Tag: Russians

Chair of US Fed prank-called by Russians pretending to be Zelenskiy

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The chair of the US Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, recently held a call with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president who is leading his country’s fight against Russian invaders.
Or so Powell thought.
On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that what Powell believed to be an official conversation in January was actually a prank call from two Russians, Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexei Stolyarov, supporters of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
Clips of the conversation, widely circulated online, show Powell appearing to address topics including inflation and the Russian central bank.
At one point, the pranksters ask: “In your opinion, which countries also suffered more from recent political situations [economically]?”
Powell says: “Well I would say not the United States. We have our own energy here so it’s really not us … You know better than I do, but it’s going to be … Poland and the eastern European countries that are … close to Ukraine.”
He adds: “We all see what’s happening, people like me just want to support you in any way we can but I have limited ways to do that in my professional job.”
The conversation pivots to inflation rates, the pranksters asking: “The decrease in inflation is clearly less than we’d like and if it starts to rise, is the Fed ready to raise the rates sharply again?”

Powell says: “Yes of course. If we need to raise our rates more, then we’ll absolutely do that. We raised rates very sharply, historically sharply last year, to get to the place we’re at now.”
The Fed said the video, which has been broadcast on Russian state television, appeared to have been edited. The Fed could not confirm its accuracy, Bloomberg reported.
In a statement, a Fed spokesperson acknowledged the conversation, saying: “Chair Powell participated in a conversation in January with someone who misrepresented himself as the Ukrainian president.
“It was a friendly conversation and took place in a context of our standing in support of the Ukrainian people in this challenging time. No sensitive or confidential information was discussed.”
The spokesperson also said the “matter has been referred to appropriate law enforcement, and out of respect for their efforts, we won’t be commenting further”.
The two Russian pranksters have held conversations with other policymakers including Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central Bank, with whom they also pretended to be Zelenskiy.
“The president agreed to this conversation in good faith, also to demonstrate her support for Ukraine and its people defending themselves from Russia’s war of aggression,” an ECB spokesperson told Bloomberg.
Other pranked leaders include the former German chancellor Angela Merkel and the Polish president, Andrzej Duda.
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#Chair #Fed #prankcalled #Russians #pretending #Zelenskiy
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

April 27, 2023
Opinion | The Russians Are Coming. There Could Be Downsides.

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At the same time, more and more Georgian politicians are spreading anti-western sentiments, even accusing U.S. Ambassador Kelly Degnan of allegedly forcing Georgia to go to war with Russia. The Georgian opposition claims that the anti-western rhetoric is being promoted by Ivanishvili, but the roots of the problem are more likely in Moscow, which has been waging both hot and irregular wars against Georgia since the Georgian government expressed its desire to join the European Union and NATO.
This time, the protestors or more accurately the people of Georgia, gained a big victory. The ruling party recalled their proposal.
But that victory could be short-lived. In this state of political disarray, Georgia provides fertile soil for Russia’s psychological operations. For example, disinformation suggesting the United States was working to drag Georgia into the Russian-Ukrainian war could lead both to the escalation of conflict among the elites and violence on the streets. This is just one hypothetical line of disinformation. There could be many. With the rise of populism around the world, including in the United States, utter lies become a tool of both domestic and international politics.
There is more the FSB could do to unsettle the region. The FSB can blackmail refugees by threatening the safety of their relatives in Russia; there is evidence that the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, a Putin ally, has been doing this for years with the Chechen diaspora in Europe and Canada. Kadyrov’s methods are brutal, including taking relatives of refugees as hostages, threatening the Chechens who do not cooperate with torture, paying those who cooperate, recruiting young Chechens through martial arts clubs, and fabricating criminal charges against refugees.
The FSB may also be planning red-herring operations with the purpose of creating tensions between refugees and their hosts. The Russians already did something similar in Germany in 2016, when Russian media used an alleged kidnapping and rape of a 13-year-old Russian girl by refugees from the Middle East in Berlin to accuse Germany of being lenient on child abuse and Muslim immigrants’ alleged criminal behavior. After an investigation, the case turned out to be a fake, yet it caused a series of protests by Russian speakers in German cities. The goal of the operation was to spike anti-immigrant sentiment and boost support for right-wing political parties.
Lastly and most disturbingly, the FSB could stoke anti-western attitudes among the refugees themselves. Nationalism is not alien to the Russian diaspora. Russians can vote abroad as long as they maintain Russian citizenship, and many do so, in spite of living permanently in other countries. Many among those who left the USSR or Russia in the 1980s, 1990s and in early 2000s — especially in the United States and United Kingdom – initially voted against Putin yet switched their allegiance after Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014. In 2018, Putin received a stunning 81 percent of the vote by Russian citizens in Germany, 72 percent in Israel, 63 percent in France, 63 percent in the United States of America, and 52 percent in the United Kingdom — a country which is a home to many anti-Putin activists.
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#Opinion #Russians #Coming #Downsides
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 4, 2023
The Time Russians Really Did Target Americans With Microwaves

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But the pressure apparently worked. Eventually, the radiation tapered off, and the American embassy returned to work as normal. But the microwave beam never fully disappeared, running through the tail end of the 1980s — meaning that the beam continued, off and on, for almost the entirety of the Cold War, making it arguably the Soviets’ longest-running anti-American program of the entire era.
At the time of Brezhnev’s outburst, the claim that no one had “fallen sick” may have been true. But by the time Schumaker had arrived at the embassy, when staffers had finally been made aware of the microwave beam’s existence, that claim was increasingly faulty. One study discovered that as many as one-third of the embassy’s employees had higher white blood counts than normal, and that “blood counts returned to normal a few weeks after departing Moscow.”
That’s not necessarily confirmation that the Soviets’ microwave radiation caused the elevated blood counts. But at the time, a pair of former American ambassadors stationed in Moscow had recently died from cancer, and another had been diagnosed with a “severe blood disorder.” As the Foreign Service Journal summed up, “To most Moscow staffers, it just seemed like too much of a coincidence.”
Indeed, new findings are now calling into question the studies and claims that officials relied on back then to dismiss health concerns.
To Schumaker, that reality hit home a few years after he returned from Moscow, when a doctor diagnosed him with chronic lymphocytic leukemia — a disease that emerged after he’d arrived in Moscow in “perfect health.”
“I have always considered Moscow microwaves to be a prime suspect,” Schumaker remembered. “[The diagnosis] came as a shock, as I have no family history of leukemia. It is a puzzle to which there is still no answer.”
It’s a puzzle to which diplomats struggling with Havana Syndrome symptoms can relate — and in more ways than just the physical. Much like the Moscow Signal experience, those suffering from Havana Syndrome have continued to be dismissed by many, including by officials in Washington, as cranks or hypochondriacs. And especially after the recent intelligence conclusions, those dismissals will likely continue. “You can say with certainty that the U.S. government’s reaction to reports of the Havana Syndrome was typical — and almost exactly the same as in the case of Moscow Signal,” Schumaker, who survived his leukemia diagnosis, told me. “It was first the bureaucratic impulse to push everything away and say, ‘It’s not happening, it’s not happening — these people are just imagining things, it’s all in their heads.’ And it was the same sort of thing with Havana Syndrome.”
If anything, the Moscow Signal and the Havana Syndrome are something of a mirror image of one another. In the former, we have confirmation that the Soviets spent decades saturating American diplomatic staff in microwave radiation — though the link to subsequent symptoms remains ultimately unclear. In the latter, we have a clear constellation of symptoms (and a far broader range of targets) — but no ultimate, identifiable cause. And after the recent conclusion from the intelligence agencies, any answer appears further away than ever.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 10, 2023
AI Can Tell Us How Russians Feel About the War. Putin Won’t Like the Results.

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Artificial intelligence can help with this. For the past year, the Center for Strategic and International Studies has worked with FilterLabs.AI, a Massachusetts-based data analytics firm, to track local sentiment across Russia using AI-enabled sentiment analysis.
Sentiment analysis is a well-tested form of artificial intelligence that trains computers to read and understand human-generated text and speech. The analysis evaluates scraped public documents and comments across social media, news media, messenger app groups (including Telegram, which is widely used in Russia), and other popular forums to gauge what people are thinking and feeling at the local level, and whether that sentiment is trending positive or negative.
This data tells a different story about Russian public opinion, especially outside Moscow — a story Putin will not like.
Standard polling often concentrates on population centers including Moscow and St. Petersburg, which can skew national averages. Outside of those major cities, a more negative picture emerges. Our analysis shows that the Kremlin is increasingly unable to control public sentiment outside major cities with national propaganda.
Kremlin propagandists work iteratively, piloting slightly different messages successively and rolling them out in waves when their analysis signals that they are needed. Since the invasion, Russian state-sponsored propaganda waves elevated public sentiment toward the war for an average of 14 days across all regions and topics. As the war in Ukraine drags on, though, these positive waves of public sentiment are getting shorter, particularly outside the major cities, and are needing to be deployed with increasing frequency across Russia.
In other words, Russians appear to be less and less influenced by propaganda from Moscow, especially when it clearly contradicts the struggles in their daily lives. As Putin’s war of choice inflicts personal costs on citizens, Russians seem less willing to swallow the state narratives that are delivered over state television, which remains the primary source of information for most Russians.
Effects of Mobilization
The news is not all bad for Putin. Russian information operations remain formidable in their ability to mobilize and leverage state resources. They are particularly adept at muddling information environments, making people unsure of what to believe, and sapping their motivation.
But as the war drags into a second year and as more Russians feel its effects on their daily lives — especially the growing number of men drafted or conscripted into the armed forces — the limitations of Kremlin propaganda are increasingly apparent.

This is particularly true in the regions of Russia most heavily targeted by Putin’s mobilization. Some of the first data FilterLabs gathered after the invasion was from the republic of Buryatia, a mostly rural, underdeveloped region 3,700 miles from Moscow and bordering Mongolia. Many of those drafted into the Russian army regardless of age, military experience and medical history come from ethnic minority dominant regions like Buryatia. In April, a national propaganda campaign created a positive spike in local sentiment in Buryatia towards the war that lasted for 12 days before reverting to pre-campaign levels. But by late May, that cycle had shrunk to nine days. By June, as EU sanctions started to impact the economy and as information about western consolidation behind Ukraine and heavy resistance to Russian advances seeped into Buryatia, it took only eight days after a wave of propaganda for public sentiment to drop down to a negative steady state.

These trends are not unique to Buryatia. Significant shifts in Russian attitudes were detected across the country, sometimes over the prosecution of the war itself. For example, when Russian armed forces met much fiercer resistance from Ukrainians in March and April 2022, and reports of high death tolls filtered back into Russia, FilterLabs detected a decrease of support for the war in many regions of the country.
When the nationwide “partial mobilization” was announced in September 2022, there were demonstrable dips in the effectiveness of pro-war propaganda. We tracked sentiment across Russia’s eight federal districts, from Siberia to the far east, south to northwest, and the drop in public sentiment was clearly visible. Opinions trended negative and efforts to impact those opinions were less effective and shorter lived.

The analysis suggests that Russians, especially outside of Moscow, are not buying the propaganda as they once were. The Kremlin has also been unable to use its propaganda to sustainably mobilize popular sentiment around an affirmative agenda, in this case its war in Ukraine. Muddling the information environment and sowing mistrust has not generated positive support for Moscow’s misadventures.
Regime Fragility
The data suggest that the Russian government could be more fragile than it would like to admit. Corruption and weak institutions have contributed to state fragility in Russia for decades. The war appears to be exacerbating that trend.
In effect, our analysis suggests that the social contract between Russians and the Putin regime is fraying. Bankrolled by high energy prices over the last two decades, the public has acquiesced to Putin’s autocratic rule in exchange for improved living standards and functional public services.
The state propaganda apparatus — which has expanded from print media and TV into online platforms — has been crucial in crystallizing this acquiescence, especially since Putin came to power in the early 2000s. The Kremlin has used information operations to create a more chaotic, undiscernible media space and to obscure the regime’s fragile underbelly, adopting “foreign agent” and “extremism” laws and intimidating would-be opposition voices, all while supporting Kremlin-aligned politicians, authorities and policies.
However, the events of the last several years — the 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine, the protests spurred by opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and the Covid-19 pandemic — have repeatedly demonstrated that propaganda narratives are not enough to cover up diminishing public trust in the legitimacy of the state. And the chaos itself can backfire — or at least quickly diminish its effectiveness — when out of step with lived experience, further undermining legitimacy in the state. Considering all this, telling Russian men and their families that it is in their interest to fight, and die, in faraway Ukraine is a harder story to sell.
It is difficult to get any reliable information out of Russia, but our research suggests the Kremlin’s hold on its people is perhaps not what it is made out to be. Despite Kremlin-pushed messages about high — or even increasing — levels of support for the war as the country marks the anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine, our analysis suggests that people’s overall feelings have changed very little in 2023 and that propaganda still isn’t as effective as it once was.
AI-enabled sentiment data analysis can provide a window into how Russians feel and how fickle public sentiment is. This poses internal threats to Putin’s legitimacy and thus his power. It also signals an inherent mistrust of state institutions that will be part of Russian society — especially outside of Moscow — well after Putin’s reign ends, whenever that may be.
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#Russians #Feel #War #Putin #Wont #Results
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 25, 2023
Two major crypto exchanges failed to block sanctioned Russians

