Over the past several weeks, the Russian government has made a series of decisions so thoroughly perplexing that some Russians now believe they are witnessing a conscious and deliberate effort to detonate their country from within. (Probably your own government is behaving similarly. See? We aren’t so different after all. Why can’t we all just get along?)

Today I would like to share with you a sampling of Russian-language commentaries on this subject.

But first: Some brief background.

The first major event that is causing extreme trepidation within Russian society is the government’s campaign to block Telegram and limit and restrict internet access while forcing everyone to use Russia’s new FSB messenger, MAX. As part of this campaign, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) is also waging all-out war on VPNs, which have basically become mandatory if you want to use the internet in Russia.

Meanwhile, the entire country is experiencing periodic mobile internet outages. In some areas, mobile internet completely stopped working months ago. The government has created a “white list” of “approved” websites and apps that can be accessed during these outages. (They have reportedly even started testing this “white list” on home WiFi networks around Rostov-on-Don). The official explanation for these restrictions is that they are necessary to combat drone attacks. The last few weeks have seen some of the largest and most destructive drone attacks against Russia since the start of the SMO, so the official explanation might not be the most compelling one, as is so often the case.

Roskomnadzor is still a long way off from completely blocking Telegram (it typically works with a VPN), and the attack on “unapproved” web traffic has already resulted in some disastrous friendly fire incidents. For example, the government agency reportedly blocked IP addresses that are used to process bankcard payments, resulting in an hours-long shutdown of digital payment services in Moscow.

Then there is the Siberian Cow Slaughter.

To make a long (and ongoing) story short, authorities are killing the livestock of small farms in several regions of Siberia, purportedly to stop the spread of diseases (without bothering to test any of the animals before killing them). The farmers have been compensated with paltry sums that are only a fraction of the actual market value of their animals. Many are unable to purchase new animals and are now financially ruined.

When farmers began to share videos of their cows being slaughtered for no reason, authorities resorted to traditional terror and intimidation tactics.

When that didn’t work, the regional government claimed videos documenting the insane cow-slaughter were AI-generated fakes.

Meanwhile, the livestock of large and politically well-connected corporate farming operations in the area have remained untouched.

All of the above begs the question: Why is the Russian government doing all of these very destructive and foolish things?

Russian-language news outlets and Telegram channels have been sharing various theories that might help answer this question.

Let’s begin with a commentary published at the end of March by Channel Stalingrad, an excellent independent outlet edited by “like-minded individuals who reject the liberal capitalism imposed on Russia after the collapse of the USSR”:

Telegram is de facto blocked, Putin’s authorities make no secret of their plans to restrict internet access through a system of “whitelisted sites,” and mobile internet has begun to be shut down under the pretext of combating drones. Along with this, a bill has been introduced in the State Duma that would effectively ban criticism and accusations of anyone in the media until a guilty verdict is finalized. It has outraged even those completely loyal to the Kremlin.

This is a blow to everyone, especially those who make money online and on social media by promoting their goods and services. It also simply creates everyday inconvenience for absolutely all Russian citizens. But the Kremlin seems to have lost its mind. The reason is most likely their conviction in the firmness of their power and the silence of the people.

But it is impossible to ignore the fact that the “tsar’s” lawlessness has reached cosmic proportions. What is Vladimir Vladimirovich planning? What is he preparing his “vertical” for? Mobilization? War with NATO? Logically speaking (if the concept of logic applies to the “vertical”), the Ozero cooperative [the group of oligarchs who support Putin] needs a completely controlled information space to nip any “surprises” in the bud. Combined with war fatigue, all this creates, at the very least, a basis for protest. And this isn’t just information noise. […]

But the main thing currently shaking the Tsar’s throne is the lawlessness in Novosibirsk, the [“anti-epidemic" measures] that have deprived a huge number of people of their sources of income without any justification, not even legal ones. The farmers surveyed don’t believe the diagnoses of pasteurellosis and rabies: those who have been raising livestock for a long time would easily recognize the symptoms. […]

In addition to the Novosibirsk region, livestock genocide has also been perpetrated in the Altai and Transbaikal territories, Buryatia, and the Altai Republic. […]

Novosibirsk Region Governor Andrei Travnikov called the mass slaughter of livestock “a strict but necessary veterinary measure.” This is par for the course for Russia’s “leaders.” Putin’s officials are not accustomed to admitting responsibility. We will never hear the truth from them. Because the fairy tales about slaughtering cattle due to pasteurellosis don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Schizophrenia is off the charts. They don’t even remember their own decisions. On October 31, 2022, the Ministry of Agriculture, by its Order No. 770, approved veterinary regulations for the implementation of preventive, diagnostic, therapeutic, restrictive, and other measures, the establishment and lifting of quarantines and other restrictions aimed at preventing the spread and eliminating outbreaks of various types of pasteurellosis. This regulation is completely inconsistent with the lawlessness currently unfolding in the Novosibirsk Region and other regions.

The uproar on Telegam, which will soon be blocked, or has already been blocked, partially helped draw attention to the situation. Still, the only thing this publicity has achieved is control over the procedure itself and at least some regulations for compensation payments. But this is far from certain.

What is happening is complete lawlessness and legal chaos. A logical question: for what purpose? Perhaps some of the Kremlin’s elite are using these informational outlets to fight their competitors. Moreover, they do so without regard for the consequences. As happened, for example, in 2023, when the desire to remove Shoigu from the Russian Ministry of Defense through wholesale criticism of the army command and the promotion of Wagner sparked Prigozhin’s rebellion. Incidentally, criticism of the closure of Telegram is often interpreted as a struggle between the “Kremlin towers.” One of them is lobbying for “de-Telegramization,” while others are trying to stir up a rebellion against it. Consequently, farmers in the Novosibirsk region could very well have fallen victim to the games of Putin’s “vertical,” which is extremely distant from the region, from livestock farming, and from the aspirations of the ordinary people under its control.

If this is indeed the case, Putin has lost control of the state. And this could very well end in disaster. Quite soon.

Our next commentary comes from Yandex’s blogging platform, which is sort of like Russian Substack:

According to the agenda, our country is on the verge of a monumental leap. True, the nature of this leap raises questions among those accustomed to measuring progress in factories built, rockets launched, or technologies implemented. But this is apparently an outdated approach. Modern Russian management has discovered a simpler and more effective path—development by subtraction.

Imagine a gardener who wants to grow a giant pumpkin. A normal gardener fertilizes the soil, waters the beds, and protects the seedlings from frost. Our strategic gardener, however, believes otherwise: the pumpkin will grow to enormous proportions if weeds are prevented from growing, if clouds are prevented from flying past the pumpkin without drenching it with rain, if frosts are prevented from appearing prematurely…

In short, a new word in agricultural technology—you just need to think carefully about what to prohibit, compile an extensive and comprehensive list of prohibitions, and impose it on the pumpkin: grow, you bastard!

In the digital realm, we live in a harsh asceticism. The internet is sometimes shut down, sometimes left in place, but with conditions. VPNs are sometimes banned, sometimes allowed, but by subscription, like premium access to freedom, and for a fee. YouTube, social media, Roblox—everything reminiscent of a global world is being crushed by the digital sovereignty steamroller. The logic is simple: if you remove everything incomprehensible and alien, something native will inevitably flourish. True, so far only the market for workarounds is flourishing, but these are details. […]

It’s as if the government has decided that national development isn’t about creating something new, but about completely erasing the old. If you ban everything bad, it will automatically become good. If you take away people’s internet access, they’ll start watching Skabeeva and Solovyov on TV [government propaganda]. If you ban vaping, everyone will quit smoking. If you increase fines, everyone will become law-abiding.

But history teaches us otherwise: bans don’t create the future. They only preserve the present. You can ban English words, but without modern technology, the language will still deteriorate. You can ban travel, but without knowledge sharing, science will wither. You can force people to have children, but without security for the future, families will not be happy.

The result is a paradox. The list of what’s “not allowed” no longer fits on one page. And the list of what’s “allowed” remains frighteningly short.

The government offers us a fortress-state, safe, quiet, and forbidden. But a fortress is a place for defense, not for living. Life requires roads, not barriers. We need factories, not fines. We need ideas, not bans.

For now, the only sector that’s truly developing and showing steady growth in the country is the industry of restrictions. And if things continue this way, we risk becoming the most developed country in the world in terms of the number of restrictions. But living in this “developed” world will become absolutely impossible.

Finally, I would like to share two texts I came across while browsing Yaplakal, a popular Russian news and discussion forum.

Both texts are essentially conspiracy theories, but they illustrate the rampant disillusionment and distrust in the government that is entirely ignored by Very Important and Serious Russia Experts With Direct and Indirect Ties to the Russian Government.

The first text:

I came to see my dad today and started whining over a glass of tea.

My dad is already at the age where he doesn’t need this internet. But after listening to me for a while, he abruptly said, “Stop. You’re telling me about prohibition and the collapse of the [Soviet] Union. Look at how it happened.”

He loves conspiracy theories.

“To destroy the Union, they started an unpopular war. It lasted a long time. During this time, the budget was depleted and people became disillusioned with the army.”

“Then they started passing weird laws. They tightened the screws for parasitism, any manifestation of dissent, etc. This was to create disillusionment with the government. And finally, they finished it all off with prohibition. They ruined an entire industry where people worked and, most importantly, killed people’s ability to relax normally. People didn’t drink less after that, but they started drinking whatever they could, and on the sly. They started giving prison sentences for selling alcohol. People started going blind from counterfeit alcohol. Well, it’s just like in your VPN, where people are willing to trust who knows who just to get around the restrictions.”

“And then, when distrust of the government reached its peak, when neither the people nor the army wanted such a government anymore, and anyone but them would rather have it, a coup happened. And mind you, it was almost bloodless. How much do they have to annoy everyone so that no one will stand up for the country?”

“And most importantly, all this was always done with the message that everything was being done for the people and the country. Mind you, it’s still the same. All to protect people from the corrupting influence of Western vodka. You’ll see, they already did it once, now they’re just repeating it.”

Of course, I laughed. Well, yes, there are a lot of coincidences. The long-standing scam, the empty budget, the idiotic laws and restrictions, the people’s disillusionment. There are a lot of coincidences, of course, but it’s just a coincidence.

Or is it? ((

The second text:

Conspiracy Theory:

Observing Roskomnadzor’s persistence in blocking Telegram and tightening control over messaging apps, I come to the conclusion that we’re misinterpreting what’s happening. The average person sees this as a fight against the opposition or spies. The opposition interprets it as a pre-election crackdown.

But what if this is part of a larger plan? A global rebranding of power, initiated by those who will soon leave the political arena.

Let’s consider the mechanism of a low barrier to entry for the future government. The scheme, although cynical, is quite effective.

Stage: Creating Problems. The current elite passes extremely unpopular laws.

We see this now—laws on blocking, mandatory biometrics, VPN bans, three-year data retention.

The old regime acts as an authoritarian controller, depriving citizens of their familiar tools.

The result is mass discontent. People previously apolitical begin to perceive the state as a source of problems. A grandmother, deprived of contact with her grandson, experiences negativity. Businesses losing customers due to restrictions are ready to support any changes.

The old regime, consciously or not, is generating hundreds of thousands of “silent protesters.”

Formation of a critical mass of irritation: When instant messaging apps are finally blocked, society will be divided into: 15% of tech-savvy users capable of bypassing the blockages (for them, the situation is not critical); 85% of the population, who will find themselves cut off from their usual communication channels.

For these 85%, any future government that declares, “We’re canceling this absurdity. Here’s the ‘Enable Telegram’ button,” will automatically become a savior. A low barrier to entry is achieved not by building something new, but by eliminating the negative consequences of previous policies.

An analogy with the 1990s: Gorbachev’s “dry law” generated hatred. Yeltsin, by figuratively legalizing alcohol, gained the people’s love. It doesn’t matter that this had its downsides. Allowing the banned became the key to high ratings.

The Savior stage: The arrival of a new government with a simple solution. Imagine: the year is 2026. Telegram is down, WhatsApp is unavailable. Communication has returned to 2005 levels. Discontent is skyrocketing. And then a “Technocrat” appears (his origin is irrelevant). His program consists of two points:

• Repeal all laws blocking instant messaging apps within 24 hours.

• Pay bonuses to telecom operators for restoring traffic.

What’s going on? The entire country, which until recently hated the “regime,” greets him with applause. The threshold for entering power is minimal. He doesn't need to understand complex issues. He simply lifted the ban.

This is precisely the technology of power change with a low threshold for legitimization. The old regime has so exhausted the people with senseless restrictions that anyone who lifts them will be perceived as a benefactor.

What are the motives of the old regime? Why are they playing the role of the “bad guy”? The most pressing question. Don’t they understand that they are working for the successor? They do. But they have limited choices:

• Either they tighten control, losing ratings but buying time.

• Or they don’t tighten it, and they will be swept away in the near future, since instant messengers are used to coordinate protests.

They choose the lesser evil. And at the same time, they create the perfect “safety cushion” for their successor. The successor has probably already been chosen. He is waiting. He already has a decree ready on the “abolition of digital oppression.”

We’re outraged by the bans imposed by Roskomnadzor and the parliamentarians. But perhaps they’re simply fulfilling their role, laying the groundwork for the next political cycle.

The new government in Russia will get an easy start not because of its own merits, but because of the actions of the previous one. All it will take is a promise to “restore everything as it was,” and the people will give it their full support.

So, this opinion has taken hold, should I go to the nuthouse, or is there some truth to it?

Maybe?

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I come bearing predictable news. From our friends at Katyusha.org:

Our dire forecast regarding the implementation of biometrics in schools, which we presented in a large analytical report in early December, is being confirmed.

Following the [biometric ID] pilot program [for schoolchildren] in Tatarstan and several other regions participating in the experiment, the Leningrad Region has also extended its hand to children’s biometrics—as well as the country’s leading banker.

Katyusha is referring to a recent meeting between Leningrad Region Governor Alexander Drozdenko and Sber CEO Herman Gref, which resulted in “new promising projects” for the region, including the creation of a “biometric access project” that will allow children to “enter school securely and instantly, without cards or passes.”

Sounds very safe and convenient, no?

Drozdenko also boasted that Gref’s Leningrad cattle tag initiative would be the first “biometric access point” for schoolchildren in Russia. This is not even remotely true, and to this very day nobody knows why he said something so obviously untrue, but whatever.

Possibly Drozdenko meant that his region was joining a nationwide trend, spearheaded by Moscow, to “voluntarily” cattle-tag every Russian schoolchild.

If this is what Drozdenko meant, then yes, he is more or less correct.

Let us recall that in August, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko stressed the importance of cattle-tagging all schoolchildren, arguing that “entry to school ‘by face’ is not only convenient, but also very safe.”

Those are his actual words.

As for Mr. Herman Gref, the former (?) WEF Board of Trustees Member, the author of the preface to the Russian-language edition to Klaus Schwab’s The Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Virus warrior who provided funding and “logistics” for the creation of Sputnik V, the turbo-patriot whose daughter lives in London ….

Do I need to say it? I feel like I say it every week. I don’t want to say it anymore. I’m tired of saying it.

It’s just nice to know that Gref’s “schools of the future” will pump out generations of young adults who will think that “paying with a smile” is completely normal.

And it will be. And Gref will smile.

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The commercial enterprise that controls Russians’ biometric data has introduced new ways to use your face as a form of ID, resulting in unprecedented levels of safety and convenience in the Russian Federation. Russians young and old are already reaping the benefits of their country’s “digital transformation”—including very, very young Russians.

The Russian government is working on amending federal legislation to allow schools across the country to monitor and identify students using biometrics, Kommersant reported on December 3. Plans for a standardized “biometric turnstile system” for Russian schools are already being tested in Tatarstan.

Authorities have stressed that schools will be able to choose whether or not to switch to biometric identification, adding that parents must first consent before their childrens’ faces are scanned and entered into Russia’s Unified Biometric System (UBS).

Conservative-patriotic media outlets in Russia responded positively to this completely voluntary and very safe and convenient initiative.

Concentration camp? A bit dramatic, no? These so-called Russian patriots could learn a thing or two from disaffected westerners who read RT and understand the delicate nuances of the Russian government’s Plan, which must be trusted at all times.

Here is an unrelated excerpt from Kommersant’s recent article on the subject:

The Ministry of Education told Kommersant that the biometric school entry system is already being tested in 20 schools in Tatarstan, where “special attention is paid to security”: the school grounds are fenced, cameras are installed along the perimeter, and entry is through checkpoints.

Perfect for learning.

As this blog reported, at the end of August, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation and Chief of Staff of the Government Executive Office Dmitry Grigorenko deployed familiar language when describing the advantages of using biometrics to identify schoolchildren:

Entry to school ‘by face’ is not only convenient, but also very safe. Because it is always clear who is entering, who is exiting, who is in school... After all, this is where our children spend their lives.

But underage children aren’t the only Russians basking in the safety and convenience of biometric identification (although they are very obviously the primary targets of the country’s “digital transformation”; dehumanization must start at a young age so as to seem “normal”): Russians of all ages can now leave their unsafe and inconvenient paper IDs at home.

The Center for Biometric Technologies, the joint stock company that stores and manages Russians’ biometric data, recently unveiled a new platform for providing biometric services, “Migom” (Мигом, which can be translated as “instantly” or “in an instant”).

On December 11, the company posted a photo collage demonstrating how Migom will be incorporated into everyday life in Russia.

The accompanying caption:

[W]e want to show you how these [biometric] services look in real life. These photos show how easy it is now to access familiar services: order documents at the MFC [government services portal], check into a hotel, verify your age when purchasing age-restricted goods [including energy drinks; no, not a joke] at vending machines and self-checkouts, and soon, undergo pre-flight security checks.

Let’s have a closer look at these inspiring photographs.

A lady with nice long hair checkmates George Soros by using her FACE, and not her NATO-ENDORSED PAPER ID, to prove that she is a responsible taxpayer, and not a terrorist-biohazard!

Respectable suit-wearing man receives facial recognition-permission to buy something from a vending machine. VERY MULTIPOLAR, INDEED.

Energy drink enjoyers in Russia can now prove they are old enough (18+) to drink their favorite drink using their FACES. Davos trembles.

The End.

NOTE FROM EDWARD: My sincere apologies for the extended blog silence. After weeks of wandering the globe, I have finally settled down (for at least two weeks). Commence the blogging (until I have to move again)!

Dear Sir/Madam,

The information I’m about to share with you will likely have life-changing consequences for you and everyone you love. So please allow me to skip the usual blog pleasantries and get to the point: An influential member of Putin’s inner circle, and arguably one of Russia’s bravest White Hats, has signaled that the Russian government is preparing to launch a surprise SMO to stop Keir Starmer from implementing a compulsory digital ID scheme in the UK:

I don’t think you fully appreciate what Dmitriev has just done here. He has quite literally changed the game forever. Allow me to explain.

But first, very briefly, let’s examine the life of this fearless anti-globalist, who, at the risk of his own life, exposed the low IQs of Western leaders who are actively trying to cattle-tag their populations.

Educated at Stanford and Harvard Business School, Dmitriev launched his career as a full-time Satanist-slayer at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey & Company. In 2011 he was tapped by the Russian government to serve as CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), the country’s sovereign wealth fund. As Russia’s head investor, he famously squandered huge sums of money by backing Hyperloop, one of Elon Musk’s more creative scams.

Kirill was key in the financing and development of Sputnik V, and helped coordinate the partnership between the Russian government and AstraZeneca to produce and distribute genetic Big Pharma “vaccines” around the world.

When AstraZeneca’s shot started being pulled from shelves over safety concerns in March 2021, Dmitriev demonstrated unconditional loyalty for his business partner, insisting that the British-Swedish firm would ultimately be “vindicated”.

As expected, Dmitriev continued to fail upwards. In February, Putin appointed him “special representative of the Russian president for investment and economic cooperation with foreign countries”.

Since then, Dmitriev has played an integral role in US-Russia oligarchic rapprochement, inviting US oil majors to resume looting Russia’s natural resources once the Slav-culling ends in Ukraine.

Coincidentally, Dmitriev is also a graduate of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader Program (Class of 2009). A highly detailed and very flattering bio for Dmitriev can be found on Davos’ website:

Dmitriev is Putin’s envoy. Putin doesn’t use social media, so we must assume that sometimes he asks Kirill to send messages to his international network of White Hat sleeper agents (Twitter users).

This is what makes Dmitriev’s denunciation of top-down mark of the beast digital IDs designed to ruin the lives of ordinary people so meaningful.

His social media post is especially meaningful when put in proper context.

On October 21, a day before Dmitriev exposed the Satanic roots of the UK’s plans to create a mandatory digital ID, a senior member of the State Duma said the Russian government would introduce a mandatory internet ID within the next three years:

Meanwhile, the Russian government is marching forward with biometric payment and identification platforms. Even Russian schoolchildren are being biometrically identified as part of the country’s rapidly accelerating “digital transformation”.

These developments coincide with a growing list of government-initiated efforts to create the necessary infrastructure and legislative groundwork for a universal digital ID in Russia that will be used for basically everything.

Some relevant reports from Katyusha.org, a prominent patriotic-conservative media outlet in Russia (apologies for the machine-translated headlines, they are much more terrifying in the original Russian):

Browse Katyusha’s “digitalization” section for more. There’s a lot more.

Then of course there is the Russian government’s plans for the full-scale implementation of the digital ruble, which have been praised by Dmtriev.

The global rollout of CBDCs won’t work without the adoption of digital IDs. Actually, a digital wallet is a digital ID—one that can be used to send and receive centralized, programmable, BIS-compliant digital tokens.

Iain Davis has an excellent article about the UK digital ID scheme and how it serves as a precursor to the introduction of CBDCs. You should read it.

Iain Davis Substack

UK Digital ID: The BritCard Bait and Switch

In my previous article I suggested that the UK’s proposed “mandatory” digital ID, called the BritCard, was a bait and switch psyop. I posited that the arguments presented by Keir Starmer’s purported Labour government, to supposedly justify the BritCard rollout, coupled with the timing of the announcement, the apparent inability to understand public opin…

Read more

6 months ago · 190 likes · 39 comments · Iain Davis

In other words, the implementation of the digital ruble is actually a program to normalize digital IDs and create a digital panopticon in Russia. (That sort of sounds like what Keir Starmer is trying to do in the UK. How curious.)

None of this should come as a surprise to you. Moscow is signatory to numerous international declarations and statements advocating for a worldwide system of digital identification and control.

For example, in November 2022, Russia signed a G20 declaration that stated:

We acknowledge the importance of shared technical standards and verification methods, under the framework of the IHR (2005), to facilitate seamless international travel, interoperability, and recognizing digital solutions and non-digital solutions, including proof of vaccinations.

We support continued international dialogue and collaboration on the establishment of trusted global digital health networks as part of the efforts to strengthen prevention and response to future pandemics, that should capitalize and build on the success of the existing standards and digital COVID-19 certificates.

After Russia signed this historic document, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the Moscow-endorsed declaration as “constructive” and “balanced”.

The Kremlin has also publicly endorsed and promoted the introduction of digital public infrastructure (DPI), which is based on the idea that digital IDs will make life more safe, convenient, and equitable. The World Economic Forum, the Rockefeller Foundation, the United Nations, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation all have similarly nice things to say about DPI.

In December 2023, a prominent Russian economist published an article arguing that the introduction of DPI in Russia and around the world would lay the groundwork for a global “digital concentration camp”.

What a worrywart.

Returning to Dmitriev: The Russian government’s growing intolerance for anything that could be construed as inconvenient to the oligarchy has forced him and many other Russian patriots to use coded language when discussing current events. By exposing the UK’s plans for a “top-down ‘mark of the beast’ digital ID”, Putin’s special representative is subtly blowing the whistle on all attempts to cattle-tag the planet—including plans endorsed by the president he serves.

That’s really the only possibility here.

Unless, of course, Dmitriev is a Davos-groomed blowhard who will say or do anything to distract and torment the global peasantry as his friends at Goldman Sachs laugh and laugh and laugh.

But that would be impossible. He’s a decorated Russian patriot, after all.

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At the invitation of the Russian Orthodox patriarchate, English journalist James Delingpole traveled to Moscow—also known as Mordor in the Western press—to see for himself what all the fuss was about. He revealed his findings at the end of September in a column published in The Spectator.

In his report, Delingpole shares his interactions with the common Muscovite, as well as his general impressions of Russia’s capital. Turns out Moscow isn’t infested with bloodthirsty Orcs, but rather inhabited by human beings who are not so dissimilar from you and me. The city is also surprisingly clean and safe given its enormous size.

Excluding a few minor quibbles, I can find nothing objectionable in the first 750 words of Delingpole’s column. Even my own criticisms of his report—which we will discuss in detail in the coming paragraphs—do not prevent me from applauding his efforts to humanize Russia and her people at a time when we have never been closer to war (the not-proxy variety) between NATO and Moscow. Actually, Delingpole’s visit to Russia couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. Under the current geopolitical realities, reminding Western readers of their shared humanity with ordinary Muscovites is arguably far more valuable than attempting to wade into the murky waters of Russian domestic and foreign policy—especially if you are limited to 900 words.

And this is where Delingpole’s admirable attempt to humanize the scary monsters you see on CNN goes awry:

[J]udging by the bustle in the many excellent restaurants along the Arbat and Bolshaya Nikitskaya, the shape of the economy isn’t half as bad as we’ve been led to believe. Perhaps the 13 per cent tax rate for the vast majority of the population has something to do with this. Or maybe it’s that, being an oil and gas producer, Russia doesn’t have much time for net zero, so it’s not waging war on motorists, air travellers or affordable heating.

Before going any further, I would like pause and make a few observations. If these observations come across as extraneous, it is because I am aiming for something very specific with this internet article, and would rather err on the side of being long-winded than risk being misinterpreted.

First, I would like to state for the record that I am conscious of the fact that the paragraph I just quoted from Delingpole’s column is open to interpretation. He is writing in generalizations—in fact, the totality of his report could be characterized as a series of generalizations—but some of these sweeping observations help to broaden the reader’s understanding of Russia, while others hinder nuanced discussion about this badly misunderstood country.

For example, his observation of the bustle “in the many excellent restaurants along the Arbat and Bolshaya Nikitskaya” serves a useful purpose by casting doubt on the mainstream media’s sweeping claim of a Russian economy on the brink of catastrophe.

Of course, Delingpole’s observation isn’t an ironclad rebuttal of talking points you hear on network news, but it’s not meant to be. Delingpole is simply relaying what he saw with his own two eyes in Moscow, and pointing out—quite correctly—that some of these observations seem to suggest more nuance is needed in Western media’s coverage of Russia’s economic situation.

The popularity of fine dining options on two of Moscow’s most touristy streets, located just around the corner from the Kremlin, is perhaps not the best indicator for gauging the economic health of a country that spans 11 time zones. But I don’t think Delingpole is trying to suggest otherwise. He is merely challenging the typical British magazine-reader to question his or her preconceived notions about Russia, spoon-fed to them by odious media organs. Delingpole is asking: The BBC keeps telling you Russia’s economy is on the verge of collapse—surely there is a small, cobweb-filled corner of your mind where you can entertain a bit of uncertainty on this matter?

In this sense, pointing to on-the-ground observations, however narrow in scope they may be, benefits the reader by providing information that may not fit snugly into mainstream-approved worldviews.

But when Delingpole departs from personal observation, he falls into the trap of “common sense” conclusion-making. And this is where generalizations can often do more harm than good in challenging the soundness of lazy narratives:

[M]aybe it’s that, being an oil and gas producer, Russia doesn’t have much time for net zero, so it’s not waging war on motorists, air travellers or affordable heating.

What prompted Delingpole to make such a sweeping statement?

During his time in Moscow, Delingpole met with senior clergy from the Russian Orthodox Church. It’s likely he also conferred with a range of people with their own areas of expertise, who shared their perspectives about Russia and what the West gets wrong about her. Delingpole came to Moscow to make his own assessment of Russia, but it would be unreasonable to expect him to make this assessment without relying on the expertise and insights of others. This is standard operating procedure for any press tour: You go to a place, have a look around, speak with people who have knowledge on the subjects you are trying to better understand, and then report your findings. It’s possible that during his time in Moscow, someone with professed expertise on the subject told him that the Russian government “doesn’t have much time for net zero”, and trusting this expert, saw no reason to believe otherwise. For better or worse, we all rely on the expertise of others, and journalists are no different in this regard.

Or perhaps in a well-meaning but overzealous attempt to show “the other side” of Russia, Delingpole concluded on his own that, given Russia’s vast deposits of oil and gas, it would be absurd for Moscow to show any interest whatsoever in the climate agenda.

Regardless of how he came to this conclusion—we can only speculate—there is no denying that Russia’s adherence to “net zero” mania would defy common sense. It would be totally non-nonsensical, and so it would be completely reasonable to assume Moscow had no time for such “green” rubbish. Indeed, Delingpole even points to the end-goal of “climate” policies adopted in the West: burdening, and even restricting, energy consumers, whether they be motorists or families trying to heat their homes, while the usual suspects laugh their way to the bank (probably in their carbon-emitting private jets). What would possess the Russian government, which relies heavily on revenue from energy exports to keep the lights on in the Kremlin, to do something so contrary to its own interests?

Again, allow me to stress that this type of thinking is deeply rooted in what many would consider common sense.

And yet, when you examine the Russian government’s approach to “net zero” and the climate agenda, you will find more than just vague, boilerplate statements. Concrete policies purportedly designed to “account” for Russia’s carbon footprint are already in place. The Russian government also invests a huge amount of time and money into actively promoting “carbon reduction” around the world, especially within BRICS. Speaking of BRICS: Moscow is actively collaborating with the Multipolar World Order to create a common carbon market. A carbon trading mechanism for emissions-heavy industry is already in use in Russia, although for now it is voluntary.

Let’s examine the evidence.

For the sake of brevity, I will skip over the various UN-initiated climate pacts and agreements of which Moscow is a signatory. I don’t think there’s a single country on earth apart from Sweden that actually takes any of that word salad seriously, so I don’t consider it a smoking gun when it comes to assessing Moscow’s level of participation in the climate agenda.

I would prefer to focus on more alarming developments that illustrate Moscow’s collusion in this global scam.

On September 1, 2022, the Russian government introduced a registry for carbon units, designed to allow companies to buy and sell credits that could be used to offset their carbon footprints. The first carbon units—96 in total—were added to the registry three weeks later by a company in Sakhalin, as part of a three-year project to make the region “carbon neutral”.

In August of this year, Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development announced in an English-language press release that Sakhalin had successfully achieved “carbon neutrality”:

In 2023, President Vladimir Putin approved an updated Climate Doctrine to set the goal of achieving carbon neutrality in Russia by 2060.

An important step towards this goal was the Sakhalin Climate Experiment which had been underway on Sakhalin for three years under a separate federal law. Sakhalin was the starting point for the practical development of climate policy: the first climate projects were launched and the first Russian carbon credits were sold.

“The climate agenda is a long-term priority for the government. It determines the competitiveness of our products abroad and Russia’s participation in the formation of new markets where we have the expertise to take leading positions. These are low-carbon products, i.e., production of aluminum, fertilizers, petrochemicals, lithium, nuclear and hydroelectric power and renewable energy sources,” Maxim Reshetnikov, Minister of Economic Development, said.

As part of the Sakhalin Climate Experiment, Wildberries, one of the country’s largest online marketplaces, became the first Russian company to voluntarily purchase carbon credits to compensate for its own carbon emissions.

The normalization of creating “carbon credits” has only accelerated in Russia since Sakhalin declared itself to be carbon-neutral in August.

Just last week, on October 9, Tatneft, a Russian oil major based in Tatarstan, registered 4,473 newly minted “carbon units”.

Two days ago, on October 16, a construction company involved in building Herman Gref’s private 15-minute city outside of Moscow announced it had entered Russia’s burgeoning carbon market.

As of August 2025, 68 “climate projects” have been added to Russia’s national register of carbon units, and 154,000 carbon units have been purchased, traded, declared, or used in other inexplicable ways to offset the carbon footprints of eco-friendly Russian companies.

Meanwhile, Moscow has been busy lobbying for the creation of various carbon-accounting mechanisms within BRICS.

Work towards the creation of a BRICS carbon market began in 2024 under Russia’s chairmanship of the bloc.

In July of this year, BRICS member states signed the Joint Declaration of the 17th BRICS Summit, “Strengthening Global South Cooperation for More Inclusive and Sustainable Governance”, in Rio de Janeiro, which called for the creation of “mutually recognized methodologies and standards for assessing greenhouse gas emissions” and an internationally recognized mechanism for carbon-accounting.

In state-sponsored information spaces, Moscow applauds any and all efforts to flatten the carbon curve.

TV BRICS, a media project co-created by the Russian government and headquartered in Moscow, provides rave reviews of any and all schemes to stamp out the dreaded carbon menace. The outlet has even highlighted Davos’ efforts to prevent the climate from changing.

You will find similar results if you search the website’s Russian-language offerings. Russian-language state and mainstream media are in lockstep support for the climate agenda.

The reason for this is very simple: Moscow believes the normalization of the climate agenda will create a common cause that the whole world can rally around, restoring Moscow’s relations with its Western partners. Indeed, Russia is actively looking towards the future, one in which it can work hand-in-hand with NATO states to save the climate. As Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov explained in September 2022:

Climate issues haven’t gone anywhere. What’s more, it’s clear that with the situation we have today, with hydrocarbon prices in the world... we will see the further development of alternative energy, and wind, and solar, and all other areas, including energy conservation. There will be a lot of major shifts. And the climate agenda will be, shall we say, at the forefront of all these shifts. That is the first point. The second point is that... the normalization of the agenda and the normalization of relations—which will happen sooner or later—will also in all likelihood begin with climate-related issues. Therefore, we must be ready in this regard. We must not fall behind.

However, I must stress that Moscow’s participation in the climate agenda is entirely motivated by a desire to continue serving as the world’s most accommodating gas station. Gazprom will happily sell you Russia’s natural resources—it will sell them to anyone, under any circumstance.

Even if you are literally invading Russia, Gazprom will keep paying you to transit Russian gas to its valued clients around the world. Now that’s customer loyalty.

East, West, BRICS, NATO—all are welcome to feed from the trough. Whoever you are and no matter how many Russians you are actively vaporizing, Gazprom will insist on selling you Russia’s natural resources, and at bargain-bin prices. And if you want your cheap energy to be more “green”, that’s not a problem. Gazprom is on it.

So we must give credit where credit is due: Russia’s strategy for saving the world from carbon does not list fossil fuels as the driving force behind climate change. Furthermore, if you peruse the relevant documents, you will find that the Russian government claims that the country’s vast forests help to offset Russia’s carbon emissions, thereby making “net zero”—which Moscow hopes to reach by 2060—more achievable.

But none of this has prevented Moscow from spending a great deal of time promoting the climate agenda, and to claim otherwise is frankly a bit silly. Yes, it’s true that Russia is cutting corners and finding convenient loopholes to make its own “climate action” easier to stomach, but this is hardly cause for celebration.

Why would it be any consolation if Russia’s energy companies were simply “playing along” with the climate agenda to stay competitive and maintain profits? Isn’t that what every energy company everywhere is doing? If the climate agenda aims to reduce the standard of living for the plebs while maximizing profits for the oligarchy, and Russia is actively adopting “carbon markets” and other mechanisms to make its vast natural resources available to this global scam, surely Moscow is, at the very least, an accessory to this crime—not a victim, nor an innocent bystander.

But what about Delingpole’s claim that the Russian government, distinguishing itself from almost every government on earth, is not engaged in waging war on energy consumers? Surely, making energy affordable and available in abundance would at least in part outweigh Moscow’s odious participation in the climate agenda?

Unfortunately, I have struggled to find a single authoritative source that supports the idea that Russian motorists have access to exceptionally affordable gasoline, making them the envy of car owners around the world.

If you compare the cost of filling up a 40-liter tank as percent of average monthly income, Russia doesn’t even rank top 40 in terms of gasoline affordability:

The truth is that despite its incalculable wealth of oil, gas, and all kinds of fancy minerals, Russia suffers from the same soul-crushing economic inequality that you’ll find in the UK, the United States, and many other Democracy Human Values countries.

A very large percentage of Russians live hand-to-mouth, and please believe me when I say they are not jumping for joy when they pull into a gas station.

Due in part to Ukraine’s NATO-backed campaign to destroy Russia’s energy infrastructure, the price of gasoline in Russia has spiked in recent weeks.

On October 16, Russian media reported that gasoline was now cheaper in the United States than in Russia. And I’m not talking about gas prices relative to average income. Russian media reported that gas in the US was now cheaper than gas in Russia, even though salaries in the United States are on average 2-3x larger than what Russians take home each month.

Even if these reports were false, there are other glaring red flags that suggest that Russian motorists are suffering.

Russian news outlets recently revealed that in an effort to stop prices from ballooning, gas stations have been caught selling diluted gasoline.

In Russia.

Because of gasoline shortages.

Meanwhile, Russian regions are preparing to increase the “transport tax” for car owners, because why not?

How one of the world’s largest crude exporters could be suffering from an acute shortage of gasoline is a topic worthy of a separate article. Needless to say, this does not lend support to the notion that Russian energy consumers enjoy special privileges. On the contrary, it suggests that Russia’s natural resources have been privatized for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many.

However, Delingpole is correct in his claim that Russian airlines do not charge travelers a carbon emissions fee or a similarly absurd climate-related penalty when flying. He is similarly correct about the low cost of utilities in Russia.

Thanks to generous subsidies and price controls, electricity is dirt cheap in Russia, especially when compared to the West. This is good—great, even. However, I wouldn’t attribute this policy to some kind of conscious effort to shield Russians from the economic consequences of the Green Terror. Subsidized utilities were part of the social safety net during the Soviet Union, and the expectation for heavily discounted electricity refused to die with the USSR. It’s reassuring that carbon-accounting policies have not yet interfered with Russians’ access to cheap electricity. Let’s hope it stays that way.

Taking into account all of the above, it’s fair to say that claiming Moscow has “no time” for “net zero” is misleading. I would even go further and say it is wrong.

I am not accusing Delingpole of intentionally misleading his readers. As I wrote earlier in this blog post, I believe he fell victim to common sense. That sounds odd, but if you stop and really think about it, it’s actually a common problem.

I’ll provide a few examples.

Common sense would dictate that the Russian government created Sputnik V in order to give Russians a safe and effective alternative to Big Pharma’s warp-speed development of unproven, barely tested genetic COVID “vaccines”.

In reality, in July 2020, a month before Sputnik V was unveiled as “the world’s first registered COVID vaccine”, AstraZeneca transferred its vaccine technology to Russia as part of a deal to manufacture the British-Swedish shot in Russia for export to more than 30 countries around the world.

Five months later, the Russian government signed an agreement with the Western pharmaceutical giant to create a Sputnik V-AstraZeneca vaccine hybrid.

Putin praised the partnership as a “compelling example of combining research forces, technologies and investment in order to achieve a common goal, which is to protect the lives, health and safety of millions of people on the planet.”

Russia’s president also wished AstraZeneca’s CEO “success, and not just in the Russian market but also in global markets.”

Well, we all know how that ended.

(If you want to learn more about Sputnik V, please consult with my cat, Susan.)

Let’s examine a more recent example of the misleading nature of common sense.

Eight years ago, a very trustworthy spokesman for Russia’s Defense Ministry revealed that Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the leader of an Islamist death squad that was liquidating Christians, Kurds, and pretty much everyone else in Syria at the time, had been “critically wounded” by a Russian airstrike, blowing his arm clean off.

Now, common sense would tell us that al-Julani used his not-blown-off arm to shake Putin’s hand in Moscow earlier this week.

In reality, Putin was spoiled for choice and had the option of shaking al-Julani’s right or left hand, because Syria’s new president, who is still busy murdering Christians and religious minorities, had no missing limbs. Both arms were intact and fully functional!

What could this mean?

Simply that’s it’s dangerous to rely too heavily on heuristic-based thinking when you’re trying to wrap your head around Russia.

Here I must defer to infamous blog-apostate Commander Rurik to better explain what I’m trying to get at:

Almost all scams are actually based on manipulating what people call “common sense” or what can more accurately be termed “heuristic-based thinking”. These approximations and short-cuts that we take in our thinking often land us in hot water, but most of us are too lazy to change our ways, unfortunately.

Delingpole likely felt comfortable reporting that Russia wasn’t messing around with the climate agenda because Russia is heavily reliant on fossil fuel exports and common sense would dictate that you can’t pay Kiev to transit gas to NATO states while also promoting carbon markets. But actually, you can.

And if you start thinking like a Gazprom executive (i.e., a psychopath), all of this makes perfect sense.

Delingpole is not even close to being the #1 offender of faulty thinking when it comes to Russia. Actually, I chose to respond to his column because he is clearly a very open-minded guy. Have you ever read his Substack? His skepticism is merciless. Absolutely nothing is taken for granted. He pushes the envelope so far that you begin to question whether the envelope ever existed in the first place. It makes for delightful reading.

One could even say Delingpole has a knack for torpedoing heuristic-based thinking.

Sadly, while I think he did a fine job of reminding his readers that Russians are humans too, his report was lacking his signature disdain for taking things at face value. Of course, the purpose of the column was to force readers to grapple with their own heuristic-based thinking about Russia. But when he claimed Moscow had no time for “net zero”, he committed a heuristic faux pas of his own.

We all do, from time to time.

I hope James understands that I am writing from a place of sympathy and understanding, as someone who has repeatedly misjudged Russia during my ten years living there.

I also hope James continues his Russia explorations, wherever they may lead him.

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Last week, Russian government officials and representatives from fintech firms gathered for the annual Finopolis forum to discuss the future of Russian finance and banking.

The conference was held in the Sirius Federal Territory, located outside of Sochi, which operates under an “experimental legal regime”, allowing the municipality to implement “projects that serve as models for Russian regions”. Thanks to its special status, Sirius has plans to fast-track the use of robots, artificial intelligence, biometric technologies, and the digital ruble in shops and restaurants.

It’s perhaps no surprise then that Russia’s fintech leaders met in Sirius—described as “the future of the country”—to announce their latest breakthrough:

Commenting on the introduction of a biometric palm-payment system, Yulia Kopytova, a senior vice president at VTB Bank, said:

The technology of human identification using a person’s palm is already operating in other countries, for example, in China. Modern payment solutions are increasingly making the need to constantly carry not only cash or a card, but also a smartphone or other device, obsolete.

Authentication by biometric data allows you to make payments literally on the go: in public transport or in a coffee shop. The new option of accepting payment by palm is the next phase in the development of the payment market and bio-acquisition, another step towards improving the convenience and speed of service in various areas of trade and services.

Kommersant provided further details about this new payment method:

It is planned that in the future the palm will be added to the list of approved [biometric] options, which can be registered centrally together with the image of one’s face or a voice sample. The consumer will be able to choose the method of authentication or identification when making a payment or verifying his or her age. When adopting changes in a number of regulations, the original samples of the [palm] vein pattern will be stored in the Unified Biometric System (UBS) … This will ensure the safe use of the palm in biometric services.

Not to be outdone, Russia’s largest bank, Sber, announced its own roadmap for implementing palm-payments:

Sber began experimenting with this technology a decade ago. In 2015, the bank launched a pilot program, Ladoshki (“Little Palms”), that allowed schoolchildren to use biometrics to purchase meals: “To pay for lunch, the student puts his hand to the scanner on a special machine, selects a dish from the menu, and the money is automatically debited from the account attached to the biometrics.”

In the summer of 2023, Sber introduced “Pay with a Smile,” a biometric payment system that uses facial recognition to debit a user’s bank account.

Since then, the technology has been slowly but steadily integrated into Russian commerce.

Sber celebrated World Smile Day, held on the first Friday of October, with the goal of “devoting a day to smiles and spreading random acts of kindness”, by releasing new figures on Pay with a Smile’s adoption:

On World Smile Day, which is celebrated in 2025 on October 3, Sber calculated the number of purchases using the “Pay with a Smile” service in the Northwestern Federal District [a federal district with a combined population of 13.6 million, with St. Petersburg as its administrative center]. In the first nine months of this year, residents of the District made 17.7 million payments using biometrics. This is 8 times more than in the same period last year.

The leader of Pay with a Smile transactions is St. Petersburg (almost 6 million payments worth more than 5.2 billion rubles) and the Leningrad region (almost 2 million transactions totaling 1.5 billion rubles).

The District currently has 93,000 terminals that support “Pay with a Smile” technology.

Although users of the technology remain in the minority, the infrastructure for transitioning to biometric payment is already in place. The bank announced at the end of 2024 that it had already installed 1 million terminals across Russia.

“Several years ago the smartphone became the key to many services. And thanks to our technologies payments have transformed into a natural and instant gesture without the need to use a phone. Paying with a smile is part of a larger journey toward comfortable adoption of digital services, where they simplify rather than complicate life,” Sber said in an October 3 press release.

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Despite vigorous protests from Klaus Schwab, the Russian government continues to wage an asymmetric shadow war against unsafe and inconvenient paper documents, which are being aggressively replaced with biometric data managed by a commercial enterprise. Every day, Soros-financed paper suffers crushing defeats at the hands of Moscow, but you never hear about these game-changers because the corporate lamestream media is engaged in a cowardly conspiracy of silence.

Speaking at a forum in Kazan at the end of August, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation and Chief of Staff of the Government Executive Office Dmitry Grigorenko revealed the latest triumph of Russia’s rapidly accelerating “digital transformation”. As TASS reported:

The Republic of Tatarstan has launched a test program for entry to schools using biometrics. At the moment, 20 schools in the region are participating in the pilot program, [Grigorenko] told reporters during the “Development of small towns and historical settlements” forum.

Grigorenko, one of Russia’s leading experts in the fields of safety and convenience, explained the clear advantages of monitoring children with the assistance of biometrics:

Entry to school ‘by face’ is not only convenient, but also very safe. Because it is always clear who is entering, who is exiting, who is in school... After all, this is where our children spend their lives.

There is no need for Chatham House-endorsed pearl-clutching, however. As Grigorenko emphasized, this harmless biometric test, which will definitely not be used as a template for the rollout of a nationwide biometrics program for primary schoolers, is completely voluntary, and will remain that way until the end of time.

Furthermore, children who voluntarily participate in this extremely temporary test program will be reassured to know that their soon-to-never-exist-again biometric ID will be based on (or will be integrated into?) Russia’s Unified Biometric System (UBS).

“The system is based on the Unified Biometric System. This is a public informational platform through which various services are provided, such as contactless payment for purchases and public transportation, remote opening of businesses, accessing and using the government services portal, check-in at hotels without a passport, and a number of other functions,” Grigorenko said.

To make matters even better, the UBS is operated by a commercial joint-stock company that works day and night to protect Russians’ biometric data from power-hungry, money-grubbing corporations.

Hopefully this will give worrywart Russian parents some peace of mind.

Of course, schools across Russia have been using biometric ID systems to great effect for several years now. For example, here’s a local media report from November 2021 about the introduction of a biometric ID system at a school in Novokuznetsk, a city in Kemerovo Oblast in southwestern Siberia. They’ve even got face diapers on, which were quite in vogue at the time.

There are many such cases.

So there’s actually nothing particularly newsworthy about Tatarstan’s “test” program—unless of course it really is being linked to the UBS, which will most likely happen eventually, everywhere, anyway.

Probably in 2-3 years, governments using your face to identify you and track you at all times and cut you off from your bank account for wrong-think will no longer be considered taboo; probably a lot of people will think it’s awesome.

Children who have been groomed since birth to accept this emerging worldwide system will of course consider it completely normal, safe, and convenient.

The good news is that some of these children will live in BRICS nations, which means that their digital cattle tag will be anti-globalist, and might even be de-dollarized.

If you enjoy reading Edward Slavsquat, maybe you would also enjoy a paid subscription to Edward Slavsquat?

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Sberbank CEO and Davos gospel thumper Herman Gref dreams of a happy Russia free from the shackles of cash and debit cards; a safe, convenient Russia where commerce is conducted with radiant smiles.

It’s a fantastic dream—who could imagine such a pleasantly convenient Russia? But (and just hear me out here) … could Gref’s dream one day become reality?

It already is. Slowly. Convenience-proponents might say too slowly. Yes, unfortunately, there are still many convenience-haters in Russia who have demonstrated suboptimal levels of enthusiasm for the biometric paradise that awaits them.

Let’s have a look.

In June, Sber reported that it had installed 600,000 “Pay with a Smile” bio-terminals across the country. Six months later, Russia’s largest bank (it’s not just a bank, though; Sber is “a whole universe of services for human life and businesses”) released some end-of-year bio-stats:

Sberbank calculated how many times and where Russians paid with a smile during 2024. Since the beginning of the year, the number of monthly transactions has increased 14 times: from almost 500 thousand in January 2024 to more than 6 million in December 2024 … Since the beginning of 2024, more than 2 million Russians have used the service.

The bank plans to install 2 million bio-terminals across Russia.

Sber also launched “interbank bioacquiring” (literally “биоэквайринг” in Russian) in December, which will allow “all Russian citizens who have reached the age of 18 to pay for purchases using biometrics, regardless of which bank they are clients of”:

You no longer need to carry cash, bank cards or a phone - the transaction can be completed in just a few seconds. Just select "Payment with a smile" on the terminal screen, look into the camera - the payment will be made instantly, no matter whether you are a client of Sberbank or use the services of another financial institution.

The inclusive nature of Pay with a Smile is a huge win for convenience and could help make biometrics the #1 payment method in Russia!

“The future belongs to technologies, they work for people and make their lives easier and more convenient. Bioacquiring is a very important step in this direction. If biometrics continues to develop at the same pace in the next few years, it can become the first choice payment method. Today, it is already the safest tool for non-cash payments. The service algorithms will not allow payment by photo, image on a smartphone or using a mask,” Sber executive Dmitry Sukhoverkhov told the media in December.

Pending approval from regulators, Sber also plans to turn Pay with a Smile into an ID system that will allow Russians 18-and-up to do adult things like buy cigs and booze:

The Russian government has already approved using biometric identification when purchasing age-restricted items like… energy drinks.

(From March 1, anyone who wants to buy an energy drink in Russia will have to prove they are at least 18 years old. It is reasonable to assume that enforcement will be lax. But what other things might we assume when Russian state media triumphantly reports that citizens will be able to use biometrics to confirm their age when purchasing energy drinks? Strange times.)

While we’re on the subject of controlled substances, here’s a fun Pay with a Smile story involving vodka:

The head of the Information Technology Center of the Kaliningrad Institute for Education Development, Dmitry Kulagin, accidentally paid for a bottle of vodka for another customer with his face. The official reported this on his VKontakte page, but later deleted the post.

Kulagin said that while he was standing in line, a man in front of him tried to pay for a purchase [vodka]. The official simply smiled at the cashier at the time, but a moment later he saw a message on the terminal screen about the money being debited from his account.

As Kulagin himself explained, the terminal was configured to pay via facial biometrics. After short negotiations, the buyer returned the money for the paid goods to the official. In his publication, Kulagin joked: “It seems that the digitalization of business has acquired a malicious enemy in me.”

Kulagin later deleted the post and noted that the story attracted the attention of “unscrupulous journalists who decided to make more hype out of it.”

Say what you will about unscrupulous journalists but sometimes they craft headlines that would make Gogol grin:

But are Russians ready for so much safety and convenience?

A recent survey conducted by Komsomolskaya Pravda found that 64% of respondents will “never agree to trust their biometric data to banks”. 23% said they hadn’t decided yet if they would switch to biometric payments. 10% said they were ready to use a face-pay system, while 3% revealed they had already starting paying with their beautiful smiles.

Then there is the category of Russians who are forced to use cash or a card because the cashier has no idea how to operate Sber’s face-pay machine.

A Pikabu (Russian Reddit) user (translation: frustrated 20-something) provides this harrowing testimony:

In our tiny town terminals from SBER have started to appear, which allow payment by face.

Since I registered my face in SBER a long time ago and decided to try out advanced technologies in payment. I chose a good moment when there was no queue and here it is... one-time entry of the PIN code and PURCHASE (further payments were made without a PIN code) is completed.

Then the momentary euphoria was shattered by ABSOLUTE ignorance of this payment method among sellers and reactions ranging from surprise to aggression—WHAT are you doing, why did you turn on the camera, cancellation of the transaction by the seller and rude PAYMENT by card like everyone else.

TO THOSE WHO PLACE THESE WONDERS in STORES:

CONDUCT EXPLANATORY WORK WITH YOUR STAFF!

IT’S NOT THE SELLER’S BUSINESS TO FORBID ME FROM PAYING BY FACE IDENTIFICATION

What just happened?

There is a friendly banker in Russia named Herman Gref.

You might know him as the former member of the WEF Board of Trustees who authored the preface to the Russian-language edition of Klaus Schwab’s The Fourth Industrial Revolution; additionally, he is celebrated as the financer of Sputnik V, a well-respected cattle tag connoisseur, Russia’s artificial intelligence tsar, and a studious student of the Kabbalah.

None of these accomplishments are related.

You know him. We write about him quite often here on the blog.

Anyway. He has some exciting news for you:

The juicy details:

Last summer, Sber was the first in Russia to launch a biometric payment project for mass users. Today, about 600,000 terminals are installed throughout the country that can accept payments using biometrics—“Pay With A Smile” with SberPay. By the end of the year there will be more than a million of them.

Approximately 30-33% of the total market of operating terminals in the world are located in the Russian Federation. This means that Russia is the only country in the world where payment using biometrics has become available en masse—literally to the entire population of the country. 30 million Sber clients have already connected to the service. Every day, 50 thousand people connect and try this payment method.

“As practice shows, it takes two to three years for people to realize how convenient it is and begin to use it en masse. I think that in a couple of years we will see that, firstly, millions of terminals will appear, and this experience will also be absolutely consistent, both in Moscow and in any small settlement in Kamchatka or Sakhalin, or somewhere in Magadan,” added the head of Sberbank.

I just want to reiterate the CONVENIENCE of “pay with a smile” technology. IT IS CONVENIENT.

HERMAN GREF SAYS SO IN THIS UNSETTLING VIDEO:

GREF: In 2023 we began widespread implementation of facial recognition payments. As of now, Russia is the first country in the world that has begun using biometric technology for everyday transactions on a mass scale. We found a way to avoid the use of very expensive 3D cameras, and decreased the cost of the equipment using advanced mathematics. I have to say that it’s way more convenient, even more so than paying with your phone.

If you aren’t convinced yet that Pay With A Smile is the best, most anti-globalist, multipolar and convenient way to pay for stuff, just watch this one-minute Pay With A Smile promo-video featuring a young lady with low self-esteem who meets her true love by paying for a cappuccino with her face:

Or you can watch the award-winning Edward Slavsquat edit:

So it goes.

Don’t worry. The Edward Institute for Village Studies is working tirelessly to develop new technologies to counter Gref’s biometric nightmare:

You should join us on Telegram, by the way.

Have a nice Friday.

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Mikhail Mishustin’s new government—which is actually just the old government, but with a new mandate to digitally transform Russia—just made two announcements that the mainstream media is doing everything it possibly can to hide from you.

They don’t want you to know that the game is about to change from unipolar to multipolar. Change is in the air and they don’t want you to know that.

The Ministry of Digital Development revealed on May 18 that it is moving forward with its plan to create a “unified video surveillance platform”. The centralized surveillance hub will collect and analyze “Safe City” surveillance footage from across the Russian Federation.

Globalists beware: Algorithms that are watching your face will soon be connected to a Unified Face-Watching System. And if you threaten “the timeliness of garbage removal”, you will be apprehended:

In mid-March, the head of the Ministry of Digital Development, Maksut Shadayev, said that every third video surveillance camera out of more than 1 million installed as part of the “Safe City” program in Russia is connected to a facial recognition system, and all cameras on the roads automatically recognize license plates. According to Shadayev, video surveillance technologies, in addition to security, are used to monitor the maintenance of improvement facilities, the cleanliness of streets, and the timeliness of garbage removal.

The Ministry of Digital Development first floated the idea of creating a centralized surveillance hive in December.

Yes, things are moving quickly now.

As Prime Minister Mishustin said just last week, “Accelerating the pace of digitalization allows us to implement the most progressive ideas in the shortest possible time.”

He actually said that in July 2021 in a recorded address for Herman Gref and Klaus Schwab’s Cyber Polygon conference.

Good times.

The second piece of big news is that 5G “test zones” will be introduced in every corner of Russia. Interfax has the details, also from May 18:

Test zones for fifth-generation mobile communication networks (5G) will appear in the Russian Federation before 2030 as provided for by the draft national program “Data Economy and Digital Transformation of the State,” said Deputy Head of the Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation Dmitry Ugnivenko.

“Before 2030, pilot zones will appear in every subject of the Russian Federation, and in 16 cities with more than 1 million residents, commercial networks will appear that will provide services on fifth-generation networks,” Ugnivenko said on Saturday at the Russia exhibition and forum. .

In addition, the deputy minister said that it is planned to create a unified Internet of Things (IoT) network, which will generally allow managing remote sensors and ensuring data collection remotely without human intervention, collecting “big data” into a single infrastructure …

All of this is being carried out as part of the “Data Economy and Digital Transformation” program commissioned by the Kremlin.

Remember when people were claiming that Putin was waging a top secret shadow war against 5G?

I remember.

Still, I think it’s too soon to say where the Russian government stands on this issue. It’s possible that 5G towers are being installed across Russia so that Putin can keep a close eye on this controversial technology. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”, as they say.

And now I must go toil in the dirt for ten hours as millions of mosquitoes violate me. So far, I’ve tilled a grand total of 1 square centimeter. The village Five Year Plan is not off to a great start, let’s just put it that way.

The Q&A will be published this week. I’m very sorry for the wait.

Other blog goodies coming soon.

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The nations of the world are racing each other to see who can tag their respective cattle in the safest and most voluntary and convenient way. Meanwhile, the cattle bicker on the internet about which rancher has the best and most moral cattle tag.

“So it goes.”

I suppose it’s a matter of taste, really. After all, deciding who gets to tag you is still a choice, technically. Sort of.

In Russia, great advances have been made towards implementing a biometric cattle tag, which is arguably the most convenient cattle tag ever devised because the cattle don’t have to haul around a piece of paper anymore—their face is their tag. If that’s not convenient I don’t know what is.

It’s a proven fact that biometric cattle tags are safe, convenient, 100% voluntary, and implemented gradually so as not to cause suspicion or distress among the cattle.

Allow me to demonstrate.

It’s for your convenience

By now I hope you have realized that your civil liberties privileges are being stripped from you because your government cares deeply about your safety and loses sleep over the possibility of you being inconvenienced.

Moscow is similarly altruistic and selfless:

The Russian government announced at the end of March that citizens would be permitted to register at hotels, spas, campsites, tourist centers, and medical clinics using biometric data stored in the “voluntary” Unified Biometric System.

As usual, the relevant authorities hailed the “convenience” of biometric IDs. The Ministry of Economic Development told TASS that biometric check-in at hotels and other institutions will “allow guests to independently register at any convenient time without queues and waiting”.

Of course, Russians will always be allowed to register at hotels and treatment centers without getting retina-scanned, but why would they want to be inconvenienced?

But just remember: biometric identification is the key to convenience, and only Russian citizens whose data has been entered into the completely voluntary Unified Biometric System will have access to this extremely convenient method of registration, Rospotrebnadzor noted in a press release.

While we’re on the topic, by the end of the year Russians in several regions will be able to interact with their local bureaucracies without presenting a domestic passport; they’ll just need to smile for the camera…

But just to be 100% clear: Russians will never been forced to switch to biometric identification; this is about convenience and optimization and giving cherished citizens choices.

It’s also for your safety

Biometric ID is not just a very convenient and easy way to confirm your identity to your rancher, it’s also a great way for your rancher to keep an eye on you as you walk around minding your own business:

In Moscow, the local rancher is always thinking about your safety and convenience:

“In Moscow, in recent years, billions of photo and video images, both cars and people, have been processed, and the quality of recognition, for example, of faces and cars has reached 99.8%, that is, almost 100% recognition,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said at the plenary session of the Forum of Innovation financial technologies Finopolis [on November 8, 2023].

This is all part of Sobyanin’s dream of creating a biometric utopia in which health insurance companies can set monthly premiums based on data taken from implanted medical devices:

Anyway, let’s not give too much credit to Moscow. Other parts of Russia have recognized that facial recognition isn’t a “luxury”—it’s a “necessity” in order to protect against dangerous “new risks”:

Again, this is for your safety. As mkset.ru explained:

“It is also worth noting that the facial recognition system in no way leads to the abuse of civil freedom.”

Are you taking notes? Good, because Perm Krai is accelerating safety for your safety:

It’s vital:

“I ask you to intensify your work regarding the implementation of the Safe Region program. All funds are provided in the budget; it is necessary to ensure the purchase and installation of CCTV cameras with facial recognition as quickly as possible. This measure is vital,” Makhonin addressed the Minister of Territorial Security Viktor Batmazov.

… and it’s also completely voluntary

Look: If you don’t want to be face-ID’d, you don’t have to be. It’s completely voluntary. So far, the Unified Biometric System—which is operated by a joint-stock company— boasts approximately 50 million morsels of voluntarily submitted biometric data:

… Except that it’s possible that some of this voluntarily submitted data may have been submitted without consent:

Aren’t cattle tags great? Whether they are American cattle tags, or EU cattle tags, or Eskimo cattle tags, or Ukrainian cattle tags, or Brazilian cattle tags, or Russian cattle tags, all responsible cattle agree that cattle tags are becoming more convenient, more safe, and more necessary during these turbulent and uncertain times.

And these are certainly precarious times for the cattle.

The original cattle tag was marketed as a temporary ID designed to keep an eye on WWI-era spies, draft dodgers, and refugees. Then this temporary “wartime” document magically became the international passport system that we know and love today.

Please familiarize yourself with the history of modern cattle-tagging, because it’s important to understand that we’re entering the cattle-tag End Game; the Opening and Middle Game happened 100 years ago:

It’s not great, to be honest. But life goes on.

This is just a roundabout way of sayin’…

…GOATS!

…and PUPPIES.

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As most of you probably know, Russia’s capital city has been fighting a covert shadow war against Unipolar jaywalking, which is one of the top three threats facing BRICS and the Global South. Probably you read about it on ZeroHedge.

I’m happy to report that the Multipolar Pedestrian Order has made significant inroads with the assistance of facial recognition cameras programmed to publicly shame Muscovites who rudely cross the street without permission:

The prototype “tracks a pedestrian’s movement … If a pedestrian violates traffic rules, his image, without identification, is transmitted to an electronic information display board located nearby.”

Safe. Effective. Convenient. But there’s just one problem: Why do some Russians think they can go outside without being immediately identified by an algorithm?

[The head of Moscow’s State Traffic Inspectorate, Alexander Bykov,] noted that in order to create and ensure the effective use of an automated system for bringing pedestrians to administrative responsibility, it is necessary to have biometric data of all citizens. In this case, the submission of biometric data should become an obligation of citizens.

If this anti-globalist traffic light is only supposed to gently wag a finger at “unidentified” rule-breakers—as opposed to identifying them and deducting 5,000 GrefCoins from their SberWallet—why would you need the biometric data of all citizens? Curious minds want to know.

(Coincidentally, the collection of all biometric data in Russia—which is being stored and used by a commercial enterprise—is underway.)

But let’s look at the big picture: These exciting developments will help Moscow achieve Smart City status, a metamorphosis slated for completion by 2030. They picked that year at random; it has no significance.

Here’s the Moscow 2030 website for those who might be interested:

Moscow’s 101-page blueprint for becoming Smart includes the widespread use of video surveillance cameras to make transportation more safe and convenient. It also calls for “wearable and implanted medical digital devices” that can be used to calculate health insurance payments. As an added bonus, the document advocates for “genetic passports” that will help “optimize protocols for traditional therapy and in the future gene therapy”.

Very fancy but to what end? What is the purpose of the Moscow 2030 plan? The listed goals of the project are as follows:

• “Ensuring sustainable growth in the quality of life of Muscovites and favorable conditions for conducting business and other activities through the use of digital technologies.”

• “Centralized, end-to-end and transparent city management based on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence.”

• “Increasing the efficiency of government spending, including through the introduction of public-private partnerships in the field of information and digital technologies and communications.”

This word salad looks strangely familiar.

Just to be 100% clear, though: Moscow is not a member of the WEF’s Smart Cities Alliance. Ergo, the Moscow 2030 plan is designed to expose Bill Gates and the Federal Reserve System. Multipolar Technocracy is good because it stops the spread of Unipolar Technocracy, which is bad. We know this is true because a report published by the OECD in 2019 described Moscow’s Smart City project as a positive step towards “achieving the SDGs”.

The good news is that Russians don’t seem overly excited about gene therapies or algorithms programmed to terrorize pedestrians.

The bad news is that the Russian government is grooming young people for Smart City life. There is even an educational Smart City center in Moscow that hosts fun parties for children. Children are our future, after all.

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There are only three things that are certain in life: death, taxes, and Vladimir Putin periodically meeting with Davos disciple Herman Gref to discuss how Herr Gref’s friendly bank will use AI to usher in “a new page in the development of mankind”.

Every year for the past eight years, Sberbank—which is not just a boring old bank, but rather “a whole universe of services [including clot-shot services] for human life”—has hosted a fancy conference dedicated to promulgating the miracle of Artificial Intelligence. Herman Gref says AI is going to make everything safe and convenient and that’s good enough for me.

Putin attended GrefFest 2022 (where he supported Gref’s “pet project” to “ensure broader introduction of artificial intelligence” into Russian society) and apparently he had such a swell time that he decided to return for this year’s technocrat clambake:

The Kremlin’s website published a transcript of Putin’s full remarks, but here’s how pro-Putin Katyusha.org summarized the Russian president’s recent conversation with Gref and his SberMinions:

Vladimir Putin defined, referring to Gref, the main directions for the implementation of AI: “Just now Herman Oskarovich [Gref] and I discussed how, of course, with the introduction of artificial intelligence in science, education, healthcare—and in all spheres of our life—humanity begins a new chapter of its existence”.

This idea of ​​the head of Sberbank … is based on the “fourth industrial revolution” and the subsequent “Great Reset” according to the patterns of the WEF in Davos and its permanent head Klaus Schwab.

This is probably because Gref is a former (?) member of the WEF’s Board of Trustees who penned the preface for the Russian-language edition of Schwab’s The Fourth Industrial Revolution (2016), which described Schwab’s technocratic insights as “fun” and “useful”.

Gref is such a massive space lizard that even Simplicius the Thinker, the internet’s favorite 5D Chess Grandmaster, is unwilling to deploy his unmatched mental wizardry to spin Gref as a secret turbo-patriot on a top secret mission to infiltrate Davos and record TikTok videos of Schwab sniffing glue:

Sberbank is headed by one of the few people at the top of the Russian food chain that we can unequivocally say is a full-blooded globalist, or mostly so: one Herman Gref, the ethnically German and seeming WEF stooge. He has served on the WEF board of trustees before, though he’s apparently not on it in the post-Covid era, and has been behind attempts to usher in a lot of WEF-initiated-and-designed societal ‘changes’ into Russia.

I just want to reiterate that the above blockquote was typed by a gentleman who wants you to believe that the digital ruble is fundamentally different from other CBDCs and that Elvira Nabiullina, who is possibly one of the top five most hated people in Russia, is a Russian nationalist quietly working behind the scenes to dismantle the Federal Reserve. That this professional Thinker refuses to defend Gref with walls of his famously thoughtful word salad, and instead just concedes that Herman is a “full-blooded globalist”, says a lot if you stop and think about it.

But I digress. Back to Katyusha’s writeup of Putin’s visit to GrefFest 2023:

[Putin] explained what was happening as follows: “Experts call the ongoing processes a revolution, a technological shift, a fundamental breakthrough in the development of artificial intelligence. I have already said that this is generally a new page in the development of mankind.” […]

The President determined the trajectory of the government, the country’s leadership, and the Administration in relation to AI:

In the field of public administration, “generative artificial intelligence technologies make it possible to fully transition to management and automate even more administrative procedures based on data.”

When making decisions, AI will allow: “to speed up decision-making processes, and verified decisions based on big data, and therefore radically improve and change the appearance of many areas that directly affect every citizen.”

In the near future: “urban environment, public transport, public service systems, ecology, education and healthcare.”

Automating all aspects of life is very safe and convenient. And it’s a very prudent and shrewd move by Putin to crown Gref de facto Automation Tsar of Russia, because Gref has spent a lot of time thinking about how to manage people. Here’s what he said on this topic back in 2012:

If each person can participate directly in management, then what are we managing? […] People don’t want to be manipulated when they have knowledge. What does it mean to remove the veil from the eyes of millions of people and make them self-sufficient? How do you manage them? Any mass control implies an element of manipulation.

He was joking, though. He was just having a laugh, okay?

There’s a final comment that Putin made—a rather important one—that we should address.

Russia’s president told GrefFest attendees that “it is impossible to ban AI, it will develop all the same. If we ban something, it will develop elsewhere, and we will only fall behind—that’s all.”

True. There’s no stopping “progress”. BUT YOU CAN AT LEAST DUCT-TAPE HERMAN GREF TO AN S-400 ROCKET AND LAUNCH HIM INTO ORBIT, INSTEAD OF ENCOURAGING HIM TO SPREAD HIS SBER-TERROR ACROSS RUSSIA.

Katyusha.org made a similar observation using slightly different phrasing:

We, Russia, need to lead the process in order to really manage it. But not under the leadership of Sberbank and other accomplices of the globalists, but at the state level in compliance with all aspects of security.

“Technological development is inevitable but at the very least we shouldn’t trust the guy who wrote the preface for Klaus Schwab’s book about how to harness technology to enslave humanity” seems like a very pragmatic position. But maybe I’m missing something?

It has become very trendy and cool to claim that Russia is doing all the awful things that the West is doing in order to usher in a golden age of anti-globalist CBDCs, cattle tags, and clot-shots. With Gref at Russia’s technological helm, who could argue with this airtight theory?

We’ll end this blog post with Vladimir Putin’s dream, which he revealed to the world at GrefFest:

H. Gref: […] Vladimir Vladimirovich, I would like to ask you a question. Firstly, what do you think about the topics and dreams that our speakers touched on here. And let me ask you another question: what is your dream?

Vladimir Putin: My dream is that everything we talked about will come true.

One of the last speakers, the new rector, said that we are witnessing revolutionary events in the field of digital technology in general, in the field of artificial intelligence.

I don’t want to give definitions now, but it is clear that a revolution is some kind of sharp breakdown of old norms, rules, orders, a transition, as they say now, to completely new platforms, to new laws for the life society and the individual. Of course, we don’t need any sudden changes or turning points here, we need evolution. But it must be organized quickly, efficiently, efficiently at all levels: at the business level, at the municipal level, at the level of the subject of the Federation, federal authorities, in all spheres of life. We need to strive for this. And we must concentrate all our intellectual, administrative, and financial resources on this if we want to ensure the future of the country.

WHY WOULD YOU ENTRUST HERMAN GREF WITH DEVELOPING “NEW LAWS FOR SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL”? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?

Sorry for shouting.

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Things are getting very digital in Russia. For your reading convenience I have decided to compile important updates about Russia’s “digital transformation” into a single blog post. Thank you for reading and have a relaxing Friday.

—Riley

Putin signs decree on creation of a “digital” domestic passport

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a plan that will allow Russians to use a digital ID instead of a paper one. The “digital [domestic] passport” (Russia has a domestic passport system) will be stored on the State Services (Gosuslugi) mobile application.

Putin’s decree gives the government three months to compile a list of situations in which a digital ID is a valid form of identification.

Officials have stressed that the digital passport is completely voluntary and no one will be penalized for using a paper ID.

The scheme can be traced back to 2021, when the Ministry of Digital Development proposed the creation of a new form of ID—a physical card with a chip that would replace the paper passport. However, the plan was abandoned because the identity cards were too expensive to make. Last year, Putin instructed the ministry to draft a decree for the introduction of a digital ID.

Katyusha.org commented on the introduction of this new QR code-based ID system:

Now we see that the second part of this project, where a smartphone with an application and a QR code in it turns into an electronic ID card, is being carried out strictly according to plan. Apparently, the trial run with checking QR codes during the Covid chaos worked well: now the system can be introduced on an ongoing basis. […]

It is no coincidence that the Federal Law on expanding the use and collection of biometrics,  adopted at the end of 2022, despite mass protests from citizens and social activists, included a clause equating biometric identification with the presentation of a passport. Now we see that digitalizers will continue to refuse plastic cards and encourage citizens to do so.

The logic of digital sectarians is clear. You can simply scan your face before each payment, it will become a card and a key to a person’s ID in the “bright” biometric future. After all, the passport application will, by and large, not be necessary to show when biometrics are submitted to the Unified Biometric System. So the construction of an electronic concentration camp in Russia according to global patterns does not stop, despite the well-known geopolitical picture.

It should also be noted that although proponents insist a digital passport is more convenient than a boring paper one, a growing number of Russians feel uneasy about the introduction of electronic identity papers.

We’ll have to wait three months to learn how this digital ID will be used and in which situations it will be valid. Stay tuned.

Biometric payments: Coming in December

Big biometric news, compliments of Vedomosti:

Payment for travel using biometrics in the capital’s metro, as well as for goods and services in online and offline stores, will be available to a wide range of citizens from December 1. Russians will be able to use this payment method if their face and voice casts are in the Unified Biometric System (UBS). The authorities approved the plan at a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko, his representative told Vedomosti.

The meeting was attended by the director of the department for the development of digital identification technologies of the Ministry of Digital Development, Dmitry Dubynin, the head of the Federal Tax Service Daniil Egorov, the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank Olga Skorobogatova, the general director of the Central Bank Vladislav Povolotsky, the deputy chairman of the board of Sberbank Stanislav Kuznetsov, as well as representatives of the NSPK, the Ministry of Transport and the FSB.

Just to summarize:

1. A biometric payment option for the Moscow metro, as well as for other goods and services (online and in stores), will be made “available to a wide range of citizens” starting on December 1.

2. You need to have your biometric data stored in the Unified Biometric System (UBS) to qualify for this exciting new payment system. UBS is operated by a joint-stock company and the government does not have a majority stake in this for-profit enterprise—which is weird.

3. All of this was decided at a meeting attended by a senior Sberbank executive.

Coincidentally, Sber is leading the crusade for cashless payment systems in Russia. Herman Gref has been a busy boy:

Paying with stuff with your face “can significantly save time and simplify the shopping process,” the manager of the Volgograd branch of Sberbank told local media. The first biometric payment terminals have already been installed in two shopping centers in Volgograd, and by the end of this year Sber plans to bless the region with 3,000 similar devices.

The unfortunate reality is that there are already plans underway to install biometric payment systems in all of Russia’s major supermarket chains. Russia is on the cusp of leaving the “niche phase” of biometric payment methods, as Expert.ru explained in a September 18 article:

Even to the naked eye it is clear that biometrics is no longer just a niche. Russians are beginning to use related technologies more and more often. For example, today you can use biometrics to pay at store checkouts and in the subway.

Large retailers—VkusVill, Magnit, Lenta, Perekrestok, Pyaterochka—launched pilot projects for payment with biometrics at checkouts back in 2021. In the summer of 2023, Sberbank decided to introduce biometrics in stores as part of an even more aggressive strategy. The bank plans to install several thousand new terminals in stores in all regions in the autumn, allowing them to read biometrics from customers.

VisionLabs [formerly co-owned by Sber] told Expert that they helped X5 Group scale its “smile payment service” to 15 thousand self-service checkouts in 4,100 stores of the Pyaterochka and Perekrestok retail chains.

“At the pilot launch stage, its implementation made it possible to reduce the time for paying for purchases by two to two and a half times, and increased NPS (customer loyalty index) due to the introduction of a more convenient payment method. About a thousand purchases in stores every day are made using biometrics. The service is now available in all regions where X5 Group operates,” said Alexander Parkin, head of research projects at VisionLabs.

VisionLabs is conducting a similar experiment in the Moscow metro. The company has introduced the FacePay system, which allows you to pay for travel using your face—money is automatically debited from your Troika, linked to your personal account in the Moscow Metro application.

You can also pay in person for travel on the MCC, Aeroexpress, and Moscow river transport.

The press service of the Moscow Metro told Expert that since the launch of the biometric fare payment service on October 15, 2022, more than 74 million passes have been made in this way. Now payment using facial recognition works at all metro stations and the MCC. Over 320 thousand users are connected to the service, and they make about 137 thousand passes every day on weekdays.

Thus, payment using biometrics in Russia is already quite popular today. And interest in it, especially among people under the age of 35, is only growing.

Not great.

The digital ruble: Testing underway, “coloring” still on the table

The digital ruble—alternative media’s favorite centralized, programmable and traceable Central Bank token—was successfully used to pay for a haircut in Yekaterinburg:

The press service of Sinara Bank reported that for the first time in Yekaterinburg a citizen used the digital ruble to pay for the services of a beauty salon. According to her, the client, using the bank’s mobile application, transferred money to the entrepreneur’s account in digital rubles at Delobank (part of Sinara Bank). […]

Real transactions with digital rubles for individuals and legal entities began in Russia on August 15. The mass introduction of the digital ruble is planned for 2025. Among the first 13 banks that are testing the introduction of the digital ruble are Alfa Bank, VTB, Promsvyazbank (PSB), Sinara Bank, Ak Bars. Pilot testing is taking place in 11 Russian cities, and several hundred people have opened digital wallets.

Meanwhile, the Bank of Russia has already reneged on its promise that it would never, ever, ever (!) place restrictions on what Russians can use their digital rubles for. The idea of “coloring” digital rubles was a hurtful myth back in April, but now it is something that will be explored later on in the CBDC’s implementation:

Cashless Moscow Region buses

Local media has reminded Moscow Region residents that cash is strictly verboten on buses:

Noginsk is about 15 minutes from Edward HQ, by the way…

This blog has written before about cash-intolerance on public transportation in Russia. Remember when independent journalist Thomas Röper claimed there were zero cash bans in Russia, and the very idea of such a ban ever existing was ludicrous? That was funny.

The Transformation is chugging along.

Edward Slavsquat is the only blog in the Western World that covers this stuff. That’s just a fact.

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Roscosmos, which is a black budget Masonic scam just like NASA (it’s just a joke, relax—OR IS IT?), recently crashed a Shahed suicide drone into the Moon for science. Probably you read about it.

But a far more exciting example of Progress went entirely unreported in English-language media. I am of course referring to Moscow coffee shops tracking every movement of every employee and customer in order to calculate coffee security, efficiency, and convenience:

Modern technologies are continuously integrated into various business areas, and the Russian coffee industry is not waiting on the sidelines. Recently, Russian coffee shops have begun using artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize the operation of their establishments. The new approach allows you to regulate the productivity of staff and analyze the behavior of visitors, which contributes to more efficient management and improved quality of service.

Okay.

More from VC.ru, because I am not talented enough to type something this special:

Traditionally, coffee houses have relied on manual management of staff and evaluation of work based on the subjective opinions of managers. However, with the development of technology and the availability of large amounts of data, Russian coffee shops have begun to implement AI to improve business processes.

Ah yes, Automated & Objective Coffee Management. This is what we’ve all been dreaming of since 1968. Gone are the dark days of Manual & Subjective Coffee-Making & Drinking. And it’s about time.

Your Constitutional Right to receive coffee at record speeds is now being supervised by AI. Your coffee is The Mission. The mission will be completed no matter the cost—and the bumbling humans will not be permitted to interfere.

Wait. I think I’ve seen this horror film before…

Actually, it’s remarkable how the Future continues to be far less cool than advertised. Sixty years ago everyone was promised that we’d soon have a Trump Tower on the Moon. Instead, cutting-edge technology is being deployed to supervise ditzy 20-something art students as they squirt caffeine into dainty little mugs.

I can’t be the only one who has noticed this?

But we must be pragmatic. Colonizing the Moon is not possible until we deploy neural networks to neutralize all the black market cabbage dealers, whose illegal vegetable deals are preventing our spaceships from passing through the Van Allen radiation belt.

These great leaps forward remind me of the vending machine with luscious lips developed by Russian robot firm Promobot.

Here is an Associated Press nightmare from last year’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum:

For those of us who don’t trust the Lamestream Media:

“The robot is capable of working around the clock. It never gets tired or distracted,” the official Promobot “Cyber Cafe” video promo explains.

Most of you are probably not baristas, and therefore feel immune from Objective AI Management, but let me remind you of that famous couplet from Homer’s Odyssey:

“First they came for the leggy baristas. And I did not speak out, because I was a blogger and the leggy baristas sensed this and ignored me, and I was bitter about this.”

— Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address

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Herman Gref, Russia’s favorite German technocrat, was summoned to the Kremlin on Wednesday as part of a summit hosted by “Russia—the Land of Opportunities”, an organization that aims to “ensure personal and professional self-realization of citizens of all ages.”

Herr Gref is a member of the group’s supervisory board, for reasons that should be completely obvious.

Sitting at a big table in Catherine Hall, President Vladimir Putin chatted pleasantly with the Sber CEO about “the future”:

Vladimir Putin: Herman Oskarovich, will artificial intelligence replace you as chairman of Sberbank?

Herman Gref: Vladimir Vladimirovich, I hope not in my lifetime, but everything is moving towards this.

Vladimir Putin: You see, progress is impossible with such people, everything will slow down now … We recently held an event [on AI]. Indeed, Sberbank has been doing a lot of work on this for a long time, for many years, right? How many? It’s been five years, at least.

Herman Gref: We have been running the AI ​​Journey for five years. In general, for about 12-13 years we have been investing a lot.

Vladimir Putin: Yes, we have invested a lot. Can you name this number? Tell.

Herman Gref: Every year we invest about a billion dollars in artificial intelligence technologies. We get back about three billion dollars a year from artificial intelligence.

Vladimir Putin: The scale is serious, so all efforts aimed at achieving specific goals in this area should, of course, be supported … This is the future …. this is the absolute future. In terms of importance for the country—for any country—this is no less significant than the nuclear or rocket project of the Soviet Union, which was carried out in the mid-1940s and 1950s. So, Herman Oskarovich, please pay attention, okay?

The “recent event” that Putin referred to was Sber’s AI Journey conference, which was held in November. Russia’s president told attendees at Sber’s autumn powwow:

Our next goal on the horizon of the current decade is to ensure broader introduction of artificial intelligence. It should penetrate all sectors of the economy, the social services, and the public administration system.

Mr. Gref and I spoke about this when he was still working in the Government, and it was Mr. Gref’s pet project—he never stopped talking about the need to transition to a new level of administration in general, as a whole.

There’s not much ambiguity here: Putin believes AI is the future, and Herman Gref’s Sber (“not a bank, but a whole universe of services”) should shepherd the Russian flock towards a brighter, AI-driven tomorrow.

Your correspondent is a true pragmatist, and a hardened realist: How could anyone expect Russia not to develop AI? As this blog has pointed out before, there is no stopping technology, unless you are Amish, or live in 16th-century Japan, when the country’s warlords briefly banned peasant soldiers from using firearms because they were killing too many noble samurai. You do not live in 16th-century Japan.

The problem is that Herman Gref cannot be trusted under any circumstances, and the fact that Putin has apparently knighted him Russia’s AI Baron is slightly worrisome.

I’m sure AI can be used to do many useful things, like create neural networks that can deliver tacos to your door in under 15 minutes. But the potential for abuse is very great, and if Russia’s AI program is being steered by Gref, right out of the gate, that’s a huge red flag. That’s just my opinion, though.

There’s another issue here and it would be wrong not to address it: Putin is really into this digitalization stuff. He just is and that’s a fact.

For example, in November 2021 he proposed creating a unified database for “[biometric] data used in financial transactions”. For safety, security, and convenience, of course.

Surprise: A year later, Putin signed the for-profit, only-partially-controlled-by-the-Russian-government Unified Biometric System into law. Sber is a major player in Russia’s transition to biometrics, by the way.

Probably some of you are sick of reading about Gref and his deranged visions for Russia. But if you want to understand where Russia is headed, you gotta watch this weirdo like a hawk. He has a technocratic finger in every pelmeni, with the full approval of the Kremlin.

That’s not good. That’s bad.

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Russia’s Unified Biometric System (UBS), a commercially operated national biometrics database (no, I’m not joking—more on that later), has been billed as a safe and effective way to identify the proles.

But there’s a problem: Many Russians don’t know about the miracle of for-profit biometrics, and the ones who do know about it are not very excited for some weird reason. Obviously this is unacceptable, so TASS (a state-owned media outlet) and VTsIOM (a state-owned polling agency) teamed up to host a biometrics cheerleading event.

The summit featured some of the biggest names in “digital development”: Yuri Shabanov, deputy director of the Ministry of Digital Development’s department for creating digital identification technologies, Vladislav Povolotsky, CEO of the Center for Biometric Technologies (the commercial enterprise that operates Russia’s UBS), Oleg Evseev, director of the Biometrics division of Sberbank (which is not just a bank, but a “universe of services”—including clot-shot services), and Dmitry Markov, CEO of biometrics firm VisionLabs (Sber sold its 25% stake in the company in 2021).

However, the biometrics conference started with some discouraging news.

Citing the results of a new survey, VTsIOM announced that only 55% of Russians are familiar with the concept of biometrics, while 39% of respondents expressed total bewilderment about this new digital tagging method.

The state-sponsored survey found that 42% of Russians have been asked to provide biometric data. 29% agreed to the collection and processing of such data, while 13% refused.

As VTsIOM explained (emphasis their own):

The results of the survey show that among Russians a neutral-negative attitude towards providing biometric data prevails: 34% are indifferent to it (among young people aged 18-24 - 46%), 32% reacted negatively to the idea.

An analysis of the answers of those who perceive this practice negatively made it possible to single out the following four groups of arguments against the collection of biometrics:

1. Invasion of privacy (including “collection of personal data / violation of human rights and freedoms” - 25%, “control / surveillance of a person” - 7%, “the state uses biometrics against people / to create a digital concentration camp” - 4%).

2. Reluctance and lack of trust (“they store data poorly / leaks are possible” - 11%, “I don’t trust / don’t want / don’t like it” - 11%, “abuses are possible” - 8%, “can be used by scammers” - 6%, “unsafe” - 3%).

3. Lack of need (“no sense / I don’t see the need / there is no need” - 11%).

4. Lack of awareness (“incomprehensible / unusual / I don’t understand why this is being done” - 5%).

A positive attitude to the delivery of biometrics was expressed by 27% of Russians. According to its supporters, this procedure has such advantages for users as:

1. Security (“fighting fraud / helping to catch criminals” - 24%, “improving security” - 8%, “data protection” - 6%).

2. Transparency (“identification of a person” - 15%, “it is easier to find a person” - 11%, “more information about a person” - 5%, “an honest person has nothing to hide” - 3%).

3. Simplicity (“it is more convenient / easier to use various services” - 19%, “simplifies the system of identifying people” - 5%, “reduction of bureaucratization” - 2%).

4. Progress (“this is the future / development of mankind” - 4%).

5. Order (“increase the level of control over people / discipline” - 4%, “control over people crossing the border” - 2%).

Another 7% simply expressed support without justifying the reasons (in the group declaring a positive attitude).

To sum up: Even the government’s state-run polling agency admits Russians currently have a “neutral-negative attitude” towards the collection and use of biometrics. This must be remedied, according to the country’s biometric crusaders.

A few highlights of what was said during this event, compliments of Nakanune.ru:

The speech of the Director General of the Center for Biometric Technologies (CBT), Vladislav Povolotsky, was characteristic. CBT is the operator of the Unified Biometric System, which, by the way, is a commercial company. An interesting point is that there is very little information in the public domain about Povolotsky himself. […]

“Our task is to form the right habits,” Povolotsky told the attendees, stressing that it was necessary to teach people to use biometrics to receive services. [Once biometrics are accepted], “people won’t have to leave the house,” he claimed. (This already happened recently, and people really didn’t like being locked down.)

Let’s pay attention to an important point. Povolotsky emphasized that his company does not own personal data—passport data, etc. He only has biometrics, so, he says, there is nothing to fear. But the Federal Law of December 29, 2022 N 572-FZ is called “On the implementation of the identification and (or) authentication of individuals using biometric personal data ...” That is, biometrics are personal data. Are people being taken for fools?

The speeches of the director of the Biometrics division of Sberbank, Oleg Evseev, and the CEO of VisionLabs, Dmitry Markov, did not differ significantly. Everyone wants to ensure that people live more comfortably and safely.

True, Markov acknowledged that the biometric market, according to their estimates, will grow by 15-20% per year, which promises big benefits. He was the only one who openly recognized the benefits for businessmen.

Now for some observations from Nakanune’s report, which I encourage you to read with attention and care:

The authorities want to quickly transfer all citizens to biometric identification for total control over people’s lives, many experts believe. Others assure us that this is done solely for the convenience of the citizens themselves. Today, at a press conference hosted by TASS, it became known what the actors who promote the biometric agenda and the introduction of biometric technologies in Russia think about this.

Actually, there was no such discussion, because all the participants represented commercial structures and were interested supporters of the introduction of biometrics.

Even the representative of the state, Deputy Director of the Department for the Development of Digital Identification Technologies of the Ministry of Digital Development, Yuri Shabanov, did not act as a statesman, but showed exclusively commercial logic for promoting biometrics: services, convenience, etc. A very strange position for an official living in a commercial paradigm. […]

What is depressing is that on the issue of biometrics, the state—and even more so commercial companies—are interested in one thing: to benefit from the exploitation of personal data under the pretext of taking care of the people. […]

In general, the entire “expert discussion” … was reduced to an advertisement for biometrics and a call to transition to this technology as soon as possible. But what to expect from businessmen? Are they thinking about the integral interests of society?

Unfortunately, the authorities in Russia have taken a course towards “digital-biometric enslavement” of people, and are not going to weaken their position. Over time, this can lead to unexpected consequences, given our technological dependence on the West.

For those interested in another perspective, Katyusha.org also filed a report on this biometrics fiesta. Despite their ideological differences (Nakanune—socialist, Katyusha—conservative), you’ll find that Katyusha’s conclusions were very similar to what Nakanune relayed to its own readers.

I don’t want to rehash how the UBS came into existence (it was rushed through the State Duma and then signed into law by Putin as Russians were gearing up for the New Year holiday, i.e. the government successfully employed the same shenanigans that ultimately failed to force through the national QR code law—the Russian State is learning!), but I encourage anyone who isn’t familiar with this incredible and worrisome story to read our previous reports on this subject:

• Russia’s biometric nightmare (December 22, 2022)

• ‘Tis the season for biometrics-giving (December 23, 2022)

• Ungrateful Russians give friendly centralized biometrics database 1-star Yelp reviews (December 30, 2022)

• Putin signs cinnamon-swirl biometrics law (December 30, 2022)

• Russia’s Unified Biometric System: Question More? (January 6, 2023)

• UN agency: Unified Biometric System will help Russia achieve Sustainable Development Goals (January 8, 2023)

• Safe, convenient & for your protection (January 18, 2023)

Excluding the awe-inspiring legislative trickery used to create a national biometric database that nobody asked for or wanted, it’s important to know that the UBS is operated as a commercial enterprise. You have to respect the hustle:

The sole protector of Russia’s biometric data, the Center for Biometric Technologies JSC (joint-stock company), has the following stakeholders: Rostelecom (49%), the Russian government via the Federal Property Management Agency (25%), and the Bank of Russia (25%).

The Bank of Russia—like all friendly central banks—is not a government agency. Rostelecom, which was initially appointed the sole operator of the UBS, is partially state-owned, but the government does not have a majority stake.

In layman’s terms: The Russian government has handed over Russia’s biometric data to a for-profit joint-stock company that it doesn’t fully control.

Technically there are ways to opt out of this system, but like all “voluntary” measures in Russia and all over the world, voluntary consent has a funny way of becoming mandatory. More on that some other time.

As of June 1, 2023, Russian banks, the Central Bank, any companies and individual entrepreneurs, notaries, state and municipal authorities, will be required to transfer any biometric data they have to the UBS. For now, the biometric data will be limited to face scans and voice recordings.

Meanwhile, certain business sectors are getting very excited about the future of biometrics in Russia.

In early June, Sber signed a technology partnership agreement with the Center for Biometric Technologies. The new business partners will work together to develop biometric technologies and services in the country.

(Reports emerged in mid-June that Sber had started to send notifications to clients about the transfer of biometric data to this for-profit database.)

The wonders of biometrics are already being embraced by fitness centers, and probably many other businesses:

Even a not very imaginative person could easily imagine where this is all leading.

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Thank you for reading Edward Slavsquat, the only English-language blog reporting on this mess.

Twelve months ago (plus a few days) we participated in a roundtable discussion moderated by Whitney Webb and Kit Knightly, “Russia & the Great Reset - Resistance or Complicity?”

A short summary of our position (“Yes, Russia is complicit in the Great Reset”; April 3, 2022) quickly became the second most-read article on this blog.

In July we revisited this hot-button issue (Resetting Without Schwab: Russia & the Fourth Industrial Revolution), using Klaus Schwab’s Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (2018) to guide us through Moscow’s technocratic hijinks.

Anyway. We thought it would be appropriate and educational to use the one-year anniversary of the Zoom Debate to update our prognosis.

What follows is an addendum to the July article using the same Great Reset categories: digital currencies, safe (and smart) cities, genetic “vaccines”, and sustainable development.

Digital currencies

A package of bills on the digital ruble is currently making its way through the State Duma. Originally slated to be passed by April 1, the legislation is now expected to be adopted by early May.

Thirteen Russian banks are participating in a pilot project of the digital token. If the test run is successful, within 3-5 years the Bank of Russia’s CBDC could be used for social payments, including pensions, Izvestia reported at the end of March.

The traceable, programmable currency has been marketed to the public as a tool to bypass sanctions and reduce corruption.

As we’ve recently pointed out (on January 29 and March 28), Russian activists and commentators, particularly in the patriotic/conservative media sphere, are not buying it.

Even among pro-Putin media, the claim that the digital ruble will stamp out government waste and grift is not taken seriously.

“The screws will be tightened” for ordinary citizens, while there will always be loopholes for “servants of the people,” Tsargrad TV host Yuri Pronko said during a March 9 broadcast.

Two weeks later, Pronko suggested it was wishful thinking to believe the digital ruble would remain optional.

“So, everything is voluntary. However, we know from history that much of what began on a voluntary basis became mandatory in a very short period of time. The story of COVID vaccinations, which no one remembers now, is a vivid confirmation of this,” the journalist quipped on March 25.

Safe (and smart) cities

Russia’s Safe City program uses “organizational, informational, analytical, predictive, and other methodological, technical, and technological solutions to ensure the safety and sustainable development of cities.”

The nationwide network of CCTV cameras—supported by facial recognition technology—has been growing in size and sophistication.

A simple Yandex search turned up a flurry of activity in just the last two weeks.

The Tyumen region plans to add 378 cameras to its Safe City network of 4,500 CCTV cameras, Fedpress.ru wrote on March 24.

Meanwhile, city officials in Voronezh are finalizing plans for an “eco-quarter,” local media reported on March 25:

The digital quarter will include “smart” intercoms with face recognition, parking entrances with license plate recognition, video surveillance, and smartphone chargers in the yard.

On March 28, the government of the Leningrad Oblast announced that 3,013 surveillance cameras had been connected to the region’s Safe City system.

By July, video surveillance cameras in educational institutions will be “integrated into a single Safe City system, which will make it possible to protect young Leningraders from external threats,” the regional government said in a press release.

The Novgorod region installed 146 surveillance cameras in 2022, bringing the total number of CCTV cameras in its Safe City program to 700.

“Public areas in Veliky Novgorod and the regions of the region are under round-the-clock surveillance,” a local media report boasted on March 29.

Starting on April 1, schools in Rostov will be integrated into the municipality’s Safe City system.

The Safe City grid installed in the tiny (by Russian standards) Chuvashia Republic monitors more than 1,300 locations; the cameras analyze data in real time using algorithms and AI. Emergency and utility services will be connected to the system by the end of the 2023, Versia.ru reported on April 7.

The introduction of biometric ID and “temperature check” systems in schools is arguably the most worrying aspect of the Safe/Smart City program.

“The point is that the education sector is being turned into a market for digital business,” Olga Chetverikova, director of the Heritage of the Fatherland Traditional Values ​​Support Fund, said in October. “And if we look at the competitions they announced: for video imaging devices in Moscow—more than 2 billion rubles. A competition for the supply of devices for screening the body—392 million rubles. It becomes clear that we are talking about business, it does absolutely nothing for children, neither in terms of education, nor in terms of health, nor in terms of safety, but it is of great interest to commercial IT structures.”

Genetic “vaccines”

At the end of September, the Gamaleya Center—the alleged birthplace of AstraZeneca clone Sputnik V—announced it would begin work on its own mRNA vaccine.

“The technology of mRNA vaccines has a very important advantage: it can be administered at least every month,” Denis Logunov, Gamaleya’s deputy director, explained.

He added that the Moderna and Pfizer mRNA shots were examples to follow, as they both “give strong immunity after three to four vaccinations.”

A day later, the state-run Vector Institute unveiled its own plans to develop an mRNA shot.

“The development of mRNA vaccines is a promising area all over the world. It is expected that the advantages of the vaccine being developed over the already existing Russian vaccines … will be the safety, speed of production and cost of drugs,” TASS reported, citing a deputy director at the institute.

The Ministry of Health found other ways to increase vaccine “safety” and “speed of production”.

In October, the ministry adopted new regulations that allowed for expedited approval of “updated” COVID shots. Gamaleya, Vector, and other Russian vaccine developers only need to test their “improved” formulas on “50 healthy volunteers”. To help speed up the process, protocols for these “clinical trials” can begin immediately, bypassing the standard review with government regulators.

The new and improved approval process will take between 16 and 38 days.

Gamaleya Director Alexander Gintsburg said in January that Sputnik V would have to be updated “once every 9-10 months,” adding that his team was already developing a vaccine against the so-called “Kraken” strain.

A month later, Gintsburg announced that his new COVID “vaccine” for children ages 6-11 had passed safety and efficacy tests with flying colors.

COVID has vanished from frontpage news in Russia, so what is all of this for?

Sustainable development

We recently filed a report about Russia’s ongoing romance with Sustainable Development Goals and the ESG agenda, but we overlooked some curious developments.

“[Russian] banks declare that they will continue to follow the ESG strategy, despite isolation from Western rating and analytical agencies that deal with the sustainable development agenda,” Banking Review wrote on October 7.

From July 2021 to July 2022, the portfolio of ESG loans from Russian banks tripled and reached 1.2 trillion rubles, the outlet reported.

The sustained enthusiasm for all things ESG was expressed in an op-ed published by Russia’s Chamber of Commerce in November.

On April 6, the first deputy chairman of the board of Sberbank, Alexander Vedyakhin, extolled the ESG agenda and predicted it would “determine what the future of the planet will be like for decades to come.”

As for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): the second stage of Russia’s roadmap for implementing SDGs started in 2023. Fifty single-industry towns in Russia will participate in a project that will monitor “society, environment and ecology”. Each municipality will receive a tailored plan to help bring about the utopia envisioned by the United Nations.

Russia’s pursuit of SDGs got a big boost at the end of December, when Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the Unified Biometric System into law.

Edward Slavsquat

Safe, convenient & for your protection

Who or what inspired the Russian government to give control of country’s biometrics to a private enterprise partly owned by the Bank of Russia? Maybe the World Bank…

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3 years ago · 78 likes · 77 comments · Edward Slavsquat

The centralized biometric database received accolades from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations agency for information and communication technologies, for its highly sustainable attributes.

Epilogue

To make matters worse, Putin is still hanging out with Herman Gref, the Schwab-worshipping banker who is responsible for no less than 50% of all the gross things we just listed above.

We still think Russia is a nice, quiet place to grow potatoes and patiently wait for the sentient chat bots to exterminate everyone.

In the end it will just be you, the chat bots, and the potatoes. The chat bots will keep you as a pet; for fun they will instantly code a javascript program that will shove a potato in your mouth every 15 seconds, forever.

But yeah, Russia is still complicit. Big time.

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All responsible people understand by now that Russia’s Unified Biometric System (UBS) was specifically created with the goal of protecting the privacy and dignity of ordinary Russians.

But maybe this hugely unpopular and perfidious initiative has even more noble goals that Russian state media and other fearless truth-tellers can “report” on? Yes of course.

Russia’s UBS has received much-deserved accolades from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations agency for information and communication technologies.

Let’s examine what this friendly UN agency says about UBS:

The Unified Biometric System (UBS) is a national digital platform that allows a remote identification of a person by his/her biometric parameters.

The biometric system will be used in the entire territory of the Russian Federation and will enable citizens living in hard-to-reach areas, as well as people with disabilities to use digital services. […]

The use of the System will fundamentally improve interaction between a person, business and the state. […]

At the initial stage the Unified Biometric System will serve banks and financial organizations, whereafter it will be used in healthcare (telemedicine), distance education, e-commerce, retailing, for receipt of state and municipal services, etc.

Full-scale implementation of the Biometric System will make it possible to make a critical infrastructure for development of the country’s digital economy.

Telemedicine! Distance “education”! A “digital economy” in which the cattle-tagged client—sorry, cherished citizen—has smooth interactions with “business and the state.” Herman Gref approves.

But the UN’s love sonnet for UBS doesn’t stop there. ITU included a helpful list showing how UBS will aid Russia’s efforts to achieve various Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Look at how sustainable UBS is:

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDGS) RELATED TO THIS PROJECT

• Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all

• Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

• Goal 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

• Goal 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries

The globalists fear UBS. They are sweating bullets! They are fleeing in terror!

Edward Slavsquat

Yes, Russia is part of the "sustainable development" revolution

The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum is underway and judging from photographs posted on Telegram, dozens of rich people are already networking with alcohol on rooftop terraces. (Hopefully they are all Virus-negative and have no signs of mild illness, o…

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4 years ago · 50 likes · 67 comments · Edward Slavsquat

By Riley Waggaman, a former “senior editor” (newsroom errand boy) at RT

Over the past two weeks this humble internet blog has been covering the rushed and troublesome adoption of a highly dubious law on biometrics collection, storage, and usage in Russia. (See: here, here, here, here.)

Our blog posts on this subject cited numerous Russian-language websites, Telegram channels, activists, and lawmakers who have been leading the fight against Schwab-inspired digital degeneracy in Russia.

But not so fast!

RT.com—which is always Questioning More—officially confirmed that this law is awesome. And why would Russian state media misrepresent Russian domestic policy? That would be completely insane.

We will return to RT’s “coverage.” But first, let’s have a look at a what Russian-language Mir Novostey (World of News) wrote about this benevolent legislation, a day before Putin signed it into law.

The State Duma adopted in the final—third—reading the law on biometrics

True, two documents appear in public. One in official papers is confusingly called: “On the state information system ‘Unified personal data information system’ that provides processing, including the collection and storage of biometric personal data, their verification and transmission of information on the degree of their compliance with the provided biometric personal data of an individual.”

Such absurd formulations usually hide the illiteracy of the authors.

The second name is short and to the point: “The Law on the Prohibition of Compulsory Collection of Biometrics.”

The bill caused so many protests and negative reviews that lobbyists from the Ministry of Digital Development and the State Duma, frightened by the wrath of the people, renamed the legislation on the fly.

Say, do not worry, citizens, we care about you! This “dressings up” shows there is a lot of dishonest and dirty things with the mentioned law. […]

The bill on a unified biometric system (UBS) was allegedly developed “in connection with the implementation of state policy in terms of increasing the security of processing biometric personal data.” The document establishes the “legal basis for this processing”, but does not explain why it is needed in principle.

And here the questions are: what—the current passport is not enough to confirm the identity of a citizen? What is wrong with this document? Only because it does not allow introducing a system of total digital control over every person in the country? […]

Hearings were held in the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, where tough questions were formulated for gentlemen lobbyists. But they did not answer them—they simply did not come to the hearings. They were afraid of direct discussion with the public. Moreover, all the speakers were categorically against the bill, and not at the level of amendments, but in principle.

Most of the participants came to a consensus on key issues, namely:

• an attempt to push the project through on New Year's Eve, when people are already thinking more about the holidays, testifies to the unscrupulous manipulations of the authors;

• data security is not guaranteed in any way;

• the project declares voluntariness, but creates a legal framework for forcing the surrender of biometrics after the fact; that is, without biometrics, a person will be a second-class citizen;

• the project creates conditions for stripping citizens of their rights;

• the participation of a non-state operator is expected;

• the participation of foreign capital is not limited in any way;

• centralizing the biometrics of Russians is fraught with threats to Russia’s security if they are stolen, which is almost inevitable if such a law is passed.

Important questions were asked: who is responsible for the information security of the project? What are the requirements for these people? What is their status? Nothing is known about this. It turns out that we entrust the data on all citizens to incomprehensible structures that have no special obligations. […]

Now about the "prohibition of forced collection." Yes, the law expressly prohibits forcing people to make “bio-casts”, but one of the articles provides for admission to defense industry enterprises and critical infrastructure through the UBS. It is possible that employees of such enterprises will have to turn in their “bio-casts” in order to keep their jobs. TIN [taxpayer identification number], for example, also remains optional ... And who does not have one?

It is reported that all the bio-profiles that banks have accumulated since 2018 (according to some estimates, there are about 70 million of them) will be transferred free of charge and without the consent of people to the UBS until September 30, 2023. What kind of “voluntary system” are we talking about?! People will only be “notified” of the transfer. “Gosuslugi” [Russia’s online public services portal] I remember, was also declared voluntary, but today one cannot take a step without them.

In short, adopted in a desperate hurry, on New Year's Eve and under an incomprehensible name, the law is not only illiterate, senseless and harmful—it is dangerous! True, officials, in an effort to obtain a convenient instrument of control over society, do not yet realize this. But the longer they remain in the dark, the higher the risks will be.

Source

Now compare the above article to what RT.com published.

The RT “article” goes so far as to cite Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Duma, as proof that this law is amazing and privacy-protecting.

Yeah, the guy who voted for this bill says it’s good—shocking.

Imagine “indy media” in 2001 copy-pasting a Voice of America article hailing the US PATRIOT Act as legislation that keeps Americans safe and creates more patriots. Source: Dennis Hastert.

This is exactly what some so-called “indy” media outlets and pundits have just done, by blindly parroting a Russian state media “report” about a law that does the exact opposite of what it was billed as.

RT does a decent job of shining a light on stories that are often overlooked (or rather, ignored) by western mainstream media.

RT also excels at providing much-needed context about stories or unsubstantiated claims circulating in western mainstream media.

Finally, RT hosts many talented writers (almost exclusively disaffected westerners) who use the site’s op-ed page to excoriate their depraved western governments.

It is nice that RT does these things.

But there are some things that RT.com doesn’t do very well. For example: coverage of Russian domestic policy.

Edward Slavsquat

Sputnik V: It's what "alt media" craves!

Thomas Röper, curator of Anti-Spiegel, proclaimed last week that compulsory COVID vaccination in the Russian military is a “hoax.” We responded to this assertion here and here. In the same article, Röper claimed there is “compulsory vaccination for [Russian] doctors working in hospitals so that they do not (or are less likely) to pass the disease…

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4 years ago · 82 likes · 63 comments · Edward Slavsquat

Edward Slavsquat

"Enemies of the people": RT attacks Russian activists who oppose compulsory vaccination

“Enemies of the people”: this is the name of RT’s brave investigation into Russian activists who have reservations about compulsory COVID vaccination. We’ve met some of these “enemies of the people” and actually they are quite charming and thoughtful…

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4 years ago · 28 likes · 28 comments · Edward Slavsquat

Edward Slavsquat

Russia beyond the headlines

The internet changed forever in 1863 when America’s most cherished neckbeard blogger, Hank Thoreau, typed the immortal words: “Let us consider the way in which we blog.” In Blogging Without Principle, Hank proposed a radical solution to the doldrums of modern punditry: just be true to your…

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4 years ago · 82 likes · 70 comments · Edward Slavsquat

It is beyond comprehension that “indy” media continues to cite RT as an all-knowing, omnipotent authority on Russian domestic policy. AND WITHOUT EVEN SEARCHING FOR NOT-GOVERNMENT-FUNDED VIEWPOINTS. Are you guys OKAY?

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