MEDUZA/EN/VHF

The Russian authorities have been sinking money into domestic alternatives to YouTube for over a year, says a new investigation from iStories and Agentstvo. Allegedly, these Russian video platforms are meant to serve as substitutes in the event that Russia's censorship agency bans YouTube altogether. However, sources say blocking YouTube would be a last resort -- apparently, the authorities in the Kremlin hope that its parent company, Google, can be "forced into submission" through fines and threats to throttle YouTube's traffic.

Every year, the Russian authorities "create" hundreds of thousands of new citizens -- 720,000 Russian passports have already been issued to residents of Ukraine's Donbas alone. In a sense, however, the Kremlin's actions are not so different from other governments that offer citizenship to foreign nationals in order to (1) expand their sphere of influence abroad and (2) acquire new, loyal electorates. Meanwhile, Russia has deprived nine million of its own citizens of a key civil right -- the right to stand for election -- and pro-government politicians periodically float the idea of depriving opposition-minded Russians of their citizenship. Meduza "Ideas" editor Maxim Trudolyubov breaks down how citizenship has evolved from a privilege to an instrument of control and manipulation.

The St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Justice Ministry has asked the courts to liquidate the charitable foundation Sfera, the operator of the Russian LGBT Network.

Russia has designated 75 individuals as "media foreign agents." And according to BBC News Russian, at least 32 of these people have left or are preparing to leave the country. Another 14 individuals had already left Russia due to pressure from the authorities before they were added to the "foreign agent" blacklist.

Since the fall of 2021, media outlets around the world have been discussing the possibility of another Russian invasion of Ukraine. Moscow has had troops massed near the Ukrainian border for several months now -- in response, NATO countries, led by the United States, have deployed additional forces to Eastern Europe and are threatening the Kremlin with sanctions. What do people living near the Russian border with Ukraine think about these escalating tensions? For Meduza, journalist Gleb Golod traveled to towns and villages in Russia's Rostov region to find out.

Vladimir Lagrange, who died in Moscow on January 22 at the age of 82, was an icon of national photography with work published in both the Soviet and foreign press. From 1959 to 1963, he worked in the news photography division of TASS. Until 1989, he was a special photo correspondent for the magazine Sovetsky Soyuz. He also worked for the magazine Rodina and in the Moscow bureau of the French agency Sipa Press. Following a memorial service on January 25, Meduza is publishing some of Lagrange's classic images, with comments by Natalia Grigorieva-Litvinskaya, the director of the Lumiere Gallery, which hosted an exhibit in 2019 titled "Lagrange Street."

On Wednesday, February 2, the Chechen authorities reported that 400,000 people had joined a rally in Grozny to protest the family of prominent anti-torture activist Abubakar Yangulbayev. The demonstration came a day after Russian lawmaker Adam Delimkhanov threatened to decapitate members of the Yangulbayev family. The activist's father, retired judge Saidi Yangulbayev, fled Russia along with his daughter on January 23 -- three days after his wife, Zarema Musayeva, was forcibly taken to Chechnya. The threats against the Yangulbayev family echo menacing remarks made by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has also been leveling accusations against Novaya Gazeta journalist Elena Milashina (who is known for her investigative work in Chechnya) and human rights activist Igor Kalyapin (who, like Abubakar Yangulbayev, works for the Committee for the Prevention of Torture).

Against the backdrop of a Russian military buildup and a deepening rift between Russia and Western countries, Ukrainians have begun to make serious preparations for an intensified war. For many, this means joining the Territorial Defense Forces -- the country's volunteer military reserve that was recently incorporated into the armed forces. In Kyiv, instructors with military experience give basic combat training to civilians wielding wooden replicas of Kalashnikov rifles. In Kharkiv, Ukrainian nationalists rehearse maneuvers at abandoned construction sites. Patriotic Ukrainian media outlets hold up these volunteers as heroes -- meanwhile, they're painted as anti-heroes in Russian state propaganda. For the rest of the world, this civilian mobilization speaks to the fact that a full-fledged war between Russia and Ukraine is a very real prospect. Here's what this combat training looks like.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen government, has called Novaya Gazeta journalist Elena Milashina and Committee Against Torture director Igor Kalyapin "terrorists." Kadyrov has also accused entire newsrooms, not just at Novaya Gazeta but also at the independent television network Dozhd, of being "terrorists and their accomplices." These remarks aren't just insulting (though they are certainly that); they're also threats of violence. "We've always destroyed terrorists and their accomplices, between whom there's no distinction, and we will continue to deal with them like this," said Kadyrov.

Ten years have passed since Russia's winter protests of 2012. They began as demonstrations opposing voter fraud in the 2011 State Duma elections, and segued into rallies against the now-infamous "castling" that returned Vladimir Putin to the presidency. Indeed, large-scale opposition protests formed the backdrop of Putin's 2012 presidential campaign. Looking back, it seems as though this was the last time that both the Russian authorities and their opponents were equally and seriously engaged in politics on the streets of Moscow. On the tenth anniversary of the protests, Meduza looks back at how this political struggle played out.