MOSCOW: Thousands of Russian internet users have piled on the Clubhouse audio-based chat app, which, of all places, has become the ideal place to breathe life into an authoritarian political system.
This week has been a novelty with the news from the Clubhouse. Saturday, Elon Musk publicly guest Russian President Vladimir Putin to chat on the application. Another avid user of the Clubhouse is Luiza Rozova, a 17-year-old allegedly made illegitimate by Putin by independent Russian media. He has recently used the platform to share ideas about his college career, his aspirations for a career in fashion, and his apparent affinity for brazen conspiracy theories. And in an unusual public outburst of views on a typically silent issue, 300 Russian journalists, lawyers and human rights defenders gathered in an open Clubhouse room to discuss the espionage case against one of the leading Russian reporters he dealt with of military affairs, Ivan Safronov, who has been jailed on charges of treason for more than six months.
In July, the Federal Security Service arrested Safronov and placed him in Lefortovo, one of Moscow’s most notorious prisons, where he faces a term of up to twenty years. The agency accused Safronov of working for the Czech secret service and transmitting classified information about the Russian army. The researchers claim that the US was the final recipient of the secret information provided by Safronov in 2017.
“It has been almost seven months since Ivan was put behind bars; his accusers probably hoped there would be no public attention to his case, “says Safronov’s friend Ilya Barabanov, who was one of the five keynote speakers in the Clubhouse discussion.
Some Russian users of the Clubhouse compare the platform to the television broadcasts of the 1980s — or television bridges, as they were known to the USSR — shared between the Russian and American audiences. Soviet and American journalists organized bridges to connect Moscow, Leningrad, San Francisco, Boston, and other cities to discuss history and trends in culture, journalism, or lifestyles.
As Bridges did more than 40 years ago, Clubhouse now offers a platform for some unexpected speakers, including Putin’s alleged daughter, who used the app to chat about her thoughts on working in New York, Paris or Milan, calling the cities “fashion boiling points.” (The Kremlin has denied being familiar.)
Rozova opened up to Andrei Zakharov, author of “Iron Masks,” a research report in Proekt’s media that told the life of his mother, the fabulously wealthy Svetlana Krivonogikh. According to Proekt, Krivonogikh has a net worth of $ 101 million. She is Putin’s “known acquaintance” since the 1990s and her daughter, Luiza, “bears a strange resemblance” to the Kremlin leader, according to the report. Rozova did not comment on this aspect of Zakharov’s story, but admitted that she liked the popularity she brought to her social media accounts.
Thanks to Clubhouse, the Russians already know that Rozova does not watch television, receives her news from the Telegram app, believes in pandemic conspiracy theories, and approves of the assassination of political dissidents by the Kremlin. Before Zakharov joined the discussion, a Clubhouse user asked Rozova what she thought of Putin’s comment on Alexei Navalny’s poisoning, saying that if Russian special services wanted to kill Navalny, “they would have finished it. “.
Rozova responded without hesitation: “The ‘Golden Billion’ society is behind all this trick with the coronavirus. It turns out they are killing people,” the teenager said. “If normal people can do it, why can’t the government do it for reasonable purposes?”
Still, there is no safe place in the face of ubiquitous Russian corruption. The government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta warns citizens about buying invitations to Clubhouse discussions, and urges them “not to give in to the illusion” and “not to pay for invitations from strangers.”
Russian bureaucrats at all levels, from regional officials to the Kremlin administration, also join the Clubhouse chats. It includes former Deputy Prime Minister and current president of the International Chess Federation, Arkady Dvorkovich, who used the app on Monday to answer questions about Russia’s plans to host the Chess Olympics, announcing that it expected “to celebrate the Olympic Chess Games in Moscow next year”.
Political opponents of the Kremlin are also exploring the possibilities offered by this new social medium. Valery Kostenok, a 21-year-old politician and member of the Yabloko party, downloaded Clubhouse on Wednesday on his phone. “At first I was skeptical, as it was rumored that someone was recording all the conversations and filtering them. But I realized that I have no secrets from anyone and I decided to download the application, ”he told The Daily Beast. “The pandemic, police arrests and persecution made many of our favorite platforms and spaces unavailable. The Russians are big fans of conferences, debates and public debates, so our youth are now storming the Clubhouse halls. “