Once, cultural ties to Russia were deliberate and hopeful. Now, they're eroding

March 13, 2022
LINDA HOLMESTwitter

NPR


Billy Joel plays in Moscow in 1987.ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content/Getty Images

As a Gen-X kid, I have to admit there was particular poignancy to the news that, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia isn't getting The Batman.

It's part of a much, much bigger and more important story, of course — several much, much bigger, much more important stories. NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas has reported on many severed relationships in arts in recent weeks.

All three major music labels have now suspended operations in Russia

Most of these have been attributed not simply to being Russian in and of itself, but to ties to Putin, or to a refusal to repudiate him — and to funding that comes from the Russian government. Some artists have actively spoken against him and against the invasion, but many have not. It's in opera, it's in classical concerts, but it's affecting other things, too: Russia is not being permitted to participate in Eurovision, where it debuted in 1994. Western musicians have been canceling Russian dates ever since the war started. As Elizabeth Blair has reported, Russian cultural organizations inside the U.S. are anxious about possible effects on their own work.

Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, and Ozzy Osbourne played at the Moscow Music Peace Festival in August, 1989.Robert Toning/AP

Connections to Russia were once optimistic

These boycotts are perhaps even more jarring if you remember past periods in which pop culture tried to paint a picture of deliberate, optimistic, post-Cold-War thaw. In the 1980s, particularly in the wake of the policies of glasnost and perestroika in the former Soviet Union — which encouraged openness and reform — artists went to places they wouldn't have gone ten or even five years before. It was in 1987, 35 years ago this July, that Billy Joel brought a big pop-rock show to Leningrad and Moscow; 1989 when Billy Crystal traveled to find his Russian relatives in an HBO special called Midnight Train to Moscow. That year also brought the Moscow Music Peace Festival, with Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue, and Bon Jovi among the performers.

At the time, all these things were presented through a lens of, for lack of a better word, a goal of international — and intentional — friendship. Joel's bond with an enthusiastic fan and circus clown named Viktor became one of the centerpieces of the documentary about his trip and the basis for a later song called "Leningrad." ("We never knew what friends we had until we came to Leningrad.")

Ukraine's libraries are offering bomb shelters, camouflage classes and, yes, books

After Putin became president in 2000, some of these events continued. Paul McCartney played in Red Square in 2003 and met with Putin personally. Putin came to the show. Even the popularity of the FX drama series The Americans, which portrayed the Cold War through the eyes of KGB spies who felt just as righteous in their cause as Americans did in theirs, arguably continued this tradition of pop culture as pushing back against simplistic and antagonistic narratives of decades past.

And now all this.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Paul McCartney during their meeting at the Kremlin on May 24, 2003 in Moscow. Getty Images

Even Levi's has halted sales in Russia

This severance of sometimes longstanding relationships isn't only happening in the arts. It's happening just as rapidly in sports, both in the real world and virtually. Russian athletes were barred from the Paralympic Games by the International Olympic Committee. FIFA has banned Russian teams from participating in its soccer matches. Russian teams have even been removed from the popular FIFA 22 video game, and may be removed from other games, too. President Vladimir Putin is seeing symbolic ties to sports withdrawn: The International Judo Federation stripped Putin of honorary titles in that sport, and World Taekwondo withdrew an honorary black belt.

Businesses that one might paint into a mural representing American consumerism have been suspending business in Russia: McDonald's, Coke, Pepsi, Starbucks, Disney. Wall Street saw its first big withdrawal when Goldman Sachs stopped operating there, and while that's an economic move, it feels culturally significant, too. Hollywood studios, major music companies, all ceasing business in Russia — there are even ramifications for sales of one of the items that has often been referenced as a go-to symbol of American cultural presence in other countries: blue jeans.
The impact of cultural boycotts

Does all this matter? It probably depends on what you mean by "matter." As Yasmeen Serhan wrote in The Atlantic earlier this month:

"It's easy to see cultural boycotts as more of a symbolic act than a serious threat to Moscow's geopolitical standing. But by suspending Russia from the world's largest sporting and cultural arenas, these institutions are sending a clear—and, for Putin, potentially damaging—message: If Russia acts beyond the bounds of the rules-based international order in Ukraine, it will be treated as an outsider by the rest of the world."

The idea of culture and sports as stand-ins for the current political climate is obviously not new. I was an enthusiastic Olympics-watching kid during the boycott by the United States of the Moscow Summer Olympics in 1980 and the Soviet Union's boycott of the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in 1984, both of which cost athletes dearly, and both of which carried a heaviness, a sense of a hostile closed door that was consistent with the political rhetoric of the time. And in the last couple of years, the controversies around Russian athletes in the Olympics and the workaround under which sanctions for doping meant they couldn't compete for Russia but only for the "Russian Olympic Committee" brought out some of the grumbling that has soured international competition in the past.

Pianist Van Cliburn performing in the final round of Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow in 1958. Cliburn's triumph helped thaw the Cold War.

AP

Why Brittney Griner was in Russia and what it has to do with U.S. women's basketball

And it goes back much farther than that: In the documentary about his trip to Russia, Billy Joel says he was inspired to go partly because he remembered how important it felt to him when he was young and American pianist Van Cliburn won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958. Joel says in the film that the event, and Russia's embrace of Cliburn, changed his own sense of the country and its people, whom he felt he'd been taught to fear.

The world has always done this — used culture and sports to communicate over and past and through and around politics and aggression — and the question of how important that is, and how productive it is, recurs.

These crossovers of diplomacy and art can be fortuitous or commercial, but they can also be fully orchestrated by governments, and they can be complicated for the artists involved: the U.S. State Department sent jazz musicians, including Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, around the world in the 1950s to present a positive image of the United States, even as the country utterly failed to treat them equally.

The world has always done this — used culture and sports to communicate over and past and through and around politics and aggression — and the question of how important that is, and how productive it is, recurs.

The efficacy of cultural sanctions certainly remains an open question; Serhan argues that because of the particular shape of his chosen image, Putin will be far more personally bothered and functionally threatened by sports sanctions than by ones in the arts. But she says this, too: "If ordinary Russians can no longer enjoy many of the activities they love, including things as quotidian as watching their soccer teams play in international matches, seeing the latest films, and enjoying live concerts, their tolerance for their government's isolationist policies will diminish."

As performing artists denounce or stay allied with Putin, history offers some lessons

By now, Russians have gotten used to global connections

If that's so, it may turn out that openness — not just concerts in the 1980s, but the growing presence of Hollywood films and the vibrancy of international competition in sports — is not just a cyclical opposite of this period of retraction we've so rapidly entered, but a logical predecessor to it. The idea of depriving ordinary Russians, as Serhan says, of sports and Hollywood films and live concerts by international performers would not be a potent threat had they not come to expect access to those things in the first place.

Ukrainian heritage is in peril. The Smithsonian hopes to rescue what it can

In other words, if bands weren't going to Russia, if world sports leagues weren't thriving, if Hollywood movies weren't earning big money from big audiences in Russia, these arts and sports sanctions would be empty. If you're not part of Eurovision, you can't be excluded from Eurovision. If people don't have expectations of a relatively open cultural and sports world, they can't be disappointed.

