The Economist, 8/6/22

Eduard K. can’t recall the exact chain of events that led him to approach a Ukrainian military checkpoint and shout: “Putin is my president.” The fashion designer says he remembers an increasing state of panic as war raged outside his home in northern Kyiv. Even when shells weren’t exploding nearby, he would cry uncontrollably at the news he saw on his phone. He became obsessed by the Russians, the evil forces advancing on the other side of the forest. Perhaps he was searching for them when he left his home, in slippers and pyjamas, for the Ukrainian positions inside the woods. Instead, he remembers saying he was looking for Katya Chilly—a camp, new-age Ukrainian Eurovision entrant—before announcing his allegiance to Russia’s president. He was roughed up for his troubles.

That afternoon Eduard K. was admitted to one of Kyiv’s psychiatric hospitals. Yaroslav Zakharov, the doctor who saw him first, says his illness was far from unique in a country traumatised by five months of fighting. War has affected every Ukrainian in some way, and stress is magnifying problems present in the most vulnerable. In normal circumstances the psyche works like a digestive system, the doctor says; it is able to adapt and process extreme experiences. Prolonged war changes that. The expectation of suffering debilitates the nervous system. “People like to control things, and war doesn’t let you do it,” he says. Ukraine’s health ministry predicts that the war will leave 3m-4m people in need of pharmacological interventions, and another 15m requiring psychological support.

Dr Zakharov’s ward was a hive of activity when The Economist dropped by in late July. A soldier had just been admitted after an incident in which he turned firearms on a colleague on the frontline. The entire second floor of the building had been taken over by the military, the doctor revealed, with new admissions increasing in line with the hostilities in the contested Donbas region, in Ukraine’s east.

The most intense pressure on resources, however, came during the battle for Kyiv in March, when the hospital stayed open despite missiles flying over and landing near it. The doctors discharged all but the most dangerous patients, and spread their meagre resources as best they could. There were many tragic incidents. One of the discharged men, who had a history of mental illness, hanged himself after discovering that his home near Kyiv had been ransacked by Russian soldiers. His wife is now receiving treatment.

Eduard K. says that many of the patients admitted alongside him came directly from Bucha or Irpin, suburbs of Kyiv where occupying Russian forces committed terrible atrocities. The men were of all ages and backgrounds, he says, from the very young to the very old, and friendly. One group of patients got it into their heads that Eduard K. was God. “They introduced themselves one by one: this is Archangel Michael, and this so-and-so is Archangel Gabriel”, he recounts.

Some were too traumatised to speak, but brought Eduard offerings instead: apples, odd tea bags, coffee, socks. By the end of his first day on the ward his bedside table was overflowing with unsolicited gifts. One young patient would bring him one-kopeck coins. He had evidently witnessed Russian atrocities near his home in Bucha, though he was never able to communicate exactly what.

The Ukrainian government has sent mental-health specialists into some of the worst-hit towns. Nataliya Zaretska, a psychologist, has been working in Bucha for the past three months, helping civilians process the trauma of occupation. She expected her programme to end after six months, but the demand has been so high that she has opened a new mental-health centre in the town. Ms Zaretska says that the spectrum of mental illness is wide. She works with soldiers who have returned after being tortured in captivity, and locals who have been prisoners in their own homes.

The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of Vladimir Putin’s invasion—the bogus claims of Ukrainian Nazism, of “liberating” Russian-speaking Ukrainians, of “high-precision” missiles that end up killing civilians in shopping centres—makes recovery complicated for many people. There are few things as dangerous for mental health as the feeling of betrayal and illusion, says Olena Nahorna, a colleague of Ms Zaretska now embedded with Ukrainian troops in Donbas. Those who understood from the start that Russia was the enemy were better at coping with the horrors of the war, she argues. Those who thought they were friends found it tougher. “A lot of Ukrainians saw in Moscow a neighbour, albeit an eccentric one. It was a personal tragedy when that eccentric friend burst into their homes and started killing them.”

Ms Nahorna identifies one potential upside to war: the national unity forged by the shared experience of trauma. Eduard K., now discharged from Mr Zakharov’s care, says the extreme nature of his experience has given him new clarity in life. “I realise I could be dead, that different soldiers might have shot me, and that is a big kick up the backside.” His doctor agrees, but cautions it is too early to know the full extent of his trauma—and Ukraine’s. Mr Putin, he says, has dropped a delayed-action bomb on the psyche of every Ukrainian.

Barely holding back tears, the doctor reveals that his own rage pushed him to try to enlist. He was persuaded against it by a former patient now fighting in Donbas. “She told me I needed to take good care of myself, that I would be needed by all of them when the war is over.” She was right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OysQ7yQl_o

This is my most powerful interview yet. I took Maria, a fierce liberal, anti-war protester to the FRONT LINES of the war in the Donbass to see things for herself, to speak to the people for herself. This woman, with balls of steel, even walked with me through the streets of Svyatogorsk, with Ukrainian snipers just 200 meters away, to speak to civilians trapped in their basements and bring them food. How much of what she believed was right? Or wrong? This is an interview you must see to believe. – John Mark Dougan

Link here.

By Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor, 8/4/22

Under the pressure of war, crackdown, and emigration, Russia’s media landscape looks increasingly as it did in the bygone Soviet era.

In the Cold War, that meant a consolidated national press offering the official narrative with little political diversity, and a range of alternative voices based outside the country trying various means to penetrate official obstacles to reach Russian audiences.

It’s not quite that bad yet today.

The funding for state media has indeed tripled since the war began, even as laws to curtail critical journalism have proliferated. And most independent media – and the journalists who worked with them – have left Russia in recent months after being declared “foreign agents,” forbidden from reporting on the war and, in many cases, physically shut down by authorities.

But thanks to the advances and ubiquity of the internet, independent media today are able to make their voices heard in a way that was impossible during the days of the USSR. Some of them have established full-scale operations from a safe perch outside the country, aiming to bring alternative news and views to Russians online. Quite a few journalists have remained in Russia but retreated to obscure precincts of social media to express themselves, or to provide information anonymously for existing outlets.

“There are so many ways to reach people nowadays that were unimaginable in the past,” says Masha Lipman, co-editor of the Russia Post, an online journal of expert debate in English and Russian that still seems to be accessible in Russia without using a VPN. “As long as the internet exists, and the restrictions are not impenetrable – the Russian government is trying – then it’s as if the émigré press now has a real foothold and can compete in the Russian information sphere.”

Russians setting the agenda

Not every independent journalist has decamped abroad. Some continue working within the still-permitted spectrum, trying to produce valuable work within increasingly restrictive legal conditions. And a few say they’re just not leaving, no matter what.

“I was born in Russia and have lived here all my life. Why should I leave?” says journalist Vasily Polonsky. He’s worked for several alternative outlets, including TV Dozhd and the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and has been declared a “foreign agent” under Russian law. “Who will stay here to express a position different from the official line?” he asks. “As long as it’s possible, I’ll stay here and work, even if I can only seem to use about 15% of my professional capacities.”

But most of Russia’s critical media voices now operate outside the country – a situation that is starting to resemble the old Cold War.

Then, the Russian émigré press was largely confined to exiled readerships, with few opportunities to reach audiences inside the USSR. Only big state-supported radio stations such as Radio Liberty, the BBC, and Voice of America had the capabilities to counter Soviet jamming efforts and bring a different narrative to Soviet citizens in their own languages.

“In those days, millions would be listening, and they considered those signals from outside the country to be the voice of truth,” says Ms. Lipman.

But there are some important differences from the past, she says. “Those Cold War-era radio stations were run by foreign governments who were fighting their ideological battles with the USSR. Russians may have worked for them, but they were not in charge. Today Russians are running these [exiled] media ventures; they are the bosses and they set the agenda.”

The online newspaper Meduza, probably the most popular opposition-minded voice, decamped years ago to Latvia where, despite mounting difficulties with news-gathering inside Russia, it continues to make its coverage available to any Russian able to use a VPN. The TV station Dozhd was finally hounded out of its Moscow studios in March, after years of tightening regulations, and recently started broadcasting from a borrowed studio in Riga, using YouTube, a platform that has not yet been blocked in Russia.

“It didn’t make any sense to stay. We’d have been no use to anyone, including our families,” says Ekaterina Kotrikadze, news director at Dozhd. “This is really different. How do you reach people? How do you understand the country when you are outside of it?”

Staff members at Dozhd have been debating how to continue gathering news and contributions from inside Russia, bearing in mind that such work may be criminalized by Russian authorities, putting journalists at serious risk. They are especially concerned for people like Mr. Polonsky, Ms. Kotrikadze says.

“It’s just impossible to do your job as a journalist from inside the country now,” she says. “There are several journalists who remain and continue to work. Polonsky is one of ours who refuses to leave. What to do about him?”

“People were waiting for us”

Despite government efforts to silence them, independent media have been able to maintain a connection with their audience. Ms. Kotrikadze says her first show in late July from Latvia – she’s also an anchor – got a million and a half views, and a lot of positive feedback.

“People were waiting for us, and knew where to look,” she says. “We’ve kept in touch on Telegram channels, of course, and our relaunch is still partial. But we are back on the air.”

The now-closed Ekho Moskvy radio station has also fallen back on YouTube. Several of its top contributors now broadcast their familiar critical commentary on a channel they call Live Nail, though not full time.

YouTube remains a viable platform for alternative Russian media because its made-in-Russia replacement, RuTube, is still not ready after suffering from a devastating hacker attack early in the war. Many official Russian news channels, and pro-Kremlin voices such as Sputnik and Russia Today, still rely on YouTube, and hence it remains one of the few pluralistic platforms that Russians can access without a VPN.

The biggest worry, Ms. Lipman says, is that independent media have lost their former business models. “News outlets like Meduza and Dozhd used to get advertising income in the Russian market, and were relatively successful. Now they are completely cutoff from that, and it’s going to become a problem.”

“The situation is changing very fast”

Some independent outlets try to carry on within Russia, despite being labeled “foreign agents” and subjected to constant legal harassment. The newspaper Novaya Gazeta attempted to continue publishing without breaking any of the new laws concerning war reporting, but nevertheless was forced to stop in March. In early July, it successfully registered the first issue of a weekly magazine, called No, but its site was subsequently blocked.

Nadezhda Prusenkova, Novaya Gazeta’s press secretary, says the staff has no idea what will happen next.

“We’re going through a very difficult period,” she says. “It’s not clear whether we’ll open a new site, or issue another edition. Right now, all I can say is that the situation is changing very fast.”

One publication that continues with some tiny semblance of normality is the 20-year-old Caucasian Knot, which produces critical news coverage about southern Russia and the wider Caucasus region. It’s been declared a “foreign agent” and its website has been blocked in Russia. But despite pending court cases, the site has been able to keep working so far.

Its editor, Grigory Shvedov, attributes that to the fact that its area of focus is not Ukraine. It employs a network of regional journalists and bloggers, most of whom are not anonymous, to concentrate largely on human rights issues in the Caucasus. They have attempted to calculate casualty rates for Russian soldiers from the region who’ve been sent to Ukraine, but only using open and official sources.

“It’s not getting any easier,” he says. “Some can’t work at all. Some topics cannot be covered. But we want to keep working. And we intend to do that until it becomes impossible.”

The Russian government last week publicly admitted that it is in negotiations for a prisoner exchange that includes Brittney Griner. – Natylie

By William E. Butler, Counterpunch, 8/8/22

The sentencing of WNBA star Brittney Griner to nine years behind bars and a fine of 1 million rubles – between US$10,000 and $20,000 depending on the exchange rate – should come as no surprise to those familiar with Russian law.

The country has long enforced strict drug laws and has a well-deserved reputation for zero-tolerance jurisdiction.

