Alexey Kovalyov Profile picture
@CityUniLondon grad, @worldpressinst fellow, @moscowtimes alumnus, investigative editor at @meduzaproject/@meduza_en. kvlv@pm.me
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Oct 1, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
The USSR was institutionally antisemitic and prevented Soviet Jews from commemorating Holocaust victims, both in Ukraine and in Russia. It's a historical fact.
Russia, the modern equivalent of Nazi Germany, doesn't get to relitigate the past to retroactively justify its invasion Ukraine is held to an impossibly high standard with the support against Russia's invasion contingent on it being a perfect democracy in the present and free from any blemishes on its past. People making such demands are often ignorant of the most basic historic facts.
Sep 4, 2023 6 tweets 2 min read
I wrote in @ForeignPolicy about the new Russian “history” textbook (it’s less about actual history and more about pandering to the private grievances and insecurities of one man) But here’s a little vignette which is a story of its own: (mini-🧵)foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/03/rus… In Hungary, the new Russian textbook caused a media scandal because, in the leaked fragment, the 1956 events are painted by Medinsky, predictably, as a CIA-supported fascist coup. Needless to say, that’s not how Hungarians see a pivotal and tragic moment of their history.
Sep 26, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
Congratulations, @Snowden. Now, under no circumstances accept a summons to your local draft office and don’t go there, not even to “go over some technicalities” if they call you. Have your girlfriend always open the door and tell them you’re not home. You really did not see this plot twist coming, did you
Mar 23, 2022 4 tweets 3 min read
And now it's someone I've known for 16 years and worked with at several independent outlets. Oksana Baulina, a Russian journalist with phenomenal sense of moral clarity, killed by Russian rocket fire on a reporting mission in Kyiv today. I'm yet to process this. Image Oksana ditched a successful career in glossy magazines (I first met her at Time Out Moscow in 2006 where she edited the fashion section) to become an opposition activist, human rights campaigner and then full time reporter. Arrested several times, her org declared "extremist".
Mar 22, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
А это те же, которые кукарекали что Чёрная сотня это просто потому что им нравится число 100 и чёрный цвет, а не что там (((всякие))) навыдумывали? А, ну всё понятно с ними (это говорящая залупа из бородатых фрейлин Симоньян) Image
Oct 10, 2021 11 tweets 5 min read
Интересно, как же так – почему-то пропагандистское иновещание на Запад транслирует прямо противоположный месседж: не прививайтесь и не носите маски, любые ограничения – это ковидофашизм… RT для русских: носите маски и прививайтесь
RT для иностранцев: уберите маску от моего лица! Маски омерзительны! Требование носить маски – это кастовая система, которая делит людей на чистых и нечистых! (Там буквально ВСЕ материалы по ключевому слову mask такие) ImageImageImageImage
Jun 20, 2021 5 tweets 2 min read
Пошёл перечитать историю Чумного бунта, дальше википедии пока не продвинулся, ору на Лобном месте. Генерал-губернатор Салтыков вскоре после этого тупо бросил город и уехал в своё марфинское имение. Потом приехал граф Орлов и просто начал больным премию за карантин выписывать — иначе бы его так никто и не подумал соблюдать. Но к этому моменту пол-Москвы уже вымерло.
Jun 18, 2021 23 tweets 12 min read
"Two-tier societies are emerging, with dwindling rights for the unvaccinated. Why do governments consider them such a threat?"

