#2
Russians' general satisfaction with life dwindles - poll

MOSCOW, September 15. /TASS/. Russia's national pollster VTsIOM has found most of those polled are far less happy with life than they were just a year ago. According to an August 22-23 poll, Russians' satisfaction-with-life index in August 2015 was 21 points down to 56 points from 77 points in the same month last year.

"All life-satisfaction parameters have declined. People's thoughts of their economic status showed the strongest turn for the worse," says a news release published on the pollster's website. According to poll returns, material status ratings in August were down from 70 points to 66 points in July 2015.

"The current level is below last year's 71 points and 73 points of two years ago, but above the 2009 level of 44 points," VTsIOM says.

Social optimism has been on the decline for a fourth month running. Now it is down 11 points since May to 57 points, which practically corresponds to the August 2009 level of 58 points. The rating of the country's economic status in August was at 44 points in contrast to May's 55 points.

"However, by and large the people's opinion of the state of affairs in the economy is considerably higher than it was in August 2009, when it sank to 20 points," the pollster remarks.

Earlier, the chief of socio-political studies at VTsIOM, Stepan Lvov, said that the rating of the political situation in the country was a reason for optimism. "A majority believes that society and the state keep moving where they should," he said.

Asked "To what extent do you agree or disagree with the statement the country is moving in the right direction?" 42% said they "completely agree" or "rather agree", another 42% replied that they "partially agree" and 14% replied that they "completely disagree".

At the same time, in contrast to the July level, the index showed a five-point decline to 66 points, staying seven points above the August 2013 rating and six points above that of 2009.

VTsIOM specialists polled 1,600 men and women in 132 communities and cities in 46 regions, territories and republics of Russia. The error margin was no greater than 3.5%

Indexes were surveyed on a scale ranging from minus 100 points to plus 100 points. The index's positive value indicates favourable comments prevailing over the negative. Zero shows skeptics and optimists are in balance.

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 #3
Russia & India Report
http://in.rbth.com
September 15, 2015
Hot air melting the Arctic
Around 700 new 'methane holes' found in the Arctic shelf by Russian scientists show how fast these emissions are heating up the region. Given the scale of hot air emissions, it is likely the permafrost has been severely degraded, and the thaw irreversible.
YANA PCHELÍNTSEVA, SPECIALLY FOR RIR

Carbon and hot gaseous emissions from small water bodies in the Arctic continental shelf have emerged as a major cause of concern, more worrying than the speed of thawing Arctic glaciers.

Having spent 20 years studying water bodies formed when permafrost thaws, a team of Russian scientists have found that these thermokarst lakes are sources of carbon dioxide and hot methane gas. More recently, they have begun to grow rapidly, making it difficult to recognize them on satellite images compared to a couple of years ago. The coastline, in some areas, has shifted as much as 70 metres in a few years.

Millions of tiny lakes

For decades, researchers at Tomsk State University (TSU) have studied the West Siberian subarctic, an important natural zone of the Northern Hemisphere. Their main research facility is Khanymey scientific station, located in a small village of Russia's Yamalo-Nenets region in the Arctic Circle. The size of these local wetlands surpasses the area of the Scandinavian, Canadian and Alaskan wetlands several times over.

"The soil organic carbon, also known as peat, transforms into carbon dioxide the fastest while in water," said Sergei Kirpotin, head of TSU's BioKlim Land research centre. "Over 80 percent of subarctic Siberia is covered by thermokarst lakes, but the scale of the carbon dioxide flow still has not been evaluated by anyone, and neither has the chemical composition of the water. We are currently working on it together with our colleagues from Sweden and France as part of the Siberian Inland Waters international initiative."

Researchers discovered that smaller lakes with a surface area under 100 square meters, which are virtually undetectable by satellites and do not show up on any maps, emit several times more greenhouse gases than bigger lakes. There are millions such tiny lakes in the Siberian tundra, and due to their negligible size until recently they were not taken into account within existing carbon exchange models.

Because of the increasing permafrost thawing in West Siberia, the bigger thermokarst lakes could soon break up into numerous smaller ones. "This could lead to a tenfold increase of greenhouse gases and dissolved organic carbon emissions into rivers and the Arctic," said Kirpotin.  

Arctic continental shelf will determine the future

An even more serious problem than the thermokarst lakes are the processes that occur within the Arctic continental shelf. Carbon emissions in the form of methane and carbon dioxide are already having a significant impact on Earth's climate.  

"Five years ago we discovered that the massive methane emissions that occur in the seas of the western Arctic are about two times larger than emissions in all the world's oceans," said Igor Semiletov, a geochemist at the Pacific Oceanological Institute and Tomsk Polytechnic University.

In 2014, an international research team led by Semiletov set sail to the Arctic Ocean on the Oden icebreaker science vessel. The researchers were the first to closely examine the waters of the outer West Arctic continental shelf at depths below 50 meters, and it turned out that carbon emissions in the shelf zone are much more intense than expected. Up to several hundred grams of methane per square meter are emitted daily, which shows that the underwater Arctic permafrost has been degrading severely. About 700 such "methane holes," each up to a kilometer in diameter, have been found in the shelf.

"We are finding more and more evidence confirming our hypothesis about the leading role of the Siberian continental shelf in changing Earth's methane balance at the present time and for at least the past 400 years," said Semiletov. "We are now experiencing what is called an interglacial period, during which sea levels rise."

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 #4
Moscow Times
September 15, 2015
13 Percent of Russians Want to Move Abroad - Poll

Thirteen percent of Russians would like to move abroad, while 17 percent of Muscovites would like to do so, a poll revealed Monday.

Almost half of those who want to leave Russia for good - 38 percent - are young people between the ages of 18 and 24, research by the state-run pollster VTsIOM showed.

Twelve percent of those who said they wanted to emigrate would like to move somewhere with a better climate.

Eleven percent would choose to live in a country with a higher standard of living, and another 11 percent would move because of an unstable political and economical situation in Russia.

Ten percent consider dissatisfaction with the government a good reason to emigrate.

Forty-five percent of Russians and 59 percent of Muscovites who want to move abroad have taken action to actually make it happen, such as learning a foreign language, collecting information about their potential country of residence and consulting with friends who have already emigrated, the pollster said.

The poll was conducted on July 4-5 among 1,600 respondents in 46 Russian regions and on July 23-26 among 1,200 respondents in Moscow. The margin of error did not exceed 3.5-3.7 percent, according to VTsIOM.

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 #5
Moscow Times
September 15, 2015
Giving Russia's Artistic Talent a Helping Hand
By Andre Rogger
Andre Rogger is head of the Credit Suisse art collection. Julia Gushchina and Martin Wehnert of Credit Suisse contributed to this analysis.

A global cultural superpower, Russia enjoys a long history of art appreciation. However, Russian contemporary artists, in contrast to their older peers, remain little known to the world, and the contemporary art sector is largely underplayed in the country. Its development is a complex process and depends on a combination of many elements, such as the creation of new museums, the organization of biennales as well as special exhibitions with a contemporary art focus.

To grow successfully, the art scene also needs a market, or commercial infrastructure comprised of a strong collecting community and platforms where sellers could meet potential buyers. COSMOSCOW, Russia's only international art fair, at which Credit Suisse is a strategic partner, took place from Sept. 11-13 and plays the role of connecting the Russian and global art scenes and each year aims to display Russia's emerging artistic talent to local and international collectors.

A vibrant contemporary art sector contributes to city development from both cultural and financial perspectives. Places that boast strong art communities and stage prominent events become tourist hotspots and draw in thousands of art enthusiasts from across the globe.

Berlin, for example, has come a long way in this regard and has turned into a global mecca for contemporary art. Home to more than 20,000 artists from around the world, the city features more than 400 contemporary art galleries and more than 150 non-commercial showrooms. The vibrant art scene serves as one of the major city attractions, ensuring steady tourist inflows.

Berlin's success story became a reality largely due to the development of a strong non-profit system represented by museums, exhibitions and biennales, which made contemporary art more accessible.

Such institutions are developing in Russia as well. With Manifesta 2014 in St. Petersburg, the Moscow Biennale for Contemporary Art, Moscow's Winzavod art cluster, and Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, the country is currently experiencing a new momentum in promoting contemporary art.

A number of philanthropic organizations such as V-A-C Foundation, The Ekaterina Cultural Foundation, The Foundation of Vladimir Smirnov and Konstantine Sorokin and the Kandinsky Prize have been established to help young artists develop their talents and get recognition in Russia and abroad. This work is critically important and must be continued to grow the contemporary art scene in Russia further.

Another important step is to lay the foundation for the creation of a commercial infrastructure, which must include a strong collecting community ready to buy Russian contemporary artworks.

China could be an interesting example of an emerging economy where the contemporary art market has grown significantly due to the creation of a vibrant collecting base. The country now rivals the U.S. in terms of the global contemporary art market share.

Moreover, 47 Chinese artists made it to ArtPrice's Top 100 contemporary artist sales ranking, compared with 19 Americans. In contrast, only five Russian artists are included into the Top 500 list, ranking between 330 and 428. None of them is a young artist under the age of 30.

Swiss business executive and diplomat Uli Sigg became one of the pioneers and champions of Chinese contemporary art in the 1990s when China's art scene was largely unknown. Determined to document the country's development through art, Sigg amassed the largest and most comprehensive collection of Chinese contemporary art.

In 2012, he donated most of it to Hong Kong's M+ museum, which is set to open in 2019. Until the museum's premises are ready, the collection is being displayed around the world, bringing the works of Chinese contemporary artists to global audiences.

Due to stronger interest in Chinese contemporary art from domestic collectors and closer ties with the global art community, China's contemporary art scene has seen tremendous development. It now features many new state and private museums.

In Russia, a new generation of more passionate and knowledgeable collectors is emerging and it seems the older generation is getting bored with the old masters and Western blue chip contemporary artists. So they are beginning to look at Russia's local young talent. Several Russia-based companies and banks are building their corporate art collections with a particular focus on Russian contemporary artists.

The availability of platforms where sellers could meet potential buyers is another important element for art scene development. This role is increasingly played by art fairs, which are now the second largest sales channels in the art market globally after in-gallery transactions.

Based on the European Fine Art Foundation's 2014 report, they account for almost 40 percent of the global turnover, up from 33 percent the previous year. More than 180 international art fairs are held in the major cities of the world annually, and their number has more than tripled since 2000. Now, in COSMOSCOW, Russia also has its own annual international contemporary art fair.

Russia is rich in creative talent. However, to flourish it needs well-developed infrastructure that would make Russian emerging artists more visible and accessible both inside the country and globally. The non-profit system of museums, foundations and special exhibitions can cultivate the community's love and passion for art. However, market platforms where collectors could buy artworks and support artists could fuel the contemporary art scene growth further.

 #6
Moscow Times
September 15, 2015
What's That Line of Poetry Again? Just Yandex It
By Jordan Reed

The Russian Internet giant Yandex put its literary research hat on to conduct a far-reaching survey into the habits of Russians who search for poets and their works online. After analyzing the 37 million Yandex searches related to poetry over the period of one year, April 2014 to March 2015, they put together a kind of snapshot of Russians' taste in poetry, poems and poets.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the poet most frequently searched for was Alexander Pushkin, whose works were the objects of over 6 million searches, making up a hefty 18 percent of all searches registered over the year. Following behind him in second place was his Golden Age companion, Mikhail Lermontov, with over 2.5 million searches and 7.6 percent of the year's searches. In fact, the 19th-century Golden Age poets as a whole took 32 percent of all registered searches with other big-hitters including Ivan Krylov in 10th place, Alexander Griboyedov in 20th, and Vasily Zhukovsky in 24th.

For ordinary Russians, this outcome is not much of a shock. Tatyana Pavlova, a Russian teacher at a Moscow language school, said in an interview to The Moscow Times, "When you think about Russian poetry, you immediately think of Pushkin and Lermontov. There's a little game you can play: ask a Russian to free associate. You say 'color,' they say 'red.' Fruit? Apple. Poet? Pushkin. It's always the same."

Pavlova guessed that the writers of the Silver Age - late 19th and early 20th century - would be next in the Russian poetic psyche, and she was right. The Yandex poetry data showed that Silver Age poets registered just slightly less than the Golden Age poets - 26 percent of the searches made in the time period, with a cluster of the most famous poets of the early 20th century taking many of the top spots - Sergei Yesenin in third with 6.5 percent of all searches, Alexander Blok in fifth with 3.3 percent, Vladimir Mayakovsky in seventh with 2.9 percent, and Anna Akhmatova close behind in eighth with 2.7 percent, just under a million, of the searches registered.

Yandex did not simply compile a list of the Russian poets most frequently searched for, but extended its investigations to particular works. The most sought-out work by Pushkin was "Eugene Onegin." That work was sought out almost 1 million times - making it the poem most searched for - but it was the object of only 15 percent of all searches related to Pushkin.

And although people looked for a variety of works by Pushkin, every single one of the 310,000 searches related to Golden Age poet Alexander Griboyedov was related to his work "Woe From Wit" ("Gore ot uma").

The writer with the greatest number of known poems? Marina Tsvetayeva. Over the course of the year, people looked for 1,260 different poems by her. Next in popularity by number of poems was Anna Akhmatova. Even though less than 3 percent of the searches were for her poetry, people looked for 858 individual poems. In third place was Pushkin, with 777 poems or works sought out.

The most sought after poem - or part of a poem - was Tatyana's letter to Onegin in "Eugene Onegin."

But users who searched for "Eugene Onegin" did so with 45,000 different search entries, covering a wide range of lines taken from the novel in verse. This gives proof to the assertion that Russians have a phenomenal store of memorized poetry. With learning poetry by heart taught in schools to generations of Russians, this feat of memory is nowhere more effectively illustrated than in a clip commissioned by the independent Russian TV channel Dozhd, called "The Power of the Word." In this short video, actors get on a Moscow trolleybus and begin reciting the love poem by Pushkin that begins "I remember that moment of wonder ..." ("Ya pomnyu chudnoye mgnovenye ...") as others gradually join in the spontaneous recital.

Despite this collective national breadth of knowledge, changing times could be affecting the youngest generation's ability and desire to memorize poetry. Yekaterina Marusanova, a fellow teacher with Pavlova, believes the trend toward reading less and watching more means the manner in which people absorb quotable lines has changed. "People like to quote lines that sum up the epitome of the Russian mentality for them. That's why someone like Vladimir Vysotsky - 14th most popular by search entries with 560,000 annual queries - is so popular.

"But nowadays romance has left our lives, so people don't bother to learn poetry and quote them; they have films for that. There is a secret language of film quotations in which youngsters communicate, and it's just a progression from quoting poetry."

Even though young Russians might be losing their touch at learning poetry by heart, they are still far ahead of Westerners. Alexander Walmsley, a student at the University of Oxford, told The Moscow Times, "When I think of English poets, I think mostly of the Romantics like Byron, Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth, of course. Then there are the war poets like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. In general, though, English people don't know their poetry as well as Russians do - we can probably quote a line or two of Wordsworth, but not much more. I think we know the names, but less people have actually read it."

For the full analysis in Russian, see yandex.ru/company/researches/2015/ya_poetry

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 #7
International Business Times
www.ibtimes.co.uk
October 16, 2013
Russians are the Most Well Educated: UK Ranked Seventh
UK is ranked seventh on the list of Most Educated Countries in the World, while US is ranked fifth.
By Sanskrity Sinha

Russia is the most educated country in the world, according to the latest figures from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), followed by Canada and then Japan.

"Russia has, according to the OECD, a 'historically strong investment in education'," the authors of the report noted, but added that this image could be tarnished by recent reports of corruption.

"Reports suggest widespread corruption in the education system, including cheating on standardized tests, selling of doctorates to politicians and the wealthy and fake thesis factories."

The United States and United Kingdom do make it into the top ten, in fifth and seventh places respectively.

Overall spending on education in the UK has gone up and the country's tertiary graduation rates have increased, according to 24/7 Wall St. journal that has released the list of world's most educated countries. In addition, a growing interest from international students in the UK since 2000 has paid off in the ranking as the country is second only to the United States for the most preferred destination for international studies.

"The most educated populations tend to be in countries where spending on all levels of education is among the highest. The United States, for example, spent 7.3% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on education in 2010, the sixth highest among the countries," the authors said.

The report suggests that most of the best educated countries tend to have higher levels of advanced skills, which account for low unemployment rates in those countries. Moreover, the best educated countries excel in literacy and maths proficiency exams (mainly Japan, Canada and Finland) and have lower unemployment levels.

"After the strong impact of the financial crisis, not surprisingly, unemployment rates increased at each level of education, but the increase has been smaller among higher-educated people. At higher levels of attainment, people are less exposed to unemployment and have better chances to keep participating actively in the economic system, for the benefit of both individuals and society," OECD's analyst, Gara Rojas González, was quoted as saying by the journal.

Top ten educated countries:

1) Russia
2) Canada
3) Japan
4) Israel
5) United States
6) Korea
7) UK
8) New Zealand
9) Finland
10) Australia

The list was prepared after analysing the data of OECD's Education at a Glance 2013 report.

The ten most educated countries were chosen based on the highest proportion of adults holding a college degree and the total spending on education.

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 #8
Lake Baikal's water level may drop to new record low in spring

ULAN UDE, September 15. /TASS/. The water level at Lake Baikal, the world's largest freshwater source, having dropped to critical marks in April, may fall by another 28 centimetres next spring, the head of the Baikal Institute told TASS on Tuesday.

"This year, the lake's water level fell to 455.86 metres in April. In the spring of 2016 it may drop by 28 centimetres to 455.58 metres," Yendon Garmayev said.

Decline of the south Siberian lake's level began last autumn and reached its critical mark in spring for the first time in decades. Scientists explain the phenomenon by low water inflow from the Selenga, Upper Angara, Barguzin and other rivers draining directly into the world's deepest lake.

Lake Baikal, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1996, contains 20% of the world's freshwater reserves.

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 #9
www.rt.com
September 15, 2015
Elton John spoke to Putin about gay rights in Russia, says thank you

Sir Elton John uploaded a photo of Vladimir Putin to his Instagram thanking the president for discussing gay rights with him over the phone. This follows the pop star's saying he wanted to discuss gay rights in Russia with the Russian president.

"I'd say come on, gay people are not the problem, we are not the problem of the world - the world faces much bigger problems than gay people."

Elton John posted a photo of Vladimir Putin on his Instagram page, saying: "Thank-you to President Vladimir Putin for reaching out and speaking via telephone with me today. I look forward to meeting with you face-to-face to discuss LGBT equality in Russia."

With over 300 comments, many Russian Instagram users grabbed the opportunity to voice their negative attitude towards the LGBT community.

While Sir Elton wants to talk with Putin face-to-face, there's a person wishing to engage in a public talk with Elton John on the gay issue. He is St. Petersburg lawmaker Vitaly Milonov known for his Orthodox platform and anti-gay views.

The lawmaker told popular Russian daily Izvestia he was confident in his ability to prove the activities of the LGBT community were non-viable and extremely harmful for traditional society. He also added that he was ready to participate in the debate anywhere in the world.

A survey carried out by Russia's Independent Levada Center shows that the overwhelming majority of Russians do not support non-traditional sexual orientation. The poll conducted regularly returns almost identical results each time.

Elton John has been fighting for LGBT rights worldwide for years and spoke out against "gay propaganda" while performing in Russia.

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 #10
Russia's Liberal Mission NGO excluded from foreign agents list

MOSCOW, September 15. /TASS/. Russia's Justice Ministry said on Tuesday it has removed the Liberal Mission scientific foundation led by prominent economist Yevgeny Yasin from the "foreign agents" list.

The ministry said on its website that the decision was made on September 11. The reason for the move is that the organization "has stopped fulfilling the functions of a foreign agent."

"I'm satisfied with this decision, but they should not have included [the foundation] in the registry. We received no foreign funds and we did only what is in line with the Constitution," Yasin told TASS commenting on the decision.

"It's the triumph of truth," he said.

Yasin said the ministry's decision could come amid his appointment in August as a member of the Russian presidential council for civil society and human rights.

The Liberal Mission was included by the Russian Justice Ministry in the NGO register of "foreign agents" on May 25 along with the beleaguered Dynasty Foundation of businessman Dmitry Zimin

Russia's parliament adopted a law in 2012 that required NGOs to register as "foreign agents" with the Justice Ministry if they engage in "political activity" and receive funding from abroad.

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#11
Journalitico
http://journalitico.com
September 14, 2015
NYT asks: Are Western values losing their sway?
By Danielle Ryan
Danielle Ryan is an Irish journalist and blogger. She has a degree in Business and German from Trinity College Dublin and studied political reporting at the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism in Washington, DC.

Steven Erlanger in the New York Times, asks: Are Western Values Losing Their Sway? [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/sunday-review/are-western-values-losing-their-sway.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0]

Here's my two cents:

The problem with our "Western values" is not the values in themselves, although some are certainly questionable. The real problem is the triumphalism that came with them after the West's 'victory' at the end of the Cold War, a dangerous triumphalism that continues today. We have utterly convinced ourselves that everyone else wants what we have and we will use any methods, from the most bloody and overt, to the most quiet and covert, to pass them on.

We convince ourselves it's the "right" thing to do because, we tell ourselves, the end will justify the means. So we shut our eyes to the side-effects and carry on with our righteous mission. This kind of skewed thinking is how you get so-called bleeding heart liberals calling for a humane solution to a massive humanitarian crisis on one hand, while urging more NATO bombing on the other.

It's a contradiction that has its roots in that very idea that we need to rid the world of the 'bad' guys we don't like and fill it with the 'good' ones we do like. We rarely consider that this might indeed be an impossible task, or even, God forbid, wrong. Because of course, Western values are always "right". Or as historian Paul Robinson put it yesterday in a blog post about the failures of Western foreign policy:

"The idea that the underlying policy itself might be faulty is never properly considered. That would produce far too much cognitive dissonance. And so the disasters keep piling up."

Even a person most uninterested in geopolitics, if you ask them, will probably tell you that Western values are universally sought after and it therefore is a noble goal to attempt to spread them. We all witnessed the celebrations at anchor desks across the Western world at the beginning of the Arab Spring. What a wonderful time it was for democracy, we were told. Our values were (supposedly) sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa like never before and we were all getting teary-eyed just thinking about it. It doesn't take a genius to figure out how that all turned out.

But there is not much difference between the relatively uninformed and the supposedly highly informed. I argued on Twitter with New York Times columnist Roger Cohen a few months after he made the outstandingly weak case that refugees from the Middle East and North Africa were coming for European values. It was for this reason, he said, that they weren't going to Russia, for example. I argued that if Russia was on the other side of the Mediterranean where Italy and Greece are, they probably would be. I argued that Western values had very little, if anything, to do with the reason most were making such treacherous trips to Europe. If values were the draw, I said, we would not have half as much trouble with integration and assimilation between native populations and ME/NA immigrants as we do today in places like Britain, France and Sweden.

It is abundantly clear that the majority of refugees would not be attempting to reach Europe if it was not for the destruction of their homes and towns and cities; destruction caused by civil wars and doubled-down on by NATO's various "humanitarian interventions".

Erlanger's piece today accepts that what differentiates China, with its own mix of both authoritarian capitalism and communism, is that it has no interest in spreading its model across the world.

"China engages with the world in its own interest, divorced from moral aims, with little desire to proselytize."

The same, I believe, can be said for Russia.

Russia, with features of both authoritarianism and democracy, is interested in its near abroad; places that, for obvious reasons, already share its language and culture. Places where people feel and are Russian.

That doesn't necessarily mean Putin is on some historic mission to conquer the Baltics and recreate 'the glories' of the Soviet Union, as Barack Obama recently claimed. It simply means that there are certain places Moscow regard as within its sphere of influence and thus will react more strongly to events in those places. The problem is that Washington is utterly convinced that only it is entitled to a sphere of influence - and that sphere can extend to any place, at any time. Moscow, on the other hand, is simply not allowed the same luxury, even in its own back yard.

On a wider scale, Russia, like China, has no interest in imposing its model of governance or cultural values on the rest of the world. Russia's own very recent history affords it the knowledge that this kind of imperialism simply does not work, which is why we hear so much from the Kremlin about the importance of multi-polarity and international systems based on mutual respect, not diktats and the relinquishment of sovereignty to a self-appointed world leader.

Western leaders and politicians cannot accept that there may be places where a different model might work - but at the same time, their incessant declarations of superiority are laced with hypocrisy that is increasingly hard to stomach. Calling for one thing and doing another. Do as we say, not as we do. Imposing and forcing values and 'democracy' on cultures that either may not want, or be ready for it, doesn't seem very...well, democratic.

Quoting the cultural historian Jacques Barzun, Erlanger writes:

"Democracy cannot be imposed, but accrues, he suggested, dependent on 'a cluster of disparate elements and conditions.' It cannot be fashioned out of whatever people happen to be around in a given region; it cannot be promoted from outside by strangers; and it may still be impossible when attempted from inside by determined natives."

Either way, what most Western leaders won't tell you, is that even in places where there is democracy or some semblance of it, it can at any moment be disregarded if they don't like its outcome. Democracy, it seems, evaporates and reappears exactly when Western governments want it to. If the right guy won, it's a victory for democracy. If the wrong guy won, we must oust him immediately, for the sake of, you guessed it, freedom and democracy.

And just like democracy disappears conveniently, so too do borders. When US or Western "interests" are at stake, borders evaporate. Indeed the White House proudly professed it would not be "restricted by borders" in Syria when it felt the need to insert itself uninvited into that country's civil war. A few months earlier however, borders were all the rage in Crimea.

Western interests are always legitimate, transparent and morally superior. Russia's interests on the other hand, are always illegitimate, mysterious and morally bankrupt.

That's the line and they're sticking to it.

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 #12
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
September 14, 2015
Why the Kremlin neglects strategic thinking
RD Interview: Carnegie Moscow Center's Andrei Kolesnikov explains why the re-emergence of nationalism and conservatism in post-Crimea Russia is a long-term trend and why the Kremlin is shying away from strategic thinking.
By Pavel Koshkin

On Sept. 17, Russia's leading economists, including the dean of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Alexander Auzan, will discuss the Kremlin's new long-term strategy document, known as Strategy 2030. Since this document is an attempt to describe the Kremlin's long-term priorities for the next decade and beyond, it could provide significant insights into how the Russian government views the current economic, political and social situation within the country, as well as important milestones on the road from 2015 to 2030.

Russia Direct recently sat down with Andrei Kolesnikov of the Carnegie Moscow Center in an effort to understand better the Kremlin's current strategic priorities, as well as how the Kremlin may attempt to manage current perceptions within society in order to achieve those priorities.

Russia Direct: Given that the Russian authorities are often accused of lacking strategic thinking, how do you assess attempts such as Strategy 2030 to come up with a comparably long-term strategy?

Andrei Kolesnikov: As many experts joke, it is easier to develop Strategy 2030, 2040, 2050 than Strategy 2016, because it is absolutely unclear what is to be done in the framework of the current political situation. But, on the other hand, long-term thinking is highly important, because government and society should understand the goals set for the future. Even discussion on this topic is crucial. Sooner or later, we will need to understand how to live in the future.

But this strategic thinking is foreign to the current authorities and they don't need it at all for several reasons. One could illustrate this trend with the example of Strategy 2020, which, in fact, wasn't very strategic. It contained neither political nor social components. It deals with just economic aspects and budget policy.

But in the end it failed to come to fruition. Instead of low military spending we have seen high spending on [army and defense]; instead of high level of spending on human capital, we see low spending on health and education. So, all these initiatives remained on paper and had lost their relevance by the end of the presidential tenure of Dmitry Medvedev.

So, the Russian authorities do not take the modernization vector seriously. What they take seriously is the vector to resolving current, day-to-day tasks. This results from the assumption of the Russian political elites that Russia has already reached a new level of development.

RD: And this is one of the reasons why you think the Kremlin lacks strategic thinking?

A.K.: Yes, they believe that there are no strategic tasks and, instead, they should maintain a certain level of income and expand the middle class, develop the economy in its current condition, all while overcoming the economic crisis. They just believe that the downturn will go away.

RD: Where does such confidence come from?

A.K.:  It is related to a very important trait of Russia's political elites and, particularly, its president:  There is no strategic vision of the future, no adequate assessment of reality. It might stem from the fact that people [at the helm] are not rotated for a long time and their perception of reality has been changed.

Or it is because the president looks through primarily three folders that come from the FSB (Federal Security Service), SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service) and FSO (Federal Protective Service) and, thus, has an absolutely distorted picture of the world.

Or it might be related to the anti-Western - half-nationalistic and half-imperialistic - outlook, which hampers the ability to perceive reality adequately.

Probably, all these factors are working, but what is important is that people [at the helm] do sincerely not understand where they are now, while assessing the current crisis as only a temporary trouble.

However, the understanding that everything is very bad is penetrating their minds. And the indirect sign of this understanding is the President's recognition that it is impossible to plan the three-year budget and so far it is necessary to focus on the one-year budget.

RD: Some argue that Putin should step down and they see it as the only condition to improve the situation in the country economically and politically. Do you agree? Is it really possible that Putin will leave and promote his successor while leading from behind, like it was in 2008, when Medvedev was elected as president?

A.K.: In 2018 it is impossible. It is rather a question of the next political cycle, when Putin will physiologically become very old and when it will be physically difficult to rule the country. So, this political swap is impossible now. Looking for the successor will be relevant for him approximately in the 2020s, when we will see a huge reshuffle of everything. Currently, there is no eligible figure to replace Putin as successor.

RD: One puzzling argument that even some opponents of Putin admit or worry about is the assumption that today there is no alternative to Putin among the current political elites. Is it really the case?

A.K.: First, all 15 years [of Putin's presidential term] have been spent narrowing down alternative political candidates to only one figure, because this figure is politically encompassing and many-sided - he is the main communist, the main liberal or the main nationalist, the rest of the political forces are like supporting blocks.

Let's imagine a simple situation in which Putin is no longer the president: Let's imagine that he steps down, observes the law and doesn't announce a presidential bid in 2018. In the beginning it won't be easy to elect someone. The election is always not an easy process. But in this situation an alternative figure might emerge very fast. In such case, there will be just another picture [of the political landscape].

RD: But there is another argument used by some intellectuals that Russia is historically a very paternalistic country, with the origins of this paternalism coming from the time of the Tatar-Mongol invasion of Russia in the 13th century. And this sounds like an attempt to justify the authoritarian nature of Russian political elites.

A.K.: This problem does exist and is related to the so-called "path-dependence problem,"  when modern people think in the same way as they did in the times of Ivan the Terrible. But as the experience of the Russian people indicates, they can successfully adjust to new [political] conditions and be creative.

After all, Russia is a very urbanized and well-educated society and I believe that this society can produce everything in terms of political freedom - from political democracy to economic efficiency.    

RD: Nevertheless, a number of pundits warn that radically minded groups like nationalists might come to power and bring more instability in Russia, like it was in 1917. Do they really pose a threat to Putin in long-run as some fear?

A.K.: They can influence more on Putin's agenda, so that he can become even more aggressive, anti-Western and more repressive. But they can't replace him. They are not so popular among ordinary people.

RD: How can you account for the high approval ratings of Putin despite Russia's current economic woes?

A.K.: Actually, the crisis is contributing to Putin's high approval ratings: People look for a person to find support. And the figure of Putin or his brand is becoming the symbol of their only hope that they will be fed by somebody at the helm. And this is the very manifestation of the paternalistic mentality.
RD: To what extent is Putin's approval rating real?

A.K.: It is real. It just reflects the desire of people to live their day-to-day life, not to bother the authorities and not to be bothered by the authorities. It is not an active support, it is a passive conformism; it is the support not of the person, but of the symbol.

RD: Yet is the Kremlin ready to put up with the decline in Putin's ratings?

A.K.: Psychologically, the authorities are absolutely not ready to tolerate a drop in the ratings because of the habit of getting high results. The decline is perceived as a serious signal of a catastrophe. They are addicted to the high rankings and this is the problem: It means that they will step up tightening the screws only to maintain the ratings above 80 percent.

RD: Due to Russia's economic challenges many, including you, talk about social protests. But generally there is a great deal of doubt that social protests will turn into political ones in the current political situation. What are the reasons of this trend and what should happen to transform social unrest into political unrest?

A.K.: Social protest is not turning into political protest because people are waiting for different perks from the president and nobody is protesting. After all, nobody bites the hand that feeds it. Putin in this case is the hand that feeds.

Converting social protests into political ones might take place when a serious economic catastrophe happens that significantly affects the entirety of Russia; when social thinking turns into political protests in Moscow; when the situation of 2011-2012 repeats (Russians took to the streets to express their indignation about what they saw as the manipulated nature of parliamentary and presidential elections - Editor's note).

Clearly, it is impossible now, but it should take time to happen.

RD: 2018 is seen as a sort of a crossroads, when the presidential elections take place. Given the skyrocketing increase in conservatism in Russia now, what should we expect and when will the pendulum sway in the opposite direction?

A.K.: I assume that the inertia for maintaining stability will be enough until 2018, but afterwards [the Kremlin] will need strategic decisions, which it doesn't have. After 2018, given a great deal of uncertainty, the political and economic collapse might happen.

RD: So, you mean that the re-emergence of conservatism is going to be a long-term trend.

A.K.: Yes, it won't be necessarily abrupt and catastrophic, but it will be very long and gradual like the economic crisis.  

RD: Well, let's imagine the situation that the West is going to ease the sanctions. Can this move reverse the trend of increasing anti-Western and conservative sentiments and change Russia's political situation?

A.K.: When sanctions were toughened, this helped to mobilize people around the governor of the besieged fortress [Putin]. But when the sanctions weaken, there is no guarantee that this mobilization will become weaker. The authorities could be intransigent as well as the population. I don't believe in a fast restoration.

RD: There are a lot of talks about the so-called inertia scenario of development of Russian in the current situation. Could you specify what does it really mean?

A.K.: It means there won't be democratic freedoms - a slow and gradual tightening of the screws, economic depression accompanied by mental depression. But there won't be any catastrophes and political protests. This is the inertia model, a sort of frozen condition, which the current authorities are seeking to prolong until 2018.

RD: What about the scenario of the besieged fortress: Is it still relevant today and how has it been evolved since last year? What place does it take in the priorities of the Kremlin?

A.K.: This metaphor is still working as well as the other metaphor "Stockholm syndrome," felt by the inhabitants of the besieged fortress toward its governor, Putin [the Stockholm syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which victims express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward those who oppress or neglect them - Editor's note].

As long as the authorities are maintaining a half-cold and half-hot hybrid war and sanctions exist, people will feel that they are living inside of this fortress. And it is important for the mobilization of the people around the authorities.

RD: But there are claims that Putin is just responding to the demand of the people to be more nationalistic and patriotic and that's why he fuels anti-American and conservative sentiments. Meanwhile, some counter that the rise of nationalism and conservatism is a result of a large-scale information campaign. In fact, it is the chicken or the egg problem, a matter of demand and supply. What emerged first? Did Russian's inherent conservatism and patriotism lead to the increase of propaganda or vice versa?

A.K.: Looking at social polls, one can assume that there is a balance between demand and supply. Demand for patriotism has always existed in its dormant condition. But only a very, very big supply in such aggressive and extreme forms could "wake up" or fuel this demand. That's why supply is primary in this situation, as indicated by the abrupt changes in public opinion.

RD: Such trend may stem from the inferiority complex that resulted from the collapse of the Soviet empire. Some even argue that it lead to the problem of an identity crisis for Russians. Do you think it is really the case?

A.K.: In general, the problem of self-identification is artificial. And it is used by those who offer this supply [through informational campaigns]. The post-Soviet man hasn't had the problem of self-identification: The collapse of the Soviet Union was actually a victory for him.

He stopped being Soviet and became a man who lived according to the terms of the market economy, felt free, had certain problems, but nevertheless he was a typical European man. And now he is persuaded that he is not European, that he is unique and exceptional. And this is the reverse movement from progress and modernization, the so-called archaization of conscience.

 [return to Contents] 

 
#13
Russia Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's interview with Voskresnoye Vremya TV programme, September 13, 2015
 
Question: Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to address the UN General Assembly for the first time in a decade. It seems that Russia finds it especially important to outline its foreign policy vision and to be heard. In you opinion, what should be highlighted and brought to the attention of the international community at this point in time?

Sergey Lavrov: The trip by President Putin to the UN General Assembly is above all attributable to the fact that this will not just be a regular session, but an anniversary session marking a number of significant dates - 70 years since the establishment of the UN, 70 years since the victory in the Second World War and Great Patriotic War. All of these anniversaries are celebrated in 2015. The creation of the UN resulted from the victory over Nazism. It is for this reason that a summit dedicated to this anniversary is held, and it is for this reason that an overwhelming majority of world leaders will be present at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly. Being there is a matter of protocol, if you will.

Substance-wise, President Putin has always a great deal to say on international affairs. Russia is proactive in dealing with global challenges and takes part in many important associations working to resolve key crisis situations. That is to say that Russia is actively involved in all of these processes and discussions. This year, taking into account that the presence of Russia's head of state is expected due to anniversary celebrations during the session, President Putin will use this opportunity to provide Russia's principled assessment of the most burning issues in today's world.

By burning issues I mean, primarily, systemic challenges related to attempts to put the brakes on the emergence of a new multipolar world order that would reflect the actual emergence of new economic, financial and political centres of power. This is where from most issues that have now become familiar to everyone stem, such as efforts to combat terrorism, which should be free from double standards. Terrorists shouldn't be divided into good and bad. No one should think about working with some of those "bad" extremists to achieve specific momentary geopolitical gains. Naturally, the same goes for the issue of unilateral coercive measures, and not just against the Russian Federation.

Our Western partners are about to lose the culture of dialogue and the ability to reach diplomatic solutions, which is primarily due to the adoption of a US mindset. The deal on the Iranian nuclear programme should be viewed as a remarkable and extremely rare exception to this rule. In most cases, force is used during conflicts that continue to break out in the Middle East and North Africa, as was the case in Iraq and Libya, where resolutions of the UN Security Council were infringed upon. Imposing sanctions is the other option, whereby when a political process to settle domestic issues is launched, be it in Yemen or South Sudan, attempts are made to create external incentives and impose solutions. This has happened in both aforementioned cases and in similar situations. Had more importance been attached to the agreement of the parties, not advice and recipes from the outside, this framework would have been much more durable. As soon as this framework begins to stall (when hurried solutions are imposed this is inevitable), "sanctions sticks" are employed to punish those who do not want to cooperate under this scheme. This is a long story, a relapse of sorts mixed with an obsession with sanctions: when our Western partners fail in any undertaking implemented according to their standards, they immediately turn to sanctions.

In his speech, President Putin will cover this and other subjects, along with the issue of the fragmentation of the global economic space, as the WTO negotiations on a universal approach to new areas of economic and technological ties between countries are stalled. President Putin is also expected to touch on a number of specific issues, such as Syria and the Ukraine crisis. All of these and other crises result from systemic attempts to put the brakes on the emergence of a polycentric world order.

Question: The refugee crisis in Europe is the most recent example of a crisis stemming from existing problems. People are understandably fleeing from war, which means that they cannot be refused shelter. However, Europe appears to be split on the issue of whether or not to accept these refugees. Refugees are fleeing to the wealthiest countries and do not stop in Bulgaria, Serbia or Hungary. Russia has warned against this crisis and here it is. In your opinion, why is it happening at this exact point in time and how can this crisis be overcome?

Sergey Lavrov: It is hard to say why this crisis is unfolding at this exact point in time. This could have happened six months earlier or six months later. It may be that the crisis occurred when the violence that is rampant in the Middle East and North Africa reached its peak. This violence is above all attributable to the so-called Islamic State, which is a new phenomenon in terms of counter-terrorist efforts, as this group seizes vast territories, not just buildings or hostages.

Hundreds of thousands of square kilometres have already been seized in Iraq and Syria and a quasi-state was created there with atrocious, uncompromising rules of its own, exploiting natural resources to finance terrorism. The Islamic State has "taken root" not only in Syria and Iraq, but in Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan and Libya, publishing maps of its caliphate spanning from Portugal to Pakistan. The Islamic State thereby seeks to establish itself as a leader of the Islamic world, as well as to include parts of the world that do not fall within the Islamic world into the caliphate. This ominous phenomenon is new, and fighting it will take much time and effort. This is the only way to bring calm to the region. Otherwise, people will live there in fear and continue to flee in search of a better life.

The second element is to keep in mind that fighting terrorism is a multidimensional effort that should include an ideological dimension. As long as conflicts in the Middle East subsist, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we must honestly acknowledge that radicals will continue educating the younger generation to resent the existing order and reject peace negotiations. It is well known that they preach in their Koran schools and other educational institutions that there was a promise to establish a Palestinian state in the late 1940s, right after the establishment of the UN, but it has not been created since, which means that talks to create a state led nowhere. They advocate the use of force, so that their rights will be respected. These ideas infiltrate the minds of boys and girls, helping recruit terrorists and suicide bombers. Essentially, teaching moderate, true Islam is becoming increasingly important. There is also the issue of terrorism financing, including through drug trafficking. This is a vibrant and flourishing industry, which above all is due to the connivance of NATO troops in Afghanistan. Russia has repeatedly called on them to pay more attention to eradicating drug trafficking, but they closed their eyes, unwilling to tackle this issue. Fighting terrorism has many dimensions. A normal socio-economic environment is vital to ensure that people stay in the Middle East, and that it remains a multiethnic, multicultural and multicivilisational community. There are many economic refugees among those now fleeing to Europe. They are simply seeking a calmer, more prosperous life, while some are fleeing because they are unable to earn a living. Of course, facilitating development and creating jobs is also important. What I mean is that security, the economy, social issues, education and ideology are all important dimensions. Russia is fulfilling its commitments under international conventions. The Russian Federation accepts everyone who qualifies as a refugee and will keep doing so. Sometimes, we accept refugees who do not meet all of the standard criteria. I'm talking about refugees from Ukraine. About 1 million such refugees came to Russia. Many of them, somewhere between one-third and 50 percent, want to become Russian citizens or have a permanent status of some other kind in Russia. Many refugees are provided housing, but there are also refugee camps in the Rostov Region and other territories. These camps were given the highest marks by the Office of the UNHCR. Of course, there are also refugees from the Middle East in Russia, including from Syria and Yemen. These individuals came to Russia early on in the conflict.

Our heart is with our European partners who are facing this issue. I believe they will overcome this challenge by finally agreeing on quotas (there are already reports to this effect). This is an internal issue for the EU. Taking into account differences in traditions and the quality of life and wellbeing among EU member states, it is not easy to give advice externally. That said, Russia is ready to make its contribution. EU countries have already asked the UN Security Council to help them draft a resolution enabling the navy of EU states to intercept illegal vessels in the Mediterranean carrying migrants who are transferred to Europe illegally. As for coercive measures, many in Europe are talking about not just arresting vessels in the open sea, but also want to operate in territorial waters and onshore (in Libya, for instance), using force if it turns out that a vessel is seized illegally and is not registered. Some even want a Security Council mandate to "get rid" of these vessels, as they say. Do they want to sink these vessels? This issue raises a lot of questions. As we have said time and again, knowing how our Western partners sometimes interpret UN Security Council resolutions, that Russia stands ready to approve coercive measures only if they are strictly regulated and set out in every detail in the resolution, leaving no space for any equivocal interpretation. First, the resolution could concern arresting suspicious vessels in the open sea. When a vessel is flying the flag of a country, its arrest should be coordinated with the country in question. If a vessel bears no identification marks, coordination is not required and it should be stopped and inspected to establish who owns it and what is on board. Second, on top of strictly regulating these actions, it has to be understood what will happen with refugees if they are on board the vessel. The EU has yet to answer these questions. It also does not have an idea of what to do with the criminals behind this business who are captured on board a vessel. This does not just concern those executing these activities, but also those who engineer the process in some other country. A comprehensive approach is needed, and hasty solutions should be avoided. Of course, in all of those debates, we want to make our partners learn the lesson of their earlier deeds. Everyone should understand from where these migrant waves are coming and why.

Today, we discussed the terrorist threat and conflict that have yet to be settled. It is not uncommon that attempts to settle political crises are fuelled by momentary political gain without thinking about the implications of an action or initiative on the situation in general. Libya, where the decision was taken to topple a dictator, provides a good example. This has overshadowed all other thoughts and assessments. I spoke with our US and European colleagues who took part in this effort, showing that their thoughtless and illegitimate actions in violation of the UN Security Council mandate turned Libya into a "blackhole" now used by terrorists of all kinds. The country has two parliaments and two governments with their own military. Apart from these structures, there are 35 armed groups that obey neither Tobruk, nor Tripoli. Illegal arms are flowing from Libya to many other countries. According to the UN, these weapons have travelled a long way and are used in a dozen African countries. Libya also serves as the primary transit hub in terms of human trafficking.

The response by my colleagues was telling. They acknowledge the facts and that they committed mistakes. They had the same arguments when Iraq was on the brink of dissolution. It was a mistake for the United States, but they proposed not to delve too much into the past. I strongly believe that unless we learn the lessons of history and do our homework, we will constantly face new crises, resulting in destructive, utterly negative and dangerous consequences, such as the current refugee flows. These issues will be subject to a detailed, substantive discussion in the UN Security Council.

Question: Syria is the most outstanding case in point. Its people are fleeing the Islamic State and the civil war. Russia's position is that this war must be stopped. President Putin came up with a package of measures to combat terrorism. What do our partners have to say about his proposal? As someone who is not a diplomat, the situation is hard to understand. The Americans continue to insist on supporting the anti-Assad opposition. You receive calls from US Secretary of State John Kerry almost on a weekly basis accusing Russia of being in their way as they try to bomb Syria. Third countries are closing their airspace to us, which we use to deliver humanitarian aid. What's going on?

Sergey Lavrov: Our American partners have created a coalition without either putting much thought into it from the start, or the coalition is supposed to serve other goals by design. The coalition was created spontaneously. In a matter of just a few days, it was announced that it includes a number of countries, and they started delivering air strikes. If you look at what the coalition's planes are doing, you can get strange ideas. Sometimes, a thought creeps in that there's more to it than just the purported goal of fighting the Islamic State. I hope I'm not talking out of school if I say that some of our colleagues from the coalition say they occasionally get access to information about the exact location of ISIS units, but the coalition's commander (of course, the United States) does not authorise an air strike. I can't draw any conclusions here because you never know what kind of information and input a senior commander may have while others don't, but there are some odd signals.

Our approach is absolutely transparent. We have been saying that we will provide help to the Syrian leaders, as we do with regard to Iraq and the leaders of other countries which have been facing the terrorist threat all these years since the beginning of the Arab Spring after it degraded into terrorist and extremist activities seeking to overthrow the regimes in various countries, and began to receive support, including from those who are at odds with their respective leaders. Our military and technical cooperation has precisely these objectives. Of course, the arms supplies will continue. They inevitably entail the involvement of Russian experts, who help to get the equipment up and running, and to train Syrian personnel to handle these weapons. There are no intrigues or secrets here.

I can't agree with speculations that Russia has sharply and dramatically changed its approach to Syria. Indeed, purportedly, the coalition was supposed to fight the Islamic State, Jabhat Al-Nusra and similar ultra-radical terrorist groups. We've been saying that for a long time now, even before the US-led coalition was created. If the goal is to prevent the consolidation of the territory of Iraq and Syria as the core of the future caliphate planned by ISIS, then, primarily, it's imperative to help those who are fighting these thugs on the ground, that is, the Iraqi army, the Iraqi Kurds, the Syrian army and the Syrian Kurdish militia. We advocate coordinating the efforts of all those who are fighting on the ground. In addition to Syrian and Iraqi government troops, and to Kurds, other Syrian opposition units are also fighting ISIS on the ground. They are not a bunch of mercenaries, as opposed to the many externally sponsored armed units fighting there. Importantly, these military units should coordinate their actions as they fight the Islamic State. Ideally, the coalition could coordinate its useful air capabilities with the ground operations. Air strikes alone cannot solve the problem. If the coalition forces could establish contact not only with the Iraqi government, with which they already agreed, but also with the Syrian government, and harmonised their approaches with the approaches of the Syrian ground forces, the synergy effect would be much stronger than what we are seeing now.

Question: They don't want to talk with President Bashar al-Assad at all?

Sergey Lavrov: They publicly state that they don't. Moreover, they claim that they would welcome the contribution of Russia or any other country in fighting the Islamic State only if it doesn't strengthen the position of the Syrian president. Excluding the Syrian army from fighting the Islamic State is an absurd concept. If you look at all the capabilities that I just mentioned, the Syrian armed forces will come out on top as the most effective military force on the ground.

We're being told that Australia has joined the coalition and will also deliver air strikes on Islamic State positions without taking any steps that would strengthen the position of the Syrian president. The British had bombed Syria and killed several jihadists saying that this was part of the United Kingdom's sovereign right to self-defence. France is now bombig not only Iraq, to which Baghdad agreed, but also Syria, and no one is asking Damascus for permission. I do wonder sometimes: maybe everyone wants Russia to also state that it will strike the terrorist positions in Syria without asking its president's opinion? What's the point of playing this game of not recognising the legitimacy of the Syrian president?

When there was a need to liquidate Syrian chemical weapons, President Bashar al-Assad was absolutely the legitimate authority. His actions to accede to the relevant convention were welcomed in UN Security Council resolutions. A year later, he ceased to be the legitimate leader, because the threat is no longer that of chemical weapons and substances, but a terrorist threat. This is an ideology-driven approach. I don't think it will bring the results which we are all looking for.  Only an ideology-free and coordinated fight against terrorism without double standards, and a proper prioritising of the tasks will be genuinely effective. All of our Western partners, without exception, are telling us that they understand perfectly well the nature of the main threat in the Middle East and North Africa. It is not the Assad regime, but the Islamic State. If everyone agrees on this, even though some say it under their breaths, and states it openly, then we should be honest about it and do as we are saying.

Question: So, do you think they are ready to hear our proposals?

Sergey Lavrov: I think they hear what we are saying perfectly well. The fact is that too much ideology and too much bias go into changing the Syrian regime. It started several years ago, and they are now stuck in this position. Perhaps, they are afraid of losing face. Many politicians in the West run concepts through the voters, and try to gauge how they'll react to their moves. They walked into a dead-end claiming that Bashar al-Assad has no place in the future of Syria, they will never sit down and discuss things with him, and will never have anything in common with him. This is a big mistake for politicians.

 [return to Contents] 

 #14
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
September 14, 2015
Russian media comments on Duma 'dress rehearsal' elections
Media roundup: Nationwide elections in 83 of the 85 regions of Russia made headlines this week, as did new signs that Europe was attempting to broker a peace deal for Ukraine.
By Anastasia Borik

Elections in Russia, another round of the Minsk talks in Berlin to solve the Ukraine crisis and Bulgaria's decision to close its borders to Russian planes delivering humanitarian supplies to Syria were in the spotlight of the Russian media last week. In addition, Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi's visit to Crimea made headlines.

Election day in Russia

The most important event of the week were nationwide elections in 83 of the 85 regions of Russia, which took place on Sept. 13. The voters were choosing future governors, representatives to regional legislatures and municipal authorities.

Even before the elections, people were saying that this was just a "dress rehearsal" for the parliamentary elections that will be held in 2016, and after the voting was finished, this became the topic of discussion in almost all Russian media. According to preliminary results, the ruling party, United Russia, remained in the lead.

The business newspaper Vedomosti considers the results of these elections to be very indicative in every regard - not only in terms of the success of the United Russia party, but also in the working out of 'mechanisms for suppression of the opposition'. The publication noted that the greatest passions were observed in the Kostroma Oblast - the only region where the opposition party RPR-Parnassus was allowed to compete.

The opposition Novaya Gazeta also pointed to the "refinement" of ways of dealing with the opposition, and methods implemented to increase the influence of the ruling party, the influence of which is based on tampering and falsifications, "using administrative leverage, NTV and police nightsticks."

"The elections on September 13 were rather paradoxical in nature. On the one hand, the authorities had done everything to ensure a low turnout," noted Kirill Martynov in an article. "While on the other hand, the ruling authorities themselves approached these elections with brutal seriousness."

The website of the Echo of Moscow radio station analyzed the election results in the regions, noting in all cases, the clear preponderance of candidates from the United Russia party. The author of the article feels certain that these elections were a dress rehearsal for 2016, and a number of parties (in particular, the Fair Russia Party, which, contrary to expectations, showed good results) should use the results to draw conclusions about their future political battles.

The pro-government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta took a different direction. Making a reference to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who heads the United Russia party, the publication reported the high level at which the elections were held, and the good results achieved by all parliamentary parties, especially United Russia. The prime minister said that he considered this means democracy is developing quite well in Russia.

The next round of Minsk talks

On Saturday, Sept. 12, European foreign ministers, working in the Normandy Format to try and find a settlement to the Ukrainian crisis, held talks in Berlin. The parties once again failed to reach full agreement, but German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier reported that there was "movement" on certain issues.

The business newspaper Kommersant wrote that this was only a preliminary meeting, and the real working meeting of the Normandy Four would take place in Paris on Oct. 2, at the level of heads of state. According to the author, on the background of reduced fighting in the region, the talks are now made difficult by the future holding of local elections, which the two self-proclaimed republics (DPR and LPR) refused to coordinate with Kiev, and are conducting independently.

The pro-government Channel One considers that these talks were successful, while noting their humanitarian, rather than political orientation, writing about the concerns of Western countries, particularly Germany, about the humanitarian crisis erupting in the Donbas.

The business newspaper Vedomosti also believes that everything depends on the conduct of the upcoming elections. The publication interviewed a number of experts, most of who believe that holding elections in Donbas will give Moscow a certain "bargaining chip, which can then be used in negotiations with the West when attempting to gain something in return.

Bulgaria closes its territory to the passage of Russian aircraft carrying humanitarian aid to Syria

On Sept. 8, Russian aircraft carrying humanitarian aid to Syria were not allowed to fly over the territory of Bulgaria, when the latter closed its air space due to "doubts about the transported cargo." The Bulgarian authorities claimed that, under the guise of humanitarian aid, weapons were being transported into the country.

The opposition Novaya Gazeta believes that this situation arose with pressure coming from Washington. The newspaper explained that the same problem could have arisen with Greece, but the Greek authorities rejected the request of the United States to block the travel of Russian aircraft through Greek airspace.

The Independent Slon also pointed to the role of the United States in this story, but believes that there is a clear division in the ranks of U.S. politicians. The publication believes that the requests of the State Department sent to Bulgaria and Greece were not coordinated with other American government agencies, or even with President Barack Obama.

The business newspaper Kommersant also wrote about the absence of unity among American politicians. The publication believes that the State Department has irritated Obama, not seeking his approval to ask Greece and Bulgaria to close their airspace to Russia.

Berlusconi's visit to Crimea

Last week, Italian politician and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi visited Crimea, where he met with President Vladimir Putin. Putin and Berlusconi share a long friendship. The visit of the Italian to "occupied" (the terminology used by Ukraine) Crimea created a great deal of bustle in the Russian press.

The opposition Novaya Gazeta drew the attention of its readers to the statements made by Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Pavlo Klimkin and which claimed that Vladimir Putin and Berlusconi violated the order of entry to Crimea. The newspaper emphasized that the Ukrainian side feels that by inviting prominent European politicians, Russia is trying to legalize its occupation of the Crimea in the eyes of the world community.

The pro-government Rossiyskaya Gazeta writes about the friendship between Berlusconi and Putin, and about how much the Italian politician enjoyed his visit to Crimea. The publication noted that the visit was not only successful and productive, but also very demonstrative, seeing that this major European politician, on his own accord, indicated a desire to visit Crimea.

Moskovsky Komsomolets believes that for Berlusconi this was clearly not the best time to visit Crimea, as his reputation is already suffering from numerous scandals, and awaiting him are municipal elections. The publication noted that in spite of all this, Berlusconi appeared very happy to be in Crimea, and he and Putin agreed to carry out a number of joint projects in Crimea.

Syrian refugees in the EU

Last week, Russian media continued discussing the issue of large numbers of Syrian refugees arriving in the EU.

The website of the Echo of Moscow radio station published an article by writer and publicist Michael Weller, who claims that migrants are the "vanguard of an invading army," and that we are witnessing the agony of Europe and European values. Weller says that this topic is popular in Russia not because of the desire of the Russian authorities to divert attention from the internal problems of Russia, but due to the Russian people's self-identification as Europeans, who are now watching their reference values disappear.

The business newspaper Vedomosti talked about the growth in the moral authority of Angela Merkel against the background of the refugee issue. The publication feels certain that it is Merkel, and not the idle Hollande and Cameron, who will be able to force European countries to deal with the influx of Syrian refugees. The author believes that for the sake of Europe's future, Merkel has made a choice between pragmatism and values, choosing the side of values, and this will become an example for the rest of Europe.

Moskovsky Komsomolets is not so sure about the good intentions of the Chancellor of Germany, and noted that in an attempt to curb the influx of migrants, Germany has closed its border with Austria.

Quotes of the week:

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny on irregularities during the elections: "When the authorities saw from the exit polls, that we [the opposition RPR-Parnassus Party] were about to overcome the barrier, they decided to remove observers from polling stations. This was done to rig the results and gnaw 1-2 percent from us."

Vladimir Putin on the question of accession of Donbas to Russia: "Our hearts and souls are with the Donbas, but unfortunately, these questions [about making it a part of Russia] cannot be solved on the street."

Viktor Ozerov, Head of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security, on the closure of Bulgarian skies to Russian aircraft, "In taking this approach, the United States has crossed all bounds of acceptable moral ethical norms, which every person should possess, and especially the head of a major power."

Silvio Berlusconi on Crimea: "The entire territory of Crimean is beautiful. I was impressed by everything I saw - the nature, the sea, and the mountains, which rise up for hundreds of meters. Everything is simply breathtaking!"

The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs' statement on Berlusconi's Crimea visit: "This visit to occupied Crimea is just another attempt of the Russian Federation to, at any cost, legitimize its illegal occupation, and a demonstration of disrespect for the national sovereignty of Ukraine."

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 #15
Vedomosti
September 10, 2015
Russian daily says political infighting resulting from resources cuts, reforms
Andrey Sinitsyn, From the editorial office: Merger of interests: Micro-managed administrative reform; administrative tasks must be resolved as a matter of urgency - economize on your enemy today or he will economize on you tomorrow

There is talk in Russia once again of administrative reform - some departments are being merged, there is persistent talk of the merging of others, and the optimization of monitoring and oversight is being prepared. The present state of reform can hardly be seen as a consistent development of what happened in 2004-2005, primarily because of the difference in motives.

This year the Federal Antimonopoly Service has taken over the Federal Tariffs Service and there is discussion of the likely merger of the tax and customs services (they are switching to a single information system) and the creation of a mega-controller in the consumption sphere which could bring together Rospotrebnadzor [Federal Service for the Supervision of Consumer Rights and Welfare], Rosselkhoznadzor [Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Oversight], and Roszdravnadzor [Federal Service for the Supervision of Health and Social Development], and even the merger of the Finance Ministry and the Ministry of Economic Development. The likelihood is that not all the mergers will take place, but it is obvious that there are lobbyists interested in these mergers and they are regularly presenting their arguments in the corridors of power. The main thing is that there is no overarching logic.

The reform of 2004 created a kind of ideal administrative world (according to Western models) in which political, monitoring, and executive functions were divided into different levels of management (ministries-services-agencies) in order to avoid a conflict of interests. That scheme did not survive for long in its state of pristine purity, and functions started to be mixed up, but nevertheless the overall design remains to this day. The reform as a process has not officially come to a halt and is under way to this day, with its main avenues identified as the reduction of excessive regulation, the improvement of the quality of state services, the enhancement of the effectiveness of the organs of power, and the enhancement of information openness. But on the reform's interactive portal there is not a word about plans for or the need for the merging of departments. These mergers are an apparatus matter.

It is obvious that people today do not care about the conflict of interests. The main task of the organs of power is becoming the safeguarding of the country's controllability under conditions of isolation and a drastic reduction in resources - hence all the rumoured plans for mergers and take-overs. The task of saving on expenditure has been set directly by the premier, while the task of optimizing the structure of the monitoring agencies has been set by the president. In that situation apparatus tasks must be resolved as a matter of urgency - you must economize on your enemy today, or he will economize on you tomorrow. The cutting of resources is leading to a struggle for influence.

The centralization and enlargement of departments in that sense is a good argument too - in war time people are in no mood for debating, on the other hand the stronger you are and the closer to the people at the top, the more effectively you will exercise control. It is curious that the number of ministries has recently expanded through subregional ones - ministries for the affairs of the Far East, the Caucasus, and Crimea. Ministries which have to be responsible for everything over an enormous territory. However, the Ministry for Crimean Affairs did not survive for long.

Experts do not understand how the Finance Ministry and Ministry of Economic Development can be merged and they are criticizing the merger of the Federal Antimonopoly Service and the Federal Tariff Service. There are many discrepancies in the likely merger of Rospotrebnadzor, Rosselkhoznadzor, and Roszdravnadzor, but here it is at least possible to reconstruct the logic: If the consumer market has become universal and monitoring powers are duplicated, there is some point in having a mega-regulator.

But even here there is room for apparatus infighting. Any control in Russia means more than resources. For instance, with the aid of sanitary oversight you can not only earn money but also conduct foreign policy. There are things worth fighting for.

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 #16
Fort Russ
http://fortruss.blogspot.com
September 15, 2015
Who's next? Three possible successors to Putin
Mark Vtoroy, Politrussia
http://politrussia.com/control/3-vozmozhnykh-preemnika-618/
Translated for Fort Russ by J. Arnoldski

"Three possible successors to Putin according to the media"

"I'm tired, I'm leaving." No, these are not the words of the current president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. These are the words of his predecessor, Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin, which, for many Russians, were either the biggest surprise or the biggest gift for New Year's Eve, 1999. Nearly ten years later, as predicted by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, only 2% of Russia's population believe that his decision to leave was a mistake.

Of course, for many it was unexpected that Yeltsin would hand over his powers in that moment to an almost unknown Putin. No one besides the media, which steadily increased mentions of him, expected the popularity of the newfound (from August 9, 1999) Prime Minister. Ordinary people remember the effective operations of the armed forces of Russia under his command in the Second Chechen War, and they remember his words "We will soak them in the crapper," which were written on hearts following the September terrorist attacks. All of this, of course, was widely reported in the media, resulting in a rise of Putin's approval rating from 31% in August, 1999 to 84% in January, 2000.

No one is saying that Vladimir Vladimirovich is going to retire on this day or that. No one is saying that it will be unexpected. Increasingly, however, there are voices of domestic political scientists, in particular that of Stanislav Belkovsky, who note that the President is tired of power. One hears so often: "Who will be at the helm of the country after him?" It is no accident that Kudrin suddenly proposed to hold early presidential elections at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. And it's far from clear if Putin will decide to go for another term. Here again, the question arises: "Who's next?"

It's immediately worth saying that there are no specific media versions about possible successors to the president. All further assumptions will be based on the axiom that any reshuffling at the top does not happen without the participation of the media, which preliminarily prepares the population by putting the activities of a possible successor under the maximum spotlight and thereby legitimizing and increasing his popularity.

This means that it's possible to search among people in the media a possible successor, that "second face after the first" mentioned in the media.

Sergey Lavrov

According an analysis of references to Russia in foreign media, the Minister of Foreign Affairs has been ranked in the top three most popular people, occupying the second place after Vladimir Putin. Of course, this can be explained by the specificity of his activity, since the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has no choice but to be one of the main newsmakers abroad.

However, his statistics among national media for the close half of 2015 are close to the maximum. According to a recent analyst of "Medialogia" company which is based on a number of Russian media reports from nearly 25,400 sources (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, news agencies, and online media), the 50 most media-spotlighted Russians are rated twice a year, and Lavrov took 4th place coming after Putin, Medvedev, and Nemtsov.

It's worth noting that his rating does not take into account statistics from July, August, and early September, although during this period the activities of the Foreign Minister began to be highlighted even more actively.

A climax was reached at the end of August when the media spread photos of Lavrov kayaking down a mountain stream in Okulovka. Here, his diplomatic and professional qualities are already not evaluated, but rather his quality as a human and his sporting skills. What else is needed to get a small increase in popularity?

At the same time, as if to confirm the version in which Lavrov is the successor, a new "torpedo" of Russia in the information war appeared in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which, according to Finnish media, is Maria Zakharova. The new official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry has already established herself from the best side. And not to mention her enormous potential.

It can be agreed that in this scenario, the script of "Lavrov replacing Putin, and Zakharova replacing Lavrov" isn't entirely unbelievable. Russia needs a strong leader, and when it comes to searching for one, Lavrov is the best candidate.

Dmitry Medvedev

In recent days, not only the Russian, but also the global community have been wondering what the photo session with Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin the gym could mean.

There are plenty of versions. The seemingly most interesting one to me is the point of view of Sergey Kolesnikov, who suggested that this could resemble a reconciliation of two competing elites: the conservative and liberal.

Well, the Russian elite needs consensus now more than ever. Therefore, we don't rule out the possibility that the media will gradually begin to prepare for the next reshuffle in the presidential post. Moreover, in the above-mentioned rating, Medvedev confidently holds second place, having experience of governing the country and being on the list of references in Western media.

However, we can say against this version, roughly speaking, that Putin's third term arrived with a kind of rollback - all initiatives of Medvedev were either bent, cancelled, or took a new form, and this speaks at least to the disagreement between the two politicians.

Taking into consideration the fact that we will accept Vladimir Vladimirovich's retirement, there are doubts that he will entrust the management of the country to Dmitry Anatolyevich.

Sergey Glazyev

There is the argument that the official who makes important economic decisions for the state ultimately becomes the personification of the state. In view of the difficult economic situation in the country, the assumption that Glazyev will take perhaps the central position in government is heard more and more often. This means the seat of the Minister of Economy, Anton Siluanov whose popularity, already in 7th place, has been significantly weakened in August 2015.

This is confirmed by the fact that, being a presidential advisor on regional economic integration, he [Glazyev] is actively promoting his program of reforms for the "neutralization of anti-Russian sanctions," which many consider to be promising. And now matter how one looks at the isolation and confrontation of Russia by the United States, such measures are supported by the Russian population.

There is also the definite plus of proximity to the president and his role in the president's entourage. This, together with the importance of the economy of the country, can be the key to the future career of Glazyev, developing virtually in the same way as the career of the current president. Both (Putin in actuality and Glazyev hypothetically) make important decisions in government during a difficult time for the country, and both have the capacity to address them. The only question is whether or not Glazyev will take take advantage of such opportunities. But for now, there are too many "ifs" in this scenario.

Of course, these assumptions may prove to be too far from reality. Someone might say that it makes no sense to think about this two and a half years before elections and that the 80% level of support for Putin won't be going anywhere. However, as experience shows, surprises often happen, and, for example, in France, preparation for elections and systematic work for popularizing oneself in the media and in society is usually begun 3 years early.

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 #17
Politico.com
September 13, 2015
Why Putinism Will Survive Putin
Let's face it: Russians like a strong state, and they'll always see themselves as an empire.
By Walter Laqueur
Walter Laqueur is a historian and the author of Putinism: Russia and Its Future with the West, from which this article is adapted.

As the Ukraine crisis settles into what appears to be a long stalemate, perhaps it is time to consider the future of Russian recalcitrance to the West-and who and what may follow in the footsteps of the main author of this recalcitrance, Vladimir Putin. Russia plainly needed someone like Putin as this point in its history. But did it also need Putinism? Will it in the future? Will the autocratic, state-centered ideology that Russian's leader has come to represent survive the man?

I believe there is a good chance that it will. Coming out of the failure of the Soviet Union, Russia needed a new feeling of mission, a new Russian idea. This is what Putin delivered. Though there is no elaborate Putinist ideology, a document prepared by a think tank established by the Russian politician German Gref in 1999, just prior to Gref's appointment as minister for economic development, and approved by Putin, constituted a platform for Putin's election campaigns. The document said that Russia was passing through the greatest crisis in its history and that all its resources, political, economic, and moral, would have to be enlisted so that a united country will be able to overcome it. The country needed solidarity and above all gosudarstvenost, or strong state power.

This need is not going away. Contrary to the beliefs of those who subscribe to the idea of an "End of History" in which liberal democracy becomes the common form of government throughout the world, Russians feel the need for strong state power more than many other countries. At the core of the Russian character is a belief that, without discipline, people would not work and nothing would function, and only government authority can enforce this discipline. Given the basic anarchic inclination of the people, but for a strong state power, the country would fall apart. Beyond that Russians tend to believe that Russia can exist only as a great power to fulfill its historic, God-given mission, and a democratic Russia would not be strong enough to attain great power status. This is at the root of the weakness of every democratic movement in Russia throughout history.

The most important component in Putinist ideology is nationalism accompanied by anti-Westernism. The origins of this intense anti-Westernism are not entirely clear; anti-Americanism did not exist before the Cold War to any significant degree. But from an eminently practical perspective, it has to do with the need of the FSB, the successor organization to the KGB, to justify its existence, budget, and policy. And Putin is a man whose mindset comes out of the KGB. For unless Russia is protected against its dangerous, powerful, and devious enemies, the country will be destroyed again. Hence the need to maintain this enormous and costly security apparatus headed by the new nobility of the country.

True, there is every reason to think that the personality cult of Putin will not survive. It is not really a permanent feature in Russian history- after all, no czarist minister ever became the object of such adulation. A vodka was named Putin, as were a milkshake, a lollypop, ice cream, a brand of kebab, and a frost- resistant tomato. Perhaps he had asked for it with his bare- chested adventures in Siberia and Tuva. Perhaps it happened because he was looking so much younger and moving faster than Brezhnev and his immediate successors. In the city of Yaroslavl not far from Moscow, a group of women had to be detained in a psychiatric clinic because of their uncontrollable passion for the man in white overalls (so as to resemble a bird) flying in a hang glider with the cranes in Siberia. It would not have happened to Stalin, Khrushchev, or Brezhnev.

Nor has Putinism, at least as defined as state capitalism, been a very successful enterprise. It means autocracy, but this is nothing new in Russian history, and whatever benefits that may bring are almost mitigated by inefficiency and corruption. There is a parliament, but the opposition parties are not really in opposition. There is a free press, but the freedom is limited to small newspapers and the criticism must not go too far. There is a constitution, but it is not the best guide for the realities of contemporary Russia. (There was a Stalinist constitution in 1935, allegedly the most democratic in the world, but it had nothing to do with the practice of Stalinism.) It became a matter of sad irony and many jokes. Historians know that each system especially each extreme political system, is different and often unique. The quest for a Russian new political doctrine is particularly unique because there were few transitions from Communism and each was different, be it in China, Vietnam, or Eastern Europe.

But Putinism is likely to survive because it has not been a disaster, and there is at present no alternative. The only opposition comes from forces even more anti-democratic and further to the right than Putin. Russians perceive their country as a besieged fortress surrounded by enemies who want to inflict great harm on her. This fear is shared by a majority of the public and is reinforced by government propaganda, above all on controlled television. The chaos that prevailed in Russia during the 1990s proves he need for a set of beliefs like Putinism. It may go in future under another name but in essence it will be on the same lines.

Many close observers of the Russian scene believe there is no great demand for a new ideology and very little interest in the subject. If people quarrel, it is about finances- about their income, their investments and profi ts, and how best to improve their interests- not about ideological questions or dialectical materialism.

When Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, Russia was in dire trouble. Neither the state nor the economy was functioning. A great deal of personal ambition and/or patriotism was needed to aspire to the leadership of the country in these circumstances. Not being an economist, Putin was probably not fully aware of the gravity of the situation, but he must have known much in view of his senior positions in the years before. For his prime minister, he appointed Mikhail Kasyanov, who later became a sharp critic of his regime. Kasyanov carried out important and successful reforms in the economic field (taxation, fiscal reforms, customs). Inflation was reduced and the economy grew during his term of office by about one- third.

However, he disagreed with Putin's style of governing, arguing that separation of powers had been abolished and replaced by the "vertical power" princi ple, which meant that all im por tant decisions were taken by the government; neither parliament nor the judiciary had a say any longer. There were allegations of fraud against Kasyanov, but the same was true with regard to Putin; it is difficult to think of a single Russian politician of that period or in the years after who did not come under suspicion. Kasyanov joined the opposition after his resignation in 2004, but he did not enjoy much popularity, and his political career came to an end.

Kasyanov was succeeded by Mikhail Fradkov as prime minister; this cabinet included two well- known liberal economists, German Gref and Alexei Kudrin. They pursued a sensible policy but did not last long. The beginning of Putin's presidency was not auspicious. Three months after his appointment, in August 2000, the Kursk submarine disaster occurred. Kursk was a nuclear- powered cruise missile submarine, and it went down in the Barents Sea. Putin was on holiday at the time but did not immediately return to Moscow or visit the scene, nor did he accept offers of help by foreign countries. But he emerged unscathed from this affair, just as another disaster did not harm him: the 2002 terrorist attack, when 130 people were killed in the ineffectual attempt by Russian Special Forces to release hostages in a Moscow theater. This was an attack by Chechens in the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow. It occurred during the per for mance of a musical based on Veniamin Kaverin's The Two Captains. The Special Forces pumped a poisonous agent into the theater's ventilation system, which caused the deaths of many. Nevertheless, Putin's popularity did not suffer. Perhaps it was realized that it would be unjust to attribute the blame to him personally. Perhaps it was the feeling that Rus sia needed a strong hand, a leader, that the authority of the state had to be reestablished, that the country should follow a more assertive, nationalist foreign policy-and that under Putin it would get what was needed.

Above all, it was Putin's good fortune that the price of oil and gas was rising; without this, none of his policies could have been carried out. The price of a barrel of oil in Yeltsin's days (1994) had been about $16. In 2002, it was $22; in 2004, $50; and in 2008, $91. It has remained at this level for fi ve years. From 2001 to 2007, the economy grew on average 7 percent a year. By 2006, the Rus sian GNP was double what it had been at the end of the Yeltsin period. Rus sia could repay all its debts, a new middle class came into being, pensions were doubled-in brief, almost everyone benefited from this prosperity, which was attributed not to good fortune, but to the wise and effi cient leadership of Putin. It was one of the most striking cases of good luck in modern history.

Putin's outlook on the economy had been formed in all likelihood by his years in Germany- the West German example, to be sure. He was in favor of a market policy within limits, insisted on a great mea sure of state control and supervision, and firmly resisted any attempt by the oligarchs
to wield political power. Those disobeying the new rules, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Boris Berezovsky, found themselves in a gulag or in exile. Furthermore, a new group of superrich was emerging, such as Genadi Tymshenko, who were personally known to him and on whose loyalty he could implicitly count.

The new rulers of Russia were not the oligarchs but former colleagues of Putin from St. Petersburg and from his KGB days. They also included some senior military and police officials, some specialists, even a few "liberals" (in the early days), and all people who could be trusted. The leadership style was strictly authoritarian. Perhaps a quarter or a third had a KGB background. Their part in the government may even have been higher, since their backgrounds were usually not widely publicized.

Putin was now the president, yet little was known about his opinions. Was he at heart a reformer, sympathizing with the liberals, or a conservative? Did he want to change the country, or did he see as his main priority calming the country and bringing tranquillity after many years of unrest? It would have been unrealistic to expect from a KGB graduate the democratization of Rus sian society. But would he accept the changes that had taken place under Gorbachev, or would he reintroduce a strict authoritarian regime moving more and more toward the right, based on a conservative reactionary worldview? Would the emphasis of the new regime be on domestic or foreign policy? These and other basic questions were left open for a considerable time. There were contradictory indications, but by about 2005 the impression gained ground that the conservative and nationalist impulse was strongest. Those working closely with him and willing to share their impressions thought of him as a patriot, very cautious, playing his cards close to his chest, not given to trusting people except perhaps a very few with a background similar to his own. He has apparently never believed in socialism, let alone communism. He certainly seemed not to think that Russia was ready to move fast (if at all) on the road toward democracy.

Much has been written about "the faceless Putin," his masculinity, his activity in the field of judo and other sports. He has appeared on comic strips and in thrillers, and he has been shown kissing a sleeping tigress and a sturgeon and also as the father of the nation and confronting a major economic crisis. His approval rating has been consistently high, at times skyrocketing to 80 percent and even higher. The state-controlled media played a decisive role in this rise in his popularity. One could think of some other twentieth- century leaders who reached similarly high approval and even enthusiasm and became the object of a cult. But it is also true that Putin admirably fit the role of a leader as wanted by many Russians at the time. Democratic institutions were not in demand, but the country wanted a leader exuding strength and self- confidence.

Most Russians have come to believe that democracy is what happened in their country between 1990 and 2000, and they do not want any more of it. There never was democracy in Rus sia except perhaps for a few months in 1917, hence the deep- seated distrust and aversion, the belief that democracy is the state of affairs in which a few people get very rich and the rest remain poor or get even poorer.

Whoever succeeds Putin is not likely to be much of a democrat either. Obviously the successor will have to belong to the new "nobility." He will have to be capable but not too much so in order to avoid outshining his predecessor. He will have to be considered loyal to the leader who appointed him and trusted to pursue his policy. Under Putin, the state has regained its traditional function, recovered its effectiveness over its own resources, and become the largest corporation responsible for establishing the rules of the game. It may be an autocratic regime, but it needs the assent of its citizens. For now, it has that in spades.

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 #18
Moscow Times
September 15, 2015
Russian Orthodox Activists Who Vandalized Manezh Face Criminal Charges
By Anna Dolgov

Investigators have opened a criminal case against a group of radical Orthodox activists who attacked Moscow's Manezh exhibition center last month.

The suspected attackers from the ultra-conservative group "God's Will" could face criminal prosecution for the "destruction or damage of cultural property," Interior Ministry spokesman Andrei Galiakberov was cited as saying Monday by state-run RIA Novosti news agency. The charge carries punishments ranging from a large fine to three years in prison.

The leader of "God's Will," Dmitry "Enteo" Tsorionov, said on his social network VKontakte page Monday that his group is now under criminal investigation.

Two of the attackers had previously been sentenced to 1,000-ruble ($14) fines on a "petty hooliganism" charge in connection with the raid, and other members of the group were to go to trial on the same charge.

Tsorionov said at the time that the verdict was too harsh and that the group planned to appeal, accusing the organizers of the exhibition of committing a crime by insulting religious feelings and inciting hatred, Interfax reported earlier.

The leader said Monday on his VKontakte page that the appeal had been turned down.

During the attack on the Manezh exhibition center on Aug. 14, Orthodox activists damaged four works by the highly acclaimed late sculptor Vadim Sidur and a work by the artist Megasoma Mars titled "Beheading of St. John the Baptist," according to a Manezh spokeswoman.

The Interior Ministry spokesman on Monday cited "independent experts" as estimating the total damage of the vandalism attack at around 196,000 rubles ($2,895), RIA Novosti reported.

Earlier, art experts from the state-run Grabar Research and Restoration Center estimated the cost of restoring the damaged art works at more than 1 million rubles, according to Manezh spokeswoman Yelena Karneyeva, state-run TASS news agency reported.

The exhibition center will seek compensation for the full amount of damages based on the Grabar center estimate, Karneyeva told state-run Interfax news agency on Monday.

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 #19
Moscow Times
September 15, 2015
First Russian Business School Enters Top 50 of Financial Times Global Ranking

St. Petersburg State University has become the first Russian institution to enter the top 50 of a Financial Times global ranking of business schools.

The English-language Masters in Management program at St. Petersburg State University's Graduate School of Management placed 46th in the survey, up from 56th last year and 65th in 2013.

The 2015 Masters in Management rankings, published Sunday, were topped for the third year by the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, followed by HEC Paris and the ESSEC Business School in France.

The FT placed St. Petersburg State University's Graduate School of Management 5th for the number of international teachers and 11th for the number of foreign students. In terms of career progress, the program ranked 33rd. The school's alumni earn on average $50,090 three years after graduation, according to the paper.

St. Petersburg State University's dean, Nikolai Kropachyov, said in a statement Monday that no other business school in the country could boast a $50,000 average salary for their students within three years of graduation.

According to the FT, the program at St. Petersburg State University Graduate School of Management lasts 22 months and costs 770,000 rubles ($11,400). In 2014-15, 90 students were enrolled.

In March, St. Petersburg State University entered the annual Times Higher Education World University Ranking for the first time, ranking in the 71-80 band among 100 international universities.

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 #20
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
September 14, 2015
Kids of Russia's billionaires charge into business
Ben Aris in Moscow

It's been just under a quarter of a century since the fall of the Soviet Union and in that time a relatively small group of men have become fabulously wealthy in the rough and tumble of Russia's "wild capitalism".

As most of Russia's tycoons are approaching their 60s they are thinking about retiring - and handing over their businesses to their now grown-up children. An increasing number of prominent names followed by the moniker "junior" are appearing in business, as the children of the rich get ready to take over.

More worryingly, nepotism is rife in Russia and inexperienced twenty-something sons of tycoons regularly pop up doing deals with hundreds of millions of dollars - and usually fail to make the deal work. The problem is even worse at state-owned companies where the heads of departments on fat salaries owe more to their surname than they do to their CV for the position they hold. Amateur management is wasteful, but many of these progeny of the powerful are more cynical: bne IntelliNews has several anecdotal reports of a son or nephew taking over an important department in a state-owned company, only to immediately cancel long-term supply contracts with established partners simply so a fresh kick-back deal can be cut with the new boss.

Smolenskys and flogging dead donkeys

In his day, Alexander Smolensky was Russia's most successful banker, founding SBS Agro, the non-state retail banking giant. As one of the "authorised" banks entitled to hold budget money, he used delayed payments to speculate against hyperinflation and make billions on the process.

One of the leading Yeltsin-era oligarchs, he left the country after his bank collapsed and Vladimir Putin took over the presidency, famously saying on his way out that he owed his investors only "dead donkey ears".

Smolensky has barely been in the press since, but his 35-year-old son Nikolai caused a stir in the UK in July 2004 when he bought the iconic British sports carmaker TVR for a reported £15mn and attempted to resuscitate the brand. After pumping millions of pounds into the company he finally conceded defeat nine years late, selling out to British entrepreneur Les Edgar for an undisclosed sum.

