#2
Moscow Times
September 21, 2015
Can Russia and the West Cooperate in Syria?
By Fyodor Lukyanov
Fyodor Lukyanov is editor of Russia in Global Affairs and a research professor at the Higher School of Economics.

Relations between Russia and the United States were already bad two years ago. Even before the problems in Ukraine began, Moscow had granted temporary asylum to former NSA intelligence leaker Edward Snowden and disagreements were deepening between the two countries.

U.S. President Barack Obama canceled a visit to Moscow but agreed to attend the G20 summit in St. Petersburg. There were no formal bilateral talks, but the two leaders had what turned out to be a significant but brief 15-minute talk that led to Putin's initiative for Syria to destroy its chemical weapons in a bid to ameliorate the situation for all concerned. Russian-U.S. relations did not improve one iota as a result, but the world had one less problem to worry about.

Washington and Moscow have not ruled out that the two leaders might meet during President Vladimir Putin's visit to the U.S. this month for the next session of the United Nations General Assembly.

If they do meet, they will obviously have only one agenda item: Syria. Russia's decision to continue sending in military equipment and experts to support the Damascus regime has set all of the other players on edge. Washington has warned Russia that it risks international isolation if it continues to support the Syrian regime.

However, other Western powers have not been so categorical, expressing views ranging from "No 'little green men' in Latakia!" to "Let the Russians give it a try - maybe they'll have more success they we've had."

Russia and the U.S. are deeply distrustful of one another right now. And yet both agree that the Islamic State is pure evil and that a united front is needed to combat it. Then why isn't one taking shape?

First, leaders continue out of inertia to classify the Islamic State as a terrorist organization and, accordingly, refer to efforts to combat it as an anti-terrorist campaign. That is not the best definition. It is based on events of the early 2000s and the global fight against terrorism that the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush declared - and that ultimately led to the current chaos.

What's more, the Islamic State is not a terrorist organization per se, but organized terrorism of a qualitatively new nature and scale. The ultra-radical Islamists led by Abu Bakh al-Baghdadi are essentially a battering ram intent on destroying the entire institutional structure of the Middle East. They want to reshape not only the region's ideological landscape, but also its governments and political systems.

Given the nearly existential threat that the Islamic State poses, it makes sense for members of the international community to combat it with everything their combined arsenals can muster. The West apparently continues to view the situation through the prism of the traditional struggle against terrorism whereas Russia is more inclined toward taking action characteristic of interstate wars.

Second, the two sides disagree over what chance Syria has of continuing with the same structure it had in the past.

The West is primarily concerned with who will control the future of Syria, thus explaining its fixation with removing Syrian President Bashar Assad and conducting talks on power-sharing with the opposition, the resumption of the Geneva process and so on.

However, Moscow has now apparently come to the conclusion that the far more serious question is: What will remain of the former Syria? In essence, the country has already fragmented into different zones of control - or chaos - and it is difficult now to imagine the reconstruction of the former state. That raises the question of which group or territory the international community can league with to stop the Islamic State from advancing.

Before deciding how to restructure and name the new system of authority in Syria and defining the power-sharing arrangement that the various parties must inevitably form, it is first necessary to clarify what part of the existing system will remain.

At present, Moscow has made the not so unreasonable call for the Syrian government and domestic opposition forces to form a coalition, through means of diplomacy, in order to respond to the massive external threat of the Islamic State - a proposal that can only succeed if the parties are willing to set aside their disagreements and earnestly unite against a common enemy.

Unfortunately, that will not happen in today's Syria. Both the ruling authorities and the opposition are vehemently obstinate. And if outside powers were to force them into a coalition, it would soon collapse and the Islamic State would take Damascus.

However, the situation in the region is so dire that the need for joint action could trump all other considerations. In light of Europe's inability to staunch the flow of refugees flooding in, citizens are ready to find a resolution at almost any cost - as long as it happens beyond Europe's borders.

Washington's position is based on a tangle of conflicting motives, with public statements often at odds with actual beliefs. The strong negative reaction to Moscow's moves stems not so much from the desire to remove Assad as it does from fears that Russia might strengthen its position in the region.

Of course, Putin is acting true to form by making an unexpected decision that radically alters a seemingly unalterable set of circumstances. And of course, he is taking a tremendous risk by initiating a campaign against the Islamic State and becoming deeply involved in Middle East intrigues.

There is the threat of Russian casualties: It is difficult to anticipate how Moscow would respond if, God forbid, one of its troops in Syria suffered the same fate as the Jordanian pilot who was burned to death. Russia is not Jordan and it could not leave such an attack unanswered. But that is the path to escalation and entrenchment. Russian public opinion has shown no aversion to heightened activity in the Middle East, but is it ready for the public executions of its soldiers by enemy forces?

The decision to participate more actively in the Syrian conflict stems naturally from Russia's previous actions. Two or three years ago, Moscow weathered harsh criticisms for its stubborn support of Assad at a time when it looked as if he would shortly be deposed.

The more moderate critics essentially said, "Well, you have proved that nothing can be done without your involvement. But now it is time to capitalize on that success by striking a bargain with the West and washing your hands of Assad." As everyone knows, that did not happen.

And now Moscow has decided to capitalize on that earlier success differently - by demonstrating its ability to ruin the West's plans for Syria, and also actively change the situation. International politics has traditionally favored action over words because action alone can win points and boost status. However, actions can also lead to the opposite result.

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 #3
Boston Globe
September 20, 2015
Russia is not the enemy
By Stephen Kinzer  
Stephen Kinzer is a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. Follow him on Twitter @stephenkinzer.

REAL ENEMIES ARE a threat to any country, but imagined enemies can be even more dangerous. They sap resources, provoke needless conflicts, and divert attention from true challenges. The United States has constructed such a fantasy by turning Russia into an enemy.

Our current campaign against Russia was set off by what some in Washington call its "aggression" against neighboring Ukraine. Russia's decision to aid the Assad regime in Syria has also angered us. The true reasons for anti-Russia sentiment, though, lie deeper.

Most leading figures in the American political and security establishments grew up during the Cold War. They spent much of their lives believing that the Antichrist lived in Moscow. Today they speak as if the Cold War never ended.

For a brief period in the 1990s, it appeared that Russia had lost control over its own security. Stunned into paralysis by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and without any power to resist, Russians had to watch helplessly as NATO, their longtime enemy, established bases directly on their borders. Many in Washington believed that the United States had permanently broken Russian power. In their jubilation, they imagined that we would be able to keep our foot on Russia's neck forever.

That was highly unrealistic. By pressing our advantage too strongly in the years after the Cold War, we guaranteed a nationalist reaction. President Vladimir Putin embodies it. He is popular in Russia because his people believe he is trying to claw back some of Russia's lost power. For the same reason, he is demonized in Washington.

Having Russia as an enemy is strangely comforting to Americans. It reassures us that the world has not really changed. That means we do not have to change our policies. Our back-to-the-future hostility toward Russia allows us to pull out our dusty Cold War playbook. We have resurrected not just that era's anti-Moscow policies but also the hostile rhetoric that accompanied them.

This summer's most extreme exaggeration of Russia's power came not from an inveterate Cold Warrior like John McCain or Hillary Clinton, but from the new chairman of our Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford. At his Senate confirmation hearing in July, Dunford said Russia "could pose an existential threat to the United States." He suggested that, to defend ourselves, we should send aid to Ukrainians who want to fight Russia.

Statements like these are bizarre on several levels. First, Russia is a fundamentally weak country with a tottering economy. It is far from being able to compete with the United States, much less threaten it. Second, Russia is surrounded by American military bases, hears threats from the West every day, faces NATO guns on its borders, and therefore has reason to fear for its security. Third, by pushing Russia away, we are driving it toward China, thereby encouraging a partnership that could develop into a true threat to American power.

The most important reason it is folly to turn Russia into an enemy is more far-reaching than any of these. Europe remains stable only when all of its major countries are included in the process of governing, and each one's security concerns are taken seriously.

The visionary Prince Metternich grasped this truth 200 years ago. Metternich was foreign minister of the Austrian Empire and mastermind of the Congress of Vienna, which was charged with reconstructing Europe after nearly a quarter-century of war. France was the villain. French armies under Napoleon had ravaged much of Europe. Anti-French sentiment was widespread and virulent. Delegates to the Congress of Vienna demanded harsh punishment for the troublemaker. Metternich resisted their pressure. He persuaded other leaders that in the interest of future stability, they must invite the miscreant back into the family. That kept Europe at peace for generations.

Emotion argues that Russia is a troublemaker because it refuses to play by our rules, and must be confronted and punished. Reason should reply that Russia is a legitimate power, cannot be expected to take orders from the West, and will not stand quietly while the United States promotes anti-Russia movements on its borders.

In our current standoff, Russia has at least one advantage: Its leaders are not foolish enough to consider the United States an existential threat. We would benefit from a bit of their realism.

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 #4
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
September 21, 2015
Moscow makes the case for school reform
Five years into a process to consolidate and redistribute funding to schools, results are being seen, despite protests from parents and experts.
Alexei Stroganov, special to RBTH

When news came in fall 2012 that School 122 in central Moscow would be merged with another school, parents were up in arms. The school, which is the home of the Moscow Boys Cappella and requires all students to take choir, is one of the few places outside of conservatories where students can do coursework for a special diploma in music. Parents were afraid that the merger would not only result in the loss of the special music curriculum, but that it would "destroy the school's unique culture," in the words of one parent, whose daughter was then in the second grade.

The school was slated for consolidation under a controversial reform that began in 2010 and involves merging small or underperforming schools with larger schools primarily to more evenly distribute financial and administrative resources. Under the reform, funding for schools would be distributed on a per capita basis - a move officials said was necessary to accommodate an increase in demand.

"In our very large country, it is essential to ensure maximum equal access to early childhood services, and supplementary education," said Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, defending the changes, which went into effect Jan. 1, 2011.

Russia experienced a baby boomlet during the economic prosperity of the early 2000s. Russia's state statistics service, Rosstat, showed a steady increase in births from 2007-2012. In Moscow, 101,000 children were born in 2007. By 2012, that number had risen to more than 134,000. While some schools in the center of Moscow, like School 122, are undersubscribed, schools in the bedroom communities on the edges of the city, where young families moved into newly constructed apartment complexes, are overcrowded.

Parents at Intellectual, a state-run boarding school for gifted students in western Moscow, took to the streets to protest the merger and expansion of their school, which had a student-teacher ratio of two to one. Students from the school took up the cause, writing letters to President Vladimir Putin and Moscow's mayor and making a short film that was shown on local news portal Moskva24.

Moscow Deputy Mayor Leonid Pechatnikov responded in an interview with Russian daily Kommersant that if the parents wanted to keep that level of staffing, they would have to pay for additional salaries themselves. "We cannot afford to allocate 378,000 rubles ($5,640) per student. Two students for one teacher is, in fact, a system of tutoring. We have a law on universal education, but we do not have the law on universal tutoring," Pechatnikov said.

The average amount per student spent in Moscow schools today is 63,000 rubles ($940).
 
In search of excellence

In addition to redistributing funding, the reform's authors hoped to improve the performance of students on the Unified State Exam (E.G.E.), which is required for graduation from Russian schools, by combining schools with weaker academics with stronger ones.

Boris Kagarlitsky, a political scientist and the director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements, said that this second goal is at odds with the first one.
"In Soviet times, they sought to reduce class sizes so that the teacher could work with each student. Now per capita funding encourages schools to fill classrooms as much as possible, with fewer teachers," Kagarlitsky said.

But other experts disagree with Kagarlitsky. Isak Frumin, a researcher at the Institute of Education of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, said that forcing smaller schools to merge with larger ones will give more students access to high-quality education.

"There are several schools where the competition was dozens of people for one place, but now they were given additional space by combining with other schools and now they take more children. Opportunities to send a child to a good school have increased," Frumin said.

Writing in a blog on the website of independent radio station Ekho Moskvy, local lawmaker Irina Kurash said that it is clear that the school reform has been a success - parents no longer have to "run around Moscow" in search of a good school and teacher salaries have increased as administrative costs were lowered, she wrote. Additionally, she noted, 13 schools in Moscow made it into the listing of the top 25 schools in Russia.

"Moscow finally has a fair system of financing educational institutions. Now funding decisions are based on standards and not the status of the school," Kurash wrote. Previously school funding depended in part on the school's designation, if it was classified as an ordinary school or had a title that indicated a special curriculum, such as "gymnasium."
 
Out of options

Frumin said that no matter what experts and parents think of the reforms, they are necessary. This year, the number of children entering school in Russia has increased by 560,000 over last year, and the number is only going to continue to rise at least for the near future.

"In the next few years, we will need between 1 and 2 million new places," Frumin said. "Either the number of children who will study in a second shift will increase, or we should put new school buildings into operation. This is a serious problem for the entire country; we are talking about hundreds of billions of rubles. The money has not been fully allocated for it."

Over the past four years, 4,000 schools in Moscow have been combined into 692 larger institutions - including Intellectual, which merged with Gymnasium 1588, and School 122, which was united along with a kindergarten and a school with an intensive German-language program, with School 1234, an English-intensive school with a reputation for strong academics.
 
Results?

After the merger, the students remained in the same building and the music curriculum continued, but School 1234 brought in a new administration and some new teaching staff in the academic subjects in the upper school. The crumbling entryway and concert hall of the school's 1930s building were remodeled and a new playground was installed. Now, two years later, the graduates of combined School 1234 scored so well on the E.G.E. that the school is now ranked 57th out of all schools in Moscow. After years of struggling to attract new students, the arts division introduced a first-grade class of 21 students at the opening bell ceremony on Sept. 1 and the school choirs held a concert as part of Moscow's official City Day celebrations on Sept. 5.

"Things have changed for the better, and many of our fears were not realized," said one parent with two children at the school, who declined to give his name.

According to a poll conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) in July, his views are shared by only 15 percent of parents; 42 percent of Russian parents believe the consolidation of schools is wrong. But for nearly half of those who responded, the jury is still out - 43 percent of respondents told the pollsters the question was too difficult to answer.

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 #5
Moscow Times/Vedomosti
September 21, 2015
Eat, Drink, Be Merry: Russia's Spending Habits
By Nikolai Epple
Nikolai Epple is a columnist at Vedomosti. This comment originally appeared in Vedomosti.

The consumption habits of Russians share some striking parallels with those in developing countries. That information comes from "The EU in the World in 2015," a Eurostat report based on data from 2011-14. The study's authors compare the European Union with 15 G20 countries.

Russia leads in three categories: the relative share of expenses for food (30.7 percent), clothing and footwear (9.2 percent) and alcohol and tobacco (8.3 percent).

Interestingly, in the first two categories Russia is very close to India (food - 29.9 percent, clothing and footwear - 7.5 percent), and both have inexpensive housing and utilities - costing 13.2 percent and 10.3 percent of incomes respectively.

Of course, in countries where incomes are lower, people must pay a greater relative share of their wealth for the most essential of necessities - food.

The share of food expenses in developed countries with a high standard of living averages 10-15 percent. According to the Eurostat study, the citizens of Australia, Canada, the EU and South Korea devote slightly more than 10 percent of their incomes to it, and among European countries, the people of Luxembourg, Britain and Switzerland pay the lowest percentage for food.

However, it is probably not so much lower incomes but cultural differences that explain why Russians spend twice as much of their wealth on alcohol and tobacco. And it is not only that Russians have a passion for vodka. In fact, Moscow leaders subsidize alcohol prices in order to retain their popularity and their hold on power.

During an economic crisis, the share of expenditure on food typically increases, meaning that the gap between Russians and Europe is likely to grow in this area, as well as in the share spent on alcohol and tobacco.

According to polls, Russians clearly understand that their standard of living is falling, but remain convinced that the country is following the right path.

The structure of expenditures also illustrates the operation of more complex social differences in various countries. In most of the countries surveyed, housing and utilities payments accounted for approximately 25 percent of total incomes. Russia and India stand out sharply against that backdrop, and in the case of the former, government subsidies account for the difference.

There are also significant national differences in the relative share of expenditure for health care.

That outlay is traditionally very modest in Russia where the state heavily subsidizes medical services - although those subsidies decreased markedly last year, causing a sharp increase in the share of paid medical services.

Adding to that difference, Russians traditionally avoid going to the doctor except in emergencies.

By contrast, the citizens of economically developed countries take greater responsibility for their own health, spending far more on health insurance and preventative medicine.

The United States is unlike both Russia and Europe in this regard, its citizens spending only 6.8 percent of their incomes on food but 20.9 percent on health care. It seems that Americans are busy losing weight and getting medical treatment. If only Russians had such problems.

 #6
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
September 21, 2015
My First-Hand Account of a Provincial Russian City (It's Bustling!)
Travelling along the Trans Siberian Railway from Moscow to Perm reveals a bustling modern city - totally different from the dark provincial Russia of western fancy
By Alexander Mercouris
Alexander Mercouris is a writer on international affairs with a special interest in Russia and law.  He has written extensively on the legal aspects of NSA spying and events in Ukraine in terms of human rights, constitutionality and international law.  He worked for 12 years in the Royal Courts of Justice in London as a lawyer, specializing in human rights and constitutional law. His family has been prominent in Greek politics for several generations.  He is a frequent commentator on television and speaker at conferences.  He resides in London.

As I reported for Russia Insider a few weeks ago, I have recently visited Perm, an important industrial city in the Urals.

This is my first visit to a Russian city other than Moscow or St. Petersburg.

