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The Real Russia. Today. The wives and mothers of Azov, a wave of pessimism hits the Kremlin, and Washington cancels its waiver: Published: Monday/Tuesday, May 23/24, 2022

In today’s newsletter:

• Latest news
• The wives and mothers of three Azov soldiers who defended Mariupol to the end
• Meduza’s sources say there’s a new wave of pessimism in the Kremlin
• New podcast episode: Genocide in Ukraine
• Meet Putin’s new ‘son-in-law’
• The Ukrainian roots and unpaid alimony bills of the Russian military’s commanding officers
• Watching the war from inside a monastery
• McDonald’s employees in Russia talk about the company’s exit

Major recent events in Russia and Ukraine

• 💱 The default draws nearer: The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced on Tuesday that it isn’t renewing the provisions of “GL-9C issued pursuant to the Russian Harmful Foreign Activities Sanctions Regulations.” In other words, the United States government is no longer permitting American bondholders to receive debt payments from the Kremlin — a major step toward pushing Russia into a government default. The waiver had allowed Moscow to keep paying interest and principal and avert default on its government debt. Russia has $40 billion of international bonds outstanding.
• 🎓 New education standards: Russia’s Science and Higher Education Ministry says it plans to abandon the European higher-education standards adopted almost 20 years ago, pulling Russia out of the so-called Bologna education system. “The future belongs to our own unique education system,” Minister Valery Falkov told the newspaper Kommersant, insisting that Russia’s higher education priorities should reflect “the interests of the national economy.”
• 🚨 It’s an emergency: Hungary’s government will assume emergency powers in response to the war in neighboring Ukraine, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in a Facebook video on Tuesday. “The world is on the brink of an economic crisis,” Orban said in the video, as reported by Reuters. He stressed that Hungary must stay out of the war in Ukraine and “protect families’ financial security.”
• ⚖️ An apology for Navalny: In a speech before a Moscow court upheld his nine-year prison sentence, anti-Kremlin opposition leader Alexey Navalny revealed that Natalya Repnikova, the judge who presided over the trial that replaced his probation sentence with imprisonment, allegedly passed him a note through several lawyers where she apologized for her ruling. Repnikova reportedly died from COVID-19 last September, though Navalny suggested in his speech on Tuesday that foul play might be the cause. In his remarks, Navalny also criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
• ⚖️ Prosecuting war crimes in Ukraine: Ukrainian prosecutors have accused five Russian soldiers and three mercenaries from the “Wagner” PMC of kidnapping, torturing, and murdering the village elder of Motyzhyn together with her family. In total, the suspects are accused of involvement in 14 separate war crimes against civilians in the Bucha district outside Kyiv.
• 👟 Just done it: Nike is officially leaving Russia. The company has reportedly decided not to renew a franchising agreement with Inventive Retail Group, which operated 37 Nike-branded retail stores in Russia. Nike suspended deliveries to Russia in March. IRG’s spokeswoman told the newspaper Vedomosti that supplies are now too low to keep its Nike stores open.
• 💥 An elderly pilot’s luck runs out: A retired Russian major general reportedly died in Ukraine when his Sukhoi Su-25 jet was shot down over the Luhansk region. Journalists at BBC Russia identified him as 63-year-old Kanamat Botashev, who left the military after he stole and crashed a Sukhoi Su-27 fighter jet in 2012, ejecting to safety. Russia’s Defense Ministry hasn’t commented on the reports about Botashev’s death, but analysts cite open-source data showing that at least nine retired Russian soldiers over the age of 50 have died in combat in Ukraine.
• 🤰 Two draft laws to deal with those shifty foreigners: Lawmakers in the State Duma adopted the first reading of federal legislation that would ban the services of surrogate mothers for foreign citizens. The bill would restrict surrogacy to married Russian citizens and unmarried infertile Russian women. The ban would not apply to married couples where one of the spouses is a Russian citizen. Deputies also approved the first reading of a draft law that will allow “external management” of Russian businesses, at least 25 percent of which belongs to companies from “unfriendly” countries. Courts would be empowered to order domestic takeovers in the event that one of these entities ceases operations in Russia “without obvious economic grounds.” The bill also stipulates qualifying criteria for external management, such as the production of “socially significant or essential goods.” An interdepartmental commission at the Economic Development Ministry would also be able to flag companies for takeovers. Researchers at Yale University’s School of Management say nearly 1,000 companies have officially announced they are voluntarily curtailing operations in Russia.

🪖 Meduza’s interview with the wives and mothers of three Azov soldiers who defended Mariupol to the end (20-min read)

Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant was under continuous siege by Russian troops from early March until May 17. The last place unoccupied by Russian troops in the city, the plant was completely cut off from the outside world. Ukrainians managed to defend it up until May 16, when the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces ordered the commanders of the units in Azovstal to “save the lives of the personnel.” The soldiers (the majority of whom belong to the Azov regiment, which was using the plant as a base) laid down their weapons and surrendered. Meduza spoke to the wives of two of the Azov soldiers who were taken prisoner, and to the mother of one who died, about what it was like to follow the siege from afar as their loved ones were under siege inside the plant.

🧠 Meduza’s sources say a new wave of pessimism in the Kremlin has Russia’s hawks demanding more brutality in Ukraine while others scout for presidential successors (7-min read)

As of today, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been underway for exactly three months. Throughout Moscow’s “special military operation,” representatives of the Russian elite have repeatedly changed their positions on the war in Ukraine and the crisis at home. Moderate optimism replaced what was initially extreme pessimism, only to be ousted by a wave of moderate pessimism. Sources close to the Kremlin told Meduza that these moods have shifted again, as more elites express dissatisfaction with Vladimir Putin directly. Frustration with the president, moreover, is rising among both supporters and opponents of the invasion.

Major recent events in Russia and Ukraine

• ⚖️ First war-crime conviction: A court in Kyiv has sentenced Russian soldier Vadim Shishimarin to life imprisonment for killing 62-year-old civilian Oleksandr Shelipov in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region. Shishimarin was charged with violating the laws and customs of war and with premeditated murder. Shishimarin pleaded guilty in court and asked Shelipov’s widow to forgive him. He claimed he didn’t want to kill Shelipov and that he was just following his officer’s orders.
• 📺 Too hot for TV: A representative of Russia’s Attorney General explained the agency’s decision to block independent television channel Dozhd (TV Rain), saying its work presented a threat to the “stability of the constitutional structure and Russia’s security.” The statement, according to RIA Novosti, was made during a review of Dozhd’s appeal to challenge the blockage in Moscow’s ​​Tverskoy District Court.
• ✋ Ukraine’s backup plan: In remarks on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reminded the public that Ukraine has a presidential line of succession in the event of his inability to remain in office (such as his death). In early April, Zelensky said that there had been more than a dozen attempts on his life since the start of Russia’s invasion in February.
• 🔱 The Moskva’s missing men: Two mothers of Russian sailors who went missing after the Moskva guided missile cruiser sank in April 2022 told the newspaper Novaya Gazeta Europe that the Navy has encouraged them to sign documents designating their sons’ bodies as irretrievable “due to an accident.” Other parents say they were promised veteran’s benefits if they signed the documents drafted for them by the Navy. (Russia says the Moskva sank after a fire and stormy seas damaged the ship, while Kyiv says it hit the Moskva with two missiles.)
• 💰 A new line-item for Russia’s capital: The Moscow Mayor’s Office has reportedly been tasked with overseeing the reconstruction of the local infrastructure in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk, a source close to the city’s authorities told the news outlet RBC. The capital is apparently expected to fund this work itself, though the amount of money needed is still unknown.
• ⚖️ Tribunal plans in Mariupol: A source reportedly with insider knowledge told the Russian state news agency Interfax that occupying forces in Mariupol plan to hold an “intermediate tribunal” for the Ukrainian soldiers captured at the Azovstal factory. Earlier on Monday, the head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic said the prisoners who haven’t already been transferred to Russia would face trial in the DNR.
• 👋 Another high-profile defection: Boris Bondarev, a counsellor at the Russian permanent mission to the UN in Geneva, resigned from his job on Monday in protest against the invasion of Ukraine, calling it his “duty as a citizen.” “I should have done it at the start [of the war] but not everyone is a hero,” he told The Telegraph. “A great number of Russian diplomats, even those who make hawkish statements in the media, are privately appalled by the brutal war in Ukraine and the ministry’s role in making up excuses for apparent war crimes,” claimed Bondarev.
• 👋 No longer on every corner (or any corner at all): Starbucks has decided to exit and “no longer have a brand presence” in Russia, following the suspension of all its operations in Russia on March 8 due to the Ukraine invasion. Roughly 2,000 employees will receive six months’ pay “and assistance for partners to transition to new opportunities outside of Starbucks,” the company said in a statement.

