#2
Rossiya 1 TV (Moscow)
March 15, 2015
Film "Crimea: Road to the motherland" - Putin text

[Film starts with Putin's speech as follows. Total duration approximately 2.5 hours, of which Putin's comments come to a total of approximately 50 minutes. Narrative in-between Putin's comments is omitted but the gist of it is provided in square brackets to provide continuity. Narrated by the film maker, Rossiya 1's Andrey Kondrashov]

[Putin] I invited the heads of our special services and the Ministry of Defence to the Kremlin, and set them the task, let's be upfront about it, to save the life of the president of Ukraine.

[Film takes up the story]

[Putin] Our electronic surveillance services, in effect, began to lead his motorcade. It became clear that Viktor Fedorovich Yanukovych would soon run into an ambush. He would simply have been eliminated.

[Kondrashov] Do I understand you correctly that it took you personally the whole night, the operation to rescue Yanukovych?

[Putin] Yes, absolutely correct, that was the night from the 22nd to the 23rd [February 2014]. We finished at about seven o'clock in the morning. As we parted, I will not hide it, I told all my colleagues, there were four of them: The situation has unfolded in Ukraine in such a way that we have to start work on the return of Crimea to being part of Russia, because we cannot abandon this territory and the people who live there, for them to fend for themselves, under the steamroller of nationalists. So I set specific tasks. I said what we should do and how we should do it, but straight away I underlined that we will do so only if we are absolutely convinced that this is what the people themselves, those who live in Crimea, want. The people had to be given the opportunity of self-determination, to express their will. That was our goal. I am telling you this totally frankly, absolutely honesty. I thought to myself: If that is what people want, then so be it. That is to say, either they are there with more autonomy, with rights of some kind, but as part of the Ukrainian state - so be it then - but if they want a different way, then we cannot abandon them.

[More from the film: Street violence against riot police]

[Kondrashov] Everything is changing right before our own eyes. Blood starts to flow. There is shooting at the Maydan. What was Yanukovych like at the time? He was bound to ring you, to ask for a meeting.

[Putin] Yes of course. The first thing to say about it is that he rang me on the evening of the 21st. He told me that he was going to go to Kharkiv to take part in a regional conference. I won't hide it, I expressed my point of view that in such a situation it was better not to leave the capital. He said: I'll think about, I don't know yet, I'll ring you again, we'll speak again.

[More from the film on this subject]

[Putin] Then he rang and said that after all he had decided to go. The only thing I said was at least not to pull out the law and order forces any further. Oh, yes, yes, I know that, he said, only then to leave and pull all the law and order forces out.

[More from the film on this subject]

[Putin] Instead, as you know, on the same day the opposition seized the presidential administration and the government. After that, it was now the 22nd, Viktor Yanukovych phoned again. He said that he was in Kharkiv, he would like to consult, to meet me, to talk things over on the development of the situation. I said of course I was ready, welcome, wherever you want.

[More from the film on this subject]

[Putin] It became clear to us, as well as reports were coming in by that time, that preparations were being made not just to capture him. It was preferable to those who had carried it out, this coup d'etat, physically to eliminate him. You know, if there's no man, there's no problem, as a well known figure in history used to say. In fact, subsequent developments confirmed that. If he were not there, then the opposition forces would have found it easier to fulfil the tasks that they had set themselves.

[More from the film on this subject]

[Putin] I proposed a meeting for example in Rostov, for him not to waste time on flights. I was ready to fly there myself. There was another phone call, and Viktor Fedorovich's guards said they had major problems and could not fly out. Frankly, I understood then that something out of the ordinary was afoot, not quite normal. Later we learnt that by that time his motorcade had already come under fire, Yanukovych's motorcade, as had Prosecutor-General Pshonka, one of whose bodyguards had been wounded. That is, by that time there had already been a coup d'etat and, in fact, an operation had begun by the opposition to capture or destroy him.

[More from the film on this subject]

[Kondrashov] So, he broke out of Donetsk and headed out somewhere, where - he probably did not know himself.

[Putin] Quite. He went to Crimea. He went to Crimea. When, however, I was shown the map of his movements -

[Kondrashov] You could see the route he was taking?

[Putin] Whenever he rang, our electronic surveillance services, in effect, began to lead his motorcade. Every time, we would get a fix on his position. When, however, I was shown the map, it became clear that he would soon run into an ambush. Moreover, according to our intelligence there were heavy machine guns in place there, so as not to waste time talking.

[Kondrashov] So they were not even going to hold him.

[Putin] There are grounds to suppose that they would simply have eliminated him.

His bodyguards were then told that they could go no further.

The situation was quite curious. The fact is that it was all being done via open communication channels. We ourselves were using it in order to understand where he is. Before, however, we got a fix on him on the ground with technical devices, as we did not  know where he was, we had made plans to extract him straight out of Donetsk, by land, by sea and by air.

[Kondrashov] So, you had given orders for the various subunits to gear up for Yanukovych's rescue.

[Putin] Yes.

As he was already a long way away from Donetsk, the boats needed quite a long time, some five or six hours, to approach the coast.

[Kondrashov] So, you told him to move towards the coast. That is to say, you warned him that there might be danger ahead, his life might be in danger.

[Putin] Yes. They turned around, we gave them target indication, as to where they needed to go, on the coast, in a motorcade, and we dispatched a helicopter group with a Spetsnaz team aboard.

[More from the film: search team airborne for 90 minutes]

[Putin] And at a certain point, it became clear that the helicopters - they could not find them - the helicopters were running out of kerosene and had to turn back.

[More from the film: helicopters were about to fly back when Yanukovych's convoy turned on their headlights]

[Kondrashov] How did they know?

[Putin] Well, they had been told to do so.

[Kondrashov] So, once again, you had told them.

[Putin] Of course. So, the pilots spotted them and picked them up.

[More from the film: a reconstruction]

[Putin] That was not the end of the story, however, because Viktor Fedorovich decided that he did not want to move to Russia and he straight away asked to go to Crimea. So, he went to Crimea. So, for a few more days, while all the events to do with the coup unfolded, he remained on Ukrainian territory. A few days later, however, when it became clear that there was no longer anyone to negotiate with in Kiev, he asked, and we took him to Russia.

[Kondrashov] When you were told that he had been rescued, how did you feel?

[Putin] How did I feel? The fact that we saved his life, the life of his family members, I think it's a good deed, a noble one. I do not want to judge his work. He said: I could not sign the order to use weapons. I could not bring myself to do it. Can he be blamed for that? I do not know. I do not consider I have the right to do so. Whether it was good or bad, the consequences of inaction have been grave. That much is obvious.

[More from the film: Dissenters "hunted down" by "nationalists"; "inhuman", "fascists", "bandits", a speaker says]

[Putin] When we saw an upsurge in extreme nationalism, it became clear that for the people who lived in Crimea particularly, very hard times might lie ahead. It was then, let me stress, that we thought we could not simply leave them, abandon people in trouble in the situation.

[Kondrashov introduces Sergey Aksenov, now head of Crimea]

[Kondrashov] Where did Aksenov spring from?

[Putin] I do not know. I had not known him before. I had not met him or known him. I won't hide it, I was given his name and told  that the deputies [MPs] had put him forward, that the Crimean parliament would like to have this man.

[Kondrashov] The militiamen were very keen on Aksenov as their real leader. They must have influenced the deputies.

[Putin] Perhaps. I don't know. They are the locals, they live in Crimea.

[Kondrashov] True. It was he who was then forming companies out of them.

[Putin] One of them, by the way, was in fact the chairman of the Crimean parliament. When I asked him, what do you think of him, he told me: He's a Che Guevara. We need someone like him now.

[More from the film: "Heroic" Berkut riot police back in Crimea]

[Putin] I am sure that in view of the population's ethnic composition in Crimea, things would have been even worse there. We had to take action to prevent this kind of negative developments, to prevent a tragedy of the kind that followed in Odessa, when dozens of people were burnt alive. On no account could we allow bloodshed.

[More from the film: Berkut's story goes on]

[Putin] The trick ["focus"] of the situation was that whereas formally, the opposition was primarily backed by the Europeans, we knew full well, we did not just realize but knew, that our American partners and friends were the real puppeteers. It was they who helped train the nationalists, they helped train the militant detachments, with training both in Western Ukraine and in Poland, as well as in part in Lithuania. What did our partners do? They aided and abetted a coup d'etat. That is to say, they took action in the form of force. I do not think that this is the way to carry on in the international arena in general and with regard to the nations of the post-Soviet period in particular. After all, these nations are not yet fully formed ["neustoyavshiyesya"], fragile and should be treated carefully, their nationhood, their constitution, their legal system. All this fell by the wayside, was trampled on. The consequences have been grave, as you can see. Some agreed, but others do not want to accept this. So, the country ended up split.

[More from the film: "Techniques" used by protesters illustrated; video of violence against Berkut - firebombed, other injuries; all evidence of a plot]

[Putin] Before taking the action that was taken in Kiev on 21 February, 22 February, one should have thought about the consequences for the country of what was being done by the people who aim to resolve political problems in this way. It's easy to turn everything upside down. One's partners' legitimate interests, however, must be taken into consideration, if we want to treat each other with respect.

On the subject of historical injustice, we have always called Sevastopol a city of Russian naval glory, and call it that still. Where was Sevastopol and where was Russian naval glory? Everything was upside down.

[More from the film: Sevastopol glorified. Its mayor Aleksey Chalyy speaks]

[Putin] In the minds of the Russian people, Crimea is associated with the heroic episodes of our history. It applies both to the period itself during which Russia acquired these territories, and the heroic defence and then retaking of Crimea and Sevastopol during World War II. Crimea is part of Russian history, Russian literature, art, the tsar family. The whole fabric of Russia's history is interwoven with Crimea one way or another, that is to say.

[More from the film: More from Aksenov, about their defence of their local HQ during a Crimean Tatar rally]

[Putin] Some of the Crimean Tatars were under the influence of their leaders, some of whom are professional, let me stress [wags his finger], defenders of the rights of Crimean Tatars, human rights. For some of them, this situation is not very good, because they suddenly become not very much needed. Crimean Tatars are not a homogeneous mass. There are different people there. The local militia was very active. It in particular relied on some of the Crimean Tatar population. The militia involved Crimean Tatars in joint work. There were Crimean Tatars among the militia, too.

[More from the film: A Crimean Tatar "militia" leader talks about their hardship when Crimea was part of Ukraine]

[Putin] We do not want to hurt anyone, be they Crimean Tatars, the Germans who live there, the Greeks, the Armenians, the Russians or the Ukrainians. We want them to be one family. So, in view of the problems, historical problems, with which the Crimean Tatar people have been living, we consider it to be our duty to resolve these problems as we join forces with all the people who live there. We do not distinguish them along ethnic lines at all. They are all now Russian citizens. In that sense, I was pleasantly surprised when, during those days, those events, I was speaking to Crimeans. When I asked how many Ukrainians there were there, they said, somewhat wide-eyed: We have no distinctions. One family.

[More from the film: Local enthusiasm for Russia, against Maydan]

[Kondrashov] In your view, what was the role of the local militia in the Russian Spring that came?

[Putin] It was huge. Their role was huge and I would say one of the main. The fact is that, let me repeat again, from the outset, when we parted at 7 a.m., I told my colleagues: We will do all this only if we see that people want this. And, of course, we have to rely on the local militias. At some points, you know, we even had to hold them back. In fact, they were almost always at the forefront.

[More from the film: Another militia leader talks about the move to take control of Simferopol airport. Then help came in the form of truckloads of Russian soldiers - the "polite green little men" - the Black Sea Fleet Spetsnaz]

[Putin] We had never thought about the taking ["ottorzheniye"] of Crimea from Ukraine, ever. When, however, the events associated with the coup, the armed and anticonstitutional seizure of power, began, and the people there were in danger of persecution by nationalists, then, of course, we, I at any rate, immediately thought about it. The first thing that I did was to instruct the presidential administration to carry out a closed [secret] public opinion poll about the mood in Crimea in relation to possible accession to Russia. It turned out that those who wanted to join Russia there accounted for 75 per cent of its population total. As I have said, this is our historical territory, Russian people live there, they are in danger, we cannot abandon them. Let me repeat that the ultimate goal was not Crimea's seizure or some kind of annexation. The ultimate goal was to give people the opportunity to express their opinion on how they wanted to live in the future. All my instructions had to do precisely with the need to be careful, with reliance - I said from the very outset - with reliance on the people whom today we can call Russian patriots, with reliance on them, their activists, with help for them, to back them up with much larger forces, in view of the fact that there were more than 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers, well armed, in Crimea.

Let me also tell you that we did not even need to avail ourselves of the Federation Council's permission to deploy our troops to Ukraine. I was not economical with the truth there because, under the relevant international treaty, we had the right to have 20,000 military personnel, even a little more, at our military base in Crimea. Even with the numbers we added, as I have just said, we were still short of 20,000. Since we did not exceed the number of personnel at our base in Crimea, we, strictly speaking, did not even violate anything and did not deploy additional contingents there.

[More from the film: Inside Crimea's parliament with speaker Vladimir Konstantinov]

[Putin] We needed to safeguard the work of the representative body of power, the parliament of Crimea. In order for this parliament to be able to meet and to act as required by the law, people needed to feel safe.

Let me draw your attention to the fact that the Crimean parliament was absolutely legitimate, fully fledged representative body of power in Crimea, which was formed long before all sorts of complex, tragic events started to happen. So, these people met, voted and elected Crimea's new head of government, Sergey Valeryevich Aksenov. The then lawful incumbent, President Yanukovych, confirmed him in that post.

So you see, from the point of view of the laws of Ukraine, absolutely everything was complied with.

Of course, tongues can wag all they like and interpret these events whichever way they like. From the point of view of the law, however, it was all watertight ["komar nosa ne podtochit" is the Russian proverb used].

In order to create conditions for the people, for them not to fear for themselves or their families, we needed to ensure their safety, which is what we did.

[More from  the film: Defence Minister Sergey Shoygu about his actions at the time, the "brand" (Kondrashov) of "polite men", as Shoygu says they were instructed to be. This theme is enlarged on]

[Putin] You know what our advantage was? It was that I was dealing with it personally. Not because everything I do is right, but because when things are done by the country's top officials, subordinates ["ispolniteli"] find it easier to work. They can sense it, they understand it and they know that they are obeying orders rather than managing themselves, for when the state structure is in ruins or is half-ruined, then orders are either not issued at all or they do not reach the subordinates, or their legitimacy is highly questionable.

[More from the film: Action to block the border led by Cossacks]

[Putin] They are generous people. They work hard, fight hard and play hard. They were very disciplined, there was teamwork, they were very responsible. And, then, they worked together with the locals, the militias. In that sense,  they were one family. People were going there because their hearts and souls willed them to do so ["po vole serdtsa i po zovu dushi"].

[More from the film: More about the Cossacks and the volunteers]

[Kondrashov] There were reports that Ukraine was bringing in Grads [multiple rocket launchers].

[Putin] Yes. We spotted that through aerial reconnaissance. They brought in multiple rocket launchers. So, we had to deploy ours, which, in the event of action of some kind, would have destroyed theirs on their first salvo.

[More from the film: More on the military component of the operation]

[Putin] Crimea is not some territory unknown to us. Crimea is historically Russian territory predominantly populated by Russians. We have to act this way because they themselves have put us in this position, under these conditions. In effect, we were left with no choice even. We simply had to protect these people.

[More from the film: Bastion missile system then deployed]

[Kondrashov] So, that was also your decision.

[Putin] Yes. This cannot be done by anyone else's decision, except that of the supreme commander-in-chief. Bastion is a defensive system. It is a coastal defence system, for territorial defence. It is not designed to attack anyone. But yes, it is an effective, state-of-the-art, high-precision weapon. For the moment, no-one else has this kind of weapon. It is probably the most effective coastal defence system in the world at present. So, yes, at a certain point, in order to make it clear that Crimea is reliably protected, we deployed these Bastion coastal systems there. And, in addition, we deliberately deployed these systems so that they could be seen from space.

[More from the film: Bastion's capability talked up]

[Kondrashov] When you talked to Western leaders, was it clear to you straight away they would not interfere in the Crimean crisis militarily?

[Putin] Of course not, that could not be immediately clear, which is why I straight away, at the first stage of work, had to guide our armed forces appropriately, and not simply guide them but give direct instructions, orders regarding the possible action of Russia and our armed forces whatever the developments.

[Kondrashov] Does that mean, what you're saying now, that we put our nuclear forces on combat alert, too?

[Putin] We were ready to do that. Indeed, I was speaking to colleagues and told them directly, exactly as I am speaking to you now, absolutely openly, that this is our historical territory, Russian people live there, they are in danger, we cannot abandon them, it was not us who carried out the coup d'etat, it was done by nationalists and people with extreme beliefs, you backed them. Where are you, however? Thousands of kilometres away, but we are here and this is our land. What do you want to fight for there? You don't know? We know and we are ready for this. This is an honest, open position. That's the way it is. So, I don't think that someone had the desire to turn all of this into some world conflict. We were not going to look for trouble. They simply forced us to take such action. Let me repeat, we were ready for the most unfavourable development of events, but I proceeded from the premise that it would not come to that. And there was no point in stirring up the situation unnecessarily.

["Later, we were told in the Ministry of Defence that during those days, some military experts suggested Vladimir Putin, as supreme commander-in-chief, use all available means to demonstrate Russia's readiness to protect its national interests. The president replied: Despite all the complexity and dramatic nature of the situation, the Cold War has ended and we don't need international crises like the Caribbean one. Moreover, the situation did not call for such actions, and this would be contrary to our own interests. As for our forces of nuclear deterrent, added the president then, like always they are in a state of full combat readiness," Kondrashov says.]

[More from the film, including about how a US warship was buzzed]

[Kondrashov] Was it your decision to buzz the cruiser?

[Putin] No, it was not mine. It was they, hooligans ["raskhuliganilis"]. I was not even told anything about it.

[Kondrashov] In effect, you were making a fortress out of Crimea.

[Putin] We made Crimea a fortress, both from the sea and on land.

[More from the film: About high concentration of Ukrainian forces]

[Putin] The fact that there was such a high degree of the territory's militarization was obvious. There were 20,000-odd men, fully mobilized and fully armed. There were, I think, 43 S-300 launchers, 18, up to 20 Buk launchers, plus other heavy weapons of this kind, including armour. It packed a formidable punch. Let me repeat again, and I mean it, we had never planned the kind of action that happened there. It all in effect had to be done from scratch ["vse proiskhodilo prakticheski s lista"]. We acted on the basis of the situation as it unfolded at that particular point in time.

[Kondrashov] What was the way in which you gave orders, instructions on how our forces in Crimea should act?

[Putin] In order to ensure that the people who lived in Crimea could express their will as normal, we needed to prevent bloodshed, to put it plainly, and to make it impossible for the armed forces, armed groups, of the Ukrainian army stationed in Crimea and the law enforcement forces to prevent people from the expression of their will. We needed to disarm the military formations of the Ukrainian army and the law and order forces, or persuade them not to stand in people's way as they expressed their opinion and in fact join us in this.

[Kondrashov] Were you convinced from the outset that it would work?

[Putin] I had no doubt.

[More from the film: Much popular support; action to disrupt Ukrainians' secure comms]

[Putin] It should be admitted honestly that we had by then done everything for them no longer to have special [secure] communications there. That is why we have the GRU Spetsnaz. It knows what has to be done and how to do it. That is why they used open lines but we, why be coy about it, monitored all their exchanges, and were able to sense both the inside condition of their military units on the ground, and their commanders in the capital. They were all trying to duck personal responsibility.

[More from the film: A Yalta biker leader talks about an operation to make a Ukrainian border guard unit take their side. A Ukrainian general, Koval, was captured, his "bloody orders" to hand. Eventually, the border guards went over to Russia]

[Putin] Imagine a commander on the ground. He is a military man. He follows orders from the commander above him, rather than some kind of independent ["samostiyna", Ukrainian], unclear, amorphous structure, which is responsible for nothing that it's doing. So, the Ukrainian servicemen in Crimea found themselves in a very difficult situation. They did not want bloodshed. They did not want to serve those who'd seized power, the nationalists. In effect, they were also helping us.

Let me repeat, they were not any kind of agents of ours. We did not know them at all. They were people who were doing this simply because their heart and conscience told them to do it.

[More from the film, including about how Gen Koval went on to start a war in the Donbass as Ukraine's new minister of defence. But in the first few days, some 20 Ukrainian military units went over to Russia in Crimea]

[Putin] In order to block and disarm 20,000 well-armed men, you need a specific set of personnel, and not just quantity but also quality-wise. We needed specialists who know how to do it. So I gave orders and instructions to the Ministry of Defence, I won't hide it, for the special forces of the Main Intelligence Directorate  plus naval infantry and airborne troops to be deployed there, as if to reinforce the protection of our military facilities in Crimea.

[More from the film: "Thousands" of Russian soldiers were then redeployed to Crimea, but still with 3,500 to spare before the limit would be reached]

[Putin] It was no mean feat, because we needed at all costs to prevent bloodshed, and as I have already said we needed to ensure that people could freely express their will.

[More from the film: Khersones-Korsun is where Christianity began to spread in Russia. A church was chosen as the venue for negotiations with the Ukrainian military]

[Putin] One naval commander would be replaced by another, then by another again. One of the commanders flatly refused to side with the Crimean authorities, shall we say. I asked for veterans to work on him.

[Kondrashov] You personally asked.

[Putin] Yes, I personally asked.

[Kondrashov] Were there other suggestions?

[Putin] Well, it was suggested more force should be used.

I simply told our military straight: send in the veterans. It must be said that they [military], however, met my suggestion with scepticism. They said: Come on, they're granddads, what can they do? So, these granddads went in and talked to him to explain things till seven in the morning. At any rate, at 7 a.m. he took a pen and paper and tendered his resignation.

[More from the film: Kondrashov with Black Sea Fleet Commander Adm Aleksandr Vitko, including about action to block the Ukrainian navy in Sevastopol's harbour]

[Putin] I must say that the lads, the Ukrainian soldiers, conducted themselves in a very dignified manner. They tried to remain faithful to the oath, but no-one knew to whom they had sworn that oath, because the state [government] was no longer, the president was toppled, who, by the way, at that point in time was the legitimate supreme commander-in-chief of the armed forces. And who is giving the orders? Those who seized power? Someone absolutely illegitimate?

[More from the film]

[Kondrashov] You were bound at the time constantly to be telephoned by Western leaders. What did you tell them?

[Putin] There were many phone calls. Our American counterparts during those talks were saying directly that we were blocking Ukrainian military units. I said that there were no longer any military units but there were groups of people, servicemen. They are unarmed, they are in no danger, and we will do everything in our power for no incidents associated with the use of weapons to happen now. It was no armed forces any longer, though. It was now something else.

[More from the film: Kondrashov with Crimean prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya]

[Putin] We had information that acts of terrorism might be carried out. Some of Ukraine's radical leaders, including in the forces, were ready to carry out acts associated with major loss of life.

[More from the film: Another militiaman, another Night Wolf biker speak]

[Kondrashov] The world is in shock. Our army is very different now.

[Putin] Well, that is the result of long hard work. Remember the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, those grave, bloody events in the North Caucasus. The army was half-decomposed. It is now very different. Over the years, we have done a lot, from the point of view of re-equipment, training and, what matters most, it really matters most, the soldiers' inner conviction that what they are doing is important and exceptionally useful to the state. And if that is so, they are not afraid to lay all that they have at the altar of the fatherland, including what is the most precious of all - their life.

[More from the film: How a Ukrainian naval infantry unit, in effect part of a NATO force, was stormed in Feodosiya by Russia's Spetsnaz. Other military stuff]

[Kondrashov] And, by the way, what the West thought of the referendum also changed.

[Putin] At first, they thought that perhaps we might not go ahead with it. Then, when they realized that there was no stopping us, they began to put forward various proposals. That is to say, they were in every way trying to prevent the reunification of Crimea and Russia, by any means, in any form, as any option. They evidently wanted once again to hold Russia back, as far away from its interests as possible. That can hardly be done. If we are honest, it is impossible.

[Kondrashov] In your view, did everything go off smoothly?

