The Naked Pravda

On Thursday morning, March 2, a few dozen armed men crossed over from Ukraine and raided two small towns in the Russian border region of Bryansk. The militants — described as “Ukrainian saboteurs” in hurried Russian news reports and later identified as soldiers in the so-called Russian Volunteer Corps — posed for some pictures, recorded a few breathless videos, and retreated back into Ukraine in short order. Conflicting reports followed about clashes with the incursion group: the Russian authorities said a couple of motorists were killed, but there are some odd inconsistencies in the footage later released by the Federal Security Service, while the militants themselves say they got into a shootout in one town but didn’t see anyone killed. The March 2 incursion itself is fairly underwhelming, and it’s hardly the first of its kind in the Bryansk area, where Russia’s border with Ukraine is notoriously hard to defend. What makes the raid stand out is the leader of the group behind it: Denis Nikitin, a Russian neo-Nazi with a long history of far-right activism across Europe and especially, most recently, inside Ukraine. For more about Nikitin and the Russian Volunteer Corps, The Naked Pravda spoke to journalist Michael Colborne, who heads the Bellingcat Monitoring Project and authored the 2022 book From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right. Timestamps for this episode: (3:56) What is the Russian Volunteer Corps and who is Denis Nikitin?(13:49) What is Denis Nikitin’s ideology?(20:19) The ties between the Russian Volunteer Corps and Ukraine’s Armed Forces(24:23) Previous border incursions into the Bryansk region(30:57) Probably not a Russian false flagКак поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

Amid an escalating public conflict between Russia’s Defense Ministry and Evgeny Prigozhin, The Naked Pravda builds on last year’s episode about the warlord-tycoon, looking more closely at the paramilitary cartel he fronts. To understand how Wagner Group should be defined, why its brutality is so valuable to Moscow, and how its recruitment of prisoners has played out, Meduza spoke to three experts. Timestamps for this episode: (3:55) Candace Rondeaux (a professor of practice and fellow at the Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies and the Center on the Future of War at Arizona State University, and the director of Future Frontlines at New America) explains how Wagner Group is best defined.(5:50) Andreas Heinemann-Grüder (who teaches Political Science at the University of Bonn in Germany and is a senior researcher at the Bonn International Center for Conflict Studies) break down how Russia’s mercenaries practice “exterminatory warfare.”(7:38) Bellingcat training-and-research director Aric Toler talks about Wagner Group’s promises of pardons and burials with honors.(10:07) Andreas Heinemann-Grüder says Wagner’s recruitment of prisoners undermined the group’s internal cohesion and “didn’t work out” in the end.(14:21) Why does Moscow need Wagner Group at all in the middle of an invasion openly waged by Russia’s official military?(17:41) Candace Rondeaux explains the difference between designations for organized crime and terrorism, from a foreign policy perspective.(22:27) Wagner Group as a front for Russian state corporations’ interests abroad.(24:21) Aric Toler examines what funerals for three 1990s-era crime bosses recruited by Wagner say about the group’s dubious promises to inmates.(28:14) Candace Rondeaux highlights the ways in which Wagner Group is a social movement too.(31:50) How to read Prigozhin-linked channels online and Russia’s Z-blogosphere more broadly.(37:10) Why ending the war demands a resolution to Wagner Group’s fate.Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

In early February 2022, as Russia massed more than 100,000 troops on the border with Ukraine, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán traveled to Moscow on what he described as a “peace mission.” Standing alongside Vladimir Putin at a press conference, Orbán urged other Western countries to adopt a “Hungarian model” of relations with Russia — one supposedly based on “mutual respect.” Just a few weeks later, the Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion of Hungary’s neighbor, Ukraine.  For Orbán and his government, the invasion came as a shock. And for a brief moment, it seemed as though Budapest would finally reverse its longstanding pro-Kremlin stance. But instead, Hungarian officials have opted to walk the line, supporting round after round of EU sanctions against Russia and welcoming more than 2.1 million Ukrainian refugees, while also blocking the passage of weapons through Hungarian territory to Ukraine, brandishing their EU veto power, and refusing to forsake Russian energy imports.  To find out more about Russian influence in Hungary and its impact on the Orbán government’s response to the war in Ukraine, The Naked Pravda sat down with three expert guests.  Timestamps for this episode: (1:36) Journalist Szabolcs Panyi from the Budapest-based investigative outlet Direkt36 on the money trail coming from Moscow and uncovering Russian espionage in Hungary. (10:44) Andras Tóth-Czifra, a non-resident fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), on Hungary’s response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. (14:14) Zsuzsanna Vegh, a visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and a lecturer and researcher at European University Viadrina, on how the Orbán government’s business-as-usual Russia policy puts Hungary at odds with its European partners. Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

In the initial months after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of people left Russia. Some were fleeing the war’s economic repercussions or the country’s accelerated descent into authoritarianism, while others saw emigration as a moral necessity. Then, in September, Putin’s mobilization announcement set off a new wave of panic, causing another 700,000 or so to leave Russia in a span of just two weeks (though some have since returned). A huge number of these wartime emigrants ended up in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, sparking what some have termed a “Russian migrant crisis.” The result on the ground in these countries has been an unprecedented reversal of a decades-old status quo that had Central Asian migrants moving to Russia to perform manual labor for relatively high wages, often while being subjected to racism and mistreatment from locals. To learn about how this reckoning has played out on a human level, The Naked Pravda spoke to migration researcher and journalist Yan Matusevich, who’s spent the last five months conducting interviews with Russians newly arrived in Central Asia. Timestamps for this episode: (5:16) Who are the people who have moved from Russia to Central Asia? What makes this a ‘monumental’ moment?(19:41) How have people in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan reacted to the influx of Russians? What difficult conversations has this migration forced people to have?(28:54) Who gets overlooked in the discussion about wartime migrants to Central Asia?(35:40) How do these migrants from Russia fit into traditional migration categories? Are they refugees? Asylum seekers? None of the above?(45:01) Why did Kazakhstan recently make its visa laws slightly less friendly to Russian citizens? How will this affect Russian emigrants there?(52:51) Why do some Russians in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan fear being deported to Russia? Is this likely to happen?Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

On May 11, 2022, The Washington Post announced that it was establishing a new bureau in Kyiv with Isabelle Khurshudyan leading coverage as Ukraine bureau chief. Elements of The Post’s expansive coverage dedicated to the war in Ukraine include a 24-hour live updates page on The Post’s site, a Telegram channel for news updates (now with more than 40,000 subscribers), and a database of verified, on-the-ground footage. Ms. Khurshudyan joined The Naked Pravda to talk about The Post’s Kyiv bureau and her experiences reporting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Timestamps for this episode: (2:38) How did The Post’s Ukraine bureau come about? Will it remain in place after the war ends?(7:19) How readers in the United States respond to reporting about the war in Ukraine(10:07) How “burnout” affects journalists reporting in Ukraine on the war(13:43) How to get embedded with the Ukrainian military(18:14) Finding information about Ukraine’s occupied territories where there are no Western journalists(20:52) Navigating the wartime legal and cultural sensitivities surrounding certain kinds of speech(25:57) War reporting vs. hockey journalismКак поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

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