#2
Nuland to discuss implementation of Minsk accords in Moscow

WASHINGTON, May 17. /TASS/. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland will visit Moscow on May 17-18 to discuss with Russia's representatives the implementation of the Minsk agreements, says a statement released by the U.S. Department of State on Saturday.

Nuland is expected to meet with senior Russian government officials to discuss the next steps aimed at implementing the Minsk agreements following her visit to Kiev on May 14-16 and also the meetings held by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Sochi.

She will also discuss bilateral issues with Russian officials and meet with civil society representatives, the U.S. Department of State says.

Earlier this week, Nuland traveled to Kiev, where she held meetings with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and President Pyotr Poroshenko.

"Coordinating our actions with the United States is vitally important," Poroshenko said following talks.

After a visit to Kiev, Nuland said Washington was willing to expand its participation in ensuring the implementation of the Minsk agreements, together with the EU and the "Normandy Four" countries. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has told TASS that the United States is showing interest not only in the "Normandy Four" format, but also in the Contact Group on Ukraine. However, the Russian Foreign Ministry sees no point in that.

The forthcoming visit will be the second trip of a senior U.S. diplomat to Russia in a week. On May 12, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held talks with Russia's top diplomat Sergey Lavrov in Sochi and was later received by Russian President Vladimir Putin. "The two sides exchanged views on virtually all key issues of present-day international agenda," Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov said following talks. "Of course, the Ukrainian issue was high on the agenda," he noted.

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#3
Interfax-Ukraine
May 16, 2015
Nuland's ongoing visit to Kyiv reaffirms U.S. full and unbreakable support for Ukraine

The main message of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland's trip to Ukraine is to reaffirm the U.S. support to Ukrainian partners and country's sovereignty.

This follows from a daily briefing of Director of the U.S. Department of State's Press Office Jeff Rathke on May 15.

"Assistant Secretary Nuland's ongoing visit to Kyiv and her discussions with Prime Minister [Arseniy] Yatseniuk and President [Petro] Poroshenko reaffirm the United States' full and unbreakable support for Ukraine's government, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. We continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine and reiterate our deep commitment to a single Ukrainian nation, including Crimea, and all the other regions of Ukraine," he said at a briefing.

According to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, this is a critical moment for action by Russia and the separatists to live up to the Minsk agreements, the spokesperson said.

He has stressed that Ukraine's leaders continue to implement their Minsk commitments.

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 #4
www.rt.com
May 17, 2015
'Bigger role' for US in Minsk II accords: Are you sure, Ms. Nuland?
By Phil Butler

One year into the Ukrainian crisis, Washington reveals a desire to jump on the bandwagon of the Minsk peace accords - brokered by France and Germany. Not bad news, after all, but when it comes from Victoria Nuland...

News that US Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Sochi to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and President Putin came as only a small surprise this week. In the wake of the most impressive Victory Day celebration ever across Russia, most experts agreed that the Russia people's vigilance held a fairly massive sway over world public opinion afterwards. Western media was not oblivious to this either.

However much of a positive this trend may be, news that the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland and sidekick Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt are on the loose again tends to quell hopes of peace.

On Saturday Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland told reporters she (and the United States of America) wanted to play a more significant role in the Minsk accords upcoming. To be honest, everyone I mention this to seems to come down with the shivers, whether they're from western or eastern Europe. Given the US bureaucrat's past tenor, and her "F" bomb flubs the United States could NOT do worse in belaying either Russian or rebels' fears.

For those unfamiliar with the Minsk II situation: The leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany agreed on February 11 to a package of measures aimed at alleviating the crisis in war torn east Ukraine. The deal, overseen by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), revived the failed protocol agreed to on September 5, 2014.

From the onset of both these efforts, Nuland and her Tonto conspirator Geoffrey Pyatt have been part of the problem in Ukraine, rather than part of the peaceful solution.

Thus, Pyatt seems to think his Twitter account is judge and jury of all regional international conflict. The ambassador tweets quasi-evidence of Russian invasions of Ukraine every time the wind blows. His latest imagery supposedly caught red handed Russian mobile artillery in eastern Ukraine, which turned out to be a two-year-old picture of an air defense system from an air show near Moscow. I think the American taxpayers should ask for a refund on this.

Long before the eve of the Euromaidan protests that led to the Ukraine coup d'etat Washington called democratic reformation [today], Victoria Nuland was an instigator in Iraq under then Vice President Dick Cheney. Nuland was a "democracy promotion" officer back then too, one so adept at making liberty happen she was later promoted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, first to State Department spokesperson, then later to her current position as Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs.

In hindsight, there's no wonder Moscow raised eyebrows when Nuland appeared in Maidan Square sharing loaves and fishes with protesters there. The veteran State Department operative is virulently anti-Russia, despite proclaiming her love for the country. Between Nuland and NATO Commander General Philip Breedlove it's hard to figure who has been more in favor of the US arming Kiev. As for her "killer instinct" in spreading democratic ideals, Nuland is a cagey operator. On the first day of the recent Munich Security Conference Nuland and Breedlove held a meeting of delegates behind closed doors to discuss a strategy for getting Europe to agree to arm Ukraine. Nuland was credited with saying:

"While talking to the Europeans this weekend, you need to make the case that Russia is putting in more and more offensive stuff while we want to help the Ukrainians defend against these systems."

Now, she is also coming to Russia to hold talks with Lavrov deputies, Sergey Ryabkov and Grigory Karasin. The talks are expected to focus on Ukraine - and Minsk Accords.

If the Kerry visit to Sochi could be seen as an olive branch to President Putin, then choosing an alternative voice for direct connecting the so-called Normandy Four and America would have been advisable here. Speaking after talks on Saturday with Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, Nuland attempted to put herself and the United States diplomatic mission at the forefront of negotiations Washington tried to scuttle from the beginning. Nuland stressed:

"The United States deepens our engagement in the Minsk implementation process in lockstep with our European allies and partners, with the EU and particularly with the Normandy powers."

Outside "deepening" a Washington engagement that has at every turn been adversarial toward Russia and the rebels, Nuland gave the Obama administration's "insistence" on a ceasefire on the borders of the Donbass. Now that a peace accord and a reversal of EU-US-Russia sanctions madness seems at hand, the very instigators of chaos want a place at the peace table. If ever there were an American peace saboteur running about, Victoria Nuland is she. Legendary investigative reporter Robert Parry frames that argument here.

Meanwhile back in Washington the daily press briefing at the State Department after Nuland's Kiev comments returned to hard line posturing. Press Office Director, Jeff Rathke returned to the Kerry State Department hyperbole we've come to expect after every visit with Vladimir Putin. Speaking of Nuland's talk with Avakov and Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko on US commitments, Rathke added this:

"We continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine and reiterate our deep commitment to a single Ukrainian nation, including Crimea, and all the other regions of Ukraine."

So Kerry, with Nuland in tow, go into Russia's back door to lay a wreath at the feet of heroes Obama and most of the west forgot. Then hours later the same bozo team tries to ramrod the Minsk peace show upcoming. One has to wonder if Lavrov and Putin did not acquiesce to Kerry (for Obama) begging and allow the US officials to save some face for those waiting back home along the Potomac. The images from Sochi bear out that Vladmir Putin seemed amused (maybe disgusted?).

To conclude, as we witness the hawkish Nuland mutating into the great white dove of European peace in Kiev, her NeoCon husband, Brookings think tank fellow Robert Kagan gesticulates on more military spending on the Washington Post. For this Washington think tank thinker it's hard to decide which member of the family is a less likely peacemaker for great nations. Since we mentioned Pyatt and Twitter viability, here's a bit of United States of America social media proof, there's a big fat hawk with a Raytheon emblem flying over the peace process in Minsk. As an American citizen this whole US involvement in Ukraine is simply an embarrassment for me.

Finally, what serves as proof for the US State Department, should be verifiable proof for everyone, no?

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#5
Poroshenko's declarations drive Donbas peace talks to blind alley - Pushilin

MOSCOW. May 17 (Interfax) - The leadership of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic finds unacceptable the instructions given by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to Kyiv's envoy to the subgroup for political issues Volodymyr Horbulin about the possibility of launching the dialogue on the modality of local elections in Donbas only after a complete ceasefire and the withdrawal of heavy armaments verified by the OSCE.

"By giving instructions to Horbulin on the possibility of discussing the modality of elections only after the ceasefire and withdrawal of weaponry at a time that the OSCE virtually every day registers the shelling of Donetsk airport and Shyrokyne from the Ukrainian side Petro Poroshenko actually drives the negotiating process into a blind alley," DPR envoy Denis Pushilin told Interfax.

He also urged the Ukrainian leader to refrain from aggressive statements regarding Donbas.

"If the president of Ukraine is truly loyal to the Minsk agreements as he regularly tells Europe he should refrain from declarations about seizing the airport by force, refrain from conniving with the actions of [head of the Luhansk region military-civilian administration Hennadiy] Moskal and [leader of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc Yuryi] Lutsenko that have tightened the economic blockade contrary to the February 12 Complex of Measures and get down to concrete actions instead of words," Pushilin said.

"The decree cancelling the armed operation would be the best evidence of the intentions to settle the conflict peacefully," he felt.

"We do not see the decree cancelling the military operation which is a necessary condition for holding elections according to ODIHR standards and it is ODIHR that is authorized by the Minsk Complex of Measures to hold the elections in DPR and LPR," Pushilin said.

 #6
The Guardian (UK)
May 14, 2015
The west talks about a new cold war. For Russians it has already started
By continually freezing out the Kremlin, the west is refuelling old resentments
By Susan Richards
Susan Richards is the author of Lost and Found in Russia, and editor of openDemocracy Russia

I've been travelling in the heartlands of Russia for 30 years, witnessing everything from the euphoric wishfulness at the fall of communism to prosperity and, more recently, political despair. Yet going there for the first time since the annexation of Crimea, I was still shocked by what I saw.

I encountered a country braced not for some frozen conflict, nor for proxy war, but for the real thing: all-out war against the west. Never have my friends been more loving - but this time it was the concern of people who were unsure when and how we would meet again.

It is true that this state of mind has been brought about by the Kremlin's unremitting media campaign of the past year. But I quickly came to understand that most of them share their government's dim view of the west, with its "hollow concepts" of democracy and freedom.

Since the regime is fixated on the idea of getting its empire back, a major conflict really does seem possible. Russian aircraft and submarines are playing war games around the coasts of Europe. But a plane crossing into Baltic air space could trigger Nato retaliation with conventional arms, which could in turn could spark a pre-emptive nuclear strike by Russia - a strategic response born of a fear of weakness in the face of superior American military power.

While Nato struggles to persuade its members to spend 2% of GDP on defence, this year Russia is more than doubling its defence spending, to 4.2% of GDP, while slashing all other budgets, including health and social services. Saturday's VE Day parade in Moscow was more than a celebration of victory: it was a display of military might.

Meanwhile, Russia's economic crisis will deepen this year. Salaries of government officials have been frozen. Private sector pay is down almost 10%. Massive job cuts are forecast. Putin announced that he would take a salary cut of 10% this year; but since estimates of his true, shadowy wealth range between $70bn and $200bn, it is unlikely he'll feel the pinch. Despite the crisis, support for him has transmuted into something close to idolatry.

How have we drifted into this absurd and dangerous situation? At the end of the cold war the Russians imagined that they would be becoming part of an expanded Europe. Instead, through a combination of  triumphalism and ignorance we have played to Russia's ancient fears of exclusion and victimhood.

The conventional view in the west is that the blame lies with Putin and his kleptocratic regime. According to this narrative, the regime went into attack mode after the oil price collapsed. It distracted attention from its own failure to diversify the economy by lashing out against an external enemy, and launching a brilliant propaganda campaign.  

This version of events, while not untrue, lets the west off the hook far too easily. When the Soviet regime ended, free-market thinking was in the ascendancy in the west. People in positions of authority really did swallow the idea that we were living through "the end of history": that in a unipolar world foreign policy was going to be exclusively about a battle for markets.

In America and Britain, government support for research on old Soviet bloc countries was slashed. The State Department and Foreign Office disbanded research units that kept politicians informed. Embassies focused on opening up commercial opportunities. Meanwhile, the press, facing its own economic crisis, also cut back on foreign correspondents. The west simply stopped thinking seriously, and in depth, about Russia and its neighbours.

And yet when it came to defence we did not behave as though we were facing the end of history. Rather than disbanding our cold war defence arrangement, Nato, we reinvented it as an alliance that could be construed only as being arrayed against Russia. We kept expanding it ever eastward, closer to Russia's borders. In response, Russia turned aggressive - first in Georgia, then in Crimea and Ukraine - at this intrusion into its sphere of influence.

The west dismissed this, saying the concept of spheres of influence belonged to a bygone age. But geography is unchanging, as are the sensibilities created by it. US policy on Cuba in the post-Soviet era has, until now, been founded on precisely this principle. Cuba had long-since ceased to pose a military threat to the US. But it was deemed outrageous that any nation so close to US borders should cleave to a "hostile" ideological allegiance.

The end of the cold war has not changed history either. History continues to inform identity, as it always has. Take Ukraine: Kiev really is the birthplace of the Russian nation. This matters, just as it still matters that America's founding fathers came from Britain.

Russia's sense of its identity, poised on the edge of Europe in a borderless landmass, has always been pathologically insecure. Identities are tangled, allegiances split. Take Donbas, for example, at the heart of the conflict area. This is the homeland of the Don Cossacks, whose cavalry regiments famously served Russia's tsars for generations. During the Soviet period, the Cossacks were greatly persecuted for their Tsarist allegiances. But the region was also the birthplace of that icon of Soviet labour, Alexei Stakhanov, who mined 227 tonnes of coal in a single shift. Stakhanov was the poster boy for a heroic generation of Soviet labour, all based in Donbas. In this region of conflicted allegiances, it is hardly surprising that the Kremlin has been fighting its propaganda war with particular intensity here.

The decision by western leaders to boycott Russia's 70th anniversary victory parade on Saturday might have seemed like common sense in the light of events on Ukraine's border. But it failed to recognise how emotive a concept fascism still is for Russians. Westerners have for years been giggling at 'Allo 'Allo and John Cleese's goosestep, but fascism is no laughing matter in this country. Russians ask me how in Lithuania marches can be permitted that honour Nazi collaborators who murdered 200,000 Jews. How, they ask, can the west welcome into the EU and Nato "ethnocracies" such as Estonia and Latvia that radically discriminate against their Russian subjects.

The 62% popular support which Vladimir Putin enjoys according to the Levada Centre reflects not only that ancient geographical sense of insecurity Russians feel; not just the unshakeable love Russians feel for their country. It represents wounded pride at the west's apparent determination to treat Russia as the enemy. Continued western sanctions will only fuel his popularity. Because Putin is a merely a symptom of the present crisis. There is more to Russia than Putin, a great deal more.

At Saturday's parade in Moscow the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, made the sign of the cross as he passed under the Kremlin's Saviour Gate. This unexpected gesture set the Russian blogosphere alight. The fact that Shoigu himself is Buddhist was beside the point. Standing there at the head of his troops, the minister of war was reviving an old tradition, doing what Russian generals used to do before going into battle. He was also, as Russian bloggers pointed out, making a gesture that drew a distinct line between their culture and a west that has "banned God from the public sphere".

We must start taking Russia seriously again, once more including it in our culture rather than freezing it out yet again. Karl Marx warned us that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. But there's nothing funny about this current predicament. We should remember the lesson of the first world war, and pay attention before it is too late.

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#7
New York Times
May 16, 2015
A Diplomatic Victory, and Affirmation, for Putin
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

MOSCOW - For Russia, victory came three days after Victory Day, in the form of Secretary of State John Kerry's visit this week to the Black Sea resort city of Sochi. It was widely interpreted here as a signal of surrender by the Americans - an olive branch from President Obama, and an acknowledgment that Russia and its leader are simply too important to ignore.

Since the seizure of Crimea more than a year ago, Mr. Obama has worked aggressively to isolate Russia and its renegade president, Vladimir V. Putin, portraying him as a lawless bully atop an economically failing, increasingly irrelevant petrostate.

Mr. Obama led the charge by the West to punish Mr. Putin for his intervention in Ukraine, booting Russia from the Group of 8 economic powers, imposing harsh sanctions on some of Mr. Putin's closest confidants and delivering financial and military assistance to the new Ukrainian government.

In recent months, however, Russia has not only weathered those attacks and levied painful countersanctions on America's European allies, but has also proved stubbornly important on the world stage. That has been true especially in regard to Syria, where its proposal to confiscate chemical weapons has kept President Bashar al-Assad, a Kremlin ally, in power, and in the negotiations that secured a tentative deal on Iran's nuclear program.

Mr. Putin, who over 15 years as Russia's paramount leader has consistently confounded his adversaries, be they foreign or domestic, once again seems to be emerging on top - if not as an outright winner in his most recent confrontation with the West, then certainly as a national hero, unbowed, firmly in control, and having surrendered nothing, especially not Crimea, his most coveted prize.

"Putin is looking pretty smart right now," said Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute, a Washington research group focused on Russia and the former Soviet Union.

Mr. Rojansky cautioned that Mr. Putin's seemingly strengthened position could prove illusory. The economy is in recession and remains dangerously reliant on energy sources, and most analysts say the long-term outlook for oil and gas prices is bleak.

Although Mr. Putin may look smart at the moment, Mr. Rojansky said, none of this was necessarily by design, adding, "It doesn't necessarily teach us anything fundamentally about him or how his system works."

Nevertheless, with oil prices seeming at least to have stabilized after a modest recovery, and the ruble rebounding so strongly from a late autumn collapse that the Russian Central Bank has begun buying dollars to keep it from appreciating further, the Western economic sanctions seem to have fallen short.

Meanwhile, a cease-fire is mostly holding in eastern Ukraine, limiting casualties and vastly increasing pressure on President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine, who so far has been unable to deliver the increased autonomy for the pro-Russian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk that was called for in the truce agreement brokered by France and Germany.

The subtle shift by the Obama administration reflects a pragmatic recognition that the policy of isolating Russia, economically and diplomatically, is failing, analysts say.

"Americans realized that sanctions against Russia did not quite work," Viktor A. Kremenyuk, deputy director of the Institute of the U.S.A. and Canada, a research organization that is part of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with Svobodnaya Pressa, a news site here.

"They thought Russia had become so much a part of the world market and depended on it so much that it would be enough to frighten Moscow a little to make it surrender," Mr. Kremenyuk said. "In reality, it's all different. Russia not only withstood sanctions but even introduced countersanctions and demonstrated that it is not going to turn off this road."

He added: "The U.S. cannot simply capitulate. This is why the policy change begins with statements like, 'We shall think,' 'We shall assess the situation.' In fact, this is a cautious departure from the policy of sanctions."

To be sure, the United States position on Ukraine has not shifted, and Mr. Kerry said at a news conference in Sochi that he had "made clear our deep concerns" including about Russia's "continued arming, training, command and control of separatist forces." The administration portrayed the visit as intended to explore new avenues of collaboration, especially in Syria, and Mr. Kerry in his remarks again insisted that Russia and Ukraine fulfill the terms of the cease-fire accord signed in Minsk, Belarus.

For the Russian news media and political pundits, however, it was striking that Mr. Kerry's arrival came three days after Moscow's huge celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany - an event that the United States refused to attend and had urged other nations to shun as well.

That snub was regarded by ordinary Russians, even those with little interest in global affairs, as disrespectful of Soviet war veterans and the millions killed in action. Mr. Kerry laid a wreath at a World War II memorial in Sochi, in a gesture interpreted as an attempt to make some amends for skipping the Moscow events.

While the Kremlin has hardly been gloating in recent days, it has noted firmly that the subject of Crimea was not discussed at the meeting, and some Russians officials have expressed a sense of victory.

Some officials in Ukraine and in Europe said they believed the Obama administration's outreach to Russia reflected a rising concern in Washington that the European Union would not be willing to renew the economic sanctions against Russia when they expire in July.

European nations have far more trade and other economic dealings with Russia than the United States does and so they have borne the brunt of the countersanctions barring imports of European goods, including most agricultural products. Some countries like Greece have publicly voiced disagreement with the sanctions policy in recent weeks.

Mr. Kremenyuk and other analysts, however, said they believed the major motivation of the United States was to seek Russia's assistance on other more pressing problems.

"There are some issues in which Americans cannot make progress without Russia," Mr. Kremenyuk told Svobodnaya Pressa. "For instance, Iran and the Iranian nuclear program. Or Syria, where nothing can be done without us. Of course, they will not yell: 'Help us!' No way. But within the last couple of years Americans found some areas in the Middle East where they cannot do much, but Russia can."

Alexander G. Baunov, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research group, said that based on a recent visit to Washington he believed that Middle East issues were more important to the Americans than Ukraine.

"It's clear that Obama is thinking about his legacy, his place in history," Mr. Baunov said in an interview. "Not to achieve the final deal with Iran will be a big defeat for him, so he needs Russia for this."

Mr. Baunov said that ultimately Ukraine mattered more to Russia. "Russia is ready to sacrifice more for Ukraine than the West and the United States," he said. "It is willing to sacrifice more economically and in lives than the West. Obama realizes Americans won't do the same."

Mr. Baunov said that the Kremlin was probably relieved at the easing of tensions. "Beyond all this anti-Western rhetoric, the Russian leadership and Putin himself are not very comfortable being isolated," he said, noting that the crisis in Ukraine was rooted partly in longstanding grievances in Moscow over Russia's interests and values not being respected in the West.

"The main motivation of Russia's behavior is that they are not treated as equal," he said.

For Mr. Putin, however, success is measured in simple terms, Mr. Rojansky said. "Ukraine is a really a regime survival story for Putin at home," he added. "He is still alive. He is still in control. He is still in power. He has survived."

Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting from Washington.

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#8
Asia Times
www.atimes.com
May 13, 2015
Obama's overture to Putin has paid off
By M. K. Bhadrakumar
M.K.Bhadrakumar served in the Indian Foreign Service for three decades and served as ambassador to Uzbekistan and Turkey. Apart from two postings in the former Soviet Union, his assignments abroad included South Korea, Sri Lanka, West Germany, Kuwait, Pakistan and Afghanistan. He served thrice in the Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan Division in the Ministry of External Affairs, including as the Head of the Division in 1992-95.

There is no reason to doubt the disclosure by the unnamed senior State Department official who briefed the media even as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was heading for Sochi, Russia, to meet President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, to the effect that the "Secretary and (Russian Foreign Minister Sergey) Lavrov have been talking for some time about when the conditions might be ripe, and we (the U.S.) obviously wanted to make sure that if he (Kerry) was going to make the trip (to Russia), he'd get a chance to talk to the main decision maker (read Putin)."

Indeed, there was an inevitability about yesterday's meeting at Sochi and what happened is in the best traditions of the denouement of Russian-American tensions, historically speaking. The partisans on both sides who fought the media war through past year probably thought that the "New Cold War" was for real or that they were witnessing were the birth pangs of a new world order. They must be feeling let down.

Of course, the humility in the tone of the senior State Department Official is striking. The Russians have shown that they could hunker down like nobody's business when it comes to defending their core interests, and the Obama administration has understood that.

More importantly, the U.S. also understands that from now on the law of diminishing returns will be at work.

Simply put, the Chinese have made their appearance on the strategic landscape of Eurasia for the first time in history, and the U.S. badly needs Russia's cooperation in the Middle East, more than at any time since the Cold War ended.

On the other hand, for all their bravado, the Russian elites also have understood that the future scenario for their economy remains grim if the western embargo on finance, investment and trade continue relentlessly. They realize too that at this rate they may eventually have to settle for a role as China's junior partner. The world at large may sympathize with Russia's plight and isolation, but life moves on, leaving the elites in Moscow to cope with the deepening economic recession as best as they could on their own faltering steam.

In retrospect, the Russians placed unrealistically high hopes on the independent foreign policies toward Russia on the part of the U.S.' European allies. Even Greece caved in, finally.

Finally, was it really worthwhile to humiliate the U.S. and complicate its ties with close allies through the Edward Snowden saga? Moscow could have easily foreseen, as Beijing indeed did, that the Empire would certainly strike back viciously. There are no easy answers here.

On balance, therefore, it is improper to assess the outcome of Kerry's parleys in Sochi in terms of "breakthroughs." None was expected, either. But, the main purpose of his mission has been achieved - the ice has been broken in the Russian-American relations. Also, the two talks in Sochi totaling over eight hours did cover a fair amount of ground.

In the media briefing, both Kerry and Lavrov downplayed the differences over Ukraine and instead noticeably played up the shared interest in finding a "comprehensive" solution. The talks in Sochi seem to have led to an understanding that neither side will do anything to precipitate fresh tensions. This would have a salutary effect on the "hawks" in Kiev as well.

The U.S. and Russia have agreed to launch a joint effort to kick-start intra-Syrian peace talks. Kerry seems to have succeeded in extracting an assurance that Moscow will not do anything to upset the apple cart of the nuclear negotiations with Iran. Quite possibly, the transfer of S-300 missiles to Iran will be kept in abeyance for several months.

Kerry disclosed that the U.S.'s summit meeting with GCC leaders in Washington and Camp David figured in the discussions. Both Kerry and Lavrov stressed strong commonality of interests in fighting the Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front. For sure, Saudi Arabia and Turkey will get the message that the Obama administration will not back their game plan on Syria. The Saudis will also feel uneasy that the U.S. and Russia intend to jointly pursue the path of UN mediation in Yemen, which makes the military campaign untenable.

Very little has been divulged as to what really transpired at the Sochi talks regarding the NATO's plans to return to the Libyan theatre. The Russians were blocking a UN Security Council mandate being made available to the NATO to (re)launch the military intervention.

But the tenor of Lavrov's remarks about fighting terrorism within the ambit of international law would suggest a mellowing of the Russian threat to block any UN Security Council resolution on Libya. Kerry flew from Sochi to Turkey to attend the NATO foreign ministers meeting where the alliance's impending intervention in Libya is listed as a key agenda item.

Doesn't this add up as sufficient enough outcome to make Kerry's mission every bit worthwhile? Most certainly, yes. Obama's overture to Putin has been very timely. The U.S. will be in a far better position in the period ahead to tackle the burning issues in the Middle East.

Equally, the sigh of relief in Moscow is almost audible. From the Russian viewpoint, the West's boycott of Moscow has ended. We may expect European statesmen to travel to Moscow as before. Indeed, as the U.S.-Russia collaboration on regional conflicts advances, it will have positive fallout on the bilateral relations between the two big powers. (Last week, Washington had signaled willingness to engage Moscow in talks relating to the U.S.' missile defence program.)

Both Washington and Moscow are in a chastened mood today, as the media briefings in Sochi strongly suggest. They peered into the abyss and didn't like what they saw.

In the final analysis, Obama took a high risk by making the overture to Russia. His critics and detractors are bound to pounce on him, as they would only see his overture to Putin as yet another U-turn on a crucial foreign policy front.

But then, what distinguishes President Obama is the high level of intellectuality that he brings to bear on America's foreign policies. He is infinitely proud of the American Dream and yet he knows that he is presiding over the concluding phase of the American Century in world politics. Presiding over the winding up of America's "unipolar moment" was never going to be easy. He is doing it as calmly, as gracefully, as methodically as he possibly can.

Evidently, he is outstripping America's political class, large sections of the intelligentsia and the media - and, of course, annoying friends and allies in Central Europe who clamor for a hard line on Russia - Poland and the Baltic states, in particular.

Obama made three cardinal errors of judgment on Russia. One, he allowed the U.S. interference in Russia's domestic politics to continue with the objective of changing the political calculus in the Kremlin in a direction that would serve America's global interests. True, the U.S. had gotten used to stringing the Russian elites and once even had arranged Boris Yeltsin's re-election as president (1996).

But Obama could have sized up that the times had changed. At the end of the day, by any yardstick, Putin won a legitimate mandate and he is an extraordinarily popular politician. The U.S. could have left it at that when Putin got returned to the Kremlin as president in 2012. Indeed, the appointment of Robert McFaul, the famous expert on color revolution, as ambassador to Russia, was a disastrous error of judgment and a needless provocation.

Second, Obama underestimated Russia's resolve to maintain a buffer on its western borders, which has been the traditional invasion route from Europe. Washington literally forced Putin's hands on Crimea and eastern Ukraine. What happened was not Putin's choice. In the obsessive drive to demonize Putin, it is often overlooked that he desires a partnership with the West, but on equal terms. The Russian "hyper sensitivity" is not difficult to comprehend.

Third, Obama has been obstinate in his refusal to acknowledge Russia's legitimate aspirations as a global power. He went one step ahead of his immediate predecessors - Clinton and George W. Bush - and assumed that the U.S. could even do without the "selective engagement" of Russia to address global issues and regional conflicts that are of critical importance to the U.S. interests.

How could such an erudite mind and profound intellect have got it all so very wrong? Of course, Obama's familiarity with Russian politics has been limited and he has allowed himself to be led by the seasoned "Russia hands" in the U.S. foreign-policy establishment who are weaned on Cold War era politics. The result has been that he ended up pursuing the very same containment strategy toward Russia that was ushered in by the Bill Clinton administration in the early nineties.

It has proved to be a road to nowhere, because the Russia that Bill Clinton in turn hoodwinked, bullied and pushed around no longer exists today. The lingering question today is whether Obama is intending a clean break with all that happened leading to the breakdown in relations with Russia. Significantly, Kerry's entourage to Sochi had a notable absentee - Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the mastermind behind the "regime change" in Kiev in February last year.

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 #9
Moscow Times
May 18, 2015
The U.S. Must Keep Talking to Russia
By Mark Adomanis
Mark Adomanis is an MA/MBA candidate at the University of Pennsylvania's Lauder Institute.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's recent trip to Sochi to meet with President Vladimir Putin, the first noteworthy Russian-American diplomatic exchange in the better part of a year, was not exactly a productive trip.

After the meeting, Russia and the United States were every bit as much at loggerheads as they were before. NATO expansion, the war in Ukraine, European energy security, ballistic missile defense, the fate of Syrian President Bashar Assad: there was no shortage of issues on which Washington and Moscow continued to occupy diametrically opposed positions.

Putin and Kerry reached no kind of "grand compromise." They couldn't even credibly claim to have made meaningful progress on one of the more specific, technical areas in which the United States and Russia have continued (in an extremely limited and very narrow way) to cooperate.

The purpose of the meeting, rather, was to demonstrate a modicum of good faith. By meeting in person, Kerry and Putin were able to show their respective governments and the rest of the world that the lines of communication between the two sides, which had broken down almost entirely over the past year as Russia more and more blatantly intervened in Ukraine, were once again open.

That might sound as if it is damning with faint praise, but there is real value to what Kerry and Putin did. To put it a bit dramatically, as long as words are flying back and forth between the Russian and American governments, it is likely that ballistic missiles won't.

The chance of war between the two countries has (thankfully) remained extremely remote even as the standoff over Ukraine has escalated, but this possibility was marginally less remote than it was just a year or two ago. Having the two governments speak, even if the contents of this speech are meaningless, costs nothing and helps make the world just the slightest bit less dangerous.

Nonetheless, despite the apparent banality of the Putin-Kerry chat, some people managed to find fault with it. Leon Aron of the American Enterprise Institute and David Kramer of the McCain Institute for International Leadership both wrote angry editorials in which they denounced Kerry for his trip to Sochi in extremely harsh terms.

Neither Aron nor Kramer expressed displeasure with the specifics of a deal that Kerry struck. The reason for this is exceedingly simple: there was no deal to criticize.

Kerry didn't offer the Russians anything. He didn't offer to soften the sanctions that are slowly strangling the Russian banking system, he didn't offer any modifications of the European missile defense system that the Russians have always found objectionable, and he didn't offer to change America's position regarding Ukraine. There was no betrayal of any previously stated American policy position.

Both Kramer and Aron were angry with Kerry for the mere act of speaking with Putin. Indeed, both editorials make very similar arguments that by meeting with Putin Kerry was affording him a legitimacy that he doesn't "deserve." Statecraft doesn't revolve around abstract notions of fairness or justice - statecraft, ultimately, is based on reality.

You can hate Vladimir Putin with all the passion a human being can muster. You can compare his malice and mendacity to Stalin, Hitler or Mao. But that hatred, regardless of its intensity or eloquence, does not change the simple, unalterable fact, that Putin is the president of the Russian Federation and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Not talking to him, and pretending to exist in an alternate universe in which he is not president of Russia, is ultimately an exercise in pure wishful thinking.

In saying that we ought to talk to the Russians I am not suggesting any specific content of that speech. You can be in favor of talking to the Russian government and also in favor of an extremely hawkish policy of NATO enlargement and ballistic missile defense. One has nothing to do with the other.

People of good faith have any number of different views on the appropriate contours of U.S. policy regarding Russia, and they can and should argue about what this policy should look like. But simply talking to the Russian government is not, as both Kramer and Aron suggest, doing it any kind of special favor or bestowing it with some kind of "undeserved" status.

It is actually the precise opposite of that, treating Russia in exactly that same manner that the United States treats virtually every other country in the world.

Diplomacy is not a synonym for weakness and conducting negotiations is not a "favor" that needs to be balanced out. Even if, in the absolute worst case, it is simply to trade insults, it is in all of our self-interest that more meetings like Kerry's take place.

Maintaining an open line of communication doesn't, by itself, have any impact on policy, but it does help both sides to avoid miscalculations about the other's intentions. Given the stakes of those potential miscalculations (thermonuclear war) we should be willing pay a pretty hefty price, and we should certainly be willing to pay the nonexistent cost of talk.

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 #10
http://gordonhahn.com
May 16, 2015
Is Putin Winning?
By Gordon M. Hahn

In a way he is. Increasingly, grudgingly, gradually and as quietly as possible, the Barack Obama Administration and Europe are accommodating Moscow and pressuring Kiev to do the same with regard to many of Moscow's key positions on the Ukraine crisis. The West is pressuring President Petro Poroshenko to grant the Donbass significant political and economic autonomy. At the May 6th Minsk 2 contact group meeting, Kiev was successfully nudged to agree to begin negotiating directly with the Donbass rebels on this as well as other issues. Kiev's recent, failed albeit, efforts to rein in its neo-fascists from groups like Right Sector suggest similar Western efforts on this front. The U.S., British and other military training missions to Kiev have raised the costs of allowing the neo-fascists to continue their lawlessness too high for the West in PR terms. In addition, the West has ceased the hyperbolic and hysterical rhetoric about Putin being today's Hitler, fascist Russia, 'Russia's war' in Ukraine, 'Russia's invasion' in eastern Ukraine (it was a temporary and targeted military intervention in Donbas), Putin's intention to recreate the USSR, and the like. These changes in Western posture were manifested by US Secretary of State John Kerry's trip to Sochi to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and President Putin.

It is very likely that the Western retreat is a consequence of a certain recognition of at least some of the following hard facts about the Ukraine crisis and its making.

Those hard facts include the following.

First, the evidence is becoming increasingly irrefutable that the Maidan revolution, though initially peaceful, was hijacked by radical neo-fascists and ultra-nationalists who broke initiated the 20 February 2014 'snipers' massacre on the Maidan killing police and then both police and demonstraors before the police or special forces fired on demonstrators. Hence, the West was hasty, opportunistic and plainly wrong in promoting the version of events that placed the blame for the massacre solely on Yanukovich and his police.

Second, it was these radical forces who seized power illegally and violated the 21 February 2014 agreement that established a transition pact or roadmap for a regime transformation and the removal of Yanukovich by the end of the year sponsored by Germany, France, Poland, and Russia. Hence the West was wrong in engaging hastily and aggressively robust 'democracy-promotion' (for 'dual use' as revolutionary mobilizational and organizational tactics and strategy) and European integration in a country having both a rising nationalist, anti-Russian tide and objects of vital national security interest to Moscow and located on Russia's border. The West was also wrong in denying the role of neo-fascism in the revolutionary coup, as Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland did at congressional hearings on the Ukraine crisis.

Third, despite some military intervention on the part of Moscow, the war in Ukraine was started by Kiev, which declared and started its 'anti-terrorist operation' before anyone in the Donbas fired a shot at a representative of the Maidan regime. Hence, the West was wrong in pushing relations with Russia to the brink by deploying insulting rhetoric and false propaganda devices such as the expression "Putin's war" and by imposing sanctions after Putin's overreraction by seizing Crimea.

Fourth, the West failed to understand Ukraine's complexity, in particular, the deep civilizational differences that existed between western and eastern Ukraine and which the West encouraged Kiev in constructing and maximizing. Hence, the West was wrong in thinking it could build a new Ukraine on a unilateral, purely Western basis without taking the interests of Russia and the Russian-oriented portion of Ukraine's population or splitting the country apart.

Fifth, with time, familiarity with the Maidan regime has bred suspicions in the West. NATO lamented that Ukraine's Defense Ministry is unwilling to reform. The West and international lending and development institutions are increasingly aware that there is little political will in Kiev to impose the kind of austerity program they require. This week's resignation of the Ukrainian-American first deputy economic development minister Sasha Borovik over Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's unwillingness to reform the economy rapidly enough is another sign. Politically, the Rada is often run in a less than democratic matter to push reforms through that later are not implemented, and the Maidan regime is allowing neo-fascists, like Right Sector, to maraud across the country attacking journalists and people tied to the old regime, seizing property, and intimidating opposition figures. Moreover, Poroshenko and other officials are steeped in corruption, and the present anti-corruption campaign is being used to target political opponents rather than root out all 'corruptionaires.' Hence, the West was wrong in thinking that the leaders of the Maidan opposition were significantly or even at all better than the Yanukovich regime. This casts the utility of Western policies such as democracy-promotion and support for regime change in doubt.

Sixth, Ukraine's integration with Europe is bogged down as Moscow and others warned Kiev it would be. EU membership for Ukraine is a very long-term prospect. Implementation of the EU-Ukraine agreement will be delayed because the parties have agreed to negotiate its stipulations and implementation with Moscow in order to take into account Russian economic and trade interests, as Putin requested before the original European effort to have Kiev sign over Moscow's head and without taking its interests into account. Furthermore, even the most basic agreement which would allow Ukrainians visa-free travel to EU countries is at best a mid-term prospect. Hence, Moscow was right and the West was wrong in urging Yanukovich to sign the EU agreement in October 2013, Yanukovich's postponement of which set off the Maidan demonstrations that has led to the worst Russian-Western crisis since the end of the Cold War at a time when Russian-Western cooperation is sorely needed from Iran to Iraq to Syria and other issues.

Seventh, Russia is the regional power in central Eurasia and a major power in Eurasia writ large and globally. No matter what costs the West is prepared to bear in acting unilaterally in Ukraine, Georgia or elsewhere along Russia's borders, Russia is prepared to accept greater costs and exert greater effort to protect its interests in the region. Hence, the West was wrong in acting unilaterally against Russian interests and not expecting a costly response from Moscow.

Despite these realizations, we are from out of the woods. Either side on the ground - Kiev or Donbass - can re-start the war by provocation or miscalaculation. Once the war re-starts, Russian-Western relations will revert to the brinkmanship of the past year, with pressure from hardliners on both sides to escalate the conflict by intervening in greater force. Also, a Western or Russian misstep can lead to a broader European war with the potential ensuing consequences on the table, including the nuclear option. This will be an especially dangerous time, especially if a Republican other than Rand Paul wins the White House. Therefore, Moscow and especially Washington must intensify efforts to push the Donbass and Kiev to move much more quickly on the military, political and economic stipulations of Minsk 2, before this last best chance is lost. And all sides should, however difficult it is, focus less on winning and more on maintaining the peace and 'satisficing' their basic security, political, and economic requirements. Even if it means Putin is or is perceived to be the winner.

Gordon M. Hahn is an Analyst and Advisory Board Member of the Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation. He is also Analyst/Consultant for 'Russia Other Points of View' (www.russiaotherpointsofview.com) and an Adjunct Professor and Senior Researcher at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and its Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program, Monterey, California. Dr Hahn is author of three well-received books, Russia's Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002), Russia's Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), which was named an outstanding title of 2007 by Choice magazine, and The 'Caucasus Emirate' Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia's North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland Publishers, 2014). He also has authored hundreds of articles in scholarly journals and other publications on Russian, Eurasian and international politics. Dr. Hahn has been a visiting scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. (2011-2013), the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. (1995 and 2005), and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He has taught at Boston, American, Stanford, San Jose State, San Francisco State, and St. Petersburg State (Russia) Universities.

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 #11
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
May 13, 2015
Russia-USA relations may "remain frozen" at least through 2016 - pundit
Sergey Karaganov, head of world economics and world politics faculty of Higher School of Economics, Cold will last through 2016. Americans start behaving more realistically - but no more than that

Americans are now in a very difficult position. All areas of their foreign policy have collapsed. This includes the US attempt to pressure Russia and place it in international isolation. Wherever Americans have pulled out, instability remains in all these regions. If Washington really wanted this, then this is undoubtedly a success for American foreign policy. I believe that the USA must realize that its policy of wrecking the EU in connection with the events in Ukraine has also not produced the desired results and has led to heavy disagreements with leading allies in Europe. They have demonstratively not gone along with the American policy that was aimed at exacerbating the Ukrainian crisis. Remember the robust disagreement between Obama and the European leaders in connection with the US plans to deliver offensive arms to Ukraine. At that time the Europeans simply said a robust "no." Recently I have not read a single rejoinder or article about American foreign policy successes. On the other hand, I have not heard for a long time such a wave of negative assessments of this foreign policy.

In this situation - and this is confirmed by Kerry's visit to Russia - the possibility cannot be ruled out that Americans are starting to behave more realistically than was the case a year ago, when they were essentially trying to do battle with Moscow. Nevertheless, there is no question as yet of any serious rapprochement between the USA and Russia. Although the possibility cannot be ruled out that, taking advantage of Kerry's visit, the American administration wants to start a long game with Russia which would show that they are capable of something and are trying to achieve something.

I believe that the question of improving relations with Moscow will be frozen until the 2016 presidential election in America and may also remain frozen after the election. If Hillary Clinton enters the White House, it will be possible to count on a partial reset in relations with Russia for just one reason: the American president has quite broad possibilities in foreign policy. But people who are the main motors of the present deterioration in Russian-American relations will accede to power together with Mrs Clinton. After all, members of her future team bear a considerable degree of responsibility for the present collapse of relations with Russia, including for the Ukrainian crisis or the Ukrainian provocation on America's part. I see no signs at present that the American authorities have changed or intend to change their policy to a serious or qualitative degree.

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 #12
Forbes.com
May 15, 2015
Here's How Western Sanctions Have 'Killed' Russia
By Kenneth Rapoza

McDonald's MCD +0.34% left Crimea. General Motors GM +0.75% left St. Petersburg. Russia is now a pariah state. Oh baba svoza, kobyla lyegche. Maybe Russia is better off because of the crisis. It's like Russia's gone Jamaican, mon. Everyting gone be all right.

Most of Russia's recent problems were of its own doing, though of course oil's precipitous fall from around $100 a barrel to $45 in a 12 month period didn't help. Nor did Russia's involvement in Ukraine. After it annexed Crimea, home to its Black Sea Fleet in southeastern Ukraine, Vladimir Putin became the bad guy in a revived Cold War. Sanctions became stricter in July 2014 and again in September, with Washington and Brussels double teaming Russian energy and finance. Russia also sanctioned the West, by banning certain food imports.

The resulting mess?

A 41.5% rise in the Market Vectors Russia (RSX) exchange traded fund, the best emerging market performer this year. And a 17% gain in the ruble year-to-date. It is now trading in the high 40s against the dollar (as yours truly mentioned here, thanks to sources who are much smarter than I am). Goldman Sachs said it was going to 70.  And I'm giving you these insights for free! I'm a Russia disruptor. But I digress...

Last week, Russia's biggest food retailer, Magnit , said its retail sales rose by 28.73% in April and added 163 new stores. At least someone is investing in Russia. Overall, this is not really a trend yet.

According to JPMorgan's view, however, the Russian government's financial situation is "quite healthy" thanks to low government debt.

While the sanction were Russia's fault, the stabilization of the Russian economy has been because of Russia too. Central banker Elvira Nabiullina has become the best emerging markets banker around, overseeing the country's worst currency crisis in a decade. Nabiullina is now at a point where she can begin easing monetary policy, and could even lower interest rates to 9.5% by the end of the year, JP Morgan fixed income analysts said in a report.

Russia's current budget surplus is expected to rise to $70 billion (5.5% of the GDP) by the end of the year, up from $59 billion (3.2% GDP) last year.

The weakening of the ruble, the increase in interest rates, and the recession are the three main factors putting pressure on Russian banks. But most non-financial corporations like Magnit have managed to cope with the economic downturn on their own, using internal sources of capital for debt repayment due to restricted access to foreign markets.

Yes, Putin haters...Russian GDP contracted 1.9% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2015. It's still a tough slog. Russia has massive structural problems we've all heard of ad naseum. However, the economy is doing better than expected.

Economic data released on Friday was only a flash estimate, really. There was no breakdown by industry or expenditure. Industrial production was negative but performed better than expected, thanks to a weaker ruble.

"The data has prompted policymakers in Russia to turn much more optimistic on growth prospects for 2015, and some revision of forecasts is probably warranted," says Craig Botham, an emerging markets economist at Schroders in London.

Russia recently jumped from 55th to 26th place in The World Economic Forum's "2015 Human Capital Report", an index that ranks nations by their human capital endowment, defined as the skills and capacities that reside in people and that are put to productive use. That puts Russia ahead of start-up nation Israel, and far ahead of the rich, but going-nowhere-fast Euro outdoor museum nations of Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain. Russia also surpasses Brazil in this regard. And after Russia it's space bar, space bar, space bar, space bar...Ukraine.

The market ignored Russia's economic contraction today, with RSX rising over 1% compared to 0.4% growth in the MSCI Emerging Markets (EEM) ETF.

Late next month, the European Commission will meet to discuss Russian sanctions. My guess is sectoral sanctions will end this year, though probably not in July. Given the fact that sectoral sanctions began in July and September, the base case is that they will end on their respective 12 month anniversaries. Add oil prices hovering in the 60s instead of the 40s and Russia starts to look all right. The market is cheap. Foreign investors are buying equities and bonds. Corporate investors probably won't want to ignore it either. As it is, major European food companies like Danone risk losing Russia market share.

Still, the bear is not out of the woods yet, Botham warns. Political risk and oil price risk remain a concern. If sanctions are extended and the Ukraine imbroglio worsens, then their goes the neighborhood.

"Warning lights might be improving for Russia," says Botham. "But only to shift from one hue of red to another, not from red to green."

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#13
Financial Times
May 18, 2015
Weak rouble and sanctions breath life into Russian industry
Kathrin Hille in Moscow

Russia has been fretting about economic catastrophe for so long that the slide in GDP announced on Friday was actually deemed good news.

Gross domestic product dropped by no more than 1.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2015, the Federal Statistics Service said in its first reading, well short of the dire predictions of some analysts.

Most economists agree the saving grace was the same factor that triggered the trouble in the first place: the rouble.

The currency has been depreciating since the middle of 2013, and lost almost half of its value against the dollar following a sharp drop in December.

While this has made imports more expensive, it has also breathed new life into parts of Russia's languishing industrial sector.

Costs in local currency have fallen, and therefore consumers and companies are in some cases more inclined to buy Russian-made goods rather than imported ones - a process known as import substitution.

"I see a renaissance of Russian industry, a renaissance we've been waiting for for a long time," says Georges Barbey, general-director of the Russian arm of Lanxess, the German chemicals group.

"Prior to the devaluation our customers had difficulties with cash flow. Chinese, Turkish and South Korean competitors had become life-threatening to them. But the devaluation was their rescue. Since then we've seen how they've recovered financially and are now running at full capacity."

The macroeconomic data partly reflect this. The slide in retail sales signalled the squeeze on household incomes, but the downturn in industrial production was much more moderate - although it shrank 1.6 per cent in February the contraction levelled off to 0.6 per cent in March.

Russia has predicted something like this ever since it banned the imports of western agricultural goods and foods in response to the introduction last year of wide-ranging western sanctions over the war in Ukraine.

Moscow billed the import ban as an opportunity to revive its own agro-industry, and has also sought to encourage import substitution in other sectors hit by sanctions, such as weapons components and equipment used in oil and gas production.

"We have now started to partly replace some American or European components with Russian suppliers - we offer our customers this as an option," says Oliver Cescotti, general-manager at GEA Refrigeration, a German-owned company which sells compressors and cooling equipment in a broad range of industries.

The company is now assembling aggregates for state-owned Gazprom in a rented facility outside Moscow, thus raising its local content.

"We now propagate 'Made in Russia' in a big way," says Mr Cescotti. "We haven't reached the breakthrough yet, but it's very much being noticed which foreign companies are positioning themselves locally."

But the import substitution effect varies widely across different industries.

Some parts of Russia's food sector are booming, with meat and cheese production up sharply. Miratorg and Cherkizovo, two of the country's largest meat producers, reported higher revenues and profits for last year. Miratorg is rapidly growing the production of high-yield beef, with the help of a $425m loan from VEB, the state-run bank.

The chemicals industry has also benefited from the weak rouble, with fertiliser producers such as Acron Group and PhosAgro reporting stronger results.

Yet other sectors are struggling. The Russian car industry has announced production cuts in recent months amid sharp drops in new vehicle sales. Production of machinery and electrical, electronic and optical equipment also continued to shrink in the first quarter.

Economists say that unless the rouble remains cheap for an extended period of time, and the government radically improves the business climate, import substitution will be no more than a blip on the horizon.

Oleg Kouzmin, an economist at Renaissance Capital, said he expected to revise the investment bank's forecast of a 4.3 per cent contraction in the Russian economy this year to a narrower drop of 3.5 per cent.

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 #14
Bostinno
http://bostinno.streetwise.co
May 16, 2015
What Now for MIT and Moscow's 'Innovation City'?
By Rebecca Strong, Staff Writer

In 2011, MIT and Russian institutions including the Skolkovo Foundation launched a multi-year collaboration to facilitate the conception of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology-dubbed Skoltech- a private graduate research university in a suburb of Moscow that was designed to stimulate the Russian entrepreneurial ecosystem and address a number of pressing global issues.

MIT has been responsible for helping to develop and coordinate Skoltech's education, research, and entrepreneurship programs. The mission? To fuel educational, scholarly and economic impact in the Russian Federation, and furthermore, to intensify Russian impact on the global innovation community. And despite immense efforts from MIT and other institutions and companies, the attempt to establish a Russian version of Kendall Square or Boston's Innovation District has been stunted by ongoing obstacles, due largely to Vladimir Putin's return to power.

Initial enthusiasm

In the early stages, the initiative appeared promising. After the first full academic year of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology ended last June, nearly half of the 80 students were already involved in a startup. And the faculty members involved had grown from a handful to 50. The new focus would be to build out the $2.7 billion Skolkovo Innovation Center, which would become Skoltech's permanent campus and a hub that would hopefully give Russia's tech industry a boost. But after anti-corruption agents raided Skolkovo in April 2013, and the incubator was forced to cut costs, the future of the innovation center began to look increasingly grim.

To understand where these challenges stem from, we must step back to 2009, when then-President Dmitry Medvedev first unveiled the ambitious Skolkovo endeavor. What he envisioned could be described as Russia's Kendall Square, and the concept inspired nearly half a billion dollars in investments from companies like Microsoft, Intel, Samsung Electronics and Cisco Systems.

Skolkovo grew from 332 resident companies in 2011 to 793 a year later. By 2013, there were more than a thousand startups housed there. Then, the foreign capital began pouring in.
In his 4,000-word treatise "Go Russia!", Medvedev outlined a slew of reforms that would leverage technology in the name of modernizing and empowering Russia. He asserted that these initiatives could, ultimately, reverse some of the devastating negative effects from the global downturn, like rising unemployment rates and dependence on commodities exports. Inarguably, the aspect of Go! Russia that garnered the most excitement was the focus on stimulating IT innovation-and just a few months later, it was announced that a $4 billion innovation district was to be constructed on a 600-acre plot in Skolkovo. This project would essentially act as an incubator for Russian startups, providing office space, educational opportunities and grants for thousands of in-resident technologists and researchers.

It didn't take long for the idea to take off: The Medvedev government negotiated a partnership between Skolkovo and MIT, garnered financial support from major players in Silicon Valley, and startups came to the campus in droves. In fact, according to Foreign Policy, Skolkovo grew from 332 resident companies in 2011 to 793 a year later. By 2013, there were more than a thousand startups housed there. Then, the foreign capital began pouring in.

A hub loses its champion

But this rapid early success seems to have been short-lived. In March 2012, Putin-then Prime Minister-won the Russian presidential election in the first round. December of that year, Putin vetoed a law that had freed Skolkovo of the obligation to obtain state planning permits. In April 2013, several of the Skolkovo Innovation Center project's figureheads were accused of embezzling funds. And shortly thereafter, the government reversed its preferential treatment for Skolkovo, pushing the incubator farther down its priority list and ordering that costs be slashed by 20 to 40 percent.

So what happened to the entrepreneurs who were planning to grow their businesses in Skolkovo?

Anton Gladkoborodov, co-founder of the video-sharing platform Coub-one of the more successful Moscow tech companies- told Foreign Policy that he knew of five to eight companies that had either already fled the motherland or were plotting their escape.

"If they open the borders and let people have visas, everyone will leave," he said.

Nina Zavrieva, co-founder of Moscow startup Channelkit, a digital management tool that resembles Pinterest, told FP she was aware of a slew of startups that had picked up and moved to New York, San Francisco and other U.S. cities, emphasizing that "people are proactively looking for opportunities outside of Russia."

Without Medvedev, a self-described tech nerd, to champion the project, did a Skolkovo innovation center have a fighting chance? In Go Russia! the former president discussed introducing the necessary financial and legislative conditions for IT companies to flourish, acknowledging that an open exchange of ideas and certain democratic freedoms and open exchange of ideas were crucial to fueling innovation. But with Putin - who has continued to place ever-tightening limitations on Internet freedoms - back in power, the potential for anything remotely close to a Silicon Valley in Russia is probably a pipe dream. An entrepreneur who launches a successful venture there faces the risk that it will all be snatched away from them.

Professor Bruce Tidor, MIT's faculty lead on the institution's initiative, is still optimistic about the potential for Skoltech specifically, but noticeably declined to comment on the seemingly flailing "innovation city."

"Skoltech is but one part of the much larger Skolkovo innovation project," he said in an email. "Skoltech is designed to build intellectual relationships in a transparent environment, centering on open, fundamental, publishable research, which will contribute positively to Russian, and world, society.  MIT is excited about this collaboration, which is off to a good start and attracting excellent students and faculty. The work ahead is as worthy as it is difficult."

It goes without saying that recreating Kendall Square would be difficult to pull off anywhere, let alone in Russia. Establishing Skolkovo as a thriving innovation hub largely depends on ensuring that entrepreneurs have a reason to stay.

Of course, there are still benefits to remaining in Russia. Channelkit's Zavrieva told Foreign Policy that it's now significantly cheaper to live and develop a tech company there than in other locations-thanks to the devaluation of the ruble, dollar investments are stretching significantly farther.

But there's increasing doubt as to whether Russia is the right environment for such a massive tech innovation development.

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 #15
Moscow metro - Russia's historical and cultural symbol - turns 80
By Tamara Zamyatin

MOSCOW, May 15. /TASS/. Moscow's metro is 80. Its first line opened to traffic on May 15, 1935. These days the network of underground rail lines it is not just an essential means of public transportation that keeps life in the city going. It is an integral part of Soviet and Russian history and lifestyle a museum of architecture and sculptural art.

Moscow metro, whose first line became a reality in 1935, was conceived by the then Soviet leader Joseph Stalin as an imperial style palace available to factory workers and peasant farmers, author, essayist and newspaper editor-in-chief Aleksandr Prokhanov told TASS. The underground stations were adorned with marble, bronze statues, crystal chandeliers, mosaic and paintings, all matching the canons of the Socialist realism tradition. Few know that the first stations of Moscow's metro had parquetted floors. In just several months' time the wood turned dark and scratched beyond repair. Soon it had to be replaced with ceramic and stone tiles.

The chief organizer of Moscow's future equivalent of London's Underground and New York's Subway, People's Commissar Lazar Kaganovich, had to address safety issues, such as the security of the underground railways in wartime first and foremost. This explains why passengers entering the oldest stations, built back before World War II, still have to make their way to the trains through long and curvy corridors, capable of easing the effects of the blast wave, should an air bomb directly hit the station's entrance on the surface. During World War II the deepest metro stations were used as bomb shelters for thousands of Muscovites, who were hiding there during Nazi bombardments.

One of the central stations near the Kremlin was used as a reserve office of the High Command.

"The post-war effort to finalize semi-finished metro stations, build new ones and lay new lines at a time when the soil on the graves of Red Army soldiers was still fresh reflected Stalin's emphatic wish to hurry with healing the scars of war and 'planting blooming gardens' all over the nation's scorched land. The metro was expected to symbolize this drive for building an earthly paradise, symbolizing the Soviet Union's triumph not just on battlefields, but also in peaceful, creative endeavor," Prokhanov said.

The editor-in-chief of Russky Mir (Russian World) magazine, Georgy Bovt, describes the metro network is an essential element of Muscovites' daily environment.

"My apartment is close to the Mayakovskaya metro station, one of the most beautiful ones of all. When a boy I was fond of getting inside to take a ride on the escalator and gaze at the ceiling, with Aleksandr Deineka's wonderful mosaic panels, with tree branches in bloom and planes flying across bright blue skies. There was a time when almost every passenger on the metro trains was reading a book or a newspaper. University students were hurriedly leafing through their notes on the way to an exam. These days many have iPhones, iPads, e-book readers or some other electronic gadgets in their hands: time flies. With today's terrible traffic jams Moscow's metro is a blessing," Bovt said.

The head of culture studies at the Higher School of Economics, Vitaly Kurennoi, points out that Moscow's metro is also a great tourist attraction, where city guests are fond of posing for a picture or a selfie against the background of solemn sculptures and collonades. It is a socio-cultural artifact that helps visitors and migrants from remote provinces get better accustomed to the basics of modern urban civilization.

Moscow's metro consists of twelve operating lines, totaling 327.5 kilometers in length and having 196 stations. On weekdays, it carries an average of 8.5 million passengers. Over the 80 years in operation its passenger traffic has exceeded 145 billion. A total of 4,300 engine drivers operate its rolling stock. In terms of traffic intensity, reliability and traffic volumes Moscow's metro firmly holds first place in the world.

Special ceremonies timed for the Moscow metro's 80th anniversary have brought together the heads of 23 underground railway networks from other Russian and foreign cities, such as Berlin, Madrid, Beijing, Singapore and London, whose Underground is the oldest in the world. The heads of the Moscow and Beijing metros have concluded an agreement of cooperation.

The festive events included a review of the Moscow metro's old-time vintage and newest trains. The most advanced Moscow metro cars will boast mobile phone chargers, folding seats, bactericidal lamps and air conditioners with sensors. During the whole month of May all pre-recorded announcements on the Moscow metro trains will be made by Russian film stars, performing artists and TV celebrities. Speaking at the ceremonies Moscow's Mayor Sergey Sobianin said that Moscow's metro will grow 50% within years. Many more new stations and a second, larger circular line will be commissioned.

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 #16
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
May 15, 2015
Refusal to jail Navalny nothing but political expediency, say observers
May 15, 2015 Yekaterina Sinelschikova, RBTH
A Moscow court has turned down the state prison service's request to replace opposition leader Alexei Navalny's suspended sentence with a jail term. Observers say the decision was politically motivated - it is not advantageous for the powers-that-be to jail Navalny.
Yekaterina Sinelschikova, RBTH
 
A Moscow court has turned down a request from the prison service to replace a five-year suspended sentence earlier given to opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny with a jail term.

On Wednesday, May 13, the court decided not to uphold the request by the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) to change Navalny's suspended sentence into jail time in the so-called Kirovles embezzlement case (the verdict was announced in 2013; the politician received five years). His existing probation order was instead extended for three months.

The FSIN had requested a prison term for Navalny based on an incident in February 2015 in which the opposition politician was jailed for 15 days after being caught in the Moscow subway distributing leaflets calling on city residents to join an anti-crisis march titled "Vesna" (Spring).

At the time of distribution, the protest had not yet been authorized (it failed to take place in the end), so Navalny's actions were regarded as an administrative offense - urging people to come to an unauthorized protest.

By law, such violations are indeed grounds for changing a suspended sentence into a jail term, but only in case of systematic perpetration. The court ruled that "systematic" meant the commission of the offence more than two times, whereas Navalny was deemed to have committed exactly two violations.
 
'Endless trials'

After the suspended sentence was upheld, the politician described the "endless trials" as a test of public reaction to his possible placement in a detention center, as well as a form of pressure on his Progress Party (the party had its state registration withdrawn at the end of April) and his Anti-Corruption Foundation.

"I have no illusions," Navalny wrote later, "they'll come up with something in the near future again - [accusing me of] crossing the street in the wrong way, reporting [to the probation officer] in the wrong way or looking askance at people. Or they'll just launch a new criminal case."

On the following day, May 14, another hearing against Navalny was held. The FSIN's new request was met; the politician was obliged to report to the probation officer on certain days of the month, instead of at his discretion.

Navalny is also serving a sentence in the so-called Yves Rocher embezzlement case  - a suspended three-year-and-a-half prison term (the verdict was announced in December 2014). His brother Oleg Navalny received three and a half years in a penal colony in the same case.

Both cases are widely seen as lacking substance and being politically motivated attempts to publicly discredit the man who has become the chief representative of Russia's opposition movement.
 
Why Navalny won't be jailed

However, Alexander Pozhalov, director of research of the Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Studies, which has close ties to the Kremlin, dismissed the idea that the decision not to jail Navalny had no political agenda.

"[Navalny's recent court hearings] are a routine process, which has no hidden political motives," said Pozhalov in an interview with RBTH.

According to him, the FSIN is simply performing its function - it is obliged to draw the court's attention to an offense and the possibility of changing the measure of restraint, or the service may be accused of non-compliance with its obligations.

"The court fulfilled its function in exactly the same manner; it found that violations did take place, but they were not systematic," said Pozhalov.

But Yevgeny Minchenko, director of the independent International Institute for Political Expertise, told RBTH that "Navalny has a desire to be imprisoned, while the authorities are seeking not to imprison him, in order that he not look like the Russian Nelson Mandela that he wants to present himself as."

According to Pozhalov, the current situation, in which ordinary protest activists receive actual jail time (for example, those convicted of riots on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow in 2012), some of Navalny's associates are under house arrest or have fled the country, but a "softer position" is applied to the politician himself, which is "not a winner for some leaders of the opposition" in general. Arguments about political pressure and the testing of public opinion are attempts to "explain this strange situation," he said.

Yet Mikhail Korostikov, an analyst from independent research center Kryshtanovskaya Laboratory, argues that Navalny's cases are "exclusively about political expediency" and "not about some legal matters."

In the current conditions of sanctions, recession and international confrontation, "it would be excessive" for Russia to aggravate its position in the international arena by "jailing the biggest opposition leader," said Korostikov. "The state would not gain any advantages from this action, it would not have improved the president's rating, whereas shortcomings would have been very noticeable," he added.

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 #17
The National Interest
May 15, 2015
Russia and China: A Great Power Partnership America Should Fear?
By Julian Snelder
Julian Snelder is a Kiwi who has resided in Asia for almost a quarter-century. He has lived in India and China and has also worked extensively in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. He worked for eight years at McKinsey & Company, and then eight years at Morgan Stanley where he ran the high-technology investment banking unit. Since 2005 he has been a partner in a global investments fund. He has two bachelors' degrees, one in engineering from the University of Canterbury and the other in economics from Trinity College, Cambridge

The China-Russia relationship is the world's most important, and the best between any two great powers, Xi Jinping told Vladimir Putin a couple of years ago. Last week, at the Kremlin's V-Day celebration, their ties were reaffirmed in grand style.

Some observers dismiss the partnership as an 'axis of convenience' or a charade of camaraderie. Others point to the widening power disparity between the two, and doubt that Russia will accept subordination to China. Some even think that the two countries are bound for conflict as China thrusts into central Asia, or the two will clash over oil and gas supplies. Chinese nationalists haven't forgotten their lost territories, ceded to imperial Russia under the 'Unequal Treaties.'

So the significance of the rapprochement last week is open for debate. One important dimension of the debate must be the towering role of official media in shaping historical consciousness and in constructing the public worldview. Both great powers run formidable propaganda machines that manufacture well-reasoned but emotional, nationalistic truth.

Gilbert Rozman has explored how Russian and Chinese national 'narratives' interweave in certain ways. Where they overlap, the points of commonality are magnified by each state's media apparatus. For example, while the two nations' experiences of communism differ markedly, Putin and Xi tap deep popular roots of socialist solidarity that allude to the patriotic sacrifice of the Party-worker-soldier-hero fighting imperialism, fascism and hegemony. Both countries share a tradition of messianic leaders who remind their subjects (or 'comrades') of the transcendent wisdom and safety of paternal rule.

Points of historic disputation between the two are delicately ignored. Joint grievances are amplified. It is not hard to discern the targets of rage in their shared historiography. Both Moscow and Beijing strongly resented NATO's intervention in the Balkans, they both opposed America's Iraq misadventure, and both suspect Western 'black hands' in the color revolutions. Japan too is an ancient enemy. Together they strive for a multi-polar world order. The Chinese public enjoys the spectacle of Putin 'standing up to' the West in Ukraine. His popularity is as stratospheric in China as it is in Russia.

Officially, the Russian and Chinese citizenry feel quite warmly towards each other. One-quarter of Chinese already see Russia as their best friend.

The two countries offer each other much in terms of collective and collaborative security. And they are economically complementary. As a Chinese analyst bluntly said at a recent conference, "Russia is resource-rich, we are resource-poor; we are industrializing and Russia is de-industrializing." Dimitri Trenin sees Putin's rupture with Europe as final, with Russia now committing to a 'greater Asia.'

But this region will become China's 'sphere of influence.' A visitor to Vladivostok today would barely recognize it as Russian territory. Elite relations may be 'warm at the top', but social attitudes are 'cold at the bottom' along the dreary borderland. Despite the undoubted force of their entwined national mythologies, there is not much commercial trust or civic interaction other than the mute, one-way shuffle of Chinese goods across the customs posts. Russians and Chinese elites don't dream of each other; their money and their families have flown to the West.

A Tartar professor's private comment is stark: "Russia has only three things in common with China: a long border, a history of communism, and a shared enemy." America is the mirror into which both societies look for comparative identity. Russia's self-image is as a nuclear peer, defiant, moral and proud. China's reflection is of a noble empire reclaiming world leadership from a chaotic Washington.

But the official Sino-Russian paradigm allows no cross-examination. For all his quixotic Arctic bomber sorties, Putin surely realizes that although the US may undermine his personal rule, it cannot realistically threaten the integrity of his mighty nation. When he looks at China, the reverse is true. Putin is fighting fires on the Western front, dealing with the urgent, while the important looms distantly on his east. Given the Chinese and Russian power trajectories, any formal future alliance would, as Bismarck put it, have a rider and a horse.

But enough prognostication. The truth is, there is great uncertainty in this relationship, and the reason is simple. Russia is ruled by one man, and China increasingly so. The paradox of stability is that succession episodes in such concentrated political power structures can be very fraught.

"Should we expect another Ukraine if Nazarbayev leaves the post of president?," Putin ominously asked the Kazakhs last year. He could ask the same of his own demise. Things can change radically when a supreme leader steps down. Under new leaders, narratives can be suddenly altered at will, wordviews shattered. How many, after all, foresaw the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s, or Nixon's China opening, or the fall of the Berlin Wall? The superpower balance is uneasily fluid, and new powers and southern threats to the China-Russia link may emerge in time.

Xi may be right that the relationship is the world's most fateful, but that is because it is so unpredictable.

This piece was first published in the Lowy Interpreter http://www.lowyinterpreter.org

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 #18
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
May 15, 2015
The real meaning of Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow
The recent meeting of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in Moscow highlights the growing importance that Russia and China have for each other in re-shaping both the economic and geopolitical agenda in Eurasia.
By Larisa Smirnova
Larisa Smirnova is Analyst for Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and visiting professor at Xiamen University (China).

When Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Russia last week, most eyes focused on the most eye-catching part of the visit: Xi's and First Lady Peng Liyuan's honorary place at the traditional Red Square Victory Day parade, next to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Thus, the working part of the visit, which took place the day on May 8, remained overshadowed. However, it turns out that the core of Xi's visit to Russia was looking for more ways for economic cooperation, not so much for a political or military alliance.

Russia's Eurasian Economic Union meets China's New Silk Road

One of the two framework declarations signed during the visit was related to the economy. Russia and China pledged to cooperate, even if only in a generalized manner, on the realization of two potentially competing projects involving Russia and parts of the former Soviet Union: the Russia-initiated Eurasian Economic Union and the China-initiated New Silk Road initiative.

Vladimir Petrovsky, a researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences, at a pre-visit press briefing hosted by the think tank Russian International Affairs Council, predicted that if the declaration on The Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) - New Silk Road coordination were signed (as it eventually was), it would become "the main intrigue and the main sensation" of the Russia-China summit.

Previously, experts viewed potential confrontation between Russia and China in the post-Soviet space, especially in Central Asia, as a major risk for the two powers' bilateral relations. Famously, in an anecdote widespread in the Russia-China diplomatic and scholarly community, Russian diplomats would have told the Chinese that, "Central Asia is our lady," and asked them "not to dangle there." To which the Chinese reply apparently was: "He who treats the lady dances with the lady."

Russia and China have luckily evolved from this potentially offensive anecdotal definition of their relations with the independent states of Central Asia. Ever since China officially unveiled, on March 28, 2015, the blueprint of its "One Belt, One Road" strategy, an ambitious plan to more tightly connect Asian, European, and African continents through transport and infrastructure development in Eurasia, the region which includes Russia and Central Asia, terms such as "win-win," "mutual benefit," and "inclusiveness" have become a sine qua non part of the Chinese official jargon.

Signing of the joint declaration symbolizes that Russia, too, acquiesced to the inevitability of growing Chinese regional influence, and pledged to start a dialogue. According to the concluding terms of the declaration, the ultimate - although remote - result of their Eurasian cooperation could be the establishment of a "common economic space."

The choice of other countries on President Xi's Eurasian tour also demonstrates his search for establishing linkages between the Silk Road and EEU frameworks. His Russian visit was complemented by trips to Kazakhstan and Belarus, two other members of the Eurasian Economic Union. As Vladimir Petrovsky puts it, "Apparently, for Xi, the main item on the negotiations agenda is coordination between the Silk Road mega-project, Xi's baby, and Eurasian integration within the scope of the Eurasian Economic Union."

Steps to boost Russia-China bilateral trade

In the list of substantial bilateral agreements signed during the Xi-Putin summit, two joint declarations excluded, 93 percent are related to the economy. Counter-intuitive as it may seem to the audience used to natural resources as the main area of Russia-China cooperation, this time only 24 percent of agreements are natural resources-related.

The area of finance, banking and investment clearly stands out, accounting for 38 percent of all agreements, followed by R&D and high tech (21 percent), and transport and infrastructure (10 percent). The remaining 7 percent are related to media and information security.

High priority given to banking, finance, and investment is a reasonable policy to support the desired increase in bilateral trade volume. Russia and China have pledged to increase the volume of bilateral trade up to $200 billion in 2020, which will require an average increase of over 13 percent year-on-year for the next 6 years.

As Professor Xu Poling, an economic expert at China's Liaoning University explains, "The crux is that Russia and China lack industrial and mutual investment cooperation, which makes it difficult to significantly increase the trade volume alone." He calls financial cooperation, which involves credits from the Chinese banks and facilitation of investment mechanisms, "a major driver for deeper investment and industrial cooperation."

The agreements in the high-tech and R&D area demonstrate the attempts to boost Russia-China innovation cooperation. They involve plans to develop a heavy lift helicopter model, joint exploitation of GLONASS and BeiDou satellite navigation systems, and more advances on the Russian telecommunications market for the Chinese company Huawei, this time through cooperation with Russia's United Shipbuilding Corporation. Huawei is already an experienced player in the Russian market - its clients include Megafon, Russia's second-largest mobile phone operator, and the state company Russian Railways, which currently ranks among the top three largest transport companies in the world.

By means of increased high tech cooperation, Russia and China plan to restructure their bilateral trade, making it more active. Both countries estimate that increasing the share of high tech production in their exports can resolve the dilemmas of their development models. For Russia, this implies overcoming its current dependency on the extensive exports of natural resources and for China, its reliance on polluting and labor-intensive manufacturing.

Russia and China search for equal status in the geopolitical order

It is too simplified to view closer Russia-China relations simply through the lens of Russia's so-called "Asian Pivot." What this view implies is that Russia, facing Western economic sanctions and political isolation over its involvement in the Ukrainian crisis, was forced to rely on China as a more "understanding" partner.

In reality, what brings the two countries together is that both Russia and China have long felt uneasy about the traditional Western-centered international development model. In both countries' opinion, real or perceived, they have not been treated as real equals by the West, and they are struggling to change it.

For Russia, equal status is a natural right. Its approach, influenced by the Western egalitarian philosophy, promotes that equality of treatment should not need any justifications, such as a strong economic base or democratic government. Therefore, Russia, which did enjoy the status of a world-class power at least for a part of its history, is in the middle of an assertive political debate about its treatment by the West.

Russian leaders have repeatedly argued, and Putin reiterated it in the recently issued documentary "The President," that Russia ended the Cold War "voluntarily," not under Western pressure, realizing the flaws of the development model the Soviet Union had been promoting.

They expected that the subsequent fall of ideological barriers would result automatically in Russia's idyllic integration into the Western community of nations. Therefore, issues that went counter to such integration, such as NATO enlargement to Russia's borders and visa requirements for Russian citizens visiting Western countries, became stumbling blocks in Russia's relations with the West.

In China's view, equal status is a merited right. China is ready to make efforts to justify its equality mainly by underlining its economic power, as well as by improving the education of its population, promoting better social manners, and more recently, attempting to strengthen rule of law. In its political debate, China is cautious and reserved, behaving more like a "warm guy" (in Chinese, Nuǎn nán).

Although China's imperial history might constitute a magnificent myth deeply engraved in its societal soul, Deng Xiaoping's "reform and opening up" explicitly promoted that the "backwardness" of China should be admitted and that China should learn best practices from the West.

Subsequently, China maintained cooperative relations with international development institutions, such as the World Bank, looking for opportunities to gradually increase its presence and influence over them. Neither did China challenge the Western view of international development, according to which less developed nations need to adapt well-tested practices from more developed nations, even if it maintained the right to be selective in the process of adaptation of the international best practices to its own needs.

Despite these differences of methodology, both Russia and China arrived at the conclusion that, besides vertical ties with the West, they need to develop horizontal ties between themselves, as well as with other emerging countries and peripheral nations. Due to the relative lack of competitiveness of their economies, exclusive ties with the West left them with roles that are inferior to their ambitions and self-perceptions. In the case of Russia, it is the role of natural resources supplier, and in the case of China, that of cheap labor manufacturer.

The Ukrainian crisis had a catalyst effect on boosting Russia-China cooperation but did not change the existing structural framework. Russia's relative strengths, including basic science, military and dual usage technologies, are more competitive and likelier to find a niche in China than in the West.
For China, exploring the under-served markets of Eurasia is an opportunity to capitalize on what it now feels experienced about: development infrastructure, transport and ready-to-use civilian technologies. And once markets are open and opportunities become abundant, chances are that fresh ideas will develop along with deepened experience.

For the West, which is used to promoting diversity within its own societies and has enjoyed engaging in self-righteousness when it comes to less developed countries, it is high time to hear, not simply dismiss, these dissident voices.

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 #19
www.rt.com
May 16, 2015
'I have to work a lot harder' in Russia than at NSA - Edward Snowden

Whistleblower Edward Snowden says he has been working harder and doing more significant things while in exile in Russia than he did while being a contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA).

"The fact is I was getting paid an extraordinary amount of money for very little work [at the NSA] with very little in the way of qualifications," Snowden said via satellite link during an event at Stanford University on Friday.

In Russia, "that's changed significantly," the former NSA contractor, who revealed the agency's vast and controversial surveillance activities in the US and abroad, said.

"I have to work a lot harder to do the same thing. The difference is that, even though I've lost a lot, I have a tremendous sense of satisfaction," the whistleblower said, as cited by Business Insider.

However, he did not reveal exactly what he has been working on, saying that he is the type of person who believes in being judged on the final result.

Snowden also addressed the ethics of whistleblowing, reminding his audience that he never published a single document himself, but always worked alongside journalists.

The involvement of reporters also allowed the employment of a system of checks and balances while making the revelations, he said.

According to the whistleblower, there was no way for him to leak the files to the press anonymously as it could have led to a witch-hunt within the NSA, putting his former colleagues under threat.

"Whistleblowers are elected by circumstance. Nobody self-nominates to be a whistleblower because it's so painful. Your lives are destroyed whether you are right or wrong. This is not something people sign up for," he stressed.

Snowden added that he is neither a hero nor a traitor, but only a man, who reached a critical moment, after which he just couldn't remain silent.

"We all have a limit of injustice, of incivility, of inhumanity in our daily life that we can kind of accept and ignore. We turn our eyes away from the beggar on the street. We also have a breaking point and when people find that, they act," he explained.

"You have to have a greater commitment to justice than a fear of the law," Snowden added.

The comments came a week after a US federal appeals court ruled that the NSA's bulk collection of American citizens' telephone records was illegal.

In a unanimous decision, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York called the bulk phone records collection "unprecedented and unwarranted."

The ruling, which Snowden described as "extraordinarily encouraging," comes as Congress confronts a June 1 deadline to renew a section of the Patriot Act that allows the NSA's bulk data surveillance.

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 #20
Medium
https://medium.com
May 15, 2015
America's war of words with Russia is no laughing matter
By Dominic Basulto
Innovation blogger at The Washington Post and Big Think. Author of new iPad and Kindle travel guides to Sochi. http://t.co/y2E0raPj7I
[Graphics here https://medium.com/the-information-war-in-ukraine/america-s-war-of-words-with-russia-is-no-laughing-matter-683d1b3f923]

The positive message that the West once offered to Russia during the waning days of the Cold War-democracy, freedom, respect for human dignity-has been replaced by a starkly negative message that encourages confrontation rather than engagement. Instead of telling Russians how great things are in America, the new strategy seems to be telling Russians how terrible things are in their own country. In the lexicon of political campaigns, America is going negative.

As a result, for many in the West, Russia has become a cartoon evil empire. According to this logic, everything in Russia is crap, everywhere in Russia is cold and bleak, and every Russian-young or old-is either stupid or poor (but usually both). And anyone who would lead that type of nation must be an autocratic, authoritarian thug. Because, logic.

Take, for example, Louis C.K.'s standup comedy routine about Russia that just went viral this week. It's a 10-minute laugh fest about his miserable, nihilistic vacation to post-Soviet Russia. He starts off by commenting on how stupid the Russians were for building Moscow in the middle of a forest, and then proceeds to reel off a litany of things that are depressing about Russia-mysterious waiters that sell you black market Coca-Cola, nasty little urchins that roam the streets at night and details about the physically daunting layout of Moscow (including super-wide thoroughfares to make sure missiles can get to and from Red Square and subway stations that seem to descend endlessly to an underworld below).

Now, take a deep breath and ask yourself the following question: If a Russian comedian were to deliver this same kind of comic routine about America, wouldn't it immediately be hailed as an example of the hate-filled propaganda speech filling Russian TV airwaves these days?

In general, the West seems to be lost in a sort of time warp, never having really adjusted to the dissolution of the old Soviet Union. The same stock characters and ideas that were popular 25 years ago during the peak of the Cold War, are now reappearing as part of an undeclared pop culture-fueled propaganda war with Russia.

Look no further than the character of Olya Povlatsky on "Saturday Night Live"-a bitter, dirt-poor Russian woman (or is she Ukrainian?) who complains about everything in modern Russia. She's wickedly funny, but she's also a stock character out of the Cold War era, when Russians queued up for life's essentials just about every day.

Not convinced about that time warp issue? Check out Louis C.K.'s comic routine-he suggests that the past 25 years in Russia have essentially been one, unbroken chain of misery. Getting the exact date right is not even important because Russia, the Soviet Union, what's the difference?

"But anyway, I went to Russia in 19-, no, 20-no, when the to f**k was it?-yes, 1994. I went to Russia. It has just become Russia again. It was the Soviet Union until really that year, everything started to crash down."

Sadly, the people who should be leading the charge in America's "information war" with Russia-politicians, diplomats, professors and think tank experts-have largely been co-opted by America's pop culture creative class-filmakers, actors, musicians and, yes, comedians such as Jon Stewart, John Oliver and Stephen Colbert. Bad jokes about Russia and funny "Simpsons" characters have replaced any type of meaningful engagement with Russia.

Want to do a withering critique of Russian state-owned TV propaganda? There's no need to do a thorough academic study-if you're the New York Times, just sign up comic writer Gary Shteyngart and pay him to sit in front of multiple TVs watching Russian news and entertainment for a week in a swank Manhattan hotel. And then give the piece an absurd title that's just the right mix of sarcasm, irony and humor: "Out of my mouth comes unimpeachable manly truth."

Want to make a statement about Russia's human rights violations? Sign up HBO to make a documentary about Pussy Riot. Or, better yet, get Madonna to adopt the girls of Pussy Riot as a new cultural signifier of her hipness and commitment to human rights.

At some point, the West stopped trying to appeal to the real, everyday people in Russia with a positive message of hope. Instead, it focused on trying to appeal to a very slender cross-section of Russia's English-speaking, Western-educated creative class, which it believes is the best wedge to push Putin out of power. The new focus, apparently, is convincing this top 1 percent of Russians that their nation has become a global laughingstock.

As a result, the West celebrates people like Garry Kasparov, someone who's basically irrelevant in Russia these days. But since he's willing to dish out the West's negative message in a big way, he's embraced on American newspaper op-ed pages.

Who did the New York Times sign up to do a withering op-ed critique of Russia just in time for Victory Day (one of the most important days of the year for Russians, just behind New Year's and March 8th)? That's right, acclaimed Russian writer Mikhail Shishkin, who wrote a predictably depressing piece about the various ways that Russia's leaders continue to abuse their people and spew hatred abroad:

"It is impossible to breathe in a country where the air is permeated with hatred. Much hatred has always been followed in history by much blood. What awaits my country? Transformation into a gigantic version of Ukraine's eastern Donbass region?

"Once again, the dictatorship is calling on its subjects to defend the homeland, mercilessly exploiting the propaganda of victory in the Great Patriotic War. Russia's rulers have stolen my people's oil, stolen their elections, stolen their country. And stolen their victory."

Want to really get inside the heads of Russian intellectuals? Tell them that their proud heritage of having the world's greatest literature is going down the tubes, as Owen Matthews recently wrote for Foreign Policy in his piece "Is Russian Literature Dead?" The demise of Russian literature is all part of an overall cultural rot in Russia, he implies.

Again, more negative messaging, because that's what works. Just ask any political consultant.

However, a lot has changed since the old days of the Cold War, something the West seems to have forgotten. At the end of the day, the reason why the West may lose the "information war" (and some would say, the "disinformation war") with Russia is because it's still stuck in the 1980s Cold War era mindset. It's tone-deaf to new changes and attitudes emerging in Russia. It can't see the ways in which a global, multilateral world is changing. And, most importantly, the messaging from the West has just become so negative. You simply can't win by going negative over and over again for 25 years.

Ever wonder why folks like Vladimir Putin come to power in Russia? It's hard not to see how more than a decade of being made the butt of Western jokes gets a bit stale. It's simply impossible for so much bad news and misery to come out of a single country on such a consistent basis.

And, as Louis C.K. would say, that's all I got.

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#21
Wall Street Journal
May 16, 2015
Book Review
Waging Peace
Churchill requested plans for a British-American attack on Russia code-named "Operation Unthinkable."
By STEPHEN A. SCHUKER
Mr. Schuker is a professor of history at the University of Virginia.

POTSDAM
By Michael Neiberg
Basic, 310 pages, $29.99

The leaders of the Allied powers met three times during World War II, at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam. The last conference stretched over 17 days in July and August 1945, longer than the first two put together. Harry Truman had replaced Franklin Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill was booted out of office by British voters in the middle of the proceedings. Of the original principals, only Joseph Stalin remained.

Although some observers consider Potsdam the opening salvo in the Cold War, the Russians and Americans got along tolerably well. The assembled statesmen had to address hot spots all over Europe, but three issues stood out. Would Stalin keep the promise he had made at Yalta to enter the war against Japan? Would Truman tolerate the Soviet dominance of Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe, as Roosevelt had intimated he would? And on what basis would the powers govern their respective zones in Germany and coordinate policies in the Allied Control Council? Michael Neiberg, a professor of strategy at the Army War College, tackles those questions in "Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe" by tracing American policy from the moment when Roosevelt died. The story of Potsdam is more than a twice-told tale. Marc Trachtenberg and Wilson Miscamble, among other historians, have already exploited the American sources. But Mr. Neiberg adds some striking anecdotes (alas, not always accurate) to produce an easily digestible page-turner.

The confusion in American foreign policy on V-E day, when Germany surrendered, makes for high drama. Roosevelt knew enough medicine to realize in 1944 that he would never survive a fourth term. Nevertheless, in order to keep the Dixiecrat and Northern liberal wings of his party together, he passed over the obvious claimants to choose an obscure border-state senator with a good civil-rights record as his running mate. Roosevelt barely knew Truman. After the election he told the new vice president nothing about public affairs. Moreover, as Roosevelt's congestive heart failure worsened, he lacked the energy to forge a consensus among his feuding subordinates. When he died in April 1945, the State, War and Treasury departments had each formulated postwar plans, yet the government as a whole had agreed on none. Truman felt obliged to appear decisive but initially had no idea how to bring order out of chaos.

Like contenders for the soul of Faust, both accommodationists and proponents of a tougher stance toward Russia claimed to know what Roosevelt would have wanted. At first Truman inclined to heed Ambassador Averell Harriman and the State Department professionals who pushed for confrontation. The hard-liners fretted particularly about the post-liberation Polish regime, whose makeup the Yalta Protocol had left deliberately ambiguous. Churchill also harassed the novice president with daily thunderbolts, proposing that American troops take Prague and even Berlin and later that they not withdraw to predetermined zonal boundaries in the Reich. After one month in office, however, Truman reversed field. He fell increasingly under the sway of Joseph Davies, a Democratic Party rainmaker who had served as ambassador to Moscow in the 1930s and who often entertained Soviet bigwigs on his yacht. Ultimately, Truman decided to dispatch Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's fixer, to patch things up with Moscow and to send Davies to London to remind Churchill who called the tune.

Mr. Neiberg covers these subjects, although not with the thoroughness he might have had he cast a wider research net. Truman instructed Hopkins to assure Stalin that the U.S. had no interest in Eastern Europe except insofar as it bore upon world peace. Nevertheless, "Uncle Joe should make some sort of gesture" toward free elections, precisely as a "smart political boss" like Tom Pendergast of St. Louis would do. On this basis Hopkins restored good relations with Stalin. A coalition government of sorts took office in Warsaw.

Meanwhile, Davies raged at Churchill, wondering openly whether the British leader felt he had "bet on the wrong horse" by allying with the Kremlin instead of Hitler. Unbeknownst to Davies (and evidently even to Mr. Neiberg), Churchill had just directed his chiefs of staff to draw up contingency plans ("Operation Unthinkable") for a British-American attack on Russia, possibly enlisting reconstituted German divisions. Field Marshal Alan Brooke advised that, given the balance of forces, the operation was indeed unthinkable. This incident, kept secret for half a century, illustrates how close the exhausted prime minister had come to a nervous breakdown at war's end. By the time Churchill delivered his "iron curtain" speech in 1946, a revivified Anglo-American alliance had reached calmer waters. At Potsdam, however, Truman cast himself as a mediator between Stalin and Churchill and declined to serve as cats-paw for the faltering British Empire.

By the time the Potsdam conference convened, some problems had solved themselves. Stalin eagerly prepared to enter the Far Eastern conflict, in order to regain the territory lost by his country in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese war. Mindful of the heavy casualties that would result from invading Japan, President Truman nonetheless deemed Russian intervention desirable. As the conference began, the U.S. Army detonated the first atomic device in New Mexico. At this juncture, however, the atomic bomb did not greatly influence the balance of power. Churchill enthused that the West could "just blot out" Moscow or Kiev unless the Soviets came to heel. More sober analysts understood that employing the bomb as a diplomatic weapon presupposed the creation of a stockpile and a delivery system. Mr. Neiberg attributes to Stalin the assertion, following the Hiroshima bombing, that a third world war had become inevitable. That quotation is surely apocryphal. Elsewhere the Soviet dictator maintained realistically that boots on the ground mattered most.

Talk of dismembering Germany had in the meantime evaporated. How to restore coal production and transport facilities essential for the Continent's economic survival emerged as the salient European issue. Soviet forces had created a fait accompli in Poland, bolstering a sympathetic Warsaw government, extending the country's western boundary to the Oder and Western Neisse, and sending millions of ethnic Germans fleeing. The British expressed measured dismay at this unilateral land grab, but the Comintern apparatchiki who spoke for Poland at Potsdam proved quite as chauvinistic as the exile grandees whom they replaced.

Secretary of State James Byrnes, the commanding presence of the conference, conjured an imaginative arrangement for governance of Germany. The American public was eager to wind down the country's European commitments; Truman and Byrnes wished above all to avoid funneling American supplies into Germany at one end while the Russians hauled off assets from the other. Hence Byrnes proposed a package deal to limit potential conflict. Each power would exercise predominance and take reparations from its own zone; the Western allies would deliver 10% of dismantled industrial equipment to the Soviet zone gratis and an additional 15% in return for food. Wrangles over subsidizing the German economy did much to exacerbate the Cold War, once it began in 1946-47. Still, for the moment, all subscribed to the theoretical principle of administering Germany as an economic whole.

Unfortunately, Mr. Neiberg overlooks recently released Russian documents, many available in translation. The Russians at Potsdam remain shadows on the wall. Mr. Neiberg rehearses the familiar Cold War dictum that Stalin came to Potsdam "not to make deals, but to settle scores." Yet it now appears that Stalin may not have intended to initially Sovietize the countries in Moscow's orbit but rather hoped to install multi-party systems, albeit with the Communist Party transmitting friendly guidance from above. The Soviet apparatus was far from monolithic, although few Westerners perceived this in real time. Some Moscow ideologues took a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary line; more practical officials sought to maximize the resources for domestic reconstruction, which in turn required tactical compromise abroad. Soviet decision-making proved almost as convoluted as the parallel process in the West. Kremlinologists would spend the next two generations trying to figure it out.


 

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 #22
Russia Without BS
http://nobsrussia.com/
May 16, 2015
Yes, Ukraine HAS perished
By Jim Kovpak
James Kovpak is a journalist and amateur historian based in Moscow.

I'm sorry to say that it seems Poroshenko approved the recent, very Russia-like laws I've been writing about for the past month or so. Recently, due to my trip to Ukraine, I was considering working there for an extended period of time. Now that is out of the question. I will not live or spend money in a country which actually provides me less freedom than Putin's Russia.

Moreover, I will no longer write any sort of defense of Ukraine against Russian propaganda on this blog. I lost dozens of leftist friends because I defended Ukraine against allegations that its government is fascist. In general I would say I was standing up for the people of Ukraine and not its government, but at times the lines may blur. And while I was standing up for the truth, I am now embarrassed to see that this corrupt government is trying to protect the reputation of an organization that was indisputably fascist and responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Poles and Jews. This is not something I can simply turn a blind eye to. More over, I cannot throw up my hands and say "But Russia is worse!" For one thing, that would be whataboutery. For another thing, Russia is not worse in this sense. Both states use force of law to protect and support far right-wing groups. Russia also never went as far as Ukraine in legislating historical narratives.

As far as I am concerned, Ukraine is dead to me. It is no different from Russia, its patriots no different from vatniks. Whatever Ukrainian heritage I have is utterly insignificant to me at this point. I have nothing in common with your people as I have nothing in common with the Russians, and you know what? I'm fucking proud that I'm not like you. I'm proud that in my society, there are still those who appreciate critical thinking, and who value the importance of self-criticism when it comes to a nation's history and culture. Countries like the United Kingdom and the United States achieved their power because they could self-criticize and change. Perhaps people like me have always been a minority in these far more successful countries, but over years of struggle we have made lasting gains and our societies are better for it.

This is nothing like the backwater that is Eastern Europe, where losers and thugs are transformed into heroes who are beyond the slightest criticisms. You say Russia has her cults of personality? And Ukraine doesn't? And Ukraine also doesn't have endless stories of how victimized we've supposedly been for centuries, victimized but never complicit? Please, bud' fucking laska, tell me the real difference between Russia and Ukraine:

-Religious fanaticism and religious interference in society? Check! Both counts.

-Rewriting of history to create mythical narratives? Check and check!

-Use of state power to enforce narratives and censorship? Double check!

-Overly concerned about people who have been dead for decades while comparatively apathetic towards the needs of people living today, if only because it would keep you from engaging in your favorite national hobby of stealing shit? CHECK!

-Conspiracy theories and delusions of persecution? Check, but at least the Russian version, where the world is supposedly controlled by the US, is at least plausible. The Ukrainian version of this conspiracy theory posits that the world is run by a country with an economy roughly equivalent to that of Italy.

-Preference of ignoring the suffering of your own people to attack your rival?

-Racism, sexism, homophobia, and a general distaste for tolerance without knowing what that even means? CHECK, CHECK!

Now some apologist at this point will waddle in here and say, "But Ukraine has had democratic elections!" Well yes, a few times. One of those times they ended up with Yanukovych, and recently they ended up with a parliament and president which passed incredibly undemocratic laws with no debate and not transparency. What does it matter if you have free and fair elections if you just end up electing a government that does the kind of thing Putin and his Duma would do? I say "would," because as I have said dozens of times and will keep saying, Russia's clown college of a legislative body actually pulled back from the brink when it came to a very similar law banning historical inquiry.

I don't care about your suffering or what Russia does to you anymore. You brought it on yourselves because deep down, you carry the same backward, primitive mentality that drives Putin's regime. Your pathetic struggle to distance yourself from that is merely changing superficial features while internally you are the same. There is no point in people like me sticking up for you because if you are by some miracle successful in your war, or more likely Russia collapses and is unable to continue, you will claim all the credit for yourself, talking about what great kozak warriors you still are.

Upset? Tough shit. I'm treating Ukraine no better than I treat Russia and that's clearly the way the former wants it. When Russians decided to pretend everything they were saying about Putin for the past 6-7 years never happened and embraced their master because he "gave" them the Crimea, I welcomed the inevitable collapse of Russia in spite of the suffering it would surely bring, all because of one concept, that the price of stupidity should ever be high. If being stupid is costly, people will have more of a disincentive to engage in stupid actions. This holds just as true for Ukraine as it does for any country, including the United States I might add. But at least in the latter I can say and publish what I want and I don't have someone forcing me to pretend as though the Confederacy was this great, freedom-loving movement fighting a second American revolution.

Thus, Ukraine, when you suffer further at the hands of Russia and your own oligarchs who still continue to make deals and conduct business with your enemy, know that this is the price of stupidity. This is the price of abandoning critical thought for myth, revised history, and a massive victim complex. If or when you finally learn from your mistakes is of no concern for me.

I call on all Russia watchers who support Ukraine on the basis of democracy and human rights to demonstrate their sincerity towards those values, lest you provide tons of grist for Moscow's propaganda mills. Show both sides what it means to stand on principles. Many of us, either sooner or later gave Ukraine the benefit of the doubt. Some saw a bright shining light, some more realistic like me saw a glimmer in the darkness. But now, and for the foreseeable future, that light has gone out, and Ukraine is as mired in darkness as Putin's Tsardom. Anyone who continues to support the former has no rational defense for opposing the latter.

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 #23
Ukraine Today
http://uatoday.tv
May 15, 2015
Injured Ukrainian soldiers say public support is decreasing

After more than a year of fighting Russian-backed militants in the east of the country, Ukrainians appear to be growing weary of the conflict.

At this military hospital in Ukrainian capital Kyiv volunteers have appealed to the public to visit wounded soldiers. They say they whereas a year ago the troops could count on a steady stream of visitors and well-wishers, today the corridors are largely empty save for medical personnel and patients.

Volunteer Olena Nevzorova: "Unfortunately less people are coming now. It's true there are less soldiers arriving at the hospital in comparison to autumn or winter but still we have a big hosptial here and many of the soldiers really do need our support but unfortunately not all of them are getting the attention they need."

Vadim is one of the many Ukrainian soldiers in the hospital. He was wounded whilst defending the Donetsk airport. Shrapnel got into his legs and his body. He's already been in the hospital for six months. He says when he was first transfered to Kyiv he was amazed by the amount of volunteers who were ready to help.

These days he says the only people around are a handful of the most dedicated.

Vadim Vidzhyb: "The war can be seen in terms of volunteers and people who aren't indifferent. We aren't complaining about our hospital treatment but on top of that, medicines, wheelchairs, clothes, even a clean change of shirt literally comes from volunteers."

Elsewhere in the hospital this volunteer named Kateryna shows us a fridge which six months ago was filled to bursting but now lies empty because volunteer donations have dried up.

Kateryna says: "We don't have enough of any of the things men need: meat, sausage, cheese, sugar, coffee, cigarettes, mobile phone top-ups, and everyday items like razor blades, toothbrushes, toilet paper".

With summer approaching volunteers say they desperately need light clothes for the soldiers. But what they soldiers say they want most of all is to know that their sacrafices are worthwhile.

Vadim explained it like this: "For us its important to understand that we aren't fighting in vain and that there are people who care. Kids come to us from schools, adults come, men and women. And we see that these people are happy that we're fighting. If someone comes and this gives them cause to think, if it makes them remember that there's a war going on then that's already something good. That's the main thing."

The hosptial provides wounded soldiers with medical care but says that when it comes to moral support that's down to the volunteers and the Ukrainian public.

But the number of people visiting soldiers has dropped significantly over the past year and even though fighting in east Ukraine has clamed, new casualties are still coming in every week.

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 #24
Sputnik
May 17, 2015
Lviv Theater Performers Protest Mass Conscription Into Ukrainian Army

Artists of the Lviv National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet have issued an appeal protesting performers' mass conscription into the Ukrainian army.

In an appeal published on their official Facebook page, the theater's artists have reported that nearly three dozen performers have received draft notices, including members of the orchestra, choir singers, opera and ballet soloists, Honored Artists and even a People's Artist of Ukraine.

The appeal reads: "We the artists are dumbfounded by such a massive intake of qualified cadre from our theater. We stress that for our theater, this far-reaching mobilization will ultimately result in the cancelation of many of our performances, and may lead to the complete breakdown of the theater's work." The appeal also points out the pointlessness of conscripting artists who have spent between 12-16 years on their education and countless years more working in their field.

Noting that their country has not officially declared a national mobilization for war, the appeal protested that "it's as if someone among our officials is deliberately trying to stamp out Ukraine's educational artistic traditions. It would be interesting to know how many sons of our parliamentarians and civil servants have been called up by the Armed Forces of Ukraine."

The artists' appeal, which concluded with a call for peace in Ukraine, has led to a comment war inside Facebook.

Those supporting the draft have said that those who have been called up should go and serve, no questions asked. Others, however, expressed their support. One user argued that "I think it's not about 'someone among our officials trying to stamp out Ukraine's educational artistic traditions,'  but about the deliberate destruction of our country in all areas where officials can reach." Others asked what good theater performers would do on the battlefield. "Well, a ballet dancer will be able to run, given that he is in good shape, but he won't run far before being met with a bullet," a user noted. "This is just idiocy," he added.

The fifth wave of Ukraine's mobilization campaign began on April 27, aimed at boosting the Armed Forces' combat capabilities amid the Donbass conflict. A decree issued by President Petro Poroshenko now makes even female doctors eligible for military service.

Earlier this month, German newspaper Handelsblatt reported that over 70 percent of western Ukraine's working age population has fled the country to avoid the draft, with a similar situation facing eastern Ukraine.

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 #25
www.thedailybeast.com
May 17, 2015
New Putin Invasion Coming This Summer
Moscow says it's sticking to a ceasefire agreement. Meanwhile, it's piling up troops and weapons for something that doesn't look so peaceful.
By Michael Weiss and James Miller
Michael Weiss is a fellow at the Institute of Modern Russia where he edits The Interpreter, an online translation journal. He is a columnist for Foreign Policy and NOW Lebanon. James Miller is the managing editor of The Interpreter where he reports on Russia and Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine may have faded largely from international headlines, but Vladimir Putin's drip-drip invasion continues. In the last two weeks, forensic evidence, some of which has been reported by monitor organizations and senior Western diplomats, the rest corroborated by eyewitness photography and video, only confirms what the U.S. fears most: A summer offensive is inevitable.

On May 5, the Ukrainian government released new data which says that they have lost 28 towns to Russian-backed separatists since February 18. That was the day the strategic town of Debaltsevo, which guarded a key highway to separatist-controlled regions, slipped from Ukraine's control. The map of separatist territory is as alarming as it is illustrative, especially when it is combined with the daily reports of ceasefire violations and fighting coming out of both the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and Kiev.

On May 6, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko addressed the National Security and Defense Council and warned that Russia has 50,000 troops on the border and its proxies have more than 40,000 fighters inside the country. That's not only a combined 50% increase in possible invaders over July of last year, the month which proceeded the "Russian invasion" on the Ukrainian mainland. It's more than enough soldiers to invade and gobble up a significant amount of Ukrainian territory.

"There is a convincing evidence that Ukraine strictly complies with the Minsk [ceasefire] agreements and militants constantly violate them," Poroshenko noted. Separatists do not allow international observers to verify their withdrawal of heavy weaponry. "Militants regularly shoot Ukrainian positions, engage in reconnaissance and subversive activity and provoke armed confrontations in order to disrupt peaceful settlement of the conflict."

One day later, May 7, the OSCE witnessed a significant amount of fighting both near Donetsk and around a town called Shirokino, 20 kilometers east of Mariupol-part of a trend of heavier fighting which started in late April. The OSCE also reported that one of their surveillance drones was jammed for 10 minutes while attempting to monitor the movement of separatist tanks near Donetsk, in violation of the 50-kilometer demarcation line agreed upon by both sides.

Washington may do nothing if the ceasefire agreement is turned to toilet paper. And that's as good as an engraved invitation for Putin to proceed as he'd already planned to anyway.

While the OSCE reports that it has seen an increase of heavy weaponry within the demarcation line for weeks, Ukraine maintains that it is only returning fire and it is the Russian-backed separatists who are on the offensive. On May 8, the day after the OSCE's unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was jammed, the OSCE witnessed three Ukrainian tanks in government-controlled territory-an admitted violation of the negotiated ceasefire. That same day the OSCE witnessed 30 separatist tanks moving toward the front lines within the demarcation line-10 times more than the Ukrainian government was deploying. The OSCE also observed a testing ground for advanced weaponry-proof, according to the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, of "Russia's train and equip program in plain sight."

Each day since has provided more evidence that the Minsk agreement is little more than a piece of paper. For weeks the OSCE, NATO, and citizens of eastern Ukraine brave enough to snap pictures and video have been warning that a large amount of heavy Russian armor and artillery has been headed back to the front lines. The separatist leadership has maintained that this equipment was only moving around to prepare for military parades on Saturday, May 9, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Nazi Germany's capitulation to the Soviet Union in World War II. While the movement of this equipment would be a violation of the Minsk agreement whatever the floated reason, since the parades ended the weaponry hasn't been moved back beyond the demarcation line.

It's not just the amount of firepower now in separatists' hands that is alarming observers. It's also the kind of weaponry-specifically, the Strela-10 anti-aircraft missile system.

The Strela-10 is designed to supply close support to troops and vehicles near the front line of fighting. It's meant to shoot down fast-moving, low-flying aircraft such as helicopters or non-stealth jets. There is significant evidence that the Russian military regularly includes the Strela-10 in important convoys because it can protect against immediate air threats while longer-range weapons (such as the Buk system, which shot down a MH17 passenger jet in 2014) can perform the same function from further afield. In fact, the first time the Russian-backed fighters were ever seen using T-72 tanks, Strela-10s were filmed escorting the vehicles from a border crossing in Lugansk just seven days before the MH17 was immolated. There are no documented cases of the Strela-10 system having been captured by Russian-backed separatists, and the T-72 has not been used by the Ukrainian military in this conflict.

On May 2, three Strela-10s were spotted escorting a convoy of two T-64B tanks, three BMP-2s, three BTR-80s, three 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled howitzers, three BM-21 Grad MLRS, three trucks towing artillery pieces, perhaps 2A65 152mm howitzers, and several other military trucks and fuel tankers through Lugansk. On May 5 Strelas were seen parading through Donetsk, escorting a similar convoy. But if they were only in Donetsk for the May 9 parade, it's curious that a similar convoy was spotted by the OSCE within the line of demarcation near Donetsk on May 10, suggesting that the weapons have not returned to their holding areas as specified in the Minsk protocol.

Could these weapons systems have been mobilized just to deter Ukraine and fortify standing separatist positions? Well, the Minsk protocol was designed to forestall any such scenario and explicitly called for de-escalation rather than retrenchment. Also, Western military officials seem to think the presence of this materiel has another purpose altogether. In late April, NATO Supreme Commander and U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove warned that the Russian military had taken advantage of the ceasefire to train and equip the separatists and to "reset and reposition" their forces. Nor were these mere training exercises. "Many of their [the Russians'] actions are consistent with preparations for another offensive," Breedlove said, adding that Russia never rattles its saber without the attendant follow-through. Breedlove also suggested that Russia had further integrated its own military's "[c]ommand-and-control, air defense, support to artillery...making a more coherent, organized force out of the separatists." Then, on May 11, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also warned that the separatists are now so well equipped that they could launch an all-out offensive against the Ukrainian military on little notice and without direct military assistance. Again, if all this was just to hold the line, then why agree to Minsk in the first place, when that protocol was designed to do just that without the benefit of tanks or APCs?

There's the added alarm of what the separatist leadership itself says about its imminent plans. On April 23, Vice News broadcast an interview with Alexander Zakharchenko, the self-declared head of the "Donetsk People's Republic." Asked if he saw the Minsk agreement holding, Zakharchenko was unambiguous: He did not want it to hold.

He categorically rejected one of the main planks of that diplomatic settlement-that the Donbass remain part of Ukrainian territory. "Do you suggest we give up, so our territory can fall into Ukraine's hands?" he told Vice News. "So that they can put us back into the stalls, like we are some kind of cattle? So that they can drag us to join the EU, to be living off American handouts? We do not want that. We declared that we want to be friends with Russia and that's what we are doing. That's what the majority of the local population want. At least 95 percent."

Zakharchenko, who wants to see the return of the Soviet Union, mooted the possibility of other conducting "referenda" to certify their breakaway status from Ukraine.

"Aside from Zakharchenko's belligerent rhetoric," a senior Western diplomat told The Daily Beast, "the most worrisome evidence is the continued active tempo of Russian training activities with the separatist armies, and the presence of advanced Russian surface-to-air missile systems near the contact line in blatant violation of the Minsk agreement."

As ever, the Putinists command one side to abide by a compact they never had any intention of honoring themselves. Only now, they've managed to embarrassingly snare the State Department into defending their own arguing position. While John Kerry was breaking bread (and potatoes) with Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the Russian president's personal residence in Sochi last week, Poroshenko made an ambiguous statement about plans to regain Donetsk International Airport, once the cynosure for some of the fiercest fighting the war as yet seen and some of the bravest Ukrainian resistance to better-armed separatists.

"I have no doubt," Poroshenko said at the premiere of Airport, a new documentary about the battle for that installation, "we will free the airport, because it is our land. And we will rebuild the airport."

Kerry was in Russia on his first state visit since 2013, and clearly there to ask for various favors from a government the United States has sanctioned yet nevertheless believes it still needs to resolves various foreign crises from Syria to Iran and Ukraine. So the opportunity to scandalize America's top diplomat-something of a contact sport in Russia these days-was too good for the Kremlin-owned press to pass up. Asked by the state-owned media about Poroshenko's provocative although nebulous pledge, Kerry replied as the media hoped he might by saying that he hadn't seen the Ukrainian president's remarks but would warn him to "think twice" before kickstarting any military operation.

The U.S. embassy in Moscow tried to downplay the inevitable awkwardness this created between two allies, noting, for instance, that Poroshenko has elsewhere ruled out taking back any of the Donbass by force. But Moscow just sat back and enjoyed the squirming. Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the UN, said, "It's an important thing that Kerry made this statement and that he said the U.S. believed it was crucial to observe the accords reached in Minsk on February 12," neglecting of course to mention how his own government has "observed" those accords.

The Ukrainians, meanwhile, were left furious at Kerry for kowtowing to the Kremlin (again) and now worry that the Obama administration has gone out of its way to telegraph its own disposition should fighting indeed escalate in the coming weeks. Kerry went so far as depict the Ukraine crisis as the result of bilateral culpability: "Whoever has instigated" war, he said, should stop, as it has gone on too long already. He also floated the possibility of U.S. sanctions relief on Russia "if and when Minsk is fully implemented." Washington, it is feared in Kiev, will do nothing if Minsk is turned to toilet paper. And that's as good as an engraved invitation for Putin to proceed as he'd already planned to anyway.

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#26
Washington Times
May 15, 2015
If you want to arm Ukraine, arm it with economic progress
By L. Todd Wood
L. Todd Wood, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, flew special operations helicopters supporting SEAL Team 6, Delta Force and others. After leaving the military, he pursed his other passion, finance, and later, writing. The first of his many thrillers is "Currency." Todd is a contributor to Fox Business, Moscow Times, the New York Post, the National Review.

In a rare moment of agreement with the Obama administration, I have never been in the camp that says the United States should overtly provide offensive arms to the Ukrainian government in its fight with Russia. To me, this is just not a well thought-out strategy. As someone who has visited Russia often, America arming Ukraine will just play into Russian President Vladimir Putin's strategy of making the United States the enemy. This is not America's fight; although, we can assists in other ways, smarter ways, since rightly, the American government has decided that a free Ukraine is in the long-term interests of the United States.

I think Mr. Putin wants America to arm the Ukrainians. Russian media thrives on this stuff and therefore the people will believe, even more than they already do, that America is the enemy. The Ukrainian conflict is not all about taking territory in the East and keeping Ukraine from NATO and the European Union. It is also about keeping Mr. Putin and his minions in power. This conflict was started by the Kremlin for a reason. If you really look at what is happening in Russia, the scenario is telling.

There is an argument to be made that Mr. Putin came to power on the back of the conflict in Chechnya, which he won decisively and brutally. Again, the Chechen conflict had its purpose. Russians longed for a strongman that could win the war and give them certainty, make them proud of Russian strength. Sound familiar? It's familiar because it is.

Do you remember what happened in Moscow only a few years ago? Hundreds of thousands of people marched and demonstrated against the Putin regime. This was not acceptable to the Kremlin. Something had to be done about this. Today this is not only impossible because you would be arrested, it is impossible because the thinking among the Russian people has changed. Mr. Putin has won the propaganda battle and Russians have bought it hook, line and sinker.

Mr. Putin is using the same playbook in Ukraine. He is giving the Russian people something to feel proud about. He is showing strong leadership. He is pushing all the right buttons. If America arms Ukraine, all we will be doing is strengthening Mr. Putin's grip on power. That is a simple fact. We cannot provide enough weapons to defeat Russians in their own back yard. That goal is nonsense. All we will do is push the world toward World War III.

So what should America do? Nothing? That's not what I am saying. We are supposed to be an enlightened, smart people. So why not be really smart and cunning about this problem? The best way to help Ukraine is to arm them not with weapons, but with economic progress. This is what scares the Kremlin the most, a prosperous Ukraine associated with the West.

Correctly, the International Monetary Fund is attempting to force Ukraine internally to change its corrupt system. This is the only way forward, to break the Soviet legacy of bribes and graft. The West should be firm in this goal and continue along this path. If Ukraine wants to continue along the Soviet model, then let them go. We can't save them. That model is not worth spending American blood and treasure. We simply can't afford that conflict. A corrupt Ukraine will implode eventually anyway and fit right in with the Russian system. So change is the only way forward.

The West needs to be much smarter and more effective in the information warfare campaign. We have Madison Avenue for goodness sake. Get creative. Tell the story of freedom, not just to Ukraine but to Russia as well. We used to do this - why not now? Reinvigorate the Voice of America in the Internet age. Put Silicon Valley on the job. As Patton said, "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."

Regarding arms, again, America should be much smarter. There are plenty of greedy arms dealers in the world. Let someone else sell them weapons. Find a different way. It would be stupid to get overtly involved.

The Ukrainian government is considering a law to allow foreign fighters in its military. Bravo! There is more than one way to skin this cat. Mercenaries anyone?

In closing, I'll just add this one suggestion. Consider how you would feel if Russia were actively arming Mexico in a bid to reclaim former Mexican territory in the United States. I'm not saying that is a correct view, but that is the way Russians feel internally. Think about it.

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 #27
Forbes.com
May 11, 2015
Ukraine Fight Flares Again: U.S. Should Keep Arms And Troops At Home
By Doug Bandow
Senior fellow at the Cato Institute

The ceasefire in eastern Ukraine is under strain as Kiev presses the West for more financial and military aid. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko warns that full-scale war could explode "at any moment." Yet many of his country's young men are avoiding conscription into the no-win conflict. Americans' sympathies should go to both Ukrainians and Russians suffering in Vladimir Putin's deadly geopolitical games, but Washington should stay out of the battle.

A century ago Europe was enveloped in death and destruction. The "Great War" raged, killing millions, ravaging nations, impoverishing peoples, and wrecking empires. Out of that conflict came the loosening of Russia's control over multitude subject peoples, including in Ukraine. The Bolsheviks soon reversed the process, but their Soviet-Russian empire disintegrated in 1991. Again Kiev escaped outside domination, this time hopefully permanently.

Independent Ukraine suffered mightily from internal divisions and poor governance. Politics was autocratic, abusive "oligarchs" dominated the largely unreformed economy. The country straddled the divide between Europe and Russia, with the Ukrainian people wanting greater Western integration without abandoning Russian ties. A strong majority rejected NATO membership, which Moscow would see as hostile.

Kiev now effectively is a Russian enemy, despite continuing cross-border ties. Putin obviously bears immediate responsibility, having seized Crimea and promoted separatist conflict in the Donbas. However, the West did much to antagonize someone who, though a one-time KGB officer, appeared to bear America no special animus when the U.S.S.R. collapsed. Moreover, Putin accepted Ukraine even when ruled by Russian antagonist Viktor Yushchenko, since Kiev did not join the Western bloc.

But Washington and Brussels consistently disregarded Russian security interests. The allies expanded NATO up to Russia's borders; dismembered Serbia, historically linked to Russia; attempted to prevent Moscow's participation in the post-war Kosovo settlement; pushed Ukraine to choose between East and West economically; and encouraged the ouster of an elected pro-Russian government in Kiev. Needless to say, Washington did not emphasize these factors when "countering Moscow's deceptive propaganda with the unvarnished truth," as explained the Obama administration's 2015 National Security Strategy.

The U.S. may not have intended an anti-Russian campaign but that mattered far less than Moscow's perception of events. As Henry Kissinger once observed, even paranoids have enemies. A coalition of Ukrainian nationalists and Western liberals taking power with the support of Europe and America in a country seen as extremely important if not vital to Russian security could not help but unsettle the Kremlin.

That still doesn't justify Putin's actions and the results have been a horror for many Ukrainians, though Kiev's military and nationalist militias have contributed to the unnecessary carnage. However, Moscow views its actions more as defense than offense, the war less about expanding Russia's "empire" than about protecting Russia from America's expanding "empire."

The U.S. should not intervene and treat Moscow as an adversary. To the contrary, Washington should stay out of the conflict and maintain a passable relationship with Russia. After all, the latter, with a substantial nuclear arsenal, is the one power capable of annihilating America. Moscow's veto at the United Nations gives it influence over every issue that comes before the Security Council. Russia has aided Washington in Afghanistan and dislikes Islamic terrorism as much as do most Americans. Moscow can be more or less helpful in Syria and recently demonstrated its ability to lean against U.S. policy by agreeing to supply S-300 missiles to Iran and warming ties with North Korea.

Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO's military commander, called Russia a "global, not regional, and enduring, not temporary" threat. But how? Moscow's behavior in Ukraine, though atrocious, poses no threat to America. Kiev has never been a security interest to the U.S., vital or other. Bilateral economic and political links are modest; personal and cultural ties are real but not worth fighting over. What is happening to Ukraine is ugly but of little practical importance to Americans.

Some emotional Ukrainian expatriates compare Putin to Hitler, but Russia isn't a reincarnation of the Soviet Union, let alone Nazi Germany. Moscow is a declining, not rising power, more concerned with protecting itself than imposing its will. Putin is a standard-issue authoritarian with bounded ambitions, rather like a pre-revolutionary Czar, and cares most about national respect and border security. Russia's military cannot overrun Europe let alone challenge America. Indeed, after 15 years Putin's "conquests" are but crumbs from Eurasia's vast table: Abkhazia, Crimea, Donbas, South Ossetia. Even a triumph over Ukraine in the east would at most leave Russia with a devastated, depopulated territory which would require years to recover and massive subsidies in the meantime. A replay of Hitler's 1939-40 blitzkriegs Putin's campaigns ain't.

Ukraine obviously matters more to Europe than America. Indeed, much has been made about keeping the continent whole and free. That is desirable, of course, but major European powers always have existed free and secure despite nearby instability and conflict. Anyway, Europe has a greater GDP and population than America (and much larger advantages over Russia). Yet almost all European states continue to disarm, expecting Washington to do the security heavy lifting. The Eastern Europeans worry most about Russia, but despite recent hikes in defense outlays still spend little on the military-Latvia and Lithuania about one percent of GDP, Estonia and Poland barely two percent. No one is prepared to fight for Ukraine.

In fact, there is no European enthusiasm even for an economic bail-out. The deeply indebted Ukrainian state is an economic black hole. Anders Aslund of the Peterson Institute has talked of the proverbial "Marshall Plan" for Kiev; George Soros urged $50 billion in aid from the West. That kind of money will not be forthcoming.

There also is a humanitarian call for action, but Ukraine ranks below many conflicts elsewhere-Congo, Iraq, South Sudan, and Syria come to mind. Indeed, 6100 dead, the estimated toll in Ukraine, is awful, but barely a footnote among global wars. Nor are Kiev's hands clean, especially given the brutal role of nationalist militias.

Some Ukrainians argue justice rather than mercy. After all, Kiev gave up its nuclear weapons, leftovers from the Soviet arsenal, in return for Western and Russian guarantees. Yet the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances was the equivalent of an international love letter, in which the signers promised to respect Kiev in the morning. Ukraine's government received no practical commitments. For instance, signatories promised to go to the United Nations if Kiev was threatened with nukes. Washington neither extended a security guarantee nor promised to act militarily.

Even if Ukraine mattered more, the allies have no cost-effective way to force Moscow to back down. Iraq, Serbia, and North Korea all proved defiant in the face of painful economic sanctions and overwhelming military force. War against both Iraq and Serbia created new, sometimes disastrous, problems. Conflict with the North remains too costly to contemplate. Russia, a major power with nuclear weapons and a deep sense of grievances, is certain to prove more intractable and respond with far greater force.

Of course, the U.S. and European militaries are more powerful than Russia's armed forces. However, the latter possesses the great equalizer of nuclear weapons. Moreover, with far more at stake, the Kremlin will bear greater costs and take greater risks. Securing its border and preserving a buffer are core Russian security interests. Kremlin credibility would disappear if it yielded, especially to America, which next could be expected to attempt to dictate Moscow's internal politics. The Kremlin likely thinks: if it cannot say no here, where can it say no?

Without allied support, Kiev is doomed to lose any direct clash. Ukraine spent $2.4 billion and $3.6 billion on its military in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Russia's comparable outlays were $66 billion and $70 billion. Corruption, mismanagement, and poor training long have dissipated Ukrainian efforts. In January Ukraine's Assistant Minister of Defense Yuri Biryukov claimed that as much as a quarter of his nation's military outlays last year were stolen. Draft evasion is rife as many young Ukrainians resist fighting for this government and purpose.

Washington is providing Kiev non-lethal equipment and training. Some European nations have similarly sent trainers and provided weapons. Several exercises are planned this year between Ukrainian and NATO military forces. After about 300 members of the 173rd Airborne Brigade arrived in Ukraine, Poroshenko told a public rally: "We are not alone in this fight." But the battlefield effect remains marginal.

Kiev wants more and Congress last year authorized $350 million for military aid. So far the administration has reacted cautiously. Former U.S. Senator Gordon Humphrey and Pentagon consultant Michael Pillsbury are campaigning to revive the Afghan playbook by arming Ukraine. In February a report jointly issued by the Atlantic Council, Brookings Institution, and Chicago Council for Global Affairs advocated billions of dollars in military aid, including "provision from existing U.S. defense stocks." In March the House approved a resolution calling on the administration "to provide Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons systems." Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, informal head of Capitol Hill's "war lobby," held a hearing in April pushing for more assistance. Breedlove testified in favor of "offensive military aid." James Clapper, director of national Intelligence, said he backed military assistance.

Yet even a more sustained program would not markedly change the balance of power. Arming Kiev might prolong and intensify the conflict, but would not likely change the outcome. Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny warned: "I do not think that supplies of weapons, lethal weapons, will change the situation dramatically. The fact is that a military victory of Ukraine over Russia is impossible." Breedlove argued that such support could compel Russia to negotiate. However, Moscow likely would respond in kind, just as it intervened more directly last year when Ukrainian forces began winning on the field. The stakes for Moscow are too high to yield.

But arming Kiev would put U.S. credibility at issue. If greater American efforts only led to higher Ukrainian losses, pressure would build for additional weapons and training, and perhaps much more, including airstrikes and ground personnel. Indeed, at the onset of the crisis last year a number of analysts proposed deploying American aircraft and troops to prevent further Russian expansion.

For instance, Charles Krauthammer suggested creating "a thin tripwire of NATO trainer/advisers," thereby establishing "a ring of protection at least around the core of western Ukraine." Robert Spalding of the Council on Foreign Relations advocated deploying F-22 fighters along "with an American promise to defend Ukrainian skies from attack." AEI's Thomas Donnelly proposed "putting one brigade astride each of the two main roads-and there are only two-that connect Crimea to the Ukrainian mainland," backed by American aircraft. Leslie Gelb urged use of aircraft and missiles to "smash the far inferior Russian air force and then punish Russian armies invading eastern Ukraine or elsewhere in the region." Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman pushed placing NATO troops in Ukraine.

There no longer appears to be much fear of Moscow encircling Kiev, but proposals for direct intervention continue. Ian Brzezinski of the Atlantic Council recently urged Congress to authorize NATO's Supreme Allied commander "to deploy in real time against provocative Russian military operations," that is, offer combat and start a war. Breedlove later testified that it would "not make sense to take any of our own options off the table." (Alas, Der Spiegel reported that Europeans view him as regularly making "false claims and exaggerated accounts.")

Such a confrontational policy implemented by a dangerously aggressive commander would be more likely to trigger than deter conflict. Yet no policymaker of note in the West is prepared for war over Ukrainian separatism. The Putin government obviously feels no such constraint. While the Kremlin would seek to avoid conflict, it probably would prefer to fight than surrender. Moreover, with conventional inferiority, Moscow would have little choice but to respond to Western escalation with nuclear weapons. Ukraine does not warrant Washington playing a game of geopolitical chicken with Russia.

Which leaves sanctions. The Russian economy has rebounded some from its nadir last year. So far the Russian people still back Putin, who blames domestic failures on foreign intervention. The public may eventually grow frustrated over lost economic opportunities, but even then a spontaneous popular pro-Western uprising seems unlikely.

Ramping up sanctions on banking and energy wouldn't likely change Moscow's behavior. First, there's little European support for such a course. The continent has more at stake in a prosperous, stable Russia than does America. Second, there's no reason to believe that wrecking the Russian economy would make Putin pliant. More likely he would expand economic controls, political repression, and foreign adventurism. Finally, a domestic crisis isn't likely to yield a liberal, pro-Western government. Putin actually appears to be a pragmatic nationalist compared to more radical forces. Navalny noted that anyone seeking to replace Putin might "have to take much stricter steps, tougher steps, to increase his popularity up to Putin's standard." Western policymakers should be careful what they wish for.

Ultimately the best outcome would be a negotiated settlement recognizing Ukraine as nominally whole while according the Donbas extensive autonomy and alleviating Russian security concerns, by, most importantly, guaranteeing no NATO membership or other Western-oriented military relationship for Ukraine.

Alas, few of the political provisions of the Minsk II ceasefire are being implemented. While there good reason not to trust Moscow, the Kremlin doesn't appear to have much appetite for grabbing additional territory which would be as much burden as benefit. Western diplomats, while citing violations by the separatists, complain that the Ukrainian government also has been recalcitrant in following the agreement. Most allied officials don't see Kiev joining NATO but nevertheless hesitate to give veto power to Russia. However, Moscow naturally expects the worst from what it sees as potential adversaries.

Ukrainians insist that these and related decisions should be up to them. Kiev should set its own policy, but then bear the cost of doing so. Washington and Brussels should not support a collision course with Russia. Ukraine's position is awful, but that's no basis for U.S. foreign policy. Permanent confrontation and potential war with Moscow would be far worse.

Hopefully the tattered ceasefire in the Donbas will hold and both sides will accept a compromise solution. Diplomats met in Minsk, Belarus last week to discuss strengthening the ceasefire. German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke with Putin when visiting Moscow for Russia's World War II victory commemoration. More substantive talks on a broader settlement are needed. European sanctions are coming up for renewal and could be used to encourage serious negotiations. The question is simple: what can everyone live with? Both Ukraine and Russia will pay a high price if the conflict continues.

In any case, America should keep its arms and troops home. Washington already has too many defense dependents which make the U.S. less secure. Ukraine is not America's fight.

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#28
Sputnik
May 17, 2015
US Actions May Prompt Russia to Consider Increasing Nuclear Arsenal

Mikhail Ulyanov, the Director of the Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control at the Russian Foreign Ministry, warned that US measures undermining global strategic stability may force Russia to grow its nuclear arsenal instead of carrying out further disarmament.

Speaking at the Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in New York on Friday, Ulyanov stated that the US proposal to reduce the total number of deployed warheads by a third is based on their understanding that they will remain able to adequately defend themselves and their allies. Unfortunately, the official noted, "US actions have led to the appearance of completely contradictory factors which, in some circumstances, may even push Russia to begin increasing [its nuclear arsenal]."

Ulyanov clarified that "at the moment, we are not planning to do so, but what is being done by the Americans makes it very difficult, and maybe impossible, to see real prospects for further steps toward nuclear disarmament."

Speaking of the factors standing in the way of further disarmament, Ulyanov cited the US missile defense program, the US refusal to negotiate on the ban on weapons in outer space, the US military's Prompt Global Strike (PGS) system, Washington's de facto refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the serious imbalance in conventional weapons in Europe.

Ulyanov emphasized that Russia would continue to fulfill all its obligations under the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Arms. He noted that during the previous Review Conference, held in 2010, Russia had a total of 3,900 nuclear warheads. "Today, five years later, we have 1,582 warheads. This constitutes a reduction of two and a half times," the diplomat highlighted.

Ulyanov also noted that Russia remains "quite satisfied" with the START, adding that "at the moment, there are no factors which might make our continued participation in the treaty incompatible with the interests of the Russian Federation, although in theory, due to the actions of the United States, such a situation may arise, although we would not like it to."

Last month, Ulyanov stated that Russia is prepared for a dialogue on the question of nuclear disarmament, although it must be serious and devoid of what he called "double standards."

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