The Real Russia. Today.
Studying Putin's re-election statistically, teasing pension reform, and forcing online ‘likes’ from teachers
Wednesday, May 9, 2018 (Happy Victory Day!)
- Moscow stands with Europe on the Iran deal
- A Stanford political scientist says there was probably relatively little voter fraud in Putin's last re-election
- Behold Putin's undying economic aspirations
- Medvedev teases pension reforms in Putin's fourth term
- Adidas stops selling some Soviet swag, after offending Lithuanians and Ukrainians
- Meduza reports on a scheme outside Moscow to force teachers to “like” posts by district officials on social media
- Police in Sakhalin are on the lookout for a rogue who insulted the governor
- It's jail time for this St. Petersburg activist
- Gay.ru and Lesbi.ru challenge their ban in Russia
- 18 Russian citizens are stuck in an Egyptian detention center
- Viktor Vekselberg's money and Trump's personal lawyer
- The U.S. Senate reports on Russian targeting of election infrastructure
Russia and Europe are sticking with the Iran deal 🇮🇷
Russia’s foreign minister says the country is sticking with the Iran nuclear deal, despite President Trump’s decision to withdraw American participation and resume U.S. sanctions against Tehran. Following the announcement from Washington, Moscow joined a chorus of European nations that have expressed concern about the loss of U.S. support for the deal, which halted economic sanctions in exchange for an end to Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. The deal was concluded between Iran, Russia, China, Great Britain, France, Germany, and the U.S.
President Vladimir Putin 4.0 🤖
🗳How many of Putin's votes were falsified?
Vladimir Putin is president, again. On May 7, he took the oath of office at his fourth inauguration, following a blowout re-election victory on March 18, when observers and journalists catalogued numerous violations and voting irregularities. Putin called it the “cleanest election” in Russian history. According to Kirill Kalinin — an expert in election fraud and a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution with a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan — there is evidence of some voter fraud in Putin’s favor. At Meduza’s request, Kalinin wrote about the preliminary results of his study, the methodology he used, and its limitations.
- Read the full story: “A researcher at Stanford University says there was very little falsification in Putin’s latest re-election, and here’s how he crunched those numbers”
🌍 When will Russia become the world's fifth biggest economy? Don't ask Vladimir Putin.
Sources for Putin’s statements in 2007, 2008, 2011, again in 2011, 2012, and 2018. In 2013, Putin said Russia had entered the world’s top five biggest economies, but only in terms of gross domestic product. In “key indicators such as labor productivity,” he said, there was a “two- to three-fold gap” with developed countries.
👴 Pension reform on the horizon?
It’s finally time for the federal government to submit a proposal for raising Russia’s retirement age, Dmitry Medvedev told the State Duma on Tuesday, before being confirmed again as prime minister. Medvedev pointed out that the country’s current system was established in the 1930s. “Life in this country has changed substantially since then, of course for the better,” Medvedev said, adding that “the conditions, opportunities, desire to work, and active years of people’s lives have changed.” He said the government will submit its reform plan in the near future.
Today, men in Russia can receive state pensions at 60 and women can retire at 55. Despite repeated warnings from state officials over the years that the country’s current pension program is unsustainable, the government has refused to entertain the idea of raising the retirement age. Beginning last year, the government started gradually increasing the pension age for civil servants and the minimum amount of employee tenure needed to claim a pension.
For Adidas, impossible is nothing, except Soviet swag ☭
The sportswear manufacturer Adidas has removed from its U.S. online store a dress bearing the USSR’s colors and emblem, following complaints from people and government officials in Lithuania and Ukraine.
Customers who added the garment to their online shopping carts now see the item listed as “no longer available.” Adidas also removed men’s and women’s jerseys with Soviet symbols from its U.S. online store. At the time of this writing, both the dress and shirts were still available, however, at Adidas.co.uk.
On May 7, the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry criticized Adidas for selling Soviet swag. The same day, the Ukrainian National Memory Institute asked the company to stop selling USSR-themed clothing in Ukraine. On Facebook, Ukrainian and Lithuanian users promoted the hashtag #StopAdidas. Since 2008, Lithuania has equated Soviet and Nazi symbols, both of which are banned. A prohibition on Soviet symbols also exists in Ukraine.
Behold the Russian education system's advance social-media technology 👨🔬
Meduza has obtained instructions apparently drafted by state officials in the Moscow region’s Voskresensk district (or possibly written on their orders) and addressed to staff at local educational and cultural institutions, demanding that they “like” posts shared by the district’s top officials on Vkontakte, Facebook, Instagram, and Odnoklassniki. The document circulated in Voskresensk tells teachers and other civil servants how to like social-media posts and how to report back that they’ve carried out the instructions.
Titled “Rules and Regulations for Specialists on Social Media,” the instructions require staff to open accounts on social networks (if they don’t already have them), and then to “submit a friend request” to Voskresensk municipal district head Oleg Sukhar, district chief of staff Vitaly Chekov, education department head Irma Pismennaya, and her assistant, Igor Podolenchuk.
