#2
Great feast of Easter brings joy and hope to millions of Christians - Putin

Moscow, April 13, Interfax - President Vladimir Putin has greeted Orthodox Christians and all Russian citizens celebrating Easter, the Kremlin press service reports.

"The great feast of Easter brings joy and hope to millions of believers, introduces them to the sources of spirituality and traditions of forefathers," the presidential message says.

"The Russian Orthodox Church plays an enormous constructive role in preserving our rich historical and cultural legacy, in reviving unfading moral values. It takes tireless care of the unity of society, the consolidation of the family and the upbringing of the younger generation in the spirit of patriotism and civil duty," Putin notes.

"The Church does much for tackling pressing social problems, for strengthening ethnic and religious harmony in the country," the message says. "These strong, multifaceted efforts are is very important today and deserve the deepest recognition," it says.

Putin also sent greetings to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill.

"It is pleasant to realize that under your leadership the Russian Orthodox Church directs its services to the revival of traditional moral values, the upbringing and enlightenment of the younger generation, the protection of the family, the mother and child, assumes an important mission of consolidating society, harmonizing religions relations and strengthening understanding between people," the message says.

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 #3
History News Network
http://historynewsnetwork.org
April 12, 2015
Vladimir Putin: History Man?
By Walter G. Moss
Walter G. Moss is a professor emeritus of history at Eastern Michigan University and Contributing Editor of HNN. He is the author of A History of Russia, Vol. I and Vol. II. For a list of his recent books and online publications, click here.

The fourth chapter of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin (expanded ed., 2015), an excellent work by Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, is entitled "History Man." The authors write: "Vladimir Putin is a self-designated student of history. He claims it was his favorite subject in school, and he remains an avid reader today. He also presents himself as a man of history with a special relationship to the subject." But they also admit that like many other past leaders of his country-and one could add "of other countries"-he attempts to manipulate history for political purposes, and they add that "for Putin, history and the lessons it teaches reinforce the importance of serving the state."

Like Peter the Great, Putin emphasizes the importance of strengthening the government and of state patriotism. As Hill and Gaddy write, "The first key to Vladimir Putin's personality is his view of himself as a man of the state, his identity as a statist." In addition to Putin being a statist and a "history man," the authors sketch out four other "identities" that characterize him ("the Survivalist, the Outsider, the Free Marketeer, and the Case Officer") and help explain his actions as a Russian leader.

Those in the West who see Putin as essentially the same man he was when he served in the Soviet KGB fail to recognize that, like many other Russians, he has been struggling for almost a quarter of a century to redefine "the Russian Idea," what Russia is and should be. Soviet communist leaders, he realizes, made many mistakes, and he has no desire to restore communism. This does not mean that his KGB service did not affect him. It did, but so too did many of his other experiences during more recent decades. Hill and Gaddy, for example, claim that his present negative attitude toward the United States has been shaped primarily by his dealings with it during the last fifteen years.

In the chapter "History Man" there is a section entitled "Manipulating History: Putin and Stolypin." Students of Russian history know that Stolypin was Tsar Nicholas II's prime minister from 1906 until his assassination in 1911. Putin pictures himself as being like Stolypin in that both men came to power after troubled and uncertain times-in Stolypin's case after Russia's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and the 1905 revolutionary unrest-and like the tsarist prime minister, Putin sees himself as a strong man but one who realizes the need for some reforms. On a trip to Kiev in 2013, Putin laid flowers at Stolypin's grave, and in his December 2013 presidential address he referred to him as someone who was "capable of implementing major progressive reforms."

Stolypin was more an authoritarian pragmatist than an ideologue. But how about ideology? In a future essay, I shall deal with the question of whether Putin is more of an ideologue, idealist, or opportunist, but here we shall consider some of the historical political ideas that have influenced him.

Despite stating in his millennium speech of December 30, 1999 that he was "against the restoration of an official state ideology in Russia in any form," Putin (according to Hill and Gaddy) reformulated and adapted the Official Nationality ideology that existed under Tsar Nicholas I, who ruled from 1825 to 1855. That ideology can be summed up in three words, Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality.

On the occasion of Crimea completing the process of being transferred from Ukrainian to Russian rule in 2014, Putin stated: "Everything in Crimea speaks of our shared history and pride. This is the location of ancient Khersones, where Prince Vladimir was baptised. His spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilization and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus." In various other ways he has also emphasized the centrality of Orthodoxy to Russian history and values and indicated that he has personally returned to the Orthodoxy which was cherished by his mother.

Under Putin the concept of autocracy has been replaced by "sovereign democracy." According to Hill and Gaddy, "Sovereign democracy . . . is the epitome of a strong and powerful state, just as autocracy was in the tsarist era." The new term is meant to suggest that "Russia is accountable and answerable to no one (certainly no outside power) apart from the opinion of the majority of its population." Furthermore, the "universal norms of democracy are not Russian and have in fact damaged Russia's political development. Russia must, therefore, return to a political system that is uniquely its own, that is sovereign and historically rooted."

Putin's emphasis on nationality also deviates somewhat from the way Nicholas I applied the principle: it is more inclusive and places less emphasis on the ethnic Russian nationality. Hill and Gaddy quote Putin as stating, "We are a multinational society but we are a single Russian nation, a united and indivisible Russia." Putin knows his history well enough to realize the folly of exacerbating ethnic nationalism in a multinational country (as Russia remains even after the breakup of the USSR).

Regarding the influence of past Russian philosophers and thinkers on Putin, much nonsense has been written. New York Times columnist David Brooks has labelled Vladimir Solovyov [also transliterated as Soloviev and Solovev], Nikolai Berdyaev, and Ivan Ilyin as "Putin's favorite philosophers" and indicated that reading them "is to enter a world full of melodrama, mysticism and grandiose eschatological visions." A recent Politico essay title by Peter Eltsov, a professor at National Defense University, refers to writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn as "Putin's Favorite Guru."

"Favorite philosophers" and "guru" certainly overemphasize the influence of these thinkers on Putin and fail to acknowledge sufficiently the extent to which he is manipulatively cherry-picking their ideas.

In that Paul Grenier (on one of my favorite blogs, Johnson's Russia List) has recently detailed how wrongheaded ascribing such influences are, especially in regard to the widely-respected philosophers Solovyov and Berdyaev, only a few additional comments are required here. Many years ago, at Georgetown U., I wrote a dissertation dealing with Solovyov's opposition to Russian nationalists whom I labelled "Russophiles." Putin has much more in common with them than he does with Solovyov.

Regarding Ilyin (1883-1954) and Solzhenitsyn, both of whom spent many of their later years in the West, the linking of them, although overdone, is not as far off the mark as it is with the two prominent earlier philosophers. Grenier acknowledges that "Putin regularly quotes" Ilyin and respects him, but also differs with him on some important points. Hill and Gaddy, who do not mention Solovyov, Berdyaev, or Solzhenitsyn, also admit that Ilyin has been "a favored reference point" for Putin, but the two authors' words that "Putin has paid lip service" to some of Ilyin's concepts suggest more manipulation than truth-seeking in Putin's use of him.

Grenier notes that some of Ilyin's ideas "overlap with those of Solzhenitsyn, who was profoundly influenced" by Ilyin. In his Politico essay on Solzhenitsyn as a guru to Putin, Eltsov does not mention Ilyin, but quotes Putin as saying that many of his policies for Russia were "largely in tune with what Solzhenitsyn has written." In noting the similarity of Putin's criticism of Western values with that of Solzhenitsyn's disparagement of them in his 1978 Harvard speech, Eltsov makes a legitimate point. Eltsov could have also mentioned, but did not, the writer's admiration of Stolypin. But he goes too far in claiming that "recent political developments show that Putin indeed has followed many of Solzhenitsyn's ideas, particularly in the area known as 'the near abroad.' " Eltsov believes that Putin's policies toward Ukraine mirror those of Solzhenitsyn, who also "saw Kazakhstan in the same light as Ukraine, suggesting that it was not really a separate state and that much of its territory is historically Russian." Therefore, Eltsov concludes, "we might look to Solzhenitsyn's writings for a clue as to where Putin's next aggressive move might be: Kazakhstan."

It would require a whole additional essay to deal with these statements. But Eltsov's own words that "Putin chooses to follow only those ideas [of Solzhenitsyn] that fit his neo-imperialist and reactionary agenda" indicate that Putin is manipulating the Russian writer's words for political purposes rather than treating him like a guru.

This manipulation is in keeping with Putin's approach to past thinkers and history in general. At a November 2014 meeting with history teachers, he observed that they were meeting on National Unity Day, a Putin-created holiday emphasizing the importance of unity amongst the many Russian nationalities.

He referred to several historical events to buttress his emphasis. He observed that "National Unity Day honors the liberation of Moscow [in 1612] by militia members who were headed by an ethnic Tatar." He declared that Russia lost World War I not because it was "beaten in battles on the front." Rather, it was "torn apart from within." He lamented the fact that many young people did not know of the heroes of World War II, that there are many examples of them, and that they included "soldiers of all different ethnic groups."

He also contrasted the two world wars and hinted that maybe Stalin's WWII domestic harshness was necessary to overcome the Nazis-and perhaps harshness is needed today to counter foreign threats: "The cruelty of the leadership likely played a certain role [in winning WWII] as well. We could, of course, argue about this and give political assessments. It's just hard to say whether we could have won the war if the leaders had not been so cruel, if they were more like those in Nicholas II's time [1894-1917]. It's very hard to say. And what would the consequences have been if we'd lost? The consequences would have been simply catastrophic."

Putin's November remarks to historians also include criticism of the "Norman theory" that "statehood [to ancient Rus] came from outside" in the guise of Vikings. Putin also maintains that lack of political unity among Russian princes led to catastrophes like the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century. The contention that the lack of a strong authoritarian ruler led to Russia being victimized by foreign powers is not a Putin invention. Rulers like Ivan the Terrible and Stalin also insisted on it.

Putin is far from unique among politicians, or even among professional historians, in attempting to manipulate history. But a true "history man" (or woman) is primarily a truth-seeker, one who puts discovering the truth before any political or personal causes, whether they are of an ideological, national, patriotic, class, ethnic, or gender nature. Philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch in her The Sovereignty of Good writes of the "honesty and humility of the scholar who does not even feel tempted to suppress the fact which damns his theory." Without denying that Putin believes much of what he says, he possesses neither the honesty nor humility of Murdoch's hypothetical scholar. Politicians who do possess such virtues are rare-in any country. And even we professional historians must fight a constant battle to prevent our biases and causes from trumping truth-seeking.

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 #4
Euromaidan Press/Colta.ru
http://euromaidanpress.com
April 9, 2015
The country of triumphant resentment: Yampolskiy on Russia's loss of reality
By Mikhail Yampolsky

Resentment

One of the most striking developments in Russian society has been the explosive growth of aggression simultaneously with a refusal to accept reality, burying it under ideological fictions. This phenomenon cannot be easily explained. It is often chalked up to the unprecedented amounts of television propaganda. While official propaganda explains a lot, it does not explain everything. Not every society can be reprogrammed in such a short period of time, and to such extremes. To be effective, propaganda must reflect some subconscious attitudes of the population.

To analyze this transformation of mass consciousness, I think it would be useful to recall Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas about resentment. Nietzsche considered resentment to be a feature of slave morality, since the very nature of the slave's predicament means he cannot change anything in the world. Here the rebellion of imagination against reality is not without a certain creative spirit:

"The slave revolt in morality begins when resentment becomes a creative force and generates values: resentment from those who are prevented from a genuinely active reaction and who compensate for that with a merely imaginary vengeance. While all noble morality grows out of a triumphant self-affirmation, slave morality from the start says 'No' to what is 'outside,' 'other,' 'a non-self.' And this 'No' is its creative act. This transformation of the glance which confers value-this necessary projection towards what is outer instead of back onto itself-that is inherent in resentment. In order to arise, slave morality always requires first an opposing world, a world outside itself. Physiologically speaking, it needs external stimuli in order to act at all. Its action is basically reaction." (Friedrich Nietzsche - On the Genealogy of Morals, translation by Ian Johnston)

When reality cannot be changed, slaves destroy it in their imagination, radically denying its existence. Nietzsche pointed out a connection between resentment and the religion of slaves - Christianity, unlike paganism, thinks in terms of the 'other world,' apocalyptic transfiguration, heavenly utopia, etc. Communist utopia fully fits this reality-denying strategy of resentment.

It seems to me that the rejection of reality in Russia today is directly related to a sense of helplessness in people who are unable to effect even a meager change in the life of their country or even their own family. Media 'content' adds fuel to the fire of slave-based negativity, which helps to cope with the feelings of alienation and humiliation. What's unique about the Russian situation, however, is that all of society - from Putin all the way down to the last railroad switchman - harbors the same resentment in equal measure. For Putin the source of the resentment is that neither he nor Russia is acknowledged as respected and equal players on the world stage. The source of the railroad switchman's resentment is helplessness before police, racketeers, corrupt officials, and judges. I believe that at some point the resentment fantasies of the ruling elite reached a strange resonance with the resentment fantasies of common folks. And the world was transformed. Adventure in Ukraine became a noble war against imaginary fascists. Russia's isolation was transformed into an acknowledgment of Russia as a great power. Economic decline and falling incomes transformed into growing prosperity and happiness. Even people who would normally steer clear of resentment are so spooked by the whirlwind of recent events, which they are powerless to influence, systematically attempt to deny the reality of what is happening, or at least try to ignore it all.

Loss of reality and crisis of institutions

The strangeness of the current state of affairs lies in the fact that the Russian government, personified by Putin, having effectively alienated and prevented ordinary citizens from having any say or influence in events and decisions, turns out to be not a victim of this alienation, but the beneficiary. Alienation from reality in Russia is unfolding on two levels, both connected with the deep crisis of institutions. For the average person, the crisis of institutions is manifested in the total perversion of the functions of law enforcement agencies and authorities, the deterioration of health care and education. But the crisis of institutions is also evident on a different level, in the deterioration and senselessness of national sovereignty. This is a crisis not only for Russia, but for the entire world, because of economic globalization. British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman likes to talk about the 'planetary dimensions of business, finance, trade, and information flow' (Z. Bauman. Globalization: The Human Consequences, Columbia University Press. 1998). This flow transcends national territories and sovereignties. Capital, goods, ideas, and services circulate within that global space. A significant part of the new Russian prosperity is a product of participating in global flows. This global space, however, not only brings wealth, but also creates a host of problems: environmental, financial, immigration, etc. At the same time, Bauman notes that solving those global problems falls on the shoulders of politicians whose power doesn't extend beyond their national borders and populations. Hence we have a systemic crisis of institutions linked to national sovereignties. Local institutions in all countries demonstrate their profound helplessness.

Russian authorities, with their exaggerated cult of sovereignty, so obsolete today, on the one hand, want to receive the benefits from the global "space of flows," while on the other, are still trying to solve global problems by using local institutions. This is especially evident in naive attempts to counter recent economic sanctions with ineffective countermeasures based on self-isolation.

Disillusionment in institutions, the profound sense of their irrelevance for both the ordinary citizen and for the president, leads to the refusal to follow institutional norms and procedures on all levels. As a result, resentment becomes, in the words of French political philosopher Étienne Balibar "anti-political."

Quintessential manifestations of 'anti-politics' are war (even though Clausewitz once called it a "continuation of policy by other means") and disgust towards all forms of civic engagement and aversion to laws. In Russia all those symptoms are equally striking in both the ruling elite and the masses. Balibar believed that 'anti-politics' leads to nationalism and populism, which in turn easily degenerate into dictatorship and the cult of the charismatic leader, whose charisma in essence is fed precisely by the breaking of the law, Constitution, and international conventions.  A paradoxical illusion emerges: that nationalism can solve supra-national problems, that a charismatic leader can solve the problems that bogged down inefficient national bureaucracies.  Italian cultural sociologist Carlo Bordoni rightfully noted that nationalism and populism today have taken on a 'variety show' character  (like Russian Cossacks), and provide no effective solutions. This is the same form of reality denial that results from resentment. Still most dangerous, according to Bordoni, is the form of 'anti-politics' that is 'statehood without a state.' This occurs when decaying Byzantine bureaucracy rules, but the state as an institution is almost non-existent.

I share Balibar's views, but I think 'anti-politics' is not just the result of a crisis of the nation-state. I believe it is also a product of Nietzschean resentment, rooted in the absence of the ability to meaningfully engage in positive action. According to  Nietzsche, in response to the resistance to the outside world, we have only pure negativity. The recent rise of Putin as the moral authority within Russia is a clear result of anti-politics. "Morality," as is often the case, turns out to be a strange product of anti-institutionality. The leader's decisions in this context flow not from laws and regulations, but from his personal "moral compass," demonstrating his absolute sovereignty. He makes decisions not on the basis of international agreements signed by Russia (on the inviolability of the borders of Ukraine, for example), but on an inner sense of justice, such as saving imaginary Russians from Ukrainian persecution, rectifying injustices committed by Khrushchev in 1954 etc. "Moral" policy in this context ignores all institutional norms.

The Principle of Lies

The rejection of the "reality principle" (to use the Freudian term), leads to the establishment of the lie as the main policy-making principle. When state policy is based on complete lies or the denial of obvious facts, then we are faced with a very special type of policy, one that was successfully practiced by Hitler and Stalin.  In a 1975 roundtable discussion in Germany on the theme of "Legitimacy of Lies in Politics," Hannah Arendt noted that the lie was not classified as one of the  deadly sins. It only began to occupy a special place in the European mind-set in the 16th-17th centuries, which corresponds to the emergence of modern science, with its claim to objective truth. Politics, though, in the general view of the roundtable participants, never existed without the "occasional" lie.

However, the situation dramatically changes with the invention of advertising, all-out propaganda, and modern mass media. Now it became possible to construct the world in accordance with the imagination of politicians. The distinction between reality and lie is now completely blurred. It is precisely this lack of distinction so evident today in Russian society that Arendt considered the most dangerous. A strange shift occurs in mass consciousness, creating what Arendt calls "defactualization." The facts themselves lose their absolute reality. Even death starts to seem illusory. Maybe they existed, maybe not. Perhaps they died, or just vanished without a trace into thin. Everything begins to appear as only a version of reality, a fiction. Such a metamorphosis of consciousness always leads to a decrease in civil activity, and to an increase in apathy and indifference.

Not long before that roundtable discussion Arendt published another essay: "Lying in Politics: Reflections on The Pentagon Papers." This essay contains her most complete statement of her views on lies in politics. It deals with the 1971 publication of classified military documents about the Vietnam War. These papers demonstrated that America had no tangible interests during the Vietnam War: no new territories, no economic advantages - absolutely nothing. Moreover, this war partly undermined the influence and the power of the United States. According to Arendt, the war was conducted exclusively for the sake of appearances, to buttress the image of the "most powerful nation on Earth," the indomitable defender of freedom and democracy. The disconnect between this war and reality resulted, as we all know, in the defeat of a superpower at the hands of a backward agrarian country. At the same time, notes Arendt, this need to boast the 'false-image' was not even prompted by the need to achieve some special international status through bluffing. Unlike contemporary Russia, who would benefit from such bluff, America's status as the superpower was never contested. There was simply no real national interest behind the Vietnam bluff.

This total lie resulted in believing its own fictions. The resulting generalized illusion makes bureaucracy, having already lost touch with reality, even less capable of solving real problems. Ukraine's story and the Vietnam War, with all their differences, have many similarities.  Bureaucracy systematically undermines the economic and political well-being of the country in order to create a kind of bluff. "Defactualization" in Russia has reached the stage of self-destruction of the state and society. And all those sacrifices are made only to 'save face' and create an image of the 'indestructible might.'

This paranoid desire to demonstrate power by any means necessary is the best evidence that Russian politics or 'anti-politics' are rooted in resentment, weakness, and powerlessness. The incredible fear which current authorities display at the specter of honest and open elections or any other political or civic activity in the country reveals the depth of Russia's impotence and insecurity. Resentment, an affect of the frightened, the helpless, and the powerless, always manifests itself in the daydreaming of power and invincibility (we don't care about the sanctions and the rest of the world), and sycophantic media do everything in their power to hypnotize with these delusions those who crave and produce them.

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 #5
Radix
www.radixjournal.com
April 10, 2015
THE IDEOLOGY OF UNITED RUSSIA
By Vincent Law

Recently, a delegation from the United Russia ruling party came by my university to give a talk about their platform. Seeing as we are a "liberal arts college" they didn't get a warm reception. But to those who were willing to listen, one could learn a lot. Let's start from the top.

Is United Russia Conservative?

Most people, if prompted to answer where they believe United Russia fits on the political spectrum would say that the group is conservative. But according to Huntington's definition of conservatism, United Russia cannot be considered conservative. Huntington's thesis is that conservatism can only be a purely situational rather than ideational ideology-a defense of any existing institutions against fundamental challenge. In other words, conservatism is a knee-jerk reaction to whatever trend of progressivism is alive and well at the time, without an all-encompassing idea at its core. The United Russia party openly agrees with Huntington's analysis and instead considers itself traditional as opposed to "conservative".

However, can it be said that UR is even traditionalist? According to the party ideology, and the presentation by the representatives, UR is firmly wedded to many key concepts of modernity and the liberal project. In fact, UR considers itself the only force that can save classical liberalism from itself, a strange claim for a party that considers itself "traditional."

They claim the title of defenders of real liberal values which they claim are now dead. From a conceptual point of view, this seems to be a either a convenient escape from logic or perhaps a different understanding of the term "traditional." Perhaps there is a new understanding of traditionalism that is defined by UR as being "diet liberalism" or "liberalism lite" that makes it more palatable to the Russian public.

The Individual vs "The Persona"

One of the more interesting ideas advanced by UR is the concept of a "persona," not an individual. They make the point that a "person is realized only in the context of society not as a disembodied individual. Mass culture is creating a culture of individual consumers," United Russia says, and here they have a point. At least in the West, the United States has embarked on a project following the end of the Second World War and arguably even earlier, to transform the American citizen into the American consumer. United Russia asks the hypothetical about what the future will look like, "when we are all interchangeable consumers, when all identity is relative, when we can sell everything that we own as a culture to transnationals. Whether this is the future of disembodied individualism that we want..."

Their criticism of modern consumer culture extends to the ideas of modern liberalism as well. Neoliberalism as a model they say, is one that is not needed in Russia, and that we have to learn from the cultural suicide of the West. They came out swinging against neo-liberalism saying that, "neoliberals say you will win if you sell out, and they to convince you to be willing to sell everything, all in favor of economics. Replace everyone with Vietnamese if you want efficiency. This is the end goal of the neo-liberal model, and we believe that it is an insane experiment; rather all social experiments must be grounded in history."

Surprisingly enough, they made an argument about the need for multiculturalism, but not in the way that most progressives would consider. If a country has a right to self-determinism, then what can we say about neo-liberalism, "when it is involved in the colonization of traditional cultures?"

A Case against Democracy

It would seem that United Russia does not believe in democracy as the highest governing principle of a state. They did not come right out and say it, but I believe the interpretation is correct, if one is wililing to read between the lines of the rhetoric. For example, one of the representatives of United Russia said that, "democracy can be manipulated, like a retard; special interest groups can derail the entire project, what is more important is the narod." This draws obvious parallels with the German idea of the volk. They continue: "Democracies can become easily manipulated by transnational corporations, foreign NGOs, or corrosive ideals." United Russia makes the point, (take it as you will) that they are not against the idea of democracy categorically, rather, "what United Russia is against, is the manipulation of identity... in the name of any ideology that is alien to that people." A criticism of democracy is hard to find in the modern world, where the idea of popular government has trumped all others in debates about the nature of government, but it seems that United Russia is making the case for a national project not necessarily based on democratic values.

Religion and Tradition

When asked how many people in attendance actually were practicing Orthodox Christians, only a smattering of people actually raised their hands. This is fairly typical among the youth of most developed countries, and it seems to be a valid criticism to point out that among the population at large, religiosity is not that common. Therefor a party that is basing its appeal on "traditional values rooted in Orthodoxy," seems to be only appealing to the minority of faithful in an otherwise post-communist country. The counter to this point, that I personally found convincing, is that the question is not necessarily one of religious practice (going to church every Sunday) or even faith (blasphemy I know), but rather self-identity. They make the comparison to China, still ostensibly Communist, but which has people who have the Chinese and Confucian values and realize the value of traditional religion to their self-identity-like. No one could say that the average Chinese does not realize that he is Chinese first and communist second. This is not a unique phenomenon, and Russians, just like the Chinese, need a self-identity grounded in history and tradition.

A Unique Take on the Recent History of Russia

People thought synergy between countries would continue, but this was not the case as the United States decided to pursue hegemony and rifts developed between the SCO countries. To put in perspective the loss incurred by Russia, Ukraine took 60% of the industry with it during the breakup of the Soviet Union, as well as 50 million citizens. The rift between Ukraine and Russia has in fact been called a "tragic development" by both Putin and his party on several occasions.

Interestingly enough, they seemed very well read on Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations," making the point that the split in Ukraine has been predicted for a while now and that this entire crisis is about deciding what Russia is in the post-soviet world. However, on the important questions, such as what Russia's future looks like in the 21st century, their stance is unclear. Almost as opaque are the answers of United Russia about the border question.

When I asked about Russia's boundaries, the answer was not what I expected.

The representatives said, "For now, Russia's boundaries, but boundaries change. It is not to say that we want to fight for new ones, but further integration is possible. Take Kazakhstan as an example. We cannot wage wars to expand markets, but further synchronization with Kazakhstan and the other 'stans' is possible."

When pressed about Ukraine, however, there was a lot of dodging, and roundabout answers. It was only when they were pressed further by the audience that they finally gave out the party line. "We support federalization of Ukraine with greater independence for the Lughansk and Donetsk oblasts." No mention of Novorossiya, of independence, of possible integration with Russia, nothing. Here they toed the party line very carefully, but that does not mean that they may not have other convictions privately.

A Critic

A student stood up and asked a long and impassioned question about economic opportunity. She mentioned how she did not feel that she could have a career here as a student of politics and with opinions that run contrary to the ruling regime. She said that she was planning to leave for the West soon, and seek self-realization there. I will let the United Russia answer stand on its own here. Their appeal to the idea of the narod and the common folk is clear here, and so is their refusal to backpedal.

"Conservatism needs a structure of realization, just like liberalism, and if you want to immigrate away and realize yourself in another country, you are in a minority. Most people can't do that, it is only people with a certain level of prosperity and income independence that have that option available to them. We need to care about the people that don't have that option first and foremost."

This quote more than any other I believe, highlights who United Russia's voter base is, and who it tries to focus its appeal to. Needless to say, it is not the liberal intelligentsia of the university crowd.

 #6
Moskovskiy Komsomolets
April 8, 2015
Russian government planning "logical" structural changes to aid business - daily
Leonid Berres, Major changes in preparation for Russian government. Number of key federal departments to be sharply reduced

The government can expect big organizational and personnel transformations in the very near future. A number of departments may be abolished, some may be amalgamated, and new, enlarged structures may emerge to replace them. Moskovskiy Komsomolets has learned that two new regulators will be established in April-May: the Russian Export Centre and the Small Business Support Centre. According to the officials' plan, these will minimize administrative barriers through the introduction of a renewed "single-window" system. In addition, the amalgamations of the Federal Tax Service and Rosreyestr [State Land Registry] and of the Federal Antimonopoly Service and the Tariff Service are under discussion

The idea of amalgamating a number of federal bodies and creating new mega-regulators in Russia has been in the minds of state agencies for quite a long time. The creation of strong guiding institutions for the economy in place of separate and frequently ineffectual government organizations is being "pushed" by first vice premier Igor Shuvalov. The first such institutions were the Central Bank, which incorporated the Federal Financial Markets Service, and Rosakkreditatsiya [the Federal Accreditation Service].

Reports of government plans to organize a single export support centre based on the Russian Export Insurance Agency (EKSAR) and Roseksimbank first appeared back in mid-2014.

Export procedures are currently distributed among several departments: the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry for Economic Development, and the Customs Service. Some issue the licenses for foreign economic operations while subsidizing them at the same time, others conclude agreements on granting state guarantees, while yet others are responsible for the work of trade missions, and so on.

Now all this will be combined in the form of the Russian Export Centre [Rossiyskiy Eksportnyy Tsentr] (RETs) Joint-Stock Company. Speaking at the 16th International Scientific Conference organized by the Higher School of Economics on 7 April, first vice premier Igor Shuvalov promised that the structure will be set up before the May holidays. The RETs itself will be registered as a 100-per cent "daughter" of Vneshekonombank and will start operating from 1 June 2015. The centre will be headed by Petr Fradkov, son of Foreign Intelligence Service chief Mikhail Fradkov, who is currently first deputy chairman of Vneshekonombank and a member of the EKSAR Board of Directors. At the same time EKSAR and its fully-owned subsidiary Roseksimbank will be made daughter structures of the RETs, and their shares will be transferred to the centre by way of a contribution to its incorporation capital. In this way the government expects to make it easier for entrepreneurs to access the range of state instruments available to support exports and reduce costs for exporters.

"Import substitution is a fashionable topic, but the actual concept has been eroded," so Vladimir Mau, rector of the Russian National Economy and State Service Academy, thinks. "Some people understand import substitution to mean replacing Norwegian fish with fish from Belarus or Latin America. Others talk about replacing imported goods with goods that are Russian-made but are of lower quality and more expensive. I would like to see the state giving real support to export-oriented enterprises. It seems to me that the creation of the RETs is aimed at minimizing administrative barriers for exporters."

In addition, it has come to Moskovskiy Komsomolets' knowledge that a centre to provide support - mainly financial support - to small business is to be set up soon on the basis of the Credit Guarantee Agency and MSP-Bank (Vneshekonombank owns 100 per cent of the shares - Moskovskiy Komsomolets).

But even that is still not all. The government is looking at the possibility of amalgamating the Federal Tax Service and Rosreyestr and also the Federal Antimonopoly Service and the Tariff Service into single structures. In principle this is entirely logical, if we bear in mind that, for example, Rosreyestr deals with recording the registration of real estate and it is precisely the land value that is currently the base for calculating property tax. It is known, however, that, while he is "firing up" the debate among government officials, Shuvalov is asking them not to act hastily, because in difficult economic conditions it is important not to confuse business with a succession of government innovations.

If the Antimonopoly Service and the Tariff Service also end up under one roof, that will mark the emergence in Russia of a new mega-regulator that combines, on the one hand, supervisory functions over observance of the law in the sphere of competition and, on the other, the state regulation of prices in electricity, the oil and gas complex, and transport.

Voronezh Region Governor Aleksey Gordeyev put forward another interesting proposal at the Higher School of Economics conference to make life easier for business. "Hitherto our monitoring and supervisory bodies have given account of themselves on the basis of the number of audits they perform and fines they impose," Aleksey Gordeyev declared. "As long as their work is evaluated that way, nothing good can be expected to come of it. These bodies need to be demotivated, by removing those indicators from their brief."

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 #7
Reuters
April 10, 2015
Russia's Middle Class Reluctant to Blame Putin for Economic Downturn

MOSCOW - It was when her nine-year-old son said he wanted to be ill to keep her home that Ekaterina Chatskaya knew the cuts at her Moscow clinic had gone too far and she was working too many hours.

The 33-year-old Russian gynecologist said her work burden became unbearable when management announced new job losses in November. Unable to cope, she and dozens of other doctors in Moscow started a "work-to-rule" action - refusing to work beyond their official contract hours - to try to protect a health service they say is being driven to ruin.

Their action is a rare display of discontent in Russia, where resurgent patriotism over the annexation of Crimea last year has largely eclipsed frustration over job cuts, rising prices and lower wages in an economic crisis deepened by Western sanctions over Moscow's role in Ukraine and a weak oil price.

But despite feeling the squeeze more than most, Russia's nascent middle class is reluctant to blame President Vladimir Putin and his policies, scared of what they see as their individual battles against the system becoming "political".

"It was simply because of the increasing burden. At first it was more or less tolerable, then it snowballed," Chatskaya said, listing the rise in responsibilities and patients, and cuts in jobs, at her clinic on the outskirts of Moscow that accelerated over the last six months as the government cut spending.

When her own health suffered - she was diagnosed with high blood pressure due to stress - and her son clung to her one morning after not seeing her for days, Chatskaya did something out of character: she got in touch with a union and agreed to work to rule.

But sitting over a cup of tea in one of Moscow's identikit suburbs of row upon row of gray apartment blocks, Chatskaya is reluctant to be drawn on whether the economic crisis threatens the gains made by the people who became Russia's middle class after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Her wage, which averaged 40,000-47,000 rubles ($790-930 at the current rate) a month last year, is stretched by a food bill that has almost doubled to 10,000 rubles every one or two weeks. Still she sees herself as "far removed from politics".

SHY OF POLITICS

It is a stance many of Russia's teachers, doctors, business owners and IT experts share - leave politics to the politicians, or as doctor Maria Gubareva, who is also participating in the work-to-rule action, puts it: "What should the government do? That's a question for government leaders."

For Vladimir Petukhov, head of the center for social research at the Russian Academy of the Sciences, it means that any protests are easily extinguished, making any repeat of mass demonstrations in 2011-2012 that shook Putin unlikely.

"Those who thought the middle class would be the driver of change ... have been disappointed," he said. "But now it is more dangerous because the crisis is hitting people in their pockets."

A decline in real wages, a weak rouble and high interest rates have hurt middle-class people more than most, striking at their ability to travel abroad, invest in housing and in their health and children's education.

Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story
Anna, the head of a computer systems company, said that out of 600 projects she was involved in at the beginning of the year, only 250 are left.

Natalia, whose husband oversaw the conversion of a Moscow garage into a commercial space, said there were few takers in a market where office vacancy rates have reached 17.5 percent from 12 percent a year ago.

"The market is bad now. Have you seen how many office buildings and shops are for rent or sale?" Natalia asked.

Neither Anna nor Natalia wanted to give her full name, a sign of concern that they could face retribution if they speak out.

PROTESTS

Around 15 percent of Russia's population are firmly middle class, while around another 25 percent are on the periphery, said Svetlana Mareyeva, senior research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences. They are the ones who will have seen their lifestyles most jeopardized by the economic crisis.

Their ability to pay for services like education and healthcare is dropping at the same time as those services are being hit by public spending cuts - moves which have already prompted isolated protests.

About 60 teachers went on strike in a Siberian region last month over salary delays, according to local media, and about 20 ambulance workers are on hunger strike in Ufa, capital of the southern Bashkortostan region, over poor equipment and wages.

Still, such action is still rare.

One of the work-to-rule doctors, Gubareva, said that while she feels support from colleagues, few have so far joined the action "for various reasons, the main one being they are scared of losing their jobs, harassment and threats".

The Health Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

But for Chatskaya, the gynecologist, the small successes she has so far wrung from a system she had never questioned before have made her more optimistic about her own future at least.

"I really hope we can unite to talk about problems," she said. "Because then we have a bigger chance that they will listen to us."

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 #8
Moscow Times
April 13, 2015
Millions of Russians Edge Toward Poverty as Economic Pressure Mounts
By Howard Amos

Clutching two plastic bags full of clothes she had just collected from a charity center in central Moscow, Svetlana Burkutskaya said that rising prices were making it harder for her to find enough money to put food on the table for her three school-age children.

"There is not sufficient money for food now," said Burkutskaya, who has twins aged 14 and another child aged 13. "They are on holiday in a week and I don't know what I will feed them."

A single parent whose disability diagnosis means she does not work, Burkutskaya, 50, said rising inflation meant she could no longer afford non-essentials, particularly clothes.

"When you are alone with all your problems it is very difficult," she said, before hurrying off to collect her three children from school.

Burkutskaya is one of millions of ordinary Russians squeezed by an economic crisis that will cause the number of people in poverty to spike for the first time since the 1990s, challenging a narrative of rising prosperity that has been a hallmark of President Vladimir Putin's 15-year rule.

Some experts predict that almost 10 million people - from a population of 143 million - could this year join the 16.1 million people already living below the poverty line.

'Everything Has Changed'

Inside the charity center, single mothers rummaged through piles of second-hand clothes in a cramped room by the entrance to a police station on the ground floor of an apartment block.

"They are all extra large, the dressing gowns were donated by the local hotel," Alla Zaripova, the manager of the center, called out across the room as one woman picked up a white flannel garment.

All the women, most of them regulars, who spoke to a Moscow Times reporter said that inflation - now peaking at levels not seen since 2002 - had made their lives harder.

"Everything has changed, everything is twice as expensive, both food and clothes," said Alina Andreyevna, who has four children in their teens and early twenties.

Despite popular preconceptions of inner Moscow as a playground for the rich and powerful, the director of the Taganka Children's Fund that runs the center, Tatyana Troitskaya, said aging residential buildings in former urban industrial zones still house many people eking out a subsistence existence.

Material help is the most popular resource they offer, according to Troitskaya. The charity, which was set up in the early 1990s and only operates in Moscow, has more than 700 families on its books.

'Worrisome Trend'

A World Bank report on the Russian economy published on April 1 highlighted poverty as one of the key consequences of a crisis caused by falling oil prices and Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis. The Russian economy is expected to contract by up to 5 percent this year.

Growing penury was a "worrisome trend," Birgit Hansl, the World Bank's Russia economist told reporters during the report's presentation in Moscow.

The number of people living below the official poverty line - measured last year as those with monthly incomes less than 8,234 rubles ($145) - ticked up by about 600,000 people in 2014 to reach 11.2 percent of Russians, according to state statistics service Rosstat.

The World Bank predicts the poverty rate could reach 14.2 percent in 2015.

But one poverty expert, who requested anonymity out of a fear of being seen to paint too grim a picture, said it could go as high as 18 percent, meaning about 9.7 million people will cross into poverty by the end of the year.

The sharp jump is all the more significant as it comes after 15 years of rising living standards: The poverty rate dropped from 29 percent in 2000 to 10.7 percent in 2012.

Homelessness

One result of the crisis is likely to be an increase in the numbers of those sleeping rough on Russian streets.

"For many vulnerable people a crisis can destroy their lives," said Maria Sedushkina, general coordinator at samusocialMoskva, a charity supporting the homeless in the Russian capital.

There are currently up to 12,000 homeless people in Moscow and this number is likely to creep upward in the coming months as economic problems grow, according to Sedushkina.

"The main inflow of homeless are former workers from regions where there is no work - they go to big towns where they have no social connections and lose their jobs. Without a roof over their heads they sleep in a station, then a second night, on the third night they meet someone, have a drink and then they are well on their way," Sedushkina said.

Danger Zone

While Russia's poverty levels are comparable with some Western nations, the country has more people with no savings, no property and little education.

About 50 percent of the population is in this danger zone, according to experts.

Falling real incomes, rising prices, salary cuts and growing unemployment in times of economic crisis can very quickly push people over the edge.

Food price rises triggered by ruble devaluation and the Kremlin's August food embargo on countries that sanctioned it over the Ukraine crisis have been felt most severely by Russia's poorest, who are estimated to spend 50 percent to 60 percent of their income on food.

Meat, fish and vegetables are among the goods that have seen steep price rises. Cabbage prices alone have risen over 60 percent since the start of the year, according to Agricultural Ministry data.

Spiraling medicine prices are also felt hardest by the country's poorest.

"Because of the crisis people can fall into poverty very quickly," said Sergei Zhidkikh, the acting head of Oxfam in Russia in a recent interview.

"Russian people are vulnerable to poverty."

Other Dimensions

While the official poverty rate is currently 11.2 percent, experts said that other measures of poverty put the level much higher.

The subsistence minimum used by official bodies to effectively reallocate resources represents the supposed cost of meeting essential physical and cultural needs. Taking into account inflation, it is defined on a quarterly basis.

Other measures, which look at relative rather than absolute poverty, reveal the extent of deprivation and social exclusion. Up to one third of Russians may be in poverty according to definitions that look at individual income compared to a median income.

Experts also flag the problem of inequality, which could be more socially explosive than that of rising poverty.

With wealth and power concentrated in Moscow, the majority of Russia's regions have a higher poverty rate than the national average.

"The inequality between the regions in Russia is one of the most extreme in the world," according to Oxfam's Zhidkikh.

"If you measure average income in Moscow and the [southern] republic of Kalmykia it's like comparing quality of life in Norway and Iraq," he said.

Limited Help

Low oil prices, an economic contraction and reduced international currency reserves are set to limit the financial options available to the Russian government to take anti-poverty measures.

Much of Russia's lower-income groups are made up of pensioners and state employees, particularly in the low-paying health and education sectors, and government spending is key to their economic fortunes.

"Public wages will not be indexed this year, and pensions, social benefits and other transfers will decrease in real terms because their indexation is based on 2014 inflation," the World Bank wrote in its recent report.

Back at the clothing distribution point in Moscow, Yevgeniya Koltsova, 31, was holding bags of clothes she had just gathered for her five children aged 11, 9, 6, 4 and 2.

"Without the help of the fund things would be very difficult," she said. "I try not to show the children that we are under pressure."

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#9
Washington Post
April 13, 2015
Russia's shocking rebound: The ruble has climbed 34 percent in just two months
By Matt O'Brien
Matt O'Brien is a reporter for Wonkblog covering economic affairs. He was previously a senior associate editor at The Atlantic.

The currency that's done the best against the dollar in 2015 is the one that did the worst in 2014 - the ruble. It's up 11 percent on the year, and an absurd 34 percent in just the last two months. What the heck is going on?

Well, the short version is that markets are overreacting to their initial overreaction. The slightly longer version, though, goes something like this. Russia, as I've said before, doesn't have an economy so much as an oil exporting business that subsidizes everything else. But it can't subsidize much when prices are only $58-a-barrel. Cheaper oil prices mean Russian companies have fewer dollars to turn into rubles, which is just another way of saying that there's less demand for rubles-so its price is falling. If it falls too much, though, those Russian companies, who have a lot of dollar debts that they can't roll over due to Western sanctions, wouldn't be able to pay back what they owe. And that's why the government has done the only thing it can do to prop up the ruble: everything. Its spent some of its now $355 billion war chest of reserves. It jacked up interest rates from 10.5 to 17 percent to try to get people to hold their money in rubles that would pay them a lot of interest instead of dollars that don't. And it, ahem, "convinced" state-owned exporters to sell their foreign currency for rubles in what amounted to kinder and gentler capital controls.

It was enough to stop the ruble from free falling, but not regular falling-at least not as long as oil was. So even after it stabilized from what looked like a catastrophic loss of confidence last December, when people were so desperate to ditch their rubles that a bank run morphed into an Ikea run, Russia's currency started dropping again at the start of the year. Indeed, it fell as far as 72 per dollar, which wasn't that much better than it was when an all-out collapse seemed possible.

And then everything changed. Well, kind of. In the last two months alone, the ruble has reversed its slide and risen 34 percent, up from 72 to 53 per dollar. Part of it was that oil prices rebounded from $48 to $58-a-barrel. Another was that at the end of last year, at least, Russia's economy grew a better than expected 0.4 percent. Yet another was that the central bank loaned cheap dollars to Russian companies that could then make easy money investing in ruble-denominated assets that paid more. That's just another way of saying that, even after it cut interest rates from a sky-high 17 percent to a slightly less sky-high 14 percent, Russia still has tight enough money that the ruble should be a little stronger than you might the economic fundamentals imply. And the last part is that markets overshoot on the way down and now on the way up. That's because nobody wants to buy rubles right before they hit a bottom or a top-so a currency don't move to its fair value, but rather past it to the point where it's expected to start moving back to its fair value. In other words, the ruble fell too much before and it's probably rallying too much now.

That's left Russia with a problem it never would have imagined having a few months ago. That's a ruble that's too strong. Now even though its economy did better than people thought it would at the end of last year, it won't in the next couple. Oil prices are still too low and interest rates are still too high for Russia's economy to do much better than the -3 percent growth economists expect. That means it needs a weak-but stable-ruble to export its way back to something resembling health. And that's why, for the second time in as many weeks, its central bank has tried to stop the ruble from rising much more by making it harder for Russian companies to borrow dollars.

But Russia shouldn't have to worry about a too-strong ruble for too long. The ruble's already gone up about as much as it probably should, so "any stronger from here," GAM Investment Director Paul McNamara told me, would "look a bit departed from the fundamentals." Although that might already be the case. Danske Bank Strategist Lars Christensen thinks that "the rate of ruble appreciation over the past couple weeks cannot be justified based on the development in oil prices" and it will fall back to 65 per dollar six months from now.

In other words, 2015 has a long way to go, but the ruble's rally might not. In fact, you might want to spend them while you can.

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 #10
Moscow Times
April 10, 2015
Russian Capital Flight Slows to $32.6 Billion in First Quarter

Net capital outflow from Russia was $32.6 billion in the first quarter of the year, down from $72.9 billion in the previous three months, suggesting that panic over Russia's economic crisis has receded, data published this week by the Central Bank showed.

Capital flight from Russia nearly tripled in 2014 from the previous year, hitting $151.5 billion - the highest level on record - as steep falls in the price of oil, Russia's main export, and Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis drained investor confidence.

The outflow helped send the Russian currency into free fall in the fourth quarter, when it briefly plunged to 80.1 against the U.S. dollar, its lowest since the late 1990s.

The Central Bank also this week estimated Russia's first quarter current account surplus at $23.5 billion and the trade surplus at $40.3 billion.

The bank in March forecast net outflows of $111 billion this year, provided oil prices stay at $50 to $55 per barrel. Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, was trading at around $57.5 a barrel on Friday.

Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in March that capital flight would hit between $70 billion and $90 billion this year - a forecast that presumes a deceleration of capital flight going forward.

Last year the Central Bank raised interest rates a total of six times and 11.5 percentage points to 17 percent in an effort to support the currency and check capital outflows by making it more lucrative to hold rubles.

The bank has since cut rates to 15 percent as the ruble strengthened and capital outflows slowed thanks in part to steady oil prices and an easing of tensions in eastern Ukraine.

The ruble has strengthened by more than 35 percent against the dollar since late January and on Friday stood at around 53 to the greenback - a high that some analysts warned would not last long.

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 #11
Almost all net capital outflow from Russia in Q1 due to debt payments - CBR

MOSCOW. April 13 (Interfax) - The private sector net capital outflow from Russia of $32.6 billion in the first quarter of 2015 was almost completely due to payments on the foreign debt of the private sector, which amounted to $29.8 billion, the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) said in comments released by its press service.

Another $2.9 billion of the outflow was due to a reduction in financial assets.

In previous years, capital outflow was primarily due to the growth of private sector assets. In all of 2014, for example, Russia's private sector reduced its foreign debt by $38.5 billion while net capital outflow totalled $154.1 billion, including respectively $33.6 billion and $77.4 billion in the fourth quarter.

In the first quarter of 2015, Russian banks reduced debt by $24.3 billion and reduced foreign financial assets by $9.7 billion, while in the fourth quarter of 2014 they acquired assets totalling $9.8 billion.

Companies in the nonbanking sector reduced foreign debt by $5.5 billion in the first quarter of 2015 (by $8.2 billion in the third and $14.3 billion in the fourth quarters of 2014), and asset growth amounted to $6.8 billion, a fraction of the figure in any quarter of 2014 (growth of $29.1 billion in the first quarter, $25.0 billion in the second, $21.6 billion in third and $39.1 billion in the fourth).

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 #12
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
April 6, 2015
Russian leading expert looks at consequences of economic crisis
Yevgeniy Yasin, See the sky sparkling with diamonds - new phase of crisis will last about three more years

A few days ago, I returned from Penza. The city of [Soviet theatre director Vesovolod] Meyerhold, [Russian writer Aleksandr] Kuprin, [Russian poet Mikhail] Lermontov... The war did not destroy it -the Germans did not reach the city. They were nearby but did not get there. I met Penza entrepreneurs. What was their mood like? We will fight, they say. For their businesses.

No, not the authorities. Different circumstances present a serious challenge to Russian businesses today. Inflation has increased. Competition has increased. The authorities are trying not to put on pressure but rather to entice, to use businesses. It is clear that modernization will take place via entrepreneurial activity. But it still needs to find a point of equilibrium itself, to pass the tests.

The loss of businesses is currently expressed in losses of profit and not in an increase in bankruptcy. Things have not yet gone that far. As far as both Penza and other regions are concerned. On the whole, that is the picture. When will they break, and in which direction? It is hard to say. I know one thing: the more stubbornly people try to direct us towards external threats that do not exist, the more negative elements there will be.

The first phase in the development of the economic crisis that started in the second half of 2012 is coming to an end. We experienced its peak on 16-17 December 2014 when the rouble fell below all the psychological marks.

Such negative dynamics in the national currency aggravated the situation in the entire economy. The Central Bank reversed the situation. Plus the words of confidence uttered by the president in relation to its policies. The Central Bank has finally brought the free exchange rate system back to Russia. You may recall that it was introduced before by [first Russian Prime Minister] Yegor Gaydar, at the beginning of the 1990s. But then the exchange rate band was introduced, within the framework of which currency rates were allowed "hang".

We did not do this for very long, regulation of the currency market was basically carried out by means of Central Bank interventions. Which worsened the situation. Capital flight started, business confidence in the state fell, and interventions had to be increased all the time. And they in fact increased particularly rapidly on 15-16 December. What could have been done? Increase interventions even more, keep the key rate low? But that is actually the wrong path, although many entrepreneurs are even now demanding: "Give us cheap loans!" But cheap loans will not improve the situation in our case, they will take us to an impasse. When businesses get them, this immediately eases their situation. This is all that they are trying to achieve. But it is impossible to suppress the crisis and create a balanced situation on the market in this way. That is precisely the picture that we observed in the autumn of 2014. And since then economic growth has been constantly losing pace.

I draw your attention to the fact that the most normal policies of the Central Bank are the free exchange rate and the inflation-oriented discount interest rate, at which the Central Bank provides its credit resources to other banks. The Central Bank has found this equilibrium. The discount rate was 17 per cent, it was then reduced to 15 per cent, and finally to 14 per cent. But the arguments surrounding the Central Bank's actions are not subsiding. People are demanding that the key rate be reduced again and again...

What awaits us in the second phase of the crisis? A slump. And restructuring. In the sense that enterprises that are unable to emerge from the crisis will either go bankrupt or join stronger ones. Who will be able to emerge from it? Those who find additional markets, and solutions for increasing profit and reducing expenditure. Eventually they will start to grow. And this process has already started.

But so far in extremely unfavourable conditions. Western sanctions plus our own embargo on importing products that were in demand. The increase in the prices of these imports has pushed up price dynamics in other sectors where there was only domestic production. All of this makes the situation extremely volatile. How long will this phase last? I suspect around two or three years. It is impossible to say more precisely at the moment.

The third phase, which should arrive, will open up a path towards economic recovery. Its success will determine whether a foundation for growth will be created. And it is positive dynamics in private investments in the economy that provides an opportunity for recovery, that is, businesses must have the prospect of high effectiveness for investments and of growth in productivity.

Only under these conditions can we start to rise and stand on our feet. And we cannot do this by increasing the number of workers because numbers are falling. Or the amount of migration will have to be increased a lot, but the mood in society does not favour this. Nor are representatives of our former union republics and other countries particularly eager to come to Russia now, considering that the country that had one of the highest paces of growth in the world cannot now boast this.

So we should understand that the new recovery will only begin when we have a high rate of growth in productivity. And for this quite major changes in economic conditions are needed. Institutional changes. This means certain reforms, which to a significant extent lie beyond the boundaries of the economy and concern rather the supremacy of the law in general, and political competition that is capable of creating incentives for maintaining a high level of respect for the law. It is clear that such changes are not always in the interests of the ruling elites. Some types of elites have a vested interest in them, others do not. But no-one particularly wants to think about this subject. What are in my view less effective methods of solving our problems are being discussed. And the arrival of the third phase is thus being delayed.

So that is our situation. I have set out my notion of how the economy will develop and what is necessary for its recovery. Is a fundamentally different successful variant possible? I do not think so. If this basic policy does not work, I fear that we will not see a sky sparkling with diamonds for a long time to come.

Questions for the Author

[Interviewer Tatyana Panina] If we listen to you, Yevgeniy Grigoryevich, the conclusion is that things are difficult now and they will be even more difficult. But Bloomberg experts have praised us for a second week: both the rouble is better than the currencies of other developing countries and investors are eager to come here to buy our shares. And the peak of inflation, Economic Development Ministry head Aleksey Ulyukayev says, has already passed. What is this? A temporary breather, or in fact the beginning of the end of the crisis?

[Yevgeniy Yasin] Yes, some positive elements have now appeared. The people who are responsible for implementing economic policy note this. And Bloomberg is recording the figures that are emerging today.

Does this mean that everything will be okay tomorrow? No. It won't. I do not rule out us feeling some improvement in the future as well. But until an increase in private investments occurs I cannot say that the sustained positive changes, which mean the start of a new wave of recovery, have arrived. And something that is of no less importance, as I have already said, these financial flows must facilitate an increase in labour productivity.

I will repeat again: we will only be able to achieve success on the high productivity front. We need the most modern equipment and technology. All of this is currently imported, but we must add our own inventions to it in the future. A turn in the direction of very high efficiency is needed, which increases faster than in the developed countries. Then the time will come when we will be able to report really major successes.

[Panina] So that means that the capital amnesty that there are plans to announce this summer is an important link in our future success. But you do not really believe in it?

[Yasin] If nothing changes then, according to my forecasts, about 30 per cent of capital will return. You know we should not be thinking about whether people will export or not export. But trying to create the freest possible situation here.

Ensuring that earnings are guaranteed and property protected. You ensure that it is advantageous for businesses to bring capital into the country. "I can only earn money in Russia," they say, "And I know how to do this. But it is more convenient for me to keep it there." This situation oppresses our businesses. Do you want to defuse the situation that has developed here since the fall in oil prices? Then you need to adopt strong measures to create a situation of maximum trust between businesses and the state, and society and businesses.

[Panina] As I understand it you will talk about all of this tomorrow with your colleagues at the April international academic conference on economic and social development. Are the Western sanctions not preventing foreign participants from travelling here? For example, a speech by a well-known Polish economist has been announced in the programme.

[Yasin] You mean Marek Dabrowski, chief economist at the Centre for Social and Economic Research in Warsaw? This man has gone down in the history of his country and the entire world.

Marek worked as the deputy of Leszek Balcerowicz when the latter was Poland's deputy prime minister and finance minister. He is actually one of the authors of the Polish reforms. He is a very warm friend of Russia and a friend of the Higher School of Economics. And when friendship develops into a struggle for reforms it possesses a certain strength, and it will stand up to many trials. That is who Marek Dabrowski is. He will definitely come to the conference. We will have a lot of other foreign guests of quite a high rank as well.

We are expecting First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov to appear. We are expecting Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Golodets, Education and Science Minister Dmitriy Livanov, and Aleksey Simanovskiy, the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank.

Rossiyskaya Gazeta Note:

The XVIth April international academic conference will take place in Moscow on 7-10 April. It will be held by the Higher School of Economics scientific research institute with the participation of the World Bank. Four topics for discussion are planned. Institutions and economic development. Reforms: reasons for successes and failures. The global world: integration or disintegration? Demand for law: factors and dynamics.

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 #13
Moscow Times/Vedomosti
April 13, 2015
Politics, Not Oil, Will Make or Break the Ruble
By Boris Grozovsky
Boris Grozovsky is an economic observer. This comment originally appeared in Vedomosti.

Russian leaders were overflowing with optimism about the markets and the economy as the ruble rose in value last week to 53.6 against the U.S. dollar and 57.95 against the euro. That was an improvement of 28.9 percent and 25.4 percent respectively since early February.

Analysts had initially linked the ruble's value to the price of oil, but the ruble broke free in March-April, continually gaining in value even while the price of Brent hovered between $55 and $60 per barrel. However, this is simply a natural correction after consumer fears pushed the ruble excessively low in winter.

Interestingly, that downward swing was the worst among all global currencies, and the current upward surge is the highest.

Back then, the mood in Russia was at its darkest as observers worried that oil prices might fall as low as $30 to $40 per barrel, banks and state-owned companies would struggle making scheduled payments against their hefty foreign debts and that Russia's unpredictable foreign policy could trigger additional problems.

Now the price of oil is more or less stable, the peak of the debt payments has passed and the consequences were not as terrible as anticipated. Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev estimates that Russian companies paid down more than $60 billion of debt between December 2014 and March 2015.

Corporations needing foreign currency used the currency repo mechanism with the Central Bank, keeping pressure off of the market. According to surveys of business managers, the pace of the downward trend in business activity is slowing in both the industry and services sectors.

The decline in demand on foreign currency resulted in part from the 40.7 percent fall in imports in January 2014-January 2015, the cheaper ruble, Western sanctions and Russia's so-called "counter-sanctions."

Many analysts believe the ruble is becoming excessively strong and could soon hit a plateau. Exporters have already stopped selling foreign currency as a result. The Central Bank will probably raise the currency repo rates, limit its volume, lower the ruble rate where possible and buy foreign currency to replenish depleted reserves.

Uncertainty regarding foreign policy, a third factor influencing the ruble, has decreased but not disappeared entirely. A resumption of the war in Ukraine, new Western sanctions or Russian retaliatory sanctions could easily push the ruble back down to January levels.

Any investors who risk "playing" the ruble should at least believe they can predict the course of foreign policy. However, those not privy to the Kremlin's secret plans can make use of tools such as Russia's political uncertainty index recently introduced by Citibank.

As a proxy for this indicator, analysts used the five-year CDS, or credit default swap, on Russia's foreign dollar debt, minus fluctuations in the price of oil.

This figure previously peaked in late 2008 and early 2009, and again sharply increased in late January and early February 2015 prior to the Minsk agreement. It has now dropped a bit, but not drastically.

That political risk factor will have an even greater influence on the price of Russian stocks over the next year than the price of oil will. As for the ruble, the foreign policies of Russia and the West will determine its future course.

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#14
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
April 13, 2015
"Croneyburger please, easy on the austerity": Inside Russia's fast-food farce
Nick Allen in Berlin

The trademark meat dish could perhaps be called "The director's cut": Two prolific Russian film directors recently sought a $19mn state credit from President Vladimir Putin to launch an unlikely new national fast-food chain as a counterweight to McDonald's and other foreign operators. And they got it.

Combining their profile, chummy ties with the Kremlin boss, the buy-local mantra and rising anti-Western sentiment, Andrei Konchalovsky and Nikita Mikhalkov landed almost RUB1bn for Yedim Doma! ("Let's Eat at Home!"), after plugging its "socio-political nature" in a letter to Putin in March, Kommersant reported.

Nice work, said rivals, given the parliament voted on April 10 to cut the federal budget for the first time since 1998 in view of the immense financial pressures on the country. "To develop a business using the state's money and placing the risks on its shoulders is probably the dream of every entrepreneur," Mikhail Kudryavtsev, marketing director of Russian jacket potato chain "Kroshka Kartoshka", told the slon.ru website after the news broke that Let's Eat at Home! will be dining out.

Giving such a label to a fast food start-up might seem like calling a trekking company "Couch Potato" to this 17-year veteran of the Russian market. "Nonsense", was its marketing director's verdict - with one vital qualification: The brand is already known to the public, since it belongs to Konchalovsky's wife Yulia Vysotskaya, who presents a home cooking TV show by the same name, and uses it to sell frozen vegetables and berries.

Putin, known to occasionally socialise with the directors (who are brothers and the sons of the man who composed the words of the Soviet and Russian anthems), had Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich handle the proposal, which was promptly approved.

70% of the cash needed for construction of two factory kitchens, 41 cafes and 91 stores selling prepared meals will now come as a state-guaranteed loan, which the directors claim can be recovered in about five years. The remaining 30% will be private investment, according to Russian media reports.

Rivals off the table

The Russian fast food market was worth RUB1.131 trillion ($21bn) in 2013, according to Kommersant. Helpfully for domestic brands, economic hardships and tensions with the West have cleared some of the competition since Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014.

As US and EU economic sanctions kicked in, McDonald's closed its three restaurants on the peninsula, citing "manufacturing reasons independent of" the corporation. This prompted demands in the parliament in Moscow that the fast-food giant exit Russia altogether.

As the Ukraine crisis deepened, so did scrutiny of America's most famous eatery: In July, Russia's consumer rights watchdog accused McDonald's of misleading customers about the energy values of some burgers and said it had found coliform bacteria in its wraps and salads. Shortly after, a second authority opened an investigation into the cheese used by McDonald's.

Having in 2010 announced plans to open 180 restaurants across Russia, US hamburger chain Wendy's said last summer it was withdrawing from the country. The decision had nothing to to do with politics and was brought about by the new management's lack of interest in the Russian market, the company said.

And in January, California-based fast-food chain Carl's Jr. said it would shut down more than 30 outlets in three Russian cities amid the volatile economic environment.

You can't have your burger and eat it

While 56% of the population have eaten in McDonald's, a survey conducted in September by the FOM pollster found that 67% supported calls for the company's ejection from the country.

But in the same poll, Russian chains did not even make the top five favourite choices of respondents who regularly tuck into fast food. McDonald's took 40%, followed by KFC, assorted pizzerias, Burger King and Subway. No companies serving Russian food garnered more than 2.5%.

It's all a far cry from the heady days of 1990, when the concept of fast food was alien but the Soviet Union allowed McDonald's to open its first restaurant in Moscow amid détente with the West. Huge numbers of people queued for hours to spend several days' wages on a taste of the outside world's most famous forbidden fruit.

Empire strikes back

But as people will jump to tell you, fast food is partly a Russian invention anyway, with the English word "bistro" coming from the Russian bystro, meaning quick. As the story has it, impatient Imperial troops who had just defeated Napoleon in 1814 would bark this at Parisian waiters, embedding the word in international usage.

This story featured in the conception of one of the first Russian fast food chains Russkoe Bistro, which opened in 1995 to offer high-quality cuisine in a cheaper format than foreign competitors. Its logo showed a uniformed Cossack, evoking tradition and great victories, but also a questionable dash of Russian nationalism. The chain failed due to shoddy products, but roll the clock forward 20 years and the imagery is the flavour of the day again as the country squares up to the West.

The new Kremlin-blessed venture already seems to have stuck in the public's throat, though, despite the current patriotic climate. In an online poll of more than 1,800 people by the Rossbalt news website, 88% said they do not agree with allocating so much state money to the project. But 9% still support it. "It is a great initiative, since in Russia we do not have a national fast-food network. In the 90s we already tried to do it with Russkoe Bistro but failed," says Andrey, a top manager with a Moscow telecoms company, who did not want his surname used. "The irony is that these guys will have to hire foreign management anyway, since Russians do not have one historically, not in fast-food operations at least. It's common knowledge that there are three areas where we don't make the grade, hotels, tourism and fast food - not even after 25 years of practice!"

Meet the new New Russians

After years of emulating Western mores, Russians may just be getting fed up with fast food anyway. They are becoming healthier, and drinking and smoking less thanks to government initiatives and a public health awareness campaign. Almost 30% of Russians now also exercise regularly, according to polls, up from 20% in 2012. "In our family we encourage our kids (aged 15 and 5) to regard fast food as 'junk', no matter if it's foreign or local, and not to be consumed on a regular basis," adds Andrey.

Yedim Doma! might yet hit the right spot in the fast evolving new environment. Russians are genuinely interested in supporting home industry - if it cuts the mustard. The success of the brother directors' pitch reportedly owes much to its promotion of localism, with around 35% of ingredients sourced in the region, and produce also to be supplied to nearby orphanages and boarding schools.

But people should also be aware that very little Russian produce these days is really all-Russian, notes Kroshka Kartoshka's Kudryavtsev. "You have to understand that 'Russian products' is a myth," he told slon.ru. "With our company there would be no eggs and meat without imports of chicken feed and so on. So to build a brand on 'hurrah patriotism' is nothing more than a PR stunt."

The new chain can easily go the same way as others before it, Kudryavtsev believes: "Everyone shouts about it when the press release goes out, and two weeks later it's forgotten."
 

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 #15
Moscow Times
April 12, 2015
Despite Recession, Russians' Support for Space Program High as Ever
By Matthew Bodner

Popular support for Russia's space program is as strong as ever, even as an economic crisis pushes greater numbers of Russians into poverty, according to a poll published Friday.

The survey by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) found that 47 percent of respondents wanted the nation's space program to be expanded, despite the current economic hardships. Forty percent said the current commitment to space exploration is appropriate, while 8 percent said expenditures should be cut, according to VTsIOM.

The government last May promised to spend 1.8 trillion rubles ($35 billion) on the space program through 2020.

The poll comes as Western sanctions on Russia over Ukraine and a sharp fall in the price of oil, Russia's main export, have combined to lower Russians' standard of living. Average real wages in February were 9.9 percent less than in February 2014, according to the state statistics agency Rosstat. At the end of last year 16.1 million Russians, or 11.2 percent of the population, were below the poverty line, a rise of 600,000 people from the year before. Russia's economy is expected to contract by up to 5 percent in 2015.

But support for Russian space exploration has traditionally survived economic shocks. In 1998, when Russia suffered a catastrophic financial crisis, VTsIOM found that 40 percent of respondents favored increasing space exploration, 30 said funding should not change and 11 percent were in favor of cuts.   

The uptick from 70 percent supporting current or expanded spending in 1998 to 87 percent in 2015 coincides with patriotic fervor unleashed by Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine last year. Since the dawn of the space age in the 1950s, Soviet and Russian leadership have used the space program to inspire patriotism and project the image of a great scientific and technological power on a par with the West.

A recent Pew Research Center report found that at no time in the history of U.S. space agency NASA have more than 22 percent of Americans said the agency is underfunded.

That said, Russian spending on its space program in 1998 was significantly lower than it is today, with a budget of $600 million that year. The program was on the verge of collapse for most of the 1990s.

After Vladimir Putin became president in 2000 Russia allocated greater resources to reviving the program, and according to the VTsIOM poll, since 1998 the proportion of respondents who believe that Russia holds a dominant position in the exploration of space has doubled from 30 percent to 60 percent.

The poll also showed that 62 percent of respondents are strongly in favor of space cooperation with other countries. The U.S. remains Russia's primary partner in the field.

The VTsIOM poll was conducted on April 4 to April 5, sampling 1,600 people in 132 towns across Russia. The margin of error did not exceed 3.5 percent.

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 #16
Vedomosti
April 9, 2015
Experts skeptical of report blaming Russian hackers for attacks on White House
Petr Kozlov and Pavel Kantyshev, Hackers from Russia suspected of attack on White House's internet resources

The CNN television channel has reported that it was Russian hackers who attacked the White House's computer network in October last year. They did not manage to obtain access to secret information, but information about updates to US President Barack Obama's work schedule did become accessible to the hackers. According to CNN, the "Russian trail" is indicated by "distinctive computer codes and other indicators" discovered in the course of an investigation by the American special services. The official spokesmen of the American departments did not confirm yesterday that it is a question precisely of Russian hackers.

"I do not know what kind of sources these are. We do know that this has already turned into a kind of sport: to blame Russia for everything. But at least they have not looked for Russian submarines in Potomac River, as has already happened in certain countries," the Russian president's press secretary Dmitriy Peskov commented on this news to journalists yesterday.

Even if CNN's claims are true, one should not expect serious consequences for relations between the United States and Russia from this incident, Matthew Bryza, former US ambassador to Azerbaijan and nowadays director of the International Centre for Defence and Security in Estonia, suggests. "It would be naive to suggest that the Russian side is not attempting to secure cyber penetrations of this kind. In the final analysis, this is one of the aspects of the work of the special services, and one should expect this. At the same time, I could foresee more serious consequences for those in Washington who are responsible for the cyber security of these establishments."

[boxed insert] Cyber Attack on the DNR

The Donetsk News Agency stated yesterday that there had been an unprecedentedly powerful DDOS attack on its website The leadership of the self-proclaimed DNR [Donetsk People's Republic] suggests that hackers from the United States may be involved in the attack [end of boxed insert].

Although Russian hackers are regularly blamed for attacks on US and European government resources, there is no information about them being caught or proofs of their guilt, Ilya Medvedovskiy, general director of the Digital Security company, claims. He attributes the new reports of an attack by Russian hackers to political bias: Against the background of its deteriorating relations with Moscow, Washington could be rushing to blame the Russians for something that could well have been an internal system malfunction, completely unconnected with a hacker attack.

In the opinion of Ilya Sachkov, general director of the Group IB company (which investigates computer crimes), an investigation needs to be carried out, if only to establish the nationality of the hackers. Investigations against hackers are carried out successfully, and if the resources of an entire state (especially the United States) participate in them, the capture of the hackers is more than realistic. But the absence of technical details about the specific attack in question causes Sachkov to treat the CNN report with scepticism. First, the moment for this news was happily chosen -a week ago, Obama announced his intention to introduce real economic sanctions for cyber crimes. Second, the public announcement of a specific attack will inevitably cause the hackers to destroy the physical evidence - computers, servers, data storage media - , after which their capture becomes extremely difficult, if not altogether impossible. Ordinary crimes are investigated in the opposite way: first, the collection of evidence, then capture, and only then the public announcement of the results - and in this regard, cyber crimes are no different from ordinary crimes. Sachkov recalls the loud, but unproductive accusations against Russian hackers over the past year - for  example, accusations of attacking the resources of the office of Ukrainian Premier Arseniy Yatsenyuk and the embassies of several countries. The hackers were described as Russians because of a line in the code in Cyrillic, but this is a normal practice - Russian hackers may insert pieces of code in Chinese, and the Chinese pieces of code in Russian; this is technically possible, Sachkov says.

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#17
Interfax
April 11, 2015
No incidents occur during U.S. reconnaissance plane's intercept by Russian fighter

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov has dismissed the U.S.' allegations that a Russian Sukhoi Su-27 fighter flew dangerously close to a U.S. RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft over the Baltic Sea while intercepting it on April 7.

"No incidents occurred during the intercept of the U.S. reconnaissance plane," Konashenkov told Interfax on Saturday.

"The U.S. Air Force's RC-135U flew near Russian borders with its transponder switched off - the matter that our NATO partners have lately been so much concerned about," he said.

"As for judgments about professionalism of our pilots, this is exclusively within the Russian command's purview," Konashenkov said.

"And besides, U.S. reconnaissance aircraft can fly 'routine' routes only near the U.S. borders," he said.

Pentagon spokesperson Eileen Lainez said earlier in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon: "On the morning of April 7th, a U.S. RC-135U flying a routine route in international airspace was intercepted by a Russian Su-27 Flanker in an unsafe and unprofessional manner."

Konashenkov said in commenting on this report that, "At 1:18 p.m. Moscow time on April 7, 2015, air defense forces on duty detected an unidentified aerial target over the Baltic Sea, which was confidently moving toward the Russian state border."

"A Su-27 fighter on duty was scrambled, approached the unidentified aircraft, flew around it several times, identified it as an RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft belonging to the U.S. Air Force and read its side number, and reported it to the command. After having been intercepted by the Russian fighter, the U.S. Air Force aircraft changed its course and moved away from the Russian border," Konashenkov said.

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 #18
www.rt.com
April 13, 2015
Sweden confirms mystery 'Russian sub'...was in fact a workboat

The unknown foreign vessel the Swedish Navy searched for near Stockholm last autumn was actually a "workboat," a senior navy official says. Local media had alleged a hunt was on to try and find a Russian submarine, which was believed to be in the area.

Swedish Rear Admiral Anders Grenstad told the Swedish TT news agency on Saturday that what was thought to be a vessel or a foreign submarine was actually just a "workboat."

The Swedish Navy changed the wording from "probable submarine" to "non-submarine" when referring to the reconnaissance mission connected to the unidentified vessel spotted in the Stockholm archipelago.

The massive hunt was used by the Swedish Defense Ministry to justify a six billion kronor ($696 million) hike in defense spending between 2016 and 2020.

The drama started after an amateur photograph of an alleged underwater vessel of unidentified origin was sent to the ministry. The man who took the photo raised the alarm because he thought he saw the object surface and disappear again.

Sweden undertook an intense one-week search in late October, looking for possible "foreign underwater activity" near Stockholm. During the operation, the Swedish Navy reportedly used over 200 troops, helicopters, stealth ships and minesweepers to search the waters of the Baltic Sea.

During the search, the Swedish media exaggerated the story, claiming country's navy was looking for a submarine in the Baltic Sea, which allegedly belonged to Russia.

Meanwhile, naval officials from Sweden and Russia maintained there was no substance to the reports, which was confirmed by Grenstad.

"From the information we have, we cannot draw the same conclusion as the media that there is a damaged U-boat. We have no information about an emergency signal or the use of an emergency channel," the navy official said.

A full report of the search operations will be published later this spring, the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reported.

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 #19
Sputnik
April 12, 2015
What Would A Clinton Presidency Mean for Relations With Russia?

Hillary Clinton finally announced the start of her presidential campaign on Sunday, having received an unofficial endorsement from the sitting president a day earlier. But what does the apparent frontrunner in the 2016 race for the White House have in store for US relations with Russia? If the past is any indicator of things to come, nothing good.

Discussing the possibility of a Clinton presidency in a recent article for PolitRussia.com, analyst Ivan Proshkin noted that Russian hopes to 'wait Obama out' and negotiate with whomever comes after him would be a moot point, should Clinton be his successor. "There's nothing wrong with dreaming," the analyst notes, "but an analysis of the likely outcome of the 2016 presidential campaign does not inspire any confidence in [such negotiations] occurring."

Analyzing Clinton's chances, Russian America watchers, like their US counterparts, point to the dynastic politician's experience, her substantial political clout and powerful political and financial backers, as well as the absence of a dynamic Republican contender. The economy's signs of recovery, following nearly a decade of recession, certainly doesn't harm the Democrats, either.

So, if the 'Iron Lady of American politics' already has pundits crowning her the 45th president, what is it that Russian analysts find so depressing about her possible reign?

Well, for one thing, there's Clinton's sharply antagonistic rhetoric toward Russia, its "behavior" and its plans for partnership and cooperation with its former Soviet neighbors. Amidst the Maidan coup and Crimea's organization of a referendum to rejoin Russia last year, Clinton compared Vladimir Putin to Hitler, stating that the Russian leader's actions amidst the growing conflict in post-coup Ukraine was something akin to "what Hitler did back in the '30s."

Stubbornly defending her Putin-Hitler commentary as a call for "a little historical perspective," Clinton would go on to call the president "a tough guy with thin skin," and a "cold-blooded, calculating former KGB agent," comments receiving the acclaim of Congress Republicans and Republican pundits alike. At a fundraising speech last October, Clinton would state that the Russian president was "a bully" the US must "stand up to, encircle and...try to choke off his ability to be so aggressive." The former Secretary of State added in no uncertain terms that the Russian leadership's agenda "threatens American interests," noting that it was "a mistake" for European powers to seek to avoid the expansion of the sanctions war against Russia.

With Republican big fish, think tanks and independent analysts frequently commenting on Clinton's famous 'Russia Reset' initiative as an example of the kind of 'poor leadership' she would show on Russia, the former Secretary of State has repeatedly responded that she has always been skeptical about the possibility for a real improvement in ties. Last July, Clinton noted that she was "among the most skeptical of Putin during the time that I was [in the State Department], in part because I thought he had never given up his vision of bringing 'Mother Russia' back to the forefront."

And while the long undeclared presidential frontrunner has had to jump through hoops for potential 'tough on Russia' sponsors and voters at home, the proof that Clinton was serious about the reset isn't actually that hard to find. As far back as 2012, when the chaos of post-Maidan Ukraine was nothing more than a nightmare scenario for Russian security analysts, Clinton gave a speech in Dublin, where she warned against what she called Russian moves "to re-Sovietize the region." Clinton admitted that "it's not going to be called that," stating that "it's going to be called a customs union...a Eurasian Union and all of that. But let's make no mistake about it. We know what the goal is and we are trying to figure out effective ways to slow down or prevent it."

And Clinton backed her words with actions. As Russia Insider pointed out in an article last October, Clinton's State Department "steadily increased its anti-Russia line, and pushed for Ukraine to choose between Europe and Russia, plowing $5 billion into anti-Russian civil society groups in Ukraine." The independent analysis portal pointed out that the 2011-2012 protest-supporting ambassador Michael McFaul was "Clinton's man in Moscow," while then-State Department Spokesperson Victoria Nuland and US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt also served as Clinton's close Russia advisors. The pair ended up coordinating policy in Ukraine during the events of Maidan, handing out cookies and serving as kingmakers to post-coup Kiev.
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Hence, while conservative commentators and their affiliated PACs and think tanks may be giving Clinton the evil eye, as far as Russia policy is concerned, the two political groups actually see eye-to-eye.

In his PolitRussia piece, Proshkin notes that Clinton's policy stance of isolating Russia, formulated during her tenure as Secretary of State, at least a year prior to the official cooling of relations over Ukraine, "denies Russia the right to carry out any sort of sovereign policy in the former Soviet Union, an area which, for a number of reasons (including historical and cultural) Russia considers as its area of interest." In this way, "any integration processes between the countries of the former Soviet Union under Russian leadership is termed 'Sovietization', 'anti-democraticization,' and by other terrifying words."

Proshkin argues that by "narrowing the field of Russia's sovereign policy to the limits of its frontiers," Clinton seeks to refuse Russia "the right to an independent foreign policy as such." The independent analyst believes that "this means that following her possible victory in 2016, Mrs. Clinton will not only attempt to squeeze Russia from Ukraine and the Crimea, but also from the Caucasus and Central Asia, where through Orange Revolutions new [pro-US] regimes can be set up, serving to "lock" Russia in a cordon sanitaire."

Ultimately, Proskin notes that Russian America watchers are nearly unanimous in their verdict that should Clinton be elected, Russian-American relations will see a "further deterioration and a slide into an even 'warmer' phase of the new Cold War." With Clinton seeking to "put Russia in its place" and Russia continuing its attempts to break out of the US-led world order, the analyst believes that a Clinton victory will ensure at least four more years of frozen relations between the two countries.

In 2009, amidst the much touted and heavily publicized 'Reset' of relations between Russia and the US, featuring Clinton laughing it up with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Russian journalists noticed a minor error on the little red reset button rolled out as a symbol for the new era of improved ties. The famous red button on a yellow and black box included a minor translation error. Instead of reading 'Perezagruzka' (reset), the button actually read 'Peregruzka' (overload). Written off as a minor flub at the time, the significance of the error has grown from a minor blip into an ever-widening chasm. In hindsight, an aide's translation error may have turned into a harbinger of things to come. If Clinton clinches the nomination, defeats her opponents and becomes the next US president, the 'peregruzka' in Russian relations seems likely to reach new heights.

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 #20
National Public Radio
www.npr.org
April 11, 2015
New START Nuke Deal With Russia May Be Aging - But It's Not Over
By David Welna

The tentative deal limiting Iran's nuclear program has gotten a lot of attention since it came together on April 2. It's shaping up to be a major test of the Obama administration's ability to finesse both negotiations abroad and politics on the home front. But this won't be the first time.

Five years ago, another big nuclear deal was being signed. It's known as the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), and its aim is simple: to limit the number of nuclear weapons the United States and Russia have pointed at each other.

And like today's critics of a nuclear deal with Iran, skeptics then called the New START a bad deal for the U.S. But American and Russian experts say that, for all its shortcomings, this arms deal has done more good than harm - for both sides.

Beyond The Finish Line

For President Obama, getting the New START across the finish line not even two years into his presidency was arguably his biggest foreign policy accomplishment to date.

"This is the most significant arms control agreement in nearly two decades, and it will make us safer and reduce our nuclear arsenals along with Russia," Obama declared the day after it won Senate approval. "With this treaty, our inspectors will also be back on the ground at Russian nuclear bases. So we will be able to trust, but verify."

Invoking Ronald Reagan's signature phrase - "trust, but verify" - was not enough to mollify Republicans.

"The administration did not negotiate a good treaty," said Jon Kyl, at the time the Senate's No. 2 Republican. "They went into negotiations, it seems to me, with the attitude with the Russians just like the guy that goes into the car dealership and says, 'I'm not leaving here until I buy a car.' "

Some who have watched the New START being implemented have doubts about just what the Obama administration was being sold.

"This treaty is actually about nuclear armament, not about disarmament," says Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. The Moscow-based defense columnist for Novaya Gazeta, an opposition newspaper, says under the terms of New START, Russia has actually been able to increase both its number of deployed nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them.

"This treaty provides for some control, and some inspections to understand what's happening, but it is really not about disarmament," says Felgenhauer. "That should be well understood."

American arms control experts say the treaty does indeed allow Russia to add to its nuclear warhead-launching arsenal. But Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey says that was not a main concern for American negotiators.

"One of the peculiar things about the negotiation was that the United States wanted a lower number of warheads," Lewis says, "and the Russians wanted a lower number of what we call delivery vehicles - missiles, submarines, bombers."

The U.S. still has many more of those launchers than Russia does; the two countries have about the same number of deployed nuclear warheads.

A Tenuous Trust

Perhaps more significant than the actual numbers is the fact that, despite increasing tensions, both the United States and Russia have been carrying out the 18 annual inspections of each other's nuclear facilities that are called for in the treaty.

"In the current situation that we're in at the moment, where relations with Russia are really quite poor and where the Russians are investing in new strategic forces," Lewis says, "I think that actually makes the verification provisions of the agreement and the limitations that it provides much more valuable."

Both Russia and the United States have carried out large nuclear military exercises in the past two weeks. The arms treaty has helped keep a lid on these shows of force, according to Hans Kristensen, an arms control expert at the Federation of American Scientists.

"It has sort of a calming, or constructive, I would say, effect on the behavior of the two countries," Kristensen says, "in the sense that they're saying, 'At least we both have an interest in this, so let's try to keep that going for now.' "

How long it will keep going may depend on other factors. Last year, at the height of tensions over Ukraine, Russia hinted at walking away from the nuclear arms treaty. Lewis doubts Russian President Vladimir Putin would make such a move.

"Putin's a bad guy, and Putin likes getting away with stuff," says Lewis. "But I think he realizes, at least for the moment, that this would leave him worse off if he were to try to break out of the treaty."

Doing so would not only doom the treaty - it would also end the annual verifications and the rare glimmer of trust they've fostered between two old Cold War adversaries.

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 #21
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
April 10, 2015
TROIKA REPORT: Greece gambles in Moscow, crunch time for Yemen, and the awakening of Iran
RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINES is proud to present its new weekly analytical program "TROIKA REPORT," featuring a look at three of the most high-profile recent developments in international affairs. The three-course meal will be digested for your sake by Vladimir Mikheev, and also salted and peppered by an array of guest analysts.
Sergey Strokan, Vladimir Mikheev
 
We bring you the hot geopolitical stories which have made the headlines over the last seven days, stratified into three sections: Engaging the West, Globally speaking, and Going Eastward.
 
1. Engaging the West
Greece gambles on Moscow: Will it pay off?

On the 8th of April, the EU's new political iconoclast, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, visited Moscow and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. By doing so, the young and charismatic Greek leader sent an unequivocal signal to the European Union but mostly to the troika of international creditors, the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund. The message is clear: If pressured too hard, the nation which gave birth to democracy as a model of governance will turn to other sources of diplomatic and possibly financial support.

Greece has been the most vociferous European nation in voicing its disagreement with the EU policy of estranging Russia thorough economic and financial sanctions - a policy which paved the way to Moscow for PM Tsipras, almost ensuring the red carpet treatment. But was it enough to guarantee Greece a weighty prize to take away? It all depended on the scope of the tasks set a priori by the Greek leadership.

According to sources in Athens in contact with TROIKA REPORT, originally the Greek delegation had three very simple and pragmatic goals.

Firstly, to cut the fine for failure to meet the take-or-pay obligation during the purchase of gas from Gazprom from 100 to 50 million euros. Secondly, to plea for a 10 percent discount for Russian gas for the current year. Mind you, this is no small beer: Greece depends on Russian pipeline supplies for 65 percent of its gas. Thirdly, to ask Moscow to lift the food embargo which has seen Greek peaches and strawberries, earmarked for the Russian market, rot, leading to 30-35 million euros in losses last year.

High hopes were pinned on Tsipras's visit to Moscow. What is actually at stake and how will it affect Russia's relations with the European Union? TROIKA REPORT asked Alexander Rytov, director of the Center of Mediterranean Studies of the Institute of Europe at the Russian Academy of Sciences, for his thoughts on the subject:

"My opinion is that Russia, of course, is an important partner for Greece. Still Russia is, to a certain extent, undiscovered terrain, an undiscovered land for Greece. Many experts, Greek and Russian alike, have been saying that Turkey has the initiative in the relationship with Russia while Greece is lagging behind and is not making use of the opportunities in relations with Russia... Russia is aiming at acquiring Greek railroads and infrastructure related to gas. The new Greek government is trying to work out what its alternatives are.

"We know that Cyprus, Italy, Greece, and Hungary are forming an opposition to the EU sanctions. But for the moment, all these countries depend by around 80-90 percent on the European Union budget and the EU strategy. It's impossible to make radical changes. But starting the search for new ways, searching for new possibilities of economic development, is very important. It is also an element of the new Greek strategy which, I think, could be quite promising."

But isn't there a nagging feeling that something is missing? The agenda of the talks Mr. Tsipras held in Moscow looks pretty mediocre and routine. Gas supplies counterweighted by deliveries of strawberries. Trade in general and Greece as a tourist destination. Russian investors to target the sell-off of Greece's "family silver." This is all suspiciously devoid of intrigue. Is there more than meets the eye?

It's our understanding at TROIKA REPORT that part of the high-level discussions must have focused on the financial side of the contemporary Greek tragedy. Time is running out for Athens: The bailout deal expires in late June.

The troika of international lenders is unhappy with Greece's constant hints that if the going gets really tough, the country may default on its foreign debt, flee the eurozone and resurrect its centuries-old currency, the drachma. Officially, Tsipras's government says the opposite, but doubts persist, and the warnings from the EU not to dump the euro are as abundant as they are menacing.

In these dire circumstances, it is all too probable that Alexis Tsipras used his trip to Moscow to test the water: Could Russia serve as an alternative source of bail-out money? Tsipras most likely came to the conclusion that Moscow is in no position to salvage anyone but itself right now. Cash-strapped and subject to Western sanctions, with global finances being used as a political weapon against it, Russia would be unable to substitute the troika as a financial donor.

That said, there is no reason to underestimate the symbolic significance of the visit to Moscow by the Greek political maverick, who is almost certain to continue to rock the European boat by playing either the Russian or the Chinese card. After all, since the European policy of austerity as the only cure for a severely ill Greek economy is not delivering, Athens will keep looking for any plausible alternatives.
 
2. Globally speaking
Yemen: Crunch time

The continuous bombardment of Houthi rebels by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition has placed Yemen on the global map of hotspots. Moscow has joined other nations in appealing to the warring parties to agree to a ceasefire and sit down at the negotiating table, but to no avail.

The purely internal feud has been interpreted by the neighboring oil superpower as a hideous plot, masterminded by the Iranians, with the covert goal of destabilizing the House of Saud, provoking the Shiite majority in the eastern province into sedition, installing a pro-Iran ruler in Yemen, and threatening to block one of the main sea lanes for Saudi oil exports by taking control of the strategic Red Sea Bab el-Mandeb strait.

Fearful of encirclement, Riyadh is contemplating the unthinkable: On top of airstrikes it plans to launch a land operation. Saudi Arabia and some Gulf monarchies are ready to table a resolution in the United Nations Security Council to legitimize a military incursion into Yemen.

Russia backed by China, another UN Security Council permanent member, is continuing to advocate a diplomatic solution and is resolutely opposed to an intervention. Why? What is at stake in the conflict? Vladimir Sotnikov, director of the East-West Strategic Studies Center, an independent Moscow think-tank, provided the following comments for TROIKA REPORT:

"International law has been violated in Yemen. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in his interview to RIA Novosti that Russia was taken aback by the attack of the Saudi-led coalition against Yemen without consultation not only with any UN Security Council member but also without consulting Russia and other big players.

"Another important thing is that the situation in Yemen has not only regional but global significance. It is not appropriate for any country, like Saudi Arabia, for instance, to be allowed to interfere in the internal affairs of another country... Russia stands firm on the principle to settle internal conflicts only by peaceful means."

Talking about the legal aspect of the internationalized conflict on the Arabian Peninsula, it is worth taking every aspect of the matter into consideration. This is exactly what has been done on the request of TROIKA REPORT by Roslyn Fuller, author of International Law: An Irish Perspective and an expert with the INSYTE Interdisciplinary Research Group of the Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland:

"An interesting point is whether or not this bombing is legal. The Houthis are not threatening Saudi Arabia, so it cannot be self-defense, and they are not any version of Islamic terrorists so this cannot be part of the "War on Terror."

"The only thing we could say is that the Saudis (and others) have been invited to intervene by President Hadi. But this is a very weak argument. He was elected on a ballot where he was the only candidate, he resigned his office several months ago, and he is now no longer even in Yemen. Thus it is very hard to claim that he has the right to ask for such an intervention.

"The case is very similar to Yanukovych in Ukraine. There was initially some talk of him asking Russia to intervene after he left Ukraine, but at the time it was said that he had left his post and did not have the right to do this."

This is the opinion of Roslyn Fuller, reviewing the Yemen conflict from a legal standpoint. Yet there is also an inter-cultural, inter-ethnic and psychological dimension to the hostilities. Andrew Hammond, a Middle East policy fellow from the European Council on Foreign Relations and author of the book The Islamic Utopia: The Illusion of Reform in Saudi Arabia, made the following comment for TROIKA REPORT:

"The major issue now is if the Saudis decide to try a land campaign. If they do, there will be a token presence of Saudi commanders and troops but other people doing the real work. It's hard to see it being a success: If the Pakistanis turn up in Sanaa it will be a medium- and long-term disaster. That won't work for bringing Saudi Arabia the stable pro-Riyadh regime it wants to have in charge. If they send their own troops, it will also quickly transform into disaster since the Yemenis will never accept them.

"The Saudi bet generally has to be that enough Yemenis hate the Houthis more than they hate Saudi Arabia. The longer this war and the carnage goes on though, the less likely that is going to be the case."

That was Andrew Hammond of the European Council on Foreign Relations, speaking about the cultural and ethnic implications of a potential full-scale Saudi intervention in Yemen. TROIKA REPORT supports a diplomatic settlement as well as the discarding of the use of force for three reasons.

Firstly, it is unachievable given the military capabilities, the spirit of defiance and tradition of martyrdom of Yemen's desert soldiers.
Secondly, it will fan animosity and ramp up the hostilities, making it much harder to find a path to a peaceful settlement.

Thirdly, direct intervention could incite Iran to go to war with its arch-rival, Saudi Arabia, thus elevating the regional conflict to an all-out war between the Sunnis and the Shiites across the whole Middle East.

Such a war would engulf the whole region and have dramatic repercussions outside its geographical boundaries. Moscow has an interest in stability in the region. Russia and other members of the global community just cannot stand idle and watch the conflict deteriorate into a major disaster of almost biblical proportions.
 
3. Going Eastward
The awakening of Iran: Does Russia stand to win or lose?

The decades-long standoff between Iran, labeled by Americans as a "rogue state," and "The Great Satan," as the religiously conservative Persians have dubbed the United States, may be coming to an end. High hopes have been raised by the tentative agreement hammered out by Iran and the P5+1 grouping of world powers after a marathon of grueling negotiations ended last week in Switzerland.

While diplomats and experts are voicing cautious optimism over the chances of reaching an all-embracing agreement on the Iranian nuclear crisis by the end of June, there is a growing understanding that lifting Western sanctions would in the long run make Iran the new superpower of the Middle East.

"This is not a question of 'if', but a question of 'when'," says Andrei Fyodorov, Russia's former diplomat and political pundit. In his view, the Iranians are cutting corners in their drive to reintegrate into the world economy and global politics, and there is seemingly no way to stop them.

Therefore the ongoing debate over the Iranian nuclear issue is quite understandable: The awakening of the sleeping giant of the East would lead to fundamental changes in regional and world politics, and also affect world oil and gas markets, where some would stand to win and some to lose.

While the U.S. mainstream media has hailed the event as a victory for President Barack Obama, he is not the only winner. The modest yet crucial advance in the talks is a clear sign of the effective leverage provided to the global community by Russian diplomacy. Washington, in spite of the current clash with Moscow over Ukraine, found it appropriate to praise the constructive role Russia played in achieving the diplomatic breakthrough.

What role exactly did Russia play during the talks? And what could be the benefits of this agreement for Russia? Here is what Russian expert, Andrei Fyodorov, former Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, now Director of the Center of Political Studies, a Moscow-based independent think-tank, has to say:

"Russia was a very important political guarantee that these negotiations would finish in a positive way. There are a number of benefits for Russia. Politically, there are opportunities to cooperate more actively with Iran on regional problems, including the fight against Islamic State. We could also try to solve, finally, the issues related to the Caspian Sea. From the economic point of view, there are contracts underway worth some 20 billion dollars.
There are problems too. We do not know what policy Iran will follow in the oil and gas field. Iran has plenty of oil and gas reserves, and can build pipelines to Europe, thereby becoming a rival to Russia. Iran can increase its production of oil by one to two million barrels a day. The question is, where will this oil go? Will it go to the free market, or to traditional partners, like China? We should be ready for Iran to sell its crude oil at very cheap prices and crash the oil market."

Mr. Fyodorov's comment underscores the full complexity of the Iranian issue for Moscow. He is echoed by Sergei Strokan, foreign affairs commentator with the business daily Kommersant. Here is what Strokan says:

"The legitimization of Iran's interaction with the outside world would boost trade and commercial ties with Russia. We could cooperate in the energy field as partners and not competitors, for instance, by launching the construction of the Bushehr-2 nuclear power plant and even coordinating oil and gas export policy to avoid unwelcome clashes of interest. What also matters is that lifting international sanctions would enable Russia to unfreeze her strained military-technical cooperation with Tehran and sell state-of-the art armaments."

Besides, Moscow and Tehran would be wise to harmonize their approaches and join their efforts in finding temporary or final settlements to a wide array of thorny international issues. To name a few: the legal status of the Caspian Sea; future stability in neighboring Afghanistan once American troops are reduced to a limited contingent; the threat of Islamic State to redraw regional boundaries, etc.

And yet there are equally firm grounds for remaining skeptical. With the final agreement expected by June 30, many potential pitfalls lie ahead.

The deal could be easily torpedoed in the U.S. Congress by the neocons, while the ultraconservative ayatollahs in Tehran may also try to sabotage it.
 
All in all, today's euphoria is misplaced. The mutual demonization may have ceased for the moment, and the antagonism between the U.S. and Iran may be on the verge of softening, but the process can be still reversed.

For its part, Moscow has scored an important point but it remains to be seen how further developments will unfold.

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 #22
Russia-led military bloc worried over escalation of frozen conflicts in post-Soviet space

MINSK, April 13. /TASS/. The Russia-led military alliance of former Soviet states, CSTO, said on Monday it was concerned over NATO attempts to interfere in the Ukraine conflict, and an escalation of almost all frozen conflicts in these territories.

"We are paying much attention now to monitoring developments," said Nikolay Bordyuzha, secretary-general of the six-nation Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).
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"Our estimate - and this was confirmed at the CSTO Foreign Ministers Council meeting in Tajikistan - is that the situation is severe. It is very severe in all directions," Bordyuzha said, noting that "this refers to the Eastern European direction and the well-known events happening there".

"But the main thing we are worried about is NATO trying to interfere in the process and those events taking place in Ukraine," he said, noting NATO's move to send military instructors to provide advice and training to Kiev soldiers alongside steps to strengthen the alliance's military presence in Eastern Europe, moving US troops and equipment eastwards.

Bordyuzha said reports about NATO establishing command centers in six of its eastern countries were "extremely alarming". "This is nothing but creation of an infrastructure for military actions," he said.

The situation was no better in other directions, Bordyuzha added. "Almost all so-called frozen conflicts are escalating," he said, emphasising the need to address issues of importance to the CSTO countries - Russia and former Soviet republics of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

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#23
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
April 9, 2015
Does the Eurasian Economic Union have a future?
Six experts from the post-Soviet space weigh in on whether the ambitious integration project - the Eurasian Economic Union, which Russia relentlessly promotes - makes economic and political sense for their nations.
By Galiya Ibragimova
Galiya Ibragimova is a consultant at the Moscow-based PIR Center, a Russian think tank. Her research interests include regional security in Central Asia, information security and international relations.

In May 2015, Kyrgyzstan will join the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEC), which is currently comprised of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia. The union itself became operational on January 1, 2015, and welcomed Armenia as the fourth member country one day later on January 2.

Tajikistan is also showing interest in the EAEC, and on December 10, during a meeting between the presidents of Russia and Uzbekistan in Tashkent, the parties expressed their desire to hold consultations on the creation of a free trade zone between Uzbekistan and the EAEC (although one month later President Islam Karimov stated that his country would not join the EAEC or any other organization reminiscent of the former Soviet Union). Today the EAEC unites 180 million people within a common market, making it the largest integration union in the world.

But anti-Russian sanctions and the economic slump in Russia have raised doubts in Kazakhstan and Belarus about the sustainability of the new union. In potential member countries, where prior to Russia's crisis the arguments in favor of joining were overwhelming, the disputes between Moscow, Minsk and Astana over organizational mechanisms have prompted a new wave of discussion.

Below, Russia Direct presents the viewpoints of six leading experts from current and potential EAEC member states.

Daniyar Kosnazarov, head of the Central Asia and Caspian Geopolitics and Regional Studies Department under the Library of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan:

The backlash over Moscow's annexation of Crimea was the first serious test for the EAEC integration process. The divisions inside the EAEC in the wake of events in Ukraine and anti-Russian sanctions have strengthened Kazakhstan's sense of sovereignty.

The measures being discussed in the country, which include banning the import of goods from Russia, show that each country in the EAEC intends to put its own interests first. Now is a natural "bedding-in" period and an opportunity to draw the boundaries of the union. Any integration project is a constant search for compromise, and for Kazakhstan the process is beneficial.

The EAEC can help solve Central Asia's interregional problems. The resumption of supplies of Uzbek gas to southern Kyrgyzstan in late December 2014 after Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Tashkent confirms Moscow's constructive role as a "solicitor" between EAEC member countries.

The Central Asian republics are traversed by roads and pipelines connecting Europe and China. The discrepancies between the republics are hindering the implementation of Chinese projects in the region. Awareness of this should make the region's politics more flexible and compromising. In other words, the principle of "don't anger the Chinese" can simultaneously draw the republics closer together and determine the general prospects of the EAEC project.

Denis Melyantsov, senior analyst at the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies:

For Minsk, the EAEC means access for Belarusian goods to the Russian market and the markets of Kazakhstan, Armenia and other potential members of the union. The EAEC can facilitate economic growth in Belarus. Another motive for Minsk's integration with the EAEC is access to energy resources, the price of which is set to be the same for all participating countries.

In ratifying the EAEC, Belarus stated that it would comply with the obligations only if trade exemptions and restrictions were removed. The experience so far of EAEC integration shows that many obstacles need to be overcome, often artificial and politically motivated ones. If all trade restrictions are removed and movement of goods, capital, people and services within the EAEC becomes genuinely free, such integration will do doubt promote economic growth in member countries.

Tamerlan Ibraimov, director of the Bishkek Center of Political and Legal Studies:

All the Central Asian republics have a large domestic market, which the EAEC can help to develop. But in any economic union, the winner is always the country where the economy is more developed and technology-savvy, and where production costs are lower. Those Central Asian countries able to compete with other members of the EAEC have a good chance of solving their problems through expanding their products and services markets. Uncompetitive countries, however, risk even worse economic hardship than before.

Economic interdependence inside the EAEC has yet to result in assistance for economically weaker members. On joining the union, Kyrgyzstan will be even less willing to shoulder responsibility for others' economic weaknesses. There is debate in Bishkek about the requirement to share member countries' politically induced economic woes.

As long as the risk of disintegration hangs in the air, and the economic benefits of membership remain unclear, any talk of the EAEC's future must come with caveats. Much will depend on the ability of the most influential country, Russia, to take account of the economic and political interests of its fellow EAEC members.

Vagram Ter-Matevosyan, senior research associate of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, Institute of Oriental Studies:

Armenia was the first country where Russia applied the safety factor to keep it inside Moscow's zone of influence. The reason for joining the EAEC lies in Armenia's traditional security problems and complex regional surroundings.

The frequent violations of the ceasefire in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, coupled with Azerbaijan's increased military spending in excess of Armenia's national budget, have restricted our options.

Turkey's refusal to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia and lift the blockade in place on Europe's last remaining closed border (which is also a customs border of the EU), and Armenia's exclusion from regional energy and communications projects, all played a part in the country's decision to join the EAEC.

Armenia's economic troubles were another reason for joining the EAEC. Yerevan was seeking a short-term and tangible opportunity to improve the country's economy. The choice was made in favor of EAEC membership, which in contrast to the long-term benefits of the EU could help solve the economic problems in the short term.

The third reason was Yerevan's dependence on Russian energy. Under the "assets for debt" scheme, a number of strategic assets in Armenia were transferred to Russian companies in lieu of $93 million owed to Russia. Armenia's gas industry became the property of Gazprom. In exchange for control of the Armenian gas sector, Russia reduced gas prices from $270 per thousand cubic meters to $189.

A little known reason for Armenia's predisposition to EAEC integration is the role played by Armenians in Russia. A large percentage (29 percent) of investors in the Armenian economy are members of Russia's Armenian diaspora. But the economic slowdown in Russia is lowering demand for Armenian exports and migrant laborers.

Saodat Olimova, director of the Sharq Research Center, Tajikistan:

The Eurasian space is a huge market in which Tajik products - fruit, vegetables, cotton, textiles, energy, non-ferrous and precious metals - are in high demand.

If the country joins the EAEC, economists and businessmen expect to see an influx of investment in the hydropower sector and lower prices on hydrocarbon imports from Russia and Kazakhstan.

Another benefit of EAEC membership for Tajikistan could also be the common labor market. Tajik migrants would be able to work in Russia free of the current immigration restrictions.

Tajikistan's WTO membership would be a sticking point if it were to join the EAEC. The WTO forbids members from joining customs unions that include non-members of the organization without revising the terms of WTO membership. Integration into the EAEC may also restrict Tajikistan's maneuverability on foreign policy in relations with the EU and the U.S.

On the other hand, the EAEC would be a counterweight to China, allowing Tajikistan to avoid excessive dependence on the economy of the "Celestial Empire." In the ideal scenario, Tajikistan could become a gateway to the huge EAEC market for goods from China, India and Pakistan. It is not ruled out that inside the EAEC the country will become the principal model for CIS integration over the next decade.

Farhod Tolipov, director of the private think tank Caravan of Knowledge in Tashkent:

Uzbekistan currently views the EAEC as politically motivated and is not looking to join the union. EAEC membership would require some major legislative changes that Tashkent cannot make at present. Another reason is that the country's diversified foreign economic relations make it infeasible to adopt all the rules of the game as prescribed by the EAEC. But it should not be ruled out that Tashkent might just be waiting and watching to see how events unfold before making a final decision.

In my view, the issue of regional integration is of greater relevance to Central Asia. Pointing to the flimsiness of such integration, people cite the fact that the Central Asian republics have built different economic and political models. But if this assertion is correct, the differences will manifest themselves even more markedly within the EAEC. The organization will be hounded by crises in member countries with weak economies, but there will be no joint effort to help each other overcome the risks.

Generally speaking, there are two essential dimensions to the integration processes taking place in the post-Soviet space. The first is whether or not Russia can become the center of gravity of the former Soviet republics, and not just economically. The second pertains to the ability of the republics to make their own choices based on their national interests. The future of the EAEC depends on a combination of these two dimensions.

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 #24
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
April 10, 2015
Vietnam's balancing act: Can Russia adapt to change?
It's time to consider if there is anything that Russia can offer Vietnam that others can't.
By Anton Tsvetov, special to RBTH
Anton Tsvetov is Media and Government Relations Manager at the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC). He tweets on Asian affairs and Russian foreign policy at @antsvetov. The views expressed here are the author's own and do not reflect those of RIAC.

On April 6-7, 2015, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev visited to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV). Russian public opinion is accustomed to perceiving Vietnam as a traditional friend and partner, preferring to ignore potential disagreements that arise between the two countries. Meanwhile, Vietnam's current foreign policy is complex and full of contradictions, and Moscow will have to adapt to this.

To survive politically the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) has to demonstrate its ability to protect the country against external and internal threats and to improve the living standards of the country's 90 million population. Economy is the top priority now, as Vietnam has only recently entered the group of middle-income countries and still faces various growth pains and challenges. In 2015-2016, GDP is expected to grow by just over 6 per cent, which is quite good by the standards of developed countries, but falls short of an economic miracle. Therefore, today's priority for the export-oriented Vietnamese economy is to gain access to technology, investment and markets.

In terms of foreign policy, this implies the most pragmatic development of a wide network of partnerships. The Vietnamese leadership lost any trust in bloc solidarity since the Border War with China in 1979, and prefers to put its eggs in different baskets, trying to maintain good relations with China, the US and Russia, as well as India, Europe and other countries in East and Southeast Asia.

The close relationship that Vietnam enjoys with China is second to none. The reasons for this are quite obvious, namely civilizational commonality, the similarity of political systems and the tyranny of geography. The largest trading partner of Vietnam now accounts for about a quarter of the latter's total imports. At the same time, huge trade deficit with China is sparking profound concern among Vietnamese experts, and this is not even the darkest spot on the surface of China-Vietnam ties.

The greatest difficulties are being caused by the territorial disputes over the Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea. And if conflicts between just Beijing and Hanoi are resolved with certain ease, the involvement of other Southeast Asian countries in the disputes and close attention of the international community fuels the debate, making a settlement nowhere to be seen. As it is often the case, external actors are siding with the weaker Vietnam. This only frustrates China, which feels like a besieged fortress and back-pedals with great reluctance.

Developing the relationship between Vietnam and China has never been easy. Of the dozen liberation wars that Vietnam has fought in its long history, only two were not against China. This nourishes nationalist sentiments in Vietnamese society and a fair part of the internal opposition favors a more hard-line attitude towards its northern neighbor. In May 2014, when China brought an oil rig within the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of Vietnam, rioters across the country burned and looted scores Chinese-run factories, many of which in fact turned out to be Taiwanese or South Korean.

Yet, a split between China and Vietnam would be too far-fetched. Common political culture and spiritual affinity between the elites drive close interparty relations. It is even assumed that no major foreign policy decision is taken by Hanoi without consultations with Beijing. Anyway, it is the contacts between the CPC and the CPV that ensure the most expeditious settlement of conflicts. Closed-door talks on oil rig issue were held between party officials, although this incurred the displeasure of many members of the Vietnamese Communist Party, who insist on taking a tougher stance towards China.

This love/hate approach naturally prompts the Vietnamese leadership to diversify its foreign contacts, playing on the US' desire to strengthen alliances in Asia. Vietnam is a key element of the rebalance and Washington's major "new friend." After normalizing relations in 1995, the two countries have developed their relationship by leaps and bounds, especially in the economic sphere. Today the US market is the main direction of the Vietnamese exports (about 18 per cent of the total). What is equally important, Vietnam is ready to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the main economic tool for strengthening US influence in the region.

In 2014, the rapprochement between Washington and Hanoi was given two strong impetuses. Firstly, the ban on the supply of lethal weapons to Vietnam has been partially lifted. So far, supplies have been limited to arms and military equipment designed to "strengthen maritime security," but the Vietnamese insist on the full lifting of the embargo, saying that without it the normalization of relations cannot be considered complete. Secondly, the so-called 123 Agreement on nuclear cooperation with Vietnam has been signed and approved by the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which allows American companies to supply equipment for nuclear power plants to the latter. This is especially important due to the growing demand for electricity in Vietnam.

Relations between the two countries can hardly be called frictionless. The observance of human rights remains the main stumbling block. The United States criticizes the Vietnamese government for infringing upon the rights of the political opposition, religious minorities, as well as of workers and press. Indeed, working with the communist government is not an easy job for the Americans, but the CPV has its own serious concerns that Washington's rapprochement has a long-term goal of eroding the party's monopoly on power.

Tuktamysheva leads short program at Figure Skating World Championships Russia, Thailand to sign cooperation deals on energy, transport, agriculture, tourism
However, as of today, the US is ready to turn a blind eye to the fact that Vietnam does not meet the high standards of democracy and human rights. A stable political regime coupled with strong state control over the army is a valuable feature for an continental partner of the US in Southeast Asia. Recognizing its value for Washington, Hanoi expects to strengthen its own security, safeguard access of Vietnamese goods to the US market, and attract new technologies and investments.

Though betting on close ties with China and the United States, the Vietnamese leadership still does not want to fall victim to another bipolar confrontation. And this is why Vietnam still needs Russia. Relations between Moscow and Hanoi today have three very promising directions.

The first is arms trade base on extensive Soviet military aid to Vietnam, still considered a priority. The contract for the supply of six Kilo class diesel-electric submarines to Vietnam can probably be regarded as the most important achievement in this sphere. Submarines have been regarded the coolest bling in military fashion in Southeast Asia, as many countries see them as an effective way to counter Chinese assertiveness at sea.

Second, the energy sector is important in several respects. When it comes to this area, Vietsovpetro is the omnipresent success story. This is a joint venture for offshore oil exploration in Southern Vietnam that has successfully operated since the 1980s. However, there are a number of more recent projects, including those in Russia (which may come as a surprise to many Russians), namely in the Nenets Autonomous Region and in the Orenburg Region. The Ninh Thuận 1 Nuclear Power Plant project, launched in Vietnam by Atomstroyexport, is considered the gem of Russian-Vietnamese cooperation in the energy sector.

The third facet is the Eurasian Economic Union-Vietnam free trade area (FTA), the agreement on which is expected to be signed in 2015. This is one of the biggest multilateral projects for both countries. It is planned to zero out import duties on most goods and thereby contribute to the growth of bilateral trade.

But there are difficulties too. The movement of goods, which is a recognized indicator of the level of the development of bilateral relations, has indeed intensified. The parties note 'with satisfaction' that the commodities trade has reached $4 billion. The thing is that this figure makes up only 1 per cent of total Vietnamese turnover and about 0.5 per cent of the Russian stat. By comparison, the Vietnamese volume of trade with the United States amounts to $36 billion, and with China - to $58 billion. The creation of the EEU - Vietnam free trade area will certainly generate some growth, but it is doubtful that the effect will be significant enough.

Russia faces competition even in the above-mentioned areas of traditional cooperation between Moscow and Hanoi. South Korea, Japan, and soon the United States are Russia's competitors in the nuclear power industry. In oil production, India is close on the heels. What will happen with the Russian export of military equipment if and when the US completely lifts completely the ban on the supply of combat arms to Vietnam? The sensational winning of the bid last year for the construction of an assault rifle assembly shop by the Israeli "Galil" in Vietnam, which managed to leave behind the darling of the developing countries Kalashnikov, is a bite of the reality sandwich.

The time has come to consider if there is anything that Russia can offer Vietnam that other countries cannot. What goods can help increase trade turnover? Will the Russian military-industrial complex maintain the price-quality balance at an attractive level for Hanoi? Does Russia have enough resources at the moment to participate in major investment projects in Vietnam? Can Moscow benefit from the growing economy of its Asian partner? These questions aren't going anywhere.

Russia is important for Vietnam as a major outside power with which its leadership enjoys a strong partnership. However, the strength of these relations has almost never been tested in recent history. In March, the media reported that State Department had asked Hanoi to prevent the use of Cam Ranh airbaase by Russian aircraft refueling nuclear bombers. The Vietnamese side confined its reaction to a rather short and maild comment to the Russian Sputnik News website. Surely, such a leak to the media is a rather insensitive gesture on the part of the State Department, but the question has been asked: Is Vietnam ready to suffer political costs for close cooperation with Russia amidst the latter's worsening relations with the West?

Similar collisions may arise within the Russia - Vietnam - China triangle. Both countries are strategic partners of Russia, but what do we do done if there is a conflict between them? And if we have to choose, let's be honest: we know what Moscow's choice will be. The rich history of relations and the development of political and military dialogue are part of a solid foundation of bilateral relations. But if we can't build a solid house on this foundation, we will still have nowhere to live.

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 #25
Interfax-Ukraine
April 13, 2015
Ukraine played 'enormous' role in defeating Nazism - president
 
President Petro Poroshenko has credited Ukraine with an "enormous" contribution to the defeat of Nazism during World War II.

"The enormous contribution of Ukraine to the victory over Nazism was reflected in the recognition of Ukraine, along with the USSR and Belarus, as one of the founder states of the United Nations in 1945. Such a high appraisal was even acceptable to Stalin, who can hardly be accused of too much liking for Ukraine," Poroshenko said at a meeting at the opera theater of Odessa during which he handed decorations to World War II veterans.

The meeting was an event marking the 71st anniversary of Odessa's liberation from Nazi occupation.

The president attacked the current Russian leadership for a "shocking" statement, "a statement offensive and humiliating to each of our veterans and to all Ukrainians - that Russia would have won the war without us."

"The war couldn't have been won without the Ukrainians! There's nothing there to argue about! One may, though, talk about the possibility of the war having been avoided if the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact hadn't been signed in 1939," he said.

He mentioned that Ukraine and Belarus had ended up being in the epicenter of fighting during the war, that about 6 million Ukrainians had fought in Red Army ranks, and that 2,072 Ukrainians had been awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

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 #26
Central European Policy Institute
www.cepolicy.org
April 13, 2015
CEPI Ukraine Watch
Week of April 4-10 (partial text)
(Complete text here http://www.cepolicy.org/publications/cepi-ukraine-watch]

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

Contrary to their public declarations, Ukrainian political and military leadership is not expecting spring rebel's offensive Insider reports. Attention is shifting towards local elections to be held in October 15 Liga.net reports.

The Verkhovna Rada approved a bill on the natural gas market, part of reform commitments under IMF program. Insider reports about how the law was passed and what does it mean for country oligarchs. In another move to curb control of oligarchs over energy sector, the Prosecutor (PGO) challenged privatization of three power supplies companies, Liga.net reports.

Levy Bereg has interviewed Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin who claimed Viktor Yanukovych gave order to shoot protesters at Maidan.  

1. POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT

Normandy Four foreign ministers discussed deployment of a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine. Russia is ready to discuss the issue of peacekeepers, but not without participation of Donetsk and Luhansk representatives, Foreign Minister Lavrov said. Both sides of the conflict could pull back weapons under 100mm calibre from the front line, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. Lavrov also said that Ukrainian legislation granting limited self-rule to rebel-held areas goes "in the opposite direction" to the spirit of the Minsk deal.

Russia has never doubted Donbas being part of Ukraine, Alexey Pushkov, the chairman of the international committee of the Russian State Duma said.

Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky, leaders of self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's republics urged German Chancellor Merkel and French President Holland to demand that Kyiv stops ignoring Minsk agreement and end its embargo on government services. [1]

First meeting of Constitutional Commission took place on Monday, 6 April. President Poroshenko said that almost 90% of Ukrainians supported the current unitary state system. He said he was for decentralizing power to the regions. The decentralization will not affect defence, security and foreign policy issues. Poroshenko said that Ukrainian would remain the only state language. He said he had "enough powers" as president. Poroshenko believes that the Constitutional Commission should also involve the parliamentary factions that are not part of the coalition. Poroshenko said that the decentralization of power, improving constitutional foundations of justice, and constitutional regulations on human rights and freedoms were the priorities for the preparation of amendments to the Constitution. Constitutional Commission has decided to set up three working groups that will develop changes to the Constitution.

Senior rebel official Andrei Purgin said that none of their representatives had been invited to sit on the constitutional commission.

A group of lawmakers blocked the parliament's rostrum on 7 April and demanded a probe into the work of the Cabinet and PM Yatsenyuk. They insisted on the creation of temporary investigative commission after Cabinet dismissed the head of the State Financial Inspection Mykola Hordienko, who accused government of stealing Hr 7.5 billion. People's Front MP Anton Herashchenko accused Tymoshenko and Svoboda party of playing into Putin's hands by fanning a conflict. Rada has created special commission to investigate the allegations, Novoe Vremja reports.

President Poroshenko and Head of the Presidential Administration Borys Lozhkin issued the Declaration of assets, income, expenditures and financial obligations for 2014. PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk has also declared his income and expenses for 2014. For other members of Cabinet, see here.

Self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic released 16 Ukrainian soldiers on 6 April. SBU reported that nearly 400 Ukrainian citizens were held captive by the militants in Donbas. Authorities of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic suspended exchange of captives with Kyiv until working sub-groups in the Contact Group are being established, DPR representative at the Contract Group Denis Pushilin said. Kyiv representative to Contact Group, former president Kuchma, said that Ukraine needed to form a special entity to deal with prisoner's exchange. Kuchma also said that militants would not continue the process of exchanging prisoners until Ukraine adopts an amnesty law.

OSCE's Chairperson-in-Office and Serbia's Foreign Minister Ivica Dačić, SG Lamberto Zannier, Chief Monitor of the OSCE SMM to Ukraine Ambassador Ertugrul Apakan, and OSCE Envoy to the Trilateral Contact Group Ambassador Heidi Tagliavini met in Belgrade to plan further steps in responding to crisis in Ukraine on April 8. They agreed that swift establishment of working groups on security, political, economic and humanitarian aspects of the Minsk Agreements are now a priority.

Separatist leader Alexander Zakharchenko accused the Kyiv government of "totally ignoring" the terms of a peace deal and warned that fighting might resume.

Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski paid an official visit to Ukraine on 8-9 April. Poland has extended a $100 million loan to Ukraine to help modernise its energy sector and improve border checkpoints. Ukraine and Poland have also agreed to hold joint military training. The deployment of the UN peacekeeping mission was discussed. President Komorowski also met PM Yatseniuk.

At the Eastern Partnership summit in Riga, the Ukrainian party is going to raise two issues - on the European prospect and on provision of visa-free regime starting from January 1, 2016, President Poroshenko said.

The lower house of the Dutch parliament has ratified the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. The UK has ratified the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union.

Spain defended EU sanctions on Russia over Ukraine, rejecting repeated criticism of the measures by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. During a joint news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on 8 April, Tsipras said the European Union needed "to leave behind this vicious cycle of sanctions".

The U.S. Senate is united in its support for Ukraine and will make every effort to get the funds required to arm Ukraine within the next fiscal year, starting 1 October 2015, U.S. Senator (Republican) Robert Portman said during his visit of Kyiv. Portman met President Poroshenko.

The deputy head of the presidential administration, Valeriy Chaly, visited Washington where he met members of the U.S. administration and non-governmental organizations.

The Verkhovna Rada has ratified a protocol on the TUR border marker between the state borders of Ukraine, Romania and Hungary and an agreement on Ukraine's state borders with Belarus and Poland.

Lithuania has decided temporarily to stop granting asylum to citizens of Ukraine.

Nadia Savchenko will undergo five new tests, her lawyer Nikolai Polozov said. Defense of Savchenko lodged a complaint in the Basmanny court against refusal to recognize immunity of PACE delegate. Savchenko started taking food in quantities required to sustain life.

Hryhoriy Samardak was appointed Head of Zaporizhzhya RSA under the President's Decree on 6 April.

Leader of the Radical Party faction Oleh Liashko replaced People's Front faction Andriy Teteruk as the coordinator of the parliamentary coalition.

Kharkiv Regional Council declared Russian Federation an aggressor country after it has failed to do so earlier.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov intends to initiate the dismissal of Oleksandr Kikhtenko from the post of the head of Donetsk Military and Civil Administration. Kikhtenko in an interview with the Dzerkalo Tyzhnya called for the restoration of economic relations with the occupied territories....

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 #27
Russia Insider
http://russia-insider.com
April 13, 2015
Confirmed by Kiev: Right Sector Launches Offensive against DPR
Fragile cease-fire blatantly violated by Yarosh and his merry pranksters
By RI Staff

Goodbye, Minsk II! Via OSCE [http://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/150696]:

"Both the Ukrainian Armed Forces representative and the Russian Federation representative to the Joint Centre for Control and Co-ordination (JCCC) told the SMM that the Ukrainian side (assessed to be the Right Sector volunteer battalion) earlier had made an offensive push through the line of contact towards Zhabunki ("DPR"-controlled, 14km west-north-west of Donetsk), but the SMM was not able to verify this.

"The SMM observed that an intensive armed clash was underway with the use of tanks, heavy artillery, automatic grenade launchers, mortars, heavy machine-guns, and small arms and light weapons (SALW). From its arrival at 9.35 to 15:00hrs, the SMM observed and recorded 1,166 explosions, caused mainly by artillery and mortar shell strikes. The SMM assessed that weapons with a calibre larger than 100mm were used by both sides during the fighting."

There must be some way to blame Russia...

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#28
Violence escalates in east Ukraine ahead of talks
April 13, 2015

KIEV (Reuters) - One Ukrainian serviceman was killed and six were wounded in separatist territories in the past 24 hours, the Kiev military said on Monday, accusing rebels of using heavy weapons that were meant to have been withdrawn under a ceasefire deal.

The escalation in violence will add pressure to talks between the foreign ministers of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany, who are due to meet in Berlin on Monday to discuss further implementation of the Minsk ceasefire agreement.

The truce, brokered in the Belarussian capital in mid-February, is still technically in force though both sides accuse each other of intensifying attacks in the past few days.

"The rebels have not stopped firing at Ukrainian positions ... Over the past day the enemy used weapons banned under the Minsk agreements," Ukraine military spokesman, Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, said in a televised briefing.

He said rebels had fired at government troops 17 times with weapons of between 120 mm and 122 mm calibre, but did not specify where exactly. He also reported clashes between the opposing forces near government-held Avdiivka north of Donetsk. The situation around the airport of rebel-controlled Donetsk was the most tense, he said.

Under the Minsk deal, weapons bigger than 100 mm calibre, including large artillery, heavy mortar and powerful rocket systems, were meant to have been withdrawn from the front line.

Separatist officials accused government troops of violating the ceasefire by firing tank and artillery rounds repeatedly at rebel positions over the past 24 hours, separatist news agency DAN reported.

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 #29
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
April 13, 2015
S&P downgrades Ukraine to 'CC', says default 'virtually inevitable'
bne IntelliNews

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's has downgraded Ukraine's sovereign credit rating from 'CCC-' to 'CC', three levels above default, with a negative outlook. S&P said it views a Ukrainian default as "virtually inevitable", with Ukraine's sovereign debt to reach 93% of GDP in 2015.

"The negative outlook reflects the deteriorating macroeconomic environment and growing pressure on the financial sector, as well as our view that default on Ukraine's foreign currency debt is virtually inevitable," analysts said in a report.

The report also said that it would classify the current efforts to restructure Ukraine's foreign currency debt as "tantamount to default".

"In our view, the biggest risks to regaining sustainable economic growth, and therefore sustainable debt levels, include re-establishing financial-sector and exchange-rate stability," S&P said. Ukraine's situation depends on external factors that Ukraine cannot influence, such as terms of trade and the Russian-backed insurgency in East Ukraine's Donbas region, according to the S&P analysts.

Ukraine's sovereign debt will reach 93% of GDP in 2015, the report finds, after rising in 2014 from 40.2% of GDP to 70.7%.

GDP will fall by 7.5% in 2015, compared to a 6.8% fall in 2014, with growth of 2% resuming in 2016, according to S&P forecasts. Inflation will surge to 35% in 2015 from 12.2% in 2014, before slowing to 12% in 2016.

Despite a 40% devaluation of the hryvnia currency in 2015, Ukraine will continue to run a current account deficit, reduced to 1.7% of GDP in 2015 from 4.2% in 2014, and reaching 2% of GDP in 2016.

S&P argues that the hryvnia, although officially floated in February 2015, is currently being artificially supported by a large hike in the refinancing rate and strict currency controls.

Moody's Investors Service rates Ukraine at Caa3, two levels above default, and Fitch Ratings also puts Ukraine three levels above, at CC.

Restructuring effort limited

As part of an International Monetary Fund bailout, Ukraine has been required to restructure debt payments to save $15.3bn over the next four years. However, Eurobonds comprise only 20% of Ukraine's sovereign debt, making it unclear how useful restructuring will be.  

The main bondholders include Franklin Templeton with around $7bn, and Russia, which holds $3bn in Eurobonds issued by Ukraine. Russia insists its bonds are "official" debt that Ukraine cannot restructure without jeopardising IMF funding. The IMF says it is undecided on whether Ukraine's debt to Russia is official or private.

Ukraine's finance minister Natalie Jaresko says she plans to prolong maturities and reduce principal and coupon payments on Ukraine's Eurobonds.

The Russian-held bond "is likely to complicate matters" S&P said. "If Ukraine has to pay the $3bn in debt redemption this year, it will make it very difficult to find the $5 billion in expected debt relief in 2015 that underpins the IMF's 2015 external-financing assumptions," S&P said.

The lower rating would have "limited market impact" as it had been expected, Tim Ash of Standard Bank wrote in a note, adding, "Ukraine's financing, macro, political and security situation still looks very, very challenging".

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#30
Sputnik
April 11, 2015
Dropping Like Flies: 46 Ukrainian Banks Go Bankrupt in Course of One Year

The Deposit Insurance Fund of Ukraine will not be able to repay people their losses and will have to rely on the external funding from the EU and, in particular, European taxpayers.

Forty-six banks went bankrupt in Ukraine over the course of one year, Managing Director of the Ukrainian Deposit Insurance Fund Konstantin Woruschilin told the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN.

He explained that there are several reasons for the mass bankruptcy of Ukrainian finance institutions. First of all, it is "the immoral behavior of bank managers". According to Woruschilin, bank employees had been stealing the money and used it for their own purposes.

The second reason is the drop in exports, the consumption decline as well as high production costs, Woruschilin said.

The Deposit Insurance Fund makes every effort to repay Ukrainians their losses. However, the financial resources of the fund are insufficient, reaching a total of 16.1 billion dollars as of April 1.

In order to meet its obligations to the banks' customers, the fund will have to rely on external funding. According to the German magazine "Deutsche Wirtschafts Machrichten", the main burden will ultimately fall on the EU taxpayers who will have to pay for the mismanagement in the Ukrainian banking sector.

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 #31
The Guardian
April 13, 2015
'The west is wrong to write off Ukraine's debts'
It's easy to feel sorry for a country crippled by war and corruption - but dismissing past debts is not the way to help, say Alexander Lebedev and Vladislav Inozemtsev
Alexander Lebedev is the publisher of Novaya Gazeta in Moscow and The Independent in London. Vladislav Inozemtsev is a Berthold-Beitz Fellow with the DGAP in Berlin and non-resident senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, they say, and so it may be with the west's approach to Ukraine.

On 11 March the International Monetary Fund announced a $40bn assistance package to Kiev, consisting of $17.5bn in new loans and $15-20bn write-offs of previous ones. Such a programme may well help any normal country, but the situation in Ukraine is far from normal.

Before the former government was overthrown and then president Viktor Yanukovych fled for Moscow in February 2014, the country was renowned for its corrupt leadership. Yanukovych, convicted of robbery and assault under Soviet rule, is alleged to have received a share of each hryvnia (Ukrainian currency) that passed through the economy.

According to western analysts, the overall scale of corruption reached 14% of GDP during the early 2010s, or roughly $30bn a year.

We believe that a significant proportion of this ended in the pockets of the president and his family, or in the accounts of the oligarchs and other close associates of the ruling clan.

For years these elites salted away their illicit profits in banks accounts around the world, with the west turned a blind eye.

The new government has been left in charge of a country crippled by both war and corruption, with external debts of $72.9bn at the beginning of this year. The finance ministry in Kiev - and the IMF - believe at least $20bn of this should be written off - because, after all, those responsible are no longer in power.

But why would creditors, many of whom are ordinary investors, be willing to do this? Why are they not asking whose debt is being forgiven - is it a new, free nation whose citizens have sacrificed dearly for their pro-European views? Or is it the former elite who are spending their retirement far from Kiev, wealthy and happy?

Rather than absolving those responsible, as the present government appears to be doing, we believe the private sector should take the lead in holding them to account.

Why not hire private detectives to analyse foreign currency transactions to get a rough idea of how much was syphoned off? They could investigate the largest bank transfers between Ukrainian and European banks from 2010-2014, to find out who benefitted. When those responsible are identified, creditors could force Kiev to prosecute hundreds of former officials.

The privatisation of a number of large industrial enterprises should also be investigated. An international financial tribunal for Ukraine could be created, with prominent figures from the old regime put on the stand. The first to be investigated could perhaps be those who have already been traced, for example the fugitive former finance minister Yuriy Kolobov, who has been arrested in Spain or billionaire Dmitrii Firtash, who is under house arrest in Austria. The tribunal could offer financial incentives to those who help detect hidden money and identify the covert assets.

The next step should be the creation of a "Kiev club" of creditors who do not want to write off their part of Ukraine's debt. We believe that even Russian banks and companies will be interested in joining this club: money tends to rise above politics.

In Moscow, people are as interested in getting their money back as they are in Washington or Brussels - and in some cases they are in a better position to do so. The Kiev club could base its stance on the findings of the tribunal and could offer to drop its claims against the Ukraine government in return for transferring them to the former officials, politicians and oligarchs responsible. When so much money is at stake, it's likely that the culprits will be brought to justice more efficiently than if the search is left solely to Interpol.

Between 2010 and 2014, Ukraine was something unknown in modern history - a private state. All her neighbours, as well as all countries dealing with Kiev, are extremely invested in preventing this from happening again. It's impossible to believe that none of those discussing the restructuring of the Ukrainian debt today were unaware of what happened in those years in Ukraine. Some knew this better than those who just sent planes with cash to Ukrainian banks or those who charged exhorbitant fees for "legal advice" for Ukrainian oligarchs settled in Europe.

The sometimes private state should be countered with private international justice - and only this will ensure that the corruption of the past will not be repeated.

We strongly believe that the holders of Ukraine's government debt must rethink the conditions for dealing with this country and realise that rather than helping, debt relief may mean a full amnesty for a corrupt clique who has brought the nation to its knees. If the international community wants to fight against global corruption, Ukraine may be the best place to start.

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 #32
Ukraine's Domestic Problems Could Spark New Protests if War Ends, Kyiv Economist Says
Paul Goble

Staunton, April 13 - As long as Russian aggression against Ukraine continues, patriotism is likely to trump concerns about domestic difficulties, according to Ella Libanova, a reflection of the fact that "the Maidan and Russian aggression has pushed Ukrainians toward more responsible attitudes toward both their country and their own fate."

In a commentary today, the head of the Kyiv Institute of Demography says that the events of the past two years have produced "unexpected reactions in society," with "Ukrainians beginning to shift away from infantilism and a paternalistic relationship to the state" (nv.ua/opinion/libanova/chto-mozhet-sprovocirovat-novye-protesty-v-strane--43491.html).

Ever more Ukrainians "recognize that they should not count on 'the good authorities,' and this is a positive sign in the development of society," one that it is giving birth to initiative and the development of small business and the development of a volunteer movement in many spheres.

Only "among people of the older generation," the demographer says, predominate people who place their hopes in the state, a reflection of the fact that "in the majority of cases, they cannot work and consequently cannot count only on themselves."  But working age Ukrainians no longer pin all their hopes on the state.

"As long as the war goes on," Libanova says, the problems of unemployment and pensions are unlikely to lead to a new wave of protests. "But this cannot last forever," and society must "unite itself, create various public institutions and take responsibility for itself and for the country into its own hands."

The scholar says that she "hopes this process will not stop, that such organizations will multiply, develop, structure themselves and thereby increase their influence on the politics and further development of the country." And she adds that "the development of civil society will help promote decentralization, the transfer of authority to localities."

If the rise of civil society occurs before decentralization, Libanova continues, "it will secure us against the appearance of little princes who will concentrate all power and economic flows in their hands."

Despite the progress Ukrainian society has made, she says, there remain "essential risks" that social protests could become more frequent and widespread. "If the foreign policy of the state concerning integration in the European space satisfies Ukrainians on the whole, the internal situation is leading to significant criticism."

"The main potential catalyst for protests," Libanova argues, "remains the catastrophically high level of unemployment." Most of them unemployed are men, she says, and "it is more difficult for the than for women to find alternative activity." If one adds to the fact that there are a lot of guns in private hands, there is reason for serious concern.

The government thus needs to promote full employment by creating new work places and also by boosting existing Ukrainian industry with government orders, Libanova says.

What she does not say but what her argument implies are two other perhaps even more important lessons. On the one hand, Libanova's conclusions about the development of Ukrainian civil society suggest that Vladimir Putin got it exactly wrong about that country when he decided to invade.

Projecting his Russian experience on Ukraine, Putin clearly assumed that Ukrainians would not become self-sufficient and increasingly independent of the state if he invaded but just the reverse. If he ultimately recognizes the truth of Libanova's observations, he would likely achieve more of his goals by moving to some kind of peace than by continuing his aggression.

And on the other hand, the Kyiv demographer's conclusions are a warning to the West: pushing Ukraine to reach an agreement with Russia before some of its domestic problems are addresses and civil society becomes more firmly entrenched could have the effect of weakening Ukraine and giving Moscow yet another victory it does not deserve.

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 #33
International Business Times
www.ibtimes.co.uk
April 8, 2015
Ukraine's Communism ban will fuel Nazi propaganda and far-right support
By Inna Shevchenko, Leader of Femen

"Where are you from, ragazza?", asked the taxi driver who brought me to the airport from the Italian city of Bologna.

"Ukraine", I said loudly.

"Bene, Ukraine. We hear a lot about Ukraine now", he said as his dark eyes, beautified by long eyebrows, looked at me through the mirror.

"Yes, it is a hard time for Ukrainian people now", I answered looking at those eyes, being sure that their owner would be sharing my anti-Putin point of view.

"Yes, the Nazis are everywhere in Ukraine, even in Parliament," declared my Italian friend, out of nowhere.

The conversation was long, and its end does not matter much to my readers. What matters is that me, the proud and convinced supporter of Maidan and all of the recent changes that happened in Ukrainian politics, had a few uncomfortable moments as I was defending my truth in front of an Italian taxi driver fed by Russian anti-Ukraine propaganda, which, I realised, had also been shared by the Italian press.

These embarrassing feelings were exacerbated by the recent news I read from Ukraine just before having the debate with the talkative, politically engaged Italian driver.

News outlets were reporting that the Ukrainian minister of justice Pavlo Petrenko had announced the preparation of a new bill to forbid "Communist ideology" in Ukraine, as part of the process of "de-communisation" of the country that had been enunciated a few months previously in Kiev.

The minister's statement was followed by explanations of the initiative on governmental portals. The purpose was "to condemn the Communist and Nazi totalitarian regimes in Ukraine, to prohibit their propaganda and declassify the archives of the repressive communist authorities".

Such a declaration does not only hurt my Marxist roots, an offence that I am easily ready to forgive, but makes it simply impossible to defend the changes in Ukrainian power by claiming that they will bring democracy and freedom of expression in a country occupied by the hungry Russian bear Putin.

It is a high level of hypocrisy to scream from Maidan about the holiness of democracy, which Ukrainians are so eager to finally experience, while at the same time carry out something so anti-democratic as to forbid a political ideology, instead of punishing politicians directly for their criminal acts. However, what first appears a hardly understandable political manoeuvre has its goals.

The invisible enemy

I suspect that in a time of war, political and economic instability, while concrete peace is not possible and the price of food has risen by 53% (according to by Pravda.com.ua), primitive patriotism can become a tool for some in power to keep the population busy with something other than their own government. There is a need to offer the population this invisible enemy of the nation to fight and to direct your anger.

It seems to me that the "ghost of Communism" is providing this mission to some Ukrainian politicians today. They, including the minister Petrenko, believe that to protect their policies, they have to use history, as they know that history is often just a raw material for creating new political ideologies to serve new regimes.

The objectively negative and even violent reputation that Communism has from the history of the Soviet Union and the easy association to the dictatorship of Stalin therefore becomes a powerful instrument in today's ideological fight between Ukraine and Russia. Putin's propaganda naming every Ukrainian politician including president Poroshenko a "Bandera", a famous Ukrainian nationalist leader, is ridiculous, but the Ukrainian attempt to name every Russian a Communist directly associated to Stalin is equally so. In fact, they are trying to replace the Ukrainians' hopelessness with an epidemic of anger.

If some of you still see no contradiction in promoting democracy and forbidding communist ideology since communists in Soviet Union did a lot of harm, let me tell you that such a choice would be simply mistaken and furthermore, dangerous. To recognise the harm of a dictatorial regime under the flag or slogan of one or another ideology is a duty for any democratic power. However, to forbid an ideology by itself such as communism that has never included any hatred, call for violence or denied a nation's right to independence, creates nothing more than an ideological dictatorship.

Moreover, this attempt to forbid communist ideology in Ukraine is an extreme political act that was followed by a clear example of the ideological bankruptcy of the Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenuk, whom is already facing corruption charges. The prime minister himself called for the Parliament to adopt these laws and ban both the Communist and Nazi ideologies, as they are, by his own words, "ideologies against humanity".

I will not waste your time by analysing the origins of the ideas behind such a statement or comment on the intellectual potential of this statement, but instead I want to point out its dangers.

Suppressing Communism, in this case, opens a space for the far-right groups, such as the still very small and weak Pravuy Sector [or Right Sector], which in this context, could easily try to build power and raise their popularity.

Furthermore, all these low-level attempts to deal with the war situation are serving the Russian anti-Ukrainian propaganda and creating bigger opportunities to share lies about the "Nazis in Ukrainian parliament" that are even reaching an Italian taxi driver in Bologna and are hurting every Ukrainian whom suffers today, minimising the chances of getting the international support and understanding that is so much needed.

