Johnson's Russia List
2015-#174
3 September 2015
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"We don't see things as they are, but as we are"

"Don't believe everything you think"

In this issue
 
  #1
Moscow Times
September 3, 2015
Putin Calls on Young Russians to Work for the Glory of Their Country
By Anna Dolgov

Gifted young Russians should "most importantly" work for the glory of their country, President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday at a new center for gifted students in the southern city of Sochi.

The center, which has been named "Sirius," after the brightest star in the night sky, offers special programs for students who have demonstrated exceptional abilities in the sciences, sports or fine arts. Students who are accepted to Sirius receive free room, board and travel to and from the center.

Praising the benefits of studying with the best teachers and athletic coaches at the center, Putin said: "Sirius should become the key link in our national system of supporting talented, active kids."

But he also took the time to warn the students about the dangers of participating in political protests and demonstrations.

"The lessons of unrest, revolutions, the civil war warn us about the deadliness for Russia of any schisms, and convince one that only the unity of the people and the public accord can lead to success, ensure the independence of the state, and help rebuff any powerful and treacherous enemy," Putin told the gathering.

Warnings against political protests have emerged as a recurrent theme in Putin's public appearances lately, reflecting the Kremlin's desire to avoid opposition demonstrations of the kind that toppled the Moscow-backed administration in neighboring Ukraine last year.

"I count on it that after returning home, you will preserve the atmosphere of friendship acquired at Sirius, will strengthen in your desire to strive for even greater successes in the name of the occupation you have chosen - be it in science, sports [or] art - and, most importantly, in the name of our beautiful Motherland," Putin said.

Putin added that the "team spirit" of Sirius graduates should help them "captivate" their peers, galvanizing new supporters and "create a Sirius community of true patriots and professionals, working for the benefit of the country."

Putin's comments also reflect the government's concerns about highly educated young Russians leaving the country.

At a speech at the Council for Science and Education this summer, Putin accused foreign-backed organizations of working to attract Russia's most talented young people to their countries through educational programs abroad, state news agency RIA Novosti reported at the time.

"A network of [foreign] organizations has 'rummaged' through the schools in the Russian Federation for many years under the guise of supporting talented young people. In reality, they simply hoover everything up like a vacuum," Putin was quoted as saying.  

 #2
Kremlin.ru
September 1, 2015
Address at Knowledge Day celebrations with teachers and students of Sirius educational centre

At Knowledge Day celebrations with students and teachers of the Sirius educational centre for gifted children.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, friends.

I would like to begin by congratulating all of you, all school and university students of Russia and all teachers on the beginning of a new school year.

On September 1, we are here in Sochi, our Olympic dream city, city of hope and victory.

The Sochi Olympic heritage is already being used for the benefit of the nation, its development and its future. Apart from modern roads, power stations and hotels, social and, of course, sports facilities, we have created an educational centre for children here. We have named it Sirius - after the brightest star in the sky - because here we have and will continue receiving enthusiastic children, interested in what they are doing. These are children who have demonstrated skills in various fields: in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, ice-skating, music, painting or hockey. Their first success has been made possible by their own talents and the help of their teachers.

We are proud of our national recreation camps Artek, Orlyonok and Okean. However, Sirius is primarily an educational centre, although, as you may see, we have created wonderful leisure conditions here as well. There is no other such centre in the world where children interested in science, the arts and sport can study and train together.

The best teachers and coaches in Russia will be working at Sirius, outstanding scholars, university faculty members and school teachers will lecture here. Both the children and their teachers and mentors will have an opportunity to learn something new here.

Sirius is to become a key link in our national system of support for talented active children. It is to serve as a beacon for all the regions and set the standards for schools with an in-depth study of certain subjects, for educational establishments existing at leading universities, for ballet and art colleges, sports and music schools.

We hope that you will find like-minded people and make friends here. We want you to be proud of each other's achievements in science, creative endeavours and sport, to expand your horizons by communicating with each other, sharing knowledge, skills, outlooks and opinions.

We expect Sirius alumni to stay in its field of vision for a long time. This applies to your further education and your practical activities, you future work.

I hope that when you return home you will retain the atmosphere of friendship obtained at Sirius and will reaffirm your striving towards your goal, achieving greater success in the name of your chosen field - be it science, sport or art, and in the name of our wonderful Motherland. I am certain that your vigorous search and your team spirit will attract your peers. I hope you will maintain close ties with each other and establish a Sirius community of true patriots and professionals, working for the benefit of this country.

Now I suggest we talk about what today's school students can do for Russia, to help it move forward with confidence.

Friends, I propose we begin with the most complicated issue - your choice in life. It often takes a lot of effort to understand what you really want, what you are good at. The sooner you make this choice, the better, because you will have more time to achieve things. Any success, be it scientific discoveries, economic, cultural or sports achievements, is directly linked to talent, education, hard work and persistence.

This country has always staked on those who did not fear to take on responsibility. Many of such people were young, daring and independent. Such was Peter the Great and his like-minded friends, who set a new vector in Russia's development. Peter was only 11 when he formed his so-called Toy Army. This seemed to be only a game. Then at the age of 16, he set up on Pleshcheyevo Lake what we would now call a shipbuilding laboratory. And just a few years later the Toy Army grew into the victorious and stalwart Russian guard, and the tiny fleet - into the Russian Navy. Peter's young associates became army commanders, administrators and industrialists; they built plants and shipyards, developed science. Peter himself travelled all over Europe, sending talented young men there so they could see the world and return home filled with knowledge and impressions to build a new country, but one that would be their own rather than a copy of some other land.

Russia became stronger through the efforts of those who worked to move it forward and multiply their predecessors' achievements. The development of science always merited special attention. In 1725, the Science Academy and the first University were set up in St Petersburg. Moscow University was founded 30 years later and it accepted all young people regardless of class, as long as they were talented and wanted to learn and to be of use to their country.

Mikhail Lomonosov played an enormous role in the development of education in Russia. He was not only a polymath scholar, a poet, historian and artist; he was also a devotee and creator of the foundations and traditions of Russian science.

A lot was done to strengthen our Fatherland during the reign of Catherine II. She conducted many progressive reforms, including the creation of the Russian system of school education, the opening of the first public libraries and 17 regional printing shops. Books, magazines and newspapers came to the provinces, playing a great role in the dissemination of knowledge. Historian Nikolai Karamzin wrote that there was hardly another country in the world where the number of people who loved to read grew as quickly as it did in Russia; even the poorest subscribed, while the illiterate wanted to know what was in the papers.

I am going into such detail about the educational traditions in Russia for a good reason. Science, education, culture, literature and our great Russian language create a solid foundation on which a truly strong state is built.

True, there were also tragic pages in this country's history. The riots, revolutions and civil wars of the past teach us how destructive any division is for Russia. They prove that only unity of the people and public accord can lead to success and ensure independence, help rebuff any powerful and treacherous enemy.

The entire nation rose up whenever there was a need to defend this country. Wherever did the enormous spiritual strength and readiness to sacrifice come from? It all grew from a sincere love for this country that came from the heart. These patriotic feelings are passed on from generation to generation, and one feels this especially strongly when May 9 comes, the day of our Victory in the Great Patriotic War: we seem to hear the hearts of all beating as one. This is an unprecedented unity of veterans, their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. This year the Immortal Regiment movement also united us all: tens of thousands of your peers came out with portraits of their loved ones who defended this country against Nazism.

During the Great Patriotic War children and teenagers would study, work at plants and fight within partisan groups, they ran off to the frontlines, becoming 'adopted' by the units, they worked and fought for the victory alongside adults. And despite the terrible hardships, they dreamt of their future. Thus, as a youngster the great Russian singer Galina Vishnevskaya survived the siege of Leningrad. She recalled how she was swollen from starvation, but her dream of becoming an opera singer kept her alive. Many of you know what great heights this remarkable woman reached.

After the war, the country's schools of higher learning were filled with people from the frontlines. They wanted to learn, to become experts and build a peaceful life. Among them was future Nobel Prize winner Nikolai Basov, whose name is familiar to those of you who like physics, just like the name of Academician Alexander Prokhorov, who had also gone through the war and became one of the founders of quantum electronics and laser physics. Today their discoveries are used in medicine, industry, biology, communication systems - just about everywhere. These were great world-scale achievements of our science, and only brave enthusiasts with deep knowledge could achieve such breakthroughs.

Sergei Korolev designed his first airplane when he was 17. Many of you here are 17. Then he got interested in jet propulsion and the ideas of the great Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky - the founder of theoretical astronautics. Back then many found what he was doing flippant, unrealistic. He had to make his way past misunderstanding, mockery and scepticism of his aspirations and plans. However, in a matter of years Korolev became the head of our space programme and put together a unique team of researchers, designers, engineers and workers. Together they turned into reality the dream of all mankind - man's first flight into space. This was an outstanding event, the whole world was rejoicing. My peers and I were only children then, but the joy and pride for our Motherland has remained with us to this day. When they asked Sergei Korolev how he managed to beat competition in the space race from other countries, who were also very talented people, he said, "How could I give up my dream?"

Breakthroughs in many areas were made possible by the strengths of our fundamental science. Teams of mathematicians and physicists generated ever new ideas and ran complicated calculations. Something that used to seem removed from reality and of little practical use would later lead to truly revolutionary technological change and breakthroughs. Incidentally, the success of our rocket and nuclear projects was referred to as the result of achievements by the three K's - Academicians Keldysh, Kurchatov and Korolev. They were not only great scientists, but their outstanding scientific research was eventually linked to the solution of large-scale practical issues; they had scientific foresight and knew how to single out what was most important - often things situated at the junction of different sciences.

Thus, mathematician Mstislav Keldysh saw prospects for a major scientific discovery in semiconductor physics. A team led by the future Nobel Prize winner Zhores Alferov were conducting this research. Support by Mr Keldysh played a decisive role in his life, while Mr Alferov's fundamental discoveries formed the basis of present-day mobile telephone communications and telecommunications. Mr Alferov will correct me if I am wrong, he should be here somewhere. Let us welcome him. (Applause)

Friends, every generation has its own priority targets. Your parents and the older generation in general were to take on a significant turning point in history - the establishment of a new Russia. I believe today you find it difficult to even imagine the complexity of the challenges and the drama of those times, though it was only a short while ago. The political organisation, social structure and economic and public life were all subject to change. These changes had to be accepted; one had to find the will and the strength to become actively involved in building a new life. Your parents and grandparents dealt with this mission honourably. Today many of them are still going strong, working to enhance the foundation that you will be always relying upon.

Now you are to achieve new milestones, solve ever more complex tasks and meet major challenges. You have to be ready for this. The strength and advantage your generation has is that you are open-minded, freethinking and can come up with nonstandard solutions.

I will only provide one example that gives us reason to be proud of our national defence industry - this is the creation of the latest Iskander missile system. Its most important control element was designed by young people under 30. They set up their own team, took on the responsibility, said they could handle the job. People believed in them, and they found an original solution that no so-called mature team was able to come up with.

The young are taking on complex jobs nowadays and are making significant progress in various fields: from unique biological research to breakthroughs in medicine. They implement social projects, set up their own businesses and work in production. It is very important that you too are trying to use your knowledge in practice: you are constructing robots, working on space technologies, creating technologies for the automobile and electronic industries; you conduct complex experiments in chemistry and physics.

It is very good that your generation knows the significance of sport in life. Sport is again popular among young people - this is great. Physical fitness makes your spirit stronger and helps you overcome difficulties. When our athletes at international competitions fight to the end, striving for victory, defending Russia's honour - this unites the entire country, the people, all of society, and we admire their courage and feel proud for this country. There are many outstanding athletes here today, let us also welcome them. (Applause) This feeling we have for our Motherland, it is natural, it is warm, it is like a filial affection. It is a concentration of both a deeply personal feeling and the realisation of the enormous significance of certain events and achievements.

We are proud of the great contribution by Russian composers, musicians, writers and artists to the development of world civilisation and culture. There is no need to list their names now - we all know and revere them, and not only in this country, but also people around the world. Their creativity has made Russia famous, has influenced the minds and hearts of people and the formation of the national cultural and value-based environment. This is very important as only a society with clear moral values and a strong spiritual position and support is capable of creating and developing harmonious society, is capable of harmonious technological progress. Only such a society can use scientific achievements to the benefit of humanity rather than to its detriment.

Friends, I don't know how often you have frank conversations with your parents and teachers, but I am convinced that such conversations are necessary. We, adults, also need your support and trust. It is very important to understand each other, including on matters that pertain to the current situation, to the country's future. It is easier to resolve problems together, including those related to making moral choices. This is something we have to do all the time. Both in society and in friendships, people are judged not by their career, success or wealth, but by their deeds, their cultural level, their decency, their relations with their family, their children, parents and friends. Each of us chooses what to do, how to achieve the goals we set ourselves.

For my generation all this was of great importance, we also had what was called the street, the back yard, the apartment house we all grew up in. We spent a lot of time at these 'informal' locations, in todays' terms. True, we had plenty of our own problems there, but this environment taught us friendship, mutual assistance, taught us how to tell good from evil. Treachery and betrayal were the worst, the most despised things. We argued, discussed the things that were going on at school, as well as films and characters from books.

Now life has changed cardinally, of course, but true values never change. These are honesty, patriotism, a sense of conscience, love, kindness, courage, honour, generosity, responsibility and a sense of duty. I am certain that they matter for you too, as much as how much benefit to our Fatherland your talent can bring and how well you can use the knowledge obtained.

Numerous achievements of your peers show the opportunities Russia offers to people with education, those who are goal-oriented and out-of-the-ordinary. Thus, a student team from the St Petersburg National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics has for several years now been winning world championships in software engineering. Moreover, university stars stay in Russia after graduation and find jobs at Russian high technology companies, create their own start-ups or teach at their university. This applies not only to those who apply their talents in technology or production, but also people of the arts: there are many gifted, talented young people working at Russian theatres, in the film industry and literature. They tour the world a lot, but they all have a common homeland - it is Russia.

Friends, people often ask: what will this country be like in 10-15 years? At least they ask me that all the time. I will say frankly that this primarily depends on you, on how you live your lives during those years. We do not see you as observers who will have everything ready for them. No, we see you as direct participants in building the future, the country you live in and your children will live in.

The world is changing rapidly, competition is growing. Using a sports metaphor, ever more states are ready to fight for the title of champion. The stakes in this historical marathon are very high: whether we would produce our own unique technologies and share our breakthrough knowledge with the world, whether we will be able to make the environment safer and more comfortable to live in, will we be proud of achievements in national art, of our sports records - or whether we will be jealous of others' triumphs. Finally, whether we would be able to meet the global civilisational challenges and ensure the leading role and sovereignty of our nation. Answers to all these questions form your agenda, your action plan.

On many occasions Russia proved its leading role in science, the arts and sport, primarily because people set themselves ambitious targets, did the impossible and moved towards victory despite any difficulties. You have to dream, to make ambitious plans, to achieve more and do something nobody has ever done before. This is the most difficult part, but this is the essence of progress, of development.

Behind every victory, there are always doubts, mistakes and failures, which is natural. Here it is important not to step back, not to give up. The main success factor is faith in one's own ability, in oneself. Each of you has to find who you are and what your place in life is. Then you will become a united team, the best in the world. I am certain that this is how it will be. Behind you are your parents, your teachers, mentors, and your homeland - Russia. We will be next to you, we will help and admire you, we will work for you and with you for Russia.

I believe in you, in the success of each one of you. You can, you must and you will win.
 
 #3
Reuters
August 31, 2015
Russia's Putin calls for Stalin-style "leap forward"
By Gleb Bryanski

NOVO-OGARYOVO, Russia (Reuters) - Russia needs a "leap forward" to rejuvenate its sprawling defense industry, President Vladimir Putin said on Friday, harkening back to the ambitious industrialization carried out by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in the run-up to World War Two.

"We should carry out the same powerful, all-embracing leap forward in modernization of the defense industry as the one carried out in the 1930s," Putin told his Security Council, without mentioning Stalin by name.

Stalin, who ruled the Soviet empire with an iron fist for 27 years, is blamed for the death of about six million people but also is praised by many Russians for winning the war and industrializing the country.

Putin made renewed industrialization a priority during his third term in the Kremlin which started in May amid the largest protests of his 12-year rule. He conceded that the defense industry, once the heart of the Soviet economy, was in tatters.

"Unfortunately, many of our enterprises are technologically stuck in the previous century," Putin said, complaining about poor discipline at plants working on state defense orders.

In the 1930s Soviet leaders transformed a rural country devastated by civil war into an industrial superpower, using terror and executions to impose strict discipline at new plants built across the vast country.

Putin's top defense industry official Dmitry Rogozin posted on his Facebook page a copy of a 1940 letter from Stalin to gun factory managers and accompanied it with a sarcastic warning: "Such methods of improving discipline also exist".

Stalin's letter to the managers said: "I give you two or three days to launch mass production of machinegun cartridges... If production does not start on time, the government will take over control of the plant and shoot all the rascals there."

"Of course, it was a joke," Rozogin told reporters regarding his posting but added that failures would not be tolerated.

"Our satellites are falling, our ships are sinking, we had seven space failures in the last 18 months but not a single plant felt the consequences," he said after the council session.

"The culprits should come on stage. The country should know them."

Putin plans to spend $680 billion in the next eight years to modernize the military, with the bulk of the money going to 1,350 defense plants which employ about 2 million Russians. Many defense sector workers backed Putin during the election.

He sees the sector as a new growth driver for the stagnating economy which can help wean Russia off its dependency on energy. He promised to open up the sector to private businesses.

Putin's critics argue that the arms industry is too backward and corrupt to be given such money and point to numerous recent failures and delays such as space satellite crashes or failed test launches of new intercontinental missiles.
 
#4
Gazeta.ru
August 31, 2015
"Revival of tandem" seen behind recent Putin-Medvedev photo op
Editorial: Tandem workout. What might lie behind Putin's and Medvedev's joint tea break"

The photo session showing the president and prime minister spending Sunday [30 August] morning together instantly triggered speculation about the possibility of a return to the Russian policy of the half-forgotten word "tandem" - because nothing in our country is done "just like that". A "new old tandem" could prove extremely beneficial for the Russian regime.

After a long break the prime minister has again become a star of the news bulletins. Two weeks ago Dmitriy Medvedev rode shotgun for Putin in the media arena while the president descended to the bottom of the Black Sea in a bathyscape. And last weekend the citizenry was unexpectedly shown the top two officials in the state working out together, barbecuing meat, having lunch, and clinking cups of tea as part of a demonstration to the people of a traditional healthy lifestyle.

Of course, this does not mean that the president and the prime minister have not done anything like that together since they swapped the presidency. But we have not been told anything about it for several years now.

Furthermore, the official media do not usually report any joint trips, voyages, workouts, or informal tete-a-tete Putin lunches with any other Russian politician. On only a couple of occasions were there fleeting reports about a three-person fishing trip involving Putin, Medvedev, and Minister of Defence Sergey Shoygu. At the same time, extensive coverage is given to the president's off-duty life, including his sporting life, particularly in terms of ice hockey or combat sambo.

Yet the famous 18 August 2011 fishing trip in Astrakhan Region involving Putin, who at that time was still prime minister, and Medvedev, who was still president, was retrospectively interpreted by many political analysts as the moment when it was finally decided that the prime minister would return to the presidency and the president would become prime minister.

Naturally, this striking TV image of unprecedented unity between Putin and Medvedev involving, moreover, punctilious compliance with not only their political but also their relative human and sporting status (like a father teaching his son, the president taught the prime minister how to do strength exercises) immediately triggered a new set of conspiracy theories. They do not work out together just like that, it was claimed....

Of these, the main theory is the revival of the tandem: the Russian regime's political construct that officially existed from 2008 through 2012.

The tactical grounds for such a revival are obvious "to the naked eye": Medvedev has become unusually more active in the media arena in recent weeks. He is being constantly talked about in news bulletins and is travelling around the country. He is holding meetings.

The strategic reasons for talking about the likelihood of a new twist in the prime minister's political career are also self-evident. As the leader of One Russia, not only does Medvedev have to lead the party into the early Duma elections in 2016, he can definitely also be seen as a candidate who more or less suits all the groups of the elites in the next scheduled or early presidential elections. And if Putin was to start campaigning for him, he would also suit a large proportion of the population.

Medvedev is a suitable candidate for the elites. First, because he has already served as a "placeholder," providing guarantees of the inviolability of the regime and the property of the entire power-wielding corporation. Second, the foreign policy and - most importantly - economic impasse in which Russia has found itself in the last 18 months is becoming increasingly obvious. Against this backdrop Medvedev's return to the presidency might look to the regime like an opportunity to solve two problems at once - to avoid relinquishing power but gradually change the foreign policy course without loss of face and without visible upheavals or even a change to the propaganda rhetoric. And simultaneously - if the situation in the economy is only going to deteriorate - to make specifically Medvedev the main person to blame.

In accordance with this logic, Medvedev is not responsible for Crimea and Donbass, but on the other hand he can start building relations with the West, which is most likely what the Russian elite, which is losing billions from this confrontation, wants.

But such plans have big flaws. The problem is that Medvedev has the reputation (created by those same media) of a spineless vassal politician. And last time he was ruling in a fundamentally different situation - with a growing economy, high oil prices, and illusions about the possibility of a reset of relations with United States. And the worsening of the global economic crisis that occurred at the beginning of Medvedev's presidency happened without the Russian regime having to make titanic efforts to rescue the situation within the country. At that time we emerged from the crisis even earlier than the world community and sanctions were not imposed on us.

This time, under pressure from unfavourable external and internal factors, the pressure on Medvedev from various sides could intensify. Furthermore, the West will clearly be looking at any Russian leader's actual actions rather than his statements. The least that Medvedev would have to decide upon if he was actually to return to power would be to leave Ukraine in peace and provide an opportunity for the "people's republics" in Donbass to collapse. Maybe some of the sanctions against Russia might then be lifted and the situation relating to the status of Crimea would not deteriorate.

With that arrangement Putin would also go down in history as a gatherer of lands [appellation traditionally given to Czar Ivan III, who tripled the size of Muscovy through land grabs in the late15th-early 16th centuries] and there would essentially be no change of regime in the country. We have already seen that Medvedev does not differ fundamentally from Putin in the post of president. Although Putin himself evidently did not think so, otherwise he would have allowed his replacement to serve a second term in the post.

Be that as it may, the possibility of a new switcharound following their joint workout no longer looks like the ultimate utopia. The again-attentive public could not fail to have noticed how much weight Medvedev - who only recently was being strongly outperformed by the president in terms of the sporty element of his image - has lost. In literally three months he has become much more toned and somehow even gained some height - in any event, in recent photographs he has looked almost taller than Putin.

It now appears that the prime minister is changing his image as a user of gadgets for the image of a user of crosstrainers. He is training his back muscles, which might find themselves carrying a new load of political responsibility.

But the theory that Putin and Medvedev have decided to remember about the tandem because of the elections immediately raises a question: is it not premature? It is still a year until the elections, and in accordance with this logic they should be drinking tea next spring rather than now.

This is the root of another theory for the "workout tea break": something is imminent either in Putin's closest entourage or in the government. Either state corporation bosses or high-ranking government officials are going to be removed. For this to happen it was also necessary to show that the prime minister is not threatened by anything.

Following Vladimir Yakunin's departure from the post of Russian Railroads boss grounds have emerged for saying that Putin is possibly looking closely at his entourage. This is understandable, because there is less and less money in the country. Here not just loyalty but also the effectiveness of certain leaders as managers needs to be remembered. Furthermore, autumn is approaching, and autumn can always be expected to bring changes of some kind.

Finally, there is also a third theory - the two leaders met in Sochi and Putin thought: We have not been shown together for a long time, why not show this to everybody? We have an opportunity, and tea, and good weather here. And so the "studio" cameras and TV cameras appeared.
 
 
 #5
Vedomosti
August 26, 2015
Pundits review poll on Russians' attitude to military in power
Syuzanna Farizova, Russians approve of military in power but are not prepared to hand them all power - VTsIOM; this opens up new opportunities for the army, sociologist believes

Over two-thirds of Russians approve of the presence of the military in organs of state power, but the same number of respondents would not want "the army to take control of events in the country," a VTsIOM [All-Russia Centre for the Study of Public Opinion on Social and Economic Questions] August poll has shown, with sociologists comparing its results to the data from similar studies in 1990. However, the assessment of the military in power has not changed over the past 25 years, while the number of those who do not want full power in the country to be transferred to the army has risen from 59 to 67 per cent. At the same time 39 per cent of those polled believe that the army structure should become a model for building society while 40 per cent are in favour of strengthening the role of the military (in 1990, 25 per cent of respondents agreed with that). Some 40 per cent of citizens - mainly young people with higher education living in megapolises - would not like society to be structured according to army models, sociologists reveal.

Over 25 years Russians' attitude towards the military has become more balanced "without mutinous pacifism but also without excessive militarist ambitions," VTsIOM socio-political studies administration leader Stepan Lvov explains: "Above all what is maintained is the desire of the majority of citizens to avoid scenarios according to which power in the country in fact switches to the control of the military. However, their civil participation in the work of the organs of power is not only accepted but even welcomed." In the sociologist's opinion, today the army "has opening up for it a big window of opportunity, it has the qualities of a full-scale component and institution," so it is entirely legitimate to raise the question of what the army can do for society.

"The army is after all a function, not something sacred or a source of threats, so Russians' attitude towards the military remains stable," political analyst Mikhail Vinogradov believes. The reluctance of the majority of the population to see all organs of state power falling into the army's hands is explained by the fact that few of the military have achieved resounding successes in state posts, the expert suggests: "Governors from the military, for instance, have no history of success, so the dream of a military man as a good boss is gradually going away." At the same time, for a section of society, having the military in power is a sign of instability or even the source of instability, Vinogradov stipulates.

"In the 1990s the presence of the military in power was perceived by society as a guarantee of order. Now people have clearly started to understand that is not always the case," historian and journalist Nikolay Svanidze says. There are not that many military men in the organs of power today, but there are an enormous number of representatives of the special services there, he reminds us. Of course, these are people with different educations, characters, and mindsets, but they are all people in uniform, and society can see that their presence in power is not actually a guarantee of success, Svanidze suggests.
 
 #6
Beslan commemorates all victims of 2004 terrorist act

VLADIKAVKAZ. Sept 3 (Interfax) - A three-day memorial campaign dedicated to the victims of the terrorist act staged at school #1 in 2004 ended in the city of Beslan on Thursday, an Interfax correspondent reported.

The last day of mourning for the victims of the terrorists in Beslan began at 9 a.m. by a religious service at the sports hall of the school, where the terrorists had kept more than 1,000 children and adults for three days.

As in previous years in the courtyard of the school, after reciting the poem called "Great Sorrow of Ossetia" in the Ossetian language written by poet Shamil Dzhigkayev after the terrorist act, bells rang twice at 01:05 p.m., symbolizing two blasts which went off at the sports hall on September 3, 2004.

After the bell chimes a minute of silence was announced. In complete silence the students of Beslan schools released into the sky 334 balloons which are equal to the number of casualties in the terrorist act and those who died later of their wounds.

Mourning events continued at the City of Angels memorial cemetery. More than 2,000 people came to pay tribute to the terrorist act victims and lay flowers and wreaths on the Tree of Sorrow monument and the monument to perished officers of the Alfa and Vympel Special Forces.

The Beslan secondary school #1 was captured by a group of terrorists on September 1, 2004. More than 1,200 people, including school students, their parents and teachers were taken hostage. Over three days they were kept without food and water in the school's sports hall stuffed with explosives. The terrorist act killed 334 people, including more than 180 children.
 #7
Moscow Times/Vedomosti
September 3, 2015
Budget Cuts Hit Russian Orphanages Hard
By Pavel Aptekar
Pavel Aptekar is a historian and commentator for Vedomosti. This comment originally appeared in Vedomosti

Budget cuts and inadequate incentives for local officials might threaten reforms on Russian orphanages, including the transition to a "family" form of upbringing and the children's public school education. A new resolution recently came into force that reorganizes institutions for children without parental care.

Barrack-style arrangements with large groups of children of the same age should become a thing of the past. The order calls for replacing them with apartment-style accommodations in which small groups of children of differing ages will live together as a single "family" - up to six children younger than 4 along with up to eight older children.

An adult "houseparent" or caretaker must also attend to them at all times. In addition, the orphans now have the right to live at no charge in the orphanages or other government institutions for children until the age of 23.

The current reorganization of Russia's orphanages - which held more than 72,500 children in 2014 according to the site usynovite.ru - marks a rare instance when the Health Ministry, Education and Science Ministry, and Labor Ministry worked together to solve a complex problem. What's more, they took into account the opinions of experts and social activists involved in helping orphans.

The state now sheds its Soviet-era role as the children's main caregiver and teacher, instead instructing the orphanages to focus on returning the children to their biological parents or finding foster parents and guardians for them. Some orphanages have successfully made the transition to the new model, but the sheer scale of the task has caused many more to run into difficulties.

According to Volunteers Helping Orphans charitable foundation president Yelena Alshanskaya, the current reforms were originally developed back when Russia's economy was booming. Now, budget deficits have made it difficult for regional authorities to obtain enough funding to convert orphanages to the new apartment-style family accommodations and to provide the needed training to staff.

Some oppose the changes: the government pays much more to care for a parentless child in an orphanage than it would provide in subsidies to adoptive parents or professional foster families. Worse, many orphanage directors view their wards as "resources" for attracting government funding.

Russia's negative demographic trend led to the closure of a number of Soviet-era orphanages, but that process has accelerated in the last two to three years. The state's order to convert orphanages to family-style groupings of children initially coincided with plans to optimize expenses at all government-funded institutions.

Local officials earned accolades for closing orphanages - either because the so-called "Dima Yakovlev" law banning U.S. parents from adopting Russian orphans prompted officials to show that Russians had become more active in adopting the children, or because it fell in line with the overall restructuring of education and health care in this country. Over the past year, the economic crisis has only added further impetus to the closures.

The problem is that, whereas officials previously closed orphanages as a form of bureaucratic corruption, they now do so for the equally base motive of saving money and balancing their bottom lines. Orphanages have begun giving children to adoptive parents with only minimal preparation or review, only to see those unequipped parents ultimately return the children to the orphanage.
 #8
Moscow Times
September 3, 2015
Russia's New Personal Data Law Will Be Hard to Implement, Experts Say
By Daria Litvinova

In a streak of measures designed to impose stricter control over the Internet in Russia, the law that requires all Internet services store the personal data of Russian users on Russian territory - in effect from Tuesday - will be the most difficult to implement due to its vagueness and the fact that it will be almost impossible to verify whether millions of companies subject to the law actually comply with it.

"Loose definitions used in the law made it unclear what exactly the companies should do to comply with it," said Karen Kazaryan, chief analyst at the Russian Association of Electronic Communications. "Most probably it will be implemented selectively at the very best."

Critics of the new law speculated that its sole purpose was to extend the government's control over society by closely monitoring popular social networks, but the lawmakers insisted their only intention was to protect Russian citizens.

"We worry about the safety of Russian citizens' personal data and [with this law] we don't violate any legislation or ethical rules," Vadim Dengin, a State Duma deputy and a member of the LDPR party, was cited by Russian media as saying last year when the law was being drafted.

There are more than 2.6 million companies that are subject to the law, officials at the state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor claimed last month. But in fact there are more, experts argue, and Roskomnadzor doesn't have the resources to monitor all of them.

The absence of any measures taken against Facebook, which last week told officials it would not comply with the law, only fueled doubts that the new legislation - aimed first and foremost at foreign companies - would be in any way effective.

Crime and Punishment

The new law was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December 2014 and outlined that companies supplying Internet services in Russia, or targeting Russian users, should store personal data in Russia. Those who didn't should have transferred it onto Russian territory by Sept. 1, 2015.

While some companies - such as Samsung, Booking.com, PayPal, eBay, Lenovo and AliExpress - expressed readiness to comply with the new rules, U.S. Internet giants Facebook and Google aren't in a rush to do so.

Just last week, Thomas Kristensen, Facebook's director for public policy in the Nordics, Central and Eastern Europe and Russia, told Roskomnadzor that the company refused to move its data on Russian users to the country, the Vedomosti business daily reported.

Under the legislation, if companies refused to transfer data to Russia by Sept. 1, Roskomnadzor can now restrict access to their websites. A special registry of websites that violate the law will be created by Roskomnadzor, and as a last resort, these websites can be blocked.

The only way to know whether a company abides by the law is to inspect it and Roskomnadzor has already announced there will be some 300 inspections carried out this year. But Facebook and Google are not due to be inspected until at least January, officials said.

Another major Internet market player, Twitter, does not have to move its data to Russia - according to Roskomnadzor, it doesn't deal with personal data - fueling speculation that the law is a mere technicality.

It also doesn't apply to companies that sell airplane tickets, foreign embassies and centers issuing international visas.

Difficult to Implement

The new law will never be implemented, Russian Internet personality Anton Nosik claimed in his blog on Monday, because it doesn't specify how government agencies will determine which data belongs to Russian citizens and which doesn't.

"'The question of establishing citizenship of subjects of personal data isn't regulated by legislation.' In other words, no one knows whose data should be transferred to Russian servers," Nosik wrote, citing the Communications and Press Ministry's explanatory note added to the law.

Russia's Internet ombudsman Dmitry Marinichev disagreed and said that the legislation requires the personal data of all users of websites which supply services in Russia be transferred.

"The law applies to those who come to Russia and use the services of websites here," and that will be determined by IP addresses among other things, he told The Moscow Times in a phone interview Tuesday.

The weakest point of the law, according to Marinichev, is that Roskomnadzor must inspect each company in order to determine whether it complies with the law and there are simply too many of them to be inspected.

"Roskomnadzor said there were more than 2.5 million companies operating in Russia to which the law applies, and announced only 300 inspections in 2015. Even if they inspect 10 times as many next year, it wouldn't cover all the companies," he said.

Moreover, there are no technical means to verify whether the company really stores the data on Russian servers or just claims it does, Marinichev said. During inspections officials will only examine the documents supplied by companies, and they will have to trust them at their word.

Difficult to Comply With

There are many non-IT companies that have websites and supply Internet services to people living in Russia and, therefore, the law applies to them, but most of them do not understand the difficulties of Internet regulations in Russia, said Kazaryan of the Russian Association of Electronic Communications.

"It is unlikely they comply with the law at the moment, and it's unlikely they ever will," he told The Moscow Times in a phone interview Tuesday.

In addition to that, there are certain industries that can't comply with this law because they comply with contradicting laws, said Kazaryan.

"Global booking systems, for example, though luckily they've been excluded from the law for now. But airlines, for example, don't comply with similar European regulations, because they can't decide what takes priority - protecting personal data or revealing it to law enforcement agencies," he said.

"And there are plenty of these cases when it's unclear what legislation should take precedent," Kazaryan added.

In general lack of clarity about what exactly should be done to comply with the law - what constitutes personal data and what data should be transferred to Russian servers - causes contradictions, the analyst said.

"Companies and Roskomnadzor might have different understandings of what it means to comply with the law, and inspections will reveal different violations all the time," Kazaryan said.

Nevertheless, he said that at least this year officials will show mercy. "The regulator [Roskomnadzor] realizes that there pitfalls in this law. I think at the beginning these inspections will be just a formality," Kazaryan said.
 #9
Moscow Times
September 3, 2015
Rampaging Pseudoscience Turning Russia into 'Medieval State' - Q&A
By Elizaveta Vereykina

The ongoing brain drain and lack of financing is not the only reason why Russian science has suffered in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union. The increase in pseudoscience has been so strong that the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN) has formed a body to deal with the influx, the Commission on Pseudoscience and Research Fraud.

The Moscow Times spoke with the chairman of the commission, Evgeny Alexandrov, who is also the head of a laboratory at the Ioffe Institute in St. Petersburg, one of Russia's largest institutions for research in physics and technology.

Q: Does Russian science really need to be protected?

I would say we don't protect science. Our main goal is to protect the Russian state budget from plunder. Very often, under the guise of costly pseudoscience projects, millions of dollars go nowhere. We inform the state that it's being cheated.

Q: What is pseudoscience?

Our commission defines pseudoscience as statements that contradict the fundamental laws of nature such as, for example, the law of conservation of energy or angular momentum ... We monitor pseudoscientific reports or claims that are usually followed by attempts to get state funding under the mask of "scientific breakthroughs."

Fraud is committed mainly in the spheres of medicine and weaponry. Twice a year we release our own bulletin in which we report about all the suspicious cases.

Q: What kind of cases do you deal with?

Almost on a daily basis we get requests to approve yet another "quant bio-regulator" or "aura corrector." Recently we got a project that declared the invention of a "gravity gun" weapon.

Recently in the bulletin we reported about Anaferon tablets. In an intense online ad campaign, it was called an "immunity modulator" that allegedly cures the flu. But it's a typical homeopathic fake.

In the annotations, it's written that one tablet includes 10−15 нг/г active form of the active ingredient. For a scientist, this number means that there is not more than just a molecule of the active ingredient in million of Anaferon packages.

Besides the writing the commission's opinion on Anaferon in the bulletin, did you make any other attempts to stop its distribution?

Once a doctor prescribed Anaferon to me. I went to the head of the hospital and showed her a Wikipedia article about it, as well as the annotation. All she could do was to exclaim: "Oh no! They cheated us!" Then I wrote a letter to the editor-in-chief of the media where it was advertised, saying that it's not good to promote medicine with zero effect. I never got a reply, and the advertising continued.

Q: Do you ever go to trial to expose such cases?

No, we just write letters back to pseudoscientists with our conclusions about their product. We also write to media, officials and scientific institutes.

In contrast, pseudoscientists file suits against us in court. Our biggest recent battle was against Viktor Petrik - the greatest pseudoscientist of our time. He demanded 6 billion rubles from us in court to compensate for his "reputation losses."

In the 1980s, Petrik was sentenced to 11 years for burglary, robbery and extortion. Since getting his freedom, he somehow proclaimed himself an academic of seven made-up academies, and in the 2000s he became very close to the Russian ruling elite, particularly State Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov.

All of his 100 patents are just repetitions of physical and chemical phenomena discovered long ago.

We consider pseudoscientific Petrik's and Gryzlov's project "Clean Water" and were trying to prevent the State Duma from funding the project. They wanted to produce and install "nanocarbon sorbent" water filters all over Russia. The filters were called "Shoigu" [after the current defense minister Sergei Shoigu] and labeled with United Russia stickers.

The commission, organized by RAN, including chemists and physics, came to the conclusion that Petrik has nothing to do with science and is just a businessman.

It's insane, but Petrik was basically the main scientific adviser of the Russian parliament. Gryzlov's deputy Svetlana Orlova told us that the "whole Russian Academy of Science is not worth of one Petrik!"

Q: Have you ever tried to inform President Putin about these pseudoscientific claims?

Vladimir Putin knows about us and supported our work at the General Meeting of Russian Academy of Science in May 2012 with the words: "We have to get rid of everything that discredits the scientific community, reduces it's authority... We shouldn't tolerate those who act like parasites on science."

I think we actually won the trial with Petrik thanks to Putin's support. Since that day, I also noticed we have become more respected. At least some media do answer our emails now.

Q: You managed to stop the "Clean Water" funding project, but which costly pseudoscientific projects have managed to get state funding?

The so-called "Torsion fields" have been widely discussed in Russia since the end of 1980. RAN has called them pseudoscientific many times, but our statement was ignored. In 2008, the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center launched the satellite Yubileiny in which they installed an engine based on those "torsion" technologies.

This engine was supposed to bring the satellite beyond the solar system. This idea contradicts the basic law of angular momentum.

This "torsion" engine weighed almost a ton - every kilogram we launch into space costs $10,000!

Q: RAN academics have many times expressed their concerns about increasing obscurantism in our society. Why are occult mystics and healers still so popular in Russia?

Because the media loves them! Take any newspaper or turn on the TV. [You'll see] shows, articles and advertising of healers who allegedly cure deadly diseases, help people find husbands or wives, get rid of spells. They promise things doctors will never promise.

What is more absurd, those charlatans cooperate with our state. For example, in 2013 there was a conference, "Actual Problems of Crime Investigations," organized by the Investigative Committee of Russia. During this conference, there was a section dedicated to "untraditional ways to obtain information from criminals." Hypnotists and occult mystics were introduced as help for investigating crimes by looking at victims' photos. What a medieval approach!

Q: Are there any laws or initiatives proposed by the Russian government that you strongly disagree with?

Our parliament recently supported a ban on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and I think our deputies just have no idea what they are doing. GMO-phobia is wrong and is used by populists. All agricultural products are genetically modified. Genetic science helps us to get necessary products much faster. Basically mankind has managed to feed itself thanks to genetic engineering. In our bulletin #15, we published a letter from Society of Scientific Workers to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev explaining that GMOs are not dangerous for humans and that recent laws will destroy genetic engineering in Russia. The letter was signed by 325 PhDs - biologists, biophysicians, genetics, physiologists etc... We also published a reply from Ministry of Education and Science that from one side agreed that biotechnology is one of the most important spheres for Russian science and at the same time supported the idea to increase restrictions on GMO use in Russia


 
 #10
Sberbank forecasts Russian GDP to contract 0.5% in 2016 - Gref

MOSCOW. Sept 3 (Interfax) - Sberbank of Russia (MOEX: SBER) expects Russian GDP to contract 0.5% in 2016, bank President and CEO German Gref said on Rossiya 24 television.

"Our most realistic forecast assumes economic growth will be negative 0.5%. We do not for now see any sources of growth that would produce serious recovery next year," Gref said.

The second half of 2015 and the first half of 2016 will be difficult for the banking sector, but "after that, we see stabilization," he said.

Oil prices will determine the macroeconomic situation, Gref said, adding that he rejects the most pessimistic forecasts for the price of oil. Instead, he said, prices are likely to remain in the $50-$60 per barrel range "and that is the minimum level needed in order for us to continue developing."

Gref also said he sees no outlook for high rates of growth in the coming three-five years without structural reforms and called for working to cut costs and raise the efficiency of operations.
 
 #11
Wall Street Journal
September 3, 2015
For Russia, Oil Collapse Has Soviet Echoes
Dependence on oil and gas revenue has undermined Russia's long-term economic fortunes
By GREG IP

For most countries, the economic slowdown in China and the accompanying slump in commodity prices represent something between nuisance and pothole. For Russia, they are a catastrophe.

Russia's currency and economy, already squeezed by Western sanctions, have been sent into virtual free fall by slumping oil prices. The International Monetary Fund predicted in July that Russia's economy would shrink 3.4% this year, the most of any major emerging market.

That now looks optimistic. Anders Aslund, a Russia expert at the Atlantic Council in Washington, thinks 6% is more likely. Coincidentally, that's close to what the Russian central bank predicted would happen if oil fell to $40 a barrel, roughly its current level.

Russian growth had averaged 7% from 1999 to 2008, due in great part to high oil and natural-gas prices. The oil collapse has exposed deep cracks in Russia's economic foundations: falling productivity, a shrinking labor force, uncompetitive industries, and private enterprise hemmed in by a kleptocratic state and crony capitalism.

The IMF now puts Russia's long-term potential growth at 1.5%. Mr. Aslund thinks it's just 1%, astonishing for a country whose standard of living is barely 40% that of the U.S.

This matters almost as much for the world as it does for Russia. Oil and gas wealth enabled Russian President Vladimir Putin to cement his hold on power domestically and flex Russia's muscles internationally. The loss of that wealth threatens to scramble the world's geopolitical order, though there are no signs of that yet.

There are parallels to the events that toppled the Soviet Union. Until the 1970s, oil and gas didn't dominate the Soviet economy. It was "an advanced (if inefficient) industrial and technological power," writes Thane Gustafson in his 2012 book, "Wheel of Fortune: the Battle for Oil and Power in Russia."

But its days were numbered. Socialist industrialization, stagnant agriculture unable to feed a growing urban population, a parasitic defense complex and uncompetitive manufacturing "made the fall of the regime inevitable," Yegor Gaidar, an architect of Russia's transition to a market economy under Boris Yeltsin, wrote in his 2006 analysis, "Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia."

The oil-price spikes of the 1970s staved off collapse while turning the Soviet Union into a petrostate. Oil and gas exports enabled Russia to pay for grain imports from the West, prop up its Eastern European satellites, and invade Afghanistan.

Mr. Gaidar, who died in 2009, traced the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia's decision in 1985 to cease supporting the price of oil and ramp up production. The ensuing price collapse eviscerated Soviet export revenues. Forced to borrow from the West to pay for grain imports, Russia largely lost its strategic leverage, first over Eastern Europe and then over its Soviet republics. With hyperinflation and famine looming in 1991, the Soviet Union broke up.

The parallels shouldn't be overdrawn. Unlike the Soviet Union then, Russia today is a market economy, albeit one with a large state presence. Macroeconomic policy is relatively responsible. Last year the central bank abandoned the ruble's peg. The resulting drop has sent up inflation and squeezed living standards, but also cut imports.

Western sanctions over Russia's annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine have curtailed new foreign borrowing. This has preserved the surplus on Russia's current account-the balance on all trade and investment income-and its foreign currency reserves, preventing the sort of crisis that hit the Soviet Union in 1991 and Russia in 1998.

The more important parallel is the damaging legacy of oil and gas wealth. Russia has suffered a classic case of the "natural resource curse," the tendency of easy resource wealth to prop up inefficient industry, squeeze out manufacturing, and fuel corruption. Natural resource rents-revenues from oil, gas, coal, minerals and forest products minus their production costs-represent 18% of Russia's GDP, the highest among major emerging markets and far more than rich-country oil exporters like Canada and Norway. Mr. Putin has used those rents to modernize the military, expand the welfare state, and finance high-profile projects such as the Sochi Olympics.

Meanwhile, an expanding state-owned sector has undermined what private enterprise Russia had. Mr. Aslund cites the purchase by state-controlled oil company Rosneft of the well-managed, private competitor TNK-BP for $55 billion in 2013. Today, "value-destroying" Rosneft is worth less than TNK-BP was then. Western sanctions will further undermine productivity by depriving Russian industry, including oil and gas, of essential know how. As Western Europe seeks more reliable sources of natural gas, Russian exports will be further squeezed.

Former president and current Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev had sought to spur innovation to diversify away from oil and gas. But as Russia experts Clifford Gaddy and Barry Ickes write in a forthcoming book, even those diversification efforts depend on subsidies generated by oil and gas.

Many of Russia's top officials are well aware of its challenges. Central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina has called the current economic slump "structural," blaming "unfavorable demographic trends" and the "investment climate."

It isn't obvious, though, that Mr. Putin and his inner circle are listening. After all, economic hardship has yet to undermine his popularity at home or his ambitions abroad. History suggests that shouldn't be taken for granted.
 
 #12
Banned products' smuggling into Russia drops 10-fold - minister

VLADIVOSTOK, September 3. /TASS/. The number of attempts at smuggling of sanctioned food products into Russia has decreased 10-fold since the beginning of their destruction, Russian Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev said on Thursday.

"We protect the health of our citizens. We cannot give them unchecked, poor-quality products. And most importantly - unique things have happened, which we expected: the smugglers do not want to incur financial losses and therefore the number of sanctioned products' smuggling attempts has dropped 10-fold. Each day we have to destroy less and less products," the minister said in an interview with Rossiya 24 TV channel within the framework of the Eastern Economic Forum.

"I believe that we should have the willpower, we must show grit and once and for all end the smuggling of substandard food products into Russia. Everybody will benefit from this in the long term," he said.

The decree on the destruction of the food products embargoed by Russia was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 29. The destruction of sanctioned food started in Russia on August 6. The Federal Customs Service, the veterinary and phitosanitary watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor and consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor were charged with the task.

Russia introduced restrictions on August 7, 2014 on imports of food products from countries that have imposed sanctions on it: the United States, European Union, Canada, Australia and Norway. Meat, sausages, fish and seafood, vegetables, fruit, dairy products were embargoed by Russia. Later, nutritional supplements, sports, children's food and preventive nutrition products [including lactose-free products] were excluded from the sanctions list.

The Russian food embargo has been extended for a year until August 6, 2016, with the same exceptions. In addition, the list of countries subjected to the sanctions has been extended - it now also includes the Republic of Albania, Montenegro, the Republic of Iceland and Principality of Liechtenstein.

The food embargo will affect Ukraine only if it signs the economic part of its association with the EU, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on August 13.

"From now on, the list - which already includes the EU, Australia, Canada, Norway and the US, and prohibits the supplies of some agricultural products from these countries since last August - has been extended to Albania, Montenegro, Iceland and Liechtenstein and, subject to special conditions, Ukraine," he said, adding that these countries had recently supported the EU's extended sanctions against Russia.

"These countries explained their decision to prolong anti-Russian sanctions by the fact that they are obliged to do so under some sorts of agreements with the EU, but this position is only partly true," said Medvedev, "a number of states that have similar agreements with the EU haven't joined the sanctions against Russia, so that was a conscious choice, which means their readiness to a response from our part.".
 
 #13
www.rt.com
September 2, 2015
Russia's UNSC presidency focuses on Middle East conflicts
By Dr Alexander Yakovenko, Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Deputy foreign minister (2005-2011).

This month Russia is taking over the presidency of the UN Security Council. The Council is going to be busy with the opening of the UN General Assembly session and the holding of general political debates.

This year the United Nations will celebrate its 70th anniversary, and the majority of the heads of state and government leaders will attend high-level events in New York.

The central event of the "Russian month" in the Security Council will be an open ministerial meeting on September 30 on "Maintenance of international peace and security: the settlement of conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa and counterterrorism".

It is hard to overstate the importance of the meeting proposed by Russia. It would be no exaggeration to say that a very complex and critical situation is taking shape in the Middle East and North Africa. New crises are flaring up along with old ones such as the Arab-Israeli conflict. The region is shaken by tragic conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya that are feeding each other, thereby helping instability spill over into neighboring countries. A number of states are facing a real threat to their territorial integrity.

All this creates conditions for a sharp increase in terrorist threats. ISIS, an unprecedented threat, emerged as a result of continued instability in Iraq, followed by attempts at external meddling in the Syrian conflict as well as flirting with the armed opposition. ISIS militants commit heinous crimes, trying to establish control over vaster territories, claiming the formation of quasi-states and declaring their geopolitical ambition of turning the clock back 13 centuries.

Under these circumstances, there is an urgent need for conducting a comprehensive and honest analysis of the nature of conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa and determining areas of our collective efforts with a view to building effective regional security architecture on the basis of the UN Charter. The existing issues can only be resolved by implementing a comprehensive approach based on the primacy of international law without double standards and with reliance on the Security Council prerogatives. All this meets the goals of President Vladimir Putin's initiative to form a broad anti-terrorist front against the ISIS threat.

The event is expected to be followed by an adoption of a statement by the President of the Council, emphasizing the urgent need for taking measures on settlement and prevention of new conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, and defining possible further measures on curbing terrorist risks in the region. Russia counts on broad and engaged participation by the UN member states in the discussion of this issue.
 
 #14
www.rt.com
September 3, 2015
UNSC veto right is crucial balance tool to avoid 'disasters' - Russia's envoy Churkin

Assuming the UNSC presidency, Russia's ambassador Vitaly Churkin said a compromise on Security Council reform is nowhere in sight, criticizing the "populist" idea of limiting veto powers which provide for minority opinions and guarantee balanced decisions.

During the press conference marking the beginning of the Russian presidency at the UNSC, Churkin pointed out there are two completely different issues concerning UNSC reform: The admission of new permanent members and proposals to limit their veto powers.

"The Security Council reform is a kind of negotiation which has been there for a long time," Churkin explained. "We want a historic compromise to be reached between the two main camps: Those who want to have new permanent members and those who don't want to have permanent members, and advocate a reform with a new category of intermediate countries which will be elected for a longer period of time than the current two years for the current non-permanent members."

"At this point I don't see this historic compromise anywhere near," Churkin said.

"On limiting the veto, it is a separate initiative...we are against it. This is not a workable proposition, this is not a workable scheme," Churkin stated. According to him there are two main problems with the "populist" proposal to limit veto powers.

First of all, the initiative pushed forward by France would result in the UN General Assembly infringing on the prerogatives of the Security Council. Churkin pointed out that it is not difficult to put together a group of UN members that would effectively deprive a permanent member of its right of veto.

But the more important issue, according to Churkin, is the content of the proposed resolutions which a veto-deprived permanent members, as a result, would not be able to object to.

"The problem is not only the situation you are dealing with but what kind of proposal you are making to deal with the situation," Churkin said. "What is the content of the resolution which is going to be put on the table and which a permanent member will not have a right to veto?"

"Sometimes absence of veto can produce disaster," Churkin reminded, expressing his confidence that in terms of looking at Libya today, many would have been glad if Resolution 1973 had been vetoed.

"You cannot say that every resolution, which is proposed in the situation of dire humanitarian need, is necessarily a good resolution, which is going to resolve the problem and which is not going to be used for some political purposes," he added.

"What if the resolution says that 'we are going ahead to occupy the country and bomb them to the Stone Age'? What if mass atrocities are committed by terrorist groups and the government is trying to fight those terrorist groups and somebody says 'Well, listen, there are mass atrocities and the government is not coping - so let's go ahead and occupy the country'?" Churkin wondered.

"We see it is a populist proposal. If France wants to limit its veto, they are welcome, but there are some permanent UNSC members - not just Russia - who understand how important it is as a tool which allow the UNSC to produce balanced decisions and which allows the minority opinion to be reflected in the work of the UNSC," Churkin concluded.

Churkin also spoke about the necessity of the joint international coalition against jihadist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and said that Russia is ready for cooperation, but would not join the current US-led coalition which does not have a UN mandate.
 
 #15
Moskovskiy Komsomolets
August 26, 2015
Popular Russian daily supports experts' call for direct communications with NATO
Mikhail Rostovskiy, Does accidental war threaten Russia and NATO? We have been on the brink of a military clash three times over the past 18 months

The names of the retired Soviet military officers Vasiliy Arkhipov and Stanislav Petrov are not among those known to every schoolchild. But if it were not for these two people the world in the form we know it today would simply not exist. In every second cinema blockbuster a superhero like James Bond effortlessly saves the planet from the threat of annihilation. Capt 2nd Rank Arkhipov and Lt-Col Petrov did not do this in the cinema but in reality.

During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis the submarine in which the chief of staff of Vasiliy Arkhipov's brigade was located was surrounded by a group of American warships. When depth charges were used against our submarine, its commander Valentin Savitskiy ordered the launching of a nuclear torpedo - in complete accordance with the instructions of the higher-ranking naval bosses. But as the senior officer on board, Arkhipov cancelled this order.

During a period of acute worsening of the international situation after the destruction of a South Korean Boeing by our military in 1983, Stanislav Petrov was the duty officer at the central air defence command post in Serpukhov. Due to a technical glitch, the space-based early warning system issued a signal that an American nuclear attack on the USSR had started. If the signal had been deemed to be reliable and had been passed upwards, our leaders could in a few minutes have given the order for a retaliatory nuclear attack. But Petrov instantly analysed the situation and came to the conclusion that it was an automation error.

Why am I now recalling these two, without the least exaggeration, unsung modern heroes? Because in the opinion of a group of prestigious Russian and Western politicians, situations like those they found themselves in may quite possibly be repeated in the very near future.

Former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and former British Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the respected Moscow expert Igor Yurgens and former Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rotfeld, MGIMO [Moscow State Institute of International Relations] vice-chancellor Anatoliy Torkunov and former German Defence Minister Ruehe - all of these and other figures from Russia and the West by their own admission may not agree with one another on the reasons for the Ukrainian crisis and the right ways out of it. But this is what they do agree on: the situation in Europe today is so highly charged that momentous decisions about war and peace may end up in the hands of junior officers.

According to the just published report European Community of Leaders by the expert organization that the above politicians belong to - 66 incidents of "contact" between the NATO and Russian Federation soldiers have been recorded since 2014. Fifty of these incidents were not really dangerous. Others were more serious. And three of them were really very risky.

In the opinion of the authors of the report, the number of such incidents can only increase in the foreseeable future: "Both Russia and NATO think that the new deployment of troops and a reinforced emphasis on military exercises are necessary amendments to their previous defence programmes. Each side is convinced that its actions are justified by the negative changes in its security sphere."

The result is a kind of vicious circle. Russia reacts to NATO's actions. NATO reacts to Russia's actions. Moscow interprets this NATO response as "the stakes in the game being raised" and it accepts the challenge. The West feels the need for "a worthy response to Russia" and also does something. And so on and so forth.

I do not know whether the current leaders of the Russian Federation and the West will heed the group of experts' suggestion - establishing direct communications channels between their militaries and thus ruling out the likelihood of a deadly "misunderstanding". But in my opinion, something like this must be done and not even tomorrow. Something like this should have been done yesterday.

The acute political confrontation between the Russian Federation and the West will certainly not end quickly. Some in the NATO camp - like, for example, many of the politicians from the countries of Eastern Europe - are really scared by Russia's behaviour. Some - like, for example, the American generals and officials - are skilfully imitating such fear in order to get additional public money for themselves and to increase their political control over their allies in Europe.

But is the motivation of the various Western leaders really that important? The result of their mental efforts is important. Relations between the Russian Federation and NATO are reminiscent of a freight train with one hundred heavily loaded wagons, which are rushing downhill at an ever increasing speed. The establishment of direct communications channels between the military on the two opposing sides, which is suggested by Igor Ivanov and his colleagues, is a prerequisite to prevent this "train" from "burning through the brakes".

Peace in Europe should not be in the hands of a junior officer who drank too much yesterday, and had a row with his other half, or simply wants to shoot. A political confrontation between us and NATO is certain to continue to the "bitter end" - or until a common enemy appears who forces us to forget our previous "small differences".

It is stupid to be offended by Westerners who see the growing economic problems in our country and redouble their efforts to put more "pressure" on Moscow. When incorporating Crimea, Russia - or at least this is true of its top leaders - understood what it was doing. And even if the Crimean crisis had not occurred, then what would have happened? Competition between the various geopolitical forces, as before, remains the core of international politics. It is impossible to eliminate competition - and it is not necessary.

However, it would be no less stupid to fail to introduce protective mechanisms into the "political framework" of this competitive struggle. You must not eternally hope for the best - for "quiet heroes" like Vasiliy Arkhipov or Stanislav Petrov without fail being in the right place at the right time. No-one has repealed the falling sandwich law - it always falls buttered side down. And if the "sandwich" of interest at some point really does fall "buttered side down", then the "evening" will quickly "cease to be languorous".

In the event of a military clash between subdivisions of NATO and the Russian Federation, we will no longer have competition. We will have a deadly situation fraught with chaos. And it should not be said that I - or, even more importantly and significantly, Igor Ivanov and his colleagues - that we are control freaks and alarmists. In 1999 - a period of much warmer relations between Russia and the West - such a clash was entirely real.

Do you remember how Gen Wesley Clark, the supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe, gave the order to attack our soldiers at the airfield in Pristina? And such an order could have been given not to the reasonable Englishman Mike Jackson who answered Clark: "I do not intend to start World War Three for you!" but to someone else. And then what would have happened? I still do not think it would have been World War Three. But nevertheless it is awful to fantasize about this -just as it is about what may occur now, in a period with the number of hotheads like Wesley Clark has increased many times over.

It is better to hedge your bets. It is better to establish effective channels for direct communication with NATO - and then compete with it calmly.
 
 
#16
The Vineyard of the Saker
http://thesaker.is
September 2, 2015
On Russian military interventions (or lack thereof)
By The Saker

My recent article about a possible Russian military intervention in the Syrian conflict triggered, amongst mostly rational reactions, a few angry and frustrated one from folks who were apparently disgusted with the Russian refusal to get militarily involved in Novorussia and Syria.  Since such angry protests are also often echoed on other supposedly pro-Russian blogs and websites I think that it is worthwhile to address the substance of these criticisms once again.  So let's start with the basics:

The legal purpose of the Russian Armed Forces.

The Federal Law N61-F3 "On Defense", Section IV, Article 10, Para 2 clearly states that the mission of the Russian Armed Forces is to "repel aggression against the Russian Federation, the armed defense of the integrity and inviolability of the territory of the Russian Federation, and to carry out tasks in accordance with international treaties of the Russian Federation".  That's it.  Defend the territory of Russia or to carry out tasks in accordance to ratified treaties.  These are the sole functions of the Russian Armed Forces.

The Russian Constitution, Chapter IV, Article 80, Para 2 clearly states that "The President of the Russian Federation shall be guarantor of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen. According to the rules fixed by the Constitution of the Russian Federation, he shall adopt measures to protect the sovereignty of the Russian Federation, its independence and state integrity, ensure coordinated functioning and interaction of all the bodies of state power".

Now, for an American used to have, on average, about one new war every year, this might seem mind boggling, but the Russian Federation has absolutely no desire to become an "anti-USA" and get involved in constant military operations abroad.  Not only that, but the laws of the Russian Federation specifically forbid this.

Russia is not the world policeman, she does not have a network of 700-1000 bases worldwide (depending on your definition of 'base') but an army specifically designed to operate withing 1000km or less from the Russian border and the President does not have the legal mandate to use the Russian armed forces to solve foreign crises.

The political mandate of the Russian President

Putin's real power is not based on any written Russian law.  His real power is in the fact that he has the support of the overwhelming majority of the Russian people.  How did he achieve such an amazing popularity?  It was not by funding a multi-billion dollar propaganda campaign, or by making empty promises.  Putin's popularity is simply a direct result of the fact that Putin's actions are in conformity with the will and desires of the Russian people.

Again, for an American who has seen every single US President grossly betray all his promises and who is used to have somebody in the White House whom a minority of Americans really support, this might be mind boggling, but in Russia the President actually enjoys the support of the people.

And the fact is that poll after poll the majority of the Russian people (67%) are opposed any overt Russian military intervention in the Donbass.  That is a fact which the "hurray patriots" always conveniently ignore, but it is a fact nonetheless.  Now if most Russian are opposed to a Russian military intervention in Novorussia, what percentage do you think would approve of a Russian military intervention in Syria?

This might sounds trite, but Putin was elected by the Russian people to defend their interests.  He was not elected by the people of Novorussia or Syria.  In fact, Russia has absolutely no obligation to anybody, not even a moral obligation to help.  Those who are disgusted by the lack of Russian military intervention seem to somehow assume that Russia "must" or "should" "do something" simply because she could do it.  That is absolutely not true.  Even if Russian could successfully intervene in Novorussia (she can) or Syria (she cannot) - that does not at all automatically mean that she has to take any such action.

Yes, Russia has provided support to Novorussia and Syria, but not because she "owed" them anything, but because she chose to help.  This help, however, does not automatically entail that the Russian commitment is open-ended and that Putin "has to" send Russian soldiers into combat if needed.

Besides, when is the last time any country send its soldiers to help Russia and, if needed, die for her?

Why the Russian soldier is willing to die in combat

I have three kids and I can easily imagine what the parents of a young man from, say, Tula or Pskov would feel if their son died in combat somewhere in Syria.  Here is the text of the oath taken by each Russian solider:

"I, (full name), do solemnly swear allegiance to the Fatherland - the Russian Federation.  I swear to faithfully observe the Constitution of the Russian Federation, to comply strictly with the requirements of the military regulations, the orders of my commanders and superiors. I swear to honorably perform my military duties, to courageously defend the freedom, independence and constitutional order of Russia, the people and the fatherland."
There is no mention of Syria or any other country in this, is there?

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan the Soviet propagandists came up with a cute concept "интернациональный долг" or "international duty".  This idea was derived from the Marxist concept of "proletarian internationalism".  And it is true that the Soviet Constitution (in articles 28 and 30) included the following language:

"The foreign policy of the Soviet Union aims at strengthening the positions of world socialism, supporting the struggle of peoples for national liberation and social progress" (...) "the Soviet Union as part of the world socialist system, the socialist community develops and strengthens friendship and cooperation, comradely mutual assistance with other socialist countries on the basis of a socialist internationalism"

There are probably those who are still nostalgic of the "good old days" when the Soviet Union was involved in conflicts in Asia, Africa or Latin America, but I am most definitely not one of them.  And neither are the vast majority of Russians who remember exactly the price paid in blood for such ideological nonsense.

Again, for a person living in the USA where it is normal to see "posts" of "Veterans of Foreign Wars" (as if the US ever had a domestic one in living memory!) all over the country and where everybody know a least one relative, friend or neighbor who lost a family member in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere - this might seem ridiculous.  But for a Russian national not only is this not ridiculous, it is quite literally sacred.  Why?  Because it means that if their son or daughter are only sent into harms way when the Russian nation is under attack.  This is also why the men of the 6th Company in Ulus-Kert were willing to die: because they were fighting for their Motherland, not for a college tuition, not to avoid jail or unemployment and not because they thought they could visit the world and kill brown people.

The pitfalls of "limited" military interventions

Ask yourself, how do wars typically end?  Specifically, how many wars do you know of when both parties agreed to stop and sign some kind of peace treaty?  The fact is that most wars end up in a victory for one side and a defeat for the other.  And that, in turn, means that as long as the stronger party does not have the means to fully defeat the weaker one, the war will continue.  The perfect example of that was the war in Afghanistan in which the Soviets easily invaded the country and defeated the "freedom fighters" [which later became known as "al-Qaeda", courtesy of the US CIA] but were unable to pursue them into Pakistan and Iran.  Thus the anti-Soviet forces, while "weaker", could deny the Soviets their "victory" simply by surviving and even successfully resisting them in some locations (such as the Panjshir Valley).

This is the rough map of the territory currently controlled by Daesh:

As you can see from the map, Daesh currently is active in both Syria and Iraq, and we also know that they have made inroad into Lebanon and Egypt.  We can also be certain that Daesh could, if needed, move inside Saudi Arabia.  By any measure, the territory currently more or less controlled by Daesh or, more accurately, the territory where Daesh can operate is huge.  So in this context, what would "victory" mean?  Eradicating Daesh from the entire Middle-East, of course.  We have already seen what happened when the Syrian military basically defeated Daesh - Daesh just retreated into Iraq, that's all.  And that was enough to deny the Syrians their victory.

