Johnson's Russia List
2015-#143
28 July 2015
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"We don't see things as they are, but as we are"

"Don't believe everything you think"

In this issue
 
#1
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
July 27, 2015
BREAKING: Sweden Finds Russian Submarine!
The vessel sank in 1916
By Petri Krohn

After 99 years of searching Sweden finally finds the Russian mini submarine lurking in its territorial waters. The submarine �Сом� (Som, "Catfish") disappeared on mission in the Baltic Sea in 1916. It has now been located by the Swedish "Ocean X Team" three kilometers from the Swedish coast.

Turns out the submarine is in fact American. The �Сом� was originally constructed as the "Fulton" by the Electric Boat Company (now General Dynamics Electric Boat) at the Crescent Shipyard in Elizabethport, New Jersey as the prototype of the US Plunger-class submarines. It was sold to the Imperial Russian Navy in 1904.

Both the US and Russian navies built 7 submarines to the design, (know as Som-class submarines in Russia). The American submarines ended up in the Philippines. The Russian submarines first served in the Pacific and during WWI in the Baltic and Black Seas.

The tradition of the US and Russia sharing naval designs was started during the American Civil War with the USS Monitor serving as the prototype. The ten US ships were known as the Passaic-class monitors while the ten Russian ships were the Uragan-class.

In WWI an important mission of Russian submarines in the Baltic Sea was to prevent Swedish iron ore from the Kiruna mines in northern Sweden from reaching German steel mills. It is possible that �Сом� was in Swedish territorial waters as part of this mission. Three other "Western" submarine types were also taking part in this mission: the American Holland-class submarines of the Imperial Russian navy (originally the US Holland 602 type submarine) and the C and E classes of the British submarine flotilla in the Baltic.

The submarine is externally undamaged and lies upright in the sea bottom with its hatches closed. It is assumed the crew is still inside. Swedish submarine experts have confirmed the submarine is of Plunger-class. I have also made the identification from the published photographs. The Plunger-class submarines are 20 meters (66 feet) long. When constructed starting in 1900 they were the largest submarines in the US fleet. Now they might be classifies as "minisubs."

SWEDISH REACTION

As expected, the Swedish press is full of hysteria about Russia and "violation Swedish territory." The Swedish Armed Forces has "been informed" of the find.

I am now waiting for the official Swedish reaction
- When and how will Sweden officially inform Russia about the find?
- Will Swedes respect the submarine as sovereign Russian territory?

SOURCES:
- Fr�mmande ub�t hittad i svenskt vatten (Foreign submarine found in Swedish waters) http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/frammande-ubat-hittad-i-svenskt-vatten/
- Unknown sunken submarine found off of the coast of Sweden http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1478072

PRESS RELEASE 2015-07-27
http://www.oceanexplorer.se/

A Russian mini-submarine has been discovered at Swedish territorial waters not far from the Swedish coast. The submarine is about 20 meters long and three and a half meters wide. It is unclear how old the submarine is and how long it has been laying at the sea floor, but the Cyrillic letters on the hull indicates that it is Russian.

The discovery was made previous week by the Ocean X Team and Ixplorer.

- The submarine is completely intact, have no visible damage to the hull and the hatches are closed. Therefore do we fear that the crew have not been able to save them self when the sub went down, says Stefan Hogeborn, divers in Ocean X Team.

The submarine was found during an expedition where a camera equipped, unmanned mini-submarine of the model ROV, Remote Operated Vehicle, was sent down.

Swedish Armed Forces was informed earlier today.

Ocean X Team is now preparing for a new expedition, divers will be sent down to film and to investigate the submarine wreck more closely.

Ocean X Team has previously made several discoveries such as shipwrecks and historical objects, including bottles of champagne from 1916 and the circular of the Baltic Sea Phenomenon etc.

See moving pictures of the discovery site here, Expressen: http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/frammande-ubat-hittad-i-svenskt-vatten/ 
Twitter
July 27, 2015
Anders Aslund
@anders_aslund

James Kirchick has written a well-researched & devastating article about the role of Carnegie in US policy on Russia. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/27/how-a-u-s-think-tank-fell-for-putin.html
 
 #3
www.thedailybeast.com
July 27, 2015
How a U.S. Think Tank Fell for Putin
The Carnegie Moscow Center used to be a hub of Russian liberalism. Now it stands accused of being a 'Trojan horse' for Russian influence.
By James Kirchick
James Kirchick is a foreign correspondent based in Berlin. He is a columnist for the New York Daily News, Ha'aretz, and Tablet, and a fellow with the Foreign Policy Initiative.

Last June, three months after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula and just weeks before Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine shot down a civilian airliner, killing nearly 300 people, a small group of Americans and Russians gathered on the Finnish island of Boisto. Policy analysts and former government officials, they had come to discuss the fate of the post-Soviet country whose democratic revolution had helped sink U.S.-Russian relations to their lowest point in three decades.

The symbolism of the location could not have been lost on the meeting's participants. Sharing an 800-mile border with Russia, Finland has delicately managed relations with its neighbor. During the Cold War, it adopted a policy of formal neutrality, accepted Soviet interference in its domestic politics, and imposed rigorous self-censorship to avoid provoking Moscow. This phenomenon of voluntarily choosing limited sovereignty to appease a large and aggressive neighbor earned the moniker "Finlandization," and the Soviet Union held up Finland as an example of its ability to live in peace and friendship with its neighbors. At the time of the Boisto meeting last summer, foreign policy luminaries like Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and David Ignatius were trumpeting "Finlandization" as a model for Ukraine to follow.

But what was most notable about the Boisto meeting-which eventually produced a 24-point plan to resolve the crisis-was what it lacked: Ukrainians. Large powers discussing the fates of smaller ones while simultaneously locking them out of the room has an understandably ugly resonance in Central and Eastern Europe. By excluding Ukrainians, the Boisto initiative signatories lent credence-wittingly or not-to the Russian view that Ukraine is not a real country and that outside forces can determine its fate. As for the Boisto proposals themselves, most were amenable to the Kremlin line.

For instance, in calling for both sides to withdraw forces from certain conflict areas in eastern Ukraine, the signatories treated aggressor and victim as moral equals, likening Russian removal of its soldiers with Ukraine's withdrawing troops from its own, sovereign land. (Full disclosure: I signed an open letter at the time rejecting the Boisto initiative alongside dozens of other foreign policy analysts, including, most important, Ukrainians.)

Boisto was an example of what's known in diplomatic parlance as a "Track II" negotiation: when parties close to, but not officially representing, national governments engage in discussions about topics of mutual concern. While America and its European partners ignored Boisto, the Russian Foreign Ministry seized on it. "On our behalf, we welcome intentions of the public and academic societies to contribute into the resolution of the situation in the Southeast of Ukraine and to put an end as soon as possible to bloodshed encouraged by Kiev authorities' forceful measures," read a Ministry statement. Happy to promote anything that flatters its self-image as a great power and goes over the heads of Ukrainians, Moscow evidently saw promotion of the Boisto proposal as in its interests.

The Boisto Group's meeting was sponsored by three entities: the Finnish Foreign Ministry, the Institute for World Economy and International Relations (a think tank affiliated with the Russian Academy of Sciences), and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, one of the largest funders of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which describes itself as "the oldest international affairs think tank in the United States." (Such a long-running pedigree hasn't been without its hiccups: a former president of Carnegie was Alger Hiss, the State Department official who spied for the Soviets.) Boisto's first three signatories were Tom Graham, a former associate at the Carnegie Endowment, and a managing director at Kissinger Associates; Andrew Weiss, the Carnegie Endowment's vice president for studies who also serves as a senior adviser at the Albright Stonebridge Group; and Deana Arsenian, vice president of the international program and director of the Russia program at the Carnegie Corporation. On the Russian side, the delegation included, among others, Alexei Arbatov, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center, and Vyacheslav Trubnikov, a former head of the country's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).

Policy analysts who simultaneously work for major consulting shops founded by former secretaries of state (Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright, respectively), Graham and Weiss-who also served as co-chairs of the Boisto initiative-are influential players in the transatlantic conversation about Russia, although it's unclear where their analytical work stops and their business interests begin. Graham's bio at Yale's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, where he is a senior fellow, states that he "focuses on Russian and Eurasian affairs" for Kissinger Associates. (Graham did not reply to an email asking him to discuss the nature of his work.) Weiss's bio at Albright Stonebridge states that he "assists clients with issues related to Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union." In an email, he told The Daily Beast, "My role at Albright Stonebridge Group is focused on helping Western companies and philanthropic foundations understand Russian political and economic realities," and that "[t]he Carnegie Endowment has strict conflict of interest policies about outside consulting, which I fully abide by." Weiss did not elaborate on whether such policies prevent him from advising businesses trying to navigate around sanctions imposed on Russia for its behavior in Ukraine, telling me that he "can't discuss client-specific work at Albright Stonebridge Group."

"I don't want to be holier than thou," a Russia analyst at a prominent Washington think tank said when asked about Graham and Weiss's work as business consultants while also dispensing ostensibly objective analysis. "It seems to be a direct conflict of interest. I actually think American business money is potentially more difficult to manage than Russian money, in all honesty, because I think the American corporate interests are engaging because they have an agenda with Russia and they're much more savvy about how to exercise their influence."

Arsenian, in her capacity as head of the Carnegie Corporation's Russia program, has undertaken a project called "Rebuilding U.S.-Russia Relations," a website featuring brief articles by scholars, the vast majority of which argue for a diplomatic d�tente with the Kremlin, oppose arming Ukraine, or discourage Western sanctions against Russia. Under their tutelage, Carnegie has attempted to steer the debate over the Western response to Russia in a direction more aligned with Kremlin interests. Carnegie's role as a convener and promoter of the Boisto plan is but one element of a dramatic shift in its agenda from an institution that once hosted some of the Kremlin's sharpest critics to a place now urging Western appeasement of an ever more aggressive Russia.

Carnegie was the first major Western think tank to open a branch in Russia following the breakup of the Soviet Union, and, ironically, it may be the last. 1994, when the Moscow center was founded, was a period of optimism for liberal reform of the post-communist system, and Carnegie Moscow was one of the leading Western outposts providing independent and reliable analysis of Russian domestic politics and foreign policy. After Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, and throughout his rise as Russia's new tsar, the center built a reputation for quality and insight. That reputation was built in part upon the work of three individuals: Lilia Shevtsova, a political scientist and one of the most well-respected analysts of Russian politics; Nikolai Petrov, who headed the center's Society and Regions Program; and Maria Lipman, a journalist and author who edited the center's renowned Russian-language Pro et Contra journal. All three have been vocal and prominent critics of Putin and the corrupt and sclerotic system he has imposed.

The center began to undergo serious change, however, after Putin returned to the presidency in 2012 following a rigged election and violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. In January 2013, Petrov left after his program was canceled, not due to lack of funds, he contends, but a desire not to ruffle Kremlin feathers. "My own explanation was that the move was initiated by Dmitri [Trenin, the Moscow center's director], whose point was there are some important functions Carnegie should serve, like communication on high-level nuclear issues and so on, and domestic politics is a troublemaker and it would be good to cut off this part of Carnegie," Petrov told The Daily Beast. Given the increasingly adverse environment in Russia for Western institutions, pressure from the Russian government on Carnegie need not have been explicit. The move, Petrov said, may have been "a reaction to some direct signals, or this could be preemptive action in order to avoid some troubles." Trenin did not reply to an email seeking comment for this story.

Next to go was Lipman, laid off in the summer of 2014 due to what she was formally informed were "personnel cuts." This came as a surprise, not least because in 2013 Carnegie Moscow had received a three-year grant of $350,000 from the MacArthur Foundation to fund the publication of Pro et Contra. Lipman told me she "was never able to get an answer" for why she lost her job and her journal when Pro et Contra still had two more years of funding. Weiss says Carnegie decided to "replac[e]" Pro et Contra with a Russian-language website, Carnegie.ru. "Carnegie people flatly denied any political reasons behind it and I have no reasons not to trust them," Lipman said.

Last out the door in October was Shevtsova, who only two months earlier had signed the open letter protesting the Boisto manifesto, pitting her against her superiors, Arsenian and Weiss. Shevtsova, who is now affiliated with the Brookings Institution, told The Daily Beast: "Carnegie has been a wonderful place over the years with a strong a tradition of pluralism of views, including most prominently liberal principled views. Over the past year or two, however, I have sensed that this has changed, with a squeezing out of different points of view."

Three months after Shevtsova's departure, in January 2015, Carnegie announced the hiring of three new analysts in its Moscow office, ostensibly to replace the veterans who had left. "I'm a great admirer of [Lilia] Shevtsova, Masha Lipman and Nikolai Petrov and their remarkable contributions to the Carnegie Moscow Center over many years," Weiss said in an email. However, one current Carnegie staffer has referred to Lipman and Shevtsova as "dinosaurs" in this author's presence.

As the Russian government ratchets up a xenophobic campaign targeting Western nongovernmental organizations, accusing them of espionage and attempting to foment a coup, Carnegie's presence in Moscow continues to be tolerated. Its name is conspicuously missing from the latest list of "undesirable organizations" compiled by the Russian government, which includes many other institutions of similar profile: George Soros's Open Society Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation, the latter of which announced last week that it will leave Russia due to Kremlin pressure.

Adding to the mystery of Carnegie's absence from the list of "undesirable organizations" is that MacArthur, Mott, and Open Society have all funded the Moscow center. "My impression is that there have been basically two reactions" to the Kremlin crackdown on foreign NGOs, says the Russia analyst at the prominent D.C. think tank. "One is basically what we saw with the MacArthur Foundation, being asked to do things we don't think we can do, so goodbye and good luck. The other is to conclude that 'there has to be good relations, so let's accommodate demands that are being made.' I know how difficult it is to manage these programs. There are a lot of people I know who have been associated with Carnegie who aren't anymore, and it looks a little bit to me that they've kind of caved in," the analyst said.

"The Russian government's recent attacks on foreign NGOs and foundations are nothing less than a witch hunt," Weiss emailed. Yet it's a witch hunt that has, noticeably, not ensnared Carnegie.

A list of events held by the Carnegie Moscow Center on its website provides one clue to why this might be the case: Scarcely any have addressed internal Russian politics or, more amazingly, the ongoing war in Ukraine. "[Carnegie Moscow] used to be a venue where events were held regularly, and, I would say, quite frequently, that discussed current developments in looking at various aspects of Russia. I don't see such events any more and if they still hold them they are much fewer," Lipman said.

According to Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess grandmaster, human-rights activist, and Daily Beast contributor, Carnegie functions in a role not unfamiliar to students of the Cold War: as a tribune to the West through which Russian intelligence whispers the official Moscow line-or rather, what Moscow wants the West to believe is that line. The Moscow center is the sort of operation that influential actors in the Kremlin, he said, "use at a time when they need to communicate their messages to the West not from official structures but from something that is viewed as independent and even American." Indeed, the motivation to cozy up to the Kremlin may have little to do with venality. "I think actually the funding is less of an issue," said the think tank analyst when asked if the Russian government, state-owned companies, or other entities might be attempting to influence American public opinion via covert funding of Washington policy institutes. "I think Russian money is potentially problematic. My impression is everybody is supersensitive about it. I think the issue is access. It reminds me a lot more of the Soviet days. There's a subtle self-censorship that begins to creep in."

Over half a dozen Russia analysts at prominent Washington-based think tanks consulted for this article chose not to go on the record with their concerns out of professional courtesy. But they joined Kasparov in assessing that Carnegie has decided to place a premium on maintaining its presence in Moscow, sacrificing its intellectual independence and analytical rigor in the process. "Certainly this was done with a measure of concern about the direction that the Russian government was taking with NGOs and probably an effort to stay under the radar," a former Carnegie Moscow Center employee told The Daily Beast about the "makeover" of its staff, characterizing much of what the center publishes today as the product of "self-censorship." A former U.S. government official who has worked on Russia characterized Carnegie to me as a "Trojan horse" of pro-Kremlin sentiment in Washington.

One person who has played a key role in managing this balancing act is Trenin, the center's director, who has been affiliated with the Moscow office since its inception. Prior to his career as a think tank analyst, Trenin spent 21 years in the Soviet army, achieving the rank of colonel. An analysis of his work since the Ukraine crisis began reveals a telling pattern of making oddly sanguine predictions of Russian behavior, followed by appeals to the U.S. and Europe that they assent to Russian belligerence.

"Despite what some Ukrainians suspect, Moscow is unlikely to try bringing about the breakup of Ukraine in order to annex its southern and eastern parts. That would mean civil war next door, and Russia abhors the idea," Trenin wrote last February, just weeks before Russian troops invaded and annexed Crimea. Having inaccurately predicted Russian restraint, Trenin then telegraphed what would soon emerge as a major Russian propaganda point: endorsing the "federalization" of Ukraine, a devolution of power going far beyond the "de-centralization" favored by the West that would allow the Kremlin to project hegemony over the country's eastern provinces politically rather than militarily (the more costly alternative). "Although federalization is seen in Kiev and western Ukraine as a step toward ultimate partition," Trenin wrote, "it could in fact help hold Ukraine together."

Trenin's kid-gloves treatment of Putin's expansionist goals has remained consistent throughout the conflict. "The idea of Russia sending forces into Ukraine has always looked fairly incredible to me at this point, ever since the beginning of this present crisis," he said last May, two months after Russian forces occupied Crimea and the peninsula's annexation was formalized with a vote by Russia's Federation Council, its rubber stamp upper chamber. "Believing that Russia is preparing to intervene militarily would be a severe underestimation of Putin's intellectual capabilities," he told the Financial Times the following month. Asked about Moscow's support for pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine's east, Trenin downplayed its decisive role in arming, supplying, and coordinating their assaults on Ukrainian targets. "They perform a function for Moscow, but no more than that," he said.

Though he usually delivers his analysis in a dry, dispassionate tone, Trenin, in a recent interview, gave a baldly emotional response. Earlier this month, he told the semi-independent radio station Echo of Moscow: "The Soviet Union lost the 'cold war.' I say it as the citizen of Russia. But when an American says that the USSR lost the cold war, my reaction is different...If he says so, he demonstrates to me his superiority, or his lack of knowledge, or his cockiness." That a Westerner cannot so much as point out historical fact without evoking feelings of grievance and wounded national pride in a former Soviet military officer-who has worked for an American organization for the past two decades-seems to complicate the latter's role as an objective observer of Western-Russian relations.

Indeed, according to Petrov, the former Carnegie analyst, "I would say that, if in the past [Trenin] was occupying a very balanced position, very good at describing the situation from two points of view, the Russian perspective and the West perspective, now his Western part is cut off and he describes everything from the Kremlin's perspective most of all."

If Carnegie's softer line on the Kremlin were limited to the work of its Moscow office, such posturing could at least be explained away as a result of Kremlin pressure. But the new line is mirrored by institutional sentiments in the United States.

This year, the Carnegie Corporation initiated a forum called "Rebuilding U.S.-Russia Relations," overseen by Deana Arsenian. The vast majority of the pieces commissioned by the forum promotes the view that Russia-despite its riptide of anti-American disinformation and conspiracy theories that place the State Department and CIA at the center of every major geopolitical development-is a sometimes difficult friend to the United States.

In April 2014, posting on the corporation's website in preface to an article in the Financial Times by Thomas Graham under the headline "Punishing an aggressive Russia is a fool's errand," Arsenian wrote: "The actions and the rhetoric of all involved are progressing along a dangerous path with potential negative ramifications for global peace and security." Such a pox-on-both-your-houses moral equivalency, it's true, is a common refrain heard among many policy intellectuals in the West who view the European Union, NATO, or U.S. policymakers as equally responsible as the Kremlin for the mess in Ukraine. But Arsenian went a step farther in justifying a policy of non-punishment for Moscow, arguing that "[f]actual information is hard [to] obtain" about events in Ukraine.

Is it, really, though? A welter of independent reporting and research conducted by nongovernmental organizations had solidly concluded quite a lot about the sequence of events concerning the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea (an Anschluss that Putin himself acknowledged after having lied about it).

Despite all these easily verifiable acts of aggression, leading Carnegie figures persist in advising against any critical Western response. Though Weiss told me that his side gig consulting with Albright Stonebridge "is focused on helping Western companies and philanthropic foundations understand Russian political and economic realities," he insisted, "I have never advocated nor do I support the lifting (or weakening) of sanctions imposed on Russia as a result of its aggression against Ukraine." His public statements, however, paint a more complicated picture.

Weiss may not have explicitly opposed sanctions per se, but he has consistently pooh-poohed them as counter to the real solution of cutting a deal with the Kremlin. "Sanctions will make it look like we're responding, and will give the administration something to point to...But I'm not sure if we're firing off sanctions bullets that we'll be as effective on the diplomatic side," he said last year, shortly after Russia's land-grab in Crimea. This March, strangely using Soviet-era solecism to refer to Ukraine with a definite article, he denigrated the use of sanctions in an interview with Reuters, stating that "These tools may hurt and bite over time, but the inherent fragility of the Ukraine is so high it is working against the ability of the West to achieve its goals." (Last year, Weiss sniped at the possible use of sanctions against the tottering regime of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin ally, amid the violence he unleashed against demonstrators on the Maidan. "Sanctions are a good feel-good instrument," he told NPR. "They will show the outside world that the U.S. and the Europeans are doing something. But they are really not likely to affect events on the ground.")

So while never coming out explicitly against sanctions, neither has Weiss endorsed them, opting instead for a subtler middle-ground position that simply dismisses them as a waste of time. This is not really off-message from what Russian officialdom itself maintains: Sanctions, runs the government line, are a big yawn to the country and will really only hurt Europe in the long term. (Never mind that, as former Russian finance minister and Putin adviser Alexei Kudrin recently noted, "In recorded history since 1992, this year Russia has the lowest share in the world economy.")

Andrei Kolesnikov, one of the three recently hired Carnegie Moscow analysts, provided a more robust opposition to sanctions when he recently wrote that "what Western policymakers fail to understand is that [sanctions are] less likely to undermine the regime than to cause Russians to close ranks behind it."

Meanwhile, Eugene Rumer, director of Carnegie's Russia and Eurasia program, warned, "Arm Ukraine and you risk another Black Hawk Down," an allusion to the 1993 attack on U.S. Marines in Mogadishu that killed 18 servicemen. Reasonable people can surely argue against sending arms to Ukraine without resorting to casuistry: As Rumer no doubt knows, there is no proposal currently on offer to send American soldiers into harm's way against Moscow-backed separatists or undeclared Russian troops. As it stands, the rebels have already downed quite a few Ukrainian helicopters-with a virtually unending supply of materiel sent to them from Russia.

Still another talking point employed by Carnegie's leadership is the suggestion that Putin is the best of all possible leaders for Russia, an assertion founded on dubious grounds that conveniently provides cover for him to carry on doing whatever he likes with impunity. In a piece headlined "What's Worse than Vladimir Putin?" Rumer warned against attempts to weaken Russia's current regime, as what could follow would be worse. "Putin is no peach," he observed, with mocking understatement, "but if current hostilities endure and sanctions grow more painful, it's possible that the next Russian leader could be more anti-Western and recalcitrant than he is." At what point Putin's hostility might reach a threshold level meriting more painful sanctions, Rumer did not specify.

It is certainly possible that this cohort of analysts believes a softly, softly approach toward a revanchist and deeply anti-American regime is in the best interests of Washington and that a mutually beneficial diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis is the best way forward. But that makes it all the more bewildering that Carnegie has opted to liaise with Russian hard-liners pushing for greater military intervention in Ukraine and the advancement of "Novorossiya," the term used to describe the establishment of a blood-and-soil ethnic Russian empire across swathes of the former Soviet Union.

Last December, Graham, Rumer and Weiss attended a conference in Moscow hosted by the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI), a think tank that, until 2009, was connected to Russia's foreign intelligence service (SVR) and now provides analysis directly to the presidential administration. Under the leadership of Leonid Reshetnikov, a retired SVR general, the institute strongly supported the annexation of Crimea, and, according to former institute researcher Alexander Sytin, has hosted the separatist leader Igor Girkin (aka Igor Strelkov), himself a former operative in Russian intelligence and a purported "friend" of the institute's director.

"Dozens of memos were prepared by the institute on the need to form inside Ukraine clandestine Russian terrorist groups, on the need to make an offensive to take over Mariupol, Nikolaev, and Odessa, and build the New Russia that would include the Transnistria that should be united with Russia as Crimea," Sytin told Radio Liberty in January.

In a February interview with Moskovsky Komsomolets, Reshetnikov said the U.S. initiators of the Boisto proposal, whom he characterized as "responsible Americans," had visited him in Moscow prior to the summit in Finland to scope out his views. "I know who was on the American side because this same group at first visited us at the institution with these same ideas," he told the newspaper. "We spent long hours with them."

That an institute seeking to foment more war through clandestine terrorist groups in Ukraine would find much to be admired in U.S.-funded think tankers is disconcerting, to say the least.

"Russia has returned to the 16th century, while these people continue to chant: 'We should not stop Russia or it could become even more dangerous,'" Georgy Satarov, a former adviser to Boris Yeltsin and now the head of the InDem Foundation in Moscow, told The Daily Beast. "But what could be more dangerous than it is now? Ironically, the chorus is singing the same song on both sides of the ocean-in Russia and America. One watching the chorus starts thinking about the conductor and the leading voices. And here they are: in the Moscow Center of Carnegie."

Carnegie's dilemma is understandable. Operating a Western-funded organization in authoritarian Russia is incredibly daunting, which is why many others have either been driven out of the country or left preemptively. And as Moscow grows ever more closed off and inscrutable to Westerners, the ability of a well-connected few to present themselves as interpreters of "what Moscow wants" or "what Vladimir Putin is really thinking" is no doubt enticing. Like all think tanks looking to influence U.S. foreign policy, the Carnegie Moscow Center seeks access and a unique perspective. But in gaining them, has it lost its way?

 
 #4
Moscow Times
July 28, 2015
Putin Scheduled to Address UN General Assembly
By Anna Dolgov

Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend this year's United Nations General Assembly in September, according to a provisional list of speakers released by the UN.

Putin plans to address the gathering of the world's heads of states and governments on its opening day, Sept. 28, according to the list circulated at the UN on Monday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Putin intended to appear, but said the plan was not yet final, Russia's state-run news agency Sputnik reported.

"I can confirm that such a possibility is being considered, preparations are underway," Peskov was quoted as saying.

Putin's visit, if it takes place, would come after a decade-long break. The Russian leader previously addressed the UN General Assembly in 2000, 2003 and 2005.

Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko is scheduled to speak on Sept. 29, the day after Putin's planned appearance, and Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko also plans to attend.

Also on the schedule is Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is slated to address the General Assembly for the first time.

While the preliminary list is a good indication of who might attend, the lists of General Assembly speakers have been known to see numerous changes in the weeks and days leading up to the high-level meeting.
 
 #5
www.rt.com
July 28, 2015
Putin: 'Europe should be more independent, defend own interests'

European countries should be less beholden to military blocks and the US when considering issues concerning their own national interests, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the Swiss RTS TV channel. Putin also talked FIFA scandal and Islamic terrorism.

"It would be great to see Europe show more independence and sovereignty, and the ability to stand up for its national interests - the interests of its peoples and countries," Putin said in an interview with RTS published on Monday.

He added that he "hopes" another war in Europe is not in the cards.

The Russian leader added that a certain level of sovereignty is undoubtedly lost when joining any "any military-political organization [or] military-political bloc." Putin noted that "France withdrew from NATO in order to preserve its sovereignty to a greater extent than would have been possible had it been part of the organization," referring to the French withdrawal from NATO in the 1960s. France fully returned to the military bloc only in 2009.

Putin stressed that "it is not our business to analyze the foreign policy of European countries. But you must admit that if we have to discuss inter-European affairs with European partners in Washington, this is not very interesting."

He also mentioned that the US has been "pursuing an imperial policy for a long time." In addition, he cited the opinion of some American political analysts who "believe that this imperial angle hurts the US."

Putin explained that Russia's stance on US foreign policy "has nothing to do with anti-Americanism," adding that Russians "have respect and great love for the USA, and especially for the American people."

Europe fighting terrorism: 'Better late than never'

When answering a question about Russia's earlier efforts to fight terrorism and the lack of Western support at the time, Putin said that European governments had ignored abundant evidence of terrorist activity, such as Al-Qaeda affiliates fighting in the Russian North Caucasus.

"When I asked my colleagues, including Europeans: 'You see what is happening?' they used to respond: 'Yes, we do, but due to various domestic, international circumstances, we cannot support you.' I would tell them then: 'If you cannot support us - at least don't hinder our efforts.'"

Putin, however, noted that the situation has substantially changed. "Europe and the United States have realized the real dangers of extreme manifestations of radicalism and joined in the fight. As the Russian people say - it is better late than never."

The Russian leader also said he hopes that cooperation with the West will go beyond counter-terrorism, adding that he looks forward to resolving the situation in Ukraine as well several economic issues: "We will engage in dialogue and work out a solution acceptable to all."

Putin criticized the US government's self-perceived right to pressure other countries around the world, acting from a policy of "who is not with us, is against us." Still, with enough patience it is possible and necessary to work with the American side on solving global issues, Putin said, praising international efforts that have led to a recent deal on Iran's nuclear program.

'EU's right wing not supporting me, but national interests'

Asked to comment on the "ironic" turn in European politics, which has seen right-wing political parties gain public support, and seemingly speak out in favor of Putin's statements as opposed to politicians on the left, the President said the underlying reason was Washington's troublesome interference into the domestic affairs of other nations.

Putin did not agree that 'surprise' endorsements of his policies or words from the likes of Marine Le Pen of France's National Front or Swiss Democratic Union of the Centre (UDC) had anything to do with him personally. He described it as a "tectonic shift in Europeans' public conscience" in the direction of protecting national interests, including from foreign political interventions.

According to Putin, a number of issues Europe is facing now, including the influx of migrants from places such as war-torn Libya, have to do with "decisions taken over the [Atlantic] ocean." In fact, Europe is now paying for decisions it did not make, he stressed.

'Are UK, US failed FIFA bids behind corruption scandal?'

After several questions from Swiss media on the FIFA corruption scandal, Putin said he doesn't believe it had anything to do with actions of the organization's head, President Sepp Blatter, hinting that he views the allegations as politically motivated.

"We all know the situation developing around Mr. Blatter right now. I don't want to go into details but I don't believe a word about him being involved in corruption personally," Putin stressed.

The statement comes days after Blatter pledged FIFA's "full support" of Russia in hosting the 2018 World Cup at the opening ceremony of the preliminary draw in St. Petersburg.

Blatter announced his resignation in June amidst a bribery scandal pursued by US, Swiss and other authorities. While several FIFA officials have been indicted, Blatter has denied any misconduct and will continue to serve as the group's acting president until a new extraordinary session can elect a new head. The scandal coincided with preparations for FIFA World Cups in Russia and Qatar, which are to be held in 2018 and 2022 respectively.

Putin questioned whether the efforts to pursue the investigation stemmed from failed attempts of the US and its key ally, the UK, to secure bids to host the 2022 and 2018 World Cups: "The way this fight against corruption looks makes me wonder if it isn't a continuation of the bids for 2018 and 2022."

"If someone is suspected for committing a crime, then evidence is collected and transferred to a prosecutor of the country the alleged person resides in. But this is in no way connected to one country - big or small - going around the world, dragging to jail individuals that it wants."

Putin praised "people like Mr. Blatter" - the heads of big international sporting federations or those organizing the Olympic Games -for actually bringing nations from around the world closer together and improving the ways they interact. "If there is anyone who deserves the Nobel Prize, it's those people," he stressed.
 
#6
Kremlin.ru
July 27, 2015
Interview with Swiss media

Vladimir Putin gave an interview to Swiss media. The interview was recorded on July 25 in St Petersburg, during the President's visit to the preliminary round draw for the 2018 Football World Cup.

Question: Good evening, Mr President. Thank you very much for making the time for this interview.

Vladimir Putin (In French): Bon Soir.

Question: We are currently in the city of St Petersburg, where the draw ceremony is underwayfor the 2018 Football World Cup, which will be held in the Russian Federation, and to which you are devoting so much energy.

Vladimir Putin: Yes, this is true. Congratulations to all of us.

I can honestly tell you, and there is nothing new: we do not have any special ambitions in this upcoming championship, although we certainly expect a good performance from our team.

Our goal in holding this competition fell in line with FIFA's goals - namely, broadening football's geography. I won't even mention that Russia is a very large nation - the biggest in the world in terms of territory, and the largest in Europe in terms of population.

In addition to everything else, we have a visa-free regime - free movement - with most of the former Soviet republics, which are now independent states. And naturally, this event will be important not only for Russia but our closest neighbours as well.

Question: You are friends with Mr Blatter; you supported him.

Vladimir Putin: You know, we barely knew one another before we began the process of our bid, our fight for the 2018 World Cup. During this joint work, we had many meetings with representatives of the FIFA executive committee, with the commissions that came to our nation, and we met with Mr Blatter himself. We developed very good business relations and good personal relations.

Question: As for these criminal proceedings, which are currently underway in Switzerland, do you feel that the United States is involved in any way?

Vladimir Putin: As far as I know, the United States was bidding to hold the 2022 World Cup in their nation.

Question: You think they took revenge?

Vladimir Putin: I have not finished my sentence... And their closest ally in Europe, the United Kingdom, was bidding to host it in 2018. And the way the fight against corruption is playing out causes me to wonder whether this is a continuation of the battle for 2018 and 2022.

After all, nobody is against fighting corruption; everyone is for it. And I feel that we should fight even harder. But there are certain international legal norms stating that if somebody suspects a crime committed by anybody, certain data are collected and given to the prosecutor general's office in the state of which the suspect is a citizen. But this is not related in any way to the fact that one nation - big or small - travels throughout the world, grabs anyone it wants and takes them to their prison. In my view, that is unacceptable.

I repeat, this does not mean we shouldn't fight corruption.

Question: Mr President, a fairly important question for you and for the United States of America. Do you think these actions, which are now being taken within the FIFA framework, are a return to a kind of imperialist policy by the United States?

Vladimir Putin: A return? They have been conducting an imperialist policy for a long time; this is simply reinforcing that state. I have already stated this many times publicly - and not just me, but political analysts within the United States, who also speak of exactly this, and in these exact words. These American experts in foreign and domestic policy feel that this imperialist bent is detrimental to the US itself.

This position is not related in any way to anti-Americanism; we have a great deal of respect and love for the United States, and especially for the American people. I feel that these are simply unilateral actions and the expansion of jurisdiction by one nation beyond the territory of its borders, to the rest of the world, is unacceptable and destructive for international relations.

Question: Western nations' opinions about you are divided. As you know, some are delighted by you while others condemn you. When you once again spoke of your nuclear arsenal, many began to talk about the threat from your side.

Vladimir Putin: This is done by dishonest and inattentive people. The process of starting a new arms race began from the moment of the United States' unilateral withdrawal from the ballistic missile defence treaty. Because this agreement was a cornerstone for the entire international security system. And when the United States withdrew from it and began to create a missile defence system as part of its global strategic weapons system, we immediately said: we will be obligated to take reciprocal steps to maintain a strategic balance of power.

I want to say something very important: we are doing this for ourselves, to ensure the security of the Russian Federation, but we are also doing it for the rest of the world, because this strategic stability ensures the balance of power.

Question: We are currently in St Petersburg, a city that suffered a great deal in the war. As far as I understand, your grandfather and grandmother lived through...

Vladimir Putin: My mother and father. My brother, whom I never met, died here during the blockade.

Question: Is another war possible in Europe today?

Vladimir Putin: I hope not. But I would really like to see Europe demonstrate some real independence and sovereignty and be capable of defending its national interests, the interests of its people and its nations.

I want to come back to the previous question. A strategic balance allowed peace throughout the planet and prevented major military conflicts in Europe and throughout the world. And when the United States withdrew from that agreement, they said, we are creating a missile defence system that is not against you, and you want to develop a strike force; do what you want, we will assume it is not against us.

And we are doing exactly what we had stated long ago. The global missile defence system is expensive and it is still unclear how effective it is. And we are developing strike systems capable of overcoming any missile defence system. And what I announced just recently has been in our plans for several years, and was publicly announced long before.

Question: You said that you would like Europe to be more independent. For example, as far as France is concerned, during De Gaulle and Mitterrand's times. How do you currently feel about what is happening there?

Vladimir Putin: I still need to finish the previous question.

All our strategic defence actions correspond fully to Russia's international obligations, including within the framework of the agreement with the United States on strategic arms.

Now, regarding sovereignty. Participation in any military and political organisation or bloc is associated with the voluntary renunciation of a certain share of one's sovereignty.

I think that at the time, France withdrew from NATO to preserve its sovereignty more than it is possible within the framework of a military bloc. It is not our business to analyse European nations' foreign policy. But I think you'll agree that if we need to discuss intra-European affairs with European partners in Washington, it is not very interesting.

Question: Mr President, right now, we are observing a rather ironic turn in history. Currently, we are seeing you garner more support among right-wing and even extreme right parties in European nations than left-wing parties; for example, Marine Le Pen in France and the UDC in Switzerland. What do you think about this?

Vladimir Putin: I think that this is not so much support for me as the realisation of national interests as the political parties see them.

There are certain tectonic changes underway throughout the world and in Europe within the public consciousness, which are aimed at defending national interests. You must understand that right now, Europe is facing a specific problem, an influx of immigrants. And did Europe make the decision that ultimately led to this situation? We need to be sincere and honest: these decisions were made across the ocean, but Europe must deal with the problem.

Question: You mean the United States.

Vladimir Putin: Of course. This is just one example, but there are many. But this does not mean - and I already said this - that we should somehow demonise US policy; that is not my goal. They are conducting their policy as they see necessary in their interests.

We must strive to find a balance of interests; we need to invigorate our work, give new momentum to the work by the UN Security Council. The US is certainly a great power and the American people created this nation over several centuries, it is simply an amazing result. But that does not mean that today's US authorities have the right to travel throughout the world and grab anyone to drag back to their prison or act from a position of "anyone who is not with us is against us."

We need to be patient and work with our American colleagues to find solutions, the way we have in some areas of our cooperation, such as with the Iranian nuclear issue.

of the people who are combatting Islamism. Do you think Europeans are on your side on this issue?

Vladimir Putin: You know, when we were only beginning this struggle and came across problems in the Caucasus, I was amazed to see that even though we had proof that we were dealing with a terrorist threat, that we were fighting Al Qaeda representatives, we had no support. When I asked my colleagues, including those in Europe "Don't you see what is going on?" they said they did see, but could not support us 'due to certain circumstances, including internal policy and international ones'. Then, I would say "Fine, if you cannot support us - don't, but at least do not stand in our way."

Now I see that the situation has changed. Europe and the United States have come to see the real danger of the extreme manifestations of radicalism and have joined this struggle. We here say 'better late than never'. However, we have strong hope that not only in this direction, but also on other matters - on regulating the situation in Ukraine and on economic matters - we will maintain a dialogue and achieve mutually acceptable solutions.

I believe we have covered all the questions dealing with FIFA.

Question: The last one, Mr President. We spoke of Mr Blatter at this point on purpose. As for Angela Merkel, she is one of your colleagues with whom you frequently communicate. She speaks German, so do you communicate in German?

Vladimir Putin: Yes, we usually speak German.

As for Mr Blatter, you know, I would like to end with this, since this was what we started with. We all know the situation that has developed around Mr Blatter. I would not like to go into detail, though I do not believe a single word about corruption regarding him personally.

I believe that people like Mr Blatter, such heads of major international sports federations deserve special attention and gratitude from public organisations. If anyone should be awarded Nobel prizes, it is these people, because it is they who improve cooperation between nations and make an enormous humanitarian contribution to the development of good neighbourly relations between people and states.

Question: The last question, Mr President. The last question I would like to ask. In Europe you are now being portrayed as the new Stalin, some people present you as an imperialist. Some love you, of course, and appreciate you, but others present you in this particular way. There are even those who say that after all these years that you have been in power, you have gone mad. What would you respond to these people?

Vladimir Putin: After our interview, do you think I am mad?

Question: You are smiling, despite all the prejudice.

Vladimir Putin: This is part of political struggle; it has been part of my life for quite a number of years. I try not to pay too much attention to it. I simply do what I think is necessary in the interests of my country and my people.

It is not in Russia's interests to be in confrontation with other countries, but sometimes we are forced to protect our interests, and we will undoubtedly continue to do so. However, we will seek solution not in confrontation, particularly military confrontation, but in finding compromise and mutually acceptable solutions.

With your help I would like to address not those who criticise me, but those who support me. I would like to thank them for their support and tell them that we will continue moving ahead together. Primarily I am referring not even to those who paint my portraits, but to those who sympathise with what we are doing and agree with it deep inside.

Merci beaucoup (in French).
 #7
Politkom.ru
July 22, 2015
Russian pundit looks at Medvedev's chances of remaining premier
Tatyana Stanovaya, Putin has chosen Medvedev

As [the liberal business daily] RBK has found out from anonymous sources, Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev will head the electoral list for the State Duma in the upcoming September 2016 elections. The "no change" scenario in controlling the political system is thus being implemented. This also indicates that Dmitriy Medvedev has a good chance of keeping his post after the Duma elections.

"The probability that Dmitriy Medvedev will head the list is 100 per cent," one of the sources stated. "It is normal for the chairman of a party to personally head the list," Sergey Neverov, secretary of the One Russia general council, told RBK. "Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, as the moral leader and founder of the party and as president, determines the direction of the country's development, and Dmitriy Anatolyevich as party chairman guides One Russia into the implementation of tasks that the president sets," Neverov explained.

It seems that the Kremlin is launching a tradition: The premier heads the party of power, and the president continues as the supra-party figure. This arrangement was introduced in 2008, when in April Putin agreed to head One Russia, and Medvedev became president. And the Kremlin has also consistently occupied a stance based on the head of state having no party affiliation. It is important here to separate the issue of leading the party from being included in top position on its list. Thus, irrespective of the fact that he was president, in 2011 Medvedev also headed the electoral list of the party of power. However, later he did head the party when he became prime minister.

Now it works out that in September Medvedev will turn out to be both the leader of the party and head of its list. Meanwhile Putin will get the far more comfortable role of "national leader." "Vladimir Putin is a supra-party figure, and that is why he cannot head the list of any one party," the source, close to the One Russia leaders, explained.. But this is actually quite a habitual role for Putin, whose electoral potential is far broader than the potential of the party of power. To associate himself too closely with One Russia would mean taking on image constraints and burdens.

The decision to place Medvedev at the top of the One Russia electoral list represents several politically significant aspects at once. First of all, the Kremlin will not reform the party of power substantially on the threshold of the Duma campaign, and will keep it conceptually in the form in which it exists today. Second, Vladimir Putin will retain the possibility of getting directly involved in supporting pro-authorities forces via the All-Russia People's Front [ONF], which will most likely support candidates in single-seat districts very actively. Let us recall that the next elections to the State Duma will be conducted with a mixed electoral system: 225 deputies will be elected on party lists and the same number in districts, using the relative majority system. That is why the Kremlin is expanding for itself opportunities for political manoeuvring between the party of power, which has become traditional for the Putin regime (major reputation risks have been building up with regard to it for a long time now) and the ONF, through which both image and personnel regeneration can be conducted. At the same time, the two campaigns will most likely be closely integrated with each other so as to prevent competition from the "good guys." There will be a mix of continuity and conservative innovation.

Third, Medvedev is highly likely to keep his post as prime minister after the parliamentary elections, unless, of course, the campaign proves to be uncontrollably disastrous. In that case it is practically impossible to predict the consequences: The development of the situation will become chaotic and spontaneous. However, accepting the stability factor as a persistent variable, it is logical to assume that Medvedev will continue to lead the cabinet of ministers after the elections.

Fourth, the Kremlin is obviously counting on the situation in the country remaining relatively calm and manageable until the State Duma elections. One Russia, as RBK's source said, is counting on 70 per cent. But these are clearly exaggerated expectations. The party garnered 64 per cent in 2007 and 49 per cent in 2011. Now, of course, there is still the post-Crimea effect, but in a year it may go down somewhat. According to the latest Levada Centre poll, One Russia's rating is 68 per cent (of the number of people who have made their decision and are prepared to come to the polling places). This indicates a certain level, but by no means guarantees that the situation will remain unchanged in a year. At the same time, in the absence of any socioeconomic shocks, it is hardly worth expecting a significant reduction in One Russia's rating either.
 #8
Moscow Times
July 28, 2015
Navalny's Opposition Coalition Stymied in Siberia
By Daria Litvinova

Efforts to inject some of Russia's almost invariably pro-Kremlin regional and municipal legislatures with opposition-minded lawmakers ended in failure in Novosibirsk on Monday.

Opposition firebrand Alexei Navalny's Party of Progress, Parnas and several other opposition parties formed a coalition aimed at providing a platform to like-minded candidates in various Russian regions, including Novosibirsk, where it had lined up three candidates to run for the city's upcoming legislative vote in September.

Weeks of canvassing, rallying voters and otherwise endeavoring to rouse the largely dormant opposition vote in Novosibirsk appeared to prove futile on Friday when a working group of the regional election commission determined that the so-called Democratic Coalition had failed to gather the requisite 10,657 signatures, and thus refused to register any of its candidates.

"The working group that verified the signatures determined only 10,187 of them were valid," wrote Leonid Volkov, a former Yekaterinburg municipal lawmaker and a longtime Navalny ally who runs the coalition's campaign, in his blog Monday. As this fell short of the required amount, the working group recommended that the election commission deny the candidates' request to register for the upcoming elections.

As Navalny had pointed out in a blog entry earlier, their group had in fact gathered 17,500 signatures, and then weeded out several thousand on their own, ultimately handing in 11,682 signatures, each of which the coalition was confident was above reproach.  

Unwilling to give up without a fight this time, the Democratic Coalition challenged the election commission's decision.

But after hours of negotiations Monday, their efforts proved to be in vain.

"At 11:47 p.m. [Novosibirsk time], they decided to refuse to register [our candidates]. Our objections, including [documentary evidence], were not considered," Volkov tweeted.

He announced afterward via Twitter that the coalition would appeal the decision to the Central Election Commission, and declared a hunger strike pending the willingness of election officials to reconsider the evidence.

Burdensome Requirement

Earlier this month, Navalny complained on his blog that collecting signatures is an obstacle designed by the federal authorities to undercut opposition figures' efforts to take part in elections.

"Signature collection here [in Russia] is hard work for the real opposition," the politician wrote. "For [parties that tow the Kremlin line] it's not a problem - they can submit blank pages and will still be registered," he added.

Analysts interviewed Monday by The Moscow Times agreed that signatures often prove to be the Achilles heels of opposition-minded political hopefuls in Russia. Candidates have to gather adequate numbers of signatures in their support prior to being allowed on ballots across Russia.

In 2014, two well-known opposition politicians - Masha Gaidar, who has since moved to Ukraine to work for Odessa Governor and ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, and Olga Romanova, a well-known prisoners' rights advocate - washed out of the Moscow City Duma race after their signatures were determined to be insufficient.

In the same race, Barbara Babich, at the time a 23-year-old unemployed theater college graduate, and a relative unknown, passed the test with flying colors.

Covering Their Tracks

Navalny and Volkov both claim to have fought hard to ensure the Democratic Coalition's signatures would pass the election commission's litmus test.

"We're the only [group] that is willing to show reporters our signatures as well as the process of collecting them," Navalny wrote in his blog earlier this month, as the process of gathering signatures in the Siberian capital was in high gear.

Wishing to exceed the requisite 10,657 signatures, the coalition set its sites on gathering upward of 15,000 signatures over the course of three weeks, Navalny wrote in his blog.

Some 300 individuals were hired to collect signatures, and the coalition demanded perfection from each of them, Navalny said.

And Volkov added in his own blog that the process went according to plan. Signature collectors were thoroughly vetted and meticulously monitored. Those determined to have forged signatures were handed over to the police, Volkov said.

The collectors exceeded their goal, managing to gather 17,500 signatures in time for an extensive internal verification process.

Once the signatures were collected, they were scrutinized by attorneys and handwriting experts. Call-center operators then personally contacted the individuals that had signed in favor of the candidates to ensure they had done so voluntarily, and that their signatures had not been forged.

"Of the 17,500 signatures, the ... most exemplary ones were submitted to the election commission today," Navalny wrote in his blog on July 17. "There is no legal cause to deny us the opportunity to participate in the elections," he concluded.

"Within 10 days [during which the election commission was tasked with verifying the signatures and making its decision] we will know whether the opposition will be permitted to participate in these elections," Navalny added.

Losing the Battle

The results were released on Friday. Only 10,187 - 470 shy of the required sum - were determined to be valid, leaving the Democratic Coalition candidates ineligible to feature on the ballots.

The majority of invalid signatures were ones the election commission claimed failed to correspond with the database of the regional branch of the Federal Migration Service (FMS).

The coalition immediately began sifting back through, cross-checking each of the signatures that had been declared invalid. "In 53 percent of cases, the errors had been made by election commission employees themselves," Volkov wrote in his blog on Sunday.

"When the election commission verifies the signatures, they type each name in by hand, and only then do they compare them with the FMS database. [Then] if they find a single comma out of place, they deem the signature invalid," Navalny wrote in his blog on Saturday.

Both Navalny and Volkov maintained that the signatures deemed invalid were primarily marred by typographical errors attributable to the very officials charged with verifying their authenticity.

Volkov further pointed to errors within the FMS' system. He wrote in a blog entry Sunday that in many cases, the FMS had been using outdated information.

Armed with the results of their research, coalition representatives headed to the election commission to discuss the situation, Volkov wrote: "At first they seemed glad to see us and open to dialogue, but then something strange started to happen."

An FMS official who was present at the meeting rejected all of their explanations with one simple argument: "There's no reason not to believe the FMS."

"We showed her [the FMS official] everything. ... We said: 'If you have information in your database that a person still owns a passport issued by the U.S.S.R., for example, and we have a more recent passport number in our signature list, isn't it your [FMS] error and not ours?' But she answered 'No, the FMS data is up to date and correct," Volkov wrote in his blog.

"It's a very comfortable argument [employed] to substantiate a political decision made by the Novosibirsk election commission," he concluded.

Kremlin Pressure

Dmitry Oreshkin, an independent political analyst and head of the Mercator political research group, echoed Navalny's sentiments that impossible signature requirements can be used as a means of controlling the opposition. Russia's federal authorities prefer to avoid difficulties from the start rather than facing them during elections, Oreshkin said, explaining that in his view, this accounts for the Democratic Coalition's present struggle.

"The Kremlin fears elections at all levels," Oreshkin told The Moscow Times on Monday, explaining that varying levels of tolerance for electoral fraud can be found throughout the Russian regions. In Novosibirsk, he opined, this tolerance is minimal.

"In the 2011 [State Duma] elections, the United Russia party received a mere 29 percent of the votes in Novosibirsk," he said, concluding that the ruling party had reason to be wary of the opposition there.

Alexei Mazur, a prominent Novosibirsk journalist and political analyst, said that the coalition's signature collection was transparent. "Everyone in the city saw them doing it, and Volkov was constantly explaining how they were doing it and was answering all questions presented to him," Mazur said in a phone interview with The Moscow Times.

He sided with Oreshkin's conclusion that the Democratic Coalition's signature woes were the result of a political decision.

"Sociological research has shown that [members of the coalition] wouldn't make any drastic changes if elected to the local parliament," Mazur said.

"There would be one or two of their deputies in the parliament among several dozen from other parties," he said. "But the authorities didn't like the way the mayoral elections in Moscow [in 2013, when a second round of voting was nearly necessitated, thanks in part to Navalny's robust performance], so now they're being overly cautious," he said.

Navalny has shelved his own electoral ambitions for the time being. A pair of suspended sentences he is serving for embezzlement charges he believes were politically motivated will bar him from any elective office until 2018.

Meanwhile, he has thrown himself into the task of fighting to introduce opposition-minded lawmakers wherever possible in Russia. In recent months, the Democratic Coalition has endeavored to rally candidates in Novosibirsk, Kostroma, Kaluga and Magadan.
 #9
TASS
July 27, 2015
Russian state corporation head not suspect, says lawyer as new probe looms

Moscow, 27 July: The law-enforcement bodies do not have any issues with or suspicions in relation to head of Rosnano [state nanotechnologies corporation] Anatoliy Chubays.

"I would like to stress that in relation to Anatoliy Chubays law-enforcement bodies have not officially put forward any suspicion of any crime," his lawyer, Aleksandr Asnis, told TASS in connection with an article published in Izvestiya newspaper today about possible institution of criminal cases against Chubays and other top managers of Rosnano.

"I state that I am not aware of any circumstances that would give ground for the claims contained in it (the article)," said the lawyer.

[Izvestiya said former and current top managers at Rosnano may face "new criminal" charges in connection with an alleged embezzlement of public funds through a R1.3bn contract signed in 2009 for the development of a road surfacing material. (http://izvestia.ru/news/589180)

On 9 July, former Rosnano CEO Leonid Melamed was charged with organizing the embezzlement of some R220m (about 4m dollars at the current exchange rate) from the company, Interfax reported earlier. Investigators allege that, while Melamed was in charge, he and two other senior executives arranged for these funds to be illegally transferred from the firm to Alemar, a company co-owned by Melamed. Chubays has headed Rosnano since 2008. He has given testimony in the case as a "witness".]
 
 #10
New York Times
July 28, 2015
Russian Liberal Who Aided Post-Soviet Overhaul Comes Under Attack
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

MOSCOW - Anatoly B. Chubais, one of the best-known architects of Russia's post-Soviet economic overhaul, has come under attack from anti-Western hard-liners in the Russian government. The campaign against him appears to be the latest effort by powerful loyalists of President Vladimir V. Putin to cut liberal voices out of Russian public life.

Mr. Chubais, 60, was a major figure of the 1990s and the presidency of Boris N. Yeltsin, a time of wrenching change and deeply unpopular policies like the wholesale privatization of state industries and assets, which Mr. Chubais championed. He was then a close ally of Boris Y. Nemtsov, who went on to become an opposition leader and who was killed in February on a Moscow street.

After the 1990s, Mr. Chubais largely retreated from the political arena to manage state-owned companies, most recently Rusnano, which uses public funds to start technology projects.

Mr. Chubais has been attacked through the pursuit of his current and former associates at Rusnano, especially Leonid Melamed, a former manager at the company. This month, Mr. Melamed was accused of embezzling state funds through a private consulting company and was placed under house arrest in Moscow. If he is convicted, he could be imprisoned for up to 10 years and heavily fined.

Other current and former managers were also named in the case, but they were not taken into custody because they were not in Russia.

The Russian daily newspaper Izvestiya reported Monday that a Moscow businessman, Dmitri Lerner, had sent letters to state investigators accusing top managers of Rusnano, including Mr. Chubais himself, of being involved in the embezzlement of state funds. Whether officials would act on Mr. Lerner's letter was not clear.

Criminal investigations have hung over Rusnano for several years, and it was not apparent why they would suddenly come to life now. A debate on television in which Mr. Chubais took part, along with an opposition political leader, Alexei Navalny, may have angered hard-liners in the Kremlin.

Mr. Chubais is despised by the siloviki ("strong men"), loyalists of Mr. Putin's who came from the secret police or the military. They see Mr. Chubais as a liberal symbol of an era in Russian history in which they lost power.

Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the siloviki were behind the attack on Mr. Chubais and his associates, but he suggested that the motive may have as much to do with economic interests as with politics. Hard-liners in the Kremlin have been consolidating control over state-owned enterprises, and they may be trying to push Mr. Chubais out of Rusnano, which has invested billions of rubles in technology in Russia and has offices in the United States and Israel, according to its website.

"A lot of factors have come together," said Mr. Kolesnikov, who wrote a biography of Mr. Chubais that was published in 2008. "They decided that the time had come for real action."

Mr. Kolesnikov said that the situation looked grim for Mr. Chubais's allies, but that it was not clear whether Mr. Putin would allow Mr. Chubais to be brought down. "He's such a major figure that only Putin could give that order," Mr. Kolesnikov said. "His only defense in this situation is Putin."

In another sign of the scale of the attack, the Russian daily RBK reported last week that a number of Rusnano managers had left the country, possibly because they fear arrest. They include Dmitry Zhurba, a friend and business partner of Mr. Melamed's whose office was searched by the authorities the day after Mr. Melamed was arrested. Mr. Zhurba's computer and phones were also seized. The paper reported that Andrei Malyshev, another former Rusnano manager, had also gone abroad, and it quoted his lawyer as saying the trip was for a surgical procedure.

Two other allies of Mr. Chubais from the 1990s, Yakov Urinson and Andrei Rappoport, are also abroad, RBK reported. Mr. Rappoport is now the president of the Skolkovo Moscow School of Management. A spokeswoman for the school, Regina Mamykina, said Mr. Rappoport was on vacation and was "planning to come back to Russia," but she did not say when.

Mr. Melamed has said that the charges against him are "ungrounded," according to the news agency Interfax.
 
 #11
Moscow Times
July 28, 2015
Pension Age for Russian Officials to Be Raised

Russia's Labor Ministry plans to raise the retirement pension age for state officials to 65 from 60, according to a statement published Monday, as the government scrambles to cut spending amid a recession.

The Labor Ministry said it had drawn up legal amendments that would bar officials from receiving retirement pay before the age of 65 and extend the period of employment required to qualify for the benefit to 20 years from 15.

Retirement pay is an addition to the basic state pension, which will be unaffected by the changes. Russian men are eligible for the state pension at 60 and women at 55.

The Labor Ministry has resisted raising the basic state pension age despite pressure from economists and some ministers, who say the state will not be able to fund the system in the long term as life expectancies grow.

But with low oil prices and Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis pushing Russia's economy into recession, the government is being forced to reduce expenditure.

It is unclear how much the Labor Ministry's move will save.
 
 #12
www.rt.com
July 28, 2015
Russian ruble hits 60 against US dollar, close to erasing 2015 gains

For the first time since March, the Russian ruble fell to 60 against the dollar. The ruble has been performing weakly against the euro too, tumbling to 66.5. Falling oil prices and the stock market crisis in China are key factors.

This summer's downward trend for the ruble is likely to cancel its excellent performance in the first five months of the year. After winning back some 24 percent against the dollar from the beginning of the year till mid-May, the Russian currency has fallen over 18.5 percent since then and is close to last December's figures.

The ruble rate keeps on changing in sync with the oil plunge; though some key Russian policymakers have insisted the currency's correlation to the oil price is over.
Crude prices have fallen 16 percent in July with Brent crude trading at $52.89 per barrel on Tuesday, while on June 30 a barrel of Brent cost more than $63.

Some big players in the market have a negative outlook on the crude, considering the recent fall. Bank of America Merrill Lynch on Tuesday predicted $50 per barrel for Brent and $45 for WTI barrel for the third quarter. The previous forecast was $54 for Brent and $50 for WTI. Morgan Stanley warned last week the fall in oil prices could be the worst in 30 years.

On Monday, the Chinese stock market fell by 8.5 percent, an eight-year record fall, which also pulled oil prices lower. Bad economic data from China, the world's biggest energy consumer, signals demand will further go down.

Another factor likely affecting the rollercoaster ruble is Wednesday's announcement on US interest rate policy by the Federal Reserve. It is widely expected by market participants that the outcome of the meeting will signal the imminent change in US monetary policy.

The Fed has been following a policy on low interest rate since 2008, keeping its key rate now at a record low of 0.25 percent.To increase the rate, the US is waiting to get enough evidence its economy is robust enough, with a 2 percent inflation rate being one of the benchmarks.

The ruble's decline makes the previously expected 0.5 percent cut in the key interest rate in Russia highly unlikely. The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) meets on July 31, where it'll have to make a difficult choice between the need to stimulate economic growth in the country and support the ruble.

After hiking the rate to 17 percent last December at the peak of the currency crisis, the bank has been pursuing a policy of steadily cutting the rate, bringing it down to 11.5 percent in June.
 
#13
Russian economy decline slows, but recovery elusive
By Jason Bush and Alexander Winning

MOSCOW, July 28 (Reuters) - The sharp decline in Russia's economy may have almost run its course, official data showed on Tuesday, slowed by a huge devaluation of the rouble and heavy government spending on anti-crisis measures.

Recovery prospects are cloudy, however, with many analysts warning of a sluggish rebound at best.

The economy has slumped as a result of Western sanctions linked to the Ukraine conflict and last year's collapse in the price of oil. But the decline now appears to arrested.

While gross domestic product continued to decline in year-on-year terms in June - down 4.2 percent compared with 4.8 percent in May - seasonally-adjusted output fell just 0.1 percent month-on-month.

The figure tallies with other recent data, leading analysts to conclude the decline is close to a bottom - a silver lining to data which still show most macroeconomic indicators sharply down compared with a year earlier.

"It is kind of premature to speak about the recovery in sequential terms, which actually lies ahead," said Alexander Isakov, economist at VTB Capital in Moscow. "But in terms of year-on-year comparisons - the headline figure that everybody focuses on - we are bottoming out."

DIVERGENT VIEWS

Uncertainty about the pace of any recovery is reflected in official forecasts, which present sharply divergent views.

The Economy Ministry predicts the economy will grow by 2.3 percent next year after a 2.8 percent decline this year. In contrast, Russia's central bank sees the economy growing by only 0.7 percent next year after declining 3.2 percent this year.

Economists polled by Reuters expect 0.5 percent growth next year after a 3.5 percent contraction this year.

Optimists emphasise the huge boost to competitiveness caused by the devaluation of the rouble, which has declined by 40 percent against the dollar over the last year.

While the initial impact of the rouble decline was to boost inflation, cutting into consumer spending, there is little sign of it becoming entrenched through higher wages. Nominal wage growth - 7 percent in June - has been running at less than half the headline inflation rate of 15.3 percent.

The resulting cut in labour costs means that these are now comparable to China's, analysts at Renaissance Capital say, boding well for competitiveness.

Evidence that the devaluation has played a key role in arresting the economic decline is provided by data on industrial profitability and wages, which shows sectors producing tradable goods strongly outperforming, VTB Capital's Isakov said.

"In terms of timing, and judging by the other indicators, we are closely following the path of the recovery of the previous crisis," he said.

Previous Russian economic crises in 1998 and 2008 were both followed by quick recoveries, with devaluations of the rouble playing a key role each time.

But some analysts are sceptical about this policy's effectiveness in the medium term.

"We see a risk that the policy of a weaker exchange rate will preserve the old structure of the economy," Morgan Stanley says, referring to Russia's over-reliance on commodity exports and its lack of high-tech industries.

The weaker rouble helps export-oriented commodity sectors, but may impede the growth of high-tech sectors that rely heavily on imports.

Other analysts emphasise the supportive role played by the government. But there are also major questions about the ability of the state to keep supporting the economy by dipping into its dwindling fiscal reserves.

The Finance Ministry forecasts that its Reserve Fund, currently worth $77 billion, will be 90 percent spent by the end of next year.

Before last year's oil price collapse, Russia based its long-term budget plans on an oil price of $100 per barrel - almost double the present price of just over $50 per barrel.

That implies painful cutbacks in government spending in the years ahead to rebalance the state's precarious finances.

Natalia Orlova, economist at Alfa Bank, emphasised that the medium-term recovery prospects have also been severely limited by chronic underinvestment.

Capital investment by Russian companies, down 7.1 percent year-on-year in June, has now fallen for 19 consecutive months.

Meanwhile foreign direct investment has been hammered by the crisis in East-West relations. In the first quarter it was just $1.3 billion, down from $12.9 billion in the first quarter of 2014 and $40 billion in the same quarter of 2013.

That is a reminder that the sanctions and the related geopolitical tensions still weigh on the economy even though Russian companies have weathered the immediate financial squeeze caused by restricted access to international capital markets.

"Probably we will lose around 3 percent of GDP this year. Next year we will be catching up, covering this output gap, but there is nothing on top of this which we can generate given the limited resources," Orlova said.
 
 
 #14
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
July 27, 2015
Conditions in Moscow Point to an Improving Economy
Stable economic conditions in Russia's capital are consistent with government projections of an end to recession in the last quarter and economic growth in 2016
By Alexander Mercouris
Alexander Mercouris is a writer on international affairs with a special interest in Russia and law.  He has written extensively on the legal aspects of NSA spying and events in Ukraine in terms of human rights, constitutionality and international law.  He worked for 12 years in the Royal Courts of Justice in London as a lawyer, specializing in human rights and constitutional law.His family has been prominent in Greek politics for several generations.  He is a frequent commentator on television and speaker at conferences.  He resides in London.

I have recently returned from a week's trip to Moscow and I will record briefly my necessarily anecdotal impressions of the economic situation.

Compared to the situation I saw in Moscow in February and March, there are clear signs of stabilisation.  

The worst of the inflation seems to be over.

The all-too-evident beggars that were visible in February and March have disappeared. While some of them might have been cleared away from the city by the police - something that undoubtedly happens in Moscow - previous experience suggests that this only has a limited effect and that in times of real hardship they quickly seep back. Their total disappearance suggests that the pressure of inflation on people at the lower end of the income scale has abated.  

Summer is a quiet period in Moscow and one person told me that it seemed quieter than usual this year - which could suggest a continuing recession.  

However there were no obvious signs of stress on the high streets - e.g., large numbers of closed or empty shops - and none of the signs one associates with periods of severe crisis, such as I saw for example during recent visits to places like Athens and Helsinki or such as I remember from Moscow in the 1990s - e.g., rowdy youths, uncollected street litter, aggressive graffiti, etc. Moscow remains what it has now been for some time, a clean, orderly and graffiti free place.

I found the food shops full of produce. On the subject of the great cheese debate, Charles Bausman, the editor of Russia Insider and my generous host, offered me a range of Russian cheeses all of which were perfectly edible and some of which were excellent.

In one important respect economic activity continues at a scorching pace. Moscow is undergoing a massive make-over, with streets and sidewalks being repaired and repaved all over the city, parks laid out and improved, old buildings cleaned and restored, and new construction, especially in the suburbs, continuing at full tilt. To someone accustomed to the leisurely pace with which such things are done in Britain, the sheer pace and speed of work is exhilarating, even if it is sometimes inconvenient, with both sidewalks of a street for example being repaired at the same time, forcing pedestrians to walk with the traffic.

These of course are all anecdotal impressions. However they are consistent with the government's latest economic projections, with the Economics Ministry now predicting a contraction of no more than 2.8% by year end, and more than 2% growth in 2016.

Is there anything that might delay or prevent this recovery? Oil prices have recently softened - a natural consequence of a glut - and they may soften further if as is now widely expected the US and British central banks raise interest rates in the next few months.  

As oil prices have softened the ruble has weakened. Unless however there is a total oil price collapse on the scale of last year's, which few are now predicting, this is unlikely to have a significant impact.  

As Constantin Gurdgiev has pointed out there has been a steady improvement in Russia's financial position with sovereign debt down from $57 billion last year to just $35 billion and aggregate foreign debt (both public and private) now standing at $560 billion as opposed to $730 billion a year ago. Meanwhile the Central Bank's foreign currency reserves have stabilised at $360 billion.

All this suggests a country that is methodically improving its position as it prepares itself for a period of growth. As I have written previously in light of the oil price collapse the recession is necessary to achieve a rebalancing, and that seems to be what is happening.

There is usually a lag between the picture shown by statistics and sentiment on the ground. Based on what I saw in Moscow and the government's projections, the worst period of the recession has passed.

One important caveat must be mentioned. As Russians constantly say, Moscow is not Russia and it might be that conditions outside Moscow are harsher.  

The point has force but can be exaggerated and Moscow is anyway so important to the Russian economy that good conditions there would tend to point to good conditions in other places.  

I am planning a trip to Perm in September, which should make it possible for me to compare the situation there.
 
 #15
Reuters
July 28, 2015
Vladimir Putin's most effective weapon is gas - but not the poison kind
By Josh Cohen
Josh Cohen is a former USAID project officer involved in managing economic reform projects in the former Soviet Union. He contributes to a number of foreign policy-focused media outlets and tweets at @jkc_in_dc

At face value, Russia's $400 billion deal to supply natural gas to China National Petroleum Corporation, via the state-controlled energy behemoth Gazprom, sounds like a coup for Moscow. But according to recent analysis, the deal is strongly tilted in China's favor. Gazprom will be lucky to break even on the contract and may even lose substantial amounts of money.

While the deal may not make economic sense for Gazprom, it does fit with Vladimir Putin's broader geopolitical "tilt to Asia" strategy, and represents "a desperate geopolitical gambit trumping all economic rationale," according to analysis by the Chatham House, a UK policy institute. In fact, the CNPC deal is just one example of how Gazprom operates more as an instrument of Putin's political ambitions and Russian state power than as a rational profit-maximizing corporation. While Gazprom trades on both Russian and American stock exchanges, it is majority-owned by the Russian government and takes its marching orders directly from the Kremlin.

Gazprom is first and foremost a tool of Russian foreign policy, which Putin is not shy about wielding to pursue Russian interests. During Putin's years in power, the Kremlin has used its control over Gazprom - increasing or decreasing the cost of energy - to maintain influence over Russia's neighbors. Putin once described Gazprom as "a powerful political and economic lever of influence over the rest of the world," and a team of Russian foreign policy experts noted that "if the leaders of this or that country decide to show good will towards the Russian Federation, then the situation with gas deliveries, pricing policy and former debts changes on a far more favorable note to the buyer."

Gazprom's behavior immediately before and after the overthrow of Ukraine's former President Victor Yanukovych is a clear example of this strategy. In December 2013, shortly after Yanukovych rejected a trade deal with the European Union, Gazprom rewarded him by unilaterally reducing the price of gas it charged Ukraine by one-third. As if to emphasize his power over Gazprom, Putin publicly announced this price reduction.

Three months later, however, after the Maidan revolution brought a pro-Western government to power in Kiev, Russia performed an about face, announcing an 81 percent increase in the price Gazprom charged Ukraine - a clear sign of the Kremlin's willingness to employ Gazprom as an economic and political weapon against the new government in Kiev.

Another sign of Moscow's use of the gas weapon against Ukraine occurred earlier this year when Gazprom began shipping gas directly to separatist territory after rebel forces damaged a pipeline. Even after Ukraine repaired these pipelines, Gazprom continued shipping gas directly to its separatist proxies while still billing Ukraine directly for these deliveries - a clear attempt by Moscow to use its energy power to intimidate Kiev by demonstrating Ukraine's weakness and dependence on Gazprom.

Ukraine is not the only neighboring country whose dealings with Gazprom are determined by its relationship with the Kremlin. A 2006 study from the Swedish Defense Research Agency found more than 50 instances when Russia used the energy lever to put political or economic pressure on its neighbors. While legitimate economic reasons frequently underpin Gazprom's coercive behavior, the Swedish study found that political motivation existed in more than half the cases it reviewed. In some of these situations the Kremlin's rhetoric is blatantly threatening. In 2013 the tiny former Soviet republic of Moldova began discussions with the European Union about a free trade deal, the same type of arrangement that precipitated the crisis in Ukraine. In response to those talks, Russia threatened to cut gas supplies to Moldova, with a Russian deputy foreign minister sarcastically warning the Moldovans that "we hope that you will not freeze."

Gazprom also plays a key role in supporting the Kremlin's power domestically. It functions as a de-facto social support agency, providing cheap domestic gas to Russian households and industry. This keeps the economy stable and Russian consumers - especially pensioners - warm in the winter and ensures that key domestic political constituencies continue to support Putin.

While the Russian government frequently promises Gazprom that it will be allowed to raise the price of domestic gas to a level sufficient to at least cover costs, Gazprom continues to lose large amounts of money on domestic sales. While a below-cost pricing strategy may be irrational by normal corporate standards, the Kremlin remains unwilling to risk the political and social instability that higher domestic gas could cause.

Finally, Putin uses Gazprom to maintain the loyalty of his closest political allies by allowing them to siphon off revenues from Gazprom - either through sweetheart contracts or outright corruption. A comparison between pipeline construction costs at similar projects inside and outside of Russia elucidates this role. According to one study, Gazprom spends twice as much money to build domestic pipelines than when it partners with foreign companies outside Russia. The study's author ascribes this discrepancy to the "wages of wickedness," and indeed, Gazprom loses almost as much money due to corruption and inefficiency as it makes in profits.

Gazprom's massive contract with CNPC is a case in point. Many of the construction projects associated with building the multibillion-dollar pipeline will reportedly go to entities controlled by Arkady Rotenberg and Gennady Timchenko, two members of Putin's inner circle, whose companies are the leading sub-contractors to Gazprom on the project. Gazprom's losses can be absorbed by the state through the government's National Prosperity Fund, while Kremlin insiders grab the profits.

The chairman of General Motors once said that "what is good for General Motors is good for America." The same could be said about Gazprom and Putin's Russia.
 
 #16
Moscow Times
July 28, 2015
Classes Aimed at Raising a New Generation of Russian Businessmen
By Alexandra Tyan

The newly renovated VDNKh park in northern Moscow is investing in the future with the Young Investor School, which will open at Pavilion 14 early next month.

Starting on Aug. 6, every Thursday and Friday, children between the ages of 8-14 can learn about the career of investment banking through master classes. Participants can take place in "business quests," learn the mechanisms of trading and use teamwork to make strategic financial decisions. The school will give children the opportunity to demonstrate and improve their leadership and entrepreneurship skills and work as a team in a competitive environment.

The sessions will be run by Masterslavl, the children's entertainment center in western Moscow that aims to introduce children to new professions and their role in a modern city.

One of the organizers of the Young Investor School project, Tatiana, told the Moscow Times that the main objective of the program is to prepare the next generation for life in the city.

"We have to admit that kids today are very different from what we were at their age. They are sometimes better at understanding the modern technologies than us adults! That's why we think that by introducing them to the investment mechanisms and their crucial role in a big city, we will in fact also help the parents, too. Although at the moment our target audience is 8-14 year-olds, we are also hoping to see other family members interested as well, and perhaps next year we will set up a similar thing for the whole family."

The school will be open every Thursday and Friday from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Classes are free, but it is necessary to register in advance. Call (499) 652-6027 to book a place.
 
 #17
New York Times
July 28, 2015
Muslims in Moscow Work to Break a Stereotype
By NATALIA V. OSIPOVA
[Video here http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/world/europe/muslims-in-moscow-work-to-break-a-stereotype.html?_r=0]

MOSCOW - Dozens of women dressed in colorful hijabs and floral dresses gathered under gray skies recently in the garden of a four-star hotel here for a charity fashion bazaar. They tried on styles from local designers and sampled new cosmetics, posing for selfies and dropping sunny filters on the images before posting them to Instagram and Facebook.

"We're making Muslims the trendsetters," said Natalia Narmin Ichaeva, a public relations specialist who organized the charity event in May. Ms. Ichaeva, who converted to Islam two years ago, is among a small group of young Moscovite Muslims who are trying to help redefine the image of Islam in Russia.

In recent decades, Islam here has been associated largely with terrorist attacks, two wars against separatists in Chechnya and a continuing insurgency in the North Caucasus. Muslim women in particular have been stigmatized because of so-called black widows, women who become suicide bombers to avenge the deaths of their fathers, brothers and husbands. Russian tabloids and television have reinforced that stereotype.

But in the last year and a half, as turmoil in Ukraine has dominated the news media's attention, Ms. Ichaeva and others like her saw a new window of opportunity to change perceptions.

The Russian government's strained relations with the United States and Europe have the Kremlin looking to strengthen ties with other parts of the world, notably China and countries in the Middle East with large Muslim populations. Muslims in Russia have also received a public relations boost from President Vladimir V. Putin's recent emphasis on conservative values, including religion.

"I noticed Muslims moved out of the spotlight," said Rezeda Suleyman, a 23-year-old fashion designer. Ms. Suleyman said it had become easier to go out covered and sell her modest clothing to non-Muslim women.

This short documentary shows Muslim activists like Ms. Suleyman and Ms. Ichaeva, as they try to improve the public perception of Islam and raise the the social status of other Muslim women.

As Zulfiya Raupova, a composer who calls herself a secular Muslim, put it, "It's always a good time to break stereotypes.


 
 #18
Interfax
July 28, 2015
U.S. National Endowment for Democracy declared unwelcome foreign organization in Russia

The United States' National Endowment for Democracy has been declared an unwelcome foreign organization on Russian territory, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office announced on July 28.

"Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Malinovsky signed a resolution declaring the National Endowment for Democracy an unwelcome foreign nongovernmental organization (NGO) on Russian territory," the agency said.

The activity of this foreign NGO jeopardizes "the constitutional system, defensive capabilities and security of Russia," it said.
 
 #19
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
July 27, 2015
The MacArthur Foundation's departure and the future of 'McCarthyist' Russia
With the adoption of the "patriotic stop list" and the subsequent withdrawal of the MacArthur Foundation, Russia's intention to develop its public diplomacy does not match its deeds. And this is a reason for concern.
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.

The list of "undesirable organizations" drawn up by Russia's Federation Council, combined with the subsequent announcement by the MacArthur Foundation of its departure from Russia, can hardly be called a sensation. Given the current policy of the Russian authorities, the sensation is more that the MacArthur Foundation and other similar organizations continued to operate in Russia at all.

The political era in today's Russia is reminiscent of the McCarthy era in 1950s America, when U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy launched a campaign to eradicate "hostile" foreign influences. Now, following the MacArthur Foundation's expulsion from Russia, the resemblance of the names makes the connection even more striking.

The departure of the MacArthur Foundation certainly marks the symbolic end of an era. The foundation opened an office in Moscow back in 1991 on the wave of enthusiasm for restructuring and democratic reform. For international philanthropists, Russia seemed a near ideal place to invest time and resources, since the collapse of the old Soviet institutions had created a unique set of circumstances for transformations aimed at "improving" the world.

Although most of these ambitions remained on the drawing board, Western charities stayed active in Russia for a quarter of a century. This was contingent on two conditions: confidence on the part of philanthropists that not all the money was "going down the drain," and neutrality (or least not hostility) on the part of the Russian government with regard to international philanthropy.

In 2014-2015, as a result of the events in Ukraine and the ensuing crisis in relations between Russia and the West, both these conditions ceased to exist. For the Russian government, any uncontrolled financial flows from Western countries began to look like a potential threat - perhaps even an existential threat - capable of toppling the regime. And no one in the Kremlin was interested in what exactly the charities did, or what scientific and educational projects were jeopardized by the imposition of bans and restrictions.

Philanthropists themselves realized the futility of the situation. Their investments were not "improving" the world, but creating problems for both investors and (even more so) recipients in Russia. NGOs caught taking foreign funds were forced to undergo the humiliating procedure of registering as "foreign agents," while individual recipients were at risk of being charged with "collaboration with the enemy," with unpredictable and unpleasant consequences.

In this climate, the decision taken by the MacArthur Foundation seems quite natural and logical. It is sure to be followed by many - if not all - other Western benefactors still operating on Russian soil. The international Project Russia, born in the crucible of Gorbachev's perestroika, now seems dead and buried.

It is distressing that not only the Russian authorities, but also a significant portion of Russian society have no regrets in this regard. The assertion that Russia can finance its own scientific research and education, and create all the institutions of civil society it needs, seems to many as undisputed as the assertion that Russia can look after all its children in care homes, including ones with disabilities, without the need for adoptive parents from abroad.

For many Russians who have never received a grant, either foreign or domestic, the MacArthur Foundation's exit has prompted no emotional response at all, and news about the shortfall of millions of dollars in funding for Russian science is of no consequence to ordinary TV viewers. For them, such figures mean little. The words "million" and "billion" are bandied about so often on the other side of the TV screen, and have no correlation with the size of their far more modest salaries and pensions.

For the Russian political leadership, meanwhile, the shift towards conscious isolation from the West is becoming increasingly irreversible. The list of "undesirable" organizations is another big step in that direction. At the same time, the Russian authorities are desperate to create the impression that, far from trying to build a new Iron Curtain, they are open to the "good" outside world, and are fencing the country off only from "bad" and aggressive elements.

To paraphrase Russian President Vladimir Putin, "The wheat is being sorted from the chaff." Russia is activating international cooperation as part of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Eurasian community. The "bad" West finds itself juxtaposed with the "good" South and East.

But despite all the efforts, the "good" world remains a largely virtual concept, existing only in the minds of Russian politicians. Many of Russia's non-Western partners are not interested in severing ties with Western civilization, but in cooperating with it. And they are certainly not against Western benefactors operating on their territory.

It is symbolic that the role of the Russian McCarthy, the architect of the "undesirables" list, belongs to Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Federation Council, who some time ago headed Rossotrudnichestvo, one of the key departments in Russia's public diplomatic mission.

It is well known that international charity is one of the most important channels of public diplomacy, a demonstration of "soft power." Kosachev and his fellow legislators who drafted the list could not have been unaware that by declaring the activity of Russian-based U.S. private charities as undesirable, they were essentially outlawing U.S. public diplomacy in Russia.

Yet public diplomacy is officially listed as a priority of Russian foreign policy, and the Russian authorities intend to pursue it, including in the United States and Europe. Can we expect a "symmetrical response" from the West, including the introduction of restrictions on "hostile" Russian organizations? The implacable logic of the new Cold War suggests that might indeed be a distinct possibility.
 
#20
Reuters
July 27, 2015
Despite concerns, full steam ahead for Russia World Cup
By Mike Collett

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - The preliminary round draw for the 2018 World Cup in Russia marked both a first and last step on the road to the finals.

While Saturday's draw was the start of the countdown to the event, the announcement on the same day that FIFA's Executive Committee had endorsed Russia as the host nation was designed to end talk of it being stripped of the finals.

The decision by the heads of world soccer's governing body bore more weight, officials said, than U.S. and Swiss investigations into how Moscow won the bidding to host the tournament five years ago.

Even with Western governments concerned about Russia's role in the conflict in eastern Ukraine and human rights groups alarmed about racism in Russian soccer, it now looks all but impossible that Moscow will not host the World Cup.

"Even if there were any irregularities in the voting, and none have ever been proved or are likely to be, the only body that can take the World Cup away from Russia is FIFA's Executive Committee," a senior FIFA insider told Reuters on Monday.

"I think we can finally put that idea to bed."

Despite cutbacks in the budget for the month-long tournament taking place in 11 cities across the European part of Russia during June and July 2018, work is generally advancing rapidly on stadiums, roads, hotels and airports.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter said the Executive Committee had voted its "trust and confidence" in Russia as the host nation.

President Vladimir Putin seemed to have no doubt Russia would host the event in opening remarks at Saturday's ceremony in the city of St Petersburg, beamed live to 170 countries.

"We are here to launch a football marathon," he said. "It is a good chance to visit a multi-faceted and open Russia that can surprise and inspire" while promising a "special atmosphere of unity and overwhelming joy."

RACIST CHANTS

That atmosphere was not shared by all because of worries about racism after an incident in which Ghanaian player Emmanuel Frimpong was subjected to racist chants during a match this month and sent off over a rude gesture to the crowd.

Days after the incident, Brazil international Hulk pulled out of Saturday's ceremony in the city where he plays for Premier League champions Zenit St Petersburg.

Hulk warned it would be "really gross and really ugly" if racism marred the 2918 finals but Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko cautioned against letting the incident become a "big scandal" and said it was being talked about too much.

Russian officials want to ensure the build-up to the World Cup finals is not marred by negative publicity in the same way as preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian city of Sochi were overshadowed by discussion of gay rights, high spending and allegations of corruption - denied by the Kremlin.

The finals start shortly after Russia is due to hold a presidential election in which Putin is widely expected to run and to win a fourth term: he will do all he can to ensure the preparations go smoothly.

But United Nations Anti-Discrimination commissioner, Yuri Boychenko, suggested Russia must do more to fight racism.

"I don't think there is a total denial of racism in Russia but there is certainly a lack of understanding by officials in Russia of what racism is," he told Reuters.

"Too often, officials in Russia only see the problem from their point of view. They do not stand inside the shoes of the victim and see it from his point of view."

Russian officials say there is not a significant problem with racism and Alexey Sorokhin, head of the 2018 organizing committee, told reporters during a tour of the World Cup venues that "everything is on track".

"There are no infrastructure challenges, there are no challenges in terms of our relations with the FIFA administration. We are working very well together," he said.

ON SCHEDULE

In contrast to the build-up to the 2014 World Cup finals in Brazil, Russia is either on schedule or ahead of schedule in its stadium building program, except for the one being built in the European exclave of Kaliningrad.

The capacity of that stadium has been reduced from 45,000 to 35,000 and work held up for technical and financial reasons but Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko says it will be ready on time.

"There is no Plan B regarding Kaliningrad. It will be finished on time and part of the World Cup," he told a news conference on Friday.

Other stadiums such as the Kazan Arena in central Russia and the Spartak Moscow stadium in the capital are virtually ready, and the host cities outside Moscow and St Petersburg are advancing with ambitious road, airport and hotel programs.

For some of Russia's less well-known cities it represents a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

Valery Shantsev, the governor of Nizhny Novgorod, which will stage six matches including one quarter-final, summed up best what the World Cup meant to his region.

"I travel all over the world, and feel offended whenever I am asked 'Where is Nizhny Novgorod?' Well no-one will ever have to ask that question again after the World Cup, that's how important it is for us."
 
 
 #21
Accession of Ukraine, Georgia to NATO will have catastrophic consequences - Russia's envoy

MOSCOW, July 28. /TASS/. Political games around the issue of NATO enlargement by accepting Ukraine and Georgia can entail serious consequences not only for Europe, but also for Kiev, Russia's Ambassador to the Northern Atlantic Alliance Alexander Grushko told LifeNews on Tuesday.

"Any political game around issues of NATO expansion to Georgia and Ukraine can entail the most serious and deepest geopolitical consequences for Europe as a whole," Grushko said. "I am proceeding from the fact that people in Brussels and in other capitals understand how dangerous this game is," he continued. "It will have catastrophic consequences. More than that, it will have catastrophic consequences for Ukraine," the ambassador stressed.

Ukraine's possible accession to NATO will divide not only Europe, but also the Ukrainian society, and will tremendously fan tensions in international relations, the diplomat said.

"NATO's role in the Ukrainian crisis is very destructive. NATO is not playing the role of an organization that facilitates solving the problem peacefully. It creates the illusion of permissiveness, and this is a very dangerous path," he concluded.

NATO is building a new "Iron Curtain" in Europe by using the crisis in Ukraine, Alexander Grushko said.

"The organization that was created during the Cold War for certain purposes, first of all for the so-called 'deterrence of the Soviet Union' feels very uncomfortable when it has no enemy. The crisis in Ukraine was used to bring NATO to its origins and on this basis to prove to the public, especially in Western Europe, that NATO is still in demand, that it is still strengthening security," Grushko told LifeNews.

The US "demands additional allocations for military purposes from its allies" under the guise of "Eastern threat," the ambassador said. "In fact, NATO is building a new 'Iron Curtain' in Europe," he added.
 
 #22
Moscow Times
July 28, 2015
New Russian Naval Doctrine Enshrines Confrontation With NATO
By Matthew Bodner

President Vladimir Putin on Sunday approved amendments to Russia's naval doctrine that prioritize the development of Russian positions in strategic seas around the world, according to the Kremlin website.

The updated doctrine takes advantage of a huge injection of funds into Russia's naval strength to shift the emphasis of Russian naval operations toward so-called blue water operations - deployments of naval force far beyond Russian coastal waters into the world's oceans, with a focus on the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

By focusing on the Atlantic, the amended doctrine asserts the Russian navy's role as a countering force to what military planners in Moscow see as an encroaching NATO military alliance on Russian borders and interests.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees the defense industry, presented the updated doctrine to Putin on Sunday and cited two reasons for the update: "above all, the changing international situation; and, of course, strengthening Russia's position as a sea power," according to remarks posted on the Kremlin website.

President Putin praised the revised doctrine, calling it a vital strategic document "to provide our country with an integral, consistent naval policy that will protect Russia's interests."

Retired Russian Navy Commander Maxim Shepovalenko, a military expert at the Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST), a Moscow-based defense think tank, said the doctrine indicates Russia was preparing for prolonged confrontation with the West.

"Its updated version [signifies] a long-term standoff with the U.S. and its NATO and major non-NATO allies," he said.

Atlantic Pivot

Speaking aboard a new Russian navy frigate during Navy Day celebrations in the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, Rogozin said the decision to expand Russian naval activity in the Atlantic Ocean was a response to heightened tensions with NATO since the start of the Ukraine crisis.

That crisis, which began after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine last year, led a revitalized NATO to relocate equipment and stage war games close to Russian borders.

"We emphasize the Atlantic because NATO has been developing actively of late and coming closer to our borders, and Russia is of course responding to these developments," Rogozin said, according to the Kremlin website.

According to Shepovalenko, this change in emphasis abandons the balanced global posture held by the Russian navy in recent years in favor of a biased one that is "assertive in the West [Atlantic Ocean] and in the North, and cooperative in the East and the South," he said. The updated doctrine has provisions for greater coordination with the Chinese and Indian navies, he added.

To effectively project force into the Atlantic would require Russia to push ahead with the militarization of the Arctic, Rogozin said. Russian military planners see the Arctic as a key access point for Russia's northern fleet to enter the Atlantic unimpeded by NATO.

Russia's Baltic and Black Sea forces are separated from the Atlantic by NATO countries and fleets. The ships of the Baltic Fleet, based in Kaliningrad, must pass by Germany and Denmark through the Kattegat Sea, while the Black Sea Fleet, based in Crimea, has to navigate the Turkish Bosphorus.

This heightens the Arctic's strategic importance, because control over it would give Russia's Northern Fleet - the largest of all four major Russian fleets - "free and unhindered access to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans," Rogozin told Putin.

Rogozin also said the naval doctrine was important to aid Moscow's economic aims in the Arctic, which has huge oil and gas reserves and is a potential future shipping route.

Limited Assets

While the new doctrine is ambitious, Russia may find it difficult to enact.

Russian ships already have a presence in the Atlantic Ocean, and it is hard to imagine how their strength could be elevated. Ships like the Northern Fleet flagship - the Soviet-built Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier - patrol the Atlantic accompanied by the handful of Russian naval vessels capable of blue water operations far from Russian shores, such as the Black Sea Fleet's Moskva heavy cruiser. Not much more is available.

Though an effective blue-water force during the Cold War, Russia's naval inventory can no longer support long-range oceangoing operations and in recent years has mostly functioned as a coastal defense force.

"Of Russia's over 215 surface ships, only a quarter of them are capable of blue-water operations, while the remaining are primarily meant for littoral [close to home] operations," Shepovalenko said.

New ships such as large destroyers designed for oceangoing deployments are not yet under construction, and are not expected until the mid- to late-2020s.

Russia's navy is expecting almost 100 ships by 2020, but the majority of them are small vessels like frigates, corvettes and patrol boats.

This means that Russia will struggle to fulfill its new doctrine until it begins building bigger ships, and no change in shipbuilding plans has been announced.

"New missions require new ships, and no new ships equals no new missions," Shepovalenko said.

Black Sea Reversal

The new doctrine also aims to reverse the decline of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

Headquartered in the Crimean city of Sevastopol, the Black Sea Fleet was one of Russia's most withered when Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014.

A basing agreement with Kiev prevented Moscow from adding new ships to the force, but freed from that constraint the Defense Ministry last year deployed over 10 new ships to the Black Sea Fleet and is planning to use it as the foundation of a permanent Mediterranean flotilla, Rogozin said.

Taken as a whole, the updated naval doctrine has a strong focus on reversing the navy's gradual decline in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union, when lack of funds saw many ships tied up in port, rusting away for years, and Russia's ability to pursue strategic objectives on the high sees eroded.

To achieve this, the doctrine goes beyond naming areas of strategic interest for the Russian navy, and adds all-new sections on shipbuilding and social support for sailors.

Rogozin said that Russia over the last 10-15 years has developed a domestic shipbuilding industry that "in terms of naval shipbuilding is doing work on a scale comparable to what was happening during the Soviet period."

According to Putin, the addition of shipbuilding provisions to Russian naval doctrine "is a big event for our future navy, and for developing our shipbuilding industry, because the main customer - the navy in this case, and the Defense Ministry - formulate their future needs, and the industry must carry out these tasks."

Putin also said that for the first time the doctrine includes provisions for improving the health care given to Russian sailors.

"People need to know that from now on, our strategic documents for developing our country's fleet and navy will address the social aspect too, and will give people what they expect from their service," Putin said.
 
 #23
Kremlin.ru
July 26, 2015
Russian Federation Marine Doctrine

Vladimir Putin held a meeting to discuss the new draft of Russia's Marine Doctrine.

The meeting took place on board the frigate Admiral of the Soviet Navy Gorshkov. Participants included Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, Commander of the Navy Viktor Chirkov, and Commander of the Western Military District Anatoly Sidorov.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Colleagues, good afternoon.

We have been updating the Russian Federation's Marine Doctrine. This very complex document's main aim is to provide our country with an integral, consistent and effective naval policy that will protect Russia's interests.

The Doctrine has been drafted and approved. This is a big event for our future navy, and for developing our shipbuilding industry, because the main customer - the navy in this case, and the Defence Ministry - formulate their future needs, and the industry must carry out these tasks. Industry adapts to new tasks depending on the needs formulated.

Let me note that for the first time, the Doctrine also includes provisions of a purely social nature. They cover marine medicine, and provisions for improving the health of sailors and the specialists working in the marine field. This is very important. People need to know that from now on, our strategic documents for developing our country's fleet and navy will address the social aspect too, and will give people what they expect from their service, as they carry out the tasks that face our country today in this very complex and important area.

Let's now discuss in more detail the Doctrine's key provisions. Mr Rogozin, you have the floor.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin: Thank you.

Mr President,

This new draft of the Russian Federation Marine Doctrine is a fundamental document of key importance, setting out our country's naval policy. In other words, it is one of our country's strategic planning documents.

The Russian Government's Marine Board undertook the document's drafting, with the navy playing the leading role in this work. In all, 15 federal executive agencies and organisations took part in drafting the new Doctrine.

We proposed making changes to the Marine Doctrine adopted back in 2001 for the period through to 2020 for two reasons: above all, the changing international situation; and, of course, strengthening Russia's position as a sea power.

The Marine Doctrine covers four functional areas and six regional areas. The four functional areas are naval activity, marine transport, marine science, and mineral resources development. The six regional areas are the Atlantic, Arctic, Pacific, Caspian, and Indian Ocean, and we have added Antarctica, as a fair number of events involving Antarctica have taken place of late and this region is of considerable interest to Russia.

The main focus is on two areas: the Arctic and the Atlantic. The reasons for this are the following. We emphasise the Atlantic because NATO has been developing actively of late and coming closer to our borders, and Russia is of course responding to these developments.

The second reason is that Crimea and Sevastopol have been reunited with Russia and we need to take measures for their rapid integration into the national economy. Of course, we are also restoring Russia's naval presence in the Mediterranean.

As for the Arctic, several events motivate our decision. One is the growing importance of the North Sea Route. Mr President, I reported to you that we have begun work on building a new fleet of atomic-powered icebreakers. Three new atomic icebreakers will be ready for work accompanying ships along the northern route in 2017, 2019, and 2020. Furthermore, the Arctic also assures us free and unhindered access to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Then there are the riches of the continental shelf, the development of which calls for an attentive approach.

The Marine Doctrine pays particular attention to environmental issues too, because it is important for us not only to develop these riches, but also to preserve them for future generations.

The Marine Doctrine contains a new section on shipbuilding. This is to a large extent linked to the fact that over these last 10-15 years, we have developed a shipbuilding industry that in terms of naval shipbuilding is doing work on a scale comparable to what was happening during the Soviet period. As for civilian and commercial shipbuilding, we are taking measures to encourage the establishment of private shipbuilding companies, which have demonstrated successful results.

State management of marine activities is an important part of the Marine Doctrine. This section stresses the role of the Government's Marine Board and clarifies the powers of the other state agencies. Essentially, once you approved the Marine Doctrine, we will be able to start drafting the whole list of planning documents for our country's marine activities in the short, medium and long term.

That concludes my report.

Vladimir Putin: Are there any comments or questions?

Commander of the Navy Viktor Chirkov: Mr President,

Let me thank you for this Marine Doctrine's timely drafting and approval. This is a timely document. It places responsibility on us for its future implementation, and we have already begun this process.

Vladimir Putin: Mr Sidorov, what is the situation with coordination between the army and the navy?

Commander of the Western Military District Anatoly Sidorov: Mr President, it is hard to talk about coordination when everything works as single whole and unified command. As far as the tasks before us are concerned, the Baltic Fleet is resolving everything together with the Western Military District's forces.

Regarding the delimitation of certain powers between the naval chief command and the Western Military District's command, there is full coordination in this area.

Vladimir Putin: Good, thank you.
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 #24
www.rt.com
July 27, 2015
'Russia's Maritime doctrine - counter-measure to NATO's climbing escalation ladder'

The US is clearly escalating its aggression against Russia, but it's Russia that is portrayed as the aggressor. This is nothing but an 'Alice in Wonderland' propaganda operation by the American government, says Brian Becker from the Answer coalition.

Russia has published a new maritime strategy laying out the future of the country's naval activities. The adoption of the new naval code focusing on Russia's naval presence in Crimea and the Arctic has sparked a reaction in Western media worried it could be a show of aggression.

RT: Russia's boosting its position in the Atlantic - what kind of signal does that send to NATO?

Brian Becker: The Russian government's announcement that it is upgrading its naval capability in the Atlantic Ocean, in the Atlantic theater, is a clear response to the announcement by the Pentagon and the new US military doctrine updated since 2011 which now identifies Russia as the leading threat to the US. This updated military doctrine - which I should say is an operational doctrine - coincides with large scale NATO - that is US-led - military maneuvers including a large numbers of warplanes, tanks, heavy artillery and naval vessels close by to Russia and its Western borders and its Western waters. So it's a predictable response by the Russia government of what is obviously perceived, and is in fact, a real threat to Russia's own national interests in the Russian area.

RT: The doctrine specifically mentions NATO's expansion as a reason to strengthen its positions. How justified are Russia's concerns?

BB: Yes, of course, it's a counter measure by the Russian government and the Russian Navy in its Western area in the Atlantic Ocean as a consequence of the upgrade by the US of its recent military doctrine of Russia as its primary threat in the world...This upgrade, this new assessment, new military doctrine by the US coincides with large scale military exercises by NATO and US forces on Russia's Western borders. Clearly this is a counter measure because the Russian government perceives that NATO has climbed the escalation ladder.

RT: Is Russia justified in aiming to restore and secure its positions in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and the Baltic?

BB: This is a doctrine of self-defense, the Russian government stated so. They are not carrying out large scale military maneuvers on US borders, on the Mexican border, Canadian border or in the Atlantic Ocean of the coast of Long Island. This is designed by the Russian government as a self-defense measure and of course American military propaganda paints the Russian military actions, or announced military plans as aggression, and everything the US does is designed in terms of the propaganda for self-defense of the countries in the Eastern and Central Europe or those who border Russia. So we have sort of an 'Alice in Wonderland' propaganda operation by the American government which is clearly escalating its own aggression against Russia, and when Russia moves to defend itself it's portrayed as the aggressor. But of course this is nothing but propaganda.

RT: The initial reaction seems to be that this is a show of aggression from Russia. Is there another way to read this doctrine?

BB: No, I don't think so. Russia is a major power; it's the largest landmass in the world. Big parts of the country are in fact landlocked. Russia has been the victim of aggression in the WWII, 27 million Soviet people died. Right after that the Western powers regrouped in NATO starting in 1948 and carried out military exercises including simulated nuclear destruction of the Soviet Union and later Russia. So it's hard to think of the Russian government as being provocative. They have a clear historical need for defense because their country, unlike the US, has been invaded and victimized unlike any country in the world.

RT: Another major priority is the energy rich Arctic region - somewhere a lot of countries lay claim to. Will the Russian position be heard?

BB: The Arctic is a point of extreme confrontation in the coming decades. The US is orientating a big part of its military operations towards the Arctic; as the Arctic thaws as new perhaps limitless or seemingly limitless energy resources become available because of this tragedy of the global melting in the Arctic. Nonetheless, that will be a point of confrontation for resources. The US is an Arctic power because of its acquisition of Alaska; Canada is clearly an Arctic nation. In other words, NATO is now focusing through its bigger countries on preparations for the Arctic. Of course Russia as an Arctic power will do the same. And China - even though it's not an Arctic power per se - will also follow suit. I think all the major powers in the world will start to orient militarily towards the Arctic and that means that each will try to upgrade its military readiness.
 
 #25
Sputnik
July 27, 2015
No-Show in Sham Inquiry Into Russian Radiation Death in London

An inquiry into the death by radiation poisoning of a former Russian intelligence service officer in 2006 in London has been dealt a further blow after a key Russian witness failed to turn up to give evidence in the inquiry already hampered by UK spy agency silence.

The public inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 has been a long process. The former officer of the Russian security services - died in 2006 after allegedly being poisoned by polonium-210 in London.

The inquiry had been due to take video-evidence, via Moscow, from one of the alleged participants in his murder, Dmitry Kovtun, the Russian businessman and former Russian intelligence agent who met Litvinenko hours before Litvinenko fell ill. He failed Monday to turn up to give evidence saying in would prejudice the Russian investigation into the death. He has been given until Tuesday to turn up or lose his chance to testify.

London Radiation Alert

Litvinenko in 1998 accused the Russian authorities of conspiring to assassinate the tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who was found hanged in his bathroom in his house near London in March 2013. An inquest into Berezovsky's death returned an open verdict.

Litvinenko also alleged widespread corruption within the FSB. He fled to the UK where he allegedly worked as a security adviser and - according to his wife Marina - for MI6 at the time of his death. She contends that the agency could have saved his life.    

The circumstances of Litvinenko's death are contested, but Russia has always said it would hand over two Russians accused of complicity in his death if a fair and transparent trial were to take place. However, the UK government has consistently tried to ensure any British intelligence service or police involvement in the case has been buried.

On November 1, 2006 at 3.30pm Litvinenko met Mario Scaramella, a security consultant and academic nuclear expert, in the Itsu sushi bar in Piccadilly, London. An hour later, he met two Russian men, both ex-FSB officers - Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy (now a Russian lawmaker) - in the Millennium Hotel, in Grosvenor Square, London.

Litvinenko complained of illness that evening and was admitted to hospital. He died from radioactive polonium-210 poisoning and died in University College Hospital on November 23, 2006.

Hush, Hush London

However, the inquest, which opened on November 30, 2006 and which, under English law can only look into the circumstances of a person's death and not apportion blame, was hampered after the series of PII requests from the UK foreign secretary, which effectively barred the coroner from hearing any evidence about the role played by the UK police and intelligence services in the use of, protection of or role in Litvinenko's death.

The legal twist in the long search for justice, was to turn the 'inquest' into a 'public inquiry', which would be able to hear all evidence, but not all in open court. This would let Sir Robert Owen, who originally acted as Her Majesty's Assistant Coroner for Inner North London, and now sits as chairman of the public inquest to take evidence both in public and in private, allowing some of the evidence previously ruled out to be heard.

Kovtun said he would be willing to be interviewed by video link, which should have started Monday. This allowed him to have full access to all court papers as a 'core participant'. However, according to the inquiry team, he failed to turn up and has been given until Tuesday to comply with the inquiry.

Counsel to the Inquiry, Robin Tam QC said Monday:

"Mr Kovtun wrote again [to the inquiry team] saying that he had been advised that he had signed a non-disclosure agreement as part of the Russian investigation and that before he could give evidence, he would need to apply for the discharge of his obligations under that agreement.  The discharge had not been obtained and so he said he was unable to assist with the giving of evidence by video link."

In the end, neither the original inquest, opened nine years ago, nor the public inquiry will be likely to find the hard facts behind Litvinenko's death.
 
 #26
Wall Street Journal
July 28, 2015
Russia Seen Reassessing Support for Assad
Syrian opposition says it detects more openness in Moscow to discussing alternative leadership
By SAM DAGHER in Beirut and THOMAS GROVE in Moscow

Russia has led a fresh push for diplomacy to resolve the Syrian conflict in recent months and Syrian opposition leaders say they have detected a shift in Moscow's long-standing support for President Bashar al-Assad.

Russian officials are showing more openness to discussing alternatives to Mr. Assad as his regime loses territory, the opposition leaders say. And with Russia's economy battered by a plunge in oil prices and Western sanctions, the government may be considering both the strategic and economic benefits of changing its stance on Mr. Assad.

Russia has proved one of Syria's staunchest allies and its military and political backing has been indispensable in keeping Mr. Assad afloat during more than four years of conflict.

But Fyodor Lukyanov, chairman of a Kremlin foreign-policy advisory council, said Russian policy makers are likely considering possible alternatives to the Syrian president.

"They are looking at the acceptability of other candidates at this point," he said, adding that he had not heard any names.

If Moscow does provide an opening to broker a negotiated exit for Mr. Assad, it would be a dramatic turn in the conflict.

The Syrian president acknowledged Sunday that his military was unable to hold on to parts of the country because the regime's forces have been depleted by desertions, defections and death in more than four years of war that have killed a quarter million people.

Mr. Assad's other major international backer, Iran, shows no signs of wavering in its crucial military and financial support for the Syrian regime. But the long-sought nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers reached earlier this month has also opened up the possibility of broader political cooperation between Tehran and the West on other regional issues such as the war in Syria.

Hadi al-Bahra, a senior member of the Turkey-based opposition umbrella group the Syrian National Coalition, said his alliance discussed Mr. Assad's political fate with Russian officials for the first time in a meeting last month led by Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov. Ahmed Ramadan, another senior coalition member, also attended that meeting in the Turkish capital Ankara.

"We have been speaking with the Russians from the very beginning and we have not heard one word of criticism of Assad," Mr. Ramadan said. "But now, the Russians are discussing the alternatives with us."

In addition to the Syrian opposition, Mr. Assad's regional adversaries such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey have argued his ouster is essential to resolve the Syrian conflict and halt the spread of Islamic State militants.

The Obama administration recently has pursued Russian cooperation on its goal of ousting the Assad regime based on intelligence assessments that the Syrian president is weakening. President Barack Obama spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 25 and July 15 on an array of issues including Syria.

Mr. Obama hinted earlier this month that the Russian leader may be among those changing his view.

"A glimmer of good news is, I think, an increasing recognition on the part of all the players in the region that...it is important for us to work together as opposed to at cross-purposes to make sure that an inclusive Syrian government exists," he said in a July 6 appearance at the Pentagon after alluding to his conversation with Mr. Putin.

In his speech on Sunday, Mr. Assad welcomed Russia's initiative but said his supporters were unlikely to approve concessions to an opposition he claimed was in league with terrorists.

Publicly, Moscow says its support for the Syrian strongman is unchanged. A Russian foreign ministry official said this month that the Kremlin sees Mr. Assad as the lawful president of Syria and only the Syrian people can determine who would replace him. Russia says it favors a political transition in Damascus and it has previously rejected Mr. Assad's exit as a precondition to any kind of political deal.

But an exchange in a meeting last month between Mr. Putin and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem suggested Moscow's patience with Damascus might be running thin.

Russian military support for Syria dates back to the 1950s during the height of the Cold War. Since the start of the Syrian war in 2011, Russia has provided arms, fuel and financial aid to Mr. Assad. It has also used its veto in the United Nations Security Council four times to shield the Syrian leader from resolutions calling for international action against him, standing firm against outside intervention in Syria.

In an interview with Russian reporters earlier this year, Mr. Assad invited Moscow to significantly increase its military presence in Syria. And earlier this month, Syria's deputy foreign minister Faisal al-Mekdad dismissed suggestions that Moscow was wavering in its support for Mr. Assad. He said his regime was part of a "righteous coalition" that included Iran and Russia.

According to an official Russian transcript carried on the Kremlin's website, Mr. Putin pointed out the regime's recent military setbacks and suggested Mr. Assad join forces with regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Mr. Moallem said the idea was farfetched.

Russia has financial and political incentives to change course on backing Mr. Assad. The country has been politically isolated by Western sanctions. Lower oil prices and sanctions have taken a toll on the economy.

After a meeting in Russia last month between Mr. Putin and the Saudi deputy crown prince and defense minister Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom held out the prospect of investing up to $10 billion in Russia.

Saudi Arabia, for its part, may seek Russian help to develop its own nuclear program. The kingdom signed a deal to cooperate with Russia's state nuclear agency Rosatom on joint projects, Rosatom said last month.

Better ties with Riyadh could also unlock Russian arms deals that have been on hold for more than a year. They include a $3.5 billion arms sale to Egypt, which relies on Riyadh to finance its arms purchases. Improved relations could also spur Saudi Arabia to back fresh negotiations between the Syrian opposition and the regime.

"With closer ties between Russia and Saudi Arabia, the Saudis have hinted that they may be able to get the opposition to come to Moscow to talk to the government of Syria," said Yelena Suponina, a Middle East expert at the Kremlin-affiliated Russian Institute for Strategic Research. "Such a constructive dialogue has started."

But the Saudi monarchy may prove unwilling to compromise on anything short of Mr. Assad's exit.

"Saudi Arabia has not succeeded yet in changing the Russian position toward Assad, but it's still trying-sometimes through persuasion and at times through enticement," said Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi commentator close to the kingdom's leadership.

Better relations with Russia could also give Saudi Arabia and others more leverage in dealing with the Syrian regime's main regional sponsor, Iran.

While Iran and Russia both back Mr. Assad, Tehran has become a far more integral part of the Syrian regime through the financial aid and militia manpower it provides.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on important matters of state, said in a speech this month that his country would never give up its support for Mr. Assad's government.

Mr. Moallem, the Syrian foreign minister, said he believes Iran's nuclear deal with the West will only translate into more Iranian financial, military and political support for his regime and even greater legitimacy.

"The stronger our allies are, the stronger we are," he said.
 
 #27
The Conversation
http://theconversation.com
July 28, 2015
Three reasons why Russia should not be called the greatest threat to the USA
Authors
Valentina Feklyunina, Lecturer in Politics at Newcastle University
James Bilsland. Teacher in School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University

When General Joseph Dunford, Barack Obama's nominee for the position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described Russia as "the greatest threat to our national security" during his confirmation hearing in the Senate, the White House rushed to distance itself from his words. However, General Dunford's statement was far from isolated. Only several weeks earlier, the US Air Force secretary, Deborah James, expressed a similar view of Russia in an interview with Reuters.

This seems a somewhat ironic u-turn in the Obama administration's approach to its relationship with Moscow. Indeed, only three years earlier when the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney referred to Russia as America's "biggest geopolitical foe" during the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama ridiculed his opinion.

In Obama's words: "the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War's been over for 20 years". Yet the crisis in Ukraine has demonstrated an enormous gap between Moscow's and Washington's positions on European security, and some of Obama's top military advisers appear to openly share Romney's view.

But does Putin's Russia really pose a threat to the Unites States? There is no doubt that the relationship between the countries has deteriorated since what Moscow interprets as Washington's attempt to illegally overthrow Yanukovych's regime in Ukraine and what Washington sees as Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea. Both sides profoundly disagree on the roots of the crisis, which makes it even more difficult to negotiate a lasting solution that would be acceptable to all parties.

Despite the high level of tensions, the language of threats is counterproductive and dangerous. There are at least three reasons why Russia should not be considered "the greatest threat" to the US security.

Military response required

The vision of Russia as "the greatest threat" would almost inevitably require some military response. It is not a coincidence, for example, that General Dunford during the same confirmation hearing expressed his support for supplying Ukraine with lethal arms. However, such a response is likely to only escalate the conflict.

In Moscow's eyes, the crisis in Ukraine is the product of the US and EU's interference in that country's internal affairs. By supplying Ukraine with lethal weapons, Washington would risk provoking a stronger military response by Moscow, with more causalities and destruction in an already devastated part of Ukraine. This would also make it more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve any lasting solution to the fate of Donetsk and Luhansk within Ukraine.

Restoring Great Power status

By describing Russia as "the greatest threat" to the US security, US officials and politicians only strengthen Moscow's determination to continue with its course of actions. This unintended consequence of US rhetoric can be explained by a basic psychological mechanism.

The roots of the current crisis, in all their complexity, are linked to Moscow's dissatisfaction with Russia's status in the post-Soviet period. In the eyes of Russian political elites, Russia's claims for great power status were continuously undermined by what they saw as Washington's disregard for Russia's interests.

Ironically, Russian elites interpret Russia's designation as "the greatest threat" to the US security as a long-awaited recognition of great power status. What couldn't be earned through cooperation with the US and the West more broadly, is seen as reclaimed through the conflict.

