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Carnegie Moscow Center
April 9, 2015
From Greater Europe to Greater Asia? The Sino-Russian Entente
By Dmitri Trenin
Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, has been with the center since its inception. He also chairs the research council and the Foreign and Security Policy Program.
[Footnotes here http://carnegie.ru/2015/04/09/from-greater-europe-to-greater-asia-sino-russian-entente/i64a?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoivaTLZKXonjHpfsX57OwpWK6g38431UFwdcjKPmjr1YcETcN0aPyQAgobGp5I5FEIQ7XYTLB2t60MWA%3D%3D]

SUMMARY
Russia is tilting toward China in the face of political and economic pressure from the United States and Europe. This does not presage a new Sino-Russian bloc, but the epoch of post-communist Russia's integration with the West is over.

The rupture between Russia and the West stemming from the 2014 crisis over Ukraine has wide-ranging geopolitical implications. Russia has reverted to its traditional position as a Eurasian power sitting between the East and the West, and it is tilting toward China in the face of political and economic pressure from the United States and Europe. This does not presage a new Sino-Russian bloc, but the epoch of post-communist Russia's integration with the West is over. In the new epoch, Russia will seek to expand and deepen its relations with non-Western nations, focusing on Asia. Western leaders need to take this shift seriously.

Russia's Pivot to Asia

-Russia's pivot to Asia predates the Ukraine crisis, but it has become more pronounced since then. This is in part because China is the largest economy outside of the coalition that has imposed sanctions on Russia as a result of the crisis.
 
-What was originally Moscow's "marriage of convenience" with Beijing has turned into a much closer partnership that includes cooperation on energy trade, infrastructure development, and defense.
 
-Putin's vision of a "greater Europe" from Lisbon to Vladivostok, made up of the European Union and the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union, is being replaced by a "greater Asia" from Shanghai to St. Petersburg.
 
-Russia is now more likely to back China in the steadily growing competition between Beijing and Washington, which will strengthen China's hand.

Takeaways for Western Leaders

-Russia's confrontation with the United States will help mitigate Sino-Russian rivalries, mostly to China's advantage. But this doesn't mean Russia will be dominated by China-Moscow is likely to find a way to craft a special relationship with its partner.
 
-With China's economic might and Russia's great-power expertise, the BRICS group (of which Russia is a part, along with Brazil, India, China, and South Africa) will increasingly challenge the G7 as a parallel center of global governance.
 
-The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, due to include India and Pakistan this year, is on its way to becoming the principal development and security forum for continental Asia.
 
-Through its enhanced relations with non-Western countries, Russia will actively promote a concept of world order that seeks to reduce U.S. global dominance and replace it with a broader great-power consensus.

Introduction

The Ukraine crisis that began in 2014 has shifted the geopolitical axis of Eurasia. Russia, which during the previous quarter century had tried to integrate into the West and become a full-fledged part of Europe, has moved back to its traditional position as a Eurasian power sitting between the East and the West. Moreover, faced with political and economic pressure from the United States and its allies, Russia has tilted toward China.

Moscow is now closer to Beijing than to Berlin. This does not presage a new Sino-Russian bloc against the West, but it carries implications for the countries of both Europe and Asia, as well as for the United States.

Russia's current economic and financial predicament visibly diminishes the impact of the shift. The country has been fraught with a combination of growth that has been grinding to a halt; Western sanctions that are sharply reducing Russian companies' access to technology, investment, and credit; and, most disastrously, the plunge in the price of oil, which sent the ruble into free fall. This has resulted in the United States and the West more broadly taking a relaxed, if not dismissive, attitude toward Russia's "pivot" to Asia. It is believed that Russia, in its present state, will not make much of a difference to the United States, whichever way it goes.

Knowledgeable Americans-and those few among them who care-look at the continuing Sino-Russian rapprochement with curiosity rather than concern. Many Europeans wish the Russians good luck with the Chinese, believing that the new closeness will soon lead to alienation and make Russia reverse, repent, and return to its European roots. Yet, the West's sangfroid notwithstanding, the remaking of Eurasia is well under way and will leave few unaffected.

What is the significance of the fundamental change in Russia's foreign relations for Moscow's ties with Beijing? Russia's confrontation with the United States and the rupture with Europe have given Sino-Russian relations a wholly different strategic context. In the coming years, those relations are likely to get appreciably closer, tending toward a quasi-alliance and quasi-integration, with Beijing as the more powerful member of the relationship. This evolution, in turn, will lead to a Eurasia more closely interlinked than at any time in modern history, with the exception of the brief Sino-Soviet alliance in the 1950s. Much of continental Asia will be drawn into the process of economic integration and political alignment, and the European Union (EU) will be faced with an economic space from St. Petersburg to Shanghai. For China, peacefully gaining preeminence in Eurasia will bring it closer to assuming its rightful place in the world. The United States, which even fifteen or twenty years ago could claim to be the Eurasian hegemon, will be watching from the sidelines.

From Change in Context to Change in Substance

Russia's so-called pivot to Asia predates the crisis over Ukraine. Indeed, the talk about Moscow's shift should not ignore the fact that the part of Asia that Russia today cares about the most lies within its own borders.

The approach is essentially Russian President Vladimir Putin's policy born out of the need to develop Siberia and the Russian Far East and to use the dynamism of East Asia to spur that development. For geopolitical reasons, too, Moscow could not afford to remain passive when it came to the East. The Far East and eastern Siberia are resource-rich but economically depressed and sparsely populated territories, and they physically abut the most dynamic region in the world-which is on China's territory.1 In his annual address to the Russian parliament in 2013, Putin designated eastern Siberia and the Far East as a strategic development area for the twenty-first century.2

Yet, Russia's foreign policy has traditionally sought to create balance in Moscow's relations with all key players around the world, starting with the United States, China, and Europe. Its outreach to the Asia-Pacific region was initially meant to add to, not subtract from, the Euro-Atlantic dimension of Russia's foreign policy. Even within the region, Moscow was looking for a balance in relations with the key powers such as China, India, and Japan. In 2014, this elaborate architecture took a big hit, and the balance was lost, at least for the time being.

In reacting to the pro-Western regime change in Ukraine in February 2014 by reincorporating Crimea into Russia, and later by supporting an anti-Kiev rebellion in the eastern Donbas region, Russia broke free from the U.S.-dominated post-Cold War system and openly challenged Washington.3 Europe's reaction to the Ukraine crisis was crucial and most consequential. In 2013, the EU accounted for about 50 percent of Russia's foreign trade-some $417 billion (about €326 billion).4 Europe was also dependent on Russia for about 30 percent of its energy supplies.5 Germany, the EU's powerhouse and emerging sole leader, was particularly close to Russia, with some 6,000 German companies doing business in the country. But Europe has now joined the United States in sanctioning Russia. A quarter century of Russian-Western post-Cold War cooperation has been fast unraveling.

The economic and political link between Russia and Germany could potentially have formed an axis of what Putin called a "Greater Europe," 6 an economic,  cultural, and security space from Lisbon to Vladivostok. In that scheme, Russian natural resources would have been linked to European industries and technologies, with Russia providing the EU a geopolitical and strategic channel to Asia and the Pacific. The Nord Stream and the now-canceled South Stream to Italy pipelines controlled by the Russian oil company Gazprom were to have become the pillars of the new construct. Moscow had intended to allow the Europeans-in the form of asset swaps-access to its natural resource base in exchange for access to the European retail gas market.

However, the idea of such a union with an authoritarian Russia, attractive as it was to the German business community, evoked much skepticism in Germany's political class and the media. In the end, Chancellor Angela Merkel cold-shouldered it. A coalition of sorts was building against the relationship in Europe, including not only Poland and the Baltic states, forever fearful of a new version of the infamous 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but also traditional Russoskeptics in Britain, Sweden, and elsewhere. The United States, which had historically viewed any rapprochement between Berlin and Moscow with a meas-ure of concern, was also skeptical, often pointing to Europe's energy dependence on Russia as a sign of its vulnerability. The Ukraine crisis put those concerns to rest by making Germany take a tough stance vis-à-vis Russia.

Europe's attitude toward Russia's Ukraine policies dramatically hardened as a result of the downing of the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet in July 2014. Rather than continue being a reluctant follower of the U.S. campaign to put pressure on Moscow, Europe, led by Berlin, turned into a persistent and implacable critic of Russian behavior. The change in the German position may be explained by Merkel's bitter disappointment with Putin returning to the Kremlin rather than allowing former president Dmitry Medvedev to run again; by Germany's ambition to become the sole leader of the EU, which has required winning the support of the Poles and others; and by the particular sort of modern German moralism that the Russian recourse to realpolitik had insulted.

As a result, the key relationship with Germany was broken. Since 1989-when then general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev put forward the idea of a "common European home" and then allowed Germany's reunification-Russia had been moving toward some form of a loose association with Western Europe, centered on Germany.7 But by 2014, it had become alienated from its principal foreign partner.

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration originally hoped that China would condemn Russia's annexation of Crimea and its interference in eastern Ukraine. Washington counted on Beijing's strong support for the principles of the territorial integrity of states and noninterference in their domestic affairs.

This, however, turned out to be a miscalculation. China refused to publicly condemn Russia's actions. At the United Nations (UN) General Assembly vote in March 2014, it chose to abstain, along with some 57 other member states.8

Apparently, this attitude was broadly analogous to Beijing's reaction to Moscow's use of force in 2008 in response to Georgia's attack on the Russian-backed rebel province of South Ossetia, which killed Russian peacekeepers and provoked an invasion of Georgia proper. China took a nominally neutral stance at the time, refusing to recognize South Ossetia's and Abkhazia's independence from Georgia, but it privately expressed its understanding for Russia's action. In 2014, however, with the U.S.-Russian confrontation turning into a fixture of international relations, the stakes had become much higher, and Beijing had to make a serious, carefully considered decision.

China's Interests

On the face of it, Russia's actions violated the principles of Beijing's foreign policy. However, the Chinese leaders could not ignore the events in Kiev that had precipitated Moscow's reaction. To them, a Western-supported color revolution, like Ukraine's Euromaidan protests, was a bigger threat to stability, including potentially China's own, than Moscow's response. For at least some Chinese officials, Putin's resolve in dealing with Crimea was something to be admired, even emulated. Most importantly, confrontation between Russia and the United States relieved China of the potential concern that Putin's pragmatism might lead Moscow to seek an understanding with Washington. It also severely narrowed Russia's international options, making the country more amenable to partnering with China on conditions that favored Beijing.

China, of course, did not want to back Russia outright. Siding with Moscow would damage Beijing's central relationship with Washington. It has highly valued its relationship with the United States, which it has worked to transform into "a new type of great-power relationship," as Chinese President Xi Jinping terms it. Beijing has envisioned bringing about a long period of close cooperation and peaceful competition with Washington, hoping to eventually achieve equality with it. At the same time, a Russia that had to rely more on China would strengthen Beijing's hand in its complex interactions with the United States.

All things considered, China turned out to be the biggest beneficiary of Russia's conflict with the West.

In the rapidly changed environment, Beijing came to be seen by Moscow as a source of money, investment, and even some technology. With Western sanctions in place, China was left as the largest economy outside the anti-Russian coalition. In addition, since 2009, China has been Russia's number one trading partner, with two-way trade reaching $95 billion in 2014.9 In December 2014, when the ruble fell sharply against the major currencies, China's finance ministry promised to stand by Russia, if need be.

Three months after the start of the Ukraine crisis, in May 2014, Gazprom signed a deal estimated at $400 billion to supply natural gas to China over a thirty-year period.10 Even though many details of the deal are undisclosed and doubts about its implementation are not uncommon, it is clearly a historic turning point in Russia's energy geopolitics. The gas opening to China can only be compared to Moscow's opening to Western Europe in the late 1960s. It is virtually certain that Gazprom had to settle for a lower price for its gas than it had hoped, but it still managed to strike the deal before the oil price, to which the gas price is tied, collapsed.

China benefited from the fallout of the Ukraine crisis in other ways, too. At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing in November 2014, Xi physically put himself in a central position, between Obama and Putin in various settings-a visual coup. To most Western observers, the Cold War triangle of Washington, Moscow, and Beijing is a thing of the past, but in the relationship among the three powers today, it is China that sits at the top rather than the United States, enjoying far better relations with the other two than they have between each other-a page from the playbook of former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

The West-East swing by Russia has coincided with China's foreign policy becoming more active. Under President Xi, China has reached a platform from which it can be more assertive in promoting and defending its interests.

China's relations with the United States are becoming increasingly competitive. The expansion of China's power in the East, toward the Pacific, is hampered by the U.S.-led system of alliances. The road to the West, however, is free of U.S. interference and promises to enhance Beijing's access to resources and markets and also to boost its influence in continental Asia. Closer ties with Russia fully fit into this strategy.

Beijing's political relations with Moscow have long since recovered from the bitter Sino-Soviet split and the ensuing confrontation of the 1960s-1980s. The constructive partnership, which started in the early 1990s, had evolved into a strategic one by the end of that decade. Since 2001, the two countries have been bound by a treaty, and their border was finally settled in 2004.

Asia's Other Players

In part as a result of the Ukraine crisis, Russia's turn to Asia is above all an embrace of China. But Russia has also embraced China for lack of other viable partners in the region.

Japan, which had been working toward some kind of strategic accommodation with Russia until Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met with Putin at the Sochi Olympics in February 2014, had no option but to show solidarity with its sole ally, the United States, on the issue of sanctioning Russia after Ukraine. Putin's visit to Japan, scheduled for the fall of 2014, was postponed, and expectations of a peace treaty and a border settlement to finally close the book on World War II receded. The Russian Navy held exercises with China's People's Liberation Army Navy in the East China Sea, and Beijing and Moscow are planning joint celebrations in 2015 to mark the seventieth anniversary of the defeat of Japanese imperialism and militarism in the Second World War.

Russia's relations with South Korea have sustained less damage as a result of the Ukraine crisis than those with Japan. Moscow has become more active in Pyongyang to increase its bargaining power with Seoul, which it needs as a source of technology and investment. But there are limits to what the Russo-South Korean relationship can contribute to Russia's development of its eastern territories and to what Washington would permit Seoul to do with Moscow. Similarly, other U.S. allies in the region with highly developed economies-Singapore and Taiwan-have to be careful when engaging with Moscow to avoid running afoul of Washington.

Where these worries are less relevant, Russia has yet to put its traditionally friendly relationships on a qualitatively new level. This refers above all to the two other strategic partnerships Russia keeps in Asia: India and Vietnam.

Moscow has yet to respond to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's overriding interest in spurring India's economic development. The pattern of Russo-Indian relations has barely changed since the days of the Cold War, and Moscow is in danger of being crowded out of New Delhi's foreign policy priorities. In addition, Russia's greater reliance on China in the face of confrontation with the United States may take a toll on these ties.

Vietnam is clearly important to Russia, but it is a middle power. Vietnam is Russia's gateway to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which Moscow has been seeking to engage. Yet, Russia's means for building a strong relationship with Southeast Asia are still fairly limited because of Russia's economic and financial weakness. Moscow also needs to step more carefully in its dealings with Hanoi now to avoid upsetting its relations with China.

In Central Asia, Russia saw Kazakhstan join the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), to be followed by Kyrgyzstan and eventually Tajikistan. Yet, the Ukraine crisis and the economic difficulties that Russia is facing have led the Kazakhs in particular to express reservations about their connection to Moscow.

There is more reason than before for the Central Asians to seek not just balance but also reassurance vis-à-vis Moscow in stronger relations with Beijing. As a result, China's prestige and role in post-Soviet Central Asia have risen. The 2014 withdrawal of the U.S.-led coalition combat forces from Afghanistan makes Kabul, too, look to China. The new Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, traveled to Beijing first after taking office in 2014.

Thus, the changing global and Asian regional context of Russia's foreign policy has begun to prioritize China more than it did in the last half century. In parallel with that formal upgrade, the substance of Sino-Russian relations has also changed, in the direction of greater intimacy. The development of these relations over the past twenty-five years is a rare case of two neighboring great powers improving their relations and then keeping them on an even keel, despite the fact that one has risen in importance while the other has gone through a difficult and painful post-imperial adjustment.

No Longer Just an "Axis of Convenience"

The mantra in the West has long been that the Sino-Russian partnership would remain limited and that both China's and Russia's interests in good relations with the United States far outweighed their interest in each other. Moreover, it was assumed that the Chinese had growing disdain for the Russians and that the Russians feared the Chinese more and more. If these beliefs have ever been reality, they are not so now. China and Russia share not only a host of fundamental interests but also, increasingly, elements of a common worldview.

At the top of the list is the importance of a strong state that enjoys full freedom of action internationally. This makes the survival of the existing political regimes in both countries the key priority for Moscow and Beijing. Both the Kremlin and Zhongnanhai view perennial Western campaigns in favor of democratization and human rights in their countries as U.S. policy tools designed to destabilize them. Russian and Chinese leaders both resent Western government criticisms and denounce what they see as biased Western media coverage, foreign funding for nongovernmental organizations, and the use of Internet mobilization techniques to foment revolution. They interpret all this as aggression against their sovereignty and seek to limit or terminate it. In 2011-2012, Vladimir Putin blamed street protests in Moscow on U.S. support for Russian civil society. In 2014, Beijing saw a foreign hand behind the protest movement in Hong Kong.12

In terms of the world order, since the late 1990s China and Russia have subscribed to the notion of multipolarity as the optimal structure for the global community of states. Right up to 2014, however, Russia was simultaneously seeking to carve out a place for itself in the Western system through membership in such institutions as the G8, an informal grouping of the world's leading industrialized nations, and strategic partnerships with the United States, the EU, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Moscow wanted a foot in each camp, the West and the non-West, and hoped to benefit from this unique position.

China observed these efforts skeptically, but also warily, even as it was working its way toward the center of the global system through ever-closer economic and financial ties with the United States in particular. In 2014, watching the collapse of Moscow's Western partnerships, Beijing must have felt vindicated. But true to form, it did not gloat publicly.

With Moscow no longer able to straddle the West and non-West divide, the Chinese and Russian assessments of Washington's global policy have strikingly converged. True, Beijing and Moscow do not see eye to eye on all of the important international issues. Both agree, however, that U.S. policies breed chaos, citing the Middle East as evidence. In Asia, according to that view, the United States seeks to destabilize China's periphery (for example, in Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang), to isolate China by consolidating the U.S.-led alliances, and to undermine Beijing's own outreach to its neighbors. In Eurasia, the United States seeks to move the NATO alliance closer to Russia and to foil Moscow's own Eurasian integration plans, such as those in Ukraine.

There is an important distinction, however: based on its growing power, China is seeking to restore its "natural" historical position of preeminence in Asia, and eventually globally, while Russia, which is no longer in the running for world primacy, is seeking to establish itself as a center of power in Eurasia and a member of a global concert of powers. In the long run, Sino-Russian relations will depend on how the two concepts interact in practical terms in Eurasia.

Amid the continuing clash between Russia and the West over Ukraine, Beijing has chosen to stand by Russia, even as it formally sticks to neutrality. In view of its geopolitics and its history, China does not approve of secessionism, annexations, or foreign military interventions-unless, of course, Beijing feels the need to intervene itself. Also, Putin probably did not consult Xi before making his fateful decisions on Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Yet, Beijing sees the larger picture and formulates its position in terms of China's interests as it defines them, not just abstract principles.

And China has no geopolitical, economic, or security interest in seeing Moscow's will broken by Washington, or Russia itself broken and falling apart. A pro-Western or, more likely, chaotic Russia would be a major security hazard to China. Beijing also interprets Washington's pressure on Moscow as not just an attempt to break Russia's will and make it obey U.S. rules, but also as a warning to other non-Western competitors, above all China. Exemplary punishment of Russia, in that view, is to serve as a means to deter China. The Chinese do not expect Russia to be defeated by the United States, and they wish it to stay united internally, which fully conforms to their national interest.

While the Russians and the Chinese expect the United States to continue to be the most powerful nation in the world for several more decades, they see its grip on the rest of the world rapidly loosening. Both Moscow and Beijing see the world going through an epochal change away from U.S. domination and toward a freer global order that would give China more prominence and Russia more freedom of action. They also see the process of change gaining speed. According to a leading Russian foreign policy thinker, "the last dozen years [since the fall of Baghdad during the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq] have witnessed the quickest weakening of the hegemony in history." 13

There is also a clear personal affinity between Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, something that did not really exist between Putin and the two previous Chinese presidents with which he dealt, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. And for first time since former chairman Deng Xiaoping, China again has a paramount leader who can act as a sovereign rather than just a committee chairman. In Russia, after the somewhat awkward four-year Medvedev interlude, the country's real leader is again the formal number one. Thus, Vladimir Putin's return to the Kremlin in 2012 and the elevation in the same year of Xi Jinping to party and state leadership in China have provided new structural elements and personal glue to make the Sino-Russian connection stronger at the very top.14 Both Putin and Xi expect to stay in power into the 2020s, thus giving the relationship a welcome "cadre stability," as one diplomat put it.15

The Road to Greater Asia

From its new levels reached in 2014, the relationship between Moscow and Beijing is likely to move forward in a number of key areas. In lieu of a Greater Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok, a Greater Asia from Shanghai to St. Petersburg is in the making.

In the field of energy, cooperation is potentially being upgraded to an alliance. China has become not only a buyer of Russian natural gas for the first time (until 2014 it had been virtually all exported to Europe) but also a consumer of more Russian oil. Beijing's companies are gaining access to Russian hydrocarbon resources-something they have long been barred from by Putin's own policies and Russian regulations. In February 2015, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said Chinese companies could now acquire majority stakes in Russia's strategic oil and gas fields, except those on the continental shelf.16 The partnership between Rosneft-Russia's state-owned oil company-and BP collapsed, as did its partnership with U.S.-based ExxonMobil, as a result of the sanctions, likely opening the way for the Chinese to take some of the business formerly reserved for the Europeans and Americans. At a time when Europe is reducing its dependence on Russian energy imports, going east appears to be a rational strategy for both Gazprom and Rosneft.

China is also moving ahead with infrastructure development in Russia. This includes high-speed rail links that will eventually connect Moscow to China via Kazakhstan; modern seaports on Russia's Pacific coast, such as Zarubino in Primorsky Krai; and development of the Northern Sea Route shipping lane from Asia to Europe across the Arctic. These projects will not only bring Russia much closer to China but also make Eurasia much better connected internally by including Mongolia and Central Asian countries.

In the field of finance, China is unlikely to replace the West when it comes to Russia, but connections are deepening. Raising money in China has already proven challenging for Russian companies. Yet, China has expressed its willingness to extend loans to Russia. What is more, Russia's increased use of both the Chinese renminbi and the Hong Kong dollar, along with the agreement to expand the role of the ruble and the yuan in bilateral trade, offers a path to the Chinese currency gradually rising in stature and status to become, potentially, a regional reserve currency in Eurasia. For Russia, this would mean recognizing China's financial leadership.

Under current circumstances, China's planned Silk Road Economic Belt, a regional trade and transportation plan, and the 2015 inauguration of Putin's EEU are more likely to lead to a sort of symbiosis between the Chinese and Russian integrationist projects than to a rivalry between Beijing and Moscow. Again, Moscow will have to compromise, allowing Central Asian states to participate both in the EEU and the Silk Road Economic Belt.

In exchange for its support, China will insist on advanced military technology transfers from Russia, in such areas as air and missile defense, as well as air and naval power. So far, Moscow has been cautious in sharing its most advanced technologies with Beijing, mindful of the sharp reversals in their past relations and reluctant to alienate other Asian powers, such as India and even Japan. However, in the present situation, when Moscow has to rely on Beijing's support more than ever before, Russia might have to lower the bar for defense technology exports to China.

Since 2005, China and Russia have regularly held joint military exercises. As a result, they have already achieved a modest degree of compatibility and interoperability between their forces, and that is likely to increase. The drills were staged in and off the coast of eastern China, in central Russia, and in Central Asia. In 2015, the Russian Navy and the People's Liberation Army Navy intend to hold their joint maneuvers in the Mediterranean Sea. This leap in geography points to the readiness of both countries to send a message to the world about their close military partnership and to demonstrate strategic unity in one of Eurasia's strategically most important and volatile regions.

In the Middle East going forward, Russia and China are likely to cooperate more in responding to conflicts and dealing with issues such as the Iranian nuclear program. At the UN Security Council and elsewhere, the two countries have already reached the point where they are able to reliably harmonize their positions on most matters. In the future, they can come up with joint initiatives and strategies on issues such as Syria and Iran. Russia is sympathetic to Xi's ideas about a regional security arrangement in Asia, which, according to Xi, should be put together by Asians themselves, implicitly without the United States.

In the field of global governance, China and Russia will work together to further empower non-Western international institutions, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a Eurasian economic, political, and security union, and the BRICS group of developing economies (made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). In 2015, the SCO will add India and Pakistan as new members, and it will thus include most of Asia's great powers. The BRICS group, now with a development bank of its own, will attempt to provide a partial alternative to the G7-after the G8 de facto expelled Russia in 2014-and the International Monetary Fund. Russia will host the 2015 BRICS summit, but the group's main economic and financial initiatives come from China.

Tackling the Problems in the Relationship

Even in the presently friendly environment, the Sino-Russian relationship contains a number of inherent problems. And maintaining the essential equality in the Sino-Russian relationship despite the apparent inequality of the partners will not be easy.

China's rising power dwarfs Russia's, and some commentators in China already refer to Moscow as Beijing's junior partner. Others remember China's pattern of being ringed by tributary states. Russia itself was a subject of the Mongol Empire from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, which the Russians have not forgotten. They clearly do not want to end up as Beijing's vassal nation. Influential Chinese academics talk about a new bipolarity built around the two superpowers of the twenty-first century, the United States and China.17 Other countries in that scheme will have to make a decision to align themselves with Washington or with Beijing. After 2014, Moscow probably has no choice.

Russia, however, has vowed not to become a junior partner to any state, and that includes China. Under Putin, Russia is adamant that it accepts orders from no one. A country that has taken on the United States in a bid to assert its interests can do so again and against anyone. Rising Russian nationalism and the popular perception of being under attack, economically and politically, from abroad make this preoccupation with retaining great-power status impossible to reverse. To Moscow, Beijing pledges equality, consultations, and trust, with no hierarchy in the relationship, but this posture will be frequently put to the test as the balance of power between China and Russia continues to shift.

At present, Xi Jinping appears to understand the risks of mishandling the Russians, but the Chinese would do well to remember Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's unfortunate experience with then chairman Mao Zedong in the 1950s. China's weakness then and its huge dependence on the Soviet Union notwithstanding, Mao always insisted on Beijing being treated by Moscow as an equal great power. The fact that the Kremlin ignored this bid and insisted on Moscow's sole leadership led to the Sino-Soviet split, followed by decades of bitter enmity.

Another potential friendship-killer would be revisiting the border issue between China and Russia. For the relationship to remain close and friendly, the border settlement reached between 1991 and 2004 and fully implemented during Putin's second presidential term needs to remain sacrosanct. Otherwise, instant alienation will ensue.

This is also apparently understood by China's politico-military establishment. However, this pragmatic attitude coexists with the deeply ingrained and widely shared Chinese notion of the unequal nature of the 1858 and 1860 treaties that lie at the foundation of the present border. A typical Chinese attitude stipulates that "it is not important whether the nineteenth century treaties were just or not; what counts is that we in China have now made a choice. No one in the Chinese leadership wants to take the territories back. The Chinese are not so stupid as to demand those territories... Our motto is: friendship from generation to generation, never to be adversaries." 18

In Central Asia, a region wedged between the two powers, there is some potential for Sino-Russian friction, even conflict. China has established itself as the region's principal trade and investment partner, even as Russia seeks to integrate the former Soviet republics economically, politically, and militarily within such bodies as the EEU and the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

Yet again, the Chinese have demonstrated enough tact to deal with Russian sensibilities. Within the SCO, Russia enjoys an informal co-leadership role alongside China. Beijing also respects Moscow's redlines on establishing political alliances and military bases in the former Soviet space. This contrasts starkly with the Western policies of NATO and EU enlargement in the former Soviet borderlands in Eastern Europe.

Aware of its relative weakness vis-à-vis China, Russia will continue seeking some kind of balance in its relations with major Asian countries, but it will find this harder than before. Russia may try to promote RIC, an informal consultative arrangement with China and India that so far has been largely ceremonial. With India formally joining the SCO in 2015, theoretically, a triumvirate of Asian great powers may emerge within that body. In reality, however, Moscow is more likely to continue handling both relationships in parallel. Russia will have to be careful. It wants to keep its position as the principal supplier of arms and military equipment to the Indian Armed Forces, which view China as the main potential threat. At the same time, Moscow may have to agree to give Beijing more advanced weapons technology, which New Delhi may not appreciate.

After the imposition of U.S.-led sanctions on Russia, which Tokyo has joined, Moscow has had to lower its expectations of what it can achieve by means of a stronger economic relationship with Japan. Beijing is definitely pleased with this development. Publicly, it had long been skeptical about Moscow achieving its goal of strengthening economic ties with Tokyo. Privately, the Chinese viewed Russo-Japanese relations apprehensively, fearing that Putin could become the first Russian leader to successfully normalize political relations with Japan. The Chinese have complained that the "Russians do not know the Japanese well enough, how aggressive and revanchist-minded they are." 19 Now Beijing feels vindicated and reassured. With the danger of Russo-Japanese rapprochement removed, at least for the foreseeable future, the Chinese want to pull Moscow closer to their position on the territorial disputes in the East China Sea.

How Moscow handles upcoming World War II-related events will indicate how much of Beijing's agenda it has bought into. Xi Jinping was one of the first world leaders to indicate that he would travel to Moscow in May 2015 to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. This contrasts sharply with the expected refusals of Barack Obama and most Western leaders to attend the event, which to the Russians symbolizes their greatest achievement in recent history, and perhaps also their greatest contribution to world history. Xi, however, expects Putin to return the favor and come to Beijing in September 2015 to mark the anniversary of the victory over Japan. The Chinese are already calling on the Russians to "build a common front to strengthen peace in Northeast Asia." 20 They make no secret that they see Tokyo as a primary threat to peace in the region today.

Russia will probably have to tread more lightly with Vietnam, which buys Russian-made arms and allows Russian companies to drill for oil and gas in the South China Sea, another disputed area near China. Any subtle change in Moscow's attitude toward the maritime disputes in the South China Sea will be indicative of how much it needs to pay China for notionally backing Russia in its time of great need.

The pro-Western elements in Russia that the Chinese were concerned about in the 1990s have long since lost their influence in the Russian government. Even Vladimir Putin's vaunted pragmatism, which in the past allowed him to attempt rapprochement with Washington and Tokyo, is constrained by the reality of confrontation with the United States. With liberals and Westernizers completely sidelined in Russia, and Putin assuming the mantle of the country's top nationalist,21 China has less reason than ever to worry about its strategic rear. The only thing that Beijing may find troubling is the rise of that Russian nationalism that focuses on immigration, including-although not in the first instance-from China.

The Russians will be watching how the Chinese deal with them now that Moscow has forfeited its European option, achieved only limited gains with its Eurasian integration project, and found itself in the midst of its most serious economic crisis since the turn of the twenty-first century. Even those expecting the Chinese leadership to continue to adhere to the generally respectful attitude toward Russia are also pointing to the disdain and disrespect for the country that many in China's business circles do not bother to hide.

Russia's and China's relations with the United States will be a very important factor for the bilateral Sino-Russian relationship. The situation is complicated by the difference between the foreign policy styles of Moscow and Beijing. Whereas the Russians do not shy away from confrontation and brusque in-your-face methods, the Chinese prefer Tai Chi gymnastics, with its many feints. Russian tactics can scare the Chinese; Chinese moves can confuse the Russians.

The Russians have been satisfied that Beijing has largely ignored the Obama administration's attempts to dissuade China from getting too close to Russia. However, they are apprehensive that China and the United States, the world's two superpowers-a G2-might reach some kind of bilateral agreement at Russia's expense. Privately, they warn the Chinese not to entertain "illusions" that the Americans will ever agree to grant them equality and to respect their interests in the way Beijing formulates them.22 Clearly, the Russians are speaking from their own experience, both Soviet and post-Soviet.

The closer China and Russia become, the more important it will be for each partner to address the suspicions at home about the other. True, most Russians today see China as a friendly country, and vice versa.23 Yet, nationalism is on the rise not just in Russia but also in China. In Russia, the old suspicions about the Chinese taking over the country-economically and demographically, if not militarily-could gain more currency,24 as Moscow has to rely more heavily on its Beijing connection. Serious Russian strategic analysts point to a high concentration of Chinese land forces in the country's north, which faces Russia.25 In China, a surge in nationalism could reignite the talk about the unequal treaties, and Russia's general mismanagement of the territories it "snatched away" from China in the nineteenth century. Thus, even at the level of practical cooperation between the two countries, issues such as the use of Chinese laborers for projects within Russia will remain very controversial.

To build a closer relationship, the two countries' elites must have a much better understanding of one another and deepen their interactions. At this point, knowledge of each other is rather superficial. Even though, for example, 2.4 million Russians traveled to China and 845,000 Chinese visited Russia in 2011, Russia is lacking in China expertise.26 In the past, Russia boasted one of the leading schools of Sinology in the world, but that is no longer the case.27 China's Russian studies are doing somewhat better in comparison, but the generation of Chinese leaders who either studied in the Soviet Union or looked up to it has left the stage.

Future Implications of the Sino-Russian Entente

Eurasia's center of gravity is shifting. And that shift will have a significant impact not only on Russia's and China's neighbors but also on the broader global system.

With Moscow now politically closer to Beijing than to Berlin, China is emerging as a much bigger player in all of Eurasia, not just East Asia. It is in a better position than ever to gain access to Russian resources, from hydrocarbons to fresh water, and to extend its reach to Europe via Central Asia as well as across Russia and the Arctic. China has also gained not just an absolutely safe rear in the north but also enormous strategic depth. If and when this position becomes solidified, China will have made a major step in its slow but steady rise to continental preeminence.

Thanks to the backing from China, the world's premier rising power, Russia should not fear isolation at the hands of the United States and its allies. If-and this is a very big if-Moscow uses the present crisis caused by the triple effect of the economic slowdown, Western sanctions, and the collapse of the price of oil to carry out structural reforms and launch a strategy of economic development, it will emerge much stronger than before. It is also quite possible that Moscow will manage to protect its sovereignty and independence vis-à-vis Beijing while growing much closer to China politically and economically. This could happen because Russia's sense of identity is very strong, and its civilization and culture are very distinct from China's, as the stark divide along the Sino-Russian border visibly demonstrates.

This shift coincides with the continuing U.S. pullback from the Eurasian heartland-Afghanistan and Central Asia-as well as its declining involvement in the Middle East and its increasing focus instead on coastal Asia, from Japan to Singapore, in an attempt to prevent China's domination of its neighbors. Simultaneously, the United States is shoring up NATO in Europe and encouraging its European allies to support Ukraine and other West-leaning post-Soviet states.

All this, however, is essentially a holding pattern. The twenty-year period of the United States dominating the "grand chessboard" of Eurasia is over.28

The European Union faces the prospect of long-term alienation from Russia. The notion of the EU and Russia forming some sort of an association, or even a symbiotic relationship, is moving out of reach for the foreseeable future. The same holds for a Greater Europe composed of the EU and the new Russia-led EEU. Instead, the EU and Russia are becoming competitors in a number of areas, from geopolitics to values systems. As a result, the European Union has to rely even more heavily on the United States and the NATO mechanism, and it has to shelve any ideas of winning more autonomy from its transatlantic ally and becoming a full-fledged strategic player.

Japan, similar to Europe, has lost the Russia option. Abe's hopes of building a strong relationship with Russia that would help balance the rise of China have been dashed after Tokyo's decision to join the U.S.-led sanctions against Moscow. Instead, Japan will have to brace itself for a further rapprochement between Beijing and Moscow, with Russia potentially taking a more hostile attitude toward Japan-precisely the scenario that Tokyo wanted to avoid. Like Europe, Japan will have to strengthen its military and political alliance with the United States. In the case of a Sino-Japanese clash over the Senkaku Islands (known as the Diaoyu Islands in China), Russia will keep its formal neutrality. But in the future this neutrality may be more sympathetic to Beijing.

For India, the Sino-Russian entente represents a different kind of challenge. India seeks to enhance its economic opportunities, and expanding trade links to China is a key element of that strategy. At the same time, India continues to purchase Russian-made weapons and keeps close political ties with Russia. New Delhi has no real reason to fear Moscow becoming Beijing's ally against it. However, greater closeness between the two could spur New Delhi into playing a more active role within the triangle of Asia's three great continental powers, in the SCO and RIC formats and beyond.

On the Korean Peninsula, China and Russia will continue to work in parallel but not in lockstep. The idea, dear to some in the People's Liberation Army, of a northern triangle of China, Russia, and North Korea opposing the southern triangle of the United States, Japan, and South Korea-almost in a replica of the NATO-Warsaw Pact confrontation in Cold War Europe-is far-fetched. Like Beijing, Moscow will pursue its own interests; the two do not collide but do not completely overlap either. As an example, the Russian attitude to the eventual reunification of the peninsula is more positive than the Chinese one. For their parts, Seoul and Pyongyang will keep their channels open to both China and Russia. In a crisis between North Korea and South Korea or within North Korea, however, China and Russia would coordinate their policies, and Moscow would likely defer to Beijing, whose interests on the Korean Peninsula are greater than Russia's.

Meanwhile, Moscow has consistently supported Beijing's position on Taiwan, even during the long Sino-Soviet split. Taipei's current relations with Moscow are strictly nonpolitical. After Russia's incorporation of Crimea in 2014, and in the spirit of the Sino-Russian entente, Moscow can be expected to support just about any steps regarding Taiwan that Beijing might take in the future.

In the South China Sea, the impact of that entente is likely to be more nuanced. ASEAN countries represent a third major area of Russia's commercial interest in Asia, after China and India. Moscow will not abandon Vietnam, its Cold War ally and today's arms client, as well as an important gateway to the region. Russia's neutrality in the regional maritime disputes will probably be stricter than in the case of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Russia showed its flag in the South Seas in November 2014, when four Russian Navy ships sailed from Vladivostok to the Coral Sea at the time of Putin's visit to the G20 summit in Australia,29 pointing to Russia's desire to be seen again as a major military power in the Pacific.

It is Inner Asia-Afghanistan, Mongolia, and the five post-Soviet states of Central Asia-that is likely to see the most impact from the deepening of Sino-Russian integration. The EEU will have to interact closely with China on its development projects in the Silk Road Economic Belt area. What is likely to emerge is a trade and investment zone covering all of central, northern, and eastern Eurasia. With China as its powerhouse, this area can be called Greater Asia-from Shanghai, its business center, to St. Petersburg, its outpost at Europe's doorstep.

The SCO, meanwhile, can provide Greater Asia with a framework for policy consultation and harmonization, joint economic development, financial support, and security cooperation. Russia will continue to play a prominent role in the SCO, but it is likely to be in the second tier of great powers there, next to India, with China very much setting the pace and providing the most resources for the organization.

The geopolitical shift in Eurasia will impact strategic stability and reshape the global strategic balance. Russia and China will not build a military alliance, but each one will be facing the United States as a potential military adversary. The growth of China's nuclear capabilities will bring it closer to the United States' and Russia's levels. In the 2020s, strategic arms control will have to include all three powers to be meaningful, but Beijing's agreement to join the process will only be possible if it expects to gain in both security and prestige. In any event, Moscow's position as Washington's sole counterpart in discussions of strategic stability issues will be diluted.

On the issues of global governance, China, with Russia's backing, will probably begin taking the initiative rather than just following the United States or opposing it. Beijing and Moscow will seek to provide an alternative to the existing Western-designed systems governing global finance, regional security systems, and Internet freedom. They may also seek to join forces, possibly with other BRICS countries, to build a global media network that would compete with the Western media in influencing global public opinion.

Challenging the Order

During the decades of their confrontation in the twentieth century, China and Russia adopted a face-to-face, and often in-your-face, posture. After the end of the Cold War, they stood back-to-back, no longer fearing each other but focusing on another actor. Now, they are shoulder to shoulder again, if at unequal heights, in the imperfect new bipolarity where the defending global champion, the United States, is facing a challenge from the emerging non-Western powers, of which China is the strongest by far. In the intensifying competition that, unlike the Cold War, is neither total nor antagonistic, Russia is being drawn to that new pole. Tilting toward China, for Moscow, is a way to keep balance vis-à-vis the West and to remain what Russia has always sought to be: a sovereign great power.

In Beijing, Deng Xiaoping's mantra about Sino-Russian relations remains outwardly unchanged: no alliance, no antagonism, and no targeting of third parties. These three "nos" were based on the experience of the past-the Sino-Soviet alliance of the 1950s; the Sino-Soviet conflict of the 1960s-1980s; and the Sino-Soviet bloc against the United States and its allies. However, the relationship has warmed considerably since Deng passed away in 1997.

China and Russia are now entering into a relationship that will fall short of a for-mal alliance but will be closer than the strategic partnership the two countries have had since the 1990s. It could be described as an entente, a harmonious association of two major powers based on the commonality of some key interests; mutual resentment of the global hegemon, that is, the United States; a measure of foreign and security policy coordination; and a degree of empathy between their leaders.

Within this tighter relationship, Moscow will insist on its coequal status, and Beijing would probably be wise to accept this. China and Russia will not form a bloc to oppose the West militarily. They will not come up with an ideology to supplant Western liberal democracy. Rather, they will join forces to withstand Western pressure (Russia's main interest today and potentially China's tomorrow) and to gain resources to better compete against the West (China's main interest). The Sino-Russian entente will be about coordination without a central command. Russia's essentially European identity will not be affected, even though its relationship with the European Union will remain broken for a long time.

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 #2
Financial Times
April 10, 2015
What Russians really think
Many in the west see Russia as aggressive and brainwashed. But its citizens have a different view
By Kathrin Hille
Kathrin Hille is the FT's Moscow bureau chief.

When I visited him last month in Moscow, Kirill Yerokhin was in his living room, which had been decked out as if for a family celebration. Platters with fruit, thick pink and white slices of pastila, the Russian sweet, and piroshki, little buns with sweet and savoury fillings, covered the coffee table. From a dozen wooden frames on the wall, Marshall Georgy Zhukov, the Soviet Union's greatest war hero and Yerokhin's grandfather, looked down.

The feast was fitting. I had come to ask about May 9, the anniversary of Germany's surrender to the Soviet Union in the second world war, and my host explained to me that there is nothing more sacred. "For as long as I can think, Victory Day was the most important holiday, and it always will be," he says. Although Yerokhin, 51, has long had a place in official ceremonies, there is nothing officious about this day to him. "It is close to the heart and to the soul."

And not just for him. Seventy years after the end of the war, Russia is gearing up for a celebration more monumental than any in recent memory, flanked by exhibitions, film releases, concerts and conferences. President Vladimir Putin has invited leaders from 68 countries to a grand ceremony in Moscow and a military parade. But while politicians from some 30 nations, including China's president Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, have confirmed, many western leaders are staying away. Both US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron have declined the invitation.

May 9 highlights the chasm that has opened between Russia's view of itself and perceptions elsewhere. While many European countries mark the day with Holocaust commemorations and appeals for peace and international understanding, the Russian emphasis is on military glory and the Red Army's role in liberating Europe.

Many European politicians fear Moscow is using the anniversary to paper over the deep divisions opened by Russia's involvement in the war in Ukraine. "At a moment when Putin is trying to redraw the map of Europe, how can we stand next to him and celebrate the postwar order on the continent, the very foundations of which he is bent on destroying?" asks a diplomat from a European country whose leader has declined the invitation to Moscow.

Such accusations are met with bewilderment and indignation in Russia. Yerokhin echoes the sentiments of many when he says it is not Russia but America that is wrecking the postwar world order in a quest to expand its own influence. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Russians and their foreign friends and acquaintances get sucked into arguments like this every day. When it comes to Russia's relations with Ukraine, other neighbouring countries and the west, they cannot agree on anything - not even the facts.

For many in the west, the explanation behind this gulf has been simple: lies and propaganda. Russian media have become more bellicose and ideological than they were even in the Soviet era, demonising Ukraine's pro-European Maidan movement and accusing the new government in Kiev of being organised by American spies and backed by fascist gangs. Last summer, Russian state television ran an interview with a woman in the eastern Ukrainian town of Slavyansk who claimed she had seen Ukrainian soldiers crucify the three-year-old son of a pro-Russian rebel. The report was taken down after it turned out to be a lie and the incident caused outrage, but the channel did not publish a correction.

Meanwhile, Putin continues to deny the presence of Russian soldiers in Ukraine despite mounting evidence to the contrary, infuriating his western counterparts. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, told Obama in a phone call a year ago that Putin appeared to be living "in another world".

