Johnson's Russia List
2015-#129
1 July 2015
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"We don't see things as they are, but as we are"

"Don't believe everything you think"

In this issue
 
  #1
Moscow Times
July 1, 2015
Russia's Satellite Nuclear Warning System Down Until November

Russia has delayed the launch of a new military satellite system by four months, news agency TASS reported Wednesday, leaving Moscow nearly blind in the event of a nuclear missile attack till at least November.

Russia's decaying constellation of Soviet-designed early warning satellites was left nearly blind last year, when one of the three remaining units malfunctioned. The remaining two satellites were taken offline in January, leaving Russian decision-makers reliant on land-based radar systems to detect incoming missiles.

Radar systems, however, give far less warning than the satellites of incoming strikes, as radar can only detect objects within a set range.

Russia's Aerospace Defense Forces, the branch of the military that operates early warning satellites, was expected to launch the first satellite in a brand new early warning net, known as the "United Space System," or EKS, in July. But the first launch is now slated for November, TASS reported.

"Today we are nearly prepared to launch the first satellite into a highly elliptic orbit, the launch of which will take place in November 2015," Major General Oleg Maidanovich, commander of the Aerospace Defense Forces, said Tuesday, TASS reported. Maidanovich did not explain why the launch was delayed.

The new system, which is closely integrated with ground-based early warning radars to provide an extensive picture of global missile launches, is expected to be fully operational in 2018. The complete satellite constellation will consist of 12 EKA satellites.
 #2
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
June 30, 2015
War, dialogue, and reconciliation: Russia and the world in 2020
Russia Direct sat down with political science professors Andrey Sushentsov and Andrey Bezrukov from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO-University) to discuss current and future conflicts facing Russia, as well as how Russia and the world can tackle global challenges together.
Cameron Gordon Judge-Becker

Alarming Contours of the Future: Russia and the World in 2020 is a new book that presents future scenarios for the development of international relations and Russia's role in the world through 2020, while simultaneously describing major global challenges.

The authors of the book-Andrey Sushentsov, a Russian expert who specializes in American studies, from Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO-University), and his colleague Andrey Bezrukov, who also works for Rosneft, Russia's largest oil company-spoke with Russia Direct to discuss their book and current and future conflicts facing Russia and the world.

In addition, Shushentsov and Bezrukov propose strategies for how Russia and the world can navigate through these contingencies to find peace.

Russia Direct: Who is the target audience of Russia and the World in 2020?

Andrey Sushentsov: Primarily we are aiming at the Russian-language audience. People who are either connected with the policy circles here in Russia, or in the Russian language space, basically, which covers a lot of area here in Eurasia and Europe and elsewhere.

We think of this book as something that represents the mainstream Russian understanding of current international threats and conflicts. For Russia, these threats are primarily along the Russian borders but are also in regions of the Middle East and elsewhere.

We think that this kind of mainstream thinking, delivered in an easily comprehensible way, should be interesting for people who seek to understand what kind of thinking Russia is developing about these kinds of conflicts and threats.

RD: These threats in the book that you mention, what kind of threats are they?

A.S.: Since this book is Russia-centric in a way, we tried to find out what kind of threats are important to our country. Our primary [assertion] is that Russia has everything it needs to maintain itself and develop itself inside its own borders. Thus, it needs to avoid getting into any kind of prolonged confrontation or conflict with any major central power elsewhere.

For example, we urge [that] instances like the Ukrainian crisis or the confrontation with Georgia should be limited conflicts. We also state that the only theater of Russia's vital interest is located in its border region.

And so it should not be connected with a conflict elsewhere, like in the Middle East or Western Europe, or wherever a conflict might emerge [other than] in Russia's neighboring belt.

RD: Russia and the World in 2020 focuses on 16 "driving forces." How many of these forces concern the United States?

Andrey Bezrukov: Several. We see, of course, the very significant issue of the American-Chinese relationship. We don't yet know how it will evolve. China is a growing power. Certainly it [will] change its neighborhood, and the way Americans react to that change can be positive, accommodating, measured, or rather sharp. This is a big unknown.

In general, we are trying to understand the American way of thinking and behavior for years to come. Because right now the U.S. model is to try to cement as much as possible the Atlantic arrangement, which is frankly weakening and falling apart.

They can forcefully, let's say, support, or fight for this arrangement by containing possible challengers like China and Russia, or they may take, I would say, a more thoughtful way of being a part, a driver, in the rearrangement, which will take into account the current situation.

RD: How can you account for this trend in the world becoming less Atlantic?

A.B.: Well if you look at the economic power of countries which are definitely not a part of the Atlantic system, let's say China, India, Iran, Brazil, Indonesia, among others, they're growing at 5-6 percent.

They will definitely within 20 years cement their economic power, and with economic power comes political power. Certainly Brazil is a sovereign country regarding any political issue on the table. So is China, and so is India. And managing that with American-led, Western institutions created after the Second World War is not feasible.

RD: On the subject of U.S.-Russian relations, it seems like with every change in administration, Russian or American, there's talk of a 'reset'between the West and Russia. At the beginning of U.S. President Barack Obama's first term in 2008, however, relations between the U.S. and Russia deteriorated relatively quickly. Do you think that the reset could have been successful, or was it doomed from the start?

A.S.: Well, I think that between Russia and the West there are structural differences that prevent them from being allies, basically. They are infrequent partners on problems of mutual interest, like battling terrorism, negotiating Syrian chemical weapons, or negotiating on Iran. But on the issue of European security, we have long-standing differences in understanding what security in Europe means.

And as long as there is a bloc-mentality, an exclusive military alliance in Europe which doesn't include Russia, we will have problems in this respect. We are in an unequal partnership.

A.B.: If I can sum up, there are three fundamental issues: One is the recognition by the United States of the national interests of Russia in the neighborhood, including Ukraine and other countries that border Russia.

The second one is nuclear security. The Americans, of course, are trying to minimize or negate the Russian nuclear capacity, and that's a long term issue.
But the fundamental issue is written clearly in the American national interest, which is not allowing any major competitors in the world to appear. And a major competitor for the Americans would be an alliance between Russia and either China or Germany. That alliance can, in the American view, threaten fundamental interests of how Americans manage the global system.

RD: Are the "structural differences" you mentioned a product of different ideological values between Russia and the U.S., or do you view the tension between these nations as the product of an American attempt at global hegemony?

A.B.: I would say the tension is the result of a clash of national interests first of all, which is geopolitical. There is a little bit of economic competition. I think there are many differences in political tradition, but the U.S. would have a different political tradition than China, and that's taken for granted.

The U.S. is a fairly decentralized country, and Russia is a centralized country. But so is France. And the U.S. and France have a pretty good cordial relationship, at times thorny, but nevertheless, normal. I certainly don't think that the basis of misunderstandings or conflicts is ideological.

A.S.: This emphasis on different ideological foundations arises when the media tries to comprehend the differences in political conduct. It is, basically, I think, part of a simplistic intellectual attempt to try to get through complicated issues or conflicting interests. And I hope that acknowledging that we do have conflicting interests, and that we need to sit down and discuss them, is an important tool that should once again arise in international relations.

We are not living in a fairytale world where everyone is in accord with everybody. We do have differences. So thus we do need to discuss our differences and not try to ignore them or try to dictate something on the premise that, "we know better because we're the West."

RD: Through these evolutions in crises-The Crimean crisis, the Ukrainian crisis-what is your own understanding of how Russia is perceived in the U.S.? How will Russia's image change through the course of these conflicts and the future scenarios discussed in your book?

A.S.: It doesn't seem that the Russian image has changed in the United States since at least 2006, when the famous report, "Russia's Wrong Direction," was published by the Council on Foreign Affairs. Primarily if we look at statistics such as public opinion polls, the negative attitude toward Russia has been a mainstream attitude in the United States.

All the news which comes through American media is primarily negative. This news is usually connected with wars, with problems, and with conflicts. Even during the Sochi Olympics, most of the news was negative. That was a very surprising thing. There was nothing connected with sport or with the Olympics themselves.

A.B.: This is actually not that difficult to explain. Because the general level of understanding of Russia in the United States is fairly dismal, and the level of contacts, people to people and business to business contacts, is quite low, what we see on the foundation of that general ignorance are vocal interest groups that do have something to say, usually against Russia. They are the only opinions that are heard.

So if you are talking about the coverage of Russia regarding Ukraine or anything like that, who do we see? We see two groups of people. We see representatives of Diasporas-both Ukrainian and Eastern European or Baltic- and we see people who spend probably all of their mature lives within think-tanks, or within government institutions on the hill, connected to the Cold War mentality.

It's the only thing they've done over the last 40 years and this is their pay day. Suddenly they're important again, people listen to them again. I hope that that generation will be gone soon and we will have better relationships.

RD: Today some Western thinkers describe the war in Ukraine as the so-called hybrid war, or non-linear war. Do you agree with this concept?

A.B.: There is a lot of talk about hybrid wars. My understanding is, I wouldn't call it hybrid because that's a word which represents pretty much nothing, conceptually. I would talk about multidimensional wars. Wars were always multidimensional because if two states are fighting, of course their economic relationship deteriorates; there is a propaganda war on either side, etc.

But right now we have a phenomenon in which all means are being used and the direct military means are being used less than they used to be because of major objective factors. The war between two nuclear powers would be so destructive that nobody wants to comprehend it. Lots of activities [are] done through proxies, being irregular, being other countries, etc, just to minimize the possibility of direct confrontation.

And when direct military means are pretty much not available, the war shifts into the war of all other means; meaning financial, economic, technological, informational of course. Informational especially, because in order to fight a war, a total war, with another state you have to convince your own population that the war is just, that we're on the good side and they're on the bad side. And of course with all the global means right now of propaganda and information [warfare] that takes the prime place of the direct stage.

RD: Mr. Sushentsov, in your recent article on the Ukrainian crisis, you described Russia's approach to reconciliation with factions in Chechnya. Do you believe Ukraine, the EU, and the West in general are capable of following a similar reconciliatory approach with the pro-independence factions in Donbas?

A.S.: Here we're speaking about different strategic cultures where the United States and European nations differ from Russia. These differences are connected with the history and experience of statehood.

Russia is a very large, and actually fragile and complex country, which consolidates many divergent interests including different ethnic groups located territorially either in the Urals, in Siberia, or in the Caucasus. To consolidate all of those interests, to somehow involve them in their own nation's processes, you need to have a long history of fights and reconciliation, basically. And Russia is rich in this.

But in Europe, and I think in the United States, people look at Russia as the last remaining European empire which has not yet collapsed. And they believe it is due to collapse sooner or later because this complex body cannot sustain itself in the long term. And they say this or that is the sign that Russia is collapsing.

The European experience is, basically, that you cannot sustain a huge or multi-ethnic body like the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Ottoman Empire or the German Empire. Europeans think it needs to be split in several pieces because small pieces are manageable, they are easy to govern, and somehow people can be more prone to democracy because they live in smaller countries.

That was the premise for development in Yugoslavia. They did not sustain the whole country; they helped it to split in several pieces. Russia's approach was that Yugoslavia should be whole, because if it did split, several civil wars would emerge, and that was the case.

Russia's position on Libya in 2011 was absolutely the same, and what we see right now is that if you dismantle the central body, bloody civil war occurs there. The same case is happening in Syria and Iraq right now.

And that's why I think Russia's position is that Donetsk and Luhansk should be part of Ukraine, and the foundation for this is the complete end of all hostilities and the fulfillment of the political dialogue, which is in the Minsk II accords.

I think these differences in strategic approaches to stability problems are found not only in Europe but basically in the world, and I believe it is connected to the different experiences in statehood here in Russia and there in the West.
 
 #3
Valdai Discussion Club
http://valdaiclub.com
June 30, 2015
Profits and Prophets: A View from the St Petersburg International Economic Forum
By Richard Sakwa
Richard Sakwa is Professor of Russian and European Politics, University of Kent at Canterbury, Associate Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme, Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House).

From the bustling pavilions to the packed halls, an observer at the recently concluded nineteenth St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), 18-20 June, would be hard put to agree with Barack Obama's notorious statement in his State of the Union address of 20 January 2015 that the Russian economy was 'in tatters'. Overall attendance was up by about a thousand from last year, to reach nearly 8,000 people. More senior American executives attended. Although the US administration still made clear its disapproval, it did not engage in the arm-twisting and threats of 2014. Many of the big names of the western business community were represented, including leading representatives of the oil and gas sectors, as well as financial services. What was formerly known as Ernst & Young, now rebranded as the anodyne 'EY', hired a prominent pavilion, as did some of the other leading accountancy firms.

The head of BP, Robert Dudley shared a platform with Igor Sechin, the head of Rosneft, as the experts tried to anticipate the shape of the energy market of the future. Leading economists worried about fragility of the world economic order, especially in light of the Euro crisis and the possibility of a Greek or British exit, while Russian economists provided excoriating critiques of the failure to implement structural reform of the Russian economy. This was the essence of the comments by German Gref, the former economic and trade minister and now head of Sberbank, as well as by the former finance minister Alexei Kudrin. The strategy of import substitution may well be a necessary short-term response to western sanctions, but it cannot be a long-term strategy to create a competitive and dynamic economy. Russia was in danger of falling ever further behind in global terms, especially given the fantastic speed of China's rise.

The stormy and changeable weather over the Lenexpo exhibition site at the far end of Vasilyevsky Island was therefore reflected in the discussions. While the Russian economy is not in tatters, as Vladimir Putin pointed out at length in his keynote speech on 19 June, it is certainly facing some fundamental challenges. Speaking to a packed hall with perhaps some 2,000 people in attendance, including the western delegates and basically the whole of the Russian elite including not only ministers but also governors and heads of various agencies, Putin outlined the Russian strategy of resilience in the face of sanctions and relatively low oil prices. I happened to be sitting five places along from Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of the Chechen Republic, and it struck me how the occasion was intended to send a message not only to the international business community, but also to act as an instrument of nation building.

The whole Russian elite were brought together for such the set piece occasion, and each in their small way could feel part of a common endeavour. The assiduous attention with which Kadyrov listened to Putin's speech symbolised the larger relationship between the leader and his people, including with what had once been a rebellious province. However tenuous the peace in the North Caucasus and enormous the challenges in regional development as a whole, some sort of stabilisation has been achieved in the Putin years. In itself this may not have resolved all the tensions and contradictions, but the greatest legacy of the Putin system may be that that it has created the framework for the resolution of historical problems if only some sort of stable evolutionary mechanism can be found that incorporates the achievements while overcoming the negatives.

Two themes were particularly striking at the Forum. The first was the attention paid to various manifestations of 'the East'. Numerous sessions were devoted to the development of the Eurasian Economic Union, which formally came into existence on 1 January and now encompasses five former Soviet states, but it was interesting that the discussion was now framed within the larger context of the China-backed Silk Road Economic Belt. This was the theme of one of the Valdai Club-sponsored roundtables, and it was reflected in Putin's speech where he talked of the agreement that had been reached on combining the development of the two. The Chinese idea of 'One Belt, One Road' now encompasses the whole Marco Polo world. Several sessions discussed the question of the development of Russia's own Far Eastern region, which now has a dedicated minister responsible for the issue. Several speakers stressed that Russia's 'pivot' to Asia long preceded the sanctions and reflected a natural turn towards one of the most dynamically developing regions of the world.

The major panel sponsored by the Valdai Club on 'Economic Interdependence vs. Political Isolation' highlighted the second main theme of the Forum. The paradox is obvious. How is that in a world that claims to be engaged in ever-closer economic integration none of the major political contradictions have been resolved. Instead, politics consistently trumps economics, as we see in the imposition of the sanctions against Russia. The postulate that economic interdependence in one way or another mitigates political tensions is once again demonstrated to be false. Political problems need political solutions. This is demonstrated in Russia's relations with the European Union. Decades of economic interdependence, above all in the energy sphere, have recently only led to estrangement and alienation. The search for economic profit does not automatically translate into a stable international environment.

It was precisely this point that was made by Fran�ois Fillon, who served as the prime minister of France between 2007 and 2012 and who is now a potential presidential candidate. He unabashedly defended the Gaullist vision of a united Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok. On the panel with him was Grigory Marchenko, the two-time former governor of Kazakhstan's Central Bank, the feisty former president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, and Franco Frattini, the former Italian foreign minister. Frattini repeatedly noted that the decision to continue with the sanctions against Russia was taken on the eve of the forum by EU ambassadors and not even the foreign ministers. The EU decision had been effectively pre-empted by the G7 meeting (or '1 plus 6' summit, as many termed it at the Forum) held earlier in the month, and it was left to the EU only to ratify the decision made elsewhere, while ensuring that dissident voices within the EU who had doubts about the wisdom of continuing with a pointless and ineffective strategy were suppressed.

In short, as Fillon stressed, we need once again to recapture a continental vision, so that Europe could once again be responsible for its own destiny and could work to overcome the divisions that have once again come to haunt us. All main speakers stressed that the relationship with the US was 'non-negotiable', but all were aware of the tensions produced in Europe as the continent was hollowed out as it was pulled in Atlanticist and Asian directions. The centre cannot hold, and it will take a prophet in the De Gaulle mould to recreate a sense of European mission and purpose.
 
 #4
The Guardian
June 28, 2015
Yevgeny Primakov obituary
Outstanding Russian foreign secretary and PM who served under Yeltsin and Gorbachev
By Jonathan Steele

Yevgeny Primakov, who has died aged 85, was an outstanding foreign minister and prime minister of the Russian Federation in the 1990s. He was a bold critic of the oligarchs and their neoliberal capitalism, a staunch defender of Russian national interests after the pro-western foreign policy of the early post-Soviet years, and a man whom many Russians considered the best president their country never had.

His popularity peaked towards the end of Boris Yeltsin's presidency, when he supported inquiries into allegations of corrupt practice by Yeltsin and his entourage. They responded by unleashing a torrent of smears against him on state television and selecting Vladimir Putin, then head of the Federal Security Bureau, the KGB's successor, to take over from Yeltsin.

Among national leaders Primakov was unusually well-educated and experienced on international issues. He spoke Arabic, had served as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East and then headed his country's top academic thinktanks, the Institute of Oriental Studies and the Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

He was first brought into active politics by Mikhail Gorbachev, who valued his diplomatic skills and careful analysis. In 1989 Primakov was elected chairman of one chamber of the Supreme Soviet and a year later Gorbachev appointed him to the Presidential Council, which was struggling to contain demands from republics in the Baltics and the Caucasus, as well as Ukraine, for autonomy within a reformed Soviet federation or outright independence. During the abortive counter-revolutionary coup by security chiefs and Communist party conservatives in August 1991, Primakov stayed loyal to Gorbachev. Under Yeltsin he served as head of the Foreign Intelligence Service until 1996.

In the early post-Soviet years the Russian elite was divided into liberal westernisers and pragmatic nationalists. Both camps hoped the US and other western countries would join in creating a new European security architecture for a reunited continent, but they differed on tactics. The nationalists claimed too soft a line from Moscow and too much eagerness for western loans would make the west see Russia as a weak, even defeated player. Primakov argued within the elite against the expansion of Nato into central Europe. Unwilling to accept Washington's view of a globe characterised by a "single super-power", he supported the neo-Gaullist idea of a multipolar world. He advocated a new strategic triangle between Russia, China and India, a concept that later led to the establishment of the Brics group - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
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Primakov also urged Yeltsin to spend more effort on building good relations with the former Soviet states, a policy that western hawks claimed was a return to Soviet expansionism, but which Primakov saw as the natural responsibility of a metropolitan power towards areas where large numbers of its former citizens still lived. It was no surprise when, in March 1996, Yeltsin appointed him foreign minister to replace Andrei Kozyrev, who was seen as excessively submissive to the west.

Primakov himself was an example of Soviet multiculturalism. Born to a Jewish mother and Russian father in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, he was brought up in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. After graduating from the Institute of Oriental Studies, in Moscow, in 1953, he worked for state radio and as Pravda's Middle East correspondent until 1970, before taking up jobs in the thinktanks he was later to head.

After three years of service in domestic politics between 1989 and 1991, he returned to the field in 1998 after the bank defaults and rouble collapse in August. Parliamentary opposition to the neoliberal western-backed policies of the oligarchs and their friends - dubbed by some analysts as market Bolsheviks - had rumbled with greater or lesser intensity throughout the Yeltsin years. It reached a new peak after the default.

Moves were made to impeach Yeltsin, who tried to appease the opposition by reappointing a former prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, but the Duma rejected him. In desperation the president turned to Primakov. Here was a man of the centre-left, who, unlike the neoliberals, advocated a greater role for the state in regulating the economy and directing investment. He was also a natural conciliator. Chosen as prime minister, Primakov appointed communists as well as reformers to his cabinet and started a policy of quantitative easing, pumping money to enterprises to pay wages which had been stopped, hire more staff, and revive investment. The economy revived, helped by a surge in the price of Russia's main export, oil.

He soon began to trouble Yeltsin by accusing Boris Berezovsky, a key oligarch and the main Kremlin fixer, of corruption and by backing an investigation by the prosecutor general into corruption allegations against Yeltsin and his family. This added to Primakov's popularity, which was further enhanced during the crisis over Nato plans to attack Moscow's ally, the Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, because of his ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo. Primakov tried to persuade the US not to use force.

Flying to Washington for talks on a new American loan, he was rung by the vice-president, Al Gore, and told that Nato bombing had begun. A furious Primakov ordered his plane to turn round halfway across the Atlantic. The decision was hailed in the Russian media as a dramatic sign that Russia had restored its independence and would not condone US violations of international law for the sake of cash.

Yeltsin was worried that Primakov was becoming the most popular politician in Russia, with a real chance of winning the presidential election the next year. In May 1999 Yeltsin sacked him as PM. Primakov responded by forming an electoral alliance with Yuri Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow, called Fatherland-All Russia, which swept into the lead in opinion polls before the Duma elections that December. This could have been a springboard for a successful campaign for the presidency a few months later.

Berezovsky's TV station, ORT, launched a furious demonisation of Primakov, claiming he was a puppet of the communists and too old at 70 to be a proper president. At the same time the Kremlin launched a new war in Chechnya, allowing Putin, freshly installed as PM, to argue that the country needed someone young and strong to take charge. Primakov's star faded and in February 2000 he withdrew from the presidential race, which Putin won easily.

In 2001 the new president gave Primakov a soft job as chairman of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a position he held until 2011. He was allowed one final political assignment of importance in March 2003, when Putin, using Primakov's Arab experience, sent him to Baghdad to try to persuade Saddam Hussein to make enough concessions to stop the impending US invasion. Primakov had been entrusted by Gorbachev with a similar mission before the first Gulf war in 1991. Neither succeeded. They were rare failures for a man who managed to maintain a reputation for integrity, realism and consistency during some of Russia's most turbulent and ideologically divisive years.

