#2
The Siberian Times
http://siberiantimes.com
July 28, 2015
First glimpse inside the Siberian cave that holds the key to man's origins
New revelations expected as Novosibirsk experts share latest ancient finds with world's leading specialists.
By Anna Liesowska.
By Anna Liesowska
[Photos here http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/features/f0135-first-glimpse-inside-the-siberian-cave-that-holds-the-key-to-mans-origins/

These exclusive pictures show the world famous Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains from which a series of stunning scientific discoveries on man's origins have been made in recent years.

More are expected as a result of a hive of archeological activity - overseen by the specialists from Novosibirsk State University -  underway at this unique site inhabited continuously from the deep past.

Scientist Maksim Kozlikin said: 'We are working with Oxford University in the UK, they help us with radiocarbon and other dating and also conduct studies of ancient DNA. Currently, we continue cooperation and there can be new joint scientific articles.'

The significance of the cave is immense, and the experts are convinced it has more secrets to give up on human origins. Here in 2008 was discovered a finger bone fragment of 'X woman', a juvenile female who lived around 41,000 years ago, analysis of which indicated that she was genetically distinct from Neanderthals and modern humans.

This previously unknown and long extinct hominin species or subspecies was christened Denisovan after this cave. In 2010 analysis on an upper molar from a young adult, found in the cave ten years previously, was also from a Denisovan.

In 2011, a toe bone contemporary with the finger was found with the mitochondrial DNA suggesting it belonged to a Neanderthal, not a Denisovan. Tools from modern man have been found in the cave, too.

As scientist Svante Paabo, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said: 'The one place where we are sure all three human forms have lived at one time or another is here in Denisova Cave.'

Another significant find in 2008 - in the same layer as the Denisovan bone -  was a stone bracelet dated 40,000 years old, but it was made using the technologies specific to a much later time.

It was due to this cave that scientists understood the settlement of this part of Siberia went back longer than the assumed 30,000 to 50,000 years. Traces in the 'cultural layer' of the Denisova show the human habitat reaching back 282,000 years. So far it has given up more than 80 000 exhibits including implements, arms, ornaments, and the remains of animals and plants.

The Denisova Cave is located in the Bashelaksky Range of the north-western Altai Mountains, close to the border of today's Altai Region and the Altai Republic, but in ancient times it would have been an attractive location.

The cave is at an altitude of 670 meters above sea level, and at 28 meters above the present level of the Anui River.

Kozlikin, a research fellow of Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, part of the the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, explained: 'From the ancient hunter's point of view the location of Denisova Cave was very convenient. To the north of the cave stretches a rather wide valley, and there is another to the south.

'At this very place, where the cave is located, is in fact a canyon, because the width of the bottom of the valley here is less than the distance between two major peaks - Mount Karakol and Mount Sosnovaya. So Denisova Cave is in a rather narrow canyon. Through this canyon - as if through a bottle neck - migrated the animals, from one valley to another. So the ancient hunter always had enough prey. There is a water nearby and good climatic conditions of the mountainous valleys.'

In the late Pleistocene era, some 100,000 years ago, an ice sheet covered much of western Siberia, but not Altai valleys such as this. 'So it was a good place for hunting and gathering plants too, and very comfortable conditions for the humans and animals.'

Indeed, there are other signs this was a hive of activity in ancient times.

A few kilometres down the Anui River is located Paleolithic site Anui-2 and four kilometres up the river is Karakol site and others, so there are quite a lot of Paleolithic sites on this area, around the cave.

'During the excavations, we found that the most ancient - 22nd - layer of Denisova Cave is 'sterile', in other words, there are no remains, or sediments.

'It turned out that 300,000 years ago Anui River had another bed, which was located higher, very close to the entrance of the cave. As soon as its course became lower, ancient humans and animals begin to visit the cave. On the upper part of the 22nd layer were found implements and the remains of animals. This happened around 282,000 years ago.

'At this time, the climate here was rather mild. Oak grew here, along with hornbeam, Manchurian walnut and even the northern species of bamboo. We see here the remains of European ass, bison, woolly rhino, several species of deer, elk, cave lion, cave hyena, bear, and snow leopard.

'Before the excavations, there was only a rather narrow manhole to the cave, because sediments covered it. The width of a manhole was about 1.4 metres. The cave was known to locals and some even left the inscriptions at the entrance at the beginning of the 20th century. Still they did not venture further in simply because there was not so much space inside.

In 1977 famous paleontologist Nikolay Ovodov made a pit in the central part of the cave and found a lot of paleontological material and stone implements. He shared with his findings with archaeologists and in 1978 Alexey Okladnikov came here.

'Since 1984, archaeological expeditions work here every summer. In late 1980s and early 1990 here was built a permanent archaeological camp - houses and other facilities. So for more than 30 years there have been  archaeological works are conducted here. Still the huge part of the cave is not explored yet, even the central hall.'

Work can go on here for many years, with the prospect of major new discoveries.

Giving us a tour of the cave, Kozlikin said: 'On the right the central hall adjoins the southern gallery, which is about 20 metres wide and it is almost fully covered with unexplored sediment. Now the work is being done in the eastern gallery, next to the central hall.

'In this eastern gallery we have already finished the famous 11th layer, which brought us the Denisovan's finger bone, bracelet and a necklace of elk teeth. Now we went deeper and are working with the 12th, 13th, and 14th layer - Middle Paleolithic. The 14th layer is dated about 180,000 years ago. Here we have typical Middle Paleolithic stone implements.'

He explained the way the inside of the cave is divided for the digs to ensure that no precious material is lost, and all clues are understood.

'We divided the area into squares with the size 1x1 metre. Each square we subdivided into two parts. Over there you see that these girls sitting and carefully removing all the ground from the square, layer by layer. Each thin layer is about 4 cm.

'If they see any big find - implements or bones, they leave it in its place, and carefully clean it. We make pictures, draw the location and measure the angle to understand if the find was replaced or moved.

If it lies at an angle to the surface, we suggest that the find and the layer was somehow disturbed. If the finding lies horizontally, we see that the layer was not disturbed. All the measurement we put on excavation site plan, with the exact coordinates. Here no more than two can work. Even for such slim girls there is not so much space here.

'All the ground they put into a bucket together with the label, which indicates the number of the layer and the square. These layers are sent using a special device down to the bank of the Anui River.'

The buckets are send from the cave to the river via the specially designed 'Cableroad' using a device called a Pepelats, initially designed to work at the archaeological site Ust-Karakol-1 by Dr Alexander Postnov. It allows up to nine full buckets to be carried to the opposite river bank 28 metres below the cave.

'On the riverbank we have the 'washing point.' The ground from the buckets is put into the sieves with a different mesh size, so we can divide the big fragments from the small ones,' he said.

Andrey Chekha, junior researcher at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, said big and small fragments are separated. 'From the big fragments, we choose the implements and bones, then clean them once again and mark with the number of layer, square, and year.'

With the small particles 'the girls sit with tweezers picking the tiny details, including the teeth of rodents, which allow us to determine the climate at that time.'

Maksim Kozlikin added: 'For one season, which usually lasts from early June to late August, we dig out not more than three cubic meters of ground. You can see that we are moving very slowly, but this is what allows us to make such a good finds.  

'We try not to lose any tiny part. For example, the finger bone of Denisovan girl - it is a very small bone, but we managed to spot it. Also, in our 'jewellery collection' we have beads made of fossilised shells of ostrich eggs. They do not exceed 0.5 cm in diameter. There is a lot of work here. We have almost finished with the famous 11th layer in the central hall and eastern gallery, but it is almost intact in the southern gallery.

'Still, we will finish the eastern gallery and only then will move to the southern. Of course, we are looking forward to new sensational finds related to the Denisovans in 11th layer in the southern gallery, but we cannot just switch from one part of the cave to another, we must work sequentially. Besides, we hope to have interesting finding in the 12th, 13th and 14th layers.

'The cave has an interesting peculiarity, namely that the bones here preserve very well. Because of this, we managed to get the mitochondria DNA from the finger bone dating  back 40,000 years. We hope to have good finds in more ancient layers too.'

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 #3
Moscow Times
July 30, 2015
Russia's Book Industry Wanes as Russians Stop Reading
By Anastasia Bazenkova

More Russian bookshops are facing closure every year, shaking the publishing industry and threatening writing as a profession.

Bookselling, never the most profitable retail business, is struggling to stay afloat thanks to expensive shop rental rates and decreasing interest from customers.

In Moscow, considered the most well-read city in Russia, there are now 226 bookshops left to serve a population of 12 million, said Boris Kupriyanov, a publisher and co-founder of Falanster bookshop. In Paris, whose population is five times smaller, there are 700 bookshops, he added.

As the number of bookshops declines, the problems in the bookselling industry are feeding through to Russian publishers and writers.

Oleg Filimonov, vice president of the Russian Publishers Association, described the negative feedback loop: Bookshop closures reduce the retail space available to publishers, who respond by printing fewer books. To break even on smaller print runs, the price per unit has to rise. Customers respond to higher prices by buying less, then falling sales push more bookshops out of business, reducing retail space still further.

One answer to this problem, at least for publishers, might be sales of electronic books. But rampant piracy means revenues from digital sales are low. And the less money made by publishers, the less they can pass on to the producers of content - the writers.

Waning Reading Culture

A major problem for bookshops is that Russians are losing interest in reading. Despite the country's reputation for literature and literacy, last year more than half of Russians didn't read a single book, up from one-quarter in 2009, Sergei Stepashin, president of the Russian Book Union told news agency TASS this month.

Young people see books as pure entertainment, and in that category they cannot compete with modern gadgets, said Kupriyanov. Without measures by the state to stimulate interest in reading and promote books as a source of education, interest will continue to wane, he said.

The number of bookshops in Russia has already fallen from 8,500 in the 1990s to 1,500 now, said Stepashin.

If we lose the battle for this generation, our future will be gloomy, Filimonov said.

Exorbitant Burden

Fading interest from customers is one problem, but many bookshops are closing because rent costs are too high.

In the Soviet era, bookshops were freed from paying rent and even received some subsidies to pay utilities bills.

"Now we have the same rental rates and taxes for bookshops as for liquor stores," Filimonov said.

Special privileges, such as reduced rental rates, are applied only to the outlets of Russia's leading bookshop chain Dom Knigi (Moscow House of Books), according to Kupriyanov. Others live or die by the market, and with retailers in other, more profitable industries able to pay higher rent, bookshops, especially small ones, are forced to close.

The introduction in July this year in Moscow of a trading fee, a fixed quarterly payment that stores must pay to legally sell goods, will increase the burden further.

To cover these costs, larger bookshops are allocating more space to related products or mutating into cultural centers, combining under one roof a cafe and a venue for hosting concerts and workshops.

But smaller stores have fewer options. Worst placed to withstand the strain are second-hand bookshops. Moscow has only six such shops, according to the All-Russia People's Front, a political movement backed by President Vladimir Putin that has lobbied against the trading fee, so far unsuccessfully. Paris, the front says, has around 7,000 second-hand bookshops.

The result of these financial pressures will be that new bookstores won't open, and only big book chains will survive, said Kupriyanov.

Falling Circulations

The effect of bookstore closures has been to reduce the quantity of printed words.

Last year, the number of book and brochure titles published in Russia was the lowest in seven years, according to a report issued by the Federal Press and Mass Media Agency. With the number of titles falling, the size of print runs is also declining, and the total amount of printed material shrank by 10.4 percent last year compared to 2013, according to the report. More than half of books published in Russia now have a circulation of less than 1,000 copies, it said.

Smaller print runs mean that each book is more expensive to produce, exacerbating a problem of affordability for consumers. Book prices are also rising due to the devaluation of the ruble over the past year, which inflated the cost of imported printing materials. And a 10 percent sales tax is levied on books, far above the norm in most developed countries, according to Filimonov.

The average book costs 350 rubles ($6), according to Denis Kotov, CEO of bookstore chain Bookvoed - or 30 percent of the average Russian's daily wage.

Electronic books are less vulnerable to rising printing costs, but despite steady growth, the share of electronic books in total market sales is no more than 2 percent, according to the Federal Press and Mass Media Agency report. Most Russians who read electronic books download them for free via pirate websites.

As a result of declining sales and published works, the writing profession in Russia is coming under threat of extinction.

There are currently 10-12 people in the whole country that can earn their living only by writing books, and there will be even fewer of them in the future, Filimonov said.

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 #4
The Calvert Journal
http://calvertjournal.com
July 16, 2015
McBorscht
Why the search for real Russian fast food has got political
By Sasha Raspopina  
 
Back in April, the hottest topic in the Russian media and blogosphere was the news that the controversial director Nikita Mikhalkov and his brother, the director Andrey Konchalovsky, had applied for government funding of nearly a billion roubles to open a fast food chain that would be a healthier Russian alternative to McDonalds. When the news hit Facebook and Twitter, a steady stream of columns and posts fulminated over the fact that two very wealthy brothers were asking the state for a billion roubles for a commercial venture. Reports from the Kremlin since say that the news reports were wrong, and that the brothers weren't actually trying to borrow money from the budget but were looking to get support otherwise. These new reports proved useless as the op-eds were already out and a train of public outrage had built up an unstoppable head of steam.

And as for their proposed fast food chain, it was supposed to work under the Edim Doma franchise ("Eating at home" in Russian), a cooking TV show and brand owned by Konchalovsky's wife, Yulia Visotskaya - an announcement that caused many commenters to blame the director brothers of nepotism. The basic concept of this proposed business is a healthier, more culturally native Russian fast food, everything McDonalds isn't - not exactly an evil idea. Only, their proposal and request for help from the state implied that these things don't already exist, that the niche of Russian fast food is empty and there is no one to stand up to the evil globalised McDonalds - and that is not entirely true. In fact, there have been several attempts at creating fast food brands with a national identity, some have failed miserably but others still work.

First, there was BlinDonalds, a fast food chain built around the idea of good Russian food, with the name shamelessly ripped from McDonalds. It was owned by a company belonging to Evgeniy Prigozhin, reportedly a close friend of President Putin. The chain, widely criticised for cheap food processed to the point of tastelessness, existed for several years before going out of business in 2012. Then there is Teremok, originally a chain of kiosks selling blini (crepes with fillings) that grew into a successful chain of fast food cafes serving simple Russian and Soviet food. The company made some good choices, like serving food appropriate for Orthodox Lent all-year-round (which means vegetarian-friendly, which the Russian McDonalds still hasn't become) and keeping the prices low. Among other brands are Chainaya Lozhka, Elki-Palki, and Kroshka Kartoshka - less popular and mostly regarded as train station food, but still managing to survive and open new cafes. These places all have various degrees of Russianness, from the very subtle in Kroshka Kartoshka to the sometimes absurd in Teremok where, for some time, the staff were required to address guests as sudar and sudarina, pre-revolutionary honorific titles that made every contact with a customer hysterically awkward.

Fast food joints aside, the trend for native food also manifested itself in a more exclusive hipster space of street food markets and restaurants, where pre-Soviet food made its claim for fame through Yamal venison and Siberian fish.

But still, in every instance, whether it is cheap fast food or overpriced street food, both the product and the concept sold to us seem artificial and awkward compared to burgers, kebabs and spicy chicken wings. And it's not the artificiality and awkwardness of eating an artisan hot dog and feeling like a character out of a New Yorker comment piece or one of the horsemen of the gentrification apocalypse. It's the artificiality and awkwardness that come from a cultural void of being sold a piece of food that doesn't bring the promised meaning: this is not "our" native fast/street food, this is a piece of local meat in a burger bun of globalisation. What it brings to the national food industry is not "native fast food", just some slightly localised recipes of western fast food.

At the same time, there is a whole culture of already existing street food that is popular and native if not to Russia specifically then to the post-Soviet space generally: food based on Caucasian and Georgian cuisines: shashliks and kababi (different types of kebab meat), shaurma or shaverma (shawarma or doner wraps), khachapuri (cheese filled pies), and chebureki (fried flat pastries with meat or cheese and herbs). These foods have a history of being sold and eaten in the Russian streets, and because of the Soviet Union they have been here for so long, they come off as "ours". These foods are handy to eat while you walk, and most people in Russia will probably have memories of them that make these foods a part of our lives: like eating a hot khachapuri, flaky puff pastry with hot melted cheese inside, in a park with one's parents, or sneakily having a shaverma with a friend after school, knowing it will spoil your appetite for dinner later. These foods are what burgers and hot dogs are to most Americans - where they eat hot dogs on the 4th of July, Russians get out of the city for the May holidays to grill shashliks. It helps that Georgian and Caucasian cuisines are generally recognised as the most delicious foods to come out of the Soviet Union, with more flavour and variety than other post-Soviet dishes. The Washington Post recently predicted Georgian cuisine would be the next big thing in the west.