Kerimov creaming off the old block

At the start of September, 20-year-old university student Abusaid Kerimov was reportedly leading a $5.4bn bid to buy out the remaining 60% shares of the leading gold producers his two holding companies don't already own. This would be his second deal this year after buying the Cinema Park chain of movie theatres from oligarch Vladimir Potanin for a reported $400m.

The deal becomes slightly less remarkable when you realise this is the son of Suleyman Kerimov, a billionaire member of the upper house of the Russian parliament worth $4.9bn, according to Forbes.

Kerimov Senior obviously has an interest in helping his son get going in his career - Abusaid is studying business at Moscow's prestigious MGIMO university - but he also needs to cut his direct ties with business under new "de-offshorisation" rules pushed through by President Putin last year.

Abusaid is reportedly considering offering shareholders $2.97 per share for the rest of the stock, which jumped on the news to just over $3.00. Given the poor track record that almost all the sons of oligarch's have in business, the shares might have been expected to fall.

The ABC of KGB family business

So far, the only really successful oligarch son is Evgeny Lebedev, 35, whose father Alexander Lebedev was KGB station chief in the UK before the 1991 Soviet collapse. Never counted as one of the seven original oligarchs, the senior Lebedev nevertheless made his money in the 1990s as the owner of National Reserve Bank (NRB), which used to have close ties to Gazprom. Like most of the leading banks, NRB was also almost destroyed in the 1998 crash, but Lebedev hung on to his investments and by the middle of the noughties he was rich again, worth an estimated $2bn.

The outspoken Lebedev has always been seen as something of a quisling by the Kremlin and he got on so badly with the Putin administration he eventually moved to London and took over the Evening Standard and Independent newspapers in 2004.

It is actually his son's signature that is on both those deals and Evgeny runs the papers today with mixed results. In a radical move, he made the Evening Standard free and trebled its circulation, putting it back into profit. But he has had less success with the Indie, which is still losing money.

Lebedev Jnr has all the trappings of a successful proprietor. Liz Hurley and Prime Minister David Cameron come to his parties and he has a penchant for very rare Rolls Royces and iconic Italian villas. As an occasional contributor to his papers, he comes in for regular ribbings by the likes of the sardonic Private Eye, while on the business front he has a reputation for very grand, yet very expensive and usually unsuccessful gestures.

The Independent decided that it would get into online TV, but instead of hooking up with one of the highly skilled but under-employed independent TV studios that litter London, Evgeny built an entire state-of-the-art studio in the Independent's building. "We don't do joint ventures," he dismissively told a bne IntelliNews source in the company when challenged. However, London Live has proved to be one of his more notable business flops; in June, parent company ESI Media announced a loss of almost £12m in the year to the end of September.

Yakunins on the right track

Another recent addition to the fold is Andrei Yakunin, son of the recently retired head of Russia's Railway (RZhD) Vladimir Yakunin. A former Russian diplomat to the EU, Yakunin Snr was appointed head of RZhD by Putin where he has overseen a massive investment programme that ran into tens of billions of dollars a year since it was launched in the midst of the 2008 economic crash. As usual, it is not clear where Yakunin made his money, as he has been a public servant all his life, but opposition blogger Andrei Navalny caused a mild scandal when he released aerial photos of Yakunin's 7,000-square-metre palatial residence  in the Moscow suburb of Akulinino, worth well over $10mn. Indeed, Navalny claims many of Yakunin's family members live in luxury accommodation abroad.

Yakunin Jnr arrived on the Moscow business scene over the last few years with a string of deals with the $250mn VIYM private equity fund that he started with a school friend of his, he told bne IntelliNews over lunch.

Of all the children of the super-rich, Yakunin currently looks like the most competent businessman. The fund's investments, usually minority blocking stakes, in a series of practical and down-to-earth businesses should to do well in the long run, whatever the state of the economy or the status of the EU-imposed sanctions. Amongst the portfolio companies are a toilet paper manufacturer, a hand-made chocolate maker and mid-sized private medical services provider.

It is still too soon for any of these investments to come to market, so it is impossible to judge how savvy a businessman Yakunin is, but from a strategic point of view all the investments make a lot of sense and should do well.

Strings working at full pull

At least all these children have been trying to build something new. Far more common is for well-connected fathers to pull strings to land their offspring cushy jobs in big organisations. Nepotism is rife in Russia.

At the start of 2015, Peter Fradkov, the 37-year-old son of former Russian prime minister and the current head of Russia's SVR Foreign Intelligence Service Mikhail Fradkov, was appointed first deputy chairman of Vnesheconombank (VEB), Russia's de facto development bank.

Prior to this top job, the younger Fradkov's resume includes a six-month training course in Italy, two years working at the Far Eastern Shipping company, and a stint running the Russian Agency for Export Credit and Investment Insurance (EXIAR). Likewise, the late Alexander Ivanov, son of the current chief of staff of the presidential administration Sergei Ivanov, also worked for VEB, before moving to the state-owned banking giant VTB and then returning to VEB. "Frankly speaking, there are more attractive financing institutions than VEB whose employees' salaries are a lot lower than those in banks with the state's participation and obviously in private commercial banks," said VEB's CEO Vladimir Dmitriev, when asked why he had so many children of powerful politicians working for him.

(Having weathered intense scrutiny about the state's handling of a fatal traffic accident in 2005 - Alexander Ivanov ran over and killed an elderly woman by a pedestrian crossing at high speed, but the investigation was closed after witnesses withdrew statements - the banker drowned in the sea in November 2014 aged 37 while vacationing in the United Arab Emirates.)

The Rotenbergs and not-so-jolly hockey sticks

Reflecting the accompanying windfalls - and pitfalls - for oligarch offspring these days, sanctioned Russian billionaire Boris Rotenberg, whose even more billionaire brother Arkady is a judo pal of Putin's, sold their majority stake in Finnish hockey team Jokerit and its home stadium to his 33-year-old son Roman last October as the Western sanctions regime kicked in. Roman Rotenberg, a dual Russian-Finnish citizen, is also vice president of St Petersburg's SKA ice hockey club. (Pictured below in YouTube screenshot being interviewed by celebrity Russian socialite turned journalist and opposition activist Ksenia Sobchak).

The Jokerit transfer had been in the works for some time, but was delayed when sanctions were foisted on his father and uncle, Roman told Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. Then Rotenberg Jnr also came under fire amid the current row with Russia over Ukraine: In July, he was added to the list of individuals sanctioned by the US, prompting Finland to ask why one of its citizens had been targeted. According to the US Treasury, Roman Rotenberg and his family's hotel business, Langvik Capital Ltd, have been linked to the provision of "material support" to his father, therefore meriting his inclusion in the list too.

(Meanwhile, Roman's brother Boris, 29, plays for Moscow football team Dinamo and has even been called up to Finland's national squad, having been raised in Finland. "Then again, if your father is the chairman of the club you play for - and, along with your uncle, is amongst Russia's richest men - maybe anything is possible," as one commentator wrote.)

Power and politics

A few of the elite scions have eschewed the business path and chosen to go into politics instead. Nor do these necessarily trumpet their connection to wealth or power.

Pavel Khodorkovsky, the 30-year-old son of the formerly jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is the founder of the Institute of Modern Russia, a political lobbying group-cum-think tank that funds the anti-Kremlin online newspaper The Interpreter, among other things.

Likewise, one of Putin's two daughters, Ekaterina Tikhonova, 29, surfaced earlier this year in a YouTube video of her dancing at a rock & roll competition. Reportedly, she has been using her mother's maiden name, Tikhonova, but a stampede by local journalists to find out more unearthed the fact that she is also the head of an academic institute with a $1bn budget to expand the famous Moscow State University. The Kremlin does not comment on the president or his family private life, was the terse reply to press demands for confirmation.

Ksenia Sobchak, bearded belle of the opposition

Probably the most high profile of all the elite children is Ksenia Sobchak, 34, known as the Paris Hilton of Russia, the glamorous daughter of Putin's one-time boss, the late St Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak.

Although a few daughters of the elite have made something of a name for themselves, Sobchak was undisputably Russia's first "It girl", with her face gracing magazine covers and television screens for years. bne IntelliNews once interviewed her in a beauty salon just off Red Square in the middle of winter before going outside to take some photos. The interview ended up being more like a fashion shoot as she responded better to the camera than the questions.

Where Sobchak's money came from is not clear (but easily guessed), as a mayor's inheritance wouldn't cover the furs and chiffon she wore on the day of the interview. But she has had several wealthy lovers including Umar Drubailov, an ethnic Chechen who ended up as owner of Moscow's Radisson Slavyanskaya hotel after its founder, US entrepreneur Paul Tatum, was gunned down near the hotel in 1996.

Sobchak now seems to have put her frivolous ways behind her and reinvented herself as a credible member of the nascent opposition movement. During her relationship with opposition activist Ilya Yashin and took the stage during the December 2011 Bolotnaya square protests, saying: "My name is Ksenia Sobchak and I have something to lose, but nevertheless I am here." Since then she has been a voluble critic of Putin, who she has known since she was a child at a time when it was not clear if there would be political blowback from such an outspoken line.

And there was blowback. Sobchak was one of several opposition leaders whose home was raided early on June 9, 2012, just before a "March of the Millions" was due to be held in Moscow. Police found and confiscated "no less than €1mn placed in more than 100 envelopes" from the apartment, money that Sobchak did not deny was hers. Sobchak faced down the prosecutors with typical flare, appearing in a TV advert shortly afterwards that lampooned the search: in the TV version, the police officers confronted her with the same shoe boxes, except this time they only held the credit cards of a well-known bank.

Sobchak caused a minor scandal in April when she posted a photo of herself on social media dressed as an Orthodox priest, complete with fake flowing beard. State officials in June launched a probe into whether this violated new and controversial blasphemy legislation passed after the Pussy Riot cathedral punk music scandal.

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 #21
Sputnik
September 15, 2015
Why are Liberal Economists Outraged by Putin Advisor's Reform Proposals?

On Tuesday, economist Sergei Glazyev will submit a report to Russia's Security Council, offering his vision on how the country can overcome the effects of Western sanctions and return to economic growth. Last week, Glazyev's proposals leaked to the press, leading to a firestorm of criticism from Russia's liberal economists. Sputnik finds out why.

Sergei Glazyev, a Russian Ukrainian economist, politician, and specialist on the Eurasian Economic Union, will present his report to the Russian Security Council, a consultative body reporting to the Russian president charged with working out decisions on issues of national security, this Tuesday. His report, leaked to Russian business newspaper Kommersant last week, features a number of controversial, unconventional and decidedly anti-liberal proposals for dealing with the effects of Western sanctions, stabilizing the course of the ruble, and restoring economic growth.

The plan proposes a five-year 'road map' to Russia's economic sovereignty and long-term growth, and is ostensibly aimed at helping the country to avoid the 'stagflation trap' of economic stagnation and growing inflation. The plan is presented as being aimed toward building up the country's immunity to external shocks and foreign influence, and ultimately, toward bringing Russia out of the periphery and into the core of the global economic system.

The plan's ambitious goals include raising industrial output by 30-35 percent over a five year period, creating a socially-oriented 'knowledge economy' via the transfer of substantial economic resources to education, health care and the social sphere, the creation of instruments aimed at increasing savings as a percent of GDP, and a number of other initiatives, including a program aimed at transitioning to a sovereign monetary policy.

Controversially, the program proposes to use Central Bank resources to provide targeted lending for businesses and industries by providing them with low interest rates between 1-4 percent, made possible by quantitative easing to the tune of 20 trillion rubles over a five year period. The program also suggests that the state support private business through the creation of "reciprocal obligations" for the purchase of products and services at agreed-upon prices.

A section of the report on "stabilizing the ruble's exchange rate, the termination of capital flight and the de-dollarization of the economy" offers yet more controversial suggestions, proposing that the state "stop the speculative vortex" in the currency market via what effectively amounts to the introduction of capital controls, something which Russia's leadership has vehemently resisted even considering. The proposed measures include restrictions on companies' purchase of foreign currency for reasons other than transactions with foreign entities, along with a "temporary tax" on conversation operations, as well as restrictions on companies' export of capital, requiring firms to offer "reasoned justifications" for their activities in the transfer of capital abroad.

Another decidedly anti-liberal and arguably even anti-free market proposal in Glazyev's report is a section devoted to the "stabilization of prices," proposing a temporary freeze on prices for a basic basket of consumer goods, a 25 percent profit cap between producer and retail prices, as well as measures to stabilize the price of goods and services provided by state-controlled monopolies. The economist also proposes revoking the return of the VAT on the export of raw materials and resources to state companies, ostensibly aimed at stimulating the export of processed goods.

A section of the report on "the neutralization of the effects of anti-Russian sanctions" proposes converting the reserves of the Russian Central Bank, the Reserve Fund and the National Welfare Fund into gold and BRICS countries bonds, along with the creation of a new regional and international system of settlements in national currencies independent of the dollar. One proposal in particular from this section which caught the ire of critics was the suggestion that Russian companies be permitted to use force majeure to free themselves of obligations related to loan agreements provided in countries which have imposed financial sanctions against Russia.

The program is capped by a proposal to create a State Committee on Strategic Planning Under the President of the Russian Federation (GKSP), together with a State Committee for Scientific and Technological Development (GKNTR), ostensibly modeled on a system created in Iran during the 1990s following the introduction of Western sanctions on that country.

Program Hits a Nerve Among Russia's Liberal Economists

Upon leaking, Glazyev's proposal was hit with a wave of criticism from representatives of the liberal wing of Russia's economic policy elite, from the 'old guard' of market reformers such as Yevegni Yashin and Andrei Nechayev, to the new generation, including Konstantin Sonin, former Vice Rector of Moscow's Higher School of Economics. Observers criticized the economist's proposals for being an attempt to return the country to the Soviet model of development, with others saying that the program amounted to a proposal to turn the economy into one-part Argentina, one-part North Korea.

An recent op-ed in liberal English-language newspaper The Moscow Times slammed Glazyev's plan, saying that it amounted to "a compendium of lazy, irrational thinking that, were it ever put into practice, would quickly set Russia on a road to economic apocalypse."

And while 'shadow CIA' think tank Stratfor went on to suggest that Glazyev's plan meant that "the Kremlin is planning for the worst -the severing of ties with the West," the reality appears to be that the economist's ideas are being considered by the Russian government only as food for thought. Presidential press secretary Dmitri Peskov responded to the plan by pointing out that Glazyev's proposals "are treated as the point of view of an expert," adding that his views are far from always being "an expression of the official position of the president or the presidential administration."

So far, Glazyev's plan has merely stepped on some toes within Russia's economic policy establishment. Were it to be taken into serious consideration, it would doubtlessly come to threaten long-established economic and political interests, both in Russia and abroad, serving as a Pandora's box which the Russian leadership does not seem eager to open.

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 #22
Carnegie Moscow Center
September 15, 2015
Glazyev's Economic Policy of the Absurd
By Andrey Movchan
Movchan is a senior associate and director of the Economic Policy Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center. He is one of Russia's best known financial managers.

Any proposals discussed by the Security Council of a major country with nuclear weapons, deserve to be analyzed, even if they are crazy.

The first impression to be had from the recommendations recently made by President Vladimir Putin's economic advisor Sergey Glazyev to Russia's Security Council is that they are indeed "crazy.". If Russia adopted them, its economy would fall to a level somewhere close to Venezuela if not North Korea which would then have incalculable socio-economic repercussions.

Glazyev's plans derive from leftist economic ideology, Russia's culture of bureaucracy and restrictive style of government. They offer the Russian economy a mix of disincentives, restrictions, and isolationist measures wrapped in a notion of "sovereignty"that the current Russian elite finds attractive. It is worth spelling out how dangerous they are, if only as an illustration of the kind of advice that is currently being offered at the highest levels of the Russian elite.

According to media reports, in order to "stabilize the ruble exchange rate, stop capital flight, and de-dollarize the economy," Glazyev proposes the following steps:

*    prohibit legal entities from purchasing foreign currency "without a legal basis, such as payment transactions";
*    introduce a tax  on currency exchange transactions and international payments;
*    outlaw foreign currency loans to non-financial organizations;
*    make the sale of foreign currency revenues mandatory.

Glazyev's notion that the ruble is unstable is misguided: it is actually stably linked to the price of oil, which is now much closer to its lowest credible rate than just a year ago. His prescriptions to achieve this questionable goal could have fatal consequences.

If legal entities are prohibited from buying foreign currency, their natural desire to hedge currency risks will force Russian banks to buy derivatives and increase the already high cost base of the Russian economy. They will be exposed to heavy risks. Any market shocks could bring down these banks, as happened with the banks that played with credit default swaps in 1998 and 2008.

A tax on currency exchange transactions would only raise the cost of virtually all goods (given Russia;s heavy reliance on imports) and decrease consumption in an already struggling economy.

A ban on foreign currency loans would put immense strain on banks, many of whose liabilities are denominated in foreign currency. Banks would need to make enormous efforts to hedge their foreign currency risks. Who would pick up the bill? Borrowers, account-holders and the budget.

In this environment, a new black market would spring up overnight as account-holders scrambled to find ways to keep their money in foreign currency, and the prices of a wide range of goods will shoot up, triggering stagflation.

Glazyev then makes the following recommendations on "stabilizing prices"-presumably to deal with all these negative effects.

*    freeze prices on basic consumer goods;
*    introduce a limit on the difference between producer prices and retail prices;
*    empower the Federal Antimonopoly Service to unilaterally set prices for any goods in the event of "severe fluctuations."

Measures like this have been tried-in Venezuela and North Korea, or back in the USSR for example. Freezing prices immediately creates acute shortages and a black market. Any local producers who are unwilling to break the law and deliver goods to the black market will cease production.

To combat the shortages, the government would need to introduce ration cards and state procurement and distribution of goods. However the state would soon have to purchase products from abroad to make up for shortages and falling production.

Yet to buy goods from abroad, the state needs the very same hard currency that Glazyev wants to ban. Thus, "to neutralize the effect of sanctions at the level of companies," he proposes:

*    declare "force majeure" and defend the right of Russian companies not to repay loans from creditors in countries that have imposed sanctions on Russia;
*    convert dollar-denominated reserves into gold and securities of BRICS countries;
*    establish an alternative to the SWIFT international payments system together with other BRICS countries.

The idea of an alternative to SWIFT can be swiftly dismissed: all BRICS countries trade so much more with the U.S. and the EU than with each other, that they are unlikely to share Russia's desire for a new separate payment system.

As for the default--most of the loans taken out by Russian companies were the responsibility of their foreign holdings under the laws of other countries, allowing creditors to seize these companies' assets regardless of any local Russian decisions.

As Russia faced ever-greater crisis, it would seek to convert dollar-denominated assets into gold and BRICS currencies. For now, Russia still has substantial reserves. But this process alone would cost Russia tens of billions of dollars --before we even talk about a possible devaluation of the BRICS currencies or a fall in the world price of gold.

It should therefore come as no surprise that the next item on Glazyev's agenda is:

*    create a mechanism to convert "strategic" insolvent enterprises into "public enterprises."

 "Public enterprises" are, presumably, state-controlled enterprises which raid state resources such as pension funds in order to finance themselves, or even benefit from the conversion of of citizens' bank deposits into equity or debt. This would threaten Russia's pension system (if it is still standing) and induce citizens to remove their bank savings and put them under their mattresses.

At this point, the Russian government would have no alternative but to follow Zimbabwe's example and simply print money. The government would be the sole remaining economic player, exporting natural resources in exchange for a bare minimum of imported goods its impoverished citizens would buy with their almost worthless rubles.

How did a report like Glazyev's, which defies common sense and the economic experience of the rest of the world, come to be submitted to an illustrious body like Russia's Security Council? If the council were seriously interested in Russia's economic development, it would not even consider it.

The true reason for the report may therefore not have much to do with economics.

Although we have no way of ascertaining the true purpose, it may make more sense to derive the report's stated purpose out of its declaration: "measures to overcome the negative impact of Western sanctions on the economy." This is already a surprise, as in actual fact Western sanctions have had little impact on the fundamentals of the Russian economy. Restrictions on lending came at a time when Russian economic players had already strongly reduced their foreign borrowing due to a lack of investment opportunities and domestic demand. Western bans on technology transfers affect hard-to-recover oil and gas reserves whose production would be unprofitable in current circumstances. Targeted sanctions on individuals simply have no power to hurt the economy.

But the emphasis on sanctions may give a clue as to a political rationale behind the report.

There used to be a popular joke about President Boris Yeltsin and Stalin: "Yeltsin asks Stalin how to bring Russia out of its crisis. Stalin advises him to shoot all of members of parliament, shut down the free market and paint the Kremlin walls green. "Why green?" asks Yeltsin. "I see you have no problem with my first two proposals," Stalin responds.

In this vein, it may be that the authorities want to convince the public that the cause of Russia's stagflation is Western sanctions-hostile actions by Russia's enemies. When Glazyev's proposals (are rejected, with or without debate, the government can claim to be moderate and liberal and divert the conversation away from any discussion of the real root causes of the economic crisis.

The alternative explanation is less benign. In recent years a large and highly-placed stratum has formed of Russian government officials and "partners of the regime," who enrich themselves thanks to their control over the levers of the economy.

This powerful class has a pact with the Kremlin of exclusive rights in return for loyalty. They are constantly seeking ways of increasing their earning potential. Up until 2011-2012, these elite groups tried to keep some kind of balance between their need for quick enrichment and the future needs of the economy. One regional politician, quoting the Roman emperor Tiberius,  unofficially described this approach as "Shear the sheep, but don't slaughter them."

If even a few of Glazyev's recommendations to the Security Council were enacted, these elite groups would enjoy almost unlimited but short term opportunities to enrich themselves by exploiting market shortages, tighter government control and monopolization of imports and exports. If this is so, it suggests that the elites have stopped thinking about the long term and now believe it is time to slaughter the sheep rather than shear them.

Whatever, the true explanation for it is, Glazyev's report is confirmation of the sad truth that no one is discussing the real issue: how an outmoded and destructive economic model drove Russia into stagnation even when the oil price was above 100 dollars a barrel and there were no sanctions and no external enemy to blame.

Instead the current Russian leadership prefers to brainstorm leftist solutions to counter the supposed effect of sanctions. By doing so they avoid asking difficult questions, which would require even more uncomfortable answers.

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 #23
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
September 14, 2015
What you need to know about Russia's biggest military drill this year
The Russian army regularly holds large-scale drills designed to boost the military capabilities of its troops. In 2014, the country's armed forces staged the Vostok 2014 drill, involving over 155,000 troops, about 8,000 various land vehicles, 632 aircraft and 84 warships. This year, the army is preparing for Center 2015, another large exercise. RBTH looked into what promises to be the main military drill of the year.
Tatyana Rusakova, RBTH
 
When?

The Center 2015 drill will begin on Sept. 14, following the current "massive surprise inspection" to check the combat readiness of the Central Military District, which finished on Sept. 12.
 
Where?

The drill will be held in the Central Military District, which includes the units stationed in the Urals, in the Volga Region and in some parts of Siberia, with the headquarters located in the city of Yekaterinburg.
 
Who?

Center 2015 will involve not just the district's land troops and the air force, but also the airborne units. Civilian emergency agencies, including rescue workers and civilian medical services, will also take part in the tests, which are designed to check how efficiently they can cooperate with the army. The exact number of personnel and hardware involved is unknown at this point, but the current inspection of the Central District units being held from Sept. 7 to Sept. 12 in the run-up to the drill involves 95,000 troops, over 7,000 land vehicles and about 170 airplanes.
 
What is the purpose of the drill?

According to a statement by Russia's Ministry of Defense, the aim of the exercise is primarily to prepare troops for missions in Central Asia, which Russia considers an important region in terms of security, and also to improve the efficiency of cooperation with Russia's CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) allies. Besides, the drill will serve as a preparatory phase for the upcoming joint exercise between Russia and Belarus, Shield of the Union 2015.
 
What kinds of missions will be simulated?

The drill will involve various missions intended to boost the efficiency of communication between personnel and the central command and to simulate peacekeeping operations controlled by the commander-in-chief of the ground forces. The army will also check the system of territorial defense and mobilization deployment. The drill will help to evaluate how fast the units can neutralize an attacking opponent and how efficiently they can use the advanced weapons and hardware. The tests are designed to be especially challenging to commanders of battalion tactical groups: To successfully resolve the simulated crisis situations, they will have to make decisions fast, use all of their available resources and think creatively, abandoning classical tactics.
 
How will the exercise affect the current international climate?

Foreign military attachés were briefed on the Center 2015 drill by the Defense Ministry on Sept. 7.

"The surprise inspection which is currently underway is in fact being held in preparation for the Center 2015 drill and is in no way linked to the recent changes in security and political climate in the world or in Central Asia," said Lieutenant-General Andrei Kartapolov, head of operations for the Russian General Staff, during the briefing.

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 #24
www.rt.com
September 14, 2015
Russia simulates international conflict in 'biggest war drills since Cold War'

More than 95,000 troops belonging to Russia and its regional allies have started the annual Center exercises that span from the Volga to Siberia.

"Center-2015 is the final step in the armed forces' military preparations during 2015," said a statement from the ministry of defense, which said that it conducted nearly 80 military drills in August alone, as well as an unannounced inspection of the troops involved in the exercises last week.

The war games will engage more than 7,000 pieces of armor, up to 170 planes and 20 warships. 20 different training ranges will be used as troops belonging to all security branches, including border guards, FSB and drug police, will make maneuvers ranging up to 6,000 km. The exercises are scheduled to finish on September 20.

"What we are seeing now has not been seen since the Cold War - late 1970s and early 1980s. The army isn't just testing out new vehicles, equipment and techniques, but is using ever greater resources for doing so," military historian Vyacheslav Filatov told Russia's army-sponsored Zvezda channel.

Kazakhstan will provide troops while other members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which also include Belarus, Armenia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, is sending officers to observe and take charge of segments of the drill.

The scenario for the war games sees the allied army attempting to localize an international threat coming from central Asia. Most troops will be purposefully operating in unfamiliar terrain, and there will be simulations of the need to treat of huge numbers of casualties, with "wounded" troops being delivered to mobile hospitals.

"While these maneuvers are defensive in their nature, NATO will be looking on with concern," military expert Sergey Fedorov told Zvezda. "They are astonished by the scale of the war games - it is something they have rarely seen, and would never practice themselves, restricting themselves only to limited situational drills."

Also starting Monday, about 1,000 troops from Latvia, with the same number being supplied by NATO allies, including US, UK and Germany, begun conventional training exercises in the country. A day earlier the alliance finished Swift Response 15, the biggest military exercises in Europe since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, involving about 5,000 soldiers.

Earlier in the month, the US deployed two MQ-1 Predator long-range unmanned surveillance drones and 70 airmen to Latvia on a training mission.

In May, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia jointly asked for permanent NATO bases, alleging that Russia has the capacity to invade them within four hours of ordering an attack. Moscow lashed out at the move, saying it contravenes the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act.

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#25
Valdai Discussion Club
http://valdaiclub.com
September 14, 2015
Situation on Oil Market: OPEC Factor
By Konstantin Simonov

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) marks today its 55th anniversary. In light of the upcoming anniversary, the Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency hosted a round-table conference, the attendees of which assessed the progress achieved by OPEC since its establishment and analyzed prices on the oil market. Moreover, they touched upon conjuncture around the volumes of production, sale and extraction on the oil markets, with regard to the lifting of anti-Iranian sanctions.