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 #34
Russia Insider
http://russia-insider.com
April 12, 2015
Is Yatsenyuk on The Way Out?
Russia Insider's International Affairs Editor, Alexander Mercouris, discusses Kiev's political infighting on CrossTalk
By Alexander Mercouris
 
Reports have been circulating for two weeks now that the purge which began with the sacking of Kolomoisky is now going to take in Yatsenyuk, who may soon be out.
 
I don't share the interest some have in who is in and who is out in the Maidan game of musical chairs.  
 
As I have argued many times before, though the Maidan movement is deeply factionalised all its members ultimately share the same rancid ideology that has brought the Ukraine to disaster.  
 
This is as true of Poroshenko as it is of Yatsenyuk. The idea that Yastenyuk's ouster will make the Ukrainian regime more "moderate" is a fantastic one.  Those who believe that should consider that such well known "moderates" as Tyagnibok and Lyashko support Yatsenyuk's removal.
 
What I will say about this tawdry drama - a kind of cartoon version of the epic power struggles the USSR used to have -  is that Kolomoisky was said by some people to be in some sort of informal alliance with Yatsenyuk. If so then it looks as if Kolomoisky's removal was intended to prepare the ground for the strike against Yatsenyuk that appears now to be underway. The promotion of Yarosh to an official position within the Defence Ministry is presumably intended to buy his support and to keep him onside whilst Poroshenko and his allies finish Yatsenyuk off.
 
As for Yatsenyuk himself, the Western media always calls him a "technocrat".  
 
If Yatsenyuk is a technocrat then he is a very bad one. The admittedly poor economic situation he inherited has under his direction gone from bad to catastrophically worse.  
 
As it happens I don't think Yatsenyuk is really a technocrat. He has held posts in the Ukrainian financial and banking system but he comes across as essentially a time-serving careerist whose ideological positions have become increasingly extreme as he has involved himself in Maidan politics.
 
If Yatsenyuk survives it is probably because he still has the support of the US, which was obviously backing him during the Maidan protests (remember the Nuland call?).  Why they would bother with such an obvious loser is another matter. His support is now said to have fallen to 4%. Frankly I am surprised that there are as many as 4% of Ukrainians who still back this deeply unpleasant and colourless man.

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 #37
Moscow Times
April 13, 2015
U.S. Must Step Up and Help Out on Ukraine
By Vladimir Frolov
Vladimir Frolov is president of LEFF Group, a government relations and PR company.

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko told Bloomberg recently that without high-profile American involvement there could be no stability in Ukraine. He has a point.

In the crisis, with its huge repercussions for European security, the American role has been inconspicuous. Despite Moscow's assertions that Russia is fighting a war with the United States in Ukraine, U.S. President Barack Obama's administration has largely dodged the fight.

Washington gave spine to the Western unity on sanctions on Russia and the IMF bailout program for Ukraine. Debate on supplying arms to Ukraine in the United States may have pushed both Russia and Europe into a cease-fire deal in Minsk. But otherwise, Washington has retired to the backstage, while Obama largely ignores President Vladimir Putin (their last phone chat was two months ago).

Yet, Putin has been trying to get Obama's attention, telegraphing his eagerness for engagement on Russia's concerns over the fundamentals of the world order.

While Putin's antique visions of spheres of influence, buffer zones and limited sovereignty of small states cannot be entertained by Obama, engaging him personally to achieve a lasting settlement in Ukraine would be a sign of American leadership.

Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington argues that it is a mistake for Obama not to engage Putin directly on Ukraine, downgrading the role of the U.S. in resolving a major security crisis in Europe.

A recent report by the International Crisis Group calls for "quiet, high-level and continuous engagement with Putin himself" on Ukraine through a "special envoy at the level of former head of state or foreign minister," because "decision-making in Moscow is concentrated in the presidency and requires a direct channel."

Direct U.S. involvement may now be necessary because the Minsk II process has reached a precarious point. There is still a chance to avoid a permanent frozen conflict in the Donbass.  But this would require Putin to accept Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's vision of the political aspects of Minsk II in exchange for a comprehensive Russian-Ukrainian settlement on Crimea. And it would take U.S. assurances on Ukraine's non-membership in NATO.

Obama's personal engagement with Putin may or may not succeed. Their relationship is poisonous and Putin, after all, may not be interested in the final settlement in Ukraine. But it is still worth trying, if only to deny Putin the benefit of the doubt.

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 #38
www.rt.com
April 11, 2015
French military intelligence rules out 'Russian invasion plans' for Ukraine
[Graphics here http://rt.com/news/248877-france-ukraine-russian-military/]

France's intelligence chief has questioned NATO's claims of Russia preparing to attack Ukraine as their agents failed to spot any activities signaling this - either before or after the crisis began.

A statement by the chief of France's military intelligence, General Christophe Gomart, was published on the National Assembly's website.

"NATO announced that the Russians were about to invade Ukraine. But, according to French intelligence, there is nothing to corroborate this hypothesis - we determined that the Russians were deploying neither command posts nor logistical facilities, including field hospitals, needed for a military incursion," General Gomart told a parliamentary hearing.

NATO's top brass has been incanting mantras about a "Russian invasion" ever since the crisis in Ukraine began a year ago. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, as well as his predecessor Anders Fogh Rasmussen, have lashed at Russia on numerous occasions, claiming that the Russian military is present on the ground in Ukraine, but failing to provide evidence supporting these claims.

"Our conclusion eventually proved correct because even if some Russian soldiers had indeed been seen on the Ukrainian side of the border, it was just a ploy, meant to bring pressure to bear on President Poroshenko, rather than an attempt to invade Ukraine," General Gomart said.

The French intelligence chief's remarks came in the context of France's role in NATO. Gomart noted that at the moment the alliance is dominated by US intelligence, while France's intelligence is taken not taken into consideration so much.

"France will not be fooled. France has its own sources of information and we are aware what the explanation for the crisis in Ukraine is," Philippe Migault, expert on Ukraine from the University of International and Strategic Relations, told Sputnik news agency after Gomart's remarks were published.

Russian MPs hailed Gomart's comments, dubbing them "a cold shower" amidst "anti-Russian hysteria in the West."

Frants Klintsevich, of the United Russia party, said the report showed US intelligence has been working to fulfill a political order.

Meanwhile, on Friday five Northern European states, non-NATO Finland and Sweden included, signed a declaration on the expansion of military cooperation to counter "Russian aggression against Ukraine."

Since Finland and Sweden intend to interact with NATO on a matching contribution basis, which might indicate a desire to join the alliance, Moscow will view this declaration as an act of aggression, Norwegian defense analyst Janne Haaland Matlary warned.

"Finland and Sweden have also decided to keep their exercises to NATO standards, which implies a step on the way toward NATO. Today, there are no political grounds for them to join NATO, public opinion is not frightened enough, and referendums will be required. But what is happening now still looks like a preparation for membership," Matlary told Aftenposten newspaper on Friday.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish military, Jarmo Lindberg, said on Saturday that Russia hadn't taken any steps that could be regarded as a threat towards Finland. "Between St Petersburg and the Kola Peninsula, Russia has only one airbase and one warehouse with military equipment. If in the Soviet period there were over 5,000 soldiers there, now there have been less than 5,000 military returned. It doesn't play any crucial role on the global scale," Lindberg told a local TV channel, adding that the nation has to reconsider its military readiness.

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#39
Russia Insider
http://russia-insider.com
April 13, 2015
Kremlin Troll Army Myth Deconstructed
Anyone arguing against stereotyping of Russia, its leader and its policies, who substantiates his or her argument with solid reasoning and historical or contemporary fact, must be paid by the Russian government
By Mark Chapman
[Links here http://russia-insider.com/en/whos-trip-trapping-my-bridge-fable-putins-troll-army/5565]
 
Not extolling the goodness of westerners and their policy and the evil of the Russian barbarian hordes - trolling
 
I was thinking, a few days ago, that I might do a post on the bellyaching and caterwauling from the Russophobes about Moscow's supposed army of "paid trolls", who are reimbursed by the Russian government for clogging western comment threads with fallacious arguments and childish insults which detract from - or derail entirely - thoughtful and informative commentary, often ridiculing the post itself into the bargain.

As I made my daily round of certain publications, including Russia Insider, I saw that I had been trumped in that intention by the inimitable Patrick Armstrong with "The West Throws a Temper Tantrum". There is no besting Patrick, with his enviable background in Russian affairs, his diplomatic experience and his pungent vocabulary - and even if there were, he references a story by Mark Ames of The eXilefame, who has traced the provenance of the "Russian Trolls" theme and found it to be a recurring wet dream of the Russophobes as far back as 2013.

The Incredible Human Smarm Generator, Max Seddon, England's answer to beefcake magazines  (I'm assuming here that he is from England because such an insufferable twit really could not have come from anywhere else, but please correct me if I am wrong and I will have the guilty location pulled down and sown with salt and dragon's teeth) did it back in 2014, basing his breathless report on "Plans attached to emails leaked by a mysterious Russian hacker collective", although the location is the same one as that described in more recent scoops - the Internet Research Center on 55 Savushkina St., St Petersburg.

According to Ames' story, Seddon's source and the furthest back we can easily trace the story is - surprise - Novaya Gazeta, The Little Newspaper That Could; employer of the martyred Anna Politkovskaya, circulation about 184,000 copies (many, like The Moscow Times, giveaways in hotels and train stations).

Partly owned by Russian oligarch and former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev and former jilted President Mikhail Gorbachev ,Novaya Gazeta now distinguishes itself by publishing the hoarse grunting and screaming of Yulia Latynina, who wrote that poor people should not be allowed to vote because they are hungry and will vote for any prospective leader who promises them food, and who caught on before anyone else that the Chel'yabinsk meteorite was a secret government missile test that got away from them.

She retracted that story shortly after it was released, but was unrepentant - she was wrong this time, but make no mistake, that did not mean the Kremlin was not up to devilish experiments. Oh, all right; one more. She announced in 2012 that Putin would use distractions in the Middle East to "stage his long-awaited attack on Georgia". There were clear signs of the contingency planning for this, she confided, in another advertisement for the wisdom of wearing a helmet when playing contact sports.

Anyway, now that I have hopefully established for you the provenance - to say nothing of the credibility - of the source of this latest nutty obsession, we don't want to make this about the source. The droll droolery of this unbridled foolishness has been exposed, and done to death.

And yet. I decided to go ahead with it, because there is an entire fundamental in this story that I did not see covered to my satisfaction.

Neoconservative warhag Annie Applebaum was quite wound up with outrage over the Russian troll issue last winter, penning a crie-de-coeur to a democracy in its death throes because of fake, bought-and-paid-for comments on Internet forums. The very bedrock of democracy is cracking, she tells us, because

"...[o]nce upon a time, it seemed as if the Internet would be a place of civilized and open debate; now, unedited forums often deteriorate to insult exchanges. Like it or not, this matters: Multiple experiments have shown that perceptions of an article, its writer or its subject can be profoundly shaped by anonymous online commentary, especially if it is harsh. One group of researchers found that rude comments "not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant's interpretation of the news story itself." A digital analyst at Atlantic Media also discovered that people who read negative comments were more likely to judge that an article was of low quality and, regardless of the content, to doubt the truth of what it stated. "
Oddly enough, she did not speculate on what lying does to the credibility of a story, despiteher track record as the kind of from-the-hip liar who lies just to keep in practice even when the truth would serve just as well. Astoundingly, in the very same post, she cites Michael Weiss and Peter Pomerantsev - of the partisan hack journal Interpreter Mag - as competent authorities to "distinguish truth from state-sponsored fiction".

But never mind that for now. Our old friend Catherine Fitzpatrick - also of Interpreter Mag - comments in a story for The Atlantic, by Daisy Sindelar; " ...trolls inhibit informed debate by using crude dialogue to change "the climate of discussion."If you show up at The Washington Post or New Republic sites, where there's an article that's critical of Russia, and you see that there are 200 comments that sound like they were written by 12-year-olds, then you just don't bother to comment," she says."

However, that emphasizes a point that everyone seems to be missing: comments which are supportive of Russia's view, but are crudely formatted or in which the commenter appears to struggle with English, especially if they are angry or insulting - are almost never deleted in moderated forums. In fact, such forums appear to deliberately leave them, as punching bags for enthusiastic and righteous rebuttals as well as examples of what unlettered savages and dropout dolts "Kremlin supporters" are, in much the same way a lioness will hamstring a gazelle and leave it for her cubs, so they will learn to kill. Also, such comments rarely inspire the accusation that the commenter is a paid troll - who would pay anyone for such an inept performance?

No, the "paid Putin troll" label is far more commonly awarded to commenters whose native language is English or who are highly competent second-language speakers - and Russians with the language skill of a Leonid Bershidsky or a Vladimir Kara-Murza are rare - and who defend their viewpoint with patient  elaboration supported by verifiable references. More often, in moderated forums, such comments (if they contradict the editorial line of the forum) are quickly deleted with a minimum of fuss, before most of the readership can even see them. The Guardian is legendary for deleting anything positive written about Russia in the commentary to its articles, and what remains where it once was is the maddeningly self-righteous message, "This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs."

Allow me to offer an instructive example: through the magic of Disqus, I recovered these comments from the Kyiv Post. Mine was marked as "spam" and deleted. See what you think.

Here's the original comment, by an academic bright spark who calls himself Mr. RainbowBotox:

"First of all, around 2008, they quietly changed the law allowing them to use nuclear weapons first. Therefore they will be able to use it first. there is also the so-called "strategic use" of these weapons, if things get worse and they decided to drop one on Talin, Estonia, or any other of these countries, there is no way in which the UK, France or the US are going to respond with nuclear weapons, risking the feared wide scale mutual destruction. Therefore it is a real danger that they can actually use them and believe not be at risk of receiving a similar strike."
Here's my reply, which stayed up no more than an hour before a moderator removed it as spam.

"Is that so? Actually, no; it's not. Russia dropped the no-first-use policy in 1993, and there was nothing sneaky about it at all - what's the sense of changing a policy in private? How does that have any global effect?

http://www.nti.org/country-pro...

"Analysts at the time speculated the reasoning behind it was not a Russian eagerness for nuclear war, but a policy change which recognized a new role for the nuclear component - deterrence of limited conventional war. The probable reason for that was the steady erosion of Russia's conventional forces, and a need to keep NATO off them until they could regroup. Since 2010 Russia has steadily reduced its reliance on the nuclear deterrent and has drawn down the Strategic Rocket Forces significantly, preferring to beef up the seaborne component.

"Anybody who seriously thinks they would nuke one of the Baltic states needs a psychiatric examination, or knows nothing of nuclear weapons. They are too close to Russia, and even though the prevailing winds are generally westerly it is not worth the risk. None of the Baltics would be able to stand against a conventional attack at much less risk. But why? Russia is not remotely interested in subjugating the yappy Baltics, despite what Edward Lucas tells you - when was he ever right about anything? Are they rich, or something? Russia spent more preparing for the Olympics than the GDP of the wealthiest of them."

A little of my reply is opinion, such as where I suggest Russia is not interested in subjugating the Baltics. I don't see any evidence of it, but the Russian government obviously does not consult me on its plans. But most is factual, and supported by references. Mr. RainbowBotox's comment was allowed to remain although it contained factual errors and they were pointed out. It's still there now.

Similar shenanigans go on all the time in The Guardian, and thoughtful comments which appear to be the result of careful research are summarily deleted because they clash with the paper's editorial stance, and because they show up the original commenter as a fool. Some of these authors are simply filtered out after they have had a couple of comments deleted, so that nothing authored by them will be accepted. Occasionally they inspire grudging admiration for the author's command of English - several such were directed at our own Moscow Exile, which made me laugh, because he is as English as the crumpet.

This kind of high-handedness, resulting in a complete inability to have one's opinion heard, are beginning to inspire alternative sites which are not moderated; in The Guardian's case it is mirrored by the brilliant OffGuardian, and there are many other great ones such asRussia Insider, Danielle Ryan's Journalitico and Paul Robinson's Irrusianality. They rarely seem to attract trolls (except for Russia Insider, which does), and on the occasions they show up the comment sections eat them alive.

Just a couple more points before I hand over the floor to you. One, for what it's worth, the "Kandid Konfession" of alleged Russian blogger and former paid Russian troll Marat Burkhard is alleged by this German site to have been a hoax perpetrated by Jürg Vollmer's "Troll Factory" in Frankfurt, allegedly the same outfit that perpetrated the "Gay Girl In Damascus" scam. The west was quite angry to discover the supposed 25-year-old lesbian in Syria was actually a 40-year-old straight man in Edinburgh.

Two; the scenario "Burkhard" describes, in which trolls act in teams of three, makes no sense. According to him, one person provides the original comment, the second plays the "villain" and disagrees with him (ostensibly to provide the appearance of balanced opinion), while the third affirms the rightness of the first person's opinion. He agrees all three sit together, agreeing on who is going to answer who, but then says they do not talk much because everyone is busy.

There's no need for them to talk at all; allegedly, each operator controls ten Twitter accounts; presumably they each also supplied ten fake email addresses to get the accounts. Why would one operator not fulfill all three roles, playing the parts of initial commenter, villain and collaborator? If it is possible to tell that all three were generated by the same individual, so they must do it in teams of three, why would each need ten Twitter accounts?

Three, the exchange the alleged troll defector describes - initial commenter, villain and collaborator - neatly captures just about every comment-forum disagreement ever written. It is therefore easy to characterize any exchange in which the commenter is hammering the editorial policy of the site as having come from a "professional paid troll".

We are being set up. While Applebaum plants the suggestion that you should not read comment forums any more because they are dominated by Russian trolls, Fitzpatrick backs her up that you should just read the article and not pay attention to comments. Applebaum chimes in that research has shown that negative comments can affect your opinion of both the article and its author - far better to just read the article and internalize its truths, rather than confuse yourself.

Meanwhile comments in which the author struggles with English and is insulting ("Obama is a monkey, Putin good") are allowed to remain, to serve as an example of how poorly-educated and bigoted Russians are. Anything which argues for fairness and substantiates that Russia is being unfairly criticized, using established and respectable academic or media references, is deleted with some excuse that it is spam, or violates some arbitrary community guidelines.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, comment forums in English-speaking sources were almost overwhelmingly in support of articles extolling the goodness of westerners and their policy and the evil of the barbarian hordes who dwell between the Baltic and the Sea of Okhotsk. This is so no longer, and articles which try to draw Manichean comparisons have to fly through a cloud of flak. The western ideologues don't like that. Hence, the cloaking device of "Russian trolls".  Anyone arguing against stereotyping of Russia, its leader and its policies, who substantiates his or her argument with solid reasoning and historical or contemporary fact, must be paid by the Russian government. Paid to lie, of course, which is why they must get rid of your argument before it dawns on readers that it is true.

Unless, of course, you use all the same devices as a troll - an assumed name, profane and opinionated commentary, statements which assume facts not in evidence - but support the western agenda. Then, it's enough that you say you're not a troll; you "try not to lie (according to your own beliefs, which you do not challenge with research) and nobody's paying you". Then, like "Adolfych" in  the Sindelar piece, you can troll to your heart's content and never get anything more negative than "an opinionated mischief-maker". You'll benefit from much the same double standard which calls a Moscow billionaire an "oligarch", and a Kiev billionaire a "tycoon".

You always know you're winning when the other side feels like it has to change the rules.

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 #40
Chatham House
www.chathamhouse.org
April 9, 2015
Ukraine's Oligarch Gambit
By Orysia Lutsevych
Orysia Lutsevych held the Robert Bosch fellowship at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, in 2012 and was also a research fellow with the Russia and Eurasia program.

The grip the oligarchs have on Ukraine's economy could further undermine the country's integrity. Attacking their vested interests is dangerous but preserving the current state of affairs is even riskier.

According to a recent poll, Ukrainians see three key threats to their country: corruption, oligarchs and Russian aggression. The dismissal of oligarch Igor Kolomoisky from his post as governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region has now exposed the challenges facing the Ukranian government in tackling the first two of these problems, and is just the beginning of a protracted struggle with vested interests. Reform is essential but not without risk − business moguls will try to mobilize resources to preserve their influence and they still hold leverage.  

Pervasive influence

One of the main reasons for Ukraine's stalled transformation over the 24 years since the end of the Soviet Union is the fact that politics has been subject to the interests of big business. The country's economy has been captured by oligarchs, most of whom accumulated their wealth through murky privatization of major industrial assets and through energy trade with Russia. According to different estimates they control around 70 per cent of Ukraine's economy.

Over the last two decades the oligarchs created a structure that protected their monopolies, provided access to cheap energy and gave them control over lucrative state-owned companies. Their leverage comes from the control of media resources, political party finance  and several key state enterprises. The metallurgic industry alone, heavily controlled by oligarchs, generates over 40 per cent of foreign currency inflows and employs over 200,000 workers.

In many cases, the legal framework set up by the oligarchs' political cronies ensured their actions remained within the boundaries of the law. Whenever a new minister was appointed, it was common for people to ask which oligarch 'owns' him or her. Members of parliament also formed a tight network around the oligarchs they served.  

This system nurtured corruption and destroyed competition. Ukraine's GDP per capita is only slightly higher than it was in 1991, when it was on par with Poland. Now it is four times lower. Ukraine is ranked last out of 43 countries in Europe on economic freedom.

New reform efforts

But things are changing. The victory of the Euromaidan movement and the subsequent parliamentary elections resulted in a pro-reform majority in parliament. That, together with Russia's occupation of Crimea and the proxy-war in the Donbass, where many oligarchs have assets, shattered the status quo among the powerful business groups. The new generation of lawmakers seems more determined to bring structural change and rid the political system of vested interests.

Most Ukrainian oligarchs have seen their wealth melt away. Some have had a run-in with justice. Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest oligarch and a backer of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, has lost $5.8 billion over the past year. He had to flee Donetsk in May 2014 and his lavish mansion was captured by armed separatists. Dmytro Firtash, another business mogul, is currently under house arrest in Vienna awaiting a decision on his extradition to the US on corruption charges. In February, Ukraine's prosecutor general re-opened the criminal investigation into the killing of journalist Georgiy Gongadze in 2000, with former president Leonid Kuchma − who is also the father-in-law of another oligarch, Victor Pinchuk − as one of the suspects.

Then last month, Kolomoisky challenged the government's decision to replace one of his allies, Igor Lazorko, as the CEO of oil company Ukrtransnafta, where Kolomoisky is a minority shareholder. He ordered his security guards in full military gear to take over the company headquarters in Kyiv and accused the government of raiding his business. Five days later President Petro Poroshenko dismissed him.

Until recently, it seemed Kolomoisky was unique in having improved his position. He funded private military battalions, which played a decisive role in defending the region from the Russian-backed separatists. This improved Kolomoisky's public image considerably, but his rising power was a concern for citizens, the new political elite and Ukraine's Western partners.

Kolomoisky's weight is stronger than most because of his local popularity and ownership of the largest private bank in Ukraine. He may assert pressure on Kyiv by mobilizing public opinion in southeastern Ukraine, which is more open to discussions of 'federalization'. For example, in his native Dnipropetrovsk, 34 per cent of citizens support federal status, which means more autonomy from Kyiv than is offered by the current plans for decentralization. This would play into Putin's pressures for a version of federalization that benefits Russia and weakens Ukraine's central government, after Poroshenko successfully fought to preserve Ukraine as a unitary state during the Minsk II negotiations.

Even Poroshenko is not immune from accusations of reluctance to separate politics and business. He promised to sell his Roshen confectionery business upon taking up office, but has not yet done so.

The next test

First steps have already been taken to mitigate oligarchic influence: a new law strengthening accountability of judges, public oversight and the independence of the judiciary; a decision to transform the national TV channel into an independent public broadcaster, strengthening the media environment; and the integration of private armies into the national guard. Further goals should include new rules on party finance transparency and the role of the antimonopoly committee, and the West should make financial support to Ukraine conditional on continuing reform.

The 2015 privatization of over 2,000 state-owned enterprises and the reform of the gas and electricity markets will be the next major tests for the government.  Will they help towards a more level playing field for investors or will they simply breed new oligarchs?

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 #41
www.opendemocracy.net
April 9, 2015
Team Kolomoisky
It's easy to make misleading conclusions when it comes to Team Kolomoisky - if you don't know Dnipropetrovsk from the inside.
By Victoria Narizhna
Victoria Narizhna is a Ukrainian columnist, essayist, translator, cultural manager, and civil activist from Dnipropetrovsk.

After Ihor Kolomoisky, a pro-Maidan oligarch and governor of Dnipropetrovsk, allegedly used volunteer fighters to seize control of Ukraine's state-owned gas company, he resigned his governorship live on television, causing a rift in Ukraine's power elites.

The ensuing scandal has placed the fragile achievements of the Ukrainian revolution at risk, prompting talk of a 'Requiem for Maidan'. But there's something we're forgetting in reporting the power struggles of Ukraine's oligarchs over the 'Kolomoisky affair' - the people of Ukraine.

Jumping to conclusions

'Can you imagine, it's just like under Yanukovych in there!' Kateryna Chyzhyk - a well-known activist (and friend) - came back in complete shock from meeting with Valentyn Reznichenko, the new governor of Dnipropetrovsk. 'You have to leave your mobile phone in the waiting room. There's that expensive brand of mineral water, fruit arranged on plates - so much pomp!'

This is far from the first report on Reznichenko's concern for 'style'. Vyacheslav Poiezdnik, a recently-mobilised journalist (and who is currently undergoing treatment at a military hospital), not so long ago published a video on Facebook showing how the hospital stopped receiving patients ahead of a visit by the new governor. This behaviour is particularly striking when you consider this hospital, once dilapidated, was restored - completely - through the donations and efforts of volunteers. The Ukrainian state did not take any part in the restoration.

Perhaps this is why Mikhail Minakov's recent statement on 'the oligarchs' take-over of an unfinished autocracy' surprised me, though I agree with much of what 'Requiem for EuroMaidan' has to say.

Of course, Governor Ihor Kolomoisky could not forget the financial interests of Privat Group. And yes, Kolomoisky's ambitions included consolidating and expanding his influence in Ukraine's South and East.

Breaking the mould

But, at the same time, the way Kolomoisky and his team worked was completely at odds with authoritarianism - for instance, their direct and evolving relationship with civil society.

During Kolomoisky's time as governor, activists and volunteers had constant access to the offices of power (on occasion, literally at any time of day), without ceremony or ritual, in a business-like and constructive atmosphere of co-operation. If the new governor can't master the ability to talk to citizens without middlemen or ceremony, he is going to have a tough time of it.

It's easy to make misleading conclusions when it comes to Team Kolomoisky - that close-knit grouping of successful, one might say self-interested, businessmen, yet displaying a clear willingness to work together with activists looking to build a civil society - misleading especially if you don't know Dnipropetrovsk society from the inside. From the inside one sees how the volunteer movement and battalions come together day in, day out. Surprising it may be, but in a country, which has demonstrated an incredible capacity for self-organisation and self-sacrifice, journalists and analysts alike still fail to consider the Ukrainian people a subject and factor in the political process.

From this point of view, of course, it's easy to popularise the myth of Kolomoisky's 'personal army in the form of volunteer battalions'. Under the influence of this myth, one doesn't even have to check the information about the men from the Dnipro-1 battalion who allegedly prevented Ukrtransnafta from legally being returned to state control - just disseminate it online. Yet there is only one (and wholly reliable) source of this information: an unidentified man in uniform who, on a single video recording, states that he is a soldier from Dnipro-1.

People familiar with Dnipropetrovsk would be less quick to judge. They would know that a certain tension has long been brewing between the commanders of Dnipro-1 and Team Kolomoisky.

A soldier's loyalty is always to his commander, not his sponsor. What's more, the Dnipro-1 battalion is financed from numerous sources, not the personal pocket alone of Ihor Kolomoisky. To be sure, volunteer battalions have their weaknesses, but putting their financial backers in charge isn't one of them.

Nineties redux

For me, as an activist and member of local society, the problem with Kolomoisky is not that he's an oligarch, nor that he seeks to take over an 'unfinished autocracy'. No, the problem lies in the origins of that very strength - Kolomoisky is a successful businessman who forged a successful career in the 1990s; and his team is of the same mould.

It goes without saying that the 1990s were a significant period for all post-Soviet countries. All these countries experienced similar processes - collapsing infrastructure, chaos and poverty, which, in turn, coincided with unprecedented freedom, as well as new, unlimited possibilities (at least compared with the past). Criminality and private business went arm in arm and, in terms of ethics and methods, every successful businessman of the 1990s was something of a bandit.

When it comes to this historical environment, Ihor Kolomoisky is top of the league. Likewise, Kolomoisky's associates Hennady Korban and Borys Filatov are also leading businessmen with a similar background. But what we have to understand is that, in contrast to other wealthy people in Ukraine who have combined politics and business over the past 23 years, Team Kolomoisky didn't overplay their hand in the country's political life.

Of course, the group has always had deputies and officials under their sway. (This was and remains an everyday practice in Ukrainian politics.) But not one member of the team took office personally.

Team Kolomoisky

And this is what has led to Team Kolomoisky's - at least, temporary - defeat. Being led by a successful businessman, influential figure, and effective crisis manager, helped Kolomoisky's team not only to re-energise the 'power sector' and executive branch, which were both completely demoralised by the collapse of the power vertical in early 2014, but also find funds to finance the wartime needs of the Dnipropetrovsk region (which has a seriously embezzled budget).

Transportation and hospitalisation of casualties, searching for the dead and people taken prisoner, supporting soldiers' families, aid for displaced persons - these are activities that should be performed, first and foremost, by the state, but which, in a country where the state apparatus has been completely degraded, have landed squarely on the shoulders of local business and volunteers. Without a doubt, Dnipropetrovsk would not have become the effective frontline city it has if the region had not been led by a person who commands serious influence and authority in political and business circles, as well as controlling significant assets.

But being a successful politician is something quite different. While Kolomoisky's successes have paid dividends in terms of voters' sympathies (and at times far beyond the region's borders), this favour does not stretch to indulging any behaviour. The situation around Ukrtransnafta provoked a mixed reaction. It's difficult to say what provoked greater indignation - the presence of mysterious armed men at a state company or Kolomoisky's rudeness towards a journalist. Following their bravery on Maidan and the front, journalists in Ukraine have been accorded untouchable status. Of course, amidst the citizens of Dnipropetrovsk, many people were angered by the fact that Kolomoisky had been 'targeted' first rather than the pro-Russian oligarchs - Dmytro Firtash, Rinat Akhmetov or Vadym Novinsky.

Yet this anger wasn't as destructive as certain people made it out to be. There was no reason to talk, as Mikhail Minakov does, of the 'challenge of possible civil unrest in Dnipropetrovsk' or calls for a 'new Maidan'.

The new network

As a whole, talk of a 'new Maidan' seems to me not only risky but even insulting to the people of Ukraine who have just lived through a revolution. Anyone who has spent at least a few weeks on Maidan knows that it wasn't a carnival, nor was it a picnic: it was tiring work. Even if you exclude the potential risk of clashing with the police, standing in the cold is exhausting - if you do it for hours on end, day after day.

Aside from the experience of understanding just how difficult protest can be, Maidan has produced another priceless achievement - a new network of experts and opinion-makers. As Facebook emerged as the main channel for information and discussion during Maidan, so a new infrastructure of analysts - who people listen to and follow - emerged alongside it.

And as the war in the Donbas wears on, volunteers have also become part of this network - these are people respected by society. The vast majority of these new generation experts are sober-minded people who understand all too well that another revolution would spell the end for the Ukrainian state. I have seen - many times - how new waves of panic or protest (frequently with an unclear and, possibly, artificial provenance) have ebbed away with the help of careful explanations by these experts.

Motive

For me, the motive behind the open struggle for control of Ukrtransnafta remains unclear, when it so obviously would have led to Kolomoisky losing his position. Of course, if President Poroshenko had let Kolomoisky get away with it, then that would have essentially signalled approval of it - indulging Kolomoisky in any future similar action, and exposing the lack of subordination between them.

Such apparent carelessness from a former governor, who has hitherto shown such deft political skill, can be explained in two ways. First, the innate businessman and billionaire in him conquered the newborn politician - confidence in his own position and the people's sympathies won out over cautiousness. In this respect, Ihor Kolomoisky simply overdid it. Second, perhaps the position of governor had already lost its importance and value; and Kolomoisky allowed himself to relax, and hence, possibly, deliberately provoked his own resignation. The second scenario appears particularly credible in the context of coming local elections.

But the fatalism and bitterness that courses through the interviews and statements given by members of Team Kolomoisky do not support the second version of events, leaving the first version in a more credible light. The experience of the 1990s, so relevant in solving the challenges of a regional war, has turned out to be harmful when played out on the national stage of Ukrainian politics. These methods - characteristic of the tough world of post-Soviet business - appear even more frightening in a country, which has defended its European choice with blood, and which is the focus of international attention (albeit, sceptical and disturbed).

The lack of political sophistication in the behaviour of Team Kolomoisky after the boss's resignation is revealing. Car crash followed car crash. Live on 1+1 TV, Kolomoisky himself asserted that former Regionnaire (i.e. Yanukovych's Party of Regions) Aleksandr Vilkul or Rinat Akhmetov are not pro-Russian, though he accepted that they may favour pro-Russian slogans. Most Ukrainian citizens don't buy this rhetoric.

Then Gennady Korban gives an interview to Ilya Azar from Meduza, where he says a few - far from complimentary - things about President Poroshenko, and then promptly disavows it on Shuster Live (a popular Friday night talk show), even though it's obvious that this disavowal won't last a day (the facts of the interview were quickly confirmed by dictaphone record). And Borys Filatov's updates on Facebook - he has 160,000 followers - soon acquire a bitter (and, on occasion, offensive) tone.

These misteps make it clear that politics is a profession, which Team Kolomoisky is yet to master.

Perhaps I sound like a lobbyist for the 'oligarch republic', but I hope that Team Kolomoisky does re-examine its approach and focuses on mastering politics while voters still favour them - for two reasons.

First, there is a high probability that forces connected to former president Yanukovych will try to make a comeback in the Dnipropetrovsk local elections, this October. Given the gathering storm, I would prefer to count on a political force, which is strong locally rather than a branch of the People's Front or Poroshenko Bloc.

Second, Kolomoisky is an interesting and, to a certain extent, admirable phenomenon.

Horizontal communication

For years, Ukrainian oligarchs have guided our politics, unseen behind the curtain. Some of them have even taken posts in parliament and the state apparatus. But Kolomoisky stands out: he took responsibility at a very difficult, even catastrophic, moment.

To be sure, war isn't only a time of great risk. It is also a time of great opportunity. But the work taken on by Team Kolomoisky was hellish. It wasn't just sitting in offices and signing documents: this work included identifying bodies, consoling grieving widows, exhausting military and political conflicts, and effective co-operation with activists from all walks of life. This is the first time in the history of modern Ukraine when rich and influential people have become involved in direct, horizontal communication. We cannot fail to value this, and I would like to see this continue.

When foreign journalists ask me if I'm afraid that Kolomoisky will attempt to concentrate even more power in his own hands than Viktor Yanukovych, I answer no, I'm not afraid - I take the people into account.

It may be difficult and costly, but Ukrainians are building a functioning civil society - a society of people who think, analyse, and study; a society mastering different means of influencing politics. In the struggle for dignity and freedom, Ukrainians have shown that even physical destruction does not stop them.

I don't believe that even such an influential oligarch as Kolomoisky can muster anything like real opposition to such determined people. The way forward for Ukraine is to doggedly work out new rules for our society to live by - rules acceptable to all Ukrainians, Team Kolomoisky included.

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 #42
Dances With Bears
http://johnhelmer.net
April 13, 2014
A GOOD NIGHT'S REST IN CLEVELAND, OHIO - IGOR KOLOMOISKY HAS BEEN SECRETLY INVESTING IN MIDWEST REAL ESTATE, AND IN KENTUCKY, TEXAS, FLORIDA TOO
By John Helmer, Moscow
[Footnotes, links, photos here http://johnhelmer.net/?p=13110]

When Ukrainian warlords need a well-earned rest from fighting the civil war, there's always Cleveland, under State Department protection, or Miami for the warm weather.

Igor Kolomoisky has accumulated more than a quarter of a billion dollars in US investments through a chain of front companies which stretch from several American states to Miami, Florida, to Cyprus, and to the Caribbean. He has also managed to keep his name out of the public record of the American transactions. But the money trail in some of his deals, and at least one of his partners, have come under scrutiny by US and state government agencies, and federal courts in several US states.

Kolomoisky himself, according to a Kiev source and a federal US court filing in December 2012, "has traveled to the United States over the past few years and should have no trouble obtaining a visa." Kolomoisky has been in the US in recent days, reportedly on a restricted visa, in order to discuss his future and the future of his American assets with US Government officials. Public records reveal that the value of these assets has been falling sharply, and that some may be sold in debt default auctions unless Kolomoisky can persuade state and federal government agencies to provide subsidies, concessional utility rates, tax and other credits.

Sources in Cleveland, Ohio, where Kolomoisky has control over several downtown buildings and a hotel, report that his assets there have lost market value since he acquired them. "Out of state investors think they will make a ton of money," one of the sources said. "they don't. I don't think [Kolomoisky] made any money [in Cleveland]."

Kolomoisky's legal right to enter the US is controversial. It has been reported in Ukraine and Russia that he was the target of an investigation by the US Department of Justice, when Edwin Mukasey was Attorney-General, between November 2009 and January 2011; and that Kolomoisky was barred from US entry. For more, click [1]. At the Dniepropetrovsk headquarters of Komolomoisky's Privatbank, his spokesman refused today to confirm or deny Kolomoisky's presence in the US. He also refused to clarify whether Kolomoisky has been denied entry to the US at any time since 2009.

In a filing [2] in federal US court in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in December 2012, Kolomoisky was reported to be "an Israeli citizen who speaks Russian but not English who[m] Sapir [Akiva Sapir, one of the defendants in the case] believes would refuse to travel and/or would be unable to obtain a visa to appear as a witness in this matter." Kolomoisky was also identified in court as a majority stakeholder in the Warren steelmill, which was the subject of the court case; he was also the plaintiff in another US court case accusing another former Soviet figure, Boris Bannai, of fraud involving the same steelmill.

Vadim ShulmanAccording to the Pittsburgh court documents citing the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, "Kolomoisky maintains an official residence in Israel and has another residence in Israel where he stays several times a year when visiting Israel". Kolomoisky "has previously resisted involvement in United States litigation". The court ruled in favour of Safir, and rejected US jurisdiction for claims which had been brought by Vadim Shulman (right), a native of Dniepropetrovsk, then an Israeli passport holder and resident of Monaco. Kolomoisky's status in the US wasn't adjudicated.

The court papers reveal the bankrupt steel plant had been sold in 2001 to the Kolomoisky group, with Shulman holding a minority stake, for an ostensible price of $13 million. Allegedly, according to Shulman, the actual transaction price was $6.6 million and the difference allegedly siphoned off. Subsequently, the stakeholders claim to have invested $100 million in reviving steel production, including loan money from Privatbank. By the autumn of last year, however, Shulman and Kolomoisky had fallen out, and were suing each other in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), as well as in US federal courts in New York, Delaware and Ohio. How much was actually invested in Warren Steel, and where the money came from are disputed.

Last December Shulman applied for a Manhattan court order [3] to compel Kolomoisky to open the books of his offshore companies to prove how much money, if any, he had paid or loaned to the Warren Steel venture; how much he had taken out; and how much shareholders like Shulman (read Hornbeam of Panama) might be owed. Targets identified in the court record include Kolomoisky himself, plus Divot Enterprises Limited;. 5251 36th Street LLC; CC Metal and Alloys LLC; Felman Trading, Inc.; Mordechai Korf; Optima Acquisitions, LLC; Optima Fixed Income LLC; Optima Group LLC; Optima International of Miami, Inc.; Optima Ventures, LLC;. Querella Holdings Limited; and Felman Production, LLC.

For parallel public records confirming that Kolomoisky is the principal beneficiary behind the Felman, Optima, CCMA, and Divot names, as well as Korf's principal, read this [4].

A search of transaction records involving these names has turned up American office buildings and commercial real estate which Kolomoisky and his associates have bought in Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, West Virginia, Texas, and Florida. Many of the deals have proved controversial, under-funded, or lossmaking. In Harvard, Illinois, for example, where Kolomoisky bought the former Motorola plant in 2008, his Optima takeover entity was identified in the local press [5] as "the U.S. branch of a private, global company based in the Ukraine that has invested in oil, gas, telecommunications and manufacturing." The purchase price in local records was $16.8 million.

Six years later, in 2014, Kolomoisky was offering to sell the building for $37 million, but there were no takers. The electricity was switched off to the plant for non-payment; heating was cut off by the start of the winter. In October last Kolomoisky had defaulted on $329,000 in county property taxes, and was facing a delinquency sale by the county government. The sale price in the local market had dropped [6] to $15 million.

2fIn 2011 Kolomoisky reportedly paid $77 million for this office building in Louisville, Kentucky. At present, according to agent advertising, the building has been renovated after acquisition, but it remains far from fully leased. It is also unclear how much cash Kolomoisky put down for the transaction, and how much in existing debt was transferred to Privatbank's books. "The $77 million purchase price," reported [7] the Louisville Business First, "was paid partially in cash and partially through the assumption of an existing mortgage, according to the deed. The deed does not indicate how much of the purchase was made with cash or the value of the mortgage that was assumed."

The public faces for Optima in US property records and local media reporting are Chaim Schochet (lead image, 3rd from left), head of Optima Ventures' Cleveland investments; and Mordechai Korf (2nd left), head of Optima Holdings in Miami. Schochet appears in this Cleveland newspaper [8] report by Michelle Jarboe McFee: "in downtown Cleveland, he might be the most important guy you've never heard of."

In fact, a city market source says, "Schochet isn't important. He is someone's family member who was put there to do a job." Kolomoisky's name has not been reported explicitly in the Cleveland media, although McFee's report of 2012 provides a link to him if the reader clicks on "the principals of the Privat Group, one of Ukraine's largest business and banking groups."

Another source claims that District Attorney Steven Dettelbach and FBI field office chief Stephen Anthony have almost certainly investigated property investment deals conducted by foreign-owned groups seeking to qualify for investment visa and naturalization benefits through an entity called Cleveland International Fund (CIF). This is one of many regional investment centres established around the US to attract foreign investors with matching projects to meet the federal government's requirements for the EB-5 immigrant investor scheme [9].

Eddy ZaiCIF was established in 2009 by Cleveland businessman, Eddy Zai (right), a year after Kolomoisky and Korf started buying Cleveland real estate. US court documents and an FBI release indicate that Zai and his companies were investigated for fraud and bribery, and by 2013 Zai had been convicted, sentenced to prison, and ordered to pay $23 million in restitution.

Court documents [10] show that prosecutors believed that CIF was "funded exclusively with funds that Zai improperly received through his bribery scheme". There is no reference to the Cleveland assets which Kolomoisky had acquired during the period of the investigation. Local sources and the Cleveland media report that in 2011 CIF was a participant in the joint venture Optima arranged with Sage Hospitality, a hotel developer in Colorado, to renovate Cleveland's Crowne Plaza Hotel, and reopen it as the Westin Hotel. The outlay for Kolomoisky was reported to have been a part-share of $9 million for the distressed asset. The renovation cost of $64.5 million was funded [11] in part by CIF.

A press release [12] by the FBI and the Cleveland District Attorney identifies Zai's wrongdoing as having taken "place from December 2003 through March 2010."

When Kolomoisky and his men first arrived in Cleveland to buy real estate, one informed source claims "there were rumours flying around". The Zai investigation did not identify any wrongdoing on Optima's part.

The rabbi's organization claims that "under the harsh rulership of Stalin, working long hours at an early age to help his family survive, life for young Abraham Korf in hunger-stricken Communist Russia was fraught with struggle. Throughout the long and cold winter nights, Abraham wished in his heart of hearts to be sent to Yeshiva (Rabbinical Academy or College) to study Torah. When the opportunity arose for Abraham and his brothers to study in a secret underground Yeshiva, their first lesson was to lay low and out of sight in order to avoid detection by the Communist government."

Mordechai (aka Motti) Korf describes [14] himself as "co-founder of Optima International, a private investment firm with holdings in several businesses located throughout the United States and Eastern Europe." Other sources, including a 2013 Optima filing [15] in West Virginia, report that Kolomoisky is Korf's principal and control shareholder. The West Virginia filing provides this chart of Kolomoisky's ferroalloy businesses, their locations, and Korf's role in each:

Korf first appears in the archive of the Kyiv Post in 2001 when he was Kolomoisky's agent in a raid against Daewoo, the South Korean shareholder in a Dniepropetrovsk mobile telephone company, Ukrainian Radio Systems (URS). Here is that report [17]. At the time Daewoo claimed it had invested $70 million in URS and its managers were running the company until their visas were cancelled. Daewoo ended up selling its 49% stake to Kolomoisky companies in Cyprus; no price was published. Korf admitted [18] at the time that "Privatbank is our strategic investor."

In Cleveland at present Kolomoisky controls at least four office buildings; his stake [8] in the Westin Hotel appears to be less than controlling. The first asset to be bought, One Cleveland Center (below, left), was acquired in 2008 for a reported price of $86.3 million. The Penton Media Building (centre) cost a reported $46.5 million. The transaction for 55 Public Square was reported [19] at $34 million, and the Huntingdon Building (right), $18.5 million. Total, $185.3 million.

Schochet manages the assets but has no ownership stake; he reports to Korf. City real estate sources warn that the market value of the assets at acquisition has probably deteriorated while the debt remains the same, or has been growing. A bid by Kolomoisky's group for $25 million in state building preservation credits has failed [20]. An attempt to persuade the Cuyahoga County administration to lease , then buy the Huntingdon Building was rejected [21]. Kolomoisky's men had threatened [22] to demolish the building if they didn't get their way.

"The combined occupancy of Optima's buildings is 74%", reported [23] a local business medium in June 2013. "[The assets] have not been a particularly strong performer," a city real estate specialist said last Friday. "Cleveland hasn't been a successful experiment for them."

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#43
The Vineyard of the Saker
http://thesaker.is
April 12, 2015
Desacrated shrines
By Dagmar Henn

Note: this is the first article sent to my by the Saker Community representative in Novorussia, Dagmar Henn, from the German Saker Blog.  Dagmar has had a tough trip, with very little opportunity to write and only sporadic and slow Internet connections (this is, after all, a war zone).  I hope that this will be a first of a series of eyewitness reports by Dagmar about the reality of life in Novorussia today.

The Saker
---

Desacrated shrines
by Dagmar Henn

We stop in front of a burnt-out church. This is Petrovsky, one of the areas most affected by Ukrainian shelling. The destruction seems completely accidental, a shelling lottery  that left ruins between untouched, immaculate buildings. This is a suburb with small single-floor houses built with red bricks, surrounded by green metal fences, squeezed between mines, factories and railroads. The whole landscape is dominated by the artificial hills, left by a century of mining, that still show their raw stoney faces.

This building was built in the 19th century as an administrative building, tells Alexandr Kolesnik, a member of the Novorosian parliament, later turned into a school and eventually transformed into a church, during perestroika. All the women in our group cover their heads. Stanislawska, one of our guards, rushes to the Turkish photographer to ask for the neckerchief around his neck, when she notices [deleted 'that'] I don't have anything on me that could be used as concealment, so I end up entering the place with his grey, cotton scarf over my hair. What once was the central room, is now an open ruin. Black marks slide down from the gawping holes that used to be windows, and the smell of burnt wood lingers in the air, even though the fire died down weeks ago. The roof of the entrance still exists, only now as a ceiling of charcoal. This is Donetsk's tiny version, of Coventry cathedral.

A small room, behind the former sanctuary, still remains somewhat intact, and a tightly packed community is attending a service there. The area was shelled, without interruption, for a whole day, I am told, and when the church got hit, there were people inside, but luckily they managed to escape and nobody got killed.

There's a yard behind the church, guarded by two chained dogs that loudly bark their protest against our intrusion; there's a well in the yard and a few beds for vegetables too. In between a table, with a collection of metal tubes, the leftover of the shells that destroyed the church; is this Grad? No, this is not Grad, this is Uragan. Uragan shells are larger than Grad ones...

We continue our trip.

Between shrubs, small houses and a hill of mine spoils, a tiny hut reveals itself as the entrance to an old Soviet bomb shelter. I have never before entered one. As we walk down the concrete stairs, I think of my mother. When I was small, she tried to make me fold my clothes orderly after undressing, by telling me how useful it is, if you need to dress fast in the darkness of night, in case of a bomb alarm. I never wanted to fold my clothes, because I didn't want to cause a war...

Behind two heavy white steel doors, starts a subterranean world full of beds, blankets, heaps of personal belongings and - people. Two girls with blond curls show up; the elder sister carries the younger in her arms; the little girl wears a pink dress and a silver crown and is presented as princess...

People cook there on tiny electrical cookers on the concrete floor, just a few meters from the next bed, directly below a picture depicting the structure of long gone Soviet defence. The top of the walls in the first hall are decorated with a fading frieze of the glorious Soviet army, which gives the whole place the atmosphere of a desecrated shrine of the past, invaded by inhabitants of the present. It's a special form of cynicism that one of these once proudly coloured images shows a Grad rocket launcher, exactly the type of armoury they had to seek shelter from.

In the next room, the frieze is dedicated to the enemy forces, black-and-white sketches of Pershing rockets and Tornado jets; in the corner below, a small baldachin forms a tiny personal space filled with teddy bears and relics of humanitarian Christmas presents.

Some of those people have lived there since last year summer. Some of them don't dare to leave the shelter; they smuggle other life in there, in the form of a parrot, a pigeon and a dog, that share their hidden habitation. It's too far off from the town center for them, to reach the spots where humanitarian assistance is delivered, so their whole existence depends on volunteer deliveries, some of which are transformed into freshly made dumplings on a wooden table, with a direct view upon the sleeping man and the organigram of Soviet defences.

This was constructed as a nuclear shelter, so there is water, electricity and fresh air, though it smells moldy; a relative luxury compared to other shelters, which are actually just ordinary cellars, lacking all infrastructure for a longer inhabitation.

When she heard last summer that the Donetsk People's Republic was preparing bomb shelters, Olga, my interpreter, thought it was ridiculous. Most of the shelters proved unusable; they had been connected with factories and mines, so the new owners stuffed them with something else or neglected maintenance, and some of them became the victims of shut-downs and bankruptcies. Still, who could seriously expect a fratricidal war turning the Soviet armoury against the people it was once built to protect?

Here nobody wants to talk to us. The member of the Novorussian parliament who accompanies us, gets targeted by the rant of an old miner, fragmentally translated by Olga, who probably censored out the curses. They just tell lies anyway. We don't want to speak with them. While he delivers his anger, a middle-aged woman with a beautiful hairdo and make-up, pets the pigeon bound to one of the tubes, running through the second hall. It's the skin of his hands, which betrays his former profession.

When we walk out of the shelter, the two girls sit silently beside each other, on one of the wooden benches.

It's late afternoon when we arrive at the stadium of Donetsk. The recently landed UFO, with its glass facade, got scratched, but not heavily damaged through the hostilities. The sports heroes shown on the enormous banners decorating it, are long gone; the club moved to Western Ukraine, probably because it's owner didn't want to lose the chance to participate in the Champions league, even though it means that the fans from its home town, have to cross into now enemy territory to assist. The shiny stadium remains an empty shell, surrounded by the elaborate system of cages and fences the UEFA nobles use to control a wild proletarian mob.

It's illuminated at night, says Olga, it's beautiful, it looks like a diamond. I can't confirm that; there's still a curfew at night in Donetsk, so the only strangers able to see that, are the ones residing in the flashy new hotel towers, nearby.

Besides the stadium, is a monument for the Great Patriotic War, a late version from the 1980s, a black triangular construction with two big statues of a soldier and a miner; on the platform in front of it, tanks, anti-aircraft-guns and other WWII armoury. Stanislawka, the former florist, climbs an ancient APC and asks for a photo. The space next to it is empty; nobody knows whether the missing object was removed for a repaint in preparation for the approaching anniversary of Victory day or whether it was put back into service, as it happened to others of these monuments. Couples come here after their wedding, tells Olga, it's tradition, to honour their ancestors, who fought to defeat fascism; how could we ever accept our history to be rewritten? How could we ever accept a Bandera rule?

 [return to Contents] 

 #44
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
March 24, 2015
Senior Russian judge claims legal justification for Crimea annexation
Russian Constitution Court Chairman Valeriy Zorkin, The law and only the law; on the flagrant violations which they persistently fail to notice

Novaya Gazeta has published an article by Yelena Lukyanova designed to prove that Russia did not have the right to annex Crimea. The article is full of obeisances to Mr Obama, who has been declared to be "a shrewd constitutionalist lawyer" of the present day, and of invective against the Russian Constitutional Court. I would never have responded to an article from any journalist, even a more professional one more deeply immersed in the specifics of constitutional law. But in this case we are not talking about an article by Ms Lukyanova, who is constantly striving to sit on two stools at the same time - the pseudo-Communist and the pseudo-liberal - and is constantly changing her position in accordance with the situation.

It is literally a question of the fate of Russia and its ability to hold out in the present situation and not to fall into the very large-scale civil excess towards which it is literally being pushed by certain strata of our own society laying claim to an elite and enlightened position and by the legal double-dealers servicing these strata. Who are prepared endlessly to discuss procedural subtleties allegedly infringed by Russia but not prepared to discuss the monstrously brutal violations perpetrated by other players close to their hearts, including "shrewd constitutionalist lawyers."

It is as a citizen of Russia that I am writing now about Russia's fate and that fate's dependence on everything connected to the law. This is not a political but, if you like, a philosophical or even existentialist article devoted to one of the most tragic topics of Russian history.

Society's bonds, the legitimacy of power, and the law

For hundreds and even thousands of years Russia was secured by supreme spiritual bonds, called various things at various times. Secured by these bonds, it could treat legal bonds with a greater or lesser degree of scorn. I shall not discuss whether that was good or bad. Nor shall I discuss the difference between the Roman approach, within whose framework the intricacies of legal formulas are a system-forming factor, and other approaches, which deny these intricacies such significance.

I am not an unconditional supporter of the tradition embodied by Ancient Rome, with its legal punctiliousness. Although that tradition must of course be called a great one. And it must be admitted that this tradition built the entire medieval and present-day West. After all, to give the Roman legal tradition its due, we cannot fail to acknowledge that both Ancient Rome and its successors managed to combine beautifully legal punctiliousness, coming close to casuistry, and incredible brutality. And brutality of a kind that dumbfounded other worlds, in which legal punctiliousness was not ingrained but which by some means had confined this brutality within certain limits.

And if Russia had continued to remain a country for which spiritual values are central, that is a country counting on the ideological and not the legal consensus, as was the case in the Orthodox and Communist period, then legal problems would not have had such a fateful nature for it.

For me, having devoted myself to precisely these problems and attaching decisive significance to them, the law would still be of supreme value. But I would understand that this supremacy of the law is not the same thing as the question of whether Russia should be or not be in general.

But Russia, having rejected the ideological system-forming principle which is a new redaction of the Orthodox-autocratic principle, ceased to be a country even "relatively independent of the law." In the absence of ideological bonds, it is legal bonds that are the only possible ones. If they do not exist, the country plunges into the abyss. And in some sense the supremacy of legal problems is in fact linked to the impossibility of binding that commonality by anything other than the law.

This issue became particularly acute for the West in the period of the religious wars and the ensuing period of Western civilization's transition from religiosity to secularism. We can all understand this is a question of legitimacy.

The French monarch might be legitimate for the Catholics because the Roman pope had blessed him and he was anointed in Reims. And under the conditions of this legitimacy, legal legitimacy was not of decisive significance But for a Huguenot, the blessing of the Roman pope and anointment in Reims was a sign of anti-legitimacy. And to preserve its unity, French society had to rely on something other than society's spiritual unity.

That something was initially the absolute and increasingly problematic authority of the monarch as supreme sovereign. What that means is something understood by everyone who has made a study of French and general European absolutism, whose supreme expression is the phrase of the Sun King, Louis XIV, "l'etat c'est moi." Everyone who has studied this has understood that the French kings of the era of the monarchy's decline did not rely on absolutism for the fun of it., But because religious legitimacy had collapsed and it was personal, charismatic legitimacy which had become the bond.

But that legitimacy could bind something only if the monarch was a truly strong individual like Louis XIV. As soon as a weak individual becomes absolute leader, absolutism collapses.

However, the catastrophe of this collapse (and as we know from the history of the French revolution, it was a terrible catastrophe) is only half the problem. The question arises, how and with what to bind everything "on the other side of the catastrophe." And, moreover, in the absence of the social stratification offered by feudalism, in the absence of the traditionalist brakes which existed within the framework of the previous type of living, whatever you call it - formation, pattern of life, or way of life. The victorious bourgeois class destroys the traditional bastions, takes off the brakes, farms out society, and creates the notorious spirit of "the war of all against all" (also known as market competition), destroying the collectivist bonds that had existed.

And then the question of the law becomes completely different from what it was in the previous society. Then society understands once and for all that either it will descend into boundless chaos, into the abyss of asociality, or it will be able to bind itself with legal bonds. Because in this new post-ideological situation it simply has no other kind of bonds.

Having forfeited ideological bonds during perestroika and definitively lost them in the post-Soviet period, the Russian Federation had to bind itself with something. With what? There was only the law. Alas, the understanding of the fatefulness of the post-Soviet challenge, the understanding that now it was either the law or nothing, was lacking in our so-called "enlightened stratum" which had been able to win authority in society by the start of so-called perestroika and which remained authoritative for society in the initial post-Soviet period.

That stratum later lost its authority - largely because it was not aware of the challenge and did not respond to it. But it continues to occupy very substantial positions in our society. And the substantial nature of those positions is in no way proportionate to its new, far slighter, degree of authority. But it does have a place. And it must be taken into account.

So I see it as my duty to respond to some allegedly enlightened and moral but in fact flagrantly cynical memorandums signed by the wise and noble lawyers or philosophers in the service of international criminals like [names US-born investment fund manager who is wanted in Russia on charges of tax evasion and fraud].

It is not about these people or their mouthpieces or their international support. It is about the normative, moral, and even existential premises of an entire stratum whose positions are still sufficiently substantial for Russia to be sharply destabilized unless this "enlightened stratum" is brought to its senses.

And that means this stratum must be brought to its sense. And I am talking now with the stratum and not with its individual representatives and transmitters of specific positions.

The "enlightened stratum" and its mea culpa

Do you remember 1993 when, according to your bloodthirsty and cynical assessment, the Constitutional Court failed to perform its function. Which was allegedly to support the charismatic president you loved?

Do you remember the screams to "crush the vermin," the ferocious shooting and the illegal persecutions, the various repressions to which people and institutions that did not heed your calls were subjected?

And are you really incapable of connecting your behaviour at the time to everything that followed? You behaved in a certain way in the fall of 1993. The payment for your behaviour was the triumph of Zhirinovskiy and the crushing failure of your representatives at the elections, despite the in fact dictatorial position you had seized in Russian society.

At that moment you were engaging in what in psychoanalysis is called transference. And you blamed your failure on Russia, saying it had "taken leave of its senses." But in actual fact it was you who had taken leaves of your senses. And it is clear why. Because you had trampled on the law. And you called those who defended it, that is those who saved everything - Russia and your authority and enlightenment and much else - the accomplices of forces pushing the country towards catastrophe.

But at the time you were the ones pushing the country into the quiet catastrophe of predatory and dishonest privatizations, social excesses, and degradation and bloody conflicts. And you did this in one single step without noticing the flagrant law violations perpetrated by Yeltsin when he issued edict number 1400. Yeltsin trampled on the law, and you supported him.

The constitutional duty of the Constitutional Court at the time consisted in one thing - immediately recording the flagrant violation of the law.

Edict number 1400 violated the law so grossly, so crudely and openly, that to record it you did not have to be a highly qualified legal professional. You simply had to be aware of the new supremacy of the law and its nature as a unique bond. You had to be aware of your duty to Russia and support that supremacy. That's all.

Some did it, others did not. And we all tasted the bitter fruit which grew as a result of the illegal seeds you had blessed. And are any of you really cynical or crazy enough today to fail to realize at least post factum that what you did comes under the category of mea culpa, which translated means "my fault"?

At least now stop stupidly and crudely shifting the blame. Because by continuing to engage in this wretched business you are the ones who are pushing the country towards very grave civil upheavals.

But even that is not all. In the end you will have to realize that it was you who in 1993 to a very great degree helped to ensure that not only in Russia but throughout the world a legal "Pandora's box" was opened, out of which there then crept all the demons of global political destabilization.

You don't understand? I shall have to explain.

The point is that Yeltsin's edict number 1400, which you ardently supported, was the first precedent in recent history for the most flagrant interpretation of constitutional law (that is, its de facto repeal) in one of the world's key countries. And it is no accident that this precedent was welcomed with delight and deemed to be a good and fair solution to a political problem almost everywhere in the West. After all, it was that precedent which was adopted and appropriated by your Western fellow-thinkers as a new and permissible norm. Which, depending on the requirements for its use, is called either "democracy is more important than the law" or "justice is more important than the law." In any event the law had already been discarded from the list of priorities.

Later this norm was provided with various kinds of "soft power" technologies. Including total control over key media (primarily all-pervasive television) making it possible to bring to the mass citizen and voter a distorted "picture of reality" by any means. That is to impose their own falsified series of events on society, their own interpretation of these vents, and their own (albeit flagrantly incorrect) verdict regarding what is fair and good in these events.

You must realize that it was out of the precedent of edict number 1400 and your justification of its benign nature, despite the fact that it contradicted the Constitution, that there later grew the methodology and technologies of the numerous "colour revolutions." Those same revolutions in which the collapse of constitutional norms and the unlawful forcible overthrow of legitimate power were declared, following the precedent you had created, to be "the people's masses' just struggle for democratic transformations." The selfsame transformations because of which the world of the second decade of the 21st century is called "the descent into global chaos."

After all, the point is also that the Russian precedent of 1993 drastically expanded the already quite broad expanse of interpretations of international law in which key opportunities for the international introduction of chaos lie hidden.

All lawyers know that the legislative norms of any conceivable legal system cannot be full and perfect enough to exhaust the infinite diversity of situations thrown up by life. And so in any national legal system and in the system of international law (as indeed in traditional systems of conventional law) the law enforcer is obliged to give a correct explanation, that is interpretation, of the legal norm in accordance with its letter and spirit. And this correct interpretation presupposes - and this is also the law enforcer's obligation - the examination of external circumstances, that is of the context of the legal problem under examination.

In the system of national law, including constitutional law, any mismatch between legal norms and principles (and accordingly broad scope for interpretation) is seldom encountered.  It is for that reason that the precedent of edict number 1400 was so obvious in its flagrant lack of constitutionality. And in the system of international law, alas, we can see the existence of principles between which clashes are possible.

For instance, in the Basic Principles in the UN Declaration [on Principles of International Law], clashes are possible between the principle of the non-use of force and the threat of force and the principle of non-interference in affairs within states' internal competence, between the principle of states' territorial integrity and the principle of the peoples' equal rights and self-determination, between the principle of settling international disputes by peaceful means and the principle of respect for human rights and basic liberties. These principles are formally of equal importance, nothing in them is "more important." And it is here that scope for mutually exclusive interpretations arises.

And since it is impossible to lend legal unconditionality to these interpretations, they are wrapped around with a whole package of information falsifications and "engineered" contexts created as necessary by the media, and also by further interpretations of this "falsified reality." And once again these interpretations are not legal ,but political and emotional: "democracy and the will of the people," "fairness," "the suffering of the victims," and so forth.

Once again this also applies to your community and to the Russian of 1993. Your statements that it was fascists who had gone out onto the streets of Moscow against the eminent Yeltsin and your demands to "crush the vermin" - don't you remember them?

Why am I writing all this? Because it was the catastrophic precedent of the Russia of 1993 which you created which to a very great degree became the basis for the further "creative development" of international law. As regards falsified reality and as regard the interpretations of that reality.

That was the case, for instance, at the start of the war in Iraq without a UN mandate, when eminent US and British representatives presented falsified (as was later proven and admitted) evidence that Saddam Husayn had weapons of mass destruction.

That was the case during Georgia's attack in South Ossetia when the world's leading TV channels presented viewers with pictures of the advance of Georgian troops claiming they were "Russian armoured convoys invading Georgia."

That was the case during all the "revolutions of the Arab spring." That was the case during the NATO operation in Libya when the global media presented the world with falsified photographs and video footage of "the atrocities of Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi against his own people." But this was the same in Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria.

And this was also the case when it came to Ukraine in 2014. And when it came to the flagrant violations of law during the emergence and establishment of Kiev's "post-Maydan" regime to which once again you refuse to give the proper assessment, donning a pseudo-legalistic mask and replacing legal analysis with the most stupid and vile legal chicanery.

"Maydan" Ukraine and the law

By the time the "Maydan resistance" started in November 2013, a system of power had been fully formed in Ukraine in accordance with the 2010 constitution (as a presidential-parliamentary republic). President V. Yanukovych and the parliament (the Supreme Rada) had been elected and had been recognized by the international community, and a government had been lawfully formed by the president and the Rada.

In November 2013 President Yanukovych refused to immediately sign the Agreement on Ukraine's association with the EU. Even then the parliamentary opposition of the Fatherland (Arseniy Yatsenyuk), UDAR (Vitaliy Klychko), and Svoboda (Oleh Tyahnybok) factions declared that Yanukovych had betrayed the "European choice" that Ukraine had already made (although there had been no referendums in Ukraine on this choice) and urged citizens to go to Kiev's Independence Square (Maydan) to protest, and headed that protest. All the Western media and many politicians immediately started to repeat the opposition's thesis of "Yanukovych's betrayal of the European choice."

By early December 2013 the Maydan's actions had already gone beyond the framework of legality. Direct calls to overthrow the regime were being heard on the Maydan. Violent excesses began against law enforcement officers on the streets of Kiev, carried out by detachments of the illegal "Maydan Self-Defence." At that moment the Ukrainian authorities, in accordance with the country's Constitution and legislation, should have halted the actions of the "Maydan opposition." Just as the authorities of any country in the West (including the administration of "shrewd lawyer" Barack Obama in the United States) do harshly in the event of protesters' attacks on the police.

All the more did the "Maydan opposition's" actions in January and February 2014 demand to be severely halted. When the " Maydan self-defence hundreds" started to employ bottles containing an incendiary mixture ("Molotov cocktails"), night sticks, iron bars and even firearms (including combat firearms) against the law enforcement officers on an increasingly massive scale.

All this was recorded in photographs and on video. Which are well known in both Ukraine and Russia. But which scarcely featured in the items on Western news channels. Nor did those items include the seizure of administrative buildings in central Kiev by the "self defence hundreds." Nor did these items feature the torchlight processions through the streets of Kiev by armed Ukrainian Maydan neo-Nazis wearing balaclavas, with fascist emblems and war cries of "stick the knife in the bastard Russians."

Did the Russian "educated stratum" I am talking about here know this? Of course they did. Some of its representatives recoiled in horror and denounced it or simply turned away. But some ardently and loudly supported this "nationwide desire of the Ukrainians to join civilized Europe."

Did the leading Western politicians know this? Of course they did. And they actively supported it. Including US Assistant Secretary of State Ms Victoria Nuland, who personally handed out "cookies" to the oppositionists on the Maydan, and Senator John McCain, who on the Maydan platform personally embraced Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the extreme right-wing-radical Svoboda party. And these politicians, including US President Barack Obama, publicly and harshly demanded that Yanukovych "respect the Ukrainian people's choice" (a choice which, I stress again, had not been declared by any legal constitutional means) and also (contrary to the law) that he rule out any strong-arm actions by the law enforcement officers against the opposition.

That is the "law-abiding West" persistently and consistently supported the advance of the political resistance in Ukraine towards the seizure of power by force.

On 18 February the Maydan opposition leaders headed by Yatsenyuk and Tyahnybok in fact led a column of militants to storm the Supreme Rada, demanding that the question of bringing back the 2004 Constitution be immediately put forward for examination. The column broke through the encirclement of the Rada building, throwing "Molotov cocktails" at the police, and later used firearms. The police responded with teargas, flashbang grenades, and rubber bullets - firearms were not issued to "Berkut." According to the Internal Affairs Ministry report, on that day the police toll was "seven dead with 39 receiving gunshot wounds and 35 in a serious condition. There were 184 officers seeking medical aid and 159 were hospitalized." On the same day there were numerous seizures of power in the regions (regional administration, police, and Ukrainian Security Service buildings) by "self-defence detachments," as a result of which a large number of firearms were delivered to the Kiev Maydan by nightfall.

On 19 February Yatsenyuk, Klychko and Tyahnybok demanded that Yanukovych "recognize the will of the people gathered on the Maydan" and surrender power. The following day, 20 February, the US President, "shrewd lawyer" Barack Obama, delivered an ultimatum to the Ukrainian president to "recognize the will of the Ukrainian people". Although Obama could not fail to know that even at its peak moments the numerical strength of those protesting in Kiev and other regions was not in excess of 1.5 million people and that they certainly could not represent the will of the 45 million-strong Ukrainian people who, in addition, had not been asked by constitutional means about their "will."

And on 20 February, when the Ukrainian president announced the "antiterrorist operation" and allowed the issue of combat weapons to Berkut, "unidentified snipers" joined the "Maydan resistance" in the buildings around the Maydan. As a result on that day about 60 law enforcement officers and protesters were killed and several hundred were wounded.

Russia immediately demanded an international investigation of these events. But the United States and Europe did not support that demand and blamed Yanukovych and Berkut for the tragedy. Nor did they demand an investigation even later, when the Kiev authorities cut down trees which had had bullets embedded in them, making it impossible to tell where the shooting had come from, and [identified] other tricks. Nor did they demand an investigation when Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet announced that according to all the information, the "unidentified snipers" had been hired by the Maydan opposition.

Instead of investigating the 20 February carnage, the Foreign Ministries of Poland, Germany, and France demanded that Yanukovych conclude a "peace agreement" with the opposition on terms including the repeal of the "antiterrorist operation," the withdrawal of Berkut and the internal troops from Kiev, and also the launch of the process of the formation of a "transitional government" and a return to the 2004 Constitution together with early presidential and Rada elections.

During the night a "peace agreement" was signed which affirmed the German, French, and Polish foreign ministers as guarantors. V. Lukin, present as Putin's special representative, did not sign, and said he had doubts about the guarantees.

Immediately after this, the Berkut and internal troops subunits, realizing that Yanukovych, the opposition, and the European ministers were guaranteeing nothing and that there were already hundreds of combat rifles at the Maydan, began hurriedly to leave Kiev. Yanukovych, it later emerged, fled Kiev under gunfire. A considerable proportion of the ruling Party of Regions deputies and the Communists also fled.

By the morning the Maydan "hundreds" had already occupied the unguarded government quarter. And the Supreme Rada adopted the following resolution: "In connection with the fact that President Yanukovych has resigned of his own accord and left the capital, the Rada is compelled to announce early elections of the head of state."

Here the Rada adopted in accordance with a simplified procedure and with rigged voting using deputies' cards confiscated from dissenting deputies (for which there is documentary evidence) a law on the return to the 2004 constitution. And also resolutions on a ceasefire, on the withdrawal of the special troops from the centre of Kiev, and a ban on the use of firearms by the security forces.

That is the Supreme Rada which, after Yanukovych's expulsion, was the only elected organ of power (that is legal and at least in some way legitimate organ of power), began its "post-Maydan" work with the most flagrant violations of the Constitution. Because in it the opposition that had come to power had in all about 150 votes. That is, not only did it not have a constitutional majority (300 votes), it did not even have a simple majority (226 votes).

And then - and there is also documentary confirmation of this - "methods of persuasion" were brought into play using the Maydan militants. Intransigent deputies were "persuaded" with the appearance of an armed "guard" of militants in their apartments. Other militants set up sentry details at the exits from the Rada. And they explained directly to the journalists who had gathered there that they were not letting the deputies out so that they would not run away and so that there would be enough votes to adopt decisions. And sometimes these same journalists saw these "sentries" directly on the threshold of the Rada beating up deputies who had voted "the wrong way."

Inside the Rada auditorium dissenting deputies were also beaten up - by their colleagues and by the Rada's new "guards." And their cards were also taken from them, and voting was done for them. There are documented instances of just 7-8 people sitting in the Communist deputies' seats and yet the minutes state that over 30 members of the Ukrainian Communist Party voted. The procedure for President Yanukovych's "impeachment" was particularly indicative from the viewpoint of the "new post-Maydan legality."

Under the Ukrainian Constitution the following requirements are obligatory for impeaching the president:

- the suspicion that the president has committed a crime as stated in an appeal by a deputies' majority of 226 votes;

- the creation of a parliamentary commission for the preliminary investigation of the suspicion;

- the appointment of a special prosecutor to take part in the investigation;

- the examination of the parliamentary commission's conclusions at a Rada session;

- the hearing of the suspected president's explanation;

- an appeal to the Supreme Court demanding a preliminary ruling on the president's indictment;

- the submission of this Supreme Court ruling to the Rada;

- the adoption by at least two thirds of the deputies (at least 301 votes) of a Rada resolution on charging the president with the crime;

- an appeal to the Constitutional Court requesting its ruling "... with respect to the observance of constitutional procedure for investigating and examining the impeachment case";

- the receipt and examination of the Constitutional Court ruling;

- the inclusion on the Supreme Rada agenda of the question of the president's impeachment on the basis of a decision by at least three quarters of the Rada's constitutional composition (at least 338 votes).

Not one of these compulsory requirements of the Ukrainian Constitution was enacted in removing V. Yanukovych from power.

Moreover, during the subsequent vote for impeachment there was not the necessary number of deputies in the Rada auditorium. At the moment the decision was made to impeach the president, there were just 313 deputies in the auditorium and of these 283 voted for Yanukovych's dismissal (55 fewer deputies than the Constitution demands).

That is, just in deciding on President V. Yanukovych's dismissal, the Ukrainian Supreme Rada committed 12 gross violations of the Constitution. That decision, whatever anyone's attitude towards Yanukovych, was unconstitutional and unlawful. The Rada's subsequent decisions, stemming from this, on the appointment of O. Turchynov as acting president, on the scheduling of early presidential elections, on the appointment of new ministers, and so forth, were accordingly also unconstitutional and unlawful.

But then on 23 February the Rada revoked the 2010 law on regional languages. Under that law a language which over 10 per cent of the population sees as its native language is declared an official language on a par with Ukrainian in the relevant region. Although this Rada decision was later not confirmed by Acting President O. Turchynov, at that moment all ethnic minorities in Ukraine understood what fate awaited them.

On 24 February the Supreme Rada passed a resolution dismissing five members of the Ukrainian Supreme Court appointed under the Rada quota for "breaking their oath," once again without any kind of observance of the parliamentary procedure established by law. And at the same time the Rada demanded the dismissal of constitutional judges appointed under the presidential quota.

The Rada thus deprived all new Ukrainian organs of power which had started to manage the country following the armed coup d'etat of one further very important basis of legitimacy - the constitutional and legal basis.

Did the Western politicians and representatives of the Russian "educated stratum" eagerly supporting this path for Ukraine "to a civilized community of peoples" know of the rigged procedure for removing Yanukovych, of the "strong-arm" rigged votes and machinations involving deputies' cards inside the Rada, or of other violations of the Constitution and legality by "post-Maydan" Ukraine?

I am sure they could not have failed to know. Numerous Ukrainian and Western journalists witnessed these events. However - I draw your attention to this yet again - the Western media did not report this legal underside of the "new Ukrainian democracy." And the day following the unlawful impeachment, the European Commission's official representative, O. Bailly, stated that the European Commission "insists on the legitimacy of the Supreme Rada and calls for the observance of Ukraine's territory integrity." And that the Rada-appointed "President Turchynov is for us the president of Ukraine." Later statements about the undoubted legitimacy of the new Ukrainian authorities came tumbling from the lips of the top politicians of the Western countries, including the United States.

Russia understood that an anticonstitutional military putsch had taken place in Ukraine with the solidary support of the leading Western countries. But at the same time Russia understood that as a partner of at least some kind in the extremely necessary dialogue with Kiev, this regime was better than the unconfined street-based regime of armed Nazis with their balaclavas, torches, and cries of "stick the knife in the bastard Russians."

And so following the elections in Ukraine, Russia formally recognized the organs of power elected as a result of these elections.

But I stress that the West - both the United States and Europe -  contrived "to pretend not to notice" all the new Ukrainian regime's most flagrant violations of the law enumerated above, and they gave a falsified account of them and then "interpreted" them as legally lawful.

But Ms Lukyanova, who in her article "On unlawful law" represented the opinion of the Russian "educated stratum" on Crimea's unification with Russia, could not have failed to notice these violations of the law in Ukraine. Of course, she is not a practising professional constitutionalist. But nor is she a wild creature from the jungle. And she understands that during the "Maydan-2014" coup all norms of law in general and of constitutional law in particular were violated. And she understands the need to include these violations in the context of the legal discussion of the "Crimean problem." But she dons another pseudo-legal mask...

Yet there is also the Crimean context proper.

When the Supreme Rada revoked the law on regional languages, that is, when it deprived nearly 2 million Crimean inhabitants of their right to make official use of their native language, the Russian-speaking majority of the peninsula's inhabitants were deeply offended and angry. But that majority was even angrier and more perturbed when representatives of the new regime announced the assembly and dispatch of echelons of Maydan "volunteers" to "introduce Ukrainian order n Crimea."

Russia was also very concerned. Both for the overwhelming Russian-speaking majority of Crimeans who had long-standing and extensive family ties and friendship ties with Russia. And - probably - for the fate of the Black Sea Fleet, which the representatives of the new Ukrainian regime were all eager to promise would be rapidly expelled from Sevastopol, offering this very important naval base to their new partners from the NATO countries who had so actively supported the "Ukrainian revolution."

In this connection Russia could not fail to recall a provision of the 1970 UN General Assembly Declaration "On the Principles of International Law." the same provision which Ms Lukyanova quotes in her article. And which reads: " Nothing shall be construed as authorizing or encouraging any action which would dismember or impair, totally or in part, the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent States conducting themselves in compliance with the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples."

In this connection Russia could not fail also to recall another relatively new Basic Principle of international law which has not yet been officially included in the UN Charter but which is universally recognized and already broadly applied. To wit, the principle of the "obligation to defend," which demands that the international community directly defend the citizens of a country which grossly violates the fundamental rights of its own citizens, including the right to life and to security, and does not want or is unable to halt these violations of rights.

It was precisely because, after the adoption of the new law on language, the "armed Maydan assault force" prepared for dispatch to Crimea intended to present the citizens living in Crimea with its own ideas about citizenship and equal rights through "anyone who doesn't jump is a bastard Russian" actions and cries of "string up the bastard Russians" and also strong-arm operations, that Russia prevented this flagrant violations of Crimeans' rights. And then supported the Crimean citizens' implementation of their right to self-determination by holding a referendum on the status of the peninsula and Sevastopol.

That is? That is Russia with regard to Crimea merely hurriedly rectified the new Kiev regime's very gross violations of the key rights and freedoms of its own citizens which you - donning the latest mask of "champions of legality" and in full agreement with the interested section of the world community - prefer not to notice.

Here Russia, in introducing an additional military contingent to Crimea to prevent the appearance of "Maydan assault forces" on the peninsula, was not violating the treaty with Ukraine on the basing of the Black Sea Fleet.

Under that treaty the maximum numerical strength of the Russian contingent could not exceed 25,000. And that restriction was observed. Under this treaty Russian servicemen had the right to go outside the base facilities when necessary to defend members of their families. Which is what they did.

And later, after the Crimean referendum, it emerged that Kiev intended to introduce "Ukrainian order" in Crimea by bringing in not just echelons of "Maydan volunteers" but also large-scale military forces.

Russia had to respond - and once again to respond rapidly (including through the Constitutional Court) - to the new threat to the citizens living in Crimea. This time by examining and adopting legal decisions following from these citizens' lawful and democratic expression of their will.

In assessing these legal decisions you again assume - in contrast to your assessment of Yeltsin's edict number 1400 - positions of strict legal chicanery. And you deny the Russian Constitutional Court the right to interpret the Constitution and international norms in accordance with their spirit. And you try to accuse the Constitutional Court of violating the constitutional "letter." And at the same time you categorically "exclude" the very important context of events, as cited above, which any honest lawyer and law enforcer is simply obliged to take into account.

One forms the impression that this is not simply inconsistency and is not legal naivety. One forms the impression that, with your extremely negative attitude towards the present authorities and with your lack of faith in your own ability to generate this same attitude in society, you are swearing allegiance to a force that is not your own, but a foreign force. And you are acting as accomplices of that force, donning various hypocritical masks, including a legal mask.

One forms the impression that it is for this reason that you are inviting Russia to play a game of geopolitical chess on the world chessboard according to strict rules - with conmen who do not scruple to steal two or three pieces from the board. And to play in this way in a situation where what is at stake is the existence of Russian statehood. And that it is for precisely this reason that you deny the Russian Constitutional Court the right to interpret legal norms in the unity of their letter and spirit At a time when an utterly shameless and "X-rated" interpretation of these norms is being employed by the people in the West who think the same way as you. According to your opinion, which Ms Lukyanova cites in her article, in the matter of Crimea, the Russian Federation Constitutional Court interpreted the norms of international law and of our Constitution in an unacceptable manner and so "Crimea is certainly not ours." According to the verdict of the Constitutional Court, our interpretation was justified and permissible. And for that reason among others "Crimea is certainly ours."

And one last thing about yet another opinion of your community published by Ms Lukyanova: You say it was the Constitutional Court which under its chairman's leadership drove Russia to "an inability to give an assessment based on loyalty to the spirit of the law and the spirit of civilization built on this law." That is, into "barbarity."

We can now see on the part of the West and its Russian admirers information falsifications of the events in Ukraine and their context on an unprecedented scale. We can see that all the official Western legal interpretations of these events persistently and unequivocally declare Russia to be "wholly to blame." We can hear major Western politicians openly stating that a new "Cold War" has been declared against Russia and its aim is a "Maydan" in Moscow and the removal of the Russian authorities. And we see and read about how you - some of you cautiously and "a little bit at a time," others openly and extensively - are in solidarity with all of this.

For me that means that our Russia is now experiencing another onslaught by the Western (and domestic pro-Western) "civilized barbarians." An onslaught which - for the time being - is taking place in the forms and mechanisms of post-modern information falsifications, openly flagrant interpretations of the law, and economic sanctions. However, in terms of its scale and aims, this onslaught is entirely comparable to the barbaric onslaught of the Teutonic knights or Napoleon's armies.

The "new barbarians'" onslaught has been declared. Our task, even under these conditions, is to defend THE LAW with all our might.

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