* International:<\/strong> Blinken and Lavrov will sit down on Thursday, Jens Stoltenberg says Russia has no say, OSINT researchers lose railcar tracking access, and Matviyenko jokes about war<\/p>\n * Law and order:<\/strong> The history of Memorial, how Beria\u2019s \u2018girlfriend\u2019 followed in his footsteps, beating the police in court, Varlamov pays for his barb, and Bastrykin launches a federal investigation into Eva Voronkova\u2019s death<\/p>\n * Public policy:<\/strong> Putin\u2019s annual press conference will be on December 23, and the Russian military says no to QR-code vaccine passports<\/p>\n \ud83d\udd4a\ufe0f Blinken will meet Lavrov in Stockholm on Thursday<\/strong> (The U.S. secretary of state and Russian foreign minister will sit down on the sidelines of the OSCE summit. Blinken will have a separate meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.)<\/p>\n \ud83d\udee1\ufe0f \u2018Russia has no veto\u2019 on Ukrainian NATO membership, says NATO Secretary-General <\/strong>(\u201cRussia has no say. And Russia has no right to establish a sphere of influence, trying to control their neighbors,\u201d Jens Stoltenberg told reporters at his own post-ministerial news conference)<\/p>\n \ud83d\ude86 OSINT researchers say Russian railcar tracking system has disabled their accounts<\/strong> (According to the Conflict Intelligence Team, multiple military researchers have suddenly encountered restricted access to GdeVagon. They have been tracking Russian military units\u2019 westward movements toward the border with Ukraine.)<\/p>\n \ud83d\ude02 Federation Council chairwoman jokes that Russians enlist in the military before emigrating as refugees<\/strong> (Commenting on recent events at the Belarusian-Polish border, and perhaps on tensions at Russia\u2019s border with Ukraine, Valentina Matviyenko said, \u201cWhy, unlike other countries, does Russia have no refugees? Because Russians immediately run to military recruiters when the times get tough. Let our so-called partners understand that.\u201d)<\/p>\n Many people associate Memorial with the study of Joseph Stalin\u2019s Great Terror. But for more than 30 years, this organization has also carried out crucial human rights work, on top of preserving the memory of victims of Soviet-era political repressions. Memorial\u2019s staff have played a key role in everything from hostage negotiations to helping refugees and political prisoners. Nevertheless, in November of this year, the Russian Attorney General\u2019s Office moved to liquidate the group\u2019s parent organization, Memorial International, for allegedly violating the country\u2019s legislation on \u201cforeign agents\u201d by failing to include mandatory disclaimers on its public materials. In this brief history, Meduza looks back on the life and work of Russia\u2019s oldest and most prominent human rights organization.<\/p>\n Relying on archival resources collected by the Memorial group, journalists at Holod Media pieced together the life of Nina Gnevkovskaya, a woman who survived the unwanted affections of secret police czar Lavrentiy Beria and four years in the Gulag only to emerge as a Moscow prosecutor who helped perpetuate Soviet political repressions. <\/p>\n Beria\u2019s head of security personally lured Gnevkovskaya to Beria\u2019s summer home, beginning years of police surveillance and unwanted sexual advances from Beria. As she resisted his overtures, the authorities started arresting and imprisoning her friends. In early 1950, as Beria competed against Viktor Abukumov for control over the secret police apparatus, officers arrested Gnevkovskaya for possession of anti-Soviet literature. Citing testimony extracted through torture from some of her imprisoned friends, a judge later sentenced her to seven years in the labor camps for allegedly defaming the Soviet authorities. Gnevkovskaya spent almost four years at a camp in the Kirov region. The labor was so brutal that she suffered permanent damage to her health, becoming partly disabled.<\/p>\n Then the political winds changed again, this time in her favor: In October 1953, a few months after Beria was arrested for treason, Gnevkovskaya was returned to Moscow to testify about how she met Beria. Within a month of Beria\u2019s execution, Gnevkovskaya was exonerated and released from prison.<\/p>\n Holod Media was unable to determine how she managed it, but Gnevkovskaya resurfaces in archival documents in January 1967 as a Moscow prosecutor. Throughout the decade, she worked several high-profile cases against dissidents, including charges against the seven Soviet citizens who dared to demonstrate in Red Square in August 1968 in favor of the Prague Spring. Having reinvented herself as an accomplice to political persecution, Gnevkovskaya also helped put dissidents in forced psychiatric care. She disappears from the archives in the 1970s but resurfaces a decade later, raiding the home of another dissident. In 2001, at the age of 75, Nina Gnevkovskaya granted a television interview where she defended the crackdown on Moscow\u2019s Prague Spring demonstrators, arguing that they were freeloaders and foreign agents.<\/p>\n \u2696\ufe0f St. Petersburg man wins lawsuit against police for mistreatment after arrest<\/strong> (Supposedly to prevent a suicide risk, officers removed Nikita Karmanov\u2019s pants because of a drawstring, but they left him his shoelaces. He was forced to sit undressed in a public space for several hours. A judge awarded him roughly $540 for the humiliation.)<\/p>\n \u2696\ufe0f In first-ever loss over published content, blogger Ilya Varlamov is ordered to delete offensive post and pay small fine<\/strong> (in defense of beautification efforts, he referred to a homeowners\u2019 association in Petrozavodsk as \u201cshit-guardians\u201d for opposing new regulations limiting the number of signs and advertisements that can be displayed outside buildings)<\/p>\n \ud83d\udd75\ufe0f Federal investigators open felony negligence case after 10-year-old cystic fibrosis patient dies without medicine<\/strong> (Director Alexander Bastrykin ordered the investigation after public outrage. Local journalists say Eva Voronkova died because \u201cbureaucratic complexities\u201d prevented her from receiving court-ordered Trikafta.)<\/p>\nInternational<\/h3>\n
Law and order<\/h3>\n
\ud83d\udd6f\ufe0f The history of Memorial: \u2018Something needed to be done\u2019 (11-min read)<\/h4>\n
\u2696\ufe0f Holod Media retells the sad and ironic life story of Lavrentiy Beria\u2019s \u2018girlfriend\u2019<\/h4>\n
More law-and-order news<\/h4>\n
Public policy<\/h3>\n