Meduza’s latest daily newsletter: Friday, July 26, 2024 Lawmaker walks back admission of YouTube throttling, war veterans hired to suppress ‘visitors’ in Vladivostok, and Defense Minister Belousov’s secret phone call to his U.S. counterpart

The war in Ukraine

• ☎️ NYT reports another potential episode of U.S.-Ukrainian ‘frustrations’: On July 12, Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov telephoned his American counterpart to ask if the U.S. had signed off on a supposed covert operation planned by Ukraine, detected by Russia. Belousov reportedly warned Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that the plot had significant potential to “ratchet up tensions between Moscow and Washington.” The New York Times doesn’t reveal the nature of the alleged plot, but the details were apparently news to the Pentagon, which later contacted Ukrainian officials “and said, essentially, if you’re thinking about doing something like this, don’t.”
• ⚖️ ‘Time will tell’: Vyacheslav Zinchenko, the teenager arrested for the July 19 assassination of former Ukrainian lawmaker Iryna Farion, made cryptic remarks in court on Friday while also maintaining his innocence. Zinchenko told Farion’s daughter, “Time will tell,” when she asked him why he murdered her mother. Ukrainian police reportedly believe that Zinchenko was acting on behalf of others. The neo-Nazi group National Socialism/White Power has claimed responsibility for dispatching an “autonomous comrade” to carry out the killing. Officials are investigating this claim.

🪖 A new Russian breakthrough threatens Ukraine’s supply lines at the most vulnerable part of the front: The Pokrovsk sector, Toretsk, the Kupyansk front, the Kharkiv front, and Vuhledar (5-min read)

The Russian army has made significant gains on the battlefield west of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine. In the spring, Russian forces advanced several miles along the Avdiivka–Pokrovsk railway in a matter of several days and captured the fortified village of Ocheretyne. In mid-July, after bloody fighting that lasted several months, Russia’s troops achieved another breakthrough along the same railway and captured the village of Prohres. This operation caused the latest in a string of acute crises for the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) in the Pokrovsk sector. The situation remains dire for the AFU in other areas of the front as well.

🪖 Two Russian men recount how their own families tried to make them go to war (6-min read)

When journalist Irina Snegovskaya posted a poem on social media about a Russian mother telling her son to join a mercenary formation to pay off his debts, she meant for it to be satirical. But after someone left a comment arguing that such a thing had never happened, Russian men began responding with their own stories of being pressured by their mothers and wives to join the war in Ukraine. The RFE/RL news outlet Current Time, where Snegovskaya works, reached out to these commenters and asked them to recount their situations in detail. Meduza shares two of these men’s stories in English.

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Russian politics and policymaking

• ⚖️ The military corruption crackdown continues: Russia’s former deputy defense minister, General Dmitry Bulgakov, has been arrested on charges of large-scale embezzlement. He allegedly lobbied for the Gryazinsky Food Plant and received kickbacks from its contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry as part of a scheme involving the purchase of poor-quality rations for the military at inflated prices.
• 🚨 Attempted self-immolation: Russian scientist accused of sabotaging defense shipments reportedly tries to self-immolate on Red Square. 74-year-old Vladimir Arsenyev heads the Volna Central Research Institute, which develops communications and navigation equipment for commercial use as well as for Russia’s Defense Ministry and Emergency Situations Ministry

📺 Russian lawmaker walks back admission of YouTube throttling

After the Kremlin’s spokesman declined to corroborate Alexander Khinshtein’s Thursday admission that the Russian government is responsible for throttling local access to YouTube, the State Duma deputy spent Friday walking back the claim. After describing YouTube’s escalating “degradation” as a “necessary step” by the state to punish YouTube for ignoring Russian laws and censoring pro-Kremlin broadcasts, Khinshtein returned to Telegram and endorsed the explanation offered by the Kremlin, Russia’s federal censor, and the telecoms company Rostelecom, which claim that the equipment powering Google Global Cache (hardware around the world that maintains fluid access to Google services like YouTube) is starting to fail due to neglect amid Google’s withdrawal from the country after the invasion of Ukraine. 

Khinshtein originally said that desktop computers’ YouTube access would be throttled by 40 percent this week and 70 percent next week. (In 2021, when the Russian authorities began to abandon their efforts to throttle Twitter, they first stopped slowing only desktop traffic.) Meduza reports that Russia’s federal censor, Roskomnadzor, likely throttles desktop and mobile devices differently at the ISP level. Using so-called TSPU (“technical-solution-for-threat-countermeasures”) equipment in place at both broadband providers and mobile operators, the agency can change speeds for hardwired and mobile connections separately.

Despite Khinshtein’s earlier warning about a gradual slowdown coming for mobile access to YouTube, many ISPs have been throttling the video service by as much as 80–90 percent since July 12, making it impossible for affected users to stream in 4k. At YouTube’s current slowdown rate in Russia, users might soon struggle to stream content in 1440 (2k) videos and even 1080p (Full HD). 

📧 Nearly half a century of prison time because of a newsletter

A BBC Russia report describes how a married couple fled to the U.S. with their two children to escape war-time Russia and were later sentenced in absentia to a combined 46.5 years in prison for disseminating “false” information and aiding “terrorist activities” by distributing their own anti-war, anti-Putin newsletter to state institutions in Russia. Maria Mamedova worked in human resources for Rostelecom and the Russian Post Office before taking a job with the Justice Ministry in March 2022, despite her political views, which included support for jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny. Mamedova and her husband decided to leave Russia in September 2022, after her supervisor ordered her to organize a collection drive for soldiers fighting in Ukraine (and then threatened her when she refused).

👮 Vladivostok gets a new police unit staffed with war veterans for putting ‘visitors’ in ‘their place’

Primorsky Krai Governor Oleg Kozhemyako announced on Thursday that his office has created a police unit comprising Ukraine War veterans to work with local law enforcement to “ensure public safety and order” in Vladivostok. “There are many visitors who might not fully understand our rules of etiquette,” Kozhemyako said in a video addressing the new unit, apparently alluding to migrant workers. “And they need to be put in their place a bit if they violate the rules of behavior in our city.” Journalists at iStories identified the new unit’s commander as Police Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Mun, who previously oversaw Vladivostok’s criminal investigations department, where he was accused of torturing suspects into confessions.

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