Can Daesh be defeated?  Absolutely.  But only if the AngloZionist would stop their anti-Shia crusade and let Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Iraq crush these Takfiri lunatics.  But since that is absolutely unacceptable to the AngloZionsts, the war will go on.  And it is in this context that some would have Russia enter the conflict?!   That is insane!

Any Russian commitment, besides being of dubious legality and politically very dangerous for Putin, would have to be either half-hearted or open-ended.  In the first case it would be useless and in the second one extremely dangerous.

What about only sending aircraft?

Contrary to what some commentators have written, sending 6 MiG-31s could make a difference: six MiG-31s would mean 2 on combat air patrol, 2 ready to take-off and 2 in routine maintenance.  Also, 2 MiG-31s in the air would be enough to monitor the Syrian airspace and defend it from any intruder (you can think of the MiG-31 as a 'mini AWACS' since it has an advanced passive electronically scanned array radar and weapons capable of tracking 10 targets while simultaneous engaging four of them at a very long range (as far as 200km).  The problem with that is that all this fancy hardware serves no purpose against Daesh which has no air force.

Some have suggested that the MiG-31s could be used to protect Syria from a US cruise missile attack.  While it is true that the MiG-31 is capable of engaging low-flying cruise missiles, the problem here is that each MiG-31 can only carry 4-6 air-to-air missiles.  Thus a 2 MiG-31s patrol could only engage 12 cruise missiles at most, unless they begin chasing down each one and use their 23mm canon.  Since any US attack on Syria would involve many more cruise missiles, there is really very little the MiG-31s could do.  A much more effective defense would be provided by the S-300 and this is why the US and Israel were so opposed to any S-300 deliveries to Syria.

Others have suggested that Russia could send MiG-29s.  Bad choice.  The MiG-29 is a formidable close-in combat fighter, but a poor close air support aircraft.  If the mission is the support of Syrian combat operations, then SU-24 and, especially, SU-25 would be much better suited.  As far as I know, not a single report mentioned these.

How the Syria can be assisted

First and foremost, I want to remind everybody that Russia has already single-handedly stopped a planned US attack on Syria by simultaneously sending a naval task force off the Syrian coast (thereby providing the Syrians of a full view of the airspace in and around Syria) and by brilliantly suggesting that Syria get rid of her (utterly useless) chemical weapons (which, of course, some saw as a "betrayal" and "disarming" of Syria).  Russia can still help Syria by sending military hardware, advisors, sharing intelligence and, most importantly, providing political cover.

Should the Syrian armed forces truly suffer from a military reversal and should the government be threatened, Hezbollah will be the first to intervene (as they already have), followed by Iran (as they, reportedly, also already have).  With Hezbollah and Iranian boots on the ground (the latter probably also in Hezbollah uniforms), there is no need at all for Russian forces.  At least not "regular" military ones.

It is possible, and even likely, that the Russians would (or already have) send covert units into Syria.  What we are talking here are GRU and SVR special teams, mostly posing as "advisors" or private military contractors or even "technical assistance" personnel.  Still, by all accounts the Syrian forces are extremely capable and we should not assume that they need any special outside expertise.  And to the degree that outside assistance would be needed, Hezbollah would probably be much better suited for this task than Russian units.

As far as I know, the Syrians do lack some types modern equipment, especially modern electronics and optics.  I am confident that the Russians can supply those, if needed through Iran.  Finally, since this war has been going on for so many years already, I am sure that the Syrian military has difficulties with spares and repairs.  Here again, Iran can help, with Russian aid if needed.

Conclusion

For the Russians to intervene directly in Syria would be illegal, politically impossible and pragmatically ineffective.  Russia is much better off playing her role in the Hezbollah-Iran-Russia "chain of support" for Syria.

For all the AngloZionist propaganda about the resurgent Russian Bear planning to invade Europe and for all the sophomoric demands by pseudo-friends of Russia for Russian military interventions - Russia has absolutely no obligation or intention to intervene anywhere.  The US example has already shown how costly and self-defeating it is for a country to declare itself the world policeman and to use military force to try to solve every one of the world's crises.  Russia is not the USA and she is not even an "anti-USA".  And that is, in my opinion, a very good thing for everybody.
 
 #17
www.rt.com
September 2, 2015
'Don't believe these reports': Putin's spokesman on Russian fighter jets in Syria claims

The Kremlin has dismissed media reports alleging that Russian jets are to participate in attacks against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Syria.

"One shouldn't believe these reports," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday.

On Monday, Israeli news site Ynet news reported that a Russian "expeditionary force" has arrived in Syria to set up a camp at a government airbase near Damascus in order to conduct air strikes against IS positions.

The report, which cited unnamed Western diplomats, added that "thousands of Russian military personnel are set to touch down in Syria, including advisers, instructors, logistics personnel, technical personnel, members of the aerial protection division, and pilots who will operate the aircraft."

The author of the report, Alex Fishman, told RT that he cannot comment on the legitimacy of his source.

On Wednesday, unverified images surfaced on Twitter suggesting that Russian-made jets and drones were sighted in Syria.

    Unverified: pics emerge showing Russian Yakovlev Pchela-1T drone & possibly Su-34 & Su-27s in #Idlib v @green_lemonnnpic.twitter.com/zFuPQafiLw
    - Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) September 2, 2015

On Tuesday, RT contacted a military source who also denied Russian troops involvement in Syria.

"There has been no redeployment of Russian combat aircraft to the Syrian Arab Republic," the source said. "The Russian Air Force is at its permanent bases and carrying out normal troop training and combat duty."

Earlier media reports suggested that Russia has supplied Syria with Mig 31 fighter jets under a bilateral contract signed in 2007. In August, Turkish media outlet BGNNews.com reported that six jets have landed in Damascus. The report was quickly dismissed by the CEO of the Russian Aircraft Corporation Mig Sergey Korotkov.
 
 
#18
Moscow Times
September 2, 2015
Putin Flies to China Amid Economic Gloom
By Howard Amos

President Vladimir Putin will be one of the most noteworthy guests at Chinese celebrations to mark the end of World War II when he arrives in Beijing on Wednesday, even as fraying economic ties between the two giant countries undermine the Kremlin's "pivot to the East."

The Russian delegation is expected to enjoy a prominent position at a huge military parade in the Chinese capital on Thursday followed by talks between Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

"The main aim of the visit is political symbolism," said Vladimir Petrovsky, an expert on China at Russia's Academy of Sciences' Institute of the Far East.

Russia has emphasized developing political and economic ties with China since last year's Ukraine crisis began to sour relations with the West, but the apparent fit between Russia's raw materials and China's rapid growth has been undermined by economic problems on both sides of the Chinese-Russian border.

Your Parade, My Parade

The presence of Putin in the stands at the parade in Beijing will echo the Kremlin's extravagant military display to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany on May 9 that was attended by Xi but snubbed by most Western leaders.

Russian soldiers will join more than 10,000 Chinese troops marching through central Beijing. But, like in Moscow earlier this year, there will be few Western heads of state visible in the stands - many snubbed the event because of military tensions in the region, while news agency Reuters reported last week that others were put off by the presence of Putin.

In an interview to Russian state news agency TASS on Tuesday, Putin criticized those downplaying Chinese and Soviet contributions to ending World War II.

"Today in Europe and in Asia we see attempts to falsify the history of World War II, put forward unsubstantiated, distorted accounts of events not based on the facts," Putin said, according to TASS.

"Our countries were allies in the battle with Nazism and Japanese militarism and we took the aggressors' main blow. And we didn't just hold out in this terrible conflict, but emerged victorious, freed enslaved peoples and brought peaceful life to the world," Putin said, TASS reported.

Accompanying Putin will be a large delegation of Russian officials and businessmen including Energy Minister Alexander Novak, Deputy prime ministers Igor Shuvalov and Dmitry Rogozin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, the heads of oil giant Rosneft and gas behemoth Gazprom as well as top bankers and billionaire Gennady Timchenko, a close acquaintance of Putin.

Gas Debacle?

Kremlin adviser Yury Ushakov said Monday that more than 30 agreements will be signed with China during the official visit, but the only one he gave details for was a memorandum between Gazprom and state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation to increase natural gas supplies via the Far East.

The size of the deliveries is still under discussion, the RBC news website reported Monday, citing a Gazprom official.

Suggestions earlier this year by officials that Putin's visit would see a final agreement about gas deliveries to China via a new "Western" pipeline through the Altai republic were scuppered by Ushakov on Monday. Such a document is "unlikely" to be signed, Ushakov said, according to TASS.

After more than a decade of talks, Putin announced a landmark $400 million gas supply deal to China last May - the first time Russia will sell pipeline gas to a non-European country. The accord followed a deterioration of relations with Europe and the U.S. as the Ukraine crisis deepened.

But Gazprom recently confirmed that the price China pays for the gas is tied to the oil price, which has more than halved over the last year. "This may end up being one of Gazprom's most misjudged investment decisions to date," analysts at Sberbank CIB said last month.

Gazprom said last week that supplies of the fuel to China under the 2014 agreement might not start until 2021, two years after the launch date originally announced.

While it remains the world's biggest consumer of energy, experts predict that China's demand for new energy deals will be dampened by concerns that a period of rapid growth is ending.

Economic Storm Clouds

Battered by the falling oil price and a dramatic decline in the value of Russia's currency, the flow of goods between Russia and China has slowed significantly - although China remains Russia's biggest trading partner.

In the first six months of 2015, trade between the two countries, worth $88 billion in 2014, contracted by 28.7 percent compared to the same period the year before.

The two sides have said they are targeting a trade turnover of $200 billion by 2020 - a goal that is looking more and more unfeasible.

"Russian-Chinese economic cooperation has reached a certain technical limit ... it is difficult for both countries to increase the size of their trade or diversify," said Mikhail Karpov, a Moscow-based China expert and political scientist. "There is less optimism about the economic side of things."
 
 #19
Kremlin.ru
September 1, 2015
Interview to TASS and Xinhua news agencies

Ahead of his visit to the People's Republic of China to attend celebrations of the 70th anniversary of China's victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan and the end of World War II, Vladimir Putin gave an interview to the Russian news agency TASS and the Chinese news agency Xinhua.

Question: This year marks 70 years since the victory over Nazism in World War II. Both your father and the father of China's President Xi Jinping fought in that war. Your memories of the war are both your personal, family memories and the memories of the whole nation. After Xi Jinping's spring visit to Moscow to attend the events commemorating the 70th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, you will make a visit to Beijing to attend the grand military parade marking the victory in the War of Resistance against the Japanese invaders. What do you think is the importance today of commemorating the victory in WWII and those historic events? What is your assessment of the contribution of the Chinese people's War of Resistance against the Japanese invaders to the overall victory against Nazism?

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: True, for Russia and China this Victory anniversary has a special significance. The Soviet Union achieved it through enormous sacrifice. The people of China also bore great losses. We will never forget heroism, courage and spiritual strength of the generation of victors. We will forever remember the fallen and honour the veterans.

Our two countries were allies in the fight against Nazism and Japanese militarism and bore the brunt of the aggression, and they not only withstood this battle, but won it, liberating enslaved peoples and bringing peace to the planet.

Such mutual support between the Soviet and the Chinese people in those years of trial, our common historical memory serve as a strong foundation for present-day relations between Russia and China.

Today, both in Europe and in Asia, we witness the attempts to falsify the history of World War II, to promote loose and distorted interpretations of the events that are not based on facts, particularly events of the pre-war and post-war periods. Efforts by certain countries to glorify and exonerate war criminals and their henchmen are an outrageous flouting of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. This is an outright insult to the memory of millions who fell in the war. The goal of such historical speculations is obvious: they are used in shady geopolitical games with the purpose of sowing feud between countries and peoples.

Russia and China maintain similar views on the causes, history and results of World War II. For our peoples its memory and its lessons are sacred. This tragic past is an appeal to our common responsibility for the fate of the world, to the realisation of the terrible consequences a destructive ideology of personal exclusiveness and all-permissiveness could lead to. These are the ideas that Nazism and militarism thrived on. It is our duty to prevent their revival and spreading.

Therefore, it is extremely important that our two countries are united in their striving to further preserve historical truth and defend our common Victory. Our joint celebrations of the 70th anniversary of Victory in World War II clearly illustrate this commitment of ours.

Question: In the past years, the situation in the world has been full of dramatic developments and changes, certain tendencies being rather alarming. How do you see relations between Moscow and Beijing in the current international situation? Can Russia and China assist in building a new world order and if so, what should it be based on, in your view?

Vladimir Putin: Unfortunately, the international situation is growing increasingly unpredictable. The creation of a new polycentric model is accompanied by growing regional and global instability. The main reason for such a tense and complicated situation is the deficit of attempts to reach compromise.

Inter-civilizational and inter-religious controversies fail to reach a stable solution. The global economy is yet to enter the stage of its stable development. Among the endemic problems is the persistent desire of certain states to retain their dominance in global affairs at any cost. While declaring norms of democracy, supremacy of law and human rights in their own countries, they ignore the same on the international arena, actually denouncing the principle of sovereign equality of all states laid down in the UN Charter.

In these complicated conditions, Russian-Chinese cooperation takes on a new meaning in terms of maintaining and strengthening global and regional stability and security and finding effective response to global challenges.

Russian-Chinese ties have now probably reached a peak in their entire history and continue developing. The partnership between Russia and China is based on sincere friendship and sympathy between our peoples, on deep respect and trust, consideration for each other's key interests and commitment to make our countries flourish.

It is in this vein that we work together in the UN, the G20, as well as within BRICS and the SCO, which have successfully held their summits in Ufa this July. The Russia-China connection played an important part in resolving such acute issues as the withdrawal of chemical weapons from Syria and an agreement on Iran's nuclear programme.

Russia and China are priority partners in promoting the principles of building an architecture based on inseparable security and cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, in strengthening trust in space exploration and ensuring global information security.

Expansion of the Russian-Chinese partnership meets the interests and strategic goals of our two countries. This is what guided us when we adopted in May the current Joint Declaration on cooperation in coordinating development of the Eurasian Economic Union and the Silk Road Economic Belt. This is the beginning of a process of coordinating our long-term development priorities to give a strong impetus to economic activity on the vast expanses of Eurasia.

Question: Trade and economic relations between Russia and China are generally on the rise, though Western anti-Russian sanctions negatively affect the bilateral trade. Can the countries achieve the target of doubling trade turnover they have set for themselves earlier? What areas do you consider most promising here?

Vladimir Putin: China is our key economic partner. In the past years, we have managed to make significant progress in all areas of economic and production cooperation.

I would not agree that the illegitimate restrictions imposed by certain Western countries against Russia have a negative impact on Russian-Chinese economic cooperation. On the contrary, this encourages our domestic business to develop stable business ties with China.

Since 2010, China has been Russia's leading trade partner. In 2014, despite unfavourable trends in global economy, we managed to maintain our trade turnover, which reached around $88.4 billion.

Energy remains the key area here. Our countries are consistently moving towards the creation of a strategic energy alliance that, I am sure, will play a significant role in international economic relations.

In 2014, we made a real breakthrough in gas industry. In May of last year, during my visit to China, we signed a contract for annual supplies to China of 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas. It will be shipped via the 'eastern' route for 30 years. To implement the project, we have already launched the construction of the Power of Siberia gas pipeline. In May of this year, we reached initial agreement on the 'western' route, with anticipated exports of 30 billion cubic meters a year. The implementation of these large-scale projects is our absolute priority for the near future.

We are also making significant progress in other areas of energy cooperation. We have built and began operating an oil pipeline from Russia to China, we signed agreements to increase oil shipments, created joint ventures to explore and produce oil in this country. Chinese companies have joined gas projects on the Russian Arctic shelf and the Sakhalin shelf. There are good prospects for joint development of coalfields in the Far East.

Nuclear energy cooperation is also developing rapidly. The first and second power units of the Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant, built by Rosatom, are demonstrating the best efficiency and security among all the nuclear power plants in China. We are currently involved in the construction of the third and fourth power units of the station, to be commissioned in 2018. As you can see, Russian-Chinese energy cooperation has great potential.

I consider the development of high-speed railway transport one of the most promising areas. We have already agreed on the parameters of joint funding for the construction of a high-speed route between Moscow and Kazan, and the amount of investment to be provided by our Chinese partners and us will exceed 1 trillion rubles. We expect to have the new route running by 2020, for it to become a model project of Russian-Chinese transport and infrastructure cooperation.

Cooperation in aerospace and space rocket industries is of great significance for both our countries. We have already agreed on the joint creation of a wide-bodied long-range jumbo jet and a heavy helicopter, as well as on a number of other joint programmes.

China's participation as a partner country in the INNOPROM 2015 International Industrial Fair in Yekaterinburg gave a new impetus to close cooperation in science, technology and production.

Both Moscow and Beijing are set to intensify our financial partnership, including mutual settlements in national currencies. We plan to expand interregional ties and cross-border cooperation, increasing their practical effect and improving cross-border transport infrastructure.

Question: Russia has taken a number of measures lately to boost the development of its regions in the Far East, including, in particular, the creation of a free port in Vladivostok. In Ufa in July, you also welcomed the participation of Chinese companies in the development of the Russian Far East. What do you think are the opportunities for Russian-Chinese cooperation here? How does Russia intend to attract Chinese investors?

Vladimir Putin: True, the development of Siberia and the Far East is our national priority for the entire 21st century. We have already made a number of significant steps to resolve this grand-scale task. We are actively implementing a programme of socioeconomic development of the Far East and the Baikal region, which includes dozens of major investment projects, including the construction of the Power of Siberia gas pipeline, Vostochny space launch centre, gas refining and gas chemical projects planned by Gazprom and Sibur, modernisation and expansion of the Baikal-Amur and Trans-Siberian mainlines, and the Zvezda shipyards.

Of course, Russia is interested in attracting foreign, including Chinese investors to participate in the implementation of these projects. The Federal Law On Priority Development Areas in Russia has created a new instrument both for the country in general and for the Far Eastern regions, where we have already created 9 such areas.

Priority development areas, along with special economic zones, should become the 'locomotives' of economic transformation in the Far East, sort of clusters that attract and accumulate investment and technology. Major tax incentives and simplified business procedures help create on these territories favourable conditions for investment and business regardless of the country the capital comes from.

Resident companies will enjoy the following benefits: zero profit tax, property tax and land tax for the first 5 years; zero import and export customs duty; subsidies on loans, special rates on rent and simplified state and municipal control procedures. For 10 years after obtaining a Priority Development Area (PDA) resident status, businesses will make lower insurance payments (7.6 percent instead of 30). Value added tax on imports for refining will also be zero.

However, stimulation measures are not limited to this. National and foreign companies will enjoy mineral extraction tax holiday: reduction factor (between 0 and 0.8 percent) will be applied for 10 years. Administrative barriers will be minimised. Most importantly, the state undertakes to create the necessary infrastructure. The Russian Government estimates that total investment in the first three priority development areas alone will constitute over 50 billion rubles. The federal budget is also allocating significant funds for their development - about 7.5 billion rubles.

Just as large-scale changes are in store for investors in the south of Primorye Territory, where we are introducing a free port regime that would cover all the key ports from Nakhodka to Zarubino, including Vladivostok, of course. The law on free port will come into effect in October 2015. Here we intend to introduce significant tax preferences - up to zero rate on certain taxes. The business environment is being simplified to the maximum, including in capital construction, and we are actually introducing a visa-free regime for foreign citizens. A free customs zone procedure will also be in place on the territory of the free port, which actually means duty-free import of foreign goods.

I am convinced that these new opportunities will draw the interest of investors from China and a number of other Asian countries to the implementation of our plans. Moreover, a number of major companies have already put forth specific investment projects. Thus, our Chinese partners are ready to invest over 100 billion rubles into the construction of an oil refinery and a clinker plant in Amur Region, Nizhneleninskoye-Tongjiang and Blagoveshchensk-Heihe bridges, and a metallurgical plant and a brick factory in Yakutia.

Question: In May, you signed an Executive Order on the annual Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. What do you expect from it? What did your regional partners think of this idea?

Vladimir Putin: The St Petersburg International Economic Forum held in June demonstrated that, despite the sanctions imposed against Russia that hinder the development of quality economic cooperation, the interest in this country among foreign business circles has grown. More than 10,000 participants from 120 countries came to the forum. Therefore, we have no doubt that the first Eastern Economic Forum to be held in Vladivostok on September 3-5 will also attract our foreign partners, primarily those in the Asia-Pacific region.

The main purpose of the forum is to position Russia as an active participant in economic and integration processes in the Asia-Pacific region and to present specific projects to investors for joint implementation. Business circles in India, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, Singapore and some other countries geographically not belonging to the region are already showing interest in the forum.

We highly value our Chinese partners' intention to send a strong delegation that will include businessmen from over a hundred leading energy, mining, transport, agricultural, machine building and other companies, as well as representatives from major financial institutions, the central authorities and governors. We expect them to be especially active at the forum.

Question: You said earlier that you have special feelings for China. Since you were elected for your first term as President in 2000, you have now visited China as the Russian leader 13 times. What changes that you noticed during those visits impressed you most? What do you think about China's development?

Vladimir Putin: As you have fairly noted, I was lucky to watch China 'on the move' over a number of years. With every visit, I noted that your country was growing more economically powerful, achieving new targets in building a modern infrastructure and in social development.

At the same time, China is showing great care for its cultural and historic traditions. Everyone who visits your wonderful country feels this practically everywhere. Cultural heritage sites are of special importance, reflecting the full measure of the ancient Chinese civilisation. My trip to the Shaolin monastery during my visit in 2006 was unforgettable.

The development road China has covered over these years is a path of successful economic reform and wise social policy. This experience is of great value for us. Therefore, even with all the differences between Russia and China, we are facing common development targets, such as changing the structure of the economy to favour high technology sectors. Russia and China also have very similar industrial priorities: these are nuclear energy, space exploration, new information technologies, environmental protection, energy saving, production of high technology medicines and medical equipment, and some other.

Our two countries have an enormous potential for closer business cooperation and active humanitarian ties. More importantly, we are prepared to make use of all these opportunities; we see mutual interest and trust between us grow and friendly ties become stronger. There is a lot we can achieve on this basis. And I am sure we will.
 
 #20
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
September 3, 2015
Russia waits on U.N. response over claim to extend Arctic borders
After 14 years, Moscow is renewing an effort to claim a vast territory on the outer margin of the continental shelf abutting Russia's land mass in the Arctic. What are the economic benefits of acquiring the legal rights to this underwater area and is Russia's claim likely to be approved?
Alexei Lossan, RBTH
 
As the Arctic ice cap continues to melt, the countries bordering the region are taking a closer and closer interest in bolstering their claims to underwater territories in the Arctic Ocean while ensuring that potential conflict is avoided, with the U.S. Department of State holding an important conference on global leadership in the region in Alaska as recently as Aug. 31.

Russia is also taking more active steps to clearly define its presence and role in the north: After 14 years, it is renewing an effort to claim a vast territory on the outer margin of the Arctic continental shelf abutting Russia's land mass.

In early August, Russia submitted to the U.N. a revised application to claim the 1.2-million-square-meter (463,000-square-mile) underwater territory extending more than 350 sea miles from the coast, according to an announcement posted on the Ministry of Foreign Affair's site.

"For justifying its claim to this territory, Russia used a large collection of scientific data, accumulated in the course of many years of arctic research," said the announcement.
 
The main justification

The potential economic benefits of claiming this underwater region are incalculable.

"The Laptev Sea, as has already been proven, has a diamond canal on the surface of its shelf, which will allow Russia to become even more competitive with other countries in the production of diamonds," said Vera Smorchkova, professor of labor and social policy at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) Institute of State Service and Administration.

Russia had applied to gain possession of a smaller part of territory on the Lomonosov Ridge in 2001, but did not have required proof that the territory was an extension of the continent and belonged to Russia, said Smorchkova, also assistant to the chairman of the Senate Committee on the Affairs of the North and Indigenous Peoples.

The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea allows countries to expand their economic zones, provided that the seabed beyond their bounds is a natural extension of the continental margin. Denmark, Canada, Norway and the U.S. are also laying claims to sometimes-overlapping territories under the Arctic Ocean. This collective interest in the northern seas is based on geologists' collective opinion that the seabed contains almost 30 percent of unexplored natural gas reserves and 15 percent of oil reserves.

In the application, Russia lays claims to the Lomonosov Ridge, Alpha Ridge and Chukchi Cap, and to the Podvodnik and Chukchi Ocean Basins separating them.
 
The prospects of a solution

Russia's application will not be reviewed in the near future for procedural reasons, but will be included in the provisional agenda of the 40th session of the Commission in February/March 2016, according to United Nations deputy spokesman Farhan Haq.

"The decision to expand the shelf margins is not only of a geographical and economic nature, but it also risks becoming a political issue," noted a chief analyst at UFS Investment Company, Alexei Kozlov.

With heightening tensions between Russia and the West, the final decision to expand the shelf may be postponed under various pretexts, according to Kozlov.
"Sooner or later, however, the issue will mostly likely be resolved positively, but the shelf will not become Russia's territory without a fight," said Kozlov.

Russia's claim to area in the Arctic will likely be opposed by countries such as Canada and the U.S., due to its rich deposits. Ed Royce, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said the U.S. should be prepared to stand up to Russia in this matter.

"Russia has been aggressively pushing its claims to the Arctic, especially the resource-rich continental shelf. It now has an Arctic Command to strengthen its military presence in the region," said Royce.

"The U.S. and others bordering the Arctic must maintain a united front against Moscow's aggressive ambitions toward this vital region."

Ecologists believe the ambitions of various countries equally threaten the Arctic. The melting of Arctic ice opens the broad expanses of the northern seas, making them vulnerable, said Vladimir Chuprov, director of the Greenpeace Russia energy program.

"Millions of people are calling on governments to create an international reserve territory around the North Pole, in order that this water area remains untouched by industry and the nature remains wild," Chuprov told RBTH.

"Moreover, there is no economic sense in extracting oil from the arctic shelf, since there are no technologies for drilling for oil in icy conditions at great depths. Economists and geologists are speaking about this more and more, including those from Russia."

In a comment to RBTH, the press office of the Russian Embassy in Washington D.C. said that they see the Arctic as a territory of dialogue and cooperation.

"We don't see any insoluble contradictions in this region, especially questions which would require a military solution. All the calls that we are facing have no military connections. Minister Sergei Lavrov has stated this several times, emphasizing that it is necessary to leave the Arctic out of military rhetoric. We recognize that all our actions in the region should be regulated within the framework of international law," said the statement.

"Russia consistently opposes the politicization of international cooperation in the Arctic. Success can be achieved only when the Arctic states are united and act collectively. The future of the region, the implementation of environmental protection measures and the improvement of conditions for residents of the Far North shouldn't depend on extra-regional events."
 
 #21
Fair.org
September 1, 2015
US Leads World in Credulous Reports of 'Lagging Behind' Russia
By Adam Johnson
Adam Johnson is an associate editor at AlterNet and writes frequently for FAIR.org.
[Graphics here http://fair.org/home/us-leads-world-in-credulous-reports-of-lagging-behind-russia/]

On Sunday, the New York Times maintained a long, proud tradition of uncritically repeating official claims that the US-despite having twice the population, eight times the military budget and a nominal economy almost ten times as large-is "lagging behind" Russia on a key military strategic objective:

"US Is Playing Catch-Up With Russia in Scramble for the Arctic"

The original front-page headline uses the classic New York Times passive voice: "Seen as." As does much of the article's framing:

    "In Washington and other NATO capitals, Russia's military moves are seen as provocative - and potentially destabilizing."

"Seen" by whom and why? As it turns out, it's "seen" this way entirely by the United States military and its partisan think tanks. The story overwhelmingly quotes Western military brass, anonymous White House officials and Western think tanks, namely the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Cold War holdover that published a paper dubiously titled "The New Ice Curtain" to warn of the pending threat of Russian presence in the Arctic.

It's clear, based on the timing of this story, that CSIS's paper-along with the president's trip to Alaska-is the inciting incident justifying this latest round of Cold War 2.0 posturing. Indeed, right on cue, Obama's announced plans for a stronger military presence in the Arctic were accompanied by another Times article Tuesday stressing the urgency of the polar "gap"-citing the Times' own Sunday report twice in the opening paragraph:

    "Obama to Call for More Icebreakers in Arctic as US Seeks Foothold

    'President Obama on Tuesday will propose speeding the acquisition and building of new Coast Guard icebreakers that can operate year-round in the nation's polar regions, part of an effort to close the gap between the United States and other nations, especially Russia, in a global competition to gain a foothold in the rapidly changing Arctic."

Both hyperlinks go back to the Sunday report.

So here we have it: Pro-NATO think tanks and military brass feed a narrative to the Times, the Times prints it with little skepticism, then these very same forces turn around and use this reporting to justify its military buildup. The crucial question as to whether or not America is objectively "lagging behind" is never really approached critically.

More importantly, the normative question as to whether the US has any intrinsic obligation or right to maintain parity with Russia in the Arctic is never brought up. The assumption is just taken for granted, and once it is, US military officials and their friendly establishment press are off to the races debating how-not if-they can amass more military hardware in another corner of the globe.

On the issue of the US's legitimacy of having a military presence in the Arctic, one critical point is obscured: Russia has roughly 14 times the Arctic coastline the United states does, 1,760 km vs. 24,140 km. A fact cartoonishly ignored in the New York Times' misleading graphic:

New York Times labels make US, Russia seem to have equal claims on the Arctic Ocean.

The reality is that the US stake in the Arctic is relatively tiny compared to Russia's.

This is nothing new, of course. Ominous warnings about "gaps" with the Russians are a decades-long tradition in US and Western media. Over the past few years alone, the US has "lagged behind" the dreaded Russians in the following departments:

Cyber security

Online and traditional propaganda

Space race

"Military tactics"

Nuclear technology

Now let's remember: Russia's military budget is one-eighth the size of the US's-and 1/14th as large as NATO's cumulative $1 trillion in annual military spending. But we've been here before. During the Cold War, the public was constantly told the US was "lagging behind" Russia in developing enough nuclear weapons.

A combination of uncritical press, military Chicken Little-ism and policy wonk groupthink spread a fear that we later learned was largely false. There's little reason to think-based on the one-sided nature of these reports-that this round of military posturing and Russia-baiting should be any different.
 
 #22
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
September 3, 2015
Why the 2016 US presidential elections matter to Russia
Even though it is too early to predict the winner of the 2016 presidential election, it's not too early to reflect on the impact that this election will have on U.S.-Russia relations.
By Andrei Korobkov
Andrei Korobkov is a professor of Political Science at Middle Tennessee State University. He graduated from Moscow State University and received a Ph. D. in Economics from the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russia) and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Alabama. He has previously worked as a Research Fellow at the Institute of International Economic and Political Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and taught at the University of Alabama. Korobkov is the author of about forty academic works, published in the US, Russia, Turkey, and the former Yugoslavia.

In recent weeks, developments in the U.S. presidential race have started attracting more and more attention, and not only from experts, but also from people who are usually not interested in politics. That's true both in the U.S. and in Russia, where the choice of the next U.S. president could go a long way in determining the future of U.S.-Russian relations.

Beyond the Cold War: Changes in the U.S. foreign policy landscape

To understand what's happening now in 2015, it's first necessary to consider the changed foreign policy landscape over the past 25 years. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Democrats, under the slogan of defending universal human values, started to be internationally active, often turning to the open use of armed forces abroad.

This trend, combined with the historical willingness of Republicans during the Cold War to intervene abroad, merged into a symbiotic relationship during the presidency of George H.W. Bush. The Bush presidency aimed at the forceful removal of unwanted dictatorial regimes and the formation of pro-Western governments in their place (which were expected to be more "democratic" and "peace loving").

President Barack Obama inherited the need to disentangle the U.S. from the unpleasant legacy of his predecessors, including the crises in Iraq and Afghanistan, the deterioration of relations with Russia and China, as well as coming face-to-face with new crises in the Middle East and Ukraine.

All of this has strengthened the perceptions of Obama as a weak and uncommitted leader, an image intensely cultivated by his opponents, especially in the ranks of the Republican Party. In many ways, such a perception is completely false - in many situations, Obama has shown himself to be a hard realist and a very cynical politician, dramatically changing U.S. strategies towards Cuba, Iran, Israel and the Middle East as a whole, as well as pushing through comprehensive immigration reforms.

Nevertheless, this intentionally created image of a "weakling" will no doubt lead to fierce criticism of his foreign policy stances, and become one of the characteristic features of the Republican primaries, and then during the official national election campaign.

Impact of U.S. presidential elections on U.S.-Russia relations

What impact will this have on the future development of Russian-American relations? It's hard to see much positive here. It is already clear that the Republicans, as was the case during the Cold War, will try to outshout each other, talking about the weaknesses of Obama and promising to "teach Russia a lesson."

Democrats like Hillary Clinton, and another potential candidate from the Democratic elite - Vice President Joe Biden - do not hide their personal hostilities towards Russian President Vladimir Putin, and hold a "hawkish" stance on the Ukrainian crisis. At the same time, many people in their entourage, for various reasons, consider the "punishment" of Russia as a personal vendetta.

And yet, things are not so bad. It is already becoming clear that Hillary is facing serious difficulties, many of them associated with the "skeletons in her closet," including potential violations of ethics and laws. In addition, Hillary's strong connections with big monopolies and pro-corporate position, as well as those of Bill Clinton, have led to considerable distrust and dislike of her in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

An expression of this sentiment was the emergence of the candidacy of Bernie Sanders - the most left-wing member of the U.S. Congress, who has received considerable support from party activists and young voters. Although Sanders has no chances of winning the nomination, or of becoming elected as the president, he is now playing a role similar to that of Eugene McCarthy in 1968, being able to point out the weakness and hypocrisy in the positions of the establishment candidates.

Therefore, in the long term, it is possible we will see a repetition of the situation in 2008, when, seeing the weakness of Hillary as a candidate, both activists and top members of the party, suddenly gave their support to the little-known Senator Barack Obama. At the same time, Joe Biden can hardly be considered as a serious candidate to replace Hillary - for many in the country, he does not yet look like a potential Commander-in-Chief.

And then there is still the possibility for the appearance of a completely unexpected figure on the Democratic horizon, as happened in 1992, with the young governor from the state of Arkansas - Bill Clinton. From the point of view of Russian-American relations, the arrival of such a leader, not overburdened with Cold War stereotypes, and having no personal animosity towards foreign partners, would be a very beneficial occurrence.

The Grand Old Party tragicomedy

Meanwhile, the situation in the Republican Party can be considered as downright tragicomic. The relative political weakness of Obama and a literal hatred of him by the conservatives, has led to the formation of an unprecedentedly large (16 people) pool of applicants for the official nomination as candidate for the Republican Party.

Among them there are candidates from the establishment (first of all - Jeb Bush), the plainly weak figures, and colorful right-wing populist leaders who appeal to the conservative activists in the party (Ted Cruz). These candidates, while unable to win the primaries, with their criticism could seriously weaken the leaders in this race, and move the party's program further to the right from the center, to the edge of the political spectrum.

However, all this carefully build structure was scattered literally overnight, when the real estate mogul, TV celebrity, and billionaire Donald Trump entered the Republican Party race.

Smug and self-reliant, Trump - in contrast to the professional politicians - does not depend on sponsors and speaks in normal human language, not in political clich�s, mocking his Republican rivals. He is not afraid to discuss topics that are politically dangerous in America, including the position of racial minorities and women.

The fact that about thirty percent of surveyed Republicans support him, shows, even more than the success of Sanders among the Democrats, the extent to which the American electorate has become tired of the cautious, politically correct, and very monotonous professional politicians in Washington.

The top brass of the Republican Party has been thrown into confusion. On the one hand, Trump has spoiled all their well laid plans, has turned the attention of the media onto his campaign, and is working on discrediting a number of influential candidates. At the same time, ideologically, he is not conservative enough, and thus outside the party's mentality.

Especially frightening for the top brass of the party are his statements on racial issues and immigration policy. Here again, Trump has upset the house of cards - he has not only pushed aside candidates such as Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, he has also radically changed the tone of the election campaign, giving it a clear anti-immigration profile. He has even proposed to resume construction of a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border.

Thus far, the Republican Party leadership has taken a wait-and-see position, in the hope that some scandal involving Trump will appear, some serious compromise involving him will be discovered, or the electorate will simply get tired of his antics. Indeed, if we go by the standards of American election campaigns, Trump "came out" too early - usually such figures do not reach the finish line.

However, everything in this current cycle is unusual, and therefore the Republican Party leaders are beginning to look closely at things and think: Perhaps, this will be our big chance?  

What does Trump's presidential bid mean for Russia?

What does all this promise in terms of U.S.-Russian relations? In some sense, there are some positive aspects here, because, at least for now, the focus has shifted to an entirely different topic. Despite Trump's eccentricity, and his love of theatrical gestures, the appearance at the helm of a man that is not overburdened with Cold War stereotypes (by the way, his first wife was Czech, and his current wife is from Slovenia) and who looks at the world as a technocratic realist, might be a plus.

And what will happen if Trump "burns out"? Among other Republican candidates, there are very few with adequate foreign policy expertise, and what is more, there are quite a few demagogues. Only one - Rand Paul - believes that the U.S, should go about its own business, and not get involved in other people's conflicts. However, his chances are minimal.

The chances are also small among the more military aggressive ones, who are demanding a sharp aggravation of relations with Russia - Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham, for example.

Then again, among the really strong candidates - Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio - Bush, of course, appears as the most competent and the most balanced politician. Even though he would surely inherit some of the "hawkish" advisers from his older brother, his policies, in general, would very likely be the most realistic.

For now, Jeb seems to have been somewhat stunned from the pressure applied by Trump, and appears to be conducting his campaign in the style of his father, rather than that of his brother - he finds it quite difficult to create an emotional connection with the audience during his speeches.

However, we are still at the very beginning - more than a year remains before the elections. And as the saying goes - time will tell. Perhaps over the long slog of an election cycle, candidates will begin to shift their positions on Russia.
 
 #23
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
September 1, 2015
'Foreign Policy' Asks: Is Russian Literature Covertly Invading Your Mind?
Is the Kremlin using literature to undermine the fact that Putin shot down MH-17? Foreign Policy asks the tough questions, again.
By RI Staff

Edward Lucas and other idiots have been waiting for months for Russia to invade the entire world. But the invasion has not come. Instead, it is now evident that Putin will resurrect the Soviet Union by brainwashing the world with so-called Russian "culture".

The United States knows this trick well and uses it with spectacular success to distract from its drone campaigns and CIA torture facilities. Who can deny the power of SpongeBob Squarepants and his subterranean hijinks? Now try to imagine SpongeBob in Russian, book form, and you will begin to understand why responsible westerners are worried.

Case in point: The Russian government is supporting efforts to make contemporary Russian literature available to western readers. Or as Foreign Policy explains [http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/31/the-rise-of-bulgakov-diplomacy-russian-literature-vladimir-putin-read-russia/?utm_content=bufferdd9d4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer]:

    "The Kremlin is backing an ambitious effort to make the B-sides of the Russian literary canon more accessible to a global audience. Is it a boon for cultural understanding - or propaganda?"

Try to imagine the discussion that Foreign Policy's editors had before running with this story. "Has Putin invaded Estonia yet?"; "Not yet, but his government is promoting book reading." ; "Books?!" ; "Yes, books." ; "My God, and they call Russia a Christian nation!" ... And so on. And the horror is shared even within the gilded towers of academia:

     "One of the participating scholars, speaking on condition of anonymity, explained, 'The problem here is that, despite the very noble nature of the project, which is long overdue and timely and necessary, the Russian authorities are using it to make a good face. And that's why I am split. I don't want to add my two pennies to the Kremlin bank.'"

Yes. "Loose lips sink ships" will be replaced with "Reading Russian literature kills kittens."

But the plot thickens. If you're bored enough to continue reading, you eventually learn that:

    "In any case, it won't be Putin's circle that decides which titles to choose, which translators to employ, and which prefaces to seek. That will be the task of a scholarly panel at Columbia."

Yes, Columbia University. One of Russia's most prestigious institutes of higher learning, located on Red Square. Inside St. Basil's Cathedral, actually.

We're sorry you had to read this. Foreign Policy strikes again.
 
 #24
New York Times
September 3, 2015
Alexander Sokurov: Russia as Allegory for Art and Life
By RACHEL DONADIO

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia - Alexander Sokurov's 2002 film "Russian Ark," a single 90-minute unedited Steadicam shot that weaves through the State Hermitage Museum here, is an elliptical meditation on art, power and nostalgia. In his latest film, "Francofonia," which will debut in competition at the Venice International Film Festival on Friday, this Russian director turned his camera on the Louvre for a reflection on cultural patrimony during wartime and Russia's vexed relationship with Europe.

"Francofonia" is a work of fiction set in 1940 Paris under the Nazi occupation. It is based on two real-life characters: Jacques Jaujard (played by the French actor and director Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), who helped hide the Louvre's collections before the German invasion; and the German art historian and curator Franz Wolff-Metternich (played by the German actor Benjamin Utzerath), who was sent by the occupation forces in 1940 to oversee the Louvre's collections.

In an interview over tea at his kitchen table here in March, Mr. Sokurov said that "Francofonia" sought to ask some fundamental questions. "What is more important, culture or life?" he said in Russian. "Or culture, life and the state? What is more important? For what should we pay with our lives?"

"Maybe we shouldn't pay" with our lives for art, he said. Instead, he added, maybe art is something that should only be bought.

Nearby, the Neva River was icy. Inside the apartment, classical music played. A tiny bird chirped in its cage and a dog Mr. Sokurov called "your majesty" nuzzled up against him.

Speaking about Russia's place in history and the world, the director was quiet but intense, sometimes breaking into a wistful smile.

"We've made all possible mistakes in Russia, every possible mistake," Mr. Sokurov said. "We are the first ones who decided to have this experiment with socialism."

"French theorists were only talking in theory, they just made notes, with their delirious minds," he added. "But here we have our dream society, this is our utopian plan, and we were such fools to actually trust it and believe it immediately."

The director said that "Francofonia" also tried to explore Russian-European relations - or "Russia's covert resistance to Europe, Europe's constant discontent with Russia," he said - a complex, centuries-old tangle of economic and political interdependence, admiration and mistrust.

Asked what it meant to raise such questions now, after Russia's annexation of Crimea damaged the country's relations with the West, Mr. Sokurov said only that Russia's biggest problems had always been "space and religion" - how to manage a land encompassing 11 time zones and countless ethnic and religious groups - and that the country's "internal contradictions," including the one between Christianity and Islam, were what would destroy it.

Mr. Sokurov took up some of those issues, albeit in his characteristically elusive style, in "Alexandra" (2008), about a grandmother who visits her grandson in Chechnya, where Russia has fought separatists on and off since the mid-1990s, and in a series of films that Mr. Sokurov shot at a Russian military outpost on the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

At other times, he has been more direct in his criticism of Russian policy. At an awards ceremony at the Kremlin in June, Mr. Sokurov told an audience that included President Vladimir V. Putin that he was "troubled."

"Our motherland is on a hard and difficult path," he said in comments interpreted as critical of the annexation of Crimea, which has divided Russia's intellectuals. "No one knows what awaits us ahead. I would like to ask God to save us from mistakes, and ask God to save our soldiers and officers, to save their lives, and to grant that everything for us is humane."

Born in Siberia and a disciple of the director Andrei Tarkovsky, Mr. Sokurov, 64, has directed more than 50 films, both fiction and genre-bending documentaries, which he calls elegies. Since 1999 he has made a series of films about men of power: Hitler ("Moloch"), Lenin ("Taurus"), Emperor Hirohito ("The Sun"). "Faust," his adaptation of Goethe's allegorical tale, which opens with the protagonist dissecting a corpse as he searches in vain for the body's soul, won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2011. (Darren Aronofsky, that year's jury president, called the film life-changing.)

Asked in the interview about Mr. Putin, Russia's current man of power, Mr. Sokurov was circumspect.

"We can blame him for many things, but in reality it's because there's huge support from the people," he said. Mr. Putin is a product of Russia. "It's just like a ring, a circle, and the question for Russian society is how to get out of this vicious circle. But we haven't been able to get out of this circle since the time of the Romanovs."

Last year the director published a heartfelt open letter to Mr. Putin, denouncing censorship and a lack of civility in Russia. But asked whether it was harder to make films now, when many artists in Russia say they face censorship, Mr. Sokurov said that his main obstacles were his own exacting artistic standards.

"I'm not experiencing any kind of censorship," he said.

Still, he did not hide his disappointment with the conditions in Russia. "I'm furious and I'm angry and I'm annoyed," he said.

He was deeply worried, he added, by Russia's refusal to acknowledge its mistakes and learn from them, in the way that Germany has been able to face its Nazi past.

"There's an economic crisis. There is a way out of a crisis of any kind, but from the moral crisis - you can spend centuries getting out of the moral crisis, and that's our problem," he said.

At least two other recent films have explored some of the issues at the heart of "Francofonia," including last year's "The Monuments Men," directed by and starring George Clooney, about a team of United States operatives who tried to save Europe's artistic treasure from the Nazis, and "Diplomacy," also from last year, Volker Schl�ndorff's elegant film about the Swedish ambassador to France who helped persuade the German military governor to disobey Hitler's orders to destroy Paris.

In "Francofonia," Mr. Sokurov's approach is less expository and more suggestive. The film blurs fact and fiction with the use of archival footage, and has cameo appearances by Napoleon and Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic. Financed by the Louvre and Arte France Cin�ma, the film is set for release in France in November.

In publicity material for the film, the director says of the Louvre: "Let's imagine an ark on the ocean, with people and great works of art aboard - books, pictures, music, sculpture, more books, recordings, and more. The ark's timbers cannot resist and a crack has appeared. What will we save? The living? Or the mute, irreplaceable testimonies to the past?"

Mr. Sokurov is haunted by the Siege of Leningrad, in which more than a million Russians died defending the city - now called St. Petersburg - against the German Army from 1941 to 1944. He is involved in efforts to prevent St. Petersburg's historic buildings from being replaced by the eyesores of the nouveau riche. During the siege, "we paid such a high price for saving the city," he said. "Therefore we don't have any right to back down now. We just can't, we're not allowed."

"We're not irrevocably fated to be civilized," Mr. Sokurov said. Whether it's the bloody wars of past centuries or "the computer revolution" of today, he said, "every time, we have to prove it; we have to pass the exam that we can be civilized."
 
 #25
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
September 2, 2015
Can Estonia build a new Berlin Wall between Russia and the West?
Estonia's attempts to build a new fence on its border with Russia might symbolically raise a new Iron Curtain between Russia and the West. But does Europe really want it - and can it afford it?
By Artem Kureev
Artem Kureev is an expert from the Moscow-based think tank "Helsinki+" that deals with protecting interests of Russians living in the Baltic countries. Kureev graduated from Saint Petersburg State University's School of International Relations.

This week, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued additional commentary on Estonia's plans to build a security barrier more than 8 feet high and approximately 67 miles long on its border with Russia.

Russian diplomats describe the wall initiative as "quite politicized," stressing that Moscow would consider "any unilateral action to construct surface facilities on the border as a temporary measure with no legal force," since the relevant border treaty between Estonia and Russia has yet to take effect.

A "new Berlin wall" in Estonia

On August 25, the Estonian border agency issued a statement on its plans to construct a 108-kilometer (67-mile) fence on the border with Russia, which will cost EU and Estonian taxpayers $79.52 million.

The initiative is backed by Latvia, where Interior Minister Rihards Kozlovskis has repeatedly proposed similar schemes. The news was quickly picked up on by Russian media and politicians, who were harshly critical of the idea.

Moreover, Moscow perceives Riga and Tallinn's steps to strengthen their state borders as a political move, drawing parallels with the Ukrainian government's ideas for a wall and ditch on the border with Russia, mooted in spring of this year.

However, Estonian and Latvian leaders, when speaking about the need for more border infrastructure, tend not to refer to lukewarm bilateral relations with Russia. So why is a wall needed? And can one be put up just like that?

First of all, a proviso: It is not really a wall. The Estonian government plans to build something more like a metal mesh fence with a height of 8 feet, reinforced with barbed wire. Such fences are not uncommon in border areas.

For instance, the U.S.-Mexico border wall, dubbed the "Great American Wall" by TIME magazine, is more than 1,864 miles long and almost 15 feet high. Similar barriers exist on the Israeli-Gaza, Indian-Bangladeshi and other borders where there is a serious political tension or a high risk of illegal migration.
It is illegal migration from Russia that Kozlovskis cites above all. In March, he proposed strengthening the Latvian-Russian border with a concrete wall costing $16.8 million. By August the price had risen to $19.04 million.

Kozlovskis asserts that since the beginning of 2015 his department has detained more than 200 migrants caught illegally crossing the border. Yet he did not specify whether all had crossed the Russian-Latvian border in particular, and not on false documents at that, but in the classic sense of the word - with a guide through the forest.

Estonian and Latvian officials cite other reasons, too. For instance, Estonian Rural Affairs Minister Urmas Kruuse in an interview with Estonian newspaper Postimees on July 24 this year commented on the problem of boars carrying swine fever.

"Killing all wild pigs domestically does not solve the problem, since wild animals are free to roam across state borders," he said.

An Estonian fence reinforced with additional obstructions for large animals could indeed solve the problem of protecting Baltic farm animals.

Latvia and Estonia have been looking to strengthen their state borders for a while now. Having joined the EU back in 2004, Riga and Tallinn made a commitment to reinforce the union's external borders. That same year the Estonian leadership announced plans to spend more than $67.2 million on beefing up its eastern borders.

But as last year's arrest of Estonian officer Eston Kohver in the Russian border area shows, there has been no substantial strengthening of the border away from official crossing points. The Estonian and Latvian borders can be traversed illegally through forest or swampland.

Moreover, the border strip (which in Soviet times simply did not exist) passes through dense thickets and other places very difficult to patrol. Hence, the need for stronger borders, which (except for checkpoints) the Baltic countries have done little about, looks quite logical at first glance.

The view from Russia

According to Russian border guards, the "anti-Russia fence," which Kiev and its Baltic allies like the look of, will not strengthen the border all that much. In the first half of 2015, for example, in the Pskov region alone the Border Service of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) detained 74 persons planning to illegally enter EU territory.

The vast majority of them were people from the Far East and Africa. The cost of detaining such people falls on Russia for having prevented their entry into Latvia and Estonia. It follows that Russian border guards are doing their job without various fences on the border.

Moreover, Russia's border agency notes that border security involves a set of measures, including interaction with local communities and organizing patrols and checkpoints. It is no coincidence that most arrests take place in the border area, not on the actual border line itself.

A wall, no matter how high, would only raise illegal migrants' outlays on guides. What's more, neither Latvia nor Estonia intends to build a solid barrier. That cannot happen in forest and wetland areas.

But that is where most EU-bound migrants will risk their lives, which only creates additional problems for Russian border guards. The situation is similar in the United States, where Mexican immigrants try to enter through the desert, since the border there is not fortified, often perishing as a result.

In any case, building fences without Russia's consent will render them ineffective and not help to significantly reduce the number of migrants attempting to cross into Latvia and Estonia. In addition, it will have no effect on smugglers and drug traffickers, since they generally carry their wares through existing checkpoints using a variety of contrivances.

Moreover, sooner or later the absence of an effective border treaty between Moscow and Tallinn will hinder Estonia's plans to strengthen the border. The relevant document was signed on February 18, 2014, but has not yet been ratified. In the current political climate, when it will finally enter into force is anyone's guess. Therefore, Tallinn does not have the right to unilaterally demarcate its border with Russia.

A fence against Russia's "little green men"

As for strengthening the border against incursions by Russia's "little green men," which, unlike in the case of Latvian Interior Minister Kozlovskis, Tallinn has not specifically mentioned, the two Baltic countries' plans are unlikely to prove effective.

Suffice it to recall the experience of the Soviet Union, which vigilantly guarded its borders against defectors fleeing to the West and enemy spies and saboteurs trying to sneak in. For many years the then Soviet Baltic beaches were closed at ten or eleven o'clock in summertime and special vehicles inspected the coastal areas. The most vulnerable were strengthened with border fences and barbed wire. And the Soviet Union had considerably more border posts and staff than modern Russia does.

However, spies entered the Soviet Union perfectly legally under the guise of diplomats, businessmen and journalists; Soviet citizens legitimately visited the West, but did not return. Besides, both Soviet and Western intelligence agencies could make illegal crossings if required.

A fence - even one wrapped with barbed wire - will not protect against tanks or saboteurs landing at Riga Airport under the guise of a harmless sports team. Moreover, unlike untrained migrants, Russia's "little green men" are able to navigate swamps and overcome obstacles.

Given that Riga and Tallinn have been talking about the need to strengthen border security for more than a decade, there is unlikely to be any swift action, especially in light of the political tensions. What's more, Estonia and Latvia's aspirations are likely to be stymied by a more mundane issue - a lack of funding.

In the words of Latvian State Border Guard head Normunds Garbars, "This year about half a million euros has been allocated to demarcating the border with Russia, and one million in 2017. Financing in 2016 is still uncertain."

Both Riga and Tallinn clearly expect European funds to be forthcoming. But will Brussels comply? After all, such a barrier in the current climate would become a symbol of the new Iron Curtain, a second Berlin Wall, this time built by the West.
 
 #26
www.rt.com
September 3, 2015
UK, US should garrison troops in Eastern Europe to deter Russia - think tank

Russia isn't scared of the UK and US because Western troops aren't garrisoned in neighboring Eastern European states, a fact which Britain must assert itself militarily to overcome, according to a new report by the neoconservative Henry Jackson Society.

The report titled 'After Crimea: Towards a new British Geostrategy for Eastern Europe?' was published on Tuesday and focuses on how Britain should respond to the perceived Russian threat.

Timed for release one year after the NATO summit held in Wales, and shortly before the UK government's Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), the report argues that, "For the first time in over two decades the UK faces, in Russia, a serious state-based competitor on the European continent."

The report comes to a number of key conclusions about frictions between Russia and the West, claiming that while Russia may not be carrying out a "neo-imperial" project it presents a serious threat. It also claims the lack of permanent UK and US military garrisons in the east has made Russia feel confident.

The report says Britain should plan in case it must relinquish global interests in favor of a relatively local confrontation with Russia.

"Rather than trying to shy away from mainland Europe, the United Kingdom needs to re-assert the European dimension of its global policy more forcefully," co-authors James Rogers and Andra-Lucia Martinescu argue.

"Europe is the centerpiece of Britain's wider defense system, and Eastern Europe, being the most exposed to Russia's aggressive foreign policy, matters most."

Rogers and Martinescu also emphasize Britain's central role in NATO and what they see as its commitment to the rights of weaker nations.

"Long a strong supporter of smaller nations' right to self-determination, as well as NATO, the UK must ensure the 'assurance measures' adopted by the Alliance are sufficient to deter Russian provocation.

"The Baltic States have asked NATO for the installation of permanent garrisons on their territory: as the most militarily powerful European country, the UK has a responsibility, both to its allies and to itself, to respond appropriately," they say.

Raised tensions between the West and Russia have led to a series of massive military exercises along the borders of European states, a situation which some claim carries its own dangers.

On August 12, the European Leadership Network (ELN) think-tank published a report titled 'Preparing for the Worst: Are Russian and NATO Military Exercises Making War in Europe more Likely?' in which the dangers of military escalation are assessed.

The investigation of two training deployments - one NATO and one Russian - found that "both exercises show that each side is training with the other side's capabilities and most likely war plans in mind."

It also argued that while spokespeople on both sides "may maintain that these operations are targeted against hypothetical opponents, the nature and scale of them indicate otherwise: Russia is preparing for a conflict with NATO, and NATO is preparing for a possible confrontation with Russia."

The report recommended that both sides increase communication with regards to the scheduling of exercises and urged "politicians on both sides [to] examine the benefits and dangers of intensified exercising in the border areas."

In January, world-renowned academic and linguist Noam Chomsky told RT the world was being plunged back into a Cold War deadlock accompanied the same nuclear risks as the original confrontation.

"The worst-case scenario, of course, would be a nuclear war, which would be terrible. Both states that initiate it will be wiped out by the consequences. That's the worst-case. And it's come ominously close several times in the past, dramatically close. And it could happen again, but not planned, but just by the accidental interactions that take place - that has almost happened," Chomsky told RT's Sophie Shevardnadze.
 
 #27
Dances With Bears
http://johnhelmer.net
September 2, 2015
KALININGRAD - THE DAGGER POINTS WEST AND EAST
By John Helmer, Moscow
[Footnotes, links and photos here http://johnhelmer.net/?p=13999]

Listeners to US Government radio and readers of the London papers are being told that Kaliningrad is a Russian dagger pointed at the soft underbelly of the NATO alliance in central Europe. According to NATO sources, the dagger must be reversed so that it threatens the Kremlin instead.

Officials in the German Chancellery in Berlin and in the Polish government in Warsaw have begun asking their intelligence chiefs to prepare memoranda on how vulnerable the Russian outpost, formerly K�nigsberg in German East Prussia, is to a campaign of economic pressure and political subversion. Does this make Kaliningrad a potential flashpoint on the eastern war front, the next Crimea?

In June NATO forces simulated an air, sea and land attack on a Polish beach less than 100 miles west of Kaliningrad. Preceded by press briefings by US officers and NATO handouts, Operation Baltops deployed "a total of 49 ships, 61 aircraft, one submarine, and a combined amphibious landing force of 700 U.S. Finnish and Swedish troops... Fourteen NATO [1] Allies are joined this year by NATO partners Finland, Georgia and Sweden. Overall, 5,600 troops will be involved." Rehearsing the beach landing at Ustka, Poland, on June 17, a landing on a Swedish beach was attempted on June 13. The two operations omitted to include or simulate opposition forces defending the beachhead. Still, a Polish amphibious transporter sank, obliging the troops to wade ashore. Noone shot himself or drowned; several caught colds.

The London Guardian [2] called the Ustka beach attack "a major show of strength." A US Naval Institute report [3] said "it serves as a crucial reminder that while much of the U.S. and NATO reassurance measures in Europe to date have been ground based (with U.S. and European units fanning out across the Baltic States, Poland, Romania, and elsewhere), an effective response to Russia's new aggressiveness must also come with effective and credible maritime components."

GLieutenant General Ben Hodges (right), commander of the US Army Europe, told journalists assembled to watch Baltops: "Nato is not threatening anyone. Nato has no quarrel with the Russian people. We do have a quarrel with Putin, or Russia, trying to change borders by force...One of the things that concerns me is the amount of capability that the Russians have put into Kaliningrad. They have the ability to deny access up into the Baltic Sea through anti-ship missiles. They recently did an exercise where they put in an Iskander missile there. That is a range of 300km, a nuclear-capable system which could easily range Riga."

Hodges claimed Baltops was intended to demonstrate NATO's capability to attack Kaliningrad and bottle up the Russian Navy further east in the Baltic at St. Petersburg. For more on NATO's strategy to block the opposite, western end of the Baltic at the Danish Straits, and the Russian response, read this [4].

The US Government organ, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, reported [5] the day after the NATO landing that "Russia is pouring troops and weapons - including missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads - into its western exclave of Kaliningrad at such a rate that the region is now one of Europe's most militarized places." RFE also reported "a NATO official writing to RFE/RL on condition of anonymity [to claim] that Moscow is stationing 'thousands of troops, including mechanized and naval infantry brigades, military aircraft, modern long-range air defense units and hundreds of armored vehicles in the territory.' A Pentagon think-tank expert was quoted as saying: "From Kaliningrad you can just go right out and you're there; there's Sweden, Poland, Germany's not that far away. So, it's almost like you can set it up as a forward-operating base without leaving your own country's territory."

For a US-sponsored comparison of scale and purpose, consider this assessment [6] of the 70,000-man Russian military exercise Zapad-2013, launched from Kaliningrad and other points in Russia's Western Military District. According to Pauli J�rvenp�� (below, left), a Finnish military planner, for the Kalinigrad part of the exercise "the major troop formations involved the 79th Detached Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, the 7th Detached Guards Motor Rifle Regiment, and the 336th Detached Guards Naval Infantry Brigade. Also during this phase of the exercise, a major amphibious landing took place... To support the exercise in Kaliningrad, there were naval maneuvers and live missile firings from ships in the Baltic Sea to block off the terrorist elements and their reinforcements. The Russian naval elements were also active in the Barents Sea, practicing "wolf-pack" salvos of missiles by ships and submarines against the enemy. An interesting detail is that there was a small exercise on September 26 in Kaliningrad depicting combat in urban environment."

Glen Howard (above, right), president of the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, claimed "the very same troops that took part in the Zapad-2013 exercise just a few months before-according to Russian sources, roughly 150,000 of them-were put on a high alert in a 'snap combat Exercise' while the Ukrainian crisis was first developing. Russia's annexation of Crimea earlier this year and the forces Moscow used in its operations across southeastern Ukraine possessed the same sets of capabilities and skills practiced in the Zapad-2013 exercises."

Influential German sources claim there is fresh interest on the staffs of Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in whether the Kremlin is planning to use Kaliningrad as a springboard for launching Crimean-type green men or Donbass-type volunteers across the Polish and Lithuanian borders; and if so, how to combat them. For the time being, the Germans are keeping shtum, compared to the Americans.

Last May a Pentagon-backed study by CNA analysed [7] the script for "ambiguous warfare.. this brand of warfare involves rapidly generating highly trained and disciplined forces who enter the battle space out of uniform and, in coordination with local supporters, utilize psychological operations, intimidation, and bribery to undermine resistance." According to CNA, "the three small Baltic Republics, formerly part of the Soviet Union and home to sizable populations of Russian speakers, are potential next targets."

The Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) has been writing scripts of its own along similar lines, publishing them to catch Swedish media attention, along with requests for state money to produce more. According to an FOI paper [8]of June 2014, "one country at a time is likely [to be targeted], since top-level political and military coordination is needed. Furthermore, any on-going operation absorbs DIME-resources [DIME = diplomatic, intelligence, military, economic] that cannot be used elsewhere. Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan and mainland Ukraine-all bordering Russia-risk (partial) illegal annexation." Kaliningrad and its immediate neighbours, Poland and Lithuania, weren't mentioned by the Swedes.

To the Russian ear this sounds exactly like the script followed by US forces in Kiev, when President Victor Yanukovich was toppled in February 2014. At present, when Russian military analysts in Moscow predict where they expect the war over Ukraine between the US, NATO, and Russia to move next, they point westwards, to Transnistria and Moldova on the Black Sea. What are the Kremlin's new red lines in the post-Soviet space? - asks [11] one of the Moscow analysts, Sergei Markedonov. In his answer he ignores Kaliningrad and the Baltic states.

In Warsaw, Polish politicians - now campaigning for the October 25 election - are in two minds. Radoslaw Sikorski took an active role in the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014, and in subsequent efforts to escalate military confrontation along Russia's borders. But he has been sacked from his posts as foreign minister, speaker of the Sejm (parliament), and front-runner on his party's election ticket. By contrast, since his ouster [12], the newly elected President Andrzej Duda has appeared to backtrack on Sikorski's adventurism, while calling for NATO investment on Poland's eastern frontier.

"We do not want to be the buffer zone", Duda (right) told the Financial Times in mid-August. "We want to be the real eastern flank of the alliance. Today, when we look at the dispersion of bases...then the borderline is Germany. Nato has not yet taken note of the shift of Poland from the east to the west. Nato is supposed to be here to protect the alliance. If Poland and other central European countries constitute the real flank of Nato, then it seems natural to me, a logical conclusion, that bases should be placed in those countries."

The Financial Times has kept repeating its interpretation that Duda wants NATO bases on the eastern front. But Duda himself hasn't said so. He evaded the issue during his state visit to Germany last week, and in Estonia a few days earlier. In Berlin he rebuffed [13] a German proposal that Poland take in more of the African and Middle Eastern refugees now pouring into Germany. Duda reminded the Chancellery that the war with Ukraine has already triggered a larger refugee flow than Poland can accommodate. "The Polish president explained that his country had taken in 'thousands' of people fleeing the conflict in eastern Ukraine: He added that any escalation in that conflict could cause a 'large number' of others to head west from Ukraine."

Duda has also been reported on Polish state radio as recommending that Europe demand that Russia return Crimea to Ukraine. He's not saying as much for Poland. Nor has he said a word, yet, about the status of Kaliningrad, or the movement of Russians across the Kaliningrad border, within the 50-km visa free zone in Poland introduced by Sikorski in 2011.

A touchstone of Warsaw's current thinking about Kaliningrad is the case of Victor Bogdan, the former head of the amber business in Kaliningrad and one of the region's most influential business figures. He had crossed swords with the Governor of Kaliningrad, Nikolai Tsukanov - like Bogdan, a a Kaliningrad native, with a strong local patronage network; Tsukanov is running for re-election this month. He has arranged for Bogdan to be charged with tax fraud; ordered the police to seize his gem stockpile; and is attempting to put his own trusties into the amber business. The Kremlin has also taken against Bogdan in circumstances at least as corrupt as those alleged against Bogdan. For details, read this report [14].

Bogdan's Polish lawyer, Jacek Potulski, said this week that he and Bogdan are waiting on a decision by the Polish Justice Minister on whether to accept the lower and appellate courts' agreement to a Russian extradition request. "Generally [the minister's decision] takes about a year. That would be June 2016. It doesn't depend on the [Poilish] election". He added that Bogdan will decide shortly whether to file a fresh challenge to the Kaliningrad prosecutor;s charges in the European Court of Human Rights.

Until the Kiev putsch of February 2014, followed the next month by the Crimean accession, transformed US and EU thinking towards Russia, the most constant indicator of "western" strategy towards Kaliningrad has come from the Warsaw think-tank, the Centre for Eastern Studies (right) - in Polish, Ośrodek Studi�w Wschodnich ( OSW). This is funded [15] by the Polish state budget and directed from the Polish intelligence services. The catalogue of OSW public-access reporting on Kaliningrad can be read here [16]. The dossier reveals just one attempt at a comprehensive analysis of Kaliningrad's situation. Published in July 2012, there has been no follow-up - no attempt by OSW to bring the political, economic or military issues up to date.

The tone of the 77-page report [17] was conciliatory, cooperative, flexible towards Russian rule in Kaliningrad. For example: "This region will remain surrounded by the EU, and it will still share numerous practical issues with its neighbours which need to be resolved together, for example in the area of ecology. Developing the oblast and bringing it up to living standards similar to those in the neighbouring EU member states would contribute to building a stable and safe neighbourhood for the EU, something which is especially important." As a measure of Polish strategic thinking at the time, the OSW report is noteworthy for what it doesn't do - it doesn't promote the idea of Kaliningrad as a "dagger", let alone a security threat to Poland.

The OSW report is also clear that the public demonstrations in Kaliningrad of 2009-2010, leading to the ouster of Governor Georgy Boos (below, left), were limited in their ambitions, non-separatist in character, and well handled by the Kremlin and the successor governor, Tsukanov (right).

"As a consequence of the higher social activity of Kaliningrad's residents and their aspirations inspired by contacts with the international environment, the significant deterioration of the living standards in this region in 2009 gave rise to public protests. The direct catalyst for the protests were Governor Boos's decisions, for example increasing the rate of the transport tax several times, which adversely affected most people in this region. The protest consolidated the regional political and business elites and the public. At that time, they were the most numerous protests on the scale of Russia as a whole in a decade (up to 10,000 people participated in them). Their participants were the first to use anti-Putin slogans (for example, they appealed for the dismissal of Vladimir Putin's government). However, it turned out later that the residents' dissatisfaction was fuelled mainly by local problems."

If OSW can be taken as a guide to current thinking towards Kaliningrad in the Polish security establishment, there is no appetite in Warsaw for schemes to stir internal opposition in Kaliningrad, let alone deploy troops in the border zone, or launch agents provocateurs of the type Sikorski and the Polish secret services were training for Ukraine for at least a year before the Kiev coup. Also, Polish strategy currently accepts Kaliningrad's Russian status as legitimate, and is wary of destabilizing the frontier area, turning it into a Ukrainian-type flashpoint.

The concentration in Warsaw is on defensive measures to be taken on Polish territory. For example, from this March report from OSW [18]: "The concept of so-called 'hybrid conflict' is a combination of conventional warfare using state-of-the-art technology (e.g. precision strikes against critical infrastructures, special forces operations) and indirect/non-military actions (no declaration of war, the use of armed civilians, avoiding clashes with the opponent's regular armed forces, information warfare).[1] Russia might use the presence of large Russian-speaking minorities in the Baltic states as a pretext to interfere with their internal affairs, which increases the possibility of hybrid conflict in Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania. Russia could initiate such a conflict by instigating separatism, supporting protests staged by sections of the Russian-speaking community (e.g. over the status of the Russian language), sending groups of armed individuals wearing unmarked uniforms across the border, organising acts of sabotage against critical infrastructures, staging provocations with an ethnic or cultural background, undertaking actions aimed at disrupting the operation of public administration (e.g. cyber-attacks on government servers) and conducting disinformation campaigns. It is increasingly likely that Territorial Defence Forces could serve as an element in in preventing hybrid conflicts. The Swedish model is a classic example ..."

Warsaw political analyst Stanislas Balcerac comments: "Poles appear to be more concerned about the autonomous movement in Silesia [western Poland] than they are about Kaliningrad being either Russian or German. Sometimes I have the feeling that Poles do not realize that they have a direct 200 kilometre (or more) border with Russia. They seem to be more concerned with the economic power of Germany, and with the fact that a significant chunk of the Polish press is already in German hands."

German sources concede that as a legacy of World War II, the status of the former German province of East Prussia is as sensitive to the Poles as it is to the Russians. Some Germans believe that if tension with Russia can be reduced, the Kremlin might be willing to trade Kaliningrad back to Germany. The idea that the Russian military have regarded (and may still regard) Kaliningrad as a non-strategic bargaining chip is based on the so-called Batelin "offer". First reported by Der Spiegel [19] in May of 2010, then amplified by US Government media outlets, the notion is that in July 1990 General Geli Batenin (then a missile specialist on the Soviet General Staff) told a German diplomat in Moscow that the Soviet Government might be willing to discuss a change of status for Kaliningrad. There have been interpretations in the west that this was a type of "Alaska sale offer" on the part of the desperate, cash-short Politburo. But Soviet officials, including Mikhail Gorbachev, have categorically denied it.

The German assessment at the time was that the Batenin offer was a ploy, and perhaps a trap for splitting German from American and from European Union (EU) tactics for dealing with Moscow. What's more certain now is that Kaliningrad is viewed by both Russia and the EU as a touchstone - also weathervane - of the larger Russia-Europe relationship. If there is a benign relationship and flexibility, then there can be concomitant flexibility in the cross-border relationships between the Kaliningrad, its EU neighbours, and its Baltic neighbours, especially Poland, Germany and Sweden. Common-focus problems can then be considered cooperatively, such as pollution of the Baltic Sea; visas and visa-free travel; electricity transmission, etc. But if there is tension, then Kaliningrad will reflect it with increased militarization. If the Batenin "offer" had been a genuine one, not a ploy, then there would have been far more attention in both the US and European strategy-making towards Kaliningrad in the years which followed. This did not happen.

There is no reference to Kaliningrad in Zbigniew Brzezinski's (right) blueprint for American global dominance titled The Grand Chessboard [20]. On his map of Europe, Brzezinski calls Russia a "black hole" between Germany and China. On the Russian side there was comparable silence and disinterest during the 1990s. In Jonathan Haslam's history of Soviet strategic thinking [21], Kaliningrad fails to draw a single mention. Not even during the strategic debate in the 1980s over intermediate range nuclear weapons in Europe, the so-called SS-20 versus Pershing contest, was Kaliningrad regarded by either side as a strategically significant point on the map for projecting the kind of Soviet threat against Europe which the missiles represented; or the kind of defence and retaliation now attributed to the basing of mobile Iskander missile units at Chernyakovsk, in the Kaliningrad region.

That leaves the US and NATO to promote subversion inside Kaliningrad. The first deployments are of the green men and volunteers known by their western cover as investigative journalists. In Kaliningrad's case, it has been targeted by SCOOP, a journalism centre funded by the Danish and Swedish governments and by the Soros foundation, based in Copenhagen. Here's SCOOP's funding [22]. And here's the SCOOP dossier on Kaliningrad, most of written by Nikita Kuzmin [23]. Note that SCOOP is currently advertising for more Russian reporters to work on this region. What SCOOP is doing is to finance Russian reporters like Kuzmin, then translate their stories from their Russian outlets into English, and ensure that they receive amplified attention. This is coming principally from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the US propaganda outlet, and from individuals who worked in Russia under press cover. Typical of the exaggerated mix of rumour, false-flagging, and fabrication which the RFE/RL [24] dossier compiles on Kaliningrad is this claim that NATO military exercises in the region are testing schemes for capture of Kaliningrad. "Childish pranks and petty vandalism to be sure, but also signs of our dangerous times," reports Brian Whitmore, a former reporter for the Moscow Times. "We're certain to see more of this kind of thing for a while - as well as more menacing gestures." Whitmore is also predicting [25] that Kaliningrad is the place to test whether "the regime is on the rocks... last weekend's vote in Kaliningrad shows that they are far from invincible."

There have been other attempts, also confined to US outlets, which pinpoint Kaliningrad as the source of Russian fleet deployments to Syria; maritime espionage, as well as sewerage, aimed at Sweden; kidnapping in Estonia; gun-running to Iran and other anti-western groups in the Middle East, and so on [26].

 

 #28
Reuters
September 3, 2015
Street violence in Kiev dims prospects for peace effort in Ukraine's east
By Richard Balmforth

A spasm of street violence has driven home how hard it is going to be for Ukrainian President President Petro Poroshenko to rally national support behind an internationally-brokered deal to bring peace to the east of his country.

The violence outside parliament on Monday was triggered by the government's "decentralization" plans - a key part of the deal agreed in Minsk, Belarus in February - that would give special status and greater autonomy to separatist-held areas of the east.

Three guardsmen died of wounds from grenade shrapnel and scores were injured in the clashes which the government blamed on ultra-nationalist radicals.

The main nationalist party, Svoboda, has denied government charges that its activists were responsible for the grenade attack and has blamed police for being unprepared.

Poroshenko himself says the deadly attack was probably the work of a freelance 'provocateur' out to stir up trouble.

That violent elements could lay hands on weapons is no surprise. After 18 months of military conflict in the east in which several thousands of people have been killed, Ukraine is awash with guns, ammunition and explosives.

But the violence, the worst in Kiev since the bloody turmoil of the 'euromaidan' protests in early 2014, has thrown a focus on where Ukraine goes from here in trying to re-establish its sovereignty in the east.

The outburst of street anger also took the edge off celebrations over a big financial deal, hailed by Kiev as a 'win-win', for restructuring billions of dollars of Ukrainian foreign debt.

NARROWING OPTIONS

In reality, the prospects for Poroshenko to sell the deal have been narrowing for some time, analysts say.

Cracks have opened up in the pro-Western coalition and more street demonstrations are now a distinct possibility. Poroshenko may now choose to slow down on granting concessions to the separatists which his critics say threaten to weaken Ukrainian sovereignty.

Popular resentment over the Minsk II agreement, negotiated by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France, has been growing for some time.

Many fear the government's plans will only entrench the independent status of the rebel-held Donetsk and Luhansk areas with Russia maintaining its military influence in the region and control of the border.

"The accords (Minsk agreements) are full of ambiguities, baited hooks and traps. They give each side multiple pretexts for claiming violation by the other. They do not provide a firm basis for a settlement," said James Sherr, Associate Fellow of London-based Chatham House.

"He (Poroshenko) knows that if he accepts Russia's terms, the country will not. People have sacrificed too much. They will see it as a betrayal. Poroshenko will put his legitimacy at risk if he bows to all this pressure, and he knows it," said Sherr.

The demonstration was led by Svoboda, a party which has been subdued since losing representation in parliament, and members of the anti-Russian Radical party, a feisty member of the coalition until Tuesday when its leader, Oleh Lyashko, walked out in protest at the vote.

The clashes turned ugly after Poroshenko's government managed to secure the required vote for an initial reading of constitutional amendments that will give increased powers of autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

In speeches before the vote, many politicians, including some of Poroshenko's coalition allies such as former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, came out against what they saw as a threat to territorial integrity.

END-OF-YEAR TARGETS

Apart from the special status law, several other hurdles have to be crossed under the increasingly-troubled Minsk II package.

October 25 has been set for local elections in Ukraine though the Kiev government says these will not take place in parts of the east controlled by the separatists and where security cannot be guaranteed. Kiev wants the elections to reinforce Ukraine's identity as a 'unitary' state.

The separatists, who have unilaterally set up their own mini-republics, have instead scheduled their own elections for October and November - the results of which Kiev is unlikely to recognize.

That begs the question: even assuming the constitutional reform goes through, when will Kiev grant the 'special status' to the rebel-held regions? Only when there are elected officials in the rebel-held areas whom they trust? That might be never.

More than 6,500 people - civilians, Ukrainian forces, separatists and almost certainly Russian troops - have been killed so far in the conflict which erupted in April 2014 after the annexation by Russia of Crimea in response to the fall of a Moscow-backed president in street protests in Kiev.

Analysts believe Poroshenko has set himself a priority of keeping casualties on eastern front-lines to an acceptable minimum and avoiding any military disasters such as that at Illovaisk in August 2014 when hundreds of Ukrainian troops were encircled and killed.

Other ambitious end-of-year targets under the Minsk II agreement now seem increasingly fanciful to many politicians.

These include a withdrawal of Russian forces and recovery by Ukraine of control over the joint border.

"Without something on a withdrawal of Russian forces and control of the border the whole idea of the Minsk agreement simply evaporates," said Taras Berezovets of Berta Communications.

But both of these points are diplomatically easy to 'finesse' for Russia's Vladimir Putin, who denies his troops have been deployed in Ukraine at all, analysts say.

"CARDIOGRAM FOR DEATH"

Crucially the Minsk deal encompasses no real plan for Kiev's recovery of lost territories.

For Poroshenko's critics, including some of his erstwhile political allies, it is increasingly looking like a step-by-step roadmap to a "frozen conflict" in which Ukraine loses any chance of re-asserting control in the east.

Poroshenko's critics say the proposed reform will give the separatists the right to choose their own courts and militia, create a special relationship with Russia and provide an amnesty for rebels who already have the blood of Ukrainian soldiers on their hands. And all that without anything gained.

Returning to the political foreground after being sidelined by the 'euro-maidan' revolution that brought Poroshenko to power, Tymoshenko criticized his policies for giving the "illusion of peace".

A "cardiogram for death" is how a critic from Self-Help, another pro-Western party, described the proposed constitutional reform enshrining greater self-governance for rebel-held areas.

In fact, Poroshenko has little elbow room to press a more active policy against Putin, whose strategic aim seems to be to promote continued instability to keep Ukraine off-balance, frustrating Kiev's aspiration of integration into the European mainstream.

"Even though the Minsk agreement is not being fulfilled, they (the government) have no alternative to it. The only alternative is a resumption of military action," Berezovets said.

In Luhansk, a Ukrainian city close to the Russian border which is firmly in the hands of separatists, shops are now selling their goods in Russian rubles rather than Ukrainian hryvnias, according to local people there.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to see how the Kiev authorities can roll this back and re-establish control through diplomatic efforts alone, without a switch in policy by Putin.

With Russia's military crossing the border with impunity and able to dictate the pace of events on the ground in the east, Putin is telling Poroshenko to sit down at the negotiating table and talk with the separatist leaders - anathema to Kiev since it would imply recognition of their self-proclaimed independence.

Poroshenko, who is under pressure from Washington and Berlin to push through the special status amendment, seems to be pinning his hopes for a change of heart - and tactic - by Putin, forced by firm Western resolve backed up by sanctions on Moscow.

The worst that could happen, according to Poroshenko's thinking, is that the West takes its foot off the pedal and eases, or ends, sanctions.

"If we did not vote for reform ... the question of these sanctions, which really hurt the aggressor, continuing would disappear from the agenda. We'd be left one-on-one with the aggressor," he said.

He may now try to strike political deals to blunt the rebellion within the pro-Western coalition before a second and final reading of the "special status' amendment.

But even if he succeeds this may not be enough to put the lid on further street unrest.
 
 #29
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider
September 3, 2015
Poroshenko Blames Kiev Grenade Deaths on...Wait for It...Russia!
In an interview with Sky News, Ukraine's Petro Poroshenko accuses Russia of extending its "campaign of destabilisation"

Ukraine's president has laid the blame for the murder of three policemen during a right wing demonstration on Monday firmly at the doors of the Kremlin, accusing Russia of extending its "campaign of destabilisation".

Three people died after grenades were thrown during clashes between nationalists and police outside Ukraine's parliament.

It followed a vote to give more powers to the regions, including separatist regions in the east.

Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire businessman who was elected in May last year at the height of a Russian campaign to seize the Crimea and back rebels in the east of Ukraine, told Sky News the killings were inspired by Moscow.

In an exclusive and wide-ranging interview, he insisted that his reform programme to bring his country closer to European Union norms and requirements was on track, notably tackling corruption and the planned lifting of immunity for politicians - including himself.

Part of his business empire was built on confectionery - as a result he is known as the "chocolate king".

But it is the tsar-like leadership of Vladimir Putin that he says is a threat not only to his country but to wider European and global security - pointing out that even the UK regularly has Russian military aircraft testing its air space.

He said that Russia had become "unpredictable" but he did not feel vulnerable, even though "this is one of the most difficult presidencies in the whole world".

His claim that Russia may have been behind the grenade attack on the police will gain credence among conspiracy theorists and some military theorists. Moscow has pioneered what is now known as "hybrid warfare" - the use of covert operators to foment instability.

Ukraine's president said he was proud of his country's ability to hold back the Russians and rebels given that a year ago he was told that "half your army is corrupt and the other 50% are Russian agents" by NATO and other western supporters who have now begun training his forces.

Mr Poroshenko was adamant that he would also bring reforms to the country's notoriously corrupt economy, insisting that constitutional reforms lifting immunity from parliamentarians and the judiciary would be driven on - even in the face of the very politicians who may soon come under investigation by newly foreign trained anti-corruption detectives.

"War is not an excuse to stop reforms," he said.

His hopes are most pinned on a ceasefire agreement that was signed many months ago but has only seen respect in the last six days, with no serious casualties reported from the front line.

"The only reason that the Russians came to Minsk and are prepared to negotiate at all was as a result of economic sanctions imposed by the outside world," he said, insisting that Ukraine did not need troops but it would continue to need the support of the international community.

He is forging ahead with plans to move yet further away from the Kremlin's influence and closer to the European Union - precisely the policy that has so angered Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. So it is hard to see an end to Ukraine's conflict any time soon.
 
 #30
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's statement and answers to questions at a meeting with students and faculty of Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University) Moscow, 1 September 2015. (excerpt re Ukraine)

Ukraine

Question: What are the chances that the Minsk Agreements will be implemented, considering the recent talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande and the overall situation?

Sergey Lavrov: This is, of course, of course, the most sensitive issue in European policy, something we didn't initiate. The course of that crisis is well known; it has been traced more than once in the minutest detail. Simply put, here it is: an internal political crisis in late 2013, Maydan, demonstrations, clashes, calls for ending these clashes made by all sides, and finally an agreement signed between the [Ukrainian] president and the opposition, as well as by the foreign ministers of three foreign states. The next morning that agreement was trampled on, instead of the national unity government it provided for, there was a "government of winners," which included Oleg Tyagnibok, the leader of the Svoboda (Freedom) party that Europeans had considered to be politically undesirable but reconciled themselves to the fact that it became part of the new Ukrainian authorities, even though one of the active members of that party had killed a person and wounded many more the day before. That's it. It was a state coup that started with the parliament's refusal to honour laws on the language rights of minorities. A bill to this effect was not signed, but it was voted on. One of the minority languages is Russian, which cannot be described as a minority language because the majority of people in Ukraine think in Russia or speak Russian. Then there was Crimea, where the Right Sector leader, Dmytro Yarosh, sent "friendship trains," as he described them, with armed people. Next came an attempt to seize the Supreme Council of Crimea. These are cold facts. When people in Crimea and southeastern Ukraine said that they didn't recognize the results of the coup and wanted their traditions to be respected, Kiev appointed its emissaries as governors or heads of so-called "military administrations." In response, the people in these territories elected their own governors. They didn't attack anyone: Donetsk and Luhansk didn't declare war on anyone; they simply elected people's governors and said they wanted to live differently, without discrimination against the Russian language or other languages, without forgetting their culture and 9 May, Victory Day. This day is no longer marked in Western Ukraine, and the new government has reaffirmed that they will celebrate the birthdays of Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) Day, the army that massacred Poles [during WWII]. The people in Donbass said they wanted to decide how they will live. It was not they who started the war.

I remember that when Maydan was seething before an agreement was signed between Vladimir Yanukovych and the opposition, Western countries and NATO defence ministers made many statements urging President Yanukovych not to use the army against the people, and he didn't. He didn't order the use of the Ukrainian Armed Forces against the protesters. There were only police and the Berkut and other special police, and they weren't even armed. There were provocations and sharpshooters who shot both at Berkut and at protesters. They were shooting from a building where the Maydan headquarters was located, the building where [Euromaydan Commandant] Andrei Paruby was seen. That story, which a commission of the Council of Europe was allowed to help investigate, has yet to be unravelled. Frankly, I doubt the truth will be established in this case, the same as in the case of the Odessa massacre on 2 May 2014. I doubt this very much. So far, only members of the so-called Anti-Maydan group have been arrested, while those who were taped shooting at the people who tried to escape from the burning building have disappeared.

Immediately after the coup, when the new government learned that Donbass and Crimea did not recognize it, it launched the so-called anti-terrorist operation. We asked our Western colleagues if they could urge the new authorities not to use the army against the people, just as they did in the case of Yanukovych. They didn't reply, and later they made public statements urging the new Ukrainian government to continue to use military force in the anti-terrorist operation, which they accepted as such, "proportionately." How do you like this? This is absolute hypocrisy. When I talk about this with my Western colleagues, they look away. In other words, they urged Yanukovych not to use the army against the people and he didn't, but they didn't use the same influence with the new Kiev government, which came to power through a coup. Instead, the Kiev government was allowed to use the army against the people and was only urged to do so "proportionately." Who will determine the proportion? Well, you know.

It took a lot of effort to switch the situation onto a more or less political track, although President Petro Poroshenko after his election confirmed the order to continue the anti-terrorist operation instead of bringing peace as he had promised. (As he always says, "I am a president of peace.") There was fierce fighting last August, and it was only after the Ukrainian army met with stiff resistance and sustained heavy losses that it agreed to sit down to the negotiating table. The first Minsk Agreements were signed at that time (September 5, 2014). But on September 15, the European Union, though admitting Russia's contribution to the signing of the September 2014 Minsk Agreements, introduced additional sanctions. Asked whether this constituted their attitude towards the political process, they couldn't say anything of substance in reply. Later it transpired that the procedure for imposing the sanctions had been a backroom affair. Many EU presidents and prime ministers were simply unaware of what Brussels was doing on their behalf. Today the authorities in Kiev publicly declare that the sanctions approved in September of last year will be extended because Russia is not implementing the Minsk Agreements. Possibly this is what Ukrainian President Poroshenko tried to arrange with Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Francois Hollande. We focus on the theme of sanctions only from the point of view of Russia being prepared, internally, for these sorts of "kinks" on the part of our Western partners, so that we don't depend on them in areas of vital importance for our country and our citizens.

For a while, the first Minsk Agreements helped to take the edge off the confrontation. But in January, the Ukrainian army, regrettably, was given another order to try to modify the front line, or line of contact, whatever you want to call it, by force. It met with a severe rebuff and Kiev again expressed its willingness to sit down at the negotiating table. It was then that the main Minsk Agreements, the so-called Minsk-2 Agreement, came into effect. This document was negotiated for almost 17 hours with the personal involvement of the presidents of Russia, France, and Ukraine, and the German chancellor. This document is not just yet another political whim; it has been approved by a UN Security Council resolution. This is not a situation where a political declaration can be somehow "dragged out."

NATO

We have examples where political declarations adopted at top levels were later not worth anything. I mean, specifically, understandings to the effect that no one will strengthen their security at the expense of the security of others, which were reached within the framework of the OSCE and the Russia-NATO Council. These were political declarations. When the US missile defence system came to be developed and it became clear that the European segment of this US antimissile defence system would affect our security, we produced these facts and suggested that the political declaration on the indivisibility and equal nature of security for all be translated into the language of legally binding obligations. But they turned us down flat. Then we suggested signing a special treaty. Although a political declaration was in place, our partner - NATO - refused even to discuss this treaty.

Yet another political declaration came into being when the Russia-NATO Council was established in 1997. We came to terms on the permanent non-deployment of substantial combat forces in the territory of new NATO members. The case in point was again a political declaration. We have come to realize in recent years, long before the Ukraine crisis, that our NATO neighbours have held exercises that became permanent and moved their combat units up to our borders by rotating them in the territory of new NATO members. We voiced our concerns and suggested devising a solution. They replied: "These are not substantial combat forces." We asked: "What forces are substantial?" And we heard in reply: "OK, let's not go into detail for the time being." Then we proposed a legally binding agreement between Russia and NATO, which would formulate the parameters of what could be regarded as substantial combat forces in terms of personnel strength and types of weapons. They didn't even want to talk to us. Therefore, we have a political declaration, but no legal obligations.

Ukraine: Minsk agreements

I cited these examples to show that the Minsk Agreements are somewhat different. Yes, there was a political declaration adopted in Minsk, but there's also a UN Security Council resolution, which unanimously approved, without any amendments, the Minsk Agreements of February 12. The Minsk Agreements spell out everything clearly, and it's hard to distort the content, as is the case now with the constitutional reform. All you have to do is sit down and read what's written in the Minsk document. It says that amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine with regard to Donbass must be agreed upon with the leaders of these territories and must include specific decentralization provisions. These provisions were formulated personally by Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Francois Hollande in Minsk. They include the Russian language and special economic arrangements for these regions, as well as their involvement in appointing public prosecutors for their territories and the right to create a people's militia, and more. The Minsk document says that all this should be enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine upon agreement with Donetsk and Luhansk. Instead, there's a phrase, which is included in the Transitional Provisions section, to the effect that some Ukrainian regions may have special local government procedures, and that the remaining provisions will become invalid several years later. Perhaps, this obscure hint on what's promised to these territories will follow the same path. Instead of blurry and vague promises, the Kiev government must include detailed provisions on self-government and special status for these Donbass regions. I reiterate, this is not a political declaration that can be ignored or circumvented. This is the UN Security Council resolution, a binding international obligation. This is something to take seriously.

We advocate full compliance with the Minsk Agreements without any exceptions or tricks. We are ready to provide our assistance in these matters. We are doing our best to, despite the absolutely arrogant position adopted by Kiev, make sure that Donetsk and Luhansk remain at the negotiating table and stick with the Minsk Agreements, which are designed to preserve the integrity of Ukraine and uphold the rights of the people of Donbass.

We understand the internal political difficulties and the opinions that are made public in the Verkhovna Rada, including the allegations that other regions of Ukraine deserve more authority. However, this is subject to political negotiation. We are willing to help in these matters and make our resources available, if need be. We have good relations with certain regions of Ukraine. Other countries have excellent relations with Kiev and various political forces in the Verkhovna Rada.

I'm confident that if the Western countries, which have a decisive influence on official Kiev, gathered all these political forces (so that the United States and the European Union do so in unison), and strongly advised them to behave as agreed, then I'm convinced nothing like yesterday's outrageous developments, would have ever happened, and that the Minsk Agreements will be complied with. But the chances are still there.

Another telephone conversation and a Skype conference with the subgroups on security and political issues of the Contact Group will be held today. The subgroup on political issues will meet next week as well. We suggested holding a Normandy format meeting of foreign ministers (Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany) within the next 10 to 12 days as a follow-up to the telephone conversation between President Putin and President Poroshenko, and President Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel to focus on the negotiability of all parties to the Minsk agreements and to seek ways to overcome the existing obstacles. We look forward to a positive response from our partners. At least in a conversation with President Putin, Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Hollande have strongly supported this idea.
 
 #31
Salon.com
September 2, 2015
Outright lies from the New York Times: What you need to know about the dangerous new phase in the Ukraine crisis
While establishment media toe Washington's line, violence and instability have shaken the Ukraine this week
By PATRICK L. SMITH
Patrick Smith is Salon's foreign affairs columnist. A longtime correspondent abroad, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune and The New Yorker, he is also an essayist, critic and editor. His most recent books are "Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century" (Yale, 2013) and Somebody Else's Century: East and West in a Post-Western World (Pantheon, 2010). Follow him @thefloutist. His web site is patricklawrence.us.

The slightly fetid "phony war" in Ukraine-the unsettling stagnation noted in this space a month ago-is emphatically over. Suddenly there is movement on several fronts, and some of it is promising. But this is a dangerous moment, too, chiefly because Washington's bet on the post-coup government in Kiev, bad from the outset, is on the brink of producing a result so ugly and shameful its consequences all around cannot now be calculated.

I refer to the very real potential, as of Monday, for a coup mounted by violence-adoring ultra-rightists-those neo-Nazis airbrushed out of the news coverage even as they now maraud through the Ukrainian capital almost with impunity. "The far right won't make a full move on the Poroshenko government now," a Ukrainian �migr� said on the telephone Tuesday. "I think it'll be a couple of months before we see that."

Comforting, isn't it?

In effect, we will now watch a race between those attempting to forge a negotiated settlement in Ukraine-and the prospects for this look good once again-and the collapse of the Kiev government precisely because the European powers are now forcing it to accept such a settlement. You tell me who is going to break the tape.

Before I go any further, there is an aspect of this new phase in the Ukraine crisis that needs to be noted right away. The narrative advanced over the past 18 months by most Western media-and all corporate American media, without exception-is coming unglued before our eyes. This is going to make it even more difficult than heretofore to understand events by way of our newspapers and broadcasters.

Already we see the kind of contorted reporting always deployed when our media have to cover their tracks after long periods of corrupt, untruthful work. Per usual, the most consequential offenses occur in the government-supervised New York Times.

Example: Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president, now confronts "Ukrainian nationalists" over plans to decentralize power because Vladimir Putin forced this upon him, "with a metaphorical gun to his head." This we read in Tuesday's paper. And here we need a trigger warning for the faint of heart, because I have two strong words for this report, written with deliberation.

Outright lies. We are beyond lies of omission now. These are the real thing.

One, these are not "nationalists." France's Front Nationale is nationalist. The U.K. Independence party is nationalist. The majorities on Capitol Hill are nationalist. These are black-shirted ultras who vote with explosives and assassins' bullets. You deserve to know this, and it does not change simply because Washington backs them covertly and John McCain-ask him-does smiling photo ops with Oleh Tyahnybok, their openly fascist leader.

Two, there is no accounting at all for the "gun to his head" bit, but Putin's view that federalization is the sensible solution to the Ukraine crisis is (1) plainly the sound way to hold the nation together while addressing its differences and (2) vehemently endorsed by the French and German governments. Chancellor Merkel, with no gun to her head, made this plain Tuesday, when she insisted that autonomy legislation now pending in Kiev must be acceptable to the leadership in the rebellious eastern regions. You deserve to know this, too.

Chronology is all if we are to understand the events of the past week or so. You have not seen a chronology, because this is the very worst time, from the official and media perspectives, for you to understand events. A brief sketch of the errant timeline, which will do for now, looks like this:

-Angela Merkel and Fran�ois Hollande, the German and French leaders, had Poroshenko to Berlin last week and made him stand next to them as they vigorously reiterated their commitment to a negotiated settlement based on the pact signed in Minsk last February. "We are here to implement the Minsk deal, not to call it into question,"Merkel declared in that forthright way of hers.

-Last weekend, with Poroshenko back in Kiev, Germany, France and Russia-the Minsk signatories, along with Ukraine-declared that a new ceasefire would go into effect Tuesday, September 1. At writing, the very early signs are that it has a better-than-even chance of holding, previous efforts having frayed.

-On Monday the Kremlin announced that the Minsk signatories would meet by mid-September "in the Normandy format." This means the four foreign ministers will convene, probably by telephone (as they first did in northern France on the D-Day anniversary last year). Two implications: One, this is a working session, devoted to structuring terms. Two, Paris, Berlin and Moscow want concrete progress toward a settlement within two weeks. In other words, the clock ticks.

-Also on Monday, the Rada, Ukraine's legislature, held a preliminary vote on the constitutional revisions that are to provide the eastern regions a high degree of autonomy. While this is a key provision in the Minsk agreement, the Poroshenko government had previously done nothing to implement it over the seven months since Minsk II was signed.

-And finally, far-right protesters had gathered outside the Rada in anticipation of the vote. As soon as the measure was passed-by a narrow margin-they erupted into violent rioting featuring bombs, explosive devices and grenades. Three police officers are now dead, more than 100 injured. The instigator was the same party that turned demonstrations last year into a coup- Oleh Tyahnybok's Svoboda, the Russian-hating, Jew-hating party that canonizes Nazi collaborators. Poroshenko called Svoboda's riot "a stab in the back." Of course: Until recently his deputy prime minister and prosecutor general were both Svoboda members. He's no stranger to these people.

So went the past week. What do we make of it? Where are we in this story?

I see several moving parts in what is now a highly kinetic situation in Ukraine and surrounding it. In some cases these are intricately related.

Consider first the European position. The Germans and French have plainly quickened the pace of their joint diplomatic efforts. Why is this and why now? It helps to note that Paris and Berlin have chosen to work with the Russians within the Minsk II framework while excluding the Americans (as, indeed, Mink II pointedly excluded them earlier this year, when warmongers on Capitol Hill and in the Pentagon were hoisting the thought of arming Kiev up the flagpole).

Two concerns appear to be at work in the European capitals. One, Washington has stepped back but half a step from its effort to force a military solution in Ukraine. Recall: As of this summer the Pentagon is effectively managing Ukraine's armed forces. Note: Joe Biden, the White House's point man on the war, had little to say to the French and the Germans last week, but he called Poroshenko in Kiev to stiffen the wayward president's back in countering rebel forces on the ground in the eastern regions. (Biden for president is an odious thought, incidentally.)

Two, and more urgent, the Europeans are well aware that the Poroshenko government is highly unstable, if not teetering indeed. Its support in opinion polls is well down in the single digits. Even before this week's street violence, nobody in Berlin could fail to see the threat of an overthrow posed by the black-shirted ultras of Svoboda and Right Sektor, a more recently formed descendant of the Social-National Party, as Svoboda used to call itself.

Remember the wave of assassinations in Kiev last April? Among the victims was a journalist and historian named Oles Buzina, who opposed a radical breach with Russia on numerous grounds. Buzina seems to have been much honored among Ukrainians, for some of them placed a plaque on the front wall of his home. Last week, Right Sektor members gouged it off-and then replaced it with a similar slab honoring his assassins. "In broad daylight. No police to be seen," as Russia Insider, the Western-run news site in Moscow, reported.

A few days later Svoboda and Right Sektor staged the riot outside the Rada. There have been arrests in both cases, but we are looking at something close to impunity.

I called Lev Golinkin, a young Ukrainian writer from the eastern city of Kharkiv (and the �migr� quoted above), to ask him about this. Here is some of what he said in a long telephone exchange Tuesday:

"The far right does not have enough support to win any presence in parliament. But they don't need support. They need unrest. All they need is for people to see the Poroshenko government as just as corrupt and inefficient as the one it replaced. And of course it is.

"Svoboda sees Poroshenko as a traitor, who is letting Europeans betray Ukraine. They have no interest in equal rights, decentralization of the country, peace with Russia. There's no room for compromise in their position.... The war serves Poroshenko because it distracts the far right. They're for the war. But other than this, they have nothing in common with this president."

"Why, Lev, do you think a move against the government is probable in the next couple of months?" I asked. Golinkin replied:

"It's historical reality. Once they're active they don't stop until they're completely defeated or they take power. After World War I, Poland brutally suppressed them. After World War II, the Soviet Union brutally suppressed them. And now there's no one to suppress them.... The Ukrainian army may not be on Poroshenko's side. The biggest question in my mind is whether the army will fight the far right.

"Right now Poroshenko's darting around like a squirrel. In Kiev he says, 'There's no plan to decentralize. There's no special status for the east.' Then he works with Merkel and Hollande on plans to decentralize and grant the east special status."

Let me put it this way: If I am talking about this near-chaos as I sit in a village of 1,600 souls in the New England hills, they are talking about it in Berlin and Paris. Merkel and Hollande appear to be motivated in some measure, and maybe in large measure, by the thought that they must move now if they are to grasp their last, best chance to achieve a negotiated settlement in Ukraine.

I had a note from a reader the other day-a prominent, connected man-who conveyed the thoughts of an American colonel now serving in Germany. (I will name neither my reader nor the officer I am about to quote.) The colonel was writing about "a shift toward collaborative behavior" he sees among Americans-the thought being that Washington is moving gradually away from unilateral action and an insistence on American primacy across all oceans and continents.

I, too, see signs of this in the Obama administration's record, but only signs, and they are faint. It occurs on a here-and-there basis and there is no consistency to it. In my read, this shift reflects partly a new understanding of America's place but mostly the force of circumstance. The colonel sees the latter at work in Europe, referring to "the pretty much complete failure of the most recent 'regime change' that was engineered in Ukraine."

The note prompted me to think, and the events of the past few days confirm the thought: It is not too soon to assess Washington's failure in Ukraine. It is, indeed, "pretty much complete" and pretty much on display as we speak. No surprise from this quarter: As argued severally in this space, this failure is has been more or less inevitable since the beginning of the Ukraine adventure in the first post-Soviet years-and certainly since the coup Washington cultivated in Kiev last year.

I do not seem to be as isolated in this judgment as I was even a few months ago. "Better to get the most advantageous possible negotiated terms," a new piece on Ukraine in The National Interest argues, "than to set up ourselves and the NATO alliance for a high-profile defeat."

That is a foreign policy "realist" doing his reckoning. It is the sound of tactical retreat in the face of failure. I go even further: Not only has failure been inevitable from the first; it is the best outcome for Americans by a long way.

There are a couple of ways to explain this. First, there are the practicalities. The shambolic Poroshenko government is simply too weak to serve as an effective client, even if you think a client regime on Russia's border is a good idea. It long ago spent its political capital. Its support in the Rada is crumbling. The I.M.F. just completed its bailout arrangement, but in so doing it assumes responsibility for an economy that has more or less ceased to exist.

The new figure for deaths in the conflict zone bouncing around in the press is "approaching 7,000." Bad enough. But as Stephen Cohen, the honored Russianist, pointed out long ago, this is the number of bodies counted in morgues, nothing more. German intelligence put fatalities at 50,000 or more, and that was six months or so back.

Now comes the very real threat of a far-right insurgency no one can control. Even if Poroshenko manages to keep his balance, this problem will haunt him. Equally, consider the damage to trans-Atlantic relations-already complicated by the Ukraine crisis-if a neo-fascist regime were to take power as the outcome of Washington's 20-odd year effort to pull Ukraine out by its roots and repot it as another flower in the Western garden.

These are on-the-ground reasons Washington simply does not want to put its name on this mess any longer. A "realist" in these matters might agree. Wait for it, readers: All the blame must now be shoved off on Russia, which is never right about anything and which holds guns to people's heads. This is going to take a lot, lot, lot of lying.

But there is another reason to applaud Washington's failure in Ukraine, and I put a higher value on it.

Good people in Washington and elsewhere in this nation can think all the high-minded thoughts they wish, but none is going to alter the policy cliques' conduct abroad decisively, as it must be altered if we are to avoid a series of calamities and tragedies as the 21st century proceeds. It is essential to wage the intellectual war, surely, but we also need failures. Repeated failures are the only way we will get this done. In failures lies our success, to put the point another way.

It is not a matter only of countering entrenched interests-the Pentagon, the defense industries, the intelligence and national security apparatus. I conclude that the American consciousness must also sustain a certain kind of violence before we will imagine our place in the world anew. This seems to me the colonel's thought: We failed in Ukraine "pretty much completely," and we can learn from this to think differently.

I see two major misapprehensions immediately at issue. One is the neoliberal model, arising as it does out of the Chicago School's free-market ideology, econometrics, rational choice theory, and the drastic tilt toward mathematics and computer modeling in postwar social sciences. It strips all history, culture, tradition and human preference out of our thinking such that we can pile into Ukraine and expect to win the day.

Impossible. This is the irrationality of hyper-rationality. It is a proven loser. Let the losses pile up.

Two, of course, is the exceptionalist impulse, and it is closely allied to neoliberal thinking. I have little faith that we Americans will abandon our claim to providential righteousness-the ideological cloak draped over our incessant drive for markets-until the world tells us one too many times to keep it to ourselves. Drop the mythological veneer, and we Americans can have a proper debate as to whether we want to subvert nations such as Ukraine for the sake of corporations such as Chevron.

The only weakness in this argument, so far as I can see, is undue optimism-and yes, you read the sentence correctly. It may be that I overestimate this nation's capacity to learn from its mistakes. Maybe I see higher aspirations among us than the policy cliques will ever reflect and, in a drastically changing political scene, see a chance for these to rise to the surface as they might have before the three assassinations that changed everything 50 years ago.

We will see. Let us watch how our failure in Ukraine computes out. Two wishes in the meantime.

One, the odious triumphalism that arose in the 1990s-so tinny and unbecoming when seen from the perspectives of others-will go straight to hell at last. I detest it.

Two, the shockingly bad performance of our media, notably but not only the government-supervised New York Times, will prove a turning point in the arrival of alternative media. It is they that have got the Ukraine story right, shining more light on it than news organizations commanding a hundred times the wattage. Given this performance, we should not consider them an alternative to anything, I like to think-only new growth on the old tree.
 
 #32
New York Times
September 3, 2015
Ukraine Weighs Autonomy for Parts of East, Already in Russia's Thrall
By ANDREW E. KRAMER

KIEV, Ukraine - A loud, angry and violent protest this week over a parliamentary measure to grant a greater degree of self-rule to Ukraine's secessionist eastern districts overlooked one little-recognized fact: To a great extent, the rebel areas have already achieved an autonomy surpassing that envisioned in the measure.

But that, paradoxically, could be a positive development, some analysts say, and a necessary first step to ending the fighting, which has cost more than 6,500 lives and has driven Ukraine's economy close to collapse.

Ukrainians outside the secessionist districts resent Russia, the separatists' major financial and military supporter, and blame its president, Vladimir V. Putin, for their country's civil war. Polls suggest that Ukrainians firmly oppose any sort of concessions to the rebels - and, by extension, to Mr. Putin.

And there are signs that the issue of autonomy could destabilize the government in Kiev. By Wednesday, three police officers had died from wounds sustained during the protest, and the governing coalition in Parliament had started to splinter, with one party leaving.

Yet the rebel areas have already slipped under Moscow's control, not only militarily and politically, but also economically, as trade has swiveled to the eastern border with Russia and Russian rubles have become the region's principal currency.

Ensconced in their enclaves, the separatists are showing little willingness to rejoin Ukraine in any way. They have formed their own ministries and armies, and they have begun levying taxes and paying the pensions and public wages that Kiev stopped paying last year.

"We are shifting to the Russian Federation," said the most senior rebel financial official, Evgenia V. Samokhina, the economic development minister of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic.

The approximately 3.5 million people living within the so-called people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk have become de facto entrants into the ruble currency zone. Donetsk is officially a multicurrency area, where businesses are allowed to accept any form of payment. But the leadership last winter fixed an exchange rate that favors the ruble, and since then the Ukrainian hryvnia has all but vanished.

While the ruble is extending Moscow's financial dominion, trade is also shifting to the east. European security observers stationed on the border with Russia to keep an eye on military transfers noticed telltale signs of Russia's footprint in the region, known as the Donbas: Starting in May, hundreds of trucks per week hauling coal, the region's main export, began crossing into Russia.

The changes are occurring as the region's formal cease-fire agreement, largely ignored in recent months, seems to be showing renewed signs of life. The big guns on both sides have fallen silent in recent days, and only a few skirmishes have been reported.

That could reflect a broader bargain that serves Mr. Putin's interests, analysts say. Obtaining an autonomy measure that meets his demands in the cease-fire agreement will simply cement the "facts on the ground" and provide him with a politically defensible way to extricate himself from a costly conflict that he can no longer afford.

"There is a strain on Russia's budget with oil and gas prices where they are today, and the lowering of military activity is part of Putin's plan to get out of this situation," Ivan Lozowy, director of the Institute of Statehood and Democracy, a Kiev research group, said in a telephone interview.

"Putin has abandoned plans for serious military action," he said.

But to accomplish his goals, Mr. Lozowy said, Mr. Putin needs the acquiescence of the Kiev government and its president, Petro O. Poroshenko, in the fig leaf of an autonomy agreement that keeps the separatists nominally a part of Ukraine.

"Putin is looking to reintegrate the occupied territories, but to have the leaders, or some representatives, enter into Ukraine's Parliament, or at a minimum hold positions in local government," Mr. Lozowy said. That way the Russian leader can make a case to Western governments to lift their damaging economic sanctions, he added.

That possibility has incensed members of the volunteer battalions that bore the brunt of the fighting. "There's a sense among those who fought at the front of: 'What were we fighting for? The separatists will be allowed in,' " Mr. Lozowy said.

That bitter outcome, analysts say, is not just the result of Russia's military and economic power. In its decision to end subsidies to the east, Kiev has itself to blame, as well as Moscow.

Before the war, the separatist regions were subsidized by Ukraine, with about $2.6 billion a year going to pensions and an additional $3.2 billion to coal subsidies. Now, rubles from Russia's own strained budget are filling that subsidy gap, buying influence along the way.

"When we speak of soft power, Ukraine is just shooting itself in the foot" by losing economic sway over the rebel zones, said Oleksiy Melnyk, a researcher at the Razumkov Center in Kiev.

It remains unclear whether the autonomy measure will pass, a feat that will require a supermajority of 300 of Parliament's 450 members, and at what political cost among a people whose hatred of Mr. Putin and Russia is often palpable.

"What do we have in Donetsk and Luhansk? We have the Russian Army, Russian gangsters and Ukrainian terrorists," Oksana Syroyid, deputy speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament, and an opponent of the constitutional change, said in an interview on Wednesday.

Speaking of the rebel leadership, she added: "If we enact this law, what will we have? These people will be amnestied, they will be elected and we will have to pay them."

With the change, Ms. Syroyid said, the Kremlin would be positioned to regain a role in Ukrainian national politics by using sham elections to fill 14 vacant parliamentary mandates in rebel-held areas and sending these officials to Kiev.

Mr. Putin, she said, has repeatedly escalated the conflict to achieve political goals, and she doubted he would stop with just the autonomy law. "We all know that Putin's behavior does not depend on any documents," Ms. Syroyid said. "What does he want? Maybe after getting the constitutional change, he will escalate again to achieve something else."
 
#33
The Guardian (UK)
September 2, 2015
Kiev's week of violence is a crisis of its own making
Theories abound about the violence that has flared again in Kiev. But despite profiting from it, Russia is very unlikely to have perpetrated it
By Andrey Kurkov
Andrey Kurkov is a Ukrainian novelist and author of Death and the Penguin

A "day of fury" was proclaimed on Monday by the Ukrainian nationalist party Svoboda (Freedom). The fury ended with a grenade being thrown into lines of soldiers guarding the Kiev parliament building, where it exploded, killing one soldier and injuring more than 100 people.

The last day of summer had started strangely peacefully. The lines of text on our TV screens told of a sharp decrease in Russia-backed separatist military activity, of zero fatalities among Ukrainian soldiers and volunteer forces on the frontline. The most recent international peace negotiations in Minsk had also given rise to unexpected optimism. The separatists had promised a complete ceasefire from 1 September and the beginning of talks on pulling back even light artillery from the line of engagement.

Such promises drew cynical smiles from people aware of the real situation in the battle zone: the heavy artillery so ostentatiously withdrawn by both sides has long been returned to the frontline and put to use. Since the beginning of the conflict not a single night has gone by without some artillery fire. The contradiction is understandable. After all, during any war people dream of peace and want to hope that it is about to arrive.

I now wonder if the unexpected moment of quiet on the frontline was not orchestrated so that this week's explosion of violence in Kiev would sound out even louder. Earlier, on Monday, parliament voted for a bill put forward by President Petro Poroshenko that paves the way for changes to the constitution to enable greater autonomy in the areas held by rebels.

No commentator is prepared to predict the outcome of the final vote on the reforms, especially with militant members of Svoboda ranged outside parliament. The vote will take place only in three or four months' time, and much can happen between now and then in Kiev, in the Donbass, in the Kremlin and in Brussels.

But the media has been busy throwing up theories about who has most to benefit from this terrorist attack. Most of the analysis in Ukraine naturally points the finger at the Kremlin. Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of the so-called Donetsk people's republic, and Igor Plotnitzky, leader of the so-called Luhansk people's republic have often promised to export the war from the Donbass to Kiev. They occasionally travel to Moscow and at home are surrounded by emissaries from the Russian Federation. However, for them to organise an attack in Kiev using Ukrainian nationalists as perpetrators, a large number of whom are fighting against the separatists, would require a degree of sophistication normally associated with the professional special services, in this case the Russian secret service.

Another version has it that the explosion outside parliament was orchestrated by the president's administration or the Ukrainian special services in order to discredit Svoboda and other radical nationalists and to "tighten the screws" on the political life of the country thus justifying control over opposition forces.

This version hardly stands up to criticism. The demonstration was led by MPs who are members of Svoboda but got into parliament as independent candidates. In the 2014 elections Svoboda did not win the 5% of the vote necessary to enter parliament. Four months earlier, in the presidential election, the party's leader, Oleg Tyagnibok, won only a little over 1% of the vote. This week he was photographed, together with other Svoboda activists, trying to drag a soldier out of the human chain formed around parliament into the crowd of protesters. It was a moment very reminiscent of the Maidan days, only that then Svoboda members and their leader were inside parliament. Since then the party has found itself increasingly marginalised.
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However, there were other groups represented in the demonstration , among them two that deserve special attention: Oleg Lyashko's radical party and Igor Kolomoisky's Ukrop party. T-shirts with the latter party's emblem were given out free at the demonstration, and those willing to take part were paid to protest. Kolomoisky is considered to be an enemy of President Poroshenko since he was sacked from his position as governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region. Kolomoisky's man in Odessa, Igor Palitsa, also lost his job as governor and was replaced by the former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili.

Immediately after the blast, Lyashko, who is a radical populist with little in common with the radical nationalists, announced the establishment of a campaign to save the nation. Only three or four hours after the explosion, his party had already registered a bill that would block changes to the constitution at times when the country is under military attack. Lyashko came second in the presidential elections, and over the last year his Radical party has gone up in the ratings. It is interesting that articles in the press regularly claim to have evidence that both the Svoboda party and the Radical party have been financed by the same oligarchs, the above mentioned Kolomoisky, Sergey Levochkin - who was head of the presidential administration under Yanukovich and who fled to Moscow after the Maidan - and Dmitry Firtash, who is now being investigated on corruption charges in Austria.

Still, the violence could have a far more banal explanation. To begin with, volunteers who went off to fight in the Donbass for the sake of maintaining Ukraine's unity were radicals from militant groups such as the Right Sector, which sprang up during the Maidan. There were also volunteers who had no affiliation to any party who went to fight. When the Ukrainian army took over the main role in the fighting, many of the volunteers returned home, taking weapons with them.

Russian TV focused on the events outside the Ukrainian parliament to prove to viewers that chaos reigns in Ukraine. The violence is a gift to the Kremlin. Yet to suspect the Russian special service of involvement is naive. It will, of course, milk the situation for all it can get, but it did not put the grenade in the demonstrator's hand; that was put there by the war in Donbass. And this is the sad reality that neither helps to stop the war in the east nor to further political and economic reforms in the country.

Some people think the challenges faced by Ukraine's Poroshenko are now too big to overcome. But those who would like to take his place have not shown themselves capable of doing even half of what he has achieved.

 
 
 #34
PBS Newshour
September 2, 2015
In Ukraine, why resistance is growing to a negotiated settlement with separatists

As another Eastern Ukraine cease-fire is tested and protests test the government in Kiev, chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner joins Judy Woodruff for an update on the diplomacy behind the scenes, the possibility of a negotiated settlement and how the Ukrainian people are responding.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And Margaret joins me now.

Margaret, welcome.

So, how significant is this cease-fire? You pointed out it was broken almost right away.

MARGARET WARNER: It was, though, in the view of U.S. officials, it is holding enough to be holding.

And so they want the Europeans now, who are really handling these negotiations, to push Putin very hard, Russian President Putin very hard, to keep up his end of the bargain, which was, in return for the constitutional changes that Poroshenko is pushing for the East, is to withdraw Russian heavy weapons and troops from Ukraine.

The question is, what's the incentive for Putin to do this? If Putin's objective is to keep Ukraine weakened and divided, make it very, very hard for them to become the kind of progressive, forward-looking European nation they want to, at low cost, he's succeeding. And the only answer the Americans can come up with, and the Europeans, is, well, maybe the sanctions are beginning to bite, maybe he will decide he has to keep up the military - carry out the military side of the deal.

But they do not think that will end Putin's maneuvers to undermine Ukraine.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So you were reporting on this vote in Parliament over the last couple of days, devolving authority back to the East. Violent protest, what was driving that?

MARGARET WARNER: I think, Judy, this was actually the more disturbing thing that has happened in the last week or two. And that is that there is growing resistance to the idea of a negotiated settlement with the Russians.

We have had a growing kind of radicalization in the western part of Ukraine as this war has ground on and on. And so, on its face, there were these two fringe far-right parties who did very poorly in the elections. Svoboda is one. The other is called the Right Sector.

And people call them skinheads, thugs. Putin calls them Nazis. And they were behind the actual event. But the deeper problem for Ukraine is that there is growing unhappiness with the idea of a negotiated settlement and the attitude of these hard-right parties is, why should we give anything to these separatists, when they continue killing - you know, there's been hundreds killed since this Minsk agreement.

And that is - they're calling for all-out war right now on the eastern front. And that, of course, is fantasy. If the Ukrainian forces were to try to step up the war, the Russians and their proteges would crush them. But it is a very persistent theme from them.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, is it clear what the broader Ukrainian public thinks?

MARGARET WARNER: Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Yes, there were the demonstrations, but what do most people think?

MARGARET WARNER: So, there are polls showing that while the most extreme rhetoric has not resonated yet - the leader of one of these parties, Yarosh, says, well, now it's time to go after our internal enemies, meaning President Poroshenko.

That is not hitting the public. But this sense that they are being played as fools by Putin, that Ukrainians are dying - those stories are in the paper every single day - that this whole idea of a negotiated settlement is flawed.

The problem with that is that, since neither NATO, the U.S., the Europeans aren't willing to enter and help Ukrainians militarily, a negotiated solution is the only solution for them. So it puts the Ukrainian government in a difficult position. Plus, the public is furious because economically life is very hard.

All these things they had to do to meet IMF requirements, for example, or get their debt restructured has meant end of subsidies and people pay more for electricity and fuel. So, all in all, it's kind of a stew of discontent. And, again, if the aim of Putin is also perhaps to so destabilize this government that the public will essentially kick them out, they will put in someone, or try to, more amenable to Russia.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And just quickly, the U.S., what is the U.S. role in all of this? What do U.S. officials you talk to think is going to happen?

MARGARET WARNER: Two things, Judy.

The U.S. - we have seen multiple phone calls from Vice President Biden, Secretary Kerry, even the president to Ukrainian government officials. They have been mentoring them on how to handle the economic issues and so on.

But they recognize that, again, in the absence of the U.S. being willing to step up military assistance, give true military assistance, that Ukraine is, to some degree, on its own, and one senior official said to me they have to play survivor, which I think the model is outwit, outplay and outlast your opponents with a little help from the U.S. and the Europeans.

But it is not - that is not the image of a powerful alliance that can rescue Ukraine.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Another tough one.

MARGARET WARNER: Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Margaret Warner, we thank you.

MARGARET WARNER: Always a pleasure.
 
 #35
Reuters
September 2, 2015
Ukraine outbreak brings polio back to Europe, WHO says
By Tom Miles

Two children in southwestern Ukraine have been paralysed by polio, the first outbreak of the disease in Europe since 2010, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday, in a setback for a global eradication campaign.

The WHO said Ukraine had been at particular risk of an outbreak because of inadequate vaccination coverage. In 2014, only 50 percent of children were fully immunised against polio and other preventable diseases, it said.

The risk of further spread within the country is high, although the threat to nearby Romania, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia is low, a WHO statement said.

There is no cure for polio, which attacks the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis within hours of infection. It mainly affects young children in areas with poor sanitation.

A global vaccination campaign has largely stamped out the virus, and only Pakistan and Afghanistan have reported cases of wild polio virus this year. Madagascar and Nigeria have suffered vaccine-derived outbreaks, like Ukraine.

The oral vaccine contains a very weak live virus and is considered very safe and effective in preventing the disease. But immunised children excrete the vaccine, and within about 12 months it can mutate in the environment and begin causing paralysis again in unvaccinated children.

"This is an epidemic-prone disease," said Oliver Rosenbauer, a spokesman for the WHO's polio eradication department. "This is a virus that's very good at finding susceptible children."

He said the two cases in Ukraine - a 4-year-old and a 10-month-old - were merely the visible cases among many silent carriers.

"You don't have two kids infected with this strain. There are a lot of other children and adults who will have it. It's in the sewage system. Now is the time to boost the immunity levels."

Vaccine-derived polio strains tend to spread less easily and not cause as many cases as the wild virus, he said, and a full outbreak response could stop the spread in its tracks. The cost of such a response was still being worked out, he said.

Ukraine, where a conflict between government forces and pro-Russian separatists erupted in the east in April 2014, has been rid of wild polio virus since 1996.

Turkey was the last country in Europe where polio was endemic, but it has been rid of the disease since 1999. Europe's last outbreak was in 2010, after the virus was imported from Tajikistan to Russia, leading to 14 cases, Rosenbauer said.
 
 #36
The Guardian (UK)/ Novoye Vremya
September 3, 2015
Ukraine needs radical reforms not Soviet bans
As the country celebrates anniversary of independence from USSR, Jaroslav Gritsak argues that an independent judiciary is more important than the removal of statues
By Jaroslav Gritsak for Novoye Vremya magazine
Jaroslav Gritsak is an historian, essayist and professor at Ukrainian Catholic University

What is my reaction to Ukraine's attempt to break ties with its Soviet past by banning communist symbols? Well, I do not have one. In common with much of the country, such initiatives leave me neither hot nor cold.

They represent a sideways step. If the government does not introduce radical reforms to change the way society operates we will have taken a step backwards - however many Lenin statues are removed.

The late Ihor Sevcenko, professor of history at Harvard University, warned at the beginning of the 1990s that while it is relatively easy to overcome a Soviet past the question is what to do about the Byzantine influence of centuries of Orthodox Christianity. Ditto the old joke about the plumber who looks like Marx and, in reply to repeated requests from the party to remove his beard, says "Sure, I'll shave my beard but where shall I put my wisdom?"

The interrelationship between communism and our historical and cultural legacy should become an object of study for historians and sociologists. At present, it is being treated flippantly. But deadly as it may be, communism is merely a flower growing on a tree whose roots reach deeper into the past. It can be uprooted only with the help of radical reforms. That is why establishing an independent judiciary is much more important in overcoming the past than banning Soviet symbols.

Ponder this: apart from Latvia, which banned Soviet symbolism as early as 1991, other countries that more or less successfully jettisoned their Soviet pasts got rid of Soviet symbols in the 2000s - after they had carried out radical reforms, not before, or in lieu of. Estonia in 2007, Lithuania in 2008, Poland in 2009. The logic?

First, overcome the past, then deal with its surface manifestations.

In Ukraine, you say, unlike in Poland or the Baltic states, there is a war on, so is fighting for the past not more important as a way of bolstering patriotic spirit? If only.

Out of all Ukraine's regions, Dnepropetrovsk is most supportive of the military struggle against separatists in the Donbass. But Dnepropetrovsk also registers one of the highest levels of hostility (33.6%) towards Stepan Bandera (the Ukrainian nationalist leader revered by some but considered a fascist and Nazi collaborator by others) of any region in Ukraine, second only to the Donbass (44.6%). Levels of patriotism, then, are linked not so much to historical memory as to a desire to protect oneself, one's family and one's loved ones.

Imagine what Ukraine - its army, economy and standard of living - would look like if former president Viktor Yushchenko had carried out real reforms in 2004 instead of being preoccupied with history. In that case, would Russia have intervened in Ukraine's affairs?

This year marks 30 years since Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. It is a sad anniversary. For 30 years we have been fighting the past and for 30 years it has defeated us.

Since some time in the late 1980s I have indulged a selfish dream: to fall asleep and wake up in five years, when everything will have sorted itself out and it will be possible to live a normal life. The irony is that whatever year I would have fallen asleep in and whichever five years I would have slept through, the situation would have stayed the same - just as bad as before.

As a historian I don't abandon all hope because I know that revolutions start fast but take a long time to bear fruit. It took the English 50 years (from 1640 to 1688) to reach a post-revolutionary equilibrium and the French about 100 years after the revolution of 1789. Likewise the Germans needed a century after 1848, or even 150 years if you count from the fall of the Berlin wall, when a unified Germany became the main driver of a united Europe.

My hope rests on the assumption that under modern conditions, historical time moves faster than it did in the past. Ukraine has also crossed two important frontiers.

First, it emerged from the shadows of empire when it became independent. According to economists, this alone increases by 50% a country's chances of creating institutions that promote development. Second, the Soviet past burned in the fire of the Euromaidan protests. With each step of this sort we outstrip Russia, which has failed the test of history and faces shocks yet to come.

To step beyond our history we need a large-scale crisis, like the fall of communism or something similar to what we are living through now. Will Ukraine take its chance this time? I cannot say. In history, there are no givens.

But at least there is a chance. It would be a sin to throw that chance away by substituting cosmetic change for real reforms.

This piece was first published in Novoye Vremya magazine and was translated by Cameron Johnston
 
 #37
Irrussianality
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com
September 2, 2015
MWG O GOFFI
By Paul Robinson
Paul Robinson is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.

My old university friend Bill Szuch, now producer of the UkeTube channel,  has posted online a few snippets of a lecture at Chautauqua by historian Timothy Snyder. I think it is fair to say that Snyder and I have very different views of the conflict in Ukraine. He has acquired a reputation as one of the more outspoken supporters of the Maidan revolution and as a fierce opponent of 'Russian aggression'. He says a lot of silly things, in my opinion, but in this segment he outdoes himself. For according to Snyder, Ukraine 'is the one country in Europe which is actually a bilingual political society', and 'There is no other bilingual capital in Europe' other than Kiev. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHtHBuxqiBM]

The first statement will come as something of a surprise to the Swiss, who have a trilingual political society, with German, French, and Italian all having equal status at the level of the federal government (Romansh has a somewhat lower status). It will also surprise the good citizens of Luxembourg who likewise speak three languages (German, French, and Luxembourgish), and those of Malta (where 100% of the population speaks Maltese, 88% of the population speaks English, and 66% speaks Italian), as well as those of Belgium (French, Flemish, and German, although the first two dominate).

As for capital cities, the inhabitants of the City of Luxembourg might be excused for being a little offended by Snyder's denial of their multilingual status. The same is true for Riga (somewhere between 30 and 50% Russian-speaking depending on which statistics you look at, and with a Russian-speaking mayor), and Tallinn (a little under 40% Russian-speaking). And if you want to bring capital cities of national autonomous regions into the picture, then Barcelona, a city in which almost everybody is fluent in both Catalan and Spanish, surely counts too.

Snyder remarks that in Kiev you can order a coffee in Ukrainian and be answered in Ukrainian, or order it in Russian and be answered in Russian. I've never actually tried ordering coffee in Flemish in Brussels (80% French-speaking and 20% Flemish speaking), but I doubt that you would encounter too many problems. Moreover, Brussels is officially bilingual. All signs and public services are in both languages. The same is true of the city of my youth - Cardiff (89% English-speaking, 11% Welsh-speaking). To be fair, if you tried asking for a 'mwg o goffi' in Cardiff city centre, the barista would quite probably stare at you in an odd way. But out on the streets you'll find all the signs are in Welsh. The city is quite energetically bilingual.

Back when we were students, Bill introduced me to Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor's Politics of Recognition. A lot of political strife is not about material objectives, but about a desire for official recognition of one's self-perceived identity. Contrary to Snyder's assertion, bilingual or multilingual political societies are actually quite common in Europe, as indeed they are elsewhere in the world (Canada and Kazakhstan come immediately to mind). Moreover, those countries enjoy a major advantage over Ukraine in that the various languages of political society are officially recognized and protected by law. This is not the case in Ukraine. 'Multinational societies can break up,' writes Taylor,' in large part because of a lack of (perceived) recognition of the equal worth of one group by another.' Ukraine is a case in point.
 
#38
http://newcoldwar.org
September 2, 2015
Kiev regime's decentralization reform is a farce - Zakharchenko
Novorossiya Today

The constitutional reform being conducted in Ukraine is not in the slightest conformity with the Minsk Agreements, the head of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), Alexander Zakharchenko, said Wednesday.

"As of today, no point of the Minsk Agreements has been fully implemented by Kiev: military hardware has not been withdrawn from the disengagement line, moreover, its number has been increased, while the law on amnesty has not been adopted by the Verkhovna Rada," Zakharchenko said.

"As regards the constitutional reform in the sphere of decentralization - it can't be called other than a farce. That law, which has already led to the death of people in front of the Verkhovna Rada, not only is out of line with the Minsk Agreements, but directly contradicts them. "

Zakharchenko stressed once again that in line with Minsk-2, Kiev should agree with Donbas on the changes to the country's fundamental law. "But Kiev has made no steps forward and has issued  openly provocative statements," he said.

The DPR leader said that the latest statements by Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko at a meeting with Ambassador Martin Sajdik, the Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office in Ukraine and in the Trilateral Contact Group on the implementation of the peace plan in Donbas, "unambiguously show once again that Kiev has not listened, is not listening and, it seems, is not going to listen to the voice of Donbas."

The Ukrainian presidential press service reported earlier Wednesday that Poroshenko held talks with Sajdik at which he claimed "full implementation by the Ukrainian side of its political commitments on the Minsk Agreements of February 12, 2015".

This week, the Verkhovna Rada approved amendments in a first reading to the Ukrainian Constitution regarding decentralization.

The DPR and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) say the amendments do not comply with requirements of the February 12 Package of Measures on implementation of the Minsk Agreements, as the document points to the necessity to coordinate with representatives of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions the constitutional reform regarding decentralization.

The DPR and LPR also insist on transferring the mention of Donbas's special status from transitional provisions of the Constitution to the main text.

Read also:

Excerpt from the 13-point (plus detailed implementation note) text of the Minsk-2 ceasefire agreement of Feb. 12, 2015:

11. Constitutional reform in Ukraine, with a new constitution to come into effect by the end of 2015, the key element of which is decentralisation (taking into account peculiarities of particular districts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, agreed with representatives of these districts), and also approval of permanent legislation on the special status of particular districts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in accordance with the measures spelt out in the attached footnote,

by the end of 2015.

12. Based on the Law of Ukraine "On temporary Order of Local Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts", questions related to local elections will be discussed and agreed upon with representatives of particular districts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in the framework of the Trilateral Contact Group. Elections will be held in accordance with relevant OSCE standards and monitored by OSCE/ODIHR
 
 #39
Interfax-Ukraine
September 3, 2015
New military doctrine calls Russia Ukraine's military adversary, stipulates NATO membership
 
A new military doctrine approved by the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) identifies the Russian Federation as a military adversary and sets out the terms for liberation of the country's "temporarily occupied territories."

