Not So Beautiful
A Russian TV channel was fined for airing the music video to the song "So Beautiful" by Sergey Lazarev
Hello from the Bear Market Brief.
This week in the news:
President Putin signed a decree increasing the number of troops in the Russian Armed Forces.
The Finance Ministry presented a draft decree that would force the heads of several Russian regions to assume personal responsibility for reducing the gap between incomes and expenditures.
Relatives of mobilized soldiers continue to demand that their family members be rotated out of the war zone.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Economy announced a new program to support startups in humanitarian demining.
More troops
On Thursday, President Putin signed a decree increasing the number of troops in the Russian army by almost 170,000. According to the decree, the number of military personnel in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will expand by nearly 15%, from 1,150,628 to 1,320,000. “The increase in the strength of the army is due to growing threats to our country linked with the special military operation and the continuing expansion of NATO,” the Ministry of Defense posted on Telegram. The Ministry’s Telegram post focused on the threat from NATO in particular, referencing a buildup of weapons near the Russian border in addition to the bloc’s other “aggressive activities.”
The Ministry of Defense also said that the troop increase will not involve another wave of mobilization. “There are no plans to significantly increase the conscription of citizens for compulsory military service,” the Ministry said. This means that the additional 170,000 troops will allegedly come from citizen volunteers. However, critics of the government say that a “hidden mobilization” is already effectively taking place in the form of sporadic drafts and more aggressive recruitment drives in Russia’s regions.
Meanwhile, law enforcement raided a Wildberries warehouse in the Tula oblast this week to look for military recruits. The raid took place in the town of Aleksino and was officially for the purpose of catching illegal migrant workers. However, law enforcement was also looking for immigrants who may have recently obtained Russian citizenship but who have not yet completed their compulsory military registration. The raid was “pre-planned as a part of a military recruitment campaign,” Wildberries’s press service said. At least 10 people were detained.
A similar raid took place last week at a Wildberries warehouse in Elektrostal near Moscow. 150 people were detained and some of them were given military summons. According to the news outlet Agency, these types of raids—in which detainees are given summons to military service—are becoming increasingly common. This is not a new strategy; police raids targeting predominantly Central Asian migrants with the aim of handing out military summons have been going on for months.
— Sara Ashbaugh
The Russian TV channel AIVA was fined 500,000 rubles ($5,500) on Friday for airing a music video that showed two women holding hands. The fine falls under Russia’s new ban against propaganda supporting the “international LGBT public movement,” which was officially labeled as extremist by the Russian Supreme Court this week. The video in question was the music video for artist Sergey Lazarev’s 2017 song “So Beautiful,” which shows a variety of couples being affectionate. The court imposed the penalty against AIVA for “allowing propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations.” (photo: Sergey Lazarev / The Moscow Times)
A squeeze on regional finances
Last week, the Finance Ministry presented a draft decree that would force the heads of Russia’s four most heavily subsidized regions, as well as the Russian-appointed leaders of the four occupied Ukrainian regions, to assume personal responsibility for reducing the gap between their region’s incomes and expenditures. A passage outlining their obligations would be added to the agreements that regions make with the federal government about the provision of federal grants—the transfers that aim to reduce fiscal differences between poorer and richer regions. Crucially, in order to receive their grants, regions would have to promise not to inflate the number of state employees and officials, to increase their tax intake, and to closely coordinate with the federal Finance Ministry on the adoption of their 2025 budgets. Refusing to accept these terms by December 18 would automatically lead to these regions losing the grants, which would make it impossible for them to execute their budgets.
The four regions—Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Tuva—receive 134.8 billion rubles ($1.5 billion) between them. That is more than 20% of all of the grants allocated to 67 Russian regions in the 2024 budget. (Chechnya’s grants are widely seen as a means to buy the loyalty of the region’s head, Ramzan Kadyrov.) Allocations for the four Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine are even higher than this, not including additional subsidies they receive from regional budgets and state-adjacent companies active in the territories. Reconstruction of the occupied territories has been prioritized by the Kremlin even over domestic development projects. It is therefore unlikely that the Finance Ministry would seriously consider cutting subsidies, or that the heads of the affected regions would refuse to sign the new agreements. Most likely, the Finance Ministry is sending a signal that now is not the time for federal largesse, and that the authorities will take a dim view of excesses and major spending decisions that were not agreed upon with the federal government. Sure enough, shortly after, Kadyrov announced that 3,000 additional Chechen fighters were ready to join the frontlines in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, representatives of 38 regions participated in a conference on regional finances organized by the Moscow State Institute of International Relations this week. Several regional representatives highlighted that in order for regions to play a larger role in infrastructure development—as the federal government expects them to—they will need help. Alexey Teksler, the Governor of the Chelyabinsk Region and head of the State Council Commission on Economics and Finance, suggested encouraging banks to invest more. Other suggestions included the possibility of issuing digital rubles and setting up dedicated management companies to channel more money to regions, as well as the evergreen proposal that large companies relocate their HQs to (and therefore pay more corporate income taxes in) depressed regions. This would be inconvenient for the companies because regional cities are not actual decision-making centers. The main, but unspoken, takeaway from the conference was that the war simultaneously puts more of a burden on regional finances while making it difficult for the federal budget to increase their financial support.
— Andras Toth-Czifra
New war critics
The relatives of soldiers who were mobilized more than a year ago have continued mounting protests in various forms demanding that their relatives be rotated out of the war zone. After several regions banned protest actions, activists have started a campaign involving placing vulgar stickers on cars. These stickers use the letters “Z” and “V,” which the Russian government has tried to turn into pro-war symbols. Activists also adopted a manifesto accusing Putin of not keeping his promises and creating an “illusion of stability” in the country. Protests of this sort have so far not involved massive numbers of people, but the radicalization of the language and the reportedly concerned reaction of the Kremlin are certainly worth noting.
