Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1853

October 6:

According to documents uncovered by a team of Russian investigative journalists, athletes and spectators at this year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi will be subject to some of the most invasive and systematic surveillance in the history of the Olympics. The Guardian reports that Russia’s security service, the FSB, has made significant changes to the telephone and Wi-Fi networks in the Black Sea area in order to monitor all telephone and data traffic. These alterations will reportedly allow security services to track the use of sensitive words or phrases in emails, webchats, and on social media. As a result, the U.S. State Department recently released a bulletin warning anyone travelling to the Games to be “extremely cautious with communications,” noting that “Business travelers should be particularly aware that trade secrets, negotiating positions, and other sensitive information may be taken and shared with competitors, counterparts, and/or Russian regulatory and legal entities.” For their part, the FSB denies that surveillance at the Games will be excessive, insisting that the CCTV cameras at the London Olympics were far more intrusive. “There, they even put CCTV cameras in...the toilets,” insisted one FSB official. “We are not taking this kind of measure.”

October 7:

The Kremlin stepped up its economic pressure on Lithuania only days after Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius warned of possible retaliation. Not long after Russia imposed increased checks a few weeks ago on Lithuanian trucks crossing the Russian border, the BBC reports that Linkevicius threatened to begin similar tactics on its border with Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave surrounded by Lithuania and Poland, noting that “The Kaliningrad region is isolated, geographically isolated, so we could apply some measures also to cut something.” Only a week later, Russian officials halted imports of Lithuanian dairy produce, claiming that the levels of yeast and mold in the products were “unacceptable.” It’s a tactic Russia has already used several times to bully the former Soviet states, which lean heavily on proceeds from trade with Russia. The European Commission is currently investigating claims of market-rigging in Eastern Europe, after Lithuanian officials accused Russia’s gas monopoly Gazprom of raising prices nearly 600% between 2006 and 2012. Analysts believe the Kremlin’s recent bullying is an attempt to prevent closer ties between its former Soviet satellites and the European Union.

October 8:

In a move not seen since the Soviet era, A Russian court this week ordered a critic of President Vladimir Putin indefinitely confined to a psychiatric ward. Mikhail Kosenko, who Reuters reports underwent outpatient psychiatric treatment before his arrest, was found guilty of assaulting a police officer at a protest on the eve of Putin’s inauguration back in May of 2012. The court moreover found that at the time of the alleged attack, Kosenko was “in a state of insanity.” Protestors and rights activists sharply criticized the ruling, calling it a “clear case of a return to punitive psychiatry in Russia.” “The guilty slant [and] the political character of this process is completely obvious,” insisted one rights activist. The practice of confining opposition activists to psychiatric facilities was a popular one in the heyday of the Soviet Union, but hasn’t been seen since. Kosenko’s family admits that the man was on medication for “a psychiatric disorder after a trauma sustained in military service,” but they maintain that he was nonviolent, and had no previous run-ins with police.

October 9:

The saga continues over the arrest of 30 Greenpeace activists and their crew, as Russian officials announced the discovery of “hard drugs” on board the ship seized during the group’s attempted Arctic protest. Officials from Russia’s Investigative Committee announced that a search of the ship turned up poppy straw (also known as raw opium), which can be used to produce morphine or heroin. BBC reports that, as a result, the charges against some of the 30 detainees may change. Greenpeace officials call the latest announcement a “smear” tactic, adding that the ship was searched by drug dogs before it left port in Norway, “and nothing was found because nothing illegal was on the ship.” In a letter to the Kremlin, the organization’s president offered himself as a guarantor of the good conduct of the activists should they be released on bail.

October 10:

In an article for the Institute of Modern Russia, Donald Jensen suggests that the appointment of Colonel General Viktor Zolotov, the former head of the Russian President’s security service, as deputy commander of the Interior Ministry troops may be the Kremlin’s first move toward the creation of a new National Guard. If so, he argues, the move could indicate Putin’s fear of renewed mass protests across Russia. Jensen claims that plans have already been proposed in the Kremlin to merge the Interior Ministry with airborne forces and military police to create a National Guard, which would be responsible for protecting the “constitutional order.” By this, Jensen means Putin and his regime. “During the wave of mass protests in 2011-12,” Jensen notes, “the OMON forces (special police units) were very aggressive, while the Interior Ministry troops were relatively more passive,” for which Putin blamed the FSB. Jensen goes on to suggest that Putin doesn’t fully trust the army, making such a guard, headed by a man he has known since both worked in St. Petersburg’s local government in the 1990s, more appealing. “As speculation heightens about whether Putin will seek yet another term in 2018,” Jensen concludes, “his basic plan seems to be to stay in the presidency for the indefinite future...Putin seems to believe that this goal requires that he dig in and rely on those people who are closest to him, such as Viktor Zolotov.”

October 11:

A recent report by Credit Suisse suggests that wealth inequality in Russia ranks among the world’s highest. According to the report, 35 percent of Russian household wealth is controlled by only 110 billionaires. Given that worldwide, billionaires collectively account for 1 to 2 percent of the total wealth, this means that “Russia has the highest level of wealth inequality in the world, apart from small Caribbean nations with resident billionaires.” RIA-Novosti reports that the number of billionaires in Russia has multiplied 13 times over since 2000, when there were only eight billionaires in the country.