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mariacallous · 7 months ago

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One of the bleakest places on Earth today is the central processing facility for the remains of dead soldiers in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, the logistical hub of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Designed to process hundreds of corpses at a time, this sprawling mega-morgue has been hopelessly overwhelmed for many months. Footage from the inside, posted by witnesses on social media, shows hundreds of bodies in various stages of decomposition and limbs strewn across the corridor floors. In wooden boxes lining the walls from floor to ceiling, row after row after row, are the lucky ones: those whose bodies were recovered from the battlefield, identified, sealed in zinc-lined caskets, and prepared for dispatch to their grieving relatives in the farthest corners of Russia. Many more corpses have been abandoned to rot in Ukrainian fields because evacuating them is impractical under the constant barrage of the defenders’ artillery and drones.

To be sure: These soldiers’ deaths are the necessary consequence of Ukraine’s right to defend itself against an illegal war of conquest. What’s more, many of these ordinary Russian soldiers likely committed despicable brutality and war crimes against Ukrainians, including defenseless civilians. But the horrific rate at which Russians are getting killed at the front—much higher than corresponding Ukrainian losses, although exact numbers are kept secret by both sides—points to two disturbing truths about the Russian way of waging war. First, a cruel disregard for human life extends to Russia’s own forces, which the Kremlin systematically deploys in so-called meat grinder and human-wave attacks. Second, mass death among Russian troops has become part of an increasingly explicit eugenics policy, by which the Kremlin seeks to rid Russia of undesirable elements and reconfigure the Russian population. The eugenics aspect of Russia’s war has long been an open secret, widely discussed on Russian talk shows and social media. Now, a high-ranking Russian politician has made it plain for the first time.

The numbers boggle the mind. With an estimated rate of 1,500 casualties per day, October was the bloodiest month of the war for Russia as President Vladimir Putin throws everything he has into battle. Estimates for total Russian war deaths range from 115,000 to 160,000, more than 10 times Soviet combat deaths in Afghanistan. Total Russian casualties—killed and wounded—are estimated at around 800,000. According to Anastasia Kashevarova, a rabidly pro-war Russian journalist, the average Russian infantry soldier lasts less than one month at the front before being killed. With casualties exceeding Russia’s ability to recruit fresh soldiers, few of the troops receive any serious training before they’re sent to assault the Ukrainian lines.

It’s not just lives that Russia is losing in astonishing numbers—equipment, too, is being lost at a rate far beyond what’s possible to replenish from weapons production or dwindling stocks. According to WarSpotting, an open-source intelligence project that uses video confirmation to track Russian equipment losses, Russia lost more than 500 pieces of heavy equipment in October—including tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and aircraft—twice as many as during the Battle of Grozny from 1994 to 1995, whose catastrophic losses in men and equipment demoralized Russian forces and society at the time. Today, some of the largest Russian military storage bases have almost been stripped clear of equipment, with even old Soviet-era tanks and armored vehicles dragged to the front.

Russian politicians, pundits, and ordinary citizens, who fantasize publicly about mass murdering Ukrainians, make no secret of the view that their own soldiers’ lives are worth hardly more. The shift to World War II-style meat grinder tactics has been widely and passionately discussed on pro-war Telegram channels since the battle for Bakhmut, which began in the summer of 2022 and lasted almost an entire year. The battle marked a doctrinal shift from the failed concept of battalion tactical groups—composed of some of the most elite and efficient Russian units, such as paratrooper and special forces regiments—to Soviet-style mass frontal assaults.

In Bakhmut, Wagner Group commander Yevgeny Prigozhin introduced what is now the standard Russian tactic of sending human wave after human wave of disposable infantry into the assault until the Ukrainian defenders’ guns jam or run out of bullets. In Wagner’s case, these were mainly convicts recruited from prisons with promises of freedom and mercenaries lured by exorbitant pay. Russia finally won the yearlong fight over the city’s smoldering ruins at the cost of at least 20,000 Wagner mercenaries alone. Later, the meat grinder policy was adopted for the entire Russian army, with each major unit setting up assault groups for that purpose.

It has been a terrifyingly effective tactic, but Russian casualties incurred by it are beyond comparison in recent military history. The battle for the Ukrainian town of Avdiivka alone may have cost around 16,000 Russian lives—and that appears to be a very conservative estimate circulated by Russian pro-war bloggers, who generally have an incentive to downplay their own side’s losses.

But Russian disregard for life is not just a question of battlefield tactics. What stands out is the deliberate cruelty. The Russian military has stunned the world with its wanton brutality toward Ukrainian civilians—including widespread rape, torture, killings, and abductions—and prisoners of war. (The latter are now routinely executed, another in a long list of Russian war crimes.) But the cruelty dispensed by officers on their own subordinates is also shocking. Russian Telegram channels are full of accounts of soldiers tortured for refusing or questioning orders, of seriously wounded troops sent to a certain death in an assault, and of Soviet-style barrier troops behind the front line, whose sole job is to shoot shirkers and deserters—also known as nullification. Suicidal human-wave attacks are both a means and an end: Commanders have reportedly assigned soldiers to these expendable units as a punishment for various disagreements or for the failure to pay a bribe.

Under these circumstances, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many Russian soldiers choose to end their lives. By now, there are hundreds of videos online showing Russian soldiers shooting themselves through the mouth to spare themselves an even grislier death, knowing that there is little hope for medical evacuation on the Russian side.

An even more sinister aspect of Russia’s disregard of the value of life is the increasingly open framing of the war as a national eugenics project. “Spare people” with low “social value” is how Russian parliamentarian Aleksandr Borodai described his compatriots sent as cannon fodder to Ukraine in a leaked tape, the authenticity of which he later confirmed. Expendable manpower, he explained, can be thrown at Ukraine’s “bravest [and] boldest,” and “exhaust the enemy to the maximum.” Borodai isn’t just anybody: He’s a political consultant from Moscow who declared himself prime minister of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic in Ukraine in 2014, and he’s now a member of the Russian parliament for the ruling United Russia party. Coming from someone this prominent, it is essentially a confirmation of how Russia is running the war.

That the war has changed the composition of the Russian population has long been clear from the incomparably higher rates at which non-Russian ethnic minorities—Buryats, Tatars, Tuvans—are dying in the war. But these are not the only disfavored parts of the Russian population while the Russian leadership shields the politically important populations of Moscow and St. Petersburg, where unrest could endanger the regime and where much of the Russian elite resides. Prisons have been virtually emptied as inmates are sent to the bloodiest sections of the front. And the protection of the major urban populations in European Russia means that the more remote, poorer, and less ethnically Russian regions are bleeding out.

To compensate for the deliberate loss of “expendables” at the front, a crucial part of Moscow’s eugenics program is played by Ukrainians. Several million Ukrainians have been removed from the occupied territories and resettled in Russia, a disproportionate share of them women and children. In their place, Russian settlers are moving in. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of these abducted children are now being Russified to strip them of any Ukrainian identity, a clear echo of the Nazi eugenics policy of shipping blond Polish children back to the Reich to be adopted and turned into Germans. Some of the Ukrainian boys are now old enough to be forcibly conscripted into the Russian army—yet another war crime on an already long list.

Russia still has numerical superiority, but its resources are not infinite. The suicidal Russian strategy of waging war, while effective, is not sustainable in the long term, especially with the Russian economy already showing signs of immense strain.

The fate of Russia’s invasion now effectively hinges on Western willingness to commit to Ukraine’s push for independence from Russia’s neo-imperialist aspirations. U.S. President Joe Biden’s final weeks in office may yet prove to be critical: His decision to grant Ukraine permission to strike key military targets inside parts of Russia with U.S.- and British-supplied weapons has already elicited an angry response from Moscow, even if there is nothing new about Ukraine using Western arms to strike vital targets in what Russia considers its lands, including illegally annexed Crimea. It’s up to the West to help Ukraine make sure that Putin loses his gamble as he throws everything he has against Ukraine before his equipment and trained soldiers run out. Catastrophic human losses won’t deter him, as they are deeply ingrained in Russia’s cruel way of waging war.

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helenvaughans · 1 year ago

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The Kremlin stage-managed Russia’s presidential vote over the weekend to send a singular message at home and abroad: that President Vladimir V. Putin’s support is overwhelming and unshakable, despite or even because of his war against Ukraine.

From the moment the preliminary results first flashed across state television late Sunday, the authorities left no room for misinterpretation. Mr. Putin, they said, won more than 87 percent of the vote, his closest competitor just 4 percent. It had all the hallmarks of an authoritarian Potemkin plebiscite.

The Kremlin may have felt more comfortable orchestrating such a large margin of victory because Mr. Putin’s approval rating has climbed during the war in independent polls, owing to a rally-around-the flag effect and optimism about the Russian economy. The Levada Center, an independent pollster, reported last month that 86 percent of Russians approved of Mr. Putin, his highest rating in more than seven years.

But while the figures may suggest unabiding support for Mr. Putin and his agenda across Russia, the situation is more complex than the numbers convey. The leader of one opposition research group in Moscow has argued that backing for Mr. Putin is actually far more brittle than simple approval numbers suggest.

“The numbers we get on polls from Russia don’t mean what people think they mean,” said Aleksei Minyailo, a Moscow-based opposition activist and co-founder of a research project called Chronicles, which has been polling Russians in recent months. “Because Russia is not an electoral democracy but a wartime dictatorship.”

In a late January survey, Chronicles asked one group of Russian respondents what they wanted in key policy areas and a different group what they expected to see from Mr. Putin — and documented a substantive difference between desires and expectations.

More than half of respondents, for example, said they supported restoring relations with Western countries, but only 28 percent expected Mr. Putin to restore them. Some 58 percent expressed support for a truce with Ukraine, but only 29 percent expected Mr. Putin to agree to one.

“We see that Russians want different things from what they expect from Putin,” Mr. Minyailo said. “Probably if they did have any kind of alternative, they might make a different choice.”

Compelling alternative choices, however, have been systematically eliminated over the near quarter century that Mr. Putin has been in power in Russia.

Opposition figures have been exiled, jailed or killed. Independent news outlets have been driven out of the country. And a wave of repression unseen since the Soviet era has led to lengthy prison sentences for simple acts of dissent, such as critical social media posts.

Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition figure who carried the hopes of many Russians for an alternative to Mr. Putin, died under mysterious circumstances in an Arctic prison last month. After declaring victory late Sunday, Mr. Putin called Mr. Navalny’s death an “unfortunate incident.”

The war has only further closed what little space used to exist for alternatives to Mr. Putin’s agenda to gain traction in public.

“There is a sophisticated case to be made about why this war is so much against Russia’s interest, and that part of the spectrum is missing,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “It is now happening in exile, and the government is erecting a lot of barriers to people tapping into this content.”

By casting those against the war as saboteurs, he said, Mr. Putin’s regime has succeeded in making “the opposition something that is really unattractive — more for outsiders, not for mainstream people.”

In years past, Russia’s so-called “political technologists” allowed a semblance of competition and open debate in presidential elections to drive turnout and give the race a patina of authenticity. But this year they took no chances.

Yekaterina S. Duntsova, a relatively unknown TV journalist and former municipal deputy from a city 140 miles west of Moscow, tried to run for president on an antiwar platform but was swiftly disqualified. So was Boris B. Nadezhdin, another under-the-radar politician who collected more than 100,000 signatures required to enter the race but could not get on the ballot.

“They deemed both of them dangerous enough not to let them on the ballot,” Mr. Minyailo said. “That tells a lot, to my mind, about the nature of the regime and about how stalwart Putin’s position is. If his regime thinks there is a danger to letting a provincial journalist collect signatures, that tells a lot.”

Russian opinion polling regularly shows that a relatively small segment of the Russian population are die-hard supporters of Mr. Putin and a similarly sized group are aggressive opponents, many of them now abroad.

The majority, pollsters have found, are relatively apathetic, supporting Mr. Putin passively, with no other alternative coming onto their radar. They are particularly influenced by the narrative on television, which is controlled by the state.

“Deep wells of social inertia, apathy and atomization are the real source of Putin’s power,” Mr. Gabuev said. Many Russians, he said, don’t have a sophisticated framework for thinking about certain issues, because there is no public discussion taking place.

And those Russians who do articulate desires that differ from Mr. Putin’s actions are not necessarily willing to fight for what they want, Mr. Minyailo noted. Many Russians believe they have no influence on the country’s course of events.

Still, the increase in support for Mr. Putin among Russians in the two years since he ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine is unmistakable across multiple polls.

Denis Volkov, director of the Levada Center, said that a number of metrics showed consolidation around Mr. Putin.

“We monitor many indicators, not only approval rating,” Mr. Volkov said. “We ask open-ended questions. We ask about the economic situation. We ask about the mood of people. All these indicators are pointing in one direction.”

Armed with a vast propaganda apparatus, Mr. Putin has convinced millions of Russians that he is valiantly defending them against an antagonistic Western world bent on using Ukraine as a cudgel to destroy their nation and their way of life.

“The state narrative has generated this idea that it’s Russia versus everybody else,” said Katerina Tertytchnaya, a comparative politics professor at the University of Oxford. “ It’s very important, this narrative of being under siege. The lack of an alternative is also cited as one of the reasons that people support Putin. People cannot conceive of an alternative.”

It is not only that Mr. Putin seems superior to the alternative candidates that the Kremlin allows to appear on state television. He also comes across as a better choice compared to nearly all his historical predecessors.

Mr. Gabuev noted that despite the war tarnishing much of Mr. Putin’s legacy, his first two terms in particular brought the greatest combination of material prosperity and relative freedom Russians had ever seen — and for those uninterested in politics, good will remains.

“That’s the paradox, they really are the happiest life in the country’s history,” Mr. Gabuev said. “Because the combination of wealth and material prosperity and freedoms being present at the same time was never higher.”

#russia #vladimir putin #news #politics #article

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beardedmrbean · 9 months ago

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LONDON (Reuters) -Russia appears to have suffered a "catastrophic failure" in a test of its Sarmat missile, a key weapon in the modernisation of its nuclear arsenal, according to arms experts who have analysed satellite images of the launch site.

The images captured by Maxar on Sept. 21 show a crater about 60 metres (200 feet) wide at the launch silo at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. They reveal extensive damage that was not visible in pictures taken earlier in the month.

The RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile is designed to deliver nuclear warheads to strike targets thousands of miles away in the United States or Europe, but its development has been dogged by delays and testing setbacks.

"By all indications, it was a failed test. It's a big hole in the ground," said Pavel Podvig, an analyst based in Geneva, who runs the Russian Nuclear Forces project. "There was a serious incident with the missile and the silo."

Timothy Wright, research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, said the destruction of the area immediately surrounding the missile silo was suggestive of a failure soon after ignition.

"One possible cause is that the first stage (booster) either failed to ignite properly or suffered from a catastrophic mechanical failure, causing the missile to fall back into or land closely adjacent to the silo and explode," he told Reuters.

James Acton, nuclear specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, posted on X that the before-and-after satellite images were "very persuasive that there was a big explosion" and said he was convinced that a Sarmat test had failed.

The Kremlin referred questions on Sarmat to the defence ministry. The ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment and has made no announcements about planned Sarmat tests in recent days.

The U.S. and its allies are closely watching Russia's development of its nuclear arsenal at a time when the war in Ukraine has pushed tensions between Moscow and the West to the most dangerous point for more than 60 years.

Since the start of the conflict, President Vladimir Putin has said repeatedly that Russia has the biggest and most advanced nuclear arsenal in the world, and warned the West not to cross a threshold that could lead to nuclear war.

REPEATED SETBACKS

The 35-metre-long RS-28 Sarmat, known in the West as Satan II, has a range of 18,000 km (11,000 miles) and a launch weight of over 208 tonnes. Russian media say it can carry up to 16 independently targetable nuclear warheads as well as Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles, a new system that Putin has said is unmatched by Russia's enemies.

Russia had at one point said the Sarmat would be ready by 2018, replacing the Soviet-era SS-18, but the date for deployment has been repeatedly pushed back.

Putin said in October 2023 that Russia had almost completed work on the missile. His defence minister at the time, Sergei Shoigu, said it was set to form "the basis of Russia's ground-based strategic nuclear forces".

IISS analyst Wright said a test failure did not necessarily mean that the Sarmat programme was in jeopardy.

"However, this is the fourth successive test failure of Sarmat which at the very least will push back its already delayed introduction into service even further and at most might raise questions about the programme’s viability," he said.

Wright said the damage at Plesetsk - a test site surrounded by forest in the Arkhangelsk region, some 800 km (500 miles) north of Moscow - would also impact the Sarmat programme.

The delays would put pressure on the serviceability and readiness of the ageing SS-18s the Sarmat is meant to replace, as they will have to remain in service for longer than expected, Wright said.

Nikolai Sokov, a former Russian and Soviet arms control official, said he expected Moscow to persist with the Sarmat, a product of the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau.

He said the Russian military had shown itself keen to preserve competition between rival designers and would therefore be reluctant to depend on Makeyev's rival, the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology, as the single source of all missiles.

#nunyas news

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tomorrowusa · 2 years ago

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If you're a James Bond fan, the word SMERSH (СМЕРШ) may look familiar. If you're a little rusty with 007 lore, check this out.

SMERSH was Stalin's military counterintelligence agency which eventually became part of the KGB – the predecessor to Russia's FSB.

So Vladimir Putin, a former lieutenant colonel in the KGB, is reviving SMERSH.

Russia has revived SMERSH, a Stalin-era spy hunting organization, in parts of Ukraine that were illegally annexed and are partially under the control of Kremlin forces, a Russian politician and Kremlin propagandist announced Sunday. Andrey Gurulyov, a Russian parliament (Duma) member and former military commander, made the remarks during an appearance on state television channel Russia-1, an excerpt of which was posted to his Telegram channel. SMERSH, an acronym for the Russian words "death to spies"—"smert" meaning death and "shpionam" meaning spies—was the name of an organization formed by Soviet leader Josef Stalin. It was tasked with the elimination of anti-communist activity during World War II. "We talked about SMERSH, today we created a department that works in approximately the same way in new territories," said Gurulyov, referring to the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Those recent Ukrainian attacks on Russian railroad infrastructure in Siberia and the Russian Far East possibly had something to do with the timing of the SMERSH reboot.

The organization, notorious for its brutality, was behind the arrest, torture and execution of thousands of people, including any its own agents suspected of sabotage, desertion, or disloyalty. However, the group prevented many attempts on the lives of top Soviet officials, including Stalin himself, Russian news outlet Lenta reported. Gurulyov said a similar structure should also operate once again in Russia. "Today they are trying to interfere with [our operations in non-frontline areas]. I talked to the Far East, where we have nuclear submarines and [where] our ships [are] based. They may also be in danger, so we need to approach protection issues a little differently," the politician said.

By "differently", Gurulyov likely means more ruthlessly. People in Russia have already gotten visits from the police for having blue and yellow curtains in their windows.

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warningsine · 1 year ago

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https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/shooting-blast-reported-concert-hall-near-moscow-agencies-2024-03-22/

MOSCOW, March 22 (Reuters) - At least 40 people were killed and over 100 hurt when gunmen in camouflage clothing opened fire with automatic weapons on people at a concert in the Crocus City Hall near Moscow on Friday, Russia's FSB security service said.

In one of the worst such attacks in Russia in years, at least five gunmen were shown in unverified videos firing repeatedly at screaming civilians cowering in the concert hall as Soviet-era rock group "Picnic" was about to perform.

The 6,200-seat concert hall in a suburb west of Moscow, which is near a shopping mall also called Crocus City, was sold out for the performance.

Other video footage showed the men shooting people below what looked like an entrance sign to Crocus City Hall. People lying motionless in pools of blood outside the hall were also visible.

"Suddenly there were bangs behind us - shots. A burst of firing - I do not know what," one witness, who asked not to be identified by name, told Reuters.

"A stampede began. Everyone ran to the escalator," the witness said. "Everyone was screaming; everyone was running."

Flames leapt into the sky, and plumes of black smoke rose above the venue as hundreds of blue lights from emergency vehicles flashed in the night, Reuters pictures and video showed.

Helicopters sought to douse the flames and evacuated around 100 people from the basement, Russian media reported. The roof of the venue was collapsing, state news agency RIA said.

Russian media reported a second blast at the venue, and there were reports that some of the gunmen had barricaded themselves in the building.

It was not immediately clear who the attackers were. No group had yet claimed responsibility. Russia's foreign ministry said it was a "bloody terrorist attack".

ATTACK WARNING

Two weeks ago, the U.S. embassy in Russia warned that "extremists" had imminent plans for an attack in Moscow.

The embassy issued its warning several hours after the FSB said it had foiled an attack on a Moscow synagogue by a cell of the militant Sunni Muslim group Islamic State.

President Vladimir Putin, who was on Sunday re-elected for a new six-year term, sent thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022 and has repeatedly warned that various powers - including countries in the West - are seeking to sow chaos inside Russia.

Putin is receiving regular updates about the incident, the Kremlin said.

"Vladimir Putin was informed about the beginning of the shooting in the first minutes of what happened in Crocus City Hall," the Kremlin said.

"The president constantly receives information about what is happening and about the measures being taken through all relevant services. The head of state gave all the necessary instructions," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

SECURITY TIGHTENED

After the attack, Russia tightened security at airports, transportation stations and across the capital - a vast urban area of over 21 million people.

"A terrible tragedy occurred in the shopping centre Crocus City today," Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. "I am sorry for the loved ones of the victims."

The White House said that images of the shooting were hard to watch while Germany's foreign ministry called the images "horrific."

"...Our thoughts obviously are going to be with the victims of this terrible, terrible shooting attack," White House spokesman John Kirby said.

Germany foreign ministry said on X, "The background must be clarified quickly. Our deepest condolences go out to the families of the victims."

"The entire world community is obliged to condemn this monstrous crime," Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. "All efforts are being thrown at saving people."

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said that Kyiv "had absolutely nothing to do with these events" in a video message posted on Telegram while Kirby said there was "no indication at this time that Ukraine, or Ukrainians were involved in the shooting."

Zakharova questioned how the U.S. knew this and said Washington should immediately pass any information it had to Moscow, or stop making such statements.

"On what basis do officials in Washington draw any conclusions in the midst of a tragedy about someone's innocence?" Zakharova said.

#russia #news tag

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cyberbenb · 1 month ago

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‘Almost all Russians poisoned by imperial propaganda,’ says journalist Ekaterina Barabash after escaping Russia

In early May, 64-year-old film critic and journalist Ekaterina Barabash made international headlines when it was revealed that she had pulled off a daring escape from house arrest in Russia and sought political asylum in France.

Barabash was put under house arrest in February for posts that she had made criticizing Russia’s war against Ukraine. She was accused of spreading “knowingly false” information about the military on her social media.

The Kremlin has intensified its crackdown on dissent in Russia since the start of its full-scale war against Ukraine, not only targeting those who dare to speak out against the war but also fostering a climate of surveillance that hearkens back to the worst periods of the Soviet era, urging Russian citizens to police one another.

For Barabash, the war struck a personal chord — she is the daughter of a renowned Ukrainian academic and her son lives in Ukraine with his family. Unlike many Russians — who either seek to justify the war or retreat into indifference — Barabash felt a moral imperative to speak out

“Most people in Russia aren’t willing to look for the truth,” Barabash told the Kyiv Independent from France.

“They’ve always been taught that Ukraine is just a part of Russia. But this belief is a kind of poison. It’s something that every Russian grows up with, often without even realizing it.”

In this exclusive interview, Barabash reflects on the moment she decided to risk her life to flee Russia, how her Ukrainian heritage shaped her perspective on Russian culture over the years, why even “good Russians” who oppose the war don’t understand Ukraine, and the bleak future facing anyone with a conscience who chooses to remain in today’s Russia.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. The Kyiv Independent: Since the idea for this interview originally came after you escaped house arrest in Russia, I just wanted to start off by asking, how are you doing?

Ekaterina Barabash: I escaped from house arrest in Russia on April 13. I got past the checkpoints and left my home. We had a plan — I was supposed to be free within 24 hours. But things didn’t go as expected, and I ended up having to hide for two and a half weeks. Unfortunately, I can’t share all the details right now. It’s a shame, because some parts are really interesting. Maybe one day I’ll write about it — maybe even a small book.

During that time, I hid in many places — in forests, fields, villages, and so on. It was a bit frightening and definitely dangerous. I knew I had to leave quickly, and that sense of urgency never left me.

We had hoped they wouldn’t notice my absence for at least a few hours, but they realized I was gone very quickly — within just minutes, maybe half an hour. They started searching for me almost immediately. I don’t know all the details of how the search was carried out.

After that, I had to cross the border into a European country. Of course, it was an illegal crossing. From there, things were arranged to help me move forward. A woman from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) came to meet me, and she helped bring me safely to Paris.

The Standard of the President of the Russian Federation flutters on top of the dome of the Senate Palace, one of the main buildings within the Kremlin compound, as seen through a barbed wire in Moscow, Russia, on Oct. 22, 2024. (Natalia Kolesnikova / AFP via Getty Images)

The Kyiv Independent: Was there a specific moment when you decided that you would take the risk and escape, or did you know from the moment you were arrested that this was what you had to do?

Ekaterina Barabash: No, I didn’t make the decision right away. At first, when they placed me under house arrest, it felt almost like a breath of fresh air. It was so unexpected — usually, in political cases, people accused of such “crimes” are held in jail while they await trial. But the judge said that because I had a very old mother, and I myself am not so young, they decided to place me under house arrest until the court date.

At first, it gave us hope — even my lawyer believed that I might only receive a large fine rather than jail time. But within a few days, after some conversations with certain people, I realized the risk was very high. The chance of being sentenced to prison was real. I believed I could face five, six, even seven years in a Russian prison — and a Russian prison is worse than death.

That was when some people from Europe, who help political prisoners like me, told me clearly: even though I was at home, I needed to plan my escape.

At first, I was in shock. I never imagined I would have to leave — especially not my mother, who is 96 years old. But eventually, I realized it was the best option. I had to choose between two impossible outcomes: prison or fleeing the country. So, of course, I chose to escape.

That’s when we began the operation. I had coordinators from Europe who guided me through every step. They told me what to do, what to prepare, and explained our plan in detail.

Russian film critic and journalist Ekaterina Barabash draped in the Ukrainian flag in a Facebook post from early March 2022. (Facebook)

The Kyiv Independent: What makes your case unique among other Russian opposition figures is that you have very strong ties to Ukraine. Does your Ukrainian heritage influence how you view Russia and Russian culture?

Ekaterina Barabash: Yes, I was born in Ukraine, though I was very young when we left — I was only five months old when my parents moved to Moscow. So my entire life has been connected to Russia. I always felt like I had two motherlands: Ukraine and Russia. I was born in Ukraine, but I was raised and educated in Russia, in Moscow.

My family has always had very strong ties to Ukraine. My father, who passed away five months ago, was a well-known figure there. He was a literary critic and the author of many books written in Ukrainian. He was highly respected in the academic community.

Years earlier, my son also moved to Ukraine for personal reasons. He lives there now with his wife and my grandchildren.

So when the war began, my situation was very different from that of my friends in the Russian opposition. For me, it was not just a political crisis — it was a personal tragedy. My closest relatives were there, being targeted by drones and missiles. And I couldn’t stay silent. I couldn’t hold back my grief or outrage.

I couldn’t keep this anger and pain inside me. I started to speak out, openly accusing the Russian government and military of killing innocent people and invading Ukraine. I wrote things like, “I hate you — you are murderers."

My perspective on the war was deeply personal. It wasn’t just politics for me — it was about my family, my roots, and the suffering of people I love.

Even intelligent and well-educated Russian people often don’t truly understand Ukraine. Almost all Russians have been poisoned by imperial propaganda. They’ve been raised with it — it’s part of their worldview.

They’ve always been taught that Ukraine is just a part of Russia. That the Ukrainian language is just a slightly different version of Russian. That Ukrainians are our “younger brothers,” and we are all one people — Russians. I’ve heard this over and over, even from good people, even from those who are against the war.

But this belief is a kind of poison. It’s something that every Russian grows up with, often without even realizing it.

I knew at least a little about Ukrainian culture and history — something most Russians don’t. I’ve done interviews and written about Ukrainian culture. So yes, my point of view was different from the beginning.

Russian soldiers patrol the area surrounding the Ukrainian military unit outside Simferopol, Crimea, on March 20, 2014. (Photo by Filippo Monteforte / AFP via Getty Images)

The Kyiv Independent: We know that Russia’s war against Ukraine started in 2014, not 2022. In what ways did Russian public opinion about the war in Ukraine change during those eight years?

Ekaterina Barabash: Most people in Russia simply didn’t care — and they still don’t. Even many anti-Putin individuals, including some of my friends, didn’t grasp that the war actually started in 2014. When the invasion happened in 2022, they acted as if it was the beginning of the war. I had to remind them, “No, the war started eight years ago."

Later on, many of them started to understand, at least a little, what had been happening. But the truth is, almost no one cared. They saw (the invasion of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts) as some small conflict in eastern Ukraine, maybe with some Russian soldiers involved, but they didn’t recognize it as the coming of something horrific.

They didn’t understand the connection between the illegal annexation of Crimea and the war that followed. Yes, Crimea was officially part of Ukraine. But they thought that (Soviet leader Nikita) Khrushchev had “given” Crimea to Ukraine many years ago and that Russia had long claimed it.

Then came the war.

The Kyiv Independent: What would you want to say to people still in Russia?

Ekaterina Barabash: You know, I’ve recently realized one thing that I didn’t understand at first: it’s impossible to change their minds. It’s like religion — you either believe or you don’t. If you want to know the truth, you can seek out information, but most people in Russia aren’t willing to look for it.

There’s a common response I get when I ask why they don’t check alternative sources, like Ukrainian media. There are plenty of (Ukrainian) outlets that offer Russian-language versions of the news, and many people understand English, so they could easily access European media, too. Yet, they only rely on Russian sources.

The answer I often hear is, “Everyone lies.” They’re willing to accept the lies from Russian propaganda, but they won’t even consider competing narratives from other sources. “Everyone lies,” they say. It’s an awful argument — a foolish one, really.

It’s unfortunate, really, but what can I say to these people? Honestly, there’s nothing more I can say. If you’re scared, just stay silent. I understand — everyone has families, property, and they don’t want to end up in jail. But if you care, then leave Russia, if you can, if it’s possible.

I know it’s not easy to leave behind elderly parents. I never intended to leave mine. But my father told me several times, “Leave, leave, leave. The end will be very, very dramatic.” Still, I couldn’t bring myself to go. I had to take care of them.

But if you care, if you can leave, then do it. Russia is not a place to stay. If you have any sense, you’ll understand that.

Note from the author:

Hey there, Kate Tsurkan here, thanks for reading my latest interview. It’s horrific that in Russia you’re considered a criminal for calling out the actual criminals who are murdering innocent people, but thankfully we have people in this world like Ekaterina Barabash who are not afraid to call evil what it is. I hope her story inspires you and helps show that if a 64-year-old grandmother can stand up to authoritarianism in this world, then so can you. It you like reading about this sort of thing, please consider supporting The Kyiv Independent.

Decolonizing Russia — what it means and why it matters

Speaking to France’s National Assembly on April 11, Russian opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza did not petition Europe for the Kremlin’s total military defeat. Yet, while answering one of the many questions posed to him, he talked about how a colleague supposedly learned that ethnic Russians find it “psychologically difficult” to kill Ukrainians because they are so “similar.” “They say… we are alike, these are very closely related peoples, as everyone knows: almost the same language, the sa

The Kyiv IndependentKate Tsurkan

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malum-sol · 10 months ago

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I've created a creepypasta-inspired blog post based on... *drumroll*... "The Russian Sleep Experiment"!

**The Sleep Deprivation of the Soviet Six**

Deep within the Soviet Union, during the Cold War era, six unwitting prisoners were subjected to a gruesome psychological experiment. Their crime? Non-compliance with the Soviet government.

In the late 1940s, Dr. Andrei Zheleznyakov, a leading neuroscientist, was commissioned to research the effects of prolonged sleep deprivation on the human mind. His team selected six subjects with varying levels of political dissent. The prisoners were told they would receive lenient sentences if they participated in the experiment.

The prisoners, dubbed "The Soviet Six", were placed in a specially designed research facility deep beneath the Moscow city streets. There, they were subjected to a seemingly endless cycle of sleeplessness.

The experiment began with four weeks of isolation, followed by a gradual reduction of sleep intervals, down to mere minutes per week. The prisoners were fed a consistent diet of nutrient-rich meals and provided with entertainment, but it was all just a ploy to keep them complacent.

As the weeks turned into months, The Soviet Six began to exhibit alarming behavior. They would experience vivid, disturbing hallucinations, and their speech and writing became increasingly erratic. Some of the prisoners reported hearing eerie whispers in the darkness, while others became obsessed with trivial tasks.

The researchers claimed to have reached the pinnacle of their investigation after 365 days, but it soon became apparent that something was terribly wrong. The prisoners' bodies began to fail, their skin turning a milky white, their eyes sunken and black. Their cries for help were met with sinister laughter from the researchers.

One night, a brave Soviet soldier discovered the truth behind the research facility. Horrified by what he found, he destroyed the lab, leaving the five remaining prisoners to their eternal darkness.

The fate of the sixth prisoner remains a mystery to this day. His file, marked " Classified", is said to be buried deep within the Kremlin's archives. They say that on certain nights, the soldier can still hear the whispers of the cursed prisoners, echoing through the abandoned tunnel system.

As you read these words, remember that the true horrors often occur in the darkest recesses of human experimentation. The Soviet Six served as a grim reminder of the devastating consequences of playing God.

And as you drift off to sleep tonight, ask yourself: What secrets lie hidden in the forgotten corners of history? What terror awaits those who dare to venture too close to the truth?

Shiver and tremble as you bid the Soviet Six sweet dreams...

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newsfromjwagner · 2 years ago

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Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin provided a huge $100M kickback to Russian Mafia

Zaporizhstal took several years of the entire USSR to construct and launch. Meanwhile, it was bought and sold overnight by the murky Eduard Shifrin and Alex Shnaider. Were they steel tycoons? Were they industrialists? Nope, they were literally nobodies. In fact, the sale of Zaporizhstal was a billion-dollar affair to launder criminal money. Moreover, some of the proceeds from the deal are still disputed by the former partners. So, who are Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin? Where are they now?

The history of the acquisition and sale of the steel giant “Zaporizhstal” during the time of the USSR by Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin is quite old; the events occurred long before the Ukrainian war. It still generates significant interest from the public as it illustrates the complex connections in the world of kleptrocracy. This story involves Alex Shnaider, Eduard Shifrin, Putin, and the criminal group “Solntsevo”.

Zaporizhstal industrial complex

How Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin became filthy rich

Russian-Canadian entrepreneur Alex Shnaider, in partnership with his Ukrainian associate Eduard Shifrin, garnered $850 million from the sale of the Zaporizhstal metallurgical plant, an establishment dating back to the USSR era. Out of this substantial sum, Shnaider allocated $40 million towards the development of the Trump Tower in Toronto. It is speculated that a portion of this $100 million was paid as “commissions” to individuals with connections to the Kremlin.

Shnaider, originally born in Leningrad but raised in Toronto, where his parents had immigrated, managed to achieve a place on Forbes’ billionaire list and attain the status of one of Canada’s most affluent entrepreneurs by the age of 36.

A significant component of Shnaider’s prosperity can be attributed to his father-in-law and business mentor, Boris Birshtein, a Soviet expatriate who actively engaged in business dealings with the USSR. Reports suggest that Birshtein maintained close associations with the KGB, aiding KGB agents in transferring funds overseas, participating in covert KGB business ventures, and involving a special service officer in the international laundering of KGB funds.

Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin’s cooperate with the Solntsevo gang

After the dissolution of the USSR, Birshtein had business connections with the leader of the criminal group “Solntsevo,” Sergey Mikhailov. Their partnership ended after Mikhailov’s arrest in Switzerland in 1996. The immigrant businessman distanced himself from the post-Soviet space and soon met Shnaider.

Thanks to Birshtein, Alex Shnaider established connections with influential figures in the former USSR, which ultimately allowed him to acquire “Zaporizhstal,” one of Ukraine’s largest industrial complexes, during the privatization period.

“Zaporizhstal” acquired and sold by Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin

The plant was acquired by the company Midland, owned by Alex Shnaider and his Ukrainian partner Eduard Shifrin. In 2003, they added the Russian metallurgical giant “Krasny Oktyabr” to their assets.

In 2010, Shnaider and Shifrin had the opportunity to sell “Zaporizhstal” profitably. In May of the same year, Shifrin called Shnaider and informed him that there were buyers acting in the interests of Russian authorities. Moscow allegedly wanted to take advantage of the decreased demand for Ukrainian steel and acquire the assets to maintain its influence in Ukraine. Shifrin explained that Russian authorities considered the Ukrainian metallurgical plant a “politically strategic” object and hinted that if the entrepreneurs refused, they would face repercussions in Russia.

The aftermath: Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin accumulate offshore wealth

After selling their stake in “Zaporizhstal,” Shnaider and Shifrin transferred control of the enterprise to offshore companies in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands through the state-owned Vnesheconombank, effectively handing it over to the Russian authorities.

The Midland group, led by Shnaider and Shifrin, received $850 million for the deal, which was $160 million more than what Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov had offered. Nevertheless, as per the deal’s terms, Shnaider and Shifrin were obliged to distribute a significant portion of the funds received among several individuals: $50 million had to be transferred to Akhmetov as compensation for the failed deal, and another $100 million had to be transferred to the deal’s organizers through offshore accounts.

$100 Million in kickback: Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin Strike a Deal with the Kremlin

It is still unclear to whom the $100 million went, as the testimonies of business partners differ, although both claim that the ultimate recipients were “individuals close to the Kremlin.” According to Shifrin, the money was supposed to go to a former official in Leonid Kuchma’s administration and the head of the Ukrainian state oil and gas monopoly “Naftogaz Ukraine,” Igor Bakai, who organized the sale of “Zaporizhstal.” Shnaider asserts that Shifrin transferred the money to himself, citing the need to pay Russian officials. This is supported by two documents: a complaint from Shnaider to Shifrin filed with the London Court of International Arbitration in 2016 and written testimonies from Shifrin in response.

Alex Shnaider Invests in real estate, including the Trump Tower

After completing the deal in October 2010, Shnaider and Shifrin divided the Midland assets between themselves, and Shnaider invested $40 million of his earnings in the construction of the Trump Tower. In 2016, a company associated with Boris Birshtein was listed as a creditor for the tower’s construction, although his lawyers claim that he had no connection to the project. Trump has always overlooked the questionable reputation of his partners, and after a series of bankruptcies in the 1990s and 2000s, The Trump Organization couldn’t secure financing from major banks. The Toronto project was conceived as early as 2001, but by the time Shifrin appeared, it had long lost its initial investors.

The Trump Organization stated that it was not the owner, developer, or seller of the Trump Tower in Toronto and did not participate in financing the project. The company only provided a license for its brand and property management (until June 2017). A representative from Vnesheconombank declined to comment.

Parted ways: Alex Shnaider and Eduard go to court

Businessman Alex Shnaider filed lawsuits against his former partner in the Midland Group, Eduard Shifrin, at the London International Arbitration Court, as reported by sources close to different sides in court. Shnaider believes that the Moscow development projects of Lobachevskogo, 118 (264,000 sq. m) in Ramenki and Tsarskiy Sad (84,700 sq. m) on Sofiyskaya Naberezhnaya were not considered in the division of assets between the owners of the Midland Group.

The Split of Shifrin and Shnaider’s Business During the 2008 Crisis: Assets, Accounts, and Misunderstandings

Shifrin and Shnaider decided to split their business during the 2008 crisis. According to reports to “Vedomosti” at the time, the first was to inherit all the group’s foreign assets (such as the projects with Trump International Hotel & Tower in the Dominican Republic and Maccabi Football Club), and the second was to retain assets in Russia. At that time, the Midland Development portfolio included around 1 million square meters of commercial space and 600,000 square meters of residential and hotel space, including Midland Plaza business centers on Arbat, Diamond Hall on Olympic Avenue, Yuzhny Port near Kozhukhovskaya metro, and retail centers in the regions called Strip Mall. The partners were also supposed to split the funds in the company’s accounts, initially amounting to $295.2 million, later reduced to $185 million.

Shnaider believes that his partner misled him regarding the Lobachevskogo, 118 project, as stated by a source close to Shnaider. Shifrin told Shnaider that the project had been transferred as collateral to the company Saratovskoye OOO Torgovyy Kompleks Solsnechnyy (TKS). TKS was a partner of Midland Development in building the Strip Mall center network, and Midland Development failed to fulfill its project obligations to TKS, leading to the collateralization of Business Master (which held rights to the Lobachevskogo Street project) with TKS. However, Shnaider learned from a TKS letter that he did not receive Business Master and did not demand its transfer. It was revealed that the Cyprus-based Dayforth Trading Limited became the owner of this company, which sold a 10% stake in Business Master to Leader Invest (part of AFK Sistema).

Controversies and Claims Surrounding Business Master and Shifrin-Shnaider’s Business Dealings

Business Master was sold to AFK Sistema for $58 million, as indicated by a letter from the former CEO of Business Master, Peter Hanus, received by “Vedomosti.” Hanus confirmed to “Vedomosti” that he wrote such a letter. In reality, AFK Sistema only paid half of the transaction amount, so Shifrin’s legal entity still owns 50% of the project, according to a person close to one of the sides involved in the deal.

A source close to Shifrin says that the Lobachevskogo, 118 project was acquired by Midland Development in 2004, and Shnaider managed it inefficiently and expensively. The site remained in such a condition for a long time that it was impossible to build anything on it. Shifrin decided to buy the asset from his partner for real money, and the deal was conducted under English law, as confirmed by a source from “Vedomosti.” The project was later successfully developed in partnership with AFK Sistema. According to this source, Shnaider had no complaints about this until 2015, and the claims arose at a specific stage when the project gained greater value.

Shnaider also believes that Shifrin deceived him regarding the payment of $100 million, which was supposed to be paid to third parties in the sale of “Zaporizhstal,” as reported by a source close to the plaintiff. All the transaction procedures received corporate approval, and all agreements with third parties were fully settled and paid, according to a source close to Shifrin.

Upon the completion of the Lobachevskogo, 118 project, its value is expected to exceed $300 million, estimated by a source close to the plaintiff.

The income from selling apartments in the Lobachevskogo building could amount to more than 20 billion rubles (approximately $344.8 million at the exchange rate on February 14), calculated by the Best-Novostroy board member Irina Dobrokhotova and Est-a-Tet department director Vladimir Bogdanyuk.

Another project that Shnaider believes was not considered in the Midland Group’s division, as reported by a source close to him, is Tsarskiy Sad.

This complex belongs to Sberbank Capital: in 2011, the company brought in Midland Development as a co-investor for the project. In reality, the agreement was reached in 2009 during the division of assets among Midland shareholders, according to a source close to Shnaider. However, a source close to Shifrin claims that Shnaider had no involvement with Tsarskiy Sad and did not invest in it. A person close to one of the project’s participants states that Shifrin is not a shareholder there; after the realization of the project, he was supposed to receive a 25% share. This was also confirmed in 2011 by Ashot Khachatryan, the CEO of Sberbank Capital.

The realization of the project has been ongoing for some time; therefore, Shifrin has a right to a share in it, as believed by a person close to the plaintiff.

The value Shnaider placed on a quarter of Tsarskiy Sad is unknown. The project’s declaration stated that the total revenue in 2015 was expected to reach 16 billion rubles, and this figure is still relevant, according to Stanislav Ivashkevich, Deputy CEO for Hospitality Industry Development at CBRE.

Eduard Shifrin and Alex Shnaider’s Confidential Legal Dispute: Parties and Potential Resolutions

Shifrin and Shnaider confirmed the legal dispute, but without disclosing details as the information is confidential. Shifrin stated that neither AFK Sistema nor Sberbank Capital is related to the disagreements.

Representatives of AFK Sistema, Leader Invest (a subsidiary of AFK), and Sberbank declined to comment. Attempts to contact a representative of TKS were unsuccessful. The only legal entity with that name, according to the Rosreestr registry, has been inactive since 2010.

Claims are accepted by the court, not only at the time of the event but also when the claimant becomes aware of their rights being violated. A court in London is expensive, and the losing party is obliged to compensate the legal expenses of the winning party, so it makes sense for them to reach a settlement.

#Shnaider

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londonvstorontonews · 2 years ago

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Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin provided a $100M kickback to Russian mafia

How Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin became filthy rich

Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin’s cooperate with the Solntsevo gang

“Zaporizhstal” acquired and sold by Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin

The aftermath: Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin accumulate offshore wealth

$100 Million in kickback: Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin Strike a Deal with the Kremlin

Alex Shnaider Invests in real estate, including the Trump Tower

Parted ways: Alex Shnaider and Eduard go to court

The Split of Shifrin and Shnaider’s Business During the 2008 Crisis: Assets, Accounts, and Misunderstandings

Controversies and Claims Surrounding Business Master and Shifrin-Shnaider’s Business Dealings

Upon the completion of the Lobachevskogo, 118 project, its value is expected to exceed $300 million, estimated by a source close to the plaintiff.

Another project that Shnaider believes was not considered in the Midland Group’s division, as reported by a source close to him, is Tsarskiy Sad.

The realization of the project has been ongoing for some time; therefore, Shifrin has a right to a share in it, as believed by a person close to the plaintiff.

Eduard Shifrin and Alex Shnaider’s Confidential Legal Dispute: Parties and Potential Resolutions

#Steel

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sarkisyansnewsdaily · 2 years ago

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Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin from Midland Group to the London court

The story of the acquisition and sale of the USSR-era steel giant “Zaporizhstal” by Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin is quite old; the events took place before the war. It still holds significant interest for the public, as it illustrates the intricate connections within the world of big money. Alex Shnaider, Eduard Shifrin, Putin, and the Solntsevo gang are all involved, with Donald Trump making an appearance as a cameo.

Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin origins

The Russian-Canadian businessman Alex Shnaider, together with his Ukrainian partner Eduard Shifrin, earned $850 million from the sale of the Zaporizhstal metallurgical plant, part of which ($40 million) Shnaider invested in the construction of the Trump Tower in Toronto. $100 million of this amount was reportedly paid as “kickbacks” to individuals “close to the Kremlin.”

Shnaider was born in Leningrad but grew up in Toronto, where his parents emigrated. By the age of 36, he managed to make it onto Forbes’ billionaire list and become one of the richest businessmen in Canada.

Much of Shnaider’s success can be attributed to his father-in-law and business mentor, Boris Birshtein, a Soviet emigrant who actively conducted business with the USSR. It is reported that Birshtein had close ties to the KGB, helping its members move money abroad, participating in secret KGB business projects, and employing a special service agent involved in money laundering for the KGB abroad.

Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin meet Solntsevskaya criminal organization

After the collapse of the USSR, Birshtein had business connections with the leader of the Solntsevskaya criminal organization, Sergey Mikhailov. Their partnership ended after Mikhailov’s arrest in Switzerland in 1996. The emigrant businessman distanced himself from post-Soviet space and soon met Shnaider.

It was thanks to Birshtein that Alex Shnaider established connections with influential figures in the former USSR, which eventually enabled him to purchase Zaporizhstal, one of Ukraine’s largest industrial complexes, during the privatization era.

Zaporizhstal (briefly) fell under control of Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin

The plant was acquired by the Midland company, co-owned by Alex Shnaider and his Ukrainian partner Eduard Shifrin. In 2003, the business partners added the Russian metallurgical giant “Krasny Oktyabr” to their assets.

In 2010, Shnaider and Shifrin had the opportunity to sell Zaporizhstal profitably. In May of the same year, Shifrin called Shnaider and informed him that there were buyers acting in the interests of Russian authorities. Moscow allegedly wanted to take advantage of the decrease in demand for Ukrainian steel and acquire the assets to maintain its influence in Ukraine. Shifrin explained that Russian authorities considered the Ukrainian metallurgical plant a “politically strategic” asset and made it clear that if the businessmen refused, they would face consequences in Russia.

Shnaider and Shifrin hid the proceedings in offshores

After selling their share of Zaporizhstal, Shnaider and Shifrin transferred control of the enterprise to offshore companies in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands through the state-owned Vnesheconombank, effectively handing it over to the Russian authorities.

The Shnaider and Shifrin Midland group received $850 million for the deal, $160 million more than what Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov had previously offered. However, according to the terms of the deal, Shnaider and Shifrin were required to distribute a significant portion of the proceeds to several individuals: $50 million was to be given to Akhmetov as compensation for the deal’s failure, and another $100 million was to be transferred to the organizers of the deal through offshore accounts.

The fate of 100 million in kickbacks: Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin deal with Kremlin

It is still unclear who received the $100 million, as the testimonies of the business partners differ, although both claim that the ultimate recipient was “people close to the Kremlin.” According to Shifrin, the money was supposed to go to a former official in Leonid Kuchma’s administration and the head of the Ukrainian oil and gas state monopoly “Naftogaz Ukraine,” Igor Bakay, who organized the sale of Zaporizhstal. Shnaider claims that Shifrin transferred the money to himself, citing the need to pay Russian officials. This is supported by two documents: Shnaider’s complaint to Shifrin, which was sent to the London Arbitration Court in 2016, and Shifrin’s written testimony in response.

Alex Shnaider invests in Trump Tower

After completing the deal in October 2010, Shnaider and Shifrin divided the assets of Midland between themselves, and Shnaider invested $40 million of his earnings in the construction of the Trump Tower. A company associated with Boris Birshtein was listed as one of the creditors of the tower’s construction in 2016, although his lawyers claim that the businessman had no connection to the project. Trump always overlooked the questionable reputation of his partners, and after a series of bankruptcies in the 1990s and 2000s, The Trump Organization could not obtain funds from major banks. The Toronto project was originally conceived in 2001, but by the time Shifrin got involved, it had long lost its initial investors.

The Trump Organization has stated that the company was not the owner, developer, or seller of the Trump Tower in Toronto and did not participate in financing the project. The company only provided a license for its brand and real estate management (until June 2017). A representative of Vnesheconombank declined to comment.

#russian mafia #donald trump #dirty money

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katrinesview · 2 years ago

Text

Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin provided a $100M kickback to Russian mafia

How Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin became filthy rich

Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin’s cooperate with the Solntsevo gang

hanks to Birshtein, Alex Shnaider established connections with influential figures in the former USSR, which ultimately allowed him to acquire “Zaporizhstal,” one of Ukraine’s largest industrial complexes, during the privatization period.

“Zaporizhstal” acquired and sold by Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin

In 2010, Shnaider and Shifrin had the opportunity to sell ��Zaporizhstal” profitably. In May of the same year, Shifrin called Shnaider and informed him that there were buyers acting in the interests of Russian authorities. Moscow allegedly wanted to take advantage of the decreased demand for Ukrainian steel and acquire the assets to maintain its influence in Ukraine. Shifrin explained that Russian authorities considered the Ukrainian metallurgical plant a “politically strategic” object and hinted that if the entrepreneurs refused, they would face repercussions in Russia.

The aftermath: Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin accumulate offshore wealth

$100 Million in kickback: Alex Shnaider and Eduard Shifrin Strike a Deal with the Kremlin

Alex Shnaider Invests in real estate, including the Trump Tower

Parted ways: Alex Shnaider and Eduard go to court

The Split of Shifrin and Shnaider’s Business During the 2008 Crisis: Assets, Accounts, and Misunderstandings

Controversies and Claims Surrounding Business Master and Shifrin-Shnaider’s Business Dealings

Upon the completion of the Lobachevskogo, 118 project, its value is expected to exceed $300 million, estimated by a source close to the plaintiff.

Another project that Shnaider believes was not considered in the Midland Group’s division, as reported by a source close to him, is Tsarskiy Sad.

The realization of the project has been ongoing for some time; therefore, Shifrin has a right to a share in it, as believed by a person close to the plaintiff.

Eduard Shifrin and Alex Shnaider’s Confidential Legal Dispute: Parties and Potential Resolutions

#russian mafia #shnaideralex

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mariacallous · 5 months ago

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For many, the daily news out of Ukraine paints a dour picture of Kyiv’s future. Russian troops continue to grind forward, sacrificing themselves by the tens of thousands for the sake of seizing more and more Ukrainian land. Dreams of a potential Ukrainian counteroffensive are long gone, with calls in the West for everything from Ukrainian neutrality to recognizing Russian sovereignty on stolen Ukrainian lands picking up steam.

These views aren’t without some merit. But they risk missing the forest of the daily news cycle for the trees of where we are—and just how battered and bloodied Russia truly is. On the economic front, Russia has seen both soaring interest rates and galloping inflation, providing a toxic brew of stagflation, from which there’s little likelihood of escape. On the manpower front, Russian President Vladimir Putin is so skittish of a potential new round of mobilization that he’s forced to rely on North Korean conscripts. And on the tactical front, Putin is no closer to Ukrainian collapse than he was in early 2022. He has created for himself, as scholar Michael Kimmage described, a “nightmare,” with only disastrous choices remaining, both for Putin’s rule and for Russian strategic interests writ large.

Indeed, it is the latter point that presents the greatest evidence of Putin’s disastrous turn and perhaps the greatest, or at least the most overlooked, suite of opportunities for Western policymakers. Few have made the connection, but a clear trend line has emerged over the past few years. Thanks to Putin’s monomaniacal fixation on Ukraine, he has been willing to sacrifice other geostrategic projects elsewhere, unwilling to step into the breach to help what had previously been key Russian interests. We’ve started to see a Russian variant of a domino theory emerge—one that has begun gutting Russian interests elsewhere, and illustrating, as few other things can, just how atrophied Russian power projection has become.

The first domino to fall came in 2023, when troops from Azerbaijan stormed into the separatist enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, forcing ethnic Armenians to flee en masse. Rather than being the supposed guarantor of stability—and a key security partner of Armenia, which backed Nagorno-Karabakh for decades—Russia wilted in the face of Azerbaijan’s push. Tucking tail, Russian troops left the region entirely, scuttling a military base where nearly 2,000 Russian troops had once been deployed.

A year later, the next domino toppled. With the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Russia not only lost its key regional ally, but watched as its primary claim as a security guarantor for autocratic regimes disintegrated. Rather than act as a swaggering great power that could shore up illiberal leaders, Moscow was suddenly outed as a government that could do neither.

Both developments—the disappearance of Nagorno-Karabakh and the dissolution of Assad’s regime—are downstream from Putin’s overwhelming focus on subjugating Ukraine, regardless of the cost. All of which begs a pair of questions: Given that he’s been completely consumed by this messianic obsession with Ukraine, which pro-Russian domino will be the next to fall? And how can Western policymakers be ready to take full advantage?

Start with the oldest Russian-backed enclave there is: Transnistria. A sliver of eastern Moldova, Transnistria has been occupied by Russian troops since the earliest days of the post-Soviet era. If anything, the recalcitrance to find a solution to Transnistria was something of an “original sin” for Western policymakers, unwilling as they were to face the realities and reverberations of Russian imperialism, long before Putin set his sights on Ukraine. By the late 1990s, it was clear that Russian promises to remove Moscow’s troop presence from Moldova—and to finally end the Kremlin’s willingness to carve up a separate, sovereign country in the middle of Europe—were hardly credible. By and large, the West looked the other way, letting this blindingly, breathtakingly obvious example of Russian revanchism fester.

Now, though, it is Moscow’s relations with Transnistria that are suddenly in question. Earlier this year, Moscow cutting off its gas line to Europe left the entire region in, quite literally, the dark. While there has been some progress in restoring energy capacity, sudden chatter has emerged about the potential “collapse” of Transnistria wholesale and what that means for Moldova and the rest of the region more broadly. The West has been almost entirely absent from the conversations about potential solutions, let alone what this may mean strategically—a bizarre absence, given Transnistria’s border with Ukraine and the clear designs that Moscow has on eventually linking its Ukrainian gains with its Moldovan holdings.

Elsewhere, Georgia remains mired in a domestic political contretemps worse than anything the country has seen in years. After recent parliamentary elections—broadly viewed as fraudulent—the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party claimed victory, and with it, the right to thwart Tbilisi’s pro-Western direction. The stolen vote was the culmination of a longer trajectory, with the party’s leadership dismantling the underpinnings of Georgian democracy. Similar to the descent of Ukrainian democracy seen under former leader Viktor Yanukovych, whose pro-Kremlin sympathies resulted in Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan Revolution, Georgian Dream’s lurch toward authoritarianism has resulted in the kinds of protests that increasingly resemble those that toppled Yanukovych.

Meanwhile, it is in Belarus that we can find the West’s greatest blind spot—and, arguably, the greatest pressure point for testing just how weak Moscow’s reach and influence is now. In 2020, pro-democratic protests erupted across the country, presenting the greatest threat to the decades-long rule of Belarusian despot Aleksandr Lukashenko. However, in one of the greatest (and most overlooked) foreign-policy failures of U.S. President Donald Trump’s first administration, Washington did little to back the democratic protesters and instead ceded all influence to Moscow. As such, when it appeared that Lukashenko was on his last legs, Putin interceded, reinforcing the regime and restoring the rule of one of Moscow’s longtime clients. Years later, Lukashenko remains in power, and Belarus remains a key staging ground for Moscow’s ongoing assaults on Ukraine.

Now, Belarus faces yet another inflection point. On Jan. 26, another election in Belarus assured Lukashenko’s regime of another term in office—or so the dictator hopes. After all, it was the immediate aftermath of Belarus’s previous election, without even the pretense of fairness or freedom, that unexpectedly jump-started the country’s 2020 protests. While the regime has arrested tens of thousands since, that’s hardly a guarantee of post-election stability this time around. If anything, with Belarus’s opposition far more organized and far more committed than even five years ago, Lukashenko can hardly be sure that this won’t be his last thieved election—especially with his primary patron completely distracted and increasingly drained.

All these developments—Transnistria going dark, Georgia turning turbulent, and Belarus once again facing the same ingredients that sparked its largest pro-democracy protests just a few years ago—would be newsworthy on their own. But it’s the fact that the primary backer of Transnistria separatists, Georgian illiberals, and Lukashenko’s regime are suddenly watching their external influence erode that presents new opportunities for the West, if only Brussels, London, and Washington take advantage.

Indeed, it is somewhat shocking that the West hasn’t sketched out a better strategy for the broader region in recent months. The European Union has continued encouraging Moldova’s pro-EU direction, but the West remains effectively a nonactor when it comes to things like Transnistria. In Georgia, the United States recently sanctioned Bidzina Ivanishvili, the architect of the country’s democratic decline, but it’s clear that there’s little strategy beyond these kinds of individual responses. And Belarus, meanwhile, is effectively a black hole of policy analysis, even for the new administration in Washington. Reams of paper have been produced on new U.S. strategy regarding Ukraine, Russia, and Europe, but there’s been precisely nothing written on Belarus, which appears to be a complete vacuum of strategic thinking.

And that’s all a shame and an opportunity foregone. After all, it’s not just people like Assad suddenly learning that Putin’s support apparently comes with an expiration date. Transnistria separatists, Georgia’s budding autocrats, Belarus’s thug-in-chief—all of them have suddenly realized that Putin’s backing, even for them, isn’t bottomless. As they’ve seen, the Russian president will always, always prioritize Ukraine over Russian interests elsewhere, including client regimes and kleptocratic allies along Russia’s other borders.

This is, of course, a trend that has been years in the making. For over a decade, Putin has prioritized subjugating Ukraine over Moscow’s other key strategic goals, dating all the way back to the creation—and immediate implosion—of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union. In the years since, Putin has prioritized the gelding of Ukraine over everything from a viable economy to stable relations with the West, even to the point of risking regime stability itself. Indeed, at this point, it’s fair to say that Putin may well choose domination of Ukraine over even places like Sakha or Chechnya, both of which remain part of the Russian Federation for the time being but have clear histories as separate, sovereign states—one of the primary reasons that Russia’s territorial stability is hardly guaranteed, or why, as the Economist said, Putin is “turning Russia into a failed state.”

Questions and crises of Russia’s internal stability are still a ways off. But that is, ultimately, where this accelerating collapse of dominoes is heading. That is all the more reason the West must begin formulating policy not just on the next dominoes to fall—places like Transnistria, Georgia, and even Belarus—but also on what a post-Putin Russia may well, and should, look like. After all, once they start tumbling, dominoes have a way of continuing to fall. The West should be ready.

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newnewz · 2 years ago

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Putin meets Kim Jong Un at Russia's space centre; Kremlin to help North Korea build satellites

Experts say Russia will likely seek artillery shells and antitank missiles from North Korea, which wants advanced satellite and nuclear-powered submarine technology in return.

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin shook hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at a Russian space centre Wednesday, images released by the Kremlin showed, kicking off a meeting that could see the leaders forge an arms deal that would defy global sanctions.

The internationally-isolated pair are meeting at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, a Russian spaceport some 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from Vladivostok, with Putin saying the location was chosen as Moscow plans to help North Korea build satellites, RIA Novosti reported.

Wearing a dark suit and smiling widely, Kim shook Putin’s hand enthusiastically — a video released by the Kremlin showed the two leaders then walking around the vast space centre.

“The leader of the DPRK shows great interest in rocket technology, and they are trying to develop (their presence in) space,” Putin said, referring to North Korea by its official name.

Experts say Russia will likely seek artillery shells and antitank missiles from North Korea, which wants advanced satellite and nuclear-powered submarine technology in return.

“We’ll talk about all the issues, without haste. There is time,” Putin said when asked by reporters whether military cooperation would be on the agenda.

Kim thanked Putin for inviting him to visit, despite the Russian leader’s “busy schedule”, having earlier stressed the trip — his first post-pandemic foreign travel — showed North Korea was “prioritising the strategic importance” of its Russia ties.

Kim, who travelled overland to Russia in his bullet-proof train, is accompanied by an entourage that suggested a strong military focus for the summit.

While Pyongyang’s top leader was out of the country, North Korea fired two ballistic missiles on Wednesday, the South Korean military said, the latest in a string of sanctions-busting tests.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu — who visited Pyongyang in July and has recently mooted bilateral joint naval drills — will take part in the negotiations, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said, RIA Novosti and TASS reported.

Kim is accompanied by top military officials including Korean People’s Army Marshal Pak Jong Chon and Munitions Industry Department Director Jo Chun Ryong, the North’s state media said.

Tactical gains

The meeting at the cosmodrome is symbolic, especially as Pyongyang failed twice recently in its bid to put a military spy satellite into orbit, experts said.

Russia is eager for North Korea’s stockpile of artillery shells, while Pyongyang is looking for help with satellite technology and upgrading its Soviet-era military equipment, An Chan-il, a defector-turned-researcher who runs the World Institute for North Korea Studies, told AFP.

“If North Korea’s multiple rocket launchers and other artillery shells are provided to Russia in large quantities, it could have a significant impact on the war in Ukraine,” he added.

Russia’s natural resources minister Alexander Kozlov greeted Kim when he arrived in the country, giving him historic autographed photographs of Soviet cosmonauts, including Yuri Gagarin, Kozlov’s ministry told TASS.

Russia and North Korea’s communication is back on a pre-COVID track with dialogue “actively developing”, foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told TASS.

The White House warned last week that North Korea would “pay a price” if it supplied Russia with weaponry for the conflict in Ukraine.

Kim is also risking the displeasure of his other major ally Beijing by meeting Putin, Vladimir Tikhonov, professor of Korean studies at the University of Oslo, told AFP.

“China will be hardly too happy about Russia entering into what Chinese consider their monopoly territory,” he said, adding Beijing would be worried about the regional destabilisation impact of any transfer of Russian military technology to Pyongyang.

Kim and Putin “may conduct an exchange of North Korea’s old-age, Soviet-type ammo for Russia’s newer military tech or hard currency (or wheat).

“Tactically, they both gain, by getting what they need right now. In the longer term though, Russia’s important ties to Seoul will be dealt irreparable damage.”

#Putin #Kim Jong Un

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newstfionline · 2 years ago

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Friday, July 21, 2023

‘Disturbing’ decline in global nuclear security, watchdog says (Washington Post) Nuclear security risks are rising for the first time in a decade, according to an annual index released Tuesday by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington-based watchdog nonprofit that looks beyond the well-known nuclear threats such as weapons proliferation, and toward less widely considered problems, such as the storage of weapons-usable uranium that could be exploited by terrorist groups or the safety of nuclear sites during conflicts. The report marks the first time that the organization’s Nuclear Security Index, in an attempt to piece together a big picture of the global nuclear threat, finds that security had gotten worse since the dataset’s origin in 2012. The report also comes amid spiraling geopolitical tension over conflict near nuclear sites in Ukraine and stalling efforts at nonproliferation and international regulation. The renewed concern is understandable: Some Kremlin officials have openly suggested that Russia could use some form of nuclear weapon if pushed too far in the conflict, while Russian troops left the infamous site of a Soviet-era nuclear disaster, Chernobyl, in a dangerous state of ill repair after a months-long period of occupation and looting last year.

Drug onslaught pushes violence to record levels in Costa Rica: Security Minister (Reuters) The influence of Mexican drug gangs and increased cocaine output in Colombia have pushed murders toward record levels in Costa Rica, a top official said, casting a shadow over a country that has long been a beacon of stability in the region. Costa Rica closed 2022 with a record 656 murders. But 2023 is getting worse: the tally jumped 42% in the first half of the year compared to last year, official data show. “We’ve got a Mexicanization of crime,” Costa Rican Security Minister Mario Zamora said in an interview with Reuters this week, pointing to increased clashes between gangs in broad daylight that has Costa Ricans worried about both their safety and the impact on tourism, on which the economy heavily depends.

Protesters take to Peru’s streets (Reuters) Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in Peru on Wednesday in marches organized by groups opposed to President Dina Boluarte, while police arrested at least six. Many Peruvians accuse Boluarte and her allies of illegitimately removing and jailing her leftist predecessor Pedro Castillo, which led to sometimes violent protests through March in which 67 people were killed. The unrest is also fueled by longstanding anger over widespread poverty and deep inequality that has persisted even as the major copper-producing nation has grown wealthier.

Facing a Future of Drought, Spain Turns to Medieval Solutions (NYT) High in Spain’s southern mountains, 40 or so people armed with pitchforks and spades cleared stones and piles of grass from an earthwork channel built centuries ago and still keeping the slopes green. “It’s a matter of life,” said Antonio Jesús Rodríguez García, a farmer from the nearby village of Pitres, population 400. “Without this water, the farmers can’t grow anything, the village can’t survive.” In Spain, temperatures reached 109 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday. Such heat and extended droughts have presented the threat that three-quarters of the country could be engulfed by creeping deserts over this century. Faced with that reality, Spanish farmers, volunteers and researchers have reached deep into history for solutions, turning to a sprawling network of irrigation canals built by the Moors, the Muslim population that conquered and settled in the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages. The channels—called “acequias,” from the Arabic “as-saqiya,” which means water conduit—have made life possible in one of Europe’s driest regions, supplying the fountains of the majestic Alhambra palace and turning the region, Andalusia, into an agricultural powerhouse. Many acequias fell into disuse around the 1960s. Now, the intricate system, seen as a low-cost and effective tool for mitigating drought, is being revived, one abandoned acequia at a time.

Russia’s latest threat (Foreign Policy) Beginning Thursday, any ships bound for Ukrainian ports will be deemed a threat and their flag states considered a party to the war on Ukraine’s side, the Kremlin announced on Wednesday. On Monday, Russia pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal, which granted ships transporting grain from the region safety. This comes as Moscow continued its third straight day of airstrikes against grain silos in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa. The United Nations has condemned Russia’s targeting of critical food supplies, but Moscow seems unlikely to curb its attacks.

A Current War Collides With the Past: Remnants of World War II in Ukraine (NYT) Clambering over boulders, past old tires and shellfish-encrusted scrap metal, Oleksandr Shkalikov ventured onto the dry bed of a vast reservoir. Out in this wasteland rested a haunting reminder of long-ago battles on this same swath of southern Ukraine: a swastika, chipped into a rock, had emerged from the receding water. The year “1942” was written next to it. “History is repeating itself,” Mr. Shkalikov, a tank driver on leave from the Ukrainian army, said of the World War II-era carving. “We are fighting this war on the same landscape and with the same weapons” as those used in World War II, he said, evoking the heavy artillery and tanks that still shape the course of a land war. Ukraine’s military history is cropping up on the battlefield as well. Terrain and rivers have often channeled the armies of today into the sites of some of the fiercest fighting in World War II, when German and Soviet troops swept over the valleys and the expanses of wide-open plains.

Auckland shooting leaves 2 dead, 6 hurt hours before Women’s World Cup opens (Washington Post) A deadly shooting in downtown Auckland threatened to overshadow the opening game of the Women’s World Cup on Thursday, although New Zealand’s prime minister said the event will go ahead as planned, with an increased police presence. A lone gunman armed with a pump-action shotgun entered a construction site not far from where many of the teams are staying on Thursday morning, barely 12 hours before the opening game. Two people were killed and six wounded, including a police officer. The gunman was found dead a short time later after a standoff with armed police. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said initial investigations indicated that there wasn’t any political or ideological motivation to the shooting. Gun-related violence is rare here and gun controls are strict.

Quran burning threatens Iraq-Sweden ties (Foreign Policy) Iraq threatened to sever diplomatic ties with Sweden on Thursday over the desecration of a Quran in Stockholm. Swedish residents, with authorization from the nation’s police and protected by the country’s extensive freedom of speech laws, kicked and destroyed the holy Islamic text as well as stomped on an Iraqi flag outside the Iraqi Embassy. In response, supporters of Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr stormed and set fire to the Swedish Embassy in Iraq and urged Baghdad to cut ties with Stockholm entirely. No staff members were injured. The Iraqi government has since condemned the facility’s partial burning, but Iraqi officials expelled the Swedish ambassador, recalled its chargé d’affaires in Sweden, and suspended Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson’s working permit “in response to the repeated permission of the Swedish government to burn the Holy Quran, insult Islamic sanctities, and burn the Iraqi flag,” Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani tweeted.

As water shortages intensify Iran’s heat wave, authorities shift blame (Washington Post) Taps are running dry across Iran. On Sunday, a record-breaking confluence of heat and humidity translated to an off-the-charts heat index value of more than 150 degrees, at the very limits of human survival, measured at Iran’s Persian Gulf International Airport. Earlier this month, more than 1,000 people sought medical treatment after dust storms ravaged the country’s water-starved southeast. From Tehran to rural regions, people are posting videos to social media complaining of days on end in the heat without running water, their faucets emitting nothing but murky drops. The water shortages, which experts say are driven in large part by decades of mismanagement, are a long-standing problem. But they have grown more severe as climate change accelerates—and are an increasing driver of discontent, sparking protests and confrontations in recent years. In public messaging, Iran’s leaders have sought to deflect blame to the Taliban, which rules in neighboring Afghanistan, for restricting water flow in the Helmand River. Officials have also blamed floods and fallen rocks, for disrupting the operation of dams around Tehran, and ordinary citizens, for their consumption of water and electricity. But those explanations have left many unsatisfied, and still thirsty.

They fled Syria’s shattering civil war. Now, Syrian refugees in Jordan fear being forced to return (AP) As Jordan hosted regional talks this spring aimed at ending Syria’s isolation after more than a decade of civil war, Syrian refugee Suzanne Dabdoob felt a deep pressure in her brain and in her ears, she said, a fear she hadn’t felt since arriving to Jordan 10 years ago. Ahead of the meeting, Syrian President Bashar Assad agreed that 1,000 Syrian refugees living in Jordan would be allowed to safely return home—a test case for the repatriation of far greater numbers. Jordan’s top diplomat spoke only of voluntary returns. But panic spread through working-class east Amman, where Dabdoob and many other Syrians have built new lives in multistory, cement-block buildings. “I would rather die right here than go back to Syria,” said Dabdoob, 37, whose home was razed by airstrikes in the Syrian city of Homs. As Middle East countries strained by vast numbers of refugees restore relations with Assad, many Syrians who fled are now terrified by the prospect of returning to a country shattered by war and controlled by the same authoritarian leader who brutally crushed the 2011 rebellion. Even as public hostility and economic misery in neighboring countries has squeezed Syrian refugees, few are clamoring to return.

Escalating violence in Congo (AP) The United Nations warned that violence in northeastern Congo has escalated significantly, with more than 40 civilians killed in three days. More than 600 people have been killed and 345,000 displaced in Ituri province so far this year, according to Stephane Dujarric, a United Nation’s spokesman. Conflict has simmered in eastern Congo for decades as more than 120 armed groups fight for control of valuable mineral resources and some to protect their communities. Mass killings by rebel groups are frequent, and the violence has triggered an exodus of refugees. The statement comes on the heels of two attacks in the country’s northeast that left nearly two dozen people dead. Such attacks often uproot entire communities, and many residents flee to nearby displacement sites which are ill-equipped to receive them, compounding an already dire situation. The United Nation’s response plan for Congo is only 30% funded.

A Hare-Raising Tail (AP) It appears that the rabbits down in Florida are breeding like … well, rabbits. In Wilton Manors, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, almost 100 lionhead rabbits are rampaging through the town, tearing up lawns. The bounty of bunnies was brought by a backyard breeder, who illegally released them when she moved away from the area two years ago. The lionhead rabbits aren’t the only invasive species plaguing Florida these days. Giant African snails can eat stucco off of houses while also acting as human disease vectors, while Burmese pythons have taken over the state’s swamps, preying on local birds and even deer. Off the state’s coast, lionfish are also on the prowl, devouring native fish species in the state’s reefs. All of these animals, like the rabbits, were once pets but began taking over local ecosystems after their owners released them.

#headlines #news

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grantgoddard · 2 years ago

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From Russia with lawlessness : 1994 : Metromedia, Park Place, Moscow

“I am a paediatric doctor,” said the young woman cleaning the toilet bowl in the bathroom of my apartment. “I work at the hospital during the day but I cannot live on my salary, so I have to work as a cleaner every evening.”

I was embarrassed. Although the doctor had been cleaning my apartment nightly, this was the first occasion I had attempted to strike up a conversation. I had mistakenly presumed that my ‘cleaner’ spoke no English. How wrong I was! Maybe she assumed I was a snobby American corporate manager who had just been posted overseas. How wrong she was! I was an unemployed Brit forced to take some freelance radio consulting work abroad, having failed to secure a job in my own backyard. Both of us were having to do what we did to survive.

I felt disorientated here. It was my first time in Russia. I would never have chosen to work here. But it could have been worse. My client, American public corporation Metromedia, had initially told me my destination was to be Nizhny Novgorod. I had had to consult a map to even locate that industrial city on the Volga. Thankfully, instead, I was sent to cosmopolitan Moscow. But looks are deceiving. My surroundings gave the semblance of a modern city but almost nothing actually worked as it should. Here was an incomplete facsimile of Western capitalist infrastructure in which the Soviet state had copied the designs without implementing the mechanisms. It recalled the era when a ‘Made in China’ label was a surefire guarantee a product that might look good would quickly fail.

My one-bedroom apartment appeared quite luxurious, about three times the size of my poky second-floor flat in London, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows on an upper floor that looked out over the permanent pollution rising from Moscow’s busy streets. It was inside a huge, newly built trio of linked office blocks containing office spaces and 330 apartments intended for foreign businesses that required a secure location 14 kilometres from the Kremlin. It was like living in one of those vast complexes portrayed in American movies about the self-destructive life of a harassed corporate ‘road warrior’. Maybe it was designed to offer ex-pats that kind of bland fictional familiarity.

In January 1994, Metromedia had bought one of the least popular FM radio stations in Moscow, planning to turn it into one of the most popular. There was a hitch. The Americans were baffled by the radio market not just in Russia, but in the whole of Europe. They could hear 30+ stations broadcasting in Moscow but they could not fathom what they were doing on-air. This was not simply a language problem. It was a challenge because Americans were accustomed to tightly defined music or speech broadcasters in their commercial radio system. You only had to listen to the vast majority of American radio stations for around ten minutes to recognise their ‘format’. Europe was not like that, largely because ‘public service broadcasting’ had been legislated as the bedrock of its broadcast systems since the invention of radio.

Before my flight to Moscow, I had purchased a Sony all-band radio from an electronics shop in Watford for almost £100. It was now put to service all day while I listened hour after hour to a particular Moscow radio station, writing notes about the music played, the talk, the advertisements, the jingles and anything else I heard. I was used to listening to radio stations in languages of which I had no comprehension, having spent so many weekend nights as a schoolboy DX-ing radio stations from all over the world on a Trio 9R59DS radio receiver. I had also analysed local radio markets in the UK for groups applying for new licences, monitoring existing stations’ broadcasts and tabulating the results. It might be boring work but at least I was being paid to do it!

One morning I received an email requesting my presence at an important staff meeting to be held in the Metromedia office within Park Place. This surprised me for several reasons: I was not an employee, I had never previously been invited to such a meeting in Moscow and, most astonishingly, nobody had told me that Metromedia even had an office within the same building where I was living. I had to call the phone number on the message to ask where precisely this office was located within the complex.

After spending so many days alone in the apartment listening to my radio and writing copious observations, it was an adventure to walk through the building’s labyrinth of anonymous floors and numbered doors to eventually locate and knock on the Metromedia office. After weeks of perpetual solitude, it felt like coming out of prison to be greeted by a surprise party. The room was full of Americans of whom I had never been aware, let alone met, all chatting away noisily. None of them had the faintest idea who I was, requiring my explanation that I too had received THE email. They were very welcoming in the American way, despite probably wondering why on earth this unknown, scraggy Englishman was present.

The meeting started soberly with an update on Metromedia’s progress attracting paying subscribers to its broadcast television service ‘Kosmos TV’ and mobile phone system it had apparently launched in 1991 in partnership with the state’s ‘Moscow Television & Transmitter Centre’. I had no idea that Metromedia had been operating in Moscow several years already and had been investing around US$5m annually in that particular joint venture business. The good news was its success in building a growing subscriber base. However, the reason for this meeting was the bad news that the Russian who had been appointed manager of the business had just disappeared with all its funds and had proven untraceable. There were long faces. Oh dear.

Welcoming the variation from my usual lonely routine, I spent the remainder of that day in the office chatting with some of my newly discovered Metromedia colleagues. At that stage, it seemed unclear whether the television business could continue and whether the office would even remain in operation. I met the corporation’s financial analyst Muema Lombe who shared my interest in pirate radio and he generously introduced me to the basics of Excel, the software that has been the mainstay of my analysis work ever since. We remain close friends since that chance introduction in Moscow.

On the way back to my apartment, I called in at the ‘Garden Ring Irish Supermarket’ in the Park Place lobby to buy my regular supplies. It was a smaller satellite branch of the bigger shop in the city centre that had opened in 1992. I was surviving on breakfast cereal, milk, bananas, tea and snacks, particularly American ‘Oreo’ cookies which I had never seen before. There was no cooking equipment in the apartment beyond a kettle, probably to encourage residents to eat in the complex’s vastly overpriced restaurant. Lacking a corporate expense account, I only ate there when my American line manager John Catlett was in Moscow, enduring hour-long waits to be served the simplest meals.

Although the Park Place shop’s range of food was limited, it felt too dangerous to shop outside as a foreigner. Russians bought provisions at kiosks where they could ask for the items they wanted, whereas foreigners like me had to frequent self-serve retailers where they became easily identifiable targets. In 1993, more than 7,000 crimes against foreigners had been reported in Russia, including the editor of the English-language ‘Moscow Times’ newspaper who had been robbed of cash and a laptop by men with knives outside the city centre’s Garden Ring Irish Supermarket. I had watched a ‘CNN’ report that Russia’s murder rate was three times higher than the United States’ and was only surpassed by South Africa.

Due to its success attracting foreign customers, the Irish Supermarket itself soon became a target. After its owners resisted a takeover by their Russian partner Dmitry Kishiev, there were reports of an alleged overnight explosion at its city centre store. The ‘Moscow Times’ reported: “Apparently fearing for their safety, the Irish partners then fled the country, urging their more than two-dozen expatriate employees to do likewise.”

Once Russians took over the ‘Irish’ supermarket, I noticed food on sale in Park Place marked with long gone expiry dates, the prices increased, customers deserted and eventually the shops closed altogether. Like everything else in Russia, ‘business’ was not considered a product of entrepreneurial spirit or managerial prowess. Instead, it was considered a lucky lottery ticket permitting almost anyone lacking relevant skills to intimidate, bully and exert power to enrich themselves over others.

Russia during the 1990’s was frequently referred to as the ‘Wild West’. There was a sense that just about anything you could imagine might happen there … and it frequently did. My corporate apartment felt like a haven of relative ‘normality’ within a crazed parallel universe. I cannot recall anyone being murdered at Park Place during my initial stay, unlike subsequent visits to Russia when I was given accommodation in hotels of variable quality and security. Never did I value boring old Britain so much as the days I would thankfully walk on the tarmac of Heathrow airport after yet another prolonged stay in Russia.

“A powerful bomb blast in the city’s centre on Saturday afternoon took the life of a Moscow student. The bomb which, according to police, had power equivalent to approximately 400 grams of TNT, had been placed inside a large metal dumpster on ul Bolshaya Spasskaya not far from Leningradsky train station. According to eyewitnesses, at the time of the blast, the 23-year-old female student of farming was walking by the dumpster. The strength of the explosion tore off one of her arms and blew out most of the windows in neighbouring buildings … Witnesses reported that just a few moments before the blast, several men had tried forcibly to enter a building next to where the explosion took place, but that after a doorman refused to let them enter the building, they threw a package into the dumpster.”

Small story on PAGE SEVEN of the ‘Moscow Tribune’, 30 January 1996

#commercial radio #Grant Goddard #local radio #Metromedia #radio #Radio 7 #radio broadcasting #radio industry #radio sector #radio station #Russia

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