#2
Kremlin.ru
March 27, 2015
Federal Security Service board meeting

Vladimir Putin took part in a Federal Security Service board meeting. Meeting participants summed up the results of the Federal Security Service operations in 2014 and set priority targets for 2015.

PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Good afternoon, colleagues.

We always attach great importance to the work of the key power agencies pertaining to national security. Today, within the framework of this expanded board meeting we will summarise the results of Federal Security Service operations in 2014 and set priority goals for the future.

I would like to begin by saying that, as you all know, the past year was not an easy one. The world situation has exacerbated. We witnessed growing tensions in the Middle East and a number of other areas of the world, while a state coup provoked civil war in Ukraine.

Russia is making significant efforts to reconcile the parties and normalise the situation. We have already received and continue receiving thousands, even hundreds of thousands of refugees and are doing all we can to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.

However, our position, our independent policy and even attempts to help those in need, including in Ukraine and some other areas, are causing outright irritation on the part of those we traditionally call our colleagues and partners.

They are using their entire arsenal of means for the so-called deterrence of Russia: from attempts at political isolation and economic pressure to large-scale information war and special services operations. As it was recently stated quite openly: those who disagree will have their arms twisted periodically. However, this does not work with Russia; it never has and never will.

Meanwhile, NATO is developing its rapid deployment forces and building up its infrastructure near our borders. Attempts are being made to violate the existing nuclear parity, European and Asia-Pacific segments of the ABM system are being created at an increased pace.

I would like to remind you that the unilateral withdrawal by the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty has toppled the very foundation of the modern international security system. Completely new systems are being developed capable of dealing a 'lightning global blow' and conducting operations in outer space.

However, it is obvious that nobody has ever managed to intimidate this country or put pressure on it, and nobody ever will. We have always had and always will have a proper response to all internal and external threats to national security.

Another point I would like to make is that the situation cannot remain like this forever. It will change, for the better I hope, including the situation around this country. However, it will not change for the better if we succumb and yield at every step. It will only change for the better if we become stronger.

Today I would like to thank you and your colleagues for your precise and coordinated work last year, for your immaculate implementation of the tasks and the courage you have demonstrated, for the reliable protection of Russia's security and national interests.

Colleagues,

Your overall workload and responsibility will obviously grow this year. You are facing the challenge of enhancing efficiency in all areas of your activity. Combatting terrorism remains your most important task. A few positive trends have emerged in this area in the past few years.

There were 2.6 times fewer terrorist-related crimes in 2014 than in 2013. While if we look at the previous 5 years, their overall number went down 9-fold.

Such results have clearly been made possible through the concerted actions of the FSB, security and law enforcement agencies, coordinated by the National Anti-Terrorism Committee. We must reinforce the positive dynamics and consistently squeeze out the underground criminal groups.

This is not easy; the militants are fighting back and making attacks similar to the one that took place in Grozny last year. Statistical analysis shows that they still posses a significant amount of arms.

You are also aware of the fact that citizens of Russia and other CIS states are being trained at the so-called hot-spots, including within groups of the Islamic State on the territory of Syria and other countries. Later they may be used against us, against Russia and its neighbours.

It is therefore vitally important to take additional measures to destroy the terrorists' international ties and resource bases and block their entry to and exit from Russia. They should not be able to move between regions or penetrate the new regions of the Russian Federation - Crimea and Sevastopol.

Your direct mission is to provide the highest possible level of anti-terrorist protection for the international events to be held in Russia this year. This is, first and foremost, celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory and the BRICS and SCO summits in Ufa.

In addition, we must step up measures aimed at preventing terrorism, radicalism and extremism, primarily among young people, migrants and underprivileged groups and more actively involve influential public and religious organisations in these efforts.

At the Interior Ministry board meeting in early March, I noted that last year the number of extremist crimes unfortunately went up by almost 15 percent. Obviously, we need to increase coordination between special services and law enforcement agencies in this area and use all the latest methods and equipment, including cutting edge information technology.

Counter-intelligence agencies worked efficiently and steadily last year. Their special operations resulted in the suspension of activity of 52 officers and 290 agents of foreign special services.

Today it is especially important to improve the protection of data that pertains to national secrets and to prevent information leaks regarding the development of our military organisation, mobilisation plans and defence and industrial technologies.

Western special services continue their attempts at using public, non-governmental and politicised organisations to pursue their own objectives, primarily to discredit the authorities and destabilise the internal situation in Russia. They are already planning their actions for the upcoming election campaigns of 2016-2018.

As I have said on numerous occasions, and will repeat again: we are ready for dialogue with the opposition, we will continue our partnership with the civic society in the broadest sense of the word. We always listen to constructive criticism of the authorities' actions or the lack of such actions at any level.

Such dialogue and partnership are always useful, they are vital for any country, including ours. However, it is pointless entering into a discussion with those who are operating on orders from the outside in the interests of some other country rather than their own.

Therefore, we will continue paying attention to non-governmental organisations that have foreign funding sources; we will compare their stated goals with their actual activities and terminate any violations.

Colleagues,

Ensuring economic stability and combatting corruption remain among your priority areas. I would like to ask you to pay special attention to cases of misuse and embezzlement of budget funds, including those allocated for the state defence order.

You should cooperate closely with the Accounts Chamber, the Federal Financial Monitoring Service and other oversight agencies. You should be more active in revealing and thwarting shady deals on the Russian stock and currency markets that may lead to sharp exchange rate fluctuations and destabilise the financial system of the entire nation.

We must continue our efforts to support Russian companies abroad and to protect their interests. Economic competition is tough, as you know. Not all the competitors of Russian companies are willing to work honestly.

Common principles of trade, cooperation and investment are being violated. We see attempts to compromise the business reputation of Russian companies in any way possible. You have to respond to this without delay and competently, within your authority.

Serious tasks are facing the FSB Border Service. The border infrastructure needs to be improved along the entire perimeter of our borders, while traditionally complicated segments in the North Caucasus, Central Asia and the Russian Arctic shelf need to be strengthened.

The Russian-Ukrainian border requires our special attention, of course. The situation there is complicated: thousand of people are trying to escape from the extended armed conflict in southeast Ukraine and are crossing over to Russian territory, sometimes even without their basic documents.

It is important to continue ensuring the unhindered passage of refugees and movement of vehicles with humanitarian cargo. At the same time, we need to reveal those who voluntarily took part in punitive actions against peaceful residents, who are trying to cover their tracks or are planning crimes on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Next. The protection of national information resources should remain under special control. The number of cyberattacks on official websites and information systems of Russian authorities is not diminishing; about 74 million such attacks were curtailed last year alone.

Moreover, over 25,000 internet resources have been identified that carry illegal publications. More than 1,500 extremist websites have been shut down. We must continue efforts to rid the Russian cyberspace of illegal, criminal materials, more actively use modern technologies for this purpose and take part in creating an international information security system.

We are not speaking of limiting online freedom, far from it. We are speaking of ensuring safety, law and order, while strictly complying with appropriate Russian and international norms and standards, without preventing people from communicating online and posting legitimate, valid and correct information.

Colleagues,

In the past years, we have done much to improve material and technical support of the Federal Security Service. Salaries, pensions and social benefits for acting and retired personnel have grown significantly.

We have practically resolved the issue of permanent housing. In 2014 alone, 65 designated apartment buildings were commissioned (5,200 apartments). We are simultaneously working to increase the stock of service housing.

The state will continue providing the best service conditions for you, taking care of the families of those who were killed in the line of duty. We will certainly do everything necessary to ensure that all FSB units are equipped with the latest in armaments, technology and special gear.

At the same time, just like all the other agencies, you are facing the task of more rationally using state funding and other resources. You have to show maximum responsibility and concentration in resolving all the tasks facing you.

In conclusion, I would like to wish you success and new, visible results in your service that the country needs so much.

Thank you for your attention.

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 #3
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
March 27, 2015
MOSCOW BLOG: Putin marks 15 years in power with harangue against West
Ben Aris in Moscow

Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 26 marked 15 years since he was elected as Boris Yeltsin's successor by summoning the heads of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and warning them sternly that there was a western conspiracy to undermine and contain Russia.

Putin struck a dark tone in his address to the chiefs of the FSB, the main successor organization to the Soviet KGB, repeating allegations that Russia's "political opposition is controlled and financed from aboard". He reiterated that dialogue with the West is "pointless" in this case. The president went on to say that western secret services had infiltrated Russia's NGOs and would use them to destabilise future Russian elections, specifically the parliamentary elections due in 2016 and presidential elections in 2018.

The speech came as a new poll from the Levada Center shows Russian support for a liberal democratic system has reached a 20-year low. One in two Russians now believe it is better to concentrate power in "one pair of hands", while anti-American sentiment is running at an all-time high.

Putin has bolstered his standing in the polls by deftly redirecting anger that should be aimed at him over the faltering economy and falling standard of living squarely onto western governments. Despite his lack of democratic credentials, Putin has played the populist harp with such aplomb that he now enjoys a unprecedented popularity level of some 80% - even better than when he was first elected.

Discovering Putin

If one were to look for symbolism in the historic anniversary of Putin's accession to power, then the conclusion is a chilling one. For the first six months after his election in 2000, the western press wrote endless articles asking "Who is Putin?"

At first it was assumed that he was simply a puppet of the oligarchs then ruling the roost. However, Putin rapidly took control by first attacking two of Russia's most prominent oligarchs - Boris Berezovsky, who was driven into political exile, and Vladimir Gusinsky, who was arrested, Both controlled Russia's leading media outlets. Putin followed up by dismissing the entire Federation Council, which was believed to be populated with proxies for the oligarchs, and replacing them with governors appointed by the Kremlin. Putin finished his coup by calling the now infamous "oligarch meeting" in July 2000, where he told the leading industrialists they could keep what they had stolen but they could steal no more - and stay out of politics.

These actions formed the political reputation of an autocratic tough guy with little respect for democratic institutions that Putin still carries today.

Less well remembered are the concurrent economic reforms that he put in place. The first thing the new president did was to completely overhaul the tax system, slashing income taxes to a low 13% for individuals and 24% for corporations - among the lowest rates in Europe. At the same time, he overhauled the labour code and launched what became known as the Gref plan, named after the serving minister of economics, German Gref.

This change paved the way for an economic boom and the Russian economy expanded by 10% in 2000, a record yet to be bested. Of course, Putin was aided by the rapid recovery of oil prices, which rose from a low of $10 to over $25 by 2001. Al Breach, chief economist at Goldman Sachs and a long-time Russia watcher, famously marked every single Russian stock up to "buy" in 2000. It was a spectacular call that would have made investors rich if they had followed his advice (most didn't) as Russia set off on a multi-year boom, until it finally hit the brick wall of the Lehman Brothers collapse in September 2008.

Rejecting the reset

For all the good luck Putin enjoyed at the start of his first term, he had an equal amount of bad luck at the end of his second, and ever since, which many would argue has only been made worse by his aggression in Ukraine and rejection of liberal western mores.

Rising tension with the West over the inability of Russia to form a true partnership with Europe escalated in the second half of the noughties, eventually culminating in the open military clash in eastern Ukraine.

Putin has clearly felt frustrated with his attempts to engage Europe, albeit in his ham-fisted way. In his famous Munich Security Summit speech of 2007, he told the European delegates that "Europe is our natural partner", but added the caveat that Russia's interests must be respected. But an effort to buy German-based carmaker Opel by a consortium of Russian banks, which Russia intended to use to rescue its failing automotive industry, was thwarted by executive interference. Likewise, the Russian purchase of a large minority stake in the European aviation giant EADS, which was intended to help rescue Russia's ailing aviation sector, was also blocked.

On the security front, Washington's decision to unilaterally withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in 2002, a pillar of European security infrastructure as far as Russian was concerned, followed by the US bid to build a "missile shield" in Central Europe, only undermined relations further. Subsequent attempts to sign a missile reduction treaty and the US "reset" pursued after Dmitry Medvedev's 2008 'interim' election as Russian president came to nothing.

Meet the new old president

Putin returned to the Kremlin helm in 2012 after side-stepping presidential tenure rules by serving as prime minister for four years. And things were going to be different. According to bne IntelliNews sources that worked with Putin for the last decade, he eventually gave up trying to be friendly and turned his attention to tightening relations with Asia. Relations with Europe from this point on are going to be pragmatic and commercial, but not friendly.

Putin is bound to be re-elected in the 2018 presidential election if he chooses to run. That would mean he will remain in office for another 10 years until 2024 when the constitution requires him to stand down. He took office when he was 47 but will probably retire when he is 72.

What the next 10 years hold remains totally up in the air. Russia is at a crossroads (yet again) and the government needs to launch radical reforms if the country is not to slide into stagnation. At the same time, the financial sanctions imposed by the US are likely to remain in place for all of Putin's remaining time in office and will act as a millstone around Russia's economic development.

Even if European sanctions expire at the end of this year, as most commentators are expecting, the viral nature of the US financial sanctions mean Russia's major banks and companies are likely to be cut off from the international capital markets from this point onwards, or at the very best will have to pay a lot more for their money.

That said, the Russian economy remains entirely self-sufficient, not to mention its treasure trove of natural resources. And it has not been isolated by the showdown with the West, as the process of integration with other emerging markets, particularly the BRIC countries, is on-going. In 2014, China became the largest economy in the world and continues to be one of the fastest growing. Whether this relationship will be enough to offset the lack of business integration with the West remains to be seen.

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 #4
75% of Russians ready to vote for Putin at next election - pollster

MOSCOW, March 27. /TASS/. Three fourths of Russians (75%) said they are ready to vote for President Vladimir Putin if the elections were held next Sunday, the poll conducted by the Public Opinion Fund (POF) said on Friday.

Thus, Putin's electoral rating has reached its new high. Six months ago, 71% of Russians said they were ready to cast their votes for the incumbent leader.

According to the pollster, Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky could count on 4% of votes, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov - 3%, leader of A Just Russia Party Sergey Mironov and former leader of the Civil Platform Party Mikhail Prokhorov - 1% each.

One percent of respondents said they would choose other politicians, 1% would spoil the ballot, and 9 more percent confirmed they would not go to the elections at all.
The poll also found that the majority of those ready to vote for Putin (95%) have a positive view of him.

Around 3,000 people from 204 towns and cities in 64 federal subjects of Russia participated in the poll. Statistical error does not exceed 3.3%.

Head of the Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Research Dmitry Badovsky said that Putin's electoral rating has been consistently growing over the last year - since February-March 2014, after a coup in Ukraine and Crimea's reunification with Russia. Since then, the president's rating has grown by 30% Putin's rating has not went lower than 70% over the last six months.

General director of the Center of Political Information Alexey Mukhin said that the results of the poll show that Russians are still interested in Putin as "an effective business executive."

"In the circumstances of anti-Russian sanctions and economic turbulence, Putin's influence inside the country is not falling, and it happens not only because of external pressure which mobilizes social groups around him," Mukhin told TASS. "It also happens because Russian people see him as a person who can deal with all these social and economic difficulties despite rather complicated conditions," he added.

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#5
Fort Russ
http://fortruss.blogspot.com
March 25, 2015
10 Major accomplishments of the age of Putin
Alexey Zernakov/(Nightly Moscow) Vm.ru
http://vm.ru/news/2015/03/25/epoha-po-imeni-putin-desyat-glavnih-dostizhenij-stremitelnogo-tigra-282073.html
Translated by Kristina Rus

Fifteen years ago, on March 26, 2000 Vladimir Putin was first elected to the post of the President of Russia. After coming to power in difficult times, he not only managed to keep the country united. 15 years later we can say: we have again become a superpower with a developed economy, industry, a powerful army and navy. And may be not everything is smooth today. But then, 15 years ago, many people actually thought that the country was finished. However, Putin has managed to prove to the Russians and the whole world that we can not be easily defeated.

In fifteen years, thanks to the "swift tiger," as President Vladimir Putin is called by Chinese journalists, our country is once again referred to with respect.

We have decided to make our own rating of achievements of Vladimir Putin and his team in the last 15 years, helped by experts from "Nightly Moscow":

1. THE SALVATION OF RUSSIA FROM DISINTEGRATION

Alexei Mukhin, political scientist, Director of the Center for Political Information:

- Putin's role in preserving the unity of Russian Federation is primary. The change in the territorial-administrative division of Russia, the creation of seven federal districts allowed to first slow down and then reverse the processes that were leading to a direct collapse of Russia into several pseudo-state entities. Fortunately, Boris Yeltsin timely sensed what was happening, and resigned as President. And Vladimir Putin in time identified existing threats and took a number of preventive measures.

2. THE END OF THE WAR IN CHECHNYA

Viktor Murakhovsky, chief editor of the journal "Arsenal of the Fatherland":

- Remember Putin's famous phrase: "Will smash in the toilet" ["If we find them in a toilet, we will smash them in the toilet" - KR] . As we remember, he was referring to the terrorists in North Caucasus. And Putin has played a huge role in that the First Chechen campaign, culminating with the Khasavyurt capitulation, was forgotten.

But the Russian army regenerated and played a decisive role in the defeat of terrorists. The key factor was not only the effectiveness of the armed and internal forces, but that the leadership of the country expressed a political will.

3. STRENGTHENING THE ROLE OF RUSSIA IN THE INTERNATIONAL ARENA

Mikhail Panchenko, political scientist:

Over the last fifteen years from a country ranking in the twenties-thirties by the degree of influence on world politics, we confidently moved into the top three - along with the US and China. The first ideological imperatives were laid down in the Munich speech of Vladimir Putin in 2007. But the first "applied" case when we showed iron will took place in August 2008 in South Ossetia. In essence Russia then stood up and said: "Tomorrow we will live by new rules!"

4. THE CREATION OF A SOCIALLY ORIENTED BUDGET

Maxim Safonov, Doctor of Economic Sciences, professor:

Over the past 15 years serious steps were made and the budget of our country has become truly socially oriented. But there is no limit for improvement, and I think we should not stop there. A good example is the joy of the inhabitants of Crimea after becoming a part of Russia. Because the level of pensions and social benefits there instantly rose to nationwide levels. Yesterday I was at a general meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was speaking. And he clearly said that the social obligations will be fulfilled, despite the economic difficulties.

5. EARLY PAYMENT OF STATE DEBTS

Vladislav Ginko, economist, Professor of the Russian Academy of National Economy and State Service:

Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has managed to significantly reduce the arrears to international financial institutions. Currently Russia, of course borrows in the foreign market, but in relation to the gross domestic product, this amount is small. First of all, it gives us the opportunity to pursue an independent policy.

Because loans from international organizations are very often accompanied by certain encumbrances. Which are often hidden behind vague wording. But often, after such "reforms" the standard of living of the population drops - we see it today in Ukraine. And, of course, if our debts were higher, the sanctions would hurt us more.

6. THE CREATION OF THE STABILIZATION FUND AND THE NATIONAL WELFARE FUND

Boris Shmelev, Professor, head of the Center of Russian Foreign Policy Institute of Economy, RAN:

The creation of these financial institutions was largely initiated by Vladimir Putin himself. Huge amounts of money was directed there - about two trillion dollars that the country made from the sale of oil and gas in favorable market conditions. And this money allows us now in the situation of economic crisis to mitigate its effects. In many respects the Stabilization Fund will be focused on supplementing government's social obligations.

7. REFORM OF THE ARMY AND THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX:

Igor Korotchenko, chief editor of "National Defense" magazine:

Today we have qualitatively new armed forces. It is no exaggeration to say that today our army is one of the best in the world. It is recognized by all, including our opponents. It is under Putin, that our armed forces again became respected. Over the past 15 years we've been through a restructuring of the military-industrial complex. On the initiative of the President powerful vertically integrated holding companies were created, each of which brings together the entire chain of developers and manufacturers. As a result, Russia ranks second in the world in the export of weapons.

8. CREATION OF INTEGRATION ASSOCIATIONS IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE UNION OF INDEPENDENT STATES

Sergei Markov, director of the Institute for Policy Studies, a member of the Public Chamber of Russia:

The creation of such associations is a key to sustainable economic development. Here is the emergence of new markets, and the possibility of joint development of technologies. But generally speaking, it is in fact the will of our people. The Russians want to stay close to those peoples who lived with us in the framework of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. And, very importantly, we see a positive response from our partner countries. The initiators of integration associations are, without a doubt, the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin and the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev.

9. THE 2014 WINTER OLYMPICS IN SOCHI

Yelena Isinbayeva, two-time Olympic champion in the pole vault, the mayor of the coastal Olympic village-2014:

A major achievement is not only that we had a great Olympics from the point of view of organization, but that people from all over the world have discovered a new Russia: strong, modern and victorious. I worked with people, saw it from the inside and noticed how their mood changed from suspicion to amazement.

But how many were skeptics at first! Remember how in 2007 thanks to the personal speech of Vladimir Putin at the meeting of the organizing Committee in Guatemala, we were able to tip the scales in our favor to host the games.

10. REINTEGRATION OF CRIMEA INTO RUSSIA

Dmitry Orlov, political scientist, Director of the Agency for Political and Economic Communications:

Reintegration of Crimea into Russia was of great importance for the whole country. From a political point of view, it helped to create and expand a new coalition supporting the government. Emerged the phenomenon of patriotic mobilization of public opinion, which continues to this day. It is also called the "Russian Spring". Today, according to research centers, this effect has not been yet exhausted. Of course, reintegration of Crimea was a very significant step, but, importantly, this is just one of the episodes of the era of Vladimir Putin.

 #6
Forbes.com
March 26, 2015
Russian Support For Democracy Just Hit The Lowest Level In More Than 20 Years
By Mark Adomanis
[Charts here http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2015/03/26/russian-support-for-democracy-just-hit-the-lowest-level-in-more-than-20-years/]

The invaluable Levada Center, Russia's only genuinely independent polling agency, regularly conducts a survey about Russians' attitudes towards the government, the economy, and the proper relationship between the state and its citizens. The 2015 results were just released, and it makes for rather depressing reading.

Basically, right across the board, Russians have become substantially more statist and nationalist in their views. This general trend might not be terribly surprising considering the events of the past year, but the size and speed of the shift in opinion seems noteworthy. Support for the current government grew by exactly the same amount (10%) by which support for Western style democracy decreased.

Levada's data also showed a similarly sized increase (11%) in the number of respondents saying that it would be better for power to be concentrated "in a single pair of hands." One out of every two Russians now thinks that this type of arrangement is preferable to a system in which "power is divided between different structures which control each other. This would appear to go beyond even the Russian state's own propaganda which (at least officially) holds that Russia does have different branches of government of equal power and influence. If you're looking for a silver lining among all these clouds you will look in vain.

Now, whenever it comes to poll data about Russia there is a surprisingly large number of people who insist that it's all a meaningless distraction, that the number are "made up" in a Putin-friendly lab somewhere. Many others think that, even if the polls aren't deliberately falsified and manipulated, they are nonetheless rendered useless by the Kremlin's malevolence.

These aren't entirely unreasonable concerns. The Russian government does lots of bad stuff, and the average citizen would be forgiven for being a bit cautious in expressing their views. But when you look at the numbers themselves, there appears to be far too much variation in the results to discount them entirely. Between February 2008 and January 2012, for example, Russians' expressed support for Western style democracy roughly doubled from 15% to 29%. Did Russians temporarily forget what kind of country they were living in during those years? Did the government think it should deliberately engineer a pro-Western turn in public opinion? In polls with the sort of sample sizes that Levada uses, 1,600 with a margin of error of about 3.5%, you would almost never see that kind of variation simply by random chance or happenstance. In other words something was happening that explained why Russians grew more willing to say that they supported democracy between 2008-12 and something explains why they've grown less supportive since then. Basically, Russians have never been more unwilling to say that they think Western style democracy is the best choice for their country. You don't have to agree with that position (I certainly don't!) to understand that it matters. It matters very much. Certainly Russian public opinion on the issue matters a lot more than my personal views, or the views of any other Western analyst. Russians' political views aren't the only cause for concern. There wasn't much change in their preferred approach to the economy, but the following should be a sobering sight for anyone who thinks that there is some kind of building grassroots campaign for liberal economic reform:

Again, one doesn't have to think that Russians are right, planned economies are obviously a horrible idea, one simply has to understand that their opinion on the issue is very different from the Western consensus. There's a really depressing tendency in Western Russia analysis to personalize issues, to place all of the credit (as in the Yeltsin years) or the blame (as in the Putin years) on a single individual. This approach hasn't worked terribly well. It should seem obvious, but you need to pay attention to what the Russian public thinks. It might be nice to assume that it wants exactly the same things that we do, but all of the evidence suggests that this isn't true.

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 #7
Moscow Times
March 27, 2015
Russian Government Struggles to Check Surging Cost of Medicine
By Delphine d'Amora

The cost of medicine is rising fast in Russia, hitting consumers and challenging a government that has made its reputation as a bulwark of social stability.

The ruble's fall of nearly 40 percent to the U.S. dollar and 22 percent to the euro since the beginning of 2014 has sent the price of medicines in pharmacies soaring by more than 20 percent, according to pharmaceutical market research company DSM Group.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in early February warned that prices could surge a further 20 percent this year.

Fast-rising prices have posed a stiff challenge to the government both politically - electorates tend not to like expensive medicine - and financially, as the government distributes medicine to many Russians for free through the government's compulsory insurance program.

Over recent months, Russia's president and prime minister have both repeatedly called on authorities to keep the price of medicine under control.

Catching the industry by surprise, President Vladimir Putin in late February ordered the government to look into the possibility of creating a chain of government pharmacies to provide cheap medicine and high-potency painkillers to needy Russians.

Currency Crisis

The root of the problem is the same as in many areas of the Russian economy right now: steep currency devaluation paired with a reliance on foreign production.

In January of this year, foreign products accounted for 44 percent of the pharmaceuticals market in terms of volume and 74 percent in value terms, according to DSM Group.

No surprise, then, that after the ruble plummeted steeply in December - losing 11 percent of its value on one dark day - the price of medicine skyrocketed. The average cost of a package of medication rose 3.7 percent from December to January alone, according to DSM Group.

Even Russian producers are being hit by the ruble devaluation, as they import almost 80 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients they use in production of medications, mainly from China and India, said Oleg Berezin, head of the life sciences and health care industry group at financial services firm Deloitte CIS.

Producers Squeezed

The problem for drug producers is compounded by a particularity of the Russian system, which recognizes two categories of medication: so-called "vital and essential" drugs, and non-essential drugs.

The prices of the 608 "vital and essential" drugs are regulated by the government, which sets a maximum wholesale price.

These maximum prices are set in rubles and haven't been adjusted since the Russian currency's crash last year, making production of many of these medicines unprofitable for foreign and Russian businesses alike.

"The least stable [production sector] is the low-priced segment, up to 50 rubles ($0.90). The profitability of producing such medications is extremely low, and even negative now," said Viktor Dmitriyev, CEO of the Association of Russian Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, a lobby group representing the country's largest drug producers.

The government is currently discussing raising the maximum wholesale prices of these drugs, with the cost of drugs with a top price of up to 25 rubles ($0.40) rising by 80 percent, up to 60 rubles ($1.00) by 30 percent, and more expensive medications at the level of inflation, Dmitriyev said.

Budgets Woes

The problem lurking beyond is that just as the price of medicine is rising, state budgets are falling.

With state income down due to falling oil tax revenues, almost all federal agencies have been urged to cut 10 percent from their budgets. Budgets for regional administrations, meanwhile, are under even greater stress.

"We already have this issue that regional governments, especially those with budget constraints, face difficulties providing medicine to all patients that are eligible to receive them for free," Deloitte's Berezin said.

State health care is turning to cheaper variants, such as generics, and may even be forced to use older medicines with lower price points. "The effectiveness and sometimes the quality of these drugs may actually suffer," Berezin said.

Much-Needed Reform

The government is discussing a range of measures for providing medicine, including, most notably, barring foreign producers from its tenders if there are equivalents produced within the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union.

But Putin's proposal of launching a state pharmacy chain has some industry players flummoxed.

"The question is: What's the source of the funding and will it be efficient to integrate state pharmacies into the existing market environment? I'm very skeptical," Berezin said.

In the meantime, Berezin added, more vital reforms could be overlooked.

"You can actually solve [the problem of providing affordable medicine] by reforming the whole system - for example, by monitoring the prices at which particular medicines are bought at government tenders," he said.

In fact, there is no shortage of ideas on how to reform Russia's medical care system - the problem, as always, is money, said Larisa Gabuyeva, a professor of health economics at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.

"There are many good ideas about provision of medicine, insurance. ... But amid a crisis, I doubt that we will be able to change this situation," she said.

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 #8
Russia's 200,000 employed senior citizens worry they may lose old age pension
By Tamara Zamyatin

MOSCOW, March 26. /TASS/. Russian Labor and Social Protection Ministry's idea of stripping employed senior citizens whose annual remuneration is one million roubles (about $16,500) or more of their old age security pension has sparked a debate in Russian society.

In the context of Russia's modern realities one million roubles is a sum enough to buy an average class car, renovate a two-room apartment or pay for an oncological surgery. In a word, one million roubles for an employee past the retirement age is by no means a luxury, but a means of decently satisfying some basic needs apart from buying food and paying the utility bills.

The speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament (Federation Council) Valentina Matvienko, has pointed to at least two adverse effects such a move will cause - firstly, it will fail to yield the expected effect and secondly, undermine confidence towards the authorities. For the time being the Labor Ministry's initiative is being discussed in parliament.

Russia has 200,000 retirees who might have to brace up for the proposed measure. Russia's average old age pension currently stands at 12,000 roubles. Striping this group of pensioners of their well-earned old age support would save the budget a tiny 30,000 billion roubles, or 0.24% of the 2015 federal budget's expected income of 12.5 trillion roubles.

"One has an impression that the bureaucrats who have had this idea are interested in nothing but the arithmetic side of the proposal. They must have estimated the likely savings and hurried to report to the superiors about how really hard they work to take care of government money. But have they ever stopped to think about the legal, social and psychological aspects of their idea?" sociology lecturer at the Moscow State University, Yelena Shestopal has told TASS in an interview.

"I am an old age pensioner myself, but I keep working and the Labor Ministry's measure would hit me too. My employer has for decades made deductions to the Pension Fund to support me in old age. Why should somebody else get my money?" Shestopal said.

"The psychological effects of that proposal, should it be implemented, may cause a split in society between pensioners along property lines. It would be very wrong to provoke conflict-breeding and protest sentiment the way it happened in 2005, when the government's cash-for-benefits swap sparked a tide of angry protests," Shestopal remarks.

"It is Russia's tradition: retirees in Russia spend the money that they have earned not on themselves but on the families of their children and on grandchildren. These days, in the context of the economic crisis personnel cuts are in progress across the nation and very many people go jobless. When the rouble slumped, thousands of young families in Russia confronted the problem of paying mortgage loans. Most retirees feel obliged to ensure their grandchildren receive good education and pay the tuition fees. Stripping senior citizens of an incentive to keep working would deal a hard blow on family values - the country's main cultural and spiritual asset," Shestopal said. "I believe that such an unfair decision will not be made, because confidence in the authorities will dwindle," she said.

