internationally as political prisoners), including Viktor Babariko (Viktar Babarika) and Sergey Tikhanovsky (Siarhei Tsikhanousky), who had hoped to run against him in this year's Belarusian presidential election. Additionally, Lukashenko spoke to Opposition Coordinating Council members Liliya Vlasova and Maxim Znak.
At the unusual meeting, the president discussed potential constitutional reforms in Belarus. Since the beginning of the protests, he's regularly mentioned these hypothetical reforms, promising that he will no longer be the head of Belarus under the new Constitution. "I'm not making any laws for myself. I won't be your president under the new Constitution. So, calm down and take it easy," he reasoned. Lukashenko promised that amendments to the current Constitution would be prepared within two years and adopted through a referendum.
After the four-and-a-half-hour conversation, the jailed oppositionists were permitted to use a sauna, and Tikhanovsky was allowed to telephone his wife, the opposition's leader whose supporters say won this summer's election before she was forced to flee the country.
Lukashenko's representatives argued that the meeting was necessary in order to "hear everyone's voices," but many political observers viewed it as evidence of the government's weak position in the face of the protests. The very next day, the skeptics' opinion was reinforced with the release of two prisoners invited to the gathering: director of the IT-company "PandaDoc" Dmitry Rabtsevich and businessman Yury Voskresensky (who belonged to Viktor Babariko's initiative group).
According to Voskresensky, none of the detainees knew that Lukashenko was visiting the jail. "They come to your cell and say, ‘Voskresensky, investigative questioning.' And you go… We were standing and looking at each other, wondering why they gathered us together, maybe for some kind of collective interview. And then the president walks in," he recounts.
Voskresensky notes that all participants in the conversation expressed their proposals for a new Constitution, but many political prisoners were "speaking emotionally" and kept getting into altercations with Lukashenko.
Alexander Vasilevich, a well-known media manager and gallery owner, was among the arrested opposition activists present at the meeting. In footage from the event, he's the one wearing a red sweater. He is still behind bars today.
Eliminating the DisloyalThe meeting at Minsk's KGB jail failed to reach a breakthrough. The very next day, on October 11, security forces used stun grenades and water cannons against demonstrators during another Sunday march through the capital.
The situation did not improve over the next two months, either. The Belarusian economy continues to struggle, as well, thanks in part to efforts by protesters like boycotts on state-manufactured goods. The nation's GDP has dropped by 1.3 percent compared to 2019, and external debt rose by $1 billion since the beginning of the year to a total of $18.1 billion.
"The Belarusian economy is in stagnation. The sources of growth on which Belarus used to rely have run out. The country needs economic reforms today," argues economist Sergey Guriev.
Instead of pursuing reforms, the state has decided to pressure "disloyal" businesses. In early August, Mikita Mikado, the founder and director of the IT-company PandaDoc, offered financial assistance to those security officers who were willing to side with the protesters. On September 2, police raided the company's office and arrested four employees, including the company's manager, Viktor Kuvshinov, who remains in custody on fraud charges.
"They arrested Viktor to punish me for helping security officers who lost their jobs after refusing to carry out criminal orders. When they started beating and killing people in my home country of Belarus, I decided to offer an alternative. Viktor had nothing to do with my initiative. Yet, the repressive machine decided that he was guilty simply because he worked for my company," explains Mikado, who lives in the United States.
Given the political instability, many companies have followed this example and moved their assets to neighboring countries. According to Sergey Povalishev, the head of the domain registration service "Hoster.by," Belarus' IT sector "is losing five years' worth of progress." Back in August, the average domain-registration rate fell by 3.5 times. "I don't remember seeing such statistics in all the years I've worked in this field," he says.
Many software engineers, startup creators, and entrepreneurs left the country on their own accord. In late October, Alexey Begun, the head of Belarus's Citizenship and Migration Department, said that roughly 10,000 Belarusians had left for Poland, nearly 3,000 had gone to Ukraine, and around 500 had moved to Lithuania and Latvia since the beginning of autumn.
"These unreasonable inspections and equally absurd fines for minor infractions killed us. We don't have the strength or the money to stand up to these ‘closure orders,'" explains Nellie Troinich, the director and co-founder of the Lokma Cafe.
Vasilevich himself had no political ambitions, but he did communicate with Viktor and Eduard Babariko and was friends with Maria Kolesnikova and Maxim Znak. He also volunteered at Babariko's election headquarters.
"He liked Babariko, we all liked him. Babariko wanted to be the new normal president with a democratic and humane vision of the state. We stood up for the truth and the belief that a brighter future is possible," Kyky and The Village Belarus director Sasha Romanova told Meduza.
Police first arrested Alexander on July 28 in front of the KGB building where he had brought a petition to free Viktor Babariko from jail. Vasilevich came with Yevgenia Sugak, the editor-in-chief of The Village Belarus. Sugak says Vasilevich hoped that Babariko would be released under house arrest.
A man in civilian clothes met them inside the KGB building. He asked them to go to a room, where six men in balaclavas took Vasilevich and Sugak's possessions, searched them, and then brought them to a police van waiting in the courtyard.
"No one would explain why we were being detained. Some 40 minutes later, we were taken to the police department. They took our fingerprints, photographed our tattoos, and questioned us on camera," says Sugak.
In about three hours, Sugak was released, probably because of her official media editor-in-chief status, while Vasilevich remained at the police department. Later, he was charged under Article 23.34 of the Belarusian Administrative Code for violating the order of organization or conduct of mass events. The charges were based on the statement of a riot police officer who said that Vasilevich "participated in a rally in front of the KGB building" and shouted "Freedom to Babariko!" In her conversation with Meduza, Sugak stressed that this was false as there had been no rally at all. Still, Vasilevich was jailed for 14 days.
The businessman was released in mid-August before he was arrested again, days later. This time, the police raided his apartment and his companies' offices. According to Sergey Vorozhun, a co-owner of Vondel/Hepta, officials also seized accounting records and interrogated staff at "Red Graphic," which Vasilevich's wife Nadzeya Zeliankova manages.
Alexander Vasilevich and his pregnant wife were brought in for questioning. Nadezhda was later released, but her husband remains in custody.
Sergey Vorozhun told Meduza that an inspector called him shortly afterward, announcing that a criminal case had been opened against him and Vasilevich, focusing on their alleged "foreign payments." Vorozhun then surrendered all his files to investigators, believing it would resolve the matter and get Vasilevich out of jail. "However, when we saw Sasha at a meeting in the KGB jail with Lukashenko, it became clear that he was being held there for political reasons," says the businessman. Vasilevich's partner remains free — he's long resided in Tallinn, Estonia.
According to Vorozhun, Vasilevich now faces charges of tax evasion and up to seven years in prison. On September 8, Belarusian human rights activists from the center "Viasna" declared Vasilevich a political prisoner.
In September, Alexander's wife (now seven months pregnant) became a suspect in the same criminal case. It's still unknown what charges (if any) she might face.
The investigation is ongoing: Alexander Vasilevich is being held in the Minsk pre-trial detention center No. 1 on Volodarskogo Street. His wife says the businessman is kept in a 12-person cell, letters arrive with long delays or sometimes not at all, and he's not permitted to receive any books. It's always cold inside the cell and the inmates have to sleep fully dressed.
"Years of work and investments — lost"About a month ago, Alexander Vasilevich and Nadezhda Zelenkova officially withdrew from the founders' group but retained the rights to the "Galereya Ў" and "Ў bar" trademarks. Sasha Romanova says the project is closed "until better days." A new venue called "Vershy" — a project handled by Valentin Losev, Vasilevich's former partner — will replace the gallery.
"Such projects need constant support and nourishment. Neither I nor Sasha can provide it now. Years of work and investments that were put into the gallery are just lost. It's as if none of it ever happened. Of course, this hurts, but it is what it is. I've lived through it and I cried it out," says Nadezhda Zelenkova.
Without any explanation, government censors started blocking The Village Belarus, co-founded by Vasilevich, on August 12. "All our requests to the official agencies have gone unanswered. Despite this, we have not cut the volume of articles, although traffic has been significantly reduced, due to the restrictions. In Belarus, you can only access our website via VPN. Before we had about 1.5 million unique users, now we have 800,000," editor-in-chief Yevgenia Sugak told Meduza.
Sasha Romanova, the director of Kyky and The Village Belarus, told Meduza that the company decided to move its key employees abroad. However, some personnel are still in Minsk. On September 1, the Belarusian authorities also blocked the bank accounts of "Mint Media," which publishes Kyky and The Village Belarus. The company can now only receive funds through special requests to the authorities. As Romanova notes, however, these amounts are insignificant. Meanwhile, the newspaper's advertising revenue has plummeted almost 10-fold since the election.
The company is now registering an office in the European Union and hopes to have it ready by 2021. "All these difficulties are temporary, and I am sure that we will be able to endure and keep the outlet, at least until our teams are safe," Romanova emphasized.
Belarusian officials also seized Vondel/Hepta accounts on the grounds that Vasilevich is one of the ad agency's co-owners. Some of its funds remain inaccessible to this day.
"In the advertising business, people are the most important resource, and the head of an advertising agency is both an advertising guru and a rock star. Our work depends heavily on Sasha's authority and charisma. After he was arrested, I was worried that our clients might be wary of the situation, but we actually received tremendous moral support from everyone: our clients, our colleagues in the industry, and of course our employees who selflessly continued to work with no salary guarantees," Sergey Vorozhun told Meduza.
On November 25, the court extended Alexander Vasilevich's arrest for another month, without any official comment on his case from the authorities.
Nadezhda Zelenkova told Meduza that the businessman's lawyers are trying to challenge his arrest, and Vasilevich's colleagues are attempting to explain to the prosecution how his business operated, providing additional documents to rule out any suspicion of tax evasion.
"It's rhetorical to ask why someone charged with an economic crime ought to be jailed for four months. I think no one knows how to deal with politically driven (allegedly economic) criminal cases while the country's legal system is failing completely. Quite simply: Sasha is being held hostage," says the businessman's wife.
On December 2, Nadezhda gave birth to a baby girl named Urszula. That same day, Viktor Babarika's headquarters launched a new initiative called "Politzekme," created to raise awareness about political prisoners in Belarus. The website allows visitors to "become friends" with one of the country's 147 political prisoners, for example, by writing letters to them in jail. Alexander Vasilevich is one of these 147 people. |
20 | Putin’s cousin establishes another anti-corruption political party | "2020-12-15T16:24:48" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/news/2020/12/15/putin-s-cousin-establishes-another-anti-corruption-political-party | Roman Putin, the cousin of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has created a new political party called "Russia Without Corruption," reports RIA Novosti.
The party was founded at a congress held in Moscow on Tuesday, December 15. RIA Novosti's source close to the party says that "Russia Without Corruption" plans to run in the 2021 State Duma elections.
Roman Putin was previously the chairman of the political party "People Against Corruption," which the Russian Supreme Court dissolved in November 2020 following a claim filed by the Justice Ministry. Before that, the Central Election Commission named "People Against Corruption" among a list of four parties at risk of being dissolved due to failure to compete in any elections seven years in a row.