The trip was made possible by the Oxford Russia Project. This is - amongst much else - an academic exchange bringing together heads of English Departments from across Russia and Belarus for seminars and meetings with major figures in the literary scene in England.

I am not a writer and I do not teach English literature, but through the kindness of Karen Hewitt - the extraordinarily gifted coordinator of the project - I was able to accompany my wife, who heads an English literature department at a University in England, and who is a regular participant in the project.

Though I did not take part in any of the seminars, through the kindness of the staff of Perm State University (I would specially mention - and thank - my outstanding hostess Svetlana Polyakova, together with the dean of history, Igor Kirianov and his daughter Olga Kirianova) I had an exceptionally full series of meetings, meeting an extraordinary variety of people who were kind enough to give me their time and to answer my many questions.

The result was an exciting and stimulating visit, which answered many questions, and posed new ones.

Over the next few weeks I intend to write a series of pieces setting out my impressions.

Before however I do so however there is one general point I want to make.

The overwhelming impression the Western and Russian liberal media convey of life in Russia outside Moscow and St. Petersburg is one of grinding poverty and harshness.  

A recent article in The Economist, with the ominous title "Russia's Economy: The Path to Penury", is a case in point. The article starts with a typically gloomy opening paragraph:

"Almost 500km (310 miles) separate Moscow, Russia's glittering capital, from its lesser-known namesake, a dying village deep in the forests of the Tverskaya Oblast.

The road that connects them begins as smooth asphalt beside the red walls of the Kremlin and ends as a rutted dirt track amid abandoned wooden homes.

The characters that populate the towns and cities along the way often live very different lives.

But as Russia's recession deepens (the country's GDP shrank by 4.6% in the second quarter measured year-on-year), the effects resonate across every stratum of society. "  
It proceeds to paint a picture of misery and hopelessness, with the clear implication that this is how life is lived beyond "Russia's glittering capital" - Moscow.

Having now actually seen Perm and met with people from across Russia who were attending the various seminars, and having also seen one of the small settlements on the railway linking Moscow to Perm, I can say this is complete nonsense.

There is poverty in Russia, rural depopulation does occur, and there are poor villages and regions. To suppose that the whole country outside Moscow and St.  Petersburg is like that is however so wrong as to be grotesque.

The reality of Perm is of a bustling modern city, with powerful industries, a dynamic university, and a highly developed cultural life. Based on what people from other regions told me, it is by no means untypical.

That is not to say that Perm - like the country as a whole - is free of problems. Over the course of the series of articles I intend to write I shall touch on some of them.

However a proper understanding of the country and of its problems is only possible once the myths are banished away. Given the immense traction these myths have - and the interest some have in perpetuating them - banishing them is not easy.  However the effort has to be made, and Perm is as good a place to start as any.

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 #7
http://gordonhahn.com
September 19, 2015
Putin is Crazy and Sick: The Lows of American Rusology
By Gordon M. Hahn
Gordon M. Hahn is an Analyst and Advisory Board Member of the Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, Chicago, Illinois; Senior Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group, San Jose, California Analyst/Consultant, Russia Other Points of View - Russia Media Watch; and Senior Researcher and Adjunct Professor, MonTREP, Monterey, California. Dr Hahn is author of three well-received books, Russia's Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002), Russia's Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), which was named an outstanding title of 2007 by Choice magazine, and The 'Caucasus Emirate' Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia's North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland Publishers, 2014). He also has authored hundreds of articles in scholarly journals and other publications on Russian, Eurasian and international politics and wrote, edited and published the Islam, Islamism, and Politics in Eurasia Report at CSIS from 2010-2013. Dr. Hahn has been a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (2011-2013) and a Visiting Scholar at both the Hoover Institution and the Kennan Institute.
[Links here http://gordonhahn.com/2015/09/19/putin-is-crazy-and-sick-the-lows-of-american-rusology/]

What now often passes for 'analysis' in Western, especially American media and think tanks is nothing of the sort; strategic communications - frequently, biased almost always. Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown himself to be in good health and enjoys approval ratings of over 80 percent. But if American commentators of things Russian are to be believed he is mentally ill and/or physically on his death bed and soon to be overthrown in a palace coup or revolutionary upheaval. Whether such 'analyses' are ordered stratcomm pieces or the fantasies of biased writers, they are delusions that poison the DC discourse and divert analysts and policymakers from serious analysis. Let's look at American rusologists' record on the first two of these scores and have some fun in the bargain. The third delusion - Putin is finished, doomed to be overthrown in an imminent coup - we'll set aside for a separate article.

Putin Is Mentally Ill or Unstable

As the Ukrainian civil war heated up in summer 2014 a slew of articles began appearing claiming that Putin was 'erratic', 'unstable' etc. None of these were claims were based on anything approaching sound evidence. A classic example is Brian Whitmore "Putin's Plan or Kremlin Chaos," RFERL, 28 August 2014, www.rferl.org/content/putins-plan-or-kremlin-chaos/26556263.html.

Whitmore claims that "recently, Kremlin policy appears erratic, inconsistent, and sometimes downright incoherent" and on this basis raises two questions: (1) "Is that all just part of the plan? Or is Putin himself becoming erratic?" and (2) "(I)s the collective Putin coming unglued? There have certainly been signs that this might be the case. There have been whispers in Moscow, for example, that Putin has become increasingly withdrawn and isolated."

Conflating the answers to these questions, Whitmore asserts that there are "signs" that "this" (without mentioning to which question 'this' refers) "might be" so. As evidence Whitmore first invokes Moscow rumors that "Putin has become increasingly withdrawn and isolated" and "is appearing live on television less frequently." He does not provide any supporting data for the latter point.

Whitmore then discusses four events in order to show that when Putin "does appear live on television" it "only adds to the speculation that something isn't quite right." Actually, three of the four events actually are cases when Putin did not appear on television at all, as described below.

Whitmore's Four Events and the Evidence

The first 'event' is the supposed cancellation "without explanation" of a Putin speech scheduled for August 7th. The evidence Whitmore offers towards his conclusion that "Putin was scheduled to make a major address to the nation" is an article from a relatively obscure news website based in Sverdlovsk (http://ura.ru/content/primenews/07-08-2014/news/1052187045.html%20http:/pressimus.com/Interpreter_Mag/press/3687. A "major address to the nation" by Putin would not be announced in this way. Whitmore's claim must be corroborated by at least one major Moscow-based source. There was no mention of any scheduled speech on this day on the Russian presidential website from late July through August 7th.

Whitmore's second 'event' is the failure to show on television either live or even in clips on the news Putin's August 14th truly hyped speech in Yalta, Crimea to members of the political parties represented in the Russia's State Duma. He concludes that this event suggests an emerging Kremlin power struggle over the Ukrainian crisis.

Others have offered more benign alternative explanations for the broadcast cancellation. One is an ostensible need to avoid disgruntling Russians with the news that in the speech Putin proposed the allocatation of billions of rubles to support the Crimean economy at a time when Russia's economy will be challenged by Western sanctions ( Russian political scientists Ivan Tsvetkov, www.russia-direct.org/content/making-sense-vladimir-putin%E2%80%99s-mysterious-yalta-speech). Polish journalist Vaclav Radziwinovicz, writing on August 15th in Gazeta wyborcza, reported that Putin - who is often hours late for important meetings even with high-ranking foreign officials - arrived three hours late and implies that this explains the cancellation (http://wyborcza.pl/1,75477,16482937,Z_duzej_chmury_maly_Putin.html).

Whitmore then makes a leap in logic by citing two strident Russian opposition opinion leaders, Sergei Parkhomenko and Yevgeniya Albats, to suggest that Putin had planned something "he cannot bring himself to do" (Parkhomenko) and "a 'struggle' between 'very dark forces' seeking to 'intimidate' the West and 'more pragmatic comrades who realize that, after all, their money is there.'" Whitmore explicitly concurs saying that he does "suspect" that "hard-liners appear to have won a round with Russia's escalation into Donbass over the past week."

I viewed the speech and perhaps saw some detachment but no evidence of any psychological or physical stress or difficulties (www.kremlin.ru/video/2684). There was no evidence in the video whatsoever to support the view put forth in this piece that something in Putin's public appearances or even related cancellations indicates in any way that something is 'wrong with Putin'. The evidence or impression is conjured up and the presentation betraying bias.

The third 'event' occurred at the August 26th EEU-EU summit, in particular Putin's remarks after his two-hour meeting with Poroshenko made in the early morning hours of the 27th during which the Russian president "swayed to-and-fro and made odd gestures. His facial expressions were off. It definitely wasn't the cocksure Putin." Whitmore cites his stratcomm colleague, RFERL's Yelena Rykovtseva: "Something appears to be wrong with him. He twitches and grimaces at random. Maybe this is why they didn't show him in Crimea." I viewed the video of this press conference twice and saw absolutely nothing of the kind. The most one could say is he sighed somewhat heavily at times, suggesting perhaps slightly tense and/or tired, but nothing strange or even remotely unusual. To me, he seemed the typical Putin and that his comments were in general effective and believable (www.kremlin.ru/transcripts/46495). Earlier in the day, he seemed to slightly choke up for a second once or twice at the very opening of his official remarks at the EU-EU meeting, but likely reflected only some slight nervousness. The rest of his presentation proceeded normally. Given the importance of the event, nervousness hardly would be surprising even for Putin, and other than that brief glitch he was his usual self and typically effective as communicator and advocate of his position (www.kremlin.ru/transcripts/46494).

The fourth 'event' is the publication of the text as opposed to a television broadcast of Putin's August 29th appeal to the Donbass rebels to open up a humanitarian corridor for Ukrainian soldiers encircled in Donetsk so they could return home (www.kremlin.ru/news/46506). Whitmore does not mention this part of Putin's message in "latest remarks on the conflict" and instead notes that Putin "lauded pro-Russian separatists for 'undermining Kiev's military operation.'" Putting aside that effort at spin, we shall stick to the value of the 'event'. It is possible that the idea of issuing a message urging the formation of a corridor emerged in the evening and to air at that time would have been 'over the top' and to do so the next day would have been perhaps too late to prevent a significant massacre.

This is not necessarily to say (or not to say) that Putin would be overly concerned about a growing casualty count among Kiev's forces from a strictly altruistic humanitarian point of view. However, he would be concerned that such a slaughter would diminish his image in the West further and bring the rift to a point of no return for any hope in resolving the conflict through negotiations any time soon. It is worth adding that late hour in which this declaration emerged suggests Putin is putting in extra hours to deal with the crisis. Over the long-term, this could effect his mental and/or physical health and effect his judgement. Unfortunately, I see no purchase in the claim that this is happening now.

Whitmore's analysis was predicated on the claim that recent "Kremlin policy" has been "erratic, inconsistent, and sometimes downright incoherent." However, he does not demonstrate this point and discusses 'policy' only once and in a self-contradictory way. He asserts that in recent weeks Putin had been looking for "a face-saving way to wind down the confict," and yet while meeting with Poroshenko in Minsk on August 26 Putin "was escalating the conflict and sending in Russian troops." But couldn't this just have been deception or was the escalation needed to force Poroshenko to the negotiating table?

Finally, on the issue of the elite split, there is bound to be some splitting as oil price decline and sanctions bite the economy. Indeed, Whitmore's article could very well be part of a strategic communication effort designed to drive a wedge between different factions within the Kremlin and Russian elite. However, I regard the issue of an elite split as not only real but likely over time as the war in Ukraine and the sanctions attending it continue, despite Putin's high opinion ratings, the absence of social mobilization against Kremlin policies, and no evidence of elite splitting thus far. I discuss the issue of a struggle under the carpet below. There is some incidental evidence to suggest some important decsionmaking was going on at the time and that coincided with ongoing events (the humanitarian aide convoy) and subsequently the Russian military incursions. There were two meetings of the Security Council held with unusual frequency (August 8th in Moscow and August 13th in Sevastopl, Crimea) in the week before the Yalta speech.

The question is whether any intra-elite tensions will reach the level of a full-fledged regime split with open defections of significant figures. Then will the split's first breaches reach a critical mass so there is a 'cascading' effect of growing and mass defections to the opposition. Open defections of significant figures occurred in late 2011 and early 2012 when Putin's decision to run for the presidency and the State Duma election results prompted mass demonstrations against the regime. I think the issue of Ukraine and war are no less important to Russian society, the state and the elite. There also needs to be consideration of the split leaving Putin stuck in the middle between hard-liners and soft-liners, the so-called siloviki and civiliki. In this scenario, hard-liners would want an invasion of Ukraine to seize the Donbass or at least greater direct and indirect military support for rebels - Aleksandr Dugin's and Sergei Kurginyan's line. Soft-liners - candidates for defection from the regime - would come to support no direct military intervention and a greater push for talks with Kiev towards a quick end to the crisis/war and a more rapid return so business as usual with the West to protect their holdings and life interests there. Moreover, a split within the ruling elite becomes even more plausible when one considers that historically the worse relations between Russia and the West become, the more authoritarian the form of rule (regime) tends to become in Russia. This will further aggravate relations between the ruling groups and between state and society. Right now there is no evidence for a major regime split, no less one that threatens Putin's rule, and such a split will take some time to develop even if sufficient pressures emerge to produce one.

At any rate, as if on cue Russia's radio Ekho Moskvy (incidentally Kremlin-financed by GazProm Media Holding) and Yevgeniya Albats' program on the next Monday repeated the Whitmore/PV discussion from Friday. The former called the discussion 'Putin's Goals' (basically the same as 'What Does Putin Want'. The discussion was much more intelligent and analytical than PV's. Albats is a liberal opposition voice and editor of the oppositionist Novoe vremya magazine. Whitmore cited Albats in his article claiming 'something is amiss with Putin'.

Moreover, it is interesting that in a matter of 2-3 days after the Whitmore article and podcast there were four episodes of media taking Putin's words out of context with the reader being led to infer that he is a little nutty or at least irrationally aggressive.

1) His comments at Seliger on Kazakhstan, in which he was praising Nazarabaev as the CIS's most effective leader and said that Kazakhstan had never existed before as a state but Nazarbaev had successfully built the Kazakhstan state.  RFERL's spin: "Putin seemed to call into question Kazakhstan's legitimacy as a country" (Is Putin 'Rebuilding Russia' According To Solzhenitsyn's Design?, 1 September 2014, www.rferl.org/section/kazakhstan/158.html). Times of India and others publicized this as well.

2) Ukrainian Defense Minister Geletei says Russia has threatened Ukraine with a tactical nuclear weapons attack through informal channels (Geletei's Facebook page, www.facebook.com/v.geletey/posts/294509377408137). I have documented in part on this website the nearly daily false reports coming from the Ukraine Maidan regime's stratcomm infrastructure.

3) EU President Barosso claimed Putin told him in a phone conversation that 'if I wanted to I could take Kiev in 2 weeks'. Ignored in all the hubbub was the phrase 'if he wanted to', the real meaning of which is that he does not want to. Putin's statement was interpreted widely as a threat to march on Kiev and a sign of his supposed megalomania. When the Kremlin threatened to publish transcript/tape of the call, the EU and media stopped talking about it.

4) Finally, media interpreted a Putin statement made in an interview in Tver with Russian state TV as a call for Ukraine's 'Novorossiya' (Donbass) to be given independent statehood (e.g., Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-ukraine-russia-novorossiya-statehood-20140831-story.html). Putin actually was calling for peace talks between Kiev and Donbass on "the political organization of society and statehood in the southeast of Ukraine" (see Pervyi Kanal, 31 August 2014, http://www.1tv.ru/news/polit/266628 or Ekho Moskvy, 31 August 2014, http://echo.msk.ru/blog/echomsk/1391062-echo/).

All this supports the view that there was either a Western wave of hysterical paranoia in relation to Putin and/or a broad NATO-US stratcomm campaign afoot at the time; one of many or part of a continuous and ongoing stratcomm campaign initiated since the Ukrainian crisis began. A network seems to take its cues from RFERL, the workers of which have access to U.S. intelligence agencies and are likely fed the subject matter that should be addressed. This is similar to the way propaganda is funnled theough much of the Russian state media for stratcomm purposes.

Putin is Physically Ill

Putin appears to have his annual medical checkup in early August. In August 2013, Russia's Surgeon General, Honored Doctor of the Russian Federation, and Putin's physician, Sergei Mironov, gave an interview to a Russian magazine the media Putin is "physically younger than his age" and "perfectly fit for work." Mironov further described Putin as "very athletic" and "considerably younger than his years." Putin's numerous hours in flight propmpted a test of his flying capability in which the president was said to have "surpassed all the standards for pilots," according to Mironov. The doctor also confirmed Putin's love of swimming for long periods of time and that despite his passion for judo Putin had never suffered a serious injury. Mironov noted apparently in connection with rumors Putin has back problems: "To be fair, it's not uncommon for the media to exaggerate somewhat the medical histories of our country's leaders. There were rumors going around not long ago that Putin was having problems with his back. I don't see any reason to hide information about the health of our president, but there is also a thing called medical ethics. If I underwent an operation on my spine, for example, then I'll tell you about it myself" (http://ria.ru/society/20130804/954152644.html and http://rbth.com/politics/2013/08/07/putins_medical_secrets_leaked_to_the_media_28749.html).