And senior lecturer at the labor and social policies chair at the presidential academy RANEPA, Anatoly Babich, sees no benefits from the Finance Ministry's proposal.
"Economically the state will gain little, if at all, while many employed pensioners will get very upset and angry. Besides, the employees past the retirement age will lose the incentive to earn as much as they can. People should be encouraged to keep working, while setting caps on their incomes is utterly wrong," Babich said.

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#9
Vestnik Kavkaza
http://vestnikkavkaza.net
March 27, 2015
Elena Bibikova: "One third of Russian citizens don't pay fees to the pension system"

Interview by Vladimir Nesterov. Exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza

The pension reform in Russia is one of the most criticized. Critics say that there have been attempts to change the pension system several times in the last two years. In comparison with the early 2000s, the vector of pension reform has almost changed its direction completely. However, Elena Bibikova, a member of the Federation Council Committee on Social Policy, told Vestnik Kavkaza that the changes in the Russian pension system, which came into force on January 1st, were timely and won't violate citizens' rights.

Q: The new pension reform came into force on January 1, 2015. What has caused the need to significantly increase the requirements for retirement and the introduction of this new formula?

The changes which took place cannot be called a big reform, which replaces the previous system. At the beginning of the 2010's we had such a situation, which did not reflect the requirements of the pension system and this affected the budget of the RF. On January 1st two new federal laws were introduced. This is the law of insurance pensions in the Russian Federation and the Funded Pensions Act. In addition to old-age pensions, I would like to draw attention to public, so-called social pensions, which are assigned to certain categories of citizens and are not linked to the presence of seniority.  These are, for example, people with disabilities, war veterans, widows of World War II.

Insurance pensions are divided into three types. The first is old-age pension, we hope that all will live to this pension be able to receive it. The second type of pension is a disability pension. Finally, the third type of pension is a survivor pension.

Only two conditions were required for a pension,  which were the age of retirement, and this had not changed since the 1930s - 55 years for women and 60 for men; and the second condition, which was necessary before the beginning of this year- five years of work. Since January 2015 we require experience of 6 years, and by 2025, 15 years of work experience, that is, significantly raising the bar, but on the ordinary person this won't have huge impact. Everyone can work for 15 years. But the third condition, it is the presence of so-called pension coefficients, pension points. By 2025 the number of these points must be at least 30.

Q: With these points there are always a lot of questions from our students, and from our readers. How difficult is it to deal with these scores? And are they relevant to the size of the wage?

What is the retirement score? For the pension point we build fractions: the numerator and denominator. The numerator is employer contributions, which the employer lists to the pension system for our wages, i.e. it is specifically my insurance payment to the pension system. This is the numerator - the fact that we will share for something to get the score. What do we share? We will share the amount of insurance premiums, which is calculated on the maximum insurance of the contributing salary. That is, to date, the pension system, this is since 2002, there is an order that the employer imposes insurance premiums , which are not all our wages, but some definite limit. So we have a strap, a maximum value which is subject to insurance contributions to the pension system. Last year it was 624 thousand rubles, this year it is 711,000 rubles. That is my 16% that for me was listed by employer and divided by the maximum and multiplied by ten. This is the formula that exists today to determine the coefficient. And multiplied by 10 - is for 2025.

What is significant for my pension? Official, white wage and how long I work for and how long I will pay insurance.

Q: What is meant by wages? There is a very delicate moment. Does this refer only to salary? Or is it a salary and bonus that some of them come from?

The entire amount, which is paid to a particular employee, except for some occasional lump sum payments, insurance contribution to the pension system.

All payments, all allowances for the complexity of the work experience for overtime. And these charges are taken into account in all places of employment. If a person is working at two places, then where he worked, regardless, all the income he receives from the workplace is subject to insurance contributions to the pension system.

Q: Many companies are working in this way, when the salary, roughly speaking, is quite small, but most people get salary in the form of a bonus.

When it comes as a bonus, it's very good, it forms the pension system of the individual. But if the bulk is prepared envelopes, so-called, this part won't be taken into account for the pension system. But, if a person pays himself, as a rule, it happens with entrepreneurs, insurance payments to the pension system with a minimum income, the minimum wage, in this case for one year, the person gets a little less than 1 retirement factor. This means that in order to get his right to a pension, he needs 30 years of experience, which will then be translated and converted into points. On the one hand, for those who pay a minimal salary, it's bad, but on the other hand, we all need to clearly understand that the payments are made from a common pot. That is to say, someone pays 711 thousand per annum, the employer pays for it, and someone with a minimal salary, so  experience increases, I think that is absolutely the right decision.

Q: What do statistics say? Does some part of Russia's population pay contributions to the pension fund, and who does not?

In last November, the first statistics were announced. We have today about 60-67 million of working population. And about 20 million people do not pay.

We do not understand who they are. Housekeepers? There can't be so many. It could be those who live in rural areas, the small villages. There's just no place to work and they live off what they collect - berries, mushrooms etc., and scraping a living. But there is a category of person who just does not want to pay. That is, he has his own business, but at the same time it is in the shadows, which allows him today not to pay insurance contributions.

Q: And are there some specific items to obtain points, for example, for mothers who go on maternity leave?

We understand what the insurance period, i.e. the period in which contributions are paid into the pension system. I work - the employer pays for me. But in life it happens that people for some reason might not work for a period. For example, while doing military service, caring for the elderly over 80 years, for the disabled group 1, caring for children, while receiving unemployment benefits, these so-called uninsured periods are subject toward contributions and a pension, to determine eligibility for a pension. And that the periods for which points are earned and pension coefficients as well. I'll tell you that the minimum wage counts for 0.9 points, it is less than 1 point, if a mother takes care of her first child, in a year she will receive 1.8 points, i.e. twice as much is paid. Military service counts for 1.8 points. For a second child it is 3.6, for a third child for a year it is 5.4 points.

As for the experience, it is directly related to the size of the pension. The thing is that here these rules, laws, scoring - it all only starts from January 2015. And what about until January 2015? I would conditionally stress that I have three piggy banks. The third piggy bank is from January 2015. I earn my pension, it is one bag. The second piggy bank is up to January 2002, because of each of your piggy bag payment of pensions, its parameters which are taken into account, and from January 2002 to January 2014 - this is the third piggy bank. Our pension, any person, say, this year or next year, will consist of three purses. The first purse - that I have earned the norms of the law which was in force until January 2002, the second - from January 2002 to January 2015, the third - in 2015. What is the difference? The fact that in any territorial body of the Pension Fund will explain that to January 2002 was taken into account seniority, ie pension formula, pension calculation directly depended directly from the seniority. The more experience, the higher coefficients for calculating the pension. And the salary taken into account. Also asked me this question: is it possible to take any salary? Yes . When people are paying for a pension, they may submit any salary until January 2002 for five years, any five-year period in a row. Or five-year plan, or the last few years - 2000 and 2001 because we did have to choose the most profitable option to calculate individual pensions. Therefore, the more there will be a salary until 2002, the more experience, the higher the calculated value of the pension.

Since January 2002, the rules were changed, and it is no longer seniority that is taken into account, wages, and from January 2002 to 31 December 2014 there account of the full amount of insurance premiums, which are transferred to the account of each person.  These accumulated premiums: the employer lists, and they lay down on my personal account and my form so-called conditional pension capital. This is the second component of the pension.

And the third is from January 2015. What is defined in points, pension factor. As it is defined, we have you reviewed.

Q: Now a lot of talk  is about a possible increase in the retirement age. How do you feel about that?

The law determined that every person can define the time of his retirement. Here is a woman turned 55 years old, and she thought, "I'm not going to retire, I will work without a pension. What am I in this case they have? And in this case, the calculation of pensions my pension will increase by nearly 50%."  To date, the law is the principle of voluntary deferral of retirement for a raising factors when calculating pensions.

Development of the pension system, which is designed to 2030, does not include raising of the retirement age. Although the subject is very lively and on very active discussion today. My opinion, you cannot just take today and say, "That all countries increased pension age  to 63 years, even our former republics, which were in the Soviet Union (Estonia, Latvia - 65, 63 years), all raised, let us do the same.» It seems to me that in order to make such statements, it is necessary to consider all sides of the problem. The first criterion - how many people live after retirement. If we see that in the West people live up to 80 years, and we have an average age of 70 years today.

On the other hand, we have intergenerational solidarity. It is formed only conditional capital money today on personal accounts except the storage component, do not linger. They reflected on my personal account and went to pay pensions to today's pensioners. If the age inflate, we offend the older generation, because after he is retired, and have no time to live. Therefore, before we talk about what should or should not raise, you need to define  statistics, and economics, and demography, and health status of people, all these factors have to be investigated , and only after that the propositions must be made.

Q: Let's talk with you about the Funded Pensions. Project of 2002. Already it is said  the next year  this must be the  part of the pension freeze. Is there a future for funded pensions?

You know, they've actually frozen. Funded pension adopted in 2002. And for a long time  Pension Fund worked, and the expert community  worked to explain what  is the funded pension. That is felt that this is a funded pension, felt that the person can take part in the decision to be or not to be funded in recent years. But today, frozen storage is a  component. These 6%. Who is eligible? Who have the right of men and women born in 1967 and younger, and provided that to date they have voluntarily declared that they do not want to participate in a funded system. If they are in the category of "silent ones", all their payment goes to the insurance part of joint and several. For every working person employer charges 22% of salary should be left for the Pension Fund. And 6% go to the so-called fixed monthly pension. A sister on earrings. 6% goes specifically to the personal account of this man. And that money are from nowhere from the pension system are not issued without the knowledge of the man. In 2013, it was first decided to freeze the funded part. That is, the government says that such is the accumulative part of which has been selected, the funded part was 6%, we are sending in all of its insurance distribution. For what? Very clear why, because there was almost more than a hundred NPF, not all of them were equally stable, not all of them are credible, well, that is, were the ones that strong, large, working class, and the yield is high. And there were those who did not not-so shaky, and as a result could be lost. Therefore, the government says, let's guys, we'll go through corporatization, change the ownership to the fund participated in management.

If a person happens that the young guys, life is life, leave this life, it is the accumulative part, it shall be returned to the successors.

It is very difficult to predict what will happen, because the disputes are serious. The social unit in a fairly categorically stands for the abolition of pension savings. All financial and economic bloc, including the Central Bank, strongly opposed the abolition of the funded part.

Q: It is de facto funded part, the frozen one, but is it documented? That is, if, say, someone from our viewers and listeners will hear our gear and decide "and I will go and write a statement that is such a part of my pension automatically went to the accumulation fund," will he be able to do  it now?

By the end of this year, there is the right to choose: if he goes to the collecting system or not. Moreover, for those people who are only just learning, students only come to life, the law defines: for 5 years, they have the right to make a choice. The Ministry of Finance said that, according to the opinion that it should be private savings, that is, to give form of private property. This question is very difficult. On the one hand, yes, reliable, guaranteed, yes, indexing goes. On the other hand, this is a loss of the right to inheritance. That is, there are for and against, but I, again, I believe that this debate, which is soon to find its completion.

Q: Elena, thank you very much for coming to our studio and we just explained thoroughly, literally step by step, what a modern Russian pension is. We are in studio of Vestnik Kavkaza, so I can't help asking about  your attitude to  Caucasus, have you ever been here? What is the favorite place of yours?

Yes, of course. I lived and studied not far from Caucasus, that is why I love this place. Firstly, people there are very friendly, very friendly, very respectful. On the other hand, it is beautiful nature, it is impossible not to admire the same Elbrus, and Mineralnyie Vody and so on. Therefore, it is like the North Caucasus, I love to go there, and I wish you all-all-all as long as possible to live, enjoy life, be lucky, happy and understand your family and friends.

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 #10
Moscow Times
March 27, 2015
Soviet-Era 'Objective Truth' Bill Would Imperil Presumption of Innocence
By Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber

A freshly introduced draft law proposing to redefine the roles of Russian judges has courted controversy among legal circles who fear that if adopted, the measure would endanger the presumption of innocence by blurring the lines between judges and prosecutors.

State Duma Deputy Alexander Remezkov of the ruling United Russia submitted an updated version of a 2014 bill last week calling for the return of "objective truth," a Soviet-era legal concept that emboldened judges to play an active role in eliciting evidence and taking other measures deemed necessary to establish the "objective truth" in criminal cases.

Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia's Investigative Committee and a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, played a key role in developing the bill after having expressed his support for the initiative in 2012, Russian media have reported.

Remezkov's draft bill, which the Russian Supreme Court and other state entities contributed to, seeks to modify Russia's version of the adversarial system, a legal system used in common law countries that consists of the prosecution and the defense arguing their positions before an impartial judge or jury.

"The Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation does not [currently] contain requirements about the adoption of all possible measures aimed at finding the objective truth," an explanatory note attached to Remezkov's latest draft read. "The so-called adversarial system is closer to the Anglo-American tradition; it's foreign to the Russian legal tradition."

Under Russian law, judges are passive observers in criminal proceedings, which are fought between defense teams and prosecutors. Remezkov said in a statement that most of Russia's legal community believes the adoption of such a law is long overdue.

But the prospect of expanding judges' rights to such an extent has sparked fears among prominent lawyers that it could violate the Russian constitution, which includes among its guarantees the presumption of innocence - the notion that a person on trial should be considered innocent until proven guilty.

Many countries view the presumption of innocence as a fundamental right in criminal cases. If the prosecution still has reasonable doubt about the guilt of the accused, he or she must be acquitted.

"The adversarial system is one of the greatest accomplishments of the Western and Russian legal cultures," said lawyer Dmitry Kravchenko, who serves as the executive secretary of the Russian Association of Lawyers' committee on constitutional law and state-building. "Straying away from it would not be right. It would violate the principle of the presumption of innocence, which is embedded in our Constitution."

Remezkov has attempted to assuage fears that the presumption of innocence would cease to exist if his bill were adopted, saying in his explanatory note that it would only apply to cases where establishing the "objective truth" seemed impossible.

Renouncing the adversarial system would require a complete overhaul of the Russian legal system, according to Vladimir Tabolin, a law professor at Russia's State University of Management. The social, economic and technical repercussions of changing the role of judges in criminal proceedings would complicate the practical application of Remezkov's proposal.

"Such a system would leave no room for doubt because judges would have to come up with a final, incontestable truth," Tabolin said. "Some would argue that this is impossible. This question has been at the heart of profound philosophical debate."

A History

The adversarial system was introduced in Russia in 1864 amid mass judicial reforms. After the revolution of 1917, jurists began viewing the presumption of innocence as being at odds with the dictatorship of the proletariat, which called for the state's interests to prevail over those of individuals, legal scholar John Quigley wrote in "The Soviet Conception of the Presumption of Innocence," an article published in the Santa Clara Law Review in 1989.

Courts in the Soviet Union took an active part in seeking evidence against the accused, making it difficult for judges to presume the innocence of the person standing trial. A 1985 survey conducted among 200 Moscow defense lawyers found that 83 percent of them had represented a client in the past year whom they were confident had been innocent, but who was found guilty at trial.

In 1973, although the state maintained priority over individuals in criminal hearings, the Soviet Union ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which recognizes that individuals charged with a criminal offense "shall have the right be to presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law."

The Soviet Constitution of 1977 did not explicitly list the presumption of innocence among its guarantees, but contained other provisions that embodied the notion, such as the right to legal defense and the stipulation that courts were the only entities that could render judgments, Quigley wrote.

Judges retreated to their roles as passive observers in 2002, when Russia adopted the criminal procedure code it still uses today, which features provisions compatible with the adversarial system.

Tipping the Balance

The return of the "objective truth" - a practice reminiscent of the methods used in the Spanish Inquisition, according Andrei Fedotov, a lecturer at Moscow State University's law faculty - would tip the balance in favor of the prosecution, something high-ranking officials in the Investigative Committee are unlikely to reject.

"The Investigative Committee will not object to this [the 'objective truth'] because it is useful for them to have the courts on their side," Kravchenko said, adding that such legislative proposals hinted at nostalgia for the Soviet Union in certain segments of the population.

Bastrykin, the head of the Investigative Committee, said in a 2012 interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta that the "objective truth" was an apolitical model that would help ensure judicial fairness.

"Judges are now like hockey referees," he said at a 2013 conference on Russian legal reforms, where he argued for expanding the rights of judges. "They just keep an eye on the rules of the game being played. They are not supposed to pick a side in a judicial proceeding; they are supposed to advocate for the victory of justice."

Bastrykin added that the critics of "objective truth" feared that it was a "relic of the Marxist-Leninist political ideology."

"He [Bastrykin] has the right to speak his mind, but ideas like this do not necessarily transition well into the public sphere," Anatoly Lyskov, a former senator, told The Moscow Times. "This topic needs to be discussed on an expert level. It needs to brew at a theoretical level before it can be presented to the public. Making provocative statements is not among the Investigative Committee's mandates."

The lawyers interviewed by The Moscow Times were split on whether the bill will be adopted by the Duma. Kravchenko said that the legislative body would not easily renounce the advances of Russia's legal system. Fedotov, of Moscow State University, said he was unprepared to write off the possible return of "objective truth."

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 #11
Witness can't recognize suspected Nemtsov assassin - newspaper

MOSCOW. March 27 (Interfax) - The confession of Zaur Dadayev, the suspected perpetrator of the killing of opposition activist Boris Nemtsov, is not confirmed by a direct witness to the crime, Kommersant reported on Friday.

Kommersant reported, citing a source close to the investigator, that Ukrainian model Hanna Durytska, who was accompanying Nemtsov at the time he was killed, was not the only witness of the crime. It turned out that a 27-year-old man named Yevgeny (whose last name is not disclosed) was walking behind the pair at the time of the attack on the Big Moskvoretsky Bridge.

The witness said he saw a man who was running away (who he believes was the assassin), who jumped the border stones separating the pavement and the driving lane on the bridge. Yevgeny said he had seen the man from behind. He says the man was of medium height, had dark, probably curly hair of medium length (some four centimeters).

The young man also said the man was not wearing a jacket, despite the cold and windy weather. The man was wearing blue jeans, which the witness thought were too large for him, and a baggy sweatshirt with a hood.

Kommersant says this description does not fit the description of the appearance of Zaur Dadayev, who is a big athletic man.

Yevgeny said the man had got in the backseat of a white domestically produced car, which looked like a Priora. However, the investigators later determined that the killers had left in a ZAZ.

Kommersant also reported that the witness had also noticed a pair at the accident site who seemed strange to him. A girl and a middle-aged woman wearing a black fur coat somehow appeared near Nemtsov, who was lying on the ground. The women exchanged a few words with the woman who had accompanied Nemtsov and then turned to the stairs leading to the Moskva River Embankment and quickly descended the stairs.

Yevgeny also said he had seen a snowplow stop near the accident site. The witness said the woman who had accompanied the man lying on the ground ran between him and the snowplow driver with a cell phone in her hand. However, her conversation with the driver was apparently very short: he stopped for just a few seconds and then resumed driving.

Kommersant reports that the lawyers intend to use the contradictions in the testimonies by Dadayev, who has admitted his guilt under interrogation, and witness Yevgeny as evidence of Dadayev's non-involvement in the crime. The defense lawyers believe the accused could have incriminated himself.

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 #12
Sputnik
March 26, 2015
CNN and the Ban That Never Was
By Alexander Mercouris

On 10th November 2014 CNN announced it would stop broadcasting in Russia.

CNN's explanation was that new Russian laws placing restrictions on foreign media ownership in Russia and on advertising on satellite and cable channels made its operations in Russia "impossible". Broadcasts duly stopped on 31st December 2014.

The Russian regulator Roskomnadzor expressed bewilderment. Its spokesman Vadim Ampelonsky said "CNN shareholders should be asked about the reasons behind the stoppage".

CNN then suddenly reversed itself, applying for a broadcasting licence in February. It was granted a 10 year broadcasting licence on 23rd March 2015. The problems in the legislation, it turns out, were not problems at all.

This banal affair would be of no interest were it not for the media storm worked up around it.

To the army of Russia's critics CNN's decision to stop broadcasting in Russia was not a decision taken by an independent broadcaster.  It had to be part of the Kremlin's sinister attack on free expression.

An article in the Financial Times serves as an example.

Under the headline "CNN to pull the plug on broadcasting in Russia" it begins portentously with the ominous words: "Russia's assault on foreign "propaganda" has made new waves, after CNN said it would stop broadcasting in the country and a Kremlin-backed news service outlined plans for global expansion."

The article quotes Orysia Lutsevych, a research fellow at the London based think-tank Chatham House, as saying that "the restrictions" (what "restrictions"?- the Russian legislation imposes no "restrictions") "were evidence that "Russia is afraid of pluralism. First, it was the national media. Now it is the international media"."

Further on we learn that "Russia is ranked 148th out of 170 countries in the World Press Freedom Index, below Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Venezuela, but above Turkey and China."It might have been lower in the index had it not been for the stubbornness and resistance shown by its civil society," said Reporters without Borders, the index's compilers, noting that Russia was also using diplomacy to "undermine international standards on freedom of information".

The same Orysia Lutsevych then warns that "Russians seeking to avoid official curbs" (what "official curbs"?- there are no curbs) would "continue to write blogs under false names, and will continue to register [websites] abroad."

Much of the rest of the article is devoted to a lengthy attack on the Russian media group Rossiya Segodnya (of which Sputnik is part) and of its head Dmitry Kiselev, though the connection to CNN is not obvious. There is however a mandatory quote of Kiselev's words, taken completely out context in a way that a casual reader might think refers to CNN: "We are against the aggressive propaganda on which the world feeds right now, which...literally imposes a unipolar construction of the world."

This farrago has now been exposed for the nonsense it is.

A cynical but probably correct view is that CNN decided to pull out of Russia in November when the fall in the oil price and the rouble's devaluation led to predictions the economy would collapse. In February, when it became clear the economy would not collapse after all, CNN reversed itself rather than lose a valuable market.

That however does not make for exciting headlines. How much more useful and exciting to pretend that what happened was "yet another example" of the Kremlin's clamp down on free expression? No matter that there is not a scintilla of evidence. When it comes to Russia the Western media long ago took Mark Twain's injunction to heart: never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.

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#13
Moscow Times
March 27, 2015
Russians Increasingly Believe State Planning Better Than Market Economy

Russians increasingly believe in an economic system founded on government planning rather than the free market, a poll by the independent Levada Center showed.

Fifty-five percent of respondents said that a country's economic system should be based on "government planning and allocation," the pollster said in a report this week.

On the other side of the spectrum, 27 percent said the economy should be based on "private property and market relations." This number has fallen steadily from a high of 41 percent in 1992, just after the fall of the Soviet Union, when support for state planning stood at a low of 33 percent, the report showed.

For many Russians, the idea of a market economy has become tightly associated with memories of the drastic economic reforms of the 1990s, which left many citizens on the edge of survival while a small group extracted massive wealth from the breakdown of the old system.

Asked which political system is the best - the Soviet system, Russia's current one or Western-style democracy - 34 percent still say the Soviet system, according to the survey.

In the increasingly nationalist climate that has emerged following the annexation of Crimea last year, belief in Western-style democracy has fallen from 21 percent in January 2014 to 11 percent this March. The number who believe Russia's current system is the best, meanwhile, has risen from 19 percent to 29 percent of respondents.

Public opinion also appears to have taken an absolutist turn. Fifty percent of respondents in March agreed with the statement "all power in a country should be concentrated in the hands of a single person," up from less than 40 percent in recent years.

At the same time, the majority - 75 percent - agreed that the state should be controlled by its people and not vice versa.

The survey was conducted from March 13 to 16 among 1600 respondents, aged 18 years or older, across 46 regions of Russia. The margin of error did not exceed 3.4 percent.

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 #14
Russia begins recovering from the 'Dutch disease' - Finance Minister Siluanov

MOSCOW, March 27. /TASS/. Russia began to recover from the "Dutch disease", Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Friday.

"The investments that previously went to the oil industry, are now beginning to decline. And the capital will be directed to other, non-oil industries," Siluanov said. According to him, agriculture is currently receiving significant investments, as well as import substitution industry. "And it is a right thing. This is the main motive of all the changes that are taking place, and we support it as a part of anti-crisis plan," the Minister said.

According to Siluanov, amendments to the 2015 budget suggest decline in investment spending by 246 billion rubles ($4.27 billion), primarily due to capital repairs, construction of individual structures "that are not directly related to the economic growth stimulation."

"Dutch disease" is the negative impact on an economy of anything that gives rise to a sharp inflow of foreign currency. The currency inflows lead to currency appreciation, making the country's other products less price competitive on the export market.

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 #15
Forbes.com
March 27, 2015
Russian Inflation: Worse Than Almost Everywhere In Eastern Europe
By Mark Adomanis
[Graph here http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2015/03/27/russian-inflation-worse-than-almost-everywhere-in-eastern-europe/]

Rosstat released a surprisingly large batch of statistics the other day.  There was a lot of useful information, but the most interesting and pertinent was a comparison of Russian inflation since December of last year with inflation in a wide range of other economies.

It's not exactly shocking, or at least it shouldn't be, but no matter what criteria you use Russia's performance was terrible. Over the course of the past several months, the only country in Europe, and one of a small handful of countries anywhere in the world, in which consumer prices grew more quickly was Ukraine. Even countries that have traditionally been monetary basket cases, like Kyrgyzstan, have current levels of inflation that are substantially below Russia's.

The following graph really ought drive home just how exceptional Russia's current situation is. All across Europe, there are massive disinflationary pressures. Largely influenced by a collapse in the price of oil, consumer prices fell not only in the fully developed Western markets, but even in post-communist transition countries like Poland.

That is to say that essentially all of the other countries to which Russia is most directly comparable, the post communist countries of Eastern Europe, have managed to avoid the inflation bug. Indeed a few of them, particularly Lithuania and Bulgaria, would  appear to have an entirely different worry: how to avoid a deflationary spiral.

short-term inflation

Could this situation change? Yes. It seems likely that some of the trends highlighted above will moderate in the not too distant future. The ruble is currently on a modest winning streak and has recouped some (but by no means all!) of the losses it suffered against the dollar. Oil has also been cautiously rebounding off of the lows that it plumbed earlier in the year. Those changes means that, in all likelihood, future inflation will be more muted than it was in the recent past.

But the above really ought to drive home the fact that there aren't any free lunches. Russia hasn't been "punished" as severely as many hawks would like to see for its meddling in Ukraine, but its consumers have already been clobbered by their country's less-than-adept economic policy formulation. For the first time since Putin came to power, the average Russian's real wage is declining.

With memories of the 1990's hyperinflation still fresh in the imagination, inflation is an issue near and dear to most Russians' hearts. No it doesn't mean that they're going to storm the Kremlin gates, but they aren't likely to be terribly happy that their country is so badly under-performing its neighbors in terms of price stability.

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 #16
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
March 26, 2015
What Yandex's battle with Google means for Russian innovation
Russia's largest Internet company is locked in a major dispute with rival Google, a situation complicated by highly unfavorable investment conditions in Russia. Can Yandex compete by itself or does it need the help of the Russian government?
By Vladimir Korovkin
Vladimir Korovkin is the Head of Digital Research, Institute for Emerging Markets Studies, Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO. He is an expert in IT-management and Internet communication platforms with focus on organizational development and psychology as well as data management.

Yandex, the flagship company of Russian innovation, as well as the country's most valuable Internet company, has recently attracted a lot of media attention by appealing  for the first time for a market intervention by the Russian government. Yandex has filed a claim against the international heavyweight Google stating that the latter abuses its capabilities as a provider of the popular mobile operating system, Android, to promote its online services.

The situation is largely reminiscent of the battles waged back in the 1990s by the independent providers of Internet browsers (Netscape) and word processing software (WordPerfect) against the actions of Microsoft, which was using the omnipresence of its Windows operating system to promote Internet Explorer and MS Word.

Some observers have endorsed Yandex's appeal for help to the Russian government as the only possible strategic move, given the current difficult economic situation. But is this true - that no other route is left for the company's development, other than a fierce shootout with its international archrival?

Investors' expectations are hard to sustain

Let's review the issue with the help of the recently released Yandex financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2014. According to the reports, the general outlook for the company is quite positive. Revenue and net income are up 29 percent and 26 percent, respectively, compared to 2013. This is a slowdown compared to the annual growth rates of revenue (37 percent) and net income (64 percent) in 2013, but it still represents over-performance in the Russian market for online advertising, which grew by 20 percent in 2014.

The problem for the company is that it is judged by the investment community, not against the performance of the Russian market, but against the international benchmarks. What investors were seeking in previous years - and receiving in full - was growth in high double digits. If the company does not manage to sustain this, it is likely to receive strong pressure from its shareholders - or to start quickly losing market capitalization.

But what can Yandex promise to investors in 2015, when its core segment of the text-based search-related advertisements in Russia is expected to grow at maximum by 10 percent in ruble terms, which means a significant drop in dollars in view of the recent devaluation?

Even holding its leadership position in Russia in search-related ads (two-thirds of the market) becomes increasingly expensive for Yandex. The financial report indicates that the "traffic acquisition costs" have increased by 41 percent, strongly outpacing the growth of revenue. In short, to get advertising money, Yandex needs to attract an audience, and the associated expenses are growing quicker than revenues.

With the current net income margin of 33.5 percent, these costs are not yet a major threat, yet combined with other factors, the trend may turn out to be a disturbing one. The company is losing its market position in "display ads" (i.e. the types of graphic banners that are usually bought by bigger advertisers for the goal of promoting the brand image). Those grew by just 4 percent, indicating that Yandex was not effective enough in pitching to the major brands and their advertising agencies. In contrast, Google was gaining ground here, offering on its YouTube site the new and highly popular format of online video ads - much favored by brand marketers that are not seeking immediate "clicks" by their customers.

Innovating faster than Google is becoming more expensive

Simply boosting product research and development (R&D) efforts may present a strategic challenge for Yandex. To stay competitive against Google in the core market of search-related advertising, the company employs more and more sophisticated techniques of data processing on two ends - generating the personalized search results for the users and developing the algorithms that link those results to the ads placed by the clients so that more users will click on the ads.

This R&D activity is seen as essential to defend the company's market share, but like any defense, it tends to become increasingly costly while bringing diminishing marginal returns. The current economic situation, however, offers one bright spot: the product development process is highly labor intensive and the economic recession will therefore put a check on the growth of salaries.

On the other hand, technological development demands ever-increasing computational power - which is in the end imported (even the Russian-made servers and network equipment are built on foreign processor and memory chips) and, thus, prone to the ruble devaluation and the stated currency risks that affect Yandex severely.

After all, the company depends enough on the constant imports of hardware for its operations and these become materially more expensive when the ruble loses its purchasing power. In the fourth quarter, the company posted a foreign exchange loss of 4 billion rubles - over half of the quarter's income. In 2015 the negative impact could be even more material.

Another risk comes if the company's major R&D projects are currently in midstream. Monetization will happen only later and only if the cash will be continuously pumped into these R&D efforts. The development of highly sophisticated technologies is notorious for the ability of being behind the schedules, but time is of the essence now.

