As he looked at the sun setting behind the Kremlin walls from a police van, thousands of miles to the west, a prestigious Italian photo exhibition of Gronsky’s work was canceled. “There is a time to firmly affirm the right of peoples to live in peace and a time to open up to dialogue and confrontation, without violence and death being invited to the table,” the exhibition's curators announced.

Like many Russians opposed to the current regime, Gronsky has found himself in an increasingly worrying situation. Outside Russia, businesses and media organizations have stampeded out of the country, halting operations and imports to Russia. The ruble has been crashing. International flights are canceled and visa centers have closed their doors. Inside Russia, the regime has banned words like “war” and “invasion,” censoring the remaining media and intensifying its propaganda campaigns.

Gronsky spoke about art and disinformation in a time of war and the reasons he’s staying put in Russia for now in a conversation that has been edited for length and clarity.

When the exhibit was canceled you said that you were devastated to see art take the blow in this way, but that you understood the motivations behind it. 

As a Russian person I feel powerless, ashamed and furious about everything that's going on. I cannot influence it in any way and I perfectly understand that blame as a result will be put on everything Russian: Russian culture, Russian language and that in the nearest hundred years people will not make films about Nazis, but about awful Russians. Overnight, from being strange, mysterious, aggressive, foolish people we turned into monsters and we will not be able to wash this blame off for a very long time, it's terrible. I am afraid that my son will hide the fact that he is half Russian when he grows up.

How is your work now received abroad?

I have to say I get a huge amount of support from Italy. I get 10 to 15 emails a day with just words of support. I had a group exhibition, a collaboration between the Reggio Emilia region and the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg. It was canceled not because I was Russian, but because all collaborations with Russian state institutions were canceled. But I recently got an email from Reggio Emilia inviting me to the festival as a private artist. I don’t think I can go now. It's really important to distinguish between Russian aggression, the Russian state, Russian artists, and Russian culture. 

Meanwhile back at home there is huge pressure, censorship, and mass detentions of protesters — which have included you.

It's not the first time I've been detained at a rally, but it's nasty. When I showed up, I shouted out “No to war!” I was immediately grabbed by my arms and legs, and dragged. I still have this big scratch on my face. I was held for 12 hours at the police station. On March 16 there will be a trial and I will most likely be given a rather large fine.

There’s this feeling of powerlessness. It’s clear that I haven't changed anything [in Russia] but it's impossible not to go out. There are no other options at all. I can't vote, I can't sign a petition. I have to physically present my body as someone who disagrees because all elections and all polls are rigged. And in order to be seen at least in some way, you have to let your body be beaten, which is humiliating, but there is no other option in Russia today.

There is another issue that many Russians opposed to the regime face, which is dealing with their relatives who are pro-Putin and pro-war. This is the case in your own family.

My mom thinks I'm a traitor. It's not a joke. It's not an argument like between someone who likes tea and someone who likes coffee. It's a huge shock to her, despite that for the last 10 years we were more or less aware of the fact that we have different views. I understood that she watches Russian television. She understood that I supported the opposition and we avoided talking about it, but now of course the war has exacerbated it so much that it is a very sharp conflict between us, with tears, with curses. Now everyone understands how serious and catastrophic the situation is. But people who watch Russian TV have this idea that while this is all terrible, we have no other choice. We will fight the whole world, to the last man, but the truth is on our side. The other half of the Russian population have a feeling that we are involved in a heinous crime and will be paying for it all our lives. Our children will be paying the price.

Do you try to make her change her mind? 

It's very difficult, it's such a radical, intransigent position and they have so much rage. The version of events that the state media offers is constructed so that it's not just a version of events, but a complete picture of the world in which everything is explained very clearly. This perfect structure of “the whole world is against us” finds fertile ground in Russia. People believe that we are fighting an evil fascist force, although in fact we are the fascist state that is trying to invade other countries. The amazing thing is that this cheap, talentless construction that's being imposed on everyone — it works, it is amazingly effective. It's a nightmare, how effective this brainwashing is.

Many are urgently leaving Russia. What about you?

I do not plan to flee the country yet. I'm in an advantageous situation, I have little to lose. My parents are in Estonia and they support Putin, but my son is in Latvia. If my child lived in Russia I would have run away a long time ago. I am worried that some of the posts that I wrote on Facebook in support of Ukraine have now become a criminal offense in Russia, but I still decide not to delete them. I don't know, I'm scared but I can't keep quiet either.

It’s scary. When I was a kid we were told a lot about World War II and the Nazi occupation. I often thought about what I would do if I lived at that time and the Nazis invaded and occupied, how I would resist. And now some of those childhood fantasies are coming back again. I just never imagined that I would end up on the fascist side instead of the occupied side. I can't even imagine what's going on and how to put it all together and create a coherent image of the world that I can live in.

No one is bombed in Moscow. Life in general is almost the same as it was a month ago. This is also a shock because I know of the nightmare happening in Ukraine, but my home is fine, the street is fine, the shop offers the same goods, maybe some prices have risen, but there is no sign of a nightmare.

And I see that most people live with the version that this war is some foreign policy nonsense somewhere far away. People honestly believe that after a couple of days everything will go back to normal; it's just some political games. And at the same time there is a feeling that I am inside a cartoon because I've never seen such grotesque evil, such obvious grotesque evil. There’s always been shades of gray everywhere, everything was so complicated and suddenly, for the first time in my life, everything is simple. There is absolute evil that cannot be justified in any way. But I don't know how much strength I have in me, how far I am willing to go in resisting it. I am human after all.