The round-table conference was attended by Anatoly Dmitriyevsky, Professor, Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), Director of the Institute for Oil and Gas Problems, RAS, Konstantin Simonov, Director General of the National Energy Security Fund, Vitaly Bushuyev, Professor, Director General of the Institute of Energy Strategy, member of the Committee for Energy Strategy and Fuel and Energy Complex, Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Stanislav Zhiznin, Professor at the MGIMO, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, President of the Center of Energy Diplomacy and Geopolitics, Alexander Kurdin, Head of the Strategic Energy Research Department, Analytical Center for the Government of the Russian Federation.

According to the experts, OPEC managed to coordinate and harmonize the oil policy of member states, effectively protecting their collective interests, and to significantly influence the oil prices on world markets.

Although the prices for "black gold" plummeted compared to the previous years, many analysts believe that OPEC's position remains pivotal in oil price formation. Anatoly Dmitriyevsky noted that the situation on the oil market was very hard to forecast at the moment, because it was influenced by many factors bearing down upon the price of oil. "In the past, if a tanker arrived with a delay, the oil price would react to that momentarily. Today, the situation in the Middle East, particularly, in Libya, and the Islamic State factor have its impact," he explained.

The expert emphasized the fact that the state of affairs on the oil market was unprecedented. When the price for oil started nosediving, Saudi Arabia declared that it would not persuade OPEC member states to react to the developments. However, OPEC had always been trying to retain direct influence of its states on the world oil market.

"Let the United States feel that the price for oil affects economies of many countries and requires a reaction. Ultimately, the US should take part in the process of oil price adjustment," Dmitriyevsky said.

In his turn, Konstantin Simonov divided the world into two camps, each trying to explain the oil price, depending on different positions. The first camp consists of market experts who interpret all fluctuations in oil prices solely as market conjuncture: a shift in supply and demand on the market. "In the early 2015, the oil price increased by 30%. Why did it happen if nothing changed in the structure of supply and nothing changed in the structure of demand? There are falls that cannot be explained," he opined.

In this respect, the expert noted that explaining everything through the lenses of market conjuncture was fruitless. The oil glut is 2-3 million barrels a day, taking into account that Russia extracts over 10 million barrels a day, a considerable volume. It is absolutely unclear where the surplus is stored. It appears that we have no clear and verifiable understanding of the developments on the oil market. That is why it should be understood that the market is exceptional, oil is an unconventional product.

Concerning the second camp, the expert believes that it appeals to financial instruments, in other words, to the amount of dollars. It is common knowledge that it exceeds the volume of money circulating on the oil futures market. Futures are deals that do not take the shape of physical shipments, yet their volume acts as a magnet guiding the marketable oil prices.

"In this context, a question arises: should we join OPEC? I am strongly against the idea. It has no point at all, at least because OPEC has not been influencing anything for a long time, the good old times of the cartel are over, and many members of the organization understand it well. I am afraid that this anniversary may become the last one, because OPEC has confronted the need to reformat itself," Director General of the National Energy Security Fund said.

Konstantin Simonov noted that a serious crisis in the relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran was appearing on the horizon. It is provoked by Tehran's demanding back the quotas it had been stripped of after the European Union's ban on purchase of Iranian oil.

Concerning forecasts for the "black gold" prices, the expert presumes that prices would not fall to $20-30 per barrel. "No matter what the US tells us about its shale projects, it is well-known that they are all very diverse and the price cannot fall below $50. If the price does fall, shale gas projects will start collapsing, because they will not be able to pay off," he explained.
 
In conclusion, the expert attested that Russia had no problems with crude sales. However, there are problems with extraction. Russia cannot boost extraction to benefit from the volumes, the way Saudis do. Nonetheless, the prime cost of most Russian projects is lower than world oil prices. It is below $10 per barrel in West Siberia, it will continue filling the budget with money even at that price. The mid-term forecast for the next one-two years is $50-75 per barrel. Yet, in the context of the current conjuncture, Simonov believes that starting Arctic oil extraction projects is unprofitable today, although, he notes, now is the time to "drive stakes into the territory" and develop the technological base.

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 #26
OPEC raises forecast for global oil demand in 2015, worsens outlook for 2016

VIENNA, September 14. /TASS/. OPEC raised its forecast for growth in the global oil demand in 2015 by 84,000 barrels per day, but lowered the forecast for 2016 by 50,000 barrels per day, OPEC said in the September report published Monday.

Now OPEC expects global oil demand in 2015 at 92.79 mln barrels per day, which is 1.46 mln barrels per day more than in 2014. Organization's experts explain improving the forecast by the positive dynamics of the basic economic indicators of the American and European countries, members of OECD.

The global oil demand in 2016, according to OPEC, is going to be above the level of 2015 by 1.29 mln barrels per day and will be about 94.08 mln barrels per day. The experts explain lowering the forecast for the demand in 2016 by the expectations of worsening economic indicators in Latin America and China.

In addition, OPEC lowered its forecast for growth in oil production by countries non-members of the organization in 2015 by 72,000 barrels per day against the August forecast. OPEC experts now expect this indicator to increase by 0.88 mln barrels per day in 2015 to 57.43 mln barrels per day.

OPEC lowered the forecast for this indicator in 2016 by 110,000 barrels per day and now forecasts the growth in the oil production by the non-OPEC countries by 160 barrels per day to 57.59 mln barrels per day.

At the same time, OPEC raised its forecast for oil demand growth of the member-countries in 2015 to 100,000 barrels per day. Thus, OPEC expects demand for its oil to grow by 400,000 barrels per day against 2014 to 29.3 mln barrels a day.

The forecast for oil demand by OPEC countries in 2016 was increased by 200,000 barrels per day and now OPEC is expects demand for its oil in 2016 at the level of 30.3 mln barrels per day, which is 1 mln barrels per day more than in 2015.

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 #27
Moscow Times
September 15, 2015
Russia Apathetic Over Corbyn Labour Victory
By Howard Amos

The election of Jeremy Corbyn to lead Britain's Labour Party over the weekend barely caused a stir in Russia - despite mainstream media in Britain and political rivals of the opposition party leader dubbing him a friend of Moscow and apologist for President Vladimir Putin.

The news appeared to generate almost no interest in Russia, with even state-owned Russian television channels carrying little or no information on Corbyn's landslide victory.

Corbyn's appearances on Kremlin-controlled English-language television network RT, his criticism of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and his stance over the conflict in Ukraine prompted fears in Britain that he could become the latest object of Kremlin efforts to strengthen ties with radical European political movements - in what some see as an attempt to exacerbate political divisions in the West as ties with Russia fray.

Left-wing Greek leader Alexis Tsipras built a closer relationship with Moscow after his Syriza party swept to power earlier this year, while France's far-right National Front party received a $11.4 million loan from a Russian bank in late 2014.

In a dry and factual four-minute piece aired Sunday on the election of Corbyn to the Labour leadership, state-owned Rossia 24 merely noted: "Corbyn is an opponent of NATO's expansion to the east and thinks that events in Ukraine were provoked by the alliance."

British newspapers and public figures, on the other hand, have made much of Corbyn's alleged Kremlin sympathies.

Last month, Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper published an article - based on the assertions of one Russian foreign policy analyst - alleging "Russia would welcome Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader," while the Independent newspaper ran a piece on Aug. 11 titled "Jeremy Corbyn hints at warmer relations with Russia" based on an interview with RT in which Corbyn did not talk about Russia.

Corbyn's political opponents have made similar allegations. During a televised debate earlier this month, Labour leadership candidate Andy Burnham accused Corbyn of "making excuses for Putin."

But the longstanding left-winger has actually made very few direct statements about Russia or Putin. He has, however, commented several times on the Ukraine crisis, for which he has blamed NATO.

"[Ukraine] has been put under enormous pressure to come into the EU and NATO military orbit," Corbyn wrote in an article for Britain's left-wing Morning Star newspaper last April - after Russia's annexation of Crimea, but before Russian-backed separatists staged an uprising in the east of the country.

"NATO has sought to expand since the end of the Cold War. It has increased its military capability and expenditure. It operates way beyond its original 1948 area and its attempt to encircle Russia is one of the big threats of our time," Corbyn wrote.

In the same article, Corbyn said that "[Russia's behavior] is not unprovoked, and the right of people to seek a federal structure or independence should not be denied."

Challenged more recently on the topic during a Sept. 1 televised debate, Corbyn appeared to moderate his position. "I'm not a supporter of Putin, Russian expansion or anybody else's expansion. I thought that NATO's excessive and obsessive expansion since 1990 has been a problem," he said.

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 #28
www.rt.com
September 15, 2015
Putin: ISIS has designs on Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, endangers Europe & Russia

Islamic State has designs on the holy cities of Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem and endangers Europe and Russia, Vladimir Putin said. Moscow is concerned about IS-trained jihadists returning to EU countries, the CIS and Russia.

The situation is very serious, Putin said, adding that Moscow is very worried that IS terrorists are publicly announcing their designs on Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. The jihadists also plan to spread their activities to Europe, Russia, central and southeastern Asia.

"Extremists from many countries of the world, including, unfortunately, European counties, Russia and the  Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) undertake ideological and military training in the ranks of Islamic State [IS, formerly known as ISIS/ISIL]," said Putin, speaking at the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) summit in Tajikistan's capital, Dushanbe. "And certainly we are worried that they could possibly return."

Putin said it's necessary for geopolitical ambitions to be set aside in the fight against IS terrorists.

"Simple common sense, responsibility for global and regional safety require uniting efforts of the international community [to fight] such a threat. It is necessary to set aside geopolitical ambitions, drop so-called double standards, the policy of direct or indirect use of separate terrorist groups for achieving own goals, including removing the governments and regimes."

Russia is supporting the Syrian government in its fight against terrorism and will continue its support, Putin said.

"We give technical-military support to Damascus and will continue doing it," he said. "And we call on other countries to join us in this."

Both Bashar Assad's government and the opposition forces should unite to battle the jihadists, Putin stressed.

"Now we have to unite the efforts of the Syrian government and the Kurdish self-defense forces and the so-called moderate opposition, and other countries in the [Middle East] region to fight the threat to Syria's statehood and terrorism."

Russia is calling for uniting the efforts of all forces eager to fight terrorism, said the Russian leader.

"Russia, as you know, has proposed to form a wide coalition to fight extremists without any delay. It [the coalition] should unite everyone who is ready and is already contributing to tackling terrorism."

The activities of the IS jihadist group go beyond Iraq and Syria. The Russian president mentioned that the militants' influence is also spreading in another war-torn country in the region - Afghanistan.

"Unfortunately the situation in the country [Afghanistan] is degrading after the withdrawal of most foreign troops," Putin said, adding there is a real threat that terror groups from neighboring countries may infiltrate the area.

Putin once again dismissed the accusations against Russia claiming the recent influx of refugees in EU countries was allegedly prompted by Moscow supporting the legitimate government of Syria.

"People are fleeing Syria, first of all, because of military actions ... from atrocities of terrorists - we know they are committing brutalities there, and destroying cultural heritage.

"If Russia had not been supporting Syria, the situation in the country would have been worse than in Libya and the refugee flow would have been even bigger," Putin said.

He added that it was not Russia who destabilized the situation in such countries as Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and other regions of the world.

"It was not us who destroyed government institutions there creating the power vacuum, which is immediately filled by terrorists," he concluded.

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 #29
The Guardian (UK)
September 15, 2015
West 'ignored Russian offer in 2012 to have Syria's Assad step aside'
Exclusive: Senior negotiator describes rejection of alleged proposal - since which time tens of thousands have been killed and millions displaced
By Julian Borger and Bastien Inzaurralde

Russia proposed more than three years ago that Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, could step down as part of a peace deal, according to a senior negotiator involved in back-channel discussions at the time.

Former Finnish president and Nobel peace prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari said western powers failed to seize on the proposal. Since it was made, in 2012, tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions uprooted, causing the world's gravest refugee crisis since the second world war.

Ahtisaari held talks with envoys from the five permanent members of the UN security council in February 2012. He said that during those discussions, the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, laid out a three-point plan, which included a proposal for Assad to cede power at some point after peace talks had started between the regime and the opposition.

But he said that the US, Britain and France were so convinced that the Syrian dictator was about to fall, they ignored the proposal.

"It was an opportunity lost in 2012," Ahtisaari said in an interview.

Officially, Russia has staunchly backed Assad through the four-and-half-year Syrian war, insisting that his removal cannot be part of any peace settlement. Assad has said that Russia will never abandon him. Moscow has recently begun sending troops, tanks and aircraft in an effort to stabilise the Assad regime and fight Islamic State extremists.

Ahtisaari won the Nobel prize in 2008 "for his efforts on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts", including in Namibia, Aceh in Indonesia, Kosovo and Iraq.

On 22 February 2012 he was sent to meet the missions of the permanent five nations (the US, Russia, UK, France and China) at UN headquarters in New York by The Elders, a group of former world leaders advocating peace and human rights that has included Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, and former UN secretary general Kofi Annan.

"The most intriguing was the meeting I had with Vitaly Churkin because I know this guy," Ahtisaari recalled. "We don't necessarily agree on many issues but we can talk candidly. I explained what I was doing there and he said: 'Martti, sit down and I'll tell you what we should do.'

"He said three things: One - we should not give arms to the opposition. Two - we should get a dialogue going between the opposition and Assad straight away. Three - we should find an elegant way for Assad to step aside."

Churkin declined to comment on what he said had been a "private conversation" with Ahtisaari. The Finnish former president, however, was adamant about the nature of the discussion.

"There was no question because I went back and asked him a second time," he said, noting that Churkin had just returned from a trip to Moscow and there seemed little doubt he was raising the proposal on behalf of the Kremlin.

Ahtisaari said he passed on the message to the American, British and French missions at the UN, but he said: "Nothing happened because I think all these, and many others, were convinced that Assad would be thrown out of office in a few weeks so there was no need to do anything."

While Ahtisaari was still in New York, Kofi Annan was made joint special envoy on Syria for the UN and the Arab League. Ahtisaari said: "Kofi was forced to take up the assignment as special representative. I say forced because I don't think he was terribly keen. He saw very quickly that no one was supporting anything."

In June 2012, Annan chaired international talks in Geneva, which agreed a peace plan by which a transitional government would be formed by "mutual consent" of the regime and opposition. However, it soon fell apart over differences on whether Assad should step down. Annan resigned as envoy a little more than a month later, and Assad's personal fate has been the principal stumbling block to all peace initiatives since then.

Last week, Britain's foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, suggested that as part of a peace deal, Assad could remain in office during a six-month "transitional period" but the suggestion was quickly rejected by Damascus.

Western diplomats at the UN refused to speak on the record about Ahtisaari's claim, but pointed out that after a year of the Syrian conflict, Assad's forces had already carried out multiple massacres, and the main opposition groups refused to accept any proposal that left him in power. A few days after Ahtisaari's visit to New York, Hillary Clinton, then US secretary of state, branded the Syrian leader a war criminal.
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Sir John Jenkins - a former director of the Middle East department of the UK's Foreign Office who was preparing to take up the post of ambassador to Saudi Arabia in the first half of 2012 - said that in his experience, Russia resisted any attempt to put Assad's fate on the negotiating table "and I never saw a reference to any possible flexing of this position".

Jenkins, now executive director of the Middle East branch of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said in an email: "I think it is true that the general feeling was Assad wouldn't be able to hold out. But I don't see why that should have led to a decision to ignore an offer by the Russians to get him to go quickly, as long as that was a genuine offer.

"The weakest point is Ahtisaari's claim that Churkin was speaking with Moscow's authority. I think if he had told me what Churkin had said, I would have replied I wanted to hear it from [President Vladimir] Putin too before I could take it seriously. And even then I'd have wanted to be sure it wasn't a Putin trick to draw us in to a process that ultimately preserved Assad's state under a different leader but with the same outcome."

A European diplomat based in the region in 2012 recalled: "At the time, the west was fixated on Assad leaving. As if that was the beginning and the end of the strategy and then all else would fall into place ... Russia continuously maintained it wasn't about Assad. But if our heart hung on it, they were willing to talk about Assad; mind: usually as part of an overall plan, process, at some point etc. Not here and now."

However, the diplomat added: "I very much doubt the P3 [the US, UK and France] refused or dismissed any such strategy offer at the time. The questions were more to do with sequencing - the beginning or end of process - and with Russia's ability to deliver - to get Assad to step down."

At the time of Ahtisaari's visit to New York, the death toll from the Syrian conflict was estimated to be about 7,500. The UN believes that toll passed 220,000 at the beginning of this year, and continues to climb. The chaos has led to the rise of Islamic State. Over 11 million Syrians have been forced out of their homes.

"We should have prevented this from happening because this is a self-made disaster, this flow of refugees to our countries in Europe," Ahtisaari said. "I don't see any other option but to take good care of these poor people ... We are paying the bills we have caused ourselves."

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 #30
Sic Semper Tyrannis
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/
September 14, 2015
French Military Intelligence Cautious about Russian Military Build-up in Syria
By Patrick BAHZAD

Amid wide speculations about Russian troops' and logistics' moves to and from Syria, the director of French "Direction du Renseignement Militaire" (DRM) - the counterpart to America's DIA - went on the record on Friday, stating that "cool heads need to prevail with regard to Russian involvement in Syria".

Speaking at a conference about "Intelligence and Geolocation", General Gomart emphasized that it was important to "let reason prevail" and that some of the most recent news published in various media outlets were subject to a risk of "intelligence manipulation". According to General Gomart, some "95 % of intelligence is based on open sources of all kinds", which means the real worry is the reliability of this information.  

This applies also to most pieces published in recent days about the Russian presence in Syria. As a comparison, General Gomart went as far as giving the example of Ukraine in 2014, when a wealth of stories surfaced, forecasting a Russian invasion before the end of the summer. Photographs of Russian units allegedly operating on the Ukrainian border, or already inside the country, had been published repeatedly, together with stories about a "pre-invasion" military build-up.

According to the director of French DRM, these stories had blown the reality on the ground totally out of proportion, with no "logistics" such as field hospitals or fuel pipelines actually being provided for. The number of "heavy armour" also proved to be greatly exaggerated. Furthermore, and contrary to stories about large numbers of Russian soldiers coming home in "body bags", monitoring of social media revealed no increase in traffic, nor any uptake in messages confirming or even suggesting an increase in combat related deaths.

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 #31
Sputnik
September 15, 2015
Russia Has No Plans to Build Military Air Base in Syria

Earlier, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Davis said that the US military is seeing movement of people and equipment, which may indicate that the Russians are planning to set up a base south of Latakia.

However, Russian military experts have said that Russia is not planning to build a military air base in Syria, RIA Novosti reported.

According to Russian former head of the International Treaty Directorate of the Defense Ministry Lieutenant-General Yevgeny Buzhinsky, construction of the Russian air base near Latakia is disadvantageous as it would require spending considerable time and resources, which seems unreasonable in the current conditions.

"There is no sense in creating a military air base there (Syria). Judge for yourself: it is a very expensive and technically complex thing that cannot be done in just a few months," the expert said.

The spokesman did say that the Russian side could well assist Syria in the reconstruction of the field aerodrome, the aim of which would be receiving humanitarian aid.

"If our military is doing anything over there, it is likely that it is connected with the renovation of the runway to receive aircraft with cargo, including humanitarian aid," Buzhinskiy said.

It was reported that the installation of new lighting and radio equipment on the airfield and reconstruction work on the runway is underway in Latakia.

Buzhinsky stressed that the reconstruction of the runway in Latakia is justified, in view of the increasing threat of ISIL terrorists taking over Damascus airport.

The former Chief of the Main Directorate of International Military Cooperation of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Leonid Ivashov, said that the statement released by the Pentagon is mere propaganda and is not supported by actual facts.

"As far as I know, there are no plans to create an air base near Latakia. It is fictional Western propaganda. Building military installations and signing agreements on military-technical cooperation with sovereign states is our legitimate right and no one has the right interfere in that," he said.

The expert recalled that the US itself has about 700 bases and military facilities in overseas territories.

"In carrying out military-technical cooperation with Syria, Russia is helping to protect the people of the Syrian Arab Republic from aggression which was organized with the help of the United States," he added.

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 #32
Moscow Times
September 15, 2015
Allegations of Russian Troops Reflect Battle Over Syria's Future
By Ivan Nechepurenko

Russia is not planning a full-scale military invasion in Syria, but it will protect its main asset - the regime of President Bashar Assad - to the extent it can, analysts told The Moscow Times amid a flood of unconfirmed reports of an increasing Russian presence in the Middle Eastern country.

Despite a common interest in countering the spread of Islamic terrorism in the Middle East, Russia and the West are still at loggerheads over the fate of Syria and are attempting to put pressure on each other instead of solving a shared problem, they said.

While the West sees Assad as an obstacle in the fight against the Islamic radicals, Russia sees him as the main bulwark against the extremists. The West blames Russia for defending Assad at a time when a democratic change of government could have stopped the spiraling civil war and the rise of the Islamic State and al-Qaida in Syria. Russia claims that the West's support of the opposition strengthened the hand of Islamic militants.

Assad is Russia's main and only asset in Syria, and if he is toppled, then Russia's influence in Syria is gone, said Alexei Malashenko, head of the religion, society and security program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a think tank.

"Russia's main interest is to keep Assad in power, even if it is only to rule part of Syria's territory. If there is a Russian military presence there, it will be more difficult to topple him - the West already sees it as upping the ante," said Malashenko in a phone interview.

"Nevertheless, having a Russian military contingent there would be insane, we have already had [a drawn-out war in] Afghanistan," he said.

Russian activity has been reported in the Latakia region, the stronghold of Assad and the Alawite religious group that he belongs to.

Experts polled by The Moscow Times ruled out the possibility of Syria returning to its prewar status quo: Assad's forces control only a fraction of the country's territory. Interested parties are therefore currently fighting for influence in postwar Syria.

"The Kremlin's primary motive is that the problems of the Middle East should be solved according to its design - not anyone else's. And Russia's design implies significant Russian influence remaining in the Middle Eastern region," said James Nixey, head of the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House, an international affairs think tank based in London.

"Russia's insistence that Assad is part of the solution appears to be holding strong compared to the West's attitude that he is part of the problem," he said in written comments.

No Evidence

No firm evidence of Russian troops participating in any actual combat in Syria had emerged by the time of this article's publication. Numerous news agencies and media outlets have cited unidentified sources as giving fragmented information.

Two unidentified U.S. officials told Reuters on Friday that about 200 Russian infantry forces are "believed" to be stationed at an airfield near the city of Latakia, where they are preparing it for future use, and on Monday, the news agency cited two U.S. officials as saying Russia had positioned seven T-90 tanks and defensive artillery at the airfield.

According to another Reuters report that cited an unidentified Western diplomat, Russia is delivering an advanced Pantsir-S1 (NATO classification: SA-22 Greyhound) anti-aircraft missile system to Syria that will be operated by Russian troops.

Russia has issued an international warning to airlines about navy drills it is conducting 70 kilometers off Syria's shores in the Mediterranean from Sept. 8 to 17, according to a record published on the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's website. Russia maintains its only Mediterranean naval facility in Tartus on the Syrian coast.

The reason Russia's military presence has come into the spotlight in recent weeks is because the West itself is planning a more active military engagement there, said Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of the Middle East Institute, a Moscow-based think tank.

"What Russia is doing is preventing a Libya scenario for Syria, when then-President Dmitry Medvedev trusted the West to handle it and we now see a country in ruins," said Satanovsky in a phone interview.

"Russia will not have troops on the ground, but it will prevent that scenario," he said.

The U.S. military and its allies continued to bombard Islamic State militants on Friday with 22 air strikes in Iraq and three in Syria, Reuters reported Saturday.

In 2011, Russia supported a UN resolution on Libya that permitted the imposition of a no-fly zone over the country and the use of "all necessary means" - except that of a foreign occupation force - to protect civilians. Russia later accused NATO forces of going beyond that resolution in order to depose Libya's then-leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Speaking to journalists in Vladivostok, President Vladimir Putin said on Sept. 4 that direct Russian involvement in Syria is "not on our agenda," though the Kremlin is "considering various scenarios."

Putin will address the Syrian crisis along with other matters during his speech at the United Nations General Assembly at the end of this month, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian TV station Channel One in an interview on Sunday.

"There were military supplies [to Syria], they are ongoing and they will continue. They are inevitably accompanied by Russian specialists, who help to adjust the equipment, to train Syrian personnel how to use these weaponry. There are no secrets about this," Lavrov said in the interview.

Lavrov said that he could not agree that Russia's approach toward the Syrian crisis "has radically changed."

Deliberate Confusion

Olga Oliker, director of the Center for Russia and Eurasia at the U.S.-based RAND corporation think tank, said that even though it is unlikely that Russia will participate in the Syria conflict directly, it will still support the Assad regime to the extent it can.

"The Kremlin sees it as in its interest to keep everybody confused about what it is doing, whether there is a serious military buildup or not. Confusion is good because it keeps your options open," said Oliker in a phone interview.

Delivering weapons to Syria gives Russia a solid justification for having military servicemen there too. Therefore, Russia can fine tune its presence there in accordance with the situation without giving much public notice, Oliker said.

"Above all, people don't always realize that Russia is very concerned about how the spread of Islamic extremism in the Middle East will affect its own internal security," she added.

U.S. President Barack Obama said in a town hall meeting with U.S. military servicemen and women on Friday that while Moscow and Washington's interests on fighting Islamic terrorism "can converge," Assad is still a bone of contention.

"Despite our conflicts with Russia in areas like Ukraine, this is an area of potentially converging interests, the bad news is that Russia continues to believe that Assad, who is their traditional partner, is somebody worthy of continuing support," Obama told military personnel in televised comments.

"It appears that Assad is worried enough that he invited Russian advisers in and Russian equipment in. That would not change our core strategy which is to continue to put pressure on IS [Islamic State] in Iraq and Syria, but we are going to be engaging Russia to let them know that you can't continue to double down on a strategy that is doomed to fail," said Obama.

Assad's government has suffered a number of painful defeats in recent months. After a two-year siege, rebels from al-Qaida's al-Nusra Front and other Islamic factions seized the Abu al-Duhur military airport from Assad-loyal forces, driving government troops from their last stronghold in the country's Idlib province, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported last week.

Speaking to journalists in Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said that reports of Russian military activities received "largely through the media" had prompted Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss Syria developments with Lavrov.

In the phone conversation last week, Kerry told Lavrov that a Russian military buildup in Syria "could further escalate the conflict, lead to greater loss of innocent life, increase refugee flows and risk confrontation with the anti-Islamic State coalition operating in Syria," according to a State Department statement.

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 #33
Gazeta.ru
September 10, 2015
West should not hinder Russia's actions in Syria - analyst
Fedor Lukyanov, chief editor of Russia in Global Affairs magazine: Alawite Israel; Fedor Lukyanov on why growth in Russian military presence in Syria benefits everyone except ISIL

When, in 2011, at the height of the "Arab spring", protests broke out in Syria against the autocracy of the religious minority headed by Bashar al-Asad, opinions were divided as to what awaited the country.

Commentators in the West, Turkey and in the Persian Gulf countries mainly expected the speedy collapse of the regime in Damascus either in accordance with the Tunisian pattern (through internal revolt) or in accordance with the Libyan model (with outside intervention). Especially given that sympathies were wholly on the side of the insurgents.

In Russia people pointed to how the Syrian case differed from the others. A population heterogeneous in ethnic, religious and ideological terms, a quite effective army, a consolidated ruling class aware that what was at stake was not simply power but physical survival, powerful support from Iran, for whom the question of maintaining the status quo is of vital importance, and so on. And they concluded that the "domino effect" would at least come to a standstill with Syria.

The course of events has shown that Moscow had a more precise understanding of Syrian specifics.