Many Russians are in just as much shock as the growing rift with the west permeates their daily lives. For Valery Chastnykh, deputy director of the Institute of Russian Language and Culture at Moscow State University, it became deeply personal last year. He had travelled to the UK to assess projects that students in the department of Russian at the University of Leeds had prepared during their year in Moscow.

Jack Heaton, 20, had chosen to discuss the role of Russia in the unfolding war in eastern Ukraine. In a 10-minute presentation, he said there had been a revolution in Kiev, that Putin was fighting a covert war to destabilise Ukraine and that Moscow's propaganda had fooled the Russian people into believing that a pack of fascists ruled in Kiev.

Chastnykh disagreed with all of it. "He presented a very biased, very superficial view of our country," he recalls. "He was suggesting that Russia is brainwashed and we don't know any better. This is just not true." Chastnykh said so, right then and there. Both he and Heaton remember the discussion that followed as if war had entered the classroom. "I am not going to call it an attack - that makes it sound quite brutal. But it was. Valery took the pro-Russian side," Heaton says. "Valery and I basically accused each other of being brainwashed."

Many Russians are deeply troubled by such incidents. They see their country as a deserving member of the global community and remember how hard it was to build these links after the cold war. Irina Orekhova, who has been teaching foreign students Russian at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow since 1976, sees her responsibility as nothing short of a mission. "We are not just teaching a language - we are teaching a culture," she says. "I want to show our students our civilisation, the Russian world. This is my motherland, my great love."

The current political tension is also hurting young Russians who have built friendships in the west. Olga Petrova, 22, spent a year at a high school in Knoxville, Iowa. She says the west's accusations against Russia in the Ukraine war have left her feeling betrayed. "This conflict is so personal for everyone," she says.

But although information warfare has triggered the breakdown in understanding between Russians and the west over the past year, the roots of the problem lie much deeper. The "other world" invoked by Merkel existed long before the Ukraine conflict. "Before blaming Putin for playing his tune, you have to ask: 'Who put the piano on stage?'" says Alexei Miller, a Russian historian who has researched competing nationalisms in eastern Europe for more than two decades.

When the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, it set free a range of widely diverging, often mutually contradictory historical narratives. The history of central and eastern Europe and central Asia had been constricted in a tight ideological corset for more than 70 years. Suddenly newly independent countries could revive their national histories and debate atrocities from the Stalin era. Such discourse became a key pillar of national identity.

In Russia, things were much more complicated. Russia had been the nucleus from which the Soviet Union was built, its language and culture had dominated the now-defunct communist empire and its people had accounted for the lion's share of the Soviet armed forces. A clean break with the past was impossible. In many cases, the opening of historical archives pitted Russians against their neighbours.

In the 1990s, during a brief interlude of multi-party politics, Russia started to question its past. But at the same time, political infighting, corruption and financial crises left many with a sense of loss, chaos and confusion. Almost a decade after the end of the Soviet Union, the country was still struggling to find a new identity.

Putin changed things. Since he came to power 15 years ago, Moscow has closed historical archives, narrowed the spectrum of debate and moved to unify history textbooks. Since the start of his third presidential term in 2012, Putin has identified patriotism and a hero cult as the necessary glue for his disoriented nation. "There is a great work under way now for the patriotic education of the youth," says Nadezhda Malinina, granddaughter of General Mikhail Malinin, Marshall Zhukov's chief of staff, and part of Yerokhin's circle of friends.

But part of what Russia calls victory and liberation is remembered as invasion and occupation by some of its neighbours. In the run-up to the anniversary on May 9, the worsening stand-off with the west has reignited long-smouldering historical controversies.

Nowhere are these controversies more tangled than with Ukraine. Russia traces its own statehood back to a federation of Slavic peoples founded in the ninth century in what is now Kiev. In Tsarist-era Russian historiography, Ukraine was called Little Russia, and seen as part of the nation. But from the late 19th century, Ukrainian nationalists started asserting their own identity instead. According to Miller, Ukrainian nationalists tended to cast Russia as a brutal, hegemonic power, while some Russian nationalists described Ukraine as the "illness" of Russia.

Following the communist revolution, the Bolsheviks abandoned the term Little Russia and fostered the idea of a Ukrainian nation friendly to Russia. Throughout the history of the Soviet Union, any hostility between the two was covered under or hidden by the term "brotherly nations", which Russia continues to use but which has flaked off like a layer of varnish. "In the 1990s, everything that had been there before the Soviet Union came back," Miller says.

In 2011, he and Georgy Kasyanov, a professor of Ukrainian history from Kiev, published a joint book on how history was being abused on both sides. But Miller sees his work falling apart before his eyes. "Now people are being forced to choose: either feel Russian [and] hostile to Ukraine, or feel Ukrainian [and] hostile to Russia," he says.

Maria Kostetskaya, 21, was born to a Russian mother and a Ukrainian father, and is trying to find her place in this maze. Her father's entire family was deported to the far north of Russia because one uncle had worked as a policeman in Ukraine during the second world war. "He was with the Banderites," says Kostetskaya, using a dismissive Russian term for followers of Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalist who died in 1959. Bandera's attempts to establish an independent Ukrainian state have made him hugely controversial in Russia. In the current crisis, Moscow has demonised him as a fascist.

In the same breath as Kostetskaya calls her Ukrainian relatives "Banderites", she says she believes in Russia and Ukraine being brother nations and insists that everything was fine until the change of government in Ukraine last year. "Why are they being so anti-Russian in Kiev now?" she asks. "Why are they worshipping Bandera?"

But when I ask about her father, Kostetskaya's indignation suddenly disappears. She tells me how during Soviet times, he was queueing for meat at a shop in Kiev. When it was his turn, he greeted the shop assistant in Russian, as was common. "No meat today, they told him," she says. But then they called him back at the rear door and asked if he was Ukrainian - they had recognised his accent. "And there was meat for Ukrainians! Isn't that funny!"

Yet Kostetskaya insists she feels fully Russian. In the Ukraine war, she sides with Russia. "I sometimes quarrel with my boyfriend, who is German, about this. He always blames everything on Russia."

Such confusion is common among young Russians who are shocked to discover how far the narratives they have been brought up with deviate from what counts as the truth elsewhere. In late February, there was a seminar organised for Russian students in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. The participants, many of them Kostetskaya's fellow students, were shown The Other Dream Team, a documentary about the Lithuanian basketball team. Their defeat of the former Soviet Union states' team at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics became the crowning moment of their careers.

The film showed the occupation of Lithuania and its subsequent incorporation into the Soviet Union in 1940, the deportation of thousands of Lithuanians to other parts of the Soviet Union, and Moscow's attempt to put down the 1991 independence movement with tanks. A group of Lithuanian players recount how humiliating they found it to be referred to as Russian when they won Olympic gold in 1988 on behalf of the Soviet Union, and how proud they were to compete for their own nation in 1992, a year after Lithuania declared its independence.

"It was a nationalistic film, and it was entirely from the Lithuanian perspective," says Kirill Shamiev, 20, a political science student in St Petersburg. "I didn't feel very comfortable watching. Rationally I think the Lithuanians have the right to establish their own identity and have their own views on this, but I wanted to say: 'No, no, don't talk so bad about the Soviet Union!'"

The son of a military official who is considering joining the armed forces himself, Shamiev is by no means a dissident. His parents, who he describes as "typical Soviet people", told him that only meddling by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the softness of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union's last leader, were to blame for the empire's collapse. Many of his friends believe that Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states are Russian lands and that their independence was an error that needs to be righted one day.

As the family moved round Russia due to his father's job, Shamiev encountered teachers who presented radically different perspectives on the country's past. Only in his last school years in St Petersburg did he learn about political repressions, deportations and occupation of neighbouring countries. Before that, Shamiev heard mostly about glory in the second world war and the country's economic development under Stalin. "Such teachings have left many in our country nostalgic about the Soviet Union. Many feel that it was better to live in a common, strong country," he says.

I met Vera Lapina, another of the seminar participants, in a beautiful art nouveau building in the centre of St Petersburg in March. She still felt shaken almost a month later. Lapina's grandfather, an electrical grid engineer, moved to the Estonian capital of Tallinn in the 1970s - like many other Russians sent to the Baltic states as experts. "They went full of idealism and helped build up and develop the country, and now they've become occupants," she says.

Lapina's grandparents told her they committed themselves for life when they moved. "My granddad learned the Estonian language, which was not easy, but he wanted to. My grandma fell in love with the city, which was so European, different from anywhere else in the Soviet Union at the time."

Lapina is desperate to rebuild such positive feelings. "We seem to have no common cultural values with Estonia now. Why are they showing films from Brazil and China in Russia, but so little about our neighbours?" she asks. "The politicians need to do something. If they feel so badly about us in the Baltics, we can apologise. Why doesn't our president apologise on behalf of our country?"

This is a minority opinion. Many others I interviewed complained it was unfair to accuse their country of aggression. Alexandra Kondusova, an economics student in St Petersburg, argues that the Baltic States enjoyed privileges in Soviet times, and says they are ungrateful. "The Baltics had very little industry before the Soviet Union - we gave them everything. But now they are throwing it away."

There are similar sensitivities between Russia and Poland. Grzegorz Schetyna, Poland's foreign minister, unleashed a storm in Russia in January when he suggested that the end of the second world war should not be celebrated in Russia as one of the countries from which it originated. Soviet troops entered Poland shortly after Germany, which had started the war. The Soviet offensive was in line with the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, the treaty signed in 1939 under which Germany and the Soviet Union secretly divided up central and eastern Europe among themselves.

Moscow continues to deny this was an invasion. Putin himself defends the pact, which broke down a year later, as a means of foreign policy aimed at delaying war with Germany. On Victory Day, Russia continues to commemorate not the second world war but what it calls the "great patriotic war", dating only from Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941.

"Of course, memory is always pluralistic, and there are always some things we remember and other things we're leaving to oblivion," says Mariusz Sielski, a Polish sociologist in Moscow who specialises in memory studies. "But there is a moment where we need to pay enough attention and have enough respect to listen to someone else's memory."

Sielski believes Russia is struggling to come to terms with this difficult history because it was under totalitarian rule for so long. He says the Catholic Church in Poland allowed a communal memory to exist that rivalled the official version of history. "People could discover that there was another truth," he says. "That never existed in Soviet Russia. Here, the only space outside official history was private, inside the families, and often Russians who had been involved in the war only told their children about what happened on their deathbeds."

Shameful historical events are often emotionally explosive for Russians. In 2010, Sielski accidentally walked in on a private screening at Smolensk University of Katyń, the film by Polish director Andrzej Wajda about the massacre of more than 20,000 Poles by the Soviet NKVD internal affairs agency in 1940. The Soviets blamed the massacre on the Nazis until 1990, when they finally acknowledged the truth. Sielski participated in the discussion afterwards.

"When they realised I was Polish, it provoked an emotional breakdown," he says. "It was very uncomfortable for me - I was asked to forgive, but who am I to forgive this?" One of the students started talking about his grandfather, who worked as a KGB officer in Estonia. "He said he loved his grandfather but only now realised his grandfather might have done wrong, and that he didn't accept it," Sielski recalls. "This was the only time a Russian ever said anything like this to me."

Nikolaus Katzer, director of the German Historical Institute, a German government-funded institution in Moscow, says any kind of reappraisal of wartime history is politically difficult because the conventional version has become so central to Russian national identity. "Of course, they want to preserve the victory narrative and the perspective that the Soviet Union acted to the benefit of its neighbours, but you have to have a dialogue about these things," he says.

Many Russians who have travelled or lived abroad have experienced a collision of narratives. Law student Adel Zabbarov, 20, spent a year at a Californian high school when he was 16. When we meet in a Moscow coffee shop, I am struck by how positive he still feels about America - something that has become increasingly rare in Russia.

"I want to be an advocate of western values in Russia and to contribute to making them better understood here," he says enthusiastically. But even he was taken aback when his history textbook featured a table comparing Stalin and Hitler as examples of totalitarian rulers. "I had never heard people mention Stalin in such a context before," he says. "Stalin was our wartime leader, and for every Russian the second world war is an issue so close to the heart because every family lost someone in that war."

Zabbarov also remembers a discussion about the victory in the war. An American classmate argued that the fact that 30 million people died in the Soviet Union didn't mean it had been the country that won the war. For one of his friends, this kind of talk was too much. She told her teacher she disagreed with the way the wartime period was presented in the textbook. Some of her classmates mockingly called her a Russian spy. This upset her so much that she stood up and sang the Russian national anthem, and was suspended from class for a week.

Zabbarov came to a different conclusion. He concluded his American classmates had a right to their point of view. "I am glad I didn't let emotion blind me," he says. "If I opened that textbook at the page with the Hitler and Stalin table again, I wouldn't be shocked any more either."

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 #3
The National Interest
April 10, 2015
Europe's Nightmare: Ukraine's Massive Meltdown
"Above all, what Ukraine needs today is for the West to lean hard on Kiev in support of economic and political reform."
By Dmitri Trenin
Dmitri Trenin is Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

The Minsk II accord is not a peace deal. It is a cease-fire agreement, and a fragile one at that. Beyond suspending large-scale hostilities, pulling back heavy weapons and exchanging prisoners of war, Minsk can hardly be implemented.

Kiev cannot and will not pay for the Donbass' rehabilitation, and would not talk to the rebel leaders. Economic ties are not being restored, and human contacts are restricted. Reintegrating Donbass into the rest of Ukraine is only acceptable to Kiev if the rebel forces de facto surrender and their administrative structures disappear, allowing Ukraine to resume control over the section of the border that links Donetsk and Lugansk to Russia. Theoretically, this could only be achieved through Kiev's military victory, or the Kremlin's political collapse. Neither of these is realistic at this point. The conflict is currently frozen.

Would Russia, for its part, seek a decisive military victory itself, to precipitate Kiev's political collapse, and mount a spring offensive, within the next few days and weeks? A year ago today, this issue was reportedly debated. The decision then, as we know today, was to limit Moscow's engagement in supporting the "people's republics" in Donbass, but avoid a large-scale military intervention in the rest of Ukraine.

Can this decision be revisited, and possibly reversed now? It's not likely. Not only would an invasion be costly in every conceivable way, but it would be utterly unnecessary. Moscow banks on peace, not war-and for a reason.

With the fighting in Donbass having largely stopped, the focus in Ukraine has shifted back to Kiev. There, the picture is not pretty. The oligarch Igor Kolomoisky wasted no time sending in his militias to take over business assets in the capital, provoking a clash with interior troops loyal to President Petro Poroshenko. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk is under fire from his rivals, and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko is rising to claim her bit of power in the land. Meanwhile, the Rada, divided not so much along party lines as oligarchical clan interests, is busy discussing the procedures for privatization.

One can argue that the Maidan revolution of 2014 has changed everything except Ukraine's oligarchical politico-economic system. True, Viktor Yanukovych is gone, but the rest have only become more powerful with his departure. The one-clan-rule regime is finished, but the corrupt oligarchical regime has been restored. To expect that the Ukrainian oligarchs and their political allies or agents will now work for deep economic reform and come together in the name of the country's national interest means to ignore the entire history of post-Soviet Ukraine. Against this background, the sense of unity in broader society borne out of the unfinished war in the east may not last long.

This could be dangerous in several ways. Ukraine needs major financial support, but its EU and other donors are not feeling overly generous with money, given their various other commitments (such as that to Greece). They are also intensely distrustful of their partners in Kiev, yet unwilling and unable to take charge of such a large country themselves. Miracles sometimes happen, and Sauls may yet turn into Pauls, but gambling on the future of a place like Ukraine is unwise as a policy prescription. A much more active commitment to Ukraine is required; doing nothing can turn out to be much costlier than engaging heavily.

Those in Russia who, despite-or maybe because of-everything that has happened in the last sixteen months, still delude themselves into seeing Ukraine as part and parcel of the Russian world and a candidate for Eurasian economic integration wait for the eventual collapse of the Maidan-installed regime and a new chance for Novorossiya. The problem is that if Ukraine enters a new round of massive instability, it will hardly be a boon to Russia. Rather, it could become a vortex into which Russia and the West, including the United States, will be sucked-with unpredictable and likely dire results.

Hardly anyone in the United States should wish for that. However, Washington needs to be careful. It is normal for military men to remain watchful and always be prepared for the worst, i.e. an enemy attack. It is equally important, however, to make sure that one's own allies- either out of hubris, like Georgia's former president Mikheil Saakashvili in 2008, or out of desperation, such as a Ukrainian government fearful of losing control of the country at some point in the future-do not jump the gun, expecting the United States to rush in to defend them. Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has made a habit of saying the Ukrainians are fighting for Western civilization. This time, the miscalculation could have much more serious consequences than what happened in South Ossetia.

In strategic terms, Russia is much closer to Ukraine than is the United States, has much more at stake there and, if push comes to shove, has escalation dominance in the region. The chain of events leading to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, including the leftist-led revolution against the corrupt U.S.-supported regime of Fulgencio Batista; the new regime's subsequent affiliation with the communist Soviet Union; the unsuccessful U.S. military intervention on the island where the United States had a military base; and finally, the Soviet move to support the Castro regime by deploying nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba will not be repeated elsewhere more than half a century later, but it should give us food for thought-and pause. The roles might be reversed, but the risks are comparable.

Above all, what Ukraine needs today is for the West to lean hard on Kiev in support of economic and political reform. Not Mariupol, but a meltdown of Ukraine itself is a clear and present danger that needs to be addressed.

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#4
The Herald (Scotland)
April 12, 2015
No daughter can be restored. No leg can be replaced: our report from the frontline of the war in Eastern Ukraine
By David Pratt
Foreign Editor, Sunday Herald

Nadezhda Kalashnikova is just one of thousands of victims of the war in eastern Ukraine which has now claimed more than 6,000 lives and left over one million people displaced and without homes.

In the first of a series of articles on the humanitarian crisis resulting from the conflict Foreign Editor David Pratt reports from frontline communities in the country's volatile Luhansk Oblast region.

As a fragile ceasefire holds, emergency specialists from aid agency MercyCorps are working under difficult conditions to bring relief provision to some of the most vulnerable.

This series of articles marks a new partnership between the Sunday Herald and MercyCorps that will see us reporting on humanitarian crises around the world where the agency is responding.

A shroud of mist and drizzle hung over the village like some ominous portent of things to come.

Clearing the last Ukrainian army checkpoint our car made its way along a narrow road chewed up and rutted by the tracks of passing tanks before dropping into the village of Triokhizbenka.

Across the world I've long since learned that frontline communities have all much the same feel and atmosphere.

Almost always there is that palpable tension or eerie quiet, as if something, anything, could happen at a moment's notice. This village was no exception.

The rain was heavy now, but here and there a few of Triokhizbenka's citizens had come on to the streets milling around in little clusters, talking most likely about the war, food and electricity shortages, whether to stay or leave and what the uncertain future might bring.

It was on these same quaint village streets lined with their little tumbledown houses and slatted wooden fences that Nadezhda Kalashnikova and her nine-year-old daughter Valentina were walking when the spectre of war came to visit them in person last November.

"They had been for a vaccination at a nearby hospital and were on their way back a short distance from home when the shelling started," recalls Nadezhda's husband, Anatoliy, his wife sitting listening close by.

What Anatoliy described next was something that will haunt both their lives forever. It was the moment when a shell fell from the sky thumping into the ground barely three yards from Nadezhda and Valentina scattering its lethal red-hot razor-edged shrapnel in all directions.

The little girl was killed instantly and her mother torn apart by the deadly flying metal, resulting in the loss of her left leg.

As we talk in the modest living room of their home, Nadezhda sits on the edge of a bed, her other daughter, seven-month-old Polina propped in her lap.

Around the floor are scattered some of the toddler's toys. Nadezhda is wearing a dressing gown but the stump and wide scar of her amputated leg is clearly visible as are other now healed wounds on her right calf.

Even before that terrible day when Valentina was killed and Nadezhda maimed, this young mother's health had been fragile.

Having only one fully functioning lung her survival from the trauma of her wounds is testimony to her own self will and the "heroes" of the ambulance and emergency service staff whose devotion to duty running the gauntlet of bullets and bombs she so admires.

Valentina is one of more than 6,000 lives lost in eastern Ukraine's war in the last year alone. In this bitter conflict that rarely makes headlines, more than one million people have been left without homes.

Nadezhda Kalashnikova, her family and many others I was to meet during my time in the region are the real faces behind these statistics, the true human cost of a conflict where many fear the worst of which is still yet to come.

While a fragile ceasefire between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatist fighters by and large holds across the firing line, Triokhizbenka and similar towns and villages continue to sit in the shadow of war.

Triokhizbenka itself doesn't so much sit near the frontline but straddles it.

Residents in there told me that only the night before my arrival in the village there had been exchanges of gunfire. For many months, too, these same people have survived sub-zero temperatures without electricity, many often sheltering in basements in the hope of protection from the arc of shells, missiles and mortar rounds that would crash into the heart of the village. "Candles have become normal," was how one old woman put it.

Those who could afford it, or had somewhere else to go, got out when they could.

But often the most vulnerable; the elderly; infirm; poor; disabled; had no choice but to sit out the violence engulfing their community. Nadezhda Kalashnikova's husband, Anatoliy, makes the point that some 80 per cent of the residents of Triokhizbenka have work elsewhere, meaning that with the restrictions on movement imposed by the fighting people are left with no income and reliant on what meagre savings, if any, they might have.

Also, with the collapse of any administrative structure, those caught in flashpoint areas are left without pensions or benefits for disability, which Nadezhda herself has yet to receive since she was wounded last year. She and her family are far from alone.

On a good day it's a two-hour drive from Triokhizbenka to the much larger town of Sievierodonetsk. Travelling on the roads Continued on page 34 Continued from page 33 across eastern Ukraine is to be instantly reminded of the way this region has been politically dislocated and violently dismembered.

Every few miles on this the government side of the frontline, our car grinds to halt while we wait to be called forward to some checkpoint with its concrete and sandbagged chicanes that block the way.

Given the presence of 'foreign' fighters in this war, government controlled checkpoints are wary of strangers. At most of these, passports and documents are checked and a brief search made by the armed men cradling assault rifles. Ominous black ski masks are de-rigueur here for the soldiers manning these positions, in part as protection against the bitter cold and also to conceal their identity.

"This one is famous, it's called Stalingrad," our driver tells us as we slowly draw up towards one checkpoint near the town of Stanitsa Luhanska, around which has been some of the fiercest fighting in the region.

As we drive through I notice that most of the tall birch trees on either side have been shattered by shellfire. Alongside the road, trenches and emplacements are deeply dug in and the detritus of past fighting is scattered everywhere, including the charred carapace of a tank, its turret lying decapitated from what could only have been a direct hit and massive explosion.

In Sievierodonetsk, however, it is the damage to the lives of ordinary, already vulnerable, civilians that I have come to find out more about. Crammed into a rundown hostel where sometimes as many as 10 family members share a room, I came across 70-year-old Nelly Chernikova and her middle-aged son, Igor, who is blind and mentally disabled.

They had fled their home of Stakhanov last October as the fighting raged around their neighbourhood, leaving behind Nelly's daughter and granddaughter. "The windows were vibrating, we were on the ninth floor with no water, no electricity," recalls Nelly.

Worried about Igor's deteriorating health she decided to flee Stakhanov but had to borrow money from friends to do so as their savings had run out.

Igor's father, a former miner, had long since died and Nelly had become the sole guardian and trustee of her son's disability benefit, but by then they were receiving next to nothing.

"Igor has had eight operations on his eyes, we have tried all our lives to make things better for him but it has been very difficult and now this," she says, a momentary sense of despair creeping into her voice.

After they managed to get out to the comparative safety of Sievierodonetsk, Igor spent three weeks in hospital having become aggressive, no doubt in part from the trauma that he and his mother had suffered.

"All he keeps asking is when we can go home," Nelly says, only moments before Igor himself asks my photographer colleague if he has a car and if so could he drive he and his mother home.

Having left with only the clothes they were wearing and a few belongings in a bag they had no time to bring Igor's precious cassette player and the collection of tapes to which he would often sing along to, to help keep his mind from the terrifying thump of shellfire resounding around their neighbourhood.

"He liked to sing along especially to religious chants, now we only have this," Nelly explains, holding up a small battered radio that provides them with their only entertainment now.

As we talk I cannot help notice a poster taped to the wall, perhaps left over from a previous resident in the hostel. The poster was a publicity flyer for the Donetsk Uefa 2012 European Championship that was held in the nearby eastern Ukrainian city a few years ago, a memory of happier times before that city too succumbed to the ravages of the war.

Along with the dozens of other "displaced people" who occupy this hostel in Sievierodonetsk, Nelly now pays 800 hryvnia (£23) where last month it was only 500, this from a total income of 2,800 hryvnia (£81) which must also pay for food and other essentials.

As prices soar because of the war such people, already among some of the poorest Ukrainians, are struggling to survive. Savings have long since gone to buy food and cover accommodation costs for basic shelter like this overcrowded rundown hostel. Across the region there are hundreds of thousands more scared and traumatised people like Nelly and Igor. As in all wars, the displaced know no boundaries and here are to be found both in Ukraine government-administered areas and on the other side of the frontlines in non-government controlled zones.

As rumours that a breakdown in the current fragile ceasefire could be looming - adding further to this human misery - aid agencies are gearing up their programmes in the worst affected areas like Luhansk Oblast. Mercy Corps, whose European headquarters are in Edinburgh, has been among the first to gain access to such regions and is now setting up programmes that will directly help the most vulnerable like Nelly and her son.

In the immediate term everything from plastic sheeting, blankets and water containers to hygiene and sanitation provision needs to be addressed in areas damaged by fighting.

On a wider level, the aim is to provide cash vouchers to help with shelter for those displaced and help host families. Cash transfer programmes will also enable people to buy food and help protect livelihoods, while food parcels will be distributed in those non-government controlled areas in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) which lie under the administration of pro-Russian separatists. For just as the displaced know no boundaries in wartime, so too must any humanitarian response where the needs of civilian victims comes first.

Travelling across eastern Ukraine's unrelentingly flat steppe, bleak at this time of year before the colours of spring have made their mark, is to traverse a region in dire need of humanitarian support.

Historically, this is a country no stranger to the ravages of war. Many of the elderly I met who sadly cower from bombardment today did so too during the Second World War. Most could never have imagined that once again they would face such horrors.

Before leaving the home of Nadezhda Kalashnikova and her family in Triokhizbenka, I asked her husband if he was angry at those responsible for the death of his daughter and maiming of his wife?

"No daughter can be restored, no leg can be replaced," was his resigned reply. How true that is. But at least the chance remains of ensuring his surviving family and others like them have what they need to help cope with the ongoing hardship this war creates.

You can donate today and help give critical supplies to those in desperate need.

Please go online at www.mercycorp.org.uk or phone 08000 413 060 (24 hours) or 0131 662 5173 (Mon - Fri 9am - 5pm).

 #5
Carnegie Moscow Center
April 11, 2015
Corrupting Civil Society in Post-Maidan Ukraine?
By Mikhail Minakov
Mikhail Minakov is associate professor/docent in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and president of the Foundation for Good Politics. A longer version of his research paper (in Russian) can be read here: http://www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forum/docs/forumruss22/10MinakovGrazhdanskoje.pdf

Ukrainian civil society has become something of a paradox over the past year. Following former President Yanukovych's ouster in February of 2014, civil society organizations successfully guided the country through a difficult transfer of power. From February to April 2014, it was the Maidan self-defense groups that fought back separatist uprisings and a Russian-backed invasion, and maintained order in Ukrainian cities that lacked functional police forces. Since then, however, they have been reluctant to give power back to the governmental institutions that have failed the Ukrainian people for so many years.

Using forms of self-organization created on the Maidan (self-defense, counter-propaganda, advocacy, fund-raising, and other civil society groups), independent actors have taken over some of the state's responsibilities in responding to war and political crises. In doing so, they saved the Ukrainian state from collapse in the short-term, but also created critical obstacles for the state's development in the medium-term. Resolution of this paradox is crucial for the fate of Ukraine: moving forward, the government in Kyiv will have to rebalance its relationship with these actors, particularly when it comes to security issues.

In their seminal book, Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World, Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart describe the state as a set of institutions fulfilling a set of exclusive functions. Two of these functions lie at the state's core: a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence (by the police and the army) and administrative control. When the government fails to preserve its monopoly on these functions, a "sovereignty gap"-a gap between de jure sovereignty the state's de facto ability to serve its people-emerges. The bigger the gap, the more reason to believe the state has failed.

In reality, states rarely fail completely. More frequently, governments are temporarily unable to fulfill some of their major responsibilities, which may lead to an inability to meet the needs of the people. However, there are also examples of non-state actors stepping in when governmental structures are temporary unable to fulfill these essential tasks.

Ukraine falls into the latter category. Since President Yanukovych's flight to Russia, post-Maidan civic actors have supported the state's military response to the war and even helped it assert administrative control over the country. Several groups of civilians led by self-defense activists were the first to organize themselves into 'volunteer battalions' who fought against the anti-Maidan separatist groups trying to take over administrative offices in cities in southeastern Ukraine.

In addition, several huge networks were organized to collect money and purchase equipment for those battalions, and later, for the Ukrainian army's regular detachments. In an attempt to enhance efficiency and gain legitimacy, Ukraine's transitional cabinet (which was in office from February to November 2014) allowed non-state actors to fulfill five functions:

Defense: Empowering volunteer battalions to fight against Russian intervention and separatist uprisings in the eastern part of the country;
 
Internal security: Enlisting self-defense groups to police cities and towns nationwide;
 
Counter-propaganda: Urging civil society groups to battle Russian propaganda about Russia's annexation of Crimea and promotion of separatism in the Donbas;
 
Elections: Allowing civil society leaders to create alternative activist networks to ensure open and honest voting; and
 
Lustration: Allowing activists to push for changes among power elites, mainly in public service (particularly in local administrations and courts). Groups raided offices in Kyiv and in regional centers, and removed (not always justly) officials associated with the Yanukovych regime. Later, they created a group that pressured the president and prime-minister to work with parliament to pass a new law on lustration.
Through their efforts in these five areas, non-state actors fulfilled important functions that the Ukrainian authorities were unable to and arguably saved the state from collapse.

But as a side effect, civil society now plays an outsized role in Ukrainian politics. It buttressed Ukraine's chances of surviving post-revolutionary fragmentation and war. Civil society advocated the public interest and made public institutions act more efficiently in addressing it. The CHESNO movement continued to oversee parliament's work day in and day out; a network of civil committees controlled the lustration of public officials in key governmental agencies; and the Reanimation Package of Reforms initiative spearheaded reform efforts.

However, at a certain point in the conflict, civil society transcended the realm of advocacy, and began to act more independently. It began to resolve issues in areas where the government could not, eventually becoming a rival to the state in certain spheres. Non-state actors' direct action and unprecedented political role gave rise to a paradox: civil society was able to address some of the Ukraine's immediate challenges, but created new challenges for the nation's political order.

Activists are increasingly involved in the political, economic and civil sectors, each of which has an important role to play in state-building. Certain public interests-honest elections leading to proper representation in parliament, or responsible and responsive governance, for example-need to be constantly monitored. Effective advocacy of these interests is at the core of civil society organizations' mandate.

However, trouble begins when civil society organizations attempt to be more than watchdogs; when the 'dog' is unleashed and enters politics. This poses a risk not only to the process of democratization, but also to the survival of the Ukrainian polity and the competitiveness of the economy. Civil society organizations' expanding mandate poses a threat to the most significant political forces in Ukraine: oligarchs and the ruling class in government.

Traditionally, the Ukrainian political class has treated civil society organizations as either 'agents of the West' or counter-elites undermining its rule. For their part, civil society leaders and activists trusted neither the government nor politicians. But with the inability of the political class to adequately respond to the situation in Ukraine last year, this mutual enmity has turned into competitive cooperation. Ruling groups and some civil society organizations have established certain forms of cooperation to solve problems critical for collective survival.

Oligarchic groups have long detested the "third sector," considering it to be a dysfunctional rival in dealing with public issues. After the Orange Revolution, rent-seeking oligarchs created 'private philanthropic organizations' that came to compete with major civic NGOs to influence the government, local communities, and international donors.

In 2014, a new phenomenon emerged, which threatens to corrupt civil society's role in another way. Oligarchic groups recognized the functionality of civil society organizations and attempted to use them-sometimes through coercion-either to increase their rent or to defend their existing power and property. This misuse of civil society organizations by oligarchs to advance their own political or economic agenda has threatened the longer-term stability of Ukraine.

Igor Kolomoisky is the most high-profile oligarch to attempt to use civil society organizations to meet his own ends in recent months. He created a large network of private businesses; entities managing state-owned companies; bureaucrats in control of certain posts in central government and local communities in the south-east; and national and local media figures to promote his personal agenda. During the war, he employed a huge number of volunteer groups (including military battalions), organizations advocating lustration, and other NGOs that helped advance his own interests. They promoted the image of Kolomoisky as a 'defender of the independence' of Ukraine, even after his men attempted a hostile takeover of state-owned gas transit company Ukrnafta on March 21, 2015.

Established oligarchs like Rinat Akhmetov and Viktor Pinchuk, and up-and-comers like Arsen Avakov and Sergii Pashynsky are beginning to use Kolomoisky's strategy. This emerging model abuses civil activists and plays on their desire to solve public problems through direct action. Oligarchs employ resources-financial, media and political-to help activists to take action they think is legitimate. But over time, oligarchs are charging a price for their support.

The coercive power of oligarchs is one of the major current threats for the development of civil society in Ukraine. Corruption remains a vexing issue that has impeded Ukraine's political and economic development, as it has in other post-Soviet countries. It is at the heart of the nexus between politics and business. As seen in Kolomoisky's network, some parts of civil society are now becoming involved in these corrupt schemes as well. In the end, the nexus between civil society, business, and politics will introduce a new shade of systemic corruption and reduce the resources for the further democratic development of Ukraine.

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 #6
Forbes.com
April 10, 2015
Ukraine Debt Rating Now Super-Duper Junk
By Kenneth Rapoza

When Arseniy "Yats" Yatsenyuk took over the Prime Minister role in Ukraine, he said that his country was going to go through some austere, difficult times.  He wasn't kidding. With the economy expected to contract by 8% this year, and Western bailouts becoming its only salvation, the Ukrainian debt bomb ticks closer to a sovereign default with every passing minute.

On Friday, Standard & Poor's cut Ukraine's long term foreign debt rating to CC from CCC-.  The rating of CC is one notch above C, which is used when a debtor is in the process of filing for bankruptcy protection.

Standard & Poor's kept Ukraine's short-term foreign credit rating at C with a negative outlook.

Ukraine's Central Bank is down to just $5.6 billion in reserves as of February, according to data from the International Monetary Fund.

Some of the biggest emerging market bond holders are currently stuck holding Ukrainian debt. They honestly think they are going to get their money back.

On Thursday, the WSJ reported that foreign investors holding $10 billion of Ukrainian bonds "joined forces to develop a restructuring plan" for the country's debt. The plan does not include a reduction in principal, but interest payments on the other hand are impossible to manage at these rates.

Ukraine's short term debt is unsustainable. Its 2015 euro bond yields a killer 178% based on the closing price on the Frankfurt exchange on Friday.  Further along the debt curve, Ukraine's dollar denominated 2023s yield 26.25%.

Ukraine's immediate future is now firmly in the hands of Western bond funds and the IMF .

"A detailed proposal is being developed by the committee that provides Ukraine with the necessary financial liquidity support it has requested... without any principal debt reductions," Blackstone Group International Partners LLP and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, which are advising the bondholders, were quoted as saying Thursday in the Journal.

Bond prices have collapsed by more than 50% over the last 12 months as Ukraine grapples with economic reforms, IMF induced austerity, the loss of important real estate following Crimea's annexation by Russia, and a civil war in four eastern provinces along the Russian border.  Russian military have been helping pro-Russia separatists fight the Ukrainian army, leading to violent uprisings, loss of life, and loss of property in Ukraine's industrial hub states. The economy is in disarray as a result of these losses.

"Nobody knows what is happening in Ukraine," says Ukrainian lawyer Marlen Kurzkhov, a partner with Gusrae Kaplan in New York.  Kurzkhov has been working with high net worth Ukrainians looking to get their money out of the country.  "All I know for sure is that whatever money the IMF gives to them, the government will steal some of it, at least that's the word on the street. A lot of Ukrainian businessmen are hoping things will blow over, or are dealing with authorities on the ground - whether it's the Russians, the Ukrainians, or the separatists. It all depends on the person. Some clients have completely lost access to their assets in east Ukraine," he says without naming names.

Standard & Poor's says a default is certain.

From the credit watchdog:

"Although we note that there is a virtual certainty of a restructuring or exchange offer in the near term, there are no specific details on what the government will propose to investors in talks to seek $15.3 billion in savings. As such, the final outcome-in terms of a potential principal haircut, maturity extension, and coupon reduction for the 29 debt instruments under discussion-is highly uncertain. The treatment of the Eurobond owed to Russia (maturing in December 2015) is likely to complicate matters. The Ukrainian government insists it will be part of the talks, while the Russian government insists that the bond, although issued under international law, should be classified as "official" rather than "commercial" debt given the favorable interest rate and the fact that it was purchased by a government entity. Indeed, if Ukraine has to pay the $3 billion in debt redemption this year, it will make it very difficult for Ukraine to find the $5 billion in expected debt relief in 2015 that underpins the IMF's 2015 external financing assumptions."

The IMF approved the provision of $17.5 billion to Ukraine in February as part of a four-year extension that replaced the original deal made in 2014. All told, the IMF program targets a total of $40 billion in loans, nearly seven times what the Central Bank of Ukraine has in reserves.

On top of the $17.5 billion expected from the IMF, the program anticipates an additional $7 billion from other international financial institutions and $15.3 billion from the private sector, though who that may be is unknown. There are no white knights coming to Ukraine's rescue.

Ukraine received the first $5 billion tranche from the IMF in early March and that is due early next year.

Ukraine has always been a relatively corrupt and unstable economy run by a few wealthy oligarchs.  Transparency International lists Ukraine business and politics as being more corrupt than the Wild East oligarchs running Russia's economy.

Today, Ukraine is fast becoming a shadow of its former self. It is at real risk of being Balkanized by Russia. And the economy is suffering in the meantime.  The crisis has some large American frontier market bond funds like Templeton Asset Management worried about major write-downs on Ukrainian debt.

In 2008, Ukraine's GDP was $180 billion. This year, Standard & Poor's estimates it to come in at just $73 billion, a 50% drop. That has direct impacts on an otherwise educated workforce seeking to integrate with the West.

GDP per capita is expected to fall to around $2,000 this year, an embarrassment which puts the number on par with India. Ukraine's population is 45 million.

In 2008, Ukraine's debt to GDP ratio was a solid 20%. Today, it is very high 93% according to Standard & Poor's.

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 #7
Kyiv Post
April 10,, 2015
Politicizing History: Parliament adopts Dangerously Divisive Laws
By Halya Coynash
 
From the Institute for National Remembrance

On April 9 Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada adopted four laws pertaining to Ukraine's recent history, two of which at least are highly contentious, with the manner in which they were presented to parliament and voted on also grounds for concern.  At a time when Russia is waging undeclared war against Ukraine, the need for unity is paramount.  Instead, a majority in the Verkhovna Rada passed laws which will be used in propaganda against Ukraine with some of that propaganda, unfortunately, being difficult to refute.  

The four laws were only tabled in parliament on April 3, with no public debate despite subject matter arousing very strong opinions and emotions in a significant number of Ukrainians.  The most controversial law has a different title and broader scope, but basically does something that was talked about under the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko but never carried through precisely because it was so contentious.  The law now is entitled 'On the Legal Status and Honouring of Fighters for Ukraine's Independence in the Twentieth Century', and carries with it entitlement to social benefits and full military status.  This, among other things, recognizes the UPA, or Ukrainian Insurgent Army, as veterans of the Second World War.  The whole law essentially lumps vastly different military formations, political or human rights movements together as having all struggled for Ukrainian independence, and then states, in Article 6, that "public denial of the legitimacy of the struggle for Ukraine's independence in the XX century is deemed desecration of the memory of fighters for Ukraine's independence in the XX century, denigration of the dignity of the Ukrainian people and is unlawful".

No legal consequences are mentioned, however the very statement is of concern.  There is an enormous list of such entities, and it would take time to verify how many of them were implicated in, for example, acts of terrorism viewed by their perpetrators as legitimate forms of struggle.  Would suggesting that it was terrorism to kill Polish politicians in the 1930s (and sometimes also Ukrainians who held different views)  fall under Article 6?

There will be inevitable fallout from full recognition of UPA (and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, or OUN).  This is likely to be viewed very negatively by a considerable number of Ukrainians, especially in eastern parts of Ukraine.  It is also guaranteed to anger Poles, in particular because of the Volyn Massacre of 1943 in which UPA members were directly implicated.  Authoritative historians such as Grzegorz Motyka provide evidence showing that the ethnic cleansing policy then applied by the Volyn UPA in October 1943 received the tacit approval of Roman Shukhevych, UPA commander and father of the author of the 2015 bill, Yury Shukhevych.  

Again, would mentioning these facts be considered to be 'showing disrespect' for independence fighters?

This is a contentious area which needed to be introduced properly with widespread discussion and respect for conflicting views.  It could not be achieved before the end of Yushchenko's presidency, and it is disturbing that it was slipped in now at a time when such debate is rendered impossible because of the conflict with Russia.

There is no reason to expect Russia's well-paid and manned propaganda machine to stay silent when such obvious opportunities to fuel resentment and anger are handed to them on a platter.

The second bill which gained a lot of publicity is 'On condemning the communist and National Socialist (Nazi) totalitarian regimes and prohibiting propaganda of their symbols'.

Whatever one's attitude to the Soviet regime is, a blanket ban on "public denial of the criminal nature of the communist totalitarian regime of 1917 - 1991 in Ukraine" seems designed to strangle any attempts at real historical study of the period.  Once again, the bill requires careful analysis, to see what symbols are actually prohibited, and what totally fascist ideologies have unwarrantedly been omitted from the ban.  There are also absurdities since even military awards could be regarded as prohibited symbols of Ukraine's communist totalitarian past. Dmitry Tymchuk, military commentator and now MP has already promised to rectify this specific issue, however there are many.  Proper study and consultation with historians, etc, should have been carried out and made public before the bill was adopted, not now.

The package of bills was presented in parliament and largely drawn up by the head of the Institute for National Remembrance Volodymyr Viatrovych.  The latter was head of the SBU [Security Service] archives under Yushchenko and became widely known for his strong support for nationalist leaders Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, and OUN-UPA.  His works as a historian, for example, his attempts to present the Volyn Massacre "in a wider context" as part of an alleged Polish-Ukrainian war from 1942-1947 have prompted criticism, both from historians and from the wider public.  Concern has often been expressed, including by the author of these words, over historical manipulation of facts or downright inaccuracies.

Viatrovych undoubtedly has the right to his own views.  Neither he nor the Institute he now heads has the right to determine what parts of history are remembered and how.  Under Yushchenko, he strongly defended controversial decisions to declare Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych 'heroes of Ukraine', claiming in Bandera's case that all the 'evidence' proved him to be worthy of the title.  This is a judgment based on a person's ideological position, and should not be foisted on others.

The other two bills are contentious mainly because of concerns about the possible politicization of the Institute for National Remembrance.

'On remembering the victory over Nazism in the Second World War' does not cancel Victory Day on May 9, but establishes May 8 as Day of Memory and Reconciliation. It also removes use of the Soviet term Great Patriotic War.

Item 3 prohibits "falsification of the history of the Second World War 1939-1945 in academic studies, teaching and methodological literature, textbooks, the media, public addresses by representatives of the authorities, bodies of local self-government and officials".

This should be uncontentious, but is not, as any glance at material, including by Viatrovych, on UPA, Bandera, the events in Volyn, etc. will make clear.   Who is to decide what constitutes "falsification"?

The final law 'On access to the archives of repressive bodies of the communist totalitarian regime from 1917-1991' places all state archives under the jurisdiction of the Institute for National Remembrance'.

Open access to archives is indeed vital and it is quite likely true, as stated in the explanatory note, that this is standard for democratic countries.  What is not necessarily standard is the degree of politicization of the country's Institute for National Remembrance.  Put very bluntly, if you are convinced that a person is a hero, then you are unlikely to wish material suggesting the contrary to be on public display.

The laws passed on Thursday go a step further, prohibiting 'falsification' of history and 'disrespect' for independence fighters.  Russia has gone much further still in recent years and, for example, is currently seeing a huge increase in support for the bloody Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.  The antidote is found not in counter-propaganda, but in rejection of political interference in historical memory and total freedom for historical investigation.

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#8
Current Politics in Ukraine
https://ukraineanalysis.wordpress.com
April 9, 2015
UKRAINE PARLIAMENT LEGALIZES 'FIGHTERS FOR UKRAINIAN INDEPENDENCE IN THE 20TH CENTURY'
By David Marples
Distinguished University Professor, University of Alberta, Canada

On April 9, Rada deputy Yurii Shukhevych (Radical Party) introduced a new law to the Ukrainian Parliament "Concerning the legal status and commemorating the memory of the fighters for Ukrainian independence in the 20th century. It also introduced a "Remembrance and Reconciliation Day" on May 8 for the victims of the Second World War, as well as other laws opening access to former Soviet archives and banning Communist and Nazi symbols, all of which were accepted by a majority of deputies.

The period for the registering of the bills, authored by historian Volodymyr Viatrovych, head of the Ukrainian Institute for National Memory and others was astonishingly short given the bills' import. Less than six days were given for discussion over issues that affect almost every facet of Ukrainian history of the 20th century. The impact may solidify national support for the current Parliament, which has been wavering, but it is unlikely to placate Ukraine's critics abroad, either in the Russian government or in Europe.

The law consists of six articles, which deal without differentiation with all so-called "fighters for the independence of Ukraine in the 20th century" starting with the Ukrainian People's Republic of 1918 and ending with the People's Movement for Perestroika (better known as Rukh) prior to August 24, 1991, the date of the declaration of independence. Most controversial are the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO), the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA.

These "fighters" ("strugglers" is the another possible translation of this unsatisfactory noun), according to Article 2, played the chief role in the restoration of Ukrainian statehood in 1991 and are to be guaranteed social benefits, recognition, and military awards (Articles 3 and 4). Article 5 is concerned with publicizing the activities of the various groups and the creation of new gravesites and memorials. Finally, Article 6 makes it a criminal offense to deny the legitimacy of "the struggle for the independence of Ukraine in the 20th century." Public denial is to be regarded as an insult to the memory of the fighters.

To discuss briefly the possible reactions to this bill, one can take three angles: firstly, my own, which is that of an historian; second, that of Russia, a country with which Ukraine has been at loggerheads for the past eighteen months; and third that of the democratic West, principally the European Union and North America.

From the angle of an historian, the new law is too simplistic to be taken seriously. The various organizations are vastly different. How can one compare, for example, the intellectual leaders of the UNR with the young hotheads of the OUN(b) in the 1930s or the ruthless insurgents of UPA? Even more basic, is one supposed to assume that the state that emerged in August 1991 was a direct result of the activities of the fighters for independence? Ironically it owed much more to reforms in Moscow begun by Mikhail Gorbachev, and the former leader's reluctance to use force to prevent a groundswell of independence movements in the former Soviet republics.

Second, the all-encompassing rejection of any facets of the Soviet legacy is troublesome. The Red Army after all removed the Nazi occupation regime from Ukraine in alliance with the Western Powers. Soviet leaders such as Khrushchev and Brezhnev were (respectively) raised or born in Ukraine, and there were other leaders who supported Ukrainian cultural development while maintaining a devotion to Communism, such as Petro Shelest. There were also serious Marxists who rejected Russification, such as Ivan Dziuba. Essentially this law attempts to erase from history their contributions to modern Ukraine.

Moving back further to the 1920s in Western Ukraine, perhaps a majority of politically active Ukrainians supported or joined the Ukrainian National Democratic Union (UNDO), which cooperated with the Polish Sejm and took part in its activities.

From the perspective of the Russian leadership and more militant activists in Russia, the law at one stroke provides credibility to some of their most outrageous and outlandish claims. What better evidence could there be that extreme nationalists are now running the Ukrainian legislature? Practically overnight, the issues that caused so much trouble for former president Viktor Yushchenko have been encapsulated in law.

The question that stymied the proposed Holodomor Law of Yushchenko-making denial (in this case of Genocide) a criminal offence-has simply been overridden in the current bill. Presumably now historians can be arrested for denying the heroism of a Stepan Bandera or the father of the introducer of the bill, Roman Shukheyvch. Russian trolls operating on social networks, very prominently featured in Western media over the past week, have now acquired new and authentic ammunition for their verbal arsenals.

For the Europeans and North Americans some serious dilemmas arise, particularly in Poland, a country that has been especially supportive of Ukraine, but has long agonized over the massacre of its countrymen in Volhynia at the hands of UPA in the spring and summer of 1943 in one of the most graphic examples of ethnic cleansing of the Second World War. The veneration by Yushchenko of Bandera as a hero of Ukraine was the subject of particular venom in Polish society, as well as in the European Parliament.

In the West as a whole, friends of Ukraine will have a difficult time accepting both the wisdom and timing of such a facile and asinine decree that avoids complex problems by lumping together disparate organizations of different periods and seeks to legitimize controversial organizations (OUN and UPA) by cloaking them within general rhetoric of fighting for independence in the 20th century.

No doubt this Law has its origins in the aftermath of Euromaidan, the loss of Crimea, and separatist control of large swathes of the Donbas. It may also be linked to the dissatisfaction with the new government among some of the more radical elements in society, such as the voluntary formations fighting in the east. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that its acceptance into law is a major error, even akin to a death wish vis-à-vis the Donbas, where a quite different version of the 20th century prevails.

Was this crude distortion of the past really necessary? Can one legislate historical events and formations in such a fashion? The Law seems inimical to the values embraced at the peak of Euromaidan.
 

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 #9
Kiev equalizes Communism to Nazism to put pressure on internal opposition
By Lyudmila Alexandrova

MOSCOW, April 10. /TASS/. Ukraine's newly-adopted laws equalizing Communism to Nazism, as well as the authorities' connivance with neo-Nazi Ukrainian organizations, pursue the aim of binding any opposition hand and foot, Russian experts say. The current Ukrainian authorities are out to foment tensions inside society to distract people's attention from the snowballing economic problems, they say.

The Verkhovna Rada on Thursday voted for legislation that not just condemns the Communist and National-Socialist totalitarian regimes, but outlaws their symbols in Ukraine. In fact, the Ukrainian authorities put the equal sign between the two.

Also, the parliament adopted a law on the legal status and commemoration of the victims of struggle for the independence of Ukraine. The status of veterans and independence fighters will be awarded to the members of those organizations which in the Soviet era were considered criminal - pro-Nazi Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and the armies of the Ukrainian People's Republic and West-Ukrainian People's Republic.

President Petro Poroshenko followed in the legislators' footsteps to place equal responsibility on Hitler and Stalin for unleashing World War II.

Heroization of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and its leaders has drawn criticism from many World War II veterans and politicians, who hold Stepan Bandera and his henchmen responsible for collaboration with the Nazis. For instance, there have been calls for remembering the "Volyn massacre" - the 1943 slaughter of Polish civilians by Ukrainian nationalists in Volyn, which up to September 1939 had remained part of Poland.

At the beginning of this year Ukraine's Ministry of Education and Science is going to rewrite all school manuals to describe all post-war years as a period of "Soviet occupation." Besides, President Poroshenko last year signed a decree to cancel celebrations on the occasion of Fatherland Defender Day, February 23. Instead, he introduced Ukraine's Defender Day, to be celebrated on October 14 - the day when the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was formed. Stepan Bandera was one of its founders.

The adoption of the latest laws and the proposed re-writing of history are not accidental, says the deputy dean of the world economy and world politics department at the Higher School of Economics, Andrei Suzdaltsev. "This is a well-considered decision meant for both external and domestic use. Such ritual public burning of Communism is exactly what the Europeans and Americans will applaud... On the one hand, they seek to please the West, and on the other, to respond to the people's growing anger over the economic situation."

The authorities in Kiev fear that the protests will "turn red." "Definitely, the protests will rely on left-of-centre ideologies, and the newly-adopted laws will prove handy to keep them under control. In fact, the slightest chance for the existence of a normal opposition is being eliminated.

As for the ideology of ethnic Ukrainian nationalism, it is neo-Nazi a hundred percent," the expert believes.

The re-writing of history also pursues far-reaching aims. There may well follow demands for compensations from Russia, Suzdaltsev believes.

"The powers that be have now consolidated their foothold and begun to challenge the dissenters, to cause them to rise in revolt with the ultimate aim to crack down on them," the deputy director of the CIS Countries Institute, Vladimir Zharikhin, told TASS. "They have intentionally brought about a situation where the Communists are outlawed. They hope for a return reaction. This fuels a standoff. We are witnesses to the emergence of a totalitarian regime determined to suppress any dissent. Tensions are being fanned deliberately. They are aimed not just at the Communists, but at all those who are against re-writing history and finding excuses for the existence of fascist organizations.

What the current authorities in Kiev actually need now is not the consolidation of society, Zarikhin says. "They will be able to find excuses for the ongoing economic turmoil only in the context of civil standoff. Up to now they could blame it on war in the southeast."

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 #10
The Unz Review
www.unz.com
April 8, 2015
The Maidan Retroactively Criminalizes Itself
BY ANATOLY KARLIN
[Graphic here http://www.unz.com/akarlin/maidan-criminalizes-itself/

The following leaflets are being spread in Slavyansk, a once focal point of the Donbass resistance that was recaptured by Ukrainian forces in July last year:

Translation:

How to recognize your typical separatist?

Calls for the entry of Russian troops or suggests surrendering to Russia.
Propagandizes Russian symbols and spreads the idea of the "Russian world."
Denigrates the values of the Ukrainian people, expresses doubts about the fact of the existence of the Ukrainian nation, Ukrainian language, etc.
Spreads rumors about the non-existent threats to the Russian language or Russian speakers in Ukraine.
Denigrates Ukrainian state symbols - the flag, national anthem, coat of arms, etc.
Praises the so-called DNR and LNR.
Portests against military mobilization.
Initiates events in which people call for overthrow of the government and mass riots.
Spreads lies and inflames interethnic hatred (racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism).
Promotes fear, panic, and defeatist attitudes.

A SEPARATIST IS EVEN SOMEONE WHO AGITATES AGAINST MOBILIZATION OR AWAITS PUTIN'S ARRIVAL! Punishment: 7-12 years imprisonment (Article 110 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code).

If you have encountered a case of separatism, please call the SBU or the government hotline and record the evidence on your phone, video recorder, photo camera.

0 800 507 309 - Government hotline

0 800 501 482 - SBU hotline

Toll free from landline phones.
--

Useless to argue the morals of this; it is justified or not depending on your particular partisan sympathies and the consistency of any convictions you might have on free speech, etc. So I won't bother.

I will however make a few wider points:

1) The utter hypocrisy (and hardheaded practicality) of a regime that came to power through an illegal coup on a wave of mass riots now banning the same thing that got them into power in the first place. And of course the incredibly hardline restrictions on free speech implicit in all this, which are and will continue to be abused (Your neighbor's dog is too loud? Maybe he's a separatist!).

Lest one think this all just talk, consider the case of Ruslan Kotsaba, a (West Ukrainian!) journalist arrested for making a video in which he came out against mobilization, which is strictly speaking without legal basis during a time in which war has not been declared, i.e. up till now. He faces up to 15 years in prison. This is just what is probably the most visible case; there have been sackings, denunciations, business shakedowns, arrests, and imprisonments for non violent expressions of different opinion (or allegations of such) on a scale that would have saved Yanukovych's "bloody regime" had he been even a tenth as ruthless.

2) A corrolary is that the results of opinion polls, which generally show drastic declines in attitudes towards Russia, while certainly real at some level, surely overstate the level of the decline. If you live in Kharkov and some unknown person phoned you and asked you for your opinions on Crimea then you'd have to be fairly brave or at least confident that you are dealing with an ethical pollster before voicing any opinion that goes against the Maidan party line.

3) As the Ukrainian economy plummets into the abyss with a helping hand from the IMF, the incidence of repressions (of which witchhunts for separatists is but a part) is ratcheting up and this process will continue further because after all they will have all been organized by Russia. After all, what possible valid reason could a pensioner with skyrocketing heating bills and devalued savings living on $50 a month have for opposing the oligarchs who rule Ukraine? And with the regime having promoted plenty of Neo-Nazis to positions of power, who'll be happy enough to crack heads while the money continues flowing.

The fact that the regime is driven to such repressive measures is an indication that it does not enjoy firm and overwhelming support from the population. With things likely to get much worse before they get better, it is only a matter of time before the regime will have to drop what remains of its liberal democracy European values facade.

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 #11
Newsweek.com
April 8, 2015
Mystery of Ukraine's Richest Man and a Series of Unlikely Suicides
BY MAXIM TUCKER

Rain lashes the ninth-floor balcony from which Ukrainian prosecutor Sergei Melnychuk was thrown to his death. On the concrete below, his portrait and a few candles in glass jars form a meagre memorial. Wind off the Black Sea has dashed one jar to the ground, the shattered glass a grim reminder of his body after the fall.

Ukraine's war with Russian-sponsored separatists is not the only conflict in the country. Across the post-revolutionary nation, reformists inside and outside government are fighting to free corrupted state institutions from the stranglehold of a few incredibly wealthy businessmen.

Largely fought behind closed doors, this conflict spilled into the public arena when between 19 and 23 March the billionaire governor of Dnipropretovsk region, Ihor Kolomoisky, sent Kalashnikov-wielding men with gas masks to seize the Kiev headquarters of two state-owned energy enterprises. He was promptly sacked by billionaire president Petro Poroshenko, but the powerplay is far from over.

Feuding oligarchs are battling to retain or increase their influence in the new order, and their lieutenants are turning up dead.

Melnychuk was a prosecutor in the southern port town of Odessa, governed by Kolomoisky ally Ihor Palytsia. He is just one of at least eight officials appointed by the Yanukovych regime, ousted by pro-democracy protesters in February last year, to die in mysterious circumstances over the past three months.

And Ukraine's law enforcement doesn't want to talk about them.

When Melnychuk's body was found on 22 March, police initially told local journalists he had committed suicide. But it soon emerged that alarmed neighbours had called police on hearing of a late-night struggle. Pathologists found he had been badly beaten before the fall. Later the same day, Odessa prosecutors registered Melnychuk's "suicide" as a murder, and arrested a former police officer they describe only as "citizen K".

In reply to a legal request by Newsweek for information on investigations into the deaths of seven other former officials, all tied to Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions, the General Prosecutor's Office responded that all the information about all the deaths was a state secret - a staggering claim to make about a series of apparently unrelated civilian deaths they told the press were suicides.

After an intervention by the Presidential Administration, the General Prosecutor's Office disclosed that four of the seven deaths are being investigated as murders, with another investigation as yet unclassified. The two remaining cases had been closed with no evidence of a crime. No other information was provided.

 At the heart of this murder mystery is one wealthy businessman in particular - 48-year-old billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest man with a fortune estimated at $7bn. A former lawmaker for the Party of Regions (rebranded as the "Oppositon Bloc" for the current parliament) he retains serious clout in the country through his purchasing power and long-standing allies in law enforcement and parliament.

"Ahkmetov was the grey cardinal of the Party of Regions," says Dmitriy Gnap, an investigative journalist for Ukrainian TV channel Hromadske who has spent more than a decade reporting on the oligarch's activities. "Yanukovych was the official leader, but Ahkmetov was the man who controlled all the financing, all the political actions of the party."

Ukraine's new government has opened numerous criminal probes into those political actions, but with several of those who knew most about Akhmetov's activities now dead, they can never be compelled to testify in court.

On 9 March Akhmetov's fellow Party of Regions lawmaker, Stanislav Melnyk, was found shot dead in his home with a suicide note. Widely known as "Akhmetov's guard", Melnyk ran a security firm that looked after the assets of Systems Capital Management, a holding company set up by Akhmetov to manage his diverse range of investments.

Melnyk's relationship with Akhmetov goes back to the 1990s when budding oligarchs all over the collapsed Soviet Union acquired state-owned enterprises for a fraction of their real value, often using coercion or violence to do so.

In 1999 Melnyk assumed management of Donetsk Brewery, a state company acquired by its Soviet-era manager, Yuri Pavlenko, in 1991. Pavlenko was murdered in 1998, allowing Akhmetov's Systems Capital Management to acquire it through a complex network of other holding companies. Melnyk headed the brewery until 2005, when he moved to head Luks, another firm controlled indirectly by Systems Capital Management. Both companies have spent more than a decade dominating the lucrative Ukrainian beer market, making a number of hostile takeovers in Akhmetov's home region of Donetsk.

"Melnyk knew a lot about Akhmetov, about how he acquired state property," says Gnap. "Some oligarchs are interested in hiding the people who know a lot about their taking control over big state enterprises."

Three days after Melnyk's death, another former Regions MP and the former governor of Zaphorizhia region, Oleksandr Peklushenko, was found shot in the neck at his home.

Peklushenko was closely tied to Akhmetov's business interests. In 2011, the first year of his governorship, System Capital Management's enormous subsidiary Metinvest acquired 50% of a company called Industrial, giving it control over a majority stake in Zaporizhia's former state steel producer, Zaporizhstal.

Shortly prior to the deaths of Melnyk and Peklushenko, the lives of Mykhaylo Chechetov, Oleksiy Kolesnik, Mykola Serhiyenko, Serhiy Walter and Oleksandr Bordyuh were all cut short between 26 January and 28 February. All appointed by the Party of Regions, all were under investigation by the new government.

Chechetov, once the party's deputy chairman, oversaw the sale of billions of dollars' worth of state assets when head of Ukraine's State Property Fund. He was bailed out by an anonymous benefactor and awaiting trial when he fell from his 17th floor apartment, leaving a suicide note.

One of the assets sold under Chechetov was an iron ore mine, KZhRK. That deal is now the subject of a mud-slinging lawsuit in the UK High Court between ex-Dnipropretovsk governor Kolomoisky and another prominent oligarch, Viktor Pinchuk. The third businessman to benefit from the sale was Rinat Akhmetov.

Chechetov and his successor at the State Property Fund, Valentyna Semenyuk-Samsonenko, would have retained a wealth of knowledge about the privatisation of some of Ukraine's most valuable assets. But Semenyuk-Samsonenko was found shot dead in August last year. Law enforcement officers concluded that she had killed herself with her husband's hunting rifle.

Without the benefit of crime scene evidence, it's impossible to know if Akhmetov ordered hits on his old allies, if someone else did, or if nine affluent individuals simply succumbed to the pressure of being under investigation.

That's the line taken by the former administration.

"I still consider it suicide. I don't consider these expert opinions that they knew too much to be serious," a former top official from the Yanukovych administration tells Newsweek."They [the dead officials] were simply not very deep and thoughtful people. In life, too, they were weak."

Watching the country's top prosecutors leaving the General Prosecutor's Office in sharp suits and stepping into gleaming Porsches, BMWs and Land Rovers, it's clear that the average state prosecutor's wage, equivalent to €400 per month, isn't their only source of income. Within the same building, officials are representing an array of different interests.

With such great wealth at stake, the truth about these deaths is unlikely to emerge any time soon.

Back in Odessa, three prosecutors laugh as they dismiss allegations that their office tried to cover up Sergei Melnychuk's murder. They have good reason to be happy. They're off to the Rugby World Cup in London later this year, an event where one ticket to a group stage game sells for the equivalent of €400.

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 #12
New York Times
April 11, 2015
The Saturday Profile
A Craftsman of Russian Verse Helps Ukraine Find Its New Voice
By SALLY McGRANE

ODESSA, UKRAINE - EVERY morning at 6, Boris Khersonsky turns on the computer in his dacha. Under the gaze of the dusky icons covering the walls, one of Ukraine's most famous literary bloggers - a 64-year-old psychiatrist, former Soviet dissident and acclaimed poet - logs onto Facebook to conduct what has become something of a daily symposium on the identity of the new Ukraine.

There, in political essays, poems, jokes and surreal diary entries where the only individual whose psychological health can be trusted is a talking cat, Dr. Khersonsky makes his case. "Ukraine can only become a whole state by admitting its differences," he said. "Admitting, and admiring."

A tall, white-haired man who radiates calm, Dr. Khersonsky - an increasingly influential voice in Ukraine's intellectual circles - has for years advocated moving away from the idea that Ukrainian nationality should be determined by ethnicity.

But watching the pro-European protests in 2013 in Kiev, Ukraine's capital, and the change in leadership in 2014, he became increasingly aware of something else. While his mother tongue, the bulk of his cultural heritage and most of his artistic fame have come from Russia, he felt he was Ukrainian at heart.

Now, say many, the poet, who made a name for himself at age 55 with a series of verses tracing the fate of his Jewish family over five generations in Odessa, has come to embody a new kind of Ukrainian citizenship. "He's a very important figure because of his mixed background," said Iryna Slavinska, literary critic at Ukrainska Pravda. "He is Ukrainian, in the modern sense. It doesn't depend on the language you speak. It's not like in the Soviet passport, where you were Russian or Ukrainian or Jewish. It's your choice."

In Ukraine, added Ms. Slavinska, much debate takes place on social media platforms. Online, writers exchange poems, news and opinions as they grapple with current political events. However, traditionally these conversations have been balkanized - with a clear divide along language lines. Fellow poets credit Dr. Khersonsky with being the first and most important Russian-language poet to reach across the aisle.

Now he has struck up collaborations with prominent Ukrainian-language poets to translate one another's poetry. "It's very important for me, that we come together," said Serhiy Zhadan, a Ukrainian-language poet who has worked with Dr. Khersonsky. "Everyone who writes in Ukraine is a Ukrainian poet. Also if they write in Russian."

A generation older than most of the blogging Ukrainian literati, Dr. Khersonsky traces some of his sang-froid in the face of death threats and the recent, victimless bombing of his officially registered apartment to experience. "Terrible things happened to members of my family, and it really called me to justice," he said. "Not only my experience, but the experience of my father and my grandfather."

BORN in 1950, Dr. Khersonsky has spent most of his life in Odessa, a city on the Black Sea known for its humor, literature and multicultural tradition, as well as a once-thriving Jewish community that just after World War I made up nearly half the population.

Dr. Khersonsky's family suffered enormous losses during the Holocaust. But silence surrounded the topic, in both political and private life. Growing up, he had little notion of this family legacy. "I was a normal boy of Jewish doctors," he said. "Ours was a completely assimilated Jewish family, without any traditions."

Soviet anti-Semitism was a fact of life, however. When he was 5, the K.G.B. picked up his grandfather, a neurologist. Released the next day, the doctor suffered a stroke that left him unable to read or speak. In a poem, Dr. Khersonsky wrote:

He ... has already been relieved

of his position as a way of combating

Jewish pre-eminence in science,

and lives in perpetual fear of arrest.

Dr. Khersonsky, who said he was always a good student, secured a spot in medical school despite an unofficial 2 percent admission quota for Jews. When he was caught telling anti-Soviet jokes in his first year, though, he risked expulsion. In a stroke of luck, Dr. Khersonsky said he was saved when he ran into the head of the school's Communist youth organization at an Orthodox Church service. "I shouldn't have been there," he said. "But he doubly shouldn't have been there."

Fascinated by the Orthodox religious tradition, Dr. Khersonsky was eventually baptized by a dissident priest. While he said he now felt distant from the church, his poetry is rich in biblical symbolism, often delving into issues of morality, love and good and evil.

Last May during a demonstration in Odessa, Dr. Khersonsky surprised himself by ordering his taxi to drop him and his wife at the scene of deadly street fighting between pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian groups. Mixing with the crowd, they saw masked snipers and chain-wielding hooligans, talked to participants and witnessed a fire that killed more than 40 pro-Russian demonstrators. He called it a tragedy.

But, he said, risk-taking has always been a personality trait. Shortly after getting his degree in psychiatry, for example, he got a job at the Odessa Mental Health Hospital No. 1. Dr. Khersonsky collected information about dissidents wrongly incarcerated at the hospital on charges of being mentally ill. He said he passed on information to an underground publishing group for two years before a hospitalized acquaintance accidentally gave him away.

Dr. Khersonsky was in his 30s before he learned that more than 42 members of his parents' families, including a respected Yiddish poet on his mother's side, died in the Holocaust. Perestroika was in effect then, and Dr. Khersonsky began writing poems about these long-lost relatives - fleeting glimpses into the lives and fates of Rachel, Robert, Moses and the beautiful Shulamith. "Without perestroika, I still would have written it," he said, but he would not have thought of publishing the poetry.

Published in Moscow as a collection called "Family Album," in 2006, those poems eventually made him famous.

YOUNGER Ukrainian intellectuals look not only to Dr. Khersonsky's experiences as a Soviet dissident for guidance, but also to his experiences with systemic collapse. While he said he initially welcomed capitalism, the economic turmoil that followed Ukraine's independence was a disappointment. "What we received was a criminal capitalism," he said.

In 1992, to escape the dire economic situation, his parents, sister, brother-in-law and niece - Yelena Akhtiorskaya, now an American writer - emigrated to the United States. Dr. Khersonsky, who had a young son and daughter, thought seriously of joining them. But he feared he would be unable to continue working as a psychiatrist.

Like Pasha, the main character in Ms. Akhtiorskaya's well-received debut novel, "Panic in a Suitcase," published last year, Dr. Khersonsky ultimately decided not to trade Odessa for Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

"We emigrated without even getting out of bed," he wrote, in one poem, of remaining in Odessa as friends, family, and most of the city's Jews left. But Dr. Khersonsky, who believes Ukraine's war with Russia is lost, hopes political turmoil will not force him to leave the country.

In the meantime, his work as a psychiatrist - a dark-red velvet couch sits in the corner of the dacha for patients - helps keep him calm.

After taking a call from a pro bono client - a woman who fled the fighting in Donetsk - Dr. Khersonsky said that if the opportunity arose, he would be happy to psychoanalyze his country.

"If Ukraine came to lie on my couch, I would say, 'You need a long process of integration,'" he said. "I might also tell her she needs to develop a better sense of reality. And of course I will remind her she should visit me twice a week for one hour. I won't charge her much, because of her financial difficulties."

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 #13
Moscow Times
April 9, 2015
Is the Iran Deal Good or Bad News for Russia?
By Chris Weafer
Chris Weafer is a senior partner with Macro Advisory, a consultancy advising macro hedge funds and foreign companies looking at investment opportunities in Russia.

It is far too early to assume last week's framework agreement between Iran and the six world powers will lead to a permanent deal governing how Iran develops its nuclear industry. But while all sides acknowledge the difficulties still to be tackled, there is a very good chance that a permanent deal may be put in place in the summer and sanctions against the country may start to unwind from later this year or next.

An easing of sanctions will start to open up Iran's considerable hydrocarbon resource base to international investors and, over time, allow for a steady increase in exports of both oil and gas.

A final deal, assuming it happens, will therefore be one of the most significant events in global energy for a very long time. It will have a long-term impact on global energy markets and on those other economies that are now hydrocarbon dependent - such as Iran's Arab neighbors - or hydrocarbon vulnerable.

Top of the list of countries in that latter category is Russia. Hydrocarbons make up just over 20 percent of gross domestic product and about half of budget revenues, so a volatile oil price clearly has an impact, albeit less than the popularly held perception that the country is only about oil.

It means that the deal with Iran is something of a double-edged sword for Russia. Obvious longer-term negatives may be balanced with some short- to medium-term positives. According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, Iran's total recoverable oil reserves are 157 billion barrels. That is the third-biggest reservoir of oil after Venezuela (298 billion barrels) and Saudi Arabia (266 billion barrels).

Iran has the resource base to eventually double or triple its pre-sanctions output of oil. To develop those reserves the country will need to attract a lot of investment and the involvement of the international oil majors. The country has not been able to work with the major oil companies since the revolution of 1979, so the scale of work to be done is huge.

Iran's gas resources are even more impressive. According to the BP review, the country has the world's largest proven gas reserves at 33.8 trillion cubic meters (tcm). Russia's reserves are marginally lower at 31.3 tcm.

But because of the lack of access to technology and investment, Iran has actually been a net importer of gas from neighboring Turkmenistan for many years. Last year, imports totaled just above 10 bcm.

So, who wins and who loses in economic terms from the opening of Iran to the world's major oil companies and to financing?

Iran has a border with Turkey and with Azerbaijan, with whom Iran has already had talks about energy cooperation, on the western side of the Caspian. It means that pipelines carrying Iranian oil and gas have a clear path to the EU either across Turkey or via Azerbaijan and the Black Sea.

EU officials have been struggling for years to try and get an alternative source of oil and gas to reduce Russia dependency or, more likely, to avoid Moscow's market share getting bigger as the EU's energy needs grow. The potential for liquefied natural gas and crude exports from the United States is very long term and, despite the hype, cannot make a material difference. Imports from Azerbaijan, through the TANAP and TAP pipelines now under construction, will total only about 10 bcm in phase 1.

A second phase will depend on accessing an additional gas source that is not now available. But it certainly could be from a sanctions-free Iran. The EU would certainly win from a deal with Iran and an opening of its hydrocarbon base.

Turkey and/or Azerbaijan would also be winners from a deal, while the Central Asian states would be losers. EU officials have talked openly about accessing gas from Turkmenistan, which has the world's fourth-largest gas reserves, via a pipeline across the relatively narrow Caspian.

But any construction across the Caspian remains blocked until all five littoral states agree to the legal status of the sea (or lake). It has never been in Russia's interest to agree to a deal, which would add competition to its key gas market, and Iran is hardly likely to be more amenable as it also looks at potential markets for its oil and gas. Either Russia or Iran can keep Central Asian gas firmly locked out of the EU and headed east to China.

The price of Brent crude fell by over $2 per barrel late last week as expectations rose that the framework deal was close, albeit it has since recovered with the increasingly dangerous news from Yemen. That was an initial trader's reaction which is unlikely to pressure much further on the downside, or at least not as a result of this preliminary deal.

However, if there is a final deal that includes sanctions easing, then we should see more serious downward pressure, assuming there is no uptick in demand beyond current expectations and no further supply outages. Iran can relatively quickly restore the 1 million barrels per day it was forced to cut from exports several years ago. Building new production will take many years of investment.

The potential damage to Russia is from the opening of Iran's vast hydrocarbon resources. Gazprom's market share, or pricing ability, in the EU gas market may be threatened and more oil on the market may depress prices long term, i.e. all else being equal regarding other supply and demand expectations.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are angry about the potential nuclear deal for both political and, one assumes, energy reasons. But they were not part of the talks. Russia was and, according to reports, had a very influential role, which is not surprising given the country's relatively better relationship with Tehran than the other five countries involved.

It does beg the question, what does Moscow get out of this deal? My suggestion, to use non-technical terminology, is "quite a few geopolitical brownie points that it can trade for sanctions easing this summer." A deal to end the standoff with Iran has emerged as one of U.S. President Barack Obama's key legacy priorities, so a helpful Moscow should be rewarded if a final deal is signed.

The recent indicators for the economy show that predictions of doom for Russia as a result of the lower oil price and sanctions are wide of the mark. The country is still on track for a contraction in GDP of between 3 and 4 percent but no worse.

It is, of course, far too early to be complacent, as there are still many variables and scenarios that could play out over the next three quarters. But even if the macro outcome is no worse, or better, than a minus 3 to minus 4 percent recession, the picture for 2016 and for many years ahead is for low annual growth unless the country can move to a new growth driver based on sustainably higher investment. That cannot happen with the financial sector sanctions still in place.

Over the past six months the Kremlin has had another wake-up call over hydrocarbon vulnerability. The fact that it appears to be prioritizing future investment over hydrocarbons, i.e. as one of those taking the hand brake off the Iranian energy juggernaut, adds another reason to hope that the message has finally sunk in.

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 #14
http://readrussia.com
April 9, 2015
Russians Think Seizing Crimea Will Pay off. Here's a hint: it won't
by MARK ADOMANIS

"Crimea is ours!" has become a rallying cry for Russian nationalists overjoyed at the "return" of land which they have always thought was part of Russia. And it wasn't just nationalists. Apparently, Crimea's entry into the Russian Federation struck a nerve among most ordinary Russians. Judging by opinion polls somewhere between 70 and 80% of total population expressed approval.

There's widespread statistical and anecdotal evidence that Russians are happy that their country has, in their view, finally "stood up" to a domineering and arrogant West. The fact that the annexation of Crimea was exactly the sort of law-breaking unilateralism of the sort about which many Russians had earlier complained was lost in the excitement. But then periods of nationalist jubilation aren't known for their ability to stimulate critical thought.

While they have grown a bit more skeptical about the extent to which the annexation of Crimea will "pay off," Russians are still overwhelmingly confident that their seizure of the peninsula will have positive consequences.

In March 2015, a Levada center poll indicated that a full 69% of Russians expected their country would gain some kind of unspecified economic or political benefits from the peninsula. As with all polls this result should be taken with a grain of salt. There's a margin of error (about 3.5%) and Crimea is an extremely politically sensitive topic about which people might have reasonable concerns about voicing their true opinion.

The optimism hinted at in Levada's poll, though, matches excellently with my personal experience. Over the past year I have been positively astounded at the completely illogical (there's really no other word for it) way that Russians think and talk about the issue.

From the very beginning I've argued that Crimea's annexation, totally outside of any questions about its legal permissibility or "justification," would be an extremely expensive proposition for Russian taxpayers. Even according to the optimistic official narrative, at the moment Crimea completely lacks a modern industrial base and has transport infrastructure that is poor even by the less than exalted standards of the former Soviet Union.* For the region to be prosperous, both of those things would have to be built essentially from scratch.

When they were still constituent parts of Ukraine, Crimea and Sevastopol were both heavily subsidized by Kiev, and received much more in government budget spending than they paid in taxes. And, demographically speaking, Crimea's population is older, less fertile, and more swiftly shrinking than either Ukraine or Russia's. Pension and healthcare spending isn't just higher than it is elsewhere in the region, it's going to get a lot higher in the future.

Considering its past history of heavy government subsidization, its bleak demography, and its lack of competitive industry, and its horrible roads and railways, there was every reason to expect that Crimea would continue to lose a lot money under Russian stewardship. The best predictor of future performance is always past performance, and Crimea has been bleeding money ever since the Soviet Union collapsed (and probably quite a bit longer than that).

But after making these rather modest factual observations I got torrents of irate e-mails. I was supposedly short-sighted, arrogant, ignorant, and narrow-minded. Even Russians with whom I sometimes agreed, or at least had proved capable of having civil discussions, expressed something bordering on fury for my tepid suggestions that Crimea would not be rapidly transformed into an enviable economic asset.

The proponents of the "Crimea is profitable" school continuously express an almost limitless faith in various kinds of hand-waving, believing that vague, inchoate sectors ("tourism") would be able to bring outsized financial rewards in the very short term. Basic questions, like who in their right mind would invest money in physical assets in a territory whose legal status was so enormously uncertain, were totally ignored.

The illusions about Crimea's profitability, however, are increasingly crashing on the rocks of reality. As Russia's economy comes under increasing strain, and as the Russian government has been forced to painfully ratchet back spending plans, the largess provided to Crimea is coming under a scrutiny that the authorities almost certainly did not anticipate.

It is, unfortunately, all too plausible that Russians will still celebrate the return of Crimea even if it becomes clear that it's cost them a lot of money. Russian public opinion has been all too willing to accept economic costs that I (and many others) expected would be found to be totally unacceptable, and Putin's popularity hasn't been dented in the slightest by the sharp economic downturn of the past six months. No one should anticipate that Russia will be in any hurry to give back Crimea, even under the very best scenario.

But Russians are going to blame someone for the fact that Crimea is a money-losing sinkhole. Maybe they'll blame the West (as has seemingly happened with sanctions) but they could cast their gaze to other, less convenient political targets. Public opinion can change. Reality can't. And the simple reality is that Russia is going to throw billions of dollars into an economically worthless scrap of land.

*I've been to Crimea several times for conferences, and still remember with dread the horrible quality of the roadway from Simferopol to Yalta. Russians roads were like newly constructed autobahns in comparison

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 #15
AP
Chechen commander in Ukraine drawn into Russian intrigue
By NICHOLAS WALLER
April 12, 2015

LYSYCHANSK, Ukraine (AP) - From a dimly lit room at his base in eastern Ukraine, the commander of a battalion of Chechens fighting Russia-backed rebels looked shaken as TV broadcast news of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov's slaying. Adam Osmayev hailed Nemtsov as a "true hero" both for condemning Russia's war against separatists in Chechnya and for decrying Russian intervention in the current conflict in Ukraine.

"Watch them try to tie Ukraine to this (murder) in some way," Osmayev added.

He was half-joking. But two weeks later, Kremlin-friendly Russian newspapers published reports based on unidentified sources in the security services that accused the Ukrainian government and also Osmayev himself of ordering the Feb. 27 murder of Nemtsov in central Moscow in an attempt to destabilize Russia.

Osmayev denies involvement and no evidence has been presented linking him to the hit on Nemtsov, who was a relentless critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Attempts to implicate the British-educated Chechen commander appear to be part of efforts aimed at deflecting attention from anyone close to Putin, including his security services and the powerful leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.

Within days of Nemtsov's assassination, investigators arrested five Chechens, including a senior officer in Kadyrov's police force, and charged them with carrying out the killing. All five have denied the charges.

The arrests heralded a crisis in relations between the Kremlin and Kadyrov, who rules Chechnya like a personal fiefdom. With generous subsidies from Moscow, he has rebuilt the region after two separatist wars and has relied on his feared security forces to track down and kill foes. His men have steadily expanded their sway beyond Chechnya to control lucrative businesses in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia.

Leaders of federal law enforcement agencies have watched Kadyrov's growing power with dismay and have made no secret of their desire to curb him. Some observers speculated that the killing might have been ordered by Kadyrov's enemies in the federal government - an attempt to prompt Putin to fire or at least punish the Chechen leader.

If such a plan existed, it underestimated Putin's reliance on Kadyrov. The relative stability in Chechnya is seen as one of Putin's main achievements, and he sees the burly red-haired Chechen strongman as key to maintaining the status quo.

Putin quickly sent a signal that he intended to stand by Kadyrov by awarding him the Order of Honor for distinguished public service, a day after Kadyrov spoke out in defense of the arrested Chechens.

The arrests were a rare case in which federal law enforcement agents managed to nab a member of Kadyrov's security force, but the investigation then seemed to fizzle.

Russian media, citing investigators, have pointed to a possible link between the suspected triggerman, Zaur Dadaev, and his commander, Ruslan Geremeyev, a senior officer in the Chechen police force. But Geremeyev is in Chechnya and off limits to federal investigators.

Russian newspapers have floated a variety of theories about the killing that have muddied the waters - a possible attempt to defuse tensions with Kadyrov.

Some reports claimed that investigators believe Dadaev and his suspected accomplices could have acted on their own, even though most observers agree that a senior officer in Kadyrov's security force would not have acted without sanction from his superiors.

Dadaev, in turn, has rescinded his initial testimony, saying he was beaten and pressured to confess.

The reports pointing to Osmayev, a Kadyrov foe, were seen as part of these efforts to deflect attention.

"State-controlled media have put forward a theory that is politically satisfying for Russia's security forces, the Kremlin, Kadyrov and all of their rival groups - namely, that Chechen Adam Osmayev ordered Nemtsov's murder," political analyst Georgy Bovt wrote in a commentary published in The Moscow Times.

Osmayev, 33, has a troubled history with both Kadyrov and Putin.

After graduating from Wycliffe College, a prestigious private school in Britain, and attending the University of Buckingham, he returned to his native Chechnya shortly after the second war there ended in 2000. He worked alongside his father, who had been appointed the head of Chechnya's state oil company.

Chechnya at that time was led by Kadyrov's father. After his assassination in 2004, power passed to his son, Ramzan, and his relationship with the Osmayevs quickly deteriorated in a dispute over lucrative energy contracts. The Osmayevs fled to Ukraine.

In February 2012, Adam Osmayev was arrested at Russia's behest and charged with planning an assassination attempt against Putin. Ukraine at the time had a pro-Kremlin government. Osmayev spent three years in detention until being released in November 2014 by Ukraine's new Western-leaning government.

Shortly after his release, he joined a battalion formed by prominent Chechen commander Isa Munayev to fight against Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. When Munayev was killed on Feb. 1, Osmayav took over the command.

His battalion includes several dozen Chechens, many with combat experience gained in the separatist wars in their homeland against Russian army troops. They regularly get calls from Ukrainian army units asking them to carry out reconnaissance missions or diversionary raids behind rebel lines.

Hundreds of Chechens also are fighting on the separatist side. They first joined the rebels last summer in the early stages of the conflict, and with their combat gear and professional demeanor they stood out among what was then a ragtag local force. Kadyrov has described pro-Russia Chechens fighting in Ukraine as volunteers, the same explanation the Kremlin provides for the Russians among the separatist forces.

Osmayev said he has few doubts that the perpetrators of Nemtsov's killing have ties to Kadyrov, but that the security services now need a convenient scapegoat whose guilt would be easily acceptable to the Russian general public.

"The fact the FSB is . trying to somehow implicate me in Nemtsov's murder is utterly ridiculous," Osmayev said, "but not hard to believe now that I am involved in the situation here in Ukraine."

Lynn Berry and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

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 #16
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
April 10, 2015
Chart - Putin ratings defy grim economic outlook
Henry Kirby in London
[Charts here http://www.bne.eu/content/story/bnechart-putin-ratings-defy-grim-economic-outlook]
 
25 years after Ronald Reagan left the White House, it would seem that Russia has its own 'Teflon President' in Vladimir Putin. The Russian president's consistently high ratings show that his and Reagan's similarities go beyond a Hollywood penchant for horse riding and rifle-toting, to an ability to come out of any crisis smelling of roses.

A recent World Bank report has predicted that the next two years will be difficult for most Russians, with the economy suffering on several fronts that could directly hit the pockets of the population.

Entitled "Dawn of a New Economic Era", the study forecasts increases in unemployment, inflation and in Russia's poverty rate - three key indicators that had previously been considered hallmarks of Russian prosperity under Putin's rule and also make up bne IntelliNews' Despair Index when combined. The Despair Index measures the relative prosperity of different countries by combining inflation, unemployment and poverty, and is a valuable way of comparing the quality of life across the globe.

Despite the grim outlook, Putin's approval ratings are better than they have been in the last three years, and have actually improved throughout the triple blow of low oil prices, a tanking ruble and the continued military conflict in eastern Ukraine.

A look at the first bne:Chart shows that the Despair Index has generally been representative of Putin's approval rating for the last few years. Bearing in mind that Russia's Despair score has consistently bettered the EU and US scores since 2012, the correlation between the Despair Index and Putin's support is understandable.

Since then, however, Russia's Despair Index score has rocketed, while Putin's popularity has paradoxically also increased.

Even a projected respite in 2016 that will see Russia's score fall from 37.7 to 29.0 will still leave it languishing behind the EU and US, if their respective 2014 scores are indicative of things to come.

So why are Putin's ratings so consistently positive? The easy answer is that Russia's low Despair Index score was Putin's gift to the country, and with the acquiescence of the Russian people Putin has since been mostly left to his own devices.

Logic, then, would dictate that a high Despair score would be seen by Russians as Putin breaking his side of the deal. With that, surely, would come political trouble for the president.

The second bne:Chart, which compares the Despair Index scores of a number of countries, goes some way to explaining how Putin has so far managed to avoid the blame.

Russia's projected 2016 score of 29 is certainly a sharp jump up from 2012's score of 21.5, yet it will still sit only two points above the EU average, well ahead of the emerging market average of 36.2 and leagues ahead of the BRICS average of 44.8.

Compared with its own outstanding record of growth over the last decade, Russia's score is indeed very poor, yet even after the hardships forecasted by the World Bank, it will still better Italy and Spain's 2014 scores of 31.5 and 43, respectively.

Things may be bad in comparison to the halcyon days of 2012, but a westward glance would suggest to Russians that they could be considerably worse. What is clear, though, is that one way or another, 2015 will be a defining year for Putin.

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#17
www.rt.com
April 12, 2015
Did you just miss your chance to get ruble-rich? Quite possibly

Rogue investors who ignored the negative hype about Russia, are smiling from ear to ear after the ruble gained about 6 percent this week.

The ruble surged 6 percent this past week, opening Monday at 56.55 and closing at 53.5 on the Moscow Exchange on Friday. In the last month alone, the ruble has appreciated by more than 20 percent.

During intraday trading Friday, the ruble shot up 3 percent against the dollar, reaching a new 2015 high of 50.42 against the USD, the biggest upward gyration since October 1998, when the ruble was recovering from the August default and currency crash.

Investors are buying rubles not just to buy rubles, but to get into the Russian bond market, which has been posting high returns compared to European markets. Bond demand is driving up ruble assets, which is why the ruble is rallying.

"No one is buying the ruble for the sake of the ruble, they are buying the ruble securities in order to participate in the rally and to make more profits," Aleksandr Prosviryakov, a Treasury and Commodities at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Moscow, told RT.

In short, lower bond prices push investors to get into the game, and push up the ruble. In a global investment climate, where central banks are cutting rates to near zero, Russia provides investors with an opportunity- albeit risky- to make higher returns.

"There is a rally in the Russian government bonds market, and the securities are in rubles, and the only way to participate in this rally is to buy the ruble-denominated bonds, and in order for investors to do this, they have to sell dollars and buy rubles," Prosviryakov said.

After reaching a high of 16 percent, Russia's 10-year ruble-denominated sovereign bond yields have been hovering in the teens, and were 11.07 percent on Friday.

Five-year treasury bonds, known as OFZs on the Russian market, have been fetching yields in the ballpark of 11.5 percent in weakly bond auctions after hitting premium value of 15.5 percent on January 11,2015. On Friday, the yields on OFZ bonds hit 11.27 percent, the lowest since December 2, Bloomberg reported.

"Interest rates on ruble are extremely attractive- you have double digit returns. It comes in an environment when the Swiss issued a 10 year bond at a negative interest rate," Michael Ingram, a market analyst at BGC partners, told RT.

In January, Standard & Poor's downgraded Russia's sovereign debt to below junk investment grade, which politicians in Moscow brushed off as 'politically motivated'. The Central Bank said they would no longer accept any ratings issued by the Big Three Western agencies - Standard & Poor's, Fitch, and Moody's - that were issued after March 2014.

REPO

As the 5-year and 10-year bond purchasing patterns show, both presented peak returns in mid-January, meaning those getting into the game now might be late. Also, the Central Bank, in response this weeks 6 percent currency gain, decided to quell the speed of the ruble's appreciation.

In response to the major currency surge, the Bank of Russia said it will increase the REPO rate, which will make it more expensive to borrow foreign currency and in theory stall the ruble's miraculous rally.

The new rates were posted by the Central Bank Friday and the decision was taken "considering the development in the domestic FX market", the regulator said in the statement.

Others have observed that the Central Bank may be artificially inflating the ruble, since at the end of the week that ended April 3, the Russian Central Bank spent $5.5 billion propping up the ruble, even though it had already made sturdy gains in 2015.

Official foreign currency reserves officially stand at $355 billion, still the sixth largest worldwide, and sufficient to cover any immediate debt obligations.

"Panic is gone, we have seen that the Russian foreign reserves have stabilized, they actually grew last week, but still are around the $360 billion mark. This is a factor showing the situation has stabilized," Aleksandr Prosviryakov, said.

Has Russia kicked the oil curse?

This past week Brent, the benchmark for more than half of the world's oil, advanced 5 percent, whereas the ruble improved 9 percent. Most analysts agree that the ruble has become more resilient to oil, just to varying degrees.

Analysts at Russia's VTB Capital believe that the ruble's stellar performance is "largely unrelated to oil dynamics," analysts wrote in a note Friday.

"We see that the oil prices have stabilized, everyone was talking about a catastrophic scenario after the OPEC decision not to intervene in the market, people thought the oil price would go down to 30 maybe 25, this of course would be very bad for Russia," Prosviryakov said.

While most private Russians are cheering the ruble rally, it is less beneficial to Russia as a country, as a whole. A higher ruble means the government doesn't make as much money on the oil they sell in US dollars. The dollar needs to be stronger to meet all budget expenditures, which may explain the Central Bank's REPO action.

Fundamentally undervalued

While both analysts agree that the bond market is driving the ruble up, they don't agree how long the run will last.

"The ruble remains fundamentally undervalued, there is a lot of momentum out there in terms of investor appetite for yield and risk, and that being the case, I think that ruble appreciation in the near term at least has some way to go, I think we could see another 10-15 percent," Michael Ingram, a market analyst at BGC partners, told RT.

The ruble nose-dived in the last three months of 2014 in part due to sinking oil prices. Another factor was the Central Bank's decision to move the currency to a free float regime in November. Analysts and politicians alike echoed the opinion the ruble was significantly overvalued, even at values of 45 and 47.

"If you look at what the IMF thinks about the ruble in terms of its fair value internationally, their own estimate of the ruble is just under 21 to the dollar. It does suggest that Ruble is fundamentally cheap," Ingram said.

The currency, the world's second worst performer in 2014, is now the best in 2015. The ruble has recovered 15 percent in 2015, and more than 55 percent since December 16, dubbed 'Black Tuesday', when the ruble bottomed out against the dollar at nearly 80 rubles per 1 USD.

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 #18
www.rt.com
April 12, 2015
Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and King Hamlet might be dead - but Putin's the ghost in everybody's room
By Bryan MacDonald
Bryan MacDonald is an Irish writer and commentator focusing on Russia and its hinterlands and international geo-politics. Follow him on Facebook

For the paranoia industry, the spectre of Vladimir Putin is the gift that keeps on giving. There's rarely a situation these days in which many media elements won't invoke the Russian president's name.

Shakespeare wasn't exactly a horror writer, but the bard was rather fond of using ghosts as plot devices. Arguably the most famous is 'King Hamlet,' the eponymous hero's late father. The 17th century Poet Laureate, Nicholas Rowe, alleged that Shakespeare himself had played the ghost in the Danish fable. If the Royal Shakespeare Company are currently planning a revival, they could do worse than employ a Vladimir Putin lookalike in the role. Stratford's Dirty Duck pub would empty faster than Richard Burton's bladder with that kind of attraction nearby.

The Kinks were thinking about a 'Dedicated Follower of Fashion' when they sang: "They seek him here, they seek him there." These days, the lyric could be applied to the Russian president. For much of the Western press, Putin is a phantom who stalks almost every situation. Indeed, his name is even invoked in Sports reports about Manchester United. Overall, the paranoia has reached levels unseen since some American eccentrics warned of the dangers of a "communist moon" in the 1960's, the heyday of both The Kinks and cranks.

As soon as David Cameron visited Buckingham Palace to inform Queen Elizabeth that parliament had been dissolved, I just knew Putin would, unwittingly, play a central role in the current UK election campaign. However, if it all seems somewhat screwy, just wait until the US primaries kick off next year. By the time the, increasingly inevitable, battle begins between the Bush-Clinton monarchies, the crackpots will most probably have burst the basin altogether.

Putin - bigger than the Beatles

When I first moved to Russia in 2010, I was immediately struck by how often then President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin were on television. In fact, they were so frequently on the Rossiya 24 channel that I dubbed it 'Putmed TV.' It turns out that I didn't need to travel all the way to Russia for wall-to-wall Putin. He's now on BBC, Sky News and CNN as often.

Last autumn, I happened to have an hour to kill at Berlin's gigantic Hauptbahnhof (main rail station). On an upper floor, there's a huge newsagent with a well-stocked international press section. Amid a collection of magazines from Argentina to Norway and Japan to Spain, Putin stared out from, what seemed like, every second cover. I wasn't around for Beatlemania but I've now got a fair idea of what it felt like. They used to say that sex sells, the modern media mantra seems to be that Putin sells better.

Anyway, it took approximately a week and a half for the UK press to find a way to knit a Putin-centred narrative into UK election 2015. A UKIP MEP described the Russian president as a "very nationalist leader" who is "standing up for his country." Upon hearing this, many British hacks were probably like hungry Labradors who'd just seen a particularly juicy steak hanging from a window. Their two current bête noire together. The 'kippers' and 'big bad Vlad.'

Putin and Farage - neither went to Oxbridge

The UK media establishment don't detest UKIP because of its slightly racist policies. Rather they resent that the party dares to have leaders who didn't attend Oxbridge. For some time now, they've been trying to link President Putin to UKIP, hoping that it might generate mud that would then stick. The policy hasn't worked. The entitled types that run the UK press might abhor Putin but there's no evidence that the general public do. In fact, I've found that the Russian president is rather popular amongst many normal British folk.

As my op-eds on Ukraine attest, I dislike hyper-nationalism in all forms, whether it be British, Russian, Irish or any other stripe. For that reason, I'm not too keen on UKIP. Nevertheless, their rise proves that the traditional UK parties have lost touch with a significant segment of the UK electorate. Also, regardless of personal discomfort, Nigel Farage's party has opened a debate in British politics that was long overdue and for that they must be applauded.

The MEP in question, Diane James, went on to comment that "I do admire him (Putin). He's a very strong leader," before adding that she respected him "from the point of view that he's standing up for his country." Ms James then invoked the spectre of Ukraine, explaining that "he is putting Russia first and has issues with how the EU encouraged a change of government in the (sic) Ukraine."

It's certainly true that Putin puts Russia first, as all presidents and prime ministers ought to do worldwide with their respective countries. After all, it was Russian people who elected Vladimir Putin, not American neocons or Eurocrats, so why should he do their bidding? Ms James is also correct in that the EU helped provoke the "change of government" in Ukraine. That said, why not call a spade a spade? It was a coup, and a very obvious one at that. If you dispute my form of words here, why not ask the "shadow CIA" Stratfor? Their head honcho, George Friedman called it the "most blatant coup in history" in an interview with Russia's Kommersant newspaper.

To be honest here, while some UKIP'ers might kind of hero-worship Vladimir Putin, I doubt the feelings are reciprocated. There's a tendency among both the European far-right and far-left to project Putin as an image of everything their own leaders aren't. Strong, decisive and patriotic are terms that frequently spring forth.

Multicultural Russia

However, in reality Putin is a political centrist. He leads a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional country, which is the world's second largest (after the USA) destination for immigrants. To keep power in his vast nation, he walks a tightrope between copious ideologies and faiths and winds up largely representing 'middle Russia.' His own cabinet is far from exclusively Orthodox Christian or Slavic. Indeed, the defence minster - a very powerful job in Russia - Sergey Shoigu is half Tuvan. Shoigu is joined by a smorgasbord of Jews, Tatars, Koreans, central Asians, Armenians and Kavkaz folk in the upper echelons of government, business and society.


Unlike many of the European rightists who express admiration for him, the Russian president makes a conscious effort to be inclusive. He attends synagogues, mosques and churches. Also, Putin isn't in the habit of slating immigrants to Russia. Conversely, he's never suggested that he holds communist sympathies either. I'm sure this is much to the chagrin of his left-wing European devotees.

Nevertheless, this matters not a jot to the neo-liberal European establishment and their media puppets. For these guys, Putin is the best bogeyman they've got now that bin Laden, Saddam and Gaddafi have exited, stage left, pursued by an eagle rather than a bear. Never mind, that there's no actual comparison between the Russian president and those three, when your system requires a DC Comics-style bad guy, proportion is a mere hindrance.

Like King Hamlet, the 'ghost' of Putin isn't going to vanish anytime soon. Rosencrantz and Guidenstern might be dead but Western paranoia about the Russian 'threat' is very much alive. If you think it's a little overdone now, just wait until the US election cycle begins. On that long and winding road, 'Putinmania' will hit new heights, no matter what the man himself does or doesn't do.

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 #19
Russia Direct
April 10, 2015
Hard thinking about Russian soft power: What to do next
Given the current international context, recent initiatives by Russia to boost its soft power abroad are losing their effectiveness. What's needed now is a long-term strategy for Russian soft power.
By Alexey Dolinskiy
Alexey Dolinskiy is a partner at Capstone Connections consultancy. He graduated with a Master's degree in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School and has a Ph.D. in political science. He is also a winner of the Valdai Club Foundation Grant Program. He currently works in corporate diplomacy in the Asia Pacific region and Europe.

The term soft power has many different connotations. However, it is important to remember that, in the end, soft power is still power - an ability to achieve desired outcomes with attractiveness and authority, not coercion or economic resources. Russia has long been developing public diplomacy instruments aimed at boosting its soft power, but the outcome has been suboptimal due to both internal and external reasons.

Konstantin Kosachev's appointment as Head of Rossotrudnichestvo in March 2012 was expected to start the golden age of Russia's soft power, but his resignation marked the end of those hopes, with this golden age never taking place. Just three years ago, when Kosachev took office, there seemed to be a window of opportunity for the country's public diplomacy. For almost a decade, Russia had been building up its soft power capabilities with no apparent strategy or coordination mechanism. As neither has been put in place and the window of opportunity is now closed, the country's public diplomacy needs a new long-term approach.

A brief history of Russian soft power

Starting from 2003, when prominent private sector media manager Svetlana Mironyuk was tasked with revitalizing RIA Novosti, a news agency, and transforming it from a Soviet-style newswire into a modern high-tech multimedia agency, Russia launched a series of projects aimed at reaching foreign audiences. Those projects included a campaign to host the 2014 Winter Olympics that started in 2005 and a 24/7 English language news network Russia Today (now re-branded as RT) launched the same year.

In 2007 President Vladimir Putin established the Russian World Foundation tasked with promoting Russian language and culture and modeled after the British Council in the UK, the Goethe Institute in Germany and the Confucius Institute in China. Besides promoting Russian language and culture, the Foundation was to develop ties with Russian diasporas internationally and second-track diplomacy channels with expert communities.

An international online and print media public diplomacy project Russia Beyond the Headlines was also launched in 2007 while RT started broadcasting in Arabic and prepared to launch broadcasting in Spanish that year. The Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation (Rossotrudnichestvo) was created in September 2008 by President Dmitry Medvedev. The world's oldest international broadcasting radio station, the Voice of Russia, also received new leadership that year.

Then in 2010 President Medvedev established the Alexander Gorchakov Foundation for Public Diplomacy Support and the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC). So, by the time Kosachev took the office, a broad variety of organizations tasked with improving attitudes towards Russia, was already in place. He did not lead the one and only soft power agency, but rather, one of the many organizations that are equipped with a range of soft power instruments from short-term (online and broadcast media) to long-term (education exchanges and development assistance).

To make it even more complicated, each of the above mentioned institutions was headed by an ambitious leader that had their own relations with the Foreign Ministry and with various divisions within the Presidential Administration. Finally, Rossotrudnichestvo itself was far from a dream agency to manage as it combined old-fashioned representative offices built back in the time of the U.S.S.R., a chain of Russian schools abroad inherited from the Defense Ministry, and a tiny budget only sufficient for the lowest salaries among all the federal agencies with extremely ambitious goals.

Kosachev was therefore seen as a unique individual combining diplomatic and public policy experience, someone who could use his authority and direct connection to the national leadership to coordinate Russian public diplomacy. That, however, required rebuilding Rossotrudnichestvo first and Kosachev came up with a visionary strategy that could make it possible. The idea was to turn the agency into Russia's international development vehicle and switch the aid budget that Moscow currently donates to international institutions towards bilateral products.

During Kosachev's term, the country did adopt a new international development concept and Rossotrudnichestvo was put in charge of the policy replacing the Finance Ministry and was expected to become an international development agency. With Russia's international aid budget (totaling about $500 million annually) shifted towards bilateral projects and greater private sector involvement, as Kosachev had envisioned, the policy could have become a game changer in terms of Russia's soft power in the post-Soviet space.

A vastly transformed international relations context

However, the conflict in Eastern Ukraine and a sharp decline in relations with the West in 2014-2015 created an entirely new international relations and soft power landscape as Moscow took a competitive rather than cooperative approach to its interactions with key Western actors. Coupled with Russia's current challenging economic situation, the overall context puts the government into a "rapid reaction force mode" where decisions are made based on momentary policy priorities, not long-term strategies.

The situation in Ukraine resulted in a cascade of diplomatic, political and economic events happening quickly within a very short time span. They demand immediate actions and reactions and therefore they affect media and political rhetoric in a greater way than longer-term soft power instruments such as international exchanges or development aid.

Throughout 2014, Russia was "hardening its soft power policies" with greater priority given, of course, to media. As a result, the vast majority of Russia's international communication efforts are currently used to create an alternative to most global media's framing of political events coverage. Although potentially beneficial for the nation's current policies, that approach does not, of course, contribute to greater international understanding or an overall cooperation framework.

Meanwhile, long-term public diplomacy instruments and institutions are essentially left out of the mix, as they cannot react fast enough to affect current events. Therefore, international development is no longer a priority and the policy was tabled indefinitely. Besides, limited financial resources make Russia less prone to engaging in international development.

Changed attitudes towards Russia are yet another reason to rethink public diplomacy. According to surveys, Russia's approach towards political developments in Ukraine in 2013-2014 led to increased negative attitudes in other countries even before the start of fighting in the eastern part of the country. There is hardly any reason to think that situation improved since then.

Moreover, the Russian leadership's changed rhetoric, implying that it intends to restore the "unity of historic Russia" shortly after Crimea was incorporated as part of Russia, also created tensions in relations with some neighboring countries. Russia's soft power was greatly undermined.

What to expect and what to do now

According to Harvard Professor Joseph Nye, who originally coined the concept of "soft power," the main resources of soft power are values, culture and policies. It is highly unlikely that Russia's current policies will become more popular than they are now, so over the short-term, soft power prospects for Russia are rather limited. No immediate public diplomacy solution can improve the country's soft power without resolving the foreign policy troubles first. That means there are years ahead when a breakthrough will not be possible, giving experts and practitioners time for a longer-term approach.

Therefore, the current situation leaves Russian public diplomacy almost no options but to continue improving operational efficiency and establishing a platform for cooperation in the future. That means investing in education exchanges and second-track communication channels, as well as promoting language and culture. Sooner or later, when the crises are over, all sides of current conflicts will still need to be able to cooperate with each other and that could lead to a burst of soft power. However, it will not be possible if the groundwork is not laid now.

That leaves Lyubov Glebova, who was recently appointed head of Rossotrudnichestvo, a surprising but apt choice as leader for the agency, given the circumstances. When there is not much money for development, one tries to makes more use for the resources that are already there and the education system is one of them. Despite certain drawbacks, Russia is still in the top ten countries in terms of attracting international students and it also covers tuition for around ten thousand foreign students annually.However, both the admission process and selection of universities to send students to are far from transparent and efficient, to say the least.

Given Glebova's prior experience in education management as a former head of the Federal Agency for Education Supervision, it is reasonable to expect that she will be focusing on bringing order to the system of international education exchanges.

With almost no chances for immediate soft power results in the coming years, the national leadership also has a chance to rethink the overall approach, develop a public diplomacy strategy and design a coordination mechanism for all the various agencies involved in the process. Experts and practitioners have been correctly pointing out that clear KPIs and better interagency cooperation could radically improve soft power outcomes for the country.

Lastly, but most importantly, Russia could use the current soft power slowdown to invest in better understanding of international audiences' attitudes towards Russia and the factors that shape those attitudes. With a rather sophisticated arsenal of disseminating its messages, there still is a lot to be done in terms of listening to what the world has to say.

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 #20
US-Russia.org
April 9, 2015
What will induce Congress to reverse its stand on the Ukraine crisis?

In the first fifteen years of the 21st century, the United States has initiated a series of well-intentioned and even noble military interventions abroad that have resulted in catastrophe, killing and maiming tens of thousands of innocent civilians and creating chaos where once there were viable if authoritarian states. Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya come immediately to mind.

Now we are poised to repeat this experience in Ukraine, where Congress has urged the President in its latest resolution (HR 162) of March 24 to send in lethal weapons, trainers and more, for the sake of countering what is alleged to be Russian aggression. Germany and other leading allies in Europe have objected strenuously to arming the Ukrainians now, saying that the effect will be merely to pour gasoline on the flames of civil war, leading to vast escalation of violence and the possibility of a hot war between Russia and the West.

Sad as the lop-sided 348 yeas vs 48 nays vote in the House was, it marked a significant improvement on the last similar Russia-bashing vote on Capitol Hill on December 4th, when there were just 10 voices against the motion.

Within the 48 votes representing reason and common sense in the face of group think, 38 were Democrats and 10 were Republicans. That marks a spurt from the nearly balanced ratio back in December. I am told that the difference was some very effective lobbying of the black caucus by Progressive Left activists.

Meanwhile at the World Russia Forum session in the Hart Senate Office Building on March 26, the one Congressman who agreed to deliver the keynote speech was, as it turned out, a Republican, Dana Rohrabacher from California. And at the sidelines of the Forum, he and several others opined that Republicans also are open to facts and capable of changing their minds. In particular he puts his trust in the greater concerns of Americans over ISIS than over Russia, as revealed by recent polls. That, and the proposition that the best way to tackle ISIS is in a joint campaign with Russia.

That is a weighty argument why U.S. national security would be better served by finding a compromise on Ukraine with the Kremlin and moving back to the status quo ante, to a cooperative stance.

One further argument from the national security file is the damage that America's contemplation of military intervention in Ukraine is having on the Atlantic alliance. The call for creation of a European Army by EU Commission President Juncker a couple of weeks ago was a direct affront to the concept of NATO and could have been issued only with the backing of his patron Angela Merkel. Europeans are looking for a way out from under American leadership only because that leadership is headed in precisely the wrong direction.

The question for our panel: is there reason to hope that Congress can be brought to its senses on the Russia question by lobbying from the healthy forces within the country, or will salvation come, if at all, from developments outside the States, meaning from decisions made in Europe.

The topic for the Discussion Panel is provided by Gilbert Doctorow,

Gilbert Doctorow is the European Coordinator of the American Committee for East West Accord, Ltd
 
By Patrick Armstrong
Patrick Armstrong is a former political counselor at Canadian Embassy in Moscow

To answer the question, we must first ask whether the US Congress steers, or is steered. Judging from a recent study that concluded: "U.S. policies are formed more by special interest groups than by politicians properly representing the will of the general people, including the lower-income class," it would seem that it is steered. Thus there is little point in seeking to use the normal "democratic" means of influencing its collective opinion.

Second, it is precisely that notion of "well-intentioned and even noble military interventions" which is at the root of the repeated disasters of US military interventions since 1945. The neocon notion of "American exceptionalism", now married to its leftist cousin of "humanitarian interventions", are driving the US Congress in its reactions to the Ukrainian disaster. It couldn't possibly occur to the self-righteous that Ukraine's nightmare is the consequence of the earlier "well-intentioned" intervention, any more than ISIS could be a consequence of the Libyan intervention. It must be someone else's fault. And the self-righteous stand strong in their self-righteousness lest they be seen as weak. As Richard Sakwa has elegantly put it, speaking of NATO: "NATO's existence became justified by the need to manage the security threats provoked by its enlargement." Every "well-intentioned" action sets up the condition for the next.

Third, good intentions are nothing when united with ignorance. And the depth of ignorance in the Washington establishment about Russia or Ukraine is unfathomable.

So, the only hope is that somebody somewhere can persuade the US Congress that this "well-intentioned" intervention is on a path that leads to war. A war that the USA will lose. A war it will lose to the loud applause of most of the rest of the world - a world that already sees it as the greatest threat to peace.

But what of it? The USA and its Congress should be used to losing wars by now.

Congress, Ukrainian Crisis, and the Dangers of Turning an Apocalyptic Film into Reality.
--

By Vladimir Golstein,
Vladimir Golstein is the Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Department of Slavic Studies at Brown University. He was born in Moscow and emigrated to the United States in 1979

I am afraid that the majority of the US politicians do not know very much about the Ukrainian crisis, nor do they want to know or even are expected to know. Their immediate responsibility is to their constituency, which has much more mundane concerns.

What the average politician seem to know is this: 1. There is a big bad Russia out there, and since most of the politicians grew up with the memories of big bad Russia, they are not surprised to hear about Russia's new threats. 2. The majority of US politicians have plenty of vocal former East Europeans and Ukrainians among their constituents, and these people bombard their offices with demands to "get tough with Russia," while citing various personal grievances against the former evil empire. So for every letter that a former Russian could write to their representative about the dangerous escalation of the events, this representative gets ten letters demanding a tougher stance. So their natural instinct is to leave the issue alone. Furthermore, every politician knows that there is nothing wrong with opening a new military enterprise in their district, so even those who do know better prefer not to rock the boat.

So far, there has been very little pressure coming from the academic establishment in US. Observing the amount of abuse thrown at Professor Stephen Cohen, this establishment prefers to sit on the fence on this issue. Significantly, that applies even to the majority of Ukrainian and Polish specialists who know very well the complexities of Ukrainian situation and the actual dangers to the world peace that can result when Russia is pushed around too much. Yet, out of fear of vicious attacks from their own nationalistic communities, they prefer to stay on the side, allowing the few committed war-mongers, like professors Alexander Motyl and Timothy Snyder, to play arm-chair NATO generals.

The initiative on reconsidering the priorities of foreign policy would not thus come from Congress or from its enlightened or uninformed constituents, but rather from the outside sources: namely, from the President, from the State Department, or from the NATO allies and other foreign countries.

The President so far has been acting with caution and understanding. Despite his tough rhetoric, he seems to resist the simplistic calls for "getting tough with Russia." Yet, he is also rather hesitant to change the direction of foreign policy, preferring to "sleepwalk" into crisis instead.

I don't have any hopes for the State Department, until people who dragged us into this situation, namely, Victoria Nuland, along with Secretary Kerry --who seems to be under Nuland's complete spell-- remain in power. Consequently, my only hope is on the pressures that would come from abroad, be it from Europe, China, Middle East and so on. I believe that these pressures would eventually establish the obvious, that despite the immediate benefits of arms race, the benefits of cooperation with Russia far outweigh the dangers of confrontational policy. Let's presume first that some Pyrrhic victory over Russia is achieved and Putin has buckled up and the external pressure. European politicians know very well, that weakened Russia would drag Europe down economically while flooding it with refugees and arms. Furthermore, the plight of weakened Russia would alarm all the BRIC countries, which would take precaution not to replay Russian situation. Thus, instead of Russia as an ally, we would face the rest of the world ready to band together in the effort to resist the bullying.

But what if Russia refuses to buckle up and decides to confront the challenge with their military force. I hope that somebody sane, whether in Europe or the United States (be it in CIA or Pentagon) would convince at least some of the Congressmen, that pushing Russia too far can result in the situation under which there won't be any constituents left to represent in the Congress. There will be empty California and empty New York. Arizona might be left to its own devices, so the stance of Senator McCain is quite understandable after all.

Europeans, Germans in particular, remember the destroyed cities well. Americans never experienced the bombing of their own cities, and thus have serious difficulty to imaging the finality of such destruction. When they see destruction in cinemas, it only lasts for two hours. In real life, the destruction can be permanent. Does this generation of politicians really have such a degree of Hollywood envy that they are willing to create their own apocalypse that would leave anything dreamed of in Hollywood in the dust? Come to think of that, maybe a good film can deliver where rational arguments so far have failed? Mr. Oliver Stone, are you up for a challenge?
--

By Martin Sieff
Martin Sieff is a Senior Fellow of the American University in Moscow and former Managing Editor, International Affairs at United Press International. He is the author of Cycles of Change: The Three Great Cycles of American History and the Coming Crises That Will Lead to the Fourth (2015) available from www.martinsieff.com

"One can always count on the American people to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possibilities," this quote is popularly attributed to Winston Churchill, although there is no record he ever said it. However, there is no sign that Congress and the American people have come close to exhausting their current plunge into suicidal recklessness in the Ukraine crisis.

On the contrary, the new 114th Congress is already in overdrive in its efforts (presumably unintentional) to drive the United States into thermonuclear war with Russia. On March 24, the House of Representatives approved a new resolution (HR 162) to send lethal weapons, military trainers and other support to President Pyotr Poroshenko's beleaguered government in Kiev, allegedly to counter Russian aggression.

This resolution could not have been more ineptly timed. It follows the signing of the Minsk 2 Accords, the best hope in a year of ending the ongoing civil war in Ukraine that has killed 6,000 people in its first year. It comes right after even President Poroshenko, who has been notorious for unleashing heavy artillery and bombing attacks on cities, signed an agreement to continue receiving cheap natural gas from Moscow. Poroshenko was fiercely attacked for this moderate move by armchair critics and free market theorists in the U.S. media).

The congressional resolution is also a gratuitous insult to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, America's two greatest allies in Europe. Both of them labored long and hard over the Minsk Accords. And both of them outspokenly oppose sending arms to the Kiev government and the chaotic militias - some of them displaying open Nazi regalia - fighting the secessionists in Donetsk and Lugansk.

The House resolution will send a clear signal to Poroshenko and his hardliners that Washington wants more violence and provocation against Russia and the eastern Ukraine secessionists. Sending arms to Ukraine now will gasoline on the flames of civil war. It will rapidly lead to a vast escalation of violence and the possibility of a hot war between Russia and the West.

The extraordinary ignorance and irresponsibility in the House is bipartisan. Some 348 members voted for the resolution, and only 48 had the knowledge and the simple guts to vote against it.

Even this was a marked improvement on the previous non-binding resolution passed in the House on December 4, when only 10 members opposed it. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus especially deserve praise from providing the bulk of the 'no' votes on the Democratic side on March 24.

However, left to itself, this Congress is never going to learn wisdom. It will only change and respond to what it always changes and responds to - the lure of money (financial support for reelection campaigns) or the threat of withholding it, and a truly giant wave of popular fury from the American people. So far there is no indication whatsoever of that happening.

I see no prospect whatsoever this situation changing before it is too late. Anti-Russian prejudices are firmly entrenched across the old imperial Republican Right and most of the liberal, human rights-loving liberal left. Fantasies of some revival of 1950s-60s grass-root "peace activists" joining hands and singing "Kumbaya" across America are just absurd. I have more faith in Frodo Baggins and his hobbits. Nor is there any sign of responsible U.S. business community leaders organizing to fund or otherwise encourage any efforts to educate the U.S. media and public on the true dangers they face.

That means the last, best hope to avoid thermonuclear conflagration currently rests on the decent, well-meaning shoulders of Chancellor Merkel, President Hollande and their allies in Europe. But even they need to speak out far more boldly and tell Truth to the Powers in Washington.

Otherwise, the best advice I can give is: Learn Spanish and go to live in Argentina or southern Chile.

What will induce Congress to reverse its stand on the Ukraine crisis?
--
CONGRESS AND UKRAINE.
By Patrick Smith

Henry Steele Commager, among the celebrated historians of his time, collected a half- dozen years' essays and published them in 1974 as The Defeat of America. In it he argued for all that was to be gained were the U.S. to lose in Vietnam and an "aberrant foreign policy" elaborated during the Cold War decades were to be turned back. Commager understood: Defeat is the mulch of renewal. He saw in it "a cathartic value."

I hold to this thesis now, as Congress, ever as aggressively as political and diplomatic circumstances permit, presses toward a yet more aggressive American role in Ukraine. Those who oppose this posture, and those who recognize that its true ambition is to destabilize the Russian Federation, must hope for failure. They must argue for defeat, as Commager did, and in the prevailing American climate remain steadfast enough also to argue for the optimism lying within the apparent pessimism.

In late March, an item called House Resolution 162 made its way to the floor of Congress. Backed by the more extreme factions of the Republican majority, it calls for the arming of Ukraine and "a long-term strategy" to undermine the Putin government in Moscow. This language was drafted a matter of weeks after the Minsk II talks established a fragile, imperfect, but so far sustained ceasefire between Kiev and Ukraine's eastern regions.

It is true that the House majority advances this kind of reckless sentiment commonly. Forlornly enough, it has tried to overturn President Obama's health-care law 30-odd times. But efficacy is not the point. H. Res. 162 is a measure of how much hope one can put into the prospect of a fundamental shift in Congress's prevailing views of the Ukraine crisis and Russia. By the evidence, which is plentiful, one can sustain none.

The best outcome, then, is an American defeat. In my view, this is the most important task to be accomplished if a good settlement is to be achieved This is the primary contradiction, as the Marxists would say. All else, and there is much, is secondary at this time. The question is what form a necessary American failure will take.

At the start of this year I argued elsewhere that one of two relationships was fated to suffer a severe setback in the course of coming months: Either U.S. ties with Europe or Europe's ties with Russia would sustain a significant breach, as I saw it. I continue to argue that the former is the more desirable result. Interdependence between Russia and Europe is a positive value; so is a wider Atlantic.

As Europeans understand far better than Americans, the Continent has been restive with America's primacy in the Atlantic world since the early Cold War decades. To realize now a distance many Europeans have long desired holds at least the prospect of a more independent Europe performing as a counterweight to American influence within the Western alliance.

The European stance on Ukraine, though often ambiguous, is a ready example of the thought. European influence in the P5 + 1 group, which just concluded a preliminary accord with Iran on the latter's nuclear program, appears (from what we know) to be another.

The reality most Americans find too bitter to face-and here we must set much aside-is that the Russian position in Ukraine is vitally important once one accepts that the causes of the crisis originate in Washington's post-Soviet ambition generally and its intentions more specifically in facilitating last year's coup in Kiev. Washington must be stopped: This is the reality. Moscow did not apply for the job, but it has it, at least in its on-the-ground aspect.

We live in a large moment and we must think accordingly. What is it Congress actually has on its mind? What is its most fundamental intent? These questions cannot be answered with resort to logic. Reasoned argument for a new posture toward Ukraine and Russia will not yield any such thing.

Fundamentally at issue is the self-evident exhaustion of what we commonly call the exceptionalist narrative. A consciousness is passing, to put the point another way. What we witness in Ukraine, and refracted variously throughout American foreign policy, is a certain desperation among those who-determinedly, insistently-still find safety in the exceptionalist story.

This defines the task, it seems to me, as less tractable than it might be otherwise. Chosen-people consciousness was not a rational matter among the 17th century settlers who made the first crossings. It was a question of belief, not thought. So it remains, for better or worse, and, in the nature of faith and belief, we had better brace for worse.
--

Forget Congress! The Deep State Is America's Real Bad Guy In Ukraine

By Andrew Korybko,
Andrew Korybko is the American Master's Degree student at the Moscow State University of International Relations (MGIMO)

In his introduction to the US-Russia Expert Panel prompt about whether Congress can be lobbied away from arming Ukraine, Mr. Doctorow mentions previous American interventions abroad that were "well-intentioned and even noble" but ultimately "resulted in catastrophe", such as "Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya". The strong issue taken with this statement is that the US' interventions there and everywhere else were and always will be anything but well-intentioned and noble, being driven by pure geopolitical power plays in each and every instance.

It's exactly this "well-intentioned and even noble" mindset that has convinced the vast majority of Congress of the righteousness of arming Ukraine, and no amount of lobbying will get them to see beyond this perspective unless they themselves really want to. Suggesting that "developments outside the States, meaning from decisions made in Europe" could have a positive effect on convincing Congress to pull back from its current course completely ignores the reality of American Exceptionalism and the fact that Congress may actually feel emboldened to arm Ukraine simply because the EU is seen as being 'weak' and 'dilly dallying' over this artificially pressing topic.

It's important at this point to question the logic of even lobbying Congress against arming Ukraine in the first place, since President Putin has previously said that Kiev is already getting arms from Western countries anyhow. This shows that Congress' function isn't to call the shots in American foreign policy, but to function as 'democratic' window dressing for established deep state policies. To expand upon this further, the deep state is defined by the author as representing the permanent diplomatic, defense, and intelligence bureaucracy that doesn't cycle out of power whenever presidential administrations change. They represent a continuous and consistent force in shaping the application of America's foreign policy, hence why despite the regular shuffling of the state's upper echelon (e.g. Secretary of State, Director of the CIA, the President), the country's policies proceed unabated amidst these symbolic periodic transitions.

This is exceptionally true for American foreign policy against Russia, and one needs look no further than the new US National Security Strategy of 2015 to recognize both the power of the deep state and the futility of lobbying Congress against its dictates. The document explicitly makes it clear that Russia is now seen as a threat to American national security and that the US "will continue to impose significant costs on Russia through sanctions and other means". Specific attention should be drawn to the last part, "and other means", which is an obvious allusion to hostile covert operations such as arming Ukraine. The die has already been cast when it comes to sanctions (see the certainty with which the document speaks about the continued imposition of sanctions without any reference to Congress whatsoever), so it should be no different when it comes to weapons shipments either.

Finally, in the absolutely unlikely event that Congress passes legislation expressly prohibiting the arming of Ukraine, then the deep state, with the rubber stamping of the President, can resort to more surreptitious methods to carry out its preplanned shipments, with the Iran-Contra scandal immediately coming to mind. It doesn't matter what exact form this takes, but what's important is to acknowledge that 'where there's the will, there's the way', and the US deep state certainly has the will to continue pushing Russia's buttons and prodding it into a costly conventional intervention in Ukraine on terms which are controlled by Washington. The solution, therefore, lies not in fruitlessly lobbying Congress and impossibly reversing a fait accompli, but in accepting the reality of the deep state's overriding influence on foreign affairs and redirecting one's efforts towards more constructive endeavors, such as raising awareness among the population about this state of affairs and supporting independent media and political oversight initiatives that seek to shed light on it.

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 #21
Sputnik
April 8, 2015
Partnership With Russia Vital for US National Security - Stephen Cohen
By Ekaterina Blinova

Washington is closer to the possibility of war with Moscow than it has been since the Cuban Missile Crisis, Stephen Cohen stated, adding that US national security "still runs through Moscow."

Interfering in the Ukrainian conflict and indulging Kiev's warmongering, the United States risks alienating Russia; however, Washington will never have "real sensible national security" without Moscow as a partner, emphasized Stephen Cohen, a prominent American historian and professor of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University.

According to the professor, the "new Cold War" instigated by Washington against Moscow has dealt a severe blow to numerous bilateral projects in such areas as space and science, arms control, fighting international terrorism, limiting nuclear proliferation and resolving regional conflicts.

However, "American national security still runs through Moscow," Stephen Cohen pointed out, "We will never have real sensible national security without the Kremlin as partner." Washington needs Moscow in those areas where Russian and American security interests coincide, and there are many such issues, the historian stressed.

Russia has long been involved in Iran's nuclear negotiations, and the United States does need Russia on its side, Professor Cohen noted. He elaborated that Moscow is concerned about Iran's nuclear weapons potential and does not want a nuclear armed power on its borders. However, the new Cold War launched by the West over the Ukrainian crisis is undermining Russo-American cooperation on the Iranian issue.

If Washington insists on behaving aggressively, militarily, toward Moscow, Russia's stance regarding Iran is going to change. Instead of considering Tehran as a subject of negotiation the Kremlin may begin to see Iran as a vital ally. And it would pose a substantial challenge to US national security, Stephen Cohen warned.

The professor qualified tensions between the United States and Russia over Ukraine as the worst confrontation since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

"We [the US] are closer to the actual possibility of war with Russia than it has been since the Cuban Missile Crisis," Stephen Cohen said.

The historian pointed out that the trade dispute between the EU and Ukraine in November 2014, erupted into a Ukrainian civil war, but the White House, the State Department and NATO denied there was any, insisting that the Kiev regime was facing a Russian invasion. The professor denounced such a stance as "complete ignorance" not only of history but of what is currently taking place on the ground in Ukraine.

Stephen Cohen noted that Washington, Brussels and Kiev in fact have sabotaged the Minsk 2 peace agreement and suggested that they could potentially be interested in direct military confrontation with Russia.

He also expressed his deep concerns about the narrative actively propagated by the West that Russian President Putin planned to destabilize Ukraine as a part of wider strategy of taking back former Soviet territories in Eastern Europe. "It doesn't correspond to the facts and above all it has no logic. This is the last thing Putin wanted," Stephen Cohen emphasized.

The professor underscored that Ukraine is completely destroyed and referred to the fact that both Russia and Europe are currently suffering from economic crises. However, while the EU wants the sanctions ended, Washington pushes it to toughen them.

Remarkably, while experts are discussing how Russia will bear up under the double burden of Western sanctions and low oil prices, it has turned out that Moscow "has really done better than anyone expected," Stephen Cohen noted. Meanwhile, Russia is turning East, and away from the West, the professor warned, adding that the EU and particularly Germany could ultimately lose their investment opportunities in Russia.

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 #22
Voice of America
April 10, 2015
Former US Ambassador: Putin Has No Interest in Resolving Ukraine Conflict

Former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul tells VOA that Russian President Vladimir Putin has no interest in resolving the conflict in Ukraine because it serves his interest.

McFaul said Thursday that Putin likes the open-ended, low grade military confrontation in the former Soviet republic because it works to undermine the government in Kyiv.
The former U.S. diplomat says none of this is about to change because unlike Mikhail Gorbachev,  Putin wants the U.S. as an enemy.

When asked about what Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other officials in Moscow have described as the United States' "overt anti-Russian propaganda," McFaul said the United States has not been involved in activities directly challenging Putin's government, which he said would be counterproductive.

"I think it is in Putin's interest to describe us as the enemy. So, no amount of diplomacy will ever change that," said McFaul.   He said the United States needs to be involved in speaking up for democratic ideals.

More than 6,000 civilians, rebels and Ukrainian servicemen have been killed in eastern Ukraine since fighting broke out there between government and separatist forces a year ago.

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 #23
Russia Direct
April 8, 2015
Russia Direct presents its Ranking of Russian Studies Programs in US
Harvard, University of Wisconsin, Columbia, University of Illinois and Stanford are the Top 5 U.S. programs in Russian Studies.
By Igor Rozin

On April 8, Russia Direct releases its comprehensive Ranking of Russian and Post-Soviet Studies in the U.S., covering 32 programs at American universities. The Ranking is an attempt to revive interest in Russia within the U.S. and improve relations between two countries. This is especially important, given the Ukrainian crisis and the geopolitical standoff between the two nations, which some experts are calling a "new Cold War."

At this time, Russia Direct focuses on Master's level degree programs that provide advanced professional training and prepare students for work in government, business and international organizations.

Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies is recognized as the best Russian Studies program in the U.S., followed by University of Wisconsin - Madison, Columbia, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Stanford (For detailed scores distribution table, please visit this page).

The methodology is a result of discussions with different academics and experts in Russian Studies. The ranking is based on six important criteria: average U.S. university ranking (based on the Shanghai, QS and Times Higher Education rankings), study abroad and exchange opportunities, academic competitiveness and research, reputation (based on peer review surveys of educators and employers), future employment prospects and Title VI center status (federal grants for universities' National Resource Centers and Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships).

In addition, the ranking brings together insights of experts from U.S. think tanks, former U.S. Department of State officials, advisors and those academics directly involved in teaching Russian Studies programs for American students and creating the curriculum.

Among them are Alexandra Vacroux of Harvard, Angela Stent of Georgetown, Jeffrey Mankoff of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Anna Vassilieva of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, Alexander Abashkin of the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, and Nicolai Petro of the University of Rhode Island.

Experts agree that such a Ranking is very timely and relevant given the sharp decline in U.S.-Russia relations and increasing distrust between two countries spurred by the Ukrainian crisis.

"The Ranking is quite timely considering the current turbulence in U.S.-Russian relations," said Michael Kofman, Public Policy Scholar at the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute.
Viktoria Zhuravleva, vice-director of the Department of International Relations and Area Studies at the Russian State University for the Humanities, gives two reasons why this project is important: "First, the decline in expertise on Russia in the United States; second, the urgent need for multifaceted research into post-Soviet Russia."

"An advantage of the ranking is its international look which is partly due to the project's goals, aimed at reviving interest in Russian Studies in the U.S. and establishing a dialogue between the two countries' expert and academic communities," she said. "The selected parameters present a clear view of the dynamics of Russia-related academic study in U.S. universities."

"Russia Direct's graduate school rankings provide a useful service to young American (and international) scholars who are considering pursing graduate work in the field of Russian studies... it has never been more clear to journalists, scholars and even casual observers, that U.S.-Russian relations have sunk to a dangerous nadir and that part (only part, but not a marginal part) of the reason has to do with the fact that there are precious few policymakers within the Obama administration who posses the requisite expertise which would enable them to make wiser decisions vis-à-vis Russia," said James Carden, a contributor to The National Interest and the Moscow Times, and a former advisor to the U.S.-Russia Presidential Commission at the U.S. State Department.

Stanislav Tkachenko, professor at St. Petersburg State University, agrees and argues that the ranking and its methodology are devised with "obvious care and meticulous attention."

"It takes into account the rating of the entire university, the international dimension of the program, expert reviews, graduates' employment prospects, as well as other factors. The key point is that its application and results are fully consistent with my own insights and assessments of the particular Master's programs in Russian studies in the U.S. with which I am well acquainted from my research and teaching activities and in my capacity as president of the Post-Communist Systems in International Relations at the International Studies Association. I believe that its findings should be taken seriously and analyzed thoroughly, leaving aside the question of which programs were not included in the list," he says.

However, Zhuravleva points out that the representativeness of the data is "still a lingering issue" and doesn't take into account two more important criteria: the number of visiting Russian scholars teaching within Russian Studies programs, and their interdisciplinary level.

"To better understand the structure of expert knowledge on Russia in the U.S. and its influence on the "Russian vector" of U.S. foreign policy, it would be useful to supplement the Ranking of academic centers with one of U.S. think tanks on Russia," she suggests.

On April 27, we invite you to join the panel discussion "The Future of Russian Studies in the USA" with representatives of academia, government and the private sector.
What are the best Russian Studies programs in the U.S.? How did we go from Soviet Studies to Russian Studies? How deep is the Russian Studies bench? How to improve the field of Russian Studies? How are the debates on Russia and the Ukrainian crisis in the White House reverberating within academia? Subscribe and download the full version of the report to find out. The report is available only for subscribers.

http://www.russia-direct.org/archive?file=RussiaDirect_Report_BestRussianStudiesPrograms2015_April_2015_0.pdf

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