A new investigative report published jointly by Meduza and The Bell looks closely at Rostec, one of Russia’s key state corporations, and its campaign to exert control over the public discourse on Telegram about Rostec’s operations and executives. Rostec is responsible for developing, manufacturing, and exporting high-tech products in aviation, mechanical engineering, radio electronics, medical technology, and a lot more. This is the Kremlin’s arms conglomerate, controlling outfits like the Kalashnikov Concern, Uralvagonzavod, Avtovaz, and many more factories that make the war machines now wreaking havoc in Ukraine.

Rostec is as serious as they come, and its long-time CEO, Sergey Chemezov, has been running the show since 2007 since the state corporation was founded in 2007. The history between Chemezov and Vladimir Putin goes back to the 1980s when the two were both Soviet intelligence agents in Dresden. So why does an enterprise with so much clout bother with bloggers on Telegram? And what does it say about the information available to Russians in an age without an independent press? Journalist Svetlana Reiter, who coauthored Meduza’s report on Rostec and Telegram, joins The Naked Pravda to discuss the story.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (6:48) What’s so special about Vasily Brovko, Rostec’s director of special assignments
• (10:09) What’s so special about Telegram in Russia?
• (13:37) Fighting extortion albeit with ulterior motives
• (23:03) Anonymity on Telegram or a lack thereof

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

In a new investigative report, journalists at Mediazona counted 536 service-related felony cases filed in Russian garrison courts against soldiers since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine started last year. Most of these charges involve AWOL offenses, often resulting in probation sentences that allow offenders to return to combat. More serious crimes include refusal to obey orders, striking a commanding officer, and outright desertion.

Citing national-security grounds (and orders from Russia’s Defense Ministry and Federal Security Service), military courts frequently conceal information about cases involving “crimes against military service.” Mediazona dug through available records and spoke to attorneys to learn what it could about this growing wave of insubordination among Russian troops.

To discuss the investigation, Mediazona reporter and data-team journalist David Frenkel joined The Naked Pravda.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (4:02) Why Putin doesn’t rescind his mobilization execution order
• (8:51) Is AWOL the most common offense by Russian soldiers or merely what Russia’s military courts prefer to prosecute?
• (14:52) Rational choice if you’re a Russian soldier who doesn’t want to fight in Ukraine
• (16:39) Morale and discipline
• (24:54) Conscientious objection
• (26:39) Show trials and judges’ “preventative talks” with soldiers

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

Show host Kevin Rothrock revisits noteworthy news stories in Russia from mid-March 2023 and celebrates 99 episodes of The Naked Pravda by reading some listener feedback.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (0:01) Evgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group paramilitary cartel starts recruiting on Pornhub
• (2:26) Russia knocks an American UAV into the Black Sea
• (3:52) The Russian Orthodox deacon who turned to Afro-Brazilian mysticism and invented a wife to cohost his anti-Ukrainian hate blog
• (5:44) How Kirill Butylin got sentenced to 13 years in prison for throwing Molotov cocktails at an army recruitment center
• (7:41) The story of Masha Moskaleva, the sixth grader taken from father after she turned in an anti-war drawing for art class
• (12:19) The latest srach (shitstorm) within the Russian opposition sparks a debate about sanctions relief and exit routes for “good oligarchs”
• (14:52) To celebrate 99 episodes of The Naked Pravda, Kevin shares some reviews from listeners

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

Late last month, there was a sudden and brief explosion of news reports in Russia and Ukraine about an ascendant youth movement of violence supposedly built around the subculture of anime fans. According to vague stories in the media, fistfights were breaking out at shopping malls and other public places as part of a transnational campaign by something called “PMC Ryodan.”

After a large fight in St. Petersburg led to dozens of arrests of Ryodan and anti-Ryodan youths, a federal lawmaker in the State Duma even appealed publicly to Russia’s Interior Ministry, demanding a ban on all content associated with “PMC Ryodan.” There was mass police action in Ukraine, too, where officials called PMC Ryodan an instrument of “Russian propagandists” leading an “informational-psychological operation” to “destabilize the internal situation in Ukraine.”

It turns out that the hysteria surrounding this youth subculture almost completely misunderstood the sporadic violence. Semantically, the first thing to grasp is that “PMC,” or private military company, is used facetiously when describing the Ryodan group. Members of this anime fan community are actually more likely to be the targets — not the instigators — of the brawls breaking out at youth hangouts. In fact, it seems the group got its “PMC” nickname after its followers started fighting back against the jocks who like to bully them.