Indeed, the crime Griner was prosecuted of – smuggling narcotics in “significant amount” in violation of Article 229¹(2)(c) of the Russian criminal code – carries a minimum sentence of five to 10 years “deprivation of freedom” along with the fine, and the upper end of the spectrum seems to be common. The prosecutor in Griner’s case asked for 9 ½ years and, presumably, the maximum fine. He got most of what he wanted.

The backdrop of the case – worsening ties between Moscow and the Washington – may lead some observers to wonder if Griner was handed an unduly harsh sentence to up her worth as a bargaining chip during discussions over a potential prisoner swap. U.S. President Joe Biden responded to the announcement of Griner’s sentence by denouncing the verdict and sentence as “unacceptable.”

But as longtime scholar of Russian law, I can say the sentence announced in the Khimki District Court outside Moscow on Aug. 4, 2022, is more or less in line with what was expected. Moreover, I believe the sentence itself does little to change the equation when it comes to any quid pro quo with Russia regarding the potential exchange of detained nationals – any negotiation over her fate will now take place outside the courtroom.

The facts of the case

Griner was detained at Sheremetyevo Airport on Feb. 17, 2022, after a sniffer dog detected vaping cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The Russian Criminal procedure codeprovided that Griner, as a foreigner with no permanent residence in Russia, was ineligible for bail.

The length of time Griner spent in detention after her arrest – nearly six months – is not unusual in drug cases of this nature in Russia and will be counted toward her sentence. And aside from the heightened international interest, the trial seemingly played out in line with Russian criminal procedure.

Under the Russian criminal procedure code, there are no “pleas”; prosecutors have to prove guilt regardless of any confession. And the evidence was there in the shape of the vape cartridges seized by customs officials along with witness statements.

In court, Griner acknowledged guilt and apologized for what she described as a mistake when packing her luggage. Her lawyers said that Griner’s cannabis oil was for medical purposes, to deal with chronic pain resulting from injuries sustained during her playing career. Griner, meanwhile, testified that she had no intention to break the law.

But in line with other jurisdictions, including the U.S., ignorance of the laws is no defense in Russia.

A pawn in US-Russian diplomacy?

If the fate of Griner was set the moment she was caught with an illegal drug in a Moscow airport, her future is less certain.

Griner has 10 days to appeal. The appeal will probably be heard rather rapidly, as standard Russian practice is to do so, but that also depends on the grounds of the appeal. If unsuccessful or unsatisfactory, additional appeals by way of cassation on issues of law may be heard at the discretion of the higher court, assuming grounds exist for this.

If all appeals fail, Griner’s lawyers can apply to a presidential commission for a pardon or hope for amnesty.

Given that Griner is being discussed in the context of a possible prisoner swap, it seems unlikely that the Kremlin will set Griner free without a reciprocal move from the U.S. government.

But Griner’s currency as a pawn in U.S.-Russian relations, with Moscow seemingly willing to barter over the future of the high-profile prisoner, will likely change little as a result of her sentence. To many in the U.S., nine years’ imprisonment may seem like a harsh penalty for cannabis possession. But in Russia, it is par for the course for this crime.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

William E. Butler is Distinguished Professor of Law at Penn State.

By Cain Burdeau, Courthouse News Service, 8/3/22

To explain the horrific events taking place in Ukraine, a chilling narrative about Russia being a fascist state run by “the dictator” Vladimir Putin has taken hold in the West.

The problem is many experts on Russia’s politics say it’s a false or misleading rendering of why Ukraine is engulfed in war.

This narrative goes this way: Just like Adolf Hitler, Putin is advancing a blood-thirsty, imperialistic, nationalistic and revanchist ideology to build a greater “Russian world” and it’s up to the West to stop him and save democracy.

In Ukraine, and increasingly in the West too, Russians are decried as “Ruscists” (a term merging Russians and fascists), Putin is demonized as “Putler,” Russian troops are called “orcs” and Russia is the “Land of Mordor,” the fictional land of dark evil forces in J.R.R. Tolkien’s books.

But this damnation that Russia is a new fascist power intent on world domination is not just false but dangerously inflaming a war that poses the risk of escalating into a world war, according to experts who study Russia and Putin’s regime.

“Since the mid-2000s, accusing Russia of being fascist has become a central narrative among Central and Eastern European countries, as well as among some Western policy figures,” wrote Marlene Laruelle, a French scholar and Russia expert at George Washington University. She is the author of the 2021 book “Is Russia Fascist? Unraveling Propaganda East and West.”

Among those who have accused Russia of fascism are Hillary Clinton, Prince Charles, Polish-American diplomat Zbigniew Brzezinski, prominent Yale historian Timothy Snyder and a number of Putin’s political rivals, including Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess master and political activist.

It’s a thesis reinforced at the highest levels with U.S. President Joe Biden calling Putin a “butcher” and “war criminal” who must be removed from power. Politicians in Europe too routinely make the Hitler-Putin comparison.

In April, after French President Emmanuel Macron talked about the need to negotiate with Putin, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki shot back: “One should not negotiate with criminals, one should fight them … Nobody negotiated with Hitler. Would you negotiate with Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot?”

The Putin-Hitler comparisons are promoted by magazines, newspapers and television news channels that regularly feature images of Putin looking deviously evil.

Nicolai Petro, a Russia expert at the University of Rhode Island, said using the fascist label “is commonly used to insult, rather than to illuminate.”

“There is no serious political project or party associated with the ‘Russian World’ in Russia today,” he said in an email to Courthouse News.

“This accusation performs the simple role of reducing Russia to being Other than the West, embodying everything that is not desirable for the West,” Laruelle wrote in an essay before the invasion. “If ‘Putin is Hitler,’ as some profess, who would want to negotiate with him and try to rebuild a constructive dialogue with Russia?”

In a more recent essay, she argued that using the fascist and Nazi label against Russia is “an easy, intellectually lazy way to make Putin understandable and predictable” and that it “does more to obscure than to shed light on our range of policy options for ending the conflict.”

Of course, those who accuse Putin’s Russia of being a fascist state have ample evidence to draw from.

Exhibit A: Hundreds of people defined as political prisoners – among them high-profile political figures such as Alexei Navalny – languish in Russian penal colonies. Since Putin ordered a full-scale attack on Ukraine, police have cracked down on anti-war protests. Recently, a councilor in a Moscow district, Alexei Gorinov, was sentenced to seven years for opposing the war.

Exhibit B: Since rising from obscurity to power in 1999, Putin has turned Russia into what many experts regard as a one-party authoritarian state with himself as the strongman on top. Putin is accused of overseeing a crooked system where his political and business allies have become fabulously wealthy through corruption.

Exhibit C: The Kremlin is a bastion of illiberal rhetoric infused by traditionalism, nationalism and militarism that represses dissenters who challenge the Kremlin’s politics, such as the closing of Russia’s most prominent human rights group Memorial International last December.

Critics point to Putin and his inner circle citing the works of Ivan Ilyin, a right-wing Russian nationalist scholar who left Soviet Russia in 1922 and later lauded fascist leaders, and Alexander Dugin, a contemporary Russian philosopher dubbed “Putin’s brain” by the Western press. Dugin’s writings create a disturbing worldview where an expansionist Russia leads the fight against Western liberalism.

Snyder, the historian at Yale, crystallized the arguments of those who see Putin as Hitler in an opinion piece for the New York Times in May entitled, “We Should Say It. Russia Is Fascist.”

“People disagree, often vehemently, over what constitutes fascism,” Snyder wrote. “But today’s Russia meets most of the criteria that scholars tend to apply. It has a cult around a single leader, Vladimir Putin. It has a cult of the dead, organized around World War II. It has a myth of a past golden age of imperial greatness, to be restored by a war of healing violence – the murderous war on Ukraine.”

Snyder said Putin, like Hitler, must be defeated.

“A time traveler from the 1930s would have no difficulty identifying the Putin regime as fascist. The symbol Z, the rallies, the propaganda, the war as a cleansing act of violence and the death pits around Ukrainian towns make it all very plain,” he wrote.