Likely based on the operating principle for much of the DC consensus that if the Russians say it, then it must be false, the Western media began running rumors that Putin was fatally ill. In October 2014 New York Post writer Richard Johnson, no Russia specialist, claimed "(n)ews outlets from Belarus to Poland" were reporting that Putin had spinal cancer, but Johnson's own sources told him that Putin had pancreatic cancer and was "allegedly being treated by an elderly doctor from the old East Germany whom Putin met decades ago while serving in Dresden for the KGB. The doctor has been trying various treatments including steroid shots, which would explain Putin's puffy appearance. The physician, who is 84 years old, quit recently, confiding that he hated coming to Russia and was always mistreated by Putin's security detail" (Richard Johnson, "Cancer Rumors Swirl Around Putin," New York Post, 24 October 2014 http://pagesix.com/2014/10/24/cancer-rumors-swirl-around-putin/). A Google, Yahoo or Bing search will yield a host of other Western media reporting the same rumors.

These kinds of articles emerged again in March 2015 when Putin disappeared from public for some ten days. Stratfor reiterated Whitmore's nonsense in an article in May discussing not only the March 2015 disappearance but some more reasonable speculation on the disappearance and a possible disagreement between Putin and the FSB over several issues, including Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov's or other Chechens' possible role in the murder of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. Business Insider re-published the Stratfor piece (www.businessinsider.com/we-still-dont-know-why-putin-disappeared-for-11-days-but-there-are-clues-2015-5).

The 'Putin is physically ill' and 'Putin is mentally ill' memes merged in what appeared to be an Obama administration a stratcomm effort launched in February 2015. Suddenly there appeared all over the U.S. media - all of the major television channels and seemingly all of the other major electronic and print media - demeaning details of a seven-year old report buried in the Pentagon and produced by the Office of Net Assessment in 2008. claiming that Putin suffers from Asperger's Syndrome - a kind of developmental deficiency that leaves one in a condition not unlike autism - which left Putin in a "primitive," "pre-mammalian" and "reptilian stage of development." According to the report, "Putin's neurological development was significantly interrupted in infancy." The study also hypothesizes that Putin suffered a stroke while he was still in his mother's womb and that his mother also may have suffered a stroke while pregnant with him. The report asserted: "His primary form of compensation for his disorder is extreme control and this is reflected in his decision style and how he governs." It concluded, conveniently enough, that Putin's hard-wired personal style is likely to change very little (www.cbsnews.com/news/does-vladimir-putin-have-aspergers-syndrome/).

In other words, Putin's 'aggression in Ukraine' should be expected to continue. In sum, the details of the report released reminds one of clumsy Russian propaganda.

The release set off a deluge of commentary offering a myriad of additional opportunities to continue the campaign. One of the more creative efforts came in the Washington political rag, Politico.com. The writer criticized the report because it insulted those, like his own son, who suffer from Aspergers, noting: "The report asks us to believe that all of Putin's political decisions and inclinations are singularly influenced by Asperger's: his impatience, his wonkish attention to detail, his comfort with routine, his obsession with controlling the day-to-day operation of running a giant country, his "basic personal struggle" to find an inner circle he can trust, seeking glory for himself and the country he leads-all of it because of something that may or may not have happened when young Volodya was a child. This explanation overlooks the tomes of research in sociology, history, political science, and Russian studies suggesting that such traits are all manifestations of the sistema of high-level autocratic politics in Russia-before Putin, under Putin and will continue after Putin-regardless of whether he has Asperger's or not. ... Putin is scary. Autism is scary. Put the two together, and you've got a story with legs, if not evidence" (www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/putin-has-aspergers-dont-flatter-him-114978).

Conclusion

Putin is still alive, and he has not attacked the Baltic states, Europe or Sweden as some analysts expected under the influence of this kind of stuff. Fun stuff to write and laugh about, to be sure (and that presented above is but the tip of an enormous iceberg). But not that which should inform the general public and the elite making the foreign policy of the world's lone superpower.

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 #8
Moskovskiy Komsomolets
September 14, 2015
Russian PM Medvedev's character, achievements, prospects assessed
Mikhail Rostovskiy, Medvedev from Putin's tribe. The man who could have been president: Non-Festive notes towards the Russian Federation prime minister's anniversary

Russian Federation Premier Dmitriy Medvedev will not celebrate his 50th birthday until this Monday [14 September]. But the head of our government has received the main present for the celebrations already at the end of the summer. Immediately after his "descent down the career ladder" in 2012, Dmitriy Anatolyevich found himself in a state of "velvet disgrace" [i.e. in partial disfavour, but still outwardly honoured and with most of the trappings of power] under the new-old president. But all this ended on 30 August. The photograph of the president and the premier's joint training session, which was disseminated to the whole country - is there a more graphic sign of "highest favour" in Russia? By the standards of 2015, probably not.

Does this ostentatious "expungement of disgrace" mean that Medvedev is once again co-ruler, a member of the tandem, and VVP's [Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin's] future successor, as some experts have already declared? I am prepared to argue for any money you like: Nothing of the sort will happen. But equally, I am confident that the signs of attention shown to the premier are not simply Putin's attempt to be nice to him on the eve of the anniversary.

What we have just witnessed are precursors of future changes in Dmitriy Medvedev's political destiny. These changes will not happen tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, or most likely, even this year. But they will definitely happen - the very logic of the development of the Russian political process demands them.

"Please don't screen me!"

Shortly after the murder in 1911 of Petr Stolypin, chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire, Nicholas II told the new premier, Vladimir Kokovtsov: "I have one request to make of you. Please do not follow the example of Petr Arkadyevich [Stolypin], who somehow continually endeavoured to screen [zaslonyat': to shield so as to protect, but also to overshadow, eclipse] me. It was always about him! And because of him, I was never seen!" Such words from Russia's last emperor are, of course, above all a reflection of his specific individual peculiarities.

But at the same time, they are a brilliant illustration of a tradition that has never disappeared from our politics since the era of Nicholas II - the tradition of the jealous attitude of the country's chief executive to the person who is formally regarded as the "number two" in the state, and consequently, has theoretical chances of becoming the "number one." And I also see in this episode the clearest explanation of Dmitriy Medvedev's phenomenal career rise and the key to the riddle of the subsequent reversals of his political fortune.

During his presidency, Medvedev raised the hopes of Russia's creative class to the skies and thereby pre-programmed the stratospheric level of disenchantment of this class when it was announced in 2011: Enough is enough! Putin is to return! It has become fashionable to abuse and belittle Medvedev in every way, to regard him as a complete "political nonentity." From my point of view, such an attitude is profoundly unfair and is based on emotions rather than on political realities.

An ordinary person cannot occupy the posts of head of the Kremlin administration, president, and premier of the country for long years without visible failures. Dmitriy Medvedev is a good speaker and a public politician in the Western mould. And this is not a mask. It is my deep conviction that Dmitriy Anatolyevich sincerely believes in the democratic values that he so profusely extolled in the period of his presidency. Despite his pussycat public image, Medvedev can be a very tough and strict boss. In the nonstate period of his career in the 1990s, our current premier showed his mettle as a good and tenacious businessman, a man with a great ability to make good his own affairs.

But along with this, Dmitriy Medvedev has another range of qualities - a range that made him in Putin's eyes the ideal understudy, the ideal locum tenens, of the presidential and prime ministerial thrones. "I have always noticed that many decisions made by Medvedev have been poorly prepared. Time was not devoted to the real discussion of these ideas. Everything was done without a second's thought" - this is how ex-Finance Minister Aleksey Kudrin assessed DAM's [Dmitriy Anatolyevich Medvedev's] practical qualities for me during our interview in April 2012.

Several days after this, I found myself in the office of a senior state chief and during an unofficial chat, I inquired after his opinion of Medvedev also. In reply, the dignitary fetched the newspaper with the interview with Kudrin, showed me the phrase cited above, and said to me: "Everything has been said here. What else do you want from me?"

Of course, far from everything about Medvedev is contained in this phrase. There was no mention in it of another highly important component of his success. A component that can be described either as Medvedev's phenomenal loyalty to Putin, or as Medvedev's phenomenal inability to assume leadership functions himself. But if we put all the aforesaid together, we will get an entirely adequate general idea of Dmitriy Medvedev - and of why he is so useful to VVP.

Putin is a political leader who is organically incapable of enduring figures who are equal to him in greatness next to him. Naturally, he has comrades in arms to whom far more is permitted than to others. Like German Gref for example. The ex-minister for economic development is a man who talks to the president using the informal second person singular, a man who can, without a summons and even without a preliminary phone call, announce himself in the president's waiting room, stubbornly ensconce himself there for several hours, and ultimately find his way to VVP.

Aleksey Kudrin possesses a similar range of privileges too. The former chief of the Finance Ministry is a unique "bird" in contemporary Russian politics. Kudrin is a free player who periodically receives private audiences with Putin, and is at the same time not an outsider when mixing with the leaders of the opposition. Aleksey Leonidovich is a figure who can allow himself to put forward important political initiatives without agreeing them in advance with VVP. For example, according to my information, Putin was not informed that Kudrin intended to call for an early presidential election.

Aleksey Kudrin also periodically plays the role of petitioner and "interceder with the czar." When the prospect of being a "guest" of the law-enforcement structures for a lengthy period began to loom over the oligarch Vladimir Yevtushenkov recently, several of the most influential business magnates appealed to Kudrin with a prayer for help. And Kudrin did not let them down: He convinced VVP that to make life a complete nightmare for business was not in the state's interests.

But even to Aleksey Kudrin's influence there are clearly designated boundaries. "During meetings with Putin, Kudrin can raise the widest range of questions. But very often, the president's reaction in response to his ideas is circumscribed by the formula 'Lesha [familiar form of Aleksey], I know better!'", a source familiar with the situation told me.

There is also another "but". Kudrin's cherished dream is the role of a "political premier," leader of the government with the right to implement an independent course. I am confident that this dream is destined not to be fulfilled, under Putin, at least. VVP can appoint strong personalities to positions in key ministries. But the post of government chairman is "mentally reserved," in Putin's eyes, for figures of a quite different mould - loyal executors who are incapable in principle of declaring to the president: "No, I do not agree with this, and I will not do it!"

Dmitriy Medvedev fits this outline of Putin's ideal premier even more than, let us say, Mikhail Fradkov or Viktor Zubov. Medvedev did not raise a revolt against VVP even when occupying the post of president - a moment when, theoretically, he had every opportunity to turn Putin into an ordinary citizen deprived of all influence. Consequently, Dmitriy Anatolyevich is absolutely "safe" in the post of prime minister. Why then has Premier Medvedev spent the past three years as the recipient of the deliberate disfavour of the master of the Kremlin? From my point of view, this is actually by no means a riddle.

Behind the facade of the premiership

Before his departure from the Kremlin in 2008, Vladimir Putin received from a close comrade in arms of his a proposal that resembled a joke, one that could only have arisen in the unique feverish political atmosphere of that time: Should the desk in the president's office not be replaced with a round table? Or else, how does this come about, Vladimir Vladimirovich! You will sit at this desk in the place of a subordinate, and Dmitriy Anatolyevich will sit in the boss' place?! It's out of order!"

If I had not heard this story from the lips of an exceptionally reliable source, I would never have believed that such a thing was possible. But this actually happened. Putin, however, decided against resorting to such an extravagant method of "preserving his authority" before handing over the presidential powers to Medvedev. On the other hand, having returned to his familiar Kremlin office four years later, Putin very quickly showed everyone "who is the master of the house."

Having ceased to be president in 2012 both formally and for real, Dmitriy Anatolyevich did not cease to be head of state mentally. It simply could not have been otherwise: To become disaccustomed to "Monomakh's Cap" [symbol of supreme power in Czarist Russia] momentarily is impossible - especially if you are still surrounded by bodyguards, aides, and other courtiers.

This situation was categorically not pleasing to Putin. He no longer needed a co-ruler or even simply a politician with a "presidential aura." VVP needed an ordinary, standard premier, and not a person full of remembrances on the topic "now when I was the head of state..." Putin saw the acute necessity of symbolically returning Medvedev from the "political stratosphere" back to earth. Consequently, as early as in May 2012, before the eyes of the whole country and the whole world, the Kremlin began an operation to rid Dmitriy Anatolyevich of "excess political weight."

Thunderbolts began to pointedly rain down on the heads of the members of Dmitriy Anatolyevich's team. The thesis: "There is only one sun in the country, only one leader by whom one should be guided. If you are the 'vassal' of another figure, get ready for trouble" was driven into the consciousness of the political elite by force. The elite understood the signal. The number of "Medvedev's people" fell sharply. Except for a fairly narrow circle of Dmitriy Anatolyevich's closest associates, the majority of "Medvedev's people" who remained in his orbit "suddenly realized" that they were actually "Putin's people."

Even Medvedev himself did not avoid "educational work." Do you recall how in August 2012 - on the latest anniversary of the beginning of the war with Georgia - the film "The Lost Day", shot by who knows whom, suddenly appeared in the Russian information area? For those who do not remember, here is a reminder. In this film, various respected figures argued that the "architect" of military victory over Saakashvili in 2008 was Putin, and by no means the then president, Medvedev. I do not want to go into the specific juicy details. I think that you have already guessed the most important detail: The film was certainly not shot for no good reason.

As for Dmitriy Medvedev himself, he was one of the first to understand the sense of the events happening around him. He understood - and adapted. "If a more or less complex economic problem arrives for the examination of the government, Medvedev assiduously chairs all the proper conferences, but no less assiduously avoids adopting any decisions. All the points are switched towards Putin, who ultimately makes all the most important decisions" - this is how a source who is well acquainted with the "inner workings" of the White House [Russian government] described the style of the current premier's work to me.

Sometimes VVP is irritated that, apart from the presidency, he also de facto has a second job as the premier's stand-in. For example, Putin attempted to force the government to adopt the necessary, but highly unpleasant decisions stemming from the chronic shortage of money in the Pension Fund independently. But ultimately, it was Medvedev who had the last word in this "bureaucratic ping-pong."

And I think that Vladimir Vladimirovich has no moral right to be offended with Dmitriy Anatolyevich on this account. VVP has got exactly the sort of premier that he wanted.

If everything is so splendid between the two former "tandem partners," why did I express the assurance that it is logical to expect changes in Dmitriy Medvedev's fate? There are two sets of reasons. The first concerns the dramatic state of affairs in the economy. The style of management of the government that was permissible during a calm becomes a provocative luxury during a storm.

"Nonstandard decisions are required from the government right now in the economic sphere. And Putin, to put it in banal terms, does not have the time right now to cover the prime ministerial sector of work as well," the source mentioned above who is very familiar with the ins and outs of the cabinet of ministers' activity described the situation to me.

The second set of reasons is connected with the 2016 Duma elections. According to the Constitution, the government lays down its powers only after the election of a new president - after the election of a new Duma, it is not obliged to do so. I suspect, incidentally, that this is precisely why, in June, Kudrin began to burn with the desire to shorten the duration of Putin's presidential mandate - in reality, he wanted to reduce the constitutional "lifespan" of Medvedev's cabinet of ministers.

But Medvedev is not only the premier. He is also the chairman of One Russia. And this gives Putin grounds for the most diverse "reconfigurations" of the state's upper echelon in the period before and after the election campaign. Only what will these "reconfigurations" look like? It is useless even to conjecture right now. No one - even the most senior state functionaries - knows the contents of the accords between Putin and Medvedev before they announced their latest "reshuffle" in 2011. Nor does anyone know for sure precisely what plans are currently maturing in VVP's head.

I will not be surprised if Medvedev remains premier after the Duma elections. One Russia has once again received a mandate of popular trust, it will be said, and therefore its chairman has every basis for continuing to occupy the post of government chairman as well. But nor will I be surprised if it is announced that, for absolutely logical reasons, the Motherland urgently requires the services of Dmitriy Anatolyevich in another sphere of work. Everything depends on Vladimir Putin's fancy. And as we know, when it comes to "political special operations," it is almost limitless.

At the beginning of the fall 2015 political season, Vladimir Putin undertook a desperate attempt to seize the strategic initiative lost by him - and by Russia - on foreign policy questions. Reflecting on VVP's forthcoming speech at the anniversary session of the UN General Assembly, I advanced the idea that Putin should think very carefully about how to defend Russia to the maximum extent with the aid of his speech against the attacks that will without fail rain down on it in huge numbers at this event.

My oldest comrade, the brilliant Russian specialist on China, Yakov Berger, objected to this in conversation with me: "I agree that Putin should show the Russian state flag at the United Nations and give a rebuff to unfriendly partners. But this is not enough... Putin's addressee should be not only, and not so much, Obama. He needs to propose something positive, something long term and interesting to a wider audience."

Well then, Putin did not wait for his speech in the United Nations. Russia has actively intervened in a crisis that directly concerns a "wide audience" - the crisis in Syria. I do not know for certain how many "military advisers" we have in Syria. But I am sure that VVP has initiated a grand game in that country. Putin is attempting to show that Russia's foreign policy is not only the conflict with Ukraine and our reciprocal sanctions with the West. VVP is arguing that the world needs a strong Russia, and that, without it, it will not be possible to successfully resolve the problem of the monstrous increase in the strength of the ISIL grouping.

I have no idea as to whether this strategy of Putin's will work - it contains very many elements of risk. But at the very least, it is bold, it is new. The need for new, "unworn" political steps is also distinctively felt in the sphere of internal policy, however. At the level of applied political techniques, everything is actually going pretty well for the Kremlin. The results of the single voting day on 13 September are unlikely to disappoint the authorities.

