Russian conscripts and Ukraine's Kursk offensive
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By the time anybody hears these words, it will have been almost two weeks since the Ukrainian armed forces smashed through Russia's border defenses in the Kursk region and began a surprise offensive that has advanced about 17 miles at its deepest point, according to Medusa's estimates. Regional officials in Kursk have evacuated towns along the Ukrainian border, and more than 120,000 people have been forced to leave their homes.

Vladimir Putin has met several times with top national security officials, but Russia's president hasn't yet bothered to make a national address, despite the fact that part of the country, a real part of the country, not just Ukrainian lands that Moscow has claimed, is now under foreign occupation. At the same time, Russian troops are still attacking Ukrainian defenses in the Donbass, where Kiev remains vulnerable after months and months of slow Russian advances.

The world is watching to see if the Kursk incursion can force the Kremlin to pull soldiers from eastern Ukraine, though Kyiv's surprise offensive into Russia has other, maybe even intangible benefits too. One of the most sensitive issues inside Russia related to Ukraine's Kursk offensive is the use of conscripts as opposed to the older, better trained draftees, volunteers and contract soldiers.

To discuss the course of the Kursk incursion and to understand why sending conscripts into Russia's new conflict zone is such a sticky wicket, I spoke to Mark Krutov and Sergei Dobrynin, two journalists at RFARL who have tracked the war closely and recently wrote an article addressing how the Russian military plans to use conscripts amid Kiev's offensive in Kursk. Welcome to The Naked Pravda. ♪

Howdy, folks. I'm your host, Kevin Rothrock, the managing editor of Meduza's English Language Edition. And it's been a minute since we released a new episode of this podcast, but we're back from summer vacation and we're jumping right into Russia's biggest news event of the past two weeks, Ukraine's armed incursion into the Kursk region. And I'm very happy to bring you a conversation with journalists Mark Krutov and Sergei Dobrynin, whose open source investigations and reporting on the war in Ukraine, and now in Russia too, are sitting

are simply excellent. Mark is especially active on Twitter, where he often posts threads about his articles published in Russian, so do consider following him there if you don't read Russian, or if you just don't have time to read whole investigations. And I'll say, even after almost five years of doing The Naked Pravda, I've never quite figured out the proper tone for this podcast, but I'll go ahead and share some personal news because it might affect your listening experience, at least for this episode.

I recently moved from New Haven, Connecticut to Portland, Oregon, which is a glorious return to the West Coast for me, but it also means that many of my interviews with people based in Europe will now happen at what is the middle of the night for me. In other words, you might notice that I sound more tired than I did before. Hopefully this isn't annoying or distracting, and I'll do my best to keep the energy up, but maybe we'll have to rebrand the show as an ASMR podcast.

if things get too sleepy. But enough about me. When I sat down with Mark and Sergei, the first thing I wanted to know was how the Ukrainian military managed to get so far into Russia so quickly. Who the hell was guarding the border when Ukraine's incursion force entered Kursk, the Kursk region?

what Russian units did these Ukrainian troops first encounter? Like, was it the National Guard? Was it some kind of territorial defense group? Was it like the defense ministry, the military? I've seen like FSB border guards, you know, the Ahmad Special Forces. Like, who was in charge? Who did they actually come into contact with?

As we see from the videos, they first encountered the same conscripts, actually, who were in those trenches. You know that Russia prepared quite an extensive line of defensive positions on the border. There is also, I think there is even an interactive map of those trenches, which are available for quite a long time. And it appears that those trenches were actually filled in with the same conscripts, but not those who were summoned to the border.

this spring, but probably those who were summoned last autumn during the autumn conscript campaign. And as you may have seen, they were taken prisoners very quickly and they literally, they were not able to do anything to push those Ukrainian troops back quickly. Yes, there were some border guards. I should say that it's just a formal thing that they are FSB because all border guards

including those who check your documents when you arrive to Moscow, for example. Everyone there is subordinate to the Federal Security Service . I'm not sure how many of them were there, but as we've seen on the prisoners' videos, they were mostly conscripts, yes. And now already, I think, a few dozens of them are identified.

those who were taken prisoners and brought to Ukraine. So the answer to this question would be as conscripts. By design, I think by design, there should be bodyguards that report to FSB, which is not an army unit. But I think it's not, it's really just a very thin number of soldiers. So they couldn't cover all the trenches that were built like last year, I think, that's the weekend lines.