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Huobi and KuCoin did not respond to requests for comment.
One year after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a conflict that has since killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides and forced millions of Ukrainians from their homes, the news reveals the continued limits of Washington’s attempts to cordon off Russian institutions and oligarchs from the broader financial system.
“Despite the bogus claims from crypto lobbyists, this is further evidence of crypto being the currency of choice for illicit finance, including by Russians looking to evade sanctions,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement
Policymakers like Warren have warned for the better part of a year that crypto markets represent a gaping vulnerability in the U.S.’ sanctions on Russia. While Treasury officials say they’ve seen little evidence that digital assets can be used to duck sanctions at scale, the U.S. has cracked down on services — including Russian exchanges and so-called mixing services that make transactions more difficult to track — in an attempt to shut off the spigot.
Inca, whose market surveillance tools have been used by Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, prepared the report on the anniversary of the Russian invasion to spotlight how certain exchanges still allow Russians to move their holdings in and out of the country using peer-to-peer platforms despite escalating sanctions. The report identifies potential vulnerabilities on two other major exchanges, most notably Binance — the world’s largest crypto trading platform and a frequent target of regulators across the globe.
Binance offers “multiple methods” for Russians to convert local currencies into crypto, including through its exchange and a peer-to-peer market, according to the report. While the platform doesn’t allow users to use Russian credit cards, debit cards or accounts from sanctioned banks on its exchange, those deposits are accessible through its peer-to-peer market, according to the report.
Binance called the report’s allegations “categorically false” in a statement.
“Binance is a full-KYC [know your customer] platform and was the first major exchange to implement EU crypto-related sanctions,” said Binance’s global head of sanctions, Chagri Poyraz. He said the company “takes the extraordinary additional step of filtering any forms of communication between users to ensure there is absolutely no potential nexus with Russian entities through any sort of workaround.”

The exchange has engaged in a major lobbying and public relations push in recent weeks in an attempt to head off state and federal agencies’ ongoing push to rein in lightly regulated crypto businesses.
Binance has previously said that it would like to settle any allegations that might be brought by the Justice Department or civil regulators. Patrick Hillmann, the exchange’s chief strategy officer, has acknowledged that Binance failed to fully verify the identity of its customers — a basic requirement for any financial company — during its first two years of operation. He said Binance has no timeline for reaching an agreement with regulators.
Meanwhile, the Singapore-based exchange ByBit allows users to convert Russian rubles into crypto using their peer-to-peer market and fiat deposit, according to the report. Russians may also purchase crypto on the exchange after depositing fiat currency via an online digital wallet or a local bank card — including “any Russian-issued card.”
“Many of these exchanges officially curtailed their operations in Russia due to the imposed sanctions. They claimed to block users from Russia and to prevent them from opening new accounts,” the report states. Instead, they’ve continued to work with Russian citizens, including allowing them to use the maximum deposit, trading, and withdrawal limits, the report said.
BitBy did not respond to a request for comment.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 25, 2023
Russians hunting property in Finland hit a new wall of suspicion

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KANKAANPÄÄ, Finland — In October, three Russian citizens arrived in the border town of Imatra and filed the paperwork to buy a rambling former old people’s home outside the small town of Kankaanpää, a five-hour drive away in Finland’s southwestern reaches.
The applicants ticked a box saying the property would be used for “leisure or recreational purposes” and all gave the same contact email and street address: a nondescript suburban apartment block in Russia’s second city, St. Petersburg.
The story didn’t fly.
Two months later, the Finnish defense ministry announced it had blocked the purchase, citing national security concerns to justify the move — the first time such reasoning had been used during the war on Ukraine.
The authorities’ problem with the transaction was a simple one: the building was a stone’s throw from the Niinisalo Garrison, an army training center for troops assigned to national defense and overseas operations. In May last year, the joint Finnish and NATO training exercise Arrow 22 — testing the readiness of armored brigades — was run out of the garrison.
On a recent weekday, green military transport vehicles could be seen entering and exiting the Niinisalo base. The old people’s home had a clear view of some of the roads in and out.
In the nearby town of Kankaanpää, locals were bemused by the Russians’ attempt to buy the old people’s home. Juhani Tuori, an estate agent, said he had heard about the planned deal and thought it odd. Tuori said he had been involved in trying to sell the old people’s home before, but had no role this time.
“I wondered why such a trade was made,” he said. “Especially given the state of the world.”

