The Russia Guy

Kevin's guest in this episode is Nikita Kulachenkov, one of the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s full-time investigators. What are you going to learn about on today’s episode of the podcast? Kevin asked Nikita about Russia’s possible criminalization of appealing to foreign governments for sanctions against Russian citizens, and he asked him what impact this legislation could have on the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s activities. They also discussed the ongoing police crackdown on the organizers of the May 5 anti-Putin protests, and Nikita described the tactics city officials use to suppress political rallies and he explained the Navalny campaign’s mentality when staging these demonstrations in the first place.Read more about how Russia plans to criminalize either observing or facilitating foreign sanctions at Meduza:https://meduza.io/en/cards/the-russian-authorities-want-to-jail-people-for-observing-or-even-promoting-western-sanctionsYou can follow Nikita Kulachenkov on Twitter @nekulachenkov:https://twitter.com/nekulachenkov?lang=enIf you enjoy this podcast, please consider showing your support with a pledge at Patreon, where you can contribute as much or as little as you like. I’d like to thank those in the audience who are already pitching in.https://www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock

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Today’s episode of The Russia Guy welcomes back Aric Toler from Bellingcat, which together with The Insider has just released a new report that contains some pretty amazing revelations about the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine almost four years ago. All 298 people on board that plane were killed, and Bellingcat has led the way in open-source intelligence gathering when it comes to tracing this back to Russia, and Aric has been one of the group’s key researchers.So what are you going to learn about on today’s episode of The Russia Guy? Aric explained the mystery behind Oleg Ivannikov, the Russian military officer whose voice we now know appears in radio transmissions intercepted by the Ukrainian authorities immediately after the MH17 disaster. Aric also talked about how Bellingcat and The Insider tracked him down and built its evidence, which it turns out was a marvelous blend of Bellingcat’s trademark OSINT, or open-source intelligence, and shoe-leather journalism by reporters from The Insider.Read Bellingcat’s new report on Oleg Ivannikov:https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2018/05/25/mh17-russian-gru-commander-orion-identified-oleg-ivannikov/And here’s Meduza’s summary:https://meduza.io/en/feature/2018/05/25/oh-hello-mr-oleg-orion-ivannikov If you’re at all interested in what’s possible with OSINT in eastern Ukraine, you definitely want to be following Aric on Twitter at @AricToler:https://twitter.com/arictoler If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider making a contribution at Patreon. No pledge is too small or too large. Many thanks to all the listeners already pledging. Your assistance helps me pay for the audio recording and hosting expenses of this podcast.https://www.patreon.com/kevinrothrockSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock)

Kevin’s guest today is Keith Gessen, a novelist, journalist, literary translator, and assistant professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Gessen has written about Russia for The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The Atlantic, and The New York Times Magazine, where he recently published a fascinating story, titled “The Quiet Americans Behind the U.S.-Russia Imbroglio,” where he examines the historical and philosophical landscape of today’s Russia expertise in the United States. So what are you going to learn about on today’s episode of the podcast? This interview is devoted to Keith’s “Quiet Americans” story in The New York Times Magazine. Here’s a list of the questions, preceded by the times in the episode that they appear: (2:50) Why write this story now? How did it come together? (8:45) Did anything about this story surprise you? (13:14) What do you say to critics who accuse you of speaking only to “like-minded” Russia hands? (15:34) Do Russia domestic politics matter here? Did you leave them out of your story intentionally? Do you think they’re not important to understanding what shapes and divides America’s “Russia hands? (22:05) How did NATO expansion become a litmus test for American Russia experts? (29:53) What’s the influence of the U.S. news media on America’s Russia hands? (35:23) How should the U.S. media improve its Russia coverage? (36:48) Is this mainstream aware that it’s living in an echo chamber? (38:55) Why is realism so unpopular in American thinking about Russia? (43:28) You’ve written about the Russia experts, but what about the Russia grifters?Read “The Quiet Americans Behind the U.S.-Russia Imbroglio”https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/magazine/the-quiet-americans-behind-the-us-russia-imbroglio.htmlFollow Keith Gessen on Twitter at @KeithGessenhttps://twitter.com/keithgessenPre-order his new book, “A Terrible Country: A Novel” (available July 10, 2018)https://www.amazon.com/Terrible-Country-Novel-Keith-Gessen/dp/0735221316If you enjoy this podcast, consider pledging a little dough to help with sound recording, editing, and hosting costs:www.patreon.com/kevinrothrockSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock)

On this episode of The Russia Guy, Kevin’s guest is David Filipov, a journalist who’s reported from Moscow, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and New England. David spent years with The Boston Globe, where he contributed to the newsroom that won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for covering the Boston Marathon bombing. He also won the 2014 Edward R. Murrow Award for Continuing Coverage as part of a team of Globe videographers, he was awarded the 2003 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism for his contribution to a series on deaths from preventable diseases, and he won the Overseas Press Club Hal Boyle Award for his reporting in 1999 from Chechnya. David has also reported for The Moscow Times and The Washington Post, for which he was Moscow bureau chief until very recently. So what are you going to learn about in this episode? David described what it was like to visit Moscow in the 1980s and work there as a journalist in the 1990s, as Communism fell. He recalled the enormous hopefulness of the immediate post-Soviet period, and the hard fall that followed. He talked about becoming a war correspondent and the lives journalists lead when taking on this kind of work. And he described the nature of reporting on Russia in Moscow today, where Americans have renewed but narrowed interests, and Russians have soured on the prospects of engaging the wider Western world.Follow David at Twitter at @DavidFilipov.https://twitter.com/davidfilipovIf you enjoy this podcast, consider pledging a little dough to help with sound recording, editing, and hosting costs:www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock

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Kevin’s guest today is Natalia Antonova, who as many listeners already know is a prolific writer, and a journalist who’s worked in Moscow, Kiev, and soon Washington, D.C., where she’s accepted a position at the Voice of America. Natalia was deputy editor at The Moscow News before it was liquidated in the collapse of RIA Novosti, and she’s been published all over the place, including The Washington Post, Politico, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, and many other fine outlets. Natalia is also a playwright and a poet, and she’s working on a fiction book right now.So what are you going to learn about on today’s episode of the podcast? Natalia and Kevin discussed her recent move back to the United States, and her new job at Voice of America. They also talked a lot about her experience in the Moscow art world, and she helped Kevin get some perspective on the “Seventh Studio” criminal investigation that has targeted acclaimed stage director Kirill Serebrennikov. She described what it was like editorially under pressure from the state when The Moscow News went under and while working at Russia Beyond the Headlines. And she and Kevin talked about her upbringing in Kiev and North Carolina, and how life brought her the Middle East, then back to the former Soviet Union, and finally again to the United States. You can follow Natalia on Twitter at @NataliaAntonovahttps://twitter.com/NataliaAntonova Natalia is also the co-founder of the Anti-Nihilist Institute nonprofit, which you can find @NoToNihilism on Twitterhttps://twitter.com/NoToNihilismIf you enjoy this podcast, consider pledging a little dough to help with sound recording, editing, and hosting costs:www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock

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In this episode, Kevin's guest is Emily Parker, a writer who's worked for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Previously, she was a member of the policy planning staff at the U.S. State Department, where she advised on Internet freedom, digital diplomacy, and open government. Today, Emily writes about tech and foreign affairs, and she works at a blockchain startup.So what are you going to learn about on today’s episode? Emily Parker you through some of the differences between “blockchain,” “cryptocurrency,” and “initial coin offerings” (or ICOs). She and Kevin talked about what governments like and fear about these technologies, and they discussed how companies and particularly social networks are trying to implement them. Kevin also asked Emily to put Telegram’s $1.7-billion ICO into context, and they shared their ideas about what a Telegram cryptocurrency could mean politically in Russia.In 2014, Emily Parker authored a book called “Now I Know Who My Comrades Are: Voices From the Internet Underground,” where you can read stories about Internet activists in China, Cuba, and Russia. Find it here on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Now-Know-Who-Comrades-Are/dp/0374176957And read all Emily's work by following her on Twitter:https://twitter.com/emilydparkerIf you enjoy this podcast, consider pledging a little dough to help with sound recording, editing, and hosting costs:www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock

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The past three episodes of The Russia Guy have been devoted to the technical details surrounding Russian Internet censorship, but today’s show focuses on one of the organizers of Monday’s Internet freedom rally in Moscow. Kevin spoke to Mikhail Svetov, a member of the Russian Libertarian Party’s federal committee.So what are you going to learn on today’s episode? Mikhail told me how Monday’s Internet freedom rally came together, and explained the organizing role his political party played. We talked a bit about the Russian Libertarian Party and its relationship with Telegram founder Pavel Durov and opposition leader Alexey Navalny. Mikhail also summarized his speech at Monday’s demonstration, explaining what he’s all about politically. And finally he shared his expectations for Internet freedom in Russia, which he says has only grim prospects, if the protest movement now beginning in Moscow doesn’t get smart or get lucky. You can find Mikhail Svetov on Twitter at Msvetov. Mikhail tweets and video blogs mostly in Russian, but as you’ll hear he speaks marvelous English.https://twitter.com/msvetovIf you enjoy this podcast, consider pledging a little dough to help with sound recording, editing, and hosting costs:www.patreon.com/kevinrothrockSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock)

In this episode, Kevin discusses three stories: (1) the structure of Russia’s pension system and the ongoing problems with keeping it funded, (2) two reports by different media monitoring groups that study traffic on Telegram, and finally (3) why it is that the Russian authorities have failed to keep so many Russian Internet users from accessing Telegram.For more on these issues, see the following articles:“The Russian pension system's 2018 deficit will be twice as big as predicted”https://meduza.io/en/news/2018/04/25/the-russian-pension-system-s-2018-deficit-will-be-twice-as-big-as-predicted“Media monitoring website says traffic to Telegram channels dropped 76.5 percent after Russia blocked the app”https://meduza.io/en/news/2018/04/25/media-monitoring-website-says-traffic-to-telegram-channels-dropped-76-5-percent-after-russia-blocked-the-app“Russia is trying to block Telegram, but it's failing. Why?”https://meduza.io/en/cards/russia-is-trying-to-block-telegram-but-it-s-failing-whyIf you enjoy this podcast, consider pledging a little dough to help with sound recording, editing, and hosting costs:www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock

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Today’s podcast guest is Yasha Levine, an investigative journalist and the author of the new book “Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet,” which offers a new look at the little-discussed genesis of the very thing that brings my voice to your ears: the Internet. What did Yasha and Kevin discuss? You guessed it: Russia’s block of Telegram. Some highlights:*The concepts of “national information security” and “digital sovereignty” *How we ought to know whom to trust when it comes to keeping our online correspondence private*The role American tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Apple are playing in the battle over Telegram*A bit of context to bear in mind when comparing and contrasting the online ecosystems in Russia and the United StatesYou can pick up a copy of Yasha’s book, “Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet,” here at Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Surveillance-Valley-Military-History-Internet/dp/1610398025If you enjoy this podcast, consider pledging a little dough to help with sound recording, editing, and hosting costs:www.patreon.com/kevinrothrockSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock)

Russia has finally blocked Telegram! In this episode, Kevin spoke to Tjournal.ru's chief editor, Nikita Likhachev, to learn more about this story.Some things Nikita discussed:*Technically speaking, how will Roskomnadzor block Telegram?*Will Russia order Google and Apple to remove Telegram from their app stores?*What will most Telegram users in Russia do? Will they bother with VPN technologies?If you enjoy this podcast, consider pledging a little dough to help with sound recording, editing, and hosting costs:www.patreon.com/kevinrothrockSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock)