#2
Irrussianality
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com
August 24, 2015
CSIS MISSES THE MARK
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.

This seems to be the season for reports about Russia. Hot on the footsteps of the Bow Group report last week, another volume has just landed in my mail box - a booklet from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) entitled Russia and the West: The Consequences of Renewed Rivalry. The report (which is available online) [https://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/pblctns/wrldwtch/2015/20150708-en.php] is a summary of a workshop held by CSIS's Academic Outreach program. As the workshop was held under Chatham House rules, and as I wasn't invited to the event, I can't tell whose opinions are reflected in the document (though I could make some guesses). Also, the fact that what were probably 30-40 minute presentations have been reduced to 2-3 page summaries means a lot of sweeping generalizations and broad brush conclusions without much substantiation. As a result, the report is of limited use. Nevertheless, it does show what advice the academic community is giving government agencies in the West about Russia.

Some of it, such as the sections on the Russian intelligence community, business and politics in Russia, and the effects of sanctions, is o.k. Others parts are less sensible. The overall tone of the report is negative, putting the entire blame for current tensions in Russia-West relations, as well as for the war in Ukraine, on Russia. In the chapter on the Ukrainian conflict, there is a brief spark of recognition that things may be a bit more complicated than normally depicted, with a statement that, 'Ukraine's non-compliance with the [Minsk] agreement has now become glaringly obvious', but this is little more than a blip in the general narrative.

This is clear from the first paragraph of the Executive Summary which states that after becoming president in 2012, 'Instead of emphasising diplomatic initiatives, Putin introduced a comprehensive narrative of grievance which rejected post-World War Two security principles, revived traditional Russian imperialistic themes, and promoted an aggressive interpretation of Russia's status'. Next, the chapter 'Russia's Self-Image and its Consequences' states the following:

"There is a clear historical link between Russia's top-down form of government and Moscow's imperial record. ... That understanding includes the presumed right and need to dominate neighbouring regions. ... What we have today is a set of legally protected myths which glorify the past. Stalin and the Great Fatherland War are its core elements. ... The reality of rule by a narrow, self-interested and in part nervous cabal is by now imperfectly concealed. ... Russian decision-makers have insisted with increasing vehemence that their principal antagonist is indeed the West. ... It is hard for Western observers to grasp the meaning of such hollow narcissism. ... Does Moscow really not understand why so many of its neighbours are afraid of it? ... The logic of Russian policy is that the Kremlin should impose its rule by proxy on Kyiv. ... Putin's Kremlin is trying to force Russia into a mould that rejects its European heritage."

This reflects a common Western perception that autocratic, or at least imperfectly democratic, states are more aggressive than liberal democratic (i.e. Western) ones. And yet, most scholars who have studied the subject believe that while democracies rarely if ever fight each other, they are not in fact any less aggressive than other regime types. Martin Malia convincingly showed in his book Russia under Western Eyes that Russophobia in the West has rarely had any relation to the actual threat Russia has posed. When Russian leaders' domestic policies have been viewed favourably, Western commentators have turned a blind eye to Russian imperialism, but when its leaders have been viewed as tyrannical, the West has vastly exaggerated the Russian danger to its security. Thus, public opinion in the West was vehemently anti-Russian during the reign of Nicholas I, even though Nicholas refrained from aggressive military actions, but it was very pro-Russian during the reign of Catherine the Great (perceived as an enlightened ruler) even though Russia expanded enormously. The idea that centralized and autocratic rule makes Russia a threat is without solid basis in fact.

Next, the idea that Stalin is a central part of Russia's contemporary self-image is somewhat bizarre. Certainly, the Great Patriotic War plays an important role in Russian identity (as indeed does the Second World War in some Western nations), but Russians aren't all neo-Stalinists. As for Russia's alleged 'hollow narcissism', this charge is not entirely without foundation - Russian fears of Western hostility are, I believe, exaggerated, and there is a tendency for Russians to think that Western actions are directed against them when they are not. But there are some good reasons for it. Take, for instance, NATO's proposed European anti-ballistic shield. I tend to the view that NATO planners really do see this as protecting Europe against Iranian nuclear-tipped missiles, and not as a tool against Russia. But I fully understand why Russians don't agree. After all, the Iranian nuclear missile threat doesn't exist. Accepting NATO's claims means accepting that its leaders live in strange fantasy world. It's easier to believe that they are rational, in which case, the anti-missile shield must have an alternative target, i.e. Russia. Russian fears do have some foundation. And while it is true that Russia's rulers do not seem to realise how their actions in Ukraine might frighten some Europeans, this report makes it very clear that many in the West are equally incapable of seeing how Western actions might frighten Russia. This lack of self-awareness, on both sides of the Russian-Western divide, is a major cause of current tensions.

Finally, the claim that the Kremlin 'is trying to force Russia into a mould that rejects its European heritage,' is not untypical of comments in recent months which like to emphasize Russia's alleged 'turn to the East', the supposed influence of Eurasianism, Putin's increasing conservatism, and so on. But it is a huge exaggeration. The fact that Russia is trying to increase its ties with its Asian neighbours does not in any way mean that it wishes to cut its ties with Europe. On the contrary, President Putin, Foreign Minister Lavrov, and others have made it clear that this is not their intention. Moreover, Russia's 'European heritage' is a cultural phenomenon which runs so deep that rejecting it is simply impossible.

The report's final chapter concludes that 'the relationship [between Russia and the West] is going to be cold, unproductive, and adversarial in certain areas, and will offer minimal opportunities for successful mutual cooperation.' This fate can be avoided. But doing so will require a change in attitudes not only in Russia but also among those in the West who perpetuate negative stereotypes.

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 #3
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
August 25, 2015
Russian media watchdog lifts ban on Wikipedia drug article
Roskomnadzor has removed a ban on a Wikipedia article about the drug charas. The online encyclopedia complied with the media watchdog's demands after Russian telecom providers were told to block access to the material.
Yekaterina Sinelschikova, RBTH

A Wikipedia article about the narcotic substance charas that violated Russian laws has been edited and has been removed from the unified register of banned information, Russia's media watchdog Roskomnadzor said on its website on Aug. 25.

"The resolution issued by the Chernoyarsk court in the Astrakhan Region with regard to the internet encyclopedia Wikipedia has been implemented. The information recognized by the court as banned has been edited. The reference mentioned in this court ruling has been excluded from the unified register of banned information," said the statement.

Roskomnadzor had earlier instructed telecom operators to block access to a Wikipedia article about the drug charas, a type of hashish made from the resin of the cannabis plant.

In an earlier statement, the supervisory body said that "the unlawful nature of the information posted on Wikipedia" had been confirmed by an expert assessment and by a ruling by the Russian Federal Drug Control Service.

In late June, the decision to ban in Russia the dissemination of information about methods of preparing drugs was upheld by a court in the Astrakhan Region.
The executive director of Wikipedia RU, Stanislav Kozlovsky, earlier said that "all the information in the article in question was taken from the UN website, all the sources were academic". He said: "We discussed this situation and decided to keep the article."

Roskomnadzor ordered telecom providers to block access only to the page that contained the article in question, however, since Wikipedia operates on the basis of the HTTPS protocol (which does not allow for individual pages to be blocked), access to the whole of Wikipedia would have had to be blocked.

Chief analyst with the Russian Association of Electronic Communications Karen Kazaryan told RBTH that, in his opinion, the Russian regulator exceeded its powers.

"In my view, Wikipedia adhered to the letter of the law. The article is no longer available at its original address. It appears that Roskomnadzor decided to opt for a confrontation and to make a show of punishing a resource that has decided to act differently."

For his part, media expert and popular blogger Anton Nosik pointed out that "in this case the problem is with the law [which necessitates blocking access to resources carrying this type of information] rather than with Roskomnadzor."

"Roskomnadzor must abide by the law. This law is of poor quality. It creates grounds for an unlimited number of violations," he said.

At the same time, Nosik went on to add that this is not a new law and that access to various resources is banned on a regular basis and by now many people have learnt how to circumvent these blocks. Now there will be more of those people.

"All those in Russia who want to continue using the internet should take the trouble to install software for bypassing [possible bans]," he said. 

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 #4
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
August 22, 2015
Why Russians support Internet censorship
According to a joint report by American researchers and Russian sociologists, 49 percent of Russians are not opposed to Internet censorship. They do not perceive attempts to control the Internet as an infringement on the freedom of speech, experts explain.
Yekaterina Sinelschikova, RBTH

Nearly half of Russians (49 percent) believe that information on the Internet should be subject to censorship, while 58 percent would not mind it if - in the event of a national threat - the Russian segment of the Internet is shut down completely. This conclusion was reached by the authors of the report "Benchmarking Public Demand: Russia's Appetite for Internet Control."

The report was written by Erik Nisbet, associate professor of communication, political science and environmental policy at Ohio State University, and was produced as a part of the Internet Policy Observatory, a program at the Center for Global Communication Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. This study is based on a survey designed and implemented by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) in partnership with the CGCS.

Among the most "dangerous" content that should be banned, Russians name homosexual propaganda (59 percent), social network groups linked to organizing anti-government protests (46 percent) and videos by the Pussy Riot band (46 percent). "From the perspective of assessing the public's demand for Internet freedom, the results are somewhat discouraging," the head of the CGCS, Monroe Price, concludes in the report.
 
Source of vague threat

The study was published in English in February 2015, however national Russian media took notice of it only in early August after the findings were also published by VCIOM. The poll was conducted among Russian residents over 18 years of age, in 42 regions of the country. Of those polled, 42 percent use the Internet all the time, 20 percent use the Internet from time to time and 38 percent do not use it at all.

According to another pollster, the Levada Center, which RBTH has spoken to, the margin of error aside, the number of Russians who support Internet censorship remains quite stable.

In an October 2014 Levada poll, the introduction of Internet censorship was supported by 54 percent of respondents. "They are in favor of censorship when it comes to things like child pornography," Levada Center analyst Denis Volkov explains. "And there is an important distinction between the opinion of those who use the Internet and those who do not. For the latter, the Internet is a source of a vague threat. They do not know what to do about it and so it seems to them that the best thing may be just to ban everything.
 
Invisible ban

It is important to note that the question about a total ban was a hypothetical one: censorship in Russia is banned by the constitution, and President Vladimir Putin has more than once declared that "Russia has no intention of restricting access to the Internet or taking it under total control".

However supportive Putin may be in word, he has also created an environment of self-censoring on the Internet. In April 2014, the Duma passed amendments to an anti-terrorist bill that would allow Russian bloggers to be prosecuted or fined for publishing content that might threaten national security.

In fact, since 2012, the number of initiatives aimed to block various Internet resources has been steadily growing, says chief analyst with the Russian Association of Electronic Communications Karen Kazaryan. "Not all of them become laws, but a large number of those initiatives, our experts conclude, were restrictive in nature, i.e. aimed not at developing the industry but rather at controlling the Internet," he points out.

For example, in 2012 a mechanism for blocking websites without a court order was introduced and a register of banned Internet resources was established. Since 2014, it has become possible to block Internet resources containing calls to extremism and mass unrest for an indefinite period of time and without a court ruling.

In an interview with the BBC Russian Service, Anton Nosik, a prominent Russian blogger and online media expert, questioned how representative the study was, adding that in practice censorship in the Russian segment of the Internet already exists: "There are several dozen or several thousand district courts in Russia, each of which has powers to ban websites, including Wikipedia, YouTube, Google. All it takes is a ruling by a district court. When that ruling comes into force, the Justice Ministry enters the website banned by the court on the federal register of extremist literature. From that moment on, the website in question must be banned on the whole territory of Russia."
 
Obligation of the state

Nevertheless, according to the director of strategic projects at the Institute of Internet Studies, Irina Levova, attempts to control the Internet are natural while the state is trying to develop the Internet sector since there are also cyber threats to be taken into account. "It is a direct obligation of any state to ensure the security of its basic infrastructure and citizens. In the U.S.A. too, there is the first amendment that bans censorship, however, in 2001 the Patriot Act was adopted, which in effect makes it possible to do anything when it concerns national security," she says.

Overall, sociologists and experts conclude, the majority of people prefer not to pay attention to restrictive initiatives because they are not affected by them directly. At least, so far there has been no rise in protest sentiment toward this issue. "Many people took notice of the proposal by the Russian Union of Copyright Holders to charge 300 rubles a year from every Internet user for the benefit of copyright owners. But that was more of an exception since the move concerned people's financial interests. Everything else is received normally; after all, people are not expected to grasp what legal risks these initiatives may cause for individual companies," Levova points out.

Denis Volkov of the Levada Center agrees: "The majority of people certainly do not see it as an attempt to restrict their right of access to information."

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 #5
www.rt.com
August 25, 2015
Community split over destruction of banned food imports, poll shows

Public opinion research on the recent order to destroy the seized contraband foods shows the proportion of Russian citizens who support and oppose it are approximately equal, with a slight shift in favor of those who support the tougher customs rules.

The results of the poll released by the state-run agency VTSIOM on Wednesday show that 46 percent of the Russian public approve of utilizing the seized food contraband. Some 44 percent said they had negative attitude towards this idea, while 10 percent said they had no precise opinion on the subject.

When the pollsters asked the respondents to suggest what the authorities should do with the confiscated foodstuffs, 22 percent said that physical destruction was the only possible scenario. Twenty-five percent said that the confiscated foods should be sent to the needy and 14 percent suggested sending it back to the country of origin - as Russia had done before the new rules were introduced in early August.

According to the same research, 79 percent of Russians agreed that the confiscated foodstuffs must be destroyed if experts rule them potentially hazardous for health. Forty-four percent said that batches of food with counterfeit documents or without any papers at all must be disposed of and 33 percent said that this must happen to any products imported in violation of the Russian laws.

Only 10 percent of respondents expressed the opinion that foodstuffs seized by customs cannot be destroyed under any circumstances.

When the pollsters also asked Russians what in their opinion was the main reason behind the much-discussed decision, the opinions varied greatly. Sixteen percent said the authorities wanted to protect the people from low quality smuggled foods. A further 15 percent see the order as a reciprocal measure against the new round of anti-Russian sanctions in the West, while 10 percent answered that this was a prevention measure seeking to bring down the number of attempted smugglings. Seven percent said that this was just a way of executing the law.

Some 49 percent of Russians said they expected the number of attempted smuggling of sanctioned foods to go down after the order on its destruction, 38 percent said that they expected it to remain on the same level and 3 percent answered that in their opinion smugglers would increase the amount of contraband after facing new rules.

Earlier this month Russia introduced the obligatory destruction of all food products imported on its territory in violation of the food embargo. According to Russian state watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, 500 tons of seized contraband foodstuffs were destroyed in in just one week after the new procedure's implementation. At the same time, the head of the agency told reporters that the number of attempts to smuggle embargoed products into the country had fallen to a 10th of the usual figure after the decree on their destruction was signed by President Putin, but before it came into force.

Last week the Federal Customs Service proposed to make the rules even tougher by criminalizing illegal food imports from sanctioned countries. If approved, the motion would put embargoed foods on the same list with weapons of mass destruction and endangered animals.

The bill ordering this has been posted online for public discussion and if passed it would come into force in March 2016.

 #6
Moscow Times
August 25, 2015
Putin Has Russians' Loyalty, But for How Long?
By Vladimir Ryzhkov
Vladimir Ryzhkov, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 2007, is a political analyst.

President Vladimir Putin has built up huge reserves of popular support during his 15 years in power. This is due not only to his systematic use of propaganda, his monopoly on power and the selective repression of his opponents. Putin's popularity primarily derives from the unprecedented prosperity that Russian citizens have achieved over the past decade and a half.

Many Russians still remember the squalor of Soviet life with its constant shortages of everything other than bread and vodka. And more recently, they remember the ration coupons for soap during the perestroika years as well as the poverty and chaos of the 1990s, with its raging hyperinflation and the way millions of people often waited for months to receive their salaries and pension payments.

Russians consider the years under President Vladimir Putin - with their consumer frenzy, mortgages and bank loans for everyone, hypermarkets popping up like mushrooms, abundance of food and consumer goods on store shelves and constantly rising incomes - as a genuine economic miracle.

Sergei Karaganov, head of Russia's independent Council for Foreign and Defense Policy think tank, frequently states that in their entire 1,000-year history Russians have never enjoyed such plenty as they have under Putin - not under the tsars and not under the Communist Party.

Add to that the Winter Olympics in Sochi, the annexation of Crimea and the resounding anti-U.S. rhetoric combined with the magnificent military parades on Red Square and the result is Putin's notoriously high confidence rating of 89 percent.

Of course, senior and junior officials stole hundreds of billions of dollars in countless state corporations and organizations, sending that money abroad or converting it into luxury items and expensive food and drink.

But the Russian people still received quite a lot from that windfall of trillions of dollars in oil and gas income over the years. And although the people knew full well that their elected officials were absconding with enormous sums, they never complained.

Tracking down and exposing such culprits is a difficult and even dangerous task. The people consider it the right of the authorities to decide how to distribute that money. Of course they will pocket the best and largest bits for themselves, but that is the nature of "public service" in Russia. The main thing is that they leave some juicy scraps for the ordinary folk.

That windfall resulting from high oil prices and other favorable factors not only enabled thousands of officials and businesspeople to enrich themselves, but also made it possible for the government to accumulate huge cash reserves. Those reserves helped Russia practically sidestep the economic crisis of 2008-2009 unscathed, with no noticeable hardship to the people. What's more, average incomes actually grew during that period, despite the sharp drop in the gross domestic product.

And now, for the first time in Putin's reign, the situation has changed dramatically. The crisis is dragging on annoyingly and no end is in sight. Russia is literally slipping downward along an invisible staircase. Each downturn is followed by a brief period of stability before a new recession hits. And that has been the pattern for the past 18 months.

The average citizen has yet to complain. He patiently waits for the authorities to take the appropriate measures and correct everything - and without the need for him to get involved. Putin promised to cope with the crisis within two years. The people are willing to tread water and endure it for two years - especially because their National Leader always kept his word in the past.

The authorities know better. If they burn foreign ducklings and dispatch Cossacks carrying whips to seize illicit foreign cheese on supermarket shelves, they must have a good reason for it. The ordinary Russian is willing to put up with such foolishness for the good of the cause.

However, no one knows how ordinary Russians will behave if the crisis becomes protracted and the situation steadily erodes their standard of living. In the same way, no one knows how Putin will behave: after all, this is an entirely new situation for him.

Will his ratings drop and general discontent rise? Will people respond to calls from the opposition and turn out for mass demonstrations? Will the ruling party suffer election losses, as it almost did in 2011? Will the authorities respond with greater repression or more democracy? Will they institute a new economic policy? No one knows.

For now, the crisis is entering its most acute phase - the deepest and most protracted decline in oil prices, the fall in gas production and revenues from its sale, the shrinking of federal coffers and forced spending cuts.

Russia's gold and currency reserves have dropped from their peak of $600 billion in 2008 to $360 billion today. Gross domestic product has dropped by 3.4 percent since last year. Investment continues to decline.

The car market is in a shambles and construction starts are down. Real incomes were 9.2 percent lower in July than one year ago. Average monthly salaries have dropped from $1,200 in 2013 to only $500 now, adjusted for the ruble's devaluation. Another 20 million Russians will fall into poverty this year, an increase of 14 percent since last year.

Chronic crisis - now that's something new under President Putin.

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 #7
Moscow Times/Vedomosti
August 25, 2015
Russia's Brave New Crisis
By Maxim Trudolyubov
Maxim Trudolyubov, an editor at the independent Russian newspaper Vedomosti, is a director at the Center for New Media and Society at the New Economic School in Moscow. This comment originally appeared in Vedomosti.

The current crisis is unlike those of 1998 and 2008 that most of us remember. It is both longer and very different than the others, and it does not help that both the Russian people and Kremlin leaders have frivolously high expectations concerning its outcome. Everyone is clearly ready for a crisis, but they are prepared for a repeat of previous crises, and not for the one that has actually come.

According to economist Konstantin Sonin, the authorities' incompetent response to the crisis is reminiscent of the "theater of the absurd" of 1990, when leaders' actions and words had no connection to what was actually happening with the economy. In commenting on how officials now say the economy has already hit bottom, Sonin points out that the recession that began in 1990 reached its nadir only seven years later.

Commentator Kirill Rogov notes that, following their experience with the crises in 1998 and 2008, the Russian people have come to expect a relatively rapid "V-shaped" decline and recovery.

However, a comparison that economist Sergei Aleksashenko conducted of the former and current crises shows that they have little in common.

"Whereas in 2008-2009, domestic industry and railway transport hit bottom in January, this time the majority of indicators are falling much more slowly and the bottom is nowhere in sight," he wrote. What's more, the government offset losses during the previous crisis with an increase in social payments.

The government does not have the same safety margins in the current situation: it has already begun making cuts to social spending and will continue to do so. The Western sanctions cut off Russian companies from international capital and, coupled with Russia's counter-sanctions, exert a long-term downward pressure on the economy.

The market is flooded with excess oil and, what's more, an even greater glut is expected - in part due to the lifting of sanctions against Iran and partly because of the growing profitability of alternative sources of energy.

Most importantly, the overall political perspective is fundamentally different than that of six and 16 years ago. Russia was then a developing post-Soviet power with an untapped market in a number of areas. The government was the subject of some intrigue: Where would it go? How would it proceed? Russia's partners were quick to overlook the war with Georgia in 2008 and proceeded under the assumption that if the Russian economy were to fail, in market terms it would simply mean a good time to buy.

Now, however, Russia is pursuing a policy of political and not economic expansion. Its prospects are increasingly difficult to assess in terms of the market because politics overshadow everything else.

The word "repression" is increasingly used with regard to the government's relationship to its domestic opponents and Moscow displays ever greater arrogance toward its neighbors.

Many internal changes are simply inevitable: the economy and society will have to adapt to Russia's decision to close itself off from the outside world. And all of this suggests that Russia will emerge from the current crisis a different country than it was at the start.

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 #8
Carnegie Moscow Center
August 25, 2015
A Bashful Autocracy: Why There is no Putin Street in St. Petersburg
By Yekaterina Schulmann
Yekaterina Schulmann is a political scientist

Soon, Muscovites will get to choose the location of an enormous, 24-meter tall monument of Prince Vladimir the Great, the first Christian ruler in the East Slavic world. They will be able to vote via a smartphone app between three different locations in the capital. Two other options on the ballot, "Experts should decide" and "I don't know," basically mean "Leave it to the authorities." The choice "Don't put it anywhere"  is conspicuously absent.

In July the Russian leadership commemorated the millennium of the death of Vladimir in 1015 with a grand reception in the Kremlin and a four-point presidential decree, in which the last two points were classified as secret. Evidently, the Russian authorities want to erect the monument to Vladimir on Lubyanka Square, the location of the headquarters of the KGB and its successor, the FSB. He will rise in the empty space once occupied by a statue of the founder of the Soviet secret police Felix Dzerzhinsky that was, until recently, being readied for his reinstatement.

In the same month a group of senators from Russia's upper house of parliament submitted a draft law to parliament instituting two new commemorative dates: April 19, the Day of the Accession of Crimea, Taman, and Kuban into the Russian Empire (1783) and September 9, a Memorial Day for the Veterans of the Crimean War (1853-1856).

The accompanying commentary to the law explains that the dates reflect "authentic geopolitical events" which compelled Catherine the Great to bring these territories under Russian rule on the request of their citizens and that this "became the legitimate form of the accession of Crimea into Russia."

The two key concepts here are "authenticity" (the events really did take place, they weren't just some fantasy) and "legitimacy" (Crimea was brought into the empire at its own request, it was not just seized by force). Of course 1783 should really read 2014: the April date was selected for its proximity to the so-called Crimean Spring, and "Catherine the Great" is a stand-in for an entirely different Russian leader.

In the same way, everyone can see that Vladimir the Great is also a stand-in for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian elite really wants to honor him with monuments and feast-days but it has to do so in roundabout fashion.

Why is that Russia cannot erect a rotating monument to Vladimir Putin, just as Turkmenistan did for its first president, or rename St. Petersburg University Putin University, just as a major university in Astana has been named after Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev?

In Russia, everyone knows that adulation of this type is impossible. Indeed, the bureaucratic machine would view someone who proposed this initiative as a provocateur.

The prohibition is both obvious and hard to formulate.

First of all, Russia's rulers are acting in a special-ops style because most of them are themselves siloviki, or members of the security forces. For them an element of secrecy and surprise is key to all political decisions. The truth should never be expressed in public, even when doing so is beneficial, and all maps must be printed with errors so as to mislead potential spies.

Under this special services logic, this year a presidential decree instituted February 27 as a Special Operations Forces Day holiday. Why this date? The government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta told its readers, "Just recall what happened where this time last year, and how it ended." The new holiday is a not-so-subtle celebration of the Crimean takeover.

This rather strange nod-and-wink routine in official commemorations makes Russia's state and citizens co-conspirators in unspoken truths.  There is nothing new here. Russian émigré author Vladimir Nabokov wrote that when radical thinker Nikolai Chernyshevsky spoke in the 1860s about the Italian resurgence, "he kept adding in brackets, with drilling insistence, after practically every other sentence: 'Italy,' 'in Italy,' 'I am talking about Italy.' The already corrupted reader would have known that he was talking about Russia and the peasant question." Soviet theater goers would learn to read between the lines in similar fashion.
Hints, insinuations, and doublespeak are the weapons of the weak. When a powerful state resorts to such technique, it creates a somewhat warped but strong bond between the government and its citizens.

The phenomenon of what we can describe as Russia's "authoritarian bashfulness" can also be explained by political theory. Professor Barbara Geddes, a prominent researcher of authoritarian regimes, classifies Russia as a "personalist autocracy," as distinct from a single-party or military autocracy that exists elsewhere in the world. This concept is regarded critically (why can't Russia rely on its laws and institutions rather than on one-man control?) or with pride (Russia needs a heaven-sent leader), but no one denies that this is how the country is run.

 Most personalist regimes are less durable than single-party dictatorships and more susceptible to economic and exogenous shocks, because a "heaven-sent leader" must continuously prove his ability to turn water into wine and multiply loaves of bread or fish. Any difficulties must be temporary in nature. Also, personalist regimes need to continually buy off their elites: when the rewards for loyalty run out, the ranks of supporters suddenly evaporate.

However, there is a subtle but important internal contradiction in this Russian regime. Even if autocracy here is centered on one leader, the legitimation of authority is still procedural, in other words, power is acquired and transferred through elections and the interpretation of written law. Bureaucrats, not revolutionaries, are the custodians of authority.