[Putin] As a whole yes, except perhaps a minor incident when, during the deployment of the first portion of our units there, there was a slight delay, they did not understand something and turned the transport back. When I learnt about that, I drew the minister's attention to that. His reply was: I turned them back. I then had to ask him: On whose authority? The answer came back in an instant: They are already on their way again. That very second. I have no quarrel with it, or questions to it. The fact is that after the instructions were issued, for the next 20 hours or so I was not in contact with the Ministry of Defence as I was busy with other matters, legal, political and international, so the impression might have been created that perhaps I'd changed my mind. The fact is that to assume this kind of responsibility is hard. Not a single failing, I stress not a single one, had been allowed to happen, though.

It was work that was far from simple. I mean the scale on which it had to be done, the use of diverse forces ["raznorodnyye sily i sredstva"], such as at the first stage, let me repeat, the GRU's Spetsnaz, the Airborne Troops, the naval infantry, then other units. Not only did the Ministry of Defence itself work in a highly professional and well coordinated manner. All other services, too, both the Foreign Ministry and the legal services, or those that deal with domestic policy issues, it was all coordinated so clearly, tightly and in a timely fashion, that I sometimes wondered: Was it really us? Everything, however, worked, the way it worked.

We know what the results of the referendum are, and we did what was our duty to do.

[More from the film: look back to Putin speech to Federal Assembly on 18 March 2014, where he spoke about how Russia had been "robbed" of Crimea with the fall of the Soviet Union]

[Kondrashov] You said Russia was robbed.

[Putin] I thought it up myself, that phrase. It was heartfelt, what I wrote. In the evening, I gathered my colleagues, the speechwriters, and dictated the final phrases to them, namely: I hereby table the law to incorporate Crimea and Sevastopol before the Federal Assembly and request your approval.

[Film: archive excerpt from that speech]

[Kondrashov] Were you aware at that moment how historic it was?

[Putin] What I can tell you is that if all your time is taken up by thinking that you are making history in some way, that you are a very important person of some kind, it very quickly puts an end to positive work. If, however, you have the internal conviction that what you are doing is right, that what you are doing is for the benefit of the country and to defend the interests of the people of Russia, if you have that internal conviction, it works.

[Kondrashov] Is that why it worked in Crimea?

[Putin] Yes.

[Archive: applause in parliament, to cheers of "Russia! Russia! Russia!"]

[Kondrashov] If suddenly it was all to happen again, would you do the same with regard to Crimea?

[Putin] Of course. What do you think! How could one have acted in any way differently? I would never have done it if I had not thought that it is our duty to do precisely this. And when we are told about sanctions and so on, sanctions are bad, sanctions should target those who do coups d'etat and those who help the coup plotters. We, on the other hand, acted in the interests of the Russian people and of the whole country. To exchange that for money, to exchange people for some kind of benefits, to exchange people for the chance of a contract or a bank transfer is absolutely impermissible. If we allow ourselves to act in line with this logic, we will lose everything, we will lose the whole country. It does not mean that we should not respect international law and our partners' interests, for example. What it means is that all partners, too, should respect Russia and its interests.

["Afterword" filmed "on the Crimean anniversary", in surroundings which suggest a Kremlin hall; undated]

[Kondrashov] Collective greetings to you from the people of Crimea, our compatriots.

[Putin] Thank you.

[Kondrashov] Vladimir Vladimirovich, when we met on the previous occasion, we could hardly have imagined what changes would have happened over this short period of time.

[Putin] Why not? Why couldn't we have imagined it? On the contrary, it could well have been imaged.

When we acted in a consistent and quite a tough manner in Crimea, my assumption was that the kind of tragic events we are witness to in the Donbass were possible. And it was precisely so as to prevent such a turn of events that we had to take the action necessary to ensure free expression of the will by the people of Crimea. It was for that purpose that we had to boost our military grouping in Crimea, for the numerical strength of our military to enable conditions to be put in place for a referendum to be held, moreover a bloodless referendum. I am convinced that had we then not done it, events in Crimea would have taken a turn similar to that which we are witness to today in the Donbass, if not an even more severe scenario, although, it would seem, could there be anything more severe and more tragic than what is happening right now in Luhansk and in Donetsk.

[Kondrashov] With Crimea part of Russia, what is your vision of Crimea's future?

[Putin] The first thing that has to be done is to resolve socioeconomic development issues. The main issues are of a structural nature and infrastructure. That bridge has to be built, the bridge to link Crimea to the Caucasus, to the territory of the Russian Federation. That can and must be done as soon as possible. Conditions have to be created to develop the energy sector, specifically Crimea's own energy sector. Crimea's recreational base has to be restored to its former glory, for the people of Russia to be able to enjoy the unique nature and climate of the peninsula. And, what is no less important, in my view, the humanitarian component of Crimea as an inalienable part of our culture and cultural heritage has to be recreated. So, when all this is done, we'll be able to say that we not only have resolved this issue from the point of view of reunification, but we'll be able to say that we have done what every Russian citizen, including Crimeans, expects us to do.

[Kondrashov] And what would you like to wish the people of Crimea today?

[Putin] Happiness.

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#3
RIA Novosti
March 17, 2015
Russian state TV's Crimea film attracts audience share of 40 per cent - research

Russian state television's heavily promoted drama-documentary about the annexation of Crimea, "Crimea: The Road to the Motherland", attracted an audience share of 39.6 per cent of viewers aged 18 and over, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported on 17 March, quoting data from market researchers TNS Gallup Media.

The programme was shown on official state channel Rossiya 1 late on the evening of 15 March, the eve of the anniversary of the disputed Crimean referendum. Made by Rossiya 1 news presenter Andrey Kondrashov and running for almost three hours, it included two interviews with Vladimir Putin, in which Russia's president said he had been ready to put Russia's nuclear weapons on standby during tensions over the crisis in Ukraine and Crimea, and alleged that Russians in Crimea were in danger before Russia annexed it.

According to TNS Gallup Media, the programme attracted a rating of 12.7 per cent. The audience share figure denotes the number of people aged 18 and over who watched the programme expressed as a percentage of the total number of people watching TV at that time, while the rating figure denotes the number of people who watched the programme expressed as a percentage of all Russians aged 18 and over.

In Moscow, the audience share was 40.6 per cent, while the rating was 14.7 per cent, TNS said. "According to Rossiya 1's data", the programme generated "one of the highest audience interest indicators for any television project over the last few years", RIA Novosti said.

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 #4
Russia Insider
http://russia-insider.com
March 17, 2015
Crimea Documentary Reveals How Close Russia Came to Shootout with NATO
"Crimea. A Way Home" is an important public diplomacy message from Russia on the Ukraine crisis
By Gilbert Doctorow
Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow.
 
To mark the first anniversary of the referendum in Crimea that paved the way to reunification with Russia (or annexation by Russia, depending on your point of view) on 15 March, Russia's state Channel One released a remarkable documentary film entitled "Crimea. A Way Home." A version of this film on Youtube with English subtitles can be found here.

Although Russian presenters on the international channel RT feared that the film would be dismissed in the West as a propaganda piece, in fact there was keen interest among mainstream Western media in the week leading up to the film's release thanks to a promotional trailer with a snippet, lasting several minutes, from the interview which host of the film Andrei Kondrashov took with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In the complete film, Putin's interview segments have been deftly interwoven with reconstructions of scenes from the Crimean Spring with interviews people from all walks of life in Crimea who comment on their experiences before, during and after reunification with Russia. The trailer focused on the decision Vladimir Putin took to intervene in Crimea. His words set off a feeding frenzy in Kiev and among pro-Ukrainian media around the world, who immediately said: "we told you so! The Crimean Spring was engineered from outside by the Russian government."

In fact, as we see from the full film, the argument presented from Moscow is quite different: Putin explains the dramatic circumstances of the night of 22/23 February, in the hours immediately following the coup d'etat in Kiev, when President Yanukovich, fearing for his life, abandoned the capital and went by automobile cortege to Kharkiv, then to Donetsk where his security detachment made contact with the Kremlin and called in assistance to save his life. The professionally led hunt by Maidan forces for Yanukovich, the weapons they deployed to assure his physical elimination, were followed in real time by Putin and his closer advisers using radio geo-positioning equipment, and left no doubt in their minds that the putsch in Kiev had been orchestrated by a very capable state, namely by the USA. It was at this point that Vladimir Putin says he decided to intervene and save what could be saved in the situation, the population of the Crimean peninsula who were clearly in the path of destruction from the radical Ukrainian nationalists and their overseas backers, given that detachments of Pravy Sektor were already on the ground in the southeast.
 
Western reporting of the film has focused almost exclusively on the segments of interviews with Vladimir Putin, ignoring the historical reconstructions and testimony of lesser people. One nugget was picked up in yesterday morning's issue of The Guardian and has been repeated today by other media with greater attention to the implication. This was Putin's mention of his determination to put Russia's nuclear arsenal on active alert depending on how the game in Crimea played out. This is a very clear public diplomacy message which we ignore at our peril: Russia is ready to go to nuclear war over Ukraine.

Another message of the public diplomacy was Putin's explanation of where the 'little green men' (as Russian military in Crimea were dubbed at the time by Western media) came from, what skills were demanded of them and what orders they were given to carry out. The point is to how the bloodless takeover of all Ukrainian army and navy installations worked, involving as it did the peaceful surrender of more than 20,000 Ukrainian troops on the peninsula and the decision of 18,000 of them to go over and join the Russian side. This was the result of a very well developed plan that was executed to near perfection. The Russian plan was to cut off the Ukrainian garrisons from all communication with Kiev, thereby sparing them the painful test of loyalty to their higher authority as orders rained down from Maidan. The second operative tactic was psychological warfare, to prepare the troops to disarm rather than fire on their compatriots. Here we see exactly how formidable the new Russia can be when put to the test, when Russia's red lines are crossed, as happened in Ukraine from the day of the coup d'etat in Kiev.

I tried to direct attention to one more key message of Putin's public diplomacy in this film in the brief appearance I made yesterday evening on RT's broadcast marking the Crimean referendum:

Here I brought up the segment on Feodosia, which is the sole military installation on the peninsula where Putin says they faced the threat of a shoot-out with the garrison. The reason for this exceptional problem was the presence on the Ukrainian side of troops speaking English and carrying NATO IDs. To my knowledge, this is the first mention of a possible direct armed clash with NATO forces in Crimea during the transition of power. And it is the most relevant to where we are today.

Now that UK and US trainers are being dispatched to Ukraine, now that joint military exercises with NATO are being prepared there are in place all the preconditions for yet another 'false flag' provocation such as have marked turning points in the Russia-West relationship over the past year. First there was the sniper fire on Maidan that 'justified' the coup d'etat. Next came the downing of the Malaysian airline, which was instantly placed at Russia's door and justified severe sanctions. Should snipers successfully kill NATO soldiers on Ukrainian soil, we may easily expect the next lurch towards war with Russia which may be unstoppable.

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 #5
Two-thirds of Russians say country benefits from reunification with Crimea - poll

MOSCOW, March 18. /TASS/. Russia has benefited from reunification with Crimea, two-thirds of Russians say one year after the event - suggests a public opinion poll by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VCIOM) made public on Wednesday.

The main advantages of the peninsula's reunification with the Russia, according to those polled, are: access to the sea, the possibility of free stationing of the Black Sea Fleet naval bases (say 36% of respondents), additional resort territories (21%), as well as restoration of historical justice - the return of formerly owned territories (23%). The vast majority of Russian citizens - 85% - are certain that Crimea has returned to Russia for good. Only 4% of respondents believe that issue of the peninsula's territorial jurisdiction may be considered again under certain circumstances.

Most Russians are convinced that the world community will sooner or later recognize Crimea as Russian territory: 27% of those polled say this will happen in the nearest time, 43% - within several years, 15% - in 10 years or more. Only 8% of respondents say this will never happen. The overwhelming majority of respondents (89%) are certain that Crimea definitely should not be returned to Ukraine for lifting Western sanctions. This view is shared equally by supporters of different political parties, people of different ages, urban and rural residents.

Crimean residents themselves have benefited from reunification with Russia - say 80% of respondents. Only 9% of respondents have a different view. Half of those polled (49%) have proposed to simply ignore the statements by some politicians who do not recognise the fact of Crimea's accession to Russia.

According to three-quarters of Russians (74%), Crimea and Sevastopol should receive the federal government's support equally with other constituent entities of the Russian Federation. Only 15% of respondents say Crimea and Sevastopol should receive financial assistance from the state budget as a matter of priority, compared to other regions of the country.

The share of those who see mostly negative consequences of Crimea's reunification with Russia is 14%. Those who expressed this view are primarily concerned over Western sanctions, the country's economic crisis, big spending of the budget funds on the support of the new Federation entities.

The VCIOM poll conducted on 21-22 February involved 1600 people in 46 regions of Russia. The statistical error does not exceed 3.5%

 #6
Moscow Times
March 18, 2015
East Ukrainian War Refugees Seek Solace in Crimea
By Ivan Nechepurenko

YALTA, Crimea - As Sergei Gabuyev, a kiosk owner in rebel-held Donetsk, watched a street fight between two groups of insurgents devolve into a sea of AK-47 fire in front of the city's central bus station one evening, he knew it was time to leave.

As had been typical among Ukrainians before the annexation, Gabuyev used to spend his summer vacations in Crimea, nestled somewhere in the verdant slopes of Yalta or the idyllic Yevpatoria steppe.

Gabuyev now lives in Crimea permanently, having abandoned his home and business as Donetsk slid into chaos.

"When I left Donetsk, I expected to return in one to two months' time, but at this point it looks unlikely that I'll be able to go back for the foreseeable future," Gabuyev, 40, told The Moscow Times.

"Life is difficult in Crimea, but it beats the constant shelling in Donetsk," he said.

Like many Donetsk refugees The Moscow Times spoke with during a recent visit to Russia's newest region, Gabuyev's loyalties are to Moscow.

Many among this group interpret the peninsula's recent history and the current events unfolding across Ukraine in a manner consistent with the official Russian narrative. Most insisted that they'd formed their opinions independently, having enjoyed access to both Russian and Ukrainian media.

Still, many Donetsk refugees preferred not to discuss politics, indicating a sense of discomfort and unease, perhaps particularly while speaking with a Moscow-based reporter.

While many reports of life in Crimea - particularly among those fleeing from the conflict zones of east Ukraine - are optimistic, the peninsula is not without its controversies.

At least seven Crimean residents have been abducted in the past year. Their fates remain unknown. Another person disappeared, only to turn up dead and bearing physical signs of torture, London-based advocacy group Amnesty International said in a statement Tuesday.

Wednesday marks one year since President Vladimir Putin delivered a landmark speech in the Kremlin, declaring Crimea's accession to Russia's federal fold and launching a turbulent era of Russian relations with the West that many pundits have described as a new Cold War.

Russian flags have replaced Ukrainian ones, but the cityscapes, seasides and lush scenery that define Crimea remain largely unchanged. One thing that has changed is the demographic of the peninsula's population.

Thousands of war refugees have fled the rebel-held Donetsk and Luhansk regions seeking safe harbor in a region recently decried by senior U.S. State Department official Victoria Nuland as "suffering a reign of terror."

In February, Crimea's First Deputy Prime Minster Mikhail Sheremet said some 6,500 refugees had fled to the peninsula from Ukraine's war-ravaged regions in the preceding two months alone, Ukraine's Kharkiv news agency reported.

Several months prior, in August, Sheremet said the total number of east Ukrainian refugees in Crimea was "at least 30,000-50,000," the Novosti Kryma news agency reported.

Today, the streets of Yalta, Sevastopol and Simferopol are bustling with cars bearing Donetsk and Luhansk license plates. If you see a premium sedan or a luxury SUV, chances are you'll find a pair of Donetsk plates attached to it.

"These are representatives of the Donetsk elite," said Gabuyev, who now makes ends meet driving taxis. "Many of these people already owned property in Crimea, and they were among the first to abandon their homes when the fighting began."

With its booming coal industry, Donetsk was traditionally one of Ukraine's wealthiest regions. It was widely acknowledged as the stronghold of Ukraine's richest oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov.

Rustam Temirgaliyev, who had been serving as deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of Crimea prior to Russia's annexation, told business daily Vedomosti on Monday of a power struggle between the incoming Donetsk elite and the long-standing Crimean elite when the refugees first started to spill into the peninsula, before it became part of Russia.

The lifestyles of most refugees are a far cry from those of the Donetsk glitterati. Gabuyev shares a tiny Yalta flat with several others who fled Donetsk.

Once a week, he leaves Crimea for the coastal Ukrainian city of Odessa to visit his 4-year-old son, who lives with Gabuyev's sister. When asked about the boy's mother, Gabuyev remained evasive.

Together, Gabuyev and his roommates pay 25,000 rubles ($404) a month for the flat. But this is the off-season price. He fears that when summer begins and prices surge as Russians spill into the peninsula to vacation as he once had, he'll no longer be able to swing the rent.

Still, Gabuyev counts himself among the lucky ones. Many of his fellow refugees can't even afford the luxury of a cramped, shared apartment, instead being relegated to sleeping in their cars.

Aside from soaring on-season prices, Gabuyev and the others may soon face a whole new threat: inhospitable bureaucracy. As Crimea continues to adapt to life under Moscow's rule, Russian migration legislation is beginning to take hold, which will require many Ukrainian citizens to somehow legitimize their residential status - a process that most can expect to be costly and time-consuming.

Under the relevant law, citizens of Ukraine can stay on Russian territory for no more than 90 days within an 180-day period. In order to work legally, foreign citizens must obtain a temporary residence permit, a work permit or a special license known as a work patent.

A governmental decree passed last July that eased the bureaucratic burden for Ukrainians seeking refuge in Russia does not extend to the Crimean Peninsula. Thus, Ukrainians who have sought refuge there can either get a work patent according to the normal protocol, or opt to relocate to mainland Russia - though Moscow, St. Petersburg and Chechnya are also closed to them.

Obtaining a work patent can cost up to 20,000 ($324), as the process requires a comprehensive medical screening, Russian language tests and a plethora of fees. Once the patent is issued, the foreign citizen must continue to pay up to 2,500 rubles each month in fixed income taxes.

These newfound obstacles have led a number of Crimean businesses to fire refugees from Donetsk and Luhansk, Lyubov Vlasenko, head of a refugee center in the town of Kerch, told Ukraine's Hromadske radio station.

Makeshift refugee shelters have been established by volunteers in every major city in Crimea. Refugees are offered help looking for work, temporary shelter, food and clothing. Several Soviet-style sanatoriums and modern hotels have likewise offered their rooms for free to those in need, at least for the off-season period.

"Before this whole political quagmire, we never really knew who in Crimea was Ukrainian and who was Russian; the distinction simply did not exist for us," Yana Ivleva, a volunteer in one such refugee center in Alushta, told The Moscow Times. "So for us helping these refugees is just like helping our own neighbors."

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 #7
Almost million people who fled Ukrainian war found homes in Russia

MOSCOW, March 18. /TASS/. Almost a million people have fled the war zone since a military conflict began in the east of Ukraine, Chief of the Federal Migration Service (FMS) Konstatin Romodanovsky told TASS on Wednesday.

He put the number of the people from the south-east of Ukraine, who had rushed to Russia in a bid to flee the war zone, at 940,000, including 300,000 who asked for temporary asylum, and 170,000 who were given residence permits in Russia.

"All of them are eager to join a state program for resettlement of compatriots; around 60,000 ethnic Ukrainians have already joined," Romodanovsky said.

Around 480 temporary accommodation centers are available for Ukrainian citizens in Russia now, and many Ukrainian citizens have been staying at their relatives' in Russia. We are able to ensure support to such a number of refugees; we have been remitting money, provided by the state, to regions where the refugees are staying," the FMS chief said.

Last year Russia's financial support to the victims of the Ukrainian conflict exceeded the UN assistance to Ukraine fivefold, Romodanovsky said.

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 #8
BBC
March 15, 2015
Life in Crimea: One year on from Russia's takeover
By John Simpson
BBC World Affairs Editor, Simferopol

A year ago, reporting from Simferopol about the takeover of Crimea by Russia was a tense and difficult business.

At any moment, as the gangs of activists who had flooded across the border swaggered through the city streets, violence seemed on the point of breaking out. Today, Simferopol is completely peaceful.

There are no soldiers on the streets, and no one stops us as we set up our television camera in the main square, overlooked by its statue of Lenin, or asks us for accreditation.

The reason is simple: the transfer of Crimea from Ukraine to Russia has become an accepted fact.

No return

When a few pro-Ukrainian supporters gathered the other day at the statue of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko in Simferopol to mark the anniversary of his birth, they were quickly moved on.

Three demonstrators were arrested - apparently for wearing Ukrainian colours - tried, and sentenced to a few hours' community service.

"I was fired from work today because it was considered it wasn't appropriate for my job," said one of them, Leonid Kuzmin, a young pro-Ukrainian teacher. "We will obey the law, but we are going to fight it in the courts."

"Crimea will never return to Ukraine," says the region's prime minister, Sergei Aksyonov. "The decision has been made once and for all."

The decision he means was the referendum a year ago which gave overwhelming endorsement to those who wanted Crimea to return to Russian control.

Mr Aksyonov, a burly, jovial figure who is often alleged to have been involved in gangland activity in the past, admits that he was not told beforehand of the plans by Russia's President Vladimir Putin to take back Crimea early last year.

But he became a significant figure in what Western countries regard as effectively a coup d'etat.

According to an opinion poll in February conducted by pollster GfK, 93% of the people asked said that they were happy that Crimea was under Russian control.

Such an overwhelming figure might look distinctly Soviet, or even North Korean; but the polling organisation which conducted it was Ukrainian, not Russian.

And even though plenty of people no doubt thought it would be better to give the safe answer, the general sense of peace and quiet on the streets seems to indicate that they accept what has happened.

Russian majority

The demographics of Crimea go a long way towards explaining why things are so calm here a year on.

The most recent figures indicate that something like 60% of the population are ethnic Russians, 25% ethnic Ukrainians, and 12% Crimean Tatars.

Given that many pro-Ukrainians have left, the Russians are probably proportionately in even more of a majority.

In our interview, Mr Aksyonov was reassuring.

"Neither the Crimean Tatars nor the Ukrainians have any reason to worry," he said.

"The only people who need to worry are those who are trying to destabilise the situation."

But that does not ease the anxieties of either group.

The Tatars used to have their own parliament here, but last September it was abolished, and the building closed down.

In the street outside it, I talked to a former Tatar MP, Zair Smerdlyav.

"Today," he said, "various actions are being taken against the Tatar people: kidnappings, killings, arrests and fines."

Major change

At the local Tatar television station, ATR, the staff feel that they are in constant danger of being closed down, though they continue to report what they regard as violations of human rights.

But the authorities clearly prefer to keep the situation here as calm as they can.

In one school I visited for instance, the main medium of instruction has been changed from the Ukrainian language to Russian; but if parents want their children to continue learning in Ukrainian, the school accommodates them.

Thirty-one classes are now taught in Russian, and nine in Ukrainian. Some children are also taught in the Tatar language, if their parents choose.

"We leave politics completely out of the school environment," says headmistress Valentina Lavrik. "Tolerance is the main principle in our team."

Going round from class to class, it was certainly my impression that this was genuine.

But there was no doubt that a major change had happened to the school, just has it has to Crimea as a whole.

Political boost

In the library there is now a big, smiling photograph of Mr Putin, and his office has devoted a number of works of Russian literature to the school.

The history taught here is Russian history, not Ukrainian.

Crimea has always looked and felt Russian, and it has played an important part in the history that is now taught at its schools.

That is certainly the way the great majority of Russians feel. Getting it back has given Mr Putin a huge political boost at home.

The outside world's response has made life a little harder for people here.

There are now some empty shelves in the otherwise full and attractive supermarkets.

You cannot use Western credit cards here or use an international phone.

Mr Aksyonov's government will have its work cut out to help the businesses of Crimea or to attract foreign tourists to what is one of the most attractive parts of Europe.

But for him, and for the Russian government which planned the seizure of Crimea, that is a price thoroughly worth paying.

And in the meantime, there will be no agreement on the basic question: was it a coup d'etat or a justifiable, democratic decision by the people here?

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 #9
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
March 18, 2015
A beautiful place caught in geopolitical games: Expats give their views on Crimea
In the year since Crimea was absorbed by Russia, foreigners living in the country have had to make adjustments due to sanctions and rising geopolitical tensions. Has Crimea affected their day-to-day lives?
Elena Bobrova, Ilya Krol, RBTH

It has been a year since Crimea became part of Russia. RBTH asked several Western expats in Russia about Crimea and if the geopolitical tensions between Moscow and the West have affected their lives. Several people declined to answer the questions, citing the complex nature of the situation, but three people responded. They are:

Elizabeth Bagot, 27, is an American from Kansas who works as a professional translator. She has lived in Russia for 4.5 years and is based in Moscow.
Bryan McDonald, 35, is an Irish journalist. He has lived in Russia for five years and is based in Sochi.

Richard Winterbottom, 31, lived in Russia for eight years teaching English before recently moving to London.

RBTH: In your opinion, have attitudes towards foreigners in Russia changed in the year since Crimea's absorption by Russia?

Elizabeth Bagot: Yes, attitudes towards foreigners appear to have changed since the annexation, not so much on a person-to-person level as on a rhetorical and abstract level.

I have heard a lot of anti-American rhetoric on social media and in discussions with Russians, but the same holds true for anti-Russianism from my American friends. Never once have I been treated differently on a personal level in Russia. This is probably because I speak Russian fluently and don't loudly express political opinions.

Bryan MacDonald: Yes, definitely. The usual Russian warmth and curiosity towards west Europeans is gone. However, it isn't nasty yet in any way.

That said, I believe it's pretty bad for Americans. I've also noticed that Russians are less interested in the EU Europe as a palace to visit/work.

RBTH: What is your attitude towards Crimea? Do you feel strongly either that it should be part of Ukraine or Russia?

B.M.: I believe in the principle of consent. It should belong to whatever the majority of local people want it to belong it. In this case, it appears to be Russia. But another referendum, with proper international monitoring, would be a good idea.

E.B.: No, I don't have a strong opinion about Crimea. In tense political times like these, I consider it very important not to take sides without being fully informed. Because we are in the midst of an information war, it is virtually impossible to have full information and form a solid position.

I understand reasoning on both sides - American and Russian. The waters are very muddy in this situation. I don't believe it right to annex a territory in violation of international law, but beyond that I am reluctant to choose a side.

RBTH: Have you ever been in Crimea? Are you interested to go there? Do the events of the past year make you more or less interested about it?

Richard Winterbottom: The Crimea has been an area that's always interested me, not least because it's always seemed to cause such a stir.

In my eight years in Russia as an English teacher I found myself having many a conversation, both in and out of the classroom, on the topic with a plethora of Russians, many of whom lamented its loss and berated [Former Soviet leader Nikita] Khrushchev for his heinous act of betrayal [by making Crimea part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954].

It's not, however, a place I ever managed to visit and while there was a time in which I would have jumped at the chance to go and even felt jealous of friends who had, I think I'm probably more turned off by this idea now.

This is not for political reasons - I'm actually still not quite decided on how I feel about the annexation/legal absorption of Crimea into Russia - but more for the fact that I expect any Russian, by which I mean one not native to Crimea, I might meet there will be intolerable.

One Moscow acquaintance, to demonstrate the sort of person I mean, stated back last April that she had never wanted to go, but now it was Russian she was already booking her trip, presumably as some sort of demonstration of misplaced patriotism. It's that kind of ridiculous attitude that I can do without.

As to what Russia's taking of the Crimea has done to its reputation here in the UK, let's just say that, since returning to London last autumn, I find myself defending Russia and Russians a lot more than I ever had to before. The phrase "new Cold War" is kicked about in parliament and pub chat alike, and there's hardly a news week in which Russia doesn't feature prominently, be it assassinations next to the Kremlin or the scrambling of British jets to ward of their wayward Russian counterparts.

E.B.: I traveled to Crimea on the long Women's Day weekend in early March. I was reluctant to go out of fear that I would be caught out as an American and targeted. But I went to Crimea with two Russians and spoke only Russian, so I had no issues.

I would not recommend traveling to Crimea for Americans who don't speak Russian, because they will be noticed, probably not in a good way.
General sentiment in Crimea appears to be radically pro-Russian at the moment, so it is not the best place for loud English speakers eager to express an anti-Russian position.

Crimea is a beautiful place and an absolute gem. It is unfortunate that Crimeans, particularly certain minority groups, have to suffer so much as a result of geopolitical games.

B.M.: Yes. 4 times. Interestingly, I was there in the summer of 2013, its last Ukrainian summer. I then went back in December of 2014. Not much had changed. The place always felt more Russian than Ukrainian anyway.

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 #10
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
March 17, 2015
The weird way that ISIS is changing the way we talk about Russia
The ISIS narrative is starting to shift the Russia narrative, and that's making it harder for Russia and the West to find common ground on Ukraine.
By Dominic Basulto
Dominic Basulto is the U.S. editor of Russia Direct. He has extensive experience in digital media including a regular blog with The Washington Post and a daily blog on Winter Olympics host city Sochi. In addition to publishing the first-ever iPad travel guide to Sochi, Dominic has lived in the House of Writers in Moscow, taught finance at Moscow's first MBA program, published a weekly column for a Russian newspaper and completed a certificate program in Russian language from Moscow State University. He has an undergraduate degree in Politics and Russian Studies from Princeton and an MBA in emerging markets from Yale.

Something has perceptibly changed in the way Western media covers Russia - the forecasts of what's happening within Russia are becoming more hysterical (just consider the media reaction to #WhereisPutin), the willingness to engage militarily is stronger, and the propaganda war is intensifying in scale and scope. You could chalk all this up to the escalation of the crisis in Ukraine, of course, but here's another idea: ISIS is changing the way we talk about Russia.

The "ISIS narrative," in short, is starting to shape the "Russia narrative." Watch CNN long enough, and you will get an intuitive feel for how this happens - a story on ISIS will immediately cut to a story about MH17 or the separatists in Eastern Ukraine or the Boris Nemtsov murder. Even without realizing it, our brains may be programmed to process these events from two very different parts of the world in the same way - as just a giant nexus of terrorism, violence and masked men doing very bad things.

There's actually a scientific explanation for this. Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, together with Amos Tversky, identified a specific type of cognitive bias known as the "availability heuristic." In the face of uncertainty, they say, the human brain instinctively searches for the most available information to help it make sense of an unfamiliar situation. The brain is hard-wired to believe that the information or theory that is most available is also what's most important. It's what makes people believe that shark attacks, homicides and being struck by lightning are so common - those stories are so available in the media that we believe they are significantly more likely to happen than they really are.

In the face of uncertain Russian actions, then, the Western media has become a victim of a specific form of this availability heuristic. Faced with an escalating crisis in Ukraine, the West has been biased by what's happening elsewhere in the Middle East. As Kahneman might say, instead of thinking slow, the West is thinking fast.

You could see the first signs of this last fall, when President Obama inexplicably mentioned Russia as the #2 threat to international peace and stability in his address to the UN in late September. The Russians, understandably, were baffled.

And that's been followed up with changing optics in the mainstream media that are starting to blur the ISIS narrative and the Russia narrative. This includes a bizarre piece in The Daily Beast ("Ukraine Rebels Thanks Jesus for Victory") from the otherwise wonderful Anna Nemtsova, who painted the Ukrainian separatists as some kind of Russian Orthodox jihadis intent on creating Novorossiya with the help of Jesus.

Or, consider a recent piece by Michael Cecire for Foreign Policy ("The Kremlin Pulls on Georgia"), which describes groups of pro-Russian operatives "protesting in Tbilisi Streets, preaching in Georgian churches." This is the same way the mainstream media describes the "Arab Street" and imams in mosques in stories about ISIS.

Yes, the more the media mentions ISIS militants, the Islamic caliphate and the clash of civilizations, the easier it becomes to talk about Russian "militants" (not "separatists" or "freedom fighters"), the restoration of the Soviet empire (which somehow blurs together with the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate) and the clash of values between Europe and Russia (which is starting to strangely mimic the clash of values between Christianity and Islam). That's a dangerous new development.

Consider the way that we now talk about the "clash of civilizations" between the West and Russia. While Russia has always historically veered between Europe and Asia, it has never closed itself off from the West. Russia is Europe and Europe is Russia. But the concern that ISIS is encouraging a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West is also encouraging the media to frame Russia's confrontation with the West in the same terms.

Look at the rhetoric coming from Europe's top thinkers. You have George Soros calling Russia an "existential threat" to Europe and you have British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond calling Russia the "single greatest threat" to Britain (even bigger than the threat from ISIS). At the same time, you have BuzzFeed posting "destruction porn" photos from Eastern Ukraine, so it's getting easier and easier to connect the dots between the destruction in Iraq and the destruction in Novorossiya. This is a foreign civilization that will burn Western civilization to the ground, the images seem to say.

That paranoia about a clash of civilizations is based, in no small part, to the rapid extension of ISIS into states across the Middle East. The desire to build a caliphate is deeply troubling, especially when the likes of Boko Haram and Al Qaeda are somehow linked as part of some kind of global terror brand. ISIS is seemingly everywhere, a marauding army that will establish a new empire.

That's making it easier to ascribe similar types of imperialistic ambitions to Russia. The same way that ISIS is carving up the Middle East, Russia must be seeking to carve up Europe, right? There is the tendency to see Russian imperialistic aims everywhere to reclaim the former Soviet Union as if it were some kind of Russian Orthodox caliphate. The Baltics, Kiev, Eastern Europe, Georgia, Kazakhstan - they've all been part of rumors in recent weeks, concerned about signs of a Russian military buildup in the region.

All of this is leading to a massive ratcheting up of the global propaganda war. Every day, we're told how ISIS is using Facebook to recruit volunteers, how Twitter is being used by ISIS as part of some kind of cyberwar, of how social media is luring young Westerners to fight for ISIS.

That media attention on the evil impact of ISIS propaganda makes it easier to see a similar type of propaganda war at work between the Russia and the West. Instead of viewing the Russian position on Ukraine as just a different take on the issue - the Palestinians or Iranians offering their counter-take on a complex foreign policy matter - we see it as the hand of a sinister propaganda machine cranking out lies.

ISIS propaganda, Russian propaganda, it all blurs together in the minds of American TV viewers. ISIS volunteers being recruited via social media start to sound a lot like Russian volunteers being recruited to fight in the Donbas.

At the end of the day, the willingness (whether intentional or not) to mix the narrative around ISIS and the narrative around Russia is dangerous. And it's not just the "availability heuristic" at work - there's also another cognitive bias at work - and that's the "availability cascade." In short, a complex idea starts to be described in very simple terms that are easy to be understood, and that makes it easier for it to "cascade" into the popular consciousness.

By simplifying Russian motivations, it's making it far too easy to condone military action in Ukraine, and it's making it harder and harder to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis. This is the new logic of hardliners in Washington: If this is indeed a "clash of civilizations," if indeed the Russians are intent on creating a new post-Soviet empire, then they must be stopped the way ISIS is stopped - with boots on the ground and lethal military hardware.

At one time, it looked like the ISIS threat might have encouraged Russia and the West to cooperate - now it looks like the ISIS threat might in some weird way lead the West to close the door on whatever slight diplomatic opening remained with Russia.

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 #11
Will Russia reschedule Ukraine's debts?
By Lyudmila Alexandrova

MOSCOW, March 17. /TASS/. The question of rescheduling Ukraine's debts is a political one first and foremost, polled Russian experts told TASS. So far Russia has refused to do this, and if it does eventually change its mind, it will happen only when the West has changed its attitude and lifted the sanctions, say some. An agreement will have to be forged sooner or later, others argue.

The Ukrainian Finance Ministry has entered into consultations with international lenders on rescheduling its foreign debt. The Ukrainian government last Friday asked the holders of Ukrainian bonds, including Russia, to discuss the possibility of reducing the principal and coupon payments. Kiev asked the bonds' holders to write off $15 billion and to prolong the period of circulation.

State debt rescheduling is one of the key conditions of the Extended Fund Facility recently approved by the IMF.

The US lenders, who hold $7 billion worth of Ukrainian debts, have united for negotiations with Kiev on writing some debts and rescheduling others. Moscow demands $3 billion in payment of the Eurobonds issued back during the Viktor Yanukovich presidency. At President Vladimir Putin's decision the bonds were purchased with money taken from the National Welfare Fund.

Russia says it will not reschedule the Ukrainian debt. It continues to insist on paying the $3 billion-dollar-debt, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Monday. The latest tranche is expected in December. At the same time Russia does not demand an early settlement of the debt, although it does have the right to this (Ukraine's debt has risen to above 60% of the GDP).

If Ukraine succeeds to achieve a write-off of the $15-billion debt, this will become an unprecedented move, says the chief of analysis at QB Finance, Dmitry Kipa, quoted by the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta. "But to persuade the lenders Ukraine must have some special political influence or special political leverage," Kipa said.

A deputy dean of the world economy and world politics department at the higher school of economics, Andrey Suzdaltsev, has told TASS that "Russia may agree to a debt rescheduling if the Western countries change their approach and if the question of lifting sanctions is settled."

In the current situation, he believes, consent to writing off the debts would be unreasonable. "We cannot afford to make unilateral concessions. We might agree to this only after the sanctions have been lifted, but it remains to be seen." Russia, he said, has already helped the Ukrainian economy a great deal over the years of independence with investment, lending on favorable terms and energy supplies at discount prices tens of millions of dollars worth. Low prices of gas have enabled Ukraine to save more than $80 billion. "In this context the EU and the IMF are no equals."

"If Russia eventually agrees to a rescheduling of Ukraine's debt, it will do so only on the condition of compliance with the Minsk Accords and Kiev's support for the economies of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions," the deputy director of the CIS Countries Institute, Vladimir Zharikhin, believes.

Various options are possible, but Russia will most probably decide against debt rescheduling," the leading expert at the Development Centre of the Higher School of Economics, Sergey Pukhov, told TASS. "Reason one is the bad relationship with Ukraine, which has openly labeled Russia as its enemy. Reason two: the western financial sanctions against Russia. Reason three: Russia's own economic problems."

There are some other opinions as well.

Higher School of Economics lecturer, Ivan Rodionov, has told TASS: "The question of rescheduling is one of the elements of the negotiating process, of political bargaining. Russia will have to continue to dispatch gas to Europe through Ukraine - for the time being there is no other way. But an alternative will have to be looked for in the end."

"We do not see the whole picture, but only individual fragments of it," Rodionov said. "Even despite the crisis economic relations between Ukraine and Russia remain. Coal from Donbass is going to Ukraine and the Ukrainian Energy system keeps transmitting electricity to Crimea, etc."

"I believe we shall come to terms," he concluded. "There is no risk Ukraine may suffer a default. No one, including lenders, is interested in it."

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 #12
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Foreign minister explains Russia's stance on Ukraine peacekeepers proposal
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responds to questions from Rossiya Segodnya, Moscow, 16 March 2015

Question: The Verkhovna Rada [Ukrainian parliament] will review a draft address to the UN Security Council on the potential introduction of peacekeepers. Russia's position on this score is known. How will we react to this?

Sergey Lavrov: We have no objections to reviewing any proposals but it is necessary to discuss them with the parties of the conflict: the Ukrainian authorities and self-defence fighters of Lugansk [Luhansk] and Donetsk. The need for this is laid out in the February 12 package of measures, which compels both sides to start with withdrawing heavy weapons and then to deal with humanitarian issues, such as relief, prisoner exchanges, amnesty, political processes, restoration of socio-economic ties, payment of social allowances and pensions and, of course, constitutional reform. The Minsk agreements define the mission of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, which supervises compliance with these measures, and the Contact Group, which is directly represented by Kiev, Lugansk and Donetsk with the participation of the OSCE and Russia. They clearly describe the role of the OSCE mission, the OSCE in general and the Contact Group.

I read the interview that Ukraine's Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin gave to the newspaper Kommersant, in which he commented on the idea of sending a request about a peacekeeping force to the United Nations. When asked why Ukraine did not raise this issue at the Minsk talks if it is so interested in it, he replied that this issue was ostensibly raised at these talks. As for all others, including the leaders of the states concerned, I was working without rest for almost 17 hours straight, but I don't remember this issue being raised. When asked why this idea is not reflected at all in the Minsk documents, Mr Klimkin said that not all decision-makers attended the Minsk talks. But many of those who must make a decision on the OSCE did not attend these talks either because the OSCE consists of 57 countries.

At any rate, the Minsk agreements were defined as the initiative of the four leaders of the Normandy format that was then submitted to the OSCE. Russia and Germany initiated the elaboration of the relevant draft, and the number of observers in the OSCE Monitoring Mission was increased. Naturally, not all members of the UN Security Council took part in the Minsk agreements. Nonetheless, Russia, France and Germany submitted a relevant draft resolution and the UN Security Council unanimously endorsed the Minsk agreements thereof. It is not quite appropriate to say that the Minsk talks were not attended by all those who must make a decision on a peacekeeping operation. As for your question, let me repeat that it is the parties of the conflict that should come to terms on a mutually acceptable form of monitoring compliance with the agreements reached.

Question: Are we ready to discuss this issue in the UN Security Council?

Sergey Lavrov: If the sides of the conflict are interested in this. But many people in the UN Security Council and the European Union will wonder why a new idea emerged a couple of days after the signing of the Minsk agreements.

If some project has to be thwarted it is necessary to continue coming up with new proposals to divert attention. Now that the military aspects of the Minsk agreements are more or less being carried out, the moment of truth is approaching. This is when it will be necessary to switch to political reforms, preparation for municipal elections and the introduction into the Ukrainian Constitution of the provisions on the special status of the self-proclaimed republics by agreement with them. The Minsk accords describe this status in sufficient detail. We are hearing from different sources that a number of Ukrainian leaders are not content with what was done in Minsk. Apparently, instead of implementing them they would like to conduct new discussions.

An UN peacekeeping operation is a lengthy process. It will take a lot of time to accomplish. At first, the Security Council members must approve a relevant resolution; then the said mission must be established and equipped and its mandate and rules of conduct elaborated. But the main point in the political process is an agreement involving both sides. To my knowledge, Lugansk and Donetsk are firm advocates of strict compliance with the Minsk agreements, primarily on the expansion, consolidation and additional equipment of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission. The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany supported this idea in Minsk on February 12 and reaffirmed this position during the March 2 telephone conference call. During the foreign ministers' contacts of the Normandy Four we invariably emphasise the importance of intensifying efforts to implement the Minsk agreements.

In the past few days I spoke over the phone with my colleagues - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Laurent Fabius, French Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Development - and they unequivocally reaffirmed the priority of this approach.

Question: Much is being said about potential US arms supplies to Ukraine. Does Russia have a plan on this score? How will Russia react if a relevant decision is made?

Sergey Lavrov: We believe that the overwhelming majority of Europeans still consider this plan highly dangerous, although there are EU officials who are nudging whoever can be nudged to start such arms supplies. This approach is aimed at ruining the Minsk agreements, because this is a direct violation of their provisions on the withdrawal of all foreign arms from Ukraine. This is an old issue. Even the accords of February 21, 2014 that Viktor Yanukovych, Vladimir Klichko, Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Oleg Tyagnibok signed in the presence and with the guarantees of the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland had provisions on the disarmament of all illegal formations. This was not done. Such structures as the Right Sector simply refuse to talk about their subordination; they are subordinate only to themselves. The same applies to the "volunteer" battalions that have been set up and paid for by Ukrainian oligarchs. Their subordination and readiness to carry out orders of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief are a major question. It seems that the monopoly on the use of force, which must be immutable in any country, is starting to erode in Ukraine. This is a key principle for any democracy, but Ukraine does not observe it at all.

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 #13
The Hill
wwww.thehill.com
March 17, 2015
Giving arms to Ukraine 'isn't a strategy,' general says
By Martin Matishak

The U.S. Army's top commander in Europe is cautioning against providing weapons to Ukraine's military to fight off Russia-backed separatists.

"Providing weapons is not a strategy," U.S. Army Europe Commander Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges said Tuesday during a Defense Writers Group breakfast. "I think the focus on lethal versus non-lethal aid is the wrong argument to have."

Instead, Western leaders should be focused on the "desired end state" in the region.

"There are great arguments for giving weapons to them to help raise the cost for the Russians. I think that is a valid argument. But saying that's a valid argument is different from saying that this ought to be the policy," Hodges said.

"If you give weapons, then what?" he asked, noting that collateral damage inside the former Soviet satellite state could then be traced back to Washington.

Lawmakers in both chambers have repeatedly called on President Obama to provide millions in arms to Kiev's forces following Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea last year.

An increasing number of high-ranking administration officials have publicly stated that the president should give weapons to Ukraine.

"I think we should absolutely consider providing lethal aid," Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey told a panel of House members earlier this month.

Others, including Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, have also endorsed the idea.

Hodges admitted that Dempsey is "in conversations I'm never in" but that he personally believes "it's more important that we get to the strategy" that resolves the security crisis, preserves the NATO alliance and brings Russia back into the international community.

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#14
Wall Street Journal
March 18, 2015
U.S. Delays Ukraine Military Training, General Says
Washington wary of giving Moscow excuse to scrap truce
By PHILIP SHISHKIN

WASHINGTON-The Pentagon is delaying a training program for Ukrainian soldiers so as to avoid giving the Kremlin an excuse to scrap the tenuous peace deal struck last month between Kiev and Moscow-backed separatists, a top U.S. general said Tuesday.

Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of U.S. Army in Europe, said U.S. officials wanted to make sure such training-which would involve U.S. military instructors deploying to western Ukraine-doesn't "give the Russians an opportunity to say, 'Look, the Americans are bringing in all these soldiers, they are not serious about it.' "

The general's comments, at a breakfast with reporters in Washington, reflect a dilemma the West has faced in dealing with Russia's yearlong push into Ukraine: how to force President Vladimir Putin to back down without provoking him to escalate the fight instead.

Worried that any overt military assistance to Ukraine's embattled armed forces would push Moscow to retaliate, the White House has repeatedly overruled some senior officials at the State and Defense Departments, and refused Kiev's requests for lethal aid, such as antitank weapons.

The training delay appears to continue the U.S. policy of caution in dealing with a nuclear-armed Russia that has so far defied Western economic sanctions in its support of east Ukraine separatists. Last month, after a bloody attack to grab more land from Kiev, the rebels agreed to a new peace deal.

An earlier deal, negotiated in Minsk, Belarus in the fall, had collapsed quickly. Now Washington and the European Union are watching whether the so-called Minsk-2 truce will prove any more durable than its predecessor.

"The administration is being very cautious; they don't want to upset the Minsk-2 apple cart," said Steven Pifer, a former ambassador to Ukraine now with the Brookings Institution.

The training of Ukrainian National Guard battalions was supposed to take place in western Ukraine, far from the front lines of the conflict. The Ukrainian units were supposed to be matched up with U.S. Army battalions and instructed in how to improve battlefield first-aid, how to combat enemy radio jamming, and how to survive heavy artillery fire, among other areas.

"The start of the training was delayed to try and provide some more space to see that the ceasefire and the full Minsk agreement could be successfully implemented," Gen. Hodges said Tuesday during the breakfast with reporters. He said he expected the training would begin later in the spring.

The alleged presence of Western mercenaries among Ukrainian armed forces has been a frequent-and unsubstantiated-plotline of Russian propaganda since the war in Ukraine began. Speaking about the Ukrainian army in January, President Vladimir Putin said, "This is not even an army, it's a foreign legion. In this case, it's a foreign NATO legion," he said, referring to the multinational North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

At the same time, the Kremlin has denied widespread reports of Russian soldiers and Russian military gear being used in east Ukraine.

Gen. Hodges also lashed out at Mr. Putin for his recent televised revelation that he had put Russia's nuclear forces on alert during the annexation of Crimea last year.

"There are people who are very concerned about us doing things that might provoke the Russians. They clearly need no provocation when you look at what they are doing," Gen. Hodges said. "When the president of a country talks about use of nuclear forces-talk about provocative. That is reckless, and completely changes the whole nature of the discussion."

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 #15
Washington Post
March 18, 2015
Don't send weapons to Ukraine, top Russian Kremlin critic says
By Michael Birnbaum
 
MOSCOW - As Washington debates whether to send lethal weaponry to the Ukrainian army, one of the Kremlin's biggest critics, Alexei Navalny, says it would be a mistake.

His opposition to the U.S. proposal, expressed in a wide-ranging interview in his spartan Moscow office, highlights a dilemma for the small fraction of Russians who still sympathize with the United States after a wave of anti-Americanism. They face new dangers after the Feb. 27 assassination of Boris Nemtsov, who along with Navalny was one of the most charismatic leaders of the movement.

Arming Ukraine would be an attempt to dissuade Russia from sending soldiers into Ukraine's east, where a battle with pro-Russian rebels is smoldering. But many Kremlin critics risk even more pressure over Western ties if their compatriots start getting killed by U.S. weaponry. They are already labeled as fifth-columnists. Few Russians can bring themselves to support the suggestion even as they criticize U.S. policy for not doing enough to halt Putin.

President Obama has come under bipartisan pressure to ship arms. But the Washington debate shows that policymakers know how to shape U.S. opinions better than Russian ones, Navalny said.

"I do not think that supplies of weapons, lethal weapons, will change the situation dramatically," Navalny said. "The fact is that a military victory of Ukraine over Russia is impossible. Putin will get new facts that Americans are fighting the war in Ukraine and not Ukrainians." Navalny, 38, a lawyer and anti-corruption blogger, was the most pessimistic about the pace of change since he led of the wave of protests three years ago that made up the biggest threat to Putin's 15 years in power.

After nearly a year shut away under house arrest over charges he says were politically motivated, Navalny now doubts Putin will be forced from power anytime soon. The Russian leader is preparing to keep himself in office for life, taking steps such as stoking a war in Ukraine that go far beyond what the opposition movement ever thought was imaginable, Navalny said.

"We underestimated how far Putin was ready to go in order to keep his power and keep his popularity," Navalny said.

In the weeks before Nemtsov was slain just steps from the Kremlin walls, he had been pushing for a stepped-up campaign of sanctions against Russia's elite. Navalny said he supported a similar approach.

Instead of weaponry for Ukraine, Navalny said, a vastly expanded program of Western travel bans against Kremlin supporters would do far more to spur policy changes.

"The introduction of visa and financial restrictions for oligarchs would hit Putin's regime harder than drones," Navalny said. "Personal sanctions should be introduced not against 12 people but against the party of war, against a thousand people."

He singled out leaders of Russia's powerful state-run news media as well as wealthy members of the Russian establishment who criticize Putin behind closed doors but do little to challenge him in public. Many of even the strongest backers of the Kremlin cherish their weekends in southern France and their Miami getaways, he said. That makes them far more vulnerable than the Soviet elite, who concentrated their far more modest wealth at home.

"This will increase the cost of their cooperation with Putin. And it might help split the elites," he said.

As Navalny was speaking, Putin re­appeared in public after an unexplained absence of about a week and half. Many Russian observers said the uncertainty after his disappearance was a marker of how much of Russia's stability depends on a single man. Navalny said such a situation was fundamentally unstable.

"The transfer of power, even inside the system, is absolutely unclear, unpredictable," he said. "And it is possible that a person from the system who will want to replace Putin will have to take much stricter steps, tougher steps, to increase his popularity up to Putin's standard."

Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.

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#16
Wall Street Journal
March 18, 2015
EU Consensus Emerging on Dealing With Russian Sanctions
Would delay decision on extending punitive measures and link any easing to implementation of Minsk cease-fire accord
By LAURENCE NORMAN

BRUSSELS-A political deal is emerging within the European Union that could help the bloc navigate its divisions on policy toward Russia, by delaying an immediate decision on extending economic sanctions against Moscow, according to people involved in discussions.

The arrangement would also clearly link an easing of sanctions explicitly to the full and final implementation of the Ukraine cease-fire accord signed in Minsk, Belarus, last month, the people said.

The understanding, crafted in talks in Brussels, Paris and Berlin in recent days, aims to create a broad consensus at an EU leaders summit this week that when heads of government meet again in June or July, they would likely extend the economic sanctions on Russia through at least the rest of 2015.

EU governments are still working on the exact language leaders will use in a statement they will issue after this week's summit.

After European affairs ministers met in Brussels on Tuesday, Edgars Rinkevics, foreign minister of Latvia said he doesn't believe "there is going to be...any decisions" on sanctions this week. Latvia holds the rotating EU presidency,

According to several people involved in the talks, there is now what one diplomat called a clear "political understanding" that there will be no decision to renew sanctions this week. However, the leaders' statement is expected to say sanctions will be tied to Russia fully implementing its Minsk obligations, which include the crucial step of handing back control of the Ukrainian border at the end of 2015.

Extending the sanctions would be "more or less a formality" at the next EU leaders summit, said a second senior official involved in discussions. The emerging political deal would "get the issue out of the way for now."

The EU has imposed a series of sanctions on Russia since March 2014, when Moscow annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea. Russia denies western accusations that it has supplied and supported separatist forces in eastern Ukraine that battled Ukraine's army for most of the past year.

The EU already has extended until September 15 targeted sanctions on Russian and separatist individuals and entities whose actions were deemed to have undermined Ukraine's sovereignty. EU leaders have said sanctions would be stepped up if the situation in eastern Ukraine deteriorates.

With the cease-fire largely holding, however, divisions have been emerging within the EU about when and whether to roll over the bloc's toughest response to the crisis: major economic restrictions on energy, banking and defense ties with Russia imposed last summer and which expire in July.

Speaking on Monday after meeting in Berlin with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said pressure on Russia shouldn't be lifted until Moscow has fully implemented the Minsk agreement. "The sanctions and the implementation of the Minsk plan must be connected," she said.

However at a meeting in Brussels that same afternoon, EU foreign ministers again exposed their rifts on what is best to do. The Austrian and Spanish foreign ministers were among those warning the bloc should take no step at this point to ratchet up pressure, saying that would send the wrong signal at a critical moment in the cease-fire.

"There is no need to decide now on Russia sanctions--they are still ongoing until summer," said Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz. "Sanctions are a means of pressure, not a goal as such. Extension of sanctions depends on the situation on the ground in eastern Ukraine."

Others pressed the bloc to give a clear signal that economic sanctions would stay in effect well past July. "I hope we can have a clear political commitment to maintaining sanctions until Minsk is implemented in its entirety," said British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond. "It's important to send a signal to the Russians that we are united, we are determined and that they have to deliver on their commitment."

The U.S. has signaled it will keep its sanctions in place for the foreseeable future.

Since the start of the crisis in Ukraine, the EU has struggled to maintain unity and divisions have become increasingly transparent in recent months.

Governments in Hungary, Slovakia and Greece have criticized the effectiveness of the restrictions to secure a political solution in Ukraine while others, like Italy, Spain and Cyprus have been tentative about the measures. Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Budapest last month. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi visited Mr. Putin in Moscow in early March, and Greece's new Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is due to see the Russian president in Moscow early April.

Other countries such as Poland, those in the Baltic and the U.K. have frequently vented frustration that the EU hasn't reacted more resolutely to Russia's actions in Ukraine. European Council President Donald Tusk, a former Polish premier, said in January that what he termed as the West's "appeasement" of Moscow "encouraged the aggressor to greater acts of violence."

The economic sanctions issue still has the potential to crack open the unity that the bloc has managed to sustain so far. To renew the measures beyond July, the bloc needs the approval of all 28 member states. Greece's government, which is entangled in a conflict with its fellow eurozone members over its economic plans, has said it won't give up its right to veto any EU decision that threatens its national interests.

However, the EU has time and again swung behind a consensus led by France and Germany-the two countries that helped broker the Minsk agreement along with Ukraine and Russia. Diplomats say that while Paris was wary of German talk about extending the sanctions in recent weeks, the two are now agreed that delaying any immediate decision on sanctions in exchange for an understanding that the pressure will remain beyond July is a policy that can keep the bloc united.

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 #17
Vedomosti
March 16, 2015
Russia run by "bureaucratic consensus", political scientist says
Yekaterina Shulman, senior lecturer at the Russian National Economy and State Service Academy Institute of Social Sciences: What does the political regime in Russia turn on? Political scientist Yekaterina Shulman on what the elites like and do not like in the current state of affairs

Does the political regime in Russia really turn on a single person? Is all the agitation and conjecture on the subject of the temporary absence of the chief executive officer proof that, without him, everything would collapse? Or, on the contrary, does the system first begin, if not to collapse, then to subside, and only later does the combination of news and the absence of news - a combination that went almost unnoticed two-and-a-half years ago (see the schedule of the president's public meetings on vedomisti.ru - the previous low point in the frequency of Putin's media appearances was in November 2012) - provoke near mass panic?

The personalistic regimes of all forms of autocracy are least of all inclined to hand over power by peaceful means; this process is usually occurs amid violence, external intervention, or in connection with the leader's death (after which a period of violence also ensues). Personal dictatorships hold out for a long time and depart amid blood, leaving political ruins behind them. Strange as it may seem, according to statistics taking account of authoritarian regimes from 1946 through 1999, the most tractable of dictatorships are military ones (juntas). Their rule lasts less long on average than personalistic regimes, and they hand over power as a result of negotiations or agree to hand it over to the victor of elections far more often (see Barbara Geddes. Authoritarian Breakdown: Empirical Test of A Game Theoretic Argument, 1999). As is well known, military people like to go to war least of all - it is staff theoreticians and self-proclaimed patriots from the ranks of humanitarians who are distinguished by the maximum bloodthirstiness.

For good or for ill, in Russia, owing to factors laid down already in the postwar era, the Army is not a political entity. The special services and the law enforcement organs are, but the Army is not: Such was the case throughout the latter days of the Soviet era, and so it remains now (let us recall the non-participation of the Armed Forces in the events of 1991 and 1993 [the August 1991 putsch and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and [first Russian President] Boris Yeltsin's 1993 confrontation with the Russian Supreme Soviet]. Hence a military coup does not threaten our regime in any shape or form. In Russia, power belongs to the bureaucracy - to the civilian bureaucracy, the siloviki, and the economic bureaucracy, the latter being represented by state corporations and nationalized raw materials enterprises (essentially, the ministries for gas, oil, and nonferrous metals).

Nicholas I's well-known phrase that Russia was ruled not by him, but by 30,000  heads of "desks" can be regarded as the coquetry of an autocrat; but in the political system that we inherited from Soviet power, the ruling class really is the state nomenklatura [establishment]. In the past 15 years, representatives of the special services and the law enforcement and regulatory organs have occupied advantageous positions in all three of its spheres (civilian, siloviki [special services], and economic). This contradicts the second most popular myth about Russia's political system after "everything turns on one man": "After Putin, more radical siloviki will come to power." It is unclear from where they will arrive, seeing that they are already in power and intend to remain there in the future, irrespective of the individual mood or state of health of anyone at all. The image of the "No 1 European" [Putin's self-description] who with difficulty keeps in check the onslaught of violent Oprichniki [militia of Ivan the Terrible that carried out acts of terror against the czar's enemies; here, forces of obscurantism, reaction, and oppression in general] is the most effective, and at the same time, the least well-justified of propaganda phantoms. It is aimed at a well-educated urban public and takes advantage of its natural historical pessimism (which is very understandable in Russia) and its ignorance of bureaucratic realities.

What is our ruling class actually happy with, and what is it actually unhappy with, in today's situation? The stability of the regime depends on the answer to this question to a far greater degree than on mysterious medico-psychological factors about which no one has any clear idea anyway.

What it likes:

- the anti-Western, and especially, the anti-American rhetoric. In power right now is the Soviet generation of 50-year-olds and older for whom "confrontation with the West" is a familiar and comfortable modus operandi. America is better than Europe as an object of confrontation, because it is not our primary trading partner. The "America " of public political discourse is in many ways a speculative construct, and therefore belligerent talk about it is in no way threatening;

- the cancelation, on the pretext of the aforementioned confrontation and the general extraordinary situation of any modernizations and reforms that disturb business-as-usual. There is no time for all that right now, it is necessary to repel threats;

- the opportunity to use rhetoric about combating external enemies and the internal enemies engendered by them in the interdepartmental and apparatus struggle that takes the place of political competition in Russia;

- the prospect of dishing out the resources of reserve funds accumulated in the years of plenty to loyal people;

- the uncontrolled flow of funds going towards the various needs of the Ukrainian conflict.

What it does not like:

- the instability. The general feeling of alarm, the uncertainty in the future.  The feeling that violence has become more permissible, including in settling internal scores. It is good if this resource is being used by you - but what if it is used against you?

- the appearance of new actors aspiring to the use of the strong-arm resource: Quite apart from the fact that the inter-elite pact "not to kill our own" that was concluded as long ago as after the death of Stalin has begun to break down, people wishing to be the operators of these permitted killings have made themselves known;

- the depreciation of accumulated gains: Assets gained during the prosperous oil years have suddenly begun to be worth less, unless they are foreign;

- the premonition of falling revenues: the loss of faith in future dear oil;

- effective isolationism: the increasing difficulty of access to foreign assets, the actual impossibility of leaving the country for oneself and one's family.

It is characteristic that it is never necessary to possess secret insider information in order to answer the really important questions - open sources are sufficient. Thus an extensive exposition of the bureaucratic consensus described above can be seen, for example, in a programmatic article by [former Russian Prime Minister] Yevgeniy Primakov published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta in January. Insofar as the nomenklatura is the substance from which the vertical hierarchy is manufactured (and in peacetime, this hierarchy is not particularly stable, and it is currently twisting before our very eyes like a Moebius strip), the existence of the regime and the dynamics of its transformation will depend on the balance, as subjectively understood by the regime itself, between the advantages and disadvantages of the current state of affairs.

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#18
Moscow Times
March 18, 2015
Russian Businessman to Buy The Moscow Times - Report

The Moscow Times and a minority stake in its sister publication Vedomosti are being sold to Demyan Kudryavtsev, former chief executive of major Russian publishing house Kommersant, news agency RBC reported citing an unidentified source.

Kudryavtsev and Finnish media conglomerate Sanoma, the newspapers' owner, had as of Tuesday signed a deal on the sale of The Moscow Times and Sanoma's 33 percent share in independent business daily Vedomosti, the report said, citing a "source on the media market."

The head of Sanoma's Russian operations declined to comment on Wednesday. Kudryavtsev declined RBC's request for comment, and Sanoma did not respond to the agency's request by press time.

Sanoma, a Finnish media conglomerate, has been seeking buyers for its Russian assets since 2013. It is the sole owner of The Moscow Times and co-owner of Vedomosti, which is owned equally by Sanoma, FT Group and Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

Both Vedomosti and the Moscow Times are affected by legislation passed last year that bans foreign companies from owning more than 20 percent in Russian media companies after February 2017.

A former journalist, Kudryavtsev was appointed CEO of the Kommersant publishing house in 2006 by the company's then-owner, oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who died in Britain in 2013. Kudryavtsev left Kommersant in 2012.

Kudryavtsev is currently acting without partners, according to RBC's source. However, Vedomosti reported last month that Sanoma was looking to sell its stake in Vedomosti to a company representing the interests of Kudryavtsev, American businessman Martin Pompadur, the former head of News Corp. for Eastern and Central Europe, and Vladimir Voronov, the former president of News Corp. subsidiary News Media.

Vedomosti reported at that time that Kudryavtsev and his partners were prepared to pay 6 million euros ($6.4 million) for a third of the newspaper. The Moscow Times was not mentioned in that report.

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 #19
Levada.ru
March 16, 2015
Russians doubt government has sound economic programme - poll

Most Russians believe the government has no viable strategy to settle emerging economic issues, a poll by Levada Centre suggests. The Russian independent pollster published the results of the poll on its website on 16 March.

The majority of those polled doubt that the country has a "well thought-out economic programme". This number includes 31 per cent of those who think that there is no programme as such and 26 per cent who believe that the government resorts to ad hoc decisions. However, 31 per cent are sure that such a programme is in place.

Over half of respondents believe the authorities "are unable to manage the rise in prices and the drop in income rates" (55 per cent as compared to 41 per cent of those polled in March 2014). As many as 29 per cent blame the government for "a lack of a comprehensive economic development programme", in contrast to 26 per cent in 2014. Besides, many think that the government cannot handle the economic crisis (23 per cent), does not aim to provide social security (22 per cent) and cannot ensure employment (20 per cent). Some also blame the government for corruption and for acting in the best interests of large businesses (19 and 14 per cent respectively).

A vast majority of those polled (82 per cent) are mainly worried about a rise in prices, compared to 69 per cent in 2014. The respondents are also concerned about such trends as impoverishment among most of the population (43 per cent), an increase in unemployment (38 per cent), the economic crisis as well as poor industrial and agricultural standards (36 per cent) and the rouble devaluation (31 per cent). As many as 28 per cent see the situation in southeastern Ukraine as a big concern, followed by unequal income distribution (24 per cent).

The poll was conducted among 1,600 people aged 18 and above in 134 population centres across 46 Russian regions between 20 and 23 February.

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 #20
Interfax
March 17, 2015
Labour conflicts in Russia on the rise, cuts top of agenda - union official

Volgograd, 17 March: The number of social labour conflicts in the Russian Federation has increased in the past eight months, deputy chairman of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia Yevgeniy Makarov said on Tuesday [17 March].

"The previous week was one of the most difficult ones. Conflicts were recorded in every federal district. There were about 15 of them. The usual figure for one week is eight or nine social labour conflicts," Makarov said at a news conference on Tuesday at the Interfax South agency press centre in Volgograd.

He noted that in previous years the bulk of the conflicts arose because of the nonpayment of wages at private enterprises. Now, however, the main reason is the cuts and dismissals of workers. Moreover, a large number of disputes have appeared in the state sector.

[Passage omitted: the news conference was part of a union-organized motor rally from Moscow to Magadan, during which meetings with union activists are held in many towns and cities.]

"At the meetings, we do of course speak of the problems in the country too. This is because the working people now face an economic crisis. This year, slogans for 1 May [Workers' Solidarity Day] will be about a tough position on the government's anticrisis programme," leader of the Union of Labour party Aleksandr Shershunov has said.

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 #21
Few chances to borrow, foul competition are worst woes of Russian businesses
By Tamara Zamyatin

MOSCOW, March 17. /TASS/. Problems with the availability of borrowing and foul competition involving corruption schemes constitute the worst obstructions to improving Russia's business climate, polled financial analysts have told TASS.

The availability of credit has outweighed by far even the problem of corruption Russian businesses are faced with, the president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Alexander Shokhin, told the conference Russian Business Week-2015, which opened in Moscow on Monday.

From October 2014 through January 2015 the RUIE has questioned its members regarding the key elements of Russia's business climate. In the polled group 66.7% belonged to big businesses, 13.3%, to medium-sized companies, and 20% to small businesses. Alongside the problem of the availability of credit most respondents (51.4%) named too complex procedures for starting a business of one's own. A little more than 20% of respondents said foul competition was one of the worst problems in doing business in Russia.

"The availability of credit is the determining factor that makes businesses attractive or, on the contrary a repulsive factor, if the key rate is too high. The fact that the Bank of Russia over the past two months has twice lowered the key rate is a sign pointing in the right direction. Ideally, the key rate must be a one-digit figure, and not a double-digit one (for instance, the current 14%). But lowering it overnight is hardly possible. It will be going down, depending on the inflation rate," the president of the Association of Russian Banks, Garegin Tosunian, has told TASS.

"I agree with RUIE comments to the effect start-up problems are a major problem for small and medium businesses. Weeks and months are wasted on obtaining permissions to launch construction projects, to be connected to power grids, and so on and so forth. The bureaucratic machinery keeps moving with its brakes switched on. The problem of foul competition is hardly surmountable for both external and domestic investors. Business people would like to hear sensible arguments from courts and law enforcement agencies that deal with their disputes, and not see biased preferences extended to either party or the outright use of the administrative resource," Tosunian said.

"Regrettably, businesses have never enjoyed great favors from the authorities since the Soviet era, and Russia finds it rather hard to overcome that legacy, still seen in the background and the upbringing of the judges and law enforcers. But since the development of business has been declared as one of the government's priorities, it is the government's duty to create conditions of stability and certainty for doing business," the analyst said.

"The high price of borrowing is a major obstruction in the way of bringing about a business upturn in Russia. Businesses had welcomed last week's decision by the Central Bank to lower the key rate to 14% from 15, but that is merely a trend. In the European countries the key rate is close to zero, and there happens deflation. For Russia the optimal level of the Central Bank's key rate lies between five and six percent," the director of strategic analysis and research at Vneshekonombank, Vladimir Andrianov, has told TASS.

"The unavailability of credit makes businesses non-competitive, and causes capital flight. Many enterprises are in shortage of turnover capital crucial to developing production and get unable to develop production and pay wages. Exit from the economic crisis requires incentives to establishing private, small and medium businesses, including foreign ones, in Russia, and not distributing budget money among major players, thereby giving them competitive edges," the analyst believes.

The Bank of Russia's former governor, Sergey Dubinin, agrees that the current key rate is rather high, but still it is below the current inflation. "Should the key rate be lowered still further, banks would be operating at a loss, and that's just nonsense," Dubinin told TASS.

"All of business people's complaints about the unavailability of borrowing are easy to explain. Before, loans could be obtained outside Russia at very sensible rates. But in the wake of sanctions the Western banks have had to deny loans to Russia. That does not mean that Russia has no conditions for doing business. To be credible enough to get a bank loan inside the country the borrower company is to ensure there be no questions about its reliability, property issues, structure and risk assessment. As Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said just recently, the solution of problems of doing business in Russia depends on internal causes first and foremost, and not on external ones," Dubinin concluded.

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 #22
Moscow Times
March 18, 2015
Q&A: Drawing Foreign Firms to Russia
By Nabi Abdullaev

The Kaluga region, an hour's drive southwest of Moscow, has become a haven for investors. International giants in industries ranging from automotive to pharmaceutical have built plants, trained and employed thousands of locals, and turned a once-depressed region heavily dependent on federal subsidies into a donor to the national budget.

Many credit Kaluga's economic miracle to Anatoly Artamonov, 62, who is regularly named among Russia's best governors in different rankings. Artamonov comes from a peasant family. He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Agriculture Production Engineers, then climbed the ranks from heading a Soviet collective farm to being elected Kaluga governor in 2000. He has since been re-elected once, and - after elections were scrapped - twice nominated by President Vladimir Putin to remain in the post, most recently in 2010.

The Moscow Times sat with Artamonov earlier this month to discuss investors' moods during Russia's ongoing economic crisis and political clash with the West, his techniques for fighting bureaucracy and corruption, and the human capital challenges that came with the influx of foreign businesses to his region.

Q: What is the story of Kaluga's economic success?

A: After [Soviet leader] Mikhail Gorbachev launched his peace initiatives and our country cut defense spending, Kaluga's weapons-making factories lost most of their orders and money. Defense enterprises accounted for 60 percent of the region's industrial output, and in the local capital Kaluga they dominated with 80 percent.

Company bosses didn't know what to do. Workers sometimes got their salaries with an eight-month delay.

There was an obvious solution - to develop other sectors of economy, whose products would be in demand on the market. For that, it was necessary to attract investors to create new enterprises.

At that time, in the early and mid-1990s, there were very few investors inside Russia, and there was almost no experience among Russian businessmen of investing in production - we had all got used to state investment. Private businesses at that time were mainly involved in redistributing former Soviet assets and would not invest in developing them.

So a team of the region's managers started traveling to different countries to learn what we could do to attract foreign investors to Kaluga. We went to the United States, nearly every European country, China, South Korea. And everywhere businesspeople named the same reasons for being scared to work in Russia.

Rampant corruption was the first. It is impossible, they said, to talk straight to officials about getting land for construction or access to utilities. You had to find out how to deal with these officials privately, and foreigners were not used to that and didn't like it.

The second reason was the difficulty of accessing infrastructure, which required too many formalities and permits from utilities companies.

They also named the excessively heavy tax burden.

But the worst thing singled out by the foreigners, worse even than corruption, were our cumbersome and slow bureaucratic procedures.

Back in Kaluga, we decided to address the infrastructure problems in the most tried-and-true way, by building industrial parks. We prepared the first plot of land, some 60 hectares near the town of Obninsk, provided it will all possible utilities, built a road to it and opened it for investors. Today, we have created ten industrial parks and one special economic zone, which together cover about 5,000 hectares.

The first company to arrive was Serbia's Hemofarm, which built a pharmaceutical factory. Then others started coming. Today, companies from 30 countries run their projects in our region.

Seventy-six new factories have been launched in Kaluga since 2006, and 12 new industrial enterprises in 2014 alone. Annual investment in the regional economy has risen to above $2.5 billion.

Q: Rewind back to late 1990s. Infrastructure seems to have been the most straightforward challenge. How did you approach corruption and red tape?

A: While working on industrial parks, we created in 1997 a special council for public hearings of investment projects.

Senior representatives of federal and regional government agencies and municipalities, as well as officials from utilities companies, would sit with investors and discuss their projects in my presence. If there were questions, they had to be solved during one session.

When everyone had agreed on a project, I would pass round a written agreement and demand that everyone sign it. I would sign it last.

After this I told the participants: You are the generals. You approved the project. Now your sergeants should not harass the investors as they go ahead with it.

We found a common language very quickly because it was clear to everyone that no one was pursuing their own interests but were working to develop the region.

Yes, there were attempts at the very beginning to extort bribes from investors by lower-ranking officials. But believe me, they were slapped on the wrist so cruelly by their superiors that no one else wanted to follow suit.

Now, several years on, meetings with investors are not as formal. We just gather and listen to investors' presentations. Then - and it is enough for me if an investor brings me his project on a single sheet of paper - I sign a permit to start construction on a selected site.

Q: And how do you deal with law enforcement agencies, the siloviki, who are responsible not to you, but to the federal government?

A: Siloviki will listen to you only if they see that you are absolutely honest and clean, that there is nothing that you can be nailed for. If you lie with your face in the trough, they won't listen.

Q: Do you hang any non-business obligations on your investors?

A: We don't insist that they finance sports teams or employ, say, certain people.

All we demand from them is to pay taxes according to Russian law and pay decent salaries to their employees.

Q: How do you address the problem of a heavy tax burden?

A: We give investors tax breaks, but this can only be done with regional taxes. Then, after they launch production, we try to cover our own spending on industrial parks through tax increment financing.

Last year we launched a special economic zone in the region, where investors get federal tax breaks.

President Vladimir Putin last year ordered that regions which built industrial parks receive partial compensation, so we will get some money back eventually.

Q: In terms of human capital, how prepared was your region for this inflow of new jobs?

A: When foreign investors moved in, the lack of qualified personnel to work at their factories was a serious problem. Even workers from the Soviet-era defense and hi-tech enterprises were not fit to operate modern production lines, lacking the necessary skills and qualifications.

What did we do? We went to a Volkswagen plant in Germany and asked them to show us how they train their personnel. Then we built a similar training center at home.

Over 12,000 qualified workers have graduated from the center and are employed at an automotive cluster that we built from scratch. Along with Volkswagen, we have Volvo, Renault, Peugeot-Citroen and Mitsubishi factories in Kaluga.

We educate engineers for these factories at our local branch of the famous Bauman Moscow State Technical University. We changed its curriculum, and now students are trained both in classrooms and at the plants - where they all get employed upon graduation.

The results are excellent: Today our Volvo plant has only one expat on site, and everything is done by local specialists. Indeed, Volvo and other foreign companies send our specialists to work at their facilities abroad.

The Volkswagen plant plans to have only few expats by 2017.

We have also started training specialists for our pharmaceutical cluster in a similar manner.

Q: What will your administration do in the climate of economic sanctions and political friction with the West?

A: We will continue with the same policies, concentrating of how to create even more attractive conditions for business. My colleagues and I are analyzing what kind of hurdles for businesses still remain in the Kaluga region and we will be clearing them.

We work closely with the investors that are already with us, and some of them - like Magna, Volkswagen and Nestle - are even now expanding their projects. We are also talking to new companies, inviting them to the region and showing what we have to offer.

What unpleasantly surprises me and what hinders new investment in Kaluga is that some foreign governments are harshly warning their businesspeople off working with Russia, at least for now.

Russia is often described abroad as an authoritarian country with many restrictions. To this, I can answer that I can go anywhere, meet anyone and discuss business at home and abroad. I don't need to ask permission from anyone.

Russian businessmen can travel freely abroad and invest there without asking for permission from the Russian government.

Governments come and go, and any official is a temporary person.

Business is something you build or inherit from your parents and grandparents. If someone creates problems for it, business walks away, and the problems stay with those who hinder business.

Sanctions and counter-sanctions hurt Russian businesspeople too, and they talk about it freely. I am confident that our government will take steps soon to help them.

When I talk to foreign investors over tea, they resent that their governments tell them sternly what to do and what not to do in Russia.

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#23
www.opendemocracy.net
March 17, 2015
Outsourcing sovereignty from Russia to Chechnya
Just like in business, the centre of Russia has transferred a range of its functions to a regional political 'contractor'. But now the tail is starting to wag the dog.
By Sergey Markedonov
Sergey Markedonov is Associate Professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities

The North Caucasus is back in the news. This time, the region has emerged in connection with the arrests of those accused of shooting opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on 27 February. Social and mass media is awash with talk of a plan to undermine Kadyrov, whereby the accused are seen as an instrument to discredit the Chechen leader; they talk of a conspiracy of radical Islamists; and a banal domestic crime; and foreign plots designed to separate the Kremlin from its trustees in the Caucasus.

I'm no criminologist. I wouldn't want to lay out my own amateur versions of what happened, even more so to contribute to the ever-expanding number of conspiracy theories. But no matter who says what about the 'Caucasian trace' in the Nemtsov murder, the facts suggest - more and more - that, when it comes to Russia's least stable region, the talking points have fundamentally changed.

If before events in the North Caucasus were viewed primarily in the context of inter-ethnic relations, regional politics, and the terrorist threat in the Russian borderlands, then today the topic has been transformed into a story with consequences for Russia in its entirety.

Now the front page is dominated neither by Chechnya, nor Dagestan, but rather the perception of them by the core Russian population, as well as the impact of the North Caucasus on the dynamics of Russia's internal and external politics.

Over the last year, North Caucasus topics have been side-lined by the Ukrainian crisis. At the times when the region did come to the fore, then it was spoken about in a contextual key. Whether it was the Winter Olympic Games at Sochi, reforming governance in the North Caucasus, the militant attack in Grozny before the annual presidential address in December, or the participation of Caucasus residents in the war in Donbas.

Sociological surveys of the past year will be studied by professionals again and again. But the data that we do have already gives us a lot to think about. After the outburst of xenophobia in 2013, the past year has seen a rollback of anti-Caucasus feeling. Here we see a drop in support for the slogan 'Enough feeding the Caucasus!', and alarmist judgments on Russia's problem region. When it comes to supporting the Kremlin's internal political initiatives, Ramzan Kadyrov has left the governors in 'mainland' Russia in the dust. Which, by the way, was reflected in comments on his activities even from Russian nationalists, who saw a 'strong hand' in him, and practically a 'real leader'. Even in the Western press, the images of Caucasian people and followers of Kadyrov, have come to be seen more or less as joint guardians of the Kremlin.

So has the moment of unity finally come? Conflicts and separatist threats have become a part of history, and the North Caucasus has come not only to represent, but also to express state values in the Russian Federation. Seen in this light, the North Caucasus strengthens the country on the world stage, rather than weakens it; and Russians from other regions no longer see people from the Caucasus as foreigners.

However, no matter how tempting such conclusions may be, they are clearly premature. Every process has its price. And Chechen stability has one too. Shamil Beno, a Chechen official in the 1990s and now an opponent of the Kadyrov administration, characterised the style of government in Chechnya as 'field management', that is, 'field' in a military sense. Without any reference to Beno's description, Kimberly Marten, a professor at Columbia University, described the model of power in Chechnya as 'outsourced sovereignty'. Just like in business, in this model the centre transfers a range of its functions to a regional political 'contractor'.

At first glance, the results of this model are obvious. Firstly, outsourcing allows one to shift delicate problems, which the centre cannot solve, onto someone else's shoulders, and secondly, it allows you to gain perspective on the 'excesses', apportioned to zealous initiative-seekers in the regions. But, strategically speaking, following this model has hidden costs. And they are serious. Especially if ideology is outsourced, and the relationship between the outsourcer and the contractor is built on personal relationships rather than a contract.

As a result, a new form of loyalty emerges, one not oriented toward the state, rather one based on personal ideological priorities - clericalisation, selective xenophobia, isolation from the west, openness to the east - and the violation of national rules and institutions. Moreover, we also see the partial privatisation of executive power and a de-monopolisation of violence. And when people involved in 'field management' are kept in constant readiness, and their activities are seen as good regardless of cost or result, the 'tail starts to wag the dog'. And Russia does not come to Chechnya (as it was thought in the 1990s), but Chechnya - to Russia. The political culture of Moscow adopts that of Grozny, and not the other way round.

Traditionally, rights activists view this scenario as a potential risk. But the risks here aren't so much in the humanitarian sphere, as in the sphere of statehood and governance. When dealing with a whole state structure, it is very difficult to keep individual elements of the 'field management' in check, naively hoping that they won't go after others.

Editor's note: This article originally appeared on profil.ru in Russian.

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#24
Moscow Times
March 18, 2015
Where Was Putin? Does It Matter?
By Matthew Kupfer
Matthew Kupfer is a writer and graduate student at Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

President Vladimir Putin's recent 10-day disappearance from the public eye may have been good for Internet memes, but it also raised some interesting questions for Russia analysts about Russian political culture.

As Putin failed to emerge day after day, questions gave way to speculation, and speculation to elaborate theories. The fact that Putin vanished so soon after the assassination of Boris Nemtsov - as rumors swirled about a supposed hit list of opposition figures - only fueled the theories.

Was Nemtsov's murder an attempt by hardliners to send a signal to Putin? Is the FSB at war with Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov? Will there be a serious shake-up in the Kremlin leadership? Has Putin been jettisoned in a palace coup? Or has Putin simply been felled by illness, incapacitated by a stroke, or killed by a heart attack? The list went on and on.

On Monday Putin re-emerged to meet with Kyrgyzstan's President Almazbek Atambayev. Appearing before the press, the two poked fun at the rumors. "It would be boring without gossip," Putin said. Some observers thought Putin looked healthy, others suggested he appeared pale and sweaty. Either way, Putin is alive and will likely be back to judo in no time.

Putin's reappearance does not necessarily discredit all the theories put forward, but it should cast doubt on them. There may be some kind of power struggle between the FSB and Kadyrov's men, and there could, in theory, truly be a "hit list." But it now appears unlikely that these things explain Putin's disappearance.

At their most extreme, the theories described elaborate machinations that threatened Putin's rule. Analyst Anders Aslund predicted a sweeping, draconian crackdown. Andrei Illarionov, Putin's former economics adviser, described a "conspiracy of generals" behind the Kremlin walls.

Other analysts shied away from such extreme explanations. Writing for The Washington Post, Julia Ioffe suggested that Putin was ill, but cannot admit to illness because his entire image is constructed upon not showing weakness. Anyone even remotely familiar with Putin's hyper-macho public persona knows that there is a great deal of truth in this statement.

However, Ioffe's view doesn't seem entirely convincing. Would an admission that "the president has a touch of the flu this week" really shake the Kremlin to the core? Would Russian society lose its faith in Putin because he got the flu? It seems implausible.

The social media circus surrounding Putin's disappearance stresses the need for what could be called analytical humility. As Russia analysts, we do not know where Putin was.

Faced with Putin's disappearance and future events like it, we should not formulate the most elaborate explanations possible. Kremlinology is fun, but these theories are often no more than grand guesses backed by a limited body of available information.

Rather, we should seize upon these events as opportunities to rethink and learn more about how the Russian political system works and interacts with the Russian public. As many analysts have noted, Putin's 10-day absence was not a first. He has briefly disappeared on a few other occasions.

Such disappearances are almost regular occurrences in the authoritarian states of Central Asia. So, secrecy about the leader's health or whereabouts is nothing new in the post-Soviet sphere.

But how does this work in an age where Twitter skyrockets hashtags like "#ПутинУмер" (#PutinDied) to mass popularity? To what degree does the Russian public react to these rumors? And, finally, what does this tell us about Russian political culture?

Trying to answer these questions would have been much more productive than spending a week guessing whether Putin was felled by the flu or a coup.
 

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 #25
Politico.com
March 16, 2015
What If Putin Disappeared for Real?
The Russian president's absence points to Russia's looming succession crisis.
By FIONA HILL
Fiona Hill is the co-author of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin (Brookings Press, 2015). She is director of the Center on the United States and Europe at The Brookings Institution.

Well, he's ba-ack, but Russia's brief sojourn without Vladimir Putin in public view won't be forgotten soon. Even as Putin rather airily dismissed the issue of his long public absence on Monday, saying life "would be boring without gossip," the frenzied rumor-mongering over the Ten Days That Shook the Twitter World raised a lot of serious issues. Most of all, Putin's temporary disappearance illustrated the fragility of the hyper-personalized political system that the president of this still-heavily-nuclear-armed nation has created around himself. And, just perhaps, it illustrated the danger to the rest of us.

We still don't know the reason for Putin's AWOL act. But the rumors that surrounded it are a sure sign of where Russian politics are headed: toward a succession crisis.

During the week and half that Putin was not seen in public-the mystery ended on Monday when he posed for the cameras with the president of Kyrgyzstan in St. Petersburg-stories choked the Internet about the usually ubiquitous Russian leader, who was first elected president 15 years ago this very month. The initial prosaic explanation that Putin might be sick and recuperating was dismissed not only by social media, but also at various times by his own press spokesman. The vacuum of information was filled with a host of rumors ranging from the whimsical and sentimental (abducted by aliens or attending the birth of his lovechild in Switzerland) to the disturbingly plausible: a coup was underway, the brutal murder of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on a bridge below the Kremlin on February 27 was the product of vicious infighting inside the Kremlin's walls. It was a provocation (as Putin himself declared when he got news of the assassination) and a power play to set off a change in presidential power.

In the last three years since he returned to the Kremlin in May 2012, questions about who or what follows Putin in power have become far more than a wild-card scenario. As Vyacheslav Volodin, one of Putin's advisors, put it in a speech to the annual meeting of the Valdai Club in October 2014: "There is no Russia today if there is no Putin!" So with Putin's approval ratings still soaring above 80 percent and no credible alternative presidential candidate even in the wings, if Putin dies suddenly, is indisposed for a period of time, or is overwhelmed by multiple crises that rapidly undercut his basis of domestic support and his ability to control the jockeying for Kremlin power, the world of Russian politics gets thrown off its axis.

Succession crises, of course, are nothing new to Russian history. They have long been the weakness of a Russian political culture that has traditionally favored a single strong leader surrounded by a tiny secretive circle of advisors. Under the tsars, when the incumbent monarch died suddenly and left no suitable offspring or heir, the result was often a smuta or "time of troubles" until the various court factions managed to come up with a successor they could all agree to circle around again. Under the Soviets, the death of Stalin on March 5, 1953 (oddly enough the same day Putin held his last confirmed public engagement before his disappearance) created a similar systemic crisis. The Politburo and upper echelons of the Communist Party sought to avoid this in subsequent decades by at least providing the mechanics for leadership selection. This was something they needed in the 1980s when Leonid Brezhnev and two successors, Yury Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, all died in a three-year period.

In today's Russia, the constitution offers the formal process for succession with the serving prime minister acting as temporary head of state-which means that Dmitry Medvedev might get to step into his old presidential role again for a brief swan song-and a timetable for new elections to take place in three months. But the institutions that are intended to produce the presidential candidates and oversee the succession, from the political parties to the parliament and even the cabinet, have been eviscerated since Putin's 2012 return. This suggests that the old Russian story of a vicious scramble within the Kremlin for who gets the next turn on top will be played out again. In the new world of globalized social media, we will likely glean our snippets of information about the inner machinations of the succession from Twitter rather than from palace intrigue, or from glimpses of who is standing on top of Lenin's Mausoleum, as in the Cold War days.

The irony of all this is that even Putin did not intend things to play out this way. Putin and those around him seemed to have learned a lesson from the dotage of Boris Yeltsin in the mid-1990s. After Yeltsin's flawed re-election of 1996, which was only pulled off after a "pact with devil" with a group of Russian oligarchs who agreed to bankroll the campaign and boost Yeltsin in the media in return for state assets, his entourage launched "operation successor." Putin was the end result of three frenetic years of trying out a host of promising deputy prime ministers and prime ministers (including Boris Nemtsov). Once he had settled on Putin, Yeltsin stepped down from the presidency, avoiding the crisis that most observers anticipated given the perilous state of Yeltsin's health and his rock-bottom ratings.

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#26
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
March 17, 2015
What globalization and sovereignty mean for Russia today
Russia's business leaders are focusing on the modern world's shifting notions of globalization and sovereignty. Globalization needs rules and regulations that are inclusive of all nations and reflect the changing dynamics of the global economy.
By Alexey Khlebnikov
Alexey Khlebnikov is the Senior Editor at Russia Direct. He is also an experienced international relations researcher and political analyst with a focus on the Middle East and Russian foreign policy. Alexey graduated with both a BA and MA in International Relations from Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod and holds a Master's degree in Public Policy from the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. Alexey has been published on international relations topics in academic journals and media sources in both Russia and Israel.

At a panel discussion in Geneva, Switzerland on March 6, "European Choice: Globalization or Re-Sovereignization," participants focused on the current economic and political trends caused by globalization and their influence on the interaction between countries. Of course, the main focus was on the analysis of historical interactions between Europe and Russia, the current crisis between Russia and the West.

The Geneva Press Club event, which was organized by the Endowment for St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation and supported by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Switzerland-Russia/CIS, the Swiss-Russian Forum, Lomonosov Moscow State University, and World Public Forum's "Dialogue of Civilizations," resulted in one major takeaway: Globalization in its current form needs a re-think.

"The world in its current stage of development lacks rules and regulation," according to Dr. Walter Schwimmer, former Secretary General of the Council of Europe (1999-2014) and Austrian politician and diplomat.

Interestingly, the experts at the event also brought up the issue of values, which can be perceived differently due to religious, historical and cultural peculiarities and the process of globalization. However, all participants were in consensus about the fact that Russia and Europe cannot exist without each other.

Opening up the conference, Vladimir Yakunin, the President of Russian Railways and the President of the World Public Forum's "Dialogue of Civilizations," emphasized that, "Globalization is a matter of political reality, not of our taste or willingness to accept it or not." He first acknowledged all the positive aspects of globalization that are impossible to ignore.

However, he also underlined that globalization has its drawbacks, such as a banking system which has "turned into an absolutely independent and rather profitable kind of business which dictates to other elements of the economy how they should develop."

Walter Schwimmer agreed with Yakunin, pointing out that globalization is not perfect. Globalization has both negative and positive aspects and it has its controversies. "There should be rules according to which all actors should live, this is especially important with regard to financial markets and international corporations," he suggested.

Russian economist and former acting chairman of the Central Bank of Russia Tatyana Paramonova agreed with Dr. Schwimmer. However, she underlined that the big question is over who is setting up the rules and if those rules are agreed upon by all actors.

Vladimir Yakunin stated that, since the 1990s, when the new global order started to form, globalization became a key word in defining it. He quoted the famous French economist Jacques Attali, who said in 1990 that in the current world order, in the globalized world, there would be winners and losers, and what is most importantly, the number of losers would exceed the number of winners.

This description reflects current reality in Yakunin's view and this situation leads to the question that a lot of states are raising: What is the role of sovereignty in a globalizing world?

Today the state defends the rights of its people, its territory and particular values inherent to its people. And therefore, as Yakunin claims, today there is a dichotomy between global values and state values that on the level of declarations are the same but, in reality, are not respected.

Dr. Schwimmer tried to answer this dilemma saying that there is a need for more international cooperation and for more coordinated globalization, which needs rules. In that regard he brought up the recent Minsk agreement signed by four leaders - Putin, Poroshenko, Hollande and Merkel - in February 2015.
As he argued, this agreement demonstrated the leaders' commitment to the vision of a joint humanitarian and economic space from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This is a sign that there is an understanding in further mutual cooperation and further globalization according to at least some rules.

Doubting the ability of nations to follow these rules, Hans Koehler, the president of International Progress Organization and a professor at the University of Innsbruck, posed a challenging question: Will the European Union will be able to act independently in the globalizing world?

He argued that currently the EU is facing a major dilemma - whether its members are able to emancipate themselves from the dominance of the U.S. Dr. Koehler underlined that the crisis in Ukraine demonstrated the weak role of the EU in the global decision-making process. This weak role comes from the interference of an outside power that makes the EU a hostage of geopolitical confrontations that are not of the EU's choice.

He believes that the EU has to contribute to the emergence of a multipolar order. In the view of Dr. Koechler, only a structure which represents the balance of power among all major actors deserves to be named the "new world order." To find that balance, the EU should not have to make the choice of whether to side with the U.S. or Russia. It should do both and should not force others to make such choices.

Professor of Tulane University Raymond Taras also shared concern over the lack of rules and regulations in globalization, bringing up the example of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). He argued that, if it succeeds, it would give huge power to multinational corporations while weakening the sovereign powers of the states.

To support this view, he gave the example that currently 51 out of the 100 biggest economies in the world are multinational corporations. They also account for two-thirds of world trade. So, giving them such powers with minimum regulation is definitely a threat, said Prof. Taras. He proposes that, "The EU should stop talking about who belongs to the European family of nations and who is not European, who is barbarian. This is what stokes the flames."

It is quite clear that the topic of the discussion has multiple angles to be examined from and also contains a lot of controversies. However the participants of the event agreed that the common goal for all European countries is to preserve the state's sovereignty and to prevent any conflicts in Europe.

In addition to that, participants shared a common understanding that cooperation between Russia and Europe, which has deep historical roots, should not be sacrificed over the division lines that are currently on the rise. The only way for sustainable development in the future is a mutually respective dialogue like the one that experts and politicians had during this event.
 

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 #27
www.opendemocracy.net
March 17, 2015
Rethinking Eurasia's future
While an economic and political union between Russia and Europe is unlikely, it could serve the interests of both sides in an increasingly hostile world.
By Nicholas Ross Smith and Zbigniew Dumienski
Nicholas Ross Smith is a researcher at the University of Auckland, New Zealand in the field of international relations. He has published extensively on the EU's foreign policy and his current project looks at EU-Russian competition in Ukraine. Zbigniew Dumieński is a scholar at the University of Auckland, New Zealand in the fields of political economy and international relations. He has published articles on a wide range of topics from transnational crime, political economy and more recently small polities. His current project looks at the economic and political viability of microstates in the South Pacific.

In March 2015, one thing is clear: a new rift between the transatlantic West and Russia is developing - one which could usher in a new period of animosity. As the crisis in Ukraine continues, there is still scant optimism for rapprochement. Many commentators have evoked analogies of the Cold War, casting the emerging struggle as a rekindling of presumed deeply rooted ideological differences between the two allegedly coherent and opposing forces: the West and Russia.

For public opinion on both sides, two things appear to be axiomatic: the West and Russia have opposing key geopolitical interests, and that Europe and America belong to a single camp in firm opposition to Russia. In this view, the conflict in Ukraine is merely a symbol of the return of a far greater and inevitable clash of two blocs with dramatically opposed interests and ideologies. We do not subsribe to this pervasive pessimistic view and would argue that, despite conflicting passions, there are no fundamental geopolitical, economic or even ideological reasons why closer cooperation or even some degree of integration between Europe and Russia should be impossible. In reality, the United States is likely the only global player whose influence could be diminished by such a rapprochement.

The 'new Cold War'

The vision of a 'new Cold War' is certainly alarming. However, this vision is partly based on a mixture of dubious or blatantly wrong assumptions, which fail to account for the interests and geopolitical forces underpinning the Europe-Russia relationship. In reality, when you factor in the various links between the two 'sides' (particularly economic and trade links), the relationship is actually far from being inherently acrimonious.

There is nothing either natural, obvious or inevitable about the conflict between Russia and Europe. Indeed, neither Europe nor Russia can actually 'win' in Ukraine. A victory for Europe would cause resentment and radicalisation in Russia while a victory for Russia would result in the proliferation and entrenchment of frozen conflicts in Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. Furthermore, Ukraine would find it difficult to survive without cordial relations with representatives of east and west - the cornerstone of its long held 'multi-vector' foreign policy strategy. Arguably, the only party that could actually benefit from a renewed continental divide in Eurasia is the United States.

The notion that the United States could benefit from Europe's division with Russia may come across as part hyperbole and part conspiracy theory. It seems counter-intuitive: how could the world's reigning power, an outspoken advocate for free economic exchange, among other norms, reap any benefits from allowing Eurasia to descend into a dangerous game of geopolitics and competition?