The PMC Ryodan scare was especially perplexing abroad, where casual observers typically view Russian youth culture through the lens of a pro-Kremlin/anti-Kremlin dichotomy. But most young people in Russia, just like most people anywhere, don’t live and breathe polemics at every moment of the day with every fiber of their being. So, what can we say about Russia’s youth culture beyond the familiar Kremlin-based divide? The Naked Pravda asked two scholars for answers.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (6:41) Dr. Kristiina Silvan, a postdoctoral fellow in the Russia, EU’s Eastern Neighborhood, and Eurasia research program at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, describes the differences between contemporary Western sociological methodologies and research approaches from the USSR.
• (10:06) Dr. Felix Krawatzek, a senior researcher at the Center for East European and International Studies in Berlin, compares survey studies and fieldwork.
• (13:04) The political vs. apolitical
• (22:34) Russian-language culture and subcultures spreading internationally online
• (25:31) The significance of so-called “soccer hooligans” and gopniki
• (32:13) The 1990s as a reference point

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

On Thursday morning, March 2, a few dozen armed men crossed over from Ukraine and raided two small towns in the Russian border region of Bryansk. The militants — described as “Ukrainian saboteurs” in hurried Russian news reports and later identified as soldiers in the so-called Russian Volunteer Corps — posed for some pictures, recorded a few breathless videos, and retreated back into Ukraine in short order. Conflicting reports followed about clashes with the incursion group: the Russian authorities said a couple of motorists were killed, but there are some odd inconsistencies in the footage later released by the Federal Security Service, while the militants themselves say they got into a shootout in one town but didn’t see anyone killed.

The March 2 incursion itself is fairly underwhelming, and it’s hardly the first of its kind in the Bryansk area, where Russia’s border with Ukraine is notoriously hard to defend. What makes the raid stand out is the leader of the group behind it: Denis Nikitin, a Russian neo-Nazi with a long history of far-right activism across Europe and especially, most recently, inside Ukraine.

For more about Nikitin and the Russian Volunteer Corps, The Naked Pravda spoke to journalist Michael Colborne, who heads the Bellingcat Monitoring Project and authored the 2022 book From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (3:56) What is the Russian Volunteer Corps and who is Denis Nikitin?
• (13:49) What is Denis Nikitin’s ideology?
• (20:19) The ties between the Russian Volunteer Corps and Ukraine’s Armed Forces
• (24:23) Previous border incursions into the Bryansk region
• (30:57) Probably not a Russian false flag

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

Amid an escalating public conflict between Russia’s Defense Ministry and Evgeny Prigozhin, The Naked Pravda builds on last year’s episode about the warlord-tycoon, looking more closely at the paramilitary cartel he fronts. To understand how Wagner Group should be defined, why its brutality is so valuable to Moscow, and how its recruitment of prisoners has played out, Meduza spoke to three experts.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (3:55) Candace Rondeaux (a professor of practice and fellow at the Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies and the Center on the Future of War at Arizona State University, and the director of Future Frontlines at New America) explains how Wagner Group is best defined.
• (5:50) Andreas Heinemann-Grüder (who teaches Political Science at the University of Bonn in Germany and is a senior researcher at the Bonn International Center for Conflict Studies) break down how Russia’s mercenaries practice “exterminatory warfare.”
• (7:38) Bellingcat training-and-research director Aric Toler talks about Wagner Group’s promises of pardons and burials with honors.
• (10:07) Andreas Heinemann-Grüder says Wagner’s recruitment of prisoners undermined the group’s internal cohesion and “didn’t work out” in the end.
• (14:21) Why does Moscow need Wagner Group at all in the middle of an invasion openly waged by Russia’s official military?
• (17:41) Candace Rondeaux explains the difference between designations for organized crime and terrorism, from a foreign policy perspective.
• (22:27) Wagner Group as a front for Russian state corporations’ interests abroad.
• (24:21) Aric Toler examines what funerals for three 1990s-era crime bosses recruited by Wagner say about the group’s dubious promises to inmates.
• (28:14) Candace Rondeaux highlights the ways in which Wagner Group is a social movement too.
• (31:50) How to read Prigozhin-linked channels online and Russia’s Z-blogosphere more broadly.
• (37:10) Why ending the war demands a resolution to Wagner Group’s fate.

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

In early February 2022, as Russia massed more than 100,000 troops on the border with Ukraine, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán traveled to Moscow on what he described as a “peace mission.” Standing alongside Vladimir Putin at a press conference, Orbán urged other Western countries to adopt a “Hungarian model” of relations with Russia — one supposedly based on “mutual respect.” Just a few weeks later, the Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion of Hungary’s neighbor, Ukraine. 

For Orbán and his government, the invasion came as a shock. And for a brief moment, it seemed as though Budapest would finally reverse its longstanding pro-Kremlin stance. But instead, Hungarian officials have opted to walk the line, supporting round after round of EU sanctions against Russia and welcoming more than 2.1 million Ukrainian refugees, while also blocking the passage of weapons through Hungarian territory to Ukraine, brandishing their EU veto power, and refusing to forsake Russian energy imports. 

To find out more about Russian influence in Hungary and its impact on the Orbán government’s response to the war in Ukraine, The Naked Pravda sat down with three expert guests. 

Timestamps for this episode:

• (1:36) Journalist Szabolcs Panyi from the Budapest-based investigative outlet Direkt36 on the money trail coming from Moscow and uncovering Russian espionage in Hungary. 
• (10:44) Andras Tóth-Czifra, a non-resident fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), on Hungary’s response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 
• (14:14) Zsuzsanna Vegh, a visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and a lecturer and researcher at European University Viadrina, on how the Orbán government’s business-as-usual Russia policy puts Hungary at odds with its European partners. 

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

In the initial months after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of people left Russia. Some were fleeing the war’s economic repercussions or the country’s accelerated descent into authoritarianism, while others saw emigration as a moral necessity. Then, in September, Putin’s mobilization announcement set off a new wave of panic, causing another 700,000 or so to leave Russia in a span of just two weeks (though some have since returned).

A huge number of these wartime emigrants ended up in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, sparking what some have termed a “Russian migrant crisis.” The result on the ground in these countries has been an unprecedented reversal of a decades-old status quo that had Central Asian migrants moving to Russia to perform manual labor for relatively high wages, often while being subjected to racism and mistreatment from locals.

To learn about how this reckoning has played out on a human level, The Naked Pravda spoke to migration researcher and journalist Yan Matusevich, who’s spent the last five months conducting interviews with Russians newly arrived in Central Asia.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (5:16) Who are the people who have moved from Russia to Central Asia? What makes this a ‘monumental’ moment?
• (19:41) How have people in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan reacted to the influx of Russians? What difficult conversations has this migration forced people to have?
• (28:54) Who gets overlooked in the discussion about wartime migrants to Central Asia?
• (35:40) How do these migrants from Russia fit into traditional migration categories? Are they refugees? Asylum seekers? None of the above?
• (45:01) Why did Kazakhstan recently make its visa laws slightly less friendly to Russian citizens? How will this affect Russian emigrants there?
• (52:51) Why do some Russians in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan fear being deported to Russia? Is this likely to happen?

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

On May 11, 2022, The Washington Post announced that it was establishing a new bureau in Kyiv with Isabelle Khurshudyan leading coverage as Ukraine bureau chief. Elements of The Post’s expansive coverage dedicated to the war in Ukraine include a 24-hour live updates page on The Post’s site, a Telegram channel for news updates (now with more than 40,000 subscribers), and a database of verified, on-the-ground footage.

Ms. Khurshudyan joined The Naked Pravda to talk about The Post’s Kyiv bureau and her experiences reporting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (2:38) How did The Post’s Ukraine bureau come about? Will it remain in place after the war ends?
• (7:19) How readers in the United States respond to reporting about the war in Ukraine
• (10:07) How “burnout” affects journalists reporting in Ukraine on the war
• (13:43) How to get embedded with the Ukrainian military
• (18:14) Finding information about Ukraine’s occupied territories where there are no Western journalists
• (20:52) Navigating the wartime legal and cultural sensitivities surrounding certain kinds of speech
• (25:57) War reporting vs. hockey journalism

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

Writer Anna Arutunyan, author of “The Putin Mystique: Inside Russia’s Power Cult” (2014), has a new book out about the early pivotal years of Russia’s invasion of the Donbas, titled “Hybrid Warriors: Proxies, Freelancers and Moscow’s Struggle for Ukraine.” A longtime journalist, former International Crisis Group senior analyst, and now a Wilson Center global fellow, Arutunyan draws on interviews, reporting from the warzone, and other research to reconstruct the relationships between civilians, non-state actors, and the Kremlin that developed after Moscow annexed Crimea and began its intervention in the Donbas that spiraled into the godawful war we see today.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (3:24) Is “hybridity” still a meaningful research topic in the war today in Ukraine?
• (5:56) Is Vladimir Putin’s “power vertical” a myth?
• (10:48) Has Putin’s ideology evolved over the past two decades or is it all improvised?
• (15:08) Does Putin still have the flexibility as a leader to backtrack in Ukraine and end the war?
• (19:39) What a sense of disenfranchisement and victimhood can do.
• (25:30) What’s the use of empathy?
• (28:42) Vladimir the Bureaucrat.

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