As a wildly naive teenager, I did find the idea that anyone could rock out at a concert transformative, capable of papering over what remained deep and troubling problems in world affairs that existed in both my own country and others.

But this is not the way this openness was pitched in the pop culture of the 1980s and 1990s, as something that might be withdrawn later as a result of an invasion; it was pitched as hope, as comity, and as perhaps a permanent realignment. And as a wildly naive teenager, I did find the idea that anyone could rock out at a concert transformative, capable of papering over what remained deep and troubling problems in world affairs that existed in both my own country and others. Even in 1987, Joel was asked whether he was afraid that his visit would be used as cover for human rights issues. His response, so familiar to people who have watched artists navigate these issues, was that he was not a politician.

There will likely be — there will hopefully be — at some time in the future, brought about by different conditions and an end to the war, another newsworthy return to Moscow for an American pop artist. There will be another reopening, another thaw in this cycle. The Gen-X kid in me, the one who remembers being sold hope in that way, anticipates this and will lean toward music and sports for signs of peace, even knowing it's foolish. It isn't that arts or sports are the important ties; it is that they are buoys that bob on the surface of world affairs, and when they move, in response to much greater forces underneath them, we notice.

'Our thoughts are with the Ukrainians' says Iggy Pop as acts pull out of Moscow rock festival

Iggy Pop, Placebo, and Biffy Clyro are among those pulling out of Russian festival Park Live - Copyright Colin Young-Wolff/AP

By Paul Stafford • Updated: 11/03/2022 - 

One after another, internationally renowned musicians are cancelling all upcoming concerts and festival appearances on Russian soil.

Iggy Pop was among the first to withdraw from the Park Live festival in Moscow last week, which is scheduled to take place over three weekends in June and July 2022.

“In light of current events, this is necessary. Our thoughts are with the Ukrainians and all the brave people who oppose this violence and seek peace,” the enigmatic punk rocker noted in a statement posted on Twitter.



Other bands followed suit. Biffy Clyro, The Killers and Placebo all dropped the Park Live festival from their tours, while Green Day, Bjork and Iron Maiden cancelled appearances at various events across Russia in the coming months.

The Revolution Will Be Televised

During the Cold War, Western music was one of the more potent links between the isolated citizens of the Soviet Union and the outside world, seeping through the Iron Curtain in the form of bootlegged, black-market cassette tapes and records.

By 1989, the Glasnost “openness” policy under then General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, led to musicians performing live in Moscow to hundreds of thousands of people. But just as these performances reflected an influx of new freedoms for Russian people, so the current cancellations in Russia reflect their erosion.

Most of the bands signed up to Park Live in Moscow this year were also scheduled to play a sister festival in Kyiv called UPARK Festival. Thanks to Russia’s invasion of its neighbour it is now highly unlikely that either event will take place.

Fashion and Protest: How Blue and Yellow might become the new black

Ink and Blood: How has Ukrainian Literature changed since 2014?

“As it stands the Ukrainian one is in an active war zone and the Russian one all countries are advising against travel to, making it impossible to do for international acts,” said Geoff Meall, an agent at Paradigm Talent Agency who represents the bands Sum 41 and My Chemical Romance. Both bands were due to play at Park Live and UPARK this summer.

“Not that there is anything tangible to actually pull from, as the event, of course, won't happen,” he said. Park Live, which was first held in 2013, has not run since 2019, with the 2020 and 2021 iterations both cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Under Pressure

With Park Live still not officially cancelled, ticket holders, many of whom held onto their tickets initially bought for 2020’s cancelled event, are taking to the festival’s Instagram page to voice their frustrations.

“Longest term investment of my life,” said one user, @juliet.estrina. Many other users complained of not being able to get refunds on their tickets, or criticised the indefinite postponement.

“As you can imagine the organisers of the events there are heartbroken at the turn of events. The Ukrainian team have had to escape Kyiv,” said Meall, about the current situation.

No official comment has been made about the proposed plans for Park Live and there have been no updates about the cancellations since March 3. Meanwhile, comment posting on Park Live’s VK page – a Russian social media platform still largely accessible in Russia – was closed.

Melnitsa International, the organisers of Park Live in Moscow, did not respond to requests for comment, although daily updates on their social media pages only add to the number of cancelled tours and gigs, spelling the end of Western musicians playing live concerts in Russia for the foreseeable future.
Festivals for Peace, not War

The international music community’s growing embargo on playing live in Russia stands in stark contrast to the Moscow Peace Festival, which took place in Luzhniki Stadium (then named the Central Lenin Stadium) on August 12th and 13th of 1989.

'Every coffee break you take costs a life': Ukrainian author criticises world leaders

Former Miss Ukraine describes terrifying escape from Kyiv and asks US to relax visas for refugees

Metal bands from Europe and the US, including The Scorpions, Ozzy Osbourne and Mötley Crüe, played two shows at the festival in the Russian capital to promote peace and the abstention of drug use.

Ironically, many of the musicians who have spoken about the festival in the years since, such as Scorpions frontman Klaus Meine, are quick to mention that many of the party travelling to Moscow were drinking and using drugs the moment the plane took off.

A little over two years later, the Soviet Union was dissolved and much of Eastern Europe was gradually reintegrated into the international community. And in Russia, music remains a vehicle for political opinion. Punk rockers Pussy Riot are among Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal and visible opponents.

'We will have another cultural revolution': Ukrainian artists respond to Russian invasion

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova was among three of the band members convicted of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” and sentenced to prison time following a performance at Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in 2012.

On cancelling their appearance at Park Live, Placebo’s official statement read: “We stand firmly against the atrocious war currently waged against Ukraine”.

At the time of writing, Park Live is still scheduled to take place with a number of top-end rock acts remaining on the bill.

Could Putin actually fall?

What history teaches us about how autocrats lose power — and how Putin might hang on.

By Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com 

 Mar 13, 2022, 

Christina Animashaun/Vox


As Russia’s war in Ukraine looks increasingly disastrous, speculation has mounted that President Vladimir Putin’s misstep could prove to be his downfall. A litany of pundits and experts have predicted that frustration with the war’s costs and crushing economic sanctions could lead to the collapse of his regime.

“Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine will result in the downfall of him and his friends,” David Rothkopf declared in the Daily Beast. “If history is any guide, his overreach and his miscalculations, his weaknesses as a strategist, and the flaws in his character will undo him.”

But what events could actually bring down Putin? And how likely might they be in the foreseeable future?

The best research on how authoritarians fall points to two possible scenarios: a military coup or a popular uprising. During the Cold War, coups were the more common way for dictators to be forced out of office — think the toppling of Argentina’s Juan Perón in 1955. But since the 1990s, there has been a shift in the way that authoritarians are removed. Coups have been on the decline while popular revolts, like the Arab Spring uprisings and “color revolutions” in the former Soviet Union, have been on the rise.

