The Naked Pravda

In the past several weeks, Meduza has written extensively about the newsroom controversy at Vedomosti, one of Russia’s top business newspapers. Most recently, Meduza published a joint investigation with a handful of other independent news outlets (including Vedomosti itself) about the backroom wheeling and dealing that’s guided the outlet’s ownership for the past five years. In this episode of “The Naked Pravda,” host Kevin Rothrock reviews what we know about developments at Vedomosti and speaks to Financial Times Moscow correspondent Max Seddon about the story and business journalism in Russia more broadly. Listen to the end and you’ll be treated to an anecdote about how reporters rekindled the bromance between President Vladimir Putin and action film star Steven Seagal. “The Naked Pravda” comes out on Fridays. Catch every new episode by subscribing at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or other platforms. If you have a question or comment about the show, please write to Kevin Rothrock at kevin@meduza.io with the subject line: “The Naked Pravda.”Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

On May 4, 2020, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced the latest winners of the most coveted award in journalism. The staff of The New York Times won prizes in three different categories: international reporting, investigative reporting, and commentary. The first honor was awarded for “a set of enthralling stories, reported at great risk, exposing the predations of Vladimir Putin’s regime.” The winning work includes six articles and two videos. Not one of the stories is actually set inside Russia: the reports are about wars in Libya and Syria, elections in Madagascar and the Central African Republic, and murders in Bulgaria and Ukraine. The Russian authorities naturally condemned the prize selection, but criticism of The New York Times‘s award-winning journalism also came from several Russian investigative reporters, including Roman Badanin, who says his news outlet, Proekt, broke the story at the heart of at least one of the winning works that earned this years’ international reporting Pulitzer: an article by Michael Schwirtz, released in November 2019, titled “How Russia Meddles Abroad for Profit: Cash, Trolls and a Cult Leader,” which appeared eight months after Proekt’s “Master and Chef: How Evgeny Prigozhin Led the Russian Offensive in Africa” and repeats many of the same findings, chronicling similar events and describing many of the same circumstances and characters. To understand the dispute better, “The Naked Pravda” spoke to Roman Badanin and Meduza corresponded with a representative from The New York Times. “The Naked Pravda” comes out on Fridays. Catch every new episode by subscribing at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or other platforms. If you have a question or comment about the show, please write to Kevin Rothrock at kevin@meduza.io with the subject line: “The Naked Pravda.”Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

In a world engulfed by the coronavirus pandemic, “The Naked Pravda” travels back in time to the carefree 1980s, when Americans and Russians worried about simpler things like World War III. Fears in U.S. popular culture that the Cold War might turn hot culminated in 1984 with the film “Red Dawn,” starring Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, about a group of high school students resisting occupation by invading Soviet, Cuban, and Nicaraguan troops. Even if you haven’t seen the movie, you’ve probably seen people on the Internet shouting “Wolverines!” at each other — a reference to the name Red Dawn’s protagonists adopt for their guerrilla group.  Soviet-born journalist Slava Malamud joins this discussion about Cold War cinema. Last year, his tweets about the HBO miniseries “Chernobyl” gained enormous popularity, attracting thousands of likes and reposts, including from Craig Mazin, the show’s creator. In May 2019, Meduza published a story from Slava about his stepfather’s experience as a liquidator at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986. “The Naked Pravda” comes out on Fridays. Catch every new episode by subscribing at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or other platforms. If you have a question or comment about the show, please write to Kevin Rothrock at kevin@meduza.io with the subject line: “The Naked Pravda.”Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

In regions and cities across Russia, state officials are taking extraordinary measures to limit people’s movements and curb the spread of coronavirus. On March 18, Russia’s Supreme Court even imposed a moratorium on all hearings across the nation’s judicial system except for particularly “urgent cases,” though judges have enormous leeway here to decide what meets this threshold. Meanwhile, Russia’s prison system has effectively locked down, and observers warn that we now even less know about what happens at these facilities than we did before. To get a better grasp of the coronavirus containment measures’ effects on Russia’s justice system, “The Naked Pravda” turned to two pairs of human rights activists and scholars, as well as the author of a Meduza investigative report about how the coronavirus quarantine is making it even harder in Russia to find justice in the courts. In this episode: (3:25) Liliya Yapparova, Meduza investigative journalist (6:01) Kirill Koroteev, head of international practice at the “Agora” international human rights group (11:45) Valentina Dekhtyarenko, project manager at the “Open Russia” human rights group (14:13) Dr. Olga Zeveleva, postdoctoral researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, contributing to the Gulag Echoes project (21:50) Ksenia Runova, junior researcher at the Institute for the Rule of Law at the European University at St. Petersburg “The Naked Pravda” comes out on Fridays. Catch every new episode by subscribing at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or other platforms. If you have a question or comment about the show, please write to Kevin Rothrock at kevin@meduza.io with the subject line: “The Naked Pravda.”Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

In late 2019, many Internet users started noticing that the Russian state media was increasingly describing gas explosions as “gas pops” in news coverage — even when the incidents caused major damage to life and property. In fact, the number of “gas pops” mentioned in news reports jumped from a few dozen stories in early 2017 to thousands of such reports by January 2020. Meduza’s sources in the presidential administration and Russia’s security agencies say this is the result of a targeted policy to introduce more “favorable information conditions” meant to avoid a public panic when reporting gas explosions. Since February 2020, when Meduza first published its findings about “gas pops” in Russian headlines, the significance of euphemisms in news reporting has only grown with the global spread of coronavirus. To understand this phenomenon better, “The Naked Pravda” welcomed back media scholar Sarah Oates, a professor at the University of Maryland, and Alexey Kovalev, Meduza‘s head of investigative reporting. “The Naked Pravda” comes out on Fridays. Catch every new episode by subscribing at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or other platforms. If you have a question or comment about the show, please write to Kevin Rothrock at kevin@meduza.io with the subject line: “The Naked Pravda.”Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

In late March 2020, after the owners of the newspaper Vedomosti confirmed that they’d reached a preliminary agreement to sell off the publication, deputy editors appealed to the paper’s new owners in a letter where they warned that the newsroom is in chaos, advertisers are in shock, and subscribers are demanding refunds for paid subscriptions. The letter’s authors argue that the only remedy is to appoint a new chief editor from among the newsroom’s own ranks. The crisis follows the decision by Vedomosti‘s new owners to install a new editor-in-chief named Andrey Shmarov, who promptly alienated the staff in a bawdy introduction where he touted his ignorance about Vedomosti‘s own code of ethics, professed not to read the newspaper itself, and then defended Harvey Weinstein and expressed skepticism about the very concept of sexual harassment. To understand the significance of the trouble at Vedomosti, “The Naked Pravda” turned to Vedomosti editor-at-large Maxim Trudolyubov, who helped launched the publication more than 20 years ago. “The Naked Pravda” comes out on Fridays. Catch every new episode by subscribing at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or other platforms. If you have a question or comment about the show, please write to Kevin Rothrock at kevin@meduza.io with the subject line: “The Naked Pravda.”Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

LGBTQ activists in the Russophone world face obstacles that many in the Anglophone world do not, but that means they also find ways to survive that defy the imagination. One way queer Russian speakers have found to work through those life-and-death decisions is writing science fiction. Through stories about augmented reality, lesbian seduction in space, sentient plants, and more, activists have offered political commentary on post-Soviet oppression that’s impossible to find in the mainstream opposition. To understand how Russophone writers are using sci-fi to map out the region’s political future, “The Naked Pravda” reached out to scholars in Japan, Kyrgyzstan, and Sweden. They walked us through the broader Russian sci-fi scene and reflected on how speculative writing has changed their own scholarship and activism. In this episode: (6:33) Mikhail Suslov, an assistant professor of Russian History and Politics at the University of Copenhagen currently sheltering in Sweden, explains why the vast majority of Russian sci-fi published today has ties to the Kremlin and the Orthodox Church. (14:29) Georgy Mamedov, an academic who chairs the board for the LGBTQ organization Labrys in Kyrgyzstan, asks why so much queer Russophone science fiction fantasizes about complete separation from the rest of the world even as the people who write it get more and more determined to engage with the homophobes around them. (16:19) Syinat Sultanalieva, a prominent activist and a PhD candidate in international studies at the University of Tsukuba, breaks down the geopolitical undertones of her short story “Element 174.” “The Naked Pravda” comes out on Fridays. Catch every new episode by subscribing at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or other platforms. If you have a question or comment about the show, please write to Kevin Rothrock at kevin@meduza.io with the subject line: “The Naked Pravda.”Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

As COVID-19 spreads rapidly across the world, the disease is pushing healthcare systems to the brink. The number of reported cases is low but rising in Russia, where officials have imposed limits on public assemblies and major events, while resisting the more drastic measures deployed in Asia and now rolling out in the West. To get a better grasp of what to expect from Russia’s hospitals and medical science, “The Naked Pravda” turned to a handful of experts who study healthcare in Russia. We also spoke to several people living in Moscow, to hear about life on the ground during the pandemic. In this episode: (3:04) Yale University Professor of Epidemiology and of Pharmacology Robert Heimer explains how a coronavirus test actually works. (6:11) Virginia Commonwealth University Professor of Political Science Judyth Twigg highlights the flaws in Russia’s official coronavirus case numbers. (13:41) Georgetown University Professor Emeritus of Government and International Affairs Harley Balzer pours cold water on claims that Russian import substitution has been a success. “The Naked Pravda” comes out on Fridays. Catch every new episode by subscribing at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or other platforms. If you have a question or comment about the show, please write to Kevin Rothrock at kevin@meduza.io with the subject line: “The Naked Pravda.”Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

We’ve known it was coming since January when Vladimir Putin warned the nation, but now it’s moving at full throttle and threatens to inflict untold damage. No, it’s not the coronavirus — it’s the other calamity currently unfolding in Russia: a massive campaign to rewrite the Constitution so that Vladimir Putin’s presidency might continue until 2036. When this episode was recorded, all that stood between major constitutional reforms and enactment were a ruling from Russia’s Constitutional Court and a nationwide vote that draws the support of at least half the Russians who bother to vote. Federal and regional legislators have moved with lightning speed in the past week, all under a cloud of dubious legality. To find out more about what laws are being bent or trampled in the campaign to allow Vladimir Putin another two presidential terms, “The Naked Pravda” turned to three scholars in Russia and the UK. In this episode: (3:24) Ben Noble, an assistant professor in Russian politics at the University College London, explains that Russian lawmakers moved so quickly with the Kremlin’s constitutional amendments because this was a top personal priority for Vladimir Putin. (7:15) Ella Paneyakh, a sociologist at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg, argues that legislators waited until the last minute to move forward with many amendments, polluting the legislation with a lot of “bad law.” (14:30) Jane Henderson, an academic lawyer at King’s College London and an expert in Russia’s legal system, breaks down the ways to revise Russia’s Constitution and the pitfalls of the theoretical checks and balances put in place. “The Naked Pravda” comes out on Fridays. Catch every new episode by subscribing at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or other platforms. If you have a question or comment about the show, please write to Kevin Rothrock at kevin@meduza.io with the subject line: “The Naked Pravda.”Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

The Democratic Party’s primaries are underway in the United States, where the country’s increasingly left-leaning political party is flirting with democratic socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders as its nominee. Additionally, recent reports citing U.S. national intelligence that Russian operatives are again trying to interfere in the American presidential election have revived the media’s interest in “RussiaGate” discourse that finally faded only last year with the release of the Mueller Report. With all this talk of “the Russians,” however, what do Russian people in the U.S. actually think about the presidential race? On this episode of “The Naked Pravda,” host Kevin Rothrock spoke to seven liberal- and left-leaning Russians who currently reside in the United States about their views concerning the Democratic primaries and what they think of “RussiaGate” news coverage in the American media. “The Naked Pravda” comes out on Fridays. Catch every new episode by subscribing at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or other platforms. If you have a question or comment about the show, please write to Kevin Rothrock at kevin@meduza.io with the subject line: “The Naked Pravda.”Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно