#2
Izvestia
May 20, 2015
More than half of Russians use internet every day, poll suggests
Andrey Gridasov, More Than One-Half of Russians Use Internet Every Day. According to the Data of Sociologists, the Proportion of Russians Using the Internet Has Grown to 69 Per cent

The All-Russia Centre for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) has carried out an opinion poll among the inhabitants of Russia on their attitude to the Internet. The results of the poll showed that within the past nine years the share of people who visit the Net every day has grown by almost tenfold. One user in two accesses the Internet with the aid of a tablet or a smartphone. In the majority of cases, people are looking on the Net for music, movies, and books, visiting forums and social networks, making friends, playing games, studying, and also making purchases in online stores. In the opinion of experts, despite the popularity of the Internet, real life still exerts a greater influence on Russians than does the virtual world.

The poll was held on 21-22 March 2015 in 130 population centres in 46 oblasts, krays, and republics of Russia, where 1,600 persons were questioned.

The share of Russian citizens who use the Internet in 2015 is estimated at 69 per cent. It emerged that one-half of respondents prefer to access the Internet every day. In 2006, the share of such users was ten times smaller - 5 per cent of respondents. One inhabitant of Russia in five accesses internet resources several times a week or a month.

As in other countries of the world, the most active internet users are young people. Among the 18-24-year-olds questioned, this share amounts almost to 100 per cent. In the majority of cases, they are affluent young inhabitants of Moscow and Saint Petersburg (85 per cent) who study in higher educational establishments (81 per cent).

As for equipment, the results of the poll showed that contemporary users prefer to access the Internet from various mobile gadgets. Thus since 2012 the share of those who use a tablet to access the Net has grown tenfold (from 4 per cent to 41 per cent, including 21 per cent on a daily basis) and the share of those who use a smartphone to do so has grown by a factor of 3.5 (from 15 per cent to 55 per cent, including 39 per cent on a daily basis). It is noteworthy that not everyone uses a tablet or a smartphone: If in 2012, one-third of users accessed the Net with the aid of an ordinary mobile telephone, their proportion is virtually unchanged in 2015 also.

"This tendency is easily explained: It is the older generation, who, for various reasons, are uncomfortable with using touch phones," Konstantin Abramov, chairman of the VTsIOM Fund Management Board, told Izvestiya. "Young people have rapidly switched to smartphones, hence this has become the new reality."

Seventy-three per cent of respondents said that, from time to time, they access the Internet via a stationary computer. By comparison with 2012, the share of such users is virtually unchanged (73 per cent in 2015 versus 78 per cent in 2012).

VTsIOM's experts were also interested in why people use the Internet. Among the most popular reasons for accessing the Internet were various media resources (music, movies, books), searching for news and necessary information, examining email, and also thematic websites connected with work or study. Four out of 10 internet users (44 per cent) visit social networks, chat rooms, or forums. One-third of respondents look for friends on the Internet and another third play games; the rest make purchases in online stores. Only one respondent in 10 visits websites with an erotic content.

In the opinion of experts, in recent times the Internet has been becoming an alternative to real-life communication.

"Undoubtedly, we are currently seeing the era of social networks, in which online contact is becoming prevalent," Konstantin Abramov, chairman of the VTsIOM Fund Management Board, told Izvestiya. "The people whom we see on public transport with smartphones and tablets are completely in another world at that moment. However, it is necessary to think about how the virtual world influences their behaviour in real life. This is the main question for sociologists, psychologists, and specialists in the social medium right now."

In the expert's words, all the same, a greater influence is exerted on internet users by the people with whom they interact in real life than by the virtual world.

"This is to be explained by the fact that the Internet influences people via linguistic and visual channels; it is necessary to understand, however, that people obtain a significant proportion of information through nonverbal, including behavioural, characteristics. And their trust is always greater precisely in nonverbal communication," Konstantin Abramov added.

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#3
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
June 2, 2015
MOSCOW BLOG: Russia is running out of money - revisited
Ben Aris in Moscow
[Charts here http://www.bne.eu/content/story/moscow-blog-russia-running-out-money-revisited]

Last December Professor Anders Aslund, then of the Peterson Institute, now of the Atlantic Council, wrote two op-eds entitled: "Russia's Economic situation is worse than it may appear", and "The Russian Economy is headed for disaster." In both pieces he claimed that with the Russian ruble going into meltdown, the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) would run out of money very quickly and that the official figure of $420bn in international reserves was a fiction: "In reality, Russia's effective international reserves are only $203bn."  

I wrote a blog in answer at the time entitled, "Russia is running out of money - not..." In it I argued that while about half of Russia's reserves are non-conventional - including its gold reserves and especially the hundreds of billions of dollars held in its two reserves funds - this money was still available to prop up the economy if need be and count as reserves. And in any case the rundown of reserves would be less dramatic than Aslund was predicting. In particular, I took issue with the argument that the 2014 currency crisis was in some way worse than the 2008 global meltdown and Aslund's extremely controversial prediction that Russia's economy would contract by some 10% or more in 2015 was wrong.

Six months on and it is time to assess where we are. The Bank of Finland released a paper in late May looking at the situation with Russia's hard currency reserves and its two crisis funds. Russia has lost a lot of money in the meantime, but it's nowhere near the panic that Aslund was predicting when investors feared Russia's reserves would run dry. Since December 1, gross international reserves (GIR) have fallen by $64bn to $356bn as of April 30, according to the CBR, and if that pace is maintained, Russia could lose as much as another $125bn this year.

But that pace will not be maintained. In fact, not only has the fall in reserves stopped, as the chart below shows, in mid-May the CBR started buying dollars again and replenishing its GIR, albeit in small amounts, as the ruble stabilises. Even more encouraging were the anecdotal reports that regular Russians were starting to sell the dollars they bought during the worst of the meltdown in December.

Russia's recession has proven to be a lot milder than anyone expected. The inflationary spike that follows any sharp devaluation of a currency worked its way through the system much faster than economists had been expecting and while Russia's economy is still definitely sick, the outlook for this year has improved considerably: the World Bank revised its GDP contraction forecast to 2.7% for 2015 from its previous forecast of 3.8%. The consensus is for a contraction on the order of 3% with a return to growth in 2016. In other words, this crisis is nowhere near as bad as in 2008-09 and in fact can be just as well described as "a very painful adjustment of the economy to the new realities of a lower oil price."

Drilling down into the $420bn number, Aslund said in his article: "Of this amount, $45bn is held in gold, and $172bn in the two sovereign wealth funds, the Reserve Fund and the National Wealth Fund. The Ministry of Finance controls those two funds, much of which is deposited in state banks or invested, so these funds are not liquid reserves. If we deduct gold and sovereign wealth funds, the official reserves shrink to $200bn. In the last year, Russia's international reserves have declined by $103bn. In the coming year, they are likely to fall by another $100bn, because Russia has to pay back about $150bn a year, while its current account surplus is about $60bn a year."

So what happened in reality to all these numbers? As the table from Bank of Finland shows, gold reserves have increased in the last year from April to April to $47.3bn as the CBR stocked up on the crisis-proof yellow metal. The CBR tapped its IMF special drawing rights (the fund's version of money) for $2.6bn, as well as the two reserve funds for a combined $23.9bn. But the bulk of the money ($107.1bn) was from the "other" category, which includes selling off a considerable chunk of Russia's investment into US Treasury bills, amongst other securities and cash deposits. Bank of Finland said in its paper that 80% of Russia's GIR is in a liquid form by international definitions.

And these numbers are from April; in just the last month the Reserve Fund has grown to $76.41bn and the National Welfare Fund to $74.92bn as of May 1, the CBR reported on June 1. "Initially the central bank announced a $100-200m daily purchase of FX [in mid-May], but then CBR officials indicated that the volume could be increased," Alfa Bank's chief economist, Natalia Orlova, said in a recent note.

This year will also see a significant call on Russia's reserves, but like last year they remain manageable. A total of $121bn of debt matures this year, but at least half of that ($56bn assuming a conservative average of $60 for oil) will be covered by the positive current account surplus. Oil was trading at $65 per barrel at the time of writing.

In addition, companies and banks have been stockpiling dollars since the start of 2014, as the ruble was in slow motion devaluation well before the shock of December's tumble against the dollar. One of the side effects of the current problems has been the re-dollarisation of the Russian economy - something more closely associated with the chaos of the 1990s. Hard currency deposits in corporate accounts are up by 44% since the start of the year in April, according to the CBR. Until 2014, companies were maintaining dollar reserves of about $150bn, but this year these have climbed to around $190bn at the end of May, according to Alfa Bank. Banks and companies are actively paying down their international debts: private companies succeeded in refinancing about $10bn of the $40bn that came due at the end of last year, according to Bank of Finland, and from the $32bn of outflow in the first quarter of this year $29bn went to pay off corporate debt.

The bottom line is that Russia still has plenty of money available to meet its obligations this year. In December, the more restrained analysis said that even with the jump in capital flight, Russia had at least two years' worth of reserves. Now the pace of capital flight has slowed, even if Russia continues to burn through $60bn-100bn a year, it still has reserves to last another three to six years before running out of cash. And that is assuming the current poor conditions persist. Given that Russia is expected to return to growth next year, it seems almost certain that Russia has "made it" through the crisis and will emerge leaner and largely debt free - good conditions to start another boom provided the issue with sanctions can be resolved, which is far from certain.

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 #4
AFP
June 1, 2015
Russian bear will roar once more, says World Bank
Russia economy forecast to grow by 0.7pc next year, reversing negative growth forecast

The World Bank is seeing some improvement in Russia's battered economy, predicting it would shrink by 2.7pc this year and return to growth of 0.7pc in 2016.
The Russian economy has been savaged by a fall in oil prices and Western sanctions imposed over the conflict in Ukraine, and the World Bank had previously forecast a contraction of 3.8pc in 2015 and of 0.3pc next year.

"The revised forecast is largely driven by the adjustment in oil prices over the previous two months that is supporting the ruble exchange rate and a slightly faster retreat of inflation," said Birgit Hansl, World Bank lead economist for Russia.

"That would allow Russia's central bank to pursue monetary easing at a more rapid pace for the rest of 2015, as a result bringing down borrowing costs and increasing lending to firms and households."

After plummeting dramatically between June 2014 and January, oil prices have rebounded to around $60 a barrel.

Russia's ruble currency crashed last year but since the start of 2015 has clawed back ground, leading officials to claim that the worst of the crisis is over.

The Russian central bank in December hiked rates dramatically as the currency fell but in recent months has been cutting back rates as inflation fears have eased.

The International Monetary Fund has also improved its outlook for Russia to a 3.4pc contraction this year and growth of 0.2pc in 2016.

Official statistics showed that Russia's gross domestic product shrank year-on-year in the first quarter of 2015 by 1.9pc.

But while Russian officials are sounding increasingly upbeat, experts warned that difficulties still lie ahead.

"The most acute phase of the crisis is yet to come," highly respected former finance minister Alexei Kudrin told Interfax news agency, noting that the economic contraction would be greater in the second quarter than the first.

"Beyond that, the situation may stabilise and the decline come to an end," he added.

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 #5
Moscow Times
June 2, 2015
Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin Sets Conditions for Return to Government
By Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber

Former Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who left his position over personal disagreements with the Kremlin in 2011, said in an interview with the Interfax news agency Monday that if the authorities would undertake sweeping reforms, he would be willing to return to the government.

"I have never ruled out the possibility of returning to the government," Interfax quoted Kudrin as saying Monday. "I do not want to talk about [executive] positions, but this option is possible under certain favorable conditions: if the government becomes geared toward reform, as was the case in the early 2000s."

Kudrin, who runs the Civic Initiatives Committee, the stated objective of which is to strengthen democratic institutions in Russia, added that the country's current political atmosphere failed to fulfill the conditions for his return to the government.

The former finance minister also told Interfax that he had turned down an offer to serve as chairman of Russia's Central Bank because he feared he would be forced to follow the government's political line and engage in policies that are economically ineffective.

Kudrin offered only a vague timeline for his potential return to government, saying the proper conditions would be put in place "as the need [for change] arises" or in "three or 10 years."

Kudrin was Russia's finance minister from 2000 to 2011, and served two stints as deputy prime minister. As an advocate of free market reforms, he has been credited with reducing Russia's foreign debt and helping the country cope with the 2008 global financial crisis.

Then-President Dmitry Medvedev asked that Kudrin to resign from his position in September 2011. Kudrin had angered the Kremlin by saying he would not serve under Medvedev if he became prime minister under current President Vladimir Putin in 2012 because of their differences about budgetary policy.

 #6
Interfax
June 1, 2015
Leading Russian liberal economist does not rule out he may come back to power

Head of the Committee for Civil Initiatives, former Finance Minister Aleksey Kudrin does not rule out he may come back to power structures if the country is going to carry out reforms, political among them.

In his interview to the Russian privately-owned news agency Interfax on 1 June he said: "I've never ruled out a comeback to power. I don't want to talk about any posts but such an option [of coming back] is possible under favourable conditions: if the authorities are set to carry our reforms, as was the case in the early 2000s."

Asked if it is at all possible within the present-day political context, Kudrin said: "Not now , this is why I am not there."

Kudrin says he has received proposals to head the Central Bank of Russia but he has not given his consent. "I believe that the Central Bank will have to follow the government's policy in the near future, and it will not be highly effective," Kudrin said.

Asked when he may come back to power structure, Kudrin said: "As soon as the need arises, I don't know, in three or ten years." Kudrin said he was ready to work with President Vladimir Putin again on condition "that reforms, political among them, were conducted".

Kudrin is not going to be involved in political activity at present, nor does he intend to support any political parties, he said. "Such political parties do not exist. This is why I focused my effort at working with civil society," Kudrin said. "The political sphere in Russia is not developed," he added, this is why he "does not see anything interesting it it".

"I devote two thirds of my time to educational and scientific projects. I am interested in this and I hope that my activity will yield serious results," the former minister said.

In a separate development Kudrin commented on the political landscape in the country. Putin will stand for president in 2018, Kudrin supposed, but he will not change the constitution in order to remain in power after 2024.

"Yes, it's pretty obvious that he will (stand for president in 2018 - Interfax). It is my personal assumption, though," Kudrin told Interfax. At the same time. "if Vladimir Putin goes by his own re-election given the present-day ranking, this seriously reduces the ambition and chances of all others", he said.

Asked if Putin would be ready to hand over power to another person in 20424, Kudrin said: "I proceed from the Russian constitution. I expect that nobody, Vladimir Putin among them, will not change it or adjust it to suit himself." "Turnover of power is a most important part of modern society and state. Without it the economy won't have any serious prospects, either," Kudrin said.

Commenting on Putin's comeback as president in 2012 and its justification, Kudrin said that "this question is more complicated and he was not going to comment on it at present." At the same time Kudrin said that he himself stepped down as Minister of Finance "when he learned about Putin and [Prime Minister Dmitriy] Medvedev trading jobs".

As for the current political system in Russia, Kudrin said that "the Kremlin has a great impact on the nature of the election".

"In terms of selection criteria and competition of parties, the work of the present-day political system is unsatisfactory. I believe that the country has a sufficient number of opposition forces that could represent large groups of populations in the parliament. Until the state corrects this situation, the party system won't be effective," Kudrin said. "The opportunities of a number of political organizations were lowered in advance, and this puts normal people off political activity," he added.

Asked to comment on protest leader Aleksey Navalnyy, Kudrin described him as an "outstanding" politician. "Another matter is that he has a marginal programme. He has chosen a rather populist topic of combating corruption, which is probably right in terms of tactics of the political struggle. "Other aspects of Navalnyy's programme are unclear, this is why he is more of an enigma to me," Kudrin said.

Kudrin has another fundamental objection against Navalnyy's programme. "I oppose the idea of calling on Western states to strengthen political and economic sanctions against one's own country or even individual citizens," he said. "I understand politicians who do so to an extent: they have a meagre set of political struggle means at their disposal, they are undeservingly and hopelessly limited in their activity. However, appeals to put pressure on one's own country are unacceptable for any opposition. I cannot support people like this," he said.

The full text of the interview is available at www.interfax.ru
In Russian here http://www.interfax.ru/444787

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#7
Sputnik
May 31, 2015
First Solzhenitsyn Museum Opens in Russia

The Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Museum opened on Sunday in the house where the writer spent his early years, in Kislovodsk, a spa city in Russia's Stavropol Krai.
The museum is situated in the house of Solzhenitsyn's aunt, Maria Gorina, where the writer lived from 1920 to 1924.

In 2008 the house was declared to be an object of national cultural significance by presidential decree, and in 2009 it was given to the State Literature Museum, in order to be restored with a view to its eventual use as a museum.

The museum's exposition consists of photographs, books and video materials which pay testament to the life of the writer. The path of Solzhenitsyn's life is traced from his childhood and youth to his first steps in literature and teaching, and his experiences of war, revolution, prison and exile.

Visitors to the museum will be able to listen to audio and video material including readings by Solzhenitsyn himself, interviews and films about the author. As a cultural center, the museum will also feature a space for lectures, seminars and video presentations.

"I would like the museum to be useful to the younger generations of Kislovodsk and the northern Caucusus," said the writer's widow Natalia Solzhenitsyn at the opening. "After all, all Aleksandr Isaevich's roots are from here."

In addition to the exhibition of the life of Solzhenitsyn, an interactive exhibition on the town of Kislovodsk allows visitors to experience what the resort was like during the prewar years when the author lived there, before he moved with his mother to Rostov-on-Don in 1924.

Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature." The writer was stripped of Soviet citizenship in 1974 and deported from the country; he returned to Russia in 1994.

"Aleksandr Isaevich always believed he would return to Russia, that's how strong his spiritual connection was ... and he returned," said film director Stanislav Govorukhin at the ceremony on Sunday. "Today's opening of the museum is another return of the great writer to his homeland."
 

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 #8
www.opendemocracy.net
May 29, 2015
A dissident's tale
One of the grey cardinals of modern Russian politics, Gleb Pavlovsky talks dissent, history and politics in the late-Soviet era.
Gleb Morev and Gleb Pavlovsky
Gleb Morev is a Russian journalist and literary critic based in Moscow. He edits the Culture section of Colta.ru.
 
Born in Odessa in 1951, Gleb Pavlovsky is famed for being one of the grey cardinals of modern Russian politics. As an adviser to Vladimir Putin until 2011, Pavlovsky was one of Russia's leading political technologists - second only to Vladislav Surkov. During Putin's second term as president, however, Pavlovsky became an outlying figure, attending protest marches and criticising the Kremlin and opposition alike.

Prior to this rise to fame, Pavlovsky cut his teeth as a dissident journalist during the 1970s and 1980s, even spending time in internal exile for anti-Soviet activity. Here he talks to Gleb Morev about reading science fiction, throwing bricks at the KGB and growing up Soviet in Odessa and Moscow.

Reading habits

Gleb Morev: As a student at Odessa University in the late 1960s, you were part of an unofficial student group. How much did you know about what was going on in Moscow, about the beginnings of what would later be known as the dissident movement? Did you have access to samizdat?

Gleb Pavlovsky: I knew about what was going on from foreign radio stations - my father listened to them and I listened with him, although mainly out of curiosity and so that I could argue with him. I was a very anti-capitalist young man, and I enjoyed listening to excerpts from books banned in the USSR - Herbert Marcuse and Ivan Illich in particular. But I remember lots of other things, like Anatol Goldberg's friendly voice on the BBC.

But I also got hold of texts through teachers and science fiction fans, and these turned me on to New Age literature - the Strugatsky brothers, Lem, Bradbury and the Ukrainian writer Oles Berdnik, who later became a dissident himself. New Age was all about enhancing human potential and freedoms, and fitted easily with the idea of rebellion. Even at school I was hyper-politicised, and knew I wanted to be involved in politics, no matter what.

GM: But politics back then meant a very clear choice between the Komsomol, Communist Party and so on ... or going underground!

GP: I certainly didn't want to join the system - that wasn't politics - but I wasn't attracted by the alternative either.

Just being anti-everything wasn't for me. My choice was to stop being a passive consumer and observer of what was going on, and reinstate Soviet everyday life in global history. We weren't living in some small country, after all - the Soviet Union was the hub of a universal project. You couldn't leave it, and it was always with you. Lem and the Strugatskys taught us that life's central questions have to be solved at home, and those were the ones I wanted to solve.

The road to dissidence

In my second year of university, a few of us set up a commune. It wasn't my idea, but it was me who pushed it towards neo-Marxism as a source of language for creating our grand projects. It was the point of no return. In Moscow you could be a Komsomol member and philosophy student, but in Odessa your choices were starker.

We knew we were leaving normal society and crossing into a Looking Glass world, where we would inevitably encounter the KGB, on the one hand, and some dissident, on the other.

And that happened quite quickly. Our dissident was Vyacheslav Igrunov, Odessa's samizdat baron. His group, which wasn't at all leftwing, earned a living making wooden tourist souvenirs, and spent the proceeds on banned literature ordered from Moscow - everything from Orwell to the Kama Sutra.

They also had a library that we devoured - the Chronicle of Current Events,  Robert Conquest's Great Terror, Andrei Amalrik's Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984? Here I found my mission in life: to produce samizdat. I hadn't become anti-Soviet. I saw myself, as I wrote in my first samizdat article in 1972, as a 'counterculture coordinator'.

But by then we were under KGB surveillance, although you have to understand what that meant. There's a myth now that the KGB was an all-seeing eye, but it was just a bunch of boring people that kept tabs on anything that moved, and had difficulty focusing on the bigger picture.

GM: Was you first encounter with the KGB at university or after?

GP: At some point they started keeping an eye on our commune, and I wasn't allowed to graduate properly and was sent to work in the sticks as an unqualified teacher. But my first personal contact with the KGB was a year later, in 1974, at the time of the 'Gulag Archipelago' case.

This wasn't just any old samizdat incident. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago had just started doing the rounds in the USSR. Meanwhile in Ukraine there had been a change of Party leadership and a purge of the Odessa KGB: they needed to demonstrate that they were tightening the screws and decided to close Igrunov's library.

I had a copy of Gulag, which I lent to someone and somehow it ended up in the hands of the KGB, so they hauled me in. I was suspicious of Igrunov, who was an anti-Communist and could happily, I thought, have denounced me, so I signed everything they asked and gave them a disgusting statement listing all the books I'd borrowed from the library. Six months later Igrunov was arrested and tried.

I was supposed to be a main prosecution witness, but in the courtroom I took back my statement. Igrunov's sentence was laughable: they declared him mentally incompetent and he spent just a few months in an ordinary hospital, where we all visited him. This was at the height of Detente. But it was thanks to Igrunov's trial that I became an official dissident: once you'd had a run-in with the KGB, you were part of the Movement.

That was when I decided to escape to Moscow. I'd become friends with the historian Mikhail Gefter.

GM: But how did that work? You needed a residence permit back then to live in Moscow.

GP: You also needed an employment record book, but I didn't have that either - I left school without one. But I was friendly with Len Karpinsky, a member of the 1960s generation of dissidents who had once been a big shot in the Komsomol [and on the editorial board at Pravda], and he phoned a friend who was head of the Higher Komsomol School, which at the time trained mainly Latin-American rebel leaders, and he gave me a part time admin job. I only stayed two months but I left with an employment book, though still without a residence permit.

By that time I was married with a son, and needed work, but every time I tried to get a teaching job the KGB would block it, and I eventually realised that it was hopeless. 1976 was a breaking point for me. In the space of a month I got divorced, caused a hoo-ha at Igrunov's trial, left teaching, left the Komsomol and trained as a carpenter, determined to no longer rely on the state for anything.

I left Odessa and got a job on a building site in Kirzhach, not too far from Moscow. And the next year I got married in Moscow and got my permit.

The changing face of the movement

In Kirzhach, I set myself the task of writing a critique of the Soviet Constitution - a common pastime among dissidents. The resulting article was a hit with people in Moscow, including Mikhail Gefter, Valery Abramkin and Aleksandr Daniel, who copied and distributed it further. In other words, my text fell into the hands of people who published underground journals. There were a number of these being planned at the time, but the one that eventually happened was Poiski [Search: a dissident journal]. Gefter wrote the foreword for it - a sort of manifesto - and I edited it.

GM: Was Poiski a platform for uniting the dissident movement from the start?

GP: Yes, it was more a platform for seeking a consensus in the Movement than the usual samizdat literary-political journal. It was a time of change in the Movement.

When I first visited Moscow in the early 1970s I caught the end of the Democratic Movement of the 1960s. That included the Human Rights Committee, but human rights were seen as just part of a general democratic agenda.

GM: Who was associated with that?

GP: The figures best known in the West were people like Pyotr Yakir, Viktor Krasin, Vakery Chalidze, Pavel Litvinov etc

GM: But that collapsed in 1973?

GP: The broad liberal front split at the time of the Krasin-Yakir trial in 1973 (on a charge of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda). When I came to Moscow for the first time the case was gearing up, hundreds of people were being called in for questioning and liberal professors were bitterly regretting their previous oppositional stance.

The democratic movement of the 1960s didn't see itself as political; it was more social-cultural, very broad based and fairly safe to be involved in. I was delighted to find it - it seemed to me a vehicle for creating parallel structures, but I just caught the end of it - the pogrom had already begun.

1972 was the worst time for the old democratic movement. There was growing tension along the Soviet-Chinese border and a general apocalyptic mood. Then in the autumn it became clear that Krasin and Yakir would plead guilty and name names.

The authorities thought they had delivered a fatal blow to the Movement, but the liberal split provided the spark for the final surge of public Soviet activism.

Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov

At this point it was Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov, with their principle of individual resistance, who took centre stage. The Kremlin was seized by a kind of metaphysical panic, the only explanation for their decision to exile Solzhenitsyn. In fact that was not the only example of strange new behaviour that was basically incompatible with the rules of the regime.

Take the Jewish emigration to Israel, for example. Nobody was ever allowed to leave the USSR - but now suddenly a chink appeared in the wall. And then there was Solzhenitsyn's exile in 1974, which the Kremlin turned into a massive global show.

GM: Was it a surprise for you?

GP: Less a surprise than a historic event. Solzhenitsyn was a talented director who turned the show to his own advantage. And this was where the short upswing of dissidence began.

I have to say, though, that the Soviet system no longer weighed on me in my daily life. I didn't watch TV or read Soviet newspapers, although I had always been hooked on international affairs. I only read the Chronicle of Current Events and listened to foreign radio, so I relished the sight of Solzhenitsyn driving the Politburo mad by exploiting the situation they had created.

This event brought the dissident movement global fame and global support. But it also caused its implosion, and it continued within a narrower frame than the democratic movement before it.

The older movement died because the stakes became higher - its members were the liberal intelligentsia, often Party members, who worked in higher education and intellectual journals and signed letters of protest. But now one signature could get you thrown out of both the Party and your job.

What appeared in its place was the real dissident movement (the name was, of course, borrowed from the Western press). Its lifetime was short, from 1973 to Brezhnev's death in 1982, and Poiski only appeared towards its end, which we didn't see coming. The journal was conceived and planned in 1977 but only came out in 1978, when the movement was already in decline.

GM: This was the time of the Yuri Orlov trial, which marked the end of the Moscow Helsinki Group.

GP: Exactly. But the Helsinki Group was not the only one, and was never intended to be. The movement never relied on one group or one leader. If one person was imprisoned, their friends would rally round to help and become involved in the movement; you got two or three new people, then the first person was released and got involved again. This is certainly what happened in my case.

The system broke down when people were able to leave the USSR on Israeli visas, but being on the inside I couldn't see how the ice was closing in.

GM: That's interesting, because someone reading the Chronicle of Current Events today sees the darkness closing in towards the end of the 1970s - a growing wave of arrests, departures for the West, every project and initiative being blocked. And then suddenly you have Poiski. How did you expect to survive?

GP: Well, the Chronicle was about searches and arrests from its creation in 1968, but this motivated people rather than discouraging them. And the thing was that you read about everything in a publication that you received from someone and copied and passed on to more people. But the problem was that you were too close to it and couldn't see the wider picture.

I was convinced at the time that dissidence was intensifying. And while some of my old Moscow liberal friends were withdrawing from politics, Mikhail Gefter was becoming more radical; we were reacting the same way to events and this brought us closer together. For instance, in the battle of ideas between the Westerniser and democrat Sakharov and the Slavophile and Orthodox Christian Solzhenitsyn, we both came down on the side of Solzhenitsyn.

GM: This seems strange, given your leftist views.

GP: I felt I was more radical than anyone. I had no desire to develop social democracy in Russia, nor to go back to Leninist principles. What I was looking for was tools to manage the system, and Marxism seemed the most appropriate technology. And Gefter and I were agreed that Marxism had to become 'post-Solzhenitsyn' and that any more moderate version wouldn't do. I wrote on this subject back in Odessa and in Poiski as well.

From samizdat to tamizdat

GM: When did you realise that they would crush Poiski?

GP: Funnily enough, it only occurred to me towards the very end. I also thought that we were keeping one step ahead of the sluggish system. You have to understand that I cut a rather odd figure both at Poiski and in the dissident movement in general. I liked the idea of overt alternative action and saw myself as a practical person - a techie, if you like. I enjoyed retyping manuscripts, publishing, and I was also working in an underground design company at the time - and the KGB was unaware of any of this. I had a carpentry workshop in the building that now houses the Cambodian Embassy and I edited and produced Poiski there. So they never found a copy when they searched my flat.

GM: What quantities were you producing it in?

GP: It's hard to say - it was samizdat, after all. There were a few of us - Lev Kopelev was one, Sonya Sorokina another - producing multiple copies, but there was no set figure. A micro-run would be 15 copies on cigarette paper; there were perhaps 150 copies of each issue circulating in Moscow before it started being reprinted in the West.

GM: Why was the KGB so hostile to it?

GP: From 1979 onwards the KGB waged open war on dissidence, and Poiski was just another focal point of opposition for them. That was true to some extent: it was a political project, founded to cement the various dissident fractions together. The main split was along ethnic lines (Russian, Jewish, Ukrainian etc), but there were others: legal/clandestine; samizdat/tamizdat [publishing abroad]; left/right. There was also a generation gap, and a growing trend for publishing abroad. By the early 1980s, tamizdat had unwittingly made samizdat meaningless: things published in the West had a much wider distribution, but they no longer involved their readers in a movement.

The first searches began in January 1979, and the main attack a few months later, as Moscow was 'cleansed' for the 1980 Olympics. You were tailed everywhere, and it became almost impossible to work. There were sometimes two or three cars following us, and even when we were working in the forest, cutting wood, 'mushroom pickers' would be wandering about and taking photos of us. When things go that far, the writing's on the wall.

The writing on the wall

We managed to bring out four issues of Poiski, but by the end of 1979 everything was going haywire. We had already been threatened with prosecution if we brought out another issue, but Abramkin refused to comply and was arrested in December. After that there were endless arguments and debates about whether to struggle on, but it was practically speaking impossible to continue.

In the end Mikhail Gefter announced that there would be a 'pause' in publication, but I refused to accept this and got on with putting the next few issues together. But then came a further blow: two more Poiski colleagues, Viktor Sorokin and Viktor Sokirko, were arrested on 22 January 1980, the day Andrei Sakharov was sent into internal exile in Gorky. My flat was also searched again; nothing was found but they took me to the Lubyanka [KGB headquarters]. Some general yelled at me, 'Your children will be orphans!', and demanded that I surrender and lay down my 'arms'. Then, ten minutes later, they suggested I emigrate and I agreed, probably just to win a bit more time.

In the end, however, I decided to stay. In the first place, as an Odessan provincial, I had no idea where the Passport Office was, but I also discussed the idea with friends. Gefter was very upset about it, but said I should go, as did the Kopelevs, who felt that 'the Diaspora needs more liberal nationalists'. But I believed that my place, my focus, was here in Russia and decided not to leave.

I told the KGB and we eventually hit on a formula: I would 'refrain from all political activity, both official and unofficial'. But I broke this promise - during 1980 I produced and published three more issues of Poiski. Then there was Abramkin's trial, when in a fit of madness I hurled a brick through a courthouse window, and then broke my leg trying to escape over some roofs.

GM: Did the KGB know you threw the brick?

GP: Not straight away. My friends got me into hospital under a false name and with false ID. But in early 1981 the KGB found out and called me in, and of course I turned up in plaster and on crutches, which was a dead giveaway. 'Why were you taking the piss?' they asked. 'You only have yourself to blame!' But they couldn't prove anything - they couldn't get prints off the dusty brick. And if you want to charge someone with hooliganism you need to catch them in the act. So they didn't arrest me then.

But lying in hospital I finally became disillusioned with the idea of opposition and dissidence and became a believer in dialogue with the authorities. In part this reflected the influence of the Polish and Czech debates around Charter-77, extracts from which I included in the last issue of Poiski. I also wrote samizdat articles asking how we could initiate this dialogue, and letters to Politburo members - Brezhnev, Andropov - with the idea of putting pressure on both the Kremlin and the Movement. It sounds daft, but I still wanted to be part of the Soviet system.

I was arrested for anti-Soviet activity on 6 April, 1982, along with others from a variety of groups - nationalists, leftists and so on. Gefter himself was also expecting arrest after his flat had been searched for the first time.

The investigators wanted me to incriminate my friends, of course, and I named anyone not in any danger - when my lawyer told me that Viktor and Sonya Sorokin had emigrated I added them to the list. The KGB told me not to play games: 'The only way you can reduce your sentence is to renounce your political views'. So in court I pleaded guilty, and got a soft sentence - internal exile in the northern Komi Republic - thanks to 'mitigating circumstances'.

My courtroom 'repentance' was of course a terrible blow to our group that broke people close to me, even Gefter. And I was affected by it too - I had broken an ethical taboo. I may not have ratted on other people, but I did break the taboo on pleading guilty. My first year in exile was a mental torment, but then I got used to it, mainly thanks to letters from Abramkin and Gefter.

GM: How long was your sentence?

GP: Five years, but I'd spent a year in remand prison and one day there counts as three in exile so I had three years in Komi. I left Moscow on the day of Brezhnev's death, and when they let each cell out for their daily taste of fresh air the deputy prisoner governor would whisper, 'Quiet, comrades - Leonid Ilich is dead'. Naturally the whole prison (in the centre of Moscow) would shout, 'Hurray!'

I spent my three years, until December 1985, in a small town, Troitsko-Pechorsk, with other political exiles such as the old Ukrainian dissident Ivan Gel, one of the founders of his country's Helsinki Group, and the St Petersburg journalist Valery Repin.

GM: I suppose you were banned from living in Moscow afterwards?

GP: Yes. Since Stalin's death it had been an informal thing, but in 1985 Gorbachev's government passed a law banning political exiles from living in large cities.

GM: But you still returned to Moscow?

GP: Yes. At first I pretended I had been working and registered in Komi, but then the police started harassing me. But at the same time I was a founder member of the first political 'Social Initiative Club' in Moscow, set up in September 1986, lobbying the authorities to give us premises. It was a very odd time.

I wrote to Yeltsin protesting against attempts to ban me from Moscow, and sent it by both the ordinary postal system (my request was turned down) and an unofficial route through friends and acquaintances that finally delivered it into Yeltsin's own hands - and in December 1986 I finally got a Moscow residence permit - although a temporary one, which I renewed every six months for several years: I refused to apply for an amnesty as a political prisoner. Despite the fact I had been working for ages on the liberal magazine The Twentieth Century and the World and running the Postfactum news agency, I still only had a temporary Moscow residence permit.

What happened next is another story.

Editor's note: This is an abridged version of an interview first published in Russian on Colta.ru

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 #9
NTV (Moscow)
May 31, 2015
Russian TV accuses scientific foundation of funding opposition groups

Russia's Gazprom-owned NTV television channel has accused telecommunications tycoon and philanthropist Dmitriy Zimin of using "foreign funds" to support the liberal opposition.

A 20-minute report entitled "Funds and Fronde" was shown as part of the "Obzor ChP" ("Emergencies Review") programme on 31 May, a few days after Zimin's Dynasty Foundation was included in the so-called list of "foreign agents", Russian NGOs that receive foreign funding are deemed to be involved in politics.

The correspondent behind the report, Aleksey Malkov, has built up a reputation for attacking anti-Kremlin opposition in previous broadcasts, such as Anatomy of Protest.

"The Justice Ministry has uncovered the true mission of Zimin's foundation," the programme's presenter said. "As it turned out, the foundation is being sponsored from abroad and may be related to funding political parties and opposition movements, while formally being involved in supporting scientists and research projects in our country," he added. Throughout the report, Malkov made no mention of the Dynasty Foundation's accomplishments, which have been recognized by the Russian scientific community, or the origins of Zimin's fortune.

"Zimin pays Navalnyy's bills"

"The fact that Zimin has been financing the Russian opposition was not given publicity," Malkov said, before setting his sights on anti-corruption campaigner and opposition leader Aleksey Navalnyy. "Navalnyy's got a new car, personal security and restaurants," he said.

A scan of what was described as "personal correspondence" between Navalnyy's wife Yuliya and an estate agent was shown to prove that she was searching for a posh apartment to rent in the city centre. "Of course, they have money," Malkov concluded.

Papers which Malkov claimed were documents and invoices were then shown as evidence that Zimin's son was donating R300,000 a month to Navalnyy's Anti-Corruption Foundation and that the Dynasty Foundation had donated R7.5m to Russian internet and satellite broadcaster Dozhd TV. Russian opposition news weekly The New Times received as much as 100,000 dollars from Zimin, according to the report.

Liberals linked to far-right nationalists

The report then looked at the Liberal Mission foundation, supported by Dynasty and also branded a "foreign agent".

Footage showed Ilya Lazarenko, one of Russia's most radical right-wing extremists, captioned as a leader of the National-Democratic Alliance, talking at a round-table discussion organized by the Liberal Mission and saying that "a collapse may become a new historic opportunity for Russia".

Zimin was happy with the outcome of the discussion, the correspondent added.

"Zimin has connections with the Americans"

In the next part, Malkov suggested that Zimin might have "betrayed his Motherland".

Zimin was shown together with US Ambassador to Russia John Tefft and his predecessor Michael McFaul, with the former being described as "Zimin's old pal".

The correspondent's voiceover said "Zimin recalled that after perestroyka, while working at a secret defence facility, he started making contacts with the Americans".

Malkov went on to say that Zimin's business partner, US citizen Augie K. Fabela, owned "a company which was a US Defence Department contractor".

Then Zimin was shown quoting a scientist as saying that "any decent person who faced a dictatorship should have the courage to commit high treason".

The correspondent added that members of Zimin's family had citizenship in St Kitts and Nevis, Bulgaria and Cyprus and owned a giant yacht.

"Zimin funds opposition parties through young scientists"

The report then featured "a leaked Facebook conversation" which Malkov attributed to rights activist Olga Romanova and scientist Aleksandr Itin.

During the chat "Olga Romanova" suggested that "Aleksandr Itin" had received an award from the Dynasty Foundation and then transferred the money to the liberal opposition RPR-Parnas party.

"A young scientist gets an award, he is recognized by the Dynasty Foundation, and Parnas gets the money to fund its Moscow City Duma election campaign," "Romanova" wrote, according to the report. "This is revolutionary fundraising. I will go to Dynasty right now and ask what else is needed," she added.

"RPR-Parnas is funded through young scientists who are ready to become fictitious grantees," Malkov concluded.

Pro-Kremlin pundit predicts Zimin will leave Russia

In the final part Aleksey Mukhin, head of pro-Kremlin think-tank Centre for Political Information, said: "Most likely, Mr Zimin will suspend or even dissolve the foundation's operations in order to create a particular negative background that emerged after the state's allegedly aggressive action."

"Zimin is most likely to move abroad to spend his old age with friends and family. It is unlikely that he will continue his work, because now, I would say, it has been revealed," Mukhin said.

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 #10
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
June 1, 2015
Stop Sugarcoating Russia's Economic Situation
Whitewashing Russia's economic hardships is counter-productive. It would be better if the economic pain so many Russians are experiencing were given due coverage - and promptly addressed.
By Gilbert Doctorow
Gilbert Doctorow is the European Coordinator of the American Committee for East West Accord

Having just completed a two week stay in St. Petersburg - I visit every 6 weeks or so - I would like to share some observations on the political and economic situation in Russia. As I see it, both the Schadenfreude position of American and other Western political commentators who celebrate any signs of suffering from sanctions and the rosy reports of many authors in the "pro-Russia" camp err substantially. The situation on the ground is both better and worse than these diametrically opposed commentators would have us believe.

Firstly, I say assuredly that the mood across the social spectrum of my "sources" is uniformly patriotic and uncomplaining. These sources range from the usually outspoken taxi drivers; through the traditionally critical journalists, academics, artists and other intelligentsia who are family friends going back many years; to former business contacts and other elites. I did not hear a word about corruption, price gouging, inflation or the disappearance from the market of favorite imported items. Instead, there was determination to withstand whatever pressures the United States and the West generally apply against Russia. Support for Vladimir Putin was a minor if persistent motif within the broader melody of Russian patriotism.

There was also a conscious choice among these sources to buy Russian, including to find holiday destinations within Russia rather than abroad. One concrete example: The principal of a music high school who normally vacations in Djerba, Tunisia is taking a two-week river boat cruise down the Volga. Or I think of the widely traveled editor-publisher of an internet magazine who is sunbathing in Sochi right now rather than in Tuscany. Cost-cutting is not the driver. It is just saying 'no' to Russia's detractors abroad.

Secondly, I say with equal conviction that the economy is doing badly and a great many people are being hurt. Small entrepreneurs have been put out of business. The large corporates are struggling, and all the skills of their management are called upon in this challenging environment to stay afloat.

Yes, the supermarkets are well stocked. Food products which formerly came from the EU are now being sourced elsewhere, but are not wanting. Prices have gone up substantially since my last visit two months ago. Some say they have risen by a third. Others say by less. The abruptness of the change reflects the appearance on store shelves of replacement stocks for the nonperishable food and beverage items which dated from before the ruble devaluation and which finally were exhausted. The new prices match European wide prices translated into the current disadvantageous exchange rate. At the same time, some domestic vegetables have risen in price, as producers take advantage of the market opportunity and move well ahead of any possible rises in their own costs.

But the fall in the value of the ruble and associated inflation is the least of the problems today. They will self-correct when and if oil prices rise. The tougher and more painful problem is generalized contraction of business activity. Partly this is due to people tightening their belts, cutting back on little pleasures in times of uncertainty. One bellwether is the Stockmann's supermarket at the head of Nevsky Prospekt. Until this latest visit, I would take a number at the deli counter and wait my turn behind six or eight shoppers ahead of me. Now I took a number and was served at once. This isn't so say things are looking desperate. The Ikea Megamarket in the Dybenko residential neighborhood was still doing well when I stopped by, with shoppers queuing up at all cash registers: recession is not yet depression!

Another cause of the fall-off in business activity is without doubt US and EU sanctions, meaning the cut-off of foreign credits, the inability of the Russian majors to roll over hard currency debt. Friends in the finance industry explained that the sell-off of assets to meet credit calls hit the stock market. This, in turn, produced shock waves in the banking and insurance sectors, including weaknesses at such major institutions as Uralsib Bank and at big Russian insurers, whose portfolios were devalued, forcing them to abandon various sectors and let go a great many employees. Weakening banks, the jacked up interest rates to protect the currency against further speculation - all have taken a toll on private entrepreneurs, the little guys who were starved of working capital to finance their stocks and meet payrolls. Those in the West who said that they designed the sanctions in such a way as to spare the people and only punish the fat cats around Vladimir Putin should be made aware of the very different reality.

As I discovered on a walking tour of the business and residential blocks in downtown St. Petersburg that I frequent regularly, the past couple of months has seen many offices and shops shuttered. Hairdressers, boutiques selling ladies' handbags, eateries, all kinds of service outlets closed down, ending the aspirations of many hard-working self-employed folks. Their numbers will likely not appear in unemployment statistics. No flicking of a switch will bring them back.

Another sign of the hard times came when I visited my bank branch specializing in renting safe deposit boxes to the public. Such boxes are widely used by buyers and sellers of apartments, dachas and other real estate, since they take the place of escrow accounts: the purchase funds placed in the boxes are made available to the sellers when they submit the deed of state registration of transfer of ownership. The bank was empty, whereas in the past it has always been a beehive of activity. The much reduced staff confirmed to me that transactions have dried up. This means the secondary market in real estate has shut down.

Meanwhile the Russian government reports an ongoing boom in residential construction, which, in the case of St. Petersburg is confirmed by the high-rise cranes operating in bedroom community suburbs and by the ubiquitous advertisements for new housing projects in the metro and buses. There is no contradiction here: the new construction is supported by government subsidies on mortgage loans, while the secondary market is left to languish at market rates which preclude mortgages.

Finally, I want to share some essential new information on the challenges facing Russian agriculture, which is generally cited as a beneficiary of the sanctions and leading indicator in the emergence from crisis. The information comes not from personal observations but from privileged sources from within the industry's own newsletters to which I have access. One of the country's largest importers and distributors of agricultural machinery has just negotiated with its bond holders in Russia and abroad their acceptance of a conversion of their debt instruments into equity. The reason for this exchange, which surely was not wished for by investors, has been the sharp fall-off in the company's sales volumes, itself a result of reduced access of farming enterprises to bank credits. The government has been slow in reversing course and reinstating subsidies for bank loans to farmers which had been cut following WTO accession.

The same importer has now opened a new side-line selling used agricultural equipment. The opportunity arose for reasons that are not good for the Russian economy: leasing companies have had to take back equipment from farms that have closed voluntarily or under bankruptcy proceedings, and they must dispose of this equipment in fire sale conditions.

Meanwhile, the dairy industry, which is one of those most favored by the government due to excessive levels of imported to native-grown milk, is suffering from surplus spring production and the insufficient processing capacities to absorb the overflow as cheese, powdered milk, etc. Producer prices have fallen below cost, which is hardly an incentive to farmers to add to their dairy herds.

Why are these problems under-reported in Russia media? I will hazard a guess. Old habits die hard: Russian journalists are not very sympathetic to business and are not quick to see the interconnection between profitable businesses and the welfare of the public at large. However, for the government to take timely measures in the ongoing crisis situation and prevent long term negative consequences, it would be better if the pain so many people are experiencing were given due coverage and explained.

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#11
Moscow Times
June 2, 2015
Poll: Russian Parents Hope to Raise Doctors, Not Priests

Despite the fact that a significant majority of the population identifies as Orthodox Christian, fewer than 1 percent of Russians wish to see their children or grandchildren grow up to be priests, according a survey conducted by independent pollster the Levada Center.

Similar polls conducted by the Levada Center over the past 11 years reveal that priesthood has long been an unpopular option among doting parents, never during that period having appealed to more than 1 percent of respondents. Meanwhile, a December 2013 poll found that 68 percent of the population identifies as Russian Orthodox Christian.

The latest poll found that most Russians would prefer for their children or grandchildren to become doctors (18 percent). According to statistics cited last October by Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova, doctors earned about 143 percent more than the average Russian in the first half of last year, RIA Novosti reported at the time.

Sixteen percent hope their offspring will pursue financial professions, such as law, economics or finance (16 percent). Ten percent of respondents voiced hope their kids or grandkids would become bank directors, while 13 percent want their children to become entrepreneurs or go into business.

At the other end of the scale, just 1 percent of those polled by Levada said they wished their little ones would become farmers, and 3 percent voiced hope that their kids and grandkids would become schoolteachers.

A mere 4 percent said they hoped their spawn would become politicians or government ministers.

The poll was conducted between May 22-25 among 800 adults in 46 different Russian regions, with a margin of error no greater than 4.1 percent.

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 #12
Shadow Economy, Rural Self-Sufficiency Allowing Russia to Weather Sanctions, New Study Finds
Paul Goble

Staunton, May 31 - Russia's shadow economy and the self-sufficiency of Russians living outside of the major cities of the country "have allowed Russia to survive the crisis and the introduction of sanctions without large losses, according to five-year-long study of provincial society carried out by sociologists at Moscow's Higher School of Economics.

According to the study's findings, Diana Yevdokimova writes in "Novyye izvestiya," Russian provincial society is characterized by a pattern of social stratification in which "the status of an individual depends not on income but on his public authority and influence, his status [with the authorities] and his membership in various clans, employment and shadow groupings" (newizv.ru/society/2015-05-27/220147-zhizn-v-teni.html).

Consequently, Yury Plyusnin, one of the authors of this study says, while Russians in the cities are frightened as a result of sanctions, the nature of provincial society with its self-organizing and self-supplying systems guarantees the stability of the state and means that an economic crisis as understood in the cities or abroad will not affect most residents.

According to Simon Kordonsky of the Higher School of Economics, official sources say that 40 percent of Russia's GDP is in the shadow sector. But in fact, he suggests, the actual figure is much higher. As a result, "the country stands on a very firm foundation," one seldom described, and "lives according to its own laws because for the state it doesn't exist."

People in this category, include those who do not work anywhere officially, often move from place to place, and do not pay taxes.  Some of them live in a natural or dacha economy where they grow their own food. Others engage in "garage" production where they produce and sell things but without reference to the state and its rules.

"No fewer than a third of all rural families live off water and forest resources of the country which are in no way controlled by the state," Plyusnin says. They may declare part of what they harvest but far from all of it, and thus they have incomes which may be twice or more what the state thinks they do.

In Yevdokimova's words, the authors of the study draw "several other important conclusions." First, the sociologists say that Russia must be understood not as a market economy but as a resource economy. Second, the country's social structure is one consisting of various strata, some of which are connected to the state but many of which aren't.

The sociologists identify four strata groups: the authorities (five percent), the people (66 percent), the entrepreneurs (15 percent), and the marginal (13 percent).

And third, they say, many Russians engage in seasonal work and move among two, three or even more residences in the course of the year.  As a result, Kordonsky says, there are really two Russias, "one visible to the state and one invisible."  If the visible is in trouble because of the crisis and sanctions, the invisible continues to function, not contributing much to its members' advancement but preventing them from falling even further behind.

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 #14
Izvestia
May 20, 2015
Russian politicians debate merits of early parliamentary elections
Anastasiya Kashevarova, Alena Sivkova, and Pavel Panov, State Duma Elections in 2016 May be Brought Forward from December to September. Vladimir Zhirinovskiy Has Put Forward This Initiative, Majority in Parliament Agrees with This, and Presidential Staff is Ready for Dialogue

According to Izvestiya's information, the 2016 State Duma elections could be held ahead of schedule. Vladimir Zhirinovskiy, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia [LDPR], has asked his colleagues in the lower chamber of parliament to submit to a discussion the rescheduling of the elections from December to September. As a number of interlocutors in the State Duma have told Izvestiya, there is support for Zhirinovskiy's initiative within the A Just Russia and One Russia factions whereas within the Communist Party of the Russian Federation [CPRF] there is no single opinion on this question. Within the Presidential Staff they are saying that this question must be resolved by the deputies themselves but there is no ban on the matter of rescheduling the elections.

As Izvestiya was told at the State Duma leadership, an initiative has been received from Vladimir Zhirinovskiy to reschedule the State Duma election from December to September 2016. This is connected with the optimization of budget election expenditure - so as to hold all the election campaigns on a single voting day in September.

"In principle the idea is good. But a consolidated decision is needed here because there are four factions in parliament and they must decide themselves," a high-ranking interlocutor stated to Izvestiya.

Several sources within the One Russia faction reported that they support the LDPR leader's idea because "there is no surplus money in the country and there is no need to be wasteful." Within A Just Russia, according to Izvestiya's information, they also adhere to the opinion that all the elections should be held on the single voting day in 2016.

"We believe that it is logical, right, and economical, both for voters and for the budget, to combine the two big election campaigns in 2016 - September's single voting day and December's State Duma elections. Admittedly there is a legal factor here. It is necessary to decide which of these two days we can reschedule painlessly. The term of State Duma deputies' powers is prescribed in the Russian Federation Constitution and we cannot simply say that the elections will be held in September because in so doing we are automatically reducing the term of the existing deputies' powers by four months. Here the State Duma and the Presidential Staff must weigh up all the factors and decide what is the right way to do everything. If the Presidential Staff is seriously thinking about holding the elections in September they will find the legal means to resolve this question and we will support this," State Duma Vice Speaker Igor Lebedev (LDPR) noted.

At the Presidential Staff they told Izvestiya that they are ready for dialogue on this question.

"This question relates primarily to the deputies themselves. If such an initiative comes from them we are ready to discuss it," Izvestiya's interlocutor noted, adding that it is necessary to clearly think through the legal mechanisms that make it possible to implement Zhirinovskiy's initiative.

Within the CPRF faction there is no single opinion on the holding of early elections. Some deputies are prepared to surrender their mandate four months early whereas the rest believe that they will not support the idea.

Vadim Solovyev, head of the CPRF legal service and a State Duma deputy, stated that the Communists will not support the rescheduling of the elections because it is disadvantageous to the opposition and the voters.

"Elections that will practically be held in summer are beneficial to One Russia. Then the election campaign will take just one month, in August when the electorate traditionally goes to the dachas, on vacation, or in  the vegetable plots. Then One Russia will be able to activate the entire administrative resource and the media and the electorate will be mobilized (pensioners, budget-funded workers, and students). But it will be beneficial for the opposition if the elections are held on the date set by law," he said, explaining that in his opinion Sergey Mironov, the head of A Just Russia, supported the idea because "he has nowhere to go, his rating is below 3 per cent and without One Russia he will not get 5 per cent which is why he will do his utmost to curry favour."

"Rescheduling the vote is not beneficial to the voters too because the campaign will be compressed and they will not get reliable information about the candidates - the elections are going to be 50:50 and it is necessary to know the candidates they are going to vote for," Solovyev added.

According to the law the election of deputies to the State Duma 7th Convocation must be held 4 December 2016. According to the legislation the Duma is elected for a 5 year term and the elections to the 6th Convocation were held 4 December 2011. The voting will be held according to the mixed system: One-half of the deputies will be elected from party lists with a 5 per cent barrier, the other half will be elected from single-seat districts in a single round.

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 #15
Moscow Times
June 2, 2015
Russian 'Troll Farm' Lawsuit Postponed When Defendant Fails to Show
By Anna Dolgov

Russian court hearings into a lawsuit by a former Internet "troll" against her former employer have been postponed after the defendant failed to show up for the proceedings.

A city court in St. Petersburg also ruled that the plaintiff, Lyudmila Savchuk - who said her suit was intended to stop Moscow's allegedly shady "information war" practices - failed to present sufficient documents to prove her identity at the start of the hearings, which were scheduled to begin on Monday, RosBalt news agency reported.

The new court date has been set for June 23, Russian media reports said.

The lawsuit against the company, Internet Research, which has been described by Savchuk as a "troll farm," would mark the first hearings in Russia against what many consider Moscow's large-scale practice of promoting its political agenda online.

The operation of the "troll farm" is reportedly controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a food industry businessman and restaurant owner dubbed the "Kremlin's chef" by Russian media.

The businessman, a well-known ally of President Vladimir Putin, was also one of the organizers of a pro-Kremlin film called "Anatomy of a Protest" that aired on nationwide television following major opposition rallies in 2012 and accused opposition leaders of paying protesters to demonstrate against the government.

Prigozhin also runs a restaurant at the Russian Cabinet headquarters, the report said.

Hearings into the lawsuit against Internet Research had initially been scheduled for June 23 when Savchuk filed her lawsuit in April, but then were moved to June 1 after her lawyers requested faster proceedings, Savchuk's lawyer Darya Sukhikh said, Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported. But the court may have failed to promptly notify the defendants about the date change, Sukhikh was quoted as saying.

Savchuk said she was hired by Internet Research late last year to post political comments online along with scores of other "trolls." The employer paid her in cash and provided no paperwork related to her hiring and subsequent dismissal in spring - issues that served as formal grounds for her lawsuit, she said in media interviews.

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 #16
Dances With Bears
http://johnhelmer.net
June 1, 2015
PUTIN AND THE FIFA INDICTMENTS -- WHY DID PUTIN SAY SO MUCH?
AT HEADBUTT MOMENT FOR RUSSIA, ROMAN ABRAMOVICH AND ALISHER USMANOV SHOW THEIR STUFF - WHAT STUFF?
John Helmer, Moscow
[Photos, links and footnotes here http://johnhelmer.net/?p=13501]

Russia survived the threat of a homosexual boycott of the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games, handily. But can it survive the threatened boycott of the 2018 World Cup from a wannabe candidate to lead a minority party in the House of Commons; a British prince whose chance of becoming king is, failing accidents, at least 20 years off; and four US senators, one of whom has been indicted for taking bribes himself. The answer is yes - Russia will survive even this; and also what President Vladimir Putin has called a case of the US "illegally persecuting people".

For the moment, though, no Russian owner of an international football team is willing to go public with a defence of Russia's World Cup. Nor are they willing to endorse Putin's claim that the US corruption charges against officials of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) are a political plot for "ulterior purposes". Against Russia, Putin means.
The criminal indictments announced on May 27 by US Attorney-General Loretta Lynch are focused for the most part on US evidence of US citizens conducting corrupt business on US territory. The Department of Justice release [1], detailing the 14 indictments and five guilty pleas and convictions, carries the qualifier: "The charges in the indictment are merely allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty."

There is no reference in Lynch's press conference, or in the Justice Department's resume of the prosecution's case, to the award of the World Cup to Russia, and no hint of a claim against Russians.

Lynch's statement [2] focuses on corruption in the marketing of broadcast and rights. "FIFA and the regional bodies under its umbrella make money, in part, by selling commercial rights to their soccer tournaments to sports marketing companies, often through multi-year contracts covering multiple editions of the tournaments. The sports marketing companies, in turn, sell those rights downstream to TV and radio broadcast networks, major corporate sponsors and other entities for significant sums of money." The accused names, according to Lynch, "used their positions of trust within their respective organizations to solicit bribes from sports marketers in exchange for the commercial rights to their soccer tournaments. They did this over and over, year after year, tournament after tournament."

Also, the Attorney-General explicitly charged corruption in the award in 2004 of the World Cup for 2010 to South Africa, defeating Morocco; the 2011 FIFA presidential election, which Joseph (Sepp) Blatter won; sponsorship of the Brazilian national soccer team by a US sportswear company; and the Copa America, a US tournament scheduled for 2016. For details of the indictments and the preceding convictions, read the official document [1] carefully.

In winning the 2018 tournament, Russia defeated bids from England, and the combinations of Spain with Portugal, and the Netherlands with Belgium. In the competition for the 2022 tournament, also announced [3] with the Russian award on December 2, 2010, Qatar defeated the US, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. The US had originally opened its bidding for the 2018 tournament, then withdrew to concentrate on 2022. The US hosted its first World Cup in 1994.

Blatter claimed [4] in his press conference last Friday: "No one is going to tell me that it was a simple coincidence, this American attack two days before the elections of Fifa. It doesn't smell right. The Americans were the candidates for the World Cup of 2022 and they lost. The English were the candidates for 2018 and they lost, so it was really the English media and the American movement."

BlatterBlatter's (left) daughter Corinne (right) toned down the charge. There is a conspiracy, she told [5] the BBC on Sunday: "I wouldn't say from the Americans and the British, but certainly people working behind the scenes, yes absolutely. I don't know if you want to call them dark forces but I mean they really tried hard, they tried in September, October last year."

There has been no US Government call for an investigation of the Russia award, nor in favour of a boycott of the 2018 Russian tournament. One US call for boycott came last week from Senator John McCain (Republican, Arizona) and Senator Robert Menendez (Democrat, New Jersey). In March Menendez (below) was indicted [6] for several years of taking bribes and accepting favours for corrupt influence over legislation. For more on the domestic reasons for their attacks on Russia, read this [7].

In March of 2014, at the start of the Ukrainian civil war, Republican Senators Dan Coats (Indiana) and Senator Mark Kirk (Illinois) announced in a letter to Blatter that Russia should not only lose the 2018 tournament, but also be banned from participating in it.

The attacks on Russia have been sharpest in the London press [8] where they have been encouraged by minority party politicians, Andrew Burnham of the Labour Party, and Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats. Both lost badly in last month's British election. The current government's sports minister, John Whittingdale, and the English Football Association (FA) president, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, have endorsed the campaign against Blatter, but stopped short of backing a Russian boycott.

On May 28 [9] Putin went public with an attack on the US for "illegally persecuting people", and for staging last week's arrests in Zurich in order to influence the outcome of Blatter's bid for reelection. Putin didn't mention the British role.

"As we all know, on Friday FIFA was to elect its president, and Mr Blatter has every chance to be re-elected. We are aware of the pressure that was put on him to prevent the 2018 World Cup in Russia. We know of his views, which have nothing to do with any special relations between FIFA and Russia. This is his general principled position: it's not right to mix sports and politics. Moreover, he believes sport should have a positive influence on politics and serve as a platform for dialogue, for reconciliation and a search for solutions. I believe this is the right position.

"As for the arrests that were made, it seems strange in the very least as the arrests were conducted on the basis of corruption charges made by the American side. Whom did they charge? International officers. It may be possible that some of them did something wrong, I do not know, but the USA definitely have nothing to do with this. These officers are not United States' citizens, and if anything did happen, it did not happen on the territory of the United States and the USA have nothing to do with it. This is yet another obvious attempt to spread their jurisdiction to other states. I have no doubt that this is obviously an attempt to prevent Mr Blatter's re-election to the post of FIFA President, which is a grave violation of the principles that international organisations function on.

"Meanwhile, according to our media, the United States Attorney General has already stated that these officers of the FIFA executive committee have committed a crime, as though he as a prosecutor is unaware of the presumption of innocence. Only a court can find a person guilty or not guilty, and only after that can anyone say anything, even if we assume that the United States have a reason to extradite those people, though the actions occurred on third party territory... Unfortunately, our American partners use these methods for their own ulterior purposes. They are illegally persecuting people. I do not rule out the possibility that the same goes for this situation with FIFA. Although I do not know what this will result in, but the fact that this is happening on the eve of elections of the FIFA president leads one to think so."

On Saturday, the day after FIFA re-elected Blatter, Putin sent [10] him a message of congratulations. "Over the 17 years that you have stood at the head of FIFA, you have acquired great respect among fans, coaches and players. I am certain that your experience and organisational talent, and your efforts aimed at consistently expanding football's geography will serve to further develop and increase the popularity of this 'number one sport' that unites millions of fans all over the world. I would like to stress that Russia is ready for further close and constructive cooperation with FIFA, which is especially important ahead of the 2018 World Cup. I am confident that through our joint efforts, we will hold an exceptional championship from an organisational and athletic standpoint."

The emphasis Putin has put on the FIFA indictments and his defence of Blatter suggest he is thinking the 2018 World Cup is at risk, and that the same hostile tactics which were visible in the run-up to the Sochi Games are being pursued once more.

Some Russian media reports support this interpretation; many do not. Some are sceptical of Putin's calculation that Blatter needed the endorsement, and are puzzled why Putin said as much as he did. Most Russian sports writers report [11] that football corruption is so taken for granted, noone should be surprised by the indictments, and or dismiss them as an American plot.

On Saturday the Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko (below) expressed the opinion that in the parlous financial state of Russian football at present, and the budget stringencies facing the entire country, losing the 2018 tournament mightn't be such a bad thing.

In a detailed cost-benefit analysis published by Pyotr Orekhin of Gazeta.ru, the headline is "No championship, no problems [12]". The extent to which this view is shared among Russian sources gives credence to published speculation that Putin's reason for delivering his diatribe on the US football plot isn't what it seems; and that the Kremlin is looking for a publicly acceptable excuse for dropping the tournament.

Seven Russians have owned foreign football teams - Roman Abramovich (lead image, left); Alisher Usmanov (lead image, right); Dmitry Rybolovlev; Anton Zingarevich; Ivan Savvidis; David Trakotovenko; Yury Korablin; and Bulat Chagaev. Abramovich owns Chelsea in the English FA; Usmanov is a part-owner of Arsenal in the same league. Rybolovlev owns AS Monaco in the French league; Savvidis (below, left), PAOK of Thessaloniki in Greece; Korablin (centre), Unione Venezia, a minor Italian league club; and Traktovenko, the Sydney soccer club in Australia.

Zingarevich owned Reading, a minor English league club, between 2012 and 2014. Chagaev (above, right) owned Xamax of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, for an even briefer period, before he was arrested on fraud charges, then released to disappear, while the club went bankrupt and two of Chapaev's associates remained behind to be convicted and given suspended jail terms. Press reports from Venice earlier this year suggest Koryablin has also disappeared, having failed to get local permission to turn the football club premises into a commercial real estate development.

For more on Rybolovlev and the Monaco club, read this [13]. For the possibility that Mikhail Prokhorov, owner of the Jets, the New York basketball team, might have been persuaded to buy the Italian football club Roma, click here [14]. Prokhorov, Usmanov and Abramovich have all spent significant sums to prop up the Russian Football Union and support domestic teams in financial trouble.

This week, though, not one of the Russian club owners is willing to speak his mind about the threats to Russia's 2018 World Cup which have emerged over the past week.

Abramovich has been given credit in the Russian press for lobbying Blatter directly ahead of the vote on the 2018 Cup vote. His wealth is also credited for the success of the Chelsea team. Analysis of game results [15] and league championships show otherwise. Statistically speaking, the only certain things are that Chelsea's winning and losing streaks are random; and that Abramovich's money persuades the fans to think otherwise.

In March 2013, Abramovich was interviewed by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in New York. How voluble Abramovich was with the FBI, and what the agents asked him, have not been confirmed by Abramovich himself, or by others claiming to know. Abramovich was not arrested or detained, his spokesman, John Mann, said at the time. Confirming his confidence that the FBI poses no risk to his freedom, Abramovich has bought a row of New York City houses for a new personal residence. For that US haven, read this [16].

Abramovich was asked today what he thinks of calls for a boycott of the Russian World Cup of 2018, or a recall vote by FIFA. His spokesman reiterated that Abramovich has sponsored Russian football in the past through his National Academy of Football, paying the expenses of the national team's coaching staff when it was led by Gus Hiddink. But as for what Abramovich thinks of the threat to the Russian World Cup, Abramovich isn't saying anything at all.

Usmanov has loaned the Russian Football Union a reported £3.9 million to cover part of the bills for the national team's current coach, Fabio Capello (below, left). His contract calls for £6.8 million in annual salary through the 2018 tournament period. Capello is now telling the Moscow press the money has run out again, and he isn't being paid. Usmanov refuses to say what he thinks of the World Cup boycott campaign.

Through a spokesman in Saint Petersburg, Traktovenko (above, right) is described as having "a positive attitude to football as a sport. A few years ago, he was a co-owner of our St. Petersburg club Zenit, but that's a long story. Now he has a completely different business interests."

Asked what Traktovenko thinks of the FIFA campaign and the World Cup boycott calls, his spokesman refused to say, explaining this "would not be relevant to Traktovenko's business, in the group of his companies known as Banking House St. Petersburg."

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#17
Interfax
May 30, 2015
US aim to "contain" Russia, China a concern - Russian security official

The US policy in the Asia-Pacific region is viewed by Russia with concern as it aims to "contain" both Russia and China, Russian Deputy Defence Minister Anatoliy Antonov has said.

Separately, Antonov did not rule out "open confrontation" in the region faced with "new challenges and threats". His remarks were reported by the Russian news agency Interfax on 30 May.

"We are concerned about US policy in the region, all the more so as with each passing day it becomes more and more aimed at the systemic 'containment' of Russia and China," Antonov told a regional security conference in Singapore. Washington, he said, is openly putting pressure on the leadership of the regional nations in a bid to force them to renounce cooperation with Russia, including naval. "US pressure on Vietnam to prevent the servicing of Russian long-range aircraft in Vietnamese airports is a recent example," Antonov said.

"New challenges and threats to security" can "under certain conditions destabilize the regional situation, escalate military-political tensions and even lead to open confrontation", Antonov warned. In his view, a "conceptual document on comprehensive Asia-Pacific security" is needed.

Regional US missile defence a threat

US missile defence plans, including their Asia-Pacific segment, undermine strategic stability as they seek to boost US security at Russia's expense, Antonov also said, including what he described as plans to bring the Aegis shipborne missile defence system ever closer to Russia's shores.

"Despite our concerns about the architecture of the US global missile defence system, the United States continues a policy of undermining strategic stability with an additional missile 'shield' segment in the Asia-Pacific region" that is "far in excess of the capability required to neutralize possible missile risks and threats", Antonov said.

"It is evident that the US wants to bring its Aegis ships closer to Russian shores," Antonov said. "Washington's plans to deploy hypersonic weapons on Virginia-class nuclear submarines as part of the Prompt Global Strike concept" are also of concern, he added.

"The one-sided bias in the security architecture must be rectified jointly on the basis of international law and with respect for the national interests of each country. I want to emphasize that no state has the right to strengthen its security at the expense of weakening the defence capability of another," Antonov summed up.

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 #18
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
June 1, 2015
Making sense of Xi Jinping's and John Kerry's visits to Russia
Think Tank Review: Russia's evolving relationship with China and the potential significance of John Kerry's visit to Sochi preoccupied the attention of Russian think tank experts in May.
By Anastasia Borik

In May the strengthening of the Russia-China alliance, the elections in Poland, and the resumption of dialogue between the Russian Federation and the United States were on the agenda of top Russian analysts.
Where will the focus on China take Russia?

Following the parade in honor of the 70th anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War, during which Chinese President Xi Jinping sat solemnly side by side with President Vladimir Putin, Russian experts pondered the further strengthening of ties between the two countries, and where this collaboration might lead Russia.

In particular, CFDP head Fyodor Lukyanov noted the qualitatively new level of Russian-Chinese agreements. He points out that the memoranda signed on May 8 are fundamentally different from the myriad previous bilateral agreements in proposing a greater range of specific projects and areas of cooperation.
Lukyanov stresses that the strategic partnership now includes the term "concordance of plans," which is a sign of marked progress. Moreover, he writes that, "The general content of the memoranda indicates a swing towards infrastructure development in Eurasia, whereupon the momentum and initiative will propagate not from west to east, as everyone assumes, but vice versa."

"All countries in this respect have an interest in large infrastructure projects to give themselves social and economic incentives," he remarks.

However, Lukyanov is quick to pour cold water over the most ardent supporters of Russia's union with China. Cooperation in the military sphere is unlikely, he opines. Moreover, China continues to balance its foreign policy between the major players, and will not reject close relations with Washington if they are placed on the table.

MGIMO experts Sergei Luzyanin and Alexander Lukin also believe that Xi Jinping's visit to the Victory Day parade has tremendous significance for Sino-Russian relations.

"Given the atmosphere of sanctions and the undeclared Cold War, the visit to Moscow of the leader of the world's second largest economy and superpower-in-waiting was not simply about observing the parade," notes Luzyanin. "It signifies that Moscow and Beijing are bound together... by a common geopolitical understanding of the challenges, threats and shaping of the future world."

Lukin completes the picture by noting that the visit of the Chinese leader hints at a gradual "consolidation of the non-Western world," into which "we are being pushed by the hostile policy of our Western partners."

Meanwhile, Carnegie Center analyst Igor Denisov urges restraint in not succumbing to the euphoria of the prospects of cooperation. He notes in particular that Chinese TV did not show a live broadcast of the parade itself, as in previous years, and that publications about Xi Jinping's visit were limited to photographs of a strictly perfunctory nature, eschewing images of the parade, Russian military equipment and soldiers.

Denisov suggests that this may be due to two reasons: First, China's leaders fear that the Moscow parade could overshadow Beijing's own victory parade in September 2015; second, the Chinese government is in no hurry to demonstrate the "strategic partnership" with Russia to the world and its own people to avoid becoming embroiled in a confrontation with the West.
Does John Kerry's visit to Russia signal a new phase?

In May Russian experts pondered the significance for Russian-U.S. relations of the U.S. Secretary of State's visit to Sochi, and whether the international climate would improve as a result.

They agree on one thing: talk of a breakthrough is premature. The personal meeting and resumption of dialogue at such a high level is a major step forward, but insufficient by itself, whereupon the outcome of the meeting left much to be desired.

Fyodor Lukyanov of CFDP explains that Obama is gradually winding down his time in office, and hence focused on his so-called legacy, meaning that major international issues, above all Iran and Syria, need a resolution. Without Russia there can be none.

Therefore, the expert posits that the U.S. will seek a new modus vivendi with Russia that assumes cooperation on some issues and confrontation on others (such as Ukraine), warning at the same time: "This modus vivendi does not mean a softening of the rhetoric - on the contrary, the real abatement in tension may have to be offset by more combative statements."

RIAC General Director Andrei Kortunov believes that Russian-U.S. relations are gradually emerging from the critical phase, but will remain in a "stable but serious condition" for some time to come. Kortunov notes that the visits to Russia by senior U.S. officials, including John Kerry and Victoria Nuland, could be the first step towards the restoration of dialogue, but needs to be followed by greater efforts.

It is particularly important, asserts Kortunov, "to muffle the hostile rhetoric - at least at the official level." The analyst is adamant that Ukraine must not become an obsession, since it is clearly not the only moot point, and that dialogue on other topics could help to reduce the tensions.

Cautious optimism is expressed by Mikhail Troitsky of MGIMO, who analyzes in detail the current state of Russian-U.S. relations, arriving at the conclusion that they need time. In addition, he flags that Russia needs to change the logic of its dealings with the United States.

Russia talks about "geopolitics" and "zones of influence," which is of no interest and not properly understood by the United States, while the "right balance of geopolitics and economics will not only ensure Russian-U.S. cooperation (which is not an end in itself), but restore Russia's outlook of economic growth and social progress."

Andrzej Duda's victory in Poland

Modern Poland is perhaps one of the most anti-Russian countries in Europe. As a result, recent elections there were closely monitored by Russian experts, who predicted a winning margin for Bronislaw Komorowski. Therefore, opposition leader Andrzej Duda's victory wrong-footed many think tanks. However, in no time at all, experts were making new predictions - this time about the future of the Russian-Polish dialogue.

Oleg Barabanov of MGIMO, for example, is extremely pessimistic about the prospects for Russian-Polish relations. The expert notes that Duda is "a loyal disciple of the Kaczynski brothers, who always fanned the flames of Russophobia in Poland."

"There is no reason to believe that [Duda] will change this position, since his foreign policy will be under the tight control of Jaroslaw Kaczynski," says the expert.

Barabanov also notes that a significant obstacle in normalizing relations will always be the Polish elite's orientation towards the United States, and Poland's insignificant role in supplying arms to Ukraine.

RIAC expert Igor Zhukovsky likewise expects no warming of relations, noting, however, that Duda is known for his pragmatism, which could be utilized to reopen the Russian-Polish dialogue.

Furthermore, the analyst points to the fact that as a member of the Law and Justice party, Duda is now focused less on Russia and foreign policy and more on Poland's domestic issues and the numerous campaign promises that will be hard to implement, especially if his party fails in the parliamentary elections this fall.

Wrapping up the assessments of the new president's foreign policy, Zhukovsky points to the U.S. and EU factor: "It should be understood that there is little point in evaluating the self-sufficiency of Poland's foreign policy, since its military, political and economic integration with the EU and NATO is too close."

Fyodor Lukyanov of CFDP predicts that, "Moscow and Warsaw face hard times ahead." That said, he does not ignore the broader context of the Polish conservatives' victory, pointing out that it is just one of a number of recent Eurosceptic triumphs, which means that the balance of power in the EU could soon change perceptibly.

European politicians will forever remember Kaczynski and his party (Andrzej Duda's too) for their endless demands to expand Poland's powers in the EU, as well as the special conditions for entry into the European Union. In this sense, Duda's victory is a defeat for Europe as well as for Russia.

"In European capitals the Kaczynski brothers' time in office (Lech as president and Jaroslaw as prime minister) is recalled with nothing less than a shudder," concludes Lukyanov.

Maxim Samorukov of the Carnegie Moscow Center sees eye-to-eye with his colleagues. He predicts that Poland can expect to face, among other things, internal political conflicts linked to the fact that Law and Justice is unlikely to win the parliamentary elections in the fall, which means that the president and prime minister will be from different parties, complicating the entire political process and certainly not improving relations with Russia.

Samorukov recalls the joint rule of Lech Kaczynski (Law and Justice) and Donald Tusk (Civic Platform).

"To prove that he was a real opponent of Russia, unlike the milksop Tusk, Lech Kaczynski came under shelling on the Ossetian border in his motorcade and circled over Georgia during the war in August 2008," writes Samorukov.

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 #19
Russian analysts call EU reaction to Moscow's retaliatory stop lists hypocritical
By Tamara Zamyatin

MOSCOW, June 1. /TASS/. The European politicians' acute reaction to Moscow's list of EU officials who have been prohibited from entering Russia is exaggerated and disproportionate, polled analysts have told TASS.

The "stop list" Moscow has handed over to Brussels contains the names of 89 politicians from EU countries. On Saturday, the list was published by foreign mass media. The deputy director of the Foreign Ministry's information and press department, Maria Zakharova, has explained in Facebook that Brussels had contacted Moscow via diplomatic channels to ask Moscow for such lists in order to minimize inconveniences for those likely to be denied permission to enter the country. As soon as they received the lists, the European officials made them public and demanded official explanations from Moscow.

"Sirs, that's really mean," Zakharova's post runs.

The chief of European diplomacy, Federica Mogherini, said the stop list was an arbitrary and groundless measure and demanded extra explanations. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte argues that the stop list has no international legal basis to rely on. Britain's Foreign Office, too, says it sees no legal reason allowing Russia to introduce the black list. Many EU politicians have come out with harsh statements on that score.

Lecturer at the political theory chair of the Moscow state institute of international relations MGIMO, Kirill Koktysh, believes that such statements are unexplainable.

"International law has always been based on the principle of symmetry. When Russia came up with its own 'stop list' in retaliation for the European Union's black list of Russian politicians the European bureaucrats preferred to follow the old proverb 'What is permissible for Jove is not permissible for an ox.' This hypocrisy weighs on their conscience. But after the EU has denied entry to the speaker of Russia's Federation Council, Moscow, too, has the right to deny entry to, say, Polish parliamentary speaker. This reaction by Russia is quite predictable, so there is no point of simulating injured pride," Koktysh said.

"In accordance with international practice any state has the right to deny entry to any foreign national without explaining the reasons. The United States and many other EU countries do so. Suffice it to recall Estonia's recent refusal to let a Russian ethnologist of world renown, Valery Tishkov, attend a scientific conference in Tallinn. The Estonian authorities offered no explanations and Brussels has kept quiet about the affair.

"It is quite significant that after the deportation of German legislator Karl-Georg Wellmann the German authorities and then the EU leadership asked Moscow for a list of undesirable persons to rule out situations in which people might arrive in Russia only to learn they must return home. Moscow has decided to be transparent. The list had been drawn up in advance. Moscow decided to meet the European partners' requests to minimize the effects of future entry refusals. As a result we've heard more, absolutely groundless accusations from the EU functionaries," Koktysh said.

The head of the public diplomacy commission Sergey Markov has described Moscow's response to the EU's 'black lists' of Russian politicians as symmetrical retaliation.

"Moscow put on the 'stop lists' those politicians and those countries which support anti-Russian sanctions. Absent from the lists are the officials of Cyprus, Hungary, Greece and other countries that have displayed interest in cooperation with Russia. The European officials are free to make their conclusions," said Markov, a member of the Civic Chamber.

"I was refused permission to enter the Schengen zone myself even when I was a State Duma member. Nobody has ever explained to me the reasons. The European politicians' anger is hypocritical and demands for official explanations are groundless," Markov said.

"The European Union's politicians hope that with the 'black lists' they will be able to punish Russia for its high-principled stance over the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis. For Brussels it would've been far more constructive to use the efforts being wasted on anti-Russian rhetoric to enforce compliance with the Minsk Accords," Markov said.

And the director of the Centre for Political Technologies, Igor Bunin, said one aspect of the affair looked particularly odd to him.

"Had Moscow dismissed the European Union's request for a list of politicians prohibited from entering Russia, the storm of criticism against it would have been as strong as the one over the disclosure of the list, or even possibly stronger."

"Any foreign policy gesture by Russia entails a harsh, sometimes disproportionate response from the European partners. Mutual accusations are snowballing. Meanwhile, time is ripe for establishing civilized relations and taking reciprocal steps. There is no other way of ending the long-lasting confrontation," he said.

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 #20
Carnegie Moscow Center
June 1, 2015
Not Against Russia: Why the Eastern Partnership Makes Increasingly Less Sense
By Alexander Baunov
Baunov is a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center and editor in chief of Carnegie.ru.

The Riga Eastern Partnership summit is a hapless event whose only point is to divide the post-Communist Europe into Russia and "not-Russia." On the other hand, what could be more timely than that? That's exactly what many Eastern partners want. They'd like to split away and fence themselves off from Russia, and can cite every reason and excuse for doing so-from Abkhazia, recognized by Russia and Nauru alone, to the recently-abandoned project of Novorossiya. But as it turns out, even the weightiest of arguments-those in the 45 to 60mm caliber range-aren't enough for these very different countries to create a genuinely united front. European diplomats have told journalists about all the difficulties they had getting even the most general documents signed at these summits: Belarus and Armenia refused to sign a joint statement that would contain the words "annexation of Crimea," leaving it to the linguists to find a synonymous phrase. Azerbaijan didn't show up at all: why, with all the oil riches it has, run around trying to join some partnership when its successful neighbor Turkey doesn't even want to join the EU anymore. All of this somewhat resembles the fate of GUAM, an organization of the former Soviet republics founded with much fanfare in 2005, but which last assembled in 2008.

LIFE IN LIMBO

The last Eastern Partnership summit took place in Vilnius a year and a half ago, in November 2013. That was where Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was supposed to have signed the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU, but he changed his mind at the last minute. Everyone knows what happened next. Maybe that event will always be the organization's fifteen minutes of fame, the largest role in history it will ever play. It comes as no surprise then that assembling the next summit took some time.

It's hard to find commonalities between Azerbaijan and Moldova or Ukraine and Armenia, other than that they are former Soviet republics west of the Urals. In this sense, the partnership looks like the CIS, but turned inside out- like a house where the chandeliers, sofas and family portraits decorate the outer walls rather than being hidden inside. These are the kinds of things you see after natural disasters-and so it's no wonder we are witnessing something similar after a geopolitical catastrophe, to borrow Vladimir Putin's term.
The difference between the CIS and every other association between members of the former Soviet republics is very simple. In the CIS they are connected by Russia, just as they were connected for decades and centuries: bureaucratically, financially, logistically. Then the links grew weaker, and the CIS turned into an institution for a civilized divorce.

This didn't happen to the Eastern Partnership because it is an institution of marriage, but not between its own members-Ukrainians give very little thought about how to start a family with Azerbaijan-but with Europe. And of course it's because of this that it doesn't work. It's marital limbo, a hellish circle for decent girls who are promised a proposal but never given one.

And so the former Soviet republics are perfectly justified in their fear that the partnership is just a ploy to keep them away from Europe.

WIDE, INDEED

This insightful thought was expressed by former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko, who voiced his concerns before the first Eastern Partnership summit in Prague in May 2009: "Ukraine doesn't believe that dialogue within the framework of the Eastern Partnership is an alternative to our expectations of integration. We don't want to want discussion of our EU membership to be substituted by other formats that don't foresee Ukraine's membership in the EU." Petro Poroshenko repeated exactly the same thing on the eve of the current summit.

But that's exactly how western Europeans view this dialogue. Where did the Eastern Partnership come from in the first place? It was part of the European Neighborhood Policy, which brings together countries not slated for EU membership. As all documents indicate, the program is geared toward creating cooperation between the EU and third parties. And as everybody knows, three's a crowd. During the EU's major enlargement in 2003-2004, when the number of members increased from 17 to 25 and the union's borders shifted, the question of what to do with new members arose. Then, officials in Brussels came up with what was first called New Neighborhood (2002), then Wider Europe (2003), and finally European Neighborhood Policy (2004). The name change was the result of a merger between the two former blocs: the new neighbors (former Soviet Republics), and the old neighbors (North Africa and the Middle East). A whole range of countries from Morocco to Israel, from Lebanon to Ukraine and Armenia, ended up in the same boat. No one could stomach this cocktail for long. The Eastern Partnership is a fairly logical way to separate these two very distinct blocs into Mediterranean and post-Soviet neighbors.

But neither Neighborhood nor Partnership members sat at the same table as EU candidates. Neither program included Turkey (official talks on joining have been going on since 2005). Albania was also missing, and so was Serbia, which along with the entire former Yugoslavia is viewed as a potential EU member when the future looks brighter and when residents of western Europe no longer shudder at the words "EU expansion."

When the partnership was just getting underway, the most active partners still hoped to make it somewhat of a stepping stone into the EU, and viewed it as a club that gave them at least a remote chance of joining. But the Europeans refused to see the partnership in the same light. Unable to lie or equivocate, Angela Merkel spoke to her parliament with typical German honesty before the Riga summit: "The Eastern Partnership is not part of European expansion policy. We shouldn't encourage false hopes."

WHERE WE ARE NOT

Russia is also Europe's neighbor to the east, so why was there no place for it in either the Neighborhood or the Partnership? Don't we belong in hell or at the very least in limbo? But many post-Soviet partners wouldn't like to share a place with the Russians even there. First of all, they didn't all struggle for emancipation from Moscow to glance around and see it just over their shoulders yet again. Russia's presence in the organization would suggest that the correct answer to the question is no, the partnership is not about joining the EU. And no one would want deliver that kind of news to their publics.

Besides, Russia wasn't exactly rushing to join the partnership itself. And it could have become a partner regardless of all the peculiarities of its domestic politics: after all, Lukashenko's Belarus and Azerbaijan's "monarchy" found themselves among the members. When the Treaty of Accession was signed in Athens in 2003, European bureaucrats actively encouraged Russia to join the Neighborhood-Partnership. But the Russian Foreign Ministry and the presidential administration signaled that Russia must have a special, separate relationship with the EU rather than sharing it with Moldova or Georgia, or later with Algeria and Egypt. Russia doesn't want to be just another neighbor-partner in the group, it wants nothing less than special status and preferential treatment. The "Four Common Spaces" between Russia and the EU was created to give Russia exactly that-but the program has long collapsed because of the numerous conflicts between Russia and the West.

The Russian leadership has never seen itself as being a fragment of the Soviet Union-it doesn't see the Soviet Union as something that previously existed, that then collapsed, and that now there are fifteen equal countries. Russia is not one of many, but is rather a slightly diminished Soviet Union, just without the communism. Internally we have changed, but we want to take the same place on the international stage as the Soviet Union did. You divided Europe with them, now divide it with us. Yes, we are smaller, but our core has remained unchanged.

No one wanted to give Russia that much, but they gave it something else instead: an assurance that the Eastern Partnership is not aimed against Russia. They have assured it that essentially nothing in this world is aimed against Russia-whether that's NATO, the missile defense program, or the International Orthopedist Union. And even now, after Crimea and Donbas, the EU must maintain the same, paradoxical official position. Regardless of the fact that war-torn Ukraine is one of the partnership's members, the Riga summit declarations can't be too harsh or anti-Russian, in contrast to those made at European Parliament or even the EU summit. For his part, President Poroshenko claimed diplomatic victories over wording that would make PACE members laugh.

WHAT IT STANDS FOR

So what is the purpose of this organization? It is not a stepping stone on the way to Europe, nor can it condemn and oppose Russia with a single voice. The cooperation between Eastern and Western Europe has always provided decent financial incentives: western Europe is perceived a source of material gain. The Eastern Partnership also has a budget, but it makes for a lousy ATM. Moldova gets the most out of the Partnership-around 100 million Euros a year in the more prosperous years of 2011-2013. Lithuania, whose population is about the same, received 1.9 billion Euros in subsidies from the EU in 2013. To appreciate the scale, one can look to the east as well: the Eurasian Union Fund created in 2013 to help Kyrgyzstan join the Eurasian Economic Union started off with $1 billion.

The Eastern Partnership could have become a conduit for a visa-free travel to Europe. This alone would have given its existence enduring meaning. Western Europeans are used to simply buying a ticket to go anywhere and rarely visit countries that require a visa, so they often fail to appreciate the ease of hitting the road without a visit to the embassy first. But the partnership didn't turn into something like that either. Georgian diplomats complain behind the scenes that their country has fallen victim to "solidarity": Europeans could have granted them visa-free travel, at least on those conditions given to Moldova, but they believe it must be done simultaneously with Ukraine. Russia is quite familiar with this logic-Russians cannot enjoy visa-free travel because letting them visit Europe before their neighbors do would be "improper."

FEAR OF THE VOID

The Eastern Partnership has almost no practical purpose. It's common to use the term "Potemkin Villages" when referring to Russia-after all, they were invented here. The Eastern Partnership is the European Union's Potemkin village. The only reason for its existence, apart from providing a career for a certain number of bureaucrats, is horror vaccui, or fear of the void.

First, there were member candidates to the east. Then they became members, and the EU was saddled with God knows what to its east: an assemblage of relatively poor and very diverse countries, moving in different directions, all wanting different things and changing directions. Plus, Moscow's never far behind. A vacuum appeared east of the EU, and the Eastern Partnership is just a helpless attempt to fill it. We have to put something there, right? It's impossible to just leave the void there, especially if what might fill it is Russia. How can these countries be left to their own devices? It's simply dangerous. What if they start wars with each other, or civil wars, or wars against some other country? They have to be taken care of somehow, we need some organization to cobble them together. The Partnership is useless, but logical and inevitable. It simply cannot not exist.

But now we have wars- both internal and external ones. And Russia has arrived, and no partnership is going to stop them. If the partnership were about the EU, money, and visas, it would have made sense. But lacking all of that, it's just an ineffective and archaic entity that automatically divides post-Soviet Europe into Russia and "not Russia." There can only be one real partnership to the east of the current Europe, and it has to include Russia. And as is often the case, it's long overdue.

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 #21
www.opendemocracy.net
May 27, 2015
Transnistria: West Berlin of the post-Soviet world
How to play hardball: Ukraine's parliament has revoked the agreement between Russia and Ukraine on the movement of Russian troops through Ukrainian territory to Transnistria.
By Sergei Markedonov
Sergei Markedonov is Associate Professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities

Fresh intrigue is afoot in the Transnistrian 'frozen' conflict. On 21 May, Ukraine's parliament the Verkhovna Rada revoked the agreement between Russia and Ukraine on the movement of Russian troops through Ukrainian territory to Transnistria, the unrecognised republic that is, from a legal point of view, considered part of Moldova.

But that is far from everything. Rada deputies also wrote off a whole series of documents regulating the supply of Russian troops and 'peacekeepers' stationed in Transnistria - the Operative Group of Russian Forces.

Not to be outdone

After the Ukrainian parliament's decision, Chișinău Airport is now the sole connection to the 'mainland' for the Russian military. And Chișinău is taking advantage of the opportunity. The Moldovan authorities now require Moscow to inform them of their troops' arrival a month in advance. Since October last year, more than 100 Russian military personnel have been deported from Moldova.

Chișinău doesn't see the Operative Group as peacekeepers: it's an undesirable foreign presence. For Chișinău , the Russian military presence only impedes Moldova's 'European choice' and fosters separatist desires on the left bank of the Nistru (Dniester) River. Made up of the former 14th Soviet Guards Army, the Operative Group was created in June 1995, when reforming the old Soviet army command.

The Russian military began its peacekeeping operation here following the 1992 Agreement on Principles of Peaceful Regulation of Conflict, between Moldova and Russia. At least 400 Russian peacekeepers, as well as troops from Moldova, Transnistria, and military observers from Ukraine are stationed in this territory. And although there have been several attempts to halt the peace process in Transnistria (particularly in 2014), Chișinău is yet to cancel the 1992 agreement.

Be that as it may, Russian troops in Transnistria are increasingly isolated. So what risk do they pose to Russian interests here? And what solution will Moscow choose?

In the past week, the Russian and foreign press has devoted much attention to this latest decision by the Rada - it's a political sensation. But if the consensus is that this move is improvised at best, then it was, at least, planned. We're not talking about a conspiracy here, but the logic of the political process. The Transnistrian conflict is different from other post-Soviet frozen conflicts for several reasons; in particular, the involvement of two guarantors - Russia and Ukraine.

For many, Kyiv's position as a second regulating party balances the plans of the Kremlin. Indeed, with more than 28% of the population in Transnistria being ethnically Ukrainian, Kyiv's position is logical.

Moreover, unlike Abkhazia or South Ossetia, Transnistria does not border with the Russian Federation, but shares a common one with Ukraine - 405km of it.

Falling out

Prior to 2006, Moscow and Kyiv were often seen as successful partners in Transnistria. For instance, Ukraine did not obstruct plans put forward by Dmitry Kozak, a Russian politician with ties to the Kremlin, to unite Transnistria and Moldova as a federal state in 2003. In turn, in 2005, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs more or less supported Viktor Yushchenko's suggestions for a peaceful resolution of the stalemate.

The events of 2006, however, sounded the first alarm bells after Kyiv and Chișinău amended regulations on Transnistria's external economic relations. Tiraspol's 'right' to economic independence was liquidated in March 2006. Meanwhile, for the first time after the conflict 'froze' in 1992, Transnistria became a negotiation battleground between Kyiv and Moscow. Fortunately, nine years ago, this conflict did not extend beyond trade relations and rhetoric.

In contrast, the events of 2014 led to something rather different. The second Maidan and change of power in Kyiv prompted the 'Russian Spring' and Moscow's military and political intervention in Crimea and Donbas. In Ukraine, these moves were perceived as aggression from a neighbouring state, and Kyiv came to view Transnistria as an outpost of Russian influence (although, it should be repeated that, before 2006 and after the 'Orange' government fell in 2010, Kyiv tried to take a more balanced line on the unrecognised republic).
 
Thus, the rise of militarist rhetoric and actions aimed at isolating Transnistria from the Ukrainian side - attempts have been made to increase security at border crossings and close off the republic with a defensive ditch. What's more, back in March 2014, all Russian male citizens between the ages of 18 and 65 with permanent residency in Transnistria were refused entry into Ukraine. According to local residents, exceptions are few and far between, and only concern journeys being made in certain circumstances (medical treatment, funerals).

In this sense, it was only a matter of time before the issue of Russian military transit became a political football. In the current circumstances, this move looks like a demonstration of national unity, patriotism, and resolve to resist the 'aggressor'.

Breaking the status quo

The Rada will not be condemned by its Western partners for its actions; indeed, it will be seen in the context of resistance to the 'imperial machinations' of the Kremlin. Russian diplomats, however, now speak of Kyiv's (and Chișinău's) violation of agreements and the breakdown in the former status quo.

In other circumstances, this argument might be accepted (or at least wouldn't provoke criticism in return). But when not only Ukraine, indeed the entire West, views Russia as having violated international law (the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, and the1997 Russia-Ukraine agreement), this is more than problematic. And although BRICS countries (and Russia's allies in the Eurasian Economic Union) are not blocking Russia's position, they are yet to recognise Crimea's new status. In this situation, international understanding is limited to Narendra Modi's willingness to receive Sergei Aksyonov of Crimea, in the Russian Federation's delegation to India.

What will Moscow's reaction to the actions of Kyiv and Chișinău be? Potentially, Moscow could raise the stakes - from a re-evaluation of Transnistria's status to increased military hardware supply. At a push, they may even 'surrender' Transnistria (the latter option comes up every time Moscow gets into difficulties on the Nistru).

But the 'exit' scenario looks unlikely. Firstly, it gives no guarantees that this 'surrender' will be the last. Leaving the Nistru won't stop the calls to 'return Crimea' or stop the 'occupation' of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Secondly, neither Brussels nor Washington have any desire to recognise Crimea in return for Russia leaving other parts of the former USSR. At least, these desires have not been made public. If they were, they would amount to a recognition of the post-Soviet space as a site of Russian special interest, highlighting the limits of American global hegemony.
 
No, we are more likely to face a choice between the visions of two representatives of the Russian foreign ministry: on the one hand, the possible re-evaluation of Transistria's status should Moldova change its neutrality (an idea proposed by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov) and, on the other, the joining of Transnistria to Moldova as a 'special region' (proposed by Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin). And all this is happening against the background of Vladimir Putin's declaration of the necessity of keeping the 5+2 format.

Lessons from the past

The increasing isolation of Transnistria is unpleasant, but far from fatal. For Russia, the issue of maintaining the Operative Group could be solved at the expense of the local residents holding Russian passports. But what then?

Perhaps the experience of the Cold War (the Berlin Airlift) may come in handy in this new historical era. The problem then would become one of military hardware and logistics, so avoiding the most controversial issue - status, which depends directly on the level of confrontation between Russia and the West, where people are inclined to view any change in the status quo by the Russian Federation as a plan to increase its sphere of influence in Eurasia rather than a reaction. As a result, responses are ever more aggressive.

However we choose to see the situation - how far it is grounded in fact, and how far it is the product of artificial fears - is not perhaps the main problem. If we choose to avoid the most controversial issue of status, Moscow will not be able to ignore its social obligations; and it is this that appears to be one of the most immediate consequences of Transnistria's increasing isolation.

Editor's note: This article originally appeared on politcom.ru in Russian.

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 #22
Moscow Times
June 1, 2015
Russians Can Learn From Polish Dissatisfaction
By Mark Adomanis
Mark Adomanis is an MA/MBA candidate at the University of Pennsylvania's Lauder Institute.

To say that Poland's recently concluded presidential election, in which Andrzej Duda of the Law and Justice party triumphed over the incumbent Bronislaw Komorowski of Civic Platform, was a "surprise" would be a pretty significant understatement.

I read quite a few of the pre-election forecasts in various Western magazines and newspapers and I can't recall a single one that gave Duda even a remote chance of winning. Komorowski's re-election was taken as a self-evident fact and a sign of Poland's increasing maturity and self-confidence.

While I sometimes get frustrated at the Western media for projecting its biases onto the stories it covers, it would be quite unfair to do so in this particular instance. Before the first round of voting started, there simply wasn't any good reason for Komorowski to lose: he was a reasonably popular incumbent with an enormous lead in the polls presiding over an economy that has recently been the best performer in all of Europe.

None of the things that you would expect to sink an incumbent were present. There wasn't a sudden economic downturn, there wasn't any alleged marital infidelity or corruption, and there wasn't any infighting among the party's backbenchers. It looked like a popular incumbent going into a race against a bunch of unknowns, and we all know how those races usually end.

Nonetheless, Duda stormed to victory in both rounds of voting and his triumph is already being interpreted as a sign of Polish society's growing frustration with inequality, at the nagging sense that the benefits of the country's unquestionably rapid economic growth have not been equally shared.

Perhaps he'll change his mind once he's in office, but all signs are that Duda's general policy positions are not especially different from Komorowski's. Both hail from broadly right of center, free market perspectives.

But, over the course of the campaign, Duda sounded more populist notes on themes such as bank regulation and mortgage lending. It is unlikely that these policies, even if they are enacted, will do anything to address the concerns of Poles, but it does signal that "business as usual" is no longer an option. There are genuine grievances in Polish society about the way the economy operates and someone is going to make electoral hay out of them.

At first glance this might appear a little bit crazy. Poland? Economic problems? If there was a single country anywhere in Europe (perhaps even anywhere in the world) where you would expect the public to not be frustrated with the current state of the economy, Poland would be an excellent candidate.

It has been growing steadily since the early 1990s and is one of a handful of countries that was able to escape the 2008-09 crisis without going into a recession. In an environment of steady growth and low inflation, how on earth could the Poles be angry enough to toss out an incumbent president?

Well, Poland presents an excellent example of a simple but very awkward truth: the public usually doesn't care about the same things that the business press does. Poland's performance has gotten glowing reviews from the likes of The Economist and The World Bank, but the most important constituency (actual Poles living in Poland) evidently hasn't been terribly satisfied.

Even in a country like Poland, there is usually quite a large gap between the kinds of things that Western businesses care about and the concerns of the median voter.

Poland, for example, has made substantial progress in reducing the amount of red tape with which the average business must deal. No, the Polish government is not as lean and business-friendly as governments in the Baltics, but it is vastly better than it was when it first made the transition from communism. Poland's business environment has likely never been better its entire history.

But whether you are cheered or dismayed by this change, the fact remains that it just isn't of much relevance to the average Pole. Very few people own (or are ever going to own) their own business. They're not anti-business per se, nor are they fans of needless bureaucratic hurdles, they just don't have much experience with these matters in their day-to-day lives.

Put more simply, the average person is always going to care a lot more about the size of their most recent paycheck than they do their country's position on the "ease of doing business" league table.

As Leonid Bershidsky astutely noted in Bloomberg, there can be a certain amount of perception over reality in these matters. Polish inequality, while it has certainly been growing, is not particularly high by European standards. For all of its popularity among economic liberals, the Polish state actually does a surprisingly large amount of redistribution and inequality would be much higher without government transfer payments.

But the potency of a political argument is not determined by a spreadsheet. If politics were a narrow game of numbers, Komorowski would have won without breaking a sweat. In an electoral campaign, narrow technocratic answers to emotional questions like "Is economic growth being fairly shared?" are unlikely to be terribly successful.

This is why Duda's populist appeals (even if they were rather light on substance) were so effective. It was a signaling device, a way to say that he shared voters' concerns in a way that the previous government did not.

If there's a lesson for Russia I would suggest it is the following: Even if the government implements (badly needed and entirely justified) liberalizing economic reforms, the public as a whole is unlikely to be very impressed. Indeed, the short- and medium-term pain usually associated with reform could conceivably cause public support to drop.

Voters aren't analyzing economic performance with a sophisticated macroeconomic forecasting model or a detailed comparative framework of government efficiency. They're making a series of quick judgements about wages, prices and their gut feeling of what is transpiring.

It's not enough for a government to be right; people have to feel like they're being treated fairly. And if this was a problem in a success story like Poland, it can be a problem anywhere.

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 #23
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
June 1, 2015
Dear American 'Liberals': Everything You Think You Know About Russia Is Wrong
Russia is actually ahead of the United States on many issues championed by the American Left
By Lisa Marie White
Lisa Marie White is a regular contributor to Russia Insider. If the United States tries to take away Russia's World Cup, she promises to stage a topless protest outside the White House. To tell her to knock it off with her sass already: @lisa_white

We all know what it feels like to log onto the Newsweek-owned Daily Beast, or the puerile random listicle generator known as  Buzzfeed, and peruse the invective-laden anti-Russian, anti-Putin screeds contained therein. These hysterical publications serve a function; that function is to convince members of the American public who might balk at militarism that today's Russia is a dangerous, dirty, backward, evil place, and its leader is some amalgamation of Dr. Evil and Emperor Palpatine.

Unlike during the lead-up to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, where the left took the lead in opposing the Bush administration's reckless Middle East policy, American liberals have more or less given Obama a free hand in his dealings with Russia and the Evil Putin. Liberals opposed the Iraq War, and spent many an hour arguing with Bushies about the errors of his foreign policy. It just so happens that these individuals turned out to be right, but their insistence on facts, logic, and commitment to the truth have gone out the proverbial window when it comes to Russia and Ukraine. "Putin is just like Stalin," my earnest, well-educated, liberal friends tell me. "His next target is Moldova and he hates gay people and Pussy Riot and now he wants to use prison labor to build the World Cup venues and he hates all women and doesn't support women's rights. I don't understand why you are so pro-Russian." I am pro-Russian because I can tell the difference between right and wrong. I can also realize when a country and a leader are being demonized to further an American geopolitical agenda. Furthermore, I can see that the more the United States tries to create some philosophical difference between the U.S. and Russia as existed during the Cold War, the more the former opens itself up to critique.

I guess it comes as no surprise when the U.S. mainstream media spends pages of copy wringing its hands over the deaths of con artists like Boris Nemtsov, but can't find a smidgen of space to tell the story of innocent victims like Vanya - who suffered horrific injuries as the result of Kiev's "anti-terrorist operation." I would like to point out to the well-meaning urban hipsters who may be reading this that they are siding with people like John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and are being duped into supporting a neo-conservative war agenda. American liberals may not be on the same page with Vladimir Putin on many issues, which is great for them, because American liberals are not required to live in Russia. However, it must be pointed out that, in many ways, Russia is actually ahead of the United States on issues that tend to be dear to liberals' hearts. Due to the constant deluge of invective on Russia's "backward" slide, when I am aware of the precise extent and stench of America's dirty laundry, these sanctimonious moral lectures from Americans on "human rights" don't exactly gel with me.

Capital Punishment

Rather than getting its panties in a twist about a piece of legislation that a foreign country has merely proposed, perhaps the NYT would prefer it if Russia followed America's lead and started executing its prisoners instead of asking them to repay their debt to society. Capital punishment in Russia has been indefinitely suspended - in contrast to the U.S.'s busy death chambers. Since 1976, the U.S. has executed 1,408 individuals. Thus far in 2015, 14 prisoners have been executed. Texas and Oklahoma alone are responsible for 637 executions. Even for those who support capital punishment, it cannot be denied that America's death chambers have likely put innocent people to death. By contrast, when Russia entered the Council of Europe in 1996, Boris Yeltsin bumbled his way into abolishing the practice.

Capital punishment has not been reinstated under the administrations of Dmitri Medvedev or Vladimir Putin. In 2008, the UN took a vote on passing a moratorium on the death penalty. Russia was one of the 106 nations that voted in favor; the U.S was among the 46 that voted against. Despite the objections of countries such as the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Iran, the measure was approved. Not only does the U.S. far outpace Russia in use of the death penalty, America executes individuals who would not be eligible for the death penalty in Russia. Women, children, and the mentally disabled are exempt from capital punishment. The last person executed in Russia was Sergey Golovkin, a convicted serial killer. In fact, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has spoken out against the death penalty.

Rates of Incarceration

Perhaps the Russians do not need to clear out their prisons through the use of a barbaric and outdated punishment simply because they don't have as many individuals in prison. Think Progress reports that the U.S. has the largest prison population in the developed world. Additionally, minority American men are more likely than their white counterparts to land in prison.

According to this chart, the incarceration rate in Russia lands somewhere between the U.S. states of Washington and Utah. You read that correctly. The entirety of the Russian Federation has a smaller percentage of its population in prison than the state of Washington. Washington has approximately 7 million residents; Russia has 143 million people. While Russia, China, and the United States overall have the highest prison rates per 100,000 people, the United States has 707; Russia has 470; and China has somewhere between 124 and 172. I wonder when I will see the New York Times gleefully trumpeting this fact as part of a smug commentary on the U.S.'s backward slide.

I also wonder how many World Cup venues could be built with just the population of the Louisiana penal system.

Recognition of Palestine

This is a map of countries that recognize Palestine as an independent state. See that big blob in green? The one in your top right? That's Russia.

According to a Gallup poll, Democrats are slowly withdrawing their support for Israel. The left-wing Slate writes of the importance of Palestinian independence. Slate's Josh Keating mentions naughty Russia in passing because they are unlikely to recognize Kosovo, but neglects to tell its readership that the Soviet Union voted to acknowledge Palestine in 1988. It's safe to say that this is a cause for concern for many Western liberals, as the Guardian became rather worked up over the firing of an American professor because of his pro-Palestinian stance.

Gun Control

In spite of The New Republic's dire warnings about drunken redneck Russians shooting anyone who looks at them cross-eyed, even with the new regulations, Russian gun laws are still considered to be restrictive. Even a cursory glance at Russia's gun policy would make many GOP voters explode with rage.

Russia places limits on the types and number of firearms citizens can own - a very significant distinction from America's "anything goes" gun policies. Possession of shotguns and other firearms is regulated by law, and gun owners must provide documentation and a "statement from a territorial police officer that weapons can be safely kept at the applicant's residence" to their local police department.

Russian gun owners must also obtain a gun license. Gun licenses are valid for five years and have to be renewed. Russia also does not allow the controversial practice of open carry, which most American liberals oppose. Additionally, the Russian government requires that citizens who acquire a gun for the first time not only attend firearm safety classes and pass a federal safety exam, but they must also pass a background check. Sensible gun legislation. What a backward sewer!

Of course, perhaps I am being too hard on the United States. Russia doesn't have the National Rifle Association buying off every politician from dog catcher to members of Congress.

Abortion

It's been brought to my attention that Russian ladies need Western feminism. I disagree. Acquiring access to family planning is central tenet of mainstream feminism. American feminists have been trying for years to get conservative Republican politicians to stop trying to restrict their access to birth control and abortion. I am not here to argue for or against abortion. I am here to tell you that abortion is free and legal in Russia, and has been for quite some time. So what would the appeal of Western feminism be for Russian women? Are they going to give them something they already have? American feminists can't even get free abortion and they can? So Russian women need feminism for what, exactly?

While abortion has been legal in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade, individual states have passed legislation placing limits on abortion. While legislators in the Russian Duma have proposed a bill that would limit access to abortion, the proposal seeks to limit state insurance payments for abortions. This is still more generous than American abortion practices, where no public money goes to pay for abortions. As of right now, abortions are available to women over the age of 16 up to the 12th week of pregnancy. No Russian woman seeking an abortion under her government's health plan is required to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound.

Maternity Leave

Yes, Russian women have it rough without the vicissitudes of feminism. If only they lived in the more advanced and civilized United States, they could give up their maternity leave benefits. In fact, the United States is so far ahead of the curve in their lack of same that they are the only industrialized nation in the world that does not guarantee paid maternity leave for new mothers.

Educational Attainment

Russia has led the world in citizens with college degrees. A 2011 report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation found that 53.5% of Russian adults held a degree. Even though Russian women are not getting on board with feminism do not support FEMEN's cultural appropriation of African protest, some of these college graduates (maybe as many as half) actually have ovaries.

Health Care

Health care continues to be a contentious issue in the U.S. Although Obamacare has lowered the percentage of uninsured adults, there are still 42 million Americans without health care. Russia, like many developed nations around the world, has universal health coverage. No, it is not perfect. Most systems like Russia's face problems such as coverage gaps and budget shortfalls, but it is a system that Russia has had in place since Soviet times, and is a guarantee that it gives to all of its citizens. Also, did I mention there is free abortion?

Admittedly, I do not know much about the Russian health care system. They are protesting their right to hang onto their Soviet-style health care system. Although the Western media gleefully reported that Russians protested cuts in health care due to sanctions and low oil prices, I am pretty certain that citizens taking to the streets to express their displeasure with their government's policy is a sign of a healthy democracy. Furthermore, taking sick pleasure in other people having a hard time because you don't happen to like their leader isn't what I would call progressive. It also doesn't make America's health care system any better.

The Down & Dirty

Since Russia will hopefully still be hosting the World Cup in 2018, it's safe to assume that the Western press will continue to beat the same very dead horses they banged on about during Sochi - gay rights and Pussy Riot - because these issues take precedence over the humanitarian tragedy occurring right now in Ukraine.

Let me take my American liberal friends on a little tour, and show them why the focus on these issues is actually war propaganda. It's very cleverly disguised war propaganda, but war propaganda nonetheless.

Gay Rights

Americans are exceptional. We know that. They are exceptionally specious when it comes to the issue of the LGBT community in Russia.

During the lead-up to the Sochi Olympics, we heard day after day after day how the "gay propaganda" law in Russia would soon lead to gay people being rounded up in cattle cars and shipped off to concentration camps in Siberia. The blame for all of this was laid at the feet of one Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, who calmly and rationally explains his views on the subject here. Despite the fact that Putin actually does not hate gay people, the Western press forged ahead painting a picture of a Russia where homosexuals are "hunted" with the full support of the Russian public and its demonic leader. In fact, when Russia jailed anti-gay nationalist Maxim Martinskovich for his crimes, it wasn't good enough for the Daily Beast and CNN tried to take the credit, even though Martinskovich had been on the Russian government's radar for a while and had actually been jailed in 2007. CNN even tried to claim that before his arrest, Putin was refusing to arrest Martinskovich, conveniently leaving out the fact that Martinskovich had fled to Cuba.

Facts continue to be pesky things for the U.S.'s campaign to vilify Russia over its LGBT record. The United States does not own the patent on LGBT equality. Far from it. Several U.S. States have "no promo homo"laws that are similar to the one passed in Russia. So I guess no Olympics for Utah. Oh, wait.

The existing laws alone would make the United States look hypocritical, but the number of states proposing anti-gay laws continues to increase. Twenty-eight states have proposed laws that range from religious refusals to anti-transgender laws. Indiana infamously passed a "religious freedom" bill earlier this year, and Michigan is moving forward with an anti-gay adoption law. Michigan already has a "right to bully" law, passed in 2011. As a matter of fact, Russia's anti-gay propaganda law is nothing compared to the laws that exist in 79 countries - some of which are U.S. allies. Here are the countries where you can die for being gay. Please note that Russia is not among them - but Saudi Arabia is. Israel restricts same-sex couples from using surrogates. Likewise, the democratic and peace-loving Ukraine is the most homophobic country in Europe. And EU candidate Georgia isn't much better.

One doesn't have to agree with Putin's views on the subject, nor do they have to be particularly supportive of Russia in general to see that it is being singled out and demonized

for a policy that was passed through a democratic process. To my knowledge, the U.S. has never changed a domestic policy simply because a foreign press was whining about how unfair it was, so I am uncertain why Russia is expected to do so.

Pussy Riot

You guys cannot be serious with this. How is walking into a church, interrupting a service, going into a sacred area of said church, dancing around like five-year-olds, and scaring a bunch of little old Russian ladies brave? Or a protest? Seriously? I am all for freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but if they wanted to protest Putin I am sure they could have found a service that he actually attended. Even then, I am doubtful that he would have cared. I am not religious myself, but I believe there is such a thing as freedom of religion, and people have a right to worship in peace.

Pussy Riot calls itself a "feminist punk band." First of all, there is nothing feminist about Pussy Riot. They are grown women in their mid-20s who don't mind men twice their age referring to them  as "girls." Western Feminism 101 will tell you that calling grown woman a girl is degrading. Secondly, there is nothing "punk" about them. Punk is about being real, and challenging the status quo. If Pussy Riot is about being real, why did they change their name from the Russian "Bойна" to the English "Pussy Riot"? Perhaps because their intended audience is actually outside Russia?

Then there is the matter of their chosen venue. The original Cathedral of Christ the Savior was demolished by Joseph Stalin in 1931 and was rebuilt only after the fall of the Soviet Union. Considering that this church symbolizes the utter hatred of religion that was par for the course during Soviet times, it is little wonder that today's Russians were so offended. Not only does the church have symbolic value, but the Romanovs were canonized there in 2000. It is where Yeltsin lay in state after he finally keeled over from heart failure in 2007. What exactly made them this angry that they chose this church for their protest? Were they murdered for their beliefs by Stalin? Were they shot and bayoneted to death for being the daughter of a tsar? Is this challenging status quo? Protesting in a cathedral that is charged with the weight of sad chapters in Russia's history? Is that challenging the status quo, or being an insensitive brat?

And what exactly has the Russian Orthodox Church done to incur this ire? There have been no abuse cover-ups. There have been no sex scandals. There have been no Orthodox Christians with reality shows on TLC who pretend that their son isn't molesting his sisters (and who maintain the support of prominent politicians). There was nothing"brave" or"heroic" about their performance, just like there was nothing brave or heroic about them throwing live stray cats at McDonald's workers to "protest capitalism." Personally I think they should have gone to jail for animal cruelty.

American liberals like to pretend this "song" was about Putin. There are only a couple of lines in the song that actually refer to Putin and the Patriarch. Most Western media claims they were arrested for "hooliganism" when they were charged with hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. Read that last part very carefully.  The rest is about how backward they think the Orthodox church is. That's fine if they feel that way, but I am pretty sure there is no law in Russia that demands that you join.

Americans were outraged! How dare they? How dare they what? Employ their own laws? Prosecute crimes and hand out punishment in a manner in which they see fit? And what if this had happened in the United States? You're telling me that the country that lost its damn mind when Miley Cyrus gesticulated with a foam finger at the"sacred" VMAs would have looked the other way if someone protested in this manner at the National Cathedral in D.C. or the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC? How about you go to Boston and interrupt Sunday mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross? I'm sure everyone would have been totally calm. Just like everyone stayed calm when Seth MacFarlane had a potty mouth at the"solemn" Academy Awards. Or how like nobody cared when someone spray painted graffiti at a national park.

I suppose I am not an arbiter of what is and what is not acceptable speech, and what is and is not a challenge to the status quo. But I do know that, had Pussy Riot not been little white girls, maybe the American media would have called them thugs.

I know Russia isn't perfect, and that's not the point. But whatever issues Russia has, I feel it is always better to let a country sort these sorts of things out for themselves. Take it from me, the U.S. has plenty of problems of its own. If anything, Russia should take the U.S.'s constant nagging as a compliment. After all, this is the same country that called Nelson Mandela a terrorist.

The United States talks all the time about winning "hearts and minds." Through the sheer preponderance of facts in their favor, Russia has won my mind. I have freely given it my heart.

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 #24
New York Times
June 2, 2015
Fighting in Ukraine Eases, but Abuses Continue on Both Sides, U.N. Says
By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE

GENEVA - Fighting in eastern Ukraine has eased recently, but at least 6,417 people have died in the conflict and abuses that may amount to war crimes continue to be committed by both sides, the United Nations said Monday.

Nearly 16,000 people have also been injured since fighting broke out between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists in the region in April 2014, Ivan Simonovic, assistant head of the United Nations human rights office, told reporters in Geneva in presenting the latest report of its monitors.

The casualty estimates were conservative, Mr. Simonovic emphasized. Both sides have reported that hundreds of people are missing, and morgues in the contested areas reportedly hold hundreds more bodies, the report said.

Indiscriminate shelling and the number of civilian casualties from the fighting have fallen since February, but "the shelling has not stopped, nor have armed hostilities between Ukrainian armed forces and armed groups, meaning that civilians continue to live in fear," the human rights office said in a statement released with its report, which focuses on developments in the three months to May 15.

Moreover, there are reports of "horrific accounts of torture and ill-treatment in detention" by both sides, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the head of the human rights office, said in a statement. "We have documented alarming reports of summary executions by armed groups and are looking into similar allegations against Ukrainian armed forces," he said.

Those abuses, if proved in a court, would constitute war crimes, Mr. Simonovic said.

In Crimea, the United Nations said, Tatars - a Muslim group that local officials accuse of working against Russian interests - and members of the political opposition faced arrests, torture, ill-treatment and intimidation "with the knowledge or participation of the law enforcement or affiliated groups."

Monitors have received reports of sophisticated weapons and of fighters crossing into Ukraine from Russia, Mr. Simonovic said, and there is "increasing evidence that active-service Russian soldiers were operating in Ukraine."

"The withdrawal of foreign fighters and the cessation of the flow of weapons from the Russian Federation would have a significant impact on law and order" and on the implementation of the cease-fire agreements of Minsk, Belarus, the report said.

The United Nations asked that priority be given to the clearing of mines and unexploded ordnance, which it said caused "considerable" numbers of casualties. It cited reports from the Ukrainian Health Ministry saying that at least 42 children had been killed and 109 wounded by mines and other explosive devices in the areas around Donetsk and Luhansk that have been controlled by pro-Russian armed groups since March 2014.

The United Nations also expressed concern about the safety of journalists in Ukraine, reporting that a Ukrainian photographer who died in a mortar attack in February was the eighth journalist killed in the fighting.

The monitors cited frequent reports of journalists being detained by armed groups and the death of the journalist Oles Buzyna, a well-known critic of the Ukrainian government who was killed by two masked men near his home in the capital, Kiev, in April.

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 #25
Deutsche Welle
June 2, 2015
Despite distance, war takes toll on western Ukraine
In Ukraine's west, long a bastion of pro-European sentiment, the war and economic crisis are shaking faith in the country's leadership. Ian Bateson reports from Novovolynsk.

In the Buzhanska mine 12 kilometers (seven miles) from the Polish border Ukrainian miners are putting on their uniforms and collecting their flashlights as they prepare to relieve the nightshift. The work is grueling and little of it automated. In the past mining was one of the better jobs in the area, with miners able to earn up to $240 (219 euros) a month. With miners owed months in back pay by the state that is no longer case.

The average wage in nearby Novovolynsk, a city of 57,000 built in 1950 to support the then new mines, is $140 a month. Though locals say the most people not working in the mines can hope to make is $119. Here the economic crisis that followed the Maidan protests and the war - which destroyed 60 percent of the local currency's value - has hit hard.
"What did we need all of that for? We've gotten nothing for it," says Svetlana Shevchuk, 56, who is forced to live off of the state's unemployment payments, now worth $20 a month.
With Novovolynsk so close to the Polish border locals have watched not only as the standard of living in Poland has risen since the fall of communism, but again as Ukraine has gone into economic crisis while Poland continues to be an engine of growth in the EU.

Normally that proximity and financial disparity would provide lucrative opportunities for potential investors, but here the uncertainty concerning Ukraine's future takes its toll and keeps such people away. "It is hard for investors because of the instability. Russian could be here tomorrow," says Vasyl Mikas, head of the city's Communal Enterprise Department.

The closeness of the border does create an opportunity for smuggling, providing a lifeline to those unable to find work or make ends meet. A Polish law allows Ukrainians living near the border to receive a special permit and travel back and forth instead of having to apply for a visa as Ukrainians usually do. Though trade once went both ways, the depreciation of the hyrvnia, the Ukrainian currency, means now it mainly focuses on taking alcohol and cigarettes bought in Ukraine or Belarus and selling them to Polish buyers who want to avoid import duties.

War close by

Novvolynsk is in far western Ukraine, yet the effects of the war are palpable. The main square displays the portraits of local men killed at the front and at two storefronts people collect supplies for soldiers. So far nine have been killed and three are missing in action.

In total over 600 men from the district have been drafted and are fighting in the Ukrainian armed forces. Others are fighting in volunteer battalions with the right-wing Azov and DUK, which is associated with the far-right group Right Sector and said to be the most popular, though there are no official statistics.

In a new youth center that offers art lessons, children's drawings are often of soldiers. "A lot of the children have fathers serving at the front and they talk to them on the phone," says Pavlo Medina, the center's manager.

In Novovolnysk the fighting in eastern Ukraine is personal in another way: Many of the city's founders came from Donbas to operate the city's mines in the 1950s. Those family connections have also brought many IDPs to the city according to Olena Martenyuk, the local supervisor of work and social programs. Three hundred and fifty-seven people are officially registered as IDPs in Novovolynsk. Their families are each entitled to maximum support from the state of $114 a month calculated based on the number of family members. Even in Novovolysnk it is not enough to pay for rent and spiraling utilities, she says.

Olha Kazymyrova, 39, arrived with her husband and young son from separatist-controlled Makyavka in August. After months of shelling she had trouble explaining to her four-year old that they no longer needed to go to the cellar to seek shelter since people here only used them to store potatoes.

It has not been easy for her to find work or a place to live, and her husband, a miner - seeing as miners go unpaid in Novovolynsk - went to Poland to work 80 hours a week in a frozen produce factory.

"I am willing to work and I don't have a problem working in the field," says the trained athlete and marathon runner.

Concern for the future

"The problem here is that absolutely nothing has changed since Maidan," says Borys Karpus, a city council member. According to him, though local residents supported the Maidan protests, they have not seen change coming from Kyiv or locally. Hoping to fix that, he founded a local branch of the reform party Samopomich, or self-reliance, one of the governing parties in Kyiv led by Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi. With local elections across Ukraine scheduled for the end of October, Karpus is hoping to bring a mandate for change here.

For now, working abroad as domestic help in Italy and or in other EU countries acts as a pressure release valve for the dismal economic situation. But for many that is not enough.

Tetyana Dyachuk's husband runs a second-hand electronics business in Portugal, while she returned with her children to raise them here.

"I don't understand what Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk are doing. It is war but it still can't be like this," she says.

For the older generation it is hard to see so many of the young leave to find work or to fight. Vasyl Buslovsky, 89, is originally from Russia's Belgorod region and was sent to Novovolynsk to drill the first mines back in the '50s. He laments that the economic situation has made his grandchildren move away to the US and Norway and makes their children not even want to visit Ukraine.

"Our leaders are all millionaires, he says. "And they don't want to listen."

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 #26
RFE/RL
June 01, 2015
Symbols of Ukraine's Strength Hide Tensions in Kharkiv
by Glenn Kates

KHARKIV, Ukraine -- Beside an overpass eight kilometers from the center of Kharkiv lies a newly dug network of trenches lined with bark so fresh the sap still oozes out.  

Regional Governor Ihor Raynin told RFE/RL of state-of-the-art fortifications being built here to guard against an invasion from Russia, 30 kilometers up the road, and in the south to ward off any advance by Moscow-backed separatists from the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.

But Oleksandr Zalyvan, a military adviser who once served with NATO peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, is not impressed. He would never agree to be deployed in the trenches, he says -- Russian tanks would destroy them and everyone nearby in an hour.

"It's public relations," Zalyvan says.

More than a year after pro-Russian activists stormed Kharkiv's regional administration building and tried to proclaim a separatist republic, symbols of Kyiv's control blanket Ukraine's second-largest city.

Blue-and-yellow national flags line the main thoroughfare under the towering glare of iconic Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, whose monument has itself been fitted with a blue-and-yellow scarf. About 200 meters from the administration building, at the site of last year's pro-Russian protests, sits the stump of what was once a statue of Bolshevik Revolution leader Vladimir Lenin. Without waiting for a law banning communist symbols, which President Petro Poroshenko signed last month, pro-Ukrainian activists dragged Lenin down in September.

But the outward symbols of Ukrainian identity and strength do little to hide the tensions that could weaken Kyiv's grip -- from dismay over economic hardship to fears sparked by a spate of bombings that have underscored the threat of the conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk reaching Kharkiv.

"Because of its location, because of its history, because of its ties with Russia, it seems like the government is just trying to make much more of an effort to show that [Kharkiv] is within its orbit," said Eugene Chausovsky, an analyst at U.S.-based think tank Stratfor. "But talking with the people gives you a different impression."

The deterioration of Ukraine's relationship with Russia, which has provided military backing to the separatists in a conflict that has killed more than 6,000 people since April 2014, has hit Kharkiv hard.

Turboatom, the region's largest factory, had long relied on exports of its turbines to Russia, but the sprawling plant on Kharkiv's Moscow Avenue has seen massive cutbacks over the past year.

And workers at Elektrovazhmash, a major heavy machinery plant, complained to local media about decreasing capacity because of the army's mobilization efforts.

"I had 420 people, now I have 380," said Serhiy Svichuk, a manager at the plant. "That creates a serious problem."

Mayor Hennadiy Kernes, who is among the last of the former members of deposed President Viktor Yanukovych's pro-Russian Party of Regions to continue to wield significant power following Ukraine's Euromaidan revolution last year, says city industry relies on Russia.  

"The destination of trade from Kharkiv industrial facilities and the machine-building sector is for the most part the Russian Federation -- the customers and the buyers [are there]," says Kernes, who is facing charges of kidnapping and torture during Euromaidan protests last year. "From that, of course, comes financing for salaries" and for "renewal and repair projects, construction projects. All of those things are mutually dependent."

Since the conflict with the separatists began, Ukraine's economy has contracted by almost one-fifth and inflation has risen by as much as 60 percent.

In a March survey by the Washington-based International Republican Institute (IRI), the Kharkiv region ranked second to last in support both for Poroshenko (27 percent) and for the national parliament (18 percent).

Few in Kharkiv express the desire to go the way of the self-proclaimed "people's republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk, but many blame Kyiv for their problems.

"It's the fault of the new authorities, not the nation itself," says Georgiy Nachkebiya, 23, an unemployed Kharkiv resident who is originally from Donetsk and says he feels a connection to both Russia and Ukraine.

"I want Ukraine to stay Ukraine," says Nachkebiya, an ethnic Georgian who sees himself as "more patriotic than lots of Ukrainians."

Amid these tensions, Kharkiv has also weathered a series of bomb blasts that have appeared to target pro-Ukraine activists.

In the most serious, on February 22, four people were killed when a bomb exploded in the middle of a Peace March of pro-Kyiv demonstrators.

These acts, say Kyiv supporters, demonstrate the importance of showing Ukrainian might in whatever way possible.

Raynin, who was appointed governor by Poroshenko in February, says that doing so goes beyond symbolic gestures.

"If we couldn't defend this city, there would already be a self-proclaimed republic here," he says.

Still, he says image-making is part of the battle to ensure Kharkiv remains under Ukrainian control.

"Today's problems, which unfortunately are the same problems of the past 24 years of independent Ukraine, are that no one worked with the people, or properly conducted the propaganda of patriotism," he says.
 
But the complexity of the task was displayed in stark form on May 9 as the city celebrated Victory Day, marking the 70th anniversary of Nazi Germany's World War II defeat.

Mindful of Russian President Vladimir Putin's use of the holiday to flaunt the Kremlin's military might and hammer home its narrative of the war, Ukrainian authorities sought to rebrand it this year, calling for commemorators and veterans to wear red poppies rather than the black-and-orange St. George ribbon that has become a symbol of the pro-Russian separatists.

As hundreds filed past Kharkiv's Memorial to the Heroes in a rainbow of Soviet and Ukrainian flags, some in the crowd began to chant Soviet victory slogans.

Off to the side, Valentyn Bystrichenko, standing with a group of six people wrapped in Ukrainian colors, grabbed a microphone and implored them to shove off to Russia.

Hoots from the crowd followed and several men approached, one calling him a provocateur. For a few minutes, the shouting match evoked the bitter intensity of the rival pro-Russian and pro-Ukraine demonstrations that gripped Kharkiv last year.

But in a departure from the discord of 2014, the angry men were eventually separated, leaving an uncomfortable peace that has become familiar here.

To Bystrichenko, the scuffle was a battle in the "information war" for Kharkiv -- and all of Ukraine.

"Where there's a blue-and-yellow flag, there will not be separatism," he told RFE/RL afterward. "When there are people who sing the Ukrainian anthem, there won't be war. So we come here."

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#27
Carnegie Moscow Center
June 2, 2015
Misha Takes Over Odessa
By Thomas De Waal
Mikheil Saakashvili-known to most of the world as "Misha"-will not slip quietly into history
De Waal is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, specializing primarily in the South Caucasus region comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia and their breakaway territories as well as the wider Black Sea region.

The sensational news that he has been appointed governor of Odessa province will have rippling effects across Ukraine, Georgia and in the breakaway territory of Georgia.

Saakashvili has been an adviser to the Ukrainian government for the past year but mainly in a back-seat role. Now he is suddenly back in the limelight in charge of Ukraine's biggest port and a region of 2.4 million people.

Odessa is notoriously corrupt, its port is a nest of organized crime and previous governors have mixed business with politics.
Poroshenko's gamble will be that history can repeat itself and a foreign-born appointee can put his stamp on Odessa. The analogy is Duke of Richilieu, the charismatic young exiled French aristocrat named by Tsar Alexander I to be Odessa's gradonachal'nik (or city chief) who launched the city on its golden years of economic boom. Richileu's statue, clad in a Roman toga, stands at the top of the famous Potemkin Steps.

Saakashvili certainly promises something completely different. He has already started purging the bureaucracy. But the challenge is even bigger than the one he faced in his own country in 2004. In Georgia he began with a clean slate and a big electoral mandate. Moreover, he was more the front-man selling the anti-corruption reforms implemented by others. In Odessa he must start from scratch in a foreign country.

Then there is the international context. The drama titled "Saakashvili vs Russia" is a decade old now and shows no signs of ending. The former Georgian president has used his time in Kiev to launch new broadsides against Russia and the Russian media is still trying to baitits bête noire. On Russia's Channel 1, Mikhail Delyagin told viewers that Ukraine's "supplies of political bums and prostitutes has been nearly exhausted. They have to import new ones."

Odessa is largely Russian-speaking and still has close cultural and economic ties to Russia. Saakashvili's divisive history with Russia will be problematic in a city that is still dealing with violence of May 2 last year when dozens of pro-Russian activists died in a fire in the center of town.

Commentators are also speculating on what this will mean for Transnistria, the pro-Russian enclave de facto separate from Moldova and 100km to the north of Odessa.

Bordering only Moldova and Ukraine, Transnistria has been squeezed over the last year. On May 21 the parliament in Kiev revoked the permission of the Russian military to transit Ukrainian territory to get there. Almost all the territory's imports, both legal and illegal, come via Odessa. Transnistrian officials now say they are under a "blockade" and have appealed to Moscow for help.

In February Saakashvili went on the record to assert that Russia wanted to punch a land corridor from Odessa to Transnistria so as to destroy Ukraine. Any prospect of an operation to squeeze Transnistria will bring back bad memories of South Ossetia in 2004 when what began as a Georgian-government anti-smuggling operation led to a summer of bloodshed, setting the stage for the subsequent conflict of 2008.

In Georgia itself there is fevered discussion of the news. There is humorous commentary on Saakashvili's declaration that "There is no other city on the Black Sea, which can compete with its potential with this wonderful city," with Georgians asking, "What about Batumi?" in reference to the ex-president's previous pet project.

The most intriguing twist is that the former president, who is facing a criminal indictment in Georgia, must renounce his Georgian citizenship to take the job. He told the BBC "a Georgian passport basically means guaranteed imprisonment in Georgia"

Georgia of 2015 is still enduring the very personal political feud between Saakashvili and Bidzina Ivanishvili that began in 2011. Possibly, Saakashvili's change of job could be the stimulus members of his United National Movement (UNM) party need to push him out as party leader. Only last week four UNM parliamentarians left the party, saying it needed a fresh start.

The UNM has a solid but small base of support and Saakashvili's divisive legacy is the major reason it cannot attract new supporters. If the party can get itself a new less controversial leader, the news that is shaking Odessa may have a calming effect on Georgia.

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 #28
Saakashvili as governor of Ukraine's Odessa region may put fuse to Dniester powder keg
By Lyudmila Alexandrova

MOSCOW, June 1. /TASS/. Kiev's decision to appoint former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili as governor of the Odessa Region was surely a US-approved move and may have a variety of far-reaching implications, both internal and external ones. For one, it may cause the smoldering conflict in Transdniestria to flare up with renewed force, Russian experts believe.

Last Saturday Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko declared he had made Mikheil Saakashvili the new governor of the Odessa Region.

Saakashvili fled Georgia after his successor, Georgy Margvelashvili, took office in November 2013. The Georgian Prosecutor's Office charged him in absentia under several articles of the Criminal Code, embezzlement of five million dollars of government money being one of the accusations. Later, he was put on Georgia's wanted list.

The deputy dean of the world economy and world politics department, Andrey Suzdaltsev, points to several factors behind Saakashvili's appointment.

"The region's governor from the clan of disfavoured big business tycoon Igor Kolomoisky had to be replaced fast, but no suitable substitute was at hand at the moment. Good managers are many, but each belongs to this or that clan. In the meantime, Poroshenko is forming a clan of his own," Suzdaltsev told TASS.

Besides, he went on to say, "there is the illusion Saakashvili is a good administrator and some groups inside the post-Soviet elites are still adoring his ostensible business qualities." At the same time they tend to forget that during his presidency the West was prepared to go to great lengths to turn Georgia into a 'shop window' and put considerable financial muscle in the project. As for corruption, it has moved from the grass-roots level upwards.

It should be remembered, Suzdaltsev said, that Odessa is of tremendous value for Ukraine with its sea port and transport infrastructures. There are many assets and port facilities still under the control of Kolomoisky and his clan.

"They are to be taken away from him, and raider seizures are one of Saakashvili's main strengths. He will do that without a twinge of conscience, because he is not affiliated with any clans," he said.

And one more side to the picture.

"Odessa itself is very unstable politically. A majority of the population is very anti-Kiev minded. Those who support the new Ukrainian authorities are few. Saakashvili is notorious for his hatred to everything Russian, so his likely role is that of a chastener," he said.

Lastly, the Dniester factor. "The Ukrainian leadership is hatching plans for a crackdown on Transdniestria, and Saakashvili has a long record of operations of quashing dissent in Georgia."

Suzdaltsev is certain that the appointments of governors of such a level require prior approval from the US embassy.

"Saakashvili is hoping that his new job, which implies his Ukrainian citizenship, will protect him from prosecution at home," the leading research fellow at the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies, Oleg Nemensky, told TASS. "Also, he is a personality with a long record of anti-Russian policies. That's why the Ukrainian leadership believes he is apt for the post."

Nemensky agrees that the appointment could not have taken place without Washington's approval, and one of the tasks that may have been set to Saakashvili is that of preparations for de-freezing the Trans-Dniestrian conflict.

"In fact, Poroshenko lacks a team of his own. To oust a member of the Kolomoisky clan from office he has had to appoint someone from another country," the deputy director of the CIS Studies Institute, Vladimir Zharikhin, has told TASS.

He suspects that to an extent the decision was adopted under pressure from US neocons, who still exercise considerable influence on US foreign policy, although they are not at the helm."

"It is not ruled out that the plans for triggering Russia's direct military clash with Ukraine remain on the agenda. In Donbas they failed. Now another attempt may be made to use the same scenario in Trans-Dniestria. That's the job for a trigger-happy pawn, who can easily be used as a scapegoat to put the blame on if, the scheme does not work again."

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#29
Reconsidering Russia and the Former Soviet Union
http://reconsideringrussia.org
June 1, 2015
The Georgian Who Would Be Governor: Saakashvili in Odessa
By Pietro A. Shakarian

On 29 May 2015, the current Ukrainian government made a jaw-dropping move. As if Kiev's controversial de-communization laws were not enough, the new government decided to appoint Georgia's provocative ex-president Mikheil "Misha" Saakashvili to the post of governor of the Odessa Oblast. Immediately prior to this (literally within hours), Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko granted Saakashvili Ukrainian citizenship, thus making him eligible for the governorship. On Twitter and Facebook, future governor Saakashvili expressed his love for Odessa.

Needless to say, Saakashvili is no Prince Vorontsov.  Unabashedly pro-Western and hawkishly anti-Russian, Saakashvili is regarded by many as one of the most unstable politicians in the entire former Soviet Union. It was he who recklessly launched the disastrous South Ossetian war in 2008. Currently, he is a wanted man in his native Georgia, charged with abuse of office. In fact, Prosecutors in Tbilisi are seeking an Interpol Red Notice for his arrest. Further, Russia, acting on behalf of Georgia's breakaway province of South Ossetia, is also seeking the arrest of Saakashvili in connection with war crimes from the 2008 war. This has not prevented Saakashvili from periodically threatening to return to Georgia via revolutionary means, despite the fact that he is widely unpopular in Georgia.

However, Saakashvili is very popular among officials in Kiev, where he retains many ties from his university days. As a supporter of the Maidan from the very beginning, Saakashvili became an advisor to the Ukrainian government. Many officials from his former administration in Georgia, including some also wanted in Tbilisi, have joined him. This has sparked protest, outrage, and indignation from Georgia, its breakaway province of Abkhazia, and Russia.

None of this seems to have fazed Kiev, which appears to dismiss and act in defiance of these protests, especially those from Tbilisi. In fact, not only has Kiev refused to extradite Saakashvili back to Georgia, but it is also widely believed to be obstructing the Interpol Red Notice arrest issued against Zurab Adeishvili, Georgia's controversial former Justice Minister under Saakashvili.

There is also the question of Saakashvili's Georgian citizenship. According to Georgian law, Saakashvili cannot be both a citizen of Georgia and a citizen of Ukraine simultaneously.  As such, Saakashvili will have to be excluded from the Georgian political process because under Georgian law, foreigners cannot participate in Georgian politics.

This will also mean that Saakashvili will have to resign as chairman of the pro-Western United National Movement (UNM) opposition party in Georgia. That party has already seen a string of resignations this past week and declining popularity in Georgia in general. If Saakashvili resigns as the UNM's chairman, it may further diminish its presence in Georgian politics.

Saakashvili's appointment by Kiev as the governor of the Odessa Oblast has already prompted strong reactions from Tbilisi. Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili was at a loss for words regarding Saakashvili's acceptance of Ukrainian citizenship. "I want to express my strongly negative stance" on the issue, he told reporters. By relinquishing his Georgian citizenship, he added, Saakashvili "humiliated the country and the presidential institution. From my point of view, values are more significant than a career... Georgia's citizenship represents such a value." To President Margvelashvili, such a step was "incomprehensible."

Davit Saganelidze, the leader of Georgia's parliamentary majority, told reporters that the decision to appoint such a "deranged person" to the post of governor of Odessa was a "very serious mistake on the part of Ukrainian authorities." He also stated that he sympathized with the Ukrainian people.

Even overtly pro-Western political figures in Georgia were critical of Saakashvili's new governorship. Georgia's Defense Minister, Tina Khidasheli, the wife of the Georgian Parliamentary Speaker Davit Usupashvili, said that Saakashvili "showed everyone his so-called devotion to Georgia" and that "now everyone can see he doesn't care about the citizenship of his own country."

Russia too also reacted to Saakashvili's appointment. On Twitter, Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev tweeted that "the circus comes to town... Poor Ukraine."

As if this were not enough, the oblast to which Saakashvili has been appointed to govern is a hotbed of anti-Kiev activity and resentment.  The memory of the terrible Odessa Massacre of May 2014 is still very fresh in the minds of many Odessans.  In that massacre, 48 people were killed, largely anti-Kiev activists. Most were burned to death in the Odessa House of Trade Unions. Independent research confirms that Right Sector (Praviy Sektor), together with far-right football hooligans known as the Ultras, were responsible for what had happened. However, official Kiev, which is allied with these nefarious groups, has tried to downplay the tragedy and instead blame it on the anti-Kiev activists, contrary to the evidence.

As such, opposition to the Kiev government is seething among many in this multicultural port city, a Black Sea cultural center renowned for its sense of humor and its mixed Russian, Jewish, and Ukrainian heritage. The recent Trade Unions massacre re-awakened bad memories of World War II. This is due especially to the presence of far-right groups, like Right Sector, within the Ukrainian government. Kiev relies on these extremists to clamp down on free expression and political dissent in Odessa. This has created much anger that is barely contained by the Odessan public.

It is this city and its surrounding area that the overtly pro-Western Saakashvili will be governing. The situation brings together one of the most volatile personalities in the former Soviet space with one of the most high tension regions of Ukraine. The potential for instability is high. "Governor of Odessa? What a great idea," sarcastically remarked Fred Weir, Moscow correspondent at the Christian Science Monitor. "Take a divided city, in the midst of an existential crisis, and send in Mikheil Saakashvili to run things."

As for President Poroshenko, his move has certainly "left a large number of political observers at a loss for explanation," remarked the BBC. "Many are struggling to see the strategy behind naming a former leader of another country to run a provincial government... The move could be a stroke of genius on Mr. Poroshenko's part - or a blunder of breathtaking magnitude." Many Georgians who know Saakashvili all too well would most certainly agree with the BBC's latter assessment.

"In Russian folklore," quipped Vladimir Golstein, a professor of Russian literature at Brown University, "there are tons of Odessa jokes and there are equal amount of Georgian jokes. But only one person managed to combine the two. And it ain't funny."

There have been different possible explanations as to why Poroshenko decided to appoint Saakashvili to be the governor of the Odessa Oblast.  Some have speculated that the "chocolate king" (as Poroshenko is known) sought to simultaneously annoy Moscow and send a message to controversial oligarch and former Dnepropetrovsk governor Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who finances many of Ukraine's notorious volunteer battalions. Others regard it as a desperate move by Kiev, amid a growing thaw between Washington and Moscow, to regain full but diminishing Western support in a belief that Saakashvili still commands a "hero" status in the West.

Others believe that the appointment of Saakashvili to the Odessa governorship may signal a sort of "demotion" for Saakashvili's status in Kiev and that Poroshenko's ulterior motive was to get him out of the capital.  In a press conference with reporters, Georgian Justice Minister Tea Tsulukiani, who had just returned from a working visit to Kiev, seemed to favor this latter explanation.  After telling reporters that legal efforts to extradite Saakashvili back to Georgia had been exhausted, given his new Ukrainian citizenship, she added:

"I saw that Saakashvili's team has failed to succeed there [in Kiev].  Reforms are on hold; the Ukrainian people and the media have serious questions about these so-called experts. He was sent away from Kiev because he was unable to carry out reforms. I have no doubt that he will not do any better in Odessa. It's a message of warning for the Ukrainian people and media."

Overall, whatever the motives for Kiev's move, the appointment of Saakashvili has certainly raised eyebrows among serious observers of the region. Yet, whether it raises eyebrows for Kiev's Western backers and supporters will remain to be seen.

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 #30
Interfax-Ukraine
June 2, 2015
IMF worsens Ukraine's GDP decline to 9% in 2015
 
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has revised down Ukraine's GDP growth projections for 2015 to 9%, the IMF mission said in a press release.

The World Economic Outlook published in the middle of April 2015 by meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, Ukraine's GDP decline in 2015 was projected at 5.5%. In 2016, it was forecast Ukraine would see a 2% increase in its GDP.

The IMF said that the unresolved conflict in the East took a heavier than expected toll on the economy in the first quarter of 2015. The IMF mission revised down growth projections for 2015 to 9%.

The IMF projects end-year inflation at 46%.

"Inflation was mostly driven by one-off pass-through effects of the large exchange rate depreciation in February as well as the needed energy price increases," reads the press release.

"In recent months, signs that economic stability is gradually taking hold are steadily emerging. The foreign exchange market has remained broadly stable. Gross international reserves, although still very low, have increased to $9.6 billion at end-April. Banks' deposits in domestic currency have been recovering. The budget outturn in the first months of 2015 was stronger than expected, partly due to temporary factors," the IMF mission said.

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 #31
Segodnya (Kyiv)
May 26, 2015
Ukrainian paper says West, Russia want to end war at Kiev's cost

Russia is trying to withdraw from the war in Donbass and "save the face", a Ukrainian tabloid has said. The West wants to end the war at any cost, even at Ukraine's cost, while Russia wants to preserve a "Putin enclave" in eastern Ukraine, experts said. At the same time, the most likely scenario is a new escalation of violence, the paper said. The following is the text of an article by Ihor Vetrov entitled "Why the 'Novorossiya' project has left in the past" and published by Ukrainian daily Segodnya on 26 May; subheadings are as published:

The active negotiations to settle the conflict in eastern Ukraine have been held during the last two weeks. Experts said that our country will eventually agree to the conditions offered by the main negotiators - the USA, Russia and Western European countries. One of the scenarios which will satisfy Russia is to give the so-called Luhansk People's Republic [LPR] and the Donetsk People's Republic [DPR] the status of a broad autonomy as part of our country. It will allow Russia to preserve its influence on our state and refuse to support the war-torn "republics" financially, shifting it to the Ukrainian budget. If the negotiations end up nowhere, the new escalation of combat actions is possible in the "local" form, in order to further expand the territories controlled by the militants.

The end of "Novorossiya"

The events around Donbass show the efforts to settle the conflict diplomatically. On 12 May, US Secretary of State John Kerry met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi and discussed, among other things, the situation in Ukraine. The details of the talks remained "behind the frame", but the next day, the representatives of the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR acting in Russia's interests, Denys Pushylin [Denis Pushilin] and Vladyslav Deyneho [Vladislav Deynego], presented a draft of amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine.

These amendments stipulate the establishment of a special legal status for certain district of Donbass, the setting up of people's militia units controlled by the local authorities, granting the Russian language an official status and confirming Ukraine's status of a non-aligned state. The leaders of the "republics" promised that they would synchronize the "constitutions" of the DPR and LPR, if Ukraine accepts the proposed amendments. Deyneho said that this scenario would be the only possible, "in order to restore a single political space and fulfil the Minsk agreements", which stipulate a special status of certain districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions within Ukraine.

The story continued with the interview by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, which was published by Russian media. Lavrov said that the LPR and the DPR should remain part of Ukraine: "They now tabled their variant of the constitution, in which they are talking about exactly the status envisaged by the Minsk agreements: the republics will be part of Ukraine, and then a constitutional reform will happen in order to fix this status on a permanent basis." Lavrov added that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was "an acceptable figure for a dialogue": "He is the president and he needs to be supported."

The next day after Lavrov's interview, it became known that the so-called "Novorossiya" project was "frozen". It envisaged the separation of southeastern regions, from Kharkiv to Odessa, from Ukraine and the creation of a homonymous pro-Russian state. But on 20 May, a former MP of the [former ruling] Party of Regions, Oleh [Oleg] Tsaryov, who had become the leader of the "Novorossiya" movements, announced that the project was closed down. Tsaryov said that the activity of "the united parliament of the 'Novorossiya' is frozen, as its existence 'contradicts the Minsk agreements'". At the same time, the website of the "Novorossiya parliament" stopped working. The foreign minister of the illegal DPR, Oleksandr [Aleksandr] Kofman, said, commenting on the situation, that the Ukrainian authorities had successfully crushed the pro-Russian movements in Kharkiv and Odessa.

Scenarios for Ukraine

A senior analyst of the International Centre for Policy Studies [ICPS], Anatoliy Oktysyuk, said that the "Novorossiya" project failed: "Its expansion stalled within the boundaries of the areas controlled by the LPR and DPR." Okstysyuk said that the reason for this was the strong resistance by the Ukrainians and the harsh reaction by the international community. At the same time, the analyst said that the West has grown tired of war in Ukraine and now wants to finish it at any cost, including at the cost of our country's interests. "Apparently, we will be forced to accept the offered scenarios," Oktysyuk said.

He said that the Russian Federation seemingly insisted that the LPR and DPR be given a broad autonomy as part of Ukraine and "these formations be funded from the state budget". "For its part, Ukraine does not agree to feed the militants with the help of whom Russia will be always able to blackmail us. The more acceptable scenario for us would be an international peacekeeping contingent in our country. But I think that the third scenario is most likely, with continued firefights and tension along the contact line," Oktysyuk said.

The head of the Donbass single coordination centre and a resident of Horlivka, Oleh Saakyan, agreed to this opinion. He said that the project of a "Big Novorossiya" was wrapping up, and the militants' supervisors from Russia are trying to turn the LPR and DPR into a "Putin enclave funded by Ukraine". "With the help of this territory, Putin will always be able to hold us in a leash," Saakyan said.

He said that most of the people remaining at the occupied territories are now so tired of combat actions that will accept any scenarios. "Refugees and their friends and relatives who stayed there say that about 60 per cent of people there are ready to accommodate themselves to any system. They do not care now with whom they will live as long as there is no war," Saakyan said. He said that about 10-15 per cent of the population preserve pro-Ukrainian sentiments and the same percentage support Putin's policy.

Expert said that the militants' armed formations started "resembling an army now": "They now have a system and structure. They are still badly prepared but they are now able to fulfil certain tasks." Russian mercenaries constitute the largest part of the potential in these formation. But now, the militant units are disoriented and do not know what to do next in the conditions of the truce. "They do not know what to do next: wage a war or return to a peaceful life," Saakyan said, adding that the significant part of the militants look for legalization, at least in the format of a "people's militia".

Escalation looming?

Despite numerous signs pointing at a possibility to resolve the conflict peacefully, the formations of the militants maintain their aggressive state. Segodnya reported earlier that the enemy established three groups which are able to strike near Mariupol, Donetsk and Horlivka, as well as Luhansk. Various dates for the strike were mentioned: May holidays or the second part of May. Recently, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that the militants would not take the offensive until 29 June. This is the day when the EU is supposed to take a decision regarding the extension of sanctions against Russia. Experts said that the further development of the situation depends on a decision on the sanctions and whether the problem of the LPR and the DPR can be resolved at Russia's conditions.

Oktysyuk said that the West would not increase sanctions against Russia, because it does not want to clash with the Kremlin. "Nevertheless, the escalation is inevitable, because the conflicting sides have licked their wounds and mustered new hardware. The militants are waiting for a chance to go into the offensive. The accumulation of forces continue. Russian activists report that conscription posts were opened in many cities in Russia in order to recruit mercenaries for the LPR and the DPR armed formations. And people are coming there," the expert said. He added that Russia will try to achieve the settlement of the Donbass problem at its conditions by escalating the violence.

At the same time, the former head of the Ukrainian External Intelligence Service, Mykola Malomuzh, said that Russia would not be able to start an all-out offensive in Donbass. Instead, the militants will keep tension in at least 12 sections at the front, he said, in particular, in Shyrokine, Novoazovsk, Avdiyivka, Pisky and Shchastya. The aim of the provocations is to destabilize the situation and accuse the Armed Forces of Ukraine of violating the truce. "Russia's ultimate goal is to freeze the conflict for a long time," Malomuzh said.

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 #32
Kyiv Post
May 31, 2015
Editorial
Bleed Ukraine slowly

The longer it drags on, the more Russia's 14-month-old war against Ukraine is taking both nations down with it. Neither seems to want the contested areas of the Donbas any longer. The military victor gets a dispirited and dwindling population, ruined property and a multibillion-dollar reconstruction project that neither nation, especially Ukraine, can afford.

Ukraine's military strategy is purely defensive now, one of containment and isolation of the Russian-controlled areas of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. Its soldiers return fire when fired upon, although some soldiers have complained to the Kyiv Post that delays in battlefield orders to return fire have cost lives.

Russia, meanwhile, continues its strategy of bleeding Ukraine slowly without triggering a harsher international response.

"We didn't have any day without Russian-terroristic groups firing at our territory. Separatist forces shelled more than 5,000 times at Ukrainian positions after the Minsk agreements were signed," said Oleksandr Turchynov, the head of the National Security and Defense Council at a May 28 security conference in Kyiv.

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk at the same conference doubts that Russia will withdraw its forces. Even without a full-scale offensive, the uncertainty and fear the Russian troops create are harming investment. And that's Russian President Vladimir Putin's aim.

"It's like asking a person to buy an apartment in their house that is set on fire," Yatsenyuk said. "While there are tanks in Ukraine's east, investors will decide to wait."

The status quo is unacceptable and should trigger a tougher Western response. The West continues, however, to try a more conciliatory approach with Russia in hopes of persuading Putin that no one means him any harm.

U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden said on May 27: "At his core, he is practical. He will push as far as he can until he reaches a resistance that in fact says there's a big price to pay," Biden said. "Putin's vision has very little to offer Europe and Russia except for myths and illusions." He also called Putin's war against Ukraine "more opportunism" than sound strategy.

"We're not looking to embarrass him, we're not looking for regime change, we're not looking for any fundamental alteration of the circumstances inside of Russia," Biden said.

"We are looking for him to, in our view, act more rationally and if he does not, we will continue to confront what I characterize as pure aggression," the vice president said, welcoming a debate about whether the West should supply lethal weapons to Ukraine.

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 #33
LPR observes almost 30 attacks by Ukrainian army over past week

LUHANSK. June 2 (Interfax) - The intensity of Ukrainian strikes on the territory of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) has grown lately, according to Igor Yashchenko, deputy chief of staff of the LPR militia corps.

"The Ukrainian army shelled LPR populated localities 29 times over the past week. We observed twelve attacks by mortars, 13 by grenade launchers, two by artillery guns and two by air defense launchers," Yashchenko said at a press briefing on Tuesday.

He reported the absence of civilian casualties but said that ten militiamen were injured, and one of them died.

The number of attacks on LPR militia positions has grown too, Yashchenko said, adding that most frequent targets were Vesela Hora and Mykolaivka in the Stanitsa Luhanska district.

"No matter how difficult it can be, we are honoring the Minsk agreement and hoping that Ukrainian servicemen will show respect for the work done by international diplomats," Yashchenko said.

He added that the militia was exhuming bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.

"The bodies will be transferred to Ukraine for being identified and buried," he said.

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 #34
Interfax-Ukraine
June 2, 2015
Petro Poroshenko Bloc calls for laying siege to militants-controlled Donbas territories
 
The siege laid to militants-controlled lands of the Luhansk region should also be applied to Donetsk region territories beyond Kyiv's control, Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction leader Yuriy Lutsenko has said.

"The Ukrainian president thinks that the blockade of this malignant tumor is necessary. The practice of Luhansk region military-civilian administration head Mr. [Hennadiy] Moskal, who prohibited any vehicles to cross from the occupied territory, has been recognized as correct, and it should also apply to the territory of the Donetsk region," Lutsenko told the parliament.

The politician suggested steps the Ukrainian authorities should take to boost reintegration of those territories, first of all, reinforcement of the contact line and a temporary economic siege.

He also called for creating a rapid economic development zone on lands controlled by Kyiv, as well as in the Kharkiv and Odesa regions. "The middle class should leave the occupied territory and receive loans from Ukraine for creating jobs," Lutsenko said.

He said that military-civilian administrations should receive money for restoring infrastructures and building homes for refugees.

Another measure proposed by Lutsenko is an efficient pro-Ukrainian propaganda campaign in the media and social networking services in Ukraine and across the world.

"Both the parliament and the government should work on these tasks this week and the week after," he said.

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 #35
Moskovskiy Komsomolets
May 28, 2015
Russia taking special measures to strengthen border with Ukraine - paper
Pavel Khrennikov, Russia is Strengthening the Ukrainian Border: Head of Border Service Discusses Situation in the Problematic Region

Russian border guards haven taken special measures to strengthen the Russian-Ukrainian border. This was reported by First Deputy Director and Head of the Border Service of Russia's FSB [Federal Security Service] General of the Army Vladimir Kulishov. He also discussed the difficulties which Kyiv [Kiev] is creating for those working in the Crimea.

Combat operations in the southeast of Ukraine involving Kyiv's suppression by force of the resistance of the popular home guard have created the necessity to take additional measures to strengthen the protection of the Russian-Ukrainian state border," Kulishov said, without specifying the details.

In his words these measures have been taken under conditions of a great flow of Ukrainian refugees across the state border and the growing threat of the penetration into Russian territory of members of the radical right and extremist organizations of Ukraine and the illegal transportation of arms and ammunition across the border, RIA Novosti reports.

Meanwhile, it should be noted that the border guard activities on the Crimean Peninsula are being implemented under the conditions of harsh counteractions on the part of Kyiv. Rail and bus transportation between Crimea and Ukraine have been cancelled. The passage of citizens through the state border has been limited under various pretexts.

Commercial flows of cargo are being blocked on land and at sea. Attempts are being made to detain and to impose administrative sanctions on captains of Russian and foreign vessels based at ports located on the Crimean Peninsula.

The Ukrainian authorities have made decisions to not recognize foreign passports of citizens of the Russian Federation which have been issued by passport and visa establishments in the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol.

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 #36
Gazeta.ru
May 28, 2015
Russian experts criticize bill classifying peacetime military casualties
Andrey Vinokurov and Vladimir Vashchenko, Russian president classifies information on losses of Defence Ministry personnel in peacetime

It is best to keep silent about lives lost.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree whereby amendments are being made to the list of information which is classified as a state secret. This category now includes losses of Defence Ministry personnel "in peacetime, during periods when special operations are in progress." Experts believe that the new decree will enable the state to protect itself against persons who attempt to clarify whether Russia is fighting in Ukraine.

On Thursday [28 May] Vladimir Putin signed a decree whereby amendments are being made to the list of information classified as a state secret. Henceforth, state secret includes information on losses of Defence Ministry personnel in peacetime, during periods when special operations are in progress. Previously, this applied only to losses in wartime.

Valentina Grebenik, a representative of the "Soldiers' Mothers of Russia" organization, believes that the innovation fundamentally changes nothing: "The latest official information concerning losses was [as published] in World War I. Since then, our Defence Ministry has never published any detailed official data. Concerning either Afghanistan, or [Nagornyy] Karabakh, or the two conflicts in Chechnya. An exception was [the Georgian breakaway region of] South Ossetia."

Other experts, however, believe that the decree will nevertheless have consequences.

Aleksandr Perenzhiyev, a member of the Association of Military Political Scientists, explains that this measure may be connected with the "ruling elite's" security. According to the expert, the figures relating to lives lost can be used "in the information war being waged against Russia." "We are compelled to protect ourselves and to take precautions of this kind. Whereas previously the public could demand the publication of data on lives lost, the legal act has now even removed any such possibility."

Perenzhiyev emphasizes that data on lives lost serve also as an assessment of the effectiveness of the authorities' operations, since it reveals how successfully any particular operation was executed.

"This is yet one more attempt to silence anyone who is interested in whether Russia is fighting in Ukraine," in the opinion of Yezhednevnyy Zhurnal editor in chief Aleksandr Golts. According to him, the concept of "special operation" currently remains undefined in law and, accordingly, it may potentially relate to "any losses" of Defence Ministry personnel in peacetime. This applies also to reconnaissance operations on other states' territory - in both Golts's and Perenzhiyev's opinion, they fall within the "special operation" concept.

Whereas military departments previously ignored requests relating to such topics, including from parliament members, now anyone who attempts to discover the actual losses of Russian troops (readers are reminded that the Defence Ministry denies a Russian Federation military presence in Ukraine) risks facing the legal consequences of the law on state secrecy, Perenzhiyev says.

Readers are reminded that the Russian Criminal Code contains a number of articles concerning the divulgence of state secrets. Under Article 283, for disclosing information that constitutes a state secret, a person to whom it became known through work or official position will be punished by either four to six months' detention in custody or up to four years' imprisonment.

And, under the Criminal Code's Article 276 ("espionage"), the collection, theft, or transmission to a foreign state of information that constitutes a state secret may lead to a term of up to 20 years' imprisonment.

Svetlana Davydova, a mother of a large family from Vyazma, was accused under this article in January-March 2015. She was arrested by a special Federal Security Service team a short time after she had informed the Ukrainian embassy that GRU [Military Intelligence Service] army unit No 48886, which is located next to her home, and the GRU 82nd Separate Radiotechnical Brigade had vacated. Davydova, who had been condemning the military operations in Ukraine, had suspected that the soldiers were being sent to Donetsk. The case triggered a major stir among the public and the media, but it was terminated in February due to the absence of elements of criminality.

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 #37
Russian arms producer ready to stage experiment to prove Buk-M1 missile hit flight MH17

MOSCOW, June 2. /TASS/. Russia's weapons manufacturer Almaz-Antei is prepared to stage an experiment at its own expense proving that the Malaysian Airlines' flight MH17 was downed by a missile launched with a Buk-M1 system, the concern's CEO Yan Novikov said on Tuesday.

"If necessary, we will be prepared to stage a full-scale real-life experiment attended by independent observers and experts," he said. "In other words, we will blow up a 9M38M1 missile placed next to the fuselage of the same manufacturer's written-off plane at the angles mentioned at this presentation."

"Our presentation has proved that the guided missile that hit the [Malaysian] Boeing in the sky above Ukraine could only be 9M38M1 of the Buk M1 system," Yan Novikov said. "This missile was withdrawn from production in 1999. Therefore, the concern and its companies could have supplied these missiles to no one in the 21st century."

Yan Novikov said the arms manufacturer is not in the position to comment who fired the missile.

"According to our estimates, the missile was launched from a position near Zaroshchenskoye. The error margin is 1.5 kilometers. We make no comment as to who controlled the area at the moment," he said in reply to a question.

"At the same time we have irrefutable evidence this type of missiles is still in service in the Ukrainian armed forces. Back in 2005 the concern conducted pre-contract work on prolonging the service life of these weapons in Ukraine. At that moment there were 991 such missiles there," Novikov said.

"We do not dismiss other versions, but if it is true that the Boeing liner was shot down by an air defense missile, the Buk-M1 system and the mentioned rocket were the sole possibility, he said.

Novikov said data from US military satellites the United States mentioned at a certain point might prove very helpful in efforts to establish who is to blame for shooting down the aircraft.

He believes that images of the area taken at the moment of the disaster from US satellites "would certainly provided a clear answer to the question who is to blame."

"I do hope that the information will be handed over to the commission for identifying those responsible," Novikov said.

Traces of Buk-M1 missile's fragments identified in MH17 debris

An adviser to the general designer of the Almaz-Antei corporation, Mikhail Malyshevsky, earlier told the media that the loss of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine last summer was due to the effects of a guided air defense missile, .

"The most characteristic damages allowed for making a conclusion the plane crashed due to an impact of a guided air defense missile," he said.

The advisor said the examined fragments of the ill-fortunate Malaysian Airlines' Boeing liner (Flight MH17), shot down over Ukraine last summer, bear unmistakable traces of fragments from a Buk-M1 air defense missile (9M38M1).

"One of the key features of missile 9M38M1 is a special scalpel-shaped cloud of shrapnel (accounting for 40% of the fragments' total mass). That special feature has now been simulated," Malyshevsky said at an Almaz-Antei presentation devoted to the MH17 probe.

"It was these traces, identified on the aircraft's skin, which allowed to say with a high degree of probability the missile's flight path," Malyshevsky said.

According to Malyshevsky, the missile that downed the aircraft was launched from the vicinity of the Ukrainian village of Zaroshchenskoye and could not have been launched from the Snezhnoye village.

"The data analysis allows for verifiably excluding the version that the airliner was damaged by a missile launched from the populated settlement of Snezhnoye," the adviser said while presenting the results of the company's probe into the Malaysian MH17 flight crash.

"We have calculated the most probable area [of the launch]. This is the area to the south of village of Zaroshchenskoye," Mikhail Malyshevsky said.

Mikhail Malyshevsky also reminded that several days after the Boeing airliner was downed, it was claimed without any proof that the plane was downed with a Buk medium-range antiaircraft system from the settlement of Snezhnoye.

"But at that moment, none of the experts had come to the plane crash site," he said.

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 #38
http://7mei.nl
June 1, 2015
About Bellingcat's claim: "Russian sat pics fake"
[Photos here http://7mei.nl/2015/06/01/about-bellingcats-claim-russian-sat-pics-fake/]

Preliminary review about Bellingcat's newest report 'Forensic Analysis of Satellite Images Released by the Russian Ministry of Defense'. (Link to Bellingcat) [https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2015/05/31/mh17-forensic-analysis-of-satellite-images-released-by-the-russian-ministry-of-defence/]

Author

This review is written by Charles Wood B.Sc MIEEE MACS.

Mr Wood is an experienced forensic expert with one specialisation being forensic analysis of digital images and metadata. Mr Wood has over 20 years years experience in digital media and 10 years experience in digital media forensics for criminal and civil cases. Additional experience includes formerly working in applied physics (meteorology, climate research, toxic gas research, and oceanography) and also 5 years parttime service in the infantry.

Executive Summary

This report is on the quality and validity of the Bellingcat report. This report makes no assertion that the images were or were not faked; it simply points out the almost completely fallacious basis for the Bellingcat report and its conclusions.

The Bellingcat report is hopelessly flawed from the very start. It relies on unsophisticated use of a (free) online 'image checker' to detect 'evidence' of forgery and relies on Google dates for imagery dates. Neither reliance is at all justifiable and any conclusions made from them cannot be used by any serious party.

They also rely on EXIF data as evidence of manipulation without addressing the very simple point that images have to be prepared for publication and so will naturally be processed by photoshop or equivalent to trim and enhance and annotate.

Image Error Analysis Failure

The error analysis program they use is incapable of detecting forgeries in any but the most obvious cases. They rely on vague patterns well below noise level that are expected in any image with a small object on a relatively plain field.

Their first error is resorting to (free) fotoforensics.com to do the analysis rather than a tunable command line tool that can perform more intelligent analysis.

They then submit the images to fotoforensics without knowing what algorithms are being used and what the precise meaning of the error image is.

Practical experience says that Image Error Analysis produces remarkably odd results for even the most mundane of images. This is affected to some degree by the image source and preprocessing and is affected significantly by high frequency changes in the image. That is if you have say a black bird on a blue background you will get a spike in the error levels around the bird. This can be seen clearly in the alleged BUK launch photos also on Bellingcat which for Bellingcat chooses to not denounce as an obvious forgery (neither do I by the way).

Without wasting too much of my time I suggest interested people submit known unforged photos to fotoforensics and see what 'forgery' signatures they produce. However I'll illustrate with some photos from a randomly selected source that 'show' signs of tampering using the Bellingcat criteria.

Google Earth Date Failure

Bellingcat rely on Google Earth dates when practical experience shows that many of the dates are aggregate and simply do not apply to parts of an image or image tile. This is a result of the Google imagery provider performing all sorts of manipulations to present an aesthetically complete set of images without tagging each part of the image precisely with different dates. Even Google doesn't know the exact dates of many of its imagery picture elements.
Bellingcat as per usual practice did not point this out in their report - though they surely must have known of this issue. The effect this date uncertainty has is that every conclusion they made as to when images were released is flawed. They simply have no idea of the precise date

EXIF Data Relevance

Bellingcat reports adversely on the EXIF tags in images showing the last editor was a variety of photoshop. This may be factually correct but is completely irrelevant. The images were prepared for publication including annotations, cropping, and rescaling. They will of course have the last editor listed in the EXIF data. There is nothing sinister about it at all.

Phrase "Highly Probable"

The Bellingcat report uses the phrase "highly probable" when attributing malevolence to unnamed Russian authorities. It's extremely clear that there is no high probability at all. There is simply wishful thinking by the anonymous Bellingcat author. There is no hard evidence of any sort to show deliberate tampering of images no matter how much Bellingcat wants there to be.

Bellingcat Investigators

There is no evidence that any of the 'investigators' or 'team' listed in the report have any qualifications to do this type of analysis.
For certain Mr Higgins has no qualifications or training in any relevant discipline. A temporary job in haberdashery does not make the grade. The other names are a puzzle. The 'forensic' investigator appears linked to a company specialising in computer gaming and creating false identities.
The 'team' has not provided any qualifications or experience for any of its members which is a pretty good indication they are simply a bunch of people off the internet pushing - badly - some agenda

Redux

In conclusion I reiterate the main issues

- Bellingcat 'investigators' are unqualified
- Their use of Error Level Analysis is incompetent
- Their reliance on dubious imagery dating is incompetent
- They have no idea about publication processes for digital
documents
- They make totally unjustified guesses at 'probabilities' and
present them as fact
- Their conclusions are unsound.

I say again about the purpose of this document. It's not about
proving or disproving or rebutting anything. It's about showing
how Bellingcat is fundamentally incompetent at best and quite
possibly malevolent at worst.

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#39
New York Times
June 2, 2015
Editorial
Vladimir Putin Hides the Truth

For President Vladimir Putin of Russia, the manipulation and suppression of facts is as much a tool of his war in Ukraine as an AK-47 or a rocket launcher. He continues to insist that Russian soldiers and weapons are not involved in the conflict in the eastern sector of the country, despite evidence to the contrary from NATO, the United States and independent journalists.

Last week Mr. Putin added a new and especially cruel twist to his formula of deception by decreeing that the deaths or wounds of Russian soldiers in "special operations" can be classified as military secrets, even in peacetime. In the past, the list of state secrets applied only to personnel losses in wartime.

The decree furthers a climate of propaganda and secrecy that was well established during Soviet times and that Mr. Putin has worked hard to revive. It could lead to the arrest of journalists and human rights activists who gather and publicize information about soldiers' deaths, further restricting the open flow of essential information.

On a personal level, the decree is especially heartless because it could make it even more difficult for loved ones to obtain the facts about their soldiers' deaths or injuries, which grieving families need to understand the circumstances of the casualties. Government critics also charge that Russia's refusal to acknowledge that its soldiers are in combat denies them disability payments and their relatives death benefits and other awards.

Mr. Putin clearly fears a political backlash from Russians who could turn against him and his destructive policies if they learn the truth about Ukraine. Public opinion polls have largely shown that Russian support for Mr. Putin is high and many Russians don't believe their military forces are involved in Ukraine.

But that could change. A recent report by members of Russia's political opposition said that at least 220 active-duty Russian soldiers had died in Ukraine since last spring. And there are signs that the toll is rising, including wounded troops showing up at hospitals, new graves appearing in cemeteries, dozens of military funerals during the past year and testimony from relatives of the dead, The Times reported.

Some analysts suspect the new decree may also be a sign that Mr. Putin is gearing up for another military push in Ukraine, when the casualty numbers could be even higher.

Regardless of the executive order, Russians have access to the Internet and even in villages, information gets through. Mr. Putin may not be able to count on the complicity of his citizens if more young men come home in body bags.

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 #40
Politico.com
May 31, 2015
How to Save Ukraine
By MICHAEL O'HANLON
Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution.

It was encouraging to see Russian President Vladimir Putin and Secretary of State John Kerry meet several weeks ago in Sochi, Russia. The last thing the world needs now is another Cold War - much less a possible hot one - involving the world's two nuclear superpowers. But the positive diplomatic signs should not lull us into a belief that the crisis over Ukraine is near resolution. Sporadic fighting continues even now in eastern Ukraine, and the possibility of escalation is real. In a speech on May 27 at The Brookings Institution, Vice President Joe Biden warned that Putin may be hoping he can outlast the West, perhaps persuading the European Union not to renew the sanctions on Russia that are currently set to expire this summer, or otherwise play for time.

We need a big idea - an integrated package of policies that Russia, the European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United States would negotiate, with Ukrainian input along the way - to create a new and durable security architecture for Eastern Europe. Before any escalation, before congressional pressure makes it harder for President Barack Obama to resist arming Ukraine's military and before American presidential politics make exploratory talks next to impossible, it is time to give diplomacy one last big chance.

The administration's current strategy for trying to persuade Putin to stop stoking trouble in eastern Ukraine is reasonable as far as it goes. Aware that Ukraine is not a member of the NATO alliance or a vital interest of the United States in any other way, Obama refuses to get drawn into a military confrontation with Russia over the matter. Aware that Putin is a bitter man who relishes a fight, Obama has also understood that any American decision to arm Ukraine will likely lead to Russian escalation and a worse conflict.

Recognizing that Russia is in an economic predicament with falling oil prices, Obama has worked with Western allies to turn the economic screws. But so far, he has held back on all-out sanctions against Russia, partly because he still hopes for de-escalation of the crisis, and partly because Washington still wishes Russia's help on issues like Iran and Afghanistan. The hope is that the Minsk agreement, negotiated several months ago among the key parties and calling for a lifting of sanctions after Ukraine gives more autonomy to the eastern provinces of the country and Russia verifiably withdraws its military forces there, will eventually produce peace.

The Obama strategy, while reasonable in conception, may quite possibly fail. The cease-fire accord negotiated this winter would not address the underlying issue between the West and Moscow - that of NATO's eastward expansion. To be sure, Russia should not object to the expansion of an organization that has no hostile intent, no significant deployment of military forces near Russia's borders and a primary focus on consolidating democracy and peaceful norms within Europe. But are we Americans really so sure that we would tolerate the expansion of a formerly competitive military alliance close to our own borders? Russian paranoia about NATO might be wrong, but, in light of human nature, it is not surprising that the Russians might be wrong in this way.

Western leaders frequently assure Russians that Ukraine will certainly not be offered a chance to join NATO anytime soon, given its poor track record of governance and shaky adherence to the rule of law. But that is only a temporary assurance. The subtext is that, yes, someday Ukraine might well be offered NATO membership. That would mean that the same Western alliance that defeated the Warsaw Pact and helped produce the dissolution of the Soviet Union a quarter-century ago could reach the doorstep of the Russian heartland, perhaps in a decade or so.

To reiterate: There is nothing threatening or aggressive about NATO, and in my view Russian fears about its expansion to date - including the Baltic states, formerly a part of the Soviet Union - are militarily baseless. Notably, the United States has never based significant military forces capable of offensive maneuver on the territory of new members and even in the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis over the past year, its response has been quite muted.

But that is how matters appear from the U.S. perspective; and that is a military analysis. For many Russians, by contrast, NATO expansion - even if not a direct physical menace - is a reflection of American triumphalism, and it grates on them. It is a psychological threat, even if not a military one. Possible Ukrainian membership in the European Union is worrisome enough; that, plus the possibility of Kiev joining NATO, is a geostrategic bridge too far.

That means there is a logic to pursuing a possible deal with Putin, even if the U.S. and its NATO partners have to hold their collective noses to do it. As part of a package, they should offer that Ukraine and other former Soviet republics not currently in NATO will never be offered membership - at least, not until Moscow at some future date might consent to the idea (or, under different leadership, even wish to join itself).

The price for these assurances from Brussels, Washington and other Western capitals would be high. Russia would need to verifiably pull its forces and equipment from eastern Ukraine, in compliance with the Minsk agreement. It would have to pressure the separatists to accept a peace deal offering some reasonable degree of autonomy but nothing more - again, the Minsk principles call for this already, but we see little sign of Moscow's support for the goal so far. Russia would have to agree to act as a future guarantor of Ukraine's sovereignty along current borders, and make the same pledge for all of its other neighbors, by binding treaty. A neutral body like the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe would be empowered to monitor compliance with these stipulations, on the ground and for the indefinite future. Moscow would have to accept the possibility of Ukrainian membership in the EU after a period of several years as well. If these pledges were not honored by Moscow, the idea of NATO membership for Ukraine could in fact be considered at a future date - and in this scenario, Moscow would not be given a say in the decision.

Several approaches could be taken toward Crimea, a region that given its history and ethnicity need not be treated quite the same way as eastern Ukraine. Perhaps an internationally supervised referendum could be held to determine its future (which would likely produce the same result, albeit in a closer poll, than occurred last year in the sham referendum organized by Putin). Perhaps the issue could simply be put off. Perhaps Russia could agree to pay Kiev a large sum to resolve the matter and allow Russia, the former owner of the region, to retain it going forward. The West could live with a number of possible outcomes on this matter.

Some will call any deal like this with Putin a form of appeasement. But the policy trajectory we are currently on will quite possibly produce a worse outcome for the Ukrainian people than the above proposal. Moreover, Putin and the Russian people have already been punished considerably for Russia's aggressions. To be sure, the punishment will have to continue absent a change in Russian behavior. But it has been moderately severe already; Putin would not be rewarded for his aggressions.

The central point is this: While Vladimir Putin deserves the main blame for the Ukraine crisis, we would all be much better off if we could walk him back to a place in which he can desist from such behavior in the future. Russia's co-operation is too important to us on a range of global issues, and the dangers of an ongoing crisis over Ukraine are too great, for us to stay on this path if we can find a way off. No deal should compromise the core interests of the Ukrainian people. And the West can negotiate from a position of strength. But that said, negotiate it should.

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