#2
Christian Science Monitor
July 3, 2015
Successful rocket launch a reminder that Russia, US can cooperate
US and Russia may have their differences, but both cheered when the rocket launched Friday bearing much-needed supplies for the crew of the International Space Station. The launch follows two failed attempts.
By Howard LaFranchi, Staff writer

WASHINGTON - The United States and Russia may be at sharp odds with each other over Ukraine, Syria, and Edward Snowden. But the two powers cheered in unison when a Russian rocket successfully launched Friday bearing much-needed supplies for the International Space Station.

After two failed attempts - one American, one Russian - in recent weeks to send a food, water, and toothpaste-laden chuck wagon to the space station's crew, Friday's problem-free liftoff was applauded all around - no matter what flag the rocket bore.

The shared sighs of relief and congratulatory high-fives were also a reminder that even with Russo-American relations at a post-cold-war low, Washington and Moscow are managing to set their differences to one side to cooperate in other areas.

Yes, the US is threatening Russia with even tougher sanctions over its aggressive stance toward Ukraine. And some Russian officials have recently resurrected Soviet-sounding, "we will bury you" warnings of nuclear confrontation - incineration was one term used - if the US persists in sending heavy weaponry to the former Soviet republics on Russia's western border.

But at the same time, Russian and American diplomats are largely on the same page in the international negotiations to reach a deal with Iran restraining its nuclear program. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have met regularly as the talks head for a deal-or-no-deal deadline next Tuesday.

And while Russia may not be a member of the 60-country coalition that President Obama has formed to "degrade and destroy" the self-proclaimed Islamic State, Russian President Vladimir Putin has every reason to root for the coalition's success, given his own battles with Islamist extremists.

Then there's the International Space Station - which ever since the retirement of America's space shuttle fleet in 2011 has relied on Russian spacecraft for getting fresh crews to the orbiting station.

Friday's successful launch of a Russian Soyuz rocket, carrying more than three tons of food, water, living supplies, and equipment, followed the explosion just five days ago of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket shortly after liftoff from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The SpaceX rocket was riding to the rescue of a space station crew that had already had to forgo the replenishment of supplies that were aboard a Russian cargo capsule launched in April. The capsule failed to separate from its rocket and burned as it crashed back to Earth.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials emphasized after each failed cargo launch that the space station's crew was in no danger of running low on essential supplies. But by Friday's third attempt, it was clear that officials and crew alike were getting a little antsy.

"Third time's the charm, I hope," NASA astronaut Scott Kelly said from the space station in a NASA agency interview just a few hours before Friday's liftoff. "We are hoping to get this one, obviously," added the retired Navy captain, who is in the middle of a yearlong space station assignment. Currently the six-person station has a three-person crew - Mr. Kelly and two Russian cosmonauts.

Kelly had tweeted to the world on Sunday, the day the SpaceX rocket exploded, "Today was a reminder spaceflight is hard" - before adding, "Tomorrow is a new day."

When the Russian cargo capsule makes its scheduled Sunday arrival at the station, Kelly will no doubt be happy that the terrestrial troubles marring the US-Russia relationship do not extend to outer space.

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 #3
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
April 1, 2014
Encounters with Russian humour
Russian people have an amazing ability to see the humour in some of the glummest situations. It's hard to argue that laughter is the best medicine.
Ajay Kamalakaran, RBTH

In the popular 2006 Russian film 'Peter FM,' the protagonist gets stopped by a policeman in an underpass in St Petersburg for an identity check. When the cop sees that the young man's passport and registration is in order, he decides to go through his backpack. When even that is all clear, he says the word "narkotiki (drugs)" in an interrogatory tone, to which the young man politely says "net, spassiba (no, thank you)" hinting that the policeman was a drug pusher. This was Russian humour at its best.

Over the last eleven years, I have seen how my Russian friends can find something funny in the glummest situations. An effective remedy to deal with the highly unpredictable nature of day to day events in Russia is to see the lighter and funnier side of life everywhere.

A Russian friend of mine who worked for BP was so excited about his first trip to the United States that he decided to take time off after his training and explore the country. He had heard stupid questions throughout his vacation, but what a gas station attendant in Texas asked him shocked him, but just for a few seconds till he could make a comeback with a witty response.

It started off as a normal conversation. The Texan wanted to know where my friend was from and he said Moscow, Russia (in an obvious attempt to avoid a mix-up with Moscow, Idaho). The response, according to my friend was, "Wow. That must have been a long drive." After he recovered from the shock, because he knew the attendant was serious, he responded by saying "the road was a bit flooded." Of course the dim-witted employee of the gas station did not get the joke.

Many of us have grown so accustomed to delays, long lines, poor service, bureaucracy and the likes, it's actually easy to laugh off these things, but the real test of a person's humour comes when he or she is faced with a new challenge.

The same friend that dealt with the gas station attendant, who thought one could drive from Moscow to Houston, fulfilled another long- cherished dream by visiting India. He was able to keep his humour in tact in the month of August when the Indian capital isn't the most pleasant place to be weather-wise. As he browsed at some books near Connaught Place, a shoe-shine boy came and offered him his services.

My friend politely declined, despite repeated pleas of "only 10 rupees" (17 cents).  Within seconds he could literally smell something strange. When he looked down, he actually saw some cow dung! Then he literally had to call out of the shoe-shiner to get his boots cleaned.

The rate obviously increased to 200 rupees ($3,3), but he laughed off the incident in a way that I am sure that many of my other foreign or even Indian friends would not have. He knew he had been tricked and who managed to decorate his boots with manure, but he appreciated the creativity of the situation.

Long drinking sessions are common in Russia, especially in the middle of winter, when outdoor options are limited in bigger cities. Non-Russian friends of mine who don't understand the jokes or the language itself seem to get completely absorbed in the humour after a few shots of vodkas.

In fact, more of the pressing East vs West problems of the day may get solved if world leaders sat together for a Russian evening and settled the matters over shots of vodka, pickled cucumbers and some dried fish. In the worst case, the problems wouldn't be solved but the leaders would establish a personal rapport.

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 #4
Kremlin.ru
July 2, 2015
Gala concert by laureates of the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition

Vladimir Putin attended the gala concert by laureates of the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition at the Moscow Conservatory's Grand Hall.

This year the competition was timed to coincide with the 175th anniversary of the great Russian composer's birth. Altogether, 623 competitors from 45 countries applied to take part in the competition.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Ladies and gentlemen, friends,

I am sincerely happy to welcome the participants and guests of the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition.

For over half a century now this competition has served as a bright and recognisable symbol of Russian culture, occupying its rightful place among the leading music competitions in the world that have a unique influence on the development of the performing arts. The principal mission of our competition is to discover new names for the world and to offer this prestigious stage to young but already accomplished musicians.

The piano, cello and violin players and vocalists who took part in this competition have an enormous potential, and this has been an exciting and often unpredictable artistic competition that took place in an atmosphere of emotional tension.

No less important is the fantastic interest the competition has drawn. This year the enthusiasm of both the performers and the audience was very similar to that of decades ago. This, in our view, is evidence of the deep spiritual need millions upon millions of people have - both those who were present at the concert halls in Moscow and St Petersburg and those who watched the performances on television. This strong interest and intensity of feelings and emotions go to show how much music is appreciated here. The Tchaikovsky Competition is loved and respected both in Russia and beyond it.

This year it attracted special interest also because it was dedicated to the 175th birth anniversary of Pyotr Tchaikovsky. The work of this great composer, loved all over the world, unites peoples of all countries and asserts the great creative power of art and the inseparable link between Russian and world culture. This competition plays a very important role in the spiritual unification of peoples.

Friends,

The title of a Tchaikovsky Competition laureate is one of the most respected. I would like to congratulate all the winners and wish you further success, which you will undoubtedly achieve. Your skill and talent will open up the doors of leading concert halls and theatres. The revival of the competition's tradition, namely tours by the laureates, is certain to help in this.

This year there was a record number of applications - 623 from 45 countries. Clearly, this is the result of the competition organisers' hard work. The organising committee worked efficiently throughout these past four years. They will not praise themselves, while I can and will do it with pleasure. I would like to give special mention to the contribution made by Valery Gergiev, who has done so much for the laureates' further promotion.

I sincerely thank the jury, which this year was unique in its composition. It includes famous musicians from many countries and it is a pleasure to see among them former laureates of this competition.

I would like to express my gratitude to our best orchestras and outstanding conductors. Your professionalism and performing perfection not only support the contestants, but also create the unique emotional atmosphere of this competition.

This was a very responsible time for all of you alike - the organisers, the contestants and the jury. You have done everything possible to turn this competition into an event in the world of performing arts that meets the highest requirements of music lovers.

The Tchaikovsky Competition has always been Russia's pride, one of the most recognised and respected competitions in the world. Thank you all very much.

Thank you for your attention.

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#6
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
July 3, 2015
Independence Day: A view from Russia
As the United States celebrates independence from Britain, the Kremlin is attempting to frame its struggle with the West in terms that echo the sentiment of the American holiday: as a fight for sovereignty against a hegemonic foreign power.
By Ivan Tsvetkov
Dr. Ivan Tsvetkov is an associate professor at the School of International Relations of St. Petersburg State University. He is an expert in U.S. policy in the Asia Pacific Region, U.S. history and contemporary U.S. society.

It seems that every country, just like every person, must have a birthday. In the case of nations, it is a date grounded either in historical events or in symbolism that celebrates the emergence of statehood.

Yet of the major countries on today's map, perhaps only the United States boasts a rare combination of two historical facts: first, that its "birthday"is set in stone (the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776); second, that the ideological tenets proclaimed at that date remain essentially unaltered to this day. Indeed, those tenets continue to define the strategy of U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

Russia, like many other countries, can only envy the United States in this regard.

Despite its 1000-year history (or perhaps because of it), the Russian state still has no universally accepted "birthday."

What's more, Russia's political ideology has changed course on at least five occasions in the past century alone, each time by approximately 180 degrees.
Nevertheless, modern Russia has felt the need to pick a day, and to give a reason.

A typical example is the "Day of Russia"(the equivalent of Independence Day), which is celebrated on June 12. On this day in 1990, the parliament of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (or RSFSR, the largest of the 15 former republics of the Soviet Union) adopted the "Declaration of State Sovereignty,"which, even at the time, and despite the still-undiminished euphoria of perestroika, provoked a wry smile from most Russian citizens.

After all -what, exactly, is Russian sovereignty? Russia has existed as an independent state since time immemorial! Everyone understood that it was merely a political ruse by Boris Yeltsin (recently appointed as chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR) in his power struggle with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

In 1992, June 12 was proclaimed a national holiday in Russia. It remains so to this day. However, the search for a truly watertight definition of national sovereignty and independence continued.

Since 2005, Russia has also celebrated the "Day of National Unity"(November 4) in memory of the expulsion of Polish invaders from Moscow in 1612. But the desired public enthusiasm was not forthcoming. As in the case of June 12, the date was there, but an ideological consensus on the pertinent historical events wasn't.

Neither 1612 nor 1990 saw the emergence of a Russian Thomas Jefferson able to sum up in one succinct sentence why the people needed their newfound independence and how to defend their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Sovereignty, Independence and the National Idea

In the rhetoric of modern Russian politics, the theme of sovereignty and independence rings loud and clear -no head of state will deliver a policy speech without reference to it.

The crisis in Russia's relations with the West, which entered the acute phase in the spring of 2014, forced the Russian political community to seek new arguments in support of its position.

Some of the statements that issued forth even seemed to be reminiscent of the American invective against Britain during the War of Independence. At times, one can almost imagine that the phrases "tyrannical London"and "King George III" have been swapped for "global domination-hungry Washington"and "President Barack Obama."

Moscow's condemnation of the "inadmissibility of U.S. interference in the internal politics of sovereign states"and the "vice of external control"has a resonance with the grievances of the freedom-loving U.S. colonies against the mother country, which in their eyes had lost all sense of proportion.

When forced to recognize Russia's economic weakness and technological backwardness, they draw comparisons with the dependence and backwardness of North America in the late eighteenth century, which nevertheless did not prevent the United States from defeating the greatest empire of the day.

One could argue in a sense that modern Russia is inspired by the ideals of the American struggle for independence, and that it seeks to harness them in its confrontation with the very state that gave birth to such ideals and still adheres by them (at least formally).

Even Russia's wished-for support from China and Latin America in the fight against U.S. hegemony recalls the Thirteen Colonies' hopes of assistance from France and Spain (whose participation, incidentally, played a decisive role in determining the outcome of the clash with Britain).

But today, in the twenty-first century, is it worth counting on a repeat scenario of the eighteenth? And will Russia's diplomatic bet pay off in trying to convince Europe and the Old World in general that it is time to reject "external control"and turn the main weapon of the New World -the ideals of the Declaration of Independence -against America itself?

The main obstacle, from our perspective, may not even be objective factors of an economic or political nature, but fundamental differences between Russian and Western notions of what constitutes independence and sovereignty.

First, the acute anxiety over maintaining sovereignty inherent in Russia and China, as well as a handful of African and Asian countries that gained independence only a few decades ago, is far less pronounced in the United States and Europe.

The last time U.S. independence came under serious threat was back during America's second war with Britain, the War of 1812. Meanwhile, united Europe has long harbored the idea that state sovereignty is no sacred cow, and can be partially sacrificed for the sake of political stability and in the name of fulfilling ambitious transnational goals.

Second, the tussle for external sovereignty in Russia over the centuries has gone hand in hand with the internal struggle for "independence from the state,"or what Isaiah Berlin might have described as "negative liberty,"i.e. freedom from interference by others.

As a result, one might say that the Russian concept of freedom and independence is comparable to the feelings of a slacker who just cut math class. The U.S. equivalentis that of the A-grade student's sense of pride when allowed by the teacher to tackle some interesting problems, while his classmates sweat over a boring test. Liberation may be a common word, but means something entirely different when Russia urges foreign partners to aspire to it -something unintelligible and barely applicable outside of the "Russian world."

Third, within the framework of modern Russian ideology the struggle for sovereignty and independence is a conservative project aimed not at the search for new forms of existence, but at the restoration of what has been lost and the preservation of traditions. At this point, Russian-style independence veers violently away from its U.S. counterpart.

In crisis-hit Europe, the nostalgia for the "pre-EU golden age"is quite notable. But will this longing be strong enough to vanquish the American idea of progress, which in the past half century has become so firmly rooted on European soil?

And, what's more - is it a fight worth winning?

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 #7
www.rt.com
July 4, 2015
Putin: We don't expect any change in hostile policies toward Russia

Russia is not expecting a soon change in the hostile policies it's subject to, President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting of the country's Security Council, adding that Moscow is not going to "trade its sovereignty."

"We cannot expect a change in the hostile policies of some of our geopolitical opponents in the immediate future," Putin said, without elaborating on the countries he was referring to.

"The reasons for pressuring Russia are clear: the country is conducting an independent policy and doesn't trade its sovereignty. This is not to everyone's liking, but it can't be any other way," he said.

Putin pointed to what he called attempts to split Russian society "to find the weak link," but maintained that they had not yielded the desired results. Those attempts came from those who introduced and continue to support "restrictive measures" against Russia, the president said.

Russia should look into all challenges it now faces and define the strategy of the country's national security, Putin said.

"It is necessary to quickly analyze the entire spectrum of potential challenges and risks - political, economic and informational, and others, and on this basis to adjust the strategy of the national security."

Putin's statement comes after the Pentagon unveiled its new military strategy where it said that Russia, North Korea and Iran are among its new challenges together with non-state groups - particularly the "violent extremist organizations" such as Islamic State and the Taliban.

The document blamed Russia for violating "numerous agreements" with its "military actions."

The countries who initiated anti-Russian sanctions have provoked the Ukrainian crisis, Putin said, and now they don't even try to analyze what is happening.

"Those who are implementing these restrictive measures toward Russia, sanctions - they are, in fact, the culprits of all the events we are witnessing in the east of Ukraine."

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev declared that the pressure on Russia is aimed at changing the country's leadership.

"Sanctions toward Russia are aimed at reducing our economic potential, to influence the policy we have been conducting. Well, in fact, [sanctions aim] to change the leadership in our country, " he said, adding that the country needs to work out a 15-year economic security strategy.
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Countries that have introduced sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine crisis:
EU, US, Australia, Canada, Albania, Iceland, Montenegro, Norway, Ukraine, Switzerland, Japan

Sanctions include travel bans for individuals and asset freezes for companies considered to be involved in the ongoing crisis in the east of Ukraine and Crimea seceding from the country.

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 #8
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
July 5, 2015
Putin's Interesting Choice of Words at Friday's Security Council Meeting
Does a change in Putin's language signify a change in his global strategy?
By Danielle Ryan
Danielle Ryan is an Irish journalist and blogger. She has a degree in Business and German from Trinity College Dublin and studied political reporting at the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism in Washington, DC. Special interests: American politics and foreign policy, US-Russia relations and media bias. Her blog can be found at journalitico.com.

When Vladimir Putin spoke to a meeting of Russia's Security Council on Friday he used a phrase which should have immediately caught the attention of anyone who has kept a close eye on the deteriorating relations between Russia and the West.

Referring to the sanctions imposed on Russia over the crisis in Ukraine, Putin said:

"We cannot expect a change in the hostile policies of some of our geopolitical opponents in the immediate future."
Geopolitical opponents.

A Google search for that exact phrase along with Putin's name indicates that this is the first time he has used it publicly in such a context, at least in the last year, which is the timeframe the search covered.

Why does it matter? Well, maybe it doesn't.

But however you look at it, "geopolitical opponents" is certainly quite a departure from the usual "our Western partners" - the stock phrase Putin has used most often to refer to the US and EU, regardless of how strained relations are.

This may be the first time Putin has framed the stand-off between Russia and the West in such stark terms. It is also worth noting, however, that the usual phrase "our Western partners" sometimes takes on a bit of a perhaps deliberately ironic tone when he uses it.

As for "geopolitical opponents" ...maybe it was simply a turn of phrase not meant to indicate any particular change in mindset. Or maybe it was a deliberate comment, intended to be picked up on in order to indicate a change in strategic thinking. It's impossible to know. But in politics, most things, from the color of a tie to the precise wording of a seemingly throwaway phrase, are deliberate. And in Putin's case, he's not someone who usually minces his words.

It's also notable that the change in language came just days after the Pentagon unveiled its latest National Military Strategy, in which it listed Russia as a primary challenge, along with ISIS, North Korea and Iran.

To be clear, this should in no way be interpreted as an attempt to partake in that ever-popular pastime of Putin mind-reading. There's already far too much of that going on, much of it closer to deliberate mis-interpretation than anything else.

We probably shouldn't read too much into this yet - although some no doubt are already building nuclear shelters in their back yards. Deliberate or random, this probably does not yet signal any sort of tectonic shift in Putin's geopolitical strategizing.

But, if things do take a turn for the even-worse, we might later trace it back to the moment when "our Western partners" became "our geopolitical opponents".

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#9
Interfax
July 5, 2015
Oppositionist Kasyanov heads up renamed PARNAS

Mikheil Kasyanov has been elected as the sole chairman of the PARNAS Party.

Kasyanov's candidacy was favored by a majority of delegates at a party congress, an Interfax correspondent reported.

The delegates also elected three deputy chairmen: senior party member Ilya Yashin, Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr. and party secretary Konstantin Merzlikin.

Kasyanov was the only candidate nominated for the PARNAS party leader. His deputy candidates also included Natalya Pelevina, Grigory Satarov and Olga Shorina. The latter two later withdrew their candidacies.

Earlier the congress delegates narrowly voted (by a single vote) to change the party charter and make amendments changing the structure of the party leadership and replacing the institution of co-chairpersons with a classical chairman and deputy chairmen.

In addition, it was decided at the congress to rename RPR-PARNAS as PARNAS. According to Kasyanov, this name "falls better on the eyes and ears of voters."
At the same time, at the party congress delegates were introduced to a democratic coalition platform that PARNAS and its allies will take to State Duma elections.

The document lists 14 spheres where the party plans change and improvement in the event it comes to power.

First and foremost is public control over government. To that end, the party plans to scrap the "archaic procedure" whereby a voter can only vote in the constituency where he or she is registered as a permanent resident, and abolish the permanent resident registration system altogether, according to the draft document.

The party proposes shifting the election of the Federation Council to the voters and criminalizing the administrative interference with election and political competition.

The coalition has announced its intention to fully remove state control over mass media and privatize all mass media outlets that are owned by the state, directly or indirectly.

As far as taxes are concerned, the democratic coalition is planning to reduce the tax burden on small and medium-sized businesses and a gradual transition to a system that largely relies on income taxation.

The coalition also has announced full departure from "grey salaries" and plans to increase tobacco and spirits excise tax.

In its regional policy, the coalition is planning to introduce direct elections of magistrates and heads of municipalities and regions. With regard to the judicial system, the opposition coalition vows to take all steps to eliminate the judicial "administrative vertical," for which purpose it is planning to scrap the laws whereby candidates for Supreme and Constitutional presidents and deputies are proposed to the Federation Council by the country's president.

The coalition is also planning to strip court presidents of the powers that make judges dependent on them.

To fight corruption, the coalition will set up an independent authority responsible for the national anti-corruption policy. It is also planning to introduce an institution of independent prosecutors to investigate the crimes of high-ranking officials, and to ratify Article 20 of the UN Convention against Corruption.

On public safety, the coalition is planning to remove some of non-core duties and cut staff numbers in the police force and the Federal Security Service.
The coalition's priorities also include police decentralization and making law enforcement agencies more accountable to the public, as well as the humanization and cleanup of the penitentiary system.

On foreign policy, the coalition is planning a shift from "the policy of mutual nuclear deterrence to one of strategic nuclear partnership."

The coalition has announces its intention to cooperate with NATO on the basis of dominating shared values and interests.

On economy, the united opposition is set to conduct a large-scale amnesty for entrepreneurs, liquidate all state corporations and conduct a budget maneuver to shift the bulk of assets from the military and police sector into the human-capital area: education, science and health care.

On culture, the coalition is planning to move control over grants and competition procedures from the state to public experts.

On state apparatus, the opposition is planning to secure maximum transparency and accountability of any government bodies and develop mechanisms for public participation in central and local government activities, and to reduce the spheres of "secrecy" by declassifying files dating back more than 50 years ago.

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 #10
Interfax
July 5, 2015
Journalist Kara-Murza Jr. suffering from poisoning flies abroad for rehabilitation

Journalist and opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr. who suffered from strong poisoning and remained in coma in a Moscow hospital for several days has flown aboard for rehabilitation.

"Kara-Murza Sr. called me and on behalf of Vladimir's family asked to thank for the words of support and for assistance. The plane carrying Vladimir has already departed to a foreign destination," lawyer of RPR-PARNAS party Vadim Prokhorov said at a congress on Sunday.

He said that Kara-Murza will undergo rehabilitation abroad for several months.

"We hope he will return to Moscow by autumn and get back to work," Prokhorov said.

It was reported on May 27 that Kara-Murza Jr. had been taken to 1st Gradskaya Hospital. The same day, the hospital's chief surgeon, Alexei Svet, said the journalist's condition was serious but stable, and doctors suspected pancreatitis and double pneumonia.

Svet said Kara-Murza Jr. was non-transportable. The chief surgeon confirmed on June 3 that the patient had emerged from a coma.

The patient's father, Vladimir Kara-Murza Sr., told Interfax on May 28 that his son had been diagnosed with "acute kidney injury."

"He has a perfect heart and excellent lungs, but bad blood tests," Kara-Murza Sr. said.

A number of tests and analyses, including those conducted at foreign clinics, have shown that journalist and opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr.'s serious health problems could have likely been caused by antidepressant overdose, a source familiar with the situation told Interfax at the end of June.

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 #11
Irrussianality
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com
July 5, 2015
CHEESY LIBERALS
By Paul Robinson
Paul Robinson is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, and the author of numerous books on Russia and Soviet history, including 'Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich: Supreme Commander of the Russian Army'

I have written some unkind words before about Russia's liberal opposition. Let me be clear: this not because I am illiberal, or think that Russia wouldn't benefit from having a more liberal order. Far from it. Rather, my criticisms derive from my sense that the people who publicly represent what is called 'liberalism' in Russia do a very bad job of it, in part because they give the impression of not liking their own country very much and preferring all things foreign. This makes many of their compatriots dislike them and what they stand for. Consequently, they harm the process of liberalization from which Russia would benefit.

Today's New York Times contains a classic example: an article by Masha Gessen complaining that because of the Russian government's counter-sanctions it's impossible to buy proper Western European cheese in Russia any more - all that's available is disgusting Russian muck. But not to worry, because Masha's rich friends are able to pick up the good stuff at the Caviar House & Prunier Seafood Bar in the departure lounge of Heathrow airport's Terminal 4, which is apparently doing a roaring trade in cheese for travelling Russians.

Who are these people who are still able to take holidays in Europe despite the depressed ruble, and furthermore are able to afford the extortionate prices of the shops in Terminal 4? Not your average Russian, one can be certain. Gessen's article seems to me quite extraordinarily out of touch. It also overflows with the sensation that everything Russian is awful (for instance, 'the reappearance of Soviet-era cheese, with its unparalleled blandness and waxlike texture'), while everything Western is superior. This is perfectly expressed in the following passage:

"'It's my first time in Europe after all that's happened,' the journalist and filmmaker Inna Denisova, a critic of the annexation of Crimea, wrote on her Facebook page in February. 'And it's exceedingly emotional. And of course it's not seeing the historic churches and museums that has made me so emotional - it's seeing cheese at the supermarket. My little Gorgonzola. My little mozzarella. My little Gruyère, chèvre and Brie. I held them all in my arms - I didn't even want to share them with the shopping cart - and headed for the cash register.' There, Ms. Denisova wrote, she started crying."

If you want to know why Russian liberals languish at about one percent in the opinion polls, you have your answer right there.

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 #12
Overwhelming Support for Putin among Russian Intelligentsia has Three Sources, Kirillova Says
Paul Goble

Staunton, July 6 - There are three reasons why support for Vladimir Putin is so high even among educated Russians: fear that their country might descend into chaos without him, their lack of a positive image about the future, and a traditional Russian deference to the state on foreign policy issues, according to Kseniya Kirillova.

One of the unexpected developments of recent times has been that journalists who usually do the interviewing are ever more often being interviewed by other journalists. Last week, Larry Poltavtsev of Snob.ru interviewed Kirillova about her experiences and views about Russia (http://snob.ru/profile/26145/blog/94867).

In the course of a 3500-word interview, Kirillova touched on many issues including the fact that Russian sources have indicated very clearly that she, a Russian citizen now preparing articles for Novy Region-2 and Radio Liberty, should not return to her homeland because she would face repression there.

But among her most intriguing comments are those concerning what she sees as the three reasons members of the Russian intelligentsia currently express their support for Vladimir Putin and his aggressive policies in Ukraine and elsewhere.  Her answer to this question, important in its own right, is particularly significant because it informs her numerous commentaries.

First, she suggests, many in the Russian intelligentsia support Putin not because of any interest in imperialism but rather out of fear and especially the fear of instability. Because people remember the 1990s and become Putin has further demonized that period, many su ffer from the fear that "a new Syria, Libya or color revolution could arise" in Russia and that "this means anarchy, a sharp decline in the standard of living, the appearance of uncontrolled bandits in the streets, and practically a civil war."

Moreover, "the overwhelming majority even of educated people believe that Russia 'is encircled by enemies,' a situation in which in the case of the weakening of central power, these enemies will detroy it instantly." As aresult, even if they believe that Putin is wrong on this or that policy, they "do not see another leader suitable for work 'in war conditions.'"

Naturally, "this is a lie because if the hostile environment exists, it does so only in response to his aggressive policy." But at the same time, "even intelligent people and perhaps in greater degree than others unconsciously feel the terrible situation that Russia is lurching toward catastrophe." Lacking the moral qualities such as bravery to do something about it, they are prepared to accept Putin's logic even if at a deeper level they know it is wrong.

Second, "the majority even among educated people who in the past belonged to the 'peresstroika' generation of the liberal intelligentsia, dream about the restoration of the Soviet Union. In part this is explicable," Kirillova says. Because the authorities offer no bright future, people take refuge in a mythologized bright past, especially as the Kremlin encourages this.

Many of them believe that it really is possible to restore the USSR, although no one knows exactly how to do this; and thus they welcome the annexation of Crimea as a step in that direction with an attitude that is also rooted in fear: they see the Soviet Union as "something powerful which no one can attack."

And third, the intelligentsia like Russians more generally finds it very difficult to "separate itself from the state on issues of foreign policy." This is not so much the result of "'imperial consciousness,'" as from a more genral sense of "'a feeling of Russia' which [the Russian] state always tries to substitute for itself."

That is especially the case with foreign policy because in that realm, "the ordinary individual understands very well his inability to influence events. In 'a battle of titans,' the ordinary person is helpless" and is aware of his helplessness. The Russian state exploits this and educated people are affected as much as others.

To explain the behavior of these people is not to justify them, Kirillova continues. Such people "believe only in what they want to believe."

Many in the Russian intelligentsia also accept the Kremlin's argument that Russia is fighting in Ukraine not with Ukrainians but with Americans. That builds them up in their own eyes.  Moreover, she says, people accept what they do because "an individual can view everything bad as good only in comparison with something that is still worse."

Thus, many for many in Russia, Putin "appears as the lesser evil in comparison with the illusory threat" which he works hard to create. Again, she suggests, understanding why this pattern works is not the basis for excusing it or thinking that nothing can be done, as hard as that may be to do.

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 #13
Moscow Times
July 4, 2015
Attack on Chubais Ally Marks Death of Russian Meritocracy - Experts
By Ivan Nechepurenko

The criminal case opened this week against Leonid Melamed, the founder of Russia's flagship innovations project, is directed against its divisive current head Anatoly Chubais, and reflects Russia's drift away from a merit-based ruling elite, pundits told The Moscow Times on Friday.

Rusnano's reformist head Chubais has long been a target for the country's security services due to his broadly unpopular liberal economic policies, according to experts, and Melamed is widely perceived as his long-term ally. The move against Melamed and his former colleagues is designed to send a message to Chubais, they said.

"The security apparatus has been looking into how to attack Chubais, but there was no permission from the Kremlin. Now it seems that permission has been granted," said Igor Bunin, head of the Center for Political Technologies think tank in Moscow.

Dmitry Oreshkin, a prominent political analyst, said he sees a wider trend in Melamed's detention.

"The competent, merit-based elite is being replaced by a more primitive and barbarian one. [Former Finance Minister] Alexei Kudrin and Chubais are economists and understand perfectly that the country has come to a dead end, so naturally there is no place for them in the system," Oreshkin said.

FSB Swoops In

Melamed was detained in Moscow on Wednesday by police and officers from the Federal Security Service (FSB), a successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB. His apartment was searched and investigators said he is suspected of large-scale embezzlement of state funds at the Rusnano corporation committed as part of a conspiracy by an organized group.

Moscow's Basmanny court ruled to put Melamed under house arrest on Friday while the investigation is under way. If charged and convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison along with a fine of up to 1 million rubles ($18,000).

According to investigators, together with two other key employees, in 2007-2009 Melamed embezzled more than 220 million rubles ($4 million) from Rosnanotech, the company that later evolved into Rusnano, siphoning off the funds as payment for consulting services to a company that he owned. Melamed was CEO of Rosnanotech for just over a year in 2007-2008 before he was succeeded by Chubais.

Melamed said in court on Friday that the accusations against him are "ungrounded" and said he is ready to cooperate with the investigation, Interfax reported.

Rusnano to the Rescue

On Thursday, Rusnano attempted to defend its former head by issuing a statement in which it said the contract with Melamed's company had been signed after an open tender with five contestants.

"By the time of the tender, Melamed was no longer working at Rosnanotech," the statement said. "Rusnano has no grounds to believe that any material damage was incurred by Rosnanotech as a result of this contract," it said.

Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin described Rusnano's statement as "strange."

"Before leaving Rusnano, Melamed had created all the conditions for state funds to be transferred to the company that he controlled, thus providing a golden parachute for himself," said Markin.

According to its website, Rusnano's mission is "furthering public policy to win a leading role for Russia on global nanotechnology markets." The company has already poured more than 100 billion rubles into tech industries in Russia - including in the fields of solar energy, medicine and biotechnology - making it one of the country's largest technology investors.

Expected sales from Rusnano's portfolio companies will total more than 300 billion rubles in 2015, according to its website. In addition to Russia, Rusnano also has offices in the United States and Israel.

Hated Figure

Rusnano's current head Chubais, a member of the St. Petersburg circle of economists who reformed the Soviet planned economy into a market one, may be regarded by some analysts as the country's top reformer, but he is widely despised by the Russian public.

Chubais is seen as being behind the controversial loans for shares privatization scheme that in the eyes of many Russians put the most lucrative chunks of Soviet assets into the hands of a few oligarchs in the 1990s.

Reacting to the news of Melamed's detention, Chubais said on his Twitter account that he was glad that Melamed had not been kept in detention.

"Nevertheless, we regard house arrest as excessive," said Chubais.

In addition to his reputation as public enemy no. 1, Chubais has made enemies among the country's political elite. In 2012, the Communist Party asked the Audit Chamber to look into Rusnano's affairs. According to Forbes magazine, the Audit Chamber found "serious violations" in the company's work that could have been connected to corruption. Chubais dismissed the allegations at the time.

The criminal investigation into Melamed's activities was opened back in 2012, the TASS news agency cited an unidentified source as saying Thursday, but remained idle for nearly three years.

No Longer Useful

Several prominent economists have left Russia in recent years. Sergei Guriyev, a former rector of the New Economic School in Moscow, left in 2013 after being interrogated by law enforcement officials. His former colleague at the school, Konstantin Sonin, followed him in March this year.

In a recent column for The Moscow Times, Sonin defended Chubais, calling him "one of a kind in Russia."

Bunin said that Chubais has been able to stay in government for more than two decades because he has two advantages: He is a skilled manager and has useful connections in the West.

"Today these connections are no longer needed, given the confrontation over Ukraine, while his managerial skills have little application at Rusnano, a utopian project from the beginning," said Bunin.

Critics have said that instead of creating a single state-run innovation project aimed at manually diversifying the country's oil-dependent economy, the government should have created a better investment climate that would have helped such projects to emerge naturally.

Oreshkin offered a broader interpretation of the perceived move against Chubais.

"In a situation where instead of implementing reforms, the country is turning into an autarky, the system is forced to eliminate such people from the government," Oreshkin said in a phone interview.

"What is happening can be described as the Chechenization of Russia," he said, drawing parallels with the southern republic whose head, Ramzan Kadyrov, has created "a virtually independent polity with its own ideology, religious policy, security structures, economy and laws," according to a recent report published by the International Crisis Group NGO.

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 #14
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
July 3, 2015
Russian daily analyzes new US military strategy
Yevgeniy Shestakov, White House gathers 'flock.' United States' new military strategy contains threats against Russia

The United States' new national military strategy, which has been disseminated by the White House, is nothing other than the strategy of a state that is "hogging the duvet" in international politics, and which regards this as the norm. The equivalent document adopted 11 years ago looked less egocentric. Then the Pentagon set itself the task of defending America against a surprise attack and ensuring its military and technological superiority over the adversary.

But now, admitting that the United States has not managed to achieve the desired level of superiority in the intervening years, the military department has staked on the creation of an international "flock" to crush disagreeable entities by numbers rather than by skill: The new doctrine is designed to consolidate ties between Washington and European states with the aid of coalitions and blocs.

However, in all these plans, America is allotted the commanding role on an exclusive basis, while the remaining participants in the partnership are obliged to submit to its will. The new strategy makes no bones about its main thrust - its authors seek to secure the economic prosperity of the United States by using the resources of its partners in Europe and Asia.

"We must promote the diversification of types of fuel and sources and paths in Europe," the document published by the White House says. It also explains that American companies should help to diversify imports of energy sources for Europe. Or take another example - according to the strategy, the United States will supply partner countries with equipment to fight terrorism and will train their security officers. But the Pentagon does not plan to do this for free.

The reason why the White House is asking for almost a billion dollars to increase its already sizeable military presence in Europe is given in the same strategy document. In it, the United States is described as "the most powerful country in the world and one that has unique advantages in terms of technologies, resources, alliances and unions, and demography." But, the document says, "these advantages are being contested." And this circumstance depresses US President Barack Obama so much that he plans to change the situation with the aid of the formation of coalitions.

The list of those encroaching on the exclusivity of the American nation is highly indicative. Apart from the main threat, the Islamic State [IS, also known as ISIS/ISIL] grouping, it includes four states that are "revisionist" on the White House's scale of things - China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Their fault is (I quote the report) "a readiness to use force to achieve their aims and the demonstration of disrespect for the sovereignty of neighbouring countries."

But here is the paradox - from this same document prepared for the Pentagon, it becomes clear that, despite the United States' commitment to the coalition format, it also reserves itself the right, if necessary, to act independently, including with the use of force. How many times before has Washington, without UN Security Council resolutions, used or planned to use force against sovereign states, beginning with the military invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Libya, or the almost predetermined military strike on Syria, which was successfully averted at the last moment through the efforts of Russian diplomacy. But the White House does not regard this kind of international activity as "revisionist," pinning this label in its strategy only on the opponents of American policies.

With regard to China, North Korea, and Iran, the report admits that "none of these countries seeks a direct military conflict with the United States and its allies." But these states "elicit certain fears among the international community," read, among the strategists in Washington.

Russia, however, occupies a special place in the strategy. On the one hand, it must be opposed - this is said even in the budget message of Barack Obama's administration. The list of which international accords Moscow, in the White House's opinion, is violating, is reflected in detail in the document. At the same time, Washington does not rule out cooperation with Russia on a limited range of questions - opposing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the battle against terrorism, and cooperation in space exploration and - this is particularly unexpected - in the development of a missile defence system. But even this is not all: In the new strategy, the United States welcomes Moscow's more active role to support stability and strengthen the security system in Asia. So that it is not easy to understand for sure from the doctrine disseminated by the White House what the US Administration is more interested in - isolating Moscow or, on the contrary, pooling efforts with it in order to resolve the problems of "third countries." Evidently, Washington decided to keep both these mutually exclusive tendencies in its strategy. Especially as the document prepared by the White House may not survive the next US presidential election: It is not inconceivable that the new head of state will want to modify it.

All the same, despite the existence of conciliatory passages with regard to Russia, the strategy's main task is worded extremely clearly: "We work with our allies and partners to contain, prohibit, and if necessary, to inflict defeat on potential opponents of the American state."

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 #15
Komsomolskaya Pravda
July 3, 2015
Russian experts comment on new US military doctrine
Aleksandr Boyko, United States Takes Swing at World With Nuclear Club. Pentagon's New Military Doctrine Describes Russia and China As 'Revisionist States'

On Wednesday, the US Department of Defence made public the country's national military strategy for the current year. The document, which was prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, designates as the main threats the extremist Islamic State [ISIL, ISIS, IS] and also four countries that are described as "revisionist": Russia, China, Iran, and the DPRK.

"Even though Russia has made its contribution to the battle against drugs and terrorism, it has more than once demonstrated disrespect for the sovereignty of neighbouring countries and a readiness to use force to achieve its aims," the Pentagon's doctrine claims. Moscow is accused of using methods of "hybrid warfare," for example, in the case of the annexation of the Crimea.

And the following conclusion is drawn: "The United States Armed Forces must provide a full spectrum of military solutions, both with regard to the revisionist states, and with regard to extremist organizations." Presumably, including with the use of nuclear weapons.

Experts' opinion

Igor Korotchenko, chief editor of Natsionalnaya Oborona [National Defence] magazine and director of the Centre for the Analysis of the World Arms Trade:

"It is useless to try to blackmail Russia"

"Evidently, the United States supposes that "revisionist states" are ones that want to change the world order that the Americans are building. This is what Mao Zedong called us at the time of the tense relations between China and the USSR. Now this term has been used by the United States. This looks very strange. It means that by implementing sovereign policies, we must be prepared to receive a nuclear missile strike from them. Well, it is good that they have warned us. Nuclear blackmail attempts against Russia will not be successful. We are capable of reliably inflicting unacceptable damage on the United States during a retaliatory strike.

"America calls into question China's right to defend its rights to the shelf and islands in the South China Sea. I do not think that Beijing will let this go by. Allegations against Iran and North Korea are heard routinely. At one time, Washington accused Saddam Hussein of developing weapons of mass destruction. This turned out to be a bluff. Now, thanks to the United States, a new weapon of this type has appeared on the territory of Iraq - ISIL."

Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of the United States and Canada:

"They are nominating us as the enemy"

"Despite the fact that the text of the national military concept says that Russia does not present a direct military threat, the United States nevertheless assigns our country to the category of countries with which direct military confrontation is possible. Moreover, it clearly understands that Russia is the only country in the world that can destroy the States with the aid of its nuclear weapons. Nor is it possible to ignore Vladimir Putin's recent statement that this year the  nuclear forces component will be supplemented by 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of overcoming any missile defence systems, even the most high tech ones. And judging by the mood, this potential will be increased in the future too.

"Today bilateral nuclear disarmament talks have been terminated; the Americans have set the tone clearly - Russia is an enemy."

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 #16
Moskovskiy Komsomolets
June 24, 2015
Russian expert warns against fuss over US plans to deploy hardware in Europe
Aleksandr Stepanov, Situation with US stationing of tanks in Europe is not new for Russia. Military expert: No need at present to react somehow sharply to this

The United States is deploying 250 items of armoured hardware in Eastern Europe. This sensational statement was made in Tallinn on 23 June by Ashton Carter, head of the Pentagon. Formations the size of a company or a battalion will be stationed at least temporarily in Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, and Germany, the US defence secretary said, pointing out that for the holding of exercises it would be expedient for military hardware to move about the European region.

At the same time military expert Viktor Murakhovskiy believes that there is nothing sensational about this statement and that the decision to station hardware in Eastern Europe is a planned one that the United States made several years ago now.

"America is simply returning to the former system - stationing stocks of arms and military hardware in distant theatres of military operations - or to the so-called forward basing concept," the expert said. "They tried this during the Cold War years. In the FRG, for example, in addition to the four divisions stationed there on a permanent basis, there were sets of arms and military hardware for another two divisions. The personnel of these two divisions, as well as the two divisions with hardware, would be transferred from the United States in the event of a crisis."

There are no US tanks or armoured hardware in Europe at the present time, and the decision was made to return a full brigade to Europe. In the expert's opinion, if this armoured hardware is distributed around the territory of a number of Eastern European countries, this will be a small gift to Russia.

"If this brigade is compactly stationed on the territory of Germany, as was the case earlier, then this can be described as creating a serious first," Murakhovskiy believes. "It is something else to cut it up into small segments and shove them into different countries - within range, what is more, of Russian tactical missiles and tactical aviation. It will be possible to embrace our 'brothers' the Poles, Letts, Estonians, and others and say a big thank-you to them for such a gift."

On the whole, the expert is convinced that this situation is not new for Russia and that there is no need at present to react somehow sharply and instantly to this.

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 #17
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
July 3, 2015
New U.S. military strategy on Russia: Strategic shift or rhetoric?
RD debates: A new U.S. military strategic document adds Russia to a list of threats to American interests. What are the implications for U.S.-Russia relations? Should Moscow view the move as a threat, or dismiss the strategy as political rhetoric?
By Pavel Koshkin

This week the United States added Russia to a list of probable threats to U.S. national interests in an update to its National Military Strategy.
The new strategy "addresses the need to counter revisionist states that are challenging international norms," such as Russia.

"[Russia] also has repeatedly demonstrated that it does not respect the sovereignty of its neighbors," the strategy continues. "Russia's military actions are undermining regional security directly and through proxy forces."

Among other threats listed in the strategy are violent extremist organizations such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Greater Syria (ISIS), North Korea and China.

Talk of a new Cold War between Russia and the West has escalated following Russia's takeover of the Crimean peninsula and the outbreak of war Eastern Ukraine in early 2014. Today, some in the media are even speculating about full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia.

Russia Direct interviewed experts and academics about the updated U.S. Military Strategy, asking whether the document actually represents a significant shift in U.S. policy towards Russia, and about the future of relations between the U.S. and Russia.

Steven Pifer, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and Brookings Senior Fellow at Center on the United States and Europe:

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) released their 2015 national military strategy at the end of June.  The document notes that some states "are attempting to revise key aspects of the international order and are acting in a manner that threatens our [U.S.] national security interests."  It cites Russia first, as a state that "has repeatedly demonstrated that it does not respect the sovereignty of its neighbors and it is willing to use force to achieve its goals."

The JCS document reflects the fact that the U.S. military-and Washington in general-now see Russia as potentially posing a threat to U.S. security interests.  A growing concern over the past 18 months, given Russia's military aggression against Ukraine, the large number of snap, no notice exercises, and the increased tempo of Russian military flights near NATO air space, is a possible Russian move to destabilize a NATO state in the Baltic region.

The probability of this may not be high, but it is not zero.  We thus have seen U.S. (and NATO) steps to bolster a conventional military presence in the Baltic states and Poland, including last week's announcement that the U.S. Army will preposition a heavy armored brigade's worth of equipment in the area.

This is not something that the U.S. military is eager to do. The Pentagon already has its hands full with the challenges posed by a rising China in the western Pacific and conflicts in the broader Middle East.  Having drawn down U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq after long campaigns in those countries, the military was hoping for a quieter period to restore unit readiness.  But Russia's more threatening rhetoric and behavior now requires greater attention to the European area.

I don't expect these moves to raise the risk of outright U.S./NATO-Russia conflict.  Quite the opposite.  A modest increase in NATO conventional military forces in the Baltic region should help make clear that the Alliance will defend the territory of member states-and hopefully avoid a Kremlin miscalculation, after a string of Russian miscalculations regarding Ukraine.

Andrei Korobkov, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University:

The "Russian threat," and its significance to the states bordering Russia, has been grossly exaggerated. Yet at the same time, contrary to the popular perception in Russia, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama appears to be dragging its feet with regard to the conflict in Ukraine. (However, it is also true that practically any U.S. administration that follows it is likely to have a more negative stance towards Russia.)

In fact, while defining Russia as a revisionist state, the new U.S. Department of Defense strategic documents show that the "Russian threat" is still viewed as having secondary importance within Washington's overall strategic equation.

The conflict in Ukraine has served as a convenient excuse for the strengthening of NATO, the introduction of stricter discipline of the allies, and for the expansion of American presence in Europe. Thus the reemergence of the "Russian threat" was in fact rather convenient for the achievement of U.S. foreign policy goals in Europe.

Still - could there be a new Cold War? In its original form, probably, the answer is "no." There is no clear ideological divide, or state of bipolarity. Meanwhile, new and highly decentralized threats have continued to emerge and proliferate.

The same American strategic documents indicate that the U.S. very seriously perceives the dangers associated with such states as North Korea and Iran, such movements as the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, and that it realizes the existence of common interests and the need to cooperate with Russia in these areas.

Whatever is said in public, there is also a growing concern about the strengthening of China and the potential for an alliance between Beijing and Moscow. The events following the introduction of the Western sanctions against Russia in 2014, including the expansion of the Chinese-Russian cooperation and the strengthening of the BRICS group of countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), have clearly created concern in Washington.

Witness the energetic and, for now, unsuccessful, attempt by the Obama administration to set up the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, an organization of Pacific Rim countries to be led by the U.S. while excluding China and Russia. Clearly, the U.S. leaders realize that China, not Russia, poses the major danger to the U.S. monopolistic position in the world.       

In my view, we can expect the continuation and even the rise in the temperature of anti-Russian polemics in the U.S. in the second half of 2015 and in 2016. At the same time, there will also be attempts, at least during the remaining Obama term, to retain some degree of cooperation and dialogue.

Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow and director of research at Brookings Institution's Foreign Policy Department:

I would describe the inclusion of Russia as a possible threat as follows-not a fictional issue or scenario, but also not a likely military contingency.  Rather, Russia is acting now in a way that makes it important for us to think hard about military issues vis-à-vis Moscow.

We need to think hard about deterrence and stability in Central Europe, and what the role of our military may be in enhancing such things. Clearly, Russia is not like North Korea or ISIS; it is still a partner of the USA and West on many matters (and also, of course, it's far more powerful than North Korea or ISIS).

But there is a category of military planning issues regarding Europe that is now much more salient and serious than believed a couple years ago. That's my interpretation. I still think the chance of Russia vs. US/NATO war is extremely small.

Andrei Tsygankov, a professor of International Relations and Political Science at San Francisco State University:

Russia indeed is now viewed as a threat to U.S. interests. President Barak Obama already introduced this perception last year in his State of the Union address. The Pentagon's strategy further consolidates the view by the U.S. ruling class.

While viewing Russia as a threat makes a war with the United States difficult to exclude, it is a remote possibility. The two countries seem to be merely returning to deterrence which may mean a greater predictability and management of hostilities than the currently highly unstable and volatile relations.

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 #18
Financial Times
July 5, 2015
Russia: Powers in the balance
Moscow wants to rewrite Europe's security order to create zones of influence as a bulwark against Nato, while wooing China
By Neil Buckley and Kathrin Hille

When top US, European and Russian officials gathered beneath the gilded chandeliers of a baroque Vienna palace last month to discuss European security after the Ukraine crisis, the ghosts of history were watching.

Two centuries earlier in salons like these, statesmen from Europe's great powers met in the 1815 Congress of Vienna - the first big attempt to agree treaties designed to ensure transcontinental peace, after the defeat of Napoleonic France. A year after Russia annexed Crimea andinvaded east Ukraine, Moscow diplomats have now proposed a new Vienna congress to boost stability on the continent.

But if last month's gathering of present and former leaders, foreign ministers and scholars was a prototype for such a meeting, it did not bode well. Participants in the largely off-the-record gathering - organised by the Munich Security Conference - traded recriminations. Russia's behaviour in Ukraine, western officials charged, had blown a hole in Europe's whole postwar order. The continent now faced a new cold war which - with a real east-west conflict at the heart of Europe and Russia "sabre-rattling" with nuclear missiles - was more perilous than the first.

"If we don't handle it right," says one participant, "we're all going to be regretting it for ever."

Though the fighting in east Ukraine still simmers despite a February ceasefire agreed in Minsk, the crisis has faded from the daily headlines. Yet as the EU rolls economic sanctions against Russia into a second year, and amid next week's anniversary of the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine with the loss of 298 lives, it is no nearer a resolution.

One problem for the west in figuring out how to respond to Moscow's military intervention has been understanding what Russia is really aiming to achieve. Vladimir Putin's Kremlin telegraphs its intentions in oblique ways. But through the fog of propaganda emanating from Moscow, the outlines of the real goals behind Russia's actions are starting to emerge. Policy makers are grappling with how any long-term settlement might be found, not just of the Ukrainian conflict, but its underlying causes.

Moscow appears to be seeking a fundamental rewriting of Europe's whole system, or "architecture", of security. Yet by riding roughshod over the existing rules it has both convinced the west of its seriousness in its pursuit of those goals, and made them politically much more tricky for the west to accede to.

The process of finding a resolution could be long and risky - and, given the huge differences between the two sides, could ultimately fail. Javier Solana, the former Nato secretary-general and EU foreign policy chief, says Europe is dealing with a continuation of the "implosion of the Soviet Union, in the same manner we dealt in the 1990s with the implosion of Yugoslavia".

Spheres of influence

The consensus among diplomats and analysts is that Mr Putin has not - as some feared last year - embarked on a rampage to rebuild the Russian or Soviet empire in a literal sense.

But Moscow is looking to expand its area of control: by re-establishing an exclusive sphere of influence at least within the boundaries of the former Soviet Union. It is unclear whether this zone excludes the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia - which have already joined the EU and Nato. Optimists drew some reassurance from the fact that when a Russian lawmaker called for the prosecutors' office to investigate whether the Baltic states' independence declarations from the USSR had been illegal the Kremlin distanced itself from the idea.

Such a zone would in effect give Moscow a veto over former Soviet republics' choice of partners, above all blocking further expansion of Nato - which it sees as a fundamentally hostile, US-dominated alliance - to neighbours such as Ukraine or Georgia.

Although Russia grabbed Crimea after last year's Ukrainian revolution, it seems reluctant to absorb eastern Ukraine, despite calls to do so from the rebels it is backing militarily. Instead, Moscow aims to use the rebel-held region as a lever to influence or destabilise Kiev's pro-western government.

Mr Putin's claims that Moscow must protect Russians like those in Crimea, left outside its borders by the Soviet collapse, may largely be cover for his geopolitical aims. But it could provide a pretext for more military interventions should he want to exert pressure or counter further expansion of western influence, anywhere from central Asia to the Baltics.

The Kremlin's agenda reflects Russia's bitter narrative of the recent past. Instead of welcoming it into the European family after the cold war, Moscow says Europe and the US took advantage of its weaknesses to absorb its former allies, expanding the EU and Nato to Russia's doorstep.

When the US talk show host Charlie Rose asked Mr Putin at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum last month whether respect, equality and a buffer zone were Moscow's demands, the president was irritated.

"You know, I hear this all the time: Russia wants to be respected. Don't you? Who does not? Who wants to be humiliated?" he said. "This is not about trust. This is about having our interests taken into consideration."

Some experts suggest the Russian leadership's paramount interest is holding on to power; it has cultivated a "humiliation myth" and hyped up supposed external plots to rally domestic support since Mr Putin returned as president in 2012 amid street protests. But the intense anti-western rhetoric has permeated society. Polls show most Russians agree the west is bent on bringing the country to its knees. And that, warn the country's beleaguered liberals, could make it a threat.

"We implore you, work with us, we are a force for good," says a senior executive in a Russian state company with extensive links to foreign investors. "You have to understand that Russia is dangerous when she is isolated."

Updating the framework

Western observers variously suggest Russia is seeking to rewrite the way the cold war ended or create a "new Yalta" - referring to the 1945 meeting where Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt carved up postwar Europe.

Russian diplomats and officials prefer to present Moscow's aims as reforming Europe's security framework through a "new Helsinki" - updating the 1975 Helsinki Final Act. This set of accords stabilised relations between the west and the Communist bloc at the height of the cold war. By confirming post-second world war borders, Helsinki also put beyond doubt Soviet control of countries east of the Iron Curtain.

A new Helsinki has been tried before. In 2008, former president Dmitry Medvedev proposed a new treaty including all European nations and the US, to transcend the dividing lines Moscow sees as imposed by Nato. The west gave it short shrift, arguing the idea had a clear subtext of carving out a new Russian zone of interest and neutering Nato.

"Helsinki I was a classic sphere-of-influence deal, and that just can't be done any more," concedes Fyodor Lukyanov, chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, a Moscow think-tank.

Russia's top diplomats have lately floated a different idea - a modern-day Congress of Vienna. Sergei Karaganov, a foreign policy veteran close to the Kremlin, launched the proposal in state media last month.

But Moscow's new Concert of Nations would look very different from its Viennese predecessor. Mr Karaganov argues that declining western economic power and the rise of emerging markets will create powerful new regional blocs. He proposes replacing narrow attempts to revamp Europe's order with a "forum for Eurasian co-operation, development and security...which could try to work out new rules and regimes for the entire Eurasian continent". A senior Russian foreign ministry official agrees: "If we want to renew the European security order, we must broaden it. Most importantly, we must bring in China."

Whether as an ally in security talks with Europe and the US or as a counterweight to the west, Mr Putin is busily wooing Beijing. This week, he will host China's President Xi Jinping and other leaders for a summit of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation in the Urals. The SCO has become Moscow's vehicle of choice to build a common agenda with Beijing and broaden its power base beyond its central Asian members. Moscow is moving to make India, Pakistan members, and - if UN sanctions are lifted - Iran as well.

While China is avoiding anything that could create the impression it is building an alliance with Russia, analysts say Beijing might be ready to participate in broader security consultations.