This does not mean that the government abides by its own laws, but it must at least pretend to abide by them, and it violates them only within certain limits (in fact the laws are often written to allow for this eventuality). The fact that the authorities feel the need to falsify elections or bend the constitution is a perverse proof of this.

Russia's leaders seek legitimation by means of procedures to make them less vulnerable to external and internal shocks. They can answer criticism by saying "The laws are the same for everyone," or "If you don't like it, take us to court."

The real risks come when a regime of this type exhausts its legitimacy and misses the moment when a transfer of power can still be carried out through procedures that are ostensibly legitimate, even if inherently flawed. After that point, the regime begins to morph. The head of state has to behave like a revolutionary leader--even if he isn't one-- accomplishing great feats, vanquishing enemies, conquering new lands, discovering treasure. A charismatic leader must live by cult of personality alone, because he has no other legitimate grounds for holding his office.

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 #9
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
August 24, 2015
Sanctions not responsible for Russia's falling GDP, say experts
According to a new report by Central Bank analysts, sanctions against Russia have not played a significant role in the decline of Russia's economy, with experts agreeing that low oil prices are principally to blame.
Alexei Lossan, RBTH

The introduction of Western sanctions against Russia is responsible for only a 0.5-0.6-percent decline in the country's GDP, with record low oil prices the real villain, reports the Kommersant business daily, citing an economic study carried out by Central Bank analysts.

The report, completed by Andrei Sinyakov and Sergei Seleznev, collaborators of the Russian regulator, as well as by Agustin Roitman, an economist from the International Monetary Fund, describes the GDP dynamics model after the introduction of Western sanctions in the third quarter of 2014 and the fall of oil prices from $110 to $50-55 per barrel.

The model used by the authors is based on work carried out by Arnold Harberger, one of the founders of the Chicago School, and Carlos Vegh from the John Hopkins University. The authors have consciously factored in the extreme assumption that in the course of the next five years Russia will not have any access to capital in foreign markets, which by 2019 will eliminate the country's foreign debt entirely.

Vladimir Bessonov, Director of the Laboratory of Inflation Problems and Economic Growth Study at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, agrees with the conclusion.

"The precision of such evaluations is inevitably relative, however, in general I confirm that Russia's GDP has fallen in relation to the change in energy prices, not the sanctions," he said.

According to official information, Russia's GDP in the January-June 2015 period fell by 3.4 percent in relation to the same period in 2014.

The U.S. and other Western nations have imposed a series of economic sanctions against Russia since March 2014 to punish Moscow for its seizure of Crimea and its subsequent backing for militants in Ukraine's eastern Donbass region, where a conflict between the rebels and government forces continues to simmer despite a ceasefire agreement negotiated in February.

The sanctions target a wide range of Russian companies and individuals seen as close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and among other things, block state companies and banks from acquiring foreign credit.
 
Chronology the key

According to Bessonov, the proof can be found in the chronology of the fall of the Russian economy: The country's GDP began to shrivel not a year ago when Western sanctions against Russia were introduced, but at the beginning of 2015, after the drastic fall in oil prices.

"The influence of sanctions on various sectors of Russian industry was mixed. Some sectors were able to establish the process of import substitution," said Bessonov. "However, it is the key rate and the consequent cost of credit within the country that has had the main influence on the economy. The manufacturing industry is suffering especially from high borrowing costs."

The Central Bank was forced to raise the key rate, which determines the cost of all credit in the country, to 17 percent at the end of 2014 as the ruble went into freefall. Later it was reduced to 10.5 percent.
 
Bad news for the domestic market

According to Alexei Baskakov, director of the evaluation department at consulting network Finexpertiza, the current situation is to the advantage of exporters of energy resources who receive payments in foreign currencies, but for the majority of the sectors in the domestic market the rising cost of money has had a bad effect.

"We work with practically all sectors of the economy and today don't see any positive structural sectorial transformations, with the exception of, perhaps, import substitution projects, which receive aid from state banks," said Baskakov.

Moreover, according to Georgy Vashchenko, director of operations on Russia's Capital Market at Freedom Finance, the fall in oil prices means that the development of Arctic shelf deposits is not profitable. This means there is no sense in increasing expenses for buying high-tech equipment - which in any case is also subject to sanctions.

"The main reason for the recession is the inflation brought about by the ruble's fall, which in turn is related to the drop in oil prices and the Central Bank's refusal to support the national currency," said Vashschenko.

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#10
RIA Novosti
August 24, 2015
Russian economy minister says oil price expected at 52 dollars

Russian Economic Development Minister has said the price of oil will find a new balance in a few months at the level of just over 50 dollars a barrel, RIA Novosti (part of the state-owned International News Agency Rossiya Segodnya) reported on 24 August.

He said the average price of Urals oil will amount to 52 dollars a barrel in 2015, to 55 dollars - in 2016, and to 60 dollars - in 2017-2018.

The official forecast of the Ministry of Economic Development on the average price of Urals is 50 dollars a barrel for 2015 and 60 dollars a barrel for 2016, RIA Novosti said.

It said the ministry will submit the revised forecast to the government by September.

World oil prices showed a very negative trend on 24 August, losing more than 4 per cent, RIA Novosti said.

It said for the first time since March 2009, Brent hit the psychologically-important mark of 45 dollars a barrel on fears about China's economy, and went below 44 dollars by midday.

"It seems to me that the new equilibrium will be discovered in a few months, and it will be just over 50 (dollars a barrel - RIA Novosti)," Ulyukayev told reporters.

"The average price (of Urals - RIA Novosti) for under eight months is now at 55 dollars a barrel. I think for 2015 the price will be 52 dollars a barrel. It will be 55 dollars in 2016 and 60 dollars in 2017-2018," he said.

Decrease in federal revenues "insignificant"

The minister also said the decrease in federal revenues in 2016 will be insignificant compared with what had been expected and will amount to "a few tenths of a per cent of GDP", privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax reported later on the same day.

"Budget revenues are falling - slightly, as rouble revenues from oil and gas remain almost unchanged. We are talking about a few tenths of GDP," Ulyukayev said.

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 #11
Experts: Russians should wait until ruble volatility gives way to stable rate
By Lyudmila Alexandrova

MOSCOW, August 25. /TASS/. The ruble's free-fall is no disaster for the economy or households, analysts say. The ruble led the fall in emerging market currencies on Monday. During the day, the euro was observed to rise above the level of 83 rubles while the US dollar hit 70.9 rubles as of 7:00 p.m. Moscow time. The Russian currency has managed to strengthen slightly against the dollar and the euro. The ruble's collapse caused no noticeable reaction from the government.

"In order to influence the ruble exchange rate, the Central Bank should change its monetary policy and switch to a managed exchange rate, a policy that was given up last year," Associate Professor of the Stock Market Department at the Higher School of Economics Alexander Arshavsky told TASS.

"Considering that the Central Bank pursues the policy of a floating exchange rate and inflation targeting, its actions are quite justified now," the expert said.

"That is, the internal prices are not following the dollar exchange rate so far. The next question is what will happen next? The current ruble-dollar exchange rate will affect prices with a delay, somewhere in November-December. That is, not quite good consequences will follow but they will be delayed in time. And no one knows what will happen by that time," the expert said.

Russians who are focused on foreign consumption and spend their vacations abroad are the main victims of the ruble's free-fall, the expert said.

"But this is a minority while the rest of Russians are experiencing this in the form of inflation. The prices of imported goods will be rising and it will be necessary to switch to internal consumption," he added.

"Russia is a country with a commodity currency and today all commodity currencies have suffered," Rus-Rating Director for Regional Ratings and Infrastructural Projects Anton Tabakh told TASS.

"All the currencies strongly pegged to oil prices have been affected - each to its own degree. Besides, developing countries' currencies have suffered to a greater extent and this exerted extra pressure on the ruble," the expert said.

Therefore, it is understandable that this process is uncontrollable, the expert said.

"You can fight against it, burning out reserves as Russia did until November and Kazakhstan until last week. You can fight by raising interest rates but this kills the loan market and is bad for the banking system. That is why, it is sometimes easier to get through it and wait until stabilization while simultaneously alleviating the consequences. This is what the Central Bank is currently doing, by expanding currency repo operations. As far as I understand, now a position has been chosen to wait until the situation stabilizes at some level and subsequently fit economic policy into this," the expert said.

"A weak ruble is advantageous for the budget because more money will come from exports. This is advantageous for all exporters, for those who are dealing with import substitution. This is disadvantageous for those who operate using imported raw materials and imported goods and those who depend on imported components, which are indispensable," the expert said.

"This will affect pensioners because pension indexation will be small while inflation will intensify further and this will affect those whose incomes are fixed in rubles while the share of imports in their consumer goods basket is high. In particular, this will affect those who are dependent on imported medicines," the expert said.

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 #12
Moskovskiy Komsomolets
August 21, 2015
Paper predicts "most terrible scenario" for Russian economy as oil, rouble drop
Nikolay Vardul, Finansovaya Gazeta chief editor, Most terrible scenario happening for Russian economy. When will oil drown rouble?

The dollar has already risen above R67.5 and the euro has risen above R75.3. It is possible to refer back meaninglessly to dates when this happened before and it is possible to admit honestly that the situation is moving ever closer to outright panic, such as it was in the Russian currency market on the divide between 2014 and 2015. And this is not yet the evening. The market is not just figures; it is psychology because it is expectations that play the lead role in the market. And nothing good awaits either the rouble or the Russian economy as a whole.

What is at the basis of everything today, just like yesterday and 10, 20, and 30 years ago is oil and its market price. For a great country which, furthermore, is tormented by the phantom pains of a lost superpower status, this is shameful whereas for the rest of the world it is dangerous because if something is bad for us it means that enemies are to blame.

On 17 August, the 17th anniversary of the default and the subsequent collapse of the rouble, Aleksey Ulyukayev, the minister for economic development (the department's name has a particularly mocking ring today), rejoiced, announcing that the price of oil has reached its lowest level. On that day it was fluctuating at a level of 48-49 dollars per barrel. Ulyukayev recalled that at a price of 50 dollars (the Ministry for Economic Development's base forecast for 2015) people will be paying R60-61 for the US currency. On 17 August the dollar stood at R65.31 and the euro at R72.44.

Four days passed and the minister's verbal interventions are already worthless. Oil (meaning Brent grade) cost 46.57 dollars yesterday [20 August] and at the moment is depreciating faster than the rouble. Will it go on for long? Sberbank's Centre for Macroeconomic Research has warned that even greater upheavals await the currency market in December and the rouble will depreciate faster than it should because of oil price dynamics. But the acceleration will most probably happen sooner.

But what is the Central Bank waiting for? On 19 August it published a curious study in which it acted as an oilman. "There has been a transition from one equilibrium in the oil market (with average oil prices above 100-110 dollars per barrel) to another (with average oil prices 40-50 per cent lower). We are still observing the residual processes of this transition. The market has still not fully come to understand the main parameters of the new equilibrium which is why significant oil price fluctuations are being observed around the new equilibrium. In other words, unlike last year, what we are dealing with this year are fluctuations and not a trend," the Central Bank comments.

On Neglinnaya Street [Central Bank location] they agree with Ulyukayev: the market has already switched to a "new equilibrium." As the classic author has written: for the boiled crab the worst is already over. But unfortunately, our economy is not a crab. Things will get worse for it.

Even if you agree that the oil market has reached a new equilibrium, the question arises: how long will this equilibrium last? Yesterday [20 August] David Kotok of Cumberland Advisers stated to CNN: "Oil could easily fall to 15-20 dollars a barrel." Market analysts, knowing the psychology, like to refer back to figures that have already come and gone before which is why the forecasts speak far more often about 30-32 dollars a barrel - that is what oil cost at the peak of the 2008 crisis. Nursultan Nazarbayev also spoke about 30 dollars when commenting on the devaluation of the tenge.

What might oil encounter with its notional equilibrium today? Neither Kotok nor Nazarbayev spoke about this but Iran will be the battering ram. The World Bank predicts that additional oil supplies from Iran could bring the oil price down by 10 per cent in 2016. Iran's tankers are already full and are awaiting the order.

Of course the market will pull out of its price dive in good time but this will not improve matters. The precipice lies ahead. And it will be even more abrupt if the US Federal Reserve System finally raises interest rates specifically at the end of 2015 or the very beginning of 2016. For Russia a combination of Iran's tankers starting to set sail for European ports with a new US monetary policy is the worst-case scenario.

The fall in oil prices will be accelerated in two ways: By a new supply of Iranian oil, which is only going to increase, and an even more rapidly appreciating dollar, the generally accepted insurance against which is pressure on oil and a lowering of its price.

In that case 15-20 dollars a barrel ceases to be an abstract scare story.

This is only the beginning.

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 #13
Moscow Times
August 25, 2015
Economic Crisis Empties Moscow Central Streets
By Anastasia Bazenkova

Even though Moscow retail property owners are increasingly willing to offer favorable lease terms to clients, Moscow's central streets continue to lose their tenants who are forced to close their outlets due to the economic crisis.

In the first half of the year, the vacancy rate in prime locations in downtown Moscow climbed to 11.8 percent, the highest since 2009, according to a report released by real estate consultancy Colliers International this month. The report said that the rate may reach 14 percent by year end.

Of all the central streets, Ulitsa Bolshaya Lubyanka now has the highest vacancy rate of 38 percent, and followed by Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya Ulitsa with a 30 percent vacancy rate and Ostozhenka Street with 27 percent, the report said.

It is mostly closures of banks and clothing stores that are to blame for these record vacancy rates, industry analysts told The Moscow Times.

Banks occupy a significant share in the street retail market and so are partly responsible for the dramatic increase in vacancy rates, as the economic crisis has caused widespread bank closures, said Svetlana Yarova, head of street retail at real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle.

Vacancies rates in some parts of downtown Moscow have risen 2.5 times since the beginning of the year, according to the Colliers International report.

Moscow's clothing stores are also among the most affected by the crisis, according to the experts. Double-digit inflation and falling real incomes are forcing Russians to slash their spending.

Overall, retail trade in Russia fell by 8 percent in the first half of the year, according to the Rosstat state statistics service.

Retailers are moving away from central streets to smaller premises in other areas or to larger shopping malls, said Nikolai Kazansky, managing partner of Colliers International Russia.

Several such malls have recently opened, offering lower rents in order to fill the retail space, Kazansky said.

Six new shopping malls with a total area of 343,000 square meters have opened in Moscow in the first half of the year - a record for Russia's capital, according to data from Colliers International.

Shopping malls are also attracting more visitors as they provide convenient parking that is often not available, inconvenient or expensive in downtown Moscow

Parking difficulties result in reduced foot traffic, therefore retail tenants tend to abandon premises located far from metro stations, according to the report.

Meanwhile, retail property owners are seeking ways to stop the outflow of the tenants.

Amid the falling ruble, many owners now offer fixed rents in rubles. If they don't do this, retailers leave, Kazansky said.

The Russian ruble lost about half of its value against the U.S. dollar over the past year. The rental rates, often set in dollars or euros, have nearly doubled in ruble terms.

While clothing retailers and banks are giving up retail space in prime streets, lower-priced and mid-range grocery chains as well as fast-food restaurants are actively taking over their spots as they are more resistant to the new economic reality because there is an increasing demand for cheaper goods during crisis, market analysts said.

"We are now witnessing a transformation of the retail market," Yarova said.

Unlike Colliers analysts, Yarova predicts that the vacancy rate will fall slightly by the end of the year.

Property owners are already tired of making concessions, she said.

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 #14
Forbes.com
August 21, 2015
Russia's Labor Market Is Deteriorating
By Mark Adomanis
[Charts here http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2015/08/21/russias-labor-market-is-deteriorating/]

Economically speaking, Russia has been taking it on the chin for the past year. Some of the damage is self-inflicted (like the wasteful and increasingly farcical "self-sanctions") and some of it is undoubtedly the result of European and American policy targeting the financial sector, but most of Russia's problems are the result of a historic collapse in commodity prices. If anything, this collapse appears to be gathering momentum. From Russia's perspective, then, it's a virtual certainty that things will get worse before they get better.

While oil collapse, and the subsequent swoon in the ruble, attracted headlines at the end of last year and the early months of 2015, there wasn't much of an initial impact on where Russia's would feel economic pain most acutely: the labor market. When you exclude seasonal factors, Russian unemployment barely budged for the first four months after oil prices collapsed: the rate ticked up from 5.3% to a still-respectable 5.4%, among the lowest levels that Russia has experienced since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Compared to the terrifying headlines, the labor market actually seemed to be doing pretty decently.

But unemployment is a lagging indicator and, as you might expect, in the intervening six months things have gradually gotten worse. There haven't been any dramatic swings, but there has been a slow, steady, deterioration to the point that in July seasonally-adjusted unemployment was a full .4% higher than at the equivalent time last year. At this pace, assuming no further radical changes in trajectory, Russian unemployment will probably end the year at an average of 5.6%. As the following graph shows this is hardly exceptional, even for recent history, but the negative trajectory is impossible to ignore and pointless to deny.

Given recent trends in the labor market and the Russian economy's surprisingly weak performance in the second quarter, it seems virtually certain that unemployment will keep increasing for at least the next six months. That doesn't mean "Russia is doomed" or that some kind of state collapse is imminent, but it does mean that the authorities are in for a nasty economic cocktail of the kind that they've almost never had to face since Putin first came to power.

It's not just one problem: the whole economic model is coming under pressure at the same time. GDP is shrinking, real wages are decreasing, unemployment is increasing, and inflation is also increasing. The authorities have a lot of problems to face and, after burning through a significant amount of foreign reserves, a reduced ability to do so.

Russians are often (unfairly, I would argue!) portrayed as passive sheep, and as submissive to whatever dictates the authorities make. But, in the past, they have clearly demonstrated the willingness to take to the streets if they feel their economic well being is under attack. This is precisely why the authorities moved so decisively in during the crisis year of 2009: they were absolutely terrified about the prospect of widespread economic unrest.

Sooner or later, a combination of shrinking paychecks and lengthening unemployment lines will create political problems.

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 #15
http://readrussia.com
August 24, 2015
No, the Russian Government Isn't More Efficient Than the US
By Mark Adomanis

According to the Pentagon, the Russian military is roughly 9 times more efficient in turning budget allocations into combat power.

Now, of course, that sounds insane. Anyone with eyes and ears knows that the Russian system of government is substantially less efficient than its Western peers. This isn't some conspiracy cooked up inside the headquarters of Transparency International or some other "foreign agent," it's an inescapable conclusion of speaking to any reasonably large group of Russians or of reading even a small handful of Russian-language periodicals.

The Russian government is not as corrupt as the liberal opposition often insinuates (it's not Zimbabwe under Mugabe) but it would take a fantastically naïve or uniformed person to think that Putin has discovered methods through which each dollar of Russian budget spending magically transforms into 8 or 9 Western dollars.*

And yet that insane argument about the overawing efficiency of the Russian ministry of defense is exactly the one that the Pentagon is making when it claims that "It's not ready for a war with Putin."

The United States spends, has spent, and will continue to spend massively more on its military than the Russian Federation. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, since 1998 in inflation adjusted terms the United States has cumulatively spent $8.5 trillion dollars more on its armed forces than the Russian Federation. That is not a typo. Eight and a half. Trillion. Dollars.

In other words, over the past twenty or so years, the United States' military spending has exceeded Russia's by more than four times Russia's total annual economic output. Eight and a half trillion dollars is simply a preposterously large amount of money, many dozens of times bigger than Russia's total government outlays. If outspending the Russians by that titanic of a margin doesn't allow the US military to beat them in a fair fight, nothing will.

It's funny, but this ludicrous Pentagon PR offensive (which is a quite transparent ploy for a bigger budget: "give us a lot more money or we're all going to be crushed under Putin's jackboot!") reminds me of any interesting, if awkward fact: many of the most hardcore "anti-Russia" advocates make arguments that, if considered logically, actually amount to Kremlin propaganda. The Pentagon, in other words, is giving the Kremlin far more credit than its performance actually merits.

Much the same can be said about Western concerns about Russia's "information war:" far too much credit is given to the efficacy of media outlets that traffic in easily disprovable lies and hoaxes so clumsy they literally inspire laughter. Despite Russia's fearsome reputation for "weaponizing" information, the reality is that, due in large part to the carnage it has unleashed in the Donbass, Russia is increasingly unpopular everywhere in Europe, even in countries that have traditionally been quite sympathetic to the Russian perspective. The Russians might be trying to wage an anti-Western information war, but they're doing a really poor job of it.

In the hysteria about the supposedly unstoppable menace of the Russian military and the peril of Sputnik and RT there is a conflation of intent ("the Russians want to dominate Europe") and capacity ("the Russian military is too strong for the US to defeat"). Intent matters a little bit, but capacity matters a lot more.

Even if one assumed that the Russian government has the goal of total global domination (and it is far from clear that this is actually the case) the Kremlin quite simply lacks the resources to do so. Russia is a middle-sized middle-income country with an aging population and an economy that is in serious trouble. The most malicious intent imaginable cannot overcome the fact that, in comparison to its NATO competitors, Russia is substantially poorer, weaker, and less populous. That reality will not change at any point in the foreseeable future.

The story about the Pentagon's supposed helplessness in the face of the Russian military reminds us that the not so wide world of Russia watchers could use a lot less amateur psychoanalysis ("what does Putin really want?") and a lot more dispassionate number crunching about the Russian state's real and potential capabilities. Those capabilities are not a laughing matter. The Russian state really does have the capacity to cause a lot of trouble for a lot of people. But tall tales about an all-conquering Kremlin do no one any good, and simply feed into the Kremlin's narrative about a cowardly West quivering in fear of a resurgent Russia.

The truth about Russia is a lot more prosaic and a lot less flattering. It deserves to be told.

*if this is actually true we ought to be sending good governance experts to Moscow to learn more about the Russian government's business processes! Apparently we'd be able to cut spending in half while substantially improving performance

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 #16
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
August 24, 2015
Russian media prepares for an escalation in Donbas in September
Media roundup: Russian media turned its attention to warning signs of intensifying military activity in Eastern Ukraine. Developments in Greece and the Korean peninsula also made headlines.
By Anastasia Borik

Last week, the Russian media focused on the potential implications of rising tensions in Ukraine as well as the unexpected resignation of influential Kremlin insider Vladimir Yakunin as head of Russian Railways. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras also caused a stir in Russian media circles last week by his resignation, as did new tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Escalation in Eastern Ukraine

Tensions have been constantly rising in southeast Ukraine for the last few weeks and both gunfire and provocations have been observed by both parties. Last week the situation deteriorated even further. Both sides are expecting provocations on the eve of Ukraine's Independence Day on August 24, with both simultaneously increasing forces on the frontlines.

Kommersant analyzed the speech delivered by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to Ukrainian soldiers in Kharkov, pointing out Poroshenko's preparedness to escalate the conflict. The newspaper believes that it was specifically Poroshenko who insisted on the new Normandy Format negotiations without the participation of Russian President Vladimir Putin to prepare European intermediaries for a possible increase in military activities. Any military escalation, of course, would impact the implementation of the Minsk Agreements.

Opposition-minded Novaya Gazeta is also anticipating a new round of military conflict. The media outlet believes that such an escalation is clear from both sides' rhetoric and offers several scenarios for how the situation would develop. It also points out that neither side has a complete advantage. Escalation is inevitable, but its extent will depend on the progress of political negotiation efforts.

Pro-government Rossiyskaya Gazeta, citing reports from militia headquarters, provided details about Ukrainian military plans to undertake a large-scale assault with the aim of surrounding Donetsk and Luhansk. The newspaper also mentions the number of military equipment Ukrainian forces have concentrated on the borders of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR).

Yakunin's resignation from Russian Railways

Last week, Vladimir Yakunin resigned from his position as the director of one of Russia's largest monopolies, Russian Railways, which practically controls 100 percent of railway transportation in the country. Russian media are certain that such an important decision could not be taken without the knowledge of the president, who has always been well disposed towards Yakunin.

Is this the start of a massive restructuring within Russia's elite? This is the question journalists are asking. Opposition Novaya Gazeta believes that Putin is sending the Russian elite a very clear message that, in times of crisis and a decline in incomes within the country, loyalty to the president takes second place to economic efficiency.

Although Yakunin is considered to be one of Putin's main companions, he cannot claim to have an impeccable reputation: the large-scale corruption within Russian Railways has been common knowledge in recent years. The publication believes the restructuring of the elite may also relate to Dmitry Peskov, the president's press secretary, and Igor Sechin, the head of Russia's largest oil giant Rosneft.

Kommersant talks about Yakunin's legacy, which he has left for the new head of Russian Railways, Oleg Belozerov. Incomplete reforms, chronic lack of money, outdated infrastructure and minimal opportunities for attracting investment from private investors are some of the results of Yakunin's activities. The paper believes that Yakunin's career is, essentially, over, and his transfer to the parliament of the Federation Council is a gesture of goodwill from the president, which ensures him a restful trip to his pension.

According to the webstite of the Echo of Moscow radio staion, Yakunin's departure is the result of a political housecleaning, which Putin is carrying out: The former head of Russian Railways had become too active, including politically, which the president disliked. The Echo of Moscow raises the question of who will follow Yakunin and become the next victim of the intra-elite struggle.

Greek PM Alexis Tsipras resigns

The reason for the resignation of the Greek PM was a failure to achieve approval from part of the ruling coalition on a packet of economic measures, which had been agreed to by EU representatives and the Greek government in mid-August.

In essence, this is a serious split between the ruling Syriza party and its coalition parties, who condemned the resulting agreements. Tsipras's departure and that of his government will lead to early parliamentary elections (with a tentative date set for the end of September). Russian media organizations have attempted to predict the election results and evaluate Greece's internal political intrigues.

Kommersant believes that elections would help improve relations between the European Union and Greece, since it is possible that a more European-oriented party would gain power. However, the publication observes that public polls show that Tsipras continues to be extremely popular, and could quite possibly return as head of government in September.

Business newspaper Vedomosti points out that, with this move, Tsipras is hoping to gain additional support for his agreement with creditors and also to counter the split in the governing party.

Tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets discusses the intrigues within Syriza, from which 25 people have already resigned and formed a new party, Popular Unity. The publication believes that Syriza will not be destroyed by this split and predicts that there will be a complete regrouping of a left wing parties as a coalition in the Greek parliament.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula

Tensions between North and South Korea continued to grow last week. After a series of mutual provocations on the border and announcements bringing troops onto a combat footing, the parties nonetheless agreed to talks, which were held on Saturday, August 22 and continued on Sunday, August 23.

Populist Moskovsky Komsomolets describes the position of both parties at the negotiations as not overly optimistic in evaluating their progress. The paper believes that much of the discussion focuses on South Korean propaganda played from loudspeakers on the border. South Korea will not remove these loudspeakers and it was specifically this issue, which has caused such severe anger in Pyongyang on this occasion.

Vedomosti reports South Korea's intention to maintain the loudspeakers on the border, a move that aroused North Korea's discontent. The publication cites South Korea's President Park Geun-hye, who stated that South Korea has no intention of curtailing border broadcasts even if North Korea apologizes for killing South Korean soldiers in the demilitarized zone.

Pro-government Rossiyskaya Gazeta believes that the dialogue is an important step towards de-escalation; however, the newspaper observes that the first round failed to achieve any agreement, and it is highly unlikely that an agreement will be achieved as part of the second round. The publication points to numerous disagreements and recriminatory claims between both sides.

Resignation of Mahmoud Abbas from the PLO

Another notable event for the week in Russian media circles was the resignation of the head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Mahmoud Abbas, who for a long time has been one of the participants in the negotiations between Palestine and Israel. Abbas announced his resignation on Friday. However, the Palestinian National Council has yet to confirm it. Along with Abbas, another ten of his colleagues intend to resign.

Pro-government Rossiyskaya Gazeta connects Abbas' resignation with his disappointment in the peace process under American auspices, and also fatigue from the internal Palestinian conflict between the Fatah movement, which he heads, and the more radical Hamas.

The populist Moskovsky Komsomolets also believes that Abbas' resignation is connected with the failure of negotiations and the inability of Palestine to influence Israel's carrying out of agreements that have already been made. Vedomosti refers to complications in negotiations, observing that the Palestinian leader appears to be tired of such ongoing negotiations.

Quotes of the week:

Alexis Tsipras addressing the Greek people: "I feel a moral and political obligation to turn to you for a decision. Your votes decide: Can the deal that we have reached get us out of the crisis?"

North Korean Ambassador to Moscow Kim Hyun Joong: "The demilitarized zone is a continuous mine field. We have powerful forces and if we want to punish the South Korean militarists, we will not use such primitive weapons as mines."

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko: "Today we are already much better prepared for the defense, for the protection of our Ukraine than a year ago. The Minsk Accords, despite their criticism, gave us leeway, gave us the time to strengthen our defenses. They helped us, even just a little, to overcome the clear technological gap between us and Russia."

Eduard Basurin, Minister of Defense, DPR: "Despite the preparedness of the regime in Kiev to unleash war after Independence Day and the preparation for a resonating provocation to justify aggression and genocide against the people of Donbas, the DPR army is ready to respond immediately, effectively halting the blows of our enemy."

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 #17
China.org.cn
August 25, 2015
Russian FM sees end of Western dominance in economy, politics
 
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday slammed the West for trying to maintain its global dominance by heavy-handed tactics, saying Western dominance in world economy and politics is actually coming to an end.

"We are witnessing the end of a very long era of dominance of the historic West dominance in economy and politics," Lavrov said at the Terra Scientia International Youth Forum held in Dvoriki in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow.

The era, which has lasted for centuries, has entered into the objective contradictions with the newly formed centers of power in the Asia-Pacific region, he said, adding that a polycentric world is being formed, although the process is going to take quite a long time.

Lavrov said the West has been trying to maintain its dominance by artificially exercising pressure on other countries, using sanctions and military forces, as well as violating the international law and the UN Charter, thus contributing to the chaos in international relations.

Meanwhile, the top Russian diplomat said Russia was ready to restore dialogue with the West, particularly with the United States, as soon as it saw the willingness from the opposite side.

"When we receive an offer to begin, even gradually, restoring the former channels and mechanisms of interaction and dialogue that have been frozen by our American partners, I am certain that we will agree to restore these channels," he said.

Lavrov added that Moscow has been following the U.S. presidential campaign, but Moscow did not expect many changes in Washington's policy irrespective of the election results.

"Since the Soviet times, there has been an opinion that it is easier for Russia to deal with a Republican president than with a Democratic one, but frankly, I do not see a major difference," he said.

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#18
Reuters
August 24, 2015
Russia's Lavrov says U.S. signals it wants to mend ties

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday the United States has been sending "signals" that it wants to start mending ties with Moscow, badly strained over the past year and a half by the conflict in Ukraine.

The United States and European Union slapped economic sanctions on Russia last year after its annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and support for a separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow, which denies arming the rebels, responded with its own counter-sanctions against Western countries.

But Russia and the United States have still cooperated in some other areas, notably in helping to broker a landmark nuclear deal last month with Iran.

Lavrov made clear Moscow was open to further dialogue, though it would also not "beg" for better ties.

"But if we receive a proposal to start, even gradually, restoring these channels, mechanisms for dialogue and cooperation that have been frozen by our American partners, I am sure ... we will agree to restore these channels," he said.

"We are already getting such signals from the Americans, though for now not very clear," Lavrov told a youth meeting.

As well as the Ukraine conflict, in which more than 6,500 people have been killed since April 2014, Washington and Moscow are at loggerheads over the Syrian crisis, human rights and trade and security issues.

However, Lavrov said last week that Russian President Vladimir Putin would "consider constructively" any request for a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama when he travels to New York next month for the U.N. General Assembly.

Also last week, Putin said at a meeting with U.S. boxing champion Roy Jones Jr.: "We have had different kinds of relations at different times, but whenever America and Russia's higher interest demanded it, we always found the strength to build relations in the best possible way."

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 #19
The National Interest
August 24, 2015
America's Worst Nightmare: Russia and China Are Getting Closer
Will an inverted U.S.-China-Russia triangle reshape the world order?
By Mathew Burrows and Robert A. Manning
Mathew Burrows is director of the Atlantic Council's Strategic Foresight Initiative. His recent book is The Future Declassified: Megatrends that Will Undo the World Unless We Take Action (Palgrave/Macmillan). In August 2013 he retired from a 28-year career in the CIA and State Department, the last ten being spent at the National Intelligence Council (NIC). Robert A. Manning is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.

It was a brilliant stroke in 1971, when Nixon and Kissinger took advantage of China's fears of the USSR with the historic U.S. opening to China. That chess move created a strategic triangle with the United States in the catbird seat and turned ideology on its head, dividing the two communist regimes. Now amid a surprising attention deficit in the United States, tensions with Russia are resulting in Washington getting the short end of the stick, with risky implications for the global order: Sino-Russian relations are closer than they have been at any time in the past fifty years, giving them the chance to reshape the global order to their liking.

Whereas Kissinger's strategic logic was to gain advantage for the United States by having better relations with both Moscow and Beijing than they had with each other, it now looks like China will be the winner as the rift grows between Washington and Moscow. While there is a tendency to focus on historic differences, racial fears and geopolitical competition, the new Sino-Russian trend may be more of a marriage of convenience than anybody in the Washington foreign-policy elite will admit.

U.S.-led sanctions against Putin's Russia has led it to look East, particularly to China, even if it means a weakened Moscow being the very Junior Partner. Its long-term energy future lies in Asia, and nearly half a trillion dollars in gas and oil deals with China will bolster a sagging Russian economy. China gains a valuable partner-instead of a rival-for stabilizing and modernizing Eurasia, which China increasingly sees not as a backwater, but its economic future. China's new "One Road, One Belt" pivot west to Eurasia seeks to turn its vulnerability-a border with fourteen nations-into a strategic asset. Together they seek to realize MacKinder's vision of a Eurasian heartland unopposed-with the possible exception of India.

A successful partnership in Eurasia-boosting its economic prospects by putting in infrastructure and stymieing extremism that threatens authoritarians in Moscow, Beijing and Central Asia-would underline the success of the non-Western model of authoritarian state-centric capitalism. Not just the region, but also Africa and Latin America-where China already has made inroads with its development largesse-are bound to take notice.

To a degree, it already exists. China usually follows Russia's lead in the UN; together they have blocked sanctions against Assad in Syria, making sure the Western-led operation to depose Qaddafi in Libya is the last R2P operation of its kind. The backtracking on democracy which Freedom House already decries-nine years in which there has been declines-would accelerate. Both make no bones about preferring to deal with authoritarians.

Russian efforts on a Eurasian Union would get a further boost. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is already enlisting more members (Pakistan and India recently joined) as the region senses where the wind is blowing with the United States and NATO leaving a mess behind in Afghanistan. The United States and its Western partners are seen as having their hands full in the Middle East, while also assuring Central/Eastern Europeans that NATO's Article V security commitment still stands.

At least for the short-term, Moscow and Beijing have avoided strategic competition in Central Asia. There appears to be at least a tacit Sino-Russian division of labor in Central Asia, with Moscow taking the lead on security and Beijing flooding the zone with aid and investment. Its new BRICS Development Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank should lubricate its efforts. In contrast, the U.S. Shale Revolution and new players like Iraq and Iran have reduced the attractiveness of the Central Asians. The West has more than enough oil. Their markets are local. The age of the big pipelines is over.

Counterterrorism was another source of attractiveness to the region. Supplying Afghanistan with troops and supplies meant the United States and its allies needed the Central Asians. Now the footprint is much less. Counterterrorism is done on the cheap with drones-and in Pakistan and Afghanistan we don't even need permission. Our exit is an opportunity for China's Eurasian gambit.                  

Global Consequences

Beyond their Eurasian symmetry, there are a host of common interests, both in opposition to U.S. primacy, U.S. values of democracy and transparency and a shared desire for a more multipolar world order. Both are pursuing nationalist agendas, drawing on historic, cultural identities. Both seek an authoritarian capitalist model in opposition to the "Washington Consensus." Both oppose an open internet and seek to Balkanize it.

This raises profound questions about the future of global governance and the dynamics of world order. In the worst-case scenario, a new bipolarity could emerge, with China, Russia and a handful of authoritarian regime from Central Asia on one pole and the United States, EU and Asian allies and partners on the other. This is not a recipe for peace and prosperity. It would leave many of what were once known as "nonaligned" nations like India, Brazil and others caught in between.

Sino-Russian Contradictions

Yet there are also other trends. While Russia has sought to pull back from the global economy it entered into upon the collapse of the USSR in 1991, China has bet its future on the global economy and has a domestic agenda of market reforms aimed at transforming its investment-driven, export-oriented economy into a consumer-led innovative economy. Then there is China's economic calculus: Chinese trade with the United States and EU was $1.1 trillion in 2014 compared to $100 billion in Sino-Russian trade. Some of the oil and gas megadeals they have signed over the past several years may be at risk-or at least slow to be realized. A slowing Chinese economy, flatter energy demand growth, lower oil prices and a changing global gas market have changed Beijing's energy calculus.

While the Russian petro-state appears in slow, but steady decline, China is a rising state, increasingly defining itself as a Great Power, and one seeming intent on fostering a contemporary version of pre-modern Sino-centric tributary rule in Asia.

China is also uncomfortable with Russian intervention in former Soviet republics where breakaway movements have been encouraged, as in eastern Ukraine. Beijing is obsessed with sovereignty issues. It has not been an enthusiastic supporter of Russian moves in Ukraine.

And as with some Trump-like American nativists fearful of Latin influence, Russia is ill at ease with the Asianification of the Russian Far East. This has racial overtones as well. Moreover, many of China's territorial assertiveness in the East and South China Seas has been based on historical claims. China's Ming dynasty claimed much of the Russian Far East, before Moscow occupied it in the 17th century.

Russia can only hope that the maritime disputes in the East and South China Seas pitting the United States and its allies against China will escalate, throwing Beijing into Moscow's arms. Beijing will see how much the United States respects China's maritime interests.

Do these trends mean that Sino-Russian amiability may not be as durable as some argue? Will historic fears and competition reassert itself? Is there an opportunity for the United States to recreate something closer to the Kissingerian strategic triangle?

Ball in the United States' Court

Whether the world moves towards this new, troublesome bipolarity or moves in the direction of a more inclusive, still globalizing international order will depend in no small degree to what role the United States plays in a complex landscape where power is diffused and no single nation can singularly shape international outcomes.

It will require more U.S. agility and pragmatic realism, abandoning unipolar tendencies and acting more as first among equals. Can the United States afford confrontational approaches to both Russia and China? Finding a new equilibrium with Russia may require uncomfortable compromises. Yet all the presidential campaigns are likely to outdo themselves in their rhetoric against both Russia and China, missing the opportunity to talk about how the US will need to grapple with a changing world order. We may wish we were back in 1971, but Silicon Valley has yet to construct Jules Verne's time machine. Both the media's and various campaigns' inclinations to sweat small stuff is blinding us to the big strategic shifts. Yes, there's a new Great Game afoot, but we're being seriously outplayed.

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 #20
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
August 25, 2015
Apocalypse not now: Why the direct war between Russia, NATO is unlikely
Amidst the increase in large-scale military exercises in Europe and Russia, apocalyptic scenarios are becoming commonplace. Thankfully, the worst-case scenarios are unlikely at best. Here's why.
By Artem Kureev
Artem Kureev is an expert from the Moscow-based think tank "Helsinki+" that deals with protecting interests of Russians living in the Baltic countries. Kureev graduated from Saint Petersburg State University's School of International Relations.

NATO's Allied Shield exercise in June, which involved 15,000 troops from 19 NATO countries, was the largest since the Cold War. Yet August 15 in Germany saw the start of yet more military maneuvers, codenamed Swift Response 15, set to last about a month. It represents the largest Allied airborne training event on the continent in the post-Soviet era.

Russia, meanwhile, is not far behind. In late August, the Collective Rapid Reaction Force of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) will hold its own exercises, codenamed Interaction-2015, involving more than 2,000 troops from across the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). At the same time, Moscow and Beijing are preparing for the active phase of the Marine Interaction-2015 (II) naval maneuvers, scheduled for August 23-27 in the Far East.

Against this backdrop, the latest report (published on August 12) by the influential non-governmental expert group European Leadership Network (ELN), made up of former high-ranking military personnel and politicians, is rather unnerving.

The ELN report suggests that both NATO and Russia are preparing for possible military action against each other. Although the ELN experts acknowledge that neither Moscow nor Washington and its allies are hardly likely to be planning a large-scale military confrontation, they are downbeat about the situation in Europe. The unpredictability surrounding the exercises is further aggravating the tensions, which both sides, says the ELN, should take immediate steps to reduce.

Over the past 15 months, NATO and Russia have indeed been fine-tuning possible operations against each other. But is it evidence of an approaching conflict, and on what scale? And is it possible that Europe could see a major war that no one wants? Unlikely. Nevertheless, it is worth considering some hypothetical scenarios and their chances of becoming real.

Apocalypse not now

First of all, it should be stated that neither the authors of the ELN report nor Russian or Western leaders and diplomats have ever mentioned open warfare. Full-scale military operations against Russia to change the constitutional order of Russia, or an Allied response to a hypothetical "Russian invasion of the Baltic countries," are topics only for the most pugnacious politicians, mainly right-wing nationalists.

Significantly, such threats are not even taken seriously by people in the Baltic countries themselves. For instance, Evhen Tsybulenko, a political scientist of Ukrainian origin whose pre-election campaign for a seat in the Estonian parliament, the Riigikogu, was full of promises to protect Estonia with NATO bases and who shot a video of "little green men" in Narva in the end gained only 25 votes.

Just a few days of large-scale open warfare would cause enormous damage to the whole of Eastern Europe, a humanitarian catastrophe and unthinkable casualties. In addition, the losing side would likely resort to tactical nuclear weapons. Such scenarios might be good bedtime reading, but are a tad implausible.

Moreover, the question arises as to what the West would do if it won? If the largest country in the world were robbed of its agencies of central government and unified system of management and plunged into chaos, hindering the extraction of resources from the earth and the implementation of business projects? NATO's track record of occupying countries and establishing transitional governments is poor, as demonstrated by Afghanistan and Iraq.

Similarly, it is unclear what Russia would do with the Baltic countries, which, in the opinion of a number of high-ranking NATO generals, it could seize in two days.  If one imagines an impossible situation in which the Alliance abandoned its allies in Eastern Europe, it would certainly be seen in the Kremlin as the most important victory since 1945.

But it should be remembered that even if Russia could theoretically include such hostile countries in its own zone of influence, it would create such serious economic problems and tensions that only years of substantial investments and countless boots on the ground could control.

Hence, the chances of such an apocalyptic scenario ever materializing are slight.

Local wars as the most likely scenario

Most experts consider a local war with the direct participation of NATO and Russian forces to be more probable. Moreover, some Western estimates suggest that one is already underway in one form or another in the Donbas, and could eventually lead to open confrontation between the West and Moscow.

For instance, Californian political scientist Edward Walker speaks of a full-scale "proxy war" in the Donbas and fears the Kremlin's asymmetric response to NATO actions to strengthen Ukraine's defense capability.

While the West has long accused Moscow of stationing troops in eastern Ukraine, pro-Russian media have started reporting the appearance of Allied instructors and even military units in the region. If Russian experts are to be believed, the Ukrainian army is preparing a new large-scale offensive, which means that the next round of fighting in the Donbas threatens to be on a larger scale and bloodier. More importantly, relations between Moscow and the West will sour even further.

All told, a direct clash between the Russian Federation and NATO in the Donbas is still unlikely. The heightened tension will only lead to an escalation of the "hybrid war," i.e. military operations that have more to do with cyber attacks, economic sanctions and propaganda than with conventional forces.

For the West, the ultimate goal of the ongoing hybrid war is, if not regime change, then at least to force Moscow to abandon its current foreign policy and claims to regional leadership.

Yet direct military intervention with an unclear outcome is too high a price to pay for such changes. Therefore, one of the signals that NATO is trying to send Moscow through its recent exercises is the Allied commitment to prevent a repeat of the events in Crimea and the Donbas anywhere in Europe.

Simultaneously, the high frequency of NATO exercises makes its troops more combat-ready and more able to coordinate joint actions involving several countries.

In addition, they are forcing Moscow to spend extra resources on similar "reciprocal maneuvers," which, in the context of economic sanctions, are costly for the Kremlin. Hence, the military drills are in many respects part of the hybrid war.

As for the direct use of force, it should be remembered that members of the Russian opposition seriously believe that, despite the economic and political pressure from the West, the only way to change the government in Russia is through a coup or a "Maidan."

Although Putin's approval rating is high, various actors in the West are apparently confident that sanctions and political pressure over a period of several years could bring about change in Russia. In this scenario, well-trained NATO troops could be deployed as "peacekeepers" to secure strategically important facilities, disarm part of Russia's disoriented military, and install a pro-Western government in the Kremlin.

Yet this scenario seems far-fetched. The Russian opposition is not popular and lacks any leader capable of realistically opposing Putin. The former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky largely talks to Western audiences, whereas in Russia he is perceived as someone who wants to hand back Crimea and return Russia back to the gangster 1990s.

Peace will have to wait

The rise in military tensions highlighted in the ELN report is not going to abate any time soon. Neither Russia nor the West can be seen to be soft on the issue of Ukraine.

The hybrid war, in which Russia looks more like the defending side, is set to continue, accompanied by new large-scale maneuvers, reconnaissance flights along national borders, and propaganda statements. A major military success by one of the warring parties in the Donbas will only exacerbate the situation further.

A peaceful compromise on the unrecognized republics leading to the normalization of Russia-West relations is unlikely. The only possible détente would be a situation in which the warring parties laid down their arms, thereby "freezing" the conflict. But would they do it? And who would claim victory if they did?

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 #21
www.rt.com
August 24, 2015
Trump's Russia-friendly rhetoric might not be so Russia-friendly after all
By Danielle Ryan

Ask Donald Trump about any problem on the face of the earth and he'll tell you he could fix it without too much bother. That's just Trump and this is the lens through which we should view his comments on Russia and Vladimir Putin.

There's a thirst in some circles for some less incendiary rhetoric on Russia from the 2016 field of candidates for president and Trump seems to have quenched it.

He made headlines last month when he announced during a trip to Scotland that he believed he'd "get along very nicely" with Putin. The so-called pro-Russia rhetoric continued when he told CNN during the same trip that Crimea is more "Europe's problem" than America's problem. Before that, in June, he broke the shocking news to Fox's Bill O'Reilly that Russians are people you can get along with. "You can make deals with those people," he said.

His comments even landed him on an "enemies of Ukraine" list and branded as a "Kremlin agent," although it doesn't take much to earn that title these days.

Pro-Russia rhetoric?

On the surface of it, in the current frosty environment, this kind of rhetoric seems revolutionary. It seems like Trump might genuinely be the guy to restore US-Russia relations to a more even keel.

The reaction to his comments has been one of two things: horror or unbounded optimism. From those with extremely negative views on Russia's handling of the Ukraine crisis, the reaction has been horror; how could anyone possibly get along with a madman like Putin, is the general (and illogical) theme. A Vox article, for example, called Trump's comments about restoring relations "insane." On the other hand, some with more neutral or positive views on Moscow's actions have hailed him as some sort of saint. Both reactions to Trump's rhetoric are misguided.

Indeed, it should be seen as a welcome and positive thing if a candidate for the US presidency wants to restore good relations with Moscow rather than exacerbate tensions, but those regarding Trump as the savior of the day might be seizing on a few off-the-cuff comments too soon. And if you look a little more deeply at the context of Trump's comments, you'll see why. While Trump today might be asking why the US is "leading the charge" in Ukraine, it was just a year ago that he was going on television to chide Obama for not doing enough to stand up to Putin, even arguing for economic sanctions to be put in place.

"We should definitely be strong, we should definitely do sanctions and we have to show some strength," he said.

Asked in August whether he'd scrap sanctions, Trump said it "depends" because Russia would have to "behave." It's unclear what a 'behaving' Russia would look like to Trump, but someone should probably ask him. Moscow might have some different ideas.

NATO and Snowden

On NATO membership for Ukraine, Trump says he "wouldn't care" that much whether they were in or out. "If [Ukraine] goes in, great. If it doesn't go in, great," he told NBC.

Trump's blasé attitude to the NATO question can be looked at in two ways: the first is that since he doesn't care, he wouldn't push it; the other is that since he doesn't care, he could be easily swayed.

Either way, not having a position on NATO membership for Ukraine betrays Trump's lack of understanding of the elements and roots of the crisis in that country, including Russia's perspective and the West's involvement. Ukraine's membership of NATO is a red line for Moscow, and the fact that he thinks this could be at all feasible or negotiable with the Kremlin speaks volumes about how little he understands Moscow's stance. One of the criticisms of Washington's policy on Ukraine has been that it is too black and white and lacks historical context. Trump certainly would not bring any of that to the table.

In the midst of his recent flurry of comments on Russia, Trump has also thrown in lines like this: "Ukraine is a problem, and we should help them," but no one has asked him precisely what that help looks like. Money? Weapons? Kind words of support?

To recap: Russia would have to "behave" for sanctions to be lifted, Ukrainian membership of NATO is not off the table and the US should still "help" Ukraine. Those are all vague statements, but they don't sound altogether unlike Washington's current position.

On the question of Edward Snowden, Trump seems to think he'd have an even easier time at the negotiating table. He would simply click his fingers and Putin would send the NSA leaker packing. Speaking to CNN's Anderson Cooper in July about sending Snowden back to the US, Trump said: "If I'm president, Putin says hey, boom, you're gone! I guarantee you that."

That's a fairly lofty guarantee and one that Trump might want to run by future pal Putin in advance.

All for show?

It's important to remember that Trump isn't saying seemingly nice things about Russia to be nice. He's saying them because at the end of the day, his misguided belief is that the US needs to take a harder line with Russia, not a softer one. When you look back over his history of comments on Obama and Putin, that's what really gets him. He has been sickened by what he feels is Obama's "weak" foreign policy. He's simply taking a different approach to that of his competitors.

Consider that when he told his audience last month that he'd "get along very nicely" with Putin, he added: "...and I mean, where we have the strength."

Where "we" have the strength, not Putin.

The Kremlin has expressed that it is sick of what it regards as a bullying America that does not respect its interests. Trump's comments, in their full context, indicate that he's not necessarily going to deliver something they will much enjoy. To quote his interview in Scotland again, he said: "[Putin] has no respect for President Obama. He will respect me, that I can tell you."

After all this tough-talk, one can imagine that an absolute no-no for Trump would be to look 'weak' in negotiations with Putin, and that's not necessarily a recipe for success in Ukraine.

The same butting-heads dynamic can be imagined for any of the candidates running for president, but at the end of the day, a solution to the crisis in Ukraine doesn't rest on who can get along best with Putin in their imagination. A solution will come from the full acknowledgement in Washington that a completely lopsided, West-is-best view of this conflict simply won't do. Until that happens, Trump's talk of deals and friendly relationships are for show.

It's slim pickings for Russia when it comes to the 2016 field. But not having very many appetizing options, doesn't necessarily mean Trump is the right one. The only new variable here is that Donald Trump thinks there's nothing he can't fix and no one whose arm he can't twist. His so-called "pro-Russia" rhetoric stems from that egotistical belief. Remember, this is the man who has said if he were elected, he'd "scare" the Pope into supporting capitalism by telling him "ISIS wants to get you."

Trump is a man who is used to getting his own way, through wheeling and dealing and always being one of the richest guys in the room. But geopolitics doesn't work like a reality TV show and if he doesn't get what he wants from Putin, things could turn even more sour fairly quickly.

But hey, presidential campaigns are won on empty promises. Then again, maybe if by some miraculous turn of events we see a President Trump, he might prove himself to be the miracle worker he thinks he is.

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 #22
Asia Times
August 23, 2015
Russia takes hard-line stance on territorial dispute with Japan
By Sergei Blagov
Sergei Blagov is a Moscow-based independent journalist and researcher. In the past three decades, he has been covering Asian affairs from Moscow, Russia, as well as Hanoi, Vietnam and Vientiane, Laos. He is the author of non-fiction books on Vietnam, and a contributor of a handbook for reporters.

MOSCOW -The bilateral political ties appear reaching new lows after Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev traveled to the Kuril Islands despite vocal objections from Japan. The Kremlin insisted that the country's top officials would keep visiting the disputed Southern Kurils despite Japanese protests.

On Aug. 22, Medvedev traveled to Iturup, one of the Kuril Islands. He reiterated that Russian officials "visited, visit and will visit" the Kurils and ordered cabinet members to travel to the islands more frequently. He also described the Kurils as Russia's gateway to Asia-Pacific.

Medvedev voiced expectations of friendly relations with Japan. Simultaneously, he advocated a deployment of more "modern and combat-ready" troops in the Kurils.

Japanese officials reportedly described the visit as an unacceptable development that would adversely affect bilateral dialogue.

Moscow lashed out at Japanese objections against Medvedev's visit to the Kurils. This criticism indicates that Japan keeps contesting the results of the World War Two, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Aug. 22.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also dismissed Japanese media reports that Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida delayed a visit to Russia, planned for the end of August. "The talks in Moscow were not announced and it's impossible to delay what was not agreed upon," the Foreign Ministry said.

Kishida's trip to Moscow was understood to be aimed to make preparations for President Vladimir Putin visit to Japan later in 2015. However, it became far from certain whether a bilateral summit meeting could take place this year against a backdrop of the latest developments.

The bilateral relations already dealt a blow after then President Medvedev traveled to Kunashir in November 2010, sparking vocal protests in Tokyo. In 2011, Medvedev also ordered the Russian Defense Ministry to arrange sufficient arms supplies to troops deployed in the Kurils.

Four years ago, the Russian Defense Ministry officials initially denied plans to deploy the advanced S-400 air defense missile systems in the Southern Kurils. But they subsequently confirmed plans to deploy S-400s in the Russian Far East.

With a background of the continued territorial dispute with Japan, the Kremlin also took action to expedite economic development of the Kuril Islands. The earlier program to develop the Kurils till 2015 involved disbursement of some 18 billion rubles ($270 million) in federal and regional grants and subsidies.

Earlier this month, the Russian government approved a new program to develop the Kurils in 2016-2025. The program is expected to cost 70 billion rubles (about $1 billion) in federal and regional grants and subsidies to finance infrastructure development, residential and road construction.

In recent years, Russian officials have urged to develop bilateral trade and economic ties so as to create conditions for signing the peace treaty eventually. But Moscow has been refusing to discuss a return to Japan of four islands, Kunashir, Iturup, Shikotan and Habomai, known as the Southern Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan. Moscow has consistently dismissed Japan's insistence to return all four islands.

Incidentally, on August 22 the Russian government released the decree No 845 to extend the country's continental shelf into the Okhotsk Sea. The decree, signed by Medvedev, stipulates that some 50,000 square kilometers of seabed in the Okhotsk Sea beyond Russia's 200-nautical-mile zone should be deemed Russia's continental. The move was approved by the UN Commission on continental shelves in 2014, following extensive consultations with Japan, according to the Russian government press-service.

In a yet another coincidence, on Aug. 20 seven Chinese naval vessels arrived in Vladivostok for a joint drill. The Russian-Chinese naval exercise, "Naval Interaction 2015 (II) on August 23-27, are aimed to practice joint defense against naval, air and submarine assaults. The joint naval drill by Russia and China, two nations having island-related territorial disputes with Japan, inevitably sends a forceful signal to Tokyo.

The Kremlin seemingly became upset by Japan's support of the Western sanctions against Moscow. Therefore, Russia apparently decided to take a more hard-line stance on the territorial dispute over the Southern Kurils.

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 #23
http://readrussia.com
August 21, 2015
Book Review: Gaidar's Revolution
By Chris Miller

Alexei Golovkov had a problem with the portrait of Lenin in his office. Golovkov, a top official in Boris Yeltsin's presidential administration from 1991-1993, thought the Lenin portrait was out of place in post-Communist Russia, so he took it off the wall and set it in the back room of his office. The next day a new Lenin portrait appeared. He took that one down, too, only to find a third portrait the following morning. "What's this?" he asked an assistant. "The manual says you must have a portrait," the assistant explained. "You have the right to take it down, but I must hang up a new one."

Yeltsin and his ministers struggled to rid Russia of the legacies of communism, but-like Lenin portraits hanging on the walls of government offices-reminders of the Soviet past were difficult to discard. A book by Petr Aven and Alfred Kokh, Gaidar's Revolution, newly translated into English, looks back at the 1990s to assess why the goals of the pro-capitalist forces proved so difficult to realize.

Aven and Kokh are far from disinterested observers. Aven, now the head of Alfa Bank, served as Minister for Foreign Economic Relations from 1991-1992, while Kokh worked on privatization. Each is an outspoken admirer of Yegor Gaidar, the free-market economist and Prime Minister who spearheaded economic liberalization under Yeltsin. Both Kokh and Gaidar see the 1990s as a period marked by both great successes and lost opportunities.

The book consists of interviews with a dozen Yeltsin-era politicians, from Russia's first deputy prime minister, Gennady Burbulis, to defense minister Pavel Grachev, to economy minister Alexander Shokhin. Some of the interviewees, such Anatoly Chubais, were long-time allies of Gaidar, while others, such as Andrei Kozyrev, Yeltsin's first foreign minister, were closer to Yeltsin.

The book's interviews are most interesting not for the new facts they bring to light-although there are many of these-but for the insight they give into how Russia's leading economic liberals make sense of the past 25 years of history.

On the one hand, the past two decades were a period of great success for free market ideas, as Russia cast off central planning and embraced, mostly, a market economy. Under the influence of Gaidar's ideas, Yeltsin's government privatized industries, lifted price controls, and embraced foreign trade. But though Russia achieved a market economy, it did not become a European-style democracy, a fact that many in the Gaidar team regret.

Aven and Kokh mostly attribute this failing to a lack of serious political work on the part of liberal forces. "What we may really be accused of," Kokh says "is economic determinism. We were focused on the economy and, being genuine Marxists, believed that economic transformations would rapidly transform the rest-the society, traditions, and people, or, in Marxist terms, the superstructure." the notion privatization and the emergence of a business class would naturally create support for democratic governance proved inaccurate. Aven agreed, noting that "It turned out that changing the economic rules does not mean changing the country." Aven and Kokh probe each interviewee about the liberals' failure to create a sustainable party or political movement, believing that a liberal platform could have won elections had it been organized.

Many critics of the Gaidar team, however, think the liberals' problem was not with their lackluster political organization but with their policies. Is it really true that a majority-or even a large minority-of Russian voters in the mid-1990s would have voted in favor of a party advocating privatization and price increases? The Communists, after all, were a leading force in the Duma throughout the 1990s. Yeltsin did win two presidential elections, though it is debatable whether his victories were because of or in spite of his economic record.

Kokh and Aven acknowledge that the unpopularity of the economic reforms complicated their desire for market liberalization and democratization. Aven suggests that the liberals might been more successful had they handled social reforms better, but both he and Kokh admit that, at the time, both thought economic changes were far more important than democratization.

"I recently found a transcript," Aven recounted, of "our discussion of the possibility of employing authoritarian mechanisms for the reforms," along the method of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. "I have much less confidence in the possibility of such an authoritarian scenario now, especially in Russia," Aven said. Kokh, by contrast, mentioned no such loss of faith in such methods, even noting that, "for a short time I lived under an illusion that Putin might follow that path."

Of all the interviews, the most interesting is that of Anatoly Chubais, who managed Russia's privatization process and ran Yeltsin's 1996 reelection campaign. Chubais is perhaps the most hated politician in Russia today, yet he remains an influential figure nonetheless. In his interview, Chubais repeatedly took issue with Aven's attempt to compare Russia with Poland and the Czech Republic-two other countries that abandoned state socialism at the same time as did Russia, but whose economic and political trajectory since then has been far more benign.

Chubais thinks these comparisons are irrelevant. "Why do you keep looking to the West?" he asks Aven. "This is a misunderstanding of what the country named Russia is," Chubais told Aven, underscoring his belief that Russia was never a country that could have elected as president a pro-market democrat such as the Czech Republic's Vaclav Havel. The reason? "There is no genuine demand for democracy in Russia now," so the only effective methods will be crudely populist at best, authoritarian at worst.

Russia's social and economic structure meant that its political system was inhospitable for market liberals. "We had a radical lack of understanding of the country and the people, due to our urban origins and lives," Chubais said. Regardless of their level of political organization, Chubais believes, the liberals around Gaidar never had a real shot at power.

"That sounds mystical!" Aven retorted. "A regular electrician from a Polish shipyard"-Poland's first post-communist president Lech Walesa-"could incite half the country to action." Chubais: "Now you're speaking about Poland again. Kazakhstan and Belarus are around us, Petr, not Poland."

The question of whether can Russia be both capitalist and democratic is not only a question for historians of the 1990s. Even today, Aven notes, doubt about the compatibility of democracy and capitalism drives much of Russian politics, as business leaders and oligarchs support authoritarian politics in part because they believe an alternative political system would threaten their businesses. "The main problem of Russia," Aven told Chubais, "is that its elite believes that to be true. And that is why it connives with every whim of the authorities. The thinking is, 'Well, we're barbarians, what can you do about that?' That is a very comfortable position. Certainly Russia is not Poland. But that does not mean it is genetically unprepared for democracy and capitalism."

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 #24
Humanities
http://www.neh.gov/humanities
September/October 2009
The Cold War's Organization Man
How Philip Mosely helped Soviet Studies moderate American policy
By David C. Engerman
David C. Engerman teaches history at Brandeis University. His book, Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts (Oxford University Press) will be published this fall. In 2007, he was awarded a $40,000 NEH research fellowship to work on this project.

When Winston Churchill ominously announced in March 1946 that an "Iron Curtain had descended over Europe," the United States government employed around two dozen experts on the Soviet Union and even fewer on Central and Eastern Europe. Two years later, after a steady drumbeat of Cold War crises, the young Central Intelligence Agency employed thirty-eight Soviet analysts, only twelve of whom spoke any Russian. The few university-based Russia specialists varied tremendously in intellect and energy; only a handful were willing and able to contribute to shaping policy. How could American officials chart a foreign policy without knowing what was going on inside the Soviet Union, let alone inside the Kremlin? As Geroid Tanquary Robinson, head of the USSR analysis for wartime intelligence and the founding director of Columbia's Russian Institute, put it, "Never did so many know so little about so much."

Into this breach stepped a handful of scholars, including Philip Edward Mosely, the man who would become the most influential Sovietologist of the Cold War. He lacked the name recognition and elegant writing style of the diplomat George Kennan, whose 1947 "X" article introduced the concept of containment to the world. Nor could he rival the publication record and scholarly reputation of Harvard professor Merle Fainsod, whose 1953 book How Russia Is Ruled introduced generations of readers to Soviet politics. And Mosely was nowhere near as colorful a character as the economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron, whose 1952 essay on "economic backwardness" remains a subject of debate into the twenty-first century. Mosely's contributions to the development of Soviet Studies have received little attention. But in a field of study that emphasized its practical application to policymaking, no one else was so adept at working the lines of influence and power that connected America's campuses and its capital.

Mosely did more than anyone to underwrite the achievements of Soviet Studies in the 1950s as well as its explosive growth in the 1960s. Thanks to the institutions he created and led, Soviet Studies went from scholarly backwater to intellectual juggernaut in a matter of years. Scholars in the field published dozens of books that peeked inside the Soviet enigma; they also trained hundreds of other experts to do the same. Sitting at the intersection of scholarship, intelligence, and philanthropy, Mosely created a field in which practitioners like himself could imagine, as Secretary of State William P. Rogers noted, "no line between government and academic work." In the process, though, Mosely set the field up for the controversies that wracked it in the years before his death in 1972. In other words, he put Sovietology on a collision course with that phenomenon generally known as the sixties.

Mosely was raised in the town of Westfield, Massachusetts, in the 1910s. For a determined Cold Warrior, he had surprisingly liberal views in his youth. Much later, he would regale a former student about his trip to celebrate the release of socialist Eugene Victor Debs from prison in 1921. Perhaps it was politics that got young Mosely interested in Russia, or perhaps it was his chance encounter with a Russian immigrant on a trip to the library in Springfield. In any case, Mosely studied Russian with a tutor until leaving for Harvard at the age of sixteen. After completing his bachelor's degree, he began graduate study in history, writing a dissertation on Russian diplomacy in the 1830s. Perhaps most crucial for his future career was a two-year stint in Moscow for dissertation research.

Mosely's Moscow years, 1930 to 1932, coincided with the immense and rapid changes of the first Five-Year Plan, Stalin's program of forced-draft industrialization in the name of building socialism. Moscow teemed with people from the countryside, basic goods were in short supply, and small private enterprise was eradicated in favor of rationing. Mosely worked in government archives, meanwhile scavenging food and supplies through networks of friends, a process no doubt aided by his marriage to a Russian woman. His Soviet sojourn left a deep impression on Mosely, visible in letters home; they movingly describe the difficulties of everyday life as well as enthusiasm for the promises of a brighter future. Mosely repeated the praise for the USSR typical of sympathetic American journalists like Louis Fischer, whom he knew well. Even as the show trials and purges accelerated, for instance, Mosely called the USSR a "defender of peace" and praised its "social welfare" programs.

This assessment of the USSR was no doubt shared by other American members of the Institute for Pacific Relations, an organization that brought together scholars, missionaries, and business people interested in Asia. The organization grew increasingly interested in the USSR in the 1930s, an interest justified by the Soviet Union's Pacific coastline. The real interest, though, was political, as the institute's American members included a handful of Communists and many others sympathetic to the Soviet cause.

After a prolonged itinerancy, which included a Social Science Research Council (SSRC) fellowship in the Balkans, Mosely landed at Cornell University in 1936. He immediately demonstrated entrepreneurial zeal, winning a Rockefeller Foundation grant to expand Russian studies and serving as secretary of the Committee on Slavic Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Over the next decade, Mosely would help steer Rockefeller, SSRC, and ACLS work toward the new enterprise of area studies. The transformation of American academic life during World War II would turn Mosely (and many other ambitious and talented scholars) from a grant recipient into a grant-maker, and from a diplomatic historian into a diplomat.

The arrival of World War II offered remarkable opportunities. Even before Pearl Harbor, Mosely joined a program of the Council on Foreign Relations to conduct confidential studies on strategic issues. After the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941, he organized Cornell's intensive program in Russian, arguing that it would "enable the Government to meet its rapidly expanding need for men able to use Russian." The program introduced a number of future Sovietologists, including political scientist Robert Tucker and sociologist Alex Inkeles, to the Russian language. Mosely also helped the Institute for Pacific Relations add some two dozen other languages, in the process providing the basis for Army and Navy programs designed to prepare soldiers for occupation of foreign countries. These military programs would train dozens of future experts, including historians Martin Malia and Richard Pipes as well as numerous social scientists.

After three years of commuting from Ithaca to New York and Washington, Mosely abandoned his university post for full-time government work. He served in a dizzying succession of State Department posts related to wartime diplomacy and, increasingly, planning for the peace. As postwar topics became the subject of diplomatic negotiations, Mosely accompanied the secretary of state to conferences in Paris, Moscow, and Potsdam, calling for Allied cooperation in war and peace. As American policy makers debated the shape of postwar Europe, Mosely found himself more open to cooperation with the USSR than many of his colleagues. Looking back at these discussions, Mosely ruefully noted that the policies he promoted provided the only "real chance" for postwar Western-Soviet cooperation, but that other policies had prevailed.

Mosely's entry into high diplomacy hardly slowed his academic work. He participated in two Rockefeller Foundation conferences that outlined the work of area studies, connecting scholarship, training, and national needs. Rather than bring scholars together by discipline, it would unite those interested in a particular world region. A hallmark of the area programs was their direct relevance to government officials fighting the war and planning the peace.

Area studies was a product of a network of philanthropists, scholars, and diplomats who planned the enterprise during World War II and built it in the decade or so afterwards. Mosely knew everyone in that network, and was active in all three spheres simultaneously: working at the State Department, editing the British journal-in-exile Slavonic and East European Review, and consulting for the Rockefeller Foundation. He promised to join the Rockefeller Foundation at war's end, but instead took a job at one of its major postwar ventures, the Russian Institute at Columbia University.

At Geroid Robinson's invitation, Mosely came to Columbia to teach Soviet international relations and held an appointment in the political science department. But his work, despite his departmental affiliation, did not stay within either his adopted discipline or his original one, history. Like others of his generation whose ties to scholarship were weaker than their ties to diplomacy, he published articles frequently in Foreign Affairs, but rarely in Political Science Quarterly. His articles evinced little sympathy for the USSR but were hardly calls to arms. In 1948, he called on the United States to restrain its conflicts with the Soviet Union, and hoped instead for "peace by mutual toleration." Though the Sovietization of Eastern Europe and the expansion of Soviet influence in Asia led Mosely to abandon those hopes in the 1950s, he still insisted that there were important opportunities for postwar amity that fell victim to Western disorganization.

Even before succeeding Robinson as director of the Russian Institute in 1951, Mosely wielded his influence over Soviet Studies by building a Russian (or is that Russianist?) empire at Columbia. Insisting that Soviet Studies could best serve the national interest if it was centrally coordinated, Mosely helped establish the Joint Committee on Slavic Studies (JCSS), a combined effort of the ACLS and SSRC. Serving as its founding chair, Mosely presided over what amounted to the Sovietology's Politburo. The committee's work consisted of heavy lifting rather than high politics. At a time when no American scholars could visit the USSR-the only one there in the 1940s was Robert Tucker, who spent seven years waiting for Soviet authorities to grant an exit visa to his wife Evgeniia-the primary job of the committee was to develop sources. In 1953, for instance, the year of Stalin's death, its big concern was Soviet periodicals. The committee had to sort out which American libraries should hold which of the dozens of journals and newspapers, like Izvestiia and Pravda, and how to keep them safe from overeager American postal inspectors. The Joint Committee spent 1956-the year that Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin in his headline-making Secret Speech-organizing a microfilm version of Library of Congress holdings and sending a young historian (Martin Malia) to arrange book-buying deals with Soviet publishers. They spent plenty of time and tens (probably hundreds) of thousands of dollars organizing the Current Digest of the Soviet Press, a translation service that never broke even and survived on secret but well-known CIA subsidies. The infrastructure built by the Joint Committee made possible scholarship on an otherwise inaccessible country.

In addition to leading and hosting the Joint Committee and its Current Digest, Mosely branched into new territory. After witnessing the failure of Kennan's effort (together with the CIA) to resettle Russian émigré scholars in a Washington-based Eurasian Institute, he built a successor organization housed at Columbia. The Research Program on the USSR received Ford Foundation monies channeled through the East European Fund (on whose board, coincidentally, Mosely served), and paid émigré scholars and former government officials to write monographs in English or Russian about their experiences. Administered by Alexander Dallin (coincidentally, Mosely's student, and later one of the most prominent students of Soviet politics), the program sought to produce primary sources about Soviet life while also offering financial support to émigrés. These apparent coincidences, of course, demonstrate perfectly Mosely's style as an organizer.

Mosely's interest in émigrés long predated the CIA's proposed Eurasian Institute. His professor at Harvard, Michael Karpovich, was the hub of the American branch of émigré Russians. Through Karpovich, Mosely met Boris Bakhmeteff, a wealthy engineer who was the last Russian ambassador in Washington before the Bolshevik takeover. Together, the three men gathered the papers of Russian émigrés and deposited them at Columbia's library, creating the core of what would later become the Bakhmeteff Archive, a remarkable collection of materials about the cultural, intellectual, and political life of Russia before 1917 and that of its exiles afterward. Again, Mosely used his connections to help expand the base of sources available to scholars of Russia and the USSR.

These activities, though not well-remembered today, are easily documented. Harder to trace are Mosely's continuing connections to government agencies in the early Cold War-both to promote Soviet Studies and to advise on policy. Nevertheless, a record of declassified documents scattered across government archives shows just how hard Mosely worked to make Soviet Studies useful to government and vice versa. His interest in obtaining sources, for instance, led Mosely to a treasure trove of Soviet party documents that the Germans had taken from Smolensk in 1941, and the American Army had taken from Berlin in 1945. The Smolensk records, along with a much larger set of official Nazi records, passed through the American national-security apparatus. Indeed, the materials were used, in a rare example of interservice cooperation, by Army and Air Force intelligence, the CIA, and the RAND Corporation. By 1954, a White House committee was ready to dispose of the materials when Mosely stepped in to ensure their continued use; indeed, work on the documents was known internally as the "Special (Mosely) Project." It was Mosely who suggested that Fainsod be the first to work with the materials, and who called for the Smolensk records to be made available at the National Archives.

While Mosely put government in the service of scholarship, as with the Smolensk materials, he more often served government. He spent a good portion of the winter break in 1952 on an official American delegation to Yugoslavia. He also served on the secret White House exercise, Operation Solarium, that shaped Eisenhower's defense strategy; the so-called New Look favored nuclear deterrence over larger (and more expensive) conventional forces. Mosely was not, of course, solely responsible for New Look, but his involvement in this White House exercise, joined by diplomats (including Kennan) and admirals, indicates the circles in which he traveled.

The best evidence of Mosely's classified connections comes from a security investigation in 1954, shortly after Mosely had moved from Columbia to the Council on Foreign Relations, where he became director of studies. The episode offers a snapshot of what would later be called the foreign-policy establishment in the early Cold War. Mosely learned in January that his security clearances had been revoked, primarily because of his prior membership in the Institute for Pacific Relations, a target of Senator Joseph McCarthy and others. At the time, Mosely held top secret clearances at nine government agencies, including the White House's National Security Council (for Solarium), CIA, State Department, Office of Naval Research (which funded his work with an old friend, the anthropologist Margaret Mead), and elsewhere. In response to the denial of clearance, Mosely and his lawyers gathered a docket of fifty-some affidavits from family members, a dozen ambassadors, and a similar number of intelligence officers. The affiants revealed their strong support for Mosely as well as something of their own worldviews. Kennan, the father of containment, wrote that the inquisition into Mosely "plays directly into communist hands," while blueblood editor Hamilton Fish Armstrong, who identified himself as a seventh-generation American, vouched for Mosely's "old New England stock." Whether it was based on Mosely's politics, his value to the government, or his lineage, the affidavits worked: His clearances were reinstated after six months.

The clearance episode reveals a great deal about Mosely: the extent of his government work, the reach and prominence of his contacts, and, of course, the dangers of past associations even for Cold War insiders. Yet his enthusiasm for government-academic relations remained unshaken, as he maintained his consulting relationships for decades afterward and made his move to the Council on Foreign Relations. It is hardly a surprise that so many of his Columbia students-most prominently, Dallin and Marshall Shulman-were frequent consultants on government projects.

The Council job played to one of Mosley's great strengths: bringing scholars and government officials together in formal and informal settings. Mosely was a key figure behind an effort to expand these informal conversations to include Soviet as well as American experts and diplomats; the so-called Dartmouth Conferences of the 1960s continued a form of the engagement that Mosely had been promoting since the 1940s. Bringing together mid-level government officials and scientists in an informal setting, as the conferences did, helped pave the way for superpower arms-control agreements in the 1960s.

In other ways, too, Mosely and his generation of Sovietologists helped keep the Cold War cold. Research projects supported by Mosely's friends in the national security apparatus undermined public (and political) assumptions that the Communist party was an all-powerful force ruling over an atomized population that was waiting for an outside power to unshackle it. Operation Solarium rolled back U.S. efforts to challenge directly Soviet power in Eastern Europe. The Smolensk project underscored the limits of the Kremlin's reach even within the USSR. And a major Air Force project at Harvard University (one of the few that Mosely didn't advise) concluded that the Soviet system was relatively stable, and that potential American invaders would not be greeted as liberators. Especially in the early 1950s, when American rhetoric was at its most confrontational, professional Sovietologists like Mosely were a moderating force.

This model of Soviet Studies worked for Mosely and for his generation. Thanks to their efforts to obtain both sources and funding, scholars of what Churchill called "riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma" produced remarkable works on the history, culture, and politics of America's Cold War adversary. The major supporters were all familiar to Mosely: the Rockefeller Foundation, which supported Columbia and other graduate programs in Soviet Studies; the newly ambitious Ford Foundation (with Mosely as an adviser), which established academic exchanges with the USSR; the Joint Committee on Slavic Studies (which Mosely chaired), which promoted the field through grants; and the Office of Education (which Mosely advised), which funded area studies programs after the passage of the National Defense Education Act in 1958.

Mosely's vision of Soviet Studies, closely tied to national-security interests, loosely connected to academic disciplines, and centrally administered by a self-selected network of scholars (heavily weighted with Columbia and Harvard men), did not survive his lifetime. The field's rapid growth soon met with a democratizing impulse, as a new national membership organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, took over some Joint Committee tasks. (The organization, still in existence, will change its name in 2010.) Scholarly exchange, which Mosely first proposed to the Soviet foreign ministry in 1943, came under attack in the 1960s. The exchange program met with increasing controversy in the American academy in what amounted to a generational divide. Students and young faculty chafed at the ways in which the American exchange organizers closely supervised their personal lives, and resented the involvement of the State Department.

For reasons both political and professional, a new generation of scholars rejected the field's direct involvement in foreign policy. Increasingly critical of American policy in Vietnam and elsewhere, many young scholars rebelled against what they saw as government incursions into academic life. Others preferred to contribute to disciplinary journals rather than policy debates; in doing so, ironically, they benefited handily from the scholarly exchanges that Mosely promoted as well as sources like the Smolensk documents and the Bakhmeteff Archive that Mosely helped organize.

For all of his insights about the USSR and his renewed work in teaching (he had returned to Columbia in 1963), Mosely did not fathom these changes. In an essay published in 1967, as conflicts brewed on campuses all over the country, Mosely praised scholars for their impact on affairs of state. Five years later, upon Mosely's death, came Secretary Rogers's praise that Mosely did not distinguish between academic and government work. Undoubtedly an exaggeration, it nevertheless reflected Mosely's long-standing commitment, forged during World War II, to serve Mars and Minerva, the gods of war and wisdom. Yet by 1972 such sentiments were hotly controversial.

Mosely's accomplishments were many. He brought together disparate groups to forge a field that shaped foreign policy and academic life for almost three decades. He helped hundreds of students, giving many of them more attention than they received from their ostensible advisers. He aided Russian émigré scholars more than any other non-émigré. Yet the rise and fall of his vision of Soviet Studies tells us as much about the assumptions of the greatest generation as it does about the anger of its successors.

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 #25
New York Times
August 23, 2015
Svetlana Boym, 56, Scholar of Myth and Memory, Dies
By MARGALIT FOX

Svetlana Boym, a scholar and artist whose work illuminated the haunting, quicksilver counterpoint of myth, memory and identity, died on Aug. 5 in Boston. She was 56.

Her death, from cancer, was announced by Harvard University, where she was the Curt Hugo Reisinger professor of Slavic languages and literatures and comparative literature.

An essayist, photographer, novelist and playwright as well as the author of myriad scholarly articles, Dr. Boym was best known to a general readership for "The Future of Nostalgia," her widely praised book of 2001.

In that work, which ranges meditatively over philosophy, history, art, literature and the experience of displaced persons, she explored the web of memory and mythologizing that underpins the human longing for vanished worlds. Her preoccupation with the subject was rooted partly in her own history as a Jewish émigré from the former Soviet Union.

Throughout the book, Dr. Boym grappled with two essential questions: Can a past that has slipped out of reach be reclaimed by means of nostalgia? Should it ever be?

She identified two types of nostalgia, one salubrious, the other far less so. The first, which she called reflective nostalgia, centers, she wrote, on "longing and loss, the imperfect process of remembrance."

That condition - a constant companion of the émigré - acknowledges that the past can never truly be reconstructed. In consequence, she argued, it fosters empathy and a bittersweet consolation.

In the other type of nostalgia, Dr. Boym said, lies danger. This type, which she called restorative nostalgia, seeks to resuscitate the past as rigorously as possible.

"This kind of nostalgia," Dr. Boym wrote, "characterizes national and nationalist revivals all over the world, which engage in the anti-modern mythmaking of history by means of a return to national symbols and myths."

She added: "Restorative nostalgia manifests itself in total reconstructions of monuments of the past, while reflective nostalgia lingers on ruins, the patina of time and history, in the dreams of another place and another time."

Writing about "The Future of Nostalgia" in 2008, The Times Higher Education Supplement of London called it "one of the more influential books of the new millennium."

Svetlana Goldberg was born on April 29, 1959, in what was then Leningrad and is once again St. Petersburg; some of her later writings recall what it was like to grow up in a communal apartment there, alongside many other people.

After receiving a bachelor's degree in Hispanic languages and literatures from the Herzen State Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad, as it was then known, she tried to emigrate to the United States. She was told that if she did so, she would never be able to return home and would never again see her parents.

After time in a refugee camp in Vienna, she arrived in the United States in 1981. Her parents, Yury Goldberg and the former Musa Beskin, both engineers, were repeatedly denied exit visas. Both lost their jobs, and Mr. Goldberg later worked as a night watchman.

The young Dr. Boym earned a master's degree in Hispanic languages and literatures from Boston University, followed in 1988 by a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard. She became an assistant professor at Harvard that year.

In recent years, Dr. Boym, who lived in Cambridge, Mass., was also known as a photographer, with her work exhibited at galleries around the world.

Her photographs include a series of portraits of fire hydrants, which she likened to immigrants for their stoical, somewhat anomalous, often overlooked presence in the urban landscape. Her photos also include multilayered, manipulated images that with their half-seen, half-obscured quality, seem to conjure the workings of memory itself.

Dr. Boym's first marriage, to Constantin Boym, an industrial designer, ended in divorce. Besides her parents, who are now living in the United States, survivors include her husband, Dana Villa, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame.

Her other work includes the nonfiction books "Death in Quotation Marks: Cultural Myths of the Modern Poet" (1991); "Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia" (1994); and "Another Freedom: The Alternative History of an Idea" (2010); a modernist novel, "Ninochka" (2003); and a play, "The Woman Who Shot Lenin."

She was the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship in 1998 for the study of Slavic literature.

Running throughout even the most scholarly of Dr. Boym's work was the singular strain of melancholy humor that was long a product of the Soviet experience. In her essay in "Kosmos: A Portrait of the Russian Space Age," a 2001 book of photographs by Adam Bartos with text by Dr. Boym, she reprises a riddle that offers a dark, comic reflection of that time.

"Why is it that the Soviet Union is not sending cosmonauts to the moon?" the question ran.

Because, the answer came, "there is a fear that they will emigrate."

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 #26
Refugees International
http://refugeesinternational.org
August 24, 2015
Ukraine's Invisible Displacement Crisis
By Michel Gabaudan

The 18-month, Russian-backed rebellion of eastern Ukraine has displaced more than 1.4 million residents from the eastern Donbas region into central and western Ukraine. It has cost nearly 7,000 lives, brought the economy of eastern Ukraine ̶ the economic and industrial heartland of the country ̶ to a standstill, and is putting increasing stress on a government bent on addressing the challenges of political reform, widespread corruption, as well as economic and structural adjustments.

In addition to the 1.4 million internally displaced, two million civilians remain in homes devastated by shelling on the line of contact (what is considered the frozen frontline of the conflict). Beyond this line of contact in the non-government controlled areas under the sway of rebellious "commanders," an additional two million civilians are living in severe hardship. Basic amenities ̶ including water, gas, and electricity ̶ are in many cases unavailable as infrastructure has been hit hard by the shelling. Food is running scarce, amenities are often out of order, the banking system has ceased to operate, and prices have spiked two to four-fold for the same items elsewhere in the country.

RI recently spent three weeks in Ukraine to learn about the government's response to displacement and to investigate the outstanding needs of the internally displaced. In many ways, Ukraine's displacement crisis appears to be invisible: there are no camps and very few internally displaced persons (IDPs) are hosted in collective centers. But as winter approaches, prompt action is needed. Families and friends who have kindly offered their homes for many months on end are growing weary of indefinitely hosting IDPs. Given the recent serious devaluation of the Hrivnia and high prices of essential commodities (including a steep raise in the price of gas used for heating), government benefits are far from acceptable.

Additionally, host communities are tiring of the pressure IDPs are putting on local services. The eastern rebellion has already created serious tensions across the region. The continuing strain host communities are feeling by hosting IDPs may only exacerbate this additional strain on national unity.

The basic requirements in food, medicines, shelter, and essential items, as well as the need to repair water and electricity services in Non-Government Controlled Areas (NGCAs) are becoming more critical by the day. These needs are only exacerbated by the increasing restrictions both government and rebels are putting on the transit of people and essential goods across the contact line. The ability of humanitarian agencies to deliver assistance will require a more sympathetic approach by the government to ensure that assistance gets through as efficiently as possible. Forfeiting this responsibility will lead to more suffering and the potential exodus of the remaining Ukrainians in the eastern part of the country.

The international community has a brief but vital opportunity to mobilize both development and humanitarian funds to support regional, public, and private initiatives to address critical shelter needs, reparation of essential services, job-creation, and integration of the displaced into their new communities. At the same time, it must ensure adequate funding of the humanitarian appeal, which was only 35 percent funded by the end of July.
Winter in Ukraine is relentless, and time is running short for over five million citizens.

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 #27
Sputnik
August 23, 2015
Ukraine's GDP Dropped by 35% Surpassing Zimbabwe, Central African Republic

Over the past 24 years, Ukraine's real GDP has decreased by 35 percent, which is absolutely the worst in the world, according to World Bank data, Ukrainian newspaper Zerkalo Nedeli (ZN) reported.

As Ukraine is celebrating its independence day, economists should be worried, as the country's economy has fallen to the point of no return.

Out of 166 countries that provided full access to their GDP data between 1991-2014, only five countries showed a decrease in GDP - Central African Republic (-0.94 percent), Zimbabwe (-2.3 percent), Georgia (-15.4 percent), Moldova (-29 percent) and Ukraine - an astonishing 35 percent drop since 1991.

Amusingly, back in 1987 Ukraine's GDP was only 4 times smaller than that of China. In early 2015, it was already 80 times smaller, and the reason behind it was not solely due to China's economic growth over the past two decades, ZN said.

One can somehow comprehend how and why the Central African Republic and Zimbabwe appeared on the list, but the fact that even these two countries are ahead of Ukraine should frighten Kiev politicians.

This horrible turn of events isn't the result of a Civil War in Donbass. The process started much earlier, when Ukraine lost a large part of its domestic production. During the first decade of its independence, Ukraine lost almost 60 percent of its GDP, which was twice as much as the United States did during the Great Depression in the 1930s, ZN said.

The main reason behind the collapse of the Ukrainian economy is technological degradation, as a result of which the country ended up being dependent on the export of natural resources and the fluctuation of the dollar and the euro.

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 #28
Interfax-Ukraine
August 25, 2015
Ukrainian Education Ministry strips academic ranks from 12 people for separatism - Deputy Minister
 
The Ukrainian Education and Science Ministry has started to deprive persons of their academic ranks for separatism, Deputy Education Minister Pavlo Poliansky has said.

"Just recently, the ministry deprived 12 people of their academic ranks, due to separatism. This is the first step," he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday.

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 #29
Sputnik
August 23, 2015
Yatsenyuk to Force Ukrainian Kids to Pledge Allegiance to National Flag

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk wants to pass a new law according to which all Ukrainian citizens will have to pledge their allegiances to the national flag, TV Channel Zvezda reported, citing Yatsenyuk's Facebook account.

"A draft of the law on the national flag will be given to the parliament. Part of this law will include the pledge of allegiance to Ukraine," Yatsenyuk said.

When the law is passed, all Ukrainian kids in schools and youngsters in universities will have to give their oath to the Ukrainian national flag, the prime minister said.

"Every Ukrainian, every child in every school and member of Parliament must pledge his allegiance to the Ukrainian government - the oath will be done not only by words, but by heart and spirit, the oath to the country that fights and wins, to the country that cannot be broken," Yatsenyuk concluded.

Ukraine will celebrate its independence day on August 24. On this day, 25 years ago Ukraine became independent from the Soviet Union. 

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 #30
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
August 24, 2015
How the Berlin meeting could change our thinking about the Ukraine crisis
The meeting in Berlin between only three participants of the Normandy Four to discuss the Ukraine crisis is proof that the Minsk agreements need to be reassessed. Could we eventually see the involvement of new stakeholders in the negotiation process?
By Petr Kopka
Petr Kopka is the head of research programs at the Center for Operational Strategic Analysis (COSA). In 2003, he was the acting head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine and founder of the Analytical Division of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine. From 2004 to 2010, he was the first deputy director of the Institute for National Security under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. He is also a major general in the Reserve.

Talks between Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande are scheduled to take place on August 24 in Berlin. The meeting was initiated by Kiev, which explains the new format, which does not include Russia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quick to point out that the summit does not correspond to the Normandy format, and is simply a trilateral meeting between Germany, France and Ukraine.

At the same time, he noted that Moscow was closely monitoring the preparations and would scrutinize the results, since "Russia clearly needs additional leverage over Kiev."

Hence, Russia's top diplomat effectively expressed confidence that the upcoming meeting would be, above all, "instructive" for the Ukrainian authorities. At the same time Moscow seems to be assigning the role of "tutor" to Berlin and Paris.

The meeting is expected to discuss the situation in the Donets Basin (Donbas), the current state of the Minsk agreements, Crimea and issues related to the implementation of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union.

What each participant wants from the Berlin meeting

In an earlier statement, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier described the situation in eastern Ukraine as "explosive." In his view, there is much at stake right now, and if the parties fail to reach an agreement on a peaceful settlement, "we could see a new spiral of military escalation at any time."

In turn, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, announcing the meeting, stressed that the priority was for military operations to cease and weapons to be withdrawn. That should be followed by an agreement between the sides on creating the "appropriate conditions for holding elections in the Donbas region."

In the words of Ukrainian President Poroshenko, the main purpose of his meeting with the leaders of Germany and France is to coordinate a tough response to what he calls "Russian aggression" against Ukraine.

"The key task of the Ukrainian authorities is to create a powerful international community as a united coalition to stop the aggressor. This applies both to well-coordinated actions to combat aggression in the east of the country and well-coordinated steps to cement the non-recognition of Crimea's annexation," underscored the Ukrainian president.

He also stated that Ukraine is not satisfied by Russia's implementation of some its key commitments, namely the withdrawal of large-caliber artillery and heavy equipment. Ukraine's head of state also stressed the need to ensure the right conditions for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to carry out its special monitoring mission.

Searching for a workable solution to the Ukraine crisis

That is the approximate lay of the land in respect of the priorities of the Normandy format participants. Despite their differences, each of the parties understands that delaying a solution to the problem will only aggravate the situation, rendering some aspects insoluble.

For Russia, the Donetsk problem is similar to the proverbial "suitcase without a handle" - hard to carry, but a pity to throw it away. Outside of the failed "Novorossiya project," the current adventure in the Donbas looks like an inexplicable anomaly in the sphere of Russian foreign policy.

On the other hand, too many hopes on both sides of the border have been placed on Russia's presence in the region. Therefore, unlike the owner of the useless suitcase, Moscow cannot simply quit the Donbas without incurring considerable reputational damage to itself, both domestically and throughout the so-called "Russian world."

This, in turn, is overlapping with other negative developments, primarily the price of oil and its effect on the exchange rate of the ruble, as well as the slow but steady grinding of international sanctions.

The unfavorable circumstances, limited time frame and loss of image are forcing the Russian authorities into making mistakes, for instance the decision to destroy imports of sanctions-listed food, which has caused a mixed reaction in Russian society.

In the current climate, Russia cannot increase its presence on Ukrainian soil without worsening the adverse consequences for itself. Hope clings to the regimes in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics, which can still act with impunity to maintain the desired degree of tension in the region and, if necessary, used to soak up negative PR without Russia becoming officially involved in the conflict. This explains the periodic outbreaks of military activity along the dividing line in the Donbas.

Lavrov's words also suggest that the Kremlin is pinning its hopes on its European partners. According to Moscow, they must "put pressure" on Kiev to make as many concessions as possible in the settlement of the situation in the Donbas, while preserving Russia's positive image both domestically and abroad.

The official position of Berlin and Paris in the settlement of the conflict cannot be described as simple. Having failed to achieve the withdrawal of heavy weapons as per Minsk-2, Germany, in particular, is determined to ensure that Ukraine carries through the provisions relating to constitutional reform.

The German Foreign Ministry evaluated the August 20 meeting of the Normandy format as a "positive and intensive exchange of views" on the reform of the Constitution of Ukraine and the process of decentralization, in particular the assignment of special status to certain parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

It seems as though the Minsk agreements are being mechanically implemented, and none of the European diplomats involved in the settlement process wants to consider the possible consequences of such actions. Not only that, pushing through constitutional reform in a country whose territorial integrity has been shattered by fighting is not safe; likewise the desire to give special status to areas beyond the control of the official authorities merely encourages the separatists to expand their scope of influence through so-called gray zones.

Thus, there is a negative synergistic effect. Having failed to carry out the main clause of the Minsk agreements on the demilitarization of the conflict zone, the participants in the settlement process intend to give more rights to just one side, the separatists, who are effectively out of control as it is, untying their hands in the process and allowing the tail to wag the dog.

Ignoring the diplomatic subtleties for a moment, one might say that the roof is being added to the house before the walls. And that seems to be the crux of the current phase, since the proposed solution conceals a time bomb with a fairly long fuse.

The conclusion suggests itself that the problem cannot be solved within the current system of coordinates. What's needed is a major revision of the approaches and solutions related to the process. As practice shows, mechanical adherence to the Minsk agreements with the focus on the most readily implementable provisions not only fails to facilitate the conflict resolution process, but also merely adds a new layer of complexities. In order to change the situation for the better, the Minsk process must be institutionalized. As evident from the current situation, the efforts of the OSCE alone are insufficient.

Since Europe has enough problems of its own, the need to review the negotiating format is becoming increasingly obvious and urgent. To that end, it would be advisable either to expand the Normandy format to include the United States or to raise the status of participants from the level of foreign ministers to heads of state. The U.S. and Russian presidents could meet under this format and set about untangling the knotty situation, which is fraught with negative consequences - not only for Europe, but also for the world.

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 #31
Moscow accuses Kiev of purposefully building up heavy weapons at contact line

MOSCOW, August 24. /TASS/. Kiev continues to purposefully amass heavy weapons at the line of contact, which will lead to the resumption of hostilities in southeastern Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

The ministry noted that the Russian side at the Joint Center for Coordination and Control had informed the employees of the Special Monitoring Mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) "about the build-up of pieces with caliber over 100 mm at the line of demarcation."

"The presence of one Grad rocket launcher and two armored personnel carriers has been established in Dokuchaevsk," the Russian Foreign Ministry said. "The movement of a convoy of six Grad launchers, 18 trucks carrying ammunition and personnel and 18 armored personnel carriers, including 6 armored personnel carriers equipped with anti-tank guided missiles from Selidovo to Lebedinsky has been registered. In Chasov Yar, the deployment of two Tochka-U tactical missile systems has been established."

In addition to that, five Gvozdika self-propelled howitzers have been deployed to Orlovskoye, and two tanks discovered in Granitnoye, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

"This information has been confirmed by the data obtained from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission," the ministry added. "It is noted that on August 15, flying over Aslanovo, the mission's UAV was subjected to radio interference from the Ukrainian military."

At the same time, the Russian side at the Joint Center for Coordination and Control informed representatives of the Special Monitoring Mission that, "according to the information of the DPR intelligence service, the Ukrainian army was deploying main attack forces with heavy weaponry to the contact line and suggested verifying this information."

"The Ukrainian authorities thus continue to purposefully build up heavy weaponry at the contact line in violation of the agreements reached in Minsk, which will lead to the resumption of hostilities in southeastern Ukraine," the ministry noted.

Ukrainian army dramatically increases artillery bombardments of Ukraine's self-proclaimed republics

The Information and Press Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry also told TASS the Ukrainian military has substantially increased the number of artillery bombardments of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics (DPR, LPR) over the past week with the use of all types of weapons despite the ceasefire.

"As a result of these artillery bombardments, civilians continue to die and sustain injuries of varying severity, residential houses and social infrastructure facilities are destroyed."

The heaviest fire fell on districts of Donetsk, the Donetsk airport and the towns of Gorlovka and Debaltsevo shelled overnight on August 16 from the 122-mm and 1520mm artillery systems from the settlement Peski area controlled by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The artillery bombardments have left a man and two women dead, whose identifies are being established.

"The relevant information, including photos and video footage on these violations have been handed over by representatives of the Russian Armed Forces at the Joint Center for Coordination and Control to the Special Monitoring Mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). They also provided information on Russia's activities to render assistance in the implementation of humanitarian projects in southeastern Ukraine," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

The ministry noted that when checking the storage area for withdrawn weaponry of the Ukrainian Armed Forces OSCE monitors registered the absence of nine Msta-B 152-mm towed howitzers, 24 Grad multiple rocket launchers, four Rapira 100-mm anti-tank guns, four Gvozdika 122-mm self-propelled howitzers, four Giatsint 152-mm field guns, eight Shturm-S anti-tank missile systems and five Akatsiya self-propelled howitzers.

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 #32
World Affairs
www.worldaffairsjournal.org
August 21, 2015
Anti-Donbas Sentiment Growing in Ukraine
ALEXANDER J. MOTYL is professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark, as well as a writer and painter.

Is Ukrainian public opinion turning toward getting rid of the Russian-occupied Donbas enclave?

The evidence is beginning to look persuasive. A year ago, the suggestion that Ukraine would be better off without the Russian-occupied bits of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces provoked cries of treason. No more. The view has become legitimate, and it may even be winning the day.

A May 2015 public opinion survey by the Sofia Center for Social Research showed that 61.8 percent of Ukrainians would be willing to give up the occupied territories in exchange for peace. Only 22.9 percent supported continuing military operations until the region's full liberation. (The survey was not conducted in Crimea or the occupied territories.)

My own conversations-with experts, family members, friends, and colleagues-in June and July in Ukraine revealed only one die-hard supporter of Ukraine's holding on to the enclave at all costs: a young television journalist. Indeed, I was struck by the prevailing view: people were tired of war, shocked and saddened by the killing and dying, and repulsed by the Russian separatists and their many supporters within the enclave's population. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the Ukrainians I spoke to felt zero loyalty to it.

Now two highly authoritative voices have joined the growing chorus of anti-enclave sentiments.

On August 3rd, Volodymyr Lanovyy, the liberal economist who served as vice prime minister and minister of the economy in 1992, argued that, by maintaining economic relations with the enclave, Kyiv was effectively financing the enemy that was daily killing its soldiers. According to Lanovyy: "At present, Crimea and the Donetsk-Luhansk enclave have de facto stopped being internal regions of Ukraine." Given that Russia controls the border, the "occupied lands of Crimea and the Donbas have provisionally entered the political and economic space of the aggressor country"-Russia. Given also that the Ukrainian authorities hold no sway in the enclave, it follows that "all talk of trade, subsidies to the coal mines, salaries to state employees, state-funded pensions according to Ukraine's norms are simply out of place."

Then, on August 17th, independent Ukraine's first president, Leonid Kravchuk, stated the following:

"We should finally make an important political decision. We should state that the line of demarcation in the Donbas is the provisional line of separation between the occupied territories of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces and Ukraine. We [should] sever all economic and political relations with these regions controlled by the militants and Russia. They seized power by force. I believe we should give them the opportunity to administer these territories, and life will then test their talents.

"All talk of the fact that our people live there and that they should be helped must be removed from the order of the day. This humanism and tears in general give Ukraine nothing. Today, as a result of Russia's influence, a cancerous growth has formed on this territory. This growth can be eliminated only by surgery and nothing else."

These are strong and unambiguous words. No less important, their author is Kravchuk. Is the architect of Ukraine's independence and the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991 speaking only for himself? Could be. But nothing is ever quite that simple in Ukraine, especially as Lanovyy served as Kravchuk's economy minister. Are the two coordinating their messages? Are they speaking for some faction in the government?

Their statements are either trial balloons or a harbinger of things to come. Either way, the enclave's days as a cancer in Ukraine's body may be limited.

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#33
Bloomberg
August 25, 2015
Ukraine Is Too Corrupt for Debt Deal to Work
By Leonid Bershidsky

Ukraine is reportedly close to a deal with its private creditors, who may accept a 20 percent haircut. This is an uneasy compromise that would solve little, because the government continues to fail where it really matters: cutting corruption and bringing the country's huge shadow economy into the tax system.

Ukraine's private creditors, led by asset manager Franklin Templeton, are talking with U.S.-born Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko about restructuring $19 billion of debt. Ukraine's $17.5 billion bailout agreement with the International Monetary Fund requires a deal that would save the government $15 billion over four years through 2018, bring its debt-to-gross-domestic-product ratio below 71 percent by 2020 and keep its gross financing needs to an average of 10 percent of GDP through 2025. The creditors initially told Jaresko that an immediate haircut wouldn't be necessary to meet these conditions: rescheduling and coupon reductions would be enough. The minister, however, demanded a 40 percent haircut and threatened a moratorium on debt repayments otherwise.

The Ukrainian government's argument was one it has repeated ad nauseam at home and abroad. "We are at war with a nuclear state, namely Russia," Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said in June. "There is no other way than to accept our terms, restructure the debts and allow Ukraine to get out of a difficult economic situation."

If the two sides meet each other halfway as reports suggest, dealing Templeton's bond guru Michael Hasenstab his first major defeat, Ukraine will get some immediate relief. It has $1.1 billion of sovereign bonds maturing in September and October, and these payments would probably be delayed. However, the $3 billion Eurobond owned by Russia, which comes due in December, won't be affected: Russia insists the loan must be treated as official, rather than private debt -- and Ukraine has been faithfully paying the coupons on it.

It is also unclear whether the 20 percent face value reduction -- a cut of $3.8 billion -- is going to help bring Ukraine's debt-to-GDP ratio down to 71 percent from the current 94 percent. The IMF program projects Ukraine's 2020 GDP to reach 3.2 trillion hryvnias, or $134.2 billion at the projected exchange rate for the end of 2020, up from 1.5 trillion hryvnias ($97 billion at the year-end exchange rate) in 2014. This projected economic growth is supposed to close most of the debt-to-GDP gap; the contribution of the restructuring deal to meeting the IMF's 71 percent target would be much smaller.

The IMF's growth forecast is probably overoptimistic. The fund expects the economy to shrink by 5.5 percent this year and then start growing, hitting a 4 percent plateau in 2018. The Bloomberg consensus forecast of bank economists puts this year's expected decline at 8.7 percent. Actual data for the first two quarters suggest even that may be hopeful. On a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, GDP was down 14.7 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2015. Hardly any business is growing in Ukraine. In July, industrial production was down 13.4 percent year-on-year. Exports in January through June reached just $18.5 billion, compared with $28.62 billion in the same period of 2014.

The other shaky assumption in the IMF forecast concerns the Ukraine's currency. The fund expects the hryvnia to weaken slightly, from 22 per U.S. dollar at the end of this year to 23.8 in late 2020. Yet the hryvnia is only protected from a much steeper immediate drop by capital controls, which the IMF itself wants Ukraine to ease. The Bloomberg consensus forecast is for the currency to hit 24 per dollar in 2016 already, further throwing the fund's math into disarray.

On Monday, President Petro Poroshenko predicted that "economic growth is going to be restored in the next few months, simply thanks to the absence of military escalation." Business, he said, was "adapting, finding new markets to replace the Russian one that is completely closed to us." It would appear that Poroshenko doesn't follow his country's official statistics. In the first half of 2015, Russia was still Ukraine's biggest export market, consuming $2.3 billion worth of Ukrainian goods. That was almost 60 percent less than the year before, but hardly closed. Meanwhile, exports to nine out of Ukraine's other top 10 markets also fell, which doesn't suggest much adaptation.

Ukraine does have one reliable growth engine: its shadow economy. According to a recent paper from the economy ministry, in the first quarter of 2015, when the official economy was in freefall, the shadow sector increased its share of official GDP by 5 percentage points year-on-year, to 47 percent. That is a modest estimate based on an average from several methods, some of which are not particularly relevant to Ukraine. Measured by consumer spending and retail trade, the informal sector has swelled to 56 percent of GDP.

The two reasons for this expansion are corruption and tax evasion. The Ukrainian government is making a visible effort to combat graft -- many official agencies have switched to transparent electronic procurement systems, and the newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau promises to send its first cases to court by the end of this year. Even so, businesses still complain of bureaucrats' depredations, the national prosecutor's office is locked up in a struggle between reformers and veterans used to the old ways, and the country's notorious judicial system remains unreformed. Changes to the tax code are in the works, but these are insufficient to induce businesses to start paying payroll taxes instead of offering employees unofficial cash salaries.

Bringing the shadow sector into the reportable, taxable economy would be far more important to growth than the proposed debt write-off. Given the nominal first-quarter GDP of $15.7 billion, the unofficial turnover (assuming a 47 percent shadow economy) reached $7.4 billion in those three months alone. Even the war in eastern Ukraine, the government's perpetual excuse, means less to the nation's future than this, much quieter war with the sizable part of the country's population that cannot imagine living by the rules.
 

