Since the tragedy happened far from any major populated area, it took several hours for reporters to arrive on the spot. Only then the first photographs and videos started to appear everywhere. But what happened to social media platforms that actively reported on the plane crash in Perm [ENG] in September 2008?

The only passenger who immediately reported about the crash of “Nevsky Express” was a Twitter user Lazy Frog. She tweeted 12 times about the crash before she arrived home. Here is what she wrote:

I am alive. But I should tell about it later. If someone tells anything in news, please write me.  They don't tell us anything here.

Later, many passengers from first cars - only last cars were derailed - said they were clueless for the whole hour after the crash. Lazy Frog posted few additional updates:

We boarded another train. I did whatever I could to help.

We are now at SAPSAN (new train that evacuated passengers to St. Petersburg - G.A.). I wish it would go slower.

They announced now that specially trained people would meet us at the train station.

The day after the tragedy, Lazy Frog summarized her experience:

I felt the first emotions about what happened when we got closer to Piter (St. Petersburg - G.A.). I wasn't worried at the place of the crash. I was a little concerned about my shoes - it was so muddy around and sharp stones.

Saturday revealed more first-hand information when passengers started blogging about their experiences. The most popular blog post related to the topic was written by LJ user paltus_mk [RUS] who was in one of the last cars heavily damaged by an explosion. He wrote [RUS]:

All that happens within 10 seconds when you understand what is about to occur. I had enough time to prepare my body. But nothing can help against the Newton's laws when dozens of tons of metal suddenly stop at high speed - just luck … …therefore I was just lucky. My brother was lucky, too, despite the fact that his wounds were more serious than mine.

[…]

Everything from something that went wrong till the full stop took about 30 seconds. It was dark and silent. Then wounded people started to cry. I was on the floor, smashed by other bodies. I moved the bodies. I saw that I was covered with blood but it wasn't mine. I saw that I am ok and my hand\legs work. I had a bleeding wound in my head. I had to get up and waited for some time before men with less serious injuries cleaned the way out.

[…]

Suffering was all around. We were sitting at the end of the train car and all the bags flied toward us. A lot of wounded people around. Durng the first minutes after the crash, the car was just a buch of bodies, chairs and parts of the train that were equally distributed around.

Paltus_mk tells the story of evacuation from the first minutes after the crash with many details but, at the same time, avoids description that may disturb readers. He writes that passengers started providing the first aid to each other heroically and without panic. He says it was impossible to count how many people died. The rescuers arrived only an hour and a half after the crash. Paltus_mk and his brother were finally evacuated to a local hospital and he later arrived to St. Petersburg.

Another survival story was published by a blogger pancakyes on another Russian blogging service Ya.ru . Her train car was not damaged by the explosion. She published her first post at 22:11 - a half an hour after the crash - right from the place of the tragedy. She wrote that the train stopped because of some accident, few cars were derailed and she would come home later than expected. Almost an hour later, she added that there were victims in the last two cars. On Saturday,  pancakyes published the whole story of the crash [RUS] as she witnessed it:

We felt few shakes that were getting stronger and stronger. Things started to fall down from the table. It was not clear what happened. No announcements. First, we were thinking that it wasn't serious. Maybe someone stopped the train by accident. But conductors with pale faces started running around collecting mattresses, tablecloths and water. They asked us not to leave our seats unless we are doctors. We heard some bad things from their radios. Some rumors started to go around. We didn't believe that two cars were disconnected and they were so far. Later, we fund out that it was true.

We went out and wanted to help. Went up untill the third car. […] We didn't want to be just gawkers and make a crowd without any opportunity to help. We also didn't want to see what people who came from there told  us.

Immediately after the crash, social media platforms became the first place where Russian journalist were looking for information. A reporter from a Russian news agency RIA-Novosty left a comment on the pancakyes‘ blog and asked her to call him immediately. Tatyana Landa (LJ user Elada) wrote on her blog [RUS] about a friend who was on the train but survived. Two reporters immediately left comments asking her to contact them. Tatyana later published  an angry  post [RUS] where she told that a journalist from “Komsomolskaya pravda” (Russian tabloid newspaper) was trying to call her several times during that night. The post turned to a place were people started to discuss if journalists can use bloggers as sources of information about the train crash. Reporters also tried to contact  a blogger who wrote [RUS] that she had decided not to take the “Nevsky Express” at the last minute.

Some bloggers expressed their frustration [RUS] with the fact that so few people from the train used social media to report about what was happening. And, apparently, there are several explanations why social media didn't play major role in the coverage of the “Nevsky express” tragedy.

