Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian authorities imposed military censorship in all but name, annihilating the entire domestic free press. Within a week of Moscow’s “special operation in the Donbas,” the television station Dozhd and radio station Ekho Moskvy both shut down, ending 12 and 32 years, respectively, of independent journalism. In late March, after a 28-year run, the newspaper Novaya Gazeta suspended all reporting until the end of the war, citing warnings from the federal censor. Many of the journalists who worked for these outlets have already fled Russia, but they continue their work at new platforms, on their own channels at YouTube, Telegram, and elsewhere.

For a better understanding of this new guerilla reporting, The Naked Pravda spoke to two independent journalists now operating from outside Russia to find out how they’re managing this job: Farida Rustamova (who uses Telegram and Substack) and Ekaterina Kotrikadze (on Telegram and YouTube).

Timestamps for this episode:

• (2:43) Did Russian independent journalists lose the fight against Kremlin propaganda?
• (10:23) How has military censorship damaged the quality of reporting and information available from Russia?
• (18:55) Rustamova’s path to Substack.
• (26:52) Kotrikadze on TV Rain’s plans for the future.
• (36:23) Did Kotrikadze see the full-scale invasion coming?

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

This week’s guest is Meduza special correspondent Lilya Yapparova, who just spent several days in Chernihiv, reporting on how the Russian invasion has destroyed local families and upended residents’ lives. She managed to leave the city just before Russian troops besieged it again. Now back in Kyiv, still reporting on the war, Lilya joined the podcast to talk about her latest article, “‘Mom, please make it stop’: Meduza special correspondent Lilia Yapparova was in Chernihiv in the final days before Russian troops cut it off from the outside world. Here’s what she saw.”

Timestamps for this episode

• (4:37) What would you ask Zelensky or Putin?
• (8:39) On the nature of war reporting
• (10:55) How does a journalist engage people who are caught in the horrors of war? What was it like to visit Chernihiv and report on events there?
• (15:47) Do Ukrainians treat Russian journalists as “aggressors”? Is there anti-Russian hostility from ordinary Ukrainians?
• (18:17) The return of the barter economy, and the greatest true romance story ever told
• (21:38) What are some of the internal conflicts among the Ukrainians defending the cities now under Russian onslaught?
• (26:14) Will Ukrainians ever forgive the Russian people for this war?

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

We’re now more than three weeks deep into Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and many are asking the question: What information is still reaching Russians? Unless you’re using a VPN to tunnel beneath the state’s censorship, Instagram is blocked, Facebook is blocked, Twitter is blocked, and YouTube is probably next. The independent news media is in tatters, and it looks like the main social networks left standing will be domestic services like Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte, which enforce the Kremlin’s political censorship — and then there’s Telegram.

For a better understanding of what this means for Russia’s information space — focusing particularly on Russians’ increased reliance on Telegram — The Naked Pravda welcomes back Dr. Tanya Lokot, an associate professor in Digital Media and Society at the School of Communications at Dublin City University in Ireland, and Dr. Mariëlle Wijermars, an assistant professor in Cyber-Security and Politics at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. The two scholars recently coauthored an article published in the journal Post-Soviet Affairs, titled, “Is Telegram a ‘Harbinger of Freedom’? The Performance, Practices, and Perception of Platforms as Political Actors in Authoritarian States.”

Timestamps for this episode:

• (4:02) Is Telegram a “harbinger of freedom”?
• (5:05) How does Telegram’s lack of moderation potentially endanger vulnerable groups?
• (8:10) How vulnerable are Telegram users to government snooping?
• (11:06) Why do users stick with Telegram if there are serious security concerns about the service?
• (13:16) On Telegram head Pavel Durov’s mixed messages in Ukraine
• (17:30) Are the U.S. social media giants any better?
• (20:32) Revisiting Telegram during the 2020–2021 Belarusian protests
• (21:11) What content is available on Telegram during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?
• (26:36) That year between 2018 and 2019 when Russia “blocked” Telegram
• (31:10) What’s next for the RuNet?

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

In the days since Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Western world has imposed crippling economic sanctions on Russia designed to force extreme costs on the Kremlin for its aggression. In the Biden administration’s words, the measures will “weaken the Russian defense sector and its military power for years to come and target Russia’s most important sources of wealth.”

Russian economy expert and Foreign Policy Research Institute fellow Maximilian Hess says he worries that the looming financial collapse in Moscow could resemble 1918 more than the 1990s. He joins this week’s episode of The Naked Pravda to explain what he means.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (4:25) How bad could this get?
• (8:03) Floating currency and frozen stock trading
• (11:01) The return of a planned economy?
• (12:41) Shortages of critical products
• (15:32) What’s the message behind the sanctions?
• (19:58) Russia’s retaliatory options

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

On February 21, Vladimir Putin delivered a nearly hour-long televised lecture on Soviet history, describing what he clearly believes are the flimsy foundations of Ukrainian statehood and arguing that the government in Kyiv owes its territory today to the supposed generosity of the Bolsheviks, particularly Vladimir Lenin.

To assess this presentation of Ukrainian and Soviet history, Meduza spoke to Dr. Faith Hillis, a professor of Russian history at the University of Chicago, where she specializes in 19th and 20th century politics, culture, and ideas, exploring specifically how Russia's peculiar political institutions — and its status as a multiethnic empire — shaped public opinion and political cultures. Her most recent book, “Utopia’s Discontents: Russian Exiles and the Quest for Freedom, 1830–1930,” is the first synthetic history of the Russian revolutionary emigration before the revolution of 1917.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (3:21) Why history is almost irrelevant to what is happening on the ground in Ukraine today
• (7:57) Moscow’s “gifts” to Ukraine
• (12:08) How the Bolsheviks reconstituted the empire
• (19:08) Ukrainian civic identity and “code-switching”

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

Meduza spoke to the two hosts of a special project organized by the Monterey Initiative in Russian Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. In roughly 16 hours of interviews, “The Ambassadorial Series” features in-depth conversations with eight of the living former U.S. ambassadors to Russia and the Soviet Union, each featuring personal reflections and recollections on high-stakes negotiations, as well as discussions about a range of geopolitical issues that still dog today’s relations between Moscow and Washington.

The Naked Pravda asked the two women who hosted the interviews, Jill Dougherty (an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, a fellow at the Wilson Center, and CNN’s former Moscow bureau chief) and Dr. Hanna Notte (a senior research associate at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non‑Proliferation), what they learned from talking to the ambassadors who represented America in Moscow over the past three decades.

Timestamps for this week’s episode:

• (3:06) How “The Ambassadorial Series” came together.
• (4:49) What sets apart 1990s U.S.-Russian diplomacy.
• (11:39) Key inflection points over the past 30 years.
• (18:45) Lessons that stand out in U.S. ambassadors’ recollections.
• (23:00) The death and rebirth of Kremlinology in the Information Age.

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

Three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Eastern European breakaway states of Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia exist in a sort of geopolitical limbo. Born out of wars that ended in deadlocks in the early 1990s, these self-governing regions remain unrecognized by most of the world and dependent on Russia’s backing. This isolation presents a unique set of challenges for cultural creatives living and working in these regions, as well as for journalists trying to help them tell their stories to the wider world. To find out more about the evolving contemporary cultures of Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia, The Naked Pravda turns to Calvert Journal features editor Katie Marie Davies. 

Timestamps for this week’s episode:

• (2:19) Summarizing recent analysis and expert opinions from Michael Kofman, Leonid Bershidsky, Fyodor Lukyanov, Andrey Kortunov, Alexander Baunov, and Vladimir Denisov.
• (7:11) The Kadyrov regime’s war on the Yangulbayev family in Chechnya.
• (9:18) A new documentary film about Alexey Navalny, and Russia’s continued crackdown on the imprisoned opposition leader’s anti-corruption movement.
• (10:47) After German regulators pull the plug on Russia Today, Moscow responds by kicking out Deutsche Welle.
• (12:02) Calvert Journal features editor Katie Marie Davies discusses the challenges faced by creatives building new cultures in Eastern Europe’s breakaway states. 

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

January 2022 kicked off with a flurry of tense diplomatic talks between Russian and Western officials. Moscow is seeking wide-ranging security guarantees in Europe, while simultaneously massing upwards of 100,000 troops along its Western border. The buildup has provoked international concern that Russia plans to escalate the long-simmering conflict in the Donbas into a full-fledged war, leaving the United States and NATO scrambling to deter a potential re-invasion of Ukraine. 

With both Russia and Ukraine making international headlines daily, and the conflict in the Donbas entering its eighth year, Meduza speaks to two journalists, one in Ukraine and the other in Russia, about how ordinary people in these two countries view the prospect of an all-out war.

Timestamps for this week’s episode:

• (2:29) Journalist and media manager Angelina Karyakina, head of news at UA:PBC and co-founder of the Public Interest Journalism Lab, answers questions about the mood on the ground in Ukraine amid the looming threat of increased Russian aggression.
• (19:36) Moscow-based freelance journalist Uliana Pavlova discusses her experience reporting on the complex question of how the Russian population views the Kremlin’s brinkmanship. 

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

In the past two weeks, Russia has demonstrated its capacity to project military power at different corners of its periphery, sending troops to Kazakhstan for a small but symbolic peacekeeping operation and pressing sweeping security demands in Europe, where the West has accused the Kremlin of plotting a war of aggression against Ukraine. The Naked Pravda reviews three essays by political analysts in Russia about the nation’s evolving geopolitics and speaks to two experts about the events in Kazakhstan and changing dialogue between Moscow and Washington.

Timestamps for this week’s episode:

• (5:22) Reviewing National Research University Higher School of Economics International Relations deputy director Dmitry Novikov’s January 9, 2022, essay on how many in Moscow already see Joe Biden as a lame duck president.
• (6:44) Reviewing Russian International Affairs Council director-general Andrey Kortunov’s January 4, 2022, essay about the fundamental “discrepancies” today between Russian and Western worldviews.
• (9:24) Reviewing PIR-Center consultant Alexander Kolbin’s January 12, 2022, essay on Russia’s struggle against “self-censorship” and fight for a “legitimate basis” for its own “cultural, economic, and military expansion.”
• (13:09) EurasiaNet Central Asia editor Peter Leonard answers questions about the CSTO peacekeeping mission in Kazakhstan and about how the nation’s political system compares to Russia’s.
• (25:44) Russia in Global Affairs editor-in-chief Fyodor Lukyanov discusses the logic behind Moscow’s grievances in Europe and the tensions still escalating in Ukraine.

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

On this week’s show, The Naked Pravda looks back at some of the journalism and scholarly work in 2021 that made significant contributions to our knowledge about Russia. These nine articles feature incredible fieldwork, insights into how power works in Russia, and compelling stories that you might have missed over the year. Meduza spoke to the authors of three of these articles — Julia Ioffe, Pjotr Sauer, and Maria Danilova — and we asked historian Sean Guillory of The SRB Podcast for his five favorite scholarly books on Russia and the Soviet Union released in 2021.

Timestamps for this week’s episode:

• (3:15) “A Black Communist’s Disappearance in Stalin’s Russia: What Happened to Lovett Fort-Whiteman, the Only Known African American to Die in the Gulag?” by Joshua Yaffa (The New Yorker)
• (6:25) “Climate Change Is Melting Russia’s Permafrost — and Challenging Its Oil Economy” by Ann Simmons and Georgi Kantchev (The Wall Street Journal)
• (8:58) “On a Pacific Island, Russia Tests Its Battle Plan for Climate Change” by Anton Troianovski (The New York Times)
• (11:51) “The Great Russian Oil Heist: Criminals, Lawmen, and the Quest for Liquid Loot” by Sergei Khazov-Cassia (RFE/RL)
• (15:47) “Inside Wagnergate: Ukraine’s Brazen Sting Operation to Snare Russian Mercenaries” by Christo Grozev, with contributions from Aric Toler, Pieter van Huis, and Yordan Tsalov (Bellingcat)
• (21:48) “Lyubov Sobol’s Hope for Russia” by Masha Gessen (The New Yorker)
• (28:05) Meduza speaks to Julia Ioffe about her story, “‘These Bastards Will Never See Our Tears’: How Yulia Navalnaya Became Russia’s Real First Lady” (Vanity Fair)
• (45:22) Meduza talks to Pjotr Sauer about his investigation, “A Royal Mark Up: How an Emirati Sheikh Resells Millions of Russian Vaccines to the Developing World,” coauthored with Jake Cordell and Felix Light (The Moscow Times)
• (54:07) Meduza asks Maria Danilova about her report, “Russia Has an Opioid Crisis Too — One of Untreated Pain” (Vice)
• (1:04:11) Sean Guillory discusses “Cold War Correspondents: Soviet and American Reporters on the Ideological Frontlines” by Dina Fainberg
• (1:10:09) Sean talks about “Utopia’s Discontents: Russian Émigrés and the Quest for Freedom, 1830s-1930s” by Faith Hillis
• (1:14:05) Sean recommends “Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future?” by Jan Matti Dollbaum, Morvan Lallouet, and Ben Noble.
• (1:18:32) Sean recalls why he loved “Flowers Through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland” by Juliane Fürst
• (1:22:05) Sean ends his list with “The Things of Life: Materiality in Late Soviet Russia” by Alexey Golubev
• (1:24:03) Closing remarks and a reminder to contribute to Meduza if you’re not already doing so!

“The Naked Pravda” comes out on Saturdays (or sometimes Fridays). Catch every new episode by subscribing at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or other platforms. If you have a question or comment about the show, please write to Kevin Rothrock at [email protected] with the subject line: “The Naked Pravda.”

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно