Eastern Radar #28
Vanishing from Russia with $600 million worth of diamonds, how to bribe a Ukrainian judge, death and coronavirus in the Yakutsk region and much more
Radio Chatter
The two-part podcast “From Russia with diamonds” sees reporter Giles Whittell catching up with Andrei Kozlenok, an infamous Russian diamond merchant accused of vanishing in the late nineties with $600 million worth of diamonds.
Researcher and host Sean Guillory talks to the three authors of “Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future?”, a recently-published book looking at the life, politics and controversies surrounding Russia’s most well-known opposition figure.
In the Russian-language podcast “Hi, you’re a foreign agent,” Russian journalist Sonya Groysman explains what life has become for those — like herself — recently branded with the “foreign agent” status.
Published by the Agence France Press (AFP), “The Poisoning” is a five part series diving into the assassination attempt against Alexey Navalny in the summer of 2020.
The Carnegie Moscow Center debates the implications of the Afghanistan crisis for Central Asia.
Beeps
📰 Lider Press, a local outlet based in the Belarusian mining city of Soligorsk closed on October 1st after 28 years of existence. The newspaper had been supportive of the worker strikes at Belaruskali, a local potash producer and Belarus’ single biggest taxpayer. “Considering that any story about the events unfolding in the region or the country can now be considered extremist, we cannot risk the safety of our colleagues,” Lider Press wrote on its Vkontakte page.
🍔 McDonald’s is planning to trademark "Макдак" ("MakDak"), a popular slang used to describe the fast-food company in Russia.
🛑 A village in Ukraine’s Lviv region went back to being called “Andriyivka,” a Soviet-era name changed in 2016 to “Marmuzovychi” in keeping with the country’s decommunization law. Locals, however, have argued that “Andriyivka” was not anymore an hommage to a local communist, but rather a reference to Andrew the Apostle.
📚 The 22 years-old daughter of Ramzan Kadyrov was appointed Chechnya's Culture minister.
Under the Radar
Alexey Arunyan | Graty | September 30 | 2,500 words
Why it’s interesting: because you know corruption is a thing, but you may not know what giving or receiving a bribe actually entails. The minutiae details are the most fascinating here, whether it’s a businessman bringing euros instead of dollars or (in the third story), a judge giving some change back after accounting for the exchange rate on the bribe.
In January 2017, a tax inspector conducted made a surprise visit to a gas station in a village not far from Kyiv. Because the station was operating without the proper permits, the tax officer drew up a protocol against its operator and seized 13,500 liters of diesel fuel. But a judge later ruled that the officer had made mistakes in drawing up the protocol and closed the case — without mentioning the fate of the seized fuel.
Yuri Rumak, the director of the company which owned the gas station, met with the judge to get an explanation about why the fuel hadn’t been handed back. When that happened, the judge asked Rumak’s lawyer to leave the room, took out a piece of paper from a drawer and hinted at Rumak to write the amount of money he’d be ready to pay to get his fuel back. Rumak refused, and the judge wrote “$1000” herself, drawing the dollar sign so poorly Rumak confused it with a euro sign. He then complained to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), which gave him 10 bills of 100 euros for a sting.
Rumak came back two days later, and the judge showed him the order she had prepared to return the fuel to its owner. Rumak read it, said everything was in order and asked: “as we agreed?” The judge nodded and told her assistant to leave the room. “It was one thousand, yes?” asked Rumak, and the judge nodded again. “Okay, I’ll put it here” he added, but the judge said “no, under the pillow over there,” pointing to the sofa. Rumak took out the money, and the judge looked down before drawing a dollar sign on a piece of paper. “A thousand of these,” she said, and Rumak admitted he had misunderstood her at the last meeting, bringing euros instead of dollars. “So you’re not ready?” said the judge angrily. She quickly calmed down however, and said “alright, so be it,” pointing again at the sofa.
Hydropower in Karabakh: Armenians’ loss is Azerbaijan’s gain
Ani Mejlumyan, Ulkar Natiqqizi | Eurasianet | October 7 | 1,300 words
Before last year, energy was one of the bright spots in Nagorno-Karabakh’s economy. The de facto authorities had built a network of small hydropower plants to supplement a larger, Soviet-era dam. Following last year’s war, however, Azerbaijan retook much of its territory that it had lost in the first war between the two sides in the 1990s. And that land included most of those hydropower plants. Of the 36 plants that operated in Armenian-controlled territory before the war, only six remain under Armenian control. Meanwhile, electricity transfers between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh have been interrupted by the loss of transmission lines that once ran through the Kelbajar region, which was ceded to Azerbaijan as part of the ceasefire deal. As a result, Karabakh has been suffering power outages.
“You don’t get used to death” — a report from Yakutsk’s biggest coronavirus hospital [RU]
Elena Alekseeva | NewsYkt | September 17 | 1,300 words
47% of the patients entering the intensive care unit of the Yakutsk Republican Clinical Hospital do not return home. “If you look at the number of deaths it’s the same as last year - about two percent of all cases. There are just a lot of patients” says the head of the department, Kirill Chulakov. On top of the usual 20 or so intensivists working there, four doctors from the Federal Medical-Biological Agency’s special detachment arrived to support them. Among them is Nadezhda Ivakina, 28, from Krasnoyarsk. She was surprised to find that no one in Yakutsk wears masks, and that the people there do not want to be vaccinated. The agency’s special detachment usually goes out to help during natural disasters, including fires. Last year they worked in Crimea, this year they were sent to Yakutia.
Research & Culture
Check out this amazing Twitter thread diving into the absolutely incredible history behind two famous pictures of a Soviet soldier before and after World War 2.
Hey, Google, is it what the Holocaust looked like? 🔓
Mykola Makhortykh, Aleksandra Urman, Roberto Ulloa | First Monday | October 4
In this article, we examine how search malperformance can influence representation of traumatic past by investigating image search outputs of six search engines in relation to the Holocaust in English and Russian. Our findings indicate that besides two common themes - commemoration and liberation of camps - there is substantial variation in visual representation of the Holocaust between search engines and languages. We also observe several instances of search malperformance, including content propagating antisemitism and Holocaust denial, misattributed images, and disproportionate visibility of specific Holocaust aspects that might result in its distorted perception by the public.
Of Stalin’s Proposal to Deploy British Divisions to the Ukrainian or Leningrad Front in 1941 🔒
Erjo Selliov | Diplomacy & Statecraft | September 17
This analysis explores the diplomacy regarding the possibility of sending British troops to the Soviet Union that took place between Soviet and British representatives during autumn and winter 1941. It demonstrates that despite retrospective emphasis on the absurdity of the proposal, both sides seriously considered the possibility of direct military help at the time, it played a far more important role in the development of Anglo-Soviet relations than previously acknowledged.
Anton Chekhov, translated by Constance Garnett | Berfrois | July 15 | 2,800 words
“The death sentence and the life sentence are equally immoral, but if I had to choose between the death penalty and imprisonment for life, I would certainly choose the second. To live anyhow is better than not at all.” A lively discussion arose. The banker, who was younger and more nervous in those days, was suddenly carried away by excitement; he struck the table with his fist and shouted at the young man: “It’s not true! I’ll bet you two million you wouldn’t stay in solitary confinement for five years.” “If you mean that in earnest,” said the young man, “I’ll take the bet, but I would stay not five but fifteen years.” “Fifteen? Done!” cried the banker. “Gentlemen, I stake two million!” “Agreed! You stake your millions and I stake my freedom!” said the young man. And this wild, senseless bet was carried out! The banker, spoilt and frivolous, with millions beyond his reckoning, was delighted at the bet.
Russian State Capitalism Part IV: Special Economic Zones in Russia (Kaluga Region)
Jeremy Morris | Postsocialism | October 8 | 1,400 words
Special Economic Zones have interested me for a long time because so many of my research participants moved directly from ‘dying Soviet’ factories to shiny new Japanese, Korean, and European intensive productionscapes in the 2000s and 2010s. SEZs were created supposedly to kickstart diversification and higher-tech production — in reality, they serve primarily as accelerated laboratories in deregulation. Taking Kaluga region as an example, SEZs’ success has been in socializing blue-collar locals in accepting downgraded labour terms and conditions and training white-collar workers in more effective coercive surveillance-managerialist methods. In terms of transnational state-capital collaboration to increase productivity, global connectivity (notably with the Silk Road rail system), and in providing a relatively low-tech domestic manufacturing base, SEZs are an outstanding success.
Andrei Yakovlev | Post-Soviet Affairs | August 17
Vladimir Putin’s personal popularity creates the base for sociopolitical stability of regime. However, in the long term, the aspirations of Russia’s elite for national sovereignty will come to naught without a new economic development model. Applying the “limited access orders” framework of North, Wallis, and Weingast, this essay analyzes the interactions among three key groups in the ruling elite# the top federal bureaucracy, politically connected big business (oligarchs), and heads of security forces (siloviki). It considers the evolution of rent sources in Russia during the last 25 years and the incentives of elite groups. It argues that under dominance of siloviki after 2012, the ruling coalition could not negotiate a new agreement on rent distribution, nor could it broaden access to economic opportunities and political activity for new social groups. Russia’s ruling elite missed the opportunity to avoid a deep shock that will likely destroy the existing “limited access order”.
Una Bergmane | The International History Review | August 11
After the USSR annexed the Baltic states in 1940, the Bank of France refused to transfer Baltic gold reserves to Moscow and preserved them until the reestablishment of Baltic independence in 1991. This decision resulted from a slow but deep change in the conduct of international relations, namely the post-WWI effort to outlaw the use of force in international relations. By refusing to recognise Soviet rights over Baltic gold, France embraced the slowly emerging principle of ex injuria jus non oritur (‘law does not arise from injustice’) that was at the heart of Stimson doctrine (1932) and the Briand-Kellogg Pact (1928). To better understand the changes taking place on the macro-level (state conduct dealing with territorial change created by force), this article zooms on the level of domestic institutional actors and their ways of dealing with the Baltic problem in their daily practice. It explains how the French position regarding the Baltic question was negotiated between various institutional actors such as the French presidency, the Treasury, Foreign Ministry and the Bank of France. I argue that the key element shaping French policy towards the Baltic gold issue was the institutional self-protection logic of the Bank of France.
ICYMI
Stories from well-known outlets you might nevertheless have missed.
Reuters: Poland says Belarusian services fired towards its troops
The Guardian: Europe’s soaring gas prices: does Russia hold solution to crisis?
War On The Rocks: The Sorry State of Czech-Russian Relations
Politico: Why India’s arms deals with Russia are about to become a headache for Biden
The Independent: ‘If you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean you aren’t being followed’: Fleeing Belarusians who still face danger
Ars Technica: Putin slashes Russia’s space budget and says he expects better results
bne IntelliNews: Reports warn Tajik militant group in Afghanistan may be poised to attack Tajikistan