Indeed, the implications of the deteriorating situation in Eurasia, such as tangible threats to American allies and broader repercussions for international trade, seem to run strongly against American interests. However, one should not conflate America's interests with that of her allies or the desire for a stable world as a whole.

Hegemony, military and economic

Isolating America's deeply-rooted strategic and economic interests from the tangled web of rhetoric, partnerships, policies. and action, points to the basic driver of its foreign policy: the maintenance of its global military, political, and economic dominance.

After two world wars and the Cold War, the United States stood alone internationally as the unquestionable superpower. Consequently, hegemony has not only endowed the United States with the capability to project and utilise power across the globe, allowing it to influence and shape key geopolitical disputes, but also the ability to dictate the terms of global economic exchanges.

While the United States may no longer be the largest economy in the world, partially due to its geopolitical standing, it certainly is still the most privileged and influential one. The United States designed and remains in control of the key global financial and economic institutions, natural resources, and shipping routes. It is also home to the world's most important corporations, and exercises a high degree of control over the key technologies and communication infrastructure. What is more, it benefits tremendously from the unchallenged status of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency.

Increasingly over the last decade, many scholars and commentators have posited an end to America's international primacy in the near to mid-term future. The fascination with the emergence of China as a challenger to American hegemony is understandable. It has demonstrated incredible economic growth and, more recently, military advancement. However, China's ascension to international dominance is far from guaranteed.

While China's economic growth continues to impress, its growth rates are probably unsustainable in the long-term, particularly due to looming demographic and environmental challenges. More importantly, China faces a number of obstacles to gaining global politico-economic dominance, which include the legitimacy and stability of its political system, and increasing problems with its economic model.

From an ideational perspective, China has yet to win the 'hearts and minds' of the global public. China's cultural capital is lightyears behind that of America when it comes to global influence. As Bill Durodié observed during the 2011 Singapore Global Dialogue: 'It's worth recalling that the United States of America rose to world supremacy with a population of just 90m. What truly makes a world power isn't merely economic clout, but the new values, philosophies and ideas that they bring to the market.' It remains to be seen what kind of new, attractive ideas China will have to offer to the rest of the world.

Lastly, from a geopolitical standpoint, China's rise to being an international challenger to America is heavily constrained by geography. China is surrounded by an array of medium and large powers, which are either wary or hostile to its rise; in every direction China faces geopolitical challenges, the likes of which the United States has never had to face.

China's growth is impressive and rightfully causes people to question the longevity of America's international preponderance. But it is unlikely that China will challenge the United States' international primacy in the next 50 years at least.

However, there is another hypothetical challenger to American hegemony. One which is rarely mentioned but could, under the right circumstances, be a more potent challenger than China: a united, or at least more closely associated, Eurasia.

Eurasia resurgent

The relationship between Europe and Russia has undoubtedly cooled significantly over the last decade. Consequently, suggesting that actually there are some strong common interests and scope for win-win outcomes through closer Eurasian cooperation may seem questionable. However, the truth is that political and economic rapprochement between Europe and Russia would be of tangible benefit to both sides, and could potentially detract from America's global standing.

Arguably, the threat of a unified Eurasia has long been a source of great anxiety for the United States, which may explain - at least partially - the rationale for their involvement in both world wars and the Cold War, where there was a risk of a single strong power emerging on the European continent.

The idea of a super-state emerging in Eurasia, incorporating the member states of the EU and Russia, along with neighbourhood countries such as Ukraine and Belarus, is currently ludicrous. The EU experience vividly shows the limitations of integration and the resilience of the nation-state. However, if you allow yourself to indulge the idea of an economically, and loosely political, union of states from 'Lisbon to Vladivostok', then it quickly becomes clear why it would, on the one hand benefit the countries of Eurasia and, on the other, challenge America's international primacy.

Untold benefits

Firstly, a united Eurasia would create the world's largest territorial free trade zone, spanning the shores of the Atlantic all the way to the shores of the Pacific. Additionally, such a zone would trail only China and India in terms of population, with incomparably higher per capita incomes, and the world's largest GDP.

Secondly, a united Eurasia would have a practically inexhaustible resource base, especially in terms of key energy resources. It would represent the perfect merger of the West's technological and innovative clout with Russia's massive resources, creating a win-win situation for both sides. The close (and previously unthinkable) Franco-German co-operation since 1945 shows how economic cooperation between two complementary entities can drive integration (in the case of the EU) and mutually beneficial policies despite an otherwise ambivalent legacy of historical animosity.

Thirdly, from a geopolitical perspective, a united Eurasia would be only second to the United States when it comes to natural protection from outside aggression. It would be protected by oceans to the east, west, and north. Though China to the south would be of geopolitical concern, the potential for lucrative trade relations and lack of border disputes could mitigate this.

Fourthly, a united Eurasia would render America's military presence on the ground in Europe pointless. Without the purported threat of Russia, most - if not all - of the European countries would see little benefit in maintaining the often asymmetrical transatlantic alliance. Furthermore, the Cold War relic that is NATO would likely cease to exist: with a cooperative Russia, there would be no problem a united Eurasia could not solve by itself.

Lastly, and perhaps most crucially in the context of the United States, an economically united Eurasia could pose a serious challenge to America's primacy in the areas of global finance and trade. While transatlantic trade and economic cooperation would still most probably prove mutually beneficial, it could be based on more balanced foundations. A united Eurasia could itself become more prosperous and attractive than America due to the sheer size of its market, resource base, and as a result of political stability. It could offer institutional alternatives to such elements of US hegemony as the privilege of being able to print the world's reserve currency.

Therefore, when compiling what a hypothetical union between Europe and Russia could bring to international affairs, it is clear that such a development would be hugely detrimental to America's current hegemonic position. Critics are right to point out that differences in history, ideology, political systems, and economies are an obvious stumbling block to potential unity between Europe and Russia. But one cannot deny that common interests exist for pursuing such a project.

It is doubtful that dividing Europe represents an explicit foreign policy objective in Washington. But, nevertheless, the current division between Europe and Russia undoubtedly bolsters the United States' global dominance.

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 #28
Fort Russ
http://fortruss.blogspot.ru
March 17, 2015
On March 17, 1991, 70% of Ukrainians voted to remain inside USSR
Grey Croco
http://grey-croco.livejournal.com/1230991.html
March 17, 2015
Translated by Kristina Rus
[Graphics here http://fortruss.blogspot.ru/2015/03/on-march-17-1991-70-of-ukrainians-voted.html]

80% of all voters participated in the referendum on March 17, 1991. 77.85% of them voted for the preservation of the USSR.

The turnout on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR was 83.5 percent, of which for Ukraine remaining a part of the renewed Union, voted 70.2%. Including me.

And indeed, more than 50% voted for the Union in almost all the regions of the Republic. Except for one..

KR: Who is a separatist now?
 
"Do you consider it necessary to preserve the USSR as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, in which rights and freedoms of people of any nationality will be guaranteed?"

Russian Wiki:

In accordance with the results of the referendum the authorized by the Central and Republican authorities working group within the so-called Novo-Ogarevo process in the spring and summer of 1991 developed a project for a Treaty of Federation "On the Union of Sovereign Republics", the signing of which was scheduled for August 20.

But the State Committee on Emergency Situation on August 18-21 undertook an unsuccessful attempt to remove M. S. Gorbachev from the post of the President of the USSR by force, disrupting the signing of the Union Treaty:

"...Using the offered freedoms, violating the newly emerged sprouts of democracy arose extremist forces committed to the elimination of the Soviet Union, the collapse of the state and a seizure of power at any cost. The results of the nationwide referendum on the unity of the Fatherland were trampled."

- From "Appeal to the Soviet people" of the Emergency Committee of the USSR on August 18, 1991.

In the fall of 1991 the working group of the Novo-Ogarevo process prepared a new draft of the Union Treaty on the creation of a "Union of Sovereign States" as a Confederation of Independent States. Its pre-signing was to take place on December 9.

However, on December 8, 1991, the presidents of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, "noting that the negotiations on the preparation of a new Union Treaty stalled, the objective process of the withdrawal of the republics from the USSR and formation of independent States became a real fact", concluded Belovesh agreement establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States, an intergovernmental organization, which has no state status. The CIS was later joined by other Union republics.

On December 26, 1991, the session of the Council of Republics - the upper chamber of the Supreme Council of the USSR, formed on September 5, from which at that time only the representatives of the Central Asian republics were not called back, adopted a Declaration No. 142-N on the dismantling of the USSR.

KR: What happens when borders do not correspond to the wishes of the population? That's right, wars...On the former territory of USSR democracy was violated at its most fundamental level. All the future conflicts were sealed in 1991.

Galicia did not become "Soviet" in 50 years, and Donbass and Crimea could not become "Ukrainian" in 23 years either.

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#29
Moscow Times
March 18, 2015
The Curious Incident of the Cat and the Missile
By Justin Lifflander
Justin Lifflander was an inspector for the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and later business editor at The Moscow Times. He is the author of "How Not to Become a Spy: A memoir of love at the end of the Cold War" (Gilbo Shed, 2014).

Twenty-five years ago last week a nondescript railcar rolled away from the Votkinsk Machine Building Factory in the Ural Mountains. Inside was one of the Soviet Union's finest intercontinental ballistic missiles, heading off to be armed with a warhead, join its mobile unit and most likely be targeted at the United States.

And yet that weapon of mass destruction and the attention it received epitomized the cooperative spirit of the superpowers and could serve as a reminder to today's leaders of what the two countries can achieve together.

The missile's departure from the portal monitoring facility run by American inspectors working under the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty marked a rare low point in the implementation of that agreement.

The so-called "Votkinsk missile crisis" of March 1990 stemmed from a disagreement between the two sides as to the readiness of a U.S.-made oversized X-ray machine called CargoScan. This machine was supposed to scan every departing railcar containing a missile to ensure it was an ICBM and not an intermediate range SS-20 that had been banned by the treaty.

CargoScan was the only element of verification behind schedule - due to its technical complexity and the extensive process of hammering out the finer points of treaty implementation. Political pressure had been mounting in Washington from hawks like Senator Jesse Helms, who had opposed INF and the detente that was taking place and were using the CargoScan delay as an example of why peace was not verifiable.

But treaty implementation was being carried out successfully in both countries - Votkinsk's sister site under INF was the Hercules plant in Magna, Utah. In addition to factory monitoring, inspection teams observed the elimination of missiles and spontaneously checked former launch sites. But because Votkinsk was still allowed to make larger missiles, CargoScan played a particularly visible role in the "trust but verify" doctrine.

In February the Americans had declared the system was ready and any missile exiting the factory now must undergo a scan. The Soviets, still getting used to the unprecedented invasiveness of mutual verification - including having 30 Americans living at the front gate of one of the country's most important secret factories - did not agree.

They had concerns about its operating parameters and were wary of how the powerful X-ray would affect the solid fuel of the missile and what design details it might reveal.

On March 1, when the gray six-axle railcar exited the factory gate, we knew there would be a conflict.

Ominously, as we shimmied along the canister inside the railcar to measure its length and diameter, the lighting briefly failed. I remember standing in the dark, inhaling the tart smell of the fresh green paint, wondering if the frantically communicating diplomats would be able to reach a compromise.

The White House asked the Kremlin for a time-out. It was agreed to move the missile car into the nearby inspection building.

The drama hardly corresponded to the hysterical claims made by Robert Evans and Rowland Novak of The Washington Post - that the Soviet guards "drew their pistols against unarmed U.S. technicians." Railcars with missiles were always accompanied by two soldiers carrying standard-issue Kalashnikovs (not pistols), and they never pointed them at anyone.

While waiting for a resolution to the impasse, we kept joint watch over the railcar inside the building. The guards even placed their weapons on the floor while we tossed around a Nerf football.

The Soviet side had its own pressures to deal with. The week prior, the revered former director of the factory had shot himself in the head, defeated by Parkinson's disease and his inability to adjust to perestroika. And the factory's customer, the Defense Ministry, had made it clear that there would be fines for any delivery delays.

The Soviets told the Americans the amount owed now stood at $27,000 and asked, only half-jokingly, if they would help foot the bill. But it was a serious concern for factory management. Votkinsk is a single-industry town where everyone depends on the industrial concern for their livelihood.

Because the previous two years of joint treaty work had gone smoothly, Washington had formally delegated full decision making authority to the inspection team in Votkinsk.

On Friday, March 9, the U.S. site commander requested that the Soviets "pop the lid" of the canister so we could visually inspect the missile itself - the next best thing to a scan under the terms of the treaty.

The rear doors of the railcar were opened. That paint smell filled the air as the top of the canister was removed.

We shined our flashlights along the length of the monster inside. The three stages confirmed that it appeared to be an SS-25, and not its 2-stage, now-forbidden younger brother. The Soviets removed the railcar from the building and again demanded we agree to allow the missile to depart unscanned.

A full moon glinted off the rails as the car began to roll down the tracks into the darkness of the woods. I will never forget that at that very moment a black cat scampered out from underneath the railcar and also disappeared into the night.

The omen was premature. The Americans declared the incident a treaty "ambiguity," not a violation. Defense officials from both sides descended on our outpost the following week and ironed out all the remaining differences. By the end of the month missiles were being scanned in accordance with the treaty.

Despite detractors on both sides, a long history of mistrust and conflicting national interests, INF came to be and was the foundation for further arms control efforts, like the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). It also fostered a culture of cooperation for an entire generation of diplomats, defense officials and contractors over the next two decades. Now we find ourselves frustrated and disappointed. Why has this spirit faded instead of grown?

The treaty was born thanks to the work of giants: U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, and Ambassadors Jack F. Matlock and Yury Dubinin.

Their work was driven by a clear understanding: war - cold or not - is unacceptable; rhetoric and posturing are not a path to achieving anything; mutual accusation and criticism in the media lead nowhere. What has changed that makes these fundamental values that worked 25 years ago invalid now?

Issues like terrorism and proliferation, which both countries are facing, are more complex and insidious than anything in the past. Today's leaders at all levels need to step back and study history. Then there is a chance they can return to the common ideals and mutual respect the giants at the end of the last century found.

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 #30
Komsomolskaya Pravda
March 13, 2015
Russian secret service "source" blames Nemtsov murder on Chechens in Ukraine
Report "Source in FSB tells Komsomolskaya Pravda: person who ordered Nemtsov's murder plotted attempt to assassinate Vladimir Putin"

Komsomolskaya Pravda's correspondent met with an FSB [Federal Security Service] officer who is part of the brigade investigating the murder of Boris Nemtsov. In an exclusive interview, the interlocutor talked about new details of the crime and named the most probable mastermind behind the politician's execution.

"The gun has already been found"

"Today the investigation has incontrovertible proofs that all the men arrested on suspicion of the politician's murder were the actual perpetrators of this crime," our source in the FSB said. "First, the billing (data on the calls and movements of a telephone subscriber - Ed.) from their mobile phone showed that before the murder they had been tailing Nemtsov, following him relentlessly. The suspects and their mobile phones had also been in the exact spot where Nemtsov and phone were found. At the time of the murder, all the arrested men 'were in the zone of the operation': some under the bridge, others in the car, others not far away.

"The man who actually squeezed the trigger was Zaur Dadayev, who at first gave confessionary statements, but later withdrew them on the advice of his attorneys. But this changes nothing; the Russian Investigations Committee has already collected indisputable proofs of his guilt. I will not go into the details of how this was done. After the crime was committed, the gun was thrown into the river; it was subsequently found by divers. The fact that Zaur Dadayev immediately told the video cameras of the TV people: 'I love the Prophet Mohammed' is simply a blind. They had no religious motive for the murder. They were cynically carrying out a contract. They are not Muslim true believers at all. Essentially, they are regular bandits.

"Well, and most important of all. The man who carried out the murder contract was in close contact with Adam Osmayev, who recently became commander of a Ukrainian battalion named after [former Chechen separatist leader] Dzhokhar Dudayev. They met and spoke a great deal by mobile phone. Zaur Dadayev and his accomplices cooperated with Osmayev on Ukrainian affairs. And also with Chechens who have been fighting on Ukrainian territory for the new regime. Zaur Dadayev was a member of the Chechen MVD's [Ministry of Internal Affairs] Sever [North] battalion, but while serving in it, he was actually working against Russia. He was linked with Osmayev by their mutual dealings and by mutual obligations.

"When the journalists of Russia's LifeNews television channel were released in Ukraine, Zaur Dadayev participated in this affair. He was in direct contact with Osmayev. I do not have the right to reveal the details right now. The collection of proofs is still under way. But I can say that, as of today, Adam Osmayev figures in the criminal case as the main suspected mastermind behind Nemtsov's murder."

"The main aim of the crime was to present Russia in an unattractive light"

"The assassins were assigned the condition of fulfilling the contract precisely in the place were it was committed," our interlocutor continues. "That is to say, not simply committing the murder in a backstreet, but doing it in the heart of Moscow, opposite the Kremlin - ostentatiously, in order to provoke a huge fuss worldwide. Before the crime, they received an advance payment, and there was an agreement that the rest of the money for the 'job' would be paid into their bank account."

[Veligzhanina] Why did they need to kill Nemtsov, who publicly opposed Putin's policies? It turns out they killed their own ideological comrade-in-arms

[FSB officer] Nationalists and bandits stick at nothing. To kill their ally is not a question of morality for them. Nemtsov was small change. The aim was as follows - to soil Russia's reputation, to present it in an unattractive light, and to hinder the establishment of peace in the Donets Basin (especially after the talks that had been held with Merkel and Hollande). To present the Russian president in the eyes of the world community as "the spawn of the devil" - look how he has strangled the opposition, people would say. The world has only a dim understanding of the policies that Putin is carrying out with regard to Ukraine. And this cynical murder of Nemtsov provoked an explosion of discontent, which was inflamed by the global mass media. The American and European press immediately began to present this murder in their own style, pinning the responsibility for it on the Russian president.

They planned to blow up the president's motorcade

Adam Osmayev was earlier suspected of the attempted organization in 2012 of the assassination of Vladimir Putin, who at that moment in time was prime minister and a presidential candidate. Osmayev's plans were to blow up Putin's motorcade, as was confirmed in a video tape of the passage of the vehicles of the premier's special escort through Moscow, which was found on his laptop. On that occasion, Osmayev reached a deal with the investigation - he admitted that he had arrived in Odessa from the United Arab Emirates with instructions from field commander Doku Umarov. But in court, Osmayev retracted his evidentiary statements, claiming that they had been beaten out of him. His attorneys wrote complaints on his behalf to the prosecutor's office and the European Court of Human Rights.

"Osmayev did not manage to get to Putin himself, but, it would appear, he did not stay quiet for long," our source in the FSB says. "And subsequently, the most easily accessible 'target' was chosen to inflict a blow on the president - Boris Nemtsov. Nemtsov had not been noticed as an active participant in the opposition in recent times; he offered no competition to Putin, but his name is well known. The choice of sacrificial victim was entirely successful. Bandits stop at nothing. And bandits drawn into politics - this is a diabolical mixture."

[Veligzhanina] Will Osmayev be charged in absentia?

[FSB officer] Right now, everything is at the stage of investigation and the collection of proofs. We already have some proofs, but I do not want to reveal everything, so as not to hamper the investigation.

FROM THE KOMSOMOLSKAYA PRAVDA dossier. What else is Adam Osmayev "famous" for?

In 2007, a terrorist act was prevented in Moscow on the eve of Victory Day - an explosive device was found in a parked car. Adam Osmayev, a native of Groznyy, who figured in the case as a suspect, was condemned in absentia by Moscow's Lefortovo District Court and placed on the international wanted list. The investigation established that Osmayev and a group of Chechens and Ingushes had also been plotting the assassination on 9 May of Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov.

According to the information of the press, after this Osmayev absconded to Great Britain, where he was approached by Doku Umarov's "handymen" and invited to organize a new terrorist act. Adam agreed, and travelled to Ukraine on a forged passport. In 2012, he was arrested after an explosion in a rented apartment - the terrorist and his henchmen had been making homemade bombs. Osmayev and his "right hand" Ilya Pyanzin, a citizen of Kazakhstan, admitted that they had been plotting an attempt on the life of Vladimir Putin, the head of the Russian Federation government. The suspects also stated that they had been recruiting gunmen for future terrorist acts in Russia. But subsequently, they withdrew their testimonies.

The Russian Investigations Committee insisted on Adam Osmayev's extradition, but the European Court of Human Rights blocked it, declaring: "In Russia, the defendant could be subjected to torture." Pyanzin, however, was ultimately handed over to Russia, and in September 2013 he was sentenced to 10 years, to be served in a strict-regime penal colony.

On 18 November 2014, an Odessa court delivered a verdict against Osmayev: two years and nine months in prison. He was released in the courtroom "in the absence of proofs of plotting an assassination attempt" - he was credited with the time he had already spent in a detention centre. Those in attendance greeted the verdict against Osmayev with applause, and he, in turn, called on them to "save Ukraine".

In February of this year, Osmayev became head of a Ukrainian battalion named after Dzhokhar Dudayev, replacing General Isu Munayev, who had been killed near Debaltseve.

THE Komsomolskaya Pravda dossier

Boris Nemtsov was shot dead on Zamoskvorechye Bridge on the night of 27 February. At the moment of the murder, the politician was with Ukrainian model Anna Duritskaya. Five natives of the Chechen Republic were arrested in Moscow on suspicion of the murder: Zaur Dadayev, Shadid Gubashev [and his brother, Amzor Gubashev], Ramzan Bakhayev, and Tamerlan Eskerkhanov. According to preliminary information, Zaur Dadayev fired the gun while Anzor Gubashev was at the wheel; the rest had tailed the politician and provided the murderers with means of communication, the gun, and cartridges.

OFFICIALLY. Dmitriy Peskov: Prosecutors will name theories of the murder within the next few days

"We hope that all the legislative formalities will be completed within the next few days and that prosecutors will make public their theories of the murder and name the people who were behind this the president's press secretary, Dmitriy Peskov, told AP journalists in response to a question on the prospects for the completion of the investigation into the Boris Nemtsov murder case.

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 #31
Novaya Gazeta
March 13, 2015
Russian journalist looks at circumstances surrounding Nemtsov suspects' arrest
Olga Bobrova, Where the 'Wahhabi' beard grows from - how suspects in Boris Nemtsov's murder were caught in Ingushetia"

The detention of Zaur Dadayev and the Gubashev brothers in Ingushetia has caused quite a stir. Perhaps it's a joke: Ingushetia, according to the Interior Ministry reports, posts the lowest crime level of all of Russia's regions. Believe it if you want to, don't if not.

It is possible that investigators would not have been able to announce so rapidly that they had solved the highest profile crime of recent times if chance had not intervened in the case, along with the official zeal of the Ingush law-enforcement agents - who, of course, were not thinking about Boris Nemtsov's murder but were just doing their jobs.

It is already known that Zaur Dadayev, who is suspected of the murder, flew to Chechnya from Moscow on 28 February. Then or the next day - Anzor Gubashev, the elder of the Gubashev brothers, also flew into Magas (Ingushetia) airport. The younger brother, Shagid, arrived almost a day later since he drove by car from Moscow.

Special purpose  troops from the FSB Special Purpose Centre arrived in Ingushetia, and specifically in Malgobek, during these same days - however the aim of the visit of such big professionals remained unclear until the last moment.

"I already understood at the time: something would happen, they were tailing someone from Moscow," Murad Zariyev, the head of the Malgobek district police station, tells me. "And then they sat around for several days doing nothing. They were probably observing where he would take them. We also use this method in operational work so as to catch more than one person - some small fry - but to take the entire group."

A source in the FSKN [Federal Service for Control over the Trafficking of Narcotics] told Novaya Gazeta that on 5 March Zaur Dadayev, who is a permanent resident of Groznyy, left for Ingushetia together with his colleague Rustam Yusupov: the latter phoned a Nazran dealer about purchasing drugs.

It is now clear that the dealer was in all probability under investigation and was the subject of wiretapping. And when the goods were handed over Yusupov was detained and Dadayev was also arrested with him. This happened in Ekazhevo, which is on the outskirts of Nazran.

Irrespective of the crime with which Dadayev is now charged, it is clear that the deputy commander of the Chechen North Battalion is too big a figure for Ingush drugs control to be able to detain him just like that. Pressure started to be put on the drug police but they dug their heels in and took the detainees to the Nazran police station. Of course, calls were also received from the neighbouring republic at the police station - and of course, the Ingush did not want to cave in, feeling that they were absolutely within the framework of the law. In addition, there is constant friction between the Chechens and the Ingush anyway, and Dadayev is an ethnic Chechen like all the other defendants in this case.

No-one of course thought about Nemtsov in this situation - the reasons for the detention were quite different.

All of this fuss was noticed by the visiting experts who evidently understood that they were losing control over the situation. If the detainees were freed and taken to Chechnya the prospects for a further investigation would prove to be somewhat different.

As a result, soldiers in unmarked uniforms flew to the Nazran police station and indiscriminately took everyone out with bags over their heads - both Dadayev and his friend, and other detainees, and even local detectives in civilian clothing.

Then, during the night, the superfluous men were sifted out and politely brought back to Nazran. And the next day, a special operation took place in Voznesenskaya: the Gubashevs were caught; they had been in Chechnya at the moment that Dadayev was detained and they had rushed to Ingushetia because they had learnt of his detention.

"Surely if think about it: if they are all criminals and are all in it together, why did my lads, when they found out that Zaur Dadayev had been arrested, not run away and hide but, on the contrary, start to try to find out where he was and what had happened to him?" Zula, the mother of the Gubashev brothers, wonders.

My other sources also confirmed this: the Gubashevs really were worried after Zaur Dadayev was detained and they tried to find out what had happened to him via acquaintances, and then for some reason went to Voznesenskaya where they were all originally from (although their families have not lived in the village for several years now: people from Voznesenskaya had been resettled, it was in a landslide zone).

It was no coincidence that the road to Voznesenskaya was chosen by the special purpose troops for the detention: it is narrow and quite badly damaged. Cars are forced to reduce their speed on it. Another five cars with their drivers and passengers were detained together with Shagid Gubashev's black BMW (which he had driven from Moscow).

The number plates were wrenched off the cars on the spot and they were driven away in the direction of Mozdok. The same evening the Gubashev brothers were sent to Moscow by plane from the military airport in Mozdok. We do not know the names of the other detainees, and they have not appeared in the case. Nor do we know where the detained cars are now located.

Only one thing is clear to me in this whole story about the brothers' concern about Zaur Dadayev's fate, that they were people who were quite close to one another although geography did not actually facilitate this.

Zaur Dadayev, the deputy commander of the North battalion, lived in Groznyy, to all intents and purposes in barracks. He rarely managed to get away to see his relatives in Ingushetia - they say once or twice a month. His mother, sister, and a disabled brother live in Malgobek where the landslide victims from Voznesenskaya were resettled. He has another brother who is married and lives separately. Zaur Dadayev does not have a wife or children, which is not at all typical for a Chechen man of his age.

The Gubashev brothers, as we know, have lived near Moscow for the past 10 years. The younger one, Shagid, worked in his Kamaz (truck), the elder, Anzor, moonlighted as a security guard. Neither of them has ever had any professional link with the security structures. Both are graduates of a civil engineering college.

"Right now Anzor is constantly being shown in a military uniform, as if he were in training somewhere. But this is his photo from the army, I recognize it," the Gubashevs' mother says. "Our lads from Chechnya were not taken into the army before. And then they started to take them again from a certain point. I was against it, to be honest. I bought him out several times. But then he used his guile to join the army: he said he was accompanying a comrade but then he stayed in the army himself. But Shagid - no, he did not serve in the army."

The brothers also rarely spent time at home in Ingushetia. They visited for the last time about two years ago, their mother recalls:

"First Anzor arrived, he does not have a permanent job. Shagid has a job but Anzor does not. I said to him: live here for a bit, get used to things. Get married! He lived here for four months and then Shagid came for a relative's funeral. And then they rushed off back to Moscow. And it was the second year that they have not visited. Then they phone: 'What's the weather like? Yes, it's raining here as well...' And then I see that they have already arrived. As a surprise. They did not tell me anything, that they were coming..."

The family was very worried about the personal lives of the brothers who had left their homeland. Especially their one-armed grandmother who raised them (the parents of the Gubashev brothers divorced when the latter were still children; according to the Vaynakh tradition, a mother cannot bring up the children from a first marriage if she gets married again).

It was known that Shagid had a Russian girlfriend in Moscow with whom he had lived for seven years and who he  had not, however, introduced to his family. "We intended to go to Moscow ourselves. To see what his Svetlana there is like," Zula Gubasheva recalls.

Anzor was not married either.

Nor was everything smooth in the personal life of Khamzat Bakhayev, who was detained in Chechnya and is now also named in the Nemtsov murder case. He, like Dadayev and the Gubashevs, was born in Voznesenskaya - however after getting married he moved to Chechnya. He had seven children by this marriage (to a Chechen). At some point, while he was still married, he left for Moscow for work - and he rented a room literally in the same building as the Gubashev brothers. Although they did not overlap in work - Bakhayev was an engineer at an energy company.

Once he was making money in Moscow, Bakhayev divorced his Chechen wife and got married in Moscow, this time to a Russian. Not as a second wife (although this is quite common among the Vaynakhs) - he divorced his previous wife and married another.

All of this personal stuff would be of no significance if it did not quite obviously testify to one important fact: none of these people lived the lives of people who were genuinely immersed in religious affairs. These cohabitations, divorces, joint trips for drugs, are far removed from the everyday lives of ordinary believers in the Caucasus, not to mention the followers of so-called "pure Islam".

Apart from his own confession that was hastily challenged, only his beard, carelessly shaven in the "Wahhabi fashion", speaks in favour of Dadayev's fanaticism. Several sources among the law-enforcement officers stressed this detail - his "Wahhabi beard" - in conversation with me.

However, it does not seem convincing to me. If only because this Dadayev, as the deputy commander of the North Battalion, took part in many counter-terrorist operations in the forest - both on the territory of Chechnya and in Ingushetia (when joint operations took place). He was "crushing the devils", using the slang of the Chechen security services. And for some reason none of his colleagues noticed sympathies on his part for the idea of radical Islam.

"I have heard a lot about him. My employees who are themselves from Voznesenskaya know him well and they also told me about him," Murad Zariyev, the head of the Malgobek police, tells me. "It is clear that he is a solid man. He uses his head. He is not a commander who lets his lads go on ahead of him. No, he goes first everywhere himself, and he continues to the end, he does not bring up the rear. You have no fears with such a man. It is quite clear that he will not surrender his own men."

The investigation is not showing any interest in the families of the arrested men although they have something to say.

"There is one thing I do not understand," Tamara, Zaur Dadayev's sister, asks a question. "Surely he flew out to Moscow with his commander, and he came back with his commander. Why is no-one saying anything about the commander now?"
 

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 #32
Washington Post
March 18, 2015
An interview with Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny
By Michael Birnbaum and Karoun Demirjian

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny recently spent about a year under house arrest, barred from most contact with journalists. He spoke to The Washington Post about his aspirations for Russia, about his fears after the killing of ally Boris Nemtsov and about how Ukraine's allies can persuade the Kremlin to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Here are some excerpts.

Q: After this year, where is the opposition headed, particularly after the killing of Boris Nemtsov?

This murder was sanctioned by the leadership of Russia one way or another, and this act of scaring people is aimed not at people like me, but those who are still hesitant. People who are probably around Vladimir Putin or members of the ruling elite.

The basic compromise of the authorities has been violated. Because they killed a person from the system, a person who once almost became the president of Russia.

So getting back to the question of where the opposition is now - despite the fact that we are accused of being extremists, we would rather have traditional types of work. Like participating in the elections. But, in fact, at the moment, we cannot do much except for organize protest rallies in the streets. So the political structure now looks rather primitive.

Q: What would Alexei Navalny in 2015 tell Alexei Navalny in 2011?

I think about it a lot, and I try to understand what mistakes we made.... The idea that if we had done something differently, then there would have been revolution - this is nonsense. Yes, we should have worked better. We underestimated how far Putin was ready to go in order to keep his power and keep his popularity.

If somebody had told me back then, in 2011 or 2012, that there would be a war against Ukraine, or that Nemtsov would be murdered, you know, murdered by these special services - this would be like madness.

Maybe the main advice is don't underestimate how far they can go, especially how far he can go, and don't think he might worry about the future of Russia.

Q: How is the opposition trying to regroup after Nemtsov's death?

I do not want to be a dissident, like in Soviet times. I don't like this role. However, in the current situation, we have to use recommendations and the experience of those times. So now the issue is not about organizing, not politics, but probably morals. We should do what we believe in.

Q: You said Nemtsov was one of the easiest opposition leaders for you to talk to because you approach politics in a similar fashion. Do you need someone to replace him?

It is impossible to replace him.

There are a huge number of people in the elite who hate Putin. They hate him because of sanctions, because they are now having fewer chances to get rich, because they lost money because of the markets, and so on and so forth. And especially to those people this shows that, "Okay, maybe you are not satisfied, but just don't move in this direction, because this is bad. You think that we will not kill somebody who is famous all over the world? Who can pick up the phone and call McCain, Obama or Hillary Clinton? No problem. We will kill this person as well." So this is the signal.

Q: Putin once promised prosperity. Now that's changed, but he hasn't lost support.

Any hope of economic growth is useless. So that's why he uses terror and fear, and uses these threats that in a civilized, educated society would seem funny.

I've said many times: The main lever of Putin's rule has not been repressions, as many people think, but bargaining. He pays, in the broad meaning of the word. He increased salaries to the state propaganda outfits, he raised salaries for the special services, he paid bribes to the opposition parties, and then also Western elite. He hired propaganda people who could work in the West, and this was much more efficient than repressions. But now the situation is different, and repressions will be carried forward.

Q: In Washington there's a discussion about arming Ukraine to increase the cost for Russia. Is this a good way to help Ukraine? Is this a good way to calm the situation?

I do not think that supplies of weapons, well, lethal weapons, will change the situation dramatically. Just because the fact is that a military victory of Ukraine over Russia is impossible. Putin will get new facts that Americans are fighting the war in Ukraine and not Ukrainians. But I cannot assume that the Ukrainian army, even armed with American drones, will win a victory over the Russian army.

The supply of weapons is a somewhat popular step inside the United States. This is something for the American public opinion. "We armed Ukrainians so that they could resist." I would say that introduction of visa and financial restrictions for oligarchs would hit Putin's regime harder than drones.

If it had not been for economic and sectoral sanctions, Putin would have seized Odessa by now. And I think that self-confidence of Putin and his circle was, "The West is weak, the West is amorphous, and they will not be able to introduce economic sanctions."

So, of course, there was a certain effect. However, the idea to split the elites via personal sanctions did not succeed. Because personal sanctions should be introduced not against 12 people but against the party of war, against a thousand people.

Q: So how long of a timeline are we talking about for your goals?

As long as is necessary. I'm asking this question very often, but for me the answer is obvious. I don't have an alternative.

So I will do what I am doing. It doesn't matter how much time it takes. Of course I wish I could be more efficient and of course I wish I could have these wonderful changes tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. In 2011, when I was asked how long Putin's regime would last, I said 1½ years, not more. Okay, I made a mistake, but for me it hasn't changed anything.

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 #33
Washington Post
March 18, 2015
Russian opposition struggles to fill void left by a very public slaying
By Karoun Demirjian
 
MOSCOW - The grisly public slaying of their dean last month was just the latest setback for Russia's beleaguered political opposition, well accustomed in recent years to being muzzled, sidelined and restricted.

But Boris Nemtsov's killing means that for the first time, the Russian opposition must carry on without the man who was its chief organizer and arbiter.

Russia's opposition leaders also understand that they have to resolve their internal differences, refine their public message and broaden their shrinking base of financial, political and popular support to avoid obsolescence in a society rallying around Russian President Vladimir Putin's warnings against "fifth columns" and "traitors."

No one was better positioned to meet such challenges than Nemt­sov, a deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin who once outranked Putin and who could bridge the divide between the streets and the elites. It's also why opposition members think Nemtsov is "impossible" to replace - and why his death is a warning to other high-profile critics of Putin's policies to beware or suffer the consequences.

"Nemtsov's murder terrified people who are still hesitating between being silent or supporting me, for example," said Alexei Navalny, now arguably the best-known face of the Russian opposition. The killing was a message, he said: "Maybe you are not satisfied, but just don't move in this direction, because this is bad. You think we won't kill somebody who is famous all over the world?"

"No problem," Navalny continued. "We will kill this person as well. That is the message."

Opposition leaders such as Navalny are used to the threats, lawsuits and jail time that come with speaking out against the Kremlin in today's Russia.

But disgruntled oligarchs - even those who have seen their fortunes shrink under sanctions that have isolated Russia's economy over the past year - still have plenty to lose from backing the opposition.

Non-elites also appear to have been cowed by increasingly hostile rhetoric. Despite a punishing economic crisis, a war in neighboring Ukraine and cutbacks to social services, the opposition has not been able to replicate the huge anti-Kremlin protests in 2011 and 2012, which drew more than 100,000, just before Putin returned to power.

Part of that can be attributed to fear and fatigue. But some opposition members say it is also because they haven't found the right message - or the right way to sell it.

"We don't have an issue, an idea, that can win the hearts of the population," said Gennady ­Gudkov, an outspoken Putin critic who was stripped of his seat in parliament in 2012. "We are trying to find something that can penetrate and get through all these obstacles and problems that are created by the powers. But unfortunately, frankly speaking, we still don't have it."

Gudkov said threats to potential financiers, a closed news media and a numbed population are obstacles to anyone - even someone as charismatic as Nemtsov - hoping to promote the opposition in the current political climate.

Others remain more optimistic about the opposition's future.

Navalny, for example, insists that the majority of the population supports the components of his "European way of development," including fighting corruption, cutting defense in favor of social spending and ensuring direct elections.

But survey responses on issues such as corruption haven't translated to more action "because people don't make the connection between these things and the fact that they live poorly," Gudkov said.

Last year, the war in Ukraine rallied tens of thousands of Russians to peace marches - but failed to promulgate any greater movement. Before Nemtsov's death, the opposition had been focusing on the economic crisis to rouse anti-Kremlin sentiments - but a planned "anti-crisis" march turned into a memorial procession after his slaying.

Some members of the opposition think the investigation of Nemtsov's death - being blamed on Chechens - is their best chance to pressure the Kremlin.

"It could open the whole political system of Russia, how it works and how it is dangerous for everyone," said Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the co-chairs of Nemtsov's party, RPR-PARNAS.

The swirling opinions among the dozen or so leaders of the opposition mulling how to proceed post-Nemtsov illustrate the challenges of choosing a way forward.

Many think the greatest way to honor Nemtsov's memory is imitating his legacy as the glue that held various opposition factions together. Several opposition members said they want to unveil a unified platform opposing Putin's strong-man rule by early next month.

"All opposition leaders should forget about ambitions, our old scandals, and just try to sit on the roundtable and start the conversation," Ilya Yashin, head of Nemtsov's party in Moscow, said in an interview. "If we've got solidarity and can work together, it will be a big answer to this challenge."

Vladimir Milov, head of the Democratic Choice party, thinks disagreement and competition are healthy.

"It's not a crime to be ambitious when you're in politics," said Milov, who plans to support the coalition's new platform.

"Russia suffers, politically, economically and psychologically, from this idea that we have to have one big czar," he said. "You make yourself vulnerable to put all your stakes on one person, because this is how the Kremlin operates."

Michael Birnbaum contributed to this report.

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 #34
Washington Post
March 18, 2015
Editorial
Helping Ukraine in its time of need

RUSSIA HAS not abided by the latest cease-fire in eastern Ukraine. Instead it has taken the opportunity to send more weapons across the border, and its forces continue to shell Ukrainian positions. Vladi­mir Putin, who this week ordered new military exercises in western Russia, may be preparing an offensive to seize more territory. But he also has a more subtle means of attacking the beleaguered pro-Western government in Kiev. A shaky financing package backed by Western governments and the International Monetary Fund has given him an opening.

The IMF recently determined that Ukraine needs at least $40 billion to keep its currency afloat and meet external debt commitments in the next four years. The fund pledged $17.5 billion, but Western donors have offered only $7.5 billion. That leaves the democratically elected government of Petro Poroshenko needing to extract $15 billion in debt relief in the next several months from Ukraine's foreign bond holders. The largest of those happens to be Russia, which holds a $3 billion Ukrainian eurobond.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Putin's ministers have adopted a hard line, saying they expect Ukraine to pay in full when the bond falls due this year. Other bondholders, who Ukraine will ask for lengthened terms as well as a write-down of principal, object to any deal that does not include Russia. That puts Natalie Jaresko, Ukraine's American-born finance minister, in the position of attempting to negotiate relief from a regime that currently has tanks and troops deployed on her country's territory and seeks nothing less than the destruction of her government.

Russia has been handed this leverage by Western leaders whose lofty rhetoric about supporting Ukraine hasn't been reflected in budgets. Like the European Union, the United States is offering Ukraine $2 billion in loan guarantees, a paltry sum compared with the bailouts that have been delivered to other allies in crisis. Like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, White House officials deflect calls for providing Ukraine with defensive weapons by saying it's more important to ensure the success of the Poroshenko government. However, the Obama administration isn't proposing to give Ukraine even enough resources to pay its debt to Moscow, much less stop its army.

While saying Ukraine is grateful for the help it has received, Ms. Jaresko told us, "it's hard to believe there hasn't been more support." She points out that her adopted nation of 45 million has literally bet its future and the lives of thousands of its citizens on the embrace of Western democracy and the free-market system. Mr. Putin is intent on reversing that choice. The future of liberal values in much of Europe consequently depends on whether the West will come to their defense in Ukraine.

The Poroshenko government has not asked for a no-strings handout; it knows it has to match aid with radical and painful reforms. It is imposing drastic energy price increases on consumers and has launched sweeping reforms of the police and judiciary. It has not yet proven it can succeed, but it deserves more than the half-hearted help it has so far received from the United States.

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 #35
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
March 18, 2015
To save Ukraine, the West must understand Ukraine
One year after Russia's incorporation of Crimea, the Donbas is close to becoming a frozen conflict within Ukraine's border. To prevent the further disintegration of Ukraine, the West first needs to understand how the Ukrainian crisis started and why it persists today.
By Yulia Karabkina
Yulia Karabkina is an expert from the Kiev-based Center for Operational Strategic Analysis (COSA), an independent analytical center that offers the expertise of both local and international analysts.

Ukraine's borders and the indivisibility of its territory is a highly discussed issue today in the context of the tragic events taking place in the Donbas region. Even one year after the incorporation of Crimea, the true reasons for hostilities continuing in Eastern Ukraine are not always easy to discern. There is an obvious conflict of interests, as clearly seen by comparing the statements made by Russian and Ukrainian opinion-makers, as well as by publications of political analysts on both sides.  

But what are the real origins for this conflict of interests?

What should be analyzed are the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis, which started more than a year ago. It still remains an open question for international observers as to the role of Ukraine's domestic policy with regard to the conflict. To understand the internal problems of any state, it is necessary to live at least for some time in the country, to communicate with everyday people and to compare different sources of information. It is hardly possible to analyze objectively the conflict without using this background information.

Disintegration of Ukraine: Myths and reality

Analysts frequently consider Euromaidan to be the key internal factor provoking the current crisis, especially the current war in eastern Ukraine. In this context, events of the "Revolution of Dignity" have to be analyzed separately from the Donbas crisis. One of the key preconditions for mass protests taking place in Kiev was the former president's refusal to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union.

Furthermore, the demonstrators were fighting for freedom and against the violations of their rights. However, not one of the Euromaidan protesters could have imagined last winter that the revolution would have been followed by the annexation of Crimea or the Donbas war. Nevertheless, it was.

The ethnic-territorial division of Ukraine is considered to be the most popular issue to debate while arguing about the local separatists. Yes, they are. Not only Russians but also Ukrainian citizens are taking the terrorists' side in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. But all of them are financed and armed by the Russian authorities. And the international community, as well as the Ukrainian government, has no doubt regarding this fact.

In addition, sometimes the Donbas conflict is considered to be a civil war between eastern and western Ukrainians. What's more, it is believed to have started when the western nationalist "banderas" (people named after Stepan Bandera) came to seize the Donbas territory in order to implement a so-called "Ukrainization" policy.

However, this is not objectively true. Citizens from western Ukraine are forced to defend Ukraine's independence by serving in the state armed forces after the prolonged attack of pro-Russian terrorists. Differences between western and eastern Ukraine in terms of economic potential and religion have been used as a basis for many concepts for the division of the state. The myth of a divided Ukrainian nation served as a key issue to manipulate during recent election campaigns.

Moreover, a particular emphasis was placed on the language issue. Candidates focused on the Russian- or Ukrainian-speaking population and promised abstract things to do for them. Consequently, the populists came to power managing to deepen the myth of a disintegrated Ukraine, in particular during the last ten years.

To a large degree, this is a consequence of the geographical location and economic situation of the country. The limited financial possibilities of Ukraine's eastern citizens, for example, led to some striking statistics. According to data from the Research and Branding Group published in 2014, more than 80 percent of Ukrainians living in southeast Ukraine have never been abroad, while the number of such western Ukrainians is almost 49 percent.

This is prominent evidence of the fact that the Ukrainian population has always been influenced by its close neighbor states. Having no opportunity to see either an alternative way of state development or a potential role for civil society, eastern Ukrainians were used to following the rules of the Soviet model. Contrary to these rules, western Ukrainians alienated by the "post-Soviet" stagnation were willing to live at least like their neighbor country - Poland.

In general, the country's west did not have a picture of the east, nor did the east have a picture of the west. That is why it is easy right now to manipulate information. Ukrainians in the east believe that those who live in the west are nationalists, while those who live in the west see those from the east as Russian agents.

As a result, it all contributed to giving ground to the notion that there exist Ukrainian citizens who are ready to betray the nation. It is crucially important to stress that pro-Russian separatists as well as Russian-backed terrorists are mostly fighting for money, not for ideas. They consider the war as a possibility to earn money, nothing more.

Why Donbas will never be part of Russia

It can be supposed that if the "Donbas" or "Luhansk republics" were primarily launched as "Novorossiya" projects to incorporate to Russia, they would have already been partially or entirely annexed last autumn. What does it mean? The Kremlin is not interested in repeating the "Crimea scenario" in the Donbas region.

The Donbas occupation strategy used by Russia is slightly different from the Crimea one. And the key reason is quite obvious. The Kremlin had different target goals for starting the conflicts in the two regions. A pro-Russian government replaced Crimea's pro-Ukrainian government after troops without insignia (who were later confirmed to be Russian) seized the Black Sea peninsula's government buildings.

Afterwards, Russia annexed Crimea following a controversial March referendum in which, according to data made public, nearly 97 percent of voters supported secession from Ukraine. Despite Russian claims of an observer presence, there were no monitors from any internationally recognized body overseeing the vote.

There was no military resistance in Crimea and Ukrainian troops withdrew peacefully. First of all, such an outcome suggested to Putin that hard power tactics would bear fruit elsewhere. And so it was applied in the southeast of Ukraine, where, after the annexation of Crimea in March, the situation was escalating.

Secondly, it was made for the consumption of the Russian domestic audience, which was admiring Putin for Crimea's incorporation to Russia. More than 80 percent of the population's approval was achieved. Despite these facts, Crimea's annexation was primarily planned to destabilize Ukraine with its pro-European aspirations.

An occupied Crimea complicated in some way Ukraine's further integration into the European-Atlantic unions even at that time. It is not legally possible for a country to join NATO when it has unresolved territorial problems. What's more, it led to financial damages for Ukraine as well as economic problems in general. The maintenance of Crimea costs Russia $3 billion per year.

As regards the Donbas scenario, a federalized Ukraine is the most preferred outcome for Moscow. It is highly likely that the Kremlin views Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration process as threats to Russia's strategic interests in its backyard. Consequently, the Kremlin could have initiated the Donbas conflict in order to create a frozen conflict and a so-called "grey zone." Deepening the economic crisis in Ukraine is one of Russia's strategies in this conflict.

So, the Donbas region is valuable for its natural resources deposits, in particular its coal and ore minerals. However, it is crucially important for manipulation through diplomatic negotiations. And it will remain a "grey zone" until it would be reasonable for at least one of the conflict parties to give up their claims.