And another force that is in charge of covering the border, it used to be called exactly Border Covering Group, something like that. Now, apparently, it's renamed into Sever Group or Norse Group or Norse Group. So they are in charge of covering the border. But I'm not sure that they were anywhere nearby because they were quite busy with the incursion into Kharkiv oblast.

The Kursk region falls under the responsibility of the Russian military's Sever or North Group, which was established from the Leningrad Military District. The Kremlin formally reconstituted this district in February this year as a reaction to Finland joining NATO. Since May 2024, the Sever Group has been drawn into heavy fighting in the northern Kharkiv region.

Before Ukraine's incursion, Z channels on Telegram spent the summer talking up the formation of the Severn Group's reserve force outside Kursk, the 44th Army Corps. However, it seems that the brigades and the divisions that were supposed to form the core of this operational unit were never actually formed, and some of the new units that did come together were probably sent as reinforcements to the Kharkiv region, where the Severn Group suffered heavy losses.

Probably they were mostly situated there. But then they arrived. So that column that was, well… High Marst near Rilsk. Yes. Apparently… It belongs to the same North Group. Yes.

So by design, it should be this bodyguards of FSB and Sever group, and also some Ahmad units that were attached to this body cover group before. And apparently in the trenches, there were conscripts that were

And is it clear whose fault it is that this incursion has gotten as deep as it has? Like, is there an obvious fault?

fall guy here. It's hard for me at least to decipher what I'm seeing in terms of like Zee bloggers because I know they all have their own various affiliations and even those affiliations are very fluid. Some people will side with different groups at different times and so on. Do you see this playing out as some heads will roll, I assume, down the road? Who's most at fault here in your view? There are two options. The first option is that Russian intelligence

was insufficient, and the Ukrainians just were able to do this incursion suddenly. But Russian pro-war channels, Z channels, say that actually everyone was aware that Ukraine is amassing troops in Sumy Oblast, right across the border. And they had intelligence, but the commanders in Moscow, some high-rank commanders, didn't pay enough attention to it.

pretty much the same as with the Israeli events of 7 October. So if you want to know whose fault is it, of course it's military. And the question is whether they didn't have the intelligence or whether they had it but didn't pay proper attention to it. I like how one of these Z-channels put it that everyone thought that Russian borders are sacred.

And no one would ever dare to cross it. So you don't even really have to care about it. You can put some constricts on the border and just forget about it. But then, well, all of a sudden it's not sacred for some reason.

And actually, Ukrainian forces can cross the border and enter, but it's still dispersed. Maybe another thing which played its role here is that previous two or three raids of those volunteer battalions like Erdeka and the Russian Liberty Legion, they crossed the border as well. But all these raids ended quite quickly without any serious consequences.

I mean, for Russia, because for Ukraine there were some consequences. And maybe that's what just made Russian commanders feel quite comfortable. Okay, maybe they will try to cross the border again. It will be just yet another funny raid to film some videos.

It will end very quickly. I will not be lying. My first reaction to news from Kursk oblast was pretty much the same. I thought that this raid is going to be of the same scale as previous ones in Bilgorod oblast. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine since February 2022, armed formations of Russian nationals like the Russian Volunteer Corps, the Freedom of Russia Legion, the

the Siberian battalion, which fight for Ukraine and get various kinds of logistical support from the Ukrainian military intelligence. On multiple occasions, these groups have raided towns in the Kursk and Belgorod regions, trying to break through Ukraine's border with Russia. And of course, everyone is comparing this situation to the situation with the Kharkiv counteroffensive, which had...

Pretty much the same situation, insufficient number of Russian troops and very bad local commanders that didn't want to tell their superiors that Ukrainian forces are building up somewhere close by. And then all of a sudden the incursion starts and no one is ready for it. So it really looks pretty much like what happened around Balakalei, I think, those places last year.

How do the front lines, as they're shaping up now in Kursk, how do they compare to what we've seen in the Donbass in various parts of occupied Ukraine? Because some of the talk I'm seeing now is, okay, like Ukraine's going to... Like their gains have slowed, although I think they're still, you know, gaining...

territory here and there in small bits, but as we speak at least. But it looks as though it's going to, their advance will stop sooner or later, and then they're going to, you know, everybody's supposedly digging in right now. Based on what you're seeing and what you know of the terrain, do you expect

kind of similar fixed front lines to appear as they have in occupied Ukraine? Are we going to get like this little bubble into the Kursk region that Ukraine will just be able to hold for a while because it's so hard to advance across fixed lines of defense? First of all, yes, the Ukrainian offensive already slowed down significantly, and I'm not expecting it to ramp up suddenly in upcoming days.

As for how long Ukraine will be able to hold this salient, it's not clear because it depends on how much forces Russia will use to push them back.

And it also depends on how much forces Ukraine can hold there for this operation. Because at the same time, the situation on the Donbas axis near Pokrovsk remains very hard, if not critical. And maybe there will be some moment when someone in Ukrainian command will say, "Okay, we achieved our goals, we improved morale, we can now push our forces back."

It depends on many factors, many factors, how the things will unfold near Pokrovsk. For example, if now Russian offensive there will ramp up even more, maybe Ukraine will have to draw back those forces.

Mark is referring here to the Russian offensive in the Donbas. According to Meduza's latest monitoring, Russian troops are now near the Pokrovsk metropolitan area and threatening to cut off some of the Ukrainian military's crucial supply lines. If the pace of Russia's advance holds, the battle will reach the city of Pokrovsk itself in the early fall. Without new reserves to reinforce them, Ukrainian troops defending this area can only hope that the Kursk incursion forces the enemy to redeploy its forces from the Pokrovsk area.

But the chances of this happening appear to be slim, despite all that's happened in Kursk. Russia still has combat-ready forces that can move from other relatively calm fronts of the war, Meduza estimates. They will be for it, yes, or even in Belgrade or Doblice, they will aim for that. So it mostly depends on how much all sides can bet on it.

would they double down or not? You also have to take into account the public relations situation for both sides, of course, because Russia really doesn't want to bring troops from Donbas into Kursk region. They do, apparently, little by little, but in significant numbers so far. But

Instead of it, they have to bring in some conscripts. I don't think they will be an important force on the front lines, but they will probably defend like second line or third line around Kursk. And if they start dying, well, I mean, it's already a scandal of certain size. And so if the scandal is becoming too big, then probably Putin will decide that, okay, now I have to think about, well, my popularity in Russia, not about military reasons.

the administration is going to change. I think Ukraine is also betting on this as well. It's like equilibrium. Also, it's been 10 days. Despite that 10 days is quite a term, we still don't know, and I think Russians don't know either, how exactly many Ukrainian troops are there. It's covered with the Ukrainian operational security in this operation was pretty good.

Not only Russians were not aware of their real plans, of the scale of this offensive, but I think the sides are still assessing each other's capabilities. So Russia is still trying to figure out how much capabilities Ukraine has in Kursk Oblast, and the same is for Ukrainians. So when they will get the more or less real picture of how many troops are massed there, they will decide what to do next.

But now I think if you ask any Russian commander how many Ukrainian troops are there, no one will be able to tell you exactly.

For example, CNN wrote about several thousands, I think. Oh, they wrote about several thousands who were redeployed from somewhere. But altogether, the numbers vary from one or two thousands to 10 or even 15 thousands, which I think is pretty much unrealistic. Yeah, it was pretty funny in the beginning. And then Gerasimov, I think, told first that there is 1,000 of Ukrainian troops taking part in this incursion. And the next day he said that the number of casualties from the Ukrainian side is also 1,000.

But for some reason, Cajun continued. Those conscripts only can be used as a second line or even third line troops who dig those trenches, do some logistics and everything, but they are not absolutely not combat ready. They serve in army for three, four months. They were in school half a year ago, so they didn't get proper training. There is...

no use of them. So probably Russia thinks that it now can at least hold the situation in its current state with those combat-ready troops which they have in Kursk oblast. And we already see that they use some not conscripts, but contract soldiers, but not those redeployed from Donbas, those who were on Russian bases already. When there was a first wave of mobilization in Russia,

A lot of people were mobilized, but not all of them were immediately sent into the combat to Ukraine. A lot of them were lodged near the border, and they were still sitting there. Now it's maybe time to use them.

I do want to get to the conscript subject, but before we do that, I was going to ask you, I know you're tracking the situation not just in Kursk, but also in what was the front in the Donbas and what is still the front. You mentioned before that there have been some reports about some redeployments from that warfront to Kursk, and I just wonder, in terms of the evidence you've seen,

Is it a substantial number of redeployments? Is it from the areas where Russia seems or seemed poised to make some kind of breakthrough or gain? Because that's obviously one of the things that people are looking for in terms of judging the Kursk operation as a success is whether it's able to pull Russia.

We don't know the numbers, of course, but we indeed have some evidence of those troops being redeployed. We know that from the person who was in Kursk a few days ago and spoke with the Russian soldiers, one of them told him that he and his friends and his group was redeployed from Avdiivka, which is indeed...

the Donbas axis, the Pokrovsk axis. But it's very interesting because Avdiivka is not on the very front line now. Now Avdiivka is something like 30 kilometers from the main area where Russian forces push on Pokrovsk. So maybe it means that they first will start gradually to pick up a little amount of troops from those not very front lines in Donbas, like Avdiivka and so on.

And maybe if situation worsens for them, they will think about redeploying some more

more combat ready troops. I think we are hearing now, well at least I heard about two experienced units that are taking part in a defense in Kursk region. It's 810th Marine from Crimea. I think they are also taking part in an offensive in Donbas and now they are fighting in Kursk region also. I think it's just part of it and there was also a

pretty famous and experienced drone unit. I forgot what the name of it was. But it was quite successful also in the region. And now it's redeployed to Kursk region. So some parts of some bigger units, yes, are probably redeployed. This is an important thing because when we speak about redeploying, we should keep in mind that not the whole unit usually is being redeployed, but a small chunk of it.

So if you see a soldier who says, I am serving in this brigade, it doesn't mean that the whole brigade was redeployed or even half of it. Okay. All right. So let's get to this subject of conscripts or soichniki. And I wondered, I was hoping that I could get you guys to explain sort of for...

those who don't know, for most foreigners I assume, the differences between , and , right? The way I usually translate this is conscripts, contract soldiers, and either draftees or mobilized soldiers. But this gets tricky, right? Because in English, or at least for most Americans, I could tell you that conscript and draftee, they're interchangeable. And we don't have a draft anymore in the United States, so most people don't even really

They just know, it conjures up ideas of Vietnam or something. That's the last time there was a draft, right? So that's what people think of. So can you explain in the Russian context the difference between these three groups of soldiers? As far as I understand, those are kind of the three main groups. I know there's also like volunteers and so on. Volunteers is also pretty big, I think. So it has to be taken into account. So let's throw it out of the mix then. Basically, Russia has a mandatory military service for everyone.

Like Israel. Like Israel and some Baltic states already introduced it and Germany is considering doing the same. So when you finish your school, you either go to university and your service can be postponed

In most cases, you go to the army right after the school and serve for one year. It used to be two years in the army and three years in the navy, and now it's one year in the army and I think two years in the navy. That's conscripts. The legal side of this issue is that when you were summoned to your mandatory military service for the first four months,

You should be properly trained, and during that period of four months, you cannot be sent to a combat mission. That's it, basically. But already after the first month of your mandatory conscript service, you can sign a contract with Russian military or defense, which transforms you from being a conscript to being a contract soldier.

And when you sign the contract, you're locked in for the whole special military operation? Yes, yes. But still, I think you cannot be signed to a combat mission. But after the fourth month, you can be. So contract soldiers, basically everyone who fits can go to local recruiting office and sign a contract.

And the Russian authorities pay huge amounts of money. There's a competition between Russian regions who will pay more and more to recruit people. Just understand it's up to $60,000 in Moscow now.

Something like that. That's the money that you receive right after you sign the contract. Yes. So those are contract soldiers. The same for volunteers. They go to the encumad, they sign contract, they become contract soldiers. So what is the difference between a contract soldier and a volunteer?

Not much. Not much. You're a volunteer before you sign the contract. After you put your signature, you become a contract soldier. I think I understand where does it come from. Because the third category you told about was mobics, mobilized. And that's totally another thing because the law allows authorities to...

to draft people without their consent. They are draftees actually. They're pretty much the same as draftees during

Vietnam War. But conscripts are also forced into the service without their choice too. But conscripts are much younger. So those draftees are mostly like people in their 30s and 40s. Do they all have military experience because they were conscripted when they were younger? Yes. Some of them do. Usually, yes. Usually, the

Those who have some military experience, they are the first to be drafted. So in general, those mobilized people, they are a better army than conscripts. And conscripts are just a green use that typically during this one year in army, they just shot a rifle like three or four times.

And mostly what they do is just, you know, do some stupid like works in the military, on the territory of military units. For example, it's like a meme. They have to paint the grass. So when the higher command arrives to this military unit, they have to paint the grass so it's green. And it really happens. That's what conscripts mostly do for one year. They also sometimes do some work for their commanders, like building their duchess and so on. Okay.

And it's my understanding that there is or was a sort of informal promise, or maybe it's formalized, but it's not legalized. Informal, yes. You're right. Informal, yes. From Putin not to use conscripts in combat. And yet it's kind of happening. There was incidents of it at the beginning of the war, and then he kind of stopped it, as I understand.

Commenting on conscripts and combat in the earliest days of the full-scale invasion, before he announced a partial mobilization, I should add, here's what Putin told the state media in March 2022. I'll let Eleven Labs AI voice generation bring this statement to life. Only professional military personnel, officers and contract soldiers are participating in this operation. There are no conscripts and we do not plan to involve them and we are not going to.

I repeat again, only men who have voluntarily made a very responsible choice in life to defend the Motherland are participating in this operation.

They are fulfilling this task with honor. It was absolutely informal promise. Yes, it's not in the law. So again, what is in the law is that you can send them to Ukraine or to Kursk oblast, but to the combat areas after four months of conscripts. I'm not sure about sending them to Ukraine, actually. But the thing that's now, you know, Donbass is not considered in Russian law as Ukraine anymore.

But still, our colleagues from Severiale, from other projects, they spoke to some mothers of some conscripts that are being taken now to the Kursk region. And they said, one of the commanders said that your child is not going to Ukraine, he's staying in Russia, and thus we can use him.

Which is not really so, because as Mark said before, they are not allowed by law to be sent to combat zones, which is kind of a murky definition, but still they can't. But the reason that commanders use, when they explain to the mothers why they

than the kids in the course of religion. That's a problem that is still in Russia. But anyway, there is not much use of them in the combat zone, as we can see. Just DIC? Yes.

Just sit there and quickly give up and become a prisoner of war. But dig trenches, probably, yes. It's what they do during conscript times. Anyway, dig and do some other hard work. We know that some... But now they are picking people from different Russian regions. They bring them to Kursk and Belgorod.

And because most of these conscripts still don't fulfill this four months condition, they're being kept in the training centers in Kursk and Belgorod and elsewhere. And when they will soon, in September, I think, fulfill this four months condition, they will think and maybe they will send some of them a little bit closer to what will be the combat zone at that time.

Journalists at Vyorska Media have reported that there were more than 100 conscripts at the border when Ukraine's incursion forces crossed into the Kursk region on August 6th. The news outlet managed to speak to some of these soldiers, who said they spent several days in the woods after coming under fire. The conscripts told the journalists that everybody knew that Ukraine was amassing troops near the border and preparing an attack.

but Russian military commanders left the conscripts in the area without weapons or even any instructions. At least a few dozen of these men are still unaccounted for, probably taken prisoner by the Ukrainian army. Again using 11 labs, here's what one conscript identified as Alexander told the reporters. There was just panic. We didn't have combat weapons. Only the squad commander did. It was complete fucking chaos. There were no instructions at all. And then the squad commander, a contract soldier, ordered us to retreat.

The exit route was under mortar fire, so we wandered into some godforsaken forest. We came under fire there too, and we scattered. I got a concussion. We lost one of our guys. We were just lying there in the woods for about an hour. While in the forest, he says, Alexander and his comrades ran into some Russian border guards who were also fleeing from the Ukrainian troops. They reached the town of Suja together and were later transferred to the hospital.

And I'm sure a lot of listeners, they hear this and they think, okay, well, this is a sensitive political issue. That's why Putin made this informal promise in the first place. That's why he hasn't just flooded the Donbass with conscripts, is that this is too sensitive. He doesn't want to upset- He didn't flood the Donbass with conscripts, not because this is sensitive, but because there's not much use of them. But it's indeed a sensitive thing, because when volunteers go to the local recruitment office and want to fight for money to receive those conscripts,

$50,000, $60,000. And no one, as Sergey said, it's usually mature adults, like 30, 40 years old. They do it for money. Sometimes they're single and no one will care about them. They're adult people. But the conscripts are just former kids, yesterday's kids. And they have mothers behind them. They have other parents.

other relatives behind them who will make a bus, submit petitions, write open letters and make a big bus. It was in the start of the full-scale invasion, as I remember, when there was a case of 600 conscripts being sent to Ukraine. And after that bus, Russian commanders just had to pull them back.