For all the speculation about Putin losing power, neither of these eventualities seems particularly likely in Russia — even after the disastrous initial invasion of Ukraine. This is in no small part because Putin has done about as good a job preparing for them as any dictator could.

Over the past two decades, the Russian leader and his allies have structured nearly every core element of the Russian state with an eye toward limiting threats to the regime. Putin has arrested or killed leading dissidents, instilled fear in the general public, and made the country’s leadership class dependent on his goodwill for their continued prosperity. His ability to rapidly ramp up repression during the current crisis in response to antiwar protests — using tactics ranging from mass arrests at protests to shutting down opposition media to cutting off social media platforms — is a demonstration of the regime’s strengths.

“Putin has prepared for this eventuality for a long time, and has taken a lot of concerted actions to make sure he’s not vulnerable,” says Adam Casey, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan who studies the history of coups in Russia and the former communist bloc.

Yet at the same time, scholars of authoritarianism and Russian politics are not fully ready to rule out Putin’s fall. Unlikely is not impossible; the experts I spoke with generally believe the Ukraine invasion to have been a strategic blunder that raised the risks of both a coup and a revolution, even if their probability remains low in absolute terms.

“Before [the war], the risk from either of those threats was close to zero. And now the risk in both of those respects is certainly higher,” says Brian Taylor, a professor at Syracuse University and author of The Code of Putinism.

Ukrainians and their Western sympathizers cannot bank on Putin’s downfall. But if the war proves even more disastrous for Russia’s president than it already seems, history tells us there are pathways for even the most entrenched autocrats to lose their grip on power.

Christina Animashaun/Vox

Could the Ukraine war could cause a military coup?

In a recent appearance on Fox News, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) hit upon what he saw as a solution to the Ukraine war — for someone, perhaps “in the Russian military,” to remove Vladimir Putin by assassination or a coup. “The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out,” the senator argued.

He shouldn’t get his hopes up. A military revolt against Putin is more possible now than it was before the invasion of Ukraine, but the odds against it remain long.

Naunihal Singh is one of the world’s leading scholars of military coups. His 2017 book Seizing Power uses statistical analysis, game theory, and historical case studies to try to figure out what causes coups and what makes them likely to succeed.

Singh finds that militaries are most likely to attempt coups in low-income countries, regimes that are neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic, and nations where coups have recently happened. None of these conditions apply very well to modern Russia, a firmly authoritarian middle-income country that hasn’t seen a coup attempt since the early ’90s.

But at the same time, wars like Putin’s can breed resentment and fear in the ranks, precisely the conditions under which we’ve seen coups in other countries. “There are reasons why Putin might be increasingly concerned here,” Singh says, pointing to coups in Mali in 2012 and Burkina Faso earlier this year as precedent. Indeed, a 2017 study of civil wars found that coups are more likely to happen during conflicts when governments face stronger opponents — suggesting that wartime deaths and defeat really do raise the odds of military mutinies.

In Singh’s view, the Ukraine conflict raises the odds of a coup in Russia for two reasons: It could weaken the military leadership’s allegiance to Putin, and it could provide an unusual opportunity to plan a move against him.

The motive for Russian officers to launch a coup would be fairly straightforward: The costly Ukraine campaign becomes unpopular among, and even personally threatening to, key members of the military.

Leading Russian journalists and experts have warned that Putin is surrounded by a shrinking bubble of hawkish yes-men who feed his nationalist obsessions and tell him only what he wants to hear. This very small group drew up an invasion plan that assumed the Ukrainian military would put up minimal resistance, allowing Russia to rapidly seize Kyiv and install a puppet regime.

This plan both underestimated Ukraine’s resolve and overestimated the competence of the Russian military, leading to significant Russian casualties and a failed early push toward the Ukrainian capital. Since then, Russian forces have been bogged down in a slow and costly conflict defined by horrific bombardments of populated areas. International sanctions have been far harsher than the Kremlin expected, sending the Russian economy into a tailspin and specifically punishing its elite’s ability to engage in commerce abroad.

According to Farida Rustamova, a Russian reporter well-sourced in the Kremlin, high-ranking civilian officials in the Russian government are already unhappy about the war and its economic consequences. One can only imagine the sentiment among military officers, few of whom appear to have been informed of the war plans beforehand — and many of whom are now tasked with killing Ukrainians en masse.

Layered on top of that is something that often can precipitate coups: personal insecurity among high-ranking generals and intelligence officers. According to Andrei Soldatov, a Russia expert at the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank, Putin is punishing high-ranking officials in the FSB — the successor agency to the KGB — for the war’s early failures. Soldatov’s sources say that Putin has placed Sergei Beseda, the leader of the FSB’s foreign intelligence branch, under house arrest (as well as his deputy).

Reports like this are hard to verify. But they track with Singh’s predictions that poor performance in wars generally leads autocrats to find someone to blame — and that fear of punishment could convince some among Russia’s security elite that the best way to protect themselves is to get rid of Putin.

Rosgvardiya (Russian National Guard) servicemen detain a demonstrator during a protest in Moscow against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24. 

Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images

“I don’t think Putin will assassinate them, but they may still have to live in fear and humiliation,” Singh says. “They’ll be afraid for their own futures.”

The conflict also provides disgruntled officials with an opening. In authoritarian countries like Russia, generals don’t always have many opportunities to speak with one another without fear of surveillance or informants. Wars change that, at least somewhat.

There are now “lots of good reasons for generals to be in a room with key players and even to evade surveillance by the state, since they will want to evade NATO and US surveillance,” Singh explains.

That said, coups are famously difficult to pull off. And the Russian security state in particular is organized around a frustrating one.

Contrary to most people’s expectations, successful military coups are generally pretty bloodless; smart plotters typically don’t launch if they believe there’s a real chance it’ll come down to a gun battle in the presidential palace. Instead, they ensure they have overwhelming support from the armed forces in the capital — or at least can convince everyone that they do — before they make their move.

And on that front, Russia experts say Putin has done a bang-up job of what political scientists call “coup-proofing” his government. He has seeded the military with counterintelligence officers, making it hard for potential mutineers to know whom to trust. He has delegated primary responsibility for repression at home to security agencies other than the regular military, which both physically distances troops from Moscow and reduces an incentive to rebel (orders to kill one’s own people being quite unpopular in the ranks).

He has also intensified the coup coordination problem by splitting up the state security services into different groups led by trusted allies. In 2016, Putin created the Russian National Guard — also called the Rosgvardiya — as an entity separate from the military. Under the command of thuggish Putin loyalist Viktor Zolotov, it performs internal security tasks like border security and counterterrorism in conjunction with Russia’s intelligence services.

These services are split into four federal branches. Three of these — the FSB, GRU, and SVR — have their own elite special operations forces. The fourth, the Federal Protection Services, is Russia’s Secret Service equivalent with a twist: It has in the range of 20,000 officers, according to a 2013 estimate. By contrast, the Secret Service has about 4,500, in a country with a population roughly three times Russia’s. This allows the Federal Protection Services to function as a kind of Praetorian Guard that can protect Putin from assassins and coups alike.

The result is that the regular military, the most powerful of Russia’s armed factions, does not necessarily dominate Russia’s internal security landscape. Any successful plot would likely require complex coordination among members of different agencies who may not know each other well or trust each other very much. In a government known to be shot through with potential informers, that’s a powerful disincentive against a coup.

“The coordination dilemma ... is especially severe when you have multiple different intelligence agencies and ways of monitoring the military effectively, which the Russians do,” Casey explains. “There’s just a lot of different failsafe measures that Putin has built over the years that are oriented toward preventing a coup.”

Christina Animashaun/Vox

Dreams of a Russian uprising — but can it happen?

In an interview on the New York Times’s Sway podcast, former FBI special agent Clint Watts warned of casualties in the Ukraine war leading to another Russian revolution.

“The mothers in Russia have always been the pushback against Putin during these conflicts. This is going to be next-level scale,” he argued. “We’re worried about Kyiv falling today. I’m worried about Moscow falling between day 30 and six months from now.”

A revolution against Putin has become likelier since the war began; in fact, it’s probably more plausible than a coup. In the 21st century, we have seen more popular uprisings in post-Soviet countries — like Georgia, Belarus, and Ukraine itself — than we have coups. Despite that, the best evidence suggests the odds of one erupting in Russia are still fairly low.

Few scholars are more influential in this field than Harvard’s Erica Chenoweth. Their finding, in work with fellow political scientist Maria Stephan, that nonviolent protest is more likely to topple regimes than an armed uprising is one of the rare political science claims to have transcended academia, becoming a staple of op-eds and activist rhetoric.

When Chenoweth looks at the situation in Russia today, they note that the longstanding appearance of stability in Putin’s Russia might be deceiving.

“Russia has a long and storied legacy of civil resistance [movements],” Chenoweth tells me. “Unpopular wars have precipitated two of them.”

Here, Chenoweth is referring to two early-20th-century uprisings against the czars: the 1905 uprising that led to the creation of the Duma, Russia’s legislature; and the more famous 1917 revolution that gave us the Soviet Union. Both events were triggered in significant part by Russian wartime losses (in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, respectively). And indeed, we have seen notable dissent already during the current conflict, including demonstrations in nearly 70 Russian cities on March 6 alone.

It’s conceivable that these protests grow if the war continues to go poorly, especially if it produces significant Russian casualties, clear evidence of mass atrocities against civilians, and continued deep economic pain from sanctions. But we are still very far from a mass uprising.

Chenoweth’s research suggests you need to get about 3.5 percent of the population involved in protests to guarantee some kind of government concession. In Russia, that translates to about 5 million people. The antiwar protests haven’t reached anything even close to that scale, and Chenoweth is not willing to predict that it’s likely for them to approach it.

“It is hard to organize sustained collective protest in Russia,” they note. “Putin’s government has criminalized many forms of protests, and has shut down or restricted the activities of groups, movements, and media outlets perceived to be in opposition or associated with the West.”

Protesters clash with police in Independence Square in Kyiv on February 20, 2014. Demonstrators were calling for the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych over corruption and an abandoned trade agreement with the EU. 

Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

A mass revolution, like a coup, is something that Putin has been preparing to confront for years. By some accounts, it has been his number one fear since the Arab Spring and especially the 2013 Euromaidan uprising in Ukraine. The repressive barriers Chenoweth points out are significant, making it unlikely — though, again, not impossible — that the antiwar protests evolve into a movement that topples Putin, even during a time of heightened stress for the regime.

In an authoritarian society like Russia, the government’s willingness to arrest, torture, and kill dissidents creates a similar coordination problem as the one coup plotters experience —just on a grander scale. Instead of needing to get a small cabal of military and intelligence officers to risk death, leaders need to convince thousands of ordinary citizens to do the same.

In past revolutions, opposition-controlled media outlets and social media platforms have helped solve this difficulty. But during the war, Putin has shut down notable independent media outlets and cracked down on social media, restricting Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram access. He has also introduced emergency measures that punish the spread of “fake” information about the war by up to 15 years in jail, leading even international media outlets like the New York Times to pull their local staff. Antiwar protesters have been arrested en masse.

Most Russians get their news from government-run media, which have been serving up a steady diet of pro-war propaganda. Many of them appear to genuinely believe it: An independent opinion poll found that 58 percent of Russians supported the war to at least some degree.

“What these polls reflect is how many people actually tune in to state media, which tells them what to think and what to say,” Russian journalist Alexey Kovalyov tells my colleague Sean Illing.

The brave protesters in Russian cities prove that the government grip on the information environment isn’t airtight. But for this dissent to evolve into something bigger, Russian activists will need to figure out a broader way to get around censorship, government agitprop, and repression. That’s not easy to do, and requires skilled activists. Chenoweth’s research, and the literature on civil resistance more broadly, finds that the tactical choices of opposition activists have a tremendous impact on whether the protesters ultimately succeed in their aims.

Organizers need to “give people a range of tactics they can participate in, because not everyone is going to want to protest given the circumstances. But people may be willing to boycott or do other things that appear to have lower risk but still have a significant impact, ” says Hardy Merriman, a senior advisor to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

You can already see some tactical creativity at work. Alexis Lerner, a scholar of dissent in Russia at the US Naval Academy, tells me that Russians are using unconventional methods like graffiti and TikTok videos to get around the state’s censorship and coercive apparatus. She also notes that an unusual amount of criticism of the government has come from high-profile Russians, ranging from oligarchs to social media stars.

But at the same time, you can also see the effect of the past decades of repression at work. During his time in power, Putin has systematically worked to marginalize and repress anyone he identifies as a potential threat. At the highest level, this means attacking and imprisoning prominent dissenters like Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Alexei Navalny.

Opposition supporters attend an unauthorized anti-Putin rally called by opposition leader Alexei Navalny in St. Petersburg, Russia, on May 5, 2018, two days ahead of Vladimir Putin’s inauguration for a fourth Kremlin term. 

Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images

But the repression also extends down the social food chain, from journalists to activists on down to ordinary Russians who may have dabbled too much in politics. The result is that anti-Putin forces are extremely depleted, with many Putin opponents operating in exile even before the Ukraine conflict began.

Moreover, revolutions don’t generally succeed without elite action. The prototypical success of a revolutionary protest movement is not the storming of the Bastille but the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. In that case, Mubarak’s security forces refused to repress the protesters and pressured him to resign as they continued.

“Symbolic protest is usually not enough to bring about change,” Chenoweth explains. “What makes such movements succeed is the ability to create, facilitate, or precipitate shifts in the loyalty of the pillars of support, including military and security elites, state media, oligarchs, and Putin’s inner circle of political associates.”

Given the Russian president’s level of control over his security establishment, it will take a truly massive protest movement to wedge them apart.
What are the odds of regime change in Russia?

It can be difficult to talk about low-probability events like the collapse of the Putin regime. Suggesting that it’s possible can come across as suggesting it’s likely; suggesting it’s unlikely can come across as suggesting it’s impossible.

