#1
Moscow Times
August 20, 2015
How Russia Can Learn From Helsinki
By Fyodor Lukyanov
Fyodor Lukyanov is editor of Russia in Global Affairs and research professor at the Higher School of Economics.
The 40th anniversary of the signing of the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe passed almost unnoticed in Russia. Probably because the date falls during the most systemically unstable period in Europe since the declaration was signed.
The Final Act was a large-scale compromise, not so much in terms of concrete details, but in the agenda itself. The Soviet Union got what it initiated the whole process for - confirmation of its post-war European borders and the alignment of forces that arose at the end of World War II.
The 30 years between 1945 and 1975 were the peak of the Russian state's power (in its Soviet form); it rose swiftly to the position of one of Europe's leading states, and then to the status of world superpower with only a single rival. After Helsinki, it became a game of maintaining that position, and one of the pieces in that game was, for example, Afghanistan.
It wasn't a matter of expanding the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, but the start of its decline. In short, the Soviet leadership correctly sensed (probably instinctively rather than rationally) the moment when they needed to "hold onto their winnings."
The West at that moment had just lived through an internal crisis, caused in part by foreign policy failures. Europe and the U.S. were undergoing a wave of civil rights struggles, the catalyst for which was America's loss in Vietnam, and that of France in Algeria and other colonies, as well as Britain's painful loss of its status as a world power.
The energy of foreign expansion, which had always been one of the main driving forces behind the development of Western civilization, was turned inward, toward the transformation of Western countries' own societies. The unrest of the 1960s was beneficial to the West, leading not to revolution, but to a strengthened social foundation for governments due to the inclusion of new groups into the establishment.
So social transformation through the expansion of human rights was a leitmotif of the domestic politics of Western states at the time the Helsinki process began. But the wave of decolonization and the awakening of the Third World caused a reconsideration of foreign policy instruments as well, from the less-justified methods of direct force to mediated influence through setting an example and using persuasion.
Fifteen years later this would be called "soft power," but at the time, it was packed into a third, humanitarian "basket" of the Helsinki process.
The main deal involved exactly that - the Soviet Union agreed to the "third basket" and formal adherence to human rights in exchange for approval from the West on the first basket - the guaranteed maintenance of Soviet borders and sphere of influence in Europe.
It's doubtful that anyone at the time fully realized the significance of the impending conflict, but it predetermined the development of Europe and the world up to the present day.
From 1975, the Soviet Union took on the role of a classic status quo power, directed not by ideas or even ambitions, but by the necessity of maintaining what it held. The West went in a more ideological direction (implementing a values-based approach) and factual revisionism.
But the matter in question wasn't the geopolitical lines of their opponent, but the latter's socio-political model. All the more so, since the Soviet model was no longer being developed at that point, but preserved.
History shows who won in that deal and who lost. It was only 10 years later that the Soviet Union started to crack. Under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, it moved in the direction of a values-based approach, and then began to withdraw from the geopolitical conquests for which it had initiated the Helsinki process in the first place.
Naturally, the Helsinki process wasn't responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union; the causes had been building up for a long time, and the final straw was incorrect prioritization - external issues over internal. But the set of "baskets" crystallized this position, and that, not stable borders, was the main outcome of Helsinki.
The West, its beliefs confirmed by the break-up of the Soviet bloc, confidently renewed expansion, relying on the ideology that had proved advantageous. By the middle of the second decade of the 21st century, the advancement of Western influence globally seemed to be stuck. The U.S. and Europe talked about a threat to the current order from revisionist, undemocratic powers - primarily Russia and China.
The West declares its protection of the status quo, but understands that to be its own uninterrupted expansion, since order according to that version means the sequential spread of a liberal world view and its attending mechanisms.
The West, preoccupied with foreign priorities and wishing to prevent revisionist views of the results of the Cold War, is met with a worsening internal condition. The growth of protest movements, mistrust in the ruling class, and the polarization of societies in leading countries all seem similar to 1968, but the current crisis will lead not to reform, but to attempts to preserve what has been accomplished. And that will undermine the "other" power that the West gained when it emerged stronger from the upheavals of the 1960s.
Russia is traveling another winding path. The fall of the Soviet Union led first to the desire to become the West, become part of that "third basket," which had proved its great strength. True, the government structure that they first started to build (with supportive encouragement from the West initially) was actually guided by anything but the idea of expanding real rights and freedoms, and the end result wasn't pretty.
A humanitarian paradise didn't come to pass, and the military/political "first" basket was lost. This caused the drive to restore at least that first basket, especially since in the surrounding world, major countries were again employing direct force.
Russia, accused of being revisionist, is convinced that it is actually trying to maintain the remnants of the status quo, protecting them against the pushy, reckless West. This, however, necessitates occasionally setting aside those immutable principles written 40 years ago.
In short, everything is so confused that it's not even possible to determine who is a revisionist and who is a conservator. Or what is more destructive - Western activism, intended to transform the world, whether the world wants it or not, or the blows of the Russian sword in response, meant as a check against the activist who has gone too far.
When Russia thinks of the Helsinki act, it should take into consideration the lessons the West was ready to impart then, and seems to have forgotten today. Namely, the path to success in the global arena begins with the transformation of external failures into energy for self-development, and a reliance on intellectual human potential.
From the start of the 1990s to the mid-2010s, Russia has accumulated no fewer foreign policy failures than the West in the mid-70s. That is, more than enough raw material on which to reflect and draw the energy needed for social renewal; the same energy that once determined the victory of the West in the Cold War. |
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#2
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
August 19, 2015
What are the Kremlin's new red lines in the post-Soviet space?
RD Interview: Sergey Markedonov of Russian State University for the Humanities talks about the unpredictable nature of frozen conflicts and assesses the chances that the Ukrainian conflict might end in military confrontation.
By Pavel Koshkin
With the recent escalation of fighting in Eastern Ukraine, many experts have started to talk about the thawing of so-called "frozen conflicts" in the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Moldova, Armenia and Azerbaijan. And the plans of NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg to visit Georgia in late August to open a NATO special training center could hypothetically also heat up these frozen conflicts, given the Kremlin's sensitivity to this problem.
Russia Direct has sat down with Sergey Markedonov, an associate professor at Russian State University for the Humanities, to discuss the unpredictable nature of frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet space as well as the responses by the Kremlin and the West to the threat posed by increased regional instability.
Russia Direct: Ukraine has changed the way the West looks at frozen conflicts in Eastern Europe. How has the perception of these conflicts changed since Crimea's incorporation into Russia?
Sergey Markedonov: I usually describe the changes in perceptions as the "Crimean spectacles." This trend emerged last year, shortly before the referendum in Crimea, when its status was on the agenda.
Today this trend is dominating. The "Crimean spectacles" mean that ethno-political conflicts in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and, to a lesser extent in Transnistria, are assessed in the context of Crimea.
In particular, [the conflict along the borders of] South Ossetia and Abkhazia is seen as a sort of precursor for Russia's annexation of Crimea.
Likewise, such logic is broadened to Transnistria (which is formally part of Moldova). If we look at the recent statement of the General Secretary of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland, who said that Moldova will soon be the next hot spot, Transnistria is seen as an upcoming "aftertaste" of the so-called annexation of Crimea.
However, all these conflicts differ significantly. The decisions on South Ossetia and Crimea were undertaken independently of each other.
In 2008, the question "Who is next?" was most significant and many experts talked about Crimea, Transnistria or even Nagorno-Karabakh.
But shortly after the five-day war between Russia and Georgia, the German TV Channel ARD broadcast an interview with then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who said that Crimea was not a disputed territory and Moscow didn't give any signs that it was going to reassess the status of the peninsula.
Not only did Putin make statements that Crimea was a part of Ukraine, but also Russia made some moves to extend the Big Agreement on cooperation between Russia and Ukraine, which was based on the recognition of the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
And it indicates that the Russian logic is not like the one described by the Western media and politicians. It is not the logic of the proactive move, which suggests that Moscow has a certain plan and strictly follows it. It is the reactive logic, which means responding to problems as soon as they arise.
RD: Could you give specific examples?
S.M.: Moscow didn't recognize the independence of South Ossetia [before the 2008 Russo-Georgian conflict] despite the fact that South Ossetia held two referendums in 1992 and 2006.
In addition, there were many requests to Russia's Constitutional Court, to the Supreme Council and to the President in person and to the State Duma - requests to recognize independence or incorporate into Russia.
Another example: In 2008, the situation in Crimea didn't threaten Russia. That's why there was no desire in Moscow to change the situation in its favor or to take risks.
But in 2014, the situation started significantly changing, when Ukraine began to turn from a country that created a balance of power into a country that identified itself as the outpost of the West in its confrontation with Russia.
This situation created the Crimea story. So, this decision was taken in the context of February 2014 and the Maidan protests, which provoked such a response from Moscow.
RD: You say that Crimea was a situational response from the Kremlin. But what about Putin's speech during the 2008 NATO-Russia summit in Bucharest, shortly before the Russo-Georgian conflict, when he warned that further NATO expansion would provoke Russia to incorporate Crimea, Ukraine would no longer exist as a unitary state and Abkhazia and South Ossetia would become Russia's buffer zones?
S.M.: These warnings were expressed not formally, but rather, emotionally. Yet, when Western opponents give this example, they tend to present Russia's policy as a one-sided move: Moscow wanted to do something and finally did it.
We should not forget about NATO's expansion from the other side. If there were any frameworks in place - no NATO expansion, no ignoring the interests of Russia - Russia would not have behaved in the way that it finally did.
RD: Following your logic, NATO expansion is a sort of "red line" for the Kremlin. Could other events - like NATO military exercises in Eastern Europe, American military assistance to Ukraine or the opening of the NATO training center in Georgia - be seen by Moscow as new red lines that will lead to a much graver conflict?
S.M.: Actually, Russia drew these "red lines" long ago and they haven't significantly changed: NATO expansion is acceptable for the Baltic States, but not for the core territory of the former Soviet Union.
Russia's red lines were clearly expressed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his deputy Grigory Karasin in their statements on Transnistria.
In fact, they framed them within two extreme viewpoints: Lavrov said if Moldova gives up its neutrality and enters NATO, Russia will raise the question about the status of Transnistria, while Karasin added that Russia would like to see Transnistria as autonomous within Moldova.
At first glance, there is a contradiction in their statements. But there is no contradiction. It is just two frameworks that require taking into account Russian national interests.
This means that Russia's new red lines - NATO military exercises and assistance to Ukraine or Georgia - are hardly likely to provoke a war. But what can really lead to a war is a question of status.
For example, if Ukraine or Georgia join NATO tomorrow, then serious escalation in the confrontation is highly likely.
To what extent will the confrontation increase? It is too early to predict. But, obviously, for Russia, it will be unacceptable. But if the conflict will be in a frozen state, Moscow is hardly likely to play the role of the revisionist state, just because it lacks economic resources to be revisionist.
RD: Western experts and officials argue that NATO expansion doesn't pose a threat to Russia. In fact, they are faced with a dilemma, as they see it. Following their logic, they don't want a war with Russia and, thus, straddle the line between taking into account Russia's interests and honoring their commitment to respond to what they see as calls for help from Ukrainians or Georgians. But it is Russia's policy in Ukraine that brings about their fears. So, how to deal with this standoff?
S.M.: Let's understand the nature of NATO. It is a military bloc that expands its military infrastructure closer to Russia's borders, not a club of stamp collectors (laughing).
And, in reality, it doesn't take into account Russian interests or involve Russia in creating mechanisms of providing international security.
RD: Yet the odds of Georgia and Ukraine entering NATO are miniscule today. If that is the case, should Russia be concerned? Don't its fears look like an exaggeration to promote its political goals?
S.M.: You know it is not a matter of Georgia's membership in NATO posing a threat to Russia. It is a matter of how it is trying to enter the alliance.
If a country, which tends to identify itself as an outpost deterring the "Russian empire," enters the NATO, it might change the bloc and its policy, given that all decision-making in the bloc is based on the consensus of its members.
So, it is not the bloc itself that brings about concerns [in the Kremlin], it is when NATO membership is seen [by Georgia or Ukraine] as defense from Russia.
RD: You said that Georgia tries to deter what it sees as the Russian imperial ambitions, but its new government seems to be trying to find common ground with Moscow.
S.M.: Yes, the new Georgian government is more pragmatic, but you should keep in mind that they don't shy away from a pro-NATO policy.
RD: After the Minsk II Agreements, there were signs that Ukraine could become another frozen conflict, with many observers pinning hopes on this scenario. What is your assessment?
S.M.: A frozen conflict is a conflict with no dynamic. But when people die, when there are shootings in cities, when two sides cannot agree on territorial status, there is no reason to call this conflict "frozen." I would be happy if the Ukraine conflict was frozen.
As soon as both sides finally understand they could totally destroy each other, the conflict might be frozen.
The problem is that the West's position is that it is only Russia that should be to blame for the development of the Ukraine crisis. So, many in Ukraine probably disregard the possibility of compromise and prefer to wait, when the West exerts pressure on Russia through sanctions or others means.
I respect this position, but it doesn't lead to compromise.
Regarding Russia, the danger is that it is very difficult to say what the Kremlin wants. But it is possible to say what Russia doesn't want.
It doesn't want the same type of failure [in Donbas] as it was in the case of the Republic of Serbian Krajina [a self-proclaimed Serb republic within the territory of Croatia during the Croatian War of Independence in 1991-1995; the rebels from this republic were defeated by Croatia's army because of the lack of support from Yugoslavia, which they wanted to join - Editor's note]
Probably, we will witness some attempts to unfreeze conflicts and flex muscles. And if these attempts fail and all stakeholders understand this, they might come up with a compromise.
After all, the Minsk Agreements, with its flaws and contradictions, resulted from the failure of all sides to reach their goals.
Today there might be attempts to reassess these agreements and there will be Minsk III, Minsk IV, etc. The only positive moment in this situation is that all players are taking about commitments to these agreements, although they question them.
RD: That's why - because of a great deal of talk and hope on these agreements - there is an illusion that the conflict in Eastern Ukraine is frozen.
S.M.: Exactly. I mean here the illusion, not the frozen state of the conflict.
RD: What should Russia do and not do today to avoid exacerbating the Ukrainian conflict and prevent other protracted conflicts in the post-Soviet space from completely unfreezing?
S.M.: In the beginning, let's figure out which conflicts are frozen and unfrozen at present.
Well, the conflicts in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria can be deemed frozen. But the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in Azerbaijan seems not to be frozen anymore.
The Donbas war is in full swing. So, what does Moscow need to do in this situation?
I think it should at least not intensify confrontation. It should take more of a defensive (not offensive) policy, because the intensification of the conflict could lead to toughening sanctions, which will aggravate economic challenges and, finally, result in failure.
The failure is even more dangerous in the current context, because it could fuel emotion-driven thinking among Russian political elites and take them away from pragmatism.
On the other hand, not everything depends on Moscow, because the West is reluctant to offer a face-saving solution for Russia.
RD: Why do you think so?
S.M.: If there is an opportunity to win, why should the West come up with a compromise?
RD: But why do you think the West is driven by zero-sum game logic if some experts and politicians repeatedly say that they are not interested in weakening Russia, a country that - with all its nuclear potential - could become a big troublemaker if it fails?
S.M.: If it is the case, let's change the approaches of how to resolve the problem. This opinion is fair and I agree with it in general. But the question is not what we are speaking about, but what we are doing.
If you think so [that a weaker Russia is not good for the world's security], you need to admit that Donbas is included in the sphere of Russia's particular national interests.
RD.: Kiev seems to have proposed a compromise to Moscow recently, when Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko made attempts to amend Ukraine's Constitution and expand the rights of the Donbas. Do you think that this move could help to resolve the country's standoff with Russia?
S.M.: The problem is that there is no clarity about the political role that the leaders of Eastern Ukraine will play in a new Ukraine and if they will be really properly incorporated in accordance with the law, while taking into account their interests and the interests of Russia.
So, [these amendments look] like talking without thinking over the real mechanisms that will work in practice.
RD: Let's think about a worst-case scenario of the development of the Ukraine crisis. What would that mean for the Kremlin?
S.M.: The scenario of Serbian Krajina is the worst case one. In this case, the Eastern Ukraine republics will be totally destroyed and their rights will not be taken into account.
The law about decentralization won't work and will be just a formality.
Regarding Russia, the domestic implications of such scenario will be very grave, because in this case, many will understand that Putin is not so powerful and try to shake him from different positions. And if so, there could be serious threats not from liberals, but from those on the right and nationalists.
This consolidation based on anti-Putin sentiments is what I am concerned with most. So, the instability [in Ukraine] can be exported to Russia. And I don't want it.
RD: Can the West contribute to resolving protracted conflicts in the former Soviet republics?
S.M.: The problem is that the West sees these conflicts as tools of Russia's influence in the post-Soviet space. And the influence is regarded as dangerous and negative.
Some American experts admit that the West doesn't have the time and tools to intervene more rigorously [in Eastern Europe]. They admit that Russia is an important stakeholder here and it is difficult to resolve security problems without Moscow.
But they don't go beyond this understanding. It doesn't lead them to the idea that they need to change something in their approaches of how to deal with Russia.
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3
The Calvert Journal
http://calvertjournal.com
August 18, 2015
Moscow bus drivers officially required to be polite
New standards released by the Moscow region transport authority officially prohibit bus drivers from being aggressive or malicious towards their passengers.
The bus carrier serving the Moscow region, MosTransAuto, outlined what it demands of drivers in its "standards of passenger service", released on Monday.
"The MosTransAuto service standards categorically forbid aggressiveness, being unbalanced, malevolent, impolite, haughty, dismissive toward the opinions of others, or the use of crude and unprintable language," the company said in a statement on their website.
Director of MosTransAuto Alexander Zaitsev stated that both drivers and ticket collectors on buses have a responsibility to be more attentive to passengers.
"Passengers see these employees in the morning, when they are going to work, and the good mood of the passengers for the whole day depends largely on them," he said.
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#4
Moscow Times
August 20, 2015
Half of Russians Believe Putin is Poorly Informed of Situation in the Country, Poll Shows
[DJ: "Poorly informed"="Vladimir Putin does not receive a complete picture of what is going on in Russia"?]
Over half of Russians think President Vladimir Putin does not receive a complete picture of what is going on in Russia or is being deliberately misled by his entourage, according to a poll released Wednesday by an independent Russian polling center.
Fifty-six percent of respondents in the poll conducted by the Levada Center said that Putin doesn't have a complete picture of the national situation, including fourteen percent who believe his closest advisors and allies are outright concealing the truth from the Russian president.
Only 31 percent of respondents said that they believed Putin was completely aware of what is taking place across the country and truthfully informed by his advisors.
When asked if they believe Putin is guilty of various accusations of misuse of power levied by his opponents, 22 percent of respondents were certain he is innocent - twice as many as in April 2012.
Thirty-one percent of respondents said that Putin's culpability in alleged violations is less important than his role in improving the standard of living.
Only 38 percent of respondents in the survey said they could freely express their thoughts and opinions about government policies. Ten percent said they couldn't express themselves because they were scared of reprisals or felt uncomfortable.
The poll surveyed 1,600 adults across Russia between July 17 and 20.
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#5
www.opendemocracy.net
Russian press digest (19 August 2015)
EDITORS OF OPENDEMOCRACY RUSSIA
This Wednesday, the Russian press focuses on the departure of Vladimir Yakunin, head of Russian Railways and a close ally of Vladimir Putin.
According to business daily Kommersant, Yakunin called his decision to leave 'a personal one' during a conversation with Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, Kaliningrad's election commission is processing Yakunin's candidacy to become the region's senator.
Experts questioned by the newspapers state that the reason for Yakunin's departure is still unclear, though there are rumours as to why Yakunin requires a senator's seat. 'For Yakunin, the Federation Council [Senate] is not a respectable pension, but rather a career change, a move to a new political level,' says Grigory Dobromelov. 'He's losing influence in the apparat, and he needs a status position to continue his active political work and access to the president.'
As Kommersant reports, Russia's drunk drivers are back in the news. Tasked by Dmitry Medvedev, the Ministry of Health has developed a draft bill which gives courts the right to send serial drunk drivers for diagnosis, treatment and medical rehabilitation at drug treatment centres. For serial offenders, if the course of treatment is not completed, they will lose their license. Experts consider the bill to be potentially harmful: people shouldn't be sent for compulsory treatment without specialist confirmation of their diagnosis.
Kommersant continues to follow the investigation into the murder of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov. Shadid Gubashev, brother of Anzor Gubashev, has unexpectedly given testimony, telling the investigation about conversations he overhead while living with his brother. Moreover, Shadid Gubashev asserts that his brother, together with his accomplices, told him of their involvement in the killing immediately after Nemtsov's body was found.
RBK reveals the misadventures of Vladimir Kekhman, the 'Banana King' recently appointed as head of the Novosibirsk Opera House following the Tannhauser scandal earlier this year. VTB has started to sell assets remaining with Kekhman's JFC Group, at one time Russia's largest importer of bananas.
RBK also reports on the rise of unpaid wages in the country following a release of information by Rosstat: in August, wage arrears rose by 6.2% to 3.5 billion roubles (£33m). The majority of unpaid wages are apparently due to companies lacking direct funds.
Last but not least: Vladimir Putin's 83-metre descent to the bottom of the Black Sea during a visit to Crimea. This stunt took place as part of the Russian Geographical Society's 170th anniversary.
Rossiiskaya gazeta, the government's newspaper, focused on the descent itself, describing how Dmitry Medvedev called Putin during the dive. Medvedev apparently wished him a speedy return, and made a promise to reproduce the president's exploits.
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#6
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
August 19, 2015
Press Digest: NATO holding biggest drills in Europe since Cold War
RBTH presents a selection of views from leading Russian media on international events, featuring a report on large-scale NATO exercises in Europe, as well as analysis of the risk of renewed conflict in the Transcaucasian region and an interview with former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jack Matlock about the putsch of August 1991 in the Soviet Union.
Anna Sorokina, RBTH
NATO carrying out large-scale airborne exercises in 4 European countries
The Kommersant business daily reports that NATO is holding airborne exercises by the name of Swift Response 15 in four European countries: Germany, Romania, Bulgaria and Italy. Almost 5,000 military personnel from 11 countries are participating in the drills. According to the alliance's general command, these exercises are the largest that NATO has organized since the end of the Cold War.
The exercises are aimed at increasing the interoperability of NATO forces, "which are on high alert," and the maneuvers are supposed to "demonstrate the alliance's capability to quickly deploy its forces and maintain a strong and defended Europe." The principal instruction is being given by the American 82nd airborne division.
Earlier, experts from the European Leadership Network research center had stated that the military exercises that Russia and NATO are carrying out near each other's borders are increasing the possibility of an armed conflict. They analyzed two significant recent episodes: Russia's verification of its armed forces' readiness in March and NATO's Union Shield exercises in Eastern Europe in June.
"NATO's largest airborne exercises since World War II are supposed to send the world an eloquent message about the alliance's peacefulness," commented Chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs Alexei Pushkov on his Twitter account.
Conflicts simmering in the Transcaucasia
The online newspaper Gazeta.ru analyzes a Minchenko Consulting report that has evaluated the political risks in the South Caucasus region. The report says that after the Ukrainian political crisis and the conflict in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine the situation in the entire post-Soviet zone has worsened.
Furthermore, competition between the European and Eurasian integration projects is growing. In total, six armed conflicts have taken place in the Caucasus (both north and south) since the collapse of the USSR, and most of them cannot be considered fully settled.
Half of all unrecognized countries from the post-Soviet zone are located in the region: Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh. Moreover, out of all the regions of the former Soviet Union, only in the Caucasus do bordering countries lack diplomatic relations.
The report evaluates the political risks for national political systems of three Transcaucasian countries: Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia. They are evaluated by their stability in domestic and foreign policy, economy and capability in countering radical Islam.
Armenia is considered the country with the highest risks, with its main problems being political and economic isolation, the unsettled Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, growing social protests and the risks of balancing its relations with ally Russia and partnership with the West.
Former U.S. Ambassador: We knew about GKChP plot 2 months before coup
August 19 marks the 24th anniversary of the 1991 coup that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of America's best-known diplomats, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jack Matlock, has revealed in an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid newspaper how Washington had warned Yeltsin and Gorbachev about the upcoming putsch.
"In June 1991 I invited Moscow mayor Gavril Popov to have a business lunch. He told me that a putsch was being prepared against Gorbachev and that he wanted Yeltsin, who at that time was in Washington, to return to Moscow. All this information was exchanged via notes, since we were afraid of being overheard."
"In Washington I was told that President Bush was insisting that I somehow inform Gorbachev. I passed the information to Chernyayev, Gorbachev's assistant, but I think the General Secretary did not give it much thought. Gorbachev then responded through Chernyayev and gave a speech about those naïve Americans. 'You did what you had to do,' he said. 'Thank you for coming. President Bush proved that he is our friend. Do not worry.'"
"A day later Bush called Gorbachev. He asked if Gorbachev had met with the American ambassador. Gorbachev said yes and added: 'Everything that the ambassador said is one thousand percent false.'"
"After the GKChP's (The State Committee on the State of Emergency) unsuccessful attempt to remove Gorbachev, Popov stated: 'In the end it all helped. From Gorbachev's telephone call with Bush, Kryuchkov understood that there had been a leak of information and stopped preparations for the putsch. Possibly, this is why the coup failed."
"This all proves that in big politics some events take place just by chance."
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#7
Russia condemns political repressions officially
By Lyudmila Alexandrova
MOSCOW, August 19. /TASS/. Adoption of a state concept of the policy on monumentalizing the memory of victims of political repressions is an extremely important event that signals the start of huge and complicated work, as the number of Russians who treat political repressions tolerantly has been growing of late, experts say.
The Russian government has endorsed the concept of a state policy on memorializing the victims of political repressions.
"Russia cannot become a full-fledged state ruled by law or occupy a leading position in the world community unless it memorializes the millions of its citizens who perished during the years of political repressions," the document says.
It puts forward the task of laying down the conditions for a free access to archival materials, educational and informative programmes related to repressions and their inclusion in the TV and radio schedules, as well as in the curricula of secondary schools.
The document also envisions a network of museums and memorial sites, creation of an all-Russia Memory Book, and identification of mass burials of those purged in the epoch of political repressions.
In addition to it, results of a competition for the best conception of an all-Russia monument to the victims of repressions will be summed up on October 30 when the nation marks the Day of Memory of Political Repression Victims, which will also be erected at the President's instruction.
Publication of this concept crowns four years of efforts on the part of the Presidential Council for Human Rights and the Kremlin Administration, Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily quotes Sergei Krivenko, a members of the board of the Memorial International Society.
An inter-departmental commission set up specifically for this purpose had come to face with instances of bitter resistance," Krivenko said. "There are forces in this country that try to put up monuments to Stalin and don't want any discussions on the victims of repressions."
The number of immediate victims of Stalin's purges that lasted from the end of the 1920's through to the beginning of the 1950's runs into millions of people but the exact figure is unknown.
A poll taken by Levada Center in May showed that the percentage of Russians believing the sacrifices the Soviet nation had suffered during the Stalinist epoch were justified by the greatness of the then objectives and results achieved had risen from 25% in 2012 to 45% in 2015.
"Such is the outcome of Stalin's popularization by separate politicians and in some TV shows," said Dr. Valery Khomyakov, the Director General of the Center for National Strategy.
"On the face of it, the number of programmes that would expose the reality of Stalin's regime has become far fewer compared with the 1990's or the early 2000's," he went on.
Khomyakov supported endorsement of the concept. "I'd like to believe this is the beginning of huge, thorny but important work. It's important to tell the nation the full scope of truth about events of the 1930's through the 1950's and the role that Stalin and his henchmen played then. It's important because we're still walking up and down the city streets named after them."
The government's concept is a signal that the government has set a task of this kind for itself and what is important now is to ensure that this effort does not melt down into a yet another campaign with a zero effect, he said.
Adoption of the concept is critically important if it is followed by practical steps, agrees Lev Ponomaryov, the executive director of the Movement for the Rights of Man.
"I surely support the proposal to include programmes on victims of political repressions in the TV channel schedules, since television is the prime instrument in shaping up the public opinion," he told TASS. "Let's wait and see the concrete actions that will be made in this sphere."
As for this moment, however, the official position of the federal government and the action of regional and/or local authorities on the issue do not match one another while the attempts on the part of some political forces to whitewash Stalin and even to erect monuments to him do not always meet with a resounding rebuff, Ponomaryov said.
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#8
Russia's Human Rights Council drafts bill to commemorate political repression victims
MOSCOW, August 20 (RAPSI) - The Presidential Council for Human Rights has drafted a bill to remember the victims of political repression, council chairman Mikhail Fedotov said at a news conference on Thursday.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev earlier approved the general approach to memorializing the victims of political repression. This included educational programs, free access to archives and other documents, government work on commemorating the victims of political repression as well as active patriotism.
Fedotov said that the Human Rights Council has been working on this concept for a long time. The human rights activists also drafted a federal bill that would amend the law on revising the status of victims of political repression and a number of other regulations.
"So far the bill has been approved up to the Finance Ministry level. It's stalled there, but I believe we'll get past this. Since we have already managed to get this state policy concept approved, I'm sure we can get the bill passed," he said.
The Human Rights Council estimates that by 2013 over 400 political repression victim graves had been marked, and over 600 memorials installed. There are over 309 memorials and museums. In 2013, over 75 Russian regions commemorated the victims on the Memorial Day for Political Repression Victims on October 30.
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#9
Moscow Times
August 20, 2015
New Policy on Commemorating Victims of Repression At Odds With Actions
By Ivan Nechepurenko
The government announced a new policy this week condemning attempts to justify mass Soviet repression, a move that appears to directly contradict official rhetoric and state actions during the last few years.
The move shows a lack of unity in the Kremlin on the ideological front, or even the desire to reverse the current trend of militant patriotism, pundits told The Moscow Times on Wednesday.
The State Policy on Commemorating the Memory of Victims of Political Repression was signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday and published on the government's website Tuesday. It was developed at the order of President Vladimir Putin, the presidential administration and Human Rights Council, who requested its formulation last October.
The political terror orchestrated by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and his accomplices in the 1930s-1950s is widely considered to be one of the darkest chapters of Russian history. Millions of people - often the most educated and able - were killed, put into labor camps or deported to distant territories with a harsh climate.
Yet the new policy appears to be at odds with what observers have described as the rehabilitation of Stalin in recent years.
"Russia cannot fully become a state where there is the rule of law and occupy a leading role in the world community without immortalizing the memory of many millions of our people who were the victims of mass repressions," the policy document says.
The policy says that Russia suffered a series of tragedies following the 1917 October revolution, including the persecution of the clergy, the emigration of the most educated citizens and the brutal collectivization of peasants and ensuing famine, as well as "mass repressions, during which millions of people lost their lives, were imprisoned in the gulag, or were deprived of their property and deported."
"The denunciation of the ideology of political terror" is listed as one of the principles of the concept.
Bucking the Trend
Arseny Roginsky, head of Memorial, an NGO that advocates the rehabilitation of victims of Soviet repression, said the document represents the first time that the current government has unequivocally condemned the Soviet terror.
"But this policy stands in striking contrast with the overall trend and the idea that we must only be proud of our history and only victories await us, and with the militant patriotism of our times," Roginsky said in a phone interview.
Memorial's Moscow office and two of its sister organizations in the regions have been declared "foreign agents" by the Russian government in the last two years. In 2012, Putin signed a law that requires all non-governmental organizations that receive funding from abroad and are engaged in loosely defined political activity to register as foreign agents, a term widely associated with spying in Russia.
"The problem is that the state never trusts society and always wants to do everything itself. The truth is that it would be better to leave the task of remembering the purges to civil society," Roginsky said.
One of the stated goals of the policy is the creation of memorials and museums dedicated to the victims of mass political purges. On Oct. 30 - the official Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression - the city's Gulag History Museum will reopen in a new, bigger location in northern Moscow. On the same day, the winner of a competition for the best design for a monument to victims of political repression to be erected in Moscow will be announced.
According to the policy, archives should be opened, museums created and databases of victims compiled by 2017, in time for the centenary of the 1917 revolution and the 80th anniversary of the peak of the Great Terror.
But in recent years, the government has taken steps in the opposite direction to its new policy. In March, Perm 36 - the only museum in Russia created on the site of a former labor camp - said it was closing due to continued pressure from the local government and a harassment campaign conducted by state-run media.
Local government authorities have since created their own museum on the site, devoted to the state penal system instead of to the victims of Stalinist repression. The new museum's management reportedly includes former prison guards.
Setting the Tone
Putin has expressed an ambiguous attitude toward the role of Stalin in Russian history. Speaking to young Russians at the 2014 Youth Forum on Lake Seliger, Putin praised Stalin for his role in the Soviet victory in World War II.
"We can criticize the commanders and Stalin all we like, but can anyone say with certainty that a different approach would have enabled us to win?" Putin told the audience of young Russians.
"No one denies that Stalin was a tyrant and that we had labor camps and a personality cult, but we need to be able to look at issues from every angle," he said.
In 2007 Putin visited the Butovo firing range near Moscow, where 20,761 political prisoners killed during the Terror were buried in mass graves.
"We need to do a great deal to ensure that this is never forgotten. To ensure that we always remember this tragedy [...] And in honoring the memory of past tragedies, we need to use as a foundation the best things that our people have accomplished," he told journalists at the time.
A former KGB agent, in 1999 Putin restored a memorial plaque to Yury Andropov on the Federal Security Service building, a successor agency to the KGB. A long-time chairman of the KGB, Andropov is widely associated with crushing the Soviet dissident movement in the '60s and '70s.
Popular Support
Nearly half of all Russians think the sacrifices made under dictator Josef Stalin were justified by the Soviet Union's rapid economic progress during his rule, a poll published at the end of March showed, reflecting a boost in Stalin's popularity in recent years.
Forty-five percent of those questioned by independent pollster the Levada Center said they fully or to some degree thought that the sacrifices made by the Soviet people under Stalin's rule were justified in light of the country's rapid development. Two years ago, that figure stood at only 25 percent, according to the report.
The Levada Center poll was conducted between March 20 and 23 among 1,600 respondents in 46 Russian regions. The margin of error did not exceed 3.4 percent.
The newly adopted government policy appears to criticize such approaches, saying: "Continued attempts to vindicate repression by referring to the particular features of the time, or their outright denial are unacceptable."
In July, the Communist Party collected nearly 160,000 signatures in support of the restoration of a monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the dreaded Soviet secret police. The party later put on hold its bid to restore the monument.
Words Vs. Actions
Igor Bunin, head of the Center for Political Technologies, a Moscow-based think tank, said there are various groups in the government that have differing views on patriotism and Russian history.
"I think some people in the government have begun to doubt that the current policy of militant patriotism can lead anywhere," Bunin said in a phone interview Wednesday.
"At the same time, having a policy is very different from taking action. For instance, the closure of the Perm museum is an action," he said.
The policy is a reaction to the growing trend of the re-glorification of Stalin, said Ivan Kurilla, a professor at the European University in St. Petersburg.
"It is an important step in the right direction," Kurilla told The Moscow Times in a phone interview.
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#10
Government.ru
August 18, 2015
Endorsing the Government policy concept for the remembrance of victims of political reprisals
The resolutions on the remembrance of victims of political reprisals are meant to promote the state partnership with civil society, contacts between generations, the succession of cultural experience, and youth patriotism.
Reference
The decree has been submitted by the Ministry of Justice in compliance with the presidential order summarising the meeting of the Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation of 14 October 2014 (No Pr-2783, Para 2, of 2 December 2014).
The present decree approves the Government Policy Concept for the Remembrance of Victims of Political Reprisals (hereafter, Concept).
The Concept bases on the premises of the Concept of Long-Term Socio-economic Development of the Russian Federation until 2020, approved by Government Decree No 1662-r of 17 November 2008. The draft Concept complied with the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation to 2020, approved by Presidential Order No 537 of 12 May 2009, the Strategy of State Nationalities Policy of the Russian Federation through 2025, approved by Presidential Order No 1666 of 19 December 2012, and the state programme, Culture and Tourism Development, 2013-2020, approved by Government Decree No 2567-r pf 27 December 2012.
The Concept pursues the following key goals:
- to elaborate and implement an effective state policy for practical patriotism and the remembrance of victims of political reprisals;
- to provide the social conditions necessary for Russia's innovative development based on the active cooperation of state and civil society institutions;
- to enhance personal intellectual and cultural potential;
- to promote the nation's moral health, particularly through practical patriotism, in partnership with public organisations and religious communities;
- to guarantee free public access to archival and other materials pertaining to political reprisals;
- to guarantee public access to memorials of victims of political reprisals; and,
- to launch relevant educational programmes.
The implementation of the Concept envisages the establishment of museums, memorial complexes and exhibitions dedicated to the history of political reprisals, the elaboration of relevant educational programmes, learning materials and databases, the publication of books, magazines, and audio and video materials, research on the topic, conferences, seminars, etc.
The Concept is envisaged as being implemented in two stages: 2015-2016 and 2017-2019.
The centenary of the 1917 events and the 80th anniversary of the year 1937 both fall on 2017.
The present resolutions on the remembrance of victims of political reprisals are meant to promote the state partnership with civil society, contacts between generations, the succession of cultural experience, and youth patriotism.
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#11
Transitions Online
www.tol.org
August 19, 2015
Russia's Democratic Opposition On the Ropes
Rejections in Novosibirsk and Magadan, a small breakthrough in Kostroma mark the Democratic Coalition's efforts to take part in Russian local elections. From Global Voices.
By Will Wright
When a group of opposition parties joined forces this April, they knew their goal of introducing true political pluralism to modern Russia was a tall order. Nevertheless, the Democratic Coalition forged ahead with plans to back candidates in regional elections this fall, with an eye on the national parliamentary elections in 2016. In recent weeks, however, the Coalition's grand ambitions have collided full force with the harsh reality of politics in Putin's Russia.
On 13 September a number of regional and district elections will be held across Russia. In preparation, the Democratic Coalition organized primaries earlier this summer to choose local candidates, and opposition leaders from Moscow such as Alexei Navalny toured key regional cities to drum up support. As the election date draws near, however, many Coalition candidates have found themselves unable to make it onto the September ballot.
In Russia, signatures from a certain number of supporters must be collected in order for candidates to take part in regional parliamentary elections, and the signatures must be verified by the local Election Commission. The verification process involves cross-checking the signee's identity and address with the database of the regional branch of the Federal Migration Service, and any discrepancies result in disqualification. Signature collection has been the focus of the Democratic Coalition in recent weeks, but this hurdle has so far proven insurmountable for the new opposition alliance. Many of the signatures declared invalid by local officials have been scrapped for dubious reasons, the Coalition claims.
NOVOSIBIRSK
In Novosibirsk, Russia's third-largest city, the Coalition submitted about 11,700 signatures. Navalny wrote online that those selected were the most perfect from a total of 17,500 signatures the Coalition had collected, and "were double checked by a graphologist, entered in databases for compliance with passport data, and a call center had telephoned almost all the signees." On 24 July, however, the regional Election Commission working group ruled that only 10,187 of the signatures were valid, leaving a total falling 470 signatures short of the required number of 10,657. Leonid Volkov, the Democratic Coalition's campaign manager in Novosibirsk, detailed the working group's findings in a post to his website.
After receiving the Election Commission's ruling, Volkov's campaign team in Novosibirsk undertook a 30-hour marathon session to review all the signatures that had been deemed invalid. They found that in many cases Election Commission employees had introduced typographical errors themselves when entering the signee's information into a computer so that it could be cross-checked with the Federal Migration Service database. They also asserted that the Federal Migration Service database contained outdated information, thus explaining the discrepancies that resulted in disqualification in many cases. A graphic on Navalny's website details the Coalition's findings.
Volkov's team then met with representatives of the Novosibirsk Election Commission on 27 July to present these findings. An official from the regional branch of the Federal Migration Service in attendance dismissed their claims, however, informing everyone that the FMS database was up-to-date and contained no mistakes, Volkov wrote on his blog. After being rebuffed, the Democratic Coalition representatives refused to leave the Election Commission building, and were briefly detained by police before being fined for disobeying police orders.
On 28 July, Novosibirsk candidates Yegor Savin and Sergei Boyko and campaign manager Volkov began a hunger strike to demand that the ruling by the Election Commission to disqualify the Democratic Coalition's candidates be reconsidered. Three workers from campaign headquarters in Novosibirsk also joined the strike.
On 7 August, Democratic Coalition leaders including Navalny appeared before the Central Election Commission in Moscow as the group met to consider an appeal filed by the Coalition. Navalny complained that the Democratic Coalition was being unlawfully blocked from participating in this fall's regional elections, and asked the officials to reverse the rulings preventing Coalition candidates from appearing on the ballot in Novosibirsk and other regions.
Navalny also beseeched the Central Election Commission officials to support his efforts to peacefully participate in formal political processes. He explained that this position is becoming more and more difficult to justify when elections are so obviously rigged. On the radio station Echo Moskvy, Navalny had recently debated this very question with journalist Oleg Kashin. At that time, Kashin argued:
"We have known each other for 10 years, and I hope we will know each other 100 more, and only then will you realize that, indeed, this was all in vain. That is, okay - Putin turns 90, Putin dies, Medvedev returns again, and again there are elections in the regions of Peskovskaya or Penza, and, you will say: comrades and friends, let us once again try to collect signatures, let us once again try to win; and only at that point will you understand that something else must be done probably -- maybe picking up a pitchfork, or maybe, on the contrary, inventing a new religion to unite people behind."
The Central Election Commission upheld the disqualification of the Democratic Coalition candidates in Novosibirsk, apparently unmoved by the Coalition's appeal, Navalny's arguments, and the hunger strike in Novosibirsk. In response to the Commission ruling, the Democratic Coalition issued a statement. It read, in part:
"Today it became clear that our Democratic Coalition represents a real challenge to the current government and can generate a worthy alternative.
The Democratic Coalition considers the shameful lawlessness perpetrated by the authorities today to be a successful start in the preparations for the elections to the State Duma. We promise our voters that we will approach these elections more consolidated and hardened, and prepared for any provocation by this doomed regime."
On 8 August, Volkov announced that the 12th day of the hunger strike in Novosibirsk would also be its last. While acknowledging that the strike's demand to allow Coalition candidates on the ballot remains unfulfilled, Volkov wrote that he still viewed the action as useful due to the publicity it had generated regarding the "lawlessness" of the local Election Commission. After Novosibirsk candidate Sergei Boyko was hospitalized on the night of 7 August, Volkov said that the Coalition leadership had asked the hunger strikers to end their campaign because the continued health and strength of the strikers would be needed for other things.
MAGADAN AND KOSTROMA
Beyond Novosibirsk, a similar story has been unfolding in the various other regions where the Democratic Coalition is also trying to run candidates in elections this September.
In Russia's remote northeastern region of Magadan, the Election Commission working group also recently barred Democratic Coalition candidates from the upcoming vote. Only 615 signatures were required to make it onto the ballot in Magadan, and Georgy Alburov, who heads the Coalition's candidate list there, personally led an effort to collect more than 1,000 signatures. However, the Magadan Election Commission ruled that over 10 percent of the signatures submitted by the Coalition were invalid, which automatically disqualified Democratic Coalition candidates from running this fall. Alburov elaborated on the developments on his blog.
In Kostroma, a city several hundred miles northeast of Moscow, officials recommended against allowing Coalition candidates to take part in this fall's parliamentary race. Coalition efforts there are being led by Ilya Yashin, a deputy chairman of Parnas, a leading party of the Coalition which is formally sponsoring the regional candidates on the Coalition ticket.
The Coalition's chances in Kostroma looked dim in early August. First, its local campaign manager, Andrei Pivovarov, was detained by police under suspicion of trying to buy a database of signatures from a police officer, Yashin wrote on his Facebook page. Then the local Election Commission ruled it had failed to collect enough valid signatures to enter candidates.
Then, on 13 August in what The Moscow Times termed a "surprise decision," the Central Election Commission ruled that Parnas could take part in the election.
"The authorities' calculation is obvious. By registering us in Kostroma they are hoping ... to save face against the background of a general disqualification of the opposition from elections," Yashin said, and another opposition leader, Vladimir Milov, tweeted, "Kostroma is now the most important point for the application of strength of the Democratic Coalition," the Moscow paper wrote.
NATIONAL ELECTIONS
The Democratic Coalition's efforts to field candidates in various regional elections this September in part represent a test run for 2016, when Russia's next round of national parliamentary elections is scheduled to be held. The Coalition plans to run candidates on the Parnas ticket for the elections to Russia's lower house of parliament, the Duma, in September 2016, taking advantage of the fact that registered political parties will be able to bypass signature collection requirements in these elections due to a recent change in Russia's electoral law. However, this does not necessarily mean that new hurdles will not be erected to derail opposition plans for 2016. On 29 April, less than two weeks after the creation of the Democratic Coalition, the Russian Justice Ministry canceled the legal registration of the Navalny's Progress Party, which was a co-founder and leading member of the Democratic Coalition alongside Parnas. The official reason given for the Justice Ministry's ruling was that the Progress Party had failed to register its regional branches within the required period of time. If Parnas is also stripped of its legal status in the lead-up to the national elections in 2016, the Democratic Coalition may find itself again unable to run any candidates.
While the administrative chore of signature collection requirements has been the biggest obstacle in its efforts to run candidates in next month's local elections, the Democratic Coalition has more generally run up against the limits to political competition informally imposed in Russia today.
As Coalition leader Navalny explained to the Central Election Commission, these developments make it more and more difficult to convince disenchanted opposition forces to participate in formal political processes instead of turning to more radical forms of resistance. The Democratic Coalition has announced plans for a mass protest in Moscow on 13 September. Meanwhile, the Coalition's own future appears uncertain if it cannot pursue its main goal of participating in elections.
This article by Will Wright originally appeared on Global Voices on 8 August. The text has been slightly edited and updated to reflect the decision to register Parnas in Kostroma.
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#12
Russia Direct
August 19, 2015
The unraveling of crony capitalism in Russia?
The resignation of the head of Russia's main railroad company might have important implications for the future of Putin's brand of capitalism.
By Yury Korgunyuk
Yury Korgunyuk is the head of Political Science at the Moscow-based Information Science for Democracy (INDEM) Foundation.
The economic system that has taken shape in Russia under Putin is often described as "crony capitalism." This system lives by the principle that can be best characterized as "to friends everything, to enemies the law." The infallibility of this principle has been convincingly proved to both opponents of Putin (former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, opposition leader Alexei Navalny) and his friends, who undoubtedly include the president of Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin. This week Russian media reported about his resignation.
Like many members of Putin's inner circle, Yakunin's career during the Soviet era was linked to the KGB. However, he was not acquainted with the future president at that time, meeting him only when Putin was an advisor to the mayor of St. Petersburg. Yakunin headed the board of directors of an international business center in the city.
Most likely they initially struck up a business relationship, which quickly developed into a personal one. How else to explain why, in November 1996, Yakunin was among the founders of the renowned dacha cooperative "Ozero" (together with six other members).
After Putin was elected as president of Russia, Yakunin worked for some time in the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Railways, whereupon in 2003 he moved to JSC Russian Railways, becoming president of the company two years later. Along with Gazprom and Rosneft, Russian Railways is one of the primary anchors of Putin's state capitalism.
But whereas Alexei Miller, the head of Russia's largest gas company Gazprom, and his counterpart from the Rosneft oil giant, Igor Sechin, were handed their companies on a silver platter (Gazprom and Rosneft were already lucrative), Yakunin had to work hard to turn the enterprise he inherited from the Ministry of Railways into a profitable business. Having liberalized rail freight, Yakunin made the company a profitable venture by 2005.
Like all Putin's friends entrusted with state-owned companies, Yakunin is alleged to have feathered his nest. In the summer of 2013, opposition leader Alexei Navalny published a plan of Yakunin's country house on which one of the rooms was marked "fur coat repository." The Russian Railways chief refutes the information, asserting that neither he nor his wife wear fur, but the fact that Yakunin, together with Miller and Sechin, persuaded Putin to allow them not to declare their income speaks for itself.
In May 2015 Yakunin told the press that his remuneration varies from 4 to 5.5 million rubles ($80,000-$110,000) a month. That is far less than not only Sechin (four times) and Miller (three times), but also top managers of other state-owned companies.
However, Yakunin is known to the general public not only for his "fur coat repository," but also his claim to be a political thinker and the source of most streams of state ideology. In 2007 he became a doctor of political science and in 2011 headed the Department of Political Science at Moscow State University. In his vision of the prospects for Russia's development, Yakunin was far ahead of his Ozero comrades, appealing to "traditional Orthodox values" and the need to "support the Russian world abroad" long before the events in Crimea.
Yakunin's status as one of Putin's inner circle is confirmed at the international level: In March 2014 he was placed on the U.S. sanctions list after the Crimean referendum. Although he escaped European sanctions, Russian Railways, along with other Russian state companies, was deprived of Western loans.
At times Yakunin's position seemed unshakable. In June 2013 Russian news agencies reported his resignation, but retracted the information a few hours later when the statement from the government press service was declared a forgery. Yet it was rumored that the message was true: Yakunin had been saved by the fact that at that moment he had been dining with Putin and had literally begged the president to override the decision, which Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev had long sought.
Two years later, on August 17, 2015, word leaked out that Yakunin had agreed to be included in the list of possible members of the Federation Council in the event that the governor of the Kaliningrad region, Nikolai Tsukanov, was reelected. The head of Russian Railways essentially confirmed his readiness to vacate his position, since membership of the Federation Council is incompatible with commercial activities.
What on earth happened? Why did Yakunin hang on like grim death only to walk away without a fight two years later? There may be several explanations.
First, starting in the first quarter of 2014 Russian Railways ceased to be a profitable company and its presidency became less of a tasty morsel.
Second, in the current climate proximity to Putin has turned from being a plus into a minus. As long as Yakunin is on the sanctions list, the company cannot get Western loans. It is not certain that the situation will change if someone else heads Russian Railways, but with Yakunin at the helm it certainly will not.
Third, the saga of cancelled suburban trains last winter could have been a factor. One of the ways Yakunin chose to deal with the problem was to allocate suburban trains to separate companies, which as of 2015 have been financed mainly by regional administrations.
Yakunin's empire makes a profit only from freight transport: passenger trains are run at a loss, and suburban routes are the most unprofitable of all. These losses used to be offset in part by the federal budget and in part by Russian Railways' profits from freight. Shifting the burden of financing to the regions, which struggle to make ends meet as it is, led to a hike in ticket prices and the cancellation of a significant number of routes.
Public discontent forced Putin to intervene and oblige the government and Russian Railways to restore most routes (ticket prices, however, were not cut, and the number of carriages fell from ten to five and even four in some cases). Apparently, the thinking goes, Putin could not forgive Yakunin for such a blow to his presidential prestige.
What's more, Putin never takes decisions that could be interpreted as caving in to public opinion. He tends to bide his time, waiting for the heat to die down before making his move. It is possible that such is the case today.
In any case, Yakunin's resignation has been presented as an honorable exile. And it is not ruled out that he could be handed a top post in the Federation Council. Of greater interest, however, is that we are essentially witnessing the start of the unraveling of crony capitalism. Yakunin is going because he became too costly for his company. In more plentiful years no one would have paid attention, but times have changed.
But Yakunin does not cost his company nearly as much as Sechin does Rosneft, which is burdened with crippling debts, or Miller does Gazprom, which is heading cheerfully into the red. Are they next in line? If so, Yakunin will be said to have launched the countdown for the end of the Putin-engineered economic system.
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#13
Vedomosti
August 18, 2015
Russian Railways head's possible resignation "unprecedented" - paper
Andrey Sinitsyn: This train is on fire; Vladimir Yakunin's possible transfer from Russian Railways to Federation Council set out in Kremlin's best traditions
Vladimir Yakunin's possible resignation from the post of Russian Railways head is an unprecedented phenomenon for the late Vladimir Putin era. The Russian political system is structured in such a way that the main institution operating in it is the feeding trough institution and the most important intrigues revolve around the top feeding posts. It is not the elections of governors or deputies which are important and interesting but the extension or nonextension of the contract of a state company head, not the inviolability of members of parliament, but the inviolability of the people from the head of state's inner circle.
Yakunin is seen as one of the functionaries closest to Putin (he was one of the founders of the "Ozero" dacha cooperative) and holds the very important post of head of a state monopoly, backing up very important social accountability projects - from the preparation of the Sochi Olympics to the delivery of the holy Easter Fire - and he comes under the Western sanctions and supports the president and the patriotic course in everything. Together with Igor Sechin he has permission not to publish an income statement. And the potential resignation of a man like that becomes known from a report on the Kaliningrad Region electoral commission website. Acting governor Nikolay Tsukanov (who in June was himself twice technically dismissed by the Kremlin, the first time by mistake) includes him on his list of Federation Council candidates. That Tsukanov following his re-election could at any moment recall his senator - somehow that seems unlikely. The difficulty is that this is not Yakunin's first "resignation." In 2013 he had already been dismissed by the news agencies - the news was retracted thanks to an immediate audience with Putin at which they ate the renowned wood grouse.
In 2014 the government dragged out for a long time the renewal of the Russian Railways head's contract. Who will bet that yesterday's act was his last? Many more grouse can be eaten before the gubernatorial elections.
On the other hand, the pattern is not entirely new. President Putin often disappears into the shadows at the time of high-profile decisions. During his time as president, Dmitriy Medvedev was given the task of purging the governors' corps of old cadres. And Valentina Matviyenko for one agreed to leave St Petersburg for the Federation Council a few days after the president of Bashkortostan had publicly suggested it to Medvedev. It is even possible that the haggling with Yakunin is continuing. The intriguing is not over as long as there is the possibility of backtracking.
Political theory says that an authoritarian ruler must do everything to protect his inner circle - it is this minority which has the real right to vote. In essence these people in countries like ours have real inviolability - whatever they are accused of. Does the intrigue around Yakunin mean he has been dropped from the inner circle? It is entirely possible that we are misinterpreting the level of inviolability of each of the president's friends. It could decline following an overall decline in revenue or as the result of misbehaviour. After all, Putin is also known for his practice of deferred dismissals. Yes, the majority of business complaints against Yakunin were heard about two years ago and then the market players got over it. But Yakunin's replacement could very well have been prepared over the course of two years.
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#14
Russian PM appoints new Russian Railways CEO
GORKI, August 20. /TASS/. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev appointed First Deputy Minister of Transport Oleg Belozerov to the office of the Chief Executive Officer of Russian Railways.
"I made a decision to appoint you the Chief Executive of Russian Railways and relieve of the position of the First Deputy Minister of Transport," the prime minister said at the meeting with Belozerov. Medvedev noted Belozerov's experience of working in the transport sphere.
"[Vladimir] Yakunin as the chief executive of Russian Railways did a lot for development of this largest infrastructural monopoly," Medvedev said. "Despite a challenging situation in the economy, Russian Railways are developing nevertheless," the prime minister said.
Belozerov was chosen particularly because the first deputy minister of transport was recently dealing with such issues as development of motorways and railways. "You know this sphere fairly well. You are aware of all the difficulties, the situation with the budget and with investments. This is a highly important economic project coordinated directly with the state for obvious reasons," Medvedev said.
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#15
Kaliningrad election commission confirms Yakunin's rank as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary
KALININGRAD. Aug 20 (Interfax) - It has been confirmed that Russian Railways (MOEX: RZHD) chief Vladimir Yakunin has the diplomatic rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Kaliningrad regional election commission chief Inessa Vinyavskaya wrote on her Facebook page.
"In reply to the commission's query as part of the verification of the information on V. I. Yakunin, the Russian Presidential Administration has confirmed that he has the diplomatic rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary," she wrote.
By law, a senate candidate from a particular region should have resided in the region for at least the last five years, or at least 20 years in total. A candidate who has the diplomatic rank of Ambassador can run for senate as well.
It was reported that Tsukanov, who is campaigning to become the region's governor, has nominated Yakunin as the region's candidate for the Federation Council.
The regional election commission registered Yakunin as a senate candidate on the basis of the documentation filed by acting governor Tsukanov. Currently, the election commission is verifying the submitted documentation. There is no time limit on how long this verification process can take.
It was believed that Yakunin, who has never lived in the region, could become a senator in one of two cases: if he has the rank of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, or if he gets into the Federation Council under the so-called 'presidential quota'.
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#16
http://readrussia.com
August 19, 2015
Why Is Vladimir Yakunin Taking a Million Dollar Paycut?
By Louise Dickson
Vladimir Yakunin has resigned as the head of RZD, one of the highest-paying positions with the most political power in Russia. Why? He wants to go into politics.
He has been nominated for a seat in the Federation Council (Russia's upper house) as a senator in Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave situated between the Baltics and Poland on the Baltic Sea. Elections are scheduled for September 13.
"Yes, its true. After the election, I will resign," he said after the announcement on Monday.
His switch from Railway tsar to Kaliningrad senator is hard to read, because it could be a civil way of Putin giving him the boot, or it could very well be a political grooming position for him to eventually succeed his Leningrad buddy as the President of Russia.
Maybe he needs immunity from something the public doesn't know about. Or, he was already on his way out, as many have already speculated.
Yakunin took the helm of Russian Railways in 2005, and his career was marked with megaprojects and mismanagement. He was lauded for overseeing the construction of high-speed trains between Moscow as well as Moscow and St. Petersburg, and by 2018, Kazan. Scandal broke out in the winter of 2015 when Russian Railways cancelled several suburban train routes in more than 20 Russian regions, mostly rural. Putin lambasted Russian Railways, as well as the Transportation Department, over their clumsy handling of the situation.
This isn't Yakunin's first resignation. In 2013, a press release was leaked to newspapers that he was quitting the top post of RZD, a rumor which was put down in a matter of hours, though drew theories Putin wanted to see him go. These rumors were quelled when a new 3-year contract was announced by Putin in 2014.
The 67-year old considers St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) his home. His career as an intelligence officer started there, and after the Soviet Union collapsed, his ties to then Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg Vladimir Putin help him become part of the Russian oligarch elite. The two have known each other since the early 1990s, and in 1996 co-founded the 'Ozero' dacha cooperative in the Leningrad regions where Putin, Yakunin, and six other St. Petersburg insiders have built themselves mansions. Yakunin has opened a lawsuit against The New York Times for claiming he has made sizeable cash payments to the Russian President.
A Senator's Salary
First and foremost, the transition will mean a colossal salary cut. In 2015, Yakunin's salary was reported to be $15 million, but he has yet to officially disclose his earnings, despite calls from the government. He claims as RZD head he earns 4 to 5.5 million rubles ($61,000 and $83,000) per month, at the very least 111 times the average monthly Russian salary of 36,930 rubles. As a senator, he will earn 360,000 rubles ($5,400) per month.
RZD not only offered Yakunin obvious financial gain, but political. Having a monopoly on consumer transport, freight, and all other rail operations gave the CEO enough political clout to demand government handouts while he was driving the company into the ground (in 2014, RZD lost 99 billion rubles). The company spent more than $8 billion constructing a rail link for the Sochi Olympics.
At the helm of RZD and in control of 52,000 kilometers of rail and more nearly 900,000 employees, Yakunin in many ways was untouchable. He is personally credited with blocking a pipeline to the Pacific Coast of Russia on the grounds it would eat away at rail transit revenue of RZD.
Slavishly Loyal
The Russian Railways boss made his political ambitions clear just a few days before his announcement to leave RZD. Yakunin, often a slavishly loyal mouthpiece for both the Kremlin and the Orthodox Church, penned a story called "Globalization and Capitalism." in the journal Development and Economics, a journal you probably have never heard of, because not even Russians have.
Yakunin's conclusions were quite simple: the American (and by extension, Western) hegemony is sucking the world dry politically, economically, and culturally. He likens America's sovereign treasury bonds as a "debt trap" used to control developing countries. The rest is filled with other odd correlations such as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the global financial oligarchy. The manifesto, which Meduza has nicely summed up in English is essentially his oath to take public office and serve the interests of United Russia.
Another criteria that will likely propel his candidacy is the fact he on the US sanctions list, and has been since March 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea.
It's difficult to say at this point whether this is a promotion or demotion for Yakunin. On one hand, it is a clear sign he has lost sway in the Putin court, but on another, if he is successful in his poltical aspirations, he has political immunity, which in Russia, can always come in handy.
For now though, he is on vacation, something he says he rarely gets to do.
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#17
Russian GDP down 3.4% in first half of 2015 - report
MOSCOW, August 19. /TASS/. Russian GDP dropped by 3.4% in the first half of 2015, the state statistics service Rosstat reported on Wednesday.
The estimate by the national statistics service is coincident with that by the Economic Development Ministry, which also reported GDP in Russia decreased by 3.4% in 1H 2015 year-on-year.
As was reported earlier, Russian GDP dropped by 4.6% in physical terms in the second quarter of 2015 year-on-year, Rosstat said.
According to the Economic Development Ministry, GDP will decline by 2.8% in 2015.
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#18
Moscow Times
August 20, 2015
State Statistics Show Flat Unemployment, Survey Paints Different Story
Despite unemployment levels remaining relatively consistent in the first six months of 2015, more Russians are seeing close friends and family members losing their jobs than in January, according to survey data released by a Russian polling center on Tuesday.
According to Russian state statistics agency Rosstat, in January the levels of unemployment across the country reached 4.2 million people, or about 5.5 percent of the workforce. In June, the number of unemployed Russians was 4.1 million, or about 5.4 percent of the workforce.
Although Rosstat shows unemployment levels have not changed much in the first half of 2015, despite Russia's ongoing economic woes and falling GDP, a poll conducted by state pollster VTsIOM last month showed Russians are seeing an increase in family members and friends losing their jobs.
Since January, the number of Russians who have seen a close relative, family member, or friend lose their jobs have increased, according to VTsIOM's unemployment index, which measures the severity of unemployment felt by respondents.
In January, the unemployment index was -44, and in recent months has fluctuated between -29 and -33. The index is measured on a scale of -100 to 100, with higher numbers indicating that the problem of unemployment is more relevant to respondents, according to VTsIOM.
The index is calculated by taking the difference between the percentage of respondents reporting that no one close to them has lost their jobs in the last two to three months, and those who reported two or more family members or friends losing their jobs.
A breakdown of VTsIOM's polling data show that in July, nearly one in three Russians (31 percent) reported someone close to them losing their jobs, up from 24 percent in January. The number of respondents reporting no firings close to them dropped four percent from January to 64 percent in July.
The poll surveyed 1,600 Russians living in 130 cities across 46 regions of Russia during the period of July 25 to 26.
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#19 Oilprice.com August 19, 2015 Oil Prices Must Rebound. Here's Why By Steve Brown [Charts here http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Oil-Prices-Must-Rebound-Heres-Why.html] Last week I spotted a very interesting chart that Gregor MacDonald tweeted which showed world oil production over recent years excluding the USA. The chart was pretty flat and that got me wondering about the extent to which the world has come to depend upon Light Tight Oil in the USA and, for that matter, Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD or oil sands) projects in Canada. So I went back to the font of all knowledge, the BP statistical review of world energy, and reconstructed the plot with my own little variations on it. For one thing, I added in OPEC's spare capacity, as what I was really interested in seeing was just how much capacity the world had to produce oil. Figures on unused capacity are hard to come by, but the EIA do publish a series of estimates of OPEC spare capacity and it is pretty reasonable to expect that just about everyone else is pumping flat out. Then I thought I would add Canada and the USA together, LTO and SAGD are different in many ways but they both grew in response to higher oil prices. Finally, I thought I would compare the total world production capacity to BP's figures for oil consumption (less biofuels) to see how the trends had moved. BP do give a pretty healthy warning on their work that supply does not equal consumption but the details of why that is so (other than stock movements) elude me. No matter, here is the aggregated picture of world oil production capacity vs world oil demand from 1990 onwards with the annual average oil price in 2014 dollars added on for good measure. You can see two things on this chart, the first is that when capacity exceeds demand, prices are low (and vice versa); the second is that, since about 2005, despite the oil price being rather high, outside North America the world has struggled to add any oil production capacity at all. In fact, since 2010 oil production capacity outside North America has been in decline. If it weren't for the USA & Canada, where production growth has been driven by LTO & SAGD, we would have been in a right pickle. Here is a closer look at that growth in capacity in North America. It is very dramatic, but what you don't see on this chart is that by the end of this year that growth will have halted and that demand will once again exceed capacity. In the short term, the oil market is in the doldrums and projects are being delayed or cancelled, left right and center. That will mean that, outside North America, oil production capacity will decline even faster and with the growth knocked out of the shale producers and SAGD projects being put on the back burner, it is only a matter of months before demand starts to exceed world oil production capacity again. A nasty recession might put a dent in demand growth and turn those months into quarters, but eventually capacity will wane, demand will wax, and the oil price will climb once again. In fact if traders looked hard at these charts they might wonder if the continued weakness in the 2022 Brent Oil future was a tad overdone. For this time, I think the price response might be even stronger and more sustained than before. |
#20 Bloomberg August 19, 2015 Russia Rewrites Growth Blueprint as Recession Dooms Consumer By Anna Andrianova [Chart here http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-19/russia-rewrites-blueprint-for-growth-as-recession-dooms-consumer] Russia's consumer economy, powered for more than a decade by a $2.1 trillion energy windfall, is in agony. The situation is getting worse, according to data released Wednesday by the statistics office in Moscow. Wages adjusted for inflation plummeted 9.2 percent last month from a year earlier and retail sales fell at the same rate. As an extended downturn in oil prices sets in and the ruble slumps to new lows, the list of candidates to replace Russia's growth engine is short. Most economists can only think of one thing: investment. Reversing an 19-month slump in capital spending by companies, the longest slide in almost two decades, will be an uphill task. With foreign investors shunning Russia amid international sanctions, domestic savings may have to carry the financing load, according to UralSib Capital, which estimates the economy last year was underfunded by about $60 billion for a desired growth of 3 percent to 4 percent a year. "If there will be growth, it will be mainly due to investment in the next 10 years," Yaroslav Lissovolik, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG in Moscow, said in an interview. "Without it, we will wear the consumer out and won't reach that potential, which is mainly concentrated in the investment component." Energy, Consumption For the past decade and a half, Russia's growth model was based on funneling income from energy exports into domestic demand, allowing for higher wages and output increases, according to an article co-authored by Alexei Kudrin, who was finance minister for more than a decade before leaving the government in 2011. Measured in 2013 dollars, the oil and gas windfall was $900 billion in the nine pre-crisis years to 2009 and another $1.2 trillion in the following five years, it estimates. The ruble declined more than 46 percent against the dollar in the past 12 months, the worst performer globally. It traded 1.3 percent weaker at 67.44 versus the dollar as of 1:22 p.m. in Moscow. Before a currency crisis, sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine and slumping oil prices shook the economy last year, consumption accounted for about half of gross domestic product, while as much as a quarter of Russia's output are linked to the energy industry. Investment Recovery? To fill the void left by the biggest drop in consumption under President Vladimir Putin, the government will have to harness the potential of a country that's bedeviled investors from Ikea to General Motors Co. French lender BNP Paribas SA exited its local fund-management venture six years after its acquisition and German reinsurer Munich Re closed its Moscow office. Franklin Templeton, which oversees almost $900 billion of assets, is liquidating its 20-year-old regional fund. The share of investment in GDP is set to approach 21 percent this year, down from the "already very low" 23 percent in 2013, Alfa Bank said in a July report. The measure has declined every year since 2011, when it was 25 percent, according to the World Bank. Last month, investment was down 8.5 percent from July 2014, the biggest drop in almost six years. The building blocks for a rebound may already be in place. With corporate profits at a record, companies will soon look to reallocate capital to focus on expansion, according to Bank of America. In the first five months, the combined net income of companies increased 58 percent from last year, according to the Federal Statistics Service. Investment demand will probably bottom out this quarter, putting it on track for a full-year decline of 10 percent in 2015, said Oleg Kouzmin, an economist at Renaissance Capital. Ruble, Savings Other signs of improvements include a more flexible exchange rate after a shift to a free-floating ruble last year, according to Deutsche Bank's Lissovolik. With time, slower inflation will bring down interest rates, he said. "This gives more room for capital inflows, for growth in investment," Lissovolik said. Savings, which according to UralSib Capital will be the key source of funding, are on the rise. Household ruble deposits climbed to 14.8 trillion rubles ($219 billion) on July 1. The savings rate soared to 13.6 percent in the first half from 7 percent last year. "With corporate profits running at an all-time high this year, the Russian economy already has enough resources for investment recovery," Vladimir Osakovskiy, chief economist for Russia at Bank of America in Moscow, said in a report. "So far, profits have been used for deleveraging and dividend flow, but this pressure should start to weaken from the third quarter." |
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#21
EU concerned over Moscow's food embargo in response to anti-Russian sanctions
By Tamara Zamyatina
MOSCOW, August 19. /TASS/. The blow against the EU's agrarian sector as a result of Moscow's counter-measures to the anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States causes European politicians' concern in the wake of growing protest sentiments, experts polled by TASS said on Wednesday.
The EU is convening an emergency meeting of agriculture ministers on September 7 to discuss the consequences of Russia's food embargo. In particular, Germany's exports to Russia have fallen by 50%, which amounts to 600-700 million euros a year. The French government is drafting an urgent plan of support for the agricultural sector. European storehouses have accumulated 100,000 tons of unsold pork.
"The political elites in each of the EU countries have an understanding of the counter-productive nature of anti-Russian sanctions," Head of the Department for European Political Studies at the Institute of World Economy and World Politics of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nadezhda Arbatova told TASS.
"The countries that have suffered most from the Russian embargo on agricultural supplies and traditionally maintain good relations with Moscow are Italy, Greece, Hungary and some countries outside the EU, first of all, in the Balkans, which have raised the issue of the lift of sanctions. However, the EU's decisions are based on a consensus and directly link the cancellation of sanctions with the implementation of the Minsk accords for the settlement of the crisis in Ukraine," the expert said.
"Another thing is why Brussels is exerting pressure on Moscow and not on Kiev for the cessation of a civil war in Ukraine. The EU and the US interpret the Minsk accords differently. Brussels is interested in the quickest termination of the Ukraine conflict, which is taking place on the threshold of the European home. The US is demonstrating its tightness towards Moscow owing to its remoteness from the seat of the fire and under the influence of the presidential campaign. Besides, the Russian embargo affects the US to a lesser extent than the EU countries," she added.
The expert said she didn't think that the EU as a "vassal" of the United States in the anti-Russian policy was being led by Washington.
"The US originated from Europe. They both have their common Anglo-Saxon mentality. The West will continue linking the softening or the cancellation of the anti-Russian sanctions with the fulfillment of the Minsk agreements, even if it is aware of the disadvantageous nature of these sanctions," Arbatova said.
Sergei Oznobishev, professor of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and section head at the Institute of World Economy and World Politics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with TASS that "electors' discontent in democratic states is an important factor in policy formulation."
"This will not happen overnight but farmers' protests will gradually bring politicians protecting the national interests of their countries into power," he added.
"The countries, with which Russia is bound with special relations, such as Italy, Greece, Finland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and even the EU's informal leader, Germany, are not interested in the continuation of anti-Russian sanctions, which are inflicting damage on their economies. But their readiness to revise their policies should not be overestimated. This will be a long process because no end to the Ukraine crisis can be seen and it will long stay in its smoldering phase," the expert said.
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#22
Russia's government to support drug rehabilitation NGOs
MOSCOW, August 20. /TASS/. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has ordered support for the non-governmental organizations tasked with rehabilitating users of drugs and psychotropic substances.
The regulation, published on the Russian government's website on Thursday, establishes rules under which the respective socially-oriented NGOs will be provided with subsidies from the federal budget.
The measure will allow increasing efficiency of the NGOs activity and preventing violation of the legislation in the sphere of civil rights protection. The regulation "will help to make the rehabilitation centers and rehabilitation programs more accessible for drug users," the government says.
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#23
The Calvert Journal
http://calvertjournal.com
August 19, 2015
Stars set to boycott Russian radio station
Russian pop stars are set to boycott Russkoe Radio (Russian Radio) in protest against the government's decision to create a media holding company to promote Russian singers with pro-Kremlin views.
According to music producer Iosif Prigozhin, the artists are preparing to take their songs off the air and withdraw from the Zolotoy Gramafon (Golden Gramophone) contest. They plan to found their own radio station, with Filipp Kirkorov, Alla Pugachova, Valeriya, and Kristina Orbakayte, among others, heading up the board.
Mr Prigozin stated their opposition to the arrival of Vladimir Kiselyov, who proposed the creation of a patriotic media holding and has been leading negotiations for the sale of shares in Russian Media Group, which runs the country's largest FM radio station Russkoe Radio, to state-run concert organiser Goskontsert.
"He's crazy and should be seen by a psychiatrist," exclaimed Mr Prigozhin, "He's like Yatsenyuk and all the rest. Maybe he could be sent to Ukraine to work with them?"
The artists made their decision after Sergey Arkhipov left his post as general director of Russian Media Group, citing the interference of Mr Kiselyov and Goskontsert in programming as the reason for his departure.
According to Mr Arkhipov, the head of Goskontsert, Sergey Bunin, had expressed "the strong wish of the new shareholders to get rid of old music from the airwaves and, above all, [...] songs by Iosif Prigozhin's artists".
On 10 August, the Federal Antimonopoly Service approved Goskontsert's acquisition of all shares in Russian Media Group, within which it plans to create a patriotic media holding company.
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#24
The Calvert Journal
http://calvertjournal.com
August 14, 2015
Russia bans Reddit pages over drug discussion
Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor has blocked access to some parts of social news site Reddit because of content "promoting" the use of illegal drugs.
The offending page was titled, "Minimal and Reliable Methods for Growing Psilocybe [Mushrooms]".
Roskomnadzor stated that it was acting on a request from the Russian Federal Drug Control Service, which said the page was promoting the use of illegal drugs. The media watchdog had threatened to block the entire Reddit site, after it received no response to its requests to the site administrators to remove pages that refer to growing "magic mushrooms" and cannabis, and posted on its official social media accounts asking service providers to restrict access to these pages.
In its social media announcements, Roskomnadzor said it had sent requests to "multiple addresses" at Reddit but had received no response. A lack of summer staff at Reddit is no excuse to "risk losing its entire audience" in Russia, it said. The organisation asked anyone with ties to Reddit's site administrators to let them know about the proposed actions against them. In a later message it thanked those that had got in touch with Reddit for their help in ensuring that the pages could no longer be accessed in Russia.
Reddit is one of a host of websites to find itself under scrutiny in Russia. Last year Roskomnadzor asked Twitter to remove 121 posts, while Facebook restricted 84 posts based on requests from the media watchdog. Last year, Russian legislators passed a law that places restrictions on bloggers and forces those with an audience of more than 3,000 people to register with Roskomnadzor.
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#25
Real Times With Bill Maher Blog
www.real-time-with-bill-maher-blog.com
August 18, 2015
Climate Change is Helping Putin!
By Bill Maher
I've found the way to get Republicans concerned about global warming.
Vladimir Putin wants to claim The North Pole as Russian territory, as well as over 463,000 square miles of the Arctic Ocean. He even claims to have sent a miniature submarine under the Arctic ice and planted a titanium Russian flag at the North Pole. Legally, I'm pretty sure that's how it works.
So what's Russia up to? You see, they're taking advantage of the UN's Law of the Sea Treaty, which allows countries to extend their economic zone up to 350 miles from the edge of the continental shelf, as well as this thing called "global warming," which is melting more and more of the Arctic ice, making more land and sea available for oil, gas, and mineral extraction.
That's right, Republicans. Because of global warming, the Russians, along with Canada, Denmark, and Norway, are trying to lay claim to the newly accessible parts of the Arctic so they can drill, baby, drill. It's basically a race to exploit a previously unexploitable part of the earth. And they want to claim it before America does.
Now do you believe in global warming? Because ExxonMobil does. So does Lukoil, Shell, and PetroChina, the Chinese state oil company, And according to Republican Party standard-bearer Donald Trump, the Chinese and the Russians beat us every time. Their leaders are smart. Ours are stupid. Don't you want to get smart like the Russians and the Chinese? Don't you want to beat the Chinese every time like Donald Trump does?
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#26
Russia's S-300 missile system supplies to Iran to strengthen Mideast security
By Tamara Zamyatina
MOSCOW, August 20 /TASS/. The supply of Russia's S-300 air defense missile systems to Iran is a commercial and long-decided issue that should not bother Washington as these complexes are purely defensive, Deputy Director of the Institute for the US and Canadian Studies, Maj.-Gen. Pavel Zolotaryov told TASS on Thursday.
The expert commented on a statement by US Department of State spokesperson John Kirby who said the United States was against the sale of S-300 missile systems to Iran.
The $900 million contract on the delivery of S-300 missile systems to Iran was signed in 2007. In June 2010, the UN Security Council imposed restrictions on the sale of conventional armaments to the Islamic Republic of Iran and Russia suspended the deal. In April this year, Russia lifted its moratorium after the successful conclusion of talks between Iran and the world six powers on Iran's controversial nuclear program.
The contract on the delivery of S-300 missile complexes to Iran may be re-concluded next week and Tehran may get four S-300s until the end of the year.
"Washington was convincing Moscow that the missile defense shield being deployed in Eastern Europe was not aimed against Russia and was intended to contain the Iran threat. We're responding with the same argument: Russia's intention to supply S-300 air defense missile systems to Iran is not aimed against any Middle East state, including Israel as the US ally," the expert said.
"On the contrary, such weapons held by Iran will strengthen security because this is a factor of containment for those who intended in their time to solve the problem of the Iran nuclear program and chemical weapons in Syria by a military method," Zolotaryov said.
"If Muammar Gaddafi had had air defense systems, this would have prevented US and NATO air strikes against Libya in 2011, as a result of which the country has been in chaos since then and dozens of thousands of refugees are storming the EU borders," the expert said.
"Tehran's desire to have air defense missile systems is justified: this will cool off those who are eager to use force to accelerate the implementation of the comprehensive agreement on Iran reached in Vienna with Russia's key role," he added.
"Although Russia has met the US halfway: after the 2001 terrorist attacks, supplying intelligence information to Washington on Afghanistan, and with regard to the destruction of chemical weapons in Syria, which helped Washington avoid being drawn in a new war, everything has been forgotten," Zolotaryov said.
"The US has no intention to take Russia's interests into account either with regard to the Ukraine events or with regard to the Middle East. The US seeks to weaken Russia by all methods. As former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger admitted, Russia's destruction instead of its integration into the western community has become the US goal. That is why, whatever steps Russia may take in foreign policy, they will be confronted with Washington's resistance all the time," the expert said.
'The UN Security Council resolution on sanctions against Iran did not stipulate a ban on the deliveries of specifically S-300 air defense missile systems, which is also admitted by the US Department of State. This was the US unilateral decision and Russia stands against unilateral sanctions," Zolotaryov said.
"Moscow does not intend to incur reputational costs like France did. Russia needs to fulfil its obligations as a reliable trade partner," the expert said.
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#27
Valdai Discussion Club
http://valdaiclub.com
August 19, 2015
US Plans for a Missile Defense System in Europe
By Vladimir Batyuk
Vladimir Batyuk, Doctor of History, is Head of the Political and Military Research Center, Institute for the US and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The United States is currently deploying a European anti-missile defense system, in line with the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPPA), which focuses not on ICBM interceptor technology, but on destroying intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The EPPA provides for deploying the European missile defense system in four stages. The first phase consists of introducing, by 2011, Navy-deployed SM-3 Block IA interceptor missiles. In Phase 2, SM-3 Block IB ground-launched and sea-launched interceptor missiles (in Deveselu, Romania) by 2015. In Phase 3, SM-3 Block IIA missiles on the ground in Poland and on warships by 2018, while Phase 4 provides for the deployment of ground-launched and sea-launched SM-3 Block IIB interceptor missiles by 2020.
The Obama administration has also announced plans to deploy target detecting and tracking systems as part of EPPA, including Aegis SPY-1D, THAAD TPY-2 radars (when used separately from THAAD missile batteries, this is called Forward-Based X-Band Radar or FBX), an airborne infrared system (ABIR) and finally, a Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) and Precision Tracking and Surveillance System (PTSS). That said, the US Congress has refused to fund R&D for creating SM-3 Block IIB systems, so the future of missiles that could potentially intercept ICBMs, not just intermediate-range missiles, is uncertain.
Presumably, these systems would be able to intercept Iran's existing Shahab-3 intermediate-range missiles. Since 2001, the US has carried out 82 tests of its SM-3 missiles under its missile defense program, achieving 66 successful interceptions. However, now that an Iranian nuclear deal has been reached, many experts are beginning to question the expediency for the US to deploy a missile defense system in Europe. Iranian missiles carrying conventional warheads seriously damaging European countries is hardly an eventuality, especially given their lack of precision.
On September 13, 2011 the US entered into an agreement with Romania as part of the EPPA to deploy a US Ballistic Missile Defense System within the existing Romanian Air Base at Deveselu. In 2015, SМ-3 type interceptors (SM-3 Block IВ) will be launched on 175 hectares with up to 200 US servicemen to operate them. In addition, a missile defense radar along with a command and control system for the Aegis ballistic missile defense system are expected to be stationed. Around the same time, Washington hammered out a deal with Turkey to deploy the Army Navy/Transportable Radar Surveillance AN/TPY-2 in the country's southeast, and reached an agreement with Spain on the stationing of four ships carrying SМ-3 interceptors and the Aegis system. A decision was made for NATO's missile defense system to be created in 2011-2021, and its final configuration will be determined taking into account the existing missile threats, availability of technology and other factors. However, it is already clear that it will be based on the US global missile defense system (with Romania and Poland as deployment areas for interceptors, and Aegis missile defense ships in the Mediterranean, North Sea and possibly in the Black and Barents seas).
Although plans of the United States to create a European missile defense system so far do not pose a threat to Russia's strategic nuclear arsenals, the fact that the development of the missile defense capabilities could eventually disrupt the existing strategic balance is a matter of grave concern for military and political leaders in Russia. For instance, Russia is greatly worried by the US plans to deploy SM-3 missiles in Eastern Europe, since the Mk41 launcher can also be used for cruise missiles. So far, the US and its allies have showed little interest in cooperating with Russia on missile defense or addressing Russia's concerns related to US plans to deploy interceptors in Europe.
The missile defense divide between Russia and the West has recently grown wider, and the Ukraine crisis has only made matters worse. Although the deployment of any element of the US European missile defense system in Ukraine is currently not an option due to the extreme instability in the country, the conflict has greatly undermined trust between Russia and the United States, especially on such a delicate matter as arms control.
Nevertheless, despite certain issues in bilateral relations, the idea that the US and Russia should keep the dialogue on disarmament alive seems to be prevalent both in Washington and Moscow.
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#28
Sputnik
August 19, 2015
Revealed: Russia's Ambitious New ICBM Early Warning System
Sergei Boev, the chief designer of Russia's nuclear war early warning system faces a massive challenge: to build a globally reaching system for Russia's nuclear security in only four years. Can he do it? He reveals his plans to Russian media.
Russia has been revamping its Soviet-era nuclear war early warning system, with plans to use not only ground radar stations and satellites, but also drones, the chief designer of the early warning system Sergei Boev told Russian daily Kommersant.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the system has been in a state of decay, with many satellites reaching their end of life and ground stations in Azerbaijan and Ukraine no longer functioning after their lease agreements lapsed. Russia began constructing new stations after Ukraine's then pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko made an agreement with the US which allowed American specialists' access to the stations.
Now, Russia's government gave Boev until 2020 to rebuild the entire system.
"The task that stands before us itself is simply unprecedented: to create an unbroken radar field within the country's borders on a tight schedule. This did not happen even in the Soviet Union," Boev said.
Russia has also begun to launch new satellites, as part of the Unified Space System, with the first launch scheduled for this fall, the head of the center's general staff, Colonel Viktor Timoshenko told the Russian News Service.
Timely Warning
While there are currently no satellites in orbit, the system is still functional, according to Boev. However, a satellite cluster would prove useful to eliminate such issues as false alarms. A famous case of a false alarm on the system occurred in 1984 and nearly triggered a nuclear war between the USSR and US, although it was narrowly avoided by Stanislav Petrov, who was manning the station.
According to Boev, false alarms are not a common occurrence although they are a danger.
"This occurrence cannot be frequent by definition, because the system's technical abilities reduce them to practically zero. The other thing is the system's ground echelon, which is a uniquely complicated technical system and malfunctions cannot be excluded. Here a lot depends on how the system's various components interact with one another: the false alarms that can occur in one station must be quickly analyzed and verified by the command post," Boev said.
Plans for the Future
In addition to being the system's chief designer, Boev is also the head of RTI Systems group, co-owned by conglomerate company Sistema and the Bank of Moscow. The company has been designing both new components for the early warning system and civilian electronics, some of which are exported abroad.
Boev told Kommersant that he sees many opportunities for the system's development now that Russia's space troops have been designated a separate branch of service.
"In his time, the founder of RTI, academician Aleksandr Mintz proposed unifying the system's information segment with the military component of anti-air and anti-missile defense. An intellectual system that could identify the target, analyze its threat level and if needed destroy it," Boev said.
Boev added that new types of mobile location systems are being developed, which will define the system's prospects for the next 10 to 20 years.
New Challenges
The system has also faced a new challenge: cruise and ballistic missiles. Smaller and faster than ICBMs, they pose a unique threat which the ground stations are not tuned to detect. However, one station has been undergoing tuning, according to Boev.
"The results of the tests showed that this station can actually locate such carriers as cruise missiles. But there is still a lot of work ahead of us," Boev told Kommersant.
With hypersonic missiles, some of which travel as fast as five or six times the speed of sound, the system is also undergoing challenges. However, the new Voronezh-type stations are already capable of detecting hypersonic missiles and air defense companies such as Almaz-Antey are developing systems to deal with the challenge, Boev added.
In addition to purely technical issues, Boev has been solving issues more related to money and politics. Majority shareholder Sistema has demanded that RTI's revenue grow 20 percent per year in a market shrunken by sanctions while the decrease in trained specialists has drained the organization since the 1990s.
Boev responded to the challenges by growing the company, in four years it went from 99th in the list of the world's 100 top defense companies to 69th. In addition, RTI implemented a new system for training and retaining prospective employees from the secondary school level, rather than only universities as was the case before.
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#29
The National Interest
August 20, 2015
This Is How the Russian Military Plans to Fight Future Wars
Russia is actively seeking out areas of relative strength to compensate for its military's overall weakness.
By Dmitry Gorenburg
Dmitry Gorenburg is a senior research scientist in the Strategic Studies division of CNA, a not-for-profit research and analysis organization, where he has worked since 2000. In addition to his work at CNA, Dr. Gorenburg is the editor of the journals Problems of Post-Communism and Russian Politics and Law and an associate at Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. He has previously taught in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as Executive Director of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS). He holds a Ph.D in political science from Harvard University and a B.A. in international relations from Princeton University. He blogs on issues related to the Russian military at http://russiamil.wordpress.com
Given the amount of attention paid over the last year to the capabilities of the Russian military, it is worth considering how the evolving character of warfare over the next 10-20 years is likely to affect Russia's military capabilities when compared to leading Western states.
The trend toward greater automation, including the use of remote control weapons and AI-driven autonomous warfare, will increasingly put the Russian military at a disadvantage. Russia does not have the technology to match Western automated systems and lacks the capabilities to develop such systems on its own in the foreseeable future. Russia's defense industry is well behind Western militaries in automated control systems, strike drones, and advanced electronics of all kinds.
The Russian government has recognized these gaps and, until recently, was attempting to rectify them through cooperation with the Western defense industry. However, the freezing of military cooperation between NATO member states and Russia in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea and the concurrent imposition of sanctions by most Western states will preclude the rapid acquisition of advanced military and dual-use technology by Russian defense firms for the foreseeable future. Financial constraints resulting from the budget crisis that has occurred because of the decline in oil prices will also hinder the development and deployment of weapons using new technologies.
As a result, Russia will have to look for alternative ways to counter Western automated technologies. Two possibilities that play to the Russian military's strengths include trying to jam enemy communications and using electronic warfare to disable drones and other automated equipment. These are both areas where the Russian (and previously Soviet) military has extensive experience. The recently unveiled Richag-AV electronic warfare system is designed to jam radar systems in a range of several hundred kilometers, so as to render opponents' radio-electronic guided weapons systems inoperable. It can be mounted on a wide variety of land, sea, and air platforms and, at least according to official Russian statements, its capabilities are far superior to any Western equivalents.
The Russian military will also try to counter Western technological advantages by focusing on using ambiguous and cyber warfare against Western states, both in the event of a conflict and in proxy fights during periods of hostile relations. These are both areas where Russia has advantages when compared to Western states. The lack of democratic accountability in the Russian political system makes the use of deception and ambiguous warfare easier than for governments that have to abide by democratic norms. When engaged in proxy conflicts with Western states, Russia can bring in mercenaries and other irregular forces, backed by GRU and other special forces units. It can also use friendly populations in neighboring states as cover for covert activities in target countries.
Similarly, Russia has extensive expertise in cyber warfare, and is not constrained by the norms against the use of offensive cyber warfare that are prevalent in Western states.
Government-organized Russian cyber warfare would likely be focused on specialized operations. The Chinese attack on the U.S. government's Office of Personnel Management, which resulted in the theft of personal information on everyone who has received a security clearance from the U.S. government since 2000, points to the likely future where hacking and big data information analysis techniques can be used in combination to undermine adversaries' security by Russia and other adversaries of the United States.
In addition, Russian security services will maintain their close ties to non-government hackers, who could be mobilized for brute force denial of service attacks. These tactics are not new. They were demonstrated by Russian hackers as early as 2007 in Estonia and 2008 in Georgia, but can be used quite effectively in the future to disrupt civilian infrastructure and potentially even government communications.
In terms of more traditional military means, the use of precision-guided munitions will become increasingly critical for Russian warfighting. Anti-access/Area denial defensive strategies will focus on protecting the homeland with defensive networks. Such layered defense systems are currently being set up in Crimea; in the future they're likely to be placed in the Kurile Islands, Kaliningrad, and potentially in other coastal areas. The low band radars on Russian SAMs have been designed to counter America's traditional advantage in stealth technology, which is likely to make U.S. attack aircraft more vulnerable to Russian air defenses over time. The main limitation on this strategy will also be technological: continued problems with the Russian space program's capacity to launch satellites are likely to limit the ability of the Russian military to detect potential enemy attacks, forcing Russia to depend on ground radars to cover key areas.
Precision-guided munitions may also be used for offensive purposes. Surface to surface missiles such as the Iskander, with a maximum range of 500 km, can be used to threaten neighboring states. The Russian military is in the process of equipping a wide variety of ships and submarines with powerful land attack cruise missiles that are not limited by the INF treaty and have a range of 2,500-3,000 kilometers. These missiles will allow the Russian military to threaten not only immediate neighbors but also more distant states from the safety of well-protected home waters such as the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the Sea of Okhotsk. Since these missiles may be launched from relatively small ships, such as frigates and corvettes, the Russian Navy may pose a serious threat to regional security even if it does not succeed in building a wide array of large combat ships.
Since Russia is highly unlikely to be able to match U.S. conventional forces or to establish a conventional deterrent to Western technological superiority, the Russian military will continue to rely on its nuclear deterrent capability as a backstop. Russian military strategists have come to view nuclear weapons as a way of compensating for Russia's relative weakness in conventional arms. Russia's nuclear doctrine in some ways thus parallels NATO doctrine from the Cold War period, though Russian leaders have been much more public with statements arguing that they could use tactical nuclear weapons in order to stop a conventional attack that threatens Russian territory or state sovereignty.
Russian leaders clearly recognize that Russian military capabilities will not match those of the United States, and are likely to fall behind the Chinese as well over the next two decades. However, they are actively planning for how to use areas of relative strength to compensate for their military's overall weakness. Western planners, in turn, need to focus on countering Russian advantages in areas such as cyber warfare and negating potential Russian threats to use its cruise missiles and tactical nuclear weapons in order to achieve Russian political goals in neighboring states.
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#30
TASS
Russian prosecutor asks court to imprison Ukrainian filmmaker for 23 years
Rostov-na-Donu, 19 August: The state prosecutor in the debate on the case of Ukrainian director Oleh Sentsov, accused of terrorist attacks in Crimea, has asked that he be imprisoned for 23 years, a TASS correspondent reports from the courtroom.
"Given the circumstances of the crimes, by partially accumulating penalties, Sentsov should be punished by 23 years in a high-security prison," the prosecutor said. He also asked that Kolchenko be deprived of liberty for 12 years.
According to investigators, Sentsov created a terrorist community operating in the territory of Crimea. According to the Office of the Prosecutor-General of the Russian Federation, members of the community committed two terrorist attacks in Simferopol in the spring of 2014 by setting on fire the offices of the public organization Russian Community of Crimea and the regional branch of the [party] One Russia. In addition, they were planning to blow up a monument to Lenin. The community's criminal activities were disrupted in May 2014 by the FSB [Russian Federal Security Service]. The defendants faced up to 10 years in prison.
Sentsov denied any wrongdoing. When questioned by a judge, he said he did not "consider this court to be a court at all" and called his case "political and fabricated".
On trial with Sentsov is his alleged accomplice Oleksandr Kolchenko. Two other defendants in the case - Hennadiy Afanasyev and Oleksiy Chyrniy - have already been sentenced to seven years each.
"Sentsov and Kolchenko have never been members of the [Ukrainian far-right group] Right Sector. They are accused of embracing the Right Sector's ideology and adhering to it," the prosecutor told the court. "Sentsov explained that he was proud of being an active participant in the [Ukrainian opposition movement] Euromaydan," he added.
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#31
Washington Post
August 20, 2015
Russia's summer of intrigue: Political trials take center stage
By Andrew Roth
Andrew Roth is a reporter in The Post's Moscow bureau. He previously reported on Russia and the former Soviet Union for The New York Times.
MOSCOW - It's the summer of political trials in Russia.
As most Russians head to their dachas for the seasonal break, Russian prosecutors are keeping busy with several high-profile cases the West has denounced as biased.
An Estonian officer allegedly abducted by Russia received 15 years in prison for espionage on Wednesday. Hours later, prosecutors in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don requested 23 years in prison for a Ukrainian filmmaker charged with terrorism.
In the same city, Nadiya Savchenko - a military officer who allegedly was kidnapped from Ukraine - will appear Friday to face murder charges.
The Kremlin is on a "war footing" with the West, said Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. The divides include the war in Ukraine and touches of old Cold War-style stare-downs between Moscow and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
And the trials, he noted, are another front.
"It looks like people are taking prisoners," he said.
There is speculation that backroom negotiations may lead to prisoner exchanges even after sentences are handed down. But no deals have been announced.
"I think there are clearly political plans for these cases, for negotiation and for bargaining," said Pavel Chikov, a lawyer who heads the Agora human rights association in Russia. "Of course I don't know whether any negotiations would be successful, or if they will be in Russian prison for years and years."
All of the cases were initiated by the F.S.B., Russia's intelligence service, and some of the evidence in each trial is secret.
Few expected a court to acquit Eston Kohver, the Estonian security officer who disappeared from the NATO-allied Baltic state in September and reappeared days later in a Moscow courtroom.
Russian security officials say that Kohver slipped into Russia with thousands of euros, covert audio equipment and a pistol to carry out "an undercover operation."
Estonian officials said that Russian security operatives kidnapped Kohver in a cross-border raid using stun grenades and jamming equipment and dragged him back to Russian territory.
It is the kind of murky spy story that seemed ripped from the headlines of the Cold War, and had threatened to become the latest diplomatic flash point between Russia and the West amid the violence in eastern Ukraine.
Just days before Kohver's disappearance, President Obama had reassured jittery Estonians during a visit to the capital that the United States would "defend our NATO allies, and that means every ally," from an attack. It was clear that he meant Russia.
Kohver was convicted this summer in a two-month closed trial in Pskov, the capital of an eponymous region bordering Estonia. Estonia complained that its consul was not permitted to attend the proceedings, and Foreign Minister Marina Kaljurand called it "a blatant breach of international law." The European Union condemned the sentence.
"I see it as a harsher sentence," Trenin said, speaking by telephone. "Two or three years ago, this would have been dealt with very differently."
Kohver's trial attracted far less attention than that of Savchenko, the Ukrainian pilot accused of directing a mortar strike that killed two Russian journalists last year.
Like Kohver, Savchenko appeared unexpectedly in Russian custody. She has said that she was abducted, while Russia said that she sneaked across the border disguised as a refugee.
Even before the conflict, Russia had been accused of abducting suspects in Ukraine. In 2012, a fugitive member of Russia's political opposition mysteriously disappeared from the streets of Kiev, Ukraine's capital, and was next seen in a Russian jail cell.
Savchenko, who was elected to Ukraine's parliament after her arrest, has become a cause célèbre among politicians there. A Ukrainian lawmaker previously told The Washington Post that Russia had offered to exchange her for two alleged Russian servicemen arrested in eastern Ukraine.
In another courtroom in Rostov-on-Don, closing arguments were held in the trial of Oleh Sentsov, a Ukrainian film director, and Oleksandr Kolchenko, a Ukrainian activist. The two are accused of plotting to blow up a statue of Vladimir Lenin in Crimea, a former peninsula of Ukraine that Russia annexed in March 2014.
During a visit to Crimea on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin told security officials to be alert for unspecified foreign-linked plots.
Sentsov has said that he was tortured in a failed bid to extract a confession. Investigators declined to investigate, suggesting that Sentsov's injuries were caused by sadomasochistic sex.
"All of the evidence is based on people who have been tortured," said Zoya Svetova, a journalist and longtime rights activist who serves on a prison oversight committee in Moscow. "Of course these people are all material to be traded, but how many years will they spend in prison first?"
Prosecutors on Wednesday requested prison terms of 23 years for Sentsov and 12 years for Kolchenko. A verdict is expected Tuesday.
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#32
Moscow Times
August 20, 2015
West Must Be Wary of Ukraine's Leaders
By Nicholas Kaufmann
Nicholas Kaufmann is a public affairs consultant based in Brussels.
The maxim, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" was first outlined in the 4th century A.D. by Kautilya, India's Machiavelli, in his highly influential work, "Arthashastra." Although the Iron Curtain has long fallen, this thinking still persists in the West's relationship with Russia.
Russia, continually at odds with Western Europe and the U.S., is still an opponent worthy of official suspicion, if nothing else. However, Ukraine, the clear enemy of Moscow, is itself a problematic ally at best.
The political and social climate in Ukraine is the most fragile it has been since independence, and the policymakers in Kiev seem to be walking in lockstep toward the cliff's edge.
Though President Vladimir Putin isn't in much danger of sainthood, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko might be in the running, as far as many in the West are concerned.
When Poroshenko was elected in 2014, he promised a new style of governance and a break from the status quo of oligarchy. Earlier this year he promised to "prevent the inappropriate influence of private interests on the state" and began by dismissing Ihor Kolomoisky, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region.
However, Poroshenko, himself a billionaire chocolate magnate, has failed to do much more than occasionally replacing an oligarch with a crony - Valentin Reznichenko, is a former business partner of Poroshenko's chief of staff. In the words of one Ukrainian MP, Poroshenko has simply replaced oligarchs with "oligarchs nouveaux" - a new class of rulers that had played second fiddle to the original set under Poroshenko's predecessors and are now ready to reap the rewards of power.
But the Chocolate King's failure to combat the oligarchy is probably the least of his sins. He has been at the forefront of a dangerous war against freedom of speech in Ukraine. The Ukrainian government banned all Russian television channels in Ukraine, a policy strongly supported by Poroshenko.
The assault on free speech continued late last year when Poroshenko forced a bill through Parliament to create the Ministry of Information Policy (MIP).
Given the power to register media outlets and set journalistic standards, the MIP is also tasked with developing a "state information strategy" and to prevent exposure of Ukrainians to what it determines to be "unreal information."
Though this Orwellian department may sound innocuous to some, the Ukrainian government's track record on press freedom is already spotty. The Defense Ministry recently attempted to require journalists to be accompanied by soldiers in what it deemed the "conflict zone" in eastern Ukraine.
Perhaps the most egregious interferences are the new "decommunization" laws signed by Poroshenko earlier this year. These laws seek to scrub communist and Nazi symbols and make illegal the suggestion that the former communist regime was anything other than criminal.
Although erasing history is outrageous enough (and expensive - more than 800 localities must change their names under this new law), these laws also have more far-reaching restrictions as well.
One bill, innocuously titled, "On legal status and commemoration of fighters of Ukraine's independence in the 20th century," makes denial or denigration of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Ukrainian Insurgent Army a crime.
The attack on free speech aside, OUN-UIA's history is controversial at best. Led by Stepan Bandera, these organizations collaborated with Nazi Germany.
Western policymakers and media outlets must recognize that Russia's enemies do not come to the diplomatic table with clean hands by default. Simply assuming that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" in this instance will lead the West down the path of friendship with a group of questionable leaders.
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#33
Ukraine's Security Service accuses more than a thousand of its officers of desertion
KIEV, August 20. /TASS/. Kiev garrison's military prosecutors are holding a prejudicial inquiry into the case of desertion of 1,372 Ukrainian Security Service's (SBU) officers to Crimea and Donbas, according to Ukraine's Unified register of court decisions.
In particular, courts already reviewed petitions filed by military prosecutors in July-August this year on detaining several dozens of SBU officers.
Investigation was launched in April 2014 when many SBU officers did not go to Kiev on order of the SBU central command. Among those accused of desertion are many officers of SBU's Center of special operations on fighting terrorism in Sevastopol and Simferopol.
The location of suspects has not been established yet. They face from 2 to years in prison for desertion.
TASS reported earlier that since Kiev launched a military operation in the country's east, more than 10,000 cases of desertion from Ukrainian Armed Forces have been registered.
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#34 Sputnik August 20, 2015 Ultra-Right Militants Acting Like Cops in Ukraine's 2nd Largest City [Video and photos here http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150820/1025975058/ukraine-kharkiv-right-sector-militia.html] Militants from the notorious ultranationalist organization Right Sector have taken it upon themselves to become the de-facto police force in a section of the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, with local security organs seemingly powerless to stop them. Ukrainian media report that the militants, armed with baseball bats and other blunt objects, wearing balaclavas and featuring the distinctive red-black badges on their army fatigue uniforms, have organized themselves into 'patrols' in areas surrounding the rail terminal, located in the west-central portion of the city. With the city's transport police presently absent, facing reorganization, the militants have subjected the district to systematic terror, roving the streets, attacking suspected wrongdoers, and organizing group raids on businesses and shops. Earlier this week, the militants organized a raid on a suspected underground slots casino near the rail terminal, smashing slot machines with bats and chairs and attacking workers and players, spraying them with pepper spray and forcing them to the ground on the asphalt outside the building. The police were present, but appeared powerless to do anything to stop the rampage. Then on Wednesday, the militants were reported to have 'closed' a pharmacy, smashing up the office, carrying out pain medication and burning it in front of the building. This follows on similar incidents taking place last month, when militants burst into two pharmacies and trashed them, allegedly for the fact that they were selling pain medications with the morphine-derived drug codeine. Earlier, Right Sector militants carried out an attack on the office and bus of 'Opposition Bloc', an opposition party organized out of the remnants of Ukraine's former governing Party of Regions. Local Right Sector organizer Andrei Sanin proudly told Ukraine's Vesti newspaper that since the beginning of the group's patrols, the number of crimes in the area has gone down considerably. "We are not the police; we can do things a little more radically," he noted. The militant added that while the group knows that "we do not have the formal right to a lot of things, in a situation where there is a war going on, and our valiant police force has left [the area], we are acting in accordance with our Constitution. Everyone has a right to defend their homeland." Vesti noted that the organization is now looking to establish more patrols, in other parts of the city, with only a lack of manpower hindering them from doing so. Ukrainian social media have voiced their outrage over their incidents, some leaving sarcastic comments such as: "with no monuments left, it's time to move on to pharmacies." Others indignantly asked "where the police are?" Answering this question, Vesti explained that Kharkiv's enfeebled police force seems unable or unwilling to do anything to stop the militants' vigilantism. Kharkiv Interior Ministry advisor Alexander Sirota told the newspaper that while "any assistance in ensuring public order is welcomed in all countries and at all times, how this assistance is provided is another question. If they had blocked off this gaming establishment and called the police, that would be right. But when they smash private property -that is an offense. Nobody has a right to just go out into the street and declare that they are 'protecting public order'." But the police's reaction does not appear to be limited to mere lack of action. The Right Sector has been reported to openly cooperate with the police, for example by handing the majority of their 'arrests' to them. The police, in response, has not stepped into open conflict with the militants, refusing to charge them for the unauthorized use of force or the destruction of property, even when they are present at the militants' raids. The Kharkiv Interior Ministry's press service explained away this oddity by noting that it has received no complaints, either from the raid on the underground casino, or from the attack on the Opposition Bloc offices. Some Ukrainian and Russian media have suggested that the situation is potentially an explosive one, recalling that had occurred in Mukacheve, western Ukraine last month, when heavily armed Right Sector militants shot it out with local police over cigarette smuggling routes. It remains to be seen just how much longer Kharkiv's security organs will be willing to tolerate Right Sector's unique and brutal brand of vigilante justice. The Right Sector, an ultranationalist confederation of paramilitaries springing up in November 2013, is known to have played a key role in ensuring the success of the Maidan coup d'état of February 2014. The group later organized a series of 'territorial defense battalions', located throughout the country, which have since become known for their brutality in crushing the anti-Maidan protest movement in central and eastern Ukraine. Donbass residents have accused the group's battalions of committing war crimes in the course of the ongoing civil war in eastern Ukraine, while independent observers have pointed to the militants' alleged use as blocking battalions in the warzone. In late 2014, the Russian Supreme Court declared the Right Sector an extremist organization, banning its activity on the territory of the Russian Federation. The group's leader, Dmytro Yarosh, has since been listed wanted by Interpol. |
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#35
Ukrainian forces violate ceasefire regime 17 times over last 24 hours - DPR
MOSCOW, August 20. /TASS/. Ukrainian forces have violated ceasefire regime 17 times over last 24 hours, firing 75 shells at the territory of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), DPR defense ministry said on Thursday.
"Ukrainian Armed Forces violated ceasefire regime 17 times over last 24 hours," Donetsk News Agency quoted DPR defense ministry as saying.
Ukrainian forces shelled from artillery the settlements of Staromikhaylovka, Oktyabr, Zhabichevo, Belaya Kamenka and Spartak, as well as Donetsk's Petrovsky district and airport.
"Twenty-five artillery shells were fired on the territory of the republic [by Ukrainian forces], as well as 50 mines of 82mm and 120mm caliber," the defense ministry said.
The Petrovsky district's administration said earlier that one civilian was injured in the nightly shellings.
"One person was injured," Donetsk News Agency quoted Petrovsky district administration head Maxim Zhukovsky as saying.
Three residential houses were damaged in the settlement of Alexandrovka, part of Donetsk's Petrovsky district, the settlement's head Vladimir Cherkas said.
"Around 11pm [local time] on August 19, the western part of the settlement was shelled, two streets were damaged, and three houses were hit," he said adding that Ukrainian forces shelled the settlement from Maryinka.
Donetsk's Petrovsky district located in the western part of the city is often shelled by Ukrainian forces. The first shelling there was registered in July 2014.
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#36
Irrussianality
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com
August 19, 2015
BLAME GAME
By Paul Robinson
Paul Robinson is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. Paul Robinson holds an MA in Russian and Eastern European Studies from the University of Toronto and a D. Phil. in Modern History from the University of Oxford. Prior to his graduate studies, he served as a regular officer in the British Army Intelligence Corps from 1989 to 1994, and as a reserve officer in the Canadian Forces from 1994 to 1996. He also worked as a media research executive in Moscow in 1995.
Given a choice between a simple explanation and a complex one, I favour the former. So, in time of war, if a shell lands behind the lines of one side, I tend to believe that it was fired by the other side, rather than being 'friendly fire', a 'false flag operation', or anything else. This means that when shells hit Donetsk, I consider that the Ukrainian Army is probably responsible, and when shells hit targets behind the Ukrainian lines, the rebels are probably responsible. This Sunday, artillery struck the Ukrainian-held Mariupol suburb of Sartana, killing two civilians. The logic above makes me believe that the army of the rebel Donetsk People's Republic is most likely to blame.
The locals seem to disagree, though. According to the Kyiv Post:
"Local people at the scene, telling the Kyiv Post that the town had been shelled by the Ukrainian side, called on the media to 'tell the truth.' 'If it had been the (Russian-separatist forces), they wouldn't have left a stone standing here!' said Natalia, a 43-year-old woman who was too afraid to give her full name. She blamed those who 'danced on the Maidan,' for the attack, adding that 'the war will be finished and we will live in happiness as soon as the Ukrainian army is away from the Donbas.' A dozen people around her supported her claims. Serhiy, 56, who also wouldn't give his full name, showed a handful of shell fragments, saying they were from small-caliber mortar shells that couldn't have come from separatist positions, as these were too far away."
The Kyiv Post's Dzmity Halko adds: 'I haven't heard such embittered confidence that the Ukrainians are shelling them and that those who "danced on Maidan" are guilty of everything since the last time I was in the occupied territories last summer.' When somebody asked 'whether they didn't think that it was just such aggressively pro-Russian sentiments that had brought war into the Ukrainian home, they flung insults at her. If there hadn't been a large number of police in the village, it's possible they would have beaten us up.'
This isn't an isolated incident. In January and February of this year, rebel artillery devastated the town of Debaltsevo and the surrounding area during several weeks of combat. Yet when reporters entered Debaltsevo after rebel forces captured it, they found that the locals blamed the Ukrainian Army for the destruction. According to Business New Europe:
"Town residents questioned by bne IntelliNews counter-intuitively blame the shelling and destruction of the town on the very Ukrainian forces that were ostensibly protecting the town - some perhaps out of confusion, others perhaps out of fear. According to [Debaltsevo inhabitant Sergei] Rudenko, the Ukrainian forces were responsible for shelling the town. 'I saw with my own eyes how Ukrainian troops fired mortars which exploded within the town,' he says. 'And we saw in January and February when there was shelling every day how Ukrainian TV crews would be on the scene of any shell impact within minutes.' 'Everyone knows this in the town,' he adds. 'Ask anyone you want they will say the same.' ... Taxi driver Roman Maksimov, 31, who stayed in the cellar of a housing block during the shelling, tells bne IntelliNews a similar story: 'Of course it was the Ukrainians that bombed here. ... The Ukrainians wanted to make sure that not a stone was left unturned before they pulled out. And when they pulled out, we saw how their tanks fired on houses directly.'"
It would appear that people believe who dislike the Ukrainian government and army believe that those institutions must be responsible for their suffering, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. But that begs the question of why they dislike the government and army so much. Sartana was 'liberated' from the rebels over a year ago. The Ukrainian authorities have had plenty of time to prove to its inhabitants that 'Russian propaganda' is false, and to win over their hearts and minds. And yet it seems that they have utterly failed to do so. A year of 'liberation' has left such a legacy of hostility that people yell abuse at journalists who dare to suggest that government forces are not to blame for their problems. This is a sobering thought.
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#37
Russia Insider/Kyiv Post
www.russia-insider.com
August 10, 2015
As Shells Hit Ukraine-Controlled Town Residents Cry False Flag
August 16th shells landed on the outskirts of Mariupol killing two civilians and injuring a 10-year-old child
Town is under the control of the Kiev government, but residents do not believe it was the rebels who carried out the shelling
Dzmitry Halko (The Kyiv Post)
SARTANA, Ukraine - Shelling on Aug. 16 that killed two civilians and severely injured a 10-year-old girl in Sartana, a town on the northeastern outskirts of the city of Mariupol, has raised fears that attacks on civilians might presage a worsening of hostilities in the Donbas.
Despite evidence to the contrary in a town that the Ukrainian military controls, some still blamed Ukrainian soldiers for the attack.
Local people at the scene, telling the Kyiv Post that the town had been shelled by the Ukrainian side, called on the media to "tell the truth."
"If it had been the (Russian-separatist forces), they wouldn't have left a stone standing here!" said Natalia, a 43-year-old woman who was too afraid to give her full name. She blamed those who "danced on the Maidan," for the attack, adding that "the war will be finished and we will live in happiness as soon as the Ukrainian army is away from the Donbas."
A dozen people around her supported her claims.
Serhiy, 56, who also wouldn't give his full name, showed a handful of shell fragments, saying they were from small-caliber mortars shells that couldn't have come from separatist positions, as these were too far away.
However, the fragments appeared to be from a large-caliber howitzer shell.
Stepan Makhsma, the head of Sartana Town Council, was certain that Russian-separatist forces launched the attack.
He said the shelling, which started at10:06 pmon Aug. 16, had come from the southeast, where separatist positions are located. He said 33 shell craters had been found in residential areas, and 30 in other parts of the town, which has a population of 10,000 people.
More than 50 houses were damaged, with five suffering direct hits. The water, gas and electricity supply to the town has been cut.
The 10-year-old girl was among six people injured in the attack. She is now in hospital in Mariupol, and may have to have her foot amputated due to severe shrapnel wounds.
Asked about the claims of the locals, Makhsma would not acknowledge that there are any anti-Ukrainian sentiments among the people of Sartana.
"I disagree - everything is all right. The people have a proper understanding of what happened," Makhsma said.
But Yaroslav Chepurnoy, the military press officer for Sector M of the front line (in the area of Mariupol), said he had been shocked by the claims of the locals when he talked to him.
"Apart from people being killed this is probably the most horrible casualty of the shelling. As there are no military targets (here), there was no reason to shell Sartana but to spread panic among people and distrust in the Ukrainian state," Chepurnoy said.
He said the attack on the town had been carried out with 150 millimeter artillery 150 millimeter mortars from the separatist-held village of Sakhana, to the southeast of Sartana.
"And I don't know what to do to make people of Donbas not think that they're being attacked by the Ukrainian military," Chepurnoy said. "Actually, if it hadn't been for the strong response of our artillery, which suppressed the enemy fire, there could have been many more casualties. We're here to protect and defend."
The Aug. 16 attack on Sartana is not the first to hit the town since hostilities in the area broke out last fall, and not the worst: Seven people were killed and 17 injured onOct. 14last year in a shelling attack that the local authorities in Mariupol blamed on Russian-separatist forces. The head of the town council, Makhsma, said there had been five previous attacks on his town.
"All of them had the same pattern and were conducted with the same weapons and ammunition, from the same positions," Makhsma said.
The sound of the shelling was heard in various parts of nearby Mariupol, with locals reporting windows shuddering from the blast waves. According to people in the city, the Aug. 16 shelling was the loudest heard in the last two months.
The incident in Sartana will increase locals' fears that a long-expected separatist offensive against Mariupol is coming. The leader of the militant groups that have seized control of part of Donbas Oblast, Alexander Zakhachenko, has repeatedly said that the forces he leads aim to take not only Mariupol, but the whole of Donetsk Oblast.
Fighting in the Donbas war zone has increased sharply in the last week. The number of daily attacks reported by the Ukrainian military hit a fresh peak on Aug. 14, with 175 incidents being reported. The number of attacks on Aug. 16 was 148.
Both sides have claimed that the other is preparing to launch an offensive, and that attacks on civilians are being carried out to justify a re-launch of full-scale hostilities.
Chepurnoy said that the attack on Sartana was one such case, and had been carried out by Russian-separatists with the aim of turning civilians on the Ukrainian side of the lines against the Ukrainian military.
"Those who conducted the shelling have achieved their ends," he said.
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#38 Reuters August 19, 2015 The Great Debate Ukraine shifts closer to open war with recent attacks By James Miller James Miller is the managing editor of The Interpreter where he reports on Russia and Ukraine. He is a contributor at The Daily Beast, Vice News, Foreign Policy Magazine, The Moscow Times, and others. [Maps here http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/08/19/ukraine-shifts-closer-to-open-war-with-recent-attacks/] Renewed fighting in Ukraine has claimed the lives of dozens of civilians and soldiers in the past two weeks alone. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin have both called emergency war councils since Aug. 4, as the ceasefire and diplomacy have further broken down. In its recent reports, the Ukrainian military has used the phrase "most shelling in six months" multiple times, and with increasing frequency. On Aug. 10, Russian-backed fighters, whom Ukraine claims were led by Russian military units, launched a tank and artillery assault on the strategic town of Starognatovka, which lies between the capital of the Russian-backed separatists, Donetsk, and the key port city of Mariupol. The battle did not go the way the Russian-backed forces anticipated, however. The Ukrainian military units stationed in the area, which apparently included volunteer units, beat back the offensive within hours, and even counterattacked before returning to their positions. Though some facts are disputed, a few things are clear: The battle marked a significant escalation in fighting, both sides suffered higher casualties than they have in months and the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine has not ended. On Aug. 3, the day before the Ukrainian president chaired an emergency war council, the Ukrainian military released a map that showed where the fighting was occurring across the front lines and expressed great concern that both civilian and military targets were under regular attack across the entire front line. The focus of the newest wave of attacks launched by the Russian-backed fighters is on the western front, from Gorlovka in the north to Mariupol in the south. Nearly every night for more than a week, citizens of Donetsk posted video of outgoing Grad multiple-launch rocket fire. "Grad" is the Russian word for "hail," and it could not be more appropriate, as these dumb-fire rockets fall indiscriminately on civilian and military targets alike. The Ukrainian military has been firing back, and civilians have reportedly been harmed and killed on both sides of the demarcation line. But Ukrainian soldiers complain that the military response to the attacks is neither proportionate nor effective because they do not have the necessary equipment to respond properly. In particular, the Ukrainian government has lobbied the United States for sophisticated ground-scan radar, which would allow the military to monitor and target vehicles and artillery beyond its line of sight. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon is ready to supply Ukraine with these weapons, but the White House is holding up the process - presumably to avoid angering the Russian government, which is supposed to be cooperating on other areas of geostrategic importance, like Iran and Syria. The Russian government has already supplied its proxies with similar weapons. In November, long after the Putin-negotiated Minsk ceasefire was supposed to take hold, both the 1RL232 "Leopard" and the 1RL239 "Lynx" ground-scan radar systems were photographed by journalist Stefan Huijboom and others traveling through Donetsk. There is no evidence that the separatists have ever captured a 1RL232 from the Ukrainian military, and the Ukrainian military has never possessed a 1RL239. The only plausible explanation for these weapons appearing in Ukraine is that they were supplied by the Russian military, which likely operates them since they are highly sophisticated war machines. Furthermore, Ukraine does not possess sophisticated surveillance drones, yet it has shot down (and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has witnessed) many Russian military drones operating on the wrong side of the border since the start of the conflict. If that is not bad enough, the organization's monitors in Ukraine have recently seen an R-330ZH "Zhitel" jamming system not far from the front lines. The system is capable of jamming GPS navigation and communication; it was used by the Russian military during its takeover of Crimea last year. Several OSCE drones have been jammed in the past months, and in one incident the aircraft crashed after the signal between the unmanned aerial vehicle and its controller was disrupted. The separatists actually told the OSCE that they have access to sophisticated equipment that can jam unmanned vehicles; in late June, soldiers from the Vostok Battalion, a group long thought to be Russian Special Forces, took selfies with an R-330ZH. Not only is Russia deeply involved in front-line operations in eastern Ukraine; it is hardly making any effort to hide it. So, the Russian-backed fighters are firing hundreds of shells and rockets toward Ukraine each day, many of which are launched from civilian areas, and Ukraine is unable to respond adequately. It is possible that Eastern Europe is closest to open war than it has been since the "Russian invasion" of Ukraine one year ago nearly to the day. If this seems like a headline that repeats itself every few months, that's not an accident. The Russian military has steadily increased its direct intervention in eastern Ukraine since the Minsk protocols, signed in September and again in February, were supposed to freeze the conflict. As long as the fighting never reaches a dramatic threshold, Putin has been able to keep the conflict out of the headlines, and away from the attention of voters in Europe and the United States, who might otherwise pressure their governments to do something to stop it. |
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#39
Reuters
August 20, 2015
Ukraine leader looks to summit with Germany, France, to curb Russian 'aggression'
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Thursday he wanted summit talks with German and French leaders next week on how to curb Russian "aggression" and force Moscow to comply with a February peace plan for east Ukraine.
Poroshenko made his comments at an awards ceremony to intelligence officers, as Kiev's military announced four more Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and 14 others wounded. The fighting threatens a six-month ceasefire between government forces and Russian-backed separatists.
Poroshenko will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande in Berlin on Monday at Kiev's behest in response to an upsurge in fighting in east and south-east Ukraine which both sides blame on the other.
More than 6,500 people are estimated to have been killed in the conflict which erupted after Russian-backed separatists rebelled in the east following the ousting of a pro-Moscow president in Kiev which in turn led to Russia annexing Crimea.
Both sides have withdrawn large numbers of heavy weapons from the conflict zone in line with a ceasefire mapped out in Minsk, Belarus, last February but violations and sporadic clashes still take a steady toll of lives daily.
The Ukrainian leader reproached Russia for not forcing the rebels to withdraw all the weapons as agreed at Minsk and said international monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe were being denied proper access to areas to fulfil their mission.
"We must coordinate action because the key task of the Ukrainian leadership is to form a powerful international community in a single coalition which can stop the aggressor," he said.
Moscow, for its part says Kiev has failed to deliver on multiple provisions of the Minsk peace plan and wants Kiev to hold direct talks with representatives of the self-proclaimed rebel "republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk, which it backs.
The Ukrainian authorities are unwilling to do this since it would imply recognition of their status.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday urged the German and French leaders to put pressure on Kiev to fulfil its obligations under the Minsk plan and "ensure it is carried out in full".
Poroshenko, in his comments to journalists on Thursday, criticised Russian President Vladimir Putin for making "an illegal visit" to Crimea this week and called for coordinated steps to ensure that Russia's annexation of the Black Sea peninsula in March 2014 is not recognised internationally.
In fresh military action overnight into Thursday, the Ukrainian military reported renewed rebel shelling of government positions near the separatist-held city of Donetsk and mortar fire in villages near the strategic Kiev-controlled port city of Mariupol.
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#40
www.rt.com
August 20, 2015
Ukraine: Road to peace runs through Minsk-II
By Dr Alexander Yakovenko, Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Deputy foreign minister (2005-2011).
More than six months have passed since the February 12 Minsk Agreements on the settlement in Ukraine were struck. However, the ongoing crisis in south east Ukraine and problems arising in the course of the implementation are still a matter of serious concern.
Kiev has been very selective, not to say reluctant, with respect to its obligations under the Minsk accord, especially as regards implementation of their key political points. Even James Sherr of Chatham House concedes that. Contrary to it Kiev is stepping up its militaristic rhetoric, refusing to sign the document on the withdrawal of tanks, artillery and mortars from the disengagement line. Announcements of the Ukrainian authorities of the return of their heavy weapons and artillery systems to their combat positions escalate tensions between the conflicting sides. Media report that shelling of settlements and casualties among Donbass civilians are on the rise. At the same time, the British government announces its intention to increase the scale and range of the Ukrainian military training. Yet, even The Independent in its recent report from Teterevka casts some doubt on the presumed non-lethality of such activity.
No progress has been seen on the issue of constitutional reform, aimed at a firm and reliable long-term agreement that guarantees equality for all regions and ethnic groups, and worked out by way of a comprehensive and inclusive discussion. The amendments to the Ukrainian Constitution on decentralization that have been recently discussed in the Verkhovna Rada are largely prompted by considerations of political expediency and might at any time become a bargaining chip in the never-ending struggle for power in Ukraine. They have been prepared without the participation of representatives of Donetsk and Lugansk and have taken no account of the interests of Ukraine's southeast.
The Western countries, for their part, do not adequately contribute to the process of implementation of the Minsk Agreements. Rather than supporting a thorough and unbiased international investigation of crimes committed during the Ukrainian crisis, including the crash of Malaysian flight MH17, they are politicizing the matter further by promoting the creation of an unprecedented tribunal that would have to operate under immense political pressure. The current investigations are held in secret, which undermines their credibility.
However, Minsk-II has still a huge potential in putting an end to conflict in Ukraine. Russia is doing its part, notwithstanding the crude propaganda in the West. We urge the sides in the Ukrainian conflict to strictly comply with their commitments. Hope that all parties that supported the Minsk Agreements, including Germany and France, will do their best to ensure their implementation in good faith, acting jointly and severally as their guarantors. The only road to peace in Ukraine runs through the Minsk-II.
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#41 Business New Europe www.bne.eu August 19, 2015 Kyiv one of the world's most unliveable cities, survey finds Henry Kirby in London [Charts here http://www.bne.eu/content/story/bnechart-kyiv-one-worlds-most-unliveable-cities-survey-finds] Kyiv is one of the worst cities in the world to live in, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's annual Liveability Ranking. The Ukrainian capital recorded the second-biggest fall in its liveability score over the last five years out of all 140 countries measured in the study, with a 25.8-point fall in its score since 2010. Its overall rank of 132nd placed it eighth-from-bottom overall. Despite the ongoing conflict with pro-Russian separatists taking place on the opposite side of the country in eastern Ukraine, the disruption of last years's sometimes violent Euromaidan street protests that ousted former president Viktor Yanukovych and worsening economic hardship pushed Ukraine's liveability score down. Russia's recent economic hardship as a result of low oil prices and Western-led sanctions were enough to see Moscow and St Petersburg enter the top 10 of cities with the biggest score decreases. Ranking 77th out of 140 in the overall city ranking, St Petersburg's score was down by 4.4 points since 2010. 74th-ranked Moscow fell 5.6 points in the same period. While the survey spelt bad news for Ukraine and Russia, the results showed that Warsaw, Poland's capital, was the fifth-highest climber over five years, with a score increase of 2.5 points. The period saw Poland's GDP grow faster than any other EU nation, no doubt contributing to the increase in its liveability score. Other notable improvers were Bratislava in Slovakia, and Azerbaijan's capital Baku, the eighth- and ninth-highest climbers over the last five years. |
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#42
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
August 20, 2015
Thousands of Ukrainians Are Being Maimed and This Disabled Activist is Furious About It
By Alexander Chopov
Oleksiy Zhuravko is a former Ukraine MP and government ombudsman for the disabled. He started several foundations employing more than 3500 disabled people.
He was kicked out of Ukraine last year for his politics - he did not agree with the Maidan overthrow.
Albeit a disabled man with no legs and only one arm, he is charged with terrorism by his country for speaking out against the government killing and maiming its own citizens.
Interviewed for Russia Insider by Alexander Chopov.
Q: Oleksiy Valerievich, good day. Thank you for agreeing to talk to Russia Insider.
Good day.
Q: Oleksiy Valerievich, let's start from the very beginning - the so called EuroMaidan movement against president Yanukovich. In the West it is portrayed as a popular uprising against a corrupt system. You, however, claim that it was organized and orchestrated by the United States. Can you back your argument up with facts?
Yes I can. Yanukovich obviously made many mistakes. But in the winter of 2013-2014 I visited Maidan several times. It was incredibly well organized - organized professionally. Great amounts of money were invested in the so called "revolution" - do you remember videos of crates of US dollars flown into Kiev by US diplomatic mail?
Obviously we cannot forget the cookies that Victoria Nuland famously gave out to the protestors. But that's a the tip of the iceberg - food, water, toilets, firewood, tents, stage, sound systems and so on costs a lot of money - especially to have all this infrastructure and logistics operating for 3 months during the winter. Maidan security is yet another aspect worth mentioning - I personally saw Right Sector (Praviy Sektor) and hundreds of other paramilitary fighters there - all of them had to be trained and paid to stay there for three months - again that costs lots and lots of cash.
In one interview Nuland herself admitted to State Department spending over 5 billion dollars on Ukraine. And this is only the State Department, and only officially. How much more did "private donors", NGOs, CIA, and other Western countries spend is immeasurable.
And then there were all the foreign guests, all the way up to foreign ministers and ranking senators constantly visiting Maidan, blatantly interfering in domestic politics of a sovereign state. So I do believe that the EuroMaidan was just a pretext and instrument to remove the legitimate government.
Q: So are you saying that the entire country of Ukraine loved Yanukovich, but America hired some thugs who overthrew a beloved leader?
I am not saying that the majority of Ukraine loved Yanukovich, but he was constitutionally and democratically elected legitimate president. Many leaders lose popularity during their terms, but if people want their removal from office there are legal and constitutional procedures for that.
Q: Many would say he lost his mandate when he refused to sign the Association agreement with the European Union - something that people in both the West and the East Ukraine wanted.
He didn't lose the mandate - he was violently overthrown, and to this day is the legitimate president of Ukraine. Whatever your opinion of him as a person, that is a constitutional fact. Being a law-abiding citizen I have to respect the Constitution.
Q: Wow. Two questions then - did I hear you right - you want Yanukovich to return as president? And second, you mentioned the Constitution, what about the so called draconian measures against protestors passed by the Rada in January 2014? Many protestors thought them to be unconstitutional and dictatorial
First - in order to return the country to a constitutional path, I think Yanukovich's return might be needed. He then has to resign, and call for new elections in accordance to the Constitution. As a person familiar with parliamentary procedures I think that could be one way to solve the crisis.
Second - at the time the so called "draconian laws" were passed I was no longer in the Rada and was the Ukrainian government's ombudsman for the disabled
Q: Judging from you Facebook posts you support Mykola Azarov's recently announced Committee for the Salvation of Ukraine. At their press conference they said that Yanukovich is equally responsible for Ukraine's tragedy and should be tried alongside of Ukraine's current leaders. How serious is your disagreement with the CSU, and what other disagreements do you have with them?
In reality there is no disagreement - what I said earlier is a down to the letter constitutional and legal procedure. In normal times that would be the way to resolve the crisis. However, as they say "desperate times call for desperate measures", so I understand the reluctance to reappoint such polarizing figure as Yanukovich as president.
Q: There are those who say that you, Azarov, CSU and others are in relative safety in Moscow, yet you call for Ukrainians to come out and protest the government en masse. If the current government is as bad as you say, aren't you just setting people up to be arrested or worst? And to follow up, if the government doesn't give up its power voluntarily, do you see a possibility of a military wing of CSU?
Azarov said everything correctly - if there is no support for the government they will not be able to remain in power - people are the source of power in Ukraine.
As for a military solution - I cannot rule it out. Ukraine today is a country engulfed in anarchy and the only law that works is the law of the jungle. There are tens of thousands of weapons in the country. A responsible government with have to disarm these units, and some of them might not disarm voluntarily.
Q: You yourself are from Kherson oblast. Kherson is now de facto a border region, being the closest Ukrainian province to Russian Crimea. What is the mood of people in Kherson? Are the people there ready to take up arms against the central government?
The majority of Kherson's population does not agree with what the government and the president are doing. People are afraid. People don't want their cities to be bombed. They don't want armed men in the streets. The don't want to suffer the fate of Lugansk and Donetsk.
Both national and local media are stoking up hysteria and openly lying to people, zombifying them to the point where people don't know what is really going on, but sooner or later the people will rise up. They will rise up because the people of Kherson are getting poorer by the day. There is not enough money for the most basic things like paying the ever growing bills. Kherson region is not prepared for winter either - there is no money coming into the budget.
Q: But there is a simple answer to that - "it's all Putin's fault". Ukrainian officials of all levels are constantly claiming that all of Ukraine's problems are caused by the evil and horrible Russia, with its deep rooted fear of a free and prosperous Ukraine. What do you say to those who claim your countries problems are all orchestrated from the Kremlin?
As you are aware, I have been forced to live in Russia for the past several months. If Russian media and Putin stoked up anti-Ukrainian sentiment similar to the anti-Russian bias Ukrainian media is barraging their viewers with, Ukrainians would probably be chased out of Russia. But there are millions of us here, and Russia has welcomed all.
As for Putin himself I think he respects and values his countrymen. He does not call for war. On the contrary he is calling for solidarity, unity and mutual prosperity. For him the interests of the Russian people are paramount - because the people are his source of power.
In Ukraine the situation is reversed. People who are in charge of the country are illegitimate. Yes, they had presidential and parliamentary elections, but there were armed men at every polling station scaring people into voting. So that vote did not legitimize them, and they know that. So for them their own interests, and their own ability to make money of Ukraine's population, are paramount. This, plus the total lack of experience and strategy, is Ukraine's biggest problem - not mythical Kremlin masterminds.
Q: You were the ombudsman for the disabled during Yanukovich's lasts years in office. What is the current situation for Ukraine's disabled people? Is there a person, an ombudsman, responsible for their wellbeing, like you were?
No, there is no ombudsman for the disabled in Ukraine today. Furthermore, today Ukraine is violating UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. People with disabilities are forgotten by the state. Industries where they work are collapsing and going bankrupt. As for the people who became disabled because of the war in the East, Ukraine is not providing them with any help or support, even though it was the state that sent these young men to fight there.
Many men who came back disabled from the war are forced to stand at the cross-roads or in other public places, begging people for money just to survive.
Government support for getting people prostheses is almost non-existent, and getting foreign-made prostheses is unbearable burden on state and local budgets.
The Ministry of Social Affairs is failing at its job. All the support the government declares for the disabled veterans of the war remains on paper, and these people are left to fend for themselves.
This lack of help, plus the ongoing war means that the number of disabled Ukrainians without any help will only keep growing.
Q: As you know Russia Insider is a relatively new site, however, we already have readers from all over the world. What can our readers do to help bring peace to Ukraine?
Remember when in January of this year the entire world was shocked and appalled by the horrendous terror attacks in Paris? 15 people died in that tragedy. They died for speaking their minds. The people who killed them were clearly terrorists.
Today, in South-East Ukraine dozens die on almost daily basis. At least 6500 people lost their lives in this war. These people are dying because in the spring of 2014 they came out to protests the coup in Kiev and to speak their minds about the future of their region and the country.
For that these people are being killed and starved to death! I think the word terrorism applies to Kiev's actions - they are trying to scare people into submission. The West seems not to notice any of it, and people who give orders to kill women and children are welcomed as guests of honor in Western capitals.
I would like to thank Russia Insider for being one of the few English language sites that tells the world the truth about what is going on in my country.
How can your readers help? First and foremost they can provide Donbass with moral or material support. There are several great charities that help Donbass operating in the West. If people want to help, they can contact me via Facebook, and I will direct you to these charities.
Second the people of the world must demand a fair and unbiased coverage of Ukrainian conflict. The world needs to know the truth about what is going on in Donbass.
And third, I call on your readers to spread the word among their friends. I call on them to write their elected officials. I call on your readers to come out to protests western support for Kiev's criminal government! People of the West must tell their governments to stop financing Kiev's genocide against its own citizens!
Only when enough people in the West learn the truth about what is really going on in Donbass, and western citizens demand for their government to stop financing this civil war, will there be peace. Thank you once again for telling the world the truth!
Q: Thank you for the interview.
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#43
Ukraine to resell Russian electricity to Poland at double price
KIEV, August 19. /TASS/. In the framework of aid to Poland, the power engineering sector of which has been hit by an anomalous heatwave, Ukraine will sell electricity to that country at 7.5 eurocents per 1 kwh, the National Commission for Energy and Utilities said on Wednesday.
Operators of Polish and Ukrainian power grids signed an agreement on August 17 on supplies of electricity to Poland. The national operator of power grids, Ukrenergo, says the maximum size of Poland's emergency need for electricity is 235 megawatts.
Experts say 7.5 eurocents per 1 kwh is high enough a price. It stands in a marked contrast to the 3.68 eurocents per 1 kwh, which the Minister of Energy and Coalmines Vladimir Demchishin named to TASS somewhat earlier as the price of purchasing electric power from Russia.
Exports of Ukrainian electricity to Russia from January through to June 2015 totaled 0.8 million kwh, while in the same period of last year no such exports took place.
At the same time, Ukraine imported 1.393 billion kwh of electricity from Russia. The exports in June alone totaled 2.8 million kwh.
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#44
New York Times
August 20, 2015
Russia's Pitch to Vacationers: Crimea Is for Patriots
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
SAKI, Crimea - Tamara Tsetlayana stood on a narrow stretch of gray beach, rinsing off a thick layer of the black, ostensibly therapeutic mud that has drawn visitors to the salty lake here for more than a century.
The dreary shoreline with its view of rusted dredging equipment was perhaps less appealing than previous holiday destinations in Turkey and Europe, she said, but patriotism drove her choice this summer.
"With all these sanctions, we decided to support our own," said Ms. Tsetlayana, expressing a sentiment that the Kremlin hoped would inspire a stampede of Russians eager to vacation in Crimea after Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine last year, prompting Western sanctions.
Yet that tourist tidal wave never quite materialized.
It wasn't for lack of trying. Workers at state-run companies received subsidized travel packages, for example, while employees of the security services were barred from vacationing abroad. The storied military history of Crimea inspired an advertising effort - one billboard campaign featured a pointing paratrooper demanding to know if YOU had signed up to be a tourist in Crimea.
President Vladimir V. Putin contributed his bit, too, taking a high-profile trip to Crimea this week. Past excursions have included exploits like bare-chested horseback riding or raising ancient amphorae planted on the seabed for him to "discover." This time he went underwater in a clear bathyscaph to look at the wreck of 10th-century ship, which he said proved Russia had ancient links to the area.
The prime minister of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, put a brave face on the overall season, telling a Western reporter that he was sorry "to disappoint" but that millions of Russian tourists actually were coming. "Everything is all right with the tourist season," he said. "Patriotically minded Russians gave special attention to Crimea."
The numbers tell a different story, still well below the six million annual visitors who came in 2013, before Russia's annexation of the peninsula. In perhaps a more telling sign, Mr. Aksyonov fired his tourism minister in June for incompetence.
Ordinary people living off tourism - guides, taxi drivers, bed-and-breakfast owners - described the season as anemic. A group of villagers along the southern "Crimean Riviera" wrote an open letter to Mr. Putin in late July saying that visitors this year amounted to just 10 percent of the number in 2013, grousing that they faced unemployment and hunger.
"People do not know how they will survive the winter," the letter said.
Residents across Crimea cited various reasons, including a weak economy throughout Russia, transportation problems and a lack of amenities.
About 33,000 vacationers used to arrive every day by train, but Ukraine now blocks the tracks. Ferry service to southern Russia was never great, and although better organization and more boats cut the waiting time from days to hours, the volume remains limited. (The prime minister also fired the transportation minister.)
Mr. Aksyonov said there had been a huge leap in the number of passenger planes, with 106 arriving around the clock, up from around 12, bringing some 15,000 people each day.
A prodigious construction effort at the Simferopol airport more than doubled the terminal space over the past six months. Yet the airport is still hard-pressed to absorb the traffic. Some planes circle for 30 minutes awaiting a landing spot. The arrivals hall is so jammed with incoming travelers, even at 2 a.m., that those greeting passengers must wait out in the street.
Many Crimeans noted that the tenor of tourism was changing. Ukrainians were happy to rent a room within walking distance of the beach and to cook their own meals. Russians prefer hotel packages. The supply in Crimea is extremely limited, unlike in Sochi, another Black Sea resort that was rebuilt for the 2014 Winter Olympics.
"Many people in Russia have been spoiled by all those fancy resorts in Turkey and Egypt with their all-inclusive vouchers," said Vera F. Basava, 67, a retired hospital worker hawking a rental apartment near the beach in the southern village of Gurzuf. "So they have doubts about coming here."
Before the crisis, Ms. Basava said she rented to all kinds of people, Ukrainians, Germans, Britons. In a good season she could earn 200,000 rubles, some $6,000, to supplement a monthly pension then worth $280 and now half that.
Mr. Putin did not help matters in one of his first statements on Crimea last year by describing its resorts as below Russian standards.
In 2014, 3.8 million tourists visited Crimea, according to government statistics.
Down the street in Gurzuf, a guide named Lena, who did not want to use her last name, was sitting under a sprawling fig tree trying to sell excursion tickets to the wineries, the palaces and the natural wonders that once made southern Crimea the playground of the czars and then the Communist Party elite.
"Last year many Russians came out of curiosity, but this is a weak season," she said, before admonishing a visitor: "Why are you sober? You are in Crimea!"
Upscale resorts seem to be doing better than others. At the Sea Wellness Spa Hotel in Alushta, a sprawling, forested coastal property, the price of rooms ranged from just over $100 a night for a studio to more than $2,000 a night for a six-room villa with its own pool. The hotel was running at 75 percent capacity, said Maria Boriy, its commercial director.
In Yalta, Lubov V. Gribkova, the chairman of the City Council's tourism committee, said the southern port had raked in an unexpected windfall from taxes and fees because so many Russians stayed in hotels this year.
Yalta decided to skip its usual spring beautification program, spending the money instead on the technical studies needed to snag federal road construction money, Ms. Gribkova said.
Poor infrastructure discourages tourism. Mr. Aksyonov said 80 percent of the road network needed replacing. But the Kremlin announced in June that auditors could not account for 60 percent of the money allocated for road construction last year.
During the Soviet era, many of the palaces and estates of the czarist aristocracy were nationalized and converted to health sanitariums. There are still 144 of them, and little has changed since Soviet times.
Many still offer the same menu of slightly weird science meant to improve your health: leeches to suck your blood, magnets that supposedly diminish pain, breathing in salt caves.
In Saki, the N. N. Budenko Sanitarium, a rehabilitation hospital, uses the famous local mud to treat people paralyzed in automobile accidents and other traumas, drawing visitors from across Russia and the former Soviet republics.
"Practically nothing has changed since Soviet times because it was all so effective that there was no need to tinker," said Snezhana Kotelevich, the deputy head of all the sanitarium's medical clinics.
The first treatment Dr. Kotelevich offered a visitor was a mud enema to address prostate problems. "All the women will be yours after that," she said.
Asked if the hospital treated the wounded from the war in southeastern Ukraine, Dr. Kotelevich responded, "That's a provocative question," before allowing that the wounded from the Donetsk People's Republic were treated at the facility. There was just one there at the time, she said, a man from the North Caucasus who could not walk and also had intestinal problems because of his wounds.
Many Crimeans in the travel business expect the industry will recover only when the grandest infrastructure project of them all is completed, a multibillion-dollar bridge linking Crimea to the mainland. But that is at least three years off.
One travel agent in Yalta keeps pictures on her computer of the huge foreign cruise ships that used to stop here, ghosts from yet another bygone era on Crimea before Western sanctions over Ukraine cut them off.
"We thought Russia would fill this place with seminars and conferences, but so far nothing," she sighed, adding that Crimea had turned into such a "madhouse" that she did not want to give her name for fear of losing government business.
Nikolay Khalip contributed reporting.
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#45
http://newcoldwar.org
August 18, 2015
Victor Shapinov: The Novorossiyan ideal isn't dead
By Dmitry Rodionov, originally published in Svobonaya Pressa [Free Press], August 18, 2015. Translation from the Russian original by Greg Butterfield and published on his website 'Red Star Over Donbass'. [http://redstaroverdonbass.blogspot.ca/2015/08/the-novorossiyan-ideal-isnt-dead.html]
Excerpts:
Novorossiya" isn't dead - its fate depends on the implementation of the Minsk agreements by Ukraine. That's what Chairman of the Parliament of Novorossiya Oleg Tsarev said in an interview with The Crimean Telegraph. According to him, while the activity of the Parliament of Novorossiya is frozen, the question of its future work remains open.
"The Donetsk and Lugansk parliaments at the time adopted the Constitution of Novorossiya, and I was appointed Head of the Parliament of Novorossiya. But as long as we are moving in the framework of the Minsk process, we stopped the legislative work of the Parliament, we are not forming executive bodies, and our Parliament is frozen. The fate of our Parliament will depend on how events develop further. In any case, the Novorossiyan ideal is alive - many people are now in prison for distributing newspaper and leaflets, or discussing it on the Internet, and many died. Novorossiya has been paid for in blood, and it is impossible to stop," said Tsarev.
Recall that in May, Tsarev announced the suspension of the Parliament of Novorossiya and the freezing of the project of the same name in connection with the discrepancy with the provisions of the Minsk Agreement. The latter implies endowing "certain regions of Donetsk and Lugansk" with a special status, but as a part of Ukraine. The idea of Novorossiya, revived in the spring of 2014, involves the creation of a state separate from Ukraine from part of the former Donetsk and Lugansk regions (small Novorossiya), or as the above, as well as Kharkov, Kherson, Zaporozhye, Nikolayev and Odessa regions (great Novorossiya). But in fact, only the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics managed to defend their independence, and in June 2014 decided to establish a confederal union - the Union of the People's Republics, which uses the term "Novorossiya."
Even before Tsarev froze the project, DNR Foreign Minister Alexander Kofman said Novorossiya was a false start, which led to numerous victims among its supporters, and now the project is closed until "a new political elite, able to lead the movement" emerges in the other regions seeking independence from Ukraine.
Around the same time, the cessation of the Novorossiya project was endorsed by Denis Pushilin, head of the DNR's delegation to the Contact Group on peaceful settlement in the Donbass. However, according to him, the project was not frozen, but merely transferred to another plane, as the priority for the authorities of the DNR and the LC was a peaceful settlement of the conflict. Novorossiya "is considered exclusively from the point of view of a bloodless policy." Its further development depends on the actions of Kiev, said the DNR envoy.
But today, six months after the conclusion of the Minsk 2 agreements, Kiev and has not fulfilled its obligations. Moreover, despite a number of peace initiatives by the Donbass republics, including a unilateral voluntary withdrawal of equipment of less than 100mm caliber from the line of contact, Ukrainian forces have intensified their daily attacks on towns of the DNR andLC, and significantly built up weapons and troop strength. It is in these circumstances that Tsarev made his statement about the resuscitation of Novorossiya.
...
The Minsk format itself was a blow to Novorossiya, says political commentator Victor Shapinov.
Victor Shapinov: Unfortunately, for a long time Novorossiya was used as a boogeyman against Kiev and its Western backers. They said, 'if you do not negotiate with Russia, we will create Novorossiya'. In this situation, the rebellious people of the South-East appeared as extras, pawns in a game of the "big bosses," and the leadership of the people's republics was stuck a difficult position where it was not able to solve complex problems of state building, since the Minsk process was supposed to push the de facto independent territories back into the Ukrainian state. This, of course, demoralized the people and militias who rebelled for a country without the nationalists and the oligarchs, and it turned out that they were fighting over some muddy "special status" in the state of these same oligarchs and nationalists.
FP: Is the Novorossiyan project still relevant? What is it ever relevant at all?
VS: Revolt against the post-Maidan regime took place in many regions. Everywhere except Donbass, it was suppressed, the leaders arrested, and many were killed in Odessa, as some fled to Donbass or abroad. But the dream of the people remained. Whether its implementation is called Novorossiya, the Union of People's Republics or Federal Ukraine is not so important. The struggle for the ideal of a free country, where labor is respected, where there is no hatred on ethnic and linguistic grounds - this ideal has remained in the hearts of millions. And when I talk with the militias, with the common people of Donbass, when rare news comes of comrades fighting in the underground in Ukraine, I believe that this ideal will be realized.
Of course, there are geopolitical players who are trying to instrumentalize this ideal, turn it into a bargaining chip, set it up as a scarecrow, etc. But the popular movement is alive, it did not disappear. It's a fact that thousands and thousands of people are ready to give their lives for these ideals, and not just to be turned into an instrument for solving immediate problems of certain world powers.
The Bolsheviks also tried to use this game against the German imperialists, to weaken the enemy, but they had a revolution at home, and then a powerful socialist state, the Soviet Union, which broke the back of the German Empire in 1945.
FP: Do you agree with Kofman about the need for a "new elite" in Kharkov, Odessa, and so on?
VS: I do not believe in elites. Two years ago, the leaders of the DNR themselves would not be included in any list of "elites." And if not for a powerful popular movement, they would have remained taxi drivers and accountants, small businessmen, and so on. The movement itself nominates the leaders. But the movement should be supported - both financially and organizationally. For this movement, Donbass is the rear guerrilla base. That is exactly what the DNR and LC must be aware of - they represent not only the inhabitants of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, but all the discontented, all dissenters of Ukraine.
FP: Moscow has repeatedly made it clear that there is no alternative to reintegration with Ukraine. Will the Russian government change its mind?
VS: I hope that it can. Although I do not harbor great optimism about the Russian ruling circles. Their dreams are limited to again becoming partners of the West. However, the world situation is such that the West no longer needs these partners. The Russian government must finally understand this before they can start to seriously support any anti-imperialist liberation movement.
FP: And how do you see the future of Ukraine and the Donbass?
VS: The pessimistic scenario: in Ukraine, a fascist dictatorship will be established, something like Salazar's Portugal or Romania during the Antonescu period. Donbass will be a "Great Transnistria."
The optimistic scenario: the collapse of Ukraine, and its reconstitution as a Federal Social Republic, without Nazis and oligarchic clans.
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#46
Bloomberg
August 19, 2015
Exiled Ukraine Premier Seeks to Regain Power, Though Not Crimea
By Irina Reznik and Stepan Kravchenko
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, who's formed a government-in-exile to try to regain power, said his country is ripe for more regime change.
Amid economic crisis and conflict in the country's east, Ukrainians are disillusioned with the pro-European policies of President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Azarov said. He'd restore economic ties and open borders with Russia once in power, though he isn't ready to demand the return of Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula annexed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in March last year.
"Brainwashing propaganda convinced Ukrainians that Putin stole Crimea from Ukraine," Azarov said in an Aug. 13 interview in Moscow, where he fled when former President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted amid street protests last year. "The idea wouldn't even have entered his head if there hadn't been a coup d'etat."
Azarov, who's wanted on corruption charges by the authorities in Kiev and is under U.S. and European Union sanctions, was premier when Ukraine rejected an EU association agreement in 2013 in favor of closer links with Russia, prompting months of anti-government protests. Yanukovych sought refuge in Russia after clashes between police and protesters killed more than 100 people in Kiev in February last year. Azarov, 67, had resigned a month earlier as a gesture of "social and political compromise."
'No Future'
Just as nobody predicted Yanukovych's fate six months before he was toppled, the driving force for removing Poroshenko will be ordinary people, said Azarov, who's rejected the corruption allegations against him. His alternative government has no ties to the Kremlin and will seek support openly through the media from Ukrainians, while he'll return to the country "when they need me," he said.
Azarov's committee "has no prospects" of success, Igor Bunin, director of the Moscow-based Center for Political Technologies, said by phone.
"It's like if Yanukovych would say that he wants to be president again," Bunin said. "Azarov lost his popularity and his idea of returning to the old days has no future."
Azarov, born and raised in Soviet Russia, kept a low profile in exile until he emerged at a Moscow news conference on Aug. 3 to announce the formation of a Committee for the Salvation of Ukraine, saying it would agitate for early elections to replace the existing authorities.
Kremlin 'Consent'
The committee set out a program to restore Russian as an official language alongside Ukrainian and to make Ukraine a federal state, in line with demands of Kremlin-backed separatists in the country's east, that would be neutral militarily.
An exile Ukrainian government in Russia "couldn't possibly emerge without the consent of the Kremlin," Stanislav Belkovsky, a former adviser in Putin's first term who now heads Moscow's Institute for National Strategy, said by phone.
"Putin still believes Ukraine will collapse economically and fall at his feet like an overripe pear," Belkovsky said. "In this case it would be useful to have some politicians loyal to him."
Putin concluded a three-day visit to Crimea on Wednesday. "Poroshenko pushed Crimea to Russia" and it would've been plunged into the same conflict raging in Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions if it hadn't "left" the country, Azarov said. It "would never have left" with Yanukovych in power, he said.
Crimea, Putin
"Whether it's right or wrong, I'm not ready to judge Putin's actions," in Crimea, Azarov said. "Let the Russian people do that."
He'd make the borders between the countries "absolutely open and then there won't be any difference whether Crimea is called Russian or Ukrainian," Azarov said.
Separatist areas in Donetsk and Luhansk should remain in Ukraine as Russia "isn't interested" in them, Azarov said. The U.S. and the EU accuse Russia of sending troops and weapons to back rebels fighting government forces during 16 months of fighting that has killed more than 6,700 people, a charge Putin denies.
Russia proposed a common economic space with Ukraine before the revolution, while huge financial resources were needed to adapt to the EU's requirements, Azarov said.
"Where will those come from?" he said. "Where the market is, that's where our national interests are. If it's in Russia, that means our national interest is here."
His committee's backed by "the best minds in Ukraine, which the current regime pushed out of the country," including former ministers and members of parliament, Azarov said.
Appointed premier when Yanukovych was elected president in 2010, Azarov says he has no contact in Russia with his former chief. He acknowledges a sense of "guilt" over the conflict that erupted in Ukraine after he resigned.
Yanukovych "failed to carry out his main duty -- to defend constitutional order," Azarov said. "My mistake was that I trusted Yanukovych to find a way out."
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#47 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace August 19, 2015 Ukraine Reform Monitor: August 2015 (excerpt) Ukraine Reform Monitor Team [Full text and charts here http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/08/19/ukraine-reform-monitor-august-2015/iewe?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRogv6rBZKXonjHpfsX57OwpWK6g38431UFwdcjKPmjr1YUATcJ0aPyQAgobGp5I5FEIQ7XYTLB2t60MWA%3D%3D] SUMMARY This memo offers a baseline assessment of the reform process as it stands a year and a half after the Euromaidan protests and the fall of Viktor Yanukovych's government. The Ukraine Reform Monitor provides independent, rigorous assessments of the extent and quality of reforms in Ukraine. The Carnegie Endowment has assembled an independent team of Ukraine-based scholars to analyze reforms in four key areas. To kick off a series of regular publications, this first memo offers a baseline assessment of the reform process as it stands a year and a half after the Euromaidan protests and the fall of Viktor Yanukovych's government. Political and Judicial Reform The first step in constitutional reform was taken in February 2014, when the Yanukovych-era system was replaced with a mixed parliamentary-presidential system that limited the powers of the presidency. The next major step, a decentralization package, is currently being reviewed by the parliament. Legitimacy of the political order was restored through free and fair presidential (May 2014) and parliamentary (October 2014) elections. Ukrainians chose a new president, and a pro-reform coalition was formed in the Rada, or parliament. This coalition and the alliance between President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk is currently under strain; many observers believe it may not last much longer and that new elections are possible. Ukraine signed and ratified an Association Agreement with the EU in June 2014. The Association Agreement includes a raft of commitments to governance reforms. At Moscow's behest, implementation of the agreement was postponed until December 31, 2015. Two EU member states are still to ratify the agreement. Moscow persists in its attempts to dilute the Association Agreement and prevent Ukraine from implementing it. Ukraine has adopted a package of anticorruption laws and established a set of institutions to fight corruption. The general prosecutor's office has been the agency most active in this agenda. Judicial processes have been improved to introduce greater transparency and opportunities for public oversight of corruption cases. There have been no high-profile convictions yet. A new law on the prosecutor's office was approved in autumn 2014. It was amended in July 2015 to make prosecutors more active in anticorruption activities. Local prosecutors' offices are being reformed. All local-level prosecutors and their deputies are being dismissed, and they will be replaced by some 700 new regional prosecutors, who will be appointed by the general prosecutor's office in Kyiv. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the National Agency for Prevention of Corruption have been established. The bureau's head was elected by a board of representatives from all branches of government in an open competition. The bureau, an independent body fighting corruption at the highest ranks of officials, is expected to be fully functional by September 2015. The agency, a central government executive authority with a special status, started work in April 2015. A lustration process was launched in the civil service and in the judiciary in 2014. The adopted legislation on lustration has been selectively applied and was criticized by the Council of Europe's Venice Commission. The law is under review in the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. Judicial reform has been slower than reforms in other areas. A comprehensive set of draft laws on judicial reform is awaiting approval in the parliament. These draft laws introduce changes regarding the selection, promotion, and prerogatives of judges; strengthening the independence of the judiciary; and providing citizens with faster and fairer access to the justice system. Economic Policy The Poroshenko-Yatsenyuk government has embraced a robust economic reform agenda. Key documents outlining these reforms are both international (the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement and Association Agenda, the IMF-Ukraine Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies) and domestic (the Coalition Agreement, the Program of the Cabinet of Ministers, and Strategy 2020). The Coalition Agreement is the key document that lays out the reforms to be implemented.... National Security Security Challenges A new national security strategy was approved in May 2015, prioritizing territorial integrity and a defense upgrade in response to key security threats, including Russian aggression and an inefficient national security system. Corruption and the ongoing economic crisis were identified as key security challenges in the strategy. A draft law has been introduced in the parliament calling for a full economic blockade of portions of Luhansk and Donetsk, which are not controlled by the Ukrainian government. Several roads into these occupied territories have been closed, and new rules for passing through checkpoints on the borders have been announced by the Security Service of Ukraine. In accordance with the new procedures, the transportation of goods into the occupied territories is prohibited, with the exception of humanitarian aid and goods transported by railroad. The Minsk II accord is considered a failure in Kyiv because of the lack of proper monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, the continued Russian military buildup along the border between Ukrainian and occupied territory, and ongoing (though limited) casualties from sporadic fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Moscow separatists. This memo offers a baseline assessment of the reform process as it stands a year and a half after the Euromaidan protests and the fall of Viktor Yanukovych's government. Ukrainian servicemen guard the road out of Mukachevo on July 11, 2015, after an armed confrontation between police and members of the Right Sector militia. The armed confrontation in the town of Mukachevo in July 2015 between a private security group working for a Rada deputy and members of the nationalist Right Sector political party cast a spotlight on significant internal security problems in Ukraine. The problems stem from a combination of organized crime, corrupt law enforcement agencies, illegal trafficking of goods and weapons, proliferation of weapons in the country, and an increasing militarization of some political groups. Defense NATO and Ukraine have signed a memorandum of agreement that will facilitate the implementation of the NATO-Ukraine C4 Trust Fund established to help Ukraine reform its armed forces. The C4 fund will improve Ukraine's command, communication, control, and computer capabilities, interoperability with NATO, and ability to participate in NATO-led exercises and operations. In the 2015 budget, military spending was increased to 2 percent of GDP, the standard NATO target. Two NATO standards on the quality of body armor and uniforms have been adopted to modernize the army's notoriously corrupt logistics and supply system. The Ministry of Defense started testing an electronic procurement system aimed at tackling corruption and improving the effectiveness of budgetary spending. The U.S. government has provided $75 million in nonlethal military assistance out of the $200 million allocation announced earlier in 2015. Ministry of Internal Affairs A new law on the national police has been adopted together with a package of laws improving the collection of traffic fines and reorganizing traffic police registration centers, known to be highly corrupt. The ministry launched a new traffic police service in Kyiv in July 2015 and is getting ready to do the same in Lviv, Kharkiv, Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, Uzhhorod, and Lutsk over the course of the next four months. New selection procedures and training standards as well as standard operational procedures were developed for the new patrol service. The U.S. government provided $15 million for the traffic police project. The Canadian government announced a package worth U.S. $4 million in support of the reform, and the Japanese government supplied new vehicles. Security Service of Ukraine The dismissal of the chief of the Security Service of Ukraine and his deputies in mid-June amid allegations of corruption and contraband smuggling by members of various law enforcement agencies showed that the work of the security services remains highly corrupt. National Guard and Volunteer Battalions This memo offers a baseline assessment of the reform process as it stands a year and a half after the Euromaidan protests and the fall of Viktor Yanukovych's government. The opening ceremony for a joint Ukraine-U.S. military exercise at the Yavoriv training center in Lviv province on April 20, 2015. With a 2015 increase in funding, the Ukrainian National Guard has been building up its capabilities-including increasing the number of units, modernizing weaponry, and upgrading training programs in line with U.S. training standards and with assistance from American trainers. The volunteer battalion Tornado, reporting to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, was disbanded amid allegations of involvement in smuggling and violent crimes. Decentralization A decentralization reform package was introduced in December 2014 through major amendments to Ukraine's Budget Code developed by the Ministry of Finance. The reform removed a series of budgetary bottlenecks, which previously obstructed the effective delivery of services and economic development at the local level. It introduced two additional types of local taxes (a destination-based local excise and a property tax), thereby creating revenue sources for local self-government. The fiscal decentralization reform introduced transfer financing for all decentralized functions except health, secondary education, and vocational education. The new system aims to partly equalize per capita revenue, rather than expenditure needs. The reform significantly expanded opportunities for local borrowing. The new budgeting law allowed external loans (including private ones) for all cities. External borrowing is allowed, provided that the Ministry of Finance does not submit objections within a month, debt servicing does not exceed 10 percent of the budget, and total debt does not exceed a legally enshrined ceiling. The new budgeting law committed to treat small communities in the same way as bigger municipalities if they voluntarily amalgamate, providing a strong financial incentive to administrative consolidation. A number of regions started to design regional plans for the amalgamation of communities. Prior to the decentralization reform, procedures for financing local investment projects were opaque. Financial grants for capital investments were channeled to local budgets via targeted subventions without clear or transparent criteria. The fiscal decentralization reform introduced a new system for regional development: the central government has committed to earmark 1 percent of its entire revenue for local investment, based on a new, transparent, competition-based approach and with 10 percent co-funding. In July 2015, draft changes to the constitution regarding decentralization were introduced in the parliament. The parliament voted to send these draft changes to the Constitutional Court to verify compliance with two existing constitutional provisions: article 157 (on human and civil rights) and article 158 (on the procedure of amendments submission). Approved by the court, the changes now need to pass through first and second readings in the parliament; the first requires a simple majority of 226 votes, the second a constitutional majority of 300 votes. If the process goes as planned, in spring 2016, Ukraine will have a significantly amended constitution. The status of the separatist-held territories in the east of the country remains unresolved and is the subject of intense debates in the Rada. Overall Assessment Political reforms have succeeded in rebuilding the political system after it collapsed in February 2014 but have not yet produced a well-functioning democracy. The executive branch is split between the president's and the prime minister's offices, and this has undercut the reform momentum. Legislative oversight of the government remains weak, and the parliamentary opposition provides no effective check. The pace of judicial reform continues to be slow, and political control of the judiciary is still a problem. Ukraine has so far avoided default and worked aggressively to stabilize the economy in the face of unprecedented challenges and pressures; support achieved at least temporary macroeconomic stability, but not without pressure from the international community and civil society remains crucially important to staying the course. OAt this juncture, only a few regulatory changes can be considered truly systemic reforms. In many cases, adopted laws are useful, but constitute rather largely cosmetic changes. Nevertheless, Tthere are clear, positive trends in a number of areas, though-e.g.for example, deregulation, opening up data, reforming the energy sector, cleaning up the banking sector, and implementing anticorruption measures. Given the scale of the security crisis in the east, law enforcement agencies have responded to security threats relatively well in an extremely difficult environment. The army, national guard, and police are gradually becoming better equipped and more capable of responding to the challenges of the conflict with Russian-backed separatists. The security service is responding well to the need to neutralize the threats of terrorist attacks in the areas bordering the antiterrorism operation zone. However, allegations of corruption, trafficking of illegal goods and weapons, and poor management in various law enforcement units are so widespread that they overshadow successes on the reform front. Progress on security and law enforcement reform is mixed and uneven, and mistrust in law enforcement agencies remains a problem. Decentralization reform has the potential to install a well-balanced, significantly decentralized public financial management system. However, it also entails risks. It may substantially increase the level of local debt and corruption, and create fiscal vulnerabilities. The introduction of a local property tax is a progressive measure, but many communities need technical support in developing local systems for administering this tax. The major source of local revenue-the personal income tax-remains based on employment rather than residence. This distorts allocation toward more affluent communities and undermines plans to introduce local income tax surcharges. The politics of decentralization plans are likely to be highly complicated. |
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#48
Fort Russ
http://fortruss.blogspot.com
August 20, 2015
"Quiet Americans" in Kiev
From the translator:
By their very nature, articles about secret operations are based on secret sources and rumors, and as such, should be taken with a grain of salt.
Ever since the start of the Donbass conflict - actually for many years before it, too, going back at least to the first American-backed government change in 2004 - there had been constant reports of American involvement in Ukraine, CIA controlling government officials, Soros and US State Dept giving billions of dollars to pro-American forces "under the table", etc. Undoubtedly, a lot of it is false... but a lot of is true, and we can read about it in memoirs and leaked US State Dept cables.
As they say in Russia, "there is no smoke without a fire", or perhaps another saying is even more appropriate - "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean THEY are not watching".
Article by Alexander Yablokov (originally published Feb 2015). Translation by Tatzhit. Aug 20 2015. [http://antifashist.com/item/tihie-amerikancy-v-kieve-vse-tolko-nachinaetsya.html#ixzz3SnzAJt6w]
One may get a false impression that Ukraine is run mostly by Georgians, slightly "diluted" by Baltic residents. And yes, the Georgian ex-President Mikhail Saakashvili [*who is now a wanted man in Georgia] leads the "Committee of reforms", imported highlanders [from his team] are at the helm in the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Health, and the name Ebanoidze (one of the deputies of the main lawyer of the country, responsible for the State registries) even became a household word [**Ebanoidze sounds like Fuckaidze to slavic people].
However, the real functions of "colonial managers" are mainly ornamental. They are supposed to symbolize the lack of corruption among "the new European government". Although no one can explain why the mass invasion of mountain peoples from the east is a symbol of "Eurointegration", official propaganda is not stumped by such discrepancies.
In contrast to US-trained colonial managers, actual Americans are hardly visible in government and presidential offices. The only exception is US citizen Natalia Yaresko, in charge of the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine. However, due to her roots and the characteristic "American diaspora" Ukrainian she passes for "local" compared to masses of Russian-speaking Georgians. Yaresko is, almost officially, considered to be the US State Dept overseer monitoring allocation of IMF tranches. Ukraine has fallen on hard times - no one can not be trusted with money, not even the cheerful Georgians.
However, there is another side to the American presence in Ukraine. Kiev is filled with "quiet Americans" from the famous novel of the same name by the English writer Graham Greene. One of the heroes of the novel, US intelligence officer Pyle, constantly launches into lengthy speeches, proclaiming himself to be a fighter for democracy. While fighting for "just causes" and creating the so-called "third force", which, in his opinion, would lead Vietnam to prosperity and democracy, Pyle organizes a bombing in a crowded area. This action leads to the deaths of many women and children not involved in politics. For the CIA agent they only "biomass", to quote Yulia Tymoshenko. ... Graham's novel could have been written about modern-day Ukraine, as well. Today's "quiet Americans" arrive in their company cars at exactly ten minutes to nine to the SBU [State Security Service] main office. They are thirty to forty years old, dressed in suits and street jackets of various, often very bright, colors. All with shopping bags, paper cups, none of them smoke, all speak English loudly. This American show (and they are impossible to confuse with anyone else) can also be seen when they take a lunch break from 12 to 1pm, as well as when they get a break at four. Many stay late.
Restaurants and bars within two hundred meters from the SBU have dramatically changed their selection of dishes. Now they serve latte with skim milk, ribs in barbecue sauce and a variety of vegetarian dishes. A similar pattern can be seen on Tarasovskaya street, where this abrupt change of dishes happened near the office of the State Security Directorate of Military Intelligence. Even such secluded places as "Forest" (complex of buildings under the Foreign Intelligence Service, near Bilogorodka) and "Island" (Army Intelligence center on Rybalskiy island) underwent Americanization. A telltale sign of mass American presence is a sharp spike in pizza and sushi deliveries in these areas. Ukrainian secret service agents never used to eat those types of fast food, preferring simple Slavic cooking and inexpensive alcohol.
Moreover, can you imagine self-respecting State Security operatives driving cheap "Lanos" and "Chevrolet" cars? Such cars are what "quiet Americans" drive to "blend in". They just did not take local corruption into account.
General Anatoly (I won't disclose his last name), my former classmate, complained that in his old age he now has to learn English. Languages were hard for him even in college, and he chose the easiest option - Spanish. ...
The "quiet Americans" quickly developed a structure of behind-the-scenes presence in the intelligence and law enforcement agencies of Ukraine. However, if they go to the SBU as if they full-time work there, the Ministry of Defense, the General Staff and the Ministry of Interior are controlled through a system of "supervisors". Americans prefer to communicate with their clients through "meetings" conducted in safehouses well-protected from wiretapping (mostly rented apartments), during which the necessary adjustments are made.
I almost forgot: "quiet Americans" now enter the Cabinet of Ministers with the help of badges saying simply "Guest". During the old regime, there was a whole system of issuing permits for foreigners. State secrets, and so on. Now everything is simplified: there is a special list and badges. Very convenient.
After creating an extensive organizational and supervisory framework in the relevant bodies of Ukraine, Kiev is constantly visited by high-ranking American curators, many-star generals. We are not talking about protocol diplomatic meetings and "scientific conferences". Each arrival has planned meetings with the people in charge within the SBU, military intelligence, the Ministry of Defense. They discuss the strategy and tactics of the "anti-terrorist operation", the combat readiness of the Ukrainian army, reform plans, promoting new officials.
Therefore, frequent visits of the Commander of Land Forces in Europe, US Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, to Kiev should be seen in this context. This is about purely practical implementation of the American strategy in Ukraine, through the power structures of the country that are mostly controlled by American advisers.
General Hodges is currently responsible for the UAF retraining program. Less than a month, at the Yavoriv staging area, the Americans are launching a project to create "Ukrainian mobile units capable of operating in a situation where Russians are jamming communications and using precision weapons." Apparently, Yavoriv base, located in Lviv, in close proximity to Poland, would be the prototype of a US military base in Ukraine.
After each visit of the Commander of the US Army, all Ukrainian elites repeat his ideological orientation like a mantra. In January 2015, Hodges said in Kiev that "the Russian Federation is at war against Ukrainian forces." Since then Poroshenko talks about the "open Russian aggression" even during parties, so as not to forget.
Hodges, with military directness, says that the main purpose of his work is the creation of new Ukrainian armed forces on a NATO model.
The current commander of NATO forces in Ukraine works in close communication with the former commander of NATO forces in Kosovo, General Wesley Clark. There's probably no need to explain why this "sweet couple" has formed. Clark was in charge of military matters during the bloody dismemberment of former Yugoslavia, and his experience in this is sorely needed in Ukraine. Clark, in his old age, has became a theoretician and loves to talk in the Ukrainian media about the "true purpose of Putin, who seeks to split Ukraine, tear it away from the West and make the country poor and disenfranchised."
We should pay attention to the following point: if earlier Kiev was supervised mostly by high-ranking CIA officials (former and current), now this role is performed by senior US military personnel, also former and current. Almost all local politicians try to meet with Americans during their visits. Especially the ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who dropped off the list of "those in power" and is now merely the leader of the smallest faction in the parliament. She even suggested to make Clark the chief overseer of the assistance to Ukraine from the United States. However, her "licking" was not counted, as Washington is not currently interested in her services. The boot-licking of the Kiev political elite show for US "monitors" is understandable; Americans now control approval for everything, from financial assistance, to UAF operations, and appointments in the security services, MOD, the Cabinet and the President's Administration.
In particular, the first deputy head of the Anti-Terrorist Center of the SBU (in charge of ATO in Donetsk and Luhansk regions) Sergey Popko was put there by the US DIA, as was the "eternal Speaker" of the ATO Andrei Lysenko. Both of them were recruited by the US military intelligence almost simultaneously, some time ago.
Currently, almost all the analytical, organizational and military support of the Ukrainian authorities is carried out by "quiet Americans". "Georgian" and "Baltic" managers are mostly for show, and anyways they are actually the same American-trained managers previously used in Georgia and the Baltics.
American plans for the near future include creation of developed military infrastructure in the Ukraine, including training centers, and deployment of electronic surveillance infrastructure in Ukrainian territory. Preparatory work is already underway for rebuilding the airport in Uzin (Kiev region) as a powerful military transport "hub" that will solve the problem of efficient transfer of technology, equipment and specialists to Ukraine.
In a suburb of the capital, work is underway to create a "cottage town". Against the backdrop of a failing housing market in Kiev, the construction of an autonomous gated town looks pretty strange. And no wonder, given the American habit of staying in comfortable "secure zones" isolated from the "natives". "Heroes" from the novel by Graham Greene have arrived in Kiev to stay. The struggle for "democracy" never ends quickly: in Vietnam it lasted decades. Ukrainian "natives" are not easy to control, especially in the Donbas.
"Democratization" in Ukraine has been costly and bloody. But the local "Piles" do not lose heart, because everything is just beginning ...
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#49
Huffingtonpost.com
August 20, 2015
Russia Readies to Invade Ukraine this Fall
By Diane M. Francis
Editor at Large with the National Post in Canada, a Distinguished Professor at Ryerson University's Ted Rogers School of Management.
World attention focuses on ISIS and Iran, with its half an atomic weapon. But the biggest geopolitical issue is Vladimir Putin, backed by thousands of nuclear weapons, who is gradually conquering Ukraine, a democracy with 45 million people the size of Germany and Poland combined.
In just over a year, Russia has seized 9% of Ukraine, killed 6,200, wounded 30,000, displaced 1.2 million people and shot down a commercial airliner with 298 people aboard.
Even so, European and American retaliation has been soft, and ineffective. The Russians have ignored a ceasefire agreement reached in February and captured another 28 towns and villages, 250 square kilometers and killed 200 Ukrainians. It's also moving tanks, artillery, troops and equipment into Ukraine by the trainload.
Now its operatives are trying to move south aggressively, shelling Mariupol and other towns.
"The struggle in Ukraine is more serious than ISIS," said John Herbst in an interview. He's a former US ambassador to Ukraine and Director of the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington. "It's very simple. Any military thinker looks at a threat - what is the [possible] damage? Putin wants to change the peace established in 1991 and after World War II."
So far, diplomacy and economic weapons haven't stopped Putin. He grabbed one-third of Georgia in 2008 using the same tactics and despite hideous publicity worldwide is riding high in Russian polls. But slowly, in Washington, bipartisan support builds to provide defensive weapons to the Ukrainian army as soon as possible to halt the Russian creep. Canada's defense minister Jason Kenney has stated boldly that Canada supports supplying Ukrainians with weapons but cannot do so unilaterally.
"Putin wants all of Ukraine," said Ukrainian MP Dmytro Lubinets, a Russian-speaking politician from Eastern Ukraine who believes the Russians are gearing up for an all-out invasion of Ukraine as early as this fall. He lives 20 miles from the current war front and one-third of his constituency is in occupied lands. In January, he led a gigantic peace march in Kiev after Russian artillery blew up a civilian bus in his town killing 15 civilians.
"The question is not whether the offense will occur but when," he said in an interview with me in New York City. "There are tens of thousands of men and 1,000 tanks. Tanks are not for defense. They are for an attack. We do not even have anti-tank missiles."
He dismisses Putin's claims that Russian military is not involved and that this is not an occupation, but the spontaneous effort by Ukrainian residents of Russian descent who want liberation and to rejoin Russia.
"It's just not true. 90% of the people in Donbas do not want to be under Russian rule. I am Russian speaking and part Russian and I identify myself as Ukrainian," he said. "This is not a war between two nations, Ukraine and Russia. It is a struggle between two worldviews - Europe and Moscow. We want Ukraine to be a European country, not a Putin country."
"This is why 1.2 million people have fled the occupied areas. They haven't fled Ukraine for the Russian areas", he said. "I meet and speak with people who still live there and who have fled. The main message is 'we never would split or separate from Ukraine'. What we are dealing with here is open aggression on the part of the Russian Federation."
Refugees are a financial burden for the country and have moved in with relatives and friends. For instance, his hometown of Volnovakha, near the 130-kilometer long warfront, had a population before the war of 25,000 and now has 35,000 residents and 5,000 soldiers stationed there.
He said that Ukraine is carefully checking those entering from the east in fear that Russian agitators will try to destabilize Ukraine in order to create a pretext for an invasion.
"It was really simple. Buses came from the Russian Federation. 2,000 Russian citizens went to Donetsk [in the Donbas] to a separatist rally. They march downtown or to the city hall, pulling out Tricolor Russian flags and waving them. They tear down the Ukrainian flag at administrative buildings, put up the Russian and get the television cameras to provide an image to the rest of the world," he said. "Then they hold a fake referendum."
Using that strategy, he said, they will create trouble in Kiev on the Maidan [Kiev's main square]. "Another [violent situation on the] Maidan and the Russians will occupy the country," he said.
His wife, children and extended family remain in their village, but the family has an evacuation plan to stay with relatives in the western part of the country if the Russian tanks roll westward.
In the face of the well-equipped Russian onslaught, the Ukrainian military is trying to rebuild quickly after being dismantled by the Moscow-controlled former President who fled last year. He looted the country financially and also appointed a Russian as defense minister who sold off the military's best equipment to foreign dictators for personal gain. In hindsight, this was in preparation for a full or partial takeover of Ukraine.
The country conscripted 50,000 men for military service this summer and U.S., Canada and Britain are supplying hundreds of military trainers and non-combat equipment. There is political support to stand up to Putin, but not enough yet.
Few members of the public know where Ukraine is much less its size and strategic importance. The country has 45 million people and is the third most educated populace in the world, with thriving software, aeronautical, pharmaceutical and agribusiness sectors. It also has one third of the world's black earth, or most productive farmland.
"One U.S. Senator asked me why he should care and I said in 1938, when Germany annexed part of Czechoslovakia to liberate Germans you didn't care. When it annexed Austria you didn't care, then Poland. But then you did care and 400,000 Americans died. It's the Donbas and nobody cares. But the US will wake up when the Russian Federation attacks a NATO country, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia or Poland," he said.
This will happen, he speculates, unless Ukraine is saved. If not, the occupation will spread and casualties will too.
"Ukraine will win," he said defiantly. "The only question is how many will have to die. Now it's thousands. If left alone and defenceless this will total millions. But no matter the price, Ukraine will win."
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#50
Den (Kyiv)
August 11, 2015
Former Ukrainian foreign minister urges West to counter Russian propaganda
Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko believes the West should urgently restrict Russian propaganda abroad and start delivering truthful information to Russian society. The following is the text of Ohryzko's article headlined "Certain methods and formats of countering Russia's information and propaganda war", published by the Den newspaper on 11 August; subheadings have been inserted editorially:
Apart from the military aspect, Russia's aggression against Ukraine in the form of the annexation of Crimea and the seizure of some territories in Donbass [parts of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions] has a powerful information aspect. We are talking about a carefully planned, well-coordinated, and generously funded disinformation campaign aimed at several addressees.
Three target audiences of Russian propaganda
In order to be able to effectively counter Russian propaganda, in my opinion and in the opinion of experts from the Centre for Russian Studies, we need to take three key factors into account. First, we need to have a clear understanding of its target audiences. Second, we need to understand what messages the Moscow propaganda machine is using on each particular audience. Third, we need to know what tools this propaganda machine uses to disseminate its messages.
As for the first factor, we believe that the Kremlin has three target audiences. The first of these is the domestic audience in Russia. The second one is the Ukrainian audience, with a special stress on the occupied territories. The third audience is in the UN and NATO member nations.
Obviously, each of these audiences has its own specific traits and requires unique propaganda formats and methods, that is, a unique set of key messages, formats and methods of their dissemination.
In our opinion, this approach allows for a realistic analysis of how the Moscow propaganda machine operates, and will help us to propose practical counteraction measures.The limited space of this article precludes a detailed analysis of all the aforementioned factors, so let us speak of only some of them.
Key messages of Russian propaganda
A survey conducted by [Russian independent pollster] Levada Centre in Moscow in March 2015 indicates that Russian citizens view as their main enemies the USA (73 per cent), the EU (64 per cent), and Ukraine (55 per cent). They view as Russia's friends Belarus (85 per cent) and China (76 per cent). A total of 50 per cent of those polled take [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's statements that nuclear weapons could have been used in the course of Crimea's annexation to be justified, whereas 49 per cent believe Russia's having regained the status as "a great state" to be the key achievement of the country's foreign policy.
A survey conducted by the same pollster in May 2015 stands out for the following three figures:
- only 6 per cent of the Russians believe that "the war in eastern Ukraine continues because of the Russian leadership's intervention in the conflict by way of supporting the 'LPR' and 'DPR' [self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk people's republics] with troops, weapons, and military hardware";
- a total of 38 per cent chose the reply "Even if there are Russian troops and military hardware in Ukraine, Russia is right to deny the fact in the light of the current international situation";
- a total of 56 per cent, or one in two Russians, view the events in eastern Ukraine as an aggression of the West, which supports the war in the east of Ukraine for the purpose of weakening Russia's global clout;
- in March 2015, 63 per cent believed the Soviet system or the current Putin regime to be the best format of political order for Russia; only 11 per cent said they would prefer to live in a Western-style democratic society.
It is obvious that the results of these opinion polls can hardly be used as the basis for far-reaching conclusions. At the same time, they clearly indicate certain trends in Russian society's moods and in its general state.
No change possible in Russia with current public moods
What can be inferred from these results?
First, Russian society is isolated from sources of objective information. Such a society can be easily manipulated and fed opinions by the Russian authorities.
Second, the majority of Russian society perceives the country leaders' lies as something normal. In other words, lies are a publicly acceptable method, not a manifestation of immoral behaviour.
Third, Russian society has a clear and solid image of the West and the Western way of life as being hostile and unacceptable for replication in Russia.
Therefore, personnel reshuffles in the higher echelons of the system will not change the system in general, because Russian society needs an autocratic leader and an autocratic system, which are believed to be the most acceptable, both mentally and psychologically.
It would be rather naive to assume that these public moods result from the 15 year of Putin's rule. This is a historical tradition of Russian national identity. In fact, we are observing a logical continuation of the autocratic system of Russian society's way of thinking and behaviour ever since the establishment of the Moscow State in the 13th century. It adopted and further developed the despotic traditions of state management practised in the Golden Horde, under whose yoke Moscow spent several centuries. These traditions were continued in the Russian Empire, but reached their completion in the Soviet Empire.Thus, we are talking about antidemocratic public views deeply rooted in the consciousness of Russian society and supported by its absolute majority for centuries.
Western politicians mistaken about Russian leadership's ability to change
Consequently, the Western leaders' erstwhile hopes that Russia would turn into a state governed by the rule of law following the collapse of the USSR demonstrated their sheer naivety, ignorance of history and downright political short-sightedness. Unfortunately, plenty of contemporary Western politicians also suffer from this short-sightedness. It is clear that curing this disease requires time, [those politicians'] ability to critically revise their former views, and truthful information about Russia.
The healing process began after [Russia's] aggression against Ukraine. There is now hope that the West will develop an appropriate policy with regard to Russia, in particular as concerns counteraction to its propaganda war.
It is important to realize that this war is being waged not just against Ukraine but against the entire Western way of life. In reality, we are observing a war of identities, a conflict of civilizations.
Goals of Russian propaganda
Speaking of the goals of the Russian propaganda war, we have already mentioned that they differ depending on the audience. By way of generalizing, the primary goals, as the Centre for Russian Studies experts believe, are as follows:
- as applied to Ukraine, to destabilize the country's political system, weaken the Ukrainians' pro-European sentiments, and split the people;
- as applied to the West, to serve information that would play into the hands of Russia, which is, in essence, disinformation about Crimea and the aggression in eastern Ukraine, and to destroy the unity within the EU and NATO;
- as applied to Russia itself, to isolate society from truthful information and ensure maximum support for the Putin regime.
Cliches used by Russian propaganda
An entire system of ideological cliches has been developed for purposes of this war; these cliches are used depending on the circumstances and the target audiences they are aimed at.
In particular, the following cliches are being used:
- the ethnic Russian minority is suffering from ostracism and persecutions both in Ukraine and in the Western countries;
- the West views Russia as an enemy and seeks to restrict its influence in the international arena;
- the USA and other Western countries organized the anti-Russian colour revolutions in several post-Soviet countries;
- Russia as a "great state" has the "right" to have its own sphere of influence. This "objective" sphere of influence for Russia coincides with the post-Soviet territory;
- Russia is the stronghold of the fight against contemporary fascism; everything labelled as being anti-Soviet and anti-Russian is fascism;
- the Western individualism is pernicious; the collective format of public consciousness better suits the Russians' traditional perceptions;
- the Russian Orthodox faith is the only true faith; the Western morals are being eroded, and Europe is turning into Gayrope [derogatory term used by pro-Putin, anti-Western Russians];
- the "Russian world" is an alternative to Gayrope.
It is evident that these theses are completely manipulative and have little to do with historical truth. At the same time, with the use of powerful instruments of influence (TV channels, radio stations, the press, the Internet, corrupt politicians, businesspeople or journalists), and also with access to virtually unlimited funding, Russian propaganda is managing to achieve substantial results both inside the country and abroad.
Russian propaganda abusing Western freedom of speech
Speaking of the Western audience, the Russian propaganda is actively using achievements of Western democracy to its own ends. I mean, first and foremost, the freedom of speech. The West has allowed Russia to operate freely in its information realm, failing to realize the level of threat to its own population. Furthermore, numerous instances of Russia financing both radical right and radical left parties in EU and NATO member nations, which are engaged in active pro-Russian propaganda in their respective countries, prove the sheer political short-sightedness of those countries' leaders.
It is important for the Western political establishment to realize the simple truth that they should stop perceiving the Russian leaders as people who embrace the approaches and values that are traditional and understandable for the West.
Not telling lies, honouring mutual obligations, adhering to national and international laws, respecting human rights, guaranteeing any people's right to choose its own direction of development - these and other principles that are obvious to the West are absolutely dispensable in Russia.
It is clear that the Western leaders and societies are having a hard time even imagining that this is possible, but it should be accepted as an objective fact, and should be taken into account when formulating and conducting the Western policy with regard to Russia.
Ways of countering Russian propaganda
What steps in countering Russian propaganda would be effective? These steps should be both traditional and asymmetric, non-standard and specific; not only "defensive", that is to say, restricted to the audiences in the EU and NATO countries, but also offensive. It is very important for the West to operate in Russia's information realm, just like Russia is successfully operating in the Western information realm.
First, information pressure on Russia should be stepped up significantly. All possible channels of influence on the public opinion in Russia should be used. Special Russian-language TV channels should be set up that would be broadcasting not only for the Russian-speaking population of the West but also to Russia. Ukraine could become one of the countries hosting such TV channels. The same goes for the resumption of operation of several powerful radio stations that would broadcast to Russia, similar to the radio statons that operated during the Cold War (for example, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Vatican Radio, the BBC, and so on).
Second, this work will only have the desirable effect if it is systemic. A coordinating organization should be identified that would efficiently manage the preparation and dissemination of the required information both within the EU and NATO countries and in Russia.
Third, the most effective way of delivering the required information to the target groups (youth, pensioners, private entrepreneurs, intelligentsia, scholars, country dwellers, salaried employees, and so on) should be identified (television, the Internet, printed media, public events, and so on), and this work should be coordinated.
Fourth, the capabilities of Russian propaganda and its political influence in the West should be legally restricted through the adoption of regulatory acts on the national and EU levels. This should be done promptly and in a coordinated manner. Such a move would deliver a powerful blow to Moscow propaganda's plans for further expansion of its sphere of influence in the West. Given the sensitive nature of this issue, which concerns the freedom of speech so valued in Western society, it could be explained by the priority of national security and the need to counter defamation in the media.
Fifth, information aimed at Russian society should be focused on its "sore spots". I mean priority dissemination of information about Russian soldiers who have perished in the Ukrainian war, about the declining living standards of ordinary Russians as a result of the ruling regime's policy, about the growing numbers of Russian citizens who have found themselves below the poverty line, about the diminishing opportunities for travelling abroad, and so on.
Sixth, the focus should be on contrasting the support offered to Ukrainian citizens (for example, with regard to the waiving of entry visas) to the absence of such prospects (at present, at any rate) for Russians owing to the Kremlin's reckless policy. The same may apply to such topics as the opportunity for Ukrainian business (including small and medium companies) to enter the European market and, in the future, the US market thanks to the opportunities offered by the association agreement with the EU and by the warming of relations with the West in general. This way, the Ukrainians will be developing faster and will soon reach significantly higher living standards than people in Russia. The stress should be placed on the Ukrainian example, which will be perceived far better by the average Russian than comparisons with Lithuanians, Poles, or Croatians.
Seventh, a tactful but persistent opinion should be instilled that the current political regime is disadvantageous for the average Russian, and that changes for the better may only occur if the system begins to turn towards universal human values. Highlighting examples in which the authorities are forced to reckon with society's opinion and make the right decisions may seriously stimulate growth in public activity in Russia.
This is, of course, a very approximate and absolutely non-exhaustive list of the topics and assets which should be used in working in Russia. It is also obvious that no immediate effect should be expected. However, at the very least they will be stimulating the beginning of change in the public consciousness, which will play a decisive role in systemic change in Russia at a certain point in the future.
To summarize, the Centre for Russian Studies experts believe the following needs to be done in order to achieve a positive result:
- Under no circumstances should the principle "let us use lies in return for lies" be used; the West should disseminate only truthful information in Russia;
- All available channels should be used for delivering truthful information to Russian society;
- Legal methods should be used to reduce Russian propaganda's presence in the Western information realm;
- All possible institutions and interested countries should be involved in this work, using every available format and instrument of information delivery. Proper coordination of this work will be crucial;
- It is important to deliver information in different ways, in different languages, but in a single voice;
- It is necessary to understand that proper financing is among the decisive preconditions for effective results. It should be remembered that real-life warfare is much more costly than information warfare.
The rethinking of Russia's role and place in the world has begun. From a strategic partner it is gradually turning into something different: some experts and politicians already identify it as the greatest global threat. This is why the best experts should join efforts immediately to develop plans of specific measures aimed at neutralizing this threat.
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