And the position taken by Russia (unshakably in support of official Damascus and categorically opposed to any external intervention), which 2-3 years ago seemed undeniably doomed, has suddenly proved to be if not the winning ticket, than at least the most consistent stance.

Between 2011 and 2015 the situation in the country has of course steadily deteriorated, but has refuted forecasts of the inevitability of destruction through revolution. And the Kremlin's fury over how its compromise stance on the Libyan issue ended has fed its intransigence over Syria and blocked any attempts to legitimize a potential regime change in Damascus.

A lot has happened on this path, including the almost-launched but cancelled US war against Syria, the surprisingly smooth, even by the yardsticks of peace time, operation to remove and destroy chemical weapons, and the endless attempts to unite the opposition and to find a common platform between Al-Asad's opponents and supporters. But today that is all in the past.

The explosive emergence of "Islamic State" [ISIL] has thrown everything in the air. The former Syria no longer exists, and whether it will survive in at least some form is an open question.

Yet the issue of how and at what speed the process of the collapse of the Middle East state and political structure model put together in the 20th century takes place depends on the answer to that question. And whereas a couple of years ago some people may still have had illusions regarding the beneficence of the region's democratic awakening, today no illusions remain. Nor, indeed, are there illusions that the "good old" pattern which existed only recently can be preserved or restored.

Indirect information about the stepping-up of Moscow's military support for Damascus, combined with Russian representatives' evasive statements, allow us to suppose that Russia has decided to take a far more active part in the crisis. The situation on the spot is impossibly confused - all players are involved in multi-level conflicts. Al-Asad's forces against ISIL and against what is usually called the moderate opposition. ISIL against Al-Asad and the opposition, even though its by no means cohesive ranks include radical Islamists, the opposition against everyone. And that is without even counting the Kurds, for instance, who also have their own war against Turkey which, under the guise of fighting ISIL (an organization officially banned in Russia - Gazeta.ru), is trying to resolve the Kurdish issue.

It is hard to imagine that a Syrian settlement will emerge from this military-political mess, and the intensive diplomatic process aimed at setting up a "Geneva 3" or some other forum to develop a new system for the country looks like desperate optimism with no clear foundation. Especially given that there is still no united position on this score among the outside players. And the creation of a coalition government (an undeniably problematic form even in the most stable and democratic of states) under the conditions of overall collapse is a very risky venture.

The Russian leadership can scarcely suppose that the expansion of various forms of support to Damascus will radically alter the state of affairs. The Syria which was seen as an ally of the USSR and then of Russia no longer exists.

In Syria and indeed in the Middle East as a whole now there can be no "victory", strictly speaking. Russian diplomats have always asserted that it is not to do with Al-Asad but is a matter of principle ("do no harm" and "do not interfere") whose main aim was the defence of the status quo. That policy has not worked - there is no longer any status quo in Syria. Most likely it was doomed, and the fight over Al-Asad has merely dragged out the process.

The Western view is that because of this delay it is not the supposed opponents, but ISIL that has become the real alternative to the incumbent regime. The Russian view is that the West's dogmatism has wrecked the chances of a soft transformation of Syrian power. However that may be, we are now talking about whether ISIL's entry into Damascus, which would have a very powerful propaganda effect, will be successfully prevented.

The Syrian capital is one of the Arab world's cultural and historical capitals and a part of the European civilization heritage. Its fall will be a symbol of the irreversible retreat of modernity from the Middle East. Indeed, the tens and now hundreds of thousands of refugees from the region who have flooded Europe have understood this. Where the future is decked in ISIL colours, there is no role for society's modernized stratum.

In what event could Russian efforts be seen as a success? Speaking realistically, it is the creation de facto of a semblance of an "Alawite Israel" - an enclave capable of defending itself with foreign support which would serve as an obstacle to ISIL's uncontrolled expansion. Of course the analogy is highly notional but the mechanism is similar. The alternative (here again there is a parallel compelling us to recall Jewish history) is the departure of ethnic and religious minorities and of the enlightened section of the population which, as we can see, is already happening.

The intensive diplomatic contacts of last summer, when a succession of Middle East visitors travelled to Moscow, makes us suppose that Russia's current activation should come as no surprise to the rest.

Objectively, Moscow's readiness to take a risk for the sake of preserving an "Alawite Israel" is to the advantage of everyone except ISIL.

The Western leaders, it is true, are lining up to express their dissatisfaction and concern at the growth of the Russian military presence in Syria, although at the same time David Cameron for one is calling for resolute intervention to defeat ISIL.

If you consider that the defeat of ISIL is possible and that following it there will again arise a battle to control Syria, then Western fears are justified: They are very much against Russia laying claim to an important role in a future Syria. However, a more likely scenario is nonetheless not ISIL's defeat by the forces of an international coalition and not Syria's resurrection on a new basis, but the consolidation of the Islamists' opponents on limited territories and an ongoing gruelling battle for survival.

In that event it would make straightforward sense for the West not to hinder Russia's actions but if possible to assist them. However, the entire recent history of the Middle East and external forces' attitude to it attest that the latter have almost lost the ability to analyse what is happening without ideological prejudice and personal emotions.

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 #34
Antiwar.com
September 14, 2015
Is Russia Invading Syria?
By Justin Raimondo
ustin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].

Having given up waiting for the supposedly "imminent" Russian assault on Kiev, which we've been told for lo these many months is coming down the pike momentarily, our new cold warriors are now in a frenzy over the sudden discovery of a Russian presence in Syria. It started in the Israeli media, and then spread outward in waves, emanating various levels of hysteria. Ynet "reported":

"According to Western diplomats, a Russian expeditionary force has already arrived in Syria and set up camp in an Assad-controlled airbase. The base is said to be in area surrounding Damascus, and will serve, for all intents and purposes, as a Russian forward operating base.

"In the coming weeks thousands of Russian military personnel are set to touch down in Syria, including advisors, instructors, logistics personnel, technical personnel, members of the aerial protection division, and the pilots who will operate the aircraft."

The Western media soon took up the cry: "The Russians are coming!" But by the time this old cold war meme spread to Reuters "thousands" had inexplicably shrunk down to what sounded more like dozens. Unnamed US officials pointed to "a small number of naval infantry forces." Oh, but don't worry, the Russians are coming: "They have started in small numbers," one anonymous Lebanese source confided to Reuters, "but the bigger force did not yet take part." Where is this "bigger force"? No doubt right behind those Russian troops who have been about to march on Kiev for the past year or so.

Aside from the inflated numbers of this "Russian expeditionary force," there is also the overwrought response to the addition of a few more Russian advisors on the scene: after all, as Ishaan Tharoor points out in the Washington Post, there is nothing new about the Russian presence in Syria. They've been there since 1971, when Leonid Brezhnev signed an agreement with Hafez al-Assad, father of Bashar al-Assad, the current head of the Ba'athist regime. Russia has been a major source of weapons for the Syrian military, and many top Ba'athist officials were educated in the old Soviet Union. In short, there is nothing new about the Russo-Syrian alliance: Putin has backed Assad in his war against the Islamist rebels from the get-go.

So why is the media now in a frothy-mouthed frenzy over this latest "discovery" of Russian "aggression"? Why is John Kerry on the phone with the Kremlin warning them to back off?

ISIS is edging toward central Damascus, and is already in the suburbs. US airstrikes have been ineffective, and indeed the "everything's coming up roses" scenario officially promulgated by the Obama regime has been thoroughly debunked by rebellious intelligence analysts, who have a far different story to tell.

The reality is that Washington's real target in Syria isn't ISIS, it's Assad. The phony war against the Islamic State has enabled the would-be Caliphate to expand its control of territory until the very existence of the Ba'athist regime is now problematic. The US program that is supposed to be training "moderate" Islamist rebels wound up deploying around 50 "vetted" fighters - who were promptly killed and captured by Al Qaeda, including the leader. And their captors were more than likely former US-funded "moderates," who have defected to ISIS and al-Nusra (Al Qaeda) in droves.

The US has repeatedly rejected Russian attempts to parlay a peaceful settlement that would include the Ba'athist regime, and specifically Assad, as one of the participants. The "moderate" rebels, such as they are, also reject such a proposal - and of course ISIS and al-Nusra, the Syrian affiliate of the official Al-Qaeda organization, are interested only in deposing the "infidel" Assad and slaughtering those Christians, Alawites, and Druze still resident in Syria.

Washington's alignment with the Islamists goes much further, however, as the line between "moderate" Islamists and "extremists" - never clear to begin with - gets blurrier by the hour. For now we have none other than former CIA chief David Petraeus calling for an alliance with "moderate" elements in Al Qaeda.

"Members of al Qaeda's branch in Syria have a surprising advocate in the corridors of American power: retired Army general and former CIA Director David Petraeus.

"The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has been quietly urging US officials to consider using so-called moderate members of al Qaeda's Nusra Front to fight ISIS in Syria, four sources familiar with the conversations, including one person who spoke to Petraeus directly, told The Daily Beast.

"The heart of the idea stems from Petraeus's experience in Iraq in 2007, when as part of a broader strategy to defeat an Islamist insurgency the US persuaded Sunni militias to stop fighting with al Qaeda and to work with the American military."

Given his former job, one has to wonder if this is a proposal or a defense of an ongoing policy. Before his disgrace in a sex-and-security scandal, Petraeus was certainly in a position to carry out this loopy idea. Indeed, he argued for arming the Syrian rebels, along with then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Obama vetoed the plan, which would have put US arms in the hands of radical Islamists, but who knows what shenanigans Petraeus and his fellow spooks were up to before the President put the kibosh on his plan? We know that arms from fallen Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi's storehouses found their way to the Syrian battlefield. How did they get there? We know that entire platoons of US-trained "moderate" rebels defected to ISIS and al-Nusra almost as soon as they hit the battlefield - but who "vetted" them?

The Petraeus proposal merely makes explicit what was our covert policy all along: the destruction of Assad's regime even if that means handing Syria over to the folks who brought down the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon.

The Russians have good reason to fear a jihadist state in Syria, what with the Chechen Islamists marauding throughout the Caucasus and central Asia. They are quite well aware that Washington would like to do to Putin what they're doing to Assad - and that the West has no compunctions about allying with the heirs of Osama bin Laden in order to pull it off. US and British support to the Chechens is a matter of record - yet more evidence that the vaunted "war on terrorism" is just a façade for the same old regime-change game.

The Syrian government, in spite of its brutality, enjoys widespread support - after all, consider the alternative. It is also the only major fighting force on the ground resisting the advance of ISIS and Al Qaeda. To demand Assad's ouster while claiming to fight "terrorism" is absurd. And remember that the same people who are self-righteously declaring "Assad must go" because he's not a nice guy are openly backing the Saudis in their vicious assault on Yemen, where thousands are being slaughtered in a merciless air campaign made possible by US complicity.

This is where we are fourteen years after 9/11 - in a de facto alliance with radical jihadists who want to establish a "caliphate" in Syria.

Oh, and by the way: we have always been at war with Eastasia.

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 #35
The National Interest
September 11, 2015
Moscow's Moves in Syria: 5 Messages Russia Is Sending to the World
By Nikolas K. Gvosdev
Nikolas Gvosdev is a contributing editor at The National Interest and co-author of Russian Foreign Policy: Vectors, Sectors and Interests (CQ Press, 2013). The views expressed here are his own.

As Russian ships and planes continue to deposit additional personnel and equipment in Syria, here are five geopolitical messages Russian president Vladimir Putin is sending to the world:

One: Reports of Russia's demise have been greatly exaggerated. In other words, the narrative that Western sanctions plus falling oil prices combined with China's economic slowdown have brought the Kremlin to the edge of collapse is quite premature. Russia has only a fraction of U.S. global power projection capabilities but in its ability to send forces to Syria it still ranks among a select few countries-with more European countries prepared to fall off that list-who can send and sustain military forces beyond their immediate borders. The Kremlin is clearly signaling that it plans to take an active role in setting the agenda in the Middle East-and not to passively accept an American vision for how the future should unfold.

Second: Putin is making it clear that he will not accept Washington's default position that the removal of a brutal strongman from power is a path to greater long-term stability in the Middle East. And while the United States and Europe continue to debate their next moves, particularly in the wake of the migrant crisis, Russia is prepared to act on its assessment that more direct military assistance to aid Assad in combating the Islamic State is the best way to end the conflict. Putin has repeatedly indicated that if the goal of Western policy is to reduce the flow of refugees and decrease the threat of Islamic terrorism gaining a new Afghanistan-style base of operations, then the experience of Iraq and Libya suggests that overthrowing Assad and hoping the opposition can form a more effective and stable state administration will not achieve these ends. Having reached this conclusion, Putin is uninterested in asking for the West's permission or Washington's blessing.

Third: Russia is more confident of its position in Ukraine. The uptick in violence over the summer has receded, with the cease-fire again largely appearing to be holding. At the same time, Ukraine's ongoing domestic political and economic woes suggest that there will be no major breakthrough that will solidify the Maidan revolution and put the country on an irreversible path towards closer integration with the Euro-Atlantic world. Instead, things appear to be settling down into a protracted frozen conflict where Moscow retains most of the leverage.

Forth: The Kremlin enforces its red lines. Just as Moscow would not permit the separatists to face catastrophic defeat last summer in Ukraine, Russia has signaled that it will not sit by and allow Bashar al- Assad to be overthrown or removed by outside military action. With more Russian forces on the ground, and reportedly augmenting Assad's air defense capabilities, the risk calculus for any sort of U.S. or NATO action against Assad's government has dramatically increased. Even more limited proposals; such as enforcing a no-fly zone to create protected space on the ground for refugees now opens up the possibility for a clash with Russian forces.

And Fifth: Russia's willingness to put "boots on the ground" in Syria, in contrast to a increasingly desperate search on Washington's part for local proxies willing and able to fight both Assad and ISIS and the reluctance of key U.S. allies to take on more of the burden, serves several purposes. It reassures Russian partners that Moscow is prepared to meet its pledges even if there is a cost in terms of resources, lives, and reputation. This has not gone unnoticed in places like Egypt and Azerbaijan, where governments question the depth of the American commitment to their well-being. For Middle Eastern countries that have opposed Russian policy in Syria, Putin's decision to up the ante may lead them to reassess whether the path to a viable settlement resides not in Washington, soon to be increasingly distracted by an election campaign, but through Moscow.

Putin's decision reflects an assessment that the risk of greater Russian involvement in Syria is outweighed by the dangers to Russian interests if Assad should fall. Russia will not be persuaded by strongly worded demarches to reverse its deployment. The United States, in charting its response, needs to be guided by a similar calculation of the ends it hopes to achieve with the means it is prepared to commit.

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 #36
The National Interest
September 15, 2015
Russia's Syria Surprise (And What America Should Do about It)
"Russian pride will not allow Moscow to join a U.S.-led coalition, but we should be able to work in parallel, coordinating air strikes and other actions for maximum effect in degrading ISIS."
By Thomas E. Graham
Thomas Graham was the senior director for Russian on the National Security Council staff, 2004-2007.

Russia's ongoing military buildup in Syria poses a serious challenge to American policy in the region. What response will best advance American interests in Syria and, more broadly, in the Middle East? That depends in large part on what Russia hopes to achieve.

So far, most Western commentators have argued that geopolitical considerations are driving Russian policy. At a minimum, Moscow wants to bolster a beleaguered Syrian president, its one sure ally in the region; more boldly, it hopes to gain some geopolitical advantage out of the deepening chaos throughout the region, exacerbated by doubts among leading Arab states about America's commitment to their security and its strategic acumen. There is some truth to that judgment, although Moscow likely sees its actions as more defensive than ambitious. Its efforts to sell arms to Arab States, especially major American partners such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, speak of regional aspirations. But Moscow is now focused on deteriorating conditions in Syria, which it no longer believes will survive in its current borders. As the map of Syria and the surrounding region is redrawn, Moscow is ramping up its presence to ensure that its interests are taken into account in any geopolitical reckoning.

Moreover, in the short term, Moscow is almost certainly focused more on the threats than the opportunities. Putin has made it clear that his goal is to counter the growing threat of ISIS in part by defending Assad.

The threat from ISIS is real: Indeed, in April, Foreign Minister Lavrov called it "the main threat" to Russia today. The reasons are many. Russian authorities estimate the number of Russian citizens who have joined ISIS at as high as 2,000. Many have returned home, presumably some to commit acts of terrorism, a fear fed by the mounting turmoil surrounding the migration crisis and similar concerns in Europe. ISIS supporters have been uncovered across Russia, including in and around Moscow. Moreover, jihadis long active in the Russian North Caucasus are drawing closer to ISIS. This summer, key leaders of the Caucasus Emirate, an umbrella group for terrorists in the region, switched their loyalty from Al Qaeda to ISIS, and the latter declared the North Caucasus a wilayat, or one of its provinces. At the same, ISIS has been fostering links with extremist forces throughout the fragile states of Central Asia along Russia's southern periphery.

Moscow argues that the Assad regime fields the only effective local force against ISIS. That is debatable; the Syrian military spends more time fighting moderate opposition forces than extremists. Closer to the truth is Moscow's fear that the only realistic alternative to Assad at the moment is one or another extremist force. The moderate opposition is few in number, poorly trained and badly provisioned. In addition, Moscow has no confidence that U.S.-sponsored regime change will bring peace and stability or rally Syrians against extremists; rather, it sees only further turmoil as the consequence. Given the record in Iraq and Libya, that fear is hardly unfounded.

These concerns are of such dimensions that Putin is prepared to run significant political risks to support Assad against ISIS. Rallying public support is not a slam-dunk. Syria is not Crimea or eastern Ukraine. Russians have no special affinity for the region; many are old enough to be haunted by memories of the war in Afghanistan. If, as polls suggest, most Russians are opposed to sending Russian troops to fight into Ukraine, we can probably be sure they will be less supportive of sending troops to fight in Syria. And the Kremlin will find it much harder to conceal the casualties there than in Ukraine, if it ultimately decides to commit its forces to combat. At the same time, with the demands of the Ukraine crisis on the Russian military, it will be stretched to sustain operations in Syria. Given the risks, the buildup is not likely a cynical play to whip up patriotic fervor and bolster Putin's domestic rating; it is rather an effort to defend Russian national interests.

So how should the United States respond? Certainly, Secretary Kerry's warning to Lavrov that Russia's actions could "escalate the conflict, lead to greater loss of innocent life, increase refugee flows and risk confrontation with the anti-ISIL Coalition operating in Syria" is inadequate. Pressure on allies to deny overflight clearance to Russian military cargo planes is ineffective since Russia has a choice of other routes. Rather, we need to prioritize our tasks so that we deal with the urgent while not sacrificing longer-term interests, and we need to consider how we could turn Russia's actions to our advantage.

The immediate threat is ISIS and other extremist forces. We should test Putin's claim that he wants to build a multinational coalition against ISIS, something he will likely press when he speaks at the United Nations later this month. Russian pride will not allow Moscow to join a U.S.-led coalition, but we should be able to work in parallel, coordinating air strikes and other actions for maximum effect in degrading ISIS. We should also enhance intelligence cooperation against ISIS in the Middle East and beyond. We would find out soon enough if Moscow is serious about fighting ISIS. If it is, we can step up cooperation. If not, we can adjust accordingly. We lose little by trying.

Second, we need to work with Moscow on a political transition in Syria, no matter how frustrating that might be. The beginning point is accepting that no one can put Syria back together again. A set of autonomous enclaves will likely emerge, if ISIS can be defeated, with the borders of some eventually extending beyond current Syrian territory. One of them will be for the Alawites, now led by Assad. The political transition will not begin with his ouster, although the Alawites themselves will likely jettison him at some point in the process. With their ties to Assad, and their deeper relations with the Alawite/Syrian regime, Moscow will be a key player in setting the boundaries of the enclaves. We would increase our leverage with Moscow, if we were finally prepared to undertake a concerted effort to build a moderate opposition to Assad, regardless of how formidable a challenge that might now appear to be.

Finally, the geopolitical competition in the Middle East will continue. Russia will be a factor but far from the most important one. Iran is now exercising the strategic initiative, and will continue to do so with or without Russian support. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel and Egypt-all American partners-will play a larger role than Russia in determining the contours of the new Middle East. And the United States' influence in the Middle East exceeds Russia's by orders of magnitude. Unlike Russia, we could play a decisive role in shaping the region's future, if only we had a strategy. Putin's Russia is not the reason we lack one, but maybe its actions in Syria will finally persuade us to devise one.

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 #37
The National Interest
September 15, 2015
Why Russia's Actions in Syria Are No Shocker
"[A]s Russia sees it, the result of this logjam will be war without let up in Syria and the strengthening of extremist forces."
By Rajan Menon
Rajan Menon is Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science at the Colin Powell School of the City College of New York / City University of New York and a Senior Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace at Columbia University. Most recent book His (coauthored with Eugene B. Rumer) is Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order (the MIT Press, 2015); next book his, The Conceit of HumanitarianIntervention, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2016.

A recent New York Times editorial castigated Russia for arming the embattled Assad regime and deploying military personnel to Syria. It's increasingly evident that the Kremlin is deepening its military presence in Syria to prop up a Syrian government that hovers near collapse and has lost control of large parts of its domain.

Yet the editorial's assessment of Russian conduct in Syria is suffused with naiveté and conceit. Worse, in its failure to say nary a word about the ways in which Washington has been using its own military power (whether directly or indirectly), including in Syria, or to mention the errors of America's Syrian policy, it is devoid of introspection, even honesty as well. None of this would matter were the Times piece not in sync with prevailing analyses of Russian actions in Syria, which are presented as an amalgam of mendacity and power grabbing.

These portrayals resonate with many in the West, and for understandable reasons, ones for which Russia bears much responsibility.

Vladimir Putin's government is turning steadily more authoritarian; true to age-old Russian tradition, the state swells, liberty shrinks. The pronouncements of the Russian political class these days evince a paranoid streak, and that is complemented by the bellicose rhetoric emanating from the Kremlin's panjandrums. Among the most outrageous examples of the latter is the boisterous Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, whose recent contributions to diplomatic discourse include the recommendation that Japanese protesters distressed by what they see as Russia's occupation of a clump of islands at the southern tip of the Kurile archipelago that are rightly Japan's should commit seppuku. The torrent of anti-American propaganda in the Russian media can be absurd, as witnessed by the comparison drawn between President Obama and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made by the tele-demagogue Dmitry Kiselyov.

Then there's Ukraine. Not content with having annexed Crimea in 2014, Putin and his minions helped create, and have since sustained, pro-Russian enclaves in eastern Ukraine, all the while hailing them as exemplars of spontaneous self-determination. The Kremlin insists to this day that it's not involved militarily in eastern Ukraine and that what's happening there is, pure and simple, a grassroots uprising sparked by a Kyiv government that lacks local legitimacy. Accompanying this casuistry has been the demonizing of the Kyiv leadership as a gang of fascists backed by the United States.

Russia, then, cannot seriously claim that the unfavorable image it has acquired in much of the West is undeserved.

This said, the problem with much of the prevailing American analyses of Russia-and it's particularly evident in the shrill, Manichaean debate in this country on Ukraine-is that efforts to understand why Russia is doing all this are seen as equivalent to blessing its leaders and their policies. No, you must not explain; to establish your bona fides you must engage in full-throated, frequent condemnation. That the flip side of such sanctimoniousness is self-glorification, a sure path to ruinous decisions, seems irrelevant. Why let complexity and nuance intrude when truth and justice are on your side?

Also apparent is the commonplace assumption that because Putin is widely disliked in the West, so must he be in Russia. This solipsism encourages prophesies of Russia's implosion, an instance of both wishful, speculative thinking and a conceptual confusion that conflates a country's deep economic problems with its imminent collapse.

Meanwhile, Russia continues to assert itself, which brings us back to Syria.

What's truly surprising about the Kremlin's latest military moves in Syria is that anyone who has paid the slightest attention to Soviet and Russian policy in the Middle East should find them the least bit surprising. Moscow has a long history with Syria, based on multiple modes of cooperation that preceded Bashar al-Assad, and even his wily, pitiless and long-reigning father, Hafez (prime minister from 1970-71, president from 1971-2000).

The Damascus-Moscow alignment has endured for various reasons. During the Cold War, the Kremlin regarded Syria's Ba'ath Party, whose ideology is a mélange of pan-Arab nationalism and socialism, as a "progressive force." This assessment was reinforced by the Syrian government's refusal to participate in Washington's Containment strategy. Furthermore, Syria is geopolitically significant. When the civil war began in 2011, its population was 23 million, making it the eighth most populous Arab country. It has a long Mediterranean coast and good ports. Its military has relied almost completely on Soviet and Russian armaments, the cumulative tally of its purchases totaling billions of dollars. Its leaders have been willing to provide Russia (and the USSR before it) access to naval bases and airfields.

As a result, Moscow has what economists call substantial "sunk costs" in Syria: interests acquired, political contacts cultivated, markets (for arms and trade) nurtured and access to strategic installations-above all the naval facility at Tartus-gained.

Yes, Assad has run a repressive regime, which is now blood-drenched as well. However, Putin is scarcely squeamish about dealing with ruthless dictators. But then he is not alone in that. The United States has long trucked with undemocratic regimes-in the Middle East: Sisi-led Egypt, the House of Saud, Saddam Hussein's Iraq when it suited our purposes and even Assad's father-that treat their populations cruelly. Democratic America doesn't abandon lightly its long-accumulated gains in repressive states. Why, then, would Putin's authoritarian Russia do so, especially when Assad's regime is the only party in Syria's horrific war with which it can work? Seen thus, the Kremlin's decision to bolster the shaky Syrian state is scarcely puzzling.

There's also an internal aspect to Russia's actions in Syria: the fear of Islamic extremism. One consequence of the near-constant war Moscow has waged in the North Caucasus since 1994 is that it faces an Islamist insurgency in that region (a largely mountainous strip between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea). To make matters worse, the Islamic State (ISIS), which has built a state-within-a-state in Syria and Iraq and gained pledges of fealty (bayat) from acolytes in various parts of the word, has made inroads in the North Caucasus and recently even proclaimed a wilayaat (province) there.

Russia has some 17 million Muslims-no EU country has even a third as many-and is expected to have 2 million-plus more by 2030. The point is certainly not that many of Russia's Muslims are extremists-hardly the case-but that this demographic reality colors the Kremlin's conduct in Syria, in particular its decision to back Assad against an opposition in which militant Sunni Islamists, in particular ISIS, are the most powerful elements.

Though Russia is seeking to overcome this disadvantage, it lacks effective channels of communication with the most powerful groups fighting Assad and will find it hard to develop them. Syria's radical Islamist forces share a profound hatred of Russia, and the most powerful one, aside from ISIS, the Nusra Front, is an Al Qaeda affiliate. As for the opposition's moderate wing, having been groomed by the United States, it has no use for Russia, and the feeling is mutual. Besides, Washington's Keystone Cops-like efforts to organize a democratic alternative to Assad and Syria's jihadists cannot possibly give Putin any confidence that that segment of the resistance will ever become a strong participant-in the war, or in such postwar negotiations as prove possible.

As Putin likely sees it, the end of Assad will not be followed by the emergence of anything resembling a moderate Syrian government.

One possible outcome in Syria is an Alawite-dominated Ba'athist statelet, sandwiched between the coast and the Nusayriyah mountain range, in a country that resembles China during the turbulent Warring States Era (475-221 BCE). The second is the ouster of Assad by members of his inner circle desperate to make the regime acceptable to the opposition in talks aimed at ending the war and creating a transitional coalition government. The third is the collapse of Assad's state, followed by a protracted intramural fight to the finish among the multiple jihadist militias, with one or more emerging victorious and building theocratic polity.

This much is clear: Moscow hopes, at minimum, for the first outcome, could live with the second if the tactic designed to enable it works, but fears the third the most and is trying to avoid it by all feasible means. (In this assessment, it is joined by Iran, which has gone to even greater lengths to buttress Assad.)

If the New York Times is offended by Putin's machinations, he is probably mystified by Washington's inability to realize that these are the realistic possibilities in Syria. Putin must be no less puzzled by the insistence of the United States (and Saudi Arabia and Turkey) that Assad must quit before there can be peace negotiations. This demand simply steels the Syrian leader's will, and quite likely that of his immediate entourage, whose members know that a happy fate will not necessarily await them if the boss goes under the bus. It also encourages the armed Islamist opposition, who receive support from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, to fight on. As Russia sees it, the result of this logjam will be war without let up in Syria and the strengthening of extremist forces. But despite recent discussions, it has failed to change the minds that matter in Washington and Riyadh.

There's something else about Putin's recent steps in Syria that upsets the editors of the Times. They complain that he has been surreptitious militarily and dishonest politically and has also failed to cooperate with the West.

This verdict, while true, is worse than naive; it's hypocritical. Since the emergence of an independent Russia at the end of 1991, the United States has, on several occasions, dispensed with consultation and cooperation and used military power unilaterally. That backdrop aside, the West and Russia are now at loggerheads (though can we please drop the absurd cliché that a new Cold War is raging?), particularly over Ukraine. So there is no tenable basis for expecting that Russia will act in concert with the United States. Putin, for his part, does not expect cooperation from us.

But this much is certain: the deep mistrust that now divides Moscow and Washington will make the already Herculean task of bringing even a patina of peace to Syria harder still.

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 #38
Political Violence @ a Glance
http://politicalviolenceataglance.org
September 14, 2015
What Russia Might Teach the US about Establishing Order in Civil Wars
By Jesse Driscoll and Barbara F. Walter
Jesse Driscoll is an Assistant Professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy. His book, Warlords and Coalition Politics in Post-Soviet States, can be purchased on Amazon. Barbara F. Walter is a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego.Barbara F. Walter is a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego

Washington would love to figure out how to put an end to the civil wars in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen. The longer the civil wars continue, the more people will be killed, the more refugees will be produced, and the more potential gains extremists can make.

Washington, however, doesn't have many good options. The conditions conducive to negotiated settlements don't exist. Proxy funding from various regional powers shows no sign of slowing, leading warring parties to believe that victory on the battlefield is possible. No one has an interest in negotiating a settlement at this time. The US could continue to try to fund friendly governments and moderate rebel groups. But this strategy is only likely to prolong the civil wars and channel money into the hands of some unsavory characters. Finally, the US could, in theory, ignore the humanitarian costs of the wars and retreat behind its oceans. But the global price of oil and the future of the nuclear nonproliferation regime are going to be tied to this region for the foreseeable future. We would like the wars to end, but we don't know how to do it.

Russians experienced a similar dilemma in the early 1990s. Exhausted by the burdens of empire and Marxist/Lenonist ideology, the Soviet Union imploded. After the Russian military pulled back from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, civil wars broke out in approximately a third of the newly independent states. These were ugly, brutal civil wars that generated refugee flows and human suffering analogous to what is currently happening in the Middle East.

Russia wanted and needed to end these wars. Acting through the United Nations and the Commonwealth of Independent States, Moscow ended the violence relatively quickly. This result - which saved many lives - was not achieved because Russia followed through on "liberal peace-building" prescriptions (see Doyle and Sambanis 2006). It was also not achieved because one side won a decisive military victory that allowed it to disarm its challengers by creating a reformed and professional military (e.g., Toft 2009).

What did Russia do?

Consider the cases of Georgia and Tajikistan. What interested Moscow, and what their policies incentivized, was the creation of a minimum threshold of stability and order. Certain "red lines" were improvised ad hoc, such as no Islamic fundamentalist regime in Tajikistan, no direct Georgian rule over the ethnic Abkhaz in their autonomous republic. In retrospect, however, it's clear that Moscow didn't have the will or capacity to create a specific type of political system, or hand-pick a set of post-independence elites, or institute a particular set of political or military reforms in any of these states. It's equally clear that strategic Georgian and Tajik social actors quickly understood this.

Russians realized that the only way to get peace was for new national elites to selectively co-opt criminal paramilitaries and rebel field commanders to form new state security services. Deals would have to be made with local gangsters who turned out to be relatively interchangeable. Tajik warlords, for example, could be "bought out" by the new government whether they had fought for or against the government during the war. Rebels were not so much fighting over control of the state, but about who would be allowed to keep control of assets that could be used for extortion: militias, roadblocks, and territorially-based racketeering schemes. The deals that were made weren't pretty, but they brought peace.

What does this tell us about the possibility of peace in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya today? The analogy between Russia's role in the post-Soviet world and America's in the Middle East is not perfect. For one thing, both Georgia and Tajikistan were in Russia's traditional sphere of influence, and, for this reason, neither civil war developed a significant "proxy war" dynamic. The United States is also a long way from the Middle East and thus more insulated from its negative effects. In principle, refugees from the post-Soviet wars could get in a taxi or on a train and end up in St. Petersburg in a few days; Syrians, Iraqis and Yemenis cannot reach Los Angeles as easily. There are also salient differences in American and Russian cultural values that made it (and continue to make it!) easier for Russian elites to see corrupt dictatorships as "natural" political outcomes.

But there are also three potential lessons to draw from these cases.

First, Russians understood that local politics, not great power preferences, would need to dictate who would be part of the post civil war coalition. Powerful and ruthless local actors - criminal warlords, militia leaders, party bosses, and sometimes clerics - are going to be the ones in the position to undermine local order. Some of these unsavory characters, therefore, are going to have to be brought into any ruling coalition. In the medium term, which individuals will emerge as the local strongman in a particular neighborhood or rural area, functionally immune from prosecution, will be hard for outsiders to predict. Deals are likely to be ambiguous and messy, and often require compromising on American ideals. But accepting amoral ambiguity of this kind may be the best of many bad outcomes.

Second, war criminals in the post-Soviet cases were permitted to rehabilitate themselves rather than fight a war of attrition to the bitter end. It is not pleasant to contemplate a future Syrian state whose security forces are penetrated with Iranian-funded militias or a future federated Iraqi state, part of which is functionally administered by former Baathists who are now co-branding with ISIS. But again, unless the map is to be completely re-drawn, these may be better than the feasible alternatives.

Third, rebel and militia leaders have strong incentives to claim, if only for the benefit of the young men who serve as their recruits, that they are fighting for a particular ideology or worldview. Sometimes this is sincere. But sometimes it's cheap talk. Many of the rebel leaders in the post-Soviet wars were ultimately bought off with political power and personal wealth. Deals that allowed them to keep local drug routes, maintain some policing of rural fiefdoms or keep militias while managing lucrative state ministries were the price necessary to buy peace. Although this is clearly a moral compromise, it may only be temporary. Many criminals and warlords were eventually pushed out of both the Georgian and Tajik states. As anarchy faded and order re-emerged, social support for the warlords declined, and most of the warlords were eventually eliminated.

Adopting these lessons doesn't guarantee long-term peace. The best way to reduce the risk of renewed civil war is to encourage good government: quality public services, the rule of law, and ethnic pluralism. But the emergence of effective and unbiased governance takes a lot of time and luck. This means that in the short-term, bargains with armed groups and local political actors may be a necessary interim step between war and the creation of a fully legitimate, functioning government. Given the alternatives, however, interim order may be preferable to continued civil war.

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 #39
Stratfor.com
September 15, 2015
The Logic and Risks Behind Russia's Statelet Sponsorship
By Reva Bhalla

Mother Russia can be quite generous when it comes to her collection of statelets. In the early 1990s, when a broken Russia had no choice but to suck in her borders, a severely distracted Kremlin still found the time and money to promote and sponsor the fledgling breakaway territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia and Transdniestria in Moldova. And as Russia became more economically coherent over the years, the number of Russian troops in these territories grew, and a bigger slice of the Russian budget was cut out to keep the quasi-states afloat.

These post-Soviet statelets have a good deal in common. They are all tiny - South Ossetia is roughly 3,900 square kilometers (1,500 square miles) and has about 40,000 inhabitants, Abkhazia covers 8,500 square kilometers and its population is about 240,000, and Transdniestria is 4,100 square kilometers and has a population of 555,000. They are also all economically isolated, effectively run on black and gray economies, and are largely dependent on Russia's financial largesse for survival. Most important, from Russia's point of view, they each occupy strategic spaces in the post-Soviet sphere where Russian troops and thus the potential for further intervention can apply acute pressure on Georgia and Moldova should they draw too close to the West. The presence of Russian troops in these breakaway territories forms the tripwire that any Western patron will be wary to cross when it comes to defending those countries in their time of need. This, after all, is the true deterrent value of statelet sponsorship.

But Russia's strategy has also gotten to be a lot more burdensome and much more complicated in recent years. In addition to readopting Crimea (covering 26,000 square kilometers with a population of 2 million), Russia has added to its basket of statelets the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic (16,000 square kilometers collectively with a population of 1.5 million and 2 million, respectively) in eastern Ukraine. Though exact figures are hard to come by, various compiled estimates show Russia has annually been injecting about $300 million into Abkhazia and at least $100 million into South Ossetia and Transdniestria each to finance their annual budgets, provide cheap fuel, pay pensions and so on. In addition, Russia has allocated at least $2.42 billion in 2015 to support Crimea (not including military costs) and, according to a report written by Higher School of Economics analyst Sergei Aleksashenko, Russia has allocated at least $2 billion in the federal 2015 budget to sustain its military support in eastern Ukraine, a figure that continues to grow.

And the list is only getting longer. As the world has observed in recent weeks, Russian military support for Syrian loyalist forces in the coastal Alawite enclave of Latakia has dramatically increased, with all signs pointing to a long-term stay. Knowing that any negotiated settlement is likely to fall apart in the end, the Russian plan is to help Syria's Alawites carve out a de facto state. Meanwhile, back in the Caucasus, the long frozen conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh may also be taking a significant turn in the coming months. We see growing indications that Russia and Azerbaijan may be collaborating to shake up the status quo between Azerbaijan and Armenia, with Russia readied to send in peacekeepers and stay for the long haul in a bid to tighten its grip in the region.

From eastern Ukraine to Alawite Syria to Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia appears to be making a conscious effort to widen its footprint in strategic spaces. This will be a pricey endeavor, but the geopolitical logic behind these moves is not lacking.

Whether strong or weak, capitalist, communist or tsarist, Russia will be compelled to anchor itself to natural geographic barriers for its own security. In eastern Ukraine, the natural Russian extension is to the Dnieper River, and short of reaching that river, Russia will try its best to use the separatist regions to both undermine Kiev and create an imperfect buffer against NATO's growing involvement with Kiev. The Crimean Peninsula reinforces Russia's hold on its only warm-water base at Sevastopol on the Black Sea, and naval projection on the Black Sea gives Russia access to the Mediterranean. The ports of Latakia and Tartus on the Syrian Mediterranean coast - an Alawite stronghold now depending on Russian aid - gives Russia a physical foothold in the eastern Mediterranean and a platform to influence power plays in the Levant. In the mountainous Caucasus, where Russia has already been strengthening its presence in Georgia's breakaway territories and remains Armenia's only real patron, a developing bargain with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh has the potential to expand Russia's presence even more and thus reinforce a Russian buffer to the south.

A Buffer in Eastern Ukraine

In order of priority, Russia's position in eastern Ukraine comes first. Ukraine, from centuries past to today, forms the soft underbelly of the Russian state that must be insulated at all costs. If Ukraine comes under significant influence or control of a Western power, the Russian southwestern flank will be laid bare. But Russia is not strong enough to anchor itself on the Dnieper River and absorb both the military and economic costs of such an endeavor. So Russia must settle. The best Russia can do at this point is to try to consolidate autonomy for the eastern rebel provinces, using its tight grip over separatist commanders to dial up and down the conflict as the need arises. If Russia feels as though its demands are being ignored when it comes to NATO's buildup, sanctions or the like, violence in eastern Ukraine flares up. Once the Germans and the French get the message and start pressuring Kiev to make certain political concessions, the fighting quickly de-escalates.

This is a pattern that all sides are getting used to, but it is still far from ideal for Moscow. No matter what negotiations are in play, Russia is not about to withdraw its military foothold in eastern Ukraine. At the same time, that military dynamic provides the foundation for a pro-West Kiev to lean on the United States for help in defending itself against a persistent Russian threat. Russia must therefore carefully calibrate its military moves in eastern Ukraine, making clear that any Western push would risk a direct confrontation with the Russians, but also not going far enough to where its actions compel a U.S. response that could cause the Russian buffer to recede even more in the end.

Preparing for an Alawite Statelet in Syria

Russia's moves in Syria are deeply intertwined with this dynamic in Ukraine. Even as Russia is locked into a long-term tug-of-war with the United States over the former Soviet rim, Moscow needs mutual areas of interest on the periphery to shape a dialogue with Washington. The Russians see the conundrum the United States is in, trying to fight the Islamic State with the help of regional powers while also trying to avoid the messier process of wholesale government change. Since early this year, Russia has been expending considerable effort to try to cobble together a negotiation that would outline the shape of a post-Bashar al Assad state, making itself appear as an indispensable partner to Washington when it comes to finding an end to the civil war. The United States needs this negotiation, and it needs the backers of the al Assad government, Russia and Iran, to bring the loyalists to the table. The more the United States depends on Russia to facilitate the negotiation, so goes the Russian logic, the more leverage Moscow has to negotiate limits on Western encroachment in Russia's immediate backyard.

But Russia is also not under any illusions when it comes to bringing peace to Syria's warring factions. Any negotiation is doomed to fail so long as the more intractable and competent rebel factions prefer the battleground to the negotiating table. Russia's strategy thus comes in two parts - it must create a credible basis for a negotiation over Syria that it can use as leverage with the United States, but it must also prepare for the worst to protect its position in the eastern Mediterranean for when that negotiation inevitably falls apart. Russia's substantial military buildup at the ports of Latakia and Tartus on the Alawite coast in recent weeks, to go along with its existing naval depot at Tartus, speaks to both of these objectives.

For the Syrian government to be comfortable entering negotiations, it needs to first feel secure in its core territory, running from the south through Damascus up through Zabadani and parts of Homs and Hama to the Mediterranean coastline. This is a plan that Russia and Iran are working closely together on. (Qassem Soleimani, an Iranian major general and the commander of the Quds Force, is rumored to have traveled to Moscow earlier in September to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to discuss the implementation of this strategy.) A look at the satellite imagery of Russia's buildup so far shows airfield construction, possible control towers and housing for troops. Russia appears to be building up the logistical capability to stage aerial assets, such as fighter jets and helicopters, to help reinforce the Alawite statelet. Stratfor sources have indicated that Russia's military buildup in Syria so far has cost around $500 million, sourced from the military budget of Russia's Black Sea command, while the military equipment Russia is deploying to Syria remains under Russian control. In essence, the Russian-Iranian plan enables the Alawites to enter a negotiation on a stronger footing, but also with the security that they will have a de facto Alawite state to fall back on as the Syrian state formally fragments with time.
A Shake-Up in the Caucasus?

Further under the radar, we can see Russia's strategy in the Caucasus starting to evolve after more than two decades of frozen conflict between the former Soviet states of Azerbaijan and Armenia over the tiny enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Nagorno-Karabakh (4,400 square kilometers and now a majority Armenian population of around 150,000) has been under the de facto control of Yerevan since a 1994 cease-fire ended the war between the two foes. Economically isolated, Armenia hosts some 5,000 Russian forces and sits firmly under the Russian security umbrella, lacking alternative patrons. In contrast, Azerbaijan, far less geographically constrained and endowed with energy resources, likes to keep its options open, always opting for a balance between the West and its former Soviet roots. That said, Azerbaijan and Russia have been a lot cozier than usual in recent months, raising questions in our mind whether Moscow has enticed Baku with an offer pertaining to the fiercely nationalist topic of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Azerbaijan is fed up with negotiations mediated by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and wants to see if it can put its years of military preparations to work to retake the territory. Armenia, occupying the territory's high ground and thus holding the strategic advantage over Azerbaijan, would obviously prefer to keep the status quo. The only way Armenia would likely be forced to renegotiate terms on Nagorno-Karabakh is if hostilities resumed and Russia, Armenia's sole patron, were to play a dominant role in mediating their end. It is little coincidence that the Armenian rumor mill has been buzzing with speculation that Russia and Azerbaijan are developing an understanding that would have Russian peacekeepers occupy and neutralize the territory. We are doubtful that this plan could be imposed on Armenia solely through diplomatic means.

While we cannot be sure that this scenario will ultimately play out, we have collected enough clues to date that put a Nagorno-Karabakh shake-up high on our watch list. And with Nagorno-Karabakh on the list of territories up for Russian adoption, Russia's commitment to creating new footholds abroad has the potential to expand even more.

The Costs of Sponsorship

Russia's strategy may not be cheap, but it is entirely rational from a geopolitical point of view. Russia is weakening internally at the same time it is confronting a strong and growing threat from the United States on its former Soviet doorstep. While Russia is still in the game, it might as well create and reinforce as many perches as it can in its near abroad to leverage against the West and maintain whatever influence it still holds in preparation for much more difficult years to come. Thus, the bill that Moscow is footing for its statelets, even factoring in a volatile ruble, may still be quite reasonable from a Russian perspective. Operating from a low and still rough estimate, we can assume that Russia is spending at least $5 billion annually on these quasi-states, which is still less than 3 percent of Russia's 2015 federal budget of $206 billion. This amount does not include the large amount of pre-allocated defense budget that goes into the Ukraine and Syria operations. There is also an opportunity cost to bear in mind. Pre-allocated military resources cannot be redirected to other purposes, such as procurement, training, and research and development unless the defense budget as a whole continues to increase.

However, the costs are not just financial. Nagorno-Karabakh is a tinderbox; once the conflict resumes, it will not be easy to contain. It is a region where both a resurgent Turkey and Iran will try to push back against an overly ambitious Russia. In Syria, the threat of mission creep is also real, since the loyalist government is combating an assembly of Sunni powers with a shared interest to undercut Iran. Moreover, with Russia preparing the ground for stationing aerial assets, it must calculate the risks of operating in a crowded battlespace, with U.S., Turkish, Israeli and potentially other European and Arab coalition partners entering the fray. In Ukraine, just as Russian sponsorship of eastern Ukraine incrementally increases, a U.S. military buildup on Russia's European frontier will grow in kind. Ultimately, this is Russia's backyard, and Russia will be far more constrained than the United States when it comes to this level of competition. A statelet sponsorship strategy can go only so far.

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#40
Valdai Discussion Club
http://valdaiclub.com
September 15, 2015
Russia-China Cooperation: Problems and Prospects
By Andrei Ostrovsky

The Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency held a Moscow-Beijing videoconference entitled "Russia-China cooperation at the current stage". Early September  Russian President Vladimir Putin visited China at the invitation of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Chinese people's victory in the War of Resistance against Japan's Aggression and the End of World War II.

Within the framework of the visit, the leaders of states negotiated topical issues in the development of bilateral relations, exchanged opinions about international and regional problems, signed joint documents. Then, the Russian president attended the Eastern Economic Forum hosted by Vladivostok.

The videoconference was attended by Andrei Ostrovsky, Deputy Director of the Institute of the Far Eastern Studies (IFES), Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), Head of the Center for Economic and Social Studies of China, IFES RAS, an expert of the Valdai Discussion Club.

On May 9, 2015, Ostrovsky reminded, Xi Jinping visited Moscow, resulting in signing of 32 agreements. Vladimir Putin's reciprocal visit to Beijing yielded 29 agreements.

The expert emphasized the deal struck with Rosneft, which stipulates supply of additional 5 million tons of oil to China. However, he noted, Russia was not the key supplier of black gold to China. This is where Saudi Arabia, Angola and Oman hold the lead.

Leaders of Russia and China meet several times a year, discussing topical political problems. However, in the economy, according to Ostrovsky, the situation falls short of the progress in politics. He quoted a phrase common in Chinese media, which reflects the state of the Russia-China relations: "It is hot in politics but cold in economy." Agreements, such as the one signed with Rosneft, facilitate efforts to overcome obstacles in the development of relations.

In 2013, during the visit to Kazakhstan, Xi Jinping declared the foundation of the New Silk Road to build the One Belt - One Road economic bridge between countries. On March 28, 2015, the creation of the Silk Road Economic Belt was announced. Basic courses and routes were unveiled. Russia joined the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank only a day before the closing of bid submission. In Andrei Ostrovsky's opinion, it gives an impression that Russian business "is procrastinating in entering the Chinese market." A slump occurred in the field of commercial and economic cooperation in 2015. Some 7-8 years ago, Dmitry Medvedev and Hu Jintao outlined plans to raise trade turnover to $100 billion in 2015 and to $200 billion in 2020. "But only during the first half of 2015, the trade turnover dropped by over 20%," the expert reminds. Cross-border cooperation is underdeveloped, the investment volume is insufficient, hence the poor development of international trade.

The paramount goal, Ostrovsky believes, is to ramp up commercial and economic ties - "the key to development of Russia's Far East." The region lags behind the European part of the country. The latter has a market consisting of 100 million people. The market of the Far East Federal District has a little over 6 million people. "Without development of our Far East regions, where, in general, we have all the key natural resources, without development of infrastructure of international trade, nothing will come off," Ostrovsky assumes. The border between Russia and China is 4,000km long, yet it lacks any bridges, save for two railway-based border crossings.

Explaining the tumbling level of trade between the two states, Ostrovsky reminded about serious economic problems in Russia as a whole. Of course, the cause of that is the dramatic fall of the ruble value in relation to the yuan-to-dollar rate. In 2014, according to the expert, a yuan was worth 3.5 rubles, it costs 10 rubles today. It is unfavourable for importers to do business. Russia tried to rectify, compensate the situation by selling oil, but oil prices crashed. "The physical volume went up, but the cost [volume] dropped". The tendency will change when oil prices rise.

In his opinion, the volume of mutual investments is exceptionally low. China invested $1 billion into Russia in 2014, compared to only $29 million of direct investments from Russia to China. Cross-border trade with China is below 15% of all Russia's international trade.

Concerning payments in national currencies, Ostrovsky assumes that the process should be intensified. Trade turnover between Russia and China is tied to foreign currencies, predominantly to the dollar. Most deals go through a New York bank. Russia loses 20-30% of product value in the process.

The main products imported by China are oil, iron ore, soya and beans. Beans, in Ostrovsky's opinion, are a promising line of exports for Russia. Russia produces 2.5 million tons of beans a year. China has a demand for about 60 million tons.

The evident targets of Chinese investments are oil, gas, metals, soya and beans. The expert believes that Russia should export high-tech products, not raw materials. The country needs more enterprises manufacturing engineering products. Money should be invested into development of national science and technology, not into purchases of foreign technologies. "Expecting that someone will sell something is the most improvident thing to do," Ostrovsky warns. Rusnano (Russian joint-stock company specializing in nanotechnologies) was a good project in this context, but the realization of the project has yielded little results.

Many Chinese agricultural producers are trying to start business in Russia, yet not all of them manage to overcome the administrative barriers. Speaking about the Chinese manpower on the Russian territory, the expert amounted them to 270,000 people. The leading suppliers of manpower are Ukraine, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan. Workforce is actively migrating from China's Heilongjiang Province, yet not to Russia, it is moving to the provinces of Shandong and Guangdong. "Russia is not a zone attractive for Chinese. Here, attracting Chinese manpower to the Russian territory, to engage in agriculture, among other things, would take enormous efforts," Andrei Ostrovsky.

The videoconference was also attended by Yevgeny Avdokushin, Director of the Center for Asian Studies, Faculty of Economics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Igor Tomberg, Director of the Center for Energy and Transport Studies, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences. Beijing was represented by experts and local journalists.

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 #41
Brookings Institution
www.brookings.edu
September 14, 2015
Empty words: Republican non-proposals for dealing with Putin
By Steven Pifer
Steven Pifer is director of the Brookings Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative and a senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence and the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. A former ambassador to Ukraine, Pifer's career as a foreign service officer centered on Europe, the former Soviet Union and arms control. Pifer also had postings in London, Moscow, Geneva and Warsaw, as well as on the National Security Council. At Brookings, Pifer focuses on arms control, Ukraine and Russia issues.

We knew well before the first Republican presidential debate on August 6 that most of the GOP candidates don't like Vladimir Putin or President Obama's reset policy-instead, they advocate getting tough with Moscow. Perhaps the second debate on September 16 will give them a chance to describe more fully how they would deal with the Kremlin.

Villainizing Putin

It's clear that Republican candidates don't think much of Putin or the Russian leadership in general. Jeb Bush led off his Europe tour in June with a blast aimed at Moscow, calling Putin "a bully" and the Kremlin "corrupt." Carly Fiorina termed the Russian president one "bad dude."

Republican candidates show equal disdain for Obama's 2009 reset, in part because Hillary Clinton implemented it as secretary of state. Never mind that the reset produced a treaty capping the number of Russian strategic nuclear weapons that could strike the United States, Moscow's agreement to increased pressure and an arms embargo on Iran, and Russian facilitation of logistics support for American fighting troops in Afghanistan. The improvement in relations could not be sustained, but that does not diminish achievements that advanced key U.S. interests.

The policy answer that most Republican candidates offer is to get tough. Marco Rubio in May said he would "roll back Russian aggression." Scott Walker proposed "standing firm against the Russian threat." Ben Carson says the United States "must be resolute" and lead "from a position of strength." Fiorina "wouldn't speak to Vladimir Putin. I would act instead."

The outlier appears to be the Republican front-runner, Donald Trump. He said that, if elected president, he'd have a "great relationship" with Putin-indeed, such a great relationship that Putin would happily hand former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden back to U.S. authorities. (Trump did not explain why Putin-a former KGB officer who presumably understands the value of defectors and knows what returning a defector would mean for the possibility of getting defectors in the future-would do that.)

How strong is Russia?

To be sure, Russia under Putin has moved in a disturbing direction in recent years, steadily rolling back the rights of civil society and the small and shrinking political opposition. Moscow has behaved egregiously in using military force to seize Crimea and conduct an undeclared war in eastern Ukraine. More broadly, it has launched a policy of military intimidation as it seeks to undermine the security order that has brought peace and prosperity to much of Europe.

For all its capacity to make trouble, however, Russia faces big challenges. Its unreformed and corrupt economy makes little that the world wants to buy, so natural resources are its main export. Its demographic situation is a disaster. And Putin has embraced a policy of Russian nationalism in a country where other ethnicities comprise nearly 30 percent of the populace.

One can certainly find fault with the Obama administration's response. The White House has timidly stuck to a policy of no lethal military support for Ukraine. And Washington can and should do more to reinvigorate NATO in the face of a less predictable Russia.

Wanted: More than platitudes

It would be nice, however, to see a bit of sophistication in the policy approach that Republican candidates advocate. Yes, the West must resist Moscow's aggression. But it should be recognized that Russia, with its thousands of nuclear warheads, is the only country that could physically destroy America. That gives a reason to talk. And there are issues-stemming nuclear proliferation, preventing the return of chaos to Afghanistan, and countering international terrorism-where U.S. and Russian interests coincide, where cooperation makes sense for both countries even if they have profound differences on other questions.

A long-term and sustainable policy toward Russia-one which Washington can persuade its allies in Europe and Asia to follow-must entail a mix of deterrence, constraint, and engagement.