Primakov's first wife, Laura, died in 1987. He is survived by their daughter, Nana, and by his second wife, Irina. His son Alexander died of a heart attack in 1981.

* Yevgeny Maksimovich Primakov, politician, born 29 October 1929; died 26 June 2015
 
 #5
Valdai Discussion Club
http://valdaiclub.com
July 1, 2015
In Memory of Yevgeny Primakov
By Rodric Braithwaite
Sir Rodric Braithwaite was British ambassador in Moscow from 1988 to 1992. His latest book, Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979-89 (Profile Books) is published in English and Russian

I first met Yevgeny Primakov in London in the mid-1980s when he brought a team from the Institute of the World Economy and International Relations to meet his opposite number, Admiral Sir James Eberle, at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Both men lost their wives at about that time and that created a bond between them that lasted many years.

Primakov was the first senior Soviet official I had had the opportunity to talk to properly. He was a thickset man, formally dressed in a suit, often with a waistcoat. He had an authority and a breadth of knowledge that commanded respect. His expression was always serious. He looked out at you from under hooded eyes. I rarely heard him laugh. But there was a twinkle in those eyes which told of an ironic sense of humor and an ability to look at the world with a degree of detachment. It was from him I heard my first Soviet political jokes. He always dealt straight, never deliberately misled you, but was never indiscreet: in short, he was a man with whom you could do business.

Primakov was an expert in the Middle East, and earlier in his career, he had spent some time there. After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990, Gorbachev sent him on a couple of missions to Baghdad to try to persuade Saddam to withdraw and thus avert a war. This struck me at the time as a reasonable action in support of the Soviet national interest. Gorbachev and his government had been appalled as everyone else by the Iraqi invasion of a small neighbor; but apart from the death and destruction that any war causes, the Soviet Union had a number of material interests in Baghdad, which could only be damaged if war broke out. Not surprisingly, Primakov's missions were regarded in Washington as meddlesome interference: they thought it another demonstration, as a senior American official later remarked, of Primakov's anti-Americanism.

The West held his KGB connections against him. They typecast him as a spy and, as so often, jumped to simplistic conclusions. Like their Tsarist predecessors, officers of the KGB did indeed have a strong sense that they, not the Tsars and commissars who were their nominal superiors, were the true guardians of the Russian state. Primakov shared that sense of the state, and some of his more belligerent public pronouncements, for example over the Baltic Republics, lacked balance. But he was too canny and too intelligent to be a blind and simple-minded nationalist: he was, rather, a firm and on the whole judicious defender of Russia's interests as he saw them.

Nor was he a simple-minded conservative in domestic matters. He loyally supported Gorbachev's attempt to reform and liberalize the failing Soviet system. He stuck with Gorbachev throughout 1990 in the growing conflict with Yeltsin and the extreme right. But he joined Yeltsin in the besieged White House in protest against the coup of August 1991 - before it was clear that the coup had failed. It was one more sign that he combined a sharp political instinct with a sense of principle.

In the new Russia, he was appointed successively Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (1991-1996) and Foreign Minister (1996-1998). As part of the complicated political maneuvering during his final years in office, Yeltsin appointed him Prime Minister in the autumn of 1998. Hitherto a comparatively unknown figure, Primakov became popular amongst ordinary people because he brought a degree of order into the economy after the default of 1998, though the new liberals feared (wrongly) that he wished to dismantle the market economy. He believed that American power had become too dominant, opposed NATO enlargement, and believed that Russia should carve out an independent role for itself. Like most Russians, he was incensed by NATO's bombing of Serbia in 1999, and his popularity increased when he ostentatiously cancelled a visit to Washington in protest.

Indeed, in Yeltsin's eyes Primakov's popularity was becoming a threat: he fired him in May 1999. In alliance with the populist mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, Primakov then launched himself on an independent political career. When he put himself forward as a potential candidate to succeed Yeltsin as President, the Kremlin launched a ruthless attack through the media to cut him down to size. Vladimir Putin was maneuvered into the succession, and Primakov abandoned the race.

Once again, he survived the transition. President Putin appointed him Chairman of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, an apparently innocuous post which nevertheless allowed him to continue to exercise his skills on the international field. In 2003, President Putin sent him back to Iraq in an abortive attempt to persuade Saddam to make the concessions necessary to avert the American-led invasion.

Primakov was an ambitious man: the Moscow wits compared him to the British warplane, the Harrier - "You know, the one that goes straight upwards." He had the political skills to remain more or less on the right side of whoever was in power in the Kremlin. But his actions, not least at the time of the coup in August 1991, showed that he was more than a mere careerist. With his death, Russia has lost a considerable public servant.
 
 #6
www.rt.com
July 1, 2015
Constitutional Court allows early parliamentary elections in 2016

Russia's Constitutional Court has decided that it is possible to slightly reduce the term of the current State Duma to move the 2016 poll to a single elections day in September. The court noted, however, that this would be an extraordinary measure.

"The Constitution does not exclude the possibility of a one-time change to the federal law that would change the date of forthcoming parliamentary elections and reduce the real term of powers of the current State Duma convocation under the condition that such a reduction is made for the sake of some constitutionally important objectives," the deputy chairman of the Constitutional Court, Sergey Mavrin, announced Wednesday. The judge emphasized in his statement that the change of the elections date was an extraordinary measure.

The statement came in reply to a request from the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament, that asked the Constitutional Court to rule on if it was possible to move the 2016 parliamentary elections from early December to the third Sunday in September - the universal elections day. The request was made after the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, on June 19 gave a first reading to a bill ordering the change of poll date.

The court verdict also detailed the conditions under which such move was possible: it must be a one-off, reduce the terms of lawmakers' powers by a few months at most, and must not interrupt the work of the State Duma or the length of parliamentary terms in general. It also stated that the rescheduling should be announced well in advance so that all political parties had time to prepare for the polls and that the principle of political competition was not violated.

The head of the Presidential Administration, Sergey Ivanov, earlier told the press that it was not right for the Kremlin to influence the decision on the date of the State Duma elections in any way. He added that as a citizen he saw a rational point in such a step, as it would save a lot of budget funds, but the real decision had to be made by the Constitutional Court and the parliament itself.

The suggestion to move the elections date was almost immediately met with criticism from the parliamentary opposition, especially the Communist Party. Its leader, Gennady Zyuganov, called the step "disrespectful to the country and voters" and said that it would prevent the Communists from holding a proper election campaign. Another of Zyuganov's concerns was that if the elections were held in September, major political debates would be held and televised in August "when half the people are away on vacation, and the other half are busy bringing in the harvest."

In response to Wednesday's decision by the Constitutional Court, Communist Party MP Vadim Solovyov promised that his caucus would contest this ruling in the Constitutional Court, and if this failed in the European Court of Human Rights.

The State Duma has scheduled the second and third hearings of the elections date bill for July 3. Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of the Federation Council, earlier told reporters that if the bill was passed by the State Duma, the Federation Council would consider it on July 8.
 #7
Interfax
June 30, 2015
Nearly half of Russians have social network accounts - poll

Moscow, 30 June: Almost half of Russians have a social network account. As many as 23 per cent use it on a regular basis, 25 per cent use it from time to time and 7 per cent said they have it but do not use it, Levada Centre [pollster] has told Interfax.

According to a poll carried out among 1,600 people on 19-22 June, just under half of those polled (45 per cent) said they do not have a social network account.

Those who do mostly favour Odnoklassniki (72 per cent) and VKontakte, followed by less popular Facebook (22 per cent), Moy Mir (18 per cent), Instagram (9 per cent) and Twitter (8 per cent.)

Since they joined social networks, a third of users (32 per cent) have seen their friends and family pass away but they remained on their friends' list. Respondents also said they kept receiving notifications about their birthdays or whenever someone updated their profiles with any content.

As many as 41 per cent of respondents believe that accounts of dead users should be completely and permanently removed.

A third (30 per cent) suggests giving the accounts a "memorial" status by indicating that the person is dead and let their friends see the pictures and also share posts about them with no option of adding them to friends lists and sending them messages.

The idea of granting their heirs or next of kin assigned by users when they were still alive the right to access the account was favoured by 24 per cent of Russians registered in social networks.
 #8
The Vineyard of the Saker
http://thesaker.is
June 30, 2015
What does Vladimir Putin's 89% rating really mean?

The Washington Post appears to be completely dumbfounded by Putin's latest approval ratings:

"Think Russians are tiring of conflict with the West? Not according to President Vladimir Putin's approval ratings, which hit all-time highs of 89 percent Wednesday (...) Putin's ratings jumped from 65 percent in January 2014 to 80 percent two months later, and they've stayed in the 80s ever since, according to measurements from the Moscow-based Levada Center, the only independent polling organization in Russia. They've kept going up: In Putin's 15 years in office, they've never been higher than June's 89 percent (...) The 89 percent approval rating is also a testimony to the near-unanimity of views about Russia's current direction."

The WaPo is correct: the Russian people do fully support Putin, especially if you consider that the 11% which are not happy with him are largely composed of Communists who blame Putin for being too sympathetic to capitalist market economy practices, nationalists who think that the Kremlin is too soft or indecisive about supporting Novorussia against the Ukronazis and maybe 1-3% (max!) who generally support the USA & EU.  So in terms of the current confrontation with the AngloZionist Empire the real approval rating of Putin would be in the 97-98% range.

What does this mean?

1) There is no such thing as a "Putin" or even a "Kremlin" policy/stance on the Ukraine.  There is a Russian stance on the Ukraine.

2) The sanctions have had the exact opposite effect from the one hoped for: instead of triggering a wave of discontent against Putin, the Russians have rallied around him.

3) The AngloZionist "message" has absolutely zero traction in Russia.  The West has no credibility left, no appeal, no moral or political authority.  Most Russians view the USA as a dangerous foe trying to subjugate Russia and they view the EU as a voiceless subservient colony of the USA.

4) The Russian will not "blink".  As I have been repeating it on this blog over and over again - Russians do not want war, but they are ready for it.  The country is fully mobilized, both psychologically and materially.  No amount of threats or sanctions will change this.

5) Putin's power base is stronger than ever before.  Not only are the Russian people fully supporting Putin, but the anti-Putin pro-USA "liberals" and "democrats" (in the Russian meaning of these words) are in complete disarray and on the run (mostly politically, but sometimes literally).

6) It is becoming increasingly clear that while the Russian economy has suffered from the sanctions and, even more so, from the drop in energy prices, it has fared much better than expected (including by the Kremlin) and that the planned "isolation" of Russia is an abject failure.

7) Most indicators seem to point to the same conclusion: the Ukronazi regime is at a breaking point: the purges have begun, the number of defectors is rising, the regime is making truly crazy decision (Saakashvili in Odessa), Goldman Sachs predicts an official default for the 24th of July (unofficially the Ukraine is already in a default situation).

VVPIn other words, while Russia is now stronger than at any time during this conflict, the Ukraine is weaker than at any time before.  The US has no workable plan left.  The Empire has failed to draw Russia into a war with the Ukraine, the Ukrainian have failed to crush the Donbass and political cracks are all over the EU.  And while all the saber-rattling along the Russian border have angered the Russian people, it has completely failed to impress, nevermind scare, them.  It appears that Putin holds Obama by the balls.

So what is next?

Well, for one thing that now depends on the USA.  Russia can hold this position for as long as needed.  In contrast, the EU is suffering economically and, even more so, politically.  Should the Greek people rise against the AngloZionist plutocracy and reject their ultimatum the resulting political crisis will make the EU even weaker.  Moldova and Romania have shown no signs that they are willing to directly confront Russia over Transnistria, and that is also very good news.  I suspect that some clear warnings were given to the West about that by Russia (including a reminder of what happened the last time Russian peacekeepers were attacked).  The longer the USA sticks to a failed Ukrainian policy, the worse the tensions inside the EU will become.

Minsk-2 is dead and the Ukronazis have clearly given up on the Donbass: they are shelling it daily, they have cut off all the supply lines (including for water and medicines), they have not resumed the payment of pensions (in clear violation of the terms of M2A) and their political rhetoric is even more hostile and bellicose than before.

Still, there is no way the western elites can accept that.  They have invested their full political capital and credibility into their completely failed policy and now to admit that would entail an terminal loss of face.  So just like the Ukronazi junta in Kiev, I expect the western leaders will be all bark but no bite, least the Russian bear bite back.

The Saker
 #9
Nothing on Horizon Now Could Cut Into Putin's High Poll Ratings, Gudkov Says
Paul Goble

Staunton, July 1 - Many Russians "genuinely support the actions and lies of Putin" because as Moscow's propaganda machine suggests, he is a guy willing to use force to stand up to America and defend the national interests of the country, according to Lev Gudkov, the head of the Levada Center.

They recognize only "very poorly" that there is a direct cause and effect connection between the policies of Putin and "the worsening of [their] lives and standard of living," he says, because his propagandists have done everything they can to shift the blame to others - the West, declines in oil prices, or lower-ranking officials (nv.ua/opinion/Gudkov/pochemu-rossiyane-veryat-chto-putin-vse-delaet-pravilno--56976.html).

And consequently, the majority of them are currently not prepared to recognize themselves or to tolerate suggestions from others that Putin is a most odious person, "the head of a corrupt mafia-style state," and thus responsible for their problems. Unfortunately, Gudkov says, there is little prospect that is going to change anytime soon.

There is no alternative to Putin up to now, he says, and "people will not participate in elections because they do not see the sense of taking part in the political process. More than that, they are afraid and get angry at those who are brave enough to contradict the leadership of the country, thus transferring to them their own feelings of inadequacy, dependence, and opportunism, and transforming these things into aggression against 'disturbers of the peace.'"

"This is a powerful mechanism of conformism," the sociologist continues, and he says that he "still does not see any social force which could change the situation. Without access to the mass media by the opposition or even those who are dissatisfied ...   and the possibility of presenting their views, programs and comments on the adventurist policy of the authorities, there is little likelihood that any other views, ideas and motives will appear among the population."
 
 #10
Moscow Times
July 1, 2015
The West Is Too Paranoid About Russia's 'Infowar'
By Mark Galeotti
Mark Galeotti is professor of global affairs at New York University.

Never mind the old missile gap, what about the meme gap? There is something of a panic in the West that it is "losing the information war" with Russia.

On one level, this may be true, but before the West turns itself into "infowarriors" it ought to consider the weaknesses and consequences of the Russian campaign, whatever its apparent success at seeding its choice of memes - contagious ideas - into wider circles.

The Kremlin is undoubtedly engaged in a multi-front, multi-message, multi-media campaign to undermine the will and unity of the West. Everything from the pre-eminence given tin-hatted conspiracy theorists and deservedly unknown, self-proclaimed "analysts" on RT through to the efforts to demonize figures such as State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, speak to this.

But this is primarily a negative campaign. If anything, opinion polls show dwindling trust in and goodwill toward Russia. Pew Research Center surveys, for example, found that between 2013 and 2014, not a single region of the world showed improving perspectives, while negative views of Russia in Europe rose from 54 to 74 percent.

Russia's aim, though, is not so much to grow its own "soft power" so much as undercut the West's ability to mobilize its own capacities. At that, it has certainly had some success.

Many NATO members are increasingly worried about the risk of being sucked into a wider conflict. At a time when their leaders are talking about the need for a tougher line, many electorates are uncomfortable. The sharpest indication of this split is in Germany, where most say they would not want to support a NATO partner facing Russian aggression.

The Russian information war has helped hide the ground truths of Ukraine within a cloud of rumor, innuendo, misinformation and spin. Whatever one may think about the "Maidan" protests, the government in Kiev was elected, and is not a neo-fascist junta.

Whatever one may think about the Crimean vote to join Russia, this was illegitimate under international law. The very existence of continued debate on such topics attests to the successes of the campaign.

But let's not assume it's all a product of Russian infowar, or that the Kremlin is some grandmaster of the memetic chessboard. These debates also reflect an underlying malaise of politics, leadership and legitimacy in the West.

We are willing to doubt the mainstream not because RT exhorts us to "question more," but because we already believe our leaders, our power structures and even our media lie to us.

We find ourselves exposed to conspiracy theories and sensationalist nonsense not because of the Russians so much as our own competitive media environments, the speed with which a fun, compelling or exciting lie or half-truth can be reposted, retweeted and re-reported around the world, outdistancing any fact-checking or sober analysis.

To this end, the West is simply suffering from its own internal contradictions. The Russians have been able to exploit them, but they have also often demonstrated themselves to be counterproductively clumsy.

Those troll farms whose "sophistication" is often vaunted by Western alarmists have become a story in their own right - and anyone wanting to present the Russian perspective in an online forum now runs the risk of being taken for one.

While attempts are made to woo German opinion, Russian hackers break into Bundestag computers, probably gaining no more than trivial intelligence, but undoing what good work the media may have done.

In short, neither the Kremlin nor Russian governments should assume that the "infosphere" is a simple battlefield, on which disciplined forces wheel and charge. It is, at best, a cacophonous forum where umpteen rival voices struggle to be heard.

The Kremlin may have a megaphone, but when its message is laughable or offensive, that simply means it can alienate more people at once.

The European Union has announced that it is establishing its "East StratCom Team" to spread its messages within the EU and its "Eastern neighborhood." But a body currently struggling even to sell itself to skeptical audiences from England to Greece should be cautious about entering into full-blown information warfare.

As soon as such bodies are created, the temptation is to use them to spin and spread messages that shade closer and closer into outright propaganda. This was a mistake made in the early years of the Cold War, before the West realized that the most powerful counter to lies is not other lies, but the truth. The West's weaknesses are also its strengths: a plurality of opinions, an innately skeptical attitude, a willingness to revisit old assumptions. In the short term they create vulnerability, but in the long term, resilience.

The infamous declaration by Dmitry Kiselyov, prime-time presenter, part-time head of media giant Rossia Segodnya, that "objectivity is a myth that is being imposed on us" could stand as the motto of Russia's information warfare campaign - or perhaps some day as its epitaph.
 
 #11
Buzzfeed.com
June 30, 2015
Pro-Putin Think Tank Based In New York Shuts Down
"Mission accomplished," the group's director says.
By Rosie Gray

WASHINGTON - A pro-Kremlin think tank based in New York City is shutting down, an official with the group told BuzzFeed News on Tuesday.

"I can confirm that the Institute is closing its operations," Nikolay Pakhomov, an associate at the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, said.

Russian news site Gazeta.ru reported on Sunday that the organization is shutting down and that its director, Andranik Migranyan, is returning to Russia. Migranyan told the site that the group is stopping its work because its mission of monitoring human rights in the U.S. has been "accomplished," because "The human rights situation has improved in the United States." The institute would publish reports detailing human rights issues in the U.S. Sources told Gazeta that the institute was in fact closing its doors due to a lack of financing.

Pakhomov didn't respond to follow-up questions about why the institute is closing.

Migranyan used the institute to function as a kind of unofficial spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin's government. Migranyan told the Associated Press in 2008 that the creation of the institute had been approved by the Kremlin, but that it was funded privately through business donations.

Migranyan would occasionally appear in the Western press giving pro-Kremlin quotes, and sometimes wrote in The National Interest, an international affairs magazine known for often showcasing realist foreign policy views.

He once told BuzzFeed News that people who supported boycotting the Olympics in Sochi to protest the Russian government's handling of LGBT rights "need to go to examine their head at a psychiatrist's" and claimed that "In Russia, nobody is persecuting homosexuals."

Migranyan last year grabbed attention for his unusual response to a historian who compared Putin's annexation of Crimea to Adolf Hitler's invasion of Austria in 1938, calling the historian, Andrei Zubov, "hell-spawn" and arguing that Hitler actually wasn't so bad at that point in time.

"One should distinguish the difference between Hitler before 1939 and Hitler after 1939 and separate chaff from grain," Migranyan wrote, saying that if Hitler had just rested on his laurels after the Anschluss, he would have been remembered by history as a "politician of the highest order."
 
 #12
RFE/RL
une 30, 2015
From Burning Hearts To Civil Unions: The Unlikely Evolution Of Dmitry Kiselyov

Somewhere around the 98th minute of his weekly news roundup and commentary for Russia's Rossiya television channel this week, Dmitry Kiselyov got around to saying something truly unexpected.

In his coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriages, the head of Rossia Segodnya, Russia's massive state-controlled media conglomerate, came out in favor of same-sex civil unions:

"We can figure out how to make life easier for adult people who want to take upon themselves -- including in a contractual way -- the obligations to care for one another."

"After all, love can work miracles," he added. "Who is against that?"

To be sure, it was a tepid statement from someone who is more famous for colorful pronouncements such as his March 2014 reminder that Russia is capable of turning the United States into "radioactive dust."

In April 2012, Kiselyov raised eyebrows with this now-notorious declaration on homosexuals: "[Gays] should be prohibited from donating blood or sperm. And their hearts, in case they die in a car accident, should be buried or burned as unfit for extending anyone's life."

During the June 28 edition of his weekly Vesti Nedeli, Kiselyov urged people not to think about homosexual relationships in terms of sex and compared his vision of civil unions to existing laws that cover cases of guardianship. After all, it doesn't matter what gender the guardian or the ward is, he argued.

Marriage, he said, must remain exclusively between a man and a woman.

"But civil unions are a different thing, a different level," Kiselyov said. "And we don't need to see men wearing white lace to weddings or throwing bouquets over their shoulders."

Russia has been harshly criticized for its record on gay rights, especially since it passed a 2013 law banning the "propaganda" of alternative lifestyles to minors. Activists say that law has provoked a sharp increase in antigay attacks and vigilantism and a spike in Russians seeking asylum abroad fearing such violence.

In comments to Interfax on June 28,  Konstantin Dobrynin, a member of the Federation Council from Arkhangelsk Oblast, also struck a surprising note, urging Russia to "try to find a legal form that would ensure a social balance on this topic between the conservative part of society and all the rest."

Dobrinin said "don't ask, don't tell" might just be "the optimal formulation" for the near future.

Asked about an initiative by St. Petersburg lawmaker Vitaly Milonov to ban Facebook because it allows users to decorate their profiles with the rainbow flag of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, Dobrinin was particularly blunt:

"We need to remove from the political sphere and from our lives these quasi-politicians who are openly speculating on homophobia and generating legislative spam -- and the sooner, the better," Dobryinin said. "It is precisely them -- and not gays -- who present a clear and present threat to Russian security and the government should fight against them."
 
 #13
http://readrussia.com
July 29, 2015
How about a Smarter, Pettier, Snarkier Sanctions Regime?
By Mark Galeotti

The financial sanctions regime against Russia is not only expensive for many - increasingly unhappy - European powers, it is certainly not having the kind of quick, decisive impact on Russian behavior that the West hoped or expected. So maybe it's time to think laterally...

Of course, the sanctions are having a definite impact, especially set against the much more serious issue of the long-term dip in oil prices. In the words of Richard Connolly, an associate of the British thinktank Chatham House

"Whereas sanctions imposed on the defense industry have caused relatively minor disruption to date, and the ban on technologies used for tight oil extraction will only really affect Russian oil production many years down the line, the limitations on Russian firms' access to finance have exerted an immediate impact.
...
"This doesn't mean that sanctions aren't hurting the Russian economy; they are, only not as quickly or directly as those in some Western capitals might hope.

"Rather than cause a sudden and dramatic financial crisis, financial sanctions are more likely to contribute to a slow strangulation of investment that, over a sustained period of time, will reduce economic growth in Russia."

Indeed, there has been some slight benefit for Russia, even if rather less than its most fervent boosters claim. There has been an orientation away from imports to domestic produce and, thanks to enforced debt repayments and the implications of the ruble's fall in value, total foreign debt has fallen from $728 billion to $597 billion through 2014.

Economic sanctions tend not to be quick-acting, though. Just ask the Cubans or the Iranians. They usually lead to a grinding decline in production and productivity, technological backwardness and indeed greater black marketeering and smuggling (witness the cheese-leggers of Belarus), but also fossilize authoritarian and isolationist political regimes. The USSR faced a sanctions regime from 1980, coupled with the economic warfare of the arms race (not least as it tried to keep up with Reagan's pie-in-the-sky fantasy of missile-killing lasers), but still lurched on another eleven years. Indeed, one could argue that without Gorbachev's quixotic attempts at reform, it would have survived rather longer. Had it had a leader who, say, was nationalist more than idealistic, evidently willing to spill blood to maintain his rule, and to buy off his elite through corruption - sounds like anyone we know? - then perhaps it would have lasted significantly longer.

Is the West is willing to work on this kind of timeframe? Not much fun for the Ukrainians if they do, and the pressures of maintaining the European consensus will only get worse. So maybe it's time - perhaps not entirely seriously - to think of the sanctions regime in a different way.

Keeping Misery In The Family

The thinking behind the early waves of personal sanctions, targeting specific individuals associated with the Crimean annexation, was brilliant. After all, if you want to affect a steeply vertical oligarchy, far better to reach out and put pressure on the handful of people at the top of the system rather than give the ordinary people a good kicking and hope the misery slowly percolates upwards. However, they were quite limited and, most importantly, were far too honorable. Only the individuals and their proven assets were hit, not their families. Time to get more petty and spiteful.

Sanction every Russian parliamentarian or senior figure...and their wives or husbands, brothers and sisters, children and parents. OK, a much more complex task, both legally and logistically, but not only does this get round the usual gambit of simply signing over foreign assets to these various consanguineous comrades, but just think of the dacha kitchen conversations when the kids get deported from their prestigious Western university, when your brother can't go skiing in Switzerland, when your mother can't go shopping in Milan. Seriously, do you think that any pressure can be greater than the entitled ire of a Russian parent or kid?

Hitting Them Where It Hurts

Let no one say the new Russians, and especially the elite, are not brand and fashion conscious. Aha, we have a new front. Ban the specific items they so crave. No BMWs or Mercedes for you, and not even the spare parts you need to keep your existing ones going. Sure, you can have a local artisan run you up a copy of a spare manifold if you want, and good luck to you. Otherwise, start thinking Renault - or even Ladas. Nor is that enough: it may even be time to go product-nuclear and ban the iPhone...

Some would say this would eat into the profits of BMW, Mercedes and Apple. Some would also say that they can afford it - and what is a war, even an economic war, without some casualties?

So Much Love It Suffocates

Arguably, though, the sanctions regime is working wrong-way around, playing directly to Putin's narrative of a hostile West eager to see Russia humbled, reduced and confined. Perhaps we ought to be killing the Kremlin with kindness? Before you scoff, the fact that the regime is so eager these days to close connections with the West, from studentships to civil society partnerships, suggests they themselves see a danger here.

So, let us offer ten thousand Russian undergrads free rides to Western universities, to encourage them to realize how much we love them really, and how nice life in a democratic society can be. Grants for Russians wanting to open up joint business ventures, and teachers wanting to work in the West for a while, and journalists eager to see how a truly free press works - so long as they all go back eventually. What's more, whenever we can, let's source procurement in Russia, so it will be the Russians who have to take a hit if they close economic connections.

RT likes to play itself as the embattled underdog (one of their publicity posters in the US touts their online presence, "in case they shut us down on TV"), so welcome rather than isolate them. Their tin-hatted conspiracy theorists and shouty soi-disant mavericks only thrive on hostility, so encourage them to take part in debates not on their channels but in other media.

The Kremlin is not Russia

Meanwhile, let's not give Putin more diplomacy victories. It was bad enough when we shunned the big Great Patriotic War parade (OK, that was a moral stance - but when the West's leaders decided to fawn over dead Saudi King Abdullah, we pretty much gave up our claim to a moral high ground here). Let's be first next time, with the biggest wreath, and the most solemn, respectful and high profile delegation. Let's go out of our way to say nice things about Russian history and the Russian Orthodox Church. Let's find somewhere to place a state of Peter the Great and invite Putin to unveil it.

Will that stick in your craw? Tough: think how the Kremlin will feel having to cope with so much love. And we can do all that without also saying that we think Donetsk is a Russian city or that Nemtsov deserved what was coming to him. It's rather a case of disconnecting those issues on which we can be very nice to the Russians from those when we want to be critical of the Kremlin.

Citizen Diplomacy = Soft Power War

Then go for one of the big symbols of the new deep freeze: the visa regime. Even if a complete visa-free option isn't feasible, go for something very easy, cheap and light-touch. Sure, they will still need TB tests if they are coming for long, need to show means and the like, but maybe we should bend over backward to make it cheap and easy.

If Russians want to come to the West to work and can make it happen for them, great. Is that really what we're worried about? Let's be blunt, the spies aren't kept out through the visa regime (most of them come in with diplomatic passports, after all), while the gangsters either buy false documentation if they are at the lower end of the food chain or else are welcomed with enthusiastic avarice if they are at the higher end - because then they are the kind of multi-millionaire biznismen, whose empire blends crime and legitimate business, who is such a necessary staple everywhere from the City of London to Karlovy Vary.

Besides, then the pressure mounts on the Russians to offer reciprocity...

15-50%

How much of all this is serious? Depending on my mood and the day, anything from fifteen to fifty percent. Of course there are challenges to trying radical different new approaches, but who can honestly argue that the present system is "working." After all, working at what? Other than simply causing pain and pressure on Russia, what does this mean? It is hard to sustain that it has brought any peace in Ukraine, let along impressed on the Kremlin the value in being a good boy. Furthermore, we have a sanctions regime these days focused on economic instruments of questionable impact and precision - and driven by a lack of imagination and a need to maintain a shaky political consensus. So we use the methods we have in the past, on a lowest common denominator basis. Maybe we - and the Russians - deserve something better?
 
 #14
Greek default may shake EU, not Russia - analysts
By Tamara Zamyatina

MOSCOW, June 30. /TASS/. Greek default, should it become a reality, and the country's ensuing walkout from the euro area are unlikely to cause a heavy impact on the Russian economy, but will surely deal a hard blow on the exchange rate of the euro and the integrity of the European Union, polled experts have told TASS.

The tensions over Greece's debt to the EU and the International Monetary Fund, currently standing at a mammoth sum of €240 billion, are white-hot. The EU's bailout program for Greece expired Monday midnight. Today, Greece may declare a default. Earlier, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras declared that on July 5 the Greeks would vote in a referendum on the Eurogroup's lending terms, which the Athens regards as unfair.

Russian presidential press-secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday: "As before, we keep a close watch on the situation, but this is a question of Greece and its lenders above all." He declined to comment on Russia's attitude to the idea of extending financial assistance to Greece through the banks of the BRICS member-states, which are holding a summit meeting in Ufa next week.

Crisis and politics

"The financial crisis in Greece is an effect of the economic and budget crisis in the European Union. The EU was created amid abundant liquidity. That money is now gone," the head of the Neocon consultancy, Mikhail Khazin, told TASS.

"The European elites are losing the struggle with their own people, which is well seen in the emergence of Europe's counter-elites, as represented by Hungary's Viktor Orban, Greece's Alexis Tsipras, France's Marine Le Pen, Italy's Lega Nord (Northern League) party and so on and so forth. The European Union's counter-elites are reluctant to bow to dictating by the United States, which hopes to use a trans-Atlantic cooperation agreement to convert the EU into its own market," Khazin believes.

"The United States is keen to keep Russia, China and Turkey away from the European market. Washington's purpose is to sever energy ties between Russia and the EU, to prevent the laying of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline to Europe across Greece and to compel Europe to import hydrocarbons from the United States," Khazin said.

"Russia, China and Turkey will surely help save the crisis-stricken Greek economy. China alone will be able to inject hundreds of billions of dollars into Greece, whose port of Pyraeus alone makes the effort worthwhile. Should Greece leave the euro area, the situation in the European Union will get much worse. Such a shock may even cause the EU to collapse," Khazin warns.

Crisis and economics

The deputy chairman of Vneshekonombank's board, Andrey Klepach, is in no mood of over-exaggerating the significance of the Greek crisis.

"The European Union is capable of localizing it. Greece's expected default will cause adverse effects on the exchange rate of the euro," he believes.

"For Russia, the Greek default may be worrisome only from the standpoint of its European energy markets, and only in a very short term. It is important to see how the Greek affair will be evolving," Klepach told TASS.

The president of the Association of Russian Banks, Garegin Tosunian, believes that the European Union will not permit a default in Greece, because no one would benefit from it.
"Even if the default becomes a reality and Greece leaves the euro area, it will not spell disaster for the EU. True, the European Union may suffer some reputational losses, but these costs will pale into insignificance against the backdrop of a major threat to the exchange rate of the euro, which through the fault of the Greek crisis has been falling against the world's other currencies," Tosunian told TASS.

"The Greek default is unlikely to have any tangible effect on the Russian economy. Short-term fluctuations of the rouble's exchange rate are possible, but not to a very serious extent. Russian tourists will be the hardest-hit. Banks in Greece are in turmoil and travelers cannot be certain if there will be enough cash for them in the ATMs or if they can feel safe to make cash transfers to other countries. I believe, these are temporary problems," he remarks.

"The Greek crisis has shown that in a globalized world all political and economic alliances have their own problems. It is essential to avoid putting spokes in others' wheels and to extend a helping hand to each other to address the arising problems," Tosunian said.


 
 #15
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
June 30, 2015
Press Digest: Iranian nuclear talks continue at a slow pace
RBTH presents a selection of views from leading Russian media on international events, featuring reports on the visit of Syria's Foreign Minister to Moscow, the talks on Iran's nuclear program continue and recent election results from Moldova.
Darya Lyubinskaya, RBTH

1. Iranian nuclear talks continue at a slow pace

The signing of the final agreement on the Iranian nuclear program was to take place on June 30, the centrist daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes. However, many questions have not been cleared up since the beginning of the negotiations, while Iran's sudden change of tone does not add confidence for the prompt conclusion of the deal.

The newspaper explains that Iran does not intend to allow the IAEA inspectors access to its military facilities and has no plans to limit its nuclear research. However, it demands that sanctions be lifted immediately and that the lifting of sanctions not be linked with the implementation of its obligations. Negotiators from the six global parties involved in the talks are not ready to meet these conditions.

According to Vladimir Sazhin, a senior researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies, all parties are interested in signing the final agreement. Sazhin notes that Iran's economy cannot develop in isolation from the rest of the world, as it already requires enormous investments in practically all sectors. At the same time Europe would gain access to Iranian oil and gas in the event of the withdrawal of sanctions.

The United States, in turn, could achieve political dividends. The transformation of a hostile Iran to at least a neutral power would allow Washington to strengthen its position in the Middle East, Sazhin concluded.
 
2. Moscow not withdrawing support for Syria

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem has paid a visit to Russia, the business magazine Expert reports. The very fact of this trip dispelled rumors that Moscow was withdrawing its support for the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the magazine writes.

Expert notes that Syria is one of Russia's closest allies in the Middle East and provides Moscow a "key" to more active participation in the region's affairs. Additionally, the magazine points out that Russia is supplying Syria with the types of weapons that it needs, citing the statement of the Syrian Ambassador to Russia, Riad Haddad.

Meanwhile, the Islamic State (ISIS) radical militant group has already captured a large part of Syria's territory and continues to step up pressure on government troops.

Moscow proposes fighting the militants collectively. Expert cites the statement of Russian presidential adviser Yuri Ushakov, who said that "in view of the extremely dangerous situation, [Russia, the EU and the United States] should forget old grudges and join efforts in the fight against ISIS."

In reality, to achieve such a union would be extremely difficult, Expert notes. It could be a challenge to get Saudi Arabia on board in addition to Turkey and the United States, who are yet to determine their position on the issue.
 
3. Moldovan authorities survive local election

The business daily Kommersant sums up local elections that took place in Moldova on June 28. The newspaper notes that the results showed the balance of power in the country largely remains the same, despite the recent corruption scandals in the country. These scandals caused a political crisis when the prime minister's government resigned on June 12.

Businessman Renato Usatii's opposition Our Party caused a furor, as its representatives managed to win in nine out of the 32 regional centers, as well as in three towns in Gagauzia, including its capital Comrat.

Candidates from the ruling Democratic Party and the Liberal Democratic Party prevailed in seven and four regional centers, respectively. The election results showed that the ruling pro-European Democrats and the Liberal Democrats are so far unsinkable, despite the corruption scandals.

The country's main pro-Russian faction - the Socialists' Party - gained control of only two regional centers and lost in Chisinau.

The leader of the Socialists' Party, Igor Dodon, and Renato Usatii are considered two birds from the same nest, yet the results were quite different.

The former presented himself as a pro-Russian politician, while the latter focused less on his ties to Russia, but more on the slogan "Down with the thieves," Valeriu Mosneaga, a professor of Political Science at Moldova State University, told the newspaper.

"Usatii took votes from both those that look to the east, and those that want to be in Europe," Mosneaga said.

 
 #16
RIA Novosti
June 30, 2015
No plans for military alliance with Moscow, says Chinese envoy

Li Hui, the Chinese ambassador to Russia, has said that Beijing has no plans to form a military alliance with Moscow. He made this statement during an in-depth interview published on the website of RIA Novosti (part of the state-owned International News Agency Rossiya Segodnya) on 30 June. (http://bit.ly/1FNjB7z)

No threat to third parties

"China and Russia are not only friendly neighbours, but also strategic partners," Li said, asked whether there was any likelihood of increased cooperation in the military technology sphere. He added that China hoped to develop "all-inclusive and broad cooperation" with Russia, which, he noted, includes military technology.

However, Li emphasized, "China and Russia have asserted on multiple occasions that they are not planning to establish a military alliance in any form", and any military ties the countries do develop "are not aimed against third parties and do not affect the interests of third countries".

Li praised the military industrial systems in the countries, which, he said, give them "powerful potential to develop and produce weapons and military hardware".

"Zero tolerance" for terrorism

Russia and China's military ties have a positive effect on the mutual trust between the two countries and contribute to stability and security in the region, Li said.

"Security and stability are primary conditions for mutually beneficial cooperation and joint development in any region and any organization," the Chinese envoy said. For this reason, he added, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes both Russia and China, focuses on the fight against the "three forces of evil" - terrorism, separatism and extremism - which it considers "one of the main aspects" of its work.

"We intend to fortify our cooperation with Russia in bilateral and multilateral formats, including the SCO and BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa], to combine efforts in the antiterror sphere, to show 'zero tolerance' in the fight against terrorist forces," Li said, emphasizing that "China consistently stands up against terrorism in all of its forms".

Mutual enrichment

Turning to the subject of economic cooperation between Russia and China, Li lauded the potential for mutual enrichment presented by two major initiatives: China's New Silk Road and Russia's Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). "Without question, they can become a focal point for the growth of all-encompassing strategic partner relations between China and Russia and an important driver for Eurasian integration," the envoy said.

He pointed to a number of recent joint projects undertaken by the two countries - including the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline, a currency swap agreement entered into by the Russian Central Bank and the People's Bank of China, and the joint construction of a bridge across the Amur (Chinese: Heilongjiang) river. "I am convinced that these effective measures will undoubtedly lend vital substance to Sino-Russian relations, open new possibilities for practical collaboration between our two countries, and give a new impulse for the development of the whole Eurasian continent," he said.

In that spirit, he spoke of Beijing's readiness to increase trade with Moscow in the agricultural sector. "China wants to increase the supply of agricultural produce, food products and other goods to Russia," he said. "Our countries' regulatory bodies are currently holding talks on mutual supply of produce and meat
 
 #17
Interfax
June 30, 2015
Russia's NATO envoy makes downbeat statements on ties with alliance

Aleksandr Grushko, Russia's permanent representative to NATO, has said:

- NATO is replacing its policy of partnership with Russia with a policy of deterrence;

- restoring NATO-Russia relations are not envisaged unless the alliance changes its views on cooperation;

- Russia will take into account the NATO "threat" in its military planning;

- NATO's role in the Ukrainian conflict is "absolutely destructive";

- NATO has no role in settling the conflict in Moldova's breakaway Dniester region;

- a possible final deal on Iran's nuclear programme will be a "moment of truth" for NATO, as this was the "pretext" for the US missile defence system in Europe; and

- Russia would consider Montenegro joining NATO to be an "unequivocally negative step".

Grushko was speaking in a video conference with Brussels on 30 June, privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax reported.

Partnership replaced by deterrence

NATO is moving from a policy of partnership with Russia to a policy of deterrence, he said.

This is the way decisions made at the meeting of NATO members states' defence heads in Brussels on June 24-25 should be interpreted, he said.

"This meeting was yet more proof that NATO is switching from a policy of partnership to a policy of deterring Russia. Unfortunately, the political line we have observed in the last year-and-a-half is being confirmed by military building and planning," Grushko was quoted as saying.

Restoring NATO-Russia ties not on cards

As for the possibility of restoring NATO-Russia relations, Grushko said: "All our cooperation projects are frozen. If NATO does not reconsider its attitude to prospects for uniting efforts in the joint fight with common threats and challenges, then there will be no sign of prospects for restoring relations in the full sense of this word."

Previously, the "quality of relations was determined by the ability to counter common threats", he added.

Russia to factor in NATO "threat"

Asked about what retaliatory measures Russia would take in response to the deployment of military potential along Russia's borders, Grushko said: "In our military planning we will take into account the potential of this new capacity along our borders, and we will take all possible measures to counter the threat related to the deployment of this potential.

NATO role in Ukraine "destructive"

As for NATO's role in the conflict in southeast Ukraine, Grushko said: "NATO's role in the Ukrainian situation today, in the political and military sense, is absolutely destructive."

He went on: "The best role for NATO in settling the Ukrainian conflict would be if the subject of Ukraine had bypassed NATO. Then there would have been more favourable conditions to seek a peaceful settlement using all the tools that Europe has, tools that should ensure a way out of this crisis in a peaceful way."

The NATO line in Ukrainian affairs "plays into the hands of those who dream about reaching a resolution of the crisis by military means", he added.

"You get the impression at times that NATO is living in its own virtual world that has been specially created, and does not draw on objective information that can be obtained from reports of OSCE mission observers," he said.

No role for NATO in Dniester settlement

Regarding the settlement of the Dniester region conflict, Grushko said: "I start from the principle that NATO does not have, and cannot have, any role in resolving the conflict. There are international principles and formats that were approved by the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] and UN, so one should move along the path that was determined by the bulk of the documents that have been drawn up to date."

He went on: "We see all the dangers regarding what the Moldovan and Ukrainian authorities are undertaking, regarding the ending of transport links, the introduction of limitations on economic operations, and attempts to establish an economic blockade."

"This is an extremely dangerous path," he said, "as we know how much effort has been put into preserving peace and calm in this region of the world. It is a frozen conflict, but the situation has been quite stable."

Iran nuclear deal "moment of truth" for NATO

On a possible final agreement about Iran's nuclear programme, Grushko said: "We know that the European segment of the missile defence system was deployed under the pretext that it was necessary to defend Europe and allies from the Iranian nuclear threat."

He went on: "We hope the issue will be removed from the international agenda as an issue related to security, and then will come a moment of truth for our partners: what was this system created for."

Russia opposes Montenegro NATO membership

As for the possibility of Montenegro joining NATO, Grushko said: "This is an unequivocally negative step for European security and our relations with Montenegro because it is obvious that a country with which we have close historical ties, spiritual unity, human relations, primarily a mutually intertwined history, is joining an organization that is unfriendly to Russia."

Russia's attitude to NATO expansion has not changed, Grushko said. "We think that none of the real security issues will be resolved," he said.


 
 #18
AP
June 30, 2015
Russia-US ties alive and well at Iran nuclear talks
By GEORGE JAHN

VIENNA (AP) - Russia-U.S. relations are at a post-Cold War low just about everywhere, except at the Iran nuclear talks.

Despite a chill over the Ukraine crisis that has spread to almost every element of their relationship, Moscow and Washington continue to find common cause on one of the most pressing issues on the global agenda - a deal to prevent Iran from being able to make nuclear weapons.

Officials on both sides credit the other with pragmatic proposals and good faith that transcends their broader differences.

For the U.S., failure to get an agreement carries the unappealing risk of involvement in a new Mideast conflict, nor does President Barack Obama want to lose out on a key plank of his foreign-policy legacy. The Obama administration has said it could strike Iran's nuclear facilities militarily should diplomatic attempts to curb its nuclear activities fail. Israel is even more upfront about threatening to launch air attacks, a move that could draw the U.S. into the fray.

The Russians also don't want a U.S.-Iran war. Gary Samore, a U.S. negotiator at the nuclear talks until 2013, says getting an agreement is in Moscow's strategic interest as it tries to limit the U.S. presence in the Middle East.

"The Russians don't like to see the U.S. going around the world, bombing countries," says Samore, who is now with Harvard's Belfer Center think tank.

To that end, the Iran talks are also serving as a conduit between Russia and America on various ways of reducing Mideast turmoil. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday said his talks Tuesday with U.S Secretary of State John Kerry in Vienna would be an opportunity "to exchange opinions on how our two countries and other countries in the region could pool our efforts" to fight the Islamic State group.

The desire is mutual.

While the Russians and Americans differ on Moscow's support for Syrian President Bashar Assad, Samore said the Kremlin's backing of Assad is now secondary to finding a way of defeating the Islamic State militants.

Though the venue was the nuclear talks, Lavrov's comments after meeting Kerry reflected how they have evolved as a place to discuss general shared concerns.

The Russian said the talks were "not the main subject of our meeting." Instead, he said he and Kerry exchanged "specific opinions and ideas on how to try to make the situation more manageable" in the anti-Islamic State campaign.

Harvard political science professor Graham Allison sees the Russia-U.S. cooperation as "good evidence that where there is real shared national interest, both Putin's Russia and Obama's U.S. can see beyond the shouting over Ukraine." He likened it to the two nations' ability to sign several significant arms limitations treaties during the Cold War.

But it's not all about goodwill.

A nuclear deal may serve Russia's own needs on a strategic level, and work against the United States. It could strengthen Tehran as a regional power allied with Moscow, both as a proxy backing the Syrian government and as a rival to U.S-backed Saudi Arabia in the struggle for Mideast influence.

Economic interests also play a role in Moscow's support for a nuclear deal, even if the lifting of sanctions trigged by an agreement would hurt Russia in the short run. These would put more Iranian oil on the market in competition with Russian crude.

But Moscow is reportedly working on a solution by offering cash for Iranian oil. Tehran then would spend the money on Russian goods. And Russia can sell the Islamic Republic state-of-the-art drilling equipment and other technology it needs to rebuild its sanctions-battered oil sector.

And in the long run, the Kremlin, which already helped construct Iran's working reactor, will benefit from an already signed multibillion-dollar deal to build two additional reactors and supply them with fuel. More such projects are planned, along with military cooperation and Russian arms sales to Tehran, including the long-delayed transfer of S-300 advanced air defense systems.

The U.S. has tried desperately to prevent that system from reaching Iran.

The Iranians are clearly banking on Russia as they ready to shake off crippling economic sanctions. Tehran's ambassador to Moscow, Mehdi Sanayee, foresees a quick and "eye-catching leap" in bilateral trade with Russia from the present $5 billion a year to $70 billion.

And helping out on Iran may mean the U.S. and its partners ease their pressure over Ukraine.

"There may be a calculation by Moscow that the western powers may be more reluctant to elevate sanctions over Ukraine in order not to jeopardize cooperation over Iran," Samore said.
 
 #19
American Thinker
www.americanthinker.com
June 30, 2015
Russia is not the Main Enemy
By Gregory Gounev
Georgy Gounev teaches and writes on ideology and strategy of radical Islam. He is the author of  The Dark Side of the Crescent Moon - the Islamization of Europe and its Impact on American - Russian Relations Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick (New Jersey) and London (England), 2014.

One of the most disturbing and dangerous dimensions of the contemporary world political panorama is the growing tension between the United States and the Russian Federation. Future historians will try to find an explanation involving the staggering blindness of the leadership of both countries.

The problem is not complicated.  While the United States is presented as number one enemy of Russia, and vice versa, the simple truth is that it is radical Islam that constitutes a deadly threat to both countries. For the adherents of the growing theocratic-totalitarian ideology there is no bigger chance to turn into reality their dreams for a global domination rather than the growing hostility between America and Russia, or ideally, a war between those countries.

Not so long ago, President Vladimir Putin gave a speech in which he declared that Russia doesn't have any aggressive intentions toward the former Baltic "republics" of the Soviet Union, or toward any former Eastern European dependency of the Soviet Union currently a part of NATO.  In other words, President Putin is trying to assure Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria that Russia does not have any aggressive designs toward them. The follow-up question is an important one: To what extent are the American plans to place heavy weaponry and to dispatch a 5,000 strong U.S. military contingent in that area perceived in Moscow as a threat to Russia?

In case the Americans think that the real intent of president Putin is a sudden attack resulting in the conquest of Eastern Europe, does anybody in Washington sincerely believe that 5,000 U.S. officers and men would be able to repel potential Russian aggression? There is not the slightest hint that Putin contemplates the broadening of Russian aggression by trying to occupy Eastern Europe and thus provoking the outbreak of the Third World War.

One of the many strange aspects of the current American-Russian confrontation expresses itself in the fact that on the one hand Putin is assuring the West in general and the U.S. in particular that Russia doesn't intend to attack either Ukraine or Eastern Europe, while on the other hand the President of Russia doesn't understand, or pretends not to understand, that the American symbolic transfer of weaponry and personnel eastward represents a defensive move.

It was the Syrian Civil War preceding the Ukrainian crisis that provided the reason for the deterioration of the American-Russian relations by deepening the divide between both countries. The conflict that erupted in Syria forced Washington and Moscow to extend their support to the different protagonists who were trying to determine the future of Syria. There was only one critically important difference between the choices made by Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama.  

The choice of Putin was determined by a clear-cut strategy based on the consideration to preserve the secular regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad from the assault of different Islamic groups and organizations whose purpose was the establishment of an Islamic state on the territory of the country. The case with President Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was completely different. As the president has recently confessed, the United States doesn't have a consistent strategy in the Middle East. The statement Secretary of State Clinton made at the very beginning of the ravaging Syrian Civil War was also categorical and short:  "Assad must go!"

As a matter of fact, the shocking statement of President Obama about a lack of U.S. strategy was incorrect. What happened was that back in 2011 during the earliest stages of the Syrian drama, the silent partnership of the President of the United States with the former Prime Minister of Turkey Recip Tayyip Erdogan, brought about two rather important results. Probably under the influence of Erdogan, President Obama was even considering inviting Mahamed Morsi, the former, hard-core Islamic president of Egypt, to the White House in September of 2011.

As far as the Syrian Civil War was concerned, the Obama administration missed a wonderful opportunity to wipe out ISIS from the very beginning with a massive air attack originating from U.S. aircraft carriers while the Jihadists were on their way to Mosul (Iraq).  Instead, Mr. Obama referred to ISIS as the "Junior Varsity team."  Finally, at least some Washington policymakers realize that the problem with the U.S. policy in the Middle East is not the lack of strategy but rather the wrong strategy. The hope is that there is an increasing number of people who realize that so far the United States have been assisting the wrong side of the Syrian conflict.

The conflict stemming from President Putin's confrontation with Ukraine and the sanctions imposed against Russia for the occupation of Crimea and the military action in Eastern Ukraine, could find its solution only within the framework of the realization on the part of Washington and Moscow that radical Islam is the main danger threatening the United States, Russia, and Europe.

If we dare follow the most likely scenario of events and the almost inevitable Taliban victory in Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal, we shall be able to observe a development very similar to the one that took place in Syria and Iraq.  The Taliban's tentacles will spread into the former Soviet Central Asia and into the barely accessible areas of Pakistan. With this huge territory as a base, the intense drug trafficking and the destabilization of the United States and Russia will acquire a new dynamic.

As far as the Ukrainian conflict is concerned, maybe a formerly rejected option will offer a solution. In other words, the federalization of Ukraine would allow the pro-Russian component of the Eastern Ukrainian population an acceptable level of representation, while keeping the territorial integrity of the country. This has the potential to offer a mutually acceptable solution to the confrontation.
 
 #20
Moscow Times
July 1, 2015
Russia Only Has Itself to Blame for Lost Influence in Post-Soviet Sphere
By Ivan NechepurenkoJ

As Russian officials scramble to heap blame on Western NGOs for anti-government protests that have swept the Armenian capital in recent days, analysts argued that Moscow only has itself to blame for its loss of influence in the former Soviet space.

More specifically, Russia has lost its regional grip due to the failure of its soft power policy, which created a vision of progress, but produced no tangible result, experts told The Moscow Times.

As if admitting defeat, the head of Kremlin-backed think tank the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation (IDC) has announced the imminent closure of the organization's New York branch, the Gazeta.ru news site reported Sunday. IDC New York director Andranik Migranyan said the think tank's Paris branch is facing difficulties staying afloat due to decreased funding from Russian companies, the same report said.

But as its own soft power initiative fails, Moscow is gearing up to crack down on foreign NGOs. On Friday, the Federation Council is set to compile a list of such organizations that should be banned from working on Russian soil.

This disconnect owes to the fact that Russian officials lack a working comprehension of what soft power is, experts told The Moscow Times. Rather than fostering fresh, young leaders, working across the political spectrum and championing modern values, Moscow works only with a select group of aging elites and hopes Russia's historic achievements will remain sufficiently compelling to keep the former Soviet population loyal to Moscow, they said.

"Russia appeals to archaic traditions and is unable to compete with the modernist culture of the West," said Alexei Makarkin, deputy head of Moscow-based think tank the Center for Political Technologies.

"Our conservative values do not resonate with young people," Makarkin said in a phone interview, explaining why Russia has lost the fight for the hearts and minds of youth across the former Soviet space.

Pavel Gubarev, a prominent figure in eastern Ukraine's self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, lamented in an interview Tuesday with nationalist website Russian People's Line that in contrast with their American counterparts, Russian organizations tend to veer toward corruption.

"Look at how Americans work: they find ideological people, give them money and resources - everything they need to continue doing what they believe in. Because this is important for the U.S. and that's how it's been for the past 23 years," he said. "And all our alleged Russian organizations simply syphon off funds."

Armenian Upheaval

As anger over energy price hikes boiled over into anti-government protests in Yerevan this month, Russian lawmakers and pundits were quick to assert that the civil unrest had been orchestrated by the United States in a bid to steer yet another former Soviet state out of Moscow's orbit.

Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the Federation Council's international relations committee, told state-run news channel Vesti-24 last week that perhaps foreign NGOs were to blame. "I don't exclude the theory that foreign nongovernmental organizations may be behind these events. ... We understand well that in the absence of prophylactic measures, such turmoil could also happen in our country," said Kosachyov. Prior to his stint as a senator, Kosachyov served head of Rossotrudnichestvo, the government agency tasked with promoting Russia's image abroad, from 2012 to 2014.

Lawmakers and state media outlets alike have readily echoed Kosachyov's interpretation of the events that continue to grip Armenia, a landlocked country of 3.2 million people in the Southern Caucasus.

A doctored image of an Armenian protester holding a Ukrainian flag has been widely circulated by Russian media outlets, which have seized the opportunity to draw parallels with the mass protests that toppled Ukraine's former Kremlin-loyal leader Viktor Yanukovych last year, the Kommersant daily newspaper reported last week.

Official Moscow has frequently and fervently accused the West of having instigated both the Ukrainian upheaval, and the revolution in Georgia that led to the ouster of its former leader Eduard Shevardnadze in 2003.

Prophylactic Measures

One of the measures the Kremlin hopes will deter a revolutionary scenario on its own turf will rear its head Friday, when senators meet to draft the so-called "patriotic stop-list," which will include foreign organizations that could prove threatening to Russia, Gazeta.ru reported Monday. The list will then be passed on to the Prosecutor General's Office and the Foreign Ministry, which have been tasked with selecting organizations to be included on the final version of the list.

These are the consequences of a law signed in May by President Vladimir Putin banning the activities of "undesirable" foreign organizations determined to pose a threat to the country's security and stability.

Citing Russian government sources, Gazeta.ru reported that more than 20 foreign NGOs will feature on this list, including such global human rights powerhouses as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Freedom House.

At present, all of these organizations are fully functioning on Russian soil, and despite this, Putin's approval rating soared to a record shattering 89 percent this month.

Still, Russian officials continue to view foreign NGOs as tools that can be used to foment unrest in the country. Putin's approval rating was revealed by the independent Levada Center, which polled 1,600 people across Russia, and had a margin of error not exceeding 3.4 percent.

Putin likewise defended an earlier crackdown on civil society during a meeting last week with members of the Civic Chamber, where he said the adoption of a 2012 law that required all foreign-funded NGOs engaged in loosely defined political activity to accept the label of "foreign agents" was justified. This law has been lambasted by Russian NGOs, who see it as an effort to stifle their work in the country.

"We introduced the 'foreign agent' concept to prevent foreign states from using such instruments to meddle in our domestic affairs," Putin said at the meeting.

Despite its understanding that NGOs and other instruments - such as media outlets - can be used to exert soft power and destabilize states, Russia has failed to assert its own influence in the former Soviet states, pundits said. According to analysts, the tendency of Russian officials to view every popular uprising through the prism of foreign-orchestrated color revolutions reflects the state's deep-seated fear of a such a coup on its own territory.

"The Kremlin still thinks that it is sufficient to simply work with the ruling elites, and is not concerned about what people in [other] countries think," said Vasily Gatov, visiting fellow at the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy.

"Also, Russia still thinks that the Soviet legacy will be sufficient to garner popularity. But in contrast with the Soviet Union, Russia does not offer any grand idea apart from 'let's stick together to survive in this cruel world,'" Gatov said in written comments.

Russian Soft Power

In recent years Russia has poured significant resources into programs aimed at bolstering its image around the world.

Rossotrudnichestvo, Kosachyov's former stomping ground, was established in 2008. The agency is funded by Russia's foreign policy budget. This year, 2.34 billion rubles ($42 million) have been earmarked for its diverse array of activities, according to the program's text on the Foreign Ministry's website.

The program lists numerous benchmarks for the evaluation of its effectiveness. Among these are an increase in the number of Rossotrudnichestvo's representative offices and an increase in the number of Russia-themed cultural events around the world. The benchmarks measure the desired results in percentages, units and numbers of people.

According to its website, the agency hosts cultural events abroad, supports Russians around the globe and promotes Russian language and culture. It also invites foreign journalists, politicians and civil society members to Russia via its New Generation program. More than 8,000 people from 80 countries have visited Russia through the program since 2011, Kommersant reported this month.

The program's aim is to "widen the circle of active young foreigners who are constructive and positive about Russia," according to the agency's website.

But to come to Russia under this program, young people must be able to demonstrate a pre-existing interest in "acquiring true information about today's Russia," Lyubov Glebova, head of Rossotrudnichestvo, told Kommersant.

In 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigation voiced concern that the Russian government was using this program as a means of recruiting foreign spies, The Washington Post reported at the time. The Russian government has denied these claims.

Regardless of whether these charges are true, the program appears thus far to have had little impact on popular attitudes toward Russia abroad. Only 26 percent of respondents in eight NATO countries told U.S.-based pollster Pew Research Center they held a favorable view of Russia. The survey was conducted among 11,116 respondents between April and May. Pew did not reveal the survey's overall margin of error.

Rossotrudnichestvo did not return a request for comment by the time of publication.

Perhaps the most successful iteration of Russia's charm offensive thus far was the 2005 establishment of RT, a global television network that currently broadcasts in English, Spanish and Arabic. RT claims to have a 2015 budget of $275 million.

A decade since its establishment, the channel has emerged as a force to be reckoned with in the eyes of Western governments and institutions, who view the network as among the Russian state's most powerful weapons - one that could pose an international threat if not adequately contained.

According to Tatyana Stanovaya, a leading analyst at Moscow-based think tank the Center of Political Technologies, the reason Russia's soft power policy has failed is because it unwaveringly pushes against the tide of popular sentiment.

"Russia always separates people into 'friends' and 'foes,'" she wrote in a comment last week for website Slon.ru. "Russia's fundamental aim is to prevent a 'color revolution.' The U.S. has a different aim: to bolster ties with any force that can gain power, whether as a result of an election or a revolution."


 
 #21
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
July 1, 2015
Electric Yerevan: what next?
Monica Ellena in Yerevan

Unemployment is soaring in Armenia, but when Vaghinak Shushanyan handed in his resignation from his post as administrator in a hotel in Yerevan on June 20, he knew it was the right thing to do. He had a party to organise. "I never had 20,000 guests at my birthday party," the 24-year-old told a cheering crowd on Marshal Baghramyan Prospekt on June 25, before cutting a cake with the symbol of an electric volt.

An activist from Spitak, the city in northern Armenia hit by a devastating earthquake in 1988, Shushanyan has been at the forefront of "No To Plunder", the movement leading the protests over a 16.7% hike in electricity prices that have gripped the capital since June 19. As the demonstration enters its second week, though, most of his party guests are now gone.

On June 28, President Serzh Sargsyan complained that "annulling the tariff raise is extremely dangerous", but said the government would use state funds to cover the price increase, rather than raise customers' bills. He added that an international firm would look into the books of the Russian-owned power distributor Electric Network of Armenia (ENA) and an independent audit would be produced.

This wasn't enough to satisfy the demonstrators, who claimed that citizens would end up paying anyway as the state budget is funded by taxpayers. Yet while stark reminders to the authorities that the struggle is not over remain - the barricade line of rubbish containers and colourful banners with slogans such as "I'm not going to pay! Will you?" and "Stop robbing people!" - the thousands who had unfolded a 20-metre long Armenian flag last week are no longer in Baghramyan and the protest seems to be fizzling out. "We will continue our fight," Shushanyan tells bne Intellinews, though adds that as citizens, not demonstrators. "We are not satisfied with the government's decision, but it is a half step back - the authorities have understood they are there to serve the people, not the other way around."

Business as usual

There remain some important outstanding questions, not least what effects the protests will have on domestic politics, the fate of ENA and the future of Armenian-Russian ties.

Some observers are cautious, fearing that ultimately the excitement will turn to disappointment as things return to business as usual. "The protest showed there is an enormous energy that could explode, but Armenia's problems are deeply rooted. Enthusiasm and grassroots activism, though valuable, cannot affect the establishment," says Hayk Balanyan, an economist at the State Agrarian University's Agribusiness Teaching Centre.

Stefan Grigoryan, chairman of the Analytical Centre on Globalisation and Regional Cooperation (ACGRC), agrees. "Citizens responded to the apolitical call, but the lack of political alignment is the protest's strength and weakness," he explains. "There is no clear leadership. In the long term every movement needs to develop a structure and decision-making mechanisms, as crowds of thousands need management and in fact signs of disagreement already arose."

Just like in Bulgaria and elsewhere, the initial protest stemmed from dissatisfaction with rising electricity prices, but then morphed into a broader movement in a country already hit hard by the downturn in Russia whose economy is deeply intertwined with Armenia's. "We need to remain focused on specific, practical issues. If you broaden it, the risk is to get lost and not achieve anything," warns Shushanian, who also joined the successful protest against the raise of public transport fares in 2013. Like today, thousands of mostly young people mobilized and tickets were kept at AMD100 (€0.18).

Shushanian and other activists like Maxim Sargsyan set up the non-partisan group "No To Plunder" in July 2014 when electricity tariffs were raised by AMD4 (€0.007), but unlike today the movement did not garner much public support. "We started too late, three days before the new tariffs were due to enter into force," recalls Vaghinak. "This time the government made a tactical mistake, it announced the hike more than one month in advance. We had time."

The IT-savvy youngsters distributed flyers in the street, attached stickers on apartment block doors, while using the internet and social media as a key tool to reach out to the e-generation. The hashtag '#ElectricYerevan' gained traction on social media and attracted attention both within the country and abroad. The protest started with a sit-in in the central Freedom Square, but gained momentum when it moved to Baghramyan street, where the Presidential residence, the National Assembly and the Constitutional Court plus an array of embassies are located.

The police's attempt to forcibly disperse the protesters with water cannons only resulted in attracting more people and stimulating creative slogans such as "The more you water us, the more we grow". "We knew it was a question of time, but we didn't expect such a stunning turnout and coverage," Shushanian admits.

The rally had been peaceful up until June 23 when police used water cannons on protestors and detained 237, but they were unable to break it up. The threat to resume force on June 29 did not materialise - the water cannons disappeared, the president urged protesters to work together for a peaceful solution, and top police officials started negotiations with protesters, media and civil representatives to prevent more violence.

New Maidan?

'Electric Yerevan' was swiftly labelled a new Maidan, referring to the protests in Ukraine that ousted the corrupt regime of Viktor Yanukovych. But this was rejected by many demonstrators, who claimed the protest was neither political nor anti-Russian. Still, people chanting Hayastan! (the country's name in Armenian) were heard loud and clear in Moscow.

Under pressure to end the unrest, President Sarkisyan hinted that ENA could be sold off or re-nationalised. The company is owned by a Russian state holding company Inter RAO, which is controlled by Rosneft, the Russian state energy company run by Igor Sechin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since acquiring the power distributor in 2006, Inter RAO has been piling up an ever-growing mountain of debt to the tune of $250mn, a huge sum in a country with annual GDP of $10bn.

After meeting with Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov on June 25, Sarkisyan acknowledged that Moscow was the largest investor in Armenia's economy, but urged companies working in his country to pay greater attention to "social responsibility".

But public grievances with its former imperial master have long been building. In January, Armenia joined the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), further increasing Yerevan's dependence on Russia. "Over the years, politicians sold most of the country's key assets to one single player - that's unwise in any circumstance," notes Grigoryan.

Bilateral ties received another huge blow in January when a Russian soldier serving at the Russian military base in the tiny Caucasus nation killed a family of seven, including a six-month-old boy. Moscow's decision to have the soldier tried in Russia further strained relations. Following Sokolov's visit, Sarkisyan said that the Russian soldier would stand trial in Armenia in a move that some saw as an attempt to calm tensions. "That's purely a fa�ade," explains Zaruhi Postanjian, a lawyer and opposition MP with the Heritage Party. "Permyakov [the soldier] remains in Russia - how credible will a trial be if the Russian government does not hand over the defendant?"

There have been other steps taken by Russia to help calm tensions. Armenia struck an agreement to purchase $200mn-worth of Russia-made weapons through a low interest loan provided by the Russian government, Radio Free Europe's Armenian service Azatutyun.am reported on June 28. The disbursement of the "concessional export loan" was formalised at that meeting between President Sargsyan and Sokolov. According to a statement issued by the presidential office, the weapons will "considerably expand the assortment of modern weaponry in [Armenia's] arsenal" - crucial for a country where war with its neighbour Azerbaijan seems always near. It has not been specified what type of new military equipment will be purchased.

Yet many Armenians express dissatisfaction that the Russian-led EEU has failed so far to deliver on promises of economic growth, hinting that the government should instead look again to deepen relations with the EU. But a third way is possible. "We are too small to bet on one single partnership," maintains Balanyan. "Armenia should be with neither of the blocs, but on its own, like the non-aligned movement in the 1960s, and develop relations beyond Moscow and Brussels. Iran could be on the horizon."

In downtown Yerevan, on Baghramyan, the midday heat is thinning out the protestors, but Shushanyan will surely be there at sunset. "This is a national awakening, now they have to listen to us," he says hopefully.
 
 #22
www.rt.com
June 4, 2015
Fight root causes of terrorism, not symptoms - Lavrov to Bloomberg

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sits down with Bloomberg to discuss thorny international issues such as the US-led bombing campaign against Islamic State terrorists, the FIFA corruption scandal and Russian-American relations.

Q: He is Vladimir Putin's right hand man for foreign policy, and he is at the helm of Russia's diplomatic arm at a time, when relations with the West are at a post-Cold War low. Sergey Lavrov, thank you very much for joining. I want to start by asking you about your recent meeting with the US Secretary of State John Kerry. You met with him for several hours in Sochi. The two of you sat down together with the Russian president. What is this? Is this the beginning of a thaw in relations between Russia and the United States?

A: I believe this is the realistic approach, getting the upper hand. I was a bit surprised that people paid so much attention to the fact that John Kerry spent several hours with the Russian leader and with his counterpart. Because if you take 2014, the year of the crisis in Ukraine, which was used by some people to try to derail the relations between Russia and the West, last year John Kerry and myself, we met 17 times. More than any of my counterparts, I saw John Kerry. And every time it was several hours. And it was a businesslike discussion on Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine of course. And the fact that another round of talks took place on the Russian soil, it's a welcome sign, but more symbolic, rather than substantive.

Q: That's what I want to ask you about, because I guess the issue here isn't the quantity of time you spend together, but the quality of the time, right? In 2009, we had the so called "reset" in Russian-American relations, which as you know didn't go very far at all. I know you said that what we are seeing now with Russian-American relations isn't a reset. Why not?

A: Well, if you take the original reset, it was not our invention, it was the invention of Hillary Clinton and Obama administration's, because with their predecessors - George Bush, Jr. - Vladimir Putin had very good personal relations. I was on good terms with Condoleezza Rice. But somehow this good personal chemistry didn't go down to the practical political level. And the American administration, when Barack Obama became president, they re-assessed the state of bi-lateral relations with Russia. And they decided that it is much better to have more forthcoming approach. It was a reset of the American policy vis-a-vis Russia. Then the Presidential Commission was created, 21, I think, working groups, covering each and every imaginable area of human activity. And then all this was abruptly stopped, because we could not and did not accept the coup which was strongly supported and welcomed by the United States, the coup in Ukraine.

Now I believe we are quite realistic. President Putin from time to time talks to President Obama over the phone. They are very pragmatic, they discuss specific areas of cooperation, where both countries could benefit. And we do the same with John Kerry on a much more detailed level. I wouldn't call it a new reset, I would call it the realization of the need for normalcy.

Q: So if we get into the necessity or the need for normalcy in relations, in real politic, working on issues where you can find common ground... You mentioned one of the issues you've been discussing is Syria. Last week you said... Effectively called on the US to work with Assad in Syria to combat Islamic State. Nice idea, immediately rejected by the United States. Is there anything, peace talks aside, that rhetoric aside, that you can point to, where Russia is actually working right now with the US to counter Islamic State?

A: We would prefer to do this on a collective basis, on the basis of international law, through the Security Council. Unfortunately, the Americans, when they announced this crusade against ISIL in Iraq and Syria, they never came to the Security Council. They just announced the coalition. And they announced that the Iraqi government gave its consent to the air-strikes on its territory against the positions held by ISIL. They also announced that they would do the same in Syria without asking the Syrian government and without going to the Security Council. I believe it was a mistake. I think that just obsession with the personality of President Assad is not making any good to the common cause of fighting terrorism. And when our American colleagues say that he cannot be considered as a legitimate partner, we always remind them that he was perfectly legitimate when we went to the Security Council to adopt a resolution on Syrian chemical weapons disarmament. The resolution of the Security Council, supported by the United States and joint consensus in the United Nations, was welcoming the decision of the Syrian government to join the Convention on Chemical Weapons and the cooperation the Syrian government provided. So they were perfectly legitimate.

Q: Have you gotten any indication... One of the things you've long demanded is that the US drop this idea of regime change in Syria. Have you gotten any indications whatsoever from the US that they are prepared to leave President Assad in power?

A: It's not for the United States to decide. It's not that we want them to change their mind, and if this happens, everything will fall into place.

Q: Mr. Foreign Minister, if we return to Sochi though, you spent several hours in a room with the Russian president, with John Kerry, the issue obviously would've come up. Did you get any sense, because certainly the rest of the world is aware...

A: I cannot get into nitty-gritty of what we discussed...

Q: Because?

A: For obvious reasons, but we certainly believe that there is only political settlement, which is possible for Syria. And we also believe that the Geneva Communiqu� of three years ago is the basis. Especially since it was endorsed by the Security Council resolution, which was also adopted by consensus. And this resolution and the Geneva philosophy provides for creation of transitional governing organ on the basis of the consent, mutual consent among the Syrians.

The efforts we are now taking - and I understand that the United States is ready to go along with the efforts of the special envoy of the United Nations Staffan de Mistura - these efforts are exactly intended to build ground for all the Syrians, for all parts of the Syrian society to be able to participate in the political process. Some countries are categorically against starting this process while President Assad is still in power. I believe that this would have to be resolved by the Syrian people. And those of outside players who can influence the Syrian groups, they must make a choice: what is a bigger threat, the personality of the Syrian president, or ISIL and the like?

Q: Ok. Islamic State - now that we're discussing it here in Moscow, meanwhile, in Paris, as you know, there is that anti-Islamic State coalition meeting. Why aren't you there?

A: As I said, we would prefer to have a coalition which is firmly based on international law.

Q: Yeah, but this is a coalition that exists of Arab nations and Western countries that are interested in resolving the conflict there. I guess the question is: is this a rhetorical conversation or can Russia provide a partnership with other countries to resolve this issue?

A: We are not against what this coalition is going, of course, because they are trying to weaken a very bad group of terrorists.

Q: So why not join them?

A: But we have been contributing to the fight against this group long before this coalition has been created. We have been providing the necessary weapons to Iraqi government when the Americans were reluctant to do this, because they wanted some, you know, conditions to be fulfilled by the Iraqi authorities. And the conditions were related to the need to rectify the mistakes made twelve years ago, when the American governor general - or whatever he was called - Paul Bremer dismantled all the Sunni structures in Iraq, after Saddam Hussein was toppled under the pretext of WMD, you know the rest. And we have been providing weapons to Syrian government to increase both Syrian and Iraqi ability to fight terrorists on the ground. Everyone understands and publicly admits that just airstrikes are not going to do the trick.

Q: So give us your forecast! If the current strategy for dealing with Islamic State doesn't work, how far do you see Islamic State getting?

A: Very far. They already make a lot of progress in Iraq, in Syria...

READ MORE: ISIS rise provoked by outside interference into Middle East, North Africa - Putin

Q: Do you see Islamic State taking Syria? Is that possible?

A: They just took the Idlib province. And they already have their emissaries seen in Libya and even in northern Afghanistan, which is very close to Central Asia - which is next door to Russia. You know, we want to cut the financing of ISIL, and not only ISIL, but Jabhat an-Nusra and the like. And it was the Russian Federation who proposed the resolution, recently adopted by the Security Council, on the need to cut any oil purchases from the territories controlled by the terrorists. And I believe we need to make another step in the Security Council and to create some mechanism to attribute who is buying this oil. We have to fight not the symptoms, but the root causes. And we proposed last September to have collective effort under the umbrella of the Security Council to analyze, to have a comprehensive analysis of the terrorist threat in this region, and to make sure we address these terrorists in the same way, irrespective of where they appear; not to repeat the situation when many countries publicly routed the Security Council arms embargo on Libya, and they were bragging publicly that they were supplying arms to the rebels who wanted to topple Qaddafi and they were arming these rebels. And then, a few weeks later, a few months later, they were facing the same rebels armed by Europeans in Mali! So we have, you know, if it walks like a duck, it looks like a duck, it's a duck.

Q: Yeah, but if we could return to how bad you think things could get, my question to you was: could Islamic State take Syria? The answer is...

A: If people continue to acquiesce with what is going on, and continue to acquiesce with those who categorically refuse to start the political process...

Q: Then?

A: ...until Bashar Assad disappears, then I'm not very optimistic for the future of this region, because these people put the fate of one person whom they hate on top of the fight against terrorism. We have been through this repeatedly. Saddam Hussein was the one person after whom the United States went - and they ruined the country.

Q: So you say...

A: Qaddafi is the same.

Q: You say that airstrikes aren't working. Then what would be effective, amongst other things, are ground operations. This is a hypothetical question, and I know you don't like hypothetical questions.

A: The answer is yes.

Q: But would you support American troops back on the ground in the Middle East to bring peace to the region? It's a 'yes' or 'no' question. Airstrikes aren't working.

A: Do you believe that the American troops are the only troops who can do the trick?

Q: Is Russia going to provide troops?

A: No, no, look: they've been to Afghanistan, they've been to Iraq, and look where Iraq and Afghanistan are now. I said that it is absolutely clear to me it was a mistake - and still is - not to coordinate the airstrikes with the activities of the Syrian army. That's what we believe must be done. And that's what unfortunately our American colleagues cannot accept from ideological considerations.

Q: I'll take that as a 'no'. Let's move to Iran. The deadlines...

A: No, no, look: if the Syrian government...

Q: ...welcomes US troops in Syria?

A: ...invites the coalition to come, then the volunteers would certainly have to be found.

Q: Let's talk about Iran. The deadline is getting close. Russia is a party to the talks. How certain are you that come the deadline, we're going to have the deal?

A: If each of the participants, including the Six, of course, and Iranians, stick to the political framework agreed a couple of months ago, then we are perfectly within the timeframe announced as a target by the end of June, we can do this. If people would try at the eleventh hour to get a bit more than the political framework provides, then of course it might not be possible to finish by the end of June.

Q: You sound much less certain than you have in the past.

A: No, I said - if everyone sticks to what has been agreed by way of political framework endorsed in Lausanne, then it is perfectly possible to do this by the end of June.

Q: Right. What if there is no deal? What's the danger of no deal?

A: We have always been putting the quality of the deal and the substance of the deal on top of some deadlines. And when the ministers decided that the end of June should be a target date, it was made absolutely clear that this is not an ultimatum for ourselves.

Q: The sticking point appears to be the US and the European Union demanding that there is a verification process before they lift the sanctions that they have imposed on Iran. Do you support a verification process before the sanctions are lifted?

A: Absolutely. We support the verification process which should be....

Q: So you don't agree with the Iranians - that the sanctions should be lifted immediately?

A: Look, there are two different things. One relates to the verification process. Iran says you can inspect, IAEA can inspect any site related to its nuclear program. Some participants from the Western group insist that not only nuclear sites must be open for inspections, but also the military sites. And this is something that they have to discuss between themselves. We are ready to help, but we don't believe that all military sites should be opened for inspection, because this relates to the security of Iran, and the experts know what are the sites which IAEA needs to inspect on a permanent basis.

The second block of problems is how you lift sanctions: all in one go or step by step. We think that by the time the Security Council endorses the overall deal, there must be lifting of all sanctions which have been introduced by the United Nations, not related to the proliferation risks. And the sanctions which relate to the proliferation risks, this bunch of sanctions could be lifted in the second stage, when IAEA provides its first report after two or three months. But this is subject to professional discussion, how this deal is going to work.

Q: Economic sanctions against Russia:the prevailing view is that the European Union will extend them when they meet to decide on that. Do you see any chance of this not happening?

A: We are not thinking about this. We are concentrating on how we must use this circumstance to diversify our economy. And we are basically thinking of working in this regime for a very long period of time, knowing how the American sanctions work - remember Jackson-Vanik? They were introduced for one reason and they were kept for three decades I believe after this reason disappeared. So we..

Q: So define "very long time" for me- how long do you think these sanctions will be around?

A: We are not thinking about this. We are concentrating..

Q: But you are, because you just compared it to Jackson-Vanik.

A: No, no, no, I said we learn from Jackson-Vanik that this could be for decades, so we just concentrate on restructuring our economy and living in the circumstance when we have more partners from Latin America, from Asia than we have from Europe and from the West.

Q: So far all the talks when it comes to Ukraine that the Russian president has participated in have involved the German chancellor and the president of France. Do you think that - what we haven't seen is president Obama at the table - do you think that that would help the peace process in Ukraine?

A: You mean the Americans at the negotiating table?

Q: Correct. Well, we discussed this with John Kerry. I believe John Kerry and his team understand that the process is very fragile. The contact group, the subgroups in the four areas, Normandy format - look, if each and every participant of the contact group and the Normandy format is in favour of changing this we would not object. But I believe the Americans understand that it is so fragile that any newcomer could..

Q: ...derail the process?

A: ...unbalance this process, and we agreed, since the Americans no doubt have huge influence on the authorities in Kiev and on their behaviour, we agreed to keep a bilateral channel on a regular basis between Moscow and Washington to exchange our views and to see how we both can influence the parties on the ground in the direction of full and comprehensive implementation of the Minsk agreements.

Q: Let me ask you about FIFA. The Russian president has said that the accusations that we've heard against FIFA are really aimed at taking down Sepp Blatter as president of FIFA and derailing Russia's hosting of the World Cup in 2018. Is that what you think this is about? Is this about targeting Russia?

A: He said a slightly different thing. He said that he cannot speak on the substance of the accusations.

Q: Yeah.

A: Things might happen. But the timing of the action undertaken in Switzerland - this was...

Q: You mean the things in terms of bribery and corruption?

A: Yes. He said - he couldn't know, you know, about these accusations, and whether they are true or not it's up for the investigation and the court to decide. But what he did say was the timing of this show...

Q: Sure.

A: ... was certainly scheduled the way to derail the electoral process in FIFA, and I don't think that anyone thinks of targeting the World Cup in Russia, no.

Q: You don't think that?

A: No.

Q: A lot of people talk about Qatar. Do you think that that's what it is about? My question is - do you think that this is spilt milk because...

A: Well, I wouldn't...I don't know. I'm thinking about the World Cup in Russia, not in Qatar.

Q: Right.

A: It's not my business what happens in Qatar.

Q: Right. I guess Russia has more of a chance of hosting the World Cup than winning the World Cup? I guess that's a fair thing to say?

A: Yes. I have to agree with you. But unless you try you never know.

Q: Will Russia continue to support the president of FIFA Sepp Blatter even if he is indicted? We understand there's going to be more arrests from the United States.

A: We cannot be in the guessing business, and we supported Sepp Blatter during this election.

Q: Sure.

A: We didn't hide this fact as did the majority of the Executive Committee of FIFA.

Q: And your sports minister is a person of interest in the Swiss probe, is he going to cooperate?

A: I don't think he was interested.

Q: Wait... I.. Swiss authorities, if they asked to speak with Russian sports minister, will he...

A: If they want to speak with him, they have to address...

Q: ..officially, yes

A: officially.

Q: And if they do, will Russia cooperate with that?

A: This is up to the office of the prosecutor general because it is through the prosecutor general that any probe request must be channeled.

Q: Suggestions that Russia may have done something towardly to win the World Cup - what do you make of that? And are we going to learn as a part of this investigation that Russia did give bribes..?

A: I don't take not of any of this stuff because we never saw any reasonable proof or anything resembling the truth.

Q: Everybody right now is talking about Greece in Western Europe.

A: Why?

Q: Is it an issue for Russia, what's happening in Greece right now?

A: Well, Greeks are a very long-standing spiritual, cultural, historical friend of Russia. We got our religion, the Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire and a thousand years later, by the way, we recognized the modern Greek state, so we have a very long common history, and of course we wish the Greek people all the best, and...

Q: And your advice to the Greek people today would be to stay in the European Union or not?

A: You're contaminated by the American philosophy. You always want to tell people what to do.

Q: No, no, no. You don't see it as Russia's role?

A: What might...

Q: Do you think that Greece would be better served exiting the EU?

A: What might be your advice to the Ukrainian people - to get to the European Union and to NATO or to stay out?

Q: Well, there's a lot less talk about that presumably..

A: No, no, no.

Q: There's a lot less talk about Ukraine joining the European Union and joining NATO - presumably - you see that is one of your successes...

A: No, no, no. I mean this American way of telling people what they have to do - that's what I had in mind.

Q: Russia has no advice to Greece?

A: It's up to the Greeks to decide, and I wish them all the best in their negotiations with the IMF and the European Central Bank and of course with Germany and France.

Q: Mr. Foreign Minister, thank you very much for your time.

A: Thank you.

Q: It's been a pleasure, as usual.
 

 #23
Kyiv Post
June 30, 2015
Kurakhove, a Ukrainian-controlled city 10 kilometers from the war front, is on edge with residents divided
By Stefan Huijboom

KURAKHOVE, Ukraine - Only 10 miles west of the war front, the Ukrainian army controls the small city of Kurakhove and patrols the streets to look for suspicious people

"All cars coming from the east have crossed from the terrorist-held territory to our land. They could be traitors and gather information on our side," explained a 21-year old Ukrainian soldier, Dima, as he drank coffee outside a small kiosk. He didn't want to be identified because he is not authorized to talk to the press.

His approach to his duties? "Nobody can be trusted," he said. "Nothing is what it seems."

Suddenly, Dima chased after two young men, both wearing sunglasses and baseball caps.

"Documents please!" he shouted.

They handed over their Ukrainian passports and took off their sunglasses and caps. They turned out to be regular teenagers from the city just hanging out on the streets because they had nothing else to do.

"Go back to your parents," Dima told them, but they refused.

"It's hot and we just want to walk outside," 17-year-old Zakhar Antonova said.

"Remember that it's dangerous on the streets," Dima warned as they walked away.

The city had a pre-war population of 20,000 people but many fled at the Ukrainian army took up positions to attack the Russian-separatist locations in the occupied east.

Just five kilometers to the east lies Maryinka, where on June 3 a Russian-separatist led offensive inflicted heavy damage against the Ukrainian army.

A large line of cars waits to gas up and go east into the Kremlin-occupied territory, but Ukrainian checkpoints are closed becaue of the heightened danger of fighting.

"I've been traveling for more than five days. I needed to pick up a package in Dnipropetrovsk," said 28-year-old Vitaliy Piatkovskiy.

He lives with his girlfriend in Donetsk, although he occasionally leaves Russian-held Donetsk for Ukraine.

"I don't say I fully support (the separatists), but if I had to choose between living in Donetsk or Kyiv, it would definitely be Donetsk," he said. "If I say the Ukrainians started the war, they will treat me as a terrorist. If I say our people or Russia started it, I will be treated as a fascist in" the Russian-controlled territories.

City officials in Kurakhove have ordered the statue of Vladimir Lenin removed.

Dima, the soldier on patrol, has reason to be fear the presence of traitors and those who favor the Russian-separatist forces.

A man named Ivan, too afraid of Ukrainian army retribution to be quoted by name, said he hopes that the Kremlin liberates the city. He only defended his position by saying that "if I say why you will probably write in your newspaper that I'm a terrorist!"

Many in Kurakhove are divided.

A young woman named Angelina, also too afraid to give her last name, used to take the bus every week to deliver food to the Russian-separatist checkpoint. Now, the road is closed amid fighting, but she is determined to continue supporting the Kremlin fighters.

"I support because they fight against Europe. I never asked to become part of Europe. Nobody in this country did, except some idiots in Kyiv!" Angelina said. "Expressing your support to what some see as the enemy is in this country an act of terrorism. But I stand against it. The only terrorism I see are those Ukrainian soldiers from the west wanting to invade our cities."
 
#24
BBC
Ukraine: Odessa Region media highlights 20-26 Jun 15 (excerpt)

Media

Well-known Odessa-based journalist Olena Hlishchinskaya, detained last April on suspicion of separatism and anti-government activities, has written an open letter to the OSCE, Informatsionnyy Tsentr website reported. The journalist complained about methods used by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and about arbitrary and biased interpretations of facts by investigative officers and justice bodies. Hlishchinskaya claims that she was charged with separatism because she had organised two round-table conferences under the socio-cultural topic Multi-Faced Bessarabia and took part in a rally of workers of the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyy commercial port protesting job cuts. "The pre-trial investigation bodies of the SBU openly advised me to plead guilty of anti-government activities and promised a lenient trial in exchange. They also openly said that they needed a guilty verdict in such types of cases," the journalist wrote, noting that hundreds of people are held in Ukrainian prisons under similar fabricated charges. (Informatsionnyy Tsentr website, info-center.od.ua, 0044 gmt 24 Jun 15)

A dozen of activists rallied in front of the Odessa city's remand centre, demanding freedom for the editor-in-chief of the website naspravdi.info, Artem Busyla, who was arrested for his opposition rhetoric, Informatsionnyy Tsentr reported. Activists of the pro-Ukrainian organisation Oberih arrived on the scene of the protest to disperse the protesters. The Oberih activists allegedly said that they had been paid 15,000 dollars for taking part in the event. (Informatsionnyy Tsentr website, info-center.od.ua, 1706 gmt 26 Jun 15)
 
 
 
#25
European Council on Foreign Relations
http://www.ecfr.eu
June 26, 2015
Saakashvili in Odessa - no half-measures this time
By Tornike Sharashenidze
Tornike Sharashenidze is a professor and head of MA programme in International Affairs at the Georgian Institute for Public Affairs (GIPA) where he lectures on the history of diplomacy

In August 2008, the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said: "The US should make a choice now - either have a partnership with Russia or with the political corpse of Saakashvili."

Lavrov was not the only one to believe that former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili was finished after the August war over South Ossetia. He was not thought likely to survive defeat as most probably he would be toppled by the Georgian opposition sooner rather than later. This was one of the reasons why the Russian troops did not move on Tbilisi - the Georgians were supposed to finish him off themselves.

In 2012, Saakashvili was jeered at by his opponents once again. This time, after his party suffered a humiliating defeat in the parliamentary elections, he was surely politically dead. But it took the corpse just two years to re-emerge - this time in Ukraine as newly-appointed governor of Odessa region - and to stun both his friends and enemies.

So what should we expect from Saakashvili in Odessa?

Saakashvili is someone who would rather be number one in Odessa than number two in Ukraine. He is much more comfortable in Odessa than he was Kyiv. He is now the boss of a wealthy and strategically important region. If he succeeds in reforming Odessa, this might become an example for the whole of Ukraine. But can he do it? He has a good chance of success, at least in the early stages. This is because he will be even more resolute in Odessa than he was in Georgia.

He has learned his Georgian lessons, or rather learned them in his own way.

In Georgia, he started well, but later stumbled. His reforms had costs - some people lost their job, some people were sent to jail, some people just did not like his drive for modernisation, but the reformer did not seem to realise this. As a result, in November 2007 tens of thousands of Georgians rallied against Saakashvili. They were dispersed by force and the TV station which backed them was raided. Georgia's Western friends were shocked and Saakashvili had to resign. He went on to win the presidential elections again, but this time found life more difficult. After that he had to balance being a democrat and being a reformer. Without being (or at least appearing to be) a democrat, he risked losing Western support and had, therefore, to put up with his critics, the political opposition and the attacks of newspapers. Moreover, he had to tolerate Bidzina Ivanishvili when the latter openly defied him in 2011 (and finally beat him in 2012).

Saakashvili believes that he was not able to finish what he started in Georgia. He may think that this was his fault too, because he was too lenient and allowed his opponents to interfere and criticise him. Many of his supporters still cannot understand why he did not arrest some openly pro-Russian politicians. Here too is evidence of Saakashvili's difficult balancing act. Perhaps fearing to be called a dictator, he avoided arrests, but his opponents labelled him one all the same. While he certainly harassed the opposition, he never destroyed them.

This is why in Odessa he will be even more resolute. This time there will be no balancing and no half-measures. This time he'll do it his way and try to do it as quickly as possible. He is already at war with criminal authorities and corrupt officials and defeating oligarchs will be one of his top priorities (an unforgettable lesson of Georgian politics). In Georgia, he succeeded as a reformer and failed as a democrat. In Odessa he has only to succeed as a reformer. Ukrainians need modernization. They are fed up with corruption and bad governance and so democracy can wait.   

This is why he may succeed in the early stages. He has done it once before in Georgia. He knows Ukraine well having studied there as a student and is better than most Western advisors. But there is risk too - with a free hand in Odessa, his determination to change things rapidly and radically may make him even more ruthless than he was in Georgia. But unfortunately Ukraine, beset by conflict and in dire need of reforms, does not have the luxury of avoiding risks.

The uneasy question is: what comes next? Even if Saakashvili succeeds in Odessa thus setting an example for the whole country, it is unclear what will happen to him or to Ukraine. Will he, after all, become an exemplary democrat? Saakashvili is, in many ways, an archetypal moderniser: a product of democratic transition and not of democracy.

But for now, the real issue is getting things moving in Ukraine. Odessites and Ukrainians should remember that Saakashvili is good at getting things moving. But when this has been done, then individuals and leaders should gradually give way to strong state institutions. Ukrainians would do well to bear this in mind.
 
 
#26
O'Dwyer's
www.odwyerpr.com
June 28, 2015
APCO Gives PR Support to Embattled Ukraine
By Kevin McCauley
 
APCO Worldwide is providing Washington media support for the prime and finance ministers of embattled Ukraine. Ukrainian officials meet in DC tomorrow with Internatonal Monetary Fund execs and bondholder committee members.

Prime Minister Anseniy Yatsenyuk earlier this month huddled with American lawmakers to press for more military and financial aid to backstop its defense against Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Senator John McCain is spearheading the effort to send weapons to Ukraine in defiance of President Obama's position of giving only non-lethal assistance to the Ukrainians.

APCO is still discussing its terms of engagement with Ukraine's PM, but the firm will receive a fixed fee of $35K through next month.

For Ukraine's Ministry of Finance, APCO will receive fees capped at $75K through December.

It advocates on Finance Minister's Natalie Jaresko effort to promote the restructuring of Ukraine's debt.

APCO targets the media, companies and other organizations in that PR campaign.

Zeff Zelkowitz and Graham Ackerman work the Ukraine MOF business.
 
 #27
www.ei-ie.org
June 30, 2015
Ukraine: union protests reach a tipping point

Thousands of education workers plan to take to the streets in protest in the wake of unresolved labour violations by the Ukrainian government and employers following months of increasing tensions across multiple sectors.

In support of demands, members of the Trade Union of Education and Science Workers of Ukraine joined Ukrainian trade unions in ongoing demonstrations. Education workers are calling for an increase in effective social dialogue between employers and workers. They are also, among other things, demanding an increase in minimum wage and indexation of pensions.  

The Ukrainian government and employers have consistently avoided trade union proposals concerning the use of peaceful social dialogue principles to identify problems at workplaces and find effective solutions. Ukrainian trade unions oppose the governmental policy of "tightening belts," which has significantly affected the livelihood of the everyday worker in the Ukraine. The policy implemented wage freezes, reduced social guarantees, increased the prices of vital goods on housing and communal services, and not allowed any real social or economic reform to occur.

National Labour Dispute

The Trade Unions' Joint Representative Body (TU JRB) entered into a national labour dispute with the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Employers' Joint Representative Body in April 2015. This was closely followed by a rally on 15 June, in which the TU JRB presented a Labour Ultimatum to the government on behalf of eight million trade union members. The Labour Ultimatum listed concrete demands and legislative proposals.

A Conciliation Commission was established due to the ongoing labour disputes. The Conciliation Commission met on 16 and 24 June, and the next meeting is scheduled for 2 July 2015. The Trade Union of Education and Science Workers of Ukraine is represented in the Conciliation Commission by Vice President Serhiy Romaniuk.
 
 
#28
Kyiv Post
June 30, 2015
Shevchenko: Yatsenyuk should not be Ukraine's prime minister
by Brian Bonner

Whether he survives as Ukraine's minister of ecology and natural resources or not, Igor Shevchenko wants the world to know his opinion about who is blocking major reforms in Ukraine today: Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

"The prime minister is the biggest brake and obstacle to reforms in this country," Shevchenko told the Kyiv Post on June 28 during an interview in his office in Kyiv.

Shevchenko this month refused Yatsenyuk's demand that he resign - what he called the prime minister's fifth attempt to fire him during his six months in office. He says it is Yatsenyuk who should resign.

"Ukraine deserves a better prime minister than the guy who is doing all these manipulations," Shevchenko said. "He's not a reformer. He's a pseudo-reformer. He's playing. He's doing nothing. He blocks appointments of ministers of the presidential team. He is not guided by the public interest and the country's interest, but by his own interests and the interests of his business partners and political allies."

Several attempts to reach Yatsenyuk over the last two days were unsuccessful, including through emails, text messages and phone calls to his press secretary, Olga Lappo. The prime minister's adviser, Danylo Lubkivsky, responded to a text message by referring questions to Lappo.

One of the latest blowouts between Yatsenyuk and Shevchenko took place after Shevchenko publicly protested the appointments of four members of a selection committee to the National Agency for Prevention of Corruption, a graft-fighting institution created to verify the income and asset disclosures of public officials.

"This was the trigger for the prime minister to start this political persecution of me," Shevchenko said.

Four members chosen by the Cabinet of Ministers, over Shevchenko's "active abstention," appeared to have been handpicked by the prime minister or people working for him, not by reputable civic organizations active in fighting corruption, as required by the law, critics say.

Shevchenko said it appears that Yatsenyuk simply wants to control the agency and who it investigates, thereby subverting the anti-corruption fight

He said that Yatsenyuk's deputy minister of the Cabinet of Ministers, a 600-employee apparatus under the control of the prime minister, didn't even want to give him the biographical information about the four candidates.

This dispute, however, was just the latest one between Yatsenyuk and Shevchenko.

"Yatsenyuk demanded me to write a letter of resignation four times during meetings of the Cabinet," Shevchenko said. "I refused."

One of the requests came during a heated argument over what to tell the public this spring in reporting about the government's first 100 days in office.

"I said, 'let's admit to each other there is no structural reform whatsoever," Shevchenko said. "Yatsenyuk accused me of humiliating the Cabinet of Ministers structure. He told me to...sign a resignation letter. My answer was: 'I am expecting a resignation letter from you.'"

Shevchenko said Yatsenyuk runs the government, including the Cabinet of Ministers, in a closed and controlling manner. And, he said, Yatsenyuk is prone to unprofessional conduct and insults people around him. Shevchenko said Yatsenyuk once told Energy Minister Vladimir Demchyshyn to "kiss my ass" at a meeting.

"He wants to control everything and wants his people in all the positions," Shevchenko said of Yatsenyuk. "He wants to put his people as deputy ministers, chairmen of agencies, deputy chair of agencies. He illegally uses his authority to push us and force us to take 'his guys.' I refused all the requests from their team and that's also one of the reasons for demanding my resignation."

Since incurring Yatsenyuk's wrath, Shevchenko said, the prime minister's allies have been trying "to dig" dirt on him.

They came up with a flight that Shevchenko took on a private jet with member of parliament Oleksandr Onyshchenko from Berlin to Kyiv. They also accused Shevchenko of improperly using his diplomatic passport then. And, they said, he tried to get a friend of Onyshchenko appointed to the State Geological Service, which issues valuable licenses for oil and gas exploration.

Shevchenko acknowledges taking the flight and wrongly using his diplomatic passport. He said that accusations over manipulating the State Geological Service, which he oversees as minister, are ironic considering Yatsenyuk's attempts to install his own loyalist in the agency's leadership.

The candidate close to Onyshchenko was someone with experience in the oil and gas sector and Shevchenko's third candidate to the appointed post in the ministry, he said.

All were refused by Yatsenyuk, he said, with little explanation.

In January, Shevchenko said, the prime minister forced on him the appointment of Mykola Boyarkin as the acting head of the service, officially the State Service of Geology and Mineral Resources. A court cancelled the appointment as illegal, but an appeal is pending and Boyarkin remains on the job. "This guy is doing what he is being told by the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers," Shevchenko said. "I have no control whatsoever of the geological service."

He notes that the accusations against him pale in comparison to the large cases of alleged corruption that the government is ignoring.

He said Yatsenyuk and the law enforcement agencies that he controls are going after him for petty reasons "instead of working on big corruption cases" involving Yatsenyuk allies lawmaker Mykola Martynenko, former deputy interior minister Serhiy Chebotar and member of parliament Serhiy Pashynsky.

The key to understanding the dispute, Shevchenko said, is money.

The State Geological Service plays a key role in issuing licenses and permits to companies for exploration and production of oil and gas.

Shevchenko said that he believes Yatsenyuk wants to control the post for the benefit of his close ally, Martynenko, a member of Parliament with the People's Front faction led by the prime minister.

Shevchenko also said that billionaire Igor Kolomoisky also has an interest in controlling the post. Shevchenko said another reason Yatsenyuk is attacking him is that he moved to cancel licenses of Ukrnafta, the state-run oil company that was controlled by Kolomoisky. The oligarch, seen as backing Yatsenyuk, still hasn't paid the state Hr 5 billion owed as royalty payments for oil and gas, Shevchenko said.

There's obviously lots of money to be made in holding licenses and permits issued by the ministry.

"The Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources used to be one of the most corrupt ministries. We broke all these shady schemes in the ministry," Shevchenko said. "We returned back to the state 22 fields of gas production fields from the Golden Derrick company."

Golden Derrick was allegedly controlled by Edward Stavytsky, a former minister of ecology and later energy under President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled power on Feb. 22, 2014.

Stavytsky is wanted on charges of embezzlement of public money and faces economic and travel sanctions from the European Union. Part of the scheme, Shevchenko said, involved improperly obtaining licenses from the Ministry of Ecology. "We reclaimed them for the state through a ruling of the court," he said.

Another Yanukovych-era minister of ecology, Mykola Zlochevsky, is also suspected of massive financial corruption and has presumably fled abroad, despite denying the accusations. About the ministry he inherited from the Yanukovych era, Shevchenko said: "They took bribes for everything. We stopped this. We just fired all these crooks. The first day in the ministry, I fired the deputy minister. I fired all the heads of the agencies, like the geological services agency, the water management services; the ecological inspection service," Shevchenko said.

Shevchenko alleges that Yatsenyuk wants to control the ministry to issue licenses to benefit his allies.

The minister said his actions to revoke the Yanukovych-era licenses and put them up for transparent auctions has angered people who received the licenses improperly or want to receive them. "Those people are close to the prime minister and this may be another reason to demand my resignation," Shevchenko said.

He said he's made progress in other areas, acknowledged by such reform watchdogs as Vox Ukraine.

"I opened all geological data, databases of licenses of gas and oil exploration. Now we are opening the budget of the ministry so people can see how we spend the taxpayer's budget. We're putting administrative services online, launching this service as well."

Shevchenko said that he also eliminated needless regulations that were sources of bribes, such as cancelling inspections of ballast waters from ships at ports.

Unlike many other ministries, which are acknowledged to be overstaffed and underpaid, Shevchenko said that his ministry has just 260 underpaid employees with vast duties -- overseeing natural resources, national parks and permits to manage hazardous waste, "where the corruption was very intense."

Another rap on Shevchenko, a wealthy lawyer who graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School, is that he had no ecological experience.

He said that's not as important as other qualities. "You should be a good manager, at this point, you need to be a crisis manager," Shevchenko said.

Shevchenko said that he will clear his name and fight for his job.

But he acknowledges that his fate depends on the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko. He is a supporter of the president. "I will honor the decision of the parliament," Shevchenko said. "It will be the decision of the president."

He said that the time has come to blow the whistle on Yatsenyuk's governing style, which includes trying to railroad Cabinet decisions without giving other ministers needed information in advance. "Sometimes we are voting like blind cats," he said.

So he finally revolted.

"Now I am paying the price," he said.
 
 #29
http://milakovsky.livejournal.com
July 1, 2015
Is it worth risking the lives of the most vulnerable to teach a "lesson-by-blockade"?
By Brian Milakovsky
Brian Milakovsky, a volunteer with refugee aid organizations in Kiev, Kharkiv and the Donbas. Brian Milakovsky first traveled to Ukraine in 2009 with the Fulbright program, and for the past five years has worked in Russia as a forest ecologist. This year he returned to eastern Ukraine for three months to volunteer with refugee aid organizations and learn more about the humanitarian crisis there. He blogs about this experience at http://milakovsky.livejournal.com/ and is author of "Time for a Lousy Peace in Ukraine" published on the National Interest.

I'm continuing a series of translations of eastern Ukrainian writers and activists about the huge moral questions raised by the Donbas blockade.

Anna Khripunkova is a fiercely pro-unity Ukrainian journalist from Donetsk. In the piece below it is clear she sees no future in the "Peoples Republics" and loathes the separatist cause. But she writes searingly of how Ukraine's efforts to isolate and starve the separatists are causing a humanitarian crisis for its citizens remaining on that side of the line.

As she points out, terrorists do not go through the roadblocks. But food and medicine, and people fleeing the brutal fighting, do go through them. It is they who have no choice. The blockade has made crossing the front line an arduous, sometimes impossible task, probably as a deliberate measure to force people to make a choice - which side will I live on?

Here is the original.[http://donpress.com/article/14-km-do-svobody] And my translation:

14 kilometers to freedom
Anna Khripunkova, DonPress

Blockade. We heard that word long before June, but namely the last month made it has become one of the most popular whenever the subject turns to the occupied territories.

After the attack by the separatists on Mariinky on June 3, which was the turning point for contact with those territories temporarily not under Ukrainian control, it became extremely difficult to leave the towns and cities of the ATO zone. And that difficulty is felt most acutely by law-abiding citizens. They protest, but the blockade remains impenetrable. And more and more often we hear in Ukraine that it is simply unavoidable.

You can't go home

It all began on June 16. That's the day all hope disappeared of more or less free passage from the ATO [anti-terror operation] zone and back. The new laws about crossing the line of contact came in to effect, which in practice blocked that path entirely for many Donchane [residents of Donetsk].

You're not in the Ukrainian Security Agency database for crossing the line of contact from the ATO zone, which is to say, you don't have a travel permit? You can't go home.

You have a travel permit, but not the strength to use it? For instance, in order to sit all day in a bus and then go through the checkpoints on foot? You can't go home.

You have a travel permit and strength, but you are afraid of the risk, since anything can happen at the checkpoints, and you are traveling with the elderly or with children? You can't go home.

It's just the same if you remain in Donetsk but want to get over to the other side. The paths are blocked. Even a few months ago there were several "sectors" and a few directions you could travel through. You could even get a driver to take you without a travel permit, and everyone had the chance to get out. Today just one route remains, the most distant - through Artemivsk. Sometimes the road through Volnovakha is also open. But in both places you have to cover a significant distance between the checkpoints. In both places they require travel permits. You didn't get one in time? You can't... well, you get it.

"Blockade" isn't some exaggerated phrase for effect. It's reality. And it affects everyone - those who live in Donetsk and those who'd like to get there. More than that, it affects not only people but the products essential for their survival. After the harsh new rules came into effect,  food and medicine are crossing less and less often into the ATO zone. Since June 16 it has often been able to transport them only covertly. With bitter irony volunteers write on social media about how they smuggled products critical for the survival of the elderly or children in by hiding them in a bag of tomatoes jammed artfully into one corner of the trunk. That's one way to do it.

Right now only humanitarian convoys can get through, although they've had to change their tactics considerably. For instance, the Akhmetov Fund, which continues distributed "gumanitarka" (humanitarian aid) in Donetsk, slashed the number of trucks in its convoy by half, but compensated by making more trips. They try to piggyback on other humanitarian convoys, going through the inspection together. Several foreign organizations are also keeping up their efforts, sending a variety of aid into the ATO zone, but of course this help is little compared to the scale of need. And the saddest point of all is that many who need that help the most remain "overboard." In first order that means people who have relatives on unoccupied [government-controlled] territories and who earlier received help from them. Many people sent their parents in the ATO zone money, food and medicine. Now that route is closed. In social media we are seeing more and more posts asking for help in getting medical supplies for parents suffering from cancer into Donetsk, or providing assistance for bed-ridden grandmothers there. Sometimes such posts even attract people who'd like to help, but if the shipment of medicine is large the chances of getting it through are very low. Parents and grandparents, who for whatever reason have stayed on in Donetsk are left to fend for themselves.

Do svidaniye, Donetsk?

Even for those who have a travel permit, simply entering or leaving is already a challenge. The trip is an adventure in itself, in the worst sense of the word. How do people get out of Donetsk?

One of the popular transport companies, "Sherrif-Tour", has its own way of doing things. It transports willing travelers by bus to the roadbloack at Volnovakha, where they unload and set off... 14 kilometers to the next blockpost. There those who made the grueling trek, or got picked up by a passing car, are loaded into a different bus, which carries them on to Kyiv. The return route operates on the same principle.

Other transport companies offer trips to Kyiv... through Russia. "No travel permits! Several trips a week!" they tell unsuspecting travelers. To get to the capital, which in peaceful times took 7-8 hours from Donetsk, now requires around 30. "DreamTrans" for instance, buses people through Belgorod. A different company, "LuxAvtoKom" figured out a route through Rostov.

These are good methods, many people gladly use them but not everyone can afford such travel. Today the trip Donetsk-Kyiv costs from 800 hryvnia if you want to economize and don't mind walking the distance between the checkpoints. If you chose a more comfortable option you'll need 1000. With no changes of vehicle it will cost you 1500 hryvnia, a cost inaccessible for the majority of Donetsk families, especially if several people travel at once.

Considering that tightening of the rules about crossing the line of contact always comes on unexpectedly, residents of the ATO zone must plan for the very real chance they will suddenly lose their last chance to cross over to Ukraine or return home. In truth, Donchane already need to decide for themselves where they will live from now on and organize their lives accordingly, in order to minimize the number of future trips. But not everyone can do that.

How can you live?

When the soldiers who man the Ukrainian roadblocks are asked how many terrorists they have caught thanks to the stricter travel permit system, they burst out laughing. That's a good joke. Everyone understands that those who wish to organize terrorist acts on Ukrainian territory will take entirely different routes to get there. The routes without checkpoints. And they know how to travel them in safety.  Unlike normal people they don't have to anxiously check the website of the transport companies to see whether the minivan that should pick them up has made it to the checkpoint. And if they really want to they can get into Ukraine faster than even those law-abiding citizens who chose the most expensive and expedited option.

But when it comes to non-terrorists, things are much more difficult. They suffer greatly from the blockade, and the most vulnerable suffer most of all. But in Ukraine more and more often we hear that the blockade is the only way forward. The subtext of this idea is pretty clear: some Ukrainians think that residents of the ATO zone (especially those who still haven't weaned themselves off of Russian propaganda and still believe in the non-existent future of non-existent republics) have to learn that living in made-up states is impossible. And the only way to do that is to blockade them, so that the last chances for normal existence are lost. When it was possible to come and go with relative ease, and move food and humanitarian shipments, even the conditions of war didn't seem that awful. Now they want to force Donchane to look reality in the face. The reality of the "republics," where there can be no conditions for normal life.

The undeserving

It might seem that his gambit is worth it. The sooner Donchane understand the hopelessness of the "DNR", the sooner "everything will become Ukraine again." But is forcing that realization on thousands worth the death of the hundreds who won't survive illness or hunger? Is it worth allowing the death of dozens of the elderly and children who won't receive the help they need? Aren't those costs too high?

Today the "DNR" is located 14 kilometers from freedom, if you count the nearest checkpoint. They are both real, physical kilometers, that some people are willing to cover on foot to get back to normal life, and symbolic ones. Everyone that remains there has their own 14 mental kilometers, which they must cross by themselves. You can help them find their way by various means, you can nudge them along or even try to make conditions such that they have no choice. But to consciously condemn people to hunger and death... Yes, sometimes it seems like the "DNR" is worse than hunger. But even those who still believe in it today deserve to be set free. Living in this country is a chance that every one of us should have.

Undoubtedly some people don't think they need that chance. And they will stay there, believing that everything is as it should be.

And undoubtedly there are those who deserve punishment, but that clearly should not be done with a blockade. Because by punishing them in this way, we can also accidentally strike at those who don't deserve it. And despite the certainty of many that "all the normal people have already gotten out" there are still plenty such "underserving" people in Donetsk.
 
 #30
http://milakovsky.livejournal.com
July 1, 2015
Why de-Communization makes me nervous
By Brian Milakovsky
Brian Milakovsky, a volunteer with refugee aid organizations in Kiev, Kharkiv and the Donbas. Brian Milakovsky first traveled to Ukraine in 2009 with the Fulbright program, and for the past five years has worked in Russia as a forest ecologist. This year he returned to eastern Ukraine for three months to volunteer with refugee aid organizations and learn more about the humanitarian crisis there. He blogs about this experience at http://milakovsky.livejournal.com/ and is author of "Time for a Lousy Peace in Ukraine" published on the National Interest.

Lately it occurred to me why I am instinctively uncomfortable with de-Communization as it is being carried out today in Ukraine, despite being fully aware of the historic crimes of the Soviet state. Well, I already thought it was a terrible idea tactically; igniting a culture war at the moment when the country needs to do everything to assure Soviet nostalgics in the east that they have a place in post-Maidan Ukraine is just terrible policy. But even in more peaceful times I think that Ukraine (and Russia, for that matter) has more to gain from the ideological tension between western liberalism and the Soviet experience than from the victory of one and the purge of the other.

While not rejecting capitalism, Russia seems in a mood to do away with many of its liberal trappings in pursuit of some lost national idea. To no good end, I fear. And Ukraine is well on its way to officially stigmatizing everything about the Soviet experience, even though millions of its citizens sincerely believe that 1991 was the last time any government in Ukraine was oriented on and capable of providing them with a decent living.

That last bit requires some explanation. Probably one reason that I have such conflicting feelings about the Soviet Union (i.e. not exclusively negative) is that my job as a forester takes me not only to rural regions of Russia and Ukraine, but to taiga regions (despite its general shortage of forests Ukraine does have places you could put in this category, such as the less touristy corners of the Carpathians or the swampy Polissie along the Belarus border). Of all places it is taiga towns that were most dependent on central planning for survival; in many cases they were established in order to serve some sort of local enterprise, be it sawmill, fur workshop, pine nut or resin collection center or miniscule collective farm. Pure market forces likely never would have spread people so deep into such remote places, let alone guarantee them steady work, decent infrastructure, education, subsidized transportation and even culture. And so even the young, educated and ambitious often sought the chance to be sent to work in such a place, where you could rise in your profession faster, get a decent salary with a bonus for living in "the north" and even have your own house.

Perhaps this was all a socialist mirage, but it is one that millions of people remained in when all of that support and subsidy collapsed. And today taiga towns are some of the most depressed, run-down, thrown-overboard parts of Russia and Ukraine. Their signature feature is the ruins of those very same enterprises around which they were built, constantly imposing the memory of relative prosperity on everyone who lives there.

I think of one remote village deep in the taiga of Khabarovsky Krai in the Russian Far East, where the remaining houses are dwarfed by a vast, crumbling sawmill complex, entirely abandoned save for one boarded-up corner where Chinese guest workers saw up stolen logs. The woods on the outskirts of town are littered with old wrecked Zaporozhets and Zhiguli cars from the 70s, when foresters or sawmill foremen could obtain a private car much easier than their urban compatriots. Right on the entrance to the village is the last standing wall of a ruined worker's dormitory, in which a huge Lenin silhouette of  dark bricks gazes on its residents. The symbolism just about clubs you. I have been in maybe a hundred such towns in various remote corners of these two countries, and there are uncounted thousands spread across the 9 time zones of the former Soviet Union.

Why should the residents of such places recall the entire Soviet experience as some terrible burden to be finally liberated from? When 24 years of independence have offered many of them little more than a subsistence lifestyle? That's not natural to expect of them. I'm not afraid of liberalism's fate if it is forced to engage critically with the Soviet model; history has shown that it more than holds its own. But until it can offer some kind of decent life to the residents of taiga towns (and most of rural Ukraine and Russia for that matter, and much urban as well), then I am turned off by liberals' almost Marxist certainty that everything about the Soviet experience belongs in the historical dustbin. And by their certainty that modern Ukraine has absolutely nothing to learn from or, God forbid, even emulate from its own Soviet past.

(*Disclaimer.* Again, I am not for ignoring the horrific, cruel or dysfunctional parts of the Soviet experience. Holodomor alone gives Ukraine ample reason not to pine for a mythical lost Communist utopia. But the late Soviet Union, the one that most adult Ukrainians and Russians actually experienced, was a different place than that of the terror-filled '30s, just as the United States in the '80s not that of Jim Crow and mass lynching. Crude de-Communization asks them to denounce virtually every part of that historical experience and to me that's artificial).


 
 #31
www.rt.com
June 30, 2015
From 9,000 to 200,000: Poroshenko's displays numeracy problem in counting 'Russian invaders'

The Ukrainian president has named an entirely new, wildly different figure for the number of Russian troops allegedly in Ukraine: over 20 times higher than he claimed earlier this month.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko claimed there is a whopping 200,000 Russian troops in Ukraine. "Today, on Putin's order, there are 200,000 men and an arsenal of armored vehicles, sophisticated missile systems and anti-air arms amassed in our territory," Corriere della Sera quotes Poroshenko, who went on to say: "One of these shot down the Malaysian civilian plane last year."

It is unclear where Poroshenko got the enormous figure, which constitutes about a quarter of the entirety of Russia's troops, and is almost the size of the entire Ukrainian army. But if Poroshenko's claims are true, the forces would have to possess incredible stealth capabilities, as no surveillance or intelligence service has detected the numerous troops crossing the border. Neither have the OSCE observers stationed at the border.

The figure is also wildly different from the number Poroshenko himself gave less than a month ago. Speaking to Ukraine's parliament on June 4, he claimed there were some 9,000 Russian troops in Ukraine, and that the number of Russian forces near the border had increased by 50 percent over the preceding year. The newest number would mean a more than 22-fold increase.

Just four days after Poroshenko's June 4 statement, Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak named his own figure, which brought further confusion to attempts to count the alleged "Russian aggressors." He claimed there were as many as 42,500 men and an impressive 558 tanks.

Just a week before Corriere della Sera published the interview with Poroshenko, another military official named another completely different number. A representative of the Ukrainian forces fighting against the self-proclaimed republics in the East told the media that there were at least 54,000 Russian troops in the disputed zone.

Since the start of the conflict between the Ukrainian military and anti-government forces in its rebellious eastern regions, Kiev has been accusing Moscow of getting involved. It claims Russia is supplying troops, weapons and armor to the fighters of the self-proclaimed republics.

These claims have been echoed by Washington and NATO officials, but vehemently denied by Moscow, which points out the West and Kiev's inability to provide any substantial proof to back their allegations. Russia's Foreign Minister has admitted that there are Russians fighting in eastern Ukraine, but said they were individuals acting on their own volition, without order or consent from the army or authorities.
 
 #32
Interfax
No military solution to Ukraine conflict - Russian Defence Ministry

St Petersburg, 30 June: The Russian Defence Ministry sees no alternative to a peaceful settlement of the crisis in Donbass.

"We are convinced that the conflict in Ukraine has no military solution. There is no alternative to a peaceful settlement of the crisis on the basis of full compliance with the Minsk accords," Russian Deputy Defence Minister Anatoliy Antonov told journalists in St Petersburg on Tuesday [30 June] at the end of a meeting of defence ministers of the SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organization] member states.

He noted that the events in Maydan [Independence Square] in Kiev had "led to catastrophic consequences".

"The socio-economic situation in Ukraine now is much worse than 18 months ago. There is a civil war on. The authorities try to pacify by force Donbass and Luhansk, which expressed no confidence in Kiev and disagreement with the policy it pursues," Antonov said.
 
 #33
The Huffington Post
July 29, 2015
Ukraine: World War II Fiasco Leads to Public Relations Disaster and Thorny Questions for Kiev and Foreign Diaspora
By Nikolas Kozloff
Nikolas Kozloff is a New York-based writer who conducted a research trip to Ukraine last year.

For Kiev, winning the public relations war against Vladimir Putin would seem to be a no-brainer. For a year now, the Kremlin has conducted a thinly-disguised war of aggression in eastern Ukraine resulting in the deaths of thousands. Yet Kiev seems intent on squandering any international public support it might have had amidst a bizarre crackdown on free speech and censorship of controversial historical debates. Through its crackdown, Ukraine has actually played into Putin's propaganda war and facilitated Russia's PR efforts.

At issue is Ukraine's contentious World War II past, some of which isn't particularly flattering. With the support of Nazi Germany, militias affiliated with the extremist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) allegedly committed a pogrom in the western city of Lviv. Writing in the London Independent, journalist Patrick Cockburn notes that while "Ukrainian politicians and historians have denied complicity... surviving Jewish victims, other witnesses and contemporary photographs prove that Ukrainian militiamen and mobs of supporters carried out the pogrom, though the Germans oversaw it and committed many of the murders."

One scholar, John Paul Himka, has concluded that the pogrom was mostly conducted by the OUN under German supervision. According to Himka, the OUN sought to demonstrate to the Nazis "that it shared their anti-Jewish perspectives and that it was worthy to be entrusted with the formation of a Ukrainian state." While the OUN also fought the Soviets and strived for an independent Ukraine, many leaders were influenced and trained by Nazi Germany. Indeed, the OUN could be characterized as a far right terrorist group which hoped to consolidate an ethnically homogenous Ukraine and a totalitarian, one party state.

Wartime Controversy

"The truth is that the official policy of the OUN was openly anti-Semitic, including approval for Nazi-style Jewish extermination," writes Eduard Dolinksy of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee. Dolinksy adds that it was only at the end of the war, when it became clear that Germany would be defeated, that the Ukrainian right changed its position. The OUN in fact played an important role in pogroms which spread across Western Ukraine in the summer of 1941, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews. After the Nazis dissolved the militias, many members linked up with the Ukrainian police and helped carry out the Holocaust throughout Western Ukraine.

Then, for good measure, the OUN assumed control over the Ukrainian Insurgent Army or UPA in 1943. A paramilitary outfit, the UPA initially leaned toward Germany but later turned against both the Nazis and the Soviets. The Times of Israel notes "according to some historical accounts the group murdered thousands of Jews in the 1940s" [other historians, as well as supporters of the UPA, dispute this, claiming there were many Jews who themselves served in the ranks of the organization]. A recent article by Reuters claims the UPA shuttled victims into labor camps where they were subsequently executed. Furthermore, it is claimed the UPA was also guilty of conducting ethnic cleansing of Poles in 1943-44. The massacres in Eastern Galicia, which formed part of an overall UPA strategy aimed at creating a homogenous Ukrainian state, resulted in the deaths of 100,000 people.

Criminalizing Dissent

Amidst escalating war in the east, Ukraine desperately needs allies and popular foreign support. Given the desperate stakes, one would think that Kiev would come to terms with some of the unsavory aspects of its World War II past. Yet strangely, political elites are running hard in the opposite direction in an effort to coddle the extremist right. At issue is a highly controversial law recently signed by President Petro Poroshenko which honors the OUN and UPA.

Under the new law, it would be a crime to question the likes of the UPA. Specifically, legislation stipulates that Ukrainians and even foreigners who "publicly insult" the memory of wartime partisans "will be held to account in accordance with Ukrainian law." The bill does not specify the penalty for questioning Ukraine's wartime past, nor does the state explain which body will enforce the legislation. On the other hand, it is possible that any private individual could bring a case to court.

Though certainly distressing, Kiev's approval of the retrograde law comes as little surprise. Former President Viktor Yushchenko, in fact, honored Ukrainian nationalists at a memorial in Babi Yar, where the most horrific massacre of Jews took place throughout the Holocaust. Not stopping there, Yushchenko then bestowed the highest government honor on none other than Stepan Bandera, a leader of the OUN.

Rehabilitating Extremist Right

Perhaps, Yushchenko's efforts helped to rehabilitate Bandera and others in the minds of many. As recently as 2013, radical nationalists were visibly active during Ukraine's Maidan revolution. Indeed, rightists brandished a host of OUN and UPA flags on Maidan square while belting out partisan wartime songs [for a fuller discussion of such curious rightist symbolism, see my earlier article here]. If anything, the UPA's popularity has soared ominously since the Maidan.

Even more disturbingly, a number of OUN-UPA apologists currently hold important government positions in Kiev, and Poroshenko has done nothing to confront the radical right. In fact, the President has gone out of his way to follow in the footsteps of his reactionary predecessor Yushchenko by once again laying a wreath in honor of the OUN at Babi Yar. In addition, Poroshenko has labeled the UPA as "defenders of the fatherland" and established an official holiday in honor of the partisans.

Needless to say, Putin and Russian media have made a lot of hay out of Kiev's backward politics and the emergence of so-called fascist hardliners. But while the new laws have raised a predictable response from Russia, the legislation has also reportedly led to hackles in Poland. Szczepan Siekierka, a leader of a civic organization dedicated to the memory of Poles killed by Ukrainian nationalists, is particularly concerned. Speaking with the Christian Science Monitor, Siekierka remarked "it's hard to see reconciliation and forgiveness when the Ukrainians treat the UPA criminals and Bandera like national heroes. Accepting one extremism now will lead to the acceptance of other extremisms in future."

Kiev Draws International Fire

Predictably, Kiev's new legislation has drawn international fire from a variety of quarters. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has protested the new legislation, noting "as Ukraine advances on the difficult road to full democracy, we strongly urge the nation's government to refrain from any measure that preempts or censors discussion or politicizes the study of history." The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has echoed such sentiments, noting that "broadly and vaguely defined language that restricts individuals from expressing views on past events and people, could easily lead to suppression of political, provocative and critical speech, especially in the media."

Perhaps, the new legislation could even harm Ukraine's bid to join the European Union. Dolinsky writes "modern Ukrainians need to realize and comprehend this difficult and tragic history in order to become a truly European nation. Such laws as that recently signed by President Poroshenko can only harm the Ukrainian people." For their part, some scholars have expressed grave dismay over developments in Kiev. Recently, a group of forty historians from western universities even signed an open letter of protest.

Still others worry about the chilling effect upon scholarship. Writing in the History News Network, academic experts declare that "the danger is that a prohibition on 'insulting' the 'fighters' or questioning the legitimacy of their 'struggle' is tantamount to a ban on critical research. The law does not specify what constitutes 'insulting', raising the question as to what scholars of modern Ukrainian history are allowed to write and say, and what they are not."

The Search For Ukrainian Identity

Controversy swirling around the historic role of the OUN and UPA highlights Ukrainian soul searching and the quest for a modern national identity. Though Ukraine has its right wing agitators and even mainstream apologists, the country has by and large practiced tolerance and inclusiveness since gaining independence in 1991. Unfortunately however, backward legislation may serve to obscure such history. According to the Christian Science Monitor, recent political controversy demonstrates that "the debate over Ukrainian fascist history isn't simply a he-said-she-said between Moscow and Kiev, but a deeper problem of how to square Ukraine's sometimes sordid past with its efforts to find a modern identity."

While the recent World War II flak poses thorny questions for many in Ukraine proper, the imbroglio may prompt some soul searching within the wider foreign Diaspora, too. In the wider metropolitan New York area, the Ukrainian community numbers more than 100,000 people. In Manhattan's East Village, sometimes known as "Little Ukraine," locals expressed opposition to Russian influence while holding fundraisers in support of Maidan protest. Though the East Village has become gentrified in recent years, the neighborhood still sports landmarks such as the Association of Ukrainian-Americans; the Ukrainian National Home; the Veselka restaurant; a Ukrainian Church, and the local Ukrainian Museum.

In the wake of Maidan protests in Kiev, Ukrainian-Americans took to the Brooklyn Bridge in support of demonstrations back home and even sang the national anthem on the subway. Indeed, EuroMaidan encouraged the growth of civic pride and patriotism, with many brandishing Ukrainian flags and embracing native folklore, crafts, music and food. The Kremlin's subsequent annexation of Crimea united Ukrainian-Americans like never before in opposition to Russian aggression. Along Second Avenue in the East Village, local residents set up an improved shrine honoring the EuroMaidan movement with signs attacking Washington for not standing shoulder to shoulder with Kiev.

Tackling Difficult Questions

Uniting the Ukrainian-American community against external threats is one thing, but looking inward and trying to define the new soul of a nation is quite another. Perhaps, as Kiev's political class increasingly moves to coddle extremist constituencies, the foreign Ukrainian community will undertake serious reflection. Hopefully, the wider Diaspora will not only condemn right wing politics and legislation but also build upon and expand modern concepts of Ukrainian identity. Rather than appease World War II apologists, Ukraine should recognize the historic role of Jews in the country. Today, many are sorely under-informed about such contributions and may not even be aware of such literary giants as Shalom Aleichem, for example.

In New York meanwhile, the expat community seems to follow familiar scripts. At the Ukrainian Museum, which supported the EuroMaidan movement by displaying patriotic posters in windows, curators have by and large played it safe by pushing rather narrow definitions of Ukrainian identity. Rather than tackle the tangled history of Ukrainian-Jewish relations, for example, the museum tends to concentrate on folk art and themes such as historic Ukrainian resistance to Russian expansionism. At the height of the EuroMaidan movement, one exhibit displayed --- apparently without irony --- a photo of a colorful "Cossack" protester on the Maidan [needless to say, many Jews of Ukrainian ancestry may have fearful associations of such Cossack history]. On their way out, patrons may purchase kitschy folkloric items in the museum gift shop.

Just a few blocks south of the East Village lies the Lower East Side, a neighborhood which absorbed waves of Jewish immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Many of the immigrants hailed from Czarist Russia, prior to modern Ukrainian independence. Later, many of the Jewish arrivals moved out of the Lower East Side and assimilated into the wider culture. Arguably, however, many of the immigrants' descendants could be considered just as Ukrainian as more recent arrivals in the East Village. To be sure, memory or associations of Ukraine may seem quite distant and abstract to the great grandchildren of Lower East Side migrants. On the other hand, it is not unheard of for Americans of Italian or Irish descent, for example, to express sympathetic ethnic ties to the mother country. Maybe it is time for Ukraine to take a hard look in the mirror and ask itself why Jewish descendants are not clamoring for the same.
 
 #34
www.rt.com
July 1, 2015
Ukraine to stop buying Russian gas after talks on new deal fail

Russia and Ukraine failed to reach a new agreement on gas prices at talks in Vienna on Tuesday, leading to Ukraine suspending its purchase of Russian gas.

Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak and Ukraine's Energy and Coal Minister Vladimir Demchishin both admitted to reporters that the negotiations had born no fruit. Demchishin added that there would be a new round of talks in September.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's energy company, Naftogaz, will stop buying gas from Russia as of Wednesday, July 1.

"As of June 30, 2015, the agreement between Naftogaz and Gazprom runs out, and conditions for continued supply of Russian gas to Ukraine have not been agreed upon; Naftogaz will no longer be purchasing gas from the Russian company," a press release by Naftogaz said.

Reacting to this decision, Novak said it was politically motivated and there were no grounds for it.

Naftogaz gave assurances that "the transit of Russian gas through Ukrainian territory to Gazprom's European clients will continue in full, according to contracts agreed."

Russia will not increase the discount it has offered to Ukraine on gas purchases, Novak told the media. "The price of $247 [per cubic meter of gas] is completely competitive, that is why we are very surprised that Ukraine wants a much lower price - it is out of line with the current market environment." He stressed that the price "is not subject to correction."

Despite Kiev's purchasing freeze, Russia will continue direct supplies of gas to Ukraine's southeast, Novak said. It has been doing so since February, when Kiev claimed that it could no longer supply gas to the conflict-torn regions due to damaged pipelines. Gazprom insists that Kiev is still responsible for paying for the gas that goes to the southeast.
 
 #35
Russia notes possible risks of gas transit to Europe through Ukraine - Energy Minister

MOSCOW, July 1. /TASS/. Russia does not want to allow risks in the course of gas transit to Europe through Ukraine, in case Ukraine does not provide gas injection to the underground storage facilities in the necessary volume, the Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said in an interview with Rossiya 24 channel after the trilateral meeting on gas between Russia, Ukraine and the European Union in Vienna.

According to him, the necessary volume of gas for Ukraine for the autumn-winter season amounts to 19 bln cubic meters.

"Currently about 12.5 bln cubic meters of gas are already injected into the underground storage facilities, including the second quarter," Novak said. He added that before the end of the summer roughly 7 bln cubic meters should be injected.

"The smaller volume, in our opinion, would create certain risks, because the possibility of raising gas is limited, and there would be the risks of taking gas from the transit pipeline for the European customers, which we would like to avoid," he said.

According to Novak, this is an acceptable volume that Naftogas of Ukraine is able to purchase. During the consultations the Russian side raised the issue of the European Commission helping Naftogas of Ukraine or the Ukrainian side represented by the government, if necessary.

"Today the European Commission said that the European Union reviews providing aid to the Ukrainian side in the amount of $1.8 bln. Additionally, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development should provide $600 mln by September, the International Monetary Fund - $300 mln. It will total $2.7 bln. But I would like to add that the funds will be allocated for the Ukrainian economy as a macrofinancial help, and we don't know what part of those funds will be used for purchasing gas. We hope that the part of the money will be allocated to Naftogas of Ukraine, because they have a large loan debt amid difficult financial situation," Novak added.

He said that one of goals of the consultations is to identify the way of financing payment for gas and the European Union aid.
 
 #36
International Business Times
www.ibtimes.com
June 30, 2015
Moscow To Build Bridge From Russian Mainland To Crimea Across The Kerch Strait
By Christopher Harress

Russia is pressing ahead with the construction of a bridge from the mainland to the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed from Ukraine in March 2014, according to a report by the pro-Ukrainian news site UNIAN on Tuesday. The bridge, which will consist of parallel road and rail sections, and connect Crimea with Russia's Taman peninsula across the Strait of Kerch, will further underline Russia's claim to the contested region.

The $3 billion contract for the 3-mile bridge previously was awarded to Russian President Vladimir Putin's friend and judo partner Arkady Rotenberg, according to a BBC report from January. Crimea is currently accessible from the Russian mainland by sea and air only, as land routes along Ukraine's Sea of Azov coast have been disrupted by the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Meanwhile, preparations for the bridge are underway as temporary infrastructure is created, with construction camps and auxiliary roads being built on both sides of the strait.

According to the Russian information agency RBC, "the traffic capacity of the line is up to 40,000 cars per day" while the railway has two lines that will allow passenger trains to travel on the bridge at 75 miles per hour and trucks to travel on the road at 50 mph.

"The construction of the bridge will be launched at six sections simultaneously to comply with the required pace of construction work," the agency said, quoting the representative of the general contractor. "The bridge will be equipped with an automated system of traffic management, lighting, communications, and a system for collection, treatment and removal of road runoff water with contaminants and suspension."

While Crimea has been void of conflict since the war in eastern Ukraine began in April 2014, the bridge is likely to further destabilize the already poor relationship with Russia and Ukraine, and could see the peace process, which has seldom been observed, deteriorate further.
 

 

  #37
Sputnik
July 1, 2015
Strained Relations Aside, Ukrainian-Russian Police Cooperation Continues

An investigation by Russia's Gazeta.ru has found that despite the fact that diplomatic relations between Moscow and Kiev are at a historic low point, cooperation between Russian and Ukrainian police in hunting down suspected criminals continues.

The newspaper explains that while the heads of the two countries' ministries of internal affairs are no longer in formal contact, each side continues to adhere to a series of cooperation agreements, signed in the 1990s and 2000s, including on the extradition of suspected criminals.