This is a very dangerous message to send. The importance of great power considerations is also evident at the level of Russia's public opinion. According to a series of surveys conducted by the Moscow-based Levada Centre, only 31% of Russian respondents viewed Russia as a great power in 1999. In contrast, this number rose to an impressive 68% in 2014-15.

Fuelling anti-US sentiment

Public statements about Russia's threat feed into already exceptionally high levels of anti-Americanism in Russian society. According to findings of the Pew Research Center, the share of Russian respondents who hold unfavourable views of the US has risen to 81% in 2015 - a striking increase compared to 33% in 2002.

Although such a significant change is clearly the result of a massive anti-Western propaganda campaign in Russia's state-controlled mass media, Washington officials and politicians often provide perfect material which is easily exploited by Russian propagandists. Of course, peaks of anti-Americanism in Russian public opinion happened before: the numbers rose considerably following NATO campaign in Kosovo in 1999, the intervention in Iraq in 2003 and Russia's war with Georgia in 2008. However, this time the length of the conflict and the unprecedented emotional intensity of the anti-Western propaganda is likely to have a much more noticeable effect on public attitudes towards the US.

As history shows, sooner or later political leaders on both sides will start looking for ways to overcome the tensions. Avoiding the language of "greatest threats" will make this process easier.
 
 #28
http://readrussia.com
July 27, 2015
It's Not Personal, Barack. It's Strictly Business
By Mark Adomanis

"'The President thanked President Putin for Russia's important role in achieving this milestone, the culmination of nearly 20 months of intense negotiations' the White House said in a statement."

That rather perfunctory summary was how the wire services reported on a recent phone call between the Russian and American presidents. In "normal" times, of course, such a simple conversation between two heads of state might not attract very much attention. Putin and Obama, after all, are supposed to talk to each other. That's what the leaders of large, powerful countries d, it's just a basic, and frankly rather boring, part of their job description.

But, of course, we don't live in normal times. At this point, the Russian-American relationship is probably worse than it has been since Ronald Reagan was in the White House. The conflict in Eastern Ukraine, clearly sustained and supplied by Russia over the past year but with roots stretching back decades, has metastasized into a trust-devouring black hole. The war between Kiev and Russian-backed separatists has predictably and thoroughly poisoned every facet of the US-Russia bilateral relationship.

The acrimony is unlike anything I can recall. Senior military officials, and not just notorious carnival barkers like John Bolton or Vladimir Zhirinovsky, muse openly about the potential of open armed conflict or even nuclear war. In response to Russian meddling in Ukraine, for the first time ever NATO is preparing to deploy heavy weapons and armor to former members of the Warsaw Pact like Poland, Romania, and the Baltics. Russia, for its part, is taking a rhetorical page from the 1970's and bragging about its intention to add several dozen new ballistic missiles to its nuclear inventory.

Public statements by the two sides suggest an ill-concealed apoplexy, a level of rage that one very rarely encounters in international diplomacy, or at the very least in diplomacy between nuclear powers.

But, despite all of this animosity, the Russians clearly played a useful role in getting Iran to agree to a deal that appears to have averted a regional war. Obama himself was quite surprised that the Russians were willing to do this:

"Russia was a help. I'll be honest with you. I was not sure given the strong differences we are having with Russia right now around Ukraine, whether this would sustain itself. Putin and the Russian government compartmentalised on this in a way that surprised me."

So what do we make of the Kremlin's diplomatic maneuvering? Well, on one level, Obama's very public, if still appropriately subdued, appreciation for Putin gives lie to the utterly ludicrous White House talking point that "Russia is isolated." Whether you love Russia or hate Russia, the idea that the US and its allies were capable of "isolating" it was always a pipe dream. Even as the White House was labeling Russia a "rogue" it continued to work with Russia to contain Iran's nuclear program. That is to say that even at its most "isolated" Russia was one of a handful of countries engaged in arguably the world's most important diplomatic negotiation.

So, in one sense, Russia's actions regarding Iran show how little has changed: the country remains what it has always been, a large, powerful, and influential country with a substantial presence on the global stage.

On another level, though, the Iran deal might represent change. Change in what sense? Well over the course of the past year and a half, the Kremlin, or at least the most reactionary forces within it, seemed increasingly comfortable advancing the notion that Russia could go it alone, that it didn't need to work with or engage the West at all.

And, for a certain period of time, it looked as if they might get their way: many of the Russia-West economic and business relationships that were painstakingly built up since the collapse of the Soviet Union were very rapidly and very thoroughly demolished by a range of sanctions and counter-sanctions. While previous years had seen steady, if exceedingly slow, progress towards ever-tighter relations, suddenly the entire process was thrown into reverse.

Russian politicians have never been great friends to the US (cooperation when it came was always pragmatic rather than ideological in nature) but they suddenly seemed to genuinely enjoy the opprobrium that they were now attracting from virtually the entirety of the US political spectrum. It was all too easy to see how this tailspin could continue indefinitely, how the relationship between Russia and the West would be irrevocably ruined.

The Iran deal suggests that (just maybe!) cooler heads have prevailed in Moscow, and that the tide of nationalist euphoria which burst forth after the annexation of Crimea has finally started to recede. The agreement with Tehran was a classic case of pragmatism and realism at work. Based on all of the published accounts I have read, the various parties to the negotiations, including the Russians, worked diligently, transparently, and fairly to bring the process to a successful conclusion.

In the broader scope of things, that might sound like very faint praise, but in the lead up to the final round of negotiations it was all too easy to imagine that Lavrov and his team would blow up the deal out of spite or a simple desire to make Obama look foolish. That they didn't do that is a genuine cause for optimism.

Does the success of the Iran deal mean that all is suddenly right in the world of US-Russia relations? No, not at all. The general tenor of the US-Russia relationship is still disastrously bad. One win (even if a rather significant one) cannot undue the enormous damage of Russia's ill-disguised "hybrid war" in Ukraine's east. But it does suggest that the powers that be are getting too carried away with their anger and frustrations and that a baseline level of rationality has endured.

A world in which America and Russia can hold their noses to occasionally do business with each other, while far from perfect, is much better than the alternative.
 
 #29
Sputnik
July 27, 2015
Will Donald Trump Save America and the World by Making a Deal with Putin?
By Edward Lozansky
[President, American University in Moscow]

Washington hawks want regime change in Russia, no more and no less. Their hatred of Putin, who has the guts to have his own opinion of world affairs, and who stands firm for his country's right to look after its security interests, makes him the ultimate evil.

For the past few weeks we have heard plenty of statements from Washington about the huge threat to U.S. National Security coming from Russia. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and top Pentagon brass are convinced - or say they are - that the Russian threat is an absolute reality. The latest in this row is the statement by the Head of the US Special Operations Command General Joseph Votel, who also views Russia as an "existential threat" to the United States, repeating accusations against Moscow over the Ukrainian crisis.

In Congress, the party of war keeps pushing the same line but If this were only related to the upcoming budget sequestration discussion - which, among other things, can affect the Pentagon - one could dismiss this incessant talk of an imminent Russian threat as a simple money extortion exercise. However, I am afraid it is not just about money.

Washington hawks want regime change in Russia, no more and no less. Their hatred of Putin, who has the guts to have his own opinion of world affairs, and who stands firm for his country's right to look after its security interests, makes him the ultimate evil - someone who has to go and be replaced by a more malleable character. A person like Boris Yeltsin, who knew who is running the show on the world stage and humbly accepted this sober fact.

It's a different question how to achieve Putin's overthrow without a major military confrontation with Russia, a conflict that can well end in a conflagration engulfing the whole planet. It is one thing to perform regime change in Iraq, Libya or Ukraine but dealing with nuclear-armed Russia is quite a different matter.

Presently the hawks' thinking is still at the stage where they believe they can get rid of Putin through economic sanctions and by using the conflict in Ukraine to exhaust Russia's strength, ruin its economy and undermine its stability. There is no question that substantial damage to Russian economy has been done. It is not "in tatters," as Mr. Obama recently gloated, but is definitely shrinking and the number of people living below the poverty line has indeed increased. However, Putin's popularity is not heading south; on the contrary, his ratings jump a point or two every time another angry anti-Putin rebuke from Washington hits the airwaves.

Instead of accepting the failure of the current policy of sanctions and start searching for some kind of reasonable compromise, the party of war is pushing for escalation in tensions which can end up really badly for everyone. Any incident, however unintentional and insignificant in itself, can grow into something that we all - or rather those who will have survived - will remember with a sense of everlasting wonder at human stupidity.

What we see now resembles the hysteria in 2003 prior to and during the Iraq invasion. The party of war is so hell-bent on its perilous course that it can hardly be swayed by any reasonable arguments of those against warmongering. Nowadays even the most ardent supporters of the Iraq and Libya wars admit that they were huge mistakes which resulted in hundreds of thousands dead and wounded, millions of refugees, trillions of dollars wasted and the rise of ISIS on top of that.

Besides, there is another question that needs to be considered coolly and factually. Does Russia really represent the great or even greatest threat to America or for that matter to any NATO country?

Many Russians believe that actually it is America that represents the greatest threat to their country. Was it Russia that instigated a military coup in Mexico and installed an anti-American corrupted oligarch as its president? Was it Russia that imposed devastating economic sanctions on America - or is it the other way round? Is it Russia that supplies weapons and trains Mexican nationalists who are thinking of getting back territories lost during an armed conflict between the United States and the Centralist Republic of Mexico in the wake of the 1845 US annexation of Texas, which Mexico regarded as its inalienable part. Is it Russia that funds and supports American protest groups, something that we do around the world through the democracy promotion crusade?

As for the military threat, Putin and his generals are well aware that NATO armed forces are ten to fifteen times stronger than Russia's. You can call Putin any names but he is definitely not insane or suicidal. However, if you try to back the bear into a corner, anything can happen.

At this point it looks like the only and lonely sane voice in Washington belongs to the Secretary of State John Kerry who recently stated that he "doesn't agree with the assessment that Russia is an existential threat to the United States.... Certainly we have disagreements with Russia...but we don't view it as an existential threat."

As for the huge crowd of presidential candidates, it looks like so far the only one who promises to fix the U.S. - Russia relations thus avoiding a looming disaster is Donald Trump. In his recent interview on CNN he said that he would be able to work well with the Russian president.

No matter how the media and Republican Party establishment are trying to humiliate Trump, I for one would give him a chance.
 

 #30
Interfax
July 28, 2015
Putin hopes Russia will be able to promote dialogue with Europe and U.S. on Ukraine issue

Russian President Vladimir Putin is hopeful that his country will be able to further promote dialogue with Europe and the United States concerning the fight against radical Islamism and other problems, including the Ukrainian issue.

"I see today that the situation has changed. Europe and the U.S. have realized the real threat coming from the extreme manifestations of radicalism and have actually joined this struggle. We, the Russian people, usually say in such situations - better late than never," Putin said in an interview with the Swiss media. The text of the interview has been posted on the Kremlin website.

"We very much hope that we will hold dialogue and will find solutions that will suit everyone both in this area and in other matters - the settlement of the situation in Ukraine and economic issues," he said.

"We need to be patient and work with our American colleagues in looking for solutions as, I can say, has already happened with regard to the Iranian nuclear problem," the Russian president said.

Putin believes that Russia and the U.S. "need to revitalize their work and give a fresh impetus to this work at the level of the UN Security Council."

"Beyond any doubt, the U.S. is a great power (...) But this does not mean that today's authorities in the U.S. have a right to travel around the world, capture whomever they want, drag these people to their territory and act based on the 'those who are not with us are against us' principle," Putin said, adding that he "does not seek to demonize the U.S. policy."
 
 
#31
Bloomberg
July 28, 2015
Ukraine War Risks Reigniting as OSCE Warns of Troop Buildup
by Kateryna Choursina and Aliaksandr Kudrytski

The battle readiness of Ukraine's military and the rebels it's fighting in the country's east is at its highest level since a February truce, monitors warned, a situation that risks tipping the conflict back into war.

After more than a year of fighting, sides are fortifying positions and amassing weapons, said Alexander Hug, deputy chief of the Organization for Security and Cooperation's mission in Ukraine. His comments follow a report Monday that cease-fire violations had reached a daily record. Civilian casualties have also risen.

There's "a preparedness of both sides to a degree we haven't seen before," Hug told reporters Tuesday in Kiev. Three OSCE monitors have been imperiled in the last three days, jeopardizing the group's presence in Ukraine, he said.

One Ukrainian soldier died and 12 were wounded in the past 24 hours, while the separatists used multiple rocket launchers for the first time in five weeks, the military said Tuesday.

Tensions are building amid a crucial phase for the peace plan, signed in Minsk, Belarus more than five months ago. At stake is the constitutional status of the rebel-held territory in Ukraine's industrial heartland, near the Russian border, and the election of officials in those regions. The leaders of the nations that sealed the Minsk deal -- Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France -- have spoken twice by phone in the past two weeks.

Autonomy Question

At least two civilians were killed and one was wounded in the town of Horlivka in the Donetsk region, the rebel-controlled news service said by phone on Tuesday. The conflict has killed more than 6,700 people, according to the United Nations.

While Ukraine passed legislation this month granting greater autonomy to the separatists' self-proclaimed republics, the move was criticized as insufficient by the rebels and by Russia. The U.S. says Ukraine has met its obligations.

"Ukraine is implementing the Minsk agreement; Russia and its proxies are not," Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, said on a conference call Tuesday.

Ukraine needs the war to abate as it seeks to rebuild an economy mired in its second year of recession, renegotiate its foreign debt and restore confidence in the hryvnia, this year's worst-performing currency against the dollar.
 
 #32
Reuters
July 27, 2015
Ukraine faces "hidden crisis" as displacement soars
By Natalia Ojewska

LVIV, Ukraine, July 27 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Ukraine is facing a "hidden emergency" because of the government's failure to plan for nearly 1.4 million people uprooted by the war in the east, which has left many struggling to find shelter, charities say.

They accused the government of breaking its promise to provide housing for people displaced by the conflict and urged it to ramp up efforts to help them.

Ukraine now has one of the world's largest populations of internally displaced people (IDPs). Some experts have warned the displacement crisis could last for years or even decades.

Many of those who have fled fighting between the military and pro-Russian separatists have been forced to rely on charities and networks of volunteers for help with food, clothing and accommodation.

"People are reluctant to let in IDPs, especially if they have children with disabilities," said mother of three Olga Striczina, whose eldest son Denys, 24, suffers epileptic fits and mental impairment.

The family, who fled the eastern city of Luhansk in September, is being housed in a tiny room at a centre run by a charity in a village near the western city of Lviv, more than 1,000 km away.

"If we didn't eat here for free, if we had to pay for the heating and services, I just don't know how we would have survived, because everything that we get is spent on expensive medicines for Denys," Striczina told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

More than 6,500 people have been killed during nearly 16 months of fighting in the eastern Donbass region which borders Russia. Although the government and separatists agreed a ceasefire in February, attacks continue.

The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) estimates less than 5 percent of those displaced by the conflict are being housed in recognised centres set up to accommodate IDPs.

Estate agents say some landlords in Lviv and Kiev are capitalising on the acute housing shortage by trebling rents for IDPs, while others refuse to rent properties to displaced people because they don't think they can pay or because of growing resentment towards the new arrivals.

Ukrainians in the western part of the country were at first eager to help those fleeing the war, charities say. But people have felt increasingly resentful that their sons are being sent east to the frontlines while young men from the east are fleeing to safety in the west.

UNHCR spokeswoman Nina Sorokopud described the displacement crisis as a hidden emergency.

"When someone says 'refugee crisis', people tend to visualise refugee camps, but this is not the case for Ukraine," she said. "The crisis is not visible on the streets of Kiev or Kharkiv, because many of those uprooted have been received by host communities."

The refugee agency warned that the crisis was deteriorating and longer term solutions would be needed for people who cannot return to their homes.

ALMOST UNINHABITABLE

The United Nations says 5 million Ukrainians - almost one in nine - need humanitarian assistance.

"I wrote over a hundred emails to volunteers asking them for support in providing us with food, because we were suffering from hunger. We were only able to have a meal every second day," said Natalya Andzeeva, a 35-year-old single mother with five children who used to run a small farm near Luhansk at the heart of the conflict.

Volunteers helped the family escape and find a room at a centre run by a charity in a village outside Lviv, but Andzeeva has no income.

Wasyl Gelbych, head of housing subsidies and benefits at the Department of Social Protection in Lviv, blamed President Petro Poroshenko's government for the lack of an adequate housing policy for the displaced.

"We would be willing to accept many IDPs, but we do not know where they could stay, because the government has done nothing to create places for them," he said.

The government could not immediately comment on allegations that it had failed to plan for the displacement crisis.

Olexandra Sorokopud, coordinator of the Lviv-based charity Crimea SOS which helps people who have fled Donbass in the east and Crimea in the south, said that in the absence of a national plan, local officials were calling around asking if landlords could accommodate displaced families in empty houses in villages, some of which she said were almost uninhabitable.

Most displaced people want to live in cities so they can try to find jobs to support their families and rebuild their lives, but Sorokopud said there was almost no work in the villages they were being sent to.

Charities also criticised the government's $20 monthly allowance for IDPs, describing it as a drop in the ocean.

"These people don't have homes, because their houses were destroyed," said Evgenya Velicho, coordinator of Donbass SOS in Kiev. "They don't have any clothes, they lost their jobs. They have nothing. So, everything is a challenge."
 
 
#33
Atlantic Council
July 27, 2015
Ukraine's IDP Crisis Worsens as Local Attitudes Harden
BY KATERYNA MOROZ AND OLENA VYNOGRADOVA
Kateryna Moroz is Program Coordinator at HIAS Ukraine ("Right to Protection"). Olena Vynogradova is the organization's Legal Analyst.

Ukraine officially has 1,381,953 internally displaced persons (IDPs), the country's Ministry of Social Policy (MoSP) reported July 10. Overall, more than 2.3 million Ukrainians-including IDPs and those seeking refuge abroad-have been uprooted by conflict since March 2014.

Yet the actual number of IDPs remains unknown and is likely to be higher, since the official figure includes neither displaced people living in the non-government controlled area (NGCA) of Donetsk and Luhansk, nor IDPs whose registrations have been cancelled.

In fact, internal displacement is a relatively new phenomenon for Ukraine. Until fighting broke out in eastern Ukraine more than a year ago, the country's experience with forced migration had been limited to relatively small numbers. Any government faced with such a rapid and large-scale displacement would be hard-pressed to respond quickly and effectively. Unfortunately, experience suggests that displacement is likely to become a long-term problem.

According to the All-Ukrainian Charitable Foundation's Right to Protection monitoring teams, people are in no rush to register as IDPs. In some cases, IDPs fear sharing their personal data to government officials. Others are young men who worry about being drafted into the military, while still others are being refused registration because their IDs have been lost, forgotten at home or destroyed at checkpoints.

The number of IDPs increases as hostilities intensify. However, a new Ukrainian security policy makes fleeing war zones difficult. In February 2015, the Anti-Terrorist Centre of Ukraine's State Security Service introduced special passes to cross the border into the Donbas. Obtaining such a pass can take up to three months, and the complicated procedure to get one creates fertile opportunities for corrupt officials. But the government says security risks justify the severe restrictions on freedom of movement. Meanwhile, people try to bypass the checkpoints either through fields and forests where they risk being injured by landmines, or by illegally crossing through Russian territory, which could result in fines.

On May 31, a local TV station reported that a 55-year-old man and his 14-year-old son were blown up by a land mine while attempting to evade a checkpoint at the entrance to Stanitsa Luganska in Luhansk oblast. An older son escaped unharmed. Data on how many people are killed or injured by landmines is not available.

So far, overseas donors have pledged or disbursed $111 million to help Ukraine tackle IDPs' most urgent needs. Yet that money has gone mainly for individual financial assistance, rent payments, the purchase of food, shoes and clothing and other immediate needs. Long-term solutions-shelter, employment, education and psychological counseling-are lacking.

Demobilized men require special state assistance. Officially, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) afflicts only 35 percent of troops returning from anti-terrorist operations, but military psychologists say privately that PTSD may affect up to 90 percent of these men. Without treatment, former soldiers struggle to reintegrate into society and re-establish relationships with family members. And PTSD sufferers who have been kidnapped or tortured while serving in NGCAs can become ticking time bombs if neglected. This often leads to aggressive behavior, gender-based violence, child abuse, and other unhappy consequences.

Many IDPs who fled Crimea or the conflict zones of eastern Ukraine cannot register for unemployment benefits because they did not properly terminate work relationships with previous employers. Some, seeing no other option, go back and bring their labor books from NGCAs to government-controlled areas, but most prefer to live on the social payments they receive as IDPs rather than return to that hell again.

According to ACF's Right to Protection monitoring teams, most working-age IDPs who have settled in the Zaporizhzhya region are ex-miners whose former salaries were considerably higher than the average salary local employers can generally offer. Thus, registered as unemployed such IDPs receive compensation almost equal to the amount they would be offered if employed.

The clear majority of IDPs rent apartments, while others live with host families and 10 percent remain in community centers. Despite the initial sympathy shown toward IDPs by Ukrainians not living in conflict zones, relations between the two groups remain uneasy. The Ukrainian media's habit of highlighting bad news about people displaced by the war has promoted a negative image of IDPs in general. Yet civil society remains crucial in helping people flee the conflict area, and it should be a government priority to raise awareness in the official media about IDPs and Ukraine's evolving humanitarian crisis.

The problem may only worsen with local elections this fall. On July 14, Ukraine's Parliament approved a law that excludes IDPs from participating in local elections - effectively barring them from forming local councils and electing village and city mayors. This indirectly leaves Ukraine's displaced population without a voice in the process of enacting policies related to IDPs. The law also hampers their interaction with host communities, angering NGOs, lawmakers and others who work with IDPs-and may only lead to further social tension.

Given these factors, the Kyiv government must establish a long-term policy on all key issues related to IDPs: registration, social assistance, documentation, employment, education, and integration into host communities. It should also launch an aggressive media campaign to reverse the negative image of IDPs now prevalent in Ukrainian society. One suggestion is to cover positive experiences of IDPs integrating into host communities and highlight the human side of displacement rather than political issues. Finally, as civil society gains influence, it can also help the government find durable solutions for Ukraine's growing population of IDPs.
 
 #34
Interfax
July 27, 2015
Russian patriarch appeals to Putin, Poroshenko over Ukraine conflict

Patriarch of Moscow and All-Russia Kirill has written letters to the presidents of Russia and Ukraine expressing deep concern over events in eastern Ukraine, privately-owned Interfax news agency reported on 27 July.

"Reaching the peace agreements in Minsk put the escalation of the conflict on hold and inspired hope for a full ceasefire between the warring sides. Unfortunately, hostilities, although not on the previous scale, are continuing to this day. Blood is being shed in Ukraine and people are dying," the patriarch said in his letter ahead of the 1000th anniversary of the death of Prince Vladimir, who is credited with turning Russia Christian.

