Boris and Arkady Rotenberg were among the most famous 🇷🇺 oligarchs to be sanctioned after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The Rotenberg Files, a leak of never-before-seen insider documents, gives insight into how they preserved their wealth and avoided sanctions...
The Rotenberg dossier shows that the Putin family owns a €10.8 million chalet in an Austrian ski resort. Local residents claim to have seen Putin's daughter, Maria Vorontsova, and her former partner at the chalet. The property is registered to a Cypriot company that received a… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Files from an anonymous source, consisting of more than 50,000 documents and emails sent between 2013 and 2020, were obtained by @istories_eng and @OCCRP and shared with 15 global media outlets. According to them, after sanctions were imposed on the Rotenbergs, their stakes in 🇷🇺… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
The revelations from the leak shed light on the Rotenbergs' sophisticatedly hidden assets and Putin's involvement in them. The leak calls into question the transparency of financial networks and thus the effectiveness of sanctions imposed on Russia. #StopRussia
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Russian propaganda refers to the Ukrainian government as a “Nazi regime.” Actually, Russia is at risk of sliding towards antisemitism. Moscow Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt left Russia last year and told Russian Jews to flee too before they are made scapegoats for the invasion… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
While it's true that Putin may not be an antisemite, he has shown himself to be a pragmatic leader with few moral principles. In times of crisis, he may change the policies to maintain power, as, for example, did Mussolini. Initially, fascism in Italy had no antisemitic elements,… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
However, Mussolini enacted brutal racial laws against Jews under pressure from homegrown fascists & to please Hitler. The same pressure is mounting on Putin from Russian nationalists & far-right (the majority of who seem to be the active war and Putin supporters) to turn against… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
In today’s Russia, literature is the same state control tool as it was during the USSR and 🇷🇺 Empire. In 2015, Putin acknowledged the instrumental role of literature, declaring it the year of literature in Russia. He emphasized its importance in “uniting a nation around spiritual… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Modern Russia's exploitation of literature differs from past authoritarian regimes due to rapid changes in the digital world. In the monopolized information space, state-controlled media plays a crucial role in disseminating "right" narratives, shaping historical memory, and… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Russia weaponizes literature to further its ideology and suppress dissent both domestically and abroad. In the occupied parts of Ukraine, Russia removes Ukrainian books from libraries. #StopRussianPropaganda
The Soviet Union under Stalin's leadership embraced censorship as a norm, resembling Nazi Germany in its approach to art and literature. The Bolsheviks saw art as a tool for promoting Marxist-Leninist ideology or the cult of Stalin’s personality.
Stalin & his favorite writer Maxim Gorky believed literature should portray a positive image of Soviet life. This gave rise to "socialist realism," an art style that served the USSR & the Communist Party's aims. Any art depicting a negative or actual image of the regime was… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
To enforce socialist realism, similar to the German Chamber of Culture the Union of Soviet Writers was established. Membership became mandatory for professional writers, limiting career prospects. For example, Demyan Bedny, a radical poet who didn’t manage to adapt to the norm,… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
History shows that literature in an authoritarian regime becomes its propaganda tool. In 1933, Hitler called for the "political and moral purification of public life" in Germany, using education, cinema, literature, and the media to preserve "German values."
The Nazis quickly turned the "purification" campaign into state policy. The Reichskammer für Kultur, headed by Hitler's chief propagandist Goebbels, united creative artists under Nazi leadership. Membership in it became mandatory for artists, and non-compliance led to… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
The Third Reich exercised control over artistic expression, banning works that deviated from the regime's ideology. Art after World War I was considered corrupt and degenerate. Literature was subjected to massive censorship, with authors such as Remarque and Sigmund Freud banned… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
More than a week passed after the Kakhovka HPP explosion but it feels like a month. A single week cannot hold so much bad news. The short chronology of the destruction by @hwag_ucmc
Experts consulted by the 🇷🇺BBC stated that shelling alone cannot destroy the dam. Despite shelling the Antonov Bridge with HIMARS, it remained intact as 🇺🇦 military deliberately damaged only the road surface. Later that bridge was blown up by the Russian withdrawing troops.
October 2022: Telegram channel of the 🇷🇺205th Separate Motorized Rifle brigade revealed that, due to the 🇺🇦offensive, they were ordered to retreat from the right bank of Kherson region. The channel claimed the brigade was mining the Kakhovka HPP dam in response to the 🇺🇦offense.
In the Russian Empire, writers had enormous influence as key agents of the dominant ideology. Poets and prose writers, often sharing imperialist beliefs, echoed views that justified the actions of the tsarist regime and promoted official narratives.
An example is the November Uprising, a Polish uprising suppressed by the tsarist regime. Pushkin, a key 🇷🇺 poet of Romanticism, supported the oppression of Poles by Nicholas I. Considering the West an enemy because of its support for Poland, Pushkin even threatened European… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
🇷🇺 writers of the time were often politically silent or adhered to official national doctrine. Obviously, the latter were the most highly regarded. Fyodor Tyutchev, a famous poet among the 🇷🇺, glorified the 🇷🇺 empire as a bulwark of Europe against the "Spring of Nations".