The Naked Pravda

Writer Anna Arutunyan, author of “The Putin Mystique: Inside Russia’s Power Cult” (2014), has a new book out about the early pivotal years of Russia’s invasion of the Donbas, titled “Hybrid Warriors: Proxies, Freelancers and Moscow’s Struggle for Ukraine.” A longtime journalist, former International Crisis Group senior analyst, and now a Wilson Center global fellow, Arutunyan draws on interviews, reporting from the warzone, and other research to reconstruct the relationships between civilians, non-state actors, and the Kremlin that developed after Moscow annexed Crimea and began its intervention in the Donbas that spiraled into the godawful war we see today. Timestamps for this episode: (3:24) Is “hybridity” still a meaningful research topic in the war today in Ukraine? (5:56) Is Vladimir Putin’s “power vertical” a myth? (10:48) Has Putin’s ideology evolved over the past two decades or is it all improvised? (15:08) Does Putin still have the flexibility as a leader to backtrack in Ukraine and end the war? (19:39) What a sense of disenfranchisement and victimhood can do. (25:30) What’s the use of empathy? (28:42) Vladimir the Bureaucrat.Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

On this week’s episode of The Naked Pravda, Meduza speaks to anthropologist Jeremy Morris about foreign Russia scholars’ growing reliance on state television as a means of monitoring what is thought to be public opinion. Dr. Morris, a professor of Russian and Global Studies in the School of Culture and Society at Aarhus University in Denmark, argues that researchers should devote more attention to less controlled platforms on social media and exercise more caution when generalizing based on survey data collected in Russia. For more of Dr. Morris’ methodological insights, check out his blog: Postsocialism.org. Timestamps for this episode: (4:39) A recent viral video from the Luhansk region released by Graham Phillips (11:19) Viral videos vs. state propagandists’ rants (16:09) Problems with surveys and survey data (28:03) How to use social media for research (responsibly) (33:32) So, how should we measure Russians’ support for the war?Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

In an article titled “Ukrainian Voices?” recently published in New Left Review, sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko warns that talk in the West about Ukraine’s “decolonization” often focuses too much on “symbols and identity” and not enough on “social transformation.” Representing the war in Ukraine “as an ideological conflict of democracy against autocracy” is intellectually inconsistent, he writes, and “works poorly” with audiences across the Global South. Dr. Ishchenko criticizes the identarian articulation of Ukraine’s decolonization, which he says reduces the agenda to “anti-Russian and anti-communist identity politics”; it’s an obstacle to “a universally relevant perspective on Ukraine.” In the days since it was released, Dr. Ishchenko’s article has won praise and provoked fierce criticism from peers and pundits alike. This week, he joined The Naked Pravda to respond to some of that feedback and delve a bit deeper into the ideas he raised in the essay. Timestamps for this episode: (4:40) The article’s academic origins (6:52) Has the “decolonization” agenda lost its way? (11:34) What’s an alternative form of decolonization in Ukraine? (15:35) What are the differences between Ukraine’s “privileged voices” with access to the West and the Ukrainians who remain largely unrepresented abroad? (23:00) Don’t call it an ideological conflict of democracy against autocracy? (29:52) Criticisms of Soviet nostalgiaКак поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

Given current events in Russia and Ukraine, much of today’s expertise about Russia is again created remotely. It simply isn’t safe for many journalists and researchers to be in the country today due mainly to the militarized censorship of speech related to the invasion of Ukraine. So, what happens when Russia experts are forced to work outside of Russia? When access to audiences, writers, and source material narrows so suddenly, how does our grasp of Russia change? To explore these issues, The Naked Pravda turned to Olga Irisova, a German Chancellor fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the editor-in-chief of the analytical platform Riddle, which the Russian authorities recently banned as an “undesirable organization.” Timestamps for this episode: (4:12) What is Riddle? (7:25) How has the war in Ukraine and “undesirable” status affected Riddle’s work? (14:30) Has Riddle faced any pressure from Westerners? (20:37) The current state of Russia expertise (25:16) Are there major differences between the Russia expertise generated by Russians and foreigners? (29:40) What makes a good essay?Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

In a guest essay this week for Meduza, philologist Gasan Gusejnov reflected on the experiences of past “waves” of Russian emigrants and on today’s interactions between the Russian-speaking diaspora and Russian-speaking Ukrainians, explaining how the Putin regime has abused the Russian language by elevating “hateful violence.” Gusejnov also described the “taste for language resistance” developing among younger Russian-speakers as efforts abroad to challenge the Kremlin’s grip on speech accelerate. On this week’s episode of The Naked Pravda, host Kevin Rothrock and guest Dr. Gusejnov further discuss the social and political state of the Russian language at home and abroad, today and in the years to come.Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