Roman Putin is the son of the president's cousin, Igor Putin, meaning he is technically Vladimir Putin's first cousin once removed. Roman has previously worked in the Federal Security Service (FSB) and was a volunteer adviser to the governor of Novosibirsk. He owns several oil and shipping companies and has headed the "Taekwondo Federation of Russia" trust foundation since 2013. |
21 | ‘This is a real terrorist act’. Navalny’s latest interview with ‘Ekho Moskvy’ about who poisoned him, in brief | "2020-12-15T16:11:09" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/12/15/this-is-a-real-terrorist-act | Yesterday, Bellingcat and The Insider, in cooperation with Der Spiegel and CNN, released a joint investigation revealing that a secret sub-unit of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) were responsible for poisoning opposition figure in August. While Russian state media and officials have had little to say about the report, Navalny himself has spoken out. Here's what he said during a radio interview with Ekho Moskvy, in a nutshell.
I have no doubt that Vladimir Putin was in charge of the poisoning. We are seeing an operation involving dozens of people and several generals. FSB chemists and doctors, who are in communication with the producers of "Novichok," followed me for four years. This is a real terrorist act, FSB director Alexander Bortnikov wouldn't have done this without Putin's order. They didn't want to scare me, they wanted to kill me, they simply didn't calculate the right dosage. Because it's impossible to do this outside of a laboratory, it's Russian roulette — there's always a danger in putting more, then the person dies on the spot and others may suffer. I have an idea of where I was poisoned but so far the investigation continues. One theory is a cocktail at a bar. The FSB's murder department is much bigger than this group that followed me — the weren't poisoned by another group, these were different structures. We aren't assuming — we know that the FSB is behind this, because we know how the FSB works. And we know that Putin operationally manages the FSB. I will still return to Russia. When this will happen depends not on me, but on the doctors.
You can listen to Alexey Navalny's full interview with "Ekho Moskvy" in Russian here. |
22 | What investigation? Russian state media remains silent following report linking Navalny’s poisoning to the FSB | "2020-12-15T15:23:25" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/12/15/what-investigation | A day has passed since Bellingcat and The Insider released a joint investigation, in cooperation with Der Spiegel and CNN, implicating the Russian FSB in the near-lethal poisoning of opposition figure Alexey Navalny in Tomsk this summer. The story has been making headlines around the world ever since it came out — here's what Russian state media and officials have had to say on the topic, in as much detail as possible.
TASS: Nothing.
RIA Novosti: One article about the fact that in an interview with Ekho Moskvy, Navalny said that he plans to return to Russia (the article contains no mention of the investigation).
One article about the fact that in an interview with Ekho Moskvy, Navalny said that he would appeal to Russia's law enforcement agencies "in connection with the publications in the media about the new circumstances surrounding his poisoning" (this article contained a brief mention of the investigation, "which claims that several FSB officers were involved in the poisoning").
Perviy Kanal: Nothing.
Rossiya 1: Nothing.
NTV: Nothing.
The Kremlin: Nothing. In fact, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has cancelled his daily press briefings with journalists for the next two days (ostensibly due to the fact that Putin is set to hold his annual press conference on Thursday, December 17).
Is it possible that Russian state media isn't reporting on the article because no one is interested? That's unlikely. On his YouTube channel, Alexey Navalny released a video about the investigation titled "Case solved. I know everyone who tried to kill me" — it gained more than six million views in 24 hours. Leading international media outlets have also reported on the investigation, including the BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, El Pais, South China Morning Post, Anadolu, Deutsche Welle, and many others.You can read Meduza's summary of the investigation here. |
23 | Russian lawmaker proposes imprisonment for defamation committed online | "2020-12-15T14:47:55" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/news/2020/12/15/russian-lawmaker-proposes-imprisonment-for-defamation-committed-online | Russian lawmaker Dmitry Vyatkin, from the ruling party United Russia, has submitted a bill to the State Duma proposing up to two years in prison for those convicted of spreading libel online.
Vyatkin proposed adding this provision to the second part of article 128.1 of Russia's Criminal Code, which outlines liability for slander that appears in public speech, a publicly displayed piece of work, or in mass media. Currently, this is punishable by a fine of up to one million rubles ($13,590) or 240 hours of community service.
The State Duma deputy also proposed punishment of up to two years in prison for libel committed "against several persons, including individually undefined ones" (what this means was not specified).
In addition, Vyatkin suggested expanding the types of punishments outlined in the other qualifying paragraphs of the article on slander. He proposed adding imprisonment, forced labor, and arrest as possible punishments, in addition to the fines and community service already contained therein.
According to the draft law, the maximum punishment under the article on slander would be five years in prison for "libel combined with accusations against the individual of committing offenses against the sexual inviolability and sexual freedom of a person, or of a grave or especially grave crime." The current version of the article on slander contains no mention of sexual offences. |
24 | ‘They found a foot and a bottle of vodka’. Life in Russia’s southern Kamchatka, where there’s one increasingly hungry bear for every two people | "2020-12-15T14:46:41" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/12/15/they-found-a-foot-and-a-bottle-of-vodka | The number of wandering bears rivals the human population in Ozernovsky, a town in southern Kamchatka. Meduza correspondent Irina Kravtsova visited the remote area to learn how locals manage to live alongside animals that can turn deadly when driven from their usual food sources, which are rapidly disappearing, thanks to overfishing.
In the summer of 2019, forty-two-year-old Sergei Vorovyov's wife was craving jam, so he went to his garden on the outskirts of the village of Ozernovsky to get some berries. "I get out of the car, look up, and there he is, fucking Winnie the Pooh! Sitting in the middle of my garden, chowing down on strawberries," Sergey told Meduza.
Located at the southern tip of Kamchatka, Ozernovsky has a population of 1,560 people. It is the largest village in the so-called Ozernovsky Bush, which also includes Zaporozhye (population 549), Pauzhetka (78 people), and Shumniy (just 23 residents).
Out here, there are almost as many bears as people. The Ozernovsky Bush borders the South Kamchatka Federal Sanctuary, where the brown-bear population is estimated to be roughly 1,000. This is a record-level population density for Kamchatka, where the overall bear population is more than 24,000.
"He would have crushed Vasya, dragged him away, and buried him"In the summer of 2014, Vasily Tretyakov was walking home from his garden when he found himself face-to-face with a bear. "He stared at me, I stared at him. Then he got on his hind legs and lunged at me," Tretyakov says.
At that moment, Vasily admits, his legs took over, and he ran. The bear overtook him in two jumps, caught him by the buttocks with its teeth, pulled him down, and pinned him to the ground with its paw.
Luckily, Tretyakov's neighbor Zhora Zhidomorov happened to be passing by. Zhidomorov drove his Jeep right into the animal, hitting him with the bumper. After being hit three times, the bear finally released Tretyakov. Zhidomorov put Tretyakov in the Jeep and brought him to the hospital.
The last thing Tretyakov remembered when he woke up was "being eaten by a bear." At first, he decided that he must be dead, but then he thought, "How can I be dead if I'm thirsty?" He stayed in the hospital for a month, then spent another month at home on sick leave. He's since given up gardening.
Many people in Zaporozhye live in private homes with gardens. Along the roads, meadowsweet and hogweed grow as tall as people. When drivers see pedestrians, they insist that walking is too dangerous, and offer to give them a lift.
Whenever locals do go on foot, they try to travel in groups of three or four, staying in the middle of the road and talking loudly. They say bears have bad eyesight but excellent hearing; if the animal expects to encounter "something big," it tries to avoid it.
The bears' presence doesn't bother Nadezhda Martinyuk as much as their bad behavior does. "Some of them come, carefully take the ripe strawberries from the bushes, and leave. Others come all sloppily, uproot the bushes, and make a mess for nothing!" she complained.
Usually, the dog Fifa starts barking to notify the Martinyuks when there's a bear nearby. Nadezhda sits by the window to look, and her son Mikhail goes out onto the porch. Sometimes he takes videos of the animals and puts them on Instagram. He doesn't try to scare them off. "This is their home, and we're guests," he says.
"Oh, Misha's here!" called Martinyuk, cutting off his conversation with Meduza's correspondent. There was a crackling sound in the thicket opposite the house, and the bear's head appeared. Then he ran towards the river. About five minutes later, shots rang out.
"He's as big as a bulldozer"In August 2019, a repairman from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky came to Ozernovsky to fix the ventilation system at Fish Cannery No. 55. After finishing the job, he decided to go for a stroll along the shore. The next morning, local factory workers found a skeleton, a foot, and a bottle of vodka scattered in the sand.
Wildlife specialists ended up shooting four bears on the beach. One of the bears had human flesh and bits of clothing in his stomach, and another one smelled strongly of vodka. "A bear that's tasted human flesh is considered spoiled," said Kosolapov, explaining why they shot them. Once a bear learns that humans are easy prey, it's bound to kill more, he explained.
In the 1990s, salmon poaching skyrocketed. Like everywhere in Russia at the time, salaries were often not paid for month-long periods, and local diets often included caviar and salmon, but not oil or cereal. Since there wasn't any money to buy grain, people fed salmon to chicken and pigs.
Fifty-eight-year-old Pauzhetka resident Gennady Chumichev worked in those days as an ATV driver for a geothermal power plant. He didn't receive a paycheck for four years. Like many others, he started poaching, "not to pamper myself, but to survive." He set a net on the Ozernaya and traded his bags of salmon for bags of sugar or flour.
Chumichev shot the bear, injuring his paw. What followed is best described in Chumichev's own words.
Death should be met head-on — not ass-firstHe did a number on me, of course — what a mind he's got! I released two more bullets on him, they went right past him. I got up onto a branch, reloaded my gun, and he's coming at me, head-on — there's no way to shoot him in the head. I dropped my gun and ran. But what's the use of running? Death should be met head-on — not ass-first.
I turn around, and he's coming at me. And he's healthy, his muscles are working. I run around his stomach, spin around — he can't catch me, and I keep running. And suddenly he lifts me up by the arm and throws me to the ground with all his might. I fell down, and out of fear, my soul separated from my body and flew up there. He points at the sky. I look down at my body like it's someone else's, and I see in slow motion how he grabs me by the leg and starts shaking me from side to side, like I weigh nothing. He starts dragging me around, and I look down and don't even feel any pain.
At that moment, I saw the image of my wife, Nadyusha, up above. Note: Chumichev's wife is still alive. She's saying to me, "Gena, you're leaving us." I really didn't want to go back. I experienced heaven in that moment. That's when I realized: we're all living in a fuss, trying to prove something, just doing nonsense. And there, where I was, was bliss: no pain, no fear, no vanity — time was stopped. But when I heard my wife's words, I remembered that I was supposed to take my son to first grade in September, and I had dreamed so much about that day. So I went back to my body.
At that very moment, the bear stopped tearing at me. And I had such energy, I felt that God himself had decided to protect me. I got up, stormed toward him, waving my hands, and cried, "Get out of here, you dumb thing!" I just didn't give a fuck! But the bear was actually in pain, I had shot it, and it was bleeding. I yelled at him, and he stood there, too, roaring and looking at me. Then he looked at the tundra, looked at me one last time, and left.
"I started to understand that when you hunt, you're taking away someone's energy. There's no love. You're basically getting rich financially, but your soul is deteriorating," said Chumichev. One evening, he collected all of his furs, took them out into the yard, soaked them in gasoline, and burned them. Since then, he's sworn off hunting — now he grows cucumbers and tomatoes in a greenhouse that looks out onto Kambalny volcano.
Right outside of Chumichev's house is a pile of bear feces. But Chumichev doesn't take a gun or a hand flare with him anymore — he says he's no longer afraid.
But the bears are still numerous. In 2020, according to local wildlife specialists, as many as eight bears visit Ozernovsky and Zaporozhye on a daily basis.
How big are Kamchatka's bears? Try Meduza's Instagram filter. If you're reading this on a smartphone, follow this link (the Instagram app must be installed). If you're on a computer, use your camera to scan the QR code below."Bears need their fish rations, too"When 39-year-old Ekaterina Bersinsh was a kid, she usually managed to see bears only from far away, when they first woke up in springtime. "You would look, and wa-a-ay out there on a snowy hill, you'd see a black dot moving. Then you'd think, thank God, I saw a bear this year, my life was made," she says.
But around the end of the 2000s, bears started appearing in town late in the evening and early in the morning. And then in broad daylight: they climb into gardens and landfills without paying humans any attention. Most locals blame the fishermen, who overfish the rivers and leave the bears hungry.
In 2020, the bears even visited Kamchatka's larger cities, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and neighboring Yelizovo. In September, first responders, wildlife specialists, and policemen spent several weeks trying to catch an "uncatchable bear," who came into Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and approached a city administration building. The bear didn't attack anybody — it just raided the garbage for food.
A few years ago, when a storm brought in more salmon than usual, "the bears quickly satisfied their hunger, realized the fish weren't going anywhere and became patient and friendly with one another. The adults, not to mention the cubs, started playing with each other. Cannibalism was very rare," said Varavskaya.
But the competition for fish has increased in recent years. In Soviet times, two facilities were responsible for fishing and fish processing. Now there are nine factories of various sizes operating in the area: four in Ozernovsky and five in Zaporozhye.
Kirill Volkov, the executive director of Canning Plant No. 55, told Meduza that there are "more than enough" fish in the rivers, and that bears have started coming into town because there are so many of them. Allegedly, poachers used to kill more of them, but then "the Reserve put things in order," cracking down on poaching.
This view has other supporters as well. After the bear attacked the plumber outside the canning plant in 2019, Sergey Milov, editor-in-chief of the Kamchatka publication Rush Hour asked officials to require the Kronotsky Reserve to shoot half of the bear population (about 500 bears).
According to Sergei Kolchin, this is absurd. "Going onto a protected natural territory and shooting the animals that we've forced to starve — lightly speaking, it's not the answer," says Kolchin.
Almost none of the cubs born in 2020 are left. "The female bears are traveling alone because their cubs were eaten by hungry males." Varavskaya also confirms that tension among the bears has been growing for the last three years: the adult males are very aggressive, and fights are to be expected.
In 2019, according to official data, wildlife specialists shot 35 bears. A local wildlife specialist who requested anonymity says, however, that the real number of bears shot in 2019 was between 120 and 130, if both wildlife specialists and local residents are taken into account.
"Children freeze, waiting for it to pass"Every resident knows the rule — if you see a bear, you should notify the rapid response team of its location and any identifying features. After that, two members of the team will go out to the location. If they find the bear, they'll detonate a stun grenade nearby.
If the bear gets frightened and leaves, the specialists conclude there's no reason to kill it. "After all, it's impossible to know beforehand whether it just got lost, scared — we'll drive him back into the tundra, and he won't want to come back," Lobov explained. If the bear growls, attacks, or tries to hide, they kill it.
The Zaporozhye and Ozernovsky residents' WhatsApp chats consist of birthday wishes, holiday wishes, and conversations about bears. Disputes almost always get heated, with cursing and personal attacks. Some residents are afraid of the bears and demand for them all to be killed, and others feel bad for them and leave condensed milk and fish outside for them.
Officially, Ekaterina Berzinsh is responsible for sanitation in the fish factories, but in her spare time, "just for the soul," she takes care of injured foxes, hares, and birds that other villagers bring her. Last year, somebody brought her a one-year-old bear cub — he was so weak he could barely move his paw. They put him in a garage, and for a month Ekaterina fed him fish. After he regained some strength, he was taken back into the tundra.
"Fishing, playing PUBG, and getting drunk"Most residents of southern Kamchatka work in fish factories. On average, they earn 40,000 rubles ($550) a month, but they get bonuses during the fishing season — 250,000–400,000 rubles (roughly $4,500) altogether. At the beginning of the year, everyone awaits the ichthyologists' forecast of how many fish will come to spawn, which determines what the rest of their year will be like.
There's no fresh fish in the local stores. Kirill Volkov told Meduza that the factories don't sell fish to the locals because they won't buy them for "city" prices, and if they lower the price, the residents will resell them.
At the same time, locals are banned from catching fish in the Ozernaya, even with regular fishing poles, as part of anti-poaching efforts. This is monitored not only by the local government and the nature reserve but also by private security guards from local factories. They travel the river in a boat, threatening fishermen with fines and confiscating fishing rods. According to local teenagers, private guards are the worst of all.
Every day, local teenagers Sanya and Dima go fishing on the bridge that connects Ozernovsky and Zaporozhye. They sell fish to seasonal workers right there and advertise their fish on local WhatsApp groups. They work all year round — in winter, they use holes in the ice.
This summer, the director of Sanya's school answered one of the announcements about fish, and Sanya sold him fish for the same price as everyone else — 100-120 rubles (about $1.50) per fish, and 1,500 rubles ($20) for a kilogram of caviar, which he extracts, salts, and prepares himself.
In the fall, Sanya comes home from school, changes into camouflage, and heads out to the bridge with his dog, Dina, who alerts him when a bear is nearby. No matter the weather, Sanya and Dima spend all day fishing. Often, they build a fire to cook fish soup or bake fish while they work.
Young people in the Ozernovsky Bush do three things for entertainment: fish, play PUBG (an online shooter game), and get drunk — "like lots of our friends here," say Sanya and Dima.
In a year, Olya plans to move to St. Petersburg to study design. This has caused some "misunderstanding" between her and her parents — they think it would be better for her to stay home and get a permanent job in the factory, like they did.
"Nothing to be done"The sky above Ozernovsky and Zaporozhye is almost always overcast. It drizzles a lot, and the sun appears very rarely.
The mineral springs in Pauzhetka is the only place people can go to warm up and relax. It's only 30 kilometers (19 miles) from Ozernovsky to Pauzhetka, but it's not an easy path — it requires crossing seven bridges that are currently damaged.
Driving to the "city," on the other hand, requires taking multiple ferries and driving off-road multiple times. Many people from the Ozernovsky Bush have tried to move to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky permanently, and some have even gotten apartments there, but they've all returned in the end. |
25 | Putin congratulates Biden on winning U.S. presidential election | "2020-12-15T14:22:57" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/news/2020/12/15/putin-congratulates-biden-on-winning-u-s-presidential-election | On Tuesday, December 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a message to Joe Biden congratulating him on his victory in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections, the Kremlin reported.
In his message, Vladimir Putin wished the President-elect every success and expressed confidence that Russia and the United States, which bear special responsibility for global security and stability, can, despite their differences, effectively contribute to solving many problems and meeting challenges that the world is facing today.
The U.S. presidential election took place on November 3. Three days later, the largest media outlets in the United States, which were tracking their own counts of the vote, announced Joe Biden's victory. His rival, incumbent President Donal Trump, did not recognize the election results and began challenging them in courts.
Many world leaders congratulated Biden on his victory in the elections right away, however the Kremlin refrained from doing so until the official results were released.
On December 15, the Electoral College officially confirmed Biden's victory: he gained 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232. These votes will be tallied at a joint meeting of the Senate and the House of Representatives on January 6, 2021. The president-elect's inauguration will take place on January 20. |
26 | Minimum 30 percent. The Russian authorities have set a coronavirus vaccination target, but will they have enough doses? | "2020-12-15T13:44:47" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/12/15/minimum-30-percent | Russia began a large-scale vaccination campaign on Monday, December 7. In Moscow and the Moscow region, the roll out happened two days earlier, on December 5. So far, the results look modest: Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin reported that 6,000 people had been immunized in the capital as of December 10, whereas the regions are, at best, reporting that they have received doses of the "Sputnik V" vaccine. At the same time, the authorities are calling on the regions to vaccinate at least 30 percent of the population by the end of the first half of 2021, government sources tell Meduza. And it has been made clear that 60 percent vaccination would be "optimal." That said, whether or not Russian manufacturers are up to the task of producing the millions of required doses of Sputnik V remains to be seen.
How many people are going to be vaccinated?Six days after the vaccination campaign began in Moscow, only 6,000 people had been immunized against COVID-19, while an additional 20,000 had signed up for the shot via an online service, reported Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin during a broadcast on the state television channel Rossiya 24.
Immunizations began in Moscow on Saturday, December 5, whereas the Sputnik V vaccine only began arriving in the regions last week — some regions only got their doses closer to the weekend. For example, more than 2,000 doses were delivered to St. Petersburg over the course of last week and the city is set to receive several thousand more before the end of the year. Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, and Tatarstan received a thousand doses each. While Kaliningrad received around 900 doses, the first batch sent to Veliky Novgorod contained just 200, sources from the governments in these regions told Meduza.
Going forward, the vaccine is set to be delivered once or twice a week in increasing volumes, one of Meduza's sources explained. The company Immunotechnology — a subsidiary of Sberbank — is responsible for supplying the vaccines to Russia's regions.
A source in a regional government told Meduza that the federal center is distributing the vaccine according to certain quotas. But how the exact number of doses sent to each region is determined remains unclear. "The principle of distribution isn't clear — probably, it's in proportion to the population, or perhaps based on the severity of the situation," another Meduza source in one of the regional governments speculated.
Meduza's source from the federal headquarters for the fight against the coronavirus said that the calculations took into account the number of doctors and teachers in each region. At the same time, only people between the ages of 18 and 60 are being vaccinated across the country (research on the use of Sputnik V among the elderly is still ongoing).
In response to Meduza's request for comment, the Health Ministry was unable to explain how exactly they are distributing doses of the vaccine. How many doses Moscow received in total also remains unknown — the capital's health department didn't respond to our request for comment either.
That said, it's in the interests of the regions to use everything the federal center has allocated to them as quickly as possible — otherwise, they'll receive fewer doses of the vaccine the next time, explained Meduza's source from one of the regional governments.
What's more, the federal center has already set targets for the regions: they are expected to vaccinate 30 percent of the population against COVID-19 by the end of the first half of 2021 — 60 percent would be optimal, two sources from the Kaliningrad and Novgorod regional governments told Meduza.
"During the video conference there were two figures — 30 percent of the population should be vaccinated minimum, ideally it's 60 percent. We're also vaccinating 60 percent of the population against the flu yearly, so that there's no flu in the region," one of Meduza's sources said.
How quickly Russia's regions could possibly hit this 30 percent goal is unclear, too. The regions are calmly handling getting 60 percent of their populations vaccinated against the flu within three months, but this involves a single injection, Meduza's source explained. The coronavirus vaccine, on the other hand, involves two injections within a 21-day interval, as well as fairly long protocol procedures, meaning each doctor can vaccinate no more than two people per hour. "Currently, no one understands how quickly we can process this," Meduza's source concluded.
This regional official was referring to the fact that the Russian capital effectively abandoned its own rules during the first week of its vaccination campaign. Before it began, Mayor Sergey Sobyanin specifically underscored that in the first stage, immunization would be available to teachers, doctors, and municipal social services workers.
To get vaccinated, Muscovites belonging to risk groups were advised to bring their passport and proof of a compulsory medical insurance policy, as well as a document confirming their place of work.
However, Meduza uncovered that in Moscow and the Moscow region healthcare workers are often vaccinating whoever comes along. For example, a clinic in Khimki told Meduza's correspondent that anyone can register for Sputnik V.
There's also another incentive for distributing the drug — it comes in bundles of five doses, which can be stored for no more than two hours after opening. Therefore, healthcare workers are inclined to vaccinate five people at the same time — whoever they may be — rather than throw doses away.
And that's not to mention the fact that Moscow is also focused on vaccinating as many people as possible against COVID-19. As Sobyanin said himself, the Russian capital needs to immunize six to seven million people to achieve herd immunity. Meduza's source close to the headquarters for the fight against the coronavirus explained that since doctors and teachers in the capital are reluctant to get the vaccine, city hall is set to expand the list of people eligible for immunization. Sobyanin has already said that as of December 14, vaccination appointments will be made available for employees of municipal services centers, as well as "cultural workers" and people working in the commercial and services sectors.
Are there enough doses of Sputnik V?According to Meduza's estimates, vaccinating 30 percent of the country (excluding everyone under the age of 18 and over the age of 60) will require more than 20 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine. The number of doses already produced is dozens of times fewer than that, and whether it will be possible for Russia to manufacture these 20 million doses is not yet clear.
As Meduza reported previously, two Russian companies are currently manufacturing Sputnik V on an industrial scale — Pharmstandard's "Generium" and AFK Sistema's "Binnopharm." They will soon be joined by the St. Petersburg-based company "Biocad," which recently announced that it will release around one million doses of Sputnik V in December.
That said, the Sputnik V vaccine is made up of two injections, which need to be administered several weeks apart. The manufacturers have already worked out the kinks when it comes to producing the first dose, but difficulties have arisen with the booster shot — since it turned out to be "more finicky," fewer of the second-stage dose were produced than the first one, explained a Meduza source from the leadership of one of the manufacturers.
In early November, The Bell reported that none of the Russian manufacturers had been able to consistently mass produce up-to-quality doses of both components of the vaccine. On December 10, Meduza's source close to one of the Russian manufacturers said that this problem still hadn't been resolved.
As Meduza reported, as of December 4, the Russian Health Ministry had approved 200,000 doses of Sputnik V for mass release (doses available for use outside of clinical trials). According to the federal healthcare watchdog, Roszdravnadzor, four more batches of the Sputnik V vaccine produced by Generium have been tested in the past week. An informed source told Meduza that there's currently a total of 300,000 doses of this vaccine (including both components) in civilian circulation.
Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin promised to send the regions an additional half a million doses of the vaccine in December. According to Meduza's estimates, this is the total number of vaccines currently being held in warehouses — around 500,000 doses (including both components). At the same time, these doses have yet to be quality tested.
In turn, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova promised to put almost seven million more doses of Sputnik V into circulation before the end of February 2021. How this will be achieved remains unclear. Generium — the leading manufacturer — said that it will produce two million doses by the end of December, and only after that begin producing "several million doses of the vaccine" per month.
However, on December 11, Sergey Sobyanin announced the launch of the "R-Farm" plant in Moscow, which is set to produce 10 million doses of the vaccine monthly. A Meduza source close to Moscow's coronavirus headquarters said that in actual fact, the plant will produce several times fewer doses.
In the event of such a shortage, people will need to be vaccinated very selectively, said an epidemiologist, who wished to remain anonymous (since October, the Russian Health Ministry has forbidden doctors from medical institutions under its jurisdiction from making comments to the press about the coronavirus without approval). First and foremost, Russia will need to vaccinate people who come in contact with many others — potential super-spreaders, who pass the virus along at an accelerated rate. Elderly people, for whom the coronavirus is especially dangerous, will also need to be vaccinated (as previously mentioned, Sputnik V's clinical trials for the over 60 age group have yet to be completed). Other countries are taking this approach to vaccination.
At the same time, on Friday December 11, Rospotrebnadzor head Anna Popova announced that the first batches of Russia's second coronavirus vaccine had entered into civilian circulation — the "EpiVacCorona" vaccine, developed by Russia's Vector Research Center. Fifty thousand doses of EpiVacCorona are set to be released by the end of the year and mass production of the vaccine is scheduled for early 2021. |
27 | The Bosnian War, in photos. ‘Meduza’ marks the 25th anniversary of the end of Europe’s bloodiest interethnic conflict since World War II | "2020-12-14T20:49:22" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/12/14/the-bosnian-war-in-photos | On December 14, 1995, the Dayton Accords were signed in Paris, officially ending the Bosnian War — the bloodiest interethnic conflict in Europe since World War II, which saw about 100,000 people killed between 1992 and 1995. To mark the 25th anniversary of the end of the conflict, Meduza shares photographs from the three-and-a-half years of fighting.
In February 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina's authorities announced an independence referendum. At this point, Slovenia and Croatia had already seceded from former socialist Yugoslavia, resulting in two other wars. The majority of (who made up almost half of the local population) and Croatians (the third largest ethno-religious community in Bosnia and Herzegovina) voted in favor of secession.
However, the Bosnian Serbs, who made up almost a third of the population, boycotted the referendum and refused to acknowledge the outcome of the vote. They announced the creation of their own independent Republika Srpska, which received support from the led by President Slobodan Milošević. This was followed by the outbreak of the war.
The fighting was particularly brutal due to the fact that Bosnian Muslims, Serbs, and Croats lived in villages located several kilometers from each other, whereas in larger towns and cities members of these different groups lived side by side. Initially, the Serbs had the advantage in terms of strength and armaments — they made up the majority of soldiers and officers in the former Yugoslav People's Army stationed in Bosnia. But the Bosnian Muslims and the Croats soon manage to restore parity between the forces.
At the beginning of the war, the Serbs besieged Bosnia and Herzegovina's capital, Sarajevo, which was defended by Bosnian Muslims. They attacked the city from the surrounding hills with artillery fire and sniper shots almost without stopping. In the three years, nearly 9,000 people died in the city, a third of whom were civilians (the Serbs' losses are estimated at about 3,000 people, with civilians also making up a third of the casualties).
Much of the hostilities consisted of indiscriminate shelling of cities and villages, as well as ethnic cleansing and genocide of civilians, which was carried out by all parties to the conflict without exception. The UN's attempts to stop the massacres by establishing "Safe Areas" under the protection of peacekeepers didn't always succeed.
In July 1995, the Serb forces took the mining town of Srebrenica — in just a few days, they killed around 8,000 local Muslims, including women and children. The UN's peacekeepers, who were responsible for maintaining Srebrenica as a "safe area," actually failed to prevent the mass shootings. Today, the Srebrenica massacre is considered the largest mass killing in Europe since World War II.
The Siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre were carried out by troops under the command of Ratko Mladić, who was sentenced to life in prison at an International Tribunal in the The Hague in 2017.
The final episode of the war was the shelling of the Markale marketplace in Sarajevo in August 1995, which resulted in the deaths of 100 people. After blaming the Bosnian Serb forces for yet another massacre, NATO began intensively bombing their positions, eventually leading them to agree to negotiations.
As a result of the Dayton Accords, Bosnia and Herzegovina became a confederation made up of two parts: Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The country's supreme authority is a three-member Presidency that includes one representative from each ethno-religious group. The Bosnian Serbs initially refused to support the agreement, which they considered unfair, and empowered Serbian President Slobodan Milošević to represent their interests. He, in turn, signed the treaty. Eleven years later, Milošević, indicted for , died in The Hague.
Many believed that the peace would be short-lived. Indeed, Bosnia and Herzegovina remains one of the least developed states in Europe, where mass unrest takes place periodically. Nevertheless, the peace has held to this day. |
28 | St. Petersburg historian facing 15 years in prison for murdering graduate student girlfriend | "2020-12-14T15:07:05" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/news/2020/12/14/st-petersburg-historian-facing-15-years-in-prison-for-murdering-graduate-student-girlfriend | The prosecution has requested 15 years in a maximum-security prison for former St. Petersburg State University professor Oleg Sokolov, who killed his former graduate student Anastasia Yeshchenko in November 2019.
State prosecutors asked that Sokolov be sentenced to 13 years behind bars for Yeshchenko's murder, along with additional time for illegal possession of a weapon.
"I admit my guilt completely and regret what I have done. It torments me. But it wasn't deliberate, it was in a state of complete insanity, which was due to terrible insults to my children that were said. Yes, I did it, but I don't know if it can be called intentional, and even more so premeditated. In my opinion — no," Sokolov said, as quoted by RIA Novosti.
In November 2019, Oleg Sokolov was pulled from St. Petersburg's Moyka River, carrying a backpack containing a woman's severed hands. He later confessed to killing his former graduate student Anastasia Yeshchenko, with whom he was romantically involved. According to Sokolov, he shot Yeshchenko four times before dismembering her body. |
29 | Trial of ex-police officers accused in Golunov case postponed | "2020-12-14T14:40:19" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/news/2020/12/14/trial-of-ex-police-officers-accused-in-golunov-case-postponed | Just minutes after the start of today's hearing in the trial of the former police officers accused of staging Meduza correspondent Ivan Golunov's last summer, the Moscow City Court decided to postpone further consideration of the case until Thursday, December 17.
The hearing was postponed because the court was unable to establish the status of defense lawyer Alexey Korvizhkin, who claimed that he had been deprived of his right to practice law on October 29, but couldn't provide any supporting documents to the court.
Korvizhkin's client, ex-policeman Igor Lyakhovets, then announced that he intends to refuse the services of a lawyer and represent himself in court.
Five former Moscow police officers stand accused in the Golunov case: Igor Lyakhovets and his former subordinates Roman Feofanov, Denis Konovalov, Maxim Umetbaev, and Akbar Sergaliev. They are facing charges of fabricating materials in a criminal case and illegal drug possession.
According to state investigators, Lyakhovets organized the crime — the prosecution maintains that he was the one who decided to plant the drugs on Golunov, in order to improve his department's clearance rates.
Konovalov, who confessed to planting drugs on Ivan Golunov and testified against Lyakhovets, was placed under house arrest. The remaining suspects are being held in pre-trial detention. Umetbaev has pleaded partially guilty of abuse of office: he confessed to beating up Golunov while he was in police custody, but denied any involvement in planting the drugs.
During a preliminary hearing on October 28, state prosecutors sought to close the trial to both the media and the public. Ivan Golunov's lawyer, Sergey Badamshin, insisted on an open-door trial. As a result, the Moscow City Court decided not to hold closed-door proceedings. |
30 | ‘Bellingcat’ joint investigation implicates FSB in Navalny poisoning | "2020-12-14T14:08:12" | meduza.io | https://meduza.io/en/news/2020/12/14/bellingcat-joint-investigation-implicates-fsb-in-navalny-poisoning | A group of operatives from a secret sub-unit of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) were responsible for the on opposition figure Alexey Navalny in Tomsk this summer, says a joint investigation from Bellingcat and The Insider, in cooperation with Der Spiegel and CNN.
By analyzing call metadata, overlapping flight records and previously leaked offline databases, we have identified at least 15 operatives who appear to work within this clandestine sub-unit of the FSB Criminalistics Institute. At least eight of these ... were in close contact at various stages of the operations to tail Navalny and in the days and hours prior to his poisoning.
The overlapping flight records revealed that members of this FSB sub-unit had flown to dozens of the same Russian cities as Navalny since 2017 — they were usually traveled in groups of two or three, purchasing tickets under their real or fake names, and attempting to travel on parallel flights (usually from another Moscow airport, rather than on the same flight as Navalny). The group was most active in 2017, when Navalny announced plans to run for president, and in 2020.
The investigation identifies the real names and aliases of the eight operatives implicated in Navalny's poisoning. Apparently, three of them were responsible for following the opposition figure on his trip to Novosibirsk and Tomsk in August. While the operatives used burner phones throughout the operation, one of them turned on his main phone on two occasions — once near the hotel where Navalny's colleague Maria Pevchikh was staying in Novosibirsk, and once not far from the hotel where Navalny was staying, according to geolocation data.
This sub-unit appears to report to a scientist who previously worked in Russia's military chemical weapons program in Shikhany, where nerve agents from the Novichok family were originally developed, and is supported by a network of other chemical weapons specialists dispersed at several government-run institutes.
Moreover, according to the investigation, the attack in Tomsk was the second recent attempt to poison Alexey Navalny this year — less than two months earlier, the same operatives made an attempt on his life in Kaliningrad; apparently causing his wife Yulia to fall mysteriously ill.
These aren't FSB operatives working on the orders of an oligarch or an official who I offended with one of my investigations. An entire FSB department under the leadership of high-ranking officials has been conducting an operation for two years, during which they have tried to kill me and my family members several times by obtaining chemical weapons in a secret state laboratory. Of course, an operation of such magnitude and such during can't be organized by anyone other than FSB head Alexander Bortnikov, but he would never have dared do it without President Vladimir Putin's order. |
31 | Our Top Weekend Reads | "2020-12-19T12:00:34" | foreignpolicy.com | https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/19/our-top-weekend-reads-sweden-coronavirus-progressives-biden-arab-spring/ | Sweden has long enjoyed a sort of wholesome global image: home of Ikea, Pippi Longstocking, and meatballs in cream sauce. But that reputation has taken a beating during the coronavirus pandemic, as the country became a lone proponent of herd immunity and floundered accordingly. Now, the government has instituted some restrictions, but confusion remains as to how Swedes should behave toward the coronavirus.
Meanwhile, progressive groups have developed a robust strategy for laying down roots in U.S. President-elect Joe Biden's foreign-policy ranks.
And, a decade after the Arab Spring, a look at the permanence of an enduring, but never consummated, revolution.
Here are Foreign Policy's top weekend reads.
Rattled by a staggering second wave of coronavirus infections, Swedes are less opposed to mask recommendations and social-distancing guidelines than they are puzzled by their government's chronic mixed messaging—a result of infighting between the prime minister and public health officials, Carl-Johan Karlsson writes.
Though progressives have recently won some key posts in Biden's cabinet, his foreign-policy team is still fairly establishment. But the left isn't fretting—yet: Cabinet posts are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to political appointments, and they've got a plan for putting down roots at a lower level, FP's Jack Detsch reports.
The Arab Spring was less a coordinated, democratic movement than a series of localized struggles against decades of failed governance. Ten years on, the fact that those struggles instead provoked further repression is not just an indictment of brutal Arab dictatorships, but also of the Western countries that embrace them, Oz Katerji writes.
There are fears that the burgeoning civil war in Ethiopia could lead to one of the largest state collapses in modern history. That's ironic given what the conflict is all about: not whether Ethiopia should exist, but how it should be governed, Teferi Mergo writes.
China is making inroads in Iran. But observers shouldn't be too worried about the prospect of a robust Beijing-Tehran alliance. China cares far more about courting the West than wooing Iran, and it won't risk further U.S. sanctions by saving Iran from its own financial peril, Wang Xiyue writes. |
32 | How the Western Sahara Became the Key to North Africa | "2020-12-19T03:41:12" | foreignpolicy.com | https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/18/how-the-western-sahara-became-the-key-to-north-africa/ | Fighting erupted last month between Morocco and separatists in the disputed Western Sahara, a territory claimed by Morocco. The sparsely populated region is bordered by Algeria to the east, Mauritania to the east and south, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and Morocco to the north.
First, Morocco launched a military operation in a U.N.-controlled buffer zone in a village called Guerguerat. The soldiers removed a camp of 60 peaceful protesters who were blocking traffic between the Moroccan-controlled side of Western Sahara and Mauritania. Then, the pro-independence, Algeria-backed Polisario Front declared an end to the 1991 cease-fire with Morocco and promised a full resumption of fighting. Although the United Nations and the international community have called for restraint on both sides and for the maintenance of the cease-fire, on Nov. 15, the Polisario Front said it was mobilizing "thousands of volunteers" to join its fighters.
Since then, there have been reports of exchanges of fire between the two sides. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement this month that the United States would officially recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in exchange for Morocco normalizing ties with Israel, upending decades of U.N.-led mediation and U.S. diplomatic efforts that aimed to resolve the regional dispute. This U.S. policy shift further increases the likelihood for a resumption of large-scale fighting and intensifies growing regional instability in North Africa.
Much is at stake in the Western Sahara conflict. Beyond the threat of fighting between Morocco and the pro-independence forces, there is the potential (albeit unlikely) for direct military clashes between Morocco and Algeria, two of the largest and most well-equipped militaries in Africa. Moreover, many other regional and global actors have vested economic and political interests in the outcome of the conflict, given Western Sahara's strategic position on the Atlantic coastline and its natural resources. If the conflict heats up, in other words, the Western Sahara won't be the only prize at stake.
The Western Sahara conflict is more than four decades old, resulting from a dispute over territory that arose after the Spanish colonizers withdrew in 1975. The Moroccan monarchy organized a mass gathering of nearly 350,000 Moroccans into the region, which became known as the Green March. The participants claimed that they were taking back sovereign Moroccan territory. In short order, a war broke out between neighboring Morocco and Mauritania, as well as the Algeria-backed Sahrawi independence movement, later called the Polisario Front. Fighting stopped after a U.N.-brokered cease-fire in 1991, and a plan was set to hold a referendum for self-determination for the Sahrawis, the Indigenous people of Western Sahara. However, no such referendum has ever come to pass, due to disagreements over the questions the referendum would cover (would full independence be an option?) and who would be allowed to vote (would Moroccans who moved to Western Sahara after 1975 be eligible?).
In the meantime, Morocco was able to assert its de facto control over around 75 percent of the disputed land and has invested heavily there in recent decades. The kingdom offers tax breaks and high salaries for civil servants there. While Morocco may have agreed to the 1991 U.N. cease-fire stipulation to hold a referendum, the kingdom has changed its position in practice. It has rejected any referendum that would include full independence as an option. Instead, it has proposed an autonomy plan for the region. Many of the country's Western allies welcomed the move, even though it directly undermines the U.N. promise of self-determination for the Sahrawi people.
And so, the conflict remains unresolved, thousands of refugees remain stranded outside the region, and tensions flare up regularly. Political negotiations started back up last year, but they, too, have stalled.
Part of the reason for the deadlock is that the Western Sahara is strategically placed on the Atlantic coast and has vast natural resource wealth, including phosphate and shale gas. Since phosphates are a key, and finite, ingredient for synthetic fertilizer, they are a core resource in global food production. The region is also believed to have significant offshore oil and gas reserves, but due to the unresolved conflict, these waters are officially off-limits to exploration.
Morocco maintains control over most of the disputed land, and is aiming to turn it into a major economic and investment hub. The kingdom has plans for the construction of a $1 billon port in the Western Sahara coastal city of Dakhla. In January 2020, the Moroccan parliament passed two draft laws to expand the country's territorial waters and to establish an exclusive economic zone that includes waters along the disputed Western Sahara, a move that angered Spain, which controls the waters surrounding the neighboring Canary Islands, and the Polisario Front, which rejects all exploitation of resources by Morocco off the Western Sahara coastline.
But Morocco has every reason to push forward. It has been pursuing a significant economics-driven foreign-policy shift toward sub-Saharan Africa, especially since it rejoined the African Union after a 33-year hiatus. It is seeking to become a member of the Economic Community of Western African States and is investing in ambitious projects such as a Morocco-Nigeria trans-African gas pipeline, a project that could help reduce European reliance on Russian gas. All of this is part of the North African kingdom's ambitions to become an economic hub connecting Europe and Africa. The disputed Western Sahara territory is an integral piece of land in this puzzle.
The conflict concerns more than just regional rivals Algeria, Mauritania, and Morocco. Other regional and global powers are closely following the dispute. Morocco's main trade and investment partners include European countries, the United States, Persian Gulf Arab states, and, increasingly, China. All of the Gulf states, in a rare show of unity, expressed solidarity and support for Morocco's position. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have taken this a step further by establishing consulates in the disputed territory. Groups such as the UAE's Dubai Port World are likely eyeing significant investment opportunities in the Dakhla port, as well as the fruits of greater connectivity between European and African markets through Morocco's infrastructure projects.
China, meanwhile, views the northwest African hub as a major partner for expanding its flagship project, the Belt and Road Initiative. Morocco has embarked on major infrastructure projects, such as a high-speed train connecting financial hub Casablanca to Tangier, a city less than 10 miles from Europe and home to the Mediterranean's and Africa's largest port by capacity. Morocco's King Mohammed VI has also publicly called for expanding the railways south, toward Marrakech and Agadir, and even further into the disputed Western Sahara territory to connect the cities of Laayoune and the coastal port city of Dakhla. Chinese and French companies are already competing to build the Marrakech-Agadir leg of the railway.
The Mohamed VI Tangier Tech City is set to receive $1 billion of financing from China's Haite group and will host more than 200 Chinese businesses. Chinese companies, along with European, Japanese, and American ones, are also gravitating toward Morocco's growing automotive manufacturing industry. Over the years, there has even been talk of building an undersea transportation tunnel between Morocco and Spain.
Russia is also seeking to expand its influence across North Africa. Moscow has engaged with both Morocco and the Polisario Front and supports a U.N. solution to the conflict. Although Russia has historically maintained closer ties with Algeria, a function of the Cold War era alliance system, and provides most of Algeria's weapons, Russia is also increasingly interested in Morocco and the Western Sahara coastlines and energy exploration. Last month, Morocco and Russia signed a new agreement on maritime fisheries cooperation, allowing 10 Russian trawlers to fish in Moroccan waters, replacing a similar 2016 deal (and the eighth such agreement since 1992). Sources such as Western Sahara Resource Watch say that that deal primarily includes waters off the coast of Western Sahara, a violation of international law.
In 2019, meanwhile, the European Parliament approved a four-year Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement between the European Union and Morocco. This agreement explicitly includes Western Sahara waters, which violates European Court of Justice rulings. France and Spain are two of Morocco's most important economic partners, though, and are eager to find a solution to the conflict and dispel many of the diplomatic blocks lying in the way of fully exploiting Western Sahara waters and resources. Morocco is a valuable economic partner, as well as a major defense ally. It plays a significant role in regional counterterrorism efforts and in managing migration flows between Africa and Europe, a top priority for Europe.
The United States has traditionally acted as a mediator in the Western Sahara dispute, and has expressed support for Morocco's autonomy plan on the grounds that it represents a realistic compromise "that could satisfy the aspirations of Western Sahara." The Trump administration, under the direction of then National Security Advisor John Bolton, stepped up diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict at the end of 2018, helping to organize the first direct talks in six years between Morocco, the Polisario Front, Algeria, and Mauritania. After two rounds of talks held in Geneva, however, the U.N. envoy resigned, allegedly over pressure from Morocco, as well as from France on the Security Council. Morocco was concerned about these talks because of the involvement of Bolton, a well-known supporter of self-determination for the Sahrawis. After the resignation, negotiations stalled again.
Trump's 11th-hour decision to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara only weeks after the resumption of hostilities ignited yet another foreign-policy fire that the Biden administration will have to put out in January. No matter how you spin it, Trump's decision was a win for Morocco—and it will be hard to walk back. The Biden administration will not want to risk Morocco-Israel normalization, which is now directly tied to U.S. recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. However much the new administration promises to restore human rights to U.S. foreign policy, the self-determination of Sahrawis will likely not be considered a high priority. Morocco's autonomy plan, for which the United States and its European allies had already expressed support even before Trump's decision, will be presented as the only realistic way forward. Given the geopolitical and regional realities surrounding Western Sahara, Morocco will probably get its way. But it's important to remember that the Sahrawis and their supporters won't give in without a fight. |
33 | Why India’s Farmers Won’t Stop Protesting | "2020-12-18T23:25:56" | foreignpolicy.com | https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/18/india-farmers-wont-stop-protesting/ | Since late November, tens of thousands of Indian farmers have marched to New Delhi and blocked the highways leading into the city, protesting against three bills that passed in both houses of India's Parliament in September. The demonstrations have since spread to other parts of the country with farmers blocking roads and railway tracks, and limiting the movement of people and goods, including farm produce.
What are the bills in question? Listing them may feel cumbersome, but in the interest of understanding their value—and the immense scale of the protests against them—they are: 1) the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act; 2) the Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act; and 3) the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act.
The first two laws expand the marketing infrastructure provided by India's state-level governments and allow direct marketing of farm products to processors, aggregators, wholesalers, large retailers, and exporters. The third law seeks to facilitate the production, movement, and distribution of farm produce by removing existing regulatory barriers.
While economists have long acknowledged the need for agricultural reforms in India, the ongoing protests likely have more to do with how the new laws were rolled out: The bills were all passed using the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's parliamentary majority, and without suitable consultation with key stakeholders such as farmer unions. The passage of the legislation also displayed all the hallmarks that have come to characterize Prime Minister Narendra Modi's key decisions, ranging from a botched policy of demonetization in 2016, a hasty rollout of a goods and services tax in 2017, and then a nationwide lockdown with four hours' notice this year to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
India's farm policy architecture is a holdover from the 1960s when the country was poor and food insecure. Policies were put in place with food security as the primary goal. While this set of laws allowed India to achieve advances in food production by the 1980s, the farm sector has suffered a decline in public investment, a lack of marketing alternatives, and stagnant rural incomes. Almost everyone, including farmers, agree that India's farm policies need to change; however, there is little agreement on the details of those reforms. In the early 2000s, the government at the time encouraged Indian states to design and enact reforms, but predictably every state adopted only piecemeal policy changes that did not hurt key interests within the state. As a result, there is no uniformity in policies and laws across the country.
Ostensibly, the laws that the Indian Parliament enacted in September were designed to reduce regulatory interference from the government and to fix that lack of uniformity and create a national policy. The intention was to make it easier to bring private investment—both domestic and foreign—into India's farm sector. The laws promise to provide more freedom to farmers to trade outside state-designated markets and to private traders to move, distribute, and export farm produce. However, the farmers are apprehensive for several reasons. First, more than 85 percent of India's farmers own farms smaller than three acres. These farmers mostly engage in subsistence farming and sell their surpluses, when available, to private traders. The average income of farmers has remained low, at just over $1,000 a year, making them highly sensitive to fears over market fluctuations. And while there is a great deal of variation within this group of farmers, they are not likely to benefit from the legislation the government has announced. Past experience with marketing reform from Indian states has shown that small farmers are likely to gain only from well-considered reforms of existing infrastructure—not a complete deregulation that the new laws propose.
The government-appointed Dalwai Committee, which published its final report in 2018, recommended that the government should radically change India's farming policy ecosystem from a supply-focused, government-led one-to-one that would be demand-focused and market-based. Such a retreat would further reduce public investment into the farm sector. These farmers are also afraid that this changing policy environment and rising corporate power would result in a loss of both land and livelihood.
Another concern about the new laws comes from farmers who sell their produce either to the government or to private traders but who enjoy the security of floor prices guaranteed by the government—officially referred to as the minimum support price. Despite assurances built into the new laws, most farmers deem them to be vague and are less than confident enough to rely on them.
Farmers fear that the new legislation will weaken government-designated markets in which most transactions have taken place in past decades. While many lament the stranglehold the aggregators at these market yards have had over farmers, the existence of these markets and the traders within them offered the advantage of a minimum support price—a floor farmers are afraid they could lose. They see the weakening of the markets as a reflection of the government's increasing retreat from the farm sector. After all, while the farm sector provides livelihoods to more than half the population of India, its contribution to the Indian GDP has been declining: During the past two decades the percentage of the country's GDP from the farm sector has declined from 23 percent to 16 percent. Part of the problem lies in the fact that many of the farms are small and thereby cannot benefit from economies of scale. Yet this is the source of livelihood for many farmers who fear that without government intervention they will soon be left to the mercies of the emerging agri-business sector in India.
Most contemporary developed economies have gone through a period where the population is dependent on a declining farming sector even as the strength of manufacturing grows, absorbing labor. But in India, the manufacturing sector has not been able to create much employment. Indeed, for a variety of complex reasons, India appears to have almost entirely skipped this particular stage of economic evolution. Instead, the country focused on service industries and most notably the information technology sector, which almost by design can only absorb a miniscule segment of the country's burgeoning population. Though technology contributes as much as 8 percent of the country's GDP, it employs a mere 3.9 million individuals, or less than a third of 1 percent of the population.
Consequently, farm employment is expected to remain a mainstay of the Indian economy—at least in terms of employment—for decades. In an economy that has cratered virtually across the board since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the farming sector has provided a much-needed buffer to those who have had to return to their villages. Preserving the agricultural sector, even as it fails to deliver high incomes, has been an entirely understandable rallying cry across much of India, and especially in its breadbasket in the northwest of the country.
Even if one assumes that the government's intent in pushing through agricultural reforms was well-meaning, the abrupt passage of such sweeping legislation, without adequate consultation, has led to a seeming impasse with a range of farming organizations. Despite several rounds of talks, a deadlock persists. The government may believe that a firm stance toward the farmers, along with some cosmetic gestures, will ensure the protests dissipate before long. But those hopes may underestimate the enduring importance of farming for India's labor market, especially amid the tumult of the pandemic. |
34 | Is the Cyberattack Big News—or Just a Footnote In a Year Like No Other? | "2020-12-18T21:56:11" | foreignpolicy.com | https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/18/is-the-cyberattack-big-news-or-just-a-footnote-in-a-year-like-no-other/ | Emma Ashford: It is, and thank goodness you're here. I have a problem. Foreign Policy just published an article by President Donald Trump's former National Security Advisor-turned-critic John Bolton—and I agree with him. This has never happened before.
EA: I didn't want to pay to read the memoir. But seriously, Bolton wrote an article arguing that the Trump administration's new deal with Morocco is a bad idea. The deal recognizes the disputed territory of Western Sahara as a part of Morocco in exchange for Morocco improving its relations with Israel. And Bolton argues that this is ridiculous: Morocco and Israel already had good tacit relations, and that it violates a commitment to take the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara seriously.
MK: Well, I often agree with Bolton and I think I do on this issue as well. Foreign policy is about making difficult trade-offs, and there are real benefits to convincing majority-Muslim countries to formally recognize Israel, so that is an upside to this deal.
But the cost—undermining the international process for resolving the territorial dispute in Western Sahara through a referendum, which Bolton helped craft as an aide to then-Secretary of State James Baker in the early 1990s—may have been too great.
EA: It reminds me of our earlier discussion about Trump and his strange willingness to ignore U.S. foreign-policy needs to hand Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu political wins, whether in Sudan, Kosovo, or elsewhere. We'll have to see whether this decision outlives the end of the Trump presidency.
MK: This is a real problem, and what is worrying is what we don't know. In addition to the agencies hit, some fear that departments dealing directly with international security—like the Defense Department or the intelligence community—might have also been compromised. Cyberspace is becoming among the most contested domains of international security. Shame on the United States for not having better cyber-defenses in place.
EA: It's funny. If you asked people about the biggest cyberattacks in history, they'd probably name Stuxnet in Iran or Russian attacks on Ukraine's power grid, or other big, showy incidents. But in reality, one of the biggest and most consequential incidents was the (likely) Chinese hack of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management a few years back, where hackers stole a huge amount of personal and security clearance information.
This incident falls into that same category, and it's an important reminder—as Joshua Rovner of American University has argued—that cyber-tools are typically used for espionage rather than anything more destructive.
MK: I was going to make the pedantic point that cyberespionage is not technically an "attack," but the more substantive point is that we shouldn't treat cyberspace as a special domain. If Russian commandos physically broke into the Commerce Department and stole files, then how would the U.S. government respond? That is how we should respond in this case.
Because it actually happened during the Cold War, and Washington considered it a normal part of state-on-state espionage operations.
MK: If commandos broke into the Commerce Department, U.S. diplomats would raise it in public and private diplomacy with Russia—and hold those personally involved responsible. The U.S. government should do the same in this case.
The scope of the SolarWinds attack remains unknown. But I don't think there is a lot that U.S. officials can or should do about it, other than reinforcing U.S. defenses—at least not if Americans want to keep these tools of espionage for their own use.
MK: It was an eventful year! And there are many candidates for the most significant event, from the killing of Qassem Suleimani in January to the conclusion of the U.S. presidential election with the Electoral College vote earlier this week.
But, the most significant event of the year was certainly the COVID-19 pandemic. It killed more people than most wars and changed the way we all worked and lived, perhaps forever.
I do think the more important long-term trend, however, may be the deterioration in U.S.-China relations and the return of great-power rivalry. With any luck, vaccinations will be successful and COVID-19 will soon be behind us. But I fear that competition with China will be with us for a generation or more.
EA: Yeah, 2020 has been… something. More than 300,000 Americans dead of COVID-19, and perhaps another 50,000 will pass away before the end of the year. It's almost enough to make you forget that the United States almost started a war with Iran in January, and maybe sponsored a coup attempt in Venezuela in May.
Interestingly, though, it really does look like the biggest long-term foreign-policy implications of COVID-19 will be the increased U.S.-China rivalry. As I recently wrote, U.S. structural power seems fairly unaffected, other than perhaps an increased deficit. U.S. military readiness is also mostly unaffected.
And the negative soft power effects of Trump's terrible response to the virus are probably outweighed by the fact that U.S. companies like Moderna were among the first to respond, creating and distributing a vaccine in less than a year.
MK: Oh no. It sounds like we agree almost completely. I can, however, raise a possible point of disagreement: Looking back on 2020, the biggest thing many analysts got wrong was that Trump was a dictator in waiting, undermining the rule of law and destroying U.S. influence and the rules-based system. Lest we forget, the impeachment hearings also happened in 2020.
In the end, however, we have seen that the American democratic system and its international position are much more resilient than many appreciated. All it took was a Democrat to be elected president for the Twittersphere to regain its confidence in the country.
EA: Oh, God. It says something about this year that I literally forgot the impeachment.
But I think you're overstating it. Just because the U.S. system was resilient to Trump in this case doesn't mean that there hasn't been damage to the system—and to norms overall. The president of the United States is still ranting on Twitter that the election was rigged after the Electoral College voted. His party continues to partly support him. If this election had been closer, we might be in serious trouble.
Can we shift back outside the United States, though? I want to get back to the China question. In addition to the coronavirus pandemic, 2020 was also the year we saw Chinese crackdowns in Hong Kong, and a growing body of evidence about their terrible treatment of the Uighurs.
It seems to me that Washington has really flubbed the response to these developments, with the Trump administration being simultaneously too confrontational toward Beijing while ignoring these human rights developments.
MK: I disagree. A more confrontational approach was needed. And Mike Pompeo's State Department made China's human rights practices a priority with a number of measures, including sanctions on the Chinese Communist Party officials involved.
And there is growing international concern: Europeans are not focused on the Chinese military threat, but they do care about human rights. The United States is building a counterbalancing coalition against Beijing thanks largely to the egregious actions of the CCP.
EA: Yeah, but when the president simultaneously tells Xi Jinping that it's fine to build camps for the Uighurs, you can see why they're getting mixed messages.
Here's an interesting factoid: As the impacts of COVID-19 fade, trade is coming back, and so is support for free trade. That's a place where Trump's legacy is already disappearing.
MK: I suspect the uptick in trade with China is temporary and that there will be a continued decoupling of the two economies—the strategic rationale for doing so is simply too great.
EA: Well, the American people evidently don't think so. Trapped at home during the pandemic, they have actually been ordering more stuff from China! Maybe it will be short-lived, but it's notable that COVID-19 didn't actually snip the supply chains the way some suggested they would. I continue to think Trump's trade legacy is ephemeral.
MK: Many are asking about the future of Republican foreign policy and whether Trumpism continues after Trump. I am of the view that it won't. Trump has long been a worldwide celebrity with a unique personality. That is a large part of his appeal. There is no one—certainly not any career politician—who can easily adopt his persona and pick up that mantle.
His support was certainly not due to his foreign-policy positions. Political scientists have repeatedly shown that, unlike with domestic policy or culture war issues, the American public does not know much about, or have strong opinions on, foreign policy. Politicians, therefore, have a lot of running room in this area.
I suspect, therefore, that we will see a return to a more traditional Republican foreign policy in the near future.
EA: Probably a topic for a longer discussion, but I think you're partly right. A traditional Republican foreign policy—most notably in support of traditional U.S. partnerships and hostility to dictators—is probably coming back. But it's going to be shaped by Trump, and in particular by the notions of those who attempted to turn his foreign-policy foibles into policy.
After all, the Republican foreign-policy elite is no longer Bill Kristol and the neoconservatives. Today it's people like James Mattis, H.R. McMaster, and Bolton, people who offer a more coherent version of Trumpism: hawkish, nationalistic, and unilateralist foreign policy.
We'll probably learn more about the post-Trump direction of the Republican Party over the next few years.
MK: It is our last column of 2020. What do you predict we will be talking about this time next year? What is the biggest story of 2021? After all, I'm sure we would have correctly predicted a once-in-a-century pandemic if only given the opportunity.
EA: I would have preferred to predict it at the bookies, not in this column! As 2020 proved, predictions are notoriously hard. But I think we can predict some things with pretty good accuracy. The Biden administration will return to the Iran nuclear deal, struggle to put together a coherent set of invitees to its "summit of democracies," and see internal conflict between President-elect Joe Biden and his own advisors over issues like Afghanistan, Syria, and Russia.
MK: There will certainly be plenty to debate. Until then, have a happy holiday and New Year.
MK: Well then, I hope that those who are celebrating it have a merry Christmas and that everyone can enjoy a much-deserved break after a year most people would rather forget. |
35 | Trump Leaves Biden Administration a Parting Gift in Currency Wars | "2020-12-18T21:17:26" | foreignpolicy.com | https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/18/trump-leaves-biden-administration-a-parting-gift-in-currency-wars/ | The U.S. Treasury Department's decision this week to label both Vietnam and Switzerland currency manipulators lacked precedent and raised plenty of eyebrows. Labeling even one country a manipulator is a rare and headline-grabbing event. Until now, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump had named only one country, China, a currency manipulator—only to remove it later. Never had the Treasury designated two countries in one fell swoop.
You could be forgiven for having expected a more vigorous overhaul of U.S. policies on currency manipulation during the Trump administration. After all, in 2015, Trump vowed to name China a currency manipulator on his first day in the Oval Office. As president, he launched accusations of currency manipulation on Twitter. Decrying the United States' trade deficits, he overhauled decades of official U.S. policy on trade. And if one's goal is to reduce the overall trade deficit, the natural complement to trade policy becomes currency policy.
Still, given the lack of real follow-through to official changes to U.S. currency policy, it would be tempting to interpret this week's designations as a last-ditch quack of disruption by a lame-duck administration. To the contrary, this action underscores the continuity of currency manipulation policy under Trump, which underwent only minor tweaks of the Treasury Department rules formulated under the administration of former President Barack Obama.
So why label Switzerland and Vietnam—and only those two countries—as currency manipulators now? For starters, the Treasury Department's hands were tied in a way that, like the announcement itself, lacked precedent. Since the 2015 legislation requiring the Treasury to promulgate specific criteria for identifying currency manipulation came into effect, Switzerland and Vietnam are the only two countries ever to meet all three of the Treasury's criteria: running a big trade surplus with the United States, running a large current account surplus, and intervening heavily in foreign-exchange markets to artificially weaken a currency. For context, China was labeled a currency manipulator after meeting only one of the three.
Two of the Treasury's three criteria address the types of trade imbalances that can emerge for any number of reasons and in lots of countries. Vietnam and Switzerland have met these criteria before: that, in the past 12 months, the country have run a bilateral trade surplus in goods with the United States of at least $20 billion and that it have an overall current account surplus of 2 percent of its gross domestic product.
But it was the third criterion that nailed Vietnam and Switzerland. If a country undertakes "persistent, one-sided intervention" to weaken its currency by at least 2 percent of GDP over a 13-month period and already meets the other two conditions, the Treasury effectively then has to label it a currency manipulator.
Why were they now trying so hard to push their own currencies down? Vietnam, a rising export power, has a history of undervaluing its currency, as the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative recently alleged in opening a Section 301 investigation into the country. A cheaper currency means more competitive exports.
But, partly due to the Trump administration's tariffs on Chinese goods, Vietnam has seen a surge in foreign investment, since Vietnamese factories can still ship goods to the United States tariff-free. An influx of foreign investment would tend to drive up the value of Vietnam's currency, which would make those newfound exports that much less competitive. Vietnamese authorities, fearing the pace of currency appreciation, seem to have wanted to mitigate that through large-scale interventions, thus running afoul of the Treasury.
In the case of Switzerland, all the global carnage and disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic played to the Swiss franc's reputation as a safe haven, inducing sharp upward pressure on the currency. But a stronger franc would mean lower prices in Switzerland, threatening to turn negligible Swiss inflation, already less than half of 1 percent in 2019, negative. And negative inflation—deflation—triggers a vicious cycle of economic contraction. Inflation may induce anxiety on Wall Street, but deflationary spirals are (and were) the stuff of great depressions.
And there are other potential pitfalls that may come from the Treasury report. While acknowledging Switzerland's legitimate growth and inflation concerns, the report said that Swiss authorities can reduce the need for unconventional monetary policy "by raising labor force participation rates and productivity growth." But faulting other countries for relying on monetary policy to shore up deficiencies elsewhere may soon come back to bite Washington. For instance, the United States faced complaints of currency manipulation from countries such as Brazil in response to the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing program, which helped shore up a tottering U.S. economy but had the effect of weakening the dollar. Today, the dollar is again weakening as the Federal Reserve undertakes unconventional measures to help a U.S. economy in a crisis. The United States, then, may soon find itself hearing the Treasury's critique of Switzerland turned back on itself.
So what happens next between the United States and these two countries? The only certainty is that the Treasury will conduct "enhanced bilateral engagement" with each country that "will include urging the development of a plan with specific policy actions to address the underlying causes" of external imbalances.
But there is little chance that either country addresses those "underlying causes," even if the United States were to threaten more than loss of access to government procurement programs. In undervaluing its currency, Vietnam's authoritarian government is choosing to decrease how much stuff every Vietnamese citizen can buy in order to have fewer unemployed. In Switzerland, the national government tends not to issue bonds because it eschews budget deficits that need financing. This is one reason the Swiss central bank turns to currency interventions, rather than purchases of government bonds, to try to save its economy from deflation. In both countries, the external imbalances have deep roots in the foundations of domestic governance. They're unlikely to change due to a semiannual Treasury report.
Instead, the most likely legacy of this announcement likely lies in its effect on government in the United States. Inheriting these "enhanced bilateral engagements," the likely next Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, and her colleagues may well choose to continue them. In that case, the Treasury starts off with the gift of an existing bilateral forum in which to press Switzerland and Vietnam even on issues unrelated to currencies per se. If, however, the Biden administration symbolically delists the countries without extracting any concessions right away, they'll start off by making a mockery of the Treasury's existing currency manipulation regime. Either way, the clock on Biden's first shot at currency policy is shorter. But the Trump administration now leaves behind a situation that could embarrass any Biden administration eager to soften U.S. policy on currency manipulation.
After the past four years and the flurry of last-minute announcements, it's tempting to presume that all disruptions from U.S. policy are due to disruptions to that policy. But the Treasury's criteria on currency manipulators—despite all that has changed about U.S. international economic policy—are largely unchanged from the Obama administration and will continue at least into the Biden administration's opening days.
Sometimes, the continuity of U.S. policy in a world that never stands still is the real source of surprise. |
36 | Sweden’s Second Wave Is a Failure of Government—and Guidance | "2020-12-18T21:03:36" | foreignpolicy.com | https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/18/sweden-second-covid-wave-failure-of-government-guidance/ | In late November, the Swedish government finally caved. The country had attracted attention worldwide earlier this year for ignoring calls to implement a lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic's first peak, as the government favored recommendations to hard regulation. But at long last, facing a perilous second wave of coronavirus cases, the Swedish government introduced its very first commercial ban: Bars and restaurants would close after 10:30 p.m.
After watching Sweden with confusion—and sometimes horror—many onlookers from abroad saw the move as the final verdict on whether governments should implement bans or just recommendations as the pandemic rages on. Even Swedes, they thought, were finally being told what to do. Admittedly, foreigners' disdain for the country's approach hasn't been unwarranted: My fellow Swedes have been ignoring the government's loose guidelines this whole time. Without bans, they're still huddling together in malls and sitting knee to knee in bars (now before 10:30 p.m.) as the death toll has risen to nearly 8,000 in a nation of 10 million—a figure higher than that of all its neighboring countries combined.
Criticism of the authorities is mounting from within the country as well. Here, however, the conversation is more nuanced. What people are calling for isn't more restrictions or a lockdown but simply what the Swedish government promised from the outset: clarity. When Sweden braced for its first COVID-19 outbreak in February, the Public Health Agency, spearheaded by state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, emphasized the importance of giving clear instructions to the public. The plan was for these guidelines to allow Swedes to make responsible choices while still being able to go about their daily lives—and to keep the economy going—while the Public Health Agency adjusted the recommendations as the situation developed.
Of course, a lack of clarity in the national response has become the norm instead, and what was labeled a "trust-based" approach by the health authorities has become a source of confusion. Two things in particular have caused dysfunction and made it all too easy for Swedes to ignore official recommendations: First, there are too many guidelines—ranging from how to shop and eat out to how to attend church—which vary between the country's 21 regions. And second, there is a growing disconnect between the recommendations of the ruling party and those of the Public Health Agency, which by constitutional law acts independently of the government.
The best example of how confusing Sweden's guidelines have been is the debate over masks. Whether to wear masks has been a perpetual issue since the pandemic began: The Public Health Agency advised against "general" mask use but maintained that masks "could" be useful in certain places such as on public transportation—with the caveat that masks could also be counterproductive as they may grant people a "false sense of security." Throughout the pandemic, Tegnell in particular has stressed that there is a lack of evidence for the effectiveness of masks and warned Swedes about the supposed risks of people wearing masks the wrong way. Eventually, on Dec. 18, the Public Health Agency announced that the updated guidelines will in fact include wearing masks on public transportation during peak hours.
Tegnell fended off criticism by saying that "whoever wants to can wear a mask." That may be, but the individual decision to wear a mask is just at the top of a long laundry list of other choices Swedes have to make on a given day. That list includes if and how to shop for nonessential goods (the city of Malmo's largest mall had to temporarily shut down as shoppers neglected national social distancing guidelines on Black Friday), whether to visit loved ones in nursing homes (regulations and/or recommendations depend on region and/or relationship), and whether to eat out at restaurants (Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says to stay at home, while Tegnell approves of eating Christmas buffets in restaurants as long as guidelines are followed).
Mixed messaging, especially between Lofven and Tegnell, has only further confused the public. When the pandemic began, the Public Health Agency called the shots under Tegnell. But as opposition parties have now lashed out at the ruling center-left coalition and accused it of botching the pandemic response, that coalition has started to take action without consulting the Public Health Agency.
And yet the reality is that even if the ruling party wished to roll out stricter regulations, its powers are fairly limited. During the peak of the first coronavirus wave in April, parliament granted the government a temporary license to shut down restaurants, malls, gyms, and public transport, should the pandemic worsen. However, the law was never used, and after its expiration at the end of June, the government failed to extend the emergency legislation, because the health authorities forecast that herd immunity would protect Swedes from a large-scale second wave.
Of course, the prediction proved gravely wrong, and Sweden now has one of the highest per-capita death rates in Europe. Even though the government is drafting new emergency legislation, it's not expected to come into force until March 2021 at the earliest—two months after vaccinations are expected to arrive in the country.
By now, it's hard to imagine that the world will remember Sweden's handling of the pandemic as anything other than a deadly blunder. But beyond the many lives lost, there's an added layer of tragedy in that the Swedish voluntary model could have been at least a partial blueprint for other countries if the authorities had not fumbled it so greatly. Sweden could have managed without a lockdown had the government, for instance, fully closed nursing homes to visitors before the virus started to spread. The ruling party could also have better prepared—and braced the Swedish people—for a second wave, even as health authorities deemed another large-scale outbreak unlikely.
Indeed, where Sweden messed up was its execution. The model was designed to protect the old, but the authorities didn't take into account that nursing homes would reel from decades of neglect and lack of resources; the plan was to give people freedom in exchange for responsibility, but authorities failed to deliver clear enough guidance for people to even be responsible. If the government had prized clarity—and if it had put aside its political squabbles to present a unified response—the criticism heaped upon Sweden might instead have become praise for not buckling under misplaced international condemnation. |
37 | Your Digital Footprint Is Worryingly Easy to Match to Reality | "2020-12-18T20:07:46" | foreignpolicy.com | https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/18/digital-footprint-match-reality-information-online-privacy-protection/ | As a person who helps other people manage their digital footprint, I actually dislike the phrase "manage your digital footprint"—it sounds corporatist, bland, and frankly neurotic.
But it's also pretty serious. Your digital footprint is not just about an embarrassing "that's what she said" tweet you posted that one time at 2 a.m.
In fact, the information we reveal online can be a personal and/or operational security risk. If you need proof, please consider the case of the Japanese singer who was assaulted after a stalker figured out her location by zooming in on the reflection in her eyes.
Whether you have a sensitive job, are going through a difficult divorce, believe you may be being stalked online—or, God forbid, all of the above—the impact of inadvertently revealing too much on the internet can be tremendous. Even when life is relatively calm, it's always good to keep a handle on how what you reveal could end up being used, and by whom. And if, like a lot of Foreign Policy readers, you work in government, diplomacy, or other sensitive areas, then it's not just your own life that's affected.
First of all, don't be paranoid. I know this sounds like a tall order in the year 2020, but paranoia simply saps us of energy. It's not productive.
Instead, assess the situation soberly. I like this piece from Maria Farrell and my former colleagues at the Conversationalist, which essentially argues that we have an abusive relationship with our technology right now. We love our gadgets, but we can't entirely trust them. For that, we need better legislation on tech and a better mindset.
But there are ways to improve the relationship we have with technology—and with other people through it.
One of the first ways to do that is to understand how the rules online are always changing. What seemed "safe" a few years ago may not be so safe today. In a world that has Google Street View and apps like the beer rating service Untappd or the fitness tracker Strava that give away far more about us than we might otherwise think, our location is usually easier to figure out than we believe. These changes won't be the last ones; the possibility of bleeding our information into the internet only increases with time.
Malicious actors, be they creepy stalkers or foreign intelligence operatives, can and do cross-reference our information. For example, if you have your location posted on your public Twitter account, and you frequently post cropped but nevertheless distinctive photos from your city block, you've already given someone the tools they need to narrow down the options as to where you live.
Geolocation is merely the process of elimination. Give people enough data points—a distinctive curb, a prominent background landmark, and so on—and they'll be able to find you. Here's just one personal example of how it can work, in which I challenged people to guess where I was based on a single photo. Because I'd previously alerted my subscribers to the fact that I was traveling in Virginia, they found me despite the fact that the picture I posted seemed random.
I laughed and told him that I would never just tag without asking, but I was upset to learn that many other people in his life not only didn't ask but would actively go against his wishes when tagging him online, exposing his personal life in ways that made him feel increasingly uncomfortable. You don't have to have safety concerns to opt out of being featured in other people's posts. Sometimes all it takes is an unpleasantly nosy ex, and, let's face it, life is stressful enough without worrying about those people. Apps like Facebook that actively encourage tagging don't help when it comes to normalizing a process too often done without other people's consent.
When it comes to public posts, it's also helpful to familiarize yourself with topics such as EXIF data, which gives us details about how and where a picture was taken, and how it can work across different platforms and websites. The same goes for the metadata on any files you may publicly upload—this is especially important if you manage your own website. There are pockets of information in the work that you are showcasing, and that information can and does get exploited.
Meanwhile, tools in photo editing apps can be a godsend for when you want to tweet a photo or post it to Facebook but don't really want it to give too much away. For some reason, a lot of the people I talk to—older men especially, some of whom hold leadership positions in the military and politics—still think that photo editing apps are there for a younger woman to get rid of an annoying zit in a picture. They don't realize how useful these apps are for blurring a distinctive background, a vehicle license plate, or, say, a document that's on your desk.
A lot of people ask me if they should stop posting pictures altogether, but I think that all depends on what you do and your own comfort level. The one thing I absolutely ask people not to do is to post the view from their home windows—even if there is an adorable cat perched on the windowsill.
Speaking of our pets, you'll be surprised how many people will post a picture of an animal while its tag, which gives away sensitive information like the owner's phone number, is fully visible. The ability to zoom, zoom, zoom as seen in Hollywood movies may not exist, but a lot more can be picked out of a clear shot than you might think. Same goes for pictures in which you are holding your mail. And don't even get me started on military personnel who think they're being "anonymous" while forgetting to blur out name tapes and, sometimes, even dog tags. Again, a simple blurring tool can save you a lot of trouble when it comes to pictures like that.
Yet at the same time, when it comes to anonymity, our safest bet is to never count on it. People who believe in anonymity online tend to find out the hard way just how wrong they are—especially if they're, say, trolling public officials on Twitter or conducting an affair. I'm not saying Foreign Policy readers, a very sober and clean-living bunch, would ever do such things, but it's always better to just assume that your business is more public than it is private. Again, this simply cuts down on trouble.
If all of this is overwhelming and stressful, consider the fact that, at the same time, there is a lot of white noise on the internet. A lot of what we do online drowns in that white noise. Meanwhile, scandals involving say, leaked nude photos, are becoming so common that public standards will shift on them eventually. This may be an uncomfortable topic for some, but most women my age and younger have sent nudes. Men do it without even asking if the recipient is interested. Publicly posted information doesn't exist in a vacuum—it exists at an intersection of political and social mores. Those change over time. When it comes to the politicians of 2040, a leaked pic from a vengeful ex hopefully won't matter—but a statement that might have passed as edgy in 2020 could seem outright bigoted.
Changes mean that none of us is ever fully in control of our digital footprint, or of life in general. And that's OK. The best thing we can do is play along and be as conscientious and as kind to others as we can. If infosec in 2020 taught me anything, it taught me this. |
End of preview. Expand
in Dataset Viewer.
Dataset Details
~96,000 news articles I collected from the 2nd half of 2019 through 2021, made for my own project.
Articles were cleaned with the readability project in python.
Feautures:
- ID number (int)
- (0, 96601)
- Title of article (str)
- 13 words on average, min: 1, max: 46
- Time published (str)
- Collected between 2019 and 2021ish, NOT evenly distributed. There are large gaps of no collection.
- Idk how time zones have been handled, so take the timestamps with grains of salt. I'd say you can trust them within the day.
- Organization (str)
- Below are (org: count)
- ('www.rt.com', 22303),
- ('www.theepochtimes.com', 9930),
- ('www.nytimes.com', 9823),
- ('rssfeeds.usatoday.com', 9201),
- ('www.businessinsider.com', 7478),
- ('www.nationalreview.com', 4962),
- ('english.sina.com', 4635),
- ('abcnews.go.com', 4568),
- ('www.foxnews.com', 3755),
- ('www.theatlantic.com', 3482),
- ('www.oann.com', 3392),
- ('feeds.foxnews.com', 3307),
- ('foreignpolicy.com', 3234),
- ('www.washingtonpost.com', 2934),
- ('webfeeds.brookings.edu', 1484),
- ('meduza.io', 1223),
- ('markets.businessinsider.com', 886),
- ('businessinsider.com', 1),
- ('projects.fivethirtyeight.com', 1),
- ('www.foxbusiness.com', 1),
- ('fivethirtyeight.com', 1)
- Url (str)
- Full URL as source
- Body (str)
- mean 496 words, min: 2, max: 15272
- Downloads last month
- 2