From the editor
Ten years ago, on November 21, 2013, Kyiv journalist Mustafa Nayyem posted on Facebook, “Meet at 10.30 pm under the Independence Monument. Wear warm clothes, bring tea, coffee, a good mood and friends.” His call was a response to then-President Viktor Yanukovych’s sudden refusal to sign an association agreement with the EU after receiving a warning from Vladimir Putin. Protesters started to gather every night and the movement only grew after the Berkut riot police reacted violently. The Maidan, or Revolution of Dignity, continued through the winter until Yanukovych fled on February 22, 2014, after dozens of people in the Ukrainian capital had been shot dead by snipers.
Ukraine’s Maidan was a struggle for freedom and democracy that continues today
The celebrations were short-lived as Putin responded by sending his “green men” with no insignia and covered faces into Crimea to illegally annex the peninsula, and subsequently more anonymous forces led by retired military officer Igor Girkin/Strelkov into Donbas to form the “Donetsk People’s Republic” and “Luhansk People’s Republic” and foment war in the east of the country. Ukrainians went through years of struggle to maintain their democracy and freedoms, while at the same time Putin crushed all dissent at home. Girkin was convicted in The Hague in absentia in November last year for his role in shooting down MH17 in July 2014, and is now in jail in Moscow awaiting trial as one more of Putin’s rivals – still hoping to make a bid for the presidency in a few months’ time.
Moderate Western leaders such as Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel were hoping for a frozen conflict that could move Ukraine off their agenda, but Putin’s endless reign depends on turning Russians against an external enemy, and after the drama of his intervention in Syria, rigged re-election in 2018 and hosting of the World Cup, there was a risk that people might start wondering what was going on in their own country. Putin most likely assumed Joe Biden was weak, especially after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year. Ukrainians are killed by Russians every day in trenches or in their own homes, still demanding the dignity they fought for during the Maidan.
Georgia’s Rose Revolution also took place 20 years ago this month, resulting in pro-Western Mikheil Saakashvili forcing the resignation of President Eduard Shevardnadze, who had been Mikhail Gorbachev’s foreign minister in the last years of the Soviet Union. Russia under the sham presidency of Dmitri Medvedev invaded Georgia in August 2008, when the rebellious Saakashvili was president, and took full control of the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. After a controversial spell as governor of Odesa Oblast, Ukraine, in 2015-16, Saakashvili made a covert return to Georgia and is now in prison there. The ruling pro-Kremlin Georgian Dream party is suppressing the people’s aspirations to free themselves from Russia’s orbit and join the EU.
Belarusians attempted resistance in the summer of 2020 after Alexander Lukashenko stole the presidential election from challenger Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, and it almost looked as if their mass protests would succeed, but his brutality ultimately crushed them and unknown numbers are now languishing in prison or have fled the country. This is the fate that Ukrainians and Georgians know they will suffer if they give in. The West will not come to rescue them. The world was already coping with a multitude of other problems, and now the war in the Middle East overshadows what Russia is doing. This is an ideal time to watch the acclaimed documentary 20 Days in Mariupol to see what we have allowed Russia to get away with, and what they will do over and over again if they are not stopped. How many of us will survive another decade or two decades of unrestrained tyranny?
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Russian TV correspondent, singer killed in Ukrainian strikes
Correspondent for state propaganda channel Rossiya 24 Boris Maksudov has been killed in a Ukrainian drone strike in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. Maksudov had been in Ukraine since the start of last year’s invasion and according to fellow propagandist Vladimir Solovyov had “documented the war crimes of the Kyiv regime” in Donetsk. Meanwhile Russian singer Polina Menshnykh was killed in another Ukrainian strike while performing for troops during an award ceremony in Donetsk Oblast. Numerous members of the Russian military at the event were also reportedly killed.
Putin pardons Satanist murderer and cannibal
Vladimir Putin has pardoned Nikolai Ogloblyak, who in 2010 was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the brutal murder of four teenagers during rituals with a group of Satanists in Yaroslavl in 2008. One of the teenagers was reportedly stabbed 666 times. The bodies were beheaded and dismembered. Members of the group allegedly cooked the heart of one of the victims and ate it. Ogloblyak was already 18 at the time of the murders, while his co-defendants were minors and received sentences of eight to 10 years. He was released from prison to fight in Ukraine and is now said to be disabled.
Putin has also pardoned mass-murdering cannibal Denis Gorin, 44, from the town of Aniva in Sakhalin Oblast, who was convicted of murder in 2003 and again in 2018, when he was sentenced to 22 years in prison for three murders. Neighbours said he had likely killed at least 13 people. Gorin was given a 10-year sentence in 2003 for killing and eating a man, then returned home in 2010 and killed and ate the brother of one of his former cellmates. He subsequently killed two more people together with his brother Yevgeny. In October Gorin posted a picture of himself on social media in military fatigues. He is now injured and in a military hospital in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
Moscow man called up for army commits suicide
A 23-year-old man who was due to appear at a military recruiting office on Nov. 21 instead went to a shooting range and committed suicide. The unnamed man wrote to friends that he had received his call-up papers and did not want to serve in the military. His friends warned the shooting club about his intentions but the club’s employees believed they were being pranked.
Abducted Ukrainian teenager who was called up goes home
Bohdan Yermokhin, the Ukrainian orphan who was abducted by the Russians from Mariupol and subsequently sent call-up papers for the Russian military, has returned to Ukraine after turning 18. Yermokin had repeatedly tried to escape from the Russian family that illegally took him in. Qatar and the UN children’s agency UNICEF helped to negotiate an agreement to allow Yermokhin to leave Russia, after his case made international headlines. A new BBC investigation has found that pro-Kremlin politician Sergei Mironov, the leader of the A Just Russia – For Truth party, has “adopted” a two-year-old girl who was taken from a Kherson children’s home last year by a woman he later married.
Finland closes border checkpoints as migrants arrive from Russia
Finland has closed all but one of its land border checkpoints with Russia in response to large numbers of migrants from the Middle East and other countries arriving on foot and on bicycles. Russia denies claims that the FSB has been helping the migrants get to the border and says that on the contrary many of them have been detained for having expired visas. The tactic is one that has also been used regularly by Alexander Lukashenko to push migrants from Belarus to Poland.
126 jailed in Makhachkala for airport pogrom
A total of 126 people are currently in jail in Makhachkala, Dagestan charged with rioting over their participation in the pogrom at the city’s airport on the evening of Oct. 29, when hundreds of people invaded the terminal and tarmac hunting for Jews who they believed were arriving on a flight from Israel. One of the ringleaders, Gadzhi Imanmurzayev, claimed that he didn’t incite the riot but in fact tried to calm people down as requested by police. Another jailed protester, Patimat Sharudinova, who was seen in a video holding a Palestinian flag in the crowd at the airport and shouting slogans, claimed she “didn’t say anything like that there”.
Journalists who exposed corruption get long sentences
A court in Lyubertsy, Moscow Oblast, has sentenced journalists Alexander Dorogov and Yan Katelevsky to 10 ½ and 9 ½ years in a maximum-security prison respectively on an array of charges. Supporters applauded the pair after the verdict. Dorogov and Katelevsky worked for the Rosderzhava website that exposed police corruption. They were arrested in June 2020 and accused of asking a traffic police officer for a million roubles in return for not publishing information about him. They responded that the case was fabricated. A third defendant, Dmitri Filimonov, who cooperated with investigators and gave evidence against Dorogov and Katelevsky, had previously been given a suspended sentence.
More Kremlin critics sentenced
A court in Dagestan has sentenced Alexei Navalny’s former coordinator in Makhachkala, Eduard Atayev, to six years and five months in prison for alleged possession of firearms, explosives and drugs. Atayev said that when he was arrested in July last year a plastic bag was put over his head and tied with tape, and he was made to hold what felt like a handgun and a grenade. Atayev had held solo pickets on multiple occasions demanding a recount of votes in his district. Navalny had campaign offices in cities all over Russia until the Kremlin shut them down and banned his organisations.
A court in St. Petersburg has sentenced 17-year-old Yegor Balazeykin to six years in a “reform colony” for throwing Molotov cocktails at military recruiting offices in St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast in February this year. The projectiles did not ignite. The prosecutor in the case accused Balazeykin of betraying his uncle, who was killed fighting in Ukraine. Balazeykin said he was trying to prevent the draft.
A court in Saratov has sentenced poet and songwriter Dmitri Lyalyaev to two years and two months in prison for “spreading fakes about the army” and “public calls for extremism” without giving details of what he allegedly did. Previously Lyalyaev was fined for “discrediting the army” for writing on VKontakte “a fresh sheep is going to the slaughter”. He was also fined for “disrespecting the government” and “demonstrating a Nazi symbol” for posting a picture of Putin with a Hitler moustache and hairstyle. Lyalyaev had published many of his own poems criticising the Kremlin and the war in Ukraine.
A court in Liski, Voronezh Oblast, has sentenced a 49-year-old resident of the town, Ruslan Bolgov, to 10 months of compulsory work for “repeatedly discrediting the army” over his posts on social media. Commenting on pro-war slogans he wrote, “Idiocy in action. Why? For what? In the name of what? They’re virtually children, already stupefied by this rubbish.” According to the charges Bolgov made three posts in which he “called for preventing the conducting of the special military operation”. Bolgov pled guilty. He was apparently given lenience due to “alcohol dependency”.
Finally a journalist from Rzhev, Tver Oblast, 40-year-old Yekaterina Duntsova, was summoned for questioning by a prosecutor and asked about her opinion on the “special military operation” after announcing on social media that she was going to run for president. Duntsova had said her platform would be to call for democratic reforms, an end to the war and the release of political prisoners. “We have to abolish all inhumane laws and restore relations with the outside world,” she wrote. “Change funding priorities: spend money on improving the lives of citizens, not on new tanks. Regain the freedoms that have been taken away. We must make the country attractive and comfortable to live in!”