The United States and NATO should take steps to deter any Russia aggression against an alliance member. Among other things, that means strengthening NATO's conventional force presence in the Baltic and Central European region.

The West must also act to constrain Russia's ability to pressure its neighbors. That means financial and military assistance to bolster vulnerable states such as Ukraine and make them less susceptible to Moscow's mischief-making and attempts at destabilization.

But Washington and the West should also be ready to engage with Russia where key interests converge and should make clear that, if the Kremlin alters its egregious misbehavior, relations between Russia and the West can improve. One area for urgent discussion: with NATO and Russian military forces increasingly operating in close proximity to one another, it makes sense to discuss measures that would reduce the chance of accidents or miscalculation.

Such a policy toward Russia requires balance, nuance, and an ability to talk while pushing back. A debate among ten candidates may not be the place to expect such a complex presentation. But one hopes that some of the candidates will take other opportunities to demonstrate that their policy toward the world's other nuclear superpower would be based on more than platitudes.

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#42
Russia & India Report
http://in.rbth.com
September 3, 2015
Russian women's struggle for the right to vote
Women in Saudi Arabia have finally been given the franchise. They will be allowed to vote in a set of 1,000 special polling booths organized for them. Saudi Arabian women will now be eligible to vote and contest in municipal elections, the first of which is to be held on December 12, 2015. Women's suffrage is often attributed to the advent of communism in Russia, but it was not quite that simple.
ANASTASIA VITYAZEVA, SPECIALLY FOR RIR

1. Most Russians do not know how women achieved their right to vote

School textbooks say that Russian women obtained suffrage in the USSR in 1917. Thus it seems that women were given the right to vote by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who had overthrown and killed the tsar in establishing the Soviet state.

The story, however, is more complicated than that. Before the October Revolution, in February 1917, there was a popular revolt and the tsar was replaced by a provisional government headed by Prince Georgy Lvov. It was Lvov who for the first time in Russian history gave women the right to vote. However, he did not remain in power long. At that time women could go to the polls only in six countries: New Zealand, Norway, Denmark, Australia and in some of the states of the U.S.

2. 40,000 Russian women demonstrated for the right to vote

In 1917 there was a respectable women's organization: the Russian League of Women's Equality. It included hundreds of women's associations throughout the country. On March 3, 1917 the newspapers published the provisional government's program, which did not contain suffrage for women.

In St. Petersburg - the country's capital at the time - members of the League began telling women of all classes about the importance of voting. The League administration then sent a petition to Prince Lvov, but he refused to review it.

On March 19, 40,000 women marched through St. Petersburg. The procession was headed by the "amazons" on horseback, followed by two orchestras. The aged revolutionary Vera Figner rode in a car in the middle of the procession. The women arrived at the State Duma and demanded to meet with the deputies. Negotiations continued into the night, and ending with Lvov giving in and awarding women the right to vote.

3. Men did not want to let women vote

The first elections in which everyone voted took place in the summer and early fall of 1917. These were elections to the State Duma and the Zemstva, the local government bodies. However, there were many incidents in the villages.

In one of them the men canceled the elections to the Zemstva because women were participating in them and when the elections were held again, women were not allowed to take part. In some other regions women were not allowed to go anywhere near the polls altogether. In those places women still had to fight for their rights for a long time.

4. Women defended their new rights themselves

Zhenotdely - departments created within government bodies to tend to women's affairs - began defending the rights of the fair sex. The government gave women new rights: an eight-hour workday, a ban on working at night, pregnancy leave and aid. A minimum wage was established, independently of gender, and the rights of both spouses were made equal in marriage.

Men began to think that the zhenotdely had a bad influence on families. There were hundreds of attacks on their representatives and even some murders. The organization was abolished in 1930, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin announced that the "women's issue" had been resolved.

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 #43
The Independent (UK)
September 12, 2015
World War II: Soviet envoy's book reveals missed opportunities to pre-empt Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union
Ivan Maisky's personal account of his years in London has been rediscovered - as have new facts about one of the most important events in world history
By Andy McSmith
Andy McSmith is a senior reporter at The Independent. He has vast experience in political journalism and has also appeared on documentaries for BBC Radio 4.

Lord Beaverbrook, the founder of the Daily Express, claimed during the war that there was no politician in Britain who was a better friend to the USSR than he. But the public thought that honour belonged to the Labour MP Stafford Cripps, whom Churchill had appointed ambassador to Moscow in 1940, and who returned in February 1942 claiming credit for bringing the USSR into the war.

When Cripps joined the War Cabinet, Beaverbrook resigned. It infuriated the vain press baron that anyone should think the swap was a gain for the Soviet Union, so the following week, he hosted a dinner party at his home, Cherkley Court, near Leatherhead in Surrey.

Guests included the US ambassador, Averell Harriman, and his lover and future wife, Pamela Churchill, the Prime Minister's daughter-in-law; the 29-year-old editor of the Beaverbrook-owned Evening Standard, Michael Foot; and Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador.

As they assembled in Beaverbrook's study before dinner, Maisky was gratified to see three portraits adorning the mantelpiece - of King George, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin. He noted, though, that Beaverbrook was very agitated and keen to explain.

Two days later, Beaverbrook turned up at the Soviet embassy to protest his "utmost support for the USSR". He understood why Stalin resented that the Red Army was bearing the full force of the war in Europe while the British and American efforts were directed at the far east and north Africa. "If there is anything Stalin wants, Beaverbrook is always at his disposal," Maisky noted.

This unlikely liaison between an empire-loving, right-wing press baron and a left-wing intellectual from a small town in Russia has come to light through an extraordinary document left behind by an extraordinary man.

No one has ever done more to spread goodwill towards Russia through the British establishment than Ivan Maisky, who was Soviet ambassador to the Court of St James from 1932 to 1943.

Speaking flawless English, he glided through the drawing rooms of London's elite, impressing everyone with his acute intelligence and adroit public relations patter.

Merely to survive so long in so exposed a job was unique. During the terrible purges of the late 1930s, almost every Soviet ambassador around the world was recalled and shot for having suspicious contacts with foreigners. That fate befell several of Maisky's staff.

Maisky was not only cosmopolitan, he was a Jew - which in itself was enough to draw Stalin's suspicion - and he was not a communist.

His politics would have fitted comfortably in the Fabian wing of the Labour Party: the Fabian luminaries Beatrice Webb, George Bernard Shaw and others were among Maisky's glittering circle of contacts.

While other social democrats had stayed neutral during the Russian civil war, Maisky had actively joined the wrong side. He was almost 40 when he finally decided to pay obeisance to the Bolshevik regime rather than spend the rest of his life in exile.

We now know that for years he was also doing something extremely dangerous. He was keeping a private diary - not a self-improving "I must be a better communist" sort of diary, but a frank and beautifully written day-by-day account of his London years.

Edited extracts of the diary, uncovered in an archive by an Oxford University historian, Gabriel Gorodetsky, will be published in a single 560-page volume later this month. The historian Professor Paul Kennedy has called it "perhaps the greatest political diary of the 20th century".

It is full of delightful vignettes, such a description of the day all London ambassadors were summoned to Buckingham Palace to present their credentials to the newly crowned King George VI.

Maisky was judged to be a "good boy" who behaved properly in the royal presence, unlike Hitler's man Joachim von Ribbentrop, who greeted the King with a Nazi salute.

Maisky also noted the presence of two small princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, dressed in pink, and very excited - "They began to giggle, and then to misbehave, to the considerable embarrassment of the queen."

Amid delightful anecdotes like that, there is a story of a vast missed opportunity. As Hitler turned his menacing eyes on Czechoslovakia, Maisky and his boss in Moscow, Maxim Litvinov, struggled to get Britain, France and the USSR to take effective joint action to protect eastern Europe's only functioning democracy.

In pursuit of this aim, Maisky had no compunction about dealing with oppositionists in London, nor they with him. David Lloyd George was one of the first big names to befriend Maisky and pour out his exasperation with the "mediocrities" who made up Stanley Baldwin's Government.

In November 1937, Maisky was invited to a banquet in honour of the King of Belgium, and was in a corner, being ignored, when Winston Churchill spotted him.

"In the presence of the two kings, Churchill crossed the hall, came up to me and shook me firmly by the hand. Then we entered into an animated and extended conversation," he wrote.

Their conversation was interrupted by King George, who apparently assumed that Churchill would want to be rescued from such compromising company. "I stepped aside and waited to see what would happen next. Churchill finished his conversation with George and returned to me to continue our interrupted conversation. The gilded aristocrats were well-nigh shocked."

The following September, Churchill invited Maisky to a dinner to suggest a scheme for averting war. There had to be a collective note signed jointly by the British, French and Soviet governments that would scare Hitler out of his expansion plans, and would be the beginning of a new alliance, the London-Paris-Moscow axis.

Churchill was desperately concerned that Stalin was wiping out the high command of the Red Army, as reports of arrest and executions filled the Soviet press. He was indeed having the Red Army's finest commanders slaughtered, but Maisky dishonestly remarked: "If a disloyal general is replaced by an honest and reliable general, is this weakening or strengthening an army?" Churchill was placated.

But Churchill, of course, was a voice in the wilderness at a time when Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement was popular both with the public and the British political establishment.

Maisky sat through a House of Lords debate and recorded: "Never in my life have I seen so reactionary a gathering. The mould of the ages lies visibly upon it."

After Chamberlain had returned from Munich promising "peace in our time", Maisky's boss, Litvinov, was sacked, as a prelude to the infamous Stalin-Hitler Pact.

Maisky, surprisingly, stayed in post but was cut adrift. His masters in the Kremlin would not tell him anything useful, and sent a secret policeman, posing as a diplomat, to keep a close watch on him.

Churchill was sure that Germany was going to invade the USSR, after which the Kremlin would come begging for the west's friendship, so there was no point in courting them.

Maisky later claimed in his published memoirs that he sent Stalin a timely warning of a German invasion, but was ignored. His diary tells a different story. He was bemused by the number of people in London who shared Churchill's "strange and nonsensical" belief that Hitler was preparing for war in the east. Maisky wondered what gave them this idea, knowing nothing of the now celebrated Bletchley Park spy centre.

On 18 June 1941, Stafford Cripps called in at the Soviet embassy to warn that 147 German divisions had gathered on the Soviet border. "I set about disproving this," Maisky wrote. "To my mind, Hitler is not yet ready for suicide."

Three days later, he took time off to enjoy the summer sunshine, and lay on the grass pondering whether such warnings might be true, but convinced himself it was British scare talk. The German army crossed the Soviet border early the next day.

For the next two years, he was caught between Stalin's angry demands that the allies open up a second front in northern France, and Churchill's sometimes angry reaction.

Nonetheless, the diaries suggest he was enjoying himself. He was seeing Churchill regularly. "For all his seriousness, Churchill is a rather amusing man," he noted. The entries for the early part of 1943 are full of instance of Churchill joking or bursting into laughter.

But just as their friendship was blossoming, Maisky was ordered to pack up and return to his homeland. It has always been assumed that his recall was an expression of Stalin's displeasure at the delay in staging the Normandy landings. Gorodetsky suggests that it was actually because the Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, did not approve of all this socialising.

After the creation of the state of Israel, the Kremlin became gripped by anti-Semitic mania. Maisky was almost 70 when the police came for him, in the month of the infamous Doctors' Plot. He was interrogated 36 times, but luckily he had been in police hands less than three weeks when Stalin died. It was another two years before he was released, but at least he escaped execution, and lived to be 91.

'The Maisky Diaries, Red Ambassador to the Court of St James's 1932-1943' by Gabriel Gorodetsky, Yale University Press £25, is  published on 24 September

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 #44
The Conversation
http://theconversation.com
September 10, 2015
Diary of Soviet ambassador to London rewrites history of World War II
By Gabriel Gorodetsky
Quondam Fellow of All Souls College at University of Oxford

The Maisky Diaries: Red Ambassador to the Court of St James's, 1932-1943, edited by Gabriel Gorodetsky, is published by Yale University Press.

Stalin's terror and purges of the 1930s discouraged any Soviet official from putting a pen to paper, let alone keep a personal diary. The sole exception is the extraordinarily rich journal kept by Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to London between 1932 and 1943, which I unearthed in the archives of the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow.

No personal document of such breadth, value and size has ever emerged from the Soviet archives. For the last decade I have scrupulously edited and checked the diary against a vast range of Russian and Western archival material as well as personal papers to allow the wider public access to this remarkable relic.

At the epicentre of the dramatic events leading to World War II, Maisky was possessed with a passion to leave behind his own account. The unique diary reveals in a lively, candid and accessible way how then, just as now, mutual suspicion, preconceived ideas and the legacy of the past blinded both British and Russian politicians and brought the world to the brink of catastrophe.

The diary tells an exceptional story of a brilliant Soviet diplomat, who despite the looming danger of being recalled any day to Moscow and shot like most of his colleagues posted in other European capitals, diligently sought to harmonise Soviet and British interests. The result is absolutely mesmerising.

Hailed by Paul Kennedy as "perhaps the greatest political diary of the 20th century", Maisky's diary is a treasure trove of a vast array of topics. It reveals the degree to which Russia was left out in the cold during the 1938 Munich Agreement and how it might have been possible to prevent the Russians from signing the neutrality pact with Nazi Germany in 1939. It exposes that if the alliance that was forged between Great Britain and the Soviet Union in July 1941 had been in place two years earlier, World War II might have been averted.

As historian Niall Ferguson suggests, Maisky's diary exposes the missed opportunities "to sup with the diabolical Stalin in the 1930s" and the dire consequences of doing so, halfheartedly, after the German invasion of Russia in June 1941. This late attempt was responsible for the shaky postwar arrangements and the outbreak of the Cold War.

Political plotting

The immediate impression conveyed by the diary is the pivotal role of the human factor, transcending controversies over policy and ideology. It reveals the immense impact of personal friendships, conflicts and rivalries within the Kremlin as the main factor in the formulation of Soviet foreign policy. For example, the rivalry between Molotov, the Soviet minister for foreign affairs, with his predecessor Litvinov finally led to the withdrawal of Litvinov's protégé, Maisky, from London in 1943 and the two years he spent in prison after Stalin's death.

Maisky's unconventional style of diplomacy, which at the time irritated many of his interlocutors, was revolutionary. It has since become the norm. He was certainly the first ambassador to systematically manipulate and mould public opinion, mostly through the press. What an ambassador has to aim at, Maisky told his friend Beatrice Webb:

    "... is intimate relations with all the livewires in the country to which he is accredited - among all parties or circles of influential opinion, instead of shutting himself up with the other diplomatists and the inner governing circle - whether royal or otherwise."

A superb PR man at a time when the concept hardly existed, Maisky did not shy away from aligning himself with opposition groups, backbenchers, newspaper editors, trade unionists, writers, artists and intellectuals. He colluded with the opposition of Churchill, Eden - Beaverbrook and Lloyd George - seeking to sway Chamberlain from appeasing Hitler towards an alliance with the Soviet Union.

The diary further reveals how, following the German invasion of Russia and with Churchill now in the saddle, Maisky unhesitatingly exploited the pro-Soviet feelings in London to create a momentous public movement in favour of a second front, plotting with Eden and Beaverbrook against the prime minister, for his rejection of the cross channel offensive. "We are in a jam over this second front business," confessed Eden, "we have to try to 'bluff' the Germans; to do so we must deceive our friends at the same time."

An insider's account

Especially gripping are Maisky's descriptions, as an informed outsider, of London during the Blitz:

    "If bombs start exploding in very close proximity, we move to the 'shelter'. Agniya and I have a special room down below, where we live like students. At night we sleep in the shelter, which is relatively safe, and hear neither the bombs nor the antiaircraft batteries. We sleep like soldiers, of course, dressed or half-dressed. The duty officer wakes us at 5 or 6 a.m., once the 'all clear' has sounded, and all of us - sleepy and dishevelled - return home to sleep in our own beds for the remaining three or four hours. That's how we live. It's more or less tolerable (leaving aside the squabbles among the staff over places in the shelter). But can one live like this for long?"

Equally fascinating are his frequent intimate meetings with Churchill and Eden during the war. The very intimacy Maisky enjoyed with the top echelons of British politicians and officials, as well as with intellectuals and artists, gave him a perfect vantage point. His intimate interlocutors included five British prime ministers - Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill - as well as monarchs: King George V, Edward VIII and King George VI.

His circle of friends also included intellectuals and writers such as Bernard Shaw, H G Wells, the controversial modernist artist Epstein (who sculpted his bust) and the painter Kokoschka, who executed an intriguing portrait of him. With Russia allied with Britain after 1942 Maisky became the most popular and sought after foreigner in London. Fascinating accounts of his activities with these influential people fill the pages of his diary.

The significance of his war reminiscences can hardly be overstated. While it was the practice of the foreign secretary to keep a record of his meetings with ambassadors, this did not apply to the prime ministers. No records are therefore to be found in the British archives of the many crucial conversations held between Maisky and Churchill before and during World War II.

Yet the diaries describe an exceptional intimacy which existed between Maisky, Eden and Churchill and their families. At times it even led to "heaps of cipher telegrams" which were shared with him in Whitehall. The diary thus becomes an indispensable source, replacing the retrospective accounts - tendentious and incomplete - which have misled historians on many fronts so far. It would hardly be an exaggeration to suggest that the diary rewrites history which we thought we knew.

A cosmopolitan, polyglot, independent-minded and former Menshevik, Maisky was in a particularly vulnerable position. Churchill's praise of him as a first-rate ambassador drew from Stalin the snippy comment that "he talked too much and can't keep a still tongue in his mouth". Maisky succeeded nonetheless in maintaining the delicate balance until his arrest, in 1953, at the age of 70. Accused of treason, having "lost his feelings for the motherland", he was saved by the bell when Stalin died two weeks later.

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 #45
The Independent (UK)
September 14, 2015
How I moved to the US from Soviet Russia in 1980: 'Being an immigrant means living with your soul split in half'
In the final installment of our series, Elena Gorokhova describes how she arrived to live in the US from Soviet Russia in 1980 and found her new country's unquestioning optimism and dizzying consumer choices strangely alienating
By Elena Gorokhova

Elena Gorokhova's memoir, Russian Tattoo (Windmill Books, £9.99), is out now

In 1980, the year Moscow hosted the Summer Olympic Games, I packed my Russian life into a 20kg suitcase and boarded an Aeroflot flight across the Atlantic to join my new American husband. As planes from all over the world were landing on the Communist tarmac of my motherland, I headed in the opposite direction, west. I was 24, giddy with the spunk of youth, and - as my mother's favourite saying had it - "the sea was only as deep as the height of my knee".

My seat mate on the plane, a morose-looking American with thin-rimmed glasses and a glass of vodka in his hand, warned me that I would never find a teaching job in the United States. He was a former professor of Russian literature, and as we glided over Greenland, between sips of Stolichnaya, he dismissed my approaching American future with a single wave of his hand. I should have told him that no one in Russia ever sipped vodka. But I didn't. I was a docile ex-Young-Pioneer (the Soviet youth organisation) who had just left her mother and her sister, her country and her friends, and who didn't know if she would ever see them again.

In the sterile maze of Washington Dulles International Airport, which might as well have been Mars, an official pulled me into a little room and pointed a camera at my face. With a new identity bestowed on me by the permanent residence card, I floated out of the immigration office. I felt as though I were inside an aquarium, sensing everything through layers of water, clear and still and deeper than I knew, with real life happening to other people beyond the glass. Cheerful families hurried to their gates or drank coffee around spotless tables; obedient lines of passengers patiently waited for their flights.

Why were those people smiling, I wondered? Didn't they know about the customs officials ready to ravage their luggage, or the stone-faced border guards imbued with the power to turn them back, or the fellow passengers equipped with loud voices and sharp elbows? Didn't they know that a real queue was at least three bodies deep, a squirming mass of humanity, stretching and constricting like a worm on the compost pile at my mother's dacha?

The sign in front of me pointed to something called a restroom, where the floor gleamed, the hand-dryers whirred, and the faucets sparkled. Restroom was a perfect word for all that luxury, which seemed to have emerged straight from the immaculate future of science fiction. I thought of the rusty toilets of Pulkovo International Airport, of their corroded pipes and sad, hanging pull chains that never released enough water to wash away the lowly feeling of barely being human.

The restroom, as the rest of the airport, smelled of nothing, and that absence of odour was puzzling. Back home, Russia assaulted you in your nostrils: milk always on the verge of turning sour, the wet wool of winter coats we wore every day for at least five months of the year, rubber phone-booth tiles buckled with urine, exhaust from trucks that ran on leaded petrol, mothballs, yesterday's soup.

Here, people didn't trail the smell of sweat and unwashed clothes, and the cafés full of happy and orderly customers didn't reek of boiled cabbage and dish rags made from old stockings crisscrossed by runs beyond repair. Clearly, I had been beamed up to a different world, like a character from Star Trek, a TV show that would take me five more years to discover.

From Washington, we drove to Princeton, New Jersey, on a five-lane highway wider than any road I had ever seen, wider than the Palace Bridge in front of the Hermitage that spanned the sides of the Neva River back in Leningrad.

New Jersey had its own Hermitage for me to revere: a supermarket three blocks away from my new mother-in-law's house, with its endless isles of food art parading an infinite number of different brands of frozen pizza, pasta sauce, and flavoured yogurts I never knew existed. I went there on a daily tour, creeping past shelves that climbed all the way to the ceiling, past counters with cut-up beef and pork and poultry sheathed in plastic, feeling I was inside the aquarium again, gazing at the real life through the glass.

Gawking at all that meat, sufficient to feed everyone in my entire home town - chopped into pieces for your convenience, big and small, for soup, or stew, or other recipes I didn't yet know how to make - was both spellbinding and eerie. How could I choose one drop in that boundless ocean of food? It was easier to shop in Leningrad: queues always led to products available at the moment, eliminating the necessity of making a choice.

And even if I'd brought myself to selecting a perfect box of cereal, or a flawless apple, how could I take it to a cashier who smiled at me and said hello and politely inquired how I was? What made me so special, so worthy of attention?

Back home, in the cradle of the first socialist revolution, everything was more understandable. Emotions were out in the open, from salespeople's resentment to bureaucrats' indifference. With the absence of social courtesy, you knew when a cashier had had a bad day because she gave you a stony stare, tossing your change into a plastic tray when it took you longer than a second to unzip your wallet. You knew that a saleswoman in a stained white apron thought you brazenly overstepped your bounds when she glared at your request to slice you half a kilo of bologna.

"Slice it?" she would repeat to the people waiting on line, inviting them to join in teaching you a lesson. "Would you also like me to wash your dirty underwear?" she would ask, fists on her hips. You got the message that a wiry babushka behind you on a bus was getting off when her elbow knifed into your kidney. Things were clearly delineated so we always knew what to expect. We felt happy when we were handed the log of bologna we could wrap in newspaper and place in a string bag next to a loaf of black bread, still warm.

Rudeness was ordinary and familiar in Soviet Russia, a way of life adopted by people who were continuously deprived of the most basic things. My mother, suspicious of other people's intentions, always divided the world into those who were ours, svoi, and those chuzhoi, not part of the family. There were only so many soup bones, or beets, or bottles of milk to go around, and if you didn't make sure that your own, svoi, had hoarded enough for today and tomorrow, you might as well pick up the jar of mayonnaise you'd been storing for a New Year's feast and serve it to all those chuzhoi on a silver platter.

Back home, sales clerks glowered and customers cowered. Bureaucrats ordered and the rest of us complied. Life was predictable if you played the pretending game called vranyo, the game I learned in nursery school from Aunt Polya, who was in charge of the kitchen and who wasn't really my aunt. She loomed over us with a pitcher of warm milk and a tray with slices of buttered bread that had absorbed all the rancid smells of the kitchen, watching closely to make sure we ate and drank everything.

We all knew she was watching us, she knew that we knew, and we knew she knew that we knew. She gave us surprise glances, and we chewed diligently, pretending we didn't expect her to look. We all played the game: my sister played it at school, and my parents played it at work. All of us pretended, the watchers and the watched. Life was simple back home: you sliced your soul in half. One half - for yourself, your family and your close friends - the other for all the salesclerks, teachers, and officials, all those chuzhoi who didn't need to know what you thought.

In the United States, how could I get used to a smiling cashier or a cheerful waitress? On a humid day of my first American August, when the heat made me think of a Russian steam bath, my husband decided to stop at a café for iced tea. I was stunned that you could simply stop for a drink here - a result of an individual's whim - and no one was going to yell at you for trying to be special, for standing out from the collective. I was astonished by the waitress who didn't scowl at us as we sat at her table and who pretended that our order of iced tea was exactly what she'd been waiting for. It was so utterly un-Soviet in its good spirits that it made me giggle.

I had a feeling that there was a different reality in my new homeland, simmering underneath all that sterility and order. Why, for instance, did buses speed past me as I was standing at a bus stop? Could the drivers see something about me that made them step on the gas instead of the brake? Later, I found out that in New Jersey you had to flag buses down, but it still made little sense: who would be standing at a bus stop, I reasoned, except someone waiting for a bus? I had a feeling there was a life throbbing under the courtesy and politeness of my new country, the heart that pumped blood to make it all work, to motivate what people did here. That heart was still hidden deep under protective layers of tissue and bone, and during my first months in America, I was not at all sure if I would ever see it.

I was also filled with guilt. I felt guilty for abandoning my mother and sister, for leaving behind the curved facades and lace ironwork of Leningrad. I felt guilty for leaving my father lying in the cemetery on the other side of the Neva under the snow and rain, with Baltic winds slowly erasing his picture from the headstone. I often felt so guilty that the only right thing to do seemed to pack the sundress my sister had sewn from cotton with a cornflower pattern and get on the first flight back home.

But I knew my home was now in America, the antiseptic land of politeness and individual worthiness, of forbidden books and movie thrillers. In the local bookshop, where books banned and censored in the Soviet Union openly lured me from the shelves, I discovered that all those dangerous tomes by Solzhenitsyn and anthologies of Brodsky's subversive poems did not cause a stir in those who passed them.

If only our steely Soviet leaders had known this, they wouldn't have had to spend sleepless nights banning and policing and confiscating these books at the borders, books that didn't force anyone - as it turned out - to become an enemy of the state. On television, I watched scary films about giant bears terrorising a summer camp, about a woman knifed in the shower, about aliens and poltergeists - films that could have never been made in my optimistic motherland, the birthplace of socialist realism. With a tape player in our living room and rows of video cassettes on the shelves, I didn't even have to leave home.

I didn't have to leave home to ask a question or make an inquiry. As my husband explained, I could simply pick up a phone and make a call - a prospect that terrified me. I expected to be admonished, just like I had been back home, for thinking that dialling a set of numbers from the convenience of your apartment could resolve an issue or answer a question. If you didn't have to elbow into a bus, rattle for half an hour over the city's potholes, and then wait in a queue to a clerk's office, you had no right to expect an answer to your inquiry. It took me years of living in America to be able to dial an official number without sweating, to order a meal without an inner apology, to say "I" instead of "we".

It took me years to read the books banned in the Soviet Union. It took me years to realise that being an immigrant means living with your soul split in half, not unlike what we did back in the Soviet Union. One half is here, where my current home is; the other will always belong to what during Soviet times was Leningrad, my birthplace. The longer you live in an adopted country, the deeper your roots grow into the foreign soil, so the wound of the internal divide begins to scab over time. But I know, as all immigrants know, that the scar of exile will always remain. My Russian memories, influences and connections will always remain with me, too, just like a tattoo: Russia inked into my heart.

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