Whether or not talks on a new security "architecture" could ever include China and Asian states, Russia's push for such negotiations poses a dilemma for Europe and the US. Western leaders and diplomats warn they cannot be seen to have been forced to the table by Moscow's adventurism to renegotiate a system they did not believe was broken. They also cannot negotiate over the heads of smaller states, a style of great power politics which is anathema in western capitals today.

US officials, meanwhile, insist peace must first be restored to Ukraine, and Russian troops withdrawn. Only then can the west even begin to think about discussions on revising the rules of the European order. The US has also responded to requests from the Baltic states and Poland by leading efforts to bolster Nato's defences. It confirmed last month that it would position heavy weapons in the Baltic states, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania. At the same time they will contribute to a planned 5,000-strong Nato rapid reaction force to deal with crises in eastern Europe.

Forms of containment

Many senior officials suggest Europe and the US should return to a form of cold war-style containment, with several components: maintain sanctions until the Minsk ceasefire is implemented in Ukraine; further strengthen Nato's defences; pour more money into Ukraine to fend off economic collapse; keep the door open to further western integration for other ex-Soviet republics; then dig in for a potentially lengthy and uneasy stand-off with Moscow.

"Everyone says we don't want another cold war. But containment worked," says Toomas Hendrik Ilves, president of Estonia. "It was unpleasant, people were nervous, but...we didn't have people killed in [wars in] Europe."

Some influential voices say the west should also engage with Russia. "There has to be dialogue about how we can help Russia create a new way of meeting its anxieties, historical concerns and its need to feel that it is secure in the new world of which it is a part," says Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former UK foreign secretary.

Mr Solana, the former EU foreign policy chief, agrees: "We share this continent, so we have to talk," he says.

Yet some diplomats, even from ex-Soviet states, warn Europe can never be safe unless the status of Russia's neighbours is fixed. Oleksandr Chalyi, a former Ukrainian deputy foreign minister, says his country was seen as a key element of European security when it voluntarily gave up its Soviet nuclear arsenal in 1994. It later became a "key element of insecurity, because Washington, Moscow and Brussels didn't manage to agree on its security status".

Military neutrality, like that of Austria after the second world war, might be in Ukraine's best interests, he says, if it were backed by collective security guarantees and allowed Kiev to choose its own political and economic direction. Austria joined the EU, but not Nato.

Navigating from today's confrontational environment to such an outcome would require courageous diplomacy at least equalling that of the statesmen of 1815. But the alternative might yet focus minds. As another senior Vienna participant warned, the longer the Ukrainian conflict festers, the greater the danger of it spreading to other parts of Europe. "And then," he says, "war on a wider scale could become thinkable."
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Timeline: Decades of realignment

1945 Yalta conference. Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt meet in Crimea to discuss Europe's postwar reorganisation.

1949 Nato, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, is formed between the US and countries in western Europe.

1955 The Warsaw Pact defence treaty among Communist states is signed, partly in response to West Germany's incorporation into Nato.

1975 The Helsinki Final Act eases cold war tensions and recognises postwar borders.

1989 The Berlin Wall falls, communism collapses across eastern Europe.

1990 Reunification of Germany. The Paris Charter, allowing European states to choose their own alliances, is seen as ending the cold war.

1991 The Soviet Union collapses, creating 15 independent states.

1999 Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic join Nato. Nato bombs Serbia during the Kosovo crisis, angering Russia.

2004 Seven more ex-communist states, including the three former Soviet Baltic republics, join Nato.

2008 Russia fights a five-day war against ex-Soviet Georgia, after moves towards bringing it into Nato.

2014 Protests topple Ukraine's Russian-leaning president Viktor Yanukovich. Russia annexes Crimea and foments war in eastern Ukraine.

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 #19
The Vineyard of the Saker/Izvestia
http://thesaker.is
July 5, 2015
The Primakov Policy
Writer and political analyst Kirill Benediktov on Yevgeni Maximovich's role in Russian politics
By Kirill Benediktov
Original: http://izvestia.ru/news/588200#ixzz3eCHM6D9i (June 26, 2015)
Translation by: Chele

It seemed that Yevgeni Maximovich Primakov would live forever.

He was a wise old man, holding no official post, but always ready to help the country. To give advice to the people invested with real power; to meet informally with foreign partners-not the ones you see on TV, but those who make the decisions; to influence his friends and followers, who held key posts in various powerful agencies.

Primakov was the incarnation of the concept of "soft power," and virtually its only practitioner who was fighting for Russia's glory.

Of course, the media is as full of "soft power" soldiers as a tin of sardines. They go on and on about "the Chinese danger," and how Russia, having quarrelled with the West, is doomed to become a raw materials appendage of China, or how it is for naught that the Kremlin is trying to establish mutually beneficial contacts with Turkey. They carry on about Iran using us as a pawn in its game with Washington, and how Beijing and Delhi will never trade in their friendship with America for the dubious benefits of an alliance with Moscow... Now that Primakov is gone, those thin, whiny voices will be louder and shriller on the air.

Right now, that is insignificant. Because Primakov's idea of creating a Great Triangle, Moscow-Delhi-Beijing, is becoming a real political construct before our very eyes, no matter how loud the liberal jackals may yap.

Yevgeni Maximovich first proclaimed the idea of the Great Triangle during his visit to Delhi in 1998. Many of us recall the condition Russia was in at that time: politically and economically crushed, having barely survived the August default, and just barely beginning to find our way out of the deep crisis into which Russia had been plunged by the "young reformers" in alliance with the corrupt members of the Yeltsin Family.

And here was the new prime minister of a country which, everybody believed, if it did recover from the misfortunes piled upon it, would not do so any time soon, proposing to his partners in India and China to form a strategic triangle, Moscow-Delhi-Beijing. Even in the Asian capitals, the proposal met with restrained skepticism.

Not to mention the Russian liberals, who-instantly-all became professional orientalists, and from the heights of their professionalism took it upon themselves to lecture Yevgeni Maximovich, who, they evidently believed, before December 1998 had understood nothing about the fine points of eastern politics (having to no avail been director of the Institute of Oriental Studies for 12 years and director of the Foreign Intelligence Service for five). "How could he not realize that relations between Delhi and Beijing are too tense, for there to be some kind of alliance?" they asked condescendingly. Just seven years after Primakov's visit to Delhi, however, China and India were already calling themselves "good neighbors and friends," and in 2012 Beijing announced that Chinese-Indian relations could become the most important bilateral partnership of the century.

And after Russia's "isolation" by the Atlantic West, it became apparent that Moscow's joining the alliance of great Eurasian nations, as it took shape, was the only pathway to preservation of its political and economic sovereignty.

"No man is an island, entire of itself," wrote John Donne. In the 21st century's global world, no single county (excepting, perhaps, North Korea) can exist under a system of autarky. If a nation wants not only to survive, but to preserve its status as a great power, it must adhere to an alliance, either one already in existence or one taking shape.

Beginning in 1991, there were attempts to turn Russian into a junior, dependent partner of the West within the Anglo-Saxon globalized model. The Yeltsin Clan led Russia under that paradigm, and, following the "junior partner" logic, deliberately destroyed the industry and agriculture, science and culture, and education and health care of this great nation. The servile foreign policy of the first half of the 1990s, personified by Andrei Kozyrev, followed exactly that logic.

Yevgeni Maximovich Primakov accomplished, so it would seem, the impossible. As a politician of the system, fully integrated into the state machine, he managed to stop this humiliating slide of Russia toward the status of a country "in receivership," and to reformat our foreign policy, restoring honor and decency. The high point of the "Primakov Renaissance," of course, was the famous "turnaround over the Atlantic."

On March 24, 1999, Primakov, heading a large Russian delegation, was en route to the USA for talks with Vice President Albert Gore. With two hours of flight time remaining to the U.S. coast, Primakov took Gore's phone call, hearing from him that the decision had been taken to bomb Serbia, in order to force Milosevic to pull his troops out of Kosovo. Primakov summoned the aircraft's captain and ordered him to reverse course. Only after the plane had turned around, did he call Yeltsin. "Do you have enough fuel to get back to Moscow?" asked the first President of Russia. "With a stopover at Shannon [Ireland], yes," Primakov replied. "See you soon."

This was a slap in the face to those U.S. circles, who had viewed the Russian leadership as a puppet government. ... It was a shock for Washington's Russian clientele, who felt the ground beginning to give way under their feet.

Primakov's plane had scarcely landed in Moscow, when the influential newspaper Kommersant, controlled by Boris Berezovsky through an Iranian businessman, published a vicious front-page polemic by Vladislav Borodulin, titled "Russia Lost $15 Billion Thanks to Primakov."

Borodulin accused Primakov of offending the USA, which had led to cutting off money from millions of Russian pensioners and state-sector workers, and had buried the entire Russian economy. Subsequently the editor-in-chief of Kommersant, Raf Shakirov, apologized to Primakov. The next day, he was fired by Berezovsky's loyal servant, Leonid Miloslavsky. ...

Some people believe that the "turnaround over the Atlantic" cost Primakov the prime minister's chair. On May 12, Yeltsin fired him, although public opinion polls showed that Yevgeni Maximovich was the most popular prime minister in the post-Soviet history of Russia. Over 80 percent of those surveyed were against the removal of Primakov, but the Yeltsin Clan, of course, was listening to other voices.

The compradors who had seized power and carved up property, saw him as their mortal enemy. Possibly Primakov might have held on to power even after the "turnaround over the Atlantic," since ultimately Yeltsin liked to annoy "his friend Bill," as the "sprint to Pristina" showed. But the Primakov-Maslyukov government was unacceptably leftist for the ruling oligarchy.

Who cares, that it was none other than this government, in reviving Russian industry when it would seem to have been killed off, that pulled the country out of the quagmire of the liberal reforms? If Primakov had remained premier, his chances of winning the Presidential election would have increased many times over.

So the oligarchy and the Family declared war on Primakov.

In this war, many who acted on the side of the oligarchy lost their own professional honor. The TV hit man Dorenko, for example, will go down in the history of journalism for his segment on "Primakov's hip" [about Primakov having surgery in a Swiss clinic]. It is generally believed that that war ended with the Family's victory. The Fatherland-All Russia Party of the regional elites, which had supported Primakov, was smashed in the 1999 Parliamentary elections by the new interregional movement Medved. On New Year's Eve, Dec. 31, 1999, Yeltsin appointed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as his successor.

At that time many people, including the author of these lines, viewed those events as tragic for Russia. The pro-Western oligarchy retained control over property and the main institutions of power, while the only real alternative to them-Primakov and his team-were pushed to the side.

But a few years passed, and the balance of forces within the Russian elite inexorably began to change. Vladimir Putin gradually, without any abrupt moves, freed himself from the Family's men, who had maintained control by the Anglo-Saxon financial and political organizations. The most influential of the pro-Western politicians, Primakov's sworn enemy and the eminence grise of the Yeltsin Family, Alexander Voloshin, relinquished the post of Presidential chief of staff.

Meanwhile Yevgeni Maximovich Primakov, assuming the honorary post of chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, seemingly not terribly important within the hierarchy, continued his soft influence on the Kremlin's policy. It unexpectedly became clear that there was no tension or mistrust between him and the President; on the contrary, the President would listen to Primakov's advice, deliberately appearing with him on TV.

One can only imagine the "smashing of assumptions" experienced by the late Boris Abramovich Berezovsky, who at one time had counted on the young FSB Director Vladimir Putin, not least because the latter had found various pretexts to decline invitations to visit Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov.

Russia's foreign policy, meanwhile, was increasingly shaped in accordance with the principles formulated by Primakov earlier. And the policy Moscow pursues today, albeit with various qualifications, in the style of "one step forward, two steps back," is the Primakov policy. It is a policy directed toward building a powerful Eurasian bloc of nations, independent of the Anglo-Saxon financial and political centers.

And when that bloc finally becomes a geopolitical reality, we shall realize for what we are obliged to this wise and strong man. To the man, who once upon a time pulled Russia back from the brink of an abyss.

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 #20
Moscow Times
July 6, 2015
Will Moscow Push for Settlement in Ukraine?
By Vladimir Frolov
Vladimir Frolov is president of LEFF Group, a government relations and PR company.

Moscow is sending conflicting signals about its plans for Ukraine. For once, there are signs it is seeking an honorable exit and a comprehensive settlement.

Ukrainian sources report that Moscow, through business channels that include the CEO of one state-owned oil major, is quietly sounding out Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko on a grand bargain that would include Russia's final withdrawal from the Donbass with Ukraine's recognition of Russia's sovereignty over Crimea in exchange for about $100 billion in debt forgiveness, gas price rebates and other financial incentives. If confirmed, this would be a smart move that this column has repeatedly advocated.

Russia is also sounding out the EU about staging another self-determination referendum in Crimea under OSCE monitoring.

Strangely though, Moscow is throwing a wrench into the Minsk II process just when it was turning its way. On June 2, the leader of the Donetsk separatists Alexander Zakharchenko announced that the DNR would hold local elections on Oct. 18, a week before similar elections in Ukraine.

This is self-defeating since, with prodding from Brussels and Washington, Kiev was moving toward holding the local elections in the separatist territories as in the rest of Ukraine. If Moscow played its cards right, this election could have produced legitimate pro-Russian authorities, with whom Kiev would have to negotiate the special status envisioned under Minsk II.

It is Moscow's response to the constitutional changes unveiled by Poroshenko last week that provide for substantial decentralization of power to Ukraine's regions.

This is consistent with Minsk II, which does not require that the "special status" be written into the Constitution. Moscow's complaint is that Ukraine's constitutional reform has not been agreed beforehand with the separatists, but this is not what Minsk II requires either.

"Russia wants to write the future Ukrainian constitution, and Ukraine wants to prevent that," says Carnegie Europe scholar Ulrich Speck. "The question is how much of a Russian role the West will accept in the formulation of Ukraine's new constitution? It won't accept a constitution that violates basic principles of sovereignty."

Moscow needs to decide soon what it wants more - reaching a comprehensive settlement and an honorable exit or drafting a new Ukrainian constitution to ensure its control over Ukraine. The two goals are incompatible.

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 #21
RIA Novosti
July 2, 2015
Russian volunteers making up to 2 per cent of Donbass separatists - rebel envoy

Moscow, 3 July: The number of Russian volunteers among Donbass rebels does not exceed 2 per cent, Vladyslav Deyneho (Vladislav Deynego), the authorized representative of the [self-proclaimed] Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) at the contact group, has said.

Moscow has repeatedly said that it is not a party to the conflict in east Ukraine. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich has said that "there have not been any" Russian servicemen in Ukraine. The Russian army does not fight there but there are volunteers who "cannot stand aside from what is happening in Donetsk and Luhansk regions", he added.

"The proportion of Russian volunteers among the rebels in Donbass... [ellipsis as published] is one to 50 but no more than that," Russkaya Sluzhba Novostey [Russian News Service, a pro-Kremlin radio station] quoted Deyneho as saying.

Deyneho was commenting on the Ukrainian security forces' report to Washington called "Russian aggression against Ukraine". One can hardly come across any Russian volunteers among the rebels but there are indeed units mostly formed of Russians, Deyneho said.

The Ukrainian authorities and Western countries have repeatedly accused Russia of interfering in Ukraine's internal affairs. Russia denies this and rejects such accusations as unacceptable. Moscow has repeatedly said that it is not involved in the situation in the southeast and that the settlement of Ukraine's political and economic crisis is in its interests.

Also, the Russian Defence Ministry has repeatedly said that it does not provide the rebels with any military hardware, munitions and other aid. The Defence Ministry described Kiev's statements to this effect as "absolute nonsense" which is "beyond any criticism". Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that the statements about Russian military presence in Donbass are unfounded and no-one has managed to provide any specific proof of this so far despite the repeated accusations.

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 #22
Forbes.com
July 2, 2015
Gazprom Done Subsidizing Ukraine, Russian Gov't Says
By Kenneth Rapoza

Russia's gas giant Gazprom is done giving subsidies to Ukraine, a top official said this week following the Kyiv's move to stop paying the Russians for deliveries.

"The discount on gas for Ukraine is in line with the prices that are in place in countries and territories around Ukraine. The Ukrainian side said today that it counted on a larger discount of around 30 percent," Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Wednesday on Rossiya-24 television after talks with its main business partner Naftogaz in Vienna. Both companies are state owned. Gazprom said it offered Kyiv the same gas prices for the third quarter of 2015 as it did in the second quarter of $247.18 per 1,000 cubic meters, a $40 break from market prices.

But Naftogaz says the Russians are still not abiding by a delivery and payment agreement made earlier this year.
The two sides have been locking horns on everything from the winter gas deal to the Minsk II accord, which speaks to Russia's unofficial support of rebels in eastern Ukraine.

CEO of Russian gas giant Gazprom, Alexei Miller, says Ukraine's gas prices are not going to change for the next four years. Ukraine wants Gazprom to agree to a temporary solution as Russia's version of Greece continues to struggle economically. (Photo by ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty Images)

On June 30, it was widely reported that the state-run Naftogaz stopped buying Gazprom's natural gas as of Wednesday. Naftogaz said they did not yet agree on supply conditions for the upcoming quarter.

European-bound Gazprom gas via Ukraine will continue in full in accordance with the existing transit contract, however.

For its part, Naftogaz said this week that it is ready to renew gas purchases quickly from Gazprom if they can reach a temporary agreement. Such an agreement should cover all unresolved issues related to the disputed gas supply contract between Naftogaz and Gazprom at least until March 31, 2016.

Russia is not interested in Ukraine's short-term solutions.

At the recent trilateral negotiations in Vienna, the European Commission and Ukraine asked Russia to agree on the temporary deal. Such a deal might prevent the crisis from continuing into the winter season and ensure security of supply of Russian gas to Europe. The Russians rejected the offer.

Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller said the company will not introduce changes to the pricing mechanism for Russian gas supplies to Ukraine until the end of 2019, state media reported.

"Gazprom has not and will not make any changes to the pricing mechanism for gas supplies to Ukraine until the end of 2019," Miller said.

Shares of Gazprom fell 1.9% on Wednesday. The gas company continues to struggle to trade over $6 a share as oil prices remain low and the overhang of Ukraine-related sanctions has turned off investors to those companies sanctioned by the U.S. and European Union.

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 #23
Reuters
July 6, 2015
No Clear Successor in Sight as Kazakhstan's Nazarbayev Turns 75

ASTANA/ALMAT - Kazakhstan's veteran leader Nursultan Nazarbayev celebrates his 75th birthday on Monday, in good shape and vastly popular, but the expected fireworks and fanfare mask uncomfortable questions about the future of the second-largest post-Soviet economy.

Nicknamed "Papa" and officially titled "Leader of the Nation," he extended his 26-year reign in April by another five years, "apologising" to his critics for cornering 97.7 percent of the vote in an early election which Western observers said offered no real alternative.

With sweeping powers that enable him to keep a tight lid on dissent, the former steelworker prides himself on maintaining discipline and stability in his mainly Muslim country of 17.5 million while overseeing market reforms.

He justifies his iron grip on power by saying it safeguards his Central Asian nation, with a population including Kazakhs, Russians, Ukrainians, ethnic Germans and Tatars, from the shocks that have led to turmoil in other ex-Soviet nations.

"Tell me, does anyone here in Kazakhstan want a repeat of what happened in Ukraine, or in Georgia, or in Moldova? Does anyone want to see this here?" he said to a question about ceding some of his presidential powers to parliament.

"These countries all have parliamentary republics," Nazarbayev said in a documentary made specially for his birthday and aired on July 1.

Most of his opponents have been jailed or have fled abroad but Nazarbayev pays little heed to human rights groups which criticise him for crackdowns on freedom of speech and assembly.

In 2011, he showed his readiness to adopt openly tough measures to curb dissent when a strike over pay and conditions in the oil town of Zhanaozen and a nearby village, escalated to riots.

Police shot dead at least 15 people and a critic of the president was later jailed for more than seven years on charges of rallying oil workers to try to topple the government.

Allowed by the law to run for president as many times as he wants, he has said that he will groom a successor for himself.

But, unnerving the vast business community which has invested more than $200 billion in the oil-rich nation since independence, he has not dropped the slightest hint about who this might be.

However, even if he officially leaves the stage one day, his status of "Leader of the Nation" will still allow him to play a key role in ruling the nation.

"Many, including investors, say: 'May this system just not get worse'," said Kazakh political analyst Dosym Satpayev. "They see that the system is not ideal, but at least it's stable."

Since 2008, the Day of the Capital Astana has been timed to fall on his birthday, ensuring it is always a national holiday.

The new capital, moved from Almaty in the south to northern windswept steppeland that was once home to Stalin-era Gulag concentration camps, is his brainchild project.

Brightly illuminated and packed with oddly-shaped sky-scrapers, the futuristic city has become a symbol of Kazakhstan's economic growth. Critics point to social inequality in a nation five times the size of France and rich in oil and minerals, from uranium to copper.

Between East and West

Displaying his art of political manoeuvring, Nazarbayev has built good relations with both the far-flung European Union and the United States, and neighbours Russia and China.

He has weathered Western criticism for backtracking on pledges of democratic reform; but he has proven a reliable strategic partner in the volatile region bordering Afghanistan and attracts massive investment from European and U.S. companies.

He has opened up the lucrative oil sector to Chinese companies, won Chinese loans to modernise local industries and overseen a sharp rise in mutual trade.

Crucially, he enjoys warm ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. After Ukraine's pro-European street protests and Russia's annexation of Crimea, he told the Kremlin leader last March he "treats with understanding" the logic of his actions.

He enthusiastically embraced the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union, which includes Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, despite critics' view of it as Moscow's attempt to restore as much as possible of the former Soviet Union.

After Putin said last August that Kazakhstan had never existed as a state before Nazarbayev, the latter reacted calmly, declaring 2015 the year of the 550th anniversary of the Kazakh Khanate.

Even Nazarbayev's most outspoken critics recognise his efforts in solidifying Kazakhstan's sovereignty and preserving stability and inter-ethnic peace.

"However, there is this huge drawback - his flourishing personality cult, which simply discredits the country and the president himself," said opposition activist Amirzhan Kosanov.

"I have a feeling Nazarbayev does not know himself how the structure of state power will be shaped if he steps down."

It appears that for Nazarbayev, one thing is certain already - he has reserved a place for himself in history.

"I believe that whatever we, our generation, are doing, will remain in the memory of our people forever," he told the documentary about his jubilee. "When you work, you will always be criticised. This is normal."

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 #24
American Committee for East-West Accord
http://eastwestaccord.com
July 6, 2015
The US, Russia and Ukraine: The Danger Escalates
By John Pepper
John Pepper is the former Chairman and CEO of The Procter & Gamble Company.  He also served as Chairman of The Walt Disney Company and of the Yale Corporation. He served as CEO and currently is Honorary Co-Chair of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati.  He is the author of two books:  "What Really Matters," and "Russian Tide:  Procter & Gamble's Entry into Russia." ACEWA Founding Board Member.

As we all know, it is hard for an individual or nation to view the world or a particular situation through the eyes of another person or nation. I have never seen this more true than what is transpiring now over the Ukrainian crisis as it is viewed by the United States and Russia.

This is a subject of deep concern because the security of our world is threatened and we risk losing the need for collaboration on such transcendent issues as nuclear proliferation and terrorism in Iran and Syria.

I could only look with irony at the statement of Defense Secretary Ash Carter as reported in the Wall Street Journal last week that the Pentagon is committing military gear to a NATO task force designed to deter Russian aggression because Moscow is, in Carter's words, trying to "reestablish a Soviet-era sphere of influence."

How precisely that echoes Russia's concerns-that the West, and particularly the United States, has, over the past 20 years, extended its "sphere of influence" by extending NATO well beyond what was expected in the early 1990s, even to the point of considering expansion to Ukraine and Georgia.

There is a great danger in the affairs of humans and also of nations in self-fulfilling expectations.  These self-fulfilling expectations can be for the better and they can be for the worse.  The expectations held by Russia toward the United States and the United States toward Russia today are all "for the worse."

We hear veiled and sometimes bald assertions that Russia intends to enter countries previously part of the Soviet empire-the Baltics, Poland and all of Ukraine.  Putin described such a notion as "insane."   He is right.  Can you imagine the sheer idiocy of Russia undertaking to move into those countries?  Why would they do this?  There is no driving ideology as there might have been in the case of Soviet Communism.  Surely, Russia has no need for more land.

Russia, quite understandably, looks for long-term economic and social ties with Ukraine.  But to try to take over a country where the majority of people would be repelled by being part of Russia makes no sense.  It would make Russia the pariah of the world and give them nothing in return but trouble.

We are failing to seriously examine what is the true strategic intent of Russia.  I am not suggesting that they haven't supported the Separatists in Eastern Ukraine; I feel quite sure they have, probably to help ensure that a constitutional settlement is finally reached that gives appropriate rights to the ethnic Russians living there.

The interests of the United States and Russia should be very simple and the same.  We should support what has been so long coming-the creation of a unified Ukraine, with federalization much as it exists in other countries.  Pulling Ukraine together is a huge challenge.  The fissure between Eastern Ukraine and the rest of the country is large, ethnically based and now deepened by a civil war.

Russia, the United States, all of us, should do everything we can to support this constitutional settlement.  We should not allow anything in our control to get in the way of that settlement, for nothing other than that will bring peace to the Ukrainian people.  And that's what they want.  That's what the people in every country want.

I fear that most people are so far removed from the horror of war today that we have forgotten what it's like.  It might serve everyone to go back and look at the movie "Platoon" or "Saving Private Ryan" again to be reminded what the cost of war is to human life.

I believe we are at a historical precipice.  I am extremely worried by the unfettered "propaganda," and that's what it is, on both sides of the issue.  This has had the insidious effect of bringing the people of Russia and of the United States to view the "other" as "evil."  And in fact they are not.  They are committed to their own national interests.

There are some who dismiss Russia as a declining economic power faced with negative demographics.  Such dismissal is ill advised and blind to history.  In fact, some of the most important demographic measures (e.g., lifespan) are improving in Russia.  Russia will be one of the handful of most important, influential nations for generations to come, just as it has been in the past.  It has the natural resources, the landmass and the educated and committed people that will make that happen.  Russia will be a bridge between Europe and Asia.  The tragedy of the Ukrainian crisis is that it has, at least for a time, thwarted its natural positive relationship with Europe.

Ironically, I believe the imposed economic sanctions may accelerate the economic and industrial development and greater self-sufficiency of Russia which it has failed to develop over the past quarter-century despite numerous pronouncements of the need.  Now, in many ways, they have no choice.  While the sanctions have led to greater capital flight and reduced foreign direct investment, their long-term impact may be more beneficial than detrimental to the Russian economy and its competitive position with other nations.

Every nation, every person, wants to be treated with respect.  There is no way that will happen if we are not able to view the current situation through each other's eyes.  That doesn't mean we will compromise and tolerate people taking away the freedom of another nation or people.  We need to draw a bright line on the support we will provide to countries to which we pledge support, but we should not make the mistake of attributing motivations and nefarious intent to other people which, in fact, they declaim and which, in fact, as we examine the reality of the situation and our "natural" relationships, we see no reason to assume.

We also need to stop carrying out diplomacy and negotiations through the media seeking sharp headlines that show we "mean business" and are tough.  We need to establish what the bright lines are, but we should do so privately, even if vehemently, through credible spokespeople.  We have them in the President of the United States and the President of Russia and their foreign secretaries.

Let's deal with this situation, recognizing the seriousness that it represents to the future of our nation, of Russia, and the people of Ukraine and the world.
--

I write as a concerned citizen and retired business leader who has been involved in Russia for a quarter of a century.  I have seen first-hand how common the interests are of the Russian and American people and how much we can accomplish together.  I hope business leaders with similar experience will express their own point of view on what I regard as the perilous state of our nations' relationship.

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 #25
The International New York Times
July 6, 2015
Russia's Virtual Universe
Contributing Op-Ed Writer
By MAXIM TRUDOLYUBOV
Maxim Trudolyubov is the opinion page editor of the business newspaper Vedomosti and the author of a forthcoming book on power and property in Russia.

MOSCOW - When you come back to Moscow after a long absence the city overwhelms you, swallowing you up in its around-the-clock bustle. It is as hectic and surreal as ever. Parks, cafes and clubs are all full of well-dressed people. And those with clout, the powers that be in the political, economic and media worlds, continue to add new diversions.

Prominent among them is the $27 million Garage Center, a sophisticated museum of contemporary art that has just opened in Gorky Park. It was created by the socialite Dasha Zhukova, funded by her husband, the billionaire tycoon Roman Abramovich, and designed by one of the world's most influential architects, Rem Koolhaas.

Though Ms. Zhukova's collection of Rothkos may not be everyone's cup of tea, Muscovites will soon have another marvel to admire: a 24-meter statue of Vladimir the Great, the prince who Christianized the state of Kievan Rus in the late 10th century. This storied leader is depicted, sword at his side, bearing a large cross, standing in a dignified, traditional manner. What's more surreal is the controversy over where to put it.

Originally, Prince Vladimir was to be placed on an observation deck in the Sparrow Hills overlooking Moscow. Now city officials want to erect it in Lubyanka Square, in front of the headquarters of the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., where a statue of the widely feared Felix Dzerzhinsky once stood. The monument to the founder of the Cheka, the precursor of the K.G.B., was toppled in 1991, but Communist Party officials want it back in its former site and have proposed a referendum to resolve the issue.

They are unlikely to get what they want. Dzerzhinsky may be a Communist saint, but the symbolism of the prince's statue is inescapable. It will celebrate the new Vladimir, not just the old one. This may be obvious, but the subject is avoided in polite conversation.

There are other topics - rising prices, the fighting in Ukraine, the shape of things to come - that people don't like to think about, even though these subjects are at times unavoidable. The economy is entering "a full-fledged crisis," former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told Parliament recently. He warned that Russia's gross domestic product is forecast to be 4 percent lower this year than it was in 2014. Meanwhile, food prices are rising. Official figures indicate a 23 percent jump for the year ending in March, but an informal survey of grocers in my neighborhood suggests a 30 percent jump is more realistic.

For the first time in 10 years, the government said it won't be able to raise pensions and other social benefits to fully match inflation, which is officially forecast at 12 percent for the current year. In the first quarter of 2015, more than 23 million people were officially classified as living below the poverty line, three million more than last year.

Nevertheless, polls show that President Vladimir Putin is even more popular now than he was a year ago. Most of my countrymen see the reasons behind our economic failures elsewhere, not in Russia. "Why are they doing this to us?" a neighbor who knows I am a journalist asked me, referring to Western sanctions. His remark was typical. I try to explain that they were imposed in response to the Kremlin's land grab in Crimea, and that the plunge in oil prices was due to a variety of global economic and political factors. But he just gave me that smile. He knows what's really being done to "us" by "them."

He's just one of the many Russians who live in an imaginary, media-concocted universe. My countrymen have gone passive; they've become an audience to a Kremlin-distilled version of current events; they watch rather than act. Even as our government becomes less and less "Soviet," as it consolidates and whittles down health clinics, schools and other services, the Kremlin keeps imposing the old Soviet world view on our citizens.

Domestic issues do not merit airtime on major political news and talk shows. International stories take the lion's share of programming. Television presents everything that is going on in the world as an epic battle between a great nation and evil foreigners. The recent FIFA corruption scandal and the resignation of its chairman Joseph Blatter was presented by "Vesti Nedeli," an important weekly commentary show, as an attempt by the United States to take over world soccer. Russia and Putin were portrayed as taking a brave stand to protect the game. But once Mr. Blatter resigned the show stopped following the FIFA story.

Discussing Russia's ouster from the G-8, Vitaly Tretyakov, a fiercely pro-Putin commentator on one of the major political talk shows, referred to our country as a "dissident" nation. Mr. Tretyakov, who was a forceful advocate of a free press back the 1990s, declared, without irony: "To be a dissident is a noble vocation." He was referring of course not to the Russian opposition (they are all just stooges of the West anyway), but rather to our courageous president and his associates, who dare to show their independence and integrity by standing up to American-led Western bullying.

The message is always the same. Mr. Putin battles corrupt global elites who are interested only in keeping power. Their center is Washington. Its "party bosses" are depriving Russia of her rightful place in the world. They have defamed and isolated her, sent her into exile, cut her off from her sources of wealth.

The universe presented on Russian television is nothing but a bizarre, inverted image of an imaginary Soviet Union, a world in which the Cold War is turned on its head. It is now the people in the Kremlin - the Putin supporters, not his critics - who are presented as the true dissidents of our times. They are the heroes who take a stand against global injustice and foreign domination. In Mr. Putin's television dystopia, the "party bosses" in Washington are doing to Russia exactly the kind of things the Soviet Communist leadership and secret police used to do to Cold War era dissidents and human rights campaigners like Andrei Sakharov. These foreigners are depriving Russia of her rightful place in the world; they are sending her into isolation, cutting her from her sources of income and casting aspersions upon her honor.

Meanwhile, Moscow's citizens play on, erecting monuments, frequenting cafes and otherwise amusing themselves. They don't want to see that their own economy is in crisis, that their beloved country is widely viewed as one of the world's most disruptive forces, and that their future appears increasingly grim. Instead, they sit back and watch the show, entranced by the lie that their country is somehow engaged in a holy struggle worthy of Prince Vladimir.

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 #26
The Sunday Times (UK)
July 5, 2015
Russia's young and poor crave war with the West
Graffiti on Moscow's sink estates talks of war, while the intelligentsia hope everyone will come to their senses
By Helen Womack Moscow
Helen Womack reported from Moscow from 1985-2015. She is the author of The Ice Walk: Surviving the Soviet Break-up and the New Russia (Melrose books, 2013).

It all began with a little black and orange military ribbon, revived as a symbol of remembrance and pride in the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany. Jaunty stickers on the backs of cars said: "Thanks, Granddad, for the Victory" and "To Berlin!"

This year there have been more belligerent expressions of Russian patriotism. Some drivers have favoured a new sticker for their cars - a cartoon of a Red Army soldier sodomising a Nazi one, with the caption: "We could do it again."

Pro-Putin and anti-western T-shirts are all the rage. "Obama-chmo" [Obama's a schmuck], and "Bardak Obmana" [whorehouse cheat] and "Better a third world war than a second perestroika" are just some examples of the rather crude, politically incorrect slogans on apparel.

This attitude is more evident on the sink estates than in Moscow's city centre, where elegantly dressed audiences attend showings at the Moscow International Film Festival and rounds of the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition.

In the tenements, however, there is a jingoistic, retro trend, encouraged by state propaganda and sabre-rattling coming from the government, but it's hard to believe that the good-hearted and cultured people among whom I've lived for 30 years seriously intend to go to war.

After three decades I have to leave Russia now, as my journalist's accreditation has not been renewed. I have not been expelled exactly, but my paperwork has failed to satisfy the authorities. "It's a hybrid expulsion," joked one friend. Perhaps it is simply that my time in Moscow is up.

Old friends, both Russians and long-term expats, have been keen to catch up with me in my last days and we discussed why so many seem to feel nostalgia for the Soviet Union.

"Strangely," said one, "It is often young people who never experienced Soviet life who feel 'nostalgia'. They don't know what it means to 'sign up for a cupboard'." (In Soviet times you had to queue to put your name down to buy a cupboard and then, after waiting for months, purchase the only cupboard that was available.)

On Ukraine, friendship has had to matter more than mere opinion. "Evil wants to put us at loggerheads," said one. "I am trying to resist this and stay friends with people of various views."

Two expats, with Russian families and residence permits, have chewed over the dilemma: to stay or go? One wanted out as soon as possible because for him Russia had "cracked". The other was minded to stay and work in the soft areas of art and music, where meaningful exchange was perhaps still possible. "We have to keep open the lines of communication," he said.

Tatyana Shcherbina, the poet, has also been in touch. I haven't seen her since the days of glasnost, when suppressed Soviet artists came up from underground. She didn't position herself then as being anti-Soviet but rather, independent, the description she still prefers.

Tatanya does see a risk of war; she feels the political logic is leading in that direction. In a recent essay she wrote of night descending. "It is terrible to think that night may never end and under its cover, humanity will disappear. The devils are shrieking that they want war and each has a nuclear weapon under his arm."

She tells me that when she worked for Radio Liberty in Munich, she was censored by the Americans.

It is lose-lose for all of us now if we cannot come to our senses. For what is in our minds today will become our reality tomorrow.

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 #27
Reuters
July 6, 2015
Tensions with Russia could prompt NATO strategy rethink
BY ADRIAN CROFT
 
NATO is preparing for a long standoff with Russia, reluctantly accepting that the Ukraine conflict has fundamentally transformed Europe's security landscape and that it may have to abandon hope of a constructive relationship with Moscow.

Some NATO allies, anxious to avoid a new Cold War or being dragged into an expensive arms race, had hoped the crisis in relations caused by President Vladimir Putin's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region last year would blow over quickly, just as a chill over Russia's 2008 war with Georgia did.

But realization is dawning at NATO headquarters that that is not going to happen and that relations with Russia have entered a new frosty period that could last a long time, possibly requiring a formal change in the alliance's doctrine.

Both sides have escalated their rhetoric over eastern Ukraine, where the U.S.-dominated, 28-nation alliance accuses Russia of sending in troops to back pro-Russian separatists - charges denied by Moscow.

The tension has prompted debate about whether it is time to rewrite NATO's master strategy document, designed at a time when there were high hopes that the enmity of the Cold War years could be set aside and Russia and NATO could work together.

The "strategic concept", adopted by NATO leaders at a Lisbon summit in 2010, rates the threat of a conventional attack on NATO territory as low.

The document, which sets out the alliance's goals and missions, says NATO-Russia cooperation is of strategic importance and adds: "We want to see a true strategic partnership between NATO and Russia."

"Some of the language (in the document) having to do with Russia as a strategic partner of the alliance is certainly cast into question given Russia's behavior," U.S. Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute told reporters last month, though he said no decision had yet been taken to revise it.

EXISTENTIAL CHALLENGE

NATO staff are drawing up more detailed contingency plans for various secret scenarios and war in Europe is no longer seen as completely out of the question.

Whereas NATO has in recent years been able to choose whether to get involved in conflicts such as in Afghanistan or Libya, in future it "could be forced to respond to an existential challenge," a NATO diplomat said.

Under NATO's founding treaty, member states are obliged to treat an attack on any partner as an attack on the entire bloc.

Lithuanian Defence Minister Juozas Olekas said NATO had to adapt to a new security environment and rewriting the 35-page strategy document was "one of the options".

"Today Russia is a threat for us," he told Reuters on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Brussels last month, adding that the alliance had not closed the door to possible future cooperation but Russia must respect international law.

Lithuania is one of three Baltic states that declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1990 or 1991, joined NATO in 2004, and feel particularly threatened by Russia's behavior in Ukraine and by its increased military activity in the skies and seas around NATO's borders. Lithuania, like the other Baltic states, has an ethnic Russian minority.

An announcement by the Russian prosecutor-general's office last week that it would review a 1991 Soviet decision to recognize their independence caused alarm in the Baltic states, though the Kremlin sought to play down its significance.

The NATO diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was little argument that the strategy document was out of date and would have to be rewritten "reasonably soon".

The chill in relations with Russia would be lasting because Putin's survival in power "is linked to permanent confrontation with the West," the diplomat said.

But some allies, including Germany, are reluctant to change the strategy document now, partly because it would entail about a year's work and partly because they do not want to antagonize Russia by closing the door on cooperation, or take any step that could undermine a truce agreement in Ukraine, the diplomat said.

Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Kremlin's Security Council, accused the West on Friday of seeking to change Russia's leadership.

PANDORA'S BOX

Diplomats worry that rewriting the strategic concept could open a Pandora's box, with some southern NATO allies, which think the alliance concentrates too much on security challenges from the east, wanting a greater focus on new threats from the south, such as the Islamic State group based in Syria and Iraq.

"It would stimulate a fundamental review of European security, of our approach to the south," one NATO official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said.

Removing the aspiration of a strategic partnership with Russia from the text would be "a big political step and maybe not necessary", the official said.

NATO seems likely to opt for compromise. NATO leaders could order work on a revamp of the strategy document when they meet in Warsaw next July. It would then be ready for approval when they next meet, probably in 2018, diplomats said.

NATO's "strategic concept" has been rewritten in the past after watershed changes in security, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall or the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities.

The 2010 version was conceived when NATO's major operation was in Afghanistan. Since the end of NATO combat operations there and the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, NATO's focus has returned squarely to defending its own territory.

Moving to reassure eastern European allies that feel threatened by Russia's actions, NATO has increased air patrols and troop rotations in the Baltics, stepped up exercises and is creating a rapid reaction force. Moscow portrays NATO action as provocative and denies any intention on its part to intimidate.

After the annexation of Crimea, NATO suspended practical cooperation with Russia, which had ranged from maintaining Afghan army helicopters to counter-terrorism and combating piracy off Somalia.

The overthrow of Ukraine's former pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovich, last year, applauded in the West, deepened Moscow's suspicions about NATO encroachment in its backyard.

Last December, Putin, hit by Western sanctions over Russia's actions in Ukraine, signed a new military doctrine that named NATO expansion among key external risks.

Russia last week denounced a new U.S. military strategy that accused Moscow of failing to respect its neighbors' sovereignty as "confrontational".

The Russian Defence Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on a possible change in the NATO strategy document.

Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow, said Russia would react negatively to a change in the NATO strategy document.

"Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO has been searching for a raison d'être ... Now NATO, and especially (the) military staff, are relieved that they can return to the good old times," he told Reuters.

Alexander Golts, defense columnist and deputy editor of online newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal, said he was very pessimistic about future Russia-NATO relations.

"We are moving very rapidly to start a new Cold War," he said.

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 #28
www.thedailybeast.com
July 5, 2015
America's Losing Russia Strategy
Confronting Putin isn't enough to restore peace on Russia's borders. What's needed is Détente Plus.
By Leslie Gelb
Leslie H. Gelb is President Emeritus of the Council of Foreign Relations, a former New York Times columnist and correspondent, and a former senior State and Defense Department official.

American hawks flapped their wings with joy when Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced recently that more military muscle would be deployed to the Baltics and Eastern Europe, and as word seeped out of significant covert U.S. military aid to Ukraine. And the hawks glowed when President Vladimir Putin telephoned President Barack Obama to discuss common problems in the Mideast. You see, they crowed, Putin is blinking first when faced with U.S. toughness. Get even tougher, do more, they urged in White House meetings and the press. They never addressed what they would do if more and more failed-as it almost certainly would.

Yes, Washington should show more resolve and enhance NATO's military punch. But neither that nor increasing economic sanctions will stop Putin. By themselves, upping military and economic pressure is both a dangerous and losing strategy.

The indisputable fact that hawks in the administration, Congress, and the think tanks simply won't face is this: Russia has military superiority on its borders with the Baltic States and Ukraine. Nothing the U.S. or its European partners can do (or are likely to try) will change this fact. This means that whatever military move NATO makes in this region, small or large, Putin can trump it. Certainly, NATO has clear military superiority beyond Russia's borders, but it is on those borders that the problem lies.

You doubt these facts? Just read what the man who knows most about them-Supreme NATO commander Philip Breedlove-had to say last February in a little noticed interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

Breedlove: So what I would say here, Christiane, is that as we saw in late August, when the Russian forces came across the border, when it appeared that the Ukrainian forces were going to be able to effect a military solution. We will not be able to give the Ukrainian forces enough equipment or time in order to defend against the Russians. If the Russians are completely determined to hold the situation in the Donbas that puts Kiev into a bargaining position where they have to come to the table and meet Russian needs, Russia will apply the necessary pressure just like they did in late August. And so we should not attempt to enter into a situation where we try to match their capability to meet that. They simply will not be able to do that.

Amanpour: Wow, that is a pretty dire assessment isn't it?

The indisputable fact that hawks won't face is this: Russia has military superiority on its borders with the Baltic States and Ukraine.
Breedlove: It's why we say there has to be a diplomatic and political solution.

Amanpour: Could I just clarify something? Did you actually say to me that in no circumstance will you be able to provide the Ukrainians with the kind of self-defense weaponry and training that they need?

Breedlove: Let's go back, Christiane, to what happened again in August. The Ukrainians were advancing on the separatists, or I call them the Russian-backed-forces in the East. And when it appeared that the Ukrainians were going to be able to accomplish their goal, the Russian forces came across the border in detail, in combined arms effort and defeated the Ukrainian forces and backed them up. I think that if we see another time in the future where the Ukrainian forces are actually able to advance in detail against the separatists, why would we expect any different behavior from the Russians than what we saw in August?

Notice that the general skirted what might happen if U.S. forces were introduced. He and his senior officers believe that might produce more favorable results. But there's no way he and NATO commanders think that direct NATO intervention makes any sense. They most certainly do not want to make Ukraine an American war. And that's true in spades for prime hawk Senator John McCain. There's no way he'd come close to recommending a U.S./NATO war over Ukraine, a non-member of NATO. What sense, then, does it make to call for escalation arms aid by itself when the end result would be the loss of even more U.S. credibilty and power? Thus, General Breedlove would increase arms aid to Ukraine, but pair it with new and realistic diplomacy.

As for the Baltics, Russian military advantages are starker still. Moscow could pour tens of thousands of first-class troops into Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in short order. Worse, U.S. military experts say, Moscow could quickly establish air superiority with anti-aircraft systems and Russian fighters.

To prevail and to bully the Baltic States, however, Moscow doesn't even have to rely on outright force. Accordingly, NATO and U.S. senior military officers expect the Russians to start with their clear-cut advantages in "hybrid warfare," i.e. with cyber warfare, propaganda, and the incitement of internal resistance from local ethnic Russians. NATO forces couldn't do much against these moves.

America's hawks never want to discuss these realities. They simply wish the facts away with their chest thumping and absolute faith in the Zeusian power of toughness. Yet they forever disregard being tough in the context of what General Breedlove called the "diplomatic and political solution." To the hawks, diplomacy simply means capitulation (except if they do it).

What should this new diplomacy look like? To begin with, diplomacy does not mean rolling back economic sanctions against Russia or halting the promised NATO buildup in the Baltics and Eastern Europe. These are essential elements of tough diplomacy. By themselves, however, they merely invite Russian toughness and intransigence. That's the story of the last two years.

The aim of a new diplomatic strategy-I like to call it Détente Plus-is to explore seriously whether Russia is prepared to work with the U.S. in Europe and elsewhere to solve or mitigate genuine common problems based on genuine shared or overlapping interests. Détente Plus, which I have elaborated fully in the current issue of The National Interest magazine, has to proceed from the commonsensical judgment that Russia does have legitimate interests that should not be ignored, and that Russia remains a great power in many parts of the world, if no longer a superpower.

Russia has been helpful to the U.S. in the Iran nuclear negotiations and probably carries more clout in these talks than Washington's other partners. Moscow also has been very helpful in fighting international terrorism, where the Russians have significant capabilities. Indeed they are probably more worried about the rise of Islamic terrorism in the Middle East than is the U.S., because they see a direct and profound connection between these Sunni jihadis and Muslim extremists in the North Caucuses. These shared fears provide a shared interest, say, in working with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria against ISIS. And it's not bad at all to be close enough to Moscow to play it off against China, and of course, vice versa.

None of this, however, solves the matters of Ukraine and the Baltic States. These situations are very dangerous and made much more so by Russia's new and threatening rhetoric and modernized nuclear capabilities. It should make Westerners worry, really worry, when Moscow refers to using nuclear weapons as a "de-escalatory" measure. This kind of talk makes use of nuclear weapons sound too easy. Simply put, the West should not want to test Moscow's underlying intentions here, nor provoke Moscow into testing America's interests.

The Détente Plus strategy is probably the only way to protect Western interests without dangerous confrontations. Here are its key elements: maintaining economic sanctions and, if necessary, threatening to enhance them; strengthening NATO military capabilities throughout the Baltics and Eastern Europe as well as sustaining the non-provocative covert arms pipeline to Ukraine; working with Moscow on future joint economic trade and investment while ceasing European efforts to rip Ukraine's economy away from Russia into Europe; and stepping up efforts to work with Moscow in Syria and Iraq, on non-proliferation (including the Iran negotiations) and on anti-terrorism.

For all this to work, the overall Détente Plus relationship has to be established and blessed by the two presidents. To get results, each should name a special envoy devoted exclusively to this enterprise. The operating principle of Détente Plus has to be that the U.S. gives to Russia as it gets from Russia.

When and as the Détente Plus strategy begins to show results, the U.S. and NATO can begin to take Moscow's interests into good account in Ukraine and elsewhere. Obviously the West should not and cannot give Ukraine or even eastern Ukraine to Russia, but some new formula is needed to settle the Gordian knot of Crimea. Russia has no rights to any of these territories, but it does have legitimate interests in preventing their use against Russia.

The initial step is to put together a U.S. strategy (which the Obama administration simply does not have) and then sit down to fashion a joint strategy with Putin. Doubtless achieving success will surpass climbing Mt. Everest, given Putin's aggressiveness and Western tentativeness. But however difficult, the only alternative is to leave NATO in a position of military inferiority on Russia's borders where sparks could easily turn into explosions. Neither side desires explosions. But with reports of Russian fighter aircraft buzzing Western commercial airliners around Europe, Russian subs penetrating European ports and U.S. B-52s flying over Baltic skies, shootings can easily erupt whatever the intentions.

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 #29
UNIAN (Kyiv)
www.unian.info
July 4, 2015
NATO: Russia ready to use force against Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova

In an exclusive interview, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg tells German news broadcaster Deutsche Welle about NATO's defense posture, which is proportionate and in line with the Alliance's international commitments, and he claims that Russia is ready to use force against its neighbors.

"Everything we do is defensive. We're protecting the allies. Russia is behaving aggressively. The annexation of Crimea is an aggressive behavior. Russia continues providing separatists in eastern Ukraine with modern weapons, anti-aircraft systems, sends troops there - this is an act of aggression. We protect our allies, Russia uses force to redraw the borders and destabilize Ukraine," Stoltenberg said, as reported by DW.

According to him, Russia is ready to use force against Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova.

"Russia is ready to use force against Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Russia more often mentions nuclear weapons as part of its defense strategy," NATO's chief said.

According to Stoltenberg, NATO is responding to new security challenges in a defensive way, which is proportionate and in line with the alliance's international commitments.

"We have increased the preparedness and readiness of our forces. We have strengthened our military presence on the eastern borders of the alliance. We have decided to set up a network of smaller headquarters in the Baltic States, Bulgaria, Poland and Romania. We have also stepped up our air patrols and presence in the eastern countries of the alliance in response to Russia's behavior," Stoltenberg said.

At this, Moscow now has a better-equipped and better-prepared army, he added.

"What is more, they conduct unexpected maneuvers to conceal aggressive actions against its neighbors. That is how Crimea was annexed," Stoltenberg said.

Therefore, by addressing these threats, NATO has been strengthening its military capabilities, being unprecedented since the end of the Cold War, according to Stoltenberg.

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 #30
Washington Post
July 6, 2015
Will we let Ukraine die?
By Jackson Diehl
Deputy editorial page editor

A Ukrainian military unit last week released footage from a drone showing a large new Russian military base in eastern Ukraine, equipped with T-72 tanks, barracks, communications equipment and even a parade ground. International observers reported "increased intensity" of fighting in the region, in violation of a cease-fire.

Russia meanwhile suspended gas deliveries to Ukraine, thwarting its attempt to stockpile supplies for next winter. In Washington, a committee of Ukrainian bond-holders, led by several U.S. hedge funds, resisted an International Monetary Fund-backed plan to reduce the government's debt burden so that it can avoid a default.

Ukraine's democratically elected and fervently pro-Western government faced all these trials essentially alone. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her European Union partners are preoccupied with the crisis in Greece; Barack Obama is intently focused on completing a nuclear bargain with Iran. Western governments have taken no new action either to prevent a new Russian military offensive this summer or to provide Ukraine's government with the funds it needs to survive through another year.

Will this be remembered as the summer when the West let Ukraine die? It's beginning to look like it.

The figment of a strategy embraced by the United States and the European Union calls for the implementation of a peace plan, known as Minsk 2, that Russia accepted in February but has never respected. U.S. officials regularly agree with their Russian counterparts that the fighting should stop and agreements should be reached on implementing other parts of the deal; meanwhile, the estimated 9,000 Russian troops in eastern Ukraine - whose existence Moscow denies - continue to lay the groundwork for another major attack.

Analysts Pierre Vaux and Catherine Fitzpatrick of the Interpreter Web site have identified two new Russian bases near the front lines in recent months, including the one filmed by a drone. They are positioned so as to support an offensive against the government-held city of Mariupol, which is the strategic key to southeastern Ukraine. "The time for such an attack may be drawing nearer," Vaux reported last week in an article for the Daily Beast. Similar warnings have been sounded by other experts, including an Atlantic Council mission led by former NATO commander Wesley Clark.

They have been ignored. Secretary of State John F. Kerry is still talking about the moribund Minsk deal. Obama turned aside the latest request by the Ukrainian government last month for defensive weapons that might blunt a Russian attack, including anti-tank missiles. The European Union recently renewed its economic sanctions against Russia, but declined to react to Moscow's brazen cease-fire violations and continuing military buildup.

Obama and Merkel argue that aiding the Ukrainian army wouldn't prevent a Russian attack and might provoke one. Their logic is dubious: Russian analysts say that Vladi­mir Putin has reason to worry about the casualties a strengthened Ukrainian army could inflict.

In any case, the military arguments don't explain the West's passivity on the economic front. By any measure, Ukraine's situation is dire: Economic output has fallen by more than 15 percent in each of the past two quarters. The government has imposed drastic austerity measures, including a huge cut in the subsidy for gas and a big reduction in pensions. Unlike Greece, it has taken every painful austerity step required by the International Monetary Fund, even while fighting a war.

Yet the European Union, which has committed $222 billion to bailing out Greece, has offered Ukraine $5.5 billion. The United States, which provided $20 million to save Mexico from default and $18 billion for reconstruction in Iraq, has approved $3 billion in loan guarantees for Ukraine.

The paltry sums have placed the Kiev government at the mercy of foreign creditors holding $19 billion of its private debt - including the Russian government, which holds a $3 billion eurobond. Outside of Moscow, the biggest bondholders are U.S. hedge funds, including bottom-feeder Franklin Templeton. To meet the IMF's plan, the government must extract $15 billion in relief from them over four years. But Franklin Templeton and its partners have refused to accept a reduction in principal, despite prodding from the IMF and the U.S. Treasury.

That leaves Ukraine facing the possibility of default as soon as the end of this month, and no later than September, when a $500 million bond falls due. Anders Aslund, an expert on the Ukrainian economy at the Atlantic Council, thinks Ukraine needs $10 billion in additional financing to survive the next two years. At best, it may get half of that.

Ukrainian leaders, who see themselves fighting in defense of Western democracy against Putin's imperialist autocracy, increasingly express bewilderment at their inability to attract support. "If we fail," Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told The Post last month, "this will be a failure for the entire free world." But the free world, it seems, is otherwise occupied.

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 #31
Sputnik
July 7, 2015
US Will Pay Salaries to Saakashvili Team

The US government will be paying salaries to members of the regional administration in Odessa, and California policemen will be training the Ukrainian region's new police force, Governor Saakashvili announced Monday.

"[During a meeting with US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt] we agreed that California cops will be training our new police force. Also, as part of our current anti-corruption campaign, the US government agreed to provide funds for salaries to the new Saakashvili team," Georgian President-turned-Odessa-Governor Mikheil Saakashvili wrote on his Facebook page on Monday.

The Ukrainian police are being radically revamped as part of an ongoing reform of the country's law enforcement system.

Plans are apace to set up a national Patrol Police of new recruits to gradually phase out the country's notoriously corrupt "militia" and road police.

Patrol Police units first appeared in Kiev with similar units slated also for Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Odessa and other big cities.

The authorities promise that once launched, the current reform will give Ukraine a well-paid, European-quality police force.

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 #32
Voice of America
July 3, 2015
Ukraine LGBT Activists Worry About Future
By Oleksiy Kuzmenko

As members of the LGBT community in the United States celebrate the Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriages nationwide, gay-rights activists in Ukraine say they fear their country is headed in the opposite direction.

They point to last month's LGBT Equality March in Kyiv - the first since the Euromaidan protests that led to the ouster of a pro-Russia government and brought in a government that pledges to lead the country based on Western values of liberal democracy, tolerance and human rights.

After the march ended, scores of people attacked participants; a dozen participants and several police officers were seriously hurt.

"There were at least a couple hundred attackers," said Maxim Eristavi, a gay Ukrainian journalist. He said many of them came from right-wing nationalist groups.

Eristavi said it was "easy to trace back that the calls to gather those groups" were led by the Right Sector, a leading right-wing nationalist party, and another group, the Organization of the Ukrainian Nationalist-Ukrainian Rebel Army.

Another marcher, Yuri Yoursky, project officer with the Gay Alliance Ukraine, agreed.  "The attackers were right-wing radicals, the representatives of the Right Sector, plus representatives of a certain group, Smerch, and nationalists who promote traditional family values," he said.

In a Facebook message, Right Sector's spokesman, Artem Skoropadsky, denied his group had taken part in the violence, although ahead of the march, the Right Sector's leadership criticized the march as being evil.

"If the law was violated by anyone, the law enforcement should figure it out," he said. "We'll judge every person separately and based on the evidence presented."

Doubts about police

Activists question the police commitment to keeping LGBT activists safe.

Although almost 30 attackers were arrested - most identified as belonging to nationalist groups - police have yet to bring all of the suspects to court.

LGBT activists doubt the official investigation will yield results. Olena Shevchenko, who co-organized Kyiv Pride in previous years, suspected that law enforcement might be complicit in the attacks.

"It was the police that suggested a new location for the march at the last minute," Shevchenko told VOA via Facebook. "We see the same situation each year - the far-right somehow always gets information about the location of the march despite last-minute changes.

They also got to the place right on time. So we witness a situation where many LGBT persons and supporters have no idea about the event location, but the far right are well-informed."

Another activist at the march confirmed to VOA that the police "wouldn't let the participants use the [originally] agreed-upon evacuation route and basically directed them straight toward the aggressive-right groups."

Police spokeswoman Yulia Mustash dismissed the possibility that law enforcement would provide information to attackers.

"I don't even know how to comment on this," she said. "It's just a case of someone making unsubstantiated assumptions and suspecting something."

Media coverage of the attack left many activists doubting that Ukrainian journalists would investigate what took place, Shevchenko said. That is partly because of the role nationalist groups have played in the Euromaidan protests and the war against pro-Russian separatists.

"We saw many speculations on 'nationalism and traditional values' as well as on the war in eastern Ukraine instead of coverage in a human rights direction," Shevchenko said.

She suggested that biased coverage of the Equality March contributed to public confusion about the event and might have fostered sympathy for the attackers.

"Many expected the nationalists from the Right Sector, who are considered heroes, to come to the rally. But once they saw them attacking a peaceful assembly, they chose to be in denial. They just don't want to believe this," Shevchenko said.  

Some of the coverage managed to omit that LGBT activists were the targets, said Anna Sharyhina, one of the march organizers.

"Most journalists covering the attacks provided information about the attackers and wounded policemen, effectively turning the event into a confrontation between the government and the right," Sharyhina told VOA via email. "This completely negates the real meaning of the event and its main message: that human rights issues are always current events."

Euromaidan and the future

The violence against LGBT and human rights marchers in Kyiv has led LGBT activists to reflect on the events of the Euromaidan protests.

"Euromaidan brought significant political and social change but failed to change the perception and attitude of society toward the LGBT community," said Gay Alliance Ukraine's Yoursky.

Euromaidan and the war in eastern Ukraine have fueled support for "far-right organizations, which have carried out attacks on members of the LGBT community in the past," Yoursky said. "These events also triggered the growth of aggression in society and increased the tolerance of violence."

He said he expected that as war rages on, Ukraine's government will choose to preserve the popular image of the infallibility of its front-line defenders - of which the far-right forms a small but ideologically coherent part - at the expense of those targeted by hate groups.

Ukraine's hate crime legislation is a particular concern for the country's LGBT activists.

Anti-gay violence is on the rise in Ukraine, said Serhiy Ponomaryov, deputy head of the Department for Non-Discrimination and Gender Equality in the office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights.

In the first six months of this year, there were six incidents, not including the attack at the march, Ponomaryov said.

He told VOA that a spike in anti-LGBT crimes began last year, but there's no consistent effort to amend the criminal code, which does not consider anti-gay attacks to be hate crimes.

Government silence expected

Almost a month has passed since the equality march, and Ponomaryov said he didn't expect the government to make any statements about the violence.

"There's currently an investigation under way," he said. "Regarding the office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, we decided that we will step in and voice our concerns if we see attempts to sweep the investigation under the carpet."

In a poll conducted in 2013, 79 percent of Ukrainians vehemently opposed any sexual relations between members of the same sex; 16 percent said they did not support same-sex marriage but thought that same-sex couples should have the right to live in a civil union; and 40 percent said that homosexuality ran against religious norms.

The poll did contain some positive news for LGBT activists and supporters: Same-sex marriage was looked upon most favorably among those under age 29, as well as among residents of Ukraine's capital and the country's other large cities. College-educated Ukrainians also appeared more likely to support the civil union rights for same-sex couples.

The same demographic of young, educated urbanites was the major force behind the Euromaidan protests, and has also been behind the current push for political reform.

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 #33
BBC
July 4, 2015
Ukraine crisis: Rally in Kiev urges war on eastern rebels

About 1,000 Ukrainian pro-government fighters and far-right supporters have marched through the centre of the capital, Kiev.

Many burned tyres and wore balaclavas; some carried white supremacist flags.

They called on the government to end the Minsk ceasefire accord and declare war on pro-Russian rebels in the east.

The demonstrators say the Russian government is bringing troops and equipment into Ukraine, a claim that Russia has always denied.

Many in the rally were from volunteer battalions and were dressed in their battle fatigues.

They said they had returned from fighting Russian forces and demanded an end to all diplomatic relations with Russia.

The ultra-nationalist Right Sector group called the march. Protesters also demanded the nationalisation of Russian-owned businesses.

More than 6,400 people have been killed in fighting in eastern Ukraine that began in April 2014 when rebels seized large parts of the two eastern regions.

This followed Russia's annexation of the Crimea peninsula.

The BBC's David Stern in Kiev says Friday's rally was a show of strength in the heart of Ukrainian officialdom.

But above all, our correspondent says, the demonstrators were calling for change. Both in the way that the conflict is being fought in the east and in the way that the country is being run.

Central to their demands is an end to the Minsk ceasefire agreement signed in February which they say is a charade because of Russia's activities in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian government, Western leaders and Nato all say there is clear evidence that Russia is helping the rebels in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions with heavy weapons and soldiers. Independent experts echo that accusation.

But Moscow denies it, insisting that any Russians serving with the rebels are volunteers.

Clashes between government troops and rebels have recently intensified.

Fierce fighting took place in June outside the rebel-held city of Donetsk, with Ukraine accusing the rebels of launching a full-scale offensive in violation of a truce.

The separatists denied this and accused Ukrainian troops stationed nearby of repeatedly shelling the city - a claim in turn denied by the Ukrainian military.

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 #34
Kyiv Post
July 4, 2015
Pyatt sees opportunities to strengthen US, Ukraine ties
By Brian Bonner

With his 13-year-old Golden Retriever by his side, Geoffrey R. Pyatt took time out on Constitution Day in Ukraine to conduct live and Skype interviews as he also prepared to host more visiting U.S. members of Congress in Kyiv. An estimated 70 U.S. lawmakers have made the trip to Ukraine in the last year, a testament to strong American interest in the nation.

While Ukraine has had another tough year, Pyatt highlighted progress made by recalling his remarks a year ago during the annual U.S. ambassador's backyard barbeque to celebrate America's Independence Day.

Pyatt compared the poor state of Ukraine's army a year ago with the 2,000 troops of the American Continental Army who died from starvation, disease and cold in Valley Forge during the winter of 1777-1778. Only a few weeks later, in July 2014, hundreds of Ukrainian troops were killed by Russian-separatist forces during the Massacre of Ilovaisk, a stinging blow coming only five months after the Ukrainian military surrender of the Crimean peninsula in March 2014.

"Clearly the Ukrainian military has developed much more substantial capabilities now," Pyatt said, partly thanks to training, non-lethal military assistance and other aid provided by the United States and NATO partners.

But, even for a "glass half full" person like Pyatt, the security challenges ahead are enormous.

"All of Russia's actions so far leave me concerned that the Kremlin has not yet made the decision to comply with the obligations that it undertook as part of the Minsk" peace accords in February, Pyatt said. "Russia continues with its train and equip program in the east. We continue to see Russian surface-to-air missile systems, Russian heavy weapons in eastern Ukraine."

The next six months will show the fate of the Minsk peace agreements in February.

"The single biggest yardstick of success will be the restoration of Ukrainian control over the international border by the end of 2015," Pyatt said. "Until that happens, sadly, Russia will retain the ability to reignite the war at a time and place of its choosing."

Russia's war against Ukraine, besides undermining the U.S. security goal of a Europe that is "whole, free and at peace," has thwarted progress in U.S.-Ukranian relations.

"Let's be honest, a lot of the affirimative agenda that I brough to my tenure in Ukraine and the Ukrainian people had for themelves has been hijacked by [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and war," Pyatt said. "Job No. 1 is to survive and job No. 1 is to prevent further Russian territorial acquisition and to build up Ukraine's ability to defend its sovereign territory."

Pyatt reeled off areas of limited progress in transforming post-EuroMaidan Revolution Ukraine from a corrupt autocracy to an honest democracy: constitutional, energy and financial sector reform; decentralization, and a new pilot police force in Kyiv, among them.

But he wants more.

"I am with the radical reformers," Pyatt said. "What Ukraine needs is not incremental reform. It needs dramatic reform...Part of my message as ambassador is that, to the extent that Ukraine sticks to the reform path, the United States will support them. As U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has said to Ukrainians: You keep reforming, we will keep supporting."

While the United States is prepared to help, such as by offering technical assistance to prosecutors and law enforcement, the rot and corruption in Ukraine "are deeply, deeply rooted and it's going to take a long time."

His endorsement about the motives of Ukraine's political leaders is unequivocally positive.

"We have complete confidence that President [Petro] Poroshenko, Prime Minister [Arseniy] Yatsenyuk and the government the Ukrainian government are acting in the interests of the Ukrainian people," Pyatt said. "And I'm pretty confident that Ukraine's free press, civil society, Rada [parliament] and others will call them out if they're ever tempted to act differently."

Many, however, have criticized the U.S. attitude towards Ukraine as one that is long on symbolism and short on substance.

One of the markers being watched is whether U.S. President Barack Obama will visit Ukraine before he leaves the presidency on Jan. 20, 2017.

"I can't predict," Pyatt said about a possible Obama visit. "What I can tell you is the adminsitration as a whole is going to continue the exceptional attention and investment they've made here," which is highlighted, he said, by Biden's three visits to Ukraine.

"I, for one, am exceptionally proud of the leadership role that the United States has played in helping to maintain an international coalition in support of Ukraine," Pyatt said. "I can't come back from a weekend in Lviv without being pestered with questions: Why aren't you doing this, why aren't you doing that? But we, as Americans, have a lot to be proud of in terms of the support that we have provided.

"But equally important for me, personally, is the degree to which Ukrainians themselves have earned that support through sacrifice, through their courage in the war, through their political courage implementing economic reform, through their courage at the ballot box. They have earned the best the United States can provide and that's what we will continue to provide."

If sustained attention to Ukraine doesn't translate into a presidential visit, it does guarantee that Ukraine will remain a priority - but only if Ukraine keeps progressing on the democratic front.

"The fear that I see sometimes among Ukrainians is that we are going to be forgotten," Pyatt said. "I don't see that as a risk unless Ukraine defaults to business as usual. Americans like winners. To the extent that Ukrainians can demonstrate they are winners, that they are building a new politics, are building a new country, America will be enthusiastic about supporting that. The values that lie behind this government, that lie behind the Maidan and behind the Ukrainian people themselves are ones that are very resonant for Americans."

--

Remarks by U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt at a reception celebrating U.S. Independence Day

Ukraine, July 2, 2015

Thank you, Yaryna. Thank you, Ruslana.

And a special thank you to the men and woman of the U.S. Army Chorus. I would like, to first of all begin by acknowledging Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, Mayor Klitschko, Minister Abromavicius, Leader of the Opposition Boyko, and all of the other friends of the U.S.-Ukraine partnership, from civil society, politics, and across all of united Ukraine.

I also want to say a special welcome, and say how honored I am today, that we are joined by two U.S. Congressional delegations, in particular Senator Wicker, and his delegation from the U.S. Helsinki Commission.

There is nothing that I can think of that would better reflect the spirit of bipartisan support from the American people to the people of Ukraine at this difficult time.

The Fourth of July has always been my favorite American holiday. Most importantly because it is, at the end of the day, a celebration of the idea of America, principles of freedom, rule of law, democracy: principles that today, Ukraine and the United States hold deeply in common.

As one of our Congressional visitors pointed out in a meeting today, both of us are countries born of revolution.

We have had a little more time to work on the perfection of our democracy. But there should be no doubt that the principles of democracy and self-determination that underlay our revolution are shared very much by the Revolution of Dignity.

When we gathered on this occasion one year ago, I recalled the bitter winter of 1777, when George Washington and his Continental Army were gathered at Valley Forge. It was a time when the American Revolutionary Army lacked shoes, lacked winter clothing, and few people thought that this experiment in democracy in the Americas would prevail.

But George Washington and his Continental Army survived, and they moved forward to build the America that we celebrate today.

In the same way, Ukraine has passed through its Valley Forge, its Winter of 1777. And now Ukraine is moving forward to build the modern, democratic, European state that we so long have hoped to support.One other critical difference from a year ago, and one of the reasons we have the U.S. Army chorus with us today, is that today we have 300 men and women of the U.S. 173rd Division who are at Yavoriv, training and helping to build the capacity of Ukrainian forces to defend your own sovereign territory.

And I hope especially all of us Americans will take a minute on the Fourth of July, as we celebrate with friends and family, to remember those of the Rock, the 173rd,who are away from their families while they help to build a more safe and secure and democratic Ukraine.Prime Minister, thank you for honoring us with your presence today, and all of your colleagues from the government, and from the opposition.

And I know it's a very busy day in the Rada, so I'm even more grateful that so many colleagues have been able to join this celebration with us.So I ask everybody to join me in a quick toast to the future of the strategic partnership between the United States and Ukraine. To Victory. Slava Ukraini, Slava America.

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 #35
The Sunday Times (UK)
July 5, 2015
Revolt stirs among Ukraine's defenders
By Dmitry Beliakov, Shirokino, and Mark Franchetti, Kiev

SHELTERING in a Soviet-era hotel wrecked by weeks of fierce combat, the men of the Ukrainian Donbass battalion were making the most of a lull in the fighting.

Clad in camouflage and armed with AK-47s, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, they sat around a table cleaning their weapons and reloading magazines. One fighter read All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque's First World War classic.

The pause was quickly shattered by mortar blasts and the heavy thud of artillery, followed by the crackle of automatic gunfire.

The men, all Ukrainian volunteers fighting pro-Russian separatists, put on their helmets and flak jackets and swiftly took up positions behind sandbags and holes smashed in the concrete walls.

A four-hour battle ensued. The noise was deafening as they fired at the enemy from rooms used less than a year ago by tourists on the Sea of Azov in southern Ukraine.

Outside, the scene was one of devastation with bombed- out buildings and trees shredded by shrapnel.

"Welcome to the ceasefire!" said Sergei, the unit's commander, a retired captain in the Ukrainian military.

The scene last week in Shirokino, a small town on the coast a few miles east of the strategically important port of Mariupol, was far from unique.

More than four months into a peace agreement that was signed between Ukraine, pro-Moscow separatists and Russia, mediated by Germany and France, large-scale offensives have ceased. But along the front lines every day there is fighting and people are killed.

Known as the Minsk agreement, after the Belarus capital where it was signed, the peace accord is dead in all but name. "The Minsk agreement is a load of political bullshit," said Viktor, 50, a former Soviet marine from Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. "There is no ceasefire. On both sides we just want to get on with it."

About 1,000 fighters and far-right supporters marched through Kiev yesterday, calling for an end to the Minsk accord and a declaration of war against Russia.

The continued fighting in the east is increasing pressure on Petro Poroshenko, the country's billionaire president. Sixteen months after his predecessor, Viktor Yanukovich, was swept from power in a popular uprising known as the Maidan, the former chocolate magnate is facing mounting discontent at home.

Ultra-patriotic young Ukrainians who had staged the Maidan - in which 100 people were gunned down - have been angered at the slow pace of reforms under Poroshenko, who had promised to end the corruption and abuse of power of his predecessor's rule.

The activists accuse the president and, above all, Arseny Yatsenyuk, the increasingly unpopular prime minister, of failing to purge the government and the state bureaucracy of corrupt officials from the previous regime.

"We got rid of thieves and replaced them with looters," said Dmitry Karp, a former protester.

Katerina Kuvita, a human rights activist who was at the forefront of the three months of demonstrations that toppled Yanukovich, agreed: "Our friends who were killed paid the ultimate price but now we see the new government just made a lot of empty promises."

Kuvita was recently back demonstrating against a decision to erect a steel gate to block access to the street in which the presidential offices lie. "With his gate Poroshenko is showing he's scared of his own people," she said. "He's kept in power the same corrupt system. I'm bitterly disappointed."

An anti-government protest took place last week outside the central bank and there was anger among critics of the government over the appointment of a state prosecutor thought to have close links to Russia.

At another street protest the opposition flushed pictures of leading politicians associated with the previous government down an oversized lavatory.

Protesters such as Kuvita also accuse Poroshenko of breaking his pledge to end the war in the east. The conflict, which he had vowed during his election campaign to end in "two weeks", has now lasted more than a year and killed nearly 7,000 people, according to official estimates. Some believe the death toll is higher.

The government is also struggling with an economic crisis that has seen rising prices and budget cuts. Poroshenko appears to be struggling to stamp his authority on the country's oligarchs as they jostle for political and economic influence.

Many believe he is too weak to see the country through its deep crisis. The latest polls show he would receive only 25% if elections were held tomorrow; some 98% of Ukrainians describe the economic situation as "bad". Adding to the country's woes, Russia last week cut off gas supplies over a pricing dispute.

As discontent mounts so does the threat of another Maidan. Fighters from volunteer battalions such as the Donbass have threatened to take to the streets if Poroshenko is seen to make too many concessions to the separatists in the east.

The president is also coming under mounting pressure from Germany, France and America to implement his side of the Minsk agreement.

This requires him to pass constitutional reform granting Ukraine's regions, including the breakaway republics in the east, greater autonomy and to hold local elections there.

"The president is between a rock and a hard place," said a pro-government source. "He's under pressure to implement the accords but fears a nationalist backlash."

The Donbass fighters are not so understanding. "Poroshenko fears us because he knows we don't give a f*** about him," said one. "We're not here for him, nor for money. We are here for our Ukraine."

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 #36
Subject: Perspectives on Russia: June 2015
Date: Sun, 05 Jul 2015
From: Sharon Tennison <sharon@ccisf.org>

Sharon Tennison has worked for 30 years in Russia and the CIS, creating numerous multi-year, multi-million dollar programs to provide training for Soviet and Russian citizens to gain independence and skills designed for self governance. She is founder and President of the Center for Citizen Initiatives (CCI). She lives and travels extensively part of the year in Russia.

In the narrative I wrote about the Volgograd trip, I'd hoped you could get insights that were wrapped into the stories mentioned. A few questions have arisen, so it seems appropriate to share my personal "take aways" from this trip last month.

FYI:  Our group of 20 citizen diplomats was composed of several travelers who had NEVER been to Russia. For them the trip was a new travelogue with Russian faces, discussions, home visits, and businesses appearing every few hours for the entire trip. I think all would say it was a real eye-opening experience. For others who had been there one or more times, they were shocked at the physical changes in Russia and the Russian people since they last traveled there.  For several who have traveled to Russia multiple times over the past dozen years, they had kept up with Russia's progress, and were fascinated to see into small and large private businesses, think tanks, have frank discussions with many new Russians--even for these watchful observers, Russia is still changing for the better.  Last for me, it was intriguing to see how ordinary (and not so ordinary) Russians are faring under the US sanctions and the loss of European trading partners. Of course, depending on with whom one talks, one gets different points of view. The following represents the opinions of the bulk of those Russians with whom I spoke.

1.  The most startling fact for me is how well Russian people are withstanding being cut off from their normal long-standing markets and trading partners in Europe--and how they are faring since their ruble lost about half of its value in the past year. They were concerned about how long this period might last, but none registered serious fear or diffuse apprehension.  Unlike us, Russians have gone through so much worse in their past. This is apparently rather small by comparison.

2.  Next, how healthy and vibrant Russia looks today. Not in my 32 years of traveling around Russia has this country looked so prosperous and orderly.  It definitely doesn't look like an isolated country under sanctions. It looks like a healthy, robust place with a great deal of modernity present everywhere.                                        

3.  There is a definite pride in Russia's citizenry that I had not seen previously. Today Russians respect themselves and their country, as opposed to the former years when, when to one degree or another, they seemed burdened with insecurities and self-doubt.

4.  Russia's structures, from 18th century buildings to today's skyscrapers, are well kept these days. Unlike yesteryear, streets and sidewalks are clean.  We traveled by metros, minibuses, and cars inside these cities--and across the countrysides by train and occasionally by cars. Highways are finally in good shape, city streets also, and they are as well marked as ours--this is new. Pedestrians have the right away with traffic now! We saw few dilapidated houses, except for rows of original wooden houses in Volgograd.  Russia's villages are disappearing which is a great loss to those who still revere village life. Khrushchev's five-story apartment buildings are being razed with numerous elegant residential buildings going up in each city. I counted 19 cranes from one vantage point in Ekaterinburg.

5.  Beauty and Russian classicism "are back" in Russia.  Having survived the ugliness of the Soviet period, the bleakness and breakdown of the 1990s, Russian designers and architects have finally come upon classic styles for new building construction and decorating.

6.  It seems to me that Russian people have found their comfort zone.  They don't aspire to be like Americans or Europeans or anyone else.  They feel good about being Russian and belonging to Russia. I think this is due to finally settling into their "national idea" of themselves (a combination of classicism from the Tsarist era including the re-emerging Russian Orthodox faith, built-in social services from the Soviet era, plus a renewed sense of Russia's cutting edge scientists and the Russian nation rising in the world. They have been searching for "what" Russia would become since the 1980s and no doubt even earlier. They appear to have internally settled this issue for the present.

7. Russians are open and honest that they have a long road ahead of them, seeing that there is much to do to refine civic responsibility, law and order,  health care, social issues, democratizing issues and to get corruption under control.

8. Russians know they are a major country coming up in the world, yet one gets no sense that they are hungry for power.  They aspire to be part of a developing multipolar world, where nations cooperate as opposed to break into competing alliances. I agree, this is the only way that makes sense at this juncture of our world's evolution. Russians are still a modest people, and not given to grandiosity or exceptionalism, in private or in public.

9.  Russian people are still questioning what system will be best for them to develop.  Is it American Democracy? No.  Is it full blown Socialism? No.  Is it full Capitalism?  No.  Is it private sectorism,  yes, definitely.   It is some combination of these with plenty of safeguards to support excellent education, culture, the needs of children, the disabled and pensioners, etc.  

10. Political system: They seem to still be searching for what's best for Russia ....  but are comfortable with their current trajectory at the moment.  Putin's approval rate in the Levada independent poll this week is  89%--probably the highest in the world for a Head of State.  Are there those who dislike Putin, who think he should vacate the presidency and make room for someone younger without a KGB background?  Definitely.  Frequently they are the younger educated males in the major cities who believe that Putin is the root of all of Russia's challenges in the world. Those with whom I had long discussions have a lot of holes in their perceptions.  They are a thin minority but it's good for Russian society for them to exercise other points of view--even if most won't agree with them.

11. Personal freedoms:  Most Russians have the main freedoms that they cherish.  Remembering communism, they feel great that they can travel abroad at will, be safe in their homes, safe on their streets, choose any kind of work they wish, move wherever they want, educate their children as they please, read whatever they like, have whatever friends they wish, and they are glad to lead a normal life in Russia. There are Russians who push for more freedoms, they too are good for society. However, those who do such acts as desecrating the National Cathedral are not among them. Average Russians don't respect exhibitionism in any form.

12. What would Russians change, if they could?  First of all they wish for fewer taxes, less bureaucracy, less corruption and more incentives for private business.  They want a more highly organized and efficient society. They want to better understand how to innovate and instigate new levels of Russian production.

13. Russians want to build the great society for themselves and for anyone who comes there to live. They don't tolerate outsiders' ideas of how to build their country. They are frank .... if you come to Russia to live, you are expected to learn the language, live by Russian laws, work and support yourself. You don't go to Russia in order to change it. Russians themselves have the right to change Russia, but foreigners do not.

14. Russians want to help develop a more egalitarian world, one that supports growth and also takes care of societies' less advantaged peoples.

15. Russians and their leadership in the Kremlin and elsewhere have ZERO interest in taking over more land.  Nothing would cripple them more quickly than having angry Estonians, Latvians or Ukrainians under their roof.  In addition, Russia has more land than they can use. They have more natural resources than they can extract and use/sell over the next 50 years. As far as Crimea goes, they and the Crimeans have understood themselves as the same people for centuries.  But for a drunk Khrushchev who gave Crimea to Ukraine without consulting the Crimeans in 1954, Crimea would have been part of Russia up to this day.  Rumors that Russia will take any of the Soviet space back into Russia, including Ukraine, are pure fabrications to benefit the objectives of those who are trying to reduce Russia's ability to be competitive in the world.

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 #37
Dances With Bears
http://johnhelmer.net
July 5, 2015
NUDELMAN'S NEW WAR, NULAND'S NEMESIS - WILL GREECE, OR WON'T GREECE BE DESTROYED TO SAVE HER FROM RUSSIA, LIKE UKRAINE?
By John Helmer, Moscow
[Footnotes, links, and photos here http://johnhelmer.net/?p=13712]

A putsch in Athens to save allied Greece from enemy Russia is in preparation by the US and Germany, with backing from the non-taxpayers of Greece - the Greek oligarchs, Anglo-Greek shipowners, and the Greek Church. At the highest and lowest level of Greek government, and from Thessaloniki to Milvorni, all Greeks understand what is happening. Yesterday they voted overwhelmingly to resist. According to a high political figure in Athens, a 40-year veteran, "what is actually happening is a slow process of regime change."

Until Sunday afternoon it was a close-run thing. The Yes and No votes were equally balanced, and the margin between them razor thin. At the start of the morning, Rupert Murdoch's London Times claimed [1] "Greek security forces have drawn up a secret plan to deploy the army alongside special riot police to contain possible civil unrest after today's referendum on the country's future in Europe. Codenamed Nemesis, it makes provision for troops to patrol large cities if there is widespread and prolonged public disorder. Details of the plan emerged as polls showed the 'yes' and 'no' camps neck and neck." Greek officers don't speak to the Murdoch press; British and US government agents do.

"It was neck to neck until 3 pm," reports the political veteran in Athens, "then the young started voting. "
Can the outcome - the 61% to 39% referendum vote, with a 22% margin for Οχι (No) which the New York Times calls "shocking" and a "victory [that] settled little" - defeat Operation Nemesis? Will the new Axis - the Americans and the Germans - attack again, as the Germans did after the first Greek Οχι of October 28, 1940, defeated the Italian invasion?

The Kremlin understands too. So when the State Department's Victoria Nuland (nee Nudelman; lead image, right) visited Athens to issue an ultimatum against breaking the anti-Russian sanctions regime, and the Anglo-American think-tanks followed with warnings the Russian Navy is about to sail into Piraeus, the object of the game has been clear. The line for Operation Nemesis has been that Greece must be saved, not from itself or from its creditors, but from the enemy in Moscow. The Russian line has been to do nothing to give credence to that propaganda; to wait and to watch.

As the head of State's Bureau of European and Eurasian affairs, Nuland is the official in charge of warmaking in Europe. Her record in the Ukraine has been documented here [2]. Almost unnoticed, she was in Athens on March 17 to deliver two ultimatums. The communique released [3] by the US Embassy in Athens was headlined, "we want to see prosperity and growth in Greece."

What Nuland (above, left) was doing with her hands is in the small print of the release. She told Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (right) not to break ranks with the NATO allies against Russia. "Because of the increasing rounds of aggression in eastern Ukraine" she reportedly said the US is "very gratified that we've had solidarity between the EU and the U.S., and that Greece has played its role in helping to build consensus."

Nuland also warned Tsipras not to default on its debts to Germany, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Tsipras was told "to make a good deal with the institutions". The referendum Tsipras called on June 27 was a surprise for Nuland. The nemesis in Operation Nemesis is the retribution planned for that display of Greek hubris.

Having thundered for a year on the illegitimacy of the March 2014 referendum in Crimea, saying yes to accession to Russia, the State Department ignored the Greek referendum for forty-eight hours. On June 29, asked what the US government was thinking of doing if the outcome "is a no vote", Nuland's spokesman, Mark Toner, said [4] the US would ignore it. "We're focused on, frankly, the opposite, which is finding a path forward that allows Greece to continue to make reforms, return to growth, and remain in the Eurozone."

The only other official Washington reference to the Greek referendum came on June 30 when the question at the State Department daily briefing was: "what are you doing within the International Monetary Fund, of which the U.S. is the largest shareholder, to try to also press from that side for more leniency with the Greeks?" The official reply [5]: "we're carefully monitoring the situation...we continue to believe that it's important that all sides work together to get back to a path that's going to allow Greece to resume reforms and to return to growth within the Eurozone. But again, we're monitoring this very closely."

The last concerted attempt the US government made to overthrow an elected Greek government was against Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou between 1987 and 1989. With his son and successor George Papandreou, there was no such necessity - George and his mother Margarita Papandreou were already under Washington's control. But against Andreas serious counter-measures were required. Military ones, of the type which ruled Greece between 1967 and 1974, had been unpopular domestically and internationally. They were demonstrably costly; they also discredited the US and NATO military which stood behind the Athens junta.

So, the Reagan Administration decided Papandreou had to be overthrown by his own people, if possible at an election. The strategy was "to give Papandreou enough rope to hang himself", said Robert Keeley the US Ambassador to Athens at the time. That too was an Operation Nemesis of sorts - the plan was for Papandreou's hubris to be defeated in front of the Greek electorate, first in a military showdown in the Aegean with Turkey, then in an allegation of bribery of the prime minister by a Greek banker and football club owner.

Both were neutralized in surprise Greek moves US officials had not anticipated. The Turks retreated after a display of combined Greek and Bulgarian force, and the Turkish Prime Minister was medivaced to a Houston, Texas, cardiology clinic. George Koskotas, Papandreou's accuser, was arrested in Boston and returned to a Greek jail. Hubris reversed, you might say. For more, read this [6].

On Sunday, had Greek voters divided evenly down the old Civil War lines, right versus left, blue versus red, the security forces would have been mobilized to confront demonstrators on Maidan, er Syntagma Square, and sharpshooters deployed from the roof of the Grande Bretagne Hotel to kick off Operation Nemesis. To prepare hearts and minds for that, however, the think-tank army has failed almost totally, firing blanks in every direction but Greece.

In London the US-funded Legatum Institute skipped [7] the poll evidence and panel discussions, attacking Venezuela, China, Syria and Russia instead for using "phenomena previously associated with democracy-elections, the Internet, the press, the market-to undermine freedoms", along with "the self-organising potential of society." Legatum left Anne Applebaum by herself to announce [8] the Greek government can be overthrown because it was "elected on a completely false premise".

The Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), the thunderer against Russian info-warfare last month [9], has since roared on Tunisian and Nigerian democracy; this week it is preparing for a panel discussion [10] on "the progress that Kyiv has made in increasing transparency and reforming key government institutions". Chatham House has stayed silent on Greek democracy and the referendum.

In Washington, the International Republican Institute (IRI) [11] - motto, "helps democracy become more effective where it is in danger" - has been issuing its State Department-funded democracy polls for months, but for Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe; not for Greece. At the same time, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) [12] has been preoccupied with its democracy schemes in Georgia, Iraq, and Kosovo.

The Pew Research Centre [13] in Washington tried anticipating the Greek referendum by surveying 2.5 million Twitter messages in Greece, and publishing the results on July 3. In the Greek language the tweets were 40% to 33% in favour of voting Yes. In the English language the Greek tweets ran 32% to 7% in favour of Yes. In the event, the social media results were contrived. If Pew hadn't invented them, the large numbers of "neutral" tweets all turned into No votes on the day.

The Brookings Institution and the Peterson Institute - both funded by the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk to beat the anti-Russian drum in Ukraine - stopped short of forecasting the Greek referendum result, but condemned the government in Athens for offering it. On July 1 [15], Carlo Bastasin, an Italian journalist on the Brookings stipend, claimed to have eyewitness evidence for "Greek leaders' conduct as unscrupulous", and for the Greek government's "plans [as] more recessionary and austerity-driven than the European ones." The reporter's sources lacked names.

AndreasOn the Peterson Institute's executive committee Greek strategy is directed by Andreas Dracopoulos [16]. He is a member of the family of the Greek shipowner Stavros Niarchos, whose foundation money Dracopoulos is in charge of awarding. When Dracopoulos has been asked what the Niarchos money is doing for the domestic crisis, he has mentioned food vouchers for the poor and beds for the homeless. He didn't mention [17] paying tax. Dracopoulos has been knighted by a previous Greek government as Grand Commander of the Order of the Phoenix; that was for the Niarchos Foundation's philanthropy. Dracopoulos is pictured above with Archbishop Demetrios, primate of the American Diocese of the Greek Church, a traditional foe of governments in Athens the diocese considers left wing, or worse.

The Greek-American community has avoided a public statement on the referendum. Instead on July 1, the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA), as the national lobby group is known, announced: "We also call on the Obama Administration to step-up its engagement to ensure the parties achieve a proper solution." If the Greek-Americans, Dracopoulos, and the Church meant Operation Nemesis, they weren't saying no on July 5. Ahead of the vote, AHEPA issued its second announcement [18]: "Regardless of the outcome of the referendum held in Greece on July 5, 2015, what is crucial to the Greek American community is that U.S.-Greece relations remain strong and certain and Greece's geostrategic importance and contributions to the security interests of the U.S. and NATO is valued and appreciated."

Political sources in Athens acknowledge that after taking power in January, Tsipras and his Syriza colleagues quietly took precautions against a putsch by the security forces. "The leadership [of the military and intelligence services] was changed," the sources say, "but not radically. The defence minister [Panos Kammenos] is rightist so there are no 'radicals' in command."

In Moscow there has been scepticism from the start that Tsipras could or would withstand the American and German pressure. For more, read this [19]. In April, and then again in June, Kammenos sidestepped the issue of what fresh military cooperation with Russia is contemplated by the Greek side. Discussion of the details has been postponed until the two governments hold a joint ministerial commission meeting [20] later this month.

Russian military analysts expect Cyprus to arrange increased military cooperation, including the Russian Navy and naval support aircraft. They do not expect Greece will ask for, nor the Kremlin agree to comparable Greek cooperation. That story can be read here [22].

So where did Robert Kaplan [23] (lead image, rear) get the idea that the US and the European Union (EU) should act "to keep Russian warships away from Greek ports"? Kaplan, from the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in Washington, reported to Wall Street Journal readers on June 30 that the Kremlin plot is to use Syriza as its stalking horse to drive Greece out of the EU, and dismantle US alliance positions along the Mediterranean shore and in the Balkans. Russia, according to Kaplan, "may [sic] be helping to inflame Syriza's internal divisions in the hope that Greece's ruling party cannot make the difficult concessions necessary to stay in the eurozone." Combined "with the dismemberment and weakening of Ukraine, [Greece's no vote] will seriously weaken Europe's geopolitical position vis-à-vis Russia."

Kaplan's think-tank in Washington reports [24] that its funding comes from well-known military equipment suppliers, US oil companies, the governments of Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore; NATO; the US Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force; plus George Soros's Open Society Foundations. Chief executive of CNAS is Michele Flournoy, a founder of the think-tank which is serving as her platform to run for the next Secretary of Defense, if Hillary Clinton wins the presidential election next year. Flournoy is one of the drafters of a recent plan for the US to escalate arms and troop reinforcements in Ukraine and along the Russian frontier with the Baltic states. Here's her plan [25] for "What the United States and NATO Must Do" . For more on Flournoy, read this [26].

Until Kaplan's report last week, the only notice CNAS has taken of Greece was a report [27] last January explaining "Why Putin Is the Big Winner in Greece's Election". The think-tank expert for that one was an ex-US Treasury official with a training in Arabic and no record on Europe, let alone Greece. Kaplan [28], an Israeli soldier as well as a Pentagon employee and lecturer to US intelligence agencies, explains his expertise on Greece comes "from living in Athens during that decade [1980s]." If he wasn't on an extended holiday, Kaplan may mean he was under cover.

For warfighting in Greece now, all you need to know is who the Greeks must be saved from. If the Greeks have voted more demonstratively than the Ukrainians against sacrificing themselves to this idea, the experts are confident that's not democracy, as the Axis understands it, but hubris, for which there's Operation Nemesis. Natch!

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