Diversification remains a pressing issue

The company was well aware of the challenges of its core market some time ago and took substantial measures for diversification. Even before the current economic turbulence came, its David vs. Goliath battle with Google was struggling to find new revenue streams.  As the report of 2014 shows, the company has boosted its efforts in this direction with product development expenditures up 52 percent (from under 15 percent to over 17 percent of the total costs), and the non-advertising revenues growing by 138 percent!

However impressive the figures are in relative terms, advertising still accounts for almost 99 percent of the company's revenues. This means that a breakthrough is needed in the alternative approaches to monetization. This is always easier said than done and the challenge is hugely increased by the economic context: the stated breakthrough should be achieved in a relatively quick and cheap way.

Yandex  should seek out the "low hanging fruits" in diversification

What could be the company's strategy be in the middle of an economic storm? On the one hand, any management textbook will say that, in these circumstances, a focus of efforts and resources is the key word. On the other hand, Yandex does really need diversification for sustainable revenue growth, without which it may fall out of favor with international investors.

The only chance to solve the dilemma is to understand the company's core assets and see if some alternative monetization can be built for them in a relatively quick and cheap way.

A year ago it was all about world-class data capabilities. Those opportunities remain, but the attempts to promptly find an alternative monetization for them were somewhat below expectations. Despite the remarkable growth of non-advertising activities, they constitute just about 1.2 percent of revenues. Will they be able to turn into a material stream within a year or two? This is highly doubtful. It becomes increasingly costly to the company.

What else if not the data? What about the client base? The company has access to small and medium business in Russia that is second to none. Well, 1C, the leading accounting software, probably sells licenses to more clients, but in their case, the actual client relations are held by the reselling partners, while Yandex holds the direct line to its customers. How can this be monetized? A range of ideas spring to mind, from loans to cloud accounting to online business education.

All of those are not within Yandex's current domain of competencies, yet they are relatively cheap in implementation compared to the less cost-effective initiatives that the company is engaged in right now. There may be stronger potential in more down-to-earth offers to the existing customer base, rather than in continuing the highly theoretical improvement of data processing, the impact of which on customer-perceived performance start to be less visible.    

It is extremely important for the Russian innovation ecosystem that Yandex survives the current storm as a strong, independent and innovative player, the flagship of the industry. The company stands for the successful commercialization of Russia's talent pool and the strong faith of international investors in the country's digital industry.

Yandex is also at the core of the unique school of data science that has enough potential to achieve global leadership for the coming decades. Yandex can do it, though it will require certain rethinking of core business concepts in order to turn its current service offerings based around generic advertising into a multi-functional business platform for Russia's small and medium businesses.
 
Regarding the Android dispute between Google and Yandex, the sad part of the history is that the similar legal battles did not work for smaller sides of the disputes in the past. Despite certain regulatory setbacks for Microsoft neither Netscape nor WordPerfect are on the market now. Though Russia may be somewhat different it is still too risky for Yandex to count on legal protection as a strategic measure. Building a stronger grip on its customer base seems to be a surer route through the economic storms to the bright future which the company truly deserves.

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 #17
PONARS Eurasia
www.ponarseurasia.org
March 11, 2015
Sanctions and Regime Survival
By Mark Kramer
Director, Cold War Studies Program, and Senior Fellow, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University

Some debates never die; they just get replayed. After the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan in late December 1979, the United States imposed economic sanctions against the USSR. The Russian Federation since March 2014 has been subject to U.S. and EU sanctions for its annexation of Crimea and active role in the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine. The targets of the latest sanctions-political elites, business executives, and large companies and banks with close ties to Vladimir Putin-are more selective this time, but the continuation of the sanctions for nearly a year has rekindled the debate about the effectiveness of sanctions. Can sanctions compel governments to change policies? Do they encourage a "rally round the flag" effect? Can they help bring about regime change (which by now is the only way political power can genuinely change hands in Russia)?

The huge academic literature on sanctions addresses these questions in various ways, depending on what the aim of the sanctions is. Often the aim is to force a specific change of policy or behavior. In some instances, however, the coercing state has had the more ambitious objective of destabilizing and fomenting unrest in a targeted state. The idea is that if economic conditions deteriorate, the vast majority of people in the target country will blame their own government for the hardships and possibly rise up against it. The goal of regime change was at least part of the rationale for the use of economic warfare on numerous occasions during the Cold War, such as the Soviet Union's imposition of economic sanctions against Yugoslavia in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba starting in 1960 (and tightened considerably in 1962), Soviet economic coercion against Albania and China in the 1960s, U.S. economic pressure on Salvador Allende's government in Chile in the early 1970s, and the U.S economic embargo against Iran starting in 1979.

Moreover, even when the coercing state's objectives are relatively limited and are not aimed at triggering upheavals and rebellion per se, one of the consequences of economic pressure might be an outbreak of destabilizing unrest in the target country. Indeed, some advocates of economic sanctions have argued that fears of such unrest are precisely what would spur the targeted regime to comply with the coercing state's wishes.[1]

Despite the frequent use of economic pressure by states against other states, Western scholars and public officials have long questioned whether the tactic actually works. Much of the debate about the efficacy of economic sanctions lies outside the scope of this blog post, but some scholars have specifically focused on the question of whether economic coercion is likely to be successful in provoking political instability and undermining the ruling authorities in the target country. In particular, large-n studies show that, on average, economic sanctions do tend to facilitate regime change in targeted countries.

In a study of 136 countries from 1947 to 1999, Nikolay Marinov sought to determine whether "economic sanctions hurt the survival of government leaders in office."[2] After comparing the longevity of leaders in countries that were targeted by sanctions with the longevity of leaders in countries that were not targeted, he concluded that sanctions do in fact "destabilize the leaders they target."

In a major refinement of Marinov's argument, Abel Escribà-Folch and Joseph Wright argue that rather than treating authoritarian regimes as a single class, scholars analyzing the impact of sanctions on regime survival must specify the type of authoritarian regime in the targeted state.[3] Escribà-Folch and Wright find that although economic sanctions do, on average, contribute to the destabilization and removal of personalistic dictators, sanctions do not have any appreciable effect on the longevity of single-party regimes and military juntas. The results of their analysis vary somewhat depending on how one treats hybrid regimes, but their findings are impressively robust.

A different take on this question comes in a study coauthored by William Kaempfer, Anton Lowenberg, and William Mertenis that relies on a model derived from public-choice theory.[4] The three authors claim that "damaging economic sanctions can have the counterproductive effect of encouraging the ruling regime and its supporters while at the same time undermining the political influence of the opposition." As they see it, sanctions are less important for "their economic effects" than for "their impact on the relative political effectiveness of interest groups within the target country."

Using a model of an authoritarian system in which a support-maximizing dictator engages in domestic redistribution by responding to pressures from interest groups, Kaempfer et al. contend that authoritarian rulers normally emphasize the provision of private (excludable) goods for their supporters rather than public (non-excludable) goods for the wider population. The imposition of economic sanctions, they argue, affects the relative levels of "political resources of key groups in the target countries" and thus "can alter the alignment of domestic interests" in the targeted state. In principle, this could lead to either the removal or the consolidation of the regime:

"[I]f opponents of the regime are encouraged by foreign sanctions, the ability of opposition interest groups to mobilize collective action is increased. At the same time, the regime might be weakened by sanctions if potential supporters defect in expectation of imminent collapse of the status quo. However, the sanctions knife cuts both ways: it is equally likely that sanctions will cause the regime's supporters to rally around the flag in defiance of foreign interference, thereby strengthening the ruling elite and reinforcing its objectionable policy."

One of the implications of this approach is that sanctions cannot be effective in precipitating the downfall of the regime unless "there exists within the target country a reasonably well-organized opposition group whose political effectiveness potentially could be enhanced as a consequence of sanctions." Even in this case, however, the sanctions might still have debilitating effects on the opposition.

The model developed by Kaempfer and his coauthors indicates that if the sanctions damage the economy of the targeted state "to such an extent as to impoverish the public, the domestic opposition's ability to exert influence might be weakened. Moreover, the capacity of the regime to repress dissent might be increased if a poor populace is more readily policed." Hence, the sanctions would allow the support-maximizing dictator to substitute loyalty for repression and consolidate his power.

The dictator would be helped even more if the sanctions enabled him "to gain some of the rents accruing from sanctions-induced changes in the terms of trade," which could then be doled out to supporters to ensure their loyalty. The beneficial impact for the dictator would be multiplied if "groups that are close to the regime might be induced by the sanctions to increase their support in order to capture more of the sanctions rents for themselves," which would mean that the costs borne by the dictator to preserve the loyalty of these key insider groups would diminish. The net result would be that the sanctions strengthen the dictatorship and undercut the main political opposition groups.

In the case of the Soviet regime and the sanctions imposed by the Carter administration in 1980 after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, we know for sure from declassified CPSU Politburo transcripts that Soviet leaders hated the sanctions and resented their effects. The sanctions did not, however, produce any near-term change in Soviet policy in Afghanistan.

The Reagan administration promptly lifted the measure that Soviet leaders particularly disliked, namely, the embargo on U.S. grain exports. During the 1980 election campaign, Reagan had promised voters in the Corn Belt states that he would end the grain embargo, and his administration fulfilled that promise in April 1981, just a few months after he took office.

Hence, assessing the longer-term effects of the 1980 sanctions is inherently difficult. The sanctions may have had a small deterrent effect on subsequent Soviet foreign policy decisions (e.g., during the crisis in Poland), but they did not change fundamental Soviet goals. Gorbachev's adoption of a vastly different approach to foreign policy is not directly traceable to the impact of past sanctions (though indirectly they may have played a small role).

In the case of the Russian Federation today, the U.S. and EU sanctions have not produced any discernible change in Russian policy vis-à-vis Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and Putin's regime has given no indication that it will back down even if the sanctions are tightened. Will the sanctions help to bring about a change of regime?  With Putin's popularity ratings at 85 percent and few if any signs of a debilitating split in the ruling elite, this goal, too seems elusive, at least for now. Although one cannot fully rule out a longer-term impact on the stability of the regime, that seems a distant prospect at best.

[1] See, for example, Susan Hannah Allen, "The Domestic Political Costs of Economic Sanctions," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 52, No. 6 (December 2008), pp. 916-944, esp. 916-917.
[2] Nikolay Marinov, "Do Economic Sanctions Destabilize Country Leaders?" American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 49, No. 3 (July 2005), pp. 564-576.
[3] Abel Escribà-Folch and Joseph Wright, "Dealing with Tyranny:  International Sanctions and the Survival of Authoritarian Rulers," International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 2 (June 2010), pp. 334-359, which builds on David Lektzian and Mark Souva, "An Institutional Theory of Sanctions Onset and Success," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 51, No. 6 (November 2007), pp. 848-871.
[4] William Kaempfer, Anton Lowenberg, and William Mertens, "International Economic Sanctions against a Dictator," Economics and Politics, Vol. 16, No. 1 (March 2004), pp. 29-51. See also William Kaempfer and Anton Lowenberg, "The Theory of International Economic Sanctions:  A Public Choice Approach," American Economic Review, Vol. 78, No. 4 (December 1988), pp. 786-793.

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 #18
Washington Post
March 27, 2015
A year into a conflict with Russia, are sanctions working?
By Michael Birnbaum
Michael Birnbaum is The Post's Moscow bureau chief. He previously served as the Berlin correspondent and an education reporter.

MOSCOW - When it comes to inflicting economic pain on Russia, the Kremlin may be doing a better job than Western sanctions.

Just don't tell that to the Russian people, who overwhelmingly blame the West for a deepening recession that has parts of central Moscow starting to look like a ghost town.

Prices are soaring. The ruble is dropping. And Russian living standards are falling even as citizens on Wednesday celebrated the first anniversary of the annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.

Many economists say the problems would have erupted even if there were no sanctions. But the wave of Western penalties against the Russian economy has inadvertently given the Kremlin political cover with its own people, analysts say.

A year after the annexation, the West has been able to do little to alter President Vladimir Putin's battlefield calculus. Russia is still fueling a bloody conflict in eastern Ukraine that has cost more than 6,000 lives, U.S. officials say. Putin denies involvement in Ukraine, and he shows little sign of backing down. His popularity at home is sky high even as his nation's economy is in turmoil.

Although sanctions have hurt, much of Russia's current economic weakness has to do with the 45 percent drop in the price of oil since June, analysts say. But most Russians are pointing their fingers toward the White House. Sanctions, the West's primary tool to try to sway Kremlin policies, have become a punching bag.

The effectiveness of the sanctions is becoming a burning question as Obama comes under growing bipartisan pressure to arm Ukraine if a shaky cease-fire falls apart. He could also ramp up sanctions. Some in Congress have floated cutting off Russia from the international bank-transfer system, a possibility that Russian officials said would be tantamount to an act of war.

The options have split Russia's weakened ranks of Kremlin critics, who were also deprived of a charismatic ringleader, Boris Nemtsov, after his murder two weeks ago. Some opposition leaders say mounting economic woes will eventually turn Russians against Putin. But so far, the main anger the sanctions seem to have fueled here is anti-Americanism, which is reaching heights not seen since Stalin, some observers say.

"The full financial force of the West is concentrated on attacking us," Nikolai Starikov, a pro-Kremlin pundit given heavy rotation on Russian state TV, told a seminar as the ruble swooned in December. "What they are doing is smashing the foundations of a great geopolitical construction that will become their competitor."

Western leaders have long said the main target of their sanctions is the Kremlin, not ordinary Russians, and they have tried to dole out economic pain with pinpoint precision. Most Russians shrugged off the first several rounds of sanctions, which targeted people and institutions close to Putin.

But after the July shoot-down of a civilian jetliner over eastern Ukraine, the West struck harder, and Russia retaliated with import bans on most Western food products. The Russian countersanctions have hurt European farmers, but they may have affected Russians most of all: Food prices soared afterward. The ruble's plummet, which accelerated in November, only made things worse.

The price of cabbage has almost doubled in the past year. Pork is up nearly a third, and potatoes a quarter. Late last month, Russia's biggest grocery chains posted signs in their stores announcing temporary price freezes on key products, but many items are still getting costlier by the week.

The Russian economy is now expected to contract up to 6 percent this year, fueled by the dropping price of oil. The ruble has lost nearly half its value since the beginning of 2014. By some estimates, almost a third of Moscow restaurants will close by the end of this month, leaving storefronts empty across the city.

Ordinary Russians are also feeling the pain. Julia Lebedeva, 46, said her refrigerator has slowly gotten emptier in recent months. Her pay as a customs broker was cut by a third even as prices have spiked.

"I eat fewer tomatoes, fewer cucumbers, less lettuce. We just don't have them," she said. Cauliflower, once a standby, is now a rare treat.

The worst thing is the fear of the future, she said: "Today I can say things aren't great. They aren't bad. But tomorrow they might turn really awful."

The vast majority of Russians - 91 percent - say their biggest concerns are now economic, according to a January poll from the independent Moscow-based Levada Center. Many people fault the West.

"The main explanation is that the West and America is to blame for everything," said Natalya Zorkaya, a pollster and analyst at the Levada Center. The economic anxiety is doing little to inspire Russians to push their leaders for policy changes, she said.

The Western sanctions are having a clear economic effect, even if they may not be the main drivers of Russia's overall slowdown. Some of Russia's biggest banks, hit by borrowing restrictions from the West, have limited their lending at home and turned to the government for aid. State-controlled Rosneft, Russia's largest oil producer, also was sanctioned and has sought billions in state loans.

At the same time, more than $150 billion flowed out of Russia last year.

The effects of the sanctions on Kremlin policymaking are difficult to assess, analysts say, since there is no way to know whether the economic pressure helped avert an even bloodier fight in Ukraine. Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said in an interview that sectoral sanctions had held Putin back from rolling far deeper into Ukraine, but he said only wider sanctions against Russia's elite would force further policy changes. Violence has quieted in eastern Ukraine since a cease-fire reached in mid-February. But U.S. officials say Russian tanks continue to flow over the border.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry this month said that sanctions were responsible for much of Russia's current economic pain and that the administration stood ready to modify them based on Putin's actions.

"It's obviously had a profound impact, but not sufficient that President Putin has decided that he isn't going to pursue his particular strategy," Kerry said.

"We're not doing this to hurt the people of Russia ," he said. "We're doing this to try to affect the choices that their leaders are making in order to uphold the norms of international law."

With Russia apparently still active in Ukraine and anti-Americanism fierce among the broad population, some analysts and investors are increasingly questioning whether the sanctions make sense in their current form.

"If you're fighting this battle, then pick the weapons that get the result you want. I don't think sanctions are the right weapon for this fight," said Bernard Sucher, a Moscow-based American investor long active in Russia. He said sanctions were most likely to hurt smaller businesses that cannot turn to the Kremlin for assistance.

For now, the Obama administration appears likely to catch flak in Russia no matter what it does. After news reports in the past week that Obama remained skeptical about sending weapons to Ukraine, one prominent Russian television journalist, Mikhail Leontyev, said he was a coward.

"That spineless peacemaker Obama is doing all he can to dodge rabid pressure exerted by those trying to force him to openly supply lethal weapons to Ukraine," Leontyev said.

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 #19
Valdai Discussion Club
http://valdaiclub.com
March 26, 2015
Russia's "Asian drift", or its Pivot to the East?
By Vladimir Petrovsky
Vladimir Petrovsky is Researcher, Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, full member of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences.

The Financial Times liberally interpreted a recent statement on Russian-Chinese relations by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi so as to indicate that Russia had been forced to continue its "economic shift towards Asia and away from Western Europe" because of sanctions. This is only partly true. Really, Russia is making a U-turn towards the East.

Russia and China continue to demonstrate their commitment to a win-win strategy and a readiness to cooperate in all spheres to serve their national interests, rather than "target any third party." At the same time, there is no substantiation for the Western fear of a nascent Russian-Chinese military and political alliance.

Russia has started turning more rapidly towards the East in accordance with its balanced strategy as a Eurasian power based on the need for large-scale cooperation with the Asian-Pacific countries in the development of Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East. The anti-Russian sanctions adopted by the West over Ukraine and Crimea have only reaffirmed the correctness of this strategy.

This is why the Chinese foreign minister said that "practical cooperation between China and Russia (...) seeks win-win results and has enormous internal impetus and room for expansion."  This is absolutely true. Russian-Chinese relations are shifting from traditional spheres of trade and economic cooperation - the power and defense industries - to projects in innovation, investment, finance and banking, as well as high technology. They are working on a long-haul wide-body plane, high-speed trains and nuclear power industry.

At the same time, energy production, processing and transportation remain a vital element of bilateral cooperation. Wang Yi mentioned China's readiness to begin full-scale construction of an eastern natural gas pipeline and to sign an agreement on the western route of delivering gas from Russia in 2015.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said at the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum in late February that there were no political obstacles to selling China controlling stakes in key oil and gas projects in Russia. "If there is a request [from China], we will seriously consider it. And I see no political obstacles at the moment," Dvorkovich said. This unprecedented decision would give Chinese investors more privileges compared to their Western colleagues, and could be also applied to large Russian-Chinese projects in other areas.

Russia is involved in a number of multilateral negotiations and dialogues on regional economic integration and free trade areas in the Asian-Pacific Region. Russia and China have formulated a joint initiative on creating a new regional security system. However, Russia should definitely increase its contribution to multilateral regional security and cooperation mechanisms.

This would help Russia protect and promote its interests in the Asia Pacific Region and occupy a place that would be adequate to its capabilities and competitive advantages. Of great importance in this respect would be China's support and cooperative assistance. Russia has supported China's initiative on the BRICS Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Silk Road Foundation. These international financial mechanisms will boost infrastructure projects and the implementation of vital bilateral investment projects.

This year, Russia and China plan to sign an agreement on cooperation in creating a New Silk Road Economic Belt. This is an open platform designed to integrate and promote the implementation of the current Russian-Chinese cooperation projects and to give new meaning to such regional cooperation mechanisms as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS and the Eurasian Economic Union. As a side effect, this initiative would help increase Russian-Chinese trade to $200 billion by the end of 2020. China and Russia can and must use this opportunity, harmonizing their development programs to promote mutual development and prosperity.

Relations between Russia and China are currently influenced by the conflict in Ukraine. The Chinese media and online sources are actively discussing China's possible assistance to Russia in this complex situation. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told journalists after the third session of the 12th National People's Congress that China respects Ukraine's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and hopes that the situation around Ukraine and Crimea will be solved through dialogue, negotiations and consultations.

The Western media speculated that this could run contrary to Russia's stance that the issue of Crimea had been settled once and for all. In fact, China's policy on this issue is reasonable, balanced and based on a striving for justice and mutually advantageous results for all parties. China's policy of compromise and dialogue on this issue amounts to the renunciation of sanctions and arms deliveries to the conflict area.

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 #20
Valdai Discussion Club
http://valdaiclub.com
March 26, 2015
Is Putin Preparing a Breakthrough in Relations with Japan?
By Arnaud Dubien
Arnaud Dubien, head of the Observo analytical center at the French-Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

I'll begin with tributes. The idea for this blog was suggested to me by Jean Radvanyi, a professor at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO), and a member of the research council of the Franco-Russian analytical center L'Observatoire, at the Geopolitical Festival in Grenoble on March 12.

For many weeks now, the media and the Western political community have been focused on the European unity that has been fractured by the planned extension of anti-Russian sectoral economic sanctions. The sanctions were approved last summer and may be lifted on July 31, 2015. At least seven EU member states are openly critical of the sanctions, including Cyprus, Greece, Spain and Italy in southern Europe, and Austria, Hungary and Slovakia from the former Habsburg Empire. The Kremlin for its part has been using the divide-and-rule tactics directed at deepening the cleavage.

But Russia is not only making moves in Europe; it is also trying to strengthen its positions in the BRICS group and with major regional players such as Iran, Egypt and Turkey. Russia's main trading partner, China, is a key player in Moscow's efforts to balance the foreign policy stage. At the same time, some analysts believe that Moscow has been trying to weaken Europe's standing in Asia, its "target" being Japan.

Russian-Japanese relations are complicated. The unsettled territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands is hampering rapprochement that would make sense, considering both nations' economic complementarity and the rise of China. Japan has limited room for maneuvering due to its military alliance with the United States. Paradoxically, Russian-Japanese tensions increased under Dmitry Medvedev, whom the pro-Putin part of society blamed for leniency in the Libyan crisis. Japan harshly criticized the Kremlin for Medvedev's visit to the Kuril Islands and plans to establish a Russian naval base there.

That being said, the current situation looks good for a diplomatic breakthrough that could turn into a tectonic shift in Northeast Asia. There are at least three reasons why the Kremlin would be tempted to choose this policy: a desire to win over a key member of the Western community, which would deliver a blow to US prestige; the hidden but very real fear that the rapprochement with China is moving too fast and could go too far; and lastly, the opportunity to attract large Japanese investments to Siberia and other Russian regions.

The Crimean crisis has contributed to the change as well. Having "regained" Crimea, Putin may more easily agree to concessions on other disputed territories, like he did in relations with China in 2004 and with Norway in 2010. The internal political obstacles that prevented President Yeltsin from implementing a similar initiative in 1992 have been removed. Alarmed by Russian-Chinese rapprochement, Japan could be willing to take resolute steps. It may be a coincidence, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel spent a long time in early March trying to convince Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo to extend anti-Russian sanctions.

According to recent reports, Vladimir Putin plans to visit Tokyo in summer. The game is not over yet.

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 #21
Christian Science Monitor
March 26, 2015
Russia heads to 'America's backyard' to find salve for sanctions
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited several Latin American nations this week to seek trade opportunities that could offset US efforts to puncture Russia's economy.
By Fred Weir, Correspondent  

MOSCOW - Russia took its global charm offensive to Latin America this week, as the Kremlin seeks to counter Western sanctions over its policies in eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

Over the past few days, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reassured Cuba of ongoing support, denounced US sanctions against Venezuela, and even suggested Russia might be willing to take part in building a Nicaraguan rival to the Panama Canal. Rumors of Russian arms supplies to several countries in the region have prompted expressions of alarm in Washington.

Mr. Lavrov's four-country visit, the latest in a series by top Russian officials, is part of a major diplomatic campaign to blunt US-led efforts to isolate Moscow for its policies in Ukraine. Over the past year, President Vladimir Putin has staged high-profile meetings with leaders of China, India, Egypt, Turkey, and even Hungary, and in each case come away significant new trade deals - and political breathing space.

Similarly, during a visit to Brazil last summer, Mr. Putin nailed down deals with several Latin American countries to provide goods that have been denied to the Russian market due to its sanctions war with the West.

"Russia is returning to Latin America after a long period of inactivity, and of course this is causing some concern in the US," says Igor Kovalev, deputy chair of world economics at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. "Russia's role in the region is suddenly growing. Part of that, no doubt, is the need to find ways around Western sanctions against Russia."

Warplane rumors

Though Moscow has made no official announcements of new arms sales, Western media have been full of reports that Russia is preparing to lease Su-24 attack planes to Argentina and even sell MiG-29 fighters to Nicaragua.

The rumors of Russian warplanes to Argentina have even triggered a mini-war scare in Britain, which fought a 1982 war with Argentina over control of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. The flames were fanned, perhaps inadvertently, by Russia's ambassador to Britain, Alexander Yakovenko, who told the Kremlin-funded RT network that the 2013 referendum that saw an overwhelming  number of Falkland Island residents vote to remain part of Britain was no more legitimate than the Russian-sponsored referendum last year in which Crimeans elected to join Russia.

"If the US can talk about arming Ukraine, why shouldn't Russia demonstrate it can do the same in America's backyard?" says Kirill Koktysh, and expert with the official Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow. "There is a political message there, for sure. But it's also in Russia's long-term interest to beef up relations with these countries. Business is business."

Russia is already a major arms supplier to crisis-hit Venezuela, which is under sanctions from Washington for alleged human rights abuses.

That's an opening for Russian diplomacy, which Lavrov didn't miss. Pointing out that Russia, too, suffers from US persecution, he told journalists in Cuba that Washington's policies are "totally inconsistent."

"We would like the United States to stop looking for enemies in its geographical surroundings and listen to a unanimous voice of Latin America and the Caribbean Basin" to be left to settle their own affairs, he said.

None of this has been missed in Washington.

"Russia is using power projection in an attempt to erode US leadership and challenge US influence in the Western Hemisphere," Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, head of US Southern Command, said in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. "Under President Putin ... we have seen a clear return to cold war tactics."

Experts say that Russian diplomacy is expertly playing upon existing differences between the US and many Latin American countries, in a mirror image of its tactics in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

"There are a lot of tensions in the region, particularly with many Latin American countries supporting Venezuela against US sanctions," says Mr. Kovalev. "Of course Russia is exploiting this factor. Why wouldn't it? It works."

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 #22
TASS
March 26, 2015
Russia capable of countering US missile-defence system in Europe - spokesman

Russia has all the capabilities needed to counter the threat of the American missile-defence system in the interest of preserving strategic balance, Russian state-owned TASS news agency reported on 26 March, quoting Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich.

"Russia has been pointing out for many years that the missile-defence architecture that is being created by the USA with the involvement of its NATO allies could in future threaten the Russian strategic deterrence forces, which will lead to a break-down of parity and will require response measures aimed at restoring strategic balance," TASS quoted Lukashevich as saying.

"In the interest of preservation of strategic balance, we have capabilities to counter this system, but we do not want to and do not intend to use them without a need, so to say. Simply participants in that system should bear in mind that Russia has every capability to neutralize such threats," TASS further quoted Lukashevich as saying.

Lukashevich also said that it is regrettable that Moscow's insistent arguments against the creation of this destabilizing system in Europe have not been heard. "And attempts to organize equitable cooperation and dialogue in the missile-defence area have run against the wall of lack of understanding. NATO recently demonstratively curtailed the dialogue on missile-defence issues, which does not improve the situation in this area either," Lukashevich said.

Lukashevich recalled that "according to the current version of the Russian military doctrine, the Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use against it and/or its allies of nuclear and other types of nuclear strike weapons, as well as in the event of an aggression against the Russian Federation, when the very existence of the state is being threatened". "We consider the attempts to juggle with our fundamental principles in the nuclear area to be unacceptable," Lukashevich said, as quoted by TASS.

He also called for "an end to the ill-intended speculations on that subject, which exist in the NATO circles". "The USA should have long since given up unhealthy unilateral steps in the missile-defence area, then there will be no need to worry about the consequences," TASS quoted Lukashevich as saying.

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#23
Interfax
March 26, 2015
Russia to take into account threats resulting from new U.S. security strategy

Russia will react to the adoption of a new U.S. security strategy and will take into account emerging risks and threats in its founding documents related to national security, says Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

"Certainly, all threats to Russia's national security are taken into consideration. They will be analyzed, and if need be, amendments will be made to the founding documents," Peskov told journalists on Thursday in commenting on the adoption of a new national security strategy by the U.S.

The Russian Security Council comment on Wednesday that the national security strategy adopted by the U.S. in February 2015 was clearly anti-Russian.

"An analysis of the strategy conducted by the administration of the Russian Security Council shows that, unlike the previous [2010] edition [of the strategy], it is clearly anti-Russian and forms a negative image of our country. It emphasizes the importance of containing 'Russian aggression,' primarily against Ukraine. It states that the U.S. will stay vigilant on the strategic capabilities of Russia and will help their allies and partners oppose Russian policies," the Russian Security Council said in a statement posted on its website on Wednesday.

The report says that the U.S. national security strategy "gives special emphasis to further interaction between the U.S. and its European allies for the purpose of political and economic isolation of Russia for its interference in the affairs of Ukraine."

The Russian Security Council says the possibility that U.S.-Russian cooperation could be resumed is conditioned by Russia's changing its foreign policies toward respecting sovereignty and democratic processes in the neighboring states.

"The strategy emphasizes the U.S. ambition to begin forming a new global economic order. A special role in this order should be played by the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership, which will help the U.S. get central positions in free trade zones encompassing two-thirds of the world's economy," the document says.

The armed forces are regarded as the foundation of U.S. national security and "military superiority is considered the main factor in U.S. world leadership," the Russian Security Council said.

The document retains the determination "to use military force unilaterally at any spot in the world and preserve military presence abroad," it said.

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 #24
Russia Direct
March 27, 2015
Russian Studies programs in the United States need a boost
While many factors remain outside of the control of Russian Studies programs, there are certain factors that can be improved.
By Michael Slobodchikoff
Michael Slobodchikoff is a Lecturer in the Political Science Department at Troy University. He specializes in relations between Russia and the former Soviet states, international conflict and peace, and comparative politics. Michael Slobodchikoff is the author of "Regional Security: Order, Stability, and Predictability in the Post-Soviet Space."

The crisis in Ukraine has only served to highlight a lack of understanding of Russia in the U.S. government - a lack of understanding that is clearly hampering U.S. foreign policy towards Russia. At a time when we are descending into a new Cold War with Russia, the U.S. government lacks a whole cadre of qualified people to be able to resolve this crisis.