"The elderly, children and disabled people are particularly vulnerable. Not everyone has the strength or opportunity to leave their homes. Not everyone, unfortunately, survives in these terrible conditions. Someone dies under fire, someone from hunger and illness, from lack of medicines and basic living conditions," he said.

He noted that the Russian Orthodox Church is doing what it can to help those affected on both sides of the conflict, adding that the safety of the region's civilian population can only be ensured "by the complete cessation of hostilities, strict observance of the Minsk agreements and establishing direct dialogue between all sides of the conflict".
 
 #35
www.opendemocracy.net
July 27, 2015
Ukraine is ripe for the shock doctrine
Like many states in crisis before it, Ukraine serves as a perfect opportunity for neoliberal transformation.
By Sean Guillory
Sean Guillory is a UCIS/REES postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pittsburgh. He hosts the podcast New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies and received his PhD in History at UCLA. Follow him on Twitter @seansrussiablog

While a crisis of faith, of sorts, has resounded in western discourse on the economic effectiveness of austerity, this scepticism, rather ironically, dissipates when you cross over into the remnants of the Iron Curtain.

Neoliberalism's flagellants reside east of the Elbe. There, ideological purity remains, if not redoubled. Former patients of shock therapy are now its most devoted converts. This was not only demonstrated by Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Slovak, and Polish officials' unyielding support for 'tough reforms' in Greece, but the general lack of sympathy among their populations for the Greek people. Past shock therapies have left them numb, docile, and inured to the calamities of neoliberal logics.

The neoliberal faith is expanding further eastward as well. The Ukrainian leadership have shown their unbridled readiness to exchange one master, Russia, for another: western finance and corporate capital. Even in light of the Troika's 'fiscal waterboarding' of Greece and the utter failure of austerity as economic policy, the Ukrainian government is willing, even enthusiastic, to implement reforms prescribed by the IMF not only with the blind faith that they will stimulate economic recovery, but also in the name of 'European values', which are now subject to much scrutiny.

'The ungrateful Greeks'

Still, the Greek crisis has given neoliberal converts in Ukraine the opportunity to declare their devotion by admonishing the Greeks for their lack of faith.

In the Financial Times, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk groaned about the attention which the ungrateful Greeks were getting, while Ukraine 'is not on radars'. He added that the whole Greek debacle was a 'political disaster,' not for the Greeks mind you, but because it 'disincentivises other governments in terms of making tough reforms.'

Similarly, in an interview with CNBC, Yatsenyuk cautioned against comparisons between Ukraine and Greece because, unlike the Greeks, 'we do not blackmail anyone.'

Yatsenyuk's ministerial colleagues followed suit. 'There is a big difference between us and Greece,' Dmitryo Shymkiv, Poroshenko's top staffer on economic and political reforms, told BuzzFeed. 'Greece has been "persuaded" into reforms recently, [over the last] few days, while Ukraine has a plan. And we're going after the plan.'

Ukraine's boosters chimed in as well. In the Washington Post, Jackson Diehl pleaded, 'Unlike Greece, [Ukraine] 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.'

Ievgen Vorobiov echoed in Foreign Policy: 'In studied contrast to the current government in Athens, Kiev is bending over backwards to emphasize its desire to reform its way back to financial health.' Ukraine's booster-in-chief, Anders Aslund repeated the mantra: 'Ukraine's first serious, able government in years has quickly adopted vital reforms the West had called for... Kiev is doing exactly what it's supposed to do, but what is the EU doing? It has committed merely €5 billion in loans to Ukraine, compared with €200 billion for Greece. This makes no sense.'

True, much of the Ukrainian government's dedication to 'staying the course' has been rewarded with little more than rhetorical fanfare in Washington. After meeting with Yatsenyuk, President Obama and Vice President Biden praised Ukraine's 'strong stand against populist measures that could undermine Ukraine's financial stability.' U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker added: 'these are hard choices. The prime minister feels the pressure. But as long as they're moving forward, they're not alone.'

Yet, when you really think about it, it all makes sense. Ukraine has little choice but to 'move forward' because it has no power to do otherwise. Returning to Russia's embrace would be nothing less than suicide.

Much of Ukraine's economic calamity, after all, is the direct result of Russia's war in the east. The embrace of the neoliberal faith is as much an expression of true belief, as it is an act of geopolitical survival.

Neoliberal transformation

Like many crisis states before it, Ukraine serves as a perfect opportunity for neo-liberal transformation. Milton Friedman once wrote that: "Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.'

Ukraine's reformers know this dictum well. As Aivaras Abromavičius, investment banker, austerity devotee, and now Ukraine's Minister of Economy and Trade, put it: 'We shouldn't waste this crisis. It's a unique chance for reforms.'

Ukraine is ripe for the shock doctrine. The population is economically disoriented and anaesthetised by patriotism. The Russian threat, however real, serves as a means to harden the population for sustained economic sacrifice.

Since 2012, Ukraine's GDP has contracted 23%. The IMF predicts it will shrink an additional 9% in 2015. The government has instituted capital controls to stabilise the hryvnia.

Ukraine's debt to GDP ratio has inflated to 158 %. Unofficial estimates of unemployment range from 15 to 18%. Under employment proliferates as do wage arrears. Employers owe workers in Dnipropetrovsk 131 million hryvnia, 136 million in Kiev, and 142 million in Kharkiv. Inflation is at 57%, and, according to April figures, prices for sugar are up 39%, dairy products - 32%, bread - 21%. Poverty hovers around 33%. But poverty by the UN's measurement is even worse: 80% of Ukrainians live on less than $5 a day, and below $150 a month.

While support for Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk's government has dropped in the polls, signs of popular resistance to austerity are few. The anti-austerity left is feeble and right-wing populist attempts at rollback verge on mendacity.

All the while, the erosion of daily economic security persists. As Yulia Burda, the head of a non-profit for children in need of speech therapy, told the BBC: 'We can't afford medicines that we need because if we buy medicine, then for a period of time we can't buy food. Whenever you go into a store or to the market, you can't believe your eyes. Because what you paid for sausage or cheese for one kilogram before, now buys 100 grams.'

The IMF

In an effort to stop the economic bloodletting, the IMF has cobbled together a $40 billion bailout, with $17.5 billion a direct IMF loan, distributed over four years.

The largest portion, $10 billion, will be given throughout 2015. Moreover, the IMF has backed Ukraine's efforts to restructure $23 billion debt owed to four principle investment and hedge funds. The hope is Ukraine's creditors will agree to a 40% haircut.

So far, the creditors have proved intransigent, arguing a haircut 'sends the wrong signal to global capital markets when Ukraine can least afford to be shunned.' On 24 July, Ukraine made a $120m interest payment on its $70 billion debt pile in order to stave off default. Despite the roadblocks to debt restructuring, the IMF has agreed to release the next tranche of $1.7 billion at the end of July, giving Ukraine another much needed fiscal hit.

Yet, the IMF's approach to Ukraine's economic catastrophe is a replay of austerity in exchange for bailouts-a Ukrainian version of the EU's 'extend and pretend' solution for Greece.

It is amazing, really, that such a bankrupt policy would be applied again. Yet here it is. The reforms, among others, demand the freezing of minimum wage, cuts in pension payments, the monetarisation of all social benefits, transforming medical care to a financing for services model, the reduction of institutions of higher education from 802 to 317.

In addition, the IMF reforms call for 'significant fiscal consolidation', amounting to cuts in budget deficits by 6.3% of GDP. Comparable measures were tried in the PIGS countries with 5-7% contractions in 2011-2013, and for the worst years of the Greek crisis, 8-9% of GDP-all to no avail.

The only saving grace is that unlike the EU's periphery, Ukraine can devalue its currency. Nevertheless, these measures, argues Yuriy Gorodnichenko, a professor of economics at UC Berkeley, 'in weak economic conditions could be a kiss of death.'

Over the last few weeks, pundits and politicians have repeatedly stressed that Ukraine is not another Greece.

And, true, it's not. The economic situation isn't wholly comparable, despite some convergences. Nor is there any Ukrainian version of Syriza, which, though it ultimately capitulated, at least resisted.

No, like most converts, those countries in the post-communist space are in the vanguard of the neoliberal faith. Unfortunately for Ukraine, its crisis is not so much a problem as an opportunity for increasing the flock.
 
 #36
Subject: Ukraine: Tainted Chernihiv Election Raises Concerns about Future Elections
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2015
From: Freedom House <[email protected]>

Ukraine: Tainted Chernihiv Election Raises Concerns about Future Elections

Washington  -  July 27, 2015 -   Following a badly marred one-off parliamentary election July 26 in Chernihiv, Ukraine, marked by serious electoral irregularities before and after the vote, Freedom House released the following statement:

"The serious abuses that occurred before and during  the parliamentary election in Chernihiv show that  that the corrupt politics and crony capitalism that sparked the popular revolution of 2014 remain alive and well in Ukraine," said Mark P. Lagon, president of Freedom House. "Threats of violence, attempts to buy votes, interference by pseudo-journalists, and intimidation by thugs all marred the campaign and voting in Chernihiv. Unfortunately, Ukrainian authorities failed to confront these violations. With important local-level elections planned for October, Freedom House urges the Ukrainian authorities to aggressively respond to irregularities to prevent a repeat of events seen in Chernihiv."

Ukraine is rated Partly Free in Freedom in the World 2015, Partly Free in Freedom of the Press 2015, Partly Free in Freedom on the Net 2014, and receives a democracy score of 4.75 on a scale of 1 to 7, with 7 as the worst possible score, in Nations in Transit 2015.
 
 #37
About 2,300 Ukrainian soldiers killed in military operation in Donbas - Ukrainian army

KIEV, July 28. /TASS/. About 2,300 Ukrainian servicemen have been killed in the military operation in eastern regions, spokesman for the Ukrainian Armed Forces Alexey Nozdrachev said on Tuesday.

"As of today, about 2,300 Ukrainian servicemen have been reported killed," he said, adding that as many as 273 more servicemen were reported missing.

On April 7, 2014, Ukraine's then interim president Oleksandr Turchynov announced plans to launch an anti-terrorist operation in the country's eastern regions that disagreed with the Kiev authorities' policy. By summer 2014, clashes between Ukrainian army and local militias grew into large-scale combat operations involving heavy weapons and warplanes.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), about 6,500 people have been killed in combat operations in eastern Ukraine. More than two million people are refuges, of whom 1.3 million are internally displaced persons.
 
 #38
Kiev forces accused of using Pion heavy howitzers in Donbas shelling

MOSCOW, July 28. /TASS/. Ukraine's security forces have shelled the country's south-eastern Donbass region from the 2S7 Pion self-propelled howitzer, defense spokesperson for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) Eduard Basurin said on Tuesday.

The howitzer was designed in the USSR to neutralise critical targets of the enemy in the tactical depth of 50 kilometers.

This weapon was designed in the 1970s for the destruction of tactical nuclear weapons delivery vehicles and remained in Ukraine. The self-propelled gun can even shoot projectiles with nuclear warheads. Basurin has accused Kiev of using this "god of nuclear war."

"Surveying the terrain, which came under fire from the Ukrainian armed forces, we have found a fragment of a shell fired presumably from the 2S7 Pion artillery system, calibre 203mm, maximum range - 47 km," the Donetsk news agency quotes Basurin as saying.

The DPR Defence Ministry called these actions "gross and systematic violation of the Minsk agreements" and regarded it as an attempt to "provoke DPR divisions to start hostilities."

The Contact Group on the Ukrainian crisis settlement at a meeting in the Belarusian capital Minsk on July 21 agreed upon but not yet signed the text of a final agreement on a phased withdrawal of tanks, armoured personnel carriers and weapons of calibre less than 100mm from the contact line. This decision was preceded by the actions of the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR republics that unilaterally pulled out weapons of calibre less than 100mm at a distance of 3 kilometres. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said then he had instructed his representatives in the Contact Group to sign an agreement on a 30-kilometer buffer zone in Donbas.

"I have instructed our representatives to sign with the OSCE and Russia, which is member [of the Contact Group] an agreement that will guarantee a 30-km buffer zone in the contact zone - to withdraw tanks, artillery and rid Severodonetsk, Lisichansk, Popasnaya of cannonades," he said. According to Poroshenko, the sides "reached these agreements" in the Belarusian capital Minsk on Tuesday, July 21. The Ukrainian president said he hoped that "the weapons withdrawal under the OSCE control will begin in several days."

"I very much hope that it's a real ceasefire beginning, release of hostages and ensuring control over the peace observance," Poroshenko added.

On July 18, the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics (DPR and LPR) announced their plans to unilaterally withdraw heavy weaponry from the contact line. LPR also completed the withdrawal of weaponry from the contact line, leaving tanks and armoured vehicles on positions only near the Shchastye settlement.

On July 21, the Contact Group on Ukrainian settlement at a meeting in Minsk reached an agreement on gradual withdrawal of tanks, armoured vehicles and weapons of less than 100mm calibre by both sides to a distance of 3 km from the contact line.

A peace deal struck on February 12 in Minsk, Belarus, by the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France envisaged a ceasefire between Ukrainian forces and people's militias starting from February 15, followed by withdrawal of heavy weapons from the line of military engagement and prisoner release. The package of measures envisages the pullback of all heavy weapons by both parties to locations equidistant from the disengagement line in order to create a security zone at least 50 kilometres wide for artillery systems with a calibre of 100 mm or more, a zone of security 70 kilometres wide for multiple rocket launchers and a zone 140 kilometres wide for multiple rocket launchers Tornado-S, Uragan and Smerch and the tactical rocket systems Tochka-U. The final document says that the Ukrainian troops are to be pulled back from the current line of engagement and the militias of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, from the engagement line set by the Minsk Memorandum of September 19, 2014.
 
 #39
Interfax-Ukraine
July 28, 2015
Kyiv announces intention to remove heavy weapons from Mariupol as part of Donbas demilitarization
 
Heavy weapons will be removed from Mariupol, Donetsk region, as part of the demilitarization process, and promptly re-deployed, if need be, Dmytro Hutsuliak, a spokesman for the Ukrainian special operation in Donbas, said on Tuesday.

"The creation of a demilitarized zone does not mean leaving Mariupol, we are only removing our weaponry. It will be returned, if need be ... I reiterate: heavy artillery is being removed to an agreed distance, and can be promptly redeployed to the frontline in the event of an enemy offensive," he said at a briefing in Kyiv.

The creation of the demilitarized zone involves the removal of heavy weapons, armed vehicles, tanks, mortar launchers and cannons from these areas, Hutsuliak said.

"At the same the Ukrainian military presence will remain within the 30-kilometer zone, our fighters will be there in full ammunition, with weapons, automatic rifles and machine-guns, and will further occupy the reinforced frontiers," the spokesman said.

As for the village of Shyrokyne east of Mariupol, a permanent observation post will be set up there for the Special Monitoring Mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE SMM) and the Joint Center for Control and Co-ordination (JCCC), Hutsuliak said.

Ukrainian marines are due to arrive in Shyrokyne shortly, he added.
 
 #40
Defensenew.com
July 26, 2015
Ukraine Military Seeks to Modernize Past Soviet Era
By Joe Gould

WASHINGTON - As Ukraine wars with Russia and its agents in the east, it also faces an internal battle with military reformers seeking to modernize past the Soviet-era versus the country's bureaucracy, pervasive corruption and largely outmoded defense-industrial base.

The new government in Kiev, which took over following the 2014 ouster of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, is adopting NATO standards as the country sets sights on joining the US-led alliance. But to get there, defense officials say, the old ways need to go.

"We are working hard because all the Ukrainian people are watching us, and we are like flags of the Ukrainian people, flags symbolic of future change for the Ukranian [nation]," said Konstiantyn Liesnik, an advisor to the Defense Ministry's reform office and head of its working group for logistics and procurement. "If we will change the Ministry of Defense, people believe we will change the whole country."

The Ukrainian military, at worst considered corrupt and shabby, is under the administration of President Petro Poroshenko taking a serious look at both how it is organized and the defense industry's work, meant to make its military and defense industry truly effective, and to orient to the West.

"Like everything else in the reform area of the Ukraine, this is going to be a tough slog," said John Herbst, director of the Atlantic Council's Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center and a Bush administration ambassador to the Ukraine. "While the national interest is clear, the personal interest of some institutions and individuals do not necessarily line up. Corruption is a huge problem in that society, including in the defense sector."

Military reform and transparency would not only thwart Russian efforts to destabilize and undermine the Ukranian government, but work to reassure potential donors of military aid that it will be used appropriately, said Olga Oliker, director of the Center for Russia and Eurasia and a senior international policy analyst at Rand.

"Reforming the military and the national security sector is part and parcel of showing the world that, no, actually Ukraine is working, this government is effective and doing things no previous Ukranian government could do," Oliker said. "Transparent, accountable militaries are probably militaries you can provide weapons to and be confident they will be used the way you expect them to."

US lawmakers have urged President Barack Obama to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons, and the Wall Street Journal reports the Pentagon is seeking White House approval to provide Ukraine with bigger, longer-range radar after sending lightweight radar units and other nonlethal aid.

The US is upping its commitment to military education for Ukraine. On July 24, the Obama administration announced it would extend training of the Ukrainian National Guard to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. That is notable, as it marks the start of the US training front-line military units that are actively engaged in the battle with separatists; previously, the units being trained were based in the Western, Kiev-controlled parts of the country.

"This small unit training will be conducted by personnel from US Army Europe to help develop the internal defense capabilities and institutional training capacity of Ukraine's Armed Forces, and is similar to our ongoing training of the National Guard, announced in March," Pentagon spokeswoman Laura Seal said in a statement. "This additional program brings our total security assistance committed to Ukraine to over $244 million since 2014."

Asked what equipment the Ukrainian military could use from the US, Liesnik and other Ukrainian officials at a press conference at Washington's Ukrainian Embassy on July 23, called out a wish list that included anti-tank systems, armored vehicles, counter-battery radars, electronic reconnaissance systems, jamming and anti-jamming systems, and NATO-standard replacements for Soviet-era radios.

It has been widely reported that Ukrainian troops are struggling to counter artillery fire and electronic jamming.

"The problem with Russia against Ukraine is we use similar Soviet Union systems, like radios, like counter-radios, and its a problem [that] we work in the same way," Liesnik said.

Ukrainian officials at the event said they were confident that with or without foreign support, Ukraine will win the war. The difference, said Military Attach� Col. Serhii Dolenko, is foreign support could lessen the number of dead.

"My personal opinion and the opinion of the Ukrainian people is yeah, we need support, we need guns, but if you will not give us these guns, we will win any time," Liesnik said. "Any war we will finish, and after the war, we will remember who helped and who did not."

Herbst forecast much larger, more effective and serious foreign support for Ukraine over time, led by the US - though it has so far been meted out too cautiously for some. Herbst, author of a report calling for the US to arm Ukraine, said the two most important systems the US can send are shoulder-fired Javelin anti-tank weapons and counter-battery radars.

"The White House has in my judgement been strategically myopic, where other parts of government at the senior levels understand the strategic stakes," Herbst said. "The White House does not get it, and it's quite appalling."

The US, traditionally cautious about sending weapons and materiel, is concerned that they will be lost or stolen, and in this case, there is not a strong history of the US aiding Ukraine with satisfactory results, Oliker said. To boot, the US has already sent nonlethal aid that satisfies most of what Ukraine needs, she said, versus anti-tank weapons that may require substantial training.

Oliker argued that Ukrainian victory against the militarily dominant Russia will have to be political. Though US aid could be a political tool that shows its backing, but the US has made clear that backing will not include troops, so it is of limited effect.

Ukraine is, for its part, inching toward the cautious West. Part of the Ukraine's pivot away from Russia is evident in the adoption of NATO military standards or stanags, short for standardization agreements. In revamping its military kit, a portion of the effort across the Defense Ministry, the aim is to meet 22 stanags out of roughly 40 in the sector by year's end.

Ukraine's military reform effort must overcome huge obstacles, and NATO membership, if not a long-shot, is a long way off, analysts said. Still, the hope of NATO membership is a huge incentive for the Ukraine to spur useful changes that it might not otherwise make, said Julie Smith, senior fellow and director of the Strategy and Statecraft Program at the Center for a New American Security.

"It's an enormously high wall to climb, but [NATO standards] are some of the best standards you can hope for," Smith said. "Rather than coming up with their own plan or following the lead of another country in the neighborhood, the good news is NATO provides a lot of concrete steps and goals - though they [Ukraine] may find a lot of them out of reach while they're dealing with Russian aggression."

Several officials from the Defense Ministry's reform office, including Liesnik, were in Washington for a few days to discuss best practices with the US Army's procurement office for soldier equipment, PEO Soldier, at Fort Belvoir, Virginia; the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland; and Walter Reed Military Medical Center in Maryland.

Ukrainian officials said they were able to see US Army gear on the visit, but access to Western equipment is likely to remain limited. That is going to make it more difficult for Ukraine to meet NATO interoperability requirements, but Ukraine should still be able to make considerable progress with what it has until greater access is provided, said Paul Schwartz, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Russia and Eurasia Program.

Reforming the defense industry would also make a big difference, Schwartz said. Yet Ukraine's defense industry has survived largely on exports, especially to Russia, and has had to adjust since access to Russian markets was cut off. The loss of key suppliers in Crimea and the rebel-held Donbas has generated further problems.

"The increase in state orders has helped somewhat to fill the gap," Schwartz said.  "But in the long run, additional investment will be needed to help Ukraine's defense industry to modernize and to become more integrated into Western supply chains. However, given the current level of corruption in the system, outside investors may hesitate to become involved."

Ukraine is working with its local suppliers to improve the quality of soldier equipment like body armor and uniforms, and to meet NATO standards. Ukrainian military clothing had retained its Soviet-era style and simplicity, but quality fell after Ukrainian independence in 1991. Instead of being flame-resistant, some fabrics would melt, Liesnik said.

The reform council has developed a "personal unified combat kit" of 65 items, each manufactured to standard, with a national stock number that is traceable to a supplier and meant to prevent black market sales. This kit will include new uniforms, a symbolic and practical step forward.

At the embassy, Liesnik and his team were wearing a unique camouflage pattern of Liesnik's design called "lizard," which would be distributed to the force next year, he said. A new dress uniform in the works will replace a Soviet-style uniform that basically swapped the red star for the Ukrainian yellow-and-blue flag.

"It's important for our great Army to have their own uniform," Liesnik said, "a new Army, a new face of the Army.

Beyond uniforms, the Defense Ministry is looking to both domestic and foreign suppliers. The plan is to offer two defense tenders for electronics, likely equipment Ukrainians lack the know-how to manufacture locally.

"We are trying to grow our manufacturing, but we really don't care about where it should be made," Liesnik said of military equipment. "We want to have the best quality at the best price in a short time. We are the Ministry of Defense, not the Ministry of Economics."
 
 #41
Moscow Times
July 28, 2015
Rebel Infighting Bringing Chaos to East Ukraine
By Paul Quinn-judge
Paul Quinn-Judge is International Crisis Group's senior adviser for Ukraine and Russia.

Ten days ago Yelena Filippova, secretary to the head of Ukraine's self-proclaimed People's Republic of Donetsk (DPR), Alexander Zakharchenko, was badly injured when her car exploded as she drove to work. That afternoon, a prominent DPR politician was shot and wounded on one of the main streets of the city. With evening came fragmentary reports that a military building in central Donetsk had been blockaded by troops.

Then a senior military officer told interviewers that the DPR Defense Ministry had been "abolished." Throughout all this, Zakharchenko remained silent and invisible. So did his defense minister, Vladimir Kononov, and another power broker, Alexander Khodakovsky, secretary of the rebels' national security council. Moscow was - and remains - tight-lipped.

Finally a few comments seeped out. DPR officials described the car-bombing and street-shooting as political, but went no further. They also stated with no further detail that the blockade of a military building was part of a criminal investigation by the Ministry of State Security.

A senior official, Denis Pushilin, vice speaker of the DPR parliament lashed out at "provocations" by former heroes "of the DPR independence struggle."

Pushilin also announced that the ranking DPR officer who had announced the Defense Ministry's "abolition," Sergei Petrovsky, was not qualified to make such claims; such allegations, he added, could only come from someone who was working for Ukrainian or other enemy intelligence. There was no word from the Defense Ministry.

The flurry of claims and counter-claims is strangely timed.

Persistent but unconfirmed reports in local Donetsk media claim that Vladislav Surkov, President Vladimir Putin's point man on Ukraine, arrived in Donetsk around the time of the first violence.

He does not come often, his visits are usually significant events and one would have thought the DPR, which is profoundly dependent on Moscow for its survival, would be on its best behavior.

But separatists in the east have been going through a month or two of mounting anxiety and tension. Speculation is growing that Moscow has lost interest in Donetsk and Luhansk, but, rather than declaring peace and going home, it wants to concentrate on a longer-term effort to subvert Ukraine politically.

Rumors that Zakharchenko will be replaced have also been circulating and Khodakovsky has been widely described as Zakharchenko's most likely successor. (Khodakovsky dismisses the speculation.)

A former commander of the prewar Ukrainian counter-terror Alpha force in Donetsk region, Khodakovsky has Russia's trust, but is disliked by many other military commanders, especially those who want a swift and decisive resumption of military activities.

The events of past weeks are murky, a reminder that the self-declared separatist entities of eastern Ukraine are unstable. Donetsk is much better organized than Luhansk. But both people's republics are fragmented and could one day simply implode.

Prominent Russia bloggers - including several of the best organized support groups that provide equipment and channel volunteers to the east - have complained of growing crime among high level military and political leaders.

Several blamed the current low-intensity positional warfare for criminality and low morale. And they complained that Moscow's own apparent indecision about what to do next would further undermine the eastern separatist movement.

Moscow has done little to create a working government structure in either Luhansk or Donetsk - a sign, perhaps, that the Kremlin views the separatist entities as short-term expedients.

In both places, leaders and factions are constantly jostling for power in struggles that have ended several times in the death of senior military or political figures. Moreover, Moscow is apparently becoming anxious about what it has created in eastern Ukraine, particularly in terms of a military force.

The rebel military machine is quite large, well armed, but neither particularly well trained or disciplined.

Moscow seems to be trying to consolidate control over the military - squeezing out, some Donetsk observers say, some of the most effective but unruly commanders. But they seem to be facing more resistance than they expected.

There have been other signs of anxiety coming out of Moscow. One of the latest issues of the Voyenno-Promyshlenny Kuryer journal, known for its discussion of fashionable issues such as hybrid war, carried an article on the U.S. doctrine of "stabilizing operations."

After a long discussion of Iraq and Afghanistan, the article veered off to the Donbass.

It referred to the "endless stream" of contraband, much of it illegal weapons, that has been crossing the Ukrainian-Russian border since fighting started. It warned of the risk of increased criminality on both sides of the border. "We should admit that fighting in the Donbass is a seriously destabilizing factor, which should be urgently nipped in the bud," it said.

Stepping gently round the question of Russian military operations - after all the Kremlin denies any military engagement in eastern Ukraine - the article suggested that "covert participation by the Russian side would not only improve the humanitarian situation, but also facilitate a normal political atmosphere in the south east," one that would thwart "attempts to divide up power, which lead to murders."

If this article in fact reflects thinking within the Kremlin, rebel-held Donetsk may well see more turbulence and unusual nighttime operations.
 
 #42
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
July 28, 2015
The French Visit Crimea: A Breakthrough for Common Sense
The French parliamentary delegation's visit to Crimea shows Europe's growing desire for a more level-headed approach to Russia
By Gilbert Doctorow
Gilbert Doctorow is the European Coordinator of the American Committee for East West Accord Ltd.

Once upon a time, America's core allies in Europe were holding hands with the Russians under the table, and it was widely feared by Washington, and also by Berlin and Paris taken separately, that one or the other European ally would cut its own deal with Moscow at the expense of Atlantic unity.

The greatly diminished strategic importance of post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s put paid to these flirtations and to these suspicions. Then in the 2000s, following a brief misadventure in 2003 over French and German opposition to the US invasion of Iraq, the Continental allies fell into line in what became an increasingly virulent information war against Russia culminating in the confrontation over Crimea and Ukraine.

French Gaullisme was abandoned by the mainstream ever since the start of the Sarkozy presidency when the incoming leader made it plain that he was in love with the USA and aspired to the 'special relationship' traditionally held by the British. Sarkozy had at his side as Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, a Russia-hater if ever there was one.

A professional do-gooder who was long as the helm of the French NGO Medecins Sans Fronti�res, Kouchner brought to office the same 'universal values' as Obama's Samantha Power with all of their geopolitical implications.

But in 2008, Sarkozy's view of Russia took an awkward turn which resulted directly from his personal intervention in the escalating confrontation with Russia over the Russian-Georgian War acting in his capacity as President of the European Council. When immersed in the nitty-gritty, Sarkozy discovered the falseness of the Washington narrative and pulled back from reflexive anti-Russian positions. The Mistral deal was then negotiated and concluded under his direction.

This brief show of French independent thinking came to an end with the electoral defeat of Sarkozy.

The downfall of the highly intelligent and experienced Dominique Strauss-Kahn in a sex scandal that nearly sent him away to prison left the French with Francois Hollande, a limited and provincial politician who was clueless about foreign policy from the beginning and entrusted formulation to the cunning Laurent Fabius, an Atlanticist conformist.

In this context, the French knuckled under to the American positions delivered by Joe Biden, to the point of jeopardizing their entire export-oriented defense industry by cancelling the Mistral sale.

It was left to the extreme Right and Euro-skeptic Front National of Marine Le Pen to pick up the strands of Gaullisme and rebel against American tutelage over relations with Russia. But her chances of winning the presidency were always considered to be marginal.

For their part, the Germans had an approach to Russia on a special track that was embedded in the mainstream Left, the Social Democrats (SPD), going back to Willy Brandt and running for decades through the administration of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. It was called their Ostpolitik. Under the Ossie Merkel, that is now dead and has been replaced by strategic alignment with Mitteleuropa.

The nice people of Poland, the Czech Republic, not to mention the swathe of economic losers in the Southeast (Bulgaria, Romania) are folks whom the Germans can boss around to their pleasure, all of which is so much more attractive than having to deal with the Russians and their pretensions at equality. Moreover, as the now disgraced Radoslaw Sikorski put it: the Poles were giving the US a blow job. The Germans decided it was their turn in line at the whorehouse.

Now with the French parliamentary visit to Crimea, it appears that Europe is truly cracking, and Gaullisme is leading the way. After all, the delegation drew principally on the UMP, now self-styled Republicans, Sarkozy's party, which is smack in the French mainstream as Center Right.

Yesterday's Vesti 24 reporting on the visit of the French parliamentary delegation to Crimea showed up a level of political sophistication that one would not have imagined from the day earlier accounts of the visitors' trying on "Obama is a Schmuck" tee-shirts featured on alternative news websites.

The top of their agenda was a visit to the French military cemetery dating back to the Crimean War which just happens to be the largest French military cemetery outside of France. The widely held belief in France was that the cemetery was in a state of disrepair and was about to be paved over for residential housing or a shopping center.

The delegation found to their surprise that it is in impeccable condition and they duly laid flowers.

Then they went to the Russian military cemetery at Sevastopol and paid their respects

All of that was an act of political theater that will be replayed in France when they get home and repeat on French soil their demand for the EU sanctions against Crimea and Russia to be repealed.

Vesti reports that Sarkozy is going to be the next visitor.

Where this all will lead one cannot say. But the Russians correctly report it as a breakthrough for common sense, perhaps of greater political moment than the current ongoing protests of farmers around France over the devastating effect of the Russian retaliatory embargo on their produce.
 
 #43
Bloomberg
July 24, 2015
Crimea Is Now Putin's Problem Child
Russian security services are cracking down on alleged corruption in the newly annexed peninsula
by Carol Matlack

President Vladimir Putin likened Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea to a family welcoming home a long-lost relative.

Now the family is showing signs of strain. Russia's federal security service, the FSB, has opened criminal investigations of three high-ranking Crimean government officials, accusing them of graft and other misdeeds. Four regional cabinet ministers have been forced from office in the past few months over allegations of corruption. And Kremlin auditors reported in June that two-thirds of the money Moscow sent Crimea last year for road building couldn't be accounted for.

Crimean Governor Sergey Aksyonov, elected in April 2014 with Putin's blessing, has reacted angrily to the allegations. Addressing Crimean cabinet ministers on July 7, he accused Moscow of trying to "destabilize" Crimea and using "fabricated" evidence against those under investigation, who include the region's industrial policy minister, its chief tax inspector, and the director of the port of Yalta. "No one will make victims of our officials," Aksyonov said.

Concerns about corruption and mismanagement weren't high on Putin's agenda when the Aksyonov government took over, says Robert Orttung, a professor at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, who has studied corruption in Russian regions. Authorities in Moscow simply wanted to ensure that the new leaders "were going to back them up." But now, Orttung says, "these guys are getting out of control."

The Aksyonov government has waged a campaign of forced nationalization, enacting legislation last year that gave it broad powers to seize companies, real estate, and other private property. In some cases, hooded gunmen ejected people from their land and businesses. Russian citizens were among those whose property was taken; the country's courts are now flooded with complaints by people seeking redress. The Crimean government said that forced property seizures ended in March, but by then investors had fled the region and its economy was in shambles.

That leaves Moscow on the hook. It's already paying 75 percent of the Crimean government's budget, while subsidizing pensions and other benefits for local residents. And the graft allegations raise questions about how the Kremlin can keep tabs on the $18 billion in aid it's promised Crimea over the next five years. The money is supposed to be used for economic development and infrastructure, including construction of a bridge from the peninsula to the Russian mainland.

The FSB investigations probably reflect a struggle for control of "the main valves of corruption" in Crimea, says Andrew Foxall, director of the Russia Studies Centre at the Henry Jackson Society in London. "This same kind of thing happens in every Russian region." Moscow tolerates some corruption among regional leaders, Foxall says, but expects them to share the spoils with Kremlin-backed interests. Those who don't may be subjected to criminal investigation and arrest.

Crimea's location on the Black Sea positions it to become "one of the main entry points for the shadow economy," including smuggling of firearms and cigarettes, Foxall says. The FSB's investigation of the Yalta port chief could reflect a fight for control of that facility, he says.

Accusations of rampant corruption could also give Moscow an excuse to scale back some of the $18 billion in promised aid. Keeping that pledge won't be easy, with the economy in recession and the ruble's value down almost 50 percent against the U.S. dollar since Crimea's annexation. The Kremlin has failed to deliver promised aid to other regions, such as Russia's Far East, which got only a small fraction of the more than $23 billion it was supposed to receive from 2007 through 2013.

For now, Aksyonov and his allies are talking tough. "We did not reunite with Russia to be subjected to the same horrors we had experienced" when Crimea belonged to Ukraine, regional lawmaker Sergei Shuvaynik said recently in a speech to the Crimean parliament. But in the end, Crimean officials will have to bow to the Kremlin or lose their jobs, Foxall says. "These are the rules of the game Crimea signed up for" when it voted for annexation. "It's only now realizing this."
 
 #44
www.rt.com
July 28, 2015
MH17 tribunal would create 'new hotbed of intl confrontation' - Russian UN envoy

Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin expressed hope that the draft resolution on the tribunal prepared by Malaysia would not be put to vote at all as he is "unable to see who and how is going to benefit from it."

"There is a clear attempt to create another hotbed of confrontation here that could have very far-reaching consequences for international relations, in an environment where there a lot of global problems that require comprehensive cooperation," Churkin told journalists at the UN.

A tribunal would be "a very dangerous step" and Russia would do everything in its power to stop it from happening, he stressed.

"We will vote against it I have no doubt about that. If the resolution gets nine or more votes than it's going to be a veto. If it gets less than nine votes, it's just going to be a negative vote of Russia together with some other members of the Security Council. Unfortunately, I think that it will most likely get nine votes," the envoy said.

He reminded journalists that Russia drafted an alternative resolution on the crash of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, which crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 17 last year, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew members.

In the document, Moscow proposed to deepen and broaden international cooperation in the investigation of the tragedy, including the involvement of the UN Secretary General, the envoy stressed.

Some elements of the Russian draft were included in the Malaysian resolution, which the country presented on behalf of five states investigating the crash over the Donetsk Region (Malaysia, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ukraine), he added.

Churkin said that he met with the ambassadors of the investigating countries and found out that they "retracted to an old hardline approach."

The Russian envoy stressed that the differences in the UN Security council over the tribunal and the whole situation in Ukraine do not affect the work on other important issues, like Syria.  

"We're mainly talking to the Americans and it's done very professionally and very deep; we're trying to understand the argument and figure out approach to each other... I am very pleased with the work with the US delegation during the last weeks," he said.   

Churkin expressed hope that the US draft resolution for creating a mechanism to establish responsibility for chemical weapons usage in Syria "would be accepted shortly."  

Earlier in July, Malaysia prepared a draft resolution calling on the UN Security Council to create an international tribunal and to classify the crash as a threat to peace and security.

According to Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, the MH17 crash is a result of a criminal offense and doesn't correspond to threat to international peace and security.

A UN Security Council has never organized a tribunal over an air crash, Lavrov said, adding that the push for the tribunal is to blame those whom Washington considers to be responsible.

The Dutch investigators, looking into the MH17 tragedy, said that the plane was shot down while flying over the conflict zone near Donetsk.

However, they have not yet established responsibility for the tragedy, as pro-Kiev forces were fighting with rebels from the self-proclaimed republics in eastern Ukraine at the time.

The Ukrainian authorities and the West blame the Donetsk militias for downing the plane, saying that they used a Buk surface-to-air missile allegedly provided by Russia.

These accusations are denied by the rebels, with Moscow repeatedly warning against blaming anyone before the investigation into the crash is completed.

The Dutch Safety Board that has been heading an international investigation into the cause of the crash is due to release its official report in October, while the criminal investigation is expected to continue until the end of this year.
 
 #45
Levada.ru
July 27, 2015
Nearly 50 per cent of Russians support MH17 tribunal idea

A suggestion to establish an international tribunal in order to prosecute those responsible for downing the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine's Donetsk Region in 2014 is supported by nearly 50 per cent of Russians, a survey conducted by the Russian independent polling organization Levada Centre has revealed, as reported on the organization's website on 27 July.

According to the poll results, which allowed multiple answers, 14 per cent "completely approve" of the idea, while 33 per cent "rather approve".

At the same time, Russians' opinion on the responsible party has remained almost steady over the last year. Slightly over 40 per cent of the surveyed say Ukrainian army is responsible for the tragedy, around 20 per cent blame the USA, and only 3 and 2 per cent blame rebels in Donetsk Region and Russia respectively.

In case the tribunal is to be set up, 36 per cent say it will find Ukrainian army or Ukrainian leaders guilty, while 19 per cent say Russia will be found guilty. Only 9 per cent say the rebels of the unrecognized Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) will be found guilty.

The figures come with a margin of error of 4.1 per cent, Levada Centre said. The survey was conducted on 17-20 June among 800 people, it said.

The idea to establish the international tribunal was opposed by Russian officials, who called for an "objective" investigation to be conducted first.
 
 
#46
MH17 tribunal 'not an issue for UN Security Council' - American expert

NEW YORK, July 23. /TASS/. The MH17 crash in Ukraine in July 2014 cannot be regarded as a threat to international peace and security, and, therefore, the UN Security Council is not an appropriate place for considering the establishment of the tribunal to identify and prosecute those responsible for the tragedy, expert on international law and President of the US-based Global Security Institute Jonathan Granoff has told TASS. Instead, he suggested setting up a structure dealing with such incidents on a permanent basis.

"It's an isolated incident, not a systemic one, not part of an ongoing offensive, the way, say, ISIS would be," he said. "I do not think it is a threat to international peace and security, it doesn't belong to the Security Council. It would be more legitimate, I think, for the Security Council to address the threat of ISIS. That's an ongoing threat."

According to Granoff, "in this instance, at worst, it's a renegade group that did it intentionally." "It's likely that was a mistake. It appears to be more an act of negligence than an act of intent. In other words, they thought they were fighting a civil war, when they opened fire. They did not mean to shoot a civilian airliner."

However, Granoff disagreed with the view that the idea to establish the MH17 tribunal, which is actively promoted by Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine, stemmed from a desire to make "a political show." "I think that the aggrieved families have a legitimate right to have justice," he said, noting that "the legal system in Ukraine was not capable of handling this." "I think it would be legitimate for some form of commission to be created to hold somebody culpable, but I don't think it's an issue for the Security Council. I just don't think it's a threat to international peace and security.

The expert pointed to similar incidents in the past when airliners were brought down by mistake, including the Korean Airlines Flight 007 shot down over Sakhalin in 1983, and suggested creating "an ad-hoc tribunal or an institution for downed airliners, some form of international body that will deal with such matters."

The Malaysia Airlines MH17 passenger Boeing plane crashed in Ukraine's south-eastern Donetsk region on July 17, 2014. All 283 passengers and 15 crew members, citizens of 10 countries, were killed in the crash. The basic version of the catastrophe causes was that the airliner was hit by a "ground-to-air" or an "air-to-air" missile. Ukrainian authorities and representatives of the militia of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) have blamed each other for the tragedy.

Currently, two draft resolutions relating to the air crash are under consideration at the UN Security Council. One of them - submitted by the Malaysian delegation - qualifies the incident as "a threat to international peace and security" and provides for the creation of an international tribunal to prosecute those responsible for the tragedy. The second document prepared by Russia focuses on supporting the ongoing investigation and proposes to appoint a special envoy of the UN Secretary-General to facilitate this process.
 
 #47
Slate.com
July 26, 2015
Double Genocide
Lithuania wants to erase its ugly history of Nazi collaboration-by accusing Jewish partisans who fought the Germans of war crimes. [excerpt]
By Daniel Brook
[Full article here http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2015/07/lithuania_and_nazis_the_country_wants_to_forget_its_collaborationist_past.html?wpsrc=fol_fb]

Nazi Fighting Partisan-or War Criminal?

I met Yitzhak Arad in the cafeteria of his upscale retirement home outside Tel Aviv. To his enemies, this short man, softened by age and bundled in long sleeves against the facility's overzealous air conditioning, is a kind of Jewish Kurt Waldheim: a brutal war criminal who deftly covered his tracks and went on to run one of the world's leading human rights institutions. Waldheim, a former Nazi officer, famously became secretary-general of the United Nations before the truth came out. Arad allegedly committed atrocities against Lithuanian anti-Communists on behalf of Stalin's secret police, the NKVD, before moving to Israel and becoming the director of Yad Vashem, the nation's holocaust museum.

Sitting near a table of wheelchair-bound women Arad, who is 88, recounted blowing up trains in Nazi-occupied Europe. With his blunt fingers and lupine eyes, I could still sense the fearsome fighter he'd been as a teenaged partisan in the frozen Baltic forests and later as an IDF desert tank commander. As a teenager, Arad lost his parents and most of his family in the Holocaust. He insisted to me that he has nothing to apologize for. "I am proud that I fought the Nazi Germans and their Lithuanian collaborators," he said. "That fate made it possible for me to fight against the murderers of my family, the murderers of my people."

At my request, Arad went upstairs to the room he shares with his wife and fetched a war medal he received for his service fighting the Nazis behind enemy lines. It had been issued by the Soviet Union, which backed the partisans in their struggle against the Germans. "This is the Partisan Medal, First Degree," Arad explained. "The most important medal for partisans." Cast seven decades ago, the tarnished medal had outlived the state that issued it, but the profile of Stalin proudly staring off into the distance, upstaging a profile of Lenin behind it, remained clear.

Although Arad claims no sympathy for communism, he held onto the medal when he abandoned Stalin's Lithuania at the end of the war and made his way to Palestine. "I hid it in bread," he told me, explaining how he'd hollowed out a loaf and stuck the medal inside. "If I'd been caught by the Soviets, they would have-if not killed me-sent me to Siberia for fleeing. I deserted." Keeping the medal was a risk, he said, but it was important to him because it was the only recognition of his service during the war. "Look, I was fighting a few years, I wanted it, of course," he said. "Maybe it was a stupid thing."

Arad also kept the award's accompanying certificate acknowledging his service to the Soviets under his birth name, Itzik Rudnicki. When he showed it to me, I saw that it was hand-signed by Justus Paleckis, the brutal puppet president who ran Lithuania for Stalin.

These days, Arad, and others like him, are no longer lauded for their wartime efforts on behalf of Lithuania. In a new party line, institutions of the contemporary Lithuanian government now portray Nazi-aligned nationalists as anti-Soviet heroes and anti-Nazi partisans-in particular the Jewish ones-as traitors. Arad lives under the cloud of an open-ended investigation by Lithuanian prosecutors for crimes against humanity committed in the final days of World War II, when he allegedly executed Lithuanian anti-Communists, including civilians, for Stalin's secret police. After decades of being hailed as a war hero, the old man sitting across the table from me had, in the eyes of his homeland, become a war criminal....


 
 Euromaidan Press
July 26, 2015
Understanding the Ukrainians in WWII
Part 3. Of German plans and German collaborators.
By James Oliver

Parts 1, 2, and 3 here:
http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/07/26/understanding-the-ukrainians-in-wwii-part-3-of-german-plans-and-german-collaborators/