The new doctrine is based on the high likelihood of a large-scale use of military force against Ukraine as the main threat to Ukraine's national security in the military sphere, confirms the abandonment of the non-aligned policy and declares the resumption of the strategic courts towards Euro-Atlantic integration, the NSDC spokesperson said.

The doctrine also defines signs of a domestic armed conflict, including one that is inspired by foreign stations; reflects the increased role of information and psychological warfare operations; and underscores the need to improve training and mobilization systems and to substantially increase the professional component of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and other military formations.

The new doctrine also sets out national defense measures required to restore national sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as the challenges of Ukraine's defense and security potentials as a pre-requisite for countering armed aggression.

The draft of the new military doctrine was approved on Wednesday, September 2, by the NSDC and proposed for signature by the Ukrainian president.

Under the new military doctrine, Ukraine abandons its non-aligned policy, re-embarks on the strategic course towards Euro-Atlantic integration, and shifts the emphasis from conducting military conflicts to the combined use of military and non-military tools, including economic, political, information-psychological and so on, the president said. "This is radically changes the nature of warfare. Effectively, it is what we call a hybrid war," he said.

The program stipulates that "in the medium term, Ukraine will use first and foremost its own capabilities."

"The red thread crossing this strategic document [the military doctrine] is the theme of Euro-Atlantic integration, the need to bring our whole defense and military system into line with NATO standards and achieve the membership criteria. It is our task to ensure full compatibility of the Ukrainian Armed Forces with those of NATO members before 2020," the Ukrainian president told the National Security and Defense Council on Wednesday.

Currently, both Ukraine and NATO are not ready yet to raise the membership issue, but there is the decision of the Bucharest summit in 2008, which says that the doors are open, Poroshenko said.

"I insist: the final version of the Military Doctrine should state clearly, with no unnecessary diplomacy, that Ukraine should achieve not just the membership criteria but actually become a full NATO member," Poroshenko said.
 
 #40
Forbes.com
September 2, 2015
If Russian Soldiers Aren't Dying In Ukraine, Why Did Putin Make Casualty Stats A State Secret?
By Paul Roderick Gregory

If you want to enrage Vladimir Putin, publish an article on Russian casualties in Ukraine. Putin unequivocally declared, on his Direct Line broadcast to the Russian people on April 16, that "the question of whether Russian troops are present in Ukraine...I can tell you outright and unequivocally that there are no Russian troops in Ukraine." With such a categorical denial, any report on Russian military deaths in Ukraine would subject the writer to the Kremlin's full wrath, including four to eight years in prison. Besides, no established Russian media outlet would cover the story.

Last week, I published an article describing how Russia may have inadvertently posted its casualty statistics in Ukraine. My piece cited an article from an online journal, Delovaya Zhizn (Business Life), entitled "Compensation of military personnel taking part in military actions in Ukraine in 2014-2015." The document spells out the compensation for families of fallen soldiers (three million rubles) and invalids (one and a half million rubles) and compensations received by the families of the 2,000 killed and the 3,200 disabled.

An independent analyst named Ruslan Leviev has argued that the Business Life-obtained document is a fake. He makes a number of fair arguments that I take seriously. I have updated my original article to make note of Leviev's analysis. Western journalists and commentators, in contrast to their Russian counterparts, must stick to the truth or not be seen as credible. The subject matter-the number of Russian military deaths in Ukraine-has been declared a state secret in Russia (Ukaz of the President of Russian Federation, No 273.) The purpose of a secrecy law is not only to conceal something but also to make leaks unverifiable. Here's what we do know about Russian casualties in Ukraine.

Russian soldiers are dying in Ukraine by the hundreds, and likely thousands

In my article, I wrote that the Business Life figures make sense and confirm what should be obvious to all: Russian troops, both regular and mercenary, are in east Ukraine and are being supplied with heavy weapons by Russia. Deadly battles-such as those at Donetsk Airport, Ilovaisk, and Debaltseve-have resulted in heavy casualties on both sides. The Russian dead are secretly transported back to Russia for furtive burials, if their remains can be recovered.

We do not need a Business Life leak to demonstrate Russian losses and expose Putin's lie. Fallen soldiers leave survivors. Civilized societies require that they be buried and their deaths entered into civil registries. Putin's making military deaths a state secret is a vain and impossible attempt to suppress the information networks triggered by military deaths.

Do the Business Life figures make sense? The three million ruble compensation figure has circulated widely. Independent groups, such as the team of murdered Boris Nemtsov and Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Open Russia, have sought to pin down the number of casualties. They both used information from two human rights groups: Cargo 200 (after the refrigerated trucks that transport dead Russian soldiers back to Russia) and regional societies of soldiers' mothers. Those human rights organizations have been gathering casualty information despite threats of closure and criminal punishment. Both Nemtsov and Open Russia document slightly more than two hundred deaths of regular Russian soldiers. Their figures do not, however, appear to  measure total Russian casualties, only confirmed deaths of regular soldiers, excluding mercenaries.

Cargo 200 provides names, photos, addresses, and military records (where available) of Russian regular and mercenary casualties. It separates Russian armed forces and mercenaries as "killed," "missing in action," or "taken prisoner." Cargo 200 shows 167 regular troops "killed" and 187 "MIA" and 305 mercenaries "killed" and 796 "MIA."

Cargo 200 does not know the percentage of total cases it has identified, given the political pressure on it. Such investigations are stymied by pledges of silence from the families of fallen soldiers. Families of regular army soldiers may be more closemouthed than those of mercenaries; hence the larger number of mercenary casualties reported. Cargo 200 may pick up a higher share of MIAs as distraught families turn to it for help. We do not know whether survivors of  mercenaries receive the same compensation as regulars. We do know that mercenary bodies are transported back to Russia in Cargo 200 trucks.

The Business Life figure of two thousand dead, however, could not have been dismissed out of hand. If Cargo 200 has picked up, say, one-third of the total, then some 500 regulars and 915 mercenaries have been killed in Ukraine, a total of 1,415.

The Russian-Ukrainian war has been one of artillery battles, which leave behind body parts scattered in remote fields. Cargo 200 lists almost a thousand MIAs, most of whom are likely dead and would thus roughly double the death toll.

If Russian authorities want to dispute the Cargo 200 reports, let them check the names and addresses. I am sure they can find many slip-ups, given the hectic and repressed nature of information gathering. But that will not happen because such inquiries break Russian secrecy laws, risking four to eight years in prison.

Russia's own estimate of deaths of Ukrainians on the battlefield is in the neighborhood of 2,500. At least until the invasion of Ukraine by regular Russian troops in August, Ukrainian forces seemed to have the upper hand. Under such circumstances, there should be a rough parity of battlefield deaths.

In sum, the number of Russian casualties can exceed two thousand if we count both regular soldiers and mercenaries. The Kremlin will counter that only regular soldiers count and that their numbers are  fewer than two thousand. Should Russians care about the number of their citizens killed in Ukraine or only care if they are regular troops? I leave that question to the Russian people.

Putin controls all Russian mainstream media; hence, casualty statistics will only leak through non-mainstream sources

Business Life is an obscure aggregator of business news, whose ownership is unclear and appears not to have a fixed business address. Its website does not contain any reference to a print edition or mail subscription. Moreover, it does not list its staff, its owner, or any relevant contact information except an online reply form.  While in the West an obscure website might legitimately be regarded with suspicion, we have to remember that Putin cracks down on dissenting press in Russia, and it is therefore understandable that people who post information about what Putin has declared a "state secret" would not want the government to find them.

In response to journalists' inquiries, on August 26 a Business Life spokesperson, calling himself Anatoly Kravchenko (possibly an alias), declared that Business Life is apolitical and that it based the report on "information received from several sources and private persons appearing to be members of families of fallen soldiers that had received compensation as well as inside information from the defense ministry about a secret government compensation decree." The spokesperson did not reveal his sources, declaring that Business Life had removed this information after a warning of sanctions by the Russian government. The spokesperson also stated that the offending article was posted before Putin's June 28 decree classifying military deaths as state secrets not just in times of war but also peacetime (Ukaz of the President of Russian Federation, No 273). Note that the spokesperson did not repudiate the article.

If someone were in possession of official information on Russian military deaths in Ukraine, they would likely turn to an obscure website such as Business Life. The fact that Business Life lives a shadowy existence would be a plus, to its correspondents, rather than a minus.

For its part, Russia's propaganda machine specializes in using obscure websites and thousands of Twitter and Facebook accounts to deliver its propaganda messages. Ukraine recently shut down 30,000 such Russian propaganda sites. My articles at Forbes are regularly spammed by pro-Putin accounts of this type.

There is no need to go through the long list of fakes and fabrications turned out by Putin's propaganda machine, none of which have been recalled, as far as I know. Two examples suffice: the Russian defense department's official briefing at which it claimed that a Ukrainian jet shot down MH17; and a paid actor playing three separate roles from a hospital bed in the area of conflict.

Alternative explanations for the Business Life document

At this point, we cannot dismiss the Leviev analysis that the Business Life document is fake. But given the behavior of Putin and the Russian government on Ukraine-related matters, we also have to rule out three alternative explanations that seem improbable, but are possible in Putin's Russia.

Second explanation: The Business Life document is not a fake but is based on insider information that was published on an obscure website by choice. Upon seeing this alarming information, Russia censors ordered it removed. It was the removal of the article that attracted the attention of Western observers. Recall it was the taking down of a key internet message immediately after the shooting down of MH17 (and labeled as a fake by Kremlin-controlled media) that provides a key piece of evidence in the investigation.

Third explanation: The document was deliberately placed on Business Life to lure Western commentators into a discussion in which they discredit themselves with estimates of Russian casualties that are too high.

Fourth explanation: The document was placed on Business Life by Ukrainian intelligence to alarm the Russian people who have been told by the Kremlin there are no Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

Putin should openly admit Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Be it noted that I did not claim to have a way to independently verify the Business Life casualty figures. I warned that "the Kremlin will claim that the web-cached material is a forgery," as it has. But it goes without saying that no such document can be authenticated given the Kremlin's repressive and dishonest approach to casualty statistics. The headline of my original article, however, should have reflected this fact, and it does now.

I challenge Putin and the Kremlin to remove the criminal penalties for revealing information on military casualties during "peacetime." Such a law can only be interpreted as hiding a deep and dark secret. Russia has secrecy laws that have no other purpose than to conceal its involvement in Ukraine. The right way for the matter to be resolved is for Russia to repeal the law and allow independent verification.

If Russia truly wants the facts to come out, let there be open discussion, not whispers exchanged in shadows against the overwhelming chatter of the state media. Better still, Russia should disclose the actual number of Russian casualties for whom the government is providing compensation. But I forget. The official number is zero.
 
 #41
www.opednews.com
August 20, 2015
Cuban Missile Crisis in Reverse?
By Craig K. Comstock

Whatever one thinks of Putin, it's fair to ask whether the US is on the path to risking a Cuban missile crisis in reverse. What if Ukraine invites NATO to station nuclear rockets on its territory or conduct "war games" near the Russian heartland or engage in other military activity? And didn't the very long and extensive US involvement in Vietnam start with "trainers"?

What is now the country of Ukraine was once a province of the USSR. And some parts of Ukraine are closer to Moscow than Cuba to Washington, D.C. When Khrushchev shipped nuclear rockets to Castro's island, and they were discovered by a US surveillance plane, it set off a crisis that has been called the most dangerous time in human history.

During the famous crisis, JFK and his "executive committee" knew that Soviet strategic rockets were emplaced in Cuba and potentially armed with nuclear warheads. What they apparently didn't know was that the Soviets had also sent tactical nuclear warheads to Cuba to combat a possible U.S. invasion of that island.

Believing that an invasion could succeed, the U.S., shortly before the crisis ended in a Soviet withdrawal, was actually considering such an attack. It is not irrelevant now to ask, what would have happened if a U.S. invasion had been attempted and met with (short range) nuclear rockets?

The White House of 1962 has been celebrated for opting for a naval "quarantine." a pledge not to invade Cuba, and a secret promise to take old-fashioned U.S. missiles out of Turkey. On the other side, Khrushchev decided not to tug on what he called the "knot of war." In the melodramatic phrase of the U.S. Secretary of State, "we're eyeball to eyeball and I think the other fellow just blinked." No problem, crisis over.

2015 is not 1962, but the question is a necessary one: how would Russia see Western military activity across its border in Ukraine? As threatening as we regarded the Soviet strategic missiles in Cuba? You don't have to agree with the other side in order to ask how the world looks to it. As seen from Moscow, could NATO military moves in Ukraine look as threatening as the Cuban missile crisis did to us?

In his American University commencement speech in June, 1963, JFK imagined what would have happened to the U.S. if we'd been invaded by Hitler as the USSR actually was. The country would have been wrecked from the Atlantic to the outskirts of Chicago, he said, with immense loss of life and destruction of most of our industrial capacity. Whatever his shortcomings, President Kennedy had the capacity to imagine a situation as seen from elsewhere. It's true that the USSR in the early 1940s was a wartime ally against the Nazis, but when JFK spoke, that communist country was a rival, the only one that could threaten us with continental ruin.

To ask it again, in the hope that we're not blinded by war propaganda, are we risking a Cuban missile crisis in reverse? Are the US war propagandists playing a role similar to those Soviet experts to whom Khrushchev initially and unwisely listened? This time, who is suggesting restraint?
 
 #42
Center on Global Interests
http://globalinterests.org
September 2, 2015
Ukraine Report: A Look Inside East And West: Part 2: Report from seperatist-controlled territory in Donbass
By Igor Rotar
Igor Rotar is a journalist whose work has appeared in Eurasia Net, The Kyiv Post, and Nezavisimaya Gazeta. From 2003 to 2007 he was the Central Asian news correspondent for Forum 18, a human rights organization based in Norway that promotes religious freedom. Additional articles from his recent trip to Ukraine are available at The Jamestown Foundation and the Russian news agency Rosbalt. He can be reached at [email protected].

During a 3-month trip to Ukraine, journalist Igor Rotar traversed the country from the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine to the 'Western capital' of Lviv. He spoke with Ukrainian soldiers and pro-Russian separatists and Cossacks; leaders of the separatist governments, militant units, and local governments on both sides; and NGO leaders, common residents, and  refugees.

CGI is publishing the first of Rotar's four-part series on Ukraine. Focusing on the conflict area of Donbass, Rotar visits both the Kiev-controlled and separatist-controlled parts of the region to compare the political situation and mood on the ground. His report from Kiev-controlled Donbass was published September 1, 2015 and can be read here. [http://globalinterests.org/2015/09/01/ukraine-report-a-look-inside-east-and-west/]

The landscape changes dramatically as soon as you pass the last Ukrainian checkpoint near the town of Artemovsk and enter the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DNR). The road passes through an absolutely deserted area. It seems as if a neutron bomb has destroyed all life but spared the buildings. "Before, the bombing went on at night. Now it seems to have gotten quiet, but people no longer risk going out," the driver explains.

It's common now to meet packs of wild, hungry dogs-against the background of the dark landscape, these animals produce an eerie impression. I ask the driver: "Do these dogs attack humans?" He assures me that nothing like that has happened yet.
"Lyashko" mannequin at a check-point, a reference to Oleh Lyashko, a deputy in the Ukrainian parliament and leader of the Radical party, which advocates putting an end to the conflict in Donbass through the use of force.

When you do come across people, they are always armed. During the hour-and-a-half journey to Donetsk, I counted as many as 12 military checkpoints. Compared to Ukrainian troops, the DNR insurgents look more anarchic, some of them dressed in military camouflage and some as so-called "modern Cossacks." At one of the checkpoints I saw a female mannequin emblazoned with the name "Lyashko."  This was a reference to Oleh Lyashko, a deputy in the Ukrainian parliament and leader of the Radical party, which advocates putting an end to the conflict in Donbass through the use of force. While his extreme radical and nationalistic opinions are well known, there are also rumors of homosexuality that Lyashko denies.

In contrast to the countryside, the city of Donetsk as a whole looks relatively peaceful. In the center of town there is very little destruction, although there are signs showing the way to a bomb shelter.  Children frolic in the gardens and lovers snuggle on benches. But, as I was told, this is only the situation during peacetime; during periods of bombing, the city empties out.

I come across a good number of mid-level restaurants and coffee shops. There is also an abundance of shops belonging to well-known brands, such as Auchan and Amstor, but the range of available items is much smaller and the prices are much higher than before the war. I even found a McDonald's, though it has been shut down since the beginning of the hostilities. The real abundance of goods is to be found in the central market, though compared to Ukraine proper, the prices appeared unrealistically high.

A 'fortress under siege'

Those residents of Donetsk who have lived on both sides of the front hold pretty flexible views that allow them to consider whether the costs of seceding from Ukraine are too high. Those who have never left Donetsk, however, have a completely different opinion. I talked with more than a hundred people, and the percentage of people supporting the separatists appears to be significantly higher here than in the Kiev-controlled part of Donbass.

There are several reasons for this. First, a significant number of those who were dissatisfied with the separatists coming to power have already left the self-proclaimed republics. Second, the conflict has led many of the remaining civilians to band together like hostages, or like the inhabitants of a fortress under siege. The "Ukrainian fascists" are fiercely despised here. As one fervent Donetsk resident told me, "You have to be an idiot to doubt that we are right. There isn't a single corpse of children or old men outside the ATO [Anti-Terrorist Operation zone], like in Kiev or in Lviv. They are 'liberating' us by killing children, women and old people, and destroying our infrastructure."

Interestingly, many of the residents supported Kiev at the beginning of the conflict but sharply changed their minds after the attacks. Almost all are convinced that after what has happened, it is simply no longer possible to remain within Ukraine. With this conclusion, the degree of their intolerance grows. The argument that if there were no separatists, then there would be no bombings, is a nonstarter for the local residents. I felt this sentiment when my agreement to rent an apartment in Donetsk was cancelled by the hostess at the last minute after she learned that I represented both the Russian and American press. "You write the truth to the Russians, while telling the Americans that we need to be killed further," she said.

To be fair, I should add that there are people in the city (I would estimate about 30 percent of the population) who are dissatisfied with the separatists, but these people consider them a lesser evil than the Ukrainian authorities. However, one taxi driver told me "in confidence" that the city militia had fired on themselves in order to blame the Ukrainian military and incite the local population, but that only a few people know this.

Another rather large group consists of "the disappointed"-those who had hoped Russia would annex eastern Ukraine. I heard this opinion many times from the people of Donetsk:

The blockade

Kiev's establishment of a blockade of the DNR and LNR has clearly not boosted the popularity of the Ukrainian authorities. At the beginning of the year, Kiev introduced a system of passes required for entry and exit into and from the separatist-controlled regions. In order to get a pass you have to have a legitimate reason, such as property ownership or a job on the territory of destination. But even if you have sufficient reason to cross the border, you are still guaranteed some level of torment. It can take up to a month to obtain a pass, while the line to submit one's documents often begins to form the night before (most people are afraid to send the application by mail).

After one receives a pass, a new level of purgatory begins. As a result of mandatory inspections at Ukrainian checkpoints, where there are no toilets or other basic amenities, people have to stand for hours on end or even spend the night in the field. As a result, if the pre-war trip from Donetsk to Mariupol took about two hours, it now takes at least 12.

Kiev has disabled all ATMs in what it calls the "occupied zone," making it necessary to go to Kiev-controlled territory to withdraw money. Unfortunately, the ATMs in "frontier" cities are usually raked clean, and even those ATMs with cash are likely to limit withdraws to no more than $150 per day.

It is forbidden to deliver goods into the "occupied zone," and therefore prices in the DNR and LNR are somewhere around one and a half times higher than in the rest of Ukraine, if they are available at all.  "Kiev hasn't limited itself to blocking goods and restricting the banking system. We have been deprived of vaccines and cancer drugs. For example, if you are bitten by a rabid dog in Donetsk, then you're done for. If you have cancer, you will suffer from terrible pain. How else to characterize this other than a policy of genocide? Kiev is bombing us and driving people onto reservations. How, after all this, does it want us to live in the same state?" Such was the opinion voiced by Andrei Purgin, the region's second-most senior official and current Chairman of the People's Council of the DNR (the DNR's legislative body).

The feeling that the Ukrainian government doesn't consider the residents of the self-proclaimed republics as its own citizens is a strong factor in feeding separatist sentiment. It is also significant that Ukraine stopped paying pensions to the separatist republics. In May, local pensioners began to receive the equivalent amounts in rubles or dollars from Russia. From April 1, all stores began accepting rubles and dollars rather than the Ukrainian hryvna, and banks began accepting money transfers from Russia. In effect, Russia's efforts to break the Ukrainian blockade have further separated the residents of the separatist republics from Kiev.

The Ukrainian language in the separatist enclaves

A natural result of the current situation is that parts of the population of the breakaway regions reject not only the Ukrainian state but also the Ukrainian language. Many Ukrainian schools in the DNR and LNR are being closed, and teachers of the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian literature are being forced out.

It's hard to say for sure whether this is the result of a deliberate policy. An acquaintance of mine, a primary school teacher from Donetsk, claimed that out of every 100 applications for children entering the first grade, only 3 on average request to study in a Ukrainian class. In her opinion, that is because the people themselves don't want their children to be taught in Ukrainian.

Nonetheless, many of the street names in Donetsk are still written in Ukrainian. The city also still has a cafe with a Ukrainian name, the Lviv Coffee Shop, where the waitresses speak Ukrainian language.

"A real Wild West"

The war in Donbass has attracted a huge number of marginalized people from two extremes into the region-both from the extreme right (including Russian nationalists, Cossacks and the like), and the extreme left, ranging from orthodox Communists to the members of Eduard Limonov's National Bolshevik Party.

In his conversation with me, Andrei Purgin spoke of a certain special "Russian civilization." "Our civilization is more collective and less individualistic than the West...In the West they followed Roman law, and our civilizations followed Byzantine law. Western law leads to pedantry. It is thanks to Western law that the burning of heretics and other such crimes were possible. In Russia, people used different methods. For example, during the conquest of Siberia, merchants caught selling vodka to indigenous peoples had their hands cut off. This method turned out to be sufficiently effective," Mr. Purgin said.

It should be said that the methods of "justice" described by Mr. Purgin are not employed in areas controlled by the DNR and LNR. However, individual regions are controlled by field commanders who refuse to submit to (or are only nominally subordinate to) the authorities of the self-proclaimed republics. For example, the regions controlled by the Cossacks of the so-called "Great Don Army" (from the cities of Stakhanov and Anthracite in the Luhansk region) refuse to submit to the DNR/LNR leadership. In these areas, public flogging has been adopted as a punishment for criminal offenses.

Field commanders with left-leaning views have also adopted alternative methods of justice. A particularly infamous separatist commander was Aleksey Mozgovoy (killed during a terrorist attack), who advocated for an "anti-oligarchic revolution" in all of Ukraine. In areas under his control, prisoners were sentenced to the death penalty by majority vote among the local population.

Members of the radical Russian writer Eduard Limonov's National Bolshevik Party consider Donbass a territory which can embody their ideas. "Eduard Limonov had wanted to create an 'Other Russia' [an anarchic utopia he described in his book of the same name] in the north of Kazakhstan. That didn't happen, but it will happen here first. Donbass is the real Wild West. Our dreams are sure to come true in the lands of Eastern Ukraine," I was assured in March by Dmytro Kolesnikov, the commander of the military wing of the National-Bolshevik Party of Russia in Donetsk.

The end of anarchy

At the same time it seems the influence of the anarchic "outlaws" in both breakaway republics is coming to an end. All DNR military units had been unified under a single command by the middle of this summer, and a similar transformation occurred earlier in the LNR.

Both republics are taking aggressive steps to neutralize disobedient field commanders. The first to go was field commander Igor Bezler, described as a loose cannon who was allegedly involved in the MH-17 shoot down, who disappeared from Horlivka-though later a YouTube video suggested that he managed to survive. Alexander Bendov, the chief of staff of the Fourth Brigade of the LNR known for extreme violence, was killed in a targeted ambush in January of this year. The LNR authorities later admitted their involvement in his murder. In May, DNR units disarmed a Cossack formation that refused to enter the Republic's Guard. And later that month the aforementioned Aleksey Mozgovoy, one of the most popular and influential field commanders in the LNR, was killed in ambush.

In the middle of this summer, the National Bolshevik Party branch office in Donetsk was closed in an effort to squeeze Limonov out of the DNR. At the same time the Kremlin didn't hide the fact that it didn't sympathize with the leftist views of the "neutralized" field commanders of the separatist formations. In this sense, it's interesting to consider the view of the former DNR Prime Minister Alexander Boroday - a person who clearly expresses the position of the Kremlin:

     "Well, let's say you are an honest 'anti-oligarch.' So you grab one of the oligarchs and hang him from a lamppost. The people's anger is satisfied. But then what? What do you do with his property? Are the masses able to manage it? Let's say you get a hold of his products made for export: where will you sell them? You have nationalized his company and come to the international market with this product. You are knocking at the door. But there you will be shut down and handed over to the police. This is because from the point of view of international law, you are thieves. And no one will buy anything from you, and all the plants that you nationalized will cease working. The workers begin to starve. And nothing more come from the social revolution and anti-oligarchic passion. The only cure against oligarchic misconduct is not nationalization, but the presence of a state that limits their power."

There is little doubt that the process of subordination of the armed forces to a single command, as well as the neutralization of unmanageable officers, was carried out under direct orders from the Kremlin. At the same time, both Ukrainian and separatist analysts believe that an agreement has already been reached with Kiev on the federalization of Ukraine; for that reason both the DNR and LNR are pre-emptively neutralizing any potentially disgruntled officers and field commanders.

Conclusions

Compared with the territory of Kiev-controlled Donbass, a much greater percentage of the residents of the breakaway regions hold separatist views. Moreover, most of them are convinced that after the bombing of eastern Ukraine, reunification with Kiev is impossible. The separatist sentiment of the locals is strengthened further by Kiev's blockade of the breakaway regions. The residents of the DNR and LNR perceive it as an attempt to drive them onto a reservation. Meanwhile, since disconnecting from Ukraine, the DNR and LNR have become attractive destinations for Russian radical nationalists from both the left and right. However, in recent months, the Kremlin is trying to eliminate the anarchic freemen in the breakaway republics.
 
 #43
Novaya Gazeta
August 23, 2015
Liberal Russian paper studies east Ukraine rebels' assets, spheres of influence
Pavel Kanygin, Donbosses: Seized businesses and spheres of influence of leaders of the 'Donetsk People's Republic'

Just 18 months ago, Donbass was one of the most prosperous regions of Ukraine. Donetsk was on a par with Kiev in terms of riches and polish, ahead of the other regional centres of Ukraine and even Russia. The region's gross regional product was around 15 per cent, which is comparable with Moscow's share of Russia's GDP (17 per cent). Since the start of the war the region's economy has declined by 60 per cent, according to data from the National Bank of Ukraine. Ukrainian and foreign businesses began to leave Donbass en masse, mothballing everything they could not take: factories, equipment, and real estate. However, new owners for the abandoned assets soon started to appear. And those businessmen who risked staying were forced to try to reach agreement with the new authorities. The forgotten concept of the "protection racket" has come back into circulation again. However a protection racket is now not just cobbled together groups of strong-arm men with knuckle-dusters, metal bars, and Stechkins [automatic pistols]. A protection racket has machine-guns, grenade-launchers and heavy equipment at its disposal.

Manpower superiority is of crucial importance. The boss is the one who has the most bayonets on his side. (In this article we are deliberately omitting the aspect of the influence of "soldiers on leave" since it is not amenable to analysis because of their constant rotation and non-involvement in the redistribution of local markets.) Aleksandr Zakharchenko [Oleksandr Zakharchenko], the head of the "DPR" [Donetsk People's Republic] and the tacit leader of the Republic Guard formed based on the Oplot brigade whose leader was Zakharchenko, has the largest number of bayonets and consequently the most economic power in the region. In second place is Aleksandr Khodakovskiy [Oleksandr Khodakovskyy], the head of the "DPR Security Council". Then comes Denis Pushilin [Denys Pushylin], the Donetsk negotiator on the Minsk Agreement, and, finally, Igor Strelkov-Girkin, the former commander-in-chief of the "Novorossiya" army (he is no longer present in Donbass but is making good money thanks to it in Russia).

We have tried to consider the level of economic power and the financial wealth of the leaders of Donbass using information from our high-ranking sources in Moscow and Kiev, listening to the statements of the leaders themselves, and assessing information presented to us by Ukrainian companies, which have lost control over their assets in Donbass.

Aleksandr Zakharchenko

With approximately four to five thousand militants at his disposal, Aleksandr Zakharchenko has control today over most of the liquid assets of Donetsk and the adjacent towns. Former members of Oplot and current "DPR" Republican Guards "run" supermarkets, restaurants, cafes, and shopping centres, and they operate protection rackets for the factories that have not yet closed.

Food retail where there is still a rapid turnover of cash is of particular interest to the region's new bosses. One of the most prominent "acquisitions" of Zakharchenko's structures is the well-known Ukrainian supermarket chain ATB, which previously belonged to a group of Dnipropetrovsk businessmen. The company had a total of 152 stores on territory of Donbass that is not under Kiev's control. At the end of 2014 the chain started gradually to close stores, explaining this step by their inability to ensure the safety of their staff. But people representing "DPR" officials started soon afterwards to occupy the supermarkets. Some of the stores continued to trade under the same guise, 20 stores were renamed "First Republican Supermarket". According to ATB-Market's information, Aleksandr Zakharchenko's wife - Natalya - has gained control over them.

"We do not now have any access to our assets on that territory," Anna Lichman, a representative of ATB-Market in Dnipropetrovsk, told us. "No-one notified us that we were losing retail space. It was unceremoniously taken away from us. Our former employees in Donetsk do not deny the fact that Aleksandr Zakharchenko's wife is behind this."

In addition to ATB, retailers mention Zakharchenko's family as running the Amstor chain of shops, which officially belongs to the Smart Kholding company of the prominent Ukrainian tycoons Vadym Novinsky and Oleksandr Vagorovsky. After a corporate conflict between the two businessmen, which was not linked to the war, the chain's operations were suspended throughout the entire country. However, the supermarkets continued to operate under the same name on the territory under the separatists' control.

"Vagorovsky, the holding company's minority shareholder, is managing the network in the breakaway regions," Yevhen Zahorulko, a spokesman for Smart Kholding, told me. "While we (Novinsky, the largest shareholder - Kanygin) do not have any influence at all on our assets there, he has somehow found options. I will express the opinion that he is clearly friends with the separatists' leaders."

The Amstor central office in Donetsk refused to comment on the situation by telephone.

It must be said that Zakharchenko was linked to the retail trade even before, during the pre-war era.

According to our information, Aleksandr Zakharchenko was a sales agent for a major Ukrainian poultry producer, Gavrilovsky Kurchata, in Donetsk before the start of his political career. When he was dealing in poultry, Zakharchenko had a turnover of approximately 10-15m hryvnyas.

The company Gavrilovsky Kurchata did not deny or confirm a working relationship with Aleksandr Zakharchenko, stating however that anyone who wanted to could become a sales agent and sell their brand of chicken.

Our sources among the largest Ukrainian wholesalers say that Zakharchenko's entourage are also guaranteeing the security of food supplies from the territory of Ukraine. "Literally everyone wants their cut, from minor Guard commanders who will accept bartered goods, to the top figures who sell our wares," a representative of one of the supplier companies reports.

Aleksandr Zakharchenko has also been noted on the petroleum products market, where until recently Serhiy Kurchenko, one of the closest oligarchs to Yanukovych Sr (most frequently named as "the Family's purse"), had the final say. According to our information, Kurchenko received the task of running the sale and supply of gasoline in the self-proclaimed republics from those overseeing Donbass in the Kremlin a year ago. Kurchenko's oil-trading companies, based mainly in Crimea, are supposed to arrange deliveries to meet the civilian and military needs of the region - to replace the flow from the Ukrainian mainland that was reduced with the start of the blockade of the "LPR [Luhansk People's Republic]/DPR". Aleksandr Zakharchenko also supported the monopoly of "the Family's purse", demanding that local dealers sell only "Crimean gasoline". Also in November 2014, Zakharchenko appointed Kurchenko's lawyer Yevgeniy Faynitskiy as "DPR energy minister".

The head of the "DPR" made a public promise that the price of 92-octane gasoline would fall from 25-26 hryvnyas to 19-20 hryvnyas a litre (which is 2-3 hryvnyas less than in Ukraine). But the monopoly of the oligarch who was settled in Moscow, in alliance with Zakharchenko, led the self-proclaimed republics into a fuel crisis. Gasoline became even more expensive, in particular a litre of 92-octane reached 26-27 hryvnyas (R52-54). "DPR" officials tried to hold the prices down but filling stations started to close completely. The resignation of "minister" Faynitskiy did not save the situation either: it was reported that he had been "locked up" but there was no evidence of this.

Aleksandr Zakharchenko has chosen the Donetsk Region financial administration building as his working residence. It is here and not in the building of the regional administration that the head of the "DPR" spends most of his working time. Zakharchenko travels in a motorcade of five luxury SUVs, including a Mercedes GL and Lexus GX.