Just consider the following example. At the time of the reset in relations between Russia and the United States, the Department of State famously mistranslated the word "reset" and presented a button to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov that was translated as "power surge," basically, an overcharging of the relationship that leads to a power outage. While the mistranslation was a foreshadowing of events to come, nevertheless it was an embarrassing display of the lack of qualified Russian specialists in the United States Department of State.

The Department of State mistranslation shows how far the preparedness of the West has fallen since the end of the Cold War. The fact is that the governments of the West have not been hiring enough qualified Russian specialists, and Russian Studies programs in turn have not been preparing enough qualified specialists to fulfill this vital role.

It has become a vicious cycle, where as it becomes more and more difficult for scholars to find funding and employment either in academia or government, less and less people are willing to undertake training in Russian Studies, thus creating the perfect storm, which has led to the current crisis in Russian Studies.

Scholars in the United States have long noted the unfortunate state of Russian Studies in the United States. Having reached their zenith at the end of the Cold War, the overall state of Russian Studies has been in sharp decline. Yet little public attention has been paid to the whole problem.

The problem is especially acute as graduates of Russian Studies programs often have careers in the U.S. government, using their knowledge of Russian Studies to help mold and shape U.S. government policy. However, graduates do not just pursue careers in government. Many choose to work for non-profits, while others pursue academia and the opportunity to continue to research Russia and the former Soviet Union.

Decline of the Russian: Threat to national security?

While many students were interested in Russian Studies following the collapse of the Soviet Union, interest began to wane when Russia was no longer perceived as a threat to the national security of the United States. Some students were still interested in learning about Russian democratization, but the allure of studying a direct threat to national security was no longer there.

During the 1990s, Russian Studies was able to tread water; however, by 2001, this was no longer possible. The events of September 11, 2001 highlighted that the U.S. faced a threat unlike any that it had faced before. The enemy was all around, and panic ensued. Russian experts in the government were trained to learn Arabic and become counter-terrorism experts.

The government deemed Russia to be much less of a threat, and therefore, it became much more difficult to find work as a Russian expert. New students in Russian studies programs were faced with the reality that it would be difficult to find employment after graduation.

Compounding the problem was that it suddenly became popular to learn Arabic and focus on Middle Eastern Studies. Universities scrambled to change to provide new centers focused on the Middle East, and as Russian scholars slowly began to retire, they were replaced by Middle Eastern scholars to accommodate this new demand. Russian Studies programs began to see their numbers of students dwindle, which made it more and more difficult to justify replacement hires.

In addition, the global recession of 2008 made it difficult for many in academia to retire. The fact is that many could not afford to retire. New scholars who were earning their Ph.D. degrees were finding that despite the fact that many had predicted the Baby Boomer generation to retire and make room for a new generation of scholars, members of the Baby Boomer generation of scholars in Russian studies were holding on to their positions. This was squeezing out the next generation of scholars.

Further, the economic downturn, coupled with the assumption that Russia was no longer a threat to U.S. national security, meant that the government was willing to cut back funding for Russian scholars studying Russia.  These programs were vital for training the next generation of scholars, and the absence of the funding signaled that the new generation of Russian scholars would not be adequately prepared to understand Russia and the former Soviet Union and, in turn, to teach future analysts.

Area studies vs. social sciences

There is a distinct divide between area studies and the social sciences. Social scientists claim that area studies specialists are too focused and not scientific enough in their approach to scholarship. Area studies specialists in turn feel that social scientists lack a depth of understanding that is necessary to truly understand Russia.

For example, one professor once famously stated that he could truly understand Russian democratization and was proud of the fact that he didn't speak a word of Russian and had never been to Russia. Area study specialists would argue that there is no way to truly understand Russian democratization unless a scholar both speaks the language and has been to Russia and studied there.

The divide between social science and area studies is only increasing, and has led to the top ranked universities being able to have strong Russian area studies programs, while middle ranked schools have virtually no Russian studies.

Further, the divide is even evident at the top-ranked universities where some Russian studies programs have their own faculty who have little contact with other social science departments within their respective universities. This, in effect, creates an isolation that makes it difficult for new ideas and theories to penetrate, which is very important for the advancement of scholarly understanding.

Ultimately, the state of Russian Studies is in dire straits. The current global climate is such that new Russian area specialists are needed to effectively analyze and advise Western governments. Yet there is a dearth of such specialists.

While many factors remain outside of the control of Russian Studies programs, there are certain factors that can be improved. One of those is to mentor new faculty and integrate them into the Russian Studies collective. More communication needs to occur. All too often at conferences, established faculty members network with other established faculty members and it becomes very difficult to break in for junior scholars.

Further, organizations that promote scholarship and discussion among Russia area scholars need to be more open to junior scholars. It is very difficult for junior scholars to find a niche in the field, which only serves to create a divide even within Russian studies.

It would be wonderful for the Kennan Institute or other Russian Studies program to host a conference specifically designed to try to break down some of these divides to improve the state of Russian area studies in the United States.  If we are to train successful individuals who can truly analyze and advise policy makers on Western policy towards Russia, we need to actively improve the state of Russian studies.

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 #25
AFP
March 27, 2015
Feud on Earth but peace in space for US and Russia

MOSCOW, Russia -- Hundreds of kilometres below on Earth, their governments are locked in a standoff over Ukraine -- but up in space, Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts are still working together side by side.

The International Space Station (ISS) is one of the rare areas of US-Russian cooperation that has not been hit by the Ukraine crisis and in the latest show of commitment, the next joint mission is set to blast off from Kazakhstan on Friday.

The crew will include two space veterans -- American Scott Kelly and Russian Mikhail Kornienko -- who are down to become the first people to spend a whole year straight on the cosmic outpost, rather than the usual six months.

"We do our work that we love and we respect each other," Russian cosmonaut Alexander Samokutyaev said of life aboard the ISS after returning to Earth this month.

"Whatever the politicians want to get up to, that is their business," he told journalists at a press conference just after landing.   

First launched as an international project back in 1998, the station was heralded as a symbol of the cooperation that emerged from the Cold War rivalry of the space race between the Soviet Union and United states.

And while the research outpost may technically be divided into Russian and American sections the truth, analysts say, is that neither country can run it on their own.

"The US and Russia need each other," American expert John Logsdon, a member of NASA's Advisory Council, told AFP.

Like a marriage

"It is like a marriage where divorce is almost impossible."

Since ending its Space Shuttle flights, the US has been dependent on Russian rockets to take astronauts and vital supplies to the space station, especially since the explosion of a commercial rocket in October cast doubt over a NASA deal to use private firms.

Meanwhile the American sector supplies the power to run the whole project and the Russian cosmonauts often rely on NASA's superior communications system to talk to Earth.

"Even though we are butting heads on Earth, up on the ISS we can't work without them and they can't work without us," Russian space expert Vadim Lukashevich told AFP.

"It's impossible to break up this cooperation."

As tensions over Ukraine spiralled, fears mounted that it was only a matter of time before the worst East-West standoff since the collapse of Communism would hit the space programme.

The US briefly blocked exports of certain defence-linked technologies to Russia that some thought would affect the cooperation in space.

But rather than affect work on the ISS, the Ukraine crisis might actually have helped cement it for the longer term.

Russia last month confirmed that it will continue using the International Space Station in partnership with NASA until 2024.

NASA had already said the ageing ISS will remain operational until 2024 but Moscow had threatened to pull out and stop financing it by 2020.

However, as Russia's economy has suffered economic strife in part due to sanctions imposed by the West over Ukraine, Moscow realised that it could no longer spare the cash to go it alone.

"Why did we decide to stay on the ISS until 2024? The answer is because we had no other option. The crisis also hit us," said Russian expert Lukashevich.

Mars barred

While cooperation on the station looks set to continue, it is likely that the next stage of space exploration -- aimed at eventually putting someone on Mars -- will be hit by deteriorating relations.

Beyond 2024, when the work on the ISS is set to end, as the situation stands now it seems unlikely that the two sides will agree on any major projects.

And experts say that without international cooperation, dreams of flying a manned mission to Mars will struggle to take off, or face lengthy delays at the very least.  

For those being blasted into space now, that is a bitter pill to swallow.

They are hoping their governments can put aside current differences on Earth to bolster mankind's exploration of space for future generations.   

"As to the International Space Station, it's a priceless experiment in international cooperation. We are learning to work together, and in my opinion the next step is interplanetary exploration of space, the moon or Mars," said Kornienko, the cosmonaut who is set to spend a year in space, in an interview on NASA's website.

"It's impossible to do it with one country alone, and the experience from international cooperation on the ISS will be very important here."

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 #26
http://readrussia.com
March 23, 2015
The Putin Myth on American TV
by WILL WRIGHT

Now nearing a month after the new season of the popular American political drama House of Cards was released on Netflix, most fans have finished season three's thirteen installments.

In an intriguing twist, a prominent part of the season's plot revolves around American President Frank Underwood's relationship with the Russian President Viktor Petrov. Petrov visits Washington, D.C. in episode three, while Underwood travels to Moscow in episode six, and Pussy Riot even makes a special cameo appearance.

The creators of House of Cards, perhaps television's most edgy and sexy political drama, almost certainly cast "President Petrov" for a starring role in the show's new season to exploit Russia's renewed infamy in the American popular imagination. In the real world, US-Russia relations have spiraled to a post-cold war low since Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency in 2012.

House of Cards is, of course, designed to entertain, making its primary goal not to get all the facts right about international politics, but to delve into the emotions of high politics. And in season three, House of Cards spins a mythology around the Russian President that mirrors the best efforts of the Kremlin propagandists and political technologists who do this in real life.

The imposing 6-foot-4-inch Lars Mikkelsen plays President Petrov, and his physical presence continually dominates Kevin Spacey, who plays President Underwood, on the screen in their intense encounters. In reality, President Putin is one of the shortest world leaders at 5-foot-7-inches; for example, President Obama stands a full half-foot taller.

Despite Putin's diminutive stature, however, the Kremlin has carefully crafted the image of Putin as an alpha male in Russia. His stunts tracking Siberian tigers in the Russian wilderness and riding motorcycles at the head of a biker gang in Novorossiysk to his crude pledge to "waste [terrorists] in the outhouse" are continuously beamed across the nation on state-controlled television. House of Cards certainly buys into this image of the Russian president.

House of Cards also presents Petrov as a domineering, aggressive, and charismatic negotiator. During his visit to Washington, Petrov displays a menacing charm, even shocking American leaders by stealing a long kiss from the First Lady after leading guests in the singing of a 19th century Russian folk song.

In reality, Putin does project a certain swagger, and has been known to bat away unwanted questions from journalists with sharp quips. When asked about the chances of a palace coup in his latest end-of-year press conference, Putin responded, "relax, we don't have any palaces."

However, Petrov's aggression and charisma are again an expression of the Putin myth, not the man. Putin's 2010 rendition of "Blueberry Hill" at a charity fundraiser and attempted offer of his coat to China's First Lady at last year's APEC summit are the hollow reality behind Petrov's persona. Obama once described Putin as looking like the "bored schoolboy in the back of the classroom." In international diplomatic settings, Putin tends to project an understated seriousness and prim demeanor, and often seems uncomfortable with prolonged eye contact.

House of Cards also embraces the popular depiction of Putin as a one-time KGB super spy. In episode ten, Petrov tells the brutal story of how he slit a man's throat in close-quarters combat while serving as a KGB agent in Afghanistan.

In reality, however, Putin was a mid-level intelligence officer stationed in the unglamorous posting of Dresden, East Germany during the final years of the cold war. In the book First Person, Putin described what he did there as "very routine work. ... [The] recruitment of sources, procurement of information, and assessment and analysis were big parts of the job."

Nonetheless, in a country where men from the security and military establishment are often thought of as cold-eyed and competent protectors of state interests, Putin's KGB past has been a useful tool for solidifying his legitimacy.

Considering that sensationalism is the very language of television dramas, one may be asking if House of Cards' propagation of the Putin myth really matters.

In real politics, perception matters immensely, however. In Russia, the Putin myth is a vital pillar of support maintaining the current regime's hold on power. Likewise, the new House of Cards season may influence and reinforce how Putin is understood in American popular opinion, which can affect US foreign policy.

House of Cards producers and Kremlin spin masters may ultimately both be in the business of distorting reality, but it is hard to argue with their success. House of Cards continues to be one of America's most popular and acclaimed political dramas, while President Putin's domestic approval rating in Russia has reportedly reached almost 90 percent in recent months.

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#27
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
March 27, 2015
3 Russian contributions to theater that changed the world
In honor of World Theater Day on March 27, RBTH presents three of Russia's greatest contributions to the art of theater, from the plays of Anton Chekhov to the methodologies of Stanislavsky and Vsevolod Meyerhold's "theater of the grotesque."
Alexandra Guryanova, RBTH

The plays of Anton Chekhov

Chekhov's plays were a breakthrough in world drama in the first quarter of the 20th century. Their plots distinguished them from traditional dramas of that time by virtue of their special psychological depth. Chekhov did not show the only true path to the salvation of heroes. Instead, he drew spectators into the study of everyday behavior of the characters and encouraged them to make their own conclusions.

His work, alongside the works of Ibsen, Strindberg and Shaw, formed the basis of "New Drama," an important theatrical trend at the turn of the century. Outstanding playwrights revered Chekhov as the father of psychological theater. For example, Bernard Shaw called his play Heartbreak House a "fantasia in the Russian manner on English themes."

Tennessee Williams adored The Seagull and wanted to put it on stage in his interpretation for the rest of his life. This play, alongside Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, has been translated into more than 80 languages and been staged countless times in the UK, Germany, France, Japan, the U.S. and other countries.
 
Konstantin Stanislavsky and Michael Chekhov's acting systems

Stanislavsky's legendary "I do not believe it!" became a meme in the global theater community. A famous director and co-founder of the Moscow Art Theater, he was a stern coach for actors. His system of acting techniques teaches the actor to "live the role." Stanislavsky made his players investigate the identity of the hero step by step, find the similarities with their own feelings and then recreate them on the stage.

More than 100 years since their introduction, his methods are still taught in acting schools today and can count many movie stars as ardent fans - from Keira Knightley to Benedict Cumberbatch.

Mikhail Alexandrovich "Michael" Chekhov was a disciple and follower of Stanislavsky, but his system largely engaged in polemics with the precepts of the "teacher." Chekhov, in particular, suggested that a good performance required detachment; when performing a role, the actors must scrupulously copy the character, carefully observing their acting and checking themselves for naturalness, rather than identify themselves with the hero. Today, Chekhov's system compares with Stanislavsky's system in popularity. It is used, for example, by Clint Eastwood and Jack Nicholson. In the U.S. there is even an association of teachers working with the Chekhov acting technique.
 
Meyerhold's theater of the grotesque and 'biomechanics'

Vsevolod Meyerhold created a special kind of theater that came to succeed folk performances on squares. The theater of the grotesque, as it would later be called, presumed utterly visual, bright and physically complex action.

It incorporated both dance and circus routines and cumbersome constructivist designs, which organized the stage space. One of the successful works of him as a director was his futuristic production Mystery-Bouffe, based on Mayakovsky's play of the same name.

Meyerhold also developed a system of work with the actors, the so-called "biomechanics", which became one of the strong points in Brecht's dramaturgy. The key element was the physical development of the role. Artists primarily mastered the gestures inherent to the character - it was through the precise movement that psychological similarity of the actor and the character was achieved.

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#28
The Guardian
March 27, 2015
How do you solve a problem like Ukraine?
Analysis: Kiev should stop banning Russian films and TV programmes and start talking to Russophone Ukrainians, says Nicolai Petro
By Nicolai Petro
Nicolai Petro is professor of politics at University of Rhode Island. In 2013-4 he was a US Fulbright scholar in Ukraine

Not long ago, former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko gave a wide ranging interview in which he offered the man who now sits in that seat some advice.

President Petro Poroshenko must understand, the ex-leader said, that half the country is against the imposition of the Ukrainian language, opposes the idea of a single national church, and does not want to join any military alliance.

With a candour that only a former politician can afford, Yushchenko acknowledged that Ukrainians live in two distinct countries. There are parts of Ukraine today where, he said, "our language practically does not exist, our memory is nonexistent, our church is absent, our culture is absent."

His solution? To impose "spiritual unity" on the country. During his time in office Yushchenko insists he did just that, which might explain why his initially high popularity rating fell to under 5% by the end of his term.

Perhaps this is the consequence of the approach that politicians such as Yushchenko have taken towards those Ukrainian citizens they consider "utterly foreign". It is a strategy that intellectuals such as Elena Styazhkina, professor of history at Donetsk National University, euphemistically term "positive, peaceful colonisation".

At a TEDx conference in Kiev last year Styazhkina clarified her meaning, adding: "the Donbass will not return to Ukraine because the Donbass does not exist. It will be either Ukraine, or nothing at all".

The most recent example of this colonisation is the introduction of a law, about to come into effect, which bans the showing of "any Russian films, documentaries, serials, or cartoons" made since January 2014 or any productions portraying "the aggressor country" (Russia) in a favourable light made after August 1991 (the time of the Soviet coup).

The current war effort has certainly succeeded in rallying popular support behind the government in Kiev, and the censorship imposed on Russian media and cultural outlets no doubt also helps.

But if colonisation of Russophone Ukraine were a realistic possibility, would we not have seen more progress on national consensus since independence, especially during the Yushchenko era?

A poll conducted last December by the Ukrainian news website Zerkalo Nedeli highlights the fact that the government's efforts, instead of healing Ukraine's wounds, are creating new rifts.

Asked what had been the three most significant developments in their country over the past year, it found little consensus between respondents in western Ukraine and those in Donbass:

-71% of those in western Ukraine included the deaths of the "heavenly 100" during protests in Kiev that overthrew the previous government, compared with just 15% of those living in Donbass.

-Fewer than 3% of western Ukrainians but more than 30% of those in Donbass rated the self-declaration of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics in their top three.

-More than 31% of western Ukrainians and fewer than 13% of those in Donbass included the invasion of Russian troops into Donbass.

-In western Ukraine, 18% rated the signing of an agreement with the EU among their top three, compared with just 1.5% of those in Donbass.

-The Russian occupation of Crimea appeared in the top three of more than 35% of those living in western Ukraine and less than 20% of those living in Donbass.

-There was somewhat more agreement on the deaths of thousands of Ukrainians during the war: 44% of respondents in the west versus 56% of those in Donbass rated this among their top three.

From this survey, it is apparent that recent events are already being mythologised very differently in different parts of Ukraine.

"Peaceful colonisation" is therefore likely to run into serious difficulties. The most obvious is resentment arising from the implication that any Ukrainian who feels a kinship for Russian culture or prefers to speak Russian is somehow disloyal. This would surely transform the current conflict into a conflict over Ukrainian identity.

A second problem will be increasing western frustration at the restriction of minority cultural and religious rights. Some European politicians are already on record as saying they cannot understand why federalism, used by many multi-ethnic states to preserve national unity, is rejected out of hand by Poroshenko. Moving further from cultural equality for minorities to some form of ethnic democracy would invariably be seen in the west as a step away from European values.

Finally, there is the unavoidable fact that Russia will continue to have a tremendous cultural impact in Ukrainian society, where nearly everyone speaks Russian. Short of shutting down the internet and isolating itself from the world, there is little that Ukraine can do about this.

Makeshift memorial to Maidan protesters killed during clashes with police that overthrew the government in Ukraine. Facebook Twitter Pinterest
 Makeshift memorial to Maidan protesters killed during clashes with police that overthrew the government in Ukraine. Photograph: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images
A better solution than colonisation would therefore be to establish a cultural dialogue with Russophone Ukrainians. A true dialogue of equal citizens might lead to the development of what Ukraine currently so obviously lacks - a unifying civic culture that encompasses both the Russian and Ukrainian speaking communities.

This is where Ukrainian elites have a fateful choice to make. They can try to resolve the problem of national unity by adopting nationalistic symbols, rallying people around an "eternal enemy" (Russia) and making the new national identity a litmus test of loyalty. Or, they can forge unity through the incorporation of Russian speakers into a new civic patriotism in which Ukrainian identity is defined by its civic virtues rather than by culture or ethnicity. Simply put, the choice is between nationalism and liberalism.

Both are quintessential European values, but they lead to very different political systems.

Moreover, given Russia's overwhelming cultural presence in Ukraine, building a national identity at the expense of Russian identity would prove especially difficult, like trying to build Canadian identity around anti-Americanism and a refusal to speak English.

Finally, there is the issue of the heritage of Ukrainian liberalism. As philosopher Myroslav Popovych points out, the country's liberal intellectual tradition rests on illustrious names such as Mykhailo Drahomanov, Maksym Kovalevsky, Bohdan Kistiakivsky, Mykhailo Tuhan-Baranovsky, Mykola Vasylenko and Volodymyr Vernadsky. But there is precious little that is distinctively Ukrainian about this tradition. It is, in fact, the liberal intellectual tradition of the Russian empire at the end of the 19th century, a heritage shared by both Russians and Ukrainians alike.

I regard this common heritage as a distinct advantage for modern day Ukraine. First, because it promotes a rule of law that is based on individual rather than collective rights. Second, because it counters the cultural isolation from Russia being sought by the most virulent Ukrainian nationalists. Finally, because it can rebuild ties with today's Russian intelligentsia on the basis of shared values.

So far Poroshenko seems bent on repeating Yushchenko's mistakes. But while his nationalistic rhetoric may help the war effort, what happens after the conflict ends? In the long-run integral nationalism runs counter to Ukrainian national unity, stable democracy, and even EU and Nato membership. Ultimately, there is no alternative to a national dialogue that sees Ukraine's bicultural and bilingual identity as a strength, rather than as a weakness.

And if the west is truly interested in the success of Ukraine, then it should recognise that it too has a vital stake in expanding liberal discourse in Ukraine, and in overcoming the nationalistic rhetoric that can only further divide the nation.

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 #29
Al Jazeera
www.aljazeera.com
March 26, 2015
Families of slain Ukraine demonstrators demand justice
More than 100 people were gunned down in Maidan Square a year ago, but investigations have failed to bring prosecutions.
By Katherine Jacobsen

The Chaplinskiys are among more than 100 families whose loved ones were killed during protests in February 2014 [Katherine Jacobsen/Al Jazeera]
Obukhiv, Ukraine - Countless times on his computer, Volodymyr Chaplinskiy has watched the moment his father was shot dead, each time looking for details he might have missed the last time, or the time before.

The 21-year-old knows the sequence of events down to the second: his father, a protester in the centre of Kiev, was pierced by a bullet through his neck before he fell to the pavement in broad daylight on February 20, 2014.
The Maidan Square protests began in November 2013 after then-president Viktor Yanukovych failed to sign an association agreement with the European Union.

The Chaplinskiys - wife Svitlana, daughter Violetta, 6, and son Volodymyr - are among more than 100 families whose loved ones were killed during violent clashes between demonstrators and Ukraine's former elite police unit, the Berkut.

Reports from Ukraine's Ministry of the Interior show 118 civilians and 20 policemen were killed - the vast majority of deaths taking place between February 18-20 at the peak of the protests.

Honouring the dead

In cities all over Ukraine there are memorials to slain anti-government demonstrators. Yet the deaths have hardly been honoured with justice.

Although on the first-year anniversary of the protests the fallen were awarded medals as "Heroes of Ukraine", the "hero" status was bestowed only after families heckled President Petro Poroshenko for failing to recognise them 10 months after their killings.

On the anniversary of the bloodiest day of shootings on February 20, thousands of dollars were spent on a lavish service where Mozart's Requiem serenaded the many lights of memorial candles.

Yet victims' families received no social benefits. Even the promise that some of their utility expenses would be paid for by the government has gone unfulfilled.

Some Ukrainians say the event was an expensive hat tip in place of a real investigation into those gunned down in Kiev's central square.

Finding the killers

More than a year later, no one has been convicted of shooting anti-government protesters such as Volodymyr Chaplinskiy, or any other Maidan-related crimes.

Svitlana has been unable to get her husband's name added to the list of protesters allegedly killed by police on February 20.

Investigators at the General Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine have told her they have no proof as to which side - protesters or police - shot her husband. Svitlana has visited their office several times with a video of her husband's death that provides evidence such as bullet angles, but with no results.

Each time, the widow said, she had the distinct feeling that no one had even glanced at the video.

"I raised my voice at them a bit," she said. "My child is watching his father's death over and over again. Why?" Svitlana said she had asked the investigators.

"Because they're not doing anything themselves."

Of the investigations into Maidan-related crimes, five people have been arrested in connection with protester shootings, and no one has been detained for the deaths of policemen.

Orders to shoot

A Ukraine Ministry of the Interior report was released on April 3, 2014, under the direction of the interim government. It detailed that on February 20, members of the elite special operations unit, Alfa, worked with members of the riot police "Black Unit" and killed about 53 protesters.

The Ministry of the Interior also stated that members of the Russian secret service FSB had infiltrated Ukraine's security agency and gave orders to shoot protesters - an allegation the FSB has denied.

On the day the report was released, three Berkut police officers were arrested in connection with the shootings of February 20 - a former commander, Dmytro Sadovnyk, 38, and two younger officers, Serhiy Zinchenko, 23, and Pavel Abroskin, 24.

Sadovnyk, who was later released under house arrest, has fled and has not been heard from since.

The Berkut, who fell under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior, has since been disbanded. Former members now either work in other police units, have joined the fighting in Ukraine's eastern front, or have fled from the government's reach.

The Alfa special operations unit is still functioning under the State Security Service (SBU), Ukraine's equivalent of the Russian FSB.

Twisted plot

Last October, a Reuters special report revealed the investigation against the arrested Berkut members was rife with irregularities.

Among these, it was brought to light that Sadovnyk, the escaped officer, was physically unable to hold a gun because his hand had been blown off by a grenade in a training accident. In addition, the report stated the prosecution had made prejudicial statements against the accused.

On February 24, 2015, days after the one-year anniversary of the shootings, the Ministry of the Interior announced two more former low-ranking Berkut officers had been arrested and a wanted list of 18 more suspects would be forthcoming.

After a hearing for Zinchenko and Abroskin last Thursday, one of their lawyers, Igor Varfolomeev, told Al Jazeera the two were being blamed for following orders to shoot when there was no evidence such orders were ever given.

According to Varfolomeev, the two men lack the training and temperament to kill unarmed protesters and are merely scapegoats.

The other two Berkut members have not yet had a court hearing, though they will be tried along with Zinchenko and Abroskin, according Alexey Donskoy, senior prosecutor from the General Prosecutor's Office.

"Six months ago there were a lot of problems with getting information from the victims' families to the investigation committee, but in that time things have gotten a lot better and we've been able to work a lot more closely with the lawyers for the victims' families," Donskoy told Al Jazeera outside the court.

On the anniversary of the Maidan shootings, the Minister of the Interior announced that Ukraine had proof that Russian special forces were, in fact, involved. No new details about the Russian connection have been made public since, however.

Although a special department in the prosecutor's office was set up to investigate the shootings, there haven't been any noticeable changes in the investigation, said the Cheplinksiy's lawyer, Markiyan Halabala.

Family initiatives

Families of the victims have started taking matters into their own hands.

"We've organised ourselves, it's the only way to propel the investigation forward," said Volodymyr Bondarchuk, whose father Sergeii was also killed in Maidan.

The EuroMaidan SOS group, comprised of civil society activists, was established to help connect victims' families with pro-bono lawyers. Families stay in close touch, sharing photographs, videos, and other information they find about the shootings.

"There is both a lack of initiative from the General Prosecutor's Office, as well as the fact that people just aren't used to the type of research that involves technology and piecing things together," said Evgeniya Zakrevskaya, a lawyer working for a number of families.   

Inna Plekhanova's son, Aleksandr, was shot on February 18, 2014. She has followed the investigations closely, but said she is highly sceptical that justice will follow.

"There are video cameras everywhere," said Plekhanova, noting the Ukrainian Parliament, luxury apartments, and government offices are all located on the street where her son was shot.
"But the prosecutors did not turn up one single videotape of my son's death. Not one," Plekhanova told Al Jazeera.

A month after her son was killed, Plekhanova found a lawyer through EuroMadian SOS and together they went looking for witnesses around Maidan. They found one.

But Plekhanova said she has received little to no support from the prosecutor's office in tracking down other witnesses.

"There was even a tree near to where [Aleksandr] was shot. They chopped it down last spring," she said, her eyes filled with emotion.

"The houses nearby also had bullet marks," Plekhanova said. "The bullet holes were plastered in a short while later. No one could tell me who was responsible for that either."

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#30
Ukraine to speed up Project Stina on Russian border in April

KYIV. March 27 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian State Border Service will speed up the construction of a security line along the Russian border, including Crimea, in April to fulfill Project Stina (Wall).

"An active phase of engineering works on the border will resume in early April. In all, the project will take three years," service spokesman Oleh Slobodyan said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Thursday.

Engineering plans for every unit protecting the Ukrainian-Russian border have been drawn up and presented to a research institute which will submit them for the government's consideration, he said.

"The first ten million hryvni were transferred to the State Border Service administration this week consistent with the project estimate. So, we will be able to resume the active phase of engineering works on the border in early April," he said.

First of all, the works will be done in the areas controlled by Kyiv and protected by the Luhansk and Kharkiv border units, Slobodyan continued.

He also reported an ongoing inspection of security and defense of the Donbas contact line by State Border Service chief Viktor Nazarenko.

"A group of officers of the State Border Service administration led by Service chief Lt. Gen. Viktor Nazarenko has been working to implement security tasks set for the contact line by the president," he said.

The group is checking security and defense systems deployed along the contact line, checkpoints, e-check systems, collaboration between departments, and some other issues.

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 #31
www.thedailybeast.com
March 26, 2015
Ukraine Psych Wards Prepare For Soldiers' PTSD
As young men return from the battlefields in east Ukraine, the country's underfunded psych wards are scrambling to treat the psychological wounds of war.
By Katie Zavadski

BOYARKA, Ukraine-The men who come back smoke differently. They cover the lit end of their cigarettes with their spare hands, conscious of the fact that a glowing red light might alert the enemy to their presence. They walk around with a different demeanor. They quarrel at home. Sometimes, they have nightmares. Divorce rates spike.

But the young men who come back from the war in Ukraine's southeast-the Anti-Terrorist Operation, or ATO, as it's known in the country-don't want to seek psychological help.

"Everyone knows that there are these 'psychologists,' but no one really knows what they do, and we're often confused with psychiatrists," says Yuliya Apostolova, a Boyarka-based psychologist. "And so often we hear, 'I'm not crazy. I don't need that.'"

"But now, because we finally have chaplains, they've started going out to the war zone and military psychologists with the troops, and it's becoming more accepted," she adds. "Guys who come back now, they're much more open. Of course, they'll never admit it, but we psychologists have our own ethics. We don't release secrets."