The West's role in Crimea and Donbas

The U.S. and EU governments are currently focused on the de-escalation of the military conflict in eastern Ukraine. Indeed, by seeking ways to establish peace in Ukraine, the West realized that the controversy surrounding Crimea might complicate the problem and aggravate tensions further with Russia.

So, it is highly likely that Western leaders would formally maintain its stand on Crimea as an integral part of Ukraine, since it does not want to set a "dangerous precedent," but it would not raise the Crimean issue in negotiations with Russia over the fate of eastern Ukraine.

Western governments are in danger of creating a far larger and long-lasting problem for the region and themselves in the future. If the West legitimizes a role for Russia in the Donbas, Moscow will be able to destabilize Ukraine for decades ahead.

Moreover, EU leaders tend to believe that the logic of realism holds little relevance in the 21st century and that Europe can be kept whole and free on the basis of such liberal principles as the rule of law, economic interdependence, and democracy. But this grand scheme went awry in Ukraine. The current crisis shows that realpolitik remains relevant and states that ignore it do so at their own peril.

In conclusion, there is still a chance to defuse the situation if Kiev and Moscow fulfill all the conditions of the Minsk peace agreement. In that case, the U.S. and Europe will start to lift its sanctions against Russia and the so-called "new Cold War" could be terminated. Analyzing the internal and external factors with regard to the Ukrainian crisis, both played an important role. But it is more likely that, without a foreign impact, internal problems could hardly have led to the Donbas crisis as it is today.

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 #36
Eurasian Geopoltics
March 17, 2015
Why the Ukraine crisis is still very dangerous
By Edward W. Walker
ABOUT THIS BLOG: I'm a comparative political scientist at UC Berkeley who has been studying the Soviet Union and its successor states since I began my graduate work at SAIS in 1984. (I went on to get my Ph.D. at Columbia -- see "About" above). I started the blog in March 2014 as a way to record my take on the unfolding drama in Ukraine, but as the title suggests I plan to cover a broad range of topics. I also intend to make the posts future-oriented -- that is, mostly about where we are going, although that necessarily requires consideration of where we have been.
[Graphics here http://eurasiangeopolitics.com/2015/03/17/why-the-ukraine-crisis-is-still-very-dangerous-long-version-2/#more-1111]

[Following is an expanded and updated version of a talk I gave at the 39th Annual Berkeley-Stanford Conference on March 6, 2015. The conference title was "The Collapse after a Quarter Century: What Have We Learned About Communism and Democracy?"]

The title of the talk I was going to give today was "Mishandling Russia." However, last week a recent Berkeley political science Ph.D., Andrei Krikovic, now an assistant professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, gave what I thought was an excellent talk entitled "The Ukraine Crisis and the New Cold War: The View From Moscow," in which he made many of the points I was going to make. We also have a talk scheduled for Monday by Masha Lipman, one of Moscow's most prominent political analysts, entitled "From a Model of Development to Evil Incarnate: How Russia Has Come to Loathe the West." So rather than repeating their arguments, I thought I would address one answer to the question in the conference title as follows: One thing that we know for sure 25 years later is that Russia's relations with the West are in crisis. And I don't see a clear path forward for resolving that crisis in the foreseeable future.

I'm going to focus on the security dimension of the current drama, which I think is the heart of the matter and the reason why it is so dangerous. First, however, let me begin with a quick update on the war in eastern Ukraine.

Update on the war in eastern Ukraine

The agreement reached last month in Minsk ("Minsk II") was supposed to bring an end to the fighting and serve as the basis for a political settlement in eastern. It provided for a ceasefire, a withdrawal of heavy weapons from the line of contact (see the red line in Slide 3), and other measures that were to follow.

The agreement has succeeded in reducing the level of violence in eastern Ukraine (as did Minsk I initially), but there is still some fighting, mostly in the form of artillery, rocket, and mortar fire, to the north and northwest of Luhansk, to the west and northwest of Donetsk, and to the east of Mariupol. There is also clear evidence of a continuing flow of irregulars and military supplies from Russia, while the Ukrainian government claims, and Western intelligence services confirm, that there are still many Russian regular troops in the conflict zone.

Finally, there have been worrisome reports recently of a buildup of Russian forces along Russia's border with Ukraine, particularly in Belgorod, which is about a one hour drive north of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city.

Nonetheless, on balance I believe there is a reasonable chance that a genuine ceasefire will eventually come into effect, but that will probably only happen after the separatists achieve some immediate military objectives, including retaking the town of Shyrokyne to the east of Mariupol and driving Ukrainian forces out of Pisky and perhaps other areas to the west and northwest of Donetsk.

There is also a chance that we will get - more-or-less - a withdrawal of heavy weapons from the line of contact, although confirming that will be very difficult if not impossible for OSCE monitors.

If we do get a genuine ceasefire and a significant drawback of heavy weapons, it is possible that we will then get a stable frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine, which I have been arguing for months is the least-worst outcome. For that to happen, there will have to be a follow-on agreement to drawback more than just heavy weapons from the line of contact, and probably also an agreement to establish a buffer zone patrolled by an armed peacekeeping force that, under the circumstances, will almost certainly have to include a Russian contingent.

There is, however, very little chance that any of the other provisions in Minsk II will be implemented, which should be kept in mind when you hear Western officials insist that sanctions will be lifted only if and when Moscow implements the Minsk Agreements in full - that is not going to happen, any more than the Russians are going to withdraw from Crimea.

That said, my view is that the least unlikely outcome is an unstable (or if you prefer, not quite frozen) conflict in the coming months, one where fighting continues at various points along the line of engagement but without major, or at least rapid, changes in territory.

The reason I doubt we will see a stable frozen conflict is that the breakaway region of "Novorossiya" will not achieve Moscow's strategic objectives in Ukraine, which are to prevent it from joining the West and ensure that it remains a buffer zone between Russia and NATO. Moreover, it will saddle Moscow with the burden of trying to restore the region's shattered economy and social order.

So a stable frozen conflict - one with a broad separation of forces (not just heavy weapons) monitored by the OSCE, and perhaps even the establishment of a buffer zone patrolled by an armed international peacekeeping force, as in Transnistria - strikes me as unlikely. Rather more likely is that the ceasefire breaks down completely once again. And it is also very possible that the Kremlin will openly introduce Russian forces into the conflict zone.

If it does, or if the ceasefire breaks down and we see, for example, a separatist assault on Mariupol, I am convinced that the United States and other Western governments will ramp up military assistance to Ukraine and start providing Kyiv with lethal weapons. Is so, I think the likely outcome will be a full-blown proxy war between Russia and the United States, which will be supported by most but not all of its NATO allies. Indeed, a decision by Washington to provide military assistance, and the increased risks of escalation in Ukraine and even war with Russia, will likely strain the alliance, particularly if Washington gets out too far ahead of Germany and France.

If we do get into a proxy war, it will be a proxy war between the world's two nuclear superpowers, one that neither side will be willing to lose. If anyone can tell me how that can turn out well, especially for Ukraine, I am all ears.

Reinforcing NATO's eastern defenses

So what of the broader security aspects of the Ukraine crisis? Let me focus first on NATO's efforts to build up its eastern flank defenses, and then turn to the debate over Western military assistance to Ukraine.

NATO began, more-or-less quietly, to reinforce its eastern defenses almost immediately after Russia's occupation and annexation of Crimea in February. Those measures were then formalized and expanded upon at the NATO Wales summit in September. NATO has beefed up its air and naval assets in the Black Sea and Baltic Sea; increased the size of its rotational forces on its eastern flank and made them more or less permanent (that is, they are constantly rotating in and out, albeit without permanent bases, at least so far); increased the frequency and scale of military exercises in, and training for, the frontline states; increased other forms of military assistance to those states; and pre-positioned military hardware and improved logistical facilities along NATO's eastern borders.

Additionally, it was agreed at Wales that the alliance would establish a new rapid reaction force, to be called the NATO Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) to supplement its existing Rapid Reaction Force (RRF), which was inaugurated in 2003. The VJTF, which is scheduled to be operational by the end of the year, is to consist eventually of some 5,000 troops, including air, naval, and special operations units, some of which are to be deployable in 2-3 days. Eventually, the force will be spearheaded by a rotating lead nation (either France, Germany, Poland, Spain, or the U.K.). An interim VJTF has been established in the meanwhile, with troop contributions from Germany, Norway and the Netherlands. The VJTF will bring rapid reaction forces in Europe assigned to NATO up to some 30,000 troops.

Finally, it was agreed at Wales that the alliance as a whole would increase defense spending. However, given the economic stress and austerity measures in place in much of the EU, that commitment is rather less than firm. The declaration affirmed that members spending less than 2% of GDP on defense in total, and less than 20% of that on hardware, would reach those targets within a decade, but only "as growth improves." So don't hold your breath.

Still, military spending overall is likely to increase in the coming years, especially if the EU economies begin to perform better. Outside the United States, spending has been going down for years (across the alliance it decreased by around 1% in 2014 despite the Ukraine crisis). That will probably reverse itself, albeit slowly, unless there is an actual military clash with Russia, in which case spending will doubtless rise very rapidly. (Keep in mind that Western economies are some 20 times larger than Russia's, and Western military spending overall likewise dwarfs Russia's.)

NATO's overall military strategy is suggested by the next slide. In January, NATO announced plans to establish "NATO force integration units" (NFIUs) in the six eastern flank countries - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria.

These command organizations, which are to become operational next year, are not large - they will have only some 50 permanent staff. They are to be tasked with planning and coordination only, including overseeing regular exercises and training efforts of the VJTF and other NATO operations in their host countries. I suspect that they will also eventually coordinate exercises and training in nearby non-NATO countries, notably in Ukraine and Georgia. Most importantly, the NFIUs will be permanent on-site command structures for facilitating any surges to the east in the event of a crisis, particularly the dispatching of NATO's rapid reaction forces. Also, note that they are not being deployed on a "rotational" basis, and as such they may prove to be the first of many permanent NATO forces based near the alliance's eastern borders.

Indeed, there are growing calls for NATO to change direction, presumably gradually, and to move from what might be called a "reassurance through surge" strategy to a forward defense deterrence strategy with permanent basing, much like NATO's strategy for defending Europe during the Cold War. General Philip Breedlove, Commander of U.S. Forces in Europe, put the argument as follows in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on February 5:

A temporary surge in rotational presence, for example, will not have lasting effect unless it is followed by the development and fielding of credible and persistent deterrent capabilities. Forward deployed air, land, and sea capabilities permits the U.S. to respond within hours versus days as crises emerge. We must follow our near-term measures with medium-term efforts to adapt the capabilities and posture of United States, NATO, Allies, and partners to meeting these new challenges. We must accelerate this adaptation because we now face urgent threats instead of the peacetime environment previously anticipated.

Advocates of a forward defense/deterrence strategy argue that a surge approach is inherently destabilizing because rapid reaction forces can be deployed to the east only after a crisis has broken out, at which point it may be too late to deter Russian aggression. Moreover, surging can raise the risk of war by increasing incentives to preempt before those forces are fully in place. There is additionally the tricky question of who gets to decide when rapid reaction forces are deployed, and under what circumstances. That can undermine the effectiveness of a surge strategy as a deterrent if, for example, the Kremlin gambled that political divisions in Western alliance would prevent or significantly delay deployment.

Slide8In addition to measures being taken by the alliance as a whole, individual member states have been improving their national rapid reaction capabilities and have been increasing military assistance to the eastern flank countries. For example, a new multinational rapid reaction force, the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), is to be in place before 2018, made up of troops from the U.K., Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Norway. Presumably the idea is that Britain and other less-dovish West European countries want a rapid reaction capability that cannot be vetoed by more-dovish NATO allies. Individual NATO countries have also been increasing military cooperation with, and assistance to, the frontline countries on a bilateral basis.

Finally, it is worth noting that Finland and Sweden have been taking steps to increase their defense capabilities and to cooperate more extensively with NATO. They have been particularly concerned about defending strategically important islands in the Baltic Sea. Last week, Sweden announced that it planned to station 150 troops on the island of Gotland after a decade's absence.

The growing U.S. military presence in the eastern flank countries

Doubtless of greatest concern to Moscow, however, are the measures the United States has been taking to increase its presence, and its ability to project power, to the east. The Defense Department has labeled its response to the Ukraine crisis "Operation Atlantic Resolve" ("OAR"), and recently it announced that it was dividing OAR into Atlantic Resolve North (which has been the priority theater and includes the Baltic states and Poland) and Atlantic Resolve South (initially Romania and Bulgaria, but possibly other countries in the future such as Hungary and the Czech Republic).

To date, OAR has consisted primarily of continuous U.S. military exercises by "rotational" troops in the eastern flank countries. The DoD posts regular briefings on the number and nature of these exercises, which have been extensive and growing, on its OAR site.

Probably the most provocative of these exercises for Moscow will take place in May, when some 3,000 troops from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division will conduct exercises in Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. Some 750 U.S. military vehicles and pieces of heavy equipment, including tanks, IFVs, artillery pieces, and helicopters, will be involved, much of which has already been unloaded in Riga. The deployment is slated to end in June, at which point the troops involved are expected to return to the U.S. The Pentagon recently announced, however, that the force's rolling stock, including tanks, IFVs, and armored personnel carriers, will remain in the European theater, apparently in Germany.

That said, if relations with Moscow worsen, or if Russia announces large scale exercises near the border with Estonia and Latvia in, say July, I would not be surprised to see the 3rd Division troops remain in place, at least until an equally large and potent force is rotated in to replace them.

As this suggests, another major component of OAR has been the prepositioning of significant quantities of U.S. military hardware, including tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and other armor in the eastern flank countries. My understanding is that the Pentagon plans to have prepositioned at least 150 tanks and IFVs in Poland and the Baltic states by the end of the year. Again, I would not be surprised if the amount of prepositioned armor did not get ratcheted up in the coming months and years, given the costs and time required to move heavy equipment to Europe from the United States. The DoD is also increasing aviation assets in Europe, including the reintroduction of A-10 Thunderbolt "tank buster" jets to the theater.

I should note that the 3rd Division troops are replacing a smaller force from the Army's 2nd Cavalry Regiment, which is permanently based in Germany. The regiment, with its Stryker fighting vehicles, has been exercising regularly in Poland and the Baltic states since January. Last month, the unit participated in a parade celebrating Estonia's independence day in Narva, some 300 yards from the Estonian-Russian border (a fact stressed by media coverage of the event, particularly in Russia). Narva is a predominately Russian-speaking region (some 90% of its inhabitants are Russian speakers, and around 80% are ethnic Russians, much higher than equivalent figures in the Donbas). It is also an area where there are still unresolved border disputes between Estonia and Russia. That said, it is also true that the local inhabitants seemed to welcome U.S. participation in the parade.

Nonetheless, there can be no doubt that the Kremlin will view a U.S. military parade in a Russian-speaking region 300 yards from its border as highly provocative.

Increased Western military assistance to Georgia

Just a quick word about another potential hotspot - Georgia. At its Wales summit, NATO agreed to a "Substantial NATO-Georgia Package" that was to include "enhanced cooperation" on military matters. The nature of that cooperation was to be determined by a delegation that would assess Georgia's defense needs.

In the period since, NATO has announced it is establishing a "Defense Capacity Building Team" for Georgia as well as a "NATO-Georgia Joint Training and Evaluation Center" and a "Defense Institution Building School" in Georgia.

The stated purpose of these initiatives is to help train Georgian officers and assist with military reforms, as well as to facilitate military exercises with Georgian troops, particularly in-country. It is also clear that the intent of Western military assistance to Georgia has shifted from initial efforts to help restore internal order (e.g., reestablish Tbilisi's sovereignty over the Pankisi Gorge region in the early 2000s), to international peacekeeping operations (notably Georgian participation in NATO's operation in Afghanistan), and now to national territorial defense.

Most importantly for Moscow, NATO membership for Georgia also remains on the table, at least formally, as confirmed most recently at the summit of NATO defense ministers in early February, which produced a "Joint Statement of the NATO-Georgia Commission at the level of Defense Ministers." After describing NATO military assistance to Georgia, the statement asserted that this assistance "will help Georgia advance in its preparations towards membership in the Alliance." It continued:

Allied Ministers recalled the Wales Summit decisions, in particular that Georgia has made significant progress since the Bucharest Summit and has come closer to NATO by implementing ambitious reforms and making good use of the NGC [the NATO-Georgia Council - EWW] and the ANP [Annual National Program, which coordinates NATO-Georgia military cooperation - EWW]; and that Georgia's relationship with the Alliance contains the tools necessary to continue moving Georgia forward towards eventual membership. NATO Ministers recalled the agreement of Heads of State and Government at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Georgia will become a member of NATO, and reaffirmed all elements of that decision, as well as subsequent decisions.

This is not to say that I think NATO membership for Georgia is likely in the foreseeable future - I don't. Accession requires formal approval from all NATO member-states, including difficult treaty ratification procedures in countries such as the United States. Moreover, given that Western countries consider Abkhazia and South Ossetia to be legally part of Georgia, and thus Russian troop presence in those regions to be illegal, NATO accession would put Georgia in a position to invoke Article 5, and effectively put NATO countries in a state of war with Russia.

I do not think there is any chance that Washington, let alone Berlin or Paris, would agree to Georgian accession to NATO under those circumstances, despite the bluster of many U.S. legislators.

But that is not how Moscow will see it.

Increased Western military assistance to Ukraine

Let me turn now to the debate over Western military assistance to Ukraine. Last year, the U.S. spent $118 million on non-lethal military assistance to Kyiv. It is difficult to sort out just how much of that assistance has been disbursed already, and whether those funds are separate from, or overlap with, commitments made this year. But as best as I can tell, the Obama administration is planning to provide at least $130 million more in non-lethal military assistance in 2015.

To date, the types of equipment provided (or to be provided) include secure communication equipment, counter-mortar radars (I saw a report indicating that three U.S. counter-mortar radars were delivered last year, of which two have already been destroyed), Humvees, surveillance drones, body armor, helmets, night and thermal vision devices, heavy engineering equipment, patrol boats, so-called "meals-ready-eat" (MREs), tents, uniforms, and medical supplies.

The U.S. is also continuing to help train Ukrainian forces. (The U.S. has been providing limited training assistance to, and carrying out occasional exercises with, the Ukrainian military for years.) Until recently, that training took place mostly abroad. In early February, however, Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of U.S. Army Forces in Europe, gave a press conference in Kyiv during which he confirmed that a U.S. Army battalion - around 300 solders - was being sent to western Ukraine to train Ukrainian national guard units, including instruction on how to counter Russian electronic warfare equipment and use counter-motar radars. The Brits, who recently provided Ukraine with lightly armored "Saxon" personnel carriers, also announced recently that they are sending 75 military instructors to Ukraine, while Poland, which has been training Ukrainian military instructors in Poland, will send 33. And there are reports that Georgia and Israel are helping train Ukrainian troops as well.

The key debate in Washington, however, is over whether to increase military assistance to Kyiv significantly, and in particular whether to provide Kyiv with so-called defensive lethal equipment, notably Javelin man-portable anti-tank missiles.

Late last year Congress passed, and the president signed, the Ukraine Freedom Support Act, which among other measures authorizes the administration to provide additional military assistance, including lethal weapons, to Ukraine at its discretion. Congressional hawks from both sides of the aisle have been pressing the administration to exercise that discretion. Some have also advocated designating Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova "major non-NATO allies" (not a status with real legal significance, but meaningful nonetheless because it would make compromise with Russia all the more difficult).

Recently, prominent officials in the Obama administration have also begun expressing support for arming Ukraine, including the new Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, and James Clapper, the director of national intelligence. My understanding, however, is that their position is that lethal assistance should be provided only if Minsk II breaks down and the war in eastern Ukraine ratchets up significantly.

Finally, as suggested in the next slide, U.S. public support for lethal assistance to Ukraine has also been growing, although more (53%) still oppose it than support it (41%).

To date, the White House has decided against lethal assistance to Ukraine, reportedly because the president does not believe it would make an appreciable difference on the battlefield for months, if ever, and also because he fears that doing so would be the death knell of Minsk II, might provoke a renewed offensive by the separatists, and might even lead to an open invasion by Russia. I suspect the White House plans to help Ukraine defend itself more effectively in the coming years, but only after a stabilization of the conflict in eastern Ukraine. But if the separatists renew their offensive, or if Russia becomes openly involved in the fighting, it is highly likely Washington will ramp up military assistance to Ukraine rapidly and significantly.

It is also important to appreciate that there are many ways for Washington and its allies to help Ukraine militarily other than by openly providing U.S. weapons. They are already, as noted, helping train Ukrainian soldiers. Moreover, financial assistance in general makes it easier for Kyiv to fund its very expensive military operations. Nor is there a U.N. ban on selling weapons to Kyiv, which means financial assistance can put Ukraine in a position to purchase supplies and equipment abroad, including lethal weapons.

At some point the United States might also undertake a covert operation, or at least one with "plausible deniability," whereby Ukraine is helped to buy surplus Warsaw Pact hardware from Poland, Romania, and perhaps other central European neighbors. While Russian intelligence would certainly become aware of the operation, and doubtless bloggers would pick it up as well, the U.S. position would be, "You pretend not to help the separatists, and we pretend not to help Kyiv."

The frog and the boiling water

I'm sure you're familiar with the perhaps apocryphal claim that if you put a frog in a pot of water and bring the water to a boil rapidly, the frog will realize it's in trouble and jump out. However, if you bring the water to a boil slowly, the frog will stay put and boil to death. My sense is that the administration is taking a "frog in the boiling water" approach in its military response to the Ukraine crisis. It wants to "reassure" its European allies, but it does not want to cross a redline with Moscow. To that end, it has been building up, and will continue to build up, its presence in the east, and it has been providing, and will continue to provide, military assistance to Ukraine. But it has been doing so gradually, without too much fanfare, in the hopes that the Russian frog won't jump out of the pot and bite it or its allies (assuming frogs had teeth, that is).

Specifically, the White House's strategy has been to build up its forces on NATO's eastern flank, particularly in Estonia and Latvia, so as to remove any doubt that Moscow would find itself at war with the United States if it invaded a NATO ally. NATO's hard power deterrence in the Baltic states was minimal, in my view, when the crisis broke out last year, but I believe that is no longer the case. On balance, the U.S. deterrence force is probably sufficient at this point to make a Russia-NATO conflict in the Baltics less likely than it would have been otherwise. It also doubtless gives U.S. military planners more confidence that Moscow's military options will be limited if Minsk II breaks down, the U.S. increases military assistance to Kyiv, and we end up in a proxy war in Ukraine or witness a full Russian invasion.

Nonetheless, the risk is that the already very angry Russian frog is going to jump out of the pot and do something "irrational," like precipitate a war with NATO, or more likely take "rational" countermeasures elsewhere that the United States and its European allies find truly unpleasant, including but not only in Ukraine. Moreover, Moscow has a very considerable incentive to at least appear irrational and risk tolerant, which can be a self-fulfilling exercise.

To date, Moscow's military response, aside from its actions in Ukraine, has been to continue, despite increasing budgetary constraints, its very expensive military buildup. It has also greatly increased the number and scale of its own military exercises, including in sensitive areas like the Baltic region, the Black Sea, and the Arctic Sea. And it has been engaging in many forms of military brinksmanship, including dispatching Bear bombers into the English Channel, having attack jets buzz U.S. naval vessels, and sending military aviation, with transponders off, into western commercial air corridors.

Moscow has also announced that, after suspending its participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty in 2007, it is withdrawing from the agreement completely. And it has suggested that it may soon withdraw from the INF treaty as well, and then deploy new nuclear weapons systems targeting Western Europe or introduce nuclear weapons, including nuclear-armed Iskander ballistic missiles, into Crimea and Kaliningrad.

Finally, Moscow has been increasing military cooperation with many of the West's geopolitical challengers, including China, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and Syria, and it may do so at some point with Iran as well.

These, I should note, are only some of Moscow's specifically military responses and options. It is also taking political, economic, and especially informational measures to promote divisions within the Atlantic Alliance, undermine the European project, and represent itself as the boldest, most powerful, and most effective global challenger to Western liberal hegemony.

Let me conclude, then, by saying that I do not see how we get out of this, and I am very worried. I have long thought that all parties would be better off if an agreement could be reached on some kind of non-aligned status for Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, as well as a new agreement on conventional force dispositions. That seems very unlikely, at least for the time being,  given political dynamics in both Moscow and the West.

At any rate, I hope I have made you as worried as I am.

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