The post Canceled exhibitions of Russian artists trigger self-loathing, anxiety appeared first on Coda Story.

Everyone should answer the question: what do we want? To continue supporting the fascist regime in Ukraine, which is hazing its people with propaganda, just like the Germans did before World War Two. Or we finally install peace, putting an end to the ongoing war that has been happening for eight years, and saving our beloved country. 

Across seven time zones, in Moscow, teachers received detailed instructions on how to talk about the country’s invasion of Ukraine, now in its fifth day. The instructions were so detailed, in fact, that it gave exact answers to the possible questions their students may ask:  

Q: Why is the war happening?

A: NATO enlargement and its approach to Russia’s borders is a threat to all of us. There are sad cases of Iraq, Libya and Syria. What’s more, Ukraine could create nuclear weapons. Considering the current regime in that country it’s a direct threat to Russia.

Russia’s government started its first attempts to control the education narrative a few days before the invasion when a 24-year-old teacher in a regional school woke up to an unusual message in one of her WhatsApp groups.

“We ask you to conduct a special class between 24 and 25th of February on this topic,” the message from the school administration said. It linked to Vladimir Putin’s speech in which he called Ukraine an “inalienable part” of Russian history and said Russians and Ukrainians as people “bound by blood.” In this televised address, he said parts of Ukraine needed to be defended from an impending “genocide” and warned Ukraine’s exceptional levels of corruption had to be dealt with.

The regional minister of education had signed a letter of instruction to teachers stating that the main objective of the special class is “to instill patriotism and pride for the country.” The letter was soon shared on social media. In Crimea, the Ukrainian region annexed by Russia in 2014, the ministry of education replicated the same objectives.

Teachers in at least seven other regions of Russia were sent similar instructions to conduct a special class to indoctrinate schoolchildren with Putin’s arguments for the Ukraine invasion, either via official letters sent to school principals or informally via chats with individual teachers. Local media outlets have reported the special classes are to begin March 1.

“History is happening before our eyes! The most important historical events, which will enter the history books of many generations of Russians, are taking place,” read a social media post published by the ministry of education in the Kaluzhsky region, which is near Moscow. 

The instructions have met with immediate resistance from teachers. “I plan to teach my children as usual. I will not say anything,” said a teacher who asked to be identified by only her first name, Dasha, because she feared she would lose her job for a second time. “I had already lost my job once for signing a petition from teachers, and then there wasn't even a war.” Dasha is not the only dissenting teacher. As of March 1 more than 4,300 teachers from across the country have signed an official address to the government opposing the war. 

The Kremlin has aggressively pushed its messaging not only to schools. It has provided sanctioned language about the war — including that it not to be called a war — to organizations as diverse as newsrooms and theaters across the country. 

Pushback against the Kremlin’s point of view has had consequences. Over the weekend, an independent teachers union shared a screenshot of a message they received from a teacher at a college near Moscow that she had been summoned into a meeting with the school director after signing an online petition. In the Siberian city of Omsk, a university professor was questioned and threatened by federal police after announcing his opposition to the war on social media.

All of which reminds parents of the Soviet era. “My grandmother brought up my mother during the Stalin era with my father locked in the gulag. I was brought up in the Brezhnev era. I always remember my mother's words: never mention in school what we say at home. And I raise my children the same way,” said Yulia, a mother of three in Moscow who declined to state her full name out of fear for her safety.

Controlling the conversation in schools is part of the government’s strategy of tightening censorship and controlling the digital space, and come on the heels of restricting access to social media platforms, passing highly intrusive data collection laws on tech companies, and years of criminal prosecutions for social media behavior, including simply liking a Facebook post the government finds objectionable. 

On February 24, the day Russian forces invaded Ukraine, Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor announced that all Russian media must only publish or broadcast official information on the war provided by the government.

Under government pressure, Facebook took actions against several Russian state media outlets for spreading allegedly false messages about Russia’s invasion. It blocked RIA Novosti for 90 days and removed its access to Facebook Ads. The news agency said it considered Facebook’s decision “another blatant violation of freedom of speech by the American social network” and appealed to Roskomnadzor to resolve the issue. The regulator responded by advising the population to switch to homegrown social media platforms.

“Roskomnadzor is trying to install a military censorship in Russia,” Tikhon Dzyadko, editor-in-chief of Russia’s last independent broadcast news station, Dozhd, wrote on Twitter. Dozhd has been labeled a “foreign agent” by the Russian government and must post warnings about its content.

At least 16 media outlets have been blocked by Roskomnadzor since the start of the war.

On February 25, Russia announced it was limiting access to Meta’s platforms. 

The crackdown has extended to theaters. Mayakovsky Theater, an important cultural center in Moscow, received a government email “to refrain from any comments on the course of military actions in Ukraine,” warning that anyone who chose to make comments critical of the invasion would be “letting the theater down.” Any negative comments would be “regarded as treason against the Motherland,” the message read. 

Elena Kovalskaya, director of the Meyerhold Center, resigned in the face of censorship. She posted on Facebook that “it is impossible to work for a murderer and receive a salary from him.”

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The post The Kremlin forces schools and theaters to uphold Putin’s invasion propaganda appeared first on Coda Story.

But 34 years ago, there was another seismic protest in Almaty. In December 1986, Almaty — then called Alma-Ata — was the site of some of the first large demonstrations protesting communist rule. When Mikhail Gorbachev, then president of the Soviet Union, installed an ethnic Russian with no connection to or knowledge of Kazakhstan to head the Kazakh Soviet Republic, students took to the streets.

Moscow sent in armed forces to violently suppress the crowds. Estimates range widely from 10 to 170 casualties. Over 2,000 people were wounded. The tragedy came to be known as Zheltoksan, which means December in Kazakh.

Then the whole thing was swept under the rug.

For years, Zheltoksan was not talked about — in Kazakhstan or anywhere in the former Soviet Union. Like scores of other rebel acts and repressive countermeasures in the Soviet Union, Zheltoksan pixelated into visual fragments, shards of aging memory hidden from history.

But amid the current unrest, the 1986 protests have been mentioned over and over on social media. Coda Story spoke to historians, sociologists and local journalists to understand Zheltoksan’s significance, how the trauma of suppressed historical memory impacts the thinking of protestors battling Kazakh and imported Russian police on the street’s of Kazakhstan’s far-flung, freezing cities.

In 1986 Kazakhstan was one of the first places where anti-Soviet protests started. Why there? What does it tell us about the political climate in Kazakhstan at that moment in history?

In 1986 Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made a big mistake, explained Nari Shelekpayev, associate professor of history at European University at St. Petersburg. He replaced the ethnic-Kazakh leader of the Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan with Gennady Kolbin, an ethnic Russian, who knew nothing about the country. This triggered the youth and intelligentsia.

“Kolbin didn't spend a day in Kazakhstan, didn't know Kazakh language, and he wasn’t familiar with Kazakh culture and politics. Ergo, his appointment was perceived as an insult by many Kazakhstanis. For by 1986 this country played an important role in the Soviet Union: it was the second republic by size, fourth by population, and its industrial and agricultural input was enormous,” said Shelekpayev.

One of the reasons anti-Soviet protests first erupted in Kazakhstan comes as a surprise to many is the false stereotype that Kazakhs are political conformists reluctant to upset the status quo.

“Kazakhs protested many times during the 20th century. They protested before the communists — let me remind you about the Central Asian revolt of 1916, which anticipated the 1917 Revolution, and they also protested after 1991. There were many worker’s protests in the 1990s, for example,” Shelekpayev said, pointing to a dearth of media coverage. 

Back then the protests were violently put down. The country’s independence followed just five years later. What significant impact did they have? 

For many people in Kazakhstan, the protests in 1986 are considered the first blow to the Soviet Union’s hold over the republics, said Aitolkyn Kourmanova, the senior editor of Central Asia Analytical Network at George Washington University. “That was the first display of the fact that the Soviet Union was not so uniform and the fact that the republics really wanted independence, which they achieved in five years.” 

The legacy of the 1986 protests has continued to shape political protests in Kazakhstan to this day. “In one way or another, they all go back to December 1986. It was a very defining moment in our history,” said Diana Kudaibergenova, who researches nationalism and political art in Central Asia at the University of Cambridge. 

She points to the civil rights movement Wake Up, Kazakhstan, which invoked December 1986 in their own protests. In 2019, when the group first emerged, activists gathered at Republic Square, formerly called Brezhnev Square, where the 1986 protests took place. They raised hands wrapped in red cloth to symbolize the blood they said was on the regime’s hands.

But the memory of the 1986 Zheltoksan protests is severely fractured.  

“We never know what to call these things,” said Kudaibergenova. “We still call the 1986 protests as events. Or in Russian, uprisings sometimes. But in Kazakh or in English, every time we write it, it’s always events because we don’t know what kind of vocabulary to use. It’s a traumatic event, but also it’s one that people are still trying to make sense of.” 

Zheltoksan is tremendously important yet never discussed. Why? 

Zheltoksan is omitted from Kazakhstan’s history books. It’s not by mistake, said Kudaibergenova.

With the power of the Soviet Union waning and the cracks in the relationship between Moscow and the republics starting to show, Gorbachev tried to keep the protests in Kazakhstan from spiraling. 

“They tried to silence it. They tried to forget about it. That erasure is very important,” Kudaibergenova said.

The protests were kept under wraps. Students were branded as hooligans, drunks and drug users. People who participated in the protests and survivors of the violent crackdown were silenced.

The Soviet leadership in Moscow also tried to pass off the protests as a provincial issue. “They tried to localize this conflict so that it wouldn’t grow further to some bigger conflictual situation.”

It worked. Many people across Central Asia don’t remember 1986, when in fact it was a defining moment in the  Soviet Union’s crack-up. Kudaibergenova is unsure how much fault lies with Soviet historical suppression and now much to blame Kazakhstan’s failure to recapitulate its own history. 

“It’s very much telling that we’re still trying to formulate that particular history and that particular discourse. For me, it’s still very unfinished business.” 

How has the Kazakh regime framed the protests of 1986?

The 1986 protests bolstered the power and influence of Kazakhstan’s founding dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev, a towering figure in Kazakhstan’s politics, who in 1986 held the position of prime minister of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. He became the first president of Kazakhstan in 1990 and ruled until 2019 when he was replaced by his handpicked successor, the current president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.

Nazarbayev attempted to fit Zheltoksan into a self-serving narrative, while ignoring his own role in the events that precipitated the protests and what he could have done to prevent the violent response directed by Moscow. It’s a tricky line to walk. 

“For the political system at this moment, which is a continuity of Nazarbayev rule from the 1990s, it's inconvenient to discuss Zheltoksan as it was because some current or past leaders of the country were either part of the government in 1986 or participated in the repression against the protesters after the events,” said Nari Shelekpayev, associate professor of history at European University at St. Petersburg.

From the outside, it appears as if these latest protests came out of nowhere. The official cause is the rising liquid gas prices, but very quickly people demanded the government resign. What are these protests really about? 

“To be honest, I understand why many people had the impression that it was sudden because there has never been anything like that in the history of modern Kazakhstan,” said Assem Zhapisheva, a journalist based in Almaty and founder of Masa Media, a digital newsroom.

In reality, tension has been building amid pandemic mismanagement, rampant corruption, wealth disparity and social stratification. 

The rising gas prices were not just an economic reason behind the uprising, but also a political one, said Aigerim Toleukhanova, a journalist from Kazakhstan and a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council. “Kazakhstan is so rich in oil and natural gas, but clearly people do not benefit from these things. So I think it just shows that it reached this point where people would say that enough is enough.”

The post An anti-Soviet protest in Kazakhstan haunts the country’s current unrest appeared first on Coda Story.

Natalia’s colleagues linked her murder to the sensitive investigations she was working on and suspected the Russian government’s involvement in her death. “Memorial”, a human rights NGO where she worked, named one person in particular: the head of the Chechen republic Ramzan Kadyrov, implicated in numerous human rights abuses, including torture and execution of gay Chechens. Kadyrov denied the allegations and sued the center and its chairman for libel.

Two years after her death, Estemirova’s sister Svetlana approached the European Court of Human Rights. Svetlana argued that Russian authorities were responsible for her sister’s death as they had failed to protect her, and that Chechen authorities — including Kadyrov — had personally threatened Natalia and that state officials were involved in her abduction.

Ten years later, on August 31st this year, the Court ruled that Russia has failed to properly investigate Estemirova’s killing but found no evidence that her death was a state-sponsored murder.

I spoke to Natalia’s daughter Lana, whom I have known for several years, about the disappointing decision and the bleak future of freedom of speech in Russia.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Coda Story: The judgment came in on Tuesday morning. You and many of your mother’s colleagues have been waiting for it for years. What were your first reactions, thoughts?

Lana Estemirova: It was all very sudden because it was processed for 10 years, and it's quite normal for cases like this to be on hold for ages. It was just very nerve-racking, I hardly slept. I just had these recurring thoughts and it was very emotional, refreshing that page. I was so nervous I didn't even understand it. I was with my husband, he was reading it with me and he said, “oh, they didn't accept that the Russian authorities were involved in this murder”. I was just hit in the face. It was so painful, I burst into tears and I was crying non-stop for the next three hours. 

It was a two-part judgment. They did admit that my mother's right to life was violated and they did admit that Russian authorities haven't conducted a proper investigation and need to do so. This is absurd because the Russian side hasn't provided enough evidence about the case, so I really struggled to understand when it's so damning for the Russian side, how could the judges just make that decision when they didn't even have enough evidence? 

This was the last chance for justice in a sense because we all know that while Putin is in power, it's not likely that they'll conduct a proper investigation. To see this judgment was truly shocking because I was associating ECHR with the side of righteousness. Several judgments ruled that the Russian state was responsible for massacring Chechens or kidnapping civilians during the [Chechen] war, and my mom actually helped to build those cases. She was the one interviewing the victims, collecting the evidence, negotiating. And just to see that in the end, she became one of those cases and she was failed like that, it's just heartbreaking. 

Coda Story: What does this decision mean for Russia in the current political context?

I think it's a very worrying development. We're seeing a complete deterioration of human rights in Russia. We're seeing a crackdown on all the independent media,  journalists have a duty to declare themselves as foreign agents, which essentially just shuts down freedom of the press entirely. We're seeing so many murders of activists and journalists in Russia and politicians go unpunished. 

This decision is like a nail in the coffin, but not the final nail because there are plenty of nails in Russia. I think it's very worrying because now whoever wants to say something damning to activists can just whip out this judgment and say: “Hey, this is your favorite ECHR that you're always referring to, the Convention on Human Rights”. And of course, it’s just a huge blow. 

Coda Story: More generally, do you think other states and international institutions could do more to condemn what’s happening in Russia?

I mean, in short, I think, yes, they're not doing enough. We've seen major red lines being crossed over the past decade by Russia. We've seen the Crimea, which we've seen MH 17 flight being brought down, major human rights violations, completely shocking. And at the same time, Russia hasn't been frozen out. Russian oligarchs are still enjoying all the services that the West has to offer. Half of the football clubs in the UK are owned by oligarchs from the post-Soviet space. These are, in a way, also Western institutions. 

There are a lot of politicians who genuinely care about the abuse of human rights and want to make it better. But I would say that sometimes Western politicians whack their finger with one hand, and with another hand they sign backroom deals and treaties. 

I keep hearing from different activists and journalists that they just don't think that anyone can help them from outside their country. And while it's hard and almost impossible, we really need to rely on ourselves because no savior is going to come from outside. No institution, no army, is going to come from abroad to save you. And we just need to gather our courage and keep plodding on.

Coda Story: What would have changed had the ECHR decided otherwise?

I think more than anything, it would be a very important symbolic victory because, well, you know, monetary compensation is kind of meaningless. How do you put a value on a person's life? Their value with this judgment was twenty thousand euros and you think, is this how much her life is worth? But it's not really about the compensation. It’s about the symbolic victory. So many murders of activists, prominent activists go unpunished and those who ordered the murders are never found. I think it would mean a lot that at least someone got this justice.

Coda Story: Things have gotten progressively worse in Russia. 12 years after your mother’s murder, both Kadyrov and Putin are still in power and “Memorial”, where she worked is now a “foreign agent”. What have these years been like for you, witnessing it from the outside?

In 2010 I left Russia. The first few years after my mom's murder, I was really focusing on healing and trying to just live my life. I was 15 when it happened. I moved to a foreign country where I barely knew anyone and made a conscious effort to just shut myself out of everything. I didn't give any interviews, I was very protective of my relationship with my mother. Thankfully, my mother's colleagues did everything in their power to fight for this case and to try and carry out their own separate investigation. 

As I was getting older, I started writing more about this case, speaking publicly. It's very difficult when it's so close to you, when you need to be an advocate, but you are also a daughter and you have your own pain that you're carrying.

Coda Story: What are your next steps now? Do you think there is hope to bring those responsible for your mother’s death to justice?

First of all, we will gather with the lawyers and see what happens next. I believe that while Kadyrov is in power and therefore while Putin is in power, we won't find the murderers, they won't be brought to justice because people who are responsible are in a position of power. Until then I think it's a combination of trying to do what we can and just having enough patience to wait for this regime to fall.

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The Netherlands-based news organization’s reporting stood out not only because of its findings, but also because of the methods the journalists used to unearth new evidence related to the August 2020 attack. Bellingcat specializes in open-source data gathering, and much of the personal information identifying the Russian intelligence operatives was purchased via bots on the popular messaging app Telegram. Since the investigation was published, the Russian government has made numerous attempts to block access to dozens of similar tools. It is also trying to make their usage illegal on privacy grounds. 

Christo Grozev is Bellingcat’s lead Russia investigator, focusing on security threats and the weaponization of information. His investigations include the 2018 Salisbury poisoning of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, for which he won the European Press Prize.

We talked about how the Russian government’s crackdown on Telegram is limiting the work of investigative reporters.

This conversation was edited for length and clarity

Coda Story: For those who are not familiar with the method of buying data online, can you briefly explain why it’s so crucial for investigative journalists?

Christo Grozev: In Russia and other former Soviet countries, there has been a lot of leaked personal data over the years. It Is consolidated in different databases, which contain millions of personal records. 

There is a thriving market of Telegram bots that provide access to a large collection of these databases. So, people are making a business out of providing access to anybody who wants to buy a subscription. For a couple of euros a month, you can check a person's phone number or a person's car registration number and get information from all the different leaked databases. 

You can also contact a data trader on a Telegram channel, who offers information from current police databases. For anywhere between 10 and 100 euros, depending on what you're after, you can get somebody's passport records, which also includes a photograph. On the most expensive end, you might be able to get the list of passengers on a particular flight, or even the metadata from phone records. 

Can you give some more examples?

A colleague from a German newspaper asked us to find a Russian phone number that had appeared in some strange transactions involving sensitive military equipment in Germany. I looked up that number in one of the Telegram bots, it gave me the name of the owner, the passport number and the personal tax number of the person. Then, by using another bot that has access to the public state database of companies, I found that person was the chairman of the association of former Security Officials of Russia. 

You can use the same method to find the license plate of a vehicle. Then, you can use another bot to find out the parking fees paid for that car and also the traffic fines. Then, you can try to recreate its route.

One of the investigations you conducted at Bellingcat revealed the names of the FSB agents who are believed to have poisoned Navalny. Many say that got the Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor interested in Telegram and the bots that journalists use. Since then, there have been several attempts to block them and to make their use illegal. Does that impact your work?

I definitely can confirm that, since the Navalny investigation, we have seen a huge crackdown, not only on Telegram bots, but also on the data traders. There have been, I would say, more than 10 closures of bots in the past six months. Yes, there will be attacks, but I cannot imagine how this industry, which is based on previously leaked data, can ever be silenced, because it's all out there.

If buying data through Telegram becomes impossible, what will you do? How much will that limit the scope of your investigations?

Even now, our scope is limited, compared to what we had before. It's partly self-imposed, because of what the government has done to some of the data traders. We've seen them being arrested illegally, kidnapped, tortured and then forced to confess that they cooperated with us, even when they had no idea to whom they were selling data. This is a very high moral burden for us. 

This is only one way that the Russian government seeks to limit the use of technology and access to information. Others include blocking VPNs, suing YouTube and Twitter, and arresting journalists. In the lead-up to September’s elections, will there be an escalation? 

I do expect significant new limitations of online freedoms in Russia in the months before the elections. In fact, we've received tip-offs from members of law enforcement, telling us to expect more and more censorship, including the closure of online media. The Russian government understands that it can only carry on by inconveniencing society, because a large part of it understands what's happening. 

The post Russia’s Telegram crackdown is putting obstacles in the path of investigative journalists appeared first on Coda Story.

Все началось с того, что перед выборами многие не могли получить аккредитацию для работы — именно под этим предлогом еще в день голосования из страны выслали журналистов «Дождя», которых перед этим грубо задержали. Трудности с получением аккредитаций подтверждает и репортер крупного зарубежного издания, который сейчас работает в Минске — он пожелал остаться анонимным.

Но и аккредитация не гарантирует безопасности. По мере роста градуса протеста правоохранители начали целенаправленно охотиться на прессу — им разбивали камеры, у них изымали флешки, многих били. Видеооператору Tut.by Всеволоду Зарубину силовики разбили технику, фоторепортера Associated Press Сергея Грица избили, наступив ему на голову, корреспондентка «Нашей Нивы» Наталья Лубневская получила ранение в ногу резиновой пулей.

К этому добавилось практически полное отключение интернета в стране — так называемый шатдаун, во время которого не работали основные мессенджеры (кроме Телеграма, который специально для Беларуси включил инструмент обхода цензуры) и не открывались никакие сайты, а журналисты практически не могли пересылать своим редакциям фото- и видеоматериалы.

По данным Белорусской ассоциации журналистов, с 9 по 12 августа в стране были задержаны 64 представителя СМИ. Мы поговорили с журналистами и редакциями изданий, которые сейчас освещают события в Беларуси, и узнали, на что похожа работа в условиях полной блокировки интернета.

Алена Сивкова, главный редактор Daily Storm

Всю ночь после выборов наша редакция не сомкнула глаз. Двое наших ребят — Антон Старков и Дмитрий Ласенко — оказались в СИЗО. Они поехали в Беларусь с пресс-картами, редакционным заданием, командировочными. Но как оказалось, для белорусской милиции это всего лишь бумажки.

Конечно, был такой замес, что многие журналисты попались случайно, но я твердо уверена, что такие действия белорусских властей неприемлемы, и очень надеюсь на скорое освобождение не только наших корреспондентов, но и всех представителей как местных, так и зарубежных СМИ (на момент публикации Антон Старков и Дмитрий Ласенко освобождены и находятся в Москве — прим. Coda Story). С другой стороны, меня очень радует, что эта ситуация сплотила все журналистское сообщество и показала, что профессионализм и ценность репортерской работы превыше политических взглядов.

То, что сейчас делают журналисты на территории Беларуси — это работа в военном режиме. Белорусские власти вновь и вновь доказывают это своими жестокими мерами пресечения протестов. Для нас, как и для многих других, одним из главных испытаний стало отсутствие нормальной связи — и это в век информационных технологий. Нам приходилось ограничиваться звонками, очень сложно было отправить фото или видео. На моей памяти никогда не было таких жестких ограничительных мер.

Антон Старков, корреспондент Daily Storm

Я был на территории Беларуси с 8-го по 11-е августа — и на свободе провел примерно сутки. Меня и моего коллегу Дмитрия Ласенко задержали, когда мы снимали массовые беспорядки в Минске. Мы передвигались по городу с группой протестующих, и в какой-то момент оказались взаперти на узкой улочке — с двух сторон нас заблокировал ОМОН и пустил слезоточивый газ. Назвать задержание мягким я не могу, но учитывая другие истории, жаловаться не буду.

Бросили в автозаки, повозили по городу, и в итоге мы оказались в ЦИПе (центр изоляции правонарушителей). Нас вызывали на опрос, пытались выяснить имена «зачинщиков».

В камере у нас сложилась достаточно веселая интернациональная компания: спортсмен из Швейцарии, студент из Турции, корреспондент из Италии. Проведя время с этими ребятами, я убедился, что все они, кроме одного — случайные прохожие. Выйдя на свободу, я связался с консульствами их стран, как вернусь в Москву — буду бороться за освобождение своего итальянского коллеги.

Елена Толкачева, политический корреспондент Tut.by

В последние несколько дней основной преградой для работы журналистов в Беларуси стали, конечно, блокировка интернета и ограничение сотовой связи — как будто бы жизнь отмотали на десять лет назад, когда не было мессенджеров, и всю информацию передавали в смс-сообщениях.

Вся страна находится в информационном вакууме — многим не удалось установить VPN, новости буквально передаются из уст в уста. Из-за этого очень быстро стали распространяться фейкньюс. В первую ночь протестов активно муссировали слух, что ОМОНовцы в некоторых городах Беларуси сложили щиты и перестали атаковать население — были даже фотографии. Но на самом деле щиты они сложили, чтобы удобнее было отлавливать протестующих.

Сейчас люди буквально «охотятся» на тех, кто в журналистских жилетах — высматривают пресс-карты, бегают за нами, чтобы мы рассказали им новости.

Во время задержаний правоохранители просто выхватывают людей из толпы без всякого разбора. В СИЗО безмерное количество протестующих сидит, и очень сложно быстро разыскать [своих].

Артем Шрайбман, политический обозреватель Tut.by

Журналистов без аккредитации задерживают целенаправленно, чтобы показать, что белорусские законы превыше всего. Больше всего журналистов «попадает под раздачу», так как они проводят съемку, и это вызывает злость со стороны ОМОНа и спецназа. Отсюда и блокировка интернета — из-за этого стало практически невозможно распространять видеоматериалы.

Подпишитесь на нашу регулярную рассылку, чтобы узнавать, как работают авторитарные технологии в Беларуси — и в мире. И следите за нами в телеграме.

The post «Люди бегают за журналистами, чтобы им рассказали новости»: как Беларусь во время протестов оказалась в информационном вакууме appeared first on Coda Story.

Coda Story поговорила с экс-майором о том, как правоохранителей готовили к протесту, какие методы они использовали для слежки за оппозиционерами и почему силовики считают, что в Беларуси перемены не нужны.

— Когда вы решили покинуть страну?

Из страны я уехал в начале года. Я принял это решение, потому что на тот момент в кругах КГБ уже началась подготовка к возможным протестам на фоне президентских выборов. Тогда я начал понимать для себя, что страна идет не по самому правильному пути и решил уйти из структуры.

— В какой структуре КГБ вы состояли? Чем занимались?

На бумаге я был стандартным работником КГБ. Мне приписали должность то ли смотрителя склада, то ли как-то так — для отвода глаз. Но по сути, я руководил слежкой за определенными людьми, которые были в поле интересов государства.

— За кем вам приходилось следить?

Имен не назову, иначе будет очень просто на меня выйти. Могу назвать только свое звание на момент ухода — я был майором. Я руководил следственными и розыскными мероприятиями в одном из районов Минска.

— Какие меры еще предпринимали власти перед этими выборами?

Полгода назад мы начали готовиться к протестам. Нашей первостепенной задачей было подготовить парней, которые заступают на службу. Мы же — офицеры, а офицеры в бой, так сказать, никогда не идут. Поэтому полгода назад начали готовить ребят морально, промывать мозги, мол, как важно сохранить режим, что других путей и быть не может.

Когда промыли голову офицерам, те принялись за своих ребят — и так все ниже и ниже, до тех самых людей, что вчера с щитами стояли. Поэтому они и говорят, что перемены не нужны, пока человека избивают. Механизм внушения работает на все сто. У вас в России наверняка такая же система.

— Как проходила эта подготовка? Это были какие-то официальные мероприятия?

Да, в основном это были офицерские сборы, но когда официальная часть заканчивалась, всегда была неофициальная, где под музыку и спиртное — и не только — создавалась сначала дружеская атмосфера, а потом в задушевном разговоре людей убеждали в правильности режима и отсутствии необходимости его менять. Под алкоголь всегда все проще получается — древняя традиция.

— Поддерживают ли Александра Лукашенко силовики?

Настроения бывают разные, но большинству все равно. Колчак как-то сказал не трогать кучеров, артистов и представительниц самой древней профессии. Я бы еще добавил сюда [своих коллег] — они так же служат и будут служить любой власти. У большинства нет выбора, не каждый может, как я, скрываться.

— Ожидали ли тогда, что выйдет так много людей?

Думали, будут небольшие протесты в 5–7 тысяч человек в столице, и поэтому считали, что [наших] сил хватит на всю страну. К разговорам по поводу крупных акций относились с усмешкой — мол, никому не захочется здоровьем рисковать.

Инструкции были обычными: простые меры по сдерживанию, стандартные приемы, использование дубинок, щитов, водометов — все как обычно. Разве что использовать резиновые пули изначально вряд ли планировали. Но вы видите, что вышло.

Я уверен, что то, что происходит последние несколько дней, для руководителей КГБ стало шоком.

— Как вы работали с оппозиционерами до выборов? Вы искали среди них будущих «провокаторов»?

Да, то отделение, в котором я сидел, искало неугодных — менее известных, но ярых. Мы их пугали. На «крупных» компромат искали. Мы начинали копать под кандидата в президенты Анну Канопацкую, но ушли недалеко.

— А как именно следили? Был ли у вас доступ к личным данным?

Проследить за человеком для нашей структуры вообще была не проблема. Социальные сети взломать проще некуда, оттуда переписки вытягивали, копались в этом, находили место, в которое можно «ударить». Тогда человек будет послушный — им можно манипулировать. Для примера: кто-то любит покурить марихуану. Мы это выясняли, ставили оперативника для слежки, в какой-то момент появлялись доказательства приобретения [наркотиков]. А дальше просто: приглашаешь в отдел и объясняешь все. Как правило, все все понимали.

Кому-то девочек подсылали, они и компромат пополняли, и «жука» могли подкинуть в незаметное место. У каждого свои слабости. Узнав их, можно легко управлять человеком. Мы смотрели через ПК, через фишинг или выуживали компромат через телефон. Тут сложнее, но мы же за счёт государства работали, так что финансов нам хватало.

— Вы сами решили уехать из страны или вас все-таки заставили?

Мне намекнули, что мне придется уехать, иначе против меня сфабрикуют дело о разглашении государственной тайны. У нас в стране есть смертная казнь — и перспектива оказаться на том свете меня не радовала. Поэтому я собрал вещи, деньги, семью и по совету товарища уехал в Европу и теперь перемещаюсь по ней. Желание вернуться, разумеется, есть, но мне очень страшно. Даже не за себя, а за семью.

— Много ли людей ушло вместе с вами?

Не так много, но уходят. В эти структуры часто идут люди с чистым сердцем и желанием защищать свой народ от любых угроз. Многие не готовы к силе и власти, которые эти структуры дают. Это сносит голову и от прежних убеждений остаются лишь воспоминания. Но есть и те, кто этому не поддается. Мы не хотим идти калечить и убивать своих братьев, но нас таких мало.

— Что вы будете делать дальше? Есть ли у вас какие-то ограничения?

Ограничивают всех, но тех, кто уходит из МВД, ограничивают гораздо меньше, нежели нас — КГБшников. Меня фактически изгнали из страны, некоторых моих знакомых тоже, кто-то теперь вынужден жить в деревне. На нас ставят клеймо, мы будто изгоями стали, хотя наш проступок заключается лишь в несогласии с курсом нашей «демократической» страны. В Европе, конечно, красиво — но родина красивее все же, там дом, и мы скучаем по нему.

Подпишитесь на нашу регулярную рассылку, чтобы узнавать о протестах в Беларуси то, чего не расскажут другие. И следите за нами в телеграме.

The post «Им промыли голову — поэтому они и говорят, что перемены не нужны, пока человека избивают» appeared first on Coda Story.

The independent MP Sara Cunial, told the crowd that she plans to refuse any coronavirus vaccine, should it become available, and accused the Italian government of attacking the constitutional rights of its citizens during the mandatory lockdown enforced in March and April.

“In these past months, but I’d say over recent years, what was attacked was much more than our constitutional rights,” she said. “Our human rights were attacked, our essential needs. They made us think that once more, by giving them the powers, we can accept leaving all of our sovereignty to these people, who I have, sadly, defined as criminals and thugs.”

Cunial, a leading voice in Italy’s vociferous anti-vaccination movement, was once an MP for the populist Five Star Movement. Last April, she was expelled from the party, which is part of Italy’s ruling coalition, for alleging that it is aiding the mafia.

Cunial had established herself as a controversial figure in Italian politics long before the pandemic cost the country more than 33,800 lives. In January 2018, she wrote a Facebook post describing vaccination as a “free genocide” and comparing such public health initiatives to Nazi-era genetic experiments. In May, she gave a speech to parliament accusing Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates of planning to depopulate the world and even wishing for a genocide. 

The Covid-19 crisis has boosted the ranks of anti-vaxxers around the world. Last Saturday, up to 20,000 people took part in demonstrations across Berlin against Germany’s coronavirus restrictions. The demonstrators spanned a wide range of interest groups, from left to rightwing extremists, including anti-vaxxers. In the U.S., one recent poll has shown that just 50% of people are committed to receiving a vaccine when it arrives. Another poll found that one in five said they would refuse to take a vaccine.

“Italy's anti-vaxx model is similar to what has been tried in California and other places before, and it can be grimly effective if the audience are unaware of the reality that, after clean water, nothing has saved more human lives than vaccination,” said David Robert Grimes, a physicist and cancer researcher at the University of Oxford, who writes regularly about the public understanding of science. “Certainly, anti-vaccine activists would delight in vindication of their views politically, but they can only succeed at this if their disingenuous reframing goes uncontested.” 

The anti-vax movement in Italy has gained ground in recent years, in part thanks to the Five Star Movement. In 2019, the party opposed the passing of legislation to increase the number of compulsory vaccinations from four to 10 — it was eventually passed to raise the rate of country's vaccine uptake from below 80% to 95%, as recommended by the WHO. Italian officials say vaccination rates have improved since it was introduced.

For years, anti-vaxxers made up part of Five Star’s support, but early 2019 witnessed the founding of Il Movimento 3V — a political party dedicated to their cause. 

“Vaccines are very popular with those who govern us. However, important and fundamental medical-scientific knowledge and valid therapies are neglected and often derided,” said Alessandra Bocchi, one of the Italian anti-vaccination movement’s founders and its current director, via email.

Earlier this year, Il Movimento 3V, was able to present its ideas to voters for the first time. It won almost 11,000 votes in January’s regional election in Emilia-Romagna, to the north of the country — not enough to win any council seats, but proof of the level of disinformation and mistrust surrounding vaccination in Italy.

Lorenzo Motta, 39, stood as a candidate for Il Movimento 3V. He describes the party as “freevax,” rather than “no vax,” and says that it seeks to give Italians a choice. A former marine officer of 17 years, Motta says he has been “damaged by vaccines” given to him as an experiment during his service. 

He is a father of four girls, and says only two have received mandatory vaccinations. 

“Our role is to alert, especially families with children. Because the child is the one that needs to be protected — it’s not a damage you can repair,” said Motta, during a telephone interview.

While Il Movimento 3V remains a marginal party, other supporters want to see more anti-vaxx protests. 

Marco Pisaneschi was introduced to the anti-vaccination movement in 2016 when a nephew of his friend allegedly became autistic after receiving the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. Facebook discussions about the government’s management of the pandemic have made him skeptical about a Covid-19 vaccine, which, he believes is being created to modify human DNA. 

“I would like the movement to enter the government and to have power,” he said. “If not, we can’t get out of this problem.” 

Pisaneschi added that he would be enthusiastic to “make a revolution happen.”

Experts worry that, given the ongoing nature of the Covid-19 crisis, Italians could become more susceptible to pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. Last month, for instance, over 500 municipalities across Italy took measures to halt the installation of 5G towers, owing to the spread of conspiracy theories linking cellular communications technology and the virus. 

According to Stefano Zona, an infectious diseases doctor and member of the pro-vaccine advocacy group IoVaccino, “It means that there are people in a position to make political decisions based on fake news. Today it’s 5G, but tomorrow it could be something worse. They could say, ‘No, we don’t want to have a vaccine for Covid, because Covid is a show put up by multinational companies.’” 

Illustrations by Sofiya Voznaya

The post Italy’s anti-vaxxers are getting political appeared first on Coda Story.