But it’s important to see a gray area here: accepting that Putin’s end is more likely than it was on February 23, the day before Russia launched its offensive, but still significantly less likely than his government continuing to muddle through. The war has put new pressure on the regime, at both the elite and the mass public level, but the fact remains that Putin’s Russia is an extremely effective autocracy with strong guardrails against coups and revolutions.

So how should we think about the odds? Is it closer to 20 percent — or 1 percent?

This kind of question is impossible to answer with anything like precision. The information environment is so murky, due to both Russian censorship and the fog of war, that it’s difficult to discern basic facts like the actual number of Russian war dead. We don’t really have a good sense of how key members of the Russian security establishment are feeling about the war or whether the people trying to organize mass protests are talented enough to get around aggressive repression.

And the near-future effects of key policies are similarly unclear. Take international sanctions. We know that these measures have had a devastating effect on the Russian economy. What we don’t know is who the Russian public will blame for their immiseration: Putin for launching the war — or America and its allies for imposing the sanctions? Can reality pierce through Putin’s control of the information environment? The answers to these questions will make a huge difference.

Putin built his legitimacy around the idea of restoring Russia’s stability, prosperity, and global standing. By threatening all three, the war in Ukraine is shaping up to be the greatest test of his regime to date.

Russia continues to arrest protesters against Ukraine invasion
By Adam Schrader
MARCH 13, 2022 /

Protesters hold a large flag of Ukraine and umbrellas with the colors of the Ukraine Flag at a Close the Sky March Umbrella Rally in support of Ukraine in Times Square in New York City on Saturday. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

March 13 (UPI) -- Russia has continued to arrest protesters against the Ukraine invasion as tens of thousands of protesters demonstrated in cities across Europe on Sunday.

The extent of protests in Russia have been difficult to document since Russian President Vladimir Putin approved laws criminalizing speaking out against the Russian military and targeting journalists who report what the government considers to be "false news" about the invasion.

OVD-Info, an independent human rights watchdog in Russia, has reported that there were at least 866 arrests on Sunday and that there have been more than 14,000 people detained in cities across the country for anti-war action since the start of the invasion on Feb. 24.

Luka Zatravkin, the son of artist Nikas Safronov, was arrested in Moscow on Sunday for handcuffing himself to the entrance of a McDonald's restaurant while blaming Russia for their departure from the country, according to OVD-Info.

RELATED Passenger train with civilians fleeing eastern Ukraine comes under fire

McDonald's and Starbucks announced Tuesday that they would close all of their locations in Russia over the ongoing "humanitarian crisis" in Ukraine. McDonald's has more than 800 stores in the country after becoming the first American chain restaurant to open during the end of the Soviet Union.

"Now we are being deprived of the very ideas of democracy and the values of human rights, showing that freedom is a fiction. Because politicians from world powers can take away our freedoms with the stroke of a pen," Zatravkin said in a post to Telegram.

"This is a real genocide of the common people, who are going to create unbearable living conditions. Because along with violent prohibitions, all our moral and social postulates collapse."

Another man, a resident of St. Petersburg, was arrested for "Putin is a fascist!" messages at a war memorial honoring soldiers who died in the siege of Leningrad during World War II.

In a series of press releases, the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Russia has noted that those arrested and charged have all been found guilty of their offenses.

Bernard Smith, a reporter for Al-Jazeera, said in a report from the outlet that "it's very difficult for people to go to the streets and protest" and that one woman was dragged away while holding a blank piece of white paper.

"Anyone trying to go out or looking like a protester has been violently dragged away," Smith said.

In the Ukrainian city Kherson, which has been taken over by Russian forces, hundreds of demonstrators protested suspected Russian plans to turn the region into a breakaway republic, CNN reported.

Protesters waved Ukrainian flags and chanted anti-Russian slogans including "Kherson is Ukrainian" and "Russian soldiers are fascists."

Meanwhile, the nonprofit group Greenpeace estimated on Twitter that more than 125,000 people had protested on the streets of German cities on Sunday. More than 60,000 people were estimated to have protested in Berlin alone.

Protesters were seen carrying signs in English urging "Peace No War" and boycotts against Russian oil and gas, photos posted to social media show.

Russians Flock to Armenia Amid Ukraine War, Western Sanctions


Published on 08 March 2022
MassisPost
ARMERNIA

YEREVAN — Thousands of Russians, many of them tech professionals, have migrated to Armenia since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing tightening of Western sanctions against Moscow.

The unprecedented influx is particularly visible in the center of Yerevan where mostly young Russians can now be seen not only walking the streets and dining at restaurants but also queuing up in local banks or outside ATMs.

Virtually all migrants randomly interviewed by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service were information technology (IT) or finance specialists. Most of them gave economic reasons for their decision to leave Russia. Some said they decided to get out in protest against the Russian military assault ordered by President Vladimir Putin.

“I have come here to avoid problems with work and to make sure I’m in a calm state of mind,” said Ilya Kornienko, an ethnic Ukrainian from Moscow who arrived in Yerevan on Monday morning.

“Of course I’m upset,” he said when asked about the conflict in Ukraine. “It’s sad. I have relatives on both sides.”

Kornienko, who is currently staying in a local hotel, will be joined by his girlfriend later this month. He is already looking for an apartment.

Andranik Harutiunyan, a real estate agent, estimated that apartment rents in Yerevan have risen by 20 to 30 percent over the past week. “Demand [for housing] is very strong,” he said.

As 33 countries — including all 27 European Union member states — closed their airspace to Russian carriers late last month, Armenia became one of the few destinations still accessible for Russians keen to travel abroad. The South Caucasus state is Russia’s main regional ally and the majority of its citizens speak Russian.

On Monday alone, there were over two dozen commercial flights to Yerevan from Moscow and other Russian cities.

“My choice was between Armenia and Georgia, because those were the easiest destinations to reach as some airports had already been closed,” explained Alexei, another Muscovite. “Logistically, the easiest way for me was to get to Yerevan.”

Dmitry Kuzmin, a resident of Rostov-on-Don, a city in southern Russia close to the Ukrainian border, arrived in Armenia with his wife and children.

“One of the reasons for coming here is this troubled situation,” he said. “But we had long wanted to visit Yerevan.”

The sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union include measures aimed at restricting Russia’s access to high technology and complicating Russian companies’ financial transactions abroad.

“I have heard that many companies will be moving abroad in the near future, because doing business in Russia in spheres connected with import, export, finances is no longer possible,” said another arriving Russian, who chose not to disclose his identity.

Armenian Economy Minister Vahan Kerobyan claimed on March 1 that Russian tech companies are already moving operations to Armenia to evade the Western sanctions. But he did not disclose their names or give other details.

The Armenian government appears to welcome the arrival of IT engineers and other skilled workers from Russia. The Ministry of Economy set up last week a working group tasked with helping them settle in the country.

The government has not yet ascertained the total number of Russians who have entered Armenia since Moscow launched its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24.

“We will be able to talk about figures in about a week when things get calmer, but as of now we can say that some professionals from Russia have already got jobs in Armenia,” said Hayk Chobanyan, executive director of the Armenian Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises.

Armenia has a vibrant IT industry that has grown rapidly for nearly two decades. According to expert estimates, there were at least 2,000 vacancies in the sector before the coronavirus pandemic.

Not all of the arriving Russian nationals plan to stay in Armenia. As one of them put it, “Most likely I will stay here for a couple of months. After that I’ll get a job in Europe.”

Armenia’s Teghut Copper Mine to Suspend Operations



Published on11 March 2022
MassisPost

ARMENIA

YEREVAN — One of Armenia’s largest mining companies belonging to a Russian bank sanctioned by the West has decided to suspend production operations.

Several workers of the Teghut company told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Friday that they have been notified that they will receive two-thirds of their wages during a two-week leave that will start on Monday.

The workers, who did not want to be identified, said the company management has blamed the stoppage on the Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. They said they are therefore not sure they will return to work two weeks later.

Teghut is owned by VTB, one of seven Russian banks that have been excluded by the European Union from the SWIFT messaging system underpinning global financial transactions. Europe is the main market for copper and molybdenum ore concentrates exported by the company.

Teghut’s chief executive, Vladimir Nalivayko, insisted that the mining giant employing more than 1,100 people will be suspending operations in order to refurbish its waste disposal facility and a pipe feeding it.

In written comments to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, Nalivayko was not drawn on the impact of the sanctions on Teghut. He said only that the current “political-economic situation in the world” has disrupted the company’s supply chain.

Teghut mines copper and molybdenum in an eponymous deposit located in Armenia’s northern Lori province. It was the country’s tenth largest corporate taxpayer last year, with over 15 billion drams ($30 million) in various taxes contributed to the state budget.

VTB’s Armenian subsidiary took over Teghut in 2019 after its previous owner failed to repay a $400 million loan provided by the bank.

Two other, larger mining enterprises in Armenia are also owned by Russian firms.

Comparisons Between the Wars of Artsakh and Ukraine

Bombing damages in Artsakh and Ukraine

Published on13 March 2022
MassisPost
ARMENIA

The world’s attention continues to be focused on the events in Ukraine. The Russian army, albeit slowly, continues to make progress, but it is still a long way from achieving its main goals. The US administration, which in the early days of the war was predicting the imminent fall of the capital city of Kyiv, has now changed its tune and is talking about Russia’s eventual defeat. The West is trying to prevent the occupation of a sovereign state by a country with extensive stockpiles of nuclear weapons and to this end, is supplying large quantities of ammunition to the Ukrainian army, which has been able to resist better-armed Russian troops for more than two weeks now.

The widespread support of Ukraine by the Western powers and the focus of the international media on the human tragedies of the war, make, Armenians wonder why the world was silent when Azerbaijan, with the help of Turkey, unleashed a war against the Republic of Artsakh, killing thousands and causing destruction and displacement.

Such application of double standards is not new by big powers, who are always driven by their own political and economic interests. The South Caucasus was of little interest to the West and saw it as a Russian zone of influence. On the other hand, during the Artsakh war, Russia’s interests coincided, to some extent, with the interests of Azerbaijan and Turkey, to which Artsakh and Armenia fell victims.

There is also another important distinction which we should take into consideration. As unpleasant as it is for us to accept, Baku managed to convince the world that the seven regions around Nagorno-Karabakh were “occupied territories” that were to be returned to Azerbaijan. During the past twenty years, all the proposals for a peaceful settlement by the Minsk Group, chaired by Russia, the United States, and France, included provisions for the return of these seven regions to Azerbaijan. Successive Armenian governments also accepted this principle, but did not have the courage to take practical steps in that direction. The only one who was ready to return some territories in exchange for peace, was the first president Levon Der-Bedrosian, who was forced to resign for suggesting a compromise solution for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. When Kocharyan came to power, followed by the Sargsyan administration, they both tried to pursue a policy of buying time, thinking that the “no war, no peace” situation could be prolonged forever. This strategy could have been successful, pushing Azerbaijan to come to terms with the existing status, if Armenia maintained a superior army or at least a balance of power with Azerbaijan.

The course and the outcome of the 44-day war showed that the modernization of the Armenian army during these two administrations was severely flawed. During those years, Azerbaijan spent eight times more on its army than the Armenian side. No matter how much it is said that Azerbaijan is an oil-producing country and has greater financial resources, we must also acknowledge that Armenia could have done more to strengthen its armed forces if corruption was not as widespread and rampant. It was obvious to everyone, that state funds were being wasted to accumulate personal wealth and to build huge mansions, instead of strengthening the capabilities of the armed forces to withstand the enemy’s ambitions.

The events unfolding around Ukraine should drive us to be much more realistic and far-sighted. Armenia cannot rely on other nations to defend its borders. It must pursue the goal of modernizing its army and strengthening its capabilities. At the same time, Armenia must be able to establish normal relations with neighboring countries without compromising its national interests.

This is the direction being taken by the current Armenian government and we should support it.

K. KHODANIAN
“MASSIS”

SA deputy foreign minister supports Ukrainians’ right to sovereignty, territory and peace – Swedish ambassador
South Africa’s deputy minister of international relations and cooperation, Alvin Botes, at the Olof Palme gravesite in Stockholm, Sweden. (Photo: Supplied)

By Peter Fabricius
DAILY MAVERICK
13 Mar 2022 

South Africa’s deputy minister of international relations and cooperation, Alvin Botes, received 'warm applause' in Stockholm last week when he expressed strong support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, according to the Swedish ambassador to South Africa, Håkan Juholt.

Alvin Botes was on a working visit to Sweden and Norway that included political, trade and climate consultations with his counterparts in both governments as well as meetings with business leaders and investors.

Håkan Juholt said Botes had spent almost a day at the Olof Palme International Center in Stockholm, at his gravesite and at the place where he was murdered in the capital in 1986. Palme, the Social Democratic prime minister at the time of his death, had been a very vocal critic and instigator of sanctions against the apartheid regime and had made Sweden one of the main supporters and financiers of the liberation struggle. The apartheid government was widely suspected of being behind his killing. But no one was ever charged for the murder, which remains a mystery.

Juholt told Daily Maverick that at a reception that evening at the Olof Palme centre attended by many of the strongest supporters of Sweden’s anti-apartheid movement, “Botes was so clear on support for Ukrainian sovereignty and that the war is a violation of international law and the UN Charter.

“He had warm applause when he said that Ukrainian integrity must be respected and that the war is a violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. He was very outspoken, saying the Ukrainians had the right to live in peace, they had the right to their sovereignty and their territorial integrity.”

Juholt said Botes had also confirmed that the statement issued by South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation on the day of the invasion, calling on Russia to withdraw its forces and respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, still stood.

Juholt added that in the political consultations, Sweden made it very clear to Botes that:

“This is not in any way a complicated conflict. It’s armed aggression orchestrated by a dictator of an authoritarian regime attacking a democratic state, where you have free press, right to vote, right to express yourself.

“And it is that that is attacked. Not primarily an attack on Ukraine. It’s an attack on those values. Russia cannot accept that those values are getting closer to the Russian border. Everything we take for granted.

“The lovely South African Constitution. Most of that would not be legal, just to advocate it in Russia. People say it’s a complicated conflict. No, no, not at all. I’ve heard so many saying that there’s nostalgic support for Russia supporting the ANC in the liberation struggle.

“That’s historical revisionism. Russia as a state was established one year after Nelson Mandela was released. Nelson Mandela was walking on the streets of Cape Town, even visiting Stockholm, one year before Russia became a state.

“I attended a meeting with Mandela in the Swedish Parliament in 1990. So the support [to the liberation struggle] was given by the Ukrainians and all other parts of the Soviet Union. So we have been very clear. The war is a violation of international law, of the UN Charter. So everyone must ask themselves: ‘Who’s next to be attacked?’” DM

WAR IN EUROPE OP-ED
You are cordially invited to the inaugural George Orwell Ukraine Study Tour
(Photo: Portrait of George Orwell from areomagazine.com) | Protest poster against Russian invasion of Ukraine in Pretoria by Alet Pretorius)

By Greg Rosenberg
DAILY MAVRICK, SA

13 Mar 2022 0

Study the contemporary masters as they put Orwell’s ideas on language and society into practice.


Dear friend,

You are cordially invited to join us for the inaugural George Orwell Ukraine Study Tour. Our newest offering provides a unique perspective on recent European events through the eyes of the author of Animal Farm and 1984. It builds on our wildly productive annual Orwell sojourns to Washington, DC, Beijing, London, Paris, Berlin and Brussels.

Given the current unpleasantness associated with the special military operation to defend the Donbass republics, the tour will circumvent Kyiv in favour of several other cities where participants can study the classics, along with an exciting new southern hemisphere destination: Pretoria!

This tour will explore several themes linked to Orwell’s writings on language and society through an in situ examination of the innovative work of contemporary masters.


Theme 1: “Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” (Politics and the English Language).

We start in picturesque Antalya, where Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last week uttered these memorable words: “We have not invaded Ukraine. In Ukraine, we are simply… we have explained it many times”. He went on to state that all the fuss about Mariupol’s maternity hospital was “pathetic shouting”: the hospital was empty of patients and full of Ukrainian militants when Russia bombed it.

What can one say about a man at the peak of his powers, apart from noting that he maintained a straight face throughout?

Theme 2: “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.” (1984).

What better place to observe the Russian masters than from the banks of the Volga?

Vladimir Putin’s 21 February address provides a unique insight into the mindset of the Russian president and the siloviki. It’s particularly notable for its brazen rewriting of history, as in: “Since time immemorial, the people living in the south-west of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians.”

With this one sentence, Putin manages to echo the tsars, promote his own imperial ambition and erase Ukraine’s sovereignty. Would it be churlish to note that since at least the 9th century, millions of Ukrainian Jews never did quite consider themselves Orthodox Christians? Discuss.

In cross-fertilisation with Theme 1, we will also explore Putin’s artful claim that Moscow is out to “demilitarise and denazify Ukraine”.

Contrast this with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s remarks from central Kyiv, where he stated, “We are all here. Our soldiers are here. The citizens are here, and we are here. We defend our independence. That’s how it’ll go.” Zelensky, who is Jewish, clearly has no appreciation for the Orwellian lexicon.

Special offer for Moscow: Sign up by 15 March and receive a tour-branded wheelbarrow, which can be used to transport large quantities of rubles to purchase teas, light meals, and sumptuous dinners at recommended restaurants!

Theme 3: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” (1984).

A merry romp through the offices of the Russian media establishment. With caviar and vodka!

Theme 4: “Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” (Politics and the English Language).

Take a break from cold, grey Europe to enjoy the sunny skies of South Africa.

In his 7 March missive on “the conflict” between Russia and Ukraine, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa declared that “South Africa is firmly on the side of peace”. As you pause to catch your breath, consider how this statement reaffirms the popular view in domestic policy circles that South Africa “punches above its weight”.

The president followed this stirring clarion call with an explanation: “South Africa abstained from voting in last week’s United Nations resolution on the escalating conflict between Russia and its neighbour Ukraine because the resolution did not foreground the call for meaningful engagement.” A few days later, Ramaphosa tweeted that he was “thanking His Excellency President Vladimir Putin for taking my call … so I could gain an understanding of the situation that was unfolding between Russia and Ukraine”.

Notice how the word “invasion” does not appear even once. Understated, but powerful! In short, South Africa offers the opportunity for a masterclass in euphemism, homily and platitude. During regular power cuts, the president’s inspirational words can light up your day.

Theme 5: “Intellectual honesty is a crime in any totalitarian country; but even in England it is not exactly profitable to speak and write the truth.” (Orwell on Truth).

How true – but it is profitable to launder money for Russian billionaires! Enjoy a jolly afternoon with drinks on the banks of the Thames. Meet with cash-flush law firms, PR agencies and estate agents who help keep the wheels of this industry turning.

Special offer – act now!: Orwell fans will recall that 1984 was set in London. Sign up by 15 March and get a T-shirt emblazoned with this brilliant quote from the novel: “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

Slightly off-topic, but still in the region, the tour concludes with a flyover of Snake Island, whose border guards provided the world with a vivid and memorable lesson in the honest, exclamatory sentence. DM

Greg Rosenberg is the co-author of Become a Better Writer: How to Write with Clarity and Simplicity (Clarity Global).

US photojournalist Juan Arredondo injured during attack in Ukraine that killed filmmaker Brent Renaud

Alex Woodward 1 day ago

THE INDEPENDENT, UK

Two other journalists were injured in an attack that killed an award-winning American documentary filmmaker in Ukraine on 13 March, according to Kyiv region police in Ukraine.

© via REUTERS A U.S. journalist receives medical attention after being shot and wounded in the town of Irpin, at a hospital in Kyiv

US photojournalist Juan Arredondo, an adjunct professor at Columbia Journalism School in New York City, described being shot while traveling with a group of foreign journalists through a checkpoint in nearby Irpin while on the way to film refugees fleeing the city during the Russian assault.

Wounded reporter tells how former New York Times filmmaker was shot dead by Russian forces in Irpin

“We were across one of the first bridges in Irpin, going to film other refugees leaving, and we got into a car,” he said in a video from an Italian news agency and shared by Ukrainian officials on Sunday.

“Somebody offered to take us to the other bridge and we crossed a checkpoint, and they started shooting at us,” he said. “So the driver turned around, and they kept shooting. There was two of us, my friend Brent Renaud, and he’s been shot and left behind. … I saw he was shot in the neck.”

Another video from a reporter with German newspaper Bild shows Ukrainian medics carrying Mr Arredondo on a stretcher as he held his camera on his chest.

A third victim traveling in the same car was also wounded, according to Kyiv authorities.

Ukrainian officials have blamed Russian forces for the attack near a bridge leading from Irpin into Bucha, which is occupied by Russian troops.

A statement from Columbia Journalism School dean Steve Coll to CNN said the university does not have “any independent information [about Mr Arredondo’s] injuries at this time but are working now to learn more and to see if we can help.”

Mr Arredondo, like Renaud, was among the 2019 fellows at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

His work has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications.

According to his Instagram, Mr Arredondo recently photographed Ukrainian volunteers cutting cloth to make camouflage nets.
AdChoices

Renaud is believed to be the second journalist killed in Ukraine, after camera operator Yevhenii Sakun was killed on 1 March, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

“We are shocked and saddened to learn of the death of US journalist Brent Renaud in Ukraine. This kind of attack is totally unacceptable, and is a violation of international law,” the organisation’s programme director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said in a statement. “Russian forces in Ukraine must stop all violence against journalists and other civilians at once, and whoever killed Renaud should be held to account.”

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said his killing is “shocking and horrifying.”

“We’ll be consulting with the Ukrainians to determine how this happened and then to measure and execute appropriate consequences as a result of it,” he told CBS News on Sunday. “I will just say that this is part and parcel of what has been a brazen aggression on the part of the Russians where they have targeted civilians, they have targeted hospitals, they have targeted places of worship and they have targeted journalists.”

Anthony Bellanger, general secretary for the International Federation of Journalists, said the deaths of Brent Renaud and Yevhenii Sakun “cannot go unpunished.”

“The authorities must do everything possible to identify the perpetrators of these war crimes,” he said in a statement.”

“These systematic attacks on journalists and other war crimes require a strong response from the international community,” added European Federations of Journalists general secretary Ricardo Gutierrez.

The Independent has a proud history of campaigning for the rights of the most vulnerable, and we first ran our Refugees Welcome campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. Now, as we renew our campaign and launch this petition in the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, we are calling on the government to go further and faster to ensure help is delivered. To find out more about our Refugees Welcome campaign, click here. To sign the petition click here. If you would like to donate then please click here for our GoFundMe page.

OBITUARY
Brent Renaud, journalist killed in Ukraine, was an acclaimed filmmaker and producer

Arkansas native was gathering material for report about refugees when he was gunned down by Russian soldiers near Kyiv

By PAMELA SAMPSON

TIMES OF ISRAEL

13 March 2022

Brent Renaud attends the 74th Annual Peabody Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on May 31, 2015, in New York. (Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)

Brent Renaud, an acclaimed filmmaker who traveled to some of the darkest and most dangerous corners of the world for documentaries that transported audiences to little-known places of suffering, died Sunday after Russian forces opened fire on his vehicle in Ukraine.

The 50-year-old Little Rock, Arkansas, native was gathering material for a report about refugees when his vehicle was hit at a checkpoint in Irpin, just outside the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said the area has sustained intense shelling by Russian forces in recent days.

Renaud was one of the most respected independent producers of his era, said Christof Putzel, a filmmaker and close friend who had received a text from Renaud just three days before his death. Renaud and Putzel won a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University journalism award for “Arming the Mexican Cartels,” a documentary on how guns trafficked from the United States fueled rampant drug gang violence.

“This guy was the absolute best,” Putzel told The Associated Press via phone from New York City. ”He was just the absolute best war journalist that I know. This is a guy who literally went to every conflict zone.”

The details of Renaud’s death were not made immediately clear by Ukrainian authorities, but American journalist Juan Arredondo said the two had been traveling in a vehicle toward the Irpin checkpoint when they were both shot. Arredondo, speaking from a hospital in Kyiv, told Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli that Renaud was hit in the neck. Camilli told the AP that Arredondo himself had been hit in the lower back.

“We crossed the first bridge in Irpin, we were going to film other refugees leaving, and we got into a car, somebody offered to take us to the other bridge, we crossed the checkpoint, and they started shooting at us,” Arredondo told Camilli in a video interview shared with the AP.

The press card of New York Times journalist and US citizen Brent Renaud, who was shot by Russian troops in Irpin, March 13, 2022. (Screen grab/Facebook)

A statement from Kyiv regional police said that Russian troops opened fire on the car. Hours after the shooting of Renaud, Irpin mayor Oleksandr Markushyn said journalists would be denied entry to the city.

“In this way, we want to save the lives of both them and our defenders,” Markushyn said.

Responding to news of Renaud’s death, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called for an immediate halt to violence against journalists and other civilians.

“This kind of attack is totally unacceptable, and is a violation of international law,” the committee said on Twitter.

Along with his brother Craig, Renaud won a Peabody Award for “Last Chance High,” an HBO series about a school for at-risk youth on Chicago’s West Side. The brothers’ litany of achievements include two duPont-Columbia journalism awards and acclaimed productions for HBO, NBC, Discovery, PBS, the New York Times, and Vice News.

Peabody Award Recipients Craig Renaud, left, and Brent Renaud attend the 74th Annual Peabody Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on May 31, 2015, in New York. 

(Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

Renaud was also a 2019 Nieman fellow at Harvard and served as visiting distinguished professor for the Center for Ethics in Journalism at University of Arkansas. He and his brother founded the Little Rock Film Festival.

Among other assignments, Renaud covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the devastating 2011 earthquake in Haiti, political turmoil in Egypt and Libya, and extremism in Africa.

Putzel, who worked with Renaud for 12 years, paid tribute to his courage and passion.

“Nowhere was too dangerous,” Putzel said. “It was his bravery, but also because he deeply, deeply cared.”

He is survived by his brother Craig, Craig’s wife, Mami, and a nephew, 11-year-old Taiyo.

Ukraine’s energy minister says power has been restored at Chernobyl nuclear plant.

March 13, 2022,
Jesus Jiménez

A monument in front of the giant protective dome built over the sarcophagus of the destroyed fourth reactor of Chernobyl nuclear power plant, as seen in a photograph from 2020.

Credit...Genya Savilov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Ukraine’s energy minister said Sunday that power supply has been restored at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which Russian troops have occupied since late February.

Ukrainian government officials had said Wednesday that damage by Russian forces had “disconnected” the plant from outside electricity, leaving the site dependent on power from diesel generators and backup supplies.

In a post on Facebook, Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Galushchenko said that the plant was no longer on backup power and had resumed operating under normal conditions. He praised Ukrainian power engineers for risking their lives to “avert the risk of a possible nuclear catastrophe.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency said last week that there was no need for immediate alarm over the condition of the decommissioned plant but that the situation around the site remained a source of grave concern.

In an update on Saturday, Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the I.A.E.A., said he had received a letter from the plant’s operator saying that about 400 Russian soldiers were “present full time on site” and that the plant was under control of Russian forces. Mr. Grossi expressed concern that the Chernobyl plant’s 211-member staff had not been able to rotate shifts since Feb. 23, a day before Russian forces occupied the site.

Mr. Galushchenko on Sunday called on the European Commission, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to help Ukraine protect its nuclear facilities.

“It is now imperative to force the enemy to leave the nuclear power plant and establish a 30-kilometer demilitarized zone around Ukraine’s nuclear facilities,” he said.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CHERNOBYL