MOSCOW: Sofia Rusova was a young political journalist in a provincial Russian city when a lawmaker pursued her with sexual text messages, staked her out and even assaulted her near her apartment.
“I was in shock and for some time I couldn’t walk the streets alone,” she says.
But she knew from prior experience that police would not react and most of her colleagues did not take the situation seriously.
“Some people who heard my story saw it as a funny adventure and told me I should be happy to be an object of such interest,” she says. In the end, she asked her father to confront the lawmaker and the pressure subsided.
Rusova’s story is typical in Russia, where sexual harassment is seen as a joke rather than a problem, even as the #MeToo movement sweeps across western countries.
In an unprecedented recent case, three women publicly accused senior lawmaker Leonid Slutsky of kissing and groping them.
They were accused of undermining his career for political reasons and being anti-Russian.
“You tried to force kisses on me, to touch me, you were rude and pushy,” one of the women, Daria Zhuk, said in a video appeal to Slutsky last week. “You still deny it?”
“Are you not ashamed to be working in Parliament and stoop to such low behavior?” said Zhuk, who works as a producer for independent Dozhd channel and said the incident occurred when Slutsky came to the studio for an interview.
Zhuk and two female reporters first made the allegations against Slutsky anonymously in February. He labelled them a political attack ordered by his enemies and even said the scandal “boosted my gravitas rather than took it away.”
“Attempts to make Slutsky into a Russian Harvey Weinstein look like a cheap and crude provocation... and are bound to fail,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
He proceeded to joke with his colleagues in the comments about dividing up female journalists, as another MP suggested he could also “take a couple.”
“We’ll discuss,” Slutsky replied.
Fellow lawmaker Anton Morozov went as far as to say the women were actors in a conspiracy. “Perhaps Russian journalists received an order from the West to compromise him,” he told Meduza news website.
Most female members of the Duma also lashed out at Slutsky’s accusers.
Oksana Pushkina, the only lawmaker who stepped up in the journalists’ defense, said fellow female lawmakers warned her that attempting to fight sexual harassment would harm Russia’s already low birth rate.
“It’s a catastrophe that we speak in such terms,” she told AFP.
Pushkina has proposed a bill on sexual harassment that would “make men control their hands and their emotions” in the work environment, but so far she has seen no support from her colleagues.
“I was told it would take me 15 years to make this law a reality,” she said.
Women’s rights were in theory at the center of the early Soviet project and International Women’s Day, March 8, remains a public holiday in Russia.
But in reality the main change to most women’s lives in the USSR was that they were expected to have a job as well as run a home.
In recent years those rights have suffered additional blows as the government extols conservative views on gender roles and labels feminism a hostile Western trend.
Punishment for domestic abuse was softened last year, for example, with most abusers now only paying a fine and facing no time in custody.
Even cases of rape rarely make it to trial, said Pushkina. “Sexual harassment cases all fall apart at the stage of a complaint.”
President Vladimir Putin, who has led the country for almost two decades, is certainly no feminist.
In 2006 he appeared to praise the sexual stamina of Israel ex-president Moshe Katsav who was subsequently forced to resign over rape accusations.
“What a powerful guy he turned out to be! Raped ten women! I didn’t expect that, he surprised us all! We all envy him!” Putin was quoted as saying at the time by Kommersant newspaper.
“Chances are, nothing will happen to Slutsky and he will keep his mandate,” said Alyona Popova, who heads feminist association The W Project.
Rusova was also pessimistic. “People will take the side of the person of authority, because our society is such that it is easier to blame the woman,” she said.
“When you find yourself in this situation, you have nowhere to go.”
Russian MPs unfazed by sexual harassment allegations
Russian MPs unfazed by sexual harassment allegations
Second death in Minneapolis crackdown heaps pressure on Trump
- Federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, early Saturday while scuffling with him on an icy roadway in the Midwestern city
MINNEAPOLIS: The Trump administration faced intensifying pressure Sunday over its mass immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, after federal agents shot dead a second US citizen and graphic cell phone footage again contradicted officials’ immediate description of the incident.
Federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, early Saturday while scuffling with him on an icy roadway in the Midwestern city, less than three weeks after an immigration officer fired on Renee Good, also 37, killing her in her car.
President Donald Trump’s administration quickly claimed that Pretti had intended to harm the federal agents — as it did after Good’s death — pointing to a pistol it said was discovered on him.
However, video shared widely on social media and verified by US media showed Pretti never drawing a weapon, with agents firing around 10 shots at him seconds after he was sprayed in the face with chemical irritant and thrown to the ground.
The video further inflamed ongoing protests in Minneapolis against the presence of federal agents, with around 1,000 people participating in a demonstration Sunday.
After top officials described Pretti as an “assassin” who had assaulted the agents, Pretti’s parents issued a statement Saturday condemning the administration’s “sickening lies” about their son.
Asked Sunday what she would say to Pretti’s parents, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said: “Just that I’m grieved for them.”
“I truly am. I can’t even imagine losing a child,” she told Fox News show “The Sunday Briefing.”
She said more clarity would come as an investigation progresses.
US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking to NBC’s “Meet the Press,” also said an investigation was necessary to get a full understanding of the killing.
Asked if agents had already removed the pistol from Pretti when they fired on him, Blanche said: “I do not know. And nobody else knows, either. That’s why we’re doing an investigation.”
‘Joint’ probe
Their comments came after multiple senators from Trump’s Republican Party called for a thorough probe into the killing, and for cooperation with local authorities.
“There must be a full joint federal and state investigation,” Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said.
The Trump administration controversially excluded local investigators from a probe into Good’s killing.
Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Tim Walz posed a question directly to the president during a press briefing Sunday, asking: “What’s the plan, Donald Trump?“
“What do we need to do to get these federal agents out of our state?“
Thousands of federal immigration agents have been deployed to heavily Democratic Minneapolis for weeks, after conservative media reported on alleged fraud by Somali immigrants.
Trump has repeatedly amplified the racially tinged accusations, including on Sunday when he posted on his Truth Social platform: “Minnesota is a Criminal COVER UP of the massive Financial Fraud that has gone on!“
The city, known for its bitterly cold winters, has one of the country’s highest concentrations of Somali immigrants.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison pushed back against Trump’s claim, telling reporters “it’s not about fraud, because if he sent people who understand forensic accounting, we’d be having a different conversation. But he’s sending armed masked men.”
Court order
Since “Operation Metro Surge” began, many residents have carried whistles to notify others of the presence of immigration agents, while sometimes violent skirmishes have broken out between the officers and protesters.
Local authorities have sued the federal government seeking a court order to suspend the operation, with a first hearing set for Monday.
Recent polling has shown voters increasingly upset with Trump’s domestic immigration operations, as videos of masked agents seizing people off sidewalks — including children — and dramatic stories of US citizens being detained proliferate.
Barack and Michelle Obama on Sunday forcefully condemned Pretti’s killing, saying in a statement it should be a “wake-up call” that core US values “are increasingly under assault.”
The former president and first lady blasted Trump and his government as seeming “eager to escalate the situation.”
