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Newsweek
3 days ago
- Politics
- Newsweek
Captive Audience: How Putin Shapes Russian Opinions
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan were toasting the new millennium with their fellow journalists when former president Boris Yeltsin introduced Vladimir Putin as his surprise successor. But the KGB past of Russia's incoming head of state raised alarm bells over the future of the country's nascent freedoms. "It was clear that for people like us, it wouldn't promise anything good," Borogan told Newsweek. A quarter of a century later, Putin's crackdown on dissent is so complete that prison terms can await those whose posts on social media platforms like Telegram and VKontakte are deemed to discredit his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Soldatov and Borogan's book Our Dear Friends In Moscow outlines a trajectory from a freer Russia at the start of Putin's rule to a country in which the president holds captive the opinion of the majority and how some former colleagues ended up toeing the Kremlin line. The book's subheading, "The Inside Story of a Broken Generation," outlines Putin's growing grip on public discourse, especially over the war he started. "People who are against this invasion remain silent because of fear," Soldatov told Newsweek. Russian President Vladimir Putin is pictured on June 30, 2025, in Moscow, Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin is pictured on June 30, 2025, in Moscow, Russia. Getty Images Moscow Theater Siege—Putin's Key Moment When Soldatov and Borogan started out in their early 20s working for newspapers like Sevodnya, Izvestia, and as founders of Russian secret services watchdog Agentura, they were a generation younger than those who had been previously in the industry. Progress was swift in a freewheeling media climate far removed from the restrictions of the Soviet era, but soon after assuming the presidency in 2000, Putin started turning the screw. Our Dear Friends In Moscow describes how this meant they had to move from publication to publication, sometimes due to editors bowing to state demands to toe the new party line, other times for work that agitated the security services. But one event that marked Putin's intentions to control public opinion was the storming of Moscow's Dubrovka Theater on 23 October 2002 by Chechen militants who took hostage 912 people watching the musical "Nord-Ost." Russian investigate journalist Andrei Soldatov. Russian investigate journalist Andrei Soldatov. Supplied by PublicAffairs Russian security services released sleeping gas into the building before storming. All 40 hostage takers died, but so did over 130 hostages, largely because of the gas, and the botched operation was condemned. Putin wanted to show himself as a president who could deal with terrorists in a different way to Yeltsin, the man who anointed him, said Soldatov. "Putin wanted to be seen as a strong leader and much more brutal and decisive— not like Yeltsin," he said, "when journalists started writing critical things about the way the situation was handled, he got really furious." Following the siege, Putin accused journalists of being traitors, and that was when Soldatov and Borogan faced their first FSB investigation. Restrictions grew, and by the end of the first decade, Soldatov said most newspapers had reduced or completely shut down their investigative departments. Threats against journalists grew, sending a chilling message to those who wrote about Russian security services. This image from 26 October 2003, shows a memorial of those who died at the Dubrokva theater in Moscow a year earlier when Chechen commanders took hundreds hostage. This image from 26 October 2003, shows a memorial of those who died at the Dubrokva theater in Moscow a year earlier when Chechen commanders took hundreds Social Contract Post-Soviet era economic turbulence caused financial hardship for much of the Russian population who felt "deceived by the West" that new democracy did not mean wealth, as they thought they had been promised, Borogan said. This was something Putin was able to exploit when he came to power. "He said, 'We will be strong. We would not be together with the West, which has always been against us, and I will resurrect our pride,'" said Borogan. "The population was not brainwashed completely, Putin found their weak spot." The price of Russia's most lucrative export boomed and as a barrel of oil, peaking at $150 per in July 2008 before the global financial crisis, people linked this burgeoning affluence to Putin. "The initial social contract was very simple," said Soldatov. The public gave up public freedoms and participation in any political activities, in return for prosperity, stability and security. But Putin also exploited the desire among people in Russia to get their pride back as a superpower. Soldatov said that along this path was the 2008 war in Georgia, which showed the Russian army would not be humiliated anymore. The illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 inflated that sense of pride. Since then, Putin has reintroduced an element of fear. A decade ago, opposing the Kremlin was only a problem for political actors—now almost every strata of Russian society is in danger, including businessmen and government workers, he said. Fear Is Omnipresent Putin exerted his control over TV channels and restrictions on other media are so tight that looking at posts or independent media in public can be risky. "Fear is omnipresent," Borogan said. "Most people in Russia who oppose the invasion of Ukraine remain silent because of this fear," said Soldatov. "The Kremlin is skillful at reminding people of what it was like under Stalin, " said Soldatov," sometimes they use intentionally the rhetoric which was used under Stalin to remind people of what the Kremlin is capable of doing." Russian investigative journalist Irina Borogan. Russian investigative journalist Irina Borogan. Supplied by PublicAffairs An example of this is the social media posts of former president Dmitry Medvedev, who regularly rails against the West and boasts of Russia's nuclear capabilities. "It gives a strong message to the Russian audience because they immediately recognize the wording." In June 2022, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs placed Soldatov on the federal wanted list, charged with spreading "fake news" about the Russian Army linked to his reporting on the faulty intelligence that preceded the invasion. As Russia's media was strangled during Putin's rule, which included a stint as prime minister between 2008 and 2012, it became more difficult for Soldatov and Borogan to work in Moscow, and they left the country. Meanwhile, their media colleagues they were close to at the start of the century became more aligned with the Kremlin's position. One of them, Zhenya Baranov, was a presenter for propaganda outlet Channel 1, which pushes Kremlin rhetoric about Nazis in Ukraine. Another, Olga Lyubimova, rose to become culture minister. A third, Petya Akapov referred in an op-ed on RIA Novosti to Putin's invasion as "Russia is restoring its historical completeness" and described the president's actions as "the solution of the Ukrainian question." These former comrades were ambitious and wanted to play a significant role in Russian politics and so decided that the only way to achieve anything is to work for the dictator, said Soldatov, adding, they believe "if you decided to oppose him, you become an outsider, a maverick—like us who are forced to live in exile."
Spectator
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
Putin's stranglehold on the Russian press
Since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, the Russian press has been slowly, methodically strangled, which has forced existential choices on newspaper and TV journalists. Twenty-one have been killed – beaten, poisoned or gunned down. Others, such as Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, highly regarded investigative reporters, have been forced into exile. Yet others, like the 'dear friends' of this book's title, have chosen a different path – to cleave ever closer to the regime. The authors tell the fascinating story of those choices and allow us a glimpse of why they were taken. In 2000, Soldatov and Borogan were employed by the political department of the newspaper Izvestiya, where they made new friends – slightly older and more experienced journalists, whom they envied for their access to people in power and admired for their intelligence and bohemian glamour. This group's ideas about Russia seemed a bit 'retro': Petya Akopov envisaged the country as a spiritual power, in contrast to the West's moral decadence; Zhenya Baranov had pan-Slav leanings; while their patron, Evgeny Krutikov, was obsessed with the secret services. But at the time these views appeared eccentric, provocative and certainly harmless. At first, Izvestiya was free enough to allow some criticism of government policy; but after barely six months, Soldatov and Borogan were squeezed out by increasing demands to toe the Putinist line. As they arrived at the office to clear their desks, they noticed a new employee – a nondescript, secretive man with no media experience. Just ten years after the 1991 putsch, the security services were back on the editorial floor. Moving from publication to publication, the pair found ways to get into print for most of the next decade. In the unlikely pages of Versia, the offshoot of an unscrupulous tabloid called Sovershchenno Sekretno (Completely Secret), they published an exposé of the official account of the Nord-Ost crisis, in which hundreds of hostages trapped in a theatre by Chechen suicide bombers were gassed by the security services. The FSB responded by harassing them and the paper for months, and this set a pattern. Subsequent employers crumpled under pressure from above. Each time the pair published a too-truthful report they'd be out on the street again. For some years, interestingly, the principle that the press should act as a check on state power still held true among their 'dear friends' from Izvestiya days, who helped them get articles printed. And for a while both Akopov and Krutikov were even happy to cooperate with Soldatov and Borogan on the website they'd set up, providing analysis and comment on Russia's security and intelligence services. In 2008, the authors' efforts to investigate the murder of their colleague Anna Politkovskaya got them sacked from their final paper. Bravely, they clung on in Moscow, writing books for PublicAffairs, their New York publisher, that were later translated into Russian. 'It felt as if we and our friends had discovered some sort of arrangement whereby we could coexist with the country's political regime.' One day, the liberals hoped, Putin would be gone and things would return to 'normal'. Their Izvestiya friends, meanwhile, had gone a different route, straight to the heart of the regime. By 2014, Baranov was a presenter for Channel 1, the Kremlin propaganda channel, pushing a narrative of Nazis in Ukraine and Nato aggression, while his wife crossed the barely discernible line between state and press to become deputy minister of culture the following year. Akopov is now known as the author of a triumphalist essay, published in February 2022: 'Putin has resolved the Ukrainian question.' It was swiftly removed from the internet when the Ukrainians stopped the Russian army outside Kyiv. All three are subject to sanctions. Why did these intelligent, well-travelled people agree to be the mouthpieces for state misinformation? Basically it was their only option if they wanted to stay in Russia and work as journalists. Financial need and family and health pressures weighed on them, as on anyone, and general lawlessness and corruption in Russia encourage conformity in all but the bravest. The emotional hangover of the Soviet Union is also considerable – nostalgia for the USSR's former status, the certainties of their childhood and family trauma working themselves out in complicated ways. Perhaps even more significant is another Soviet legacy – a profound cynicism that reasserted itself, as powerfully as ever, once Putin's direction was clear. Many of the propagandists are connected to Soviet dynasties such as the Mikhalkovs, who seem quite comfortable with telling lies in return for success and comfort. Trying to gauge the views of ordinary Muscovites, Soldatov and Borodan noted a collective determination to enjoy this rare moment of Russian prosperity without rocking the boat. Their interviewees often clammed up, snapping: 'We just want to trust our security services!' Yet almost before people had noticed, the Russia they knew had been transformed 'from a highly globalised and aspirational society to a dismal walled-in fortress'. In a flash, the moment when they could have chosen another future had passed.
Hamilton Spectator
02-05-2025
- Health
- Hamilton Spectator
What happens when you microwave plastic? Here's what the science says
Microwaves have come a long way since they were first introduced into homes as a quick and easy way to prep a meal, and so has our understanding of them. Microwaves create electromagnetic radiation. 'In the microwave, we expose food to these electromagnetic waves,' said Dmitriy Soldatov, professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Guelph. The electromagnetic waves 'induce rotation of water molecules,' said Soldatov, meaning water molecules start to move, and push other molecules around. This, said Soldatov, will make other molecules also start moving. 'Basically, that's what heat is,' he said. Electromagnetic waves do not affect other molecules aside from water, said Soldatov, 'This is very smart because any food will have some water molecules in it,' he said. Here's what that could mean for your food. If you flip your dishware upside down, you might find a note that says the material is microwave safe. When it comes to claims that certain materials are in fact microwave safe, it's important to understand when manufacturers deem something 'microwave safe,' to begin with, said Soldatov, since it only means the material can be used in a microwave without it melting, decomposing or becoming deformed. 'It does not mean it cannot leach any chemicals into food,' he said. BPA-free plastic, is safer, but still not the safest material. When deciding what is safest, 'we should look at what could cause toxicity,' said Soldatov. In general, plastics are pretty safe, he said, 'but it really depends on the plastic.' 'Plastic is a polymer. When soft polymer molecules start moving, heated, they themselves would not typically produce any toxicity,' said Soldatov. What could produce toxicity, he said, is if there are some 'bad chemicals in those plastics,' adding those harmful chemicals, could leach into the food from the container. Once these chemicals get into food, they could interact with body physiological function, said Soldatov. In particular bisphenol A, — commonly referred to as BPA — a chemical used in producing certain plastics, has the potential to interact with the 'current system body,' which basically controls a lot of physiological functions, he said. If choosing to sous vide — vacuum sealing food in plastic bags, and cooking it immersed in water — Soldatov said to be extra vigilante you aren't using materials that can leach chemicals as things cook. 'Sous-vide implies longer cooking times, so one would have to be more careful in selecting suitable kitchenware,' said Soldatov. Instead of using plastic bags to sous-vide food, opt to use glass containers like canning jars, brand names like Pyrex, or any other heat-resistant glass. If you prefer to use a bag, consider switching over to a reusable silicone bag instead. Ziploc brand has branched out from solely BPA-free plastic to now offering silicone pouches and containers, made to be able to go from the freezer to the oven in temperatures up to 425°F or 218.3°C, according to a Ziploc spokesperson in an email to the Star. The silicone can also be washed in the dishwasher and reused, read the statement. If you want to stick with using plastics to sous-vide, be sure to use BPA-free plastics. 'Glass or silicon will be even better,' Soldatov said. If you are making the shift to only microwaving your food in alternatives to plastic, make sure you are eliminating all other sources of plastic from the microwave, too. Microwaving food underneath plastic, if not BPA-free, can also leach chemicals into your food. If you use a microwave plate cover meant to keep the inside of your microwave safe from splashes and easier to clean, consider using a heat-resistant glass or silicone sheet, instead. 'I would say that glass in any scenario, would be absolutely the safest,' said Soldatov, 'If somebody is very concerned ... use glass without any problems,' he said.
