MOSCOW – Thousands of Russian internet users have plunged into the audio-based chat app Clubhouse, which has become of all places the place to vent about life in an authoritarian political system.
This week was a block of clubhouse news. On Saturday, Elon Musk publicly announced invited Russian President Vladimir Putin for a chat about the app. Another avid clubhouse user is Luiza Rozova, a 17-year-old who is regarded by independent Russian media as Putin’s illegitimate daughter. She recently used the platform to share insights about her university major, her aspirations for a career in fashion, and her apparent affinity for wildly unhinged conspiracy theories. And in an unusual public broadcast of views on a typically tacit topic, 300 Russian journalists, lawyers and human rights defenders joined an open room at Clubhouse to discuss the espionage case against one of Russia’s foremost military reporters, Ivan Safronov. who has been imprisoned for more than six months on treason charges.
In July, the Federal Security Service arrested Safronov and placed him in Lefortovo, one of Moscow’s most notorious prisons, where he is facing up to 20 years in prison. The service accused Safronov of working for the Czech Secret Service and of passing on classified information about the Russian army. Investigators claim the US was the last recipient of the classified information provided by Safronov in 2017.
“It’s been almost seven months since Ivan was put behind bars; his prosecutors probably hoped that there would be no public attention to his case now, ”said Safronov’s friend, Ilya Barabanov, who was one of the five keynote speakers at the clubhouse discussion.
Some Russian clubhouse users have compared the platform to the 1980s broadcasts – or Television Bridges, as they were known to the USSR – shared by Russian and American audiences. Soviet and American journalists organized the bridges to connect Moscow, Leningrad, San Francisco, Boston and other cities for discussions of history and trends in culture, journalism or lifestyle.
Just like the bridges did over 40 years ago, Clubhouse now provides a platform for some unexpected speakers, including Putin’s alleged daughter, who used the app to talk about her thoughts on working in New York, Paris or Milan, taking the cities “boiling points of fashion”. (The Kremlin has denied that she is a relative.)
Rozova opened up to Andrei Zakharov, author of “Iron Masks”, an investigative report in Proekt media on the life of her mother, the fabulously wealthy Svetlana Krivonogikh. According to Proekt, Krivonogikh has a net worth of $ 101 million. She has been “close acquaintance” of Putin since the 1990s and her daughter, Luiza, “bears an uncanny resemblance” to the leader of the Kremlin, the report said. Rozova did not comment on that aspect of Zakharov’s story, but she did admit that she enjoyed the popularity it brought to her social media accounts.
Thanks to Clubhouse, the Russians now know that Rozova doesn’t watch TV, gets her news from the Telegram app, believes in pandemic conspiracy theories and approves the Kremlin’s murder of political dissidents. Before Zakharov even entered the discussion, a clubhouse user asked Rozova what she thought of Putin’s comment about Alexei Navalny’s poisoning, saying that if Russian special forces wanted to kill Navalny, “they would have finished it.”
Rozova responded without hesitation: “The ‘Golden Billion’ society is behind this whole gimmick with the coronavirus. Turns out they kill people, ”said the teenager. “If ordinary people can do it, why can’t the government for reasonable purposes?”
Yet there is no safe haven from ubiquitous Russian corruption. The government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta warns citizens against buying invitations to clubhouse discussions and urges them “not to give in to the excitement” and “not to pay for invitations from unknown people.”
Russian bureaucrats of all levels, from regional officials to the Kremlin administration, also participate in the clubhouse chats. That includes former Deputy Prime Minister and current President of the International Chess Federation, Arkady Dvorkovich, who used the app on Monday to answer questions about Russia’s plans to host the Chess Olympiad, announcing that he hoped “ next year’s Chess Olympiad in Moscow. . ”
The Kremlin’s political opponents are also exploring the possibilities of this new social medium. Valery Kostenok, a 21-year-old politician and member of the Yabloko party, downloaded Clubhouse to his phone on Wednesday. “At first I was skeptical as there was a rumor that someone is recording all conversations and leaking them out. But I realized I don’t have any secrets from anyone and decided to download the app, ”he told The Daily Beast. “The pandemic, police arrests and prosecutions made many of our favorite platforms and spaces unavailable. Russians are big fans of public talks, debates and discussions, so our youth is now storming clubhouse rooms. “