Johnson's Russia List
2015-#50
12 March 2015
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"We don't see things as they are, but as we are"

"Don't believe everything you think"

In this issue
 
  #1
Wall Street Journal
March 12, 2015
5 Things About the War in Ukraine
By Philip Shiskin

The war in Ukraine has exacerbated internal tension about whether the country should ally itself with Moscow or the West. That question has generated turmoil inside Ukraine's main security agency, as described in a page-one article in The Wall Street Journal. [below]

1 The Kremlin's Goals

Russian leaders want to prevent Ukraine from joining Western alliances, particularly the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which Russia has always viewed as a national-security threat. The Kremlin also is concerned that the kind of revolution that overthrew the previous regime in Kiev could take place in Moscow. In destabilizing east Ukraine, the Kremlin is showing its domestic constituents that revolutions beget chaos and war.

2 Kiev's Response

Ukraine's fledgling central government has been caught unprepared by Kremlin actions that began with the annexation of Crimea last year and spread to east Ukraine. Moscow has shown Kiev it won't allow the separatists to be defeated on the battlefield. Kiev accepted a series of unpalatable compromises with Moscow-backed rebels: de facto loss of territory in two eastern provinces in exchange for tenuous cease-fires. Kiev has promised autonomy to the breakaway regions should they return to Ukraine's rule, but the separatists have shown no interest.

3 The Western Reaction

The West hasn't found an effective strategy to deter Moscow from fueling the conflict by supplying weapons, commanders and fighters. Moscow denies doing any of this, despite evidence to the contrary. The U.S. and the European Union have imposed sanctions, which have damaged the Russian economy. The White House has so far resisted Kiev's appeals for lethal military aid, fearing it would escalate the conflict.

4 What's Next?

The current cease-fire, reached last month after the separatists grabbed more land, already is showing signs of strain. If it crumbles, the separatists are likely to press an offensive against the port city of Mariupol. More Western sanctions against Russia likely would follow. If the truce holds, Ukraine's east would remain under Russian influence as a breakaway entity akin to parts of Georgia and Moldova.

5 The Wider Implications

Nations from Estonia to Georgia are worried about the Kremlin's possible designs on other former Soviet republics. The U.S. wants to reassure NATO members that the collective-security clause of the alliance's founding treaty is ironclad. Moscow appears eager to undermine the alliance, and to drive a wedge between the EU and the U.S.


#2
Russia Insider
http://russia-insider.com
March 12, 2015
'90s Sitcom "Seinfeld" Predicted NATO Strategy in Ukraine
Sometimes life imitates art...
By Ricky Twisdale
[Video here http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/03/12/4379]
 
"Ukraine is game to you?!"

In this clip from the episode "The Labelmaker" from the 1990s sitcom "Seinfeld," Kramer (Micheal Richards) and Newman (Wayne Knight) become obsessed with the board game "Risk" - a game of world domination.

The pair's subway dialog presciently describes how US/NATO policy in Europe has operated since 1991.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia completely withdrew from Europe - leaving only a naval base in Crimea. Washington apparently believed Ukraine was just another "road apple" on its drive to completely encircle and neutralize Russia.

In the video, it is notably the Ukrainian himself who angrily overturns and destroys everything, under the mistaken perception that he is somehow defending his country.

He doesn't understand that to some, the fate of Ukraine is simply a game.
 
 #3
Putin has very busy schedule - press secretary

MOSCOW. March 12 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has a very busy schedule at this time, presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said.

"He is holding meetings all the time, but not all of them are public. His schedule is very busy these days. He is discussing crisis-linked issues and other matters. He is keeping in touch with the government, state-owned companies and the banking sector all the time. Naturally, these meetings are taking up much time," Peskov told the Ekho Moskvy radio station.

When asked about Putin's health, Peskov said: "There is no need to worry. Everything is fine."

In an interview with Interfax on Wednesday, Peskov denied rumors that Putin had to cancel his visit to Kazakhstan on March 12-13 because of an illness.

"The president feels well," he said.

The planned summit of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus in Astana "will be held in a few days at the decision of the three leaders," he said.

Earlier, Western media claimed that the meeting may have been postponed due to the Russian president's illness.

A source in the Russian presidential administration told Interfax on Thursday that Putin and South Ossetian leader Leonid Tibilov are expected to sign a treaty to further promote integration processes between the two countries in Moscow next week.

"The document has already passed all required procedures and negotiations, and we expect the presidents of the two countries to sign it in Moscow next week," he said.
 
 #4
www.rt.com
March 12, 2015
'His handshakes break hands': Press secretary dismisses Putin illness rumors

Vladimir Putin's press secretary has dismissed reports that the Russian president is ill as rumors, adding that the news itself could be a result of "spring madness" among some reporters.

"No need to worry, everything is all right. He has working meetings all the time, only not all of these meetings are public," Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday in an interview with Echo of Moscow radio. He added that the president is "absolutely healthy" and that "his handshake is so strong he breaks hands with it."

Shortly before the radio interview Peskov dismissed the rumors of Putin's possible illness in an interview with TASS.

"As soon as the sun appears in spring, when the smell of spring is in the air, some people suffer from crises. ... Some have hallucinations about the government dissolution and some cannot see Putin on television for several days," he said. "We have a calm attitude to such crises and keep answering all questions in a patient manner."

News of Putin's alleged health problems was initially circulated by Reuters in a report about the postponement of the president's visit to Kazakhstan.

"It looks like he has fallen ill," an unnamed source in Kazakhstan's government told the agency. However, reporters and bloggers quickly inflated that suggestion into the size of a statement, seeking comment from the Kremlin.

The current situation is reminiscent of November 2012, when Russian and international media outlets suggested that Putin's state of health had deteriorated. Journalists pointed out that the president's visits to Moscow from his suburban residence had become less frequent and that he had canceled several international trips because of back pain.

Back then Peskov categorically dismissed allegations that Putin's state of health was affecting his work schedule and reminded reporters that Putin had been a semi-professional sportsman. As with any sportsman, he nurses a lot of old injuries, but they do not limit his professional activities in any way.

In December 2012, Putin personally addressed the issue during a major press conference. He claimed the false reports about his health problems had been circulated by his political opponents who sought to question his ability to run the country.
 
 #5
Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
www.carnegiecouncil.org
Februrary 27, 2015
The United States, Russia, and Ukraine: Report from Moscow
Interview with Dmitri Trenin

DAVID SPEEDIE: I'm David Speedie, director of the program on U.S. Global Engagement here at the Carnegie Council. It's a very special pleasure to welcome today someone who has been a good and trusted friend for two decades, I would think, Dmitri Trenin.

Let me just briefly say that Dmitri Trenin served in the Soviet and Russian armed forces for two decades, from 1972 to 1993. He then taught at the War Studies Department of the Military Institute from 1986 to 1993. He retired from the Russian army in 1993 and then held a post as a senior research fellow at the Institute of Europe in Moscow. In 1993, he was also a senior research fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome. Then, of course, he joined the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he now directs the Carnegie Moscow Center.

So with Dmitri Trenin, we have truly a seasoned perspective, both from the point of view of military policy and intellectual analysis of the developments in Russia at the moment.

Dmitri, a warm welcome to the Carnegie Council.

DMITRI TRENIN: It's a great pleasure to be with you here at the Council.

DAVID SPEEDIE: We spoke a few months ago, Dmitri. At that time you said something that was very striking, and that is that we would look back on the period of 1992 to 2014, barely more than 20 years, as the inter-Cold War period. I would assume that not much has happened in the intervening weeks and months to change that analysis.

DMITRI TRENIN: Unfortunately, I think we have more evidence that this is what I thought it was and still think-a period between two confrontations between Moscow, on the one hand, and the United States, on the other hand. Of course, you cannot have the Cold War repeat itself, but the confrontation that one experiences today could be every bit as cold and potentially could even be more dangerous than the Cold War of the 1940s through the 1980s.

DAVID SPEEDIE: What has been lost at this moment in time, it seems to me, is the ability that has been at times halting and incomplete, but even, starting towards the end of the Cold War-the ability to find some kind of accommodation between the two sides, as it were. The Russian specialist Robert Legvold spoke recently of the loss of what he called "useful ambiguity in the relationship." Instead, we are kind of in what might be seen as the Cold War at its height, placing all blame for all that is wrong in the relationship on the other side, rather than recognizing shortcomings on both.

Is that pretty much on target?

DMITRI TRENIN: I think it's a fair analysis. I think what has changed is also the idea that I think both sides shared very much at the end of the Cold War that no one was perfect, that mistakes were made by both sides, that both sides, if you like, lost the benefit of a jointly fought and jointly gained victory in the Second World War, that they stumbled into the Cold War that they didn't need, and that they could only get out of that predicament through joint efforts, recognizing again one's own mistakes.

I think we now have a situation in which each side believes it has a monopoly on truth, a monopoly on what's right, and the other side is basically doing things all wrong. That is potentially, as I said, a dangerous situation.

DAVID SPEEDIE: We are not here, obviously, to assess blame. It would be wrong to fall into that trap of saying that one side is all in the wrong and the other is in the right. However, there are some commentators here who feel that there have been measures taken certainly in what you now call the inter-Cold War period that were designed, if not to humiliate Russia, at least to get the message across that the Cold War is over and we won. There are other serious thinkers, like Ambassador Jack Matlock, for example, who served under Ronald Reagan, who bridle and are indignant at that notion. He has written very eloquently as to the shortcomings of that view.

On the other hand, President Putin at one point proposed a new post-Cold War security architecture. I think "from Lisbon to Vladivostok" was the sort of catchphrase there. I think I'm right in saying that he, and indeed Yeltsin before him, even inquired about NATO membership for Russia and were fairly singularly rebuffed. Putin has been one of the most-one of the favorite things attributed to Putin is his description of the tragedy of the fall of the Soviet Union, but he also says that the Soviet Union can never be reconstructed.

What's going on in that whole blame-game scenario from the Russian point of view?

DMITRI TRENIN: I don't think one should focus very much on the apportionment of blame. Let's try to take the situation more or less objectively.

Russia, at the time of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, was intensely interested in being drawn into the Western community. There was a very clear, very broadly supported notion that Russia belonged in the West, that Russia was a European country coming home. President Yeltsin talked about NATO membership for Russia. His prime minister talked about EU membership for Russia. President Yeltsin also asked then-president George H.W. Bush for a bilateral U.S.-Russia military alliance.

So Russia was interested in two things-actually, in one thing: integrating itself into the Western system. It also was ready to accept U.S. primacy in that system, which was extraordinary, if you like, given Russia's attitude to its sovereignty, independence, and stuff like that.

But this was not really appreciated in the West, in the United States, for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons are pretty serious. One was,"Well, we don't have to do that now, because we are not pressed into it." NATO did not come about as someone's intelligent design, but rather as a response to the perceived threat of a communist takeover in Western Europe and the aggressiveness or whatever of Stalin's Soviet Union. That was a response, rather than a policy that the United States had at the time of the end of the Cold War.

The situation was absolutely dissimilar at the end of the Cold War. The United States was not threatened by anyone. Russia's assistance was not needed in order to repel that threat.

Secondly, I think people realized, even though not everyone talked about it, that Russia may be weak today, Russia may accept U.S. primacy for the time being, but look 20 years down the road. Russia will be stronger. It will challenge, one way or another, U.S. leadership. If Russia is coming to the club, it will not be coming the way Germany and Japan were coming-overtly, obviously defeated powers, the U.S. occupation. Russia was going to position itself essentially as a co-leader alongside the United States. That was a clear threat to U.S leadership in NATO and other Western councils. People thought Russia within Western councils was not going to do much good to the United States. Potentially it could be a very disruptive force.

DAVID SPEEDIE: NATO, of course, is interesting in a number of ways. I remember in the early to mid-1990s, there was a whole self-analysis of NATO and its future. In fact, it may have been Senator Lugar who said, "Out of area or out of business." In other words, NATO had to-and, of course, with Afghanistan and elsewhere, to whatever extent one wants to say successfully, it has tried to reconfigure, to some extent.

I want to come back to the perception question a little bit, on both sides, in a minute, but clearly we ought to talk about Ukraine, because that's where the mutual angst comes into sharpest focus, currently what's going on in Ukraine. Let me just throw out a couple of thoughts.

First of all, in our last conversation, you talked about movements into Ukraine as a humanitarian intervention on Russia's part. Is that an opinion you still share?

DMITRI TRENIN: There are many elements to Russia's involvement in Ukraine. There is an element of humanitarian intervention. There is an element of geopolitical struggle. There is an element of all the civil war in which Russia is supporting one side within Ukraine. So there are many elements here.

"Humanitarian intervention"-I think is how this is presented to the Russian people. Russia is there because the Ukrainian military, through its indiscriminate use of force, is threatening the livelihoods and lives of so many people in Eastern Ukraine, and Russia has to support those people.

Again, this is only part of the story, but this is the part of the story that gets the most traction in the Russian media these days.

DAVID SPEEDIE: Of course, it gets no traction in the Western media. What happens in the West is that Poroshenko, as I remember when he was elected, pledged to engage the people of Donbass, of Eastern Ukraine. Of course, the engagement turned out to be military engagement.

Again, what we tend to read in the Western media is how Russia, for example, did not live up to the Minsk agreement from September of last year, will probably not live up to the Minsk agreement just concluded, the second round. Yet there are all sorts of ways in which Poroshenko and the Kiev regime have also not lived up to the Minsk agreements in terms of looking toward federal arrangements, humanitarian assistance, some degree of federal accommodation of various things that were in Minsk, and I think were taken out, but now ratified by the Rada or whatever have you. So again, we get the blame game coming into play.

In addition to just what's not reported in the Western media, obviously there are other things that seem to be relevant. There are what are called the "Iron Horse" armed cavalry units in the Baltics, the Western military units. There are U.S. warships and aircraft in the Black Sea supporting Georgia. Are these not just elements of controversial behavior on our part that stoke the fire even more?

DMITRI TRENIN: I think we are witnessing a return of a Cold War military standoff "lite." That is very sad, of course. But more than sad, this could lead to military miscalculation. This could lead to too close engagements, too much provocation that could amplify the moves of the other side. You have a dynamic which is not only unhelpful, but which is actually dangerous.

I will add to what you have just said. The Russian moves of increasing the number of flights by the Russian Air Force-sometimes those flights come close to Western aircraft, and Western aircraft come close to Russian bombers. People scramble to defend their airspace against an intruder. Sometimes that may lead to a collision. It may lead to an emergency situation. It's one thing to deal with that situation when the general environment is calm and sort of peaceful.

Of course, military people need to train, no question. They need to exercise, no question. But under the conditions of a quasi-permanent crisis in the relationship, accidents of that kind could lead to serious breaches of peace.

DAVID SPEEDIE: Again we are back to the future, back to the Cold War, in the sense that, yes, they have to train. But when relationships are better, shall we say, when there is dialogue, when there is back-channel, when people know what the other is doing, there is a way of sharing, "We're going to be doing this. We're going to be carrying out these exercises." In a time like this, the sharing of what you are doing in terms of military exercises may be lost. Is that true?

DMITRI TRENIN: I think it's true. I think it's very true. I think what you said is also very true-back to the future. We are revisiting some of the elements of a landscape that we thought was long gone. We thought that it all belonged in history. We see that history is haunting us. History is coming back. That is pretty depressing.

DAVID SPEEDIE: The other thing is, we are, after all, the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and one of the ethical documents that we like to refer to with some frequency are Morgenthau's principles of realism. There are various excellent principles contained therein: avoiding the crusading spirit in foreign policy, being able to see things from the other side's point of view-not capitulating or automatically giving in, but understanding where the other side is coming from-and don't get yourself into a position from which there is no turning back.

These are all sort of ethical as well as strategic questions that I think we fail to take into account when it comes to Russia, and particularly the question of understanding the other point of view. I wrote something recently and really focused on this. That is, there is no country on the planet with which the United States has a relationship that compares to Russia's relationship-historical, cultural, ethnic, strategic-with Ukraine.

You said something in our last discussion that I really would like to repeat, because it was fascinating. You pointed to a situation 100 years ago in the civil war in Russia involving units in the eastern part of Ukraine that were on the side of the communists at that time. It was an interesting slice of history that shows how far this goes-well, it goes back further than 100 years. Can you just restate that?

DMITRI TRENIN: The civil war that followed the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 perhaps was fought most intensely in Ukraine. Ukraine had a whole range of groups who fought for power. Some of them were bona fide Ukrainian nationalists, let's say of a Western Ukrainian school. That's the hotbed of Ukrainian nationalism, in the former confines of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in Lemberg, which was then the name for what is now Lviv.

But Ukraine also had its fair share of communists, all sorts of socialists, and also all sorts of pretty anarchistic elements, some of them simply bandits. All this went for three years, more or less, the territory of Ukraine, with its various governments succeeding one another in places like Kiev, and sometimes people aligning not so much with somebody, but against somebody. There were some figures that really inspired awe in law-abiding citizens that remained, people like Symon Petliura, because of the clearly anti-Semitic element in his group.

DAVID SPEEDIE: And, of course, Lemberg was also a large Jewish population.

DMITRI TRENIN: Yes, but Lemberg in those days was outside of the Russian empire. It was given to Poland as a result of the First World War.

So it was a hodgepodge of different groups. It's interesting that in those days Ukraine had several competing governments. What's now Donbass was known in 1918-1919 as the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog People's Republic. The Donetsk People's Republic did exist. It's not a new name. It's very interesting. We are now discussing it as if it's just a recent phenomenon. It is a recent phenomenon, but it has some history behind it.

There was another republic in Lviv. It was called Western Ukrainian People's Republic. Before the area was attached to Poland, they used to have their own government-very briefly, of course.

There were some Russian generals, Ukrainian Hetmans, Bolsheviks, whoever, who ruled the various parts of Ukraine and vied for power. And, as I said, there was a very strong anarchistic element.

I'm saying all that because not all of that is history. If you think that Donetsk and Lugansk are simply proxies of the Kremlin, you will be deluding yourself. There is much more to it than just being Kremlin-friendly or "pro-Russian." There are many other things. I believe that history matters, and it matters a lot in Ukraine.

DAVID SPEEDIE: Exactly, and it's not just that that part of it is not new, is history, but in the current situation, clearly in Western Ukraine and in Kiev you have a fairly motley assembly of genuine reformers of some rather nasty forces. Some of them are represented in the post-Maidan government-Svoboda, which has been condemned by the European Union as racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic as recently as 2012. So there is this hodgepodge of characters, in what is now, as it was then, as you described, a profoundly divided country.

DMITRI TRENIN: Right. This situation, to some extent, continues. We're sitting here in March 2015. We don't know what will happen in Ukraine over the next 12 months, to what extent Ukraine will remain in one piece, what the combined result will be of heightening economic hardships, mounting social tensions, intensifying political infighting.

Even if you leave the war in the East to one side and focus on the rest of Ukraine, things are not going to be very easy. Things are not going to be very quiet. As Ukrainians address those very difficult and serious issues, quite a few of them may be led by this or that version of an ideology that seeks simple solutions to things.

DAVID SPEEDIE: Back just for a moment to the question of perceptions, a military presence in the Black Sea, the lack of recognition of the importance-clearly, some have written that Ukraine is far more important for Russia than it is for the West. That's seen in some of the indecisive attitude among some Europeans, for example, on the question of arming Ukraine. There is a fairly healthy debate going on in this country about whether we should be sending heavy arms to Ukraine.

Again, how is the Western perception seen in Russia? Clearly there are some notable exceptions to the average commentator in the mainstream press. John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt at Harvard wrote a piece last week. "Why Arming Kiev Is a Really, Really Bad Idea," was the fairly evocative title. I mentioned Jack Matlock before.

But there is also a fairly prevalent view that Russia should just get over all this sense of post-Cold War angst, NATO expansion, the bombing of Serbia, missile defense-"It's all over and done with; just get over with it."

My distinct sense is that it's not that easy for Russians to take up that point of view, particularly in the current situation with Ukraine. Again, my sense is that the condemnation of Russia on all sorts of fronts, from human rights to conduct in Ukraine, the sanctions, of course, and the threats-this is a sort of cocktail that only plays into the hands of anti-Western feeling.

DMITRI TRENIN: I think that it has already done that job. Anti-Western feeling has never been as strong in the post-Cold War years as it is now. I think that for a vast number of Russians, the United States has reemerged as the principal adversary, which is a very, very sad fact.

In some ways, this is a judgment that-let me put it this way. It would be wrong to ascribe everything to the Kremlin propaganda. A lot of pretty well-educated Russians, people with enough time and enough resources to study international relations themselves, have come to the conclusion that Russia is essentially seen as the country that lost the Cold War, the country that had to pay the price of defeat, the country that had basically no right to protect its geopolitical interests outside of its borders; that there were no limits to how far NATO expansion should go. Russia was not to be consulted on that issue. Russia was not to be consulted on the issue of the enlargement of the European Union.

Again, the sovereignty of all states between Russia and the West mattered a lot. But Russia's unease or suspicions or what have you with regard to the West coming closer and closer to its own borders was seen as essentially evidence that Russia has not been able to reform itself. If a country like Russia sees the United States and its allies as potentially an adversary, then there is something wrong with Russia. If the Russians militate against NATO enlargement, it means that they have some new imperialist designs themselves.

So you have that.

DAVID SPEEDIE: That's an odd sort of switching of roles, isn't it? One side is expanding to Russia's borders, but when Russia protests, they are the ones who are the new imperialists. There is a logical fallacy there somewhere.

DMITRI TRENIN: This whole argument is built on, I think, a very important statement, a very important foundation, and that statement runs like this: There can be no moral equivalence between Russia and the West. That, I think, is key to the new narrative. If there is no moral equivalence, it means that the West can do anything because whatever it does, it is either good or will be corrected by the West itself. Russia has absolutely no right, no moral right at all, to question anything, because it's still a country on probation. It used to be a country on probation. Now it's the criminal again. The old criminal has come back, the old convict.

That, I think, is key. It does not only pertain to Russia and the West; it pertains to Russia and anyone else-Russia and Ukraine. There can be no moral equivalence. Ukraine is always higher. Georgia is always higher. You name any country with which Russia may have a problem; it would stand on a higher moral ground in the eyes of the people who adopt that vision than Russia itself.

DAVID SPEEDIE: In the State of the Union address in January, President Obama was pretty much dismissive, both in terms of substance and time allotted to Russia. He said two things. The first was that basically Russia was chronically isolated from the rest of the world, and the second was that Russia was an economic basket case; Russia was in economic freefall. I can't remember the exact wording.

Just to take a look at these in order, it seems to me that-well, what's interesting is that about 30 years ago, I remember it being claimed that we were pushing China into the Soviet camp. Now it seems it's the other way around; we're pushing Russia into the China camp. It has always been argued that Russia-China together is not a logical partnership, but it was one that was being rendered inevitable or bound to happen.

Obviously you had the big oil deal a few months ago, the $400 billion oil deal, and then the joint naval exercises that were announced, I guess, last month or earlier in the year, where the Chinese official was quoted "resulted from concern with U.S. attempts to reinforce its military and political influence in the Asia-Pacific Region."

So not just China, but it seems that with Russia reaching out to Vietnam, to India, even to Japan-is Russia really so isolated at this point?

DMITRI TRENIN: Russia is not isolated, I don't think. I don't think it's possible to isolate a country of Russia's size internationally. Even in the West, it's not isolated. There are very clear problems in Russia's relations with Western countries, but I think, as the chancellor of Germany said many times, you cannot have security in Europe without Russia, or even against Russia, you cannot have security in Europe. When the going got tough in Ukraine, the chancellor of Germany and the president of France flew to Moscow to discuss things with Vladimir Putin.

Later this year, Vladimir Putin will be hosting two forums in the city of Ufa, which is just west of the Urals. One forum will be that of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that unites China, Russia, the countries of Central Asia, and to which two major countries are acceding this summer. One is India. The other one is Pakistan. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with Russia in the chair, is moving to become the principal forum for continental Asia. It will have in the second half of this year all the major powers of continental Asia as members: China, India, Russia. We can add Pakistan. We can add a few other countries. Turkey and Iran are very interested in getting closer to that organization.

DAVID SPEEDIE: Hasn't Iran had an observer status at some point?

DMITRI TRENIN: Iran has an observer status. Iran has desired for a long time to join. There is a formal obstacle of UN sanctions imposed on Iran that prevents Iran from being accepted. But at some point, this thing may give and Iran may be welcomed as a member.

The other group that Putin will be feting in Ufa is BRICS, of course-Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. That's the club of the non-Western emerging economies.

Russia is also reaching out to several U.S. friends and allies. Mr. Putin's visit to Japan is on. Just last month, a Japanese deputy foreign minister was in Moscow preparing ground for that trip. Russia is actively pursuing relations with South Korea, another U.S. ally, as well as North Korea. Russia has signed major economic deals with Turkey, another U.S. ally, which is an important economic partner to Russia, also a partner in energy trade. Egypt has seen its relationship with Russia improve over the last year or so. Iranian-Russian relations have rarely been so actively pursued by the two governments.

Apart from that, Russia has been trying to win new friends in places like Latin America, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere. Even within Europe, Mr. Putin has made a rare visit these days to Hungary to talk energy. He has received the president of Cyprus in Moscow, who basically offered Russia basing rights for the Russian navy on his island. Russia's relations with Israel are solid, and they have not been affected so far by the rapid and massive deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations.

So the picture is very different from Russia being a rogue state, in isolation, reeling in its own cage and unable to move anywhere. The situation is quite, quite different than that.

DAVID SPEEDIE: That's terrific. Thank you.

Briefly on the economy, the idea that Russia's economy is collapsing-it was reported not too long ago that Moody's, the respected evaluation-type firm, has said that Russia's reserves are enough to cover external debt, and the move to the floating currency will to some extent mitigate, obviously, the spiraling down of oil prices, the fluctuations in oil prices. Clearly oil is stabilizing a bit. It's not just Russia that is suffering from this.

Again, it would seem to me that it's Ukraine and the collapse of the hyrvnia that perhaps ought to be regarded as the economic basket case, not necessarily Russia at this point.

DMITRI TRENIN: Well, Russia and Ukraine are in very different economic situations. There's no question that Russia is facing the most severe economic test in 15 years right now. The kind of response that the Russian government will ultimately give to that crisis will determine the future of the Russian economy, and maybe more than just the future of the Russian economy in the years to come. So I wouldn't want to minimize the challenges that Russia is facing.

On the other hand, this crisis could be a salutary one, if properly used. If you want to reform your economy, diversify it, make it modern, oil at $100 is not your friend, not even oil at $80. If oil hits $60, $50, or $40, this is when you have no choice but to diversify, but to innovate and do other things. Whether Russia will do it or not will depend very much on the Russian government and on the Russian people.

What I'm saying is that the crisis for the first time is giving Russia an opportunity to wean off this overly big reliance on oil and gas and hydrocarbons more broadly.

I think, as a Russian, you feel that you have not done a great job with your economy when the economic situation was good. The Russian economy today is not what it can be. If you use the crisis to change the economy, to start producing more, to develop your own domestic market more, to develop your particularly medium- and small-size enterprises; if you manage to de-monopolize your economy so that it's not totally controlled by a few monopolies here and there, then I think this crisis will go down in history as a good crisis for Russia.

I think people are prepared to suffer, but they will not suffer simply to please the fat cats. If they see that something good is coming out of the government's policies, then they would accept a temporary loss in living standards, and they will be compensated by a different kind of an economy and a different kind of a future for themselves and their children.

DAVID SPEEDIE: It's an excellent prescription, Dmitri. Is it going to be filled, especially when you talk about monopolies?

DMITRI TRENIN: I have a problem with that. Russia is ruled by the same people today as it has been ruled for the past 15 years. The people who missed the previous 15 years, in my view, should not necessarily be trusted to reform now.

But I'm keeping an open mind. Things are changing. People may change. People may be rotated out of power. Russia may find itself in a situation in which it will have run out of all bad options. When you have your back to the wall and all the bad options that you had exercised to try to buy yourself more time so that things remained the same, all these options have been exercised, then you have only the good options. But the good options always tend to be the hardest and the most difficult ones.

I don't know. As I said, I have no illusions about the people in power in Russia today, not the people who would be able to do-I think there is capacity for reform, no question. Russia has a body of very professional, very experienced people. I'm talking more about the political masters. The political masters have little interest, frankly, in reform, because it goes against the grain. It goes against their own interests often. We'll see.

DAVID SPEEDIE: Two final questions, one of which deals with in Russia itself. You have indicated that there are various sort of levels or, shall we say, different kinds of forces who are pulling strings or have the ear of the Kremlin and so on.

I think you know that we here at the Council for the last two years have been embarked on a major project that looks at the new Eurasianism in Russia and the way that has spread into some of the extreme right movements in Europe, basically across Europe as far as France, the Netherlands, and so on and so forth. It's a little complicated in a place like Greece, where there seems to be some dialogue with both the extreme right and the new leftist government, Syriza. It's clear they have a very complicated situation.

Can you say a little bit about this movement that clearly is "anti-Atlanticist," which, of course, means the UK and the U.S. basically? How connected is it in the corridors of power? To what extent do its chief proponents-and here, obviously, the name Aleksandr Dugin has come up with some frequency-what sort of role do these people play? How influential are they?

DMITRI TRENIN: I think that they have been able to rise from being marginal, underdogs, almost irrelevant in the 1990s, to being very much part of the mainstream, to being very close to President Putin and his entourage. The people who share those views-many people who share those views-form part of what is known as the Izborsk Club, which is named after a fortress on the Russian western border in the Baltics, a medieval fortress. I think these people have seen their theories vindicated by what happened in the last 25 years. They are having a ball today.

Again, this is more of an intellectual movement. It feeds into the general philosophical environment that informs the leadership of Russia. I wouldn't exaggerate the specific influence of individual members on the decision-making process. They may be among Mr. Putin's favorite intellectuals today, but Mr. Putin has remained, above all, a pragmatist.

Eurasianism also has a good answer, at least from the standpoint of Eurasianism itself, about the West. The West is not to be trusted. You need to stand up to the West. They will only respect force and they only respect strength. So you have to be strong, not only militarily, but also in economic and other ways.

I don't think they have a good answer to the rise of China, another great power that merits a lot of attention. Russia traditionally insists on being independent and sovereign. It doesn't matter sovereign toward whom, sovereign toward the most powerful nation of the time. Today it's the United States of America, so sovereignty vis-�-vis the United States is a top goal.

But in Eurasia, it is China that's rising. It's China that is becoming the hegemon of Eurasia. You mentioned Putin's ideas of "Lisbon to Vladivostok" as Greater Europe. The reality today is the emergence, in my view, of what I would call Greater Asia, from Shanghai to St. Petersburg, with China very much driving the process. Eurasianists are yet to give an answer to the China issue.

DAVID SPEEDIE: A big question.

DMITRI TRENIN: It is, and a serious one.

DAVID SPEEDIE: Finally, back to the Bob Legvold's "the loss of our useful ambiguity" and the finger-pointing and so on, and what that has meant. Clearly there are numerous missed opportunities in terms of global issues in which the United States and Russia really have to engage each other, everything from climate change to catastrophic terrorism-Russia, I think, has had more incidents of terrorist attack than any other country since the end of the Cold War-and, of course, very obviously, an issue that you think about a lot, the arms control, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and others that may be unraveling. Is there no back-channel communication at this point?

Look into your crystal ball and try to give us some hope.

DMITRI TRENIN: I think it's very sad that we don't have this back-channel. It's very sad that the only channel that seems to be working, at least visibly, is the one between Secretary Kerry and Minister Lavrov. The presidents talk over the phone, but very infrequently, and I don't think the conversation pleases either party.

I think that in order for the relationship to be stabilized-before it gets improved, I think we need to have it stabilized and have it follow some mutually agreed upon temporary rules. For that, I think we need some legwork and we need some brainwork. This can hardly be done by people who are formally on government's duty, either in Washington or in Moscow.

I think that, rather than that, trusted representatives of the two countries' political establishments need to be encouraged to engage in serious discussions of various issues, totally open-eyed, without any illusion whatsoever, but with a clear aim of establishing areas where U.S.-Russian interaction is actually feasible, where there is enough of common interest that would make the two countries cooperate in a bona fide fashion. It's important that the people who are leading that charge have easy access to their presidents.

I have some thoughts and ideas about who might fulfill that role. I know that a few attempts, early attempts, have already been made in that direction. Much of that, I think, will have to remain, for the time being at least, off the record, and people will not be giving many interviews. But unless we manage this mechanism, install it and manage it, we're going to have a relationship that will be subjected to surprises and that can be suddenly wrecked by a stray bullet. And then god help us.

DAVID SPEEDIE: I will resist the temptation to ask you for names of these constructive individuals, since, as you say, it has to be off the record.

Our guest has been Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Dmitri, thank you so much for your time, for your insights on so many elements of this very complex situation that prevails, and for your wisdom.

DMITRI TRENIN: David, it's a pleasure. Thank you so much.
 
 #6
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
March 11, 2015
Press Digest: Lavrov suggests the West introduce sanctions against Kiev
March 11: In a meeting with his Spanish counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov proposed that Ukraine should also be sanctioned; the U.S. announces troop drills in the Baltics; and Russia ceases cooperation on the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty
Darya Lyubinskaya, special to RBTH

Lavrov suggested that the West introduce penalties against Kiev

The Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper reported on meetings between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Spanish counterpart Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, which were dominated by the question of Western sanctions against Russia. According to the paper, Garcia-Margallo argued against prolonging the sanctions, saying that they are not only "disadvantageous for everyone" but also "do a lot of damage to the Spanish economy."

Lavrov, for his part, suggested that the West consider the possibility of implementing sanctions not only against Russia, but also against Ukraine "in order to force the government in Kiev to carry out what was agreed on."

Vladislav Belov, deputy director of the Institute of Europe at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that there is a major difference of perspective between the EU and the U.S. in relation to the sanctions against Russia.

"The EU links the sanctions strictly to the situation in Donbass," Belov said. "[German Chancellor Angela] Merkel insists that Russia has violated international laws and must pay for it. And the sanctions will continue until the situation changes."

The U.S., however, is focused on the broader geopolitical picture. "The EU will do everything so that the conflict ends as soon as possible, but the Americans are interested in its continuation. And the delivery of lethal weapons to Ukraine guarantees the conflict's escalation and thus the continuation of the sanctions," Belov said.

U.S. troops will go to the Baltics

The news website Gazeta.ru writes that the U.S. is sending 3,000 troops to the Baltic countries along with technology for strengthening their defense within the framework of NATO cooperation. The U.S. troops will be stationed in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, where they will carry out drills until the middle of June. After the drills are over, the military technology will remain in these countries in order to guarantee their security.

The governments of the Baltic countries have previously stated that they fear possible military aggression from Russia, which could use the presence of Russian-speakers as a pretext for intervention. Russia has also recently been conducting military drills near the borders of Latvia and Estonia.

In a statement to the website, Igor Korotchenko, director of the Center of Analysis of World Arms Trade called the U.S. drills in the Baltics a provocation. "The U.S. is goading the Baltic leaders to augment their political confrontation with Moscow," said Korotchenko, while stressing that Russia has exclusively defense forces" in its northwest corner.

Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty 'already dead'

The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper reports that Russia has ceased participation in the joint consultation group on the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty. Anton Mazur, the head of the Russian delegation at the talks in Vienna, said that Russia had halted its participation in the CFE talks in 2007.

Leonid Ivashov, president of the International Center of Geopolitical Analysis told Moskovsky Komsomolets, "the treaty is already dead. We had maintained this group hoping that the NATO countries and Russia would work together on the new project. But there was no progress and in today's conditions we do not foresee any cooperation between NATO and Russia."

Deputy Director of the Center of Political Technologies Alexei Makarkin said that there would not be any major political consequences to the end of Russia's participation in the CFE. "Relations with the West are already poor, therefore abandoning this platform is unlikely to worsen them," said Makarkin.

"The current system of agreements does not particularly suit Russia, while the West is not planning to change it. Moreover, neither of the sides believes it is an urgent problem. First they have to settle the issue in southeastern Ukraine."

The CFE treaty, negotiated at the end of the Cold War, placed limits on the number of troops and conventional weapons deployed by NATO and Russia in Europe.
 
#7
Kyiv Post
March 12, 2015
In Russian-held Debaltseve, shelling continues amid desperation and destruction
by Stefan Huijboom
Kyiv Post contributor Stefan Huijboom is a Dutch journalist.

DEBALTSEVE, Ukraine - "Hell is over there," said a Kremlin-backed fighter at a checkpoint, pointing to the ruined city of Debalteve, captured from Ukraine by Russian forces and their proxies on Feb. 18.

The soldier's name is Pavel Kuzorev. He is only 22 and a student of the Donetsk Polytechnic University before he joined the Novorossiya Armed Forces, part of the Russian-led forces that killed at least 66 Ukrainian soldiers during the attack to reclaim the strategic railway hub in Donetsk Oblast. The separatists claim to have killed more than 100 Ukrainian soldiers in the operation.

The only good thing about Debaltseve, with a pre-war population of 25,000 people, is the spring weather.

The road to Debaltseve is severely damaged, but not empty, as a convoy of green Ural trucks head to the city. Kuzorev said the trucks are loaded with humanitarian aid for the civilians left behind after the intense battle.

"We are providing them with essential aid," Kuzorev said proudly. "It's something the Ukrainians didn't do while they controlled it."

The Russians worked hard to regain control of Debaltseve. They launched a fierce offensive in mid-January, forcing the Ukrainian military to help evacuate civilians. The Russian army and their proxies, however, continued the offensive through the evacuation, with shells hitting buses filled with escaping civilians.

Despite the agreed Feb. 15 cease-fire, loud explosions are still heard.

"We are only repelling attacks," Kuzorev said. "Those Ukrainian bastards keep shelling us."

The Ukrainian military deny cease-fire violations.

Both sides, however, confirm that heavy weaponry has been largely withdrawn from the war front. But nobody knows if this is just a pause in what could be a renewed offensive by the Russian forces this spring.

It seems that not a single building has been left undamaged in Debaltseve. Mortars and shells that struck the city are spread out everywhere. Despite the ruins, the separatists see their control of the city as a major victory.

"In time this city will be glad to be part of Novorossiya," according to a Russia-backed fighter, Grigor, who refused to give his last name to the Kyiv Post out of fear for reprisals.

The Kyiv Post was not allowed though to move freely through Debaltseve. Grigor and another Kremlin-backed fighter Maksim, who also didn't give his last name, guided the Kyiv Post through the ruins.

The train station of Debaltseve looks intact, at least from a distance, but some damage becomes clearer upon closer view.

The Russians view the Debaltseve railway station as important in connecting the separatist strongholds in Donetsk Oblast and Lugansk Oblast by rail. "Factories and businesses will eventually benefit that we took control of Debaltseve," Grigor said.

The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine accuse the separatists of using the railway as a hub to rearm their fighters with artillery and other heavy weapons, presumably coming from Russia.

Grigor refused comment. "I can only say that there is still military equipment in Debaltseve. Just look around. But I can't say if more weapons have come in at the railway station. I'm just an ordinary soldier," he explained.

The Russians in Debaltseve have seized Ukrainian weapons as "trophies" -- meaning they were taken from Ukrainian soldiers they killed.

"Weapons come from everywhere," Grigor vaguely explained.

Ukrainian authorities consider the civilians who stayed behind in Debaltseve as Russian supporters.

But mostly they seem to be just hungry. A woman stands waiting near the railway station with her two young sons, asking eparatist fighters: "When will the next convoy of aid come?"

Her name is Anna, a 28-year-old woman who said her husband abandoned her for another woman. "You never know what to expect here," she said in refusing to give her last name.

"We will provide as many aid as possible," one Kremlin-backed fighter replied to Anna. "I'd recommend you to come to Donetsk as more stores and supermarkets have opened."

"I would have done that already, if only I would get my money!" Anna yelled back.

It remains difficult for civilians in Debaltseve to enter Ukrainian-held territory because of the need for a special permit issued by local authorities on Ukrainian territory.

"I was living here under the Ukrainian regime. They didn't care about us. We didn't get as much aid as our liberators now give us. I have to sons to feed. Can you imagine how hard it is to live under Ukrainian authorities that treat you like garbage? The city was full of civilians that needed aid, but little was done. Yes, they evacuated them. Yes, our houses were completely damaged. And yes, both sides are to blame for it. I only care about my two sons for now."

Life in Debaltseve has slowed down significantly. It looks more like an apocalypse than an important industrial railway hub.

And yet, the shelling continues on the outskirts of Debaltseve, even though there is not much left to ruin, except more lives.
#8
Ukraine begins combat training near engagement line - Donetsk republic

MOSCOW, March 12. /TASS/. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are beginning combat exercises near the line of engagement with the positions of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, the republic's Defense Ministry said.

"According to a reliable source in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the Ukrainian military begin exercises and live firing practice near Mayorsk village, northwest of Gorlovka," the Donetsk news agency quotes the Defense Ministry as saying.

The Defense Ministry pointed out that bearing in mind the territorial location of Mayorsk, it will be very hard to observe the distance established by the Minsk accords.

The DPR Defense Ministry's spokesman Eduard Basurin said significant Ukrainian troop reinforcements have been registered near the key port city of Mariupol and the Peski village near Donetsk.

Motorized infantry units continue being deployed to the contact line from the back areas and convoys with ammunition and building materials for fortifications are heading there, he said.

New artillery positions for Grad BM-21 multiple rocket launcher system batteries have been set up in the Donetsk direction to the north of Staryi Krym, he said. One more Grad BM-21 MRLS is located some 6 kilometers to the north-east of Starogranatovka, in the Donetsk region.

Some concentration of heavy artillery is also seen in the Mariupol direction near the Gnutovo village where a battery of four Grads is set up. In the Lugansk direction, six Grads are deployed in violation of the Minsk agreements, he said.

"We send all the information about these or other violations of the Minsk agreements to the Joint Center for Control and Coordination of ceasefire," Basurin said.

The self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic representative at Contact Group Vladislav Deinego said that Kiev continues military preparations near the LPR borders.

"According to our intelligence data, there is a concentration of heavy artillery, armaments and tanks in the security zone," Deinego told a meeting of the Russian Federation Council Committee for public support of south-eastern Ukraine residents.

"There is information that there are self-propelled artillery systems in the security zone from which all the heavy armament need to have been already withdrawn," he said.

While the negotiation process on complying with the Minsk agreements is being delayed, "the Ukrainian military buildup is underway in the areas adjacent to the conflict zone," Deinego said.

Kiev is carrying out works on building fortifications and concentrating armaments and troops, he said. The envoy also confirmed that military instructors from the United States have already arrived in Kharkov, in the country's north-east.

Kiev violates ceasefire using heavy weapons

The self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic has identified violations of the ceasefire regime by Kiev with the use heavy weapons that should have already been pulled back, Vladislav Deinego went on to say.

"By the beginning of March, we completed the withdrawal of weapons in accordance with the schedule", Deynego said. "However, there's no confirmed information that Ukraine took similar steps. The Ukrainian side has made a series of contradictory statements to this effect, which calls in question the whole process", he added.

"Ukraine should have withdrawn its weapons by March 7, but ceasefire violations with the use of heavy weapons were recorded after that date, specifically, on March 9 and 11", the envoy said.

Deinego pointed to the "obvious decrease in the activity of the Contact Group". "Contact Group members haven't met "in person" since February 12, there were no meetings with the involvement of the People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, and video conferences are not held on a regular basis", Deynego said.

 
 #9
Sputnik
March 12, 2015
Ukrainian Officers Complain to Poroshenko, Identify 'Biggest Enemy'

Ukrainian officers involved in the failure of the Debaltseve operation have written an open letter to President Petro Poroshenko, demanding that everyone in charge of the operation be fired and replaced by people like themselves.

Ukrainian officers' councils of the 128th, 25th, 40th and 54th brigades of the Ukrainian army have written an open letter to the country's president, Petro Poroshenko, blaming the Ukrainian army's top command for the army's encirclement around Debaltseve and demanding that the entire command be replaced.

"Four self-propelled guns, which were brought in as part of the loss restoration program, were only painted and not taken out of conservation, which led them to break down within three days."

One of Poroshenko's advisors has advocated scrapping Ukraine's draft and adopting a contract-based military service, insulting draftees in the process.

In the letter, the officers reveal that the operation's command used the most competent troops and best machinery to defend their own headquarters while the narrowest point of what was then the Debaltseve bulge was controlled by four soldiers in a broken-down reconnaissance vehicle.

The officers continued their complaints, summing up the failure of the operation and the loss of what they estimate to be at least 2,000 soldiers, as the result of the failure of the headquarters, which they contrast with their own ability to command their troops to retreat:

"After exhausting all possible resources to hold the Debaltseve bulge (the night after repelling an intense assault) with minimal possible loses, the completely surrounded (at the moment of retreat) Debaltseve Ukrainian Armed Forces group and National Guard and police units retreated."

The officers concluded that all heads of the operation should be replaced with "enterprising people who have the positive experience of heading brigades and battalions, and have the trust and respect of their formations, units and subdivisions." Although they do not say who exactly should replace them, they do refer to themselves as "enterprising officers" in other parts of the letter.

 
 #10
Ukraine Today
http://uatoday.tv
March 11, 2015
Counter-insurgency troops deployed to east Ukraine in bid to root out militants

Ukrainian troops depart from Chernihiv for Donbas combat zone

Soldiers from a special battalion in Chernihiv have been deployed to east Ukraine.

They are trained experts at catching Russian-backed insurgents.

During an earlier deployment, the unit captured a grandfather who planted an explosive device in a glass jar of honey in Luhansk region.
 
 #11
Ukrainian units reinforced in Pisky, Mariupol area - Basurin

DONETSK. March 12 (Interfax) - The militia has again accused the Ukrainian army of breaching the truce.

"Fifty-one violations of the ceasefire regime have been reported over the past day. The Ukrainian authorities claimed to have withdrawn artillery guns but we are still being informed about artillery systems staying on their positions. The Ukrainian group is being reinforced in the area of Pisky and Mariupol," Eduard Basurin of the Defense Ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic said.

He said four BM-21 Grad rocket launchers were spotted in the Hnuteve area near Mariupol.

"Although the Kyiv authorities have declared a full withdrawal of heavy armaments from the contact line, we continue to receive information about the Ukrainian army reinforcing positions along the entire frontline," Basurin said.

In his opinion, Azov battalion servicemen are alleging the offensive plans of the DPR on purpose "so that Ukraine could gain lethal weapons."

"We have said many times that our armaments are pulled back. How can one start an offensive without artillery support?" Basurin said.

He called the exercises held by Ukraine along the contact line provocative. "Ukraine has a right to practice but why do so in the buffer zone? This is a provocation," Basurin remarked.

Ukraine keeps artillery systems and rocket launchers within the demilitarized zone, he continued.

"Fresh motorized infantry units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces equipped with armored vehicles, ammunition and construction materials for reinforcing their positions are being openly moved from the rear to the contact line," Basurin said.

For instance, new artillery positions have been built for Grad rocket launcher battalions north of Stary Krym in the Donetsk sector. Four Grad rocket launchers have been spotted in the Mariupol sector, and six Grad rocket launchers have been deployed in the Luhansk area.

"We are informing the Joint Center for Control and Coordination about these and other violations of the Minsk agreements. Seeking to fully implement the February 12 Minsk accords we are requesting the OSCE monitoring mission to immediately visit the aforesaid areas and to control the prompt withdrawal of Ukrainian heavy armaments to the distances set by the agreement," Basurin said.
 
 
#12
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
March 12, 2015
Ukraine separatists strip Donetsk elite of power and property
Graham Stack in Donetsk

A line of fresh flower-heaped graves marks the northern edge of Donetsk's Scheglovskoe cemetery, where 33 coal miners killed in a pit blast on March 4 lie. Only 50 metres away stands a pithead of the massive Zasyadko mine, where the men met their deaths. The cemetery contains the graves of hundreds of miners killed in a string of disasters at the Zasyadko mine over the last 20 years. Local lore says a coal seam runs beneath the cemetery itself, and gravediggers sometimes turn over lumps of coal.

Divided by the perimeter wall from the graves, workers stacking timber for mine props onto carriages at the pithead are fatalistic rather than angry about the March 4 accident. "In 2007 there was a much bigger accident," shrugs Kolya, a former miner now stacking timber, who declined to give a last name.

Instead, the workers express outrage about a danger from an entirely different direction: the cemetery and adjacent pithead are in north Donetsk near the Prokofiev airport, which was defended fiercely by Ukrainian government forces against the Russian-backed separatist forces operating in the Donbas region.

As a result, the district including the cemetery and pithead suffered extensive damage from Ukrainian outgoing shellfire. The shelling left behind a trail of shattered gravestones and splintered trees, cratered graves and embedded rocket shells "We had more than 200 direct strikes," a cemetery administrator tells bne IntelliNews. "You work, and you never know when it will hit, the swine!"

While mine workers are quick to blame Kyiv for the shelling, they are less inclined to blame the mine's management for the accident. But the self-proclaimed authorities of the separatist 'Donetsk People's Republic' (DPR) that now control the city of Donetsk and its environs see things differently. In response to the accident, the DPR authorities on March 7 said they would 'nationalise' the mine that produces around 7% of Ukraine's coking coal. On March 9, the DPR authorities announced they had arrested the mine's general director since 2005, Pavel Filimonov.

The March 4 disaster at the Zasyadko mine was only the latest in a series of similar or worse catastrophes since Ukraine's independence, mostly involving methane explosions. The worst of these, in November 2007, killed 101 miners, with a second explosion two weeks later killing another 57, including five rescue workers. Explosions in 1991, 2001, 2002 and 2006 had already killed in total 140 miners, many of whom lie buried in the Scheglovskoe cemetery, beside the mine that took their lives.

The mine is controlled by 82-year-old MP Yufim Zvyagilsky, who in October 2014 was elected to parliament for a record eighth successive time. Despite the series of terrible accidents, in the city and the workforce Zvyagilsky still enjoys wide respect. Workers point to the mine's constant expansion under his leadership, workers' perks including provision of housing, and regular salary payments.

Staff at mine headquarters, located at a different pithead 5 kilometres from the Scheglovskoe cemetery, expressed dismay at the reported removal of Zyvagilsky from running the mine. "Zvyagilsky is still directly involved in running the mine - the last time I saw him here was a week ago," said a mine engineer and member of the accident investigation commission, who declined to give his name.

"But if there was human error involved in the accident, it would be on the part of managers, not the lessor," the engineer said. "Yufim Leonidivich is a very authoritative personality and enjoys huge respect in the mine," the engineer added, referring to Zvyagilsky by his first name and patronymic.

"The commission is still investigating, and we cannot comment," a spokesman for the mine told bne IntelliNews.

"The main thing is that they pay our salaries on time," says miner Kolya phlegmatically, "whoever the owner may be."

Local hero

The Zasyadko mine has long been synonymous with the larger-than-life figure of Zvyagilsky, whose career illustrates the fusion of political and economic power in Donbas since independence.

Zvyagilsky is a Donbas institution - with a street named after him in his home town, and decorated as a 'Hero of Ukraine' in 2003.

Zvyagilsky has run the Zasyadko mine for 36 years, over half of the life of the mine, which was founded in 1958. Born into a poor Jewish family in 1933, Zvyagilsky worked his way up from engineer to manager, becoming director of the mine in 1979 at the age of 46, and remained in the job until 2005.

Zvyagilsky is widely regarded as controlling the mine through an "organisation of lessors," formally comprising the 1992 workforce, which he heads down to the present day. He denies personally owning or controlling the mine.

The "organisation of lessors" leased the mine from the state until 2011. Then Zvyagilsky initiated the privatisation of an 86% stake in the mine to the "organisation of lessors" for around $220mn, funded by a state bank loan. No auction was held for the stake.

According to Mikhaylo Volinets, head of Ukraine's independent miners union, it is Zvyagilsky's de-facto authority in the workforce and his political weight that secured his control of the mine. "In fact, the mine de jure belongs to the labour collective, and 16% is still held by the state," he says.

Zvyagilsky had plenty of political weight behind him: he became mayor of Donetsk in 1993, and was then appointed deputy prime minister. His political career peaked in 1994 when he became acting prime minister for a few months.

After power changed hands in Kyiv in 1995, criminal charges were opened against Zvyagilskii for alleged embezzlement of around $25mn, which he denied. After he became the first Ukraine MP to have parliamentary immunity removed, he fled for Israel, where he reportedly remained until 1997, when it became safe to return to Ukraine.

He continued to sit as MP for the Donbas-dominated Party of Regions, the party of ousted former president Viktor Yanukovych, lobbying the mine's interests behind the scenes, but attending sessions rarely.

Political opponents accuse Zvyagilsky of jeapordising mine safety in the search for profit, and of hyprocrisy in posing as a Donbas patriot and supporter of the common man. According to an investigation by journalist-turned-MP Serhiy Leshenko, Zvyagilsky's granddaughter, the daughter of former Party of Regions MP Vladimir Vecherko, lives as a citizen of Switzerland in a villa on the banks of Lake Geneva.

Forbes Ukraine in 2013 rated Zvyagilsky's wealth at $172mn. According to his official income declaration as MP, in 2013 Zvyagilsky earned UAH12.3mn (at the time around $1.5mn) in dividends.

"Where does such talk about me come from?" Zvyagilsky asked in a rare press interview with internet portal lb.ua in November 2014. "The answer is simple: envy... Some people enjoy such a 'rotten' feeling, unfortunately. I usually look down on such people and answer: the dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on."

Gilded elite

The 'nationalisation' of the Zasyadko mine by the Russian-backed DPR leadership symbolises the demise of the gilded Donbas elite, who achieved riches and power in the framework of independent Ukraine.

The wealth generated by the country's numerous mines and smelters, largely accumulating in private pockets, lent a veneer of cosmopolitan flair and consumerism to what had been a hard-bitten industrial conurbation grouped around mines and metal works. The city sprouted malls, parks, multiplex cinemas, eateries and hotels to neighbour the slag heaps, pitheads and smelters.

Much of the profit was transferred abroad, but some wealth trickled down: On paper, average income in the Donetsk region was three times higher than that in West Ukraine, according to Ukraine's state statistics commitee. But miners' salaries, lacking strong trade unions, stayed low by international comparison.

The zenith came less than three years ago when Donetsk was a venue for the Euro 2012 football championships, attracting international crowds and cameras to the city. Concurrently the Donetsk elite held power in Kyiv via the administration of local boy President Yanukovych and a parliamentary majority for his Donetsk-rooted Party of Regions.

"Ukraine was a great country, Donetsk its best city, and those were good times," says 26-year-old Dmytro Novyk, a self-confessed member of the Donbas golden youth - a manager in his father's business supplying materials and equipment to, and trading coal, from the state-owned mines of Makeevka, a mining town adjacent to Donetsk. "Why did they [pro-European forces] have to ruin it all in Kyiv, and then come and ruin it here?"

Novyk browses his smartphone, reliving the past. Videos show Lamborghinis accelerating to 240 km/h on Donetsk streets at nght, birthday celebrations in Singapore casinos, and vacations in Dominica. "My dream was to own property in different places across the world," he recalls.

"The truth is that Donbas was the heart of Ukraine's economy, and those idiots [pro-EU forces] think Ukraine can live without its heart. We were the ones who held Ukraine together," he claims. "We have our own way of life here, we have our industry, coal and steel, we work closely with the Russian market. We never needed the EU."

While the Donbas clan had its own strong regional identity, and close links to Russia, it was Ukrainian statehood that had handed them control over the region's industry. As a result, Donbas magnates like Zvyagilsky or steelmaker Rinat Akhmetov have stayed anchored to Ukraine and its territorial integrity: Zvyagilsky's shaftheads are painted in Ukrainian colours, and after Donetsk fell into separatist hands, he re-registered the company to the nearby Donetsk town of Avdeevka, still under Ukrainian control.

Burst bubble

In February 2014, the Donetsk elite were abruptly ejected from political power after the ousting of Yanukovych by the Maidan street protests in Kyiv.

The collapse of Yanukovych's Party of Regions and the flight abroad of leading figures created a power vacuum in Donbas, which the Kremlin filled with a separatist movement engineered from local workers and police, as well as Russians, mostly without the participation of the propertied class.

The Donbas bubble had burst. Novyk was badly injured when a shell struck his lakeside schashlik party in the summer of 2014, killing two. He underwent emergency surgery in a German clinic to save his leg.

Zvyagilsky is also no longer safe in Donbas. In a November 2014 interview, he described how security rapidly deteriorated in his former stronghold of Donetsk, forcing him initially to use an old car to move around in, and then to leave hurriedly after three aides had been detained by rebels. In November he was reported to have again been detained by rebels. The loss of the Zasyadko mine seals his loss of power.

Many of the former Donbas elite have likewise retreated to Kyiv or elsewhere in the EU, except for Yanukovych and his closest associates who fled to Russia for fear of arrest.

What awaits the Donbas miners under the new separatist authorities is unclear. Many mines have shut due to infrastructural damage during the conflict, forcing miners to look for work in Ukraine or Russia.

Given Donetsk's antagonism towards Kyiv after shells struck the city, growing unemployment may also provide the separatist forces with more local recruits.

Outside the Zasyadko mine headquarters, an unemployed man seeking work is turned away. Asked by bne IntelliNews if he would join the rebels, the former security guard laughed as he hurried on his way. "I am more a civilian sort of guy," he said.

But a rebel fighter, codenamed Hunter, guarding the Zasyadko mine headquarters shows how unemployment combined with anger at Kyiv prompts enlistment. 'Hunter' tells how in his former job as builder he had worked on the now destroyed Prokofiev airport in 2012. Four weeks ago he returned there with his unit, after Ukrainian forces pulled out. "Three years ago I worked there for months with trowel and mortar board - do you think I ever imagined I would stand in its ruins with a gun?"
 
 #13
Wall Street Journal
March 12, 2015
How Russian Spy Games Are Sabotaging Ukraine's Intelligence Agency
Ukraine's security agency, the SBU, has been riddled with Russian spies, sympathizers and turncoats
By PHILIP SHISHKIN

KIEV, Ukraine-When Moscow-backed separatists were starting their war in east Ukraine last spring, the country's main security agency sent a covert team to capture a rebel leader.

But word of the classified mission leaked out, and three Ukrainian operatives were themselves captured and thrown into a separatist jail. Rebels stripped them to their underwear, bound their wrists and blindfolded them, then paraded them in front of Russian journalists.

Ukrainian counterintelligence officials now believe their capture was an inside job, the result of a betrayal by a high-ranking employee of the Security Service of Ukraine.

The agency, roughly equivalent to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and known by its Ukrainian acronym SBU, has battled corruption, internal intrigue and treason for years. Ukrainian officials said in interviews that by the time the war began last year, the SBU was riddled with Russian spies, sympathizers and turncoats, and many of its files had been stolen and taken to Russia.

The SBU's troubles come amid broader tension in Ukraine about whether the country should ally itself with Moscow or the West. As Russian and Western powers drift toward a new Cold War over the crisis, U.S. officials have grown concerned about special operations, spycraft, propaganda and other actions they claim Moscow has undertaken in Ukraine and could attempt elsewhere.

The Kremlin, for its part, has disavowed any role in the war. "We do not interfere in Ukraine's internal affairs," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last year. "There are no Russian agents there."

The U.S. is careful about sharing intelligence with the Ukrainians, in part out of concern that it could fall into Russian hands, American officials say. U.S. spy-satellite images, for example, are degraded before they are shared.

Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, current head of the SBU, said in an interview that when he took over the agency last year, days after Ukraine's pro-Kremlin regime fell, he faced a gutted institution. "We entered this empty building. All the deputies had disappeared," he said recently at SBU headquarters in downtown Kiev. "Nobody was home."

Ukrainian intelligence officers say Mr. Nalyvaichenko's predecessor fled to Russia early last year and later was involved in funneling weapons to the separatists.

Unlike some other former Soviet republics, Ukraine didn't purge the ranks of its spy service when it gained independence in 1991. Many agents at the newly created SBU came from the former Soviet KGB's 5th directorate, which had focused on rooting out domestic political dissent, according to Ihor Smeshko, a former intelligence chief and now adviser to Ukraine's president.

When the Soviet Union broke up, two specialized military-intelligence brigades that once reported directly to Moscow were left on Ukraine soil. Those brigades had been responsible for organizing sabotage and guerrilla warfare in the event Soviet Ukraine became occupied by the West, according to Mr. Smeshko.

KGB files

In the early days of independence, Ukrainian operatives in Kiev loaded KGB agent files onto a truck at night and drove them to a secure location to prevent the former local KGB boss from taking them back to Moscow, recalls Nicholai Malomuzh, who would later lead Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service.

Nevertheless, cooperation between Russian and Ukrainian intelligence services remained close. "We were closer even than the U.S. and U.K.," recalls Vitaly Naida, who joined the SBU in 1997 as a counterintelligence officer. "The Russians could pick up the phone and call any office here. There was a direct secret connection line."

Corruption spread through the security service, according to current and former officials. Reports of SBU involvement in arms sales abroad began appearing regularly in the early 2000s. One case involved a former SBU officer and Russian intermediaries who sold Ukrainian cruise missiles to Iran and China. Ukrainian authorities later acknowledged the sale and arrested some alleged participants.

Ukraine's then-President Leonid Kuchma was caught on tape in 2000 discussing a possible sale of antiaircraft radar to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The surveillance of the president's office was conducted for years by a career security officer assigned to Mr. Kuchma's protective detail, though it remains unclear whether the officer acted alone. Mr. Kuchma said he never authorized the sale to Iraq.

The tapes include comments by the president to senior advisers about an opposition journalist. On one tape, then-chief of the SBU Leonid Derkach promises the president he will deal with the reporter, who he says is already under surveillance. The journalist, Georgi Gongadze was later strangled, decapitated and buried. A police general was sentenced to life in prison for the murder in 2013, more than a dozen years later. The former president and his associates, including Mr. Derkach, have denied any role.

Another murky chapter in recent Ukrainian history involves the 2004 poisoning of pro-Western politician Viktor Yushchenko. His successful run for the presidency that year against a Moscow-backed candidate triggered Ukraine's Orange Revolution. During the campaign, Mr. Yushchenko ingested dioxin, a powerful toxin that left him in severe pain, his face discolored and bloated. Shortly before becoming ill, he had attended a small private dinner with Ihor Smeshko, then SBU chief.

Ukrainian investigators zeroed in on the dinner as a possible site of the poisoning. Mr. Smeshko, whom Mr. Yushchenko had fired upon becoming president, was interrogated by prosecutors. Mr. Smeshko denies he had anything to do with the poisoning, which remains unsolved.

As president, Mr. Yushchenko sought to steer the SBU away from its former Soviet influences. The so-called de-KGBzation campaign involved declassifying and publishing archives dealing with the deadly famine unleashed by the Kremlin on Ukraine in the early 1930s.

The president's point-man for the project was the SBU chief at the time, Mr. Nalyvaichenko, who now holds that job for a second time. He says the effort to relieve the SBU from its Soviet baggage was "a very important thing for the society and for the security service itself."

On the ground in Crimea, Ukrainian counterintelligence teams began confronting Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor to the KGB. Officially, the FSB was on the peninsula to protect Russia's Black Sea Fleet stationed there under a treaty with Ukraine.

Ukrainian counterintelligence claimed the FSB went beyond its mandate. "They were executing clandestine operations, collecting human intelligence, recruiting Ukrainian officials, police, trying to steal secret documents," says Mr. Naida, the longtime SBU officer. Russian operatives were establishing links with pro-Moscow organizations active on the peninsula, he says. Those organizations would later prove instrumental in the Russian annexation of Crimea. Russian officials have said FSB officers in Crimea dealt only with fleet security.

In 2009, Mr. Yushchenko's government revoked the deal that had allowed limited official FSB presence in Crimea. In 2010, with his popularity waning, Mr. Yushchenko was replaced as president by the Moscow-backed politician he previously had defeated, Viktor Yanukovych .

Mr. Yanukovych sought to reorient Ukraine toward Moscow. Inside SBU headquarters Kiev, Russian officers became a common sight. "It was the golden age of Russian special services," says Mr. Nalyvaichenko, who left SBU when Mr. Yanukovych became president and joined the opposition. "They simply came in with their equipment, their people and their mentality."

A veteran SBU officer from Odessa said in an interview that counterintelligence operations against Russia were deliberately blunted. Ukrainian officials now say the SBU returned to its old role of spying on opposition activists, wiretapping their phones and tailing them around Kiev.

But President Yanukovych's decision to spurn European integration in favor of the Kremlin's Eurasian economic union set off the street protests that eventually led to his flight from the country early last year.

After his government fell, the SBU was supposed to take the lead in dealing with the pro-Russian separatist unrest that followed. But when Russia annexed Crimea, the local head of the SBU switched allegiances to the FSB. Later in Donetsk, now the capital of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, nearly one-third of SBU employees supported the separatists, according to Ukrainian counterintelligence officers.

The highest-profile defector was Alexander Khodakovsky, a former paratrooper who for years had led the SBU's counterterrorism unit in Donetsk. During the protests against President Yanukovych, his team had deployed to Kiev's Maidan square, the center of the protests, for crowd control.

Mr. Khodakovsky says he was shocked by the revolution. He returned to Donetsk frustrated and demoralized. His feeling was shared by other officers at Maidan square, who faced scorn from the protesters and later from the new government in Kiev. Mr. Khodakovsky says that led him to join the separatists.

In Kiev, Mr. Nalyvaichenko once again took charge of the SBU. When the unrest began in Donetsk last spring, he didn't trust the agency's operatives in the city. So he sent a team from Kiev to track and capture a rebel chieftain.

Mr. Nalyvaichenko claims that Mr. Khodakovsky, the defector, called one of the operatives' cellphones, fished out details of the mission and relayed them to the rebels. That led to the capture of the three SBU operatives.

"He's a traitor," says Mr. Nalyvaichenko,

Mr. Khodakovsky denies this, saying SBU counterterrorism commandos "remain my family. To betray them is unthinkable."

They spent 10 days in the basement of the former SBU headquarters in the town of Slovyansk. The three eventually were released in a prisoner swap that included the separatists' self-proclaimed "people's governor," who had been captured earlier by the SBU.

Mr. Khodakovsky used his inside knowledge to help the rebels. Last May, when the rebel leadership decided to storm the Donetsk International Airport, Mr. Khodakovsky says, he and his men surprised the Ukrainian forces inside by using a secret, special-forces airport entrance. The raid led to months of fighting that left many dead and reduced a multimillion-dollar facility to rubble.

After leading his own battalion staffed with many Russian fighters, Mr. Khodakovsky now serves as the secretary of the Donetsk People's Republic's security council. SBU's Donetsk headquarters has become the separatists' command-and-control center and jail.

The SBU officers who remained loyal to Kiev regrouped in Mariupol, a port city in the Donetsk region that remains in Ukrainian hands.

Vadim Tsvigun, a deputy chief of the regional SBU branch, says that after the protests at Kiev's Maidan square, "there was no real authority in the country."

Pro-Russian groups mobilized. One such group, called Mongoose, took part in a deadly raid on Mariupol's police headquarters last May that destabilized the city.

A Mole

Mr. Tsvigun says Mongoose had a mole inside the SBU who helped supply weapons to Mongoose commandos. When the mole was arrested by SBU counterintelligence, he turned out to have links to Russian security agencies, including a laptop for encrypted communications, Mr. Tsvigun says. The operative, he says, was released in a prisoner swap requested by the former SBU chief in Crimea, who also had sided with Moscow.

Back in Kiev, Mr. Nalyvaichenko, the SBU chief, resumed the "de-KGBzation" campaign he had begun when he first held the job. He laid off top officers who had substantial Moscow links. Mr. Nalyvaichenko, a former diplomat who served in Washington, had himself studied in an elite Moscow foreign-intelligence school. But he says he never graduated, which allowed him to keep his job.

His pro-Western bent is so strong that SBU's former chief, now living in Russia, has accused him of being a CIA agent, something Mr. Nalyvaichenko dismisses with laughter.

SBU recently arrested its former counterintelligence chief, Vladimir Bik, accusing him of bringing FSB groups to Kiev to suppress the Maidan protests, where more than 100 protesters were shot to death. Mr. Bik's lawyer, Taras Popovchenko, characterized the charges as "a political prosecution" and the "rants of a madman."

Some of SBU's recent actions have stoked criticism that it is overreaching. The agency arrested a Ukrainian journalist in part because he questioned mass military mobilization in Ukraine. Mr. Nalyvaichenko and President Petro Poroshenko accused a close aide of President Vladimir Putin of personally supervising sniper teams during the Maidan protests. No evidence has been presented to prove or disprove a Russian connection.

Mr. Putin ridiculed the accusation. "It's complete and utter nonsense," he said in a Russian television interview.

Mr. Nalyvaichenko is unapologetic about the charges, or about the broader battle against Moscow. The SBU's new logo features an eagle stomping on a snake with two crowned heads. The heads appear to be cut and pasted from the Russian state coat of arms. The logo carries a Latin proverb: "The eagle doesn't chase flies."

-Adam Entous contributed to this article.
 
 #14
IMF cash in bag, a debt moratorium may give Ukraine what it needs
By Sujata Rao

LONDON, March 11 (Reuters) - Ukraine, seeking to plug a $15 billion-plus funding gap via debt restructuring, may find that a multi-year payment moratorium does the trick, with investors possibly having to swallow a smaller eventual writedown than feared.

The country has received the nod from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $17.5 billion loan package, and the fund assumes Kiev will get $15.4 billion from talks with creditors.

Right now Ukrainian bonds, with the exception of a $3 billion chunk held by Russia and a $1 billion U.S.-guaranteed issue, are trading at less than half their face value, a reflection of what creditors fear they will have to swallow as a writedown, or haircut, on their initial investments.

With total debt likely close to or over 100 percent of gross domestic product, reserves that can buy just a month's imports, a fragile ceasefire in the east of the country and a chunk of territory (Crimea) annexed by Russia, some players reckon a haircut of up to 70 percent is possible

But some are starting to speculate that pushing back debt payments over the four-year life of the IMF loan may give the country what it needs. It could do this either by extending maturities or by stopping payments for a while with bondholders' agreement, through a moratorium.

"You know Ukraine's debt is unsustainable but you don't know how unsustainable," said Gabriel Sterne, head of global macro at Oxford Economics. "What would make sense in this very tight liquidity situation is a complete moratorium, calling a stop to all payments for a period."

That would be an amended version of reprofiling, or pushing back bond maturities, and would give Ukraine breathing space while it figures out what resources it has. Pushing back debt repayments for four years should provide Ukraine with a $15 billion cushion, the Institute of International Finance said last month.

In such a situation, easing short-term debt payment pain can improve solvency while a longer-term restructuring is then agreed. In the most optimistic scenario, a significant haircut may not be needed at the end of the grace period.

Ukraine has set itself a June deadline to conclude the restructuring, an ambitious timetable because one creditor, Franklin Templeton, holds around $6.5 billion of outstanding Eurobonds, Exotix strategist Jakob Christensen notes.

Greece's restructuring after it was first floated in 2011 took four months, but Ukraine has the added complication of Russia, which has already said it will not restructure its $3 billion.

But negotiating a reprofiling that could possibly include a grace period and maturity extensions of up to 10 years, could be concluded relatively quickly, Christensen said, advising clients to hold on to Ukraine's 2015, 2017 and 2023 dollar bonds.

The bonds have rallied this week after ratings agency Fitch told Bloomberg that Ukraine bondholders may escape a full-fledged restructuring.

And if bondholders would benefit, so would Ukraine, many argue, citing Kiev's standing with the global investor community and its hopes to eventually return to bond markets. Deutsche Bank economist Robert Burgess says Ukraine would need to bear in mind that aggressive restructuring carried long-term costs.

IMF research has found sovereign spreads returned to pre-crisis levels faster after reprofiling exercises, compared to when the face value of bonds was cut, while the time taken to regain market access was also shorter, Burgess noted.

"There is a potential cost and the question is whether the cost is bigger than the benefit," he said. "It's a thin line."
 
 #15
Risks to Ukraine turnaround "exceptionally high", IMF says
By Chris Vellacott

LONDON, March 12 (Reuters) - Efforts to restore financial stability in Ukraine face "exceptionally high" risks from further conflict and disgruntled creditors, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday.

In a report by IMF staff released after the fund announced a $17.5 billion loan package, the IMF said the programme it was backing and Ukraine's journey back to economic health are most vulnerable to being derailed by renewed conflict in eastern Ukraine.

The fund's report also highlighted the risk that creditors holding Ukrainian bonds may balk at the terms being offered in a restructuring.