"There is no need for illusions. The Kremlin knows the real price of these people. They are only in their places for as long as they demonstrate complete controllability. As far as the internal squabbles are concerned and the redistribution of property - these are not critical subjects for Moscow. The most important thing is not to go too far. After all, people can be made to see reason in an instant, and in Donetsk everyone should understand this," that is how a source close to the Presidential Staff commented to us on the behaviour of the head of the "DPR".

We asked Aleksandr Zakharchenko to comment on the information we have set out. We sent his press secretary, Alena Alekseyeva, a written request a week ago. We suggested that Aleksandr Zakharchenko choose a convenient format for the conversation. Alekseyeva confirmed the receipt of our suggestion. However, a week later an answer had still not been received.

Aleksandr Khodakovskiy

The second most influential man in the "DPR" - Aleksandr Khodakovskiy - has fewer "security agency" resources by comparison with Zakharchenko. The commander of the Donetsk Alfa subdivision of the SBU [Security Service] and current head of the "DPR Security Council" has one to two thousand armed fighters from the Vostok brigade under his control.

But Khodakovskiy's influence is increased by his close links with the old Donetsk elite who have kept their assets here. He is also seen in Moscow as a possible fast replacement for Zakharchenko. Khodakovskiy actually positions himself as a likely future leader of the region, willing to attempt to reach agreement with everyone.

In his public statements, Khodakovskiy speaks in favour of the re-integration of Donbass into Ukraine but with close links with Russia being maintained. He states that he does not support becoming part of the Russian Federation but he insists on the territory's special status. Khodakovskiy is also supported as a more moderate figure by the entourage of Rinat Akhmetov, who is still influential in the region: the main enterprises of Akhmetov's SKM group are continuing to operate on the territory of the "DPR". In such circumstances, the oligarch's entourage is also forced to give political and other support to the head of the "DPR", Zakharchenko.

Friction of a political nature, the fight for flows linked of the name of Rinat Akhmetov, and goods smuggling from Ukraine, are the main reasons for the tension between the two leaders of the "DPR". Vostok fighters control the western boundaries of the "DPR" and have a stake in the smuggling of food freight coming from Ukraine, setting up competition with Zakharchenko's people.

(Generally speaking, during periods of lull protection rackets relating to the flow of goods are the main source of earnings for all armed groups on both sides of the conflict in Donbass. Representatives of the Ukrainian state engage in protection rackets for smuggling with the same zeal as the separatists. Bribes are imposed on businessmen for the passage of freight both by representatives of the security agencies, and civilian officials who are lured to the demarcation line - starting with the public health services and ending with the tax police's special forces. As a result, the price of goods crossing the demarcation line is increasing 2-2.5-fold.)

Until recently, Vostok ensured the security of alternative supplies of gasoline from Ukraine and their sale in the "DPR". In particular, supplies to the Parallel gas stations belonging to Rinat Akhmetov. But sales within the Parallel chain were virtually stopped with the tightening of the blockade on the breakaway districts. Among other things Vostok, volunteers say, until recently accompanied and ensured the safety of the humanitarian cargoes of Rinat Akhmetov's foundation.

The link between Khodakovskiy's and Akhmetov's interests was evident from the very first days of the conflict in Donbass. Rumour-mongers attributed sponsorship of Vostok to Akhmetov in exchange for the security agencies' support for his initiatives and their escorting the industrial freight of the SKM group on the territory of the "DPR". In one way or another Khodakovskiy's men are still guarding the Donbass Arena Stadium (one of the Euro-2012 sites) and enterprises belonging to the billionaire.

Until recently medicines supplied from the territory of Ukraine were also one of the interests of Khodakovskiy's group. But the volume of medicine supplies has been cut by an order of magnitude due to the blockade. On the whole, the tightening of the blockade and the lack of hostilities are increasing competition between the armed groups. The leaders of the armed formations are constantly resorting to cutting numbers in order to optimize costs, announcing a "cleansing of the ranks and getting rid of unnecessary people". In particular, Khodakovskiy last announced cuts to his  team two months ago.

In a telephone conversation, I asked Aleksandr Khodakovskiy to comment on the information contained in this article. The Vostok leader said that such subjects were not discussed on the telephone but only in person, noting at the same time that it might not be safe for me to travel to Donetsk now.

Denis Pushilin

All of our sources cast doubt on the standing of this man in the "DPR". Pushilin has neither his own army nor influential patrons. However, he manages to occupy the prominent place of deputy chairman of the "DPR People's Council" in the separatists' hierarchy and he represents Donetsk at negotiations in the Minsk format.

Our other source who now deals with the collapsed "Novorossiya" project described the deputy chairman of the People's Council as a "complete ....": "a petty, greedy adventurist and a person without any ideas apart from gain. He pilfers anything lying around for himself. Such people are useful to those who will sooner or later make scapegoats of them. And that is what will happen to Mr Pushilin."

At the height of the Russian spring people were speaking about the former overseer of the Donetsk MMM [Ponzi scheme] network as Rinat Akhmetov's man. Our sources in Moscow and Kiev maintain that from the winter of 2014 Pushilin received several tens of millions of roubles to create a network of pro-Russian campaigners in Donetsk. The money was allocated for organizing rallies, purchasing food for activists, and transport, and equipment. Large sums were spent on organizing the May referendum. According to our sources, Pushilin dealt with providing financial support for all the events in the early days of the "DPR" and reserved most of the funds for himself. Which angered the other new leaders. In June 2014 an attempt was made to assassinate Pushilin, his assistant was killed, but the MMM official was not injured himself.

The coordinators of the curtailed "Novorossiya" think that most of the funds allocated for the early "DPR" were simply stolen. Large sums were misappropriated including from private donors.

Little, however, is known about Pushilin's current business activities.

In a telephone conversation we asked Denis Pushilin about a conversation on the subjects touched upon in this article. The deputy chairman of the "DPR People's Council" said that he would comment on our information by email, but he did not communicate any further.

Igor Strelkov-Girkin

The Kremlin removed Girkin, the "commander in chief of Novorossiya", from the list of managers of the war as much as a year ago. However, the months of his intense activity in Donbass helped him to scrape together the asset of a reputation, that can now be successfully converted into real money. After returning from the war, Strelkov-Girkin created the "Novorossiya" public movement, via which the collection of funds was organized, it was stated, for providing humanitarian aid to Donbass and other regions in southeast Ukraine. "The movement will be based exclusively on volunteer principles, anyone can join us - both monarchists and Communists," the former re-enactor said. To attract donors, the former commander-in-chief set off on a tour of the cities of Russia accompanied by supporters and PR consultants. Among other things, photographers in Perm discovered that Girkin was travelling in a motorcade made up of two Mercedes S500s.

In a short time the former commander-in-chief's movement became the most famous and the wealthiest foundation, while also being independent of the Kremlin's foundation for the support of Donbass. His ex-wife Vera Girkina told us that the movement today manages millions of roubles.

"He hit the jackpot with this war and the 'Novorossiya' movement is his main project," Vera Girkina told me. "Plus Igor was very generously rewarded for the campaign in Slovyansk. I do not know whether he accepted them or not, but it may be a question of R15m. On the whole, to the best of my knowledge, the foundation operates successfully but funds are also spent illicitly. Although Igor himself is pure as the driven snow, illicit expenditure is still inevitable, everyone circles around you wanting to grab a cut."

According to Girkina, some of the humanitarian aid settles at the border between Russia and Donetsk Region and then continues on its way, already as a saleable commodity: "People empty their pockets to help Donbass. And humanitarian aid ends up being traded. For Igor material wealth has never been important, he was not greedy and he did not like theft. But he turns a blind eye to this now. I do not understand it."

Vera Girkina herself now lives with her two children in Rostov Region not far from Millerovo. She says that she went there at the insistence of her ex-husband. "We were sent here at the beginning of the war, Girkin demanded that we maintain a low profile, he was supposedly worried about our safety. But the problem is that once he became rich Igor effectively abandoned us. It is impossible to keep a low profile when you have minimal funds and two children, one of whom is sick. I know what he is up to, I talk to our mutual friends. I recently wanted to get in touch with his former boss Malofeyev as well, but Konstantin made it known that he no longer wanted to know any of Girkin's relatives."

In response to a request to comment on the information cited, Anastasiya Mikhaylovskaya, the pres! secretary of Strelkov-Girkin, stated the following:

"Igor Ivanovich will not comment on this nonsense. The information about R15m is a lie, as is the fact that Vera lives in Rostov Region. Vera lives where she is registered, at her apartment in Khimki [a suburb of Moscow]. Rather tell us, why are you writing all of this? You have already been beaten up in Donetsk, haven't you, and do you not know how many delusional militias there are walking around in Moscow now?"
 
 #44
Financial Times
September 3, 2015
Ukraine: Costs of conflict
A debt deal agreed with the IMF and creditors averted default but the war-torn country's worries are far from over
By Elaine Moore, Roman Olearchyk and Neil Buckley

As Russian troops surrounded military bases on Ukraine's Crimean peninsula last year, Michael Hasenstab made a tough decision.

Known for his risky - and profitable - bets on government bonds, Mr Hasenstab watched as the events in Crimea sent prices of Ukraine's debt lower. As a fund manager at Franklin Templeton, he had already bought more of the country's bonds than anyone else. Now, sensing that the market panic was an overreaction, he bought more. The crisis in Ukraine would not escalate, he decided.

This time he was wrong.

More than a year of violence between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists has cost the lives of close to 7,000 people, vast swaths of Ukraine's industrial heartland have been eviscerated, and the country is in the grip of recession.

As Ukraine teetered on the verge of default this year, Mr Hasenstab and the rest of the country's creditors were asked to write off part of its national debt. Last week, after months of fractious negotiations, they agreed. By swallowing an immediate write-off of 20 per cent on $18bn of bonds, creditors like Mr Hasenstab agreed to take a loss they had insisted was unnecessary - a move they will have to explain to investors.

Officials in Kiev initially cheered the deal, even though it fell short of the debt relief they had first sought and that many, including billionaire financier George Soros, supported.

But that jubilation has quickly turned to consternation as critics question whether the deal backed by the International Monetary Fund will leave Ukraine struggling to boost its economy before it has to start meeting debt obligations once again. Because Ukraine has only planned to restructure a small portion of its $72bn debt, there is mounting suspicion that it will be forced to renegotiate the terms of the deal at a later date. And some suspect that the bondholders got a better deal than they let on, especially with the inclusion of a "sweetener" for investors.

"The deal is positive for bondholders," says Vadim Khramov, Ukraine economic analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "The deal is generous enough to prompt a short-term rally while simultaneously raising long-term sustainability issues."

In public, both the pro-western government in Kiev and the IMF hailed the deal as a breakthrough. For the Ukrainians, it presented an opportunity to put the debt question in the past and concentrate on rebuilding the economy. And for the IMF, the Ukraine deal was held up as a model restructuring - and offered an opportunity to shift discussion away from the fraught Greek debt renegotiation.

The agreement will "help restore debt sustainability", says Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF. Securing an accord with private sector creditors was a crucial component of Ukraine's rescue funding from the IMF, along with tough domestic reforms.

Natalie Jaresko, the minister of finance and one of the new government's foreign-born technocrats, says the IMF's plan is "crucial" for Ukraine.

"In a post-revolutionary society legitimacy is very important, domestically and internationally," she says. "That's what the IMF has given us."

The need for political legitimacy has been thrown into relief this week as violent protests over plans for separatist regions to gain greater powers have left three national guard troops dead. Western governments hope that financial support will stabilise the ex-Soviet state.

Huge commitment

For Ukraine, meeting the IMF's demands has been tough. Although the fund agreed to provide a $17bn package in April last year, it quickly became clear Ukraine would need much more than originally envisaged. Early this year, the IMF calculated that the funding gap stood at $40bn.

Mindful of its bruising experience in Greece, when private bondholders were able to cash in their investments before the country underwent the biggest sovereign debt restructuring in history, the IMF had no intention of providing the money alone. Instead, it has offered to loan Ukraine $17.5bn, with other lenders including the US, the EU and World Bank providing a further $7.5bn. The remaining $15.3bn, the IMF insists, will have to come from Ukraine's private creditors, including Mr Hasenstab.

The impact on Ukrainian bonds has been disastrous. Prices for bonds due to mature in 2017 dropped from 100 cents in the euro to just 39 cents in March, when negotiations began, although they recovered to 66 cents following last week's deal.

For Mr Hasenstab, Ukraine accounts for just a small sliver of his portfolio and as a contrarian investor he has successfully sought out difficult investment environments in the past, including Ireland in the depths of the eurozone crisis.

"We typically picked points when Ukraine - even before this crisis - has gone through periods of stress where the market has sold off," he told the FT.

But Ukraine's debt crisis culminated at a time when emerging market funds are showing signs of strain and Mr Hasenstab's funds at Franklin Templeton are underperforming. He joined a committee of investors in March who between them hold close to $9bn of Ukrainian debt - enough to block a restructuring deal - and began to raise a series of objections.

Why, the group wanted to know, did the IMF demand that Ukraine meet the oddly specific target of a debt-to-GDP ratio of 71 per cent by 2020 from close to 100 per cent this year? And why restructure debt now when the situation in the east could deteriorate further?

There were also questions about why Kiev had picked bonds and loans worth under $23bn for its restructuring plans from a total of $72bn of government debt, putting so much of the burden on one set of creditors. Igor Hordiyevych of BTG Pactual, a member of the bondholder committee, says investors were sympathetic to Kiev. "We would have preferred a situation without a 20 per cent haircut but bondholders recognise that Ukraine has serious problems. A haircut is not the desired outcome, but the inclusion of the upside instrument could be a good deal for investors."

But within Ukraine, there has been wariness about the size of the country's creditors and their intentions. Advisers to the government point out that its largest creditor, Franklin Templeton, has more than $800bn of assets under management - close to 10 times the size of Ukraine's GDP.

"There is suspiciousness that fund managers...who participate in the talks with the Ukraine government, once again gamble," says Alexander Valchyshen, head of research at Kiev-based investment bank ICU. He says their first bet was investing in the country under its former pro-Russian regime, and the second was that they would be repaid no matter what happens to Ukraine.

Harsh realities

As negotiations between Ukraine and its creditors dragged on, Kiev took a harder line, declaring that it was prepared to default on its payments without a deal.

But a default would be disastrous, not only for Ukraine but for the rest of the world, argues Andy Hunder, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine. "It is important to understand the realities and the complexities of the country," he says. "An economically robust Ukraine is essential to western security in the region."

Despite its financial problems, on the streets of the capital city life has carried on, albeit marred by this week's violent protests. Since the bulk of the slump in output has been in the war-torn east the effect has been less immediately visible elsewhere, although the devaluation of the hryvnia has limited purchases of goods such as cars and imported foods.

Cobblestones that during the anti-government protests 18 months ago were ripped up to hurl at riot police have been restored to the main boulevard, Khreshchatyk. Giant hoardings hide the rebuilding work on a burnt-out building around the Maidan, or main square.

Many citizens have reserves of resilience and resourcefulness developed during the shortages of the late Soviet period and the post-communist downturn of the 1990s. But all have been affected by the plunging hryvnia, with spiralling utility prices hitting the poor and elderly particularly hard.

The question is whether these problems will be eased by the deal with bondholders or reappear if the country is forced back to the negotiating table.

Effective debt reduction

The markets, says Gabriel Sterne at Oxford Economics, appear unwilling to factor in the downside risks that remain in Ukraine. These include a possible escalation of fighting in the east, further banking sector losses and weaker than projected fiscal adjustment.

"I think the lesson is clear that if you are determined to avoid a disorderly restructuring, you struggle to get enough debt reduction," he says.

Research by Harald Finger, senior economist at the IMF, says the price of avoiding default can mean a smaller deal, which can then necessitate further debt restructuring. Governments that restructured debt without default secured an average 8 per cent reduction in creditors' bondholdings. Those that defaulted first, including Russia in 1998 and Argentina in 2001, secured deals that involved an average reduction of 48 per cent.

S&P, the rating agency, has maintained its negative outlook on Ukraine despite last week's deal, citing the tense relationship between Kiev and Moscow and the bond that Ukraine sold to Russia in 2013, which is due to mature in December, as risks.

If Ukraine honours that $3bn redemption this year, S&P calculates that it will be difficult for the government to find the $5bn in debt relief that underpin the IMF's assumptions.

Further problems may arise from the "sweetener" offered to investors as part of the restructuring. Creditors were offered an unusual bonus that pays off if Ukraine recovers, but nothing if it falters. These investments, also proposed by Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister, sound good. But by promising to pay out a percentage of growth for two decades they could become a "chain around a future government's neck", warns Timothy Ash at Nomura.

Kiev hopes to use the agreement to focus on a more positive message of nascent recovery and to garner support from a weary population, but its debt worries are likely to continue.

"Ukraine's debt restructuring illustrates the dilemma inherent in all government debt crises," says Jakob Christensen, economist at frontier market specialist Exotix.

"If you can secure a deal quickly you save your economy a lot of pain, but on the flipside it may not be comprehensive. I'd say it's unlikely that this is the end of Ukraine's debt problems."

----

Should a country be expected to repay an invading creditor?
Elaine Moore

Ukraine's $3bn "Russia bond" is not only one of the strangest parts of the country's debt burden, it has the potential to derail the IMF's rescue programme. In December 2013, as pro-democracy protests raged on Ukraine's main square or "Maidan", Russia loaned Ukraine $3bn to support pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovich. Less than two months later Mr Yanukovich fled the country and Russia was left holding the security. Ukraine's new government has since called the money a bribe intended to keep Kiev under Russia's influence, questioning its legitimacy.

But eschewing payment in December may be tricky. Ukrainian debt is issued under English law, meaning Russia can sue if the country defaults. The answer, says Anna Gelpern, professor of law at Georgetown University, could lie in England. If it legislated that the bond was unenforceable Ukraine would avoid a legal battle.

Alternatively, Mitu Gulati, professor of law at Duke University, points out that Ukraine's debt contains a payments provision stating that it is subject to unspecified "appropriate" laws. If Kiev successfully argues that the appropriate law is Ukrainian it could change the terms to suit its needs.

But even if these plans work, there would still be one more hurdle to clear.

Russia says it will not engage in private-sector debt negotiations because the debt is an official sector loan from one government to another. If the IMF agrees, Ukraine's funding will be jeopardised because while the IMF will tolerate missed payments to private creditors, it will not lend to countries in default to other governments.
 
 
#45
Dances With Bears
http://johnhelmer.net
September 3, 2015
IMF OFFICIALS IMPLICATED IN THEFT, CONCEALMENT OF UKRAINE LOAN CORRUPTION, US JUSTICE DEPARTMENT INVESTIGATING
By John Helmer, Moscow
[Footnotes, links, and photos here http://johnhelmer.net/?p=14017#more-14017]

Officials of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are in flight from evidence of negligence, incompetence, and corruption in their management of billions of dollars in loans for Ukraine.

Nikolai Gueorguiev, head of the Ukraine team at IMF headquarters in Washington, DC, and Jerome Vacher, the IMF representative in Kiev, refuse to respond to questions on their role in the offshore diversion of IMF loan money through Privatbank and Credit Dnepr Bank, banks owned by Ukrainian oligarchs Igor Kolomoisky and Victor Pinchuk. The Fund's Managing Director Christine Lagarde (lead image, front) and her spokesman, Gerry Rice (rear), are covering up evidence of conflicts of interest and multiple violations of the IMF Staff Code of Conduct which have been occurring in the Ukraine loan programme. Simonetta Nardin, head of the Fund's media relations, refuses to explain her apparent violations of the Code, or respond to evidence that she fabricated elements of her career resume.

On Tuesday a spokesman at the US Department of Justice in Washington confirmed that an investigation is under way of the role played by US clearing banks in the movement of IMF funds through the Privatbank group and companies connected with Kolomoisky. Speaking for the Asset Forefeiture and Money Laundering Section, Peter Carr declined to give more details.

In recent indictments [1] presented to US courts, Justice Department officials have defined the crime of money laundering as the transmission or transfer of money through "a place in the United States to or through a place outside the United States" with the "intent to promote the carrying on of specified unlawful activity"; with knowledge that the transfer of funds represents "the proceeds of some unlawful activity"; and with the intention to "conceal or disguise the nature, the location, the source, the ownership, or the control of the proceeds of unspecified unlawful activity".

The role of US system banks, such as Citibank, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase, in clearing US dollar transactions has been the basis of selective Justice Department prosecutions of Russian and pro-Russian Ukrainian companies and individuals since the toppling of President Victor Yanukovich in Kiev in February 2014. In contrast, Ukrainian allies of the US in that operation, including Yulia Tymoshenko (below, left), Kolomoisky (centre), and Pinchuk (right), have not been pursued on court evidence of their involvement in corruption and money-laundering.

Washington's selectivity and political favouritism was condemned by an Austrian court in May, when a US extradition request for Dmitry Firtash on corruption charges was rejected [2]. Justice Department lawyers are now attempting a retrial of their allegations in an appeals court in Vienna.

For the Justice Department to acknowledge this week that it is investigating Kolomoisky is unusual. Kolomoisky himself was last recorded as visiting the US in April; follow that story here [3]. He is based in Geneva, where a Swiss Government investigation of his qualification for renewal of a residency permit continues without end [4].

For the US to acknowledge opening an investigation of IMF lending to Ukraine is unprecedented. The IMF resumed its loan disbursements to Ukraine in March. This was after a hiatus of six months from October of 2014, when the Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) agreed the previous April was suspended as Fund officials attempted to convince the board that the Kiev government was capable of repaying its debts and meeting its loan conditions [5]. When the Fund launched the SBA on April 30, 2014, it had claimed [6]: "A strong and comprehensive structural reform package is critical to reduce corruption...to build capacity to more effectively conduct enforcement of anti-money laundering and anti-corruption legislation."

The IMF reports that in 2014 it gave $2.2 billion to the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) before the suspension. Another $5.4 billion in IMF cash was paid to Kiev for what is called "budget support". That also included warfighting in eastern Ukraine [7].

When the IMF board agreed to restart lending with a new arrangement called the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), the American deputy managing director of the Fund, David Lipton, claimed [8]: "Restoring a sound banking system is key for economic recovery. To this end, the strategy to strengthen banks through recapitalization, reduction of related-party lending, and resolution of impaired assets should be implemented decisively." Using the future tense Lipton (below, left) was acknowledging that next to nothing had been done to reform the Ukrainian banks in fifteen months.

Gueorguiev (right), an ex-official of the Bulgarian government, has claimed he is in charge of the independent auditing and supervision of the Ukrainian banks; for the record of his admissions in June 2014, click [9]. Since then Gueorguiev refuses to answer questions.

In the new staff report for which he and Jerome Vacher, the IMF resident representative in Kiev, are responsible, issued [10] a month ago, they admitted the condition of the Ukrainian banks is parlous. "Outstanding NBU loans are still elevated for a number of domestic banks. At end-June, the aggregate liquidity ratio among the 35 largest banks was 15.2 percent, although seven of these domestic privately-owned banks had liquidity ratios below 5 percent." Privat and Credit Dnepr, the Kolomoisky and Pinchuk pocket banks, aren't identified.

Gueorguiev omits to note that the current liquidity measure for the Ukrainian banks is several points worse than it was at the start of this year. His report does reveal that the banks' non-performing loan (NPL) ratio and their capital adequacy ratio (CAR) have deteriorated while Gueorguiev has been in charge. In June 2014 the CAR was 15.9%; in January 2015, 13.8%; at the start of this past June, 7.7%.

That ought to have flagged the question of where the money the IMF was putting into the Ukrainian banks has gone, if men like Lifton, Gueorguiev and Vacher, and Mrs Lagarde, have been unable to staunch the haemorrhaging of their clients' liquidity. In March, when the IMF released $4.6 billion of new EFF money, they also approved the NBU issue of more cash to Privatbank "to ensure timely implementation of... PrivatBank's obligations to depositors...[and] to support its liquidity.". Click [11] for this story.

Gueorguiev and his staff reported in August to Lagarde and the board that "the top 10 banks submitted reports on related party exposure based on the new legal and regulatory framework by mid-June and a review process by independent accounting firms has begun. Once this is completed, the next stage-unwinding the above-the-limit loans to related parties--will commence. Additionally, the authorities are also working on the establishment of a specialized unit that will identify and monitor loans to related parties in all banks."

Gueorguiev was reiterating a promise to do in future what he had promised, and failed to do, since June of 2014. He and the Fund management are now claiming they plan to help "the NBU's monitoring capacity through greater information sharing with public registers and other financial sector regulators on shareholdings and asset ownership."

"A new wave of bank diagnostics, based on data as of March 2015, is underway," Gueorguiev is now proposing, "with the aim to identify capital shortages as a result of losses associated with the recent macroeconomic shocks and the ongoing conflict in the East." Privatbank isn't mentioned in the report, but as it is the leading commercially-owned systemically important bank (SIB) in the Ukraine, when the IMF reports refers to SIBs, they mean Privat.

The new staff report claims it has been decided to continue making "provision related loans in full and transfer them into a specialized unit inside the bank in case it is needed to ensure medium-term financial viability of any resolved SIB. [And] inject public funds in the SIBs only after shareholders have been completely diluted and non-deposit unsecured creditors are bailed in." This looks like the IMF has decided to oust Kolomoisky from control of Privatbank. In practice, it's advance warning for him to empty the bank's pockets into his own before the dilution and other conditions take effect. That would make Gueorguiev and his IMF colleagues complicit in the money laundering schemes the Justice Department is investigating - if evidence turns up that they knew, or ought to have known, of transfer schemes intended to defraud the bank, its collateral shareholder NBU and lender IMF, by hiding the cash offshore under Kolomoisky's personal control.

This week Gueorguiev was asked to start with data which are missing from the staff report. What is the current aggregate of IMF provision of ELA [emergency liquidity assistance] and other funds to the NBU for 2014 and 2015 through August 31? he was asked. What does the IMF understand to have been the receipt (to current date) of NBU funds by Privatbank and Bank Credit Dnepr? These ought to be uncontroversial data, required for disclosure according to what the IMF terms its transparency and governance standards in Ukraine.

Independent Ukrainian bank publications [12] indicate that at the start of June the NBU and the associated Deposit Guarantee Fund (DGF) had loaned 131.9 billion hryvnia (UAH) to the commercial banks for liquidity support. That's about $6.3 billion at the current dollar-hryvnia rate of exchange, all of it from the IMF. On last year's evidence, Privatbank's systemic importance enabled it to garner about 40% of this outlay, making about $2.5 billion.

Since the start of June, however, the IMF has given Kiev another $1.7 billion. How much of that has gone, or will go, into emergency liquidity assistance for the NBU and DGF, and how much has been moved on to Privatbank are sensitive secrets. A table in one of the technical papers attached to the IMF's latest report indicates that between the end of June and the end of this month, the IMF is figuring the NBU will pass on about $410 million of the new money. That would make $164 million for Privatbank if it is still absorbing 40% of the total outlay.

More public is Privatbank's claim to be currently unable to repay its foreign creditors. According to this report of July 24 [13], the bank is required to redeem a $200 million bond issue later this month, but cannot make the repayment. If it defaults, another $150 million bond, due for redemption next year, would be called in. Foreign bondholders think the bank has the cash to repay. Privat officials claim they have been ordered by the government to cover domestic depositors first, and defer other obligations by getting deferment agreements for several more years. Follow Privat's version of the bond deferment scheme here [14]. The impact has been to halve the trading value of the 2015 bond:

Rating agency Moody's is currently warning that the rot in the Ukrainian banks will get worse, not better, despite the fresh IMF money supply. "System-wide problem loans could rise to as much as 60% of gross credit exposure from 45% at the end of 1 April 2015," says Elena Redko, a Moody's analyst and author of this report [16]. "Our scenario analysis indicates that banks would need to create additional loan-loss provisions of 15% of gross loans, on top of already existing loan loss provisions, in order to fully cover expected losses. If applied, incremental provisioning would result in a negative capital adequacy ratio for the banking system," she added. Moody's has issued a private warning on Privatbank [17].

Privatbank was asked to say how much it has received in liquidity assistance from the IMF programme. It refuses to say. It has also cancelled the English-language version of its website.

Gueorguiev has been asked what happened to the fish that got away. "How do you explain that while you were supervising the disbursement of IMF funds through the NBU to the Ukrainian banks, assessing the NBU's regular reports and assessing loan compliance for your superiors, it was possible for Privatbank to divert at least $1.8 billion now recognized in the Ukrainian courts to be in default? What do you say in defending yourself from the charge, naturally arising now, that you are personally culpable, by intention or by carelessness, for the Privatbank violations identified in the court evidence? " Gueorguiev isn't claiming the constitutional right not to incriminate himself. He isn't defending himself either.

The evidence of the disappearance of $1.8 billion has emerged in commercial court filings in Dniepropetrovsk, Kiev and elsewhere by the Privatbank group itself as recovery claims against purportedly unrelated borrowers who have defaulted. That, according to independent Ukrainian investigations, is in fact a massive fraud scheme, in which the money was loaned to related parties, deposited in offshore Privatbank accounts, before disappearing altogether. Privatbank has issued a press release, claiming the non-performing loans are genuine ones, not thefts. "We are convinced that the investigation by examining the documents to which access was granted by the court will be able to objectively assess all the circumstances together, and to establish the truth," the bank said [18].

Several English-language reporters have investigated the disappearance of the $1.8 billion [19], starting with Graham Stack (right) in Kiev. A selection of the offshore entities and amounts involved can be followed in this Ukrainian report [20]. A few days ago in the US magazine Harper's, a reporter named Andrew Cockburn claimed [21] credit for uncovering the story himself.

In New York this week, an international banker said the publicity is confirmation of what was already known. His colleagues all understand, the source said, the extent to which IMF officials, including Lipton and his US Treasury associates, have winked at the stealing of Fund loan money by Ukrainian figures who are allies of the US-appointed officials now running the country. "It's no news the stealing continues. But once the evidence moves into court, and then into the American press, it isn't the Ukrainian thieves who are on the hot seat. It's those American, British, and European nationals in charge of the cover-up, whose liability becomes actionable. How long can Lagarde and Lipton carry risks like that?"

Even the Russia-haters in Kiev publicly concede that official corruption is undiminished. Andriy Parubiy, ex-head of the Defense and National Security Council, as the President's war office is known, recently lost out in faction-fighting over the flows of arms and money; he blames the rampant corruption - on his rivals. Parubiy (below, left) is keeping his post as Vice-Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada (parliament). Late last week, he proposed a US Department of Justice official, Mary Butler (right), for a post on the government's Select Commission on Anti-Corruption Prosecutor [22].

Butler has been the Justice Department's representative in Kiev; at present she is Deputy Chief of the Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section at headquarters. Her involvement in pursuit of Firtash and the Russian telecommunications companies Vimpelcom and MTS has been reported here [23]. When Department spokesman Carr admitted this week that an investigation of Privatbank and Kolomoisky is underway, he was asked to clarify the details with Butler. She and the spokesman aren't saying more.

VacherVacher (right), the Fund's resident representative in Kiev, may be of greater interest to US investigators because he appears to have been exchanging valuable favours with Pinchuk. Questioned about his trip to Venice in May to attend a Pinchuk art show and political rally, Vacher is admitting through the Fund's press office that he wasn't on official duty at the time. But did he stay on board Pinchuk's motor yacht Oneness, which port logs show to have been in Venice between May 4 and May 8? Vacher and his superiors in Washington are withholding their answer. For more details of Vacher's relationship with Pinchuk, read this [24]. For the impact of the IMF loan programme on Credit Dnepr Bank, click here [25].

Reporting to Managing Director Lagarde as chief spokesmen for the Fund's Ukraine operations are Rice, a British national, and Simonetta Nardin, an Italian. She claims [26] to have been a journalist in Italy before joining the IMF in 1997. In a forum [27] sponsored by the US Government's National Endowment for Democracy, the Czech Foreign Ministry, the European Commission, and a Taiwan government office in Prague, she also claimed her role is "to make the IMF responsible and accountable for what it does."

Nardin is ducking questions about Vacher's political demonstration for Ukrainian causes funded by Pinchuk. She and Rice have also avoided questioning about Nardin's own involvement in political demonstrations she has published on the internet in favour of President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party presidential candidate, Senator Elizabeth Warren. The IMF Staff Code forbids this [28].

Nardin [30] (above, left) says she studied at universities in Milan and London. Between 1994 and joining the IMF press office in 1997, Nardin claims she was a journalist in Italy. The Italian guild of journalists (Ordine dei Giornalisti) recorded her membership for the Lazio region (Rome) in October 1998. By that time she had been serving at the IMF for eighteen months. There is no sign that she had published as a reporter to qualify for guild membership; no record of her byline has been found in Milan and Rome. When asked last month to provide the evidence for her claim, Nardin refused.

As soon as she was asked, Nardin's biography was removed from the IMF website. What remains is the record from last December, when Rice promoted her to be chief of his Media Relations Division. Reporters at a Fund briefing [31] were obliged to clap their hands. "I would like to give a quick round of applause to Simonetta," announced the briefer, "because she deserves this appointment. For those of you who do not know Simonetta it's important that you get to know her. So I look forward to hearing more from you in the future."