#2
Moscow Times
August 28, 2015
Russians Consider Marrying, Giving Birth and Education Most Important Things
By Daria Litvinova
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When asked what the most important things to do before turning 30 are, most Russians chose getting married, giving birth and receiving an education, while things like starting a business or traveling the world were at the bottom of the list, a poll released Wednesday by an independent Russian pollster Levada Center revealed.

Three top priorities for men were receiving an education (65 percent of respondents of both genders said so), getting married (according to 56 percent of respondents) and serving in the military (55 percent).

Women are supposed to, first and foremost, get married (77 percent of responders said so), have a baby (75 percent) and get educated (according to 60 percent of respondents). The poll was conducted from Aug. 7-10, among 800-1,600 respondents in 46 Russian regions. The statistical error does not exceed 3.7-4.1 percent, according to the Levada Center.

The results of the survey fitted well into the rapidly developing trend of Russians embracing so-called traditional values that usually entail patriotism and devotion to family, as opposed to what is considered to be Western capitalistic ideals.

"Russian society remains strongly conservative, especially when it come to gender roles - they are seen to be very traditional," said Karina Pipiya, a sociologist for Levada Center who took part in conducting the poll. "A woman should give birth, a man should earn a living," she told The Moscow Times in a phone interview on Thursday.

Social Approval Factor

Russian society is very androcentric and doesn't respond well to changes, Pipiya said, and that's why such things as feminism, women who do not want to have children and LGBT relationships fall out of the circle of socially approved processes.

At the same time, there is a difference between what people declare a priority and what they really consider to be important, she pointed out.

While most of respondents (75 percent) placed giving birth for women above having a career (19 percent), when asked whether a woman should quit her job in order to raise a child, 61 percent of respondents said she shouldn't and it would be better to somehow combine work with family.

"If we look at the dynamics, we see that number of those who share this point of view grows during periods of economic crisis," the sociologist said. The economic factor enters their decision making process as well as the social approval factor, she added.

The same social approval factor is responsible for both men and women excluding starting their own business from their top priorities in life. Only 20 percent of respondents thought men should do it before turning 30, and only 4 percent considered it a thing a woman should do.

"Traditionally we [Russian society] perceive businessmen negatively," said Pipiya. "Most people are skeptical toward the rich and those who managed to accomplish something. Russian society is set to think that the state will give it things, including material benefits. It is not used to earning them and getting them on its own," she said.

Propaganda Works?

Serving in the military closing the top-three of men's priorities seems to be a recent development that reflects the political situation in the country. Several other polls conducted lately showed that the army is gaining more and more respect in Russia.

Just Wednesday the state-run pollster VTsIOM published a survey revealing that 39 percent of Russians think of the army as an example to the society. Another 40 percent thinks the army's influence in the country should increase.

"During the last two years the number of people thinking they should serve in the military has been consistently growing," Pipiya said. "This phenomenon is resulting from, among other things, the current geopolitical situation and overall mobilization," she said.

Propaganda does work, agreed Olga Isupova, senior lecturer at the Higher School of Economics' Institute of Demography. "[Russian] people are open to these influences. Even though we haven't eliminated the conservatism that has always been our thing, it has never been as [strong] as it is presented to us now," she told The Moscow Times in a phone interview Thursday.

The number of people resorting to traditional values has increased, said Isupova, because those who always held conservative views but doubted them, no longer do, and those who disagree are not so inclined to talk about it openly.

Iranian Scenario

At the same time, propaganda doesn't have absolute power - it may influence the polls and public opinion, and people may declare certain views, but they will not change their lifestyle because of it, Isupova explained.

That's why the declining birthrate in Russia doesn't correspond with most men and women naming having children as a top priority, she said. Women may claim that their calling is to become mothers because they are unable to resist the pressure from the society, but this pressure will not make them do what they don't want to do.

"If people are used to a particular lifestyle, they will not change it in a matter of seconds because of  propaganda," the expert said. "It's impossible to motivate people to do something because someone else wants it for them," she added.

A similar situation, according to Isupova, occurred in Iran, when it was run by an ultraconservative government. "People there were used to living according to their own values, which weren't conservative or liberal - just different [from what the state declared]," and they found ways to lead their lives the way they wanted, she said.

"It's very likely that things in Russia will be pretty much the same," Isupova said. "People [in Iran] lived like they used to live, but pretended [to live in accordance with the demands state imposed on them]. Worst case scenario they [Russian government] will accomplish just the same with their conservative propaganda," she added.

World Overview

There are four categories of values societies all over the world share, according to the World Values Survey, a research project that explores people's values and beliefs, carried out by a worldwide network of social scientists since 1981: traditional values, secular-rational values, survival values and self-expression values.

Traditional values emphasize the importance of religion, parent-child ties, deference to authority and family values. These societies have high levels of national pride and a nationalistic outlook, the website of the project says.

Secular-rational values entail less emphasis on religion, traditional family values and authority. Divorce, abortion, euthanasia and suicide are seen as relatively acceptable.

Survival values place emphasis on economic and physical security. It is linked with a relatively ethnocentric outlook and low levels of trust and tolerance.

Self-expression values give high priority to environmental protection, growing tolerance of foreigners, gays and lesbians and gender equality, and rising demands for participation in decision-making in economic and political life.

The latest cultural map created by the scientists involved in the project places Russia and other Christian Orthodox countries somewhere in the middle between traditional and secular-rational values and closer to the survival values than to the self-expression ones.

At the same time groups of countries marked as "Protestant Europe" and "English Speaking" are placed much closer to the self-expression values. Protestant Europe countries are more into the secular-rational values, while English speaking countries are also in middle between traditional and secular-rational values.
---
Most Important Things to Do Before Turning 30
Here are the things Russians consider men and women should do before turning 30, according to the poll conducted by Levada Center.

For Men:
To get an education - 65%
To get married - 56%
To serve in the military - 55%
To have a career - 52%
To buy a place to live - 46%
To have children - 40%
To buy a car - 30%
To fall in love - 26%
To start a business - 20%
To travel - 17%
To learn to cook - 9%
To take part in charity - 9%

For Women:
To get married - 77%
To have children - 75%
To get education - 60%
To learn how to cook - 52%
To fall in love - 32%
To have a career - 19%
To travel - 18%
To buy a place to live - 14%
To take part in charity - 8%
To buy a car - 6%
To start a business - 4%
To serve in the military - 3%

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 #3
Subject: Running for Office in Siberia: Part IV: History, Perspective and the Components of a Modern Campaign
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2015
From: Sarah Lindemann-Komarova <echosiberia@gmail.com>

Running for Office in Siberia
A series on the District #35 Election for Novosibirsk City Council
By Sarah Lindemann-Komarova
[Founder, Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center 1995 - 2014. Helped to establish this as the hub for the first civil society development support network in the former Soviet Union.]

Part IV: History, Perspective and the Components of a Modern Campaign

Article with pictures:

https://medium.com/@ECHOSiberia/running-for-office-in-siberia-history-perspective-and-a-modern-campaign-93b69cc93d1c

As the campaign to represent District #35 in the Novosibirsk City Council heats up, it makes sense to add some perspective on this 23 year old democracy. In June 1992 I attended my first and last political party meeting in Russia.  The democratic capitalist country of Russia was 6 months old when I joined 25 other people at a Democrats for Russia meeting. This was Yeltsin's party or, the thing created to give the first president of Russia the veneer of a mechanism to replicate democracy.  Not knowing this at the time, the meeting was disappointingly mellow and short.  A brief discussion on whether to support the Petersburg or Moscow variant of referendum on land reforms and should the constitution be put to a vote. They went for the Petersburg option, finances was next on the agenda but first, a break for tea.  The tea break lasted longer than the discussion.  Finances began with the question "How do we live?", a participant said something about looking into it and the meeting was adjourned.

Electoral politics did not improve as parties multiplied.  By 1996 there were over 60 and many were single issue groups like the Beer Lovers Party. The foundation I helped to establish gave a grant to an NGO hoping to make sense of this for voters.  The idea was to make a cheat sheet with basic positions like private property (for or against).  It was the worst few months of the NGO activists post Gulag life as he searched for party platforms, opinions in newspapers, phone numbers, offices, any sign of life beyond registration as the election and the latest possible publication deadline drew near.  

In the 90's America was supporting activities targeted at strengthening parties and coalitions but my limited exposure indicated they were not very effective. The National Democratic Institute had a training program for coalitions but it was not available to Siberian NGOs because we lived in International Republican Institute (IRI) territory and they did not have a coalition program.  A friend who had served as a local deputy attended an IRI seminar and told me the people conducting it were a little naïve, "I already knew everything they were teaching, like how to dress for  a TV interview."   High priced western consultants called in to help national parties demonstrated a similar disconnect based on a TV ad for the "liberal" right of center SPS party.  It featured three high profile leaders (Chubais, Nemtsov and Khakamada) associated with privatization and economic shock therapy wearing expensive looking clothes as they flew luxuriously in a private jet over a devastated post 1998 financial crash Russia chatting and laughing while tapping away on fancy lap-top computers. None of this scene was coherent, let alone accessible, to 99.9% of the people below.  Whatever aspirational vision they thought they were conveying, if it were votes they were after and they wanted to feature some mode of transportation (a "Russia on the move" theme), the ad should have featured them drinking tea and listening to people in a platzcar (Russian train car with 36 bunks and no dividers). Although traveling in a regular coupe, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn understood this when he embarked on his 1994 return to Russia across country train trip and speaking tour. One of his stops was Akademgorodok where a standing room only group greeted him at the House of Scientists. In the 1999 parliamentary election SPS got 8.52% that was down to 4% in the next cycle.

In most regions the first decade of democracy was characterized by a Governor getting elected and staying "elected" establishing a fiefdom feel to democracy.  For better or worse, in Novosibirsk the election of Governors was more tumultuous. This began when President Yeltsin found a way to kick out the Communist Governor and replace him with a more "liberal" guy. The Communist went on to become a banker until he made a comeback when the "liberal" guy was democratically voted out of office. The "liberal" guy went on to become a banker, the Communist achieved nothing and was challenged in the next election by the "liberal", the "democratic" Mayor of Novosibirsk and a Vice Minister of Economics for the Russian Federation who was the first farmer in Novosibirsk to privatize his land in the early 90s .  The "liberal" and the Communist lost and both went back to banking.  In a runoff between the other two the Mayor won by a tiny margin and the Minister returned to Moscow.

The 90's were equally confusing at the local level.  The only security came in showing up every day at work regardless of the fact that you weren't getting paid anymore and to huddle in kitchens at night talking and drinking tea with your small circle of friends and family. In this  environment any action or reaction is as logical as any other.  One of the English teachers at the University woke up one night at the sound of someone fidgeting with her lock.  Face to face with a stranger she asked if he was a robber.  He said "yes", she invited him to have tea.  During their tea party they discussed home security and he offered advice on where to find the best lock.  Before leaving he used the bathroom.  They said goodbye and in the morning Rosa noticed that a big bottle of shampoo, a treasure indeed, was missing.  

This was Akademgorodok in February 1993 when Ruslan Khasbulatov, Speaker of the Russian Parliament, came to  address a science conference.  I was told later that preparations for the welcome by local government officials consisted primarily of discussing whether they should stuff goods in the stores and do repairs as they used to do when someone of that status came, or if this was no longer appropriate? Should things look good or bad?  They left things as they were but it didn't matter.  Prior to the low-key speech by the embalmed looking Khasbulatov, came reports from various Academy of Science bigwigs.  The head of medicine reported, "everything is awful", head of agriculture, "everything is awful", head of the Buryat Division, "everything is awful" and a sharp, impressive looking guy from Tomsk, "everything is awful".  Valentin Koptyug, the President of the Siberian Division of the Academy of Sciences and an unapologetic socialist true believer, was the only one deviating from the theme with a proposal to create a Siberian scientific "techno-polis".  The futurama picture he painted seemed ludicrous amid the bleakest of backdrops, I could only think he was either a madman or fool.  

The 2015 Akademgorodok where Natalia Pinus launched her campaign is home to a Technopark, considered one of the most effective innovation centers in Russia. It is also the place where  cherished forest was destroyed despite protests and legal challenges to stop the construction of apartment buildings that trampled on all principles associated with this community's development. These elite buildings are located on the Prospect named posthumously for Koptyug and are located in what is called the "Upper Zone". Unemployment is relatively low, 5-6%, but if you cross the street from the new elite apartments, you will find retired scientific workers scraping by only thanks to their dachas. A 5 minute bus-ride will take you to micro-district "D" and Building Workers Street where working class and the pensioners who helped to build Upper Zone live and represent different priorities and interests.  Nearby is micro-raion "Scha" that was initially built to accommodate the children who grew up in Upper Zone and didn't want to leave and is now home to people with a range of backgrounds and bank accounts. Then there are the people who decided to abandon apartment building life and build homes in Kirov village on land that borders the Botanical Gardens.  With no large institutional constituency, the challenge for Natalia was how to connect with as many of the 27,000 District voters as possible in the less than 2 months provided when the national government decided to move up the elections.  

Any campaign begins with money. Natalia got hers from members of the Alumni Association of Novosibirsk State University, the same people who encouraged her to run in the United Russia Primary.  Some of these people also serve as advisors but the final decision on everything is Natalia's.  This includes the slogan "I love Gorodok", colors (green, red and black) and poster layout, although she asked for Facebook feedback on several poster options.  There is an Internet site, http://n-pinus.ru/, and a newspaper that has published 2 editions with schedules, endorsements and other information.  These are passed out at street meetings with citizens that have taken place on 10 evenings throughout the District.   None of them have been well attended and at first the assumption was it was because a competitor was tearing down the announcements. By meeting three it was clear that whether it is rooted in cynicism, indifference or boredom, most people are not motivated to take advantage of an opportunity to talk to a political candidate.   Still, she was learning a lot from the few and testing her ideas for a program. The program will be introduced in the third campaign newspaper and discussed at the open "Conference for Voter Priorities" she is organizing.    

In America this may appear a traditional candidate slate of activities but here, if in volume alone, she outdid anything seen before. In addition to all of that, as Director of the Academgorodok Community Foundation, Natalia mobilized sponsors to support a "Summer Akadem" series of free outdoor cultural events.  A string trio kicked off the season that  several times a week dazzled the public with everything from science presentations to a retro 80's childhood evening.  

In the first few weeks of the campaign other candidates were mostly invisible beyond an occasional poster with a picture tacked to a building or newspaper handout.  The removal of Natalia's announcements was the first sign that she had upped the candidate ante.  More evidence came when she arrived in Kirov Village to find another candidate had scheduled a meeting half an hour before hers.  Yet another would-be deputy, from a construction company, started laying asphalt, filling in potholes, fixing entryways with workers wearing t-shirts promoting his candidacy. There is nothing she can do to compete with asphalt but when a billboard appeared Natalia, unable to finance one of her own, asked supporters to hang banners from their apartments.

On Monday August 24, the Alumni Association of Novosibirsk State University shoved the iceberg of democracy in Russia forward by inviting candidates to participate in a debate. The first of its kind in Akademgodorok, rare in the rest of the country, it would be broadcast live on local TV and streamed on-line.  The moderator, a University graduate and respected director of a large advertising company, announced his participation on Facebook, "And suddenly, in the seemingly forever frozen and dead huddled little world political life! Look, look, she's got a pulse! Teeth appeared on the EKG!"

Next week Part V:  Campaign Substance: Candidates, Issues and the Debate.

Previous parts of the Series:

Part III: Becoming an Official Independent Candidate

https://medium.com/@ECHOSiberia/running-for-office-in-siberia-becoming-an-official-candidate-4119419f30b

Part II: Next Generation
https://medium.com/@ECHOSiberia/running-for-office-in-siberia-959d59bf2737

Part I:
https://medium.com/@ECHOSiberia/running-for-office-in-siberia-7b426f574249

 [return to Contents] 

 #4
Christian Science Monitor
August 27, 2015
Can Russia's only independent election monitor survive Kremlin pressure?
Three years ago, Russia unveiled a law effectively requiring NGOs to refuse any foreign funding. Electoral watchdog Golos has complied, but is still on the Kremlin's blacklist.
By Fred Weir, Correspondent

Moscow - Golos, Russia's only grassroots election-monitoring organization, has been fighting an exhausting battle to prove it does not receive foreign funding. Otherwise, it would have to self-describe as a "foreign agent" - a term that connotes "spy" in Russian.

But even though the organization has won some significant court victories, including a Constitutional Court order to lift the onerous label they were saddled with, Golos seems no closer to fielding its usual teams of observers when Russia's next cycle of elections kicks off, with regional polls in October.

Now, members of Golos and other nongovernmental organizations in similar conflict with the government are asking: Are there any terms under which the Kremlin will allow such a group to do its appointed job?

"The basic problem is that authorities are not happy with what Golos does," says Andrei Buzin, an analyst with Golos. "It's this type of activity, making conclusions, publishing results, that they just don't like."

Squashing 'foreign agents'

Three years ago, Russia's State Duma passed a law requiring any nongovernmental organization which received any funding from abroad and engaged in "political" activities to register itself as a "foreign agent." One of the original targets actually named in the law was Golos, whose independent observers had angered the ruling United Russia party by documenting thousands of irregularities and cases of outright fraud in 2011 parliamentary elections.

The "foreign agent" blacklist maintained by the Ministry of Justice has since swelled to over 80 names, including organizations that work for prison reform, environmental causes, and human rights. Even some cultural groups and a foundation that supports scientific education have been caught in the net.

Many of those groups have given up and shut down. But some, like Golos, are still fighting. A few months ago, the Constitutional Court ruled that Golos's umbrella organization hadn't received any foreign funding in the past two years, and should be removed from the list. That hasn't happened. Moreover, Mr. Buzin says, several regional chapters of Golos have now been blacklisted, making it almost irrelevant if the central organization does get a bit of legal relief.

After two years of ceaseless legal battles, and a good deal of gratuitous official harassment, "our central office has financial problems. There is no money even to pay the rent," he says.

What does the Kremlin want?

The key question is whether the law is aimed at cutting out foreign funding and contacts, or whether it's intended to eliminate a whole class of NGOs that do the kind of community work which brings them into friction with the authorities. Some argue that the Kremlin may be satisfied when the law is fully complied with, and completely domestic NGOs take over those potentially controversial activities.

Pavel Chikov, chairman of the AGORA Association, which provides legal aid to NGOs, says there are about 20 groups, including his own, waiting to have the damning "foreign agent" label lifted so that they can return to their activities. But their options are limited.

"Attempts to defend NGOs that want to preserve their foreign funding, but avoid being classified as 'foreign agents' are never successful," he says. "But if an NGO wants to preserve its staff, its activity, and reputation, there are legal variants to pursue this. It depends on the management and its legal approach."

One group that's fought the label in Russian and European courts for the past two years is Memorial, Russia's largest human rights organization.

"We made it very clear from the start that we would never classify ourselves as 'foreign agents,'" says Yulia Orlova, Memorial's spokeswoman. "When we refused, they changed the law and the list was [unilaterally] compiled by the Ministry of Justice. Our lawyers have presented our case [in every possible forum] but there are no results."

Others argue that the byzantine legal process, which appears to hold out hope that NGOs can make changes and return to work, is likely a mirage.

"I don't think there are any grounds for optimism," says Sergei Nikitin, head of Amnesty International's Russia branch. "It's pretty clear that the whole process was developed to get rid of independent organizations - independent in the sense they are not controlled by the Kremlin - and the fluctuations you see are beside the point. Golos, for example, is regarded by the Kremlin as a very dangerous organization. I think state pressures will continue, and most of these groups will be closed down."

Mr. Nikitin says the long, drawn-out legal process groups are subjected to is a hallmark of the Putin era. "It's part of the information war. If they just shut these groups down, people might object. But now they can say 'we're just enforcing the law,' the way they do all over the world."

'A hidden agenda'?

Sergei Markov, a former Putin advisor, says the Kremlin firmly believes that the network of foreign-funded NGOs built up in Russia since the collapse of the USSR are political Trojan horses, whose mission is to promote regime change in Russia. Golos, for example, with its election-monitoring brief, might be used to promote instability at a critical moment in the country.

"They know that [colored revolutions] are best staged during elections, when power is up in the air, and they can make all sorts of accusations that promote revolution," he says. The "foreign agent" label is a crucial tool to warn the Russian population about the organization's hidden agenda, he insists.

As for groups that seem to have little to do with politics, like environmental and educational NGOs, Mr. Markov claims they are suspect by the fact "they have constantly been accepting foreign money. Their paymasters may well give them the order, at some moment, to stop what they were doing and go over to revolution ... Moscow's task is to undermine the credibility of these groups, so they can't do that."

The fate of most blacklisted NGOs will probably be clear soon, and perhaps the answer to the larger question about Kremlin motives as well.

"Fighting back takes an enormous amount of resources," says Kirill Koroteyev, a lawyer for Memorial. "And it seems like the result will be the same, since you will exhaust all your strength in this struggle. The law was meant to bury civil society, to pave it over. The way things are going, within a few months there may well be nothing left."

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 #5
Izvestia
August 5, 2015
Russian daily discusses proposals for NGO law overhaul
Alena Sivkova, Human Rights Council, Justice Ministry propose overturning NGO law. Instead, three new laws regulating NGOs may appear in Russia

The Presidential Human Rights Council and the Russian Federation Justice Ministry are ready to conduct a comprehensive reform of NGO legislation. Proposals to improve NGO legislation, which a Human Rights Council working group spent several months preparing, have been submitted for approval to the Justice Ministry.

The human rights activists' idea consists of "abolishing the current NGO law," since many of the document's provisions have apparently "migrated over to the Russian Federation Civil Code." Instead, it is proposed to create three new laws: "On Registering, Supporting, and Monitoring NGOs"; "On Citizens' Right to Association"; and also a specialized law on different types of NGOs. The Human Rights Council spoke to Izvestiya about this.

That said, Human Rights Council members did not touch upon the foreign agents theme, which human rights activists constantly declare to be absurd in the media.

"It was not the working group's task to change anything in the law on foreign agents. Therefore, we did not even discuss this issue. The comprehensive reform which has been envisioned will not happen tomorrow. It will require time," Izvestiya's source explained.

For its part, the Justice Ministry's press service stated that the agency is developing a bill which aligns the NGO law with the Civil Code.

"NGOs' civil-legal status as legal entities is settled by the Russian Federation Civil Code, and an unnecessary duplication of standards in the federal law 'On NGOs' creates the danger of possible contradictions and alternative interpretations," the agency stated.

In connection with this, it is proposed to leave in the law "On NGOs" only standards that define the particularities of state registration and monitoring of NGO activity; the particularities of their [NGOs'] legal status, activity, and liquidation as legal entities; and also possible ways in which the state authorities and local authorities can support NGOs," the Justice Ministry clarifies.

Effectively, the current NGO law will be split into three laws: "On Registering, Supporting, and Monitoring NGOs"; "On Citizens' Right to Association"; and also a specialized law on different types of NGOs - human rights activists and social activists plan to clearly prescribe the term "social NGOs" - and what they do and under which conditions these NGOs can receive tax breaks (this means exemption from paying income and property tax, a reduction in utility payments, and subsidized rent).

That said, the Human Rights Council and the Justice Ministry will not touch the legislation regarding foreign agents. Even though Human Rights Council head Mikhail Fedotov suggested previously in the media that the article on foreign agents would change.

"If you make a new law, the articles also change as there  is a new logic to the law. I do not think that it will include the concept of political activity, as this is impossible to define," he said.