Meanwhile, Yekaterina Duntsova, a journalist from the Tver Region who recently announced her intention to run for President on an anti-war ticket, faced an attack by blackmailers. They set up scam versions of her campaign sites which Yandex, Russia’s most popular search engine, began showing at the top of search results instead of Duntsova’s actual website. The blackmailers’ intention is to force Duntsova to buy the fraudulent domains. Earlier, prosecutors in Tver summoned Duntsova for questioning about her position on the war.
The largely-unknown journalist will not be able to mount a serious challenge to Putin. However, her appearance, as well as that of other candidates (such as jailed pro-war influencer Igor Girkin “Strelkov,” who has criticized the war effort from an ultranationalist perspective), suggests that grassroots movements and opposition personalities are going to try to mount a critical discussion of the war’s failures in the upcoming presidential race. As much as the Kremlin would like to make the 2024 presidential campaign a quiet and reassuring experience for voters, the effects of the war on the lives of ordinary Russians cannot be denied.
— Andras Toth-Czifra
On Tuesday, a Russian woman was detained for eating caviar on Red Square. Gulina Naumann was recording a video of herself eating out of a 14-kilogram tub of caviar when police detained her and her friend for suspicious behavior. The pair were interrogated but ultimately released with no charges filed. “It turns out you can’t film so much caviar near the Kremlin,” Naumann posted on Telegram, “The situation in the country prohibits showing off.” (photo: Gulina Naumann / The Moscow Times)
A Ukrainian program for demining startups
The Ukrainian Ministry of Economy, in partnership with the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), announced an accelerator program to support innovations in humanitarian demining. This program will equip demining startups with necessary business development skills, as well as provide mentoring support from industry experts and the ability to test technologies at training grounds. Program participants will have the opportunity to work on an individual roadmap with support from their mentors and create a business model and a business development plan to bring their ideas into fruition. To participate in this program, startups have to fill out an application on KSE’s website.
Ukraine is now one of the world’s most heavily-mined nations, as nearly one-third of its territory has been mined since the beginning of the Russian full-scale invasion. Around 6 million people are threatened by landmines in Ukraine. “We have an ambitious goal to return up to 80% of these lands to economic use over the next 10 years,” Minister of Economy Yuliia Svyrydenko commented. KSE President Tymofiy Mylovanov said that Ukraine needs to demine its territories as quickly as possible, and ideally it would use robots to achieve this goal, especially in areas that have a high risk of explosions.
Since February 2022, more than 260 Ukrainian civilians have been killed by landmines, including at least 14 children. The Ukrainian Ministry of Education introduced mine safety courses for Ukrainian schoolchildren as a part of the curriculum in August 2023.
— Lisa Noskova
Where does Russian public sentiment on politics and war stand these days? And on a more basic level, how is it measured? Bear Market Brief talked with Isabelle DeSisto of Russia Watcher to learn more!
Quickfire: Regions
On November 27, an article in the pro-Beijing South China Morning Post quoted an unnamed source in Moscow saying that China is trying to force Russia to finance the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, a planned gas pipeline that is key to Russia’s pivot to Asian energy markets, and also to achieve further discounts on gas. The article suggested that President Putin, who hoped to sign an agreement on the pipeline during his visit to Beijing in October, has no choice but to make concessions to China. The construction of the pipeline has already suffered delays. The article was published just days after Gazprom announced a significant reduction of its 2024 investment program. The company is cutting expenditures by a fifth, including both for new export-focused projects and for the development of domestic gas infrastructure.
Based on discussions in the State Duma’s Committee on Energy, there is a possibility that the government will soon reintroduce a ban on the export of certain oil products as diesel prices continue to rise in 58 regions. The authorities are also introducing a temporary export ban on durum wheat in order to ensure domestic price stability. Inflation will likely remain a major concern for Russian authorities in the months before the March 2024 presidential election, as the population’s inflation expectations are reportedly growing.
The Penza City Council deleted a video of a council meeting in which Alexander Basenko, the city’s Mayor, spoke against putting up memorial plaques in schools for Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine. Basenko did not speak against the war, only argued that it would be better to wait “until this whole process is finished” to put up one plaque instead of a large number of individual plaques, in order to “protect the mental health” of pupils. Apparently even this was too much for the federal government. Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein demanded that the mayor be reprimanded, while Basenko himself claimed that his words had been “taken out of context.” Basenko is not the first public official to express misgivings about the extra duties that regional and municipal leaders are required to perform because of the war. The expansion of pro-war propaganda in schools has triggered resistance in several regions over the past year. This latest exchange highlights how small the Kremlin’s tolerance for dissent has shrunk.
— Andras Toth-Czifra
Quickfire: Ukraine
On November 25, Russia carried out the largest drone attack on Kyiv since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. It launched 75 Shahed drones on Ukraine’s capital, 74 of which were shot down. At least five people were injured as a result of the attack. According to Ukraine’s Air Force, the drones were launched from two directions: Primorsko-Akhtarsk and the Kursk region.
A massive snow storm hit Ukraine on Monday, killing at least five people. Snow and high winds knocked out power in hundreds of towns and villages and shut down highways. Over 2,000 settlements in 15 Ukrainian regions experienced power outages, according to the state grid operator Ukrenergo. Several roads in the Odesa and Mykolaiv regions were closed due to heavy snow and low visibility, and trucks were prohibited from entering Kyiv.
— Lisa Noskova