Eastern Radar #21
How the longest ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine unfolded, Ukraine’s new party of Regions, how a Soviet aircraft carrier ended up in a landlocked Chinese lagoon and more
Beeps
I’m trying something new this week with a short “In case you missed it” section, listing some stories from well-known outlets that might nevertheless have flown under your radar. Thanks for reading, I hope you’ll enjoy this issue.
Among podcasts worth checking out this week, Maxim Trudolyubov discusses the Soviet-American space race with historian Victoria Smolkin, researcher Amanda Williams debuts the Soviet Sex Podcast with an episode about sex, marriage and family Life after the 1917 Revolution, and ABC looks at the state of Russian science.
In other news:
📝 Conscripts in the military commissariat of Russia’s Krasnoyarsk district underwent psychological testing that included questions about mass protests and corrupt officials, according to local outlet Tayga Info. Questions included “do you think that, if young people can't vote in elections because of their age, it is normal for them to participate in violent protest actions?” or “can one hope that a revolutionary change of power will quickly increase the standard of living of Russian citizens?”
🚌 The Russian city of Novosibirsk kicked off its dedicated “dacha buses” on April 24 and until October 1.
🏃♀️ The European Union registered in February a 72% increase in asylum applications from Ukrainians compare to the previous month, with France receiving the highest number of applicants.
🏃♂️ All of Latvia’s and Lithuania’s regions are expected to lose population between 2019 and 2050, according to the European Union’s statistics office.
⚔️ The Ukrainian ultranationalist “National Corps” party is planning to create “defense headquarters” in all of the country’s regions.
Under the Radar
Quiet Donbass: how the longest ceasefire unfolded [RU]
Natalia Kurchatova | Batenka, da vy transformer | April 29 | 6,700 words
The Donetsk People’s Republic’s military court is in a Stalinist building surrounded by old trees, with a fortified entrance and boxes of ammunition stacked in the courtyard. “If I were you, I wouldn’t show such an obvious interest,” Sedlov tells me as I examine the barricades. Near the entrance stands the lawyer in the murder case of Andrei “Violonist” Kutsky, as well as Katya Katina, a red-haired war correspondent who was also Kutsky’s fiancee. The defendant is a soldier in a sniper platoon that Kutsky took command of shortly before his death. A musician, Kutsky never even held a weapon until the war — he became famous as a sniper during the conflict. He died in the fall of 2019, during a feast meant to celebrate his appointment as platoon commander. Katya believes a fight erupted during the party and the defendant simply shot her fiance. She’s also sure the killer wanted the position of platoon commander. The judge is late, but he finally appears and we take seats. He quickly presents the materials of the case to the audience and asks the defendant several questions — ironically, the defendant’s callsign is “Odessa”, the city Kutsky was from.
Party of Regions 2.0: how Akhmetov is taking over Medvedchuk’s legacy [UKR]
Roman Kravets, Roman Romanyuk | Ukrayinska Pravda | April 26 | 2,700 words
For the first time in 15 years, Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest oligarch, does not control a full-fledged faction in the parliament. Of course, he has MPs who are loyal to him, others who ready to support his interests in some situations — but it’s an unusually unstable structure. And considering Volodymyr Zelensky’s hold on power in the executive and legislative branches, it wasn’t enough for Akhmetov to try and defend his current interests. The oligarch needs to think about his “future,” which is why his entourage is now seriously considering launching a new party. According to sources, it is no longer about rebranding the Opposition Bloc, the party that emerged from the ashes of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. “Zelensky showed that it doesn’t make sense to create a pro-Russian or pro-European party” one source said, adding that the party will be centered around young people not previously involved in politics but with professional experience, mostly in Akhmetov’s own businesses.
The Sad Story Of How This Soviet Aircraft Carrier Ended Up Rotting In A Landlocked Chinese Lagoon
Joseph Trevithick | The Drive | April 15 | 2,100 words
The former Soviet Kiev class aircraft carrier Minsk is rusting away, seemingly abandoned, in the middle of a man-made lagoon some 50 miles northwest of the Chinese city of Shanghai. It looks to be a sad and lonely fate for the ship, which was already spared the scrapper's torch once by Chinese businessmen in the 1990s. The ex-Minsk's present home sits just off the Yangtze River to one side of the Sutong Yangtze River Bridge in Nantong, China. Its immediate neighbors are farms and associated agricultural facilities. Looking at satellite imagery of the site, to the immediate north of the Lagoon, there is what looks to be a viewing platform with a walkway leading back to various structures and a tented pavilion. All of this looks to be part of equally abandoned work on a planned theme park that was to feature the aircraft carrier at its center, but which never opened.
Research, Culture & General Nerdistry
Russia has 41,373 post offices (including 30,609 in rural areas), with the Russian post as a whole employing a whopping 331,000 people — 82% of which are women (to compare with the 469,934 employees working for the United States Postal Service). That’s just some of the data you can get on the incredibly detailed country database of the Universal Postal Union.
Infrastructure-embedded control, circumvention and sovereignty in the Russian Internet 🔓
Françoise Daucé, Francesca Musiani | First Monday | May 2021
This is an entire issue of First Monday, a peer-reviewed, open, academic journal about the Internet, dedicated to the Russian-speaking internet. Lots of fascinating articles here, I do recommend in particular “Mapping the routes of the Internet for geopolitics: The case of Eastern Ukraine”, “Social media and state repression: The case of VKontakte and the anti-garbage protest in Shies, in Far Northern Russia” and ““Free libraries for the free people”: How mass-literature “shadow” libraries circumvent digital barriers and redefine legality in contemporary Russia.” There are nine articles total, looking at the Telegram ban, Yandex’s strategy with algorithmic news sorting or the Russian authorities’ attempt to make the RuNet more “sovereign.”
Nikolaus von Twickel | DRA | April 30
The year 2020 in the Donbas was overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which by all accounts hit the “People’s Republics” hard but whose exact impact is hard to gauge, given the notorious secrecy of the separatist de facto authorities. While security significantly improved thanks to the adherence to a renewed ceasefire brokered on 22 July, the overall situation remained volatile as some 80,000 troops remain stationed on both sides of the Contact Line. The massive deployment of Russian troops along the Ukrainian border and in Crimea in spring 2021 reminded the world that military escalation is also possible. The human rights situation inside the “People’s Republics” remained dismal - both critics and public supporters of the separatists risk detention and torture – and access to justice is practically not existent. Another serious problem that worsened in 2020 is the environmental crisis posed by the flooding of unused coal mines after the separatist stopped pumping water out of them.
The Unruly Masses: Andrei Konchalovsky’s Cautionary Tale
Joy Neumeyer | Los Angeles Review of Books | April 19
“Dear Comrades” premiered in Russia in fall 2020 amid mass protests in Belarus against President Alexander Lukashenko, the former state farm manager who has ruled the country since 1994. Lukashenko has countered dissent by arresting and torturing protestors, unknown numbers of whom have died in police custody. Several Russian critics noted in passing the resemblance between the subject of Dear Comrades and current events in Belarus. Yet Konchalovsky’s remarks following the film’s release have made clear that he is on the side of centralized authority. “Any destruction leads immediately to chaos, and this is evident with the Soviet Union — how it was destroyed and what came of it,” he said in the BBC interview. “Now we see this chaos in Ukraine” following the Orange Revolution. In this light, Dear Comrades appears as a cautionary tale about the dangers posed by unruly masses, compatible with the Russian state’s condemnation of uprisings in its former satellites. But it can also be read as a warning of what happens when an out-of-touch elite forgets to feed the people.
ICYMI
Stories from well-known outlets you might nevertheless have missed.