Twitter, the most convenient platform for live blogging, is relatively unpopular in Russia. According to twitRU [RUS], there are only 2,700 Twitter users who write in Russian language. At the same time, popular Russian blogging platforms as Livejournal.com or ya.ru could have been used for live reporting but, as discussed above, there is only a couple of examples of this use.

The second explanation is related to the role of mobile devices and connectivity. The number of portable devices in the country is growing. More and more Russians can use Internet and various Web-applications on the go. This trend is especially strong in the area of Moscow and St. Petersburg. But the crash happened far from any metropolitan area where, as witnesses reported, the cell phone coverage was limited. A blogger pancakyes recollects the connectivity problem:

The phone connection was very bad. Everyone probably tried to make a call at the same time and the net was overloaded. I started to get SMSs only when I was on the second train (the one that took passengers to Saint-Petersburg - G.A.). I could use the Internet occasionally, but it was very difficult.

In contrast, the plane crash in Perm last year provided many opportunities for citizen reporting:

1. The plane crashed within the city borders where  many people could see what happened right from their windows. The “Nevsky express” crash, as noted earlier, happened the rural area.

2. The  social media coverage in Perm was based on the accounts of those who witnessed the crash but were not part of it (unfortunately, there were no survivors on the plane). All the witnesses of the “Nevsky Express” incident were passengers on the train.

3. Most people posted their updates on the plane crash in Perm using their home computers. The “Nevsky Express” survivors had to rely on their mobile devices.

These differences explain why social media reporting was prevalent in the case of the plane crash and almost absent in the situation with “Nevsky Express.”

It is also possible to claim that Russia has not yet developed the tradition of social media reporting. That is why only two passengers were motivated enough to go online and assume the role of citizen reporters. It may also explain the hostility of passengers and bloggers toward journalists who were looking for information on the crash in social media.

It looks like the Russian blogosphere is still far from being a major source for breaking news. It still remains as a place for distribution of information and broad discussions about what has happened.

On Aug. 13, 2007, the same Neva Express train was derailed due to an explosion; some 60 people were injured then. Coincidentally, in the past few days, there has been an increase in the Russian media coverage (RUS) of the trial of Maksharip Khidriev, one of the suspects charged in connection with the 2007 attack; an Ingushetia native, he is alleged to have links to Chechen rebels. (GV posts on the 2007 Neva Express train derailment are here and here.)

No witness reports of the tragedy seem to have appeared in the Russian blogosphere yet, but there are plenty of reactions still, and below is a small selection.

LJ user peresedov recalls the 2007 accident and the ongoing trial of one of the suspects, and posts this comment (RUS):

[…] Whether you want it or not, these two events [appear related].

I'd like to ask the experts: to which extent could these two events be interconnected, and is it really possible for Khidriev's associates (he has been proclaimed [Doku Umarov]'s person) to have prepared an attack like this in two days, and what the hell is going on here in general?

UPD. [LJ user] beri_llii links to a report claiming that the train explosion was carried out by yet another obscure nationalist group: [http://headshotboy.livejournal.com/137255.html]

(The post linked to in LJ user peresedov's update has since been deleted, replaced by another one (RUS) with an explanatory note, which says, among other things, that “the nationalists' statement” turned out to contain false claims of their involvement in the train blast.)

Some bloggers chose to draw parallels between Friday's train accident, the trial of Maksharip Khidriev, and Kurban Bayram (Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice), a three-day Muslim holiday, whose celebration began on Friday. LJ user warsh wrote this (RUS):

[…] I won't be surprised if this turns out to be a Kurban Bayram “gift” from the North Caucasus rebels (as it was with the attack on the Neva Express in 2007). I'm wishing them to join [the Chechen guerrilla leader Shamil Basayev, killed in 2006] as soon as possible.

And LJ user uliana wrote this (RUS):

All things considered, the newest Neva Express blast is someone's kurban. A consequence of the fact that those guilty of the first blast have been “appointed”…

LJ user aneta_spb mentions the 2007 attack and the trial, too, but points out (RUS) to other factors that might have caused the crash:

[…] The suspect in the previous catastrophe [case] has just admitted [his involvement] (and how many more they kept trying to implicate in this case!)

I can imagine what this night is going to be like for Novgorod's doctors… With roads like these… […]

***

murys:

We were just driving from the countryside, gave a ride to a man who, as far as I understood, worked for the Ministry of Emergency Situations or a similar kind of place. He said that this segment of the railway near Bologoye is so rotten in general that they don't have to explode anything there, and this could've been a secondary explosion, too. […]

aneta_spb:

Exactly - you don't even have to make an explosion. A couple weeks after [the 2007 Neva Express accident], we were on a train and spent some six hours waiting [not far from the site of Friday's crash], because there had been some accident in front of us. And prior to the rushed launch of the [Sapsan high speed train route], they were doing some urgent repairs, and it's likely that they haven't finished something or done something wrong. […]

And here's a comment (RUS) on the rescue effort, posted anonymously in the ru_railway LJ community:

In this situation, I'm most upset about the fact that they've spent so much time bragging about the Emergency Situations Ministry's cool new rescue center in Moscow, about all the info that they've got showing on the little screens, and the fact that they are now capable of taking urgent decisions, but what's the use of all these decisions if the local rescue equipment is not in the working condition, and that's why they had to send some [all the way] from Novgorod. The accident took place at 9:34 PM, and the rescuers from Novgorod set out [to the site of the accident] only at 10:40 PM, and it takes two and half hours to ride along those roads, if you can call them roads at all, and that's the best case scenario. They've sent the planes out - but why don't they have anything locally?!

Irek Murtazin, photo by Sergey Varshavchik

On Nov. 26, the Kirov district court of Kazan, which is the capital of the Republic of Tartastan, convicted Irek Murtazin, a 45-year-old journalist and blogger, of defamation and incitement to hatred, reports Gazeta.ru [RUS]. The court sentenced Murtazin to one year and nine months of imprisonment in a penal colony (a form of imprisonment where convicts live not in a jail but in a special colony for prisoners).

About a year ago, in Dec. 2008, Murtazin - former head of Shaimiev's press service and currently an opposition blogger, aka lj-user irek-murtazin [RUS] - was accused of defamation against Mintimir Shaimiev, President of Tatarstan. On Sept. 12, 2008, Murtazin published a post in which he mentioned a piece of gossip about Shaimiev's death. He wrote [RUS]:

Пришла страшная весть…
…на 72-ом году жизни, во время отдыха в Турции (в Кемере) скоропостижно скончался Минтимер Шарипович Шаймиев.
Честно говоря – не верится. Точнее, не хочется верить. Потому что, если это правда, то начнется такая свара, такая нешуточная борьба за то, чтобы занять освободившееся кресло, что чубы у холопов будут трещать и вдоль и поперек. И именно из-за подобных перспектив, ближайшее окружение Минтимера Шариповича попытается скрыть эту информацию. Чтобы успеть перегруппироваться (вплоть до скоропостижной эвакуации из страны). Именно поэтому официальная информация, думаю, будет не раньше чем через неделю.

The rumor of Shaimiev's death was disproven on the same day, but the shares of the oil company allegedly owned by the representatives of the so-called “Shaimiev clan” dropped significantly, says Lenta.ru [RUS]. In Dec. 2008, Murtazin was officially accused of defamation and infringement upon personal inviolability of Shaimiev (It is important to note that the court acquitted Murtazin only on this latter charge).

The trial lasted almost a year, and prosecution kept adding new accusations, blaming Murtazin for defamation and libel not only on his blog, but also in Murtazin's book “Mintimir Shaimiev: The Last President of Tatarstan. Part 1″ as well as in his news bulletin “Our Kazan News” (”Наши казанские вести,” which Murtazin described [RUS] in Oct. 2008 as a “print digest” of his LiveJournal blog).

Murtazin said he didn't agree with the verdict and would file an appeal.

Photographs from the trial are available here.

***

Irek Murtazin's bio (according to Anticompromat.org)

Born in 1964 in Bogatye Saby settlement, Tatarstan
1981-1990 - served in the Soviet Army, also in GRU (military intelligence unit)
1985 - graduated from the Kazan Higher Tank College
1990-1991 - assistant to the legislator Vladimir Lopatin
1995 - graduated from the Moscow Government Law Academy
1991-1995 - editor-in-chief of newspapers “Russian North” and “Gubernskie Vesti”
1993-1995 - editor-in-chief of TV-7, a local TV channel in Vologda
1995-1999 - bureau chief of the VGTRK (the largest state-owned TV company) in Kazan
1999-2002 - head of the press service of the President of Tatarstan
2002-2003 - head of TV channel “Tatarstan”
2003-2004 - head of VGTRK's Minsk, Belarus, bureau
2006-2007 - member of the regional branch of A Just Russia party in Tatarstan
2008-2009 -publisher and editor-in-chief of the news bulletin “Our Kazan News” (printed outside Tatarstan in Cheboksary, Republic of Chuvashia)

October alone produced a death toll of 24, including 12 suicides, according to the report (RUS), which was one of the monthly statistical bulletins on the so-called “non-combat losses” that the ministry publishes in the form of tables on its website, www.mil.ru.

The reports do not specify the proportions of draftees, soldiers doing contractual service and officers that make up the death tolls, and they only cover the Defense Ministry-run part of the military; no such statistics are available on armed services coming under the Interior Ministry, the Federal Security Service (FSB), or the Emergency Situations Ministry.

The Defense Ministry-controlled forces, where the term of draft service is one year, number about 1.2 million, including more than 300,000 officers.

The ministry's “non-combat losses” statistics have varied little from month to month, with this year's minimum and maximum monthly tolls being 23 and 37 respectively.

Accidents claimed more than 127 lives in the 10-month period, but the exact numbers of lives lost through accidents, murder, and, possibly, manslaughter are unclear because of the bulletins' rather confusing organization.

The reports have a category entitled “Accidents” (96 fatalities stated in the November report), but also separate categories on the mishandling of weapons (seven deaths) and road accidents (24), and a category entitled “Murders and Deaths through Negligence” (17). There is also a category (four deaths in the November bulletin) on “exceeding of powers” and the notorious bullying and brutal hazing by soldiers of fellow servicemen known as dedovshchina.

According to footnotes to the table, the total “non-combat” death toll is definitive, but criminal investigations into soldiers' deaths sometimes take a long time, and so some of the reported cases may be moved from one category to another later.

One of the notes says the statistics do not cover fatal diseases.

The November report, which also says 11,653 crimes were committed in the armed forces from January to October, has hardly drawn any comments on RuNet so far, but quite a lot of comments followed the October bulletin (RUS), which said the period from January to September had produced a death toll of 273.

There was hardly any reaction to the October report from bloggers, but there were quite a few comments on various news websites: some purely emotional, others trying to get to the causes of “non-combat” fatalities, one comment providing a link to a law firm that offers to exempt young men from the draft, and one person arguing that the death toll of 273 was too low to worry about.

There was, for example, a discussion on the Novosibirsk-based Lyubimy Gorod site, and below is a small selection of opinions posted there:

Silxer:

But everyone chooses their own way. If all you do is drink and smoke, that's where you will be [i.e., drafted into the army]. These days tricking yourself out [of the draft is no problem]…

***

Tatyana and KOtyata:

Study and study [a reference to Vladimir Lenin's advice to young people], or phone here [a link to the website of a law firm in Novosibirsk that promises allegedly guaranteed exemption from the draft]

***

Zyklon_B:

Moreover, according to the Defense Ministry, 10,396 crimes were committed in the military since the start of the year, 1,023 of them in September. If one serves in the Russian military, there is a high probability that one will become a criminal.

There was also a debate (RUS) on the site of the Novy Region 2 online news agency:

Kapitan:

An I-couldn't-give-a-shit attitude on the part of officers, lack of REAL sergeants, moronic combat training programs – all these are results of these “non-combat” losses in the Armed Forces [he apparently means 'causes' rather than ‘results']. Russia is no exception either. The situation is just as crazy in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. And the ultimate reason is there are more old-fart generals, colonels and rubbishy staff and logistics officers than soldiers in our armies. There're 10 officers for each rank-and-file soldier!!! There's one more little group of good-for-nothings with stars on their shoulders – the warrant officers. I'm not talking about those who command companies or are special forces fighters – I'm talking about the LOGISTIC services, where, at times, to get something out of a warrant officer in a combat or financial unit you have to either give him a bottle of brandy or simply blow his teeth out – an IMPENETRABLE BUNCH OF BASTARDS.

***

Dersu Uzala:

This is a very low ratio between non-combat losses and the total number of military personnel for any army in the world.

Why should NR [New Region] be running into hysterics?

***

SPETS:

In fact, in a large city with a population of a minimum of one million more people get killed by drugs […] than in the entire armed forces with all their losses. But they don't yell about that, do they!

***

Nerussky:

The main causes of non-combat losses are old armaments plus the fact that military personnel have very little experience of using them, the exceptionally low education standards of draftees and their exceptionally poor health, the shortage of officers and their being too busy with goodness knows what but not work with soldiers, exceptionally poor performance on the part of officers in working with soldiers – most of them simply lack the knowledge that's needed for this.

A lonely comment, posted by “a student” on the Velikaya Epokha (The Epoch Times) site, said (RUS):

Yet they keep taking young guys into the military, our state broke the lives of 273 people.

Reuters reported on Nov. 17, citing Gen. Peter Chiarelli, vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, that about 140 soldiers in the Army had committed suicide in 2009.