Why do they indeed. Filed under "Russian state media takes dissing the West that didn't age well" in... *squints* one week exactly. How it started => How it's going (two weeks later)

Amazing that someone in Moscow thought exporting antivaxx BS only works one way, but there we are. ImageImage
May 23, 2021 4 tweets 2 min read
Why @RT_com is not a legitimate news outlet and shouldn’t be treated as one, in their boss’s own words, exhibit #478373: referring to Lukashenko’s hijacking of a Ryanair flight, Simonyan calls it a “beautiful move” for which she envies Belarus. Worth noting that in 2020 Simonyan was instrumental to keeping Lukashenko in power amid widespread protests against his rule, lending him @RT_com’s full support in his then-flailing propaganda efforts. She is unapologetically proud of it. meduza.io/en/feature/202…
May 21, 2021 5 tweets 3 min read
With @meduzaproject's "foreign agent" status we went from shock to grief to anger to... LOL WTF. Turns out behind all this was a guy who, among other things, claimed to have invented BLM. Yes, that dude. Some of you Russia nerds have heard about him. meduza.io/en/feature/202… I shit you not re invention of BLM: this is from his 2018 RT interview (they've distanced themselves from him since after he fed them a piece of fake news from a satirical website which is a bit too much even for this this dump meduza.io/en/shapito/201…) Image
Mar 10, 2021 6 tweets 2 min read
This... just happened again. Russia's censorship ministry attempted to throttle Twitter but instead appears to have kicked offline most government websites in Russia, starting with Kremlin.ru. Incompetence too hilarious for satire. washingtonpost.com/news/democracy… This is almost poetic: Roskomnadzor's actions against Twitter seem to have paralyzed wireless access in the Duma, the lower chamber of the Russian parliament which passes the same laws that allow Roskomnadzor to police the internet in the way it does, time after time.
Dec 28, 2019 6 tweets 2 min read
А, значит опять где-то обосрались или проворовались, кто-то про это пишет и послал Конашенкову запрос на комментарий :) Настоящая информационная война против России – это отставные спецслужбисты, которые засирают головы студентам планом Даллеса и психотронными лучами: meduza.io/feature/2019/1…
Jun 7, 2019 15 tweets 5 min read
Okay, listen up. This is not a drill. Ivan Golunov, my colleague at @meduzaproject, one of the best investigative reporters in the industry, was arrested yesterday after leaving work (I was with him before he left). He is now awaiting formal charges at a remand prison in Moscow. The allegations against Ivan brought forward by the investigators are simply ludicrous. Police claim Golunov, an award-winning investigative journalist, was moonlighting as a Walter-White-level meth kingpin from his Moscow apartment. It's clearly a fabrication.
Apr 15, 2019 16 tweets 6 min read
After years of glowing, uncritical coverage of StopFake (their crusade agains *RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION* demands nothing but complete suspension of disbelief) the truth about their unethical practices, to put it mildly, and unapologetic pro-government bias is finally acknowledged: It's almost a perfunctory afterthought, but as close to calling StopFake out on their BS as it gets. Typically, StopFake's "debunking" of "Russian fakes" consists of little more than copypasting a Ukrainian government press release and presenting it at face value. Image
Mar 29, 2019 8 tweets 3 min read
Few things that didn't make it into the final piece:
* "Russian hacking/trolling" seemed too amateurish and haphazard to make any meaningful impact
* Trump is Americans' own creation, pretending otherwise is desperate self-deceit (same goes for Brexit)
nytimes.com/2019/03/29/opi… Also, comments kind of prove my point?
Jul 27, 2018 4 tweets 1 min read
You know what freaks out most Russians about American politics? The sheer anti-intellectualism of the public discourse. Not only people don't know the basics of other cultures, but they aren't even aware of their ignorance and actually *refuse* to learn. That's unimaginable here. Case in point: this tweet is still up:
Jun 2, 2018 9 tweets 3 min read
56 years ago today the Soviet authorities brutally crushed a rally in Novocherkassk, a southern Russian town. Locomotive factory workers protested against food price hikes, increased production quotas and the general worsening of living conditions. 1/7 Their signs said: "[Give us] Bread, butter, bigger wages!" The protest was sparked by a careless remark by the factory's director: "If you can't afford meat, eat liver pies." A crowd of workers was machine-gunned down by the army and KGB, 26 were killed and 87 wounded. 2/7