It’s strange days recently at Russia’s Defense Ministry. Amid the replacement of the agency’s head, police have brought large-scale bribery charges against at least two senior officials in the Defense Ministry, raising questions about the state of corruption in Russia’s military and the Kremlin’s approach to the phenomenon in wartime. 

Also earlier this month, the American Political Science Review published relevant new research by political scientist David Szakonyi, an assistant professor at George Washington University and a co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Data Collective. In the article, titled “Corruption and Co-Optation in Autocracy: Evidence from Russia,” Dr. Szakonyi explores if corrupt State Duma deputies “govern differently” and tries to establish what the governing costs of such corruption might be. The methodology he uses will be familiar to The Naked Pravda’s listeners who know the techniques of anti-corruption activists like the researchers at Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Dr. Szakonyi joins this week’s podcast to discuss his findings in the context of a major “anti-corruption moment” for Russia’s Armed Forces.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (3:26) Is this a story about corrupt politicians writ large or specifically in authoritarian states?
• (4:55) Explaining the paper’s methodology
• (13:09) The demographics of State Duma corruption
• (14:21) How the Kremlin co-opts corrupt officials and even welcomes them into politics
• (17:35) The State Duma as a “rubber stamp” legislature
• (19:53) “High politics” and “low politics”
• (21:32) The role of Russia’s security services
• (23:34) Exhaustion with anti-corruption revelations

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

The leadup to voting this November will renew fears in the United States about Russian malign influence. That means more paranoia from politicians, more alarming op-eds and white papers from the institutes created and funded to draw attention to foreign disinformation, and more mutual suspicions among ordinary people on social media, where journalists and pundits often draw their anecdotal conclusions about popular opinion.

This week, for a skeptical view of the foreign disinformation threat in America, The Naked Pravda welcomes Gavin Wilde, an adjunct faculty member at the Alperovitch Institute, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a former director for Russia, Baltic, and Caucasus Affairs at the U.S. National Security Council.

Together with Olga Belogolova, Lee Foster, and Thomas Rid, Wilde recently coauthored “Don’t Hype the Disinformation Threat: Downplaying the Risk Helps Foreign Propagandists — but So Does Exaggerating It” in Foreign Affairs. About a month earlier, he also wrote an article in the Texas National Security Review, titled “From Panic to Policy: The Limits of Foreign Propaganda and the Foundations of an Effective Response.” In this week’s episode, Wilde talked about both of these essays.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (3:51) Talking to those who believe that foreign disinformation threatens to undo U.S. democracy
• (7:32) The profit incentives behind counter-disinformation work
• (10:43) Shifting geopolitical adversaries in counter-disinformation work
• (13:26) Cognitive information threats
• (16:56) Deconversion from the ‘Period of Panic’
• (20:12) Hard-science methodologies and ontologies
• (22:49) When does downplaying foreign disinformation become dangerous?
• (25:23) The challenges of U.S. partisan subjectivity

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

Over the past few weeks, many in the think-tank community have argued about the negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv in the first two months of the full-scale invasion, following an article published on April 16 in Foreign Affairs, titled “The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine: A Hidden History of Diplomacy That Came Up Short — but Holds Lessons for Future Negotiations,” by Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, and Sergey Radchenko, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Europe.

In their article, Charap and Radchenko acknowledge that today’s prospects for negotiations “appear dim and relations between the parties are nearly nonexistent,” but they argue that the “mutual willingness” of both Putin and Zelensky in March and April 2022 “to consider far-reaching concessions to end the war” suggest that these two leaders “might well surprise everyone again in the future.” Charap and Radchenko joined The Naked Pravda to talk about this largely forgotten diplomacy, as well as the reactions to their research and what it might reveal in the years ahead.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (2:27) Summary of the Foreign Affairs article
• (4:46) Entertaining the idea that Russia negotiated in good faith
• (7:41) If Putin was open to concessions during early setbacks, could the West hope for leverage again?
• (12:51) Criticism from Poland’s think-tank community
• (15:13) Lessons and recommendations for tomorrow’s parallel-track diplomacy?
• (20:40) The biggest surprises in this research
• (26:46) The shape of a possible peace to come

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

According to a new investigation from Novaya Gazeta Europe, Chechnya Governor Ramzan Kadyrov was diagnosed with pancreatic necrosis in 2019 and isn’t long for this world. Since then, he’s supposedly undergone “regular procedures,” including surgeries, at an elite hospital in Moscow. A bout of COVID-19 in 2020 reportedly further degraded his health, kicking off another round of sudden weight loss. His kidneys reportedly started to fail and fluid built up in his lungs, making it difficult for him to speak and walk. After Novaya released the first part of this investigation, Kadyrov’s Telegram channel shared its first video in five days, posting footage of Kadyrov meeting with his cabinet to discuss the war in Ukraine.

Kadyrov’s speech is slurred and he barely moves. He doesn’t look good. He looks like the title character in Weekend at Bernie’s. 