However, the business of these foods is rather marginalised and there are very few recognisable brands - most shawarma and khachapuris are sold in kiosks or small cafes where you have to eat while standing up. Some of these places look suspicious and not exactly clean, the kind of place you might not go inside unless you have a recommendation from a friend who assured you won't be poisoned. But some bigger businesses have already started to recognise the potential and the dormant powers of these foods. A chain of Georgian fast food cafes called Vai Me (Why Me in English) serve simple Georgian foods like khinkali (giant meat dumplings) and lobio (bean-based pate, usually eaten with lavash bread), affordable and fast, in three locations in central Moscow. They also recently announced that they have plans for a cafe in Budapest, the new hipster Mecca that has thrown Berlin off the top of the European cool list, so it's safe to say that their claim to foodie fame is a serious one. Other businesses in the know of the trend are the countless Ossetian pie delivery services - easily outnumbering pizza deliveries and offer a variety of pies with fillings of cheese, meat and leafy greens, originating form Ossetia, a region in Georgia. To stand up to the competition, some pizza companies even started to add Ossetian pies to their menus.

So does Russia need another fast food attempting to address our cultural identity via borschts and blinis? Perhaps, for the competition's sake - though not funded by the state. And unless some marketing genius magically rebrands borscht, it's not going to become a go-to fast/street food dish in Russia. What we really need is a less marginalised version of the foods we are used to, the shashliks and shavermas. Even if they are not exctly directly native to Russian culture, we probably have the Soviet concept of the peoples' friendship to thank for the delight we feel every time we bite into a piece of Adjarian khachapuri.

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 #5
Le Monde diplomatique
August 2015
Traffic jams, parking deserts, bad road manners
Moscow on the road
Moscow can't cope with cars - they've only arrived en masse in the past 20 years. And already they're less desirable than they once were.
by Hélène Richard
Hélène Richard is a political scientist at the University of Lyon.

"I like driving. Cars are my life. I've had Zhigulis as well as American and German cars. Lately, I've gone for Japanese ones." Andrei Garashchuk, a former mechanic in his 40s who is now a driver for an eveningwear hire company, opens the passenger door of his Mazda 6, the latest model. A blue neon light projects the Mazda logo on to the pavement. He puts the car into reverse and uses a dashboard screen as he manoeuvres out of the courtyard of an apartment building near the Kremlin. We head in the direction of Sheremetyevo Airport, towards the dacha he has fitted out as a permanent home 40km from Moscow's centre. "Normally, it takes me an hour, an hour and ten minutes maximum," he says optimistically.

In 2013 Moscow was ranked the world's most congested city - worse than Istanbul, Rio de Janeiro and Tianjin (China) (1). The biggest traffic jam in Russia's history was on 15 May 2008, when the traffic was almost static on a 68-km stretch of the Moscow Automobile Ring Road (MKAD) for 13 hours because of lane closures by the police (2). But traffic is never free-flowing in this 2,500-sq km mega-city (Paris and its inner suburbs are just 760 sq km). In the morning rush hour, it takes at least an hour and 10 minutes to cover the 14km of the Entuziastov (enthusiasts') Highway (3) between the MKAD and the Garden Ring (4) (see map).

The evolution of Russian car ownership, a symbol of the lurch towards capitalism, has its roots in the Soviet era. Before the 1960s, engine manufacturers dedicated most of their production capacity to trucks, essential for transporting goods. With the post-Stalinist thaw, after Nikita Khrushchev's appointment as first secretary of the Communist Party in 1953, came the promise of a socialist-style consumer society. In 1966 Italy's Fiat signed a $900m deal with the USSR to build the VAZ factory in Tolyatti (a city renamed in 1964 after Palmiro Togliatti, a founder of the Italian Communist Party). Its production lines turned out the country's first mass-produced car, the VAZ-2101, closely modelled on the Fiat 214, affectionately known as the Kopeyka (after Russia's smallest coin, the kopek), a reference to its modest price, though it was still far beyond the means of most Soviet households. Garashchuk, who has taken out a loan to pay for his new Mazda, remembers the licence plate of the Kopeyka in which his father once turned up at the school gate: "1254 MNT. That was in 1980. You had to put your name down for one. Because my grandfather was an invalid, we had priority. In the early 80s, there were only five or ten cars outside the flats, for ten staircases."

The advent of fridges and televisions symbolised the arrival of modernity in Russia, but the car remained an object of enduring suspicion. As an emblem of US life, it risked encouraging petit bourgeois desires. The cult comedy Beware of the Car (1966) demonstrates this: "People who don't have a car dream of buying one; people who have one dream of selling it," says the voiceover at the start. The film is about an insurance salesman who steals his clients' cars and sells them on to help support an orphanage, targeting drivers with ill-gotten wealth.

Khrushchev considered developing taxi services and rental stations as an alternative to private ownership. "We will make more rational use of cars than the Americans," he promised in 1959. This forerunner of car sharing, ahead of its time, never got off the ground, but did provide an excuse for failing to catch up with the US: by 1985 the Soviet Union had 44 cars for every 1,000 inhabitants compared to 744 in the US (5).

'Back then, cars were still a luxury'

From the mid-80s, perestroika removed qualms about bourgeois values. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Russian market opened up to western carmakers. Volodya Polons, a former officer in the merchant navy, shows me some of his old photos. He points to the deck of a freighter laden with cars. "In 1990 sailors were allowed to buy cars when they were in port. I got my first one in Amsterdam. I liked the colour: it was a honey-coloured Volvo. To me it represented happiness and freedom. One evening, on a whim, I took a drive to the Donskoy monastery, near Shabolovskaya Street, where I grew up, to cheer myself up. A man there offered to sell me some stolen icons. He saw my car and assumed I was rich. Back then, cars were still a luxury."

Between 1990 and 2013, ownership rates rose from 58 to 273 cars per 1,000 citizens (6). Yet even Moscow, much richer than the regions, still lags behind major western cities. There are 360 cars per 1,000 inhabitants in Moscow - more than London (341), but fewer than the Ile-de-France region (479), Madrid (458) and New York (454), and far behind big US cities planned for cars, such as Atlanta (756) (7).

Moscow is not congested just because Muscovites have flocked to the dealerships. The city is bursting at the seams because the road network was not designed to cope with such a rapid rise in car ownership. Moscow's outer boulevards, which are eight lanes wide, long ago lost the greenery that earned them the name Garden Belt. The wide avenues may seem made for cars (so as not to interrupt the traffic, pedestrians use tunnels to cross the road) but "that has nothing to do with car traffic," says Mikhail Blinkin, director of the Institute of Transport Economics and Transport Policy Studies (Moscow Higher School of Economics). "These broad avenues, which date from the general reconstruction plan of 1935, have a purely aesthetic purpose: they were conceived for torchlit processions, funfairs and popular parades to the glory of the regime." Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow's mayor from 1992 to 2010, thought he could turn these boulevards into urban motorways by widening the carriageway and getting rid of traffic lights. But by increasing traffic flow towards the centre, around the Kremlin, where 40% of the city's jobs are concentrated in just 3 sq km, he worsened the problem. Across the city, every vehicle has just 27 square metres of asphalt, a quarter of the space in western cities (8). Outside the arterial routes, the network of streets and alleys is hard to navigate.

The reign of the car causes the usual pollution and accidents, but fatalities are more common here than elsewhere in Europe. Around 27,000 people die each year on Russia's roads. In 2010 there were 6.7 deaths for every 10,000 cars: 12 times the UK and Swedish figures and nine times those of Japan and Germany. Drivers are fitting video cameras to provide evidence in the event of an accident or altercation with another driver. Thousands of these amateur videos online worsen the bad reputation of Russian drivers.

'Democratic' value of the car

When Moscow drivers reach their destination, parking is often a problem. Outside an apartment block in the Lomonosovsky district, residents have painted their licence plate numbers on the ground to discourage anyone else from taking their space. Interlopers risk getting their car scratched or tyres slashed. Such tensions are feeding the beginnings of political protest. With mass availability, the car has acquired a "democratic" value. On the road, there is less tolerance for abuses of power and privilege. Traffic police - gaishniki - have long had a reputation for demanding bribes. But "they have become more respectful of the law since they got a pay rise," a veteran Moscow taxi driver tells me.

The focus of discontent has switched to senior civil servants and other political figures who abuse their flashing blue lights to cut through traffic. According to a police union, the police cleared the road for 100 official cars and motorcades a day during 2010 (9). That year the Society of Blue Buckets was set up by disgruntled motorists who organised street protests and generated publicity on social media, where their videos have been seen by up to 200,000 people. The group's supporters mock VIP flashing lights by putting a toy blue bucket on top of their cars. The movement was set up after a fatal accident on Leninsky Avenue in 2010, when a chauffeur-driven Mercedes carrying Lukoil's president Anatoly Barkov and his bodyguard hit a Citroën, killing its driver, Olga Alexandrina, and her mother-in-law, Vera Sidelnikova, both gynaecologists (10). "We launched a protest against the vulnerability of citizen to abuses by the powerful," says coordinator Pyotr Shkumatov. "In Soviet days the car was part of the trappings of the nomenklatura, a sign of dominance. Those days are gone. I belong to the first generation with mass access to cars. We have a different mindset."

The pro-Kremlin youth movement Nachi (Ours) launched the Stop-Kham (Stop the lout) project in 2010. "In a year, we overtook the Nachi in terms of activity and support, and went independent," says Dmitry Chugunov, 30, the project's coordinator. Stop-Kham activists try to re-educate bad drivers through snatched footage which is shown online. In a recent video, a Stop-Kham team put a security barrier across a dirt track which drivers used to gain a few metres' advantage in traffic jams. The team asked drivers to turn around and put large stickers on the windscreens of those who refused that read "I don't give a shit about others. I park wherever I like." The videos made compelling viewing. "I was born in Biryulyovo in the far north of the city, a disadvantaged suburb, a 'white ghetto'," says Chugunov, who calls himself a political communicator. "We lack examples of positive behaviour. People need them to educate their children properly. In the long term, it's a national security issue."

Moscow's current mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, appointed by President Dmitry Medvedev in October 2010 and confirmed after the 2013 municipal elections (11), has put transport at the top of his agenda (see Investing in public transport). In under two years, measures have been pushed through that would be commonplace in big European cities, such as bus lanes and parking charges in specified zones. But consultation and participative democracy have been brushed aside, which has caused discontent.

The Moscow Drivers' Union (MDU), the successor to the Soviet-era union responsible for driving instruction and road safety, is still in shock. Though it remains responsible for managing 150,000 parking places, it was only consulted twice by Moscow's Transport Department. Under Luzhkov, the union was treated with greater respect. Its car parks survived the destruction of the rakushki (seashells), the individual canvas garages that from the 1990s invaded the green spaces between apartment blocks, which become more numerous the further you go from the Kremlin. City hall has refused the MDU land lease renewals, which are being awarded to private investors. Between 2011 and 2014, the association lost 20,000 parking spaces, which became pay parking zones or multi-storey garages where bays are sold to individuals. "We're peaceful people, not extremists. We're prepared to talk," says its director.

In a country where collective action is often hard to get off the ground, protest takes individual forms. "Look!" says Garashchuk as we pass a parked car. "He's stuck a CD over his number plate." The aim is to stop patrol vehicle cameras identifying the car and sending an order to remove it to the pound. Tow trucks constantly cruise Moscow's streets.

The spectacular enlargement of Moscow's administrative borders shows how the vertical conception of power has taken hold in Russia. This policy makes it clear how far the solution to problems is based on central planning, which in reality has limited effect. In June 2010 President Medvedev suggested the creation of a "Greater Moscow" with the transfer of some federal institutions, such as parliament, to new land the city was incorporating. The mayor soon devised a plan. On 1 July 2012 the capital absorbed 21 municipalities, renaming them "New Moscow". The total area of the city has more than doubled with this encroachment into the southern and southwestern suburbs, an underpopulated zone to which the government hopes to attract 2 million people from central districts. "The concept is fundamentally misguided," says geographer Robert Argenbright of the University of Utah. "This expansion avoids existing towns which are genuine urban centres, such as Podolsk and Khimki. Sobyanin doesn't want those workers' towns. They don't fit with the image of Greater Moscow and would put a strain on welfare budgets" (12).

Garashchuk's new car is stuck in an alleyway. Forty-five minutes have gone by while he has been detailing his reasons for preferring traffic jams to disorganised public transport. Other drivers have tried to take the same shortcut to Tverskaya Street, a five-lane radial route starting at Red Square. Eventually, a driver gives way. All you can see are cars' sidelights beyond Belorussky station at the end of the avenue. "In the jams, I listen to the radio, music, the news. It's not worth getting stressed. What else can you do? But if we had public transport worthy of the name, I'd definitely use it." In Russia, the long-held dream of car ownership is losing it lustre.

[Footnotes not here]

 
#6
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
July 28, 2015
New tolls on heavy trucks to raise funds for road repairs in Russia
Russia is to introduce a new system for collecting tolls from heavy trucks, with the proceeds - some 50 billion rubles ($896 million) a year - to go toward vital road repairs. Payment will be controlled by special gates set up on major highways.
Anna Kuchma, RBTH
 
Help may be at hand for Russia's long-suffering roads in the form of a new initiative that aims to offset the damage done by heavy trucks by charging hauliers a fee that will go toward maintaining major highways.

The new system, called Platon (derived from the Russian for "pay per ton"), will be launched in November 2015 and will levy charges on trucks over 12 tons.
Given the tariff set by the government, during the first year the new system is expected to raise 50 billion rubles ($896 million). The money will be transferred to the federal road fund to be used for road repairs.  

According to Alexander Sovetnikov, the managing director of the company operating the new system, hauliers will be able to make payments via dedicated terminals, the system website (which has an English-language version) or by visiting the office.

Sovetnikov explained that in Russia, just as in the European Union, toll payment and routes will be controlled through special "gates" set up on federal highways (there are plans to install some 480 stationary gates and about 100 mobile ones), with operators monitoring truck movement with the use of dedicated onboard devices, two million of which will be distributed to drivers free of charge.

"We have engaged Western consultants, for example the Sky Toll company, which launched a similar system in Slovakia," said Sovetnikov.

At the same time, he added, in the Russian system the main emphasis was made on domestic industrial capabilities: For instance, the onboard device necessary to record payment was developed and manufactured in Russia.

"In terms of the length of roads, at 90,000 km [56,000 miles], and the number of trucks, nearly two million, the Russian system is unique," said Sovetnikov.
 
A small price to pay

Despite the vast sums earned by Russia over the past 15 years from oil and gas exports, the country's road network remains chronically underdeveloped, with even the road connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg still two-lane for much of its length. The poor quality of existing highways and a lack of investment mean that road surfaces quickly deteriorate under heavy usage from trucks.

According to the Russian federal agency operating motorways, Rosavtodor, up to 58 percent of damage done to the roads in the country is caused by trucks weighing over 12 tons. Given their total annual mileage on federal highways, the optimum tariff was calculated at 3.73 rubles ($0.068) per kilometer.

"This fee is about half of what is charged in other countries, so the economic effect on hauliers will be practically nil. At most, it will add 1 percent to the cost of the transported goods," Rosavtodor head Roman Starovoyt told RBTH.

According to the federal road agency, the annual cargo traffic in Russia is about 5 billion tons, and the annual damage caused to the roads is estimated at 180 billion rubles ($3.16 billion).

Ivan Varlamov, director for strategic development of the PEK transport company, estimates that the introduction of the new payment may push hauliers' costs up 10 percent, which will add 1-3 percent to the cost of transported goods.

However, Alexander Dyakonov, head of the Fresh division at the FM Logistic company, said that the moderate amount of the fee "will not have a big effect on the cost of transportation."

"It is another thing if the tariffs are differentiated, as was done in Belarus, with different tariffs used for residents and non-residents," he said.
 
The issue of transit

According to official figures, transit accounts for about 5 percent of road traffic in Russia, whereas in neighboring Belarus the figure is nearly 20 percent. Both in Russia and Belarus, the bulk of transit comes from EU countries.

"Of course, the new system will create a certain inconvenience for foreign hauliers. However, the final price of the issue is unlikely to be high enough for them to give up the transit route via Russian territory or to look for alternative routes," said Alexei Kichatov, managing director of the City Express delivery company.

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 #7
Kremlin.ru
July 28, 2015
Reception to mark 1000 years since the death of St. Vladimir, Equal-to-the-Apostles

A gala reception was held at the Kremlin on behalf of the President in honour of the 1000th death anniversary of St. Vladimir, Equal-to-the-Apostles. Attending the reception were representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, public and political figures.

In 2015 Russia marks the 1000th death anniversary of St. Vladimir, Equal-to-the-Apostles. The church equals the deeds of St. Vladimir the Evangelizer of Russia to those of Christ's Apostles. In the late 13th - early 14th centuries the Russian Orthodox Church proclaimed Prince Vladimir a Saint Equal to the Apostles. The day of his veneration is the Day of Russia's Christianization.

Address at the gala reception

Vladimir Putin: Your Holiness, esteemed guests, colleagues, friends,

These days Russia and the entire Orthodox world are celebrating the Christianization of Rus'.

It is impossible to over-estimate the significance of this event - the acquisition of faith and spiritual support. Christening clearly became a turning point in the history of Russia, in the statehood and culture of this country. It is our common duty to honour this momentous stage in Russia's development. Gathered here today are representatives of bodies of power, civil unions, the Russian Orthodox and local Orthodox Church hierarchs and representatives of all the traditional religions of Russia, which as a state was built on a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional basis.

The Christianization of Rus' has become embedded in the church tradition and the people's memory alongside the name and deeds of St. Vladimir, Equal-to-the-Apostles. His 1000th death anniversary gave us another opportunity to perceive the scale of his personality as an outstanding creator of Russia, the significance of his decision for generations to come, to perceive the continuity of our age-long history and the unbreakable bond to the legacy left by our ancestors.

Prince Vladimir was destined to become a great ruler. His choice was discerning and extremely responsible and became the source of Russia's development as a unique country and civilization.

The adoption of Christianity was based on Prince Vladimir's deep love for his Fatherland, on his serious spiritual reflection, on his search for a single baseline that could unite the people and the dispersed lands.

The Russian Primary Chronicle says, "The amount of good he did for Russia by Christening it is amazing". By putting and end to feuds and rebuffing outside enemies Prince Vladimir launched the creation of a single Russian people; he actually paved the way towards a strong centralized Russian state.

Rus' became strong, gaining power and authority among its neighbors near and far, communicating on an equal footing with peoples both East and West of it.

The Prince's decision reflected the striving of our people to the lofty ideals of goodness, truth and justice, to fraternal unity and solidarity the world over. Fyodor Dostoyevsky called this 'overall humanity'.

The great Prince Vladimir became a true builder of his land, the founder of its cultural and economic development, a wise and far-sighted ruler of Russia. He remained that way after the holy Christening at the ancient city of Khersones, or Korsun. These spiritual sources continue to nourish the fraternal peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

We remain true to the choice made by Prince Vladimir. We value peace and accord in our multi-ethnic land, working together for its flourishing, treating the traditions of all its people and traditional religions of Russia with respect.

Allow me, once again, to congratulate you, Your Holiness, and all those present on Russia's Christening Day, on Prince Vladimir's Memorial Day. I wish you success in your diverse spiritual activities, in your important and responsible service to the people of Russia.

Thank you for your attention.

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia: Your Excellency, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, honourable representatives from local Orthodox churches, high government representatives, Your Excellencies, reception participants,

I would like to welcome everyone who has gathered at the Moscow Kremlin to celebrate the Day of Rus's Baptism and the thousand-year anniversary since the repose of Prince Vladimir.

The life of Prince Vladimir provides us with a clear example of heroism - both personal and public heroism - which affected the fate of many peoples and millions of individuals. Upon being baptised and changing his life and the way of life for his subjects, he set a fundamentally new standard for personal and public behaviour, based on evangelical precepts. Before, murder, human sacrifice, deception and greed were considered normal and, as many felt at the time, the correct means to achieve power and happiness; but after the Prince of Kiev's historical act, the common understanding of what is good and bad, what is acceptable and what is unacceptable changed. Of course, crime did not disappear from the life of the eastern Slavic tribes, but they forever lost the aura of something permissible, necessary and lawful.

By choosing a pious way of life, launching the widespread construction of temples and churches, demonstrating consistent concern for the troops and common people, the poor and even the criminals, the wise ruler, popularly known as the Red Sun, proved to his subjects that God's truth and living by the Gospel of Christ is far greater than human glory, honour and wealth. But Prince Vladimir did not just accept baptism from Constantinople's ambassadors and Korsun's clergy. As we know from the chronicles, in search for power, beauty and truth, St. Vladimir had previously analysed various spiritual traditions and the cultures that had formed on their basis. For his people, for the consolidating Rus', he chose the high ideals of Byzantium's statehood and literacy. In that historical era, no culture or state was more developed than the Byzantine Empire. His desire to use that highly-educated Christian nation as his example determined the path of our Fatherland's development for centuries to come. Thus, the Prince's religious selection also meant choosing the Christian way of life, its social life, its style of culture and way of thinking, a choice of a civilised code that stood apart becausethis social structure was formed on the basis of Christian values, and opened opportunities for individuals from any religion or view on life to live with most people, without feeling inferiority or discrimination. It is remarkable that these principles, which were laid like seeds during Prince Vladimir's time, flourish today, allowing for our nation's existence and peaceful development.

Thus, thanks to the Christian teachings and aesthetics brought to the land of Rus', we saw masterpieces such as the creations by Rublev, Dionysius, unique ensembles of Russian monasteries and kremlins, the lyricism of Russian Orthodox prayers and hymns. In turn, the church's cultural influence became the foundation for social culture giving the world the works of Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and a list of many, many others too long to count.

Orthodox ideals of loyalty, valour, sacrifice, love for the Fatherland and Church have strengthened our glorious ancestors over the course of a millennium in defending their native land in many wars and upheavals.

Externally, the adoption of Christianity helped the newly-converted people enter the family of Christian states, but in terms of changes within people, according to prominent Russian Historian Vasily Klyuchevsky, the truth of Christ drew individuals into their inner world and thus promoted the growth of national consciousness.

Prince Vladimir's actions and his personality become particularly relevant in light of the events happening within and outside our nation. And although there are different independent states on the territory of Ancient Rus' today, I believe their people desire to be united spiritually. For our lives are based on one faith, selected by the holy Prince Vladimir, the individual who formed the contours of the great Eurasian state on whose territory these independent countries exist today. We should be particularly aware of this in speaking about the spiritual unity of brotherly peoples beyond the baptismal font - the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

I would like to particularly congratulate those who carry the name of the holy prince, including our President. Today is your double name day - through your name and the name of your father.

Being named in honour of the Baptist of Rus' is certainly an honour and a responsibility. I wish you, Mr Putin, and everyone celebrating their name day today, to always view your heavenly patron as a high, grand example. For his part, I believe St. Vladimir extends protection over all who bear his name and continues his work.

We all know that a good example is the best approach to teach anything. Subsequent generations cannot be successful if their predecessors do not leave them an example to follow. St. Vladimir played this role for us. Our people associate him with the memory of finding the truth, through which an entire civilisation was able to enjoy a rich spiritual experience.

Today, I am happy to welcome representatives from ancient Constantinople, from which the first bishops and clergy came to Rus' and under whose umbrage the young Russian church developed for several centuries. It is with special warmth that I address words of welcome and gratitude to representatives of all brotherly local Orthodox churches that are joining us in today's celebrations.

Against the background of the tragic events throughout the world, we are particularly aware of the need to strengthen Orthodox unity, solidarity and mutual aid. I once again sincerely congratulate everyone present on this significant church and state anniversary. Thank you, Mr Putin, for the opportunity to share this celebration with you, and may God's blessing and the shroud of the Heavenly Queen reign over our fatherland through St. Vladimir's prayers, over all the territory of Ancient Rus' and over all who carry on the work of the holy Prince.

Thank you, Mr Putin.

Vladimir Putin: Friends, once again, I would like to congratulate His Holiness, Church representatives and all Orthodox Christians on this holiday. I would like to say special thanks to representatives of other traditional religions of Russia for being with us on this day. Nothing separates us, while much holds us together: the unity of our moral values and our Fatherland that we all hold so dear.

Congratulations!

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 #8
Moscow Times
July 30, 2015
Ruble Fall Stokes Russian Holidaymaker Woes
By Howard AmosJ

Alexandra Khomenok booked a European holiday earlier this month, but her plans hit a stumbling block this week as the ruble took an abrupt plunge, scraping four-month lows.

While the 27-year-old PR manager has already bought tickets for herself and her husband to fly to Italy in September, they have not yet booked accommodation.

"With the hotel it's a problem," said Khomenok. "Of course it's more expensive now."

Middle-class Russians have been hit hard in recent months by an economic contraction that has been accompanied by declining real incomes, record levels of inflation and a depreciated currency. And a new run of ruble weakness that began last week has dealt an additional blow to those who can still afford to vacation abroad in the summer months of July and August.

On Tuesday evening, the ruble hit 60.9 against the U.S. dollar, recording a 6 percent dive in just four days and reaching its lowest level since March.

The plummet forced the Central Bank to step in Wednesday with an announcement that it was halting foreign currency purchases that have run since May in an effort to replenish depleted reserves. The ruble rose to about 58.6 to the dollar in the early evening in Moscow, but analysts warned the show of strength was likely to be short lived.

"The ruble will likely struggle. ... There is a very reasonable chance that the ruble reaches 65 versus the dollar by year-end," said Tom Levinson, a currency strategist at Sberbank CIB in Moscow, in written comments.

The declines have largely been driven by oil prices, which have fallen on fears of oversupply generated by a slump in Chinese stock markets and unabated production. The price of Brent crude fell to under $53 a barrel Wednesday, recording its lowest level since January.

"In these conditions, it's hard to be an optimist," Dmitry Polevoy, chief Russian economist at ING Bank, wrote in a note to investors Wednesday. A day earlier, he warned that traders had shifted from a "sense of growing worry to a sense of acute panic."

Exchange rate fluctuations have a direct impact on the tourism market, according to Maya Lomidze, head of Russia's Association of Tour Operators, who added that the recent ruble slump has already been felt.

"It impacts consumers instantaneously," Lomidze said. "If the ruble fall continues, the amount of foreign trips could be reduced by 50 percent [compared to 2014] by the end of the summer season."

Lomidze also warned that sharp ruble fluctuations would impact the domestic tourism industry, prompting would-be holidaymakers to cancel their trips in a bid to save money.

The numbers of Russian tourists taking trips abroad fell rapidly as the ruble lost almost 50 percent of its value in 2014. While traditional package holiday destinations - like Turkey and Egypt - have suffered, European countries have been hit harder, experiencing a precipitous drop in the numbers of Russian tourists.

About 40 percent fewer Russian vacationed abroad in the first three months of this year, accounting for about 1.3 million fewer trips overall, according to the latest data from the State Statistics Service. Spain lost 41 percent of its Russian tourists, Austria lost 50 percent and Italy lost 29 percent, according to the official data.

The summer season, traditionally a time when Russians enjoy longer breaks, has been predictably trying for Russian tour companies struggling to adapt to the new economic conditions. "Of course we have seen a fall in demand, but it was expected," said Anna Podgornaya, head of the Pegas Touristik travel agency.

Meanwhile, Khomenok and her husband have not been so hard hit by the crisis as to begin canceling vacations. The two have traditionally taken one or two European holidays annually, and they plan to keep it up.

But as she plans her trip to Italy, she said the ruble's weakness will force her to get creative with finding ways to cut costs while on vacation - like she has done on previous breaks this year.

"We tried to economize," Khomenok said of a trip to Milan in May. "We tried not to use the metro [which she said was quite expensive] and to get good deals on apartments."

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#9
www.foreignaffairs.com
July 8, 2015
Moscow's Baby Bust?
Birth Rates in Russia are Up, But the Demographic Crisis is Far From Over
By Ilan Berman
ILAN BERMAN is Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council.

For decades, first the Soviet Union and then Russia languished under adverse population trends. Deaths far outpaced births, life expectancy was dismally low, and social ills, from alcoholism to unsafe abortion practices, were rampant.  

Over the past several years, however, this demographic picture has somewhat brightened. In 2012, live births outnumbered deaths for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union. That indicator has remained marginally positive, and others have also begun to improve. By 2013, Russia's average life expectancy reached a historic high, at 71 years, and birthrates nearly matched European averages. These reversals have been modest, but they have been enough for the Kremlin to proclaim victory in its decades-long fight against demographic decline. In a December address to Kremlin officials, for instance, Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrated the "effectiveness" of Russia's demographic programs in reversing the country's trajectory.

His conclusion, however, is extremely premature. That is the assessment of a 2015 study by the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), a state university. The report points to some marked improvements in Russia's recent demographic fortunes, with fertility rates, for example, rising from 1.3 children per woman in 2006 to 1.7 children per woman in 2012. But it maintains that Russia's demographic prospects are profoundly negative in the longer term. "Despite . . . recent positive dynamics," the report notes, "the potential for a demographic crisis is not over."

Indeed, Russia's window for further population growth is rapidly closing. Within a decade, according to RANEPA's estimates, the population of Russian women aged 20 to 29 will shrink by nearly 50 percent. The corresponding decrease in birth rates, particularly when combined with the country's mortality rates-the 22nd highest in the world, according to the study-makes it clear that Russia is still in for long-term decline.

In fact, without remedial action, Russia's population could shrink to 113 million by 2050, a decrease of more than 20 percent from today's population of 144 million. And in a worst-case scenario, RANEPA argues, Russia's population could fall by nearly a third, to 100 million, before midcentury. The economic effects of such a shift would be dramatic; Russia's working-age population would decrease by more than 26 million, making the country less competitive and less prosperous. But there is still some hope: if Moscow takes measures to reduce mortality and boost the birthrate, RANEPA estimates that the Russian population could rise modestly, to 155 million, by 2040.  

In other words, Russia has a choice to make-one with deep social and economic consequences. If implemented in the near term, improvements in health care, tax benefits for families, and steps to discourage emigration could offset and even reverse Russia's long-term population decline. The opportunity to do so, however, will be lost over the next decade, and the social and economic consequences of governmental inattention could be catastrophic.

SOCIAL SLIPPAGE   

Unfortunately, there's little chance that the Kremlin will seize the moment. In recent years, preoccupied with regaining its place on the world stage, Moscow has only peripherally addressed the long-term sources of national decline. Instead, it has prioritized spending on programs that reinforce its reputation as a great power. Even before the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, it was estimated that Russia planned to spend upward of $600 billion on upgrading its military capabilities by 2020. The increased expenditures have funded, among other projects, the creation of new intercontinental ballistic missiles, the deployment of additional long-range strike capabilities, and serious work on electromagnetic pulse weapons.

Over the past year and a half, as Russia's relations with the West have deteriorated and as its economy has suffered under Western sanctions and slumping oil prices, Moscow has assumed an even more martial focus. According to a recent Bloomberg exposé, Russia is in the midst of a massive military spending boom. Many of the increases in defense spending, the news agency reports, are in the "black budget": expenditures authorized by Putin but not publicly announced, often due to opaque national security concerns. The black budget has doubled over the past five years, to some $60 billion. It is set to grow even more in the future. In all, the study estimates, military expenditures have increased by a factor of 20 since Putin became president 15 years ago, and defense and security now account for some 34 percent of Russia's budget. That is nearly double the proportion of the U.S. budget devoted to those sectors.

All of this leaves little room for the serious investments in social services that Russia's demographic health demands. The country's social sector is weak: Russian health-care expenditures, for example, have declined as a percentage of GDP since 2009, and issues such as education, public health, and science are seen as only marginally important. Indeed, in September 2012, Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach admitted that Moscow's budget priorities precluded reform in those sectors. Today, with the country in an even more precarious state as a result of the Ukraine conflict, there's even less likelihood of reform.

That's a potentially dangerous mistake. Unless Moscow gets serious about Russia's internal health, and does so quickly, the country's recent population rebound is destined to be temporary -and Russia's negative demographic future will return with a vengeance.

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 #10
Economic Crisis, Uncertainty about the Future Pushing Russian Birthrate Down
Paul Goble

Staunton, July 30 - The Russian statistics agency reported yesterday that the birthrate in the Russian Federation had fallen to 12.6 children per 1000 population, lower than it has been at any point in the last three years and, according to experts, a reflection of both underlying demographic trends and current uncertainties about the future among Russians.

After Rosstat reported this figure and noted that it was country wide, with the number of births falling in 66 of the 85 federal subjects, with the greatest declines almost certainly being in the predominantly ethnic Russian ones (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=55B9DA3BC69E6 and gks.ru/bgd/free/B04_03/IssWWW.exe/Stg/d06/ind-zen23.htm).

"Izvestiya" spoke with two experts about this development.  Mikhail Denisenko, deputy director of the Institute of Demography at Moscow's Higher School of Economics, said that the decline in the number of births was occurring "because of the sharp reduction in the number of potential mothers" (izvestia.ru/news/589299).

Fewer people were born in the 1990s than during perestroika, and consequently, the number of women entering prime child-bearing years is down.  But he "does not exclude" the possibility that the explanation for this year's decline over last reflects the impact of the economic crisis in Russia.

Leontiy Byzov, a scholar at the Academy of Sciences' Institute for Complex Social Research, agreed and said, in the words of Kasparov.ru's report that "general uncertainty about tomorrow is influencing demographic processes."  If that is the case, such feelings will further depress Russian population growth and increase Moscow's dependence on immigrant workers.

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 #11
http://readrussia.com
July 29, 2015
Central Bank's New Plan Makes Russian Economy Vulnerable
By Mark Adomanis
[Chart here http://readrussia.com/2015/07/29/central-banks-new-plan-makes-russian-economy-vulnerable/]

Even the most skeptical outsiders have to concede that the Russian Central Bank is, by virtually any standard, a well-run outfit. During late 2014, the bank and its staff managed to avert a full-fledged currency crisis through some extremely fancy footwork. Yes, you can argue that the the CBR was a little late to the show and that it should have taken action before the situation reached a crisis point. But its policy actions since December have been pretty much textbook and they have allowed Russia to emerge from the collapse in oil prices with a lot less damage to its economy than most anyone expected. It's easy to forget now, but many people expected a run on the banks and the collapse of the financial system itself. That could have happened but it didn't, and effective policy choices are the reason why.

So, in general, the Central Bank is a reputable shop run by smart, competent people. It was with a certain degree of sadness, then, that I saw that it was deeply involved in a particularly stupid bit of gamesmanship: the creation of a new credit ratings agency.

The Central Bank's announcement was, as you might expect, cloaked in the language of economics and business. It said in part that "the Russian market requires a strong credit rating agency with a high level of corporate governance and professional competency" before going into a number of details about the proposed ownership structure (the current plan is to sell stakes in the agency to Russian banks and insurance companies, with no single company holding more than 5% of the shares).

The real reason the agency was created, though, is politics. As Reuters noted in its write-up of the announcement, Russian officials have loudly and repeatedly said that previous credit downgrades by Standard & Poor's and Moody's were politically motivated. The "new" and as yet unnamed ratings agency is meant to address that complaint, and to provide "objective" credit analysis untainted by the bias of politics. In the words of the Central Bank itself, the activity of the new agency should be "stable in the face of geopolitical risks."

The problem, of course, is that none of Russia's recent credit downgrades were politically biased. They were based on exactly what the Central Bank claims it wants to see from its new ratings agency: unbiased, objective analysis.

Consider the chart below which shows the past four and a half years of world market prices for Brent crude. Despite long-simmering tensions with the United States and a notable regression in its political system after Putin's return to the presidency, Russia's credit rating was unchanged until late 2014 and early 2015.

The proponents of the new ratings agency would have you believe that Moody's and Standard & Poor's just happened to downgrade Russia at the exact time that prices for its single most important export (oil) were collapsing.

That claim, of course, is total nonsense. If Standard & Poor's and Moody's were really determinedly biased against Russia, if they really changed their ratings decisions based solely on their view about the desirability of Russian foreign policy, they never would have rated it as investment grade in the first place. Again, for a period of many years Russia was both extremely confrontational with the West and ranked as a more-or-less safe investment. What's changed has not been the confrontation with the West but the underlying economic reality of the Russian state, which really has become much more precarious.

Indeed the state itself realizes this! The change in economic reality is precisely why the Central Bank had to implement such radical policies in late 2014 and early 2015, and also why there is currently broad-based pressure on virtually every part of the Federal budget. Russia's finances are quite obviously a lot tighter than they have been in the past, and barely anyone in the political system would care to disagree.  

This is the point where more confrontational and hawkish Western Russia watchers will go into a long-winded digression about "Potemkin villages" and Russia's almost congenital inability to face up to reality.

However, I'm rather less excited by this sort of thing. Why? Well, ultimately, the only person that the Kremlin is fooling with this new agency is itself. The powers that be can pretend that their country hasn't become a much riskier place to do business. They can pretend that they would be the best student in the class if only Moody's liked them a little more. They can pretend anything they like.

But reality, and particularly financial reality, is very difficult to repress. The new ratings agency won't be able to influence how much the Russian state pays to borrow money. The bond market does that. And the new ratings agency won't be able to influence the price of oil, which is done on the world market. The new ratings agency won't be able to impact the course of the ruble which (at least for the moment) is also done by the market, nor the prices of any other important product. All it can do is provide what essentially amounts to advertising, optimistic press releases about how wonderful Russia is doing.

The plans are for the new agency to have about $50 million in capital. Sounds a little expensive for a PR agency.

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 #12
Free land allocation to Russians in Far East requires large infrastructure investment
By Lyudmila Alexandrova

MOSCOW, July 29. /TASS/. Many Russians are not against the idea of receiving land plots for free in sparsely populated areas in the Russian Far East on the authorities' proposal. Experts warn, however, that this idea can crown with success, only if it is backed by measures to create the necessary infrastructure on these lands, which requires large capital investment.

As many as 20% of Russians or about 30 million people would agree to move with their families to the Far East for permanent residence, if they are allotted land for free, according to a poll by the pollster VTsIOM, the results of which were announced by Far East Development Minister Alexander Galushka recently.
In the minister's opinion, these figures inspire hope. Today 614 million hectares of land are in state ownership in the Russian Far East.

Most frequently, the respondents mentioned their desire to run a peasant farm (28%) or a farming business (19%) as the main goal of receiving land. Meanwhile, 26% of those polled said they would like to set up their own business on these lands (for example, to open a hotel).

Russia has launched public debates of the bill on the allocation of land to citizens for free in the Russian Far East. The bill stipulates that land plots of 1 hectare (2.5 acres) each will be provided to any citizens initially for free use for five years and eventually for ownership for free. If no activity is conducted on a land plot, it will be withdrawn from such ownership. No land will be allotted to foreigners.

The authorities believe that this measure will help halt or at least slow down the exodus of residents from the Russian Far East. Since the early 1990s, the region's population has shrunk almost by a third, largely due to migration. Now, the population in the Russian Far East stands at 6.3 million people or about 5% of Russia's entire population. Meanwhile, the region accounts for about 36% of Russia's territory.

Most experts largely support the idea of land allocation but with reservations.

"This measure is reasonable," General Director of the Institute of Regional Problems Dmitry Zhuravlyov was quoted by Free Press web portal as saying. "But this is a half-measure. The main thing that should be done in the Far East is to develop transport infrastructure. And this is a very costly and difficult task. It is hard to resolve this problem in a market economy."

The initiative of land allocation will work, only if the persons wishing to move to the Far East will be given noticeable support in the form of a state interest-free or low-interest loan and relocation allowance to move to a new place together with the family, Chairman of the Committee for Fiscal and Tax Policy and Finances of the Primorye Territory legislature Vladimir Bespalov said.

'It is also important that the land plots, which are allocated, should have infrastructure like electricity, roads and, ideally, water supplies. But all these measures will result in large state expenses," the regional lawmaker said.

"The very idea of attracting people is good," Senior Researcher at the Russian Presidential Academy of the National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) Alexandra Polyakova told TASS.

"In principle, the population is ready to move to the Far East. I usually ask students: 'Are you ready to go to the Far East? They reply: 'Why not? But if we have not only land but also jobs and social security.'"

In the expert's opinion, the problem should be resolved comprehensively and large funds should be invested in advanced development territories, which are being established in the Russian Far East and are intended to serve as the base for creating powerful production clusters as part of integration with countries of the Asia and Pacific region. "The question now is whether sufficient financing will be provided for the implementation of all these projects."

"There must be some concept for the development of territories, the relevant infrastructure and science-intensive industries and then there will be sense in allotting land in such conditions," RANEPA Senior Researcher Yuri Sivachyov told TASS.

"This is good as an instrument but there must be a plan," he added.

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 #13
www.opendemocracy.net
July 28, 2015
Russia is swimming in oil
Russia's oil industry lacks the infrastructure to avoid spills and leaks; and the environmental consequences are horrific.
Georgy Borodyansky is an Omsk-based correspondent for Novaya Gazeta.
 
Russian oil giant Rosneft has dumped on us northerners once again. It's unlikely that anyone apart from the locals would have heard about the pipeline which burst on the outskirts of Nefteyugansk if not for photos of the aftermath on social media.

The pictures were taken by Andrei Seleznyov, a light aircraft pilot; and the local media, swiftly followed by national TV and press, picked them up after they appeared online on 27 June.

Burst pipes

The burst had in fact taken place several days before on 23 June. The pipeline, lying along the bed of a channel at a depth of around three metres, burst at a point about a kilometre outside town, covering a four hectare area of water with a one-millimetre-thick iridescent film.

This, at least, was the estimate of the damage made by inspectors from Russia's environmental watchdog Rosprirodnadzor, who visited the site on 2 July, accompanied by the deputy CEO of the Rosneft subsidiary responsible for the pipeline, as well as two independent observers.

According to the Environmental Ministry, the real extent of the spill was in fact impossible to assess. High water levels led to the further dispersal of oil, some of which ended up on the channel's banks and in the gardens of neighbouring houses. Environmental officers are confident that floating booms will prevent the oil flowing into the nearby massive river Ob, but the real size of the slicks, both in rivers and on dry land, will become clear only after the lifting of gale warnings in the area.

For the moment, no one will even hazard a guess at the overall scale of the disaster - apart, that is, from Rosneft's vice-president Michael Leontyev, who combines his day job with a Kremlin spin doctor role.

From Leontyev's office in Moscow, the spill appears localised, even minimal: 'the leak was very small, but later, heavy rain carried some of the oil into a reservoir.' This claim conflicts with a statement from the Emergencies Ministry, reported on regional TV, according to which it flowed out of the reservoir again, but the volume of the spill was still unknown.

Leontyev's response to this was that 'it was no longer oil' but some undefined 'film' that would not be easy to remove, but could be cleared within a week.

The clean-up is postponed

Leontyev and his company didn't, however, finish the job in a week. On 3 July, the Emergency Ministry's regional team, which was also involved in the clean-up, told TASS news agency that the operation had been postponed until 7 July because of the bad weather - the technology used to clear oil spills requires high air temperatures.

A week later, a new date of 20 July was announced. The emergency team told TASS that 'much of the work has been done', and indeed, by that point, 118 cubic metres of oil had been removed. Fifteen floating booms, with an overall length in excess of four kilometres, had been installed to prevent further dispersal of the oil. But, probably due to the continuing high water levels, the process took longer than expected, and on 22 July there was still no further news from either the Emergencies Ministries or Rosneft.

On 21 July, the news agencies announced that two senior Rosneft managers had been sacked. There was no reference to whether this was connected to the oil spill.

The residents of Nefteyugansk, and indeed the whole region of Khanty-Mansiisk, have been more down-to-earth in their assessment. Unsurprising: they're closer to the disaster than the political commentators.

In the words of one blogger: 'now they're not just flooding us, but flooding us with oil. There'll be no more bathing, no more fish; nothing will grow in our gardens.' The public mood is generally one of fury, with the occasional burst of irony: 'Putin the Great has kept his promise: Russians are swimming in oil. Even the Emirates can't match it.'

Stanislav Meshcheryakov, deputy head of the Department of Industrial Ecology at Moscow's Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas, thinks that it will take Rosneft several years to clean up the contaminated area (if it were actually to try).

'I don't know how much oil ended up in the river, and how much on its banks,' Mescheryakov told Nakanune.ru. 'But it will affect the entire food chain, from microorganisms through small crustaceans eaten by fish. And people will also catch the oil-contaminated fish'.

Meshcheryakov believes that the floating film of oil will deprive fish of oxygen and that they will lose their food supply: 'we can clean the banks using synthetic microorganisms. But in one place there will be 5% oil per m², and in another, 50%. The microorganisms will deal with the 5% areas in one season, but larger concentrations will require two or three, which will be very costly'.

A region covered in oil

Leontyev is right in saying that nothing unusual has happened in Nefteyugansk. For Rosneft, it is a perfectly normal situation.

It is not just Russian sources that put the company at the top of the accident league. Greenpeace and global statistics confirm it - Rosneft is responsible for 10,000 oil spills a year. An inspection conducted by Rosprirodnadzor three years ago concluded that it accounted for 75% of leaks in the Khanty-Mansiisk region of western Siberia, where Nefteyugansk is situated.

After a visit to the area in 2012, Environmental Minister Yuri Trutnev wrote that 'the earth is practically covered in oil. It was not a question of finding contaminated areas - we had a problem finding any unpolluted ones. There are oil rivers, oil lakes, oil ponds - all the carelessly spilt detritus from accidents'.

In 2013, Rosneft consolidated its position as king of the spills: the regional environmental watchdog reported that its subsidiaries were responsible for 2,188 accidents (95% of all pipeline bursts in the region). There are as yet no statistics available online for last year and this, but if you search online for 'Rosneft, accidents', you will find numerous results.

Rosneft is also active in other regions. Sakhalin Environmental Watch, a non-governmental organisation, was immediately able to bring me up to date on spills at oil wells owned by a Rosneft subsidiary on this far eastern edge of Russia.

On 7 May this year, an internal pipeline burst at the Mongi oilfield in the Nogliki district. The oil leaked into the Nelbutu River, which flows into the central part of Nyisky Bay on the Sea of Okhotsk. The spill is a mere 200-300 metres away from the Dagi Springs, a popular tourist destination and regional natural park. Local people are saying that the oil has seriously polluted not only the river but also a part of the bay; and both Rosprirodnadzor and the Emergencies Ministry have been informed.

The previous day, another spill had been discovered, at the Ekhabi Vostochoye oilfield belonging to the same Rosneft subsidiary in the Okhinsky district of the island of Sakhalin. The oil had been leaking since March, and it is still unclear whether its source has been located.

Several thousand square metres of oil-polluted soil have also been found on both banks of a creek that flows into Ekhabi Bay - also on Sakhalin, which has only a narrow outlet into the Sea of Okhotsk. The oil is continuing to flow into the creek, and from there, into the bay. Here, any accurate assessment of the extent of the pollution is hindered by the fact that the oil is spreading out under a thick layer of snow.

Sakhalin Environmental Watch suspects that the oilmen have not informed any government agencies of this spill, and so they have themselves reported it to the public prosecutor's office, the Emergencies Ministry and Rosprirodnadzor. In 2010 and 2012, there were a number of similar leaks and spills in the district. And one notable incident took place last year, when the Ura.ru news website reported that 'in Nizhevartovsk, oil might start coming out of your tap; there has been a spill next to the water intake from the reservoir.'

Historic legacy - or excuse

Meanwhile, Mikhail Leontyev explains his company's trail of environmental destruction with suitable spin:

'We had these wonderful oil companies such as Yukos and TNK-BP, with businesslike owners whose aim was to make as much money as possible, so they paid little attention to infrastructure. This is our historic legacy. This is why we have all these unfortunate oil leaks and spills, but we are fighting back. It's no big tragedy'.

The truth of this statement can be gauged by the following: Environmental Ministry statistics for 2012 show that the company which spent the most on environmental compliance was TNK-BP (26.1 billion roubles, or £292.7m), while the company that spent the least (8.6 billion roubles less, to be exact) was Rosneft.

It was the downfall of Yukos that gave Rosneft its opportunity a decade or so ago. In 2003, Yukos's owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested on a charge of fraud, and in 2005, he was sentenced to a lengthy prison term. When the company's assets were seized by the government and auctioned off, Rosneft, a small state-owned company at the time, was able to acquire most of them at a fraction of their value. By 2005, Rosneft had become Russia's second-largest producer of oil and gas. In 2013 it acquired its rival TNK-BP as well.

The spectre of Yukos still haunts the bureaucrats of Khanty-Mansiisk. Last winter, Nefteyugansk suffered a series of breakdowns in its utilities, leaving many residents without heating.

But the main problem, according to Ura-ru, is not burst pipes. The local residents' taps produce not water, but a cloudy, greasy substance, and sometimes even a black liquid bearing a distinct resemblance to crude oil. The regional and municipal authorities say that the problems go back to the time when Yukos practically owned the town.

The locals, however, are sceptical: in a letter to Vladimir Putin, they wrote 'our water quality has been deteriorating year on year for a decade now. Our tap water is not only undrinkable; we cannot even wash in it'.

Rosprirodnadzor has now opened an administrative case against Rosneft for violating regulations governing bodies of water, which may lead to their contamination and obstruction. If found guilty, the officials in charge may face a fine of 30-40,000 roubles (£320-430): the official monthly salary of Rosneft's CEO Igor Sechin is 500-700 times that sum.

The investigation of the incident is now in the hands of the Khanty-Mansiisk public prosecutor, whose press officer Inga Snatkina told me: it is still too early to talk about the extent of the damage or who is responsible for it. The results of the investigation, she says, should be known by the end of July.

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 #14
Reuters
July 30, 2015
Independent media battle on in Putin's Russia
BY TIMOTHY HERITAGE
 
Alexei Venediktov, one of Russia's most prominent journalists, does not go out without a bodyguard and does not answer mobile phone calls for fear of being tracked.

He has worried about security since someone left a chopping block with an axe in it outside his apartment in 2009 and he fled Russia for a week this year, fearing he was on a hit list.

Such precautions do not seem out of place in a country where at least 17 journalists have been killed this decade, or for an editor whose radio station has been accused by President Vladimir Putin of "pouring diarrhea over me day and night".

With state media waging a full-scale information war over the crisis in Ukraine, independent media such as Ekho Moskvy, where Venediktov is the veteran editor-in-chief, are battling to survive - and fear the noose around them is tightening.

In a series of interviews, editors of such outlets said they rarely feel direct pressure to toe the line but the Kremlin has financial, legislative and judicial levers at its disposal, and speak of intimidation and bullying of advertisers.

"You have to work as though each day at work could be your last ... That's what my journalists think and that's how they work," Venediktov said in an interview at the station's busy headquarters in a high-rise Moscow office bloc.

Suggesting Ekho Moskvy could survive only as long as Putin allowed it, he said: "We know that the future of Ekho Moskvy depends on one person, one person in one office."

Kremlin critics accuse Putin of intensifying a campaign to stifle dissent, clamping down on civil society and using the media as a political weapon to maintain his grip on power and influence public opinion - charges the Kremlin denies.

The existence of a few media organizations which criticize the authorities helps Putin deflect criticism at home and abroad that Russia does not allow media freedoms, and gives the opposition a way to let off steam.

Coverage even by independent media is restrained by Western standards, with direct criticism of Putin rare though Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's government is considered fair game.

Taking on Putin directly over his wealth or personal life is widely seen as out of bounds. One newspaper, Moskovsky Korrespondent, made a splash by publishing allegations about his love life in 2008. It closed mysteriously soon afterwards.

INDIRECT PRESSURE

One of Putin's initial acts after rising to power in 2000 was to restore Kremlin control over the media, which was much more outspoken under President Boris Yeltsin in the free-wheeling decade after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.

Most Russian media are now owned by the state or by private individuals or companies loyal to Putin.

Such media have been on little less than a war footing since Ukraine's pro-Moscow president, Viktor Yanukovich, was ousted in February 2014 and Russia responded by annexing the Crimea peninsula and giving political support - and Kiev and the West say military backing - to a separatist uprising in east Ukraine.

Despite such tight control, Venediktov, his unruly hair and beard now grey at 59, says he only occasionally has criticism of his coverage conveyed to him by the authorities, "sometimes over tea, sometimes over vodka, sometimes over cognac".

Indirect pressure is much more common.

Ekho Moskvy has felt the heat from Russia's media regulator, which warned it last year over a program about Ukraine which the body said contained information "justifying practices of war and other crimes". A second warning would mean closure.

Venediktov says the company that controls the station and is loyal to Putin - Gazprom-Media Holding - has been unable to oust him as editor because this would require the support of his journalists. But he feels economic pressure from a drop in advertising and a downsizing of his advertising department.

The fact that Venediktov is able to cling to his job and continues to criticize the authorities is held up by Gazprom-Media Holding as evidence that it respects media freedoms.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov underlines this by saying that the station's editorial line has "never been an obstacle for normal business-like communication" between Putin and Ekho Moskvy, including with Venediktov.

Yevgenia Albats, editor in chief of the New Times magazine, says she is surprised when asked why she thinks Putin allows some independent media to exist.

"Russia is not a totalitarian state", she says, even though the Kremlin has many ways to squeeze outlets that criticize it.

"If you are loyal (to the Kremlin) you get ads. If you are not loyal, you don't get ads," Albats said.

She said New Times was raided by police three years ago, she once found a listening device in her home and added in an interview in her office that she had no doubt "we have a couple of other people in on this conversation".

The magazine's recent stories include an investigation into how Russia reached the decision to annex Crimea from Ukraine last year and concluded the plan was drawn up by four people. It also wrote about problems suffered by gays at a time when this was widely seen as taboo for Russian media.

The New Times gets by - just - on sponsorship, sales and subscriptions.

"It (the situation for independent media) is getting worse, much worse, I guess since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict," she said.

"It's harder to get information, it's harder to get to decision makers, it's harder because people are afraid to give you interviews, afraid to be mentioned in the magazine."

BROADCASTING FROM AN APARTMENT

Dozhd, which made its name as an independent cable and Internet outlet during opposition protests in the winter of 2011-12, suffered a big financial blow when cable operators in one fell swoop canceled their contracts last year.

Dozhd also found it was no longer a desirable tenant for landlords and was forced to move office several times. For a while it resorted to broadcasting from an employee's flat but has now found a studio in a trendy business and shopping center.

After a year of almost constant worry, the channel's general director, Natalya Sindeeva, embodies its slogan as the "optimistic channel".

"For me it's alright now because we are operating," she said. "If you speak about the wider context, it's difficult, not only politically but economically."

Dozhd hit problems after running a poll last year asking whether Leningrad, now St Petersburg, should have given up to Nazi German forces during World War Two rather than refuse to surrender. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in the siege and Putin's spokesman said the poll had "crossed a line".

Set up in 2010, the network had been vulnerable after giving a voice to Kremlin critics.

Sindeeva said the channel has managed to survive by going behind a pay wall and switching to a subscription basis.

Dozhd has about 70,000 subscribers, editor Mikhail Zygar said, paying around 4,800 rubles ($80) a year. It can reach about 12 million people a month on television and the Internet.

Other leading independent media are threatened by a law that will limit foreign ownership of Russian media to 20 percent, introduced to "defend national sovereignty".

Among newspapers under threat is Vedomosti, a business daily with a print run of 75,000 that often criticizes the government.

Finnish company Sanoma sold its one-third stake in Vedomosti in May to a Russian businessman, Damian Kudryavtsev. The Financial Times Group and Wall Street Journal owner News Corp own similar stakes and say they are reviewing the implications of the legislation on foreign ownership.

PATRIOT GAMES

Announcing the seizure of Crimea on March 18 last year, Putin warned against "action by a fifth column, this disparate bunch of 'national traitors'" - a phrase that has widely been seen as including any media speaking out against the annexation.

Putin has little less than a media army at his disposal. As in Soviet days, some news outlets have a direct phone line to the Kremlin, media sources say, and top editors take part in regular meetings with Kremlin officials to discuss content.

Dmitry Muratov, editor of the investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta, said most Russian media have simply become "instruments of mass propaganda and manipulation".

His newspaper, part-owned by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, said in March it may have to stop its print edition because of a lack of funds. For now, though, it is still going.

Across the hall from Muratov's office hang the portraits of six Novaya Gazeta journalists killed since 2001 including Anna Politkovskaya, shot dead on Putin's birthday in 2006.

Another, Yelena Milashina, left the southern, mainly Muslim region of Chechnya in May this year after a border guard warned her that her life was in danger. A local newspaper later published an article widely seen as a death threat.

The New York-based Committee to Protect journalists says 17 journalists have been killed in Russia because of the work they were doing since 2001. Other groups say the toll may be higher. The International Federation of Journalists said in a 2009 report that 313 Russian journalists had been killed since 1993.

Despite such a hostile environment, Novaya Gazeta's Muratov prefers to look on the bright side, underlining that there is still some room for independent media in Russia.

"If there's a future for this country, there's a future for independent media," Muratov said.

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 #15
Sputnik
July 30, 2015
OSCE Impressed With Russia's Achievements in Gender Equality

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia's progress in gender equality practices, especially within law enforcement and countering terrorism, is impressive, the senior adviser on gender issues in the Organization for Security Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) said Thursday.

"I was impressed by the efforts of the Russian Federation to include women in law enforcement and security policies," Miroslava Beham said as quoted in an OSCE press release.

She added that the share of women participating in combating extremism and terrorism in Russia was higher than in other countries or international organizations.

Beham urged Moscow to share the experience in introducing these practices with the OSCE member states.

The OSCE is a global security organization recognized by the United Nations, comprising 57 participating states, and working in crisis management, conflict prevention and post-conflict rehabilitation as well as covering a broad variety of human rights issues.

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 #16
Russian opposition party files complaint over refusal to register it for local election

MOSCOW, July 30. /TASS/. Russia's Parnas opposition party has filed a complaint Thursday to Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) for refusal of Novosibirsk regional election commission to register it for local election.

"The complaint was registered," CEC press service told journalists adding that it consists of 10 pages and has 306 pages of supplements.

CEC head Vladimir Churov said earlier that one complaint had been filed to the Central Election Commission, refusing to specify who had filed the complaint.
On July 27, Novosibirsk regional election commission refused to register the Parnas party (part of Democratic Coalition) for election of deputies to regional legislative assembly. "Our decision made today was justified both from material and procedural point of view. I have always called for staying in the legal framework. The party has an opportunity to appeal the decision in higher election commission or regional court," head of Novosibirsk election commission Yury Petukhov said.

Only 10,340 signatures supporting the Parnas party were recognized as valid while the minimum number of signatures required for registration stands at 10,657. The session of the working group checking the validity of signatures supporting Parnars lasted for 10 hours.

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#17
Interfax
July 29, 2015
Kremlin denies "political order" exists to bar opposition from elections

The Kremlin has not received an appeal from the opposition party Parnas over the refusal by the Novosibirsk Region electoral commission to register the party candidate list in the Novosibirsk Region parliament election, presidential press secretary Dmitriy Peskov has said, as reported by Interfax news agency on 29 July.

"No, I know nothing about this appeal. Unfortunately, very often people tell the mass media that they have appealed to the Kremlin and only afterwards, some time later, they send appeals or forget to do it altogether," Peskov said.

"I did read media reports about the version of those who had been denied [registration], but I do not yet know the version of those who have refused them. Both points of view should be taken into account here. No doubt, the version of those who denied them registration is interesting because this should be substantiated one way or another," Peskov added.

At the same time, Peskov said that the statement about an allegedly existing instruction to bar the opposition from elections did not correspond to reality, RIA Novosti news agency said on 29 July.

"It is not that absolute. It is about the need to implement the actions stipulated by the law. Everything is clearly stated there: what should be done to be registered and stand in elections, hence, it is an issue of simple compliance with the norms and rules specified in the law," Peskov said commenting on opposition activist Aleksey Navalnyy's statement that a political order exists not to allow the opposition to stand in elections.

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 #18
Moscow Times
July 30, 2015
Who Will Build a Better Future for Russia?
By Ivan Sukhov
Ivan Sukhov is a journalist who has covered conflicts in Russia and the CIS for the past 15 years.

An old college friend whom I have known for more than 20 years is planning to leave Russia for good in early September.

Like clouds gathering before a storm, both close and distant acquaintances are increasingly talking about leaving Russia. Announcements to that effect are already trickling in, and they threaten to become a heavy downpour soon.

However, it is unlikely to become an ongoing flood of emigrants: In the quarter-century since the fall of the Iron Curtain, only a little more than 10 percent of all Russians have traveled abroad - even including the massive numbers that have visited Egypt and Turkey. In fact, only a minority of them plan to leave Russia forever.

My parents, who have been abroad, are constantly advising me - someone who travels abroad regularly - to move away, that Russia has no future for us or for our children. At the same time, they putter around their dacha every summer weekend and clearly show no desire to ever sell it and leave.

And yet that steady trickle of departing friends comes like the steady beating of raindrops on the rooftop in Moscow's drizzly July. The fact that relatively young and educated people are leaving the country is already enough to convince even the uninformed that something is wrong in Russia.

I still clearly remember the day when I first learned that people sometimes leave the country. It was Sept. 1, 1991: Soon after the abortive coup attempt in Moscow took place, I began my penultimate year at high school only to learn that our Russian teacher had emigrated. Even as teenagers we understood her rationale for leaving: The dramatic political events unfolding meant that our old lives had ended and that insecurity and uncertainty were on the rise.

By contrast, those who are now considering leaving lack a clear-cut picture of exactly what is happening in the country.

People consider leaving due to three main concerns: that the economy will collapse, that deepening authoritarianism will either cause the system to fail or take everyone else down with it, and that the rising generation will enjoy few prospects.

There are so many unpredictable factors and worsening indicators that it seems unlikely parents will manage to properly educate their children or help them to lead productive and secure lives in Russia.

Nobody knows just how bad things will get with the economy. However, it is clear to most that the ruble is likely to suffer another sharp devaluation like the one that occurred in late 2014 and that more troubles will follow. And yet, members of that segment of the population most likely to emigrate still earn higher salaries in Russian than they are likely to earn if they were to move abroad.

In fact, the cheaper ruble is dampening emigration ambitions for many Russians. A cup of coffee at the airport costs the same $5 as before, but it now requires twice as many rubles to buy it. On the other hand, apartment rental fees in Moscow have not doubled, leading many property owners - accustomed to using that income to live overseas while maintaining jobs in Russia - to return home, sometimes with the added problem of having lost their cushy jobs.

It is one thing to escape Moscow's depressing winters with the help of vacations to eternally sunny Southeast Asia, but quite another to relocate overseas permanently. However, some might risk a possible drop in income and make the move anyway, either because they dislike the political uncertainty at home or, to the contrary, anticipate an inevitable increase in authoritarianism.

It is customary to argue that the authoritarianism in today's Russia is just window dressing compared to Soviet-era, and especially Stalinist practices. In fact, Russians respond very passively to such developments as the clash that occurred on May 6, 2012 between police and demonstrators who were protesting the falsification of election results or the current crackdown on nongovernmental organizations that receive foreign funding.

People tend to view such things as they would a foreign war. They might sympathize with the innocent victims and yet believe that, since they themselves do nothing but drink their coffee and read their newspaper, the problem won't affect them. According to that logic, only crazy alarmists could compare the trickle of today's political excesses with the flood of abuses that characterized the Great Terror of the 1930s.

However, the terror of the 1930s also began with a trickle. Russians have only superficially examined that national tragedy and have never really given it a proper ethical or legal evaluation. Where is the guarantee that the authorities' decision to charge a 75-year-old physicist with high treason for having contact with foreigners will not open the floodgates of repression, eventually turning the current trickle into a flood?

Another common misconception is that, although the ruling regime is admittedly imperfect - and the Crimean adventure might really have some connection with the weak ruble and problems in the real estate and labor markets - trying to replace it might only lead to something worse, perhaps even a more rigidly autocratic regime.

Strangely, many people choose to remain in Russia despite their belief that the country has no future as long as President Vladimir Putin remains in power - even though a blind person could see that this regime greatly differs now from what it was two, three and especially five years ago. Those people contend that although the future is bleak, as long as things are more or less moving along, there is no reason to worry.

These are all reasonable and logical arguments. However, few people think about the fact that the current situation is that same negative future that my Russian teacher and others foresaw 25 years ago, and that even then threatened to reach such lows as to make it necessary for us, her students, to leave the country as well.

Many people intuitively saw it coming even then, but felt it was easier to just go along with the flow than to live and act and in such a way as to bring about a different future, one that would make it worthwhile to stay in Russia and not emigrate.

We Russians have brought about this future ourselves, and we continue on even now in the same direction. Each person has their own pain threshold that would justify a decision to leave, but when the very social group that might have transformed Russia for the better decides to opt out, it begins to resemble players who turn over the game board when they realize they have little hope of winning.

I have no one to blame but myself. I am one of those who simply stood by as events reached this stage, and I am one of those who constantly thinks about leaving. My one concern is that it might not prove so simple to build a better future elsewhere if we lacked the skill and tenacity to do it here.

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#19
The American Interest
www.the-american-interest.com
July 27, 2015
What Comes Next in Russia?
Change is coming to the Kremlin, sooner or later. The West should consider the implications.
By Andrew Wood
Andrew Wood is an associate fellow of Chatham House and a former British Ambassador to Belgrade, and subsequently to Moscow (mid 1995-early 2000).

Even the most expert analysis is biased towards the rational extrapolation of known parameters. Gorbachev surprised the experts, and probably himself into the bargain: Both the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the peaceful way it came about remained at the outer edge of speculation for most of his time in the Kremlin. There is even today no commonly accepted account of why it happened, whether in Russia and other former Soviet states, or in the wider world.

It is a widely held assumption that, when Putin goes, he will be replaced by an analogous figure, and that his system will therefore last for the foreseeable future, for worse or just possibly for better. The lessons that he and his circle have drawn from the way that the Soviet Union collapsed are that experiments are dangerous, and that in Russia power rests on force. The dominant convictions in the Kremlin, which are shared by a substantial portion of the wider Russian population, are that: anything decided in the outside world without Russia is directed against Russia; others have to be made to obey rules set by the Kremlin, in particular in the "near abroad"; and regime change is a premeditated threat held over Russia's head by its main rival, as they see it, the United States.

The outside world might well share the Kremlin view that the Soviet Union collapsed because the changes that Gorbachev initiated were more than its structures could bear, but not the implied belief that the Soviet Union might have prospered without those changes. Several of the underlying causes for that collapse, as perceived in the West, have parallels in today's Russia: overreliance on the export of natural resources; lack of well targeted investment; excessive defense spending; and nationality issues all spring to mind. So too do demographic, health, and social problems. None of this is to imply that anyone could have known for certain well in advance that the Soviet system would break down in the way that it did, or at the time that it did, any more than it would now be possible to set out a clear road map for the end of Putinism. But the parallels are worth pondering.

The authors (including me) of The Russian Challenge, a Chatham House Report published last month, recommended among other matters that the West should consider the implications of an eventual change in the leadership of Russia. The policies followed by Putin since his return to the Kremlin in May 2012 have greatly narrowed the options for constructive engagement by the West with Russia. There is no sign as yet that he recognizes the need for economic reform. His remarks to the St. Petersburg Forum last month were founded on the disputable claim that Russia was over the worst. An unreformed Russian bureaucracy would anyhow be incapable of delivering liberalizing economic reform, as Herman Gref, the Chairman of Sberbank and once a key Putin adviser, has pointed out. Putin has nothing to say about judicial reform, let alone political changes. He has plenty to say about the need to protect Russia (meaning himself and his immediate collaborators) against the threat of color revolution (meaning popular demonstrations). He has yet to recognize the extent of his failure to impose a stable outcome for his adventures in Ukraine. Russia's Strong Man is afraid of change.

The Soviet Union fell apart for subjective reasons induced by the feeling that it had lost its way, and its internal justification, not just because of the objective difficulties that it faced. There are parallels with Putin's Russia today here too. And the Soviet Union was a better organized state than today's Russia, better able to cope with the long period of Brezhnevite stagnation. Heavy doses of propaganda-induced patriotism will not forever compensate for the overall sense, not least in Moscow, that Russia's present leaders are concerned in the first place with preserving their power. The general population fear political change, and hope that somehow the good times of Putin's first two terms will return, but hope delayed cannot last forever. Uncertainty as to the future is a corrosive force in its own right.

The assumption I referred to earlier-that when Putin goes he will be replaced by someone like him-seems to me to be questionable. It is reasonably plausible if it is imagined that he might go of his own volition in the fairly near term. But that is unlikely to happen. If it did, he would have a hand in choosing who took his place and would need to ensure that his successor would protect him. Such a successor would also have to secure the support of Putin's present entourage. He-or notionally she-would be chosen for his amenability, not his strength. But even so he would have to address the issues in his own way if he were to have a chance of establishing himself as the acknowledged leader of his country. That would mean infighting and change over time, even in the case of Putin leaving office through ill health.

The uncertainty as to what will happen if Putin dies in office is also great. A lot would depend on what had happened between now and then. The constitution has it that the Prime Minister of the day succeeds for the three months leading up to the election of a new President. That would be Medvedev if Putin died tomorrow. A future PM appointed by Putin is unlikely to be more independent minded-even one with his own agenda like Kudrin, with his appeal to Western hopes-would be strictly constrained in office and unlikely to be supported by other members of the ruling cabal.

The scenario whereby Putin is removed by a group of his present supporters looks improbable-and would be difficult to imagine as bringing continuity or stability.

It is no wonder that so many Russians fear that, however Putin goes, a time of troubles will follow soon after.

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 #20
www.rt.com
July 30, 2015
'Hypocritical': Russian Foreign Ministry blasts US statements over NED undesirability

Russian diplomats say that the US concern over inclusion of the National Endowment for Democracy into the list of undesirable groups was hardly justified as this NGO is known for projects aimed at regime change in foreign nations.

"The 'deep concern' expressed by the [US] State Department over the fate of the Russian civil society in connection with recognition of the National Endowment for Democracy's activities as undesirable on Russian territory decisively has a flavor of hypocrisy," reads the statement released by the Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday.

An analysis of real-life projects sponsored and executed by this organization shows that the majority of those were destined to misbalance the internal political situation in countries that attempt to remain independent and act in accordance with their own national interests, the ministry added.

The diplomats also stated that the groups conducting constructive work based on demand from the society will always be valued and supported in Russia, including the cases when such work is aimed at development of the democracy.

"But we will never put up with lecturing and open interference into our domestic affairs on the part of foreign structures," the ministry's statement reads.

The comment was prompted by the words of Deputy Spokesperson of the US State Department Mark Toner, who earlier this week described the inclusion of the National Endowment for Democracy into the Russian list of undesirable organizations as "heightening concern" and "another intentional step to isolate the Russian people from the world."

On Wednesday the Russian Justice Ministry officially declared the NED an undesirable group after Prosecutor General's Office reported that the US NGO spent over $5 million in 2013 and 2014 on attempts to question the legitimacy of Russian elections and tarnish the prestige of military service.

The law on undesirable foreign organizations came into force in Russia in late May this year. It allows the Prosecutor General's Office and the Foreign Ministry to create a proscribed list of 'undesirable foreign organizations', making the activities of such groups in Russia illegal. The main criterion for putting a foreign or international NGO on the list is a "threat to the constitutional order and defense capability, or to the security of the Russian state."

Non-compliance with the ban can be punished by administrative penalties, and for repeated and aggravated offenses can carry prison sentences of up to six years. Russian citizens and organizations that continue to work with banned groups would face administrative fines only.

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 #21
RFE/RL
July 30, 2015
Commentary: Pride Versus Prejudice In The West
by Sergei Kovalyov
Sergei Kovalyov is a former Soviet dissident and veteran Russian human rights activist. He served as a human rights adviser to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin and was a member of the Russian State Duma from 1993-2003. This piece was originally published in Russian here: http://http//www.svoboda.org/content/article/27142838.html

Let me make several remarks about the current political course of the West, which combines strength and weakness, pride and prejudice.

Throughout its history, my country -- the Soviet Union -- conducted cruel and arbitrary mass purges; participated in international political terrorism; fostered new totalitarian regimes; committed aggression; and violated fundamental principles of law. Russia has returned to that behavior.

Now the West is firmly resisting Russian expansion. This instills in me hope with regard to the most urgent global problems. I have serious concerns, however.

The grounds for my concerns are widespread myths about Russia that have become rather prevalent in the West. These myths have been reinforced by experienced and skilled masters of deception from the special departments of the FSB (the Russian successor to the KGB).

One of the main myths is that Russia (the U.S.S.R.) freed the world from fascism. That is not true. Since the mid-19th century, Russia, the Soviet Union, and the current Russian Federation have never freed anyone. What they have done was enslave people, including their own population.

The Tsar-Liberator Alexander II, who abolished serfdom in 1861, was assassinated by terrorists who brazenly called themselves "The People's Will."

It's true that Hitler's army was drowned in Soviet blood and buried under Soviet corpses. It's true that Europe and the United States did less than they could and should have done during World War II. But that is a completely different matter. The definitive motives for the Soviet Union's major role in the military victory were not at all liberation. The peoples of Eastern Europe and Germany, who were ruled by two successive tyrants -- Hitler and Stalin -- should remember this.

Another common and dangerous idea is that Russia's immorality and political barbarism are solely Russia's internal affair. That isn't true. In our present interdependent world, serious problems become global and affect everyone. Russian (and not only Russian) totalitarian tendencies are fraught with catastrophic global consequences. No one knows how to deal with this challenge, but many people realize that not to face it is shameful and dangerous.

It's true that we don't know how to make universal values enforceable instead of empty slogans, but we should at least know what simply must not be done. You cannot appease an aggressor. You must not buy your safety, especially your gas supply, with other people's lives and fates. The acceptance of immoral political pragmatism is the shameful legacy of the Munich and Yalta agreements. Overcoming this legacy is long overdue.

Alas, the West's deficit of political will nullifies its good intentions. Russian expansion in the Caucasus exposed Western "forgetfulness." Each stage of this expansion was met by the unfeigned outrage of the West. There was the cruel ethnic cleansing of Georgians during the early 1990s in Abkhazia, provoked by Russian "peacekeepers." In 2008, there was the creation of two Russian satellites on Georgian territory, which caused general indignation. But all such offenses were quickly forgotten.

In the same vein, there were the many years of incoherent, ineffective fussing by the Council of Europe over Russia's outrages in Chechnya.

Now it is Ukraine's turn.

The occupation of Crimea has already been almost forgotten by the public. The European Union postponed some important items of the agreement with Ukraine, and the European Parliament did not contest this decision. It is said that the decision will not do any economic harm to Ukraine and will not give Russia any economic preferences. Russia, however, is not looking for any economic preferences; it just doesn't want to allow Ukraine to join Europe. Russia will interpret and use this postponement for a year and a half as a concession to its pressure. And the industry of a devastated Ukraine will not become competitive in that time.

There was a time when Europe imagined that the Cold War ended with the demolition of the Berlin Wall. It's not true. Russia only took a breather. Imagine a postwar Germany that left the Gestapo untouchable. Or a Stasi lieutenant colonel chancellor of Germany. That is and will be the Russia with which you seek partnership and mutual understanding. Right now, it will play fair only if forced to do so. It cannot be persuaded to do so. (Note that "forced to make peace" is a concept understood by the United Nations.)

Many are ready to make concessions to Russia, arguing that a cornered rat is dangerous. That's true. But you must remember: a rat, whether cornered or left in peace, is still a powerful carrier of plague. The plague under discussion has lasted almost a hundred years and has killed millions of people. The choice is limited -- you either fight the plague, or, in the words of Pushkin, you "feast in the time of plague."

Five years ago the European Parliament awarded my colleagues and me the Sakharov Prize, and I would like these notes to be taken as an open letter to the West. I knew Andrei Sakharov well. I am convinced that today, as in the past, he would urge the civilized world to be more resolute in its stand against tyranny. I will not discuss specific steps to support the victims of Russian expansion, but I wish to remind my readers that the American Lend-Lease Act and the Marshall Plan were historical examples of extensive and successful actions to defend democracy.

Effective resistance to the advance of the "evil empire" demands a maximum effort now. The day after tomorrow may be too late.

The views expressed in this piece are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL

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 #22
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
July 29, 2015
Press Digest: Resurgent Iran has no need to honor previous deals with Russia
RBTH presents a selection of views from leading Russian media on international events, featuring analysis of post-sanctions relations between Russia and Iran, as well as a report on how the crisis is affecting salaries in different parts of Russia and an interview given by Vladimir Putin to Swiss media.
Yekaterina Sinelschikova, RBTH
 
Oil-for-goods deal between Tehran and Moscow never got off ground

The Kommersant business daily reports that after signing the deal on Iran's nuclear program, the rapprochement between Tehran and the West is gaining momentum. The process, however, leaves Russia in a complicated position: Moscow finds itself in the role of a side that has to catch up.

Last fall Russia and Iran signed a memorandum paving the way for a raft of mutually advantageous business projects worth $70 billion. The deal was called "oil in exchange for goods": Iran was to supply Russia with oil for re-export and spend the money on Russian products.

However, as Kommersant has discovered, there still has not been one single supply of oil from Iran as part of the deal. A Kommersant source in the Russian government believes that there are no future prospects for the oil part of the deal: After the removal of the sanctions Iran can sell its oil by itself.

An Iranian source told the newspaper that Tehran would not feel bound by previous agreements with Russia. However, Lana Ravandi-Fadei, senior scientific collaborator from the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Middle East Studies, believes that the cancelation of the sanctions also opens new opportunities for Russian business, while "the political elite in Iran will not forget what Moscow did for Tehran."
 
Russia's crisis-proof zones: Where is disposable income highest?

The quality of life in Russia is decreasing swiftly due to the ongoing economic crisis, writes the Gazeta.ru online newspaper. According to the Russian State Statistics Service, in six months the population's real disposable earnings (adjusted for inflation) have declined by 3.1 percent and real salaries have fallen by 8.5 percent.

But the country still has regions where salaries are sufficient not only to buy food and necessary items. Residents of the Nenets Autonomous Area were the ones who were left with the most disposable income in April (about 55,000 rubles, or $920), followed by the Yamalo-Nenets and Chukhotsky Autonomous Areas (54,000 rubles), then Moscow (53,000 rubles). In Sakhalin one could also have a reasonable sum left over after essential expenses (about 38,000 rubles), as well as in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area and in the Khabarovsk Territory and St. Petersburg (31,000 rubles). Today these are the most favorable places to live in Russia in terms of salary.

In comparison, the difference between the cost of living and earnings for residents from other regions is about 6,000-7,000 rubles ($100-120). Chechnya also made it onto the list of regions with advantaged incomes and cost of living. But this is due to Chechnya having a large share of public workers and being one of the biggest federally funded regions in Russia.
 
Putin: Blatter deserves Nobel prize, Russians like U.S. and its people

The centrist newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes that the Kremlin press office has published the text of an interview that Russian President Vladimir Putin gave to the Swiss mass media, recorded on July 25. Putin said that he does not believe in the corruption accusations against FIFA President Joseph Blatter and thinks that such people deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. He also stated that the United States is continuing its imperial policy and is thus doing damage to itself.

"This position is not related to any kind of anti-Americanism. We respect and love the United States, and more so the people of the U.S.," he said, adding that the extension of one country's jurisdiction beyond its territory is unacceptable and destructive for international relations.

Concerning Russia's announcements on the modernization of its nuclear potential, Putin responded that Russia is acting in accordance with agreements made with the U.S. When the latter withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Russia said that it would take retaliatory measures.

Putin also expressed the hope that there would be no war in Europe, but added: "You have to agree that if we must discuss internal European affairs with our European partners in Washington, it is not very interesting."

The interview ended with what the newspaper describes as a rather tactless question for a head of state, an enquiry about Putin's psychological health. "You will think that I am mad after our interview, no?" the Russian leader asked the Swiss media, noting that such rumors "are also part of the political fight."

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 #23
Russia makes proportionate response to missile defense in Europe - Defense Ministry

MOSCOW, July 30. /TASS/. Russia is taking proportionate military and technical measures in response to the missile defense system the United States is creating in Europe, Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said on Thursday.

"All decisions will be made, if and when there emerges a threat to Russia's national security (from the US missile defense in Europe)," Antonov said.
He recalled that Iran's nuclear problem had been settled, but "no statements the United States is terminating the creation of a missile defense in Europe have followed."

"This confirms our worst suspicions regarding what country these plans are targeted against in reality," Antonov said.

Russia's modern missile systems to counter US missile defense

Head of the 4th department of the Central Research Institute of the Russian Defense Ministry Colonel Oleg Pyshny said last week that Russia's modern missile systems are based on the technology solutions that will enable them to counter the US missile defense system.

"Indeed, we are closely monitoring the situation with the creation of the US missile defense systems, including those being deployed to Europe. We are aware of the program for the development of the SM-3 family of antimissiles. We believe that over time these missiles will be upgraded with systems that will pose a threat to us," Pyshny said.

He said all the threats are taken into account in the development of Russia's missile systems. "Our modern missile systems are based on the technology solutions needed to counter these missile defense systems," the official said.

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 #24
Interfax
July 29, 2015
Russian envoy slams NATO for playing "destructive role" in Ukraine crisis

NATO's role in the Ukraine crisis is "utterly destructive", Russia's permanent representative at the organization, Aleksandr Grushko, has said, as reported by privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax on 29 July.

"NATO's role in the Ukraine crisis is utterly destructive. NATO does not act like an organization that would conduce to the peaceful settlement of the issue. It creates an illusion of permissiveness and this is a very dangerous route," Grushko said, as shown on the Twitter page of Russia's NATO mission. (http://twishort.com/hGFic)

"Any political game around NATO's extension towards Georgia and Ukraine could lead to gravest and most far-reaching consequences for the whole Europe," Grushko said.

"The crisis in Ukraine was used to bring NATO to its roots in order to demonstrate to Western European countries, first of all, that the alliance is still significant and tackles security issues," Grushko said.

"NATO has frozen all joint constructive cooperation with the Russian side and has virtually begun setting up a new 'iron curtain' in Europe," Grushko said.

"NATO exists with an illusion that it is possible to establish a world with a single security centre, that everything that is favourable to NATO should be acceptable to everyone else," Grushko said.

"This is impossible. Sensible people can understand that there will not be any NATO-centred world," Grushko said.

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 #25
PBS NewsHour
July 29, 2015
NATO Commander: Russia's use of force in Europe is a major threat

Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, joins Gwen Ifill to discuss the alliance with Turkey against the Islamic State and why Russia poses a major threat in Europe today.

GWEN IFILL: General Breedlove, thank you so much for joining us.

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE, NATO Supreme Allied Commander: Oh, thanks for having me.

GWEN IFILL: I want to start by talking about Turkey. How significant is it that Turkey has allowed us to start using Incirlik for a basing to attack ISIS?

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: Those things that we are working at now to use bases like Incirlik and Diyarbakir, those will be very important to our ability to prosecute a joint campaign with Turkey as a part of our coalition.

GWEN IFILL: How far does that buffer zone go and how far do we go into it?