At the time this article was published, Human Rights Council head Mikhail Fedotov, on the grounds of being too busy, declined to comment to Izvestiya on the theme of changes to the law on foreign agents. The Human Rights Council informed Izvestiya that this theme had not come up.

Yelena Topoleva-Soldunova, chair of the Human Rights Council's Standing Commission for NGO Development, also confirmed that the working group had not prepared changes with regard to foreign agents but had placed emphasis on "harmonizing legislation and eliminating existing contradictions and weak spots with regard to the nonprofit sector."

"During the reform it will be possible to improve the law on foreign NGOs but this is an urgent matter and it is better not to postpone it. At the moment, the working group is proposing, in the place of the current NGO law, to make a law 'On Registering, Supporting, and Monitoring NGOs,' in order to specify the particularities of supporting and monitoring NGOs. The second law is 'On Citizens' Right to Association.' This is a law which will concern not only NGOs, but also how a citizen will be able to realize his or her constitutional right to join an association or organization. Plus, there will be specialized laws on different types of NGOs (foundations, associations)," she said.

Representatives of the expert community were also included in the working group for improving legislation in the NGO sphere. Among them are Lev Yakobson, deputy rector of the Higher School of Economics; Vladislav Grib, vice president of the Federal Chamber of Lawyers; Darya Miloslavskaya, chair of the board of the Lawyers for Civil Society nonprofit partnership, and others. However, experts questioned by Izvestiya explained that they had not been present at the last sessions, including the one where documents were ratified and subsequently submitted for approval to the Justice Ministry.

Andrey Maksimov, project manager for Kudrin's Civil Initiatives Committee, who was also a member of the working group, thinks that it is extremely necessary to improve legislation in the NGO sphere.

"The current situation that has arisen with the legislation on NGOs is quite complicated since amendments were made to the Civil Code, and the civil-legal foundations of NGO activity changed fundamentally. In connection with this, the NGO law should be either radically changed, abolished, or broken up into other legislative acts, and this is obvious," he summarized.

Political Expert Group head Konstantin Kalachev did not expect the Human Rights Council to overlook the issue of foreign agents.

"All of the work on changes in the NGO sphere was related to those extraordinary things which occurred with Dynasty [Russian NGO which was recently put on the foreign agents list], when officials said that in reality there were no complaints [against it]. There was talk about liberalizing legislation to a certain extent. Figuratively speaking, the period for tightening the screws had passed and now, conversely, we needed to loosen up the situation. I might suggest that when it comes to human rights activists promoting and praising themselves, people say one thing and say all the right words. But when it comes to their place in the system, their wish not to argue with anyone and remain nonsystemic, then that is an entirely different story. It is one thing to make out that you are going with the flow, and another thing to swim with the current," the expert opined.

 #6
Magyar Nemzet (Budapest)
August 21, 2015
Analyst explains Russia's position in multipolar world in Hungarian interview
Text of report by Hungarian privately-owned conservative newspaper Magyar Nemzet, on 21 August
Interview with Fyodor Lukyanov, chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, by Gabor Stier: World Order Shaped in Global Uncertainty

[Stier] The world order is changing amidst a succession of shocks and growing uncertainty. On one hand, we have stability promised by the system based on US dominance, and on the other, a for now uncertain multipolar order based on a balance of power. Or perhaps these have not been the two opposing alternatives for a long time.

[Lukyanov] Today uncertainty is global. The world order based on US supremacy has been in crisis for a while. Although at the end of the last century the United States was close to it, life has proved that a single state, even a powerful one, cannot rule the world on its own. Neoconservative Washington analyst Charles Krauthammer, who formulated the terminology of the single-pole world order bringing about the United States' global hegemony, said already in 1990 that this situation would not last forever, at most 25 or 30 years. Well, after two decades this world order started to fall apart.

[Stier] Which also meant the end of global stability....

[Lukyanov] Correct, moreover, US efforts aimed at strengthening the single-pole world are further increasing this uncertainty. This is clearly visible, for example, in the Middle East, where Washington's steps have reached exactly the opposite of the desired effect. The region is in a state of total collapse and it will take a while before the systems become solid and a new balance of power emerges, which can again stabilize the region.

[Stier] Which power could fish in troubled waters with the greatest success and strengthen its positions the most?

[Lukyanov] Generally none of them. Everyone is worried about this uncertainty, which at the same time could relatively strengthen the positions of countries not directly involved in the political clashes. Such a power is for example China, which actually is more worried about this global uncertainty than anyone else. It is aware of its own vulnerability and the uncertainties of its system, therefore, it tries to avoid all shocks. It is a big question whether, in a given case, it will also stay away in the future from ongoing conflicts, or it would take a risk and become involved.

A Threat of War Existed

[Stier] To what extent does Russia feel at home in this situation? For example, did it exploit the Ukrainian crisis in connection with Crimea, as many believe, or was it rather forced to make a move?

[Lukyanov] Russia could not have done much else and it had to make a move. The events that took place in Ukraine in 2014 were an unpleasant surprise for it and it tried to reduce the negative consequences in all possible ways. It is too early to say whether they handled the situation correctly, but time will tell. However, it must be seen that Moscow had to react to the change of power in Kyiv.

[Stier] Let us assume that the Kremlin does not react to the Kyiv turning point, or it does not react the way it did. In this case, what would be the situation today in Crimea?

[Lukyanov] Look, the situation would have become uncertain in Crimea even if it had not joined Russia. A serious risk existed that the new power would try to strengthen its positions in this not exactly loyal region. This assumed a rise in tensions from the outset, however, what is even more important, in view of the foreign forces behind them, the Kyiv "revolutionaries" would certainly have terminated the contract on the deployment of the Black Sea fleet until 2042. In this case, Russian soldiers would have had to leave Crimea by 2017. On one hand, this would have been a clear strategic defeat, and on the other, and I would especially draw attention to this, the fleet has become a symbol and neither the Russian power, nor society could have stood by doing nothing if it had been ordered to leave. This situation held out the threat of a direct Russia-Ukraine war, which could have had even more tragic consequences.

Rising Tension

[Stier] Let us not become stuck at the Ukrainian crisis because, although owing to its proximity, this is the most important one for us, the conflicts erupting from the Middle East to the Pacific region may present an even bigger challenge....

[Lukyanov] This is true. Let us just take the Middle East, which cannot even be said to have conflicts as it is a whole zone of conflicts. The whole thing started with the so-called "Arab Sprig," which destabilized the region. However, this is over, the domino effect stopped at Syria, at the same time, the Islam factor is gaining strength in the general uncertainty, states are falling apart, and it is only a matter of time before this destruction reaches the region's important countries like Saudi Arabia. This is a new level because, while Libya is on the periphery of the region, Saudi Arabia is in its centre. This region is particularly dangerous at the moment because, whirling like a maelstrom, it is even sucking up outside regions. Let us just remember the kind of threat presented for Europe by Islamization, young people setting off to fight in ISIL and then returning, or the flood of refugees coming to a large extent from the Middle East. In contrast with this, the East-Asian region does not appear to be so terrible, nevertheless, the situation is more dangerous. Although no one wants a war, the changes in power relations are still increasing the tension step by step. Confrontation is intensifying in the seas around China because Beijing sees the expansion of its influence as its lawful right, while the United States perceives this as a weakening of its leading position in the region. Although for now it is possible to freeze this conflict, this is not a solution. The only thing Washington can do is to demonstrate its power in response to Beijing's steps that are seen as a provocation, the tension is only rising, and even their mutual economic interdependence is no guarantee for avoiding a clash.

[Stier] Clashes taking part in which region could shape the new world order to the largest extent?

[Lukyanov] It is difficult to give a definite answer as everything is connected to everything else. These conflicts also have an effect on each other, for example, the bigger the tension in the Middle East, the more nervously China reacts to everything. At the same time, it is a fact that, while the Middle East is a macro-regional, East-Asia is a global factor.

A Sense of Unpredictability

[Stier] At the same time, the Ukrainian conflict is "only" regional and has not become a catalyst for shaping the world order. Do you agree with this?

[Lukyanov] Only partly, because it has undoubtedly intensified the sense of unpredictability, which is not a negligible factor. For example, in connection with this conflict, certain Americans are concerned about Moscow setting an example with the events for Beijing, rather than about Russia strengthening its status. Why should China not believe that it can also do the same as what is allowed for Russia, especially that China is even stronger. These circles can see a direct link between the events in Crimea and China's increased self-assurance. Therefore, although Ukraine in itself is a periphery, in the aforementioned way it has become part of the global processes. However, in reality this crisis is an ever deepening problem of an unaccomplished Europe. For example, a year ago, Brussels could still say that Ukraine was a serious problem, but Moldova was a counter-example. However, the illusions related to Eastern Europe are slowly waning. With its own, constantly mounting problems, Moldova also demonstrates today the crisis of EU expansion. The same is reflected by the fact that the Romanian president was able to keep reiterating for a decade that no such thing existed as a state of Moldova, and in Brussels this did not even meet with much of a mild disapproval. Naturally, the internal crisis of European integration has a serious effect also on the periphery's future as, while not so long ago, the unification of the continent was expected to solve the problems, expansion is not even mentioned today. In the meantime, it has become clear that it would not at all solve the problems. On the contrary.

[Stier] In the meantime, in a global sense, Europe is also becoming peripheral, and this trend is only reinforced by the fact that it will open up to transatlantic free trade in a weakened condition according to all indications. This does not seem like a winning game....

[Lukyanov] In a political sense Europe is indeed weaker than the United States, however, I would not believe that it is waiting for opening up its market with hands held up. Tough talks are being held and, as a matter of fact, the establishment of this basically economic alliance is very similar to that emerging between Russian and China.

[Stier] It might be another common factor that, while counterbalancing Chinese dominance is one of TTIP's main goals, the alliance between Moscow and Beijing seems to be formed precisely against the West. Is this so?

[Lukyanov] This alliance is only formally anti-Western, in reality it is not based on this. Eurasian stability based on economic cooperation and the linking of projects hallmarked by the Eurasian Economic Union and the New Silk Road are much more important than the military and political dimensions.

New Realities of the World Economy

[Stier] Does the plan of the New Silk Road weaken Russia?

[Lukyanov] Look, Russia is not able to enter into a competition with China. For this very reason, the Kremlin takes the right attitude when it does not want to fight against Chinese ideas, rather, it builds on these and is trying to gain positions. It has a good opportunity to do this as China is interested in western-oriented infrastructure developments, can also invest money in this, and this effort can meet with the reality that the Eurasian Economic Union in itself is weak precisely owing to its lack of capital. Therefore, the efforts of Beijing and Moscow can reinforce each other. So the New Silk Road is not a competitor but rather an opportunity.

[Stier] However, turning to the East cannot replace European ties, which are in crisis. Without Europe, Russia is weak. In your opinion, is Moscow's turn to the East a response to the tensions in Western relations, or rather a step taken out of necessity, with an amount of grievance added to it?

[Lukyanov] Russia's turn to the East is unavoidable, I could even say that it was actually overdue. At the same time, it is regrettable that this is taking place at a time while Western relations are worsening. It also has to be seen that China, rather than Russia, is dominant in this turn to the East, and the Chinese are heading not for Russia but Europe. We are only a partner in this, and the cooling of Russia-Europe relations is noticeably disturbing Beijing. This means that China could even have a calming effect on the current tense relationship. All in all, serious movements are taking place in the Eurasian region, including TTIP, which along with other formations is shaping the new realities of the world economy, the Ukrainian crisis, Beijing's opening to Europe, and the intensification of Russian-Chinese relations.

[Stier] Amidst the emergence of the new world order, this is not surprising, even alone for the fact that, according to the known geopolitical thesis, the one who rules Eurasia rules the entire world. As Zbigniew Brzezinski also said, the United States must at least prevent the emergence of a strong power or an alliance in this region. Therefore, understandably, currently many changes are taking place, however, what will the world look like, let us say, in 10 years' time, by which time the new order may have been established and consolidated?

[Lukyanov] Hopefully, it will be calmer and more stable. If we look back 10 years, many things were already visible in 2005 but it would have been difficult to envisage where all this would lead. It is the same situation now.

[Stier] Where can Russia find its place in a multipolar world?

[Lukyanov] The most important thing is now for Russia to find itself. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has been continually struggling with defining itself, without much success so far. Even though the debate on the future and on who we are was started in the late Soviet period, during glasnost, this was stopped in 1991. This is where we must pick up from because without this it is hard to find our place in the world. This search for identity is being continued and it makes a strong mark on the events. For example, everyone is talking about the fact that Crimea is a clear manifestation of Russian imperial ambitions, while in my opinion it is exactly the opposite of this. Moscow is trying to assess the limits of the Russian world, and this is a dangerous experiment with self-definition, however, its character is not at all expansionary but inward-looking.

Pragmatic Eurasian Identity

[Stier] What kind of self-image and vision do you think would be ideal?

[Lukyanov] First of all, we must rediscover our European identity in a cultural and psychological sense. The often stupid denial of European basic values leads nowhere. Russia is an inseparable part of Europe and this cannot be changed just like that. Neither from the outside, nor from the inside. The real dilemma is how European orientation in a cultural sense can be reconciled with Asian opening, which concentrates primarily on the economy and in a certain sense on politics. This is not an easy task, even because in past centuries Europe was the main area for shaping world politics, while this is no longer so. Although even now Europe cannot be called a periphery, it is a fact that it is not a centre, either. In the meantime, in Russia, three-quarters of which lies in Asia, many believe that we will become different through the turn to the East. This is also not true though. Today the most important task is to make this Eurasian identity pragmatic. It is totally pointless to revive the mentality of the intelligentsia of a declining era, which is divorced from reality. We need an active and constructive Eurasian identity, which looks upon this huge area as an opportunity and is based on the realization that Eurasia is the new centre of development.

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 #7
The National Interest
August 28, 2015
How the U.S. Can Help Solve the Ukraine Crisis: Treat Ukraine Like Georgia?
The George W. Bush administration's approach to Georgia in 2008 could work well for the Obama administration in 2015.
By Paul J. Saunders
Paul J. Saunders is executive director of the Center for the National Interest and associate publisher of The National Interest.

In August 2008, when Russia's military appeared to be preparing to move through the Roki Tunnel from Russia into Georgia's South Ossetia, Bush administration officials told Georgia's then president, Mikheil Saakashvili, "don't get drawn into a trap" and "don't confront the Russian military." They quite correctly feared that what one official termed "a 'Guns of August' scenario'" could lead to full-scale war and Georgia's defeat. Yet today, some seem to think that the United States should take the opposite approach in Ukraine or even to imply that the Obama administration should not have discouraged Kiev from resisting Moscow's seizure of Crimea from a position of great weakness. Few explain why Ukraine's escalation-with or without lethal U.S. military assistance-would not spring the same trap that the Bush administration encouraged Georgia to avoid. Even fewer describe what America would have to do to prevent Ukraine's defeat in a wider war. This does no favors for either the United States or Ukraine.

Perhaps most striking in the Ukraine crisis is the extent to which Western leaders and politicians and pundits agree that "Putin must be stopped" while expecting someone else to do the work. NATO's new "front line" states in Central Europe appear eager for the United States to arm Ukraine, but reluctant to become too involved themselves (or, for that matter, to increase their defense budgets commensurately with the threat they describe). Western European governments want the United States to take the lead, but don't want to follow Washington into anything too costly, and the European Union is providing Ukraine with less than 1 percent of the assistance it has committed to Greece. In fairness, Ukraine's economy is somewhat more than half Greece's, and Ukraine is not an EU member. Still, Ukraine's population is four times higher than Greece's and many European officials describe its fate as almost existential for Europe.

No small fraction of America's political leaders, including senior officials in the Obama administration, are ready to arm Ukraine, but few if any are willing to send U.S. troops into combat; in other words, they are fully prepared to fight Putin-to the last Ukrainian. Or perhaps to the last dollar that the Congress would authorize for this purpose, a limit that they would likely see sooner, since recent legislative proposals call for about $60 million for offensive weapons out of $300 million in total assistance.

These political realities across NATO's democracies raise two fundamental questions about policy toward Russia and Ukraine.

The first has to do with commitment and it has two components. Do the "hawks" seeking to force the administration to spend $60 million-roughly equivalent to the proposed 2016 budget for Washington DC's public libraries-and like-minded Europeans think that minimal commitments like this will do the job? After spending hundreds of billions of dollars to fight nonstate adversaries in Iraq and Afghanistan, with military capabilities considerably inferior to Russia's, U.S. and European assistance to Ukraine is either a fig leaf or a very small down payment.

In the former case, if $60 million is all that America as a nation is willing to spend to defend Ukraine, we would be better off admitting this to ourselves sooner rather than later. A half-hearted policy (or, for that matter, a 5 percent-hearted policy) to confront Moscow will likely produce outcomes demonstrably worse than a settlement-better to get the most advantages possible negotiated terms than to set up ourselves and the NATO alliance for a high-profile defeat.

Conversely, if the advocates of this course see small arms deliveries as the first step in a substantially broader effort, they should be honest with the American people about their proposed objectives and the costs and benefits they foresee. If the United States is to make confronting Russia an organizing principle of its foreign policy, it will require an extended national commitment that will be unsustainable without broad public support (and difficult to pursue without virtually nonexistent European public support). Indeed, if advocates of this approach believe that a nuclear superpower-notwithstanding its other weaknesses-has already made an analogous national commitment to confront the United States, as many of them argue, it is difficult to understand why they have not done this already. If Moscow has indeed made such a choice, which does not seem very likely, it would be a much graver threat than Iran or the Islamic State.

The second fundamental question about our policy toward Russia and Ukraine is a moral one. If the United States is not willing to make a commitment to defending Ukraine sufficient to ensure success, how can we encourage Ukrainians to fight and die in a conflict with a very powerful neighbor and with no clear endpoint? Allowing the government in Kiev and the Ukrainians resisting Moscow to think that America is behind them when we are not-or when we are pretending to ourselves that we are-is functionally equivalent to encouraging the 1956 uprising in Hungary, or the 1991-92 Shi'ite uprisings against Saddam Hussein, and then watching the devastating consequences for the courageous people who believe us. Making a moral case to assist Ukraine without answering tough moral questions about outcomes means pursuing "the histrionics of moralism at the expense of its substance," as George Kennan put it.

The George W. Bush administration, which was not shy in making moral arguments about U.S. foreign policy, appeared to follow this logic in Georgia in 2008. Why shouldn't the Obama administration do the same in Ukraine?

Most important, being honest with ourselves, with our allies and with Ukrainians does not mean acquiescing to Russia's conduct or giving up. On the contrary, it is the first step in building a policy that can work in protecting U.S. national interests and strengthening European security. Reckless rhetoric or-worse-reckless action helps no one but the Kremlin hawks looking for an excuse to escalate the fighting and a means to distract attention from their own failings. Washington should discourage Kiev from providing either.

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 #8
Kremlin.ru
August 26, 2015
Meeting with Government members
Vladimir Putin met with Government members to discuss current economic development matters.

The participants discussed the situation on the financial market, in particular, the ruble's exchange rate fluctuations, executing the budget and the anti-crisis measures the Central Bank is taking in the banking sector.

The meeting also discussed the work of the Government's anti-crisis commission, which was set up to coordinate the federal, regional and local authorities and various organisations in carrying out the country's import replacement policy.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues.

Let us discuss certain current matters, and one major issue - we will get to this - that will be considered at other venues, without the Government's direct involvement.

Let us begin with the Eastern Economic Forum. Mr Trutnev is in charge of the preparations. The forum is scheduled for September 3-5. Go ahead, please.

Deputy Prime Minister, Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District Yury Trutnev: Mr President, colleagues,

We initially planned for 1,000 participants and proceeded from the idea that we need people, rather than scale.

Currently we have some 4,000 applications, 1,470 of them from foreign participants. We are now working with the delegations individually, to make sure that everyone receives fair treatment, but at the same time ensuring we preserve the forum's format. These are 24 countries, and the largest delegations will come from China, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Malaysia. We have accredited 660 journalists.

We have enough to tell the participants: over the past year, eight priority development areas have been created in the Far East, the ninth has been listed recently - a tourist and recreational area in Kamchatka. A decision has been made to provide infrastructure support to six investment projects, and the Far East Development Fund has become operational.

The decision has been approved to fund the first three projects, including the Nizhneleninskaya - Tongjiang railway crossing. The law On the Free Port of Vladivostok has been passed and is to come into effect on October 12. Work has begun and we believe that its results will make it possible to say that a new competitive investment space will have been created in the Far East for investment in the Asia-Pacific countries.

Vladimir Putin: Good. Could you repeat the number of expected participants, please?

Yuri Trutnev: We cannot accept more than 1,000, everything has been designed for 1,000 people, but we have 4,000 applications, with 1,500 foreigners alone.

Vladimir Putin: Good. Thank you.

We are aware of the situation on the Asian stock markets and the international financial currency markets, and the situation with oil prices. All of this has its effect one way or another on our financial market. I would like Mr Siluanov to comment on these developments and give his assessments.

Finance Minister Anton Siluanov: Indeed, Mr President, in the past days we have seen greater volatility on the world financial and commodities markets. We see that stock markets have gone down by about 10 percent, prices of raw materials have also gone down, there has been a weakening of currencies, especially those of the developing countries and especially those that export primarily raw materials. The national currencies of those countries have lost 5 to 15 percent.

The reason, of course, is the increasing unpredictability of the Chinese economy's growth. The Chinese economy is currently one of the major economies influencing world demand, including demand for raw materials. Among such reasons, we also see the overproduction of oil; there are constant excessive volumes of oil being produced, while demand is not growing at the rate that was expected earlier. We are also witnessing pressure on financial markets, expectations of increased rates from the Federal Reserve System, which, as we know, may lead to a withdrawal of capital from developing markets.

The drop in oil prices is undoubtedly having the greatest effect on the Russian financial market. During the past month, the prices went down by some 20 percent, about 10 percent in the past week alone. This inevitably had an impact on the financial market of the Russian Federation: the ruble lost about 10 percent, just as many other currencies in countries, as I have said, with developing economies; the stock market here has dropped by about 15 percent since early August.

We have already witnessed a similar situation with the exchange rate early this year, but a rise in oil prices then led to a strengthening of the ruble. We should not rule out a repeat of this development. However, analysts dealing with the oil market say the oil price drop may be long term and we need to prepare for such a possibility and work to ensure financial and budget stability.

Of course, Mr President, we will comply with all our budget commitments for this year. This year we will need to use the reserves that we have accumulated, but these reserves are not unlimited, and for next year and the following budget cycle we have to align our commitments with the new macroeconomic situation. The Government is currently working on such proposals and we will present them for your consideration.

Vladimir Putin: Ms Nabiullina, would you like to add anything?

Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina: Overall, I agree with the assessment provided by Mr Siluanov, but I would like to say that the key factor affecting the ruble, which is the price of oil, is volatile. We have already seen this year that it can go up and down: this year alone there was a period when it grew by 23 percent and then dropped by 38 percent. Therefore, we can expect change any minute.

True, our financial system is part of the global system and is not protected from all the existing risks. However, we modelled various scenarios well in advance, knowing that a pessimistic one is possible, so that we could prepare. Thus, for instance, whenever possible we increased our gold and currency reserves to create a long-term basis for our financial stability and to strengthen our safety net.

We have introduced currency refinancing mechanisms. We envisaged a $50 billion limit on loans to banks to avoid excessive pressure on the currency market. We have spent $34 billion of that reserve, and we believe that the remaining $16 billion would be enough. At the same time, we decided that we would not refinance these amounts for banks that have used up their annual limits so they feel more comfortable.

Moreover, we have decided to loosen bank regulation to allow our banking system to adapt. We have curtailed a number of measures because the banks did not need them, and were planning to discontinue more as of October 1. However, now, depending on how the situation is going to develop, we are ready to retain those measures with certain modifications.

The main thing now is for the exchange rate fluctuations to have a minimal effect on prices. I mean that after the drop in the exchange rate early this year we managed to get inflation under control. For 16 weeks, weekly inflation was about 0.01 percent, with the exception of the week when we had our traditional rate increase. Therefore, we will continue in the same way to ensure a further drop in inflation.

Vladimir Putin: Good. Thank you.

Mr Dvorkovich, has the Import Replacement Commission begun work?

Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich: Yes, pursuant to the law that was passed in July, the Government has set up a Commission headed by the Prime Minister. It held its first meeting to establish Commission procedures, some of which are temporary because the law will come into full effect on some of the Commission's powers only next January. After that, we will adjust some of these procedures.

Two sub-commissions are to be set up: one headed by Mr Rogozin [Deputy Prime Minister] to deal with the defence industry and import replacement in these areas; the other one headed by me will deal with civil branches of the economy. These sub-commissions are to be set up by September 1, in the next few days.

At its first meeting, the Commission considered import replacement in the agro-industrial complex. Work has been launched in this area and plans were adopted last year, and we already have certain results. Nevertheless, this requires constant coordination and we have passed some additional resolutions.

Work in the defence industry was launched about 18 months ago. In this area, the new sub-commission will enhance coordination of efforts on implementing the appropriate plans in specific import replacement areas.

As for the civil branches of the economy, we have approved around 20 plans, which are very detailed and cover every position in specific areas, including pharmaceuticals, where we have had significant progress. In other areas work on the plans is only beginning. The Industry Ministry, the Energy Ministry, the Transport Ministry and the Communications Ministry are all coordinating this in their appropriate areas.

The sub-commissions are to align the actions of the various state agencies and the companies that are implementing projects and have a demand for certain goods. This is in the focus of the Government's attention.

I would like to stress that we are talking about creating goods which will be competitive not only in Russia, but on the world markets as well - this is the point of all these efforts. We have specific targets and we intend to achieve them.

Vladimir Putin: We must ensure that the commission does not just take token measures. The work must be filled with very specific content.

Arkady Dvorkovich: The main changes that are to be introduced as of next January deal with the coordination of investment projects and purchasing within these projects to ensure that the companies that are implementing the projects prioritise goods produced in Russia. We are preparing for this.

Vladimir Putin: Right, and the tasks you have set should not be general, but very specific.

Arkady Dvorkovich: These are all very specific things.

Vladimir Putin: Good. Thank you.

Russia has won the right to host the 2019 WorldSkills International Competition. Ms Golodets will provide her comments.

Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets: Mr President, colleagues,

Acting on your instructions, Mr President, Russia submitted its application to host the WorldSkills Competition - a world championship in professional skills, in 2019. The competition was quite fierce, because Russia proposed Kazan as the venue, and it had to compete with Paris, France, and with Charleroi in Belgium. That made the victory even sweeter: of the 57 votes, 31 were cast in favour of Russia, which speaks of a high level of trust for this country in the current geopolitical situation.

I would like to note that at the same time we won six medals for professional skills. Our team was new to these competitions; we had 32 people taking part in the WorldSkills Competition in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Our team was best in such skills as cooking, electrical installations, restaurant service, hairdressing, IT network systems administration and mechatronics.

We have already begun preparing for the 2019 competition. We had a meeting and are preparing to set up an organising committee. Everything will be ready, and I hope this movement will contribute to restructuring the Russian economy and the import replacement programmes, because it focusses on the quality of work and the quality of professional training.

Vladimir Putin: We do need to prepare for 2019 and host this event properly, but we must also prepare and hold similar national and regional events.
<...>

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 #9
www.rt.com
August 28, 2015
Russia accepted over 1mn Ukrainian refugees forced out of homes by Donbass war

Over 1 million people have moved to Russia from southeast Ukraine since the beginning of the armed conflict and about 600,000 of them decided never to return home, the head of the Federal Migration Service says.

Konstantin Romodanovsky said in an interview with Interfax that about 114,000 of Ukrainian refugees took part in the government program of resettlement and received material aid and a short track in getting Russian citizenship.

Romodanovsky also said that the influx of refugees from Ukraine had led to improvement of Russians' attitudes towards migrants in general. According to a recent poll conducted by the independent Levada research center, 41 percent of Russians hold that the best way to tackle illegal migration was to help the refugees find jobs and receive legal status - twice as many as the 19 percent who gave the same answer just one year back.

In the same interview, Romodanovsky said that his agency was actively fighting illegal migration and over the past 2.5 years they have managed to detain and send back about 1.5 million people who tried to get on the Russian territory by bypassing the rules.

In mid-June this year the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said that in 2014 the influx of Ukrainian citizens seeking refuge on Russian territory put the Russian Federation in first place in the world by number of asylum applications.

The UN confirmed that the military conflict in Ukraine's Donbass region was the main reason for the surge in asylum applications. Over 271,000 requests came from Ukrainian citizens, making 99 percent of the total number, the report reads. The report also stated that Russian authorities proved to be much more tolerant in their approach to Ukrainian applicants than their colleagues from Western countries.

Russia and Belarus fulfilled 90 percent of the asylum requests while nations such as the UK, France, Poland or Finland accepted no more than 10 percent of Ukrainian asylum seekers. The US, Canada and Germany proved to be more hospitable, fulfilling between 35 and 65 percent of requests, but these numbers are still far lower than the Russian figures, wrote the UN researchers.

The report also stated that in 2014 Ukraine surpassed the previous years' leader, Syria, by number of people who wanted to flee their homeland. About one-fifth of a total 1.47 million asylum requests was made by Ukrainians and 94 percent of these requests were made in Russia.

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 #10
www.rt.com
August 27, 2015
Ukraine's Poroshenko says 'no Minsk-3' as Moscow hopes for ceasefire

The possibility of a new peace deal agreement that could improve the situation in Eastern Ukraine is off the table, says Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko, as a contact group meeting in Minsk ended with a proposal to ensure a stable ceasefire.

The existing peace deal is good enough and simply needs to be implemented, said Poroshenko at a press conference in Brussels accompanied by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

The Trilateral Contact Group for Ukraine came to agreement to end all military operations and ensure a ceasefire along the whole contact line by September 1 at a meeting in Minsk on Wednesday. The matter is especially important now with the new school year just around the corner.

Information on the location of all educational facilities close to the contact line will be available to both sides, OSCE special envoy Martin Sajdik told journalists in Minsk. Moscow hailed the proposal.

"A very positive proposal to establish a real ceasefire by September 1 was put forward in Minsk. We would like to hope that this proposal will be implemented in practice. After all, we are talking about children," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Thursday, TASS reports.

Poroshenko in his turn said there was no reason to wait until September 1.

"Who knows how many lives we will pay until ... September 1," he said, requesting an immediate halt in hostilities.

"We shall see if they will obey the ceasefire or not. We haven't been conducting warfare since February as we do observe Minsk agreement," said Eduard Basurin, General Staff Deputy Head of the self-proclamed Donetsk People's Republic.

The next meeting of the Contact Group and its working groups has been scheduled for September 8.

Poroshenko's statement comes a week after he told his troops in the Kharkov region that the Minsk agreement had given Ukraine time to rearm and build up its defenses.

"The Minsk agreement, despite all criticism, has given us time to build up Ukraine's defense. It allowed us to partially bridge the gap in military capacity we have against Russia," Ukraine's leader said at the time.

Kiev continues to accuse Russia of providing the rebel forces with weapons and secretly invading the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Moscow, however, has persistently denied those accusations and claims to be doing everything it can to help Ukraine get over the crisis.

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 #11
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
August 28, 2015
KYIV BLOG: Ukraine not out of the woods yet
Ben Aris in Moscow

The $3.6bn debt deal announced on August 27 by Ukraine's Ministry of Finance, where private bondholders agreed to take a 20% writedown on the face value of $18bn in government debt, is very good news. Yet it's not a done deal and the final sum that will be restructured will almost certainly be less than the headline figure.

As bne reported, this is only a preliminary deal, which still has to be approved by the holders of the bonds - a process that will last well into October.

What was actually agreed was that in principle some of the bondholders - those that were members of the ad hoc credit committee, especially Franklin Templeton, which holds some $8bn - would agree to this 20% haircut.

But as Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko said, this committee only holds a supermajority share in "some" of the bonds where it can force a deal on the other investors. That means the rest of the bondholders also need to sign off on the deal on "most" of the bonds, an outcome that remains uncertain. The bondholder approval process for the deal will actually only start in the middle of September and then the investors have 21 days to make up their minds.

The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, highlighted the fact that a lot of work has still to be done in a statement she released on August 27. "Full implementation of the agreements will provide the targeted external debt service relief, reduce annual post-program gross financial needs as envisaged, and place public debt on a clearly downward path. It is therefore important that the agreement gains broad support by all concerned Eurobond holders," Lagarde said.

In other words, their agreement is not a given, and if the agreement does not get the broad support of all concerned Eurobond holders, the deal will fail to meet the IMF's requirements needed to release more funds for the rescue package.

Still, the prospects for a significant deal remain pretty good. And even if the actual amount of bonds falls short of the IMF's targets, the Fund will probably still keep sending Kyiv money for political reasons. Franklin Templeton owns a significant proportion of the debt and has made it clear it would accept a haircut, while many of the bondholders will probably go along with it. However, Russia, which holds another $3bn of Ukraine's debt due for redemption in December, has made it equally clear it is not prepared to parlay. That means trouble at the end of the year.

Intractable

Ukraine's finance ministry has made it clear that it continues to regards Russia's $3bn Eurobond as commercial debt, ie borrowed by the state from private creditors, whereas the Russians insist that it is sovereign debt. The distinction is crucial.

If Russia is not included in this deal and refuses to accept it, then in December the Ukrainian government has to decide whether to pay down the Russian debt in full or default. If it is ruled that Russia's debt is indeed sovereign debt, then the IMF support programme will be suspended because under the Fund's own rules it cannot lend to a country that has defaulted on sovereign debt. A default could also play havoc with the other bonds.

What this week's deal has done is partially solve some of the debt problem, but Ukraine is still a long way from financial stability. Its international hard-currency reserves increased to just over $12bn, and if Ukraine decides to repay the Russian debt, then it could end this year with as little as $9bn - way below the three months' import-cover generally considered by economists to be the minimum necessary to ensure the stability of the national currency.

Executive managing director of the Washington-based Institute of International Finance (IIF), Hung Tran, said on August 27 that he was convinced Ukraine would refuse to pay the $3bn Eurobond and that, "full private sector bondholders agreeing to the deal, it is important that documentation for the extended slashed restructured bonds contains well drafted pari passu and cross-default clauses excluding any references to possible Russia triggered credit events".

A taste of what would follow from a more formal default on the Russian debt came almost immediately after the deal was announced: Fitch ratings agency lowered Ukraine's long-term foreign currency issuer default rating from 'C' to 'CC'.

"This [deal] represents a Distressed Debt Exchange (DDE) that results in material losses to bondholders and is being conducted in order to avoid default," the rating agency said in a statement announcing the downgrade. And more ominously, Fitch said that it "does not envisage developments that would result in a positive rating action at this time."

A full-on default of Russia's $3bn Eurobond would only make matters worse.

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The Economist
August 29, 2015
Ukraine's debt restructuring
Tinkering around the edges
Ukraine's deal with its creditors is less impressive than it appears

AT FIRST sight, it was a triumph. After months of negotiations Ukraine and a committee of its creditors (which include Franklin Templeton, an American investment house and BTG Pactual, a Brazilian one) reached a deal this week to restructure the country's international bonds, as well as a smattering of other sorts of debt, worth about $18 billion. Payments have been pushed back, meaning that the government will not need to cough up any principal or interest on the debts in question until 2019. The principal on the bonds will also be cut by 20% on average.

This is a better deal for Ukraine than many were expecting. It is rare for a country to get a haircut on its debts without also defaulting (one exception is Greece). When the negotiations began, the creditors had refused even to consider writing off any of the country's debt, arguing instead that delaying repayment alone would be enough to right Ukraine's finances. The Ukrainian government's repeated threats to declare a moratorium on debt repayments-a default by another name-may have helped soften their stance. (That it did not have to follow through will help Ukraine whenever it next tries to borrow commercially.)

But Ukraine's position was stronger than it might have seemed, thanks to the stance of the IMF. The fund has already lent Ukraine about $11 billion since the conflict there began last year. Ukraine needs further help to remain solvent, and thus to keep paying its creditors. The fund has pledged to lend another $11 billion by the end of 2018. But as a condition for disbursing the next $1.7 billion, due some time in the autumn, following a review of the country's economy, the fund has demanded that Ukraine's debt be restructured. To make the burden sustainable, and thus justify further lending on its part, it said that Ukraine would need to write off $15.3 billion in debt and interest payments by 2018 and to reduce its public-debt-to-GDP ratio to 71% of GDP by 2020.

Taking into account debt that has already been restructured-including bonds of the state import-export bank and the state savings bank-Ukraine will probably meet the first condition. That depends, though, on all owners of Ukraine's international bonds, of which there are hundreds, accepting the deal. Russia, which holds a $3 billion bond due in December, has already declared it unacceptable.

Both the government and the creditors claim that Ukraine is also on track to meet the debt-to-GDP condition, provided economic growth is in keeping with expectations. If so, the IMF can keep lending. But that looks too optimistic. By the end of the year, Ukraine's GDP may be nearing $70 billion, a fall of 60% in dollar terms over the past two years. As it is, it fell by 17% year-on-year in the first quarter, and 15% in the second (see chart), making the IMF's debt-to-GDP target a challenge, to say the least. Moreover, roughly $50 billion of public and publicly guaranteed debt, including concessionary loans, was not part of the negotiations. (Indeed, as private creditors like to point out, Ukraine will repay the IMF over $4 billion before 2019.) The deal amounts to a minor cut in Ukraine's total stock of public debt, from about $71 billion to $67 billion.

In the short term, moreover, the agreement will do little for the average Ukrainian, now far poorer than he was at the end of the Soviet Union. The hryvnia, Ukraine's currency, is still feeble: inflation is nearly 60%. And the long-term prospects are little better. Even if the war stopped tomorrow, the country would need tens of billions of dollars to rebuild itself.

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 #13
Rossiya 1 TV (Moscow)
August 27, 2015
Russian finance minister insists on full repayment of Ukrainian debt

Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has said that Russia will "insistently demand" that Ukraine repay the loan it was given at the end of 2013 "to the full extent". In an interview shown on Russian official state television channel Rossiya 1 on 27 August, Siluanov also said that Russia would not agree to restructuring of the debt or any change of the rules under which the loan was granted.

Asked to comment on the news that Ukraine has reached an agreement with its creditors to write off 20 per cent of its debt, Siluanov said: "Yes indeed, we know that Ukraine has held such talks with commercial creditors, reached a certain agreement, but the Russian Federation's debt is not commercial. We provided funds to Ukraine on a non-market interest. I shall recall that when funds from the National Wealth Fund were provided, we provided them at 5 per cent annually. That was support for Ukraine's budget. We consider ourselves to be official creditors. And the question of settling the debt first of all concerns commercial creditors, the question of settling the debt with official creditors, with states, such as Russia, is considered completely separately.

"We shall not agree to restructuring, we shall not agree to any changes of the order and rules, under which the funds from the National Wealth Fund were provided. We have already been helpful to Ukrainian colleagues, as we have not resorted to an early demand of payment of funds despite violation of the conditions of the agreement on provision of funds from the National Wealth Fund.

"On the other hand, we have always stood and shall continue to demand that Ukraine fulfil, to the full extent, the obligation which it undertook when the funds from the National Wealth Fund were being provided. We shall insistently demand that the funds are returned to the full extent in December this year, to the amount of 3bn US dollars, taking into account payment of appropriate interest."

To a question as to the way in which Russia will spend the money which Ukraine should repay in December, Siluanov said that Russia needed to develop its own economy and invest into infrastructure. "Therefore, the repayment of the funds which we should receive at the end of this year, these funds will be spent on the development of infrastructure of the Russian economy in the next few years. Therefore, we continue to insist and shall insist on a position of firmness of our agreements regarding the return of the funds from the National Wealth Fund invested into securities of the Ukrainian state," Siluanov concluded.

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 #14
http://readrussia.com
August 27, 2015
Ukraine: The Market Does Not Care About Your Values
By Mark Adomanis

Kiev's new government, for all of its aggressively pro-market rhetoric and its constant invocation of "reform," appears to not entirely understand the way that markets actually work. Not to wax overly philosophical, but markets are wonderfully efficient at allocating scarce resources and at balancing risks and rewards. They're not terribly effective at passing moral judgements on who is "good" or "bad."

Bond markets, for example, present investors with extremely stark tradeoffs between security and profit: investors can get substantial returns, but in order to do so they need to expose themselves to much greater risks. It would be great if investments as safe and liquid as US Treasuries yielded 8 or 9 percent a year, but they don't. And that's the whole point: in order to get yields of that magnitude, you need to swim in much murkier waters, investing in countries whose abilities to repay their debts on time is much less certain.

When investors are evaluating whether or not to buy a particular country's bonds, the only thing they care about is if the country is going to be able to make the requisite payments. Politics enters into the equation not in any kind of comparative analysis of "values," but in an analysis of stability (i.e. "will this country's government get overthrown before the last payment is due"). A stable autocratic government is, from the market's perspective, greatly preferable to an unstable democratic one. And vice versa. The merits of democracy or authoritarianism are entirely beside the point, and what matters first and last is the ability to pay.

That might seem exceedingly obvious, but as basic an overview of the bond market as that is, it appears to be substantially beyond the expertise of Ukraine's current Prime Minister, Arseny Yatsenyuk.

Yatsenyuk has, for reasons I can't even begin to grasp, made a large number of public statements about how "unfair" it is for the country to be saddled with the debts of the old regime. In recent comments, Yatsenyuk said the following:

"Private creditors need to realize they need to contribute and support the Ukrainian people...the government will do everything in order to lift this huge debt burden that was made under the Yanukovych regime... [Investors] were all aware they can easily go into arrears as they financed an entirely kleptocratic pro-Russian president"

In an interview with CNBC, Yatsenyuk struck a broadly similar note, encouraging investors to understand that a haircut on bond payments was "their contribution to the Ukrainian people" while also whining that "the former regime of Yanukovych collected $40 billion and we succeeded in collecting only $25 billion."

The reason why "the former regime of Yanukovych" was able to raise more money than the current one was because investors had greater faith in the ability of that government to service its debt obligations. And, on the merits, that seems like the right decision: Ukraine is currently an economic disaster area, and it is already on the brink of technical default. Why on earth would an investor have any faith whatsoever that such a government could pay its debts?

Not to strike too bloodless a tone, but investors do not have an interest in "contributing to the Ukrainian people." That's not what a bond investor is doing. If someone wants to donate money to help the Ukrainian people (a perfectly worthy endeavor) they should not go out and purchase Ukrainian government debt. Instead they should donate to a charity, an NGO, or a non-profit. Heck, they could even cut the Ukrainian government a check if they felt like it.

But investors are not running a charity. They are trying to make money. As such, they have been predictably unmoved by the Ukrainian government's paeans to "European values" and "democratic choice." Those aren't on their list of concerns.

You don't have to revel in any of this. I suppose that it would actually be pretty nice if the international capital markets punished "bad" countries while rewarding "good" ones. But that doesn't happen. Even today, Russia pays less to borrow money than the country that its troops have invaded.

Now, in comparison to several years ago, investors have actually soured quite dramatically on Putin's Russia. But they have done so not because they have come to a belated realization about the nature of the Kremlin's political values but because they have lost faith in the country's ability to pay back what it owes.

I wish the Ukrainian government nothing but luck in its struggle to move closer to Europe, but they need to be aware that they are not going to get "credit" for this from the financial world. The sooner they realize this, the better off they'll be.

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 #15
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
August 28, 2015
Ukraine Reaches Agreement With Creditors - But the Figures Don't Add Up
Ukraine secured only half the write-off it wanted and the amount involved doesn't seem enough to fill the hole in its IMF programme.
By Alexander Mercouris

An announcement on 27th August 2015 has confirmed that Ukraine has reached a restructuring deal with its private creditors.

However, as the article from the Financial Times attached below makes clear, it is far from certain that the deal comes anywhere close to meeting Ukraine's needs.  

On the face of it the agreement looks like a bad deal for Ukraine.

Ukraine was demanding a 40% haircut. It got only 20%.

Ukraine's creditors have also agreed to delay bond (ie capital) payments on the remaining debt for four years, though Ukraine will have to continue to make coupon (interest) payments at a slightly higher rate during this period.  

In return Ukraine has agreed to a GDP linked security that will pay its creditors a percentage of its economic growth after the debt repayment holiday ends in 2019.  It seems 40% of any economic growth over 4% will have to be used to pay off debt. This will be on top of any regular capital and interest payments that fall due.

That suggests a very heavy period of debt repayments after 2019, after the four year bond payment holiday ends, and when the IMF programme also ends.  

Not surprisingly the Financial Times reports worries amongst financial analysts that this may be too heavy a burder for Ukraine to bear.

Judging from the last paragraph of the Financial Times's article, Ukraine may be hoping to overcome this problem by further borrowing in the capital markets.

It remains to be seen whether lenders, once they have done the sums, will be prepared to lend it extra money.

The agreement still needs some creditors to agree. The pressure on them to do so will however be so great that it is a virtual certainty they will do so.

The agreement does not cover the $3 billion payment on the eurobond held by Russia, which matures in December.  

What are the implications of this agreement?

Firstly, though the IMF is backing the agreement (it has no other choice), it is far from obvious that the sums add up.  

The IMF's latest programme assumes a reduction of Ukraine's total debt repayments over the duration of the programme of $15 billion.  

The Financial Times says the total amount of debt at issue in the negotiations is $18 billion, and says the value of the haircut is $3.6 billion (20% of $18 billion).

TASS says the total amount of debt at issue in the negotiations is $19.2 billion, and says the value of the haircut is $3.8 billion (20% of $19.2 billion).  

TASS may be giving the more accurate figure.  The Financial Times also says the total value of the write off is "close to $4 billion" - which seems more consistent with TASS's $3.8 billion figure than the Financial Times's $3.6 billion.

There is no information on how much Ukraine will save as a result of the cancellation of the interest payments for the debt that is subject the haircut. Nor do we know how much relief it will get from the four year bond payment holiday.

However, on the face of it, whether the haircut is worth $3.6 billion or $3.8 billion, the sums look too small to come anywhere close to hitting the $15 billion debt reduction target the IMF was looking for.

Ukraine's demand for a 40% haircut by contrast would have written off £7.2 billion if the debt is $18 billion, or $7.68 billion if it is $19.2 billion, which together with cancelled interest payments and the four year bond payment holiday might have brought the debt relief target of $15 billion within sight.

More clarity will be provided as more information becomes available. However the Financial's Times's pessimism about the sustainability of what has just been agreed tells its own story.

If the $15 billion debt reduction target is not being achieved, then unless the West provides more money or Ukraine's economy suddenly improves, the IMF programme will fail.

Why did this agreement take so long to agree - especially given the immense pressure from Western governments on the creditors to settle - and why is it so unfavourable to Ukraine?

Firstly, it is important to say that it was not because the creditors anticipated that in the absence of an agreement the IMF would pull the plug on Ukraine - forcing Ukraine to settle on their terms.  

As we have previously reported the IMF - under political pressure - has said it will support Ukraine regardless of whether it comes to an agreement with its creditors or not.

Nor is it likely that the creditors thought that if Ukraine defaulted they would get all their money back through credit default swaps. These were unlikely to come anywhere close to compensating the creditors fully for the money they would have lost.

The creditors held out because what Ukraine was demanding was completely unreasonable.

Ukraine's debt is not unsustainable. The Financial Times says the total amount Ukraine must pay on its debt (public and private) is $72 billion.

This ought to be perfectly sustainable for a country that is the second biggest in Europe, has a well-educated population of more than 40 million people, and which is blessed with an abundance of natural resources, large industries, a lengthy coastline, and some of the most fertile agricultural land in the world.

By contrast Greece, with a total debt of $350 billion, is a small country, has a population of just 11 million people, has very few industries, and few natural resources.

Parallels people make between the situations of Greece and Ukraine are simply wrong. Greece's debt is obviously unsustainable. Ukraine's debt is not.

The reason Ukraine is failing to pay its debt is not because its debt is unsustainable. It is because Ukraine is chronically mismanaged and insists on waging war rather than restoring its economy by making peace.

The creditors therefore question why they should be asked to agree to huge haircuts when - provided Ukraine ends the war and sorts out its problems - it is perfectly capable of paying them the money it owes them.

The Financial Times explains the creditors' position clearly:

"Bondholders had rejected Ukraine's assertion that they must take a 40 per cent upfront loss, arguing that the country's problems were mutable and that a temporary freeze in debt payments would be a better solution, delaying a final deal until political and economic problems calm."

Ukraine did not help its case by acting as if the creditors were under some sort of moral duty to write off the debt; and by constantly complaining that it was spending more on debt payments than on defence - leading to the inevitable suspicion that it was intending to use any money saved on debt payments to fund the war.

The result is what looks like an unsatisfactory outcome both for Ukraine and the IMF.  Given the political pressure they will doubtless press on with their programme, but the sums do not look like they add up.

Recent news of the deterioration of Ukraine's economy anyway calls the IMF's whole programme into question. Even if a much bigger haircut had been agreed it seems unlikely the sums offered are anywhere near enough to turn Ukraine's economy round.

It seems only capital controls are preventing the Ukrainian currency's complete crash, and without a political breakthrough leading to an end the war there must be a question over how long the situation can hold.

In the short term this unsatisfactory agreement must however increase the possibility that Ukraine will look for some way to default on the $3 billion eurobond it owes Russia, which matures in December.

The Russians have categorically ruled out any restructuring of this debt, a position they have just reiterated.  

Given the financial pressure they are under following an agreement that fails to meet their needs, there must now be strong pressure on the Ukrainians to default on this debt, and certain comments made by Yatsenyuk suggest as much.

As I have discussed previously, if Ukraine defaults on this debt bitter legal disputes will follow, with the Russians insisting that it is public debt and the Ukrainians arguing - implausibly - that it is not.  These disputes alone might suffice to derail the whole IMF programme.

Regardless of what happens to this particular debt, Ukraine's position, following what looks like a deeply unsatisfactory agreement, looks grim.
---

From the Financial Times

Ukraine has secured an agreement to avert default and restructure billions of dollars of government debt in a deal that could see international investors write off close to $4bn.

Creditors, including San-Francisco based Franklin Templeton and Brazilian investment bank BTG Pactual, have accepted the proposal for a 20 per cent haircut on $18bn of the embattled country's bonds as well as delaying debt repayment by four years.

In return they will receive a GDP-linked security that will pay holders a percentage of Ukraine's economic growth from 2021.

However, questions remain over whether the hard-won deal, which is supported by the International Monetary Fund, will result in solvency for the country, as conflict with pro-Russian separatists imposes a heavier than expected toll on the economy.

"Ukraine could face further liquidity issues when the IMF programme is over so the extension of debt repayments is crucial," says Vadim Khramov, strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Under the plans agreed by Ukraine and creditors, bond repayments will be extended by four years while coupon payments will be slightly higher than the current 7.2 per cent average at 7.75 per cent. A GDP-linked warrant will be provided from 2021 to 2040 that will pay out up to 40 per cent of the value of annual economic growth above 4 per cent, although total payments will be capped at 1 per cent for the first four years.

The haircut on government bonds could mean immediate debt relief of up to $3.6bn. However holdouts on some bonds are expected by analysts, including Russia's $3bn bond due to mature in December.

Kiev's deal to restructure its $72bn government debt burden follows months of negotiations with investors who hold close to $9bn of Ukrainian bonds.

Although the creditor committee of Franklin Templeton, T Rowe Price, BTG Pactual and TCW have agreed to the plans with the Kiev government, other bondholders will need to be persuaded of a deal in order for a majority to agree relief on each bond.

Once the plans are submitted to Ukraine's parliament, a prospectus will be published in mid-September and bondholders will vote on the restructuring proposal. The timing means that repayment of a $500m bond due on September 23 will be suspended while creditors consider the plans.

In August officials from Kiev, including US-born minister of finance Natalie Jaresko, flew to San Francisco, home city of Franklin Templeton, for emergency meetings as an upsurge of fighting with Russian-backed separatists controlling breakaway eastern regions of Ukraine focused attention on the deal.

Bondholders had rejected Ukraine's assertion that they must take a 40 per cent upfront loss, arguing that the country's problems were mutable and that a temporary freeze in debt payments would be a better solution, delaying a final deal until political and economic problems calm.

Relations with private sector creditors had soured since spring as the two sides clashed over the question of whether investors must write down their holdings in order for Ukraine to meet the terms of the IMF's four-year $17.5bn bailout, designed to take the country's debt below 71 per cent of GDP by 2020.

Earlier this year Ukraine took the highly unusual step of passing a bill in parliament that allows the government to halt payments on some foreign debts by declaring a moratorium, a term described by one international credit lawyer as "a polite word for default".

The IMF alluded to the uncertainty in early August when it reiterated that although it expected Ukraine's debt operation to be completed, it was willing to support the country even if debt discussions failed and a moratorium was imposed.

However, the repercussions of Ukraine defaulting on its debt would have been severe.

Ukrainian bonds, issued under English law, contain cross-default clauses that mean missed payments on one can trigger default on all, allowing bondholders to demand repayment, drag a country into lengthy legal battles and exacerbating existing economic problems.

S&P, the credit rating agency, said that a sovereign default would also worsen already tight liquidity in Ukraine's banking sector, triggering panic-driven deposit withdrawals.

If Ukraine succeeds in a debt restructuring it could plausibly return to international debt markets within a year, said Yerlan Syzdykov, head of emerging markets debt at Pioneer Investments. The country has said that it plans to come back to the market by 2017.

Market prices for Ukrainian bonds have recovered in recent weeks as hopes rose that the country would avoid default, with a Ukrainian $2.6bn bond due to mature in 2017 trading at 57.4 cents on the dollar ahead of talks, up from 39.5 cents in March.

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 #16
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
August 28, 2015
Ukraine's wartime privatisation
Sergei Kuznetsov in Kyiv

Desperate to raise money, the Ukrainian government is determined to start a massive privatisation campaign before the end of this year. A total of 345 companies are on the list, including some of the state's most attractive assets. But will there be any buyers? The economy is in meltdown and there is war in the east of the country. The risk appetite of a potential purchaser will have to be very high or the price on the assets very low if the gavel is to fall on any deals at all.

Some buyers will certainly be tempted, as there are very attractive assets on the list that includes power plants, ports, coalmines, agricultural firms, and horse- and fish-breeding farms. The authorities are ready to sell 302 of the companies straight away, while the remaining 43 will be sold after the parliament approves amendments to relevant Ukrainian laws.

"The government is [too] focused on managing these enterprises and not on more important things like improving the [country's] business climate or creating necessary regulations - that is why we want to sell controlling stakes in these companies," Adomas Audickas, a Lithuanian-born senior advisor to the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, who previously helped manage state property reforms in his country, tells bne IntelliNews.

Ukraine already has a petty good track record of privatising state property since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The trouble was that many assets ended up in the hands of the country's oligarchs, in particular the energy and steel industries, with the inevitable accompanying corruption scandals. Today, the Ukrainian state still owns more than 1,800 active companies, many of which are operating at a loss: in 2014, state-run companies posted a combined net loss of UAH115.4bn ($5.26bn), according to official statistics.

"We want to conduct a very transparent privatisation [programme]," Audickas tells bne Intellinews in an exclusive interview, adding that the country's State Property Fund, the body responsible for privatisation, intends to hire international advisors for the sales of the largest assets. The caveat is that the main strategic companies, including the oil and gas network operators and the railway network, will stay in government hands.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has thrown its weight behind the "ambitious privatisation and restructuring agenda" unveiled by Ukraine's government. "Following the preparation of a priority-privatisation list of 10 state-owned companies and respective privatisation action plans, the authorities will seek adoption, by cabinet resolution, of the action plans for five companies by end-September 2015," the IMF said in its country report published in August.

Jewels in the crown

Ivan Dzvinka of Kyiv-based Eavex Capital tells bne IntelliNews that the companies set for privatisation are a bit of a mixed bag. According to him, there are companies for which there will be "considerable competition", in particular Odesa Portside Plant and the chemical fertiliser producer Sumykhimprom, but others "that would be difficult to give away for nothing, such as the [unprofitable coal] mines."

The State Property Fund wants to sell Odesa Portside Plant as soon as possible, Audickas says, adding that such a "sizeable asset in the region" is already well known to potential investors. "We expect that we will have strong competition for such kinds of assets," he believes. According to the marketing materials of the economy ministry, Odesa Portside Plant is a major chemical production company accounting for 17% of Ukraine's ammonium nitrate capacity and 19% of urea production capacity.

Due to its strategic location and connections to the chemical transportation infrastructure, the plant is export-oriented: export sales constitute up to 85% of the output, while the major export destinations are the EU and US.

The starting price for the 94.5% stake held by the state in Odesa Portside Plant will be no less than $500mn, the head of the property fund, Ihor Bilous, told a meeting of the plant supervisory council on August 18. Bilous added that ten potential investors have already expressed interest in Odesa Portside Plant, while the authorities plan to attract a global investment bank as the advisor for the privatisation by the end of August, while a road show for investors will begin in September.

Ukraine's second largest thermal power generator Centrenergo is considered another choice asset in the upcoming privatisation programme. However, Audickas underlines that the privatisation of the utility, which operates three power plants in the Kyiv, Kharkiv and Donetsk regions and has its own repair services company Remenergo, might be postponed. "Currently, the energy ministry is considering different options concerning what to do with this asset," he explains.

Not the best of times

Audickas says the authorities are relying on heavy participation by foreign investors in the privatisation campaign, and that the government intends to create the necessary conditions for competition to be as fierce as possible for these assets - something that was singularly lacking in previous rigged tenders. "In this way, we will be able to get fair prices for these assets in the current circumstances," he says.

Audickas talks a good game, but it still remains unclear if there will be any competition at all for the bulk of the names on the list, let alone a fierce fight. Given the current financial crisis and the military conflict in the Donbas region in the east, investors will likely offer lowball prices in what could end up becoming a fire sale of assets.

"It is not the best time [to privatise assets]," says Alexander Paraschiy of Kyiv-based Concorde Capital. "During wartime, interest from foreign investors is limited. An example is the Roshen group, controlled by [President Petro] Poroshenko. He promised to sell it a year ago, but wasn't able to do so, because nobody offered a good price."

Paraschiy also believes that the problem of the inefficiency of these state companies, the result of poor management and high corruption, could be resolved by passing these assets to private management companies, but keeping ownership with the state for the meantime. "Perhaps this could even be a foreign company with experience in asset management," he suggests.

While the government argues that it has no spare resources to modernise these state-owned companies and improve their attractiveness before putting them on the block, Paraschiy points out that such arguments are at odds with the government's stated desire to strengthen its position in the oil and gas field by merging assets under the management of the state. "It appears that in some aspects the state is an inefficient owner, but at the same time it could become an efficient one," Paraschiy says.

Meanwhile, Eavex Capital's Dzvinka says that the successful sale of state-owned enterprises will only work under certain conditions. "The privatisation should be fair and transparent, while the winner should not necessarily be the bidder who offers the maximum price, but the bidder who provides a plan for the company's reorganisation and development. Such a blueprint may include investment for modernisation and plans for output growth," he underlines.

Dzvinka also believes that it would be wise to have independent (preferably Western) experts conduct regular monitoring of the fulfilment of the privatisation agreements. "In case of failure to meet obligations without grounded reasons, the enterprise can be re-privatised," Dzvinka says.

No Russian money, please

The one pool of investors that the Ukrainian authorities are definitely not chasing are also some of the richest and most experienced in Ukraine: Russian investors. In April, President Poroshenko urged the leaders of the parliamentary coalition factions to "limit participation by beneficiaries of Russian origin".

Russia is considered an aggressor state by Ukraine given its annexation of Crimea and support for the rebels in the east, and the Ukrainian government has prepared a law that bans the participation of Russian capital in the privatisation process, Audickas explains. "If the law is approved by parliament, companies that represent the aggressor country will not be able to buy assets. We hope that the law will be passed soon," he says.

However, Paraschiy points out that imposing restrictions on participants from any particular country of origin is not a simple task. "It's possible to register any holding in Europe today," he says. "However, it is possible to limit the share of direct or indirect participation by a given state. For example, earlier there were limits on admission to the competitions, according to which the potential investor could not belong to any government by more than 25%."

Another thorny issue is making good on the promises made by politicians to limit the involvement of Ukrainian oligarchs keen to expand their empires during privatisations. Poroshenko has launched a campaign to defang the oligarchs and already openly clashed with some of them, such as Ihor Kolomoisky and Dmitry Firtash. Allowing these industrialists to further concentrate more of the country's best assets in their hands would certainly raise money quickly, but is unlikely to be healthy for Ukraine's long-term development. "This is a more complicated issue - it will be difficult to create a law that discriminates against local investors," Audickas notes.

Paraschiy warns that the government's intention to sell state-owned minority stakes in many energy distribution and generation companies would provide an opportunity for oligarchs "to concentrate the final stakes" in those companies already in their hands. "But probably this is the right thing to do, as these packages do not add anything for the state," he says.

In general, Paraschiy believes that any plan to prevent certain local investors from participating in the privatisation process sound "very strange". "Firstly, who will participate if there are no foreign investors? Secondly, it is unclear how exactly the oligarchs will be screened in the competition. It is not a Western practice. In any case, there is an Anti-Monopoly Committee, which, as in any other country, must give the green light for any transaction to be finalised. This body should examine all the possible risks of concentration and monopolisation," Paraschiy explains.

Ultimately, the need by the government to raise a lot of cash quickly could trump all other considerations. With an economy in free fall, debt rising above 100% of annual GDP, and recalcitrant creditors unwilling to write off some of that debt, a healthy dose of money from selling assets would be a huge help in stopping the rot.

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 #17
Kyiv Post
August 28, 2015
Russian flags found in Odesa police chief's office during arrest for corruption
By Allison Quinn

The Odesa city police chief has been detained for allegedly taking a $20,000 bribe, and prosecutors say they stumbled upon a makeshift shrine to Russian law enforcement in the suspect's office when he was arrested.

Ukraine's top military prosecutor, Anatoly Matios, announced the news on his Facebook page on Aug. 27, posting photos of the Russian paraphernalia, which included several banners of Russia's Interior Ministry.

"The Russian Interior Ministry is closed! These are the banners of the aggressor found in the office of the detained Odesa police chief. I'm ready to exchange this wannabe Russian cop for our heroes in captivity," Matios wrote.

Although Matios does not identify the suspect in his post, the official website of the Odesa city police lists the head as Oleg Makukha, a Donetsk native appointed to the position on July 1.

The press service for the Odesa police department told the Kyiv Post they were "conducting an investigation and looking into" how Makukha could have had pro-Russian flags displayed in his working office without any colleagues calling attention to it.

As for the corruption aspect of the case, the bribes allegedly accepted by the police chief were in exchange for "resolving corporate conflicts" involving property deals, according to Matios.

Odesa Oblast is widely seen as the epicenter of the country's fight against corruption, with new Governor Mikheil Saakashvili bringing a team of Western-educated professionals and Georgians to reform the city and region.

Sasha Borovik, a Western-educated adviser to Saakashvili who has been outspoken in demanding full reforms, was unavailable for comment on what the governor's next move would be to stamp out corruption among the police.

But Saakashvili responded to the scandal on his Facebook page on Aug. 28 by describing the Odesa police force as a "well-organized criminal syndicate." He said the latest corruption case proved it was time to rid all law enforcement and government agencies of corrupt officials.

"From my point of view, we need to completely dismiss them (the police force) and organize the force anew. On this step, together with (Interior Minister) Arsen Avakov we will create a special branch within the Interior Ministry, the employees of which will be selected very carefully, and they will tackle corruption inside the administration and the police," Saakashvili said.

The governor's plans for restructuring the police force are nothing new, having been on the agenda since he took office on May 30.

Police reforms are part of a wide package of reforms in the region, with the new patrol police having hit the streets on Aug. 25.

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#18
Putin to lead Russian delegation at 70th session of UN General Assembly

MOSCOW, August 28. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin will lead the Russian delegation at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly that will be held in New York City in September.

A presidential resolution on this point was published on Friday at the official portal of legal information.

The document confirms the delegation consisting of 10 people and led by the president. Among other delegates are Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his deputy Gennady Gatilov, presidential aide Yury Ushakov, Federation Council's International Affairs Committee chairman Konstantin Kosachev, State Duma's Committee on International Affairs chairman Alexey Pushkov, Russia's Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak, Russia's envoy to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin, Foreign Ministry's department of international organizations head Alexander Pankin and Foreign Ministry's department on non-proliferation and arms control director Mikhail Ulyanov.

The 70th session of the UN General Assembly will open in New York on September 15. In the framework of the session, a summit will take place on September 25-27 where it is planned to adopt a resolution on development agenda after 2015. The session will finish its work on October 6.

In recent years, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has been leading the Russian delegations to the General Assembly sessions. President Dmitry Medvedev addressed the UN in 2009.
Vladimir Putin attended the opening of the General Assembly session in 2005 when the organization turned 60 years old.

Putin, Obama may meet on sidelines of UN General Assembly session

US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland earlier told TASS that she couldn't make any official announcements regarding possible contacts between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Barack Obama.

"I don't have anything to announce today. Obviously, those will be White House decisions to make," Nuland said, noting however that the US government expected President Obama to participate in "a number of multilateral events" on the sidelines of the UNGA session that coincides with 70th anniversary of the founding of the world body. "Some of them may bring the President [Obama] and President Putin together," she said.

The diplomat added she believed "what's most important now, particularly with regard to the situation on the ground in Ukraine, which has become more dangerous over the last few weeks, is that we use time between now and UNGA to communicate clearly, to seek a de-escalation, to conclude the heavy weapons withdrawal that Minsk calls for, so that we can get back to the rest of Minsk implementation."
 

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 #19
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
August 28, 2015
Russia's Foreign Ministry's new press head is a breath of fresh air
Experts and journalists have been commenting on Maria Zakharova's recent appointment as head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Press and Information Department. Zakharova has asked journalists to view her social media posts as an expert opinion rather than as ministry statements.
Nikolay Surkov, RBTH
 
Maria Zakharova is the first woman to become the official spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Her appointment was announced on Aug. 10. In the post, Zakharova has replaced Alexander Lukashevich, who has been appointed Russia's permanent envoy to the OSCE.

Prior to her appointment as head of the ministry's Press and Information Department, Zakharova served as its deputy head and a personal PR manager to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. She accompanied him on foreign trips and regularly posted mobile-phone pictures of the minister taken in an informal setting. As a result, one of the strictest, from the point of view of protocol, ministries has developed a human touch.

However, her breakthrough achievement is considered to be the ministry's foray into social networks in February 2013. Zakharova herself likes to recall the incident when the Russian Foreign Ministry website was down because of a hacker attack and for a while its main window to the outside world was the ministry's Facebook account.

Zakharova has promised that after her promotion, active work in social media will continue.

"The language and communication style there are quite different, so addressing social network users with the Foreign Ministry's proverbial concern and expressing emotions that diplomats express in quite restrained language ... - we simply realized that the audience were expecting something different from us. I think this genre will survive too because it is in demand and it has been received very well," Zakharova said in an interview with the TASS news agency.

However, writing on her own Facebook account on Aug. 22, Zakharova asked journalists to view her personal social media posts as an expert opinion, not as official statements from the Russian Foreign Ministry.
 
Diplomatic revolution

In the past 12 months, Zakharova has been a frequent guest on TV and radio. She attributes this to the Ukrainian crisis and to tensions in Russia's relations with the West.

"Because of the crisis in Ukraine, foreign policy has entered every household. That crisis has cut right through our lives. No other crisis has been so painful for our people. Russia and Ukraine are a single body. Half of my family have Ukrainian surnames and I spent my childhood listening to my grandfather singing Ukrainian songs," she said in an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

In a comment for RBTH, journalist Yury Paniyev, who heads the foreign politics desk at the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper, said: "Maria is incredibly hard-working and respects journalists. I remember when she was heading the press service of the Russian mission to the UN in New York, it seemed the notion of sleep was quite alien to her.

"During the so-called ministerial week, when heads of state, prime ministers and foreign ministers from all over the world come to visit the UN headquarters, Maria would work nearly 24 hours a day assisting the Russian envoy, Vitaly Churkin, but also willingly responded to requests and queries from journalists covering the work of the General Assembly."

Political analyst Dmitry Babich, a regular contributor to the International Life magazine, a specialist publication for Russian diplomats, points out that "Zakharova's appointment is symbolic."

According to Babich, Russia has been "constantly under attack" for the last year or so and it is necessary to respond "robustly" to these attacks, at the same time making sure that the Russian position is made clear.

"Zakharova is a symbol of a new tactic of the Russian Foreign Ministry, of its new style. In order to put the essence of Russian foreign policy across to the general public, a new, striking and exciting personality was needed," he told RBTH.
 
Social network interview

The fact that Zakharova's appointment signifies more changes to come is obvious from the way she gave her interview to RBTH. Many Russian journalists remember too well how a mere five years ago, in order to receive an official comment from the Russian Foreign Ministry, it was necessary to file an official application and then wait, sometimes for a couple of days.

These days arranging an interview is not an easy thing either, but for the sole reason that Zakharova is so busy. In the end, she gave a brief interview for RBTH via Facebook messenger.

RBTH: What scares you the most in your new job?

Maria Zakharova: Lack of time.

RBTH: How do you feel about some media presenting you as 'the new face' of Russian foreign policy in addition to Sergey Viktorovich [Lavrov], a less formal but at the same time a more gutsy one?

M.Z.: Coming up with pithy and striking comparisons and metaphors, especially when speaking about 'newcomers', is part of the media's job description. So I am quite understanding. The main thing is not to allow metaphors to replace the essence of journalism, i.e. objectivity.

RBTH: Which stereotypes about Russia do you think should be broken?

M.Z.: In my view, journalists, in principle, have no right to use stereotypes. Otherwise, they are not journalists but propagandists.

Will you continue going to the gym? Do you have a favorite sport?

M.Z.: Yes, I will. I like roller-skating, cycling, swimming and shooting.

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 #20
US demarche against No. 3 in Russian politics harms bilateral relations
By Tamara Zamyatina

MOSCOW, August 27. /TASS/. The United States' demarche against No. 3 official in Russia's political establishment - the decision to issue a restricted visa to Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of the Federation Council (upper house of parliament) - is a clear sign Washington is reluctant to mend relations with Moscow, which aggravates the no easy international situation still further, polled experts have told TASS.

A delegation of Russia's Federation Council was to take part in a session of the Inter-Parliamentary Union on August 31-September 2 at the UN headquarters. The question of granting a visa to Matviyenko, included in the US sanction list, had remained suspended for a long time. "The visa that was issued after repeated procrastinations sets a number of impermissible restrictions regarding Matviyenko's presence in the United States. For instance, she was prohibited from attending any IPU meetings or other activities. In a situation like this a visit by the Matviyenko-led delegation to New York became impossible," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Deputy chairman of the Federation Council's international affairs committee, Andrey Klimov, has told TASS: "The United States jumped at the opportunity to point out that formally the IPU is not an organization within the UN system. In the meantime, the IPU is twice older than the United Nations and unites legislators from nearly all countries, while the United States is not its member." Klimov remarked that such actions by the US authorities were unable to resolve either the Ukrainian problem or any issues in bilateral relations.

The director of the Institute of US and Canada Studies under the Russian Academy of Sciences, Sergey Rogov, says Washington's demarche against a politician who is number three in Russia's political establishment is unprecedented. "Even in the Cold War years Washington and Moscow maintained inter-parliamentary contacts and delegation exchanges. Of late, the US Congress terminated all contacts with Russia's parliament," Rogov told TASS.

"The introduction of individual sanctions against both houses of the Russian parliament violates the spirit and letter of international agreements concerning the activities of inter-parliamentary organizations. This situation heralds an unmistakable U-turn towards the Cold War era. Washington leaves no room for mending bilateral relations, but on the contrary takes ever more steps to turn them from bad to worse. One can expect that after the presidential election in the United States the White House will take a still harder line," Rogov said.

Asked about US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland's remark in an interview to TASS the United States would cooperate with Moscow "where our interests are aligned," Rogov said: "Washington turns to Moscow there where its own policies are stalled, for instance, in Syria." Rogov recalled that Barack Obama four years ago said that Syria's President Bashar Assad must step down. But that has not happened to this day. Moreover, Syria has been plunged into civil war and saw the emergence of a terrorist Islamic State, which is a menace to the whole world.

"Washington has been maneuvering and trying to get Russia involved in the solution of the Syrian crisis. US Secretary of State John Kerry met with President Vladimir Putin in Sochi last May precisely for this purpose, and the United States' new special envoy for Syria, Michael Ratney will visit Moscow at the end of August," Rogov said.

Some in Russia's Federation Council have suggested expanding Russia's counter-sanction list in retaliation for Matviyenko's disrupted visit. Says Rogov: "It would be wrong to yield to emotions and stage a contest as to who can slam the door shut with a louder bang. Such measures can achieve nothing in bilateral relations. Making public comments in response to Washington's unfriendly moves is necessary. But efforts to push ahead with really constructive policies must never ease."

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#21
Euromaidan Press/Radio Liberty
http://euromaidanpress.com
The state of Ukraine's Armed Forces
By Oleksandr Lashchenko, Radio Liberty

In his speech on Ukrainian Independence Day, August 24, President Poroshenko reported that almost 2,100 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed as a result of Russian aggression and emphasized that Ukraine's war for independence continues. The core question is if the Armed Forces of Ukraine are ready to defend the independence of the state. Oleksandr Lashchenko posed the question during an interview on Vasha Svoboda (Your Freedom) to two men with extensive knowledge of Ukraine's military: Yuriy Biriukov, adviser to the President of Ukraine, assistant to the minister of defense and founder of the volunteer military support group Wings of the Phoenix, and Yuriy Butusov, one of the best military journalists in Ukraine, who has written extensively on the Ilovaisk tragedy.

Q: After almost a quarter of a century is this the first independence day where Ukraine actually has real Armed Forces?

Biriukov: The last two years, yes. It would be difficult to say that there were any Armed Forces of Ukraine since the 2000s. In the early 1990s they still existed because they had been inherited from the USSR. And then they were destroyed; they were cut and cut. The height of the destruction of the army occurred during 2008 -2013. The army was reduced, the brigades and the most combat-ready parts were destroyed. The best initiatives with positive results were cancelled.

Q: Mr. Butusov, what do you think?

Butusov: Yes, of course. Now the army can be called an army. Because previously it was being destroyed. During the past 23 years there was practically no army. It did not hold maneuvers. It did not participate in military activities. Right now we can see that in 1.5 years of war a significant number of fighters and commanders of the lower and middle ranks have gained experience. The talent pool, the personnel resource is unique and can provide the basis for carrying out a real reform of the Armed Forces in a very short period of time.

Q: Almost exactly a year ago, also on Independence Day, the Russian invasion took place, a stab in the back with an insidious, undeclared war. I remember your post from a year ago. Today you again pointed out on Facebook that this was in reality an invasion by Russian troops. At that time there was a different Ukrainian army that could not resist. But now, after a year, if Putin again dares to repeat similar actions will the Ukrainian army be able to resist?

Butusov: Basically last year the problem was not at all in the army. These were simply decisions that are now being investigated by the military prosecutor and have received a proper appraisal. I expect that decisions will be rendered in court very soon , during a court hearing. There were basically not problems in the combat capability of Ukrainian troops. These were problems of command, problems with orders, and people were carrying out their duties with the same dedication as they did afterwards. Of course there were weak links. Some people became frightened, some fled, but the ones who were encircled were those who had not fled, who stood there till the very end and who were carrying out orders till the end.

This is a problem of operational management and the fact that, unfortunately, the same people who commanded the army for 23 years are still in command today. The ones who are incapable of competent command, who do not meet modern requirements. These are clans of generals who should have been exchanged some time ago for those commanders who have real combat experience.

Q: Mr. Biriukov, do you agree?

Biriukov: No one has ever denied the presence of clans of generals nor the fact that with the exception of one general, who appeared only yesterday, all the inherited generals to a greater or lesser extent were still trained in the USSR. Yesterday the first truly Ukrainian general appeared. It is Oleh Mikats, who had already completed higher military education in Ukraine ...

Q: Participant in the battle for the Donetsk Airport ?

Biriukov: Yes he was. As to the fact that everything was bad on the level of the generals - it was bad. But things were bad everywhere, in everything. In principle the process has already started. During this year - I don't have the exact numbers - dozens of squadron commanders have seen combat and a number of the combatants have become brigade commanders, and the brigade commanders have already moved to the Operations Command of the General Staff. And now we already have four generals, former brigade commanders of combat brigades who have become generals and now are beginning to work as generals.

Yesterday there was one more general who is not well known. He is the head of the Military Medical Department, a colonel, a practicing surgeon, who has hundreds of operations under his belt, including during ATO (Anti-Terrorist Operation). He also received his general's stars yesterday.

Therefore, the process continues. It is not as rapid as I and others would like. But, objectively, we have to understand that we do not have that many experienced military people with operational and strategic levels of education.

Q: Mr. Butusov, you have sharply criticized what is happening in the Armed Forces. When the fourth wave of general mobilization began, the first one this year, you wrote in Facebook that 104,000 of Ukrainian soldiers will be replaced by another 104,000 soldiers without decent training. Now the sixth wave of mobilization has ended, the last one this year so far. Do you still think the same way?

Butusov: No, I had a slightly different position. I believe that it is necessary to create and carry out mobilizations after creating a vision that is called for by several regulations in Ukraine. There is a doctrine on the use of the Armed Forces of Ukraine that covers where and why they should fight. On this basis a program for the development of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is prepared and this is what needs to be approved. And on the basis of this program of development there is also the armament program. Of course other regulations are included under these programs.

On October 15, 2014, the president ordered that a new program to develop the Armed Forces of Ukraine be created as soon as possible as well as a new armament program. Unfortunately, none of these regulations documents have yet been approved.

Q: By the Verkhovna Rada?

Butusov: This needs to be developed by the General Staff and approved by the president. None of these documents has been adopted so far. Therefore, we approve a budget for the army without approving a vision of how to build it, how to develop it.

Q: Therefore, in your opinion, after 1.5 years of a continuing war that doesn't stop for a single day there is still no vision?

Butusov: The presidential decree called for it and it still hasn't happened. Because of what is happening? Why do we have such problems in the army? Why is there such chaos and disorder at the supply level? Because we are making arrangements for the army without a vision, creating new units that are not given necessary material support. The army budget is for 230,000 people. In fact, by presidential decree it has been increased to 250,000, and presently it has 280,000 people! Because the most recent wave of mobilization has not yet been released. But the budget is calculated for 230,000.

So, of course, under such conditions there is no real planning. And since there is no vision on the part of the leadership because the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has not yet determined what kind of army it is building. This planning demands money for something that is not envisioned. This is why, as a consequence, were have such systematic problems right down to the bottom, to the level of the soldier. But we need to build the army from the soldier, from his needs at the front. But our army is still being built still from the level of the general on down and his needs at the headquarters.

Q: Mr Biriukov, you write every day in Facebook, very emotionally, and not as an official who avoids controversial topics. You write about indisputable examples of heroism, about what is being done. However, there are enormous problems. What is currently the most important issue?

Biriukov: You have just heard what is basically 10% of the general picture. Because the defense doctrine, the program of the development of the Defense Ministry, has been completed long ago by the General Staff. But the president is not able to sign the documents because first they need to be approved by the Cabinet. And this is where the constant "back and forth" begins because we, for example, do not fully understand. Therefore, on one hand, it is clear why the Ministry of Economics, represented by the Economics Minister, needs to approve the military doctrine. And the Cabinet took 2.5 months to approve the military doctrine. This was because the economy indicated that we would not have enough money and the lawyers said something else, then the Ministry of Justice and so on. Finally the doctrine was approved two to three weeks ago.

Now comes the next step. Now this needs to be approved at the meeting of the National Security and Defense Council. And only then it is presented for the president's signature. Unfortunately, these layers of our bureaucracy usually inhibit the activity of the Ministry of Defense catastrophically.

This is what I described on Facebook. This is our struggle with the standards of military issue.The standards describe not only the types of socks and trousers that need to be given to the soldiers but also their numbers. You would think that this is a decision strictly for the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff, but no, it must be approved by resolution of the Cabinet.

Q: But Minister of Defense Stepan Poltorak is a member of the government. And you are his advisor.

Yes, but I may surprise you when I say that the first attempts to change the standards for military issue were approved not even under Heletey (previous defense minister - Ed.) but under Koval.

Q: The second defense minister after Maidan.

Biriukov: And these attempts to make changes were blocked by the Ministry of Finance, which stated there was no money. Then they were blocked by the Ministry of Justice with the argument that if the Ministry of Defense determines military issue standards then that in itself would be evidence of corruption. But no one has ever explained what exactly was the evidence of corruption

And so, in February we developed the bill and 4.5 months later we pushed it through the Cabinet, with complete approval. And then we pushed it through the Verkhovna Rada, ginving the army the right to establish its own military issue standards. And this is the way it goes with each step.

Q: One subject that comes up constantly is the possibility of having a professional army. The Commander in Chief Petro Poroshenko, while visiting Chuhuiv in the Kharkiv Oblast, stated that no country waging a real war has been able to afford such a luxury as a completely contract army. On the other hand, there are many problems.

Mr. Biriukov, I read your interviews carefully. You said in late March this year that after you visited the 79th brigade you saw the results of the fourth wave, that "10% are chronic alcoholics." You said they stated they would not fight and therefore "would drink morning, noon and night," Is there such a problem?

Biriukov: Yes, absolutely

Q: Therefore, there is a lack of money that you mention again (no money for a professional army), and then we have this problem. How do we find the "middle ground" in order to still have a battle-ready army in numbers and quality?

Biriukov: There are several initiatives, including in the Ministry of Defense, which again the Cabinet is approving with difficulty, to keep as many of those who have already served for a year and who have normal characteristics on a contract basis.

Q: This is the skeleton that Poroshenko talked about? Some 60,000 people, if I remember his statement.

Biriukov: No, we already have 60,000 in the contract army now. Plus 42,5000 officers. Therefore, we essentially have more than 100,000 people on contract with the army.  And all the calculations indicate that the ideal proportions should be 70% contractors and 30% of those mobilized and called up. So that the mobilized forces would not be used for combat but to fulfill other necessary daily functions.

Q: Not at the forefront?

Yes, the process is continuing but very slowly

Q: Mr. Butusov, Of course we will not move to a 100% professional army in one day. Our economy will not allow it. But is this transition under way?

Butusov: We, unfortunately, constantly confuse the professional army with the contract army. The president also confuses the two (as he did in his speech today) They are really quite different.A contract is simply a form of the relationship. And professionalism is the organization and professional demands and criteria. Right now these professional demands and criteria are absent in the army today. That's why we have these commanders ...

Today General Pushniakov, commander of the land forces, received the parade. Yuriy Biriukov, incidentally, with complete justification demanded that he be removed from office for incompetence.

Q: He has been awarded the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi

Butusov: He has been awarded the Order of Bohdan Khmelnyckyi! Since the beginning of war this person in the General Staff has overseen the work of the recruitment offices, the recruiters who enlist these "beings," the alcoholics, the drug addicts.

On the other hand, there is the objective picture. The General Staff has recognized that during the last wave of mobilization they were able to enlist only 60%. In the west, many leave the country for work or flee from Ukraine, for example.

Butusov: Why should we recruit an army that we can't provide for with weaponry, for example. We give valuable, expensive equipment to the untrained, unmotivated people, often to these "beings" who are incapacitated, absolutely unfit for combat.

Why does this happen? Because in the General Staff, in the Ministry of Defense, despite the presidential decree of last year (as I mention again), these basic elements of development have not yet been approved. They don't see this. Yuriy (Bociurkiv) confused the two concepts somewhat. In reality, these are planning documents; military doctrine is somewhat different. The strategic doctrine has been adopted. And this is very good. But there are concrete programs for developing the Armed Forces of Ukraine. They need to exist. If they are absent, there will be constant recruitment of completely unnecessary people to the army. The soldiers have no selection, no appropriate material supplies.

Q: Petro Poroshenko said today that Russia has 50,000 soldiers on the border with Ukraine and 9,000 military personnel in the occupied territories in the Donbas. Therefore this is altogether 60,000 Russians. Additionally, there are the fighters. So maybe it makes sense to have a smaller but more professional, combat-ready Ukrainian army?

Butusov: Yes. All the commanders at the front say the same thing. They say why do we need the dead weight of useless people?

Q: Mr. Botiurkov, Do you agree?

Biriukov: The total contingent on our side occasionally reaches 200,000. In reality it is less right now. But from that number they have formed two new corps that are undergoing training and combat readiness. So to say that there are 50,000, 60,000, 70,000 - no, there are more.

Right now we're in a defensive posture, so that's why we have reinforced the front line. Only now we reinforced it with troops along the entire front line but with somewhat inferior moral quality . I'm sorry but it's true. I saw the various units at the front. However, unfortunately I don't see other options right now. I'm not a professional soldier, and I cannot imagine how you can cover this length of the frontline with a small army.

Translated by: Anna Mostovych
Source: Radio Svoboda

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 #22
Wall Street Journal
August 28, 2015
Russia Shows Off Military Might as Budget Gets Squeezed
Drive to modernize forces gets scaled back amid economic woes, Ukraine sanctions
By THOMAS GROVE

MOSCOW-Fighter jets roared overhead this week as Russian arms firms showcased their new wares, including drones, helicopters and surface-to-air missiles, in a biennial air and space extravaganza.

But even as the country projects a muscular image, a falling ruble and weaker economy has forced the Kremlin to scale back its ambitious plans for a multibillion-dollar military modernization.

In just one example, Russia's Defense Ministry has cut the number of Sukhoi T-50 stealth fighters it will buy in its initial order from as many as 100 to 12, an official close to the defense industry said.

Opening this year's International Aviation and Space Show at an airfield outside Moscow, President Vladimir Putin promised Russia would push ahead with revamping its defense sector and equipping its armed forces with better and more powerful technology. It has already restructured its army to make it a more mobile and flexible fighting force.

"We will continue developing our country's unique capabilities in the space sector, and will bolster our leading position in the production of defense-sector aviation technology," Mr. Putin said on Tuesday.

But while Russia hasn't officially cut its budget for arms procurement or research and development, industry officials say state defense and security firms have been asked to reduce their expenditures by 10%.

Just as importantly, the rubles allocated are worth less when it comes to buying foreign parts and acquiring Western technology; Russia's currency has slumped some 20% against the dollar over the past month.

"The budget hasn't shrunk, but we can only do less and less with what we are being given," said Rafel Mirzoyan, an engineer at Concern Radio-Electronic Technologies, based in southern Russia's Stavropol region.

Russia, of course, remains a formidable power. U.S. military leaders including Gen. Joe Dunford, President Barack Obama's nominee to become the Pentagon's top military officer, have recently named Russia as the biggest threat to U.S. national security, due to its nuclear arsenal and recent aggressive behavior toward its neighbors.

In 2011, Russia started on an ambitious rearmament program to equip at least 75% of its armed forces with more powerful technology by 2020, a spending plan worth $680 billion when it was announced.

The modernization has encompassed a range of space projects, rocket programs and the next-generation fighter jet, the T-50.

But a sharp drop in oil prices has sent shock waves through Russia's economy, while Western sanctions have added additional strain on some of Russia's largest businesses, including some defense firms now on Western blacklists.

It is unclear how much Russia's plans depend on imported parts and technology that are now off limits because of Ukraine crisis. But in one high-profile blow, France this month broke a €1.2 billion ($1.35 billion) contract to deliver two warships, cutting Russia off from a much-needed glimpse at Western weapons technology.

"You can't do everything: [There are] not enough resources financially, not enough intellectual resources, not enough technological partners," said Ruslan Pukhov, director of CAST, a Moscow-based defense think tank. "You can name up to a dozen project but you can realize a maximum of five."

The International Aviation and Space Show started in 1993 and gained force over the 2000s as Russia benefited from rising oil revenues and arms importers looked to diversify away from Western weapons systems.

The Russian leader used the venue this week to host Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan and Jordan's King Abdullah II.

One item on display has become Russia's perhaps most-infamous piece of military equipment-the BUK 2ME, a missile system the U.S. government says downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 last year above pro-Russian separatist territory in eastern Ukraine. Russia's Defense Ministry disputes Washington's assessment and has put forth evidence it says shows the civilian airliner was downed by a Ukrainian fighter jet.

A salesman from the Russian defense firm Almaz-Antey, the BUK's manufacturer, described the system's finer points this week to a delegation of Tanzanian officers, dressed in dark blue military uniforms heavy with gold braid.

"It will lock on to 24 targets at once," the salesman said, pointing down at the model of the mobile surface to air missile system. The visitors were then led out to see the real thing, parked at the far end of the airfield.

A delegation of Chinese officers was also led past models of other Russian aircraft, including a Yak-130 and a MiG-35.

Since the start of tensions with the West, Russia has touted what it calls a strategic alliance with China, which may develop into plans to build a joint aircraft carrier.

A defense industry official, however, said China is raising its demands, and wants a controlling stake in the project.

"We both tout the benefits of our friendship," the official said. "But the truth is, the Chinese are playing hardball."

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 #23
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
August 27, 2015
How Russia, the West should tackle frozen conflicts in post-Soviet space
Russia Direct releases a new report that analyzes the strategic factors that could play a major role in determining the outcome of not only the Ukraine crisis, but also the frozen conflicts in Georgia, Moldova and Nagorno-Karabakh.
By Igor Rozin

With increasing tensions in Eastern Ukraine, there are now fears that the Ukraine crisis will lead to the thawing of frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet space and have grave implications for both Russia and the West. The new Russia Direct report "Frozen Conflicts in the Post-Soviet Space" outlines Moscow's major challenges in resolving these conflicts and offers a road map of how to minimize the consequences of these conflicts.

The report describes Russia's overarching security concerns in the post-Soviet space, analyzes the important factors at play in each of these frozen conflicts and provides an overview of Russia's new red lines in the region.

In addition, the RD report includes case studies of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as interviews with Vitaly Ignatiev, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Transnistria, and Sergei Markedonov of the Russian State University for the Humanities. It also provides a list of recommendations for normalizing U.S.-Russian relations from a former U.S. diplomat in Moldova, William Hill, Professor of National Security Strategy at the National War College in Washington D.C.

Hill argues that, as conflicts have broken out in the post-Soviet space, the Western strategy has been to support the territorial integrity of states such as Georgia and Moldova. However, this approach is now being tested during the current Ukraine crisis.

Frozen Conflicts in the Post-Soviet SpaceAccording to another author of the report, Nikolay Silaev, a political scientist and a Caucasus specialist from Moscow Institute of International Relations (MGIMO-University), the war in Ukraine has underlined how inherent contradictions between the former Soviet republics could turn into new conflict zones threatening the stability on Russia's borders and on the European continent more generally.

Silaev argues that Russia "plays a dominating role" in the post-Soviet space and, according to him, this is not "the result of a deliberate policy, but simply due to its overall economic, political and military power."

"This dominance will continue at least for the next decade, and will remain an important factor in post-Soviet relations," he writes.

At the same time, Hill believes that Russia, as the largest state in the region, with deep historical, cultural, economic and personal ties with the other states and peoples in the region, should play an important role in resolving all these conflicts.

"No reasonable person would argue that Russia has no interests and should have no influence in its neighbors and the states in the region," he admits.

Hill points out that, "The key objection of many Western officials and observers is how Russia has chosen to pursue those interests and to exercise that influence."

"Coercive measures, such as embargoes on Moldovan wines, fruits, and vegetables; prohibitions on Georgian wines and mineral water; or threats to reduce or cut off natural gas deliveries to Ukraine, seem more likely to make more enemies in those countries than to convince policymakers to adopt positions favorable to Russia," Hill explains.

"Such coercive reactions also provide more ammunition for that group of Western policymakers and observers which argues that Russia is simply bent on dominating the countries around it, and, therefore, must be met with further sanctions and isolation," writes Hill.

Silaev also argues that one challenge that prevents the resolution of these protracted conflicts in the post-Soviet space results from the different approaches of Russia and the West of how to deal with these problems. And both sides should admit that.

"Russia and its Western partners would be advised to recognize that they cannot be totally neutral in resolving conflicts in the post-Soviet space," he wrote. "The circumstances do not suggest a common approach to resolving these conflicts. The major international players who mediate - or claim to mediate - conflicts should remember that the prospects for settlement depend on the willingness of the parties involved."

Given that the 20-year history of conflict resolution in the post-Soviet space is littered with failed peace initiatives, "a broad, equitable and mutually-binding discussion of security in Europe is still relevant," Silaev concludes. "The events of recent years should have convinced everyone on the continent that attempts to build such a system on the basis of unilateral action by NATO or the European Union are counter-productive."

What are the Kremlin's new red lines in the post-Soviet space? Will Moscow, Brussels and Washington be able to find common ground? What should Russia and the West do to resolve the protracted conflicts in the post-Soviet space? Find forecasts and recommendations from Russian and Western experts in the full version of the Russia Direct report. To download the report, subscribe to Russia Direct:

http://www.russia-direct.org/archive?file=RussiaDirect_Brief_FrozenConlictsInThePostSovietSpace_August2015.pdf

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 #24
Moscow Times
August 28, 2015
Canada's 'Victims of Communism' Debacle
By Yakov M. Rabkin
Yakov M. Rabkin has been professor of history at the University of Montreal since his emigration from the Soviet Union in 1973. His most recent book is "Comprendre l'État d'Israël."

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been changing Canada's collective self-image. He has emphasized violent, rather than peaceful episodes, in the country's history, and had a war memorial replace artistic and literary images on the $20 bill. Now his government wants to leave an even more durable trace of its rule: a monument "to the victims of Communism."

This concrete structure is to be erected next to the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa. The project has drawn much criticism for poor artistic taste, inappropriate location and the cost of rededicating the space that was originally allocated for federal judicial institutions. The media has also noticed the project's partisan nature: it promotes Harper's Conservative party among voters of Eastern European origin, whose numbers in Canada are significant.

But this project also raises the issue of collective memory, which he is trying to mould as part of the radical transformation of Canadian society, pursued with remarkable ideological consistency ever since assuming power in 2006.

The name of the monument is borrowed from the vocabulary of the Cold War. Communism has so far been a vision, a goal, an aspired-to radiant future rather than an established reality. No government, whether in Moscow, Beijing or Budapest, ever proclaimed the victory of Communism. Ironically, it is among Cold War warriors that the term came to denote a political reality to be decried and denounced. To invoke Communism 25 years after the end of the Cold War fits in with the aggressively self-righteous rhetoric typical of the Harper government.

Collaborators or Patriots?

In the 1930s and 1940s, fascist groups were common in Europe, each hailing the supremacy of an ethnic group, a race or a nation. Not surprisingly, during the Nazi occupation of Europe they took part in massacres and other brutalities. As ethnic nationalism has regained prominence in recent years, several Eastern European governments are trying to present these same people as patriots and heroes. Today, one can find monuments across Eastern Europe, which honour these Nazi collaborators, including SS members, as "fighters against Communism."

To do so one needs to affirm a moral equivalence between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. An example of such an effort is a Museum of Occupations in Estonia, which first declared independence from Russia in February 1918, the very moment German troops landed on its territory.

The museum, which ignores that foundational occupation, focuses on Nazi military occupation (1941-1944) and nearly half a century of Soviet Estonia (1940-1941 and 1944-1991). The country is portrayed as a victim, even though the Estonian Nazi collaborators committed mass massacres of Jews, making Estonia one of the first to earn from Berlin the title of jüdenrein (free of Jews) and Estonians actively participated in the running of their republic during the Soviet period.

The museum, which one enters between the images of a red star and a swastika, conveys the idea that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are essentially one and the same.

More Than History

By trying to downplay the significance of the Soviet struggle against Nazism, the Harper government is following a trend common in countries of Eastern and Central Europe. He is redesigning the collective memory of World War II and reinforcing hostility toward Russia.

Harper has been by far the most provocative among leaders of major countries with respect to Russia and its president. Unlike Chinese president Xi Jinping who took part in Victory Day celebrations on Red Square, or German Chancellor Angela Merkel who went to Moscow to honour Soviet soldiers killed fighting her country, Harper scorned the occasion, thus helping erase from our collective memory the decisive role of the Soviet army, which fought the Nazis alone for nearly three years before Western allies finally landed in Normandy in June 1944.

While the war brought prosperity to North America, the Soviets paid the heaviest price for the victory, with 27 million killed and much of its industrial infrastructure destroyed.

Harper ardently supports ethnic nationalism, frequently anti-Russian, in Eastern Europe. His government allowed the Canadian Embassy in Kiev to become a safe haven for those taking part in the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine in the winter of 2014. Defense Minister Jason Kenney, one of the promoters of the monument "to the victims of Communism" in Ottawa, recently visited Ukraine, where he encouraged a military confrontation with Russia.

Curiously, Canadians of Chinese and Russian descent are absent from the Tribute to Liberty group, which is behind this project, even though the numbers of "victims of Communism" in the People's Republic of China and the largest national group in the Soviet Union were incomparably higher than in all the countries of Eastern Europe combined. This further reinforces the impression that the monument's goal is to target Russia.

The monument to "the victims of Communism" is also meant to discredit any left-leaning alternative to triumphant neoliberalism. Elizabeth May of the Green Party has suggested that a monument be erected to the victims of capitalism (slavery, colonialism, exploitation, etc.), which according to some estimates, would encompass more than billion people around the world. In Ottawa there is no monument to the victims of fascism and Nazism in Europe. Nor has Canada a memorial for the victims of its own colonial wars, such as the one waged in South Africa at the turn of the 20th century.

According to a survey on the CBC news website, 88 percent of respondents were opposed to the monument. As matters now stand, the Royal Institute of Architects of Canada, Heritage Ottawa, former presidents of the Canadian Bar Association and others have objected to the project. The monument may never be built, particularly if Harper loses the election on Oct. 19.

But Harper, a consistent ideologue and a consummate politician, has already changed the image of Canada in the world and is working hard to change the way Canadians see their own future and remember their past. This makes it easier to involve our country in military adventures that have brought chaos and death to thousands of victims of Canada's recent militarism in Asia and Africa. And he has been generous with Canadian lives as well: the Canadian Forces suffered, through 2010, the highest casualty and fatality ratio among member states of the coalition fighting in Afghanistan.

He has now sent military advisors to Ukraine. Harper has been true to a promise he reportedly made in 2006: "You won't recognize Canada when I'm through with it." Indeed, many Canadians no longer recognize either their own country or its redesigned history.

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 #25
www.israelnationalnews.com
August 27, 2015
Old Hate in the New Ukraine: Neo-Nazification in Progress
The shocking renaming of streets for Nazi collaborators is reminiscent of Abbas naming streets for terrorist murderers of Jews.
By Dr. Inna Rogatchi
Dr Inna Rogatchi is the writer, scholar and film maker. Her forthcoming book is Dark Stars, Wise Hearts: Personal Reflections on the Holocaust in the Modern Times. Her film The Lessons of Survival is due to the Special Film Commemorative Series in honour of Simon Wiesenthal on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of his passing in October 2015 in Israel. More: Rogatchi Films - www.rogatchifilms.org

Heroization of Villains

To mark the second anniversary of the events that mark what the current Ukraine considers its new existence, the country's officials are hurrying up the process of massive "name-lifting" of the region. Many Ukrainian cities and a massive number of streets all over the country are to be renamed by November 21st, 2015.

To complete the task, a special re-naming commission has been set up in each municipality of the country. The commissions have drafted their proposals for re-naming. To give the impression that the process is democratic in character, the proposals are announced on the sites of some, not all, municipalities, with the idea that people could read and react to those proposals. And they do.

People from Ukraine are telling us that they are terrified. "We are stunned. This is not the process of de-communisation. The recent law on de-communisation prescribed changing only the Soviet Communist names, but what's going on here is the process of total and forceful Ukrainisation, in fact. Instead of the expected 60 streets to be renamed here (in the big city of Dnepropetrovsk), they are willing to re-name 350 of them. The situation in Kiev, Kharkov and Odessa, and the other big cities with a long history is the same."

This is what we are being told by extremely worried citizens of Ukraine. Loyal citizens, just very frightened ones. We are also told that  "people here are very weary and all of them worry. People are afraid. They are depressed. People are scared on a level which they did not reach even when the conflict was in its hottest stage. Because at that stage there was a hope that it all will settle down and life will return to some sort of normality. But now people have realized that this was an illusion".

The Ukrainian officials in charge of Operation Renaming openly and serenely are declaring that "it is our only chance to get rid of everything Russian now, not just ideologically, but culturally, too, so we are very committed to implement the system of new names - and new values - into our society at this very moment" - to quote Sergey Svetlichny, the chair of the working panel of the re-naming commission in Dnepropetrovsk. His interview has been published by several Ukrainian media. He calls himself an academic.

According to the plan accepted by municipalities and publicised re-naming plans, all the main streets and avenues in the downtowns of all major cities of the Eastern and Southern Ukraine are to get the names of Stepan Bandera, Roman Shuhevich, Eugen Konovaletz,  thus glorifying the vicious murderers and Nazi collaborators  whose criminal records are horrifying and are documented in detail.

On the record: in order to call these facts "Russian, Israeli or Polish, for that matter, propaganda", one must be a certified Holocaust - and the crimes against humanity - denier.

Additionally,the proposal includes renaming big and important central streets and avenues after such vicious anti-Semitic bandits as Atamans (Cossack village leaders) Mahno and Petliura who commanded pogrom gangs in Ukraine after the Bolshevik revolution; and in whose name the Bandera militia conducted the second Lvov pogrom in July 1941 known as "Petliura Days". These gangs were notorious for their cruelty in southern and eastern Ukraine  in the 1920s murdering, robbing and raping thousands of people there and setting a vivid model for the Ukrainian 'heroes' massacres carried on in the 1940s .

Many Jewish families in those vast regions of Ukraine still remember both of those pogroms in their chilling details. Now they are supposed to live while being enlightened by the names of the criminals at their home or office addresses. It makes for nice walks through the city, too. All of the Ukrainian cities, to be noted.  

To make it all even nicer, many central streets are to be renamed in honour of every possible Ukrainian hetman (Cossack army heads), the leaders of the gangs of butchers, from the XV century onward. On their hands are oceans of Jewish and the other non-Ukrainian blood, throughout all Ukrainian history.

Upon seeing the information on the current self-re-make of Ukraine, one cannot stop to think of a similar process meticulously described in the book first published in 1944 in the USA and that became an instant world best-seller. The book's title was The Story of the Secret State, and its author was Jan Karski, a Polish hero who brought to the West the first factual account of the Holocaust (which no decision-maker was interested in at the time). In his book, Karski described how his beloved Poznan, the city of the most sophisticated Polish culture, had been Germanised  by the Nazis over a few weeks in the Autumn 1939, and what an unbearable void it had become for thousands of people there. Jan Karski was a first-hand witness of the process. Now, 75 years and three generations later, we all are witnessing the beginning of something very similar in Ukraine.

"How we are supposed to live on the Bandera, Shuchevich, Mahno, Petliura and all those bloody hetmans' streets? Our families were victims of those criminals. People here remember it all very well. This is insane," - people from Ukraine are telling us, in a state of panic.

It is also insulting, not just insensitive and frightening. What is going on there is an abrasive push of the new Ukraine's ideology which could find no one better than the infamous butchers of all Ukranian epochs, so as to infuse their citizen with a new-found patriotism. Patriotism about what? Torturing skills? the degree of hatred? the limitless cruelty?

From Bandera Street to Hitlerstrasse

The world community seems to be bothered little by this outrage. There clearly is a wave of the growing concern in the leading Western media, but all is still quite serene, at least, publicly, on the international diplomacy and political front. Well, if this is so acceptable and not worth noticing, it would be logical to expect a hypothetical re-naming the streets all over the world.

We can start with Hitlerstrasse in Berlin, Kaltenbrunnergasse in Vienna, Mengele platz in Munich, and so on.  They all were fighting for the glory of the Reich, their fatherland, were they not? Additionally, they were the ones to whom Bandera, Shuchevich and their criminals gave an oath, who recruited and bred them from the early and mid -1920s, who paid and formed their divisions, who taught and trained them. If their pupils, agents and paid workers have become heroes in the country which is supported by Europe so enthusiastically, it is logically acceptable for their masters to be proclaimed super-heroes.

The ineptness of the world's leaders with regard to the flourishing Ukranian neo-Nazification does demand answers from senior decision-makers, the blind and unequivocal supporters of the country that lost 5.3 million of its citizens in the Second World War, but decided to promote and support, in its new appearance, a blatant neo-Nazification .

Back in early 2014, when the Ukrainian conflict started to unfold, replete with neo-Nazi parties and organizations, 27 of them registered and operating in Ukraine at the time (now there are many more), we discussed  this looming problem with many senior US and European officials. Not one of them dismissed my concern; everyone did confirm that the problem is acute and worrisome. "Yes, we know about it , it is existing and worrisome", but - "We'll deal with it a bit later";  " we can assure you that  we are keeping our fingers on the pulse of it", "it is going to be under control" - that is what I was hearing from  all of them in unison . Well, is it?

Has the case of Hungary not been alarming enough, where the same problem of the rising neo-Nazi movement was left unnoticed to become a really acute phenomenon for all of Europe some 15 years later when the movement matured in a remarkable - and unchallenged - way, until it is now too late? And would not it be a bit sobering to remember that population-wise, Ukraine is four and a half times bigger than Hungary?

The young generation which will be born and grow up on Bandera street, will read and see what is on Ukrainian TV and in their text-books and will be brought up as natural fans  of the Ukrainian 'heroes', vicious murderers and zoological racists. This generation will also have a wide array of current, very active and highly profiled neo-Nazis, to help their illustrious bringing up. So, we should not be surprised at the qualities of that society within the span of a decade.

Apart from the eastern, southern and central parts of Ukraine which have become subject to Operation Renaming, it is worth mentioning that the process of thorough typonimical and historical glorification of vicious  murderers was successfully completed in western Ukraine decades ago.  All cities of the six regions ( out of 24 in Ukraine) enjoy their Bandera, Shuhevich & Co street names since the mid 1990s, plus numerous very pompous memorials to vicious Nazi collaborators whom the Ukrainian new leadership and parliament have re-qualified into  'fighters for the Ukraine's freedom and independence', also numerous museums of all sizes establishing the legacy of racial hatred and unspeakable crimes as a noble national tradition.

Many Western publications, including special monographs, such as Erased by Omer Bartov, documented that shocking reality in detail. It is a very uneasy reading. But the point is that the phenomenon has been registered and efforts were made to bring the subject into the limelight of public discussion as long, as 8 years ago, from 2007 onward. To no avail.

I remember very vividly, just a few years ago, at the beginning of the Ukrainian conflict, our Ukrainian - Ukrainian by nationality and origin - friends were terrified while saying to us:"Have you seen those giant memorials to Bandera in Lvov, and the other places of the Western Ukraine? What a horror! How on the earth is it possible? Why did you in Europe overlook it in silence and negligence? " Now the same people are looking at us with their sad eyes, living in the still nightmare-like for them reality and trying to grasp the meaning of the continuing silence of the world, with Europe so close, while the wave of the glorification of Nazism is sweeping all over Ukraine. Those people have no questions any longer. And this is alarming, indeed.

In the process of their own contribution into the matter of the national pride today, in all those cities of the Western Ukraine,  the streets already named after Bandera, Shuhevich and Co in mid-1990s, now will be re-named  -  and become  the streets of the Hero Stepan Bandera, National Hero Roman Shuhevitch, Hero of Ukraine Eugen Konovaletz, etc.  There is no limit to the striving for perfection.   

And we have not even mentioned the Jews yet. (Part II to be posted tomorrow)

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 #26
www.israelnationalnews.com
August 28, 2015
What About Those Jews? Ukrainian Neo-Nazism and Culture Offensive
The Ukraine has its own way of dealing with Jewish victims of the Nazis and current writers and scientists who do not think the right way.
By Dr. Inna Rogatchi
Dr Inna Rogatchi is the writer, scholar and film maker. Her forthcoming book is Dark Stars, Wise Hearts: Personal Reflections on the Holocaust in the Modern Times. Her film The Lessons of Survival is due to the Special Film Commemorative Series in honour of Simon Wiesenthal on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of his passing in October 2015 in Israel. More: Rogatchi Films - www.rogatchifilms.org

To refresh our memory, those fighters  and 'heroes' having streets in Ukraine renamed to honor them are responsible for the documented 88,700 (estimated 130,800) lives of Poles during the nightmare of the Volyn massacre carried on in 4,144 places in 1943; for thousands of victims of the two horrific Lvov pogroms in July 1941, with, respectively, four and two thousand people murdered in a day; for many unspeakable atrocities during the Second World War. Dry and unemotional military data documented their 'exploits' is contained in many leading military and historical archives  - such as in the Imperial War Museum (London, UK), the State Archive of the Military History of the USA, the Australian State Commission on Military Crimes during the Second World War, the archive of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, Yad Vashem, the Federal  Archive of the military history of Germany, the State Institute of Holocaust Studies of Austria, etc.

Just one quote of very many available ones: "UNA UNSO ( the Bandera and Shuchevich organisation) have been responsible for lives of 850,000 Jews, 220,000 Poles, 500,000 Ukrainian and Belorussians (civil population), 400,000 Soviet prisoners of war."

Back in mid-1990s, Simon Wiesenthal has told to me personally and on the record that from his vast experience, and his documented knowledge, "those Ukrainians who were the Nazi collaborators, were worse that the Nazi themselves in their non-stop bloody crimes, and the pleasure that they were getting from it."

The Bandera organization's Torture Manual, re-published in Poland in 1989, is an impossible read. It lists 180 kinds of tortures of the most imaginative kind. Many Polish academics were and still are working on the subject. In the publications of the Historic Institute of the Jagellon University, the list of the tortures, - applied to civil populations, including children, the elderly and women  - reaches 362. Highly recommended reading, especially if somebody is perplexed about the definitions of the terms 'heroes' or 'freedom fighters'.

In many Polish cities throughout the country there are numerous, over a dozen, tragic memorials to the victims of the Volyn massacre and the other crimes of the OUN UNA , some of those memorials are made with the chilling images of the photographs of the actual massacre. The day of 11th July is commemorated in Poland as the Day of the Victims of the Volyn Massacre.

For many years, previous Polish governments and the country's Senate (the Upper House of the Polish parliament) tried to make Ukraine recognize the crimes against humanity carried on by the Bandera and Shuchevich butchers as a genocide on the international legal level, with the latest of these attempts  accepted by the Polish Seim, the parliament, in the Spring of 2013, a few months before the start of the Ukrainian conflict. The Polish leadership is trying to address the issue even now, despite their strong general support of the new Ukraine. And one can be absolutely sure that the Polish people would ever forget the massacre against them committed by the Ukrainian nationalists back in 1940s. There are valid reasons for qualifying the crimes as the crimes against humanity. They have no statute of limitations.

There is no statute of limitations on yet another crime of the Ukrainian Nationalists - the Khatyn massacre in Byelorussia when an entire village was set ablaze by the 118th Nazi Schutzmannschaft battalion, formed in 1942 in Kiev and consisting of Ukrainian militants, with people burned alive there. The list of the crimes of the new Ukraine 'heroes' is precise - and it is a very long one.

Father Patrick Desbois, known to the world as 'The Priest on the Holocaust Mission', has found and described methodically the endless crimes against the Jewish population in Ukraine, with the crimes' perpetrators, the OUN UNA units. He does it today with doubled energy, justly outraged at the Nazism glorification in Ukraine.   

Next year, there will be the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre in Ukraine. President Poroshenko has recently signed an order to create all kinds of committees to "prepare their proposals for the commemoration". According to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive in Washington, DC, "among 1500 policemen carrying on the massacre, 300 were German members of the SS, and 1200 members of the Ukrainian OUN UNSO forces (those Bandera 'heroes')". The statistic of Babi Yar is well known: 350 000 people were murdered there from 1941 through 1943,160, 000 of them Jewish, 50 000 of them children. Any further questions on the Bandera fighters' heroism?

But as it is become known, in a truly inventive approach to history, the Ukrainian authorities and the people devoted to the operation Our Heroes in Ukraine, are preparing to commemorate also the OUN own victims of Baby Yar. It is known that 14 of them had been also killed by their comrades in Baby Yar, following the orders of the Germans who were not quite happy with the faction of the OUN that tried to be not quite subordinated to the Germans.

The ideological father of the new laws in Ukraine reworking all this outrage is the one of the new Ukrainian MPs, Jury Shuchevich, the 82 -year son of Roman Shuchevich, the one of the leaders of the infamous the SS Nachtigail battalion. SS Captain Roman Shuchevich was awarded the Nazi Iron Cross for his 'exploits' during the Second World War in Ukraine and was an Abver agent from 1926.  The fact that the son of the political leader of the SS Nachtigail battalion and the bearer of the Nazi Iron Cross is the most respected - according to the Ukrainian authorities - member of their parliament is telling all by itself. He spent many decades in the Soviet Gulag and is clearly motivated against anything Russian - he even added a new Ukrainian name to his existing name of Jury. But it is ridiculous to see how a personal vendetta has driven the policy of a country with a population of 45 million.

Recognised in his country as a political heavy-weight, Jury Shuchevich was asked recently by the very pro-governmental Kyiv Post English-language newspaper, "is it not too much glorification of the Ukrainian nationalists, with the historically known record of their activities?" The senior MP of the Ukrainian parliament  responded: "It is a very complicated question which has to be examined in full detail. But what about those Jews? Those ones who were in Judenrats, and who were after their own people in ghettos? I saw it with my own eyes. But Jews do not like to talk about it."

This year the whole world commemorates the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Were 70 years not enough time to 'examine' those 'complicated' questions in full detail? And how about this completely shameless, cynical and hateful statement that mocks the memory of victims of his father's 'exploits to the core? In today's Ukraine, Shuhevich and the like do this routinely. In Germany and many other countries, he would be behind bars for his racist incitements.  In the current Ukraine, he is a hero, like his criminal father.  This legacy is tarnishing the reputation of Ukraine in global proportions.

The Cultural Offensive

The articles in both the Ukrainian and English version of Wikipedia have been altered drastically since the beginning of 2014, and today, one will find only positive things on the new 'heroes' known to the rest of the world as the biggest haters and worst criminals in modern history.

With unprecedented zealotry in implementation of what they believe is their new cultural and ideological identity, Ukrainian authorities did not find a better solution than 'black lists'. They are enthusiastically blacklisting everything  and everyone now - people, books, films. Those lists are telling, too.

The new Ukrainian authorities have 554 people on their black list of cultural personalities, mostly Russians, but also Steven Segal and Gerard Depardieu, and even the American boxer Roy Joyce Jr. who opted to move to Russia.  Blacklisted writers, artists, actors and singers are officially declared by new Ukraine as 'imposing a threat to its national security'. The Ukrainian authorities do know how to amuse effortlessly, it seems.  Many of those very dangerous people are in their 60s, 70s and 80s; they had been the most prolific culture figures for millions of viewers and listeners for decades.  

The films with all those enemies of Ukraine, including Segal and Depardieu, are banned too, of course. The French star laughed at the ban and thanked the Ukrainian authorities for what in his view is an honour.

In comparison, the white list of those whom they listed as their friends contains 34 names. Some of them, like the famous Russian actor and poet of Jewish origin Valentin Gaft,  has declared that he had been white listed without his knowledge and  is officially asking the Ukrainian authorities to black-list him, please. Another, the cult Soviet and Russian satirist writer Mikhail Zhvanezki, also of Jewish origin, has stated that "he is stunned by the decision, and does not quite know how to treat it, to cry or to laugh."

The new Ukrainian authorities' attacks on literature and cinema are unprecedented for the beginning of the XXI century. In June 2015, the Ukrainian State Cinema committee proudly reported that "while they banned 161 films in previous months, by now the figure is 384". The ban has been carried out following the special law passed by the Ukrainian parliament in February 2015, and followed by another special decree of the president in June 2015. The law has banned for good the films produced by Russia from 1991 onward and having anything to do with police, army, special forces, etc. , including practically all films on the Second World War, on the First World War, and many historical ones. The presidential decree has banned all Russian film production from 2014 onward, including cartoons.

They are banning books and banning writers en masse and they are banning the film versions of their own Gogol - who wrote in Russian and escaped from his place of birth first to St Petersburg and then to Italy, and their own Bulgakov for 'unfavourable depiction' of Ukrainians.

The world is stunned. Reporters Without Borders has issued an official statement in this regard: "Banning of any media, films or books cannot be tolerated and shall not be practiced. This is a direct and very serious violation of the freedom of speech. We do regard the introduction of black lists and culture bans by the Ukrainian authorities as completely wrong". Johann Bier, the director of the Eastern Europe and Middle Asia Department of Reporters Without Borders has also clarified that the only exception which would justify such ban is a propaganda of terror - which had not been the case in the Ukrainian ban.

Mr Bier has also emphasised that "every case of a particular ban is due to be implemented only after an at least three-level international inspection, and strictly on the basis of the international law. It is obvious that the Ukrainian authorities did not conduct their bans in accordance with the international requirements and practice for that."

The new methods of punitive patriotism appear daily. Recently, the authorities in Kiev decided to strip the scientists who in their opinion are disloyal, or not loyal enough, of their scientific credentials - independently of when and in which country those scientists defended their dissertations and received their doctorates. Yet another punitive committee has proudly reported that they "did strip 12 scientists of their doctorates, and we will continue to apply this measure to entire scientific community here vigorously." It is amazing to observe such revival of medieval inquisitional  practices in Ukraine.  

What they are conducting is a cultural offensive. Did anyone in the current Ukrainian leadership ever hear of  Western democratic values? Tolerance, humanity, etc? Most of them were educated in decent universities, after all, albeit Soviet ones, and some of them have had some international experience, too.   Welcome to the new Ukraine.

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 #27
Washington Post
August 28, 2015
What six years of 'reset' have wrought
By Charles Krauthammer
Opinion writer

On September 5, 2014, two days after President Obama visited Estonia to symbolize America's commitment to its security, Russian agents crossed into Estonia and kidnapped an Estonian security official. Last week, after a closed trial, Russia sentenced him to 15 years.

The reaction?  The State Department issued a statement. The NATO secretary-general issued a tweet. Neither did anything. The European Union (reports the Wall Street Journal) said it was too early to discuss any possible action.

The timing of this brazen violation of NATO territory - immediately after Obama's visit - is testimony to Vladimir Putin's contempt for the American president. He knows Obama would do nothing. Why should he think otherwise?

● Putin breaks the arms embargo to Iran by lifting the hold on selling it S-300 missiles. Obama responds by excusing him, saying it wasn't technically illegal and adding, with a tip of the hat to Putin's patience: "I'm frankly surprised that it held this long."

● Russia mousetraps Obama at the eleventh hour of the Iran negotiations, joining Iran in demanding that the conventional-weapons and ballistic-missile embargoes be dropped. Obama caves.

● Putin invades Ukraine, annexes Crimea, breaks two Minsk cease-fire agreements and erases the Russia-Ukraine border - effectively tearing up the post-Cold War settlement of 1994. Obama's response? Pinprick sanctions, empty threats and a continuing refusal to supply Ukraine with defensive weaponry, lest he provoke Putin.

The East Europeans have noticed. In February, Lithuania decided to reinstate conscription, a move strategically insignificant - the Lithuanians couldn't hold off the Russian army for a day - but highly symbolic. Eastern Europe has been begging NATO to station permanent bases on its territory as a tripwire guaranteeing a powerful NATO/U.S. response to any Russian aggression.

NATO has refused. Instead, Obama offered more military exercises in the Baltic States and Poland. And threw in an additional 250 tanks and armored vehicles, spread among seven allies.

It is true that Putin's resentment over Russia's lost empire long predates Obama. But for resentment to turn into revanchism - an active policy of reconquest - requires opportunity. Which is exactly what Obama's "reset" policy has offered over the past six and a half years.

Since the end of World War II, Russia has known that what stands in the way of westward expansion was not Europe, living happily in decadent repose, but the United States as guarantor of Western security. Obama's naivete and ambivalence have put those guarantees in question.

It began with the reset button, ostentatiously offered less than two months after Obama's swearing-in. Followed six months later by the unilateral American cancellation of the missile shield the Poles and the Czechs had agreed to install on their territory. Again, lest Putin be upset.

By 2012, a still clueless Obama mocked Mitt Romney for saying that Russia is "without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe," quipping oh so cleverly: "The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back." After all, he explained, "the Cold War's been over for 20 years."

Turned out it was 2015 calling. Obama's own top officials have been retroactively vindicating Romney. Last month, Obama's choice for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff declared that "Russia presents the greatest threat to our national security." Two weeks ago, the retiring Army chief of staff, Raymond Odierno, called Russia our "most dangerous" military threat. Obama's own secretary of defense has gone one better: "Russia poses an existential threat to the United States."

Turns out the Cold War is not over either. Putin is intent on reviving it. Helped immensely by Obama's epic misjudgment of Russian intentions, the balance of power has shifted - and America's allies feel it.

And not just the East Europeans. The president of Egypt, a country estranged from Russia for 40 years and our mainstay Arab ally in the Middle East, has twice visited Moscow within the last four months.

The Saudis, congenitally wary of Russia but shell-shocked by Obama's grand nuclear capitulation to Iran that will make it the regional hegemon, are searching for alternatives, too. At a recent economic conference in St. Petersburg, the Saudis invited Putin to Riyadh and the Russians reciprocated by inviting the new King Salman to visit Czar Vladimir in Moscow.

Even Pakistan, a traditional Chinese ally and Russian adversary, is buying Mi-35 helicopters from Russia, which is building a natural gas pipeline between Karachi and Lahore.

As John Kerry awaits his upcoming Nobel and Obama plans his presidential library (my suggestion: Havana), Putin is deciding how to best exploit the final 17 months of his Obama bonanza.

The world sees it. Obama doesn't.

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 #28
Washington Post
August 28, 2015
Russia's food burning campaign is an irrational show of control
By Sergei Guriev
Sergei Guriev is a professor of economics at Sciences Po in Paris.

The "purifying fire" came as a surprise when the Russian government starting burning food and boasting about it on state television.

A year ago, the government introduced an embargo on food imports from Western countries. This embargo raised domestic food prices and contributed to a major decline in real incomes. But why isn't it enough to confiscate Western food? Why burn it?

For people raised in Soviet and post- Soviet Russia, the destruction of food is a taboo. In the past 100 years, Russia has experienced several famines. Even though there is no famine in modern Russia, more than 20 million people live in poverty. It would certainly make more sense to hand out food to them instead of destroying it. Can food burning be rationalized?

Actually, for today's Russian government, burning imports is a very rational move because it looks so horrible. The Kremlin wants to send a clear message: Yes, we can do things that you find irrational and unthinkable; do not mess with us. It is important to communicate this message inside and outside of Russia. To its supporters within Russia, the government says: The standoff with the West is a matter of principle, whatever the economic cost. (Such a statement is very timely - Russia's second-quarter gross domestic product fell by 4.6 percent over the second quarter of last year.) The Kremlin also sends a signal of self-confidence to the domestic opposition: The government can afford doing unpopular things and still remain in control.

Outside of Russia, this is a signal of commitment to the course of confrontation. The West should understand that it cannot predict the Kremlin's actions, and Western leaders should be afraid that Russia will do things that they would not dare do themselves. Coming from a nuclear power, this message sounds especially frightening.

But this is not the whole story. Food burning also demonstrates that the embargo's main goal was not to reciprocate Western sanctions. If the goal were to punish European farmers, the government would confiscate the imports and hand them to the poor - this would hurt the European exporters as much as burning the food would. Food burning benefits only the Russian agricultural lobby. It reduces the supply of food in Russia, raising domestic prices and domestic producers' profits. In this sense, food burning is not geopolitics; it is good old protectionism, fair and square. It shows that the government cares more about the agricultural lobby than Russian households.

Russia's anti-trade lobby has always been strong, but the World Trade Organization (WTO) accession in August 2012 has put it in a straitjacket. Initially, the Russian elites did not fully understand the WTO's power. Allegedly, when selling the WTO accession to leftist members of parliament, a top government official said, "You should not worry about WTO rules; we will only pretend to stick to them while continuing protectionist policies." After joining the WTO, the government introduced a "car recycling duty." It was supposed to be paid only by foreign car manufacturers - to protect the domestic automotive sector after WTO accession commitments required a lowering of car import duties. However, Russia soon discovered that the WTO is a rule-based organization with teeth. An obvious violation of rules would result in retaliation - which other members immediately told Russia. Russia had to return to the equal playing field, and the government imposed the recycling duty on domestic car producers as well.

With Russia's annexation of Crimea, everything has changed. Having sold the cow, Russia has also sold her milk. Having violated the U.N. Charter when it did so, Russia can afford to break WTO rules. Once sanctions against Russia were introduced, politically connected businesses successfully lobbied for sector-specific and even company-specific subsidies and protectionist regulations - even if they violate WTO rules. These decisions show that the government's priority is protecting the incomes of the lobbyists at the expense of Russian taxpayers and pensioners. If there are still any doubts as to whether the government cares more about the corrupt elites or about the ordinary Russians, the "purifying fire" has burned these doubts into the ground.

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 #29
Like Stalin, Putin hasn't Changed the Rules of the Game; He's Destroyed Them, Portnikov Says
Paul Goble

Staunton, August 28 - The Anschluss of Crimea and the murder of Boris Nemtsov were not continuations of the rules of the game that had existed before, with the first following the 2008 Russian actions in Georgia and the second that of murders like Galina Starovoitova and Anna Politkovskaya, Vitaly Portnikov says.

Instead, on the sixth-month anniversary of Nemtsov's assassination, Portnikov argues that "the rules of the game didn't so much change as disappear," just as happened in Soviet times when Stalin murdered Sergey Kirov in 1934 to destroy the rules up to that time and open the way to greater horrors (grani.ru/opinion/portnikov/m.243902.html).

Indeed, he suggests, it is important to see the way in which the Crimean Anschluss and the Nemtsov murder reflect this change in Russian realities, a change that threatens not only Russia's neighbors but also the Russian people and perhaps most directly the Russian elite around Vladimir Putin.

Before Putin annexed Crimea, Portnikov writes, "the Russian authorities, both under Yeltsin and under Putin, never crossed the red lines which separated conditional respect for international law from complete contempt for it."

"Yes," he continues, "they could help preserve the separatist enclave in Transdniestria, while asserting that they were for Moldova's territorial integrity. Yes, they could even recognize the fictional statehood of Abkhazia and South Osetia while asserting that they support the right of peoples to self-determination and do not have claims on Georgian territory."

With the Crimean Anschluss, "everything changed, and not only because Putin spat in the face of the entire rest of the world but because the Russian president for the first time openly demonstrated his willingness to annex to Russia the territory of the former Soviet Union." After that, "everything changed forever - Russia's relations with the rest of the world, its contacts with its neighbors and the future of the country itself."

The same thing was true of the murder of Nemtsov, Portnikov continues. "Neither Starovoitova, nor Yushenkov not Politkovsky was ever one of their own for the group of comrades who privatized Russia after the collapse of the CPSU. But Nemtsov," by his life and career, "was."

According to the commentator, "the unwritten laws of the existence of the Russian nomenklatura specify that one can defame, fine or even imprison [such people] but one cannot kill them." And that is why, Portnikov suggested, Nemtsov felt he could act in "relative security" at least until the Crimean Anschluss.

After that happened, the Ukrainian commentator points out, Nemtsov became "one of the first to speak about the possibility of his own death because he understood that there were no more rules of the game" after Putin's seizure of the territory of a neighboring country.

In reality, Portnikov argues, "this is very similar to what was the case in the Soviet Union after the murder of Kirov, only in the reverse order: first, [Stalin] began to shoot former members of the Politburo, then began mass repressions and only after that the occupation of the territories of other countries."

The Soviet dictator "consciously formed a regime in which no internal rules operated and in which each was a slave to the attitude of the dictator or simply a victim of circumstances. And Putin today is doing exactly the same thing, even though he doesn't have a tenth of the repressive resources Stalin did."

And that has the truly frightening consequence that "in the Russian future, there will be still fewer rules and logic than there was in the Soviet past," a trend that means that after the Crimean Anschluss and the murder of Nemtsov, just about anything is possible. And that in turn should frighten Putin's entourage in the first instance: they are likely to be the next victims.

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 #30
Washington Post
August 27, 2015
A small measure of justice for Boris Nemtsov
By Vladi­mir V. Kara-Murza
Vladi­mir V. Kara-Murza is the deputy leader of the People's Freedom Party, a democratic opposition party in Russia co-founded by Boris Nemtsov.

six months after Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was murdered 100 yards from the Kremlin, his killers - let alone those who directed them - have yet to face justice. The investigation appears to be stalling. One by one, the suspects have retracted their confessions. Investigators have been unable to question high-profile persons of interest from Chechnya, who appear to enjoy special protection.

Yet many of those who share responsibility for this crime are well known. The gunshots that ended Nemtsov's life were not fired in a vacuum. They were enabled - indeed, encouraged - by an environment of hatred, violence and intimidation of those who oppose Vladimir Putin's repressive policies and corruption, and his war on Ukraine.

Nemtsov was the first among them. He was vilified on government-controlled television as a "traitor," a part of the "fifth column" and an "enemy of Russia." Propagandists working for the Russian state told the public that Nemtsov was "bankrolled" by the United States; that he drew "inspiration for throwing mud at [his] country from abroad, from those who dream of swallowing, strangling and dismembering Russia"; that he was a "wretched thief" who "robbed Russia"; and that he would have "greeted" Nazi troops had they entered Moscow in 1941.

This was not journalism. This was state-sponsored incitement.

Needless to say, its perpetrators - the Streichers and the Nahimanas of today's Russia - enjoy government immunity. But there is a way to hold these dealers of hate accountable.

The Kremlin's propagandists prefer to spend their money and their vacations in the very countries they tell the Russian people to despise. This hypocrisy must stop.

The United States has a federal law - the Sergei Magnitsky Act, adopted in 2012 in memory of a Russian anti-corruption lawyer killed in prison - that denies access to the United States and its financial system to those responsible for "gross violations of internationally recognized human rights committed against individuals seeking...to expose illegal activity carried out by officials of the Government of the Russian Federation." The actions of Putin's propagandists in relation to Nemtsov meet this standard.

This year, former Russian prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and I met with congressional leaders. We asked them to include on the sanctions list the names of eight state television employees responsible for incitement against Nemtsov . They promised to raise the issue with the Obama administration.

In a May 2014 interview, shortly after Putin launched his war on Ukraine, Nemtsov urged the West to sanction Kremlin propagandists for fueling the aggression. "These are not journalists," he said. "They are fighters on Putin's amoral battlefield, they incite hatred and provoke gunfire." No one at the time could have imagined the level this hatred would reach.

Denying Putin's propagandists the privilege of traveling to the United States - with the possibility that the European Union would follow with measures - is a poor substitute for justice that these people should be facing in Russia. It is, however, a tangible step . And it is the least the free world can do to honor the memory of Boris Nemtsov.

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 #31
www.politico.eu
August 27, 2015
EU declares information war on Russia
Task force will start trying to win hearts and minds in eastern partnership countries next month.
By JAMES PANICHI

The European Union's foreign affairs department said Thursday it was launching a rapid-response team to counter what it considers biased Russian media reports.

The unit, which will include up to 10 Russian-speaking officials and media professionals from EU member states, will be fully operational by the end of September and will be part of the European External Action Service (EEAS). Officials say it is a first step in the EEAS's response to growing concern in eastern Europe and EU Baltic states about the destabilizing influence of Russian-language news reports.

The EEAS was tasked by the European Council in March with coming up with a response to what EU leaders described as "Russia's ongoing disinformation campaign," with a specific request that the EEAS establish a "communication team" as a "first step" in fighting back.

The team, which will be based in the EEAS's Brussels headquarters, falls short of requests from Latvia that the EU establish a full-blown, EU-funded Russian-language television channel, to provide an alternative source of news to Russian-speakers in both EU and "eastern partnership" countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus).

Officials Thursday stressed the limited scope of the team and were adamant its role would be to improve EU communications with Russian-speaking communities and not to be producing Brussels-funded propaganda.

"This is mostly about reinforcing our existing actions," said an EU official. "It's more about reallocating resources and doing more to reinforce that and communicate better."

The team's role would be to improve EU communications with Russian-speaking communities - not to produce Brussels-funded propaganda.
The unit, which includes Russian-language experts from the U.K., Latvia and Sweden, will be attached to the EEAS's existing communications team. The EU member states will pay the salaries of the personnel, but the unit has not been allocated a budget.

"The team will carry out media monitoring and will work on the development of communication products and media campaigns focused on explaining EU policies in the region," the official said.

However, the EEAS said it has neither the resources nor the mandate to go beyond the capabilities of the new unit and the funding of TV channels in Russian was not on the cards.

"This is not about engaging in counter-propaganda," the EU official said. "However, where necessary the EU will respond to disinformation that directly targets the EU and will work ... to raise awareness of these activities."

The unit's daily routine will consist of monitoring Russian media and suggesting ways for EU institutions to tailor their media strategy to counter Russian broadcasts, in a bid to win the hearts and minds of eastern partnership audiences.

In June, a study funded by the Dutch government recommended the creation of a Russian-language "content factory" that would produce entertainment and documentary programs, alongside news and current affairs broadcast from a "news hub."

An EU official said the department had not been approached by Euronews, a multilingual broadcaster which last year received €25.5 million from the EU, to expand its Russian- and Ukrainian-language programming as part of the EU's response.

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#32
Opednews.com
August 27, 2015
The evolution of the West's negative narrative about Russia
By Angela Borozna
Ph.D candidate in political science, writing dissertation on Russian foreign policy.
[Footnotes here http://www.opednews.com/populum/pagem.php?f=The-evolution-of-negative-by-Angela-Borozna-Media-Distortion_Media-Lies_Putin_Russia-150827-265.html]

"Now we do not have an Iron Curtain, we have a newspaper curtain. "
Evgeny Yevtushenko. [1]

Though Russia went through significant domestic changes since 1991, the extent of Russia's domestic achievements had rarely been acknowledged in the United States. Instead, Russia has been continuously criticized for not democratizing fast enough. American media ignores positive developments in Russia and concentrates on the negative. Russia made significant changes from the Soviet totalitarian system, but instead of acknowledging this progress, Russia is characterized by exploiting misleading historical analogies as 'closed', associated with the KGB, the Soviet Union, 'relentless propaganda', 'government control'. [2] The opinions of the Russian citizens on their political system or their president as well as the actions by the Russian state that do not fit the description of 'dictatorial power' are typically omitted from Western media coverage. [3] The result of this "selection bias" builds up over time to construct a negative overall image of the country and its president.

Creating an external threat perception in the eyes of the Americans and Europeans becomes an instrument of uniting the public on foreign policy issues, as expressed by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his text, The Grand Chessboard: "As America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat." [4]

The news on Russia became consistently negative after 2000. Positive developments inside Russia, or news regarding Russia's positive international involvements, were ignored while the negative news received immediate attention. A few examples from the period will illustrate this phenomenon:

William Safire's article in The New York Times in 2004 concluded: "NATO must not lose its original purpose: to contain the Russian bear." [5] In 2006, the Wall Street Journal editorial described Russian foreign policy as "openly, and often gratuitously, hostile to the U.S." and therefore it concluded that "it's time we start thinking of Vladimir Putin's Russia as an enemy of the United States." [6]

In July 2007, US Neoconservative Richard Pipes, who has been for decades a fierce critic of Russia, declared to an Italian newspaper that "For Europe, Russia could be even more dangerous than the threat of Islam, more hazardous than Bin Laden" [7] . According to Pipes, Russia is trying to regain its superpower status and will use economic tools as pressure on the European or even global economy to achieve its goals. Pipes insisted that Russia has always been hostile to the West, and that the best policy that the West should adopt toward Russia is to avoid any contact. Oil companies should stop making contracts with Russia, and banks should cut out any investments. Not surprisingly, Pipes has been a fervent supporter of the missile defense shield in Eastern Europe, which hides behind the pretense of avoiding the spread of Russian influence there. [8]

Similar to Pipes' Russophobic stance, Vice President Dick Cheney frequently characterized Russian foreign policy as threatening to the United States and therefore has been advocating a policy of isolating Russia. Other officials in the George W. Bush administration who helped to inflate anti-Russian rhetoric are the deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz, Senator Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), and Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.).

David Kramer is particularly descriptive of Russia's sins: "With this renewed sense of pride comes an arrogance, cockiness, assertiveness, self-confidence, and even aggressiveness that is combined at the same time with paranoia, insecurity, and hypersensitivity." [9] And journalist Michael Bohn sees Moscow acting out of stubbornness, and as a 'spoiler': "Now Moscow has trouble projecting its power...one way it can still project its strength globally and particularly vis---vis the United States is to be the spoiler in international affairs, a modern-day version of 'Mr. Nyet.'" [10] One must ask: What precisely is Moscow 'spoiling', and why? Said answers are tellingly avoided in much of this predominantly Western-based anti-Russian commentary.

The commentators, politicians and media personalities consistently portray a negative picture of Russia: 'aggressive', 'non-cooperative, 'imperialist' are very common descriptions in the mainstream Western media. Negative media on Russia became especially intense after the brief Russo-Georgian War of 2008, which lasted only five days due in large part to Russia.

Without an investigation of the sources of the conflict, Western media nonetheless immediately took the side of the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in the conflict and disregarded any evidence that Russia submitted to the United Nations, calling Russia the "aggressor". [11] While the Russian State's account of the event did not receive any Western media coverage, nonetheless Saakashvili's pleas for 'protection' were afforded front page positioning in major Western newspapers.

After Joe Biden visited Georgia and Ukraine in 2009, he expressed his predictions in The Wall Street Journal that Russia will collapse in no less than 15 years, given its "withering economy" and shrinking population base. [12] Biden dismissed any Russian goodwill on nuclear disarmament, attributing it to Russia's inability to maintain commitment to such a policy: "All of sudden, did they have an epiphany and say: 'Hey man, we don't want to threaten our neighbors?' No. They can't sustain it." [13]

Russian analyst, Sergey Roy, expressed the feeling in Russia toward the negative remarks by Biden on Russia:

"Biden's harangues have done more good than harm. Russia's leaders, starting with Mikhail Gorbachev, have been too gullible in their dealings with the United States and the West generally. Biden's Dick Cheney-like stance shows only too clearly the kind of "partner" with whom we are supposed to enter "a new era of mutual respect and improved relations," as promised by Obama. [14]

Walter Isaacson, the former Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which oversees US media coverage directed at foreign audiences, was very open at calling Russia an enemy. Thus, in October 2010, Isaacson called for even more money for the BBG to combat America's "enemies," which he identifies as Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and China. "We can't allow ourselves to be out-communicated by our enemies," [15] Isaacson bluntly, indiscreetly stated.