In a statement, the Finnish government said the transaction had been rejected because of the “special role” the city of Kankaanpää plays in securing Finland’s national defense.
“According to the Ministry of Defence, it is possible that the large property in the vicinity of the Niinisalo Garrison could be used in a manner that could hinder the organization of national defense and safeguarding of territorial integrity,” the statement said.
The Russian buyers did not respond to an emailed request for comment sent to the address they provided on their application to the defense ministry. They had 30 days from the date of the decision to appeal. As of February 9, they had not done so.
New suspicion
The Kankaanpää case shows how suspicions about Russian activity — official and civilian — have spiked in neighboring states as the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine looms.
For more than two decades after the end of the Cold War, Russians enjoyed increased freedom to buy assets across much of Europe, and Finland was no exception, despite a bloody recent history that saw Finland fight two wars with the Soviet Union in the middle of the last century.
Three Russian billionaires bought a leading Finnish ice hockey team and entered it in the Russian league. A Finnish energy company announced a joint plan with Russian state-run firm Rosatom to build a nuclear power plant in Finland.
Across the Nordic state, Russians also snapped up holiday homes in forests, on picturesque lake shores, and on remote Baltic Sea archipelagos in what were widely seen at the time as innocent investments in an economically stable neighboring state.
But now, with the Russian army’s aggression in Ukraine intensifying and the activities of its intelligence wing the GRU increasingly visible across Europe, Russian property purchases are being viewed with much greater skepticism.
Finland, which has a 1,340 km border with Russia, sees itself as especially vulnerable to covert Russian operations and has begun to take a much greater interest in which Russians are buying what assets: a Finn recently bought back the ice hockey team and the nuclear power plant plan was scrapped last year.
The defense ministry was granted powers in 2020 to block property sales to Russians and other citizens from outside the EU and the European Economic Area, but had never used them before the Kankaanpää case on national security grounds, a spokesman for the ministry said. The only other application rejection was because of an unpaid processing fee.
Experts say the officials are likely concerned the old people’s home could have been used as a base for special forces on covert missions, or more routinely as a place to run monitoring of comings and goings around the army base.
“This kind of place would not necessarily be part of some Russian masterplan, but could theoretically be there in case it was needed,” said Charly Salonius-Pasternak, a researcher at the Finnish Institute for International Affairs, a think tank.
In its ruling, the Finnish defense ministry said the Russian would-be buyers of the old people’s home had changed their story several times about what they intended to use the building for. Their explanations were “not credible,” the ministry said.
Visited on a recent weekday, the empty old people’s home, standing unheated in sub-zero temperatures, was clearly in need of some attention. The front door was yellow with rust. The driveway was covered in thick ice.
The old people’s home appeared to have around 100 bedrooms as well as extensive parking and other surrounding land. It could be accessed by vehicle from two sides with the edge of the Niinisalo Garrison area accessible from the property via wooded back roads as well as the main approach.
The tightening of Finnish property policy comes at a sensitive time for the Nordic country as it proceeds with applications to join NATO alongside nearby Sweden.
Vladimir Putin has threatened what he called a “military-technical response” to those bids, which has led to calls for heightened vigilance in both states.
Officials in Sweden, where there has been a flurry of arrests recently of suspected Russian spies, are likely watching closely to see what lessons can be learned from the Finnish rule change, experts say.
The state-run Swedish Defense Research Agency recently produced a report taking stock of Russian investments in Sweden.
In Finland, security experts have welcomed the country’s new property rules as part of a reckoning with Russian investment in the country, which some suggest was overdue.
“This is a problem which has long been recognized and now there are tools to at least fix some of it,” said researcher Salonius-Pasternak.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

February 21, 2023
Free tea and sausages in the snow: How Putin persuades Russians to cheer the war

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MOSCOW — Among the perks offered to those stamping their feet to stay warm outside Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium there were hot drinks, payouts, free food or a day off from class. Others had simply been told by their employers to attend, independent media reported.
“We’re from the Russian Post,” a young man with dark hair said glumly, burying his face into his coat. Minutes earlier, a woman in a white wooly hat had called out his name from a list and handed him a paper invite in the colors of the Russian tricolor.
“Invite to the festive program ‘Glory to the Defenders of the Fatherland,’” it read.

The mass event at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium on Wednesday could hardly be called spontaneous. But it was certainly a crowd-puller.
Тens of thousands were reported to have poured through the metal detectors installed on the grounds of Luzhniki, once the gem of the World Cup Russia hosted in 2018 and a symbol of its international appeal. Now it is a favorite location for staged patriotic rallies.
This event was timed for Defender of the Fatherland Day on February 23, a traditional holiday in Russia which this year acts as an upbeat to the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a day later.
The lineup included a number of pop stars who are regular faces at patriotic events, such as singers Grigory Leps and Oleg Gazmanov, both of whom are on the EU’s sanctions list.
Тhe singer Shaman belted out his ballad “We’ll rise,” dressed in a T-shirt reading: “I am Russian.”
But the real star was President Vladimir Putin who looked visibly pleased after walking on stage to chants of: “Russia! Russia!”
“Right now there is a battle going on our historic lands, for our people … we are proud of them,” he told the crowd. “Today, in defending our interests, our people, our culture, language, territory, all of it, our entire people is the defender of the fatherland.”
Earlier, a group of young children described as being from Mariupol were brought on stage with footage of a destroyed city playing in the background. “I want to thank Uncle Yurya for saving me and hundreds of thousands of others,” one of the girls said before being encouraged to hug а military commander said to have “saved” more than 350 children.
Generally, public messaging has tended to avoid putting too much focus on Ukraine and the war — a term which in Russia is still a criminal offense — and more on a broader and less contentious narrative of patriotism and support for the country’s armed forces.
Тens of thousands were reported to have poured through the metal detectors installed on the grounds of Luzhniki, once the gem of the World Cup Russia hosted in 2018 | Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Images
At the stadium, some law enforcement officers, but few visitors, brandished Zs, the letter that has become a symbol of the war. Similarly, across the city, billboards featured veterans and modern-day soldiers and slogans such as “We stand together!” but rarely did they explicitly mention Ukraine.
Access to the concert was strictly controlled. There were no tickets for purchase and only a handful of media were allowed in. Attendants had to sign up beforehand via youth organizations, state companies and educational institutions.
“I was signed up by my university,” a young man dressed in a light gray hooded sweater said. Asked whether it had been mandatory, he nodded and looked away.
He declined to give his name and, fearing reprisals, others were similarly wary to talk. “We don’t speak Russian,” a woman of Central Asian appearance said, after being asked what had brought her there.
“It’s very cold today, and we’re just having a snack, thank you, goodbye,” said another woman in a fur coat, who stood outside with a group eating sausage sandwiches and pickles in the snow.
A similar rally in Luzhniki was held in March last year, when Russia marked the eight-year anniversary of the annexation of Crimea. And another in October on Red Square after a ceremony annexing four more Ukrainian regions, despite them not being fully under Russian control.
In fact, since 2014 the rallies have become a fixed feature of Putin’s leadership.
“After Crimea’s annexation, Putin went from aspiring to the legitimacy of an elected president to that of being an almighty Leader. And if you’re a Leader, you need a crowd to gather around you,” analyst Nikolai Petrov, a consultant at Chatham House think tank, told POLITICO.
But even the most fervent Kremlin supporter would struggle to portray the rallies as spontaneous. In fact, the traditional scenes of rows of similar buses transporting similar-looking people who then wave similar-sized Russian flags are more like North Korea than Woodstock.
However, said Petrov, the Kremlin is unlikely to consider this a weakness. “The Kremlin doesn’t need people to mobilize themselves, even in its support,” he said. “The whole idea of such events is to demonstrate loyalty, not some kind of fanatical love.”
Though the Luzhniki concert was the big showstopper, other festivities are expected across the country in the coming days.
According to the business outlet RBC, the presidential administration has sent out guidelines to regional authorities on suitable activities. Suggestions reportedly included painting military-themed murals, staging flash mobs with people lining up in the form of a star-shaped war medal, and arts and crafts workshops to produce, among other things, knitted socks that could later be sent to soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
The real star of the show was President Vladimir Putin who looked visibly pleased after walking on stage to chants | Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Images
Russians who have family or friends involved in the “special military operation” have also been encouraged to record personal video messages and share them online under the hashtag #ourheroes.
In one such video posted on Instagram — a platform that has been banned in Russia as extremist but is still widely used via VPN — a teary-eyed woman from the town of Prokhladny in Kabardino-Balkaria dressed in uniform tells her husband: “You’re our rock, our defender. I wish for you to come back victorious, healthy, unharmed. I love you very much.”
Back at Luzhniki, ahead of the rally, loudspeakers promised attendants free hot tea, porridge and sausages.
Meanwhile, coordinators continued to call out names from their clipboards to groups of middle-aged women in mittens and fur coats and men in dark jackets and hats. “Smirnova, Oxana Pavlovna!” one such organizer yelled. Answering to that name, a woman walked forwards and accepted her entry ticket with little emotion.
After getting their names ticked, a trickle of people headed straight back to the metro, away from the grounds before the celebrations had even started, some of them with the Russian tricolor flags they had been given still in hand.
With another anniversary, the annexation of Crimea, around the corner in March, they are likely to be back soon.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

February 21, 2023
A moment that changed me: I fled Ukraine with my ex’s family as the Russians invaded

