#2
Der Spiegel
August 6, 2015
Mikhail Gorbachev: US Military an 'Insurmountable Obstacle to a Nuclear-Free World'
Interview Conducted by Joachim Mohr and Matthias Schepp

In a SPIEGEL interview, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev discusses morals and politics in the nuclear age, the crisis in Russian-American relations and his fear that an atomic weapon will some day be used.

SPIEGEL: Mikhail Sergeyevich, during your inaugural speech as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985, you warned of nuclear war and called for the "complete destruction of nuclear weapons and a permanent ban on them." Did you mean that seriously?

Gorbachev: The discussion about disarmament had already been going on for too long -- far too long. I wanted to finally see words followed by action because the arms race was not only continuing, it was growing ever more dangerous in terms of the number of weapons and their destructive capacity. There were tens of thousands of nuclear warheads on different delivery systems like aircraft, missiles and submarines.

SPIEGEL: Did you feel the Soviet Union was under threat during the 1980s by the nuclear weapons of NATO member states?

Gorbachev: The situation was that nuclear missiles were being stationed closer and closer to our adversary's borders. They were getting increasingly precise and they were also being aimed at decision-making centers. There were very concrete plans for the use of these weapons. Nuclear war had become conceivable. And even a technical error could have caused it to happen. At the same time, disarmament talks were not getting anywhere. In Geneva, diplomats pored over mountains of paper, drank wine, and even harder stuff, by the liter. And it was all for nothing.

SPIEGEL: At a meeting of the Warsaw Pact nations in 1986, you declared that the military doctrine of the Soviet Union was no longer to plan for the coming war, but rather to seek to prevent military confrontation with the West. What was the reason behind the shift in strategy?

Gorbachev: It was clear to me that relations with America and the West would be a lasting dead end without atomic disarmament, with mutual distrust and growing hostility. That is why nuclear disarmament was the highest priority for Soviet foreign policy.

SPIEGEL: Did you not also push disarmament forward because of the financial and economic troubles facing the Soviet Union in the 1980s?

Gorbachev: Of course we perceived just how great a burden the arms race was on our economy. That did indeed play a role. It was clear to us that atomic confrontation threatened not only our people but also all of humanity. We knew only too well the weapons being discussed, their destructive force and the consequences. The nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl provided us with a rather precise idea of what the consequences of a nuclear war would be. Decisive for us were thus political and ethical considerations, not economic ones.

SPIEGEL: What was your experience with US President Ronald Reagan, who many saw as a driving force in the Cold War?

Gorbachev: Reagan acted out of honest conviction and genuinely rejected nuclear weapons. Already during my first meeting with him in November of 1985, we were able to make the most important determination: "Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." This sentence combined morals and politics -- two things many consider to be irreconcilable. Unfortunately, the US has since forgotten the second important point in our joint statement -- according to which neither America nor we will seek to achieve military superiority.

SPIEGEL: Are you disappointed in the Americans?

Gorbachev: So many decades pass, but unfortunately some things do not change. Already back in the 1950s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower stated the problem by its name. The power of the military-industrial complex continued to be enormous under Reagan and his successor George Bush. Former US Secretary of State George Shultz told me a few years ago that only a conservative president like Reagan could have been in a position to get the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty through the Senate. Let's not forget that the the "Zero Option" that Reagan himself proposed (eds. note: the proposal to remove all Soviet and American intermediate-range nuclear missles from Europe) had many opponents in the West. They considered it to be a propaganda stunt and they wanted to thwart Reagan's policies. After the Reykjavik summit in 1986 (eds. note: the subject of the summit between Reagan and Gorbachev was nuclear disarmament), Margaret Thatcher declared: We won't be able to handle a second Reykjavik.

SPIEGEL: Did you really believe at the time that you could achieve a world free of nuclear weapons?

Gorbachev: We not only proclaimed a nuclear weapons free world as a major goal -- we also named concrete interim goals. In addition, we aspired to the destruction of chemical weapons and are now close to achieving that goal. Limiting conventional weapons was also on our agenda. That was all inextricably linked to a normalization of our relations. We wanted to move from confrontation to cooperation. We achieved a lot, which shows that my approach was completely realistic.

SPIEGEL: Many accused you of using your demand as a tactic to present the Soviet Union as a peace-loving country.

Gorbachev: No, there was no propaganda at play and it was not tactical. It was important to get away from the nuclear abyss our countries were marching toward when they stationed hundreds of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe.

SPIEGEL: Why were the negotiations over intercontinental ballistic missiles so much tougher than those over intermediate-range missiles?

Gorbachev: In Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986, Reagan and I not only established the framework for eliminating intermediate-range missiles, but also for halving the number of intercontinental missiles. But Reagan was up against strong resistance from the hawks in the US administration. This continued under Bush, so, in the end, we only finally signed the treaty in summer 1991. With the strategic long-range weapons there were also technical questions. And then we also had the problem with the missile defense.

SPIEGEL: You were unable to convince Reagan to abandon his SDI project, which aimed to create a defensive shield against nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles. Did that upset you?

Gorbachev: Reagan wanted it no matter what. That's why in Reykjavik we weren't able to turn our agreements on intercontinental missiles and intermediate-range missiles into treaties. In order to break the impasse, we offered the Americans concessions and uncoupled the negotiating package. We agreed on a separate treaty addressing the intermediate-range missiles. Reagan and I signed it in Washington in December 1987.

SPIEGEL: The stationing of American intermediate-range missiles led to mass demonstrations by the peace movement in Germany ...

Gorbachev: ... and Helmut Kohl then played a very positive role in the establishment of the treaty with the elimination of the Pershing 1A missiles.

SPIEGEL: The nuclear warhead belonged to the Americans, but the missiles were German. Kohl declared that the missiles could be destroyed if the US and Russia came to an agreement on the destruction of the intermediate-range missiles.

Gorbachev: If Kohl had not dispensed with them, we would not have signed.

SPIEGEL: Was there actually resistance to your disarmament policies within the Soviet ruling elite?

Gorbachev: Every member of the leadership at the time understood the importance of disarmament. All the leading politicians had experience and a sober view of things. Just think about Foreign Minister Andrei Gromkyo ...

SPIEGEL: ... who had the nickname "Mr. Nyet" in the West because of his hardline negotiating tactics ...

Gorbachev: ... but like all the others, he understood how dangerous the arms race was. At the top, we were united at the time about ending it.

SPIEGEL: How did disarmament treaties materialize under your leadership?

Gorbachev: The Soviet Union had a strict and clear system for the preparation of politburo decisions. They happened through the so-called Five, a committee made up of representatives from relevant agencies and experts. We took into consideration the positions of our negotiating partners without jeopardizing the Soviet Union's state security. The politburo weighed proposals and then issued directives to our negotiation delegations and also to me, the general secretary and later president, for summit meetings. That happened prior to Reykjavik in 1986, Washington in 1987 and other meetings. The politburo, in turn, fell back on proposals from experts, which it then reviewed and discussed.

SPIEGEL: Can the goal of a nuclear free world still be achieved today?

Gorbachev: It is the correct goal in any case. Nuclear weapons are unacceptable. The fact that they can wipe out the entirety of civilization makes them particularly inhumane. Weapons like this have never existed before in history and they cannot be allowed to exist. If we do not get rid of them, sooner or later they will be used.

SPIEGEL: In recent years, a number of new nuclear powers have emerged.

Gorbachev: That's why we should not forget that the elimination of nuclear weapons is the obligation of every country that signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Though America and Russia have by far the largest arsenals at their disposal.

SPIEGEL: What do you think of the oft-cited theory that mutually assured destruction prevents nuclear wars?

Gorbachev: There's a dangerous logic in that. Here's another question: If five or 10 countries are allowed to have nuclear weapons, then why can't 20 or 30? Today, a few dozen countries have the technical prerequisites to build nuclear weapons. The alternative is clear: Either we move toward a nuclear-free world or we have to accept that nuclear weapons will continue to spread, step by step, across the globe. And can we really imagine a world without nuclear weapons if a single country amasses so many conventional weapons that its military budget nearly tops that of all other countries combined? This country would enjoy total military supremacy if nuclear weapons were abolished.

SPIEGEL: You're talking about the US?

Gorbachev: You said it. It is an insurmountable obstacle on the road to a nuclear-free world. That's why we have to put demilitarization back on the agenda of international politics. This includes a reduction of military budgets, a moratorium on the development of new types of weapons and a prohibition on militarizing space. Otherwise, talks toward a nuclear-free world will be little more than empty words. The world would then become less safe, more unstable and unpredictable. Everyone will lose, including those now seeking to dominate the world.

SPIEGEL: Is there a risk of war between Russia and the West over the crisis in Ukraine?

Gorbachev: We have reached a crossroads in relations between America and Russia. Many are already talking about a new Cold War. Talks between both powers over important global problems have practically been put on ice. That includes the question of nuclear disarmament. Trust, the very capital we worked so hard to build, has been destroyed.

SPIEGEL: Do you believe there is a danger of nuclear war?

Gorbachev: I'm very worried. The current state of things is scary. The nuclear powers still have thousands of nuclear warheads. Nuclear weapons are still stationed in Europe. The pace of reducing stockpiles has slowed considerably. We are witnessing the beginning of a new arms race. The militarization of space is a real danger. The danger of nuclear proliferation is greater than ever before. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has not entered into force, primarily because the Americans did not ratify it. This would have been extremely important.

SPIEGEL: Do you think Russia will once again begin to use its nuclear capablities as a bargaining chip in international relations?

Gorbachev: We have to view everything in context. Unfortunately, formulations have reappeared in the nuclear powers' military doctrines that represent a relapse to the language that predated the Soviet-American declaration of 1985. We need a new declaration, probably from the United Nations Security Council, that reasserts nuclear war as inadmissible -- it knows no winners.

SPIEGEL: Isn't a world without nuclear weapons just a nice dream?

Gorbachev: No matter how difficult the situation is, we must not fall into resignation or panic. In the mid-1980s, there was no shortage of people who thought the train to atomic hell was unstoppable. But then we achieved a lot in very short space of time. Thousands of nuclear warheads were destroyed and several types of nuclear weapons, such as intermediate-range missiles, were disposed of. We can be proud of that. We accomplished all that together. It should be a lesson for today's leaders: for Obama, Putin and Merkel.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Gorbachev, we thank you for this interview.

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#3
Moscow Times
August 6, 2015
Is There a Place for Idealists in Russia?
By Konstantin Sonin
Konstantin Sonin, a columnist for Vedomosti, is professor of economics at the University of Chicago and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

I once attended a meeting at a publishing house where non-fiction authors were present. They claimed that virtually any U.S. bestseller would achieve the same status in Russia - with the exception of one type of story: the idealistic individual who beats the odds to implement a public initiative or other project for the good of others.

Of course, that was just their opinion. However, my mother is a retired molecular geneticist and after reading "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder, she managed to convince me, and then a publishing house that this book deserved to appear in Russia so that today's medical students could see what noble goals might guide their careers as doctors.

Corpus published the book, making it - as it always does - a more striking and elegant tome than the original.

However, a different but experienced publisher was certain the book would never make money in Russia because it is exactly the type that readers here don't like. Dr. Paul Farmer, the main character in the book, is the quintessential loner hero, a modern day Mother Theresa or Albert Schweitzer.

Dr. Paul Farmer is a modern knight in shining armor, and as such, understands the role that money plays in real life. It would be no problem to treat hundreds of thousands of Haitians suffering from AIDS and tuberculosis were it not for one thing: that treatment is expensive and Haiti is one of the poorest countries on earth.

Nevertheless, Farmer decided that every person has the right to have someone fighting for his life and caring for his welfare, regardless of his income. He discovered that corporations, hospitals and charities can donate drugs and money, but that the plan would never work unless he devoted every day over a period of years to seeing patients and training local specialists.

And it turned out that if he devoted his entire life to the goal - sacrificing everything that a Harvard Medical School graduate might have enjoyed in Western society - and devoted himself entirely to charity, then he could achieve success.

And he could measure that success in terms of lower death rates and a higher quality of life among the people he served.

But a Haitian proverb states: "Beyond these mountains there are more mountains," meaning that even after solving one problem, you are immediately confronted with another. This was also true for Farmer, who faced a significant number of challenges connected with both local and high-level politics.

In fact, Farmer and the charitable organization he founded, Partners in Health, have done a lot in Russia. They battled the spread of tuberculosis in Russian prisons, exactly as if they were dealing with one of the world's poorer countries.

But that is not the main point: Russia is not Cuba or Haiti. Russia, a relatively wealthy country, should have enough money to treat its poorer citizens.

And if we take a moment to look around, we might find that others beyond our borders need help. If so, and if we respond, then a story about an idealistic doctor has a chance of becoming a bestseller in Russia too.

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#4
Moscow Times
August 5, 2015
Will Russia's Brain Drain Dry Up?
By Georgy Bovt
Georgy Bovt is a political analyst.

Russia is locked in a confrontation with the West, and all those who work or study there are increasingly viewed as deserters or betrayers. On the other hand, the ruling regime has not yet closed the borders, perhaps feeling that it is better to let its critics - those at odds with Russia's "moral majority" - leave the country than to remain behind and create a "fifth column" of opposition.

On the other hand, if the country's education system continues to degenerate at the current rate, the problem might go away by itself when there are no more brains left to drain.

Figures on the Internet vary concerning the scale of the exodus. Some put the number at 200,000 over the past two years. Official statistics claim that only 20,000 Russians have moved abroad during that period. And the departure of each prominent public figure is accompanied by malevolent - and perhaps envious - cries of, "Yet another one has fallen out of the nest and chosen freedom," or else, "That's what this bloody regime deserves."

Opinion surveys of the youth - most of whom supposedly want to jump ship - are intended to demonstrate that Russia has no future. However, it is a long way between saying you want to leave and actually doing it. For many youth, the desire to leave Russia is more of a protest pose than a concrete plan.

In fact, approximately the same percentage of youth in more economically developed countries expresses a desire to leave. The world is changing. Leaving your homeland nowadays is nothing like it was in the late 19th century when the Irish emigrated to escape famine or when Russian Jews, fleeing pogroms at home, dropped to their knees and kissed the ground as they disembarked from their ships on Ellis Island and first glimpsed the Statue of Liberty. Those emigrants left their homelands forever.

Now a person can go live in a second country, study in a third, holds jobs in several more and then retire to a warm seaside locale in yet another. However, many Russians continue to judge such globe-hopping with a prejudice hearkening back to the Soviet era, when anyone moving abroad was stripped of their native citizenship.

The problem of brain drain is connected with the country's level of technological development, its global competitiveness and its place in the world economy. Russia is currently going through a difficult phase. On one hand, leaders are constantly telling the people that Russia will not fence itself off from the rest of the world, and ratings indicate that they are concerned about improving the country's competitiveness.

On the other hand, when official propaganda describes the outside world as hostile, it is difficult for Kremlin spin doctors and legislators to avoid the temptation of adding yet another brick to the wall separating Russia from the host of its "enemies."

It has become the political fashion whereby officials question the transparency of international scientific and educational exchange programs or express intolerance toward the invading "alien" values. Propaganda has fanned support for autocracy, a "besieged fortress" mentality and the belief that the West does not love or understand Russia and only wants to "enslave" it.

This has prompted a rise in archaic patriotic traditionalism under the slogan: "Russia follows its own path." Backwardness has become the guiding principle of the government at almost all levels, as if leaders want to exact revenge on Peter the Great for attempting to open a window to the outside world and modernize the country.

Decision makers are losing their awareness and their desire to know how the modern world functions and which trends will shape the future. That backwardness contributes to the brain drain among people who see few opportunities for self-realization in modern Russia.

Recognizing that Russia can still learn a thing or two from the rest of the world, the government allocated 4 billion rubles ($63 million) to fund education costs for up to 1,500 students who would study in any of the 225 fields in prestigious foreign universities on the condition that they return home after graduation to work in their specialties.

I was recently surprised to learn that the program had very few takers and that the government has since cut the number of slots down to 750 - while doubling the stipend for each. What's more, many of the Russian firms originally slated to participate in the program now show no desire to receive graduates who return from overseas full of "foreign ideas."

Does that mean Russia's economic and management systems have no need for Western-educated minds?

Roughly 50,000 Russians studied abroad last year - three times more than in the 1990s. Some observers claim that greater numbers of those students are now returning to live and work in Russia, although for many, a foreign university degree remains the best chance to gain a foothold overseas and start a new life there. Will an increasing number really come back to Russia? I doubt it.

This is first due to the decline in Russia's system of education, especially higher education. It is increasingly becoming a profanation of education, as instructors earn humiliatingly low salaries and lack the opportunity or even the motivation to maintain and improve their professional qualifications.

The quality of the graduates from such institutions necessarily suffers also. Who needs such non-competitive "minds"? The rate at which the educational and technological chasm between Russia and the world's leading countries is growing will only increase.

Already now, Russia's scientific institutions and universities lack access to everything from subscriptions to the latest technical journals to modern lab equipment. That will one day take its toll.

The second reason is both ideological and psychological. Life in Russia is simpler and more familiar. Western society requires residents to jump through numerous hoops in order to live a highly regulated lifestyle - in contrast to what Russians had imagined about the West back in the late 1980s. The difficult demographic situation in Russia also means that jobs are available for practically everyone, including the dullest and laziest.

The low overall level of competency in all fields makes it possible for employees to earn more money with less effort than comparable workers in a more competitive country could ever hope to bring home. And the "informal" but illegal arrangements that characterize so much of Russian life make it possible for people who excel at such things to earn a tolerable existence without much hassle.

In addition, the government has enough cash in its coffers to afford such a lazy lifestyle to state employees and their dependents for at least another 10 years. Today's Russian youth would prefer a cushy government job with little responsibility and great "side benefits" to a diploma from Harvard. But their real dream is to land a career with a state corporation where illicit wealth abounds for anyone with gumption and little regard for principle.

Thus, the number of Russians adequately skilled in their professions to work in the outside world will rapidly decline in the near future. And when the question arises, "Is it time yet to get out of here?" the answer will increasingly be: "Nobody needs you over there, anyway."

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#5
Irrusssianality
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/
August 5, 2015
THREE HEADLINES
By Paul Robinson
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa.

Three headlines have caught my eyes this week, all of them deserving a short commentary:

Russia claims the North Pole.  The Russian government has just submitted a revised claim to parts of the Arctic Ocean, including the North Pole, in accordance with the process laid out by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). You can read the executive summary of the claim here. To my surprise, so far the media here in Canada have been remarkably fair in their coverage of the issue. The Ottawa Citizen, for instance, cited Arctic affairs expert Professor Michael Byers saying that, 'Russia showed surprising restraint in its new Arctic claim compared with Denmark's provocative bid last year, and diplomats should be relieved that Russia has chosen to follow to international rules in its submission and not create tension in the area.' Indeed, in putting forward its claim, Russia is following the procedure laid out by UNCLOS, and the matter is now in the hands of the United Nations. There is no cause for alarm.

Russians are dying more and giving birth less. The last decade saw a significant improvement in Russia's demographic situation, with Russians living longer and having more children. But, according to the Russian statistical service Rosstat, this trend has now been reversed. The death rate in the first quarter of 2015 was 5.2% more than a year previously, while the birth rate was 5.7% less. According to the Deputy Minister of Health, Veronica Skvortsov, 'This is not because the population is getting older. The death rate is increasing among young people, aged 30 to 45 ... For the first time in years the number of suicides and alcohol poisonings ... have increased. This is a big problem.' It is not clear yet whether this is a one-off or the start of a new negative trend, but either way it is undoubtedly bad news.

Robert Conquest has died. During the Cold War, when the true nature of the Soviet Union's communist regime remained disputed, the works of British historian Robert Conquest were revelatory. Books such as The Great Terror, The Nation Killers, and The Harvest of Sorrow exposed the enormous extent of Stalinist repression, and ensured that public opinion in the West would remain resolutely anti-Soviet. Like many other Cold Warriors, however, Conquest didn't manage the transition to the post-Soviet era very well. Documents from newly opened archives revealed that some of his claims were exaggerated, but rather than accept this, he clung to his original position. As a result, his reputation suffered somewhat. Still, despite its faults, his work provided the foundation on which a generation of historians built. As a young man, I found his books enthralling, and they helped to inspire me to become a historian myself. Conquest was one of the giants of Soviet studies, and his death is a great loss to the field.

 #6
Al Jazeera America
August 6, 2015
As ties with the West suffer, Russia embraces its own 'East'
Putin sees Muslim leaders as allies in forging a new multipolar world order no longer dominated by the U.S. and Europe
By Joshua Kucera
Josh Kucera is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul. He is a regular contributor to EurasiaNet, Jane's, Slate, and The Wilson Quarterly; his articles also have appeared in The Atlantic, ForeignPolicy.com, The International Herald Tribune, Al Jazeera English, The Diplomat, and U.S. News and World Report. He blogs on Eurasian defense and security at The Bug Pit.

KAZAN, Russia - Rustam Batrov, the 37-year-old, baby-faced deputy mufti of Tatarstan, is warm and engaging as he describes the renaissance of his faith in the republic, one of the traditional centers of Russian Islam. More than 1,500 mosques have been built in Tatarstan since the collapse of communism, Muslim holidays are now state holidays, and the government supports Islamic studies.

But when the conversation turns to the conflict between Russia and the West over Ukraine, and the sanctions that have slowed Russia's economy, Batrov's voice rises. "Yes, we're suffering. But for a Russian it's his soul that's important," he says, brandishing last year's model of the iPhone. "Of course I'd like to buy an iPhone 6, and I don't have the money. But never mind - we're right, we're doing something great, we're not giving up. It's like what we had in the Soviet Union - that we're a world power, that we're saving the world, we're helping developing countries, internationalism."

An enthusiastic embrace of Russian, much less Soviet, power may seem unlikely coming from a Muslim cleric. Historically, Muslims have been at best tolerated, and often persecuted, in Russia, where either Orthodox Christianity or socialist atheism has been the state ideology. And today, President Vladimir Putin's political dominance and Russia's newly assertive foreign policy have been in large part driven by Russian nationalism as Putin has tried to defend the rights of Russia-identifying people in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

But there is another, countervailing trend that also has been gaining momentum: the government's embrace of its multinational identity, in particular its Muslim heritage. And many of the country's Muslim leaders, in turn, have taken the opportunity to position themselves as allies of the regime by defending traditional values against the decadence of the West.

"Just like after the fall of Byzantium, [when] Moscow saw itself as the Third Rome, defending orthodoxy, under Stalin we were the defenders of the proletariat, [and] today Russia is the defender of traditional values on the world stage," says Batrov.

This "traditional values" agenda has been a key ideological justification for Russia's break with Europe and the U.S. and Moscow's redoubled efforts to strengthen ties with Asia, in particular China. Just as Washington is attempting to execute a "pivot to Asia," Russia has the equivalent strategic catchphrase: the "razvorot na vostok" - the "turn to the East." And while the realpolitik in this strategy is inescapable, Putin and the Kremlin have attempted to explain it in terms of values: the traditional family and community of the East versus the individualism and libertinism of the West.

"We can see how many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilization," Putin said in a 2013 speech to an international foreign policy conference. "They are implementing policies that equate large families with same-sex partnerships, belief in God with the belief in Satan."

Meanwhile, Batrov is far from the only Russian Muslim cleric to invoke the spiritual dimensions of foreign policy. The two top-ranking Muslim officials in Russia, Talgat Tadzhuddin and Ravil Gainutdin, frequently appear with Putin in public and regularly criticize NATO, Ukraine's new government and Western values. In doing so, they have tapped into the obscure, but increasingly popular, intellectual school of "Eurasianism," which posits that Russia is not European but rather has more in common with an often hazily defined "East."

"Beginning with the Renaissance, Europeans have rejected faith in the Creator, because it was burdensome to them. The pursuit of wealth for personal gain eclipsed everything else, individual desires were placed above common interests, and an anthropocentric type of thinking dominated. These were called universal values, and then these values were spread across the entire world, including by colonialist methods," Gainutdin said in a December speech to an international Islamic forum in Russia. "The West is a hegemon in the contemporary world, but it doesn't want to take responsibility for the fruit of its hegemony."

Many younger, lower-ranking clerics are prolific bloggers and opine on earthly geopolitics as well as more celestial concerns. In September, a new central mosque will open in Moscow, and various leaders from Muslim counties in the Middle East and elsewhere are expected to attend. The event will be " 'zero hour' in the formation of a Eurasian trend in the Muslim world," wrote Damir Mukhetdinov, the second-ranking mufti in the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of the Russian Federation, one of the country's two main Muslim organizations, on his blog. "The informal Russia-Muslim world summit ... can be the first brick in the foundation of a completely new system of Eurasian security."

It's not clear to what extent this is genuinely believed and how much is political pragmatism. "Gainutdin - first of all, he's an opportunist," says Rafael Khamikov, director of the Institute of History at the Tatarstan Academy of Science and a proponent of what he calls "Euro-Islam," an alternative, Western-oriented vision of Russian Islam. "What the Kremlin tells him ..." Khakimov trails off and laughs. "If he were sitting here with us he'd say something different, and all the more so if he were speaking Tatar instead of Russian."

In light of the limits on speech in Russia, embracing Eurasianism clearly gives Muslim leaders more room to maneuver. "All spiritual leaders express devotion to Putin's path, and they do it in a particularly opportunistic form to flatter the Kremlin - calling Russia and Ukraine 'a common civilization of Slavs and Turks,' " wrote Alexei Malashenko, one of Russia's leading experts on Islam, in a recent op-ed. "One can understand the Muslim leaders - the current external and internal politics of the state don't allow for any other, more flexible approaches."

Indeed, there is a hint of the tactical in Batrov's embrace of Russian traditional values. "Personally, I have nothing against gay marriage," he says. "But people see this as Europe losing its way." And he smiles as he adds, "We have you Americans to thank for bringing us all together like this."

Tactical or not, as Russia becomes more estranged from Europe, the Kremlin is reciprocating its Muslim leaders' support. The number of Muslims in Russia is difficult to determine, but Putin tends to use the figure of 20 million, which would make Muslims about 15 percent of the population. (Independent estimates suggest the number may be closer to 15 million.) They are split roughly equally between the Volga region (which includes Tatarstan) and the North Caucasus, and those two groups historically have little connection other than both being subsumed by Russian imperial expansion.

Traditionally the Volga Tatars have been enthusiastic allies of the Russian empire, while the Caucasus has resisted Russian assimilation. That pattern largely persists; the leaders of the two most prominent national Muslim groups are Tatars, and Kazan, Tatarstan's capital, has become a sort of showcase for Russian efforts to woo the Muslim world. One of Russia's most prosperous cities, it is a magnet for domestic tourism. Russians come to photograph themselves in fanciful oriental costumes and tour the Kul Sharif mosque, destroyed in 1552 when Russia conquered the city and reconstructed in 2005 to celebrate the 1,000th anniversary of the city's founding.

In June, Tatarstan hosted an economic summit of the leading Muslim international group, the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation. Also this year, the Kremlin formed a new Russia-Islamic World Strategic Vision Group, aimed at boosting ties between Russia and Muslim countries, and named the president of Tatarstan, Rustam Minnikhanov, its chair.

Most controversially, the Volga Tatar religious and political authorities have served as envoys to the Crimean Tatars during Russia's annexation of the formerly Ukrainian territory, traveling to Crimea to meet with Tatar leaders there. The Crimean Tatar leadership was among the most outspoken in its opposition to joining Russia, believing its rights would be better protected within Ukraine than in Russia. Volga Tatar leaders say they acknowledged the Crimeans' objections, but tried to convince them that they would prosper in Russia.

"Of course there was some concern here for the Crimean Tatars," says the Russian Islamic University's rector, Rafik Mukhametshin, who was among the Volga Tatar envoys. "We tried to show that in Russia you can adapt ... but from the beginning the Crimean Tatars were against joining Russia. How much that's changed, I don't know."

In any case, the issue is not the subject of much public discussion in Tatarstan, says Azat Akhunov, a scholar at the Kazan Federal University's Institute for International Relations, History and Oriental Studies. "To speak against the unification almost means you're an enemy of Russia. It's basically impossible to say that out loud," he says. "There are people like that, but they stay quiet."

The other center of Volga Islam is Bashkortostan, whose capital, Ufa, was the site of Russia's first official Islamic organization, the Muslim Spiritual Assembly, established in 1788 by Empress Catherine the Great. In 2013, during a trip to Ufa to celebrate the 225th anniversary of the assembly, Putin said it had "helped Muslims become true Russian patriots" and praised "traditional Islam as an important spiritual component of Russia's identity."

In July, Ufa hosted joint summits of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS group, two emerging alliances that Putin sees as key building blocks in his attempt to create a new, multipolar world no longer dominated by the United States and Europe. Summit organizers strove to present Ufa as the embodiment of Russia's unique place between East and West. And despite the relative unimportance of the Muslim world in Russia's new geopolitical vision - the focus in Ufa was primarily on China and India - Russia's self-identification with the East was represented by its Islamic heritage. The regional history museum featured an exhibit on the ancient Silk Road, while the city's art museum hosted an exhibit, The Image of the East in Russian Art, with paintings from Russia's Muslim regions. Summit visitors were given a book, "Bashkortostan at the Junction of Europe and Asia." Putin held a one-on-one meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at an Ufa mosque.

The North Caucasus, meanwhile, has for the most part hewn to its historic opposition to Russian rule, though today the insurgency that has wracked the region since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been largely pacified. And in a remarkable break with historical precedent, Chechnya - once the center of that insurgency - is now under the firm control of a president, Ramzan Kadyrov, who enforces a sort of sharia law in the republic even as he maintains warm relations with Putin. Photos of Putin and Kadyrov's father, the former top mufti of separatist Chechnya, who later changed sides to support Russia, are ubiquitous in Grozny, the capital, which has been completely rebuilt with Kremlin aid after years of civil war. The main street is Putin Boulevard, alcohol is now banned in public, nearly all women cover their hair, and the hijab is required for girls in school.

Kadyrov, like the official Russian muftis, often expresses his support for Russia's combative stance against Europe, and he tends to do so in blunt terms. "Unfortunately, many Russians admire Europeans, their way of life, though for the most part Europeans have neither culture nor morality," he once said. Putin's close relations with Kadyrov have disconcerted both liberals and nationalist conservatives in Russia, especially as the Chechen leader has been outspoken in expressing more radical positions on social issues, and Kremlin officials have sometimes echoed him.

This spring, a national controversy erupted over news that a senior local police official in Chechnya, aged 46, planned to take a 17-year-old girl as a second wife. Kadyrov endorsed the marriage, and so did Kremlin officials, despite the fact that polygamy is illegal in Russia. Vsevolod Chaplin, the official spokesman of the Russian Orthodox Church - which has very close ties to the Kremlin - said, "I'm surprised that the same circles who often defend single-sex marriage are now lashing out against Islamic polygamy... Russia has many different peoples with different traditions." And after al-Qaeda-linked attackers killed 12 people at the offices of the French satirical journal Charlie Hebdo, Kadyrov criticized the magazine for its cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. "We have often forgiven even those guilty of the deaths of loved ones. But we will not allow anyone to insult the prophet, even if it will cost us our lives," the Chechen leader wrote on Instagram.

The Kremlin's rhetorical embraces of Islam are not always accompanied by concrete support. Gainutdin wrote a public letter to Putin last year urging his backing in a Supreme Court case involving a ban on girls wearing headscarves to school in the Republic of Mordovia; in February the court upheld the ban. For years, authorities had refused to allow the construction of more mosques in Moscow, and even after the new mosque opens in September, there will only be four buildings to serve an estimated Muslim population of 1.5 million. And Muslims remain underrepresented among the country's political elite: In the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta's most recent power ranking of the 100 leading political figures in the country, only five were of Muslim backgrounds.

Further, the Kremlin's rapprochement with Islam extends only to forms that the regime deems traditional, which it contrasts with newer, nontraditional versions, particularly Salafism. Russia's official Muslim leaders have been vocal in attempting to discredit Salafism and the groups that espouse it, such as the Caucasus Emirate and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL. (Occasionally those two lines of rhetoric intersect; Kadyrov has repeatedly claimed that ISIL is an American plot.)

And popular Islamophobia still persists, fueled by violent attacks from radicals from the North Caucasus and large-scale labor migration from Muslim countries of Central Asia. But that, too, may be changing. Part of this is the result of the geopolitical climate, says Kazan Federal University's Akhunov. He monitors social media and the Internet for popular attitudes about Islam, and he says there was a substantial change after news emerged that many Chechens were fighting on the side of pro-Russia rebels in eastern Ukraine.

"From then, Russian attitudes toward Muslims completely changed. Especially people from the Caucasus: 'They're not bad. They're fighting on our side, for the interests of Russia,' " Akhunov says. "The first target of abuse used to be Muslims, especially from the Caucasus and migrants from Central Asia. But that rhetoric has changed sharply. Everyone has noticed this. Now there is a new target: Ukrainians."

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 #7
Bloomberg
August 4, 2015
Putin Accused of 'Terror' Against Elite by Barred Opposition
by Henry MeyerIrina Reznik

Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny accused President Vladimir Putin of waging a campaign of "terror" to keep the country's elite loyal and said the government is blocking anti-Kremlin candidates from elections.

Navalny, an anti-corruption lawyer who challenged a Putin ally for Moscow mayor in 2013, said the authorities are orchestrating moves to keep the opposition off the ballot in regional polls in September. His pro-democracy coalition wants to use the vote as a springboard to gain seats in parliament next year.

"Putin doesn't believe in elections, he believes in hanging onto power," Navalny said Tuesday in an interview in his office in Moscow. "He's very afraid of a split in the elite, and to ensure this doesn't happen you have to terrorize the elite." The opposition leader cited recent criminal charges against officials, including several linked to one who agreed to debate Navalny, as examples of Kremlin efforts to intimidate insiders.

Putin, 62, who's led Russia for a decade and a half, is confronting the country's first recession in six years after the price of Russia's main export, oil, more than halved in the past 12 months. The economy has also been dragged down by U.S. and European sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine.

Near-Record Approval

Opinion polls show Putin is still riding a wave of patriotic support linked to the Ukrainian crisis, with near-record approval ratings of above 85 percent and few outward indications of tensions within the elite.

Election officials and prosecutors have denied political motivation for decisions that have blocked opposition candidates from the ballots in several regions. Putin has said his opponents suffer from low popularity, not official pressure.

Navalny, 39, said the recent filing of new criminal charges against associates of Anatoly Chubais, the architect of Russia's privatizations in the 1990s who now heads the state nanotechnology company, was a sign that Putin won't tolerate any breaking of ranks.

After Chubais called Navalny a "promising" politician in a televised debate in June, two of the state manager's allies were detained for alleged embezzlement. Other associates have since fled the country. The Kremlin has banned officials and executives of state companies from giving Navalny, who has 1.3 million followers on social media, any kind of publicity, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Putin is "effectively stripping 30 percent of the population of political representation, the residents of big cities who are dissatisfied with the authorities," Navalny said.

Criminal Probes

Candidates from Navalny's opposition party, RPR-Parnas, are being barred from registering for Sept. 14 polls on the grounds that petition signatures were falsified. There are criminal probes against opposition organizers in Novosibirsk in Siberia and the party's electoral chief in the Kostroma region, north-east of Moscow, is under detention.

Next year's national parliamentary polls are likely to see a repeat of the same tactics to keep RPR-Parnas out of the lower house, the State Duma, Navalny predicted. He said he would call for a boycott of the election if opposition candidates are kept off the ballot.

RPR-Parnas is capable of winning at least 20 seats in the 450-member Duma, in which only four pro-Kremlin parties are now represented, the opposition politician said.

In his office, Navalny keeps prison photos of his brother Oleg, who was sentenced in December to 3 1/2 years in prison for allegedly defrauding the Russian branch of French cosmetics company Yves Rocher. Navalny has been given two suspended sentences, one in the Yves Rocher trial and another in a separate embezzlement case.

After leading the biggest street protests of Putin's rule in 2011-2012, sparked by alleged fraud in parliamentary elections, Navalny finished second with 27 percent in Moscow mayoral elections in September 2013 against Kremlin-backed Sergei Sobyanin, almost forcing a run-off vote.

Threat to Legitimacy

It's impossible to predict how long Putin, who can seek a new six-year term in 2018 elections, will stay in power, according to Navalny.

"Horribly ineffective regimes have lasted for decades in Cuba and in Zimbabwe," he said.

What is clear is that the authorities' decision to prevent the opposition from taking part in the elections is dangerous because it undermines credibility, according to Nikolai Petrov, a professor of political science at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

"This policy is very short-sighted," Petrov said. "The main risk is that if your only source of legitimacy is one person, the leader of the country and his high popularity rating, you don't have any factors to prop up the political system should he or his support disappear."

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#8
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
August 5, 2015
Press Digest: Antony Beevor history books banned in Sverdlovsk Region
RBTH presents a selection of views from leading Russian media on international events, featuring reports on orders to remove history books from school libraries in the Urals, and the techniques being used to falsify signatures in regional elections, as well as analysis by Russian experts on Greece's economic collapse and its significance for Russia.
Yelena Temchenko, special to RBTH

Russian academics outraged by demand to remove history books from schools

The Kommersant business daily reports that the Education Ministry of the Sverdlovsk Region in the Urals [800 miles east of Moscow] has ordered history books published with the support of American millionaire George Soros's foundation to be removed from school libraries.

Directors of educational institutes in the Sverdlovsk Region are required to "remove from the access of students and pedagogical collaborators" all books by British historians Antony Beevor and John Keegan, which, the document says, "propagandize stereotypes formed during the Third Reich."

The decision has outraged Russian historians. "Of course, we have a rather critical position on Beevor's books, but he is a famous expert," remarked member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and co-chairman of the Russian Historical Society Alexander Chubaryan. "Whatever the case, a history teacher must familiarize himself with various points of view, in order to juxtapose them."

The idea of the necessity to remove scientific books from libraries on ideological grounds also disappoints Ivan Kurilla, professor at the European University in St. Petersburg and member of the Free Historical Society Council. "This is pure fascism. It would have been better to just add good Russian works and start a serious discussion on war in schools," he said.
 
Greek collapse and European Union giving Russia cause for concern

The centrist newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta has published the opinions of a number of experts on Greece's economic collapse.

Nikita Kulikov, executive director of the Heads Consulting company, remarked that Greece will always be pulling the EU down unless the tough decisions to either declare bankruptcy or write off Greece's debts are taken.

"Unfortunately, both solutions are unacceptable. The first - due to the financial losses, to which the EU will never agree, and the second - not only because of the financial losses but also because of the possibility of creating a precedent that subsequently other borrowers may take advantage of."

Another Nezavisimaya Gazeta source said that the collapse of the Greek market should not have any serious impact on the European economy, since the Greek economy is relatively small.

Yet Daniil Nametkin, an expert at the Analytical Center of the Russian Government, added that signs that the EU economy is slowing down can already be seen. "In particular, industrial production in the eurozone in May 2015 unexpectedly decreased by 0.4 percent," he said.

Some experts are worried about the fact that Europe's problems may have an influence on Russia's economy. Director of Investments at AGT-Invest Dmitry Nuzhdeny stressed that "Russia is still closely tied to the EU, despite the sanctions and the food embargo."

He also pointed out that a reverse trend in relations is not being observed: When positive changes begin to appear in the European economy, they have little effect on Russia.
 
Secondary databases used to falsify citizens' signatures for election candidates

The Gazeta.ru online newspaper reports that signatures in favor of certain candidates in regional elections are often gathered illegally.

"Often signatures are forged," said a political consultant cited by the publication. "Sometimes the candidate knows about it, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes 'proportions' are created on how many real ones there should be and how many can be falsified."

Gazeta.ru explains that in order to fill in a falsified signature sheet in favor of an election candidate, the citizen's personal data is required, as well as their signature. Usually, to acquire data and falsify the signature, information from secondary databases is used: various financial organizations, medical insurance policies, driver's certificates, mobile phone companies, etc.

"The paradox is that if a competent team worked on the falsification, then the 'forged signatures' are almost always better than the real ones," remarked a political analyst interviewed by Gazeta.ru.

According to the source, the "forged" data has a better chance of passing inspection by election committees, since the people who fill in the pages do it more carefully and attentively than volunteers or other collectors who gather real signatures."

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 #9
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
August 5, 2015
Russians split over destruction of banned food imports
Russian is to destroy confiscated Western food products that fall under the Russian embargo at the border starting from August 6. According to the presidential decree, embargoed foods will be destroyed both at the border and after being seized from stores. However, some observers are calling on the government not to destroy the products, but give them to the needy.
Alexei Lossan, RBTH

Plans by Russian authorities to destroy confiscated products that fall under the Russian embargo on Western food imports at the border have met with mixed reactions among Russian commentators, with some in favor of the decree, which enters force on Aug. 6, while others have called for the seized foodstuffs to be distributed to schools, orphanages and other similar institutions.

The decree, signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 29, 2015, according to the official website of the head of state, concerns produce from the United States, the European Union and all the countries that introduced sanctions against Russia over the Ukrainian crisis.

However, the rule does not apply to foods brought into the country by individuals for their own personal use.
 
Nationwide search

According to the presidential decree, the destruction of banned food imports will be carried out immediately after their seizure. Moreover, the authorities will seek banned foods not only on the border but also throughout the country, including stores and retailers' warehouses.

How much banned produce is crossing the border?

According to the Federal Customs Service - the official agency that records imports and exports in the country - the controlling authorities seized 552 tons of banned products in the first half of 2015. In turn, as Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich noted, the regulatory authorities have recorded approximately 700-800 food embargo violations in recent months. Russian authorities have also seized 44.8 tons of embargoed products from stores.

The process of elimination will be documented in photo and video form, and must take place in the presence of at least two impartial persons.

Deputy Agriculture Minister Yevgeny Gromyko told the Russian news agency Interfax that plans are already in place for disposing of fats, cheeses, fruit and vegetables; they will be burned in special furnaces, but the question of how to dispose of meat products remains unresolved.

Timur Nigmatullin, an analyst at investment holding Finam, says that banned goods are continuing to leak across the Russian border principally because of the legal framework on which the Eurasian Union - the Russia-led economic organization of which Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia are also members - is based.

"The impossibility of the implementation of the embargo is fully due to the peculiarities of the supranational law and customs regulations in the framework of the Eurasian Union," said Nigmatullin, explaining out that the weak link in the chain is Belarus.

Minsk has pointedly not followed Russia in implementing sanctions against EU food imports, while border controls between Belarus and Russia are practically non-existent.

However, Nigmatulin argues that on the whole the food embargo has been a success for Russia.

"The introduction of the food embargo had both geopolitical and macroeconomic grounds in the form of support for domestic producers. In both cases the desired effect has been reached," he said.

According to him, even the imperfection of economic institutions and government regulation in the country in this respect is not critical.

However, Ilya Balakirev, chief analyst at the UFS investment company, disagreed that the food embargo could be described as a success in view of the new decree, saying that the provision "states a physical inability to fully control the importation of the embargoed products."
 
'A reverent attitude to food'

The presidential decree has caused different reactions in society, said Natalya Shagaida of the Center for Agricultural and Food Policy at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, who said that she personally had an "extremely negative attitude" to such practices.

"In general, Russians have quite a reverent attitude to food, to the work of those who produce it. A large part of the population sees the burning [and] destruction of benign products as blasphemous," she said.

According to Shagaida, Russian citizens reduced their consumption during the crisis and eliminated costly products from their diet, as evidenced by the retail food index.

According to the Economic Development Ministry, retail trade turnover decreased by 8 percent in the first half of 2015, including by 7.7 percent in the food sector and by 8.3 percent in the non-food product group.

"It is better to confiscate benign products instead of liquidation, thus punishing those suppliers or customers who violate the government's decisions, and then to transfer them to schools, orphanages, homes for the disabled," said Shagaida.

However, according to Ilya Balakirev, the destruction of produce is, in general, a common practice in many developed countries.

In turn, according to the Russian daily Izvestia, the State Duma deputy from the center-left party A Just Russia, Andrei Krutov, has sent a letter to Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachyov calling for the government not to destroy the banned food products but send them to the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, where the population continues to suffer from food shortages amid an unresolved conflict between Ukrainian government troops and Russian-backed militants.

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 #10
Sputnik
August 5, 2015
Beyond Expectations: Russia's Service Sector Showing Astonishing Growth

Russia's services sector is demonstrating astonishing growth, hitting a 20-month high in July, despite low oil prices and an anti-Russia sanctions policy maintained by the West.

Contrary to US President Obama's gloomy predictions, Russia's economy is not in tatters, a Markit survey has indicated Wednesday.

"July's headline Business Activity Index for the [Russian] service sector recorded a level of 51.6, up from 49.5 in the previous month... Moreover, the rate of growth accelerated to the highest recorded for twenty months amid reports that a more positive economic climate was driving demand for services upwards," the latest report released by Markit, a global provider of financial information services, reads.

The report notes that the respective Composite Output Index improved to 50.9 in July, up from 49.5 in the preceding month.

The rate of inflation eased to the lowest seen for 11 months, while the unemployment rate "inexplicably" declined to 5.4 percent.

"Amid reports of a gradually improving business climate, which led to the best increase in new work for 20 months, the Russian service sector helped to drive some marginal growth of the economy at the start of the third quarter of 2015," Senior Economist at Markit Paul Smith emphasized in the report.

In general, Russia has done better than anyone expected, Western experts admit.

In mid-July Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev claimed that the worst scenarios for Russia's economy have been avoided.

"The worst scenarios, perhaps, did not take place. The economic situation remains difficult, but controlled, thanks, among other things, to the joint work of the government, the Central Bank, the legislature," Medvedev said.

In turn Russia's Economy Minister Alexey Ulyukayev emphasized that Russia had already passed "the lowest point," adding that from the third quarter, "there will be some adjustment."

The Russian economy had previously faced a downturn caused by the global fall in oil prices and, to a lesser extent, by sanctions policy imposed by the West.

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#11
Destruction of banned food imports is forced but effective measure - analysts
By Tamara Zamyatina

MOSCOW, August 6. /TASS/. Russian presidential decree (effective as of Thursday) requiring the elimination of foods imported from those countries which had agreed to join the current campaign of sanctions against Russia is a forced measure and a very harsh one, but it has already borne fruit, polled experts have told TASS.

According to Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, at the moment about 800 attempts at violating the embargo have been identified. On Tuesday the first batch of a prohibited a food item - 114 tons of pork brought in from the European Union under forged documents - was eliminated. On Thursday, 20 tons of cheese and also three truckloads of peaches will be destroyed. The chief of the agriculture watchdog Sergey Dankvert said on Wednesday that since the decree to destroy prohibited items was signed the attempts to bring them into Russia had instantly dwindled by 90%.

In the meantime, by last Wednesday the website Change.org collected 200,000 signatures over just one week in protest against the elimination of foods. The director of the Political Studies Institute, Sergey Markov, has called for providing solid arguments for the public at large to realize the products under sanctions should be eliminated.

"The embargoed foods are brought into Russia illegally. The accompanying documents are forgeries. Thorough examination will be required whether these products are good enough for food and can be sent to homes for the aged or to orphanages. That's a rather costly procedure. Tens of tonnes of food are involved," Markov told TASS.

"The embargoed products arriving in Russia create a favorable environment for corruption. If these foods are not destroyed, corrupt officials will be just stealing them.

Auctioning the items would be useless. There exist well-oiled shadow patterns devised by those who bring in illegal products and bidders who buy these at auctions for next to nothing. By virtue of these reasons the decision was made to eliminate illegal foods," Markov explained.

A member of the Civic Chamber, Dmitry Chugunov, believes that "domestic farm producers will never be able to achieve positive results unless Russia manages to shrug off its dependence on food import."

"The aim of the measures being taken to destroy embargoed foods is to crack down on the grey retail market in Russia. The government sees no other means of wiping out illegal farm produce supply patterns," the president of the National Strategy Institute, Mikhail Remizov told TASS.
 

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 #12
Sputnik
August 6, 2015
Bread and Butter of Russian Food Embargo: What, When, Why and for How Long?

Sputnik provides a detailed story on Russian food embargo. Find out history, details and consequences of Russia's embargo on import of food from Western countries.

On August 6, 2014, Russia imposed a year-long embargo on import of food from the European Union, the United States and some other Western countries, in response to sanctions imposed against it over the Ukraine crisis.

At the time, Russia was the European Union's second-biggest market for food exports.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev immediately ordered the agriculture ministry to find ways to boost Russian agricultural output in order to avoid consumer price increases.

The following day, the Russian government approved and published a black list of agricultural products, raw materials and foodstuffs subject to the import ban, should they originate in the United States, EU member states, Canada, Australia or Norway.

The ban targeted chilled and frozen beef, pork and poultry; salted, dried and smoked meat, fish and crustaceans; mollusks and other invertebrates. It also included milk and dairy products, vegetables, edible roots and tubers, fruits and nuts, sausage and similar meat, meat byproducts and blood products. The list also contained finished products, such as cheese and cottage cheese based on vegetable fats.

On August 20, the Russian government removed the following items from the banned list: seed material (potatoes, peas, sweet hybrid corn, and pearl onion), biologically active supplements, vitamin and mineral complexes designed to address vitamin and mineral deficiencies in the human organism, flavors and food additives, protein concentrates and mixtures thereof, dietary fiber, dietary supplements and lactose-free dairy products, as well as salmon and trout fingerlings.

In response to the Russian countermeasures, the European Commission implemented an array of steps to support its agricultural producers.

Since August 17, the European Commission has provided 33 million euro ($35.8 million) to support the peach and nectarine market, 125 million euro for producers of perishable fruit and vegetables, with targeted support for the storage of butter, powdered milk and cheese, as well as 30 million euro for programs to promote European agricultural products.

On September 10, the payments were frozen.

On September 29, the European Commission adopted a new 165-million-euro program to compensate agricultural producers affected by the Russian food embargo.

For the first time, the list of supported sectors included orange, tangerine, and clementine producers. The subsidy program was also extended to fruit and vegetable producers in the following categories: apples, pears, carrots, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, kiwi, plums and table grapes. The new program also established strict criteria for the selection of European agricultural producers who could qualify for compensation. The European Commission was to make decisions based on a analysis of the volumes and trends in their exports to Russia over the past three years.

In December 2014, the European Commission said it was ready to adopt additional emergency market measures for perishable fruit and vegetables in the wake of the Russian ban.

The additional measures were in force until June 2015. They were designed to remove certain categories of products from the market in certain EU countries so they would not influence EU prices.

On June 25, 2015, Russia extended its food embargo for a year, until August 5, 2016 in response to the extension of the EU sanctions until January 31, 2016.

The initial 2014 list of products banned for import into Russia underwent some changes and eased certain requirements.

Oysters and mussels were taken off the list, but certain provisions were added that completely excluded the import of any of cheeses or lactose-free products, except those vital for people suffering from lactose insufficiency and registered as medicinal and dietary products.

The embargo did not affect alcohol or canned fish, flowers or sweets, as proposed by the heads of various Russian agencies.

On July 30, 2015, the European Commission extended its agricultural support measures, introduced in response to the Russian embargo.

According to the European Commission, as of 2013, Lithuania was the largest exporter of agricultural and food products to Russia in the European Union (927 million euro); Poland was second (841 million euro) and Germany third (595 million euro). Dairy products constituted the largest share of EU exports to Russia in 2013 (1.349 billion euro), followed by fruit (1.258 billion euro), meat and cooked sausages (1.233 billion euro), vegetables (769 million euro), prepackaged food products (489 million euro) and fish products (154 million euro).

According to the Economic Development Ministry, between August 2014 and April 2015, food imports to Russia from countries subject to the countersanctions dropped by $2.5 billion.

Copa-Cogeca, an association of European farmers and agri-cooperatives, has estimated that, as of late July 2015, agricultural producers in EU countries have lost 5.5 billion euro as a result of the Russian food embargo.

The Austrian Institute for Economic Research (Wifo) said that the economic crisis in Russia, partially caused by the EU sanctions, could cost Europe 100 billion euro and two million jobs in the next few years. The European Commission has an opposing opinion, assessing the consequences of the anti-Russian sanctions as "relatively insignificant" and manageable.

Earlier this year, Medvedev stated that during the first months of 2015, imports of sanctioned products dropped by at least a third, but "the market almost did not notice that."

Meanwhile, Russia has boosted its domestic food production, as well as increasing food imports from Latin American, Asian and CIS counties.

On Tuesday, the Russian Agricultural Ministry announced that it was drafting a bill that would ban certain food imports from seven more countries - Albania, Montenegro, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Ukraine and Georgia - as they supported the latest EU extension of the restrictive measures against Russia.

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 #13
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
August 5, 2015
European businesses adapt to sanctions on Russia
RD interview: Chairman of the Association of European Business in Russia Philippe Pegorier explains how European businesses view the current political crisis between Russia and Europe and offers his take on how these businesses are adjusting to Western sanctions.
By Alexey Khlebnikov

Philippe Pegorier, the chairman of the Association of European Business(AEB) in Russia, the largest foreign business association in the country, has been working in Russia for the last 35 years and has been living in the country for about 20 years. He is well aware of how to do business in Russia and what European business thinks about current political tensions between the European Union (EU) and Russia.

On the sidelines of the Greater Europe meetings in Paris, he talked to Russia Direct about the current state of trade and economic relations between Europe and Russia. As Pegorier explains, European businesses are not as worried about anti-Russian sanctions as people might think because they have already localized their production within Russia.

Russia Direct: It's been a year since Russia and the European Union initiated mutual sanctions. Are French and European businesses suffering as a result of sanctions?

Philippe Pegorier: Of course, French as well as European businesses in general suffer. But in my view, small and medium companies suffer significantly more than big ones.

The big companies have already localized their production lines in Russia and produce in Russia.

If we look at cumulative European investments in Russia they total about €170 billion ($190 billion). This is to say that we have our factories and plants in Russia and we created 500,000 workspaces, which is quite an impressive number. Therefore, in general, we continue our work.

We are trying to localize our production in Russia even more and there are two reasons for that.

The first and the most important one is the Russian ruble devaluation. Before sanctions and the economic crisis, Russia was quite an expensive country in which to produce. With the ruble depreciation, it has become almost twice cheaper for us to produce in Russia.

Secondly, there is the Russian government policy that aims at attracting investments and localization of foreign production. For example, Alstom (Philippe Pegorier is also Alstom Country President in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. - Editor's note), as well as Siemens, Schneider Electric, and others had localized their production in Russia long ago. It happened because this is what our clients wanted and because our major clients were state-owned Russian companies. Only the companies that have already localized their equipment and production in Russia could successfully bid for a state tender.

This is why de facto big companies already localized their production in Russia.

And large European businesses in Russia try to do everything to keep their share of the Russian market. But we have to keep in mind that a company's share in the market is not a country's share in the market. For example, when Siemens or General Electric orders its equipment for Russia from its factories in China then it is, of course, considered as part of Chinese, not European, exports to Russia. But what is more important for a company is that it has its own equipment in the country where it operates.

RD: What is the attitude of French and European business to the policy of Brussels towards Russia?

P.P.: We are lobbying. We have been saying for a long time that we are dissatisfied and are not happy with current policy. That was pretty much clear. And our Association of European Businesses in Russia is among those that expressed concerns and dissatisfaction. We told them that these sanction against Russia are also sanctions against us, as we have such enormous investments in Russia.

So if our country wants to hurt us of course we are not pleased with that, however it is a law for us and we have to follow our French laws in the same way we have to follow laws in Russia - it is natural. We can work only in such a manner.

But sanctions against Russia are not UN sanctions that were adopted by the Security Council; hence, we can find ways of how to play around the sanctions. We can find a legal way to keep our interests untouched.

RD: What do you see as the possible way out of the current crisis in relations between Russia and the EU?

P.P.: We, all European businesses, already said that the only way out of this crisis is to talk with Russia, to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is the way how business is done in Russia.

How can you solve an issue if there is a question which has to be discussed with the President and you refuse to talk? It is illogical. You have to meet and have a meaningful discussion of the issues of concern.

After all, Russia is our partner and neighbor. You can divorce your wife or husband, but it is impossible to do so with your neighbor. You have to get along with a neighbor. The same is with Russia - we have to get along with our neighbor.

RD: Do you think that the issue of the Mistral deal between Russia and France will not affect French-Russian trade and economic relations?

P.P.: It won't because it is the will of two presidents - Vladimir Putin and François Hollande. This is their will to solve this issue in the mutually beneficial way and not to politicize it. So far they plan that ships will stay in France and Russia will get back its money and compensation. So there are only commercial details left for negotiation.

RD: How do you see the role of the U.S. in this crisis? Does it influence European businesses?

P.P.: The U.S. always has an influence because every single big European company has business in the U.S. So, European companies have not only to observe European sanctions but also to look at the U.S. In this regard the U.S. has influence.

RD: What about U.S. influence on the political level with regards to the EU? Some say that Europeans adopted anti-Russian sanctions under U.S. pressure.

P.P.: I do not think it was merely under U.S. pressure. I do not think so. I believe it was also a common decision of the heads of the EU member states because of Crimea and Ukraine, they think Russia should respect the rule of law. In Russia there is a different view: Crimea is an integral part of Russia and it has historical justification for that.

RD: What can be done to restore EU-Russia relations? What can motivate both sides to do that?

P.P.: Firstly I want to say that since the beginning of the year, trade between Russia and the EU decreased by 12 percent. However the main reason for that are not the sanctions, it is the economic crisis. Of course, sanctions also play a certain role here but not a central role.

What should companies do? It is very simple - they should save the contacts with their partners and clients. We, European businesses, are all in Russia for the long-term and, of course, we must adapt. There will be fewer expats and more Russians to work; maybe we will produce less if there is less demand on the market. We will do everything to stay in Russia, unlike American companies that are leaving the country, such as General Motors and Hewlett-Packard.

RD: Russia is currently opening more and more for Chinese companies, which come to Russia with huge investments and projects. Don't you think that they can pose a threat by challenging European companies and business in Russia?

P.P.: Chinese companies are our competitors everywhere in the world, not only in Russia. In fact, they are not represented in Russia to the same degree as European companies are and underrepresented in Russia by way of comparison to the overall Chinese presence in the world. So, we can say that China was sort of distanced from Russia to a certain degree in terms of economic and trade cooperation. However now, the doors to Russia are wide open and the Chinese naturally enter the market. This is normal.

What is not normal is that this is happening too fast. In one year, everything has changed so fast. But the fact that Chinese companies are entering Russia is absolutely normal. There is no threat here. By the way, the trade between Russia and China dropped as well - and it is also normal because of the economic crisis and global economic slowdown.

I also want to stress the fact that Chinese companies never localize their production abroad. They produce everything in their country, which makes their ties with a partnering country less strong.

RD: What is your estimation of when the sanctions will be lifted?

P.P.: Only God knows for how many years more the sanctions will stay in place.

RD: So, you think that they will not be lifted in the next couple of years?

P.P.: Yes, because I think that sanctions will stay at their current level. I do not think that new sanctions will be introduced unless there are some negative developments, which you cannot predict to occur. So, sanction will stay for quite a long time, but for us it is not that important. We believe that economic growth will return to Russia and we will continue to grow and benefit from doing business in Russia despite the sanctions.

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 #14
New York Times
August 6, 2015
Canceling Deal for 2 Warships, France Agrees to Repay Russia
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

MOSCOW - France has reimbursed Russia for two warships that were never delivered after economic sanctions imposed against Russia last year blocked the deal.

Russia annexed Crimea, a peninsula in Ukraine last year, an act that drew international condemnation and prompted economic sanctions from the United States and Europe. The two Mistral warships, built to carry helicopters and sold to Russia in 2011, were casualties.

On Wednesday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia spoke with his French counterpart, François Hollande, by phone and they later released statements acknowledging that the deal had collapsed and that Russia had been fully reimbursed. They did not say how much money Russia received. Previous reports in the Russian news media put the sum at about $1.3 billion.

"France has already transferred these funds," the Kremlin news service said in a statement on its website. "Moscow considers the Mistral question completely resolved."

The ships were the biggest purchase of military equipment by Russia from a Western country since the fall of the Soviet Union, said Ruslan Pukhov, the director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow. The failure of the deal is symbolic of the profound break with the West over the conflict in Ukraine.

The outcome had been long expected, and Russian news reports had noted that the sticking points were mainly about how much money would be returned.

Recently, Russia's economy has been declining along with the price of oil, and Mr. Pukhov pointed out that the reimbursement might actually be welcomed in the Russian government. The ruble has fallen significantly in value against the euro since the purchase, a pattern that would have made the ships more expensive for Russia, he said.

"Under the current circumstances, this is almost a happy ending for Russia," Mr. Pukhov said, adding that even if they had been delivered before the sanctions, maintaining the ships without help in servicing them from France would have been difficult.

"Imagine you bought two Bentleys but you don't have Bentley technicians to keep them up," he said. "In a rather short time they would rot."

The sale agreement was signed by Mr. Hollande's predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, and was touted as a major advance in trade and foreign relations between France and Russia. But the sale later became a problem for Mr. Hollande, who came under intense pressure from the United States and other European countries to cancel it.

The ships are currently in France. Russian news accounts have said that the first was supposed to have been delivered last year and the second in 2016.

The ships are valued for their versatility and agility, defense experts said. Mr. Pukhov said that the French had conducted training for Russian sailors.

The Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported that the Russian equipment installed on the ships would be removed this fall, at which point France would take back full ownership.

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 #15
Russia would like to see border of its Arctic shelf expanded
By Lyudmila Alexandrova

MOSCOW, August 5. /TASS/. Achieving the expansion of continental shelf borders in the Arctic would be of great economic and political importance to Russia, experts believe. None of them dares forecast at this point if Russia's second request will be satisfied this time, given the no easy international environment, but the hope remains the science-based approach will eventually prevail.

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday submitted to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf a revised bid for expanding the area of the country's continental shelf in the Arctic by 1.2 million square kilometers. In 2001, one of the main arguments in favor of such a decision was the eastern part of the underwater Lomonosov Ridge stretching across the Arctic basin, and also the Mendeleyev Ridge, were extensions of the Eurasian mainland. In 2002, the UN Commission asked Russia for presenting extra research-based evidence to back up its request. Of late, Russia conducted a great deal of research in the Arctic. The results have been included in the revised bid, due to be considered in February-March 2016.

The Arctic for the past 20 years has been regarded as a scene of rivalry among countries affiliated with the Arctic Council (alongside Russia there are also Denmark, Canada, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Sweden and the United States). The reason behind their interest in the Arctic seas is their bed, according to some geologists, may contain about 30% of the yet-to-be-explored reserves of natural gas and 15% of unexplored oil.

The director of the Oil and Gas Geology and Geophysics Institute at the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Aleksei Kontorovich, believes that the reserves of hydrocarbons in the Arctic may prove as large as those in the Middle East. Before, they were almost inaccessible, but with the melting of the polar ice cap ever larger areas have been opening for exploration and production. The overall reserves are estimated at 286 billion tons, including 10 billion tons presumably found in the area Russia is contesting, Kommersant quotes Kantorovich as saying.

"The UN Commission's specialists are focused mostly on the results of research, but in the current global context the solution of the issue may be politicized, too, the more so since practically all littoral countries wish to see the borders of their Arctic shelf expanded," the science doyen of the Natural Resources Management Economics Institute, Aleksandr Bagin, has told TASS.

The Arctic is believed to contain huge unexplored hydrocarbon resources, but these are not the sole benefits of controlling the continental shelf. "Without obtaining consent from the country that controls the continental shelf no other state will be able to extract mineral resources, use biological resources or lay subsea communication lines. In other words, the sea shelf spells access to biological resources and the opportunity for using the territory to lay pipelines on the seabed."

Bagin agrees that all this still looks like a remote possibility, because no great amounts of hydrocarbons are extracted on the Arctic shelf at the moment.

"But this is important economically and politically. The Arctic is becoming a lucrative asset attracting not only Arctic states. China, India, South Korea and Japan have their own Arctic programs, too," Bagin said.

The expert recalled that the Arctic was officially recognized in Russia as one of the government policy's priorities.

"If common sense gains the upper hand and truly independent conclusions by experts are made, Russia will have these territories," the executive director at the Russian North Social Development Centre, senior lecturer at the presidential academy RANEPA, Vera Smorchkova, has told TASS. She agreed, though, "that in the modern conditions one can expect any outcome."

Russia is number one country as to the scale of economic activity in the Arctic.

"While all Arctic countries have a combined population of about four million, two million of them are Russian citizens. Of the 12 Arctic cities eleven are Russian," Smorchkova said.

If the borders of Russia's sea shelf in the Arctic are expanded, the newly-acquired territories will be used exclusively for economic purposes, military analyst Viktor Murakhovsky, the editor-in-chief of the Arsenal Otechestva (Arsenal of the Fatherland) magazine has said.

"No defence aspect is on the agenda. We create the corresponding systems only in our own territorial waters, while we abide by the international rules in the international waters," he said.

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 #16
Sciencealert.com
August 5, 2015
A Russian railway mogul plans to build a giant bridge from the US to Europe
You might one day be able to take a road trip from New York to London
By DAVID NIELD5

If this becomes a reality, it's going to set the scene for the ultimate cross-continental road trip. The president of the Russian railway network, Vladimir Yakunin, is concocting an ambitious plan to connect his country to Alaska via a huge bridge - it would be the final link in a theoretical 'mega-road' that would run through the United States, Russia, and Europe.

Don't get your hopes up just yet, because Yakunin first proposed the idea back in March and is struggling to convince governments and private enterprise to stump up the cash for it. Reports suggest that he's currently trying to negotiate some kind of agreement with the Chinese government, which is also looking to improve its national infrastructure.

The proposed bridge across the Bering Strait would only be one part of the jigsaw. The plans include significant upgrades for road networks across Alaska, connecting the remote city of Nome to the rest of the country (today Nome is usually reached by air, boat, or dog-sled). Roads across Russia would also be upgraded, with a brand new highway running alongside the Trans-Siberian Railway.

Some 9,977 km (6,200 miles) would have to be negotiated from one end of Russia to the other, and Yakunin wants to upgrade the railway and other infrastructure at the same time. It could eventually become an important and profitable trade route, as well as a demanding road trip for the most adventurous of travellers. The economic benefits would be felt all along the new route, according to Yakunin and his partners.

"This is an inter-state, inter-civilisation, project," Yakunin told The Siberian Times. "It should be an alternative to the current (neo-liberal) model, which has caused a systemic crisis. The project should be turned into a world 'future zone', and it must be based on leading, not catching, technologies."

The Russian Railway president still has plenty of details to work out and as yet there's no sign of support from the US.

The name of this outlandish proposal is the Trans-Eurasian Belt Development and the cost is expected to hit trillions of US dollars by the time it's finished. With that in mind, it's no wonder that no one is too keen to pony up the cash right now. Yakunin can't be faulted for his ambition though, and he remains committed to getting the project off the ground. If you're going to eventually take on the road trip, stock up first: it's going to end up being close to 20,921 km (13,000 miles).

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 #17
Deutsche Welle
August 6, 2015
US astronauts will continue travel with Russian spacecraft

NASA and Roskosmos are continuing their joint flights to the ISS until 2017, according to an agreement both sides signed. After 2017 NASA aims to return to space on their own.
Rocket Start at the Space Center in Baikonur (Foto: AFP/ Getty Images/Kirill Kudryavtsev)

Right now, all travelers have to depart from Baikonur

On Wednesday, the US space agency NASA announced it has extended an agreement with Russia's Roskosmos to provide transport for American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) through 2017.

In a letter addressed to the US Congress, NASA chief administrator Charles Bolton explained that NASA was forced to renew its contract with the Russians, rather than send its own crafts up to the ISS, due to budget contraints.

The Soyuz spacecraft successfully docked at the International Space Station, carrying a three-member crew from Russia, the US and Japan. The crew will spend five months on the ISS. (23.07.2015)

The two-year contract comes a pricetag of $490 million (more than €450 million). This is a considerable price-hike: Roskosmos previously charged $71 million for one seat in their crafts. From now on a round-trip-ticket costs $82 million.

Not too happy about dependence

NASA experts and members of Congress have repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the dependency of NASA on the Russians. NASA chief Bolden stressed repeatedly that the US needs to be capable of running its own space travel program.

"It is my sincere hope that we all agree that the greatest nation on Earth should not be dependent on others to launch humans into space," Bolden wrote in his letter. "I urge Congress to provide the funds requested for our Commercial Crew Program this year, so we can prevent this situation in the future.

Advocates of American-operated space travel became even more vocal in 2014 when the US froze its collaborative research projects with Russian scientists after Russian annexed Crimea. The only exception to this sanction was that NASA would continued cooperating with Russians on the ISS without interruption.

American astronauts have been flying to the ISS with Russian Soyuz space ships since 2010 after NASA ended its Space Shuttle program in 2011 due to cost cutting measures. Since then, the US has followed a two-tiered approach to get back into space on its own.

However, NASA also recently gave contracts to the defense companies Boeing and Space-X to build new spaceships for the near-earth orbit, meaning the crafts would be able to reach the ISS.

Together with the European space agency ESA, NASA is developing a new space ship called Orion. ESA contributes the service module, including the life support systems.

Orion is designed to explore space beyond the earth orbit - for examples for missions to moon and beyond.

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 #18
Moscow closely watching situation with issuing US visas to Russian senators - Kremlin

MOSCOW, August 6. /TASS/. The Kremlin is closely watching the situation with issuing US visas to Russian senators who plan to take part in the session of the inter-parliamentary council in New York, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.

"Of course, [the situation] is being watched, and, of course, it is being watched closely," Peskov said. "After all, we are talking about high-ranking Russian officials," he added.

The spokesman said it is necessary to wait for the decision of the US embassy first. "Let's not speculate hypothetically," he said stressing that "the topic is important" because it concerns Russia's high-ranking officials.

On July 1, the Finnish Foreign Ministry said that Russian State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin will be denied entry to Finland to participate in the session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (PA OSCE) in Helsinki on July 5-9. The decision was explained by the fact that the State Duma speaker was included in EU's "blacklist" of sanctioned officials.

Naryshkin later announced that the Russian delegation as a whole will not participate in the PA OSCE session in Helsinki, where it planned to put forward draft resolutions on impermissibility of sanctions against parliamentarians and countering Nazism rehabilitation. However, the Duma speaker confirmed that Russia plans to participate in the next PA OSCE session in Mongolia's capital Ulan Bator.

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 #19
Reuters
August 6, 2015
U.S., Russia agree on Syria chemicals weapons draft - U.S. official

The United States and Russia have reached agreement on a draft U.N. resolution aimed at identifying those behind chemical weapons attacks in Syria in order to bring them to justice, a U.S. official said on Thursday.

The United Nations Security Council is likely to vote on Friday on a U.S. proposal to ask U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon and the global chemical weapons watchdog to assemble a team of investigators to lay blame for toxic gas attacks in Syria, diplomats said.

Attributing responsibility for chemical weapons attacks would pave the way for action by the 15-member Security Council. The body has already threatened consequences for such attacks, which could include sanctions.

A U.S. official, who did not want to be identified, said an agreement had been reached on the draft between the United States and Russia.

Officials say the agreement was finalized during talks in Malaysia on Wednesday between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.

Russia - which has veto power on the U.N. council - is a Syrian ally and has protected President Bashar al-Assad's government from any U.N. action during the four-year civil war. The United States began discussing the draft resolution with Russia several months ago.

Several diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that if no objections to the draft were raised by any council members by Thursday morning, then a vote would likely be scheduled for Friday.

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 #20
Foreign Affairs
www.foreignaffairs.com
August 3, 2015
Gregory Feifer on Putin's Russia

In this Foreign Affairs podcast, Gregory Feifer, author of Russians: The People Behind the Power, discusses Russia and Vladimir Putin with Foreign Affairs Deputy Web Editor Brian O'Connor.

This interview has been edited and condensed. A rush transcript is below.

Brian O'Connor: You're a journalist who reported from Russia for almost a decade, what were some of the experiences that stood out in your mind spending that much time in the country?

Gregory Feifer: Well, one of the things that really stood out were... The continuities, really... When I first went to Russia it was in 1991, I caught the last couple of months of the Soviet Union before it came crumbling down, and I was in Moscow during the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, or the coup attempts, I should say, when there was this great optimism right after, that Russia would soon join the international community and would be sharing in Western prosperity, and so on and so forth. And it became quickly evident, in fact, it was evident already before then that the Soviet Union didn't entirely crumble and leave a ruin on which to build a new shining capitalist democratic society but it still had many structures in place and many behaviors that continued. Nevertheless, I think it could have fundamentally changed, it was fundamentally changing in some ways in the 1990s, that is, I don't believe Russia's faded to remain a corrupt authoritarian country.

O'Connor: You actually say in the article that the escalating conflict might have enabled Putin to tap into a deep current, but by playing on Russian tradition he has probably set a course for the country to repeat its history. You mentioned that that history might be avoidable after all, what do you think might need to change for that to happen?

Feifer: Well, we often look at Russia as kind of a mystery, a quarter century almost, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Americans find Russians as baffling, I think, as ever. Why did they continue to support their authoritarian President who's presided over a huge explosion of corruption and is again, isolating his country from the West, when Russians are free to travel, they're free to read pretty much still everything they want to on the internet? And I think the answer at least for me, in my eight years of reporting there is that there is no such thing as a mysterious Russian soul that's unknowable because it's different. But that Russian behavior is based on very practical motives, there are reasons that Russians behave the way they do, and there are forces that shape the national character. It's the world's largest country by territory but its a place where most of the land is uninhabitable, its tundra or taiga forest, its climate is legendarily awful, it has a very bitter history, and there are certain ways that leaders have traditionally ruled a country which is very difficult to rule. I think, like I said, it was changing in the 1990s, I think that Boris Yeltsin who essentially provided the political protection for a group of young technocrats to rewrite laws, to privatize very imperfectly, but nevertheless, were actually changing society. And it was really a confluence of events in the late '90s that brought about Putin and it didn't have to happen.

One of them was the economic crisis in 1998, which of course, started in Asia, but which seriously affected Russia. It had to default on some domestic debts, had to devalue its currency, inflation sky-rocketed, and it really ended the reformaire for Yeltsin because he had lost a lot of political power and really that... The crisis started a very bitter battle for political succession that Putin ultimately won. He saw how Russians reacted to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, he understood that Russians were nostalgic for the lost superpower status, and he was very quickly able to tap into these feelings by presenting himself as a restorer of Russian greatness, a restorer of law and order.

Of course, nothing could be farther than the truth, I think his rule in many ways has been ruinous for the country, but he's been a terrific, a master of appearances, somebody who seems very crude to us, but somebody whose approval rating is now, a year after having invaded Ukraine at 86%, and somebody who governs very successfully on his own terms. Within the Russian political culture, he's been... He's had an exemplary reign, so far.

O'Connor: Where do you think the country goes, post Putin?

Feifer: Well, one of the things that I think that we in the West often fail to keep in mind is that Putin is really acting in his interest and not the country's. This image of him as a restorer of Russian greatness, it's really a narrative that he's created that's not actually true. The economy now is going into recession. There's virtually no investment going into Russian infrastructure, no efforts going to diversify its energy resources economy. What he's doing is not ultimately, politically or economically sustainable. Russia may appear to be a wealthy country if you go to Moscow. The oil and gas proceeds have fueled an explosion of fancy restaurants and luxury cars on the streets, but even a half-an-hour drive outside of Moscow, the countryside is filled with thousands of literally dying villages.

I've visited many where there were only one or two elderly people left living along isolated muddy tracks and abandoned wooden houses, really apocalyptic scenes, where agriculture and industry have essentially collapsed, thanks to corruption and mismanagement. So I don't think that, again, I don't think it's ultimately sustainable, Russia's current course, but I don't think Putin cares about that. His main concern is the interest of himself and his inner circle and he doesn't really care what comes next. Now, predicting when this is all gonna come crashing down, it's really a mug's game. We have no idea. The economy has proved to be more resilient than many had thought.

He is... I think, will continue to maintain a kind of a simmering conflict in eastern Ukraine, which really enables him to pose as really, America's main rival. I think his ultimate goal is to appear on CNN on a split screen with President Obama, which shows the Russians that, look, Russia is indeed an influential country; the West is forced to reckon with it and this could go on for quite a long time. I think the only very vague answer I can give is that Putin will last only as long as Russians will continue to believe that he's acting in the country's interest and their interest. When they realize that he's not, then I think it will come crumbling down quite quickly.

O'Connor: I was curious to learn little bit more about the way that propaganda plays into the Russian understanding of what's happening in Ukraine.

Feifer: Well, I think that Russian propaganda, crude as it often is, has actually been quite successful because Russians don't actually... The Russians don't actually have to prove all of the claims that Ukraine is being run by fascists who are killing Russian speakers, that the US basically backed a coup, and that all Russia is doing is protecting the lives and rights of Russian speakers. I... The only thing really that the Russians have to do is question the Western narrative that Ukrainians deserve the right to self-determination, that they deserve the right to join the West if they want. And by claiming that for instance, Ukraine isn't really a viable state, that it was always part of Russia, essentially part of the Russian Empire that the language and culture are essentially the same, the Russians are able to tap into feelings in the US and other countries that, well, Ukraine really isn't the West's battle.

Also a serious argument, rather one that's raised in all seriousness is that essentially, Russia's actions in Ukraine are a reaction to the expansion of NATO in the 1990s, that really the West only has itself to blame for what's the natural reaction once Russia restored a certain amount of power. And I think that for various reasons, a lot of American liberals, for instance, believe that really, that America shouldn't be the world's policeman, which it shouldn't. But when it comes down to Ukraine, again, the Russians have been very successful in tapping into Western debates. And for that reason, even though I think that Ukraine minus Eastern Ukraine and Crimea will eventually, if not actually join the EU actually will continue orienting toward the West. I think the Russians can sustain this propaganda battle for a long time quite successfully.

O'Connor: Well, it seems like Putin also tapped into the idea of Novorossiya, the idea that there is a Russian state that should be, that once was and may exist yet again. And I'm wondering how much of that sentiment you feel like is tied into this idea of Putin having so much control of the Russian? How much maybe the public also feels similarly about that concept?

Feifer: Well, yeah. Excellent question. They've actually dropped the Novorossiya narrative just over the last few months. The Kremlin has stopped talking about it, it's almost never mentioned. But the fact is that, at least half of Ukraine, present-day Ukraine, was never part of the Russian empire. It was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and there's also this... Essentially, this myth that Russian culture and Ukrainian culture is essentially the same. Yes, Russia essentially got its orthodox religion via Kiev, when it was the seat of Rus, a civilization that preceded the rise of the Russian principalities in the North. But there was quite a large gap of time in between the collapse of Rus and the rise of the the Slavs in the Northern forest. They looked to Kiev much later for their models of culture and politics. It was a separate civilization. And Ukrainian is its own language, it's not basically Russian.

