The Real Russia. Today.

Moscow wants to suspend gasoline exports, Russia grants Poland another look at Kaczyński's plane, and the Big Four telecoms say nyet to Net Neutrality

Thursday, August 23, 2018

This day in history. On August 23, 1939, the foreign ministers of the USSR and Nazi Germany, Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop, signed a “nonaggression pact” that included a secret protocol dividing the Baltic states, Finland, Romania, and Poland between the two empires.

Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service wants to suspend gasoline exports temporarily to keep fuel costs down domestically
Russia's Communist Party cuts a deal with Moscow City Hall to stage a protest against raising the country's retirement age
Supervisors at a facility for disabled orphans are sentenced to prison after a fire killed 23 in December 2015
Russian investigators will give Poland another look at the wreckage of Lech Kaczyński's plane
An old Soviet tank belly flops at a 75th-anniversary celebration of the Battle of Kursk
A college in Novosibirsk covers nude statues in sheets to ‘spare the feelings’ of visiting Orthodox priests
Russia's four biggest telecoms oppose a new initiative by the Federation Council to codify Net Neutrality

Born in a cross-fire hurricane ⛽

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service has reportedly approached several domestic oil companies about a total suspension of gasoline exports during repairs to the country’s oil refineries scheduled for later this year. An official told the news agency Prime that Surgutneftegas has already agreed to halt gasoline exports until the end of September.

**Why does Russia want to hold onto its benzin?**

Gas isn’t just a battering ram for Moscow’s foreign policy: it’s also a sensitive domestic political issue. In mid-June, a national survey showed that rising fuel costs may have contributed to Putin’s reelection rating falling to 54 percent (his lowest score since before the annexation of Crimea). Gasoline prices in Russia spiked 7.3 percent between January and May 2018, before federal officials cut fuel taxes to bring consumer costs back down. On August 22, the Russian Fuel Union warned that gasoline prices would rise again in 2019, thanks to legislation signed by Putin in early August to raise the country’s value-added tax from 18 to 20 percent. Last year, Russia exported roughly 10 percent of its gasoline production.

Storming the gates 🧓✊

Russia’s Communist Party has cut a deal with Moscow City Hall to stage a protest on September 2 against proposed pension reforms. Organizers have obtained a permit to march to up 15,000 people down Academician Sakharov Avenue, but they had to agree to a rally that’s just half as long as what they wanted. The party reportedly asked the city for permission to start the protest at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday, September 2, giving demonstrators a full hour to assemble, before marching and rallying until 3 p.m. City Hall said, okay, Commies, you can have your permit, but you’ve got 15 minutes to gather your people at noon, and the whole demonstration is over by 2 p.m. Organizers said okay.

Does this mean the authorities are caving to popular backlash?

Don’t count on it. Despite the feats of its Soviet predecessor, Russia’s Communist Party is just another cog in the country’s controlled “systemic” opposition, and it’s already been staging toothless protests against pension reforms since the initiative was unveiled in June. Anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny says he wants to organize demonstrations on September 9, when Russia holds regional elections throughout the country, but it’s unlikely that many cities will issue permits for these rallies. Earlier this summer, the newspaper Vedomosti reported that the Kremlin had mobilized a brain trust to “win back” the pension reform issue. Many experts expect the authorities to tweak the current plan to raise Russia’s retirement age before it inevitably becomes federal law, possibly by reducing the proposed raise to women’s pension age. A poll by the independent Levada Center in late June found that 89 percent of Russians oppose the reform plan.

Fire unsafety 🔥

Two top officials at a children’s psycho-neurological orphanage in Novokhopersky have been sentenced to time in prison for failing to take the proper safety precautions ahead of a fire in December 2015 that killed 23 people, including several physically disabled patients. The center’s director, Sergey Nikiforov, was sentenced to two and a half years and the facilities manager, Yuri Dykhnenko, got two years. Investigators argue that most of the deaths could have been avoided if management had installed a fire alarm in the building’s top story and held regular fire drills.

Who cares about some random orphanage?

Russia has struggled with fire safety, to put it mildly. On March 25, a blaze at a shopping mall in Kemerovo killed 60 people, including 40 children. Meduza correspondent Irina Kravtsova was on the ground, speaking to parents, immediately after that tragedy. After Kemerovo, a series of nationwide inspections turned up fire-safety violations at roughly half of all shopping centers in Russia, leading officials to shut down a third of all malls. Russia’s problems with protecting children from fires aren’t anything new. In 1961, a schoolhouse in Elbarusovo burned down, killing at least 40 students, and the public didn’t even find out about it until the 1990s. Read Daniil Turovsky’s special report about that event here.

Poland gets another peek ✈️

Russia’s Federal Investigative Committee has approved a request by Polish officials to carry out another inspection of the wreckage of the Tu-154 plane that crashed outside Smolensk in 2010, killing then President Lech Kaczyński. The review of the plane’s structural debris will take place between September 3 and 7, conducted by specialists from Russia’s Main Forensics Directorate “in the presence of Polish officials.”

Why are we talking about an eight-year-old plane crash?

In Poland, the 2010 Smolensk crash has grown more contentious over the years, straining the country’s historically complicated relationship with Russia. The Moscow-headquartered Interstate Aviation Committee ruled out a terrorist attack, explosion, or fire on board as the cause of the crash, attributing the incident to pilot error and bad weather conditions. Polish investigators initially agreed that Kaczyński’s pilots made mistakes, but they also placed some blame on the Russian air traffic controllers at Smolensk North Airport. In 2016, Poland reopened the investigation, exhuming the crash victims’ bodies. In March that year, National Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said a terrorist attack could have downed Kaczyński’s plane. In October 2017, Macierewicz said one of the plane’s flight recorders picked up the sound of an explosion.

Not as planned 🤷‍♂️

In Kursk, at a celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Kursk, a T-34 tank flipped onto its side after slipping off a loading platform during a parade. Neither the mechanic driving the machine nor the spectators were injured. The tank had reportedly been delivered from the Leningrad region specifically to lead a convoy of armored vehicles in the festivities.

Is this just a dumb story about an old tank?

Yes, it is, but misbehaving tanks at parades celebrating the glory days of the Second World War are not always frivolous news. In May 2015, one of Russia’s T-14 Armata tanks stalledduring a rehearsal for that year’s Victory Parade in Red Square. A vehicle that state propagandists say has “fully robotic battle” potential, the T-14 Armata’s underwhelming performance brought mockery from journalists.

Inanimate modesty 🍃

Ahead of a visit from a delegation of Russian Orthodox priests, staff at the Novosibirsk State Academy of Architecture and Fine Arts draped sheets over statues of nude bodies in its first-floor lobby. The school invited the clergymen to a forum on local urban infrastructure, so they could discuss wheelchair access at churches. One of the event’s participants told the website NGS that the sculptures were covered to “spare the feelings” of the visiting priests. Spokespeople for the school told reporters that they didn’t know why the statues were covered, but the sheets were taken down as soon as the priests left.

Russian Orthodox Priests can’t handle a little ceramic skin?

There are no reports that the Novosibirsk priests asked anyone to hide the nude statues, but the school’s caution is understandable, given the recent explosion of criminal charges against Russians for public behavior that supposedly offends religious sensibilities. Police have been especially fond of opening criminal cases against Internet users for posting content that pokes fun at faith. In mid-August, for example, Batenka.ru special correspondent Petr Manyakhin visited Barnaul and reported on two young people now facing felony charges for sharing satirical memes online. For its part, the Russian Orthodox Church said in early August that criminal punishment is unnecessary whenever a suspect “confesses” and “repents” speech that offends religious people. But, hey, why repent when you can drape a sheet over it?

Nyet neutrality 👨‍💻

Russia’s “LTE Union,” a lobbying group for the country’s “Big Four” telecoms (VimpelCom, MTS, Megafon, and T2 Mobile), has come out against a new initiative by the Federation Council to codify the principle of Net Neutrality in a new federal law. In a letter to the government, LTE Union argues that “harsh and hurried decisions” by lawmakers could disrupt plans to introduce 5G mobile data in Russia, saying that Net Neutrality could interfere with the 5G network’s prioritization of “critical communication” data (such as information used in “telemedicine” and unmanned vehicles).

Will Russian telecoms beat Net Neutrality like their American counterparts?

A proposal by the Federation Council does not a law make, but the initiative could find its way to Putin’s desk, if it’s ever allowed to gain steam in the State Duma. Despite generating billions of dollars in revenue, Russia’s telecoms have had to swallow costly new “anti-terrorist” regulations over the past few years. (Reuters reported on August 22, however, that the Big Four want legislation “that would oblige foreign Internet companies to share the financial burden” of these new requirements.) In mid-August, Russia’s Communications Ministry proposed forcing the country's telecoms to start buying new FSB-approved SIM cards with cryptographic protections that MegaFon warns would cost 83.2 billion rubles ($1.2 billion). If Net Neutrality ever takes on national security significance, there’s a good chance that Russia’s telecoms will be told to shut up and play ball.

Yours, Meduza