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It was February 2022. Life was going pretty well. I had an apartment with views across Kyiv and I was sketching out a new project as an illustrator. I had finally ended an unhealthy long-term relationship. Yes, I thought. This will change everything!
My mother and I went on a last-minute holiday to Zanzibar. We left on 15 February, the day the Russians had initially planned to invade. Before we left, there was talk of war, but I didn’t take it seriously. Beautiful Zanzibar made it seem even less likely. We flew back on 23 February. The flight attendant was strict about telling us to wear our face masks. Surely, if everyone was worrying about face masks, then they weren’t thinking about war?
I went back to my flat with its view of the city. It was a bright and sunny day – but that night, the ravens came. I was woken up by explosions. I went out on to my balcony hoping it was just fireworks. It wasn’t. I shut myself in the bathroom, Googling “war”, but there was nothing in the news.
What I did next was instinctive: I took my Zanzibar suitcase, added some entirely impractical things such as incense, crystals and three vintage Laura Ashley dresses. Then my ex-boyfriend picked me up in his car. I am still so touched that he did that, considering how we had parted. It seemed right that we should be together.
Kyiv was the target, and it made sense to get out, but there were traffic jams everywhere and the queues for petrol were ridiculous. We spent the next 24 hours in the car. At Vinnytsia, about 170 miles from Kyiv, we saw bomb sites and destruction. We made it to western Ukraine, where we stayed with my ex-boyfriend’s relatives. It was decided then that all the women, children (and cats) should go abroad. It was forbidden for men to cross the border.
Imagine the company: my almost-mother-in-law (who was still furious with me), her daughter-in-law and my almost-sister-in-law, who pitied me for putting my efforts into drawing instead of starting a family. In other words, we had little in common.
Together with two children and a couple of cats, we crossed the Romanian border on 28 February. It was amazing that we reached our destination at all, given how little driving experience we had between us.
We stayed in a house that had been empty for 20 years. It was extremely cold. We had to heat up an ancient stove with wood that we collected, and the toilet flooded every time it was flushed. I swear the house was haunted.

We changed places and countries. My almost-sister-in-law showed her gratitude to the people who hosted us by cleaning their houses. I did my best to help her. What else could we do?
Eventually, we ended up in a little Austrian town called Marchegg. We didn’t know the people, but they opened their arms to us. Later, they even helped me find a place for my mother and sister to stay. Until then, they had camped in a basement. My almost-sister-in-law continued to clean while I got on with my work. I now see that this was her way of dealing with stress. We haven’t become friends, but we’ve become something like good allies.
My sadness over the breakup dissolved under the weight of war, at least for a couple of months. I was working hard on my new book, trying to embrace the opportunity. Strangely, it helped calm me down. Drawing has always been my therapy.
After a couple of months, my ex was able to leave Ukraine and come to Austria. While I was happy that he was safe, it meant living together under one roof again. Soon, we were locked in the same impossible relationship. I was making the final changes to the illustrations for the book. I finished the project, then mentally crashed and hit rock bottom.
Long story short: a psychologist helped me process everything. I feel more stable than ever. My ex is happy with another woman, and I am finally free to see what the future holds. I haven’t suffered as much as millions of other Ukrainians. The war heightened my inner issues, but escaping it helped me heal.
The Girl of Ink & Stars (illustrated gift edition) by Kiran Millwood Hargrave, illustrated by Olia Muza, is published by Chicken House (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy for £21.75 at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

February 15, 2023
Red carpet war as Ukrainians and Russians scrap over Oscar nominations

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The Oscars are wading into a Russian-Ukrainian geopolitical minefield.
Of the five films shortlisted by the U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for this year’s best documentary, one is about Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny and another is “A House Made of Splinters,” about a Ukrainian orphanage in the war-torn east of the country.
While neither film will warm the heart of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the competition between the two has sparked a conflict between Ukrainians and the Russian opposition.
“Ukraine has been invaded by Russia and tens of thousands have been murdered by the Russian army, millions have been kicked out of their homes. Therefore, I can understand that reaction to a film that focuses on the fate of one single — Russian — person,” said Christo Grozev, a Bulgarian investigative journalist who is in the Navalny movie. “This is why I will never start arguing with Ukrainians who are upset about the film getting nominated for an Oscar.”
“Navalny,” directed by Canadian filmmaker Daniel Roher and produced by HBO Max and CNN Films, tells the story of the opposition leader who led a growing political movement against Putin, was almost killed by a nerve agent and then returned to Moscow despite the threat of arrest; he’s now languishing in a Russian prison. The movie does touch on Navalny’s nationalist views and his dalliance with far-right forces, but it’s all too little for Ukrainians aghast at Navalny’s stance on the 2014 occupation of Crimea.
At the time he denounced Putin’s annexation as a “flagrant violation of all international norms” but he also said the peninsula wouldn’t go back to Ukraine. “Is the Crimea a sandwich or something you can take and give it back? I don’t think so,” he told Ekho Moskvy radio.
But his political leanings haven’t stopped a wave of support for his bravery in standing up to Putin.
“Navalny” got wide recognition, distribution on HBO Max, a Times Square poster and was praised by Hollywood stars. Actor Hugh Jackman has supported the movie in a video recommendation tweet.