In early May, another document was circulated to educational and cultural institutions in Voskresensk (Meduza also obtained a copy of this letter). The document — which begins with the phrase: “Dear general education organization director!” — requires supervisors to report on the likes posted by their employees “according to the attached table” by May 8. Supervisors were supposed to send these reports to a Mail.ru email address identified in the document. The letter also expressed dissatisfaction with the initial monitoring results, which showed that staff in all but 10 schools were shirking their new duties, while individuals tasked with monitoring them were “not complying with orders.”
Read the full story here: “Teachers outside Moscow were ordered to ‘like’ posts on social media written by top local officials, and they were monitored for compliance”
Don't you dare mock the gov ⛔️
Investigators in Sakhalin are on a manhunt for the rogue who filmed himself walking down the city’s Lenin Street, complaining about the absence of a sidewalk, and blaming Governor Oleg Kozhemyako, whom he also insults in the video. The footage appeared on the website Sakhalin.info on April 9. According to the mayor’s office, the man filmed himself walking along a roadside that never had a sidewalk.
According to Sakhalin.info, Governor Kozhemyako reported the video to investigators, though his office told the magazine RBC that it was the regional government’s legal department that alerted the police. For insulting a public official, the suspect faces a fine as high as 40,000 rubles ($630) or up to a year of community service. The governor’s office says it will drop the charges if the man apologizes. It’s still unknown, however, if the authorities have identified him.
In 2017, a court in Vladivostok fined a demonstrator 3,000 rubles (about $47) for offending then Governor Vladimir Miklushevsky when he attended a protest carrying a sign that read, “Crook. United Russia member. Hyatt.” (The final word here refers to a long-delayed local construction site for a Hyatt hotel.)
Don't you dare ... hang dummies? 🤷♂️
A St. Petersburg district court sentenced Timur Rasulov, a member of the “Vesna” protest movement, to 10 days in jail on Wednesday, following his detention on May 7 at an unpermitted demonstration where he and two other activists hanged four dummies from a tree. The victims in this “lynching” (see photos here) were symbolic: the “bodies” were identified with signs as Vladimir Putin’s new presidential term, Russia’s anti-American sanctions, the war in Syria, and the federal censor, Roskomnadzor.
Two LGBT websites challenge Russian censorship 🏳️🌈
The websites Gay.ru and *Lesbi.ru have filed an appeal with Khakassia’s Supreme Court against the Altai District Court’s decision to add them to Russia’s Internet blacklist. According to the human rights group “Agora,” which is representing the websites, Gay.ru and Lesbi.ru* were never even informed about the “gay propaganda” charges against them, and thus were denied their right to a fair trial by the district court. The verdict against these LGBT websites also relied on no linguistic expertise.
Established in 1997, Gay.ru is one of Russia’s oldest LGBT websites. Lesbi.ru is an affiliate website. “Gay propaganda” in the presence of minors has been illegal in Russia since 2013.
Down and out and locked up in Egypt 🇪🇬🇷🇺
The Egyptian authorities are holding 18 Russian citizens (including nine children) in a deportation prison at one of Cairo’s airports, eyewitnesses told the human rights group “Memorial.” The Russians in custody are all from Dagestan, and (as of May 1) Egypt apparently planned to send them back to Russia. According to Memorial, police in Egypt regularly carry out “repressive actions against citizens of post-Soviet states,” denying legal and consular aid to detainees.
Memorial and the BBC’s Russian-language service first reported these detentions in late April, writing that masked men took a woman’s whole family into custody in connection with her ex-husband, who joined the Caucasus Emirate terrorist group.
Iraq currently imprisons several dozen Russian citizens (captured terrorists and the relatives of killed terrorists). In April, the country sentenced almost 20 women from Russia to life imprisonment.
RussiaGate 9000 🇺🇸🇷🇺
🤝 Viktor's funny money
Special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators have reportedly questioned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg about hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments his company's U.S. affiliate made to President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, after the election, according to a source familiar with the matter. The purpose of the payments, which predate the sanctions, and the nature of the business relationship between Vekselberg and Cohen is unclear.
👾 Russia's naughty meddlers
On May 8, the Senate published a report on “Russian targeting of election infrastructure during the 2016 election,” stating that “cyber actors affiliated with the Russian government conducted an unprecedented, coordinated cyber campaign against state election infrastructure.” According to the report, “Russian actors scanned databases for vulnerabilities, attempted intrusions, and in a small number of cases successfully penetrated a voter registration database.”
The silver lining comes on page two: “The Committee saw no evidence that votes were changed and found that, on balance, the diversity of our voting infrastructure is a strength.” Nevertheless, the Senate makes the following recommendations:
- Reinforce states’ primacy in running elections
- Build a stronger defense by “creating effective deterrence,” “improving information sharing on threats,” “securing election-related systems,” and “taking steps to secure the vote itself”
- Assistance to the states
Yours, Meduza