The Washington Post did not report on Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov's visit to the United States in September 2010 and Serdyukov's discussions with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates regarding boosting U.S.-Russia defense cooperation. The Washington Post also did not find it important enough to report Russia's ban on selling S-300 missile systems to Iran, which was signed by president Medvedev in the same month of September 2010. [16]

The Foreign Affairs journal ran an article by Charles Kupchan, where Russia is listed among other US enemies: Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Syria, and Myanmar. According to the article, Russia is an adversary, "a rivalry that Washington hopes to tame," it is "on the wrong side of history." Kupchan compares "recalcitrant autocrats" Putin and Medvedev to Iranian president Ahmadinejad, and Cuban President Raul Castro in their use of anti-Americanism in order to bolster domestic Russian support. [17]

In 2011, The Economist published an article entitled, "The mood of Russia: Time to Shove Off," [18] where the publication concluded that the most educated and successful Russians are ready to emigrate as a response to Russia's domestic 'situation'. The article was based on the statistics provided by Levada-Center stating that 22% of Russians are interested in emigrating out of the country. What The Economist piece forgot, however, was to compare this figure to similar figures from other nations, such as Great Britain, where said figure would be closer to 33%, or to those from Chili, where the number of people wishing to emigrate is 35%, according to a Gallup poll. [19] Mark Adomanis from Forbes responded: "The Economist does have a quite nasty habit of excluding evidence and limiting perspective when it serves its own interests, and the publication has long made clear that it considers Mr. Putin to be a figure of extreme, if not unique, malevolence." [20]

Putin spoke in 2012 about the excessive criticisms which Russia receives from the West: "Russia has been the target of biased and aggressive criticism that, at times, exceeds all limits. When we are given constructive criticism, we welcome it and are ready to learn from it. But when we are subjected, again and again, to blanket criticisms in a persistent effort to influence our citizens, their attitudes, and our domestic affairs, it becomes clear that these attacks are not rooted in moral and democratic values." [21]

Russia's efforts to restore its national pride are misread in Washington as somehow Russia's efforts toward the restoration of the old USSR. [22] Since most Russians appreciate the increased stability and security prevalent since Putin first assumed the Office of President, the ongoing criticism of Russia from Washington makes Russians wonder: "When we hear US criticism of what's going on here, it sounds to Russians as if Americans want us to be weak. They want to provoke chaos - not to democratize, but to destroy." [23]

President Putin's oft quoted phrase regarding the collapse of the USSR as "the biggest geopolitical catastrophe," got misquoted numerous times by politicians, analysts, and the media. To those who quote it, the phrase apparently signals Putin's dreams of rebuilding the Russian Empire. What Putin actually said carried a different meaning than that which is usually attached to the quote:

"The demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain. I see that not everyone in the West has understood that the Soviet Union has disappeared from the political map of the world and that a new country has emerged with new humanist and ideological principles at the foundation of its existence." [24]

American media's assault on Russia started right after Putin came to power, yet it took on new heights during the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, which coincided with the protests in Ukraine at the end of 2013. The distortions and twisting of facts to create an image of Russia as an enemy is achieved best by using the technique of 'personalization of a threat'. In Russia's case, the whole focus of attention is concentrated on the personality of Putin and his role in conducting Russia's foreign policy. 'Personalization of a threat' leads to downplaying substantive discussions of events and the role of the United States in provoking Russia's foreign policy responses. [25]

Newsweek, in its August 1 st , 2014 issue, featured a cover page with a picture of Putin alongside huge letters stating: "The Pariah: Inside the bullet-proof bubble of the West's enemy number one." The article, written by Owen Matthews gave a summary verdict of Putin's involvement in the crash of the Malaysian airline, despite no formal investigation of the accident having even taken place. [26]

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron's cabinet compared Putin to Bashar al-Assad and Muammar Gaddafi. U.K. Defense Secretary Michael Fallon accused Putin of "sponsoring terrorism" and ordered him to "get out of Ukraine." Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond warned that "Russia risks becoming a pariah state if it does not behave properly." [27] The Newsweek piece's author concludes that the Kremlin's handling of the aftermath of the MH17 plane crash completely destroyed Putin's attempts at building Russia's soft power.

Charles Krauthammer compared Putin to Hitler: "Putin is like Hitler, but he's more subtle"; Putin is challenging the idea that Eastern Europe is "free"; Putin is threatening the Baltics, trying to destroy NATO, and Obama's response to Putin is "weak". [28]

One of the more recent examples of a 'shaper' of media messages about Russia in the West is that of writer and foreign investment fund manager Bill Browder. In 2003, when Browder was still making billions in Russia, he backed Putin's decision to arrest former Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, saying, "A nice, well-run authoritarian regime is better than an oligarchic mafia regime -- and those are the choices on offer." [29] After Khodorkovsky's arrest, Browder said: "People will forget in six months that Khodorkovsky is still sitting in jail." During Khodorkovsky's trial in 2005, Browder attacked the oligarch for the same asset-stripping behavior which Browder supported and profited from, telling the BBC: "Mr. Khodorkovsky is no martyr. He has left in his wake aggrieved investors too numerous to count and is widely credited with masterminding much of the financial trickery that plagued the Russian capital markets throughout the 1990s." Browder tried to encourage Westerners to invest in Russia by writing in the New York Times: "Putin cares about foreign investors; he just doesn't care about them enough to allow one oligarch to use his ill-gotten gains to hijack the state for his own economic purposes." [30] After Browder became unwelcome in Russia, he completely changed his narrative and started demonizing Putin and Russia as a state.

Examples of negative media are too many to mention, but the main victim of this negative media coverage of Russia is U.S. foreign policy itself. Instead of trying to understand complex issues, Russian foreign policy actions and internal developments are presented in a caricatured, black and white dichotomy, resulting in mistrust and making continuing reasonable dialogue between the two nations quite difficult.

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 #33
The Joint Baltic American Committee (JBANC)
http://us11.campaign-archive2.com
August 25, 2015
DECISION 2016: The Presidential Candidates on Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltics
By ERIK LAZDINS
Erik Lazdins is a political science graduate from Grand Valley State University, and has worked at the Joint Baltic American National Committee this past summer

Russia is now waging its summer offensive at the Ukrainian front. It was a year and a half ago that Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and commenced a proxy war in Eastern Ukraine that today threatens international norms and the sovereignty of the post-Soviet sphere.

Russia justifies its aggression in the name of Russian national unity, to regain territories lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and to contain a perceived NATO expansion. As a result of this Russian hostility, over 1.3 million Ukrainians have been displaced, and over six thousand people have been killed.

The Russian-Ukrainian conflict, however, is not only about Russia and Ukraine. It also represents the fight for self-determination by all nations formerly trapped behind the Iron Curtain.

The United States and NATO allies fear that Russia will continue to violate the sovereignty of its neighbors by waging asymmetric warfare. This is especially concerning to Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia which border Russia and have large Russian-speaking populations.

Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Joseph Dunford, and recently retired Chief of Staff of the Army, Raymond Odierno, agree that Russia represents a significant threat to the United States and its allies.

"If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I'd have to point to Russia," Dunford said to the Armed Services Committee this July. "If you look at their behavior, it's nothing short of alarming."

There is a clear disagreement on strategy between the White House and the Pentagon regarding the conflict in Ukraine.

Although President Obama has slapped crippling sanctions on the Russian Federation and provided non-lethal aid to Ukraine, he has not yet supplied the Ukrainian government with the weapons it desperately needs to combat Russian aggression.

As a world leader, the United States is a central decision-maker in the crisis, and the outcome of the presidential election in 2016 will determine how the United States will respond to a militaristic Russia. Each presidential candidate must decide how the United States will answer Putin's imperialistic ambitions and deal with the crisis in Ukraine.

Some presidential candidates have addressed issues concerning Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltics more clearly, while others have remained undecided.

HILLARY CLINTON

Hillary Clinton has expressed reservations regarding the Obama Administration's strategy in Ukraine. Instead of Obama's more passive take, Clinton proposes greater financial and military assistance.

"It's a difficult, potentially dangerous situation, but the Ukrainian army and ordinary Ukrainians who are fighting against the separatists have proved that they deserve stronger support than we have provided so far," Clinton said.

Clinton has also taken a strong stance on Putin's annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, and has criticized Russia's continued aggression.

"What Putin did is illegal," she said. "It's not because we gave the poor little Baltic states NATO protection. And people need to say that, and they need to be very clear: This is a clash of values, and it's an effort by Putin to rewrite the boundaries of post-World War II Europe. If he's allowed to get away with that, then I think you'll see a lot of other countries, either directly facing Russian aggression or suborned with their political systems, so that they're so intimidated, they're in effect transformed into vassals, not sovereign democracies."

JEB BUSH

Jeb Bush has taken a hard-line stance on Russian aggression in Ukraine. He clearly views Putin as a bully and does not rule out the possibility of deploying ground troops to the Baltic countries. Bush seeks to increase U.S. military presence in the Baltics to send a stronger message to Putin.
"The numbers are, I understand, in the hundreds, and that doesn't send a signal of strength," Bush said. "We need to be more robust, and need to encourage our allies to invest more in security."

Bush expressed concern for potential aggression by Russia in the Baltic countries, about cyber warfare, and acknowledged concerns from Poland and the Baltics.

"There are things that we could do, given the scale of our military, to send a strong signal that we're on the side of Poland, the Baltics and the countries that truly feel threatened by the 'little green men', this new cyber warfare, and these other tactics that Russia now is using," Bush said. "I think we ought to consider putting troops there for sure."

Bush has advocated for greater U.S. involvement, including the possibility of sending lethal aid to Ukraine.

"I think we need to provide defensive military support, because it's very hard to make the structural reforms necessary and grow the economy in a world where there's a threat of further aggression," Bush said. "That would be the first step."

DONALD TRUMP

Donald Trump has taken a much softer position on Ukraine and Russia compared to other Republican candidates. According to Trump's view, the annexation of Crimea is a European problem.

"This is more of a Europe problem," Trump said. "And when Europe comes to us and says, 'We want your help, we want your help,' but they're not really doing that. They're dealing with Russia, they're taking in the gas, they're taking in the oil - they're not really doing that. And you know, we're making a big deal out of it."

In the past, however, Trump has advocated for sanctions on Russia to show that the United States is strong.

"We should definitely do sanctions and we have to show some strengths," Trump said in March of 2014.

Trump believes that Vladimir Putin is extremely popular in Russia.

"Putin has no respect for our president whatsoever,"  Trump said in a Fox News interview. "He's got a tremendous popularity in Russia, they love what he's doing, they love what he represents."

Trump has made concerning remarks on his potential relationship with Vladimir Putin if he were elected president. He argues that the United States should have a greater relationship with Russia.

"I'd get along very well with Vladimir Putin," Trump said during a press conference in Scotland. "Obama and him, he hates Obama, Obama hates him. We have unbelievably bad relationships."

MIKE HUCKABEE

Gov. Mike Huckabee disagrees with the president's strategy on Ukraine, however, he does not believe that a military solution will solve the crisis in Ukraine.

"I think the solution is to put as much economic pressure on the Russians as possible, try to flood with information to the Russian people," Huckabee said in a CNN interview. "There's not, I don't think what I'd say, a clear military solution, because it could escalate. And in that situation, if it's Russia versus the Ukrainians, Russia is going to win, 80 times the military strength."

Instead, Huckabee believes that Putin's system will inevitably collapse on its own.

"They collapsed from within, and they're on the verge of collapsing again, because their economy is so in trouble," Huckabee said.

MARCO RUBIO

In a Politico piece, Senator Marco Rubio outlined his stance on Ukraine. He supports NATO enlargement and supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine in their fight against Russian aggression.

He is also open to the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO.

"We must enlarge NATO. Allies need to overcome the roadblocks to enlargement before the next NATO summit - including by inviting Montenegro to join the alliance - and to reaffirm that the open door policy is still intact and applies to any NATO aspirant including Ukraine, if it so chooses," Rubio said.

Rubio has been extremely supportive of supplying Ukraine with lethal aid. Rubio was also a co-sponsor of S.452 which authorizes the president to arm Ukraine with lethal military weapons.

SCOTT WALKER

In the August GOP debates, Gov. Scott Walker came out strong in support of Ukraine and the Baltics.

"Putin is in a position where he is very much invoking Lenin's old adage that you probe with bayonets, and if you find mush you advance, and if you find steel you withdraw," Walker said. "That doesn't mean we're fighting the war for them, but there are significant things we can do beyond what we're doing, and lethal aid has got to be a part of it."

Walker criticized the Obama Administration for being too soft on Vladimir Putin. He also stressed the need to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons and send ground troops to the Baltic countries and Poland.

"I would send weapons to Ukraine," Walker said. "I would put forces on the eastern border of Poland and the Baltic nations, and I would re-instate, put back in place the missile defense system in the Czech Republic."

LINDSEY GRAHAM

Senator Lindsey Graham strongly supports sending arms to Ukraine. Graham is also in favor of expanding NATO to include Ukraine and Georgia.

In an interview with "Meet the Press", Graham argued that the United States should take greater military and economic action to isolate Russia.

"I'm suggesting that we arm the Ukrainians so they can defend themselves," Graham said. "I'm suggesting we put more NATO troops around Ukraine, that we rebuild the missile defense systems that Obama took down to let Putin know the path of least resistance is not to continue to dismember the Ukraine."

Specifically, Graham argued that the United States must create a more robust presence in the Baltics.

"I would move at least a brigade of Americans that could operate in the Baltic region along with other NATO members, and I would begin to build capacity all throughout the region around Russia to let them know that we're serious about their ambitions here," Graham said.

CHRIS CHRISTIE

Gov. Chris Christie argues that he would take a stronger stance on Russia and Putin. Christie said that he would provide more aid to Ukraine and other regional allies.

"Aggression happens in this world in response to weakness, and peace happens in this world in response to strength," Christie said to a crowd in Iowa this June.

TED CRUZ

In a CNN "State of the Union" interview, Ted Cruz reaffirmed his position that the United States should send arms to Ukraine.

"It is long past time for us to step forward and provide defensive weapons, so that the men and women of Ukraine can defend their nation," Cruz said. "I'm part of a large bipartisan congressional delegation that is united on the need for us to provide defensive arms to Ukraine."

RAND PAUL

Rand Paul takes a very passive position on Ukraine compared to many other candidates. Paul adheres to a non-interventionist foreign policy platform.

"America is a world leader, but we should not be its policeman or ATM," Paul said.

In 2014, Paul stated that due to Ukraine's history as being a part of the Soviet Union, the United States should be weary of involving itself in the conflict. In other words, Paul argues that Ukraine is a European problem, and the United States should also "suspend American loans and aid to Ukraine, because currently these could have the counterproductive effect of rewarding Russia." He questions the possibility of allowing Ukraine to join NATO.

"The Ukraine has a long history of either being part of the Soviet Union or within that sphere," Paul said. "I don't think it behooves us to tell the Ukraine what to do. I'm not excited about saying 'hey, let's put the Ukraine in NATO' to rub Russia's nose in it."

However, in an opinion piece he wrote for Time Magazine, Paul argues that Russia's violations of Ukrainian sovereignty should be met with "isolation." He added that sanctions should be in place, the missile defense shield should be restored in Poland and the Czech Republic (on Europe's tab), and the U.S. should aggressively market natural gas to Europe in order to curb dependence on Russian gas.

RICK SANTORUM

Rick Santorum, like many of the other Republican candidates, has denounced the decisions of the current administration on Ukraine. Santorum argued in March of 2014, that if he were president, he would have prevented the crisis in Ukraine by taking a stronger stance.

"I would have deployed missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic. I would have stood by our allies in Ukraine," Santorum said. "You can't show the continual weakness and not expect Russia to take advantage of it."

If elected president, Santorum says that he would send arms to Ukraine.

BEN CARSON

Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, made some fumbles in March on his foreign policy platform. In an interview with Hugh Hewitt, when asked what Carson would do as president, if Putin made a move on the Baltics, he seemed confused.

"We need to convince [the Baltics] to get involved in NATO and strengthen NATO," Carson said.

The problem here is obvious. The Baltics are already NATO members.

Although his lack of knowledge on Baltic issues might be concerning to some, Carson still supports arming Ukraine, expanding NATO, and rethinking Russia's position on the UN Security Council.

(Canadian Prime Ministerial hopeful and Liberal Party Leader, Justin Trudeau needed to ask a reporter what NATO Article V is in October 2014 - ed.)

BERNIE SANDERS

Senator Bernie Sanders supports President Obama's use of sanctions to punish Russia for its involvement in the Ukrainian unrest propagated by the Kremlin.

"The entire world has got to stand up to Putin," Sanders said in an interview with Bill O'Reilly. "We've got to deal with sanctions, we've got to deal with freezing assets."

Sanders, however, has not taken a stance on whether or not to send lethal weapons to Ukraine in their war against Russian separatists. Sanders stressed that force should be a last resort in the conflict in Ukraine in an interview on the The Ed Show in March of 2014.

RICK PERRY

Gov. Rick Perry has been extremely critical of the Obama Administration's tactics in handling the crisis in Ukraine. He sees the current policy as being far too soft on Russia.

In a video released in February regarding the Ukraine-Russia conflict, Perry encouraged providing arms and deploying troops to the Baltic countries. He also supported increased U.S. natural gas exports to Ukraine, provide lethal military assistance to Ukraine, and impose more sanctions on Russia.

Perry believes that the United States should "lead the debate in NATO, to allow a permanent deployment of US and NATO allies to Poland and the Baltics, to protect our allies and the assets in the area, including bomber wings to the Baltic Republics and permanent US Army forces in Poland," Perry said. "We need to conduct port visits by the US Navy in the Baltics."

JOHN KASICH

In July, Gov. John Kasich took aim at President Barack Obama's foreign policy plan for Ukraine, and urged that the United States should send military assistance to Ukraine to fight Russian-backed rebels.

On the campaign trail in New Hampshire, John Kasich expressed his concerns about Russia and Ukraine.

"For the life of me, I cannot understand why we are not giving the Ukrainians [the ability] to defend themselves against Putin and the Russians," Kasich said.

BOBBY JINDAL

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has been critical of the current policy on Ukraine and Russia. Jindal stated that the Obama Administration's indecision on Ukraine threatens U.S. credibility among the rest of its allies.

"The reality is our enemies today don't fear us, our allies don't consistently trust us," Jindal said.

Jindal favors sending lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine in order to combat Russian separatists, and argues that there needs to be a stronger response to check Russia.

"I think what Putin read in all that was weakness," Jindal said. "We know he went to Crimea in part, because he didn't fear real consequences, he didn't fear real repercussions."

LINCOLN CHAFEE

Gov. Lincoln Chafee has taken a soft approach to the Russia-Ukraine issue. Chafee argues that the crisis in Ukraine is a "tug of war" between Russia and the European Union. He believes that the United States should instead work with Russia to "wage peace", and is skeptical about even imposing sanctions on Russia.

"I don't know about these sanctions. I should think that there would be better ways of getting rapprochement with Russia," Chafee said in a CNN interview. "They're so important in the world and especially to the former Soviet republic, such as Ukraine."

Chafee clearly does not view Russia as a threat, and sees the crisis in Ukraine as a European issue. His rhetoric on Russia seems to echo Donald Trump: Russia is a better friend than a rival.

JIM GILMORE

Jim Gilmore expressed worry about the current policy for the crisis in Ukraine in a blog piece he wrote for The Hill. Gilmore maintained that the United States should work to restore Crimea to Ukrainian control, and that "1994 borders are the only option in Ukraine."

"Restoration of the captured territory must be the U.S. policy, especially in the face of continuing pressure on Eastern Ukraine," Gilmore said.

Gilmore stressed that NATO should bolster support for its allies along the Russian border.

"NATO must resolve to place soldiers in vulnerable countries along the Russian periphery: not enough to imply aggressive action against Russia, but to make it clear that further Russian invasion will have to go through NATO soldiers," Gilmore said.

CARLY FIORINA

Carly Fiorina argued for an increased military presence in the Baltics, arming Ukraine, and taking a more aggressive stance against Russia.

"I wouldn't speak to Vladimir Putin. I would act instead and do four things immediately," Fiorina said. "Rebuilding the Sixth Fleet, rebuilding the missile defense program, I would begin conducting very aggressive military exercises in the Baltic states, and I would arm the Ukrainians."

MARTIN O'MALLEY

Gov. Martin O'Malley has yet to speak about the crisis in Ukraine, Russia, and the Baltics. O'Malley did visit Estonia in 2009 in conjunction with the Sister State relationship between Maryland and Estonia.

GEORGE PATAKI

Gov. George Pataki has yet to speak about the crisis in Ukraine, Russia, and the Baltics.

JOE BIDEN?

Rumors have spread through media and political circles that Vice President Joe Biden will make a run for 2016. Last week, Biden attended a private meeting with Senator Elizabeth Warren helping cultivate more suspicion that he will throw his hat into the race for the presidency.

Biden is well versed on Baltic issues, having visited Lithuania in 2014, and has met with the leaders of the Baltic states. Senator Biden chaired many of the committee hearings on NATO enlargement in earlier days. He has visited Ukraine three times since the conflict began, and takes a strong stance for military defense of the Baltics.

"NATO's readiness action plan is an important start, allowing us to step up our military presence in the air and sea and on the land, from the Baltics and Poland to Romania and Bulgaria," Biden said in a speech at Brookings in May of 2015.

Biden believes that the U.S. response to the conflict in Ukraine will set an important precedent for European sovereignty and the rest of NATO.

"What's happening in Ukraine is about much, much, much more than that," Biden said. "It's about the rights of nations on the frontier of Europe to choose their own futures; it's about the future of NATO, our collective self defense, and our unity, our strength, our ability to deter aggression together."

Despite his position as vice president, Biden suggested that more needs to be done in assisting Ukraine in its fight to deter Russian aggression, especially regarding military support.

"Let's not lose sight of the fact Ukraine also needs basic military equipment and training which we're also providing on the ground," Biden said. "But more [needs] to be done."

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 #34
The Daily Caller
http://dailycaller.com
August 27, 2015
Russia Is Such A Backwater Dump Nobody Wants To Study It Anymore
By Eric Owens
Education Editor

The state of new research and graduate-level instruction on Russia in American colleges and universities is depressingly sad because, in a nutshell, nobody thinks the country that makes up nearly 12 percent of the earth's landmass is important enough to study.

A report by the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies reveals the extent of the problem, according to Inside Higher Ed.

The Carnegie Corporation-funded report was issued earlier this month and completed from January to April of 2015.

Researchers surveyed 36 American universities that offer specialized graduate-level coursework in Russian studies. They also contacted over 600 Russia-related experts to obtain insights.

The faculties at the three dozen schools include 50 tenured or tenure-track political science professors who have expertise in some Russia-related area. While 50 may seem like a big number, it's actually just 1.39 professors per school.

Collectively, the 36 schools award an average of only seven - seven - Ph.D. degrees to newly-minted Russia experts each year in the field of political science.

Historically, America's political science departments have produced more Russian specialists than other faculty departments.

"Eighty percent of the social scientists in our individual survey sample agree that interest in Russia among Ph.D. students in their field has fallen in recent years," the 93-page report explains. "Even top programs with long-term reputations for excellence in Russia-related social science, such as Berkeley and Harvard, have seen the number of their Russian specialists in political science dwindle."

Professors who are experts on Russia are retiring and will retire in droves, the report warns, and there are very few new experts to replace them. Thus, the field is in danger of dying off on U.S. campuses.

Beyond political science, in the disciplines of economics, geography, sociology and anthropology, the situation is even worse. In the last five years, just 26 Russia specialists have obtained Ph.D. degrees in those fields. And 15 of those doctoral degrees were awarded in anthropology - the most pathetic college major that doesn't end in the words "studies." (RELATED: Now America's Most Pointless, Useless Professors Threaten Academic Boycott Of Israel)

The report notes that potential new Russia specialists are turning away from America's once-great, now-annoying nemesis because they perceive fewer job opportunities and less in the way of possible graduate student funding.

The report also notes a decline in federal funding for research and graduate instruction focused on Russia and Russian language programs.

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