Johnson's Russia List
2015-#157
13 August 2015
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"We don't see things as they are, but as we are"

"Don't believe everything you think"

In this issue
 
#1
Russians value tolerance and civility more than freedom of speech - poll

MOSCOW, August 13. /TASS/. Russians value religious feelings, tolerance and civility above freedom of speech, suggest opinion poll findings showing more than two-thirds rate tolerance in society ahead of unrestrained expression.

"Most respondents [68%] are sure that citizens' first priority must be tolerance and civility, not freedom of speech," the Russian Public Opinion Research Center announced on Thursday after an April poll of 1,600 people across 46 Russian regions. Twenty-seven percent took an opposite view, the pollsters said.

Similar findings recorded 67% of respondents saying that those working in the world of art should not insult religious sensitivities by their creations, a figure rising to 77% among the older generation. A quarter of those questioned said they had witnessed religious feelings being insulted. 
 #2
Russia Beyond the Headlines/Moskovsky Komsomolets
www.rbth.ru
August 13, 2015
50% of Russian parents talk about sex with their children
Russians feel more and more comfortable about explaining the birds and the bees.
 
A new study shows that 50 percent of Russians believe the best way to educate children on sexual matters is for the parents to talk to them personally - meaning the number of Russians who are ready to have "the big talk" with their kids is growing.

The data was collected in December 2014 during a poll entitled "Is sex education necessary and how should it be implemented?" as part of a comparative study published by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VtsIOM).

A similar survey run in 1989 found out only 19 percent of respondents believed in home sex education, most of them having confidence in school and professional literature.

Just 2 percent of those polled in 2014 (compared to 1 percent in 1989) considered sex education unnecessary.

The number of Russians who think the most important part of sex education is informing children about pregnancy and the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases is on the increase (from 18 to 44 percent and from 15 to 41 percent, respectively).

Attitudes towards casual sex and early sexual relationships have also changed: While 25 years ago most respondents objected to these on moral grounds, in 2014, the reasons were mostly pragmatic: health concerns (34 percent of respondents) and possible problems with getting thorough education and finding a good job (19 percent).

This article is an abridged version. The original text can be found at Moskovsky Komsomolets.
 
 #3
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
August 13, 2015
5 Western Media Memes Which Turn Russians Against Us
Russians are well-informed and have learned to be very skeptical of the west's Orwellian 24/7 media echo chamber
By Peter Lavelle
Peter Lavelle is the host of Crosstalk, RT's flagship political discussion show.

Western media coverage of Russia is breathtakingly biased and never held to account for the lies and nonsense it spews out.

The following memes highlight the kind of journalistic malpractice actively encouraged by western governments, and gleefully reproduced by corporate media.

"If they only knew the truth"

The "If the Russians only knew" meme: The fact is Russian audiences interested in politics know a lot and certainly far more than their counter-parts in the west. This should not surprise anyone who has been watching Russia and watching western media coverage Russia over the past few years. The intentional distorting of "the Russia story" is breathtaking in its breath and depth - it is a propaganda war without historical peer. Rarely are there any facts used, there is an absence of chronology, missing is any sense of causality, and the overt willingness to deny any responsibility about things written or said about Russia.

Nonetheless, the west lectures Russia about media professionalism. Russians no longer trust western media when it comes to coverage of their country. This applies also to western media coverage of Iran, Syria, and, of course Ukraine. Russian audiences are aware and fuming at how the West uses and abuses journalism for crude geopolitical gains.

Who wins, who loses?

The "Who lost Russia" meme is one of the most arrogant and long-term western media and policy themes in play. Russia now and always will be a country not to be won or lost by anyone outside Russia itself. This meme needs to be re-worded to ask a more germane question: Why does the west's policy toward Russia continue to go from bad to worse? Why do the West's rhetoric and intentions become more shrill and violent? No one in the halls of power in Washington (and its supportive "stenography union" echo chamber media) has ever been held responsible for the catastrophic bi-partisan policy approach toward Russia since the end of the Cold War.

Over the past two decades there can be not doubt who has won Russia - it is the Russian people themselves. They are richer and freer today than they have been in their entire history. Washington and Brussels (and their pliant media) will continue to "judge" and "suggest," and "berate" their behavior, but they are the real losers in all of this. Fortunately a solid of majority of Russians today no longer look to the west for inspiration. There is plenty at home to be proud of.

Empire: Who has already built one?

The most common fantasy meme regarding Russia is its alleged desire to regain empire. This claim is repeated 24/7 by western media and cited more times than not as the motive behind Putin's "aggression." However, there is scant evidence to support this wild claim. In fact it is often forgotten how Vladimir Putin during his first and second terms as president repeatedly reached out to the west to reform Europe's security structures to encompass the interests of Europe and Russia as equal partners. The west, particularly Washington, would have nothing to do with any notions of security equality. Russia had to completely submit or suffer the west's full spectrum assault.

That assault started after Washington's minion in Georgia - Mikheil Saakashvili - attacked recognized peacekeepers and civilians in the breakaway republic of South Ossetia in August 2008. Russia responded militarily, but importantly did not make any attempt to take and occupy Tbilisi. When faced with western-back military action on its borders Russia will react. Tragically this tenet of Russia's security policy Washington refuses to take on board.

The Ukraine fiasco is further evidence that Russia does not have imperial ambitions. If Moscow wanted to take Kiev militarily, it could do so in a couple of days. However, this will not happen. The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union were a net loss for its core nation - the Russians. There is no national debate about regaining empire. Only voices in the west talk about this. Russians do not want to make the same mistakes of the past as the U.S. continues to expand its real global empire through the use of force.

Ukraine: Washington's filthy hand

Ukraine is a media meme that has rapidly and widely become associated with the words quagmire, hopeless, senseless cruelty and insanity. The western designed and activated regime change in Kiev disgusts and unites the Russian public like no other issue sense independence in 1991. Proclaimed western values have been left in tatters in the destroyed homes and lives of the Donbas.

The west's portrayal of this civil war as a Ukraine conflict with Russia rings hollow when put under scrutiny. With the exception of Moscow's traitorous fifth column liberals, the vast majority sees through the lies of western propaganda. The truth is the people of the Donbas continue to defend themselves (and often with degrees of Russian help) against the aggression delivered by Kiev's western-backed right-wing and even neo-fascist militias. It is interesting to note that among the media memes mentioned thus far, this is the one cracking under pressure.

Alternative and independent media (and some rights groups) have started to shame the corporate media shielding the corrupt and murderous regime in Kiev. Nonetheless, the west's "ministers of propaganda" always have recourse to claim that all that is bad in Ukraine is "Putin's fault."  

Putin, the one and only

Vladimir Putin is a media meme all on his own. The Russian president is widely liked and respected among his people. His foreign policy protecting and advancing Russia's interests on the world stage has almost universal acceptance at home. This is what makes the west's hatred of all things related to Putin of supreme interest to many Russians.

A great deal of western print media is instantly translated into Russian. The ahistorical and mindless missives written by Washington's guardians of empire are all a click away (and the reaction is a mixture of laughter and seething anger). Russian audiences have access to CNN, BBC, France 24, Sky News, and Al-Jazeera. What is said about their president does not have to be censored or filtered. The lack of knowledge and transparent hatred of Russia is obvious for all here to see.  The more the West tries to demonize and isolate Putin, the more his place in history as the Russian who said "NO" to the Empire is assured.

Another reason Russians have to be proud.
 
#4
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
August 9, 2015
Sergey Naryshkin, chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Federal Assembly: August of provocations. Political forecast for most troubled month

August is the traditional month for the political summer break. Citizens of European countries also like to take a vacation during this period. But by no means all Western politicians rest during these days - they actively plan new provocations, and not only for the fall...

History reminds us how "preparations" of this kind have ended for Europe and the world. A century ago, in August 1914, World War I broke out, and it too was provoked by certain people - beginning with the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the initially local conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary. There are other examples too. A quarter of a century later, in July-August 1948, there was the Soviet-Japanese conflict in the region of Lake Khasan. And seven years after that, also at the beginning of August, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were wiped off the face of the earth by nuclear bombings.

Coincidentally, it was exactly 30 years before the dropping of the first atom bomb, on 6 August 1915, that one of the most searing and symbolic episodes of World War I took place, involving the use against Russian troops of another lethal and barbarous weapon - chemical toxins - in the so-called "attack of the dead men"...

Unfortunately, in recent times August has also repeatedly seen invasions, armed conflicts on borders, and other patently planned, "handmade" events. Suffice it to recall the hot August 1999 when the terrorist attachments of [Chechen warlord Shamil] Basayev and [warlord] Khattab invaded Dagestan, or 2008 in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, where the initiator and perpetrator of the military adventure was the American placeman M. [Mikheil] Saakashvili. He is now "practising" in Odessa, which will be forever remembered for the tragedy of dozens of people burned alive [in May 2014]. Meanwhile in Ukraine, where the bloodshed is in its second year, the armed clashes continue...

Nowadays, when the whole world is unquiet, one must closely observe any political provocations launched on either side of the Atlantic. It is important to see and to analyse in depth everything that is done in the West or dropped by the West into the forums of international organizations.

A few days ago there was a vote in the UN Security Council on a clearly politicized issue - the formation of an international tribunal. This time the pretext was, alas, the Malaysian Boeing tragedy (although hitherto no such tribunal has been formed for any air disaster). As in the case of another draft Security Council resolution (on the situation surrounding Crimea in March of last year), here we imposed a veto. And do you think anyone seriously expected the vote to end in any other way?

However, the chief initiator, the United States (there is no doubt of that), will not let it rest there. No doubt they will now insist on a discussion in other formats, even if those formats are not binding for implementation. A decision at any level will be passed off by Washington as one that gives it a free hand. Because it is Washington that has an interest in instability, which gives the United States time to continue old acts of piracy and start new ones. That is the only reason that they need a new ballyhoo even over the Boeing disaster, where the version of the causes that they themselves fabricated was imposed a long time ago.

I think the States will also continue to bamboozle people with its false information, to pass off wishes as reality, and to create more and more new pretexts for inflaming anti-Russian sentiments in Europe. They are even trying to turn the UN Security Council into a forum for their own propaganda, which has already exceeded every conceivable limit. The Russian veto, in essence, saved the reputation of the Security Council - because a ruling by such a tribunal would be bound to be false and unjust, as the Canadian expert in international law Christopher Black (one of the participants in our roundtable in Moscow in July) recently said outright.

You may ask - what is the States' ultimate goal? The answer is as before: Their foreign debt is enormous, and ruining other states is their usual method. Even the presence in US hands of the global "printing press" is no longer helping. Total control of NATO and the bugging and blackmailing of the "big league" in the EU cannot save them. For the "21st-century model" colonialists, all this is not enough. It is necessary not only to keep the dollar as the only world currency but also to get closer to the economic wealth of other major powers and regions of the world.

In fact, that is why the United States has now published a new list of Russian organizations and individuals, instructing its banks (and with their help, European banks) not to work with our organizations, and to seek any reason for that. Apparently they are also pinning considerable hopes on the upcoming examination in an American court of the so-called lawsuit of former Yukos shareholders. The main aim is to give American jurisdiction a global monopoly and also to preserve the former influence on the world financial system and remain the sole master in this regard. Even the fate of the euro does not count, just as the other economic losses of European countries do not count...

To be honest, it is becoming tedious not only to react, but even to observe all these antics. And even more to ponder what served as the reason for imposing these piratical sanctions only now, and not months earlier. Whether American politicians had the objective of first reaching agreement with us on Iran, or whether it was something else - the cynicism of their policy is obvious. But if you sow the wind you will reap the whirlwind, something that the present, umpteenth "war" president of the United States would do well to remember. As North American analysts themselves have written, only for a handful of years out of the country's two and a half centuries of existence has it been without wars. And all too often it has waged war against peoples far away from its borders.

Well, August has only just begun. But it is no accident that its very first events reek of deep political autumn. To all appearances an escalation is being planned, but this is by no means the first in an entire string of similar ones that have happened before our very eyes. They say forewarned is forearmed. I am confident that we will not yield to these provocations, either. As for the international tribunal, eventually it will happen on an entirely different subject than the one desired by those who are currently demanding it. And one day a really objective and professional court will take into account all the facts, including those I have written about today. This tribunal will happen, and not another one. And you and I will live to see the day.


 
 
 
  #5
www.rt.com
August 13, 2015
United Russia will not use Putin's image in next elections - report

Russia's ruling parliamentary party, which has always based its policies on supporting Vladimir Putin, will not ask the president to allow them use his image in the 2016 elections campaign, a business daily reports.

Kommersant newspaper quoted unnamed sources in United Russia as saying that its presidium has already chosen five people who will top the party's lists in the forthcoming primaries, and the president was not among them. The sources did not disclose the names of these politicians. They also said that most of the places in the lists would be reserved for regional party leaders, as this would make the primaries "democratic to the maximum."

United Russia officials also told Kommersant that the party did not want to involve Putin in its election campaign in order to protect the president from possible damage to his political rating, because it was difficult to forecast how many voters would lend their support to the party this time around.

A source in the Russian presidential administration has confirmed the party's announcement, adding that the general idea was to make United Russia more independent and competitive. "The party must now do everything to cope with its political tasks by itself," Kommersant quoted the unnamed Kremlin official as saying.

Earlier this year, United Russia announced that its chairman, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, would head its lists of candidates in the 2016 parliamentary polls.

Russian elections law requires that any political party or movement that intends to use an image of any person in its campaign materials needs to get the written consent of that person. In 2011, Putin gave his consent to United Russia to use his image. However, after his re-election as president, Putin started to distance himself from his main political allies and became closer to the United Popular Front movement - an alliance of people who agreed with Putin's political course, but chose not to join United Russia or any other political party.

In June, the president's approval rating reached a historic high of 89 percent, according to the independent Levada Center polling agency. The number of Russians who expressed dissatisfaction with Putin's work was 10 percent. Sixty-four percent said the current policies of all Russian authorities were correct - also the highest in recorded polling history.

When researchers asked the Russian public to name five or six politicians they trusted most, Putin again ranked first, with 64 percent of respondents naming him their favorite.

Putin's approval ratings have been constantly rising since the beginning of last year, and in December an overwhelming majority of citizens named the president "Man of the Year" among serving Russian politicians.
 #6
Moscow Times
August 13, 2015
Russians Require Minimum Monthly Income of $350, Poll Shows

The minimum monthly income a household needs to make ends meet, according to the average Russian, is 22,755 rubles ($350) per person - nearly 2.5 times more than the official minimum cost of living in Russia, a survey by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) revealed.

Respondents' answers varied according to geography and income level.

Residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg said they need a minimum monthly income of 25,153 rubles ($395) per person to support themselves, while village residents consider a minimum monthly income of 17,414 rubles ($270) per person sufficient for modest living.

Low-income Russians, who struggle to buy food, reported that a monthly income of 18,809 rubles ($290) per person is needed to get by, while property owners needed a minimum monthly income of 31,935 rubles ($490) per person.

Respondents said they considered poor households to be those with a monthly income of 11,173 rubles ($173) per person and below.

Respondents from villages considered poor households to be those with a monthly income of less than 10,050 rubles ($155) per person. In cities with a population greater than a million people, respondents considered households earning a monthly income of less than 13,045 rubles ($200) per person poor.

The poll was conducted on July 4-5 and 11-12, among 1,600 people in 46 Russian regions. The margin of error does not exceed 3.5 percentage points, according to VTsIOM.

In April, a poll carried out by the National Agency of Financial Research (NACFIN) showed that 7 percent of Russians polled are barely making ends meet. A quarter of respondents could afford food but not clothing, the survey indicated.

Rosstat state statistics service reported a significantly lower minimum subsistence level of 9,662 rubles ($150) a month per person. As of June, the average Russian monthly income is 35,930 rubles ($555) per person.

The first four months of this year saw the number of Russians with incomes below the poverty line increase to 22.9 million and now accounts for 15.9 percent of the total population, Rosstat said.
 #7
Interfax
August 13, 2015
Poll: Banned food better be given to needy, orphans

Forty percent of Russians have backed the authorities' decision to destroy embargoed food, while the number of opponents is a bit higher (48 percent), the Levada Center has told Interfax on Aug. 13.

In the opinion of the respondents, the food would better be given to orphanages, homeless shelters or hospitals (43 percent) or be distributed amongst the needy: pensioners, people with disabilities and families with many children (41 percent).

Twenty-seven percent proposed to give the embargoed food to charities; 27 percent proposed to send the food to Donbas and 12 percent to hungry people in Africa.

Fifteen percent think the embargoed food should be destroyed and 10 percent suggest that it be processed and used as fertilizer or cattle food.

On July 29, 2015, the Russian president signed a decree on the destruction of all agricultural products, raw materials and food prohibited from being imported into Russia starting on August 6. According to Rosselkhoznadzor, 371 tonnes of food had been destroyed by Aug. 10.

Twenty-three percent of Russians said the decree ranked second amongst the most remarkable events of the past four weeks.

On the whole, 68 percent of the respondents backed the Russian authorities' ban on imports of food and agricultural products from EU countries and the United States. The indicators were 78 percent and 13 percent, respectively, a year ago.

Two-thirds (66 percent) of the respondents feel negative about the proposal to ban government procurements of high-tech medical hardware, such as X-ray machines, ultrasonic scanners, artificial lung ventilation systems, newborn incubators and so on, from the West, and 26 percent support it.

The ban on government procurements of orthopedic footwear, prosthetic appliances, crutches, bandages and other patient care products from the West is supported by 33 percent and not supported by 55 percent.

Forty-three percent of 1,600 respondents polled in 134 populated localities in 46 regions on Aug. 7-10 backed the idea to ban government procurements of condoms from the West, and 36 percent expressed their negative attitude.
 #8
Sputnik
August 13, 2015
Russia Mulls Distributing Confiscated Food to Poor Amid Public Discontent

A group of lawmakers from the Communist fraction of Russia's lower house of parliament has introduced a bill aimed at redistributing foodstuffs confiscated under Russia's food embargo to those in need, and as humanitarian aid to conflict zones, the body's press service announced on Thursday.

"Hundreds of tons of foodstuffs are being burned in food crematoriums and destroyed using other methods. Their destruction is an extreme and costly measure. For the purposes of observing the ban on the import of [sanctioned] agricultural production, raw goods and foodstuffs into Russia, their confiscation is sufficient," an explanatory note to the bill noted.

The bill's authors say that instead of being destroyed, these confiscated foodstuffs could instead be distributed among the country's poor, to those facing temporary difficulties, and could also be sent as humanitarian aid to conflict zones, such as eastern Ukraine's war-torn region of Donbass.

The draft legislation proposes that agricultural products falling under Russia's food ban would be subject to seizure, becoming the property of Russia. Aiming to quell worries about shoddy food safety standards, the bill notes that products of sub-standard quality would be subject to destruction and recycling.

Measure a Response to Public Discontent Over Destruction of Food

Earlier, Western and Russian media reported heavily on Russians' discontent over a presidential decree stepping into force earlier this month authorizing the destruction of several hundred tons of confiscated embargoed food goods. A petition over at US-based online petition tool Change.org aimed at distributing seized food to the needy has gathered over 350,000 signatures. The petition was addressed to President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, and the leaders of Russia's parliamentary fractions.

Earlier this month, Presidential Press Secretary Dmitri Peskov noted that Putin would be kept informed of the results of the petition, but added that the authenticity of the signatures has yet to be verified. Moreover, Peskov stressed that the publicized destruction of food products would be aimed at maintaining the effectiveness of Russia's countersanctions, and most importantly, at ensuring that the questionable foodstuffs without proper certification would not damage Russians' health.

On Wednesday, independent sociological research firm Levada Center published findings from recent polling, finding that nearly 40 percent of Russians considered the presidential decree 'entirely positive' or 'somewhat positive', with 48 percent of respondents considering it 'somewhat negative' or 'entirely negative', and 13 percent finding it 'difficult to say'.

A follow-up, multiple answer question asking respondents what exactly the government should do with the confiscated food found 43 percent of respondents suggesting that the goods should be 'given to orphanages, homeless shelters and hospitals,' 41 percent saying it should be 'given to those in need, including pensioners, the disabled, and families with many children', 27 percent suggesting that the food should be transferred to charitable organizations, 24 percent saying they should be 'sent to Donbass' as humanitarian aid, 12 percent saying that they should be 'sent to the hungry in Africa', 10 percent saying that they should be 'processed and used as fertilizer and/or to feed livestock', and only 15 percent sticking to the view that 'it should be destroyed.'

The presidential decree approving the decision to destroy confiscated embargoed foodstuffs stepped into force on August 6, following reports questioning the effectiveness of Russia's ban on the import of several categories of food products from the European Union, the United States, Canada, Australia and Norway, introduced in August of last year. The measure has served as Russia's response to several rounds of anti-Russian sanctions introduced earlier by these countries over Russia's alleged involvement in the ongoing civil war in Ukraine. In June, the Russian government decided to extend the embargo until August 2016, in response to the extension of EU sanctions.
 #9
Christian Science Monitor
August 12, 2015
Recalling famine, Russians decry Kremlin destruction of food imports
The Kremlin's decision to destroy some 400 tons of Western food covered by countersanctions offends those who remember the Soviet years.
By Fred Weir, Correspondent

MOSCOW-Larissa Tarkhanova well remembers the Soviet-era rituals of lining up, often for hours, to obtain basic foodstuffs in the "grocery stores" of those days. As a clerk in a pretty well-stocked local food shop, Ms. Tarkhanova says she knows how far her country has come, generally supports its leadership, and seldom complains about anything.

But today something has upset her - the Kremlin's destruction of perfectly good food.

The Russian government has been destroying vast quantities of foodstuffs, from pork and cheese to apples and tomatoes, because they originated in Western countries covered by retaliatory counter-sanctions ordered by President Vladimir Putin a year ago. And that waste - almost 400 tons of food incinerated or bulldozed in the past several days - is rubbing a lot of Russians, who have memories like Tarkhanova's, the wrong way.

"My parents went hungry during the war, and we never had very much. It just seems like a criminal waste to destroy food as they are doing. It's against the traditions of this country," she says. "If it's contraband, OK, confiscate it. But why not give it to orphanages, or resell it at low prices for poor people? Punish the smugglers, but why do my eyes have to burn when I see this?"

Why the waste?

While the extent of this mood has yet to be confirmed by public opinion polls, the mass food wastage does seem to have struck a raw nerve with many Russians. Even people who seldom have a bad word to say about Mr. Putin, or Russia's government, seem viscerally opposed to the idea of plowing juicy-looking peaches into the earth.

The Kremlin's in-house human rights council has deplored the policy. Duma deputies and Orthodox priests are among the nearly 350,000 people who have signed an on-line petition calling on Putin to cancel the program.

Social media has erupted in anger and derision over the spectacle. While that's not so unusual for Russia's freewheeling Internet, some of the commentary, juxtaposing images of food being willfully destroyed with famines within living memory, seems more biting than usual.

"I don't understand how, in a country that survived the terrible privations of war and the horrible years of the post-revolutionary period, we could be destroying food," tweeted the normally pro-Kremlin media personality Vladimir Solovyiev this week.

The food destruction program was ordered personally by Putin two weeks ago to crack down on efforts to circumvent the counter-sanctions regime by relabeling produce from European Union countries as coming from non-sanctioned places like Turkey or Brazil. Both Putin's signature on the order, and the graphic media coverage showing eradication of baskets of lettuce, cheeses, and boxes of bacon, leave little doubt that this is not simply bureaucracy run amok, but a deliberate political point being driven home by the Kremlin.

"Putin has put his own name to this, so it's certainly something to do with asserting his own legitimacy," says Nikolai Petrov, a professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. "He may be demonstrating his toughness and resolve vis-�-vis the West, and telling Russians they must not evade the hard choices that go with that. We all have to make sacrifices."

'This is the way things are'

It has been an open secret over the past year that a good deal of sanctioned European produce has been slipping into Russia through the open borders with its EurAsian Union partners Belarus and Kazakhstan, who don't have much enthusiasm for enforcing the bans. The crackdown may be partly aimed at pressuring those friendly governments to be more compliant with Russian wishes.

The EU formerly sent about 10 percent of its food exports to Russia, worth about $13 billion. The Kremlin's demonstrative food destruction may be partly designed to intensify the impact of the counter-embargo, which many Russian analysts credit with sowing doubt within Europe over the EU's anti-Russian sanctions.

Another goal could be to encourage Russian entrepreneurs to invest more heavily in import substitution, by giving them assurances that their often lower quality produce won't get pushed off the market by covertly imported European goods. According to Bloomberg, in the first six months of 2015, Russia's poultry output increased 11.4 percent from the same period in 2014, meat production jumped 13.2 percent, and cheese production increased 27.5 percent.

Putin's popularity ratings still hover well above 80 percent. Experts suggest he's using the food show to circle the wagons more tightly in anticipation that Russia's problems with the West will probably go on for a long time - and people had better get used to paying the price for that.

"Movies and TV have played their role in making Russians see eye-to-eye with the Kremlin over what happened in Crimea and Ukraine. But actions are needed, too," says Mr. Petrov. "This [food destruction] spectacle is a way to make everyone feel directly involved, and accept that this is the way things are."
 
 #10
Bloomberg
August 12, 2015
Fractures Form Inside Russia's Central Bank as Recession Deepens
By Evgenia Pismennaya and Ilya Arkhipov

In his first stint as a top Russian central bank official in the early 1990s, Dmitry Tulin saw how flooding cheap credit to dying industrial giants delivered hyperinflation instead of growth.

Now back as the bank's monetary chief, Tulin, 59, has argued internally for easier credit and more targeted lending to industry to revive an economy driven into recession by plunging oil prices and U.S. and European sanctions, say officials who have attended meetings with him. They discussed internal bank deliberations on condition of anonymity.

While Tulin isn't pushing for a repeat of the failed Soviet-style policies of the early 1990s, his challenge to the orthodox approach of his boss at the central bank, Governor Elvira Nabiullina, underscores the tension facing Russia's economic policy makers as they try to steady an economy battered largely by forces beyond their control.

"The external environment is very difficult: geopolitical tensions, sanctions, rising capital outflows, a sharp drop in economic activity, a strengthening of restrictive and regulatory moves by the authorities," said Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister who now runs a think tank. "Nabiullina, an advocate of traditional, market-based policies, is trying as best she can to maintain her balance in this very unstable situation."

While Russian officials say publicly the worst of the economic turmoil has passed, they say in private that the situation is fragile at best and the central bank's $358 billion in reserves could be drained further if crude prices continue to drop.

Economic Slump

Russia's economy contracted 4.6 percent in the second quarter, its weakest performance since 2009, and the Economy Ministry has said it might cut full-year forecasts. A renewed slide in oil prices has dragged the ruble to a six-month low against the dollar, further limiting the central bank's room for maneuver and raising the stakes for Tulin's policy debate.

His arguments have already contributed to shifts, helping drive the bank to cut interest rates quickly in recent months and begin to rebuild its foreign-exchange reserves, officials said.

Tulin advocates more assertive steps to manage the exchange rate, which has lost almost half its value against the dollar since the Ukraine crisis began last year. He has gone as far as questioning bank opposition to restricting international capital flows. He has argued that lifting capital controls in 2006 was a mistake and re-imposing some limits could be justified to steady the ruble, according to officials familiar with his thinking.

Capital Controls

So far, Nabiullina's view that capital controls would do more harm than good remains policy. The officials said there's no sign yet of open conflict between Nabiullina and Tulin. As monetary chief, he has emerged as her most influential deputy, officials said.

Still, his positions also reflect views widely held in the Kremlin and the government, where many back the kind of direct intervention in the economy that Russia hasn't seen since the early 1990s, officials say.

The central bank already has pumped trillions of rubles into the economy as the slump deepened. In the first half, lending to banks averaged 5.4 trillion rubles a day -- up 20 percent from the year before, according to official data.

The central bank's press service declined to comment on any differences between Nabiullina and Tulin.

Team Player

Facing political pressure after the ruble's plunge in December when the currency dropped as much as 20 percent in a single day, Nabiullina brought Tulin on board in January. He was chosen to help placate critics who had accused the bank's leadership of being out of touch, senior officials said. At the time, Nabiullina, a 51-year-old Putin appointee, praised him as "very responsible."

In a March interview with Interfax, Tulin described himself as a "team player."

He's been a fixture on Moscow's banking scene since the early 1990s. He began his career at Gosbank, the Soviet central bank, and became a deputy chairman at its Russian successor after the Soviet collapse.

No advocate of easy money -- he served as Russia's representative to the International Monetary Fund in the 1990s - - he has likened the bank's role to that of one of a team making a suit, colleagues said. Even if the individual tailor sewed only the buttons, he still shares responsibility if the suit fits badly.

Targeted Support

He has argued in internal deliberations for targeting central-bank support to specific sectors, including grain farming and gold mining, according to officials.

"If our financial system doesn't turn its face toward material production, then our country won't have a future," Tulin said in an April 23 interview in tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda.

But his calls for expanding a 100 billion-ruble program for targeted cheap loans to manufacturers and farmers have run into opposition from Nabiullina. She has said the program doesn't work and shouldn't grow, while Tulin has written letters to senior government ministers sugggesting the bank could offer more money, according to officials.

"It's an illusion to think that if we give everyone cheap loans that will get the economy growing," said Sergey Dubinin, who came in as chairman of the central bank about a year after Tulin left as deputy in 1994 and is now a board member at state bank VTB. "We went through that in 1992-1993, when we gave everyone loans and wound up with 1000% inflation."
 
 #11
Carnegie Moscow Center
August 13, 2015
Myths and Realities of Sanctions in Russia
By Oleg Buklemishev
Oleg Buklemishev is Director of the Economic Policy Research Center, Moscow State University

Ever since the Ukraine crisis began in 2014, the word "sanctions" has become part not just of Russian politics but of everyday life. They are now the source of jokes, such as the inscriptions on street stores warning U.S. President Barack Obama that he is not welcome to buy beer on the premises.

This is likely to stay the case, after the European Union decided to prolong its sanctions regime against Russia on June 22. A mythology has grown up about sanctions which is partly the result of targeted official propaganda, but is also a natural process.

In this article I will review several pervasive myths about the sanctions regime on Russia.

A LACK OF PUBLIC ANGER

Myth No.1: Sanctions against Russia are not having the desired effect.

Russian television and popular culture has lately been presenting the West as some sort of collective bumbling despot.  Assorted political talking heads contend that Western sanctions were a horrible mistake and have proved useless or even counterproductive as Russian citizens have only rallied around the ruling elite. This is the rationale of appeals to end or ease the sanctions, not only by members of the opposition but also by government officials and government-sponsored media.

It is far from obvious what effects the Ukraine-related sanctions are having on Russia. Recent history has few clear-cut sanctions success stories, even with international embargoes approved by the UN Security Council. In Yugoslavia, South Africa, North Korea or Cuba there is little evidence that sanctions had a strong effect. Yet the cases of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Libya, and perhaps also Iran, suggest that sanctions can be also quite effective. And this is before we mention that they are much better than the alternative of military action.

Yet the Western notion that sanctions will drive the population to overthrow a ruling regime and change course is unrealistic. History has shown that autocratic governments find it quite easy to blame foreign powers for the real and imagined hardships of the general population, which usually suffers the most from sanctions. This pressure allows regimes not only to consolidate their political base, but to earn a "mobilization bonus" such as the Kremlin's current 85 percent level of support.

The architects of modern-day sanctions understand these issues very well and nowadays attempt a new approach: targeted sanctions against specific members of the elite. We are now seeing these "smart sanctions" in action against Russia. The growing discontents inside the Russian elite shows that this attempt is having some effect. There is more to this than the fact that some members of the Russian ruling class are being forced to schedule routine medical operations in Israel rather than in Germany, or the seizure of bank accounts and real estate assets that are fairly unimportant for their owners.

It would be na�ve for the West to expect the rapid elimination of the root cause of the sanctions-a restoration of the Russian-Ukrainian border of mid-February 2014. Yet no one ever believed this was the real goal. The aim of the sanctions was to send a clear signal of the West's political position and, more importantly, to try to prevent a further escalation of the conflict.

The sanctions are dynamic, not static. They can be strengthened or eased in order to restrain or stimulate certain actions. We do not know how far military activity in Ukraine would have gone otherwise, since the ceasefires and agreements negotiated in Minsk were largely the result of the sanctions. In the light of all this, it is no longer correct to say that the sanctions have had no effect.

COSTS AND BENEFITS

Myth No.2 is being disseminated for those who are too well-informed or too skeptical to buy into Myth No.1. This is the idea that sanctions are proving too harmful to Western business and will therefore soon be repealed.

Do sanctions hurt the side that imposes them? Absolutely. Economic models on the effects of sanctions clearly show that a deliberate disruption of the optimal balance in international trade causes losses for both the targets and the initiators of sanctions.

How much do the latter sacrifice? A new study published by the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) estimates that the Ukraine-related sanctions and counter-sanctions could cost the economy of the European Union up to 100 billion euros and two million jobs. The authors do not disclose their research methodology, but their figures appear to be greatly inflated. First of all, all of Europe's overall losses from the Russian economic crisis are being lumped into this figure, although many of them are unrelated to the sanctions. Mercedes sales, for example, are clearly falling for other reasons. Secondly, the luxurious repertoire of European food on offer in Moscow restaurants suggests that many of Russia's counter-sanctions are not actually working and are therefore doing little harm to European agricultural producers.

Still, let's consider the hypothetical possibility that Europe really will suffer 100 billion euros in losses. That would be very bad news indeed, but it would be especially bad news for Russia. That is because it seems that Western politicians have concluded that the considerable losses they suffer from sanctions are still lower than the moral and political victory of keeping them in place.

So, the higher the value that Russia attaches to Europeans' economic losses, the greater the threat that the EU feels from Russia and the greater the importance it attributes to sanctions as a means of containing this threat. The most realistic path towards ending the sanctions will not come from the Foreign Ministry's tactic of playing on supposed disagreements within the Western coalition. Instead of trying to exaggerate the losses that sanctions have brought to others, the Russian leadership should think about how to lessen the moral and political advantage that the West derives from keeping the sanctions in place.

RELATIVE LOSSES

Myth No.3 maintains that sanctions have a negligible effect on Russia. Myth No.3 and Myth No.2-that the West suffers great losses from these same sanctions-are strange bedfellows. Theoretical international trade models suggest that the losses of the targets and initiators of sanctions should be symmetrical.

Let us suppose again that the Austrian experts from are correct and that sanctions with Russia could cost the economy of the European Union up to 100 billion euros. This enormous figure is still far below one percent of the EU's GDP. Moreover, the EU is not the only actor to have imposed sanctions on Russia. Russia's economy accounts for a fraction of the combined economies of the coalition that it is up against. Assuming parity of losses, Russia is down no less than that same 100 billion euros, which is about eight percent of its GDP. Losses of this magnitude are not negligible.

Trade is only part of the problem. The effect of technological and financial sanctions is much more severe. Despite all the hype around the supposed success of import substitution, Russia is acutely vulnerable to curbs on technology transfers in the energy and defense sectors.

Sanctions are also asymmetrical in the financial market. Russia's private sector is chronically dependent on foreign capital and suffers much more from the sanctions than do the purveyors of the capital, for whom Russia is only one of several medium-sized competing clients. Major Russian banks and corporations have already learned from visits to Asian financial centers that there is basically no alternative to Western capital markets.

This means that either Europe's losses from sanctions and counter-sanctions are greatly exaggerated, or Russia's own losses are much greater than perceived by the adherents of Myth No.3. Unfortunately, while the former is partially true, the latter is more likely and more harmful for Russia.

SANCTIONS REVENUES

Myth No.4 is being propagated to lessen the pain. This is the idea that Russia's economy has got used to sanctions and hardly notices them.

There are a myriad of reports in the Russia media asserting that the country's economy is doing much better than expected under sanctions. And it is true that Russians have found numerous ways to get round the restrictions.

Any limits and prohibitions on economic activity always create opportunities to generate new revenues. Today, the average law firm is just as good at taking advantage of these situations as the smugglers and bootleggers of yore. However, there are two reasons to not be too enthusiastic about these adaptations. First of all, fake "Belarusian salmon" is bound to be more expensive than real Norwegian salmon. Any means of dodging sanctions bears the additional costs of "contraband lawyers", as well as risks, as, for example, when Russian borrowers package debt as consecutive 30-day tranches in order to sidestep restrictions on long-term financing. Naturally, none of this reduces the expenses of domestic consumers and business, nor does it bolster the competitive position of the Russian economy.

Secondly, there is a growing appetite for the extension of Russia's counter-sanctions which suggests that certain lobbyists have concluded that they are an excellent means of earning new revenues and that it will be difficult to roll them back.

IMPORT SUBSTITUTION

The last, strangest and perhaps most pervasive myth is Myth No.5, which maintains that sanctions are helping rather than hindering Russia's economic development. This may be the most authentic myth, since it most completely defies logic. What possible benefits could the Russian economy gain from sanctions?

In theory, if domestic producers don't have to worry about competition in certain sectors, they can capture those sectors. This, in effect, is import substitution. However, there is a big gap between theory and practice. Creating new businesses in Russia from scratch requires investment, and therefore cheap sources of lending which are currently in short supply, in part due to sanctions. Even the most basic increase in production requires, in addition to working capital, surplus capacity, labor, and high-quality raw materials. There are few sectors of the economy which can provide these.

Furthermore, investment in import substitution only makes sense if there is a guarantee that vacant niches remain open for a long time and that there is no overall economic turbulence. That is not the case in Russia at the moment. The government has the reputation of changing its economic policy at short notice for political reasons-counter-sanctions could be repealed at a moment's notice. Moreover, the economy is entering a recession, and domestic demand is falling. Businessmen are unlikely to view this as an auspicious time for import substitution.

There is also talk of the benefit of diversification resulting from a "pivot to the East", a re-orientation of the Russian economy to Asian markets. However, the advantages of this are almost certainly exaggerated. Asia has its own business culture and challenges, and diversification can only work when there is free choice among multiple alternatives. When the options are already limited, it is not proper diversification.

LENGTHY, COSTLY AND FUTILE

There is one more hazy but grand rationalization of the current situation: that "Whenever the going gets really tough we Russians mobilize ourselves and work wonders". We will not even try to argue with such an incoherent thesis. If we do not resort to this kind of logic, there are no visible benefits from sanctions to Russia's economy.

This short overview in sanctions mythology can be summarized as follows:

Lesson One: Sanctions are here for the long term-even if one imagines what is now unthinkable, an abrupt change in Russia's political course. Legal, political, and psychological factors have given the sanctions process a certain inertia and pushed it past the point of no return both in Russia and in the West.

Lesson Two: The damage suffered by the Russian economy from sanctions and counter-sanctions greatly exceeds that which Western countries are facing. The Russian government's attempts to match and outdo its adversaries are only exacerbating the country's losses.

Lesson Three: Russia can survive the effects of sanctions for a long time and in relative comfort, but there can be no healthy development in these conditions.

This text is based on two articles originally published in Russian on Carnegie.ru.
 
 #12
Moskovskiy Komsomolets
August 7, 2015
Daily interviews head of independent pollster on public sentiment in Russia
Marina Ozerova interview with Lev Gudkov, the head of the Levada Centre: Why There Will Not Be a Revolution in Russia in 2017 - Lev Gudkov, Director of the Levada Centre: 'Politics Causes Very Strong Revulsion in People'"]

[Interviewer Marina Ozerova] Can it be said that Soviet man has become a thing of the past and that a new post-Soviet community of people has emerged in Russia?

[Lev Gudkov] If we are talking about values and basic attitudes, on the whole people are changing extremely slowly or are not changing at all.

[Ozerova] They are not changing by comparison with which period?

[Gudkov] The late Brezhnev era, say - the generation of the parents of people who are currently in their thirties. The study Ordinary Soviet Man, which we started in 1989, shows how stable the basic type is: it is an educated man, formed in the conditions of a repressive state, he has learnt to get on with it, and is guided by the principle "I am like everyone else, why show off?". His life strategy is not striving to achieve an improvement in the conditions of his existence, but not to lose what he already has. Approximately 45 per cent of the population is like this.

[Ozerova] But that is not the majority!

[Gudkov] It is not the majority but it is the dominant and most widespread type, the norm by which even successful groups are guided. There are of course generational nuances and differences linked to place of residence. But let us take a theoretical young person who due to his age characteristics and officially higher level of education feels optimistic: as soon as he starts a family and assumes responsibility, this starts to shatter and his initial romanticism and high expectations shrivel.

[Ozerova] And we again get people adapting to the conditions offered?

[Gudkov] That is quite right. This shattering is accompanied by an increase in cynicism, internal aggression, dissatisfaction, and a sense of one's own inadequacy. This is not simply stress, ultimately it is one of the causes of social pathology on a massive scale.

[Ozerova] But surely this happens in any country and in any period when people move from one age group into another?

[Gudkov] I am sorry but in Germany, for example, the number of prisoners is much lower than in Russia - 60 and 600 for 100,000 people respectively. Including because the level of internal aggression in Russia is incomparably higher... It has fluctuated, reflecting the degree of social tension or crisis phenomena. After the collapse of the USSR there was a sharp increase but not immediately: by 1994-1995, criminologists had recorded a crime wave and social disorganization, and an increase in suicides and social diseases. Then it all started to decline. After the 1998 crisis, this was repeated, but right up until 2008 the level of aggression in society fell because a perceptible and sustained increase in living standards was under way.

[Ozerova] And now?

[Gudkov] It is hard to say: the departmental statistics are late and are not that reliable. According to our data, the level of aggression and irritation in the first half year has clearly decreased: at the beginning of a crisis people as a rule try to concentrate on the changing situation and protest sentiment wanes. Moreover, "Crimea is Ours" led not only to a consolidation of society but also to the diversion of hostile feelings. But this should be discussed separately.

[Ozerova] So the current thirty-year-olds are the same as their parents?

[Gudkov] Both the same and different. On the one hand, a dependent sort of person is being produced, who is eternally dissatisfied, who thinks that he has been short-changed, that the state is obliged to provide him with a good life, and it is neglecting this, and casting off its social commitments. Irritation and anger against the regime is particularly increasing in the provinces: benefits are being taken away, people are starting to have to pay for medicine, there are fewer hospitals, roads are no longer being repaired or built, buses are not running and nor are suburban trains. The gap between the centre and the periphery is increasing, and this is creating serious tension...

On the other hand, a completely new type of person has appeared in the big cities over the past decade and a half-entirely self-confident, and less dependent on the state because he works in the market sector. This young, well-educated, and highly paid Russian does not think about what kind of pension he will have at the end of his life...

[Ozerova] Later he will suddenly realize...

[Gudkov] Later he will realize but it is very important that, as our polls show, Russians have an extremely narrow horizon for planning - two-thirds say that they can contemplate their lives for no more than three-four months ahead, very limited resources. And the majority of young for a maximum of two-three years... That is a lot less than in other countries.

[Ozerova] Less than our CIS neighbours?

[Gudkov] International studies single out a zone of countries in the so-called former socialist camp where the population possesses certain general features, but in Russia all of these features are manifested more graphically. More graphically even than in Belarus. Ukraine is the closest to us but the situation there has changed drastically now and it is hard to compare...

From the point of view of sociology, it is extremely important that the structure of the institutions has changed little. As Yuriy Aleksandrovich Levada said, the point is not what attitudes the young generation have but what the institutions are doing with this young generation, how they wear them down. In this case by institutions we mean a system of sustainable rules that are replicated independently from the body of people who comply with them. These rules are enshrined officially or unofficially.

[Ozerova] In laws or in practice?

[Gudkov] In practice, custom, or in laws - and in the ability to circumvent the law and get along with the state. Experience of doublethink, corruption, hypocrisy are exactly the same kind of social capital as education, qualifications, and profession...

During the 1990s, various spectres of democracy still roamed the country, however not because people were democrats but because the regime was weak and several centres of influence had arisen. During the 2000s, authoritarianism was reconstructed together with all the institutions on which it depends: dependent courts, law-enforcement bodies, an army that effectively had not been reformed, a conservative system of mass education, control over the media... But at the same time, in conditions of openness the invasion of Western mass culture occurred. New forms of communication appeared - the Internet, the social networks, mobile telephones. At the beginning of the 1990s, only 2 per cent of Russian families had a car while now it is 35 per cent, which has produced a completely different level of mobility. The economy has nevertheless become a market one, despite increasing nationalization (at the end of the 1990s, the state controlled 29 per cent of all assets while it is 58 per cent now). As a result, it was in the 2000s that a completely new phenomenon arose in our country: a "consumer society" started to form. Not for everyone, of course, but for the 20-25 per cent most educated and active this became very significant. Consumption and not the recognition of social activities and talent has become a very important marker of social status, prestige and value.

[Ozerova] Can this be seen from the polls?

[Gudkov] Of course. The population's real incomes have increased 1.6-fold between 1990, the last Soviet year, and 2013, and if we take the year 2000 as the starting point - 3.8-fold (there was a collapse in the 1990s). At the same time the gap in incomes between the 10 per cent richest Russians and the 10 per cent poorest is, according to the official data, 16-fold, and according to data from independent economists - 27-fold. In Moscow this figure is around 41. In the Soviet era the ratio was about 4-5, and in the developed countries of Europe it is currently 6-7... A consequence of the blatant inequality is what sociologists call "ressentiment". When teenagers from poor families see their peers driving Land Rovers, they get a feeling of impotent envy, a painful consciousness of the futility of their attempts to enhance their own status...

[Ozerova] But despite all of this, society is calm.

[Gudkov] It is not calm but apathetic, although also very irritated. Dissatisfaction and aggression are being driven inwards. People deprived of a future do not want to take part in politics, which since Soviet times causes very strong revulsion. At total of 85 per cent of Russians say that they are not in a position to influence the decisions taken by the authorities at any level, even municipal, and in answer to the question "if you also had the opportunities would you take part in political or social activity?" 80 per cent decisively answer no.

[Ozerova] Is this a way of avoiding responsibility - we say that we cannot influence things even if in actual fact we are very well able to do so?

[Gudkov] Indeed. In our country you will not see anything resembling the wave of mass protests and demonstrations on the most varied of pretexts as in the countries of Europe and America. Soviet man in such a situation immediately takes up the pose of an embryo - roll up into a ball and wait it out. He lives through the interests of his family and inner circle, fencing off a space around himself that he can control, and he goes no further than this. Therefore society, or to be more precise, the population, is very fragmented, in the sociological sense "society" as such does not exist here.

[Ozerova] Judging by the president's 88 per cent rating do Russians trust the regime?

[Gudkov] Brazen rogues who do not respect people - that is how the regime looks as a whole in the eyes of Russians. This particularly applies to deputies and officials, but to the top leadership as well. Of course, the "Crimea is Ours" effect is there, the number of those who believe the critical articles about Putin is falling but the main group answers "probably yes" to negative information about the president, adding that "the most important thing is that we have started to live better under him". This represents relativism, amorality, cynicism - call it what you like.

[Ozerova] But at the same time social expectations are being kept at a low level. "I support the regime but I do not expect anything from it"?

[Gudkov] The gap between attitudes towards the regime and social expectations is unusually large today, almost 40 points. Incidentally, when there were protests in 2011-2012, there was almost none... But we need to understand what has occurred. Since 2014, propaganda has transformed the sense of constant irritation into support for the regime. It was very important for people to be aware that they members of a superpower.

[Ozerova] The post-imperial syndrome is making a come-back?

[Gudkov] Yes. "Although we were poor we were respected because we were feared", and when perestroika started this was lost, they told us. "But we produce missiles" compensated for the daily humiliation and dependence. Even in 1998 three things were expected from the future president (even before Putin's arrival): the end of the economic crisis, a solution to the Chechen problem - that is a cessation of war - and the return of super power status. Neither medicine, nor corruption, nor crime bothered Russians 15 years ago as much as something purely symbolic - status.

And now at last, Putin has behaved to spite the "damned West", "defended his own people", Russia is demonstrating its strength, getting up off its knees, those polled tell us "we have shown everyone we have teeth" and "we have forced them to respect us"... The very strong increase in self-respect - 1.7-fold between 2012 and 2015 - this lies at the heart of the so-called post-Crimean euphoria. The number of those who think that the world has started to respect us has increased by approximately the same proportion.

According to the polls, Putin has been losing support since 2008. The Olympics just halted but did not change this trend while the annexation of Crimea had an effect of mass mobilization and we can see an increase in the rating of almost 20 per cent. Moreover, due to the same circles that protested - the disorientated and dissatisfied section of the middle class. Disorientated because those who took to Sakharov and Bolotnaya were not able to formulate political demands.

[Ozerova] And "fair elections"?

[Gudkov] Fair elections do not represent a step-by-step political programme and they are not every-day party work. It was basically an offended sense of human dignity there, a moral protest. The same craving for respect: "give me back my vote!".

[Ozerova] And they were given an opportunity to respect themselves, instead of a vote, with the return of Crimea?

[Gudkov] Yes. As a result, the Russian proto-middle class split and most of it joined Putin. A smaller section, no more than 8-12 per cent, were against. It is possible of course to count 18 per cent as opposition, but that is the limit -like an air bubble that does not let the water in on a half-submerged boat... While the nationalist euphoria has reached a certain point and is staying there.

[Ozerova] Why is it staying there? Many people thought that six months, a year, maximum - and people would come face to face with reality...

[Gudkov] The crisis is not yet so severe, a 10 per cent fall is not a disaster, it is not 55 per cent like in the middle of the 1990s. And people are willing to suffer for the sake of their self respect. After a very serious fright at the end of last year, they want to believe that they have got through it and that soon everything will be like it was before. While they do not feel that they are losing something that they cannot live without, they will act calmly.

[Ozerova] So Russians' internalized discontent is being shown not in relation to their own regime but in relation to America?

[Gudkov] Everything is like in the joke: "I can also go to Red Square and say that Reagan is a fool..." The experience of the 20th century was catastrophic, and the reactions of learned helplessness are self-destructive for society. We have paid for the hope of building a bright Communist future for the country, and for the country allowing itself to pretend that it believed in this, and was prepared to tolerate anything.

[Ozerova] But there will not be a revolution in 2017?

[Gudkov] No, there will not be a revolution. Only local rebellions... But I think that the elections will be held strictly in 2018 despite all the dissatisfaction, without experiments like Navalnyy in Moscow. The solving of problems will be delayed, thus raising the pressure in the pot. But as you see: one-third of people's savings have been taken away from them  in six months - and nothing.

[Ozerova] In 1992 they took all of their savings away from them and nothing... So where then does this fear of "colour revolutions" come from?

[Gudkov] It is not the population's fear but the regime's. According to the polls, despite the propaganda, no more than 30 per cent of Russians are prepared to believe in the threat of a "colour revolution" in Russia - they do not see anything of the sort around them.

[Ozerova] Do you mean that the regime is not satisfactory for the country?

[Gudkov] It is satisfactory for the country in as much as it is a concentrated expression of a basic type: it is distrustful, with all the inferiority complexes inherent in this type, and it uses thieves' slang. Imagine a young lad somewhere in Uryupinsk - he has no job, and on the television Putin flies a fighter jet and hugs tigers... It is a fairytale, a myth of success! Young people are now the most pro-Putin group.

[Ozerova] So the people do not trust the regime, but does the regime trust the people?

[Gudkov] The paranoia game has another aim - mobilizing society. The slogans of Bolotnaya were supported by up to 45 per cent at the peak, but the protest movement was then successfully discredited by linking it cunningly with several things: the West-human rights-permissiveness-homosexuality-paedophilia-Russia, the custodian of Orthodoxy, and purity of faith and morals... Russians have a very strong fear for their children and of everything that is unknown and alien. It would appear that we can expect a return of repressive practices and an attempt to restore total ideological control.

[Ozerova] And how does this fit in with the consumer society?

[Gudkov] It fits in badly! As the saying goes, "a conflict between television and the refrigerator"...

[Ozerova] Are your expectations based on the actions of the regime itself or on the population's willingness to accept this calmly?

[Gudkov] The population is forced to do this. The regime is changing the legitimization base - it is no longer "prosperity and stability" but "enemies", external and internal. The anti-Western propaganda is intensifying (although this has been going on for a long time - since Putin's arrival).

[Ozerova] But do Russians, incidentally, feel they are Europeans?

[Gudkov] No! "We have a special path", "we are different"... But they cannot say clearly how. This is a kind of defensive barrier.

[Ozerova] Is the increase in Stalin's popularity linked to the trend towards increased repression?

[Gudkov] Nothing is that simple. In 1991, Stalin was not included in the top ten great people for Russians, today he takes first place. But what is behind this. He is "guilty of the deaths of millions of innocent people" but he is not a criminal, the majority say, since "without him there would have been no victory", he "made the country a super power"... But in response to the question "would you like to live under Stalin?" they answer "no". And in response to the question "does this period of history interest you?", they also say "no". Moreover, the proportion of those who are indifferent, for whom Stalin is - like the "pluperfect" in a grammar book, just like Alexander the Great or Napoleon - has increased from 12 to 47 per cent during Putin's rule.

[Ozerova] There has been a generational shift ...

[Gudkov] Go up to a German and say that Hitler is in the distant past! The thing is that moral work on interpreting history has not been carried out here. And the cynicism of the regime and force have been accepted as the social norm...

[Ozerova] Because you cannot achieve super power status without the cynicism of the regime and force?

[Gudkov] Yes, one compensates for the other.

[Ozerova] And people are willing to lay down the lives of several million innocent people for the sake of even more respect?

[Gudkov] At the moment, no. But who knows? In November 2013 when we asked about the Maydan, two-thirds did not feel any hostility towards those who took to the square in Kiev, they thought that there was no need to interfere in their affairs. But by January 2014 the situation had changed drastically because the propaganda had started to say that fascists, the "Kiev junta", had come to power in Ukraine. And how can you talk to fascists?

[Ozerova] And what, do people do an about - turn as a result of propaganda?

[Gudkov] Yes. After all the alternative sources of information have been stifled. Serious irritation against the opposition developed. Up to 50 per cent of the population know of Navalnyy, he has become a figure on a national scale, eight per cent approve of him, 35-40 per cent have a negative attitude towards him... This negative attitude also partly justifies their own passivity - in focus groups people say that the opposition are "making waves", they are loudmouths, they are only fighting for power, and are not in any way better than those who are in the Duma...

Our liberals have a huge resistance to the need to recognize things that are unpleasant to them, frightening things - the same 86 per cent. It is not simply a reluctance, it is an inability to understand that we are dealing with signs of a relapse into totalitarianism.

[Ozerova] Is this like an ostrich burying its head in the sand? Like a mother who does not want to notice that her son is a drug addict, like a wife who is the last to find out about her husband's unfaithfulness although everyone around knows about it?

[Gudkov] In a sense, yes. This is one of the means of passive adaptation, adapting to the situation.

[Ozerova] But are people of the basic type we spoke about honest when answering questions about their attitude to the regime?

[Gudkov] What difference does it make whether they are honest or not! I absolutely do not care what comrade Ivanov says in the kitchen with his wife when discussing Putin - what is important is how he behaves in public. If he votes like he should, he is loyal...
 
 #13
Gazeta.ru
August 3, 2015
Editorial
Russia splitting in two: Why citizens are voting for censorship

A survey of Russian citizens' attitudes towards censorship of the internet reveals a much deeper problem in our society than a survey of their attitudes towards freedoms. It seems that nowadays it is not the church that is separated from the state, but the people. Despite the illusion of a shared surge of patriotic feeling, these two castes - the rulers and the common people - live in completely different worlds.

An American think-tank [the Internet Policy Observatory] has compiled a report on Russian citizens' attitudes towards internet censorship using the results of a survey by the VTsIOM [All-Russia Centre for Study of Public Opinion]. An article by one of the report's authors draws the following conclusion: it is clear from the figures that the authorities in Russia are successfully creating a situation in which there is mass support for any decision they make. By trying to regulate the internet, the authorities want to cut off the remaining dissenters from access to full information.

The VTsIOM website gives a slightly different interpretation. The Russian-language version of the report is called "What society wants: Russians' aspirations to control the internet".

According to the VTsIOM, 49 per cent of society "desires" censorship. Fifty-eight per cent of Russian citizens would support disconnecting the internet in the event of a national threat or the possibility of mass protests. At the same time, around 70 per cent want the people to keep their small pleasures - pornography and also the possibility to download music and films for free. And, really surprisingly, as many as 73 per cent believe that negative information about public officials should not be published on the internet.

Of course the results of such public opinion surveys depend on the way that the questions are formulated and on the sample; one can never be 100 per cent certain that the respondents answer honestly and that they understand the meaning of the answers; and, finally, the extent to which it is representative is often called into question. Nevertheless, taking into account that fact that a year ago the Levada Centre came up with approximately the same figures regarding internet censorship, it is probable that the authorities will rely on them when deciding whether it is time to tighten the screws on the internet or not.

We are attempting to understand why the country's citizens are giving up freedom of information so easily. Surely the majority do not yet really no longer care about how much officials earn, where their children study, and finally how well they are doing their jobs? And does the ordinary man in the street now only care about accessing free online entertainment, which for many people nowadays has replaced of all the rest of life's pleasures, if not life itself?

If that is the case then it seems that in our country society has developed in which the "lower classes" are either satisfied with their situation (give us some bread and circuses, and leave us alone) or are resigned to the impossibility of changing it (we have no control over anything, so why on earth do we need to know about the world, about our own officials, about how things could be different).

This seems to confirm the sociologists' thesis: the majority do not care what happens to the country "as long as there is no war". Or a "Maydan". We will put up with everything, just do not take away the bread and circuses all together. We have no responsibility for anything, no influence over anything regardless. Here we have beer, television, hatred and no future. There they have major-league politics, society events, money and corruption. Two worlds separated by a gaping chasm.

What difference does it make how much someone's watch costs, who made it, and whom it was given to? It is still "nothing to do with us". What difference does it make if all the information about government agency procurements is put online or not? We will still not be able to make any sense of it, we will not be able to add it all up, and if we do add it up "they" will still find a way to circumvent this and siphon money off. There "with them" everything is different, there among "the chiefs", "the upper class", which we will never be able to be part of no matter what.

And yet something does unite these two completely different Russians: the common loss of lofty goals and ideas. Neither one nor the other can say what they are living for and what they are striving for.

Here some people may mutter spitefully: "You can have too much of a good thing. They have everything, why do you want to go giving them ideas as well?" Well, sometimes it also happens that at work all the skills that can be learned have been acquired and there is nowhere left to go and sometimes it is not possible. Money has also already been earned. What to do? The question is not vacuous as it might appear to the man in the street. Everyone has their own tragedies and their own questions echoing in the void.

After the accession of Crimea for a time it seemed that "the rebirth of a great country" might become such an aim for the elite and the new majority. But then came the sanctions, price rises, the stalling of the situation in Donets Basin [Donbass]...

And gradually the situation became even more mired down: living standards are falling, there are no opportunities in sight, some are getting rich, others are getting angry. So what is the point of all this?

For the people the virtual reality depicted by television and the internet is more or less replacing the opportunity to realize their potential in actual reality. Politicians have turned into workers carrying out the will of the main, essentially the only, politician in the country. Any department head in any government agency knows that if he moves into business, then soon he will be a petitioner at the door of the same head of department. He will have to pay dearly, convince him... The few farmers who believed in the phase-out of imports are threatening to burn their harvests - out of despair that it turns out no-one wants the crops. High-ranking officials offer superficial ideas because either they believe that serious ideas cannot be implemented, or because they simply cannot be bothered with thinking them up any more. And this is what it leads to: burning, banning, closing.

Offering citizens the equivalent of the American dream - you make your own life, change from Cinderella into a princess - did not work. And that is why we do not want to hear about how others managed to do this. Why tell us this, if there is no chance we can do it too? Basically, just do not touch our free films, do not wake us from our sleep. And then just do what you want with your "geopolitics".

Essentially it seems that Russia is gradually reverting to the "sausage in return for politics" social contract of the early 2000s, which had been overwritten by the "Russian spring". Only the conditions are even more depressing: weird sausage in return for weird politics.

Each of the "two different countries" in Russia - the leaders and the common people - have their own desires and opportunities in terms of bread and circuses in the context of an identical growing boredom stemming from a purposeless existence.

The country is once again seeing times like those about which [Boris] Pasternak wrote more than 80 years ago: "And we have no reality". There is neither a present (everything is set up so that we live in a fictitious reality) nor a future. And the past is just the past: you can be proud of it, but it will not feed you.

There is no nationwide solidarity: the leaders are on their own, the common people are on their own. They each live in their own virtual country and their own world. A social network - in real-life society and not on the internet - is something that we in Russia have failed to create.
 
 
#14
BBC
August 13, 2015
Russia bans Reddit pages over drug growing discussion

The block on some Reddit pages came about following discussions about ways to cultivate drugs

Russia has blocked access to some parts of social news site Reddit for "promoting" use of banned substances.

Several pages on the sites are believed to have been banned over a discussion about how to cultivate hallucinogenic mushrooms.

The Russian media watchdog initially planned to block the entire site if it got no response from Reddit.

Earlier in the week the same agency threatened to ban Reddit for discussions about growing marijuana.
Blogger registry

The block was enacted by Roskomnadzor - Russia's Federal service for the Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media.

It had called for a block on pages posted two years ago about the best way to grow psilocybin mushrooms.

Roskomnadzor maintains the list of all sites banned in Russia and added Reddit to that roster at the behest of the country's national drug control agency, reported news site Meduza.

The agency also posted information about the block to its own page on Russia's VKontacte social network.

In that message, it said it had sent information about the ban to "multiple addresses" at Reddit but had received no response. It assumed the lack of response came about because the site was understaffed in August as people were on holiday.

However, it said, this was no excuse to "risk losing its entire audience" in Russia. It asked anyone with ties to Reddit's site administrators to let them know about its actions.

In a later message it thanked those that had got in touch with Reddit for their help in ensuiring the pages could no longer be seen in Russia.

Reddit is one of many organisations that Russia has banned or threatened recently. Google, Facebook and Twitter have all received stern reminders from Roskomnadzor about complying with the nation's laws on handing over data.

Last year, Russia brought in a law that placed restrictions on bloggers and forced those with an audience of more than 3,000 people to register with authorities.
 
 #15
www.opendemocracy.net
Russian press digest (12 August 2015)
EDITORS OF OPENDEMOCRACY RUSSIA

This Wednesday, the Russian press reports on import substitution, copyright news and the emergence of a new, Cossack currency in St Petersburg.

This morning, business daily Kommersant leads with an article on import substitution-a commission devoted to the issue has just been set up, with Dmitry Medvedev its head. The commission's first meeting took place in Krasnodar, where the participants discussed the situation in the food produce market. However, the commission will mostly concentrate on managing tenders for infrastructure and industry projects.

The commission will be divided into two sections: a civil division guided by Arkady Dvorkovich, deputy prime minister, and a military-industrial division managed by Dmitry Rogozin. Both branches of the commission will give recommendations on pricing for procurement of industrial equipment, as well as permitting or vetoing deals made by state companies and companies supported by the state. The commission won't be ready to make any decisions before January 2016, as it will be busy developing a register of investment projects and companies.

Kommersant also reports on the investigation into the murder of two traffic police officers in November 2014. Mikhail Konstantinov, a sniper who had recently returned from the Luhansk People's Republic to the Russian Federation, is suspected of shooting two officers in the Moscow region last year. When Konstantinov (whose callsign is 'Bear') was stopped for a document inspection near Solnechnogorsk north of Moscow, the former LPR fighter decided to shoot both officers. The patrol had in fact stopped Konstantinov, together with two associates, on route to rob prostitutes on Moscow's Leningrad highway.

Ministerial conflict, however, is hampering the investigation: the Investigative Committee believes that Konstantinov tried to bribe the officers, and thus the charge sheet should be expanded. The General Prosecutor's Office believes the opposite is the case-Konstantinov had no money on him.

Finally, Kommersant publishes a survey on the Russian population's relationship with the authorities. The Levada Center Democracy in Russia survey suggests that the majority of Russian citizens try to avoid contact with the state, and if the economic situation continues to deteriorate, this could lead to further dissatisfaction. Most Russians, however, do trust the state.

Moskovsky komsomolets reports on the appearance of a new substitute currency in Russia-complete with a picture of Vladimir Putin. While Mikhail Shlyapnikov, a farmer from outside Moscow, has recently faced court proceedings for setting up his own currency, the people behind the bashli turned out to be loyal representatives of society-Cossacks, from St Petersburg.

RBK reports on a new initiative by the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications (Minkomsvyazi), which could have a substantial effect on the work of Nikita Mikhalkov, the patriotic film director and the head of the Russian Union of Right-holders (RUR), which was established in 2009 to protect intellectual property rights. Together with two related organisations, RUR collects billions of roubles for Russian cultural workers. Minkomsvyazi proposes to move away from collective management of IP rights without contracts.

'There's several reasons for this reform,' Minkomsvyazi stated. 'In particular, a lack of transparency in the work of the accrediting agencies, which manage, collect and distribute royalties to rights-holders, and the inability of rights-holders to control the activity of these organisations.'
 
 #16
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
August 12, 2015
Press Digest: Should Russia prepare to combat terrorism in Arctic?
RBTH presents a selection of views from leading Russian media on international events, featuring reports on proposed counterterrorism initiatives in the Arctic and the effect of Russia's Western food embargo on the country's market, as well as expert analysis on whether the boost in Chinese oil imports will affect world prices.
Yelena Temchenko, special to RBTH
 
Anti-terror head: Russia must be ready for terrorist threat in Arctic

Head of Russia's National Anti-Terror Committee Alexander Bortnikov has suggested the country should concentrate on countering potential terrorist threats in the Arctic, reports the centrist daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

According to the newspaper, Bortnikov said the growing economy of the region was sure to attract attention from terrorist groups, adding that the Arctic, with its considerable strategic, economic and defense potential, has become a focal point of interest for world nations.

Given the increasing military presence of those nations in the region and the intensifying competition for the right to exploit its natural resources, "protecting Russia's interests there becomes a strategic priority of national policy," said Bortnikov.

"The Arctic is indeed a rather disputed area, we are talking about a struggle for influence here. We have got a lot of competitors out there: Canada, Norway, the United States, Denmark - countries that either initiated the sanctions against Russia or joined them," says Alexei Makarkin, first vice president of the Center for Political Technologies think tank in Moscow.

Nevertheless, the terrorist threat still should not be underestimated, he added. "In theory, terrorists can emerge anywhere - not just in the Arab world," he told Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
 
Russia's food embargo causing food prices to spike, quality to plunge

Experts at the Analytical Center for the Government of the Russian Federation have acknowledged that Moscow's year-old embargo on Western foodstuffs "is affecting competition heavily," reports business daily Vedomosti.

Russian food producers now face limited competition from the West, which is causing the price of food to rise and its quality to fall, says the newspaper. The experts also warn that unless the government manages to stimulate competition within Russia, both of these trends will only get worse in the long term.
 
Yelena Parshina, advisor at the competition policy department of the Analytical Center, said in an interview with Vedomosti that competition in Russia is currently restrained by the mechanisms providing access to resources and markets (various quotas, permits, etc.) as well as varying criteria for providing state support and limiting access to the Russian market for alternative foreign suppliers.

As for the quality of Russian foodstuffs, it is mostly influenced not by the absence of foreign competition, but rather by a fall in producers' purchasing power, Anna Mironichenko, head of the agricultural complex control department of Russia's Federal Antimonopoly service, revealed to Vedomosti.

"For instance, the producers of sausage (...), seeking to reduce costs and maintain their position on the market, are forced to reduce the quality by changing the recipes and buying cheaper raw materials," she said.
 
Increase in China's oil imports will not stop prices from falling

China's crude oil imports increased by 29 percent in July (compared to the same period last year), hitting a record high. News website Gazeta.ru has compiled the opinions of several Russian experts on the subject.

Several months ago, oil market experts pointed out China's imports had considerable influence on global oil prices, noting how the increase of demand in the country was keeping prices from falling. Nevertheless, as of now, this impact has virtually been reduced to zero, Gazeta.ru reports.  

Vitaly Kryukov, CEO of the Small Letters analytics company, suggests in an interview with the newspaper that China is unlikely to stabilize oil prices by building up its reserves.

"Global market oversupply is still there, with 1.5 million barrels of crude produced daily, and global production is as high as before. Thus, the Chinese factor won't be able to reverse the current trend," said Kryukov.

"I do not think China's imports will really have an impact on oil prices," said Alexey Kokin, an analyst at Uralsib bank. "If China was to reduce the imports - now that would have caused the market to crash."

According to the expert, the strengthening of the U.S. dollar (which usually causes oil prices to fall) and market expectations concerning the lifting of Western sanctions against Iran play a much bigger part in oil market dynamics.
 
 #17
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
August 13, 2015
The battle for Arctic heats up
Russian scientists say their new model for the Arctic's tectonic evolution shows that the underwater Lomonosov and Mendeleev Ridges are part of the Eurasian mainland. This apparently substantiates Russia's claim to 1.2 million square kilometers of Arctic sea shelf. At stake is control over vast natural resources, and opposition from western nations is almost certain.
Aram Ter-Ghazaryan, special to RBTH

Scientists from the Shirshov Oceanology Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences have developed a new model for the Arctic's tectonic evolution that could help Russia - as well as several other countries - to support their territorial claims in the region. The model proves that both the Mendeleev and the Lomonosov underwater ridges in the Arctic Ocean are in fact extensions of the Russian shelf, while the North Pole belongs to Denmark. Earlier this month Russia submitted its latest claims over the vast Arctic area to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. If these are deemed valid, then access to significant parts of the Arctic could be off-limits to other nations.
 
The Arctic explained

The scientists claim their model is the most accurate to date since it was the first one to describe the actual tectonic plate movements in the Arctic and explain the origin of the basic tectonic structures of its seabed. The scientists say their model represents a huge step forward, paving the way to a completely new field of research --- the study and reconstruction of the mechanism behind the movement of the Arctic crustal blocks.

The Russian scientific data could also support shelf extension claims made by other countries, with some of them potentially extending their borders all the way to the North Pole. "Our colleagues from Norway, Canada, the United States and Denmark are quite interested in the model and are studying it with enthusiasm," Leopold Lobkovsky, deputy director of the Shirshov Institute, told RBTH.

"We know now that the Gakkel Ridge, which Russia had previously claimed as well, is not an extension of the country's shelf, but merely a part of the seabed,'' said Yuri Sychev, head of the Zubkov State Institute of Oceanography. "The North Pole - according to the equi-distance principle - should belong to Denmark, but this issue is still a subject of discussion between Copenhagen, Ottawa and Moscow. As for the Lomonosov and the Mendeleev Ridges, these are undoubtedly part of the Russian shelf."

The researchers have gathered unique cartographical and geophysical data that they expect will satisfy the UN commission. Russian scientific data shows that the ridges started moving away from the Eurasian continent 120 million years ago, but have never broken off from it.
 
A decade of research

Russia submitted a similar territorial claim in 2001, but it was rejected because it failed to provide convincing evidence. Establishing the new model took over 10 years of geological and geophysical studies and large-scale marine expeditions involving ice-breakers and scientific research ships. During one such expedition, drilling rigs deployed near the Mendeleev Ridge reached rock formations that could date back to almost 300 million years ago.    
 
"At the moment, the Arctic Ocean beyond the exclusive economic zone is open to ships from all states", said Lobkovsky. "If the Russian claim is approved by the UN Commission, then a large part of the Arctic will no longer be considered international waters.''

Professor Vladimir Pavlenko, head of Russia's Arctic Research Institute, believes the UN will approve Russia's claims this time. "The rejection of the 2001 claim made sense; we had almost no accurate data at that point,'' said Pavlenko. "It was hard to expect any other outcome, but now we have every reason to expect an approval."

Despite the new evidence, however, Russia's claim will continue to meet strong opposition from other countries, such as the USA and Canada, because at stake is a very resource-rich area of the Arctic. The House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce said the U.S. and its allies should stand up to Russia.

"Russia has been aggressively pushing its claims to the Arctic, especially the resource-rich continental shelf. It now has an Arctic Command to strengthen its military presence in the region. The U.S. and others bordering the Arctic must maintain a united front against Moscow's aggressive ambitions toward this vital region," said Royce. 
 
 #18
Sputnik
August 10, 2015
European Dairy Industry in Crisis Due to Russian Food Embargo

European dairy farmers are facing their most serious economic crisis in decades, largely as a result of the ongoing sanctions war between EU member countries and Russia.

French pig farmers estimated that due to the Russian embargo that led to the oversupply in the EU food market the pig producing industry alone lost almost a billion euros, news radio station France Info reported.

In a recent report on the subject, Radio Sweden explained that the ongoing Russian embargo of European agricultural products is expected to lead to a new wave of lowering milk prices in the near future.

The broadcaster noted that "the current crisis is [already] regarded as one of the most serious in the last 40 years," noting that with global milk prices already falling to a 30 year low, the current price of 2.65 krona (about 30 cents US) are already below the 3.60-3.70 krona (41-42 cents) minimum necessary for Swedish dairy farmers to make ends meet. Meanwhile, subsidies to Scandinavian dairy giant Arla Foods have fallen by 1.09 krona over the past year.

"We can't remember when we last experienced such a deep crisis, and no one knows when it will end," F�ran�s-area dairy farmer Tore Engstr�m told the broadcaster.

The Association of Swedish Farmers is convinced that if the situation is not dealt with in the next six months, many of Sweden's 4,200 private dairy farmers may simply begin go bankrupt, with 4 out of 5 already suffering serious economic difficulties. Association chairman Jonas Carlsberg told Radio Sweden that according to the data of his colleagues from Denmark, "86 percent of Danish milk producers face a critical situation. I can add that a similar situation exists in Sweden as well."

Radio Sweden noted that much of the hit to producer prices has been the result of the ongoing sanctions war between Europe and Russia over the crisis in Ukraine. Carlsberg complained that "the idea that farmers must pay for political decisions is fundamentally wrong. We are waiting for decisive actions by policymakers."  For its part, the Swedish government has promised to look into the matter later this month, with EU member agriculture ministers promising to do the same in early September.

Czechs, Germans, Balts Too Feeling The Pinch

Like their Swedish counterparts Czech dairy farmers too have felt the pinch of the embargo, forced to look for new places to dump the 500 tons of butter and 1,500 tons of powdered milk once going to the Russian market.

German dairy farmers are also struggling, losing a market for 126,000 tons worth of cheese, according to Thorsten Sehm, the head of the Federal Union of German Milk Producers. Sehm told Russia's RIA Novosti that while only 1.26 million tons of Germany's 29 million tons worth of milk were exported to Russia prior to the embargo, "in any market, once the supply exceeds demand, it leads to drastic changes." So far, in Germany, this has led to a drop in prices to rates lower than "the crisis years of 2012 and 2009," Sehm noted.

German Farmers' Union spokesman Michael Lohse Lohse complained about commercial effects of politicized decisions, noting that for his organization's part, "we call on authorities of our country to find opportunities for closening [of trade relations] with Russia."
The Baltic states seem to have been hit worst of all, with the countries' close economic ties with Russia prior to the embargo and difficulties in finding alternative markets leading to a situation where the countries' entire dairy industry is now on the verge of collapse. In Estonia, the sanctions war has resulted in a decline in a 30 percent decline in producer prices, with Estonian exports of milk falling by 17 percent in the first quarter of 2015 alone.

Latvia's dairy industry has suffered a similar decline, with agriculture minister Janis Duklavs noting that he would be appealing to the EU for additional funds to save the dairy industry from total paralysis, warning that farmers are on the verge of destroying their livestock and liquidating their farms.

Latvian Association of Milk Producers Chairperson Ieva Alpa Eisenberg noted that Latvian farmers "have plunged into despair, because we do not know when the situation will improve. One does not know whether one can climb a little bit further into debt, and whether one will be able to pay it back." The representative noted that the present crisis is the worst the country has faced in over 15 years.

In Lithuania, dairy farmers join the rest of the agricultural sector, which has faced a 30 percent decline in exports in mid-2015, compared with a year earlier. Agriculture Minister Virginija Baltraitiene noted that she will be asking the EU Commissioner for Agriculture for 32 million euros to help save the industry. Local experts warn that the country may be forced to reduce the production of dairy products by 50 percent in the near future.

Global Factors

The crisis in the loss of exports to Russia has been exacerbated by the fact that in the spring of this year, the European Union lifted national quotas on milk production, with each country now able to increase its dairy production at will, resulting in growing production and a glut in the market.
The crisis has been exacerbated further by the fact that China has significantly reduced its purchase of powdered milk from the EU market.

German Farmers' Union spokesman Lohse explained that "of the 10 cent drop in milk prices, 2-3 cents are the result of the Russian embargo, with the rest resulting from other factors. These include the decline in exports to China...as well as the general overproduction of milk in the EU."

Federal Union of German Milk Producers chairman Sehm complained that local politicians "are not undertaking any efforts to create the appropriate regulatory environment for the milk market," adding that the same problem exists in France, Spain and Italy, and other EU countries.

In August 2014, Russia introduced an embargo on several categories of food products from the European Union, the United States, Canada, Australia, and Norway, in response to the anti-Russian sanctions introduced earlier by these countries over the ongoing civil war in Ukraine. In June of this year, the Russian government decided to extend the embargo until August of 2016, responding to the extension of EU sanctions.
 

#19
http://readrussia.com
August 10, 2015
Mission Failed: Russia's Already Lost Its Own Information War
By Jim Kovpak
Jim Kovpak is the founder of Russia Without BS

A recent Pew Research study entitled Russia, Putin Held in Low Regard Around the World: Russia's Image Trails U.S. Across all Regions, may serve as an indicator that Russia's so-called "information war" might in fact be a non-starter. Bloomberg's Leonid Bershidsky cited the report in a recent article whose headline is far more blunt than the report's own title - "The World Hates Russia. Russia Hates it Back." One may quibble over whether people actually "hate" Russia, but that is beside the point. What the report does tell us is that Russia's massive foreign language propaganda machine, the recipient of a massive boost in funding from the state, clearly hasn't accomplished the goal of generating sympathy towards Russia.

This conclusion serves as a major blow to the argument that the West is under threat from a cash-infused, supercharged Kremlin propaganda machine. After all that money was pumped into it, not only did it fail to lower animosity towards Russia, but we actually see growing hostility towards the country, i.e. the opposite of what one would think the desired result should be. One struggles to find a better concrete definition of failure than this.

On the other hand, this represents a small victory for my more skeptical camp, also known as the "Don't worry, you don't know these people like I do" camp. Russia already has a number of factors naturally working against it in this arena, but more importantly, the propaganda strategy of the Kremlin ultimately works against itself. Though that may be the case, as in other parts of the Russian political system the inherently counter-productive, backward strategy of Russian propaganda cannot correct itself because those who crafted it are not only convinced that their assumptions about the world are true, but in such circles as theirs criticism is at best a sign of questionable loyalty and at worst- traitorous. The result is a feedback loop that essentially explains the increasingly bizarre antics of the state-run press and the newsmakers it covers in the government.

Now some advocates of the "Russian propaganda is going to destroy democracy" line of thinking might respond by bringing up the point that Kremlin propaganda is designed to confuse and spread cynicism and doubt rather than convince people. To this I can only ask: So what? We know that Russian propaganda isn't winning converts. Studies have shown this. As for spreading confusion and cynicism, well the problem with that is that it's...confusion and cynicism. The former prevents people from developing any kind of coherent position which could oppose the policies that Russia doesn't like, and the latter prevents people from doing any concrete political action at all. Of course within Russia, that's a feature and not a bug, but from an objective point of view, Russia should want people in other countries to organize against their governments should they have foreign policies at odds with those of Moscow.

So no, Virginia, the Russian propaganda machine isn't as menacing as some people think. It's been around long enough to declare it a failure in light of this most recent study; there's little reason to believe that such dismal results will reverse any time soon. Thus while it continues to operate and enjoy comparatively high funding in the state's budget, it is effectively a zombie, though one which shambles along groaning "Neoooooocooooons!" instead of "Braaaaaaaains!"  

What went wrong?

In trying to reach out to the world, Russia has had natural, historical obstacles to overcome, but analyzing those would require their own article. Thus I confine myself only to what I see as the human blunders of the Kremlin's propaganda machine, i.e. the flaws in their strategy and the absurd mistakes they make which work against their mission objectives.

The first mistake they made was their very belief in the "information war." The elite's paranoia and desire to remain in power whatever the cost causes some of them to view negative stories about the country as being part of a hostile political campaign. In their mind, there's this hivemind collective called "the Western media," and though it mostly consists of numerous private corporations, they believe that it does the bidding of Western governments, which can in turn be boiled down to Washington.

Thus we see a curious process unfold. First, they declare that there's no such thing as objectivity and  everyone agrees that the "Western media" lies. After making this a priori judgment, without question or challenge, this serves as license to lie and even fabricate entire stories. This is a problem because it means a lax attitude toward credibility. Of course the world shows no shortage of gullible people, but there are also a lot of people who get resentful if they feel someone is insulting their intelligence with crude propaganda. Those also happen to be the kind of people you want to reach. They're more likely to have strong opinions and values, as well as influence.

Another assumption that Russian propagandists make which works against their goals is their ridiculous belief that the US controls the world to the point where it can be blamed any time a sovereign nation does something Russia's leaders don't like. Canadians, Germans, French, Japanese, etc. might not necessarily like to hear representatives of an authoritarian country with far lower living standards lecturing them on how they are nothing but puppets of the United States because their governments agree when it comes to dealing with Russia. The mentality promoted by the Kremlin is essentially: "Take our side or you're America's bitch." I'm not exaggerating on that last bit. While Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov typically puts it in far more diplomatic terms, likening America to a dominant prison sex partner is common in this sort of discourse in Russia.

I have often likened Russia's attitude in this respect, often propagated even by its foreign language media, to the rage of a stereotypical "nice guy" when women turn down his advances. Russia tries to appeal to other countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, etc., but when they or at least their governments don't reciprocate, Russia flies into a rage and calls them all whores of the US. It simply cannot be that Russia's overtures aren't appealing to them. It's not that Russia doesn't take care of itself to make it look more attractive. No, there's an evil conspiracy to get countries to go with the US, just as the nice guy sees conspiracies to lure poor, unsuspecting, innocent young maidens into the arms of brainless jocks.

This is the level of thinking we're talking about here, and Russia and its media don't seem to see how insulting it is to other countries. America does have a reputation for being cocky and dismissive of other countries, yet few Europeans are ready to call themselves whores of the US just because their governments aren't willing to believe Russia's ever-morphing, often contradictory explanations on various international issues. Nor are they willing to accept Russia's dictates simply for the sake of cheap gas. The truth is that it is Russia's government and its ideologues who see international politics as a competition between "great powers" with spheres of influence. It is they who see the relationship as a dominant/dominated dichotomy, and if any country fails to acquiesce to this relationship, it is automatically labeled a whore of the opposing power, for no other possible relationship is possible in their minds. Obviously this isn't a way to win friends.

Another major problem with Russian propaganda is lack of coherency. Those who warn us about Kremlin "disinformation" and the "weaponization of information" point out how modern capitalist Russia is no longer bound by ideological constraints as it was during the Cold War. This is asserted as though it were some sort of advantage when in fact it is the opposite.

For comparison take Fox News. One could claim that some aspects of Fox appeal to libertarian conservatives as opposed to more mainstream conservatives, but at the end of the day Fox is a network entirely geared towards conservatives, leading them to support Republican candidates. Fox stays resolutely on message and it has achieved undeniable results, albeit at the expense of the American political system.

In some ways, RT has in recent years become like Fox News in the sense that it stays on message with the rest of the Russian press. On the other hand, while they insist that Ukraine suffered a violent fascist putsch and defend the annexation of the Crimea, they aim their talking points at very different, in fact often diametrically opposed forces on the right and left. If we imagine Fox doing the same thing, we very quickly see the problem with this. They can't convince hardcore anti-abortion conservatives and progressive leftist radicals that the GOP is the party that represents them both. This is precisely what Russia is trying to do via its media - to the right it portrays itself as a bastion of traditional values against a decadent, degenerate New World Order. To the left, it presents itself as a defender of poor, allegedly socialist states opposing Western imperialism and American hegemony. I've often likened Russia's purported image to a bad sitcom plot, one in which a male character somehow sets up dates with two different women for the same evening. As soon as they find out about each other, the charade is over.

If Russia's politics can be put on one side of the political spectrum, it would have to be the far right. Their connection with far right parties and organizations is far more solid and concrete than any that they have with the left, something that shouldn't be surprising considering the kind of conservative politics the government promotes at home. In spite of this, it's got to sting for European neo-fascists  when their best ally is constantly claiming the mantle of a crusader against fascism, as it does in Ukraine. Far right wing extremists, including ideological fascists, actually volunteer in the Donbas on the separatist side, where they're supposed to be fighting against...fascists. No doubt this has caused them some measure of concern. It also isn't too appealing to far rightists in countries like Romania, Hungary, or Slovakia when Russia keeps screaming about "their" victory over fascism. Putin might have friends in Hungary's far-right Jobbik party, but one wonders what they might have felt when he recently laid a wreath at a memorial to Soviet soldiers in Budapest.

Russia's sudden transformation into an "anti-fascist" force opposing US hegemony has been quite effective at luring in naive and ignorant leftists, but once again all it takes is a little investigation and the whole facade collapses. Apart from promoting clericalism, homophobia, and nationalism, Russia is a country where 35% of the wealth belongs to 110 individuals. The wealth inequality and working conditions are such that while Russia's economic policies might not fit the commonly-accepted definition of "neo-liberalism," they have certainly managed to achieve neo-liberal results, perhaps even more efficiently than those states which do follow the neo-liberal economic formula. Even cursory research is enough to tell any openminded, sincere leftist that if your problem is fascism or global neo-liberal capitalism, Russia's the last country you want to look to for solutions.

In truth, many right wing and left wing consumers of Russian propaganda are not really sincere or politically educated and thus they simply become cynical and don't critically question why the Russian government is trying to appeal to two different diametrically-opposed political factions at the same time. Consider that, for a moment, however. It means the only loyal audience they get is from people whose dedication to their own cause is so lackluster that they're willing to side with those who are supposed to be their opponents. These cannot be considered enthusiastic supporters. If they are, they most likely lack any kind of principles and are instead driven by cynicism. Again, not ideal supporters.

The best response

For quite some time now the American and several European governments have been discussing what to do as a response to Russian propaganda. In my opinion, this is largely a waste of money seeing as how if anything, these efforts are likely to be seen as nothing but propaganda, and given the voices that will be guiding these efforts, that label might be justifiable. This is just as well seeing as how Russian propaganda isn't a serious threat to Western governments. On the contrary, as it ensnares many serious Western activists and destroys their credibility, one could even make the argument that it actually helps Western governments by poisoning activist movements in their countries. But there are some, and indeed perhaps those aforementioned activists, who have a genuine and legitimate interest in counter-acting the Kremlin's "information war." So the question remains as to how to fight back. I have proposed a few concrete tactics for this purpose.

The first is simple mockery. From 2014 onward, pro-Kremlin media has increasingly moved into the realm of self-parody. It gets to the point where you can basically play a game of bingo based on their talking points- neocons, muli-polar world, fascist junta, Western media, etc. It spits out contradictory conspiracy theories so fast that any credibility they manage to build up is immediately  pissed away. This makes the Kremlin's foreign language propaganda a ripe target for Onion-style parody. When it gets hard to tell the difference between mocking parody and actual Kremlin media, people who want to be taken seriously will be forced to rethink how they get their information.

Another possible tactic is inspired by Ukraine's Stopfake.org, but whereas that site merely catalogs fake stories from the Russian (and sometimes Ukrainian) media, what I propose is a kind of Encyclopedia of Bullshit. Essentially, multiple fake claims from the Russian media are cataloged by theme. For example, on my blog I proposed grouping all Russian media claims about the downing of MH17 together in one place. As many of these theories are mutually exclusive, and insofar as nearly all of them claim to have some kind of evidence or the backing of "experts," anyone confronted with all of the theories at one time faces a major quandary. All these theories cannot be true at the same time, and one must answer the question as to why the other narrative, backed by independent international investigation, has been more or less entirely consistent from the beginning, whereas in the same time frame Russia has continually spit out numerous, often contradictory explanations, on more than one occasion providing them in less than 24 hours of each other. On a positive note, it seems RuNet Echo's Aric Toler has actually done exactly this. Parody account Darth Putin also took this approach and mixed it with satire.

As one expert recently told me, the Kremlin's whole information war could be ended as soon as someone decides to pull the plug, meaning cut off the money. So long as Western governments and their trusted experts continue to panic and talk of mounting a propaganda counteroffensive, those in charge of the Kremlin's media will be able to justify their inflated budgets. If, on the other hand, the information offensive is met with laughter, mockery, derision, and parody, this plus mounting evidence that Russian propaganda not only fails to win converts, but that it actually turns people against Russia, may be enough to convince the top brass to abandon their wasteful information war, at least in the international realm.

Just in case anyone thinks I'm not taking the "threat" seriously enough, or worse, that Kremlin supporters will read things like this and rectify their tactics accordingly, I leave you with something I was told by a former employee of RT. "What you have to understand is that RT is systemically broken, and there's no way to fix it when it's like that from top to bottom." These words appear to be consistent with what I've heard or read from other former or current employees in the Russian media, both foreign language and domestic. So let's not lose any sleep over Russia's failed information war.

 
 
#20
The Hill
www.thehill.com
August 12, 2015
Top US general: Russia is most dangerous threat
By Kristina Wong

Gen. Ray Odierno, the outgoing Army chief of staff, said Wednesday that Russia is the top military threat to the U.S.  

"I believe Russia is the most dangerous," he said at a Pentagon briefing.

"First, they are more mature than some of our other potential adversaries, and I think they have stated some intents that concern me, in terms of how the Cold War ended.  
"And they have shown some significant ability in Ukraine to do operations that are fairly sophisticated, and so for me, I think we should pay a lot of attention to that," he added.  

Odierno's comments come as defense officials suspect that Russia is behind last month's cyber attack of the Joint Chief of Staff's unclassified email server. They also come as the U.S. is continuing to support Ukrainian forces as they battle Russian-backed separatists and Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine.  

The four-star general said he is also "greatly" concerned by the prospect of Russia violating the sovereignty of Baltic states that are members of NATO, which would require the U.S. military to come to their defense under Article V of the organization's founding treaty.

Russia is "constantly assessing the reaction of NATO to any of their actions," Odierno said.

"What I worry about is miscalculation - that they perceive maybe that NATO might not be as concerned, and they make a mistake and miscalculate and do something that violates Article V of our NATO agreement, so that's something that greatly concerns me," he continued.  

Odierno said the U.S. had to increase its ability to move quickly to the region if needed, and increase interoperability with other NATO forces.

"A true deterrent is one where people are worried that if they do conduct operations, that there will be some level of response," he said.

Odierno's assessment echoes those made by other military chiefs. Last month, Gen. Joseph Dunford, the outgoing Marine Corps commandant and incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told senators that Russia posed the greatest national security threat.

Odierno is retiring this month after a 39-year career in the Army. He spent much of the last decade commanding forces in Iraq.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the outgoing Army chief of staff, said Wednesday that Russia is the top military threat to the U.S.  

"I believe Russia is the most dangerous," he said at a Pentagon briefing.

"First, they are more mature than some of our other potential adversaries, and I think they have stated some intents that concern me, in terms of how the Cold War ended.  
"And they have shown some significant ability in Ukraine to do operations that are fairly sophisticated, and so for me, I think we should pay a lot of attention to that," he added.  

Odierno's comments come as defense officials suspect that Russia is behind last month's cyber attack of the Joint Chief of Staff's unclassified email server. They also come as the U.S. is continuing to support Ukrainian forces as they battle Russian-backed separatists and Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine.  

The four-star general said he is also "greatly" concerned by the prospect of Russia violating the sovereignty of Baltic states that are members of NATO, which would require the U.S. military to come to their defense under Article V of the organization's founding treaty.

Russia is "constantly assessing the reaction of NATO to any of their actions," Odierno said.

"What I worry about is miscalculation - that they perceive maybe that NATO might not be as concerned, and they make a mistake and miscalculate and do something that violates Article V of our NATO agreement, so that's something that greatly concerns me," he continued.  

Odierno said the U.S. had to increase its ability to move quickly to the region if needed, and increase interoperability with other NATO forces.

"A true deterrent is one where people are worried that if they do conduct operations, that there will be some level of response," he said.

Odierno's assessment echoes those made by other military chiefs. Last month, Gen. Joseph Dunford, the outgoing Marine Corps commandant and incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told senators that Russia posed the greatest national security threat.

Odierno is retiring this month after a 39-year career in the Army. He spent much of the last decade commanding forces in Iraq.

 
 
 #21
ValueWalk
www.valuewalk.com
August 13, 2015
Russia Just Trying To Protect Itself From The U.S. Aggression
By Vikas Shukla

The United States was alarmed when Russia flew its strategic bombers close to the U.S. airspace along California in July. Recently, General Joseph Dunford, nominee for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Russia was an "existential threat" to the U.S. In reality, it's the opposite that seems to be true and few Americans realize this fact.

Russia doesn't overact like the U.S.

Considering what the U.S. has been doing since the end of the Cold War, Americans shouldn't be surprised at all if Russia sends its military jets close to the U.S. airspace. In fact, they should be thankful that Russia doesn't overact to threats that don't even exist, like the U.S. does, said the Eastern Arizona Courier columnist Harry Goslin.

For more than two decades, Washington has been encircling Russia by persuading the former Soviet states to become members of NATO. And then it setup military bases in Eastern European countries, just a few hundred yards away from the Russian border. These tiny countries do little for the security needs of member states than serving as "sacrificial pawns" in a geopolitical game played by the U.S.

The reality is: U.S. poses 'existential threat' to Russia

U.S. Army regularly conducts military drills close to the Russian border. And then Americans claim that Russia poses an "existential threat" to their country. Imagine how the U.S. would respond if Russia took measures to bring down a pro-American government in Mexico and installed a pro-Russian one. Moscow did something similar in response to the U.S.-directed regime change in Ukraine to protect its interests.

Harry Goslin points out that the U.S. government probably wants people to believe its security threat propaganda, and it has succeeded in this aspect. U.S. military surveillance can track Russian military aircraft even before they leave the Russian airspace. So why wait until the Russian aircraft came close to California before detecting them? Flying its planes near the U.S. was the least Russia could to in response to Washington setting up several military bases along its border.

Russia is modernizing its Soviet-era military, adding more ships to its Navy and building closer ties with China to counter the U.S. aggression.
 
 #22
New York Times
August 12, 2015
Is Russia the New Iran?
By Maxim Trudolyubov
Maxim Trudolyubov is the opinion page editor of the business newspaper Vedomosti and the author of a forthcoming book on power and property in Russia.

MOSCOW - Whenever Russians think about Iran, soul-searching ensues. Some look at the Iranian system favorably, and some despise it, but in the aftermath of the recent deal to limit Iranian nuclear production in exchange for a lifting of economic sanctions and increased commercial contacts with the outside world, many Russians, worried by their country's growing status as an international pariah, have begun to ask themselves: "Are we the new Iran?"

This may sound strange to foreign ears, but it is not really so far-fetched. Many Russians, both inside and outside the Kremlin, admire the Iranian way of dealing with a hostile world. They respect the country's determination to develop its own nuclear power, regardless of widespread global opposition. And Tehran's toughness in the face of crippling economic sanctions struck a chord with President Vladimir Putin and his supporters, who have succeeded in presenting Western sanctions over Moscow's misdeeds in Crimea and Ukraine as a sinister attack upon their sacred motherland.

Many Russians feel much as Iranians felt when their country was hit with sanctions years ago: defiant and eager to prove that no sanctions can affect them. Mr. Putin and his acolytes never tire of declaring that Russia will stand up to the West and prosper on its own.

And yet Russia played an important role in negotiating the American-led agreement with Iran. Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, was a key voice among representatives of the six-nation coalition, never letting the U.S.-Russia conflict over the Ukrainian crisis and other issues get in the way of talks with Iranian officials.

Perhaps President Obama was taking this into consideration when he acknowledged Moscow's contribution to the Iranian accord. Referring to Washington's tensions with Moscow, Obama said in an interview after the agreement was reached in Vienna that "Putin and the Russian government compartmentalized on this in a way that surprised me." He added: "We would have not achieved this agreement had it not been for Russia's willingness to stick with us."

But now that Iran is opening up, Russia simply won't be competitive enough with the West to deliver the kinds of consumer goods and technology that a post-sanctions country would want. In reality, the nuclear deal will increase Russia's political isolation and hurt its economy - already reeling from the steep drop in oil prices, a plunging ruble and the effects of Western sanctions. Investors, wary of the Kremlin's cavalier approach to contracts, prefer to seek opportunities elsewhere. And many of the country's most talented people, troubled by its dictatorial approach to government, are seeking their future abroad.

Meanwhile, high-profile delegations from Germany, France, Italy and other European countries that include dozens of corporate representatives have begun visiting Iran. "Even in the past couple of weeks we have approved more than $2 billion in projects in Iran by European companies," Reuters quoted the country's deputy economy minister, Mohammad Khazaei, as saying last month.

Iranian officials are hoping for renewed access to consumer goods and are planning a massive revamp of the country's antiquated infrastructure. Hard-liners may want the bomb, but the leaders who have prevailed want their citizens to have new clothes and gadgets, automobiles and airplanes. Tehran already has announced that it plans to buy as many as 90 aircraft a year from Boeing and Airbus as soon as the sanctions are lifted. If Obama's gamble to reopen the country pays off, Iranian and Western interests can merge.

Russia can certainly compete with the West in the energy sector as well as the arms trade (although the United Nations embargo on weapons sales to Iran won't be fully lifted for five years). But it still faces a difficult paradox. While the Iranian business climate waxes, the Russian climate will wane. The lifting of sanctions in one nation will further complicate economic conditions in the other. Some international companies, including the same car and equipment manufacturers that are now interested in Iran, are leaving Russia, and even more may follow. Western investors worried by what might await them in Russia are lining up to compete for more lucrative deals in Iran.

Mr. Putin supported the Iranian accord because he realized that disrupting negotiations that both Iran and the West wanted to succeed would have only deepened Russian isolation. Perhaps he also has realized that he's been alone on the world stage all too often. Russia's aggression against its neighbors, its military games of chicken with NATO, and his own often-comic chest-thumping, are setting him up to take Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's place in the world.

Mr. Putin probably realized that he had to support the Iran deal in order to stay in the game. That is why he recently pushed a plan for a "united front" to fight Islamic State terrorists in Iraq and Syria. Though this is unlikely to materialize, given that the front would include forces loyal to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, it's real purpose was to present our president as an important and engaged global leader.

Far more important to we Russians, however, is how and on what terms our country stays in the game. Today it seems as though we are proudly and foolishly marching into the position hastily being vacated by Iran.
 
 #23
'Virtual Civil War' Going on in Russia Today Moscow Sociologist Says
Paul Goble

Staunton, August 12 - Only 25 to 30 percent of Russians actively profession Putin's national-patriotic ideology, but far fewer, ten to 15 percent are "convinced liberals, Leonty Byzov says. This division, far deeper than in the past, means that "a virtual civil war" is going on in Russia, one that could in a short time explode into a real one.

Those in between the two groups, the senior scholar at the Moscow Institute of Sociology says, for the time being accept "the cult of national ties" that Vladimir Putin has promoted; but they oppose any tightening of the screws on their lives even if they have nothing against actions against political parties or dissidents (rosbalt.ru/main/2015/08/08/1426744.html).

The "external unity" of Russian society shown by polls is deceptive, Byzov continues. There is broad agreement on foreign policy but that does not negate the fact that at the same time, "a deep split exists in society." In the 1990s, there wasn't such external unity; but the disagreement was not as deep either.

Today, however, Byzov says, "a division about values has emerged between the majority and the minority, and this is very concerning because there is the view that the minority's opinion can be ignored as long as the majority is 'for.' But this minority represents the most active, educated, and intellectual part of society, the so-called creative class."

As for the majority, he says, "it is made up of a small nucleus of convinced conservatives and the conformist part of society," people who are accustomed to following the party line but who are not "conservatives by conviction." They will shift with the winds: That is why in Soviet times, only seven percent said they were believers, while 80 percent do now.

This majority supports the regime but it opposes anything that directly affects it. A political tightening of the screws is fine with its members, Byzov says.  "But try to tighten the screws on it" and people will get upset "because they do not want that the authorities get involved in their private lives, force them to pay taxes" or do anything else they don't want to do.

The "conservative" majority "values personal freedom: to work or not to work, to buy or not to buy, to live where and how it wants."  As far as the freedom of parties, speech or the media are concerned, that is a matter of indifference for them. Thus, there is a line the regime cannot cross without high risks.

Society had been relatively balanced between the moderate conservatives and the moderate liberals until 2012, but after the protests and the harsh reaction of the authorities, "the balance was violated" and the compass swung to the side of the conservatives. Thus led to the current gulf between conservatives and liberals.

The powers that be feel this and feel themselves to have entered a zone of "heightened turbulence." But they don't know how to change policies or initiate a dialogue between the two groups. As for the population, most are prepared to wait things out and to take what the official media says on trust even though they have access to alternative sources of information.

Some people suggest that Russians always prefer order to freedom, but "in fact," while many say they prefer order, they do not reject freedom as a value.  The only difference is this: liberals say it is one of the three most important values, while conservatives list freedom only in fifth place.

"History teaches that a sense of order can disappear among [Russians] in a single day." It happened in 1917 and it happened again in 1991, in both cases enormous enthusiasm for the regime disappeared and became the most hostile anger at it.  "The very same thing may happen tomorrow as well."

Byzov continues: "the transition to chaos in Russia is very rapid, massive and always takes on the character of collapse. Now, according to the findings of sociologists, nothing points to that. But this does not mean that it cannot occur in principle, for example, under the impact of external causes."
           
What is occurring already, he says, "can be called 'a revolt on one's knees."  Many express dissatisfaction, "but no one is rushing to the barricades. Why? The conformist majority as a rule always is ready to support the authorities because it has nothing else to count on." Those who are better off are more politicized.

But pushing off the date of reckoning is not a good strategy, he suggests. "revolts are needed; what matters is their nature. History shows that the longer stability passing into stagnation continues, the stronger will be the shocks at the exit from this period."

"The authorities will not always be strong, and as soon as they show their weakness, that will become a catalyst for all possible contradictions," Byzov says.  Moreover, in that situation, "the colossal energy of collapse will arise."
 
 #24
Fort Russ
http://fortruss.blogspot.com
August 12, 2015
CONVERSATIONS WITH PEOPLE IN RUSSIA: Three Amigos from Ukraine, Sanctions, Putin, and much more
By Alevtina Rea
[Alevtina Rea is a researcher, analyst and writer. For 7 years (2005 - 2012), she worked as an assistant editor with CounterPunch. Ms. Rea is a contributing author to CounterPunch, Cyrano's Journal Today, Uncommon Thought Journal, The Greanville Post, the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, and Russia Insider.]

"Haven't you heard, it's a battle of words ...
And who'll deny it's what the fighting's all about?"
Pink Floyd, "Us and Them," 1973

As far as the other cultures are concerned, basically, we deal with "ultimately unknown reality," and the lack of either direct involvement or mere curiosity on our part is manna from heaven to our respective governments. It is exactly why a bunch of arrogant and ignorant politicians - at least some of them who serve the ignominious interests of global domination - feel free to manipulate their constituencies without the slightest twinge of conscience. One of my favorite philosophers, Jacques Ellul, said, in his book On Freedom, Love and Power (expanded edition), "We live as if the reality we have come to know and live is reality itself, minus some details yet to be discovered and lived. ... In other words, we have extrapolated what we know and live to include, in principle, all of reality, thereby leaving no place for anything that is radically 'other.'" As in Plato's parable about the cave, political manipulators are only eager to cast the shades on the back wall of our "caves" to draw our attention away from the immense world outside of our voluntary "imprisonment." And we are the ones who allow confining ourselves in Procrustean bed of distorted reality and, thus, "leaving no place for" - or not accepting - "anything that is radically other."

Given the prevailing Russophobic fad that took place in the West in the last few years, one may wonder how to really wade through the thick propaganda and the constant lies that are being mounted on Russia and its leaders. How should one make sense of something that if not entirely "other" but still is not "our" way of life? Obviously, the best way to find truth is go to the source, so to speak - to visit this country and talk to people who live there, find out their views and thoughts on what is transpiring nowadays, as far as their lives are concerned. During my trip to Russia this June-July, I was curious to see with my own eyes how the Russians handle the impact of economic sanctions imposed by the West. I was in Moscow in the summer of 2014 and saw how happy and prosperous the Muscovites were back then. One year later: what has changed under harsh pressure on Russia, in an effort to bend the country politics to the Western politicians' will?

Upon my immediate arrival, still in the airport, I had a chance to speak with the head of a young family standing behind me in the customs line. The three of them - a husband, wife, and their son - were coming back after living in the United States for four months. The young man was a computer tech who had a chance to work at Microsoft in Seattle. He was quite excited to go back home. They definitely seemed to miss Russia. I was curious to hear his opinion about the effect of the sanctions and what he thinks about the U.S.-Russian current confrontation. The guy was very clear - he himself and all his friends support Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. Obviously, they noticed the economic effect of the Western bullying - the prices on some food items soared - but all in all everyone copes. Most of what the sanctions caused, he said, is to unite the Russians - they understand the unfairness of it all and, for the most part, they are disappointed in the West's stand, especially in the U.S. one. It is quite obvious to all who is the mastermind of a current hostility. "Americans, as people, they are ok," he said. "But we don't like the Obama administration!"
 
 Incidentally, my arrival in Moscow on June 12th had happened on big Russian holiday - the Russia Day. The celebration on the Red Square, the firework, the throngs of happy people everywhere - I guess, it was all predictable and expected, to some degree, but still very pleasant to see. One year later, despite the sanctions, the economic hardship that followed, and in spite of the Obama administration's dedicated efforts to cause some harm to Russia, its people are still happy and they know how to enjoy life!

In the next few weeks, the conversations with people of various ages in Moscow and elsewhere demonstrated that they had more or less accepting attitudes toward the sanctions while feeling a kind of indignation toward the West, mostly the United States. Yes, the prices were soaring and they noticed that their money was much easier to spend these days, but, at the same time, they do ok. For the most part, they all support Russia, condemn the American "exceptionalism" that is so brazenly put on display by the U.S president - while all sort of international gangsterism being committed by his country around the globe - and they support Vladimir Putin. It was way overdue for Russia to have such a strong and wise president who puts Russia's interests first and who has brought a lot of stability and - for many - even economic prosperity, especially in big cities such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, and others. However, a few voiced their concern that while they are proud of the Russian international stand, they think that, definitely, there is not enough being done to improve the lives of ordinary Russians. The misuse of public power for personal gain is rampant, especially where public funds are concerned.

For example, in the city of Cheboksary, the capital of the Chuvash Republic, one year ago I was told that a public school would be built by a cluster of the new fancy houses that popped up by the Volga River in the last few years. The place for school was allocated, the plans were all in place - the school was really needed for all the local kids around. And here I am, 12 months passed, and where is the school, or at least any sign of the construction? The sight is still the same - the shallow ravine, the aspen grove, and things have not budged an inch. What are the people saying? They think that the money was embezzled by the officials. I was told, "If they managed to steal 92 billion rubles (or $1.8 billion) from the new cosmodrome project in the Far East, no wonder the funds for the school were missed." For those who don't know about this reference, Vostochny Cosmodrome is an ambitious $3 billion government project intended to guarantee Russia's independent access to space. Earlier this year, it became public that more than half of this money has been apparently embezzled. So, you get the picture. Unfortunate as it is, corruption is still an ever-humming leitmotif in Russian life, especially when the governmental funds are concerned. And it appears the people are well aware of it.

Were there any real critics of Putin's Russia, one might wonder? Frankly, I have encountered only three of those who offered a harsh criticism. There was an older gentlemen in his 80s, who just cannot forgive Putin's attempt to destroy Chechen terrorists wherever they were found, including in toilets. Since then, this gentleman projects his dislike of Putin's words to any of his actions, whether in Russia or abroad. When, back then, Putin promised "to pluck out the remaining terrorists from the bottom of a sewer," it didn't fare well with some of the Russian people. However, while I condemn any violence that was exhibited on both sides - the Chechen and the Russian one - it seems to me that the Chechen excessive violence toward the civilian population in Russia was an urgent issue to deal with back the situation at that time. Perhaps the cruel means of suppression were the only ones workable given the circumstances, especially the fact that the Chechen insurgents were trained and otherwise supported by the United States.

Furthermore, the situation in Chechnya back then was different than it is in Ukraine today. After all, the self-defense forces of the Donbass region do not commit any atrocities against Ukrainian civilians; they do not hold any kids and women as hostages; they don't impose an economic blockade on civilians; and they did not even start this military conflict - it is the current Kiev regime that started the so-called anti-terrorist operation against the "separatists and terrorists" residing in the east of Ukraine, without even making any effort to negotiate with them; it is the Kiev junta and its president, Mr. Poroshenko, who have ordered the use of shells, mortars, and even rocket launcher fire while dealing with residential areas. So, while judging Putin's decisions on the Crimea and Ukraine in general, I would not hold the Chechen war against him.

Two other critics belonged to younger generation, and their denunciations of Putin were also of a more or less personal matter. The middle-aged man was disappointed that there is not enough attention given in the present day to the victims of Stalin's repressions. If in the past it was a dangerous enterprise to research the topic and publish the results, nowadays, there is almost palpable disinterest to reveal all the details. It is not needed, many say. In fact, there are numerous efforts to whitewash the Stalin terror, to revise history in his favor, so to speak. Certain gatekeepers on the political scene are doing their best to filter information or divert attention to something more easily accepted and agreed upon. Thus, the millions of those who were killed during the years of Stalin terror have become political ghosts sacrificed on the altar of the Soviet ideology of the past, and, ironic as it is, they are still being neglected in the capitalist Russia of today. In this way, I would agree that the certain cynicism of the state power is always in place, alas.

The third critic was incensed because of the "gay propaganda" law prohibiting "the promotion of non-traditional sexual relationships" as far as the Russian children and youth are concerned. The young woman in her early 30s thinks that there are detrimental effects of this law. Many young people of "non-traditional" orientation have neither a place to go, to meet with the like-wise friends, nor the opportunity to share their frustrations and worries. In consequence, they feel as outcasts and, as she said, the suicide rate among the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) youth is high.

As reported by Wikipedia, "Although same-sex sexual activity between consenting adults in private was decriminalized in 1993, same-sex couples and households headed by same-sex couples are ineligible for the legal protections available to opposite-sex couples and there are currently no laws prohibiting discrimination regarding sexual orientation." Whereas I don't have much to offer in terms of evaluation of this law, I regret if the banning of the promotion of "non-traditional" sexual relations has resulted in the lack of services offered to LGBT population, in outlawing of almost any expression of support for gay rights, and in cases of harassment. However, as it is the case with Chechnya, I won't hold Putin personally accountable for this unfortunate state of affairs.

Thus said, it is also possible that the reaction to this law is overly exaggerated in the West. For example, as Jack Hanick writes in his article, "The U.S. Media are Failing in Their Reporting on Russia" (published by Russia Insider), "The punishment for breaking this law is a fine of less than $100. Double-parking a car in Moscow carries a heavier fine of $150. Nonetheless the reaction was overwhelming against Russia. The boycott of the Sochi Olympics was the West's way of discrediting Russia. Russia saw this boycott as an aggressive act by the West to interfere with its internal politics and to embarrass Russia. Sochi was for Russians a great source of national pride and had nothing to do with politics." Here we go, as some of us see it again and again, the distortion of reality is blatant and shameless.

Ordinary tribulations

At the end of June, I had a chance to visit Kazan, a capital of the Tatar Autonomous Republic. Also, Kazan is one of the Russian cities where the FIFA competitions ought to run in 2018, provided that Russia will retain its right on this prestigious championship. The first glance on the city shows that this capital is more rich and better tended than, for example, the neighbor-city Cheboksary, a capital of the Chuvash Republic. Incidentally, it is not such a surprise because the Republic of Tatarstan has more money, due to the simple fact that it has a plenty of oil and gas. "Money-money-money, money makes the world go around, of that we can be sure ...," as the song in the film Cabaret goes.

The architecture around the downtown is quite impressive and makes the walk on the streets of the city quite an aesthetic adventure. Kazan is definitely the city where the East meets the West. On the territory of Kremlin, the Islam mosque is located next to Christian churches, symbolizing the peaceful co-existence. Per Wikipedia, "originally, the mosque was built in the Kazan Kremlin in the 16th century. It was named after Qolsarif, who served there. Qolsaif died with his numerous students while defending Kazan from Russian forces in 1552. ... Since 1996 the mosque has been rebuilt in Kazan Kremlin, although its look is decisively modern. Its inauguration on July 24, 2005, marked the beginning of celebrations dedicated to the Millennium of Kazan. It can accommodate 6,000 worshipers. Several countries contributed to the fund that was set up to rebuild Qolsarif Mosque, namely Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates. Qolsarif is considered to be one of the most important symbols of Tatar aspirations."

Not too far from the Kremlin is a pedestrian Bauman Street, located in the heart of the city. Beside the architectural delight of the buildings fencing the street on both sides, there are such landmarks as the church and the bell tower of the Epiphany, Shalyapin monument, the building of the National Bank, a drama theater, a monument to the Cat of Kazan, the zero meridian, Catherine's coach, alley of national stars, and even a huge stature of Gulliver that dwarfs any of the bystanders. Also, there are many boutiques, which are, obviously, not for the average folks. Passing by one of those stores, my eyes caught an attractive summer dress displayed in the window-shop. I peeked in, if only out of curiosity. "How much this dress cost?" I asked. The answer has cooled off my expectations - it was available for 54,000 rubles, or approximately $1,000. Ok, I thought, if not this dress but maybe this necklace, made of multicolor opaque glass? Well, its price was 27,000 rubles, half of the dress. Just to give you an idea about its "accessibility" for ordinary people, it is important to know that the minimum pension in Russia is about $6,000-7,000 rubles - depending in what region people live. As to those who work, I was told that some of the hard-working people in Chelyabinsk, for example, earn only 7,000 rubles per month. Chelyabinsk is located beyond the Ural Mountains, in the Asian part of Russia. People who live in the European part of Russia are better off, as it seems, but just slightly so. One of the locals in Kazan, my friend and a former classmate in the university, earns only 17,000 rubles a month - and she is a lead nurse, thus, earning more than most of her co-workers. To buy such a dress, they have to work almost four months - meanwhile, not paying for anything else.

My cousin, who works in one of the banks in Ulyanovsk - a home of Vladimir Lenin - fares better than my friend-nurse. Her monthly wage is 40,000 rubles. So, the way I see it, the financial sector provides a much more lucrative career than vocation in medical field. The educators are somewhere in between. For example, an academic in Chuvash State University earns only 25,000 rubles. Whereas the Soviet times were marked by more or less even distribution of wealth - the doctors, bank employees, and educators earned enough money for a decent life - the capitalism in Russia has a predatory face.

Life in Russia under Putin has improved significantly - as recent IMF data indicates, "From 2000 to 2006, the Russian middle class grew from 8 million to 55 million. The number of families living below poverty line decreased from 30 percent in 2000 to 14 percent in 2008." But still, the state sector has meager remunerations compared with the private field. Those who work for private companies and the business owners themselves are especially much better off than the rest of the Russian population. The way I see it, the disparity in earnings and the style of life is a prominent feature of the modern Russian society. Definitely, there is a chasm between the rich, the poor, and those in between. Most of the average folks live ok, though, provided that they have families to support one another. Therefore, the family connection and the friends support are a must.
Ukraine and the Ukrainians: "the demolition of false pretenses"

As far as Ukraine is concerned, the concerted efforts of western governments and their minions in the mass media led to the fact that "what passes for truth" is very often false, or at least distorted to such a degree that it seems ludicrous to those in the know or to those immediate participants who didn't let themselves to be inebriated by excessive propaganda. As Zygmunt Bauman once said, "How quixotic to debunk the distortion in the representation of reality once no reality claims to be more real than its representation." Nevertheless, the debunking of the distortion is what I strive for.

My recent trip to St. Petersburg was marked by a fascinating conversation about Ukraine, Russia, and beyond. My train companions were three young, husky guys. As I discovered it later, all three of them were from Ukraine, from Kherson region but from different towns. Obviously, I was curious to talk to them about the situation in Ukraine, so I was the one who initiated the chat. First, I was curious if they are tired to be asked about Ukraine all the time. But they didn't mind, and, as it seemed to me, they were even glad to share their thoughts. Oleg, Valera, and Kolya - those were their names. Kolya was the most talkative one. He said that he got summons to the army, but he has escaped to Russia, almost immediately. The declaration of hostility against his brothers Slavs in the east of Ukraine didn't fare well with him. People from his hometown - even some of his friends - asked him, why he didn't go to war in the Donbass. But he was very clear about it. "Why should I?" he said. "For whose interests and for whom should I go there, for the greedy oligarchs? I don't want to kill!"

Oleg and Valera were in the same boat - they were drafted and they also didn't want to fight against their own people. Basically, all three of them have had become fugitives: they cannot live in their respective towns anymore, they had to leave behind whatever life they had before Maidan (the February 2014 coup) and start their careers anew. Luckily, they found a good job in Russia - they are part of a roof team (where three of them met one another and became friends), travel from one place to another, and build new roofs for their employer. They are well taken care of - their employer pays for their rent in whatever city they work and for transportation between the cities, when they travel to their next destination. For example, their train tickets were paid for, the taxi fare to their apartment in St. Petersburg will be paid when they arrive, and they don't need to worry about the rent. Three weeks in St. Petersburg - and they will earn about $1,000 (about 55,000 rubles each - which is much more than some university professors earn). Not such a bad arrangement.

All in all, they like their new life - after all, they have a chance to send enough money to their families in Ukraine to support their loved ones. Back home, people struggle to survive, they said. Utilities went up ten to fifteen times. All prices have skyrocketed. Not enough work too. Some of the coal mines are held in conservation, because there are not enough funds to develop them. Every three months, these young Ukrainians have to risk by going back home - the current Russian law allows them to work in Russia only for three months, but then they have to re-enter the country. "Aren't you afraid you will be snatched on and sent to the army?" I asked. "No," Valera said, "We could always pay a bribe - $250 can buy the path to freedom." Also, he thinks that those who went to the army were from the country side, not educated, and they were threatened into submission. He, for one, is well educated (a degree in jurisprudence) and he knows his rights. Because he served in the army already, he could be sent to the army only when Ukraine impose martial law. Because this hasn't happened yet, he is sure that no one can make him fight for the sake of the oligarchs.

"What do you think about the Right Sector (notorious neo-Nazi group, marked by extreme violence)?" I asked. Kolya was very quick to answer - "Bastards!" he blurted out. These monsters were in the Kherson region for a while and brought a regime of terror to his town. "They are all well paid," he said. "For money, they are ready for whatever." - "Did they kill in your city?" - "I don't know about killing, but they beat some people severely. And I know about it not from some people but I felt it on my own skin." Frankly, I didn't feel comfortable to probe for more information in this regard, but my understanding was that he was badly beaten himself. However, he said that lately the situation was taken under control - whoever is in charge of these neo-Nazis, it seemed they sent them to another place. And why? Because, if they were to continue with their tactics of terror and intimidation, then the whole south of Ukraine would rebel - and then the hell will break loose for sure.

"What is your opinion of Putin and Russia?" I was curious to hear. The answer was positive regarding either. "We like Putin," Kolya said. "I have heard that Putin has proposed to extend the three-month stay to one year," which would be very good for all Ukrainians who work in Russia. Then, they don't have to risk by going back home every three months. As to Russia, this young man thinks that these two peoples, Ukrainian and Russian, are the brother-nations. Why should one fight for the oligarchs' sake? As to the United States, these guys think that people in Ukraine are not hostile to Americans in general, but they know it well that the U.S. politicians are the ones who incited the flame of hatred and warfare and who are planning to grab the fertile black soils of Ukraine (Monsanto's planning to get hold of their fertile soils). Also, they know that the West doesn't care about the common folks in Ukraine - they follow the money, so to say, and they act according to their interests only. At the same time, Kolya said that they hate Yatsenyuk (currently, Ukrainian prime minister and also he is one of the Maidan instigators) and Co., the U.S. puppets who are selling Ukraine to the Western companies and make profits themselves while doing this ignominious deed. All in all, they fill their pockets with money at the expense of the people.

 I was also curious to hear their opinion about Bandera (the Nazi collaborator during WW II) and why he is so popular in Ukraine. Kolya said that it is very simple, "People don't think and they believe what they are told. Someone said that Bandera is a hero and, when it is repeated many times, people tend to believe that. No one knows the real truth anyway," he said. "We don't even know what to believe in anymore." The silence took place after this phrase. I was thinking that I cannot even offer any adequate answer to this lack of beliefs. The young generation of Ukraine is definitely confused and even tired of the lies that are being piled up by all the corrupt politicians they had all their lives, basically. Kolya broke the silence at last. "My granddad went through World War II, until Berlin, and he was wounded only once, not too seriously. However, he fought for three years after the war, he fought against the Bandera bands in Ukraine, and he was wounded three more times even if, officially, the war was over." He was proud of his grandpa, and I was proud of him keeping the memory of his hero-grandfather and also understanding what the latter was fighting against, as well as keeping his head together in the current times of turmoil and confusion and not willing to fight against his own people in the Donbass. Before Maidan, Kolya had his own business back home, but he had lost everything and started his new life by escaping the rabid nationalism and Russophobia of current Ukrainian politicians, earning money in Russia, and helping his family the best way he can.

This time, he asked me, "Do you know how the Maidan had started?" No, I had to admit. Kolya said that there was a group of students who came out with the banners for Euro-integration. But they were brutally dispersed. Who gave such an order? Who were those people who beat them up back then? Perhaps those were the Special Forces militants in disguise and perhaps this was a false flag operation, he said. Somehow, he knew that later on, when the crowds were taken to Maidan, they all were paid good money. Those who were in the front rows were paid handsomely, 2,000 hryvnias per day (back then, it was almost $800 or even more). Who paid this money? The West, Kolya thinks. He himself was offered 800 hryvnias to be on Maidan and participate in the protests. But why, he said. "I didn't want to sell my country!" But those who did? "They are as a flock of sheep. They don't care - they get paid, and they don't care what will happen next."

Honestly, all three of them greatly impressed me. This conversation was as a breeze of a fresh air, for it helped me to realize that there are some young people in Ukraine who don't get fooled by whatever amount of propaganda is being tossed at them; who don't let themselves to be bullied into killing their own people on the east of Ukraine; who see through their politicians nefarious goals and know better. After all, there is always a choice, and it is up to us which path we choose. As one of the songs goes, "there is a dawn in every darkness; there is a hope in every pain."

In addition to these guys, I have also had a chance to talk to a middle-aged woman from Ukraine about what it feels like to live over there. Originally, she is from Chernigov, the central part of Ukraine, but she has lived in Moscow for two decades at least. However, every summer she visits her homeland, to take care of her mom and spend time with the rest of the family. In our conversation, this woman told me that all the people she knows in Chernigov are completely zombified by the local TV. They watch the news diligently, they don't like the fact that she lives in Russia, they accuse Russia in starting the war in the Donbass region, and they don't even want to hear anything of the sort that it is the other way around - the substitution of reality is complete, and any intimations of the truth are being filtered.

Frankly, she prefers not to talk to them about Russia at all, and every evening, when everybody else sits in front of TV screens, she goes for a walk. Even the fact that people in Russia are better off, especially after the coup, is held against the neighboring country too. The life for ordinary Ukrainians these days is riddled with disappointment, the animosity toward anything Russian, hatred in general and toward Putin in particular (as he is at the root of all evil!), and survival, survival, survival. I asked how they manage to say afloat, so to speak. The woman told me that every available piece of land is taken to grow vegetables and berries. Basically, the ordinary Ukrainians just deal with whatever limitations they may have by doing what their ancestors did - growing their own food - and also growling at the neighbors who have nothing to do with their trouble at home. The whole state of mind of those who live there leaves the bad taste in her mouth, she said. And this is the native Ukrainian, mind you!

FINAL THOUGHTS

The overt distortion of reality is what we mostly see as far as Russia and Ukraine are concerned. Notorious lies spread by the West and their Ukrainian puppets are so prevalent that even Ukrainians themselves don't know what to think, who the heroes are, and whom to believe. Some have chosen to believe in whatever their politicians feed them with. Some others, as those three young guys from Ukraine I had a chance to interview, took the other path - instead of killing their own brethren, they moved to Russia where they built their new lives and, meanwhile, support their families at home. Some of us have chosen to follow the steps of Theodor Adorno, German philosopher, "who was allergic to the power-relations involved in propaganda" (Ben Watson). For him, to condone "using something as imbalanced as the mass media to put over a 'progressive message' is to agree with manipulation."

It is definitely not easy to go against the Juggernaut of the Western mass media lies, but this is what we have to do, as it seems. As John Milton said, in Paradise Lost, "Long is the way and hard that out of hell leads up to light." More often than not we have to take a stance on issues to which the rest of the world - at least its Western part - remains ignorant, indifferent, and unaware of. The chaos of life in Ukraine is often blamed on Russia, but the real culprits - in Ukraine and in the West - deflect the blame, dodge accountability, and get off scot-free. At least so far...

In regards to Russia - yes, as commonly agreed, there is not enough done to improve the lives of ordinary Russians, but still, the Russians are proud of the independent steps that their country is taking in the world these days, the steps that part with the Western dictate. The economic pressure of the Western sanctions is making their lives harder, but they stand firm. They are proud of Putin - the first president in the long run that people could be proud of because he has the Russian interests at his heart. All in all, according to what I heard and saw in Russia this summer, the bonds of unifying stand against the Western bullying are what draw people together, tighter and tighter, in their support of their own country and their truth. And, in the end, the effort to spread their truth, their stance, is the main purpose of this piece. As Spinoza once pointed out, "if I know the truth and you are ignorant" - as the majority in the West are, as far as Russia is concerned - "to make you change your thoughts and ways is my moral obligation; refraining from doing so would be cruel and selfish."
 

 #25
Court bans LGBT march in Odesa

ODESA. Aug 13 (Interfax) - The Odesa District Administrative Court has banned an equality march in Odesa which representatives of the LGBT community planned to conduct.

The court told Interfax the decision was made on a lawsuit filed by Odesa City Council.

Among the arguments presented by the city council was that there are negative tendencies in society about the upcoming event and there is also a high probability of the use of violence against march participants and of public order violations during the event.

Additionally, the court took into account the fact that football marches are scheduled to be held in the city on August 14 and August 16.

The city council is currently not officially commenting on the decision.

In the meantime, the organizers of the event previously said that they still intend to march on the streets of Odesa despite all opposition from the city council and the threats. "If we get an official court decision banning the event, we will file an appeal. If they ban the demonstration on specific streets, it's OK: Odesa is big. We will not give up. The festival will definitely take place!" Alina Rakhuba, one of the organizers of the festival Odesa Pride 2015, said.

The march participants planned to march on Pushkinska and Maryinska Streets and Prospekt Shevchenko. However, the route has not been approved by the police.

The organizers said over 200 people, including foreigners, have registered to participate in the festival.

The organizers are also seeking to reach agreements with radical forces and ultras that they will not attack them.

They said such agreements have already been reached with some pro-Ukrainian organizations, including Odesa Self-Defense, Avtomaidan, and Right Sector (extremist organization banned in Russia). However, some members of the organizations do not hide their wish to prevent the equality march from being held. Serhiy Sternenko, head of the Odesa division of Right Sector, said: "We will not batter gays, but the march is not going to take place either." He said he believes the event is a provocation.

Clergymen have flatly opposed the march.
 
 #26
The Daily Signal
http://dailysignal.com
August 11, 2015
Meet Ukraine's Women Warriors
By Nolan Peterson
Nolan Peterson, a former special operations pilot and a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is The Daily Signal's foreign correspondent based in Ukraine.

KYIV, Ukraine-It was called position 18.

The house, which was yellow and had its roof caved in from artillery hits, was only a hundred meters or so behind the front-line trenches in Pisky, Ukraine.

Shrapnel and bullet holes had shredded the exterior walls, leaving the yellow paint polka-dotted by the grey concrete underneath. The soldiers used the living room as a communal space to eat and sleep.

A generator powered a TV that was playing a women's boxing match. A couple of soldiers sat on an old leather couch with Kalashnikov assault rifles propped against it, watching silently.

Out in the adjacent garage, which faced away from the trenches and was left open, soldiers were coming and going, grabbing weapons, ammunition, and bottles of water as they shuttled back and forth to the trenches.

The sectional garage door hung from the ceiling, suspended on tracks. A conical divot punctured the front right section, where the door was warped and the metal tracks twisted. A few weeks ago, one of the soldiers explained, a mortar had come through the roof; the suspended garage door trapped the round and stopped it from exploding at ground level.

The unit stationed at position 18 was OUN, a volunteer battalion recently incorporated into the Ukrainian regular army's 93rd Brigade.

The 93rd Brigade was holding the line several kilometers outside the combined Russian-separatist stronghold of Donetsk. OUN stands for the "Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists," a partisan group dating back to before World War II.

With the sun settling outside on the late summer afternoon, about a dozen Ukrainian soldiers stood casually inside the garage, talking and joking. They seemed unconcerned by the sounds of artillery and gunfire in the distance.

The soldiers ranged widely in age, some as young as 19, some in their 40s and even 50s. They wore mismatched military uniforms purchased off the Internet, or which civilian volunteers had donated. Some soldiers were cleaning their rifles or tinkering with equipment, while others relaxed, enjoying the relative safety of the garage.

One of the soldiers was a 22-year-old named Julia. She had just returned from the trenches and stood with a Kalashnikov assault rifle slung across her chest as she talked and laughed with the others.

Julia's dark black hair was pulled back in a bun, but it was a little wild and disheveled. She wore a body armor vest, camouflage pants cut off below the knee, and high black combat boots. Her jewelry was simple-a silver necklace, silver gauge earrings through her earlobes, and a black stud in the upper ear. Two woven bracelets were on her right wrist and a ring on her left index finger.

Julia, whose nom de guerre is "Black," seemed relaxed. She rolled her eyes and cocked her head in a dismissive laugh when a fellow soldier made a joke about Playboy magazine.

Suddenly, there was the sound of separatist machine gunfire only a hundred meters or so away. Everyone in the garage moved swiftly toward the walls for protection-a few went straight for the door leading into the house.

Julia reacted calmly and purposefully. She barely budged, standing her ground while some of the other soldiers, and this correspondent, scrambled for cover. The smile left her face like a balloon letting out air, and she looked in the direction of the gunfire with a flat, focused expression.

"With regard to her reaction to the fighting, then I would say that she bore them normally and was even more careless than most of the other soldiers," said Andrey Mikheychenko, an OUN soldier who served with Julia in Pisky.

"As to her personal courage," Mikheychenko continued, "then, of course, she is very brave-braver than many male soldiers."

Unofficial Warriors

Since the beginning of the Ukraine war, women have played a key role for Ukraine's armed forces. They have served on the front lines as infantry, combat medics, and even snipers. And they help sustain the war effort from the home front as civilian volunteers by procuring vital supplies and equipment and delivering them to the front lines.

"I always felt ashamed that I wasn't in the war when some 18-year-old guys, even if they're not patriots, have to go," said Lera Burlakova, 29, who quit her job as a journalist last December to serve as a front-line soldier with the Karpatska Sich volunteer battalion in Pisky.

"If you want to look in the mirror and not turn away, you have to go," she added. "But I don't think all people have to do it. Some people are really scared, and that's the way they are. And maybe they shouldn't be there, in the war, and die without reason."

Women are still officially barred from front-line service in Ukraine's regular army, and most of the women who have served in combat have done so as members of civilian volunteer battalions.

So, as Ukraine continues to rein in the volunteer battalions by integrating them into the regular army or National Guard, new questions are emerging about the future role of female soldiers who have proven themselves in combat and are consequently reluctant to be relegated to support roles behind the lines.

"We have a war, and women are serving," Burlakova said. "And if a woman wants to be in combat, if she passes the tests, doesn't break, and has already taken part in the war ... then yeah, of course she should be allowed-she shouldn't have to be a cook."

A Grassroots War

As Ukraine's civilian volunteer battalions merged into the Ukrainian National Guard and regular army this year, women serving in combat roles had to officially register for support positions such as cooks or headquarters staff.

Those who wanted to remain in combat roles skirted the rules by registering for non-combat jobs, and then remained on the front lines with their old units, which, despite moving under government control, remained largely intact.

The resulting problem is that there is no official documentation of a female soldier seeing combat, excluding her from awards and benefits.

Due to her unofficial status, for example, Burlakova never received a salary for the five months she spent as a soldier in Pisky. And she is not eligible to receive awards and benefits awarded to male combat veterans, because, as a woman, it was not technically permitted for her to be on the front line.

"You never get official status as someone who was in the war," Burlakova said. "I'm not sure what the status of combat veteran gives. But I see the guys are so proud of it, and yeah, it would be nice to have it be official."

According to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, 67,697 Ukrainian soldiers have been granted "ATO participant status," indicating combat zone service. This designation entitles certain Social Security benefits as well as free public transportation, first-in-line status for housing and land lots, zero-percent loans for private construction, and a 75-percent discount on public utility service bills.

Government data on the number of women granted ATO participant status was not immediately available, although according to Ukrainian media reports, about 25 percent of Ukraine's 250,000 military personnel are women.

In 2014, about 100 women were mobilized for military service as part of an emergency program, and the Ministry of Defense announced plans this year to potentially open up the national draft to include women between 20 and 50 years old.

On Equal Footing

Ukraine's female soldiers serve alongside their male counterparts, enduring the same risks and battlefield living conditions. And while some of the male soldiers demonstrate a protective disposition toward the female soldiers, the women are resistant to special treatment and work to prove themselves as equals.

"Julia faced all the same problems, as everyday problems, physical and mental, as the male fighters," Mikheychenko said.

"At the same time, the commanders tried in every way to protect her," he added. "For example, Julia rarely came out on duty in a combat patrol, but she always asked that we put her in, in order to be on an equal footing with everyone else. At the same time, sometimes she was allowed to participate in reconnaissance raids on neutral territory, or even behind enemy lines."

Burlakova decided to become a soldier after visiting front-line positions while working as a journalist. She attended a military training camp but was initially dissuaded from combat service, thinking it would be too difficult.

But after visiting Pisky on a five-day journalism assignment and experiencing combat firsthand, Burlakova decided that she was capable of being a soldier.

"I was scared for the first two or three hours, but after that I was OK," she said. "I saw other women there, and I saw young soldiers learning to shoot out there on the front lines. I realized that I could do it."

Burlakova called her editor and quit her job. And after a short trip back to Kyiv to arrange her affairs, she returned for five months of combat.

"My dad said I'm an idiot, in a nice way," she said. "My mom was crying, probably praying."

Burlakova's grandfather, who was a pilot in the Soviet air force and currently lives in Moscow, was at first against the idea but ultimately supported his granddaughter's decision.

"'You're a girl and you shouldn't do it,' he told me. 'But if you have to, I understand,'" Burlakova said, recalling her grandfather's reaction.

Burlakova said she ultimately earned the trust and respect of male comrades by performing well under fire.

"Maybe they [the men] would give you the last piece of candy," she said. "But they give the women opportunities to prove themselves. It depends on how you act and if you don't give anyone reasons to treat you differently."

In some ways, Burlakova explained, it was easier to be a woman on the front lines because there was less of a stigma for a woman to admit fear. "Some men never show their fear," she said. "I felt allowed to show that I was scared. But you have to be careful so people don't treat you differently."

And the fear was real, Burlakova admitted. Yet it was also mixed with exhilaration and a feeling of purpose, sensations that are hard to match in civilian life.

"On the one hand you feel like you really don't want to die today," Burlakova said. "And the other hand it's fun, not really exciting ... but you realize how much you want to live."

Tradition

Ukraine has a historical tradition of women in combat. Women played an active role in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the red and black flag of which is a ubiquitous symbol of wartime patriotism in modern Ukraine), which fought a guerrilla war against both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Red Army during World War II.

Ukrainian women also served in the Red Army during World War II, including Russian-Ukrainian sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who was credited with killing 309 German soldiers.

A contemporary example of a Ukrainian woman in combat is Nadiya Savchenko, a 33-year-old Ukrainian combat helicopter navigator who volunteered to serve with the Aidar battalion as a soldier in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Combined Russian-separatist forces captured Savchenko on June 18, 2014. She was accused of being a spotter during a mortar attack, which Russian authorities claim killed two Russian journalists. She is now being held in Russia after a year in custody in Donetsk and faces up to 25 years in prison.

On March 2, 2015, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko awarded Savchenko the title "Hero of Ukraine"-the nation's highest military honor.

"Nadiya Savchenko is a symbol of the struggle for Ukraine," Poroshenko said in a July 2 statement. "While in captivity she has demonstrated the true, strong, martial Ukrainian spirit of a serviceman who doesn't betray the motherland."

Total War

While the Ukraine war affects only a small portion of the country geographically, Ukrainian society has mobilized across all spectrums to sustain the war effort.

After a year and a half, the war is still a grassroots effort, sustained by civilian volunteers who, often with no military background or training, raise money to buy supplies for Ukrainian soldiers and then deliver those supplies to the front lines.

The volunteer movement is essential to Ukraine's war effort, and many combat units are still dependent on civilian volunteers for basic necessities-including uniforms, food, water, first aid kits, body armor, and medical supplies.

Ukrainian women play a key role in the volunteer movement.

"I just can't step aside and look away," said Julia Minaeva, a 26-year-old university instructor in Kyiv. Minaeva collects supplies, including letters from children, for deployed troops, and she visits the wounded in hospitals, speaking to them about "anything but the war" to raise their spirits.

"Every day when I go to sleep, I had a peaceful day because of the soldiers," Minaeva said. "They're sleeping in trenches and in block posts, and they're giving us the opportunity to live peacefully. It's our duty to help them, and I feel like I need to do something for our country."

Minaeva says wounded soldiers are often in need of conversation with people outside their families-and to not talk about the war.

"They're still men," she said. "They're still clever and handsome, even if they don't have an arm, or a leg. They're really great people. They never complain. They just want to get back on their feet and get back out there to protect us."

That's War

Julia Dimitrova, 28, is a civilian volunteer in Dnipropetrovsk. The mother of two sons (4 and 2 years old) lived in Donetsk for 14 years and still has many friends there, including some who have taken up arms with the combined Russian-separatist forces.

"It's very difficult that I live here and realize that I help the soldiers that kill my friends," she said. "But that's life. That's war."

In July 2014, Dimitrova and four other women started a grassroots supply drive to gather equipment for Ukrainian soldiers. They raise money on Facebook to buy supplies like boots and first aid kits, and, about once a week, Dimitrova travels to the front lines to deliver what she has collected.

"It's not really good out there; our guys need a lot of support," she said. "Our country wasn't ready for a war. Not a year ago, not now."

Dimitrova said she rarely wears body armor when she travels to the front, even though she faces the same risks of artillery and sniper fire as the soldiers to whom she is delivering supplies. She also said there are separatist diversion groups, which try to intercept civilian supply runs-sometimes kidnapping or murdering the volunteers.

"My family thinks I'm crazy," Dimitrova said. "A year ago, my husband wanted a divorce, but he got used to it."

Dimitrova works in a rented office in downtown Dnipropetrovsk. The walls are lined with various supplies and memorabilia from the war zone. Like many civilian volunteers, Dimitrova had no prior military experience before deciding to support the war effort. She used to do a little modeling and was a housewife before the war started. But, echoing a common refrain among Ukraine's volunteers, she said she couldn't sit idly by while others fought.

"I saw that I could do this, and I could do it well," Dimitrova said. "And now the volunteers are like a second family for me. I know that if we met in normal life, we'd never get together. But this experience has bonded us."

The war also takes a psychological toll on the civilian volunteers, who are firsthand witnesses to the suffering of the soldiers.

"It's something you never get used to," Minaeva said, fighting back tears as she spoke about a soldier she knew who was killed. "It's a war and this is what we have to do. I have no right to complain."

"I always cry when there's a funeral," Dimitrova said. "War never has a happy end."

An Unfinished Fight

Julia entered service on the front lines in Pisky in April 2015, and was pulled off the lines after being wounded in July. She is currently an instructor at OUN's training camp outside Kyiv.

Mikheychenko praised Julia's courage under fire and her skills as a soldier, which he witnessed firsthand, but he also retains some misgivings about women serving in combat.

"In general, I personally think that in war, women should not be in combat," Mikheychenko said. "It is hard to see how they are injured or killed."

"On the other hand," he added, "they mobilize men by their brave behavior and give them courage. These men are too embarrassed to show cowardice because some women do not stop."

Burlakova, who is currently back at work as a journalist, said she plans to return to the front lines in September.

"The main problem is you want to go back," Burlakova said, explaining what it was like to return to Kyiv after her time in combat. "You make better friends in the war than in real life. ... As a soldier it's easier sometimes. You just stand there with weapons and fight; it's simple. In some way, being a soldier is an escape. Kyiv is more difficult and depressing."

Minaeva expects that the work of caring for soldiers and their families will last long after the war has ended. "When the war ends, I will give myself two days to sleep, and then there are a lot of things to do to help these families, and to help the soldiers," she said.

"Most of all," Minaeva added, "I want every soldier to get back with victory, alive and healthy."
 
 #27
Liberation (Paris)
August 12, 2015
Ukrainian president says Putin wants "the whole of Europe"
Interview with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko by Sebastien Gobert in Kyiv 1 August: "Petro Poroshenko: 'We Are Fighting for the Security of the Entire European Continent'"

The escalating fighting in the East, where pro-Russian separatist rebels have attempted several offensives using tanks, prompted Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to request, Monday [10 August], urgent consultations with Paris, Berlin, and Moscow, the capitals that sponsored the Minsk agreements in February. The most violent fighting occurred this weekend around the city of Starohnativka, halfway between the separatist stronghold of Donetsk and the port of Maryupol, the last major city in the area still under Kyiv's control. The Ukrainian authorities have listed 127 attacks, the highest figure since the introduction of the ceasefire approved in Minsk.

In an interview granted 1 August to Liberation, and to Austrian daily Kurier and Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat, the president, who came to power following the revolution and who was then elected in May 2014, confirmed the pressing need for the implementation of reforms and sanctions against the "criminals" disrupting international peace.

[Gobert] The Ukrainians are still waiting for the reforms for which they fought.

[Poroshenko] In the context of war and rising defense expenditure, there are no other instances in which a government or president has conducted reforms successfully. But during the war we have nevertheless reduced budget deficits, are implementing the country's decentralization, establishing the rule of law, carrying out a very difficult reform of the judicial system, and combating bureaucracy and oligarchy. These reforms are very painful. And they are unpopular.

[Gobert] Ukraine is less wealthy now than it was in 1990, when it separated from the USSR. Many Ukrainians feel nostalgic about the Soviet era. What kind of future can you offer them?

[Poroshenko] I believe that few people feel really nostalgic about the USSR. The outcome of the recent elections, both presidential and general, showed this very clearly. But you are right: our national wealth has diminished, and there is a very simple explanation for that: 25 percent of industrial output is now in occupied territory. Furthermore, 10 percent of our industrial resources have been destroyed by the war or dismantled and transported to Russia. At the same time, on top of the aggression in the east of our country and the annexation of Crimea (in March 2014 -- Liberation editor's note,) the Russians are closing their markets to us. They have launched a very major trade war on Ukraine, violating WTO rules. We are actively seeking alternative markets. This is perhaps the worst of the ordeals that the aggressor is inflicting on us.

[Gobert] The ongoing hostilities in Donbas, in the east, are a real obstacle to economic development and reforms. Why not simply yield to the region to those that want it?

[Poroshenko] It is Ukrainian territory! There are 4 million Ukrainians living there. They are suffering pressure from the Russian troops occupying the country. We Ukrainians have no problem with finding compromises among ourselves. It is Russian propaganda that is trying to portray this as an internal conflict among Ukrainians. No! It is an outright attack on my country. As we speak, there are 9,000 Russian troops, equipped with the most modern Russian weapons, occupying my territory. And there are over 60,000 Russian troops occupying Crimea! This is a brutal violation of international law, and it would be unthinkable to relinquish the smallest portion of my territory.

[Gobert] How far do you think Vladimir Putin [Russian president] wants to go?

[Poroshenko] Putin wants to go as far as he will be allowed. He wants the whole of Europe. With the annexation of Crimea and the attack on eastern Ukraine, Putin has smashed the international security system. Is an attack on Finland possible? Yes. And Finland is well aware of it. Is an attack on the Baltic states possible? Of course. Is an attack within the Black Sea area possible? Yes. And this is why, when we talk about Ukrainians fighting in the east of my country, we are not talking only about the struggle for Ukraine's integrity and independence: we are fighting for the democracy, for the freedom, and for the security of the entire European continent.

[Gobert] What do you expect now from your Western partners?

[Poroshenko] We need, first and foremost, European solidarity with Ukraine. We already have that. Second, we need trans-Atlantic unity, because what is happening is a brutal violation of international law, a global threat to world security. Third, we need financial support in order to carry out the reforms. The Ukrainians' main problem is that they abhor the idea of living in this kind of reconstituted Soviet empire; they regard themselves as a European nation. And they want at all costs to carry out these reforms properly. Fourth, there needs to be a mechanism capable of motivating the aggressor to fulfil its obligations. That means sanctions! They are not intended to punish anyone. These are pressures to make the aggressor withdraw its troops and to fulfil its other commitments. And, fifth, there needs to be effective and efficient coordination in implementing the Minsk peace plan.

[Gobert] Are Russia's involvement and the OSCE observation mission not enough to ensure the implementation of the peace plan?

[Poroshenko] Neither Russia nor the terrorists that it supports are implementing anything with regard to what would permit a real de-escalation, such as real observance of the ceasefire and troop withdrawal. Because of that, we must have a peacekeeping force. The OSCE mission is of vital importance to us, but it is not sufficient. This 1 August marks the 40th anniversary of the Helsinki agreements that resulted in the establishment of the OSCE, an organization whose mission is, as its name indicates, to ensure the continent's security and stability. On this very day, in Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry published a communique on the OSCE's 40th anniversary, stating that the annexation of Crimea was... legal.

Like most countries throughout the world, we voted at the UN Security Council to request the establishment of an international court on the crash of the MH17 (the airliner that took off from Amsterdam and that crashed 17 July 2014 in eastern Ukraine, with 298 people on board -- Liberation editor's note.) Russia, completely isolated, used its veto right to prevent that resolution (in a vote that took place 29 July -- Liberation editor's note.) That veto constitutes admission of Russia's responsibility in that terrorist attack.

[Gobert] The new decentralization law grants greater powers to territorial communities, particularly in the separatist territories. Despite that, you still describe pro-Russian representative as "terrorists." Can you engage in dialogue and work with them?

[Poroshenko] If those people do not kill Ukrainians, then they will enjoy an amnesty once local elections have been held. I call them not "terrorists" but "criminals." If they have killed people, they must be held responsible. Otherwise, it is very simple: we will hold elections and there will be an amnesty law.

[Gobert] You talk a great deal about the Russian aggression, but within Ukraine the battalions of volunteers have become an outright counter-authority in opposition to the state authority. The ultranationalist Praviy Sektor group in particular was at the heart of outright gang warfare in the west of the country at the beginning of July. How can these groups be prevented from becoming a state within a state?

[Poroshenko] During the first phase of the Russian aggression, many volunteers defended the country. We are very grateful for what they did and for their devotion. Nevertheless, during the course of this year we have built one of the best and most powerful armies in Europe. Most of the volunteers have been brought into the Army, the National Guard, and they have strengthened our security and our defense.

Unfortunately, a few criminals use those patriotic groups' name to perpetrate their crimes. But they are merely criminals! They have no political basis. And the state must treat them as such. I am disgusted by this spiteful Russian propaganda that exaggerates these criminals' strength and importance. We have the situation under control and we will not allow anybody to destabilize our country.

[Gbert] Right Sector leader Dmytro Yaroch has taken up the defense of these people, whom you call criminals. Is he a criminal as well?

[Poroshenko] No. We have radically opposed positions. There may be a political party, which may be radical. Fortunately, or unfortunately, this is part of democracy. But if these political parties presume to have armed units, then that is illegal. And such people are treated as illegal armed groups.

 
 
#28
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
August 13, 2015
Western Media Completely Misrepresents Ukraine Flare-Up - Civilians Brutalized Again
The latest in a ugly parade of disgraceful journalism from the western media
By The Saker

Here is a report from the Saker on what is going on.  The Western news agencies and major media were full of reports this morning with headlines like "Ukraine Says Rebels Attack", etc, etc.  Why?  Because they have no one on the ground, and so are reduced to either printing what the side they are rooting for is saying, or admitting they have no idea what is going on.  

It is beyond pathetic, and a lot of innocent people are dying on both sides, something that wouldn't be happening if the media would just do its job.

In fact, it looks like what the rebels are saying is closer to the truth.  Kiev attacked defenseless civilians for the 100th time, (for their own obscure political reasons), and in reply, the rebels hammered them again.  There are reports that Ukrainian hospitals are filling up with wounded, suggesting serious casualties on the Ukrainian side.

We read a lot of the analysis, and the Saker is, in our opinion, the best at sorting through the claims and counter-claims and coming up with something which probably approximates the truth.

His report appeared yesterday on his website:

The Russia media is reported on Wednesday that Donetsk was hit by a record 800 artillery shells.  The Telmanovo suburb was hit particularly hard, but the shelling was also very violent in the airport region.  Furthermore,  DNR intelligence services have reported a steady movement of Ukronazi forces towards the line of contact.  These forces include tanks and artillery systems, even multiple rocket launchers.  Yesterday, a group of 8 tanks backed by armoured personnel carriers attempted to attack Novorussian positions, but there were beat back.  Two Ukronazi tanks were destroyed.  Does that mean that a junta attack is imminent?

Maybe.

The logical conclusion would be that yes, indeed, an attack is imminent and that the current Ukronazi attacked are probing attack, reconnaissance by fire, to test the Novorussian defenses.  It makes no sense at all the bring in more and more forces and then keep the in the field doing nothing.  But then, the junta has done so many illogical and plain stupid things during this war that I would not put it past them to just move forces and order shelling to, say, "impress" the British Defense Secretary.  This is a time tested Ukronazi policy: every time some high ranking western official shows up on Kiev, they beg for money and show their "magnificent" resolve to "defend Europe against the Russian hordes".  Shelling civilians is usually how this resolve is demonstrated by the Ukronazis.

Still, even though it may sound like we are crying wolf, we should keep on reporting that the junta forces are poised for an attack regardless of whether this attack actually materializes or not, if only because that is yet another direct violation of even the very first provisions of M2A which, as I have been saying for weeks now, is dead, dead, dead, dead and dead.  The only reason why so many pretend that it is not is because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.  Still, M2A was stillborn and never had a chance.  As long as a Nazi junta is in power in Kiev there is no hope for peace.  None.

The Saker

UPDATE: Predictably, the West blames Novorussia.  See here. [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33880342]  Apparently, the Novorussians are "shelling themselves" again...
 
 #29
Sputnik
August 13, 2015
OSCE Reports Both Sides in East Ukraine Still Using Heavy Weapons

KIEV (Sputnik) - The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's (OSCE) monitors in eastern Ukraine have reported the use of heavy weapons by both sides of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, OSCE Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug said Thursday.

"OSCE monitors have witnessed yet more violence resulting in the injury and death of civilians and combatants, as well as the destruction of housing and other infrastructure," Hug told reporters.

"Moreover, there is reported use by all sides of heavy weapons, including 122mm and 152mm caliber artillery," he added.

According to Hug, the OSCE has also recorded less military hardware at storage facilities of both Kiev-led forces and eastern Ukrainian militia than claimed.
 
 #30
Donetsk People's Republic says Horlivka came under fire

MOSCOW. Aug 13 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian Armed Forces have fired heavy weapons against the town of Horlivka, the Donetsk news agency reported on Thursday, citing the information and analytical department of the town's administration.

"The shelling began at 10:30 p.m. Some heavy [weapons] were fired. Shells dropped near the village of Oksenivka," it said.

According to the local authorities, the strikes were conducted from the direction of Dzerzhynsk and Mayorsk.

One civilian has been killed and another three have been injured as a result of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' shelling of Donetsk in the past 24 hours, the press service of the city administration said.

"In the evening of August 12 and in the night of August 13, the Armed Forces of Ukraine launched heavy strikes against the village of Oktyabrsky in the Kuibyshevsky district, the village of Staromykhailivka in the Kirovsky district and Gorky village in the Kyivsky district," the press service said.

The shelling destroyed more than ten buildings in Donetsk, one house in the village of Staromykhailivka and one house in the Kyivsky district, it said.

The Ukrainian police, for their part, have reported that two civilians were injured when militia forces opened fire on Dzerzhynsk.

The militia shelled Dzerzhynsk and its outskirts at around midnight, injuring a 79-year-old man and a 33-year-old woman, the Donetsk region's police said.

For its part, the press center of the Ukrainian army operation in Donbas reported on its Facebook page on Thursday morning that on Wednesday militia forces had violated the ceasefire on 152 occasions, including 102 times in the Donetsk region. The militia attacked the Ukrainian army's positions near Peski seven times and fired artillery weapons against Avdiyivka and the village of Opytne.

According to the press center, militia forces used artillery weapons against Ukrainian military checkpoints in the villages of Lebedynske, Starohnativka, Talakovla and Pavlopil near the city of Mariupol starting from 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday.

The press center also accused the militia of opening fire on the Ukrainian army's positions near the village of Kirove near the town of Artemivsk at around midnight.
 
 #31
Kiev forces use ammunition produced abroad - LPR emergencies ministry

MOSCOW, August 13. /TASS/. Ukrainian forces shell the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) using ammunition produced abroad, head of LPR emergencies ministry's department of engineering and demining Alexander Brovko said on Thursday.

"There is a lot of foreign ammunition at the contact line. Ukrainian forces use mortars, anti-personnel and anti-tank mines manufactured in Italy, Poland. There are also units whose origin have not yet been established," LuhanskInformCenter quoted Brovko as saying.

According to LPR emergencies ministry, sappers find many Polish mines of 120mm caliber along the contact line near the Schastye town and in settlements of the Slavyanoserbsky district. Ukrainian forces also use anti-personnel mines near the settlement of Stanitsa Luhanskaya, but LPR miners have not yet established the origin and modification of these mines, Brovko explained.

"We don't have literature on ammunition. We find on the Internet what we can and try to study what we cannot find online," he said.

Almost 100 Ukrainian armored vehicles spotted on contact line

The defense ministry spokesman of the self-proclaimed Donetsk republic said on Wednesday that more than 90 tanks, artillery and armored vehicles of Ukraine's Armed Forces have been moved towards the contact line in Donbas.

The movement of troops and equipment to the areas close to the frontline comes with the use of fraudulent maneuvers, Eduard Basurin told reporters citing intelligence data.

The vehicles were found in the villages of Kodema, Prohorovka, Nevelsky and Andreyevka.

This comes in violation of the February 12 Minsk agreements which envisage the pullout of all heavy weapons by both sides to equal distance with the aim of creating a security zone on at least 50 kilometers apart for artillery systems of 100 mm caliber or more.

Ukrainian military try to break the militias' defense

The Ukrainian military tried to break the militias' defense near the village of Starognatovka on the Mariupol direction early on August 10.

"After two hours of massive artillery preparation from large-caliber guns, Grad multiple rocket launchers, tanks and mortars near the Petrovskoye, Novaya Laspa and the Belaya Kamenka populated localities, the enemy used six armoured vehicles and six tanks to launch an offensive in the direction of Starognatovka and Belaya Kamenka," Eduard Basurin, the spokesperson for the Defense Ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, told a briefing held at the Donetsk news agency.

He added that foreign drones and powerful field radio-electronic warfare complexes had been noticed in the vicinity of those populated localities since 3 o'clock in the morning on August 10.

A battle broke out between the Ukrainian troops and the militias. The Ukrainian military, Basurin said, were stopped and thrown back to the start line from where they continued shelling Petrovskoye and Belaya Kamenka.

The leadership of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) has asked the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to investigate Ukraine's offensive near Starognatovka.

"Last night, the Ukrainian military committed another gross violation of the Minsk agreements. They knew that we had lived up to our commitment to withdraw all heavy weapons, including with a caliber under 100mm (from the disengagement line), and decided to take advantage of the situation to move deep into the DPR's territory," Basurin said.

"We are calling on the OSCE SMM and the Joint Control and Coordination Centre to carry out immediate and detailed investigation into the attack. We also want the world community to be informed about the incident," he added.

Basurin also called on Germany, France and Russia that guarantee the implementation of the Minsk agreements to influence the Kiev leadership and make it end its provocations and stop the shelling of the self-proclaimed Donetsk republic.
 
 #32
The National Interest
August 13, 2015
Russia and Ukraine: Back on the Brink of War?
Just as there are tremors registered before a major earthquake occurs, there are clear warning signs that things could heat up very quickly, very soon.
By Nikolas K. Gvosdev
Nikolas Gvosdev is a contributing editor at The National Interest and co-author of Russian Foreign Policy: Vectors, Sectors and Interests (CQ Press, 2013). The views expressed here are his own.

While the ceasefire in Ukraine has been gradually eroding over the last several weeks, are we on the verge of seeing full-scale hostilities resume? While the position of the major European powers remains preservation of the Minsk peace process at all costs, even to the extent of studiously ignoring the recent flare-ups that make a mockery of the very idea of a cease-fire, both sides in the conflict-Russia and the separatists on one side, and the Ukrainian government on the other-have considerable incentives to stoke up the conflict at this particular point in time in the hopes of delivering a knockout blow that could change the current facts on the ground.

For Ukraine, every day that the Moscow-backed entities in Donetsk and Lugansk continue to exist diminishes the possibility of reunifying Ukraine under Kyiv's terms. As we have seen in other conflicts in the greater Eurasian space, temporary cease-fire lines have a way of becoming more permanent lines of control. In addition, the government in Kyiv is coming under greater pressure to do more in terms of improving the standard of living of the Ukrainian people, as well as moving more aggressively and rapidly on a series of reforms desired by Ukraine's Western partners. The presidential administration of Petro Poroshenko and the cabinet of Arseniy Yatsenyuk are watching their approval ratings tank, while both the official armed forces and the militia units that have been holding the line in the east are expressing growing frustration with how the government is conducting military operations. At the same time, even as the cease-fire crumbles, Ukraine has not been able to break through continued opposition in many Western countries to providing it with weaponry.

For its part, Russia's timetable is now under significant pressure. The slowdown of China's economy and the expected emergence of large amounts of Iranian oil into global markets presages another major drop in oil prices. Moscow's ability to sustain the separatist entities and continue to weather sanctions under such conditions will not improve with time. Yet the status quo is also unfavorable from Russia's perspective, as the separatist entities have not acquired a more permanent, definitive status and remain vulnerable to sudden extinction.

Under the quieter conditions of even an ineffective cease-fire, the Ukrainian government's problems with implementing a reform agenda could receive greater attention. Should open, large-scale fighting resume in the east, national-security considerations will once again take center stage-with the possibility that Western donors and creditors can be persuaded to give Kyiv more time and greater leeway. There is also the possibility that the complete collapse of the Minsk process will help to rally popular support in Ukraine behind the government.

At the same time, if Moscow's long-term goal is to get recognition of the staying power and essential permanence of the separatist entities-as has essentially occurred for South Ossetia and Abkhazia vis-�-vis Georgia-then Ukraine must be disabused of any hope that it can press for reunification of the country on its terms. This means crushing the Ukrainian forces in a decisive action so that even the prospect of greater Western support for training and equipping Ukraine's military would no longer hold open the prospect for a Croatian-style Operation Storm at some point in the near future. Luring the Ukrainians into a major pitched battle while Russian-backed and -supplied forces still hold the advantage might also persuade Kyiv that it has no choice but to accept the reality of a permanent frozen conflict.

There is a second timetable at work. Given the six-month cycle for reapproval of European sanctions, Moscow must act within a narrow window. If it has any hope of seeing a partial reduction in the sanctions regime, any alteration in the military balance must occur now and be over and done so that by November, when the talks among the twenty-eight states of the European Union are underway, things are once again quiet on the eastern front and the lines have been stabilized. Any major flare-up that lasts for, say, ten days in August will by mid-November be "ancient history," especially if there is a third iteration of the Minsk accords in play.

The Iran deal is taking up most of the energy and attention of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment. But Washington-along with America's European allies-must be prepared for the likelihood that there could be a full-scale resumption of hostilities. If fighting resumes, there is no excuse for the West to be taken by surprise. Just as there are tremors registered before a major earthquake occurs, the increased frequency of clashes and the deployment of equipment and personnel are clear warning signs that things could heat up very quickly very soon.
 
 #33
Wall Street Journal
August 13, 2015
Ukraine Deserves Debt Relief
The war-torn country is working hard on the reforms that will get the economy back on its feet.
By GEORGE SOROS
Mr. Soros is chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC and the Open Society Foundations.

Ukraine is struggling to negotiate a deal with its creditors, which the International Monetary Fund demands as a condition for further financial support. Russian aggression has taken a terrible toll on the economy of the new Ukraine, making its $19 billion in foreign debt unsustainable. Talks to renegotiate the country's debt are currently under way in San Francisco.

Unfortunately, Ukraine doesn't have recourse to bankruptcy. There is no chapter 11 for sovereign borrowers to establish a cease fire between lenders and borrowers, decide which debts should be reorganized, and mediate negotiations between the two sides. Ukraine and its private lenders are left to negotiate in a setting in which "might makes right."

In such a setting, Ukraine's only negotiating leverage is to threaten to default unless its gets debt relief. I am sure that, in return, bondholders are warning Ukraine that if it defaults, no one will invest in the country for a very long time.

Sovereign defaults are costly. But they have lasting effects mainly when lenders drag out the battle, as they did in Latin America in the 1980s or in Greece today. When a country and its lenders can reach a speedy deal, even one that imposes losses on lenders, the country is usually back in the market in a year or two. Moreover, it is not the default that briefly keeps the country out of the markets but the economic problems that caused the default in the first place.

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady understood this when he unveiled the Brady Plan in 1989, which urged banks to accept debt relief, at least for those Latin American countries pursuing sensible reforms. Mr. Brady understood then that savvy investors would look to the future rather than to the past when considering whether to lend to a country that had just defaulted.

Today, Mr. Brady is chairman of Ukraine's largest bondholder, Franklin Templeton, which is pressing hard against debt relief. It is difficult to reconcile his position in 1989 with Franklin Templeton's position today.

The Ukrainian government is fighting heroically for the kinds of structural reforms that the Brady Plan called for in 1989: rooting out corruption, reforming the judicial system, weaning the country from Russian gas, integrating the economy into the European Union, boosting agriculture, cleaning up the banking system, and more. If debt relief can be a fillip to these reforms, then investors ought to demand it (as the IMF is doing) and ignore the argument that writing off debt spells doom. If going into default is the only way to get debt relief, then investors will applaud, not condemn, Ukraine for doing it.

Recent efforts by policy makers and academics to revive the idea of a sovereign-debt restructuring mechanism, along the lines of chapter 11, are liable to founder, just as they have in the past. This is unfortunate for countries like Ukraine, because the argument that default ruins a country's reputation runs against the logic behind the U.S. bankruptcy code, which allows companies to "reorganize" their debts-often by imposing haircuts on their creditors-so that they can revive their fortunes. Chapter 11 assumes that forcing a heavily indebted company to pay its debts in full is bad for business, and that making debt relief easier can be good for business.

For Ukraine's bondholders, there is no shame in admitting that they oppose debt relief, whether through haircuts or in any other way. They loathe losing money on their investments as much as I do. Why not admit this rather than try to convince Ukraine that debt relief is bad for the country? This would at least be sincere and have the advantage of being true. To say that debt relief and even default is not in Ukraine's best interest is disingenuous and false.
 
 #34
Sputnik
August 13, 2015
Ukrainians May Freeze in Flats in Winter as Gov't Mulls Reducing Temp Norms

Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers has proposed lowering the minimum allowable temperature in dwellings with central heating to 16 degrees Celsius this winter, with the Ministry of Regional Development and the Ministry of Health now tasked with reviewing existing norms, Ukrainian media have reported.

Ukrainian economist Alexander Ohrimenko voiced his discontent over the measure, telling news website Vesti that lowering the temperatures from the present norm of 18 degrees Celsius (a common engineering standard for apartment dwellings in many post-Soviet countries) would allow the government to save a great deal of money, but at a tremendous social cost.
"Two degrees is a lot. Apartments will be very cold, and the government will be able to save a lot, and everything will be legal. People will be paying for the cold according to new, higher tariffs."

The expert added that the country's heating system was not designed for such an artificial lowering of temperatures, which could result in an increase in the number of accidents in the country's heating network this winter.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk earlier admitted that Ukraine's energy sector is facing a crisis, and that the Ministry of Energy and state-owned companies are not adequately prepared to provide the population with heating this winter. The Ministry of Energy has established a crisis management center to prepare for the heating season. Ukraine's energy crisis has been exacerbated by Kiev's loss of the majority of its profitable coal mines in Donbass. The mines which remain under Ukraine's control extract coal which is unsuitable for use by power plants.

Earlier this month, it was reported that Ukrainian authorities were prepared to consider purchasing coal from Russia, and the self-proclaimed Lugansk People's Republic. The head of Ukraine's national electric utility Ukrenergo noted late last month that it may be forced to begin temporary electricity shut-offs for up to two-and-a-half hours at a time if the country is unable to maintain adequate coal reserves.

At the same time, the European Integration Department of Ukraine's Ministry of Energy and the Coal Industry has been boasting that Ukraine could survive the winter without any Russian gas, if necessary. On July 1, Ukraine suspended its purchases from Russian gas giant Gazprom, with the two sides unable to reach an agreement on prices for the third quarter of 2015 after Kiev demanded a $100 discount per 1,000 cubic meters of gas. The Russian side offered a discount of $70, saying that tumbling oil prices have made heavier discounts economically unviable. Ukraine is presently receiving reverse gas flows from Slovakia, in smaller volumes.

Over the past year, gas tariffs have jumped 500 percent, and the International Monetary Fund has conditioned its loans to Ukraine's battered economy on additional hikes in utilities rates. Since April, the Ministry of Regional Development has observed a growth in hot water tariffs by 55-57 percent, on cold water by 25 percent, and on heating by 73 percent. Over the next two years, electricity prices are also set to jump 350 percent.

Former EU Enterprise and Industry Commissioner G�nter Verheugen told German media last week that the winter season may portend heating shortages and power outages, which could result in a serious political and social crisis in Ukraine.
 
 #35
New York Times
August 13, 2015
In Crimea, a Disputed Beach Is a Symbol of Corruption
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

GURZUF, Crimea - On a sweltering summer day, Crimea's burly prime minister, Sergei Aksyonov, stood in a black suit on a contested public beach in this resort town, once a famous retreat for artists like Anton Chekhov.

The prime minister, who was appointed by Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, tried to speak over the din created by about 100 jostling residents all yelling at him simultaneously. An occasional voice soared above the rest to hurl abuse like: "There were scoundrels in Ukraine, there are scoundrels in Russia. They all stay here!"

Mr. Aksyonov pleaded repeatedly for calm and for time, trying to reassure everyone that Russia's annexation of Crimea last year would improve matters eventually, but that nothing would change overnight. "I am not a magician who can make everybody happy in a few minutes," he said.

Seventeen months after Mr. Putin deployed Special Forces troops to seize Crimea from Ukraine, prompting the deepest confrontation with the West since the Cold War, life on this Black Sea peninsula remains in disarray.

Freedoms of speech and assembly have largely evaporated, as has a free and independent news media, but that is not what upsets people here. It is the familiar demons, government corruption, venality and incompetence, that have infuriated many.

A half-dozen cabinet members and other senior officials have been either arrested on corruption charges or fired for incompetence in recent months, and a Kremlin audit released in June found a huge chunk of highway funds missing. Two nights before his beach appearance, Mr. Aksyonov spent more than three hours answering a battery of questions live on television, a rare event, trying to explain it all.

Aside from the political shambles, Crimea has been isolated from the outside world by Western sanctions. Credit cards from abroad do not work. Cellphone signals drop constantly, and app stores are often inaccessible. Many mainstream web services like Gmail are frequently blocked, too.

University degrees issued here are no longer recognized in the West, prompting an exodus of thousands of foreign students. Even minor international travel links remain suspended. The Turkish government stopped a ferry service across the Black Sea, as well as an attempt by a Chechen airline to fly from Simferopol, the Crimean capital, to Istanbul with a pit stop in southern Russian.

"We have ersatz education, ersatz mobile phones, ersatz banks. As a result, we live in a kind of isolation here," said Vladimir P. Kazarin, a university professor. "Even other Russian systems perceive us as something foreign. We are not entirely integrated as part of Russia."

In opposing annexation, Mr. Kazarin has been in the minority. The standard refrain among the majority, who voted in the hasty March 2014 referendum to join Russia, is that despite the chaos, Crimea avoided a war like that in southeastern Ukraine that has claimed more than 6,400 lives.

"We feel safe now," said Yuri Skorik, a history teacher here in Gurzuf who led protests against the seizure of a public beach. "I would say that, on balance, security is worth all these problems."

During the prime minister's televised town hall meeting, Mr. Aksyonov blamed most of the problems on either the sanctions or the lack of competent government officials.

In recent weeks, however, the Federal Security Service or F.S.B., the successor agency to the K.G.B., arrested the minister of industrial policy and two senior officials on various corruption charges. Three ministers were also dismissed, and one of them is under criminal investigation as well.

In response, Mr. Aksyonov announced that he was forming a Commission for the Protection of the Rights of Officials. No sooner had he announced it than he backtracked, saying it contradicted federal law.

Analysts in the Russian news media have suggested the root problem is the fight to control the river of Russian government money flowing into Crimea, with about 700 billion rubles, currently valued at about $10 billion, pledged by 2020. For example, Kremlin auditors announced in June that two-thirds of the funds that Moscow had allocated for road construction in 2014 could not be accounted for.

Mr. Aksyonov denied any friction with Moscow, but some political allies admitted to strains.

"There are certain tensions with federal ministries and other organizations," said Alexander N. Formanchuk, a veteran political operative and Aksyonov ally. News reports from Moscow said the Kremlin was planning to appoint all deputy ministers.

Some Russian political commentators have concluded that the F.S.B. is determined to thwart any attempt by Mr. Aksyonov to become another Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the pugnacious Chechen leader who used federal largess to build a war chest and potent security force outside F.S.B. control.

Mr. Aksyonov, 42, has long denied reports that he was a gangster before becoming the politician who led the fight to join Russia, but he looks the part with his heavyweight boxer build and graying brush cut.

The real problems in Crimea stemmed more from mistakes than venality, he said, with officials confused by the many contradictions between Ukrainian and Russian law. "We work in unique conditions," he said, forced to micromanage problems like beach access and construction permits. "Every day I face five to 10 problems that are not covered by any Crimean or federal laws."

Various residents who wanted to speak to Mr. Aksyonov expressed disappointment that life in Russia was not the idyll they imagined after 23 years of Ukrainian rule. "We hoped so much that we would become part of Russia," said Tamara Gregoriyan, 75, a 47-year Gurzuf resident wearing a white straw hat. "We hoped that everything would change for the better, but it went from bad to worse."

In Simferopol, Leonid Kuzmin, a 24-year-old teacher, learned the limits on freedom in Russia when he helped organize a rally to commemorate the 201st birthday of Taras Shevchenko, a beloved Ukrainian poet, in March.

After some protesters showed up bearing Ukrainian flags and a banner reading "Crimea is Ukraine," he was arrested, fined some $200 and fired from his teaching job. "Freedoms we got used to over the past 23 years, like freedom of speech, are practically all gone," he said over tea in a cafe.

Gurzuf emerged in the early 19th century as an elite summer resort. After a short visit, Aleksandr Pushkin, the forefather of Russian literature, wrote, "If I am to travel far from the eternal light, where happiness lasts forever, I hope my soul will fly to Gurzuf."

Nearly a century later, in 1900, Chekhov bought a summer retreat, a four-room Tatar farmhouse hidden in a cove, and started writing "The Three Sisters." Other artists also settled in the charming village, where wooden balconies still overhang cobblestone streets, and a rich Moscow entrepreneur built a grand hotel.

