Need the meeting, urgently! Men in black visited Putin. Kremlin tightens control over internet.

December 3, 2021

Diplomats in disarray

On December 1, President Vladimir Putin suggested “starting a substantive discussion on the possibility of working out specific legal and long-term agreements that would rule out NATO’s eastward movement” and the deployment of weapons along Russia’s borders.  

It seems that this presidential initiative came as a complete surprise to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At least, I got this feeling after Minister Sergei Lavrov said, “Soon we will formulate appropriate concrete proposals to our Western colleagues and we will count on a serious attitude towards them.”

Need to meet with Biden. Urgently!

First Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Sergei Ryabkov said that Russia is interested in the meeting between Presidents Putin and Biden in the coming days. However, “there are difficulties in aligning the calendars of the two leaders… But contact is vital. Our problems are multiplying… There is no movement on bilateral affairs, which are more and more moving into the phase of an acute crisis; there is no mutual understanding on how we should de-escalate the situation in Europe. Well, further down the list.”

In my opinion, the latest statements by Putin and the Russian Foreign Ministry regarding the threats posed by NATO reflect the fear that gripped the inhabitants of the Kremlin after the alliance sharply increased its activity near the Russian borders (as I spoke of in yesterday’s issue).

Men in black visited Putin

On November 25, an explosion occurred at the Listvyazhnaya mine in Kuzbass, as a result of which 51 people died, including five mine rescuers. The authorities named the explosion of the methane-air mixture as the most likely cause of the accident.

In the first days after the explosion, the General Prosecutor’s Office of Russia announced numerous violations at the mine, particularly cases of concealing the automated reports of individual control devices.

President Vladimir Putin decided to demonstrate that he keeps all the country’s problems under his control and held a special online meeting to discuss the causes of the accident. 

During his speech, he, on the one hand, called for avoiding sweeping accusations in the investigation of the tragedy. On the other hand, he quoted the document of the Investigative Committee, which blamed the owners and managers of the mine for the explosion, ending all this with the phrase: “The Prosecutor’s Office and the Investigative Committee will give a legal judgment to all officials’ actions.” According to Putin, I want to emphasize, the legal assessment is given not by the court but by the investigating authorities. However, he knows very well that Russian courts will never oppose the position of investigators in cases controlled by the President and his administration. (Note that the CEO of the mine and his deputy were dressed in black prisoners’ uniforms as they were online from the jail. The mine’s owner was sitting next to them in black, although he is not under arrest.)

During the meeting, Putin demanded a detailed report from the Minister of Labor on how the wages of miners are arranged. Calling the report unsatisfactory and banging his fist on the table [according to RIA Novosti, the video of the meeting is posted on the Kremlin’s website in a limited volume and does not contain this episode], he described in great detail what components it consisted of and indicated how the state should control the relationship between these components. 

Ukraine as the epicenter of the conflict

Discussion of the situation around Ukraine became one of the important topics during the meeting of Russian Minister Sergei Lavrov with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Russia has once again expressed its claims and voiced its threats.    

“We are interested in joining efforts to resolve the Ukrainian crisis. Our American colleagues have repeatedly said they want to help without destroying the Normandy format, restoring a separate channel of dialogue that existed under the previous administration. We are ready for this... Using Ukraine in U.S. geopolitical games will entail serious consequences,” Lavrov said.

In turn, Blinken said Washington would be ready to impose large-scale economic sanctions against Moscow in the event of an allegedly possible Russian invasion of Ukraine and called on Russia to withdraw its troops from the Ukrainian border. 

Kremlin tightens control over internet

As a result of two significant transactions, control over the most prominent Russian internet resource VK.COM (the MAIL.RU email server, VKontakte, and Odnoklassniki social networks) passed into the hands of a close friend of President Putin, Yuri Kovalchuk (who is under U.S. and EU sanctions). To prevent the company from falling under Western sanctions, the transactions were structured so that Kovalchuk does not independently control more than 50% of the shares in any entity but does so in partnership with Gazprombank and Rostec, which are also under Western sanctions. But Russian lawyers know very well that in this case, neither the United States nor the European Union recognize that the company is under the control of persons under sanctions. 

I see this deal as aimed at achieving two goals: 1) making it easier for the FSB to control the Russian internet, 2) increasing the use of the internet by Kremlin propaganda.

The missile does not reach Japan. Yet

The Bastion coastal anti-ship missile systems took up combat duty on the Kuril island of Matua, the Russian Pacific Fleet said on Thursday.

“On this remote island in the central part of the Kuril ridge, the Pacific Fleet missile men will maintain a 24-hour watch to monitor the adjacent water area and straits. The Bastion complex is equipped with Onyx anti-ship missiles (SS-N-26 Strobile acc.NATO’s classification) with a range of up to 600 km (the distance to Japan from the island is 740 km).