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: We're not creating any specific zone.

What we're talking about is bringing Turkey into an arrangement where, as a part of the coalition, they cooperate in our counter-ISIL campaign in the north. And that's the real key to this.

GWEN IFILL: So, it's not a no-fly zone, per se, is what you are saying?

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: That's correct.

GWEN IFILL: I want to take you to Ukraine, especially Russia's role. The new incoming nominee to be - for Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joe Dunford, said at a congressional hearing last week that he saw Russia as our chief global threat. Is that something you agree with?

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: I have testified to the same thing in the past.

GWEN IFILL: Why?

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: Well, clearly, there are lots of threats out there, for instance, ISIL.

But I think what you hear from numerous leaders is that Russia is a different case. This is a nation that for 20 years we have tried to make a partner. And in the last few years, we have seen that they're on a different path. So now we have a nation that has used force to change internationally recognized boundaries. Russia continues to occupy Crimea.

Russian forces now are in the Donbass in Eastern Ukraine. So this nation has used force to change international boundaries. And this is a nation that possesses a pretty vast nuclear inventory, and talks about the use of that inventory very openly in the past. And so what I think you see being reflected is that we see a revanchist Russia that has taken a new path towards what the security arrangements in Europe are like and how they are employed.

And they talk about using, as a matter of course, nuclear weapons. For that reason, these senior leaders, I believe, see that as a major threat.

GWEN IFILL: Secretary Kerry has not said that. And I wonder if the distinction there is between the diplomatic approach to dealing with Russia on things like Iran and the military concerns.

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: So, Russia can and we hope in the future will be a great partner. There are many places where our needs and requirements match.

But, again, in Europe, they have established a pattern now, Georgia, Transnistria, Crimea, Donbass, where force is a matter of course. And that's not what we look for in partners in Europe.

GWEN IFILL: So NATO has talked about providing training and artillery and some sort of support against this force you describe, this Russian bear on the border. Is that enough?

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: Well, NATO nations are offering some assistance to Ukraine, as is the United States. Many nations now are coming along to be a part of helping Ukraine to defend themselves. They have the right to defend themselves.

GWEN IFILL: But is it enough?

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: I think that question is yet to be determined.

We believe that there is a diplomatic and a political solution. So when you ask, is it enough, the question is, is it enough to set the conditions so that we can get to a political and a diplomatic solution?

GWEN IFILL: What about the Baltics? There is a lot of nervousness that Russia is going to expand its view of aggression in that direction as well, and they will be entirely unable to defend themselves.

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: Both NATO, as an alliance, and the United States have come to great measures of assurance for our Baltic nations.

We have U.S. soldiers alongside British and other soldiers inside of these countries now, exercising, doing training, to assure those allies that NATO is there and will be there. I was privileged to sit in the room at Wales when the leaders of 28 nations, including our president, were rock-solid on Article V, collective defense. And that includes the Baltics.

And I think that Mr. Putin understands that NATO is different.

GWEN IFILL: There is a lot of nervousness, however, that this option, if this doesn't take hold, is war.

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: Well, the best way not to have a war is to be prepared for war. So, we're in there now, training their soldiers.

As you know, we are looking at and have decided to preposition stops forward. We have heavy equipment that we train with in these nations now. And so we need to be prepared, so that we can avoid.

GWEN IFILL: Is there a line between preparation and provocation?

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: Absolutely. I believe there is.

We do defensive measures, and in, I think, very easily defined defensive stances in our forward bases. We're not putting big forces into the Baltics. Right now, there is a company of U.S. soldiers in each of the three Baltic states. That is well below a proportional issue.

GWEN IFILL: If it is possible for there to be a diplomatic or a political solution to head off any future conflict, what would that look like?

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: We always talk about a European land mass whole, free, and at peace.

To get to that, we need to have a partner in Russia, not someone that we are competing with. The Russian energy...

GWEN IFILL: Do you see a partnership that I don't see?

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: No, no, I'm saying we have to have one in the future.

GWEN IFILL: Right.

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: If we really believe we're going to get to whole, free, and at peace and prosperous, then we need a partner in Russia.

GWEN IFILL: Well, give me an example of one way to get there, especially if the person who has to be your partner is Vladimir Putin, who doesn't show any indication, other than being helpful at the Iran nuclear talks, of being the partner you envision.

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: So first, it's communication. We need to reestablish those lines of communication.

You have seen our secretary of state, undersecretary of state reaching out in several forums. Mil-to-mil communications need to become routine again. They are not routine now, where they were once before, communication first.

GWEN IFILL: I guess I hear what you are saying, but I don't see how you get there.

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: Its' not going to be an easy road. And it's not going to happen quickly. This business with Russia is a long-term thing.

I have said in testimony in other places that this is global, not regional. And it is long-term, not short-term. But we have to start down the path.

GWEN IFILL: Assuming for a moment there is a diplomatic-to-diplomatic impasse or president-to-president impasse, is there a military-to-military way of forging that kind of agreement?

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: There is.

It is important also that, even if our countries are not getting along, when you are flying airplanes in close vicinity, when you are sailing ships in close vicinity, when you have soldiers on the ground exercising sometimes just on the other side of borders, military men and women have to be able to communicate in a very matter-of-fact way to preclude anything ugly from happening.

GWEN IFILL: Well, and we hope nothing further ugly happens.

NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Philip Breedlove, thank you very much.

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 #26
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
July 29, 2015
Why Russia's 'borderization' strategy makes Georgia so nervous
On the seventh anniversary of the Russian-Georgian War, signs are building of renewed tensions along Georgia's borders. Keep an eye on developments in South Ossetia.
By Sergey Markedonov
Sergey Markedonov is an Associate Professor at Russian State University for the Humanities based in Moscow (Russia). From May 2010 to October 2013, he was a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, DC, USA). In April-May 2015 he was a visiting fellow at the Center for Russia and Central Asia Studies, Institute of International Studies (IIS), Fudan University (Shanghai, China).

The anniversary of the "Five-Day War" between Russia and Georgia is approaching. Seven years ago, in August 2008, the latest round of the two ethno-political conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia ended with Russian military intervention and recognition of the independence of these former autonomies of the Georgian SSR, which, incidentally, for the previous 15-year period had existed as unrecognized entities de facto outside the jurisdiction of official Tbilisi.

Today, the events of seven years ago have been pushed to the margins of the information agenda by Ukraine. But back then in 2008, a new status quo began to take shape in the South Caucasus. As the hitherto mediator in the settlement of the two conflicts, Moscow assumed the role of military and political guarantor of Abkhaz and South Ossetian self-determination (not self-determination per se, just secession from Georgia).

Despite the departure of Mikheil Saakashvili (the main irritant in relations with Moscow), the Georgian government has since strengthened its policy of European and North Atlantic integration, although the NATO Membership Action Plan and proposed visa-free regime with the EU remain pipe dreams.

The normalization of Russian-Georgian relations, announced in late 2012, is in a state of stagnation. Although the confrontational rhetoric has abated on both sides, neither is prepared to abandon its openly stated "red lines" on the status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia or cooperation with NATO.

This halfway house does not suit Tbilisi or its Western backers. However, rhetoric aside, there seems to be no appetite for a radical reshaping of the status quo. At the same time, unresolved issues refuse to go away.

Come summer 2015, on the eve of another "hot August" anniversary, the border issue has cropped up again. Journalists, experts and diplomats describe the building-up of the frontier between partially recognized South Ossetia and Georgia as "borderization."

The story is a graphic reminder that the disparate members of the political processes on Russia's southern borders exist in different political and legal realities. Whereas Russia and its South Ossetian protectorate recognize the Georgian-South Ossetian state border, the safety of which is guaranteed by Russia under intergovernmental agreements with Georgia's erstwhile (now independent) republic, for Tbilisi the border with its former autonomy is no more than an administrative boundary temporarily occupied by its northern neighbor.

The latter view is shared by the United States and its NATO and EU allies, which insist on respect for Georgia's territorial integrity. Georgia has never recognized South Ossetia's legal subjectivity since the abolition of the autonomy in December 1990, regardless of who happened to be the country's president or prime minister at any given time.

This summer the head of the Georgian government, Irakli Garibashvili, recalled the protection of national interests in "Samachablo" (the informal name for South Ossetia after the Machabeli line of Georgian princes).

The process of borderization dates back to the spring of 2013, when South Ossetia, supported by Russia, began erecting border signs and barbed wire. Tbilisi spoke of Moscow's desire to penetrate further into Georgian territory and limit the fundamental rights of the local population (free movement and access to agricultural resources, health services and education).

Since then, the problem has repeatedly been discussed under the Joint Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism on the Georgian-South Ossetian border, as well as during talks between Georgian Prime Minister's Special Representative for Relations with Russia Zurab Abashidze and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin. The last meeting between the Russian and Georgian diplomats was, in the words of Abashidze, a "highly charged conversation."

Every new surge of altercation and borderization is accompanied by public animation inside Georgia. The result is protests and demonstrations (such as the tearing down of a banner with the words "Republic of South Ossetia") in the immediate vicinity of the disputed border, which Russian and South Ossetian officials describe as provocations.

The asymmetry of Moscow and Tbilisi's perception of the problem is telling. The building-up of the border is seen in Russia as a minor regional issue. In Georgia, however, it is near the top of the political agenda. Whereas for Moscow the difference between 100 and 300 meters is negligible, for Georgian politicians and experts their country is too small to give up even one meter.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that in July 2015, after the installation of border signs on the Khurvaleti-Orchosani line, an approximately one-mile stretch of the strategically important Baku-Supsa oil pipeline ended up inside territory controlled by South Ossetia.

Meanwhile, the roots of today's border issue lie in the Georgian-Ossetian ethno-political conflict of the early 1990s. Unlike Abkhazia, the authorities of the unrecognized republic received much less territorial control. The leadership of the abolished autonomy retained the Tskhinvali, Java, Znauri and part of the Akhalgori (Leningor) districts. At the same time, Tbilisi kept control over part of the Akhalgori district and the Georgian villages of Tamarasheni, Kurta, Kekhvi and Achabeti in the Tskhinvali district (the so-called "Liakhvi corridor" named after the Liakhvi river).

Still, the leaders of South Ossetia did not have "complete control" over "their territory." Because the unrecognized republic's capital Tskhinvali was cut off from the Java district by the Georgian villages in the Liakhvi corridor, most Georgian villages in South Ossetia became almost enclaves under the jurisdiction of Tbilisi. Relations with the South Ossetian authorities were conducted through joint peacekeeping forces.

Legal confusion arose when villages with mixed ethnic populations became subordinate to different administrations. Unlike Abkhazia, 1990s South Ossetia had not yet undergone the mass expulsion of Georgians (that happened in 2008), which made the infrastructure of the unrecognized entity vulnerable.

Given a positive negotiation process and a peaceful settlement, such territorial configuration would not have been a serious issue. Moreover, the potential cohabitation of Georgians and Ossetians gave Tbilisi hope of reintegrating the abolished autonomy of South Ossetia into a united Georgian state with a higher status. However, were the negotiations to stagnate and the conflict to "unfreeze," such "chessboard" ethno-territorial configuration posed a direct threat to the political existence of South Ossetia, which was confirmed by the later events of 2004-2008.

Thus, the decisive role in the border demarcation was played not by the imperial chicanery of Moscow, but the four-year unfreezing of the conflict with an attempt to revise the Dagomys Agreements of 1992 and strip Russia of its role as exclusive guarantor of the first post-Soviet status quo. Hence Tskhinvali 's tough stance with respect to today's borderization.

South Ossetia (backed by Russia) believes that its border with Georgia should be based on the proposal of the Boundary Commission of the South Ossetian Autonomous Region dated December 21, 1921. Tbilisi believes that the border should follow the de facto confrontation line that existed between 1992 and 2008, whereupon it is viewed as an administrative, not transnational boundary.

The result is deadlock. Moscow has proposed negotiations between Tbilisi and South Ossetia, in which regard the Georgian authorities see Tskhinvali as a Kremlin puppet. Moreover, the task of borderization is not a top priority for Moscow, which sees in it the natural completion of the "Five-Day War" and the legitimization of the new status quo.

But it would be emotionally rash to suggest that the dispute over borderization will result in a major new unfreezing of the conflict. Moscow considers its task in respect of Georgia to be largely resolved (whether that is justified or not is another matter). It would like the international community to "recognize the new realities," although the issue is not critical for the Kremlin.

Meanwhile, Georgia's political and expert community is increasingly (albeit unofficially) warming to the idea that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are potential stumbling blocks on the road toward NATO and the EU. That said, the key issue here is the question of how far borderization will go.

If it is carried through with no significant advance into Georgian territory beyond the bounds of the former South Ossetian Autonomous Region, the rhetoric will remain just that. But if the present status quo is shattered (by the inclusion of South Ossetia in the Russian Federation or the penetration of "core Georgia"), more active international intervention is possible, which will see the move as an extension of Crimea.

However, there are no grounds as yet to believe that Moscow is plotting a radical offensive in the direction of Georgia. More likely, the talk is about consolidating the old Soviet borders in the new circumstances.

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 #27
Moscow Times
July 30, 2015
The Russian Theater - What a Season It's Been
By John Freedmam

Another theater season bites the dust.
And, therefore, wrap it up again we must.
For three and twenty years without a break
The Moscow Times has listed what is great
Or maybe less,
But worth a dwell
To test our dares
And quell our cares.
And so, for now,
'Til autumn comes,
It's Fare-thee-well!

Sign of the Times: an unnamed woman shouting "Bring back 'Tannhauser'!" when Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky appeared on stage at the Golden Mask Festival award ceremonies in April. Medinsky moved against a controversial production of "Tannhauser" at the Novosibirsk Theater of Opera and Ballet in February, leading to the show's ban, and to an increased chill in the already cold cultural atmosphere. The heckler, whose outburst evoked a thunderous ovation from the crowd, epitomized the outrage that the theater community felt about Medinsky's actions.

Trend of the Year: Theaters throwing down the gauntlet before spectators. In "Boris Godunov" at the Lenkom Theater, director Konstantin Bogomolov "corrected" Pushkin's original text to declare that "the people are scum." At the Satirikon before every performance of Vladimir Zaitsev's "All Shades of Blue," about a gay teenager's coming-of-age, Konstantin Raikin ran a recording that challenged spectators to remember they were part of a cultural elite and should behave as such. In the cabaret "19.14" at the Moscow Art Theater, the emcee began with five minutes of insulting jokes, his purpose being to resensitize an audience desensitized by contemporary trends of hostile public discourse. In "Revolt" at Praktika, director Yury Muravitsky put on a play that mercilessly attacked its audience's sense of comfort. Theater often sought to wake people up this season.

Farce of the Year: Moscow's relentless persecution of Teatr.doc. It drove them out of one home in December, then out of another in June. The explanations were, frankly, asinine: supposed violations of fire and renovation codes, bookkeeping irregularities and other nonsense. In fact, the authorities didn't like Doc mounting artistic discussions of such topics as Kiev's Maidan revolt and the infamous state crackdown on peaceful protesters on Bolotnaya Square on May 6, 2012.

Spectacular Survivor: Teatr.doc. Kicked out of its home on Tryokhprudny Pereulok in December, it reopened on Spartakovskaya Ulitsa in February. Pushed out of that space on June 22, it reopened on two new stages on Maly Kazyonny Pereulok on June 23.

Incongruous Accomplishment: Ksenia Sobchak's starring role in "The Marriage" at the Theater of Nations. There is no way this controversial political journalist should have been so good, so nuanced and so genuinely funny as the matchmaker in Nikolai Gogol's classic comedy. But she was.

Best Actress: Yekaterina Kramzina, in Mikhail Bulgakov's "Flight" at the Vakhtangov Theater. Her character of Serafima, a refugee from Russia's Civil War, was excellent throughout the four-hour show, but that first half-hour of her sitting motionless on a chair until she began shaking and shuddering from fear and anger simply blew me and other spectators away. When she stood to leave, the crowd gave her the kind of rousing ovation that is rarely seen in the middle of a performance.

Best Actors: Filipp Avdeyev and Alexei Agranovich in Ivan Goncharov's "A Common Story" at the Gogol Center. It is a fact that excellence in acting is aided greatly by a great acting partner. Avdeyev's young, innocent country bumpkin could never have had the same impact without Agranovich providing him with such a cold, evil foil. And you can turn that sentence around in the other direction with equal success.

Perfect Pair: Vyacheslav Yevlantyev and Yevgenia Gromova as the put-upon husband and wife in Sergei Zhenovach's sensitive production of Nikolai Erdman's tragic farce "The Suicide" at the Studio of Theatrical Art. The pair was achingly sweet and innocent, making the pain they experienced when their neighbors plotted to exploit them all the more tragic.