Apostolova tells me this in a dimly-lit pizza shop on a dusty, small-town road, a five-minute walk from her job at the city's socio-psychological rehabilitation center. Like many Ukrainians in and around Kiev, the 37-year-old with a broad, open face has been infected by nationalist fervor, and now spends many of her non-working hours volunteering. Inevitably, she says, it all runs together with her work as a psychologist. Her two cellphones ring incessantly, interrupting our conversation at least three times, but she doesn't mind: Apostolova has found purpose in this war.

That's a good thing, too. Both professionally and personally, dealing with violence is new for Apostolova and the rest of the center's staff, who are predominantly well-meaning women with the demeanor of patient grade-school teachers. Until recently, they had primarily been tasked with aiding populations affected by the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster.

The CSPR centers-in Boyarka, but also in nearby Borodyanka, Korosten, Ivankiv, and Slavutych-opened in 2000 under the Ministry of Emergency Situations, part of a 14-years-too-late effort to help those affected by the 1986 catastrophe. Their work was primarily with families and children; the Boyarka center, for instance, cooperates with a 400-bed children's hospital. One of the staff social workers ran a support group for expecting mothers; another had a sandbox full of plastic animals for Jungian psychotherapy.

Then last year, amid the conflicts in the east, the CSPR centers were reshuffled into the guardianship of the Ministry of Social Policy, and then placed under the watch of the governmental service in charge of veterans' affairs-and those of participants of anti-terrorism operations, as the government has chosen to dub the ongoing violence in Donbass.

And that's how psychologists in a small town an hour west of Kiev came to learn about PTSD.

In the states of the former Soviet Union, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder has another, familiar name: Afghan Syndrome, for the thousands of untreated veterans of the Afghan War still dealing with the consequences of battlefield trauma. They're the reference point used by Apostolova and her boss, center director Angelina Lakhtadir, when thinking about their patients. "We're still dealing with the consequences of that," Lakhtadir says.

But they had no practical experience in dealing with PTSD. So they began by cobbling together low-cost trainings for treating the condition. Online blogposts for families and friends offered translations of English-language materials. Soon, they put together a plan: Treat the men before they leave. Provide maintenance on breaks. Start preparing for a mass demobilization.

The real strength, though, was in approaching soldiers through their wives and children, the access points they knew best.

"The girls expect their husbands to be the same as they last saw them," Apostolova explains. "But the men change a lot, and the person who comes home is practically a different person. He still loves her, but he may have some unintentional bursts of aggression. Other times they start to drink, even though before they never tried alcohol."

Now, those women have a weekly support group where they learn techniques for approaching spouses who come home for short breaks. Apostolova says they warn women that a return to normal may take a long time-and that they must be ready. At the top of their list of no-gos are no surprises, and no crowds. They social workers recommend talking out a day full of activities ahead of time.

"It helps, it helps," Apostolova says reassuringly, adding that the women are "very scared of this return, because they don't know what to expect." Center employees are on call whenever the women may need them-even though, because of the bureaucratic shuffle, the psychologists haven't been paid in months.

They also deputize children, who may be alarmed by sudden personality changes in their dads, to be caretakers in charge of the recommended three liters of water men on leave are prescribed daily. "We tell children, they take this responsibility upon themselves: Bring dad half a glass of water every half-hour."

These networks also help bring returning soldiers closer to the psychological care they need, especially those who were drafted and didn't volunteer. "They know why, and for what, they're going," Apostolova says of the volunteer battalions. "But especially the fourth wave of mobilization, it's young boys who are afraid."

Ahead of deployment, Apostolova and other volunteers accompany the soldiers to training sessions. They explain fear reflexes amid sounds of grenades exploding. The idea, which Apostolova explains using the metaphor of a snake phobia, is that telling them why their bodies react the way they do makes the experience less frightening. If you preoccupy yourself with learning about different kinds of threats and then-"god forbid"-encounter one, your first instinct will be to identify the type of snake, not to fear it. "You won't be lost."

"It's hard for those guys, because what we're seeing is that everyone wants to go back. They come back for their break rotations and sleep for two days, see their family, relax with their friends, and then start going back and forth to the recruitment office, war friends... they're constantly in camo gear," she says. "They're yearning to go back. It's not just patriotism and that they're defending their country. Now there's an added, very strong incentive of brotherhood. The people they're there with, they want to go back to not leave the guys who have become their family."

Right now, the psychologists are taking it one day at a time. Resources that were initially diverted to helping internally displaced people have now largely been put back for service members and families. On a recent weekend, the Boyarka CSPR hosted a crafts fair to raise money for the military families. Two dozen locals came out with homemade trinkets.

At the auction, many items started at about a dollar, but no one bid. Money is tight, and ongoing devaluation doesn't help. Lakhtadir, the center's director, bought a paint-by-numbers picture for a few dollars. Most of the rest was sponsored by one Russian-speaking man in an expensive suit.

The government has said funding-for salaries, and the center itself-will resolve soon, but it's not clear whether the staff believes that. Much of the war effort is run on the shoulders of volunteers, and they're used to it by now. (Ukraine's Ministry of Social Policy did not return a request for comment on the center's funding and reports of unpaid salaries.) The real challenge will come when the war ends, whatever the resolution will be.

For those who come back permanently, the CSPR is creating a comprehensive service: A soldier will report to the center, tell them what he needs-child care, benefits, the like-and a coordinator will take his documents and arrange it for him, jumping through bureaucratic hoops and going to appointments in his stead.

At the same time, a psychologist will be nearby to determine whether the man needs help. "And if he does, they'll gently broach the subject even if the boy says, 'No, not me,'" Apostolova says softly. "You can start a conversation with anything, and then he won't even realize how he starts to feel better."

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 #32
Kyiv Post
March 26, 2015
Right Sector defies government's calls to pull out of frontline
by Allison Quinn

As the Ukrainian government seeks to merge volunteer battalions fighting in the east into the country's official armed forces, one group has defiantly refused to lay down their arms.

Right Sector, a far-right paramilitary group that was instrumental in the Euromaidan protests that saw Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych overthrown, has called the Defense Ministry's proposal to join the armed forces "traitorous" and said they have no intention of obeying the order.

The move could throw a wrench into the plans of the Defense Ministry to bring order to all the volunteer forces fighting pro-Russian separatists in the east, where spokesman Vladyslav Seleznyov said it was vital for the various regiments to be "structured and systematized and clearly regulated and managed."

Throughout the Ukraine conflict, private battalions have fought alongside Ukraine's regular forces to prevent pro-Russian separatists from gaining more territory, but many have expressed concerns that such groups have no one to answer to, no official supervision and unclear sources of financing. Human rights groups have repeatedly sounded the alarm over major abuses by such groups, including arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances and torture.

The government's initiative to conduct housekeeping of such battalions is meant to both resolve these issues and bolster Ukraine's own government forces.

The order for volunteer fighters to either join the Ukrainian government forces or leave the counter-terrorism zones in the east came down from the head of Ukraine's Security Service on March 25.

"Now is the time for both the military leadership and the leadership of the Interior Ministry, as well as the leadership of the SBU, to take care of fighters in the counter-terrorism zones, by providing them with the legal status they deserve, the opportunity to legally enter into the official armed forces ... All those who do not want to do so must give up their weapons and select a different mode of behavior - leave the ATO zones, but more importantly, not create and not be a part of any illegal paramilitary groups," Valentin Nalivaichenko said in comments to Interfax-Ukraine.

Right Sector has been given until March 27 to leave the frontlines in conflict-stricken Mariupol and until April 1 to leave counter-terrorism zones completely, according to the group.

Artyom Skoropadsky, the group's spokesman, said they had no intention of obeying the order, however - and that there was little the Defense Ministry could do about it.

"From the very start of the war, we have been negotiating with the Defense Ministry to make us a part of the ministry but as a separate division. But they just keep saying, 'No, you guys just dismantle and join the armed forces.' That doesn't suit us," he said, noting that Right Sector was often more effective than the armed forces.

"We've already proven with our actions, the feats of our fighters - unfortunately the deaths of many of our fighters - that we are prepared to fight, to defend Ukraine. We aren't going anywhere, and the suggestion that we would is just crazy," Skoropadsky said. "I don't even know what they were thinking when they voiced such a proposal," he said.

Skoropadsky said the group would pull out only on the orders of their leader, Dmytro Yarosh, who has yet to comment on the matter and was unavailable on March 26.

"They're taking away our right to war," said Artyom Lutsak, the chief of staff of the group's 8th independent division. "Neutralizing the volunteer forces is betrayal," he said.

Seleznyov, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, played down the idea that Right Sector had been issued an ultimatum, saying they had simply been offered the chance to take part in a "mutually beneficial process" to become a part of the official armed forces.

He said that as far as he knew, the group was still considering the offer, and that they had "taken a time-out to think."

Seleznyov noted that the official military wants to ensure that all fighters are "professional, well-trained and motivated, who possess military experience and are prepared to defend Ukraine and its people until the very end."

As for what would happen if Right Sector refused the offer, Seleznyov said they would figure that out "when we get to it."

"No ultimatum was given to Right Sector. We simply offered them the chance to officially become a part of the National Guard. The other option is to join the armed forces. They asked for time to consider this proposal. ... We are counting on their understanding and are awaiting a response," he said.

The OUN battalion, another volunteer battalion in the east that is not subordinate to government forces, said they were prepared to get official status but would not leave the front until they did.

"Endless negotiations seem to be going on to get legalized. They are not denying us the right to do so outright, but there are constantly new negotiations and circumstances," Lidia Guzhva said.

For now, she said, the battalion, based near Donetsk, is getting many promises of legalization but has yet to see any results.

Oleg Sushinsky, a spokesman for Sector M, part of the government's defense forces, said in comments to Ukrainian media on March 26 that there were already plenty of government battalions serving in Mariupol, and that Right Sector wasn't needed there.

"They want to fight. But they can't do it this way. There are civilians, and then there are soldiers. If they consider themselves professionals, let them enroll officially," Sushinsky was cited as saying.

Skoropadsky was adamant that the Right Sector would settle for nothing less than getting their own separate division, saying there was not much the Defense Ministry could do to force Right Sector to comply.

"They can't take any actions against us. What could they do? The army can't fight against Right Sector, that would be absurd. Right Sector has huge authority," he said.

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 #33
www.foreignpolicy.com
March 26, 2015
Ukraine Doesn't Have a Warlord Problem
Ukraine's volunteer battalions are not undermining the state -- they're saving it.
BY ALEXANDER J. MOTYL
Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey.

One analyst claims that "Eastern Ukraine is awash with weapons and armed militia groups on both sides." Another speaks darkly of "independently operating warlords and armed groups." A third writes of "independent and semi-independent battalions, some of which descend from Ukrainian nationalist groups, extreme elements of the Maidan self-defense forces, and criminal groups."

You'd think Ukraine was on the verge of chaos.

The subjects of these alarmist statements are Ukraine's volunteer fighting units, which have fought alongside the regular army in the country's war against pro-Russian separatists. Are they really a threat to Ukraine's stability and democratic prospects? The answer is no. Although the first deputy speaker of Ukraine's parliament, Andrii Parubiy, may have gone too far in saying, during a recent visit to New York, that the units are "disciplined Ukrainian warriors about whom films will be made and books will be written," he was right to suggest that panic is unwarranted.

Some basic facts and numbers, gleaned from Ukrainian- and Russian-language sources inaccessible to many Western journalists, tell a less alarming story. The volunteer units emerged in the immediate aftermath of Russia's annexation of Crimea in March 2014. Ukraine's armed struggle against pro-Russian separatists picked up in the spring and summer, and the regular army, neglected since Ukraine's independence in 1991 and starved of resources under the Viktor Yanukovych regime, proved inadequate for the job. Many police officers in Ukraine's southeastern provinces had either defected to the separatists or refused to take sides. In March and April of 2014, the government adopted a variety of constitutionally grounded measures legalizing the formation of volunteer units under the aegis of both the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Most were formed in April and May.

According to a September 2014 report of the Kyiv Post, Ukraine had 44 volunteer battalions subordinate to the Ministry of Defense, 32 subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, three affiliated with the National Guard, and several Ukrainian Volunteer Corps units that were not subordinate to any state agency. Several other sources list slightly different figures. Part of the problem in identifying the exact number of units is that they and their roles often overlap. In addition, being volunteer-based, the units grow and contract depending on circumstances beyond their control.

According to the Kyiv Post and other sources, about half of the volunteer units came from Ukraine's eastern and southern provinces. That makes sense, as the southeast is where the Russian aggression has taken place. Compared to regular army conscripts, the volunteers (who number just over 10,000 altogether) are far more motivated, idealistic, and willing to place their lives on the line. Many are close to or above middle age, have families and professions, and served in the Soviet army. The commander of the Donbas battalion, for instance, is an ethnic-Russian ex-businessman from Donetsk. Although all the volunteers would characterize themselves as Ukrainian patriots, many are ethnic Russians or Russian speakers.Although all the volunteers would characterize themselves as Ukrainian patriots, many are ethnic Russians or Russian speakers. Jews also form a noticeable contingent within some battalions. That said, the volunteer units generally have the same problems as Ukraine's regular armed forces: a lack of supplies, a lack of training, and a lack of integration into an effective command and control structure.

The leaders of these volunteer battalions are anything but "incipient warlords," and the units are hardly Ukrainian versions of the Taliban or Colombia's FARC. Warlords are established local chieftains who attract followers by means of their charisma or resources. The leaders of the Ukrainian battalions are usually just volunteers; sometimes they're affiliated with small and uninfluential political groupings; and their charisma and resources appear to be minimal. The units have no territorial bases and no independent sources of financing (such as, say, the drug trade that sustained FARC). They fight along various sections of the front, not just in their "home territory." The volunteers themselves have families and jobs and are only part-time soldiers. And, with one exception, the units are all subordinated to the ministries of internal affairs or defense.

The only remotely justified concern over "incipient warlordism" involves Igor Kolomoisky, the Dnipropetrovsk-based oligarch, who established and funded the Dnipro-1 unit after becoming governor of the province last spring. One critic has suggested that Kolomoisky "commanded their loyalty," implying that Dnipro-1 had become his private army. And, in fact, on March 23, during Kolomoisky's tussle with the government over control of two energy companies, some armed men loyal to him did temporarily occupy company offices. As the New York Times reported, however, "the commander of Mr. Kolomoisky's main paramilitary group, Dnepro-1, denied any involvement." Next day, Kolomoisky resigned, while Dnipro-1 neither staged a coup nor disbanded out of loyalty to its putative "warlord."

Of the 79-plus volunteer units identified by the Kyiv Post, only three have attracted significant negative media attention in both Ukraine and the West. They are Aidar, Azov, and Right Sector. The first two have some 500 members, while the third numbers around 250. (The Kyiv Post attributed 120 to one Right Sector unit and had no data for the second one, so I doubled the estimate). That is, only 4 percent of the units and 11 percent of the volunteers have been implicated in controversy. All three of these units draw heavily on Russian-speaking volunteers from eastern Ukraine. Their geographical origin is significant. Like the pro-Russian separatists fighting on the other side of the barricades, pro-Ukrainian volunteers are the products of Donbas political culture, which is illiberal, intolerant, and violent. It would be shocking if they were to have diametrically opposite attitudes from those of the pro-Russian separatists. Furthermore, given that the volunteers are quickly mobilized irregulars with too much motivation and too little training, the most striking thing about them is not the presence of a few bad apples, but the absence of many more.

Critics who say that the units have gone rogue often cite a recent Amnesty International report, "Summary Killings during the Conflict in Eastern Ukraine." A Newsweek article on the report bore the title "Ukrainian Nationalist Volunteers Committing 'ISIS-Style' War Crimes." In fact, the Amnesty report documents "strong evidence" that four people were executed by pro-Kiev forces, and demands a prompt and impartial investigation into the circumstances of their deaths - while noting that separatist sources and the Russian media have "significantly exaggerated" the scale of the killings. Though there is no excuse for any extrajudicial killing, one to four victims of summary justice are a far cry from "ISIS-style war crimes."

Only Aidar seems to be a rogue unit or, more accurately, a unit with many rogues. Luhansk province Governor Hennadi Moskal recently said that deserters from the unit are now "involved on looting, thievery, racketeering, automobile thefts, and other crimes," even though a "significant part" of its troops continue to serve faultlessly on the front lines. Minister of Internal Affairs Avakov has called these elements "pseudo-Aidar" and "Aidar-2." An Aidar fighter, meanwhile, says that the battalion consists of a subunit - the "black ones," alleged to be its commander's private army and consisting of "criminals, fighters, and fighter-criminals." There have been reports of tensions and fighting between the two Aidars, though whether it's over power, booty, or principle isn't clear.

The modifier invariably appended to Azov is "neo-Nazi." Although the unit's leader, Andrii Biletsky, belongs to an unabashedly extremist organization, Patriot of Ukraine, he comes across more like a hardline Republican in his interviews with the press: "Our central ideological platform is: fight for what's yours and destroy everything that interferes in the life of your people and your state. Today our primary enemy is the Putin regime and the band of outcasts who call themselves his 'family.'" To add to the confusion, Azov has received funds from Igor Kolomoisky, the now deposed governor - who also happens to be a leading Jewish Ukrainian philanthropist. Josef Zissels, the Kyiv-based chairman of the General Council of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, says that Azov may have 30-40 genuine Nazis.

The Right Sector, which emerged on the political scene during the Maidan Revolution in 2014, is the driving force behind the self-styled Ukrainian Volunteer Corps, which remains outside the defense or internal affairs ministries. In early 2015, the Right Sector turned down an official offer for its volunteer units to go "legal," as presidential advisor Yuri Biryukov put it, though they did enter into a contractual relationship with the Ministry of Defense. (On March 25, the group was ordered to leave the front or subordinate itself, but as of this writing, it has made no known response.) Notwithstanding their go-it-alone approach, the Right Sector's volunteer units coordinate their front-line activities with Ukraine's military command, have fought together with regular army units in defense of Donetsk Airport, and have not been implicated in any major public scandals.

Putin's propaganda has demonized the group, suggesting that it amounts to a Ukraine-wide movement that is preparing a final assault on Russia. In reality, the Right Sector amounts to no more than a few thousand members.In reality, the Right Sector amounts to no more than a few thousand members. Although its ideology is right-wing, the group rejects anti-Semitism and one of its leading activists is an Orthodox Jew, Borislav Bereza. Its 2014 electoral program was a collection of largely anodyne proposals for better governance and less corruption. Although few Ukrainians - and few Westerners - would disagree with those suggestions, the Right Sector received only 1.8 percent of the vote in the October 2014 parliamentary elections. Its candidate garnered 0.7 percent in the presidential elections in May.

Although the volunteer battalions are part of Ukraine's military efforts, it may be more appropriate to think of them as part of Ukraine's burgeoning self-help movement. The Maidan Revolution's "regulars" - who numbered several thousand permanent activists - were all volunteers. Most of them continued the struggle after Russia invaded Ukraine. Some went into politics; others joined NGOs; and still others took up arms, in the manner of their predecessors in the American and French Revolutions.

Ukraine's regular and volunteer soldiers are supported by an army of civilian volunteers, who in turn are supported by hundreds of thousands of diaspora Ukrainians, who contribute large sums of money. As of late 2014, the volunteer movement in Ukraine consisted of 750,000 individuals and about 100 groups with no fewer than 100 permanent members. They provide food supplies, medicine, and equipment to the military as well as a whole range of services for the 1.8 million refugees from the Donbas. That number (750,000) amounts to about 2 percent of Ukraine's actual population of about 40 million. Run-of-the-mill Ukrainians, most of whom live on the verge of poverty, have provided hundreds of thousands of dollars for their cause. One volunteer activist estimates that people willing to give large donations on a regular basis amount to 2-3 percent while those who give one-time small donations are 10-15 percent.

Although volunteerism is an intrinsically positive phenomenon reflecting the strength of civil society, it can also be a measure, as in today's Ukraine, of the weakness of the state. Many tasks - such as economic entrepreneurship, religion, and culture - are best left outside the purview of the state. Others - such as defense and emergency response - are best performed by the state. "The good news is that Ukraine has developed an enormous potential for self-organization," Denys Kobzyn, the director of the Kharkiv Institute for Social Research has said. "The bad news is that the state's monopoly of the use of violence ... could be destroyed" if the volunteer units get out of hand.

Yuri Butusov, a military analyst and merciless critic of its military establishment, disagrees, questioning the units' ability to "engage in a revolt." According to Butusov, "amidst chaos, organized and patriotic volunteer units are the most disciplined foundation of the government." President Poroshenko's unwillingness to embrace the volunteer units is "irrational." "Yes, the battalions are politicized," he argues, "but they're no army. So why regard them as if they were a regular army? Let's arm and train them, and then we'll give them regular army tasks. Let's replace their incompetent commanders with competent ones. And then let's raise our standards toward them."

Both Kobzyn and Butusov have a point. The emergence of a huge volunteer movement in Ukraine in 2014 was a testimony to both the strength of Ukrainian civil society and the abysmal weakness of the post-Maidan, post-Yanukovych Ukrainian state. That movement - and the armed units within it - played a critical role in sustaining the state in 2014 and continues to play such a role today. It will be a measure of the success of Ukrainian state-building that the volunteer movement - and the armed units - eventually wither away and assume "normal" proportions.

If current state-building, nation-building, and economic-reform efforts proceed apace, and if Ukraine withstands Russian military pressure, the volunteer units will fade into obscurity. If those efforts fail and Russia overruns large parts of Ukraine, the volunteer units will be the least of Ukraine's problems - or the West's. In the meantime, talk of warlordism, fascism, and imminent chaos is hyperventilation. The true source of chaos in Ukraine comes from Putin's armies in the east.

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 #34
Fort Russ
http://fortruss.blogspot.com
March 25, 2015
The "Night of Long Knives" Cometh?
By J.Hawk

It is being reported that the Right Sector and all formations which are not under UAF or National Guard juristiction have been ordered to leave the ATO zone not later than April 1. It is an order which, in the words of a Right Sector unit commander, they have been warned "not to disobey."

The Right Sector is protesting, claiming that once they leave, it will fatally undermine the defensive lines, and they are likewise opposed to their units being disbanded. Moreover, they are playing the "Putin card", by claiming that Poroshenko has betrayed them at Minsk. It is easy to imagine that once they are out of the ATO, it will be difficult for them to justify their existence and, especially, their weapons. One other tangible effect will be the elimination of the Right Sector from the profitable smuggling operations between Ukraine proper, the Donbass, and Russia.

Poroshenko is clearly trying to take advantage of the firing of Kolomoysky, which was a useful demonstration of power, to press his advantage and take out a number of other potential rivals. Whether that will help him, or Ukraine, is another question. His nation-wide approval rating is now under 20%, according to a recent survey.

The order presumably does not affect the Azov Regiment, or any other "volunteer" formations which are formally part of the National Guard.

However, it is also evident that the SBU is rapidly gaining in importance and prestige, in part thanks to Nalivaychenko's backing of Poroshenko in his struggle against Kolomoysky. The SBU has already launched a "full-scale operation" against Dnepr-1 militants who have allegedly killed an SBU officer. According to recent statements by Poroshenko and Nalivaychenko, the SBU can count on a major reorganization, expansion, and change of emphasis that will make it into a de-facto political police whose main function will be the stifling of political dissent. In practice it will probably look something like this:

A billboard in Kharkov: "Lifestyle" Separatist. Disfigures national symbols. Awaits the coming of the "Russian World." Punishment: 7-12 years imprisonment (Article 110 of Ukraine's Criminal Code). If you hear or see something, call 0 800 501 482.

So at long last Poroshenko will get himself a loyal (?) Praetorian Guard. But then again, that's what the National Guard was supposed to be, and we know how that turned out...

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 #35
Sputnik
March 27, 2015
Infernal Affairs: Ukraine Minister Regrets Not Killing Protestors at Outset

Ukrainian Internal Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov has expressed regret at not having used Ukrainian security forces to blow up the Donetsk and Lugansk region administrative centers at the outset of the conflict in eastern Ukraine early last year.

Security officials from the self-proclaimed Lugansk People's Republic have reported the capture of a group of Aidar Battalion fighters suspected of planning terror attacks in the region, Lugansk Inform Tsentr reports.

Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov told Ukrainian television Thursday that Kiev had made a mistake when it didn't blow up the regional administration centers in Donetsk and Lugansk at the start of the civil conflict there last year.

"I'll say something that may make me look bad; I am a wanted man in Russia as it is. Anyway, back then [at the start of the conflict] we should have blown up the Donetsk Regional Administration," Avakov noted, speaking on Channel 1+1's program 'Right to Rule'. "Perhaps there would be 50 dead terrorists, but then we would not have 5,000 deaths in the Donetsk region. Something similar should have been done by Ukraine's Security Service in Lugansk, but were we ready for this then?" the minister pondered.

Responding to Avakov's commentary on Friday, Russian parliamentarian Franz Klintsevich said that the minister's statement represents a "barbarous point of view."

"Arsen Avakov considers that Kiev's biggest mistake was its indecisiveness in beginning the mass killing of protesters immediately after the beginning of the conflict, which would make others think twice about protesting. This is a truly barbarous point of view," Klintsevich said.

Klintsevich believes that in reality such terror tactics would have only given rise to greater violence and more unnecessary deaths, and noted while such commentary may be forgivable for an ordinary citizen, it is inexcusable for a minister. "Such a statement seems to indicate that Kiev has 'worked out the bugs' in its thinking and is ready to regain authority over southeastern Ukraine at any cost, regardless of civilian casualties; Avakov has only reiterated what everybody already knew."

In April 2014, Ukrainian authorities launched a so-called 'antiterrorist operation' against protesters in eastern Ukraine who rejected the country's new government following an unconstitutional coup that had occurred in Kiev in February. Since then, the United Nations has estimated that over 6,000 people were killed in fighting in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, which have since formed self-proclaimed people's republics. Kiev has been accused of the indiscriminate use of artillery and air attacks in populated areas.

In June 2014, Ukrainian air forces carried out an air attack on Lugansk's central administrative building, in an attempt physically wipe out its leadership. The bombing resulted in 8 deaths and 28 injuries, including LPR Minister of Health Natalya Arhipova.

Russia put out a warrant on Arsen Avakov in June 2014, accusing him of organizing murders, the use of prohibited means and methods in warfare, and the obstruction of the lawful activities of journalists.

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 #36
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
March 26, 2015
Support for Ukrainian government plummets
bne IntelliNews

Support for Ukraine's pro-Western government is plummeting, with nearly 70% of Ukrainians believing the country is going in the wrong direction, one year after the change of regime in Kyiv. The plunge in confidence mirrors the economic collapse in the wake of the conflict in East Ukraine and rising tensions with Russia.

Two thirds (66.9%) of respondents in a poll by Kyiv's Razumkov Center believe the country is heading in the wrong direction, with only 17.5% believing current developments are positive.

Only 19.4% of Ukrainians would now vote for President Petro Poroshenko, less than half of the 55% that swept him to a landslide first round victory in elections on May 25, 2014. The elections followed the ousting of former president Viktor Yanukovych after the Maidan protests.

Only 12.6% of respondents now say they fully support the tycoon-turned-president, while 39.9% take the opposite view.

While percentages differered considerably, because of a different ranges of options, the overall turnaround in support for Poroshenko was confirmed by a second poll conducted by Research & Branding Group: 58% of respondents disapprove of his performance, and only 33% of respondents expressed approval.

The precipitous drop in support is reminiscent of the fate of Poroshenko's mentor, former president Viktor Yushchenko, who came to power in 2005 after a pro-Western revolution. His initial ratings were over 60% but he garnered only 5% of ballots when he ran for re-election in 2010.

Neither poll covered Crimea, annexed by Russia in March 2014, or parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions currently held by Russian-backed separatists.

Bad to worse

Poroshenko's key ally, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk, fares even worse in the polls, 13 months after becoming premier when Yanukovych fled in February 2014.

According to the Razumkov Center poll, 56.7% of people do not support Yatsenyuk at all, with only 7.8% expressing full support. In the survey by Research & Branding, 68% disapproved of Yatsenyuk, and 24% gave their approval. Less than 5% of respondents fully supported the work of the government, despite it being formed by a coalition of parties that together took around 70% of the vote in parliamentary elections in October.

"If the government loses the support of society now, its reforms will be ineffective," said Razumkov Center director Vasil Yurchishin.

The government is now facing local elections in October 2015, prior to which constitutional reform should devolve extensive powers to local government.

One consolation for Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk is that their collapse in approval is not matched by a surge in support for the opposition. The opposition, which largely succeeded Yanukovych's former governing Party of Regions, is weak and fragmented after losing key strongholds in Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk, and through its association with deadly violence by Yanukovych's administration against protestors in February 2014.

Economic torpedo

The plummet in support for Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk is even more significant since they have benefited from largely benign media coverage. Poroshenko himself is the owner of a major TV network, while other top officials such as (recently fired) Dnipropetrovsk governor Ihor Kolomoisky and Andriy Sadoviy, head of the third largest party in the ruling coalition, also control key networks.

Other major media owners such as gas oligarch Dmitro Firtash and metals oligarch Viktor Pinchuk also lent their support to the Poroshenko administration, since the ongoing conflict in East Ukraine has diminished their readiness to criticise the 'wartime' government, the media watchdog Telekritika said.

This means the government's collapse in ratings is probably a result of Ukraine's disastrous economic situation rather than politics, say analysts. Ukraine's GDP collapsed by 6.8% in 2014, according to official statistics, with the government anticipating a further 5.5% fall in 2015. Ukraine's hryvnia has devalued by 66.5% since the start of 2014.

The economic collapse has largely resulted from the fighting in the eastern industrial heartlands, as well as financial imbalances accumulated over years. Indicatively, only 12.7% of respondents are now ready to further "tighten their belts" for the good of reforms in the country, the Razumkov Center poll showed.

Asked for their views on the economy, 30.7% of respondents fear Ukraine's economy will utterly collapse, leading to mass closures of firms, unemployment, national default, and another dramatic devaluation of the hryvnia currency. A quarter see the crisis deepening in 2015, and only 29.4% expect the economy to stabilise by the end of the year.

Hopes still lie in EU

Gloom reflected in the polls is marginally relieved by Ukrainians' EU membership aspirations, which provides some light at the end of the tunnel, according to another poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS).

Russian aggression towards Ukraine has apparently pushed more Ukrainians away from Moscow and towards the EU, with 47% of respondents wanting union membership, up from 41% in September 2013. But 27% of respondents now do not want to join either camp.

The number of Ukrainians wanting to join the Russian-led Eurasian European Union has dropped to only 12%, down from 35% in September 2013, according to the KIIS poll. Its survey included the rebel-held Donbas area of East Ukraine, but not Crimea.

"Positive signs of support for Ukraine from the international community are now crucial to propping up the government's reform path," says Volodoymr Fesenko of the Penta think tank. According to Fesenko, this could include financial support as well as a decision in favour of a visa-free regime between the EU and Ukraine.

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 #37
Kyiv Post
March 27, 2015
Power Play: Does Kolomoisky's exit signal start of real crackdown against oligarchs?
By Oleg Sukhov

Igor Kolomoisky was dismissed as governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in the early hours of March 25.

Shortly after noon the same day, the head of Ukraine's Emergencies Services, Serhiy Bochkovsky, and his deputy, were handcuffed on suspicion of corruption in the middle of a Cabinet meeting. The scene was broadcast live on national television. The two officials are suspected of taking kickbacks from the purchase of fuel at exorbitant prices.

Is the nation witnessing the rule of law finally taking root? Is this a power play? Or are these merely public relations stunts?

Some observers have said that Kolomoisky's resignation may indicate President Petro Poroshenko's increased clout in collaboration with Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to get rid of the tycoon's influence.

The resignation followed the passage by parliament last week of a bill depriving the oligarch of his de facto control of state-owned oil and gas extractor Ukrnafta. At the same time, the government removed a Kolomoisky protégé as head of oil pipeline operator Ukrtransnafta.

Kolomoisky responded by sending armed men to both companies while exploding in a curse-laden tirade at journalists.

Observers say the future will show whether Kolomoisky's resignation and Bochkovsky's arrest were a cheap show intended to impress the public and the West or a demonstration of genuine political will. A lot will depend on the whether suspects are successfully prosecuted, and whether the government cleans up state-owned companies and reduces the influence oligarchs have on them.

Viktoria Syumar, a lawmaker from Yatsenyuk's People's Front party, told the Kyiv Post that the most qualified, independent people should run state companies. They should be hired through a transparently competitive process, and possibly be Western executives. Others maintain that the firms should be privatized at transparent auctions - a measure for which Poroshenko has recently pushed.

Another crucial issue is whether Kolomoisky's resignation will have implications for other oligarchs, including Rinat Akhmetov, Viktor Pinchuk, Dmytro Firtash and Konstyantyn Grigorishin, among others.

The tycoons have dominated Ukraine's political and economic life for most of its nearly 24 years as an independent state. "Nobody doubts that Kolomoisky is an oligarch but he's definitely not the only one and he's a pro-Ukrainian oligarch," Syumar says.

Some argue that Kolomoisky's amicable exit from his job is an indication that some kind of agreement had been reached with the president.

Another theory is that Poroshenko - himself a billionaire oligarch - was motivated not by the interests of the state but by his own business in his struggle with Kolomoisky. Last week the former governor accused some of the president's allies, including Poroshenko Bloc lawmaker Ihor Kononenko, of installing a loyal associate at the helm of Ukrtransnafta.

Kolomoisky's resignation also prompted a debate over the extent of his influence over Yatsenyuk and his allies, who have often been accused of being in the oligarch's pocket. Yatsenyuk's faction, however, voted with Poroshenko's to pass the Ukrnafta bill, suggesting that claims of Kolomoisky's influence over Yatsenyuk were greatly exaggerated.

Syumar denied that Kolomoisky was financing her party and said that Yatsenyuk "supported the Ukrainian state's interests in the dispute."

"We should divide the business story and the political one. Politically, we support (Kolomoisky) in what he was doing, in his efforts to help volunteer battalions," she says, adding that they did not support Kolomoisky as a businessman.

The oligarch has been praised for turning Dnipropetrovsk Oblast into a bulwark against pro-Kremlin separatists last year. He succeeded in those efforts far better than former Donetsk Oblast Governor Serhiy Taruta and Odesa Oblast Governor Ihor Palytsya, Syumar says.

The Kolomoisky saga may also have repercussions for the fate of volunteer battalions, some of which have been accused of being his "private army."

He has reportedly financed the Dnipro, Azov and Donbas battalions, which are part of the Interior Ministry, and also has links to the Right Sector's military unit, which has no legal status, and Dnipropetrovsk-based private security firm Sich.

Pavlo Kishkar, a combatant in the Donbas battalion turned lawmaker from the Samopomich party, denied by phone that there were any links between his unit and Kolomoisky, however.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has argued that Kolomoisky does not have much sway with the battalions now, and they have been firmly incorporated by his ministry. Meanwhile, Security Service head Valentyn Nalyvaichenko said on March 25 that all "illegal" military units, including those in Donbas and in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, should be disarmed. The statements were likely a reference to the Right Sector and Sich, the security firm.

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 #38
Russia Insider/Hromadske TV
http://russia-insider.com
March 26, 2015
Ukraine's Chief Anti-Corruption Official Fired after Uncovering Millions Stolen
Ukrainian State Financial Inspection uncovered 7.5 billion Ukrainian hryvnia (about $0.3 billion now, up to $1 billion at the time) that have been stolen from state funds under the new post-Maidan government
(Hromadske TV) UKRAINE
[Video here http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/03/26/5028]

Hromadske TV is a Ukrainian TV station founded in late 2013 in support of the EuroMaidan movement. It is funded by Dutch, American and British Embassies as well as George Soros' Open Society Foundations

This article originally appeared at Hromadske TV. It was translated by Kristina Rus at Fort Russ
http://www.hromadske.tv/politics/uryad-blokuye-koruptsiinikh-skhem-pid-chas-privati/

Transcript of the video:

Nikolai Gordienko, the Chairman of State Financial Inspection of Ukraine:

- Yes, I was fired. Probably for a good work. We performed planned audit of all state companies and monopolies. In 2014 a law was adopted to audit all the state monopolies.

- Why were you fired?

- I think, for the results of the work.

- Who has fired you?

- Yatsenyuk. I think you heard in the media, what was said. A decree was announced to fire me from my position, and perform a re-inspection of my activities. They announced that our audit of Antonov was not qualified, but I would like to say, that this audit was performed by a commission from several ministries: State Financial Inspection,  Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Justice and so on. During this audit we found fraud for 301 million UAH. We passed the materials to Prosecutor General. Our act of inspection was completely confirmed.

Prosecutor General started criminal proceeding in the case of Antonov against the Azarov government.

We were asked to inspect government activities for the period prior to the revolution, but during the course of inspections, we have found violations from the new period, by the current government. Such as Ukrzalispostach, Ukrzalisnitsa. The government asked the Ministry of Infrastructure to perform the audit of Ukrzalisnitsa, not us (to audit themselves by themselves). Their audit was useless.

With all materials which we had inspected, Prosecutor General opened criminal proceedings. I don't have the right to give you details, which is part of investigation, but I can give you the names of the companies and the amounts.

Ukrtransgas - 219 million UAH

Ukrgasdobyvannya - 358 million UAH

Ukkrzalisnitsa - 258 million UAH

Ukrzalispostach - 300 million UAH

Ukrpochta - 61 million UAH

These are only a few contracts, which we had checked, but we have not checked all the activity.

If we checked the entire activities, the amounts are 10 times higher.

The Ministry of Finance has never been checked. We have found 552 million UAH fraud, this is the activity of the first period of  Yanukovich and Azarov, and also we found one billion 46 million missing in the Ministry of Finance. The Ministry of Finance has sued us.  

- What about Yatsenyuk? Which violations are the responsibility of the government of Yatsenyuk?

Ukrpochta, Ukrzalispostach, Ukrzalisnitsa, Ukrgasvydobyvannya

Our employees are auditors, we just record facts, we take the accounting records, and just record the facts. Everything that is written in this report - are facts, taken from the accounting documents.

I am fired, thank you

Hromadske commentary:

"Corruption schemes in Ukraine are headed by the government of Yatsenyuk," - said Gordienko, the chairman of State Financial Inspection

In particular, he noted that corruption schemes were found in the process of privatization of "Ukrtelecom". According to the official, the fraud is in the billions.

Gordienko stated that during the audit of privatization of "Ukrtelecom" " a fact of non-payment in the amount of 220 million UAH of liabilities was proven, which is grounds for immediate cancellation of the contract."

Also, the fired chairman of State Financial Inspection, said that the government is blocking the disclosure of corruption schemes of the times of Azarov (Yanukovich's PM).

Finally, the official has formally asked Prosecutor General to check the activities of the government.

Later, MP Yuriy Levchenko (inter parliamentary association "Svoboda") demanded the Parliament to hear the Prosecutor General, Viktor Shokin, regarding accusations against the government of fraud of more than $7.5 billion UAH.

The members of the parliamentary association approached the Presidium of the Verkhovna Rada and asked the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, Vladimir Groysman to provide them with the opportunity to speak. Groisman gave them such a word.

Levchenko, in his speech said that today at the briefing in the Parliament the fired chairman of the State Financial Inspection, Nicholai Gordienko reported about the government fraud for more than $7.5 billion UAH. "We're talking about fraud in "Ukrpochta" (Ukrainian state mail service), "Ukrgazdobycha" (state gas company), about fraud of more than $4.5 billion UAH in "Naftogaz", said Levchenko.
 
Translator's comment: Kiev wanted to expose the fraud of the previous government of Yanukovich, but audits, which continued until a year after the Kiev junta took control of the government also uncovered their own fraud. The head of State Financial Inspection was fired for the findings.

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 #39
The Economist
March 28, 2015
Ukraine's Future
President v oligarch
Building a nation means putting plutocrats in their place

FOR the past year, Ukraine's government has enlisted the help of the country's powerful oligarchs in fighting its war against pro-Russian separatists. This week a new war opened up, pitting the government against one of the very oligarchs it had relied upon. On March 25th Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine's president, forced Ihor Kolomoisky, a business magnate, to resign from his post as governor of the central region of Dnipropetrovsk. Mr Kolomoisky had financed pro-Kiev battalions and played a vital role in stemming the spread of separatism. Yet after Mr Kolomoisky deployed his personal militia in Kiev to block the government from regulating his business interests, the president had no choice but to sack him.   

The clash was the biggest skirmish yet in an unfolding confrontation between the government and the oligarchy. It may be the single most important front in the struggle for Ukraine's future. Sergii Leshchenko, a former investigative journalist and now a reformist member of parliament, calls it the second phase of the Maidan revolution: "Maidan removed [the former president, Viktor] Yanukovych, but not the oligarchic system." But it could mean war with the oligarchs at a time when Ukraine can ill afford instability.

Ukraine's oligarchs amassed their fortunes through shady privatisation deals in the 1990s. Mr Kolomoisky collected holdings in oil and gas, aviation, banking, and media. Last year he began financing volunteer battalions to supplement the country's decrepit army. By defending Ukraine, Mr Kolomoisky was also protecting his business empire. His bank, PrivatBank, offered rewards of $10,000 for captured separatists and equipped some of its armoured cars for military use. In March last year Mr Kolomoisky was given his governorship.

Other magnates have had less of a formal role in government than Mr Kolomoisky. But unlike Russia's oligarchs, whom Vladimir Putin pushed out of politics, Ukraine's retain unfettered influence over the country's leadership. Ownership of the media allows them to act as kingmakers. A closed party-list voting system means that their lackeys can slip into parliament unchallenged. Corrupt courts do their bidding. As a result, business and government do not merely coexist, they are often one and the same.

It was a challenge to this nexus that led to the outburst from Mr Kolomoisky. At issue is his stake in a state oil company, UkrNafta. Previously, Ukrainian law required 60% of shares for a quorum at meetings of state-owned firms, giving Mr Kolomoisky, with a 42% stake, de facto control. He milked the company for cash, withholding billions of hryvnias in state dividends. Mr Kolomoisky claims that in the early 2000s he paid $5m a month to Viktor Pinchuk, another oligarch, to protect his stake in the lucrative enterprise. Mr Pinchuk's representatives deny the claims.

On March 19th reformists in parliament passed a law reducing the quorum requirement at state firms to a simple majority, denying Mr Kolomoisky a veto. Some days later a group of armed men, apparently loyal to Mr Kolomoisky, arrived in a military vehicle without number plates and built metal barricades around UkrNafta's headquarters. Earlier in the week Mr Kolomoisky had appeared with a phalanx of guards at another state-owned oil company, UkrTransNafta, after the government tried to replace a manager loyal to him. At both companies, Mr Kolomoisky ultimately backed down.

Ukraine's reformers have wanted to wean the country off the oligarchs ever since the Maidan revolution, with only limited success. The margin of graft on government tenders has fallen from about 40% to 10%, say anti-corruption activists. Some notorious schemes have closed, including, last week, UkrEcoResoursy, a state-owned recycling firm that in reality recycled only cash for its masters.

Yet behind a façade of reforms, corruption continues. If bribes are smaller, that is partly because Mr Yanukovych monopolised corruption on a grand scale. Now it has returned to its more diffuse pre-Yanukovych form, says Vitaliy Shabunin of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre. Progress comes only where the new elite and Western partners apply pressure together. America sent a signal last year by bringing bribery charges against Dmitry Firtash, another Ukrainian oligarch. He is trapped in Vienna fighting extradition.

True change can only come with a "systemic reset", says Viktoriya Voytsitska, a new member of parliament who argued for the law on shareholder quorums. Otherwise "we'll just feed the oligarch wars." The oligarchs are constantly struggling with each other over their shares of the economic pie. Mr Pinchuk and Mr Kolomoisky are fighting a court case in London. Mr Poroshenko, an oligarch himself, has fed resentment by appointing business partners and friends to government posts. He has also reneged on a campaign promise to sell his confectionery company, Roshen. Unless oligarchs transform as a class into law-abiding big businesses, their assets will simply be transferred from one to another, says Ms Voytsitska.

UkrTransNafta epitomises these risks. Mr Kolomoisky calls the government's attempt to replace his loyal manager at the company a "raider attack". The new manager, a former officer in the security services, was appointed without an open competition. He has ties to a member of parliament who is one of Mr Kolomoisky's business competitors. "It was ugly," says Ms Voytsitska.

Perhaps Mr Kolomoisky has secretly been compensated for his ousting. Yulia Mostovaya, editor of Zerkalo Nedeli, a newspaper, says backroom deals could include a refinancing of PrivatBank or the promise of neutral management at UkrNafta and UkrTransNafta. If Mr Kolomoisky gets nothing, his peace deal with Mr Poroshenko may not hold, and Mr Kolomoisky could seek to strike back.

But not by undermining the war effort. That would not serve Mr Kolomoisky's interests now any more than it did last spring, argues Volodymyr Fesenko of Penta, a Kiev-based think-tank. Instead, his ties with the National Guard and his ownership of PrivatBank could help him to claw back influence. Local elections scheduled for October will present another opportunity to accrue political allies. The process of "deoligarchisation", says Mr Fesenko, will be "complex and painful". But at least it has begun.

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 #40
Off Guardian
http://offguardian.org
March 26, 2015
Is Yats Packing Too?
Theodorakis

"After Kolomoiskiy's "resignation" there is a theoretical possibility to push through Yatsenyuk's one. He steals big time, and is generally not a good person"

While Ukrainian coal miners threaten to march on Kiev demanding months of unpaid wages, a serious contest is going on for the seat of the scandalous head of the country's government.

As reported by Vzglyad, he may be replaced by people from Poroshenko's team, eagerly trying to keep their hold on power, but also by former President Yanukovych's associates. Given the distrust to the current prime minister and the crisis in the country, the possibility for his departure doesn't seem to far-fetched.

The reforms Yatsenyuk announced didn't bring an economic miracle, so people doubt his abilities. The degree of dissatisfaction with the prime minister is growing, as well as the confrontation between supporters of Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko. And rumors of imminent changes to the Cabinet suggest that Arseny Petrovich (Yatseniuk) may be politely asked to leave.

Yanukovych's Ghosts

Ukrainian media have already raised suspicions that a the former president's head of administration, the famous oligarch Sergei Liovochkin may replace "Yats". According to "Ukrainian Pravda", Liovochkin does not skimp on the presentation of its political influence throughout the western press. Liovochkin's lobbyists actively write letters to the American media to publish an article by Yanukovych's former ally under the title "A Bad Peace or a Good War?" as Journalists have learned from American sources.

In Ukraine, Liovochkin is really talked about as a possible Yatsenyuk replacement, says the expert on economic programs of the Public Movement "Ukrainian Choice" Alexander Koltunovich. "Today, in Kiev there are active discussions about him, now Deputy Chairman of the political party "Opposition bloc " in the Verkhovna Rada. The votes of Poroshenko's Bloc (150 deputies), the Opposition bloc (40), some small factions and independents may be enough to form a new majority and appoint a new technocratic government."

Liovochkin, as a talented manager and economist, is able to overcome the deep economic crisis, provide an institutional basis for development of the country, the expert believes. "Actually, we have already seen that in the previous years of his stay in power. As for the other candidates, it is obvious that their appointment would change nothing radically," he states.

It is interesting that Liovochkin's desire to get the premiership was discussed by another well-known oligarch - Igor Kolomoisky. As early as 2014, he gave an interview to "Channel 3", in which he talked about the personal qualities of the former head of the presidential administration and his ambitions he knew firsthand. "Liovochkin is not a mercenary. He is not corrupt. Liovochkin always wanted to be prime minister. He never told me that, but I felt it. Those who tried to lay claim to the premiership, for example Khoroshkovsky or Tigipko, he was way better than them"- he said.

Another promising figure is the Rada Speaker Volodymyr Groisman, who has recently been giving a lot of interviews and press comments. The journalists asked him whether he is ready to replace Yatsenyuk. "Yatsenyuk made a lot of mistakes. When a Prime Minister absorbs quite a lot of negativity, a moment comes that he needs to be replaced.

It is believed that after the election Poroshenko wanted to appoint Groisman as a PM. But Western partners have focused on Yatsenyuk, and this earned him the post. However, over time the situation has changed on all fronts.

Recently the Vice-Speaker of Parliament Andrew Paruby uttered to reporters that in the future the government can be changed and that he did not rule out the possibility that the decision to change the Cabinet "will be a full package one." However, he declined to name any names of possible lay-offs.

We should remember that according to the laws of Ukraine the Prime Minister is hired and fired by a decision of the Verkhovna Rada. The nomination for the post shall be approved by the Parliament after it is presented by the President of the country. The nomination, in turn, is introduced to the MPs at the suggestion of a coalition of factions in the Verkhovna Rada. That is, the Prime Minister can only become a candidate having a strong support among MPs.

The Prime Minister, as well as any other member of the Cabinet may resign voluntarily. By the way, Yatsenyuk already threatened the Rada several times that he would leave, earning himself a reputation as a blackmailer and populist. The Verkhovna Rada also can remove the Prime Minister with a vote of no-confidence. The President may also invite the Parliament to vote the Prime Minister out of office, which has already taken place in the history of the country and would not be a precedent.

Poroshenko's Man

The question of who could lead the government instead of Yatsenyuk, was tackled by the International Centre for Policy Studies Inside Ukraine. Experts conducted a study, which resulted in a policy brief.

"The unabashedly militaristic rhetoric of Yatsenyuk is annoying most of not only the political establishment, but also the population. One of the central TV channels is running an awareness campaign about the inability of the current government to carry out reforms. On March 15, Congress Radical Party, where it was decided that if the coalition agreement is not complied with, the party will abandon the coalition. Such statements are also made by the leader of the "Fatherland" party Yulia Tymoshenko, who, in the public sphere, constantly criticizes the government for its lack of decentralization reforms ", the researchers concluded. It is amusing that Yatsenyuk rose through the ranks of Timoshenko's party to get the top executive job in the country.

In the event of the current coal'tion's collapse Finance Minister Natalia Yaresko is another feasible PM candidate, experts say. She may be acceptable to both the West (US) and President Poroshenko, who does not like the fact that he doesn't control all the levers of power, including law enforcement agencies and financial channels.

Experts find another argument in favor of Yaresko in the Western press, including the authoritative edition of Bloomberg, where one of the articles presented her as a promising Ukrainian politician for the Western world.

The president also has the option to form a "technocratic government" without any politicians. Such an apolitical government will be best suited for the times of crisis and war," experts say.

The President against the Prime Minister

"The resignation of Yatseniuk would benefit mainly President Peter Poroshenko," says Vasiliy Stoyakin, a political scientist, head of the Ukrainian Center for Political Marketing. In his opinion, this is the right time, when Poroshenko, at first sight, has managed to "eliminate the political threat posed by Igor Kolomoisky," who supported Yatsenyuk in certain situations.

Note that one of the initiators of the "Ukrnafta" scandal, the "Block Poroshenko" MP Sergei Leshchenko in January this year accused the Prime Minister of colluding with Kolomoisky - they allegedly embezzled the income of Ukrainian oil industry. According to Leshchenko, during the voting in the Verkhovna Rada on January 12 Yatsenyuk's "Popular Front" party almost unanimously tried to thwart a law that would make it possible to transfer "Ukrnafta" under full state control.

Now, after weakening Kolomoiskiy and Rada's adoption of amendments to the Law on Joint Stock Companies, Poroshenko's position has strengthened, and, according to Stoyakin, "it is possible to weaken the political "party of war", which opposed the president."

"There is evidence of an American operation aimed at consolidating power," the expert said.

Stoyakin reminded that current demonstrations for the resignation of Yatseniuk are by far not the first ones. "But now the situation is different. Following the resignation of Kolomoiskiy there is some kind of a theoretical possibility that the resignation may be pushed through. Will there be enough votes in parliament? Maybe there will be. Arseny Petrovich has sinned quite a lot. Justification can always be found," the analyst said.

Stoyakin noted that already there were publications claiming Yatsenyuk steals big time, and is generally not a good person. "So the conflict continues to grow."

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 #41
Wall Street Journal
March 27, 2015
Default Threat Haunts Ukrainian Corporate Debt Investors
Concerns mount amid fears of a default on government bonds
By JOSIE COX

Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko's tour of Europe this week has done little to placate fears that the country is hurtling toward a costly default on its government bonds.

But now concerns are mounting that Ukraine's companies may face the same fate. Economists are warning that a wave of corporate defaults is all but inevitable.

The prolonged recession and conflict with Russia have for months hit sales, and the foreign investors that companies need for financing have stayed away from Ukraine even as they have taken on more risk elsewhere.

On Tuesday, Moody's Investors Service slashed its rating on Ukraine to "Ca," the second worst on its scale, saying the likelihood that holders of government bonds will face big losses is growing. A default by the government would hit companies' credit ratings, too.

But that is not the only problem.

Ukraine's currency, the hryvnia, has plummeted more than 50% against the dollar in the past year. That has made it cripplingly expensive for companies that issued bonds in dollars but have revenue in hryvnia to service that debt. Companies dependent on imports from abroad, meanwhile, have to stump up much more cash to buy their goods too, also hurting earnings.

Some foreign investors have been burned. Emerging-market asset manager Ashmore Group PLC, based in London, reported on its website that as of the end of last year it held Ukrainian bonds from more than a dozen companies and banks, including Ukrainian power company DTEK Energy BV, Ferrexpo PLC, Metinvest Holding LLC and MHP SA. It had paid a total of $378 million for them.

The value of the bonds had fallen by almost 36% as of the end of the year, data on Ashmore's site shows. A spokeswoman for Ashmore declined to comment.

Several Ukrainian companies, including VAB Bank PJSC and agriculture firm Mriya Agro Holding, defaulted last year, and this year J.P. Morgan expects "most [Ukrainian] issuers to attempt to restructure or extend upcoming bond maturities."

The U.S. bank expects the rate of default among companies in emerging Europe to rocket to 8.6% this year, almost entirely driven by Ukraine.

According to BNP Paribas data, Ukrainian companies have just over $10 billion of external debt outstanding, the bulk of which is junk bonds, but according to the International Monetary Fund, Ukrainian companies have external financing needs of more than $15 billion this year including repayments of debt and coupon payments.

"Any Ukrainian company whose performance is strongly correlated to the performance of the economy is potentially at risk of default," said Zeke Diwan, senior portfolio manager in the emerging market fixed income team at Allianz Global Investors, which has around €1.8 trillion ($2 trillion) of assets under management.

So those who hold Ukrainian corporate bonds better have a strong stomach.

Ariel Bezalel, a fund manager at Jupiter Asset Management, bought some very short-dated bonds issued by national oil and gas company Naftogaz at the end of last year.

"It was very reminiscent of picking up pennies from in front of a steamroller," he said. The day the bonds came due earlier this year, Jupiter started calling up the custodian to get the funds, which didn't come through for a nerve-racking three days.

Since then, he hasn't been buying Ukrainian debt. "I think it's a broken country, sadly," he said.

The IMF last week approved a $17.5 billion emergency loan as part of a larger $40 billion international financial package designed to keep the country afloat as Kiev's pro-West government overhauls its creaking economy and contends with Russia-backed separatists in the east.

Ukrainian companies that generate the majority of their revenues in local currencies, but have debt piles in dollars are likely to be the first to miss repayment deadlines and default.

Agricultural company MHP, which specializes in chicken farming, has a $235 million bond due in April. It has $200 million in prearranged funding in the form of a loan from the International Finance Corporation, which is part of the World Bank group. Under the terms of the loan, however, the IFC retains the right to cancel or suspend the loan in the event of a significant deterioration in the political and economic environment in Ukraine, according to Moody's.

"IFC's decision on whether or not to advance funds to MHP this month will be a further test of international support for the country and its issuers," Moody's analysts wrote in a recent report. A spokesman for MHP said the company was not "operationally" in any difficulty. He declined to comment on the debt situation.

DTEK, the power company, also has $200 million of debt due to mature in April and said this month that it was seeking a long-term deal to restructure. It has sizable assets in the parts of eastern Ukraine scarred by fighting.

The company is domestically concentrated, with exposure to the weak domestic operating environment, and sizable assets in the areas subject to military action.

Still, there are some investors who believe that the worst is over for Ukraine and that now might be an apt opportunity to buy, considering that the market is already pricing in a total default.

"The market is already trading at restructuring levels. Growth in Ukraine is of course lacking, and not expected to return any time soon but some companies look attractive if bought to be held for the long run," says Chris Edwards, a portfolio manager at FPP Asset Management LLP, a boutique investor with a focus on emerging markets, based in London.

The company has around $200 million in assets under management and about $10 million invested in Ukraine.

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 #42
www.rt.com
March 27, 2015
Ukraines's $3bn debt to Russia puts multibillion dollar IMF package at risk

Ukraine's $3 billion debt to Russia could undermine the IMF's four-year multibillion dollar bailout program. If the debt is considered official, it will breach the terms of providing financial assistance, said IMF spokesperson William Murray.

The Ukraine debt includes $3 billion in Eurobonds lent by Russia to the country's previous government in December 2013. IMF rules say a bailout cannot be provided to a country if it defaulted on a loan from a state institution.

"We have a non-tolerance policy," William Murray told reporters at a news conference on Thursday, adding that Ukraine's debt to Russia should be considered state debt.

"If I'm not mistaken, the $3 billion Eurobond comes from the Russian sovereign wealth fund, so it's official debt," he said.

However, the IMF hasn't yet clarified its attitude towards the whole matter, Murray said.

If Russia rejects the possibility of restructuring Ukraine could face imminent default, placing the IMF in an awkward situation.

Russia's Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Friday he considers Ukraine's $3 billion debt official.

"Russia is definitely acting as the official creditor in this case," Siluanov said.

Siluanov also said that Russia isn't ready to restructure the Ukrainian debt, as "it is in a difficult situation itself."

Talking about the possibility of settling Ukraine's debt to lenders through the Paris club of creditor nations, he said that Russia received no official information about Ukraine talking to the club.

Earlier in March the IMF approved a $17.5 billion loan to Ukraine as part of the four-year bailout program in exchange for the economic, budget and monetary reforms. The country has received an initial $5 billion payment.

The fund has repeatedly warned that violations of the ceasefire in Ukraine's south-east, along with its failure to reschedule the debt to private lenders could also pose a substantial risk to the implementation of the bailout program.

There are two possible ways Ukraine can save the situation with its debt - either to renegotiate the Russian loan through the Paris club of creditor nations, or sell it on the secondary market, so that it would no longer be owed to Russia.

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 #43
Reuters
March 26, 2015
London or Paris: which is the club for Russia's Ukraine debt?
BY SUJATA RAO AND CHRIS SPINK

(Reuters) - A legal conundrum is threatening plans to ease Ukraine's debt burden and possibly its entire $40 billion (26 billion pound) IMF-led bailout: should a $3 billion Eurobond held by Russia be classed as commercial paper, or as bilateral sovereign debt?

Kiev is trying to persuade holders of its commercial bonds to swap their bonds for new ones with a lower face value, a reduced interest rate and a longer repayment period.

The aim is for Ukraine to save $15.3 billion from its debt bill, which would be investors' contribution towards bailing out the country. But classification of the Eurobonds held by Moscow falls into a grey area.

Moscow bought the bonds from Kiev before a pro-Russian president was forced from power early last year, opening a rift which widened with the annexation of Crimea and a separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine.

If these bonds are classified as official government debt, Russia could escape the restructuring which Kiev wants to impose on private bondholders, making it harder to plug the $15.3 billion hole in its finances by a deadline at the end of May.

Even leaving aside the two bickering governments, consensus is absent among legal and financial experts who call it a situation without a recognisable precedent.

Russia lent Ukraine the $3 billion in December 2013 out of its "rainy day" sovereign wealth fund, structuring the debt as a two-year Eurobond governed by London law.

That, experts agree, was a canny move, firstly because of the complexity of restructuring Eurobond debt, and secondly, because of an unusual clause allowing Russia to demand repayment early if Ukraine's debt exceeded 60 percent of annual economic output.

So far Moscow has not demanded the money even though it is probably entitled to do so. Instead it seems intent on tightening the screws in another way - by declaring the bond to be bilateral sovereign debt and therefore not subject to the private creditor "bail-in".

Russian government officials have said they won't restructure the debt, indicating that discussions must be bilateral and not as part of a wider package.

Moscow seems to believe its bonds are subject to discussion by the Paris Club of official creditors, rather than the London Club, which encompasses debt owed to the private sector.

Ukraine disagrees. "They are a Eurobond but they are saying they are not London club. I am not going to do the work for them," said Finance Minister Natalia Yaresko.

A source close to the talks said Ukraine was confident of its position. "Never before has any Eurobond been classified as Paris Club. There is no precedent," the person said.

But the Paris Club itself states that it deals with "claims granted by official bilateral creditors i.e. states" or international financial institutions such as the IMF.

A BEAUTIFUL POSITION

The money was lent at a concessional 5 percent interest rate at a time when markets were demanding that Ukraine should pay double that.

"The Russians clearly configured this debt to be able to have it both ways; it's private in form and official in substance. They are in a beautiful position where they have the choice of being an official or a private creditor," said Anna Gelpern, a law professor at Georgetown University in the United States.

Gelpern, who specialises in sovereign debt restructurings, says that despite the unusual features, she would be "comfortable" classing it as Paris Club debt.

That would gel with Paris Club norms. What matters is a member country's debt claim on another country, without mention of whether it is a loan or a bond. In theory, that would mean Russia could declare its Eurobonds as a claim at the Paris Club if it chose to.

The IMF appears to agree. "If I'm not mistaken, the $3 billion Eurobond comes from the Russian sovereign wealth fund, so it's official debt," its spokesman said on Thursday.

Private bond holders, already fuming that official lenders are not being asked to write off debt, will be up in arms.

Crucially, any impasse leading to a default on the Russian-held bonds risks derailing the IMF's own $17.5 billion loan to Ukraine. This is because the Fund is not allowed to lend to a member state that is in default to another.

"Private external arrears are tolerated but arrears to official bilateral lenders are not," the IMF said in a 2013 paper on sovereign debt restructuring.

Still, there are caveats here too. Greek bonds held by the official sector via the European Central Bank escaped a restructuring of the country's debt in 2012. But other central banks and state-owned entities such as pension funds and bailed -out Dutch bank ABN Amro took a hit.

Gabriel Sterne, head of global macro at Oxford Economics, expects the IMF to take an indulgent view, noting it has a loan deal with Iraq even though Baghdad is behind on war reparations to Kuwait. A useful IMF get-out clause is that the debtor is negotiating "in good faith" to settle arrears, he says.

Finally, who decides whether the Russian bonds are subject to private sector bail-in or not? For now, Moscow seems in a position to use it as a bargaining chip, either to gain control over disputed eastern Ukraine or gas supplies to Ukraine.

Whatever the outcome, the saga will further confuse already murky debt workout mechanisms.

"There was a mechanism where a country gets in trouble, agrees IMF funding, goes to the Paris Club for relief, then to private creditors, every step is conditioned on the next," Gelpern said. "But when the categories are so jumbled, it doesn't work."

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 #44
Ukraine Today
http://uatoday.tv
March 25, 2015
Poll finds Ukrainian audiences in Odesa and Kharkiv give most credence to Russian media

A new survey has found that a large number of people living in Ukraine's eastern and southern regions believe what is broadcast by Russian propaganda outlets.

The survey, conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, found that around 50 percent of residents in Ukraine northeastern Kharkiv region and eastern Donetsk region trust the narrative broadcast by Russian media.

In Ukraine's southern Odesa region, 42 percent believed Russian propaganda, while 38 percent in the eastern Luhansk region were open to the Kremlin line.

Russia has launched an unprecedented information war against Ukraine since the beginning of Ukraine's Euromaidan protest movement over a year ago. According to the study, among the key elements of the propaganda is the message the United States organised the revolution and that a government came to power seeking to oppress Russian speakers.

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 #45
New York Times
March 27, 2015
No One Sees Easy Way Out on Ukraine
By STEVEN ERLANGER

BRUSSELS - Hardly anyone expects Ukraine to get better before it gets worse, or for the latest set of commitments in last month's cease-fire agreement to be kept.

Instead, senior Western diplomats and analysts are predicting a further escalation of tensions, including the placing of Russian nuclear weapons in newly annexed Crimea; more unrest in cities like Mariupol and even Odessa; more advances by Russian-supported rebels against an under-gunned and dispirited Ukrainian Army; and attempts to destabilize the Western-leaning government in Kiev, beginning with President Petro O. Poroshenko.

Mr. Poroshenko, weakened by the loss of Crimea and a large, contiguous chunk of eastern Ukraine, faces Western demands for economic overhauls, increased energy prices and a crackdown on corruption to justify billions in loans and aid. He also confronts new challenges from oligarchs like Igor V. Kolomoisky over control of energy companies and private militias with flexible loyalties to the state, or what's left of it.

The West, which claims to be united, is actually divided over Russia's actions in Ukraine and how to respond.

Having hailed the revolution in Kiev as a defeat for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the United States and Europe are indeed united in one matter: refusing to defend Ukraine militarily.

But they disagree on much else: whether to provide Kiev with arms; whether to give Kiev massive economic aid and for what benchmarks; whether the cease-fire agreement reached in Minsk, Belarus, last month is being implemented.

The disputes were clear this week at the German Marshall Fund's Brussels Forum.

Europeans, led by Germany and France, oppose supplying even defensive arms to Kiev, believing it would prompt Russian escalation.

Washington is not convinced. Nor is the NATO supreme commander, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, who said that the West must respond to Russia's continuing supply of troops and arms to the rebels. The West "should consider all our tools in reply," he said. "Could it be destabilizing? The answer is yes. Also inaction could be destabilizing. Is inaction an appropriate action?"

General Breedlove's outspokenness and readiness to publicize evidence of Russian intervention have not endeared him to European officials or some in Washington who do not want to be pushed into difficult decisions.

Europeans say that key elements of the Minsk agreement, like the withdrawal of heavy weapons, are proceeding; American officials disagree. "We continue to see disturbing evidence of air defense, command and control, resupply equipments coming across a completely porous border, so there are concerns whether Minsk is being followed or not," General Breedlove said.

Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, said the pro-Russian separatists possessed more sophisticated weapons than the Ukrainian Army. "We've seen, month on month, more lethal weaponry of a higher caliber" brought into Ukraine, she said.

"The No. 1 thing," she added, "is for Russia to stop sending arms over the border so we can have real politics."

The European Union has rolled over financial sanctions against Moscow, but its foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, wants to lift sanctions, though subject to "the situation on the ground."

Russia faces large loan payments by year's end that exceed its foreign-currency reserves, making some officials wonder whether Moscow will escalate or try to accommodate, hoping to get European Union sanctions lifted.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former American national security adviser, is not sanguine. Predicting Russian nuclear weapons in Crimea, he said, "I'm not sure that at this stage we have succeeded in convincing the Russians that we are prepared to deter the kind of steps they are adopting."

He wants to balance deterrence and accommodation, but he suggests instead that "the Russians may pursue an assertive policy towards Ukraine just far enough to avoid a military confrontation but produce the result of the total collapse of the Ukrainian economy, the wasting of billions of dollars." Despite sanctions, Russia "remains a major power and therefore achieves a major change in the geopolitical situation in Europe."

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 #46
Hoover Institution (Stanford University)
www.hoover.org
March 10, 2015
Hoover Roundtable: Perspectives On Russia's Hybrid War On Ukraine And US Foreign Policy

On March 10, the Hoover Institution held a roundtable discussion on "Perspectives on Russia's Hybrid War on Ukraine and US Foreign Policy." Hoover fellow Paul Gregory moderated; presenters were Michael McFaul, director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute, Hoover senior fellow, and former ambassador to Russia; Alexander Yarim-Agaev, a professor at Donetsk Technical University; General Jim Mattis, (ret) former commander of the US Central Command (CENTCOM) and Hoover Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow; and Yuri Yarin-Agaev, Hoover visiting fellow. The speakers limited their remarks to brief introductions to allow maximum time for discussion.

Ambassador McFaul spoke of his impressions of Russian president Vladimir Putin, going back to their first meeting in St. Petersburg, where Putin worked in the mayor's administration before being brought to Moscow by the Yeltsin administration.

McFaul explained that Putin declared in his first term that anyone who does not regret the collapse of the USSR has no heart, but he who wants to restore it has no brain. In this earlier period, Putin listened to liberal economic advisors. He introduced reform including a flat tax, and the economy grew at high rates for eight years, earning Putin loyalty from the Russian people, reeling from the chaos of the Yeltsin years.

McFaul emphasized the importance of the 2011-2012 parliamentary and presidential elections on Putin's thinking. The 2011 parliamentary elections had the usual amount of election fraud, but voter dissatisfaction brought out huge street demonstrations. The President Medvedev's reaction was to sit down with the opposition to discuss new ideas for reform. Putin's reaction was to crack down. He was frightened by the unrest and attributed it to outside influences. This was a threat that must be crushed. Putin easily won the March 2012 election, again by fraud and keeping viable opponents off the ballot. At that point, McFaul declared he concluded that the "reset" was over. There would be no deals on arms control, Syria, and so on. Nevertheless, in this period 2011-2012, Putin was still able to compartmentalize, saying in one breath that the West was out to get him and in the next breath claiming that Russia's deal with ExxonMobil pointed the way to future Russian-American relations.

McFaul believes that Putin responds to circumstances as he interprets them. The key turning point was the Maidan protests and Putin's belief that the CIA was out to force Ukraine into its sphere of influence while taking the Kremlin for a ride. McFaul explained that the United States was doing its best to strike a compromise deal in Ukraine, but Putin came away convinced that the decadent capitalist West was out to get him.

McFaul also noted an unusual change in Putin's meetings in recent times, shifting toward religious and clerical advisers, which McFaul characterized as perhaps Putin's dealing with his mortality.

McFaul has a pessimistic view of the future of Russian-Western relations. Putin will not go away soon; his views of the world and his goals will not change, and he is winning the propaganda war. Putin has a strong belief in his ability to control events. We must understand that we will be at odds with Putin for the long run and that we must develop a long-term strategy to deal with him. There are no easy solutions, but we must be consistent in our responses to the Kremlin under Putin. We should not be surprised if years from now we are negotiating a tenth Minsk peace agreement with Russia.

General Mattis reviewed the military situation on the ground in Crimea, east Ukraine, and the periphery of NATO states. He described Putin's hybrid warfare, which is not new but has been perfected by Russian military planners. Mattis emphasized the importance of the propaganda component of Russia's hybrid war, which Russia is clearly winning over the West. Mattis also focused on the costs of the Ukrainian war on Russian forces, which have had to be drawn from all corners of Russian, leaving potential trouble spots, such as on the southern border,  uncovered.

Mattis noted that Russia at first hoped that it could occupy East Ukraine without loss of life as it did in Crimea but was surprised by the Ukrainian forces fighting back with vigor. The Russian military had to increase its logistic and military support for its rebel forces and then, in August, had to use regular troops to save the encircled Donetsk and Luhansk "people's republics" from defeat.

With regular Russian forces involved, Ukrainian forces have been outmatched, notably by deadly artillery weapons (such as dual-purpose missiles, banned by the United States) that explode multiple warheads overhead. So far, Russia has been able to fight a tank war owing to the lack of antitank weaponry on the Ukrainian side. Mattis elaborated the military equipment Ukraine needs to defend itself, most of which is available from various NATO states and from other countries. The U.S. supplying lethal defensive weapons would represent a major breakthrough, although Europe is now less inclined to follow US leadership.

Mattis estimated Russia's nonmilitary to military effort in fighting the Ukraine war at approximately four to one, highlighting the importance of nonmilitary instruments, such as propaganda, in support of the military effort. Ukraine is stretched to its limits with no operational reserves, and its front-line units are depleted.

Mattis noted a nuclear context to this war, which he emphasized is a war. He believes that Putin desires "anarchy protection" (which others have called frozen conflicts) on its borders. NATO expansion did not persuasively demonstrate to Russia the value of having democratic neighbors under the rule of law. In fact, Russia under Putin likely considers neighboring rule-of-law countries a threat to Russia's nondemocratic, anti-rule-of-law governance.

Alexander Yarim-Agaev denied that military action in east Ukraine is a civil war growing out of dissatisfaction with the Maidan revolution, for there were no problems with ethnic or linguistic divisions before the overthrow of the Yanukovich regime. In fact, the eastern regions controlled the top three positions in Ukraine national government.

The only losers from Maidan were local and regional officials of the Yanukovich administration who feared losing power and privileges. Their attempts to organize protests failed (despite Russian assistance) until the Russian intervention that put Russian citizens or local "marginals" in control of occupied cities. These occupations resulted in economic collapse and terrorization of the population, as paratroopers, many of them Chechens and Ossetians, patrolled the city and detained and arrested people without cause. Yarim-Agaev noted that both he and his wife had been stopped by armed men and his wife was threatened with being shot.

One and a half million people have fled the Donbass area, possibly the greatest number of refugees in recent time in Europe. Those who stayed are on the edge of a humanitarian crisis largely ignored in international negotiations that seek a truce that preserves the status quo, meaning for many people in the area possible starvation and death.

Yuri Yarim-Agaev began by commemorating Boris Nemtsov, friend of Ukrainian and Russian democracy, tragically killed by Putin's regime.

Yarim-Agaev declared that what we are seeing is not a civil war but a war between two forces: Russia versus America and Western democracies on the other, similar to the Korean and Vietnam wars against Soviet communism. Of the fifty thousand troops fighting on Russia's side, about fifteen to twenty thousand are Russian mercenaries and fifteen thousand are regular Russian army. In his report on the war, Nemtsov identified two airborne Russian divisions and four motorized brigades in Ukraine, with all heavy weaponry supplied by Russia. Hence, Ukraine is not merely another country that we support but our ally in this global conflict, fighting on the front line.

Putin's Russia is our enemy, whether we like it or not. Russia considers the United States its main enemy, and if we are Russia's enemy then Russia is our enemy. These relations are indivisible. If Russia is our enemy in the conflict with Ukraine, it cannot be our ally, partner, or go-between in our relations with Iran, Syria, war on terror, or anything else. Our policy toward Putin's Russia should be clear, unconditional, and strong and aimed at weakening it and stopping its aggression. He must get out of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, and out of Ukrainian politics.

We must counter Putin's propaganda with all the power of America's media. We must expand broadcasts by Radio Liberty, Voice of America, and other stations, and we must continue and expand economic sanctions. Weakening Putin does not automatically translate into strengthening his opposition or making Ukraine stronger. Currently, the Russian economy is in recession owing to the pressure of economic sanctions and lower oil prices.  Yet the Ukrainian economy is deteriorating even faster. The ruble has fallen by a factor of two, whereas the Ukrainian hryvna has fallen by a factor of four. The Russian army is not in the best shape. Yet the Ukrainian army is much weaker. Our policy should weaken Russia and undermine its aggression but also make Ukraine stronger militarily, economically, and support democracy and rule of law. We should provide lethal military assistance.

We should have no illusions about the state of Ukraine's governance, which is still weak and corrupt. Our policy toward Ukraine should be supportive yet assertive. We should provide weapons but also military advisers, who will control the use of the weapons, which otherwise could end up in Russia's hands. We should provide economic and financial advisers to insure the money is not wasted or stolen. The war in Ukraine, as was the 2008 war in Georgia, is part of the prolonged agony of the collapse of Soviet communism, which  hasn't yet been uprooted There was neither a Nuremberg trial nor a de-Communization, such as the de--Nazification of Germany after WWII. The main communist structure, the KGB, was left nearly intact. Having come back to power, it is intent on restoring the Soviet Union. We need to finish this job now by bringing bring back and refining the most successful of Reagan's policies that helped  bring down Soviet communism.

This seminar, as with several other events that we organized in this institution, are steps in this direction. Yet we can do better. Hoover's unique expertise could launch a sustainable and comprehensive program, dealing with totalitarian ideologies and methods of countering them. Such a program could be of great help to our policy makers, to America, and to the people of Ukraine and Russia.

A lively Q&A period followed. Among the many questions discussed were from Admiral James Ellis ("Is Putin strong or weak?"), Enrique Oti ("What is our ideology to counter Putin's propaganda?), Piotr Kosicki (to McFaul to "elaborate on Putin's meetings of religious figures"), Alvin Rabushka ("Comment on the similarities between China's growing repression and that of Putin?"), Markos Kounalankis ("The effect of sanctions on the Russian economy?").

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 #47
Dissident Voice
http://dissidentvoice.org
March 27, 2015
Why Ukraine's Viktor Yanukovych Spurned EU's Offer on 20 Nov. 2013
The $160 Billion Cost
by Eric Zuesse
Eric Zuesse is an investigative historian and author, most recently of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 and of Christ's Ventriloquists: The Event that Created Christianity.

"Burying the lede" is a way that 'news' professionals hide or "bury" things while 'reporting' on them; and the biggest example of this in modern times occurred when Germany's Spiegel magazine headlined its cover story on 24 November 2014, "Summit of Failure: How the EU Lost Russia over Ukraine." On the magazine's front cover, it was instead bannered as "Kalte Krieger - Geschichte einer Machtprobe: Wie Merkel und Putin Europa an den Rand des Abgrunds brachten" which translates as: "Cold Warrior - History of a Showdown: How Merkel and Putin brought Europe to the Edge of the Abyss." This was a very lengthy report, 7,000 words, but the historically blockbuster revelation in it, which the global press has ignored, and/or themselves buried by similarly mentioning it without headlining it or leading with it (nor even linking to it), was this (which would have been a fair headline for that news report, since it's 99% of that news-report's real value): "EU's Offer to Ukraine Would Have Cost Ukraine $160B." (I hope that the headline that I used above is even better, however.)

And, so: now you know why, on 20 November 2013, Yanukovych turned that offer down - and the rest was history (the "Maidan" demonstrations, and all the rest, producing the Ukrainian civil war, and the new and much hotter version of the old Cold War, including all of those economic sanctions against Russia, and the resulting boom in nuclear weapons on both sides, and the thousands of corpses in the eastern Donbass region of what used to be Ukraine).

This blockbuster revelation was in merely a brief, 231-word passage within the 7,000-word article, and nothing further was said about it than these mere 231 words.

Here it is (as given in Spiegel's online English edition of the article's second half - and the article's first half was here [http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/war-in-ukraine-a-result-of-misunderstandings-between-europe-and-russia-a-1004706.html], but it contains nothing of this blockbuster revelation):

Kiev, Presidential Palace
Nov. 19, 2013

At Barroso's behest, Füle traveled to Kiev once again to meet with Yanukovych - and the Ukrainian president got straight to the point. In talks with Putin, Yanukovych told Füle, the Russian president explained just how deeply the Russian and Ukrainian economies are interconnected. "I was really surprised to learn about it," Yanukovych said. ... "There are the costs that our experts have calculated," Yanukovych replied. "What experts?" Füle demanded to know. The Ukrainian president described to his bewildered guest the size of the losses allegedly threatening Ukraine should it sign the agreement with the EU.

Later, the number $160 billion found its way into the press, more than 50 times greater than the $3 billion calculated by the German advisory group. The total came from a study conducted by the Institute for Economics and Forecasting at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and it was a number that Yanukovych would refer to from then on.

"Stefan, if we sign, will you help us?" Yanukovych asked. Füle was speechless. "Sorry, we aren't the IMF. Where do these numbers come from?" he finally demanded. "I am hearing them for the first time." "They are secret numbers," Yanukovych replied. "Can you imagine what would happen if our people were to learn of these numbers, were they to find out what convergence with the EU would cost our country?"
--

Though that was a poorly-written passage (in a poorly written article), it does clearly state why Yanukovych couldn't possibly have accepted the offer. The passage makes no connection between, on the one hand, "the Russian president explained just how deeply the Russian and Ukrainian economies are interconnected. 'I was really surprised to learn about it,' Yanukovych said," and, on the other, "'There are the costs that our experts have calculated,' Yanukovych replied." Did Putin's statement cause Yanukovych to request this new analysis from Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences? We just don't know. The reporters didn't say. Maybe they didn't even wonder about that. All that the article tells us is: the latter scientific institution calculated that if the EU's offer were to be accepted, the cost to Ukraine would be $160B.

Why, then, was this blockbuster news-item buried, so that virtually no one noticed it? Perhaps the key passage to provide a hint to explain this burying (which hint appears in the article's first half) was "Berlin continued to focus its efforts on Tymoshenko [whom the Ukrainian government had imprisoned on a corruption conviction, but Merkel - like Obama - was insisting that she be freed from prison], it failed to recognize the real danger: The Russian Federation's power play." The only actual "power play" that the article describes from Russia was "the Russian president explained just how deeply the Russian and Ukrainian economies are interconnected. 'I was really surprised to learn about it,' Yanukovych said." Apparently, Putin's "danger," his merely "explaining" that, was, to the writers of the Spiegel 'news' report, a "power play." The anti-Russian slant is blatant there.

In other words: This article's writers, evidently, needed to find a way to present a negative view of Russia, and especially of Putin. Therefore, focusing their story and presentation around this particular blockbuster revelation (which went in the contrary direction) was out of the question for them - and especially for their employer.

So: now you know why Yanukovych, the very next day after his learning about the $160B price tag of the EU's offer, turned it down, and also why this revelation is still news, more than a year later - just as it was news to me until I happened upon it only today.

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 #48
http://gordonhahn.com
March 21, 2015
WORKING PAPER: Violence, Coercion and Escalation in the Ukrainian Crisis, Parts 1-3: November 25 and 30, 2013 and January 21-22, 2014
By Gordon M. Hahn
Gordon M. Hahn, Ph.D., is an Analyst and Advisory Board Member at Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation (Chicago), Adjunct Professor, Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey (California), and Analyst and Consultant for Russia - Other Points of View (www.russiaotherpointsofview.com). He has authored three well-received books: The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia's North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland Publishers, 2014), Russia's Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), and Russia's Revolution From Above: Reform, Transition and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime, 1985-2000 (Transaction Publishers, 2002).

In order to understand the unfolding of events that led to the Maidan revolutionary coup and Ukraine's civil war, it is necessary to examine the key turning points. This is the third in what I hope will be a series of analyses of approximately ten coercive and violent turning points in this ongoing crisis.

Coercive and violent incidents are particularly powerful turning points in crisis politics. The play the vanguard role in polarizing, mobilizing and escalating actors and groups operating in the structure of strategic action attending any political or revolutionary crisis. Therefore, I will endeavor to determine the dynamics of escalation through coercion and violence and which sides initiated and escalated the level of coercion or violence at several key turning points in the Ukrainian crisis sparked in mid-November 2013 by then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich's decision to delay the signing of the draft EU association agreement.

None of this is to say that non-coercive and non-violent actions do not play a role in the polarization, mobilization and escalation inherent in political crises. Research shows that rhetoric and insult raise the temperature in any developing or ongoing conflict. However, it is almost always true that coercion and violence play the lead role in the development of conflictive dynamics.

Escalation Point 1: The First Violence

Typically, the first violence mentioned in most media and even academic reports on the Maidan demonstrations is that ostensibly carried out on Yanukovich's orders by the Berkut police in the early morning dark hours of November 30th. At that time, an attempt was made by the Berkut special police forces to clean the Maidan square of demonstrators during the sleeping hours when the crowd thinned down to a few hundred.

In reality, the first violent clash between police and the demonstrators occurred on the evening of November 24th. Several reports in non-mainstream but far from alternative Western media report that demonstrators attacked police in the early morning hours on the evening of November 25th "for the second night running" as police "struggled to keep order." Business News Europe reported: "In the morning of November 25, police used tear gas and batons to disperse a crowd around the government headquarters after numerous protesters hurled rocks and tried to tear off officers' helmets."[1] The independent and pro-democracy Russian daily Nezavisimaya gazeta also reported that the demonstrators initiated the violence by throwing objects at the police and that there were numerous aggressive youths calling on the crowd to storm already the presidential palace, turn over buses or engage in other such violent acts.[2] The pro-Kiev Kyiv Post reported that more clashes broke out that evening when demonstrators attacked a police van, which turned out to be a police mobile eavesdropping post. Police moved in to retaliate and more violence ensued.[3]

Also, it appears that photographic evidence that would support the print reports cited above were cleansed from the Internet, presumably by the pro-Maidan, now pro-Kiev Kyiv Post. The Kyiv Post removed an article, which is cached on the Internet; only its accompanying photographs remain, but only 7 of the original 14 photographs. One of the seven remaining photos shows members of the ultra-nationalist Svoboda Party front and center at the demonstrations.[4] The evidence that originally there were originally 14 pictures and that 7 have been removed comes from a mobile phone freeze frame still accessible on the Internet.[5]

Most Western sources did not identify which side initiated the violence, but tended to mention the police response first.[6] Therefore, the claim made by Western governments and media that the demonstrations were peaceful was already proving falsehood. The demonstrators had escalated the situation from a political confrontation to a more tense and violent conflict.

The likely perpetrators of this first violent episode were younger members of the ultra-nationalist, even neo-fascist Svoboda Party or perhaps the Social-National Assembly (Right Sector would be founded a few nights later). No casualty figures are available for this first violence, and it appears no one was killed, wounded, or hospitalized.

Escalation Point 2: November 30th Berkut Crackdown

The next data point for violent escalation was the November 30th late night attempt to clear the Maidan of demonstrators by the Yanukovich regime's Berkut special riot police. For the first time, Ukrainian riot police first used force against peaceful protesters on 30 November 2013, when they refused to disperse, resulting in dozens of injuries and the brief detention of 35 peaceful protesters on charges of hooliganism.[7]

Four nights previous, several neo-fascist parties even more radical than the ultra-nationalist Svoboda Party joined to form the Right Sector as a Maidan defense force and shock troops for a nationalist revolutionary takeover.

The formation of Right Sector was part of the quasi-militarization of the Maidan that would escalate the conflict between regime and opposition and lead ultimately to the revolutionary seizure of power in February 2014. On the evening of 26-27 November 2013, four ultra-right and neo-fascist groups joined forces to found Right Sector: Stepan Bandera's Trident, named after the head of the Ukrainian nationalist leader who allied and carried out massacres of Poles and Jews in league with the Nazis during World War II; the Ukrainian National Assembly; White Hammer; and the ultra-fascist Social National Assembly (SNA). The SNA's program gives a glimpse of its ideology: "nationocracy." It proposes banning all political parties, organizations, associations and ideological groups. The elite of the Ukrainian ethnic group or nation will hold full power: "Political power is wholly owned by the Ukrainian nation through its most talented, idealistic and altruistic national representatives who are able to ensure proper development of the nation and its competitiveness." "Supreme power (executive, legislative and judicial) of the Ukrainian state will be in the hands of the head of state, who is personally responsible to the nation's own blood and property." Capitalism is to be "dismantled" and democracy is to be "eliminated." All actions that fail "to comply with obligations to the nation and the state will entail the restriction of civil rights or deprivation of citizenship ... The ultimate goal of Ukrainian foreign policy is world domination."

The Berkut police found out about the formation of Right Sector and were put on high alert beforehand. Indeed, the decision to attempt clearing the Maidan was almost certainly motivated at least in part by the news of Right Sector's formation. Almost all of its members are committed to seizing power, including by force of arms. Right Sector leader Dmitro Yarosh has been relentless in calling for a "nationalist revolution" both before and ever since the Maidan seizure of power.

The failed attempt to clean the square of demonstrators was executed by unleashing several hundred baton-weilding Berkut and hired-hands or titushki, who brutally beat apparently defenseless demonstrators. This was a significant escalation in violence but not a major one, having led to no fatalities or use of firearms. Moreover, the incident further mobilized both democrats and nationalists in Kiev and in other parts of the country, especially in the more pro-nationalist and anti-Russia western provinces. The result was the radicalization and the beginning of the militarization of Maidan and a vindication of the creation of the sotniki and Right Sector.

It needs to be said, however, that mobilization in the provinces began earlier, indeed on the same evening, November 25th, which saw the protesters' initial violence against the police. Ultra-nationalists of the Svoboda Party and other Galicians in Lviv (Lvov) called the population to the city center to mobilize for a march on Kiev. Declaring Lviv's secession from Yanukovich's Ukraine as a "free European city", the mayor hailed the Galicia's European messianic mission in the east:  "We have always been Europe. Today, our task is to ensure that this European spirit prevailed all over Ukraine."[8]

Escalation in coercion and violence was coming to a new broader turning point that would have implications far beyond Kiev's city center.

Escalation Point 3: First Fatalities and Use of Firearms, 21-22 January 2014

Tension and conflict between police and Maidan demonstrators gradually escalated through December, with the nationalists's use of Molotov cocktails against police and the police's beatings of demonstrators. Although President Yanukovich condemned the November 30th Berkut beatings and promised an investigation, much of Kiev and all of western Ukraine and the Western media were convinced that he had ordered the crackdown. As a result, conflict between police and demonstrators escalated but remained at a manageable low-intensity level.

Coercion and violence on the ground in any local conflict are not the only sources of potential escalation. Foreign influences can push conflicting sides to escalate in the belief they have powerful foreign backers and support being or to be provided can tip the scales in their favor. In mid-January, ill-fated Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich was set to travel to Moscow for discussions on Ukraine's possible involvement in the Eurasian Economic Union and a desparately needed financial rescue package from Moscow. In response, Washington stepped up its involvement in the Maidan protest and would-be revolution. On Wednesday, December 12th, US Deputy Secretary of State Viktoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Kiev Jeffrey Payatt encouraged the demonstrators to stay the course by walking through Maidan Square and handing out cookies. In a press conference during her visit, Nuland said she had a "tough but realistic" conversation with President Yanukovych and believed it possible to save Ukraine's "European future" if he showed "leadership."

At the same time, US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki suggested the US might impose sanctions on Ukraine, and the US government-funded think tank Freedom House called on Yanukovych to resign immediately and declare early elections as "the only non-violent way to end the standoff with demonstrators." Like Nuland, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle toured the Maidan protest camp with two Ukrainian opposition leaders and asserted that "Ukraine should be on board with Europe."[9] The Polish Foreign Ministry set up a tent on Maidan Square, according to some reports.[10] Taken together or simply in its essential parts, the above constituted nothing less than a violation of the Helsinki Final Act's clauses banning the interference of member-states of the OSCE in the domestic politics of its other member-states.

In the days that followed, the barricades that had been disappearing from the square were returned by the demonstrators. On Sunday, December 15th, a rally of some 200,000 supporting Ukraine's 'European choice' was feted by two US Senators - Chris Murphy (Democrat from Connecticut) and former Republican Party presidential candidate John McCain (Arizona), well-known for his anti-Russian and bitterly anti-Putin. His words seemed calculated to whip up an anti-Russian sentiment. McCain declared: "We are here to support your just cause, the sovereign right of Ukraine to determine its own destiny freely and independently. And the destiny you seek lies in Europe. We are here to support your just cause, the sovereign right of Ukraine to determine its own destiny freely and independently. And the destiny you seek lies in Europe. We...want to make it clear to Russia and Vladimir Putin that interference in the affairs of Ukraine is not acceptable to the United States. People of Ukraine, this is your moment. The free world is with you, America is with you, I am with you." Warning Putin not to interfere in Ukrainian politics from Maidan Square in central Kiev seemed blatantly hypocritical and designed to antagonize Moscow.[11] While in Kiev McCain also met with ultra-nationalist Svoboda party leader Oleh Tyagnibok, whose followers had been and would continue to play a leading role in the violence on Maidan and the ultimate coercive seizure of power in February. Russian officials in fact expressed their dissatisfaction with this American interference.[12]

The EU seemed to move in the opposite direction from the Americans, simultaneously undermining its Ukraine integration efforts and Yanukovich's incentive to pursue them when it announced it was terminating all further efforts to convince Kiev to sign the agreement. Yanukovich's trip to Moscow ended in the Kremlin's purchase of $15 billion of Ukrainian debt and a cut in the price of natural gas for Kiev.

By early January, it seemed that the American gambit had failed Maidan largely emptied out. The Catholic Christmas, the New Year, and the Orthodox Christmas emptied the Maidan and revolutionary activity all but ceased. One pro-Maidan Western media outlet lamented "Why Did Ukraine's Eurorevolution Fail?"[13]

Through mid-January, as the holiday hangover passed, some demonstrators returned to the Maidan, but they were initially few and limited to the ultra-nationalists from the Right Sector and other radical groups. Since the New Year, demonstrators had been storming and occupying government buildings, the ultra-nationalists' began to systematize and intensify their use of bricks and firebombs, catapulting them with improvised devices. This was one of several lulls in the crisis when the Yanukovich regime had a chance to divide the parliamentary opposition and the Maidan demonstrators and secure an agreement for a peaceful resolution for the crisis as would happen for but a moment a month later. Instead of negotiating with the troika of Fatherland (Batkyvshchina) party leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Udar party leader Klitchko and Svoboda's Tyagnibok, Yanukovich adopted a series of draconian laws. Passed by the Rada on January 16th, they seriously restricted the rights to public protest and the activities of nongovernmental organizations and cracked down on independent news media, and the laws were adopted with no advanced notice and no debate in the Rada.

The new laws breathed new life into the Maidan movement. The numbers of demonstrators again rose to many thousands on the weekdays and tens of thousands on the weekends. Moreover, the Right Sector and other radical groups escalated their use of Molotov cocktails, chains, metal bars to attack police. During the week of January 12th pro-Maidan protestors siezed scores of regional and city administration buildings in western Ukraine. On January 19th, a Sunday, demonstrators seized the Justice Ministry building and barricaded themselves inside, preventing access.[14]

On Wednesday, January 22nd, the next violent escalation point came with the first deaths and use of firearms. On January 21st On January 21, Ukrainian Yuriy Verbytskiy became the Maidan protest's first fatality. Having been abducted, his body later found in woods outside Kiev with signs of torture. However, no one witnessed the abduction or torture, and the perpetrators were never found. Three demonstrators were killed on that day; 25-year old Belorussian Mikhail Zhiznevskiy from Belarus, Yurii Verbitskii from Ukraine were shot and Sergei Nigoyan from Armenia were shot. At least one of them was reportedly killed by a police sniper, but in the chaos of the street violence no eyewitnesses could pinpoint the source of shots no less the perpetrator.[15] The opposition contended that they were shot by police on Kiev's Hrushevskiy Street, where demonstrators had been throwing bricks torn from the pavement and improvised firebombs at riot police for several days running. The government, however, claimed the two demonstrators were killed with hunting rifles, which police do not use.[16] Video later emerged showing demonstrators from the Right Sector, Svoboda Party and other groups - including Svoboda Party parliament deputy Ruslan Koshulynsky - carrying and using hunting rifles at various periods during the unrest in January and February, in particular during the February mass sniper attack.[17] The shootings sparked an escalation of neo-fascist demonstrators' attacks on police forcing the January 28th repeal of the draconian laws passed less than two weeks earlier and the resignation of Prime Minister Mikhail Azarov the same day.

However, a year after the first lethal use of firearms on the Maidan, the new regime's own Ministry of Internal Affairs cast doubt on the Maidan's version of the events that had escalated the regime-opposition confrontation closer to a revolutionary outcome. MVD deputy chief Vitaliy Sakal now reports that Zhiznevskiy was shot with a pistol and Nigoyan with a hunting rifle, noting that police do use such weapons. Sakal adds: "The investigation is also considering among other versions a killing in order to provoke an escalation of the conflict and justify the use of weapons by protesters. It is confirmed by numerous materials from public sources, where people with firearms were recorded." "It was also found that the dead bodies were removed, and the witnesses of the murder weren't found."[18] This gives creedence to the Yanukovich regime's rejection of the charge that the police had committed the first killings of the Maidan revolution.

Although the circumstances of each of these first three killings remain unclear and if anything appear more likely to have been a settling of unknown scores between demonstrators, the Yanukovich regime was and continues to be blamed by most in central and western Ukraine and in the Western media. This would not be the last case in which questionable, unsubstantiated, and even false attributions of crimes would be made against the corrupt and venal, albeit, Yanukovich regime.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Footnotes
[1] "Ukraine's president tries to calm tensions as clashes continue," Business New Europe, 26 November 2013 and Kyiv Post, www.kyivpost.com/multimedia/photo/maidan-tonight-332445.html.
[2] Tatyana Izhvenko, "Yevrointegratsiyu v Kieve travili gazom," Nezavisimaya gazeta, 26 November 2013, http://www.ng.ru/cis/2013-11-26/1_ukraina.html.
[3] Brian Bonner, "EuroMaidan rallies in Ukraine - Nov. 25 coverage," Kyiv Post, 27 November 2013, http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/euromaidan-rallies-in-ukraine-nov-25-coverage-332512.html.
[4] Kostyantyn Chernychkin, "Police, demonstrators clash in Nov. 25 evening rally," Kyiv Post, 26 November 2013, www.kyivpost.com/multimedia/photo/maidan-tonight-332445.html.
[5] See Kyiv Post, http://www.kyivpost.com/multimedia/photo/maidan-tonight-332445.html?flavour=mobile.
[6] See, for example, Luke Baker and Richard Balmforth, "Police, pro-Europe protesters clash in Ukraine, EU condemns Russia," Reuters, 25 November 2013.
[7] Amnesty International Annual Report 2014/15 - Ukraine, http://www.amnesty.org/countries/europe-and-central-asia/ukraine/report-ukraine/.
[8] Maryana Petsukh, "Lvovskii Yevromaidan: messianstvo v raskolotom vide," Ukrainskaya pravda, 25 November 2013, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/articles/2013/11/25/7002990/.
[9] Fred Weir, "Russia cries foul over Western embrace of Ukraine's demonstrators," Christian Science Monitor, 13 December 2013.
[10] "KYIV BLOG: Yanukovych backed into corner as EU suspends talks ," Business New Europe, 16 December 2013.
[11] The Guardian, www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/15/ukraine-protesters-return-central-kiev-eu-campaign; Fox News, www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/12/15/senators-mccain-murphy-join-massive-ukraine-anti-government-protest-threaten/; Reuters, and http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/15/ukraine-idUSL6N0JU0BV20131215.
[12] Weir, "Russia cries foul over Western embrace of Ukraine's demonstrators".
[13] Vijai Maheshwari, "Why Did Ukraine's Eurolution Fail?," The Daily Beast, 5 January 2014, www.thedailybeast.com.
[14] CBS News, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/as-ukraine-protests-grow-slain-demonstrators-mourned/.
[15] Maidan Translations, http://maidantranslations.com/2014/01/22/english-translations-jan-22/.
[16] CBS News, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/as-ukraine-protests-grow-slain-demonstrators-mourned/.
[17] YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2PTeUBCPAQ; and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YUDbQ-4r6w.
[18] UNIAN, http://www.unian.info/society/1036260-maidan-activists-nihoian-and-zhiznevskiy-not-killed-by-police.html.

 [return to Contents] 

 #49
Gazeta.ru
March 12, 2015
Website traces chronology of Crimea annexation: Kremlin had not prepared
Natalya Galimova, 'We are going to Russia. I Do not know how.' How Russia annexed Crimea. Investigation by Gazeta.ru

On the anniversary of the referendum on Russia's annexation of Crimea Vladimir Putin will reveal details which, obviously, will henceforth become the official version of those historic events. Gazeta.ru has conducted its own investigation. While not claiming to be a full investigation, it re-establishes important details that the president might omit. The chief conclusion is that Moscow certainly did not act according to a clear-cut plan that had been written in advance. A great deal was decided on the go.

Simferopol. First blood

Two rallies gathered on 26 February in the square in front of the Crimean Supreme Council building - Tatars against pro-Russian activists who had been gathered together mainly by forces of the Russian Unity movement. It was headed by Serhiy Aksyonov [Sergey Aksenov], at the time a deputy but now prime minister of the republic. Some of the people at the rally were residents of Sevastopol who had travelled to Simferopol to lend a hand.

Former Supreme Council deputies told me that the Crimean Tatars had broken an unwritten rule - not to hold a rally where there were Russians. The Russians had "reserved" the venue earlier.

"Maybe this really was so to some extent," Ilmi Umerov, member of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people and ex-head of Bakhchysarayskyy District, agreed after a moment's thought. "But we came to defend our state. According to our information, separatist decisions were to have been adopted at the Supreme Council session - an appeal to Putin to incorporate Crimea into Russia and the scheduling of a referendum."

The situation was alarming and becoming further heated - both on the street and inside. Mejlis leader Refat Chubarov would periodically call on Supreme Council speaker Volodymyr Konstantynov - one of the leaders of the pro-Russian movement in Crimea - in his office. "He demanded that we not hold the session, for otherwise he would be unable to restrain people," Serhiy Tsekov, then a Supreme Council deputy but now a senator for Crimea, said. "A couple of times I even called his people provocateurs and shouted at them."

Brawls erupted in the square at a certain moment. The corridor that had been dividing the rally participants vanished in the twinkling of an eye. In the recordings of those events it is possible to see one mob going at another. Two people died - one in the crush, the other of a heart attack.

Some of the Crimean Tatar rally participants burst into the Supreme Council building. Apparatus staffers and a number of deputies evacuated through a side entrance.

"I jumped over the fence and hurt my leg. Then I had four months' treatment," one of the fugitives recalled.

It was as though the police had vanished. The fighters were separated by Chubarov and Aksyonov in an attempt to recreate the corridor between the two groups. It was largely thanks to their efforts that dramatic events were avoided.

The Supreme Council session never took place that day: They failed to get a quorum. Many of the people's elected representatives wavered and just did not come to the hall.

Confident that they had won, the Crimean Tatars made the decision to take people away. Umerov recalled that, when the rally participants started dispersing, representatives of the Mejlis once again went to Konstantynov's office: "He asseverated that he would hold no session in the immediate future. We believed that we had prevented separatist decisions and that we had done so for a long time to come."

Guests from Moscow

Moscow had always had plans to regain Crimea: A high-ranking Russian official told Gazeta.ru this after the referendum on annexation to Russia.

However, these plans were akin to a strategy of action in case of nuclear war: It seems necessary to be prepared, but only an emergency can make it be applied in practice.

We do not know at what moment specifically Moscow's emissaries started to travel secretly to Crimea. Igor Strelkov, who was in Crimea during those events, declared in one of his interviews that he had been on the peninsula since 21 February. Ukraine's SBU [Ukrainian Security Service] gave a different date for Strelkov's arrival - 26 February.

According to Gazeta.ru's information, Strelkov was on the peninsula as a Main Intelligence Directorate staffer. But according to the version given us by Serhiy Aksyonov, Strelkov headed one of the volunteer subunits that was responsible, inter alia, for the weapons taken from Ukrainian SBU and Internal Affairs Ministry structures.

Oleg Belaventsev, the president's present plenipotentiary representative in the Crimean Federal District but at that time general director of the Slavyanka open joint-stock company that is part of the Defence Ministry's structure (the very one that became celebrated in the case of Serdyukov), had been on the peninsula at least since 26 February, before the clash between Russians and Tatars.

According to unconfirmed data, Belaventsev, as third secretary of the USSR Embassy in London for science and technologies, was expelled from Britain for espionage in 1985. Later, according to certain information, he worked in Germany. He is regarded as one of Defence Minister Sergey Shoygu's closest associates.

"Belaventsev was responsible for questions of security. All the same, the Black Sea Fleet and the Ukrainian military were in Crimea, and there might have been clashes," one of the participants in those events said. "He did not deal with political issues."

However, according to our Kremlin interlocutors and Crimean politicians, precisely he was the person chiefly responsible for the operation in Crimea, acting also as a kind of messenger between the local elites and Moscow.

"Little green men" take to the stage

At 0430 hours on 27 February - that is, at dawn the day after the clashes in downtown Simferopol, the buildings of the Crimean Supreme Council and Council of Ministers were taken over by unknown armed people, later nicknamed "little green men." According to Novaya Gazeta's data, they were Russian servicemen.

"Early in the morning one of the deputies called me and said that the Supreme Council and Council of Ministers had been seized," Serhiy Tsekov recalled. "I asked: 'Who seized them? The Mejlis?' 'Apparently not,' came the reply. 'The police were driven out, but there was no shooting.'"

Members of the Supreme Council Presidium and some other deputies gathered at the police department - prior to ascertaining the circumstances. Later Volodymyr Konstantynov invited them to "do some work," and they set out for the Supreme Council building.

"We went in and went up to the sixth floor (where Konstantynov's office is) , but coming out to meet us was...Oleg Yevgenyevich Belaventsev," one of the deputies said, laughing. "At the time I did not yet know who he was. Only later did I realize. After this Konstantynov started cooperating closely with us. Of course, they were also working with Moscow, but Konstantynov set us the tasks."

What had Belaventsev been doing in the occupied building before the deputies arrived? Only one theory is possible: He had been directing the operation.

"This was a crucial situation," a high-ranking Russian official described what happened on the eve of the clash in the Crimean capital. My interlocutor did not reveal the details, but it seems that it was these events that prompted Moscow to take decisive steps.

If the confrontation had not happened, the order to occupy the Supreme Council and Council of Ministers buildings would hardly have been given.

Moscow ascribed the need for this to the threat of possible carnage. This has also been spoken of by former and current deputies who took a pro-Russian stand at the time: Many of them told me that further clashes between Tatars and Russians (or, to call things by their proper names, between those who wanted to be in the Russian Federation and those who advocated preserving Ukraine's territorial integrity) were inevitable. In their opinion, Kiev would also have done everything possible to crush the uprising.

What do Tatars themselves think of this?

"There is a lot of argument now over whether we were right to leave the square on 26 February. I believe we were, for otherwise the same thing could have happened as in Donetsk and Luhansk," Umerov said. "Russian assault rifles would have come in."

Be that as it may, it was not easy to persuade many deputies to come to the session. They had no wish to turn up for the session, fearing that sooner or later Kiev would take control of the situation, and then things would not turn out well for lovers of Russia.

They used various ways to try to change the minds of waverers. Some with the help of telephone conversations, others with nonparliamentary methods. "Armed people would call for certain deputies at home and at work and demand that they drive over to the Supreme Council. These were people dressed in Cossack uniform," Ilmi Umerov maintained.

There is every reason to trust his words, since Igor Strelkov said recently that some members of parliament had to be forced to attend the session: "The deputies were rounded up by home guardsmen in order to chase them into the hall. I was one of those home guardsmen."

By hook or by crook they got together a quorum - according to Tsekov, 53 out of 100.

One of the questions the people's elected representatives had to decide was to approve a new head of the Council of Ministers instead of Anatoliy Mohilyov, a Yanukovych stooge. According to Gazeta.ru's Crimean interlocutors, Mohilyov had previously been offered to side with Moscow but, according to one version, he himself refused whereas, according to another, they refused him, suspecting him of playing a double game.

In choosing its "own" leader for Crimea, according to Gazeta.ru's information, Moscow gambled on former Premier Leonid Hrach, a veteran of local politics. According to Hrach himself, the offer was passed on to him on 26 February by Belaventsev and "a couple of admirals" who came with him.

"They put me through to somebody over a special line," the politician said, refusing to give the "somebody's" surname. "In the conversation it was stated that 'we are going to regain Crimea,' after which I was made the offer to head the Council of Ministers. I replied: 'Yes, I agree to everything. But will you be able (to regain Crimea)?' 'Without a shadow of a doubt,' came the reply."

Hrach asseverated that the "somebody's" words to the effect that "we are going to regain Crimea" sounded just like that and in no way any different. It is noteworthy that Vladimir Putin uses the same phrase in the documentary film "Return to the Motherland," which will be shown on the anniversary of the 16 March referendum: Our conversation with Hrach took place even before the first trailers appeared.

However, Konstantynov and deputies in his entourage came out categorically against Hrach's candidacy. As a result, Aksyonov became the chief aspirant to the post of head of the Council of Ministers.

"He put on a resolute show when he separated the Crimean Tatars and the Russians. Next to him was Belaventsev (according to Gazeta.ru's information, Belaventsev and Aksyonov had been acquainted even before the Crimean events and are linked by friendly relations), who was assisting. But for them, I do not know how it would have all ended. At that time our special services were getting drunk in the bathhouse. The logic is clear: If everything turns out OK, this means they will be great guys. If not, they will have had nothing to do with it, as it were," a Russian politician who had been in Crimea at that time said. "After this we started calling Moscow, saying that Aksyonov must be made premier, not Hrach."

Prior to this, according to some information, Moscow had not taken him seriously: Aksyonov was hindered by his reputation as someone associated with the criminal world.

Be that as it may, it is obvious that the Kremlin conducted the search for its "own" man in time-trouble mode. This confirms yet again that it lacked a clear-cut plan prepared in advance.

In the end, it was necessary to fight for Aksyonov's appointment. Tsekov maintained that three or four people were opposed. But it was because of them that the necessary minimum number of votes could not be obtained. The arguments over the premier's candidacy went on for more than five hours.

Konstantynov, from whom the suggestion relating to Aksyonov had officially come, took a tough stand. Finally, the problem was resolved: They persuaded (or "persuaded"?) several more deputies to come along. Serhiy Aksyonov was approved as premier by just 53 votes "for."

Crimeans put the question point-blank

But the decision to schedule a referendum was truly fateful. At the same time the very first wording, which did not de jure propose Crimea's secession from Ukraine, de facto implied its independence from Kiev. It read as follows: "The Autonomous Republic of Crimea possesses state independence and is incorporated in Ukraine on the basis of treaties and agreements (yes/no)."

"At that stage this was exclusively our, Crimean decision," one of the participants in the events insisted, bearing in mind that Moscow had not yet really been drawn into the process.

Here, admittedly, it is necessary to make a reservation: At a certain moment, according to an informed source, Konstantynov was connected by telephone with Vladimir Putin. It was only after this that the question of a plebiscite was put to a deputies' vote.

By all accounts, the Supreme Council speaker had to obtain guarantees of support from Moscow: The people's elected representatives were terribly afraid that Kiev would take tough steps. Konstantynov himself maintained that right up until the wording was changed to "annexation with Russia" he did not have direct access to the country's leadership.

The referendum's original wording corresponded to the 1992 Crimean Constitution, which was later repealed. It prescribed a similar status for Crimea - a state that is incorporated in Ukraine and determines its relations with it on the basis of a treaty and agreements.

However, that fundamental law also proposed the right of autonomy to independent relations with other states and even organizations.

This may well have been the next step: After the plebiscite was announced and right up until the first days of March a local constitutional commission was sitting in Crimea and discussing a further widening of the republic's powers.

"But even in meetings at that time Crimeans started demanding that I put the question (of annexation with Russia - Gazeta.ru) point-blank. I told everyone: 'We are going to Russia anyhow. I do not know how, but we are going there.' I thought that this was one such way of a soft transition to statehood, without violating international norms, when we conclude a treaty with Russia (after the referendum)," Konstantynov said.

To whom Moscow "passed"

While Crimean legal experts were drawing up proposals for widening the republic's powers, Moscow was playing its own big game.

On 28 February, the day after Crimea announced the referendum, A Just Russia leader Sergey Mironov submitted a curious draft law to the Duma. The sense of the thing was that it was necessary to simplify the procedure for admitting new territories into the Russian Federation. Under the existing legislation a new component may join the Russian Federation only if there is an international agreement with the state it has "left."

Mironov proposed widening the terms: Russia has the right to incorporate part of another state even if there is no international agreement. For this it is sufficient for the inhabitants of the "seceding lands" to vote to join the Russian Federation in a referendum, or else the territory's organs of state power must put an appropriate request to it.

According to Gazeta.ru's information, the draft law was not all Mironov's "own work." It had been prepared in the Kremlin.

However, the document got hung up in parliament and was not adopted at a Stakhanovite pace, as is usual when the country's leadership needs to change something urgently.

Why?

"Mironov's draft law was an element of a big game that can be assessed in different ways," a high-ranking source in the power structures gave a very meagre explanation. "This was primarily a pass to the Crimeans: If you advocate joining Russia in the referendum, then we can accept you."

But the wording providing for annexation with the Russian Federation officially appeared a week later. One wonders why the Crimeans delayed, albeit for a very short time?

There can be just one supposition: Moscow was not giving a definitive signal that it was ready to receive Crimea.

The interlocutor in the Russian power structures pointed out: There was no unity of opinion at the top on just what to do with the peninsula - to annex it or not.

A Crimean politician said that in May, when the referendum had already taken place, he happened to attend one of Vice Premier Dmitriy Rogozin's closed meetings in Sevastopol: "He said that the supporters of annexing Crimea were in the minority. Rogozin himself was among those who advocated annexing Crimea."

Here is what Konstantynov said about this to Gazeta.ru: "As we have already realized now, the decision (to annex) was not easy to make. When we had only announced the referendum, there was a decision that it was necessary to help the Crimeans, that Russia would not abandon them. But what precisely does 'not abandon' mean? Nobody knew at the time that in the end there would be just such a wording (about annexation).

"There were different views of Crimea's status. Some people who are at the centre of politics (Konstantynov emphasized that he was talking not about deputies or senators, but he refused to be more specific - Gazeta.ru) told me: 'You must be a state. Be an independent state so as to calm the world public.' I replied: 'No way, for the Crimeans do not need this. We are not ready to be a state. This is an adventure of the first water, which will ruin us all.'"

However, the chief purpose of Mironov's draft bill was probably to demonstrate to the West and to Kiev what Moscow was prepared to do. At that stage Russia was essentially proposing two scenarios: Either Crimea formally remains part of Ukraine while being, however, practically independent, or it will be annexed.

Haggling with the West

Obviously, Putin was forced to take the second, radical path by the tough stance of the West, which gave Moscow's involvement in Crimea's affairs a hostile reception. Starting 1 March, when the Federation Council promptly gave the president permission to send a limited troop contingent into Ukraine, and "polite people" turned up in Crimea, the pitch of the conflict with the West, which was already high following the Kiev opposition's violation of the 21 February agreements, grew still higher.

The Russian leadership and the leaders of Western countries held talks. Bellicose statements were made.

Thus, on the night of 1-2 March Putin spent 90  minutes talking with Barack Obama. According to the White House's information, the American President declared that further violation of international law would lead to Russia's political isolation. It was then that Obama threatened that he might not attend the G8 summit planned for May in Sochi (as is known, in the end nobody went there, and the summit itself was held in the G7 format in Belgium in June).

Speaking in the White House on 3 March, the American leader declared that the United States was considering the entire spectrum of economic and diplomatic measures aimed at isolating Russia: "It cannot violate the basic principles recognized by the world."

A few hours later (in Moscow it was the early morning of 4 March) agencies reported that Obama had held a conference with advisers, where steps "to further isolate Russia" in response to its actions in Crimea were also discussed. Obviously, even then Moscow was being threatened with sanctions, although no one had yet uttered this word in public.

Over what did Putin haggle with the West and, above all, with the United States, which was and is regarded in the Russian leadership as the chief shadowy curator of the new Kiev authorities?

It can be assumed that one of the Russian leader's chief demands was for recognition of the legitimacy of the Crimean referendum and guarantees that Kiev would also recognize the result. This correlated perfectly with the concept of Ukraine's federalization (in the case of Crimea it was even possible to speak of some semblance of a confederation), on which Moscow powerfully insisted at a certain time.

After the victory of the "Euro-Maydan" it was extremely important for Russia to maintain its influence over Ukrainian politics. After the "orange revolution" this was achieved thanks to guarantees that the Party of Regions would remain in the political field, but in this instance there was nothing like this. Upon acceding to power, the "regionals" themselves headed by Yanukovych showed themselves to be still those allies. It is logical that it was decided to gamble not on the centre but on centrifugal trends.

But if the West and Kiev had agreed to Russia's demands, the Ukrainian authorities could not possibly have seen full-blown control over the peninsula. To begin with, Crimea and Kiev would have been linked by some treaty relations, but who knows what would have happened next?

Whatever was discussed in the talks, no compromise was reached. What is more, to judge by the tough tone of the statements, there was not even a hint of a compromise. The West's harsh reaction meant just one thing to Putin - a reluctance to take the Russian Federation's interests into account.

What options for action did the Russian president have?

First option - to pretend that nothing had happened, recall the military from Crimea, and let the situation take its course. But, according to Putin's logic, this would have been a manifestation of weakness and a surrender of positions under pressure from the West. Putin could not agree to this. In addition, the Black Sea Fleet is on Crimean territory, and the head of state was hardly certain that the basing agreement, which was to have been in effect through 2035, would not be revised - in NATO's favour, moreover.

Second option - to move according to the original, soft scenario, according to which Crimea gets "state independence" based on the referendum results. What would be the further actions of Moscow, which understands that Kiev would not recognize the results and would conclude no agreements with the republic? To uphold the referendum's legality but at the same time take no steps to enshrine in legislation its "guardianship" of the peninsula? In that case at least one question would arise: What to do with the Ukrainian military units, even though they were blockaded, and the military themselves were demoralized but remained on the territory of Crimea? Ask them to "leave"? On what grounds. Most importantly, was there a guarantee that an armed conflict would not occur in the future?

Then, having recognized the legitimacy of the Crimean referendum, hurriedly conclude with Crimea some agreement providing, inter alia, for military protection? Next, "at the request" of the Crimean leadership, increase the presence of the Russian contingent and demand the departure of the Ukrainian military? But in that case the West's reaction would most likely prove just as tough as the reaction to Crimea's annexation.

So we come to the third option - annexation proper. A radical scenario that makes it possible, however, to dot all the i's at once: Crimea is ours, no one will drive out the Black Sea Fleet, and the Ukrainian military will have nothing to do in someone else's state. The Crimeans are happy, and there is a patriotic upsurge in Russia. True, the West introduces sanctions, but we will survive somehow, as we have survived other things.

It is sad to realize this, but it seems that from the moment Putin got involved in the battle for Crimea and failed to reach agreement with the West on anything, he was left with no alternative but to stake everything.

The final decision

Only the Russian president himself knows just when he made the fateful decision that cardinally altered the course of history. Officially the referendum's new wording providing for Russia's annexation of Crimea was approved by the Supreme Council on 6 March. But according to people who were mobilized directly or indirectly in the process, the work on the new wording began roughly on 3-4 March.

Thus, when Vladimir Putin, speaking at a news conference on 4 March, declared that Russia was not considering the option of annexing Crimea, work on legalizing the peninsula's annexation was either already taking place or started right after the president's communication with the media.

Incidentally, at that time the head of state, recalling the precedent of Kosovo, qualified his statement by saying that "no one has yet abolished the right of nations to self-determination." At the same time he emphasized that in respect of Crimea Russia "will not provoke such sentiments or such a decision." At that time nobody paid any attention to the words about the right of nations to self-determination. Everyone was "lulled" by the statement about having no intention to annex Crimea.

"At a certain stage we had realized that Kiev would, all the same, not recognize our referendum (with the original wording) and believed that the question had to be changed. And people were of a mind to be in Russia. But we could not display independence until Moscow lit the beacon," one of the Crimean deputies complained.

And then they "lit the beacon."

"Round-the-clock conferences began. This was hot, hands-on work, and it was coordinated by the president personally," Gazeta.ru's source in the Russian federal structures said.

It is possible to conclude from the stories of Crimean members of parliament that total chaos reigned in the offices there: People were conferring for days on end, and apparatus staffers and legal experts were fussing about.

"Konstantynov himself would come out periodically in order to telephone someone. Here, too, there were people from the Presidential Staff who were assisting us juridically," a former deputy said. "There was the task of finding a formula that could legitimize Crimea's annexation from the viewpoint of international law," Gazeta.ru's interlocutor in Russian diplomatic circles added.

Moscow cannot have failed to realize that the West would not recognize the referendum in any case - above all, because it did not conform to the Ukrainian Constitution, which proposes that a plebiscite on a region's secession from the state must be held on the territory of the entire country. But at the same time it was obvious that Russia would have to defend the legitimacy of the referendum that was held on international platforms. This was why the search for a juridical formula for annexation was no idle matter.

The final decision on the referendum's wording - "Do you favour the reunification of Crimea with Russia with the rights of a Russian Federation component?" - was adopted on the night of 5-6 March.

"I understand that the decision was adopted at the highest level, and guarantees were given that there would be no Dniester region scenario (a referendum on joining Russia was held in the Dniester region in 2006, but it was never incorporated into the Russian Federation - Gazeta.ru). At any rate, Konstantynov and Aksyonov told us that everything had been decided," one of the participants in those events said.

"From the moment the referendum was announced, nothing at all was decided in the Crimean Supreme Council without a telephone call from above," another of Gazeta.ru's interlocutors added with malice.

Konstantynov, however, produced a different version: The wording was not agreed with Moscow, and after it was approved he himself was not entirely certain that Russia would not change its mind at the last moment: "I believe that that night (5-6 March) was a night of decision-making. We had realized the day before that all the risks were being assessed up above and there would be no final decision."

One time, Konstantynov complained, he even had a terrible nightmare: "We are driving into Moscow, and they say to us: 'You know, we are not taking you into Russia.'"

Vladimir Putin really did have the final word: Hypothetically Moscow might not have received Crimea into Russia at once but taken a time-out and dragged out the game.

Flight to Putin

On 6 March, when the Crimean Supreme Council officially adopted the decision to alter the wording of the plebiscite, it was also brought forward - from 30 to 16 March (it had originally been scheduled for 25 May, the day of the presidential election in Ukraine).

Right after this four Presidium members - Volodymyr Konstantynov, Serhiy Tsekov, Volodymyr Klychnikov, and Kostyantyn Bakharev - set out, let us say, on a "cruise." From Kacha Airfield near Sevastopol they flew to Anapa in a military Mi-8 escorted by no less than two combat helicopters. The Ukrainian military were still in Crimea, and no one could guarantee that a provocation would not occur, hence the precautionary measures, one of the "travellers" explained to Gazeta.ru.

They changed planes at Anapa: A Black Sea Fleet aircraft flew them to Sochi airport. The next destination was the president's Bocharov Ruchey residence. Admittedly, only one of the four could boast that he "saw Putin" on that day: Konstantynov alone was invited to have an audience with the head of state, and he showed the head of state the Supreme Council's officially formulated decision. The rest sat "in some cottage" and drank tea.

The very next day, 7 March, the Crimean members of parliament participated in the rally "People's Gathering for a Fraternal People" held beneath the Kremlin walls on Vasilyevskiy Spusk.

The referendum was held on 16 March. According to the official data, 96.77 per cent of citizens in Crimea voted for incorporation into Russia, and 95.6 per cent in Sevastopol, which later became a separate Federation component. On the same day the Crimean Supreme Council declared the republic an independent state. The next day, 18 March, Vladimir Putin signed the treaty incorporating Crimea and Sevastopol into the Russian Federation at a ceremony in the Kremlin.

That stroke of the president's pen altered the history of Russia once and for all. Not only the history of Russia - of the world. For the first time since the end of World War II one country annexed the territory of another. An unprecedented instance. Or, conversely, a precedent.

What did Russia achieve by "restoring historical justice" and annexing Crimea?

On the one hand, the almost complete cessation of the dialogue with the West, significant international isolation, and sanctions that sharply exacerbated the already increased problems in the Russian economy. Russia's wish to continue influencing Ukraine's politics and Kiev's reluctance to hold a dialogue either with its own citizens or with Moscow in the new geopolitical reality led to full-blown war in Donbass.

A very bad split occurred in Russian society and was intensified and continues to be intensified by state propaganda. The split has already attained excessive proportions but seemingly will only increase.

On the other hand, a surge of patriotic sentiment has occurred in Russia, entailing a sharp rise in Vladimir Putin's rating, which, despite the present diminution in the "Crimean effect" and the very first palpable economic problems, remains high: According to various data, it is fluctuating between 70 and almost 90 per cent. Finally, the main thing that Russia has achieved is, in fact, Crimea.

Was it worth it? Everyone has his own answer.

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