The overall package amounts to more than $40 billion. That includes the $17.5 billion of IMF loans, a further $7.5 billion in lending from other international organisations and $15.3 billion in debt relief that Ukrainian officials hope to gain from bondholders.

Debt-restructuring talks with holders of its sovereign debt, who include top fund managers Franklin Templeton, Blackrock and PIMCO, are due to begin on Friday, according to Finance Minister Natalia Yaresko.

"Creditors may balk at the terms being offered in the debt operation and holdouts may try to free ride," the IMF report said. "The negotiations may be protracted, particularly as some creditors have large positions in specific bond issues."

The financing package assumes $5.3 billion debt relief from the restructuring this year, $3.4 billion next year, $4.4 billion in 2017 and $2.3 billlion in 2018.

Questions remain over whether Russia, which holds $3 billion of Ukraine bonds, will participate in the restructuring.

The IMF also noted that reforms -- which hinge on strengthening public finances, repairing bank balance sheets, shaking up the energy sector and running a tight monetary policy to stabilise its currency -- could be blocked by "vested interests".

"Ukraine's track record on program implementation is weak and punctuated by repeated false starts," the fund said in its assessment of the reform package.

"In fact, in key policy areas such as the exchange rate regime, energy sector, anti-corruption, and agricultural VAT, progress was stalled in the past under pressure from vested interests."

The IMF conceded, however, that Ukrainian authorities made progress in addressing these issues in connection with an earlier loan agreement approved last year. That loan is now deemed insufficient in light of Ukraine's ongoing conflict with pro-Russia separatists in the east.

The fund noted that the reform package, if successful, could leave Ukraine with a more robust long-term outlook because the current crisis presents the country with a unique opportunity to push through tough policies.

Ukrainian authorities proposed to the IMF a structural turnaround that will involve some belt tightening for their citizens, such as spending cuts and an energy-sector shake-up that will involve increases to household gas prices.

Monetary tightening aimed at stabilising the currency and replenishing foreign currency reserves would be helped by the IMF's intention to front-load its rescue package, pumping $10 billion into the economy in the first half year, the fund said.

Governance of the central bank will be bolstered in consultation with IMF staff. Banking sector supervision will also be tightened alongside anti-corruption measures and deregulation to lure back investors.
 
 #16
www.rt.com
March 12, 2015
IMF loan to Ukraine is 'involuntary servitude'- Central Bank ex-head

The $17.5 billion loan approved by the IMF won't save Ukraine from hopeless poverty; instead, it will inflict a blow on the country's population already living on the breadline, said the ex-head of the National Bank of Ukraine Sergei Arbuzov.

None of the options proposed by the IMF would improve the economy, said Arbuzov to Izvestia, adding that the biggest mistake made by the government was working with the IMF instead of working with the economy.

"Ukraine had all the reasons to talk with the IMF and international creditors not about the loan, but about debt relief and the restructuring of the remaining debt in long-term securities with low profitability," he said. "I do not see the reasons for the allies to refuse to make concession to the war-torn country that has experienced the Maidan. Instead, we've come up with an involuntary servitude variant, even without trying to negotiate."

The IMF loan will only partly solve the short-term problems of Ukraine, and won't level the global imbalances. The payments on public debt will be about $11 billion in 2015. That means all of the money received from the IMF, except a few billion for supporting the exchange rate will be used to pay foreign debts. But the payment of foreign debt would in no way become an incentive for attracting investment into Ukraine, Arbuzov said.

"Will it solve the problems of Ukraine, which is de facto only refinancing debt? Definitely no. As a result, the debt will become even larger," he said.

"What did the government set up social experiments on the population for? The paradox is that for anything but for the sake of the population itself," he said, adding that now is the time for average people to pay for the Ukrainian government's mistakes.

The real income of the Ukrainian population is already on the brink, with many living below the poverty line. The government will soon face the choice of whether to refuse granting some people with subsidies, and thus raising social discontent, or to resort to printing money, causing another round of inflation, Arbuzov suggests.

Cuts in pension payments, social services and health care, as well as the reduction in the Naftogaz deficit by higher prices for gas and utility services were among the terms for providing financial aid to Ukraine. Arbuzov says raising tariffs could only theoretically solve the problem of Naftogaz, as the scale of the deficit won't let Ukraine raise the overall standard of living.

"It's no secret that a significant share of Naftogaz's losses is associated not with low tariffs but with poor governance and debt service," he said. "The technical losses of Naftogaz alone are 20 percent and these issues cannot be solved by raising tariffs."

The increase in tariffs makes it possible to leave everything as an inefficient and non-transparent system; it's easier to keep afloat especially at the expense of ordinary citizens. "And this applies not only to Naftogaz," he added.

Europe doesn't care

"Time has already shown what we were talking about a year and a half ago: The European market has no need for Ukraine. Last year, despite the favorable terms of the EU, our exports there grew only by 1.5 percent," said Arbuzov.

"At the same time, we lost the markets of other countries and the exports to some of them fell by 30-40 percent. The government continues to knock on closed doors."

China, for example, is willing to invest in real Ukrainian projects, he said recalling the agreements signed by the two countries.

"In 2013, during my visit to Beijing, we agreed on projects worth $30 billion. The new authorities weren't able to realize almost any of it, only having started the implementation of a swap with China, signed back in 2012."

Talking about the latest IMF decision on Ukraine, one shouldn't forget the example of Greece that agreed to receive loans from lenders with multiple cuts in expenditure and no adequate structural reforms.

As a result, Greece plunged into a deep economic crisis caused by austerity measures and is unable to pay off its debts totaling €246 billion. The country's GDP has slumped a quarter to €242 billion. A third of Greeks live below the poverty line and the unemployment rate has reached 30 percent.

"The Ukrainian population possesses around $100 billion. This particular money, and not the IMF funds, can become that cheaper domestic resource that will give rise to the country's development," he said. "However, it needs to be involved not by raising taxes and through a permanent political crisis."

The IMF agreed to provide Ukraine with $17.5 billion in financial aid within the next four years. The total amount of money to be granted to Ukraine from all other foreign creditors is expected to be up to $40 billion.

The fund's decision will help the country avoid default as it has nothing to pay the current debts with. The government hopes that other international lenders will later join the IMF and assist Ukraine in overcoming the crisis. However, the success will depend on how the country's authorities carry out the painful economic reforms requested by the IMF.
 
 #17
RAND Corporation
www.rand.org
March 9, 2015
For Ukraine, the Battle to Bolster a Crashing Economy Is as Dire as Combat in the East
With political upheaval and a war in the East, Ukrainians are facing poverty, with prices rising sharply, the currency crumbling, and a nearly bankrupt state
by Olena Bogdan
Olena Bogdan is an assistant policy analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and a Ph.D. candidate at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. This blog was written for the Pardee Initiative for Global Human Progress.

Ukraine's fight to control its destiny is underway not only on its eastern battlefields but also in the halls of its parliament and in those of global financial institutions. The struggle to keep the former Soviet state afloat economically has been daunting, as the nation's parliament has fallen into disarray and failed to enact major economic reforms.

The country's gross domestic product fell by an estimated 8.2 percent by 2014's end. Government reserves have fallen to $7.5 billion, the equivalent of less than two months of imports. Ukraine's economic woes could get worse: If Western creditors, and the International Monetary Fund in particular, do not approve a recently negotiated $17.5 billion package, the nation will be deemed to be in default.

Ukrainian lawmakers could help improve the economic situation, particularly by dealing better with the national budget. But their recent deliberations inspired little public confidence.

The parliament launched its consideration of the 2015 budget at the end of 2014, laboring until 4 a.m. Dec. 29 to barely approve it - 233 of 450 of them voting in favor. The nationally televised discussions had lasted two weeks, and, at one point, lawmakers said the budget had undergone so many changes they needed a timeout so amendments could be incorporated into a plan that all could see. Rather than waiting, lawmakers jumped ahead in their deliberations.

The budget was published Jan. 1 to meet a legal deadline. But Ukrainian leaders quickly termed the budget provisional and said it would be subject to revisions as soon as January. A number of amendments were passed earlier last week (March 2).

That left a handful of top Ukrainian negotiators with the tricky task of persuading international lenders at a critical moment to provide billions of dollars more in aid without evidence the country would undertake reforms needed to enable it to repay the debt.

Ukrainian Prime-Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk has suggested slashing Ukraine's social tax to 16.4 percent from 41 percent - but this would apply to businesses only if they also increase their employees' official salaries by 30 percent. Ukrainian leaders also say they will boost trade and energy tariffs, lay off 20,000 interior ministry staff, and cut judicial and legislative costs such as expenses for deputy advisers. Yet Ukrainian leaders fell far short of their promises for more "draconian measures," as the Yatseniuk government had outlined in its own reform strategy last fall.

Ukraine's current quandary harkens back to decisions made in the 1990s. The nation then confronted stark choices as to how best to move away from a state-run economy to a free market. Some advocated a "Big Bang" approach, others favored gradualism. Both camps argued about the speed of reforms rather than their scope as the latter had to be far-reaching anyway. After the Soviet Union's collapse, East bloc countries diverged in their choices of reform speed. Some countries made gradual transitions to market economies while other pursued quick radical reforms. Poland pursued radical reforms and today is viewed as a regional leader with positive growth rates even in harsh fiscal times. Two decades ago Ukrainians opted for an incremental economic approach, which failed. Then, Ukraine's former communist elites pushed gradualism and in fact held the nation back from a market economy.

As for Big Bang reforms, they were fiercely advocated by Kakha Bendukidze, a father of Georgia's economic miracle and a member of the Pardee RAND Graduate School's Board of Governors. He died suddenly in November, soon after he was invited to join Ukraine's government and had been advising Ukraine's leaders. But in an hourlong discussion last spring, Bendukidze kept insisting to me that it was vital for Kiev to avoid missing the "window of opportunity" for reforms before it slams shut. He said the Ukrainian government must fire many bureaucrats, especially former Communist Party members, numbering more than a half a million total in 2014 (1 percent of Ukraine's population of 44 million). He was adamant that Ukraine had to stop subsidizing its energy sector, thereby reinforcing its addiction to Russian supplies and making it vulnerable to Moscow's economic pressure. Finally, he underscored that it would be critical for Ukraine to liberalize its economy, slashing regulatory agencies and their diktats as well as privatizing state enterprises that still account for about 8 percent of Ukrainian firms.

The 2015 budget not only wouldn't pass muster with reform advocates like Bendukidze, recent public opinion polls show that it's unlikely to please Ukrainians themselves. Though wary, they also want Big Bang reforms. Their hardship already is great but they seem convinced that future prosperity may be worth accepting more economic pain now. Their highest priority reform obviously rests in anti-corruption efforts. The newly established national Anti-Corruption Bureau is supposed to help, though its functions are still under debate. It cannot be effective without political independence, however, and that is a questionable commodity in Ukraine's current political environment. Ukrainians are eager for economic deregulation, and they do not see the military conflict in the East as an excuse for stalling this reform. They also are starting to insist on greater social equity, particularly so the nation's elite feel their share of war-related duress.

The budget and economic debate is far from over. As the national currency free fell in the past month Ukrainians have rejoined debates about their financial future, especially that they had to update the budget to meet negotiated IMF loan conditions and consider the impact of promised IMF aid. The Ukrainian Parliament should follow its budget amendments with policies that would eliminate excessive tax burden on businesses and distortive subsidies for unprofitable enterprises rather than introducing new taxes and duties. Leaders keep speaking of sweeping reforms and introducing incremental changes to balance the budget. But just as their generals must lead on the battlefield, the politicians and lawmakers must act with greater decisiveness to ensure their cause is not lost.
 
 
#18
The National Interest
March 11, 2015
Russia and Ukraine's Medieval Love Affair
The two countries' intertwined histories are rooted in Orthodox Rus'.
By Matthew Dal Santo
Matthew Dal Santo is a Danish Research Council post-doctoral fellow at the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He previously worked for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and is a former Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He tweets at @MatthewDalSant1.

The new Minsk agreement is supposed to create a resolution for the Ukraine crisis. But while the conflict poses questions about international law and order for the United States and Europe, it remains for Russia a question of realpolitik, culture and history. Minsk is unlikely to bridge this gap, even if Western leaders cling to the hope that it will. Rather than setting themselves up for disappointment, they should pay attention Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy's observation that "any effort to understand Vladimir Putin must begin with the man of history. For Putin, . . . history is a crucial matter. . . . He appreciates the power of 'useful history,' the application of history as a policy tool, as a social and political organizing force that can help shape group identities and foster coalitions."

While historical themes have always featured in Putin's public statements, especially prominent themes in the Ukraine crisis have been Crimea's significance as the site of Prince Vladimir of Kiev's baptism in 988 and the fount of an East Slavic civilization based on Orthodoxy, and the Kremlin's duty to defend the inhabitants of a "New Russia" ("Novorossiya") consisting of the lands conquered by Catherine the Great (reign: 1762-96) in southern and eastern Ukraine. While "Novorossiya" has retreated to the margins of public discussion, Crimea continues to unite Russians. To convert that consensus into lasting support for Russia's defense of its political interests in Ukraine, the Kremlin and its allies maintained a strong focus on Russia's medieval history in the autumn and winter of 2014-15, foregrounding Russia's non-Western values, the imperative of preserving national unity and the historical and cultural links uniting the East Slavic (Rus') world. As Alexei Miller, a historian of public memory at the Russian Academy of Sciences, has written: "It is quite possible that in the historical perspective 2014 will be perceived as the beginning of the long process of mobilizing civil society on a platform that will be not only anti-liberal, but also nationalist."

One example of this mobilization was the Orthodox Rus. My History: The Rurikids exhibition in Moscow's Manege Exhibition Hall, 4-23 November 2014. Opened by Patriarch Kirill ("of Moscow and All Rus": in the patriarchate's view, this includes Ukraine) in Putin's presence as part of National Unity Day celebrations, it welcomed a quarter of a million people-12,700 a day-in two weeks. A long tunnel of rooms in a snaking S-shape, it depicted the achievements of the twenty-one princes and tsars of the Rurikid dynasty in an epic style, relying heavily on nineteenth-century movements in Russian art. Bearded warrior-princes in flowing robes battled Khazars, Mongols and Swedes, guarded fortress walls, issued laws, built cities and received the blessings of churchmen. Wall maps showing additions and losses to the lands of Rus' suggested the arbitrariness of Eastern Europe's modern borders; banners bearing the exhortatory words and effigies of historians, philosophers, saints, patriarchs and presidents-including Putin twice-hung between them. Posters of "surprising facts" added a lighter note. But Rurikids' message was serious: Russian (russkaya) civilization is exceptional, the Orthodox Church is the nation's defining cultural institution and a strong, centralized state is crucial for guarding against foreign and domestic foes. Eighty official guides, mainly Orthodox seminarians, reinforced its themes.

Rurikids embodied Putin's belief that "economic growth, prosperity and geopolitical influence . . . depend on whether the citizens of a given country consider themselves a nation, to what extent they identify with their own history, values and traditions . . ." Designed to bring Holy Rus' to a new generation, it was thus a bid for hearts and minds in Russia today and the nation's long-term unity tomorrow. Indeed, in the showdown with the West over Ukraine, the Rurikids-the dynasty that founded Kievan Rus'-have figured prominently in Russian rhetoric. In the televised address marking Crimea's annexation in March, for example, Putin extolled Crimea as "the location of ancient Khersones, where [ninth-century Rurikid] Prince Vladimir was baptised," and so the scene of the "spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy [that] predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilisation and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus." Or, as he put it later in the same speech, Ukraine and Russia "are not simply close neighbours but, as I have said many times already, we are one people. Kiev is the mother of Russian cities. Ancient Rus is our common source and we cannot live without each other." Fittingly, one of Rurikids' most memorable boards showed the full-immersion baptism of Grand Prince Vladimir at Kherson in 988, an event Putin would later claim made Crimea Russians' "Temple Mount."

Ukraine's centrality to the early history of Rus' and Russia's roots in the Kievan state are facts. But Rurikids was motivated by modern political considerations. Some highlights were:

-The panel dedicated to Danilo, the Rurikid prince of Galicia (reign: 1253-64) who reigned in Kiev during the Mongol invasions, described his route to power as an "oligarch-led coup" and the "seizure of power by the prot�g� of foreigners." Referring to his anti-Mongol alliances with Western kingdoms, it pitied the demise of the "state ['Western Rus', i.e. Ukraine] that might have been," had it not been "devoured by its European neighbours." The "real" Danilo here is, of course, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.

-"Strengthen defences in the West, but look for friends in the East," the panel dedicated to Alexander Nevsky (1220-62) recalled this alleged admonition to future Russian rulers. Befitting the "New Cold War," his victories over invading Swedes and Teutonic Knights were commemorated as "Repelling Aggressions from the West"; by contrast, Nevsky's cosy relations with the Mongols (who razed Kiev in 1240) were called "The East: the Choice for the Preservation of Russia." Alongside, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hailed Nevsky as "undoubtedly the founder of the centuries-old traditions of Russian diplomacy"-as if foreshadowing the partnership with China, often touted as the Kremlin's way out of the straits imposed by Western sanctions. (Putin was at the time on a high-profile visit to Beijing.)

-"The Strengthening of Moscow: The Beginning of the Unification of Rus," the panel devoted to Moscow's Prince Dmitry Donskoy (1359-89), which glorified his victory at Kulikovo Field in 1380 as the beginning of Moscow's struggle to free Russia from Mongol domination. Yet, one of the central questions in Russian history is how Moscow, a remote border post ruled by a minor branch of the dynasty, beat its rivals to emerge during the 1300s as the seat of the "Grand Prince of Vladimir" (as the leading Rurikid prince was known). The answer, as scholars have concluded, was its princes' knack in persuading the Mongols to award the grand princely title to them-disregarding centuries-old tradition-by delivering more tribute than their cousins. If Donskoy did begin the "unification of Rus," it was in the name of the Khan, not national liberation. (One prominent Russian medievalist has called Kulikovo a skirmish about "timely delivery of tribute payments, not sovereignty.")

-"Ivan the Terrible: The first information wars in the European press," a panel devoted to Ivan IV (1533-84), which used the English to underline the role of foreigners in disparaging Russia's first tsar and last significant Rurikid-the victim, it alleged, of a propaganda campaign aimed at the "creation of a frightening image of Russia." It asserted that Ivan's Livonian Wars (1558-82) provoked "the first political and economic sanctions against Russia." (The Baltic territory known as Estonia having fallen under Swedish and Polish sway, the twenty-four-year war exhausted Russia economically.)

Quoting Ivan Ilyin, a conservative philosopher admired by Putin, a final poster exemplified the anti-Western orientation of the exhibition's nationalism: "The Western peoples fear our number, our formation, our unity, our growing strength, our mental and spiritual way of life, our faith and our Church, our economy and our army. They fear us and to comfort themselves they persuade themselves that the Russian people is a barbaric, stupid and destructive people."

Still smarting from Moscow's protests, in 2012, Putin lamented the absence of "spiritual bonds" between the people and government. A year later, he complained that "Russia's national identity is experiencing [...] the consequences of the national catastrophes of the twentieth century, when we experienced the collapse of our state two different times." The "disruption of traditions and the consonance of history, [...] the demoralization of society" were "the root causes of many pressing problems." Remarkably, in his 2014 Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly, he declared these traumas healed, praising Russians for facing "trials that only a mature and united nation and a truly sovereign and strong state can withstand." He pointed to growing awareness of history as the source of revived morale:

Russia has done this thanks to its citizens, thanks to your work and the results we have achieved together, and thanks to our profound understanding of the essence and importance of national interests. We have become aware of the indivisibility and integrity of the thousand-year long history of our country.

In fact, Russia's medieval history, like its twentieth-century, contains plenty of crises and ruptures. But Putin's new confidence reflects the patriotic mood that the Ukraine crisis has encouraged (and that sanctions have done little to dilute).

Dubbed Russia's "historian-in-chief," Putin sees it as part of his role as president to unite Russians around a common respect for their history, culture and traditions. A few weeks after Rurikids closed, he delivered his annual Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly, heavy on history even for him. The "historical reunification of Crimea and Sevastopol with Russia," he said, was one of "this year's landmark events," because:

It was in Crimea [...] that Grand Prince Vladimir was baptised before bringing Christianity to Rus. [...] even though its borders were not marked then, [...] Christianity was a powerful spiritual unifying force that helped involve various tribes and tribal unions of the vast Eastern Slavic world in the creation of a Russian nation and Russian state. It was thanks to this spiritual unity that our forefathers for the first time and forevermore saw themselves as a united nation. All of this allows us to say that Crimea [...] and Sevastopol have invaluable civilizational and even sacral importance for Russia, like the Temple Mount in Jerusalem for the followers of Islam and Judaism. [Emphasis added]

This paean to Holy Rus' echoed Rurikids' message: the God-given indivisibility of the East Slavic world regardless of the modern Russian-Ukrainian border; the imperative of a strong, united State; the role of Orthodoxy as repository of Russia's values as a distinctive world civilization. If Hill and Gaddy emphasized the rhetorical role played by Petr Stolypin (Russia's reformist prime minister, 1906-11) in Putin's first term as president, the 2014 Ukraine crisis has elevated Prince Vladimir of Kiev ("the Saint"), a figure not only more closely connected to Crimea, but also a convenient standard-bearer of conservative, religious values in a "culture war" that Putin sees as part of a bigger "clash of civilizations" between Russia and the West. "Who is Mr Putin?", ask Hill and Gaddy. One answer is a Prince Vladimir, Nevsky, Donskoy and a sanitized Ivan IV, too, rolled into one-a latter-day "Rurikid" for Russia's twenty-first century.

Ironically, while for Putin medieval Crimea was "the spiritual source of the development of a multifaceted but solid Russian nation and a centralized Russian state', Muscovy achieved domination over "all the Russias"-including modern Ukraine-not by preserving the decentralized structures of the Rurikids, but by suppressing them in the name of a novel, centralized autocracy. Faulty as history, Rurikids' defiant expression of offended Russian exceptionalism is nonetheless more than a pose: the West's doggedly legalistic construction of the crisis has consistently underestimated how much Ukraine means to Putin-and a substantial proportion of the Russian public-as well as the high costs Russia is prepared to pay to keep it out of the West's orbit. "Today our task is not only to sort out the past (although that must be done)," Lavrov recently declared at a meeting of the Russian Council of Foreign and Defence Policy, "but most importantly, to think about the future." Rurikids is clearly meant to help Russians do both. It opened in St Petersburg, the first stop on a national tour, on January 30.
 
 #19
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
Ukraine is Russia - or at least the Russia that Western critics imagine
Mark Adomanis in Philadelphia

Writing and thinking about Russia can often have a rather surreal quality to it. Something about the place seems to short-circuit peoples' critical thinking skills. Serious pundits write things ("Russia life expectancy is collapsing!") that are flatly contradicted by recent academic research and that don't withstand even the most cursory use of Google. Lots of things that "everyone knows" about Russia - that its alcohol epidemic continues unabated, that its population is in rapid decline, that it is suffering enormous population loss through emigration to the West - are simply not true.

The general expectation among the Washington elite, which tends to be marginally, but not extremely, more negative on Russia's long-term prospects than its European analogues, is that Russia will collapse sometime in the medium term. There are differences in the precise way that this collapse is expected to happen - despite being the plotline of a second-rate Tom Clancy novel, "China invading and annexing Siberia" is a surprisingly common answer - but that it will happen is not seriously in doubt.

Meanwhile, Russia's next-door neighbour Ukraine, is the darling of the moment. Barely a day goes by without a stirring press release about the country's "European choice". At least in public (there are indications that in private many Ukraine boosters are rather more skeptical than they'd like to let on), high-ranking Western diplomats seem to be having a competition among themselves about who can offer the most outlandish praise. The official narrative is a strikingly optimistic one of progress, reform and rejuvenation.

When you look at the actual numbers, though, the narratives start to make less and less sense.

Grass not greener

By virtually any standard you can think of Ukraine is not only underperforming Russia at the moment, it is projected to continue to do so for at least the next several years. This is true in terms of GDP growth, inflation, international reserves and the strength of the currency.

Russia's economy is, of course, not doing terribly well at the moment. The 2015 GDP growth forecasts are all over the map, a great deal depends on whether the recent rebound in the price of oil continues or reverses course, but somewhere between -2% and -5% growth seems reasonable. That is, of course, bad. Negative growth is always bad. But Russia actually managed to eke out 0.6% growth in 2014, so it's not as if the economy is in a tailspin. As of writing, Russia wasn't even in a recession (at least yet). As 2008-09's experience demonstrated, it has recent experience with stumbling and bumbling its way through an even more serious crisis.

In Ukraine the economic situation is much, much bleaker. The economy shrank by 7.5% in 2014, with the slump actually accelerating at the very end of the year (the growth rate hit an annualized -15.2% in the fourth quarter). The Ukrainian statistics service hasn't yet published it's fourth-quarter 2014 data, so the numbers cited are the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) estimates, which are probably as good as anyone else's right now. It's also a little hard to collect accurate data when a sizable chunk of the country is an active war zone and it's anyone's guess as to how, or if, economic activity in Donetsk and Lugansk is being tabulated*. Even optimistic government forecasts, which initially called for a return to growth this year and have been repeatedly revised downwards, expect that the economy will shrink another 5.5% this year.

That is to say that according to forecasts, Ukraine will perform worse than Russia in 2015 in absolute terms despite already being in a nasty recession. Cumulatively, Ukraine will probably suffer a 12.5% decline in total output, or a recession that is more than twice as bad as the worst estimates for Russia.

Another one of Russia's Achilles' heels is inflation. In Russia, inflation throughout 2014 was about 11.5%. By February, year-over-year inflation reached as high as 16.7%. Neither of those figures is particularly good, and they represent a worrying loss of the central bank's hard-won progress in achieving price stability. Russian consumers are going to suffer and they're probably going to suffer quite a lot.

But the situation in Ukraine is, as with the overall economy, much, much worse. 2014 inflation in Ukraine was 24.9%, or more than twice as bad as in Russia. And it has accelerated more rapidly through the first few months of 2015. Inflation got all the way up to an annual rate of 34.5% in February and considering what happened to the hryvnia it's likely to go even higher.

Whatever problems Russia is going to suffer as a result of heightened inflation (and there will be a number of them!) they will be that much worse in Ukraine. That is to say if you think the Russian economy is on the brink of turning into Weimar, the exact same thing will happen in Ukraine, only it will happen more quickly and to a country with a much smaller pile of international reserves (most of which aren't really "reserves" as they are loans from the IMF).

Taking a step back we can see that Ukraine is facing all of the same problems as Russia - a weakened currency, rising inflation, weak banks, a shrinking economy,and declining foreign reserves - only it is suffering these problems much more acutely and doing so without a giant cash-generating natural resource sector. Indeed, the only thing that has prevented Ukraine's economy from completely imploding, aside from some hasty capital controls instituted by the central bank, is the package of assistance from the IMF. But those, of course, are loans. They aren't money earned from selling things to foreigners, like Russia's oil and gas exports; it is money that needs to be paid back with interest. And since Ukraine already cannot meet its debt obligations, it's not clear how it is going to do so at least on any kind of reasonable timeframe.

There is one way out of this situation that is as simple as it is politically impossible: the West could just give Ukraine a bunch of money. That won't happen - German taxpayers would riot in the streets if they found out their government was just gifting Kyiv billions of euros - but it could. Absent that kind of deus ex machina situation, however, Ukraine is on the highway to economic ruin and collapse. Russia isn't exactly in the fast lane to prosperity, either, but it seems likely to make it through the next couple of years. The same cannot be said for Kyiv.

*the Ukrainian statistics service stipulates that the only areas that it is (temporarily) excluding are Crimea and Sevastopol. From a methodological standpoint the Donbass is still considered a full part of Ukraine.
 
 #20
Anniversary of Crimea's reunification with Russia: No-one said everything would be easy
By Tamara Zamyatin

MOSCOW, March 12. /TASS/. Despite current economic tension and uncertainties, the first anniversary of Crimea's reunification with Russia is generally seen in Russia as a historic event and it will be marked as a real holiday, polled experts told TASS.

The referendum on future statehood for Crimea and the city of Sevastopol was held on March 16, 2014. Locals rushed to polling stations to choose between wider powers for the region inside Ukraine and reunification with Russia. As many as 96.77% of those who cast their ballots voted for joining Russia. On March 17, President Vladimir Putin signed into law a special decree recognizing the Republic of Crimea as a sovereign and independent state. The next day, the Republic of Crimea and Russia signed a treaty making the peninsula a constituent territory of the Russian Federation.

A year later, national pollster VTSIOM has found that 91% of Crimea's people hail the results of their return to the fold of Russian jurisdiction. Asked if another referendum on Crimea's reunification with Russia were called today, 90% of residents would vote in favour, 86% assessing themselves pretty happy with what their life is like today. At the same time, most of Crimea's residents (79%) mentioned the key problems of inflation (79%), unemployment (56%) and bad roads (47%).

"I have been able to see for myself that Crimeans live quite happy and peaceful lives today," Japan's former prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, said on Wednesday after visiting Crimea.

Director of the CIS Countries Institute Konstantin Zatulin says the impressions he received during his trips about the peninsula made him certain that Crimeans feel no doubts their decision to join Russia was correct, though the process of getting used to Russia's socio-economic conditions was not entirely painless.

"Back one year ago, not a single person expected everything would be easy, though all of Crimea's problems are solvable," Zatulin told TASS. "For instance, before a future Kerch Bridge is built between mainland Russia and Crimea, the problem of cargo traffic can be addressed by using ports in Russia's Krasnodar Territory and Sevastopol seaport, which has the required logistics infrastructures. The potentials of Russia and Crimea have never worked together before and now their synergy will surely yield positive effects before long."

Mikhail Delyagin, director of the Globalization Problems Institute, recalls that over the past 23 years since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has systematically ruined Crimea, keeping it a depressed, subsidised region. "Over four years to come, Russia plans to put huge financial muscle into its economy - about 860 billion rubles or approximately half of what was spent to build facilities for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. We coped with the Winter Olympics and we will certainly cope with the task of bringing about Crimea's upturn," Delyagin told TASS.

"It should be remembered that Crimea as a region is a generator of profit, not losses," he said. "The peninsula has oil, gas, advanced agriculture, good wineries and tourist facilities. The region's worst problems are infrastructure, water supply, power supply and cargo traffic. A ferry link will operate until 2018, when a bridge across the Kerch Strait is hopefully to be put up. Two transformer substations and the laying of water pipelines is not so much a matter of funding as of good organisation. In a couple of years from now, Crimea, once a recipient of subsidies, may well achieve self-sufficiency," said Delyagin.

"Looking at Crimea from an accountant's point of view would be fundamentally wrong," he said. "It is far more important that Russia has assumed responsibility for the future of 2.3 million people. In this way, Moscow demonstrated its firm commitment to European values, of which the main one is the democratic right of choice by people who voted for reunification with their historic motherland. It is the right to use the mother tongue, and for an overwhelming majority of Crimea's residents the mother tongue is Russian. The Swiss Constitution grants official status to four languages, including Rhaeto-Romanic, spoken by a tiny faction of four percent of the population."

Political Studies Institute director and Civic Chamber member Sergey Markov believes that against the backdrop of bloody hostilities in the east of Ukraine, where Kiev's current authorities have conducted a punitive operation against Russian speakers for the past year, Crimean residents may now be shuddering in horror at the thought they might have suffered the same plight.

"This explains well why the anniversary of Crimea's reunification with Russia is being celebrated nationwide as a true national holiday," said Markov.
 
 #21
The Daily Mail (UK)
February 21, 2015
A (not so) Brief History of Crimea
By Peter Hitchens

All right, I admit it, it's not that brief. I didn't have time to shorten it. But what follows is a condensed history of the argument about who should control Crimea, one which still rages and which (as usual) is not as simple as politicians like to claim it is.

I'll begin with a question.

What do you reckon is the date of this Reuters News Agency dispatch? I've slightly doctored one or two things in it, but only to conceal the date.

'Elected officials in the Crimea voted on Monday to hold a referendum to resolve heated debates on the future status of the region.

'A Moscow news agency said the regional council voted to issue a declaration restoring the Crimea's "statehood" and also to hold a vote to determine the future of the attractive peninsula on the shores of the Black Sea.

'Moscow television suggested the referendum could take place early next February. It said the region, part of the Ukraine but with a large population of ethnic Russians and other groups, was sharply divided between maintaining its present status or rejoining the Russian Federation.'

Well, it was 12th November 1990, nearly a quarter of a century ago.  And it forms the opening page in a fascinating file compiled for me by a friend and colleague in Moscow.

What it shows is that the issue of Crimea's relations with Ukraine ( and of the Donbass region around Donetsk) was a live and troublesome matter even before the break-up of the USSR at the end of 1991. And it also shows that at one stage the recently-established Ukrainian  government  in Kiev acted with considerable ruthlessness to prevent a referendum in Crimea on independence, a referendum which had been requested by 246,000 of the peninsula's 2.5 million people. I'll come to the details of this forgotten scandal later.

This is especially paradoxical, since Moscow did nothing to prevent Ukraine from declaring its own independence from the USSR, nor did it act to prevent the referendum which confirmed this. At the time, it seemed as if pretty much anyone could declare independence from Moscow. But nobody could declare independence from Ukraine. Or else.

One explanation of this was that Russia had, by and large, been liberated from Soviet rule by democrats, or would-be democrats. But in the non-Russian parts of the USSR, liberation tended to be accomplished by nationalists. Nationalists are out of fashion now and frowned on by the EU, especially. But at that time, before and since, in this part of the world, they served a useful purpose in dismantling the Russian empire, as long ago suggested by our old friend Herr Richard von Kuehlmann, Kaiser Wilhelm's Foreign Secretary, in 1918. So you will find that Ukrainian Georgian and Polish nationalism are viewed as nice nationalisms, in the post-modern halls of Brussels, where the idea is generally despised.

Russia, belatedly waking up to the danger,  has now turned nationalist itself, and that is very much not approved of. For Russian nationalism does not serve Kuehlmann's prescient purpose, continued in modern times by his successors,  in dismantling the old Russian empire and creating a new liberal empire of 'limited sovereignty' dominated by German interests. Thus, it is the *wrong* kind of nationalism. Whereas Ukrainian nationalism (if anything even more chauvinistic, virulent and intolerant than the Russian version) is the *right* kind. Which shows that it is its effect on the European map, not its innate characteristics which decide which nationalism is cool, and which despicable.

But back to the day before yesterday, by the sunny, rugged shores of Crimea.

The BBC Monitoring service , on 19th January 1991, picked up a report that the government of the Crimean Oblast (region) had scheduled a referendum on the legal status of Crimea, for the 20th of that month.

On 21st January, Dow Jones reported an overwhelming vote  (93% of an 80% turnout) for Crimean autonomy  - that is, separating the peninsula from the direct authority of Ukraine. This, of course was before Ukraine had declared its own independence. Russians in Crimea had long resented Krushchev's 1954 transfer of their region to Ukraine from Russia.

But Ukrainian nationalists rightly realised this was a canny pre-emptive move, designed to prevent a new Ukrainian state seizing control of Crimea, and opening the way for a reunion with Russia.

The Ukrainian nationalist movement Rukh declared ( according to Reuters)

'the referendum is an assault on the territorial integrity of the future Ukrainian state'.

In the following March, in a vote on Mikhail Gorbachev's curious and murky 'Union Treaty' , a last attempt to hold the USSR together by consent instead of force,  87% of Crimean voters voted to stay in the Soviet Union and become independent.

This is outwardly puzzling, as the two seem contradictory. But there is an explanation. Presumably they believed a form of Crimean independence would be available within a loosened Union.  And they feared (with reason) the effects of Ukrainian independence on their lives.

Then came the failed KGB putsch in August 1991, which finally discredited the USSR and the Soviet Communist Party in the eyes of almost everybody, and spelt the end of both.

But very soon afterwards, on August 26th 1991,  a statement issued in the name of the then Russian president Boris Yeltsin warned that borders would have to be redrawn if Ukraine and other republics quit. It's often said these days that , though the Soviet borders between Russia and Ukraine are quite unfitted  for use as international frontiers, there was never any concern about this at the time of the split. The following newsagency despatch shows that this is not true.

'Russia warned neighbouring Soviet republics on Monday that it would not let them secede from the Soviet Union taking large Russian-inhabited areas with them.

A statement issued in Russian President Boris Yeltsin's name said the Russian Federation reserved the right to review its borders with any adjacent republic which left the Union.

His spokesman, Pavel Voshchanov, who signed the statement, told reporters at the Russian parliament this referred mainly to northern Kazakhstan and to the Donbass region and the Crimea in the Ukraine.'

The 'Donbass Region' is of course the area around Donetsk and Lugansk, now in flames.

Instantly, Ukraine's President Leonid Kravchuk reacted. Reuters reported the following day 'Kravchuk said on Tuesday Soviet republics were concerned by Russia's warning that it would not allow those with large Russian populations to secede.

"(The statement) sent reverberations through the republics...Territorial claims are very dangerous and could end in problems for the people," Kravchuk told a news conference in the capital Kiev.'

Within a day, Boris Yeltsin had backed down (I suspect that when the archives are opened, if they ever are, it will turn out that he did so under pressure from the USA, but what do I know?)

Reuters reported :'PARIS, Aug 28, Reuter - Russian President Boris Yeltsin said on Wednesday Russia would respect the frontiers of republics that decided to sign the Union treaty.

"As for republics that stay in the (Soviet) Union, we will of course respect their frontiers, the Union treaty caters for frontiers to be respected," he said in an interview with French radio.

Yeltsin added that a joint Soviet-Russian delegation which flew to Kiev on Wednesday would tell Ukrainians that Russia would have no territorial claims on their republic if the Ukraine decided to stay in the Union.

The Ukraine's parliament declared independence from Moscow on Saturday subject to confirmation by a referendum in December.

The Soviet-Russian delegation's mission is to try to defuse Ukrainian alarm over Yeltsin's announcement on Monday that Russia reserved the right to contest borders with any republic that quit the Soviet Union.

His statement stirred historic suspicions of "Russian chauvinism" in the Ukraine, which contains two areas -- the Donbass and the Crimea -- populated mostly by Russians.

"Relations with Russia are becoming more and more complex as a result of Yeltsin's statement," an official in the Ukrainian administration earlier commented.

In the radio interview Yeltsin said questions of territory, frontiers, frontier security and diplomatic relations would all have to be settled by negotiation and "without shedding blood.

"When I speak of frontiers I am basing myself on laws and international treaties. If a state or republic leaves the union, then we will have to establish state-to-state relations by discussion around a table."

Soon afterwards, AP reported:  

'MOSCOW (AP) - The Soviet legislature, backing Mikhail Gorbachev's bid to stem the collapse of central authority, voted today to send a delegation to the Ukraine to discourage the breadbasket republic's secessionist drive.

The delegation also will discuss potential border disputes with the Russian republic, which has thrown a scare into some of its neighbors by saying it reserves the right to review its borders with them.

Gorbachev put his political future on the line yesterday, threatening to resign if the Soviet Union cannot somehow be preserved and indicating he would settle for a loose alliance of sovereign states.'

These efforts would be a complete failure. The break-up of what was left of the USSR was complete by the end of the year, and the old Stalin-Krushchev borders survived.

But shortly before the final collapse, Crimea's local parliament tried to throw a spanner in the works. On November 23rd. AP reported :' SIMFEROPOL, U.S.S.R. (AP) _ The Crimean parliament laid the groundwork for secession from the Ukraine when lawmakers approved a measure enabling the region to hold a referendum on its political future.

On Friday, lawmakers also sent a message to the Ukrainian parliament, asking it to continue to participate in Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's plan to hold the Soviet Union together as a loose federation.

The Crimea is an autonomous republic of 2.5 million people in an area that juts from the southern Ukraine in the Black Sea.

Its parliament, dominated by former Communist Party members, voted 153-3, with two abstentions, to hold a referendum to decide whether the Crimea should stay under Ukrainian jurisdiction, reunite with Russia or become independent. No date was set.

On March 17, voters in the Crimea gave 87.3 percent approval to Gorbachev's federation plan.

Ethnic Russians comprise 67 percent of the Crimea's population. Many of them worry that the Ukraine might try to exert more control on the region after the Ukraine's presidential election and referendum on independence, set for Dec. 1.

Crimean lawmaker Yuri Ryzhkov said he expected a referendum on Crimean secession within a month of the presidential election.'

On the 27th, Reuters reported 'SIMFEROPOL, Soviet Union, Nov 27, Reuter - Angry and frightened Russians in the Crimea are vowing resistance to the idea of their fertile sunny peninsula becoming part of an independent Ukraine.

"I don't want to find myself living in a foreign country," shouted 67-year-old war veteran Georgy Malyshev, one of hundreds of Russians who demonstrated here last week outside the Crimean parliament.

Inside the parliament, still dominated by the old communist elite, deputies failed narrowly to approve an appeal to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev for the Crimea to be returned to Russia.

For nearly four decades, formal subordination to the Ukraine barely mattered as all vital decisions were taken in Moscow and official policy favoured Russian interests.

But now, with the Ukraine likely to opt for complete independence in a referendum on December 1, fears are growing that the Crimea could become a flashpoint of tension between Moscow and Kiev.

Anatoly Los, a Russian deputy to the Crimean parliament, said he expected the Crimea to vote "No" to Ukrainian independence in the referendum while the rest of the republic votes yes.'

On 1st December AFP (Agence France Presse) reported a low turnout in Donbass and Crimea (and other heavily Russian regions) in the Ukrainian independence referendum

'The Kharkhov and Odessa regions reported turnout of 62 percent, while in the Crimea just under 59 percent of the voters went to the polls.

In Donetsk, turnout was put at over 67 percent, while the lowest participation in the election -- 51 percent -- was in Sebastopol, the officials said.'

In Western Ukraine turnout was 87.8%, in Kiev, 80%.

On the 6th January, the Wall Street Journal reported :

'CRIMEA, Ukraine -- When empires start disintegrating, at what point do they stop? Ukraine has now firmly established itself as an independent state, but within Ukraine, there is the Crimea.

Home to 2.5 million people, with some 105 different nationalities living on its territory, Crimea, an autonomous republic located in the south of Ukraine, is like a miniature Soviet Union. It, too, is facing a shakeup.

While a surprising number of people here say they had never thought about the question of their own independence -- being an autonomous republic within a vast empire was enough -- they are now saying that with the Soviet machine having broken down, the Crimean people now want a shot at their sovereignty.

Only 52.6% of Crimeans voted in favor of the Ukrainian independence referendum that elsewhere passed overwhelmingly on Dec. 1. Many Crimeans would like to see their region affiliated with Russia...'

Later in the report, it noted:

'Mr. Kravchuk made a fact-finding visit to the autonomous republic on Oct. 23-24 after reports of civil unrest here and to persuade local deputies to vote yes to an independent Ukraine....

'In no uncertain terms, he told the legislators they were not ready for independence -- the Crimea had neither a constitution nor other important laws in place that would guarantee success as a separate nation. Mr. Kravchuk drew applause, however, when he promised that under an independent Ukraine, the Crimea would maintain its current autonomous status, including a guarantee that all languages and cultures on that territory would be respected.

'In a later press conference, Mr. Kravchuk said, "Ukraine will not be cut up into pieces. No one is going to look at all the painful points . . . with a red pencil. We won't sit at a table to cut up the territory. That would be the beginning of the end."

'He noted Ukraine was ready to work with the Crimean parliament and people to build one unified country -- Ukraine.

"Today we want to create a nation. The majority of the Crimean people understand the only way to live is with Ukraine," he stressed.'

Round about this point, a movement began to collect signatures demanding a referendum on Crimean independence, a legal entitlement under Ukrainian law.

In the background, tension was growing between Moscow and Kiev about the future of the Russian naval facilities in Sevastopol.  The Russian Parliament, after the referendum crisis was over, even voted symbolically to rescind Krushchev's transfer of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. Plainly this had no practical effect at the time.  As Boris Yeltsin had discovered when he briefly sought border revision, Russia was too weak to reincorporate what it regarded as Russian parts of Ukraine.  But it staked an implied claim.

In February 1992, worried by the threat of an independence referendum, Kiev offered more autonomy to Crimea. By then, the independence campaigners, plainly with Russian backing, had already gathered 50,000 signatures.

On 21st February, BBC Monitoring gave this account of a Kiev press conference given by President Leonid Kravchuk

'Is the president of Ukraine going to hamper the collection of signatures and the holding of the referendum on the new status of Crimea? The answer to this question has clearly defined the attitude to processes which are taking place in Crimea and the possible solution of the Crimean issue.

[Kravchuk] If people are collecting signatures in order to determine their political situation in their region, I do not see anything unusual in it. Whether or not it is necessary to do that at present is another thing, in my opinion, since the referendum has already taken place and this peninsula has expressed its attitude both during the referendum on 1st December and during the other referendum [all-union referendum] and in a great number of resolutions of the supreme soviet of the Crimean republic - well, that is another matter.

But the president will not be able to ban or cancel this referendum. (My emphasis, PH)

We can only pin our hopes on common sense, and the existing legal foundations and legal norms along with the Constitution of Ukraine and the paragraph concerning the Crimean republic which was made part of the constitution. This is the situation here. I somehow think that the supreme soviet of Crimea must show its attitude to this even if those signatures are collected - the supreme soviet must give its assessment of them and I would like it to be the supreme soviet of Crimea.'

Four days later, AP was reporting that the independence movement had collected enough signatures to trigger a vote: : 'Crimea has ancient Greek ruins, Tatar castles, a stunning Black Sea coast, an important navy base and an angry majority of Russians who want independence from Ukraine.

'Russians have gathered nearly 250,000 signatures, enough to force a referendum on Crimea's status. Such a vote would likely increase friction between Ukraine and Russia.

"Ukrainians are nationalists," said Alexander Tsitov, a Russian who works in a cooperative in Simferopol, the capital. "They want to introduce their language, and that is no good for us. They want us to be their colony.

"There is a danger the tension here could be transformed into armed conflict."'

Later President Kravchuk warned that bloodshed was possible if the Crimea went ahead with the referendum, placing established frontiers in question.

On the 5th May,  things were speeding up, as AFP reported : 'SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine, May 5 (AFP) - The parliament of Crimea Tuesday voted for secession from Ukraine, subject to confirmation by a referendum to be held soon.

The regional assembly of the Black Sea peninsula approved the independence bid by a large majority and offered to enter into immediate negotiations with Ukraine on a future bilateral agreement with the republic, local sources reported.'

Reuters elaborated: 'SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine, May 5, Reuter - The Crimean peninsula passed a declaration of independence from Ukraine on Tuesday, a move likely to inflame relations between Kiev and Moscow.

Deputies in the Crimean parliament in Simferopol stood and applauded loudly after passing an "Act of Independence" by 118 votes to 28. The decision must be confirmed by a referendum.

Several thousand people standing outside the rambling, modernistic building in the sunshine waved banners and cheered as the decision was announced over loudspeakers.

The act stated: "In view of the threat posed to Crimean statehood...and expressing great alarm about worsening relations between Russia and Ukraine, the parliament of the Crimea declares the creation of a sovereign state, the Republic of Crimea."

Parliamentary leader Nikolai Bagrov told reporters: "The Crimea is a republic and should have its own statehood."

The declaration will infuriate Ukraine, which considers the Black Sea peninsula part of its territory. The referendum is likely to take place on August 2.

Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk has said that any referendum on Crimean independence could lead to bloodshed.'

Events now became bizarre, and readers will have to form their own conclusions as to how an entire regional assembly can totally change its mind on a central issue in the course of one day. Severe outside pressure seems to me to be one possible explanation.

For on the 6th May, we see this despatch:

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine, May 6, Reuter - The Crimean parliament on Wednesday appeared to reverse the previous day's declaration of independence by changing its constitution to say the peninsula formed part of Ukraine.

"The republic of Crimea is part of the state of Ukraine and determines its own relations with Ukraine on the basis of treaties and agreements," the amendment said.

It was passed by a big majority.

The Crimean parliament had on Tuesday declared the Republic of Crimea a sovereign state. Independence was to be confirmed in a referendum, likely to be held on August 2.

Tuesday's vote was a reaction to a Ukrainian parliamentary resolution giving the Crimea a measure of independence which the local parliament said fell short of its demands.

But Wednesday's apparent reversal of the independence vote may be an attempt to find a face-saving compromise which will give deputies more say in running their own affairs but which will not trigger a complete break with Kiev.'

