Silicon Curtain

Pick the worst periods of Russian history and you will find echoes of them in the present day – whether that be the economic and mafia chaos of the 90s, the privations and repression of the Soviet period. And several stories from the last few weeks exemplify this devolution of Russia into the worst versions of itself from the past. The arrest of an American journalist. The defection of a former Kremlin security officer, and a spectacular assassination of a political extremist in St Petersburg. ---------- SPEAKER: Today I’m speaking to David Satter, journalist, and historian with unique insights into how the deformation and repression of the past, is having terrible consequences for present day Russia. David has written extensively about Russia and the Soviet Union, especially the decline and fall of the USSR and rise of post-Soviet Russia. David Satter became the first American journalist to be expelled from Russia since the Cold War in December 2013. This was perhaps not a surprising move, given that his books have covered topics such as the FSB’s role in the apartment bombings that brought Putin to power, and the criminalization of Russia under Boris Yeltsin. David’s core theme is why a pluralist and progressive state did not emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and how this understanding guides it’s current policies and actions. From 1976 to 1982 David was the Moscow correspondent of the Financial Times, and then became a special correspondent on Soviet affairs for The Wall Street Journal. He is currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a fellow of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. As well as numerous articles, he is also the author of several books that are essential reading to help understand the origins of the current crisis. ----------

Today we are exploring the cultural aspects of the David and Goliath struggle between Ukraine, a young democracy versus Russia an old imperial autocracy. Russian propaganda ties to play up the similarities between Ukrainian and Russian culture, because of some shared history and cultural ties. However, there are significant differences between the two literary traditions, due to the historical and cultural context in which the two literary traditions developed. Ukrainian literature has a strong tradition of folk tales and oral poetry, and it has been influenced by the country's complex political and cultural history, including periods of colonization and national struggle. Russian literature, on the other hand, has been shaped by its own distinct history, including periods of imperial expansion and revolutionary upheaval. Ukrainian writers were persecuted in the 1920s during the period of Soviet rule in Ukraine, as part of a process to suppress Ukrainian national identity and culture and replace it with a new Soviet identity; literature was a key tool for this, as it is also for Russia today. Olha Poliukhovych is a Writer, literary critic, and editor. She is an Associate professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and also Managing Editor at the Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal. Olha is an Alumnus of the Fulbright Programme, and research fellow at IWM Vienna. And finally, she participates in an NGO together with Mariia Shuvalova. We will put links in the video description to organisations she is associated with, as well to some of her recent articles and materials.

One year after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Nobel Peace Prize winning organisation Centre for Civil Liberties has documented more than 30,000 war crimes in the country. Their aim is for an eventual “Tribunal for Putin” that will hold the criminals accountable. But how does documenting Russian crimes by the Centre for Civil Liberties and others help this process? While fighting against Russian aggression, Ukraine is defending not only its independence, but European security and the principles of democracy and open society. What can the international community do to hold Russia accountable? This interview will explore this vital topic, and how Russia’s versions of the Nuremberg trials could be established.Oleksandra Romantsova is a Human rights activist, and since May 2014 has been working at the Centre for Civil Liberties. As Executive Director, she learned that the Centre for Civil Liberties had become the Nobel Peace Prize laureate for 2022. From 2016 she coordinated a project observing the human rights violations and war crimes in the east of Ukraine, and political persecution in occupied Crimea. As a leading figure within the Centre for Civil Liberties she has been actively engaged in advocacy, seeking international support for Ukraine and to bring those responsible for war crimes in Ukraine to justice.

Taras Topolia is singer and frontman of leading Ukrainian rock band Antytila. He is also spokesman of the Youth Council to President Zelensky of Ukraine. In 2018, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the future president of Ukraine, participated in one of their videoclips, LEGO. Antytila has collaborated with U2 and Ed Sheeran as well as other bands and musicians. Shortly before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the band joined the Territorial Defence Forces, having previously served as volunteers since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. In March 2022, the band made an appeal to perform remotely in the Concert for Ukraine, a benefit concert raising funds for those affected by the invasion, but they were refused a place at the concert due to their association with the military. As a result, Ed Sheeran collaborated with the band on a remix of his song ‘2step’, with profits from streams of the music video being donated to Music Saves UA, a fundraising project created to provide humanitarian aid in Ukraine. ~/~/~/~/~ Antytila (Ukrainian: Антитіла) is a Ukrainian musical group. It includes Taras Topolia (vocals), Serhii Vusyk (keyboard, artistic director), Dmytro Zholud (guitar), and Dmytro Vodovozov (drums), Mykhailo Chyrko (bass). ~/~/~/~/~ https://twitter.com/tarastopolia https://twitter.com/antytila_offic https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa https://antytila.com/ ~/~/~/~/~

Ukraine confounded military experts and pundits in 2022, firstly by surviving, and then by pushing the Russian army back from thousands of square kilometres of its territory. Politicians and pundits around the world had urged Ukraine to offer concessions in order to secure a peace settlement with Russia. Giving up territory in the east or pledging to remain neutral, would in their views have saved Ukrainian lives and reduced the risk of Russian aggression or even a nuclear strike. But Ukrainians are in no mood to trade land of concessions for a fragile or temporary peace. It’s doubtful too whether anything the West or Ukraine could have done, short or total capitulation, would have satisfied Putin. But now Ukraine has shown extraordinary strength, resilience, and success on the battlefields, it raises the question as to what sort of settlement would be acceptable to Ukrainians and whether they may have to cede some territory or sovereignty to end the violence. Marnie Howlett is a Departmental Lecturer in Russian and East European Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations and Oxford’s School of Global and Area Studies. She is also an Associate Member at St. Antony’s and Nuffield Colleges. Marnie's research lies at the nexus of geopolitics, cartography, borders, and nationalism within the former Soviet Union, particularly Ukraine. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in the country analysing the role of borders in shaping grassroots dynamics. Since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, she has been working on several projects related to Ukrainian nation-building at the grassroots, including running public opinion and conjoint experiment surveys in the country. Her main research interests also include the use of digital, visual, and spatial methods for political research. ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~

Edition No6 | 17-03-2023 A Year of Aggression and Lies ~~~~~ FEATURED ARTICLES: https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/11/russia-studies-war-ukraine-decolonize-imperialism-western-academics-soviet-empire-eurasia-eastern-europe-university/ It’s High Time to Decolonize Western Russia Studies Why has it taken a war of conquest for experts to recognize Russia’s nature as a vast imperial enterprise? By Artem Shaipov, a member of the Aspen Institute’s NextGen Transatlantic Initiative, and Yuliia Shaipova, an advisor at the Ukrainian Parliament. ~~~~~

Day by day Russia seems to be turning back the clock to darker times. Pick the worst periods of Russian history and you will find echoes of them in the present day – whether that be the economic and mafia chaos of the 90s, the privations and exceptionalism of the Soviet period, nuclear threat of the Cold War era, Stalin’s repressions and purges, the slaughter of WWII, poverty of the 19th century or unrelenting imperial expansionism of Ivan the Terrible’s times. In its political mythology and with its weaponed education system, Russia is a country whose focus is on the past more than the future, and daily reminds us why looking forward can sometimes be healthier than looking backwards. ---------- SPEAKER: Dr Yuri Felshtinsky is a prominent author, historian, and journalist, and expert on Russia and the former Soviet Union. He has appeared in print, TV, and radio interviews worldwide, and is widely known as co-author of the book “Blowing Up Russia” with Alexander Litvinenko, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the FSB who was poisoned with radioactive polonium in London in 2006. His latest book – “Blowing up Ukraine: The Return of Russian Terror and The Threat of World War III”, was researched before the invasion of Ukraine and is the first comprehensive investigation into the lethal methods Russia has used since 1999 to take over Ukraine – culminating in the full-blown unprovoked war in 2022 and mounting atrocities. More recently he has warned of the risk of a nuclear strike from the territory of Belarus, and it’s the topic of strategic nuclear blackmail that we’ll be discussing today. ---------- BOOKS: Blowing Up Ukraine: The Return of Russian Terror and the Threat of World War III (2022) The Putin Corporation: The Story of Russia's Secret Takeover (2012) Lenin and His Comrades (2010) The KGB Plays Chess: The Soviet Secret Police and the Fight for the World Chess Crown (2010) The age of assassins (2008) Corporation: Russia and the KGB in the Age of President Putin (2008) Blowing Up Russia (2002)

Disinformation continues to be a threat to Ukrainian sovereignty and unity, though is perhaps not as effective as it was in the years 2014-2022. But around the world aggressive information warfare still threatens information security and social stability, especially in states which Russia seeks to destabilise or coerce into supporting it. As we saw in the 2016 US elections, it can potentially threaten results of voting, place undue influence on voters’ decisions and undermine democratic processes. Valeria Kovtun is Head at Filter, the National media literacy project founded in Ukraine. FILTER aims to make society more resilient to misinformation and is a crucial tool in Ukraine’s armoury to defend itself from aggressive Russian information warfare. Valeria was formerly a journalist at BBC Reel, a senior correspondent at major Ukrainian media organisations, and a fellow journalist at the United Nations. She also has a background in video production, content management and news broadcasting. Valeria Kovtun has studied at law, Media Communications, and journalism at several prestigious institutions, including the Kyiv National Economics University, the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, and The London School of Economics.

Every time Ukraine pulls off another ‘improbable’ victory, or achieves a substantial breakthrough, journalists and military analysts return to their familiar refrain that ‘the war will now grind on indefinitely’ or that ‘there will be no more advances until spring’. From the battle of Kyiv, to Kharkiv and now Kherson, the stark evidence of extraordinary Ukrainian capability and boundless Russian incompetence is quickly forgotten. It seems that underestimating Ukraine’s potential and over-estimating Russia’s strength is a comfort zone the experts cannot tear themselves away from. Jenny Mathers is a senior academic with expertise in Russian politics and security, gender, and conflict. She has been a Senior Lecturer at Aberystwyth University since 1992. Jenny Mathers is experienced in Policy Analysis, Political Science, and lecturing. She is a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) focused on International Relations gained from Somerville College, Oxford University.

The Putin regime has been widely exploiting the vulnerabilities of global social media platforms, using bots and trolls to promote specific stories and narratives. But they are not alone once developed the same techniques can be used by other powers, international and local to subvert democratic institutions and to warp public perception of the news and politics in their countries. But Russian propaganda does not work how most people think it does. The interventions of the trolls and agitators often fail to directly promote pro-regime narratives in political discussions but do succeed in distracting people from having open discussions that are critical of the state. The mechanics of disinformation operations are often counter-intuitive – and we’ll unpack this topic in today’s episode. ---------- SPEAKER: Emma L Briant is an internationally recognized expert and scholar of information warfare and propaganda who helps policy makers, governments, business leaders, journalists and the general public understand and respond to the challenge of contemporary online threats. Emma is a fellow of Bard College. She has been called “The woman exposing the propaganda puppet masters” by Index on Censorship in 2022, and “One of the world's leading experts in information wars.” by Der Spiegel in 2023. Her research and solutions on the rapid evolution of surveillance driven propaganda and its implications for democracy were central in exposing the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Her work continues to inform policy including through US Congress, UK Parliament, Canadian Parliament and the European Parliament. ---------- BOOKS: Propaganda and counterterrorism: Strategies for global change (2015) Bad News for Refugees by Greg Philo, Emma Briant, et al. (2013) ---------- LINKS: Emma Briant blog and website: https://emma-briant.co.uk/ Emma Briant on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Briant Emma Briant on Twitter: https://twitter.com/EmmaLBriant Emma Briant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmalbriant/ Emma Briant on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/emmalbriant Emma Briant at Open Democracy: https://www.opendemocracy.net/es/author/emma-l-briant/ Emma Briant at Bard College: https://www.bard.edu/faculty/details/?id=4601 Reading list: https://www.patreon.com/posts/78981573 About Cambridge Analytica: https://www.propagandamachine.tech/ UK Parliamentary committee report: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/96662/html/ ----------