The same we see now, because those people who are standing behind these conscripts can make this bus. They're absolutely ready to contact the press, the media, even foreign media, and so on. But those volunteers, no one actually cares for them except themselves. They knew what they do. They do this for money and

I just wanted to add that Ukraine actually also has, well, it has probably up to now, I think now it's changing, but they had this conscript-based army and they don't use conscripts on front line either. More than this, while some experts suggest that Ukraine should lower the draft age at least to 22 or to 20 or even to 18, Ukrainian state is hesitant to do it.

So they also consider that people under 25 are not really suitable for... It's a question of political salience and also the fact that the soldiers are just too young and not very trained and not all that useful. As for deployment in Kursk, there are two reasons why so many talks about conflicts we hear. The first reason is that Ukrainian offensive was so quick and unexpected that Russian commanders simply didn't guess the scale of it and

what they had at their possession right at the time were conscripts. The second reason is, of course, that Russia wants to avoid until the last moment the need to redeploy more combat-ready troops from Donbas. And if the next mobilization starts this fall, as many people predict,

Then it would take like another three or four months before the first draftees would arrive to the front lines.

So Russia won't be able to bring in some new, like older soldiers to the front line without redeployment. So maybe they can use these conscripts to keep the ground for a few months if the offensive continues, if the incursion continues. But the interesting thing is that while Russia used convicts and draftees for those green meat storms in Donbass, were combined with heavy air bombardment

they were able to gain territory and level the cities and destroy them to the rubble, it would not be so much easy to do in Kursk Oblast. I won't be personally surprised if Putin will erase the suja from the

from Earth by dropping dozens of 500 air bombs on it. But maybe he will not. It's not that easy to decide to do that when comparing with Zabdiivka or Bakhmut. So maybe this is what the Ukrainian army hopes for, that they will dig in in Sudja and other settlements.

And at least Russia won't have that advantage of being able to drop, just drop bombs on them and destroy everything to the rubble. And I know that you've been tracking, you know, as you mentioned before, like you said that the conscripts have parents behind them, people that are willing to kind of

muddy the waters or go to the media, be public about their children's situation. Based on what you're seeing, does this look like a real problem for the Kremlin, based on even with the limited use that they will have for conscripts in the months ahead? Or does this look like kind

kind of more, it's manageable. It's kind of, it's a little, it's different from what we've seen, but it's nothing sort of extraordinary. I don't have sources in Kremlin, but in my opinion, rather the latter one. So yes, that's kind of an annoying problem, but it's manageable because it's not for the first time. Yes, but you have to remember history. Like during the Committee of Soldiers, there was a thing called the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers. It still exists, but it's not as well

doesn't have as much authority as it used to have. During the Chechen Wars. But during the Chechen Wars, it became quite a wide civil movement, which eventually gained some authority. And it was a problem for Kremlin. Kremlin was pretty weak at the time, but still. I mean, during the first Chechen War. So recently we saw that there was some movement behind mobilized people because

Some of their wives and daughters and mothers wanted them back. They insisted that there must be rotation. And they had some protests in front of Kremlin even. Now the founder is a foreign agent and fired from her job. So they tried to do some protests and it was pretty popular. But of course, the Russian oppression machine is pretty efficient now and they know how to kill these movements.

like, politely talking to certain people in it and maybe detaining some of them and talking to others. So already now, you know, that those more active mothers from this new starting movement behind this construct being sent to Kursk region, they already receive calls

Not from SSB, but from local recruitment centers, from some military guys saying, "You better sit quiet, otherwise your kid is going to have problems." Which is very effective when you talk to your mother. I think this movement has some potential to become bigger, but it's already under oppression. No one in the Kremlin is happy about this conscripts issue.

History indicates that this is absolutely manageable. In Russia. In Russia. Thanks for tuning in, folks. This has been The Naked Pravda, a podcast from Meduza in English. Remember that undesirable status back in Russia means our entire news outlet now relies on readers and listeners around the world to support our work. Please visit our website for information about how to become a contributor with one-time or recurring pledges. Thanks again. Until next week.

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