Perhaps a clue to  the explanation can be found in these words of President Kravchuk, on a visit to Washington DC at the time :

'"But I would have to say that the voting in the parliament of Crimea is not the last instance," he said during a ceremony marking the opening of Ukraine's embassy in the United States.

"We can say one thing for sure that what has been voted in the parliament of Crimea is against the constitution of Ukraine," Kravchuk added.

On May 8th Reuters reported :

'KIEV, May 8, Reuter - A campaign by the Crimean peninsula to break away from Ukraine could plunge the region into a conflict similar to that in Northern Ireland, a top aide to Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk has said.

Alexander Yemets, Kravchuk's top adviser on legal issues, also said in an interview on Thursday that Ukraine would never give up the peninsula, populated mainly by ethnic Russians but given to Ukraine as a "gift" by Russia in 1954.

Speaking a week before a summit of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States, he accused prominent Russian leaders of stirring up confrontation in the run-up to Tuesday's declaration of independence by the Crimean parliament.

"The problem is difficult and complex and could take on a violent character," Yemets told Reuters in his office, once part of the headquarters of the now-banned Communist Party.

"If we cannot solve this through political dialogue, the situation will resemble that of Northern Ireland in terms of the violence involved. That is, partisan-like actions by different groups pursuing different aims, violent confrontation," he said.'

On 13th May, we learned from AFP: 'The Ukrainian parliament on Wednesday declared unconstitutional a recent declaration of independence by the Crimean peninsula, where the former Soviet Union's huge Black Sea fleet is based.

The parliament called on the local authorities in the peninsula, which was ceded to Ukraine by Russia in 1954, to "return to legality" by rescinding the declaration of independence they issued on May 6.

The Crimean authorities have said they will organise a referendum on independence on August 2.

And on 14th May, the London Times reported : 'Ukraine's parliament yesterday moved to bury the Crimea's growing Russian separatist movement by issuing a five-point plan over-riding the peninsula's independence vote and threatening direct presidential rule.

In a rare show of strength by the Kiev parliament, deputies voted by an overwhelming margin to declare last week's actions by the Crimea's supreme soviet unconstitutional, and banned the Black Sea peninsula's government from holding an independence referendum this summer

On 30th June, we learned from Reuters; 'KIEV, June 30, Reuter - Ukraine's parliament on Tuesday granted the Crimean peninsula wide-ranging autonomy, allowing it to determine its own foreign economic relations and social and cultural policies.

The power-sharing arrangements were detailed in amendments to a new law aimed at satisfying the territory's aspirations for self-rule while keeping it under Kiev's jurisdiction.

And on the 9th July 1992, Reuters said: MOSCOW, July 9, Reuter - The Crimean parliament voted on Thursday to suspend plans for a referendum on independence from Ukraine, local journalists in the regional capital Simferopol said.

The decision, approved by 106 of the 137 deputies attending parliament, will help remove a possible source of conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The referendum had originally been scheduled for August 2.'

But it hadn't really gone away. In summer 1993, BBC monitoring noted :' A regular congress of the Crimean Electors' Movement [Ukrainian: Rukh Vybortsiv Krymu] was held today [29th May] under the slogan "Away with independence! Give us a referendum!". The movement is made up of adherents of joining the peninsula to Russia. Several resolutions were adopted at the congress, and on the situation in the Black Sea Fleet too. Those present called on the presidents of Ukraine and Russia to hold their meeting on problems of the Black Sea Fleet only in Sevastopol, and to adopt at the meeting an unequivocal decision - on the impossibility of dividing the fleet, and on preserving Sevastopol's status of Russian Federation naval base. In the event that this demand is not fulfilled, says the resolution, the participants of the movement reserve the right, following the sailors's example, to hang Russian flags on their buildings.

'A decision on setting up a civic committee to safeguard the referendum on Crimea's state status was adopted. The movement intends to organize a warning strike of work collectives on 2nd August in support of this referendum...'

I have assembled this account because I had not seen a proper explanation of the history of the Crimean independence issue. I think it helps to explain the origin of the dispute. I also think it once again raises the curious and ever-fascinating question of title in international affairs.

Who really owns which piece of land? On what is his claim based? Why are some units permitted to declare independence from large countries, and others not? And if there is no consistent legal or moral answer to any of these questions, what lessons should we learn from that?
 
 #22
PR Week
www.prweek.com
March 11, 2015
Ketchum calls it quits on Russia work
Ketchum has ended its high-profile and controversial media relations work for the Kremlin.
by Frank Washkuch and Laura Nichols

NEW YORK: Ketchum has ended the bulk of its work for the Russian Federation in the US and Europe amid continuing tensions between the country and Western governments.

The Omnicom Group firm represented the Kremlin through its hosting of the Winter Olympics in Sochi last year but also as its relationship with the West strained over the country's role in the conflict in Ukraine.

"Ketchum no longer represents the Russian Federation in the US or Europe with the exception of our office in Moscow," the firm said in a statement. "Our partner in the consortium, [Omnicom subsidiary] GPlus, continues to operate under the terms of the contract."

Ketchum was paid nearly $23 million by the Russian federation from 2006 through mid-2012, according to ProPublica, as well as $17 million by energy giant Gazprom.

The firm declined other comment on the matter.

Documents filed with the US Justice Department show the firm represented both the Russian Federation and Gazprom Export during the six-month period ending on November 30 of last year.

However, they also indicate that its work on behalf of the country began to wind down at the end of 2014. While it pitched media outlets from The New York Times to TechCrunch and Mashable about the BRICS Summit and tech startups in July, it only corresponded with third parties about ThinkRussia.com in September and October. It reported no activity on behalf of the country in November.

The firm said it received fees of more than $773,000 during the six-month period ending in November 2014 through its Ketchum Limited affiliate in the UK.

Ketchum reported no activity on behalf of Gazprom during the half-year period.

However, for the previous six-month range ending May 31, 2014, the firm listed a much greater scope of work on behalf of the Russian Federation, including media relations support on behalf of Putin and other Russian leaders and liaising with NBC for the Sochi Olympics. It also reported a considerable range of corporate and financial comms work for Gazprom. Its billings from the Russian government during that period were more than $1.5 million.

Ketchum's work for the country was widely cited in the US media in September 2013 after it placed an op-ed written by Russian President Vladimir Putin on military action the US was considering at the time in Syria in The New York Times. The firm responded to jabs at that time by saying it did not pen the piece, but submitted it to the Times for its consideration.

As the conflict in Ukraine escalated in the months that followed, the agency clarified that it did not advise the Kremlin on foreign policy. However, the firm continued to take punches in the mainstream press because of the relationship, due in part to tensions between Russia and the US and the Putin government's stance on gay rights.

The agency has worked for the Russian government on a number of major international issues in the past, starting in 2006 when it was brought on to support the presidential press office as the country prepared to host the G8 Summit in St. Petersburg.

In 2007, it completed a two-month, $847,000 contract to promote energy security and foreign investment in Russia, as well as the country's bid to join the World Trade Organization.

Representatives from the Russian Embassy in Washington, DC, could not be immediately reached for comment.
 
 #23
EU leaders want to tackle Russian 'disinformation' on Ukraine war
By Jan Strupczewski
March 11, 2015

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European leaders will ask their foreign policy chief next week to draw up a plan to counter Russian "disinformation campaigns" over the conflict in Ukraine, draft conclusions of an EU summit showed.

EU leaders, meeting on March 19-20, will give the High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini three months -- until their next summit in June -- to work out how to support media freedom and European values in Russia.

"The European Council stresses the need to challenge Russia's ongoing disinformation campaigns and invites the High Representative...to prepare by the June European Council an action plan on strategic communication in support of media freedom and EU values," the draft said.

"It welcomes the establishment of a communication team as a first step in this regard," said the draft, obtained by Reuters.

Russian government-funded TV stations, like RT, broadcasting in English, Spanish, Arabic, German and French have been steadily expanding their operations. Many Western broadcasters cut back their Russian-language services after the Cold War.

SPUTNIK

EU diplomats said the EU would need to find a way to tackle Russian disinformation within Russia itself, as well as in west European countries like Germany and in Russia's EU neighbors with large Russian minorities, like the Baltic states.

Russian domestic television, under strong state control, has portrayed the pro-Russian insurrection in eastern Ukraine as a spontaneous reaction to a coup by nationalist Ukrainian forces in Kiev. The West accuses Moscow of fomenting the fighting, providing arms and troops - something the Kremlin denies.

Last November, Russia launched a state-of-the-art media organization with hundreds of journalists abroad intended to wean the world off what it called aggressive Western propaganda - dubbing it, with echoes of the Cold War, Sputnik.

RT's London-based correspondent Sara Firth resigned last July over the station's coverage of the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, accusing it of the "most shockingly obvious misinformation".

Four months earlier RT's Washington-based correspondent Liz Wahl resigned live on air, blaming the network's "whitewashing" of Moscow's military intervention in Crimea.

"There has been growing concern with the Russian propaganda and it is coming to a head now," one EU diplomat said.
 
 #24
www.rt.com
March 12, 2015
Russia is not a threat to Britain's security, Philip Hammond is wrong
By Bryan MacDonald
Bryan MacDonald is an Irish writer and commentator focusing on Russia and its hinterlands and international geo-politics.

The British Foreign Secretary proved this week that he's unfit for the rigors of the role. By no stretch of the imagination is Russia the greatest security threat to the UK.

Philip Hammond is in line for the wooden spoon award as the shortest serving British Foreign Secretary for a quarter of a century, according to both the bookmakers and opinion polls. If so, the dreaded ligneous utensil will come in splinters. The multi-millionaire Oxford old boy has been hopelessly out of his depth in the position.

Hammond first indicated that he may be somewhat removed from reality back in 2012. In a, frankly barmy, speech in Germany he defended the role of the banks in creating the 2008 Great Financial Crisis. In terms of tact, this was akin to turning up at a far-right rally in the west Ukrainian city of Lvov, and suggesting Stalin wasn't such a bad chap after all.

The following year Hammond's calamitous tongue was at it again - comparing legislation supporting same-sex marriage to the sanctioning of incest. Whatever your views on the matter, to place what amounts to a civil rights campaign in the realm of the oedipal complex was grossly offensive.

The Conservative MP for Runnymede and Weybridge has a habit of saying very silly things. This week he finally took the 'McVities' with a statement that not only made him look extremely stupid - it also debased his office. An utterance so imbecilic those illustrious predecessors from the Duke of Wellington to Harold Macmillan must have been spinning in their resting places.

Hammond versus reality

Hammond said: "It (Russia) has the potential to pose the single greatest threat to our security." Some have suggested that the Foreign Secretary was waffling in an attempt to secure funding for the foreign intelligence services (Mi6) which he controls, but I doubt it. I think the 'cold warrior' really believes his nonsense. This suggests that either he's lost touch with reality or is taking advice from unqualified sources.

London is home to a number of activists who masquerade as Russia experts, despite having little or no practical knowledge of the country. By my reckoning, someone who has never lived in Russia, nor has much of a grasp of the language, is not a competent source for information. Even as a tour guide. However, the UK media regularly use such people as pundits, based on some book they've written or the fact that Russia was somehow part of their liberal arts course at Cambridge/Oxford. Is it possible that a few of these chancers have somehow bluffed their way into advising government officials? It's starting to sound like it.

So by what measure of even the most tortured imagination is Russia the "single greatest threat" to the safety of the UK? Russia is very very far from Britain. I know this because I once drove between the two and it took me 4 days. While Finland and Georgia, for instance, have legitimate reasons to fear an aggressive Russia, I can't fathom for one moment where the UK comes into play here. In order for Russia to attack the British homeland its forces would have to cross Ukraine, Poland, Germany and France first.That's a very, very large buffer zone.

Natural British defenses

In reality, the only countries who could feasibly invade the UK are France and the USA (and even then only if their Irish friends let them land there first, which is rather unlikely). Indeed, Britain's geographical position is a blessing. The moat around it, allied to its relative martial strength, makes it just about the least likely European country to be threatened by anyone.

Hammond also suggested that he might publicize the value of assets held by the Russian elite in England. This is an extremely good idea. Furthermore, he confirmed that the UK intelligence agencies are recruiting Russian speakers for the first time in decades. Again, this is actually quite welcome. A side-effect of the USSR's collapse was to relegate the study of Russian to the Vauxhall Conference of language specialization in the UK. Given that Russia is the largest and most populous country in Europe this was a mistake.

The Foreign Secretary also mentioned the, very real, danger posed by the Islamic State (also known as ISIS/ISIL). While Russia is unlikely to radicalize young British citizens, IS has being doing it very successfully. Whatever about Jihadi John, I simply can't envisage a Cossack Colin escaping to Siberia and attempting to join the Russian army. However, a significant amount of young British Muslims have been travelling to the Middle East to enlist in IS.

Removing the attraction of jihad to young Brits is an internal matter for Westminster to sort out, but eradicating the IS problem at source will require an international coalition. Given the precarious state of most European militaries and Russia's sway over Iran, it's transparently obvious that Moscow will have to be involved. The best way to get Russia onside is definitely not to compare it to a mutual concern that both Downing Street and the Kremlin are interested in extinguishing.

Hammond's future is uncertain

On the other hand, Hammond's Conservative Party has a strangely bi-polar attitude to the military finance issue. Despite the Chancellor, George Osborne, leading an ideological crusade to reduce public spending, the Hammond wing of the party hopes for more money for the armed forces. The two aspirations can't rhyme.

While Hammond's comments have caused a stir this week, it's worth bearing in mind that he's almost certainly in his last weeks as Foreign Secretary. All indications suggest that Labour will lead the next London government and their putative replacement for Hammond, Douglas Alexander, is vastly more experienced in government than the incumbent. The Scot is also a much smarter operator. Should the Tories somehow retain power, it's almost certain that Hammond will be moved aside in order to create cabinet space for incoming MP's like Boris Johnson.

Philip Hammond said a thoroughly stupid thing this week. In doing so, he exposed both himself and the Conservative Party elite as being hopelessly misinformed on Russia. With relations between London and Moscow at an all-time low, the hope is that the next British government works to heal them. As two geographically peripheral countries on opposite edges of Europe, Russia and the UK are no threat to each other. Not in the slightest.
 
 #25
Embassy (Canada)
www.embassynews.ca
March 11, 2015
Analysts say difficult to tell if Canada's sanctions on Russia having impact
Observers say Canadian companies face compliance costs given legal situation.
By Chris Plecash

Canada has spent the last year aggressively imposing sanctions on Russian and Ukrainian players with ties to the simmering conflict in eastern Ukraine, but experts say there's no evidence that the penalties are having any political impact on the Putin government.

The federal government has imposed sanctions on 85 Russian and 75 Ukrainian individuals implicated in the conflict, along with more than 70 companies and armed groups hostile to Petro Poroshenko's pro-Western government in Kyiv over the past year.

The Harper government has blacklisted entities and individuals on 11 different occasions since last March. The objective of the sanctions remains unclear, though. Last May, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the restrictions were meant to "increase economic pressure on Russia and those responsible for the crisis in Ukraine."

Determining the political consequences of the sanctions is "almost impossible" though, observed Paul Robinson, a professor specializing in Russian and military studies at the University of Ottawa's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

The measures imposed by Canada, the United States and the European Union could be strengthening the resolve of hardliners within Vladimir Putin's government, he said. They could also be pressuring more dovish members of the Russian government to press for an end to the standoff in an effort to protect the financial interests of the Russian oligarchy.

"The problem is, we don't really know which narrative is true," Mr. Robinson told Embassy.

"If the political effect is to stop the Russians from arming rebels in Ukraine, sanctions have failed dismally. On the other hand, the Russians appear willing to negotiate a political settlement that will see Donbass remain in Ukraine."

Sanctions imposed by Canada and its allies have certainly had an economic impact, making it more difficult for many Russian firms to raise capital internationally. But Vladimir Putin remains popular. Recent polling by the Levada-Center, an independent Russian-based pollster, puts the Russian president's domestic approval rating at 86 per cent.

No single list

"Absolutely, no question, it's made it painful for Russia's economy, but Putin's still in Ukraine and Crimea is still out of Ukraine," said John Boscariol, head of law firm McCarthy T�trault's international trade and investment law group. "It's hard to test the effectiveness of the sanctions by simply looking at something like that."

Not only is the political impact of Canada's sanctions program inconclusive, but it's becoming increasingly difficult for Canadian companies to comply with the expanding list of spurned players in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Current sanctions are meant to freeze the assets of listed individuals and entities and prohibit Canadian citizens from engaging in any financial activity with them. Under Canada's Special Economic Measures Act, violating existing sanctions can come with a fine of up to $25,000 and up to five years imprisonment.

"[W]hether it's actually working to prevent companies from doing business with these entities, I think is an open question," Mr. Boscariol told Embassy. "I think there are a lot of Canadian companies out there that aren't aware. Frankly, not a lot of resources have been put into the administration of these sanctions measures."

The government pledged to simplify the sanctions regime to "reduce the compliance burden" for businesses in the 2014 budget. Foreign Affairs launched an economic sanctions portal last December in an effort to centralize information and reduce the compliance costs for the private sector.

But the department does not offer a consolidated list of blacklisted individuals and entities that Canadian companies are barred from doing business with in Russia and Ukraine, and it doesn't offer guidance for complying with existing sanctions.

"We do not in fact have a consolidated list," department spokesperson Francois Lasalle confirmed in an email.

"The Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development does not provide legal advice to members of the public... For legal advice, members of the public may wish to consult a lawyer."

Embassy compiled its list of sanctioned individuals and entities from 11 separate announcements made by the government over the last year.

"No company has the time or money to really do that. They make it incredibly cumbersome, especially for [small and medium enterprises]," Mr. Boscariol said.

He noted that Canada had previously applied sanctions on countries that Canadian companies didn't do a lot of business with-Syria, North Korea, Belarus and Iran. Russia is a much larger economy with international reach, though. Up until last fall it was listed as a "priority market" in Canada's Global Market Action Plan export strategy.

"Canada just doesn't have the compliance infrastructure in the government to assist with that," said Mr. Boscariol.

"You call Foreign Affairs [and] their position is that they're lawyers for Foreign Affairs. They're not there to advise Canadian companies on how to comply, which is just insane. When we tell our clients that, they can't believe it."

Canada, EU and US picking and choosing

Another factor that could be undermining the effectiveness of sanctions on Russia is the fact that Canada, the EU and US aren't applying the same measures on the same individuals.

Mr. Boscariol, whose firm maintains its own list of measures taken by Canada and its allies, said that he's found a lot of discrepancies between each party's sanctions.

"They say it's co-ordinated with the US and the EU, but they're still striking out on their own. Even looking at the lists, they're not the same," he said.

One example where Canada and the EU and US are not on the same page is Rostec, a Russian state-owned enterprise involved in weapons R&D. The company is subject to US sanctions, but not Canadian or EU sanctions.

Mr. Robinson also questioned Canada's reluctance to impose sanctions on Rosoboronexport, the Russian government's international arms sales agency.

"You would think that with a civil war going on, arms manufacturers would be an obvious target, but we happen to like their arms exporters," he said, adding that Canada has been imposing sanctions on many rebel militia leaders unlikely to visit Canada or have financial holdings here.

"I don't think Motorola was planning to visit Ottawa anyway," Mr. Robinson said, referring to Arseny Pavlov, commander of the pro-Russian Sparta Battalion.
 
 #26
Politico.com
March 11, 2015
Obama pressed on many fronts to arm Ukraine
By JEREMY HERB

The Obama administration is at war with itself over the question of arming Ukraine, with Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and key military leaders suggesting they would support a change of course.

The Obama administration tried to up the ante on Wednesday by promising non-lethal military aid to Ukraine, but it did little to satisfy the rising congressional demands to send weapons and other heavy military equipment. Both Carter and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey have broken with the president and could support arms to Ukraine.

And now many lawmakers, including some influential Democrats, are pushing for arms for Ukraine.

"Providing nonlethal equipment like night vision goggles is all well and good, but giving the Ukrainians the ability to see Russians coming but not the weapons to stop them is not the answer," Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declared Tuesday during a committee hearing on the issue.

The White House said Wednesday it was providing Ukraine $75 million in non-lethal aid that included surveillance drones, radios and other light equipment, as well as transferring 30 armored Humvees and up to 200 unarmored ones. And Secretary of State John Kerry also announced that new sanctions were being enacted by the Treasury Department.

Yet Dempsey has told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he would "absolutely consider providing lethal aid" to Ukraine, while Carter said at his confirmation hearing he was "very much inclined in that direction."

The disagreement between the White House and the Pentagon over strategy in a volatile region represents a rare public dispute within President Barack Obama's Cabinet - and shows that Carter, just confirmed as defense secretary, can be more willing than his predecessors to air his differences with the president.

On Tuesday, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European affairs, acknowledged a "spirited debate" on the issue within the administration, as well as among countries.

Congress, on the other hand, has argued with a largely unified voice that Ukraine needs U.S. weapons to balance the military playing field and deter Russia from getting further involved militarily in eastern Ukraine.

"This aid will be completely ineffective," House Speaker John Boehner spokesman Cory Fritz said of Wednesday's aid package. "The Ukrainians are begging for help, and the Congress is begging the administration to provide the defensive lethal assistance we authorized in December. Our allies deserve better."

The speaker wrote the president last week, urging Obama to approve "the transfer of lethal, defensive weapons systems to the Ukrainian military." The letter from the Ohio Republican was notable not just because it had senior GOP leaders and committee chairmen signed on, but also the top Democrats on the Foreign Affairs, Armed Services and Intelligence Committees.

"I don't see this changing the thinking up here on any side of the aisle," a House committee aide said of the administration's new non-lethal aid announcement. "It doesn't go nearly far enough."

Lawmakers say they're particularly concerned by comments from German Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Wittig, who told The Associated Press that Obama had agreed to hold off on providing weapons in a meeting last month with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"The fact that it appears that the president may have made a commitment to Angela Merkel while she was here, or the German ambassador, to not do that certainly has created a lot of concern on both sides of the aisle," Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Wednesday. "What Secretary Kerry said today is welcome, but we know we need to do far more to be successful."

The bipartisan congressional frustration was on full display in Corker's committee on Tuesday, when senator after senator complained at a hearing that the administration hadn't acted on arming the Ukrainians.

"I guess when all of this is solidified, then it will be too late," Menendez said.

"I don't buy this argument that, you know, us supplying the Ukrainians with defensive weapons is going to provoke Putin," said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).

Nuland emphasized the administration has provided $355 million in foreign assistance to Ukraine and the president's fiscal 2016 budget includes an additional $514 million.

She said that the second Minsk agreement, struck last month between Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany, had seen some removal of Russian separatist heavy weapons, but acknowledged that transfers of Russian tanks and other equipment have occurred over the border to eastern Ukraine.

"If we can see these Minsk agreements implemented, if we can see peace in eastern Ukraine, that offers the best hope for the Ukrainian people. But we will continue to evaluate the situation," Nuland said.

Democrats were nevertheless more supportive of the latest administration move, with Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois calling the new equipment a "timely increase of U.S. military aid."

"I applaud President Obama for sending a strong signal both to the people of Ukraine as well as to the Kremlin," Durbin said in a statement. "But more can and must be done for Ukraine, including defensive weapons as soon as possible."

In December, Congress approved the Ukraine Freedom Support Act, which authorized up to $350 million in defensive weapons to Ukraine. But the administration has not used that authority, which has prompted lawmakers to consider additional legislation to press the issue.

Last month, House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and ranking member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) unveiled a bill to provide $1 billion annually in defensive weapons to Ukraine. And Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, is drafting legislation he plans to introduce soon to ramp up Ukraine aid.

A group of 13 senators is eyeing the appropriations process to provide weapons for Ukraine. The group, led by Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), sent a letter Tuesday to Appropriations leaders, urging them to include funding for Ukrainian weapons that was authorized in the December legislation.

The annual defense authorization bill - one of the few so-called must-pass pieces of legislation - is also being eyed as a possible vehicle for pushing military aid to Ukraine.

Still, any of the legislative options could take months to enact, if at all, which means that convincing the president to sign off on arms to Ukraine remains the best option for those pushing it.

"Passing legislation is always an uphill battle," the aide said. "[But] Congress is not happy where American policy is on this, and that's bicameral and bipartisan."

Austin Wright contributed to this report.
 