Over a decade ago, long before last year's Maidan coup, Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement on 'Cooperation Between the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine,' which recognized that law enforcement officers from each country must assist one another in the search for fugitives hiding from prosecution in their home country, up to and including the extradition of suspected criminals.

And despite an across-the-board worsening in Russian-Ukrainian cooperation in virtually every sphere over the past year-and-a-half following the Maidan coup, police cooperation continues.

In fact, the paper notes that the Russian police's relentless insistence on adhering to the letter of the law has led to some unpleasant, possibly even unjust situations, where the Ministry of Internal Affairs made preparations to extradite Ukrainians charged with petty crimes who would have faced additional, politically motivated charges had they been sent home.

The newspaper cites the case of 28-year-old Vitaly Velichko, a Ukrainian who stole a mobile phone from a passerby in Kiev over ten years ago, and who remains listed as 'wanted' by Ukraine's police. Catching the former delinquent youth at a bus terminal in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar, Russian police threatened to extradite him back to his home country. The problem is that the young man has since gone on to fight for the anti-Kiev militia in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, which means that upon his return, he'd be charged with "terrorism" in addition to petty robbery.

"In Kiev, I would have been tried not for petty robbery, but for terrorism, if I had lived to see trial. Everyone knows how they treat militia fighters there," Velichko noted, stressing that he did not deny his guilt for his "mistakes of youth," and adding that he would like to serve out a sentence for his crime in Russia.

But local police were relentless. "They said that they have clear instructions to detain individuals whom Ukraine has declared 'wanted' for the commission of crimes, and to transfer their cases to the prosecutor's office for extradition," Velichko noted. The head of the local police service hold him bluntly, "war or not, the law has not been repealed; Ukraine extradites our criminals to us, and we give theirs to them."

Velichko was fortunate. An appeal by friends to authorities on the basis of the European Convention on Extradition of 1957 saved him from undue punishment. The Convention states that extradition may not be carried out if "there is reason to believe that [the accused's] life or his freedom may be threatened by reason of his...political opinion."

Former DPR Defense Minister Igor Strelkov stated that there have been other cases similar to Velichko's, although to date no active or former militia fighters have been extradited to Kiev to face politically motivated charges on top of whatever petty criminal charges they may face.

Roots of Long-Standing Cooperation Difficult to Eliminate

Active cooperation between the Russian and Ukrainian ministries of internal affairs emerged immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Four formal agreements, signed between 1998 and 2009, dedicated to everything from the fight against organized crime, to narcotics and illegal immigration, remain in force; many of them involve not only the police, but also other organs, including ministries of health, prosecutor's offices, border control and security services. The agreements charge police with cooperation in the prevention, detection and solving of all sorts of crime, from terrorism, to human trafficking, the trafficking of weapons and drugs, etc., via the exchange of information, coordinated investigation and the search for missing persons. The two countries even exchanged police attaches to each other's embassies to coordinate work between security organs.

Speaking anonymously, an officer from the Russian Internal Affairs Ministry told Gazeta.ru that "before all these 'Maidans', we captured up to 400 persons a year who had been declared wanted by the Ukrainian Internal Affairs Ministry, and they, in turn, handed over at least 200 persons to us."

And while cooperation continues, albeit less intensely than before, officially there is no contact between Russian Internal Affairs Ministry head Vladimir Kolokoltsev and his Ukrainian counterpart, Arsen Avakov. "Interaction continues at the level which is possible in connection with the prevailing situation," was all that the press service of the Russian Internal Affairs Ministry was willing to say on the matter.

The anonymous officer noted that "while on the one hand, relations are not formally supported, on the other hand, our Ukrainian colleagues send us requests to search for persons, and we also ask for information we may need. It is worth pointing out that they are far less likely to answer us. They suffer from a permanent witch hunt, under which they could be charged with aiding and abetting the 'Moskals' [derogatory slang for Russians]," he noted.

Earlier this year, Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, whose office is charged with the extradition of suspected criminals, explained that contacts with Kiev continue, and that Ukraine extradited 20 persons suspected of crimes in Russia between March and December 2014, while Russia similarly acceded to Ukrainian requests.
 #38
Human Rights in Ukraine
http://khpg.org
June 29, 2015
High-ranking Berkut officer charged over Euromaidan killings
By Halya Coynash
 
A police lieutenant colonel, working in the police force until his arrest this month, has been remanded in custody on suspicion of involvement in the killing of 39 Euromaidan protesters in Kyiv on Feb 20, 2014.  Oleh Yanishevsky was deputy commander of the Kyiv Berkut special force unit in Feb 2014 and lawyers representing Euromaidan victims or their families call this the most significant arrest thus far.

Given the criticism expressed both within Ukraine and from an International Advisory Panel over the lack of progress in investigating the crimes, it is possibly no accident that the arrest was announced on June 26, during a Security Service [SBU] briefing given to members of foreign diplomatic missions in Ukraine.  

Four ex-Berkut officers are already in custody on charges over the same killings, although it appears that Yanishevsky may also be charged with issuing orders to kill.

Lawyers and activists were following the June 28 court hearing on a restraint measure closely as the same Pechersky District Court had on Sept 19, 2014  released Dmytro Sadovnyk who was in charge of the Berkut unit suspected of shooting 39 protesters.  Sadovnyk was placed under house arrest and promptly disappeared.  Given the serious charges against him, the court had needed to provide grounds for changing the restraint measure to house arrest.  Judge Svitlana Volkova was convinced by the fact that he has a wife, three children and a flat in Kyiv, and had received a good character reference.  

Sadovnyk had been arrested together with two subordinates - Pavlo Abroskin and Serhiy Zinchenko - who were not released and who remain in custody.  Sadovnyk's release and immediate disappearance and the general lack of movement in the investigation caused public anger, and other ex- Berkut officers since arrested have all been placed in detention.  This is not to suggest that there have been many arrests.  On Feb 24, 2015, two former Berkut officers - Oleksandr Marynchenko and Serhiy Tamtura - were remanded in custody, on the same charges over the death of 39 Maidan activists on Feb 20.

Most other former Berkut officers from that unit have not been charged, and were doubtless among those who gathered on Sunday to show their support for Yanishevsky.

As reported, three ex-Berkut officers have also been in custody since April 2015, charged with involvement in the bloody police dispersal of the peaceful procession to the Verkhovna Rada on Feb. 18  Five people were killed; 62 received gun injuries and a further 400 - other injuries. The Prosecutor General's Office asserts that investigators have established the involvement of the former commander of the Kharkiv regional Berkut unit and two subordinates.  They have been charged under Article 365 � 3 (exceeding official duties with this leading to grave consequences) and Articles 15 � 2 and 115 � 2 (attempted murder).  

While these people are in custody, and some others are on the wanted list believed to be in hiding in Crimea (including Sadovnyk) or Russia, there have not yet been any convictions by a Ukrainian court over any of the violent crimes committed during the Euromaidan protests.

A recent report by civic organizations and lawyers was appropriately entitled "Year of Impunity".  It analyses every incident under investigation (we hope) by the prosecutor's office from the first violence against a group of Lviv students on Nov 25, 2013 to the mass gunning down of unarmed protesters on Feb 20, 2014.

At the press conference on the report, Pavlo Dykan, one of the lawyers representing victims, listed just some of the problems with the investigation into the killings in Jan-Feb 2014, namely: the lack of sufficient technical backup; procrastination with qualifying the alleged actions of people arrested back in April 2014; Interior Ministry sabotage; court trials being dragged out and others.  He said then that there had effectively been no progress in the investigation into the beating by police officers during the events on Bankova St on Dec 1, 2014 and during the storming of Maidan in the early hours of Dec 11, and many others.

The report was put together by Euromaidan SOS, OZON [a civic initiative monitoring peaceful assembly and attempts to restrict it], and the Centre for Civil Liberties with the intention not only of demonstrating what had not been done, but of understanding what had gone wrong.

An example given is the public outrage over the fact that the driver of a bus bringing a group of former Berkut officers to court to support one colleague facing charges in connection with Euromaidan was wearing a St George ribbon.

What should have caused outrage, however, was the fact that this was the same driver in whose bus Maidan activists were beaten in Jan 2014.  Despite this the man is still working in the police force in a unit that was supposedly reorganized, but in fact was just renamed.   (See: Ex-Berkut officer on trial over AutoMaidan ambush).

One of the systemic failings was the inadequate organization of the investigation process.  Despite assurances from the country's leaders of commitment to effective investigation into all Euromaidan cases, for a long time there was a diffuse range of investigations into different cases carried out by various investigative bodies.  As a result, no investigator or prosecutor had any idea of the overall picture and could not establish the connections between different events.  A number of these episodes, the authors write, ended up being omitted altogether.

Another key failing was that the investigators concentrated solely on those who carried out the abuses, and did not try to establish who gave the orders.

The authors pointed to direct sabotage by representatives of the Interior Ministry, as well as the lack of interaction between the Prosecutor General's Office, the Interior Ministry and the Security Service [SBU].

It was thanks to serious pressure from the public and lawyers of the victims that 10 months into all official investigations, a special investigation department was created within the Prosecutor General's Office.  This is now the single centre investigating all crimes committed during the Euromaidan protests.

Many of the criticisms were identical to those presented in the International Advisory Panel's damning report,   including scathing comments about the "uncooperative attitude" from the Interior Ministry and the SBU.  
 
 #39
Sputnik
June 30, 2015
Brzezinski: Russia Has to Be Assured That Ukraine Will Never Join NATO

Former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski stands by his convictions that Ukraine should never join the North Atlantic Alliance if peace and stability in the war-torn country and the region as a whole is to last.

Brzezinski's full recipe for solving the yearlong Ukrainian crisis is the following:

"Ukraine must have a right to freely choose its political identity and forge closer ties with Europe. At the same time, Russia must be reassured that Ukraine will never become a NATO member," Brzezinski said, as quoted by Spiegel Online.

In other words, Ukraine needs to become Finland of sorts. Brzezinski's ideas echo those of Henry Kissinger. In an opinion piece for the Washington Post published in March 2014, the former secretary of state urged the West to understand Russia's concerns and its attachment to Ukraine.

"Ukraine should have the right to choose freely its economic and political associations, including with Europe," Kissinger stated, adding that Kiev should not join NATO and "should pursue a posture comparable to that of Finland."

Brzezinski defended the US decision to position more troops and heavy weaponry in the Eastern European states and the Baltics, saying it was a cycle of action and reaction. In his mind, the United States would provoke a war with Russia if Washington does not respond to Moscow's steps.

Russia has made its stance on the issue abundantly clear: the US and NATO's increased military presence close to Russia's borders and intensified war-games in Russia's neighborhood risk undermining stability and security in the whole region. Western saber-rattling runs counter to the bloc's promises and prompts Moscow to seek ways to improve its defense capabilities.

Many call mounting tensions between Russia and the West a new installment of the Cold War. Brzezinski thinks the second Cold War has long since started. But it will not last as long and is unlikely to turn hot, he told Spiegel Online.
 
#40
Fort Russ
http://fortruss.blogspot.com
June 30, 2015
How Russia Can Win All of Ukraine
By Rostislav Ishchenko
Translated from Russian by J.Hawk
http://cont.ws/post/97484

On Oleg Marchenko's request, I'm laying out my answers to my old friends questions provoked by one of my earlier articles. In the form it was earlier published on a facebook community page. I'd like to draw attention to the fact that we were discussing a hypothetical ability to do something in the past rather than plans for the future (which is something many don't understand).

Dear Dima, welcome!

Please forgive me I am answering you in public but, as far as I understand, the questions you raised are also of interest to others. Therefore it's all the same to you where you'll read the answer, and it will save me the trouble of writing the same thing 20-30 times.

So, you wrote:

Greetings! Pardon my denseness, but I did not understand the logic of this paragraph: "Federated Ukraine with a new constitution and broad regional rights would not only acknowledge the transfer of Crimea to Russia (the new constitution would not mention Crimea as Ukraine's territory), but it would also gradually integrate into the Customs Union and the Eurasian Union. It would simply have nowhere else to go. Neither US nor the EU are willing to support Ukraine."

1. Why won't Crimea be listed as Ukrainian territory in the new constitution?
2. Why a federated Ukraine? A unitary Ukraine would likewise have nowhere to go. In any event, it's the center that decides the direction of foreign economic activity, even in a federated state.

P.S.: Those aren't abstract questions for me. I'm not looking for an argument. There is a reason why I'm asking.

My answers:

1. If we are to carefully examine Putin's proposals aired in March and April 2014 as well as the text of Minsk Agreements, we see that the federation ought to take the form of a free association of territories which agreed to live together. In other words, the new federation constitution addresses the collapse of legitimacy which occurred after the legal government was overthrown, which in turn led to an armed confrontation among regions and a civil war. The constitution will be written by those regions who agreed to remain part of the reinvented Ukrainian state. This would be a reinvention--the old unitary system ends, the new federated one is established (just as France's Second Empire was followed by the Third Republic, or the Soviet Republic after the Romanovs' empire). Everything changes--the system of government, the institutions of government, and their legitimacy is no longer based on historical continuity through presidential and parliamentary elections, but on a new fundamental law. This constitution ought to be through a national referendum, because the old system which lacks legitimacy in the eyes of its people, cannot endow the new system with legitimacy. But even if it is adopted by a special constitutional assembly, one important aspect would remain the same. Government cannot rule over territories which did not participate in establishing that document. You can't simply write in Russia's constitution that it now includes Hokkaido and demand that Japan give up the island. Therefore the power of the new federated Ukrainian state could not extent to Crimea whose population not only would not participate in ratifying the new constitution or founding the new Ukraine, but which already clearly expressed its willingess to be part of Russia and which already was part of Russia.

This, of course, would not obviate the necessity to deal with the international legal aspect. The negotiations might be protracted and difficult, but you would not have a legal dead end in which Crimea is perfectly legally mentioned as a region of a country in two constitutions. Crimea would not be one of the lands founding the new Ukraine, therefore it could not be included in the new constitution.

2. The same applies to the Customs Union and Eurasian Union. Look. One of the demands posed before the process of founding a federated Ukrainian state was granting regions which we today call Norovossia not only rights, but also guarantees these rights would be respected, including own budget policy, own foreign economic policy, and even its own means of violence (it's not important what they would be called--"people's militia," "republican guard", or something along these lines). I'm sure Galicia would not allow Novorossia have more rights than it does. But that means Ukraine would no longer be a unitary state and not even a genuine federation. It would be more akin to confederation that calls itself a federation which has a central government but with limited power and dependent on the budget-forming regions.

And who is the engine of euro-integration? Galicia? No, the luckless hutsuls don't have the power to subordinate the entire Ukraine without the support from the powerful center which suppressed the openly pro-Russian orientation of the majority of voters. This is why it was impossible to apply Russia's "soft power" in Ukraine effectively. No matter which politician you approach, they'll turn out to be in favor of euro-integration. You could have ten coups, and you'd still end up with euro-integrators in power. As soon as a regional pro-Russian politician finds himself on the national stage, he becomes imbued with the interests of the center, whose importance depends on its ability on redistributing Novorossia's resources to Galicia's benefit (this is incidentally what the civil war is about), and becomes a euro-integrator.

But in a soft federation (which would in fact be a confederation) the elected governor of Donetsk or Dnepropetrovsk would be ten times more important than the president, government, and parliament in Kiev no matter how many chambers it has. Whoever has the money has the power, and the money are in the regions. The capital loses its importance, which means its control also is of no interest to anyone. Everyone wants to be as close to the money as possible, which means remaining in the regions.

Its greater population and economic power means that Novorossia would enjoy a huge advantage. Not dependent on the center's diktat, it would decide for itself how much money to allocate Galicia to prevent everyone from emigrating in search of work. I realize that there would be a residual tendency toward euro-integration. But when you, as a politician (district governor), are dependent on the will of the people live off contracts with Russia, you see the light pretty quickly. That precisely is the problem of the Kiev government. They got used to look for money not in manufacturing, but in the piggy bank called national budget. They could care less how money gets into the budget. Their job is to divide that money (mainly among themselves). But in the regions, if there is no manufacturing there is no money in the budget because customs revenue and suchlike belong solely to the center.

In that situation neither Kiev nor Galicia would have sufficient political weight to overcome the regions' desire to make  money. Rather the opposite, their well-being would now depend on the well-being of the regions.

In order to become independent of the regions, the central authorities would have to find alternative sources of budget financing. The only such source in the current situation are foreign loans. I won't even mention the possibility of the constitution limiting the extent of the volume of such loans by requiring assent by the regional assembly (which means Novorossia could block any such loan). But let's assume the center can borrow as much as it wants to. Who would give it money? We're not talking about pitiful $5-10 billion a year, like right now, but $30-50 billion per year in order to balance the regions' power. And it would have to be sustained. Loans against which guarantees, if the center has limited authority?

But Russia, crediting industries of interest, would provide Novorossia $15-20 billion over a period of 2-3 years, not counting private loans. It would be clear that the loans are mutually beneficial and repayable, and both sides would know how the loans would be repaid. That's how Galicia would be brought into the Customs Union in 3-5 years without excessive theatrics, using a financial rope through the federation ring in the nose.

Naturally, this scenario contains a number of assumptions which might be invalid. But other scenarios have even more such assumptions, for example: "If we sent in the tanks in March, we'd have captured Lvov by April and all would be well." Here the entire statement is one huge assumption based only on the wishful thinking of the person making the claim. And, finally, the fact that both the US and Kiev turned down Putin's rather generous proposal: "Federalize, and all will be well, we'll live with Poroshenko (even with Turchinov) like we did with Yanukovych" and instead launched a civil war which they could never win, also indirectly confirms what I'm writing. In the federalization scenario they would lose Ukraine, not as quickly or noticeably, but definitively and without unnecessary deaths and destruction.

J.Hawk's Comment: I think here, too, Ishchenko hits the nail on the head. This is Russia's endgame, has been from the beginning, and the strategy has been crafted with that particular endgame in mind. If you listen to Poroshenko, "federalization" is about the worst thing that could happen because, from his perspective, it would be the worst thing to happen. I mean, why fund the Maidan if you will become a figurehead president of a confederal Ukraine???


 
 
 #41
www.politico.eu
June 26, 2015
In defense of Ukraine
The West has to act now, or Russia's assault will be irreversible.
By IVO DAALDER AND MALCOLM RIFKIND
Ivo Daalder, President of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, is a former U.S. Ambassador to NATO. Malcolm Rifkind is a former British Foreign Minister and former Secretary of State for Defense.

Unless Europe and the United States act swiftly, the situation in Ukraine is about to get worse - possibly a lot worse. The Minsk II agreement that was supposed to stabilize the conflict and provide a path forward to political settlement is languishing as a result of repeated violations and unenforceable terms. Any hope Vladimir Putin had of economic sanctions being lifted were dashed by the EU decision this week to extend the regime for another six months.

Despite a year of sanctions and deteriorating relations with Europe, President Putin continues to do what he can to prevent Ukraine from deciding its own future. A renewed Russian military offensive now appears to be in the offing. Russian forces are once again massing at the border with Ukraine, and Russian troops and heavy equipment have continued to flow into eastern Ukraine. Russian forces have been training Moscow-backed separatists for months. All is set for a rapid military advance - most probably to take the strategic port of Mariupol and the remainder of the Donbass region, though further advances towards Odessa and possibly the creation of a land bridge to Crimea cannot be excluded.

Ukraine is singularly ill-prepared for another major military confrontation. Its forces are exhausted after more than a year of conflict. It lacks the training and the equipment to offer a strong defense, especially if Russian forces participate directly. It has lost every decisive battle so far. It's very unlikely to do better the next time.

Another major military escalation in Ukraine would be devastating for the country. Kiev does not have the economic resources for a short war, let alone a long one against well-equipped and trained forces. Even without direct confrontation, Ukraine faces extraordinary challenges in reforming its economy, managing its growing debt, and paying its bills. Economic output has already fallen by nearly 20 percent this year, and another major military conflict would cost the country dearly.

The focus should not be on what to do if Putin does move, but how to deter him in the first place.
The consequences beyond Ukraine of a renewed escalation would be equally profound. Any major military actions would leave the Minsk process in tatters. The divisions in Europe would harden further; Russia would become even more isolated. Security in Europe would continue to deteriorate, and the militarization of relations between Russia and the West would intensify. Nominal success in Ukraine could encourage additional Russian military action in Georgia, Moldova, or even against the Baltic states.

The dangers are real, which makes it imperative that the major western countries do whatever they can to prevent Putin's next military move against Ukraine. The focus should not be on what to do if Putin does move, but how to deter him in the first place. That will require renewed focus, urgency, and determination - something that has been lacking so far. Rather than warning of further sanctions if Putin escalates, the United States and Europe need to spell out specifics - for example, banning Russian banks from participating in the SWIFT mechanism, which manages international banking transactions, and halting all exports of technologies for the Russian oil and gas industry.

The Western powers should also be clear that if the conflict escalates, they will be prepared to provide defensive lethal support to Ukraine - including drones, secure communications, reinforced troop carriers, long-range counterbattery radar, and anti-armor weaponry. While not enough to turn the tide of a major confrontation, such weaponry would help Ukraine impose significant cost on Russian forces and on the separatists Moscow is enabling to fight.

In addition to threats of economic and military countermeasures, there needs to be a major new diplomatic push aimed not just at any escalation, but at trying to settle the conflict. This requires direct U.S. and British involvement. Their absence from the most important security negotiation in Europe is historically unprecedented; they now need to join Germany, France, Russia, and Ukraine in an effort to find a lasting solution.

Such a solution must restore Ukraine's territorial integrity, full sovereignty, and independence, create an agreed process for internal political reform and decentralization, strengthen economic relations with Ukraine, and end the sanctions regime. It likely will require the deployment of an outside peacekeeping or stabilization force - to ensure heavy weapons are withdrawn, all foreign forces return home, irregular forces are disbanded, the Russian-Ukrainian border is secure, and conditions for conducting free and fair elections of local authorities in eastern Ukraine are in place.

Agreement along these lines is of course not assured. To have any chance of success, presidents and prime ministers of the six countries most directly involved would need to meet in the next few days or weeks to launch a serious negotiating process and forestall any further military escalation. The initial focus needs to be on resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine, though larger issues, including the status of Crimea, would need to remain on the agenda.

The situation in Ukraine, and throughout Europe, is dire. It requires the attention and direct involvement of the heads of those countries that have led the effort to secure Europe for so many years. There is no time to waste.