“The fascist leader has to be defeated, which means that those who oppose fascism have to do what is necessary to defeat him,” Snyder concluded. “Only then do the myths come crashing down.”

Volodymyr Ishchenko, a Ukrainian political sociologist at the Free University in Berlin, said the fascist label being lobbed by both sides in the Ukraine war “has become completely discredited.”

While those in Ukraine and the West accuse Russia of fascism, Moscow too churns out propaganda alleging Kyiv’s government of being run by Western-backed Ukrainian “Nazis” determined to destroy Russia.

“It’s almost the most important legitimization for the war: That Russia is legitimately fighting Nazis in Ukraine,” Ischenko said in a telephone interview.

“One of the things that is strikingly different between Russia and classical fascist regimes is the actual lack of any ideological mobilization,” he said.

Unlike Nazi Germany or fascist Italy, he said post-Soviet nations like Russia lacked a “totalizing ideology.”

In Hitler’s Germany, the fascist ideology was embodied by the National Socialist Party with its millions of party members and the SS and the Hitler Youth (the Hitlerjugend), vast paramilitary and youth organizations.

Those elements, Ischenko said, were the “fundamentals of the real fascists” and “nothing like this existed” in Putin’s Russia.

That was the case before the Ukraine invasion. But what about now?

“With the invasion, the Russian political regime starts to take some of the elements that may turn Russia into something more similar to fascism,” he said. “Would it develop into some kind of new fascism – or fascism of the 21st century?”

He said it’s conceivable Russia could evolve into a fascist state centered on mobilizing Russians around an ideology and turn into a real “pro-Putin movement.”

“That is quite possible,” he said, “and that would make the Russian political regime stronger in contrast to that paternal authoritarianism which has dominated post-Soviet politics for the past 30 years.”

Laruelle agreed that the Ukraine war may move Russia toward fascism.

“It is a danger. I think it has been moving toward that with the war,” she said in a telephone interview.

She said the rhetoric from some Russian elites, which she called the “party of war,” is now very close to what she would call fascist.

However, she added in her recent paper that the “party of hawks shouldn’t become the tree hiding the forest” and that much of Russia’s elite are “uninterested in ideology” and that the hawks “should not be read as the position of the whole state.”

She said a fascist state is best characterized as one that advocates its rebirth through violence and relies on the “heavy mobilization of the population” around a “cult of war.”

Until now, she said Putin has only openly expressed ideas that could be called fascist during a March 16 speech where he talked about Russia’s “self-purification” from “scums and traitors” to make the country “stronger.”

But she said Russian authorities “do not celebrate war, but on the contrary hide it and have even passed a law that condemns those talking about a ‘war’ and not a ‘special military operation’ to up to 15 years in prison.”

She added that the regime is trying “to avoid actual military mobilization, as a large-scale draft of young men would force a recognition that the ‘operation’ is indeed a ‘war’ and could jeopardize the Russian people’s passive consensus around the regime’s ‘special operation.’”

Until now, Russians have not shown to be fanatical about the war, for example with rallies and parades, and attempts to force society to show its support for the war “have been manufactured in a pretty poor, Soviet-inspired manner,” Laruelle wrote.

“Moreover, while youth support is a central component of any fascist regime, in Russia, the youth are the most unreliable part of the population from the regime’s point of view, and the least supportive of the war,” she argued.

She cited surveys of Russians that find most people see the conflict “as a geopolitical struggle with the West” and that there is not any “particular enthusiasm for the more cultural, political, and genocidal aims of liquidating Ukraine’s statehood and nationhood.”

But with the war at danger of becoming prolonged and Russia facing ever more difficulties, Laruelle warned the Russian regime “has a real risk of shifting toward this kind of mobilization of society, and this totally utopian vision of the future.”

She wrote that a rise in paramilitary groups inside Russia – which have been cultivated by Putin’s regime – “would constitute compelling evidence that the Russian state apparatus is becoming fascist.”

*You can read Marlene Laruelle’s recent in depth academic article, “So, Is Russia Fascist Yet?” here. Purchase is required. (Spoiler alert – the answer is still no.) – Natylie