Quintessential Quartet: Irina Gorbachyova, Serafima Ogaryova, Alexander Michkov and Yury Butorin as the four young interlocked lovers in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Fomenko Workshop Theater. They were the epitome of bright, excitable, deliciously flawed, utterly sincere, youth.

The Beauty of Hell: Maxim Didenko's production of "Red Cavalry," based on Isaac Babel's stories about the Russian Civil War, for the Dmitry Brusnikin Workshop. This song, dance and installation performance found both bitter beauty and evil in the hell that is war.

Wordless Wonder No. 1: Sergei Zemlyansky's dance interpretation of "The Inspector General" at the Yermolova Theater. Who would have thought you could toss out all of Gogol's words and still have the whole story? This was fun, attractive, energetic and funny.

Wordless Wonder No. 2: Timofei Kulyabin's beautiful, primarily non-verbal staging of "#shakespearessonnets" at the Theater of Nations. Choreographed with understatement by Yevgeny Kulagin and Ivan Yestegneyev, it was sensitive, erotic and chaste all at the same time, as the young cast silently played scenes from 14 Shakespearean sonnets, while other actors recited the poems almost as background music.

Recalibrated Classic: Konstantin Bogomolov's production of "Boris Godunov" at the Lenkom Theater retold Pushkin's portrayal of 17th-century court intrigues as if it were news coming through a contemporary television screen. It was clever, funny and devastating.

Best Production: Yury Butusov's production of "Flight" at the Vakhtangov Theater. Butusov is a forest fire of a director. His interpretation of Mikhail Bulgakov's Civil War drama burned white hot from beginning to end.

Poetry Goes Punk: Yury Muravitsky's production of "Revolt" at Praktika. Working with the talented kids of the Dmitry Brusnikin Workshop, Muravitsky turned poet Dmitry Prigov's ironic dramatic texts about intellectual insubordination into a fury-fueled attack on complacency and mendacity.

Sui generis: Dmitry Krymov, in a class by himself. His production of "Oh, Late Love" at the School of Dramatic Art showed us Alexander Ostrovsky as we have never seen him, while making the 19th-century author look like our contemporary. Kyrmov's eclectic, ironic, visuals-driven theater keeps getting better.

In the Line of Fire: Kama Ginkas' interpretation of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" at the Theater Yunogo Zritelya. Ginkas put spectators in the thick of the epic battles taking place in Edward Albee's famous play about the ties that do and do not bind human relationships.

Avant-Kitsch: Robert Wilson's "Pushkin's Fairy Tales" at the Theater of Nations. Whether you thought this show was a startling visual feast or a misguided comic strip of Russian folk cliches, you had to agree: the great Wilson working in Moscow was good for everybody.

Alien Elegance: Anastasia Nefyodova, designer of Boris Yukhananov's otherworldly and gorgeous "serial opera" "The Drillalians/Sverliitsy" at the Stanislavsky Electrotheater.

Solemn Farewell: to Yury Lyubimov, founder of the legendary Taganka Theater, who died at the age of 97 on Oct. 5, 2014. On that day we lost one of Russian theater's all-time greats.

Theater of the Year: Boris Yukhananov's Stanislavsky Electrotheater. It took a year and a half of rebuilding, reorganization and renaming for the moribund old Stanislavsky Drama Theater to become the spectacular new Electrotheater. Yukhananov unveiled two beautiful, unorthodox "serial" productions - "The Blue Bird" in three nights, and "Drillalians/Sverliitsy" in five - as well as turning his stage over to foreign masters Theodoros Terzopoulos and Romeo Castellucci, all while making this the coolest new venue in town.

Profile in Courage: Yelena Gremina, playwright, director, managing director of Teatr.doc. This replaces my usual Person of the Year award. Gremina is more than just Woman of the Year. Her sense of dignity, strength, perseverance, humor, justice and social responsibility in the face of massive attacks against her Teatr.doc by the authorities this season was epic.

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 #28
Subject: Re restrictions on foreign orgs in the U.S.
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2015 14:09:46 -0400
From: Thomas M. Callahan <tom.callahan@yandex.com>
 
There has long been an American statute in place regulating the work of organizations working "in the interests" of foreign powers on American soil.  However, it is quite short and, anyway, is a single provision compared to Russia's extensive anti-"foreign influence" legislation beginning in 2012.  According to Registration of Foreign Propagandists, 22 U.S.C. § 611 (1938), certain organizations are required to register with the DoJ if, for example, they fit a set of requirements including engagement in "political activities."  Let's also remember that in the United States, regardless of all our other legal and law enforcement problems, some of them formidable, we do not have an institutional legacy of using bizarre and vague laws to silence inconvenient political voices.

"'Political activities' means any activity that the person engaging in believes will, or that the person intends to, in any way influence any agency or official of the Government of the United States . . . with reference to formulating, adopting, or changing the domestic or foreign policies of the United States or with reference to the political or public interests, policies, or relations of a government of a foreign country or a foreign political party."

I've attached a copy of the statute, which is three pages long, in case you are interested or think your readers may be.
[Not here:
United States Code Annotated
Title 22. Foreign Relations and Intercourse
Chapter 11. Foreign Agents and Propaganda
Subchapter II. Registration of Foreign Propagandists (Refs & Annos)]

Meanwhile, Chapter 11 of Title 22 U.S.C. is entirely devoted to "foreign propagandists."  According to the cursory research I did in response to your note today, the last time an organization was prosecuted for acting at the "request of a foreign principal" was in 1982. It was apparently a Northern Irish lobby group (Attorney General of U.S. v. Irish Northern Aid Committee, C.A.2 (N.Y.) 1982, 668 F.2d 159).

All best, and thanks for all your work keeping us up to date - especially these days,
 
Thomas M. Callahan
Crowley Scholar in International Human Rights Law
Executive Notes & Articles Editor, Fordham International Law Journal
Fordham University School of Law | J.D. Candidate, 2016

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#29
Subject: Crowdfunding Support for a Grassroots Organization
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2015 02:15:13 -0500
From: Ron Pope <ron42.pope@gmail.com>

    THE ISSUE:  The American Home in Vladimir has encountered an unusual obstacle. After years of cooperative relations with our organization, the current Vladimir City Administration has decided to invoke what we thought was an outdated clause in the 1992 contract governing the Home's construction.  They are insisting that we transfer ownership of the Home to them.  (They have declined to say what they want to do with the property.)

    The matter is being adjudicated in the Russian arbitration court system.  

    Our main activity is our English and culture program where we have approximately 500 students each fall and spring.

    In part because the court's final verdict won't be handed down until after the start of the fall term, and in part because we want to be able to bring all of our major activities under one roof, we are preparing to move into new quarters in a building that is under construction.

    In reality, we don't have any choice.  We have to make the move.

    We have been entirely self supporting for more than 20 years.  But we cannot fit all of the moving related expenses into our limited budget.

    OUR SOLUTION:  A crowdfunding campaign.  

    The URL is   http://igg.me/at/save-AH-programs/x/11382584

    Comments about our program include the following:

    "What you've done is truly incredible.  The excitement and positive energy that we witnessed was something that I'd rarely seen before.  You deserve hearty congratulations!"  

    -US Foreign Service Officer, after visiting the American Home

    "This is a remarkable cultural center that provides the opportunity to not only learn a language, but also to learn a lot about American culture."       -American Home student

    "You have a fantastic program here. This is cooperation at its finest, and the skills and respect that you are giving your students is invaluable"       -Patrick Buzzard, NASA representative, US Embassy, Moscow

    ["The American Home] is one of the unique and TRULY ALIVE
    attractions in Vladimir...."                                                                                     -American Home student

    "I am sure that thousands of children are grateful for the excellent start in life that you have given to them.  My son went to each lesson as if it was a holiday....  A unique project that deserves the highest awards, recognition, and support.                                                                             -A satisfied mother

    If those JRL subscribers who believe in the value of sustaining grassroots organizations like ours make whatever contribution they can, and if they share the information about our need, our fundraising effort will have a significantly improved chance of success.    

Ron Pope, PhD
Founder & President
Serendipity-Russia
(The America Home)
www.serendipity-russia.com
(309) 454-2364
 
 

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 #30
Subject: Mokrushyna podcast
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2015 17:25:19 -0400
From: Pietro Shakarian <pashakarian@gmail.com>

Here is the link to my latest Reconsidering Russia podcast:
https://soundcloud.com/pashakarian/reconsidering-russia-podcast-04-an-interview-with-halyna-mokrushyna

Guest: Halyna Mokrushyna on democracy in Ukraine today. Dr. Mokrushyna holds a PhD in linguistics and an MA in communication. She is also currently enrolled in the PhD program in sociology at the University of Ottawa and is a part-time professor. Her doctoral research deals with the memory of Stalinism and the Stalinist purges in Ukraine.

Enjoy and please share on JRL.  This is a must-listen podcast.

Pietro A. Shakarian

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 #31
Subject: Five-part blog: THE WORLD WAR IV SERIES
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2015 19:39:46 -0400
From: David Law <davidmurraylaw@gmail.com>

I have recently written a five-part blog series on what I call World War IV.

I think your readers may be interested in this material. At the very least, it should provoke some reflection.

David Law
--
 
THE WORLD WAR IV SERIES

What's in a World War: Challenges facing the West - Part 5
21 July 2015
While the West wins hands down in the numbers game, it faces critical deficits in its systems of political and economic governance. It needs to overcome them if it is to command the support of its publics - if and as push comes to shove.
https://www.cdainstitute.ca/en/blog/entry/what-s-in-a-world-war-challenges-facing-the-west-part-5

What's in a World War: Strong points of the West - Part 4
20 July 2015
The West has several strong suits that would serve it well in any major new international confrontation. This blog identifies the most critically important ones.
https://www.cdainstitute.ca/en/blog/entry/what-s-in-a-world-war-strong-points-of-the-west-part-4

What's in a World War: Knocking on the Door of World War IV - Part 3
17 July 2015
How do and can the three rings of conflict interact with one another - and what could this mean for international peace and security?
https://www.cdainstitute.ca/en/blog/entry/what-s-in-a-world-war-knocking-on-the-door-of-world-war-iv-part-3

What's in a World War: The Three Rings of Conflict - Part 2
15 July 2015
What are the main areas of confrontation in the world - or rings of conflict - and what are their key features and fault lines?
https://www.cdainstitute.ca/en/blog/entry/what-s-in-a-world-war-the-three-rings-of-conflict-part-2

What's in a World War: From World War I to the new Cold War - Part 1
14 July 2015
The Cold War had many features in common with World Wars I and II but did not get a number. Should it have? And, more importantly, how does the possible new Cold War compare with the three world wars of the twentieth century?
https://www.cdainstitute.ca/en/blog/entry/what-s-in-a-world-war-from-world-war-i-to-the-new-cold-war-part-1

---
 
CDA Institute
www.cdainstitute.ca
July 14, 2015
What's in a World War: From World War I to the new Cold War - Part 1
By David Law
David Law, a former Head of the NATO Policy Planning Unit, is currently a Senior Associate with the Kitchener-based Security Governance Group, and a Senior Fellow with it sister organization, the Centre for Security Governance.

In this five-part series, Centre for Security Governance Senior Fellow David Law - who is a CDA Instiute Security & Defence Blogger - explores the development and scope of what he terms World War IV. This series is based on David Law's presentation at the CDA Institute Roundtable "Knocking on the Door of World War IV," held in Ottawa on 10 June 2015. The CDA Institute thanks Lockheed Martin Canada for its generous sponsorship of the 2015/16 Roundtable Discussion Series.

The Ukraine crisis has given rise to the view that we may be entering a new Cold War. The use of this term raises all sorts of questions. Here are just a few. How does this possibly new Cold War compare with the old Cold War? What is a cold war and how does it differ from a hot one? And can a cold war become a hot one and if so, how?*

The Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union that dominated most of the second half of the twentieth century was in many ways like World Wars I and II. They all involved a significant number of the then existing states, drawing in all regions of the world to a greater or lesser extent. They all endured over a generation - and sometimes two. They all displaced, wounded, maimed and killed tens of millions of people. This was as true of the Cold War's many wars (from Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan), as the world wars that preceded it.

Each of these wars was driven by an effort of one or more powers to transform the prevailing system of international power to its advantage.

Thus, in World War I, the key contest saw the authority of long-established empires-Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian--being threatened by the new nationalisms that had emerged on their territory in the nineteenth century. But the Great War also put Great Britain and France on the front line, inflicting on both imperial powers huge casualties even as they emerged as victors alongside a rising America. Their empires would remain more or less intact until after the next world war.

World War II pitted the world's then more democratic states against the authoritarian nation-states that sought to aggrandize their power. The main aggressors in this story are generally identified as Germany, Italy, and Japan, but the effort to extend one's borders and control over other nations was far more widespread than that - one only need to look at the behaviour of numerous states in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, and not least the Soviet Union prior to the Nazi invasion.

The Cold War was essentially a contest between two socio-economic and political systems: democratic capitalism and totalitarian communism, each vying for global domination. So, the twentieth century knew no less than three world wars, whereby the third was just as much deserving of a number as were World Wars I and II. In my book, the Cold War was World War III.

If a world war is essentially about an effort on the part of various actors to challenge the internationally established order, then we should probably also rethink the start and end points of these conflicts. Thereby, we also need to take into account the inter-state altercations that helped build momentum towards major war among the main actors, as well as the subsidiary conflicts that were spawned in its wake.

By this logic, the opening salvo in World War I was probably the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. It was followed by several other wars - and in particular the two Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, which established fronts that would be in place in 1914. Similarly, this first great war of the twentieth century gave rise to several other conflicts that continued or broke out after the 1918 Armistice, including the Russian Civil War of 1918-21 and the Greek-Turkish war that began in 1919 and ended with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. So seen, World War I lasted 19 years.

Similarly, one can consider that World War II began not in 1939 but in 1932 when Japan marched into Manchuria, and it ended not in 1945 but in 1954 when the last of the Indochina Wars unleashed by this great conflict came to an end. This would make World War II 22 years old at its conclusion.

And what was the starting point of the Cold War, or what I have suggested should be designated World War III? In my view, it was in Cuba in 1958. This was the first major challenge that was launched to the world order established by the previous world war. It was only with the end of the Yugoslav Wars of Succession in 2001 that it was really laid to rest, for a total of 43 years. In between lay the decolonialisation process that saw the dismantling of the world's remaining empires in Africa, Asia, and Europe and the more than doubling of the number of states in the international community. Their emergence was more often than not accompanied by civil wars coloured by the ongoing East-West rivalry.

World War III differed from its two predecessors in one very important respect. While it proved to be a fight to the finish between the US and the USSR, the two superpowers did not attack each other frontally. That said, the Cold War could have very easily turned hot if the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963 had gone nuclear.

As for the new Cold War, it can be said to have started in 2007 when Russian President Vladimir Putin made a speech at the Wehrkunde international security conference in Munich, in which he made a blistering attack against the United States for provoking a new arms race, destabilizing the Middle East, undermining international institutions, expanding NATO and supporting democratic revolutions in the Commonwealth of Independent States. He concluded by insisting that Washington accept Russia's demand for equality, in practical terms giving Moscow a free hand throughout the former Soviet Union, and appealing to other countries to join Russia in an effort to end what he called the American effort to create a unipolar world. The following year brought the Georgian-Russian war and Russia's occupation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two self-proclaimed republics that had broken away from Tbilisi at Moscow's urging.

The new Cold War differs significantly from past world wars. All three of the previous conflicts were conducted to a greater or lesser extent on all continents. The new Cold War is for the time being local and covert. Russia denies any military involvement in Eastern Ukraine and has put itself forward as a mediator between Kyiv and the two self-proclaimed republics that have emerged to challenge the sovereignty of Ukraine's central government.

The new Cold War is, however, only part of the strategic situation currently taking shape in the world. A second story concerns the rise of ISIS in several countries of the Middle East and North Africa, where conflict, unlike in the Euro-Atlantic theatre, is overt. Probably, the jihadists of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State would see their conflict with the prevailing powers in their part of the world and with the westerners that have helped sustain the latter as a world war going back at least two decades.

A third story is about China's rise in its region. Here conflict is neither covert nor overt but for the time being latent. What was this story's opening chapter? It probably occurred with the rise of Xi Jinping as of 2012. Whether his ongoing effort to bolster the role of the autocratic Chinese communist party in an economy that increasingly beats to a capitalist drum announces the onslaught of conflict in Asia is anybody's guess. But if it does, then World War IV will have taken hold in Asia as of 2012.

How this all pans out will determine the kind of world we live in as the twentieth-first century unfolds. For more, read my next blog post in this series.

*The approach taken in this blog post to understanding the causes and duration of world wars was developed by Hermann F. Achminow in a book that appeared in Europa-Prisma Verlag in 1983 under the title of "Am Grossen Krieg "vorbeischleichen"?

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