Nationalized after the Russian Revolution, the hotel's 30 leafy acres became a Ministry of Defense sanitarium. Gurzuf residents have rarely been allowed to set foot in the heart of their own town ever since, and now the land officially belongs to the Russian presidency.

Across town the other big landlord is Artek, the famous Pioneers children's camp of Soviet times that the Kremlin seeks to resurrect. At more than 500 forested acres, it is slightly larger than Monaco.

The management set off protests by announcing plans to annex 25 acres the camp already surrounded, including one of just two public beaches in Gurzuf. Mr. Skorik, a handsome 54-year-old given to bright Hawaiian shirts, decided to fight Artek despite its Kremlin pedigree. The protest movement filed a lawsuit, staged marches and released a video appealing to Mr. Putin to halt the transfer.

In an interview, Mr. Skorik said Gurzuf residents had tired of the fact that in both Ukraine and now seemingly in Russia, citizens came last.

From a breezy seaside restaurant he pointed to the abandoned concrete skeleton of a hotel that Igor V. Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian oligarch, had been building at the tip of the bay, marring the view and privatizing yet another beach. Ukrainian law barred construction within 100 meters of the shoreline, but countless tycoons bribed their way to building permits, Mr. Skorik said.

"If you lived in Ukraine, and now in Russia, there are private organizations that have taken over public land," he said, "and little by little they have become inaccessible to the people in Gurzuf."
 
 #36
Sputnik
August 13, 2015
Propaganda Botch: FP Tries Its Hand at 'Information Warfare' on MH17

Descending into the often dangerous world of Russian tabloids, Foreign Policy magazine thought that it was debunking Russian "propaganda," but may have hit something much darker in the world of Russian politics.

Apparently thinking it was on the tail of a new propaganda campaign, Foreign Policy magazine "debunked" an audio recording provided to Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda by one Sergei Sokolov, who claimed to have conducted an investigation of the Malaysia Airlines MH17 crash. [http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/12/propaganda-watch-listen-to-two-russians-badly-impersonate-cia-spies-to-pin-mh17-on-u-s/]

Foreign Policy did not identify the source of the recording as Sokolov and his company, which in its prior incarnation as "Atoll" security company worked for late Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky. It also does not note that out of three experts interviewed by the tabloid, two said that they disagree with it and one, a former military pilot, said it could be "brought to attention." More tellingly, the tabloid's own response to the theory was titled "I Don't Believe It!"

What did Foreign Policy "debunk" then? It's not clear, but the publication felt it was necessary to translate the article into Russian, possibly so that Russians, apparently "brainwashed" by this tabloid material, have a hope of reaching the "truth." The translation was almost immediately republished by foreign media translation service InoSMI, a part of Rossiya Segodnya media group together with Sputnik.

Why Was This 'Recording' Created?

A visit to the website of the "Federal Information Center 'Analysis and Security'" shows that it is a limited liablity corporation which presents itself as an anti-corruption non-government organization. The organization also has a list of partner sites, most of which are defunct, although one, presented as a consumer protection agency, which operates out of the same building as the investigative agency.

Calling the toll-free 800 number provided by the organization on its website led to a recording saying that "the number is temporarily unavailable."

The organization has been accused in Russian media of ties to the late Boris Berezovsky, and implicated in the Pussy Riot case in 2012, when the organization accused the Russian prison service of corruption for "leaking" and unauthorized recording of the group in a jail cel. Sokolov himself gave an interview to Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2013, simultaneously alleging that Berezovsky was murdered and that falsified evidence would be used to implicate Russia.

After the Ghost of Communism terrified Europe for the better part of the 20th century, there is now a new "evil" sneaking up on Europe - the "ghost of Russian propaganda," Italian news website Globalist.it reported.

Russian media have previously accused the "Federal Information Center" of conducting fake anti-corruption investigations against organizations such as Russian Railways to fulfill personal goals of its members.

With such a background, the origin of the recording with "CIA agents" becomes more clear. The group, which has no clear source of funding or revenue, has also given interviews with the same "evidence" to LifeNews. Employees of the organization often give press interviews, mostly on issues of personal safety and corruption, but at times also international politics.

The falsified evidence then could help the organization maintain a media presence with a sensationalist material. At the same time, the media which picks up the "story" would be able to retain its reputation by immediately saying that the theory is wrong while also gathering considerable views and therefore ad revenue (both LifeNews and Komsomolskaya Pravda are privately-owned media outlets).

What Was FP Hoping to Accomplish?

While the most obvious motivation for the debunking of a questionable material could be to discredit Russian media as "propaganda," it is not clear if the article's author, Reid Standish, actually looked at the source of the "recording."

While the motivations of the source of the recording is unclear, the Foreign Policy article more or less paralleled the Komsomolskaya Pravda reaction that the theory does not make sense.

However, the Russian translation of the article published by Foreign Policy also raises some questions. While the InoSMI reprint received significantly higher readership (38 comments rather than zero on FP's Russian version of the article at the time this article was written), the "necessity" of translating the article by FP shows that it hoped to make an impact on Russian public opinion.

It also signals a basic, but crucial misunderstanding of Russia and its internal politics. A simple walk down a street in Moscow can lead one to meet any number of shady businessmen and former security officials now engaged in under-the-carpet political struggles against corruption, legislators, governors, state-owned companies and even federal officials as in the case of Sokolov's firm.

Often these are simply fronts for expanding traditional business interests and securing government contracts. Sputnik recently covered the case of a St. Petersburg security firm seeking to ban "dangerous selfies" under the front of an NGO.

Other times, it may be a private agenda, as appears to be the case with Sokolov. In any case, however, individuals seek to make media connections, often with privately-owned tabloids, to promote their agendas, even if it takes fabricating a video of "CIA agents" with bad accents to do so.
 
 #37
Interfax
August 12, 2015
Pro-Russian rebel official says MH17 "most likely" downed by Ukrainian Buk

Andriy Purhin (Andrey Purgin), the deputy speaker of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic's (DPR) people's council, has said that the Malaysian Boeing is likely to have been downed by a Ukrainian Buk air defence system, privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax quoted him as saying on 12 August.

"Certainly, a Buk [missile] is more likely [to blame] here. These systems are still in the arsenal of the Ukrainian [military] units. According to my information, there were Buk systems on the crash site at the time, which were in the arsenal of the Ukrainian military units located on the territory of Luhansk Region," Purhin told Interfax.

Purhin added that after the crash, the Buk could have been relocated to a different area.

"It was a mess there. Kiev was moving these Buk [systems] as it pleased. I do not rule out that this particular Buk was moved to a different site," Purhin said.

Commenting on the Buk fragments recently discovered by the Malaysian Boeing probe at the crash site, Purhin said: "There were a lot of fragments related to these systems at the time. It is indeed hard to ascertain now whether it is that same Buk or a different one."
 
 #38
Fort Russ
http://fortruss.blogspot.com
August 12, 2015
Poroshenko's Close Ties with Russian Elites
By Christina Melnikova for Novorosinform
http://www.novorosinform.org/articles/id/1586
translated by J. Arnoldski

[Editor's Note: This article describes a dynamic we have covered before:  After the US suffered its major setbacks with Crimea's secession and the Novorossiya uprisings, they needed the EU and Russia to help re-manage part of the situation.  So much for 'F*ck the EU', and Nuland's attempt to alienate other interested parties. Poroshenko was an optimal compromise candidate; he was someone that the Three Powers involved could more or less live with.  The US and Russia both have mechanisms at their disposal to push Poroshenko in various, often contradictory, ways.  This article helps to explain why the Russians saw Poroshenko as someone they could minimally work with - J. Flores]

Experts: Part of the Russian governing class is closely connected with Poroshenko

Visible manifestations of Russia's support for the Ukrainian economy and, as a result, the Kiev regime, are really there. But on the question of how much they are capable of significantly affecting the economic situation in Ukraine, experts' opinion diverge. Many political analysts, writers, and simply indifferent observers, blame the Russian government, convicting it of evil intent in their aspiration to maintain good relations with the West, by protecting the Kiev authorities who are waging war against the rebellious Donbass.

So by what ways and, above all, for what is Russia, albeit indirectly, contributing to the maintenance of the positions of the hostile powers of the puppet and criminal Ukrainian "elite?"

Granting discounts on gas and electricity supplies at preferential prices

In order to justify here the policy of "Gazprom," the argument can be made that, first of all, Ukraine is a transit territory for Russian natural gas, and attempts to establish an alternative path of transit have thus far been unsuccessful. The objective reality is such that, dependent on resource exports, Russia is compelled to make concessions. The second argument is a concern for the "brother Ukrainian people" which, of course, it is impossible to regain due to the unhealthy actions of the leadership of Ukraine.

But, given that the bills for the population as a result of Russian discounts in Ukraine do not at all decrease, and social policies are not gravitating to be wider encompassing, this argument also appears unconvincing. Moreover, experts notice that discounts on gas are one of the most important areas of unofficial support for Kiev from Russia's side.

In the case of electricity, it's also possible to reference the dependent status of Crimea on Ukraine on this question. The peninsula is currently 70% dependent on Ukrainian electricity. In the words of the Minister of fuel and Energy of Crimea, Sergei Egorov, the peninsula could independently provide for basic energy needs by 2018, when private energy generation will reach 950 MW per day.

Russia's mild position in relation to Ukrainian debt

It is understood that one needs to help friends - this is true not only for a human but also for a state. But here, where to financially help those who with all of there strength maintain animosity and hatred and use financial resources instead of paying back debt, hardly anyone agrees. However, the requirement of the early payment of debt would mean direct confrontation with Ukraine and the "civilized" world - because by returning this money it is unlikely that there would be a Ukraine. In support of this, Ukraine continues to insist on restructuring debt to Russia, and in Ukrainian media "expert appraisals" appear explaining why Russia should agree with this.

For the effectiveness of international mechanisms of influence on this matter, it does not lend towards hope given the prevailing unfavorable situation for Russia. Therefore, it is possible that Russia, in order to save its face, is trying to build "a good sport amidst a bad game," demonstrating the nobility and breadth of the Russian soul, which even if it does not forgive enemies of their debts, at least doesn't dispose of them in their favor.

"The term of redeemed repayments by Russia of eurobonds of Ukraine expires in December, 2015. Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation Anton Siluanov already reserved for the possibility of "some kind of temporary process for reclaiming these resources. One can also understand this as a willingness, under certain circumstances,  to delay the payment of debt. Perhaps this is evidence that Moscow already now doesn't see effective tools allowing for the collection of Ukrainian debt on time", - said political analyst Mikhail Neyzhmakov.

He recalled that the lenders of Greece took very serious efforts and time to force her to  accept their plan for the restructuring of debts.

"Meanwhile, for Athens the European lenders were the main source of external financial assistance. But in the relations of Moscow and Kiev, the situation is different, Ukraine finding other sources of external financial support. The IMF has not yet and is unlikely to  exert clear pressure on Kiev on the issue of its debts to Russia. And this means that the Ukrainian side, even refusing to answer for debts to Moscow, can continue to receive credits from other sources. In this way, once it will be difficult for Russia to compel Kiev to pay its debts, then the instrument of political pressure on Ukraine in this situation comes out weak" , - explained the expert.

The policies of Russian banks supporting the financial system of Ukraine

About this the public figure Oleg Tsarev wrote as previously reported by IA Regnum. He noted that Russian state-owned banks are increasing their share in the assets of the Ukrainian banking system - for 2014 their share has increased up to 12%. In addition, Tsarev drew attention to the fact that Ukrainian enterprises en masse do not return and do not tend to their taken credits, and the courts, "driven by financial incentives received from the borrowers as well as patriotic sentiments", en masse withdrawing assets out from underneath bank mortgages, do not recognize loan agreements. "The return on loans todays does not exceed 20%. Russian banks in Ukraine are ready to give 80% discounts just to get back at least part of the funds given out" - Tsarev ascertained. He also recalled that in the previous year, the "daughters" of Russian Sberbank and VTB were all involved in the issue of war bonds.

The economist Vladislav Zhukovsky explained the actions of banks by the desire to save their positions and their revenues and noted that the root of the problem is to be found in more fundamental causes.

"It's not that our individual state-owned banks, state corporations, private sector, or those close to the Kremlin's oligarchical structure continue to cooperate actively with Ukrainian counterparts, providing direct or indirect economic support. In fact, what in Russia that is in power in Ukraine is the raw offshoring of oligarchical capital", - noted the expert.

Authorities in Russia and Ukraine, in Zhukovsky's opinion, defend not the interests of the working majority or the representatives of small and medium-sized firms, but the interests of major raw capital and international financial speculators. In addition, the elites of both countries aspire to friendship with the West and are trying to enter the "waiting room of the global managerial class, where they were allowed only the rights of the whipping boy."

"State-owned banks don't just support the Kiev regime. As I understand it, the lion's share of the Russian governing class is very closely linked to Poroshenko," - the economist said. For this reason, in his view, the referendum in the republics of Donbass was not recognized and the idea of the Russian World didn't find support as it threatened the Russian offshoring aristocracy. "The oligarchs will always agree with each other and find common ground. Our authorities, like our businesses, don't want to quarrel with the West, and our financial system is tied to the West," - he stated.

With regard to the policy of Russian banks, for them it also business and money. And their actions in Ukraine can be explained by their desire to save sinking assets and keep afloat their subsidiaries and affiliates. In this way the main support for the Kiev regime is not that of the banks. "We are helping those whom we supply electricity at preferential prices in installments, and to those whom we supply industrial metals. Support goes on all fronts - credits and bonds for which we don't require repayment ahead of schedule, although also where they could do this, with the supply of gas, oil, industrial metals, state orders which we place at Ukrainian enterprises. The whole war is a big imitation", - the expert summed up.

Political analyst Boris Kagarlitsky drew attention to the fact that what is important in this situation turns out to be the position of Russian banks throughout Crimea. He recalled the words attributed to German Gref which were disseminated throughout Russian and Ukrainian media and from which, it is true, Sberbank disassociated itself on its Twitter profile: "Crimea is the territory of Ukraine from the point of view of the international financial sector and we adhere to this position."

Speaking plainly, for Sberbank "Crimea is not Russia" - the head of Sberbank allegedly said this in an interview with the Germany radio host Udo Pretenzel for radio WDR5. However, regardless of whether there was this interview or not, the policy of "of Sberbank" in Crimea remains unchanged - it actually continues to participate in the blockade of the peninsula. In both the two Russian regions, the Republic of the Crimea and Sevastopol, to this time there is still not a working branch of the leading bank of the country.

In the words of Boris Kagarlitsky, banks do everything in order to damage in Ukraine. "If the Russian authorities would take a tougher stance, they would say: 'You know, guys, chose, either you put hurt on Ukraine, or Russia will suffer to a much greater extent.' But the state, as the main shareholder in Sberbank, sanctions the very same behavior in Gref," - Kagarlitsky believes.

Industrial and commercial cooperation, including with military enterprises

At the height of hostilities in 2014, the media reported that the Yaroslavl Diesel Equipment Plant (YaZDA), included in "GAZ Group," which is owned by Oleg Deripaska, continued the delivery of units (groups of diesel) for the engines of tanks produced in the Kharkov plant of transport engineering named aver V.A. Malyshev. It was reported in June-July YaZDA significantly increased deliveries of its products to the Ukrainian side. Later followed categorical refutations of this information from the side of "GAZ Group" and YaZDA.

However, smoke doesn't happen without fire, and as the political analyst Boris Kagarlitsky said, these contracts could have been annulled retroactively and some kind of such deliveries were nevertheless carried out. The expert believes in the first stage of the war, there took place the delivery of spare parts and the sending of Russian specialists to repair Ukrainian weapons and military equipment fighting with Donbass.

Besides this, speaking of trade cooperation between the countries, it should be noted that the dominant position of Russia is in the export of coal to Ukraine. Russia, according to officially released figures, was the leader in the ratings of coal exporters to the country in January-July 2015.

Replying to the question as to why Russia conducts such a two-faced economic policy towards Ukraine, experts first of all pay attention to the reluctance of the Russian elite to  quarrel with the West. On this Kagarlitsky is sure, observing that Russian authorities with all their strength are trying to reconcile with Ukraine and the West, in every way demonstrating their good will, but the other side stubbornly refuses to reciprocate.

In turn, department head of the Russian University of Economics named after Plekhanov, Ruslan Dzarasov, is convinced that the spinelessness of Russian political in regards to Ukraine and its half-hearted position in support of Donbass have the same origin. Russia hopes for the success of the Minsk process, which could find support among Europeans for a peaceful settlement even if this does not fit the pressure of the United States in its geopolitical strategy.

"If you go on for a peace plan which pushes our leadership, then the entire strategy of the Americans is undermined, meaning more than 20 years of working on the subordination of Ukraine. And Russia is counting on it, hence our half-hearted support for Donbass. We stubbornly cling to peace plan which is unacceptable to the Americans. They keep it as a carrot for us, so that our support of Donbass would be ineffective and not match the scope of the support for the Kiev regime by the West. Here lies our economic aid to the Ukrainian, anti-Russian regime by the fact that we want to leave the door open, we do not want to burn the bridges, so that the West would  compromise with us on these conditions, which we consider acceptable for ourselves," - he said.

The economist Vasiliy Koltashov clarified that the Russian policy of economic mildness is based on the fact that presidents come and go, but the country remains, and with it it's necessary to work and negotiate. In his opinion, one should not exaggerate the significance of the economic support for the Ukrainian economy from the side of Russia, for it doesn't help Ukraine in any way - the economy of the country is still in critical condition.
 
 #39
www.politico.eu
August 13, 2015
Kiev's hipster revolution
With Russia breathing down their necks, the young seek refuge in ramen burgers and beards.
By VIJAI MAHESHWARI
Vijai Maheshwari is a writer and journalist. His novel White God Factor, about Moscow in the 1990s, was published by London's Coptic Press. He also publishes a magazine, B.East, about trends in the East, and was editor-in-chief of Playboy Russia.

KIEV - A disc jockey spins a remix of Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" on a stage by the river, while scores of young fashion brands that have sprung up in Ukraine's capital since the revolution hawk their wares in a carnival atmosphere. T-shirts decorated with slogans like "Putin is a Dick," "Pray for Ukraine" and "Separatist Buyer's Club," flap in the cool summer breeze, alongside harem pants in folk patterns, hoodies emblazoned with the Ukrainian trident, and tons of other creative knick-knacks. A vivacious girl in lensless granny glasses hands us a free cupcake for our "good vibrations" while a bearded barber from the "Tommy Gun Barbershop" offers free shaves. It's just past noon on a summer Sunday, but Kiev Market is pumping, hipsters jostling against each other to sample the wares.

The flea market was launched just over a year ago, but has already become a fixture of the city's booming hipster scene that has emerged since the country's Euro Revolution.

"This European youth movement started with the Maidan. Young people realized that they needed to do something for themselves, and not depend on the government," says Kiev Market founder Miriam Dragina, a former journalist who launched the market last year to raise funds for the Ukrainian army. She had the idea for the market while visiting Amsterdam last year, and modeled it on street markets in Europe.

"We were inspired by Moscow in the past, but now we're moving closer to Berlin style," she adds.

Ukraine's capital - once known for its glamorous nightclubs and high-heeled, overdressed women - is indeed fast turning into an "Eastern Berlin." I remember being one of the brave few to ride a bicycle down the city's busy streets when moving here six years ago. Now biking is the new "cool" and many bars and restaurants have bike stands; hundreds gather for midnight bike rides through the city on the weekends. Bars, which were once a foreign concept, have sprung up like mushrooms in the past year. I tried keeping track of the new bars last fall, but there are now so many Brooklyn-style watering-holes and artist hangouts that it's impossible to keep up.

One of my favorites is Druzi ("friends" in Ukrainian), a brightly-lit, open-plan bar with large plate-glass windows, stylized graffiti on its walls and... a bicycle hanging over the bar. Hipsters lie on the grass outside the bar beside their bicycles, sipping beers and mojitos and playing the occasional game of Frisbee. It's easy to forget after a few Obolon beers that we're in a country wracked by a war with Russia in the East. Okno, which means window in Russian, set inside the courtyard of a building in the city center, is another cult bar: Regulars lounge on beanbags, and watch the action on the ping-pong table that dominates the space. The bar's Old Fashioned cocktail is supposed to be so good that the bartender advises against drinking it with a straw and spoiling the taste. There's also Hashtag Bar, the rooftop Barbara Bar, Atlas, Otel, Closer, and countless others.

It's easy to forget after a few Obolon beers that we're in a country wracked by a war with Russia in the East.
Dogs and Tails, a SoHo-style bar-restaurant with large beams and big windows exclusively serves gourmet hot dogs, priced around $5 each. Many of the Kiev fashionista choose to eat their hot dogs with champagne. Ditto at The Burger, a stylish burger joint in the center of Kiev, where regulars wolf down New York Burgers with stylish Negroni cocktails.

As banks go bankrupt, and Western retail chains that entered Ukraine in a blaze of publicity close up shop, the center of the city is full of empty storefronts. Hipsters and others have taken over those spaces, turning them into bars, co-working spaces, and showrooms for boutique fashion brands.

"Even smaller fashion brands can now afford to open showrooms in the city center," says Dragina from Kiev Market. "It's the cheap rents that are driving this trend."

"Kiev has changed so much since the revolution that it's almost unrecognizable," says Diana Lyubarskaya, a young actress, who now skateboards around town to various castings. "I used to want to move to Europe, but Europe has come to us instead."

Hipster bars and cutting-edge restaurants are just the sharp wedge, however, of the European movement shaking up a city emerging from its post-Soviet slumber. I visited Platforma Art Zavod last weekend, a formerly abandoned Soviet factory on the edges of the city that has been converted into an ambitious creative space, with galleries, artist studios, performance venues and co-working offices. A street food festival takes place there every weekend in summer and the space was packed to the gills with curious locals trying out ramen burgers, organic hot dogs, Malaysian noodles, gelatos and other nouvelle foods once associated with Brooklyn's "Smorgasburg" food festival. Bearded hipsters lounged on beanbags in the various caf�s, while some tried surfing in a shallow wave pool on the edges of the factory. Others lazed in hammocks strung between trees, or wandered the exhibitions in the factory's refurbished halls. It felt very much like Berlin, except that the women were prettier - gorgeous, in their shorts and brightly colored trainers. It's still Ukraine after all - a Slavic country with a flair for glamour and the high life. "You should come back here alone with your male friends," suggested my (hipster designer) girlfriend. "You'll have a better time."

Hipsters are seen at the forefront of the city's shift towards European values.

Though Kiev hipsters, like their counterparts in the West, are more affluent than common Ukrainians - culled as they are from the city's creative classes - they're not yet as grungy as "Western" hipsters. In Berlin, its hipster scene dominated by legendary clubs like Berghain, the dirtier and freakier the better. Kiev's hipsters are clean and well-behaved; fewer dogs, fewer joints, fewer unattractive piercings. Their beards are perfectly trimmed, their loud T-shirts are often ironed, and they shower every day. Kiev's hipsters are often more arrogant and less friendly than the city's fast-shrinking "glamour" crowd, and are openly disdainful of what they consider the Moscow-of-the-90s inspired class, with their Porsche Cayennes and designer handbags. There are fewer wannabes among them: Hipsters are seen at the forefront of the city's shift towards European values.

"This is all due to our mayor," said a waitress at one of the food stands. "He's encouraged this movement to take root." It's indeed true that Kiev has a new civic consciousness under its pugilist mayor, Vitaly Klitschko, who was once the world heavyweight boxing champion. The parks have been cleaned up, new benches installed on city streets, and roads repaired. There's even a new black-clad police force about town, nicknamed "bunnies" by the locals, since they are so nice and cuddly, in contrast to the rude cops of yore.

I even spotted Klitschko at The Bar a few months back. It's the most well-known hipster bar, and is famous for its hammocks, Polaroid photo booth and steam punk design.

Meanwhile, the Kiev market has spawned tens of imitators in the past year. There's a music market, an organic market, a bike market, Union Square-style farmer's market, and many others. There was even a yoga market a few months back, and a VedaLife Festival on an island in the city last week that went on for five days, with hippies shacked up in tents, meditation and yoga classes, tabla and bongo classes, reggae bands in the evenings, and much more.

"It was more like a Goa freak festival than a true Vedic experience," complained a friend who's also a Hare Krishna devotee.

Buro 24/7, a popular online magazine, reported recently that 20 more "hipster" bars are set to open in Kiev this fall. It attributed the rise in bars to the devil-may-care attitude of people who have nothing left to lose. There's more than a grain of truth to their observation: With Russia breathing down their necks, a frozen conflict in the East, and the country caught in an economic death spiral, it makes sense to drink the nights away. With their finances shrinking, many young professionals are ditching their suits and expensive cars for a bike, a beard and a tattoo.

The hipster movement flourishes in the impoverished neighborhoods of the West's high-rent metropolises. In Ukraine's war-ravaged capital, it has come home to roost.