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 #34
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
August 24, 2015
Ukraine's largest lender PrivatBank investigated for diverting $1.8bn of IMF funds
Graham Stack in Kyiv

PrivatBank, Ukraine's largest lender partly owned by controversial oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, is under criminal investigation by the authorities for fraudulently diverting around what was then about $1.8bn, the bank has confirmed.

"We are aware of the existence of criminal proceedings. PrivatBank fully cooperates with the investigators and provides all the information and documents necessary to establish the objective truth of the case," a bank spokesperson told bne IntelliNews on August 20. In a statement cited by Interfax Ukraine, the bank put the amount in question at UAH19bn (today worth about $855mn).

Kyiv's Pechersk court ordered PrivatBank on June 10 to provide police investigators with access to confidential documents relating to the allegations of fraud, which were first reported internationally by bne IntelliNews. Financial sector regulators the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) and the State Financial Monitoring Service both said police investigators were acting independently, without their assistance, according to Interfax Ukraine.

PrivatBank, part of Kolomoisky's empire which encompasses aviation, television and energy, received the funds as stabilisation loans from the NBU as the February 2014 revolution and ensuing conflict with Russia unleashed economic turmoil in Ukraine. The funds were in turn paid to PrivatBank by the central bank as part of an IMF bailout of Ukraine in May 2014.

"We are convinced that the investigation by examining the documents to which access was granted by the court will be able to objectively assess all the circumstances together, and to establish the truth," PrivatBank said in its statement.

Paper trail

As bne IntelliNews reported, the paper trail suggesting PrivatBank moved $1.8bn out of the country was hiding in plain sight in Ukraine's online database of litigation. But regulators and law enforcement agencies ignored the signs until the international press picked up the story in the wake of bne IntelliNews' story.

Indications of suspicious activity were the scores of apparently pro-forma lawsuits brought against offshore vehicles for failure to deliver imports as contracted that hit courts in the Dnipropetrovsk region, starting in September 2014. At the time of the alleged fraud, Kolomoisky was also governor of Dnipropetrovsk, where PrivatBank is headquartered.

The lawsuits were brought by Dnipropetrovsk-registered companies against the offshore companies for failing to deliver on massive import contracts paid in advance, and which in turn were funded by PrivatBank loans. This is a common scheme for illegal capital exports, and effectively means that PrivatBank funds had been siphoned out of the country.

Ukrainian law stipulates that where advance payment is made on an import contract without any subsequent delivery, the "deceived" Ukrainian company has to sue the foreign counterparty in Ukrainian courts for the sum of the advance payment within six months.

Processing these cases, journalist investigations identified six firms from the UK and British Virgin Islands as having received the "advance payments" in May-August 2014 totalling $1.81bn, with no subsequent delivery of goods.

42 firms registered in Dnipropetrovsk made the payments from their accounts at PrivatBank, funded by loans from PrivatBank collateralised with the goods ordered. All the Dnipropetrovsk firms are owned via offshores, but journalist investigations linked them via cross-ownership or trading operations to structures belonging to the so-called "Privat Group" of companies.

The six non-resident recipients of the funds also have links to Privat Group trading operations, according to the investigations. Tellingly, their accounts are held with PrivatBank's subsidiary in Cyprus owned by the six UK and BVI firms. Three separate journalist investigations (here, here and here) came to the same conclusions, drawing largely on open sources and thus easily verified.

PrivatBank denied the allegations to bne IntelliNews. "We have already stated a number of times that the information about moving capital abroad does not correspond to reality and is based on fabricated data," PrivatBank told bne IntelliNews.

Asked about the alleged scheme in a previous interview, the head of the central bank, Valeria Gontareva, said that she "did not notice" any such scheme.

Captive bank?

The criminal investigation adds to concerns over PrivatBank's stability, given ongoing depositor flight from the lender.

PrivatBank's business model combines that of a national savings bank, dominating retail deposits and retail credits, with that of a 'pocket bank' serving a single financial industrial group - the so-called Privat Group of companies controlled by bank shareholders Ihor Kolomoisky and Hennady Boholyubov. Thus, while PrivatBank holds 26% of Ukraine's retail deposits, with over one fifth of Ukraine's total bank branches, as much as 95% of the bank's corporate lending reportedly goes to companies registered in its home region of Dnipropetrovsk, presumed to belong to Privat Group, according to Ukraine's respected weekly zn.ua. PrivatBank dismisses the conclusions of the report.

Privat Group, in striking contrast to other oligarch holdings, has never been consolidated into a legal entity, which would put a limit on bank lending to the group because of banking regulations over lending to a single customer. Without such consolidation, it is impossible to fully know how much the bank has been lending to related parties, although the bank does list 26 firms as related parties.

Even without group consolidation, the bank's disclosures reveal that fractionally over 20% of lending goes to one customer. NBU limits lending to one customer to 20%. The bank is well within all other regulatory limits. PrivatBank accounts show that around 25% of lending goes to Ukraine's oil refining sector, where Privat Group dominates, with just under 15% going to the iron alloy sector, also dominated by Privat Group.

A cornerstone of Kolomoisky's operations for over a decade has been effective control over state-owned oil producer Ukrnafta, with opponents accusing him of siphoning off funds from the company by selling oil and oil products at far below market prices to other Privat Group structures - an accusation that Kolomoisky has always denied.

But in March 2014 Kolomoisky clashed with President Petro Poroshenko over Privat Group control of the state-owned companies, leading to his dismissal as governor of Dnipropetrovsk and decisive moves to reduce Privat Group's role in the state energy sector, including the switching of Ukrnafta deposits from PrivatBank to state-owned banks.

PrivatBank has suffered severe deposit outflow since 2014, and continued to receive stabilisation funds from the NBU to prop the bank up, totalling just over UAH10bn ($0.46bn) since December 2014, as detailed by the NBU. The central bank said that the bank's shareholders had provided personal guarantees for the latest stabilisation loans.

But the most immediate challenge faced by the bank is to restructure a $200mn Eurobond due for payment on September 23. An August 13 meeting with bondholders failed to reach quorum, and has been rescheduled for August 27.

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 #35
Sputnik
August 25, 2015
Only 2.8% of Ukrainians Ready to Vote for Yatsenyuk's Party

Ratings of the Ukrainian President and Prime Minister dropped shortly before local elections scheduled for October. Voters are furious about the ongoing fighting in Donbass and increasing inflation, Der Tagespiegel wrote.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is unable to cope with domestic problems and has to pursue "symbolic politics," meeting with the leaders of France and Germany on Monday in Berlin, writes the German newspaper Tagesspiegel.

After it turned out, that Russian President Vladimir Putin was not invited to take part in the summit, European media started speculating about Poroshenko trying to create a "three vs one" alliance against Moscow.
Ukrainian diplomats, for their turn, immediately interpreted Putin's absence as a sign of the growing distance between Moscow and the West. However, Paris and Berlin authorities stressed that the meeting was requested by Poroshenko himself, and that the resolution of the crisis is impossible without Russia.

"While the relations between Russia and the West have stabilized on a certain level of mistrust and mutual accusations, distance between Ukraine and the West has rather increased over the last time," the newspaper wrote.

Politicians in Kiev are becoming increasingly unhappy about the fact that they have to directly negotiate with the Donbass militias. The domestic situation is also complicated by the threat of bankruptcy. According to some estimates, the country may become insolvent already in early October.

Despite numerous promises, the Ukrainian government failed to put an end to the military conflict, carry out reforms and stop the economic decline. The ratings of the president and prime minister have significantly fallen shortly before the local elections.

Only 2.8% are ready to vote for the party of Arseniy Yatsenyuk, 23.5% - for "Petro Poroshenko Bloc."

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 #36
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
August 24, 2015
Marina Aleshina, Kyiv is preparing for a blitzkrieg: How and with what will the DPR and LPR defend themselves in the event of an offensive by Ukrainian power-wielders?

The Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics are expecting a large-scale offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (VSU), which have massed a thousands-strong force of equipment and manpower in four sectors of a possible assault. Eduard Basurin, deputy corps commander of the DPR [Donetsk People's Republic] Defence Ministry, spoke about what the militia is preparing for.

The Donetsk Basin [Donbass] does not rule out the Ukrainian power-wielders may begin an offensive on Ukrainian Independence Day, which is commemorated on 24 August. But a visit of the president of Ukraine to Berlin, to see the guarantors of the Minsk agreements, from where it would be hard for him, as supreme commander, to command the troops, is scheduled for this day. Which in no way calls off the clear preparations of the VSU for an offensive. Its indications have been recorded by the republic's armies' intelligence since the start of August. The VSU have formed four offensive force groupings (and also one reserve grouping) in the Mariupol, Donetsk, Artemivsk, and Luhansk sectors.

For example, five mechanized brigades, two tank brigades, an air-mobile brigade, an artillery brigade, and a multiple-launch rocket system (MLRS) brigade are concentrated in the Mariupol sector.

The force is composed of more than 130 tanks, more than 560 BMP [infantry fighting vehicles] and BTR [armoured personnel carriers], 55 MLRS, and approximately 200 artillery pieces and mortars.

In the Donetsk sector Kyiv [Kiev] has assembled 5 separate mechanized brigades, a separate tank brigade, 2 air-mobile brigades, a Tochka-U ballistic missile battalion, three artillery brigades, and an MLRS brigade. These formations altogether run to more than 15,500 personnel, approximately 110 tanks, about 432 BMPs and BTRs, five Tochka-U missile systems and 50 MLRS, and approximately 220 artillery pieces and mortars. Moreover, the VSU are preparing for an offensive in the Debaltseve and Luhansk sectors. The total strength of the Ukrainian army's offensive force is more than 90,000 military personnel, approximately 450 tanks, 5 Tochka-U missile systems and 230 MLRS, and more than 1,050 artillery pieces and mortars.

Militia headquarters says that Kyiv's aim is to reach the border with Russia with two convergent assaults in the Uspenka sector. Following a new capture of Ilovaysk and Shakhtarske, the VSU are planning to get Donetsk in a pocket and, in parallel, surround Luhansk. A frontal offensive from Mariupol to Novoazovsk is planned. And the VSU is hoping for a swift breach of the front and development of the success.

The DPR maintains that the people's republics have the wherewithal for a response. "Despite the readiness of the Kyiv regime to unleash war after Independence Day and the preparation of headline-making provocations to justify the aggression and genocide of the people of Donbass, the DPR army is ready for an immediate response and the effective repulse of the enemy assaults," Eduard Basurin assured reporters. Experts note that although the armed forces of the self-proclaimed republics are appreciably inferior in strength to the Ukrainian force, their personnel is well schooled, and technical communications are up to par. In addition, there have been substantial miscalculations on the part of the Ukrainian strategists, of which the DPR and LPR would not fail to take advantage. In the event of a breakthrough by the Ukrainian army, the militias would be able with flank assaults to cut off the forward units. Specially since a Kyiv offensive in all sectors, which would be a perfectly clear demonstration of a violation of the Minsk agreements, would appear unlikely, for all that. Analysts believe that both parties to the conflict are prepared for the time being to confine themselves to counterattacks in a limited section of the front.

It remains to hope that the plans for a blitzkrieg will remain just plans on paper and that the directions of the assaults identified on the maps will not resound in reports from the front in southeast Ukraine.

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#37
Kyiv Post
August 24, 2015
For second year, Ukrainians celebrate Independence Day amid Russia's war
By Veronika Melkozerova

Ukrainian Independence Day 2015 showed that Ukrainians love their soldiers a lot and their politicians, well, not so much at all.

Thousands turned Kyiv's Khreshchatyk Street into a river of vyshyvanka, as people donned a bright and varied collection of traditional Ukrainian embroidered clothes.

They hugged weary soldiers and took photos with them. They gave them flowers and bottles of cold water.

But skepticism remains about Ukraine's authorities, who still erect fences, police cordons and metal detectors to put the public -- and whoever might wish them ill -- at a safe distance.

To see the main street parade, people climbed to the highest places they could find -- even if that was just on each other's shoulders. They cheered their favorite volunteer battalisons. "Aidar! Aidar! Guys, I love you all," a young woman, wearing a headdress of flowers, treating the men in uniform like rock stars.

The soldiers of Aidar, as well as other volunteer battalions and regular soldiers, sang the national anthem and everyone joined in.

For the most part, the soldiers kept the weapons at the war front.

Poroshenko touched on all the themes -- war, reform, the coming fall local elections -- in his talk. English-language excerpts can be found on the presidential website.

"The war continues! And we are warriors, not lazybones," Poroshenko said. "Independence Day is almost synchronized with the Ilovaisk tragedy - the day when Russian army invaded our land. We won't ever forget the more than 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers who died in our fight for freedom and independence. And we won't ever forgive the aggressor."

Kyiv pensioner Tamara Malyzheva was unimpressed.

"The warrior he is! Ha! He should have better to say the words of gratitude to the volunteer battalions. What would we do without them?" Malyzheva said.

Poroshenko said Ukraine's fighting forces have improved and he pledged to further enhance their combat readiness. He pledged another 300 armored vehicles, 400 fighting machines, 30,000 ammunition supplies.

The soldiers responded "Oorah!"

During the parade, people greeted battalions warmly. When it all came to an end, the soldiers finally got a minute to rest out of the sun.

"We are pleased to be here! You know, people.... they are looking at us different now, proudly I guess. When you see those furtive glances, full of hope, you understand that all that was well-spent," said Andriy Dovgan from the Aidar Battalion.

Dovgan said Ukrainian warriors were promised bonuses, but he and others don't expect much rest soon.

"We will rest when the war will be over! When we will win it," said Maxim Gluhenky from the Kirovograd Battalion.

The Russian-separatist forces are keeping them busy.

According to an Aug. 24 update by Andriy Lysenko, the Ukrainian military spokesman blamed the other side for 82 cease-fire violations of the Minsk agreements.

"Half of them were made from the heavy weapons, which were under banned according to the agreements," said Lysenko on a briefing on Aug.24.

Some 40,000 armed Russian-backed separatists and some 9,000 Russian soldiers are fighting against Ukraine in eastern Ukraine, while another 50,000 Russian soldiers are deployed just over the border in Russia, according to Ukrainian government estimates.

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 #38
Ukraine celebrates Independence Day amid martial law, economic crisis
By Tamara Zamyatina

MOSCOW, August 24. /TASS/. Ukraine is celebrating its Independence Day on August 24 amid martial law, its ruined economy and unprecedented inflation rates as a result of the rupture of ties with Russia, experts polled by TASS said on Monday.

Ukraine, which seceded from the Soviet Union in 1991, maintained the model of economic cooperation with Russia, which had developed over the course of several decades. However, after the forceful seizure of power in the country in February 2014, official Kiev formulated the course towards European integration and sharply curtailed trade and economic relations with Russia.

Ukraine's trade with Russia fell by 63% in the first quarter of 2015. Production and technological cooperation between Ukraine and Russia has been actually destroyed: trade in engineering and technical products between the two countries has halved. The loss of the Russian market has resulted in a protracted economic decline, rising unemployment and social instability in Ukraine.

Ukraine's purely ideological desire to get away from Russia has been the cause for the current disastrous state of the Ukrainian economy, deputy director of the Institute of CIS Countries Vladimir Zharikhin told TASS.

"By virtue of the objective state of things, the Ukrainian economy had always been a part of the Soviet and later Russian economy. The point is that while Ukraine has an educated population, it does not have the required amount of natural resources, except coal and black soil. As a result of the rupture of ties with Russia a year ago, Ukraine 'outpaced' Moldova and fell to the last place in Europe in terms of GDP per capita of the population," Zharikhin told TASS.

"This year, Ukraine has set another anti-record as it has become the poorest country not only in Europe but also in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Today, the average wage in Ukraine is lower than in Tajikistan," the expert said.

Ukraine has registered the highest inflation rates in the past 20 years: inflation is predicted at the level of 36% by late 2015 and this is not the final figure yet, the expert said.

"President Petro Poroshenko can justify the fall of the hryvnia exchange rate, the rise of housing and utility tariffs and food prices only by martial law in the country. With no funds in the treasury for solving acute social problems, Poroshenko has spent $4 billion on the war in the country's southeast. That is why, the march of Ukrainian servicemen has become the celebration's central event in Kiev. It is obvious that military affairs are the main point on the Ukrainian authorities' agenda, overshadowing such problems as the persisting risk of default and preparations for the winter," Zharikhin said.

At the same time, Kiev has refused to purchase gas from Russia, buying the fuel in the mode of reverse-flow supplies from Europe. Gas supplied in a reverse-flow mode is more expensive than the gas delivered directly from Russia.

"Ukraine is spending extra money for the sake of mythical energy independence. Pyotr Poroshenko has said recently that Ukraine has been able to get rid of its dependence on Russian gas and now has 10 suppliers in the European Union. But European gas is also of Russian origin. This is how Ukrainian politics is destroying the economy," the expert said.

"The Ukrainian business has lost the market of its once largest partner, Russia, but has proved to be unprepared to enter the market in Europe. Ukrainian products fail to match the requirements of the European market and this is a global problem. The Ukrainian politicians' desire instantly to give up the traditional markets in the CIS countries and integrate the country's economy into the EU economy has resulted in a shock for the state, producers and finally for the population," the expert said.

Director of the Institute of Globalization Problems Mikhail Delyagin expressed his "condolences" to Ukraine on the occasion of Independence Day. "The eighteen months that have passed since the new regime came to power in Kiev have become the culmination of Ukraine's independence since its secession from the USSR: it has turned into a hell from a rich and flourishing land," Delyagin told TASS.

"The deaths of civilians and Ukrainian servicemen in Donbas are the country's national tragedy. The economic decline in Ukraine is intensifying even according to state statistics. It has to be hoped that the Ukrainian politicians will come to their senses and pull the country from the edge of the abyss. Otherwise, the Ukrainian state would cease to exist," the expert said.

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#39
Sputnik
August 24, 2015
Ups and Downs in Ukraine's 24-Year History: Has Kiev Learned Its Lesson?

On August 24 Ukraine is celebrating its Independence Day; 24 years ago the young country faced a unique opportunity to become a sovereign state and realize its dreams of independence... but has it seized this chance?

On August 24, 1991, Ukraine's parliament passed a declaration of independence; after the collapse of the Soviet Union Ukraine was freed from Soviet debts (this burden was borne by Russia) and given the green light to independent economic development.

It should be noted that at the moment of the USSR's collapse Ukraine was the richest among the former Soviet Republics; over twenty four years Ukraine turned into Europe's poorest state. Ukraine has obviously failed to fulfill its great economic potential due to internal political struggle, mismanagement and wavering between East and West.

Needless to say, the country's most profitable assets were privatized by prominent tycoons who were not interested in consistent economic and political reforms. Furthermore, between 1991 and 2015 the Ukrainian population decreased from 52 to 42.6 million people.
From 1991 to 2015 five presidents were at the helm of the independent Ukrainian state.

Leonid Kravchuk (1991-1994) served as the first president of Ukraine. When the USSR started to crumble, Kravchuk pushed for Ukrainian independence. He counted on the West and substantially messed up relations with Russia. For instance, the relations between Russia and Ukraine deteriorated due to the controversial Black Sea Fleet "partition" and the Crimean issue.

In 1994 Crimean residents planned to hold a referendum on self-determination and re-unification with Russia. But the Ukrainian government led by Kravchuk did not allow the peninsula's population to exercise their democratic rights.

Meanwhile, Ukraine suffered from corruption and financial hardships: its traditional political and economic ties with former the Soviet republics were broken. The country had to build its new financial system from scratch. As a result, Ukraine spiraled into hyperinflation.

The situation had improved under the rule of Leonid Kuchma (1994-2004). The Ukrainian leader conducted a multi-vector foreign policy, cooperating with both Russia and the West. The country's economy began to revive after a prolonged recession, the country's currency - the hryvnia - was introduced and new national Constitution adopted.

The Orange Revolution of 2004, backed by the West, ushered in a new era of cooling of Russo-Ukrainian relations. Viktor Yushchenko, supported by the West, hijacked the elections and became the third Ukrainian president. However, in 2008 Ukraine faced a significant economic slowdown. By 2009 its GDP slid by 15 percent while the Ukrainian Central bank devalued the hryvnia twice and Ukraine's external debt began to grow. Furthermore, a Russo-Ukrainian gas conflict of 2009, instigated by Kiev, put Russia's gas deliveries to Europe in jeopardy.

In 2010, frustrated by corruption and certain mismanagement of the Yushchenko government, the population of Ukraine voted for Viktor Yanukovich, the pragmatist, who adopted a neutralist stance toward Russia and the West. Although the country's external debt continued to grow, the Ukrainian economy indicated gradual growth.

However, the February coup of 2014 has nullified the modest achievements of the Ukrainian economy under Yanukovich. Today, after a year and a half since the coup, when democratically-elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich was ousted by Washington-backed ultra-nationalist forces, the country is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

The signing of the widely-discussed EU Association agreement postponed by Yanukovich and approved by the Poroshenko government has not facilitated the Ukrainian economy's growth.

In 2014 the Ukrainian economy sank by 6.8 percent against 2013, the inflation rate has risen by 25 percent, while the hryvnia's value has been cut in half. Meanwhile the country's national debt increased to $72 billion. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund's loans delayed the collapse, but have not mended the country's financial situation.

According to World Bank data, over the past 24 years Ukraine's real GDP has slid by 35 percent. This negative trend is the worst in the world.

According to some modest estimates, Ukraine needs about $97 billion for ten years to rebuild its aging infrastructure and boost economic growth.

However, while earlier in August Ukraine avoided a technical default by paying off a $120 million Eurobond coupon, in September Kiev has to repay $500 million and the specter of default is looking more than real.

The Ukrainian government's unwillingness to mediate the situation in Donbass - to recognize the right to self-rule for the Donbass republics, establish a federal state - is only adding fuel to the fire.

It is still unable to predict what the future has in store for Ukraine.


 

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 #40
Ukrainians Mark Independence Day United by Patriotism and Hope, Sociologist Says
Paul Goble

Staunton, August 24 - Today is Ukraine's Independence Day, and compared to the years before Vladimir Putin's Anschluss of Crimea and the Russian invasion of the Donbas, Ukrainians are now far more united by patriotism and by their hopes for the future, according to Irina Bekeshkina, a sociologist at the Kyiv Institute of Sociology.

For more than a decade, she writes on the "Novoye vremya" portal today, she and her fellow scholars at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences have been carrying out surveys asking "one and the same questions" so as to be in a position to make longitudinal conclusions about changes (nv.ua/opinion/bekeshkina/chto-obedinjaet-ukraintsev-65425.html).

For the entire period from 2005 to 2013, she says, responses to the question "What feelings arise for you when you think about the future of Ukraine?" remained relatively constant: Thirty-two percent felt hope, 14 percent experienced optimism, 18 percent felt a sense of hopelessness, and 22 percent fear.

But between 2013 and 2014-15, she says, "essential changes took place," and Ukrainians responded to the war, the annexation of Crimea, the occupation of part of their territory, and the constant threat of attack by a foreign enemy by becoming more optimistic and patriotic than ever before.

In 2014, those expressing a sense of hopelessness fell by half from 18 percent to nine percent, those feeling optimistic about Ukraine's future rose from 14 percent to 23.5 percent, and those feeling hope rose from 32 percent to 49 percent, even though those expressing concern rose as well, from 31 percent to 44.5 percent. The share of those expressing fear "did not change."

This trend, one at a time of enormous economic difficulties and war, Bekeshkina says, is "connected with the fact that in Ukraine an active process of the formation of a political nation is taking place," a process that means that "the absolute majority of the population ... is beginning to feel itself a single nation."

For most of the first decade of this century, the sociologist says, Ukrainians told pollsters that faith in a better future, dissatisfaction with the authorities and common difficulties" defined what they had in common.  Patriotism as such was seldom mentioned.  Now, that has changed, and patriotic feelings are "a significant unifying factor" with 42 percent mentioning them.

Moreover, she says, this is an indication of the formation of a political nation because neither language, nor ethnicity nor religion is considered by the public "as defining factors of the unification of people."  Further evidence of this is that 52 percent of Ukrainians now include within the term "we" citizens of Ukraine and not just friends and family.

Thus, "the community 'citizens of Ukraine is now for people no less important than their relatives and friends. In other words," Bekeshkina says, "'the feeling of a single family' is being formed among people." And polls show now 72 percent of the country's residents would vote for independence, up from 56 percent in 2013. Only eight percent would now vote against.

In 1991, 88 percent voted for independence, while 12 percent voted against, she says. "But then such voting was to a remarkable degree the result of illusions and hopes for a happy life in the near future. Now, there are no illusions: there is war, losses, and deprivations." Yet there is almost the same result, reflecting the rise of "a strong undefeatable nation."

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 #41
www.rt.com
August 24, 2015
Poroshenko Dooms Ukraine to Endless War
In a bleak and hopeless speech Poroshenko tells his increasingly demoralised army and nation to prepare for "decades of war". Meanwhile, as the Ukrainian economy crashes, a government in exile is set up in Moscow and waits in the wings
By Alexander Mercouris
Alexander Mercouris is a writer on international affairs with a special interest in Russia and law.  He has written extensively on the legal aspects of NSA spying and events in Ukraine in terms of human rights, constitutionality and international law.  He worked for 12 years in the Royal Courts of Justice in London as a lawyer, specializing in human rights and constitutional law. His family has been prominent in Greek politics for several generations.  He is a frequent commentator on television and speaker at conferences.  He resides in London.

Ukraine's President Poroshenko has just made yet another in his seemingly unending series of belligerent speeches.

Speaking in Kharkov he openly bragged that Ukraine's has used the breathing space provided  by Minsk II to build up its army.  As he has repeatedly done in the past, he reeled off a long list of ways in which the Ukrainian army has been strengthened with extra men and equipment.

On previous occasions when Poroshenko has made similar boasts they have turned out to be untrue.  Whilst it is undoubtedly the case that the Ukrainian military has built up a numerically large force near the battlefront, reports continue to pour in of poor morale, widespread desertions and equipment failures, and of growing anger and bitterness towards the Ukrainian high command.

It is nonetheless possible - and indeed likely - that some sort of attack on the Donbass is in the offing.  The Saker has provided the fullest discussion of this and I have nothing to add to it.

War-weary Ukrainians listening to Poroshenko's speech are more likely however to notice the following words:

"The military threat from the east is a prospect for decades to come. This threat will not pass anytime soon and every new generation has to have army training."

In other words, whatever renewed offensive Poroshenko has in mind, he expects the war to go on indefinitely with Ukraine's youth being increasingly militarised in the process.

This is a promise of war without end.

It is also incidentally an indication that Poroshenko knows that any offensive Ukraine now launches cannot achieve final victory.  

In other words, if Poroshenko does now order his army to attack - as seems likely - he is sending his soldiers to fight and die in a battle he knows they cannot win.  Nothing perhaps exposes his cynicism - and this war's futility - more than that.

What these words however also show is something else: the extent of Poroshenko's and of the Maidan movement's intransigence and their refusal to compromise to the smallest degree on any of Maidan's maximalist aims even if by doing so they might achieve peace.  Instead they refuse to compromise even though by doing so they knowingly doom Ukraine to perpetual war.

It should be said clearly that Ukraine does have an alternative to this desperate prospect.  It could compromise and work with Russia and the EU to implement fully the terms of Minsk II.  Whilst that might not be a guarantee of peace, it would at least create that possibility.

This is the alternative opinion polls show the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians prefer.  As has however been true throughout this crisis, their wishes are being held hostage to the obsessions of a violent and intransigent minority, which is now in control.  

Instead of implementing Minsk II as he promised, Poroshenko has violated it so flagrantly that even those parts of the Western media that habitually support him find it impossible to deny the fact, but must instead invent excuses for him (see for example the convoluted reasoning used to justify Ukraine's failure to carry out Minsk II in this editorial in the Financial Times).  

Now of course Poroshenko has broken cover and is openly bragging about how he only saw Minsk II as giving him a breathing space until he got his army ready.

Even the normally supportive Western media seems startled by the bleak nihilism of his speech.

Meanwhile reports from Ukraine point to a rapidly deteriorating situation.   Reports from eye witnesses and such statistics as the government still provides all point to a situation rapidly approaching breaking point.  

The economy is in free fall.  Production continues to collapse, falling far below even the depressed levels of last year.  

Attempts to negotiate a write-off with Ukraine's private creditors are for the moment deadlocked.

Coal production has fallen to World War II levels.  An energy shortage once again beckons and contrary to its boasts Ukraine is once again being forced to turn to Russia for gas, coal and other energy supplies to get through the winter.

As we predicted the government has proved unable to suppress Right Sector despite the open challenge Right Sector poses to the government.  Reports from Kharkov say Right Sector there is completely out of control, with the police all but vanishing from the streets as the behaviour of Right Sector's activists becomes ever more brazen.

The situation is becoming so bad that there are signs of growing alarm on the part of Ukraine's Western backers.

Christoph Schiltz, writing for the German newspaper Die Welt, makes his dismay all too obvious:

"Ukraine is eroding and the West looks on.  The European Union is helpless.  It contents itself with appeals to the parties to the conflict, or demands, as (German) Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has just done, a stronger role for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) - an observer force that has never played any real role in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

"Ukraine meanwhile is in a vicious circle: threatened by Russia from outside, threatened from within by economic and financial collapse, corruption and militias...."
(translation from the German by RI)

It says much for the bankruptcy of Western policy that all Schiltz can offer is however more of the same: more financial and military support for an obviously failing government in Kiev; more pressure through more  sanctions on Russia.

This despite the fact that it is Ukraine not Russia which is refusing to carry out the terms of Minsk II.

Ukraine cannot stabilise without peace in the country and without a rapprochement with Russia.

Poroshenko's latest speech however makes clear what we have always said - peace and rapprochement with Russia is impossible whilst the present Maidan government remains in power in Kiev.

These two realities point to the only way out of this crisis - a change of government in Kiev.

If Ukraine cannot be saved because of the intransigent refusal of its government to negotiate in good faith, then it is necessary to change that government to one which will negotiate in good faith - if Ukraine is to be saved.

That is the inescapable logic of this situation, which both of Ukraine's two big outside stakeholders - Russia and the EU - must face.

This logic is surely what is behind the recent announcement in Moscow of the setting up of something that looks suspiciously like a government in exile headed by the former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.

The Russians probably accepted this logic some time ago, which is why they have allowed - and doubtless encouraged - the setting up of this government in exile.

The EU - which in practice means Germany and Merkel - are still resisting this logic, though Christoph Schiltz's barren article shows they have no alternative to it.

With events in Ukraine deteriorating fast the time to come up with an alternative may be running short.  

A little-noticed comment of Denis Pushilin's - the DPR's chief negotiator who is known to be close to Moscow - may point to Moscow's thinking and to what now lies ahead.

Pushilin said that if Minsk II fails, there will be no Minsk III.  

That may suggest that if the fighting restarts and Ukraine is defeated - forcing Merkel once more to the negotiating table -  the Russians may refuse to cut any more deals with the present government in Kiev, pointing out how it has failed to honour every one of the commitments it has previously made.

In such a situation it is easy to see how the Russians - and the east Ukrainians - may instead press for a complete reconstruction of the government in Kiev, putting that rather than a constitutional settlement at the forefront of any future negotiations.  

The creation of a government in exile in Moscow looks like it is intended to put the Russians in a stronger position when that moment comes, which given the deteriorating situation will probably be fairly soon.

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 #42
Facebook
August 23, 2015
Falsification, cover-up and political exploitation of killings of the Maidan protesters from the Volyn Region during the Maidan Massacre
By Ivan Katchanovski
Ivan Katchanovski teaches at the School of Political Studies and the department of Communication at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of "Cleft Countries: Regional Political Divisions and Cultures in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova" and the co-author of "Historical Dictionary of Ukraine, Second Edition.
[Links here https://www.facebook.com/ivan.katchanovski/posts/1081942381835647]

A monument to Serhii Baidovsky, Eduard Hrynevych, Vasyl Mojsei, and Ivan Tarasiuk, who were killed during the Maidan massacre on February 20, 2014, has been opened today in Lutsk in presence of the Lutsk mayor. The killings of these and other Maidan protesters continue to be falsified by the Ukrainian government and the media and exploited for propaganda purposes. The killings of all these Volyn protesters are attributed by the government investigation and the media to Berkut policemen, while evidence that they were shot dead by "snipers" from the Maidan-controlled Hotel Ukraina continues to be covered up. http://www.volynnews.com/.../u-lutsku-vidkryly-pamiatnyk-vol.../

As I described previously, the new video compilation and other evidence indicate that Baidovsky was killed from the Hotel Ukraina at 9:24am. At the moment of his shooting he faced the Hotel Ukraina, and the prosecution stated during the trial that he was shot in his abdomen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7TZMjrkAB4

My analysis and this video compilation show that Ivan Tarasiuk was shot dead near a bridge between Zhovtnevyi Palace and the Hotel Ukraine at 9:18/9:19am. His reported entry wound in the neck and an exit wound in the chest point towards a shot from a steep upper direction, which matches the Hotel Ukraina. Two protesters said on February 20 in their interview to the 5 TV channel that they had witnessed a sniper killing protesters from the Hotel Ukraina, including one killed in the neck near Zhovtnevyi Palace. This description and location matches the killing of Tarasiuk. Their testimony was removed from the publicly available videos made by this Poroshenko-owned TV channel, but it is available in this little-known recording of the TV broadcast (1:29).
https://youtu.be/XpMMyDymAA4?t=1m29s

Vasyl Mojsei from the Volhynian company of the Maidan Self-Defense was shot dead at 9:17am in the nearby area, in which Bratushko and Kotsuba were killed 7 minutes before. A 2cm entry wound size in his chest was reported by another member of the Volyn company of the Maidan Self-Defence. This large entry wound size indicates an expansion or other large caliber bullets used in hunting. Whip-like sounds of several rifle shots are heard during the brief interval of his killing in a video filmed by an American. Mojsei's apparent positions in the new photos in the video seconds before and after his killing is also consistent with shooters from the Hotel Ukraina. Photos show bullet impact traces or holes from the direction of the hotel in a metal pole, a tree, and Zhovtnevyi Palace near areas of their killings:

https://plus.google.com/.../599080617627.../6019662418890800626...
https://plus.google.com/.../599080617627.../6019662350015775554...

Several witnesses and videos confirm that protesters around that time and at that area were killed from the hotel. For instance, a Maidan medic, who was there at that time, said in a 5th channel documentary that the protesters were killed there by several snipers from the roof of the Hotel Ukraina. He confirms that the protesters were shot by expanding bullets. (13:06)
https://youtu.be/ghZm7ggI1Ko?t=13m6s

The video compilation shows that Hrynevych was killed at 9:41am. His apparent position after the deadly gunshot and testimony of his mother during the trial that a bullet entered a left temple area of his head above an eye and exited in the back of the head point towards the Hotel Ukraina as most likely locations of his shooters. The video compilation and a new photo immediately after his killing show him positioned with his back towards the Berkut barricade and his face and his shield towards the hotel. The wound in the back of his head in this photo and a bullet hole in a similar lower part of his helmet in the 5th channel documentary (26:41) also indicate that he was killed from a steep angle position, such as the Hotel Ukraina and not from a nearly straight Berkut barricade position.

Seconds before his killing, a group of the protesters on another side of Instytutska were loudly shouting about shooters firing from the hotel (26:45-26:52 in the Svoboda activist 55minute-long video). The same video contains whip-like loud sounds of rifle shots when a protester behind Hrynevych was struck and wounded (26:55) and when three seconds later Hrynevych was killed. https://youtu.be/OqXQaa7V4zg?t=26m28s A second later, there is a sound and a smoke from a Kalashnikov shot by a Berkut policeman. Videos and timestamped twitter posts by Ukrainian and foreign journalists show that the Berkut policemen were shooting at the 13th/14th floor stairways shortly before 9:43am and the first and second floor stairways around the same time. Snipers were filmed and reported by Maidan protesters on these floors of the Maidan-controlled Hotel Ukraina. The group of the protesters, who were shouting about snipers at the hotel, would be massacred, specifically from this hotel starting at 9:43am. This group included Trapezun, Ushnevych, Varianytsia, Tochyn, and others.

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 #43
Sputnik
August 25, 2015
MH17 Most Likely Downed by Surface-To-Air Missile - Dutch Prosecutors

Investigators believe that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was most likely hit by a surface-to-air missile, though the possibility of the plane being downed by an air-to-air missile cannot be excluded, a spokesman for the Dutch Public Prosecution Service said Tuesday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Wim de Bruin told RIA Novosti that the criminal investigation of the crash is very complex as it has to be concluded in a conflict zone, and the crash site was long inaccessible for investigators.

"The Joint Investigation team is focusing on several scenarios. The most likely is the one in which the MH17 was downed by a ground-to-air missile. But there are still [other] scenarios that can't be excluded. For example the air-to-air scenario," Wim de Bruin told RIA Novosti.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed near Donetsk in eastern Ukraine in July 2014, killing all 298 people on board.

Kiev blamed the Donbass independence supporters in eastern Ukraine for shooting down the plane. However, Donbass militia insisted that they did not possess weapons capable of bringing down an aircraft flying at 32,000 feet. Russia has repeatedly stressed the importance of a transparent international investigation into the tragedy.

The Dutch Safety Board is due to release a final report on the tragedy in October 2015.

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 #44
The Unz Review
www.unz.com
August 23, 2015
Flight MH-17: One Year Later
By The Saker

Over a year has passed since Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17 was been shot out of the skies by somebody, but we still don't know the truth and all sorts of hypotheses continue circulating on the Internet. In the West, the Emperor Barack decreed on the day after the actual shoot-down that the party responsible for this atrocity was, of course, the Novorussians. That is as predictable as it is irrelevant since not a shred of evidence has been presented by anybody in the West. In contrast, the Russians did provide quite a lot of evidence, but it was all immediately dismissed without further ado. Again, this is also as predictable as it is irrelevant. The undeniable fact is that the western narrative about the Ukraine absolutely mandates that either the Russians or the Novorussians shot down MH-17. Any other version is completely unacceptable and therefore shall never be considered, let alone accepted, by the western politicians and their corporate media.

But for the rest of the world the question remains open: who shot down MH-17 and how?

The first thing we know is that the Ukrainian traffic air controllers directed MH-17 to fly directly over the combat zone and to lower its altitude. We also know as a fact that there was at least one Ukrainian aircraft in the immediate vicinity of MH-17 that day. This was confirmed both by Russian radar signals and by several local witnesses who saw at least one, possibly two, SU-25 aircraft in the air that day. Finally, we also know that Ukrainian air defense units were present in the area that day and that their radars were active. What nobody saw that day was the kind of large and highly visible smoke plume which would have accompanied any large missile launch, not did anybody hear anything special. There was apparently no missile launch, and yet the Ukrainian radars were active. Why?

I believe that MH-17 was shot down by a Ukrainian SU-25. Critics of this theory have pointed out that the SU-25 is a "close-air-support aircraft" which was designed to fly very low and to engage attacking armored columns, that it was never designed to fly very fast or very high, and the SU-25 does not have radar nor air-to-air missiles. Finally, the cockpit of the SU-25 is not pressurized which means that the pilot cannot fly over 7,000 meters in altitude. This is all quite true. But it also misses the point.

First, while it is true that the cabin of the SU-25 is not pressurized, all a pilot needs to do is use a mask to supply him with oxygen. The aircraft itself can easily fly well over the 7,000 meter limit. It is true that the speed of the aircraft is inadequate for intercepting a large civilian jet flying at its cruising speed. The SU-25 engines were never designed to fly high and while they can be made to bring the aircraft over 7,000 meters, they cannot develop enough speed in this rarefied atmosphere. But what the SU-25 can do is carry a R-60 infrared-guided missile. Not only does such a missile not require engagement radar, but its speed is over 3,000 kilometers per hour, far faster than any civilian airliner. The problem with the missile, however, is that its range is short, about 8,000 meters.

The SU-25 does not have radar capable of detecting a civilian airliner and guiding the SU-25 towards it. But the Buk missile radar battery definitely does. Since the course of the MH-17 was known well in advance, all the Ukrainians had to do was the keep one or two SU-25 loitering at low altitude under the air corridor which MH-17 would take and wait for the Buk missile operators to guide the best placed SU-25 towards the airliner at the appropriate moment. All the pilot would have to do when given the signal was to sharply climb towards MH-17 and get inside the missile's flight envelope (in this case within less than 8 kilometers of MH-17) and then fire off his R-60 missile. At that point, the missile would guide itself towards the biggest heat source of the aircraft - one of the engines.

The R-60 is a rather small missile and it would never be able to destroy a large airliner like the Malaysia Airways Boeing 777. But the R-60 is more than capable of destroying one of the Boeing's engines. At this point, the airliner would rapidly lose speed and enter into a sharp turn while the pilots would be trying to figure out what happened, extinguish a burning engine, and compensate for the increased drag. This is exactly what was observed on radar, by the way. The rapid loss of speed and altitude would make the Boeing easy prey for the SU-25 which has a powerful cannon on board which would then easily catch up and continue the attack with a volley of 30mm cannon fire. Having finished off its target, the SU-25 would then sharply turn and return to its base. This is exactly what the Russian radars saw.

One might wonder why the Ukrainians would use a close air support aircraft like the SU-25 instead of a dedicated interceptor like the SU-27 or a fighter like the MiG-29. Here again, the explanation is very simple: not only does the Ukraine have many more SU-25s than SU-27s or MiG-29s, but these latter planes would also be highly conspicuous to any witness. In contrast, the one (or, possibly two) SU-25s tasked with the destruction of MH-17 would be easy to conceal in the eastern Ukraine and on any airfield. It is precisely because the SU-25 would be an unlikely aircraft to be given such a mission that it is the perfect aircraft to execute what is a textbook example of a false flag attack.

As for the Buk, it is such a big and conspicuous missile system that it is impossible to hide. Furthermore, had such a missile been fired broad daylight, the launch would have been clearly seen for many miles around. However, as long as the Buk battery was merely guiding the SU-25 towards MH-17 nobody would have noticed it. Nobody except Russia, NATO and the US, of course.

As somebody who has personally monitored military and civilian air traffic over Europe, I can attest to the fact that several militaries in Europe are constantly monitoring the entire airspace between the Atlantic and the Urals. These militaries include the US and NATO. This is especially true for a battle zone. In fact, US and Russian AWACS aircraft are always present when a conflict occurs anywhere near Europe. They have been monitoring the war in the Persian Gulf, the war in Bosnia and Croatia, the war in Afghanistan and many other conflicts. Besides their AWACS, the Americans and Russians also use their space based satellites to monitor any conflict zone. Of course, neither side is willing to share all the detailed information it has, but the real problem here is political: the US won't share anything at all because of the need to protect the regime in Kiev while anything the Russians would share will be immediately dismissed as "propaganda" (which is exactly what happened with the little the Russians did share).

I would add here that if had been the Novorussians who had shot down MH-17 the US could easily have proven it just as they had done with KAL-007 in 1983. In fact, in the 30 years which separate us from the shooting down of KAL-007 US intelligence capabilities have considerably improved, so I would expect the US could provide much more data than just radio intercepts. And yet the US has provided exactly nothing. There is only one logical explanation for the otherwise bizarre US refusal to provide any data at all: the US data points to the "wrong" party. In other words, the fact that the US has not released any data at all by itself indirectly proves that the Ukrainians did it.

As for the Ukrainians themselves they, of course, know exactly what happened and there is no need for them to "investigate" anything. So there is really nothing left to investigate. The Ukrainians did it and the West will never admit it.

End of story.

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 #45
Gawker
www.gawker.com
August 19, 2015
Ukraine's Twilight War Zone, Part One: The Donbass D-List
By Ray Lemoine
Ray Lemoine lives in New York. He is the co-author of Babylon By Bus, a book about the American occupation of Iraq. This is the first of three installments from Ukraine.

"Passports! Translation!" yelled the Russian soldier after bursting into the hotel room. He was carrying a bottle of vodka - it was, after all, a Friday afternoon.

He announced he was military intelligence. Often, this is a bad sign. Especially here in Europe's only conflict zone: Donetsk, the capital of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), the main breakaway territory in Ukraine's war-torn Donbass region. The region's most violent week in months was nearing its end, but not over yet. With little choice, we handed over the passports.

"France!" he yelled to the photographer I was bunking with.

Turning to me: "America! Hello!"

Then came the big hug and the handshakes. Turns out, the soldier just wanted drinking buddies. Thanks to an online translation program, our man came from St. Petersburg to fight against "the Europeans and Americans." Yet here he was pouring drinks for a Frenchman and a Yankee.

Donbass is not a rational place. It is a middle ground between light and shadow, an area we call the Twilight War Zone. Ukraine, the largest country in Europe, about the size of Texas, has lost a New Jersey-sized sliver of its eastern border with Russia. Donbass is now cut in two by a few hundred miles of frontline. Even seasoned war junkies find themselves confused upon entering the rebel-held alternate dimension of sound, sight and mind.

Within minutes of demanding our passports, we were all comrades. The soldier wouldn't admit his name ("call me Oleg!") but pledged loyalty to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Army. Take note: Russian soldiers are not officially supposed to be here. They are merely volunteers fighting alongside locals, called "Russian-backed separatists" in newspeak.

Each time we toasted, he handed us a sliced sausage as a chaser. He yanked out the DPR rebel flag, which is a replica of the Confederate flag: a red X with white borders on navy blue. Showing deep emotion, he explained how his sniper girlfriend had been counter-sniped last month and died. Now he wanted to snag a hooker down at the rebel disco, but told us we had to pay. Twelve toasts and twelve sausages later, we were toasted. It was disco nap time.

Russia's war in Ukraine is the peoples' version of the CIA drone war. Neither officially exist, yet both are existentially undeniable. This Cold War throwback involves the same two powers, Washington and Moscow, using the same tools from wars in Latin America, Africa, Afghanistan. The US Army has 300 troops based in western Ukraine, with plans to expand its training program this fall. Total "non-lethal" American aid has reached $300 million. Russia, meanwhile, has spent billions. Much of it on lethal aid, like weapons and human capital, but Putin has launched an incredible propaganda offensive.

Casualty estimates vary wildly between 6,000 (UN) to 50,000 (German intelligence officials). From a pre-war population of 4.5 million, around 2 million have been displaced. Donbass has not only been split in two and stopped functioning-it has stopped making sense.

Consider the date of the above hotel drinking session, July 17, 2015. One year ago saw the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17, which killed 298 people. To mark the anniversary, the DPR held memorial at the crash site: the full package of flag waving, sad speeches, serious men in uniforms and a media scrum. Earlier in the day, new video was released showing these same rebels, standing in the wreckage, admitting they shot down the plane. The Potemkin memorial was a bit like Al Qaeda holding Friday prayers at Ground Zero.

The day before MH-17's anniversary, the propagandists held a practice run at the crash site, in a small village about a dozen miles east of Donetsk. They busted out "New Russia" flags, trucked in some sad old women with flowers, grabbed a few local boys and gave them hand-carved wooden guns. A fleet of treaded vehicles with cannons practiced drifting, flinging their vehicles to the side so fast they slide. Tires leave marks, but tanks rip up perfectly good road.

"We are fighting for a Russian world," said a volunteer. The boy sparkled in new battle dress and old sneakers under a cloudless sky, sitting on the edge of a field next to an armored vehicle.

"Scary thought," remarked a cynical Brit freelancer standing by with full body armor and helmet, twenty-odd miles from the front.

Not all the DPR soldiers I met were Russian, but the many who were had all apparently wandered over the border for a cause known as New Russia, or Novorossiya. This 18th century imperial concept claims east and southern Ukraine are Mother Russia's underbelly.

Planet Russia certainly helped push the Ukrainians out of Donbass's major cities this past winter. Kremlin officials continually deny any involvement. But Russian Army bases are mushrooming along the border. Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have counted 20,000 Russians crossing the border between September 2014 and June of this year.

How did things get this tragically bizarre, so fast?

As recently as 2013, Ukraine was a peaceful-if outlandishly corrupt-country, known for leadership swivels from East to West. In November 2013, a small group of activists gathered in Kiev's Maidan Square to protest the rule of President Victor Yanukovych, a Putin-pal oligarch. The protesters wanted closer ties to Europe.

Maidan became a months-long standoff. Nationalists took the militant lead. But the pro-democracy left were on the streets, too. Things culminated in late winter. Tens of thousands of people clashed with police and state security. Tear gas, projectiles, rubber bullets, Molotov cocktails, fires, barricades. On February 20th, the state opened fire with live rounds, killing at least 100 civilians. But the protesters did not leave.

Days later, Yanukovych was shipped off to Moscow. Maidan served as pretext for Russia's army to Anschluss Ukraine's southern peninsula of Crimea. Further Russian land-grabs followed. Quasi-populist revolts spun off eastern Ukraine's aforementioned Donetsk and its northern neighboring province Luhansk, where another People's Republic was quickly established. Together the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, known as Oblasts, make up Donbass, the industrial hub of Ukraine.

Ukraine now knew its 150,000 man army was incapable of defending its borders. Right-wing nationalists (with, incidentally, a sizable Neo-Nazi element, who made up Maiden's fiercest street fighters) merged with the Ukrainian National Guard.

By April, war was raging in the East. Elections were held. Petro Poroshenko, a Western-friendly oligarch, won the presidency. In late June 2014 the Ukrainian irregulars had pushed back the separatists and looked set to retake the breakaways.

Putin did not approve. "Humanitarian aid" convoys buzzed across the Russian border. Armor, big guns, rockets, advanced missile systems and ever-more Russian "volunteers" appeared on the front. Battles turned nastier. In July, Ukrainian planes and choppers were being shot out of the sky. Then MH-17 was blasted from the flight corridor by a surface-to-air missile.

There is no clear rebel command structure. But Western intelligence officials say that Russian commanders run the show, like Iran does with the Shia militias in Iraq. After MH-17, it took about six months for the Russian-backed separistas to take back control of Donbass. Insane battles for the Donetsk airport turned the war for the rebels. On February 12th, the Minsk II ceasefire was signed. It has since been violated several thousand times.

Pre-war Donetsk was a mining boomtown home to over a million people. Shiny glass malls and towers sprout on every major block. There's a new soccer stadium and beautifully sculpted parkland. Now, the city is reminiscent of downtown New Orleans a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina. Curfew is 11 pm. One July evening on the city's riverfront, I watched a few sweaty speed walkers zip past the odd couple holding hands on benches. Mothers and their children at playground seemed casual, inured to the thuds of distant guns.

Unlike many wartime capitals, there are no armored vehicles or checkpoints at major crossroads. One of the few hints of militarization are the rebel soldiers bouncing about in cars, many of them stolen. At least two-thirds of all businesses have closed, and there is no banking system. The main signs of war are literally signs: CCCP-style billboards, tarps, posters. Uncle Joe Stalin, who starved 10 million Ukrainians to death, has his own advert, along with the T-72 tank and a new DPR film about a rebel hero marrying Dolly Parton-looking lady.

The DPR's administrative building, your typical Bolshevik monolith, is as schizophrenic as the regime. One day, there's virtually no sign anyone even works there; the next, it's blocked off by dozens of gunmen.

A Ramada hotel serves as the ubiquitous war correspondent headquarters. At night, the expansive third floor terrace restaurant becomes a post-curfew Gulag. Your typical grab bag of profiteers, organized criminals, hookers, soldiers, aid workers and fixers lurk amongst the foreign press. Usually this type of crowd under the strain of war would create a carnival of carousing. But when I was there, most factions stayed to themselves. Maybe they've become so the West and East have become so mutually suspicious that neither side wants to talk to the other. Or maybe they were just busy posting to the Internet.

Reading some reporters' alarmist Twitter feeds, you'd think this was Baghdad 2007. Every day you hear of the coming Russian invasion. Yet Donbass is not in a Syrian-style all out war. Instead it's an all-out competition for the most serious war correspondent social media war profile.

Ukraine is the D-List freelancer war, the refuge you go to when your Syrian refugee story gets killed. The online profile photos some of these freelancers have-pondering the sunset wearing shades, in full armor by a smoldering tank, languishing lakefront in autumnal glory-make Putin's shirtless-on-a-horse style seem humble. At the Ramada, I saw multitudes of sexy haircuts and too-tight dungarees paired with non-combat boots. It makes one yearn for last decade, when war reporters just dressed like they were on safari.

A young British toff said he had a scoop that could get us killed if he told us. He immediately proceeded to tell us. "I have a dossier that says the separatists are building a 'dirty bomb,'" he whispered, a stamped dossier being the Ukrainian version of a blood oath. "It's from a reliable source at the SBU." That's Ukraine's intelligence agency, arguably the least reliable source outside the Kremlin.

This one-sourced scoop on a potential nuke ran as an "exclusive" in two print outlets, Newsweek and The Times of London. The story was neither exclusive nor true. The rebels banished the lad from Donbass. His serious Twitter profile photograph has not, however, been affected.

Westerners like this made us miss our Russian vodka-toting Comrade. At least he had good stories.

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 #46
Gawker
www.gawker.com
August 24, 2015
Ukraine's Twilight War Zone, Part Two: Bodies on the Front Line
By Ray Lemoine
Ray Lemoine lives in New York. He is the co-author of Babylon By Bus, a book about the American occupation of Iraq.
[Photos here http://gawker.com/ukraines-twilight-war-zone-part-two-bodies-on-the-fro-1725656059]

"What is the value of my life? You in America only care about death if it involves your allies?" a young pro-Russian soldier at a funeral for a fallen comrade plead his case. He smelled of tobacco, gunpowder and booze. Tears streaked his face. His uniform: mismatched camo pants and shirt.

He was born here in Donetsk, the large Ukrainian city that now serves as the de facto capital of a separatist occupation. Donetsk is the hub of "Free Donbass," under the control of the Donetsk's People's Republic (DPR). "Why do you not care if we die, our cause is just-maybe not you, but to millions of Russians- why does America ignore our sacrifice?"

Objectively, there wasn't an answer. Despite Ukraine being in a two-sided war, no one is really keeping track of how many rebel and civilian deaths are occurring in Free Donbass. Casualties on the Ukraine side are reported daily. News about "Russian aggression" is allotted far more column inches than information about the aggressors behind the fight.

Ukraine's war is a small conflict in an important region. The eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, collectively called the Donbass region, are the country's largest sources of natural resources. War broke out here in winter 2013 after a street revolution overthrew a pro-Kremlin leader in Kiev. Russian President Vladimir Putin responded by invading Ukraine's southern peninsula of Crimea, seizing it, then propped up insurrection along the border. Donbass is now split in half by a deadlocked frontline in a failed ceasefire, like a Kashmir in Europe.

Spending a week spent with the insurgents last month, I came to agree with my Russian friend. Their cause is legitimate. They want autonomy from Kiev. How many people who live in Donbass agree with them is the question: a questionable 2014 referendum counted 89% pro-freedom votes just a few months after Western NGO poll said only 18% wanted out of Ukraine. Nonetheless, the Western media doesn't seem to report equally on both sides.

"Please tell America we are good people too," the soldier begged.

The reason they've been called the bad guys is obvious. The Ukrainians-a mixture of army, national guard and nationalist militias-are backed by America and Europe. The rebel side, labeled "Russian-backed separatists," receive direct combat assistance from our Cold War nemesis, the evil former empire led by Putin. Free Donbass is under the control of the DPR and the neighboring Luhansk People's Republic (LPR). Its fighters are a mixture of local Ukrainians who hate the central government in Kiev and prefer closer ties to Moscow if not outright secession, Russian volunteers, and actual Russian soldiers and officers who are running the strategic side. But just being aligned with Putin does not make them all bad people.

Donetsk's morgue is inside a Second World medical complex. The entryway is a shoddy alleyway lined by a black steel fence. This is one of the most active places in an otherwise deserted city. Every day an average of one to three war dead arrive here, according to Dr. Dimitri Kalashnikov, the head of Donbass' morgue system. Of those, two out of three are civilians.

On this overcast morning, though, the morgue took in a soldier. About ten rebels stood near women wearing black. Soon, a van pulled in and a man opened its back doors. Two dirty feet hung off a stretcher. The crowd made its way towards the van in silence. Two soldiers assembled a humble plywood casket wrapped in red wine-colored velvet. Then another two soldiers removed the body and placed it in the casket.

The open casket was propped up on benches in the middle of the alley. Family members approached one by one, the women kissing the face of a young soldier, his head shaved, his skin the post-mortal color of old canvass. His comrades followed. Most dropped a few roses onto the body. Minutes later, the casket's cover was secured and placed into another van.

The soldier, a sniper, had been killed the day prior, according to his commanding officer, a 32-year-old Siberian named Alexey. Incoming shrapnel had sliced into him while he lay at the ready. "He was a good fighter, always willing to help," said Alexey, a burly man with a big red beard and bald head, his glacial-blue eyes bubbled with trace tears.

Alexey was the head of The Patriot Brigade, a militia unit fighting for the DPR. He allowed us to follow their three-car convoy back to base for the military funeral, charging along back roads to the gates of an old three-story CCCP rectangle of decay. In the parking lot, a column of a half-dozen men raised their guns, another dozen stood in formation. The casket was placed in the middle of the lot. Two shots were fired in salute. En masse, the unit surrounded the casket to pay final respects.

After the ceremony, Alexey invited us for tea. The casket was moved to a family service in a nearby village church. War is not hobby for the commander. Both sides are tired.

"I want the fighting to end," Alexey said. "We send food to the Ukrainian Army on the other side of the line. They do not have enough. We don't fight them, really. It's the National Guard that fights us." It was unclear who his commanding officers were. "We follow orders from above," the Russian vaguely stated. "We just want this land, they can have theirs."

Alexey's cause is Novorossiya (New Russia), a belief that Ukraine isn't a nation, and that its east and south are Russian territory. This concept was born in the 1700s and has played out scores of times since. For example, over one four-year period between World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, Kiev changed hands 19 times between the Russian monarchists, Ukrainian nationalists and Soviet Communists.

The next day, we joined the Patriot Brigade at their position south-west of Donetsk, in the village of Oleksandrivka, facing Ukrainian-held Marinka. This area has seen an absurd number of ceasefire violations.

The Patriots held four lines of defense. Alexey drove a black Audi A8. We blazed through a series of checkpoints of stacked concrete slabs draped in green netting, wrapped by trenches. Each checkpoint was manned by a dozen or so rebels with various looks-some wore tank tops showing off tattoos, others had jumpsuits, kevlar vests, bandanas-a militant style that was both uniquely post-Commie and generic insurgent-chic.

At the last of the lines-the front-we looked through a telescope down a steep valley and back up at a collection of sandbagged huts. Just a few hundred yards away, Ukraine's yellow and blue flag flew.

Fighting is mostly confined to this front, a few hundred miles long, fought by 100,000 or so troops split between both sides. An estimated 10,000 rebels are Russian. From my experience, that number seems low. Shelling flies ten or so miles each way. Running battles for strategic towns push the lines back and forth. There is no air power. Most of the related regional terrorism has been small bombs not intended to kill civilians. It is deadly but limited warfare.

The Patriot Brigade's rebel frontline wall of concrete, dirt and sandbags was intact. But every house around it was scorched rubble, crumbling brick walls and splintered timber. Incoming shells had half-demolished the house that served as the brigade barracks. Still, most residents had stayed in the village, crowding in basements during the nightly siege, Alexey said. Looking at the time, we saw it was 4 pm and wanted to avoid the evening artillery. We bid farewell.

Not that fighting was confined to the front anymore. A few nights later, Donetsk proper was shelled for the first time in months, killing civilians in the center city. Video shows a lush pink sunset punctuated by incoming fire. Both sides blamed one another. The DPR internally shelling itself would seem stupid, were this not such an odd war.

Down in Mariupol, the frontline Black Sea port city held by Ukraine, occupied Donbass' wartime trauma seemed absent. Beach life was vigorous on a recent Saturday. Sailboats raced a regatta offshore. Speedo-clad men and be-thonged women alternated between sand and sea. Volleyball, soccer, grand wedding parties dancing at beach clubs, a sauna offering sex after you sweat. The only signs of war here were the military trucks in the parking lot and the guns on beach towels next to beefy men catching rays.

All of this was within eyesight of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's war monitors quarters at a beachfront resort. Lounging at the hotel's balcony cafe, officials told us Mariupol could be Putin's next target. Battles rage within ten miles of this city of half a million. But the rebels had recently retreated, much to the relief of the OSCE, the only international organization allowed on the front. (Last week, fighting broke out up again.)

With Mariupol's airport now the Ukrainian Army's HQ, the train is the best way out of Donbass. I was still with the French photographer, and we booked a 20-hour ride to Kiev.

For 18 hours we were back in peacetime Ukraine, dozing in bunks. But as the last two hours approached, our cabin was invaded by Ukrainian militiamen from the Azov Brigade. All night they were partying in the neighboring cabins. At 11 a.m. they decided to take ours, too. Azov is considered one the best fighting units, but its nationalist Neo-Nazi reputation has tainted its battle prowess.

"Obama and McCain good!" said one boy in a striped sailor tank-top and fatigues. McCain really wants to arm the Ukrainians, and Obama's military had trained these kids, despite a Congressional amendment banning the training of Neo-Nazis.

The boy, Alexii, 22, looked truly sad when he asked, "Why do you think we are Nazis?"

I pointed to the SS Wolfsangel logo on the Azov patch and asked how many of them were Nazis.

"Maybe 10 percent....It is a symbol of power to most, not a racist issue. Some use the imagery as a joke. It is like your Confederate flag, no?" Touché, Alexii. "Look, we love Muslims!" He pointed to a big, bearded Jihadist, who had two empty mortar tubes attached to his backpack.

In one of the stranger unions in modern warfare, Neo-Nazis have united with Jihadists to battle Russians. Chechnya, a Muslim-majority Russian province in the Caucasus Mountains, has fought two wars against Moscow in the last 20 years. Many Chechens are experienced Russian killers.

Sure enough, a bottle of cheap vodka plopped down on the table. The Ukrainians provided pickles as a chaser, not sausages like a Russian soldier had a few days prior. We pulled into Kiev around 1 p.m., drunkenly hugging the Ukrainians and making plans to hang out in the coming days. Two sides and one universal beverage, all fighting for a deadly ideology: nationalism.

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 #47
www.thedailybeast.com
August 25, 2015
Lviv Is Ukraine's Happiest Sad City
In an exclusive interview, the mayor of Western Ukraine's most important metropolis explains how and why he's brought democracy to town.
By Anna Nemtsova

LVIV, Ukraine - Names on the crosses could be hardly read under heaps of flowers and wreathes. On a recent morning, a woman and a teenage girl lay more bouquets on top of 40 freshly dug graves for soldiers killed on the front lines in the Donbas region, far to the east of here.

Lviv, an ancient city on Ukraine's western border, looked after its dead sons, burying them with honors at Lychakovsky, one of Europe's oldest cemeteries. Maidan revolutionaries and soldiers are lying here together among graceful monuments to the city's famous personalities of history, victims and heroes of conflicts and crises in past centuries.

Today the fate of Lviv, with its dark memories of Nazi and Soviet terror, as well as past and current wars, is decided by a tall 46-year-old man in glasses, Andrei Sadovyi.

For nine years, Mayor Sadovyi has carried out democratic reforms turning Lviv into a model for the rest of Ukraine. He calls his concept for Lviv's development Open World. His party, Self Reliance, is one of young and talented economists, lawyers and business people who do not obey any of the old political clans.

"We are a bone in the throat of the Ukrainian oligarchy," Sadovyi told The Daily Beast.

On the other side of the country, the conflict once again has escalated. Both the Ukrainian military and Russia-backed rebel forces report casualties almost every morning. But here in the west, in Lviv, the conflict seems not to interrupt the pace of daily life: Russians and Ukrainians continue to travel by plane and train between Moscow and Lviv. In the evenings colorful crowds of locals and tourists fill up the central Market Square to marvel at medieval cathedrals, graceful statues or just to have a cup of Lviv's famous hot chocolate on one of the flower-trimmed verandas.

On Monday, national Independence Day, President Petro Poroshenko said that the Donbas war has killed about 2,100 Ukrainian military. Many in Lviv wore embroidered shirts to celebrate Independence Day, sang a sad "Plyve Kacha" song, and shed tears as they remembered the victims.

"We drafted our men to the front lines," says Sadovyi. "We lost dozens. We've received 11,000 internally displaced persons. Every one of Lviv's big companies contributes millions of dollars to the army." The mayor spoke with the firm intonation of a strong politician. "The war is hugely painful, the most severe test." But Lviv's society has been tempered by such experiences over the centuries.

Lviv has a long history of suffering-people still find remains of Russians killed by Ukrainian nationalists or German Nazi soldiers, and Ukrainians killed by Russian secret police. "Every third man and every fourth woman died from violent murder during the last century," said the mayor.

Painful losses and brutal provocations continue to trouble the city.

In late July, a crowd of a few dozen people came out to shout about a "Jewish brotherhood" running Ukraine. "Our eastern neighbor organized that show for the Russian media, the level of anti-Semitism in Lviv is very low," the mayor said.

In the past 100 years, Lviv's Jewish population, once counted among the most vibrant in Europe, shrank to about 5,000 people, who are now struggling to restore their destroyed synagogue.

Through his personal example, Sadovyi has demonstrated that there is a real chance for politicians to get rid of the country's Soviet heritage. Wearing a traditional embroidered vyshivanka shirt, the mayor walked out on the balcony of his office on Market Square. There are only two stone lions to guard the door of city hall.

Anybody from a U.S. military official to a Polish civil society leader or a news reporter can drop by to chat with the mayor. Sadovyi and his young and polite administration are the most accessible politicians in today's Ukraine. But it is not they who run the country.

While the war envelops the east of Ukraine, Kiev, the capital, continues to talk about decentralization. Cities continue to ask for more independence and responsibility.

"Back in the 1990s, a few families received a monopoly for business, for political parties and media-their conglomerate has enormous influence in our country today," said Sadovyi, outlining the true nature of power in Ukraine. But his Lviv provides a different example with the emergence of new, young, talented, professionals.

So we asked him if he thinks Ukraine's current leadership is serious about reforming Ukraine?

"President Petro Poroshenko quoted Lee Kuan Yew: If you want to fight corruption, put three of your friends in jail," said Sadovyi. "He said that but he did not do it. The system has not changed and this is a very big problem for Ukraine."

Parliamentary deputies from Sadovyi's Samopomich (Self Reliance) party criticize Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk for appointing loyalists to key positions in state companies worth billions of dollars to oversee embezzlement and corruption schemes at a time when post-revolutionary civil society expects the leaders to end such practices.

Sadovyi's critics remember his missteps: the mayor flipping his middle finger at his opponents at one occasion, or turning the city, where the average salary is around $200 a month, into a haven for expensive restaurants, known for "wow!" effects and themes. (Anyone for an eatery catering to masochists?) But there are very few critical voices.

"Only Sadoviy can help us create a cultural center for 2,000 Tatars escaped here from Crimea or for 11,000 mostly Russian IDPs from Donbas," says Alim Aliyev, leader of local Tatar community. "Ukrainian nationalists are against that, but he is our supporter."

Sadoviy's has pinned hopes on investment projects for dozens of IT companies opening in the city. Dutch CTP plans to invest $50 million to develop the industrial park of IT companies in Lviv. But for big investment projects to succeed, Lviv and the rest of Ukraine need peace and stability.

"We want peace," said Sadoviy. "Europe wants to see a strong and peaceful Ukraine; but our neighbor Russia does not want Ukraine to grow strong."

When asked whether people living in the west and in the east of Ukraine are different, Lviv's mayor talked of distinct mentalities, exactly the point that offends so many people in the Donbas region.

"Russia ruled the east for 300 years; here in the west of Ukraine we were under six different countries; here people developed small and middle-sized business, while eastern cities grew out of barracks built around factories," said the mayor.

How to reconcile those opposing cultures is the problem for Kiev that the mayor of Lviv does not address.

 [return to Contents] 

 #48
The Daily Mail (UK)
August 24, 2015
'Blood oozed through the soil at grave sites. You could see the pits move, some of them were still alive': The secrets of Ukraine's shameful 'Holocaust of Bullets' killing centre where 1.6million Jews were executed [excerpt]
By Will Stewart
[Complete text and photos here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3205754/Blood-oozed-soil-grave-sites-pits-alive-secrets-Ukraine-s-shameful-Holocaust-Bullets-killing-centre-1-6million-Jews-executed.html]

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
Jews were humiliated and murdered one by one in Ukraine during WW2
Many of them were forced to stand in front of mass graves and shot dead
Women were stripped naked, beaten in the streets during 'organised riots'
Witnesses today have broken their silence to tell of Ukraine's killing centre

Seventy years on from the end of the Second World War the full, shocking scale of the Nazi-inspired Holocaust in Ukraine is finally being revealed - thanks to pioneering work by a French Catholic priest to research the truth of the industrial-scale killing.

Around 2,000 mass graves of Jewish victims have been located where men, women and children were shot and buried by the Germans and their collaborators.
But there maybe up to 6,000 more sites to uncover, with victims of this 'Holocaust of bullets' - so called because unlike in Poland and Germany where gas chambers were used as the means of slaughter - here most were summarily shot and buried nearby.

In many cases, the Jews were ordered to dig pits and then to strip naked before they were mown down by their murderers.
Some were buried in the unmarked plots while still alive.

Blood oozed through the soil at sites of these graves, according to accounts assiduously collected by French Catholic priest, Father Patrick Desbois, who began his search by seeking to trace his grandfather's experience as a prisoner of war held in a concentration camp by the Nazis in Ukraine during the Second World War.

He uncovered accounts of how Jews were killed by the Nazis 'for fun', or 'out of anger, boredom, drunkenness', or 'to rape the girls'.
Yet the Soviet Union, for its own motives, obscured the full scale of the Holocaust on its own territory.

Leading historian Mikhail Tyaglyy told MailOnline the number of Jewish victims in Ukraine is between 1.4million and 1.6million, significantly higher than the oft-quoted figure of around one million.

The priest's search took him to four sites around Rava Ruska, close to the Ukrainian border with Poland, where 15,000 Jews were slain, and also the site of a Nazi camp where his grandfather Claudius Desbois had been held as a prisoner of war.

Gradually, elderly locals who had kept quiet all their lives - mainly under Soviet rule - opened up to him, as hundreds more did in many other villages and towns in Ukraine....

A sign of what was to come under the Germans was seen in the Lviv Pogrom of June 1941 immediately after the Nazi entered the city after pushing out the Red Army.

A Ukrainian mob, eagerly backed by the new occupiers, stripped and beat Jewish women in the streets who were subjected to public humiliation.

This was part of an orgy of anti-Semitic violence that included beatings and killings which led to the deaths of 4,000 Jews in Lviv (also known as Lvov), which is 31 miles south-east of Rava Ruska.

'The topic of the Holocaust was almost banned in Soviet times,' Mikhail Tyaglyy, historian of the Ukrainian Centre of Holocaust Study, told MailOnline.

For modern Ukraine the subject is difficult, too, because it means admitting a role for nationalists in colluding the Nazis, in part because some preferred a German occupation to Stalin's as the lesser of two evils.

Soviet history neglected the anti-Semitic aspect of the Jewish killings, lumping these deaths together with total losses in the USSR.

'We are touching the topic of Ukrainian nationalism here and it is a complicated matter. The situation in Ukraine was not so different to what was going on in other Soviet regions which were occupied by Nazis - everywhere they relied on local nationalists, who often blamed Jews for supporting the "Moscow-Bolshevik regime", as they said at the time.

'Such attitude easily inspired pogroms as we had in Western Ukraine.

'The Nazis did their best to inspire pogroms everywhere they came. But pogroms is one thing, and systematic extermination of the Jewish population which was organised purely by the German Nazis is another.

'It is true that radical nationalists helped Nazis in guarding and performed other tasks. But Nazis did not trust mass killing of Jews to locals.'

Tyaglyy added: 'It is vital for all Ukrainians to keep memories of what happened in Ukraine, to come back to it, because this experience can teach us many important lessons needed nowadays. '

He said: 'There may be differences in calculating the number of Jewish population in Ukraine before the war, it is about including or not including the Eastern regions of Poland after Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, but in general we can say that at least a half - if not more - of all Ukrainian Jews were killed in Holocaust at our territory.'

Iosif Zisels, co-president of Association of Jewish Organisations and Societies in Ukraine, said that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust in Europe.

'Of these, 1.5million to 1.6million were Ukrainian Jews,' he said, 'In other words, one in four were Ukrainian Jews.'

'It is true that the local population did cooperate with German Nazis in the occupied territories but the majority of them were ethnic Russian.

'Russia makes a point about Ukrainian nationalists because it is keen to divert suspicion from itself.'

The notion of Ukrainian nationalists colluding with the Nazis was a vivid horror played on by Soviet propaganda, and now seized on again by the Russian authorities in branding 'fascist' those who currently want to be outside Moscow's sphere of control.

Hitler had planned to eradicate over half of Ukraine's population so that the country's rich farmland could be repopulated with Germans in their so-called quest for Lebensraum.

By 1945, some three million non-Jewish Ukrainians had been murdered by the Germans in addition to those killed in the Holocaust.

The priest is unapologetic over his campaign in Ukraine.

'Why do we come back to Ukraine?' he asked. 'Because one day we will have to go back to Iraq, because one day we will have to go back to the last mass grave in Darfur.'

Unless the lesson is learned from the Holocaust 'tomorrow will be the same story'.

Yahad's executive director Marco Gonzalez warned: 'Unfortunately, this form of genocide, the 'Holocaust by Bullets', is the model for mass killings today.
'The lessons to be learned are practical and the details need to be exposed for all to see and understand.'

Historian Mikhail Tyaglyy said the truth about the Holocaust in Ukraine must be taught to young people.

'It is important to all times and all generations. Radical extremism and anti-Smitism still exists, and this is why it must be taught.

'If we look at modern German society, we can hardly see any signs of anti-Semitism and xenophobia there, but it became possible because of long term wise educational, cultural and historical policies of the German state within the last decades. '

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 #49
www.thedailybeast.com
August 24, 2015
The Fifth Column on Ukraine's Front Line
In the besieged strategic port of Mariupol, much of the population sympathizes with separatists.
By Anna Nemtsova

MARIUPOL - A group of angry people chatted in a tight circle under a poplar tree near the wrecked building that used to be the center of government in this besieged port city on the Azov Sea. Its broken, soot-blackened windows are a sad monument to last year's violent clashes between patriots loyal to Kiev and those who wanted pro-Russian forces to take over the city. The Ukrainian patriots won, and ever since in this city of 500,000 people those sympathetic to the pro-Russian partisans of the Donbas region are liable to arrest. But these old protesters don't seem to care.

From time to time one of the demonstrators in the group will turn around, spit, utter a sizzling curse word and flip a middle finger at a nearby tent camp that Ukrainian patriots have decorated with the blue-and-yellow national flags. "Don't think we are old and sick, there are hundreds of thousands of us, a majority of Mariupol," a middle-aged man on crutches, sputtering through missing teeth, tells The Daily Beast. "But it is too dangerous for our young supporters to come out on this square, they immediately get thrown in jail."
The commandant of the nearby tent camp, Vladimir Kisel, tells The Daily Beast that this gathering of "the fifth column" a few steps away is a bigger problem for Mariupol than one might think. "Over 50 percent of the population in Mariupol population has separatist views today. They are very aggressive." Kisel stretched out his arm to show a blue-and-yellow bracelet around his wrist. "They can cut my hand off for this," he said.

So the potential for internal unrest grows as war continues, bit by bit, to encroach on the city's external defenses.

Every morning Mariupol wakes up to news of more artillery fire on the outskirts of town. Thursday night, for instance, there were six artillery blasts less than 20 kilometers away from the city center, according to a report issued by city hall. There were three civilians killed and six wounded, and over 50 buildings damaged in the shelling of Mariupol the previous weekend.

Not many people believe any longer in February's ceasefire agreement. Everyone, from a market seller to a military commander, volunteers and even the city's mayor blame Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and Renat Akhmetov, the richest man in Ukraine (and Mariupol's biggest employer) for all of Mariupol's troubles.

Meanwhile, this group the authorities call "the separatists of Mariupol" is calling for thousands of Ukrainian military defending the city to withdraw from Mariupol's outskirts. "We want our boys, who are fighting for united Donbas on the other side of the front line, to return back home," says Valentina, a blond woman with a bright scarf around her shoulders. She and her friends Lyuba, Alexander, and six other retired men and women never miss the daily meetings between 1 and 3 p.m., they said.

When the head of local police recently approached the group, the activists sent him to hell or, as Russians say, "to three letters."

The situation with daily anti-Ukrainian protests in the heart of Mariupol upsets the city's 71-year-old mayor, Yuri Khotlubei. He sees last year's conflict developing again before his eyes. But it's not a matter for him to handle, he says.

"I hope our security service will react-such gatherings of old people resulted in a disastrous revolt and clashes that killed over 20 people last year, and left dozens wounded," Khotlubei tells The Daily Beast. "As if we did not learn the lesson last year." The mayor remembers all too well when "separatist militants" appointed themselves leading positions at city hall, threatening the lives of public servants in his administration.

But as Khotlubei prepares to retire in less than two months, after 17 years in office, he doesn't hesitate to criticize Ukrainian leaders and tycoons as well, especially Renat Akhmetov, who owns many factories in the Donetsk region. "The talk of the town is that this tycoon Akhmetov will appoint all our deputies and a new mayor of Mariupol at the October election," Khotlubei told The Daily Beast.

Like many others in the city, he resents what he sees as Kiev's indifference. "We did not hear a word of condolence from our leadership, neither on state television nor in print media-no sympathy for civilians killed last weekend-as if the shelling of Mariupol has become some ordinary thing. People complain of injustice, they lose their trust, they criticize us bitterly," the mayor said.

Ukrainian military commanders also criticized Kiev. "We counted and registered hundreds of trucks with contraband goods going both to Europe on the Western border and to the Donetsk and Luhansk separatist territories," the commander of the Donbas Battalion, who goes by the name Gal, told The Daily Beast on Thursday. "Poroshenko and [Prime Minister Arseniy] Yatesenyuk must be making money on contraband goods, on this war. ... The biggest fifth column is not on the square of Mariupol but among the leadership in Kiev."

Peace in Mariupol depends on political will and the results of the upcoming October elections, volunteers at the pro-Ukraine tent camp told The Daily Beast. In the past year the city, with a budget of less than $100 million, took in over 70,000 displaced persons, 40,000 of whom were pensioners and about 500 of whom were kindergarten children. "Unfortunately, young professionals prefer to leave Mariupol, as they see no prospects here," said Galina Odnorog, a local leader of volunteers.

She and her supporters set up the tent camp of Ukrainian patriots in front of the burned administration building to collect signatures against "demilitarization." They want to make sure the army is not withdrawn from Mariupol. And Odnorog managed to grab President Poroshenko twice at public meetings and get his word that Mariupol would not be abandoned. A banner stretched between the trees by the camp reads: "Mariupol people achieved their goal: demilitarization is not going to happen." In these perilous times, it was a little victory that made the volunteers proud.

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