A Film About a Murdered Russian Activist Takes Its Own Risks
But on the morning of July 15, 2009, as she was leaving her apartment, she was abducted and murdered, crimes for which no one has been charged but are viewed by many as precipitated by her work.
Years later, filmmakers and former colleagues trying to tell her story encountered their own set of risks as they endeavored to draw attention to her heroism and the conditions that provoked it.
The resulting short 35-minute documentary, 'Natasha,' as Natalya was known, premiered this month at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Andrew Meier, one of the two producers and directors of the film, said he does not imagine it will be shown in Russia anytime soon.
'Even revisiting Natasha's work and Natasha's murder is a taboo, to put it mildly,' he said in an interview. 'It's one of the big cases you just don't talk about in Chechnya.'
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USA Today
33 minutes ago
- USA Today
US-Russia prisoner swap one year later: What to know about the history-making deal
One year ago, Russia and the United States conducted the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War, freeing journalist Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan from Russian custody. The August 1, 2024, deal was the culmination of months of backdoor negotiations between former President Joe Biden's administration, the Russian government and the governments of five other nations, making it one of the most significant diplomatic operations between Russia and the West in decades. In total, the historic swap involved the release of 16 people previously detained in Russia in exchange for eight people held in the U.S., Germany, Norway, Slovenia and Poland. Turkey was a neutral country where the swap took place. US-Russia Relationship: Trump said he'd end Ukraine war in 24 hours. Now his patience with Putin is wearing thin. Who was released from Russian custody in the swap? More than a dozen people were released from Russian prisons and labor camps, several of them Russian pro-democracy and human rights activists or prominent opposition figures of Russian president Vladimir Putin. The deal also freed five German citizens from Russian custody, three American citizens and one U.S. resident. The three Americans were Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, the journalist Gershkovich and Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. More: Who were the Russian prisoners released in swap for Paul Whelan, Evan Gershkovich? The last high-profile prisoner swap between Russia and the U.S. took place more than two years prior, when American basketball player Brittney Griner was exchanged for a notorious Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout. He had been held in an American prison for 12 years following convictions of aiding a terrorist organization, conspiring to kill Americans and to supply anti-aircraft missiles. 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Gershkovich, a U.S. citizen from New Jersey, was detained in Russia in March 2023 while living and working in the country as one of the Wall Street Journal's Moscow reporters. He is a former national of the Soviet Union and had accreditation from the Russian Foreign Ministry to work as a journalist in the country at the time. His arrest came a little over a year after Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, during a time of heightened tensions between the West and Russia over the war. At the time, the Kremlin was cracking down on opposition activists, independent journalists, and civil society groups, USA TODAY previously reported. By the time of his release, he had been held in Russia for 17 months. Who is Alsu Kurmasheva? Kurmasheva is a Russian-American journalist who was working for the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty at the time of her detention. She was detained while visiting Russia in June 2023 for a family emergency for failing to register her U.S. passport with Russian authorities. Authorities confiscated her U.S. and Russian passports, Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty reported, preventing her from leaving the country, and later detained her again in October 2023, on charges of failing to declare herself a foreign agent. Kurmasheva and her employer have long denied the accusations, calling the detention and charges politically motivated. Leading human rights and media watchdog organizations have called Kurmasheva's and Gershkovich's arrests arbitrary and part of Russia's years-long crackdown on independent and foreign media. A few months later, Russian authorities launched a third investigation against the journalist for 'spreading false information' about Russia's military, a charge for which she was convicted in July 2024. Who is Vladimir Kara-Murza? Kara-Murza, a former journalist and prominent opposition figure, was also part of the 2024 prisoner swap. He is Russian-born but has dual citizenship with the U.K., and is a U.S. green card holder. He is a contributing columnist at the Washington Post. Kara-Murza had been imprisoned since 2022 on charges of treason and spreading false information about the Russian military, which he has rejected. In 2023, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was poisoned twice, in 2015 and 2017. Kara-Murza has claimed both were assassination attempts using the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok, and caused him to fall into a coma. The Kremlin has denied any involvement. According to his Washington Post bio, a media investigation by Bellingcat and The Insider identified officers of Russia's Federal Security Service who were behind the poisonings. Contributing: Kinsey Crowley, Christopher Cann, Margie Cullen, USA TODAY NETWORK. Kathryn Palmer is a national trending news reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach her at kapalmer@ and on X @KathrynPlmr.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Russia's rumored jet-powered versions of the Iranian Shahed are appearing in Ukraine's air defense reports
Ukrainian reports are starting to document the use of Russia's new jet-propelled Shahed drones. One version, unofficially dubbed the Geran-3, is said to fly up to 500 miles per hour. Such speeds would pose key problems for Ukraine's air defenses if jet drones are launched en masse. More signs are emerging that Russia is launching a new exploding drone said to fly much faster than its current Shaheds. Ukraine's Air Force Command reported on Wednesday that it had encountered jet-powered attack drones while defending its airspace the night before. "A notable feature of the night attack was the use of up to eight jet-powered UAVs in the northern direction," it wrote in a regular update. The announcement marks one of the first official reports of Ukraine's forces encountering the new loitering munition in combat. In total, the Air Force Command counted 78 Shahed attack drones launched on Tuesday night. The statement added that 51 drones were shot down or disabled by electronic warfare, interceptor drones, anti-air missiles, and mobile fire groups, which typically use truck-mounted machine guns. The Ukrainian air force did not specify if any jet-propelled drones were shot down. "There were 27 drone impacts recorded at 7 locations, and falling debris from downed drones at 2 locations," Air Force Command wrote. On Thursday, a Ukrainian Telegram channel that monitors the flight paths of Russian drones also wrote that it recorded launches of jet-propelled drones. "On the map we've drawn for you, you can see the movement of cruise missiles, jet-powered Shaheds, and regular strike/decoy UAVs," it wrote. While not an official government channel, it's widely followed in Ukraine for city-specific alerts on incoming drones. A major problem for Ukraine's air defenses Russian jet-propelled drones are believed to be closely modeled after Iran's Shahed-238, an upgraded long-range loitering munition Tehran unveiled in November. Moscow has not officially detailed its own version of the new weapon, but Ukraine's intelligence and Western analysts have reported that it's likely building a model with the Tolou‑10/13 jet engine to vastly increase the drone's speed. Open-source intelligence sources said as early as January that Ukraine may have shot down at least one Shahed-238-type drone, indicating limited Russian use. In June, images published by Ukrainian Telegram channels appeared to show destroyed fragments of such drones in the country. In both earlier reports and the Air Force Command's update on Wednesday, it's unclear if these were prototypes or finalized drones. But if deployed en masse against Ukraine, the new upgraded drone could pose a major problem for Kyiv's air defenses. The Shahed-238 is said to be much faster than the Shahed-136, which is locally produced in Russia as the Geran-2 — the Kremlin's main attack drone against Ukraine. While the Shahed-136 is known to fly at top speeds of 115 mph, a Russian general told state media in December that the Shahed-238 could fly as fast as 500 mph. Extended independent analyses on the drone's still aren't publicly available, and it's possible that the munition can only fly that fast while diving. At such speed, however, the jet-powered drone would be nearly as fast as a cruise missile. That would be a nearly impossible target for Ukraine's mobile fire groups, or the vehicle-mounted machine gun crews it's relied on to fight off Shahed-136s. This year, mobile fire groups are already being overwhelmed by the sheer number of Russian Shahed-136s launched every night. To shore up the gap, Ukraine has started prioritizing interceptor drones, which also risk being rendered obsolete if jet-powered Shaheds become mainstream. Interceptor drones, built secretly by Ukrainian companies, already need to fly much faster than the Shahed-136 since they must catch up to the loitering munition after it's detected. A Shahed-238 or Geran-3 moving at 500 mph would require an intercepting drone to fly nearly three times as fast as before. "In such a case, promising antiaircraft interceptor UAVs, unfortunately, will be powerless," wrote a Ukrainian military blogger in late June. Ukraine does have advanced anti-air missile defenses for faster targets, such as the US-made Patriot system, which has even been reported to take down the hypersonic Kinzhal missile. Still, Ukraine typically reserves these expensive anti-air munitions for ballistic missiles; expending them to neutralize waves of Shahed drones would be unsustainable. Read the original article on Business Insider Solve the daily Crossword
CNN
6 hours ago
- CNN
‘House is gone. Cars are gone': Paul Whelan's life one year after his release from a Russian prison
Russia CrimeFacebookTweetLink Follow For Paul Whelan, returning to life in the United States after more than half a decade of Russian imprisonment has been 'interesting' – and not without its challenges. 'You're literally starting over,' he told CNN ahead of the one-year anniversary of the sweeping US-Russia prisoner exchange deal that secured his release. 'For people like me who have come home after five-and-a-half years, we really don't have very much. House is gone. Cars are gone. Employment's gone. No health insurance,' he said. His post-traumatic stress disorder gets triggered in hotel rooms, after he was 'violently arrested' in one in 2018 while visiting Moscow for a friend's wedding. It was that arrest on espionage charges that started his nearly six-year nightmare of Russian detention. Returning to his home in Michigan was an adjustment, he said, and he had even developed new seasonal allergies from being away so long. 'It took a little bit of time for me to kind of feel comfortable driving down the same streets that I used to or going to a park or doing things that I used to do, especially with my dog when she was alive,' Whelan told CNN. His dog passed away while he was in Russia. 'Doing routine things that I hadn't done for five-and-a-half, six years, and then I was doing them again, and it did take a few months just to kind of get back into the hang of it.' Whelan hasn't been able to get a new job. Some companies won't hire people who've been in prison, regardless of whether that imprisonment was wrongful, he explained, and he's competing with people who don't have a nearly six-year gap on their resume. 'Most people understand the wrongful detention issue,' he told CNN. 'They don't know what to do with it. It doesn't necessarily fit into their policies or procedures.' Whelan has been working with Michigan Democratic Reps. Debbie Dingell and Haley Stevens and others to pass a law 'that would fund the medical, dental and psychological care listed in the Levinson Act that was never funded, as well as to provide compensation and things like that for former hostages who were wrongfully detained,' he said. The Levinson Act codified key parts of US hostage policy into law, including the position of the Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs, and set out criteria for making wrongful detention determinations. Additional amendments have sought to increase support for families of US hostages and wrongful detainees. 'Congresswoman Dingell has worked closely with Paul Whelan to understand and address the challenges that political prisoners face when they return home,' Dingell's deputy chief of staff Michaela Johnson told CNN. 'One of these is ensuring they have the medical treatment and mental health resources they need to recover from their traumatic experience.' 'She is working on legislation to address these issues that have been raised in her experience working with Paul,' Johnson said. Whelan also wants to meet with President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to discuss the matter. Whelan keeps in touch with fellow inmates who were imprisoned with him in a Russian penal colony in Mordovia. That facility, IK-17, has now closed and will instead house Ukrainian prisoners of war, Whelan said. His friends have been scattered around the country, but they describe the situation as poor. 'The food is worse than what we had. Russia is having a tremendous problem with the economy. The prison guards aren't happy. There aren't enough guards to go around,' he recounted. Prisoners, especially foreigners, are being told that if they want to get out, they have to go fight in Ukraine, he said. Whelan also is in contact with fellow former wrongful detainees, he said, including Evan Gershkovich, who was freed with him last year. Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva and Putin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is a US permanent resident, were also released as part of the sweeping exchange. There's a sense of camaraderie among the former detainees, Whelan said, likening it to 'the Island of Misfit Toys' from the Christmas movie 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.' 'It's a unique club of people from all different backgrounds were brought together not by their choosing, and we have shared experiences,' Whelan said. Looking ahead to how he will commemorate the one-year anniversary of being freed, Whelan said, 'There's a special bottle of scotch that I have that I'll probably open, and I think I've got a box of cigars sitting around.'
