#2
Moscow Times
March 30, 2015
Government: Russians Smoking, Drinking Less Thanks to Putin

More and more Russians are trading in vodka and cigarettes for gym memberships, according to a report released by the government on Sunday.

The report was published in a bid to outline the government's achievements in fulfilling President Vladimir Putin's so-called "May Orders," a series of campaign promises - including ones related to improved health in Russian society - which the president signed the day of his most recent inauguration in May 2012.

Only 28.3 percent of adult Russians smoked in 2013, down from 33.7 percent in 2008, according to the report, citing data provided by the State Statistics Service.

Alcohol consumption has decreased on average, plunging from 16.2 liters per capita annually in 2008, to 11.6 liters in 2013. The death rate from alcohol poisoning has dived to 8.9 people per 100,000 in 2014, down from 9.7 people one year earlier.

In addition, 41.6 percent of Russians, aged 15 years or older say they have never consumed alcohol, up from 38.2 percent in 2011, the report said.

In 2014, 29.3 percent of Russians said they were exercising on a regular basis, a significant boost from 20.6 percent in 2012.

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 #3
Fort Russ
http://fortruss.blogspot.com
March 29, 2015
Russians believe that Putin's team consists of professionals

Putin's Twelve Friends
By Migan
http://migan.livejournal.com/224687.html
Translated by Russian by J.Hawk

On Monday, VTsIOM presented evidence that the majority of Russians are confident in the professionalism of the Russian president's team. The poll results indicate that the overwhelming majority of respondents-93%--believe that Putin has a team on which he can rely. One third (37%) moreover believes that the team consists predominantly of professionals, while another third (37%) believes that it consists mainly of people who share Putin's views. Only 13% believe that the President assembled around himself only close acquaintances and friends, and such views are most widespread among supporters of parties which are not represented in the Duma (32%) and also LDPR (25%).

When answering the question, what kind of people should the head of state have on his team, 61% answered "people who think like Putin and who have views similar to his own". 31% answered that the President should surround himself mainly with professionals. Only 2% would like to see the President surround himself with more personal acquaintances and friends.

The majority of people polled, 64%, are convinced that Putin's entourage is helping him implement his ideas. Only 14% believe that the President's team is making his work difficult. Remarkably, in 2013 55% were of the former opinion, and 20% of the latter.

The confidence that Putin ought to retain the current composition of his team has also increased over the years: in 2013, according to VTsIOM, only 30% shared that opinion, in 2014 that proportion increased to 42%, while this year it's already 54%.

The poll convincingly demonstrates that people trust Putin and his team, which had not made a single major strategic mistake. Even in the most complex situations, from the war in Chechnya to EU and US sanctions, Putin acts unswervingly, reliably, and effectively, defending the interests of the peoples of Russia.

In Ukraine, on the other hand, the oligarch-cum-officials could care less about the people or the country, they are mainly concerned about grabbing the biggest piece of the economic pie that was left over from the Soviet era, the Kolomoysky case is just but the most recent of examples. I'll put it plainly, Russia is lucky to have such a president with his team of professionals.

J.Hawk's Comment: There is no question that Putin and his team are widely respected in Russia. They satisfy the two fundamental criteria of effective leadership. If asked whether Putin & Co. are competent, and whether they care about ordinary Russians, the answer would be yes to both. Which is more than can be said for most of the leaders of the "free" "world".

Paradoxically, the Ukraine crisis and the sanctions enabled the Russian government to display its ability to govern, which I suspect was not something most Western leaders expected to see, much to their own dismay.

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 #4
Reuters
March 29, 2015
Russia's rich forego some luxuries but still back Putin
BY ELIZABETH PIPER
 
(Reuters) - Russian model Alisa Krylova canceled her order for the latest Mercedes, spent New Year in Moscow rather than skiing in the Alps and now employs Russian staff rather than foreigners.

The former Mrs Russia and Mrs Globe beauty pageant winner is among Russia's super rich but even she and many of her wealthy friends are feeling the pinch from the economic crisis.

Driven into "a kind of hibernation", they are steering clear of celebrity parties and trimming spending to make up some of the millions lost to a weak rouble and a falling stock market.

 But the enforced modesty has not yet driven the super wealthy out of Russia or against President Vladimir Putin, who has fanned patriotism during the Ukraine crisis and appealed to businessmen to bring their money home to bolster Russia's position in the worst standoff with the West since the Cold War.

Perched on a golden sofa in the living room of her newly built apartment in Moscow, Krylova, 32, recoils at her compatriots who flocked to buy televisions, refrigerators and buckwheat - a popular staple - when the rouble plunged in December and shops had yet to change their prices to catch up.

"And what about me? I am calm in dealing with the crisis, nothing really terrible has happened. Yes, of course, we didn't fly away on holiday this year because I did not see the point in paying three times over the odds," said Krylova, whose flawless beauty has put her on the covers of numerous fashion magazines.

"So we decided to holiday in Moscow and St. Petersburg and went to museums, theaters, everywhere, and we had a wonderful time. It was great to go to Red Square to see the Christmas tree and I think it was just as good as skiing in Austria or France."

It's an attitude Putin is counting on.

Since coming to power in 2000, the former KGB spy has tamed the country's powerful businessmen, or oligarchs, who in the 1990s used their control over the Russian economy to influence politics and his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin.

After bringing some of what he calls Russia's 'national champions' in the energy sector back under state control, Putin made a deal with private owners of big business - be loyal and stay out of politics and you can keep your assets.

It is a bargain which has largely held, even with the rouble down 40 percent against the U.S. dollar since last summer, and the economy weakened by a fall in global oil prices and Western economic sanctions over Ukraine.

LOYALTY

Konstantin Kostin, a former aide to Putin who now heads the Civil Society Development Foundation, said some in Russia's business elite were without doubt suffering from the downturn.

"Someone may be discontented, but I don't think that it's that widespread," he said.

"I think that if we are talking about their political affiliations, then they are loyal."

Earlier this month, Putin appealed again to leading businessmen to bring their money from offshore accounts back to Russia before, he suggested, the West closed off flows in possible further sanctions over Ukraine.

"So he said clearly - you've got enough for a good standard of living so please bring everything back to Russia so we can lift up our country," said Krylova.

She says she is married to a "successful businessman" while declining to identify him, and that all of her assets are in Russia, as are most of her husband's.

A self-declared patriot who wants to "pass something on" to the next generation, Krylova still likes to pop over to France and other west European countries for long weekends to indulge herself in French and Italian cheeses, imports of which have been banned by Russia in retaliation to the sanctions.

But mostly, Russia's wealthy are staying home, while making sure they have a firm plan B in place.

Luxury magazine director Alexei Koval said some businessmen had worked out an "evacuation plan" in case they fell out of favor.

"I think that the majority of businessmen who in some way may have something to fear have, a long time ago, prepared spare airfields and put in place plans for a quick emigration or, God forbid, evacuation of their family," said Koval, operating director at CITYMAGAZINE, which offers lifestyle and investment tips to "successful people" in Russia's main cities.

In the meantime, some luxury companies, while counting the cost of Russia heading into recession, are also counting on Russia's wealthy staying put for a while.

Upmarket jeweller Bulgari said it would open its first own-brand shop in Russia in October, while U.S. car producer General Motors Co says it is shutting its Russian factory to focus on premium cars - a sector which has largely weathered the crisis.

But they will have to contend with an elite that has become "more modest" in its spending habits.

"No one wants to show off and everyone is waiting. When there was the panic, crisis, speculation, the middle class ran to get its stashed money and started to buy everything," Krylova said. "Those who are higher than the middle class and even higher, they are kind of hibernating."

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 #5
BBC
March 27, 2015
Brand Putin: Russia's president still in fashion 15 years on
By Sarah Rainsford
BBC News, Moscow

Vladimir Putin's popularity is still strong after 15 years, as Sarah Rainsford reports

Fifteen years ago, Vladimir Putin was elected promising to make Russia strong again: a country its citizens could be proud of and that the world would respect.

This week, Russia's main polling agency measured his support rating at 85%.

While opinion polls do not tell the full story in a country where much of the media is under state control, Mr Putin's enduring popularity is undeniable.

"Russia and Putin go together, we just don't see another way," says Oleg Sokolov, a member of the latest pro-Putin youth group known as Set', or "Network".

Set' has its headquarters in a converted Moscow gas tower. The office resembles an internet start-up or a PR firm, strewn with bright-coloured bean bags and dotted with young Russians eating sushi or browsing their iPads.

But the brand they're promoting is Vladimir Putin: his image is plastered all over the walls alongside signs reminding Russians of what makes their country great.

'Not ashamed anymore'

The group won't comment on any formal links to the Kremlin but their passion for the cause is clearly genuine.

"Putin is a strong leader, I'd say the strongest in the world right now," Oleg says.

He recalls Boris Yeltsin's rule following the Soviet collapse as a time of chaos and humiliation, not the dawn of democracy.

Though he barely reached his teens in the 1990s, the activist talks of "begging" the IMF for funds then and being forced to endure the drunken antics of Mr Putin's predecessor.
"With Yeltsin, I was ashamed that he ran my country. But with Putin, I'm not ashamed anymore."

A former KGB spy, President Putin's image as a man of action has long been part of his appeal. It is carefully maintained through photo shoots: bare-chested on horseback, or tossing opponents onto a judo mat.

But his policy also resonates.

Last week, Russia marked a year since the annexation of Crimea. The move has been widely supported here, despite the heavy financial burden it brings - that was when Vladimir Putin's popularity rating topped 80% for the first time.

Loudly condemned in the West as illegal, in Russia the annexation is presented as reversing the "unjust" transfer of the peninsula to Soviet Ukraine in 1954.

Some also clearly revel in a post-Soviet Moscow starting to flex its political muscle.

'Political chocolates'

The sanctions imposed by the West in response - together with a slump in the oil price - look set to push the economy into recession this year.

A prolonged crisis, which many anticipate, is likely to eat into support for President Putin - especially amongst the middle class who gained most during the boom years. Prices are already rising and jobs are being cut.

But so far the mood is largely resilient.

"The sanctions make it difficult to do business," admits Roman Eldarkhanov, co-owner of Confael chocolates.

He describes problems paying suppliers as well as accessing raw materials from Europe. But the businessman lays the blame with those Western leaders who have imposed the sanctions rather than President Putin and his policies.

So he has created a "political chocolates" collection that includes lollipops modelled on Western heads of state to devour and destroy.

"We are supporting our leader, we think he is doing his job well," Mr Eldarkhanov explains, revealing one chocolate box that displays a macho close-up of Putin's face, in dark glasses.

The slogan reads: "You need balls to be a King, when all around are mere pawns."

"Of course we are earning less money now but we don't care, as it's a question of our country," Mr Eldarkhanov adds, chiming with the patriotic mood here.

'No choice but Putin'

Russia's state-run media has played a major role in shaping such views.

President Putin made controlling the airwaves a priority when he came to power: satirical shows mocking senior figures swiftly disappeared.

Fifteen years later, the result is a monochrome landscape of state-controlled channels that mouth the same anti-Western rhetoric without a word of criticism for the president.

"In Russia, the role of TV channels is much more than in the US or Europe," media analyst Dmitry Nekrasov points out, as 90% of Russians get most of their information from TV.
For around 55%, TV is their only source.

So he argues that part of President Putin's popularity stems from the fact many people literally don't see any alternative.

"Real opposition is not allowed onto the main channels," he says. "And if a politician is not allowed on state TV, he doesn't exist. We are always told there is no choice, but Mr Putin."

Emblazoned with his face

Plenty of Russians do seem content with that option, though.

They are the target market for all the Putin manicures and T-shirts now available, as well as tablet and phone covers with the president's face on them.

Back at Set' - the youth group - a designer has created a Putin fashion line: a long silky dress and a sweatshirt emblazoned with his face hang between two birch trees.

A few metres away in a display cabinet are silver rings adorned with somewhat ghoulish mini-heads of the president.

And for activist Oleg Sokolov, Mr Putin's lengthy time in office has not blunted his appeal, but quite the opposite.

"If he continues the politics he's led for the past 15 years," he says, "I'd be very happy for Vladimir Putin to stay on for another 15 at least. If that were possible."

 #6
Moscow Times
March 30, 2015
New Report Names and Shames Russia's Worst Regional Governors
By Anna Dolgov

A Kremlin-linked think-tank released a rating of Russia's regional governors on Monday that names the head of the Leningrad region, which surrounds St. Petersburg, as the most effective manager and the head of the Sverdlovsk region in the Ural Mountains as the least effective.

The rating, which was conducted by the Civil Society Development Foundation, evaluated regional improvements or declines from mid-February to mid-March and focused primarily on economic indicators, according to official government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

The survey comes on the heels of a series of corruption investigations against Russian governors, and amid speculation that the cases indicate an increasing power struggle for control over resource-rich regions.

According to the rating, the most progress was made by Governor Alexander Drozdenko of the Leningrad region, which surrounds St. Petersburg, Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported. In contrast, Governor Georgy Poltavchenko of the city of St. Petersburg - which is a separate region under Russian law - was named among the 10 worst regional heads in the survey.

Governor Yevgeny Kuivashev of the Sverdlovsk region, which includes the city of Yekaterinburg, was named the country's worst leader, largely due to an investigation into the use of funds earmarked for the development of the Ural Mountains region, according to Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

While no accusations have been brought against Kuivashev personally, his administration lost points due to "reverberations" from the scandal, the report said.

The governors of the Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, Orlov and Primorye regions rounded out the bottom five.

Samara Governor Nikolai Merkushkin was named the second-worst administrator because of his failure to combat corruption in the region, as well as for a recent comment about World War II in which he referred to Alexander Matrosov, a decorated Hero of the Soviet Union, as having committed "suicide" on the battlefield, the report said.

Nizhny Novgorod Governor Valery Shantsev came in third from the bottom because of a criminal investigation against his protege, Oleg Kondrashov, the mayor of the regional capital, Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported.

Other recent scandals involving Russian regional governors include charges brought against Sakhalin Governor Alexander Khoroshavin for bribe-taking earlier this month. Russian President Vladimir Putin fired Khoroshavin last week.

The Chelyabinsk region also emerged as the center of a scandal last week when police reportedly detained its deputy governor, Nikolai Sandakov.

That detention was unlikely to have influenced the results of the latest ranking, however, since it took place after the March 15 closing date of the survey.

Top news-makers among Russia's regional chiefs, including Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov, did not appear in either the top or bottom 10, according to rating results published by Izvestia daily.

The Civil Society Development Foundation, which conducted the survey, is headed by former Kremlin aide Konstantin Kostin, who was the deputy head of the presidential administration's domestic politics department until 2012 and is believed to be a close ally of Putin adviser Vladislav Surkov. Kostin told Rossiiskaya Gazeta that surveys on the effectiveness of regional leaders would be released once a quarter.

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#7
The Guardian
March 29, 2015
How Nemtsov's murder could force Putin into a big decision
A month after the politician's killing in Moscow there are signs of a Kremlin power struggle - and Russia's president may soon have to take sides
By Shaun Walker in Moscow

When Boris Nemtsov was shot dead, as he walked home on a drizzly Friday night in Moscow last month, Russia's beleaguered liberal opposition realised tthe rules of the game had changed in the most shocking way.

But there are also signs the highest-profile contract killing to take place during Vladimir Putin's 15 years in charge could have triggered a battle inside Russia's power structures, the consequences of which could reach far wider than the insular world of the minority opposition - and be much harder for Putin to control.

Given the opacity of the Kremlin, the small circle of decision-makers around President Putin, and the use of various media outlets to leak "versions" of the politician's murder that may have varying degrees of proximity to the truth, piecing together what is really going on is extremely tricky. Much remains unknowable. But decoding the signals coming from the Kremlin and those around it, the outline of a conflict between influential members of Putin's security apparatus is emerging.

Five men have been arrested and remanded in custody for carrying out the crime, including Chechen Zaur Dadayev, who investigators believe pulled the trigger. Given that Dadayev was a member of one of the battalions answering to Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin's man in Chechnya, suspicion has naturally fallen on him.

Independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta published an investigation that suggested the killers had been working for figures close to Kadyrov, who has been implicated in all manner of rights abuses and extra-judicial killings, though he has always denied any involvement.

Suspicions were raised further by another suspect "blowing himself up with a grenade" when police tried to detain him in Grozny, the Chechen capital, and by Kadyrov's surprising gambit of writing on his Instagram account that he knew Dadayev personally and believed him to be a "patriot" of Russia. The next day, Kadyrov was awarded a medal by Putin, as rumours spread that Moscow-based security forces were trying to question people close to him over the murder.

For many, the picture was clear: powerful people were trying to pursue Kadyrov over the murder, and Putin was telling them he still backed his Chechen protege.

"People in Moscow have never liked Kadyrov; he has always ruled only with Putin's personal backing," said one former Kremlin insider. "In Chechnya, there are no normal prosecutors, no normal judges, no normal courts, no normal FSB [the Russian security service]: it's all under Kadyrov's control. But what was the other option? Think about what Chechnya was like 10 years ago. Kadyrov has brought stability."

Some of Nemtsov's colleagues have suggested Kadyrov could just be a useful excuse for those higher up who wanted the politician dead, while publicly, officials have suggested two possibilities: that the killers acted alone, perhaps out of fury over Nemtsov's condemnation of the Charlie Hedbo killings in Paris, or that they came from abroad. Hardly an hour after Nemtsov was shot dead, Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, said it was "100% a provocation" aimed at framing Putin and making Russia look bad.

What seems to be clear is that investigators believe Dadayev shot Nemtsov before hopping into a car driven by Anzor Gubashev. The men then allegedly swapped cars a number of times, before arriving at an apartment and flying to Grozny the next day. Dadayev initially admitted guilt, according to the judge in the brief court hearing held to remand the suspects in custody, but later told human rights activists who visited him in prison he had been tortured into confessing.

Piecing together the thinking in the investigation team requires reliance on a number of anonymous leaks given to different Russian publications by officials from the security services and police. Many directly contradict each other and, taken together, they give the picture of a behind-the-scenes struggle between parts of the government that may have interests in pursuing different "versions".

Last week, the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published an alleged interview with an unnamed "source in the FSB". It said the agency's main thesis was that Nemtsov's killers were hired by people working for Andriy Parubiy, the former head of Ukraine's national security council. This is seen by analysts as significant not because it is plausible but because it suggests some elements in the security services want to push this version rather than pursue other lines of inquiry to their logical conclusion.

Many of Nemtsov's allies believe the Kremlin was directly involved in the death of their friend and colleague. His associate Ilya Yashin said Kadyrov was likely to have been involved in the murder, and the investigation had revealed that Chechnya remained out of federal control. It has been reported in recent days that Dadayev's close associate Ruslan Geremeyev is holed up under guard in Chechnya and is inaccessible to investigators trying to question him.

"Of course there is rivalry between different groups, and I am sure that some of the flaws in handling the case will be exploited by those trying to gain points, but I don't believe that it was done on someone's own initiative," said Vladimir Milov, who co-authored reports with Nemtsov about corruption in the elites. "This is a highly centralised system based on loyalty. Why breach that loyalty, risk your families and everything. For what?"

Milov said Nemtsov was an important figure both as a connector of opposition figures who had little in common, and as an advocate of sanctions against Putin's inner circle on the international stage.

"Whenever I met people in the west, I had the feeling that the door had just closed behind me and Boris had just left. He was a very strong advocate for sanctions and people in the Kremlin considered him guilty of that."

Kadyrov has said Dadayev should be tried if he is indeed guilty, but has spent more time praising him as a patriot than criticising him. He also posted an ode to Putin's "wise policies" on his Instagram account, with repeated declarations of loyalty to the president.

"We are the Russian president's foot soldiers! I will always be thankful to Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] for everything he has done for me personally and for my people. I will always be his loyal ally, whether he is the president or not. To give your life for such a person would be easy. I guarantee that I would carry out any order, will solve any problem for him no matter how hard it is and how much it might cost me!"

All of this has led many to see an epic power struggle behind the scenes, but the former Kremlin insider was dismissive of talk of a shift in the tectonic plates under the Kremlin: "I wouldn't worry about it too much. They will fight a bit and then everyone will come back into line," he said.

Others are not so sure. The Novaya Gazeta article, which first set out the details of the Chechens it claimed were involved in the killing, suggested that eventually Putin would have to choose between Kadyrov and the security apparatus. The article, which ran without a byline, concluded: "The result of [Putin's] decision will determine not just who ends up in the dock, but the future political configuration of the country, which has found itself on the verge of war between different pillars of the regime. The decision will have to be taken who is a patriot and who is not."

Some even suggested that Putin's mystery disappearance recently was connected to a need to withdraw and take difficult decisions. Others said he simply had a cold. The lack of reliable information adds to the mystery, and many agree there is a confusing but portentous atmosphere about politics at the moment.

"There's just this extraordinary feeling in the air," said the editor-in-chief of a Russian media holding. "You don't know what is going to happen, but you know it's probably going to be really bad."
 

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 #8
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
March 30, 2015
Report: Euphoria over 'return' of Crimea has passed among Russians
A new report suggests that the number of Russians who see the acquisition of Crimea in 2014 one year ago as a positive achievement is decreasing. The authors of the report believe that the reason for that is the fading of the initial euphoria over the "Crimean Spring." But political analysts say that this is a trend - a reassessment of last year's action by the authorities is underway in the country.
Yekaterina Sinelschikova, RBTH

Russians still see the takeover of Crimea as a great achievement, but one year after the peninsula was incorporated into the Russian Federation, growing numbers are beginning to question whether the move was in the country's interests, according to new research by a leading Russian pollster.

The new study by independent sociological research organization Levada Center, titled "Crimea and the Expansion of Russian Borders," shows that while the majority of Russians still believe that the acquisition of the peninsula was a great achievement whose positive effects will be felt in the future, the share of those convinced of this has fallen from 79 to 69 percent compared to last year.

In addition, more and more people are starting to believe that the events of the past year are instead indicative of a growing adventurism by the Russian leadership, which is seeking to distract Russians from social and economic problems (the percentage of Russians who believe this has increased from nine to 14 percent since March 2014).
A majority of citizens - 72 percent - believe that by behaving in such a way the country is asserting its interests in the post-Soviet space and returning to the status of a "great power" - yet this statistic has also fallen, down from 79 percent last year.

Researchers also found that more and more people are against the expansion of Russia's borders (57 vs. 32 percent).
 
Return to a long-term trend

However, these fluctuations over the year have had little impact on the final conclusion of sociologists: "On the whole, no significant changes have happened during the last year," the deputy director of Levada Center, Alexei Grazhdankin, said in an interview with RBTH.

Although the awareness of the problems associated with the acquisition of Crimea has grown over the year, while people with higher levels of education and income have become less supportive of the decision taken by the leadership, this is no reason to speak of a trend to decrease support, says the sociologist.

"If any changes have occurred, they are linked with a decline in the euphoria that reigned among the population after the accession of Crimea. But it passed as early as last summer; no significant changes have been observed since that moment," says Grazhdankin.

However, Konstantin Kalachyov, head of the Political Expert Group, disagrees with this assessment. "This is a downward trend," says Kalachyov, who notes that while the euphoria has passed, "here there is also an overlap with the economic crisis."

"Obviously, the less money a person has, the less they wish to pay for any decisions made by the authorities," he says. In addition, the attitude to the Crimean issue will change as people start exploring the peninsula itself. "People who go to Crimea after Egypt and Turkey will be disappointed with the quality of service," he says.
 
A new enemy?

However, sociologists argue that it is more correct to describe what is happening now as a return to the trend of previous years - it was 2014 that was an anomalous year rather than 2015.

"The accession of Crimea has somewhat reanimated the idea of restoring the Soviet Union, or, at least, the idea of integrating several republics into the Russian orbit," Grazhdankin says. That is why, in his opinion, the number of those opposed to the Russian expansion in 2014 was not so high (32 percent).

Crimea: Do Amnesty International claims of 'climate of fear' have any basis? Crimea: Do Amnesty International claims of 'climate of fear' have any basis?

But the idea of the possible collapse of Ukraine has gained traction in the mass consciousness over the past year, says the sociologist. The study has shown that every third Russian has a positive attitude to the disintegration of Ukraine (in 2014, it was one in four).

"Right now, many commentators are broadly discussing this question in the Russian media. They believe that federalization, even if it means the disintegration of the country, will be the solution to the problems of Ukraine," Grazhdankin explains.

"People have found a new enemy; we are offended by the behavior of our 'younger brother' in relation to the 'older,' so we say, 'Let them fall apart,'" says Kalachyov.

But, in his opinion, this is a temporary situation. "Everything will change depending on Ukraine's success in carrying out reforms. Remember how Russians treated the Baltic states in the 1990s; there was talk that the country was falling apart, that they wouldn't survive without us," he says.

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#9
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
March 30, 2015
INTERVIEW: Crimean Tatar leader urges West to step up sanction pressures on Russia
Sergei Kuznetsov in Kyiv
 
While many in the West now pay only lip service to the idea of Russia handing back the Crimean peninsula it annexed in March 2014, Mustafa Jemilev, one of the most influential leaders of the Crimean Tatars and an envoy of the Ukrainian president, has not given up. He tells bne IntelliNews that Western sanctions against Russia should be at the forefront of the fight to return Crimea to Ukraine, though he opposes any military solution to the dispute.

Jemilev was barred by the Russian authorities from entering Crimea in April 2014. Since then he has had no way of entering the territory. "De facto, they have refused me entry to Crimea, but they haven't provided me with any official document to this effect," he says.

The Crimean Tatar leader and his lawyer are currently appealing to the Russian courts in an attempt to obtain an official decision from the Russian authorities barring him from entering Crimea. Their aim is to use this document to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). "My wife and relatives remain in Crimea. However, it's hardly appropriate to talk about discomfort resulting from the fact that I am not allowed to go back to my home, when dozens of Ukrainians are perishing every day in eastern Ukraine," Jemilev says.

Jemilev is a member of the Ukrainian parliament, representing the bloc of President Petro Poroshenko. Last year, he was appointed by Poroshenko as the presidential envoy on Crimean Tatar affairs. Jemilev was deported by the Soviet authorities to Uzbekistan in 1944, and later became a dissident who fought for the rights of Crimean Tatars. After 15 years in Soviet prisons and labour camps, he returned to Crimea in 1989.

Leaving Crimea

The Mejilis, the representative body of the Crimean Tatars, has appealed to members of the Tatar community not to leave Crimea, "no matter how difficult it is," Jemilev says. "However, mothers fear for their children," he adds, pointing to incidents in which Crimean Tatars have disappeared or allegedly been kidnapped, and in some cases later found dead.

According to international organisations, up to 20,000 residents fled Crimea in 2014. "More than half of them are Crimean Tatars," Jemilev says, adding that for the most part those who left have headed to the western regions of Ukraine. "I believe that the exodus will go on, we are unlikely to be able to stop it. This especially applies to intellectuals and students - those who feel the lack of freedom more acutely than ordinary workers."

An additional stimulus for Tatars to leave Crimea is conscription into the Russian army. "I do not know a single Crimean Tatar who would like to serve in the Russian army. Although [the Russian authorities] have promised that draftees will not be taken out of Crimea before 2017, nobody believes them now," Jemilev says. "And taking an oath of allegiance to the occupant is a difficult act, from the moral point of view."

He also stresses that the Crimean Tatar leaders are "strongly opposed" to the relocation of Tatars to Turkey, a country which is close to the minority both linguistically and culturally, and where there is a large Crimean Tatar diaspora. "Turkey has better living conditions [so] if the Crimean Tatars leave for Turkey, they will not come back [when the occupation is finished]."

Jemilev believes that Turkey is trying to avoid taking a tough stance towards Russia, because of close economic and investment ties, as well as its dependence on Russian energy. "However, as a Nato member, Turkey is ready to fulfil all decisions taken by the alliance. So far, however, Nato has refrained from taking any decisions with regard to the aggressor."

The absence of any decisiveness on the part of Nato is among the factors why Turkey refused to move its navy close to the Crimean coast during the first weeks of the crisis. Jemilev says that he made such a request of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the then prime minister of Turkey, in March 2014.

Turkey currently has a declared strategy of using its special relations with Russia to make life easier for the Crimean Tatars. However, Jemilev is sceptical. According to him, Turkey is able to make everyday life easier for the Crimean Tatars, but the country "cannot convert Crimea into a democratic island within non-democratic Russia". "More importantly, there are no prospects for Crimean Tatars in this country [Russia]. The only solution is to do everything possible to force Russia to leave our territory."

Buying and forcing loyalty

According to Jemilev, since the very beginning of the annexation of Crimea, the Kremlin has employed two different strategies to gain the loyalty of the local Tatar community. The first is to try to gain the support of the Mejilis, "which is trusted by 90% of the Crimean Tatars", through "promises and attractive offers".

"However, this attempt has failed and the Russian authorities have started to use an alternate strategy: repressions, attempts to split the Crimean Tatars and trying to create 'a fifth column' who will cooperate with the occupants," Jemilev says. Today, Russia is preparing fresh elections to the Mejilis, trying to create a "puppet" Crimean representative body, he claims.

Jemilev himself is also under pressure. He says the Russian authorities are trying to manipulate a "family drama" that took place in 2013, when Jemilev's son Heyser "shot a friend of the family using my carbine". After the annexation of Crimea, Russian law-enforcement agencies accused Heyser of premeditated murder and relocated him from Crimea to Russia's Krasnodar for trial. According to Heyser and his lawyer, the killing was a result of negligence.

Jemilev says that in mid-July one Vladimir Putin's aides came to him in Kyiv with a proposal to meet with the Russian president. "He said that if I agreed, then the next day all doors [to Russia] would be open for me. And, most importantly, the next day my son would be home."

This invitation was the second attempt by the Kremlin to foster negotiations between Putin and Jemilev. In March 2014, before the illegal referendum on Crimea's incorporation into Russia, Jemilev had a phone conversation with the Russian president during a trip to Moscow on the invitation of Mintimer Shaimiev, the former president of Tatarstan. "Roughly speaking, Putin wanted me to become somebody like [Ramzan] Kadyrov [the president of Chechnya, loyal to the Kremlin] for the Crimean Tatars."

Western sanctions

Jemilev is pushing forWestern sanctions against Russia to be front and centre in the process of returning the Crimean peninsula to Ukraine. "Sanctions could damage Russia to the point that it would want to return Crimea," he argues. "And the West should step up its [sanction] efforts."

"It would be a major threat to the international community if this situation, in which a military stronger neighbour has seized the territory of another country, went unpunished. We are talking about the protection of the West itself," Jemilev underlines, though admits that the "de-occupation" of Crimea would take a long time and the issue is likely to remain a frozen dispute for the foreseeable future.

Significantly, Jemilev does not rule out that some Western nations have an interest in spinning out the crisis with the aim of further weakening Russia through sanctions and political isolation. "The more Crimea will be a part of Russia, the more the country will be weakened and vulnerable," he says.

Jemilev concludes that a military solution to the Crimea crisis would be the most undesirable one for the Crimean Tatars, due to fears that their lives would be in danger if hostilities were to break out. "Even if the Tatars didn't show clear pro-Ukrainian sentiments," he says, "the Russians believe that the Crimean Tatars are a 'fifth column' there."

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 #10
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
March 24, 2015
Crimea: Do Amnesty International claims of 'climate of fear' have any basis?
Amnesty International has released a report on the human rights situation in Crimea, timing it to coincide with the first anniversary of the peninsula's takeover by Russia. The report speaks of abductions and torture, attacks on the media and NGOs, violations of the rights of Crimean Tatars. However, representatives of some local organizations do not agree with these findings.
Alexei Timofeichev, RBTH

Human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) has published a 24-page report on the situation in Crimea. The authors of the document report numerous instances of human rights violations on the peninsula and say that over the past 12 months several people in Crimea have gone missing.

According to the report, released on March 18, seven people have been abducted, including three Crimean Tatars, one of whom was found dead in spring last year with signs of torture on his body. The whereabouts of the remaining six people remain unknown.

One of the authors of the report, an AI researcher for Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, Krasimir Yankov, told RBTH from Kiev that Amnesty did not see any progress in the investigation into the disappearances. At the same time, he said, the authorities had listened to the families of the abducted people and set up a contact group that had "met several times, promising to investigate all those incidents."

Yankov pointed to the fact that all the abducted people had one thing in common, their "pro-Ukrainian stance" and the fact that they had protested against Russia's takeover of Crimea.

In February, the head of the Russian Investigative Committee's directorate for Crimea, Mikhail Nazarov, announced that 12 criminal cases were being investigated in Crimea in connection with "missing people."

Crimean Deputy Prime Minister Ruslan Balbek told RBTH that the investigation is being carried out by the law-enforcement agencies, which are outside the supervision of the Crimean government.  
 
'Something out of nothing'?

Seytumer Nimetullayev, the head of Kyrym Birligi (Crimea Unity), a pro-Russian public organization formed in 2014 that describes its task as assisting "the revival of the Crimean Tatar people," told RBTH that he was aware that several people had gone missing but he did not know whether they had been abducted or "had left of their own accord." In either case, those were individual incidents, he claimed. According to him, "somebody is hyping up" this issue, while "Western media are trying to make something out of nothing."

At the same time, Nimetullayev stressed that "Crimean Tatars were experiencing a lot of problems." However, he continued, those problems have been caused by becoming part of a new state. The main difficulties are related to acquiring plots of land and registering them as one's property.

Ivan Garda, who heads the MIR Congress of Human Rights and Freedoms, which unites a group of socially-oriented NGOs, also says that the main problem being experienced by Crimean Tatars is related to obtaining land. Garda told RBTH that about a quarter of all the cases that human rights activists of his NGO are dealing with are complaints from Crimean Tatars related to the allocation of land rather than political problems.
 
Climate of fear?

According to Amnesty International, "the de facto authorities are creating a climate of fear in Crimea, using intimidation and restrictive laws to silence the media and NGOs." Garda, speaking of his experience over the past 12 months, said that the authorities may be lacking understanding about how public organizations work, however, they do not hinder NGOs in their work and sometimes assist them.

Garda also spoke of the situation concerning NGOs that have ceased operation over the past 12 months. Amnesty reports that "a number of prominent independent organizations have ceased to exist" in Crimea. According to Garda, many of those NGOs were funded from abroad and left after refusing to register under the controversial law requiring such NGOs  to register as "foreign agents."

"After the historical events, three-quarters of heads of those NGOs [with funding from abroad] left for Kiev and did not reregister them," said Garda, adding that they may still return. At the same time, he continued, "we have the Helsinki Group and several international organizations that are financed by foreign funds working here." 

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 #11
Russia Beyond the Headlines
March 30, 2015
Expats in Russia: No longer a boom - but not all doom and gloom
The ruble's calamitous fall against the euro and dollar this winter and a well-publicised recession makes Russia less attractive for expats than anytime in recent memory. But are they really leaving the country? Bryan MacDonald discovers that how the economy is faring back home plays a decisive role in whether Russia's foreigners stay or go.
Bryan MacDonald, special to RBTH

Learning English is difficult enough without the hassle of your teachers disappearing. Krasnodar-based model scout Tanya Firsova has gone through four native speakers this year already. "Initially, I thought it was me, or that they didn't like Krasnodar, but it's obviously the ruble. At this rate, I'll have to emigrate to Dublin to learn English," she joked. But is the situation really so uncomfortable for expats that they are leaving Russia?

Juan Martinez arrived in Russia's Far Eastern outpost of Khabarovsk in 2008, just as the economy of his native Spain fell off a cliff. Raised on balmy Andalusian nights, even after seven Siberian Januarys, he has failed to adjust to the city's devastatingly cold winters. However, while he hated the chill, Antonio loved the spending power the strong ruble gave him back home.

Helping to build a refinery near the Chinese border for Lukoil, Martinez, 47, was paid 300,000 rubles monthly, which once translated to £6,000 ($8,913). Due to the Russian currency's recent travails, it's now £3,500 ($5,199). Juan returns to Europe next week. Permanently.

"I came here with forty other Spanish engineers and administrative staff. Most of us expected to stay around six months but now about 25 of the original crew are still here and others come and go. Some of the group married locals, some stayed here with them and others took them back to Spain," he explains.

"I just kind of drifted here. I was divorced just before arriving and I've been sending money back to my two children," Juan elaborates. "With Spain in such a mess, I just couldn't walk away from £6,000 a month, but now that it's half that, I'd be confident of matching it in Madrid. Some of the others are heading to a project in Chile now. I am tired of moving."
 
Serbian stagnation

While Western Europe's economic position is generally improving, the eastern side of the continent remains largely moribund. Moscow-based Serb, Dragana Tomaskovic, 24, claims that Russia would need to collapse in order to match the level of despair in Belgrade.

"Everyone keeps asking me, 'are you leaving?' Russia has some terrible publicity because things aren't that bad! The rouble fell as low as 100 to the euro, now it's around 65. At this rate of recovery, it'll be back to 40 again soon enough," she predicts.

The ambitious young architect is motivated by more than just money. "I am staying because I like my job and my company, plus people have a hard time finding a job in my country. I am not here just because of the money, but work experience. And, if honest, I love Moscow."

British oil-executive, John Hogan, 50, has been based in Russia, on and off, since 2004. Hogan explains that despite the current economic problems, he stays to do business in Russia.

"Politics aside, Russia is a great country. The people are well educated and less ignorant than the British. That said, businesses are starting to struggle and lay people off, people are staying at home instead of travelling abroad," Hogan elucidates. "Also, supermarket prices have soared, probably fifty percent in real terms."

Despite reports of a mass expat exodus, John dismisses this notion: "I have not come across any foreigners wanting to leave unless they've been forced to. I'm negotiating with four oil companies right now to provide expert services and improve their margins and my UK colleagues are still very active in Russia."
 
Harsh facts

While John, Dragana and Juan are all currently in Russia, Canadian Tyler Moss had planned to return after a four-year absence. The 39 year-old former ice hockey professional and NHL veteran, played five seasons with Spartak Moscow and Amur Khabarovsk and left some of his heart in the vast country. "I love Russia," he says.

However, there's a large but. "Let's call a spade a spade, the economy is toast and there's no way to sugar-coat it. When I was in Russia last time (from 2006-2011) everything was on an upward curve. As a hockey player, you travelled the whole country and could see the improvements year on year. Now the data and forecasts are appalling," Moss insists.

The former goaltender subsequently found a fresh calling in the energy sector and was poised to market a new product in Russia for his Canadian company. "I was going to be based in Sochi and meet people at conferences there and do a bit of travelling around. After cold winters here in Calgary, I had an image of kicking back a bit in the Russian sub-tropics. That's parked for now, more's the pity. Man, I adore Russia, but it's got to sort itself out." With that, he tails off.

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 #12
AFP
March 29, 2014
Ruble gain brings hope to Russian economy

It has been a torrid time of late for the Russian economy, as the fallout from Ukraine and tumbling oil prices have plunged the country into financial crisis.

However, an unexpected recent rebound by the ruble has partially reversed months of pain for the national currency and fired hope among officials in Moscow that there might be light at the end of the tunnel.

Few analysts were betting on a bounce after the ruble lost over 40 percent of its value last year and carried on the slump into this year. However, a drop in fighting in east Ukraine and the steadying of oil prices seems to have combined with the tax payment season and a Kremlin drive to get money repatriated to fire an unlikely recovery.

Since briefly hitting a low of about 80 rubles to the US dollar and 100 rubles to the euro in December last year, and sparking panic among Russians, the ruble has now climbed back to about 57 rubles against the greenback and 62 rubles to the euro.

"The economic situation is still complicated, but we are seeing some significant signs of stabilization," Russian Minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukayev said in a rare upbeat statement this week.

With things starting to look up, Ulyukayev predicted that the drop in GDP this year could be less than the 3 percent that is officially forecast - still dire, but not as bad as feared.

Inflation has reached a high of about 17 percent, but has also appeared to stabilize of late and the finance ministry is already claiming that the recession could be over by the third quarter of this year.

VTB24 analyst Timur Khairullin said that the ruble's "firm dynamic" was being bolstered by both external and internal factors.

Among them is the fact that the time for firms to pay their taxes in the nation has only just passed, meaning there has been a spike in demand for the ruble.

Also Khairullin said the bump could have been helped by the promise by Russian President Vladimir Putin of an amnesty - now being considered by parliament - to try to encourage vast sums being stashed overseas to be repatriated to Russia.

Capital Economics analyst Neil Shearing said that the most important factor has been the "stabilization and then rebound in oil prices," but added that the extent of the ruble's earlier plunge was likely an overreaction in the first place.

"The ruble probably overshot to the downside during the sell-off before Christmas. Some form of correction was always likely and now that strains in the financial system have started to ease that has come through," Shearing said.

Despite the recent rise, Shearing warned that unless oil prices pick up even more then "it's difficult to make the case for a sustained strengthening in the ruble."

"The economy is sliding into recession, elements of the banking system remain vulnerable and financial sanctions remain in place," he said.

As calm returns to the Russian economy after the panicked turmoil of late last year, some analysts said that this would give authorities breathing space to fend off the worst.

The steadying of inflation meant that, for the second time in a few months, the central bank was able to cut its key interest rate after a monster hike in December last year.

"Effectively there is a recession, but it is not as deep as we anticipated," Alfa-Banks JSC's Natalia Orlova said. "The crisis of confidence isn't getting any worse, and that is good news."

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 #13
CNN.com
March 30, 2015
Now might be the time to buy Russia. Yes, really.
By Virginia Harrison  

Is the worst over for Russia? Some brave investors seem to think so and are piling back into its markets.

The oil-dependent economy is on track for a deep recession this year, and there's a risk that the West may impose more sanctions over Ukraine.

Yet Russia's stock market, currency and bonds are all bouncing higher.

After a horror year that saw the ruble roughly halve in value, Russia's currency has gained about 4% since the start of 2015 to trade at about 58 to the U.S. dollar. That compares with the record low of 80 hit in late December.

Helping revive the currency's fortunes has been a halt in oil's recent slide. Crude futures are steadier, trading just below $50 a barrel as tensions in the Middle East stoke supply concerns. That's positive for the Russian economy, which relies heavily on oil revenues.

Bond markets are also showing promise. Russia's 10-year government bond yields have eased to about 11.5% from 13.5% at the start of the year. Yields, which move in the opposite direction to bond prices, are still well above where they were a year ago but the drift lower is positive.

"That's a product of broader stabilization in financial markets," said VTB chief Russia economist Vladimir Kolychev. "It seems that trend is sustainable."

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is also bullish on Russian bonds.

David Hauner, an analyst at the bank, recently picked ruble-denominated government bonds as his top bet in eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Hauner said instability in Ukraine may be steering investors away from the "best [trade] of the year."

Russian stocks have brightened too. The MICEX index has rallied more than 14% so far this year.

Fund flows appear to support the view that sentiment is shifting. The stock market saw capital inflows of $6.6 million in the week to March 25, Russian media reported, citing data from EPFR Global.

That may sound small but it's a big swing from the previous week when the markets recorded an outflow of $57.7 million.

While Russia's financial markets are calmer than they were in December, the investment climate could sour again quickly if relations with the U.S. and Europe deteriorate further, or if oil prices resume their slide -- perhaps triggered by the lifting of sanctions on Iran.

A ceasefire deal reached in February between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists remains fragile. Violence in contested eastern Ukraine appears to be receding but an escalation of fighting could trigger additional sanctions.

Andrew Risk, principal Russia analyst at London-based political risk firm GPW, said there is a "reasonably strong likelihood of more sanctions."

New trade restrictions would exacerbate Russia's economic problems. Still, ignoring Russia as an investment destination could be shortsighted.

"It's still a very large economy with potentially very interesting opportunities," Risk said. And past political tension between Russia and the West hadn't prevented successful investments in the past

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 #14
Moscow Times
March 19, 2015
Predicting the Future With Russia's Economic Nostradamus
By Ivan Nechepurenko

Mikhail Dmitriyev, president of the New Economic Growth consultancy, is often described as "Russia's top brain."

He studied in Leningrad in the '80s and took part in economics discussion clubs with the people who transformed Russia into a market economy, including Anatoly Chubais, the architect of Russia's privatization program, and Alexei Kudrin, Russia's longtime finance minister from 2000 to 2011.

Some of those people who were discussing the future of the country's economy at a time when nobody imagined that the Soviet Union would collapse now occupy government posts. Others, including Alfred Koch and Andrei Illarionov, have turned critical of the country's current government.

Dmitriyev, 54, is somewhere in the middle. After serving as deputy economy minister in 2000-04, during which he was responsible for some of the most important reforms of President Vladimir Putin's first term in the Kremlin, he became head of the Center for Strategic Research, the country's top think tank on economic policy.

In reports produced by the think tank, Dmitriyev showed an uncanny ability to correctly predict the future, forecasting, among other things, the rise of political protests in Moscow and other big cities in 2011-12 and the current Russian economic downturn. This earned him fame among other analysts, but also latent irritation from the authorities. A year ago, he was forced to leave the Center for Strategic Research together with his team after his contract was not extended. Around the same time, he was beaten up at the entrance to his apartment block. The attackers took his computer, but did not touch his wallet or other valuables.

"Chronologically it coincided with the decision of the CSR's board to appoint a new president. No other clues are available," he told The Moscow Times in an interview.

Dmitriyev, who now heads the New Economic Growth consultancy, believes Russian society is undergoing fundamental changes that will become visible before the 2016 State Duma elections.

The economist met with The Moscow Times to share his views on the current economic, political and social situation in Russia.

Q: It is now clear even to the government that sanctions do affect the Russian economy. But how do they affect Russian society and support for President Vladimir Putin?

A: The foreign policy agenda, Ukrainian conflict and the economic crisis go hand in hand. We have observed a dramatic evolution of public attitudes toward the Ukrainian crisis throughout the last year. At the beginning of 2014, the whole issue was considered through the perspective of foreign policy achievements. Back then, the approval of what people saw as the restoration of Russia's status as a great power got maximum ratings: It [Putin's electoral rating] increased from 36 percent to more than 50 percent at that time, according to Levada Center surveys. The majority of respondents singled out this issue [Ukraine] as Putin's main achievement.

By the end of the year, that attitude had changed. Russia's ambitious foreign policy began to be considered not as an achievement but as a source of the threat of military conflict. The perception of a real threat of war has increased almost three times from the beginning of last year: Now almost 40 percent of respondents consider the risk of Russia being engaged in a military conflict as one of the key issues.

People have also begun to see Western powers as an enemy and a threat. Only a year ago, less than 20 percent of Russians considered the United States Russia's enemy. By August, that figure had increased to 82 percent, the highest ever recorded.

This situation means people can still approve of Putin, but the nature of the approval has shifted from positive motivation - approval of achievements - to negative: approval due to the perception of foreign threats. The acquisition of Crimea was considered a positive achievement, but now Russia's isolation is considered to be a threat. This threat can also consolidate [people], but only from a negative perspective.

If the Ukraine conflict escalates further, then this negative consolidation could turn against the authorities. People could get tired of military confrontation, which will no longer motivate them to support the government.

In our focus group studies, we first discovered last December that it was difficult to stimulate respondents to talk about the Ukraine conflict in a rational way. They were often giving very normative, emotional answers.

On such sensitive issues, people tend to say what they feel they should say. In order to avoid this we used projective tests: We asked respondents to compare Russia with any animals they considered appropriate. At the time of Crimea's incorporation into Russia, respondents compared Russia with bigger and stronger animals, such as the bear. At the end of the year, shortly before the ruble's deepest dive, many respondents compared Russia to a smaller animal, such as a wolf or hedgehog.

What this means is that Russia was perceived as stronger at the beginning of the year than at the end. This became particularly clear when we looked into the standard average physical weight of each animal. We found that Russia's average weight had declined by 36 percent from the beginning of the year.

It was interesting that this decline correlated with the ruble's devaluation, which depreciated by 39 percent in the same period. This means that people began to associate Russia's economic might with the country's ability to achieve foreign policy goals.

This may also imply that if the foreign policy crisis escalates, sanctions are strengthened and the economy suffers, then it is likely that the approval rating of the president will go down.

Q: Over what sort of timeframe could these developments take place?

A: The economic sentiment [how positive people feel about the country's economy] of Russians is going down fast. Sberbank's financial sentiment index, which measures popular demand for financial services, is already at its lowest point ever. Usually presidential approval ratings follow attitudes to the economy with some lag. In the last 15 years, there has never been a case when a decline in economic sentiment was not followed by a decline in approval ratings.

After the previous economic crisis, approval ratings declined by 25 percent from the peak level of 2008, but it was a stop and start process.

This time we see that high ratings are underpinned by boosted patriotic sentiment among Russians. The propensity for protest is much lower now in 2015 than it was in 2011-12, when mass political protests took place in Moscow. The public's attitude toward the political protests of Russians on Bolotnaya and Sakharova squares has gone from generally positive to strongly negative. That happened during this last year, when the public reflected on the latest Ukrainian revolution and its implications for Ukraine and Russia.

Now such large-scale protest events are associated with the risk of destabilization, economic decline and even the disintegration of the country. Therefore, it looks quite unlikely that large-scale political protests could happen in Russia in the near future.

Q: Is that a long-term or a short-term prediction?

A: That depends on how strong the memory of the Ukraine crisis turns out to be.

Economic protests, on the other hand, are a different story. The propensity for such protest activity is already in the red zone. The decline in incomes, high inflation and raising utility tariffs greatly contribute to this situation. These issues could cause major concern this year. Last year was the first one in the 21st century when the real incomes of Russians declined, and this trend will continue this year. January inflation was the highest since 1999.

Therefore, we can expect that these economic protests will intensify this year.

There is a big differentiation between political and economic protests in Russia. The latter are usually scattered among the Russian regions. Moscow and St. Petersburg are much less vulnerable to an economic crisis than provincial towns. In 2010, there were 34,000 protest events, according to our data, but most of them were outside Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Political protests, on the other hand, are concentrated in the capitals, the last wave in particular. These protests were very different from the economic protests.

Q: Could economic protests affect Russian foreign policy?

A: Economic protests are less challenging in terms of retaining political control. In my view, such protests are unlikely to force the authorities to change their policy on Ukraine.

Q: Do you believe it is possible for Russia to achieve economic growth while it is in confrontation with the West?

A: There are two challenges in terms of achieving higher levels of growth for Russia. Given the current economic policy mix, the potential growth rates are 1-2 percent a year in the longer term. This means that the gap between Russia and advanced economies will widen.

Russia is currently in the middle-income trap [meaning it is stuck at a certain level of development], making it similar to Argentina, Venezuela and Iran.

If the Ukrainian crisis ends in the political, financial and trade isolation of Russia from Western economies, growth will be perpetually limited. The largest market for Russia is still the European Union, because the European market is the closest to the geographic center of the Russian economy, which is somewhere around Moscow.

In contrast, the Chinese center of economic growth is very far from Moscow, while the EU economy is still larger and more technologically advanced than that of China. In 2010 Russia's combined exports to Germany, the U.K. and France were almost 1.5 times higher than Russia's exports to China. This will change, but only in the long run. According to HSBC bank's latest projections, by 2050 China is set to become Russia's largest trading partner and Russia's exports to China will be three times higher than Russia's exports to Germany, the U.K. and France combined.

In the short term, any disruption in cooperation with the EU will bring economic slowdown. Because of the size and distance of the Chinese economy, Russia's trade with China will not compensate for the decline in its trade with Europe. Russia's Far East will benefit from more trade with China, especially as the security concerns have been eased there. At the same time, regions such as St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad [near borders with EU countries] will suffer from the disruption of trade with Europe.

Q: Who do you think loses more from sanctions, Russia or the EU?

A: The EU losses are minimal at this stage. Further escalation - for instance if all gas supplies from Russia stop - would change that.

Russia's economic losses from sanctions and Russian anti-sanctions [retaliatory measures] are much more significant. So far, the main damage comes from financial sanctions against Russian companies.

For instance, the ruble has lost about 50 percent of its value under the combined impact of foreign policy risks, sanctions and the decline of oil prices. There is no [other] oil exporting country that has seen its currency devalue by more than 20 percent.

Further escalation of sanctions may cause much heavier losses, in particular if Russian banks are disconnected from the SWIFT system.

Q: How strong are the conservative and progressive elements of Russian society in relative terms?

A: In larger cities, many people are concerned about human development issues, such as education, health or civic and political rights. At the same time, the relative strength of these priorities has declined. Crimea's incorporation into Russia was considered even by socially advanced middle-class groups as a manifestation of the country's achievements.

Despite being achievement-oriented in some sense, such sentiments do not correspond to what we believe are modernist values. They reveal an obsession with territorial claims, which for the time being are placed above any other social and economic matters. So there was a certain setback from the modernist agenda to more traditional values, even among the middle classes in Russia. This does not mean that the middle class completely lost interest in the development agenda. But now the economic crisis has begun to work against these values too.

What we see is that as current consumption becomes affected by the crisis, the intentions of the middle class are refocusing on immediate survival above getting a better education or career advancement. In short, priorities have shifted to minimizing risks at the cost of achievement and development objectives. This shifts society's overall priorities back toward more traditional values.

By 2014, over 40 percent of the Russian population could be considered middle class, according to the classification of prominent sociologist Natalya Tikhonova. More than half of that middle class holds relatively modernist values, while among other groups the traditionalists prevail.

What we discovered in 2012 was that for the first time even the less advanced social groups outside Moscow and St. Petersburg suddenly turned to developmental priorities, with current issues of everyday consumption and risk minimization receding. This shift was taking place among all social groups, our study revealed. But outside Moscow this shift of priorities proved to be short-lived because it was not underpinned by a fundamental change in behavioral models and institutions. Social norms could not adjust so quickly to dramatic improvements in current consumption.

Our next survey in the middle of 2013 revealed that the majority in Russian provinces had slid back to survivalist mentality. Only in Moscow did there still remain a much bigger concern for human rights, environment, and education, while in the provinces these matters seemed much less important.

This is not the end of social modernization in Russia, but rather a temporary transitional setback. The new priorities are not yet embedded in new behavioral models and institutions. That is why such wide swings in public opinion have become possible. Public attitudes during transition have become more volatile.

Q: You were part of the modernization team of the Russian government, implementing German Gref's program during Putin's first term in 2000-04. Do you think the government will be forced to go back to the reform agenda, given that real incomes are falling and the economy is contracting?

A: Today, I do not see any decisive indications of a long-term policy shift toward successful development. There is a long way to go before this agenda becomes a priority for the current economic administration in Russia.

First, there is the issue of isolationist economic policy. If Russia follows Venezuela, Argentina or Iran, any attempts to accelerate long-term economic growth - even with institutional reforms - will be hopeless. It will also make any attempts to introduce a new set of policies irrelevant.

The second issue is that mere institutional reforms are not enough to achieve long-term economic growth in Russia. The previous reform package was very instrumental for a country that was still relying on energy-driven economic growth. Basic liberalization helped to translate growing export revenues into higher consumption for the vast majority of Russians.

At that time, non capital-intensive sectors were among the fastest growing in Russia: telecommunications, retail trade, retail banking and so forth. IT was the only exception, when the high-tech services sector became a booming export industry. All the other booming industries were driven by domestic consumption.

That was the easy part of the task, but today this model is completely exhausted. Housing, infrastructure and human capital now come to the foreground. The World Bank assesses that two-thirds of potential productivity growth in Russia could be delivered by simply improving the quality and quantity of infrastructure.

The Russian economy has already outgrown its energy sector. There are clear natural ceilings in energy export growth in current dollar terms, and energy exports will continue to decline as a percentage of GDP. The world does not need more energy from Russia. Export can no longer drive the Russian economy, and it is clear that we should find non-resource-based solutions for further economic growth.

In this regard, the policy mix that the Russian government and elite is trying to put forward - import substitution in industry and agriculture - is irrelevant to future economic growth. There is some room for import substitution, but manufacturing and agriculture contribute less than 20 percent to Russia's GDP. In addition, real exchange rate appreciation will in the long run undermine short-term gains in manufacturing competitiveness due to the recent devaluation of the ruble.

If we aim to achieve average economic growth of 4 percent, which would enable Russia to bridge the gap with advanced economies in the next 20-30 years, then the import substitution strategy would require completely unrealistic growth rates of 10-20 percent in manufacturing and agriculture.

The solution to this requires a much more complex strategy that would aim at accelerating a far broader range of non-energy sectors, mainly in services. This policy agenda would go far beyond simply reforming public administration or the overall deregulation of the economy.

Q: Is the answer in the rule of law and democracy?

A: These concepts are relevant and important, but are not sufficient to secure high economic growth. The next major long-term drivers of economic growth in Russia are in the services. They include some of the traditional sectors, such as construction, logistics and transport infrastructure. But Russia also badly needs further advances in modern business services. In Russia, the proportion of business services in employment is still 1.5 times less than in Germany, while it [the proportion of people employed] in retail is higher than in Germany.

What do business services really mean? This is design, marketing, engineering, IT, legal services, architectural services, financial intermediation and others. These are very varied industries, but they are skill-intensive and highly productive. In addition, these services are no longer linked to the location where they are consumed. There is also a similar or even higher potential for growth in health, education, culture and entertainment.

If Russia wants to reduce its dependency on energy exports, it has to focus on the modern and productive segments of services. This requires a very different policy mix from the previous economic leap of the 2000s.

Q: In this regard, Russia does have several success stories: Yandex, Kaspersky, Mail.ru, which have developed in the last 15 years under not very developed governance in the country.

A: These individual successes indicate that the combination of skills of the Russian workforce is conducive to such industries. There might be many more successes in these areas with the right set of policies.

One of the main challenges is that these sectors need large economies of scale and require a large concentration of people, knowledge, skills and similar companies in one location. Most of them develop in the world's largest agglomerations. Russia's problem is its spatial inefficiency. The proportion of the population living in major metropolitan areas in Russia is only 20 percent; for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development it is 50 percent. This problem is aggravated by the fast decline of the working-age population in Russia.

This means that a vast pool of skilled and potentially productive workers is trapped in inefficient locations, where business services are unlikely to be competitive. The productivity gap between Russia's large agglomerations and small towns is enormous. An enterprise in a small town of less than 50,000 people is 30 percent less productive than the same enterprise in a city with a population of more than one million.

In Russia, wages and real estate prices fall much more quickly than in developed countries as you move away from the core of a major agglomeration. This means that the areas of higher productivity around Russian agglomerations are also much smaller.

Connecting big cities with the surrounding areas by more efficient transport networks and encouraging labor mobility will make it possible to gradually shift 20-30 percent of the working population within the economy into major metropolitan areas. Russia could create an environment that is much more conducive to the faster growth of productive non-oil economy.

Q: How could the government do that?

A: We have very few efficient agglomerations and only a small fraction of the workforce is located there. This needs a comprehensive redesign of housing policy, which must remove the unacceptable barriers for developers and diversify supply, particularly toward rental housing. Supply of modern office space should also be radically enhanced.

Regulations must become conducive to the knowledge economy. These are issues of intellectual property rights, easier entry and exit of companies, better enforcement of minority shareholder rights to facilitate the capitalization of startups, and the effective protection of small and medium-sized companies from fraudulent hostile takeovers.

The urban environment must become more friendly for learning, leisure and socialization. It should provide cultural and recreational activities that are associated with upper middle class lifestyles. It should become more environmentally friendly and better connected by modern mass transit systems. In all these areas Russian policy-makers face enormous challenges.

This new development agenda affects very diverse areas and requires many new policy competences. It must be a comprehensive and coherent strategy: When implemented, it cannot fail in some aspects and still be successful as a whole.

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 #15
Sputnik
March 30, 2015
Investigators Identify Mastermind Behind Nemtsov's Murder

Russia's Investigative Committee has said that they have identified the name of the person who gave weapons, a vehicle and money to the suspect accused of killing Russian politician Boris Nemtsov, Russia's Kommersant newspaper reported on Monday, citing a source familiar with the investigation.

According to the newspaper, the new suspect, known only as Ruslik, delivered a gun and a car to those involved in Nemtsov's murder. He also promised that they would get 5 million rubles (about 85,200 dollars) each.

The newspaper claims that Ruslik is thought to have ordered and organized the assassination. The investigative committee is not releasing Ruslik's real name to the general public, according to the Kommersant.

Ruslik is not on the wanted list yet, as only suspected killer Zaur Dadayev has mentioned his name to investigators.

On February 27, Boris Nemtsov, who served as Russia's deputy prime minister in late 1990s, was shot and killed in central Moscow.

Five suspects in the case have already been arrested, including  Ramzan Bakhayev, Tamerlan Eskerkhanov, Shagit and Anzor Gubashev and Zaur Dadayev. Dadayev was the only one to plead guilty, but later withdrew his plea after the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights suggested his confession was made under duress.

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 #16
New York Times
March 30, 2015
Russian Theater Director Fired for Offending Christians
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR and SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY

MOSCOW - In the latest skirmish between the Russian Orthodox Church and the cultural elite, the culture minister on Sunday fired the director of a Siberian theater who included a controversial interpretation of the life of Jesus in the Richard Wagner opera "Tannhauser."

The director, Boris Mezdrich, had failed to apologize and to take other steps to mitigate the outcry among the Orthodox faithful offended by various aspects of the production at the Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater, said Vladimir Aristarkhov, the deputy minister of culture, according to Interfax.

President Vladimir V. Putin has made the protection of "traditional values," including religious values, a pillar of his third term. In this case, Mr. Putin made his opinion known on March 23 when he awarded a state medal for "service to the homeland" to Aleksandr Novopashin, a priest in the Novosibirsk diocese who helped to lead the campaign against "Tannhauser."

This case came three years after the storm over Pussy Riot, a punk protest band that performed an anti-Putin song in a Moscow cathedral. Several band members served up to two years in prison for "hooliganism."

In 2013, a blasphemy law made it a criminal offense to perform public acts that offend believers, punishable by up to three years in prison.

The church took Mr. Mezdrich and the director of the opera, Timofei Kulyabin, to court in February, accusing them of offending the feelings of believers with their December production. Local prosecutors threw out the case on March 10.

But the church continued on the offensive. On Sunday, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the theater, praying and holding up signs saying things like "Judas; 5th Column; Get out of the Culture Ministry" and "Let's defend our faith in Christ from sacrilege."

In an interview this month, Vladimir Medinsky, the culture minister, denied that the Kremlin was the enforcement arm of the Russian Orthodox Church. He made his displeasure over the opera clear, however, saying that the director had made a mistake by not warning the community about what was coming and then not reacting to the outcry.

"You have to explain what kind of a production this is, that it's a new interpretation," Mr. Medinsky said. "You have to talk to people. Instead, their position was approximately: 'You foolish priests and your henchmen don't understand anything about art.' "

Wagner's circa 1845 opera focuses on a hero who is initially tempted by Venus and her entourage, but is eventually drawn back to the Roman Catholic Church.

The Novosibirsk version imagines Tannhauser as a modern film director who makes the temptation of Venus something that Jesus Christ endures. Perhaps the most controversial element was the poster for the would-be film, which shows a crucifix between the naked, open legs of a woman.

Cultural figures expressed dismay at the firing, with Aleksandr Kalyagin, the chairman of the Union of Theater Workers of Russia, saying it was a harsher reaction than those seen under the Soviet Union.

"Even in Soviet times there was a procedure known as the last warning from the party," Mr. Kalyagin was quoted as saying by the official Tass news agency. "There are few good theater directors in the provinces," he said. "By firing such people, we might be tossing away professionals."

The culture ministry announced that the new director of the Novosibirsk opera house would be Vladimir Kekhman, the head of a St. Petersburg theater, who called the "Tannhauser" production "blasphemy" produced by "militant atheists" in remarks published on the ministry's website.

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 #17
www.rt.com
March 30, 2015
'Forced measure' - theater boss sacked after church row over Tannhauser opera

The Russian Culture Ministry had to replace the general director of Novosibirsk Opera Theater because the recent row with the Orthodox Church over a controversial opera staging led to a conflict in society, a senior Kremlin official has said.

Magomedsalam Magomedov, deputy head of the Presidential Administration, told reporters Monday that the ministry's decision was forced by an unprecedented public reaction.

"This interpretation of Wagner was disliked by a great number of people and insulted the feelings of believers, which we should not permit. I think that we have no right to stage works that insult a part of our population and insult their feelings," he said.

"In future we should see to the fact that all important theaters stage works that are aimed at uniting our people, and not those that split society," Magomedov added.

Also on Monday, President Vladimir Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, dismissed allegations that stricter control over the state-funded cultural establishment was similar to censorship. "The state has the right to expect that the theater collectives would stage the variants of plays that would not cause such acute reaction from public opinion," Peskov said.

On Sunday, Culture Minister Vladimir Medinskiy also said in a televised interview that in his opinion the actions of cultural establishments must not cause any strife in society, or become the cause for court cases or street rallies, especially if the establishments in question receive their funding from the state.

The comments came shortly after media reports about the sacking of Boris Mezdrich from the post of general director of the Novosibirsk Opera Theater. The move came after a scandal erupted over the theater's modern interpretation of Wagner's Tannhauser, which caused the ire of the local diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The staging, prepared by director Timofey Kulyabin, moved Wagner's romantic story of a medieval knight into the modern day. The main character, Tannhauser, became a film director who was shooting a movie about the life of Jesus Christ in which the Savior lives in carnal sin with the goddess Venus. The believers were especially upset by a poster advertising the opera, which depicted a crucifix placed between a woman's legs.

In January, Novosibirsk Bishop Tikhon asked regional prosecutors to instigate a criminal case against the director and theater officials who allowed the staging. The cleric claimed that it was violating the Russian law that forbids publicly insulting the religious feelings of other citizens. Violators of the law, introduced in 2013, can face up to three years in prison.

The prosecutors started a probe against Mezdrich and Kulyabin, but only instigated an administrative case against them on charges of public desecration of religious attributes or literature. On March 10, a district magistrate in Novosibirsk cleared both suspects and ordered a halt to the case "due to the absence of the corpus delicti."

However, the scandal has already hit the media, and caught a public furor. Actors, artists and the liberal public in Siberia and across Russia have launched a petition in defense of embattled theater personalities, while Orthodox activists organized a 3,000-strong rally near the theater, demanding stronger protection for their religious feelings.

The decision to sack Mezdrich was announced soon after the rally. He has told reporters that he was not planning to contest his firing.

The newly appointed general director of the theater, Vladimir Kekhman, said in a press interview that he intended to return the establishment to its initial historical name, the Bolshoi Theater of Siberia.

In mid-March, the Interfax news agency reported that Kulyabin had been invited to work at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, had accepted the offer and will start working in the next season. The Bolshoi has confirmed the talks with Kulyabin, and promised to make a statement in May.

On Monday, a Culture Ministry statement said that Mezdrich's sacking was caused by his unwillingness to consider the traditional values accepted in society, by a lack of respect for public opinion and for refusing to follow the recommendations of the theater's sponsors.

The ministry also called on the Novosibirsk Diocese to withdraw its criminal complaint over the opera. "The issues of creativity and artistic images must not be discussed at mass rallies or, which is even worse, in courts. We ask the leaders of the Novosibirsk Diocese to retract their address to prosecutors and ask them to hold all future discussions in format of mutually respectful dialogue," the release reads.

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 #18
www.opendemocracy.net
March 30, 2015
The Russian politics of multiculturalism
The relationship between religion and ethnicity on the one hand, and civic assimilation on the other, is far less harmonious than Putin's magniloquence asserts.
By Anna Alekseveva

Much has been made in the last several years of Vladimir Putin's close alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). With charges of corruption, laundering, and a now infamous botched wristwatch Photoshop incident tarnishing the Church's image, few would deny that this partnership is more about political expediency than genuine piety.

But while there is an ideological consensus between the Russian Church and the state, it does not necessarily lie in ecumenical doctrine. The central point at which Putin and the ROC converge is in their rejection of 'the liberal mode of civilisation,' as Patriarch Kirill writes in his manifesto Freedom and Responsibility: A Search for Harmony, in favour of 'national culture and religious identity.'

Russia is a vast and diverse country, and in promoting a mode of governance rooted in cultural and religious identity, Putin's nationalist ideology extends beyond the Russian Christian Orthodox demographic base. In his discourses, Putin has worked to cultivate an image of a multi-ethnic and multi-faith Russia. While the ROC certainly maintains a spotlight in the political arena, Putin has made a rhetorical effort to step away from the Church as the be-all-and-end-all of Russian identity, insisting that Russia's strength lies in its cultural diversity.

A Russian brand of Islam

To accommodate a multicultural national identity - one that is positioned at the juncture of Asia and Europe - Putin has elevated Islam alongside Russian Orthodox Christianity as one of the country's two central religions.

Approximately 20m Muslims live in Russia, comprising 14% of the population, and making Russia home to the largest Muslim population in Europe.

Not only has Putin defended Islam as historically indigenous to Russian culture, he has also sided with the proposition that Orthodox Christianity is closer to Islam than to Catholicism. While Western Protestants evince their liberal values through support of abortion and homosexuality, Putin has said, Islam and the ROC are bound in their deference to a traditional value system.

As one of Russia's four traditional religions (alongside Judaism and Buddhism), Islam does get special status. The state has lent support to various Islamic institutions, including religious schools and an Islamic TV channel.

Those religious authorities willing to cooperate with the state, such as Talgat Tajuddin, Russia's Chief Mufti, maintain close relations with Putin. In the past, the bond between the state and Muslim leaders has at times even eclipsed - if only momentarily - its closeness with the ROC. When anti-government protesters gathered in Bolotnaya Square in 2011, Damir Mukhetdinov, deputy head of the Russian Muslims Religious Directorate, condemned protesters while representatives of the ROC maintained a more neutral stance.

But the brand of Islam that Russia promotes is tightly circumscribed. Dating back to imperial policy, the state has worked to dissociate Russia's Muslims from transnational Islam, creating a domestic infrastructure of Islamic administration and leadership. Putin has denounced the import of Islamic practices like the wearing of the hijab, arguing that they are foreign to traditional Russian Islam. In 2012, the President sided with a ban on girls wearing headscarves to public schools in the Stavropol region.

More troubling has been the government's policy regarding religious extremism, which has fanned public fears by alleging widespread 'Wahhabi' threats, often based on little evidence. In the lead up to the Sochi Olympics, authorities conducted sweeping raids in Muslim places of worship in Moscow and St Petersburg, detaining hundreds of people.

The state's tangled and contradictory relationship with the broader Russian Muslim community can be summed up in Putin's policy towards the North Caucasus. There, full-scale war, which provided Putin with critical political capital early on in his presidency, was succeeded by government subsidies and a wholesale redevelopment of Grozny.

Yet despite these fraught policies, the government has nonetheless maintained a rhetorical commitment to Russia as an ethnically inclusive state, even against the backdrop of growing tides of ethnic nationalism (a trend so oft remarked that it has become a platitude in contemporary analysis of Russia). In the aftermath of ethnic riots in 2010 in Moscow's Manezh Square and in cities across Russia, Putin condemned the rioters' xenophobic targeting of North Caucasians. 'We are all children of the same country,' he declared, 'we have a common motherland. Russia has been a multi-confessional and multi-ethnic state.'  

Religion and foreign policy

While Putin's words can be cast off as mere tokenism, his defence of ethnic and religious diversity is clearly part of a domestic and foreign policy agenda.

In the 1990s, staking out its liminal position between the world's major political groupings, Russia worked to develop a role as a mediator between the Muslim world and the West. Russia denounced American interventions in Iraq, pursued a 'two track policy' with Iran, contributing to its nuclear programme while maintaining dialogue with Washington; and engaged with Hamas leadership. More recently, in 2009, Medvedev asserted that Russia is 'an organic part' of the Muslim world, a sentiment that was reiterated by Putin, who argued that 'our country is developing close and multifaceted relationships with the governments of the Muslim world.' These declarations of unity have been borne out by Russia's defence of the Syrian government, in which Putin has painted Russia as an apostle of international law.

The government's appeal to unity with the Muslim world also helps legitimise Russia's eastward economic expansion, which it has begun with the establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union, a Slavic-Turkic alliance that will include Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia. 'Eurasian integration,' argued Putin in his speech at the 2013 Valdai International Discussion Club, 'is a chance for the entire post-Soviet space to become an independent centre for global development, rather than remaining on the outskirts of Europe and Asia.'

In the context of westward expansion, too, the rhetoric of inclusivity has played a role. Early in his speech after the annexation of Crimea, Putin emphasised that Crimea's 'unique blend' of different cultures and traditions paralleled that of 'Russia as a whole, where not a single ethnic group has been lost over the centuries.' (Crimea's Tatars, who have only relatively recently returned to the region after Stalin's ethnic cleansing of their entire population in 1944, might have been sceptical of such claims.)

Anti-Western

Putin's geopolitics positions Russia as a nation between East and West. When it comes to values and morality, however, Putin's Russia is decidedly anti-Western.  

This contrast is premised not only on the asserted distinction between Russia's religions and Western Christianity, but on the very basic divergence between a religious Russia and a secular West. In the same 2013 Valdai speech, Putin lamented that 'people in many European countries are embarrassed or afraid to talk about their religious affiliations. Holidays are abolished or even called something different; their essence is hidden away, as is their moral foundation.' Not so in Russia, where legislation passed in 2013 has penalised the promotion of 'gay propaganda' to minors and criminalised acts that insult people's religious feelings (dubbed by many as the 'Pussy Riot' law).

And while European secularism stifles multiculturalism, says Putin (or, at least establishes an 'artificial' multiculturalism, whatever that may mean), Russia preserves a rich concentration of ethnicities and languages unparallelled even by the land of immigrants itself, the United States.

The rhetorical middle ground

Such claims to multiculturalism and multi-confessionalism may be part of Putin's attempt to position Russia as a preeminent civilisation, re-establishing the country as a moral and political centre of gravity, but the President makes sure to couple these claims with affirmations of national unity and patriotism.  

Careful to temper his endorsement of ethnic diversity, Putin has noted that 'it is clearly impossible to identify oneself only through one's ethnicity or religion.' Instead, the President argued, 'people must develop a civic identity on the basis of shared values, a patriotic consciousness, civic responsibility and solidarity ...' To this end, Putin has fondly referenced the enthusiasm with which Soviet Muslims and other ethnic groups defended their homeland during the Second World War 'from the Brest fortress ... to Berlin itself.' References to the Soviet government's mass deportations of many of these groups during the war didn't make it into his speech.

By singling out patriotism as one of the values that all of Russia's traditional religions share - alongside justice, truth, and industriousness - Putin has attempted to reconcile ethnic and civic identity into a singular, pro-Russian allegiance.

In reality, though, the relationship between religion and ethnicity on the one hand, and civic assimilation on the other, is far less harmonious than Putin's magniloquence asserts. Take, for example, Russia's new nationalities policy of 2012, which has been criticised from both sides of the aisle. Minority rights supporters argue that the policy undermines the status and autonomy of non-Russian nationalities. Russian nationalist groups, meanwhile, decry the new policy for removing references to the 'state-forming role of the [ethnically] Russian people.'

A superficial commitment to diversity may have a certain strategic significance in projecting a vision of Russia as a resurgent counterpart to the West, capable of allying itself with Asia and the Middle East. However, this political stance will do little to appease domestic constituencies such as nationalists and non-Russian ethnic groups, who will feel betrayed by the government's lack of commitment in either direction.

On the foundational question of Russian national identity - to which sphere of the world does the country belong? - Putin has time and again staked out a rhetorical middle ground. Russia, according to Putin, is neither one nor the other: it is 'a unique civilisation connecting East and West.' In other words, Russia doesn't have to choose sides. It seems, however, that there is some contradiction in this equivocation. Is it possible, after all, to be both part of the West and idiosyncratically distinct from it?

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#19
Russia Insider
http://russia-insider.com
March 29, 2015
The BBC on Putin: It's Not the USSR He Hankers after - It's East Germany!
A lengthy article in the BBC magazine accompanying a documentary claims the fall of East Germany was a formative experience for Putin. It probably was but not in the way the article says
By Alexander Mercouris

The BBC has published yet another in the unending series of articles that tries to "explain" Putin.

The basic claim made by this article is that Putin was completely won over by the sort of political system he saw in East Germany, which had in theory a multiparty system but which was in reality a tightly controlled Communist state. Supposedly he has recreated this system in Russia.

The article also claims that "Putin" was traumatized by the collapse of the East German state he so admired and that the supposedly uncompromising line Putin takes towards his political opponents and the tight control he has established in Russia stem from his fear this may happen again.

The fundamental problem with this thesis is that as anyone who knows anything about the two countries can confirm, today's Russia bears absolutely no resemblance to the former East Germany.

There is no similarity between the basically fictitious multiparty system that existed in East Germany - where there were no contested elections and where voters were obliged to vote for one pre-selected candidate - and the sort of multiparty system with often bitterly contested elections one sees in Russia today.

The biggest opposition party in Russia - the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which in the last parliamentary elections won 20% of the vote - is not only bitterly critical of Putin and of the government, but has been around for far longer than the government party United Russia. Its leader, Gennady Zyuganov, was active in politics long before Putin appeared on the scene. In no sense did Putin "create" this party or pick its leader and in no sense does he control it.

Nor does today's Russian media - with independent newspapers such as Kommersant, Vedomosti, and Novaya Gazeta, and with a free-wheeling Internet and independent cable television and radio stations - bear the slightest resemblance to the tightly controlled media Putin would have been familiar with in East Germany.

Nor is it possible to imagine the sort of religious revival Russia is experiencing today happening in the militantly atheistic society of the former East Germany - whilst the contrast between East Germans, whose travel options were severely limited, and the freedom Russians have to travel, is stark.

The idea that Putin is intent on recreating East Germany in Russia is therefore an entirely fantastic one. Any thesis that tries to explain his motivations on that basis is obviously wrong.

The whole way the fall of East Germany is presented in the article anyway does not correspond with my own recollection.

I was not personally there and it may be that things were more ugly than they appeared (or were reported) to be, but as I remember it there was little if any anti-Russian feeling (this was the peak of Gorbymania in both Germanys); and though there were a few (peaceful and brief) occupations of a very few public buildings, the whole East German revolution was generally extraordinarily orderly and peaceful and good natured. I don't remember seeing or hearing any reports of Russians being threatened and the atmosphere was basically one of goodwill. Certainly it bore no resemblance to what we have seen in Ukraine since Maidan.

No doubt East Germany's fall was a formative experience for someone like Putin, but I doubt it was in the way the article says. What I suspect it did was make Putin determined that Russia would never again be an occupier of another country so that it would never find itself in the same position again.

The one thing Putin seems to have taken from his time in Germany is a pronounced Germanophilia. That also does not point to the sort of fear or anger about the fall of East Germany the article talks about. On the contrary, following Crimea's accession to Russia Putin cited Germany's reunification as a precedent, which strongly suggests that he considers German unification a good thing.

Lastly, any discussion of Putin that quotes Masha Gessen must come with a strong health warning, and the article provides no evidence the "small agitated KGB officer" who supposedly dispersed a group of protesters outside the KGB compound in Dresden by threatening that they might get shot was Putin, despite the way the article tries to imply it was.

 

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 #19a
BBC
March 27, 2015
Vladimir Putin's formative German years
By Chris Bowlby
BBC News, Dresden
[Graphics here http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32066222]

Anyone who wants to understand Vladimir Putin today needs to know the story of what happened to him on a dramatic night in East Germany a quarter of a century ago.

It is 5 December 1989 in Dresden, a few weeks after the Berlin Wall has fallen. East German communism is dying on its feet, people power seems irresistible.

Crowds storm the Dresden headquarters of the Stasi, the East German secret police, who suddenly seem helpless.

Then a small group of demonstrators decides to head across the road, to a large house that is the local headquarters of the Soviet secret service, the KGB.

"The guard on the gate immediately rushed back into the house," recalls one of the group, Siegfried Dannath. But shortly afterwards "an officer emerged - quite small, agitated".

"He said to our group, 'Don't try to force your way into this property. My comrades are armed, and they're authorised to use their weapons in an emergency.'"

That persuaded the group to withdraw.

But the KGB officer knew how dangerous the situation remained. He described later how he rang the headquarters of a Red Army tank unit to ask for protection.

The answer he received was a devastating, life-changing shock.

"We cannot do anything without orders from Moscow," the voice at the other end replied. "And Moscow is silent."

That phrase, "Moscow is silent" has haunted this man ever since. Defiant yet helpless as the 1989 revolution swept over him, he has now himself become "Moscow" - the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. "I think it's the key to understanding Putin," says his German biographer, Boris Reitschuster. "We would have another Putin and another Russia without his time in East Germany."

The experience taught him lessons he has never forgotten, gave him ideas for a model society, and shaped his ambitions for a powerful network and personal wealth.

Above all, it left him with a huge anxiety about the frailty of political elites, and how easily they can be overthrown by the people.

Putin had arrived in Dresden in the mid-1980s for his first foreign posting as a KGB agent.

The German Democratic Republic or GDR - a communist state created out of the Soviet-occupied zone of post-Nazi Germany - was a highly significant outpost of Moscow's power, up close to Western Europe, full of Soviet military and spies.

Putin had wanted to join the KGB since he was a teenager, inspired by popular Soviet stories of secret service bravado in which, he recalled later, "One man's effort could achieve what whole armies could not. One spy could decide the fate of thousands of people."

Initially, though, much of his work in Dresden was humdrum.

Among documents in the Stasi archives in Dresden is a letter from Putin asking for help from the Stasi boss with the installation of an informer's phone. And there are details too of endless Soviet-East German social gatherings Putin attended, to celebrate ties between the two countries.

But if the spy work wasn't that exciting, Putin and his young family could at least enjoy the East German good life.

Putin's then wife, Ludmila, later recalled that life in the GDR was very different from life in the USSR. "The streets were clean. They would wash their windows once a week," she said in an interview published in 2000, as part of First Person, a book of interviews with Russia's new and then little-known acting president.

The Putins lived in a special block of flats with KGB and Stasi families for neighbours, though Ludmila envied the fact that: "The GDR state security people got higher salaries than our guys, judging from how our German neighbours lived. Of course we tried to economise and save up enough to buy a car."

East Germany enjoyed higher living standards than the Soviet Union and a former KGB colleague, Vladimir Usoltsev, describes Putin spending hours leafing through Western mail-order catalogues, to keep up with fashions and trends.

He also enjoyed the beer - securing a special weekly supply of the local brew, Radeberger - which left him looking rather less trim than he does in the bare-chested sporty images issued by Russian presidential PR today.

East Germany differed from the USSR in another way too - it had a number of separate political parties, even though it was still firmly under communist rule, or appeared to be.

"He enjoyed very much this little paradise for him," says Boris Reitschuster. East Germany, he says, "is his model of politics especially. He rebuilt some kind of East Germany in Russia now."

But in autumn 1989 this paradise became a kind of KGB hell. On the streets of Dresden, Putin observed people power emerging in extraordinary way. In early October hundreds of East Germans who had claimed political asylum at the West German embassy in Prague were allowed to travel to the West in sealed trains. As they passed through Dresden, huge crowds tried to break through a security cordon to try to board the trains, and make their own escape.

Wolfgang Berghofer, Dresden's communist mayor at the time, says there was chaos as security forces began taking on almost the entire local population. Many assumed violence was inevitable.

"A Soviet tank army was stationed in our city," he says. "And its generals said to me clearly: 'If we get the order from Moscow, the tanks will roll.'"

After the Berlin Wall opened, on 9 November, the crowds became bolder everywhere - approaching the citadels of Stasi and KGB power in Dresden.

Vladimir Putin had doubtless assumed too that those senior Soviet officers - men he'd socialised with regularly - would indeed send in the tanks.

But no, Moscow under Mikhail Gorbachev "was silent". The Red Army tanks would not be used. "Nobody lifted a finger to protect us."

He and his KGB colleagues frantically burned evidence of their intelligence work.

"I personally burned a huge amount of material," Putin recalled in First Person. "We burned so much stuff that the furnace burst."

Two weeks later there was more trauma for Putin as West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl arrived in the city. He made a speech that left German reunification looking inevitable, and East Germany doomed.

Kohl praised Gorbachev, the man in Moscow who'd refused to send in the tanks, and he used patriotic language - words like Vaterland, or fatherland - that had been largely taboo in Germany since the war. Now they prompted an ecstatic response.

It's not known whether Putin was in that crowd - but as a KGB agent in Dresden he'd certainly have known all about it.

The implosion of East Germany in the following months marked a huge rupture in his and his family's life.

"We had the horrible feeling that the country that had almost become our home would no longer exist," said his wife Ludmila.

"My neighbour, who was my friend, cried for a week. It was the collapse of everything - their lives, their careers."

One of Putin's key Stasi contacts, Maj Gen Horst Boehm - the man who had helped him install that precious telephone line for an informer - was humiliated by the demonstrating crowds, and committed suicide early in 1990.

This warning about what can happen when people power becomes dominant was one Putin could now ponder on the long journey home.

"Their German friends give them a 20-year-old washing machine and with this they drive back to Leningrad," says Putin biographer and critic Masha Gessen. "There's a strong sense that he was serving his country and had nothing to show for it. "He also arrived back to a country that had been transformed under Mikhail Gorbachev and was itself on the verge of collapse.

"He found himself in a country that had changed in ways that he didn't understand and didn't want to accept," as Gessen puts it.

His home city, Leningrad, was now becoming St Petersburg again. What would Putin do there?

There was talk, briefly, of taxi-driving. But soon Putin realised he had acquired a much more valuable asset than a second-hand washing machine.

In Dresden he'd been part of a network of individuals who might have lost their Soviet roles, but were well placed to prosper personally and politically in the new Russia.

In the Stasi archives in Dresden a picture survives of Putin during his Dresden years. He's in a group of senior Soviet and East German military and security figures - a relatively junior figure, off to one side, but already networking among the elite. Prof Karen Dawisha of Miami University, author of Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?, says there are people he met in Dresden "who have then gone on... to be part of his inner core."

They include Sergey Chemezov, who for years headed Russia's arms export agency and now runs a state programme supporting technology, and Nikolai Tokarev head of the state pipeline company, Transneft.

And it's not only former Russian colleagues who've stayed close to Putin.

Take Matthias Warnig - a former Stasi officer, believed to have spent time in Dresden when Putin was there - who is now managing director of Nordstream, the pipeline taking gas directly from Russia to Germany across the Baltic Sea.

That pipeline symbolised what was seen, until recently, as Germany's new special relationship with Russia - though the Ukraine crisis has at the very least put that relationship on hold.

Putin-watchers believe events such as the uprising on Kiev's Maidan Square, have revived bad memories - above all, of that night in Dresden in December 1989.

"Now when you have crowds in Kiev in 2004, in Moscow in 2011 or in Kiev in 2013 and 2014, I think he remembers this time in Dresden," says Boris Reitschuster. "And all these old fears come up inside him."

Inside him too may be a memory of how change can be shaped not only by force, or by weakness - but also by emotion. In 1989 he saw in Dresden how patriotic feeling, combined with a yearning for democracy, proved so much more powerful than communist ideology.

So when wondering what Vladimir Putin will do next, it's well worth remembering what he's lived through already.

One thing seems sure. While Vladimir Putin holds power in the Kremlin, Moscow is unlikely to be silent.

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 #20
Putin's Collapse Could Spark Russia's Violent Disintegration, Kasparov Says
Paul Goble

Staunton, March 28 - Speaking in Kyiv yesterday, Russian opposition leader Garri Kasparov said that the collapse of Vladimir Putin's regime could spark the disintegration of the Russian Federation and that that in turn would likely be far more dangerous and explosive than was the end of the USSR.

Kasparov said it is impossible to know when the Putin regime will collapse because "the life of dictators does not fall under the law of a biological cycle."  But Putin's demise, he argued, "in the course of the next five to ten years" could lead to the disintegration of Russia" (news.liga.net/news/politics/5406544-kasparov_opasaetsya_chto_krakh_putina_privedet_k_raspadu_rossii.htm).

It could occur suddenly if those in his immediate entourage decide that he is more a burden than a defense, the opposition figure suggested, adding that "if Putin thinks that he has immunity from the laws of history, then he is mistaken."  At the same time, Kasparov said, "the agony [of Putin's regime] could last quite a long time."

"I would not count on an immediate collapse," he said. Moscow's resources are far from exhausted, the economy has not collapsed, and there are no clear challengers yet. "The authorities still control the entire information space, and in the absence of an organized opposition, I would not wait for some kind of explosion" at least in the near term.

But over five to ten years, the regime could certainly collapse, and if that happened, Kasparov said, one "quite probably scenario" would involve its collapse being followed by the disintegration of Russia, something that would entail far more dangers than did the falling apart of the USSR.

"Unlike in the former Soviet Union," he said, "there are no administratively recognized borders."  The union republic borders were, but "inside Russia there are no such borders." Consequently, "no one knows where Chechnya ends" and a Yugoslav-type conflict likely could not be averted.

Kasparov concluded that the best way to avoid having Russia disappear in the wake of the Putin dictatorship would be for Putin to depart the scene as soon as possible. The longer he remains in power, the opposition figure says, the greater the chances that Russia will not be able to stay in one piece.

Kasparov's argument requires at least three comments. First, he is simply wrong that the union republic borders were forever fixed and agreed upon as opposed to the borders of the autonomies within the Russian Federation. Both were changed frequently in Soviet times, and the former were and are not where everyone wanted but where the West insisted they remain.

Second, his argument that Putin's departure could mean the end of Russia echoes many of the views of those in the regime as well as in the Russian population abroad that as bad as Putin may be, his remaining in office is essential to keeping Russia together, something most of them very much want.

But third, Kasparov's suggestion that the Russian Federation will be more at risk of disintegration the longer Putin stays not only contradicts that but suggests that in his view Putin's Russian nationalist integration strategy is having exactly the opposite impact on the non-Russian portion of the country than he hopes.

The combination of the three puts those who want to keep Russia in its current borders in a difficult position: If they support Putin in order to do so, they risk having him continue to act in ways that mean when he does go, as the actuarial tables at the very least require, the disintegration of Russia will be both greater and more violent than might otherwise be the case.

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 #21
http://readrussia.com
March 28, 2015
How Not to Influence People
Russia's "tough" posturing just makes it look ridiculous.
by MARK ADOMANIS

"Russia threatens Denmark with nuclear missiles" isn't the most intuitive headline in the world. Indeed it sounds like something from a parody magazine or from a clumsy remake of Dr. Strangelove. If Denmark is famous for anything (a contentious proposition, but indulge me) it's precisely because it is inoffensive and non-threatening. It's a small, rich, tolerant country sandwiched between Germany and Sweden, one of the few European countries that didn't do anything horrible at some point during the course of the 20th century. In a continent awash in nationalist hatreds of varying stripes and intensities, Denmark might be the only country without a legitimate blood feud.

Ok so virtually everyone agrees Denmark is a nice boring country. Why on earth did the Russians threaten it with nuclear annihilation? Well, last summer Denmark, which is actually a NATO member if not a terribly active one, said that at least one of its frigates would be equipped with a special radar that would allow it to contribute to NATO's missile defense shield. This shield, which has famously gotten the Russians fuming mad, is officially directed against Iranian ballistic missiles.* Before then, Denmark hadn't really been an active participant.

Writing for the daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten (one of the rare Danish newspapers that non-specialists already know, back in 2005 it published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad) Russian ambassador Mikhail Vanin warned readers that if it did decide to participate in the defense system then Danish ships were going to become targets for Russian nuclear weapons. This wasn't a vague, cloaked threat, an illusion to potential future consequences or some kind of strange theoretical exercise. Vanin literally wrote that if Denmark fully participates in NATO's missile shield "then Danish warships will be targets for Russia's nuclear weapons."

Vanin's comments actually didn't cause nearly as might fury as you might expect from the Danes, the Danish foreign minister's response noted that there was no need to "over-dramatize" the situation, but it caused quite a lot of controversy in other Western countries. Here again were the Russians trying to bully a small, peaceful country, and doing so in a remarkably bullheaded and crude way. Vanin's comments summoned a lot of very bad memories about the Soviet Union.

On the one hand, Vanin's comments were flagrantly inappropriate, a mind-boggling breach of diplomatic protocol. Even if you need to have testy conversations behind closed doors, you simply do not issue threats in public. The Russians are usually rather deft diplomats, and it's not clear why they suddenly decided to violate every rule in the book.

On the other hand Vanin's comments weren't simply inappropriate, they were self-defeating. There was no great enthusiasm in Denmark, or anywhere else in Europe for that matter, for the missile defense shield: it's an extremely expensive piece of unproven technology directed at a threat that likely doesn't even exist. In order to get it up and running, US has had to drag its allies into it and foot ever-larger parts of the bill on its own. There was always a chance that a lack of allied cooperation would derail the whole thing.

Now, however, any Danish politician who objects to the missile shield will immediately be presented as a Kremlin patsy, a useful idiot who is covering for Putin's aggression in Ukraine. The missile shield wasn't a terribly salient issue in Danish politics. No there wasn't great support for it, but it just wasn't a particularly relevant debate: most politicians had more important issues on their plate. On those kinds of low-salience issues, politicians will just go with the herd and do whatever easiest.

Now, of course, everyone in Denmark heard of the issue and the only thing that most of them know is that the Russians threatened their country with nuclear attack. In such an environment, there's a natural urge to "stand up" to the country which looks like a mean-spirited bully.

Russia's bluster, which was intended to weaken NATO unity, has had the unintended (if entirely predictable) consequence of strengthening Danish resolve to participate in the missile shield. It's a depressingly familiar sight across the world: a government determines to project an image of strength and determination, but actually ends up bringing about the outcome it was trying to avoid.

This is why I think so much of the pearl clutching about Russian bluster is so misplaced: speech like Vanin's doesn't do anything to improve Russia's position it only strengthens opposition.

* However, these missiles might not exactly exist. The latest and most advanced Iranian missile, which is essentially a reverse engineered Soviet design from the early 1980's, can  "potentially" hit cities in Eastern and Southern Europe. It thus seems that even in the worst case situation, the Iranians don't currently have any missiles which could hit Denmark. As for Iran's nuclear weapons...well, those don't exist either though it is possible that they could at some point in the future.

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#22
Financial Times
March 30, 2015
Russia looks to its history in search for a new ideology
Its nationalistic hue is supplied by what Russians see as an external threat
By Andrei Nekrasov
The writer is a film and television director whose works include 'Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File'

For much of the 20th century, Russia was the laboratory for one of the most far-reaching ideological experiments in history. But for most of the two-and-a-half decades since communism's collapse, Russian politics has been bereft of guiding ideas.

To the casual observer, it might seem otherwise. Listen to the country's politicians speak, and you still hear echoes of the last century's great battles of ideas. Russian propagandists are not shy about calling their adversaries "fascists" - the term of abuse most often deployed against those in Ukraine who oppose the Russian-backed rebels.

In Russian parlance, however, "fascism" does not denote an ideology but merely an orientation. Fascists are people who attack the country from outside - no matter what they believe. Nazi Germany and its allies were called fascists during what Russians know as the Great Patriotic War. But now the term is also used to describe pro-western liberals, including the late Boris Nemtsov.

Clearly the fall of the Soviet Union left an ideological vacuum. The communist faith, which had initially been so powerful as to replace Christianity itself, was gone. Democratic values could have supplanted it, but they were quickly discredited by the excesses of the economic oligarchy that took root after the privatisations of the 1990s. In this pillaging of communist collective property, the west came to be seen as an accomplice.

For a time, the void was filled by the consumerist distractions of a booming economy. Only after the economic troubles of 2008 did a protest movement begin to incubate the first strands of a new ideology. Russians called it democracy and so did westerners, but it was not a doctrine that western liberals would recognise as their own. Alexei Navalny, the movement's leader, was against corruption. But he was also against immigrants, tapping into beliefs which westerners associate with the far right, but which often pass for household wisdom. Slogans such as "Russia for the Russians" may not be to everyone's taste, but their appeal is far from marginal. Migrants from the southern former Soviet republics, along with Russian citizens from the Muslim Caucasus, have become victims of a campaign of propaganda, and often violence.

It is in the crisis over Ukraine that the contours of Russia's new national ideology have become clear. Its foundation is an unlikely emulsion of nostalgia for a glorious past, resentment of the oligarchs, petty-bourgeois materialism and xenophobia. But its nationalistic hue is supplied by what Russians perceive as a pressing external threat.

There are undoubtedly many people among the Russian-speaking population of Crimea and eastern Ukraine who felt themselves under attack from the west, even if the number of the beleaguered was less than Moscow claimed. And mobilising against a common enemy, as they did during the second world war, is Russia's most enduring political tradition.

Russians feel their national identity most strongly when they come under pressure from the outside. City dwellers in Moscow and St Petersburg might betray a weakness for western cars and other imported comforts. But wherever you go in Russia, you will encounter limitless national pride. Western sanctions, inconvenient though they are, have done little to dissuade Russians from supporting Putin's Kremlin.

The new Russian ideology presents European values as part of a hypocritical propaganda the west uses to rationalise its pursuit of geopolitical and economic interests. Westerners should not compromise on their values. But they should also be aware that neither economic sanctions nor (if it comes to that) military help for Ukraine are the right antidote to Russia's new ideology. Instead they are a potential trigger that could turn a suspicious Russia into an outright enemy.

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#23
Christian Science Monitor
March 27, 2015
Grounded? Russia's answer to US next-gen fighter hits the skids.
The Kremlin is cutting its initial production of the Sukhoi T-50 fighter by 75 percent amid cost overruns and rumored technical concerns - the same kind of issues that have plagued US development of the F-35.
By Fred Weir, Correspondent  

MOSCOW - Russia's ambitious T-50 fighter plane project was meant to develop a rival to two futuristic US jetfighters, the F-22 Raptor and the planned F-35 Lightning-II.

But now, the T-50 appears to be rivaling the F-35 another way: in development troubles. The Kremlin is slamming the brakes on its "fifth generation" fighter program and cutting its initial rollout to a quarter of those originally planned.

The decision seems a setback for Vladimir Putin's sweeping $800 billion rearmament program, a vital component of the wider effort to restore Russia to its Soviet-era status as a major global superpower. However, the sharp slowdown in plans to procure the sophisticated new jet may represent an outbreak of wisdom on the part of Russian military chiefs, who will remember how the USSR was driven into bankruptcy by engaging in an all-out arms race with the US.

Financial constraints are the key reason cited for cutting the military order from 52 to 12 of the planes over the next few years, according to the Moscow daily Kommersant.

"Given the new economic conditions, the original plans may have to be adjusted," the paper quotes Deputy Defense Minister Yuriy Borisov as saying. The project to build a cutting-edge fighter plane, which is partly financed by India, will not be canceled, but held in abeyance while the Russian Air Force makes the most of its existing "fourth generation" MiG and Sukhoi combat aircraft, he added.

No one knows whether technical problems may also have played a role in the decision to shelve the fighter.

"We may suppose there are problems, but hard information is lacking," says Alexander Golts, an independent military expert. "For instance, the prototypes of this plane have been using an old engine, pending the development of the engine it needs. Has that been developed yet? We have no idea."

The only operational "fifth generation" fighter in the world is the US F-22. Its production was canceled in 2009, after fewer than 200 of the hyper-expensive planes had been built. American military services are now awaiting the arrival of the newer and also hugely overpriced F-35, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter, but that program has been dogged with serious delays and technical failures.

The T-50, an advanced stealth plane with many capabilities lacking in previous fighters, has prompted some alarm in the West. The Russians have presented the project as an example of how they are able to leapfrog over the lost years, after Russia's military-industrial complex collapsed along with the Soviet Union, and field 21st century weapons that can rival the best the US has to offer.

Most of the weaponry that's currently in Russia's military inventory are Soviet-era designs that have evolved to incorporate new technology. Only three projects currently in the testing phase have been entirely developed by post-Soviet Russia. They are the T-50, the recently unveiled T-14 Armata tank, and the Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile.

Recent reports suggest that Russian military brass have also decided to slash orders for the new Armata tank, and instead continue using older, Soviet-designed models for a few more years.

There is no word on the fate of other grand projects that Russian military leaders have claimed to have on the drawing boards. These include plans for a super-sized aircraft carrier that would dwarf the US Nimitz class, and a fleet of enormous supersonic transport planes that could deliver up to 400 tanks anywhere in the world. [Editor's note: The original version mischaracterized the carrying capacity of the transport planes.]

"Despite all these soaring plans, I think we see a bit of reason taking hold in the Russian military establishment," says Mr. Golts. "Even if there were no economic crisis, and no sanctions, this massively expensive rearmament program would not be what Russia needs right now. Scaling it back is a wise move."

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#24
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
March 27, 2015
Russia forging new acquaintances in Latin America
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently completed a tour of Latin America that was notable for its focus on countries usually seen to be outside Moscow's sphere of interest. With traditional ally Venezuela mired in crisis and the leaders of Brazil and Argentina occupied with reputation-threatening scandals, Russia took the opportunity to forge closer contacts with Guatemala, and in particular with Colombia, besides visits to Nicaragua and Cuba.
Yevgeny Bai, special to RBTH

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has concluded his trip to Latin America. His itinerary was rather unusual for a Russian politician: Besides the traditional Moscow-friendly countries such as Cuba and Nicaragua, Lavrov also visited Colombia and Guatemala, which he had never been to before.

The choice of visiting Colombia is possibly related to the fact that a series of Latin American countries with Moscow-friendly leftist governments are experiencing a crisis. Brazil is going through a large corruption scandal linked to the shady deals that the country's largest oil company, Petrobras, made in the past, something that has significantly affected the standing of President Dilma Rousseff.

Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, who has warm relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, does not have it any easier. The country's public prosecutor accuses her of having impeded an investigation into six high-ranking Iranian politicians who were involved in the preparation of a terrorist act against a Jewish Cultural Center in Buenos Aires in 1994. In October this year Argentina will be going to the polls, which a candidate from the right is expected to win.

Meanwhile, the socio-economic crisis in Venezuela, Russia's main ally on the continent, has reached such a level that Caracas currently has no time to receive guests. The country's precipitously deteriorating relations with the U.S. are aggravating the situation for the unpopular government of Nicolas Maduro. Recently the White House has labeled Venezuela as a "direct and open threat to America's national security."

In these conditions Moscow has embarked upon a search for new possible allies and partners in Latin America. One of them could be Colombia. For many years the Russian Foreign Ministry had considered the country "America's patrimony." Bogota is tied to the U.S. through a series of large agreements on fighting terrorism and drug trafficking, which provide for the quartering of U.S. troops on Colombian territory.

However, when in 2010, instead of the avowed pro-American President Alvaro Uribe, the country elected the more neutral Juan Manuel Santos Calderon, Colombia's foreign policy became more diversified.

In 2014, during the BRICS Summit, Calderon became the first Colombian president to meet Putin. Calderon's recent talks with Lavrov were mainly held behind closed doors. However, a comment made by the Russian Foreign Minister after the meeting shed light on many things: "We appreciate Colombia's balanced position regarding the Ukrainian crisis." Before that the Russian Foreign Ministry had noted on several occasions that Colombia was not adhering to the sanctions imposed against Russia by the U.S.

Obviously, it was very important for Lavrov to secure, if not Latin America's full support for Moscow, then at least its neutrality in the confrontation between Moscow and Kiev. Now, when Russia has found itself in harsh isolation, such neutrality is worth a lot.

Lavrov also searched for support in Guatemala, where besides talks with the country's government, he participated in a meeting with the Foreign Ministers of the Central American Integration System (SICA). The eight countries that make up this organization expressed an interest in establishing multilateral dialogue with Russia. Mutually beneficial agreements were even concluded with several of them. In particular, Lavrov and his counterpart from Salvador, Hugo Martinez, signed an intergovernmental agreement on waiving travel visas for the two countries' citizens.

Moscow's traditional allies Cuba and Nicaragua have also assured Lavrov of their full political support for Russia. Nicaragua was one of just three other countries to join Russia in recognizing the independence of the breakaway "republics" of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the North Caucasus. In the course of the talks between Lavrov and President Ortega both sides stated that Nicaragua and Russia's position on international issues converge and that both countries adhere to principles of resolving all international conflicts peacefully. Daniel Ortega criticized the U.S. and EU sanctions against Russia, saying that this kind of policy will "lead nowhere."

In Havana, Lavrov apparently received comprehensive information not only on Cuba, but also on Venezuela. The crisis with Maduro's government and the almost 50-percent reduction of Venezuelan oil supplies to Cuba has motivated Havana to start looking for ways to normalize its relations with the U.S. in hopes of canceling the economic embargo and re-establishing diplomatic relations.

However, Havana is simultaneously interested in preserving trade and economic relations with Moscow, since the island contains infrastructure built in the Soviet era. Concerning contacts between Cuba and the U.S., Lavrov underlined once again that Havana's dialogue with Washington does not worry Moscow, while the Cuban leader promised the Russian minister that political control will remain in the hands of the current government and that Moscow has nothing to fear.

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#25
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
March 30, 2015
Online film festival offers chance to view little-known Russian movies

The sixth annual Double Dv@ Online Festival of Russian Film will take place on the website of Rossiyskaya Gazeta from April 6-20. Most films will be shown with English subtitles.

Each film will be available for 48 hours. http://d2.rg.ru/

According to the press release: "The aim of the program is to inform a broader audience about high-quality Russian movies that did not receive the mass release that they deserved."

The 2015 program will feature a wide range of films, some of which were released a number of years ago. The program includes:

"Fat Stupid Rabbit" by Vyacheslav Ross (2007); "Elysium," by Andrey Eshpai (2010); "The Shaft" by Nurbek Egen (2013); "Dog's Paradise," by Anna Chernakova (2014); "Corrections Class," by Ivan Tverdovsky (2014); "Name Me," by Nigina Sayfullayeva (2014); and Yury Bykov's "The Fool" (2014).

Viewers also have the opportunity to rate the films on a scale of one to 10. The score will be used to determine the "Viewer's Choice" award.

Each year, the festival organizers open the festival with the presentation of a special award for "Outstanding Contribution to Cinema." This time the award went to actor Vladimir Menshov and director Vera Alentova, who are partners both on and off the screen. Their film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears," which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1980, celebrates its 35 anniversary this year. The Double Dv@ festival will show two other films featuring Menshov: "Rozygrysh" (1977) and, "The Envy of Gods" (2000).

The festival will also feature a special program for documentaries, called "Memory." Two films will be shown as part of this program: "Triumph Over Violence," by Mikhail Romm (1965), about Germany society and the Nazi government during World War II, and "The Process," by Alexander Zeldovich (2002), which examines the totalitarian system and the fate of the members of the Jewish anti-fascist committee who were shot on Stalin's orders in 1952.

The program for the festival can be found here:

http://d2.rg.ru/

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 #26
Moscow Times
March 30, 2015
Russian Souvenirs Make Up to 500% Profit Online Despite Political Faceoff
By Peter Spinella

Russia's relations with the West may have reached lows unparalleled since the Cold War, but the trend for kitschy Russian and Soviet souvenirs abroad appears to be as popular as ever, bringing vendors a pretty penny.

Selling souvenirs on online marketplaces such as eBay and Etsy can yield a profit of 300 to 500 percent, vendors told The Moscow Times.

Vendors buy the items at second-hand stores and antiques markets around the former Eastern Bloc, and sell them mostly to Americans enchanted with the keepsakes of the once-mysterious Soviet culture.  

But it's a line of business that is not without its complications. There is a relatively high customs duty to send items abroad, and strict regulations on exporting objects of national heritage.

Every vendor who spoke with The Moscow Times said they operate outside Russia.

"It's too expensive to go to Russia, and it requires a visa, but I think the best items may be there," said Merilin Pold, who runs an Etsy shop called "Merilin's Retro" from her home in Tallinn, Estonia.

Bargain Hunting

Pold said she finds most of her items locally. "Mostly I get my items from our local thrift stores and Internet auctions, but also from my friends and summer markets."

She said she often drives around her native Estonia to find items.

One other vendor who did not wish to be identified to avoid problems during future visits to Russia said he comes here periodically to find especially rare and high-quality items.

The markup can be high, the vendors said, but prices should be similar to those of the competition - and the competition can be tough. A search for Soviet items on the Etsy and eBay online marketplaces reveals dozens of sellers.

Bora Erdinc, who was born in Turkey but is now based in Berlin, said he currently makes about 300 euros a month by selling a dozen or so items on his Etsy shop SovietGallery.

He got into the business a few months ago after buying some clocks in Sofia, Bulgaria, and putting them online for sale, he said. "I had 10 different ones, and Americans bought them all," he said.

He emphasized the importance of having quality products, with professional-looking photos to show them off on the website.

"Some really beautiful stuff that I bought really cheap can for sure have a high profit," he said.

Pold, who has sold more than 700 items since starting her online business in 2013, said she prices her products "rather high because these kinds of items are quite limited and are no longer available anywhere."

She added that some prices are negotiable. "Higher prices also leave me some room for discounts," she said.

American Audience

Erdinc said his top buyers of Soviet antiques are Americans, followed by other Westerners. "Germany and Austria are mostly interested in kitchen stuff: glasses, plates," he added.

Pold, who sells a lot of Soviet-era antiques, said that 90 percent go to customers in the United States, followed by Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan and France.

She said that many of her customers grew up in the Soviet Union and are nostalgic.

"I've seen such joy when people discovered something familiar from their childhood. So many former Soviet people are living abroad now."

Alex Bugayev, who runs an Etsy store simply called "SovietWatches" and is based in Odessa, Ukraine, said 80 percent of his customers are in the United States.

He got into the business in summer 2012 after collecting watches for years as a hobby.

"I learned that in the West they highly regarded Soviet watches," he said. "I began to sell them some watches so I could buy more."

The Real Deal?

One of the main obstacles faced by would-be vendors is authenticity. Some of the souvenirs offered at eastern Moscow's popular Izmailovsky Park market, for example, are made in China.

Magnets, keychains and even some traditional matryoshka nesting dolls are made cheaply in China and brought to Russia to sell to tourists, a Moscow Times report revealed in 2011.

Igor Konnov, an antiques seller at the market, confirmed recently that some modern souvenirs are made in China, but he was adamant that his goods are authentic.

He has been a collector for years and said a close look at an item can discern its quality. He said he sells his antiques, which include Soviet-made toys, tea-glass holders and other knickknacks, to mostly locals who are nostalgic for the bygone era.

Confusing and restrictive postal rules are another hurdle faced by anyone seeking to export local goods.

The regulations de facto prohibit the export of items made prior to the 1930s and can cause problems for shipments of antiques even if they were made after that.

One seller said that the Culture Ministry could grant approval for specific items to be taken out of the country, but that the process to get permission can be long and arduous.

In addition, there is a customs duty - about 1,000 rubles ($15) for a package weighing between one and two kilograms - to send items abroad.

A Way of Life

Despite the obstacles, making a living from the international treasure trove of Soviet souvenirs also has its advantages.

"This is my current day job. I buy the items, wash them, take pictures," said Pold. "I can plan my own time and do the job when I want to. I can take a vacation whenever I want."

And for some, it's as much of a passion as a job.

"You have to love old things and not to be afraid of thrift shops and filthy things," said Pold. "You must have a good eye to purchase the right things so your shop looks beautiful.

"It's a lot of work, but if you love old things it's great."

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 #27
Central European Policy Institute
www.cepolicy.org
March 30, 2015
CEPI Ukraine Watch

CEPI is continuing with a regular weekly digest of notable local and international news, as well as analyses covering the Ukraine crisis, all available in English. The CEPI Ukraine Watch focuses on domestic politics, reforms, energy and security developments. CEPI's Ukraine Watch editors welcome your comments (info@cepolicy.org).

Week of March 20-27

Insider and Ukrainska Pravda reconstructed six days which lead to dismissal of Ihor Kolomoisky as governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Zerkalo Nedeli has reported that hot phase of the conflict has subsided due to the intervention from West and effective mediation of Boris Lozhkin. However, it seems premature to conclude that de-oligarchization process has started in Ukraine, since the last conflict between Kolomoisky and President Poroshenko can be rather characterized as an effort to consolidate central power. Hennadiy Korban commented on Kolomoisky dismissal and described conditions in which Dnitropetrovsk team worked last year, while Boris Filatov said more about plans for future. For possible future development, see Maksim Kamenev for Hromadske TV.

Ukrnafta & Ukrtransneft Conflict

On Saturday, March 21, the SBU officer was shot dead from an automatic weapon in Volnovakha when he had tried to stop three cargoes full of smuggled goods. Interior Minister Avakov said deputy from parliamentary coalition tried to justify the criminals.

On Sunday, March 22, Ihor Kolomoisky dispatched armed men to guard the corporate headquarters of Ukrnafta (where Privat group controls 42% stake) and put up a steel fence outside building. He said the guards were protecting the enterprise against a corporate raid of organized crime gang led by oligarch Igor Eremeev. One of the armed men said on video that he represented the Dnipro-1 volunteer battalion. The battalion's commander denied the report, stating that no one from Dnipro-1 was among the armed guards in the building. Kolomoisky explained his position in interview for his TV channel 1+1 .

Several MPs tried to enter Ukranafta office and were denied by the armed guards.  MP Mustafa Nayyem was attacked by armed men when he tried to inquire about the occupation.

Energy Minister Demchishin has ordered the accounts and deposits of companies under the management of the ministry to be transferred to state owned banks, including Ukrtransneft.

Interior Minister Avakov said that private security companies had 24 hours to bring their operations into compliance with the law, to disarm and to abandon the use of firearms. Avakov emphasized that the use of firearms by private security agencies was illegal. "There will be no armed security groups of businessmen and politicians wandering in city streets with fire arms. This applies to all - quasi-"patriots" and real patriots, big businessmen and oligarchs. And personally Kolomoiskyi, Pinchuk, Akhmetov, Eremeev, Surkis, Hryhoryshyn and others".

President Poroshenko said that units and battalions of the territorial defense must be part of the vertical structure of the national armed forces and be subordinated to them. Poroshenko said that "none of our governors will have pocket armies." The head of SBU Valentyn Nalyvaichenko has said that President has instructed law enforcement agencies to disarm the individuals inside Ukrnafta office.

On March 22 Nalyvaichenko[1] has said that Dnipropetrovsk RSA officials were questioned about their possible role in activities of criminal gangs operating in Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, murder of SBU officer, alleged kidnapping and transporting contraband across the separation line in ATO zone.  He added that Hennady Korban and Svyatoslav Oleynik were hampering investigation and had threatened SBU investigators with force of illegal armed groups.  Nalyvaychenko added that armed men at Ukrnafta had been identified as belonging to the Sich security company. Nalyvaichenko said that MP Denysenko, who stood up for the detainees, was also being checked for the involvement in the organized crime group's activity.  

MP Andriy Denysenko has admitted that his associate - Denys Hordeyev, a member of Sich organisation, shot an SBU officer in Volnovakha. Denysenko said that the moves against the Dnipropetrovsk RSA were part of a Russian-backed campaign to discredit the volunteer movement. Denysenko called for a demonstration to be held in Dnipropetrovsk to protest against a creeping "authoritarian and totalitarian regime" in Kyiv and "attempts to fracture Ukraine." The Deputy Chairman of Dnipropetrovsk RSA Korban demanded the creation of a parliamentary investigative committee to examine the allegations against himself and Oliynyk. Korban said that SBU itself was handling the transport of contraband in the ATO zone. Korban said Kyiv government had failed to uphold its promises of decentralization and accused it of lying about the ATO's progress and number of casualties. "Thieves are sitting in Kyiv today, and it's time that they leave," he said.

MPs Andriy Denysenko, Vitaliy Kupriy, Valentyn Didych and Oleksandr Dubinin have left the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction. The group is associated with Ihor Kolomoisky.

The new chairman of Ukrtransnafta's board will be selected in a public competition, Energy Minister Volodomyr Demchyshyn said.

Dnipropetrovsk region has no intention to separate from Ukraine and will do everything to strengthen the country, Hennadiy Korban said. Korban also said that assembly in Dnipropetrovsk was not initiative of RSA, but initiative of public organizations.

 Interior Minister Avakov said that some security firms would have their licenses revoked; adding that this in particular concerns the security companies involved in the events surrounding Ukrnafta and Ukrtransnafta.

On March 25 President Poroshenko accepted the resignation of Ihor Kolomoisky as a head of Dnipropetrovsk RSA. It was announced that Valentyn Reznychenko will be appointed acting head of Dnipropetrovsk RSA. Reznychenko is a close business partner of head of presidential administration Boris Lozhkin (more about Reznychenko here). Sviatoslav Oliynyk and Hennady Korban have also resigned.

President Poroshenko has signed the Law "On Amendments to the Law of Ukraine On Joint Stock Companies." The law should return control over Ukranafta to state.

Naftogaz Deputy CEO Andriy Pasishnyk said the company planned to announce an open application process to select a new CEO for Ukrnafta.

Dnipropetrovsk-based Gambit has filed a claim with Kyiv's economic court asking it to invalidate the decisions passed by Ukrnafta's stockholders at their general meeting in November 2014, in which it decided that the company'' dividends worth UAH 3.799 billion, due for 2011-2013, should be paid by April 10, 2015. Earlier, Kolomoisky said that the incomplete repayment of Ukrnafta's dividends to the state was related to the refusal of Naftogaz to pay for gas produced by Ukrnafta (read here).

During investigation into the murder of SBU officer in Volnovakha, a suspect and four witnesses in the crime were detained on March 26.

President Poroshenko visited Dnipropetrovsk on Thursday, March 26. He ruled out the possibility of destabilization in region. Poroshenko and Kolomoisky said there was no conflict between them and demonstrated unity. Poroshenko signed a decree appointing Valentyn Reznychenko the chairman of the Dnipropetrovsk RSA. (Reznychenko was also dismissed from his post as the chairman of Zaporizhzhya RSA).

Denys Hordeyev, a suspect in the murder of an SBU officer Viktor Mandzyk, has been detained when trying to cross the Ukrainian border on Friday.

Ihor Kolomoisky is not ruling out using proceedings in international arbitration over Naftogaz's non-payment for natural gas produced by Ukrnafta. According to him, for several years, Naftogaz, the major shareholder of Ukrnafta, has not been paying for 10.5 bcm of gas produced by the company. "Let them pay at least a little, and then we will pay dividends and royalties to make payments to the shareholders," Kolomoisky said that recent dispute over Ukrnafta was "a publicity stunt". In interview for his 1+1 channel he responded questions of journalists (starting 0:30:05).

On March 28 Unity Rally was held in Dnipropetrovsk.

1. POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that he was concerned Kyiv might stage "provocations" to persuade the United States that it should aid Kyiv by sending lethal weapons. Lavrov repeated Russia's opposition to UN peacekeepers mission in eastern Ukraine. He said that Russia was ready to provide the OSCE SMM in Ukraine with unmanned aerial vehicles and armoured vehicles. However, these must be operated by Russian operators, he said. Lavrov dismissed Ukrainian plan to hold a vote in Donbass region, saying that any such election carried out on Kyiv's terms was "nonsense."[2]

Kyiv will backtrack on its commitments to the Minsk agreements at the moment of readiness for a war, leader of self-proclaimed LNR Igor Plotnitsky said.

Russian Foreign Ministry has accused Kyiv of violation of Minsk Agreements on Saturday. Kyiv has dismissed the accusation. Russia urged Germany and France, to do more to ensure Kyiv sticks to the agreements. Kremlin said that Moscow's influence on self-proclaimed DNR and LNR was limited.

Meeting in the Normandy format was held in Paris on Wednesday, March 25 on the level of deputy foreign ministers.

The West should consider using all its tools to help Ukraine, including sending defensive weapons, NATO's U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove said. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution on Monday asking President Obama to send lethal arms to Ukraine. On Tuesday Senate unanimously passed the resolution.

The German parliament ratified the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. Germany is ready to discuss a peacekeeping mission to eastern Ukraine; Ukrainian ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk said referring to a meeting between Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Hroisman and German Foreign Minister Steinmeier. German Chancellor Merkel and Volodymyr Hroisman have discussed the situation in Donbas and the ongoing process of reforms in Ukraine.

President of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaite visited Ukraine. She met with President Poroshenko and PM Yatseniuk. Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sebastian Kurz visited Ukraine. President Poroshenko held a meeting with UN Deputy Secretary General and Administrator of the UN Development Program Helen Clark. They have discussed the situation in Donbas and possibility to deploy UN peacekeepers in the region. President Poroshenko met with Foreign Minister of Turkmenistan Rashid Meredov. Poroshenko said that Ukraine was interested in resumption of Turkmen gas supplies.

Ukraine should become a member of NATO after implementation of reforms and holding of a referendum, PM Yatseniuk said. NATO SG said that "it's independent nations that have knocked on the door and wanted membership. It's not NATO in any way moving east.  And that's the sovereign right of every sovereign nation to decide."

Sri Lanka is investigating its former ambassador to Russia following a media report that he helped arm pro-Moscow separatists in Ukraine, the Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweeraaid said.

Russian authorities have arrested a Ukrainian citizen suspected of industrial espionage. Ukrainian diplomats are taking steps to meet him and provide consular and legal assistance.

Judith Gough was appointed new British Ambassador to Ukraine, having changed current Ambassador Simon Smith.

The younger son of former President Viktor Yanukovych has drowned in Lake Baikal, Russia. He was buried in annexed Crimea.

Nariman Dzhelyal has been elected First Deputy Head of the Mejlis and Ilmi Umerov was elected Deputy Head of the Mejilis. Dzelyal will be coordinating the work of the Mejlis in Crimea, since the Head of the Mejlis Refat Chubarov is in forced exile.

Swiss prosecutors have filed criminal charges against MP Mykola Martynenko, a close ally of Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, for taking a bribe, MP Serhiy Leshchenko has reported on his blog .

Interpol has put MP from the People's Front faction Mykola Kniazhytskyi on wanted list. Kniazhytskyi,  sought by Cambodian authorities over allegations of child-rape, was later removed from Interpol's wanted list because, according to Cambodia's Interpol office "the case involves politics in Ukraine and Russia."

The mother and sister of Nadia Savchenko were received at the German Chancellery. The request of Savchenko to replace the judge in her trial has been rejected.

2. SECURITY UPDATE
Two Ukrainian servicemen were killed in the area of ATO in Donbas, spokesman for ATO said on Saturday. One Ukrainian serviceman was killed in the area of ATO, military spokesman said on Tuesday. Four people were killed and seventeen were injured when a passenger bus hit a mine near Artemivsk. Immediately after the bust hit a mine, DNR militants opened a mortar fire on a bus. A civilian was killed when militants shelled Shyrokyne on Friday.

Militants have blown up railway tracks near Volnovakha (Donetsk region) and Popasna (Luhansk region).

ATO HQ said that militants committed strikes on the Ukrainian troops' positions from weapons, which had to be withdrawn from the demarcation in early March. Ukraine accused pro-Russian separatists of firing heavy Grad rockets and moving tanks, weapons and fighters closer to the line of contact.

Ambassador Ertugrul Apakan, Chief Monitor of the OSCE SMM said that SMM observed intensified fighting in and around of Shyrokyne and called on all sides to stop fighting and respect all provisions of the Minsk package. "Both sides in this area continue to violate numerous provisions of the Minsk agreements, including those related to cessation of fire, prohibition of attacking moves, withdrawal of heavy weapons, and deployment of UAVs."

On March 25 OSCE monitors visited Shyrokyne following the SMM facilitated local ceasefire. Deputy Chief Monitor of the OSCE SMM Alexander Hug has described situation in town as catastrophic. On March 27 Chief Monitor of the OSCE SMM Ambassador Ertugrul Apakan expressed disappointment that the sides have breached a local ceasefire arranged by the Mission and urged them to stop fighting immediately. Spot report on the escalation of the situation in Shyrokyne can be read here.

The militants shelled the village Pisky in Donetsk region when OSCE SMM carried inspection in village, the U.S. Department of State reported.

A Russian sabotage group crossed the Ukrainian-Russian border and fired on a truck belonging to the Air Defense Forces of Ukraine in the village of Milove, 200 km from demarcation line in Luhansk region.

An explosion occurred on the first floor of a building at Heraneva Street in Odesa on March 22. Authorities were treating it as a terrorist act. Police said the blast damaged office of organization that aids wounded soldiers.

On March 25 there was a blast on a railway line in the Dnipropetrovsk region (between Demurino and Prosyanaya). A train carrying coal from Donetsk to Dnipropetrovsk was passing over as the blast went off. No wagons were derailed and there were no casualties.

Ukrainian side is ready to withdraw tanks from the demarcation line, President Poroshenko stated.

The Sokol special police officers and units of the National Guard conducted a special operation in Illichivck district, Mariupol region.

The senior member of the separatist legislature in the self-proclaimed DNR Roman Voznik was killed late on March 26 in Donetsk. Voznik was also commander of a rebel battalion Mirazh.

Advisor to the Defense Minister Vasyl Budik said that negotiations on prisoner exchange were deadlocked.

Donbas rebels are trained in street warfare by Lebanese instructors, Donetsk RSA reported.

Russian-backed militants have obtained a new type of rocket system - the highly mobile Grad-P portable rocket launcher, Dmytro Tymchuk reported.

Mi-24 military helicopter has crashed in Vasylkiv district of Kyiv region, one person was killed and several more were injured. The incident is being investigated by the military prosecutors.

President Poroshenko said Ukraine saw shocking levels of desertion during the first wave of mobilisation. The numbers were as high as 30%. But during the latest wave of mobilisation earlier this year, armed forces saw a less than 1% desertion rate. The ongoing fourth wave of partial mobilization in Ukraine is 76% complete in terms of conscription. One in eight servicemen mobilized in the fourth wave is a volunteer.

Internal Minister Avakov said he did not support initiative proposed by a number of Parliament's members to allow free gun ownership.

First lieutenant of the Ukrainian air force is facing 12 years in prison for high treason. He was found guilty of passing secret information to Russian security services about the placement of Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine.

Sixteen corruption scheme organizers, among them servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, have been caught in a special operation held along the Donbas contact line, SBU reported.

President Poroshenko has appointed Oleksandr Kuts as the head of the department of the SBU in Donetsk region and Oleh Kozlovsky as the chief of the SBU branch in Luhansk region.

President Poroshenko has proposed bill increasing the number of employees of the State Border Services from 50,000 to 53,000.

President Poroshenko has signed a law "On size of the Ukrainian armed forces," according to which the number of the Ukraine's army is to be increased to 250,000 people.

Starting from March 25 certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions have become temporarily occupied territories[3].

The first batch of U.S. Humvee military armoured vehicles arrived at Kyiv's Boryspil International Airport. US is planning to supply 230 Humvees, 30 of them heavily armoured. Another two lots with 20 heavily armoured vehicles will be delivered by April and the rest of 200 vehicles will be sent within 45 days.

Ukroboronprom intends to equip British made Saxon armoured personnel carriers, bought by the Defense Ministry, with KT-7.62 tank guns.

The status of participant in the Anti-Terrorist Operation has been granted to 22,322 soldiers, Ministry of Defense has reported. The status entitles to a range of state subsidies and benefits.

Head of SBU Nalyvaichenko said that armed groups that were in the ATO zone and were not under command of the armed forces, the Interior Ministry, or the SBU would be disarmed. They will have opportunity to legally join the armed forces to gain proper legal status. The Right Sector confirmed it had been ordered to leave Shyrokyne before March 27 and the ATO zone before April 1. The volunteers had been offered either to join the regular ATO forces or to leave the military zone, the General Staff confirmed. The group's spokesman said that Right Sector was ready to join army as a separate division under the command of Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh. President Poroshenko has offered Yarosh a job at Defense Ministry.

President Poroshenko issued instructions to strengthen the coordination of security forces regarding illegal circulation of weapons. The state of weapons storages in certain units of the armed forces has been inspected. Law enforcement officers, during a special operation on the cleaning ATO zone of illegal weapons and smuggling, detained more than 30 other offenders in Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk. In addition, recently, 18 armed men, 8 soldiers and 10 civilians, having presented themselves as policemen and community activists, were detained.

Police and SBU thwarted an attempt to create a fake riot in Odesa. As a result of the measures taken by the police six people were detained, including the organizers.

SBU has detained man, who was preparing attack on Saturday rally in Dnipropetrovsk.

In 2012, by order of the Minister of Defense, the electronic database of recruits used by the military enlistment offices was destroyed, President Poroshenko said. Poroshenko said about 80 percent of officials working for the SBU in 2012 had been recruited by the Russian Federal Security Service.

The State Border Guard Service has received UAH 10 million for Stena project, which will allow resuming the active stage of engineering works in early April. In particular this applies to Kharkiv and Luhansk border detachments.

Serhiy Yuldashev has been dismissed from the post of prosecutor in accordance with the lustration law. The criminal proceedings were initiated by the investigators of the PGO against Yuldashev earlier.

Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin has signed an order suspending Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Bahanets and Chief of the PGO Main Investigative Directorate Ihor Scherbyna while an internal investigation is conducted.

PGO has submitted case against Kharkiv Mayor Hennadiy Kernes and two of his bodyguards to court.

PGO confirmed the resumption of the investigation concerning non-affiliated Verkhovna Rada deputy Serhii Kivalov.

The membership of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine in the Coordinating Council of Prosecutors General of the Commonwealth of Independent States has been terminated, the PGO has reported.

President Poroshenko has signed the decree to establish interagency working group to coordinate the return of assets acquired by criminal activity of former high-ranking officials.

Head of the State Service of Emergency Situations Serhiy Bochkovsky and his deputy have been detained during televised government meeting on March 25. Zorian Shkiryak, an advisor to the Interior Minister, has been appointed as the acting head of the State Service of Emergency Situations. Interior Minister Avakov said the two men were detained for alleged graft involving off-shore companies. The Cabinet also dismissed the heads of the regional branches. The Kyiv Pechersky District Court ruled that former Emergency Situations Service head and his deputy would not be sent to pre-trial detention due to "insufficient evidences of a crime."  The PGO has withdrawn the request for their arrest to amend it with new charges and extended motion was taken back to the court, Avakov has explained. Pechersky district court has arrested former head of the State Emergency Situations Service Serhiy Bochkovsky until bail of around Hr 1.2 million is paid. The State Service for Emergency Situations faces a process of total lustration, Zorian Shkiriak said.

The Crimean News Agency QHA has been refused registration and it is likely that TV ATR, the only Crimean Tatar television channel in the world, will be forced off air.

Dutch experts found more human remains at the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 crash site in the Donetsk region.

On March 26, another Russian convoy arrived at the Donetsk Border Crossing Point.

OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Astrid Thors and the Ukrainian authorities discussed human rights violations in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Ukraine.

There is an urgent need to enhance the capacities of Ukraine to address the issue of gender-based violence, OSCE Senior Gender Adviser Ambassador Miroslava Beham said.

Weekly update from the OSCE Observer Mission at Russian Checkpoints Gukovo and Donetsk, March 25, 2015

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: Situation report No. 32 as of 20 March 2015

3. ECONOMY & REFORM EFFORTS

Ukraine's gross foreign debt in 2014 fell by $15.77 billion, or 11.1%, to $126.31 billion. However, due to the devaluation of the hryvnia and the economic downturn, the gross external debt to GDP ratio worsened last year, from 75.4% of GDP to 96.5% of GDP.

The international conference for the financial support of Ukraine is scheduled for April 28, adviser to the Prime Minister Danylo Lubkivsky said. EU officials told Reuters that Western governments and agencies are expected to meet in Kyiv only late in the year.

In April-May 2015 Ukraine plans to issue a new tranche of eurobonds worth $1 billion against U.S. guarantees, Finance Ministry reported.

The European Parliament has approved the allocation of €1.8 billion in macro-financial assistance to Ukraine.

Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko has called on countries of G7 and G20 to provide Kyiv with additional financial assistance.

Ukraine's debt burden cannot be restructured by just extending the maturity of its bonds, and creditors are unlikely to benefit if they "hold out" to maximise payments, Finance Minister Jaresko said. She has urged the nation's bondholders to negotiate a debt-restructuring agreement now or risk facing bigger losses. The Moody's downgraded Ukraine's rating to Ca.

IMF considers Ukraine's $3 billion in debt to Russia as an obligation of the private sector, not the official sector, IMF spokesman said. Taking back an earlier statement IMF spokesperson later said, that IMF has not determined whether Russia's $3 billion holding of Ukrainian debt should be classified as official or private sector debt.

IMF is assuming that $3 billion of debt owed by Ukraine to Russia this year will have to be restructured as part of the country's bailout package. Russia expects Ukraine to repay a $3 billion Eurobond in full and on time, Russian Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak said on March 23. Finance Minister Natalia Jaresko said Ukraine had officially invited Russia to participate in debt restructuring talks but has not yet received a response. Russian Finance Minister Siluanov repeated on Friday that Russia was not prepared to discuss restructuring its $3 billion holding of Ukrainian debt and considered itself to be an official rather than a private creditor[4].

Ukraine intends to return to financial markets in 2017, economic development and trade minister of Aivaras Abromavicius said.

China is to loan Ukraine $15bn over the next 15 years, to aid in the development and construction of affordable housing, according to Ukraine's Ministry of Regional Development.

The draft declaration of the Eastern Partnership Riga Summit says nothing about the conclusion of the visa agreement between the EU, Ukraine and Georgia, the Radio Poland has reported.  Ukraine will not be given a visa-free travel regime at Riga summit, Head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine Jan Tombinski said.

The NBU is ready to continue to support Ukraine's largest bank PrivatBank (part of Kolomoisky's Privat Group) with refinancing, but believes that its clients have no reason to worry; NBU said in reaction to dissemination of false information.

The Cabinet has accepted resignation of Ihor Bilous, the head of Fiscal Service and dismissed his deputies for violating the oath of a public servant. More about the surprising results of an official investigation into the activities of the State Fiscal Service leadership can be read here. The commission recommended that the Cabinet should leave Bilous at his post and dismiss his deputies. The Cabinet appointed Maksym Moklyak as temporary acting chief of State Fiscal Service.

President Poroshenko signed the law "On introducing amendments to certain legislative acts of Ukraine to strengthen social protection of internally displaced persons."

President Poroshenko signed law on licensing of economic activity. The law will simplify the procedure of issuing licenses and reduces the number of economic activities subject to licensing.

Companies in which the state owns or controls a stake should pay 80% of profit in dividends for 2014, a draft resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers reads. If companies fail to pay dividends by July 1, 2015, the heads of such enterprises will have their contracts terminated.

PM Yatseniuk said that principal provisions of the Constitution should be approved in a referendum and the constitution should include additional powers and responsibilities for regions.

Deputy Prosecutor General David Sakvarelidze said that all prosecutors and their deputies would have to take an exam to remain in their posts. Sakvarelidze explained reform of prosecutor office in interview for Glavcom.

The Antimonopoly Committee has issued binding recommendations for the 13 largest retail chains to reduce retail food prices to the levels before the period of high demand in February.

The Venice Commission has published full opinion on Law on Ensuring the Right to a Fair Trial, which serves as a base for judicial reform.

European Commission has released annual European Neighbourhood Reports on Ukraine, which underlines key developments and reform efforts in 2014 and makes recommendations for the year to come.

4. ENERGY UPDATE

Energy Minister Demchishin predicts lower gas consumption and sees no point in buying gas from Russia at a higher price than in Europe. The two countries are working on the new deal which may be signed on April 13-14. Russia is weighing a reduction in Ukraine's natural-gas price retroactively once a new agreement on summer package is reached, as talks threaten to miss an April 1 deadline.

Gazprom has sent about 200 million-300 million cubic meters of gas to Donbas since February 19, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told.

Energy Ministry is contesting in court the conclusions of the government commission that checked the contract on electricity imports from Russia and supplies to Crimea, minister Demchyshyn said.

EBRD has allocated €65 million to the Ukrainian national transmission network operator, Ukrenergo.

Crimea will be able to receive about 300 MW of electricity from Russia's Southern Federal District by the beginning of 2016 thanks to the laying of an underwater cable across Kerch Strait and construction of onshore power grid infrastructure, Russia's Energy Ministry said.

5. VISEGRAD NEWS AND VIEWS
[Resource links not here]

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 #28
Ukraine Today
http://uatoday.tv
March 29, 2015
Residents of eastern Ukrainian frontline town of Shchastya living in fear
[Photos here http://uatoday.tv/politics/residents-of-eastern-ukrainian-frontline-town-of-shchastya-living-in-fear-418269.html]

More than two-thirds of 15,000-strong population have fled since Russian-backed insurgency began

The eastern Ukrainian town of Shchastya is located some 20 km away from the separatists' stronghold of Luhansk. The word Shchastya means happiness in Ukrainian. But life in this quiet town during the past year has been anything but happy.

Because of its close proximity to Luhansk, this front line town in eastern Ukraine has been under frequent shelling ever since the Russian invasion began last summer. The traces of this invasion are all too evident here.

Now the town is quiet again, but for other reasons. Out of more than 15 thousand people living here before the war, more than 2/3 have fled. Those who stayed behind live in constant fear.

Local resident: "Here you go - the shots. What is happening? It's scary. We just want peace and no war. Nothing else. Our children have left already, thank God! And we will stay here. As they say - what will be, will be."

One of the reasons why this town is so important for both sides - is this heating station. It produces centralized heating for both - Luhansk, which is controlled by the Russia-backed militants and Schastya. This massive heating plant was too under heavy fire for a number of times.

Taras is a volunteer fighter with the Aydar battalion. He shows us the aftermath of station's shelling.

Taras joined this volunteer battalion, which is stationed in Schastya, last May and says the attitude of many locals is changing.

Taras, Aydar battalion fighter: "To be frank, some of the people were very narrow-minded. They considered us avengers. The time has passed and now they thank us. Now they don't want us to leave this town. they don't want these ruins."

But there are those, who blame the Ukrainian army and volunteer battalions for inflicting war and destruction on this quiet town. This local resident lives in the apartment block, which was hit with a Grad rocket. He says his family fled the town long ago.

Local resident: "Everything was beautiful here, everything was fine here, people were fine - they were fishing, resting, working. And here you go - all this began. I haven't seen my grandson for almost a year now. Almost a year."

And while some are fleeing in fear for their lives, others are coming in to save lives and souls as well. Among them father Volodymyr. He is an orthodox priest who came from Kyiv to this frontline town to serve as Aydar's chaplain. Every Sunday father Volodymyr goes to the fontline trenches to lead a Sunday prayer there.

Father Volodymyr, Aydar Chaplain: "Serving a liturgy on the front-line is absolutely normal. A priest should be with his people. During the war - in the trenches. During the joyful moments - he should be happy with others at wedding or a child birth. During funeral - he should mourn with others. Otherwise, nobody needs him."

Several months ago when father Volodymyr and a medic went to the frontline to retrieve the bodies of the killed soldiers, they were ambushed and taken prisoner by Russia-backed militants. Now the holly father is very reluctant to talk about his time in captivity. Following his physical and emotional recovery father Volodymyr came back to Aydar battalion to continue his mission here on the very frontline. The priest confides with us that after his detention he always carries a grenade in his pocket.

Father Volodymyr, Aydar Chaplain: "As soon as I leave the perimeter of the base, I arm the granade and walk around the town like this."

On Sunday we followed Father Volodymyr to the frontline positions of the Ukrainian soldiers, where he was leading a Sunday prayer. And even though no one was in attendance, Father Volodymyr still comes here every Sunday to deliver a sermon.

Father Volodymyr believes that he is in the right place. Here, in the trenches of this frontline town Schastya, which means happiness, where so little happiness is left.

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 #29
Ukrainian state-run companies to have foreign managers - PM Yatsenyuk

KIEV, March 29. /TASS/. Ukrainian state-run companies, including energy companies Ukrnafta and Ukrtransnafta, will have "high-quality foreign management," Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told the ICTV channel on Sunday.

"A new state approach to public companies - Ukrnafta, Ukrtransnafta and Ukrtatnafta - means that the state will resume its governance. We respect the rights of other shareholders, we receive and distribute dividends and we hire new, high-quality foreign managers," he said.

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 #30
Moscow Times
March 30, 2015
What Will the Kremlin Do Next in Ukraine?
By Vladimir Frolov
Vladimir Frolov is president of LEFF Group, a government relations and PR company

With the Minsk II agreement stalled and EU sanctions tied to its full implementation, it is getting increasingly hard to see Moscow's endgame in Ukraine.

Minsk II contains a set of conditionalities that provided the Kremlin with non-lethal means to realize its objectives in Ukraine - a new constitutional setup that would give the Donbass republics a special status with a veto over Kiev's policies. But this will not materialize.

It was discernible from the outset that Minsk II was primarily a cease-fire agreement, while all the fancy stuff about the Bosnia-style changes to Ukraine's constitution was never going to be implemented. Moscow knew this as it insisted on returning the control over the border to Ukraine only after constitutional changes were made.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko lacks the domestic support to implement the political parts of Minsk II that amount to dismantling the sovereign Ukrainian state. So he upstaged Moscow with a creative interpretation of the agreement that conditions the special status for the Donbass on free local elections held under Ukrainian law, effectively dead-ending Minsk II. Moscow's hope that the West will pressure Kiev to desist is futile.

Which leaves Russia with three options. One is to resume the military offensive to pressure Kiev to grant Russia's proxies in the Donbass the "special status" in a "confederate Ukraine." But the restart of combat operations, even if it did not directly involve regular Russian forces, would entail new Western sanctions with unpredictable impact on Russia's sputtering economy.

The second option would be to freeze the conflict for good and gradually build up the separatist enclaves into functioning unrecognized statelets with their eventual absorption into Russia. This could even result in a larger settlement were Kiev to legally abandon those territories while President Vladimir Putin leaves the rest of Ukraine alone, as he hinted a month ago. Some Western sanctions would be lifted.

The third option is to launch direct talks with Kiev to reach a comprehensive solution where Russia would withdraw its support for the separatists and allow Ukraine to restore its sovereignty in the Donbass while Kiev would agree to Russia's purchase of Crimea through debt forgiveness and energy subsidies, ending all Western sanctions.

Moscow's choice is between ending the conflict on reasonable terms and allowing it to drag the country down indefinitely.

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 #31
Interfax
March 29, 2015
Ukrainian opposition plans to form shadow government

Ukraine's Opposition Bloc plans to form a shadow government, says a posting on the opposition party's website.

"I will be responsible for industry, new industrialization and rehabilitation of Donbas as deputy prime minister," vice chairman of the Opposition Bloc's parliamentary faction Oleksandr Vilkul was quoted as saying.

Vilkul said that [ex-deputy prime minister] Borys Kolesnykov would be shadow prime minister.

"The government in office is absolutely incompetent. Guided by European practice we are shaping an opposition government that will draft bills and propose steps to overcome the crisis and to protect Ukrainian citizens," Vilkul said.

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 #32
Moscow Times
March 30, 2015
Ukraine's Power Struggles Are Just Beginning
By Pyotr Romanov
Pyotr Romanov is a journalist and historian.

The conflict between Ukrainian billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky and the Kiev authorities is just heating up, so it is difficult to predict how it will ultimately end. However, at this point it seems Kolomoisky is in a losing position, despite the weakness of the current Ukrainian government and the considerable political and paramilitary resources the oligarch has at his disposal.

If Kolomoisky has enough good sense to see that himself, he will abandon his adventurism and remain in politics as a central figure of the opposition. That way, he can have his revenge later.

But however this drama plays out, the current conflict was altogether predictable. This is first because history shows that revolutionaries eventually butt heads in the struggle to play the "alpha male." When the stature of the men is lower, and the stakes are lower, a threatening gesture is sometimes enough to settle the matter, although the contest occasionally ends in the taking of life.

But it is clear that two such revolutionary oligarchs as Kolomoisky and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko cannot peacefully coexist in the same political arena, much less in the same economic market.

The second reason is no less obvious. Ukraine underwent what might be called a "two-headed revolution" in that two groups made it happen - the Ukrainian people and those forces that, while not in the public eye, had "primed the pump" for Maidan from the very start.

Not only were historical laws a factor, but also the interests of those who push, control and teach the "rules of life" to the current Ukrainian authorities. Even during a difficult post-revolutionary period, no ruling national authority in the world could tolerate the existence of uncontrolled and essentially partisan militias. The most that could be hoped for is a temporary alliance with them, but even then, only until those militias focus their sights on the foundations of the new state.

Kolomoisky is a classic example of this. No government in the world could have tolerated someone such as Kolomoisky, who appropriated the entire Dnipropetrovsk region and, relying on his private army, created a state within a state. Of course, that is not unusual in revolutionary times, but it is a temporary phenomenon that ends once the central government of any country facing such a problem gathers enough strength to put an end to the rogue elements.

Those who rule Ukraine from behind the scenes have also had a hand in recent events. It is both unwise and pointless to deny that certain forces are calling the shots from a distance. It is more important to understand whether such interference works to the benefit or detriment of Ukraine. In many cases it is detrimental, but in the current case I believe it is beneficial.

I imagine that a reluctant Poroshenko was willing to endure Kolomoisky with his private army and his personal regional fiefdom for some time, but that the West finally lost its patience with the extravagant oligarch and his endless tricks.

The fact that the West observes a conspiracy of silence regarding the many outrages in Ukraine so as not to undermine the image of its protege does not also mean that the West is blind and deaf. And that is why the West feels that, in order to continue its support of the Ukrainian authorities, it is necessary for them to project a more acceptable image.

Dressing up Ukraine in attire suitable for civilized society is an ongoing process. Those baggy trousers, high deerskin boots and forelock are very interesting, but only for a folk festival. That is why the West insisted that Ukraine change into "gentlemen's" clothing in the form of presidential elections, parliamentary elections and reforms - albeit, all of questionable legitimacy.

Now Ukraine will have to shave that ridiculous forelock, curled and twisted as it is by Kolomoisky and his militia.

If Kiev does not bring the Right Sector into line, its turn will come as well. That is, if Poroshenko cannot instill order among the Ukrainian far-right himself, the time will come when the West makes it a precondition for further assistance.

In fact, the West has probably already been hinting as much, which would explain why Poroshenko has unexpectedly made a number of public statements attacking the "Bandera bandits," and why he has decided to pull all volunteer militias that openly refuse to abide by the Minsk agreement out of the so-called "anti-terrorist operations."

The European Union already has more than it wants of regressive and backward-looking elements in Germany and the recent upsurge in activity by far-right forces in Greece. The West is probably more than a little peeved to have to also look at television images showing wild far-right groups roaming the streets of Kiev.

Does the conflict with Kolomoisky weaken or strengthen Ukraine? In the short run, of course, it weakens the country because it threatens the already unstable balance of Ukrainian political forces. But in the long run, it strengthens the country.

After all, a picture of official Kiev without armed bandits and marauders always looks better than one with the government embracing them.

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#33
Moscow Times/Vedomosti
March 30, 2015
Ukraine's Oligarchs at War
By Boris Grozovsky
Boris Grozovsky is an economic observer. This comment originally appeared in Vedomosti.

The enemies of the Kiev authorities are rejoicing over the latest news out of Ukraine. The administration of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is practically at war with oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky and his private army, with both sides accusing the other of incompetence and corruption.

Kolomoisky was forced to step down as governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, but that is only the end of one act and not the end of the entire drama. At any moment now, several more corruption scandals could erupt involving government officials from various rival clans.

Kiev's enemies also have reason to celebrate the results of the latest opinion polls. According to a Research & Branding Group survey conducted in early March, only 8 percent of Ukrainians are confident that the country is moving in the right direction, while 48 percent feel that it is moving in the wrong direction and 44 percent have mixed feelings.

Respondents generally do not trust political parties and the authorities, but have strong faith in the church, the army and in civic and voluntary organizations. Poroshenko and Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk hold negative popularity ratings, with only 33 percent approving of Poroshenko versus 58 percent disapproving, and 24 percent supporting Yatsenyuk and 68 percent unhappy with his job performance.

Kolomoisky played a major role in defending Ukraine's southern and eastern regions. First, he created volunteer battalions with the assistance of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Administration. Second, by transferring sound business practices to the processes of government, Kolomoisky demonstrated how effectively and efficiently regional officials could carry out their duties. Why did such services go unappreciated?

There are several reasons. For his part, Kolomoisky was greedy and unwilling to accept the new rules of the game that prohibit government officials from using their posts to further private business interests. As for Poroshenko, he failed to clearly articulate his policy objectives and was unwilling to apply those new rules of the game across the board to all oligarchs and senior government officials.

The conflict over state-controlled companies Ukrnafta, in which Kolomoisky holds a 42 percent share, and UkrTransNafta, which is 100 percent state-owned but which Kolomoisky manages, was accompanied by the appearance of a group of armed men in the center of Kiev.

Government authorities do not understand by what supposed right those men appeared, but they have responded by deciding to disarm all private security companies. At the same time, Kolomoisky does not understand why the authorities have decided to start placing harsher limits first on him - after he has done so much for the country - rather than on other powerful oligarchs.

Now Kolomoisky can exploit all of Poroshenko's mistakes and the widespread frustration with him over unpopular government reforms. Kolomoisky has many supporters, and either he or a hand-picked protege could become a serious contender for the presidential post if Poroshenko is forced into early retirement.

The cunning Kolomoisky even tipped his hat in the direction of Moscow by suggesting in a recent television interview that Kiev should negotiate directly with the self-proclaimed people's republics of Donestk and Luhansk - something the Ukrainian authorities have refused to do on principle until now.

The greatest risk that Kolomoisky faces is losing his ability to continue earning money from state companies and the possible bankrupting of the PrivatBank chain, an institution he co-founded and Ukraine's largest bank.

For his part, Poroshenko risks bankrupting his support from civil society that now decides all, or almost all, of Ukraine's most important questions. That outcome is inevitable if Poroshenko does not apply the same strict measures against businessmen and officials from other clans, including his own, that he is now pressing against Kolomoisky.

But the greatest risk Ukraine faces is eliminating the "anything goes" rules of the 1990s without creating new rules to replace them.

Ukraine has a rich tradition of businesspeople "seizing" power and conducting state policy in favor of private rather than public interests. It is impossible to halt that practice without sparking a conflict. The only question is what it will lead to - a step backward, or a more transparent government that is accountable to the Ukrainian people.

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#34
Kyiv Post
March 29, 2015
Kolomoisky speaks of his inner tug-of-war and patriots from the Opposition Bloc
by Yulia Sosnovska

The former governor of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, businessman Igor Kolomoisky, appeared on the political talk show "Pravo na vladu" on the 1+1 TV-channel on March 26 in a sort of farewell address after his high-profile resignation. He stepped down from his post in the early hours of March 25 after a dramatic showdown with the government that saw Kolomoisky twice dispatch his private security guards to seize control of state-owned energy companies Ukrnafta and Ukrtransnafta.

He stepped down from his post in the early hours of March 25 after a dramatic showdown with the government that saw Kolomoisky twice dispatch his private security guards to seize control of state-owned energy companies Ukrnafta and Ukrtransnafta.

He explained the move by saying he was trying to protect the companies from raiders, but many saw the action as an attempt to resist the government's initiative for the state to regain control of the companies.

In his appearance on the 1+1 channel, which he himself owns, Kolomoisky spoke openly on his thoughts regarding the country's current state of affairs for the first time since his resignation. He spoke of his reasons for leaving office, his team's future plans and relations with the Opposition Bloc, which did not support the EuroMaidan uprising that saw a change in Ukrainian leadership. The Kyiv Post has rounded up some of Kolomoisky's most interesting comments.

Businessman vs Politician

"I don't think my designation [to the post] was a difficult decision. It happened last year after the parliamentary elections. I moved to the post of governor from business and from another country - I moved back and forth between Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Geneva. And that was a difficult decision."

"We must understand that our country, where the war is continuing, is trying to normalize civilian life and rebuild the governmental institutions that were broken a year ago. We need reforms and vertical power strength."

"I promised to leave my post after the presidential elections, but circumstances arose that would've made such a move nothing short of desertion."

"I'm a businessman and have never truly been an official. I understood that I was a subordinate and I had a boss. But sometimes I forgot about that and started to behave as if we were on the same level. Other governors saw this and it undermines the power vertical."

"I consider Poroshenko to be a very patient and compromising person. If I were him, I would have fired governor Kolomoisky within three months."

"There was no zugzwang, check or mate - there was just the end of the game, and we turned the page. I left my official post; I resolved the conflict between the businessman and the government worker that had been brewing inside me. I didn't give the enemies of Ukraine a chance to play up a conflict between me and President Poroshenko."

"I said in an earlier interview that I wasn't going to take part in politics or start politic projects. I'll stay an oligarch, a businessman, a parasite in society's opinion. I don't see any reason to change the things I've been working with for the past 25-30 years. Yet, being a wealthy businessman doesn't make me any less of a patriot than an ordinary citizen."

"[The situation with Ukrtransnafta and Ukrnafta] was just a PR-stunt to improve the ratings of smaller parties. It wasn't an attack on governor Kolomoisky, it was an attack on the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, the People's Front, against the prime minister and the president."

"I don't consider my resignation to be the beginning of a war on oligarchs. There was no fight with oligarch Kolomoisky. There was only Kolomoisky's inner tug-of-war. And it's gone now."

The Dnipropetrovsk team and the Opposition Bloc

"I still consider my team to be the Dnipropetrovsk people, the Ukrainians. We don't want any rebellion to start. Throughout the past year, we united the country and don't want to separate."

"Our team [in the Dnipropetrovsk administration] was a restrictive factor for the Opposition Bloc. And I think we'll continue to be an outpost against it here."

"We are preparing for the local elections, which have strategic value after the implementation of decentralization. If decentralization isn't started by the higher government, it will begin on a lower level. We have already seen what aggression this caused last year."

"If the Opposition Bloc begins running around with tricolors in Dnipropetrovsk, they will have made themselves betrayers and separatists. We won't allow them to incite people to such behavior - and it doesn't matter if I'm the governor or not."

"I always tell my colleagues that we earn two kinds of money: first, the money given by natural conditions and God, and second, the money earned using our intelligence. The first one prohibits Dnipropetrovsk or Lviv or Donetsk from saying that it feeds other regions."

"We're familiar with [Rinat] Akhmetov and [Oleksandr] Vilkul so I can't say they have a pro-Russian position. Some of their sayings and appearances with Russian flags are caused by flawed advice from political strategists and party leaders who want to attract voters. But they are still Ukrainian patriots."

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 #35
Fort Russ
http://fortruss.blogspot.com
March 29, 2015
Dmitry Yarosh to Poroshenko: "We toppled Yanukovich, and can topple you". Interview.
Maria Lebedeva for LB.ua
http://society.lb.ua/war/2015/03/28/300131_dmitriy_yarosh_vlast_boitsya_pravogo.html
Translated by Kristina Rus

Our conversation took place on the day the "Right Sector" was ordered to leave the area of the ATO, and a new head of administration was introduced in Dnepropetrovsk. The leader of the "Right Sector" shared with us how he sees the situation, and also spoke about the relationship with the authorities, the future of the volunteer battalions, and much more.

About the order to leave the area ATO

I was preparing the draft laws on social protection of volunteers, but, as far as I understand, the President put a stop to it. In my opinion, Poroshenko does not understand still, what country he lives in, does not understand the realities. I am not forcing events from my side. And they are shaking the situation for some reason. Our politicians who have become state officials, by circumstances, by the will of the people, by the blood that was spilled on the Maidan [did not earn the power themselves, but were given the power by those like Yarosh - KR], in this war are too dependent on the opinions from abroad. Putin, Merkel, Hollande. They are given an algorithm of behavior, and they will follow it. Even if it is at the expense of national interests, even the sacred, the blood of the guys who died. This is where it "shoots" from. [The government betrayed the patriots, surprise - the "patriots" served their role and are no longer needed, but they don't want to step back  - KR]

I realized this even at the airport. They begged me for a long time to take the Right Sector out of there. When the fighting intensity came down due to the "truce," which was quite ephemeral. At the end of November I pulled the fighters. Often my guys stopped the [UAF] soldiers from running away and under a barrel of a gun simply did not allow to give up the airport. [This is a war of the "radical patriots" and not of the people of Ukraine, and Yarosh doesn't get it, thinking most of them are traitors of the motherland - KR] Twice we were given the order to leave the airport.

As soon as we left - the old terminal was surrendered. It became clear that the new terminal is next - in a matter of time it will be either captured or surrendered.

Although we offered a lot of options. To move the firing positions outside of its territory. To blow up the runway across, to dig a trench, 600 meters from the control tower, which we controlled. We went there first, and then brought in the experienced soldiers. Captured the height over the airfield. That is, we planned to fully capture it, and under normal control and operations there would be no problems with retaining this location. We even proposed to build a new terminal!

They looked at us, like... But it is very simple. Need shipping containers, they are dug into the ground, filled with soil, even a tank can't get them, it can be done in one day. They didn't agree to anything. Now there is a [Right Sector] company in Shirokino, another scandal began. I was already told that there is an order for the withdrawal of troops of the Right Sector from Peski and Shirokino, and anyway, we're represented across the entire front, I  have medical brigades and combat units. Many do not like it. Including soldiers.

About the relations with the army

When our guys are under fire, they, as a rule, do not sit back and fire in response. Mainly, we are in good relations with those brigades, with which we fought before together [thats it? - KR]. But before the injury, when I was in Lugansk region, near Schastje, drove the medics, we were not accepted well... But there the war is different than in Donetsk region. Checkpoints are close to each other. They even go to visit each other (laughs). Like it was in Afghanistan, when field commanders agreed among themselves, existed peacefully. Until there was an incident when national guardsmen on a jeep flew into a checkpoint to the other side without stopping (were drunk), and they were shot. From our side they began to pull APC's, to take them out, from that side they began to pull the heavy weapons, and that's how it starts.

About lawmaking, plans and relations with the authorities

I want to introduce some bills, to form the armed forces under three categories: conscripts, contractors and volunteers. To make DUK [Volunteer Corps] a volunteer reserve, with its own area of responsibility. One of the bills I have already registered. My assistants betrayed me. Of course, changes will have to be made in other legislation.

It will be a natural relationship of the armed forces and volunteers. We never subordinated to them. We initially established normal relations with the main command. Only those suggestions that we have received back in the spring... Initially, for example, agreed in the AP [Presidential Administration], with Pashinsky that we will work under the main directorate of intelligence. But in the Ministry of Defense, they tell us: "Territorial defense" in God knows which region. Wait, but we talked about something else?! "No, we'll change it later..." Uh, no, guys, I say, I know your Ministry of Defense, the bureaucracy, you will find any reason not to let us fight. Had to refuse. And later there were many such proposals. To join one brigade, then another. Everyone who wanted to go, went to "Aidar", "Azov", UAF, we do not force anyone. But there are people who don't believe the military commanders, and have reasons not to believe. After Ilovaysk, Debaltsevo.

Now I talk with the fighters, they ask: "Who are you leaving us to rip us apart?" If they (the government - ed.) managed well, if we had normal upgraded armed forces, with normal approach to staff, there would be no need for any DUC, nor anything else. And what I see, not in all, but in many units - no work with the staff. So that a political officer would come, explained the political situation, explained the motivation, why you are here, why to storm or to protect an object, this doesn't happen. [Ukrainian soldiers don't understand what they are fighting for, and Yarosh wants to explain it to them - KR] This is the Soviet model, they do not work. But we are doing everything according to NATO standards. The lack of bureaucracy gives full mobility. We are not perfect, but much more efficient than today's regular army. If only we had sufficient quantity of weapons, I think, we would outnumber the armed forces (laughs). I know many, among the commanders and fighters of armed forces of Ukraine, who would immediately come to our side, if we were given weapons.

They [the authorities] only can't understand one thing - they think that I am competing with them for power. I don't need it at all!. If I wanted power - I would have long started to work on that. All I want is to win the war and to babysit grandchildren - nothing more.

[Didn't you just describe how you want to call the shots? - KR]

(Wife Olga: "What about me?!.." - Yarosh: "Well, and you, of course, sweetie! We will babysit each other!")

They added amendments to the bills that I proposed, at the last session on Thursday they were supposed to vote, but did not vote, and it is unclear if they will vote at all, after all these statements about the "cynical Banderites" [Poroshenko slip of tongue - KR], and "those who love to shoot" (regarding the killing of the SBU agent - ed.)... I know that he (Poroshenko - ed) is afraid of us. Can't stand us. I told him everything in his face. When Ilovaysk happened, and the first agreements. The battle is raging, and I am told - "Minsk agreement is signed". Called his assistant, said, tell him it's complete idiocy. And the betrayal of national interests. And also said: we toppled Yanukovych and can topple you too. He got very offended.

I can understand a lot: diplomatic maneuveringg, buying time, creating the armed forces. But what killed me was a truce in September. Debaltsevo. There was, for example, the moment when in Gorlovka only a company of the separatists was left, we could go in there. Debaltsevo could be prevented. And what? No orders. Lost a chance, they were building up forces. And we were denied requests for arms. But they (the authorities - ed) are afraid of the Right Sector more than of the terrorists, obviously.

On foreign instructors

Every experience should be adopted. Will come in handy. We also hired instructors, they came from all over the place. Our army did not fight, their army came back from Iraq, Afghanistan, and so on. When instructors see that our guys are interested, they are happy to share the knowledge, it is very useful. They compared, went to the army. They say this is not a drill, they [army soldiers - KR] are not interested. They do one hour of training, and done. But the volunteers light up, they have a million questions, of course, the instructors love it. In one of my battalions there are four Georgian instructors, they also went through training. When they work, they are very organized. Perfect supply, communications. When they see someone managing a battle with text messages on a cell phone (laughs), it's hard for them to understand.

On the work in the Verkhovna Rada
I didn't really want to do it, the truth is, the guys came up with the idea, I did not really want it, knew that it's not for me.

What will happen to the volunteer battalions


Legitimization of the status may help to save the volunteer units. But DUK just cannot go under the subordination of the armed forces, under their command. Because it means we will be liquidated. I have some commanders without higher military education, and some even without any higher education. They will immediately loose their positions. But they are more efficient than those with two diplomas. We must have our own system of knowledge, hierarchy, and the opportunity to grow. This should be reflected in the law. Then, after the war, if they wish, they can receive a higher education. Our Charter says: DUK is formed and operates only during the period of war [undeclared? - KR]. We will return Crimea, restore our territorial integrity, and then dissolve. We have more discipline than the army. But it is normal to see a commander on the front lines. Find me a  general, who will come there and lead the men from the trenches.

Our fighters are well provided with helmets, body armor, and so on. We are supported by volunteer organizations. If we will depend on [state] tenders, it will be useless. We never set a goal to obtain heavy equipment, we are light infantry, at most - we can have mortars. Will not say no to tanks, of course, but it is not the goal. We offer a completely different model of warfare. After air reconnaissance, armored pickups or "Cougars" can appear at the front, work on a target in three minutes and disappear. The [enemy's] artillery will cover the position, but there will be no one there.

About the "ceasefire"

It is relative, we see that there is fighting on many fronts. How long it will last - depends on Putin and his decisions. They have assembled forces for a strike, they will have deceptive battles, and there will be the main ones. 3-4 shock troops they already have. There are some in Donetsk, they may go to Konstantinovka, Slavyansk, for them it is symbolic. The second direction is Mariupol. The third - Stanitsa Luganskaya, Schastye, another cauldron may develop there. And Volnovakha. They will wait until the fields are dry to start the offensive. We don't see their chessboard, may be they will have aviation.

About relations with Kolomoisky

I saw him twice in my life, there is no special relationship. With Gennady Korban, Slava Oleynik, Boris Filatov I have a friendly relationship. But then again, we also met after the revolution. War, so to speak, made us friends. I judge by real results. I saw that the guys are working not for their own pocket but for the country. That's the main thing.

Although I hear different things about "Privat", and I don't deny it. Gena wrote yesterday in FB, that in our country the conditions are such that you cannot legally do business. And it's true. If you want to achieve anything, you have to violate the rules, and only then you will achieve something. I am very grateful for everything they've done for us, even though we never asked for anything. Help with the body armor, helmets, cars, without them it would be much harder. I am grateful to them, as a resident of this region. We saw the situation in Kharkov, Odessa, couldn't do this there. But they managed to do it, despite the influence of Vilkul clan, which has considerable influence here. We will ensure that they (the members of the clan - ed.) don't raise their head, we can't afford to lose the Dnepropetrovsk region. Without options.

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 #36
Sputnik
March 29, 2015
Ukraine's Right Sector Leader Wants Donbas Residents Deported

In an interview for Ukrainian newspaper Obosrevatel published on Sunday, Ukrainian Right Sector leader and Rada deputy Dmitri Yarosh stated that the unruly residents of eastern Ukraine should be deported and deprived of their civil rights.

Yarosh noted that much of Donbas is populated by 'Sovoks', an insulting slang term in Ukrainian and Russian derived from the word 'Soviet'. Yarosh stated that the region "is populated by Sovoks -real Sovoks. And they should be deported. We have to deal with those who do not want to live by the rules and the laws of the state in a very harsh manner. This includes deportation, the deprivation of civil rights, and so on. Without force, it will not be possible to do anything with the region, to turn the tide so to speak."

The Right Sector leader added that the region's "unruly" residents must also be dealt with. "If we get rid of the unruly ones, everything will be fine, quiet and peaceful. And then, of course, a program of affectionate Ukrainianization can begin." The MP noted that "spiritual rebirth" can begin only if authorities act in a consistent and forceful manner.

Yarosh cited Ukrainian authorities' response to events in Konstantinovka, Donetsk, controlled by the Ukrainian military, where an inebriated Ukrainian armored vehicle driver recently crashed into a crowd of people and crushed and killed an eight-year-old girl in a hit and run incident, leading to riots in the streets.

"The events in Konstantinovka are an example of what I mean. If we had shown even a little bit of weakness...Right from the beginning a whole bunch of 'heroes' began crawling out of the woodwork, using the tragedy in their own separatist interests. And when our guys came out and began shooting into the air and arresting the instigators of riots, everything ceased at once. This is the rule," Yarosh explained.

The MP noted that in his view, there are still many "real patriots" of Ukraine in the region, and that the present anti-Kiev attitudes are the result of many years of Russian propaganda and the removal of genuinely Ukrainian spiritual values. Yarosh explained that the "guys from Donetsk and Lugansk regions" fighting for the Ukrainian army "should become the [new] elite, on whose basis a qualitatively new society can be built...And those Vatnik [slang for Russians blindly loving their country], criminal oligarchic attitudes sitting in the minds of ordinary people for one reason or another must be removed."

As part of an effort to get the country's volunteer battalions under his control, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko is said to have offered Right Sector leader Dmitri Yarosh a post in the Ministry of Defense.

The extreme nationalist leader noted that he has accepted the president's invitation to come work in the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, adding that he has chosen to do so on a volunteer basis.

Speaking about the Ukrainian army's recent losses on the battlefield, Yarosh recalled that "we faced a route near Ilovaisk...On the one hand, we have learned to fight, with morale at a high level. But things are very bad when a pride of lions is led by sheep. They cannot lead us to victory, and only roll us back...Speaking about the current situation on the front, our forces are still threatened by several encirclements. And I don't know, again, whether the sheep will react to this, or whether they are playing some sort of geopolitical game."

The Right Sector is a far-right wing Ukrainian nationalist party. In January and February of 2014, the movement's members participated heavily in fighting with Ukrainian police in the streets of Kiev, and in the capture of government buildings during the Euro-Maidan coup. Since April, they have taken the lead in the crushing of protest movements in eastern Ukraine, and enforcing the new order of the revolutionary government. In addition, they have also been involved in Kiev's military operation in Donbas. Right Sector's Ukrainian Volunteer Corps includes two battalions operating in eastern Ukraine, as well as eight reserve battalions throughout the rest of the country.

In November 2014, the Russian Supreme Court declared the Right Sector to be an extremist organization, and its activity has been banned on the territory of the Russian Federation. Earlier, in March, 2014, Russian authorities issued an arrest warrant against Dmitri Yarosh for incitement of terrorism, and for his organization's combat operations in the First Chechen War against the Russian military.

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#37
http://rusvesna.su
March 29, 2015
Right Sector fighters want to be the part of Secret Service

"Right Sector" fighters (the far-right extremistic organisation banned in Russia) go on bargaining wirh Kiev authorities over their further destiny.

The offer to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine or National Guard, i.e. to be incorporated into the army, wasn't much liked by the RS fighters as they wanted to keep their privileged "out-of-the-system" status.

Now RS have laid their own conditions: they are ready to join Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) as field reconnaissance detachments. The Right Sector agrees to be incorporated into Ministry of Defence on their own conditions: organisation integrity shall be preserved with D. Yarosh as a head.

"What orders should we wait from the generals who made Ilovaysk and Debaltsevo entrapment possible and who did not give us any intelligence data when we needed it? - told one of RS heads to the Ukrainian journalists. - Disbandment is totally unaccaptable. If they want to incorporate us somewhere then we should be incorporated as a whole organisation with no exceptions and we will obey our commanders only."

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 #38
Fort Russ
http://fortruss.blogspot.com/
March 26, 2015
Right Sector blamed for bus tragedy near Artemovsk
By J.Hawk
[Tymchuk document here http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/03/right-sector-blamed-for-bus-tragedy.html]

The casualties include 4 killed, 12 wounded, and 7 missing. The bus struck an anti-tank mine while trying to bypass a checkpoint on the approaches to Artemovsk. Reportedly the Ukrainian checkpoint was refusing to allow them passage--was it a question of paying bribes to be allowed through?

What is interesting that, instead of the usual "Je suis Artemovsk"-type propaganda campaign, Ukrainian government sources pointed the finger at the Right Sector. The charge is led by Dmitriy Tymchuk, well known for his advocacy on behalf of the junta, who did not stop short of calling them "cynical criminals", thus faithfully echoing (though without his boss' Freudian slip) Poroshenko's references to "volunteer battalion" killing of an SBU officer earlier.

So the knives are coming out for the Right Sector. Question is, are they being warned to fall in line and accept Poroshenko's authority, or is it a beginning of a campaign to eradicate them?

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 #39
http://gordonhahn.com
March 29, 2015
Coopting Neo-Fascism: Yarosh, Poroshenko, and the State's Monopoly on the Organs of Coercion
By Gordon M. Hahn
Gordon M. Hahn is an Analyst and Advisory Board Member of the Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, Chicago, Illinois; Senior Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group, San Jose, California Analyst/Consultant, Russia Other Points of View - Russia Media Watch; and Senior Researcher and Adjunct Professor, MonTREP, Monterey, California.

Dmitro Yarosh, one of the Ukrainian parliament's neo-fascists and leader of the Right Sector (RS) party and volunteer battalions, has suggested "deportation, deprivation of civil rights, etc." for the residents of the Donbass who oppose "ukrainization" in the breakaway region. Without coercion, the next stage of "soft ukrainization," in which "sovok" or the alleged remnants of 'Soviet' (read: Russian) culture cannot begin (http://vesti-ukr.com/donbass/94280-jarosh-predlozhil-svoj-variant-ukrainizacii-donbasskogo-sovka).

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has offered the neo-fascist a position in Ukraine's Defense Ministry, according to Anton Geraschenko, an advisor to the Internal Affairs Ministry and a former Petroshenko advisor (http://vesti-ukr.com/strana/94012-gerawenko-zajavil-o-nalichii-vakansii-dlja-jarosha-v-minoborony). Right Sector members entered the neo-fascist-dominated volunteer battalions such as 'Azov' and 'Aidar' - which are accused of war crimes by Western human rights organizations such as Amnesty International - as well as Dnepr 1, the National Guard, and the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Others entered Right Sector's own 'Ukrainian Volunteer Corps' (DUK) which refuses to subordinate itself to either the Defense Ministry, the General Staff, the MVD, the National Guard, or the intelligence services.

In a recent interview, Yarosh stated RS's DUK will not subordinate itself to any state institution and that Poroshenko is "afraid" of Right Sector. He also said that when Poroshenko traveled to Ilovaisk a week ago, he told the president's aide to tell him that "we removed Yanukovich, and we can remove you." He also said the Ukrainian armed forces remain Soviet-like and that he plans to develop his DUK "according to NATO standards" (http://vesti-ukr.com/strana/94249-jarosh-nazval-prichiny-neprijazni-poroshenko-k-ps).

It is clear that Poroshenko's offer is an attempt to coopt Yarosh so he can convince him and others to subordinate their volunteer battalions to the state's armed forces. The dilemma of using neo-fascist-dominated extra-legal armed formations to carry forth its 'anti-terrorist' operations in Donbass is reaching a crisis point in the wake of oligarch and now former Dnepropetrovsk governor, Oleh Kolomoiskii.

As Western countries, including the U.S. military, prepare to begin training the Ukrainian army, Washington may be, and one would hope is, exerting pressure on Poroshenko to rein in the neo-fascists and the volunteer battalions. On April 20th US paratroopers will begin several weeks of training maneuvers with Ukraine's National Guards and the volunteer battalions, including the neo-fascist-dominated 'Azov' battalion (http://www.ng.ru/news/498380.html).

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 #40
Russia Direct
http://russia-insider.com/
March 30, 2015
Ukraine - In the Grip of Propaganda
In a dysfunctional and stagnant Ukraine one sector nonetheless works extremely well - the lying oligarch-controlled media. The overthrow of Yanukovich was its greatest triumph yet
By Ricky Twisdale
Ricky Twisdale is a freelance writer and teacher living in western Ukraine.

One day, when the cacophony of lies drowning out the truth of what has happened in Ukraine since the violent Maidan power grab last year is silenced, the entire episode will furnish rich material for social psychologists.

That is, assuming the true facts ever become generally known in the West, for there are plenty of historical examples that the truth does not always "prevail," as the adage goes. Instead, people's views of history are largely formed by myths, and ever since Herodotus, the "father of history," what we call history has been more legend than an impartial documentation of fact.

It is telling that in all the major European languages except English, the word "history" means both "history" and "story" - in other words there is an awareness, at least in our languages, that history is a story, i.e. that it is made up. Even in English the two words have the same etymology.

When Ukrainians overwhelmingly backed the overthrow of constitutional government by the putschist-led mob in Kiev, it was the result of a massive deluge of hysterical, usually non-sensical, fantastical, and always Russophobic propaganda.

This propaganda came in no small part through the late 20th century's traditional medium - television. For all the hype of Yanukovch as a "dictator" by the Maidan crowd, his influence over the country's media was weak. There were few, if any open statements of support for Yanukovych on Ukrainian TV, which is largely owned and financed by oligarchs and the western powers.

One of the main channels in country, 1+1, is owned by Igor Kolomoisky; another main channel, Inter, is owned by Dmytro Firtash; the Starlight Media Group, which owns several Ukrainian channels, is owned by Victor Pinchuk;  and the primary 24 hours news outlet in the country, Channel 5, is the property of El Presidente himself. Another popular news channel, Hromodske TV, appeared suddenly on the airwaves in November 2013 (just in time to cover the "revolution"), funded by the USA, the Dutch, and the International Renaissance Fund of George Soros.

But among the younger generation, the primary instigator was undoubtedly the internet: the same social media which had played so large a part in the murky origins of the Arab Spring "revolutions": Facebook and Twitter (which it deserves recalling are American) supplemented in Ukraine by the Russian networking site Vkontakte. These websites served as the heartbeat of Maidan supporters. No sooner did a photo of dubious origin, or even a single inflammatory sentence, appear on one of these sites than it was propagated infectiously and accepted as an established fact by the Maidan crowd.

Of course it was not merely a question of mass media manipulation. There were genuine grievances behind Ukrainians' support for "revolution." Ukraine is ranked as one of the world's most corrupt countries. Bribery permeates every level of society - from the presidency down to the cleaning lady. The country has suffered 24 years of economic, infrastructural and social stagnation which no politician or political party has shown itself able or willing to remedy. Instead, many politicians - such as the current prime minister Yatsenyuk and the seemingly washed up Oleh Tyahnybok - have made careers plying the Russophobia which underlies post-independence Ukrainian nationalism.

"Manufacture of Consent"

In 1922 the journalist Walter Lippmann published a book, Public Opinion, in which he coined the term "manufacture of consent." The basic theory is that human evolution has not equipped the average man with the ability to discern the truth from the vast amounts of information presented to him by means of modern mass media. Therefore, it is incumbent upon an elite - who will of course act in the best interests of society - to mould his worldview in such a way that is most beneficial to society.

(We are here reminded of Lenin's contention in his famous tract What is to be done? that in the modern world the average worker did not have the time or ability to study and fully comprehend the theory of Marxism - therefore a revolutionary vanguard became necessary.)

In the words of Lippmann:

"That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies. The process by which public opinions arise is certainly no less intricate than it has appeared in these pages, and the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the process are plain enough. . . . [a]s a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power. . . . Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the old constants of our thinking have become variables. It is no longer possible, for example, to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-deception, and to forms of persuasion that we cannot verify. It has been demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents of casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond our reach."
- Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, Chapter XV

There is reason to believe that those who control mass media are students of collective psychology. Besides the ideas expressed in Lippmann's Public Opinion, Propaganda by Eduard Bernays and The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon, among other works, prove that the mechanisms for manipulating collective consciousness were already being studied and were known by the early 20th century.

Myth vs. Reality

There exists a huge gulf between the myths promoted in Ukraine about Europe, and what Europeans actually think about Ukraine. According to German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Ukraine should not be allowed to join NATO, and joining the EU will take "generations."  Joining the EU or NATO requires a unanimous vote of all members. If Germany says "no," it means no.  

But since most Ukrainians' beliefs and attitudes are formed entirely by their own reckless propagandistic - dare I say lying - oligarch-controlled media, they will know nothing of this. They know nothing of how Western Europeans truly regard them, because they do not or cannot read international media. They could read Russian media, which would certainly provide an opposing perspective. But they largely do not, since the stigma attached to Russian sources is strong, and Russian channels have been banned in Ukraine since the coup regime took power.

That's how the Maidan coup leaders and Poroshenko were able to dangle the carrot of EU membership and visa-free travel (which he promised in his election campaign would happen in January 2015) and why the majority of Ukrainians were all too willing to believe the fantasies promised them.

A failed "Revolution"

Approximately one year later, most Ukrainians are disappointed with the results of their "revolution" -the promised visa-free travel in Europe and miraculous transformation of the country to Western European standards did not materialize. Corruption has not decreased, for that requires more than new "European" style laws and regulations - it requires Ukrainians themselves to change their behavior, to stop accepting and demanding bribes. That seems unlikely as long as they are encouraged to keep blaming the devil for their sin, i.e Russia and "Russian mentality" which they say is responsible for any flaws in their character.

Many are beginning to see that it was merely a coup d'état by one set of oligarchs against one of their own - and the the Ukrainian people were duped, herded like cattle and used as pawns in a power grab. Their patriotism and dreams for the future were abused, just as in the earlier Maidan - the "Orange Revolution" of 2004 - and probably will be again. Ukrainians have an uncanny knack for picking a loser and siding with whatever new would-be slave master comes along - be it Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon, Hitler, or Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland (my apologies to Charles, Napoleon, and Hitler).

They are not yet prepared to see the role played by the United States and Western powers in Ukraine as pernicious. For that would mean, essentially, embracing Russia - which is now psychologically impossible for a great many. They forget entirely, or simply deny, that they come from the same origin: the medieval Rus state. As for the generation educated in the last 20 years - I doubt they are taught this in school at all.

A typical example is one woman I know, whose husband is a rather prosperous businessman. She is fully aware that the Maidan events were not a revolution at all; that they brought the same politicians and oligarchs to power who have ruled the country since independence. Remarkably, she even suggested that the coup was supported by the United States. But as if forced by cognitive dissonance she then interjected, "of course, we'd be a lot better off if Putin would just die." Death wishes against Putin (also called "Putler") are common. It is just too much psychologically for Ukrainians to look in the mirror for the source of their problems. They cannot admit that the bogeyman did not do it.

Igor Kolomoisky: Defender of Ukraine

To most, the problem is not mainly the oligarchs. It is Russia and Putin. The is reflected in Ukrainians' attitudes to the recent clash between Petro Poroshenko and Igor Kolomoisky. Though ostensibly about control over a state oil company, it was really about defining the limits of Kolomoisky's power. Since the coup, Kolomoisky has ruled Dnipropetrovsk oblast as a personal fief - albeit one loyal to the Kiev regime. I have to admit that in confronting Kolomoisky, Poroshenko showed political and personal courage I did not expect from him. If he can escape the influence of the oligarchs and the United States, he may yet prove himself a true leader.

But that is not how most Ukrainians view the situation. In the opinion of many, but not all, Ukrainians, the country's oligarchs play nothing but a positive role in the country - especially Kolomoisky, who is considered to have stopped the "Russian invasion" of the country in its tracks through his financing of numerous private militias which now form the core of what is left of Ukraine's armed forces. No doubt the oligarch-controlled mass media has something to do with their image.

Already disappointed by his broken promises, support for Poroshenko is at an all-time low, and his row with the "hero" Kolomoisky has only exacerbated public disappointment. That having a billionaire warlord with a private army in control of a significant part of the country is not exactly compatible with "European values" does not seem to occur to a significant portion of Ukrainians.

One client of mine, a doctor, actually expressed the view that Poroshenko was controlled by Putin (The same accusation leveled at his predecessor.) and was acting against Kolomoisky at his behest. The new president of Ukraine should therefore be Kolomoisky and the new prime minister, Right Sector leader Dimitry Yarosh. Similar views can be heard from many people.

War propaganda continues

In today's Ukraine, that old standby, good old fashioned war propaganda, is the primary means of keeping Ukrainians distracted from the IMF and oligarch robbery and subjugation of the country that is taking place. Despite the relative quiet of the current ceasefire, the vilification of Russia, "Putler," and the people of Donbass as "terrorists" continues. Few pay attention to the sell-off of the country's resources when there is a "Russian invasion" to contend with. Factual evidence of such an invasion is not necessary to sustain the propaganda.

Logical questions like, why, if Putin seeks the conquest of Ukraine, the Russian army only bothers to invade along a small section of Ukraine's 2,300 km border with Russia cannot be answered, and by most Ukrainians brainwashed by the propaganda, will be refused with a charge that the questioner himself is "brainwashed by Russian propaganda" and the discussion will be terminated.

To an American, who has lived through 15 years of "war on terror" - the themes are all too familiar. Whereas America has its "War on Terror," Ukraine has its "Anti-Terrorist Operation" (ATO). Whereas the war slogan in America is "United We Stand," in Ukraine it is "єдина країна" (United Country). Varients of America's "Support the Troops" appear on Ukrainian propaganda posters, as well as the slogan "ми переможемо!" - which is an almost direct translation of a late WWII German propaganda slogan "Der Sieg wird unser sein!" (Victory will be ours!) One could be forgiven for thinking Kiev and Washington use the same scriptwriters.

When a government has to start promising victory in the future tense, it is because victory is not at all evident in the present.

Breaking the propaganda stranglehold

But there does seem to be hope for breaking through the power of mass media propaganda. In 2013 during the Syrian chemical weapons crisis, even as the entire American corporate-controlled media was - as usual - agitating for aggression against another country, Americans rejected the propaganda.

Incredibly, it was the unlikely partnership of the peace initiative of the Russian government and the war-weariness of the American voting public which combined to abort Washington's attempt to bomb Syria. (Nevertheless, following the convenient emergence of the "Islamic State" the US and its Arab monarchy clients finally got their casus belli to intervene in Syria.)

Polls show Americans are overwhelmingly against intervening in Ukraine's civil war, even as the anti-Putin hate-fest and bizzare Russophobic carnival continues in Western mainstream media.

The United States itself has not been touched by war since its own civil war, in the 19th century. To Americans, war is something that happens abroad, with little to distinguish the horrific reality of actual war from a movie or video game. Only those who have had a family member maimed or killed have some idea of its effects.

In Ukraine there is a real war (albeit with a ceasefire no one expects to last). But it is a war entirely of Kiev's making. When anti-Maidan protestors in Donbass merely reproduced what the putschists engineered in Kiev - occupying main squares and government buildings - Turchynov sent in the tanks. He did exactly what Yanukovych was constantly accused of preparing to do, but never did.

Yet the war propaganda that Ukraine is a totally "united country" does not allow for the possibility that some people may have opposed the overthrow of constitutional order. There are no Ukrainian citizens fighting against Kiev - they are all Russian army, a.k.a "terrorists." So goes the narrative of the Ukrainian government and media.

It has taken Americans 15 years of "War on Terror" to grow weary of and begin to question their war propaganda. One can only hope that for the Ukrainians, for their own sake and that of their country, the time necessary will be rather less.

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 41
www.rt.com
March 30, 2015
Donbass: 'The war has not started yet'
By Pepe Escobar  
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia. Pepe Escobar traveled to Donetsk at the invitation of German-based media project Europa Objektiv.

Two top Cossack commanders in the People's Republic of Donetsk and a seasoned Serbian volunteer fighter are adamant: the real war in Donbass has not even started.

It's a spectacular sunset in the People's Republic of Donetsk and I'm standing in the Cossack 'holy land' - an open field in a horse-breeding farm - talking to Nikolai Korsunov, captain of the Ivan Sirko Cossack Brigade, and Roman Ivlev, founder of the Donbass Berkut Veterans Union group.

Why is this Cossack 'holy land'? They take no time to remind me of the legendary 17th century Cossack military hero Ivan Sirko, a.k.a. "The Wizard", credited with extra-sensory powers, who won 55 battles mostly against Poles and Tatars.

Only three kilometers from where we stand a key battle at a crossroads on the ancient Silk Road called Matsapulovska Krinitsa took place, involving 3,000 Cossacks and 15,000 Tatars.

Now, at the dawn of the Chinese-driven 21st century New Silk Road - which will also traverse Russia - here we are discussing the proxy war in Ukraine between the US and Russia whose ultimate objective is to disrupt the New Silk Road.

Commander Korsunov leads one of the 18 Cossack brigades in Makeevka; 240 of his soldiers are now involved in the Ukrainian civil war - some of them freshly returned from the cauldron in Debaltsevo. Some were formerly part of the Ukrainian Army, some worked in the security business. Korsunov and Ivlev insist all their fighters have jobs, even if unpaid - and have joined the Donetsk People's Republic army as volunteers. "Somehow, they manage to survive."

What's so special about Cossack fighters? "It's historical - we've always fought to defend our lands." Commander Korsunov was a miner, now he's on a pension - although for obvious reasons he's receiving nothing from Poroshenko's Kiev set up; only support from the Berkut group, the Ministry for Youth and Sports of the People's Republic, and humanitarian food convoys from Russia.

Korsunov and Ivlev are convinced Minsk 2 will not hold; fierce fighting should resume "in a matter of weeks." According to their best military intelligence, Kiev's army, after the recent IMF loan, was allocated no less than $3.8 billion for weapons.

"After Odessa", they say - a reference to the massacre of civilians in May last year - Ukraine as we know it "is finished". So what would be the best political solution for Donbass? Their priority is "to free all Ukraine from fascism." And after victory, referenda should be held in all regions of the country. "People should vote for what they want; whether to remain in Ukraine, whether to align with Europe, or with Russia." This implies advancing towards Western Ukraine across hostile territory; "We're ready for five, seven years of war, it doesn't matter."

So even if a political solution might be possible on a distant horizon, they are preparing for a long war. The EU is "mistaken" to treat them as separatists and even terrorists. As for those elusive Russian tanks and soldiers relentlessly denounced by NATO, where are they? Hiding in the bushes? They laugh heartily - and we're off to a countryside Cossack banquet.

Kiev wants war

Serbian fighter Dejan "Deki" Beric - a hero of the People's Republic army, already decorated with 10 medals - fully shares the assessment of the Cossack commanders: "The real war has not started yet."

There are 20 Serbs - all with extensive battle experience - fighting alongside the Donbass brigades. "Deki" has just returned from a secret hardcore recon mission, infiltrating enemy territory just to conclude they are bringing in fresh soldiers, bringing new technicians, and are awash with new weapons. Minsk 2 is about to the shredded to pieces.

"Deki" shows absolutely harrowing personal footage shot with his mobile phone of the People's Republic victory at the now fully destroyed Donetsk airport; the main scene (not fully uploaded to YouTube) starts with soldiers laughing, chatting and smoking and pans to dozens of scattered, lifeless bodies of Kiev's forces.

"Deki" confirms that even before last summer Kiev might have had no less than 20,000 dead. The absolute majority of soldiers he encountered were too scared to fight; in the Debaltsevo cauldron, "they didn't even try to fight."

Less than two weeks ago Ukrainian Prime Minister "Yats", cherished pal of the American Queen of Nulandistan Victoria "F**k the EU", made no mistake war is inevitable: "Our goal is to regain control of Donetsk and Lugansk." Of course such a wide-ranging threat is possible only when you're sure of total support from the IMF and NATO - financial and military arms from the US government. Not to mention Capitol Hill.

NATO has no proper intel agency of its own. NATO's military intel is gathered by American, Brit or German agents - thus politically manipulated. That's why NATO's current Dr. Strangelove, Gen. Breedlove - call him Breedhate - is able to relentlessly spew out the same nonsense about "columns of Russian equipment - primarily Russian tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air defense systems and Russian combat troops" invading Ukraine over and over again, even as OSCE observers insist they have never seen them. And neither did this columnist.

Contrary to the assessment of both Cossack commanders and "Deki", this concise analysis contends that neither side - Kiev or the Donbass armies - is about to launch a full offensive anytime soon. Meanwhile, the People's Republic of Donetsk is turbo-charging the political front. Foreign Minister Alexander Kofman - who confirms he's having political discussions with members of some EU countries - says there are plans for a wide-ranging meeting in May, leading to the possible set up of an Institution of Unrecognized Nations which could include a lot of participants, from Donetsk and Lugansk to Catalonia and the Basque country.

And Kofman is adamant. He'd rather see the People's Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as an independent country, not as part of Russia. But first, the war Kiev - and Washington - are so obsessed on winning has to end.

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 #42
New York Times
March 28, 2015
Residents in Eastern Ukraine City Rally Against Separatism
By ANDREW E. KRAMER

DNEPROPETROVSK, Ukraine - Residents of this city held what they called a "unity rally" on Saturday meant to help mend a rift between President Petro O. Poroshenko and the regional governor he fired and ease worries that Ukraine, on top of everything else, is also now at risk of unraveling into privately ruled fiefs.

The country seemed to be teetering in that direction last week, when Mr. Poroshenko dismissed Igor V. Kolomoisky, the billionaire governor of Dnepropetrovsk, an important industrial region in the east, apparently for sending armed loyalists to Kiev, the capital, to occupy the offices of two state-owned energy companies that are central to a business dispute.

Mr. Kolomoisky had been one of the government's staunchest allies, and his militias had helped stop pro-Russian fighters from moving beyond the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where the pro-Russian fighters have been waging war for nearly a year.

But recently, Mr. Kolomoisky had clashed with the government over the future of the energy companies, in which he owned a minority stake.

Masked armed men occupied the offices of the companies - UkrTransNafta and its parent company, Ukrnafta - for five days, until Monday, when Mr. Poroshenko ordered Ukraine's state security service to arrest the men. Mr. Kolomoisky emerged from the UkrTransNafta building after his men had seized it on March 19 to say they had just thwarted an attempt by "Russian saboteurs" to take control of the company, and cursed at reporters who asked about his presence there at such a late hour.

The building seizure unsettled Kiev, and members of Parliament, worried that other oligarchs with private militias would follow suit, threatening national stability, sharply criticized Mr. Kolomoisky.

The rally on Saturday evening was intended to tamp down these tensions and demonstrate that the city, and the former governor, remained loyal to Kiev despite the clash, supporters of Mr. Kolomoisky said.

"When we have war in our country, we cannot have any internal political disagreement," Borys Filatov, a business partner and political ally of Mr. Kolomoisky, said in an interview before the rally. "We are all citizens who understand if we shake the president, the country will fall apart."

A few thousand people gathered in a cold rain on Heroes of Maidan Square, a central plaza formerly known as Lenin Square, and released blue and yellow balloons while politicians spoke dismissively, and to cheers, of the possibility of separatism here. Mr. Kolomoisky was shown in a video tribute. The rally wrapped up with a fervently patriotic set by a Ukrainian pop singer Ruslana, who praised the city and its departing leaders for keeping separatism at bay.

Other developments indicated that the breach in Ukraine's domestic politics was mending.

Mr. Poroshenko flew to Dnepropetrovsk on Thursday to thank Mr. Kolomoisky and his team, an event that was televised. "We parted very well, and we will cooperate," Mr. Filatov said. "There were no demands, and no slamming of doors."

Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story
Mr. Kolomoisky became the most prominent example of a strategy adopted by the new government last winter, first embraced by former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko, to halt the Russian advance in the country's east by appointing the region's business titans, who were in a position to sponsor private militias, as regional governors.

Mr. Kolomoisky, a banking and oil magnate and philanthropist supporting Jewish culture in Ukraine, was an enthusiastic backer. "The idea was to save the country and save his assets at the same time," Mr. Filatov said.

But the arrangement was always understood to be temporary. Critics of the militias have long warned that they could easily turn against the national government. After the confrontation at the oil company headquarters, Mr. Poroshenko said he would take steps to incorporate private militias like those controlled by Mr. Kolomoisky into Ukraine's military.

Mr. Filatov said the oligarch's backers in Dnepropetrovsk were considering forming a political party and would run on their accomplishments this year, including forming the militia, called Dnepro-1, and keeping the region out of separatists' hands.

An acting governor has been appointed to lead the Dnepropetrovsk region. Mr. Kolomoisky, Mr. Filatov said, wanted to use the rally to say goodbye to supporters and reaffirm his patriotism.

"As they say, the English leave without saying goodbye, and the Jews say goodbye without leaving," Mr. Filatov said. "And that's us. We're saying goodbye but not leaving."

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 #43
Russia Direct
http://russia-insider.com
March 29, 2015
When Billionaires Ruled Ukraine and Planet Earth
When only the headline counts for understanding foreign policy, news from even the best sources devolves. A recent New York Times piece misinforms out of pure neglect in revealing what's underneath Ukraine's insidious war.
By Phil Butler
Phil Butler is an American journalist, editor, and analyst. He is a partner at Pamil Visions, a leading digital PR firm, and is the former managing editor of Everything PR News, Europe's leading public relations news portal. He contributes to such online publications as The Epoch Times, the Huffington Post, Japan Today, and RT, as well as dozens of others.
[Graphics here http://russia-insider.com/en/when_billionaires_ruled_earth/5108]
 
How about this for a "beyond the headlines" piece? When Americans see splashed underneath the mighty New York Times moniker: "Residents in Eastern Ukraine City Rally Against Separatism," they record an incorrect assumption into their memory banks. With this, the US State Department and Kiev sigh a breath of relief. Arizona arms dealers, NeoCon congressmen, and think tank urchins waiting for White House audience, they all grin in delight at the doughty stalwart investigations of reporters like Andrew E. Kramer, too. But, alas, it's the devil in the details.

The problem with this headline is, there's one thing is missing in this latest disingenuous piece from the "gray lady" of news, one big thing. Unfortunately for readers of "All the News That's Fit to Click," deep discovery on principals and sources is non-existent. So, to further the mission of Mr. Sulzberger's famous newspaper, here's my unpaid contribution to the factual story of the when, where, and who of the Ukraine city of Dnepropetrovsk.

To begin with, the NYT's readership should understand the headline is wrong because "east" Ukraine is nowhere near the "east" being insinuated. Kramer has framed the headline to suggest "eastern" Ukraine, as in the pro-Russian regions somehow in upheaval over loyalties, that's just wrong. In case the writer or reader is confused, Dnepropetrovsk is 3 and a half hours by car west from Donetsk. I guess Kramer just placed the city in the east in the headline because it technically is east and south of Kiev. Let's move on, if only for expedience; I am doing this NYT review service for free remember.

In my opinion, Kramer's story is a news bit intended to help patch a negative PR wound for the Kiev regime. This author, and other NYT's journalists, have performed hatchet jobs for the Washington backed anti-Russia campaigners in Kiev before. The current need comes as the Kiev regime shudders amid a crumbling cohesiveness in between accomplices there. President Petro O. Poroshenko's dumps fellow oligarch (insert rich evil people) Igor Kolomoisky, and the latter's notorious fondness for bounty hunting pro-Russia separatists and other forms of pugilistic prowess. The real take on Kolomoisky is nebulous to be sure. His profiles put him somewhere between a mega rich Don Vito Corleone (The Godfather) and Ukraine's version of George Soros. However central he may appear in the current scheme of things, an even richer feudal oligarch is on the New York Times list of billionaire Ukrainian saints.

To lay off Kramer for a moment, another story the New York newspapaper pawns off on us as fact, A Ukraine Factory That Can't Close, and Workers Who Won't Quit, it supports my query into NYT's intentions too. So as not to single out Kramer, Andrew Roth turns a gigantic steel operation into the Alamo of Poroshenko's rein. There's only one slight mention of the fact that Avdiivka Coke and Steel is owned by none other than Ukraine's richest oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov. Imagine that, Ukraine workers are so dedicated to making oligarchs money, they'll risk life and limb to keep on pumping coin into the coffers of the rich and famous.

Plug Akhmetov into the equation and friends like billionaire buddy Viktor Pinchuk below, and you've the makings of a clique that controls a trillion dollars or more worth of clout. Even compiling all this I'm wondering why some diligent New York Times or Washington Post Pulitzer winner is not framing the NEW WORLD ORDER? Wow, no wonder John McCain seems vehement to arm Kiev.

I know how readers would revel in the knowledge Vice President Joe Biden's son is an executive now for Burishma Holdings, in which Kolomoisky is heavily vested, but that's perhaps too far beneath the necessary profiling needed. As for Poroshenko, as we already know, he made his billions selling chocolate, but these now conflicted oligarchs are less interesting for the New York Times than the hero of Kramer's story, Kolomoisky's friend, Borys Filatov, who filled Kramer in on the east Ukraine "say no to Russia" march of which he speaks; he's an interesting player on this stage. While the NYT's piece does present the front page version of the Dnepropetrovsk demonstration story, we're not really left knowing anything about who these people are. How can any investigative reporter, let along the New York Times, leave us in the dark on Filatov, his associations, and what the underlying meaning of all this Ukraine business is?

Since time is of the essence, (remember my donation to the NYT) perhaps you'll forgive me just linking you to Filatov's Facebook stream, There are many other bit players in this drama, which mainstream media has neglected to show you, but for now, Filatov is a stereotype. I know you'll find some interesting faces and places there.

Let me start with Filatov's place in line for heading to space when Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. The image below from Filatov's Facebook shows the Brit billionaire with Kolomoisky's "main man" at pre-flight preparations. (For Richard Branson's interests in Ukraine, one has to look deep - see Economics for Humanity 2012)

Since we're focused on Mr. Filatov like the New York Times never will, we can follow his timeline and his associations and gain invaluable knowledge into at least his predilections over the whole "west-east" affair. In fairness to him, I will admit some admiration for his passion on spaceflight, NASA, and all things astrophysical. Moving past his many postings aimed at the stars though, we come to imagery of guerillas, the Maidan coup, and the strange bedfellows revolutions often cause. The screenshot below is interesting for me, as I covered the mainstream media shenanigans against Mr. Putin's Sochi Games. Apparently, Filatov and his fellows were watching, too. Unbeknownst to the rest of us sports fans, apparently there was some "Russia FAIL" conspiracy going on in Ukraine, and not simply by the LGBT Washington lobbiest set.

Then a few days later, Filatov joined in a comment string with Facebook followers over the photo below. Among the comments, "the fighting has not yet started" seems the most compelling for me. Following his movements on social media, we see Filatov as a key in Brussels, as below. These images reveal he was in town a few days before the EU summit on 21 March 2014, where new Ukrainian Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatseniuk, European Union leaders Herman Van Rompuy and José Manuel Barroso, and some 28 national political leaders or heads of state on the European Council, signed in Brussels the political provisions of the AA.

That whole "regime change" affair was snappy quick from an observer's point of view. Why, it was almost as if the EU knew what was about to happen! The commission even had cool posters made for this event.

For those of you who have never considered the 1,2,3 BAM! succession of events back then, it's fair to say US Senators and State Department people were flying in and out. Next on Filatov's share list, the Israel connection to Maidan surfaces. The share below hints at later connectives in between Filatov, Kolomoisky, and even arms industry hookups later on.

From here on in it gets nastier. Filatov's involvement in the civil war that has become Ukraine goes from cute propaganda-like imagery, to documents posted, and eventually leads to Kolomoisky's deputy pictured with members of the extreme right wing Aidar Battalion, one of Ukraine's most notorious military outfits. It should be noted that Amnesty International has accused the Aidar Battalion of having committed war crimes, including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, theft, extortion, and possible executions. I'll leave you to connect the dots from here.

Curious as all these "associations are," there's no more puzzling bedfellow than Filatov's friend, European Greens party substantial, Pavlo Khazan. This environmentalist slash energy player has been concerned about fish in the Dnepr River in the past. Today however, good weaponry and support for the armed forces seems to be the new sustainability subject for Ukraine tree huggers. Prevalent in recent shares by Filatov, Khazan was part of a recent delegation to Israel for talks with weapons giant Elbit Systems Ltd. Given the topic of conversation, one can only assume Kiev is planning on installing a Berlin Wall, a la Gaza barrier, in between the west of Ukraine and the Donbass. Such systems as the IDF uses to insulate Israel from Gaza denote something having been ordained. Khazan, whom some Internet researchers proclaim is just an altruistic and naive Jewish millionaire, he's not the weirdest Kolomoisky associate, though.

Below, Filatov makes no bones about showing us the root of ideologies where Kiev's cohorts derive their power. If NATO, the EU, and Washington would only be so transparent!

To be sure, some 4,811 Facebook fans liked this one. And NATO commander General Breedlove thinks his forces need anti-Russia Today operatives! Sitting here wondering at all the information that can be gleaned from the internet footprints of key subjects, I am aghast that Sulzberger's New York Times is content to flush itself down the credibility toilet over half truths. Is the all out, win-or-lose western war on Russia just that desperate? We see names pasted up in headlines as "sources" or commentators just to fortify a headline. For me, whether people, like Filatov, are simply starry eyed followers of billionaires, or if they are narcissists who brag on bravery and medals won for God knows what, the situation is the same. The world's greatest newspaper has let us down. You and I need to know who the hell these people are. I set off here, but leave the reader with one last tidbit New York Times readership may not afford. Filatov, and his associate Anton Gerashchenko filed a bill to make criminal any criticism of Kiev doctrine.

I'm not sure if President Obama even knows the depth of democratic reform taxpayer dollars fund in Ukraine. Certainly Andrew E. Kramer must have no clue as to anything I've revealed here. There you go, Mr. Sulzberger, a freebie for future journalistic revelations about our world. Here's to more of the illustrious friends of Ukraine democracy.

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 #44
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
March 27, 2015
IMF ties itself into knots over status of Russia's loan to Ukraine
Ben Aris in Moscow

A confusing argument has broken out over the crucial question of whether Ukraine's $3bn worth of bonds held by Russia and due in December are "official" debt or not.

The answer is important because if the bonds are "official" and Ukraine doesn't pay them, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), under its own rules, will have to suspend its $40bn financial aid package to Kyiv. If the bonds are deemed "privately held" then they can be included in a $15.3bn debt reduction deal Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko is currently trying to put together.

Russia lent Ukraine the money in December 2013 as part of a $15bn Kremlin-sponsored package to bail out the country shortly before the Maidan protests kicked off.

The problem is these "bailout" bonds, as they have been dubbed, mature in December but Ukraine has just launched debt restructuring talks with creditors that appear to assume Russia will accept a haircut along with the private bondholders. Russia has been adamant that it expects to be paid in full and won't accept a haircut.

The IMF agreed to extend its loan programme by $17.5bn in March and has already transferred $5bn to Kyiv. But as part of the total $40bn aid package it has also demanded that Kyiv somehow comes up with a $15.3bn reduction in debt, of which $5.3bn needs to be cut off this year's redemptions, if Ukraine is to stay within the parameters of the new IMF programme.

At first glance the "official" status of the Russian-issued bonds appears obvious, but the IMF has managed to muddy the waters in the last few days.

IMF spokesman William Murray said during a briefing that as Russia's National Reserve Fund, a sovereign wealth fund, holds Russia's Ukraine Eurobond, it should be classified as "official" debt.

However, the IMF came out with a statement to clarify the situation shortly after the briefing, saying "no decision" had been made on the status of the Russian bond, forcing Murray to in effect retract his comments: "No determination has been made by the fund as to the status of this claim," Murray said in a later statement. Analysts say that this statement doesn't really make the status issue clear one way or the other.

And the status of the bonds is critical. Under the IMF's own rules it cannot offer help to countries that have arrears to "official" lenders - ie governments or other international financial institutions (IFIs). But if it is a "private" lender then Ukraine, in theory, could refuse to repay all the principle amount of the loan, and even if Russia refuses to accept its haircut, the IMF programme for Ukraine can continue unimpeded.

"[The IMF statement] is kind of a good news/bad news story for bondholders. The good news is that if the IMF deems this as "official" and having to be treated as Paris Club debt, then this could suggest the debt would need to be repaid back in full or alongside similar treatment for other Paris Club liabilities, and then potentially making agreement with other bondholders easier," Tim Ash, head of emerging markets research at Standard Bank, said in a note to clients. "The bad news is that if the $3bn is excluded, then the heavy lifting of getting to the $15bn required from [the IMF programme] will fall increasingly on other bondholders, hence more likely a haircut, and a bigger one at that."

The IMF itself has precipitated the clash by proposing a $45bn programme over four years but only coming up with $40bn worth of funding from itself and other sovereign and IFI creditors. In effect it predetermined the size of the necessary haircut before any discussion with private creditors had taken place. Moreover, the IMF has exempted itself (as an "official" lender) and the other sovereign creditors from the haircut, which means the entire burden falls on private creditors, who are not happy with this fait accompli. And the clock is ticking: Jaresko said in an interview this week that a deal needs to be completed by May if Ukraine is to stay within the parameters of the IMF deal.

For their part the Russians are also being a bit disingenuous. The Ukraine bonds are owned by Russia's National Reserve Fund (NRF), which is explicitly only allowed to invest into investment grade securities - something that Ukrainian bonds are clearly not. Indeed, Moody's downgraded Ukraine's rating to Ca with outlook negative last week.

"The key driver of the downgrade is the likelihood of external private creditors incurring substantial losses as a result of the government's plan to restructure the majority of its outstanding Eurobonds. Also included in the restructuring is the external debt of state-guaranteed entities and selected other state-owned enterprises, and the Eurobonds issued by the capital city of Kyiv," Moody's said in the ratings action press release.

The Kremlin is rather belatedly attempting to dodge this particular bullet and submitted a bill this week that will ease the investment restrictions on the NRF, effectively bringing the bar low enough to permit the fund to hold Ukraine's debt.

The situation is further complicated as the numbers don't seem to add up: Ukraine has to repay $7.7bn worth of bond redemptions this year, so even if the private creditors agree to cut their debt by $5.2bn, as is being proposed, that doesn't leave enough money to repay the Russian debt.

"I am struck by one bit of arithmetic: Ukraine has about $7.7bn in external sovereign debt payments due in 2015, of which $5.8bn is principal, of which $3bn is to Russia," analyst Anna Gelpern said in the Credit Slips blog. "The IMF document contemplates $5.2bn in financing from the "debt operation" in 2015. Since 7.7-5.2=2.5, and since 2.5<3, Russia does not seem to be getting its $3bn repayment in December."

So it appears that the IMF has not only predetermined the size of the haircut for private investors, but also decided that the Russians will have to participate. This is doubly odd because Russia is a shareholder in the IMF and so had a vote on the new IMF package, so it was presumably aware of the mistake in the arithmetic.

IMF rules

At first glance it seems that the IMF's rules are pretty clear: the bond is owned by Russia's sovereign wealth fund and was issued under a inter-government agreement between the Russian and Ukrainian governments, which is about as "official" as you can get. However, everyone seems to be anticipating some sort of game playing with the wording: "I would still not rule out some juggling with the rules from the IMF," says Ash.

The IMF has been very reluctant to be pinned down on the status of the Russian bond. When a member of the audience tried to pin Murray down on exactly how the IMF's "non-tolerance of arrears" (the official phraseology for this issue) policy applies to the Russian bond, Murray replied: "Well, I'm not prepared to go there. It's really too early to speculate on that."

These comments are a little strange, given that the IMF has effectively imposed the need to restructure "private" debt on the Ukrainian government; one would have thought the Fund had thought this issue through before releasing a plan that explicitly includes a $15bn haircut for investors and appears to assume that the Russian bond would not be paid back.

For her part, Jaresko seems to be willing to go down the harder road of imposing a haircut rather than simply extending the maturities of the bonds - the investors' preferred option - and leaving Ukraine in the same boat as Greece. The US-born minister quoted the late Margaret Thatcher in her meetings with London-based investors and told them she was "inspired by Margaret Thatcher's words 'there is no alternative' [to debt restructuring]".

Playing word games is going to be very difficult with the Russian bonds as they came with some very unusual riders in the covenants. Despite the fact the bonds were issued when now ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was still in power, a friendly borrower for the Kremlin, the riders in the covenants clearly assume Russia was going to face economic and political problems getting its money back.

The best-known clause is one that allows Russia to call in the entire debt early if Ukraine's debt/GDP ratio exceeds 60%, which has already happened. The Russians have said they will not do this, but legally they are already in the position to ask for all their money back at any time before December.

Less well-known is a clause that prevents Ukraine from offsetting any Russian debt to Ukraine against the bond. This prevents Ukraine from making up some debt and then using this to offset what is owes on the bonds.

Also the covenant doesn't make clear where the money should be repaid. This could be a problem for Russia as Kyiv could decide that the bond repayments are due in Kyiv and in effect transform an international bond into a local one, subject to local laws, which then could be changed to force a haircut on Russia.

What happens will also have wider implications for all emerging markets. At the end of the day, even if Russia broke its own investment restriction rules, the NRF is a sovereign wealth fund and similar to a raft of funds belonging to Norway, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, and others. If the result of this dispute is that a haircut can be imposed on Russia's sovereign wealth fund, then that could affect the risk profile for all the world's sovereign wealth funds, effectively driving up the cost of borrowing for every emerging market.

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 #45
The Unz Review
www.unz.com
March 28, 2015
Yemen, Ukraine, and "Legitimacy"
BY ANATOLY KARLIN

It has the world's highest number of guns per unit of GDP, a population fast outgrowing the land's carrying capacity, is riven by ethnic and religious divisions, and its cities look something like the Counter-Strike map de_dust.

Otherwise, I don't know much about Yemen.

So I will not wax knowledgeable about it except insofar as the incipient intervention there allows me to make a couple wider points on the hypocrisy of international relations.

The first point was eloquently argued by my friend Alexander Mercouris at Sputnik earlier this morning. I will liberally paraphrase henceforth (I would otherwise quote outright, but I wish to add in some additional details as I go).

President Hadi was elected Yemen's President in 2012 as the sole candidate with 99.8% of the vote, in what Hillary Clinton said was "another important step forward in their democratic transition process." But early this year he was unseated and fled to the souther port city of Aden, declaring his overthrow illegal, and since then he has fled on to Saudi Arabia. He has called on the UN to "quickly support the legitimate authorities with any means at their disposal," and his new hosts were quick on the uptake, assembling an Arab coalition of Sunni states and carrying out airstrikes against the Houthi rebels. They are doing this with logistical and intelligence support from the United States and the United Kingdom, both of which have also unequivocally made clear their views on the situation: The Obama administration refers to President Hadi's regime as "the legitimate government," and the UK's Foreign Office calls him the "legitimate President."

Now compare and contrast with what happened in Ukraine last year. In 2010, Yanukovych was elected President that was declared free and fair by the West. (How could they not? "Their" side had been ruling the country for the past five years). In March 2014, he was overthrown in a coup that was unconstitutional, went against public opinion, and was enabled by what even the Western MSM is admitting looks more and more like a false flag. He fled to Crimea, and then on to Rostov, from where he called himself the "legitimate" President - drawing smirks not only in Ukraine, but in Russia - and asked Russia to restore him to power. Russia didn't overtly intervene, its influence being mostly circumscribed to the "military surplus store" that it maintains for the Novorossiya Armed Forces. Certainly nowhere near to the extent of using its air power, which could have depleted most Ukrainian military power in a matter of days. But instead of joining Russia in support of Ukraine's "legitimate" President, there were sanctions and condemnations.

Why? Well, this goes back to my point about Westernism being a revealed truth, and deviation or opposition it being essentially a religious crime. As Alexander Mercouris puts it:

"Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov calls this a double standard. He is wrong. As Noam Chomsky (the US political activist who is also a prominent linguist) pointed out long ago what Lavrov calls a double standard is actually a single standard: the United States does not consider itself (or its allies) subject to rules of behaviour that apply to everyone else. The United States is always gravely offended when others say otherwise. The "exceptional country" is not subject to rules. It is lese-majeste when 'lesser countries' say it is."

Or consider another precedent. In 2011, there was an exceedingly vicious crackdown on Shi'ite protesters against the Sunni Bahraini monarchy, up to and including the Bahraini security forces arresting and imprisoning medics for exercising the Hippocratic Oath and treating the wounded demonstrators. The Saudis ended up sending in their tanks. Did Obama fulfill his promise, made good in Libya that same year, that "we cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people there will be no mercy." Of course! The US and Britain sold them weapons throughout the turmoil, so in that sense, they indeed did not merely "stand by."

One more point. The supposedly Iranian-backed Shi'ite Houthis, needless to say, are not exactly friendly with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, whom the US is purportedly at war with. Back when President Saleh was ruling the country before 2012 - the same guy to whom the Houthi rebels now pledge allegiance - a journalist who carried out interviews with Al Qaeda and was suspected of being a bit too friendly with them (human rights organizations disagreed), Abdulelah Haider Shaye, was imprisoned - at the explicit request of the Obama administration, funnily enough.

According to the Wikipedia map, the Houthi insurgency now controls pretty much all of the western part of the country. But in the rest of the country, Al Qaeda and affiliated groups are disturbingly close to parity with the Hadi regime. While neither Hadi nor Saleh and the forces they represent are shining beacons of liberalism, gay rights, and non-nepotistic governance, pretty much every reasonable person will agree that they are "better" than the anti-civilizational fanatics of Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and sundry Islamist militants.

Which is why Saudi Arabia sees fit to concentrate its energies against the force there that has the most potential (by virtue of being strongest) of checking the spread of those Islamist militants. So okay, the Saudis like to play around with these groups, hoping that their boomerangs never end up rebounding on them; and at a basic geopolitical level, they must also be legitimately concerned about getting encircled both from the north (South Iraq) and south (West Yemen) by newfangled Shi'ite states that might ally with Iran.

But at a time when domestic oil production is booming and Saudi Arabia's influence over OPEC has been diminishing, what dog does the US have in this fight?

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#46
www.rt.com
March 30, 2015
'Reuters lied':  MH17 witness says reporter falsified testimony

A Lugansk Region resident, whom Reuters cites as saying he saw evidence of a surface-to-air missile launched from rebel-held territory on the day MH17 was downed, told RT the news agency gave a false report of his interview.

As a part of a March report on the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 tragedy Reuters talked to Pyotr Fedotov, a 58-year-old resident of the village Chervonniy Zhovten in the Lugansk Region of eastern Ukraine.

"When interviewed by Reuters, Fedotov, the witness who described the 'wiggling' rocket, at first said on camera that it was fired from territory held by the Ukrainian army. Later, off camera, he said it was launched from a nearby rebel area. Asked why he had originally said the opposite, he said it was because he was afraid of the rebels," the news agency said.

RT contacted Fedotov who, after some persuasion, agreed to be filmed. He told RT that Reuters correspondent Anton Zverev was "less than accurate" with Fedotov's testimony.

"When we talked about the Boeing on camera, I explained everything as it was. The things that I allegedly said off-camera were just made up by the journalist. It's all lies. Off-camera, we never discussed the Boeing," Fedotov told RT.

He added that the Reuters journalist contacted him after taking the interview, but never showed him a draft of the article. Instead he was asking whether Fedotov had got into trouble for speaking to him.

"The journalist called me and asked if I was in trouble. I was really surprised. Why would I be in trouble if I told the truth? And then my friends told me in the article I was saying different things when the cameras were on and off. That's when I understood why he was asking if I was in trouble," the witness explained.

"So it's mere fantasy from the journalist or maybe he was doing it for his own benefit," he added.

RT's request to Reuters for comments on the controversy and raw footage of Fedotov's interview was not replied to as of publication of this article.

Reuters' reporting was not based solely on Fedotov's testimony. The agency cited three other eyewitnesses from the village, but only Fedotov was cited as pointing to either side of the conflict as firing the missile. The report emphasized that the eyewitness accounts didn't conclusively prove that the rocket they saw was the one that downed Flight MH17.

Earlier in March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov condemned the Reuters report of witnesses' statements, saying it "looked like a stovepiping." The top diplomat also then said that questions posed by Russia's officials remained unanswered, saying there have been no promised images from American satellites or recordings of Ukrainian air traffic controllers' communications with the plane.

The Malaysian Boeing 777 airliner was downed over eastern Ukraine on July 17 last year, killing 298 people on board. The incident became an instant controversy, with Ukraine and its Western backers accused rebel forces and Russia of being behind the downing.

An investigation into the incident is being conducted by the Netherlands, but the preliminary report released last year didn't point even to a kind of weapon used in the downing of the aircraft, only that an outside force destroyed it mid-air.

Russia called not to jump to conclusions and made military radar data public which indicated the presence of Ukrainian surface-to-air batteries and warplanes in the area on the day of the Boeing shooting.

Earlier Ukrainian media falsely claimed that Dutch investigators concluded that MH17 had been shot down by the rebels with a Buk missile, citing a report in the Dutch media that outlined the popular theory, but didn't claim it to be proven. Dutch prosecutors told RT at the time that the investigation had not been concluded.

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#47
Sputnik
March 28, 2015
What if Ukraine's Euromaidan Had Never Happened?

Sunday, March 29 will mark the date when, according to Ukraine's constitution, the country would have held its regular presidential elections, had Viktor Yanukovych been allowed to serve out the remainder of his term.

Despite silence in the Ukrainian government and the oligarch-controlled media on the subject, social media has been the scene of an active discussion over the past month regarding this 'what if' scenario, with people reflecting on what might have happened to their country if the Maidan 'Revolution of Dignity', or the Maidan Coup, as it is known by opponents, had never taken place.

Most users who lament the events of the past year have no illusions about the deposed president, recalling the out-of-control corruption and mismanagement that marred Yanukovich's four-year term. The ex-president continues to be the source of endless memes, jokes and criticism on the Ukrainian (and Russian) internet. But whatever problems may have exist, users also pointed out that things could not have turned out any worse than they have since his ouster, including the loss of Crimea and the civil war that has broken out in eastern Ukraine.

Discussing Sunday's 'phantom election' date on Facebook, a user named Aleksei postulated that in an alternate timeline, perhaps Poroshenko would still emerge as a frontrunner and defeat Yanukovych, but in such a case "he would have become the president of a united Ukraine, including Crimea and Donbas."

A user named Ekaterina responded to Aleksei with a sentiment only too-well known across the former Soviet Union, namely that "what ifs do not exist in life. In reality, the things that occur are the only things that could have possibly occurred."

But others discussing the subject, on Facebook, Twitter, and a spattering of political forums, could not help but voice their disappointment and dissatisfaction over the way things ultimately turned out following Yanukovych's ouster, and the spiraling crisis Ukraine has found itself in since then.

Haste Makes Waste

Ultimately the impatience of the Euro-integrationist Maidan protesters and their powerful national and international backers, and their subsequent unwillingness to let an increasingly unpopular president serve out the remainder of his term in peace, carried Ukraine from one disaster to another.

Amid political crisis in Kiev and threats against Russian speakers, Crimea broke off from Ukraine and joined Russia. Meanwhile, the revolutionary government's impatience with protesters in the east who sought autonomy and federalization led to a civil war in eastern Ukraine, in which thousands of people died and the economy of the industrialized east was irreparably damaged. Furthermore, Euro-integrationist hostility toward economic ties with Russia helped to plunge the rest of the country into a deep economic crisis, with no real solutions in sight, apart from foreign loans aimed at temporarily staving off complete disaster.

The population as a whole has been demoralized, with recent polling finding that the majority has become disillusioned with the government, the media and social institutions. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands have fled to Russia as refugees from the war-torn east and from other areas of the country, while dozens of radicalized and armed ultra-nationalist formations have grown up like mushrooms since the coup and have taken the place of a weakened and dispirited state.

Ukrainian politician and former Dnepropetrovsk businessman Oleg Tsarev says that the political and economic conflict between the country's oligarchs may turn into outright street warfare and a new Maidan. Photo: Ukrtransnafta following this week's scuffle between Ukrainian authorities and Dnepropetrovsk oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky.

Pondering the tragedy of the situation last month on the one year anniversary of Yanukovych's ouster, independent journalist Maksim Kononenko  told Russia's Vesti FM radio station that if "a year ago, Ukraine was a poor country controlled by oligarchs," now, "a year later, it is a destitute country, controlled by the same oligarchs, one of them even becoming the president."

Commenting on the promises made to the Ukrainian people by proponents of European integration, who initially launched the Maidan protests following Yanukovych's suspension of negotiations on an Association Agreement, Kononenko noted that "none of the promises made to Ukrainians under the coveted European integration project have been fulfilled. The visa regime with European countries has not been lifted, but on the contrary, has been tightened. Ukraine has been told openly that it has no prospect for NATO membership. The question about membership in the EU has not even been discussed."

Popular Kiev-based lifestyle magazine Nash Kiev ('Our Kiev') echoed Kononenko's sentiment earlier this week, prompting a comment war on its Facebook page by noting that "biometric passports don't work, one euro = 30 hryvnia, and the visa-free travel agreement for Ukrainian hasn't been placed on the agenda of the May [Eastern Partnership] summit...We're not ready to panic just yet, but are already impatiently waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel."

Comments over the post ranged from people criticizing the magazine's editors for their "pessimism," to users noting that pessimism is a perfectly logical feeling, given the extremely difficult situation that has engulfed the country. A user named Alisa asked "what visa-free agreement can we talk about in the current environment?...No sane government will open their borders to a country that has dug itself into such a deep hole, and integration has nothing to do with it." Pavel agreed, noting that "the economic part of the association agreement has been postponed, while the political part doesn't work, and trade with the EU has not replaced losses in other markets." Sergei rounded out the chorus of despair, noting that he is a patriot and loves his country, and that he would never consider going to live in Europe if he could stay in Ukraine, but "to just endlessly endure, and to blame everything on the war and the consequences of Yanukovych's corruption is just becoming impossible."

Ex-President Weighs In

In December 2013, when the Maidan protests had already begun but had not yet spiraled into a full-blown crisis in the center of Kiev, President Yanukovych soberly assessed his electoral chances for 2015, noting that he would consider not seeking a second term if his approval ratings didn't improve over the next year. "If my approval rating remains low, and I face poor prospects [for reelection], I will step aside and will not interfere with the country's development and its forward progress," Yanukovych noted, speaking before journalists in Kiev.

Even as the Maidan crisis burned out of control, the president was initially promised by the protest leaders that he would be allowed to serve out the remainder of his term, albeit with reduced constitutional powers, before the revolutionaries, in their impatience, changed their minds.

Recently commenting on last year's coup in an op-ed for Russian newspaper Argumenty i Fakti, Yanukovych solemnly summed up the 'victories' of the revolution, noting that the promises of EU association have not been realized, while the country's people have "suffered a catastrophic worsening of their quality of life", corruption has only grown, and the oligarchs sponsoring the Maidan have seen their powers grow to immeasurable heights. The former president noted that freedom of speech has completely disappeared, with criticism of authorities becoming a crime. "They ended up fighting so hard for democracy that they ended up damaging democracy itself," the ex-president said. "And, moreover, Ukraine has now found itself in a situation where it is under external control, its present leaders dictated to from the outside on what decisions they should make."

Yanukovych has not commented on 'what might have been' had he served out the remainder of his term, but his appeal did hint at what he would not have done, which is to launch a war against his own people, which he considers to be "the most terrible crime committed by the new authorities." In his view, in the present situation, "only the process of negotiations, the taking into account of all interested parties can get us out of this impasse." As for the question of how to move forward in repairing a country damaged by war, social and ethnic tensions, explosive crime rates, and a myriad of other political and socioeconomic problems, the president noted that "what's most important is the desire to build, and not to destroy."
 

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#48
AP Interview: Ukraine PM: Russia could spark new offensive
By KATE DE PURY and PETER LEONARD
March 27, 2015

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - Russia plans to eliminate Ukraine as an independent state and could spark a new offensive in the east to achieve that aim, Ukraine's prime minister told The Associated Press on Friday.

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, in an interview at his office in Kiev, said Russia was uninterested in de-escalating Ukraine's conflict with separatist forces, despite its commitment to maintain a peace deal made in February.

Ukraine and the West accuse Russia of being directly involved in the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine which has left over 6,000 dead in the last year. Moscow denies that charge. The warring sides are poised in a delicate truce that is largely holding, despite sporadic skirmishes along the 450-kilometer (280-mile) front line.

The cease-fire agreement reached in February requires both Ukraine government and rebel forces to pull back their heavy weapons. It also envisions Ukraine granting its rebellious eastern territories some measure of self-rule.

Yatsenyuk told the AP in an English-language interview that the agreement was a bad but necessary settlement that could halt new rebel advances.

"This is a political solution. A diplomatically political solution, which has to be underpinned by the military capabilities of the Ukrainian army," he said. "The idea is just to deter the Russian terrorists, not to allow them to move further."

View galleryUkrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk talks with …
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk talks with reporters during an interview with the Associa ...
The prime minister said the West must stay united in helping Ukraine repel Russian aggression and that achieving this would be the "joint success of the entire free world."

The European Union and the United States have slapped sanctions on Russia for its actions in Ukraine, a move that has hurt the Russian economy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's "main focus today is on the EU," Yatsenyuk said. "To split the unity among the EU member states, to lift sanctions. And to split the unity among the United States of America and the European Union."

The Ukrainian government's detractors have sought to paint it as crippled by corruption and divisions within its national leadership and weighed down by a plummeting economy.

Ukraine has begun addressing shortcomings in all those areas, Yatsenyuk said.

On Wednesday, police officers barged into a televised government meeting to detain two top officials on suspicion of extorting bribes. Yatsenyuk indicated that would set the pace for his government's looming fight against graft.

"It is disgusting when the country is in the state of war and high-profile officials are just stealing the money from the pockets of ordinary Ukrainians," he said. "Everyone who violates the law, who commits any kind of corruption, will be brought to justice."

The International Monetary Fund earlier in March agreed to extend $17.5 billion in loans to Ukraine as part of a program designed to pull the country back from the verge of economic collapse. Yatsenyuk said that kind of support would head off the default that many economic experts have predicted for Ukraine.

"This is the way how to stabilize the economic situation, how to stabilize the (foreign exchange rate), and how to repay out debts to our creditors," he said.

Just how successful Ukraine will be in handling repayment of its onerous debts, however, will depend on accommodations by its creditors, which include Russia.

Yatsenyuk played down persistent rumors of fissures within the national leadership, particularly between himself and President Petro Poroshenko.

Anxiety at infighting among Ukraine's elite was compounded this week after Poroshenko was compelled to dismiss the truculent billionaire governor of an eastern region.

"We are fully and entirely united," Yatsenyuk insisted. "We are floating in the same boat. And we are not eager to sink. We want to float."

The austerity required by international creditors is pressing down on already-low standards of living in Ukraine. Yatsenyuk rattled off a series of harsh changes implemented by his government, which have included increases in taxes, a reduction in social entitlement programs and a freeze in state salaries.

"We've closed a number of tax loopholes. We've increased communal tariffs by six times. We've fired 10 percent of public servants," he said, sighing heavily.

Yatsenyuk said the ultimate goal of enduring the financial pain was to create a country with a clear sense of national purpose.

"A few years ago we had the territory. Today, we have the country. An independent country that is fighting for freedoms and liberties," he said.

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 #49
Washington Times
March 29, 2015
Russia's grab for its neighbors
'Europe whole and free' should be more than a slogan
By Paula Dobriansky and Blaise Misztal
Paula Dobriansky is former undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs, and a senior adviser to the Bipartisan Policy Center's National Security Program. Blaise Misztal is the program's director.

A bipartisan consensus is emerging that the United States should do more to address Russia's continuing aggression against Ukraine. But Russian revanchism does not begin or end with Ukraine, nor are "little green men" its only foreign policy instrument. Moscow is actively engaged in subversive activities along Europe's eastern flank, targeting the region's economic and political stability. As Central European capitals grow increasingly concerned, Washington urgently needs to demonstrate its robust commitment not just to the region's security but to its democratic future.

Moscow has long demanded that Western nations not encroach on its "sphere of influence," defined by the borders of the old Iron Curtain. It is now seeking to regain its sway over its neighbors in order to, ultimately, control all aspects of their domestic, foreign and defense policies and separate them from the rest of Europe.

This message about Moscow's intentions was delivered at the White House recently by President of the Council of Europe Donald Tusk. Though Mr. Tusk now officially represents the European Union, he spoke about the "brutal history returned to us," with an urgency befitting his former role as Poland's prime minister. Having had a front-row seat to Ukraine's dismemberment, Mr. Tusk warned that Moscow is "trying to divide us, from inside of Europe, as well as [between] Europe and America." Russia's attempt to destabilize its periphery threatens to unravel the European integration project and trans-Atlantic alliance; it is not solely a Central European problem and should be vigorously opposed.

Russia's strategy beyond Ukraine may not feature outright use of force, but that should be cause for greater alarm, not less. To exert control in its near abroad without resorting to aggression, Moscow has sought to first weaken the post-Cold War European order - political and economic stability and abiding commitment to political and civic freedoms. Those countries that undertook significant and often painful reforms to establish new, free institutions following the fall of the Berlin Wall - Poland and the Baltic states, for example - have been better off and more deeply anchored in Western international political and security institutions than those that struggled to changes their ways, like Ukraine. Now, Russia has launched a campaign of propaganda and subversion directed at the Central European nations that remained beyond its grasp for the last quarter-century. Its primary tactic is to exacerbate and exploit Europe's internal tensions.

Unfortunately, it has already achieved some successes. Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orban, has embraced the "wind from the East." Encouraged by what he sees as Europe's failure to develop political solutions to major collective problems, such as the fiscal crisis, and citing Russian success as an inspiration, Mr. Orban has announced "that we have to abandon liberal methods and principles of organizing a society."

In Mr. Tusk's native Poland, Russia is vigorously attempting to foment a similar eastward turn. It created, even before its conflict with Ukraine, "astroturf" environmental groups to oppose Poland's exploration of its shale gas reserves, which, if developed, would provide energy independence. It launched a Polish-language, Russian government-owned news agency, "Sputnik." It has supported a pro-Kremlin political party, "Zmiana" ("Change"), ahead of parliamentary elections this fall. All these actions seek to reinforce existing doubts about Poland's place in the West, and U.S. and other allies' commitment to Polish security. Critics of the West will point to Washington's 2009 decision to retract plans to base a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic to please Moscow. Germans' current opposition to providing military aid to Ukraine can be cited as further evidence that Poles, too, should appease, not confront, Russia.

Russia's strategy for re-exerting its influence is thus to first sow divisions both within Europe and among the trans-Atlantic community. Unity is both the ends and means for defeating this challenge.

Only by working together with all of our European allies can we defeat Russia's attempts to fray the fabric of the European community. And only through commitment to such a united front can we dispel the fears that Russia preys on. But unity cannot be allowed to be an excuse for foot-dragging.

The call for a "Europe whole and free" should be transformed from an aspirational slogan into real policy. The debate in Washington needs to expand beyond Ukraine and military assistance to include the whole range of foreign policy tools - diplomatic, informational and economic - that can be deployed to ensure the unfettered sovereignty of all Central and East European countries.

"United we stand," Mr. Tusk urged, "divided we fall." President Obama has emphasized allied unity as a key imperative of our foreign policy. It is time to deliver on that promise. A good way to start would be to hold a summit in Washington with all the Central and East European democracies so that the president can reaffirm, in the strongest possible terms, the unshakable U.S. commitment to their security.

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 #50
http://www.i24news.tv (Israel)
March 29, 2015
One man's journey to the heartland of fascism
Hostility to minorities and attempts to rewrite Holocaust history in Baltics - but no one cares, except Russia
By Efraim Zuroff
Efraim Zuroff is the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of its Israel Office. His most recent book is "Operation Last Chance; One Man's Quest to Bring Nazi Criminals to Justice." His website is: www.operationlastchance.org and he can be followed on Twitter @EZuroff

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Baltic independence and more than a decade of full membership in the European Union and NATO. If the assumption was that those developments would cure Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian society from the scourges of fascism, racism, and anti-Semitism, the events of the past month clearly show that these plagues have not been eradicated. During this period, four separate neo-Nazi/ultra-nationalist marches were held in the Baltics, all of which I attended as a monitor/protester, and I believe that it is important to publicize what I saw and attempt to evaluate the importance and potential dangers posed by those events.

The first question in that regard is the legal status of these marches. Those in Latvia (in Riga on March 16, to honor Latvian SS veterans) and in Lithuania (in Kaunas on February 16 and in Vilnius on March 11, both days on which Lithuanian independence is celebrated) have been a subject of controversy since they were launched, in Latvia in the 1990s and in Lithuania in 2008. Local courts decided to allow the marches on the basis of freedom of speech, and all attempts to have them banned, or at least moved out of the city center, including my appeals this year to the mayors of both Lithuanian cities, have not achieved any practical results.

The second question concerns the sponsors of the events and the number and identity of the marchers. With the exception of Estonia, where the march was organized by the Blue Awakening youth movement, closely linked to the new Conservative People's Party (EKRE), the organizers in Lithuania and Latvia are not officially connected to political parties, but clearly identify with those on the extreme right. In the past, there were government ministers who participated in the SS veterans' march in Latvia, but since the annexation of Crimea, the government has forbidden such participation and last year it cost a minister his post. This year quite a few MP's from the right-wing All for Latvia party marched, and the ministers of justice and of culture, along with Parliament Speaker Ingrida Murnietse, attended a memorial service for the SS.

The number of marchers ranged from 200 in Tallinn to 500 in Kaunas and 1,500 each in Vilnius and Riga. In Estonia, the overwhelming majority of marchers were young - most appeared to be high school students - whereas in Lithuania, most were young adults and in Riga there were also many elderly supporters. One must remember, however, that for every person marching, there are at least several hundred Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians who fully agree with the marchers' ideology. Thus, for example, in Estonia's election several days after the march, the EKRE obtained seven parliamentary seats (out of 101), after garnering more than 46,000 votes.

Two dangerous themes were dominant in practically every event. The first was the open hostility toward local minorities - Poles, Russians and Jews in Lithuania, the latter two in Latvia and Estonia. The second was support for ongoing efforts throughout much of post-Communist Eastern Europe to rewrite the narrative of World War II and the Holocaust. These are designed to hide or minimize the extensive crimes by local Nazi collaborators, promote the canard of equivalency between Nazi and Communist crimes (erroneously classified as genocide), and glorify those who fought against the Soviets regardless of whether they had murdered Jews during the Holocaust.

Thus, Latvian SS veterans are portrayed as freedom fighters who paved the way for independence, even though the Nazis had absolutely no intention of granting the Baltic countries sovereignty, and marchers in Kaunas carried a huge banner with the image of Juozas Ambrazevicius, the prime minister of a short-lived provisional Lithuanian government, who publicly supported the Third Reich and lethal measures against Lithuanian Jews. In both Lithuanian cities many marchers wore swastikas, and in Vilnius, a large black SS flag was displayed. Only in Estonia was this theme missing, but each summer an international gathering of SS veterans from all over Europe is held, including from countries in which such meetings are legally banned.

The final question relates to the reactions to the demonstrations. Unfortunately, with the exception of Riga where about two dozen protesters symbolically "fumigated" the Freedom Monument after the SS march, there were very few counter-protesters, 12 individuals in Kaunas, no one besides myself in Tallinn, and about 20 in Vilnius, almost all of whom came thanks to the dedicated efforts of Prof. Dovid Katz, the editor of www.defendinghistory.com who is the sole active Jewish voice in the Baltics against Holocaust distortion.

The only good news was that for the first time since Faina Kukliansky assumed the post of Chairperson of the Lithuanian Jewish community, she issued a statement denouncing the march in Vilnius (after initially ignoring the one in Kaunas), and several community officials participated in our protest. There was only silence from the Jewish communities of Latvia and Estonia, as well as from the Israeli embassies in Vilnius, Riga and Helsinki.

Outside of the region, with the exception of Russia, there were no official responses despite numerous international media reports, especially about the Riga march. I can only surmise that perhaps the incessant, and to a large extent justified (albeit often exaggerated) criticism from Moscow of this phenomenon, has silenced those in the West, who long ago should have been the first to object.

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