The problems become obvious when one rises in one's reflections to a higher level. I will not "speak for the whole of Odessa." But from my point of view, the feeling that the country is developing in the right direction has unequivocally been lost. The upsurge of public enthusiasm caused by the annexation of Crimea has passed. It has been replaced by growing weariness and a kind of sense of hopelessness. The country badly needs something positive, some kind of new start.

I have no confidence that Putin will be able to achieve such a "new start effect," even by carrying out a large-scale reshuffle in the upper echelons of power. But if such a reshuffle nevertheless does occur in 2016-7, Medvedev is "high command's main strategic reserve." A change of premier is, according to a long-standing tradition, the simplest and least expensive way of "reformatting political reality" of those available to the Russian head of state.

The date of the current prime minister's 50th birthday is possibly not the best time for reflections on such topics. But even on this day of celebration, it is difficult to refrain from the conclusion that Dmitriy Medvedev has already made his main contribution to Russian history. In our politics, he can remain in various guises for a very long time to come. But the big opportunity that Medvedev had - the opportunity to change something in our country in a big way, to turn it aside from the Putin trajectory - will never be granted to him again.

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 #9
Moscow Times
September 21, 2015
Russia's Political Opposition Must Get Its Act Together
By Reid Nelson
Reid Nelson is a political campaign consultant, democracy development specialist and lawyer who served as the Russia country director for the National Democratic Institute for four years.

Any postmortem of Russia's recent regional elections should begin with hearty and sincere praise for those in the opposition who had the courage and invested the time necessary to run, and worked to support campaigns and protect the vote. Given the state of affairs in Russia today, theirs is not only a dangerous undertaking, it is often thankless and always seemingly Herculean.

A number of seasoned campaign veterans were involved in running this year's Parnas campaign. So, they are now doing what good campaign strategists do after an election: assessing and evaluating what worked, what didn't work and determining where to go from here.

In looking forward and charting a course for the near future, they may want to consider first looking back considerably further than this election, and examine where the opposition was several years ago.

A good place to start is a panel discussion held in 2008 in Washington, D.C. at the American Enterprise Institute, where panelists Vladimir Ryzhkov, Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Oleg Buklemishev discussed that year's Russian presidential election. Michael McFaul, who would later become the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, was also present.

It's striking how the issues raised by the opposition panelists then - unfair barriers to entry, vote manipulation, lack of access to media, the need for a unified opposition and more street demonstrations, oppression of opposition supporters - are largely those still being raised today.

But after seven years, can it be said any real progress has been made in building a stronger, more viable opposition? It would be a hard case to make.

Except perhaps for the brief, bright glimmer of Navalny's 27 percent showing in the Moscow mayoral election in 2013, the opposition is essentially where it was seven years ago - low support among the populace, no durable, experienced nationwide organization and pretty much the same leaders.

At that 2008 gathering, McFaul cited other countries where opposition political forces managed to build strong organizations under much more oppressive conditions than those existing in Russia.

He also noted "Most successful democratic movements have not had democracy as the ideology of the opposition; that is usually a means to another end."

"Democracy is a very hard thing to mobilize people around," he added. "They [other successful opposition movements] had other mechanisms for mobilization that did not depend on the state giving them the chance to participate in elections."

We can only dream where the opposition in Russia might be today if it had heeded McFaul's advice and taken to heart his observations back then.

If the progress made over the last seven years is any measure, the current strategic approach of the opposition is not working and it's time to at least discuss some radically different paths forward.

First, reverse the current strategic mindset. Though many would deny it, there is a top-down mentality that pervades the entire political spectrum in Russia, from the ruling regime through the democratic opposition. There is a deep conviction among many opposition leaders that change only happens from Moscow, thus rendering regional organization building and outreach efforts irrelevant.

The democratic coalition ran a good, issue-oriented campaign in Kostroma. But can anyone seriously expect to be successful in regional elections running candidates parachuted in from Moscow? This is not a successful long-term strategy for a party.

Had the opposition been organizing in Kostroma for the last seven years, it's a sure bet that any leaders emerging as candidates out of that effort would have fared far better Sunday than the opposition managed.

Second, find an effective mobilizing ideology. Develop a platform that communicates clearly and directly to people how their lives will improve if opposition candidates are elected.

For a long time, the manifesto on the Parnas website was "free all political prisoners," followed by a series of demands for structural democratic reform. The party's latest platform is a slight improvement.

Needless to say, few Russians get up in the morning and wonder how many political prisoners might be freed that day. They worry about the same things every human the world over worries about: adequate health care, their pension, their kids' education, putting more food on the table.

To be viable, a political party must speak loudly and explicitly to those types of concerns.

Third, work to create a more democratic party. Democracy may not be a good mobilizing ideology, but it's a great way to build an effective political organization.

Parties serve as a means of aggregating citizens' concerns and addressing them through policies. The policy formulation process should include substantive input from the grassroots level of the organization, where activists can conduct direct citizen outreach and help develop prescriptions that resonate with citizens. This creates greater solidarity and a sense of common purpose throughout all levels of the organization.

Fourth, organize and mobilize at the local level - continually. A party gains legitimacy by proving it can be a relevant and positive force in people's lives. That cannot be accomplished by showing up every election cycle and making the case for votes.

Even in the most difficult times it is possible to organize to achieve some sort of good, particularly at the local level where such efforts have more impact.

Producing tangible, positive results for people in their communities legitimizes the party, develops leaders and demonstrate the value of collective organizing and mobilization.

Finally, as a kind of general guiding principle: Focus more on people and less on Putin. Democratic transition depends only in part on credibly challenging the legitimacy of the ruling authority.

Whether or not you believe Putin's approval ratings are as high as polls indicate, there's no doubt he remains the most popular political figure in the country. It makes no sense to try to build a political movement based primarily on simply being opposed to such a figure.

Take the issue of corruption. It can be used to demonstrate that the regime is full of bad people (Putin focused), or it can be used to show how much corruption is costing citizens in unbuilt kindergartens, kilometers of unpaved roads, and unopened new medical clinics (people focused).The latter approach is likely to be much more effective.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky said, "I believe that the problem in Russia is not so much with the president on a personal level. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens don't understand that they're the ones who have got to be personally responsible for their own fate themselves."

It seems unlikely that a "bottom-up" democratic transition will ever occur in Russia. However, liberalization will eventually come, and consolidating and sustaining democratic change must come from the bottom. That means fundamentally re-engineering the way Russian citizens relate to government, political parties and democracy itself.

The opposition should be the architect and builder in that re-engineering project. But a change in the mindset of Russian citizens won't come about by preaching the virtues of democracy. It will happen through empowering grassroots activists to demonstrate the effectiveness of organizing and mobilizing to make a positive impact on communities.

Let's hope that project starts now. Russia cannot afford, and the Russian people certainly do not need, another seven years of unorganized drifting and pointless bickering by the opposition.

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 #10
AP
September 20, 2015
Russian opposition draws several thousand to anti-Putin protest on Moscow's outskirts
By KATHERINE JACOBSEN

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's beleaguered opposition drew several thousand people on Sunday to a protest rally in an outlying Moscow neighborhood to decry the 15-year rule of President Vladimir Putin.

Protesters denounced the Kremlin-controlled political system that keeps Putin in power and prevents the opposition from running in elections. They complained of political repression and official corruption.

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny called on Russians not to give up hope that they can make a difference. He said the opposition's mission was "to work with those who don't believe" that anything can be changed.

The Kremlin intensified its crackdown on the opposition after anti-Putin protests drew as many as 100,000 people in the winter of 2011-2012. The protests were set off by parliamentary elections won by the Kremlin party through what independent observers said was widespread fraud and by Putin's decision to return to the presidency for a third term after four years as prime minister.

Irina Yegorova, 50, who held a sign saying "Putin is not a czar, he's a bureaucrat," said she came to the protest even though she no longer sees a way forward. She said the government will "put more people in jail" and Russia's economy will continue to suffer.

"There is no investment. They are stealing and stealing and stealing," Yegorova said. "We don't have hope anymore."

Protesters said it was wrong to have a system of government where the leader does not change. "It's not like your wife that you're married to your whole life," said 65-year-old Vladimir Semyonovich, who gave his patronymic but not his last name.

The protest was relegated to the southeastern Maryino neighborhood because the city government refused to allow the opposition to rally in central Moscow.

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 #11
www.russia-insider.com
September 19, 2015
Face It: Liberals in Russia Are Just a Fringe
Local and regional elections in Russia on Sunday show a vigorous political life. It's just the liberals have no part in it
By Alexander Mercouris

Though they have received little attention in the Western media, regional and local elections took place across Russia on Sunday.

The elections were the first test of the government's popularity since last December's ruble crisis and since the start of the recession this year.

Turnout appears to have risen, and with few complaints of irregularities, there is no reason to think that the elections do not provide a fair gauge of the state of the government's support.

In the event the results were very much in line with the opinion polls, showing that support for the government and for its party United Russia, remains firm.

Of the three main opposition parties, the Communist Party once again confirmed that it is by some distance the strongest.  There is no reason to think this will change any time soon, which means that the Communist Party will once again be United Russia's main opponent in the parliamentary elections next year.

The single most interesting aspect of the elections was however the failure of the non-parliamentary "liberal" parties, even in central Russian regions where they once might have been expected to do well.

The heavy focus on the disastrous showing in Kostroma of PARNAS, the liberal party of Navalny, Kasyanov and of the late Boris Nemtsov. where it only managed to win 2% of the vote, in some respects distorts the picture. Of much greater importance is that the far bigger and much older "establishment" liberal party, Yabloko, which in the 1990s was considered a major political force, also did poorly across the board.

In aggregate all the liberal parties taken together failed to poll more than single figures.

Whether one likes the fact or not, liberal parties are not a significant element in modern Russian society or political life.

Even the Guardian's Alec Luhn, wandering around Kostroma, was obliged to admit widespread support for United Russia there.

Given that this is so, it is baffling that in his report he continues to give so much emphasis to the doings of PARNAS which on the basis of its results, is quite obviously not a real political party at all, but just a fringe protest group.

Certainly there is no justification for referring to the liberal parties as Russia's "main opposition forces" as the BBCdid  in its report of the elections.

Russia's real opposition parties are not the liberal parties, but the three parties (the Communist Party, the misnamed Liberal Democratic Party of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and the social democratic A Just Russia) that Russians typically vote for when they vote for their parliament.

Politics do exist in Russia.  In Kemerovo turnout on Sunday was over 80%, and in one gubernational election there will be a run-off.  It's just that the liberals aren't part of them.

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 #12
Moskovskiy Komsomolets
September 14, 2015
Opposition politician berates Russian "power vertical"
Gennadiy Gudkov: 'Hybrid counterrevolution' has taken place; Nonexistent 'celebration' with real tears in our eyes

It is possible that many do not remember this date. And have not commemorated it. Nevertheless, on 13 September 2004 a new political doctrine was proclaimed in Russia, to be named slightly later the "power vertical." Essentially on that day there began a quiet "hybrid counterrevolution" which passed unnoticed by citizens and which over the next 11 years gradually led the country to its present state.

On that day Russia embarked on a slippery and dangerous path, preferring authoritarian forms of rule to the limited democracy which already existed prior to that moment. The pretext (and I stress this, the pretext, not the reason) for this epoch-making decision was the tragic events in Beslan, which shook the entire civilized world.

I remember very well that September 2004, because it was then that I had my first serious falling out with the incumbent regime. During those days I was invited to the Presidential Staff and issued with an extremely stern demand to stop commenting on the Beslan events and to accept as a matter of course the decision that had been reached on the "power vertical." Following the Presidential Staff, an edifying conversation with me ("on Kremlin instructions," was how he explained to me the reason for our meeting) was conducted by the Moscow Region First Deputy Governor, who "out of friendship" explained to me what "they" (he pointed up at some point in the ceiling as he said this) could do to me and my associates, my business, and so forth if I did not stop stating in public that the fight against terrorism had nothing to do with the introduction of the notorious "power vertical."

That is why the act of terrorism in Beslan was not only a terrible tragedy which led to the deaths of hundreds of children and hostages. It was also a historic milestone in the sad fate of the Russian state, which embarked on a course towards the consolidation of the hierarchy of functionaries.

The state of shock in which Russian society found itself following the senseless and ruthless killing of the Beslan children helped get through the reform of the regime almost unnoticed to the overwhelming majority of the population.

The next day we awoke in what was already a different country. In my view, the anniversary commemoration "brings tears to the eyes" and those tears are not only for the children of Beslan. Russia had yet again let slip a historic chance to build a civilized country with a replaceable regime, a normal parliament, independent courts, and free media. On that basis and with our resources, over those 11 years Russia would indeed have become one of the world's honourable countries... But, alas, we turned once more from the main road into a historical dead end.

And so, what has the notorious power "vertical" given the country and its citizens? Despite some upsurges in the "noughties," caused by the crazy prices for oil and gas, today Russia is in a deep economic crisis generated solely by the "power vertical's" voluntarist management methods. The stranglehold of the functionaries, total corruption, and impulsive adventurist decisions on domestic and foreign policy have cast Russia back decades, led to its international isolation, and placed it on the verge of war with a neighbouring state - Ukraine - which it was impossible to imagine even in our worst nightmares 11 years ago.

Over 11 years all democratic institutions in the country have been almost completely wiped out. Elections of governors and municipality heads have been de facto abolished and the elections that are left have been turned into a pitiful farce with the removal of opposition parties and candidates, the sidelining of observers, and the rigging of results. Over the course of this period the media have become an instrument of shameless propaganda which engages day and night in "brainwashing" the population, who have become completely stultified by the deluge of lies and hatred which has been descending on them from virtually everywhere.

Capital and people are fleeing Russia en masse: Whereas in 2004 the outflow of capital was no more than 20-25bn dollars, in the past two years it has come close to 150bn dollars. The Russian rouble is rapidly losing its value: In 2004 the dollar was worth 29 roubles, now it is worth over 68; because of this prices in the stores are rising and citizens' living standard is dropping.

In Russia there is a decline in industrial production (minus 5 per cent in 2015 alone) and in construction and trade, while unemployment is on the rise and there is a crisis in education, medical care, and culture. Is that really how you were dreaming of rising from your knees, my dear compatriots?

The failures in the economy and in social policy are being presented to Russian citizens as "the intrigues of our enemies" again encircling us on all sides. However, the country's government continues to keep Russian money in US treasury bonds and European banks' gold reserves. Would you trust your money to your enemies, esteemed Russian citizens? That means that they are lying to us once more about our enemies, ascribing all their blunders and large-scale theft to "the intrigues of Uncle Sam."

Instead of resolving the economic problems of a population that is rapidly growing poorer (over 23 million Russians are already below the poverty line) we are again threatening the world with our military might, brandishing the nuclear stick right and left, and then wondering why our neighbours so dislike us and why even they are not our allies in countering the whole world.

The power "vertical" is a generally dangerous thing, particularly when its buttress is moving away from this rusty hulk. It will then collapse onto the country and people, burying the destinies and aspirations of millions under its ruins. This has already happened not just once and not even just twice in Russia, alas.

I would very much like to be wrong, but I fear a similar tragedy awaits our long-suffering people in the very near future. Meanwhile, happy "vertical" anniversary to you, dear Russians!

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 #13
Carnegie Moscow Center
September 21, 2015
Problem-2018 or Putin's Dilemma
By Andrei Kolesnikov
Senior Associate and Chair Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program

In their classic work "Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy", recently translated into Russian for the first time, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson imagine a dictator making a cost-benefit analysis.

The imaginary autocrat is trying to make an optimal decision by calculating the cost of repression. Will it cost him less and make his situation more comfortable if he introduces some elements of democracy?

At a time when the Russian economy is shrinking, Vladimir Putin faces a dilemma, which can also be called "Problem-2018," as it is the choice that awaits him at the end of his current presidential term. It is a choice between greater repression and more democracy within the confines of the current "information-based dictatorship."

In Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman's formulation, the modern-day Russian regime is an "information-based dictatorship, " because it uses outright repression sparingly and relies much more on propaganda tools. As these two authors explain, "So long as force is not too cost-effective, it is used against the general public only as a last resort after co-optation, censorship, and propaganda have failed."

As the economy gets worse, so official propaganda is intensifying, and with it selective repression. The recent sentences, reminiscent of the Stalin era, meted out to the alleged "terrorists" and "enemy agents" Oleg Sentsov from Ukraine and Eston Kokhver from Estonia were PR actions intended to educate the Russian public.

If the situation gets completely out of hand, if propaganda, selective repression, and a constant state of a hybrid warfare no longer do the trick, then there has to be a next phase: either comprehensive repression or a decision to embark on the path of reform and introduce some democracy.

Democracy should bring prosperity. In a paper published in 2014, the very same Acemoglu and Robinson answered the conundrum that had bothered social thinkers for years, concluding that democracy does indeed cause economic growth.

Of course, the president, his inner circle, and the wider elite are trying, as usual, to choose the do-nothing option and hoping the problem will go away.

They revealed this strategy of "postponing decisions" with their reaction to the "Strategy-2020" state economic program. The program was supposed to kick-start a new phase of modernization of the Russian economy and re-start the Putin presidency of 2012. The authors of Strategy-2020 received genuine thanks for their ideas. Their obedience was appreciated too: they had heeded the advice not to stick their noses into politics and social issues and keep to economics and finance.

Yet the actual outcome was very different. Either no action was taken or the exact opposite of what Strategy-2020 recommended occurred. For instance, defense spending was increased, while expenditures on healthcare and education were cut.

The official message was "Thank you, dear experts. We asked you to come up with ideas that required no change from the status quo. But your road-map still calls for change. Absolutely not!"

Yet, even if reform is rejected, mass repression is not an attractive option either. It is expensive, it upsets the balance in the elite, and it increases uncertainty. Nor would it reduce the risk of the regime losing power.

This fear drives everything the regime does. It underlines their "no-strategy strategy," in which propaganda is used to cover up a crisis, and, instead of reforms, a New Syria or Northern China project is devised, which are in turn substitutes for the failed Novorossiya project in eastern Ukraine.

Fear of regime change also lies behind the almost hysterical reaction to the supposed threat of revolutions. The Arab Spring and the Maidan frightened this regime as much as the Prague Spring of 1968 scared Leonid Brezhnev.

Russia's leaders are nervously groping for ways of preserving themselves. They recently replaced Russian Railway boss Vladimir Yakunin with the "technocrat" Oleg Belozerov in a quest for greater efficiency or, rather, survival. But Belozerov and other second-tier technocrats who are available to fill an entire government will not help. As the word "technocrat" suggests, men like this offer a technology, not a strategy.

For the last few years the symbol of Russia has been a knight standing at a crossroad and pondering, not choosing either one road or the other.

The knight does not move, even as everything is in motion around him. Bearded volunteers go off to fight; bulldozers destroy contraband cheese. The television quotes radicals like Dmitry Enteo or Alexander Prokhanov, where it once quoted Tolstoy or Chekhov.

The knight wonders to himself, "Shall I set my people free or press down on them more? Which will cost me more?" And all the while, the oil price keeps falling.

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#14
The Unz Review
www.unz.com
September 18, 2015
Egor Prosvirnin Gets Shoahed. Is Novorossiya Next?
By Anatoly Karlin

One of the more frustrating misconceptions Westerners have about Russia - including even many of the more well meaning ones - is that Putin is some kind of nationalist.

He is not. Nor was he ever.

It appeared he might be sort of leaning in that direction in the heady days after Crimea's return into Russia. For the first time, he even started using the term russkie - ethnic Russians, as opposed to the multiethnic, and about as fictional as "Soviet," nationality called rossiyane - in some of his speeches. But since then he moved back into old forms and familiar habits, and the wholesale "regathering of the Russian lands" that many (but far from all - it's complicated) Russian nationalists were salivating after in mid-2014 wasn't to happen.

This is not, of course, to say that Putin is a bad leader, or anti-Russian, like the real Russian nationalists have always claimed. It is not exactly a secret that yours truly believes he is objectively better for the Russian nation and its ethnic minorities than any plausible liberal or Communist opposition alternative. But apart from being a patriot, Putin is also an ethnic blank slatist. No nationalist of whatever stripe would have allowed large-scale Central Asian immigration into the Slavic Russian heartlands, which even many of my decidedly anti-nationalist and cosmopolitan acquaintances in Russia have complained about.

And most nationalists would have supported Novorossiya to the hilt, Western sanctions and ostracism be damned. Ironically Putin might get damned either way. It doesn't much matter if you steal $10,000 (Crimea) or $10 billion (Novorossiya and Malorossiya) from a bank. Either way, the (world) police is going after you. I personally don't fully buy this argument 100%, but it should be stressed that this has been one of the main domestic criticisms of Putin's Ukraine policy from the Right (which in Russia includes the Hard Left, i.e. the Communists). And these criticisms are arguably far more potent and potentially dangerous for Putin than criticisms from pro-Western liberals for going against the West.
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It is in this context that we the see the police search of Egor Prosvirnin's apartment, and the confiscation of his computer and other electronics.

Egor Prosvirnin is the chief editor of Sputnik i Pogrom (SiP), a Russian nationalist glossy magazine. Unlike most of the Neo-Nazis and liberal nationalists, they are ardent supporters of Novorossiya, and tend to idolize Tsarism and the White movement. Prosvirnin has met with Igor Strelkov on several occasions and SiP has been responsible for raising several millions of dollars in humanitarian aid and in organizing "vacations" to the lush resorts of the Donbass. In this sense, their Novorossiya policy is in line with that of the Communists and the Eurasianist imperialists, and (to a far more limited extent) to that of the Russian state proper.

It is also the closest thing Russia has to a US-style Alt Right, though as with all European nationalist movements, it does not have the Americans' preoccupation with race, and is far less literate on IQ matters. Its writers tend to be young, socially liberal, supportive of free speech, and unusually familiar with Europe and the US. It has been called "Russian nationalism for hipsters" by several commentators. One anecdote to illustrate this: Dugin, their "Eurasian" antithesis, appears to believe "transhumanism" is some particularly deviant variant of transgenderism. The SiPers, in stark contrast, are familiar with Ray Kurzweil and write articles about Russia's potential role in the technological singularity.

Sometimes this familiarity with the West leads them down some very questionable avenues in which they overestimate Western wisdom and intellectual vitality. I got the (possibly mistaken) impression that Prosvirnin believes that the European immigration crisis is a devious plot by Germany to enhance its power in Europe, as opposed to Merkel being her usual dithering and feckless self. He is a militant atheist who wouldn't be out of place at /r/atheism. He regularly cites Stratfor, and more or less reprints its geopolitical analysis. Now Stratfor might be very good at marketing itself as a "shadow CIA" but it is far less competent at actual geopolitics, or even password security for that matter. And the SiP guys are positively obsessed with the concept of "Putinsliv," that is, the idea that Putin is going to "flush" Novorossiya anytime now. In this obsession, they are a somewhat ironic mirror image of Ukrainian "svidomy" who harp on about peremogi - victories, and zrada - betrayals, and the endless ways in which they morph and coalesce between each other.

But such minor quibbles aside, SiP is an excellent resource that regularly produces quality articles on Russian history and culture as well as on more loaded political topics, and (for Russian speakers) it is well worth its $50 annual subscription price. Its name regardless, it is not particularly anti-Semitic. It just don't care about Jews very much (which admittedly is equivalent to anti-Semitism in many Western and Russian liberal circles).

Nor, until recently, did SiP appear to have particularly big problems with the Russian state.

What happened?

Russia does not have the First Amendment. It does have Article 282 of the Criminal Code, which criminalizes hate speech, like in most European countries. But it is a tool that has been wielded selectively, mostly against politicians of the Neo-Nazi persuasion. Incidentally, the Neo-Nazis as well as the "liberal nationalists" (mostly Krylov and the more famous Navalny) have for the most part been the Russian nationalists most against Novorossiya, seeing it as a sovok creature and praising the Ukrainian junta as the new citadel of the White Nationalist global revolution. (Asking them what they thought of this White nationalist paradise having a Jewish oligarch as Fuehrer and an Armenian sci-fi nerd as Goering was a reliable and entertaining way to trigger them).

Anyway, Article 282... a tool that has been wielded selectively... until now. In that its application against a public figure with no obvious Neo-Nazi connections and a history of support for Novorossiya is unprecedented.

Now to be fair, Prosvirnin has always been staunchly - even rabidly - anti Putin. But this never got him into legal trouble before, so that is unlikely to have been a key motivator now.

The pessimistic explanation - and one advanced by Prosvirnin himself - is that Putin is indeed plotting some great "zrada" (betrayal) against Novorossiya. Naturally, this would excite massive opposition amongst most Russian nationalists, so in this interpretation the confiscation of Prosvirnin's computer equipment - especially were it to lead to further arrests and prosecutions of Novorossiya supporters - could be the Russian state nipping potential opposition in the bud.

Now it should be noted at the outset that SiP doesn't have a great predictive record. It is been predicting Putinsliv for more than a year now, but during this same period the DNR and LNR have consolidated themselves as functioning states, and the Novorossiya Armed Forces are far more powerful today than they were even in early 2015 during the Battle of Debaltsevo. It would be strange of Putin to have enabled all this, only to "flush" it all down later on. In any case, the Minsk Agreements are failing on all fronts - most of all thanks to helpful Ukrainian nationalists who are the main obstacle to Poroshenko implementing his side of the deal. With Minsk II in its death throes, it would be exceedingly difficult for Putin to commit his "zrada" in any plausibly face-saving way.

And yet... and yet...

If that is indeed the plan, to decisively close up the Novorossiya project, try to make amends with the junta, and hope they and the Western "partners" forget and forgive Crimea, this is pretty much what I'd be doing in Putin's place: Harassing and seizing the computers of Novorossiya supporters, using that to build criminal cases against them, discrediting them in the media, and sending them off to prison. So this might conceivably be Step 1 of such an operation. Or it might not be. It probably isn't.

But then again... back in July of this year, Prosvirnin on his Facebook page - I can't locate it now, but it was certainly there - predicted that Novorossiya would soon be betrayed (nothing new) and replaced with a propaganda campaign in favor of Russian involvement in Syria, including boots on the ground (very new!).

He even argued that this would be a way of mending US-Russian relations, which certainly cuts against the conventional wisdom - both in the mainstream and the altsphere - that the West and Russia are fundamentally at odds in Syria and that the US is committed to seeing Assad go.

In effect, Russia would doing the "dirty" work of wrapping up the Syrian Civil War with the quiet acquiescence and approval of the West and the Gulf Arab states while they get to wash their hands of it, condemn Russia, take meaningless symbolic actions against it (e.g. requesting that Greece close its airspace to Russian military cargo only for Greece to promptly refuse it), and otherwise quietly shake Putin's hand and congratulate him with the restoration of order in the Levant and, in the Europeans' case, for helping end the refugee crisis.

And for all my, and the Saker's, prior skepticism... some of this does seem to be happening.

Russians tanks and gunships are appearing in the Alawite heartlands. Bases are getting expanded. According to the latest reports from gazeta.ru (an anti-Kremlin publication), Russian military contractors are being sent to Syria to fight for Assad against their will.

It looks increasingly that Prosvirnin must have either guessed very, very well... or that he had very, very senior informants in the Kremlin.

If this version of affairs is in any way accurate, then it appears that Putin is setting himself up for a fail of epic, 1989-like proportions.

My operating assumption is that the US does not tend to honor those of its commitments that are not both written and binding (just ask Gorbachev about NATO expansion). Imagine that Russia "sorts out" Syria, assuming onto itself the opprobrium of keeping "bloody Assad" in power and doubtless taking some military casualties in the process to boot. Assume it also betrays Novorossiya, as Prosvirnin has been insisting it would for over a year now. Assume it does all this on some promise from the US to drop sanctions, accept Crimea, and help reintegrate Russia into the international (read: Western) community.

But why would it?

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on... shame on you, as that old Texan saying somewhere in Tennessee goes. If Putin falls for a trap this obvious, he will have nobody to blame himself. And with an approval rating now presumably in tatters, he will find both nationalists and liberals coming at him with knives unsheathed (unless, perhaps, he takes care of them beforehand).

But it is also this very obviousness that is also the best argument against it. Say what you will of him, but one thing Putin definitely is not, is stupid.

The alternative explanation, and one in line with the theory of the "mnogokhodovka" - the idea or faith amongst pro-Kremlin commentators that Putin has a very devious, multi-step plan for final victory in Ukraine - is that Putin does plan to walk into this trap but to then spring it on the US itself. If so, it would be fascinating to see this play out.

The third, and in my opinion likeliest scenario, is that both Prosvirnin and I are overanalyzing things, that the case against Egor is just what it says on the tin (alleged hate speech in one of SiP's articles), and that nothing particularly radical is happening in either Syria or Ukraine.

Though in fairness to Prosvirnin, he at least has the benefit of his conspiracy theories being given weight by the heavy, arbitrary hand of the Russian justice system.

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 #15
Reuters
September 18, 2015
Russia for first time acknowledges low oil prices may hit output
By Olesya Astakhova

(Reuters) - Russia's oil production may drop if crude falls below $40 a barrel, Deputy Energy Minister Alexei Teksler said on Friday, the first time Russia, one of the world's biggest producers, has acknowledged low prices could hit output.

Russia has so far insisted it would not deliberately cut production of oil, its chief export, even if prices fall below $30 per barrel. That has frustrated some oil exporters who want coordinated cuts to arrest the slide in world prices.

"If the price falls below $40 per barrel, then we, most likely, would be faced with a production decline," Teksler told reporters.

He said any output cuts would come about as energy companies would be forced to change their approach, adding that firms would start reviewing business models if crude traded persistently below $45 a barrel.

"With a price of $40-$45 per barrel, the companies will revise their models, if the low price persists long term," Teksler said. "Previously approved models would stop working efficiently."

Brent crude edged lower to below $49 a barrel on Friday after the U.S. central bank warned on the health of the global economy and on signs the world's biggest producers would keep pumping at high levels to maintain market share.

Teksler's comments may not yet amount to an early signal to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries that Russia might cooperate on production cuts.

However, it is a change of tack in official comments that the country, which in the past years has produced more oil than most in the industry expected, could in theory cut its output.

The statement follows a similar acknowledgement by Kazakhstan, another important ex-Soviet oil producer, that its oil output could fall by a tenth next year if prices drop to $30 per barrel.

Teksler added that the energy ministry sees a risk the European Union will introduce sanctions on Russian oil purchases, but that would be costly for the EU.

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#16
Moscow Times
September 21, 2015
Russia to Ban Genetically Modified Organisms in Food Production

The Russian government will ban production of goods using genetically modified organisms (GMOs), Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich was quoted as saying Friday.

"The question is complicated, but the decision was made: We are not going to produce any food products using genetically modified organisms," Dvorkovich said at an agricultural forum, the Prime news agency reported.

GMOs in agriculture have become a controversial issue worldwide, with several dozen nations banning their import or use. Critics of GMOs say they are potentially hazardous to human health and the environment, but many scientists oppose limits on their use, insisting GMOs have been used for years and are perfectly safe.

Russian authorities have been tightening rules against GMOs for some time. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said last year that Russia would not import GMO products, and the government approved a draft law banning GMO cultivation, except for research purposes, in early 2015, Prime reported.

Dvorkovich, speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June, said that Russia would not resort to using GMOs to boost agricultural output, and that Russia has "chosen a different path" to boost crop yields, according to naturalnews.com.

President Vladimir Putin in 2014 said measures should be taken to protect the Russian market and consumers from GMO products, as their use could have unforeseen consequences, news agency RIA Novosti reported.
 

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 #17
Forbes.com
September 17, 2015
Barclays Thinks Russia May Be Hitting Bottom
By Kenneth Rapoza

A new dawn for Moscow...again? Barclays thinks the recession pains are starting to ease up a bit. But, the investment bank warns, Russia's economy is still struggling and won't post any growth this year and maybe not until the end of next year.

Has Russia bottomed out?

If I told you what I knew, that would cost an annual fee of $20,000.

In the meantime, here is what Barclays Capital is thinking.

Russia's real sector data for August was a bit better, implying positive momentum change in a country hit by sanctions and weak oil prices. It's not that data is improving, per se. It's just that the rate of decline is moderating.

In particular, real investment improved to a -6.8% yearly rate from the -8.5% yearly rate in July, which proved to be better than consensus. Investments are starting to benefit from the improvement in locally produced profits that has taken place in 2015. In addition, industrial production declined by -4.3% yearly in August from the -4.7% decline in July.

When it's that bad, one hopes it can only go up.

Barclays might be a bit more bullish than they need to be. Consumption data released on Thursday was worse than expected. Real wages are down 9.8% compared to a 9.2% decline in July. This was worse than expectations in the market.

Retail sales are declining again, down 9.1% in August and only slightly better than the July decline. And unemployment was unchanged, meaning further adjustment in consumption could be under way this quarter.

For BarCap, today's Russian data suggest that declines in real GDP continued into the third quarter, but that momentum is improving, albeit slowly.

For instance, second quarter GDP fell 2.0% on a quarterly basis, accelerating from the first quarter decline of 1.6%. Barclays is forecasting a decline in third quarter GDP to be better than previous quarters. In other words, the recession is still in place, "but is starting to show signs of bottoming out," BarCap analysts said today.

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 #18
www.russia-insider.com
September 19, 2015
Russia's Recession Bottoms Out
Statistics point to the worst being over, with signs of recovery starting to grow
By Alexander Mercouris

Away from the gyrations of the financial markets, latest statistics appear to confirm that Russia's economy is coming off the bottom.

Both industrial output and investment contracted by less in August than in July - and less than forecast - whilst after a brief and small upward tick caused by the August ruble fall, the trend in inflation is down again.

It is not all good news. Retail trade turnover in August was down by 9.1% - worse than expected - whilst the fall in the ruble in August caused the Central Bank to delay its planned interest rate cut.

Nonetheless the basic story the statistics tell is of an economy that is now coming off the bottom.

Meanwhile in a time of recession the government's budget deficit is just 3% of GDP

Perhaps the most remarkable figure of all is that aggregate foreign debt is expected to fall to $500 billion by 1st October 2015 - testament to the speed of the economy's deleveraging.

That the Russian economy has paid off roughly a third of its foreign debt during a period of falling oil prices without sinking into depression is a sign of its underlying strength and resilience. With the Central Bank's reserves now standing at $365 billion, the day when they will overtake the amount of foreign debt may not be so far off.

All this comes as the US Federal Reserve Board has once again put off a rise in interest rates, which remain essentially zero.

It is difficult in this situation to avoid making comparisons between the two economies.

Officially the rate of unemployment and the size of the budget deficit in the two economies is about the same. However the US is supposed to be several years into its recovery, whilst Russia is in recession.

Inflation is many times higher in Russia, but is expected to fall quickly. Russia has a trade surplus, whilst the US runs a trade deficit.

The biggest difference between the two economies is that Russia can increase its interest rates - as it did at the start of the year - to an extent that in the US now looks unimaginable. It is imposslbe to imagine interest rates of 17% in the US, such as we saw in Russia at the start of the year, without this triggering a severe economic crisis. Russia by contrast seems able to weather the storm.

That perhaps is as good an indication as any of which economy is in better shape.

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 #19
RFE/RL
September 20, 2015
Patron Saint Of Russian Journalism Despairs Over Putin's Television
by Roman Super and Robert Coalson

MOSCOW -- If Russian journalism has a patron saint, his name is Yasen Zasursky.

The ailing 85-year-old headed the Moscow State University (MGU) journalism department for more than 40 years before becoming its president emeritus in 2007.

The roster of respected journalists who received their diplomas from him is astounding: Yury Shchekochikhin, longtime investigative journalist who died suddenly and mysteriously with symptoms resembling acute poisoning in 2003; Anna Politkovskaya, the investigative journalist who was murdered in Moscow in 2006; Mikhail Beketov, the former muckraking editor of Khimkinskaya Pravda who died in 2013 of injuries suffered when he was savagely beaten in 2008; and many others.

But Zasursky is far from impressed by the work of others who have taken his courses -- and are now stars of Russian state television under the government of President Vladimir Putin.

In fact, he is deeply disheartened.

"It is unpleasant for me to see what they are conveying," he told RFE/RL's Russian Service. "It is pointless trying to get your information from television. Everything there is official announcements. There is nothing analytical, so you risk being turned into a person with blinders on."

"There isn't even one journalist there who I would say has his own opinions," he adds.

It is a harsh assessment coming from someone who devoted his entire life to producing his country's journalists.

Zasursky cringes a bit when told that one of his students, state TV news presenter Ernest Matskyavichyus, recently declared that Russia is in the throes of an information war and journalists must reject formerly accepted international standards of journalism. "Let's remember how journalism was in 1942," in the midst of World War II, Matskyavichyus said. "Did they present both sides of the story -- interview one side and then the other in turns?"

Matskyavichyus was "an excellent student," Zasursky says.

"But, no, I don't agree with that," Zasursky says of the Vesti presenter's rejection of one of the basic principles of balanced journalism. "People are only disarmed when they have insufficient or incomplete information. Then we have surrendered even before the enemy attacks."

He is at a loss to explain the popularity of another MGU graduate -- Dmitry Kiselyov, who heads the Rossiya Segodnya state media conglomerate and dispenses anti-Western venom as the host of a weekly news round-up on state-run Rossia television.

"He was an interesting journalist," Zasursky says of Kiselyov. "Was."

"He was a very smart young man," he continues. "He wrote some very smart things. But now he is simply repeating various ideas. And that has nothing to do with journalism. A journalist must help people to understand events. He must not only convey information, but knowledge as well."

"I wouldn't say [Kiselyov] is highly esteemed in the circles that I move in," Zasursky adds. "I guess he is just a highly skilled propagandist."

Zasursky is an admirer of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, whose glasnost reforms in the late 1980s resulted in a golden age for journalists. He is less enthusiastic about former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who he says was unable to bring Gorbachev's reforms to fruition.

"At the critical moment, he was lost," Zasursky says, adding that although Putin has accomplished some positive things, Yeltsin's decision to name him successor was "not the optimal path" for the country.

Zasursky has seen a lot in his long life. Born in 1929, he has lived in Moscow his entire life except the time he spent in evacuation in Barnaul, Siberia, during World War II. He graduated from the Moscow State Pedagogical Univerisity of Foreign Languages in 1948 with a specialization in English. He got his doctorate in 1967 with a dissertation on 20th-century American literature.

He joined the journalism faculty of Moscow State University in 1955 and served as its dean from 1965 until 2007.

In recent months, he has suffered from health problems and has been confined to a wheelchair. But he says he is feeling better and is optimistic that he will be on his feet again by the New Year.

As for the fate of honest journalists under Putin's government, he is less optimistic. He recalls how in the 1950s he worked as an editor for the Foreign Literature publishing house and how the firm gave translation work to Soviet poets who couldn't be published for political reasons.

"Not all those poets were...appreciated, in a manner of speaking," Zasursky says. "But it was allowed to give them translations and they made a living on that. Maybe [journalists now] should do translations. I think it is possible to find some intellectual work."

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 #20
www.rt.com
September 21, 2015
'Extremism': Russia reviews code for rehabilitation of Stalinist crimes

The deputy head of the upper house's Committee for Constitutional Law has prepared and drafted the bill that would ban any public attempts to justify the crimes of the Stalinist regime and list any works on this subject as extremist materials.

"The historical realities of the Stalinist era that is currently being promoted among the population is idealized, one-sided and doesn't correspond to any historical realities," read the appendix to Konstantin Dobrynin's (Arkhangelsk Region) bill. The senator further suggests that the situation can be improved if all works containing justification of Stalinists' crimes are legally classed as extremist materials.

"Stalinist repressions were unprecedented in scale and concerned the Soviet Society as a whole," Dobrynin said in comments to TASS.

At the same time Dobrynin says his bill should only apply to crimes already listed as such in official documents and not to the disproval of theories that accuse Stalin of genocide or crimes against humanity. Such arguments must remain under the protection of constitutional norms guaranteeing the freedom of speech and expression, the draft reads.

The document also seeks to ban the naming of name various topographical and geographical items (including Metro stations) after people who were complicit in the crimes of the Stalinist regime. However, it allows the places and objects that already bear these names to retain them after the bill is passed into law.

According to Russian NGO Memorial, which specializes in the history of the Stalinist purges, about 720,000 death sentences were passed in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The group claims 30,000 people were executed in Moscow alone during the 'Great Terror' of 1937 and 1938.

In the beginning of 2015, activists from Memorial several times expressed concern over the fact that public opinion polls were showing a growth in the popularity of the late Soviet dictator. Memorial also criticized a proposal to erect a monument to Stalin in Moscow and to rename the city of Volgograd as Stalingrad.

Meanwhile, some forces on the left side of the political spectrum, led by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, were requesting the city be renamed, and that Stalin's name and a monument be given to a Moscow square.

The leftists emphasized that the Battle of Stalingrad played a decisive role in the war against Nazi Germany and the return of the historical name to the city would be the best way to acknowledge the importance of this event. Similar suggestions were also made in 2013, when Russia celebrated the 70th anniversary of the battle, however the renaming was rejected both by the people and the authorities.

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 #21
New York Times
September 21, 2015
Russian Project Honors Stalin's Victims and Stirs Talk on Brutal Past
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia - In a society stewing in nationalist sentiment, a little project called Last Address seems almost seditious.

Run by a small band of activists, journalists, professors and historians, it is an effort to publicly acknowledge the victims of Soviet repressions, beginning in 1917 and culminating (but not ending) in Joseph Stalin's Great Terror, a wave of arrests and executions of hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens that took place in the late 1930s.

Its tools are humble. Organizers screw hand-size metal plaques onto the sides of buildings where the victims were last known to have lived.

But its hopes, given the country's bristling patriotic mood, are more ambitious. Before putting up a plaque, everyone in the building must agree to have it there, something that has incited conversations among neighbors around the country about a period of history that has gone largely unprocessed by Russian society.

"The aim is not to cover the whole country in metal plaques, but to bring people together to talk," said Sergei Parkhomenko, a journalist and civic activist who had the idea for the project after seeing a similar one in Germany.

In the first few years after the Soviet Union's collapse, all the brutality of its history came tumbling into public view. But interest in those revelations quickly faded, as Russians grew exhausted by economic chaos, searing inequality and the loss of identity and status that went along with the dissolution of the empire.

These days the appetite for contemplating the empire's darker moments is on par with that for leftover liver. Russians are in the grip of a powerful bout of nostalgia for the Soviet Union's successes, and groups like Memorial, a human rights society that is helping run Last Address, work in an atmosphere of apathy and sometimes outright hostility.

Last Address is an effort to recognize the victims as individuals, in hopes that their personal details and the act of remembering them might help society heal. It is an antidote to the state's narrative of honorable collective sacrifice: Many died, the thinking goes, but Russia ultimately won World War II, and that is what counts.

"It's our small answer to the hysterical patriotism," Mr. Parkhomenko said.

The plaques are plain, engraved with the victim's name, date of birth, arrest, execution and rehabilitation. (Only those whom the state has since vindicated are considered.) Families pay 4,000 rubles - about $59 at today's exchange rate - to have a plaque hung, and Memorial sifts through records to confirm the victim's history.

About 100 have gone up since the project began in December, including in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Taganrog in the south and even in Siberia. There are about 800 outstanding applications, a tiny figure considering the numbers of the dead. In St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, for example, Memorial has documented more than 48,000 deaths from 1936 to 1938, the years of the worst repressions.

In all, throughout the Soviet Union, about 740,000 people were executed in 16 months in 1937 and 1938, said Nikolai Ivanov, a professor of art and design history at St. Petersburg State University, who is in charge of Last Address here.

On a recent sunny, crisp summer morning, Mr. Parkhomenko, Mr. Ivanov and several other activists zipped around the city in an aging, gray minivan toting a drill, a ladder and a toolbox full of plaques.

They stopped at 39 Bolshaya Pushkarskaya Street, once the home of Lydia E. Bogdanova, a homemaker, and her husband, Pavel D. Belenky, the chief accountant at a state ministry that ran the city's cafeterias, restaurants and food shops. They were arrested on June 2, 1937.

The family had received a package of children's clothes from a relative in Poland, and the couple was accused of being part of a "Polish espionage and sabotage organization." Their son, who was 6 at the time, remembers that he was dressed in some of the clothes the morning the police took his mother away. She was executed on Sept. 15, 10 days after his father. Neither was Polish.

When the couple's son, Vladimir P. Belenky, applied in the 1950s to have them rehabilitated, a neighbor gave him a list of items the police confiscated: A winter coat with a nice fur collar, seven or eight high-quality dresses, lingerie, a man's pocket watch, women's shoes, a new dresser, an Ottoman.

(Possessions seemed to sometimes be a motivator: One informant, a man nicknamed "the Television" for the constant stream of information he gave the authorities, received an apartment, money and extra food rations during the war. His denunciations led to the arrests of at least 127 academics, Mr. Ivanov said.)

Arseniy Belenky, 35, the couple's great-grandson, who had traveled from Moscow for the occasion, said the topic of Stalin's repressions was not exactly popular, but it was important because "it's a big part of our history."

Svetlana V. Prasolova, who works at the Anna Akhmatova Museum and followed the group all day on foot, pushing her baby in a stroller, explained it this way: "This is part of who we are. If we don't do this, we lose ourselves."

Many would rather not remember. In some buildings, residents have objected, effectively blocking the plaque. Getting all the neighbors to agree is an act of self-preservation for the project, a defense against unwanted scrutiny from the state.

"'We don't want to have our mood spoiled when we come home from work,'" Mr. Ivanov said, giving some of the objections raised. "'There were good times, too, in that era. Let's remember those instead.'"

One resident said her aunt had died in the "Bolshoi Dom" or Big House, a building in St. Petersburg used by the secret police under Stalin. But she opposed another family's plaque anyway.

"Why should we dwell on that?" she said, according to Mr. Ivanov. She suggested hanging a plaque in honor of a musician who had also lived in the building.

Still, most plaques have gone up unopposed, Mr. Ivanov said.

For many families, the plaques serve as graves because the bodies of their loved ones were never found. The Malakhovsky family held a small luncheon in honor of their relative, Bronislav B. Malakhovsky - an illustrator who created the popular children's comic strip "Umnaya Masha," about the adventures of a smart little girl named Masha - after his plaque was hung.

The occasion had the feeling of a wake: Steaming plates of fried meat, cabbage salad and a bottle of vodka were set before guests on a long table at a small cafe near the site. Mr. Malakhovsky was arrested and shot in 1937.

"Let's drink to the memory of the not-guilty Bronislav Bronislavovich," said a man in a blue tie, using Mr. Malakhovsky's patronymic. "A great talent!"

Some people came just to watch.

Kseniya Kirpichnikova, 66, a biologist, who brought four purple carnations to place near one of the sites, said her father despised Stalin for what he said was the dictator's systematic disregard for Russians' lives during World War II.

"He talked about how many of our soldiers died for nothing," she said of her father. "There were so many orders for attacks that were senseless."

Ms. Kirpichnikova has applied for a plaque for her grandfather, an English teacher executed in 1938. He published a textbook that authorities said contained quotes from Leon Trotsky, who was exiled at the time.

"It's impossible for a normal person to understand," she said, as a woman in a blue dress rollerbladed past. "Let these tablets be hung. Maybe kids will ask about them."

She added: "A lot of people say none of this ever happened."

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 #22
Republican presidential TV debates: attitude to Russia unfriendly, but with silver lining
By Tamara Zamyatina

MOSCOW, September 18. /TASS/. The televised debates of 15 presidential candidates from the Republican Party broadcast in the United States on Wednesday confirmed that there is "silver lining" in the relations between Washington and Moscow, experts polled by TASS said. However, they note that "regardless of whether a Republican or a Democrat will head the White House, disagreements between the two countries will remain."

Billionaire Donald Trump, who currently enjoys the support of 37% of Republican voters, expressed confidence at the debates that he would "get along" with Russian President Vladimir Putin, not only on Syria, but also on Ukraine. His opponent Senator Marco Rubio expressed concern over Russia's plans to strengthen its positions in the Middle East.
Former head of Hewlett-Packard Carly Fiorina said that she "wouldn't talk to him at all." Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush refrained from commenting on relations with Russia at all. Senator Rand Paul took an intermediate position between the two opinion poles. He reminded that dialogue between the United States and the Soviet Union continued even during the times of the Cold War, though the situation was much more complicated then. "I don't think we need to be rash, I don't think we need to be reckless, and I think need to leave lines of communication open," Rand Paul stressed.

Deputy Dean of the Department of World Economy and International Affairs at the National Research Institute "Higher School of Economics" Andrey Suzdaltsev told TASS that the Republican presidential debates should not be considered as the statements made by decision-making politicians. "The debates are aimed at the public, at US voters, they are aimed at the domestic political field, though, of course, they reflect the positions of the candidates for the post of the White House head," Suzdaltsev said.

"The fact that Republican candidates actively discussed a range of foreign policy issues, that they discussed relations with Russia, indicates that they think about us. They think differently, distancing from each other. The picture comes out as checkered, but with a silver lining. The main thing that we heard was that candidates consider it necessary to discuss with Moscow different positions on Syria, on Ukraine, on Iran, and on geopolitics in the broad sense," the expert told TASS.

In general, the American establishment treats Russia as the country that last the World War, Suzdaltsev continued. "Washington treats Moscow as a winner and then wonders on what grounds Russia restores its important role in the world, including in the Middle East? The United States express readiness to allow Russia to partake in international affairs, but only as a contractor in carrying out Washington's orders, which is unacceptable for Moscow," the expert noted.

"Republican televised debates were just for starters. There will be Democratic presidential debates, with Hillary Clinton in the lead. There is a great difference between these debates. Since the times of the Soviet Union, Russia has traditionally had strained contacts with US Democrat presidents. The exception was John Kenney, but while he was in office, we narrowly escaped the Third World War during the Caribbean Crisis. And if Hillary Clinton wins - no one can guarantee that the renewed Cold War will not turn into a 'hot war'," Syzdaltsev warned.

"Unlike Democrats, Republicans are firm realists who can take into account the interests of other countries. Talking about Democrats, they will always call our countries 'the empire of evil' as long as it has nuclear weapons, even if it becomes an ideally democratic country," the expert said.

Head of the Center of International Security at the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexey Arbatov told TASS that the attitude was unfriendly toward Russia and hostile toward Putin at the televised Republican presidential debates. "However, several statements made by Republicans show that they do not share the official position of the White House toward the Kremlin and are in opposition to the 'hawks'. This is the law of the two-party system. No matter who wins the presidential election in 2016 - a Republican or a Democrat - the relations between Moscow and Washington will depend not on the party affiliation of the White House host, but on the person himself," Arbatov stressed.

Talking about disagreements between Washington and Moscow on the settlement of the Syrian crisis and fighting against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization, the expert said Russia and the United States can find common ground. "The White House and the Kremlin can organized the Geneva III conference, negotiate creating a government of national unity in Syria with a transitional period for Bashar Assad, hold election and set up the base for a joint fights against IS. In any case, many Western politicians say unofficially that the situation in Syria is close to that in Iraq and Libya, and they support the idea of the Russian leadership to establish a broad international coalition to fight against IS. The problem is the Ukrainian crisis that became an insurmountable irritant in the relations between Moscow and Washington," Arbatov concluded.

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 #23
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
September 20, 2015
What the closure of the American Center means for Russia
Concerns about the closing of the American Center in Moscow appear to be overblown. Russia is still open to new ideas and the constructive role that can be played by soft power.
By Dmitry Polikanov
Dmitry Polikanov is Vice President of The PIR-Center and Chairman of Trialogue International Club. Author of more than 100 publications on conflict management, peacekeeping, arms control, international relations and foreign policy. Member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the International Sociological Association, the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center Research Council.

The American Center in Moscow is now under the control of the Russian Foreign Literature Library. And that means that yet another demonstration of Russian "sovereignty" has resulted in much concern on the part of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and even condolences about the end of public diplomacy in U.S.-Russian relations.

Obviously, taking over authority of the American Center by the Russian authorities is merely a symbolic step. It would be naïve to believe that information flows could be supervised in the age of the Internet and social media. Cultural centers in this respect are the most harmless institutions, especially taking into account their dramatic reduction in funding and importance even from the U.S. side.

Such offline centers are much more influential in areas that lack any access to other means of culture. In many developing countries they become a point of attraction for the young local elites and, hence, provide opportunities for much more effective introduction of competing values, if any.

However, it is important for the Kremlin to ensure that no offline soft power tools are used to undermine stability in the country. The process of the "nationalization" of the elites is under way and it is aimed at eliminating any temptations of foreign influence.

This may look like a form of paranoia, but truly speaking, the major goal is to find a fine line between culture and politics. Moscow emphasizes its desire to be open to the best international practices and cultural patterns, but it does not want them to be destructive to traditional values. Moreover, Moscow does not want these practices and patterns to get caught up with political intrigues.

This is why the Russian government supports, on one hand, various cultural festivals, attracts foreign academics into joint scientific programs and funds young Russians to study in universities abroad through the Global Education program. And, on the other hand, it uses its power to curb the leadership of exchange programs, to remove foreigners from administrative posts in higher education institutions, to ban gay parades and prevent some movies from being shown in Russian cinemas to a large audience.

Regretfully, this process of curtailing what members of the government perceive as a "negative" external influence is mainly reactive. Russia is not that energetic in promoting its own agenda. There are not enough Russian language centers abroad and those that exist lack teachers.

Many events supported by the Russian Agency for Cooperation (Rossotrudnichestvo) or the Ministry of Culture have limited coverage in the foreign media, attract very specific audiences and have limited social impact in strengthening the attractive image of Russia. The worst thing is that Russia is aware of best practices in this area, but deliberately (for unknown reason) refrains from using them.

Thus, the story of the American Center is not the end of public diplomacy - it died some time ago and this process has nothing to do with the current freeze in U.S.-Russian relations. Nor will it curb in any way U.S. cultural expansion - the American Center was probably the least effective instrument for that.

At the same time, it is clear that public diplomacy can become a powerful tool in conveying Russia's message in the current information wars. Under these circumstances, Russia needs to reconsider its approach to soft power and make sure that countermeasures are augmented with a proactive policy in the fields of culture and information.

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 #24
AP
September 19, 2015
Russians with Western ties increasingly branded 'traitors'
By NATALIYA VASILYEVA

MOSCOW (AP) - When Gennady Kravtsov sent a cover letter to a Swedish company, he reasoned that, even if a job didn't come of it, he at least would know whether his engineering skills were valued outside Russia.

Instead, he found himself charged with treason and facing a possible 15 years in prison.

Kravtsov worked for Russia's GRU military intelligence agency from 1990 to 2005 as a radio engineer in satellite intelligence. For five years after he quit, he was barred from leaving Russia or taking certain security jobs because of the sensitive nature of the work. But when that period was up he sent a cover letter to a Swedish company he found online. Nothing ever came of it.

In 2013, Russian counter-intelligence officers asked Kravtsov about the contact, and last year grabbed him on the street and threw him in jail.

The Russian government increasingly has portrayed any cooperation with foreign companies or nationals as a potential security threat, a throwback to Soviet times when any interaction with foreigners aroused suspicion. The eclectic group of Russians charged with treason this year includes a mother of seven, a Sochi traffic controller, a Black Sea Fleet sailor, a Siberian police major, a Russian Orthodox Church employee, a Moscow university lecturer and a retired nuclear scientist. The variety of suspects is not in itself evidence of a harsher crackdown, but Russia is clearly widening its net on treason and hauling in the most people in years.

Nine people, including Kravtsov, were arrested in Moscow in 2014 on suspicion of treason, according to the Moscow City Court. Across Russia, 15 people were convicted of treason last year, nearly four times as many as the year before, Russian Supreme Court data show.

The stepped up campaign against suspected traitors follows a Kremlin move in 2012 to expand the definition of treason to include undefined "assistance" to a foreign government, which rights activists have warned could lead to abuse.

"If you look at it, any person who has talked to a foreigner and said something bad about the government can be sent to prison," said veteran human rights defender Lev Ponomarev.

Kravtsov's lawyer, Ivan Pavlov, has handled treason cases for 20 years, but he has never had as many clients as he has now.

"They look for enemies and they find them. These are various people, from a breastfeeding mother to former intelligence agents," Pavlov said. "The mood in law enforcement agencies, how aggressive they are, their zeal to intensify their search and prosecute (more people) stem from the developments in Ukraine and Russia's position in the world."

He said "every single treason case" he has seen recently has a connection to the crisis in Ukraine - where the government is fighting a pro-Russia insurgency - either because the person had traveled there or had some personal ties.

Russia is returning to old Cold War tactics in other ways as well. In July, the Nizhny Novgorod State University fired its vice rector, an American who had lived in Russia for two decades, after a state television program criticized him for hanging portraits of American scientists on university walls. When state media seek to discredit Russia's marginalized opposition, they often accuse them of being too cozy with Western diplomats.

It is the treason campaign that perhaps most evokes the repression of the Soviet era.

"At first I thought he was the only 'spy' in prison," said Kravtsov's wife, Alla Kravtsova. "Then I realized it was a war-time campaign. A campaign to catch spies had begun and Gena was at the right time in the right place with his stupid letter."

Pavlov is barred from discussing details of Kravtsov's case, but he said that prosecutors are accusing his client of revealing his job description at the GRU, as well as information about the military capability of the Tselina-2 radio surveillance system. Kravtsov's defense argued that since the satellite, invented in the 1970s, has not been in use since 2000, information about it should not be classified. The lawyer himself has been kept in the dark about much of the case, he said, and the defense was helpless since the government list of classified information is classified as well.

Kravtsov's case was heard at the Moscow City Court, with the trial proceeding behind closed doors. Kravtsov's wife turned up at every hearing, even though she was not allowed in. She stood outside, straining to listen through the door and waiting to get a glimpse of her husband whenever it opened.

Prosecutors on Monday asked the court to sentence the 47-year-old Kravtsov to 15 years in prison. The verdict is expected next Monday.

Kravtsov, a father of two, quit his GRU job in 2005 because he felt that the military intelligence agency was wasting money and his talent, his wife said. He got a job at a think tank in Moscow, but once the five-year ban on travel and employment in security-related jobs expired, he started exploring other options.

His wife said he sent a letter to the Swedish firm, using an online program to translate it into English, and soon got a reply that the company was not interested.

"He just wanted to find out whether his skills were in demand elsewhere or he should get new training and work somewhere else," Kravtsova said.

In 2013, he wrote one more letter, "a cry for help," as his wife described it. She said he mailed a letter addressed to the Belarusian defense minister saying he was frustrated with the decline of his field in Russia and wanted a job in Belarus, a former Soviet republic that remains a close ally of Moscow.

A few months later, in July 2013, Russian counter-intelligence officers approached him on the street.

"They came for him, showed him their ID on the street, as in Stalinist times," Kravtsova said. "They didn't even let him go home, but put him in the car and took him to their office."

She said the FSB officers asked him about the email to Sweden and seized his computer the same evening. For the next year, Kravtsov dutifully answered the investigators' calls and went to meet with them whenever they asked, although there were no charges against him. His wife said the investigators told him he was free to travel, but just after the family bought a package tour to Greece, Kravtsov was arrested on the street, his arms pinned behind his back.

The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, did not respond to a written request for comment.

Both of Kravtsov's children, 4-year-old Vasilisa and 8-year-old Anton, know that their father is in prison. His wife said that when Anton was asked in school why his father no longer comes to pick him up, the boy said: "He's in prison, but don't be afraid, he's a political one."

Pavlov thinks that senior Kremlin officials no longer have to send orders to their subordinates to crack down on dissent or to be on the lookout for spies, because the political system has taken on a life of its own.

"Every official on every level, from investigators to judges, they feel it; they don't need anyone to pick up the phone and call them," the lawyer said. "Everyone knows what to do."

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 #25
www.rt.com
September 20, 2015
Pentagon updates plans for war with 'potentially aggressive' Russia - media

The Pentagon is reportedly reviewing and updating its contingency plans for a war with Russia for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with a defense official telling US media that Russia's "actions" prompted the assessment.

"Given the security environment, given the actions of Russia, it has become apparent that we need to make sure to update the plans that we have in response to any potential aggression against any NATO allies," a senior defense official familiar with the plan told Foreign Policy.

According to Michèle Flournoy, a former undersecretary of defense for policy and co-founder of the Center for a New American Security, the move was prompted by the Ukraine situation.

"Russia's invasion of eastern Ukraine made the US dust off its contingency plans," Flournoy told FP. "They were pretty out of date."

Moscow, however, has repeatedly denied having a role in the Ukraine conflict, despite accusations by Kiev and its Western backers that it has supported the rebelling eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk with weapons and manpower.

Although the Department of Defense generates contingency plans continuously, the move is significant because it marks the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 that Washington has revisited plans for a potential armed conflict with Moscow.

According to a senior defense official, the new plans focus on hypothetic Russian incursions into the Baltics and have two parts: one focuses on what the US can do as part of NATO if Russia chooses to attack a member state, while the other considers US action independent of NATO.

Baltic countries have expressed fears of a possible Russian invasion, following the Ukraine crisis. UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon added fuel to the fire in February, when he said he was "worried about Putin...I'm worried about his pressure on the Baltics, the way he is testing NATO, the submarines and aircraft."

But President Putin told Italian media in June that such "scaremongering" should not be taken seriously, adding that Russia's military is "not global, offensive, or aggressive," and that it has "virtually no bases abroad." He added that the few that do exist abroad are remnants of its Soviet past.

"I think that only an insane person and only in a dream can imagine that Russia would suddenly attack NATO. I think some countries are simply taking advantage of people's fears with regard to Russia. They just want to play the role of front-line countries that should receive some supplementary military, economic, financial or some other aid," Putin said at the time.

The report comes as US and Russian officials agreed on Friday to discuss each other's involvement in the Syrian conflict, marking the first time the two ministries have spoken since last August, as relations between Moscow and Washington remain soured by the Ukraine conflict.

The US is taking part in a coalition bombing campaign against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), while Russia has begun providing military equipment for use by Syrian forces.

But while the US apparently views Russia as a threat, Moscow says NATO and its "eastward expansion" is the real cause for concern. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev stated earlier this month that Russia may soon create more Air Force facilities in neighboring countries.

In July, Russia amended its Maritime Doctrine as a response to NATO's growing presence in Eastern Europe. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said the new doctrine, which focuses on Russia's naval presence in Crimea and the Arctic, was due to "the changes of international affairs" and the consolidation of Russia as a maritime power.

Last month, the Russian Foreign Ministry said increasing troop presence at Russia's borders is being done to achieve "dominance" in Europe. The ministry added that the military buildup is "counter-productive" and serves as a "financial burden" for member states, as it "distracts" the alliance from dealing with other threats.

Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said NATO is provoking Russia into an "arms race," after there were reports of "American missiles put in a certain location and about certain ammunition depots in Eastern European countries and the Baltic."

Both Russia and NATO have been staging military drills, with each side closely watching the other.

In August, the US military launched the largest NATO airborne drills in Europe since the end of the Cold War, in an effort to enhance "security and stability" in the region. Moscow stated the drills were aimed at raising tension in the wake of alleged "Russian aggression."

That effort was met by Russia earlier this week, when more than 95,000 troops belonging to Russia and its regional allies launched the annual Center exercises that span from the Volga to Siberia. The large-scale drills were the biggest Russia has seen since the Cold War.

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 #26
Washington Times
September 20, 2015
Putin is coming to New York - what will he say?
It is not in either nation's interest to let relations deteriorate
By Edward Lozansky
Edward Lozansky is president of the American University in Moscow and professor of world politics at Moscow State University.

Many analysts who believe Russia's Vladimir Putin has developed into an implacable foe of the United States are convinced that when the Russian president comes to speak at the United Nations, we can expect an even harsher speech than the attack on U.S. foreign policy he delivered in Munich back in 2007 and which continues to reverberate among foreign policy analysts around the world.

However, there are signals coming from Moscow that this may not be the case. Many in Moscow and Washington are convinced that it is in neither nation's interest to let relations continue to deteriorate. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov publicly suggested the possibility of a personal or informal meeting between President Putin and President Obama while Mr. Putin is in New York might be worth some consideration. He followed with an even more optimistic statement that "Our American colleagues are sending us signals that they want to continue to maintain contacts if there is such a proposal on their part, I think our president will give it constructive consideration."

The White House issued a statement when Mr. Lavrov's remarks reached Washington that "currently there are no plans for a personal meeting between the presidents of Russia and the United States in the foreseeable future, and no preparations are underway for such a meeting." Read one way this reaction could be seen as a rebuff, but it could also be read as leaving the door open.

Maria Zakharova, who is the head of Russia's foreign ministry press office had this to say: "The path, onto which the world is being pushed, including by Washington (I have in mind the path of sanctions, antagonism, absence of dialogue), this is not a transition to a new state of affairs; it is a path to nowhere, a dead-end."

Still, despite this, mildly speaking, not very friendly exchange, there is a chance that being a pretty good player on the international geopolitical chessboard Mr. Putin will choose to avoid harsh rhetoric and use the opportunity to address an audience that will include many world leaders including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Pope Francis to present a positive agenda and offer his vision on how to address the most pressing problems facing humanity.

It is well known that whatever the differences between the two nations, Mr. Putin considers the continuing terrorist threat something that must be addressed. Thus, he can be expected to promote the idea of creating the International Anti-Terrorist Organization (IATO). International coordination among nations threatened directly or indirectly by terrorism and the by-products of the anarchy that so often follows in its wake is an admirable and shared goal. Among the by-products of terrorism are the waves of refugees flooding Europe and while military strikes continue, the threat seems to most observers to be growing.

Thus far, the West has chosen to "go it alone" in trying to stem the tide of terrorism, but hasn't met with the success Western leaders have expected or promised and might benefit by working more closely with Moscow. The two nations differ most profoundly in how to deal with the chaos in Syria with the West focused on removing Bashar Assad who for better or worse has a claim on Russian support as a longtime Russian ally.

Mr. Obama may wish that he could deal with someone other than Mr. Putin, but the Russian president remains quite popular at home and Washington has to accept that both he and his country are players who can neither be ignored or patronized. He is a potential ally in the war against terror and should be treated as such.

Many in Moscow, however, believe that some in the United States dream of what American foreign policy experts like to call "regime change" in Russia so they can deal with a Russian leader other than Mr. Putin. Dreams are one thing; reality is quite another. To allow their dislike of the Russian leader to dictate policy in a world where misunderstandings can lead to war is the kind of dream that might easily morph into a nightmare. This is especially true when some in Moscow blame the United States and those who despise Mr. Putin with responsibility for all their nation's current troubles.

Fortunately, there are also people in Moscow and Washington who seek a new start; who realize that while great nations will often differ as each pursues its own national interests, we live in a world where it is incumbent upon great nations and great leaders to look not just to their unique interest, but to those they share with others. It is to be hoped that Mr. Putin and Mr. Obama fall into this camp. They don't have to spend their vacations with each other or play golf every weekend, but for the sake of the peoples they lead, they do have to work with each other.

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 #27
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
September 18, 2015
Putin calls on CSTO to fight terrorist threat in Central Asia
The Collective Security Treaty Organization Summit, which took place in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe on Sept. 14-15, was chiefly devoted to countering the threat of Islamist terrorism in Central Asia. However, Russian experts believe that corruption and poverty are a greater threat to the region than terrorism.
Oleg Yegorov, special to RBTH

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for greater cooperation between the countries of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in the drive to ensure that the Islamic State (ISIS) radical group does not gain a foothold in Central Asia.

Speaking at a summit of the organization in the capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, on Sept. 14-15, Putin said that ISIS has become a serious threat not only for the Middle East but also for the six CSTO countries (Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan).

The Collective Security Treaty Organization was established in 1992 and as of today includes six countries: Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It is a military-political alliance. The CSTO has its own armed forces, the CSTO Collective Forces, which were created on the basis of the member-countries' armies. The member countries form a joint defense policy.

"The dimension of this organization's activity has gone far beyond the limits of Iraq and Syria," RIA Novosti cites Putin as saying. "They plan to spread their activity to Europe, Russia, Central and Southeast Asia. And we are preoccupied."

The Russian president is also worried that after the withdrawal of the International Security Assistance Force from Afghanistan, extremist groups will move from this territory to the Central Asian countries.

Putin criticized the policy of western countries on Syria, calling on them to "renounce their double standards and their policy of directly or indirectly using separate terrorist groups for achieving their own political objectives."

He also underlined that without cooperating with the Syrian government it will be impossible to drive ISIS terrorists out of Syria, where they have seized large swathes of territory over the last year.
 
How effective is the CSTO?

Other participants of the summit, which was attended by the heads of all six member states, also see a threat in the activities of ISIS and are trying to improve the CSTO's interactivity mechanisms for countering terrorism. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko presented the idea of "creating a regional antiaircraft system" and strengthening the organization's military potential, while Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan said that it is necessary to introduce a collective security strategy next year.

"Today the CSTO is proving to be an effective organization," said Deputy Director of the Institute of CIS Countries Vladimir Zharikhin. "Thanks to the joint activity of the member-countries' special services, the organization is able to block Islamist extremists' attempts at penetrating the region without deploying forces."

However, another Central Asia specialist, Alexei Malashenko from the Moscow Carnegie Center, noted that since the armed forces of the CSTO have still not participated in any armed conflict, it is too early to speak about their effectiveness.