Novaya Gazeta has released two more installments in this story since that first report, and a fourth article is due out soon. On this week’s episode of The Naked Pravda, Meduza spoke to journalist Kirill Martynov, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta Europe, to dig into these revelations and learn more about the predicament of Russia’s second-worst autocrat.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (5:02) Why is Ramzan Kadyrov so hard to replace as head of Chechnya?
• (10:31) What’s so special about Major General Apti Alaudinov, the commander of the “Akhmat” Chechen Volunteer Special Forces Association?
• (15:18) Protecting Kadyrov’s sons by putting them in the limelight
• (20:01) Novaya Gazeta Europe’s sources for this investigation

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

It’s no secret that the economies of Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan rely heavily on labor migration to stay afloat. In 2022, according to the International Organization for Migration, remittances from Russia accounted for just over half of Tajikistan’s GDP, and made up more than 20 percent of the GDPs of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Many of the workers sending these remittances are their families’ sole breadwinner — and given the lack of employment opportunities at home, working in Russia is often their best option, even if means dealing with a maze of bureaucracy and relentless discrimination. 

The aftermath of last month’s terrorist attack in Moscow has brought the xenophobia that Central Asian migrants face in Russia back into the spotlight, with media outlets reporting on a surge in blatant discrimination and, in some cases, targeted violence. Meanwhile, the Russian authorities have launched a renewed crackdown on migrant workers. This is despite the fact that Russia, with its shrinking population and labor shortage made worse by the war, needs migrants to keep its economy functioning.

To learn about Russia’s migration policy under Vladimir Putin and how the xenophobic backlash to last month’s attack has affected ethnic and religious minorities, The Naked Pravda spoke to Moscow Times special correspondent Leyla Latypova; Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center fellow Temur Umarov; and political scientist Caress Schenk, an associate professor at Nazarbayev University.

And be sure to check out Temur Umarov’s previous appearance on The Naked Pravda: How Russia pressures Central Asian migrants into military service.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (2:35) Xenophobia in the wake of the Crocus City Hall attack
• (16:55) Russia’s dependence on migrant labor
• (27:35) How Russia uses migration policy for political aims
• (31:25) The migration-extremism fallacy
• (39:13) The long-term effects of Russia’s current migration crackdown

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

Look at almost any recent major news story from Russia, and you’ll find the Federal Security Service, better known as the FSB. Having failed to prevent the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack in Moscow last month, the agency has played a major role in arresting and apparently torturing the suspected perpetrators. It was FSB agents who arrested Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges just over a year ago. And the FSB has been heavily involved in enforcing Russia’s crackdowns on dissent and LGBTQ+ rights.

At the same time, the FSB is inextricably linked to Moscow’s war against Ukraine. After years of carrying out subversive activities there, it provided Putin with key (though apparently misleading) intel that led him to launch his full-scale invasion in 2022. Since then, its agents have facilitated the deportation of Ukrainian children, tortured an untold number of Ukrainian civilians in so-called “torture chambers,” and tried to plant former ISIS members in Ukrainian battalions.

And let’s not forget that Putin himself was shaped by his career in the FSB’s predecessor agency, the Soviet-era KGB. Putin’s rise to power was defined by his image as a strong man who could ensure security and stability. Since assuming the presidency, he’s given himself direct authority over the FSB and steadily expanded its ability to surveil and repress Russian citizens.

To learn about the Russian FSB’s evolution over the last three decades, its operations in Russia and beyond, and its possible future after Putin, Meduza in English senior news editor Sam Breazeale spoke to Dr. Kevin Riehle, an expert in foreign intelligence services and the author of The Russian FSB: A Concise History of the Federal Security Service.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (3:13) Decoding the FSB: Structure, mission, and operations
• (5:58) The evolution of Russian national security: From KGB to FSB
• (14:36) Corruption and ideology: The FSB’s internal struggle
• (23:31) The FSB’s foreign reach and domestic repression
• (38:49) The agency’s post-Putin future

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

It’s been seven weeks since a local branch of Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service published a brief news post about the death of opposition leader Alexey Navalny. “He went for a walk, felt sick, collapsed unconscious, and couldn’t be resuscitated.” Russian officials would later insist that Navalny died of natural causes — his mother was told that he succumbed to “sudden death syndrome.” In mid-March, while celebrating his claim on a fifth presidential term, Vladimir Putin finally uttered Navalny’s name in public but only to dance on his grave, claiming that he was ready to trade him off to the West, provided he never came back. “But unfortunately, what happened happened. What can you do? That’s life,” said Putin.

This week, The Naked Pravda looks back at Navalny’s career in politics and ahead to the political future of his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, by speaking to two of the people most responsible for educating the English-speaking world about his work: filmmaker Daniel Roher, whose documentary on Navalny won an Oscar last year, and journalist Julia Ioffe, who was one of the first Western reporters to write about Navalny and who’s tracked him and his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, in numerous articles for more a decade, profiling them in stories for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Ioffe is also the author of the forthcoming book “Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy,” now available for preorder.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (1:55) How Daniel Roher started filming Team Navalny
• (10:15) Roher’s goals when making the “Navalny” documentary
• (11:51) Choosing a literary trope for the Navalny story
• (15:02) Did anyone try to talk Navalny out of returning to Moscow?
• (19:39) Filming Navalny’s nationalism
• (22:37) Rethinking the film after Navalny’s death
• (24:21) Julia Ioffe remembers meeting Alexey Navalny for the first time
• (29:47) Ioffe reviews Navalny’s views on nationalism and Ukraine
• (36:15) Looking ahead to Yulia Navalnaya and back at past revolutionary women

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

It’s been a little more than a week since a group of armed men walked into a concert hall just outside Moscow and gunned down dozens of defenseless people. A branch of the Islamic State active in South-Central Asia known as Islamic State – Khorasan, or IS-K, claimed responsibility for the Moscow attack in a statement through an affiliated media channel. That same channel later published body-cam footage recorded by the terrorists in the concert hall during the attack. Western intelligence officials say they have corroborated IS-K’s responsibility claim.

Though IS-K says the concert hall killings are its work, Russian national security officials — including President Putin in several public statements — have argued that Moscow’s enemies in Kyiv, Washington, and London are the attack’s true masterminds. 

The Russian authorities have arrested four Tajikistani nationals they say acted as the gunmen, and several more people are now in custody on suspicion of aiding and abetting the killings. Before the four main suspects were arraigned in court, videos circulated online showing Russian security forces torturing them after their capture. Despite this treatment then and presumably in the days since, so far, only two of the four defendants have pleaded guilty to all charges.

To learn more about the perpetrators of this heinous attack, the fluid geopolitics that drives such terrorism, and the road ahead for Russia as the Kremlin tries to utilize the tragedy for its own aims, Meduza spoke to Dr. Jean-François Ratelle, an adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa, and Dr. Domitilla Sagramoso, a senior lecturer in conflict and security in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (5:49) The Role of Tajikistan and Central Asia in the Attack
• (28:07) Russia’s Response and the Blame Game
• (29:30) Debunking Narratives: The Truth Behind the Accusations
• (44:09) The Impact of the Ukraine Conflict on Russia’s Security Landscape

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

For decades, NATO’s European members have depended on the U.S. to bolster their defense. Perhaps nowhere is this reliance more acutely felt than in the Baltic countries, which joined the alliance 20 years ago this month, and experienced occupation in living memory.

With Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine entering its third year and the future of U.S. military support for Kyiv in doubt, European officials and military analysts have begun sounding the alarm about the risk of Moscow starting a wider war. Meanwhile, the presumptive Republican nominee for the U.S. presidency, Donald Trump, threatens to renege on Washington’s NATO commitments, stoking fears of the alliance being undermined from within.

Is a Russian invasion of NATO territory really plausible? If so, how are the Baltic states working to deter it? And in a worst-case scenario, how prepared is the West to fight back? For answers to these and other questions, Meduza spoke to Baltic defense expert Lukas Milevski, political scientist Henrik Larsen, and retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe.

Articles mentioned: The Baltic Defense Line by Lukas Milevski and Europe’s Contribution to NATO’s New Defence by Henrik Larsen.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (1:30) Street interviews in Latvia
• (9:09) Exploring the Baltic defensive line
• (37:19) NATO’s readiness and the European context
• (1:01:33) Political will and public opinion

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

U.S. President Joe Biden took less than two minutes to bring up Russia in his 2024 State of the Union address. “If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not,” Biden said, prompting a standing ovation. “But Ukraine can stop Putin if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons it needs to defend itself.” 

An unwavering commitment to supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia has been at the center of the Biden administration’s foreign policy for more than two years now. But Washington’s relations with Moscow and Kyiv looked very different when Biden took office back in 2021. For the inside scoop on team Biden’s Russia and Ukraine policy, and how Moscow’s 2022 invasion turned all their plans upside down, Meduza turns to Politico national security reporter Alex Ward, the author of The Internationalists: The Fight To Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump. 

Timestamps for this episode:

• (5:07) How did team Biden originally plan to handle relations with Moscow and Kyiv?
• (11:40) How did the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal influence the response to Russia’s looming Ukraine invasion?
• (15:46) Why did U.S. intelligence get Russia’s invasion plan right but its military capabilities wrong? 
• (23:40) What did the first two years tell us about team Biden’s approach to foreign policy?
• (26:52) What will the Biden administration be remembered for?

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

Last month, there was a sudden panic in the United States when House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner issued a statement warning of a “serious national security threat” and demanded that President Biden declassify related information. The American media subsequently reported that Turner was referring to alleged Russian plans to deploy nuclear weapons in space, though U.S. National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby later clarified that the matter concerns anti-satellite weapons that cannot be used to attack people or to strike targets on Earth. He explained that Russia’s development of the technology is concerning but does not pose an immediate threat.

To make sense of these reports and to respond to the panic that this situation provokes, The Naked Pravda welcomes back nuclear arms expert Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (3:20) The (im)practicality of nuclear weapons in space
• (5:31) Imagining a nuclear blast in orbit
• (9:59) The feasibility of nuclear-powered space weapons
• (28:02) The 1967 Outer Space Treaty and its modern-day implications
• (31:26) Common misconceptions about space in movies

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно