Eastern Radar #32
How to mention Putin's daughter, the QR code wars, being a British military liaison in the Soviet Union during World War 2 and more
Beeps
✍️ “Katerina Tikhonova, which Reuters and Bloomberg describe as the daughter of Russian president Vladimir Putin:” that’s the careful euphemism used by Russian media Kommersant to discuss news surrounding the head of the “Innopraktika” foundation. RBC uses the same turn of phrase — even though it was one of the very first media to report about Katerina Tikhonova almost certainly being Putin’s daughter back in 2015.
💉 40% of Ukrainians believe no one in particular is responsible for the recent outbreak of Covid-19 in the country — 21% accuse those who refused to vaccinate, and 15% the Health ministry.
💸 Authorities in Russia’s Saint Petersburg will launch an experiment where locals could receive up to 1,000 rubles ($13) for removing snow on the sidewalks.
🚬 In 2019, 18.4% of EU population aged 15 years or more reported they were daily cigarette smokers, with the highest shares reported in Bulgaria (28.7%), Greece (23.6%) and Latvia (22.1%).
🕰️ 19 years ago, on November 21, 2002, NATO extended an invitation to join its alliance to seven former Eastern Bloc countries: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
Under the Radar
The QR Code Wars [RU]
Zoya Alekseeva | Strelka Mag | November 19 | 1,100 words
“QR code isn’t a Russian word!” Nearly two years into the pandemic, the sentence — shouted by a group of women attempting to enter a mall in the Far-Eastern city of Ulan-Ude — could be a rallying cry for thousands of Russians. “Strelka Mag”, a media focused on urban policies and development, is compiling a list of battles fought across Russia between regional authorities and locals opposing sanitary restrictions and, in particular, the dreaded QR code. Protests mostly, but also a flood of angry comments left by Orthodox activists on the Instagram pages of Siberian governors, an attempt to occupy an administrative building in Volgograd or the theft of a “mobile vaccination point” in the Leningrad region.
Research
Martin H. Folly | The International History Review | November 2021
Britain stationed a military mission in the USSR from 1941-45. This article examines the British conduct of the Mission at a crucial stage of the war, from November 1942 to November 1943. Prompted by a report from the head of the Mission, the Chiefs of Staff decided in February 1943 to institute a ‘new deal’, to try to end what was seen as ‘one-way traffic’ in the relationship. A new head, General Martel, was appointed, to make higher-level contacts. The attempt to try and make the relationship equal, reciprocal and symmetrical was short-lived as other military concerns moved the ‘bargaining’ approach of the ‘new deal’ back towards an acceptance of asymmetry. While the Soviet contribution on the battlefield was a weighty element in the balance, this article demonstrates that in the diplomacy of alliance military liaison, such rational calculations were accompanied by irrational factors like concern for personal or national prestige, cultural differences concerning ‘manners’, the pressures of life as a foreigner in Stalin’s Soviet Union, and inter-service rivalries in Whitehall that set the representatives in Moscow often at cross-purposes.
Irina Molodikova | Journal of Human Trafficking | February 2020
The government faces domestic challenges in combatting trafficking. Overall, migration policy has favored both the shadow economies that support trafficking and the punitive nature of Russian law enforcement that supports the propiska system. Because the average salary of irregular migrants is often higher than that of legal workers, many migrants are ready to accept some level of exploitation. Law enforcement institutions, taking advantage of loopholes in the legislation (especially with regard to registration regulations), often support the employers in their strategies to profit from discrimination and exploitation of migrants. The corrupt liaisons between law enforcement institutions and employers provide few chances to refuse work in low-paid services and industries. The protection of victims is ineffective because of many factors, including corruption and distrust of law enforcement. Additionally, little assistance (medical, social, psychological) is available to victims. Currently, there are few NGOs working with trafficked victims, because the law ‘On Foreign Agents’ penalizes Russian NGOs for accepting support from international organizations.
Representations of the First World War in the Politics of Memory in Russia and Ukraine 🔒
Hanna Bazhenova | Problems of Post-Communism | September 2020
This paper examines the re-emergence of the memory of the First World War in Russia and Ukraine during the post-Soviet period. It shows what kind of interpretations of the war the governments of these countries have put forward in order to establish new commemorative traditions. It examines the role of non-state actors in the revival of the memory of the war. The article demonstrates that despite sharp differences in attitudes towards the imperial heritage, both countries have structural similarities in their commemoration strategies and they are commensurable to those that developed in Western European countries right after the Great War.
ICYMI
Stories from well-known outlets you might nevertheless have missed.
RFE/RL: The Curious Case Of Central Asia's Severe Electricity Shortages
Financial Times: ‘We are one people’: Russia bemoans Ukraine’s ‘separate path’
Al Jazeera: Armenia and Azerbaijan’s new-old border war
Bellingcat : Inside Wagnergate: Ukraine’s Brazen Sting Operation to Snare Russian Mercenaries
Associated Press: Europe lacks natural gas. Is it Russia’s fault?
BBC: Belarus president tells BBC: ‘We won’t stop the migrants’
AFP: Poland Says Belarus Has Changed Tactics on Migrant Crisis
Associated Press: Ukraine's doctors pushed to the limit by COVID-19 wave