🎧 The Naked Pravda: Genocide in Ukraine (1 hr, 40 min)

As the world learns more about the atrocities committed against the Ukrainian people, Ukrainian law enforcement and officials throughout the West have begun the process of investigating, designating, and prosecuting these acts. For a better understanding of this work and its challenges, The Naked Pravda spoke to four experts about war atrocities in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, focusing particularly on genocide as it’s understood both legally and in terms of history and politics.

👨‍👦 Meet Putin’s new ‘son-in-law’: The Russian president’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova is in a relationship with a ballet star named Zelensky (11-min read)

Russian ballet master Igor Zelensky may share a last name with Ukraine’s current president — but he’s actually the father of Vladimir Putin’s granddaughter. A joint investigation by Meduza, Current Time TV, and the Dossier Center has revealed that Zelensky has been in a years-long relationship with Putin’s purported second daughter, Katerina Tikhonova. Until recently, Zelensky was based in Munich, where he worked as the director of the Bavarian State Ballet. And Tikhonova, who heads the Moscow-based nonprofit “Innopraktika,” divided her time between Russia and Germany. Zelensky resigned from his position in Munich in early April, reportedly in connection with his refusal to publicly condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now, there’s speculation that Zelensky will take on a leadership role at a new state theater the Russian authorities are constructing in Crimea — a project announced by Putin himself in 2018.

🎖️ Investigative journalists at Proekt collect data on the military officials commanding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Many were born and raised there. (2-min read)

The investigative news website Proekt has published a database of information about Russian military units currently fighting in Ukraine. In total, the database names 166 commanding officers, offering varying degrees of detail about each individual’s activities and biography, as well as information about their income, property, debts, and any recorded fines. Nearly two dozen of the officials identified were born or raised in Ukraine.

☦️ The story of four young Kharkiv residents who have been living in a monastery since the war began (25-min read)

On February 23, four members of an Orthodox youth movement in Kharkiv set out on a four-day pilgrimage. Their plan was to return home on February 28. At 5:00 a.m on February 24, they got off their train in Kyiv and learned that Russia’s invasion had begun. Ever since then, they’ve been living in a Ukrainian Orthodox monastery in the Kyiv region. Some of them have nowhere else to go because their homes have been destroyed; others have made the decision not to leave for religious reasons. Meduza asked Iryna, a journalist from Kyiv who found herself living in the same monastery, to write about the new lives these young people are building in the monastery.

🍔 Meduza spoke to five McDonald’s employees to find out what they think about the fast-food giant leaving Russia for good (11-min read)

McDonalds has announced that it is leaving the Russian market after 32 years of doing business there. Since mid-March, operations have been suspended at McDonalds’ 850 restaurants across Russia. On May 16, the company confirmed that it will sell its Russian business. Existing locations will be rebranded, and the iconic Golden Arches will vanish. According to the state news agency TASS, the new restaurants could open as soon as mid-June. Before the invasion, McDonalds employed 62,000 people at its franchises. The company continued to pay these staff even after suspending business in Russia. Meduza spoke to a handful of McDonalds workers to learn their thoughts about the chain’s departure from Russia, and to find out what they plan to do next.

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