#2
http://readrussia.com
April 5, 2015
Russia's Chickgate: Feminism, Political Correctness and Disconnect from Reality
by MARINA PUSTILNIK

Over the course of the last few weeks I have read more about the subject of feminism, equal rights and chicks that I care to admit (and I have just been skimming the tops, reading the links from my FB and Twitter feed without going into any deeper research mode). I have kept all of my thoughts on the matter to myself until now, but I think that the story is an important one because it very clearly shows the disconnect that exists between Russia's "chattering classes" (by which I mean educated, professional urban dwellers with active online presence and strong media interests) and the rest of the country's population.

I don't remember what started it all, but judging by the dates, it had to do with March 8, International Women's Day, which in Russia is an equivalent of Mothers' Day, except that it applies to all females regardless of their age and parental status. Of course, the original history of the celebration has little to do with celebrating girls, women and babushkas for their womanhood and around the world it is (and was) a day of anti-sexism and anti-discrimination. Which, I suppose, is the reason why a number of just such anti-sexism and anti-discrimination texts were posted on Facebook by a number of Russia's self-appointed feminists. The texts were met with general derision that was best summed up in a post by Katya Kermlin, a beautiful young woman with a successful career in consulting who is best known as a part of the well-known satirical duo KermlinRussia. In response to the pro-equal rights texts Katya has published a sultry self-portrait and a text titled "Objectivization of rights". In it Katya claims that Russia does not need feminism, because Soviet/Russian women have been given so many rights that they pretty much don't know what to do with them. According to her, there was no gender discrimination in the workplace (until, that is, the Western companies began their attempts to install reverse gender discrimination with their "working women" clubs and "reverse affirmative action"), and the only thing that is somewhat worrisome is the rampant sexual violence. However, Ms. Kermlin believes that sexual abuse should not be treated as gender based and should be considered strictly within the framework of "violence against a person". That post was liked by 17 of my friends (and 1700 people I don't know) and shared with various admiring commentary by 463 people.

Next came the Chickgate (or Telochkagate as it is known in Russia, where the words telka and telochka, a young calf, are used to describe not just the young and generally clueless girls, but any and all women). Riga-based Meduza Internet daily decided to do its part in combatting sexism and published a set a question-and-answer cards under the title of "How not to be a sexist in Russia?" The good intention behind the idea was completely destroyed when the site's Twitter feed promoted the content with a tweet that read: "Guys, here's an instruction on how to avoid making chicks mad". After that pretty much all hell broke loose. Meduza journalists were hotly criticized (mostly by women, obviously, as well as by colleagues who live or study outside of Russia and have, therefore, been exposed to the virtues of PC-speak), several online platforms gave word to 34-year-old Bella Rapoport, the poster girl of modern Russian feminism, Meduza replied with another tweet along the lines of "Look, guys, we inspired a chick to write a column", that led to even greater backlash and even greater support for the "ironic and tongue-in-cheek guys". Afisha magazine, which caters to the hipster crowd, came out with an article titled "Je suis telochka" , in which 11 Moscow fashionistas, DJs and other female wonders of hipsterdom (including another supposed poster girl of Russian feminism, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot fame) unanimously agreed that they actually like the word and use it either to describe the girls who fail to live up to their strict standards or even to describe themselves and their girlfriends. The story even spilled out into several offline publications, but then had an unexpected ending when Meduza's Twitter published an apology, saying "That tweet was rude, we apologize to everyone who was offended, we won't delete it as a reminder". They got some flack for bowing down to the "crazy feminists", but in general the story was over.

And then came the latest - another Russian website W-O-S published a diary-type story by one of its female editors detailing the unexpected beating that she received from her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend, which resulted in a broken nose, black and blue face and serious head trauma. The editor published the pictures of her face during various stages after the beating and detailed her attempts to bring the man to justice using the legal means such as opening a criminal case against him. Three months after the beating she was told the case would not be opened for lack of proof or something along those lines. The Internet went up in flames once again - the site was accused of presenting just one side of the story and I have personally read comments along the lines of "Well, sometimes there is no other way to reason with a woman than to hit her". The surprising outcome of this story was that the ex-boyfriend whose name was revealed in the official rejection letter from the police actually lost his job after this information became public. The discussion on the wrongfulness of his deeds, meanwhile, continues.

This could be just a recap of three strange and polarizing stories, but they all have something in common. Several things, actually.

1) There exists an overwhelming public consensus that basically believes that declared rights equal actual rights. If a woman in Russia has a right to work then it is only her own fault if she doesn't utilize that right to the fullest. If women earn less, that is not because of discrimination, it's because these women choose to not utilize this right. They "don't want to take risks", they choose having kids over having an uninterrupted climb along the corporate ladder, they allow their capricious and illogical nature to get the better of them.

2) Every woman who publicly declares herself a feminist has some sort of "skeleton in the closet", something that - in the eyes of the others - forced her to become such an activist. One used to be overweight (and therefore invisible in the eyes of the men), another used to suffer from public pressure to marry and have kids by a certain age, the list can go on. Declaring yourself a feminist in Russia leads to intense public scrutiny in an attempt to decipher the motives. I don't know of a single professionally successful good-looking wife and mother who has declared herself a feminist in Russia. Is it because they don't consider themselves feminists or because they don't want to go into the public limelight?

3) Moreover, Russian women (and here I am talking about a rather small but important cohort of educated, professional women with active social network profiles, not about millions of other Russian women who live outside of big cities and generally view the relations between two sexes as the war between Mars and Venus) suffer from a mixture of Stockholm syndrome, self-identification problems and a case of "bro-ism". They are women, who prefer to identify with men on a range of topics, including but not limited to the use of word "chicks", disdain for political correctness and their less fortunate "sisters". I would know, I suffer from this myself - I prefer to identify with my smartass male colleagues who find pleasure in disturbing the feelings of just about anyone than with the girls who readily claim "Je suis telochka". But the girls who claim to like the word telochka just like Katya Kermlin who claims to see no gender discrimination and sexual violence all around her are also identifying with the men - they are showing that they are not a [feminist] threat, that they are "just like the guys", that they consider it OK to call other women "chicks", that using such words in respected media (even if it's just a collective (but official) Twitter feed) is also OK, because it is "ironic".

4) And here we come to the Russian men (and here once again I am only talking about a small cohort of educated, professional men with active social network profiles, not about millions of other Russian men who daily suffer scoffs and jeers of their wives and girlfriends only to beat them senseless after one jeer too many). These Russian men may be the smartest, best educated, witty and generally well-meaning towards women in their everyday, but their general attitude is that feminism is a vice, feminists are deeply insecure and unhappy women, derogatory words are ironic and the problem of gender inequality is contrived. They allow themselves such statements as "I would never hit a woman, but I can imagine a situation where that would be possible" or "We should listen to the other side of the story". They claim that a Twitter feed is unedited, that mistakes are possible, that jokes are allowed, that it's a folly to take into account the offended cries of several dozen/hundred/thousand "feminazis". Over the course of the Chickgate, the only men who sounded the voice of reason in trying to explain why a media should not pride itself in its wit when such wit offends a sizable group of people were the men who currently study or work in the US and Canada and who have been "infected" with a notion of political correctness and respectful tone.

Problem is, despite the rights that Russian women have been afforded after the Revolution of 1917, despite the fact that women number 40% among senior managers in Russian companies, institutions and organizations (the highest such ratio in the world) and despite the fact that over the last 25 years the rights of Russian women have been expanded simply because they know have greater opportunities in work and study that afford them a leisure of making their own decisions about their lives - decisions involving career, kids, family situation - despite all this, it is still a "men's world" out there in Russia. This is equally albeit differently true for the big cities, small towns and run-down villages.

Meanwhile, the debates that rage in the social networks and on the pages of several "handshake-worthy" online media simply do not take this into account. The self-involved online minority exists in a world where the rights of men and women are as close to equal as currently possible, although sexist prejudices still exist - the most obvious example being the fact that the more sexually experienced the man is, the better, while the opposite is still true for a "marriage-worthy" girl. Exemptions from these ruling attitudes only stress the rule. And even in this more or less egalitarian society gender inequality exists, even though its scope may seem laughable to some. So when young Russian feminists try to bring them to attention, they are derided and laughed at for "blowing things out of proportion", for creating a problem where none exists.

What they completely seem to forget is that they are only a sliver of 140+ million population. Those millions of women don't have the opportunities afforded to hundreds of thousands of their educated urbanite counterparts and they live in a world where they cannot always use the rights that are de jure theirs. They may not have access to good education because their parents cannot afford to sponsor their life and study away from home. They may not have access to high-paying jobs because the only jobs available to them have a meager pay, not because they have to compete with men and "take risks". Their right to get out of an abusive family situation is hampered by small-town prejudices and lack of jobs that would help them become financially independent. According to official statistics sited by the government-controlled Channel 1, one in every four women suffers from domestic violence and 10,000 are killed each year. The real statistics of domestic violence are likely higher. But these topics are rarely brought to the fore in feminism/sexism/inequality debates. The Russian society is so atomized and at the same time the country's population is big enough for the Russian chattering classes to feel a full sense of disconnect from the rest of the country.

As a result, it's OK to discuss the irony of using word "chicks" in the promo of anti-sexist article and in everyday life. It's boring and faux pas to discuss how such derogatory jokes can and often do lead to verbal abuse and then to physical violence. It's OK to believe that feminism is about teaching other girls that they don't have to submit to men and take on gender roles. It's dangerous and inappropriate to admit that women actually are expected to play gender roles of a cook, a cleaner and a parent, while men get extra bonus points if they willingly take on any of these roles. And this is where the situation is wrong. I harbor no illusions and I'm sure that Russia and its society are not the only ones where the question of gender equality gets treated differently on different levels - there are other big countries with great levels of inequality where women's rights mean different things to different groups. But the debates that "raged" over the last few weeks clearly show that in Russia there exists a gulf between the visible and vocal urban minority and the invisible and overwhelming majority of the country's population. The chattering classes are ready to discuss any triviality, but shy away from thinking about things that actually matter. "If it's not happening to me, it's not happening to anyone" seems to be the prevailing attitude. With such attitudes it's difficult to imagine that one day Russia's 14% will be able to lead the other 86% to any sort of a bright future.

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 #3
Moscow Times
April 6, 2015
U.S. Should Think Twice Before Criticizing Russia
The 'whataboutism' phenomenon is by no means exclusively Russian
By Mark Adomanis
Mark Adomanis is an MA/MBA candidate at the University of Pennsylvania's Lauder Institute.

There are few things in the world that drive Russia hawks battier than "whataboutism," a Soviet-style debating tactic in which any criticism of Moscow's policy would immediately be met with "but what about ... "  and then a long litany of Western sins such as racism, colonialism, militarism or economic exploitation.

Whataboutism was employed by the Communist Party with such frequency and shamelessness that a sort of pseudo mythology grew up around it. Any student of Soviet history will recognize parts of the whataboutist cannon.

Whataboutism's efficacy decreased for a certain period of time, in no small part because many of the richest targets (like the Jim Crow racial segregation laws) were reformed out of existence, but it has made something of a rebound over the past few years.

Because of its nature there has never been, and never will be, any real agreement on exactly what constitutes whataboutism. One person's helpful historical and political context ("After Kosovo, who are you to criticize us for changing borders?") becomes someone else's irrelevant distraction ("Ferguson means you can't lecture us about anything.")

At its best, whataboutism can help illuminate interesting commonalities between different countries that, at first glance, have nothing in common. At its worst, which unfortunately is a lot more common, whataboutism degenerates into crude, useless and intellectually harmful propaganda.

At its heart though, whataboutism is a logical fallacy. Essentially, it amounts to responding to a specific criticism with "look over there, a squirrel!" As such, it deserved to be criticized and, on occasion, combatted. It's certainly not something that should be celebrated.

Westerners justifiably criticize Russian official media outlets for going overboard on whataboutism, for answering any and all potential criticisms of Russia with counterexamples of American perfidy.

It has gotten to the point where even completely objective data-based observations (e.g. "Russia's economy is shrinking") are immediately met with shrill cries ("But what about the U.S. government's budget deficit?").

However, while they are generally justified, there is an awful lot of self-satisfaction in criticisms of whataboutism, as if it was somehow distinctively or uniquely Russian. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

The roots of whataboutism won't be found in the Kremlin or the hallways of RT, but, to slightly modify a famous quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in every human heart. People don't like to confront their own misdeeds and generally find it far more convenient to focus on someone else's errors and mishaps. It's just a basic part of human nature.

All of which brings us to an enlightening example from the United States. Tom Cotton, a recently elected, and supremely hawkish, Republican senator from Arkansas was asked to weigh in on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a controversial Indiana state law that would allow businesses to cite their personal religious beliefs in any lawsuits arising over alleged discrimination.

While the bill doesn't explicitly target gays and lesbians, criticism of it has centered on the idea that it would allow businesses to systematically deny services to same-sex couples (for example, a restaurant that refused to cater a gay wedding).

For a whole host of reasons, this law has caused a wall-to-wall media firestorm here in the United States. For about a week it nearly monopolized the political conversation. Actors, athletes, musicians - almost everyone weighed in with their personal "take."

Cotton's response was a dictionary definition of whataboutism. A trained lawyer, he made little attempt to affirmatively defend the law on its own merits. He didn't argue that there was any pressing need for such a law, nor did he say that the law would do anything to make Indiana's citizens better off than they were before it was passed.

Instead he made the following statement: "It's important that we have a sense of perspective about our priorities. In Iran they hang you for the crime of being gay."

Cotton is famous for wanting to inject "morality" into foreign policy, arguing that the United States has a duty to spread democracy around the world and to support like-minded regimes against any and all challengers.

It's thus particularly ironic that he indulged in a rhetorical practice that his own ideological allies have frequently criticized for being "relativist" and amoral.

Cotton's attempted dodge was so crude and unconvincing that he caught a lot of flak for it. But it is a very helpful and clear reminder that we don't need to go very far in search of whataboutism: It's not a logical fallacy that lives only amid scary foreigners and "propagandists," but among all of us.

So, by all means, criticize the Russians when they try to change the subject. But as you search for the sawdust in your neighbor's eye don't lose track of the plank in your own.

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 #4
www.rt.com
April 2, 2015
Russian attitude to the West still bad with tendency for changes - poll

Negative sentiment towards the West persists among Russians. China and Belarus are still the most popular nations with the Russian people.

According to a public opinion poll conducted by the independent research center Levada in late March, 73 percent of Russians were negative towards the United States, whereas for the European Union the figure was 64 percent. Ukraine was the third-least-loved nation on 55 percent.

Only 19 percent of Russians said they had a positive attitude to the US and just 25 percent expressed approval of the EU. Thirty-one percent said they had positive sentiments about Ukraine.

The current figures are an echo of last year's and slightly differ from the ones registered in February, when Russians' dislike of the West hit an all-time low.

However, deputy director of the Levada center, Aleksey Grazhdankin, wrote that it was too early to speak about a new tendency. "The fluctuations are not significant and remain roughly consistent with last summer's," he said.

Previously Grazhdankin explained the crisis of Russians' trust in good relations with the West by the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, and on Western sanctions against Russia, which were largely perceived as a tool of economic attrition.

In February, the state-owned Russian research center VTSIOM released a report revealing that 68 percent of Russian citizens feared an increased danger of foreign military aggression. At the same time, 49 percent consider the current state of Russian military as 'good.'

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 #5
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
April 6, 2015
Domestic political stability in Russia depends on Ukraine - report
A newly published report titled "Between Crimea and the Crisis" puts forward two scenarios of Russia's future, both of which predict serious domestic upheavals. Everything hinges on the outcome of the Ukrainian conflict. How likely are these scenarios? RBTH investigates.
Yekaterina Sinelschikova, RBTH

Russia will be swept by moods of protest. When? It all depends on the situation in south-eastern Ukraine. These are the views expressed in "Between Crimea and the Crisis," a report prepared for the Committee of Civil Initiatives, which is managed by ex-Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, and published on March 31 on the committee's site.

According to the report, domestic events in Russia are likely to evolve according to two scenarios.

The first envisages an end to the military conflict in Ukraine and a concurrent relaxation of the international pressure on Russia, which, with the lack of an external threat, will redirect citizens' attention to the problems of the economy. The aggression currently focused on perceived external enemies will be channeled towards internal ones: "officials and migrants." Support for the government will drastically fall, which could lead to serious economic protests similar in size to the ones in 2011-2012.

The second scenario looks at the possible consequences of a protracted armed conflict and posits that "the mass consciousness will support the country's self-isolation." In such a situation, says the report, the aggression towards the perceived external enemy will remain, but weariness of the conflict and the crisis will lead to protests and "the gradual erosion of support for the government."

The authors of the report expect serious political consequences to manifest themselves during the 2016 parliamentary elections.

The report's principal author is economist Mikhail Dmitriev, ex-Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade. Dmitriev earlier predicted the development of the crisis in 2008 and the protests of 2011.
 
Are scenarios likely?

Other experts have various opinions of the report prepared by Kudrin's team.

"It says that a détente would create problems for the government, moreover, starting with the 2016 elections," says Konstantin Kalachev, director of the independent Political Expert Group. "I think it is the contrary: A détente would stabilize the government's position, while a protracted conflict and self-isolation would not help confidence ratings to remain high for long."

Kalachev reminds us that George Bush, Jr.'s rating swelled during America's invasion of Iraq, "but when the U.S. was bogged down in Iraq, the rating declined." If Russia "gets bogged down in Ukraine," it is inevitable that the same thing will happen.

Professor Leonid Polyakov of the Department of Political Sciences at the Higher School of Economics agrees that the settlement of the Ukrainian conflict will have beneficial effects on Russia. Polyakov believes that if the war of sanctions continues, it will indeed lead to "an isolated existence," but this will not result in acts of protests against the government or migrant workers.

"I don't see a link between the growth of xenophobic attitudes and the West's pressure on us," says Polyakov. "The migrants in Russia by no means come from the West."
 
Putin's rating anomalously high

However, everyone RBTH interviewed spoke about the instability of Russian President Vladimir Putin's confidence rating, as well as that of ruling party United Russia.

Kalachev is convinced that Putin's rating is high thanks to the support of two groups: those who expect stability from the government and those who seek mobilization and new feats. "But the interests of the first category contradict the interests of the second," says Kalachev. "And when they collide, the rating may even be annihilated."

The rating is indeed anomalously high (75 percent in March 2015, according to the Public Opinion Foundation). This is the direct consequence of Russia's annexation of Crimea, explains Polyakov. Therefore, the indicator should fall to a normally high level of two thirds (60-65 percent). "That is the precise percentage of those who stably vote for the president," he said.

According to Natalya Zubarevich, director of regional programs at the Independent Institute of Social Politics, "a decrease is inevitable." Zubarevich recalls that the rating fell after the Georgian War in 2008, influenced by the economic crisis, sinking to a low in 2013 (Vladimir Putin's maximum disapproval rating was in February 2013: at the time, 35 percent of Russians disapproved of the president, according to a Levada Center survey).

"I think that now the rating will fall at the same speed," says Zubarevich. She adds that back then, however, there was no "total propaganda" of the kind seen today. But it is nevertheless clear, she says, hinting at many Russians' frustration with a lack of EU food imports due to Moscow's embargo, how what she describes as "the great war between the refrigerator and the television" will end.

 #6
Bloomberg
April 6, 2015
Ruble whipsaws top forecasters as worst currency becomes best
By Ksenia Galouchko

MOSCOW - For one of the toughest jobs in financial markets, try predicting the ruble.

As Russia's currency went from the world's worst performer to the best in the first three months of this year, it caught out even the most accurate forecasters. Oil's drop to near a six-year low and cuts in interest rates, previous indicators of a weakening ruble, were swept aside as the cease-fire in Ukraine became the bigger determinant.

"None of my expectations regarding the ruble came true," Evgeny Shilenkov, the head of trading at Veles Capital in Moscow, said by phone on Thursday. Shilenkov had forecast the ruble would weaken as much as 3.6 percent in the quarter. "This is our new reality - there are too many different factors affecting the ruble, there are too many elements in the ruble matrix. The ruble is completely unpredictable."

Investors should stay focused on eastern Ukraine to gauge the ruble's direction, said Simon Quijano-Evans, the head of emerging-market research at Commerzbank in London, whose forecasts in the past four quarters came the closest to matching the market moves. He predicts a 3.9 percent advance in the ruble this quarter and gains for domestic bonds, based on a prolonged cease-fire averting the prospect of tougher Western sanctions and crude avoiding a further slump.

Swings in the ruble underline the difficulty for analysts. One-month implied volatility for the currency was the highest in the world at the end of the quarter, raising the cost of hedging and making moves harder to predict. The ruble slumped 46 percent last year, the most among 31 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg.

"Currency forecasting is, in principle, an unenviable task," said Ivan Tchakarov, a Moscow-based economist at Citigroup, the second-most accurate ruble forecaster by Bloomberg data. Tchakarov had predicted the ruble weakening in the first quarter. "It becomes even more difficult during times of excessive market turbulence, which was the case in Russia over the last couple of months," he said by e-mail Thursday.

The ruble rallied 4.4 percent in the first quarter, even as the Bank of Russia cut its benchmark borrowing rate a total of 300 basis points and Brent crude traded at an average of $55.17 a barrel, 29 percent lower than in the previous three months. The ruble advanced for a fourth day, adding 0.9 percent to 56.0930 versus the dollar as of 2:23 p.m. in Moscow on Monday.

The gains of the first quarter will likely continue in the second, according to Tatiana Orlova, chief Russia economist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group in London. Russian companies will need to buy fewer dollars because foreign-debt payments will be 42 percent less than in January through March, she said.

The currency will strengthen 5.1 percent to 55.4 against the dollar by the end of June, Orlova predicts. RBS was the sixth-most accurate forecaster for the ruble, the Bloomberg survey showed.

Tchakarov disagrees, and bases his forecast on declining oil prices. He sees the ruble slumping 13 percent in the second quarter to 67 versus the dollar as Citigroup predicts the glut in crude reaching a peak and prices dropping to $40 per barrel.

Oil in New York closed last week at $49.14 per barrel and is down 7.8 percent this year. Brent, the benchmark used to price Russia's main export blend, has fallen 4.2 percent in the period to $54.95.

The ruble is also subject to changes in the economy and developments in Ukraine.

While analysts predict the economy will contract 2.8 percent in the first quarter, it unexpectedly grew 0.4 percent in the fourth. Even as the February cease-fire between pro- Russian rebels and Ukraine government troops eased concern sanctions will be tightened, the sides continue to swap blame for frequent violations.

"It is the multitude and complex interplay of different factors driving the ruble exchange rate that made forecasting it so difficult," RBS's Orlova said.

_ With assistance from Wei Lu in New York and Vladimir Kuznetsov in Moscow.

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#7
Los Angeles Times
April 5, 2015
Russian middle class watches relative prosperity fade away
By CAROL J. WILLIAMS

Andrei Miller's sallow skin and gaunt visage betray a serious affliction as he sits outside an X-ray unit of Tver Regional Hospital, the tattooed fingers of his slender hands gripping a flimsy onion-skin appointment slip like a lifeline.

The 42-year-old welder has been off work since just after New Year's Day, suffering from a lung disorder that impairs his breathing, clouds his eyesight and leaves him too weak to do more than limp from chair to chair.

In the time that he has been on disability leave, the buying power of his 20,000-ruble salary has continued to slip; it's now worth about $330 a month, half what it was a year ago. His wife is on maternity leave from a day-care job that will earn them an additional $100 a month when she returns to work this spring, but the needs of their four children haven't yet adjusted to Russia's sudden economic downturn.

"The girls are teenagers," he says of the two older children, a sense of panic rising as he contemplates his family's shaky financial status. "They need everything - coats, boots, money to go out with their friends. And now we are lucky if we can buy enough food."

Miller spent 12 hours on trains and buses to get to his fluoroscopy appointment from his home in Bologoye, 150 miles by road from Tver and about halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg. The main hospital in his hometown lacks the equipment to diagnose his respiratory problem, he said, and cutbacks in rural transportation service have lengthened what was already an all-day undertaking to get to Tver into costly two-day journeys.

Like many Russians who climbed into an emerging middle class in recent years, Miller is watching his relative prosperity vanish. The plummet in global oil prices since last summer and Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its seizure of Ukrainian territory last year have cut deeply into the national budget, which depends on hydrocarbon exports for more than half of its revenue.

For Miller, his worsening and still undiagnosed illness amplifies the distress felt by all but the wealthiest Russians. Many in provincial cities like Tver appear ready to ride out the hard times in the short term, fueled by a nationalist euphoria over President Vladimir Putin's defiant posture toward old Cold War adversaries. But those like Miller who have been confronted with the unexpected costs of infirmity are haunted by the prospect of never recovering the modest economic stability to which they had become accustomed.

Fear for the future is rising in Russian provinces, though anger over declining living conditions seems to remain in check. Many Russians readily accept state-controlled media reports linking their hard times to a purported Saudi-U.S. conspiracy to suppress oil prices and bankrupt Russia.

Living standards in Moscow have been less affected because of the capital city's concentration of well-heeled government officials and industry captains; the decline in the provinces is more palpable.

Average income for Russian workers fell over the last year, as layoffs from bloated government payrolls have gradually boosted unemployment. Still low in comparison with most European countries at 5.5%, the jobless rate is nonetheless spreading misery among those who can least bear it.

Independent economists, Russian and foreign alike, have been warning since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union that the country needs to diversify its economy from its dependence on oil and gas sales. It is a lesson learned too little and too late in a country where private business growth is stunted by corruption, unpredictable property rights and access to financing dependent on political connections more than a borrower's ability to repay.

Calls for deep investment of commodity sales income in transportation, technology, manufacturing and support for small businesses have been ignored to the economy's detriment.

Kremlin budget drafters counted on an oil price of at least $70 a barrel for 2015, leaving the central coffers short of funds to be doled out to political allies in the provinces. Last year, regions got $70 billion more in subsidies from Moscow than they paid into the federal coffers. This year, local and regional governments and state-owned enterprises are struggling to comply with the Kremlin's order that they make across-the-board budget cuts of 10%,

In March, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that the crash in oil prices would deprive the treasury of at least $180 billion this year, forcing the government to continue tapping its sovereign wealth fund and hard currency reserves. Last year, the government spent $88 billion to keep the banks liquid and the ruble from losing even more of its value than it did, the Finance Ministry has reported.

Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin warned in late March that Russia would be mired in economic stagnation at least through 2018, and called on Putin to use his outsized popularity - he has a more than 80% approval rating according to Kremlin-allied pollsters - to carry out the costly and painful structural reforms.

Kudrin earned the respect of his international colleagues during an 11-year stint as the Kremlin's chief economic architect, a term that ended with his 2011 resignation in protest of a defense modernization plan forecast to boost military spending by 44% through 2016.

Withered by inflation that has doubled over the last year to 15%, the average Russian household income shrank to 31,200 rubles, or about $500, a month, according to statistics released by the Economic Development Ministry in March. That was an 8% drop in ruble income from the previous year, and a 50% plunge in the dollar value of the average salary.

Food costs are expected to account for at least half of Russians' household spending by the end of this year, the business journal Vedomosti forecast last month.

Miller, meanwhile, worries that his job will be cut at the military-industrial plant in Bologoye, despite reports that defense producers will be spared from the budget ax. Even if he continues to receive the Russian version of disability compensation, his family is already at the limit of what it can cut from the household budget.

At this point, the seemingly negligible cost of commuting from home to the hospital here every couple of weeks has to be borrowed, embarrassingly, he says, from relatives who are scarcely better off than he is.

On this visit, though, he counts himself lucky. Sympathetic nurses have found an empty hospital bed in which he can sleep for the night, after he missed by hours the last bus that would have begun his 12-hour journey home.

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 #8
Moscow Times
April 3, 2015
Russia's Shrinking Services Sector Less Miserable Than Before
By Delphine d'Amora

Cautious optimism is beginning to emerge in Russia's services sector, even as business activity continues to drop and the Russian economy veers toward recession, a report by international bank HSBC found.

The services sector continued to shrink in March, but at a much slower rate than in February, when business activity dropped at its fastest pace since March 2009, according to HSBC.

HSBC's seasonally adjusted Russia Services Business Activity Index, which tracks changes in the hotel, restaurant, transport, telecommunications and other service industries, recovered to 46.1 in March from a low of 41.3 in February. A score of more than 50 indicates an improvement from the previous month, and less than 50 a decline.

"Companies offered a more upbeat assessment of the future than at any time in the past seven months," said Paul Smith, senior economist at financial services company Markit, which collaborated with HSBC on the survey.

More than a third of service providers polled for the index forecast some business growth from March levels over the next 12 months, the report said.

Nonetheless, service providers continued to cut jobs, with employment falling for the thirteenth month in a row, and the number of new businesses continued to drop.

The services sector is being hit particularly hard by Russia's economic crisis, research firm Capital Economics said in a report earlier this week.

In contrast to the 2008-09 recession, when the service sector fared better than manufacturing thanks to a relatively stable ruble and state efforts to stimulate domestic demand, service industries are now under particular pressure.

Retail sales fell 6 percent over the first two months of this year compared to the same period in 2014, the result of high inflation - which hit 16.7 percent year-on-year in February - and a corresponding 10 percent decline in real wages, the report said.

"Inflation is set to remain extremely high over the course of this year, which will continue to hit real incomes. What's more, fiscal policy is unlikely to provide any support to households," Capital Economics analyst Liza Ermolenko said in the report.

HSBC's Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI), a composite indicator that tracks changes in the manufacturing sector, was 48.1 in March - significantly better than the 46.1 recorded in the services sector.

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 #9
Russian inflation slows to 1.2% in March, annual rises to 16.9% - Rosstat

MOSCOW. April 6 (Interfax) - Inflation in Russia slowed to 1.2% in March from 2.2% in February, 3.9% in January and 2.6% in December, the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) said.

This was slightly above the 1.1% that analysts predicted in a consensus forecast for Interfax. It was also higher than the 1% that Rosstat itself estimated, although that was based on weekly inflation figures for a narrower range of goods.

Inflation in March 2014 was 1%, so inflation in annual terms rose slightly to 16.9% in March this year, from 16.7% in February, 15% in January and 11.4% in December. Inflation in annual terms is almost 3 percentage points higher than the Central Bank's key lending rate, which was lowered to 14% from 15% in the middle of March.

The core or underlying inflationary index, which excludes short-term irregular price changes caused by various factors of an administrative, once-off and seasonal nature, was 101.5% in March 2015 September, up from 100.8% in March 2014; and 117.5% in annual terms (106.0%).

Food prices rose 1.6% in March this year compared with growth of 1.8% in March 2015. Food prices minus fruit and vegetables went up 1.6% also (1.3%).

Nonfood prices rose 1.4% (0.7%) and service charges rose 0.3% (0.5%).

Fruit and vegetables averaged up just 1.2% in March compared with growth of 7.2% in February and 22.1% in January. There were price rises of 21.5% for garlic last month, 6.6% for bananas and 5.2-5.7% for dried fruits, frozen vegetables and nuts. Oranges went up 3.7% and cabbage, beetroot, carrots and grapes - 1.8%-2.8%, but tomatoes and fresh cucumbers fell 7.2% and 2.3%, respectively, onion - 0.5% and grapes and apples - 0.4%.

Frozen fish (except salmon) rose 4.2% in price, filleted fish - 3.7%, natural canned fish and canned fish in oil - 3.6% and salted herring- 3.4%.

Peas and beans rose 3.4% in price, rice - 3.2%, semolina - 2.9% and millet - 2.2%.

Poultry fell 0.5% and pork went down 0.3% in price in March.

Black pepper corns rose 6.5% in price, olive oil - 5.9% and margarine, condensed milk sweetened with sugar, canned meat, canned vegetables and canned fruit and berries, jam, coffee, tea, instant soups, breakfast cereals, grape wine, ketchup, mayonnaise and selected confectionery - 3.0-4.4%.

The consumer basket of staple foods went up 1.2% in March and to 13.7% in January-March to 3,774.3 rubles per person per month.

The basket was most expensive in Chukotka at 8,084.5 rubles and least expensive in the Kursk region at 3,018.4 rubles.

It cost 4,550.0 rubles in the City of Moscow, up 1.6% in March and 15.4% since the start of the year; and 4.453.2 rubles in St. Petersburg, up 1.3% and 14.4%, respectively.

Housing and utility charges went up 0.4% in March, compared with growth of 0.4% in February and 0.6% in January. They rose 1.1% in January-March 2015, compared with growth of 0.5% in the same period of last year; and 10.1% in March compared with the same month last year.

Retail gasoline prices in Russia were unchanged in March after falling 0.6% in February. Prices fell 0.3% in January and 0.9% in December but grew 0.7% in November. They were up 6.1% from March 2014. Gasoline prices fell 0.9% during Q1 2015.

The Central Bank is expecting 12%-14% inflation for the year and Economic Development Ministry - 12.2%. The analysts said in their consensus forecast that 12.5% was possible.

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 #10
Moscow Times
April 3, 2015
Soviet-Style Censorship Returns to Russian Arts
By John Freedman
John Freedman is a theater critic for The Moscow Times.

How many bulls does it take to trash a china shop?

We may have an answer by the time the dust settles in a seemingly self-refueling controversy that keeps swirling around an opera house in Novosibirsk.

Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky said this week on the Vesti Nedeli television program that events "funded by the government should not create schisms in society, should not be the cause of mass unrest, speeches, court cases and demonstrations."

But Medinsky and large numbers of individuals in and out of government, have done much lately to split society, cause unrest and foment demonstrations.

Ground zero in this tumult is a production of Richard Wagner's "Tannhäuser" that a young director named Timofei Kulyabin mounted at the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater in December.

In February, Metropolitan Tikhon of Novosibirsk and Berdsk moved against the production, convincing local prosecutors to try Kulyabin and the theater's managing director Boris Mezdrich for "desecration of objects of religious worship."

Kulyabin transported the opera's tale into contemporary times where the main character is a director shooting an erotic film titled "Venus' Grotto," about Jesus Christ's early, unknown years.

The trial opened amid international hue and cry on March 5, but one of the most powerful statements was made in the courtroom itself by Boris Falikov, a religious scholar from St. Petersburg. Supporting the defense, he noted it is "religious ignorance" for "a believer to equate an artistic construct with reality."

He said it is the job of religious leaders to help believers distinguish between invention and reality, not persecute the former for imitating the latter.

In a verdict that surprised many for its speed and independence, judge Yekaterina Sorokina threw the case out of court on March 10 for "lack of evidence that a crime was committed."

Few paid attention when the state declared it would appeal. Instead, there was much joy among those who believe in the intrinsic good of freedom of speech and artistic freedom. In fact, what seemed like the end of a minor nightmare morphed into a massive new push against the arts.

The last week of March and first days of April were packed with events and declarations, including the announcement on Thursday that the Novosibirsk prosecutor had withdrawn his appeal of the decision to exonerate Kulyabin and Mezdrich. But that only made it clearer: the case against "Tannhäuser" had been a pretext for further persecution.

News struck like lightning on Sunday that Medinsky had fired Mezdrich, one of Russia's most respected theater administrators.

Replacing Mezdrich was Vladimir Kekhman, a scandalous figure from St. Petersburg who, conveniently, had used the ministry's website earlier to smear Mezdrich and Kulyabin. Describing himself as "a believer who has been christened in the Orthodox faith, and as a Jew," Kekhman labeled "Tannhäuser" "a demonstration of internal godlessness in the style and spirit of a union of warring infidels."

Kekhman made a fortune importing bananas before going bankrupt in 2011. He was named managing director at the Mikhailovsky Theater of opera and ballet in 2007 in St. Petersburg, where one of his first major acts was to cast himself as Prince Lemon in a production of "Cipollino."

An awkward video of him rehearsing can be found on YouTube. In it he admits, "It's been my longtime dream. That's basically why I came to [this] theater. I very much want to sing and dance."

Kekhman received his diploma in theater management from the St. Petersburg State Theater Arts Academy in 2009 without attending classes or submitting course work. St. Petersburg critic and pedagogue Marina Dmitriyevskaya detailed that story in newspaper Novaya Gazeta on Tuesday.

Kekhman is still a plaintiff in an embezzlement case brought by Sberbank in 2012. On the other hand, he has received three honorary orders from the Russian Orthodox Church, according to a biographical timeline compiled by news agency RIA Novosti.

The Church, or, at least, people clinging to its robes, had a busy, if confusing, week.

On Saturday the website of the Novosibirsk eparchy attacked those who would defend "Tannhäuser," including managing director Vladimir Urin of the Bolshoi Theater and artistic director Mark Zakharov of Moscow's Lenkom Theater. Both have invited Kulyabin to work on their stages.

"Unlike us," the diatribe addressed Urin and Zakharov, "you and your position lack a single point of support. You cannot invoke a higher authority."

Curiously, the Orthodoxy and the World website sought Wednesday to distance the church from the hoopla by denying it was involved in the "Tannhäuser" controversy: "The whole legal situation surrounding the opera 'Tannhäuser,' as well as personnel decisions in the system of the Culture Ministry of the Russian Federation, fall outside the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church."

But it was too little, too late and too implausible. On Wednesday, Russian Orthodox protesters, who in 2013 interrupted a performance of Konstantin Bogomolov's production of "An Ideal Husband" at the Moscow Art Theater, left a pig's head at the theater's doorstep, hung a sign proclaiming "Art up the a--" on the main entrance, and chanted "Russia without blasphemy!"

Scholars have jumped on the bandwagon. The Likhachyov Heritage Institute in St. Petersburg convened a conference at which speaker after speaker condemned some of Russia's top directors - Bogomolov, Rimas Tuminas, Dmitry Chernyakov, Vladimir Mirzoyev and Kulyabin - for staging productions of works by Alexander Pushkin that, purportedly, desecrate the spirit of the great national poet.

Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Magomedsalam Magomedov called on Monday for government oversight of theater productions before they are shown publicly.

His idea was supported Wednesday by the Public Chamber and other government offices. Andrei Kovalchuk, head of the chamber's culture committee, declared this would not be censorship, although he admitted this is how theater was censored in Soviet times.

None of this is random. An atmosphere of hostility and repression has reigned in cultural spheres ever since Medinsky became culture minister in 2012. He aggressively espouses "traditional Russian values," leaning on the church and ultraconservative groups for inspiration and support.

Medinsky has railed against "Gayropa," a common slur among Russian traditionalists who equate European tolerance of social diversity with moral decay; he is a champion of the notion that Russia has been maligned by historians, and he repeatedly has trotted out the old Slavophile notion of Russia as a nation destined to pursue a unique spiritual mission.

Early in the week the small CinemaUnion, a group existing independently of the Union of Cinematographers, called for Medinsky's resignation. A Change.org petition urging Medinsky to quit had gathered over 3,400 signatures by Thursday afternoon.

With such guardians of national treasures in charge, how much longer can the china shop of Russian culture last?

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 #11
Vedomosti
March 31, 2015
Continuation of Ukraine crisis may keep Putin's rating high "for while" - expert
Mikhail Dmitriyev, member of Civil Initiatives Committee: Protective Patriotism. Continuation of Foreign Policy Conflict in Acute Form May Keep Ratings High for While To Come

Russian society's demand for development has not been realized inside the country and has successfully been moved to the outside. For more than six months now the protracted nature of the conflict in Ukraine and the fact that it is being kept at the centre of public attention have been ensuring that the president's ratings are kept close to the historical maximums. This is happening despite the record worsening of economic sentiments by January 2015. In December 2013 our study, conducted for the Civil Initiatives Committee, pointed to appreciable growth in the population's pessimistic sentiments associated with increasing mistrust of the regime and lack of faith in its ability to change the situation in the country for the better. This tendency was manifested particularly strongly in small and medium-sized depressed cities. We assumed that the electoral equilibrium that had taken shape in 2011-2013 was spent and that a lowering of the ratings could be expected in 2014. But contrary to the December signals the ratings increased to historical maximums: After the Olympics to 58 per cent, after the annexation of Crimea to 67 per cent, and by the end of the year to 73 per cent. In the study conducted in December 2014 we also saw a very high level of support for Putin by a majority of members of focus groups (approximately 80 per cent).

The deep-seated cause of such strong growth is the factor of protective patriotism. In the focus groups (December 2014) a majority of respondents, when asked the question directly, expressed approval for the foreign policy course being pursued by the president. This course feeds the Russians' sense of patriotism. Respondents would frequently say that the United States and the EU have now been forced to reckon with Russia, unlike in the nineties. This phrase was frequently heard in various focus groups: "They have stopped wiping their feet on Russia."

The switch that followed in the second half of 2014 to a perception of foreign policy primarily from positions of threats, not successes, may have a lowering effect on the ratings. The worsening of economic sentiments under the influence of the crisis is also starting to operate in the direction of lowering the ratings (they have fallen to a level comparable with the lowest point of the crisis of 2008-2009). A further change in Putin's electoral rating will happen under the influence of the joint action of foreign policy and economic factors. By the beginning of 2015 both factors started losing their positive thrust. The determining role of economic sentiments for the dynamics of the president's approval ratings was given econometric confirmation for the first time by D. Treisman on the basis of a mass of data from the All-Russia Centre for the Study of Public Opinion and the Levada Centre covering some 15 years from the early nineties ("The Return: Russia's Journey From Gorbachev to Medvedev"). In a later work ("Putin's Popularity: Why Did Support for the Kremlin Plunge, Then Stabilize?") Treisman showed that even in 2010-2011 economic sentiments all the same remained the main variable, which explained the changes in the president's ratings. At that period there was not a single instance where a substantial worsening of economic sentiments would not be accompanied by a significant drop in the rating.

The continuation of foreign policy conflict in an acute form may keep the ratings high for a while to come. This factor of support for the ratings may weaken far more quickly if the Ukrainian conflict is successfully settled or even frozen. Then we can expect an appreciable reduction in the topicality of foreign policy priorities. In that case, against the background of the continuing economic crisis, foreign policy issues in the mass consciousness will start  quickly to be squeezed out by problems of the worsening current material situation. If the Ukrainian conflict is successfully deescalated, interest in international problems will start to tail off, and the population's attention will switch to the economic crisis.

The chain of rapid and at times unexpected and outwardly chaotic changes in social priorities observed after 2010 obeys a quite definite inner logic. It has its origins in the growing demand for human development. It was prompted by the country's accelerated entry into the society of mass consumption during the rapid economic growth of the 2000's and by the erosion of traditional social precepts geared to current consumption and the minimizing of risks. However, the new social demands were making headway slowly and encountering numerous obstacles. These were associated with the limited potential for realizing the demand for development and with the slow adaptation of institutions to the changing social priorities. The transition to development priorities remained incomplete, and the population's precepts found themselves in a border zone, where their wide and rapid amplitude of variations was possible under the influence of fundamental factors and unforeseen external events.

The transition to a modernized system of values is a long and sluggish process. But one component of the modernized system of values through 2014 demonstrated considerable dynamism. This was the precept for development as a counterweight to the precept for current consumption and the minimizing of risks. But retrogressive changes also occurred. The switching of the focus of public attention to foreign policy at the beginning of 2014 occurred partly under the influence of the demand for development and achievements, which was not realized inside the country. Together with the increasing factor of protective patriotism, it served to increase the president's ratings to historic maximums.

The medium-term scenarios for the evolution of the mass consciousness will largely depend on the prospects for the peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian conflict. Its defusing will reduce the topicality of the external threat factors and open up possibilities for continued economic growth. Preconditions will emerge for a new strengthening of the development priorities -which could lead after a while to an actualization of the social and political agenda akin to the period of 2011-2012.

Conversely, the continuation of the armed conflict in Ukraine will result in the mothballing of the precepts of minimization of risks and current consumption. The mass consciousness will support the policy of the country's self-isolation. The potential for continued economic growth will be limited by sanctions and by the narrowing of opportunities for the transfer of advanced technologies from developed countries. This scenario increases the risk that Russia will find itself trapped by a medium level of development with low rates of economic growth and with social stagnation.

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 #13
AFP
April 5, 2015
A year on, Putin's Ukraine gamble brings mixed results
By Anna Smolchenko

Moscow (AFP) - A year since the start of the fighting in eastern Ukraine, Vladimir Putin may not have emerged the winner in his showdown with the West but he has not lost either, analysts say.

By supporting Ukrainian separatists, they say, he took a huge risk but it largely paid off as it allowed him to punish Kiev's pro-Western authorities for seeking to turn their back on Russia and stand up to the West.

Most importantly for the Kremlin, the annexation of Crimea and support for fellow Russian speakers in Ukraine's east have given a huge boost to Putin's popularity ratings at home.

According to a February study from the Levada Centre independent polling group, the number of people who want Putin to seek a fourth term in 2018 has more than doubled to 57 percent since December 2013.

"What Putin wanted was clear a year ago -- he wanted a blocking stake in Ukraine or -- the next best option -- a manageable conflict," Nikolai Petrov, a professor at the Higher School of Economics, told AFP.

"To a large degree the Kremlin has achieved what it wanted."

Ukraine marks the first anniversary of the start of the conflict in a hugely demoralised state with its economy shattered and NATO membership a very distant, if not impossible, prospect.

"They managed to keep Ukraine out of NATO because it is struggling with two unresolved territorial disputes," Alexander Baunov, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center, told AFP.

Calculated risk

If Putin gambled that the West would not move to burn all its bridges with Russia nor engage the former Cold War foe militarily, he was right.

While Washington has been vocal in its assertion that Moscow has been sending troops over the border to buttress Ukrainian separatists, it has held off on supplying Kiev with lethal weapons over fears of escalation.

Economy-wise, the US and European Union have forged a united front, slapping Russia with several rounds of sanctions, but decided against radical measures like cutting Moscow off from the SWIFT banking system.

Russia has withstood the blow, and the government recently declared that the worst was over for the recession-hit economy.

After a shock slump late last year, the Russian ruble has recently rebounded following a lull in fighting in Ukraine and the steadying of oil prices.

Economists have forecast stagnation over the next few years but naysayers predicting imminent financial collapse have been floored.

In a sign that Putin may be getting ready to break out of Western isolation, he is considering whether to travel to New York to speak at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly this fall, the Kremlin said. It would be his first UN visit over the past 10 years.

Such a move would have appeared unimaginable several months ago when Putin appeared crushed under the weight of international condemnation when a Malaysia Airlines Boeing came down over rebel-held Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

The West and Kiev claim that Moscow-backed rebels shot the jet out of the skies by mistake, with a missile provided by Russia.

In a bid to counter raging accusations that he was personally guilty, an ashen-faced Putin recorded an unprecedented nighttime video address, urging the West and Kiev not to exploit the tragedy for political gains.

But as a shaky truce appears to be taking hold in Ukraine, Russia has apparently managed to put the worst of the fallout behind it.

That may explain Putin's jokey mood at the triumphant celebrations marking one year since the takeover of Crimea last month when he quipped that Russia "will overcome the difficulties that we have so easily created for ourselves."

'Putin will not back off'

 To a large extent, Putin has been lucky, after rushing into the confrontation with the West without a well-thought-out plan, observers said.

"There was a set of tasks and Napoleon's famous maxim, 'On s'engage et puis on voit' (Let's jump into the fray and then figure out what to do next)," Konstantin Kalachev, head of the Political Expert Group think tank, said of the president's attitude.

Even if his tactics have often defied comprehension, Putin has made his message abundantly clear: the West should understand that a new, post-Soviet Russia is a force to be reckoned with.

"Putin will neither give up nor back off," Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote in a recent report.

"Moscow will continue to defy US global hegemony and act in its own self-interest, guided by its own set of values and without seeking prior US or EU approval."

The fighting has exacted a huge human toll.

According to official statistics, more than 6,000 people have died in eastern Ukraine since last April, and human rights activists say scores of Russian troops sent over the border may have also perished in the ex-Soviet country.

Ties between ordinary Russians and Ukrainians have also been torn apart, with observers saying years -- if not decades -- will be needed to heal the rift.

While the fighting has largely died down, an end to the Ukrainian crisis is nowhere in sight.

"The crisis is dragging on through inertia, which is dangerous," said Petrov of the Higher School of Economics. "It has become a necessity to a large number of people."

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 14
Vedomosti
March 31, 2015
Russian political analysts regard fourth term for Putin as "self-evident"
By Syuzanna Farizova, Putin is virtually doomed to serve a fourth term, politicians and experts consider. But some feel that there will be early presidential elections

Vladimir Putin will most likely exercise his constitutional right and run in the 2018 presidential elections. Former Finance Minister Aleksey Kudrin said this yesterday at a roundtable devoted to the 15th anniversary of Putin's election. Dmitriy Peskov, the president's press secretary, avoided making predictions, stressing only that "Putin has the absolutely solid and complete basis that is needed to continue his initiatives and possibly to make up for things that have not been totally fulfilled." In addition, during the 15 years "a generation of young people has grown up who do not know what the end of the Soviet Union in the 1970s-1980s comprised, do not know what the horrors of the 1990s comprised, and have grown up as the Putin generation," Peskov said, and the overwhelming majority of these young people are "consolidated around Putin." Since he acceded to the presidency in 2000 Putin's popularity in Russia has risen by 50 per cent, Public Opinion Foundation Director Aleksandr Oslon confirmed.

Experts questioned by Vedomosti regard a fourth term for Putin as "self-evident." "Putin will run for a fourth term; his administration is working on this basis and has been conducting an election campaign for a long time," political analyst Nikolay Zlobin says. However, in his opinion, it is disadvantageous for the regime to talk openly about this since such a statement would "kill off any idea of political competition": "It would be like presenting a gold medal in advance." Political analyst Yevgeniy Minchenko believes that a decision about a further term for Putin will be made on the basis of the results of the 2016 Duma elections. Right now a fourth term is the main scenario, but the key element in the State Duma elections will  be not the result achieved by a specific party but the general level of controllability of the process, the expert feels - that is to say, how successful the result will be if there is compliance with the stated principles of transparency, legitimacy, and competition: "This success can be compared to 1999 or 2003 - a 'motley' State Duma where the majority nevertheless supports Putin and his policy." "Between 57 and 66 per cent of citizens want Putin to participate in elections - for the majority of Russian citizens this is how they see the desired future," Konstantin Kostin, former head of the Kremlin Domestic Policy Administration, adds.

Political analyst Gleb Pavlovskiy does not rule out the possibility that Kudrin's comments are linked to the possibility of early elections. Kudrin acts as Putin's "medium and intermediary," whose comments are unlikely to be rebutted by anybody, the expert explains: "His comment is based on Putin's high level of popularity, which might not hold up for long. That is to say, this popularity needs to be exploited." And this requires early elections for both the Duma and the presidency "on some pretext or other" - this would elevate the consolidation around Putin to a new level, Pavlovskiy says: "But we will arrive by a complex route at what Putin himself has said: That somebody else may be elected in 2018. Only it will happen not in 2018 but in 2023, when operation 'successor-2' will be carried out."

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 #15
Russian Far East lures investors
By Lyudmila Alexandrova

MOSCOW, April 3. /TASS/. The Russian government's measures to develop the country's Far East and raise its investment attractiveness are yielding the first results.

Potential investors from the Asia-Pacific region are watching these developments with interest while some of them are already taking part in specific projects, experts say.

Despite the crisis, the Far Eastern region is demonstrating good results in the economy and the social sphere, President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting on the Far East development on Friday.

Industrial production in the Russian Far East grew by 5.3% last year compared with 1.7% across the country while agricultural output in the region expanded by 18.7% compared with the country's average of 3.7%, the president said.

In his address to both houses of Russia's parliament back in December 2013, Putin called the rise of Siberia and the Far East a top priority task for Russia in the 21st century.

The Russian Far East is situated on an area of over 6.1 million square kilometers or about 36% of Russia's total territory while its population is 6.3 million people or about 5% of the country's population.

The Russian president said on Friday that the law on advanced development territories, which had come into force earlier this week, should work in full in the country's Far East.

"This law stipulates a whole range of privileges, including reduced or even zero rates on a number of taxes, accelerated and simplified administrative procedures, the provision of ready engineering infrastructure and other benefits," Putin said.

Russia will start creating a free port of Vladivostok already from 2016. The port is set to become a major project to spur the economic growth of the Primorye Territory and the entire Russian Far East. Putin called the idea of the free port's creation in Primorye "a good proposal" and urged to expedite the project's implementation.

At the first stage, 14 advanced development territories are scheduled to be established in the Russian Far East. Russia's promising plans to develop the country's Far East make emphasis on cooperation with countries of the Asia-Pacific region.

Russia's Far East Development Minister Alexander Galushka said at a meeting on Friday that foreign investors "perceive our law on advanced development territories very positively."

"Some 20 memorandums of mutual understanding and investment memorandums were signed precisely with foreign investors before it was adopted," Galushka said.
Besides, all major Japanese trading houses officially signed corresponding memorandums with the Far East Development Ministry and confirmed their readiness to invest in the Russian Far East, the minister said.

"New projects in the Far East evoke great interest of investors from China, Japan, South Korea and lately, from Singapore, and advanced development territories play a special role here," Head of the Regional Economy and Economic Geography Department at the Higher School of Economics Alexey Skopin said.
"The creation of a free pot in Primorye will also produce a large effect," he added.

"An advanced development territory will center on a particular project, around which infrastructure will be built, which is attractive for investors, the expert said.

"As compared with existing special economic zones, the law on advanced development territories stipulates additional financing from the federal budget and considerable support from local authorities and these advanced development territories cover broader areas. It is especially important that both investors and the federal government will implement programs," Skopin said.

"Quite substantial investments are already coming, first of all, in the port infrastructure as these projects can be quickly recouped. Korea, Japan and China are investing quite actively in port projects. All projects in the coastal area are quite attractive while problems with infrastructure begin in areas located some 1,200-200 km from the coast, the expert said.

Russia's representative in the China Overseas Development Association (CODA) Mikhail Udovichenko said in an interview with TASS that "Chinese investors closely watch Russia's efforts to increase the investment attractiveness of the Far East. China certainly has interest in the implementation of projects in the Far East."

"I can't say that a sharp leap has occurred in investment sentiments but interest is rising - step by step, gradually in accordance with Asian mentality." The largest hurdle that stops potential investors so far is the absence of the required infrastructure, he said.

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#16
New York Times
April 5, 2015
Kamchatka, Home to Russian Version of Alaska Iditarod, Frets Over Growth
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, Russia - When Vladislav Revenok, an Orthodox priest, first participated in the obscure Russian version of Alaska's Iditarod, he found himself in places so isolated that he was mobbed by villagers demanding to be baptized. They told him he was the first priest to visit the outback of the already remote Kamchatka Peninsula in about 50 years.

"Only a few small villages see us," Mr. Revenok, a veteran musher, said by telephone after finishing the arduous 17-day race in late March. "When I arrive at the finish line and see all those people waiting - journalists, the crowd, so many cars - I feel like I am arriving back on a different planet."

Kamchatka's very isolation once afforded a measure of protection for its astounding beauty: a crown of 300 volcanoes, including around 25 that are still active; a central valley of erupting geysers; rivers so red and so thick with spawning salmon that walking on water seems distinctly possible; oceans inhabited by crabs the size of turkeys.

Even many locals do not know the peninsula that well. About 80 percent of the population lives in three southern cities. But isolation no longer provides the same insurance. Kamchatka is caught between ambitious plans to develop untapped resources like gold and oil, and efforts to preserve its natural splendor.

Oil exploration has started in the Sea of Okhotsk, which separates the peninsula from mainland Russia, and the first natural gas wells now operate onshore. Two gold mines are already working, and 10 more are in the planning stages.

Local officials want Petropavlovsk to become the main transit harbor for hulking container ships that can deflect ice as they ply the Arctic route between China and Europe. In addition, the government is trying to raise the number of tourists to 300,000 from 40,000 annually.

Skeptics worry that the development plans threaten to overwhelm what amounts to a giant nature preserve about 750 miles long and 300 miles across at its widest point.

"The territory is not as big as Alaska," said Sergey Rafanov, the director of the World Wildlife Fund's local branch. "Everything is compact here, and the interests of these various industries conflict. If you want to dog sled or to see volcanoes, will you come if there is a huge iron processing plant on the Pacific shore with two smokestacks?"

The problem, he said, is the lack of a master plan. Since the local government depends solely on federal funds, it is never sure which projects might be funded and hence plans each in isolation.

Senior government officials vow to reconcile the competing demands.

"The quality of life of our population depends on the caliber of the protection measures. Why would we cut off the branch on which we are sitting?" said Vladimir M. Galitsin, the minister of fisheries and the deputy chairman of the Kamchatka government. "A sensible balance can be reached that both safeguards the natural resources and allows for the exploitation of various deposits."

Environmentalists have doubts. Populations of the largest bears and big-horned sheep have already been decimated, they said, because trophy hunters from the United States and Europe were unleashed without regulations. A black market for Kamchatka falcons fetches $50,000 per bird in the Persian Gulf nations, Mr. Rafanov said.

In Soviet times, Kamchatka was a naval base closed to foreigners. After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the population gradually ebbed, dropping by around a third, to 300,000.

To stem that flow, Kamchatka needs jobs and critical infrastructure, like an independent energy source. Volcanic steam powers a rare geothermal electric plant, but that supplies only 30 percent of local needs. The largest development schemes are likely to be shelved because of federal budget problems after a collapse in global oil prices.

Fish, salmon roe and crabs constitute Kamchatka's most famous exports. Strained relations with the West and Japan meant foreign sales were down by a third, to 200,000 metric tons out of nearly 900,000 metric tons produced last year, Mr. Galitsin said. Kamchatkans hope that the Kremlin's retaliatory economic sanctions banning salmon and other fish from places like Norway will increase demand for their products in western Russia.

The problem is distance. In the time before planes and trains, it could take a year to reach Kamchatka from Moscow. These days, logistical and bureaucratic hurdles still make it impossible to move fresh fish to western Russia on a regular basis.

It has been said that Kamchatka is so far east of Moscow that it is practically west. The nine-hour flight from Moscow lasts almost three times longer than flights from Anchorage. (Those run only in the summer.)

It is little wonder, then, that Kamchatkans look to Alaska for inspiration for everything from building a tourism industry to making protective bootees for their sled dogs.

"The land, the nature, the traditions, the dogs, it is all so close. They share the same roots, and you know that Alaska used to be Russia," said Alexei Sitnikov, the owner of the Siberian Fang Kennel and an ecotourism company. An eight-foot, arched whale rib leaning against the front of the kennel came from a northern beach littered with them, he said.

The annual Beringia dog sled race was conceived 25 years ago as Russia's answer to the Iditarod, but it has never attracted the same international following. The red tape and cost involved in transporting sled dogs to Kamchatka through Moscow is prohibitive, organizers said, and until last year, first prize was only a Russian off-road vehicle.

The race was named after a legendary land mass said to have once linked the region to Alaska, allowing indigenous people to travel freely. Kamchatka's indigenous population currently numbers about 15,000.

During the Klondike gold rush in the late 19th century, Siberian dogs were cherished for their strength and resilience, despite their small stature, Mr. Sitnikov said. Now, the most valued dogs come the other way.

The Soviet Union turned native villages into collective farms and banned their dogs as backward - appalled not least that the canines were fed salmon, a hard-to-find delicacy in Moscow.

In addition, people here long valued dogs for their skills. "Once I had a dog who could even catch fish," said Mr. Sitnikov, who now breeds dogs for speed, like those from Alaska.

More Americans probably know Kamchatka as a territory in Risk, the board game, than as an actual place. Kamchatka's effort to attract more foreigners despite the current Cold War-like chill includes a slick new English guidebook brimming with useful information like how to survive a surprise encounter with a bear. "Stay calm" is Point 1.

The Beringia starts with a one-day exhibition event held on a groomed racetrack near the capital, because the starting point of the main 590-mile race can be difficult to reach.

Few roads cross the northern part of the peninsula, and helicopter charters cost more than $5,000 a day.

Kamchatka also produces savage, unpredictable weather. After a particularly snowy February, the city manager was fired for not clearing the streets fast enough. Colossal snow banks lined every road.

"We prefer not to mention and not even to think about the weather," quipped Mr. Sitnikov when asked for a forecast.

The exhibition event included a children's race. One contestant, Ksenia Kasatkina, 16, is raising four sizable dogs in a three-room apartment and dreams of competing in the Beringia after she turns 18.

"It is a good sport in a place where we have snow for about nine months of the year," said her mother, Julya Daoudrich. "Even when it melts in town, in July we can take the dogs and the sleds to the slopes of the volcano."

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#17
Moscow Times
April 3, 2015
Russian Political Opposition Uniting for 2016 Parliamentary Elections
By Peter Spinella

Russia's currently fragmented political opposition - which covers a broad spectrum of ideologies, from the far left to the far right - has agreed to form single alliance for next year's parliamentary elections, newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported Thursday.

Nine of Russia's most prominent opposition politicians, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Alexei Navalny, have agreed to form an alliance with a unified list of candidates for the elections in December 2016, the newspaper reported, citing opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister and close friend of recently murdered opposition firebrand Boris Nemtsov.

Kasyanov told the newspaper that Nemtsov's brazen murder, just steps away from Red Square in February, has galvanized the opposition leaders to form the political alliance as well as pursue justice for the killing.

"We have agreed that our group will take political control over the murder investigation so that the investigators do not limit themselves to finding only the killers, but also the organizers," Kasyanov, who served as prime minister during Vladimir Putin's first term as president in 2000-04, was quoted as telling the newspaper.

Gennady Gudkov, a socialist opposition leader, was kicked out of the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, after the Investigative Committee accused him of involvement in entrepreneurial activity, which is illegal for Duma deputies. In December 2012, the Constitutional Court sanctioned the Duma's decision to kick him out.

Gudkov, along with his son Dmitry, Navalny and others had helped stage a series of anti-government street protests after the scandal-mired parliamentary and presidential elections in 2011-12.

Gudkov and his son, who is also a seasoned parliamentarian, have agreed to join the new coalition, which also includes career politicians Ilya Yashin, Andrei Nechayev, Vladimir Ryzhkov and Vladimir Milov, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta report said.

The younger Gudkov said in the report that the time has come to end infighting among the opposition and unite for a common cause. "There is nothing that we should compete among ourselves for - if it's only for a bullet in the head or a spot in a cemetery. We have agreed that we will meet on a regular basis, act as a united front and produce a collaborative reaction to certain events," Gudkov was quoted as saying.

It remains unclear whether either Navalny or Khodorkovsky, two of the group's most prominent members, would be able to run for office if they wanted to, as both have criminal records.

In addition, Khodorkovsky is currently living in Europe and recently vowed he would not return to Russia until he can be sure he will not be thrown back into jail. Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, served a decade in prison on charges including embezzlement and tax evasion that his supporters denounced as revenge for his political ambitions.

Navalny, a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin, was the runner-up in Moscow's 2013 mayoral election, collecting 27 percent of the vote. He too was convicted of embezzlement, but avoided going to prison.

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 #18
Moscow Times
April 3, 2015
Russia Shouldn't Put All Its Middle East Eggs in Iran's Basket, Warn Experts
By Ivan Nechepurenko

As Russia's role in the Middle East was thrown into the spotlight this week by Wednesday's attack on the Russian Consulate in Yemen and by the ongoing Iran nuclear talks, analysts said siding with Iran completely would significantly limit Moscow's options in future conflicts.

Iran may be the current linchpin of Russian policy in the Middle East, but aligning itself with it completely would lock Russia up with a power that is important but not dominant in the region, pundits told The Moscow Times on Thursday.

Russia's support of President Bashar Assad in Syria's civil war during the last four years and its rapprochement with Iran - two countries led by Shia-aligned Muslims - have damaged the Kremlin's relations with the Sunni-adherent states that constitute an overwhelming majority in the Middle Eastern region, they said.

Around 85-90 percent of the world's Muslims are Sunni, and the remaining 10-15 percent are Shia.

"The difficulty is that the more Russia supports Shia Iran, the more difficult it is to have good relations with the Saudis and the Sunni world," Alexei Malashenko of the Carnegie Moscow Center said.

"It is in Russia's interest to stay above the divisions and have influence among all parties," he said in a phone interview.

Choosing Allies

A group of Houthi rebels and supporters of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh stormed and looted the Russian Consulate in the Yemeni port city of Aden on Wednesday. The building was empty at the time, as diplomats had been evacuated on a Russian navy ship the day before, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The Houthi rebel group that currently controls large swathes of Yemen's territory - including the capital Sanaa - is reportedly supported with weapons and money by Iran, home to the world's largest Shia population. Iran denies the allegations.

The Houthis are currently fighting against a Saudi Arabia-led coalition of Arab countries, including states of the Gulf Cooperation Council, as well as Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Sudan, which began carrying out airstrikes against Yemen at the end of March.

The rebels, like Iran's leaders, belong to the Shia branch of Islam, while members of the Saudi-led coalition are predominantly Sunni denominated. The two major branches of Islam have historically served as demarcation lines for sectarian strife among Muslims.

Russia has avoided siding with any of the warring parties, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov calling on both the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi rebels to stop fighting and negotiate.

At the same time, following Moscow's support of Syria's President Assad, Russia is seen as a patron of Shia Muslims and states, said Alexander Shumilin, head of the Center for Analysis of Middle East Conflicts at the Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies in Moscow.

"After Syria, Russia is increasingly seen as an ally of Shia elites in Iran, and now in Yemen, where it is against foreign intervention, which diminishes its influence in Sunni states," Shumilin told The Moscow Times in a phone interview.

Russia has supported Assad, an adherent of the Alawite branch of Shia Islam, and successfully opposed U.S. plans to launch airstrikes against his regime in September 2013. Apart from Russia, Iran is Assad's most powerful ally in the civil conflict raging in his country.

Russia's role in averting U.S. military action against the Syrian government was seen as an international success of President Vladimir Putin, but also reportedly irritated conservative elites in the United States.

Making Enemies

In addition, Russia has also been one of the more lenient parties in the ongoing series of international negotiations over Iran, defending the Islamic country's right to develop nuclear energy.

Talks continued through Thursday after the six negotiating states failed to meet another deadline Tuesday to reach an agreement. The German foreign ministry said Thursday that an agreement had been reached on the framework for a final agreement.

Saudi Arabia has been fiercely opposed to an agreement over Iran's nuclear program, and has also accused Russia of stirring up trouble in Syria. The level of Saudi irritation with the Kremlin became evident Sunday, when Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal accused Putin of hypocrisy over his letter to the Arab League, news agency Reuters reported.

"We support the Arabs' aspirations for a prosperous future and for the resolution of all the problems the Arab world faces through peaceful means without any external influence," Putin's letter said, according to the Kremlin's website.

These comments triggered a sharp and unusual rebuke from al-Faisal.

"He speaks about the problems in the Middle East as though Russia is not influencing these problems," he told the summit right after the letter was read out.

"They speak about tragedies in Syria while they are an essential part of the tragedies befalling the Syrian people, by arming the Syrian regime above and beyond what it needs to fight its own people," Prince Saud said.

Saudi Arabia, an ultraconservative Islamic absolute monarchy, has been a longtime ally of the United States, with the two countries enjoying what they describe as a "special relationship" with each other.

Strength Through Mediation

According to Shumilin, Russia's open confrontation with the United States over Ukraine, its support of Assad in Syria and its growing ties with Iran - where Russia is set to build eight nuclear power units under an agreement signed last November in Moscow - have all limited the Kremlin in its Middle East policy choices.

"The most advantageous position for Russia would be as a mediator between Iran, Saudi Arabia and other parties," he said.

Malashenko shared the same sentiment, saying that Russia is stronger when it mediates a conflict between parties, rather than when it sides with one of them.

"Russia is important when there is a conflict. When everything is peaceful, Russia is not needed," he added.

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 #19
Russia Direct
April 1, 2015
Russia's Yemen strategy comes into focus
While Russia maintains close contact with all conflicting sides in Yemen, it has thus far been non-committal about which side it supports. That could change, however, if the crisis begins to escalate further.
By Yury Barmin
Yury Barmin is a strategic risk consultant based in the UAE. He holds an MPhil Degree in International Relations from the University of Cambridge. His interests include Russian foreign policy and the politics of the Gulf.

On March 28, Mikhail Bogdanov, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and Vladimir Putin's Mideast envoy, said that the conflicting sides in Yemen had asked Moscow for help in resolving the crisis. While Russia certainly has a potential role to play, it is still unclear how much leverage Moscow has with either of the sides, or even which side Moscow supports.

The Yemen conflict, which on the surface looks like a standoff between Sunni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and Shiite Houthis, is in fact more complex, with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and Yemeni tribes playing a significant role. According to Bogdanov, Russia is maintaining close contacts with all conflicting sides in Yemen, but he did not elaborate on who exactly approached Russia asking for help.

The conflict in Yemen is usually interpreted as a proxy war between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran and many mistakenly argue that Russia, Tehran's ally, has vested interests in supporting the Houthis, Iran's Shia proxies, in Yemen. However, the leverage that Moscow once had over Yemen has largely faded away since the country's unification.

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, the Communist South Yemen remained strongly in the Soviet orbit and was commonly referred to as a Soviet satellite state. It is estimated that over 5,000 Soviet military advisors worked with the local government and over 50,000 Yemeni professionals (President Hadi being one of them) were educated and trained in the USSR.

In November 2014, South Yemeni rebels delivered a letter to the Russian consulate in Aden asking for help in their attempts to secede from North Yemen. Moscow, however, did not honor this request, which largely represents Russia's position towards the entire conflict in this country. Russia has avoided aligning itself with any of the sides and wants to wait the conflict out.

The logic of non-involvement in this crisis has guided Moscow's strategy ever since Ansarullah, more commonly known as the Houthis, started advancing in Yemen. Russia, however, has sent a number of mixed signals that were interpreted as its support for one of the sides. In February, a Houthi delegation met with Russian members of parliamnet in Moscow and asked them to recognize Ansarullah's authority in exchange for deals for Russian companies in Yemen. The meeting came two days after President Hadi withdrew his resignation, meaning that Houthis were desperately looking for a partner in Moscow.

The Russian government, however, was adamant and two weeks after this meeting, the Russian Ambassador to Yemen met with President Hadi in Aden and expressed Russia's support for his legitimacy. Russia has even expressed indirect support for Operation Decisive Storm against the Houthis. Yemeni Foreign Minister Riyadh Yassin, who met with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Bogdanov on the sidelines of the Arab League summit in Egypt last week, told journalists that Russia expressed understanding toward the military operation currently underway.

This, of course, further complicated the understanding of what Russia's position on Yemen is.

In February, several countries, including the U.S., the UK, Saudi Arabia and China, decided to relocate their embassies from Sanaa to Aden or evacuate diplomatic staff altogether, fearing the Houthi advance. Russia's diplomatic mission, however, remained one of the only ones that decided to keep its Embassy in Sanaa as well as the Consulate in Aden open and said that there are no plans to evacuate the 2,000 Russians currently residing in Yemen. This means that, despite its seemingly pro-Hadi position, Russia doesn't feel threatened by the Houthis in the face of growing unrest across the country.

Moscow's neutral position does not mean, however, that it refrains from criticizing Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen, especially given that a recent airstrike campaign that hit a refugee camp possibly left 40 civilians dead. The Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Alexander Lukashevich particularly said that "the armed methods of resolving internal Yemeni problems are categorically unacceptable" and once again reiterated that the conflict in the country "can be settled only based on a broad nationwide dialogue."

Unlike in Syria, Russia is not invested enough in the Yemeni crisis to provide meaningful support to any of the sides, which is why Moscow feels comfortable discussing what many call a "proxy war" with both camps, Saudi Arabia and President Hadi as well as Iran and the Houthis. Just last week, Russian officials of different levels were in touch with Riyadh and Tehran discussing the situation in Yemen.

The fact that Saudi Arabia - the nation that recently slammed Russia for its "hypocritical" Mideast policies - is ready to talk Yemen with Moscow, its geopolitical opponent, means that the country does not fear Russian involvement in this crisis. Moscow's diplomatic contacts with Riyadh and Tehran, in which all parties routinely note that a political solution needs to be found to the conflict in Yemen, highlight how little leverage Russia has over their Yemen strategies.

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 #20
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
April 3, 2015
Russia takes over presidency of BRICS group
bne IntelliNews

Founding a $100bn currency reserve pool, launching the New Development Bank, and progress toward the peaceful settlement of world conflicts should be the hallmarks of Russia's presidency of the BRICS grouping of emerging powers, the country's leadership pledged after taking the helm on April 1.

"The Russian presidency will be oriented toward the most efficient use of the possibilities of the five [countries] for strengthening security and stability in the world," President Vladimir Putin said.

The Russian leader said the BRICS members - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - account for almost a half of the world's population and around 30% of its global gross domestic product.

An agreement on establishing the reserve fund will be signed in the near future and Russia "will most likely be the first country to do this," TASS quoted the Russian Foreign Ministry's ambassador-at-large Vadim Lukov as saying on April 3.

According to Lukov, South Africa will contribute $5bn to the pool, Russia, India and Brazil will allocate $18bn each, and China will provide the rest of the sum. The currency pool will help BRICS members in case of liquidity shortage. Russia, India and Brazil may take out 100% of the pool if needed, South Africa is entitled to 150%, and China 50%.

Parrying West's clout

The New Development Bank with a capital of $100bn will focus on funding infrastructural and development projects in the five member countries. The institution is expected to start work by the end of 2015 and reach full-scale operations in four to five years.

The bank is expected to offset the influence of Western-dominated financial institutions, say its founders, which see it as an alternative to the Western-led World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Loans will initially be made in US dollars. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has been named as the likely candidate to head up the bank.

The establishment of a BRICS rating agency is also on the agenda, Lukov said, with a nod to negative ratings accorded by the current top agencies to Russia and Russian businesses since the outbreak of tensions with the West over Ukraine.

"After well-known events when the big three rating agencies issued politicised and intentionally biased ratings on the state and prospects of the Russian economy, this issue becomes especially important," the Russian envoy told TASS.

But Lukov added: "It is important to ensure that the agency's establishment should not be perceived as a political counterbalance to the agencies that already exist because in this case its ratings would be perceived by opponents as politicised and deserving no attention."

The organisation is due to hold its first summit under the new presidency in the Russian city of Ufa in early July. The first summit of BRIC (without South Africa, which joined in 2010) also took place in Russia, in the city of Yekaterinburg in 2009.

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#21
Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies
www.aseees.org
April 1, 2015
On Russian Visas for Researchers

There has recently been a good deal of internet comment about the category of visa that is required by those intending to do research (particularly, to visit archives) while staying in the Russian Federation. Members may have seen this story on RFE/RL, as well as discussions on SEELANGS, H-Russia, and Facebook. Our recent survey of the membership (many thanks to those who replied) suggests that the number of known cases involved is small (no more than 5-6 in the last year), but the penalties can be high--from an interrogation by the Federal Migration Service and levy of a fine to the worst case being deportation and a 5-year ban. We have also become aware of some Russian media reports of visa-related deportations that are not included in our survey.

For non-Russian passport holders required to obtain a visa to conduct research in Russia, the safest visa choice appears to be the Common Humanitarian visa type, backed by an invitation from a Russian academic organization, and specifying "scientific-technical" purposes of the visit, rather than a tourist or business visa. You can obtain a multi-entry humanitarian visa as well, at least for US citizens (check with the Russian consulate in your country). Obtaining a humanitarian visa will involve more advance planning. It is important to note that this is not a change in Russian visa law, but possibly a stricter enforcement of its visa regulations, particularly in certain localities. We suggest that you consult the Russian Consulate website and a visa service specialist. "Kritika" journal plans to publish a "From the Editor" column dealing with this subject in more detail, to which members are referred.  Also see the "research/travel arrangement" introduction section of ArcheoBiblioBase. We will continue to gather more information and keep you informed.

The administration of ASEEES regrets that, with 3000 members from over 50 countries, we do not have the capacity or expertise to advise individuals on their plans for research visits. However,as a scholarly society committed to academic values, ASEEES will do everything in its power to press for the freedom of movement that is essential to all its members, whatever their nationality, to carry out their scholarly and collaborative activities. 
 

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 #22
Irrussianality
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com
April 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
OVERCOMING THE SOVIET LEGACY
By Paul Robinson
University of Ottawa

It's hard to think of books saying what a great place Russia is. Occasionally an author makes a real effort to understand and empathize with the Russian people (Hedrick Smith's 1976 tome The Russians stood out as a Cold War example), but in general anybody who gets information about the country from what's in the local branch of Chapters, Barnes and Noble, or Waterstones will most likely decide that Russia is an absolute dump which just keeps getting worse.

Two books which I have just finished reading are no exception: Oliver Bullough's The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation, published in 2013, and Lev Golinkin's A Backpack, A Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka, which came out at the end of last year.

Bullough intertwines a biography of Soviet dissident priest Dmitry Dudko with descriptions of Stalin's Siberian labour camps and the later, more subtle, repressive techniques of the KGB, along with an analysis of Russians' predilection for alcohol. He paints a picture of a nation suffering from a severe psychological illness, which has manifested itself in mass drunkenness, a low fertility rate, and early deaths.

In contrast, Golinkin's book is an amusing and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny description of his emigration from the Soviet Union in 1989. By his own account, Golinkin seems to have been traumatized for life by the anti-Semitism he and his family experienced in their home town of Kharkov. As a young boy, he skipped school and stayed at home, so afraid was he of leaving his apartment. His youth in the Soviet Union left him with a pervasive sense of fear and self-loathing. This perpetual anxiety comes across as almost a perfect model of the psychological trauma which Bullough claims was the product of communist rule. Golinkin describes the corruption required to navigate the complex process of obtaining a Soviet exit visa, and the tyranny imposed on emigrating Soviet Jews by the guards on the Soviet-Czechoslovak border. Golinkin makes it absolutely clear that he was delighted to leave 'Russia' (as he insists on calling it, even though Kharkov is in Ukraine), and shares his opinion that the United States, where he eventually settled, is a glorious bastion of freedom and opportunity compared to the ghastly country he left behind.

Both books are well worth a read. Bullough's book, written in a journalistic style, is often as much about him as about his ostensible subject, but it is well researched and tells an interesting, important, and original story. Golinkin's, meanwhile, is quite deliberately about the author, but also informative about the history of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union.

The subject of both works is very much the Soviet Union. However, it would be all too easy to read them and come away with the impression that contemporary Russia is the same. In particular, Bullough's talk of impending demographic catastrophe may induce some readers to believe that rampant alcoholism and a declining population are still crisis issues. Yet, in fact, the situation has been improving since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Figures out this week, for instance, say that, '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.' Suicides have also declined. All of this is having a knock-on effect on Russian demographics. As Mark Adomanis has regularly pointed out, Russian fertility has increased markedly in recent years, as has Russian life expectancy. Russians are living longer than ever before. Surveys suggest that Russians are also happier than ever before. In short, the spiritual malaise Bullough describes is gradually being fixed. These two books, therefore, should serve not to reinforce prejudice about Russia but rather to remind us of the appalling legacy of communism and thus to put the problems of today's Russia in the correct context.

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 #23
Reuters
April 2, 2015
Russian court refuses to rehabilitate Soviet-era commissar Yagoda

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's highest court on Thursday refused to legally rehabilitate Genrikh Yagoda, the head of the Soviet-era NKVD secret police who oversaw Stalinist purges in the 1930s and set up the GULAG forced labor camps.

Yagoda ran the NKVD between 1934 and 1936, was dismissed in 1937 and executed in 1938 for treason and conspiracy, becoming one of millions of victims of the Soviet system that he himself helped establish under Joseph Stalin.

"The court rejected the request for the rehabilitation of Genrikh Yagoda," Russia's state-funded RAPSI news agency quoted a court official as saying.

No one at the Supreme Court could be reached for comment and it was not clear who had filed the case or whether the court was looking into it as a matter of course under a law on the rehabilitation of victims of Stalinist repression.

The decision indicates there are limits to what critics of President Vladimir Putin say is his drive to whitewash the Soviet past, including the legacy of Stalin, and buoy his own political reputation by channeling the pride felt by many Russians about the Soviet Union's achievements.

Stalin's rule remains the subject of bitter debate in Russia, where many believe he did some good for the country.

A Levada poll this week showed that 30 percent of Russians felt "respect" for Stalin and as many were indifferent, compared with nine percent who felt hostility toward him.

While 46 percent associated Stalin's death in 1953 with an end to an era of terror, 45 percent of respondents said the Soviet Union's "great achievements" justified the loss of millions of lives during his rule.

Levada also said 57 percent were against considering Stalin a criminal.

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 #24
AFP
April 5, 2015
Trolling for Putin: Russia's information war explained

Lyudmila Savchuk says it was money that wooed her into the ranks of the Kremlin's online army, where she bombarded website comment pages with eulogies of President Vladimir Putin, while mocking his adversaries.

"Putin is great," "Ukrainians are Fascists," "Europe is decadent": Savchuk, 34, listed the main messages she was told to put out on Internet forums after responding to a job advertisement online.

"Our job was to write in a pro-government way, to interpret all events in a way that glorifies the government's politics and Putin personally," she said.
Performing her duties as an Internet "troll", Savchuk kept up several blogs on the popular Russian platform LiveJournal, juggling the virtual identities of a housewife, a student and an athlete.

While the blogs themselves would be filled with apolitical content about life in Russia, she was paid to use the account identities to comment on other news sites and online discussions, leaving 100 comments on an average day.

Every morning, she says, she would get assignments for the day, a list of subjects on which to comment and ideas to propagate.

"Ukraine has approved a reform plan to secure IMF aid" was the title of one recent assignment that Lyudmila had kept on her cellphone.

The instructions were for her to respond to the potentially positive Ukrainian news story with negative comments, such as "For the Ukrainian government, military needs are more important than those of the people."

Savchuk spent two months as a cyber-warrior, or what fans of news comment sections call "trolls", because they join to provoke or to spread propaganda, ruining what would usually be exchanges of opinion in good faith.

She said she worked in a nondescript grey building on Savushkin Street in a busy neighbourhood in the north of the city of Saint Petersburg before quitting in March.

Her short job interview was conducted by a man who only gave his first name, Oleg. His first question was: "What do you think of our policy in Ukraine?"
"Like many others, I was seduced by their salary," said Savchuk, who is raising two children. Her monthly pay was 40,000 to 50,000 rubles ($700-870), considered good money in Russia's second largest city.

'Work is hard'

The online onslaught of identical, often abusive Internet comments discrediting Russia's opponents, and especially the United States, while hailing the Russian government, began even before Russia's standoff with Ukraine.

A journalist with Novaya Gazeta opposition newspaper visited the Saint Petersburg agency in 2013 undercover and reported there were about 400 employees based out of a small building on the outskirts of the city.

Since then many Russian newspapers, and even foreign-language outlets that cover Russian events, have been forced to close comments sections because of the trolling torrent.

Local media reported that the operation moved to the larger, new four-storey building in October.

Now the Kremlin trolling centre's focus is the conflict in Ukraine, and it has reportedly added departments for people with foreign language skills and those able to Photoshop images.

Prospective trolls initially respond to employment opportunities on popular websites, where seemingly innocuous jobs titled "editor" or "content manager" are posted by an entity calling itself an agency for Internet studies.

AFP found job ads as recently as March 17 asking candidates to send a CV through a website. An automated reply then promises to contact the applicant in the future.

The employee turnover is huge, Savchuk said.

"The work is hard. You have to write an enormous amount and a lot of people were laid off since they lacked the skill or simply couldn't express these ideas."

Most of the staff are young, often students. "They were completely indifferent to politics and did not take anything seriously. For them it's just a way to earn money."

But there were also other kinds of employees roaming the building who were older and full of enthusiasm. "There weren't many of them, but for them this work was a true mission," she said.

The bland space -- christened a "troll factory" by some Russian media -- is closed to the public. In fact, the only clear sign of the agency's existence at all are the job ads.

Inside, most workers hardly speak to each other, often giving just a brusque "Excuse me, I'm in a hurry," said Savchuk.

Some seemed afraid to talk at all, she said: "They have cameras everywhere."

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 25
Counterpunch.org
April 3-5, 2015
The Rising Swell of Anti-Russian Propaganda
NATO is Building Up for War
by BRIAN CLOUGHLEY
Brian Cloughley writes about foreign policy and military affairs. He lives in Voutenay sur Cure, France.

The German city of Frankfurt is continental Europe's largest financial center and host to the country's Stock Exchange, countless other financial institutions, and the headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) which is responsible for administering the monetary policy of the 18-nation Eurozone. The place is awash with money, as demonstrated by the plush new ECB office building which is costing a fortune.

The original price of the bank's enormous palace was supposed to be 500 million euros, about 550 million dollars, but the bill has now been admitted as €1.3 billion (£930 m; $1.4 bn).  This absurdly over-expensive fiasco was directed by the people who are supposed to steer the financial courses of 18 nations and their half billion unfortunate citizens. If the ECB displays similar skill sets in looking after Europe's money as it has in controlling the cost of constructing its huge twin-tower headquarters, then Europe is in for a rocky time.

Intriguingly, the Bank isn't alone in contributing to Europe's bureaucratic building boom. There is another Europe-based organization of equal ambition, pomposity and incompetence which is building a majestically expensive and luxurious headquarters with a mammoth cost overrun about which it is keeping very quiet indeed.

The perpetrator of this embarrassing farce is NATO,  the US-Canada-European North Atlantic Treaty Organization which is limping out of Afghanistan licking its wounds, having been fighting a bunch of sandal-wearing rag-clad amateur irregulars who gave the hi-tech forces of the West a very hard time in a war whose outcome was predictable. But the debacle hasn't dimmed the vision of the zealous leaders of NATO who are confronting Russia in order to justify the existence of their creaking, leaking, defeated dinosaur.  Their problem is not only do they lose wars, but they then look for another one to fight - to be directed from a glittery new and vastly expensive building whose cost has soared above all estimates.

Just like NATO's wars.

NATO's operation 'Unified Protector' to overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi involved a massive aerial blitz of 9,658 airstrikes which ended with the gruesome murder of Gadhafi - and caused collapse of Libya into an omnishambles where fanatics of the barbarous Islamic State are now establishing themselves.

In spite of the horror of NATO's Libyan catastrophe one does have to have a quiet smile about Ivo H. Daalder and James G Stavridis whose deeply researched analysis in the journal Foreign Affairs in 2012 was titled 'NATO's Victory in Libya.'  These sages declared that "NATO's operation in Libya has rightly been hailed as a model intervention . . .  NATO's involvement in Libya demonstrated that the alliance remains an essential source of stability . . .  NATO may not be able to replicate its success in Libya in another decade. NATO members must therefore use the Chicago summit to strengthen the alliance by ensuring that the burden sharing that worked so well in Libya - and continues in Afghanistan today - becomes the rule, not the exception."

Not much is working well in either Libya or Afghanistan two years after the Daalder-Stavridis advocacy of "burden sharing" and it is obvious that NATO has been the opposite of a "source of stability" in both unfortunate countries.

In October 2005 I wrote that "NATO is to increase its troop numbers in Afghanistan to 15,000 and its secretary-general states that instead of acting as a peacekeeping force it will assume the combat role of U.S. troops, which is insane . . .   The insurgency in Afghanistan will continue until foreign troops leave, whenever that might be. After a while, the government in Kabul will collapse and there will be anarchy until a brutal, ruthless, drug-rich warlord achieves power. He will rule the country as it has always been ruled by Afghans: by threats, religious ferocity, deceit, bribery, and outright savagery when the latter can be practiced without retribution. And the latest foreign occupation will become just another memory."

The number of US-NATO troops in Afghanistan has been reduced from a high of 130,000 to 13,000, of which some 10,000 are U.S., but NATO's new headquarters building in Brussels is expanding in both size and cost. The budget for the immense complex was approved at 460 million Euros (500 million US dollars) in 2010 but has now surged to over 1.25 billion Euros,  about 1.4 billion dollars.

Germany's Der Spiegel reported in January that the scandal of the cost overrun was being kept secret by all governments contributing to this redundant organization. A leaked cable from Germany's ambassador explained that at a meeting of NATO representatives last December they "pointed to the disastrous effect on the image of the alliance if construction were to stop and if NATO appeared to be incapable of punctually completing a construction project that was decided at the NATO summit of government leaders in April 1999 in Washington. The risk of a further cost increase is already palpable."

The solution to NATO's self-imposed image problem was simple :  the people responsible for managing the affairs of a military alliance involving 28 countries, 3.5 million combatants and 5,000 nuclear weapons decided, as asked by the staff of its Secretary General, to deal with the matter "confidentially."  In other words, the cost overruns and delays in construction are being deliberately concealed from the public in the hope that NATO's executives will not appear incompetent.

Meantime, while trying to conceal their flaws, faults and failings in management of basic administrative affairs, NATO's chiefs are squaring up to Russia in an attempt to persuade the world that President Putin is about to mount an invasion from the east.  The focal point of NATO's contrived alarm is the corrupt and chaotic regime in power in Ukraine, which has serious disagreements with Russia and is therefore energetically supported by the United States to the point of distortion, menace and mendacity.

As reported in the UK's Daily Telegraph on March 4, the commander of US troops in Europe, General Frederick "Ben" Hodges, has accused Russia of having 12,000 troops inside eastern Ukraine, which was irresponsible nonsense.

Hodges was formerly the army's Congressional Liaison Officer in Washington where he obviously acquired a taste for political grandstanding, as in a political speech of the sort that generals have no right to make he declared that "We have to raise the cost for Putin. Right now he has 85 per cent domestic support. But when mothers start seeing their sons come home dead, when the price goes up, domestic support goes down," which was as offensive as it was hostile.

In February the Wall Street Journal reported Hodges as saying "I believe the Russians are mobilizing right now for a war that they think is going to happen in five or six years-not that they're going to start a war in five or six years, but I think they are anticipating that things are going to happen, and that they will be in a war of some sort, of some scale, with somebody within the next five or six years." Just what President Putin was supposed to make of that is anyone's guess - but it is certain that Hodges' bellicose meanderings did nothing to persuade Moscow that there would be any attempt by the US-NATO coalition to modify its policy of uncompromising enmity.

Other pronouncements by NATO leaders have been equally threatening and intended to convince the public of western Europe that Russia attacked Ukraine.

But even if Russia had indeed invaded Ukraine, it would have had nothing whatever to do with anyone else.

The US-NATO coalition willfully ignores the fact that Ukraine is not a member of either the European Union or NATO and has no treaty of any sort with any nation in the world that would require provision of political, economic or military support in the event of a bilateral dispute with any other country.  Yet NATO has seized upon the Ukraine-Russia discord to justify its policy of unrelenting hostility to Moscow.

NATO should have been disbanded at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union because that threat was the sole reason for its existence; but it decided to multiply membership and extend its military presence closer and closer to Russia's borders. There is little wonder that Russia is apprehensive about NATO's intentions, as the muscle-flexing coalition lurches towards conflict.

NATO'S Supreme Commander, US General Breedlove, has also contributed greatly to tension and fear in Europe by issuing dire warnings about Russia's supposed maneuvers.  On March 5 he indulged in fantasy by claiming, without a shred of evidence and no subsequent proof, that Russia had deployed "well over a thousand combat vehicles" along with "combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery" within Ukraine.  This pronouncement was similar to his downright lie of November 18, 2014, when he  told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that there were "regular Russian army units in eastern Ukraine."

The swell of anti-Russian propaganda, confrontation and attempted intimidation by NATO has increased, and if it continues to do so it is likely that Moscow will take action, thereby upping the stakes and the danger even more.  It is time that NATO's nations came to terms with the reality that Russia is a major international power with legitimate interests in its own region. Moscow is not going to bow the knee in the face of immature threats by sabre-rattling US generals and their swaggering acolytes.  It is time for NATO to forge ties rather than destroy them - and to build bridges rather than glitzy office blocks.

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 #26
Wall Street Journal
April 6, 2015
As Tensions With West Rise, Russia Increasingly Rattles Nuclear Saber
Bellicose rhetoric has soared since start of Ukraine conflict to rival Cold War levels
By PAUL SONNE

MOSCOW-It wasn't an ordinary Valentine's Day for the students from across Russia arriving at a military institute outside Moscow. Their date was with a Topol, the intercontinental ballistic missile at the heart of the country's nuclear arsenal.

The new event was part of an initiative to promote careers in Russia's missile forces, and it also reflected another phenomenon: the rising boastfulness about nuclear weaponry in public life here.

Amid the wave of bellicose rhetoric that has swelled in Moscow since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, officials as high up as President Vladimir Putin have been making open nuclear threats, a public saber-rattling with weapons of mass destruction largely unseen even in the days of the Cold War.

Remarks about Russia's nuclear strength play well to Mr. Putin's domestic constituency, hungry for a restoration of lost military might.

They also come at a time when Russia has grown more reliant on nuclear weapons, as the imbalance with Western conventional forces has widened. During the Cold War, Warsaw Pact conventional forces outnumbered NATO's in Europe, leading the West to depend heavily on its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent.

These days, Russia has fewer soldiers, poorer weaponry and scarcer allies. The inferiority and isolation have changed its defense strategy.

"It's not just a difference in rhetoric," said Bruce G. Blair, a research scholar at Princeton University and nuclear weapons expert. "It's a whole different world."

Recent Russian military exercises have included nuclear elements, and the Kremlin has vowed a full overhaul of Russia's land-based nuclear arsenal in the next five years.

In a recent documentary on Russian state television, Mr. Putin said he prepared to put Russia's nuclear forces on alert as the Kremlin moved ahead with retaking Crimea from Ukraine last year.

"The fact that this nuclear option was on the table for consideration is a very clear indication that there's a low nuclear threshold now that didn't exist during the Cold War," said Mr. Blair, who described Mr. Putin's actions as the riskiest among Kremlin leaders since Cuban missile crisis.

At the same time, Russia has engaged in a series of military encounters with European and U.S. aircraft and other targets in the past year, raising the likelihood of mishaps that could lead to dangerous escalation.

Twice last year Russian military aircraft turned off their transponders to avoid detection and almost collided with passenger planes taking off from Denmark. An armed Russian fighter jet flew within 100 feet of a U.S. reconnaissance plane, and Russian aircraft conducted aggressive flybys on U.S. and Canadian warships. Russian maneuvers also simulated attacks on Europe.

It was the misinterpretation of military exercises that almost led the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1983, when top Soviet officials briefly thought a NATO simulation of a nuclear attack on the U.S.S.R. was a ruse to mask a real one.

In 1995, President Boris Yeltsin was handed the Russian equivalent of the "nuclear football"-the satchel carrying launch codes that follows the U.S. president-after Russian officials suspected a rocket launched from Norway to study the aurora borealis was in fact a U.S. ballistic missile. A tap of the buttons would have launched a nuclear strike.

"We know, historically, that as crazy as it seems, one thing led to another," said Graham Allison, director of Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. "Just because it would be nuts, it doesn't mean it couldn't happen."

For most of the Cold War, Soviet rhetoric generally presented the U.S.S.R. as a peace-loving nation that would turn to nuclear weapons only as a final defense. The actions of Soviet officials notwithstanding, public statements and broadcasts tended to glorify the military's capability to repel a nuclear attack or accuse the West of nuclear warmongering. Public nuclear threats were considered largely taboo.

"This whole notion that 'you don't want to test how far we'll go'-that was never part of Soviet propaganda," says Pavel Podvig, an expert on Russia's nuclear forces. "The Soviet propaganda was, 'If you attack us, we are ready, we are here.' It wasn't anything like, 'We dare you.' "

That has changed. In a Danish newspaper in March, the Russian ambassador to Denmark threatened to target Danish ships with nuclear weapons if Copenhagen were to support construction of a U.S.-backed missile defense shield in Europe.

"It is best not to mess with us when it comes to a possible armed conflict," Mr. Putin warned at a pro-Kremlin youth camp last August. "I want to remind you that Russia is one of the leading nuclear powers."

At a December news conference, Mr. Putin described Russia's nuclear capabilities as the teeth and claws of a bear that the meddlesome West is trying to defang and declaw. "If they're removed, the bear won't be needed at all. They'll stuff him and that'll be the end," he said.

The more heated nuclear talk extends to state television. Last year, as Russia annexed Crimea, a top anchor threatened to turn the U.S. into "radioactive ash." In February, state television hosted a nationalist politician known for his extreme statements who called on air for Moscow to nuke Washington, prompting a robust round of applause.

After the U.S. and European Union sanctioned Russia last year over the crisis in Ukraine, patriotic T-shirts appeared in Moscow reading: "A Topol isn't afraid of sanctions."

One risk is that such casual talk changes public opinion about the appropriateness of issuing nuclear threats. In a Levada Center poll, half of Russians approved of Mr. Putin threatening nuclear weapons use in Crimea, agreeing that the West would understand only tough talk.

The freeze in relations has stalled progress on any new arms control measures between Moscow and Washington, jeopardizing advances that grew out of Cold War crises.

"Putin stresses the nuclear dimension as a warning to the West to stay away," said Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King's College London and a longtime authority on nuclear strategy. "How much he means it, who knows? But that's what he does."

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 #27
Russia Insider
http://russia-insider.com
April 6, 2015
Russia Is Still Ready for War - Even Nuclear
Russia is morally and psychologically willing to use military force to defend herself against the West
Russia has the military means to defend herself
By The Saker
"The Saker" is a pseudonym for a top level American military analyst who lives in Florida, the author of the leading blog covering the Ukraine crisis, The Vineyard of the Saker,

On March 1st of last year I wrote an article entitled "Obama just made things much, much worse in the Ukraine - now Russia is ready for war" in which I wrote the following: "I hope and pray that Obama, and his advisers, stop and think carefully about their next step, because make no mistake that RUSSIA IS READY FOR WAR."  Using bolded caps was my hope to get everybody's attention, including the various US analysts reading my blog and thinking that maybe I knew a little something about Russia.  This was the first time in my (now ex-) career as a military analyst that I delivered such a warning, and it is a sweet irony for me that it was made publicly and not behind all sorts of secrecy walls.

I STILL very much believe that Russia is ready for war.  And by "ready" I mean two things:

-Russia is morally and psychologically willing to use military force to defend herself against the Empire
-Russia has the military means to defend herself against the Empire

I fully agree with a recent article on Russia Insider entitled "NATO Would Probably Lose A War Against Russia".  I don't know who "Shellback" who wrote this article is, but I can immediately recognize a fellow "cold warrior" who, like me, must have spent many hours studying the works of V.G. Reznichenko and David Glantz and who knows what he is talking about. You can take what "Shellback" wrote to the bank.

Recently, the Times of London posted an article about threats allegedly made by senior Russian intelligence officers to their western colleagues. Since the Times' website is behind a pay-wall, I will direct you to this reprint from The Australian. Let me immediately say, that all the details given about the alleged meeting sound totally true to me and that I have no reason whatsoever to doubt that this time around, The Times actually printed a true story. I am aware of the fact that Putin's spokesman, Peskov, has immediately denied the story, but in this (very rare) case, I still believe the western corporate media. Why? Because everything in the story is absolutely credible. In particular these excerpts:

   Among the "key messages delivered by Russian participants" was a warning that any military move by the West on Crimea would trigger a Russian response, possibly involving nuclear force. "The United States should also understand it would also be at risk."

   The Russian delegation said that any NATO build-up in the Baltics would prompt an increase in Russia's "nuclear posture", according to notes drawn up by a US participant. The warning is baldly recounted: "Russia will use its nuclear weapons against NATO."

   When discussing possible Russian action in the Baltics, it reported: "Russian members mentioned a spectrum of responses from nuclear to non-military."

   The most trenchant Russian remarks on eastern Europe were delivered by the former military intelligence chief Valentin Korabelnikov, who remains a senior adviser to the defence ministry. Since the GRU masterminded the annexation of Crimea, he is likely to have been involved in the planning. He said that the biggest threat to Russia was US activity along its borders, according to notes taken by Kevin Ryan, a retired US brigadier-general who served as defence attaché in Moscow.

Most people in the West, especially those who have not yet ditched their Idiot-Tube, are getting influenced by propaganda, whether they realized it or not.  Just living in a highly propagandized society makes you absorb a lot of that propaganda, as if by osmosis.  One such propaganda myth is about the condition and readiness of the Russian military.  Of course, it is a very cozy "feel good" feeling to "know" that your military is just "the best", as if by definition, but the reality is very different and ignoring it is very dangerous. Here are the raw facts:

1. In the Ukraine Russia has a *huge* terrain advantage over the US/NATO, simply because the Ukraine is right across Russia's border. NATO simply does not have the power projection capability or numbers to intervene in the Ukraine.
2. The Russian Ground Forces are much tougher, better trained and better commanded that their NATO counterparts.
3. The Russian Air Force is more capable that NATO's, both in terms of personnel and in terms of equipment.
4. Russian Air Defense Forces are the best on the planet.
5. Russian nuclear forces are much more modern and capable than the US ones.
6. Russian special forces are, by far, the most capable on the planet and, unlike their US counterparts, their combat record (Operation Storm-333, "Polite Green Men" in Crimea) proves it.  In any Ukrainian war, they will play a key role.

[Sidebar: Western propaganda always makes loud claims about this or that kind of training, this or that kind of weapons, this or that kind of quotes and statements about super-duper, super-secret, "best in the world", special forces, but I simply look at the combat record. You can train all you want, and spend 100 days in the desert eating lizards, but unless you have some real war time combat success to show, I don't take your claims seriously. Recently, a commentator wrote that the best infantry in the world was the Australian one, because they had learned their skills from the Bushman. Great. One look at the territory currently controlled by the Bushmen and the size of Russia will tell you everything you need to know about that claim :-]

Now, make no mistake: Russia does not want war. If Russia wanted war, Putin would have sent the Russian military into the Donbass last year. In fact, Russia does not even want another "cold" war in Europe. But Russia is prepared to defend herself, if the Empire insists on making her submit to its hegemony.

As for Crimea, it is simply not negotiable.  Any attempt to break Crimea away from Russia will be considered as an attack on Russia. You might as well try to seize the Kremlin.

Lastly, notice that I said "Russia is ready".  Not "Putin is ready". Not only is Putin supported by something in the range of 85%+ of Russians, even though those who oppose him (LDPR, Communist Party, Just Russia) fully and totally support Putin's refusal to surrender to the Empire. The size of the pro-western part of the Russian population must be roughly in the 3%-5% max, not even enough to get one single deputy into the Duma.

Let me explain something about Russian history here.

Russia began as a rather small principality, much smaller and weaker than Poland. And then Russia got invaded by a multi-ethnic mix of nomads from the East. Russia did not have any natural borders. Not only that, but most of Russia is, in military terms, much more similar to an ocean than to dry land: huge forests, infinite steppes, extreme climates, etc. Finally, unlike western Europe, where a surrendering force was usually spared, in the vast expanses of Russia, surrender was simply not an option. Surrender meant death. The Russian gene pool was directly affected by this selective pressure. As was Russian culture.

[Sidebar: my daughter always laughs that Russian songs are all about only three topics: love, the Motherland and war. She is right. War and everything it represents in an integral part of the Russian culture as is sacrificing your life for the Motherland.]

For those still dubious, I would recommend machine translating this page. It is an analysis of all the wars and battles Russia fought between 1700 and 1940.  The results are clear:

  For 250 years of its existence of the Russian military fought 392 regular army battles against the Swedes, the French, the Germans, the Turks, the Poles, the Tatars, the Finns, various ethnic groups from the Caucasus, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Austrians, the Hungarians, the British, the Italians, and Central Asian nations. Of those Russia won - 279.

  Russia only lost 3 out of 34 wars:

  1. Crimea
  2. Russian-Japanese
  3. Polish-Soviet 1920.

  And in most these battles Russia has inferior numbers of troops and inferior weapons.

So much for the usual western myths about "winning by numbers" or "General Winter" (these myths are the output of bruised western egos, not military analysis).

This history creates a paradox: Russians absolutely hate war and even fear it, but in war they are determined and fearless. Furthermore, the "ocean like" terrain results in the Russians being unbeatable at two things: maneuver warfare and intelligence/reconnaissance. As for "retreat" on an ocean-like terrain, it has very different meaning than in traditional land warfare.

I believe that this is what the Russian intelligence officers were trying to convey to their counterpart at the meeting reported by The Times: we don't want war, but if you force us to, we will defeat you.

You might ask about nuclear war - would the Russians really risk death rather than surrender? After all, the USA *does* really have the means to wipe most Russian cities off the world map! Again, the answer is simple: Russia has almost always fought an existential threat. Sure, the US has nukes, but Hitler's project for Russia was hardly any better (to turn the Russian subhumans into slaves for the Master's Race). Unlike westerner, who have hardly ever faced a real existential threat (Hitler does not count - he was very much "our son of a bitch"), Russians have, numerous times. That is the big advantage of imperialism, especially for a power protected by the seas: wars happen away from home. In a nuclear war, both Russia and the USA would lose 20-50 million people. Now take a guess, which country is more capable of loosing anywhere between 1/5 to 1/2 of its population and then survive the nuclear winter and radioactive fallout?

In conclusion, I want to say the following to those who will dismiss all of the above as nonsense and still believe that the western military forces could prevail against Russia: you are welcome to dismiss all of the above, but please realize that the vast majority of Russians really do believe it! And as a direct result of that - they will not submit, they will not "blink", they will not surrender and they will fight you with everything they have.

This topic makes me sick to my stomach. I hate it. I am also frustrated to tears that having survived the Cold War, I am now facing by far the most dangerous international situation since the Cuban Missile Crisis (and then, at least, everybody was terrified; today the propaganda zombified public is utterly unaware of what is happening). The only reason I feel that I have to repeat all these things is in the hope that somebody somewhere will take my warnings seriously and warn his/her bosses.

If you are that person - please do the right thing now.

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 #28
18 of 20 Ukraine's Ministers Now Speak English Up from Two in Yanukovich Regime
Paul Goble

Staunton, April 6 - Sometimes a simple statistic can highlight a fundamental change, and that is true of one from Ukraine. At present, 18 of 20 of the ministers in the Ukrainian government speak English, up from only two of 20 under Viktor Yanukovich, Vitaly Sych, the editor of "Novoye vremya" points out.

And that shift reflects broader changes in the politics and society of that country means, he argues, that "Ukraine has a historic chance" to transform itself into a European country "if it survives the war on the Eastern front" Moscow has imposed upon it (nv.ua/opinion/sych/the-moment-of-truth-42442.html ).

Of course, precisely because of what this change would mean for Europe and Eurasia if it is completed, the Russia of Vladimir Putin is likely to do anything and everything to make sure that Ukraine not only cannot complete that change to a better life but that Kyiv is forced to return to a Russian-centric past.

In a speech to an Aspen Institute meeting in Berlin, Sych described the events of the past year and a half which he says have led to a "moment of truth" for Ukraine and for more than Ukraine as well.

The Ukrainian editor began his remarks by saying that "the lives of many Ukrainians switched into emergency mode on Dec.1, 2013. That day special police units beat up students who protested in the Maidan, Kiev's main square against ex-President Viktor Yanukovych's decision not to sign an association agreement with the EU.

"Ukrainian television channels aired footage of police brutally beating up young girls and boys who were peacefully protesting on Maidan," he continued. "The students were bleeding and shouting, some of them managed to escape only when they got inside the nearby churches. The next day a crowd of 100,000 outraged Ukrainians poured into Kiev's streets."

Their "protest was no longer about European integration-it was about justice and dignity. People demanded an apology and a punishment for those responsible for beating the protesters," he said. But instead of apologizing, "Yanukovych responded with repressions turning a spontaneous protest into a marathon stand-off."

Sych told the meeting that it was obvious to him at the time that "if we allow this to happen, we will turn into a bad version of Belarus for decades. There would be no elections in Ukraine, no economic competition, not even personal freedoms. We wouldn't even get what I call a 'freedoms in exchange for food' pact."

Yanukovich then "flooded the city with armed thugs brought from all over Ukraine to intimidate the protesters. Some of the activists ... went missing." Others were killed, and still others targeted. "Nobody knew who was going to be next."

"A few days afterwards what was already called a Revolution of Dignity," Sych said, "culminated in an ugly way. Special troops shot dead about 100 people right in the center of the capital, Yanukovych fled Kiev. Parliament cancelled the dictatorial laws. The next morning Yanukovych's mansion ... a symbol of corruption, opened its doors to general public."

"The trouble seemed to be over. But it had just began," Sych continued.

"A few weeks afterward Russia annexed Crimea and riots began in Eastern Ukraine. Armed people started capturing government buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk, some of them Russians, some of them locals. What was happening in Kiev was grim but was clear. The developments in the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine were beyond my understanding."

"We suddenly realized that Russian propaganda, which looked ridiculous from Kiev was extremely effective in the Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine and Russia itself. What we thought was a Revolution of Dignity was presented on Russian TV as an illegal rebellion of neo-Nazis financed and managed by Americans."

"An anti-criminal revolution was shown as an aggressive offensive on anything that is Russian-culture, language, identity. The technique was simple: Russian media focused on a small radical wing of the revolution-it constituted less than 5%, the rest were young professionals, students, retirees-and blew it out of proportion mixing it with fakes and lies."

"You would think such a primitive technology wouldn't work in the 21st century when people have internet," Sych said. "But it did. No wonder a lot of residents in Crimea and Russia started treating the Ukrainian revolution and Ukrainians themselves with suspicion, to say the least."

"In a recent poll by the Moscow-based Levada Center polling agency, Russians included what they previously referred to as brotherly Ukraine into the top three most hostile nations to Russia, along with the US and Latvia. Ukrainians replaced Georgia and Estonia in this honorary title."

"Ukrainians' attitude towards Russians has also deteriorated ...  The number of Ukrainians willing to live in the same state with Russians fell to a record low of 5% by October last year, even in the East of the country the figure halved from 26% to 13% over just five months."

"Relations have deteriorated on the human level as well. My wife's sister lives in Moscow for many years," Sych said. "She is a Russian citizen. We find it difficult to communicate with her family and decided we should all take a pause. It is difficult to speak with people who are convinced black is white and vice versa."

"Generally, most Ukrainians have been on a major emotional and financial stretch over the last year," he added. On the one hand, "many have either participated in the war ... or lost a relative or a friend." On the other, "all have seen their income plummet as the exchange rate of the local currency, the hryvna, fell from 8 to almost 30 to a dollar."

Today, "Ukraine is now waging two wars: one with pro-Russian rebels and Russian troops in the East, another-at home trying to reform its obsolete economy. The government was slow to reform in the first six months after the revolution. Part of the reason was the war that drew a lot of resources, part was domestic politics-new parliament needed to be elected that would replace the caretaker government with the new one."

But, Sych continued, everyone has "a strong incentive to reform-a lack of alternative. If [the country doesn't], Ukraine's economy will collapse in a year or two. [The reforms] will include privatizing loss-making state companies, cutting red tape and easing the tax burden as well as putting corrupt people in jail."

"Ukraine has now a historic chance to transform into a vast European nation with competitive economy and rule of law -- if it can only survive on the Eastern front-its people have been in emergency mode for the last 15 months."

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 #29
Zik (Ukraine)
http://zik.ua
April 4, 2015
Russia prepares terrorist acts in eastern Ukraine on Easter - SBU colonel

Terrorist operations in Eastern Ukraine during the Easter festivities are very probable as Pres Putin is in the habit of stepping up his activities on Orthodox holidays, SBU Col. Mykhailo Prytula said, speaking on Kanal 5 TV Apr.3, UNN reports.

Recall that Ambassador Yury Shcherbak assumed that Russia is preparing a large-scale military operation in Ukraine.

Shcherbak pointed to a recent noticeable three-fold increase in monthly military spending by Russia.

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 #30
Reuters
April 4, 2015
Russia's Lavrov Calls for Pull-Back of More Weapons in Ukraine

BRATISLAVA - Both sides in the conflict in Ukraine could pull back weapons under 100mm calibre from the front line in a bid to boost confidence in a ceasefire, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday.

Lavrov said there was a common aim for a ceasefire in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions agreed in Minsk in February to hold indefinitely, although there have been some violations.

Lavrov said parties involved in the conflict as well as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe were discussing what could be done on the top of the Minsk agreement which, among other measures, involved the pullback of weapons with calibre over 100mm, including large artillery, heavy mortar and powerful rocket systems.

"It is necessary to monitor keeping mainly the military part of the Minsk agreements....There is a possibility to pull back troops with calibre under 100mm," Lavrov said.

"We will try to help the sides to reach such an agreement, which would increase mutual confidence," Lavrov told a news conference during a visit to Slovakia.

His remarks echoed comments by a Kiev official last week that weapons not covered by the Minsk agreements, such as tanks and 80mm mortar and other weapons of up to 100mm calibre may be pulled back.

He criticised a Ukrainian law on the status of eastern Ukraine which he said went in the opposite direction than the Minsk ceasefire agreements.

Ukraine's parliament voted on in March to offer limited self-rule to pro-Russian rebels in the east. But Kiev's insistence that the law should come into force only when elections are held in the eastern territories under Ukrainian jurisdiction drew immediate criticism from Russia.

Asked about the rights of Crimea Tatars after Russia's annexation of Crimea last year Lavrov said they had full rights to use their language and were represented in power structures.

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 #31
AP
April 3, 2015
Russia's role in Ukraine seen as shifting from sending troops to training rebels
By NATALIYA VASILYEVA

YENAKIEYEVE, Ukraine - On a recent spring morning, an important visitor watched Russian-backed rebels conduct infantry maneuvers on the sunlit training grounds outside this town in eastern Ukraine.

"The general is very pleased," rebel battalion commander Ostap Cherny told his troops, referring to the figure in camouflage encircled by five armed guards.

The man - almost certainly a Russian military officer - became alarmed when he saw two journalists approach. His entourage shielded him from all sides, warning that photos were forbidden, and the group soon sped off in a four-car motorcade, with the "general" safely inside a black Toyota SUV with no license plates.

Nearly a year into the conflict in Ukraine, the extent of Moscow's direct involvement has become clear: They may wear camouflage, but the Russians' presence in eastern Ukraine is hardly invisible.

At the same time, there has been a recent shift in tactics that appears aimed at minimizing Russia's military presence as part of an effort to persuade the West to lift its punishing economic sanctions.

Visits by The Associated Press to training grounds like those near Yenakiyeve and interviews with dozens of rebels reveal that Russian armed forces spearheaded some of the major separatist offensives, then withdrew quickly before they could be widely noticed.

More recently, as a shaky cease-fire has taken hold, Russia has kept fewer troops in Ukraine but has increased its training of rebels to make sure they are capable of operating sophisticated Russian weaponry and defending the territory they control. NATO and an independent London-based Russian scholar estimate that Russia has several hundred military trainers in eastern Ukraine.

Since hostilities began around mid-April of last year, the Ukrainian government and the West have accused Moscow of waging an undeclared war in Ukraine by sending thousands of Russian troops to fight on the side of the separatists and providing the weapons to drive back the Ukrainian military. At least 6,000 people have been killed on both sides.

While the Kremlin acknowledges that many Russians have fought in Ukraine as volunteers, and such volunteers are regularly seen at checkpoints in rebel-held areas, Russia firmly denies sending its troops across the border or arming the rebels.

Throughout the conflict and often a few days before a new flashpoint of fighting would erupt, AP reporters would see as many as 80 armored vehicles a day, mostly coming from the direction of the Russian border, carrying troops and towing artillery. Their ultimate origin was impossible to establish, and the rebels strongly discouraged reporters from photographing such convoys or following them.

While rebel commanders avoid talking to journalists about Russia's role in the conflict, separatist fighters routinely confirm that clothing and ammunition are among supplies they receive from Russia.

"Yes, our brothers are supplying us - you know who," one fighter who goes by the nom de guerre Taicha said in November at a checkpoint in the crossroads town of Krasny Luch. Most rebels won't reveal their full names for fear of retaliation against their families.

Months later, on the front line west of Donetsk, a sniper who goes by the name of Kvadrat, or "Square," showed off his new rifle from Russia. "Uncle Vovka is helping us," he said, using a nickname for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Rebel fighters often casually thank Russia for the weapons they use, and two of them expressed gratitude to Russian troops for joining them in battles that they said they would not have been won without Russia's help.

When the town of Debaltseve finally fell to the separatists on Feb. 19 after weeks of fighting over the strategic railroad hub, the true victors were long gone.

"Our friends helped us," Andrei, a fighter who fought in Debaltseve and is based outside Luhansk, said with a shy smile. Unlike his platoon, which had nothing newer than a T-72 tank, he said the Russians had modern T-90s.

"They had everything, of course," said Andrei, who like other rebels would not give his last name because his family lives in an area controlled by Ukraine's government. "If they hadn't gone in (to Debaltseve), I don't know what we would have done."

Andrei and another fighter, Alexei, said Russian troops specifically stormed a fortified area outside Debaltseve that the rebels had been trying to capture for weeks.

Alexei, who was still based in Debaltseve in March, also saw fighting last summer in Ilovaysk, another major battle where the involvement of Russian troops was strongly suspected.

He was flippant about the Russian presence in Ilovaysk, saying "just a couple of tanks pushed through." But when asked about Russians in the battle for Debaltseve, he became animated: "I'm not going to hide it: Russians were here. They went in and left quickly."

In March, the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta published a rare interview with a Russian soldier who said he fought outside Debaltseve. Dorji Batomunkuyev, who was wounded Feb. 9, said his brigade of 120 troops and 31 tanks crossed into Ukraine in February, wearing no insignia and leaving behind all documents identifying them as Russians.

He recalled how the rebels were often reluctant to attack, while he and his fellow Russian soldiers had no choice but to obey orders and advance. Batomunkuyev, a native of the Siberian city of Ulan-Ude near the Mongolian border, could not be reached by the AP.

Igor Sutyagin, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, has spent months collecting evidence of the Russian presence in Ukraine, coming up with an exhaustive list of combat formations that were sent in.

The presence of large numbers of Russian troops has been a "permanent feature of the conflict" since August, Sutyagin said, with the number peaking at about 9,000 troops in late February at the end of the battle for Debaltseve.

His estimate stems from calculations based on sightings of weaponry on the ground as well as information that soldiers routinely post on social media.

Sutyagin corroborated the rebel fighters' descriptions of Russian troops entering Ukraine and leaving promptly after a battle is won. By his calculations, several hundred Russian servicemen are still in Ukraine, training local troops and coordinating rebel forces.

The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to numerous calls and faxes seeking comment for this story. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that Russia "firmly denies" reports of a Russian military presence in Ukraine.

NATO insists Russian troops continue to operate in eastern Ukraine despite the cease-fire, but it is unable to give exact figures. In recent months, according to Lt.-Col. Jay Janzen at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Russia has transferred more than 1,000 heavy weapons to the separatists, including tanks, armored vehicles, rocket systems, surface-to-air missiles and artillery.

NATO and the Ukrainian government in Kiev are convinced that Russian military personnel in rebel-held territories are providing training to a proxy force.

Gen. Philip Breedlove, commander of NATO forces in Europe, said the alliance's intelligence indicates that trainers from Russia's special forces have been instructing fighters in eastern Ukraine about sophisticated weaponry that the Russian military has supplied. Breedlove estimated 250-300 advisers are supervising the training.

One evening in November, a rebel garrison on the outskirts of Donetsk was on the move. Fighters busied themselves hauling their belongings into the back of pristine military transport trucks. One middle-aged rebel fighter, who identified himself only by the nom de guerre Kesha, said he and his comrades were leaving for training.

The instructors, Kesha let slip, were Russian nationals. Asked what his combat-hardened battalion still had to learn, Kesha said with a chuckle: "All kinds of things."

In visits to three training grounds in eastern Ukraine in March, AP reporters saw coal miners, drivers and handymen taking part in military drills involving hundreds of people and dozens of armored vehicles.

At the grounds outside Yenakiyeve, where the man referred to as the "general" observed maneuvers, the lack of formal military training among the rebels was obvious.

As infantry vehicles rolled toward a hill and opened fire, Cherny, their commander, started to shout into a walkie-talkie: "Why did you open fire? I didn't give you an order to open fire!"

Cherny told the rebels afterward that the "general" was happy: "He said you did fine. But I actually think it was not fine. There's still a lot of work to do."

The officer, whose camouflaged uniform bore no insignia, never approached the fighters and left with his entourage of protective guards after a brief word with the man in charge of the training grounds.

His black Toyota was seen later in the day parked outside a well-guarded hotel in Luhansk, less than 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the Russian border.

The hotel appeared largely empty, although potential guests were told there was no vacancy. Its restaurant was frequented almost exclusively by middle-aged men, some in camouflage with epaulets. They didn't say a word in the presence of strangers.

Every corner of the hotel was guarded by armed men with the deportment of professional soldiers. Some slouched in chairs in the lobby for days, watching Russian TV. The glittering ammunition belts of their machine guns rested on the floor. One morning, a military truck arrived at the hotel with 12 men carrying large-caliber machine guns and sniper rifles.

Although hostilities in the region have subsided since a truce was reached in mid-February, continuing skirmishes in some areas feed anxieties that the conflict could flare up again across the entire 450-kilometer (280-mile) front line.

None of the rebel fighters interviewed said they believed the war was over, adding that they are preparing for battles.

Sutyagin said Russia has created a regular force of sorts that is "more or less" capable of defending the rebels' self-proclaimed republics in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

"One of the most important tasks now is to keep these republics as possible leverage on Ukraine," he said. "So they need to preserve these republics, make them combat-ready, and at the same time, make sure that the sanctions against Russia are lifted."

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 #32
AFP
March 5, 2015
After a year at war, Ukraine at financial breaking point

PARIS: Bruised and battered after a year of armed conflict, Ukraine has been crippled by a combination of monetary, budgetary, industrial, banking and energy crises that could make it dependent on outside help for decades.

The country has suffered a series of shocks that has obliterated its fragile economy.

Its vital heavy industry, in the east, has been completely hamstrung, with production plunging by a fifth - not helped by a sharp decline in steel prices.

In addition, with foreign investors fleeing the uncertainty, the value of the local currency, the hryvnia, has fallen by around 50% since the beginning of the year.

"Like many emerging markets, this has a direct effect on households, businesses and public finances, because both private and public debt is denominated in foreign currency," said Julien Marcilly, chief economist at insurance firm Coface.

Gross domestic product contracted 6.8% last year, according to official statistics and the central bank is bracing for a decline of as much as 7.5% in 2015.

Ukraine is also suffering a debt crisis, with its proportion of public debt to gross domestic product (GDP) expected to spiral to 94% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund - from a healthy 40% in 2013.

"There is a banking crisis, a monetary crisis and an economic crisis that translated into a strong contraction of GDP last year.

"This year, there will probably also be an energy crisis," said Francis Malige, managing director for Eastern Europe and the Caucasus at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

The international community, desperate to avoid a collapse in the Ukrainian economy that could be a propaganda coup for Russia, has rushed to its aid.

In April 2014, the IMF sketched out a bailout plan worth some US$17.5bil to come in a series of tranches - US$5bil of which has already been paid out.

This is part of a package of US$40bil pledged by the international community to help Ukraine back on its feet.

The European Union has offered Ukraine about 1.6 billion euros (US$2bil) in short-term assistance and put together a wider package worth about 11 billion euros.

Ukraine has encountered huge difficulties in borrowing on the open market, raising only small sums over short periods of time.

Possible lenders are scared off by the potential for default - which the Moody's ratings agency says is near 100 %.

However, others see it differently - billionaire investor George Soros has said he is willing to plough one billion dollars into the country.

One thing that particularly irks investors is the perceived level of corruption in Ukraine.

The authorities in Kiev say they are trying to stamp out corruption and have fired a billionaire governor and arrested some high-level officials.

But Tatiana Jean, from the Paris-based IFRI think tank, said part of that was "play-acting".

If authorities were serious about clamping down on corruption, they could start with breaking the monopoly of state gas firm Naftogaz, she says.

Malige, from the EBRD - the main investor in the country - said another priority was to clean up the financial system.

"There are too many banks in Ukraine working on a closed system.

"They are in the hands of a few powerful people and they tend to finance the companies held by those same people," he said.

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 #33
International Business Times
www.ibtimes.com
April 3, 2015
Ukraine War Forces A Nation To Talk About A Taboo: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
By Lydia Tomkiw

KIEV, Ukraine -- In mid-February, Fedir Kalenychenko, a Ukrainian army soldier, was retreating with his unit from the town of Debaltseve amid heavy fighting punctuated with shelling by pro-Russian rebels. He suffered a concussion, and now that the 24-year-old is back here in the capital, he has begun seeing psychologists to talk about his experiences as a soldier.

Kalenychenko did it at the urging of his wife, Tetiana. "My wife helped me. She knows how to convince me," he says. And seeing a psychologist "helps," he says. "It becomes a little easier."

That makes him an exception.

Many Ukrainians, including soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) associated with a yearlong war that's killed more than 6,000 people, are leery of going to psychologists. There is still a large stigma attached to seeking psychological care. Some of the field's practitioners here see a connection to the legacy of Soviet medicine, which focused on treating external ailments, while psychology was frequently tied to political questions. A current fear among many soldiers is that psychologists will prevent them from serving in the army.

"It's a big problem," says Natalya Stepuk, a psychologist and member of the recently formed Ukrainian Society of Overcoming Consequences of Traumatic Events, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) with 200 members across the country. "There's a small percentage of people who turn to psychologists."

April 13 will mark a year since the Ukrainian government began what it calls an anti-terrorism operation (ATO) in the eastern Donbas region, aimed at pushing back Russian-supported separatists. Psychologists are now learning how to treat what has been dubbed "ATO syndrome," as soldiers and volunteers return from war on rotations.

And, in this deeply religious country, psychologists are teaming up with unlikely allies: priests. In Ukraine, four churches have major followings: the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow patriarchate, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Kiev patriarchate and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

The Rev. Andriy Lohin, a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest, realized the need for priests and psychologists to work together when he tended to the injured at Kiev's Independence Square during Ukraine's revolution last year.

"In our society, there is a strong lack of information about the work of psychologists," Lohin says. "For our society, this is something new. When people hear from the lips of a priest that our psyche needs educated help ... for a lot of people, it helps lower the barrier."

Priests need to understand the importance of PTSD, says the Rev. Sergiy Dmitriev, an archpriest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Kiev patriarchate. He is also head of the NGO Elios-Mylist, and has undergone both American and Israeli training sessions. However, he says, priests should not be expected to do the work of clinicians.

"Not everyone understands the function of a priest," Dmitriev says. "A lot of people think of priests as a substitute for a psychologist, but it's not a switch: We both have our functions."

Dmitriev is planning to open a rehabilitation center in Novohrad-Volynskyi, west of Kiev, where soldiers can be together and work on their rehabilitation and adaptation back to daily life.

The relationship between religious leaders and medical professionals has "pleasantly surprised" psychiatrist Mariia Bialaia. "It's interesting because we have a similar outlook -- we use different words for the same things," says Bialaia, who is also a member of the Ukrainian Society of Overcoming Consequences of Traumatic Events. "We do similar work, but treat it a bit differently."

Bialaia, Stepuk, Lohin, and Dmitriev all met last August at training run by the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, which is pioneering an interdisciplinary approach to treating trauma by involving clergy, psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers.

Priest Lohin has also attended seminars and training sessions to help him understand PTSD and how to treat and interact with soldiers and their families. In early March, he opened the Center for Psychological Health at the Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky hospital in the western city of Lviv, where he works as the hospital administrator.

The center provides free treatment for soldiers and their families, as well as volunteers who go into the field and people who participated in the Maidan protests. The center is taking a holistic approach to care with the philosophy that everyone linked to the ATO -- from the soldiers to their wives -- deserves free treatment.

Volodymyr Stanchyshyn, a psychologist at the center, previously worked at a private psychotherapy center. He readily admits that PTSD and war-related trauma are new fields for him and that psychologists across Ukraine are learning about them and how to treat patients.

"I believe that other psychologists must learn quickly, and they are learning quickly," Stanchyshyn says. "I really believe in this because right now there's no other way. No one was ready that a war would start." He has been studying American materials on how to treat PTSD.

Similarly, psychologist Stepuk in Kiev pulls out pamphlets she gives to wives and families affected by the ATO, translated into Ukrainian from American sources. On page one, in bold, capital letters, it reads, "You are not the only ones," and it goes on to describe what to expect when husbands and fathers return from war.

Since June, Stepuk has been traveling to the ATO zone and training psychologists working with army battalions. There's a problem, though: Soldiers criticize young, recent graduates assigned to battalions who have a hard time connecting with them and the experiences they've gone through. Overall, training and psychological care given to soldiers before and after they deploy is still uneven, with psychologists saying the government lacks the necessary resources as volunteers attempt to plug the gaps.

"The overall problem is that in reality the army does not have psychologists," says the soldier Kalenychenko, speaking of his personal experience. "There is one person per battalion, but the person usually isn't qualified, and they need to see a psychologist themselves after everything."

Many of the men Kalenychenko served with are not going to see psychologists, he says, and problems such as aggressive behavior can surface months later. Many soldiers fighting in the ongoing conflict have little to no prior combat experience.

Kalenychenko's wife, Tetiana, works as an assistant to the archpriest Dmitriev. Sitting in an office within the complex that houses the historic golden-domed St. Michael's monastery in the heart of Kiev, she explains how she quickly understood the need for psychological care, especially targeting the wives of soldiers. Wednesday nights, free group-therapy sessions are run for the families of soldiers, and she says wives mainly attend it.

"To this day, there are still problems of getting men to turn to psychologists. There are still stigmas that it's not needed," she says, noting it's mostly wives who are asking for help on how to deal with their husbands.

In addition to treating soldiers and their families, priests and psychologists are also dealing with Ukraine's 1.1 million internally displaced people, as well as those suffering trauma from events related to the revolution, when scores were killed at demonstrations as the conflict between protesters and police turned violent. But psychiatrist Bialaia says she is seeing a subtle shift in the way Ukrainians view both her peers and psychologists.

"It is changing a bit," she says. "A little more trust is appearing."

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 #34
Security Service of Ukraine says it adopts principles of WWII Ukrainian nationalists

KIEV, April 1. /TASS/. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) reported on Wednesday that it would adopt the experience of the relevant structures of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-UPA) - an ultra-right terrorist organization in Western Ukraine in the 1930's-50's of the last century.

"SBU does not need to invent anything extra - it is important to build on the traditions and approaches of the OUN-UPA security service. It [the security service] worked against the aggressor during the temporary occupation of the territory, it had a patriotic upbringing, used a counterintelligence unit, and had relied on the peaceful Ukrainian population using its support," SBU head Valentyn Nalyvaichenko told the Kiev-based Den (Day) newspaper in an interview. According to him, he has already studied very well the methods of the founders of the OUN security service.

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during World War II worked for German intelligence. In 1943, OUN organized the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), forming the backbone of the SS Division Galicia. OUN-UPA militants killed at least a million people, including almost 200 thousand Poles.

Nalyvaichenko has promised to completely reshuffle personnel of the Security Service of Ukraine, recruiting to the service people, brought up in the 1990s. "In 2012-2014, the leadership of SBU, and I suppose, of the majority of other law enforcement agencies, consisted of people who are currently charged with "treason," he said. "At present, the SBU senior management team has been 100% renewed. Almost every day I sign orders for dismissal of people."

During President Viktor Yushchenko's office term in 2005 an attempt was undertaken in Ukraine to reconcile the OUN-UPA veterans with veterans of the Soviet army. However, according to public opinion polls, the majority of Ukrainians were ready to support reconciliation of the veterans of the Soviet and German armies, rather than veterans of OUN-UPA and the Red Army.

In 2010, Yushchenko issued a decree on awarding posthumously the title of Hero of Ukraine to Stepan Bandera (OUN active figure since 1929, since 1940 - head of the OUN faction).

Members of the European parliament then officially expressed regret over this fact and urged the newly-elected President Viktor Yanukovich to revise Yushchenko's decisions. A year later, by a decision of the Supreme Administrative Court of Ukraine, this decree was finally declared illegal. Polish media previously claimed that the glorification of Ukrainian nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, as well as President Petro Poroshenko's decision to move the February 23 army holiday celebration to the date of the UPA formation testify to the fact that the cult of nationalism in Ukraine has penetrated into the power structures of the highest level.

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 #35
www.rt.com
April 6, 2015
Ukraine's neo-Nazi leader becomes top military adviser, legalizes fighters

Ukraine's Interpol-wanted leader of extremist group Right Sector, Dmitry Yarosh, has been appointed as an adviser to the country's Chief of General Staff. He has agreed to legalize thousands of fighters as an assault team subordinate to the regular army.

"Colonel General Viktor Muzhenko, Chief of General Staff, and Dmytro Yarosh agreed the format of cooperation between 'Pravy Sector' [Right Sector] and the Ukrainian Armed Forces," Ukraine's defense ministry said in a statement.

The appointment apparently comes after successful negotiations took place between the so-called Ukrainian Volunteer Corps (DUK Right Sector) and Ukraine's top military command regarding possible options of incorporating the armed gangs inside the defense ministry's structure of command.

The Right Sector's armed paramilitary battalions agreed to be "subordinated to military leaders," the ministry said. According to the statement, Muzhenko and Yarosh stressed the need for "unity", confirming fighters' readiness to obey Kiev's central command.

"DUK is ready to perform common tasks with the Army, ready to obey the army leadership in matters relating to national defense against an external enemy, which enables every patriot to protect Ukraine," Yarosh said.

Yarosh, who was one of the main figureheads of the violence-seeped coup last year, is wanted by Interpol for incitement of terrorism, and extremist activities. He was placed on the international wanted list at the request of Russian authorities. Despite his notoriety, Yarosh is an elected member of the Ukrainian parliament heading the Right Sector political party, which is banned in Russia as an extremist organization

Over the weekend Yarosh announced that he plans to legalize private military companies in Ukraine, and will soon introduce new legislation into the Parliament.

"I think it could be a good option for people, who can't get back from war inside their heads," the extremist leader claimed. "This will provide jobs to many people, and stability in the country, after all."

The legalization comes after Yarosh offered to reform his Volunteer Corps into a professional assault team, in response to Kiev's demands for all paramilitary units to surrender their arms or join the country's official armed forces. Right Sector initially refused to obey the ultimatum, calling them "traitorous" and claiming that "volunteers and patriots" will only lay down arms after Ukraine's territorial sovereignty is restored.

The so-called volunteer, as well as territorial defense and other types of privately formed and sponsored battalions, have been fighting alongside Ukraine's regular army since Kiev began its "anti-terrorist operation" in the east of the country last April. Many of them have been noted for their cruelty and murderous tactics against the local population, such as Aidar and Azov being accused by international human rights associations of war crimes.

After a ceasefire agreement was reached in February, some of these armed units refused to leave the Donbass region and have regularly violated the reached agreements.

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#36
Vedomosti
April 2, 2015
Russian daily says Ukraine peace process deadlocked
Petr Kozlov, It is unlikely that local elections in Ukraine and Donetsk Basin can be synchronized

The continuation of the counterterrorism operation will not interfere with Kyiv [Kiev] holding elections to local self-government bodies planned for 25 October, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said yesterday on a trip to Ternopil. After that, the "lion's share" of powers will be transferred to local government bodies as part of the decentralization process, he promised. "There is no talk of the local elections being postponed. No one should be counting on that," Poroshenko said as quoted by Interfax-Ukraine [news agency]. The president did not specify if he was also referring to the Donetsk Basin territories controlled by insurgents. At the end of March, he did not rule out the possibility that local elections in the self-proclaimed DNR and LNR [Donetsk and Luhansk "people's republics"] would be held later this year, as provided for by the Minsk agreements, but this "would hinge on many circumstances."

In his statement yesterday, Poroshenko was referring to Kyiv-controlled territories because some experts had been discussing the possibility of the local elections being postponed. However, this [postponement] would require changing the constitution, a Vedomosti source in the Ukrainian president's administration explained. It is premature to say when the elections will be held on DNR and LNR territory as everything depends on the implementation of the Minsk accords, he said. Kyiv "would be more interested" in the elections taking place at the same time, but it believes that the self-declared republics will not agree to that in order to distance themselves from Ukraine.

Luhansk is also referring to the Minsk agreements, stressing that it would be ready to start a "dialogue on the modalities" of elections only after Kyiv has implemented the point about constitutional reform. "Let them change the constitution, after agreeing it with us in advance, and only after that will we be ready to discuss elections," Oleksiy Karyakin, chairman of the LNR parliament, told Vedomosti. The work of subgroups as part of the tripartite contact group has not even started, and it would be good if it starts by mid-April, adds Vladyslav Deyneho, the LNR's special representative at the talks. "What dates can you talk about when the 'Package of Measures' (the official name of the Minsk agreements - Vedomosti) is not being implemented? Under the agreements, the subgroups were due to start work on 8 March. Three weeks have passed since then, but this has not happened."

On 17 March, the Verkhovna Rada [Ukrainian parliament] passed a law stipulating new rules for the order of elections and for changing constitutional status: First, elections are to be held under Ukrainian law, with all illegal armed groups, which, in Kyiv's understanding, include the forces of the DNR and the LNR, having to be withdrawn from the east of the country.

"In order even to hold talks about elections, let alone to agree the details of the electoral process, the republics will need firm guarantees of Kyiv honouring its commitments," says Aleksey Chesnakov, head of the Centre for Political Situations, which is close to the Kremlin. He does not believe that with the current version of the special status law, it will be possible to agree on elections.

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#37
Sputnik
April 4, 2015
Embattled Ukrainian PM Fires Official Who Investigated Him for Corruption

Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers fired the official who led the corruption investigation which found that Cabinet members embezzled over $30 million.

A growing rift between Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and President Petro Poroshenko surfaced during a conflict with oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi over state assets. Yatsenyuk has been attempting to negotiate with Germany separately from Poroshenko as Berlin is losing patience with Ukraine's lack of progress in European integration.

One legislator from Poroshenko's Bloc called the now-fired head of the State Finanсial Inspection Nikolai Gordienko's findings "just the tip of the iceberg."

Yatsenyuk said that the Gordienko implicated his cabinet in corruption after a "biased" audit of the state-owned Antonov plane manufacturer.

The country's parliament is scheduled to convene on Tuesday for what is expected to be a vote on Yatsenyuk's future as Prime Minister. Yatsenyuk is preparing by finding allies abroad while Poroshenko's Bloc is gathering support for his ousting in the Parliament.

Low-Profile Berlin Trip

On April 1, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk went on an unexpected visit to Berlin, where he met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and top German officials.

The visit was not announced until the day before, and the announcement itself was largely ignored in Ukrainian media outlets controlled or owned by President Petro Poroshenko, which suggests a developing rift between him and the Prime Minister.

During the visit, Yatsenyuk broke from previous Ukrainian government rhetoric, telling Merkel that he supports holding an election in militia-controlled Donbass districts as quickly as possible.

The German move could be a political bet, as Poroshenko is increasingly portrayed in German official media as lagging on promises to follow the Minsk agreements and reform the government.

German Impatience

Germany has grown increasingly impatient with Ukraine's leadership, as it has thus far failed to reform its government or investigate the 2014 Euromaidan sniper shootings.

In an editorial by Deutsche Welle, Germany's official broadcaster, the head of the Ukrainian editorial staff wrote that Ukraine is blocking the investigation in part because the suspects are being "covered up" because they are needed to fight the war in Eastern Ukraine.

The same editorial stated that Ukraine's reforms are failing to materialize not only because of the war, but also "because the power of the oligarchs and the old boy networks are still unbroken in Ukraine."

The editorial, together with official discontent, shows that while Germany showed Ukraine lenience because of its military campaign in the east, "Kyiv must also play its part, or risk losing the trust of its partners in the West."

Neither the editorial, nor German officials have thus far explained what "losing the trust" would mean for Ukraine's leadership.

How the Conflict Surfaced

The potential for conflict between President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk surfaced on March 19, during a conflict between oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi and Poroshenko over the control of state-owned pipelines.

On March 23, a Poroshenko Bloc MP threatened to begin a corruption inquiry against Yatsenyuk's cabinet. The next day Yatsenyuk said that he backs Poroshenko over Kolomoyskyi after initially remaining silent on the conflict.

On March 27, the conflict was resolved and Kolomoyskyi agreed to resign from his position as governor. Sergei Leshchenko, a Poroshenko Bloc MP, then said on his blog that the settlement was a result of a political unity negotiated by US Vice President Joe Biden.

"Biden called Yatsenyuk and his political party and asked to demonstrate the unity with the President Poroshenko in restraining Kolomoiskiy," Leshchenko then wrote.

On Friday, Ukrainian lawmakers from Petro Poroshenko's Bloc and the far-right Svoboda faction began collecting signatures for Yatsenyuk's dismissal from his position as Prime Minister.

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#38
The Nation
www.thenation.com
April 6, 2015
The Least Among Us: The War in the Donbas Is Terrorizing Ukraine's Most Vulnerable Citizens
The Western media has forgotten those who have suffered the most in the Ukranian civil war-the eastern Ukranians.
By James Carden
James Carden is a contributing editor to The American Conservative magazine and is a frequent contributor to The National Interest and Russia Direct. Formerly an Advisor to the US Department of State, he resides in Washington, DC.
[Photos here http://www.thenation.com/article/203553/least-among-us-war-donbas-terrorizing-ukraines-most-vulnerable-citizens#]

On a bluff overlooking the Sea of Azov in the southwest corner of Russia-tucked between the city of Rostov-on-Don and the town of Taganrog sits a series of 6 unprepossessing buildings on dirt lot roughly the size of an acre. Living in these plain cinderblock dwellings are over 50 school age children and their mothers, refugees from the war that has been raging in the cities, villages and towns of East Ukraine's Donbas region for nearly a year. These mothers and children probably do not have very good chances for happy futures; they lack means and they lack opportunity. Their separatist husbands and fathers are still in Donbas fighting against Keiv's regular army and ultra-nationalist battalions or else have been killed. For many, the homes they once knew have been destroyed and the country they were born into is now very far along the process of disintegrating. Yet for all that; these refugees in Russia, by the sea, are the lucky ones. They got out.

Many have not. For four days last week (March 24-27) I and a small group of other foreign journalists*, visited the largest city in the Donbas, Donetsk, and several surrounding towns and villages. Today, Donetsk, which had a pre-war population of well over 1 million inhabitants, seems on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe. In several shelters in and around Donetsk we saw scores of children-some as young as 3 days old-and their mothers (and many cases their grandmothers) living in cramped, dirty hovels with limited access to electricity, food and water. The sound of artillery shelling could be heard not far off from the Donetsk airport where fighting between the separatist's Army of Novorossiya and the Ukrainian forces has sporadically flared up despite the fact the the second Minsk ceasefire has, for now, largely held in other parts of Donbas.

The ceasefire, which is being actively undermined by Kiev's refusal to negotiate directly with the rebel government, has, according to several rebel fighters we spoke to, not prevented snipers from taking up positions in abandoned apartments throughout the city. Though the targets of sniper fire have mainly been rebel parliamentarians and members of the burgeoning Donetsk government, the fear they inspire among the non-combatants is real.

Unremarked upon by the American media, eastern Ukraine's elderly, women and children are living in a city that is effectively under an economic and military blockade by the Western-backed government in Kiev; which has resulted in a very real sense of privation throughout the city. The Poroshenko government, as one of its first moves, cut off all social services and benefits to the citizens of the Donbas; because people are living without medical insurance, hospitals are offering their services for free. Kiev has also cut the area off from the banking system, there is no access to credit or even the most rudimentary banking services. Unsurprisingly, commerce has ground to a standstill; in the city center only small markets selling flowers, crafts and, occasionally, food, seem to be doing much business. Medium-sized enterprises; retailers and restaurants, are shuttered, as are, according to one parliamentarian we spoke to, most of the Donbas's primary large scale industry; coal and steel enterprises. Only the main Donbas Metallurgical facility is still operating.

And then there is the question of water. Reuters reported on March 19 that "The main filtering station for Donetsk...has been out of order since mid-January" resulting in a foul stench emanating from water taps. Driving through parts the city after the mandatory 11pm curfew, the smell is unmistakable. Even so, according to the International Rescue Committee's Bibi Lamond "I wouldn't drink [the water] and I would not advise anyone to drink it without further treatment."

The deep anger toward both Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (I was told by one young woman, a native of Donetsk, that "this is Poroshenko's war") and equally deep sense of alienation from the Ukrainian state in Kiev are equally unmistakable. One young mother told us "there is no 'back' to Ukraine for Donbas." If Poroshenko and his cheerleaders in the Obama administration and the US Congress believe that an economic blockade, Kiev's deployment of snipers, the shelling of Donbas's civilians, and a proposal to send American weapons with which to facilitate the shelling, is the recipe for winning eastern Ukrainian "hearts and minds" they couldn't be more wrong.

Yet, tellingly, this is the strategy Poroshenko himself laid out last November in a speech in which he declared:"Our children will go to schools and kindergartens, theirs will be holed up in the basements. Because they are not able to do a thing. This is exactly how we will win this war!" Well, he may have half the job done. The little children we saw are indeed cowering in filthy conditions in underground Soviet-era bomb shelters. Our hearty band of neoconservative war boosters-from Rutgers University professor Alexander Motyl to the mendacious Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland-might take a moment to consider the misery which their backing of Kiev has brought in its train, though of course they will not.

It is a remarkable aspect of the current conflict that the people who have suffered that most as a result of the Ukrainian civil war, the eastern Ukrainians, have received little sympathy from a Western media that is usually only too eager to cover the hardships brought about by war. The reason is neither hard to divine, nor is it lost on people we spoke to in Donbas. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the Russian-speaking population of  the Donbas is being subjected to a conscious campaign of dehumanization that is being waged primarily by private armies funded by Ukrainian oligarchs. Because the people of the Donbas are ethnic Russian speakers their suffering is discounted. After all, how could people who are seen to be positively disposed to Mr. Putin's Russia and are fighting an American-backed government in Kiev be deserving of our sympathy?

While this may seem to be an exaggeration, it's hard, given some of the rhetoric of Kiev's more sanguinary cheerleaders, to dismiss. Professor Motyl, a vocal supporter of the Kiev regime, has called residents of the Donbas "the most retrograde part of [Ukraine's] population" comparing the Donbas to the Jim Crow-era American South. And indeed, the Kiev government and its representatives in Kiev have repeatedly attempted to de-humanize them by referring to them as "terrorists" and as "subhumans."

The psychological effect this has had on the citizens of what almost everyone we spoke to invariably calls  "Novorossiya" or "New Russia" harkening back to a historical era when the Donbas and other Ukrainian regions belonged to the Tsarist Russian empire - is that there is indeed no going back to the pre-Maidan Ukraine. And as long as Kiev refuses to negotiate with the leaders of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk the war will continue with devastating consequences for those most vulnerable to its ravages

*The author would like to gratefully acknowledge staff of the German-language webzine Europe Objectiv for help in arranging travel and security.

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#39
AFP
April 2, 2015
Opera plays on through east Ukraine chaos
By Beatrice Le Bohec

Donetsk (Ukraine) (AFP) - The fighting in east Ukraine may have driven away soloists and drained the coffers, but it's still curtain up at the Donbass Opera theatre, thanks to its staff's heroic efforts.

"A bomb destroyed some of our sets that were stored in a warehouse near the airport, we've lost 20 percent of our staff -- or 150 people -- and we are short of cash," said the weary head of the theatre, Yevgeny Denisenko.

"Tomorrow I will pay the salaries (that were due in) December."

At first glance, nothing appears to be amiss backstage. From behind a door, vocal melodies resonate through the air, just like at any opera theatre.

One of the soloists, Grigory, practises his part from the operetta "The Merry Widow", hand on heart.

"We get by!" said the chief set designer Andrei, while passing by a sign pointing to the air-raid shelter in the basement.

But the exodus of singers, dancers and technicians has proved to be a huge headache when planning the season's programme.

"When half of the choir is missing, it is impossible to perform operas such as Aida," said the director, referring to Giuseppe Verdi's grand opera. "We've had to adapt."

"I hope the soloists will come back, they've still got their flats here. But I know some have gone to work in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Kiev."

On February 14, a bomb exploded 300 metres away from the venue as singers were performing an operetta called "The Circus Princess."

"Nobody left the room, neither the musicians nor the public," recalled Rustem, the pianist accompanying soloist Grigory. "We held out."

The 21-year-old singer admitted he was afraid during the bombings, "but when you start to work on a role, you forget everything and start living the life of the character."

Natalya Semibalamut, who translates Italian operas into Russian, said she had contempt for the artists who left the theatre.

Art above all else

"Those who left have dirt in their souls, the best remained," said the slender brunette. "Art is the priority, even during the bombings, and we should not be afraid."

Ballerina Tatiana Lyadskaya, 35, sought refuge in the Kiev-controlled city of Dnipropetrovsk for a few months, but returned in November and is now rehearsing "Giselle", which is due to premiere in late April.

"Some say the war will resume, but I pray it's not true," she said, dressed in a white tutu and black leotard, with an Orthodox cross on a chain around her neck.

The city's separatist leaders have promised to help after the culture ministry in Kiev pulled the plug on funding for the state theatre in November.

Russian-born soprano Anna Netrebko, who now lives in Austria, donated one million roubles (about $16,000, 15,000 euros), and other benefactors are expected to step forward.

"Art is a way to resist," said the director. "I've seen people cry with happiness. They come out of their basements, their bomb shelters, to listen to our music."

Since the conflict broke out last April, the public has tried to stay off the streets after darkness descends and fighting intensifies between pro-Russian rebels and the regular army.

The theatre schedules all its performances to start in the morning or early afternoon.

The director hopes to return to normal hours soon, giving those with day jobs the chance to take in a performance.

Separatist leaders are keen on the idea to "calm the public, and because there are few other distractions," according to Denisenko.

Shortly after the curtain went up on a Saturday performance, two camouflaged rebels slipped into the full house. With all eyes focused on the first act of "The Merry Widow", they went unnoticed.

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 #40
Donetsk and Luhansk economies start healing war scars
By Lyudmila Alexandrova

MOSCOW, April 2. /TASS/. The economies of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics are showing the first signs of recovery, although Kiev is continuing the economic blockade and impairing every effort to shape the restive territories' political future. The war-ravaged region does have a development potential, experts say, but at the same time they warn that without reintegration with Ukraine many issues will be hard to address.

Kiev's stance remains harsh. Ukraine's central authorities keep pressing for preposterously unrealistic demands, which leaves the Donetsk and Luhansk leaders no option other than to consider alternative scenarios of future development, including those causing these territories and Ukraine drift ever farther apart. First and foremost the Donetsk and Luhansk republics have started creating their own economic systems and mending ruined or damaged infrastructures. A monetary system is in the making and financial and commodity flows are being put under control.

Last January the leader of the Donetsk Republic, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, declared the banking system was up and running. The authorities of the Luhansk Republic have been workingalong the same lines.

Donetsk has declared that as of April 1 it was shifting to a multi-currency system. It is presumed that the Ukrainian hryvnia will be the basic currency, but many financial transactions, including tax collection and the payment of benefits will be made in roubles, dollars and euros - until Ukraine has lifted the economic blockade. The Luhansk Republic introduced a multi-currency system on March 15.

As Russian media report, the food supply situation in the region is more or less normal. The Donetsk Republic runs what just recently was Ukraine's largest manufacturers of salamis and sausages, mayonnaise, dairy products, semi-cooked foods and beer. Street bazaars are open. But the prices are high, while most potential buyers lack cash.

In this region Ukraine's economic problems had been piling for quite a long time, the deputy dean of the world economy and world politics department at the Higher School of Economics, Andrey Suzdaltsev, told TASS.

"The economy of Donbas has remained under oligarchic rule for years. And oligarchs are not very investment-and development-minded people.

Ukraine's heavy industries, mostly coalmining and heavy machine-building are located here, Suzdaltsev recalled. But the technological base is the one inherited back from the Soviet era. It is largely outdated. These energy-ineffective facilities remained afloat as long as they had access to low-priced Soviet and then Russian energy resources. Now most economic facilities are at a stand-still. Only some industries and coalmines are in operation. The region's export potential remains untapped and there is no access to sea ports.

"Although problems are many, the potential of economic development does exist, and it would be very wrong to say that the region is doomed," Suzdaltsev says. "There still is skilled personnel, although some human resources have been wasted. True, development will require heavy investment, and amid the current political uncertainty it is unrealistic to expect money will suddenly start pouring in.

The financial system is in the most precarious position. A four-currency monetary system is to be introduced - the authorities have left the financial market at the mercy of uncontrolled processes, but there is no other way out.

There are two alternative concepts of the Donetsk and Luhansk republic's future development, the deputy director of the CIS Countries Institute, Vladimir Zharikhin, has told TASS. "One is that of a compromise between Russia and the European Union, letting both republics integrate with Ukraine, which as a matter of fact would turn into a federal state with a weaker central government. And there is Kiev's concept, which better suits the interests of the United States,reluctant to see federalization for political reasons. In fact, a federative Ukraine would be a neutral country looking both ways, towards the West and the East. The United States has obviously opted for phasing out the Donetsk and Lugansk republics from Ukraine's political and economic affairs and turning them into equivalents of Trans-Dniestria or Northern Cyprus."

In a situation like that, Zharikhin said, developing the economies in both republics will be no easy, although such a potential does exist. First of all, there is coal, and Ukraine needs it very much. "Latent supplies of Donetsk coal to Ukraine are already underway. It is not accidental that both the Donetsk and Luhansk republics have retained the hryvnia as part of their multi-currency systems." Also, they certainly count on support from Russia, but Kiev and the West will certainly be posing obstructions to this," he said.

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 #41
Kyiv Post
April 2, 2015
Editorial
Dangerous grounds

Parliament may soon enter dangerous territory if it decides to criminalize the public denial of military aggression that Ukraine is facing from Russia. Should the bill, co-authored by the buffoonish Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko, be approved, the offender will receive up to five years in prison. A repeat offender will face 10 year in prison for denying the fact. The authors argue that this law will prevent the nation from breaking up and specifically targets local officials in Ukraine's east who refuse to use the word "aggression" in describing Russia's actions.

This infringement on freedom of speech is meant to stifle public discussion and lay the groundwork for political persecution and suppression of dissent.

Indeed, several European Union countries, such as Germany, France, and the Czech Republic, as well as Israel, criminally punish public denials of crimes against humanity, such as the Holocaust and other atrocities committed by the Nazi and communist regimes. Israel, the first country to pass such legislation, did it only in 1986, more than 40 years after the Nuremberg trials and painstaking documentation of crimes against Jews, including millions of victims and survivors of the Holocaust.

This brings us back to Ukraine, which doesn't criminally punish those who deny the Holodomor, the Josef Stalin-ordered famine to starve millions of Ukrainians. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk acknowledged this week that the investigation into EuroMaidan Revolution mass shootings is complicated because key documents have been destroyed. And while the authorities claim to be collecting evidence for a future Hague tribunal against Russia's annexation of Crimea and instigation of the war in the Donbas, we are skeptical.

Instead of giving the country's law enforcement a complete makeover and strengthening its capacity to investigate, the bill to ban free speech makes Ukraine look like Russia itself. In Russia-annexed Crimea, for example, public denial that Crimea is part of Russia is punishable by up to five years in prison.

Restrictions on free speech must be limited and done for compelling reasons. Simply denying reality, as many Kremlin bootlickers love to do in this current war, is boneheaded and wrong, but it is not a crime.

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 #42
Kyiv Post
April 2, 2015
Lost in communication
Experts say there is a huge problem with communication between the media and Ukrainian state agencies
by Alyona Zhuk

If a journalist in Ukraine asks a government agency a question on behalf of readers, the following is the most common response: "Send us an official information request."

According to Ukraine's law on access to public information, anyone can send a letter to a publicly financed institution with a question, and get an answer. The same should work over the phone - that's the theory.

In reality, the law is a wall behind which officials hide to avoid answering questions in a timely manner and in full. Press services are the gatekeepers of this wall.

Victoria Syumar, head of parliament's committee on freedom of speech and informational policy, says that this style of communication is a relic of the Soviet past. "Officials are afraid to say something they are not supposed to, as the boss can punish them," she says.

The lawmaker and former media analyst says the silent types also think they're giving off the impression that they're a "convenient politician" without ambitions - something that might advance their careers in Ukraine's often murky world of public service.

But what these habits do for the public is to keep information in the dark, and many guessing. Moreover, when journalists receive a reply to their questions which is supposed to happen within the next five days, it's often formalistic.

"Many journalists complain that state agencies very often give just a formal reply, that they don't want to give information and to do it quickly," says Lyudmyla Pankratova, media lawyer from the Kyiv-based Regional Press Development Institute.

The Kyiv Post has had its fair share of delayed responses, misinformation and incomplete access to information in its dealings with the authorities in the past year. In one such case, when a staff writer asked the Border Service for details of a new project to build a wall along the Russian border, the government body took 10 days to reply, and the Cabinet took nearly a month. None of the two answered all the questions.

It gets even sillier when questions relate to data that changes on a daily basis, such as statistics on victims of the ongoing war. In one case, a Kyiv Post journalist was told she would receive a response from the General Prosecutor's office within five days. By that time, the numbers changed significantly.

In another case, multiple government agencies at different levels gave contradictory answers to the same question. In yet another case, Ukraine's defense ministry issued a statement, accusing the Kyiv Post of being a Kremlin agent after the newspaper reported a story based on senior - and named - sources at the same ministry.

Syumar says there is no way to make authorities more professional or responsive at this point. "It's not a matter of legal responsibility," she says, "it's a matter of political responsibility. If a top official, a minister or a head of some state enterprise doesn't explain to people what they're doing, he won't last long as a politician. But officials, who earn reputations as reformers, which is possible only by explaining and communicating, only those officials have a political future."

The free speech committee she heads in parliament is planning to develop recommendations for government agencies to appoint spokespeople who could address information needs in a real-time manner. The first person to get a true spokesperson who is free to talk, she says, should be Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. "However, the price of each word is very high in this case," she adds.

Ivetta Delikatna, an adviser at the newly-created ministry for information policy, says professional spokespeople are hard to come by, though.

"That's how it works in U.S. and Europe - there is a minister, who is an expert, and there is a spokesperson, who completely covers communication," Delikatna told the Kyiv Post. "But it's a long way to go. These spokespersons should be high-level professionals, and that requires an appropriate salary."

The Information Ministry was created last December. According to its minister, Yuriy Stets, the main goals of the agency is to develop a single program of informational security, to fight against Russia's propaganda and to make communication easier - inside the government and between state agencies and media.

"There is a huge problem with communication in Ukraine," says Delikatna. "The fact that the Information Ministry has been set up means the government recognizes the problem."

Delikatna says the group of experts will audit all the government's press services, analyze the situation and then build a "multi-level treatment program".

"It's a difficult task, so I won't promise fast results," she said. "We can get any only if we change the system."

But the public remains to be convinced that this agency actually needs to exist, with its attempts to emulate the Russian propaganda machine by hiring trolls to post on the Internet, for example. "The best it can do is self-destruct," said Natalya Ligacheva, head of Telekritika media watchdog.

That's exactly what Stets promised to do, but only in a year's time, after the ministry "has fulfilled its mission".

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 #43
Russia Insider
http://russia-insider.com
April 4, 2015
2,500 Ukrainians Picket US Embassy in Kiev (Video) - Story Suppressed
On April 1st US Embassy in Ukraine was picketed by 2,500 demonstrators under the slogan "We are not cattle!" - Event got barely any coverage in Ukraine and none in the west
[Video here http://russia-insider.com/en/2500-demonstrators-target-us-embassy-kiev-story-suppressed/5311?utm_source=Russia+Insider+Daily+Headlines&utm_campaign=0ff8025f65-Russia_Insider_Daily_Headlines11_21_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c626db089c-0ff8025f65-199996097&ct=t%28Russia_Insider_Daily_Headlines11_21_2014%29]

We initially missed the story ourselves since so few reported on it, but have been able to find two useful reports since:

Report by Life News (translated at Off Guardian):

About two and a half thousand Ukrainians surrounded the US embassy in Kiev on the first of April. People who disagree with the appointment of foreigners to the Ukrainian government, as well as the intervention of the Americans and Europeans in the public administration of the country, holding banners saying "We are not cattle!" And they made sounds imitating animals.

Besides the protesters braying and bleating, they were eating cabbage, which was distributed by the organizers of the protest. They also kept two-meter carrots with the symbols of the European Union. By the end of the demonstration of dissent Kiev residents pelted the US embassy with manure.

It is noteworthy that the video from the protest was removed from all the Ukrainian sites and users were blocked. Local journalists hardly covered the event.

Report by drcollins (user blog at Telegraph):

On April 1 US Embassy was picketed by more than two thousand Ukrainian people under slogan "We are not cattle!"

The phrases "We are not cattle!" on the posters were written in four languages: Russian, Ukrainian, English and Polish. Also people unrolled the big slogan with the quote of one famous Ukrainian writer Panas Mirny "Do oxen roar when the rack is full?"

For 2 hours, from 12 a.m. till 2 p.m. people were mooing and bleating in protest against the transformation of the Ukrainians into beasts by means of prices and rates increase, lowering salaries and standards of living, and banning freedom of speech and opinion. Mooing is the only thing people can do not to be arrested by the current government. But even despite these safety measures many people received physical threats from guarding US embassy right-wing radicals and USC officers.

The representative of the Embassy came to the picketing people and asked what they wanted. The answer was mooing and eloquent posters.

At the end of the picket a few activists began to throw the thing that beasts have enough - excrements at the plate of the Embassy. Several USC officers came up to them threatening by arresting and transferring to the nearest police buses.

The Ukrainian mass media headed by the Ministry of Propaganda of Ukraine ignored such an action and the information about this protest was blocked. Even bloggers who tried to place this information were instantly blocked (for example, Maxim Ravreba and Anatoly Sharij - he's ready to give an interview on such theme, Anatoly was shocked, 2 minutes after placing the material the YouTube account was blocked).

Complete blockade, both forced and information is obvious. It's obvious that American embassy in Kiev is guarded much better than other governmental buildings, because the US Embassy is the main institute of power in Ukraine.

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 #44
Sputnik
April 6, 2015
Ukrainian Analyst Proposes Murdering Russian Journalists in Sniper Attacks

Ukrainian journalist and political analyst Yuri Romanenko says it's time for Ukraine's Armed Forces to start a deliberate campaign of murdering Russian journalists in Donbass, for the purpose of attracting global media attention.

Recalling a recent meeting at Harvard University on his Facebook page, Romanenko noted that he recommended to his colleagues that Ukrainian army snipers suppress Russian coverage of the war in Donbass by deliberately targeting Russian journalists operating in the region.
[https://www.facebook.com/yuriy.romanenko/posts/906169656071433]

The political analyst noted that as the conversation turned to the powerful role played by information warfare in the present conflict, speakers began lamenting about how Ukraine has been falling out of the American media space recently. It was then that Romanenko decided to "inject some new life into the debate."

"I know how to resolve the problem of waning attention and to bring media attention to a new level. The Ukrainian army must selectively and carefully eliminate Russian journalists covering the situation in Donbass. We need to direct Ukrainian army snipers to shoot people wearing PRESS helmets, making them priority targets," Romanenko wrote, recalling his comments before the Harvard audience.

"Since the media represent a destructive weapon and allow Russia to operate not only in the war zone, but across Ukraine, taking out several dozen journalists in the conflict zone will reduce the quality of the picture presented in the Russian media and, therefore, reduce the effectiveness of their propaganda."

The political analyst explained that such an action would quickly bring Ukraine back into the center of the American media's attention, noting that while on the one hand this would serve as "bad PR" for Ukraine, "all the same, PR is PR, and we must do everything possible not to fall out of the US media's focus in the context of [its] presidential campaign."

The analyst noted that his Harvard hosts rejected his proposal outright, noting that the deliberate murder of journalists is a violation of international law, to which, in Romanenko's recollection, the Ukrainian delegation "happily grinned."

The analyst noted that when Russia repeatedly violated international law in relation to Ukraine, "you didn't seem too worried...so why should you be worried now? The intensification of the conflict, and bringing it to a new level, unable to be ignored by the US and Europe, serves as our magic wand."

Romanenko stated that following the meeting, "one man from the [Ukrainian] diaspora" told him "you are completely right; this is just the way to save Ukraine."

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 #46
Moscow Times
April 6, 2015
Lavrov Says Crimean Tatars Have More Rights Under Russian Rule
By Peter Spinella

Days after Russian authorities shut down the only television station run by Crimea's Tatars, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in comments carried by state media that the minority ethnic group enjoys more rights under Russian rule than they did when the region was part of Ukraine.

Lavrov said at a press conference Saturday that Crimean Tatars have rights guarantees concerning language, culture and land use that they lacked under Ukrainian rule, state news agency TASS reported.

Shortly after Russia's annexation of Crimea last year, President Vladimir Putin said at a press conference that plans were under way to rehabilitate Crimea's Tatars, who had been deported en masse during the height of Josef Stalin's purges.

"Crimean Tatars suffered some serious damage during the Stalinist reprisals and were deported from Crimea, which is their traditional place of residence, their home. We certainly need to do everything we can to rehabilitate and restore the legitimate rights and interests of the Crimean Tatar people at a time when Crimea is joining the Russian Federation," Putin said at the time.

Addressing the matter Saturday, Lavrov said: "A law has been enacted for the rehabilitation of all peoples living in Crimea. ... Such a law was not even under consideration while Crimea was still part of Ukraine."

He added that plans were under way for a "land amnesty." According to the report, deported Crimean Tatars faced residual issues having to do with their return to their native land from the places they were deported to, including never having obtained proper authorization to occupy Crimean land. Russia - unlike Ukraine - plans to resolve these issues, Lavrov said.

"Crimean Tatars are represented in every agency of government in the republic of Crimea. They have the right to speak, to teach their children and to use all services in their own language," Lavrov was quoted as saying.

Last week Russian authorities shut down the only Crimean Tatar television channel, ATR, inciting condemnation by Ukrainian and U.S. officials who accused Russia of trampling on the rights of the ethnic minority.

The station was closed on the purported basis that it had failed to properly register for a Russian broadcasting license. But the channel's director, Elzara Islyamova, was quoted in media reports as saying that the channel had attempted to register at least four times and was denied by Russia's media watchdog, Roskomnadzor.

Russia's human rights ombudsman in Crimea, Lyudmila Lubina, said in an interview with the Interfax news agency that overall rights in the region were below average for Russia.

She said that the number of people regularly visiting her agency for help was significantly higher than the figure across Russia, and added, "the influx of people who need our protection and assistance is not decreasing," she was quoted by Interfax as saying.

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 #47
Moscow Times
April 6, 2015
From Crimea to Kosovo, Seeking Recognition
By Yulia Zhuchkova
Yulia Zhuchkova is a graduate student at Tomsk State University.

The new geopolitical phenomenon of "unrecognized states" has appeared only in the last 40 years. This phenomenon did not exist 100 years ago when the world was divvied up between the colonial empires, nor did it exist after that, when most of those colonies declared their independence.

The situation changed in the mid-1970s, when a large part of the world was finally freed from its colonial shackles. In 1974 the Turkish army occupied northern Cyprus and, in 1983, proclaimed it the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. In 1975, Moroccan troops entered the territory of Western Sahara that had not yet fully established its independence. As a result, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic was proclaimed in 1976, with support from Algeria.

Recent history has also witnessed several examples of the breakup and even collapse of Eurasian states composed of diverse ethnic groups - from Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union to Somalia and Iraq. In some cases, the disintegrative process continues even today. There is a long list of unrecognized and partially recognized territories and countries that have appeared on the planet since 1989.

It includes the Republika Srpska and Kosovo on the territory of the former Yugoslavia; Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the Caucasus; Transdnestr and Gagauzia on the territory of Moldova; and the Islamic State (IS) on the territories of a number of Middle Eastern states.

Of course, the self-proclaimed people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, along with about a dozen other similar entities from West Africa to Southeast Asia also belong in this venerable company.

Why is it that, at one time, the fierce anti-colonial movement led to the appearance of states that rapidly assumed all of the features of formal sovereignty, whereas extremely complex conflicts arise now concerning far less fundamental instances of secession?

In my opinion, the reason is that from the 1950s to the 1970s, powerful states and their individual colonies were the parties to such conflicts - and often not even conflicts so much as processes of political disengagement, as was the case with the majority of Britain's overseas territories - whereas today, the emerging geopolitical squabbles involve a far greater number of participants.

By definition, the phenomenon of refusing formal recognition to a state involves more than just the transient conflict between that state or territory and the mother country. And while a number of recent large-scale secessions and breakups have proceeded smoothly - such as the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia - a conflict arises when more than one outside party becomes involved.

That outside party could be a country with direct ties to the secessionist entity. The classic example of this is Nagorno-Karabakh, which was created on the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan but which is populated by Armenians - and which therefore receives open support from Armenia. The outside player could be a neighboring state that has ethnic ties to the people of the unrecognized entity - as with Serbia and the Republika Srpska, as well as Russia and South Ossetia and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics.

The third party might also be a country pursuing its own geopolitical interests in the territories concerned, as with Russia and the self-proclaimed Transdnestr republic, Abkhazia, and, in some ways, the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics, and also the European Union and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

And finally, the outside parties can be global players that understand the threat that certain unrecognized states pose to regional security - as in the case of the United States and NATO against the IS - or the threat such entities pose to the modern world order - as in the case of the United States and the EU against the self-proclaimed Transdnestr republic and the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

As a result, a relatively local conflict has caused a sharp deterioration in relations between major geopolitical players. And that, in turn, has led to large-scale economic losses, heightened international tensions, failure of international initiatives and another round of increased military spending by many states.

The world community will undoubtedly have to find new solutions to these problems in the coming years, if only because the history of the last quarter-century shows that the previous approaches no longer work. The fate of self-proclaimed states has become a "bargaining chip" in relations between the major powers. In my opinion, there are two ways to overcome this practice.

On the one hand - though it seems a highly unlikely scenario - the international community could change the process by which new states gain entry into the United Nations. This is crucial because without such status, the UN cannot classify as aggression any attempts by the mother country to reassert control over secessionist entities.

Under the current arrangement, new states are admitted to the UN by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly, followed by a vote of the UN Security Council where nine of its 15 members must give approval - without a single one of the five permanent Security Council members using its veto.

However, considering that the United States, Russia and the EU have a vested interest in practically every one of the conflicts, it is highly unlikely that it will prove possible to simplify the process by, for example, eliminating the need for Security Council approval.

On the other hand - and this seems a more promising option - the world community could revive inactive UN institutions. This primarily applies to the United National Trusteeship Council that ceased operations in 1994. That body functioned from 1945 until 1993 in accordance with Chapter XIII of the UN Charter.

In this way, an unrecognized territory over which no country exercises internationally recognized sovereignty could acquire the status of a mandated territory. As such, it would be managed by special administrations or agencies under the auspices of the UN on the basis of respect for human rights and freedoms and fundamental UN declarations and conventions.

I believe such a solution has three advantages and could turn current complex problems into opportunities for improving the global order. First, the new status would allow those territories to uphold civil rights, issue special passports to their citizens, host the consuls of foreign countries, appeal for redress to international courts and establish normal commercial relations with third-party countries.

Second, such a measure would serve as the basis for building constructive relationships between the major political players - relationships that would replace the current paradigm of confrontation, double standards and mutual accusations. A new world order would crystallize out of the current global chaos.

Third and finally, the UN - that many have written off as obsolete but which served as the fundamental tool for international stability for half a century - could regain its status.

Perhaps these arguments do not conclusively prove that this prescription for healing the world's ills will work. But why not try at least a small dose of a new medication if all of the old ones no longer help the patient?

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 #48
Ukraine's former PM says West might be enmeshed in state coup in Kiev

MOSCOW, April 3. /TASS/. Ukraine's former Prime Minister, Nikolai Azarov, said on Friday he could not rule out immediate involvement of the West in the state coup in Ukraine.

He said it in an interview with the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche.

"On one occasion, the Americans asked us to let two of their airlifters into our territory without control," Azarov said. "The case in hand was the transportation diplomatic documents. Can you imagine two military transportation jets filled with correspondence or printouts of network messages? That's ridiculous!"

"The data our intelligence services managed to obtain said the cargo most likely consisted of specialized equipment and cash money because every revolution needs financing," he said.

According to Azarov, the then President, Viktor Yanukovich hoped the Americans would meet him halfway. "He didn't want to lose them but they cheated him."

"The Americans acted cunningly," he said. "They told Yanukovich he was legitimate (as President of Ukraine - TASS), that he was a guarantor of the Constitution and he should stay in office until the next election and the only thing they insisted on was the setting-up of a national unity government."

He believes however this was a trick for supplanting Yanukovich.

Azarov indicated nonetheless that Yanukovich hoped until the very last moment the conflict in Ukraine could be settled politically and diplomatically.

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#49
New Cold War.org
April 3, 2015
The Russian and Ukrainian languages in history

The following commentary was received by New Cold War.org from a correspondent in Ukraine.

When can we define the emergence of the Ukrainian language? For sure, our nationalists (as well Russian nationalists) try to trace the origins of language as far back in history as possible in order to support present-day political agendas. But when we speak about Russian and Ukrainian in the XVII century - it's like speaking about the concept of citizenship in the same period. In short, we automatically expand to the past modern categories and standards which did not exist at that time.

There was a language spoken in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine in the XVII century and this language has common features with modern Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian languages. We can call that old language Old Slavic, East Slavic, Old Russian, Old Ukrainian etc. But this is just a matter of modern claims to legacy serving a present political order.

This was written in a recent essay by the respected scholar Nikolai Petro: "First, though, we need a bit of essential history. By most accounts, the Ukrainian language developed more or less simultaneously alongside Russian and other Eastern Slavic languages, becoming distinct from the rest of them around the 14th century. After the union between Russia and Ukraine in the mid-17th century, Russian gradually became dominant in cities, while Ukrainian was more widely spoken in rural areas."

This is a typical exageration. In the 14th century, there were not even such words as 'Russian' or 'Ukrainian'. The language spoken in the XVII century in both Russia and Ukraine was not Russian or Ukrainian. A modern Ukrainian or Russian citizen can hardly read and understand that language since it differs from both of them (something in the way in which olde English differs from modern English).

Those who claim the existence of Ukrainian or Russian languages in the XV or XVII centuries should show us some printed texts of those eras some we may compare. There are actually many such texts which could be examined.

The 'father' of modern Russian language is sometimes considered the poet A. Pushkin (early XIX century), while the 'father' of modern Ukrainian is the poet T. Shevchenko of the mid-XIX century). Before the XIX century, the language used in both countries and seen in documents and papers differed from modern versions significantly.

The texts of Kyiv thinker and philosopher G.Skovoroda (late XVIII century) were written in what can be compared to modern 'surzhik'. The codes, agreements and papers of Ukrainian Cossacks, rural rebels and religious thinkers of the XVIII century are written in old versions of language, common to Russia and Ukraine at that time.

We may say about the not yet completed division between Russian and Ukrainian that they resembled Siamese twins attached to one another. Not yet completely separated. That's why the characteristics of both languages is their 'mutual intelligibility' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_intelligibility). This is evidenced most strongly by the popular dialect 'surzhik'.

When we speak about creole 'surzhik', the main problem with its formalization into an official language is its grammar and lexical rules. As a non-fixed language, it exists and is spoken in a number of versions, each one easily understood. But it is neglected by the literary intelligentsia of both countries. One and same phrase may be spoken in many variants (voluntarily changing and replacing words, pronuncation and even creating new words on the base of Russian or Ukrainian. The standards of 'surzhik' cannot, therefore, be fixed.

'Surzhik' is a real, popular language which is not just a product of a mixture but quite probably a language in its own right which has existed even before attempts to introduce standards, norms and rules of grammar to Ukrainian and Russian.

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 #50
Dances With Bears
http://johnhelmer.net
April 6, 2015
BLACK BOXES, BLACK HOLES IN THE MH17 INVESTIGATION - WHY ARE THE FRENCH SO SWIFT AND REVEALING, THE DUTCH SO SLOW AND UNREVEALING?
By John Helmer, Moscow
[Photos and links here http://johnhelmer.net/?p=13071]

On July 17, 2014, at 1320 local time, Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 crashed in eastern Ukraine. The investigating authority, the Dutch Safety Board (DSB), reported within five days that the two black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR - lead image, left) and the flight data recorder (FDR), had been recovered. On September 9, eight weeks after the crash, the DSB issued what it called a preliminary report.

On March 24, 2015, at 1041 local time, Germanwings flight 4U9525 crashed in southeastern France. The first black box, the CVR (lead image, right), was recovered within the first 12 hours, and the contents reported to the media by investigators of the Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la sécurité de l'aviation civile (BEA). The second black box, the FDR, was found on April 2. The BEA released a summary of what it contained one day later. According to French reporters, the time elapsing between the discovery of the CVR and public disclosure of its contents was less than 24 hours - "overnight we went from zero information to knowing everything", Paris-Match has reported [1].

Comparing the two crash investigations, the Dutch and the French, the disclosures have been very much slower in release for the MH17 case - and almost totally unrevealing. Is this evidence about what really happened to the aircraft - or is it evidence about the forces to which the investigators have succumbed?

The cockpit evidence in the Ukrainian crash, according to the DSB, reveals the aircraft was struck by "high-energy objects", which penetrated from outside the aircraft, and from below the cockpit floor. The impact caused the aircraft to breakup and fall out of the sky in about four seconds. Repeat - that's the four seconds between the 59th second of 13 hours 19 minutes Ukrainian time, when the MH17 crew made their last recorded radio contact with Air Traffic Control (ATC) at Dniepropetrovsk, and the 3rd second of 13 hours 20 minutes, when both the CVR and FDR recordings stopped. In between, at 13:20:00, the Ukrainian ATC operator at Dniepropetrovsk, Dnipro Control, was recorded as giving a route change clearance to MH17 but receiving no reply. The Dutch say they have come across no evidence, no sound from the cockpit, no Mayday or distress signal, no noise in those one to four seconds. The FDR is also reported by the DSB as recording all flight parameters moving normally and predictably until the recording suddenly stops. That's NOTHING.

In truth, can the destruction of the airframe and the deaths of all 298 souls on board have occurred in four seconds, without a recorded sound of any kind?

In the Germanwings case, the BEA has already concluded from the two black-box recordings that the co-pilot locked the pilot out of the cockpit, then set a descent course with accelerating speed until the crash after 8 minutes. The BEA has identified on the CVR the sounds of the breathing of the co-pilot at the cockpit controls. Repeat - the Dutch claim they have NOTHING to show for 4 seconds. The French say they have radar plots and ground to air communications from French Air Traffic Control, plus on-board data from the black boxes for 480 seconds. That's EVERYTHING.

The DSB report refers to "injuries to persons", but that is misleading. Passports and nationalities have been investigated, but the report makes no mention of autopsy evidence of cause of death gathered from the bodies of the crew and passengers. "Pathological investigation" is promised by the report, but not delivered. In the French case, the bodies of the victims were reportedly pulverized on impact, and only DNA strands have been identifiable.

The Netherlands Government released the 34-page report of the DSB for public access here [2]. In addition to the black box data, the DSB claims to have received radar plots from the Ukraine and Russia; it says it continues to investigate them. The DSB also reports reviewing "images publicly available and obtained" from the aviation authorities of Ukraine and Malaysia and the Australian Federal Police. The Dutch don't say what these were images of, nor how they were authenticated. More NOTHING.

The DSB is also coy about identifying the sources of "satellite imagery taken in the days after the occurrence". That means what it says. The DSB hasn't asked for nor received US, Russian, French, British or other satellite images of the "occurrence" just before or during the period of 13:19:59 to 13:20:03. NOTHING.

The DSB has identified "three other commercial airliners" within 30 kilometres of MH17 at 13:20:00; two were behind also flying eastwards, and one was in front flying west at 33,000, 36,000 and 40,000 feet, respectively. The cloud base, according to DSB, was at 3,000 to 3,500 feet, with the tops of the clouds at 10,000 fleet. So the sky was clear for all four aircraft. MH17 was at 33,000 feet, below the two nearest planes.

The DSB identifies the other aircraft as two Boeing-777s and one Airbus A330, and gives their flight levels, but doesn't identify their airline flights, and doesn't report what their pilots or passengers may have heard or seen. Media reports have identified one of the eastward flights as a Singapore Airlines flight; the westward flight was Indian Airlines. Separation was less than 16 kilometres, well within normal visibility for aircraft operating in clear sky, and especially for explosions and fireballs. NOTHING.

The Dutch report gives no date for the finding of the black boxes. They are recorded as having been handed first to a Malaysian official on July 21 by "representatives of the armed group controlling the area". The Malaysian official, accompanied by Dutch officials, then took the boxes to Kiev, and they were handed over to the Dutch Safety Board on July 22. The DSB report concludes that in the interval there was no manipulation or tampering with the boxes.

This isn't so certain with the Dutch document. According to DSB, it was required to file its report to the "appropriate states...within 30 days after the occurrence." That would have been August 16, a Saturday. Publication, however, was delayed.

The DSB records this delay, explaining it was caused by officials of other governments. "For the purpose of drafting the preliminary report of what is a complex investigation," the DSB acknowledged, "the date of publication of the preliminary report was extended by approximately three weeks." In that time seven governments, including the Dutch, had access to the draft document for "review". The DSB identifies the others as "Malaysia, Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and Australia". All reportedly "sent a reaction. The Dutch Safety Board assessed the provided suggestions and amended the report where appropriate".

So far, without explanation, the DSB provides no transcript of any part of the 30 minutes of tape recovered and downloaded from the CVR. Instead, the report claims: "no aural warnings or alerts of aircraft system malfunctions were heard on the cockpit recording, which ended at 13:20:03 hours. Crew communication gave no indication that there was anything abnormal with the flight".

Ukrainian ATC recordings were also analyzed, and from these the DSB report says the last recorded transmission from the cockpit of the aircraft was a 3-second response to ATC beginning at 13:19:56 and ending at 13:19:59. In short, the DSB is implying there is no evidence in the black boxes of what struck the aircraft, what the flight crew saw or heard, or how they responded when the aircraft was hit.
Aviation experts have claimed that the FDR readout from MH17 ought to show if the aircraft had a major structural failure, an engine failure, a fire, an internal explosion or was struck by cannon fire or missile. It might reveal the force and direction of any such impact. No expert has conjectured that the FDR would show NOTHING.

According to the DSB report, the FDR readings show no deviation of course from a constant heading, no deviation in speed or altitude. "Both engines were running at cruise power. All indications regarding the operation of the engines were normal. No aircraft system warnings or cautions were detected. The data stopped abruptly at 13.20:03 hrs."

Here is the Dutch version of the FDR readout - note the undeviating flat line between 13:19:50 and 13:20:03.

The black box evidence for MH17, reported publicly after two months, is apparently silence - at least as several governments interpret the data as "appropriate".

The Russian Government is represented [3] for communication with the DSB and in the international review of its report by a group of officials headed by Oleg Storchevoy, Deputy Head of the Federal Air Transport Agency (RosAviation). The group also includes Valery Luchinin, Adviser on the control of safety inspection; Andrei Krylov, Deputy Head for inspection and quality control of the Air Navigation South Branch of the State Corporation for Air Traffic Management; and Anicetas Yazokas, Head of the State Centre for Safety in Air Transport.

On July 27 Storchevoy was reported [4] in the Russian press as saying: "There was an official request from the Dutch side to include Russian experts into the commission. The commission has just been formed... we are ready to participate in any actions deemed necessary by the commission."

StorchevoyOn September 9, immediately after the DSB released its report in the Netherlands, Storchevoy (right) gave a press conference [5] in Moscow. "We consider this publication as a preliminary report," he said, "the first step in a long and painstaking investigation into the crash... The investigation should further study the data from the radars and post mortems of the victims. All these steps are widely regarded as a must in civil aviation and no preliminary conclusions are usually made before completing all of them. Regrettably, significant time has been wasted, and some of the data will be unavailable - I now refer to the remains of the victim's bodies and the plane's debris which are not secured enough and located in the zone of an armed conflict. Nevertheless, this work must be done to ensure a speedy and unbiased investigation into the cause of the crash."

On November 21 Storchevoy told [6] the state news agency Sputnik: "We have consistently stressed our full readiness to cooperate with the commission on any issues that emerge. However, our cooperation appears to be one-sided at the moment: they request our data, we provide it, but we get no information in return. We have not been invited to participate in joint work and, in fact, we have learned all the news from open sources."

Storchevoy was asked this week how the text of the report which the DSB published in September differed from the draft which the DSB claims to have sent RosAviation in August. He is not answering.

According to the Netherlands Government a full DSB report will be issued in "spring 2015 [7]".

In the investigation so far of the Germanwings crash, French government officials and BEA have not sought the permission of the Spanish or German governments before making their disclosures of the black-box data.

URLs in this post:

[1] reported: http://www.parismatch.com/Actu/International/Reporter-for-Paris-Match-explains-the-investigation-737370
[2] here: http://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/uploads/phase-docs/701/b3923acad0ceprem-rapport-mh-17-en-interactief.pdf
[3] represented: http://bloknot.ru/v-mire/rossiya-sformirovala-gruppu-e-kspertov-dlya-rassledovaniya-boinga-777-mh17-99370.html
[4] reported: http://rt.com/news/175976-ukraine-mh17-malaysia-fighting/
[5] press conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6a0e4o-kfw
[6] told: http://sputniknews.com/russia/20141121/1015003887.html#ixzz3WW0kiuIj
[7] spring 2015: http://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/en/onderzoek/2049/investigation-crash-mh17-17-july-2014

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 #51
http://gordonhahn.com
April 3, 2015
Rusology's Georgian War Fail and its Implications for Ukraine Today
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.

Seven years ago "Russia invaded" Georgia. Left out of the picture was that an American-backed Georgian regime intensely antagonistic to Moscow bombed the capitol of South Ossetiya killing tens of civilians and 19 Russia peacekeepers the night before. Georgian President Mikheil Saakasvili unleashed an aggressive propaganda campaign consisting of lies and wild exaggerations. A year later an EU commission's investigation into the war revealed that the one-sided, pro-Georgian interpretation of the war's origins and course adopted in Washington and Brussels was largely false. Wikileaks' revelations disclosed that the US embassy in Tbilisi passed on Saakashvili's fabrications to Washington as fact. A few years later Saakashvili was run out oh his country where he is wanted for human rights violations to this day.

Today we hear much of "Putin's war" in Ukraine - in negation of its real, complex origins - and of Russia's "powerful propaganda machine." In fact, the West and Kiev are equally responsible for the war, and all sides have very active active propaganda or strategic communications efforts. As I have been writing for well over a decade Putin's Russia is an authoritarian regime, but it is far from the worst of such regimes. Indeed, the U.S. and the West have far more authoritarian allies. The difference is that the U.S. and the West expanded world history's most powerful military alliance only to Russia's borders and have encouraged and supported color revolutions almost exclusively among Russia's neighbors and allies.

Just as seven years ago, the Western narrative regarding Ukraine is slowly being eroded. It is now apparent that the "Yanukovich's snipers" were in fact the Maidan revolution's crucial, neo-fascist element. Other 'stratcomm' versions of events have been proven dubious here (http://gordonhahn.com/2015/03/21/violence-coercion-and-escalation-in-the-ukrainian-crisis-parts-1-3-november-25-and-30-2013-and-january-21-22-2014/).

The article below on the Georgian war was fully vindicated by the much later EU commission and other revelations, while the claims of those who comprise the Washington consensus and are making claims about Ukraine were completely discredited by the same commission and subsequent revelations. Thus, the article below is a harbinger of the inevitable unmasking of the pro-Ukrainian propaganda war and its grossly one-sided interpretation of events. "Georgia's Propaganda War", which exposed Georgia's lies regarding the 2008 war, was first published on October 17, 2008 at Russia - Other Points of View (http://www.russiaotherpointsofview.com/gordon-hahns-underground-.html).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Georgia's Propaganda War
by Gordon M. Hahn
[first published in October 2008]

The five-day Georgian-Russian saw Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and other Georgian officials waging an aggressive propaganda campaign and, in many ways, a disinformation war in the Western mass media. This media offensive was the result either of a carefully planned disinformation war or a rush by Western governments, mainstream media, and think tanks to get the Georgians' side of the story and their side only. Either way, the Georgians were able to wage an effective and constant barrage of propaganda and disinformation against the Russians.

In some 40 appearances in the Western media and at Western think tanks, President Saakasahvili and his ministers made numerous false statements in their effort to convince the West that it was obliged to defend Tbilisi from Russia's incursion. The following is a review of Georgia's official version of events and a comparison of their claims with the facts as we know them as of late August and early September 2008.

THE RUSSIAN PLANNED FOR WAR AND WHO ATTACKED FIRST

Georgian officials were careful in all cases to avoid mention of the fact that it began escalated tit-for-tat sniper and artillery exchanges to the level of all-out war by undertaking an offensive to seize South Ossetia's capitol of Tskhinval. After seizing South Ossetia the Georgian army's blitzkrieg likely would have moved on to Abkhazia. President Saakashvili and other Georgian officials repeatedly accused Russia of undertaking a "well-planned invasion" of Georgia designed to size the country and remove him from power. Saakashvili told CNN on 8 August: "Russian troops have been stationed near the border for a few, three or four months. They were claiming that they were staging exercises there, and as soon as a suitable pretext was found yesterday they moved in."

[CNN interview with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, CNN News, 8 Aug, 2008, http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/08/08/intv.saakashvili.cnn?iref=videosearch.

In other words, Russian forces were ready to pounce once Ossetian forces prompted by Moscow began firing on Georgian villages.

Saakashvili further claims that on August 7 Georgian settlements were fired upon by Russian-backed Ossetian forces first after he declared a ceasefire and that as Georgian forces moved in to move on Tskhinvali in response to Ossetian attacks, Russian forces were already entering Georgia through the Roki tunnel. Saakashvili laid out this argument in his August 14 Washington Post article "Russia's War Is the West's Challenge" in these words:

Russia, using its separatist proxies, attacked several peaceful, Georgian-controlled villages in South Ossetia, killing innocent civilians and damaging infrastructure.

On Aug. 6, just hours after a senior Georgian official traveled to South Ossetia to attempt negotiations, a massive assault was launched on Georgian settlements. Even as we came under attack, I declared a unilateral cease-fire in hopes of avoiding escalation and announced our willingness to talk to the separatists in any format.

But the separatists and their Russian masters were deaf to our calls for peace. Our government then learned that columns of Russian tanks and troops had crossed Georgia's sovereign borders. The thousands of troops, tanks and artillery amassed on our border are evidence of how long Russia had been planning this aggression.

[Mikheil Saakashvili, "Russia's War Is The West's Challenge," Washington Post, August 14, 2008.]

What is perhaps most striking about this article is that the Georgian president has the very date for these events wrong - they occurred on August 7, not August 6. Indeed, Saakashvili himself (like all other reports) indicated this in his August 7 televised address on the crisis. [See "Sakashvili's Televised Address on S. Ossetia," Civil Georgia, 7 August 2008, 21:45, www.civil.ge.] Saakashvili's article has the earmarks of one written in haste by someone with a loose attitude toward the facts. Aside from this, Saakashvili's version of events is at odds with every account of the events leading up to the war.

First, Saakashvili omits from his account that Georgian forces began to occupy the hills surrounding Tskhainvali days earlier and were trying to do so for weeks since June. [See Kavkaz-uzel.ru, for example, http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/newstext/news/id/1223412.html, http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/newstext/news/id/1223638.html. Saakashvili was moving his troops and artillery into position to invade Tskhinvali throughout the first week of August. Georgian forces renewed lower-intensity military operations around Tskhinvali on August 1, including moving into position for the offensive. Georgian snipers were firing at Ossetian villages. [See the report on the liberal-oriented Russian human rights website Kavak uzel "V Yuzhnoi Osetii zayavlyayut, chto Gruzia pazmestila artilleriyu bliz zony konflikta," Kavkaz uzel, 4 August 2008, www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/newstext.newsid/1226489.html.] This was one of the main reasons for the escalating in tit-for-tat machine-gun, sniper, and mortar fire that preceeded the outbreak of general hostilities in the weeks prior to August 7.

Second, the location of Russia's 58th Army on the eve of the war could have represented contingency planning based on good intelligence rather than on intent to invade. The fact is that Russia's 58th army, from which the troops and equipment for the incursion came, is based in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia, just across the border from South Ossetia. It is the nucleus of Russia's military presence in its jhadi-plagued North Caucasus. In late July Russia's North Caucasus Military District carried out military exercises involving the core of Russia's military presence in the North Caucasus, the noted 58th Army. Some units could easily have been put on alert and moved near the border as the tit-for-tat fighting escalated between Georgians and Ossetians. Surely any competent military would have had contingency plans in the event that Saakashvili invaded one or both of the breakaway republics; a danger which remained real as long as he refused to sign an agreement rejecting to solve the frozen conflict by force of arms as proposed by Russia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Third, Georgia's official version of the events, as stated in his Washington Post article and elsewhere, is gravely at odds with what has been reported in virtually every non-Georgian source on the war as well as with Georgian officials' statements on specifics regarding mobilization of reinforcemnts. In an August 8 CNN interview Saakashvili specified the time of the Russian invasion: "At 24am last night Russian APCs started to cross into Georgian territory, and there we had to act."  CNN interview with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, CNN News, 8 August 2008, http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/08/08/intv.saakashvili.cnn?iref=videosearch.

However, five days later in a conference call with journalists he moved the time of the Russian invasion up in another attempt to claim the Russians moved first: "We clerarly responded to the Russians...The point here is that around 11 o'clock Russian tanks started to move into Georgian territory, 150 at first. And that was a clear-cut invasion." ["Countdown in the Caucasus: Seven days that brought Russia and Georgia to war," Financial Times, August 27m 2008.] Georgia's deputy defense minister Batu Kutelia also said Russia began to move heavy armour through the Roki tunnel from North Ossetia before Georgian forces opened up its artillery barrage and attacked South Ossetia around midnight August 7-8, but gave no evidence to back this up. In fact, he also said that Georgian war planners did not believe Russia would respond to Tbilisi's offensive in South Ossetia, leaving readers to wonder how he could claim both that Russians had responded to Georgian operations and that they intiated the war by crossing Roki first. [Jan Cienski, "Tbilisi admits it miscalculated Russian reaction," Financial Times, August 22, 2008.]

There is no mention of Georgia's mobilization for war - a mobilization that began hours and even days before Saakashvili's declaration of a unilateral ceasefire at 7:10pm local time on August 7 - either in Saakashvili's or most other Georgian officials' version of events. The OSCE monitoring mission reported that Georgia moved 3,000 special forces into the hills and villages surrounding Tskhinvali on August 6 in complete violation of the ceasefire agreement before flagrantly violating it by unleashing GRAD missiles on August 7. Georgian Defense Minister Davit Kezerashvili has revealed that already hours before the August 7 ceasefire announcement an additional 800 Georgian forces of Georgia's 4th Battalion began to move out from their base in Tbilisi. Other units equipped with Grad rocket launchers moved out from the base near Gori towards the conflict zone. Russia forces massed on the Russian side of the North Ossetian-South Ossetian border, tipped off about the Georgians' preparations by intelligence surveillance. [Peter Finn "A Two-Sided Descent into Full-Scale War," The Washington Post, August 17, 2008, p. A1.]

Moreover, once these reinforcements arrived, Tbilisi informed commander of the Russian peacekeepers, General Marat Kulakhmetova, that the ceasefire has been cancelled. At 11:05pm, about the time Saakashvili claims Russian tanks were moving into Georgia, Mamuka Kurashvili, chief of peacekeeping operations at the Georgian defence ministry, announced in a nationwide television broadcast an end to the ceasefire and the beginning of a Georgian military operation. He did not mention any Russian invasion in his speech. Rather, he claimed the offensive was targeting the South Ossetian separatists who "continued the shelling of Georgian villages." In an indication that Saakashvili may not have had complete control over Georgia's armed forces, Kurashvili asserted that "Georgian power-wielding bodies decided to restore constitutional order throughout the whole region." ["Countdown in the Caucasus," Financial Times, August 27, 2008 citing BBC Monitoring.] At 11:30pm, Russian peacekeeping forces and all other sources corroborate that Georgian forces initiated a massive artillery barrage on a sleepy residential Tskhinval. ["Countdown in the Caucasus," Financial Times, August 27, 2008.]

In the weeks before the war, Saakashvili increased the contingent of Georgian forces near Georgia's other breakaway republic, Abkhazia in violation of the ceasefire agreements. Foreign Minister Abkhazia Sergei Shamba states that on eve of conflict Georgia had 3,000 troops in Abkhazia's Kodori Gorge. [Sergei Markedonov, "Abkhazia 16 let spustya," Politcom.ru, 14 August 2008, http://www.politcom.ru/print.php?id=6690. This explains the Russian force that entered Abkhazia on August 8 and suggests that Saakashvili was not simply the victim of Ossetian-Russian provocations but appears to have been gearing up for a gambit to seize back both breakaway republics, hoping U.S. support would cover him.

Thus, as Saakashvili's troops around Tskhinvali were loading ammunition into their guns, mortars and cannons in early evening of August 7, Saakashvili told the world he was implementing a unilateral ceasefire. [See "Sakashvili's Televised Address on S. Ossetia," Civil Georgia, 7 August 2008, 21:45, http://www.civil.ge. Hours later, the Georgian artillery began to pound Tskhinvali. The Georgian side had significantly escalated the tit-for-tat attacks by initiating a major military offensive against South Ossetia, prompting the Russians' readied response. Remember that an attack on Ossetians in South Ossetia would inevitably have provoked a mass mobilization of volunteers among Ossetians in Russia's republic of North Ossetia without Moscow's intervention.

Georgia's fourteen-hour barrage destroyed large parts of the city and included attacks on the hospital and ambulances. [See Larisa Sotieva, "Eyewitnesses: Carnage in Tskhinvali," Caucasus Reporting Service, Institute of War and Peace Reporting, 12 August 2008, http://www.iwpr.net and Sara Rainsford, "S. Ossetia's Ruins Seethe with Anger," BBC News, 13 August 2008.] Human Rights Watch concluded after a visit to Tskhinvali that the evidence suggested that the bulk of the damage to the city was caused by Georgian forces. [SOURCES] Thus, Saakashvili inflicted many, perhaps hundreds of casualties, including killing 15 and wounding tens of Russian peacekeepers, even before Russian crossed the Roki Tunnel.

Perhaps more importantly, Georgian military officials have in advertently revealed that Tbilisi had brought heavy artillery into the conflict zone very early on. If civilian and Russian peacekeeping force reports that heavy artillery was bombing Tskhinvali from approximately midnight on August 7-8, then perhaps the comments of Georgian Artillery Brigade Commander Maj-Gen Devi Chankotadze will impress. He told a Georgian newspaper: "Georgian artillery made an impact during the August 2008 conflict in Tskhinvali and delivered a heavy blow on the enemy. We destroyed several Russian columns on their way to Tskhinvali. The Russians are concealing the fact that they suffered heavy losses." Col Arsen Tsukhishvili, chief of staff of the Artillery Brigade, added. "We had four observation points in strategically important areas near Tskhinvali and Java districts." The Georgian reporter added: "At least 300 gun barrels of Georgian artillery were firing at the enemy simultaneously! These included the 203-mm Pion systems, the 160-mm Israeli-made GRADLAR multiple rocket launchers, the 152-mm Akatsiya, Giatsint and Dana self-propelled guns, the 122-mm Grad and RM-70 multiple rocket launchers, as well as the D-30 and Msta howitzers of the infantry brigades." ["Georgian artillery inflicted 'heavy losses' on Russians," BBC Monitoring, August 25, 2008 translating Georgian weekly Kviris Palitra, August 25, 2008.]

It takes many days if not weeks to bring in the kind of heavy artillery the commander is talking about through the mountainous terrain around South Ossetia from Georgian army bases in Tbilisi, Senaki or Gori. If they were not on their bases, then they were located just outside the conflict zone ready to be brought in as hostilities became imminent. In that case, the Georgians were doing no less than what the Russians are being accused of doing in North Ossetia. If the artillery was already in the zone, they Georgian forces were in violation of the previous ceasefire agreement and were exceeding Russian efforts on South ossetian territory to 'provoke war.'

As Russian and Ossetian forces engaged the Georgian army on August 8, Saakashvili claimed: "The Georgian government's forces, according to information as of 21:00, completely control the entire territory of South Ossetia except the highland settlements of Dzhava." ["Saakashvili: voiska Gruzii kontroliruet vsyu territoriyu Yuzhnoi Ossetii," KavkazMemo.ru, 8 August 2008, www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/printnews/news/id/1226844.html.] In fact, Georgian troops never even controlled all of Tskhinvali and began withdrawing from there at 8:30pm and held a small slice of the city in the south as Russian troops began to enter it. [Timeline for the Georgian Foreign Ministry, accessed August 28, 2008, www.mfa.gov.ge/index.php?lang_id=ENG&sec_id=461&info_id=7484p.] The Russian entry into Tskhinvali came over 20 hours after the beginning of 'pre-planned invasion' during the initial stages of which Russian president was in Samara, not Moscow, premier Putin was in China, and the head of the Russian Security Council and the commander of the 58th army were on vacation.

 CONTACTS WITH RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES

In his August 14 Washington Post article, Saakashvilit stated: "Our repeated attempts to contact senior Russian leaders were rebuffed. Russia's foreign ministry even denied receiving our notice of cease-fire hours after it was officially - and very publicly - delivered. This was just one of many cynical ploys to deceive the world and justify further attacks." [Saakashvili, "Russia's War Is The West's Challenge"] The Georgian president was reiterating a claim he made in his televised address to the Georgian people on August 7, when he Saakashvili stated that the Georgian authorities had not been in touch with Vladimir Putin or other Russian authorities "for days." [CNN interview with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, CNN News, 8 August 2008, www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/08/08/intv.saakashvili.cnn?iref=videosearch.]

However, on the next day in his television address to the Georgian people Saakashvili said: "We have been in constant contact with the leadership of the local Russian peacekeeping forces. Several hours ago, they told us that they have completely lost control over the actions of the separatists.... We are in constant contact with the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the ministry tells us Russia is trying to stop the separatists from engaging in armed action, but without any success." ["Sakashvili's Televised Address on S. Ossetia," Civil Georgia, 7 August 2008, 21:45, www.civil.ge.]

HOW MANY RUSSIAN TANKS AND ARMORED VEHICLES?

Concomitant to the Georgian claim that Russia planned an invasion and then provoked Georgia into attacking so it could 'respond' was the claim that the initial Russian invasion involved 1,200 tanks or 1,200 tanks and armored personnel carriers combined. Saakashvili and other Georgian officials made this claims, respectively. However, during a conference call with journalists on August 11, Saakashvili said that Georgian towns were "extensively being bombed" but that only 500 Russian tanks were on Georgian territory. [Henry Meyer and Lucian Kim, "Russia Bombs Georgia as EU Mounts Peace Mission to Moscow," Bloomberg, August 11, 2008.] Saakashvili again revised his figures upwards, this time radically so, in a speech at a August 24 meeting with some Georgian parliamentarians at the State Chancellery broadcast live on Georgian television. He claimed that the Russian military operation "planned for many months" brought "80,000 servicemen and mercenaries" and "about 3,000 armored vehicles" into Georgia. ["President says 80,000 Russian soldiers, 3,000 armored vehicles invaded Georgia," BBC Monitoring, August 24, 2008 citing Channel 1, Tbilisi, August 24, 2008, 1600 GMT.] Such a deployment of equipment would mean that Russia's entire 58th Army was deployed from its jihad-plagued North Caucasus to South Ossetia.

On August 18, 2008 the Heritage Foundation convened a conference 'The Russia-Georgian War: A Challenge to the U.S. and the World' chaired by the foundation's Eurasia specialist Ariel Cohen, which served as another forum for the Georgians to spin their web of disinformation. The conference speakers included the Georgian Ambassador to the US Vasil Sikharulidze and, by video phone, the Georgian Minister for Reintegration of Abkhazia and South Ossetia Temuri Yakobashvili but no one from the Russian government or the embassy down the street. All of the conference speakers, with the exception of Johns Hopkins University Professor Frederick Starr, focused exclusively on presenting or supporting the Georgian side of the story ((See the transcript of a Heritage Foundation Forum on the Russian-Georgian War "A Challenge for the U.S. and the World," Heritage Foundation, Washington DC, August 18, 2008, Federal News Service, August 18, 2008). Ambassador Sikhuralidze told the conference that "1,200 tanks and 15,000 soldiers" entered Georgia "within 12 hours" bringing the number of Russian troops in all of Georgia to 25,000 as of August 18. His colleague Minister for Reintegration Yakobashvili stated there were 1,200 tanks and armored personnel carriers when asked how many troops and how much equipment entered Georgia in the first 48 hours of the Russian incursion. [Transcript of a Heritage Foundation Forum on the Russian-Georgian War "A Challenge for the U.S. and the World," Heritage Foundation, Washington DC, August 18, 2008, Federal News Service, August 18, 2008.] Three weeks after the war Yakobashvili also escalated his figures to "2,000 tanks." [Nikolaus von Twickel, "Theories Swirl About War's Beginning," The Moscow Times, August 28, 2008.]

In fact, the Russian force appears to have been much smaller. The respected Janes' Defence Weekly reported that in fact the "invasion force consisted of 15,000 and 150 tanks and heavy self-propelled artillery pieces." [Giragosian, "Georgian planning flaws led to campaign failure."] No independent source has confirmed the figures for the number of Russian forces on Georgian territory claimed by Georgian officials.

RUSSIAN ATROCITIES

Georgian pronouncements on the conduct of Russian forces in Georgia grossly exaggerated and appeared to conjure fabricated lies about their conduct on Georgian territory in an attempt to tag them with war crimes and gain the world's sympathy. In his August 18 Washington Post article, Saakashvili characterized Russian forces as a "brutal invading army, whose violence was ripping Georgia apart." Specifically, he charged them with committing wanton destruction and war atrocities against the civilian population: Oddly, he adds: "(I)n response to which his government "decided to withdraw from South Ossetia, declare a cease-fire and seek negotiations. Yet Moscow ignored our appeal for peace." He also wrote in the same article: "Within 24 hours of Russia agreeing to a cease-fire, its forces were rampaging through Gori; blocking the port of Poti; sinking Georgian vessels; and - worst of all - brutally purging Georgian villages in South Ossetia, raping women and executing men." [Saakashvili, "Russia's War Is The West's Challenge"] On the same day as well, Saakashvili stated in a CNN interview that Russian planes were "specifically targeting the civilian population, and we have scores of wounded and dead among the civilian population all around the country, not so much in the conflict area." [CNN interview with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, CNN News, 8 August 2008, www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/08/08/intv.saakashvili.cnn?iref=videosearch.] Four days later, at an August 12 press conference, Saakashvili asserted that despite a ceasefire, the Russians continued to attack "purely civilian targets." ["'Georgian Will Never Surrender'," CNN News, 12 August 2008, http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/08/12/sot.georgia.saakashvili.surrender.itn?iref=videosearch. Also, in his August 13 press conference, Saakashvili stated:

"Russian tanks are attacking the town of Gori and rampaging through the town. There is marauding. There is destruction of buildings. There is marauding to the level that even toilet seats are taken from the buildings...computers, furniture. The worst kind of marauding I ever could imagine. There was a rampage through Georgian-controlled villages of South Ossetia and through upper Abkhazia - Kodori, and scores of people, according to the reports which we cannot totally confirm, were killed as well as the camps were set (up), women and men were separated from each other. Internment camps were set up, and we are getting reports of large-scale violation of human rights of the worst case (kind). ... The town of Tskhinvali was turned into Grozny II by Russian carpet bombardment... I have been hearing accusations that this was Georgian bombardment, and this is not true. The leveling of the town of Tskhinvali was done by Russian air force.... What we are seeing in the area is classical Balkan-type and World war II-type ethnic cleasning and purification campaigns. ...(T)he worst kind of atrocities are being committed in my country against my people of all ethnic groups." ["Tensions Still High in Georgia," CNN News, 13 August 2008, www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/08/13/sot.georgia.presser.saakashvili.ap?iref=videosearch.]

Saakashvili's ministers, like their leader, repeatedly asserted that Russians were routinely destroying residences, infrastructure, and ethnic Georgian civilians. Not unlike the Russians' disinformation regarding Georgia's 'genocide' of Ossetians, President Saakashvili and other top Geiorgian officials accused Russian forces of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Minister Yakobashvili told the Heritage Foundation that Russian forces had engaged in "ethnic cleansing" and inflicted "enormous atrocities, unbelievable suffering" on the Georgian population. In the following exchange, he went further by implying that no civilians had been killed by Georgian forces:

MR. COHEN: Can I ask you a question about what happened in Ossetia? We are exposed here to the Russian position that the Georgian operation in South Ossetia on the 8th of August resulted in, quote, unquote, "genocide of the Ossetians" and "2,000 victims of the Georgian military operation." Human Rights Watch, on the other hand, is saying that 45 South Ossetians, presumably civilians, died in that operation. What are the Georgian government figures on that?

MIN. YAKOBASHVILI: Okay, let me clarify a couple of things. First of all, Human Rights Watch is talking about 45, but not civilian, but militants, because they were wearing the military uniform. [Transcript of a Heritage Foundation Forum on the Russian-Georgian War "A Challenge for the U.S. and the World," Heritage Foundation, Washington DC, August 18, 2008, Federal News Service, August 18, 2008.]

As of two weeks after hostilities ended no campaign of ethnic cleansing or atrocities and no internment camps have been found. There have been no reports of Russians "raping women and executing men," as Saakashvili claimed. There were later reports of destruction and perhaps a few murders committed by Chechen battalions (irresponsibly sent by Moscow to fight on its behalf) and Ossetian militiamen. The alleged large scale killing, raping and internment camps have not been mentioned again by Saakashvili or any other Georgian official since the new ceasefire was established and Russia withdrew its troops from Georgia proper (excluding arounf the port of Poti). In terms of intentional bombing of civilian populations and 'collateral damage,' Human Rights Watch has concluded that evidence suggests most of the damage to residential Tskhinvali came from Georgian bombardment. HRW has reported one occasion in which Russian air forces appear to have used of cluster bombs, banned by international convention. However, the Georgian side's official civilian death toll among Georgians as of August 25 was 69 as of August 25 with several hundred civilians wounded. ["Senior MP: 215 Killed in Conflict," Civil.ge, 19 August 2008, 23:05 www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=19215&search=civilians%20killed.] This hardly amounts to the massive Russian atrocities being claimed by Tbilisi. Georgian exaggeration and disinformation regarding the conduct of Russian troops and claims of massive and unprecedented atrocities led the Western mainstream media's coverage. Thus in the first hours of the war on August 8, Sky News was reporting that invading Russian troops were "killing thousands." The final death toll was approximately 400 plus on each side.

RUSSIAN DESTRUCTION OF GEORGIA'S CIVILIAN INFRASTRUCTURE

Saakashvili and his ministers repeatedly claimed that Russian forces were systematically destroying Georgia's civilian infrastructure. At the Heritage Foundation Ambassador  Sikhuralidze stated Russia troops were "invading new towns, pillaging our villages and burning our national parks." Minister Yakobashvili said: "They (the Russians) are, you know, throwing, firing bombs into Georgian forests and enflaming there and then sending helicopters to, you know, aggravate the flame and to use the helicopters as a front to inflict more damage.... (T)hey are building - blowing up bridges that connect Georgia - two parts of Georgia, and they have (blocked the line that ?) also connects Armenia to the rest of the world. So by blowing up these bridges and blockading the seaport at Poti, they have put Armenia in complete blockade, in complete blockade....(T)hey are going to the villages, looting villages, you know, and abusing people who are not complying with their demands, you know, taking furniture from their houses, lots of barbarian behavior....(P)ipelines were bombarded....by ballistic missiles....long-range, you know, 200-kilometer ballistic missiles. So Russia used these ballistic missiles to bomb international - (inaudible). And only by force of that, they were not able to hit this pipeline. But they definitely were targeting it....By blowing up the railroad bridge, they also disrupted the oil system from Azerbaijan. Lots of oil was going from Azerbaijan by the railroad." [Transcript of a Heritage Foundation Forum on the Russian-Georgian War.]

Reporters on the scene have reported a very different story regarding territories other than those attacked by the Georgians themselves. Borzou Daraghi wrote in the August 19 Los Angeles Times after visiting western Georgia on a tour organized by the Georgian government: "In west Georgia, few signs of damage by Russia" shows, the Russians in fact "used force minimally" and "avoided any inadvertent high-profile attacks on civilian targets." "Early in the conflict, Georgian officials in Tbilisi warned of an impending disaster as Russian tanks from Abkhazia massed at Zugdidi's edge. But residents said there had been little or no damage to their town." [Borzou Daraghi, "In west Georgia, few signs of damage by Russia," Los Angeles Times, August19, 2008.] Human rights organizations have reported no abuses by Russian troops, and some reports indicate rather exemplary behavior on the part of Russian soldiers. [See Saba Tsitsikhashvili, "The Ramifications of the Ten-Day Blockade of Georgia," HumanRights.ge, 27 August 2008, http://www.humanrights.ge/index.php?a=article&id=3057&lang=en.

Regarding the charge that the Russian military was set on burning Georegia's forests, a Georgian newspaper noted that the Russian military set fire to forests during the occupation of Kartli because it was searching for Georgian artillery weapons that Georgian artillerymen hid there during the Georgian army's retreat; a fact left out Minister Yakobashvili's comments. ["Georgian artillery inflicted 'heavy losses' on Russians," BBC Monitoring, August 25, 2008 translating Georgian weekly Kviris Palitra, August 25, 2008.]

Russia did carry out a concerted bombing campaign to destroy Georgia's military infrastructure in order to prevent Georgian forces from undertaking a counteroffensive and the resupply of the Georgian army by outside forces that might have chosen to support Tbilisi if the war dragged on.Even Russia's air attacks on the port of Poti destroyed the military side of the port but left the civilian side intact. [Borzou Daraghi, "In west Georgia, few signs of damage by Russia," Los Angeles Times, August19, 2008.]  Moreover, as the respected military studies journal Janes' Defence Weekly reported on August 15, it was the Georgian army that targeted the residential capitol of South Ossetia with an indiscriminate, all night artillery barrage on 7-8 August with "notoriously imprecise" truck-borne GRAD missiles. [Richard Giragosian, "Georgian planning flaws led to campaign failure," Janes' Defence Weekly, August 15, 2008 in Johnson's Russia List, #152, August 19, 2008, http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnsonwww.org

RUSSIAN TROOPS ENCIRCLING TBILISI

"On Wednesday, August 13, Saakashvili said in an interview on CNN that Russian troops were 'closing on the capital, circling,' and planning to install their own government in Tbilisi. Associated Press journalists in the area reported "no sign of an impending coup." An AP reporter did see dozens of Russian trucks and armored vehicles heading south from the central city of Gori in the direction of Tbilisi, but they later turned away. [See Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili, "Georgian president's Russia claims raise eyebrows," Associated Press, 13 August 2008, 8:12.] The Russians undertook no military operations against the Georgian capitol throughout the five-day war.

U.S. IS TAKING OVER GEORGIA'S PORT AND AIRPORTS

Saakashvili claimed on Georgian national television that the arrival of U.S. military cargo plane carrying humanitarian aid "means that Georgia's ports and airports will be taken under the control of the U.S. Defense Department." Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell immediately refuted this: "We have no need, nor do we intend to take over any Georgian air or seaport to deliver humanitarian aid. ... We have no designs on taking control of any Georgian facility." [Dzhindzhikhashvili, "Georgian president's Russia claims raise eyebrows."]

RUSSIA HAS LOST MORE PLANES THAN IN ANY CONFLICT IN ITS HISTORY

In his Wednesday, August 13 television address, he said, "Russia has lost more airplanes than in any conflict of this scale since 1939." The entire Soviet air force was destroyed in the first days of Hitler's invasion of the USSR, and in the present war Russia is claiming the loss of four airplanes. [Dzhindzhikhashvili, "Georgian president's Russia claims raise eyebrows."]

RUSSIA WILL BOMB TBILISI DEMONSTRATION

Saakashvili also mentioned supposed rumors that Russia would bomb the August 12 rally in Tbilisi, but there was no bombing. [Dzhindzhikhashvili, "Georgian president's Russia claims raise eyebrows"]. It never happened.

GEORGIAN PROPOSING AUTONOMY TO SOUTH OSSETIA AND ABKHAZIA

Saakashvili claimed: "Georgia has been proposing 21st-century, European solutions for South Ossetia, including full autonomy guaranteed by the international community. Russia has responded with crude, 19th-century methods" [Saakashvili, "Russia's War Is The West's Challenge"]. Saakhashvili's representation is gravely overstated. Throughout most of the some twenty years since South Ossetia and Abkhazia demanded first internal autonomy in Georgia and then independence from it, Georgia rejected internal autonomy. The crisis began when ultra-nationalist Georgian president Zviad Gamsakhurdia repealed these breakaway republics' former status as autonomous republics within the Georgian SSR. After Georgians inflicted violence on the two republics and they achieved de facto independence did Georgia make tentative offers of internal autonomy. For most of Saakashvili's term, he emphasized reintegrating the republics without offering a plan but refusing the rejection of the use of force. Only early this year did he propose a plan for internal autonomy for the republics as Georgian forces continued to break the ceasefire agreement by placing heavy artillery in the conflict zone and to refuse to reject the use of force.

RUSSIA BOMBING OIL BTC OIL PIPELINE

Yakobashvili's cleverly piqued the conference's American fears that Russian forces sought to interdict the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline by saying that the Russians had repeatedly tried to bomb it. Westerners are to believe here that a Russian force, including sophisiticated fighter jets and 1,200-3,000 tanks and armored personnel carriers, was unable in the course of five days to bomb an oil pipeline. [Transcript of a Heritage Foundation Forum on the Russian-Georgian War.]

CYBER WAR

Minister Yakobashvili and other Georgian officials claimed that Russian authorities initiated a large-scale cyber-attack on Georgian government websites before and during the war. [Transcript of a Heritage Foundation Forum on the Russian-Georgian War.] Experts on cyber warfare have cast grave doubt over the Georgian authorities' claims that the Russian military or intelligence agencies conducted cyber warfare in the run-up to Moscow's incursion. Rather, independent hacker networks attacked Georgian websites earlier this month previously targeted pornography and gambling sites as part of an extortion racket. Moreover, these attacks were only launched after Georgian forces engaged Russia forces broke out. [Shaun Waterman, "Analysis: Russia-Georgia cyberwar doubted," United Press International, Aug. 18, 2008.] Moreover, two days before Georgia's August 7 assault on Tskhinvali, Georgian hackers and perhaps Georgian cyber-war targeted South Ossetia. Following a report on South Ossetian television that 29 Georgian authorities were covering up the killing of 29 Georgian servicemen during the exchange of fire between Ossetian and Georgian forces on August 1-2 that marked a sharp escalation in the tit-for-tat attacks, sites of the analytical publication 'Ossetian Radio and Television' were subverted by hackers. [Osetinskie saity atakovany khakerami posle publikatsii o tainykh pokhoronakh gruzinskikh soldat," Regnum.ru, 5 August 2008, http://www.regnum.ru-news/1036460.html.

CONCLUSION

American support for Georgia in the present crisis is based in part on the belief that Russia is to be blame for instigating this war. Much of this belief is founded on Saakashvili's and other Geoergian officials' statements to American officials like the State Department's Matthew Bryza. Western publics and decisionmakers should not take the statements of Georgian officials regarding this war or much of anything else at face value. They should think twice and then thrice about whether backing President Saakashvili, his aspirations for Georgian membership in NATO, and the resulting 'hot peace' with Moscow are in the West's interests.

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