I don't mean to say that the two don't have anything to do with each other, but not to the extent that Russia claims. Russia has... And this is nothing new. For centuries, Russia has waged a Russification campaign, has always claimed... Has always laid claim to Ukraine. One of the names... Ukraine's name... So, Ukraine comes from "Ukraina", at the edge. So the very name of Ukraine is derived from its relation to the Russian empire. Its previous name was "Mala Rossiya", little Russia. So this is nothing new, but of course, it doesn't make it true.

O'Connor: What I think is interesting about that is, in the beginning of the piece, you mentioned speaking with a young 30-something, somebody who had traveled abroad, but was a professional within Moscow. And this person, you had indicated, was blaming the West essentially for what's going on in Russia and it seems that that sentiment was something that you encountered fairly often.

Feifer: Well, that's right. I met him... This was in the very early 1990s, I think it was 1992 or maybe even 1993, and I had just assumed that all young Russians were pro-Western, that the benefits of Westernizing, integrating into the international community were self-evident after 70 years of communism and especially after communism collapsed so quickly under its own weight a couple of years earlier. And when I've heard that, well actually everything in the West is doing is aimed at keeping Russia weak, that America wants to continue to see Russia on its knees, it really took me aback. Since then, we now know that a lot of young Russians are ostensibly anti-Western, sort of anti-American.

And I think that in some part, that has to do with Putin having played on these latent feelings in the 1990s. Now of course, the West, I think made a lot of mistakes. I don't think we supported the Russian reforms seriously enough. We didn't provide enough financial aid, but I think ultimately the West can't be blamed for what happened in Russia. I think it was a confluence of events, that brought Putin to power. But now he was able to play on these latent feelings and really elevate them in order to support what's essentially a new cold war against the West.

O'Connor: And along those lines, I'm wondering in your experience within the country, what's something that people in the West or, in particular the United States, what's something that we get wrong about Russia and Russian culture?

Feifer: Well, I think we tend to believe... Well, first of all, as I was saying, that the benefits of cooperation with the West are self-evident. To a lot of Russians, at least on the face of it, they're not. But I think the main thing that we don't get is that Russia has a political culture that works according to its own internal logic. It's a country, again, as I was saying, that's very difficult to govern and the way that Putin has done it is by relying on corruption. Corruption isn't an unfortunate byproduct of governance in a way that it is in many Western countries. In Russia, it's central to governing the country. It's the way that Putin is able to exert top down control. Now, it's well known that bribery is very common in Russia. If you drive a car, you will inevitably be stopped by the traffic police almost daily and will have to pay a bribe to keep your license.

If you own a corner store, for example, you'll have to pay the fire code inspector, the health code inspector, just an army of people coming by to take bribes. Now, bribery coerces people because it enables the authorities to essentially prosecute almost anyone. But it also co-ops people by giving them essentially the feeling that they too have a stake in the system. And so, if pay a bribe you get something out of it, if you pay the local police, if you're the corner store owner and you feel maybe you've got a leg up on the competition a couple blocks away down the street. So I think we don't understand, first of all, the centrality of corruption, and we also don't understand why Putin has been successful. And as I was saying, I think he's reinvigorated a century's old traditional culture and I think at the heart of it is erecting facades. So, Russians aren't stupid, they know that they live in a corrupt authoritarian country. But by posing as a restorer of Russian greatness, Putin is able to, essentially, to distract them to essentially cover up for what's actually going on. I think that's something that's been reoccurring throughout Russian history.

O'Connor: I think it'll be interesting to see whether or not it stays successful.

Feifer: That's the great unknowable.

[laughter]

O'Connor: Great. Well, Gregory Feifer, thank you so much for joining me for the podcast, really appreciate you taking the time.

Feifer: My pleasure, thank you.

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 #21
Ukraine Today
http://uatoday.tv
August 6, 2015
Large Russian military offensive in Ukraine possible within weeks: US analyst

Phillip Karber: Russian army restructuring forces ready for advance, not ceasefire

Russian troops in east Ukraine are preparing to fight - and could launch a major offensive within weeks. That's the view of American military analyst Phillip Karber, who recently spent time embedded with government troops in the combat zone.

He argued that Russia's military leadership were restructuring their forces, in a formation not usually made if they expect the Minsk ceasefire agreement to last.

Phillip Karber, US military analyst: "These are core structures. They have intelligence, they are run by Russian officers, there is Russian electronic warfare and they have heavy artillery brigades so they can orchestrate and coordinate....this is not the infrastructure you put in if you're expecting a ceasefire to last, this is the infrastructure you want to put in if you want to launch a major offensive, and not just one that goes a little way, but one that goes very deep".

Journalist: "How was it on the war, Phil?"

Phillip Karber, US military analyst: "I am so impressed with these 'kids' at the front, they are living in unbelievably difficult conditions. They eat the same roll three times a day, under fire; intermittent fire, but when it comes in, it is incredibly intense. Not knowing whether they are going to survive until tomorrow. It's one of the great honours of my life"

Karber went onto discuss the US Army's recent training program for Ukrainian servicemen. He described how Washington was benefiting from such exercises.

Phillip Karber, US military analyst: "My friends are doing the training. They come back to me and go. We went there and we were going to show them how to do it. We are learning more from them than they are learning from us. They taking mass fire artillery strikes that we've never experienced, they are under UAV's constantly, we've never experienced that, they're taking on the latest Russian equipment, its electronic warfare, so Ukraine has as much to teach as it has to learn."

Karber also argued Ukraine was in desperate need of anti-tank weapons to penetrate the armour on Russian military equipment and that militant forces were arming prisoners with some basic training to fight in the warzone.

Washington has already provided non-lethal military equipment to Ukraine - such as body armour, medical supplies and surveillance gear. But the Obama administration has stopped short of sending weapons, proclaiming that a diplomatic solution is instead, the way forward.

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 #22
RFE/RL
August 6, 2015
Ukraine Famine Monument Erected In Washington
by Tony Wesolowsky

After years of work and some setbacks, a memorial to the millions who perished in the Ukraine famine of the 1930s, or Holodomor, has been erected in the U.S. capital.
 
The monument -- a bronze slab resting on a stone plinth and showing a field of wheat stalks -- was winched off the trailer of a truck and bolted into place in downtown Washington on August 4.

On hand were Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Valeriy Chaly and the sculpture's Ukrainian-American designer, Larysa Kurylas.

Tamara Olexy, the president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, which helped spearhead efforts to bring the project to fruition, described the moment as "very significant" for the Ukrainian community in the United States and elsewhere, capping years of hard work.
 
In an interview with RFE/RL, Olexy said she hopes the monument will raise awareness of what Ukrainians consider their greatest tragedy.
 
"We hope the world, and the greater community here in the United States as well, will understand the significance of what happened in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 when up to 7 to 10 million Ukrainians -- men, women, and children -- were starved to death under Stalin," Olexy explained.
 
An official unveiling ceremony for the Field of Wheat memorial is scheduled to take place on November 7.
 
Efforts to construct the memorial gained traction in 2006 when the U.S. Congress gave its approval to the project in cooperation with the authorities in Kyiv.

By that time, Ukraine's Orange Revolution had led to the election of Viktor Yushchenko as president.

Eager to reawaken Ukrainian patriotism long suppressed under Soviet rule, Yushchenko sought to raise international awareness of the Holodomor, which means "death by hunger."
 
Under Yushchenko, a Holodomor memorial and museum opened in Kyiv in 2009. Shortly thereafter, Ukraine's Culture Ministry launched an international competition to pick a sculptor for the Washington memorial.

Two years later, in 2011, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts chose Kurylas's entry, Field of Wheat.

The U.S. Congress allocated the plot where the monument now sits on a triangular sliver of federal land bounded by Massachusetts Avenue, North Capitol Street, and F Street, but not money. Funds for the project have come from private donors, both individuals and organizations.

'Political Weapon'

The 10-meter-long strip of bronze depicts almost sinewy wheat stalks that first project then gradually recede across the monument. That is meant to represent the withering away of the harvest bounty to famine scarcity. Beneath "Famine-Genocide in Ukraine", text is provided off to the side in both English and Ukrainian giving brief, basic facts of the Ukraine famine .
 
To Kurylas, "Wheat was used as a political weapon to starve the people of Ukraine," she told the Washington Post last year.

Historians say the seizure of the 1932 crop in Ukraine by Soviet authorities was the main cause of the famine. Moscow has long denied any systematic effort to target Ukrainians, arguing a poor harvest at the time wiped out many in other parts of the then Soviet Union.
 
Given her ethnic Ukrainian roots, Kurylas, an architect by trade, said the project was the most important work she had ever done.
 
"It has a spiritual dimension," she told the Post.
 
To make sure she got the details right, Kurylas said she visited a relative's farm in Winnipeg, Canada to examine wheat stalks up close.
 
Kurylas joins a small group of women who have designed modern-day memorials in Washington, joining Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and Julie Beckman, who along with husband Keith Kaseman, designed the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial.
 
There has been some controversary surrounding the monument, which went up as Ukraine struggles with Russian-backed separatists whose war with government forces has killed more than 6,400 people since April 2014. The conflict and Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine have severely strained ties between Washington and Moscow.
 
Among the individuals contributing financially was Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian gas tycoon who was arrested in Austria in 2014 on bribery charges, at the request of U.S. authorities. He was later released on bail and a Vienna court rejected a U.S. request for his extradition in April.
 
Firtash, who denies any wrongdoing, gave $2.5 million to the memorial project.
 
Ukraine's recent turbulent political shifts have also put the project on shaky footing at times.
 
When Kurylas's entry was selected in 2011, Viktor Yanukovych was in power after defeating Yushchenko in the 2010 presidential election. Eager to please the Kremlin, the now-ousted Yanukovych reversed Yushchenko's stance on the famine, saying it was "wrong" and "unjust" to call it a genocide.
 
Olexy said the Ukrainian community in the United States and elsewhere remained focused on the issue despite the challenges.
 
"We had to plug through there is nothing you can do about it because this issue has been extremely important to the Ukrainian community since it actually happened in the 1930s," Olexy said.
 
"We had major demonstrations in the 30s. The women's organization, the Ukrainian National Women's League of America, had demonstrations in New York City back in the 30s trying to raise awareness of what was going on in Ukraine and we've been bringing up this issue ever since."

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 #23
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
August 6, 2015
Ukraine's Top Activist for The Disabled Pleads for End to Brutal War
German military intelligence estimates the number of killed Ukrainian troops as high as 50,000.  The number of maimed and disabled is estimated to be at least half of that
By Oleksiy Zhuravko

Oleksiy Zhuravko is a former Ukraine MP. He was the ombudsman for the disabled in Ukraine, and started several foundations employing more than 3500 disabled people all across Ukraine.

He was kicked out of Ukraine last year for his politics - he did not agree with the Maidan overthrow.

Albeit a disabled man with no legs and only one arm, he is charged with terrorism in Ukraine for speaking out against the Ukrainian government killing and maiming its own citizens - and making countless more disabled.

Dear friends,

A few days ago I wrote a post about what kind of pictures I want to see Ukrainian people posting.  And here is another example of good and horrible pictures.

First we see a young mother playing with her baby daughter, and then we see the mother and the daughter walking together towards the sun - a metaphor for moving together towards a bright future.

The last photos are beyond horrible - war has taken the lives of both the mother and her young child.

Its 8,494 kilometers from Donetsk to Washington, DC.  The distance between Lugansk and Brussels is 2,880 km.  The distance between Gorlovka and Berlin is 2,059 km.  It is easy to live in those wonderful cities, so far from this war, and talk about how horrible the people of Donbass are, without seeing the horrors that the Kiev government (with the support of the above mentioned capitals) inflicts on women and children on a daily basis.

Dear friends, I, as a citizen of Ukraine do not want to see horrible pictures like these ones.  I do not want to hear the word "war".  I don't want to see blood.  And my biggest dream today is for this war to end as soon as possible.

I want see love and happiness.  I want to hear children laughing.  I want to see young mothers playing with their kids in parks.

I my last post I gave an example of Nick Vujicic and his family - smiling parents and a happy child.  And that is what I wish all of you.

I know that the vast majority of Ukrainians don't want this war - we are a peaceful people.  People with a long history of creating things, not destroying them.  So why do we let out government send young Ukrainian men to kill other Ukrainians in this civil war?

I know that people of the world, people of the United States and Europe are peaceful people, who hate war.  However, I also know that most in the West are misled about this war, and don't see the pictures of innocents suffering at the hands of the Ukrainian army.  A Ukrainian army and government that have unconditional support from the West.

Dear friends!  War is a very profitable business.  Vast riches can be made on human suffering (President Poroshenko, for example, made 7 times more money last year, than he had made the previous year).  We cannot wait while the people profiting from deaths of Ukrainians will get tired of this war - they won't.  They will never stop this war until people speak up - both Ukrainians at home, and people in the West against their governments' support of Kiev's war.

When thousands of people have already died, staying quiet and not doing anything is unacceptable.

Ukrainians! People of the world!  We want peace!  But only together we can stop this war!  Stop being quite while thousands perish, and hundreds of thousands suffer!  Stop quietly waiting for all of this to stop by itself.  Speak up! Write to you politicians!  Come out to protest!  Demand for an end to this war!  Only together can we make sure that a road to the future for other mothers and kids is not tragically cut short like it was in these pictures!

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 #24
Kiev forces violate ceasefire regime 27 times over last 24 hours - DPR defense ministry

MOSCOW, August 6. /TASS/. Ukrainian Armed Forces have violated ceasefire regime in Donbas 27 times over the last 24 hours, including with the use of heavy weaponry, the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) defense ministry said on Thursday.

"The situation in the republic remains tense, the enemy continues using artillery. The number of shellings over the last 24 hours stood at 27," Donetsk News Agency quoted DPR defense ministry as saying.

According to the defense ministry, 40 artillery shells of 152mm and 122mm caliber were fired, along with 26 tank shells and 66 mortar mines of 82mm and 120mm caliber. Ukrainian forces also used grenade launchers, anti-tank and small arms.

"The most intensive shelling hit the settlement of Primorskoye in the Novoazovsky district, Gorlovka was also shelled," a DPR defense ministry spokesman said. According to earlier reports, two civilians were killed in night's shellings in Gorlovka.

The Ukrainian forces shelled Donetsk airport, Gagarin and Glubokaya mines, settlements of Staromikhaylovka, Verkhnetoretskoye, Botmanka, Spartak, Golmovsky, Veseloye and Zheleznaya Balka.

Weaponry withdrawal

On July 18, the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics (DPR and LPR) announced their plans to unilaterally withdraw heavy weaponry from the contact line. Weaponry withdrawal is envisaged by the Minsk agreements on the settlement in Ukraine signed on February 12 by Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine in the Belarusian capital.

DPR announced at the end of July that it completed the withdrawal of weaponry of less than 100mm caliber from the contact line, leaving tanks only in "hot spots" to the north of Donetsk and in Debaltsevo. LPR also completed the withdrawal of weaponry from the contact line, leaving tanks and armored vehicles only on positions near the Schastye settlement.

On July 21, the Contact Group on Ukrainian settlement reached an agreement on gradual withdrawal of weaponry of less than 100mm caliber by both sides.

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 #25
Fort Russ
http://fortruss.blogspot.com
August 5, 2015
Ukrainian oligarchs had enough
Pravoe Delo [http://pravoe-org.livejournal.com/764827.html]
Translated by Kristina Rus

On August 1 the most influential Ukrainian businessman met at Kiev Hyatt, where they discussed the situation in the country. This was stated on Tuesday, August 4,  by the MP from the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko, Sergey Leshchenko, on his blog on "Ukrainian Pravda," citing informed sources. Leshchenko said that the meeting was informal and no documents have been signed.

"It was an informal gathering of current and former oligarchs and big business," - wrote the MP. According to him, the meeting was attended by Rinat Akhmetov, Sergey Taruta, Victor Pinchuk, Vasily Khmelnytsky and Yuriy Kosyuk. Konstantin Zhevago did not have time to fly to Kiev, but has delegated his associate, and Valery Khoroshkovsky was on the phone with one of the initiators of the meeting.

"According to sources, all were unanimous in the assessment that "there is something wrong with the country". The main discussion was about how to react to the current situation," - said Leshchenko. Some of the participants of the meeting, according to the journalist, including Taruta, advocated the creation of a new party that would defend the interests of the gathered. Others, among whom were Pinchuk and Khmelnitsky, spoke about the ineffectiveness of this approach. According to them, it is impossible to achieve anything with parties, and the power must be influenced by a civil society. Instead, they suggested the establishment of "The Union of Industrialists" which would defend the interests of big business.

Leshchenko called this meeting a wake-up call for President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. "The worry of the oligarchs is based on the inability to maintain previous profits, and the emergence of the new  [oligarchs] who began to grow at twice the speed, leaving the "old oligarchs" on a "dry meal" and destroying the illusions of those who believed in "a new life," - wrote Leshchenko. He noted that de-oligarchization, recently announced by the President, can result in the redistribution of property and neo-oligarchization".

http://gordonua.com/news/politics/Leshchenko-1-avgusta-v-Kieve-sostoyalsya-neformalnyy-slet-oligarhov-Vse-byli-solidarny-v-ocenke-chto-v-strane-idet-chto-to-ne-tak-92701.html

It is clear that everything is moving towards the "new (neo-) oligarchization" and re-privatization, and new privatization will accelerate this process.

The main conclusions about the informal meeting:

The "Old oligarchy" in Ukraine has no levers of influence on the new government (the junta), because to talk about buying a new party and some Union of Industrialists is ridiculous, especially in a situation when domestic policy is controlled by the State Department, and the "Right Sector" gangs are uncontrollable

The "Old oligarchy" has no new conceptual ideas, has nothing but ideological impotence

The "Old oligarchy" has no home front - not regional or in the face of Russia and the former patrons in the West (a possible calculation of Pinchuk) look at them as the last suckers

The "Old oligarchy" has a desire to take revenge, but has no resources and no other capabilities...

Actually, this is why they have such (obvious in Akhmetov) a feeling of "slipping away"... A new time has arrived, and whatever it will be, little will remain from the "Old oligarchy" (but half of them, including Pinchuk and Khmelnitsky will simply become "big business")... However, this is not a matter of the near future, but of the next couple of years ...

Kristina Rus:

I think this is a sign of the general mood in Ukraine. Only a small section of population, connected to the current establishment is content. The old Ukrainian elites, the ordinary citizens, and most business owners are struggling to make ends meet, going broke and are literally starving. The discontent is growing. Whether it will reach a critical mass and be sufficient to produce positive changes for Ukraine remains to be seen. Only if and when a critical mass of Ukrainian elites will realise that their meal can come only from the East will we see positive changes in Ukraine. If Ukraine follows the current path, even the new oligarchs will realize that sooner or later. No matter how much damage has been done, bringing Ukraine back under its influence is Russia #1 goal. Russia will try to rebuilt the relationships with anyone willing, as it has shown that can work even with Poroshenko. Ukraine's destiny is Russia, and the only question is how long will it take for Ukraine to realize that.

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 #26
Moscow Times
August 6, 2015
Arming Ukraine Is Unnecessary and Dangerous
By Andrew Monaghan
Andrew Monaghan is a senior research fellow at Chatham House, and is author of "The New Politics of Russia - Interpreting Change," soon to be published by Manchester University Press, as well as a recent research paper, "A 'New Cold War' - Abusing History, Misunderstanding Russia."

The conflict in Ukraine poses a complex problem for Western policy-makers. Responses have included sanctions on Russia, the suspension of institutional formats for relations between the West and Russia, and a diplomatic effort resulting in the Minsk agreements.

There are also measures to assist the government in Kiev, such as financial support, the supply of non-lethal weapons, such as helmets, body armor and Humvees, and the training of Ukrainian National Guard units.

But as the conflict has dragged on, Moscow has not changed its position and there has been increased lobbying in the U.S. to supply lethal weapons to the Ukrainian government. Senior Ukrainian officials request "defensive" weaponry as a demonstration of "solidarity" from their European and American allies.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk stated that "Without weapons, we lost Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine. This is the lesson." Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has stated that to "keep the peace, we should have the ability to defend ourselves" with lethal weapons, and requested 1,240 Javelin anti-tank missiles. "This would be absolutely fair," he claimed.