“It is a documentary about a man who is literally risking his life every single day,” Jackman said.
However, Ukrainians, deeply traumatized by the ongoing Russian invasion, see the documentary as an attempt to whitewash Navalny, who they accuse of still being a Russian nationalist despite opposing Putin.
Tetiana Shevchuk, a lawyer with the Anti-Corruption Action Center, complains that Navalny’s backers have been pressing for his release, but haven’t done much to protest the war.
“They were silent for 11 months of the war, but now that Oscar is on the horizon, they have become more active and imitate the anti-war movement. If the Academy awards them an award, it will be another tone-deaf gesture,” Shevchuk said.
Questioning Navalny’s credentials can provoke outrage.
Maria Pevchikh, who heads Navalny’s team of anti-corruption investigators and is one of the producers of the documentary, refused to answer POLITICO’s questions on that topic, saying they were offensive and unprofessional.
However, Pevchikh is scathing about allegations that Navalny and his supporters are pussyfooting around the war to not risk offending nationalist Russians.
“Is that why Navalny’s supporters have been talking about the war to an almost entirely Russian audience of ten million people on a specially created channel since the first day of the war? Without interrupting for a single day? Apparently this is a clever attempt on our part not to lose their audience,” she tweeted.
Less promoted but still visible
“House Made of Splinters,” a co-production of Denmark, Ukraine, Sweden and Finland, tells the story of children from a special orphanage in the eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk made just before Russia’s full-scale invasion last year; the city is now a field of ruins and under Russian occupation.
“Children are all safe now. They were evacuated abroad. And their educators have been internally displaced to other regions of Ukraine. So, they are also relatively safe,” said Azad Safarov, assistant director of the film. “However, the special orphanage was destroyed after a missile strike.”
Splinters got strong reviews and recognition at cinema festivals last year, but it made less of a splash than “Navalny,” said Darya Bassel of the Moon Man production studio, a Ukrainian co-producer of the film.
“The film, for example, does not have an American distributor. So, the result — an Oscar nomination — indicates that the film really impressed academics and maybe they just advised each other to watch the film, and thus the film was nominated,” Bassel said, calling it: “Word of mouth radio.”
When asked about what she thinks of the Navalny documentary competing for the same award, Bassel said that everyone fights for what is important to them. For her, it is important to talk about Ukraine and how Russia’s war ruins lives in her country.
“I just don’t want us to be placed at the table with Russian opposition and pushed to start a dialogue,” Bassel said.
Navalny’s views
In “Navalny,” Grozev, lead Russia investigator with Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group, helps the opposition leader figure out who tried to kill him by placing Novichok nerve agent in his underwear.
However, Grozev initially had significant reservations about Navalny due to his past public statements about Crimea, his view of Russia and much more.
“I enquired about him from many Russian colleagues who have an uncontested liberal, non-imperialistic worldview, and they all had the opinion that he has evolved from an opportunistic populist to a staunch democrat with liberal democracy values,” Grozev said.
The journalist spent days arguing with Navalny about politics, concluding he was pretty mainstream and not an imperialist. According to Grozev, nowadays Navalny thinks that Russia should be decentralized, the president’s power should be cut down to a minimum and that a successful Ukraine would be a competitive benchmark for Russia.
But Crimea remains a sore point; Navalny can’t break with the overwhelming view among his countrymen of all political views that the peninsula can’t simply be returned to Ukraine.
“We did argue a lot with him over his views on Crimea. While I never agreed with his view, I must also admit that it is very different from that that is claimed now by many anti-Navalny activists,” Grozev said.
According to him, Navalny still views the annexation of Crimea as an egregious violation of international law. But now that it has happened, Russia and Ukraine should sit down and prepare a long-term plan for giving the residents the right to decide which nation they want to belong to — after “advertising campaigns” by both countries and a U.N.-controlled period of independence. However Ukrainians warn that the idea makes no sense as more than 800,000 Russian colonists have moved to Crimea since it was annexed.
“In my opinion, Navalny and his anti-corruption team are now doing everything they can to stop the war — including him shouting against the war in each court hearing, writing anti-imperialistic and anti-war op-eds that get him further punishments, and his organization paying for fines for anti-war protests and running a separate full-time anti-war TV channel,” Grozev said.
“Unfortunately, none of this has led to mass protests in Russia, and I can completely understand many Ukrainians’ sentiment that all Russians bear collective guilt for not doing enough to stop this barbarism,” he added.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

February 8, 2023