A couple of months ago, videos from Russian prisons started appearing online showing a beefy-looking, bald man addressing large crowds of inmates, trying to recruit them as mercenaries to go fight (and quite possibly die, he admitted) in Ukraine. “Do you have anybody who can pull you out of the slammer when you’ve still got 10 years on your sentence? There are two who can get you out: Allah and God, and it will be in a wooden box. I’ll take you alive, though I won’t always return you that way.” He then gives the prisoners five minutes to decide if they’ll join his private military company. The man speaking here is Evgeny Prigozhin, an ex-con himself and now a jack of all trades when it comes to the dark side of the Russian elite. He’s known as Vladimir Putin’s favorite chef, a restauranteur from St. Petersburg who caters for the president and supplies food to the military and many public schools. He operates so-called “troll farms” and an empire of fake news outlets that he now openly admits were created to meddle in politics, particularly in the United States. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (not just this February but all the way back to the start in 2014), Prigozhin’s most important dirty work for the Kremlin has been through his mercenary group Wagner. For a better understanding of Evgeny Prigozhin’s current significance as a public figure in Russia, The Naked Pravda spoke to five journalists and experts. Timestamps for this episode: (3:40) Alexandra Prokopenko (11:58) Roman Badanin (18:24) John Lechner (33:50) Roman Dobrokhotov (42:37) Liza Fokht Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

It’s been more than 266 days since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In more recent few months, the war’s momentum has swung dramatically in Kyiv’s favor amid a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has Russian troops retreating from areas that Moscow has formally annexed. To get a grasp on where things stand currently in the war, Meduza spoke to military analyst Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), who’s been meticulously gathering operational data about the conflict since before Russian troops started pouring over the Ukrainian border. Timestamps for this episode: (2:38) What’s so special about HIMARS, or High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems? (10:22) What other advanced weapons could give Ukraine new advantages in the war? (14:57) What’s the military impact of Russia’s airstrikes against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure? (18:57) How far might Ukraine’s counteroffensive reach into occupied territory? Will Russian defenses hold at some point? (25:19) Is the Russian military regrouping or on the verge of collapse? (27:41) What happened with the missile(s) that recently killed two civilians in Poland? (30:26) Is Russia going to run out of rockets or ammunition?Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

It’s an exaggeration to say that Russian aviation has been cut off from the outside world, but the loss of routes to popular Western destinations has squeezed airlines profits while sanctions complicate basic maintenance. In late July, for example, several Russian airlines reportedly advised pilots, not to use their brakes so much when landing, in order to extend the equipment’s lifespan. To keep its fleets in the air, Russia must now rely chiefly on repairing planes using spare parts from other aircraft. The country already operates a policy charmingly known as cannibalization. The Naked Pravda spoke to two experts to find out more about the risks of safety lapses in Russia’s aviation industry amid international sanctions that could soon jeopardize domestic commercial air travel. Timestamps for this episode: (4:28) Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory (19:38) Dr. Pavel Luzin, visiting scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts UniversityКак поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

On October 23, following a report in Russia’s state news, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu started calling his counterparts in France, Turkey, the UK, and the United States, warning that Moscow has collected intelligence suggesting that the Ukrainian government is preparing a “provocation” involving the use of a dirty bomb. A day later, Russia’s Foreign Ministry claimed that Kyiv plans to “camouflage” an explosion of “the radioactive substances derived from the spent nuclear fuel storages of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant” as the effects of a “low-power Russian nuclear warhead that contains highly enriched uranium in its charge,” supposedly framing Moscow for using tactical nukes. At Kyiv’s own request, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog has already begun inspections to investigate Russia’s claims, but the Kremlin has pressed on, undeterred. On October 27, Vladimir Putin said again that the Ukrainian government is “preparing an incident with a so-called dirty bomb” with plans to accuse Russia of using a nuclear weapon. To understand what radiological weapons actually are and what their use would mean in Ukraine, The Naked Pravda turned to three experts. Timestamps for this episode: (3:39) Dr. Andrey Baklitskiy, a senior researcher in the Weapons of Mass Destruction and other Strategic Weapons Program at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, compares Moscow’s “dirty bomb” allegations to past claims about U.S. bioweapons on Ukrainian soil. (15:08) Dr. Nicole Grajewski, a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow with the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard’s Kennedy School, describes how Russian warnings about Ukrainian radiological weaponry mimic past accusations against the White Helmets in Syria. (25:21) Sarah Bidgood, the director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, explains the rise and demise of state-level radiological weapons programs.Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

Now that Vladimir Putin is 70 years old, we’re understandably getting less of his torso in official photographs, but the Kremlin nevertheless relies on tropes of masculinity to validate the regime and its actions abroad, particularly in Ukraine and when it comes to confrontation with the West. This gendered rhetoric resonates with Russians just as it does in societies and nations all over the world. The authorities and the public work together to manufacture consensus about who gets to be on top, who constitutes a threat, and what actions are legitimate. When it comes to the invasion of Ukraine, for example, the promotion and draw of various anti-feminism and anti-gay narratives in Russia have facilitated the idea itself that an independent, Western-leaning Ukraine poses an existential threat. This language has helped make plausible for Russians a war that was inconceivable until only recently. But what happens if you take away that rhetoric? Without gender’s role in influencing Russia’s securitization process, what’s left of Moscow’s justifications for war? These are questions inspired by a new article titled “Damsels in Distress: Fragile Masculinity in Digital War,” published in the academic journal Media, War & Conflict and written by Dr. Lisa Gaufman, an assistant professor of Russian Discourse and Politics at the University of Groningen. Also the author of “Security Threats and Public Perception: Digital Russia and the Ukraine Crisis” (2017) and the forthcoming “Everyday Foreign Policy: Performing and Consuming the Russian Nation after Crimea,” Dr. Gaufman joined The Naked Pravda to discuss her work.Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно