Podcasts by The Naked Pravda

Spies, student journalists, and life behind bars: A blowup in Moscow’s relations with Prague, the felony case against ‘Doxa,’ and conditions in Russian prisons from 2021-04-24T13:09:37

A lot has happened this month. On the world stage, Russia’s relations with the Czech Republic started unraveling on April 17, when officials in Prague accused Russian military intelligence agent...

‘Sweeping new authority’: What it means to sanction Russia’s sovereign debt from 2021-04-17T13:20:24

This week, the Biden administration rolled out the latest round of U.S. sanctions against Russia, slapping Moscow (yet again) with a series of targeted measures to punish the Kremlin for alleged...

The quiet game: How scientists in Siberia tried to conceal pollution research from 2021-04-10T15:06:43

Last month, the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences decided to withhold public access to new research on atmospheric and soil pollution in cities throughout the region. The discus...

Transnational Repression 101: How Russia goes after its citizens abroad from 2021-03-27T15:58:50

When it comes to carrying out repressions, the Russian government’s reach isn’t limited by its own borders. The Kremlin is known for going after perceived enemies abroad — especially former “ins...

Putin the Killer: What Joe Biden’s pronouncement means in U.S.-Russian diplomatic history from 2021-03-20T13:49:45

In an interview published on March 17, U.S. President Joe Biden said he considers Vladimir Putin to be a “killer,” prompting the Russian president to respond a day later with a schoolyard retort...

Russia’s failed Twitter throttle from 2021-03-13T16:33:23

Russia and Twitter haven’t really gotten along for years now. In fact, since 2017, federal censors at Roskomnadzor (RKN) have filed more than 28,000 takedown requests with the social network, an...

Xenophobes and xenomorphs: A look back at Cold War science fiction from 2021-03-05T14:52:59

In a time when intergalactic superheroes dominate global box offices and capture the imaginations of millions of people around the world, what do we see when we look back at the science fiction ...

Under pressure: The evolving Belarusian opposition movement versus Lukashenko’s embattled regime from 2021-02-26T15:11:40

Belarus has seen ongoing protests since August 2020, when election officials declared that Alexander Lukashenko (Alyaksandr Lukashenka) had won his sixth consecutive presidential term. The mass ...

Arms control treaties aren’t for friends: The difficult diplomacy of today’s U.S.-Russian negotiations from 2021-02-13T15:50:50

Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden recently had their first presidential phone call — a conversation that paved the way for a renewal of the New START Treaty (the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty reach...

Fighting the ‘crooks and thieves’: Alexey Navalny’s anti-corruption politics from 2021-02-06T16:06:46

For the last six months, Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny has been making headlines both in Russia and abroad. His near-fatal poisoning in August 2020 provoked international outcry a...

Putin’s people: Money in the bank and a palace by the sea from 2021-01-23T13:58:23

In December 2010, a St. Petersburg businessman named Sergey Kolesnikov penned a nifty four-page open letter to then-President Dmitry Medvedev, outlining how a glorious palace built for Vladimir ...

How Russia is ruled: Debt and vertical control across towns and industries from 2021-01-01T15:37:19

Thanks to Russia’s recent constitutional amendments, local self-government has effectively lost its independence. State officials at all levels are now accountable, one way or another, to the pr...

Revisiting the poisoning of Vladimir Kara-Murza from 2020-12-25T15:43:42

There have been major breakthroughs in the investigative reporting surrounding the poiso...

Follow the money: What monetary policy and banking say about Russian politics from 2020-12-12T15:26:04

Even if you follow news in Russia regularly, you might be unaware or only vaguely aware that Russia’s Central Bank printed an enormous sum of money over the past decade in a sweeping campaign to...

Maia Sandu’s win and what it means for Moldova from 2020-11-28T04:14:28

On November 15, Moldovan citizens at home and abroad came out in record-breaking numbers to cast their ballots in the run-off vote of the country’s Listen

Is it Putin or is it Russia? The causes of today’s bad vibes between Moscow and the West. from 2020-11-21T15:37:37

Back in early October, Meduza learned about a whole archive of transcripts between members of the Clinton administration and Vladimir Putin, dated between 1999 and 2001 — records that w...

The Nagorno-Karabakh truce: What to expect in the years that follow a bloody six-week war from 2020-11-14T16:25:51

A six-week war in Nagorno-Karabakh has ended disastrously for Armenia. Judging by th...

Keeping Up With Kyrgyzstan from 2020-10-31T15:30:55

On October 5, thousands of opposition demonstrators took to the streets of Bishkek to protest the official results of Kyrgyzstan’s parliamentary elections. About a dozen different opposition par...

From Russia With Junk: Why the U.S. Trashed the Ventilators Shipped From Moscow from 2020-10-24T14:51:27

In April 2020, Russia shipped 45 ventilator machines to New York City as part of what became a humanitarian exchange with America at the height of the Big Apple’s initial coronavirus outbreak. B...

The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict from 2020-10-10T15:20:17

Armenia and Azerbaijan reached a fragile ceasefire agreement in Moscow on October 10 after nearly a dozen hours in negotiations. The two sides will suspend hostilities so bodies and prisoners of...

Stephen Cohen’s legacy from 2020-09-26T14:42:35

The historian Stephen Cohen died on September 18 at the age of 81. Though he became something of a pariah among American Russianists in his final years, particularly after 2014 (thanks to his vi...

Belarusian propaganda: From courting the West to taking Russia’s cues from 2020-09-19T14:20:07

About a decade ago, after a temporary falling out with Vladimir Putin, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko tried to pivot his country to the West. In this endeavor, he had help from a Brit...

Finding the poison: Dr. Marc-Michael Blum explains the analytical chemistry needed to identify nerve agents in patients from 2020-09-12T13:50:38

The German media reported on September 9 that Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny was poisoned with a new type of “Novichok” nerve agent, more dangerous than any variation previously identi...

For Russian eyes only: U.S. voter data, hackers, and the story that wasn’t from 2020-09-04T15:43:02

On September 1, 2020, the Russian newspaper Kommersant ran a story that looked like a real bombshell before it fizzled out. The report, titled “Listen

Russia’s coronavirus vaccine: Assessing the risks and research behind ‘Sputnik V’ from 2020-08-30T14:28:50

If you’ve read anything about Russia’s coronavirus vaccine, “Sputnik V,” you know that it’s rolling out to the public in October, just as Phase III trials begin — meaning that researchers still ...

Poisoned in Russia: Alexey Navalny fights for his life as a deadly trend catches up to the country’s top oppositionist from 2020-08-21T10:04:58

Opposition politician and Anti-Corruption Foundation creator Alexey Navalny was hospitalized early on Thursday, August 20, in critical condition. At the time this podcast was recorded, he was in...

The Belarusian Election: Three experts explain what to expect from the presidential vote and the real political battle that follows from 2020-08-08T11:14:49

On August 9, Belarus concludes its most contentious, openly dirtiest, and toughest presidential campaign ever. During the race, one leading (albeit unregistered) candidate has been imprisoned (a...

The Sino-Russian Propaganda Pact: How Moscow and Beijing bungled a media partnership meant to promote each other from 2020-07-31T19:54:18

For the past two years, several major state news organizations in Russia have been working with China’s biggest media conglomerate to Listen

The FSO on the QT: The state of sociological work and opinion polling in Russia today from 2020-07-25T14:02:57

In reporting and analysis about Russian politics, the question is ubiquitous: How does Vladimir Putin see things? While there’s no shortage of efforts to read the Russian president’s mind, a mor...

Treason and Military Journalism in Russia: The arrest and prosecution of Ivan Safronov from 2020-07-11T15:57:45

On the morning of July 7, federal agents arrested Ivan Safronov, a longtime journalist who recently took a job as a communications adviser to Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin. Safronov is being cha...

The Seventh Studio Case: What Kirill Serebrennikov means to Russia’s art world from 2020-06-27T12:13:59

On Friday, June 26, a Moscow court announced verdicts in the controversial “Seventh Studio” case involving the alleged embezzlement of almost 129 million rubles (about $1.9 million) allocated to...

‘Secondary Infektion’: Ben Nimmo explains how his investigative team helped to uncover a long-running Russian disinformation operation from 2020-06-19T14:07:17

On today’s show, host Kevin Rothrock speaks to online-disinformation investigation pioneer Ben Nimmo about his latest research into a sweeping Russian disinformation campaign called “Secondary I...

Nationalism and the Alt-Right: Another look at ‘Russian Lives Matter’ from 2020-06-13T13:21:33

This week’s show looks at Russian nationalism, activism in Russia against police brutality, and the American alt-right. We also return specifically to remarks by Mikhail Svetov from Listen

Russian Lives Matter: How America’s new civil rights movement reverberates in Russia from 2020-06-06T13:33:46

On today’s episode, we’ll hear from five guests about race and injustice in Russia and the Soviet Union, including from the activist behind a new initiative against police brutality in Russia bu...

Moral calculus under Putin: Joshua Yaffa talks about his new book, ‘Between Two Fires’ from 2020-05-22T13:30:10

This week's guest is Joshua Yaffa, The New Yorker's Moscow correspondent and the author of the new book “Listen

It's business time: Max Seddon dissects the controversy at ‘Vedomosti’ and reviews the nature of financial reporting in Russia today from 2020-05-15T13:20:01

In the past several weeks, Meduza has written extensively about the newsroom controversy at Vedomosti, one of Russia’s top business newspapers. Most recently, Meduza p...

F**k the Pulitzer: A Russian investigative journalist says his team deserves recognition for breaking one of the stories that won ‘The New York Times’ its latest reporting award from 2020-05-08T16:50:30

On May 4, 2020, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced the latest winners of the most coveted award in journalism. The staff of The New York Times won prizes in three different categories: ...

‘Red Dawn’: What Hollywood's most outlandish Cold War movie says about Americans and Russians from 2020-04-24T15:39:41

In a world engulfed by the coronavirus pandemic, “The Naked Pravda” travels back in time to the carefree 1980s, when Americans and Russians worried about simpler things like World War III. Fears...

Pandemic Justice: How COVID-19 and coronavirus containment measures have exacerbated problems in Russia's courts and prisons from 2020-04-17T15:43:41

In regions and cities across Russia, state officials are taking extraordinary measures to limit people's movements and curb the spread of coronavirus. On March 18, Russia’s Supreme Court even im...

‘Russian Journalism's Newspeak’: How the Kremlin's euphemisms creep into reporting about disasters from 2020-04-11T23:45:10

In late 2019, many Internet users started noticing that the Russian state media was increasingly describing gas explosions as “gas pops” in news coverage — even when the incidents caused major d...

‘The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad New Boss’: Editorial changes at ‘Vedomosti’ jeopardize one of Russia's best-respected business newspapers from 2020-04-03T13:40:59

In late March 2020, after the owners of the newspaper Vedomosti confirmed that they'd reached a preliminary agreement to sell off the publication, deputy editors appealed to the paper’s...

‘Queer Science Fiction in Russian’: What space epics and tech dystopias tell us about post-Soviet minority activism from 2020-03-28T01:39:31

LGBTQ activists in the Russophone world face obstacles that many in the Anglophone world do not, but that means they also find ways to survive that defy the imagination. One way queer Russian sp...

‘Russia's Chances Against Coronavirus’: Sizing up the country's healthcare capacity and social readiness for a pandemic from 2020-03-20T14:06:05

As COVID-19 spreads rapidly across the world, the disease is pushing healthcare systems to the brink. The number of reported cases is low but rising in Russia, where officials have imposed limit...

‘Constitutional Gymnastics’: Russia's strange initiative to keep Vladimir Putin in office for years to come from 2020-03-13T15:12:31

We’ve known it was coming since January when Vladimir Putin warned the nation, but now it’s moving at full throttle and threatens to inflict untold damage. No, it’s not the coronavirus — it's th...

‘Russians in America’: Russian immigrants and visitors in the U.S. discuss the 2020 Democratic primaries from 2020-02-28T16:25:46

The Democratic Party's primaries are underway in the United States, where the country's increasingly left-leaning political party is flirting with democratic socialist Vermont Senator Bernie San...

‘Starting WWII’: Today's war of words between Russia and Poland over the history of the late 1930s from 2020-02-21T14:54:03

Earlier this month, Meduza published an article by Andrey Pertsev about President Vlad...

‘Academic Freedom’: The fight over political activism inside Moscow's Higher School of Economics from 2020-02-14T15:01:12

In mid-January, administrators at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics (HSE, perhaps the best university in Russia, shared a proposal to impose greater restrictions on political activism within t...

‘RuNet Sovereignty’: How Russia is trying to isolate its Internet segment from the rest of the world, maybe from 2020-02-07T15:35:09

The “Agora” human rights group and digital activists at Roskomsvoboda recently released a report on Russian Inter...

‘Conspiracy theories’: What Americans and Russians reveal about themselves in the stories they tell about each other from 2020-01-24T15:17:39

In recent years, we've witnessed a strange convergence of Russian and American conspiratorial thinking. They're talking about each other again in Moscow and Washington, often spinning stories th...

‘Executive power in Russia’: How we know what we know about Kremlin politics and what to expect from Putin's new Constitutional shakeup from 2020-01-17T09:51:31

Most weeks, it's fair to say that you could probably roll your eyes at a 30-minute podcast about the inner workings of executive power in Russia. But the issue is suddenly urgent. Two days ago, ...

‘Tabloids and an inferiority complex’: The business and political strategy behind the media's biased Russia coverage from 2019-12-20T14:33:30

According to a report by the news agency “Rossiya Segodnya,” almost half of the articles in the foreign press about Russia are “negative.” This recent study leans heavily on the British media (w...

‘The Information Nation’: Kremlin researchers and forensic journalists intersect at Russia’s black market for leaked personal data from 2019-12-06T15:03:02

The Russian Presidential Affairs Department’s Scientific Research Computing Center (GRCC) develops systems to monitor and deanonymize social-media users, and it sells these systems to government...

‘Instead of her face, I saw a pizza’: How women in Russia are fighting back against sexual assault from 2019-11-29T13:41:36

In life and in news reporting, violence against women is a sadly “evergreen” topic, but the issue has taken on new and growing momentum in Russia, where there’s a rising number of high-profile c...

‘The Naked Pravda’ premiere trailer: Meduza’s new English-language podcast from 2019-11-27T17:33:46

“The Naked Pravda” highlights how Meduza’s top reporting intersects with the wider research and expertise that exists about Russia.

Future episodes will look at the following issues: Listen