The call to arm Ukraine has also come from prominent U.S. officials such as Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and NATO figures such as Supreme Allied Commander Europe General Philip Breedlove, who have both argued for supplying lethal weapons to help the Ukrainians "defend themselves" and to "raise the costs" to Russian President Vladimir Putin of aggression in Ukraine.

Supplying lethal weapons to Kiev, however, would be a bad idea for several reasons. First, the "Ukraine should be able to defend itself" argument masks important considerations. The reason Ukraine could not defend itself in 2014 was because of a 20-year degeneration that saw the Ukrainian military decline from being one of the largest in the world to one which could field only a few thousand combat-ready troops.

This degeneration was caused by long-term lack of government support and leadership, a steep decline in investment in the military, the frequent changing of defense ministers and endemic corruption. Combat capacity declined precipitously, not least because for several years before 2014, no brigade or battalion level exercises were held. Without first addressing this strategic picture - which has no quick fix - U.S. weapons will make little positive difference.

Second, the influx of U.S. weapons alone will not help Ukraine defend itself, and increases the risk of the opposite effect. Though the Ukrainian leadership requests the weapons for defensive purposes, the situation will evolve. If the Minsk agreement holds, then Kiev will not need the weapons. But there are no such things as "defensive lethal weapons," and if Minsk collapses, they may be pressed into service as Kiev seeks to fulfill its stated aim to regain control over Donetsk and Luhansk (and even Crimea) which could trigger a larger and likely unwinnable conflict with Russia.

Furthermore, the suggestion that U.S. weapons will "raise the battlefield cost to Putin" also masks important considerations. U.S. weapons would provide the grounds for Moscow to escalate its own involvement in Ukraine.

Russian armed forces could relatively easily match (or better) the supply of weapons to Kiev with its own to the separatists, even providing them before the U.S. weapons arrive or could be effectively used. While Kiev's forces would need training to use U.S. weapons, the separatists are ready to use those that Moscow could supply.

A third objection to supplying lethal weapons is the ongoing instability in Ukraine. The government in Kiev faces not just serious economic, political and social problems, but also serious questions regarding control over the armed volunteer battalions and the Right Sector, of which the recent violence in the city of Mukachevo in western Ukraine is only one dramatic example.

The risk that weapons might fall into the wrong hands once in Ukraine was acknowledged by the (unanimous) passing of amendments on June 10 in the U.S. House of Representatives to the defense spending bill to protect civilians from the dangers of arming and training foreign forces.

The amendments block the training of the Azov volunteer battalion by U.S. troops. They also made explicit the dangers of supplying shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine (and Iraq), and their concern about the unintended consequences of "overzealous" military assistance or the "hyper-weaponization" of conflicts, and the possibility of radical groups acquiring them.

In the past, the U.S. has supplied weapons to unstable and war-torn areas. Such conflicts evolve quickly and the weapons fall into the wrong hands as interests and alliances change. In Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, the Taliban and the Islamic State have gained possession of U.S. weapons, even using them against U.S. forces.

This is important in the Ukrainian case, where problems such as low pay, desertion, corruption and the black market sale of weapons are rife. It is likely that at least some of those supplied by the U.S. would fall into the wrong hands.

The White House is among those who have opposed the idea. Officials have suggested that providing lethal weapons would inflame the situation and escalate the bloodshed.

Furthermore, the idea is very divisive in the West, splitting the U.S. from major European partners who oppose it, and, as a recent poll by the Pew Research Center suggested, there is limited popular support for the measure throughout NATO: in the U.S., fewer than 50 percent supported the idea, in Germany just 19 percent.

Measures in support of Kiev may evolve. It may be, for instance, that the U.S. supplies counter-artillery and rocket radars that have a longer range than the counter-mortar radars already supplied. But the downsides of the U.S. providing lethal weaponry considerably outweigh possible gains.

Instead, diplomacy should remain the primary approach. This can be supplemented by two other measures that, in due course, will assist the Ukrainians more effectively to defend themselves. First, the U.S. and the EU could increase support to address corruption, smuggling and the black market in weapons. Second, the U.S. and NATO could consider where and how best to assist with more strategic education of the Ukrainian military leadership and the reform and reorganization of the Ukrainian forces.

Equally important, however, is that U.S. and European leaders begin to work out desired (and realistic) strategic aims and timelines, both in Ukraine and with Russia.

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 #27
Wall Street Journal
August 6, 2015
Negotiations Between Ukraine, Bondholders Take Step Backward
Ukraine's latest proposal to restructure $19 billion of debt is unacceptable to bondholders
By CHRISTOPHER WHITTALL

After signs of progress in recent weeks, negotiations over Ukraine's debt restructuring appeared to take a step backward Wednesday.

The Ukrainian government's latest proposal over how to restructure $19 billion of debt is unacceptable to bondholders, a person familiar with the negotiations said Wednesday. The person didn't specify why the proposal was unacceptable.

Bloomberg News reported the news earlier Wednesday.

The price of two-year Ukrainian bonds fell slightly Wednesday to around 57 cents on the dollar. Bond prices remain well above their March lows of 38 cents.

Ukraine's finance ministry had proposed high-level talks with a committee of its creditors, which holds about $9 billion in bonds and includes Franklin Templeton Investments, in London on Thursday.

But the talks will be postponed until Monday or Tuesday of next week "to give the committee more time to prepare a revised and improved proposal," a statement from the finance ministry said Wednesday.

The statement also said that time was running out to reach a deal.

Earlier Wednesday, the creditor committee rejected Ukraine's request to meet at 48 hours notice and instead planned to review the proposal and hold a call or meeting early next week, the person familiar with the negotiations said.

Negotiations between Ukraine and the committee of four creditors got off to a slow start earlier this year, but the tension seemed to ease in recent weeks.

Ukraine, which is advised by Lazard, made a $120 million interest payment on its bonds in July. The country has previously threatened to stop making such payments.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the creditor committee, which is advised by Blackstone Group International Partners LLP, was willing to take a small reduction in the face value of its bonds, according to two people close to the negotiations. This marked a change of tack from the bondholders, who had staunchly rejected calls for any debt haircuts before.

Ukraine has publicly called for a 40% haircut.

Vadim Khramov, an economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, wrote in a report Wednesday that the risks of Ukraine defaulting on a major bond payment due Sept. 23 "have increased and are high" given the gap between creditor demands and Ukraine's position.

Mr. Khramov said that at least 21 days' notice must be given to bondholders before a change to terms can be made, meaning that time is running out before the September 23 bond payment.

A deal has to be reached "within weeks to avoid [a] hard default," he added.

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 #28
Reuters
August 5, 2015
Slowdown in industrial contraction gives hope for Ukraine recovery: Reuters poll

Ukraine's economy may start recovering in the coming months as a contraction in output - battered by a separatist conflict in the industrial east - slows, as shown by a Reuters poll on Wednesday.

Analysts at 13 Ukrainian banks and brokerages expect industrial output to have shrunk 17 percent in July year-on-year versus 18.1 percent in June, 20.7 percent in May and 21.7 percent in April

"Ukraine has been suffering from the loss of the industrial Donbass region since last year. But it looks like the country has managed to adjust to it. Soon the double-digit fall in production output will be left behind," Dmytro Boyarchuk of the economic research organization CASE Ukraine, said.

Ukrainian industry was already shrinking before the conflict. In June 2012 output fell by 1.4 percent due to poor external demand for steel, one of Ukraine's key exports.

The military conflict with Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk regions - the location of the majority of coal mines and metals plants - worsened the situation last summer. In July 2014 industry shrank by 12.1 percent year-on-year and in August the contraction deepened to 21.4 percent.

Kiev says it has lost about 20 percent of its industrial capacity due to regular shelling in the east. A ceasefire, agreed in February, has given a fragile hope for the peaceful solution of the conflict, despite almost daily violations.

"Since then, there has been some recovery of production. In particular, steel ... The dramatic collapse in the industry happened last summer along with the intensification of military actions in the eastern region," Olexiy Blinov of Alfa Bank Ukraine said.

As the industrial sector accounts for the largest part of Ukraine's gross domestic product - about 35 percent - its improvement along with a record grain harvest expected this year should result in an upturn in the economy, analysts suggested.

They expect the year-on-year fall in GDP to slow to 3.5 percent in the fourth quarter from the 7.0 percent expected in the third and 14.8 percent estimated for the second quarter.

In the first quarter, the economy plunged 17.6 percent after shrinking 14.6 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.    "The Ukrainian economy may begin to exit from the recession, which has lasted for six consecutive quarters, provided the situation in the east does not significantly deteriorate," Olena Bilan of Dragon Capital said.

However, she added that the recovery will be much slower than after the crisis of 2008-2009.

The war with separatists is deterring foreign investment, while Ukraine's banking system - hit by capital outflow - does not have the resources for lending. The purchasing power of the population has also dropped due to currency depreciation, an increase in utility prices and a public sector pay freeze.

The fall in spending power could help curb price rises, with the poll predicting 2015 inflation at 48.2 percent, down from the 56.8 percent analysts forecast in July.

The International Monetary Fund expects Ukraine's GDP to grow by 2.0 percent next year after a 9.0 percent fall in 2015, but says further conflict and the possibility of protracted debt restructuring talks still pose "exceptionally high" risks to efforts to restore financial stability.

Reuters polled analysts at Alfa Bank (Ukraine), CASE (Ukraine), Concorde Capital, Credit Rating, Da Vinci AG, Dragon Capital, International Centre for Policy Studies, Prominvestbank, Institute for Economic Research and Political Consulting, Raiffeisen Bank Aval, Credit Agricole Bank Ukraine, First Ukrainian International Bank, Capital Times.

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 #29
Experts: Ukraine has to seek compromise in gas dispute with Russia ahead of winter season
By Tamara Zamyatina

MOSCOW, August 5. /TASS/. Ukraine's national energy company Naftogaz will have to seek a gas price compromise with Russia's Gazprom in order not to freeze Ukrainian citizens together with European consumers in the upcoming winter, experts polled by TASS said on Wednesday.

A new round of gas talks between Russia and Ukraine with the EU's mediation will be held in late September.

The participants in the three-party talks in Vienna failed to reach agreement in June on the terms of further gas deliveries and Russia stopped supplying natural gas to Ukraine from July 1.

In the first and second quarters of this year, Ukraine enjoyed a discount of $100 per 1,000 cubic meters to the contract gas price. As a result, the final gas price stood at $247.2 per 1,000 cu m. Oil prices declined considerably in the second half of last year, bringing gas prices down as well. In this situation, Russia said it could no longer offer Ukraine a $100 discount. Moscow said the final discount for Ukraine would be only $40 per 1,000 cu m but the gas price would remain at $247.12, i.e. at the level of the second quarter. However, this price did not suit Ukraine.

As of early August, Ukraine's underground gas storage facilities have about 13 billion cubic meters of natural gas. According to Naftogaz CEO Andrei Kobolev, considering the gas reserves required for uninterrupted gas transit to Europe, Ukraine's underground storage facilities should have 19 billion cubic meters of natural gas as of the end of October.

Kiev needs over $1 billion to purchase the missing 6 billion cubic meters from Gazprom. However, Brussels is in no hurry to provide a loan to Ukraine. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said the situation with preparations for the upcoming winter was disastrous.

The issue of energy supplies from Russia to Ukraine has become the subject of a big political game, Deputy Director of the Institute of CIS Countries Vladimir Zharikhin said.
"If Kiev politicians were independent, the gas dispute between Ukraine and Russia would have long been resolved. But Washington orders Kiev not to buy fuel from Gazprom to undermine the Russian budget," the expert said.

US President Barack Obama said early this year that "the Russian economy is torn to pieces as a result of sanctions. The refusal by Naftogaz of Ukraine in June to purchase Russian gas amid the collapse of the Ukrainian energy sector confirms that Kiev acts on instruction from the US White House to the detriment of its own interests," Zharikhin said.

"But there is no and can be no other gas in Ukraine except the Russian gas because fuel supplied in a reverse mode from the territory of Slovakia or Hungary is also of Russian origin. That is why, Kiev will have to seek a pricing compromise with Gazprom. As before, the forthcoming tripartite talks of Ukraine, Russia and the EU in September won't be able to do without political demagogy but the approaching winter will make Kiev more compliant and the EU will also exert pressure on Naftogaz," the expert said.

In 2011, the Ukrainian authorities jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko for allegedly signing a disadvantageous gas contract with Russia, which continues to be in force, the expert said.

"The contract pegged the gas price to world oil prices. But the price of oil at that time was more than $100 per barrel and now is stays within $50. That is, the current scheme is advantageous for Ukraine," he said.

"Russia gave a discount of $100 per 1,000 cubic meters, on which Kiev insists, to the previous Ukrainian authorities with a view to support the integration economy of both countries. But giving a discount to the current Ukrainian leadership only because Kiev has no money to make advance payments for Russian gas supplies is illogical from the economic standpoint," Zharikhin said.

Kiev's demand that Gazprom keep the discount of $100 per 1,000 cubic meters is unjustified, said Vladimir Averchev, an energy market expert and a member of the Valdai International Discussion Club and formerly director of analysis at BP Russia.

"If the oil price has fallen by two times, bringing the gas price down, then the size of the discount should also fall. Kiev is displaying incomprehensible stubbornness, a mixture of provincialism and populism. Whatever Prime Minister Yatsenyuk may say, he has no alternative: he will be forced to buy Russian gas either in a reverse supply mode from Europe or directly from Gazprom," Averchev told TASS.

"The years-long practice of negotiations between Naftogaz and Gazprom evidences that Kiev advances tough conditions to Moscow in summer, considering a sharp decline in production, especially in metallurgy and the chemical industry, because Ukraine's requirements for gas are small in the warm season. Closer to winter, Kiev normally becomes more compliant under the pressure of Brussels and Moscow as was seen on many occasions in the past, up until December 31. This is what we'll see again," the expert said.

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 #30
www.opendemocracy.net
August 3, 2015
District 205: what the Chernihiv elections mean for Ukrainian politics
Ahead of municipal elections in October, Ukrainian politics gets dirty, hot and local in the northern town of Chernihiv.
By Valery Kalnysh
Valery Kalnysh is deputy editor of Ukraine's Radio Vesti.
 
Meteorologists in Ukraine called 26 July the hottest day on record for 80 years. But while temperatures reached 26 degrees in Chernihiv, some 140km north of Kyiv, 26 July also saw some of the dirtiest elections in the country's history.

This by-election, caused by Petro Poroshenko's promotion of Valery Kulich to regional governor, saw candidates from the opposing factions of Poroshenko and businessman Igor Kolomoisky square off in provincial Chernihiv.

Political theatre

It's 9pm on Sunday, 26 July: the polls have just closed, and I'm sitting in the Chernihiv regional drama theatre-the headquarters of the newly victorious Sergei Berezenko, the government's candidate in electoral district 205.

'Now I can relax,' I think to myself. 'I won't have to run around this hot town any more, drinking litres of water, waiting for briefings and discussing the exit polls, inaccurate anyway.'

As I begin to relax, I notice there's a fair amount of red and white balloons in this foyer. Some are tied together, others have been made into bouquets, and the rest just hang in the air.

An elderly woman walks in unexpectedly. She looks intelligent. Taking in the scene before her, she asks-in confusion: 'is this some kind of a play? I was walking past and I saw there was a light on in the theatre. I thought perhaps I'd missed a play.'

The woman turned out to be surprisingly correct: the 'play' had just finished.

Election day

Chernihiv was half-empty on election day. Residents preferred to spend their Sunday somewhere out of town, near to water. The elections, however, managed to reach them there too.

Local residents were offered a free trip to Blue Lakes, 50km outside of Chernihiv. Time of departure: 7am. Time of return: 10pm. Later, it became clear that the candidate who organised this 'excursion' was purposefully trying to reduce the election turnout. He simply transported voters out of town before the polling stations opened, and brought them back when the stations were closed.

Indeed, the only thing that cut through the slow pace of life in this provincial town were the convoys of luxury vehicles, which rushed from one end of Chernihiv to the next with an air of self-importance.

The vehicles, carrying representatives of the race's leading candidates, Sergei Berezenko (Poroshenko Bloc) and Gennady Korban (Ukrop, a charitable organisation funded by Kolomoisky), were on their way to inspect polling stations for evidence of vote tampering.

Sat in one of Gennady Korban's cars, I speed along to a polling station in a convoy of 12 vehicles. Having barely made the green light at a junction, we arrive at a station where police officers are allegedly impeding the work of election observers. Korban's team is sure that the local branch of the Interior Ministry is trying to engineer a vote falsification.

The incident is over in a few minutes. The police officers look a bit frightened when a whole convoy of jeeps turns up and Korban's muscle jumps out in front of them.

All told, observers didn't note any serious violations (by Ukrainian standards) in district 205. The Interior Ministry press office reported that the police opened 57 criminal investigations into evidence of electoral fraud during the campaign and on election day. 'Thirty-seven investigations directly concern violations of electoral legislation. In particular, 18 investigations were opened into vote buying, five into instances where electoral rights have been infringed, and three cases of stealing ballot papers.'

Ten cases were opened on 26 July: six involving purposeful harm of property (tents and stands belonging to various parties), theft (placards), and four cases of anti-social behaviour. On top of all this, the Interior Ministry states, there were three bomb threats, and two occasions where firearms were used illegally.

Testing democracy

The elections in Chernihiv have become something of a national shame, but 26 July turned out to be far from the most representative day of the election campaign.

According to my information, the Berezenko and Korban teams knew roughly how the vote would go on Saturday-they had accurate polls, though they didn't have the right to make them public.

This is why neither side made serious preparations for a 'scenario of force': for example, to drive out to the polling stations, break open the ballot boxes or try and interfere with vote counting. But these plans did exist, and both sides prepared them.

The days leading up to 26 July were just as shameful. In their campaigns, candidates played on the basest human desire, greed, using voters' poverty as an opportunity to get into power.

For instance, Ukrop gave out free food parcels-rice, buckwheat, butter, sugar, flour and preserved goods. You could get one of these parcels simply by presenting your passport.

Inessa Vachnadze, a local teacher who has been recognised nationally for her abilities, told me about the 'courtyard mafia' operating in the queues for food parcels-women, old and young, organised into groups to ensure their access to Ukrop's charity.

Imagine, if you will, a woman standing in front of you in the queue. She receives a parcel, runs into an apartment block and leaves it there before changing her blouse and rejoining the queue. But the woman joins with her friends further down the line, and soon enough she receives another parcel.

Korban isn't the only one suspected of vote buying, though there's a reason people started calling him the 'Buckwheat Marshal'. Sergei Berezenko is also suspected of the same. Local activists say that Berezenko's team organised a 'social contract' with some voters: a voter would show his passport, he is then put on a bus with others and taken round town for 30-40 minutes, taking in a polling station on the way. They received 400 hryvnya (£12) for voting for the government's candidate.

'These elections are a stain on Ukraine's reputation,' says Anatoly Lutsenko, a political commentator. 'Everyone's guilty: the impotent Central Electoral Commission, and the parliament, which doesn't want to change the electoral system. Our local institutions of law and order are unreformed, and they can't operate in the new conditions of competitive democracy. The real loser of district 205 is Ukraine.'

Consequences

In the end, attempts to buy votes with buckwheat didn't succeed. And the words of Viktor Yushchenko, remarking on the eve of the 2004 presidential elections, suddenly seemed relevant again: 'Take the buckwheat, but vote according to your conscience.'

People took the buckwheat and the food parcels, but they cast their vote as they saw fit. Or, in fact, didn't cast their vote at all. Indeed, if everyone who received a parcel from Ukrop had voted for Gennady Korban, then he should have racked up a minimum of 20,000 votes. He received far less.

According to Central Electoral Commission statistics, Sergei Berezenko received 17,782 votes (35.9%), Korban - 7,311 (14.76%).

Ukrop is a new political force, and its core consists of advisers and people close to the oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, currently having a hard time of it.

Kolomoisky has lost his influence over the assets of state oil companies Ukrnafta and Ukrtransnafta, which he formerly controlled through a loyal management structure. Mikheil Saakashvili, new governor of Odessa (and current favourite of Petro Poroshenko), has taken a sharp disliking to Kolomoisky's aviation company, Ukraine International Airlines. As a politician, it seems, Kolomoisky's career has taken a turn for the worst-otherwise he'd still be governor of Dnipropetrovsk region.

That said, Ukrop thinks its job is done. 'You can mock the "casualties" and "reputations" all you want, but we fulfilled an additional task,' wrote Boris Filatov, a leader of Ukrop, on Facebook. 'Petro Alekseyevich [Poroshenko] had long-term plans for Seryozha Berezenko: from party leader to a future speaker [of parliament].

'Now we've made Berezenko into a laughing stock. The horse, which Caligula wanted to make a consul, was called Incitatus. Poroshenko has Seryozha [Berezenko]. And he isn't a horse, but a donkey.'

Berezenko himself says that he doesn't have the right experience for the post of speaker, 'but I could be deputy head of the party'. Thanking the residents of Chernihiv for their votes, Berezenko said: 'I'm sorry you've had to swallow all this muck.'

And so the hottest day in 80 years finished with a thunderstorm and torrential rain. It'd be nice to describe this scene in romantic terms, with the rain washing away the dirt and the sense of disgust at the methods used by political campaigns. But it didn't.

While meteorologists don't know when these temperatures could be broken again, the situation in Chernihiv could be repeated as soon as October, when people go to the polls in local elections.

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 #31
Dances With Bears
http://johnhelmer.net
August 5, 2015
IMF MANAGEMENT ENDORSES WAR CRIME AGAINST PRESS - LAGARDE SUPPORTS IMF UKRAINE REPRESENTATIVE IN PROPAGANDA TRIP TO VENICE, ALL EXPENSES PAID
By John Helmer, Moscow
[Photos, links, and footnotes here: http://johnhelmer.net/?p=13977]

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has taken sides in the homicide trial of Nadia Savchenko, a Ukrainian military volunteer who is standing trial in Russia for the murder last year of two Russian journalists reporting on the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Jerome Vacher, the resident representative of the IMF in Kiev, appeared at the Ukraine art pavilion at the Venice Biennale, at the official opening sponsored by the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. The event took place on Thursday [1], May 7, and Vacher was there at the invitation of the Pinchuk Art Centre. The day was a regular working day in the Ukraine office of the IMF, and at IMF headquarters in Washington, DC. Pinchuk's insolvent Ukrainian bank and steel company are beneficiaries of the current multi-billion dollar IMF loan to Ukraine, the disbursement of which Vacher is responsible for supervising.

Vacher was photographed [2] in his official role as "chief of the IMF mission" carrying a placard in the Ukrainian colours which is part of the Savchenko-support campaign - motto "Hope Nadia" - being conducted by partisan political elements in Ukraine. The Pinchuk Art Centre has published its photograph of Vacher (lead image), along with 34 others, at this link [3].

According to the Pinchuk website and the caption published with his picture, Vacher was an invited guest at the "Official opening of 'Hope!', the Pavilion of Ukraine at the 56th International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia, and 'Okean Elzy' concert. Photos below are open for usage by mass media. To download a high res photo, click a preview, then click a link «Save in high resolution» in window's lower right corner. When using photos, please, note copyright information. Photographs provided by the PinchukArtCentre © 2015. Photographed by Sergey Illin."

For Vacher's trip to Venice the expenses appear to have been paid by Pinchuk entities.

In his official capacity representing the IMF, Vacher has been the guest of other Pinchuk entities at events promoting partisan political views, as well as Pinchuk's interests. Vacher is listed in his IMF role as a "participant" at the Pinchuk-funded Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference in 2013 [4].

Vacher was also an official participant at the YES conference in 2014 [6].

Vacher (centre) at Pinchuk's YES conference in Kiev, September 11, 2014 [7]. By then the IMF money had started to flow into Bank Dnepr Credit, and Vacher had been upgraded in the YES seating hierarchy to the second row, just behind Pinchuk himself.

Pinchuk's struggling bank, Bank Dnepr Credit, is a beneficiary of IMF payments to the Ukrainian banking system through the National Bank of Ukraine. It is also subject to Vacher's recommendations to the IMF team supervising the Fund's requirement that insolvent Ukrainian banks should be recapitalized by their shareholders. For that story, read this [8].

Pinchuk's steel company Interpipe [9] is in default on debts of more than $1 billion to the Ukrainian government, several international banks, the Italian government credit agency SACE, and private bondholders. According to a bondholder in Europe, Vacher's closeness to Pinchuk raises "concern for a potential conflict of interest on whether IMF rules for collecting Interpipe's overdue taxes and raising its energy bill will be modified to benefit Mr. Vacher's relationship with Mr. Pinchuk."

The Code of Conduct for IMF Staff explicitly [10] bars conflicts of interest; the use of official IMF time on private or partisan activities; acceptance of gifts or favours worth more than $100; and engagement in political activities without express permission by the Fund. The code also instructs its officials: "You should not, without authorization, provide to the news media, publish, or make public statements relating to the policies or activities of the IMF or to any national political question."

The Savchenko case has been a controversial political issue in both Ukraine and Russia for more than a year. A Ukrainian helicopter operator, Savchenko (below, right) was captured following military operations in the Lugansk area, and charged with criminal culpability in the deaths of two Russian television reporters, Igor Kornelyuk (left) and Anton Voloshin (centre), on June 24, 2014.

The international Committee to Protect Journalists has reported [11] their deaths this way. The circumstances have been reported [12] by the Russian media in greater detail. According to the Russian prosecution, Savchenko was a volunteer fighter in the Aidar battalion [13], an ideological formation associated with the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and accused internationally of war crimes and neo-Nazism. Savchenko is charged with providing firing coordinates for the journalists' position to a mortar unit which killed them. Nadia is a diminutive for her first name Nadezhda; in Russian nadezhda, but not Nadia, also means "hope". In Ukrainian the words make a pun.

In July Russian prosecutors finalized the indictment against Savchenko for multiple homicide, attempted murder, and illegal crossing of the Russian border. A court in Rostov-on-Don will commence trial at a date yet to be fixed. In the meantime Savchenko is in prison at Novocherkassk, in Rostov region. She is pleading not guilty [14].

The IMF staff code requires IMF officials, including Vacher, to "certify, according to a periodicity and in a form to be prescribed by the Managing Director, that they have read the policy on conflicts of interest and that they are in compliance."

Last week Vacher removed his Facebook publications after they disclosed approbative relationships with Ukrainian government officials. After his Facebook disclosures were revealed, Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko removed one of her Facebook publications. For that story, read this [15]. Vacher and the IMF refused to say whether or when Vacher had last signed his compliance with the staff code. The IMF claimed Vacher's Facebook and Twitter publications were "considered a personal matter". That's not exactly what Vacher himself believes. For what Vacher calls his "private" internet communication, including posts, photographs and videos, try JVacher1, his Instagram [16] call-sign.

On Wednesday morning, through her chief spokesman Gerry Rice and her spokesman for Ukraine, Olga Stankova, the managing director of the IMF Christine Lagarde was asked five questions to clarify the circumstances of Vacher's sponsored trip to Venice, his political demonstration in favour of Savchenko, and his acceptance of freebies from Pinchuk:

"1.Was Mr Vacher's time official time? Your refusal to answer will be reported to mean your affirmation.
2.Was Mr Vacher compensated by an entity associated with Mr Victor Pinchuk for his trip to Venice, his accommodation and expenses? Your refusal to answer will be reported as your affirmation.
3.Does the IMF endorse Mr Vacher's display of the political demonstration and placard known as "Hope Nadia"? Your refusal to answer will be reported as your affirmation.
4.Does Managing Director Lagarde and the IMF management endorse Mr Vacher's published view that Nadia Savchenko is not guilty of the murders for which she has been indicted and for which she is standing trial in Russia? Your refusal to answer will be reported as your affirmation.
5. Does the IMF condone the potential for conflict of interest in Mr Vacher's acceptance of favour from Mr Pinchuk, control shareholder of Bank Dnepr Credit and Interpipe? Your refusal to answer will be reported as your affirmation."

Lagarde and her spokesmen replied: "Mr. Vacher was on personal leave on May 7. We have nothing else to offer on your other questions." Vacher refused to reply.

A Russian banker who served at the IMF in the 1990s was asked what evidence he had encountered at the Fund of prejudice and Russophobia. "That was the period when Russia behaved to the expectation of people in Washington," he replies. "That is, it was doing all the 'right' things: destroying its economy and society, withdrawing from everywhere, abandoning its allies, renouncing any foreign strategy, stupidly repaying Soviet-era debts, undermining its defense capability, humiliating the army, etc. So the tone towards Russia and towards us was quite benevolent, almost friendly. There was no overt Russophobia, except that driven by the paranoia of former Soviet Union republics, especially in the Baltics."

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 #32
Sputnik
August 6, 2015
OSCE Confirms: No Russian Military Hardware Crossing Ukraine Border

Representatives of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have not seen any Russian military hardware crossing the Russian-Ukrainian border checkpoints of Donetsk and Gukovo over the last year of observations, the head of the OSCE's monitoring mission, Paul Picard, said Thursday.

Picard said in the past that there had been no signs of military hardware crossing the Russian-Ukrainian border.

"We have not seen any military equipment crossing the Donetsk or Gukovo checkpoints," Picard said at a press conference in Russia's southern city of Rostov-on-Don.

"In the region that we patrol nothing like that was observed," Picard said back in November, when asked about reports of Russian tanks, soldiers and military equipment allegedly crossing into Ukraine.

Picard said that since September "people dressed in military uniforms" had been seen crossing the Russian-Ukrainian border in both directions, but called them "volunteers."

"From September 1 through August 4, we have observed 21,309 of these types of people crossing the border, that's 63 per day or 441 per week, of which 94 percent are crossing the Donetsk checkpoint. This flow is continuing, but it has become less," Picard said.

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 #33
Kyiv Post
August 5, 2015
No end to Russia's war - or propaganda - in sight
by Allison Quinn

Russia's direct involvement in prosecuting its war against Ukraine is proven, as far as most in the West are concerned. But the Russian public is still oblivious to what's going on, accepting official denials, more than a year after the fighting began.

Among the latest allegations in a long and strong chain of evidence: Ukraine's top military prosecutor Anatoly Matios pinned the blame for the strife in eastern Ukraine squarely on the chief of Russia's General Staff, saying the entire war in Ukraine was a plot hatched and executed by Valery Gerasimov.

"The ideologist behind the war of aggression and the military conflict in eastern Ukraine is ...based on all the collected evidence, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Gerasimov," Matios told journalists at a briefing in Kyiv on Aug. 5.

But getting the truth to the Russian public, bypassing the Kremlin and Russia's state-controlled media, is seen as a way to get Russian President Vladimir Putin to admit the involvement.

Razumkov Center's military expert Mykola Sunhurovskyi said, however, breaking through Putin's "organized chaos" and detachment from reality will be difficult.

"Comfort is a huge factor here, because the Russian public would never want to admit that their leaders are mass murderers. And the Russian government is never going to just say 'Sorry, we've been lying to you this whole time,'" Sunhurovskyi said.

Even as two Russian servicemen who have consistently identified themselves as GRU military intelligence officers sent to Ukraine on assignment speak from their jail cells in Kyiv, Russian state media describes them as simply "Russian citizens."

One of them, Captain Yevgeny Yerofeyev, said on Aug. 2 that many other Russians were in Ukrainian custody, "including servicemen."

"It's just that they are only talking and writing about us. But in reality there are many," he told Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

Russia's Defense Ministry has maintained that the two captured GRU officers, both of whom were captured while fighting in eastern Ukraine, resigned prior to their arrival. They have denied this.

Joining Alexandrov and Yerofeyev in the ranks is Russian army major Vladimir Starkov. After he'd been detained by Ukrainian authorities in Donetsk Oblast in late July, he told them that he'd been sent to eastern Ukraine to act as a military adviser for the separatists.

Yet the Russian propaganda machine seems to have done the trick in convincing the Russian public that there is no war in Ukraine.

A poll conducted by Russia's Levada Center in late February provides a glimpse into the "organized chaos" Sunhurovskyi describes.

Fifty-three percent of respondents said they did not believe Russian troops were in Ukraine, compared to 25 percent who did. Forty-five percent said they would view the presence of Russian troops in Ukraine positively, compared to 35 percent who took a negative stance.

The overwhelming majority of respondents - 60 percent - said they did not believe a war was under way between Russia and Ukraine.

It is precisely the Russian public's ignorance that allows Putin's policies to flourish, Sunhurovskyi said.

He compared the current situation in Russia to the regime under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, noting that it took years for people to truly realize what had been happening.

"First there was Stalin, now there is Putin," he said.

According to analyst Vitaly Bala of the Situations Modeling Agency think tank, Russia's use of old Soviet tricks like "maskirovka" - denial and deception - is what has allowed them to wage the war so effectively without ever having to admit involvement.

By consistently portraying the crisis as an "internal conflict," he said, Russia can rely on plausible deniability even in the face of overwhelming evidence that Russian troops are on the ground in eastern Ukraine.

"The main goal right now for Russia is to legitimize the separatist republics so that they can continue to use them as proxies, while at the same time pretending (Moscow is) in no way involved," he said.

The fact that much of the international community continues to dance around the issue is what "allows Russia to brazenly lie," Bala said.

"They describe Russian mercenaries as 'separatists' or 'Russian-backed' instead of just calling them what they are: Russian mercenaries," he said.

"There is no end in sight. This is a war but no one is willing to call it that," he said.

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 #34
Orientalreview.org
August 5, 2015
Willy Brandt followers call for a new European approach to the crisis in Ukraine

A couple of weeks ago a group of influential German figures, the members of Willy Brandt Circle, have signed an Open Letter to SPD (German Social-Democrats) Bundestag delegates and cabinet ministers urging them to abandon the confrontational course in relations with Russia. The authors reviewed the degrading EU-Russia ties in the context of Ukraine's crisis which was the direct result of mutual misunderstandings and controversies. Hereby ORIENTAL REVIEW publishes an exclusive English translation of the Letter in full:

Europe is experiencing the worst crisis since the end of the East-West conflict. Not only dealing with Greece and the thousands of refugees heighten tenses across the continent, but also the ceasefire negotiation process in Ukraine remains fragile. As long as the conflict over the future of Ukraine is unsolved, the real danger of escalation is on the table.

A comprehensive peace treaty for Europe, envisioned by the Charter of Paris 1990, is still needed. Europe has no interest in aggravating old controversy between the United States and the USSR, bringing Russia to its knees. There is a difference between the European and the American interests: pan-European problems cannot be solved without Russia or even against Russia. Recent history shows: Russia and the peoples of the Soviet Union contributed more than anyone to the liberation of Europe from fascism and later to the unification of Germany. Therefore, Germany has a special responsibility to win Russia as a negotiating partner in the European peace order.

In 1990 it seemed that the answer to these questions is found once and for all: Russia became a co-architect of the European integration. Russia, alongside with the USA, would naturally become an anchor and an equal partner. Since then Russia's expectations have been deeply disappointed: EU and, what's more important, NATO enlargement policy totally excluded the possibility of Russia's membership. It was too difficult, as the country was too big. Moreover, some Eastern European states claimed that their quick accession to NATO membership was a military precaution against Russia. Having no perspective to join NATO itself, more and more patriotic Russia sees the expansion of the structures of the Western alliance as a threat. NATO expansion nourished Russia's old fear of being surrounded and it was gradually forced to thinking in geopolitical categories and zones of influence.

The Ukrainian crisis is a reflection of a major conflict between Russia and the Euro-Atlantic structures. It may lead to a catastrophe if the ongoing arms race, military provocations and confrontational rhetoric is not stopped. We strongly appeal to all responsible politicians and peace-loving citizens but first and foremost directly to the SPD:
In this situation bold political initiative is needed comparable to the initiatives that helped to stop the conflict spiral during Berlin Wall and Cuban Missile Crisis. It was German social democracy that paved the way to the new Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik and the détente. In 2015 we require such courage and political wisdom to counter the threat of renewed confrontation and division of Europe. We call to stop the confrontation and restart our relations with Russia before it is too late for all of us.

The Ukraine crisis cannot be solved by political sanctions against Russia. The underlying causes of the Russian-European alienation should be discussed at EU-Russia summit talks. Lasting reconciliation of interests can only be achieved through dialogue and negotiation. The economic sanctions undermine the development of Europe as a common economic area. Cooperation is an engine of confidence building. Energy infrastructure that has already been affected by the current sharpening of contradictions is a vital part of our mutual interests and bilateral trade.

The European Union that is partially responsible for the roots of the crisis must contribute to its solution on the basis of consensus. The interaction of Germany, France and Poland with Ukraine and Russia in Minsk II Agreement is an innovative approach. Implementation of Minsk II may bridge the credibility gap. A wider European integration is needed. Germany must throw into the say its position as a future OSCE president and act in the spirit of dialogue.

The United States as the most important partner of the new Ukrainian government has also high responsibility to find a solution to the crisis. All available international fora should be used to bring Russia and the US together. In times of crisis we need to maintain close ties in order to communicate effectively. Therefore, G7 should involve Russia and the work of the NATO-Russia Council should continue as soon as possible. Essential ways to negotiate in crisis should not be limited but broadened.

The incorporation of the Crimea into Russia is a violation of international agreements. At the same time it is a political reality that cannot be undone against the will of the majority of Crimea's voters. The status quo must not undermine the constructive cooperation with stakeholders of the common European interest.

Ukrainian crisis is also the result of a weak federal structure in a relatively new state. Only through a strong federal system the country can protect itself from ethnic strife and the threat of secession. The experience of other European countries with federal structure should be offered to Ukraine if needed.

NATO membership for Ukraine will not enhance Alliance's security. It will fuel the flame of Russia's fears about NATO objectives and increase the risks of unwanted military confrontation. The framework of the OSCE and the "Vienna Document" 2011 is vital in times of crisis and should be implemented to bring together political and military bodies of all European states.

The Ukraine crisis threatens the European arms control. Arms race, transfer of lethal military equipment and new troop deployments on both sides of the Russian border undermine the existing system of arms control treaties. The participation of German troops in the military training of the "intervention force" can trigger on the Russian side memories of the German invasion and aggravate tension, which is unnecessary. Disengagement of troops, non-proliferation and arms curbs are goals to be achieved as soon as possible.

During the Ukraine crisis we saw alarming rise of nuclear intent once again. There is a risk of rearming with medium range nuclear missiles in Europe as it happened in the 1980-es. Nuclear weapons must be finally outlawed. A matter of principle weapons of total annihilation should not be part of employable forces.

European peace order is not only an order of states. It is based on strong civil societies and, among other, international cooperation in the field of culture, media, sports and science. Restart of European youth exchange programs with Russia and Ukraine may help to overcome stereotyping and encourage better understanding of each other and, consequently, build better relations.

Europe needs Russia and Russia needs Europe. We stand at a tipping point. Either we enter a more or less Cold war with dim future or pave the way together the new common European peace order.
Now is the time to act!
Berlin, July, 21, 2015

Signers:
Prof. Egon Bahr was the creator of the "Ostpolitik" promoted by West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, for whom he served as Secretary of the Prime Minister's Office from 1969 until 1972. Between 1972 and 1990 he was an MP in the Bundestag.
Prof. Dr. Walther Stützle was the Deputy Minister of Defense in 1998-2002.
Dr. Christoph Zöpel is the SPD politician, Foreign Minister in 1999-2002.
Prof. Dr. Ingomar Hauchler, Bundestag MP (SPD) from 1983 to 1998.
Dr. Edelbert Richter is a Member of the European Parliament in 1991-1994, German Bundestag MP in 1994-2002, member of the Federation of German Scientists.
Dr. Hans Misselwitz is a functionary of the SPD and a founding member of the Institute Solidarity modernity.
Prof. Dr. Götz Neuneck is the Deputy Director of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH) and Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Group Arms Control and Disarmament (IFAR).
Antje Vollmer, is a member of the German Green Party. From 1994 to 2005, she was one of the vice presidents of the Bundestag.
Wolfgang Schmidt is the Hamburg Commissioner to the Federal Government, the European Union and of Foreign Affairs; Member of the Committee of the Regions.
Prof. Dr. Dieter Klein is the Head of the Commission on the Future of the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation and a member of its Board.
Prof. Dr. Gustav Horn is the Professor of Economics at the University of Flensburg, Scientific Director of the Institute of Macroeconomic Research in the Hans Böckler Foundation.
Dr. Rainer Land is the German social scientist and economist.
Axel Schmidt-Gödelitz is the Chairman of the East-West Forum.
Prof. Dr. Rolf Reissig is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation.
Prof. Dr. Elmar Brähler, was the Professor of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology at the University of Leipzig.
Prof. Dr. Peter Brandt is the German historian and retired Professor for Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Hagen.
Prof. Dr. Michael Schneider is the German political journalist and literary critic.
Prof. Klaus Staeck is a German lawyer and publisher.
Dr. Friedrich Dieckmann is the author of essays, reviews, stories and radio features.
Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Gießmann is the Executive Director of Berghof Foundation.
Prof. Dr. Lutz Götze, Professor Emeritus of the University of Saarland.
Dr. Enrico Heitzer, Researcher of the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation.
Gunter Hofmann is the German journalist working for Die Zeit.
Dr. Irina Mohr is the leader of Forum Berlin of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
Dr. Friedrich Schorlemmer, is a German Protestant theologian, civil rights activist and member of the SPD.
Volker Braun is the prominent German writer living in Berlin.
Daniela Dahn is the writer, journalist and essayist.
Ingo Schulze is a German writer from Dresden.

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 #35
Den (Kyiv)
July 27, 2015
Ukrainian pundit explains Russia's new strategy for Donbass

The following is a text of a report by Valentyn Torba: "'Panic Attack.' Expert: 'Russia actually rejects the idea of a mass invasion. Right now, Putin's main goal is discrediting the Ukrainian authorities and creating conditions for replacing them'" published by the Ukrainian analytical daily Den on 27 July:

The situation with the withdrawal of heavy equipment in the ATO [antiterrorist operation] zone [in Ukraine's Donbass] repeatedly increases the level of dissatisfaction in society. In social networks, this tendency sometimes borders on hysteria.

When conversation recently shifted to a 30-kilometer demilitarized zone, the topic of the population's discouragement began to break records. This is connected to a series of reasons.

First, it is understandable that the Minsk agreements are not so much an option for resolving the war, as they are an option for prolonging it in the hope that it will be possible in time to minimize losses through the formulas of truce.

Second, by embarking on the path of negotiations and agreements with the aggressor a year ago, the Ukrainian side trapped itself in a blind alley, where terms are being dictated to it. And while a year ago these terms were being dictated to us by the Kremlin, pressuring us with provocations and its military armada, now we are being pressured into fulfilling the Minsk-2 agreements by the West. That is to say, we have deprived ourselves of room to make alternate maneuvers.

Third, every step back by the Ukrainian military means the enemy's advance. And examples of this demonstrate the price of bargains with the occupier.

In the flurry of news headlines, the fact of the militants seizing several Ukrainian villages last week went by almost unnoticed (we are talking about the villages of Sokilnyky and Zholobok seized by the militants in violation of the Minsk agreements).

Another illuminating story took place on the night of Sunday to Monday [26 to 27 July], when the militants found out about the Aydar battalion being withdrawn from the city of Shchastya. The bandits immediately launched an attack on Shchastya. It was successfully repulsed mostly because the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not abandon their positions and our forces did not have such orders. For now, Aydar members themselves really are abandoning the city of Shchastya, which is located near Luhansk. But it is necessary to clarify that Aydar is not an assault battalion and that the number of Aydar members located in Shchastya itself was relatively small. Also, according to battalion representatives, many fighters from among its membership have already been fighting for a year and they are to be demobilized, that is to say, undergo planned rotation.

But the ambiguity of statements by politicians, questionable assumptions by experts and, as a consequence, a chain reaction of reflections among citizens, creates a cloud of disappointment. Statements about the withdrawal of the Armed Forces, as of 3 August, from occupied positions and beyond the borders of the 30-kilometer zone need to be supplemented with thorough explanations instead of being delivered in the form of general intentions. Citizens need to have it clearly explained why Shyrokyne (and more precisely, its hills) are important to us, what positions in Shchastya and Stanytsya Luhanska mean, and so on. And, most importantly, they need to understand the meaning of the Ukrainian side's February signature under the commitments to withdraw troops and create a demilitarized zone, as the majority of the public is convinced that the militants will not abandon their positions of their own free will.

In its turn, the ATO press center stated that "The announcement regarding the withdrawal of Azov battalion units from positions near Shyrokyne and the Aydar battalion from the Luhansk area publicized through certain mass media does not reflect reality. The misleading information is being spread through certain mass media and some dubious experts with the goal of discrediting the ATO forces and causing a flare-up of panic feelings in society. We declare that a planned rotation of the aforementioned battalions is underway." Though, in truth, Azov fighters themselves have already been signaling for a long time about the leadership's intention of withdrawing them from their positions without rotation.

In his turn, Aydar battalion officer Mykola Hrekov stated in his commentary for Den that "there is no point in causing panic over Aydar's withdrawal from Shchastya. There is sufficient Armed Forces presence in Shchastya to repel any attack. Aydar members themselves are always ready to return to their positions. There is, for example, a lot of fuss about the encirclement of a police department building that, in truth, did not happen. It is authorized persons who bear responsibility for their words, not people with loose tongues making assumptions based on rumors, who should be commenting on the situation. Unfortunately, this false practice of distortion and speculation leads only to negative results. I recall that some journalists and bloggers began smearing Heorhiy Tuka [recently appointe Luhansk Region governor] back when he departed for Luhansk Region. A person who has not held official positions beforehand and was a volunteer needs to be helped in a region that is new to him, instead of being unconstructively berated."

Heorhiy Tuka, Luhansk Region civilian-military administration head himself, offered quite emotional comments on Facebook on the situation regarding Shchastya being allegedly surrounded. He explained that "there was fighting in Shchastya. As a consequence of the fighting, we have four wounded, while the enemy has two killed and several wounded. A tragedy almost took place due to a stupid 'mistake': At a checkpoint, soldiers mistook a border guard patrol for a sabotage and reconnaissance group. It was a miracle that friendly fire was avoided, given that the fighters, who have been reading 'experts,' were 'on edge.'"

People's Deputy [and military expert] Dmytro Tymchuk explained on Facebook that "Minsk agreement-2 was signed without any public or expert discussions. But this is a fact that can no longer be amended. Accordingly, we should not cry about what should or should not have been done a year ago, but act on the basis of reality.... In order to avoid losing the West's support, we need to demonstrate the fulfillment of these agreements."

Recently, Tymchuk added: "The 'buffer zone demilitarization' in the Donbas [Donets Basin] by the Russian-terrorist forces does really display previous use of heavy equipment and armored vehicles. The opponent continues to actively conduct reconnaissance operations and is attempting to unleash a sabotage-and-terrorist war in the rear of the ATO forces through the use of sabotage- reconnaissance group forces."

Valentyn Badrak, Army Center for Research, Conversion and Disarmament director, commented on the situation for Den:

"Currently, positional displacements are taking place in eastern Ukraine, which are mostly connected to the Kremlin's desire to create conditions convenient for continued bargaining during negotiations. At present, everyone understands that Russia is actually ruling out the idea of a mass invasion. Transformation of the Russian stance has been noticeable since 9 May 2015. Today, by assembling powerful military forces in the Donbas created from Russian soldiers and mercenaries, the Kremlin is attempting to use them to cause the maximum amount of damage to our soldiers. This is a reaction to the internal escalation of the situation in Ukraine. Putin's main goal is to discredit the Ukrainian authorities and create conditions for replacing them. That is why Russian terrorists groups are attempting to destroy as many Ukrainian fighters as possible and to make demonstrative local attacks within the combat operations zone. It is not about a mass assault. It is about point strikes that affect Ukrainian society as negatively as loss of territory.

"The Kremlin wants, in practice, to prove to Ukrainian soldiers that, during strategic planning, the authorities are not worrying about the issue of creating a strong defense, but are attending to their private interests. Moscow is doing so without separating this from the context of the war itself. The Kremlin's main actions are currently directed at our country's stable regions in order to put people loyal to Putin into power. In order to do so, they will be using sabotage and various techniques for undermining public order, in order to create an opinion in society that these authorities cannot carry out their main mission, which is to lead Ukraine into the West and do so professionally. This is the Kremlin's main idea. A significant portion of the Kremlin's work is focused not just on Ukraine, but in the West as well. This work is aimed at creating a wing of allies and we can see that, at present, Russia is able to conduct dialogue or create conditions for such a dialogue with a certain portion of European countries. This has a negative impact on Ukrainian reality in the continued conflict with the Kremlin. To sum up, the main threat to Ukraine comes not from the Kremlin or from European countries that have a reserved stance toward us, but from our authorities' inadequacies. The authorities really are making the issue of defense secondary to protecting themselves. If no conclusions are drawn from this, Ukraine will continue to face risks of similar attacks."

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 #36
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
www.mid.ru
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's interview with the Channel NewsAsia, Kuala Lumpur, August 5, 2015 (excerpt re MH17)

Question: Mr.Lavrov, welcome to the program "Conversation With..." What do you have to say to the Malaysian families who lost loved ones on MH17?

S.Lavrov: We already expressed our deepest condolences on many occasions to those who lost their families, their relatives, their sons and daughters and parents. This is a terrible tragedy, and from the very first days if not hours of this incident we have been insisting on a very thorough investigation and we were among the initiators of the Security Council Resolution 2166, which was adopted a bit more than one year ago, on the 21st of July last year, and which called for a thorough comprehensive independent international investigation under the authority of the International Civil Aviation Organization.

The Security Council pledged to keep this investigation under its permanent review. It's also called upon the Secretary General to provide recommendations as to how the Security Council and the United Nations in general can help and assist in the investigation, and it also called upon all countries who might possess any information to submit it to the investigation procedures. Unfortunately, the investigation which was started, was not independent, was not comprehensive and was not truly international. Instead of acting under the authority of the International Civil Aviation Organization, which is the rule under the Chicago Convention, Ukraine, Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands signed bilateral agreements between themselves, the substance of which was never made fully known, and they organized a joint criminal investigation team August 2014. It's really very strange the Malaysia was invited to join only in December 2014. Now this is a five-country criminal investigation group. Technical investigation team is broader: they invited several other countries to participate in this technical investigation, including the Russian Federation - a representative of the Russian civil aviation organization is participating in these procedures. But the information we receive through this representative is not complete. We are being given less than those who started the investigation, which is also subject to questions.

The Secretary General, unfortunately, in spite of our reminders did not provide his recommendations as to how the United Nations can facilitate the investigation, and the call of the Security Council upon all countries to submit information which might have any relevance to the incident was basically responded to only by Russia. We submitted the data from our radar station in the Rostov Region, which monitored the skies at that time. The Americans said that they did have images from the satellite, but never submitted them, never made them public. The same is true for the Ukrainians, who were asked to provide recordings of the air controllers and between the planes up in the air in the area of incident. All this, unfortunately, has been repeatedly brought to the attention of the United Nations, of the general public, by us. We suggested a couple of times that the Security Council should consider the implementation of that resolution and should call upon everyone to strictly abide by its provisions. Unfortunately, the proposals were blocked in the Security Council. The Secretary General also was asked by us to appoint a special envoy to monitor the investigation, and we also suggested to dispatch Security Council mission to the area. All this was blocked and, unfortunately, blocked by those very countries who now insist on creating the tribunal.

Question: Isn't it a bit confusing now there? Because the Malaysians have, as a representative of a group, and that is of course Malaysia, Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Ukraine, they've all come together, though, to put forward the latest draft resolution for the tribunal and they seem to be in agreement that there appears to be sufficient evidence to pursue a criminal tribunal. Why is it that Russia decided to veto that draft resolution? Why are you so against a criminal tribunal?

S.Lavrov: No. We are very strongly demanding that the truth be established and that the culprits be brought to justice. The Security Council was involved from the very beginning, and I've just explained what measures the Security Council demanded to be taken one year ago. None of this was implemented, and the investigation is not transparent. It is not complete yet. The preliminary report which was circulated causes so many questions. It never answers such a very simple thing which air traffic and air service experts immediately brought to the attention of the public. They only said that the plane was hit by high-energy particles. The first thing professional investigators do is to conduct chemical analysis of those particles. With modern technologies it is possible to immediately identify what the metal is and what factory in what country produced this particular thing.

Another problem which I believe is very important is that from the very beginning they were finger-pointing, saying: "We know who did it: the rebels in Ukraine did it from the Russian-made air defense missile system". They even identified the system, which is one of the options, one of the versions that we believe must be thoroughly investigated. Why do you think they never, ever approached the Russian company which produces those systems? The company itself conducted its own study and they presented the results in June this year. But the fact that the investigators didn't ever approach the company which produced the system from which the investigators say the plane was hit is causing a lot of questions.

Answering your question my point is that the Security Council one year ago identified very specific steps to conduct the investigation. Most of the steps were not heeded, were not implemented, and people repeatedly blocked our proposals for the Security Council to pick up the matter during the year which passed after the tragedy, and they were saying that they are doing this among themselves.

By the way, the five countries you mentioned, apparently, agreed among themselves not to make any information public, unless all of them, including Ukraine, agree. And we also don't understand why Malaysia was invited only six months after the investigation team was composed.

Question: But Malaysia obviously seems satisfied enough to actually be the proposer of the draft resolution for the criminal tribunal, and expressed great disappointment in fact that the resolution wasn't passed. The blocking vote came from the Russian Federation. So if the countries involved, who suffered victims, seem to feel that the coming report, which will be out in October, has sufficient evidence in it to pursue a criminal tribunal, why is Russia still so adamant?

S.Lavrov: You say they were disappointed. We have been hugely disappointed that during the year which passed after the tragedy all our attempts to push the investigation, to make it transparent, to provide information, because the families did not receive enough information. All our attempts to get answers for the questions which we formulated through our professional civil aviation agency - all of this was just stonewalled, and it causes suspicions.

Question: What is your suspicion? When you say 'causes suspicions', what are the suspicions?

S.Lavrov: When people who say: "We would investigate", instead of fulfilling the Security Council decision that the investigation must be under the authority of the International Civil Aviation Organization, they ignored this, and they created their own small team without even inviting immediately Malaysia, waiting six months to do this. Then, in previous disasters like this, including when in 1988 the United States shot down the Iranian civil airliner, when Ukraine shot down the Russian airliner in 2001, the Lockerbie case - all of these were considered as criminal offense. The Security Council never created any tribunal to investigate these incidents. Every time there was some special way out, and the specific proposal which was submitted - apart from the arguments which I already alluded to, like ignoring the previous resolution, but insisting that the Council should create a tribunal - apart from this, the specific proposal was very peculiar. It was proposed in the draft statute to establish a tribunal based mostly on the Ukrainian law, for the judges and prosecutor of the tribunal to be appointed by the Secretary General without consulting the Security Council, and the judges, as it was proposed in the draft statute, should have experience in exercising Ukrainian and Malaysian law. It does not look like an international investigation or prosecution mechanism.

Question: Do I understand correctly though that you are implying that the other countries, including Malaysia, are being manipulated by the Ukrainians?

S.Lavrov: I'm not saying that anyone is manipulated by Ukrainians, and least of all by Malaysians. We believe Malaysia is the most sincerely interested country in establishing the truth. It has experienced two disasters with its airliners, and I don't see any political motivation in what Malaysia is trying to do. There should be no doubt about it. I cannot be so certain about some other colleagues, especially from the Western countries, who seem to be quite prejudiced. But still, the chief of the criminal investigation team said that he didn't exclude that the plane might have been hit by an air-to-air missile, not just by surface-to-air missile.

Our experts have been looking into both options, and they believe that both of them must be investigated. But when we try to speak about this, it is very easy to be driven by emotions - "oh, Russia vetoed something which was supposed to establish the truth!" I never get an answer from my colleagues in this investigation team to a very simple question: if from the very first days it was stated that most probably the plane was hit by the "Buk" air defense missile made in Russia, why the producer of this system was never contacted and why this producer had himself to initiate some investigation and then the results of this investigation were made public.

And the very simple question about the American satellite images, about Ukrainian air traffic controllers recordings. By the way, those who insisted that it is the rebels who are responsible try not to mention a very simple and a very well-known fact: this happened on the 17th of July. One the 20th of July the black boxes were discovered, on the 21st of July there were given to Malaysian experts who then transmitted them to the Dutch investigators, immediately. There are so many politicized games around this tragedy that we cannot really pretend that we are satisfied with the way the original resolution was handled. It was bypassed by the investigators, the demands were not implemented, the information is not made public, and they were ignoring our proposals to engage the Security Council during the year saying that they are doing this on their own.

I don't believe it's crucial for them to have something under the Security Council. None of such cases has been subject to a tribunal by the Security Council. The representatives of the this criminal investigation group including Ukrainians said that they are thinking of creating some mechanism outside of the United Nations, maybe using a national jurisdiction. That's how all similar disasters have been handled.

Question: So you would like it to be done under national jurisdictions and nor under the United Nations?

S.Lavrov: I would like the UN Security Council Resolution 2166 to be respected fully which was not the case by the criminal investigation team created by the five countries you mentioned.

Question: Transport Minister of Malaysia Liow Tiong Lai said that instead of conveying a message of support, of justice and accountability we are sending a dangerous message of impunity for the perpetrator of this heinous crime. Do you agree?

S.Lavrov: No, I don't agree with this. I read an interview with the former ambassador of Malaysia to the Netherlands in "The Sun" yesterday who said different things. He said this is hugely politicized, and I agree with him.

Question: So you think that the Malaysian government, by implication, is being manipulated or has a political agenda? It's not been obviously really revealed?

S.Lavrov: I don't know whether the Malaysian government is manipulated. I said only one thing and I can repeat it again. I don't have any suspicion that the Malaysian government sincerely wants to establish the truth. I am sure this is the case for the Dutch government, and for the Australian government. But there are also those in Europe and in the West who would like to use this tragedy to achieve also political purposes.

Question: Who are these in Europe and in the West who would try to achieve a political purpose - if you discount those who have suffered most?

S.Lavrov: Those who immediately, the next day after the disaster, pointed the finger to the rebels. Now these very people say that they want justice to prevail.

Question: Are you referring to the Ukraine?

S.Lavrov: They were many statements in Europe and in the United States. I don't think Ukraine was making any straightforward statements. My point is people including those whose countries created this criminal investigation team have said that they knew who did it. If you know who did it, you say so. Present your report and then we will all see whether this report is persuasive.

But they also must answer why they ignored most of the demands of the Security Council of the original resolution. Doesn't it look fishy?

Question: The countries that are involved seem to think that it doesn't look fishy and that there is sufficient evidence to try and pursue a criminal tribunal...

S.Lavrov: If you were asked to present your opinion, do you think that the Security Council resolution on such an important issue should be strictly implemented or not?

Question: But that would imply that 2166 was somehow wrong fundamentally, and a new resolution should be put forward.

S.Lavrov: I am asking whether 2166 should be implemented strictly or not?

Question: The most important of this interview is definitely your opinion, not mine. Could we move on to look at Russia's role in Asia.

S.Lavrov: Now that you've failed to answer my question, okay, let's move on....

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