 #27
Christian Science Monitor
March 11, 2015
As Kremlin's Nemtsov case unravels, eyes on Chechen connection
The assassination of activist Boris Nemtsov was carried out by Chechens inspired by Islam, according to the Kremlin. But as that claim falls apart, Russian eyes are turning elsewhere.
By Fred Weir, Correspondent

MOSCOW - The Kremlin's case against five Chechens accused of murdering liberal activist Boris Nemtsov for his "anti-Muslim" statements appears to be unraveling at lightning speed.

The alleged shooter, Zaur Dadayev, was likely tortured in custody and denied that he had confessed to the crime, a Russian human rights official said Tuesday after a prison visit.

Winston Churchill once said that following a Russian power struggle is like "watching two dogs fighting under a carpet," and Russians are now filling in the gaps in the official narrative of Mr. Nemtsov's death with a wave of speculation.

Recommended: Vladimir Putin 101: A quiz about Russia's president
Most here believe that Mr. Nemtsov's assassination, a professional hit carried out under the Kremlin walls, is part of a deeper internecine battle. But there's little agreement or clarity on who is fighting who, and why.

Some experts see signs of blowback from Russia's covert war in Ukraine.  

On Wednesday the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta published an unsigned analysis arguing that an extremist challenge to President Vladimir Putin's ruling circle could be underway. The paper suggests that ultra-nationalists, frustrated with Mr. Putin's failure to go all-out in support of eastern Ukrainian rebels and to silence fully his pro-Western domestic opponents, staged the killing of Nemtsov - in order to force the president to take responsibility for an act that to most Russians appeared to have official complicity.

"It's an unmistakable signal to the Kremlin that 'Russian patriots' are tired of waiting," the paper wrote. "[The message is that] If you don't do it somebody surely will. . .  We are the force that protects your weakness and our task is to protect the Motherland from its enemies. . .  Our work must be rewarded."

Free speech backlash

Last Sunday Russian investigators brought the five Chechen suspects to court, and charged two of them with carrying out the killing. The judge claimed that Mr. Dadayev had confessed to shooting Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister.

Then the pro-Putin leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, took to his Instagram account to claim that Dadayev, who had served as an officer in Chechnya's security forces, was a devout Muslim who'd been shocked by the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and may have killed Nemtsov over his outspoken defense of free speech.

"All who know [Dadayev] confirm that he is a deep believer and also that he, like all Muslims, was shocked by the activities of Charlie and comments in support of printing the cartoons," Mr. Kadyrov wrote. "If the court confirms Dadayev's guilt, then he's committed a serious crime... But I want to point out that Dadayev was incapable of lifting so much as a finger against Russia, a country for which he spent many years risking his life."

That framed Nemtsov's killing in a way that let both the Kremlin and Kadyrov off the hook. The very next day Putin awarded Kadyrov with the Order of Honor, which recognizes exemplary public service.

Some speculate that Kadyrov, who has sent large numbers of Chechen fighters to aid east Ukrainian rebels, was behind Nemtsov's murder. Others suggest that Chechens opposed to Kadyrov, or even Russian security officials, may have done it to drive a wedge between the Chechen strongman and the Kremlin.

Kremlin loyalist

Kadyrov was left in near total charge of Chechnya after Russian forces pulled out in 2009 after pacifying the rebellious republic. He professes total loyalty to the Kremlin, yet has infuriated many by running Chechnya as his fiefdom, largely outside of Russian law.

"Chechnya is an enclave where power has been monopolized [by Kadyrov] to such an extent that the place can be described only with great reserve as part of Russia," says Gennady Gudkov, a former KGB officer and parliamentarian turned anti-Kremlin activist.

The theory advanced by Kadyrov is falling apart. Dadayev insisted Tuesday that he had not made a confession during a visit by Andrei Babushkin, a member of the Kremlin's human rights commission. Mr. Babushkin later told journalists that there were signs Dadayev had been tortured.

Meanwhile, Nemtsov's friends excavated his Facebook postings at the time of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and found that, aside from some generic affirmations of free speech, the liberal activist hadn't said anything that would likely rile Muslims.

Chechens have often been blamed for political killings in Russia, without the actual organizers ever being named or brought to justice. Notably, five Chechens were convicted in the 2006 slaying of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya; the crime's "mastermind" and his motives remain unknown.

"Chechens are used as killers, but also as smokescreens," says Andrei Soldatov, editor of the online security journal Agentura.ru. "Kadyrov protects his people, and that's why investigations of these murders stop at the immediate perpetrators and never go up the chain.
 
 #28
Interfax
March 11, 2015
Russian court says Nemtsov murder suspect's guilt not established

Moscow, 11 March: The Basmannyy Court has given Zaur Dadayev, accused in the case of murder of politician Boris Nemtsov, an opportunity to state his position regarding the investigators' request for his arrest, the press-service of the court has said.

"Dadayev was given the right to speak. But he thought that the criminal case was being heard, while the judge said that he needed to state his opinion regarding investigator's request for his arrest," spokeswoman for the court Anna Fadeyeva told Interfax on Tuesday [10 March].

According to her, Dadayev said that he "did not agree with the investigator's opinion".

A spokesperson for the Moscow City Court explained that during the hearing of a petition for preventive measure of pre-trial detention submitted by investigators the issue of evidence and guilt of the accused is not being considered.

[Passage omitted to end: background information]

[On 8 March, a judge at Moscow's Basmannyy court said that Dadayev's guilt is confirmed by his confession. On 10 March, Dadayev told Russian newspaper Moskovskiy Komsomolets that he is "not guilty", complaining that the judge did not allow him to speak during the hearing. For details, see BBCM report: "Suspected killer of Nemtsov tells Russian paper he is 'not guilty'", published on 10 March ]
 
 #29
Ekho Moskvy radio (Moscow)
March 11, 2015
Russian paper names alleged mastermind behind Nemtsov murder

Liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta has disclosed the name of alleged mastermind behind the murder of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov in an article published on 11 March, Gazprom-owned, editorially independent radio station Ekho Moskvy reported on the same day.

The article by the newspaper's section of investigations headlined "Patriots of Russia and its enemies" says that law-enforcers revealed the names of some of the perpetrators and the mastermind behind the crime to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the middle of last week. It is not former deputy commander of the Chechnya-based Sever 141st special motorized regiment of the Russian Interior Ministry's Internal Troops Zaur Dadavyev, who confessed to the murder last week but later claimed he was innocent.

The alleged mastermind is called Ruslan. He previously served in the same regiment and his name is known to many Russian law-enforcers at this point in the investigation, Novaya Gazeta reported. The paper did not disclose his surname, but some bloggers suggested that he might be a relative of high-profile Russian politicians close to Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov.

Novaya Gazeta reports that there is a standoff between "Kadyrovites" (term used to describe Chechens who support the Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov) and security officials over Nemtsov's murder and says that president Putin will, in essence, be forced determine the outcome of the investigation personally.

Meanwhile, mass-circulation newspaper Moskovskiy Komsomolets reported that Zaur Dadayev told human rights activists who visited him in custody said that he is not guilty, adding that he admitted guilt in exchange for his friend's release.

The paper also said that the investigator's version that Nemtsov may have been killed over his critical remarks about Islam after the attack on Charlie Hebdo office in Paris was unfounded, as the suspects started trailing Nemtsov several months before the Paris shooting.
 
 #30
Nemtsov killing exposes cracks in Kremlin unity
By Christian Lowe and Jason Bush
March 12, 2015

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The killing of Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov within sight of the Kremlin has exposed rarely seen tensions between different camps inside President Vladimir Putin's system of rule.

No outsiders can know with any certainty what is happening behind the red-brick walls of the Kremlin, but some of Nemtsov's associates say his shooting is being used by one faction to send Putin a message that they are unhappy and need to be reckoned with.

That would represent a challenge to the foundations of Putin's 15-year-old rule, built on a rigid pyramid of power and the assumption of unshakeable loyalty.

"I think that perhaps Putin, even completely sincerely, was bewildered and even afraid," Vadim Prokhorov, Nemtsov's lawyer, said of the hours after the Feb. 27 shooting.

"Because if you can do that next to the Kremlin, then is it not possible to do it along the route of the (presidential) motorcade?" he told Reuters.

Feeding a mood of frenzied speculation in Moscow, Putin this week canceled a planned trip to Kazakhstan without explanation. A Kazakh official said Putin was ill, while the Kremlin said he was fine and working as usual.

Who is on which side in this rivalry, or even that such a rivalry exists, is impossible to establish with complete confidence because no one has publicly acknowledged any serious differences between camps.

Yet analysts point to signs of tensions between, on one side, the powerful head of Russia's Chechnya region, Ramzan Kadyrov, and on the other, the Russian state security agencies which are Putin's closest associates.

Nemtsov, a 55-year-old former deputy prime minister who had become a vocal critic of Putin, was shot dead as he walked home with his girlfriend after dining next to Red Square. He was the most prominent of a string of Kremlin critics to be killed since Putin came to power; in many cases the gunmen have been jailed but the masterminds remain unidentified.

Many of Nemtsov's supporters said the president stood to gain by removing a relentless critic. Russian officials denied involvement and Putin called the killing a shameful tragedy.

CONFLICTING VERSIONS

A timeline of events in the 13 days since Nemtsov was shot points to a tangle of conflicting accounts, confused messages and rival narratives from usually deferential media.

That messy picture jars with the meticulous stage management normally associated with the Kremlin.

Kadyrov put forward the theory that Nemtsov was killed by a group of Islamists because he had publicly defended Charlie Hebdo, the French magazine attacked by militants in January for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.

That version has been contradicted by evidence, possibly obtained from surveillance, published in Russian media. One paper said Dadayev was tailing Nemtsov months before the Jan. 7 attack on Charlie Hebdo.

Nor has Kadyrov's version of events been backed up by state investigators. They have refused to comment on the alleged motives of the two men they charged over the killing, or the three people they are holding but have not charged.

The suspects in detention are from Muslim Chechnya, but that does not make them Islamists. There have been numerous cases where police have accused Chechens of acting as hired gunmen in high-profile killings.

Usually, when an issue is important to the Kremlin, officials are meticulous in making sure mainstream media outlets follow broadly the same script, according to Russian journalists who have been exposed to this treatment.

Sergei Sharov-Delaunay, an aide to Nemtsov in the opposition movement, said he had a number of theories about the motive for the killing, but one is that it was part of an internal power struggle.

"It might have been some group within the authorities trying to put pressure on Putin, to boost their position, to force even more radical scenarios," he told Reuters.

Kadyrov, the Chechen leader, professes loyalty to Putin but also represents a risk for him. Kadyrov put down an anti-Moscow insurgency in Chechnya, helping Putin cement his rule. In exchange, Putin gave him a large degree of autonomy to run his region as he chooses.

The arrangement has so far been successful for both men, but some observers say Kadyrov is overstepping the mark. Russian media have reported incidents of police in Moscow having run-ins with Chechens, then coming under pressure not to prosecute them because of their ties to Kadyrov.

"If Putin is able to put Kadyrov in his place, then that will sharply improve his standing in his immediate entourage, something he is in great need of," said Georgy Satarov, who was a senior aide to the previous president, Boris Yeltsin.

PALACE COUP "IMPOSSIBLE"

There are signs too that Putin's nationalist allies, who include some senior people inside the government, are getting fractious.

While Putin's intervention in Ukraine has angered the West, for some at home he has not gone far enough.

Many wanted Russia to help expand further the territory held by separatist rebels in south-east Ukraine, to include all of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Large swathes of those mainly Russian-speaking regions are still controlled by Kiev.

The best-known Russian commander among the separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, a former special forces officer called Igor Girkin, has accused Putin's entourage of betrayal.

"The team that the president is now working with is absolutely pro-Western," he said in January on Neuromir TV, a Russian Internet TV channel. "It is the same people that the West is counting on as the fifth column."

In December last year, at a news conference in Moscow, a Reuters reporter asked Putin if, given the pressures from the crisis in Ukraine and the sputtering Russian economy, he felt at risk from a palace coup.

Putin replied: "I can assure you that we don't have palaces, so a palace coup isn't really possible. The official presidential residence is the Kremlin. It is well protected."
 
 #31
The Economist
March 11, 2015
Russia and Chechnya
The Caucasian connection
A pact between Vladimir Putin and his Chechen ally suddenly looks fragile

THE people who killed Boris Nemtsov, a liberal politician, on February 27th, did not expect to be arrested. That was clear from their impudence.

Having shot Mr Nemtsov in the back, in the heart of Moscow, they did not cross the river to leave the city centre. Instead, they circled the Kremlin, passed the Duma, Russia's parliament, and turned into a well-lit, half-pedestrian street. They did not even burn their getaway car.

Such brazen behaviour raised suspicions that the killers might be Chechen hitmen, of the sort who work for Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya, who has hitherto been a big friend (and fan) of Russia's president, Vladimir Putin. Now some are wondering whether the seemingly solid pact between Mr Putin and Mr Kadyrov may have become too costly for the Russian leader.

An ex-warlord, Mr Kadyrov was plucked out of obscurity by the Russian leader and installed as president of the once mutinous Caucasian republic, succeeding his father who had been assassinated. Mr Putin has let Mr Kadyrov ignore Russian laws and settle scores freely. In the past decade, Chechnya has virtually became a separate Islamic state under Mr Kadyrov's rule. He has his own 20,000-strong army, his own (informal) tax system and his own religious laws.

As Russia's strongest regional leader, Mr Kadyrov extends his influence right across the country. His security men have special status in Moscow. After officers of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the alma mater of Mr Putin, arrested a group of Mr Kadyrov's men over kidnappings, torture and extortion in the capital, they walked free. Several nasty murders have highlighted Chechen impunity. When Anna Politkovskaya, a brave reporter, was killed in 2006, the main suspect went to Chechnya and lived near Mr Kadyrov. He was jailed for life after a probe by the dead woman's colleagues, but those who ordered the killing were not named. After the death of Natalia Estemirova, a human-rights activist slain in Chechnya after threats from Mr Kadyrov, nobody was held responsible.

One of Mr Kadyrov's old rivals, Ruslan Yamadaev, was shot dead in rush-hour traffic, next to a public building in Moscow. His brother, who had led a pro-Russian unit against Georgia, was assassinated in Dubai, where police issued a warrant for Adam Delimkhanov, Mr Kadyrov's right-hand man and relative. In 2009 Mr Kadyrov's ex-security guard, who had spoken of torture and executions carried out by his old bosses, was killed in Vienna.

Few were surprised on March 8th when Alexander Bortnikov, head of the FSB, announced that five men had been detained over the murder of Mr Nemtsov, including Zaur Dadaev, an ex-commander of the "North battalion", made up of Mr Kadyrov's irregular forces.

Indeed, the only person who seemed shocked was Mr Kadyrov, who has made odd statements since the Nemtsov killing. On the day of the murder, he wrote on his Instagram account that Western spooks were to blame. After Mr Dadaev's arrest, he spoke out again: "I knew Zaur as a true patriot...he is devoted to Russia and was always ready to give his life for it. Even if the court confirms his guilt...he could not have taken a step against Russia." (Soon after, Mr Dadaev retracted his confession.)

In his Instagram statement, Mr Kadyrov hinted that Mr Nemtsov might have been killed for condemning the terrorist attack on the French weekly Charlie Hebdo. The Chechen leader's own reaction was different: he led a vast rally in his capital Grozny against Charlie, not the killing of its staff.

The Russian security services claim that Mr Dadaev and his men planned and carried out Mr Nemtsov's murder. That raises many questions. Few observers believe that anything involving Chechen fighters occurs without Mr Kadyrov's and Mr Delimkhanov's knowledge. But the same probably goes for the FSB, whose agents trailed Mr Nemtsov. As ever in Russia there are more theories than facts. Some wonder whether the FSB has exploited the killing to settle scores with Mr Kadyrov.

There is no love lost between senior Russian military and security officers and the Kadyrov camp. Russian officers in Chechnya resent the political authority of Chechens who were once their foes. In 2010 Russian forces accused the North battalion of betraying them in a clash with rebels. While swearing loyalty to Mr Putin, on home soil Mr Kadyrov boasts of having won independence not by fighting Moscow but by milking it.

Mr Kadyrov's reaction to the arrest of Mr Dadaev suggests a hard struggle between forces previously united around Mr Putin: the FSB and his Chechen friends. As Novaya Gazeta, a liberal paper, wrote: "Two pillars of Kremlin support bashed their heads and are now moving in the opposite directions, forcing the Kremlin to choose which is a true patriot of Russia."

The stakes are high; Mr Putin is trying to preserve at least the appearance of stability, and this week went ahead with a planned award to Mr Kadyrov. Should the Chechen leader lose Kremlin support, he will be at risk, because he has many blood enemies, say analysts. Mr Putin also needs Mr Kadyrov to keep order in Chechnya.

But the bond is unstable. "The contract between Kadyrov and Putin-money in exchange for loyalty-is coming to an end. Where will Mr Kadyrov's 20,000 men go? What will they demand? How will they act? When will they come to Moscow?" Those rhetorical questions were posed by Mr Nemtsov shortly before his death.
 
 #32
Washington Post
March 12, 2015
Editorial
Russia sends a very clear message

THE AFTERMATH of the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nem�tsov has been chilling even by the sinister standards of Vladi�mir Putin. Ten days after the gangland-style hit on a bridge near the Kremlin, police arrested and charged several ethnic Chechens, including one who was said to have confessed. That man, Zaur Dadaev, turns out to be the former deputy commander of an elite police squad controlled by the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a fierce Putin loyalist. Mr. Kadyrov quickly praised the suspect as "a real patriot of Russia." Mr. Putin, meanwhile, chose Monday to present Mr. Kadyrov with an Order of Honor, along with Andrei Lugovoi, the leading suspect in the 2006 London murder of another Kremlin critic.

If this all seems rather unsubtle, then that may be the point. Mr. Kadyrov, whom the Russian leader installed as Chechnya's absolute ruler and who in turn serves as a Kremlin attack dog, has been a suspect in the unsolved assassinations of other Putin opponents, including of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was gunned down on Mr. Putin's birthday in 2006. In each instance Mr. Putin has shielded and defended Mr. Kadyrov. In the Politkovskaya case, several Chechens were arrested and eventually convicted of the killing in questionable trials that never explained who had ordered the murder.

The suspects in the Nemtsov killing also look like fall guys. According to a member of the Kremlin's official human rights advisory council, three of the five suspects arrested were probably tortured; a sixth was reported to have blown himself up with a hand grenade. Those abused include Mr. Dadaev, who reportedly retracted what he said was a forced confession.

While his former foot soldier languishes in Moscow's Lefortovo prison, Mr. Kadyrov has been offering a far-fetched theory for why he might have acted: Mr. Nemtsov, he says, gave offense with statements condemning the killing in Paris of journalists working for the magazine Charlie Hebdo. Mr. Dadaev, he claimed, is "a deeply religious person" who "was shaken" by this.

To believe this is to ignore Mr. Nemtsov's far larger profile as an adversary of Mr. Putin and the deep connections between Mr. Kadyrov and the Putin regime. Just a few weeks ago, the Chechen leader staged a rally of his gunmen in Grozny's soccer stadium; according to an account in Time magazine, Mr. Kadyrov declared: "We will gladly fulfill any order, in any spot of the world where our president tells us to go." Brian Whitmore of Radio Free Europe reported that a contingent of Mr. Kadyrov's thugs played a prominent role in a recent Kremlin-orchestrated rally against last year's "Maidan" revolution in Ukraine. They carried signs saying, "Putin and Kadyrov will prevent Maidan in Russia," along with photographs of Mr. Nemtsov, who had denounced Mr. Putin's Ukraine adventures.

Of course, there is no proof that either Mr. Kadyrov or Mr. Putin were involved in Mr. Nemtsov's murder, and there may never be. But Russians following the case have gotten a clear message. Anyone who opposes the Putin regime, no matter how prominent, can be killed - and those responsible are more likely to receive a Kremlin medal than a court summons.
 
 #33
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
March 12, 2015
How many Putin's Russias are there?
Mark Galeotti of New York University
Mark Galeotti is Professor of Global Affairs at the Center for Global Affairs, New York University. He writes the blog In Moscow's Shadows (http://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/)

"Putin's Russia" is a convenient term for today's Russia, to distinguish it from the ramshackle anarchy of his predecessor, Yeltsin, and also to name-check the man who now seems to have become synecdoche as much as tsar, the epitome of this contradictory country. And yet - and I say this as someone who has used the term many a time - it is also a dangerous expression, one that fails to capture the complexities of Russian politics. The swirling and still speculative narratives about the Boris Nemtsov murder remind us that while this may not be a political pluralism, after all, it certainly has political pluralities.

First of all, "Putin's Russia" accepts a questionable narrative that the Kremlin itself has so often fought to impose: that Putin is the omniscient, omnicompetent father and strategist of the nation.  This is a powerful and self-aggrandizing myth that the man himself has sought to instill, from the carefully-prepared factoids with which he lards his interviews and public performances (it helps when you generally get to vet or write the questions your tame journalists will ask) to the regular set-piece interventions when he descends on some town or factory to upbraid local administrators and magically bring funds and political capital to resolve some problem.

The sky is high and the tsar is far, went the old Russian proverb, but under Putin the tsar is at once unassailable in his political commanding heights and yet also intimate in his relationship with the people, in his potential nearness. The massive bureaucratic apparatus devoted to reading letters and email from the Russian public and spinning his image to them attests to the importance of such myth making.

Putin is unquestionably the decider, the central figure in a political system that owes more to the medieval court than modern democracy. Individuals, institutions, factions, businesses, cabals and conspirators desperately seek the ear and favour of the tsar, because that can divert massive revenue streams into their pockets, make investigations and rivals disappear with equal speed and rotate national policy on a proverbial kopek.

However, Putin is just one man, and a man who furthermore enjoys his free time and his very distance from the seat of government. After all, these days he essentially reigns in state from his palace at Novoe Ogarevo rather than sitting in the Kremlin. He relies on what people tell him, a bureaucratic camera obscura that shows him a dim and often distorted view of Russia and the world. He is at once master and prisoner of the system he has created.

Thus, Putin's very centrality also fosters a system in which interests and institutions also have massive practical autonomy. When the tsar is absent, or not interested, or not informed, then the boyars can have their fun. And ultimately, it is always possible retrospectively to gain sanction or forgiveness.

So behind the facade of austere centralization, "Putin's Russia" seethes with all kinds of initiatives and activities that at best lack the approval of the centre and at worst actively work counter to the interests and ambitions of the tsar.

The murder of Nemtsov, or at least the circling debates and speculation about the whos and whys behind it, perfectly exemplify this.

Murder most complicated

On the one hand, there are those who believe that not a sparrow falls, but that Putin is behind it, much less an opposition politician. It was in Moscow, it was in view of the Kremlin, so of course it must have been on his orders, or at least at his encouragement.

It may be that this was the case, but it is hard to see quite why him (he was, after all, a non-person on Russian TV, of significance largely to Westerners and metropolitan liberals), why then (it made the protests larger and more serious than they would otherwise have been, and ensures his posthumous report on Ukraine will get more attention than ever), and why that way (for all the talk of the "professionalism" of the hit, it was hardly that). Of course there are limits to trying to understand any regime, not just Russia's, as a purely rational actor, but it's probably the best analytic tool we have.

Many of the alternative hypotheses, though, focus on the multiple and often competitive forces at potentially murderous play.

The "lunatic jihadists" line has looked threadbare from the first, especially given that the ostensible prime mover, Zaur Dadaev, was an officer in Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov's security forces. Maybe Nemtsov was killed on Kadyrov's orders. After all, there was bad blood between then, and Kadyrov has been linked to assassinations in Moscow and beyond, ones that suited his rather than Moscow's interests. For example, his political-military rivals, the Yamadaev brothers, were all murdered, one of them in central Moscow. The Yamadaevs had been cultivated by the GRU, Russia's military intelligence, as a possible counterweight to Kadyrov, and he was clearly having none of that.

Then there is the variant that has the Federal Security Service (FSB) aware of a Kadyrov plot but willing to let it go ahead, so that he could discredit himself in Putin's eyes. Or rogue nationalist FSB officers hatching a plot themselves. Or ultra-nationalists. And so it goes on.

The point is that regardless of where the truth lies - and it is doubtful if we will ever know for sure - what this demonstrates is a state in which power is negotiated between interests more than simply exerted from the top.

Does this matter, when Nemtsov is still dead and Russian troops are still in Ukraine? Absolutely.

First of all, we can better try and understand Russia's likely future actions when we see it as more than just the geopolitical extension of a single ego. Putin is absolutely the decider, but it is others who define the information and advice that flows his way, the choices on which he is asked to rule.

It also affects attempts to influence Russia. Policies meant to change Putin's mind, for example, have to be structured rather differently than ones intended to persuade and empower specific elements within the elite. I cannot help but feel there's a confusion between the two that's creating a degree of incoherence within the sanctions regime.

No one who knows Russia, who has had to deal with Russian companies or bureaucracies, needs to be told about their tendency to scheme and fragment. A country which has intelligence services whose responsibilities deliberately overlap, where the Presidential Administration sometimes seem to act like a shadow government, and which can even swap president and prime minister for four years without meaningfully changing the pecking order is no stranger to fluid, constantly redefined and negotiated power. When we forget that, when we succumb to the strange alliance between Putin's most devoted fans and his most rabid critics, who both elevate him to the status of the sole agent in Russia, we do ourselves and the country a disservice.
 
 #34
Moskovskiy Komsomolets
March 9, 2015
Experts interviewed on whether Putin will run for fourth term
Article by Mikhail Zubov comprising interviews with various leading political scientists: "Putin's fourth term. Has VVP made the decision to run for a fourth term, and when will he announce this?"

The midway point of Vladimir Putin's third presidential term is approaching. At the midway point of his two previous presidencies, it was already known whether or not he would run in the following election. But this time he is keeping quiet on this topic. Why? Has the decision not yet been made, or does Putin not see any sense in making it public? If VVP [Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin] has decided not to remain at the helm, whom could he declare as his successor? And when will clarity arrive? Moskovskiy Komsomolets talked about this with leading political scientists.

Anton Orlov, member of the board of directors of the Institution for the Analysis of the Political Infrastructure: "I think that the president's decision will in many ways depend on the state of affairs in the country by the middle of 2017. I will venture to suggest that, in the event of the presence of a serious disequilibrium in the socioeconomic sphere and the continuation of threats from outside, the president would want to retain power. It is not in his character to hand over affairs in a worse position than the one in which he accepted them.

But there is also another nuance. According to cyclical wave theory, crises repeat themselves with a certain periodicity. Thus the Russian crisis of 2014-15 was predicted by academics as early as the end of President Medvedev's term of office [May 2012]. I do not rule out that Putin knew about this when making the decision to run for a third term. This conclusion can also be drawn from his pre-election articles and from his attempts to diversify the economy and to shore up the social sphere with the May edicts. But the wave method indicates that the next systemic sociopolitical crisis will hit in 2023-24. And in that case, Putin risks finishing his fourth presidential term 'on his shield' [i.e. in defeat, from the phrase to return on one's shield, to go home defeated]. Will his vanity agree to run this risk?"

Aleksey Mukhin, general director of the Political Information Centre: "I will assume that Putin will answer this question finally and equivocally only right before the end of his third presidential term. But these questions have already been put to him, and he gave a preliminary answer, saying that he will run for a fourth presidential term if there will be the political need for this. This means that, for him, the question of retaining power is not a question of personal ambitions (or else it would have been possible to give an answer right now), but a political decision."

[Zubov] That is to say, he has not yet made this decision?

Igor Bunin, director of the Centre for Political Technologies: "I think that Putin has not even thought about this question yet. Even before now he has never liked deciding questions until they come to a head, and right now the economic situation for the country, and the psychological situation for him personally, are so difficult that he has no time for such reflections. Given another course of events, he still might have been able to think about this already now, but in the given situation, it is clear that this is a decision not for 2015 and not even for 2016."

Aleksey Mukhin: "Even if Putin has already made this decision, he is not able to go public with it right now. Whatever it would be, this announcement would immediately disrupt the activity of the elites, the vertical hierarchy of executive power, the state holding companies... When Putin did make public the decision that he was going to run for a new term, the elites immediately relaxed and functionaries settled down, deeming that it was possible not to worry about their positions, that everything would take its course and that the president would unfailingly perform their part of the work. And certain 'cogs' in the state mechanism simply stopped working. When the president made public the fact that he was not seeking a future term - the opponents of the 'course' went into action, which destabilized the political situation. Therefore, the optimum formula, deduced in the light of accumulated experience, is that silence (until a certain moment) is golden.

"Hence Putin will observe this MKhAT-like pause [MKhAT, the Moscow Arts Theatre, most famous for staging the first performances of the plays of Anton Chekhov, whose plays are notorious for their long pauses]."

[Zubov] Until when?

Aleksey Mukhin: "I think that this moment will arrive shortly after the State Duma elections in December 2016. That is to say, in the spring of 2017."

[Zubov] Who could be the successor, if Putin decides to go?

Igor Bunin: "The succession system that was employed during his second term, when he outlined the circle [of potential successors] and spent along time making his choice, is today impossible. The economy is shattered, there is a war in the Ukraine, there are sanctions... Right now, it is necessary to darn holes and not to organize examinations. He could outline the circle of candidates and in the remaining time they could 'burn themselves out."

Anton Orlov: "The successor, in my view, is not known to anyone today, including to Putin. Most likely, we will be witnesses to improvisation, to yet another 'knight's move' [tricky manoeuvre].

Aleksey Mukhin: "No one is actually making any secret of this. The people who have real prospects of succeeding are very few. They are the three 'Ses': Sergey Naryshkin, Sergey Shoygu, and Sergey Ivanov [chairman of the State Duma, defence minister, and leader of the Presidential Staff respectively]. But apart from them, there are a large number of candidates who could offer competition to Putin's nominee and realize the opportunity to become president. Among them, of course, are Dmitriy Medvedev - an extremely symbolic figure for the liberals - and Aleksey Kudrin. His chances are less because of his huge negative poll numbers. But a configuration whereby a serious and unpredictable struggle would be initiated between one of the 'Ses' and Medvedev is entirely possible."

[Zubov] Does anyone from the opposition have any chances of taking part in the battle?

Aleksey Mukhin: "Mikhail Khodorkovskiy would have had chances, but he does not have the right to run for election [because of his criminal record]. The same goes for Aleksey Navalnyy, but he could initiate a high-profile virtual game: He could launch a ballot on the Internet and win an online presidential race. The rest of the opposition will only simulate a battle, without seeking victory. Moreover, the most promising players are after all gathered in the president's team. And the point is not the purge of the political area. There are plenty of talented politicians in Russian politics, but they do not have ambitions of a higher level. They do not want to become presidents and premiers, instead ceding this burden to Putin and his team and reserving themselves room for criticism."

Igor Bunin: "Right now, the opposition has no chances at all. Crimea is ours, Putin's poll numbers stand at 85 per cent, and no alternative to him is in sight. But it is impossible to guess right now how the situation will develop. If the economic situation becomes catastrophic, if there is a real war - anything could happen. It could even happen that Medvedev would find himself in opposition by that time."

Anton Orlov: "At the moment, the opposition does have chances, but only of participating. And it is necessary to spell out: Which opposition are we talking about? The establishment opposition? But these people are necessary only in order to create the semblance of a battle. Each of them is satisfied by today's state of affairs, each of them plays his own role and derives satisfaction from this.

"If one is talking of the nonestablishment opposition, at the present time we are seeing a crowd of people who are not connected with one another in any way, trust in whom has been undermined. They are tarnished by a train of criminal proceedings, links with foreign countries, or their experience of working in government in the nineties. In 2011-12, they were united by a common enemy and supported by the fact that Putin's poll numbers had begun to weaken. But since the Crimean consensus, they have not had an individual against whom it would have been possible to unite."

[Zubov] What would a Putin fourth presidential term be like for Russia, and what would the term of another president be like?

Igor Bunin: "A fourth term would be an obvious overkill. It is possible to run a country more or less normally for 10 years. This is calculable. After ten years, isolation from reality begins, because all this time the country's leader has effectively been isolated. He is too cut off from ordinary life and simply loses touch. This is why I think that a fourth term for Putin is not the best option for the country.

"It is even more difficult to talk about another president. He is not visible right now, and we do not know as a result of what he will come to power: as the result of appointment by Putin, as the result of a social explosion... The biggest danger is that after Putin's departure and under a weak president there could begin an equivalent of the "battle of the Diadochi" [war between Alexander the Great's would-be successors], as a result of which the great empire of Alexander of Macedon was torn to pieces."

Anton Orlov: "For Putin, this will be a battle to defend the country to the maximum extent against external threats and centrifugal sentiments.

"In the event of the advent to power of an 'appointed' successor, the Venezuelan 'Chavez-Maduro' scenario looks to me the most obvious. The successor would enjoy significantly less authority, both among the elites and among the people, and the real battle for the presidential chair would unfold in 2024, when it would be impossible to hide mistakes behind authority, that is to say, precisely on the eve of the next systemic crisis."

Aleksey Mukhin: "If Putin remains, his method will continue: to change course depending on the circumstances - external, political, and social circumstances... Russia will respond to challenges with the same serious elegance as today, and life will continue to be merry and unpredictable.

"If the president is not Vladimir Putin, the situation could change. The pressure on the new man from outside would be unprecedented, monstrous. He would be compelled to take a strictly defined course, one that is under the control of the 'civilized world.' The internal pressure would also be great, because he would be continually compared with Putin, who by that time could have been turned into a folk hero. To be honest, I do not envy the person who will replace Putin in 2018, if this happens."

[Zubov] And external pressure is not being exerted on Putin? Have our Western friends resigned themselves to the fact that this is useless and given it up as a bad job?

Aleksey Mukhin: "They put pressure on Putin, they demonize him, and they attempt to sap the motivation of his support group. All this is done, and will be done, in an adult way. But it does not work. This has already been verified by time. But what will happen in the case of a successor - that time has yet to show."

Anton Orlov: "I think that Vladimir Putin, like any living person, feels pressure on him, in the case in question, from his counterparts in Western countries. But I form the impression that this pressure is somewhat indecisive. I get the feeling that many of his counterparts literally feel timid in front of Putin. And he too senses this. In my opinion, Putin was far more nervous as a result of the internal pressure at the beginning of his third term."
 
 
#35
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
March 12, 2015
Middle Eastern oil players lose out to Russia in Asia
As Russian oil supplies increase, Gulf states are forced to drop prices to remain competitive.
Anna Kuchma, RBTH

Russia boosted oil supplies to China, Japan and South Korea by 10 million tons in 2014, increasing the proportion of oil exports to Asia from 7.2 percent to 8.7 percent. The additional supplies from Russia come at the expense of Saudi Arabia, whose share in the Asian oil market decreased from 26 percent to 24, Bloomberg reports.

Other Arab oil-producing countries have also reduced their shares in the Asian oil market of the Asia-Pacific Region (APR). Qatar has reduced its oil supplies by 7.4 percent, while supplies from Kuwait decreased from 7.2 percent to 7 percent.

In the next five years, the flow of Russian oil to China could increase by 15-20 million tons, according to experts.

Russia has accelerated the reorientation of its exports to Asia as its diplomatic relations with Europe continue to deteriorate. Moscow is currently prioritizing relations with China, South Korea and Japan and Russian officials say that the growth potential of these economies is several times higher than that of Western Europe, ensuring a long-term growth market for Russian oil.

"Russia has long been interested in Asian markets, because they are willing to pay for energy there more than in the West, the price of oil is on average higher by $5 per barrel," said Kira Yukhtenko, an analyst at brokerage company FBS.

Asian countries are also interested in long-term cooperation with Russia. From the point of view of international politics, Russia is a more reliable partner for them than the Gulf countries, which have strong ties with the United States, Yukhtenko added.

Saudi Arabia is fighting back, however, offering substantial discounts for Asian consumers. State-owned Saudi Arabian Oil Co. lowered the official price for the March delivery of its Arab Light crude to Asia by 90 cents. This the lowest price offered by Saudi Arabia over the past 14 years.

Iran and Iraq have also joined the race to the bottom. A barrel of Iraqi Basra Light oil will now be sold in Asia for $4.10 per barrel less.

"Competition among suppliers is beneficial for the Asian countries, as it allows them, in particular China, to achieve the best prices in the contracts," said Yelizaveta Belugina, head of the analytical department at FBS. She also noted that Russian oil is transported by land, unlike oil from the Middle East, making delivery cheaper and more reliable.

Grigory Birg, an analyst with Investcafe, agrees with Belugina's assessment.

"In Saudi Arabia, oil production costs are lower than in Russia and in theory they can offer a greater discount," Birg said."However, supplies from Russia still remain competitive; Russia has a powerful infrastructure that allows us to deliver large volumes of both directly to China and to transport it by sea to the rest of the APR countries, on a very short route."
 

 #36
Financial Times
March 12, 2015
China and Russia - allies not frenemies in central Asia
By Diana Gapak, Daniyar Kosnazarov and Gavin Bowring
Diana Gapak is a Russia/CIS analyst. Daniyar Kosnazarov is a head of Central Asia and Caspian Region department, Geopolitics and Regional Studies Division, The Library of the First President of Kazakhstan. Gavin Bowring is a researcher at Asean Confidential, a research service at the Financial Times.

Often likened to being "between a rock and a hard place", Central Asia's relatively isolated position has required it to maintain consistent and balanced good relations with two giant neighbours, China and Russia.

Nevertheless, its high degree of integration with Russia has jolted the region's local economies, the result of their twin exposure to the protracted Ukrainian crisis and the slump in commodity prices, manifested through tanking local currencies and reduced inflows of remittances from workers abroad.

Anxiety has further gripped post-Soviet states in recent months, with the recent 35 per cent slump in the Azerbaijan manat and a 34 per cent devaluation in Turkmenistan, often considered the economy with the least direct exposure to Russia. Concerns are spreading in Kazakhstan of an additional devaluation of the tenge (following last year's 20 per cent decline) amid calls for early presidential elections.

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan arguably face even greater pressure, with both GDP and fiscal revenue highly dependent on remittances from Russia and the transit of Chinese manufactured goods into Russia/Uzbekistan. Neither has a promising outlook; the World Bank currently forecasts remittances to decline 4.9 per cent and 17.8 per cent in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan respectively this year, while Kyrgyz export volumes to Russia slumped 33 per cent year on year last year - also partly the result of a concerted crackdown on Kyrgystan's re-export industries.

Uzbekistan, the region's most densely populated country, has also seen an 11 per cent decline in its som currency over the last year, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects inflation to remain in double digit figures as a result.

Diversifying remains a challenge

The twin factors of low oil prices and Russian weakness have further pushed Central Asian states to diversify their economies. Nevertheless, their ability to integrate into global manufacturing supply chains remains hampered by their relative geographical isolation, problematic infrastructure and mostly low population densities.

As an example, Japanese companies have not expanded manufacturing facilities into Central Asia as they have rapidly done in Southeast Asia, due to this lack of competitiveness. Accumulated financial exposure to Central Asia and the Caucasus by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), Japan's main policy lender, currently amounts to only �642bn, barely 3 per cent of its total �21,106bn exposure across Asia, and most of this has also gone towards energy-related services.

Moreover, the declining rouble itself further stymies the potential for local manufacturing, given Russia's much larger industrial economies of scale. Car dealers in Kazakhstan, for example, have slashed retail prices by an average 30 per cent in recent months to compete with a surge in Russian imports.

Separately, private sector development and local innovation are difficult to implement even in the region's more advanced economies, due both to the dominance of the state sector in most countries and the lack of access to credit and capital markets.

China's role in widening the economic base

Diversification is thus largely dependent on an expected massive surge in Chinese investment into the region which, in theory, should help build local industrial capacity and manufacturing supply chains. On paper at least, China has committed to investing $16.3bn into multiple infrastructure projects across Central Asia.

Central Asian states, particularly Kazakhstan, have also embraced the idea of acting as "transit hubs" for manufactured goods between China and Europe. Kazakhstan's vice president is known to favour Chinese investment and the Astana headquarters of Kazakhstan Temir Zholy, the state-owned railway firm, beams televised pictures of the China-Kazakhstan partnership in the sector onto the streets.

In addition to collecting transit fees on transported goods, this is also expected to result in some manufacturing spillover. A recent Kazakhstan-China investment forum resulted in agreements to establish 20 JV manufacturing projects in sectors such as construction, transport, logistics, and food production.

Less-developed economies such as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which also face greater domestic political uncertainty, are seeking Chinese investment into infrastructure. One major flagship project is a mooted Kyrgyz-China rail project, although this faces both political risks in Kyrgzstan's democratic environment, as well a clampdown on Kyrgzstan's re-export trade. The deputy finance minister of Tajikistan, meanwhile, announced that China plans to invest $6bn into the Tajik economy over the next three years.

Turkmenistan also aims to become a regional transit hub in which China has a special investment interest. Kazakhstan in late 2014 inaugurated the first direct railway link connecting Iran with western Kazakhstan via Turkmenistan, to more fully diversify from Russian transit routes to Europe. Positioned as a halfway point, this new route also enables Turkmenistan to act as a gate for traded goods simultaneously between Russia, other post-Soviet states, and southwest Asia.

According to Shohrat Kadyrov, a researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Science, Ashgabat is not only a major provider of gas, but also acts as an interlocutor between China and neighbouring states in the negotiation of supranational infrastructure corridors that aim to facilitate economic integration. In this regard, Turkmenistan is using the prospect of retaining its gas market share in China by investing in additional pipelines, which in turns allows it to bargain for infrastructure investments to facilitate the transit of Chinese-produced goods, arguably at Russia and Kazakhstan's expense.

The importance of Russia

Media attention has mostly focused on the surge in aspirant Chinese investment in the region coming "at the expense of Russia", with the economic downturn luring Central Asian governments towards China's trade and investment prowess.

Nevertheless, it is also clear that Russia remains a crucial partner and ally not just for Central Asian states themselves, but for ensuring the stability of China's investments in the region, in particular its energy supplies.

Indeed, despite the recent pain caused by Central Asia's economic alliance with Russia, countries such as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan appear to be making what amounts to a political decision to join the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), which currently includes Kazakhstan, Belarus and, most recently, Armenia. This comes despite the clear evidence in Kazakhstan's case that its participation in the EEU has not yielded significant economic benefits, as well as the concomitant exposure to Russian domestic political cycles.

Russia-led structures such as the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), beyond bland gestures of Sino-Russian geopolitical alliance and common interest, are acquiring real significance through the emphasis on maintaining, expanding, and modernising Russia's network of military bases in countries such as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Armenia. Russian bases remain strategic for the security of Central Asian governments themselves, since nearly their entire domestic military budgets go to Russia.

In this respect, Sino-Russian co-operation is maintained out of a common interest to keep the Central Asian region stable. Chinese investment is required to buffer stagnant inward foreign direct investment flows into Central Asia from Russia.

However, Beijing needs Russia to provide security in a politically complex region subject to periodic unrest, as a means to ensure its massive investments into the region's energy and infrastructure sectors. This is particularly crucial given the security imperatives in China's own restive Xinjiang province, through which all energy supplies pass.

This pattern of Sino-Russian cooperation is arguably being replicated elsewhere, such as in the ambitious pending construction of the Nicaragua canal, whereby China will finance the majority and Russia will provide military and other forms of security during the construction process.

While media reports often emphasise the "historical distrust" between China and Russia, evidenced by long-drawn and sometimes acrimonious negotiations over bilateral gas supply contracts, it is clear that China does not aspire to undermine Russia's sociopolitical and security influence in the region, while Russia in turn is not resisting China's economic encroachment into the region. It might be a stretch to call the relationship symbiotic, but it is certainly mutually tolerant.

 #37
Washington Post
March 11, 2015
Interview: Carnegie Corporation of New York's Deana Arsenian on U.S. - Russia relations, and making scholarly expertise more accessible
By Joshua Tucker

A key goal of The Monkey Cage is to make political science research accessible to wider audiences, and one of my primary research areas is in post-communist politics.  Naturally, then, I have been quite interested in ongoing efforts by Carnegie Corporation of New York to provide a forum designed to spread insight from scholars regarding current U.S.-Russia relations.  Deana Arsenian, vice president of the International Program at Carnegie Corporation of New York, who oversees the Corporation's work concerning Russia and Eurasia, was kind enough to answer some questions about the forum, its goals, and what's she learned from it on the subject of U.S.-Russian relations.

Q: Carnegie Corporation has a long history of engagement on U.S.-Russia relations.  What's your current focus?

The Corporation's history and interest in Russia date back to the end of the Second World War. Our current Russia-focused work aims to advance three specific objectives:  help sustain the U.S. analytical communities' Russia-relevant work; create venues for serious and results-oriented discussions of policies and interests between U.S. and Russian experts; and facilitate academic networks between younger U.S. and Russian academics working on critical global challenges.

Q: What's changed and why this forum?

The obvious change is the significant deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations, as well as in Russia's relationship with Europe, due to the tragic developments in Ukraine, although the downturn in these relationships started before the Ukrainian crisis. Some in the U.S. and Europe now argue, moving forward, that the best way to deal with Russia is through containment of Russia's further expansionist aspirations, which calls for more assertive policies toward Russia. Others take a different view and suggest that Russia's actions today might have been influenced by decisions made by the U.S. and Europe over the past two decades and that in light of the history, engagement with Russia on issues of mutual concern is the better option. Given this sharp and divisive debate, and the fact that we as a foundation have been supporting scholarship on Russia and U.S. policy toward Russia, we decided to offer a platform to the expert community to voice their views. Carnegie Forum: Rebuilding U.S.-Russia Relations features many experts whose work is supported by the Corporation, with the latest set of articles debating the possible consequences of the U.S. arming Ukraine in its fight against Russia-backed separatists.

Q: What are some of the expert contributors to the site saying, especially about the situation in Ukraine?

The unfolding of the Ukrainian crisis will be a subject of dissertations down the road, but for those watching it in real time, it was akin to a train wreck that no one was able to stop. The violence within Ukraine, an unthinkable bloodshed only a few months ago that has already taken more than 5,600 lives, has been difficult to contain for a variety of reasons, but top among them is the different perceptions among all the key players (Ukraine, the EU, the U.S., Russia, and the Russia-backed separatists) about intentions, actions, and roles. The articles by experts offer various views on what could and should be done to deescalate and, as importantly, to begin the critical task of reconstructing Ukraine. With so much focus on the fighting in eastern Ukraine, the economic collapse of the Ukrainian state, which will make political consolidation so much more difficult, is not getting adequate attention or financial backing. Rebuilding the Ukrainian economy will remain an enormous challenge and not one that is likely to progress without Russia's involvement.

Q: What are some avenues where shared interests might resolve the current impasse, or is it too late?

The expert articles offer views on the shared interests. My own take is that it is not too late, but close to it. If the latest ceasefire fails, the likelihood of the U.S. arming Kiev will increase, which in turn will increase the prospects of a major Russia-backed offensive against the Ukrainian forces in the disputed region. In the worst outcome, the world could face a NATO-Russia confrontation in the heart of Europe. But even if the worst scenario could be avoided, Ukraine is likely to remain the source of a deep rift between Russia and the U.S. Partly because of Ukraine, but also due to various actions taken by both sides since the end of the Cold War, the U.S.-Russian relationship has reached a point where it cannot be fixed any time soon. At best, it can be managed with the avoidance of a military confrontation and prevention of even deeper divisions that would complicate the already difficult challenge of addressing critical global threats. One point I want to stress is that no other country matters as much to as many U.S. foreign policy priorities as Russia. As we have seen historically, if Russia is not part of the solution, it is usually part of the problem. But if we look at Iran, North Korea, nuclear reductions and nonproliferation, the elimination of chemical weapons from Syria, the fight against international terrorism, and even U.S./NATO interests in Afghanistan, Russia had been largely on board with U.S. policies, at least until now.

Q: What recommendations would you give to scholars who are interested in making their research more accessible to people trying to shape foreign policy debates?

The Corporation is dedicated to helping bridge the academic-policy divide across international peace and security issues. It is a challenge that must be addressed since so much of the expertise that resides in universities does not get to policy communities, largely because it is not easily usable. There are also few incentives for academics to produce policy-relevant products. On the demand side as well, while attempts have been made by policy officials to draw on academic expertise, these efforts have not been systematic. So, the Corporation is focusing on this issue through the Bridging the Gap program, which uses various interventions to close the divide. I urge the readers to check out Carnegie.org for more details on this.
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In the interest of full disclosure, I want to note that I have participated in the Carnegie Forum: Rebuilding U.S.-Russia Relations and have also recently published an essay commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation of New York in their Carnegie Reporter publication. The decision to write this post was entirely mine alone and not in any way a condition of my professional relationship with the Carnegie Corporation of New York.