"Absolutely nothing is known about the CSTO's armed forces since no one has ever seen this organization in action. Joint exercises are good but they are always different from real combat," he said.

Is the Islamist threat real?

Judging by the statements made by the summit's participants, the CSTO is serious about the ISIS problem. For example, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev was alarmed by the increasing number of CSTO member-country citizens fighting for the extremists, while CSTO Secretary General Nikolai Bordyuzha said that CSTO special services have identified (and blocked) more than 57 websites created to recruit Central Asian residents into the ranks of ISIS.

At the same time, Alexei Malashenko believes that the threat to Central Asia posed by the group has been rather exaggerated.

"Today the ISIS militias are warring in Syria and Iraq and are practically fighting for the survival of their quasi-state. Yes, there have been declarations of expansion, including expansion into Central Asia, but for now they've only been declarations," he said.

"There is the danger of ISIS entering the region but the mass media exaggerates it. The Islamists' success or failure in Central Asia depends largely on how effectively the regimes in that region will solve the existing social problems, how they will fight corruption and poverty."

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 #28
Interfax
September 21, 2015
Half of Russians back independence of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transdniestria

Half of Russians deem Abkhazia and South Ossetia to be independent states and think that these republics and Transdniestria should have formal independent status, the Levada Center has told Interfax.

According to the poll of 800 respondents held in 134 populated localities in 46 regions on August 21-24, practically half (47 percent) of respondents see South Ossetia as an independent state. The same opinion was expressed about Abkhazia by 49 percent of respondents.

In the opinion of 10 percent and 9 percent of respondents, respectively, South Ossetia and Abkhazia are parts of Georgia. A fifth (21 percent) regard South Ossetia as a part of Russia, and 20 percent say that Abkhazia is a Russian territory. Twenty-two percent and 21 percent, respectively, were undecided.

Almost 50 percent of respondents think that South Ossetia (48 percent) and Abkhazia (47 percent) should be independent. Seven percent and 8 percent, respectively, believe that these republics should be incorporated by Georgia. Another 23 percent and 22 percent, respectively, think that South Ossetia and Abkhazia should enter into Russia. Twenty-three percent are unable to answer the question.

Speaking of the consequences of Russia's recognition of independent South Ossetia and Abkhazia, 23 percent percent said that it did good to the country, and 10 percent claimed the opposite. Almost 50 percent (47 percent) think that the recognition of independent South Ossetia and Abkhazia was neither good nor bad for Russia. Twenty percent failed to give a definite answer.

As to the best status for Transdniestria, 49 percent said it should become an independent state, 17 percent suggested that the region should stay within Moldova, and 34 percent were undecided.

Forty-two percent believe that Nagorno-Karabakh should also be independent; 10 percent suggest that the region belongs to Azerbaijan, and 9 percent suggest that it belongs to Armenia. Thirty-nine percent are undecided.

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 #29
Gazeta.ru
September 15, 2015
Russian website interviews veteran diplomat on Syria developments, forecasts

Interview with ambassador Aleksandr Aksenenok, member of the Russian Council on International Affairs, by Aleksandr Braterskiy; 'A real bloodbath could begin.' Arabist and diplomat Aleksandr Aksenenok on what is happening in Syria.

Russia has begun active moves to step up its military presence in Syria: Warships are conducting manoeuvres off its shores, military equipment is being delivered, and experts are arriving. This is causing concern on the part of the United States and Western countries, which are opposed to Russian aid to Bashar al-Asad's regime even in the fight against Islamists. Diplomat and Arabist Aleksandr Aksenenok, member of the Russian Council on International Affairs, told Gazeta.ru why a Russian military presence in Syria is necessary.

Aleksandr Aksenenok is a Russian extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador, an Arabist, and a member of the Russian Council on International Affairs. In the 1980s he was a minister-counsellor and USSR charge d'affaires ad interim in Syria. In 1991-1995 he was the USSR's (then Russia's) ambassador to Algeria. He also held the post of Russian special representative in the Balkans. The author of many articles about Russia's relations with the Arab world answered Gazeta.ru's questions.

[Braterskiy] How do you assess the development of the situation around Syria in the light of reports about the presence of Russian military personnel there and the strengthening of our base at Tartus?

[Aksenenok] To the best of my knowledge, as yet no base as such exists at Tartus, and the refuelling and supply depot that is operating there cannot be described as a base. Even the Americans have described it as facilities [preceding word published in English in original]. But there are opportunities to deploy a base there. The fact that Russia has supplied equipment has never been a secret. Both the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Defence Ministry talk about it. I have no reason to disbelieve statements by the Russian side, and also by Damascus itself, that there are no Russian combat units in Syria. Deliveries may be accompanied by a temporary increase in the presence of military experts providing assistance in mastering equipment. But there is definitely no question of any kind of landing of an "expeditionary corps" on the Syrian coast at Tartus, Baniyas, or Latakia, as some foreign news agencies are sensationally reporting. Clearly the only thing we can talk about is helping the Syrians themselves to organize defensive lines.

[Braterskiy] Why is such reinforcement necessary, in your opinion?

[Aksenenok] A build-up of opposition forces from a conglomerate of various armed grouping of a mainly Islamist persuasion, including the well-known terrorist organization the Al-Nusrah Front and the pro-Turkish Ahrar al-Sham, is taking place in the foothills of Latakia. There is also a risk to Damascus - from both the northwest and the south.

The so-called Southern Front - whose headquarters, staffed with American and Saudi advisers, is located in Jordan - operates in the south. Whereas in the northwest, in the area of Az Zabadani and in Idlib Province, fighting is taking place with detachments of the so-called Free Syrian Army, ISIL, which is banned in Russia, and the Al-Nusrah Front. Incidentally, there are occasional clashes between them too.

[Braterskiy] If we do not intend to participate in military operations, what is Russia's political objective in Syria?

[Aksenenok] It seems to me that the political objective is to prevent the worst possible development of events. The situation in the theatre of military operations is going from bad to worse. Everybody who is closely following the development of the situation in Syria knows this. In this respect our assessments coincide with both the Americans' and the Saudis' assessments. The main thing is to prevent the collapse of Syria's state structures. The Saudi foreign minister officially stated this in Moscow. The point that the foundations of statehood need to be preserved in the course of a political process was also made in the text of the joint communique on the results of King Salman of Saudi Arabia's recent visit to Washington.

Otherwise, as Lakhdar Brahimi, the former UN special representative for Syria, has warned, we will see the "Somalization of Syria." Given the current alignment of forces the alternative to Al-Asad is the coming to power of bellicose Islamist and Jihadist forces, either in the shape of ISIL or in the shape of organizations of a similar type.

[Braterskiy] Today many experts say that the disintegration of Syria is inevitable and that Russia's objective is to "save what's left" - that is to say, the part that is mostly inhabited by Alawis and Christians. How do you assess such a scenario?

[Aksenenok] You are right, the de facto division of Syria, which may be described as "cantonization," has already happened. But as yet there are no clear dividing lines. They are very fluid. The military theatre resembles a patchwork quilt. There is a constant war for spheres of influence, for bits of territories located closer to major centres like Damascus, Hims, Hamah, and Latakia. If the dividing lines were to be set it would then be hardly possible to expect that a unified Syrian state would ever be restored.

There are currently four areas of control in the military theatre: The government controls 20-25 per cent of the territory, mainly the big cities; the second area of control belongs to ISIL and Al-Nusrah, with approximately 60 per cent of the territory, which mainly consists of agricultural land or desert. They are mainly located in the area of Mesopotamia. The third section of territories consists of Kurdish enclaves, and the Kurds have managed to combine them into a separate Kurdish belt along the border. The fourth section is under the control of oppositionists of every hue and colour - from moderate to radical Islamists - among whom there are both Salafis and various Sunni tribes dependent on various religious forces.

[Braterskiy] Are there fears that the Islamists would annihilate the Alawis if Damascus was to fall?

[Aksenenok] There is no doubt is that a struggle for the survival of the Alawi minority is taking place. In the event of a catastrophic development of events a real bloodbath could begin - a humanitarian disaster on an even bigger scale than what has been happening hitherto. It would be comparable to the bloodbath between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes in Rwanda, which Europe is still ruing.

Some Western and Arab experts have suggested that Damascus and Tehran have some kind of "plan B" envisioning the creation along the coast of an Alawi corridor from Damascus to Latakia in order to ensure the safety of the local population. But even if such an enclave was to be created, it would mean the end of Syria's territorial integrity and the continuation of the bloodshed with renewed force.

This is why Russia is displaying such concern - and not because of the fate of Al-Asad but specifically because of the consequences for the Near East region in the event of a violent change of regime.

[Braterskiy] You knew Hafiz al-Asad, the current president's father, well. If he had still been the country's leader today, might events have followed a different path?

[Aksenenok] He was an outstanding figure, and it seems to me that first and foremost he would not have allowed the emergence of the troublemakers who instigated the revolution in March 2011. Hafiz al-Asad would have been able to rise above clan and kinship considerations and call to account those Syrians security officials who bear the responsibility for the events in the south of the country in the city of Dar'a that triggered the subsequent popular protests, which to begin were totally peaceful. The militarization of this internal conflict began later with the interference of regional powers - Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

[Braterskiy] How do you see the figure of Al-Asad junior?

[Aksenenok] On the one hand, he tried to reform the country but proved incapable of doing so. Syria was at least 10 years late with its reforms. In Algeria, where I headed up our embassy for more than four years from 1991, the upsurge in Islamist terror began mainly as a result of the hasty implementation of democratic reforms in the Gorbachev style. In Syria, by contrast, a situation of chaos emerged because of delays to political reforms after a degree of economic liberalization had been carried out. The Baath party's monopoly on power essentially remained unchanged.

When Bashar al-Asad came to power, many people hoped that political changes would happen as Baathist pan-Arab ideology under the slogans "unity, freedom, socialism" had lost its former attractiveness in the Arab world. There were also trends there towards national-ethnic and faith-based segregation, at that time within the framework of a national state. I believe that if Al-Asad senior had remained in power he would have been able to prevent the spread of faith-and clan-based relations using his authority and state experience. He could have caught the feeling of the time while not repeating Gorbachev's mistakes.

[Braterskiy] Do you not have the feeling that the United States is prepared to agree with a Russian presence in Syria, even despite our differences over Ukraine?

[Aksenenok] I am far from overly optimistic, but nor am I inclined to take only a gloomy view of the future prospects. The concept of a broad coalition in the struggle against ISIL that Russia has proposed is very timely.

[Braterskiy] Why is it needed, and why is it necessary to pool everybody's efforts?

[Aksenenok] Admittedly aerial bombings have played a part - Kurdish detachments have been successfully helped to defend areas along the border with Turkey - the city of Kobani - and also to move towards Ar Raqqah, the so-called capital of the Islamic Caliphate. Government control was also successfully established over the city of Tikrit, but then stupefaction set in. And people in the United States were already starting to say that the struggle against Islamic State will take decades, that a long-term strategy is needed. But the international community does not have that much time.

Today there is a real underestimation of the global danger in the shape of ISIL and the very ideology of "caliphatism," which is much more serious than the threat of Al-Qa'idah.

And it is not even so much about jihadists penetrating into Europe or Russia, including in the guise of refugees. In conditions of continuing terrorist expansion and the spread of Islamophobia it cannot be ruled out that it will turn into an inter-civilizational conflict, in line with Huntington's prophecy (Samuel Huntington, also of the concept of a "clash of civilizations" - Gazeta.ru).

[Braterskiy] Is Al-Asad himself prepared to participate in this coalition?

[Aksenenok] The Syrian government is adopting a somewhat ambivalent and not always realistic stance. In this connection I would like to draw a parallel with the Balkan crisis. All internal conflicts - no matter how they may differ in terms of country and region - have their own internal logic. During the period of the conflict in Yugoslavia the country's president, Slobodan Milosevic, also adopted a very inflexible stance, refusing to take heed of the actual development of events. He was always too late coming forward with political initiatives. Primakov, the then head of the Foreign Ministry, was always drawing this to his intention and telling him: "You hold back, and if you do say something it is already too late - it has already lost its significance." We know what happened to Milosevic. If Damascus was to adopt a more flexible stance Russia would then acquire political bargaining cards that would make it possible to get the United States to carry out symmetrical actions with regard to the Syrian opposition too. This would make it possible to revive the political process that failed to work out during Geneva-2.

[Braterskiy] The Geneva process might have helped a settlement, but why did the sides nevertheless fail to agree?

[Aksenenok] In verbally accepting the Geneva communique the Syrian government is prioritizing the fight against terrorism. For its part, the opposition in the shape of the umbrella structure the Coalition of National Opposition and Revolutionary Forces attaches priority significance to the communique's provision relating to the creation of a transitional government - that is to say, essentially power-sharing.

But right now the political process has stalled, and the fight against terrorism is proceeding very slowly. At the regional level - and it is specifically this angle that is currently acquiring the greatest significance - each of the parties, despite the fine words, is pursuing its own selfish interests primarily linked to ethnic, faith-based, and state ambitions. If this continues to happen, the ISIL expansion will continue.

As I said, Russia's stance consists in initiating a negotiating process on a twin-track basis - a fight against terrorism in parallel with a political process. In addition to their differences, the major players like the EU, Russia, and the United States have quite a few areas of overlap. They include the inadmissibility of the collapse of state structures, as happened in Iraq and Libya, the preservation of territorial integrity, the protection of ethnic and faith minorities, and the implementation of political reforms on the basis of the provisions of the 2012 Geneva communique.

[Braterskiy] Neighbouring countries recognize the ISIL danger and are fighting that organization. Are they prepared to act together with Russia?

[Aksenenok] The external players - especially regional players - are pursuing their own interests. Take Turkey - this is a country that, while recognizing the terrorist danger from the very beginning, nevertheless opened its borders to Islamic militants. Then, having agreed to join the antiterrorist coalition and made an Air Force base available to the United States at Incirlic, it targeted air strikes against the Kurdish Workers Party instead of bombing the Islamists.

Israel's stance cannot be described as neutral either. This country has exploited the situation to establish channels of communication with the Al-Nusrah League terrorist organization.

Israel has accepted on its territory more than 1,000 wounded militants in hospitals bordering on Syria and sent them back onto the battlefield.

For its part, Saudi Arabia has sent enormous resources to support Salafi groups, which could become an instrument of Saudi influence. All the regional countries are attempting to derive benefits for themselves. And this was one of the factors that prompted Russia to take specific actions. The reality today is such that there are two major forces: they are the Syrian government and ISIL, and also Al-Nusrah, although there have been armed clashes between the two groups recently. And if the common objective of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and the United States is to combat Islamic State they need to proceed from the real state of affairs from which Russia is currently proceeding.

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 #30
Real News Network
http://therealnews.com
September 19, 2015
Is the U.S. Secretly Welcoming Increased Russian Syria Involvement?
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson tells Paul Jay that cooperation with Russia and Iran is the only way to resolve the situation, but U.S. policy is catering to Saudi Arabian, Turkish and Israeli ambitions

Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired United States Army soldier and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson is an adjunct professor at the College of William & Mary where he teaches courses on US national security. He also instructs a senior seminar in the Honors Department at the George Washington University entitled "National Security Decision Making."

Transcript

Is the U.S. Secretly Welcoming Increased Russian Syria Involvement?PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay.

In Syria apparently there are four or five fighters trained by the United States who are actually fighting. It seems a rather ridiculously low number, as supposedly the Obama strategy was all about training local fighters. There was supposed to be I guess at least more than 5,000 at this point. And 5,000 is a far cry from four or five. That number came out in committee hearings in Capitol Hill the other day.

Now joining us to try to make sense of just what U.S. foreign policy in Syria is is Larry Wilkerson. He's the former chief of staff to Colin Powell, and he's a regular contributor to the Real News. Thanks for joining us, Larry.

LARRY WILKERSON, FMR. CHIEF OF STAFF TO COLIN POWELL: Good to be with you, Paul.

JAY: So what exactly does the United States want in Syria? We've been saying on the Real News what they generally seem to want, because I think this is what Israel wants, is they want both sides to keep fighting and killing each other. We've heard various people articulate this openly. We've heard it from various of the Israeli pundits. We heard it actually even from Donald Trump in the debate Wednesday night where he said let them all just kill each other. That seemed to be really what the policy was.

Now, but with the growing strength of ISIS and Al-Qaeda type forces, the Russians apparently strengthened their support to Assad. They're going to have a somewhat more involved military involvement in Syria. Why wouldn't the United States actually want that if they really want ISIS and Al-Qaeda defeated? I mean, how is Assad the big problem here in terms of American foreign policy?

WILKERSON: Let me describe what I would hope is happening. But I won't in any way assert that it is happening. And I'll say, open parentheses, I really don't think this administration has a policy or a strategy, close parentheses. That means it's just going from day to day.

But what possibly could be happening is this. First of all, the administration confronted enormous challenges here because one of its principal allies, Saudi Arabia, and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council are actually supporting and funding some of the most radical elements in Syria. So you've got that challenge at the beginning. You also have a NATO member, Turkey, and the leader of that NATO member, Erdogan, vigorously pursuing a policy vis-a-vis Syria that is antithetical to U.S. interests and to the interests of Syria as a state, if it can still be called a state. So you have some enormous challenges, and I didn't even talk about Iran and Hezbollah, the most effective fighting instruments, as I see it, in Syria right now and mostly working for Assad. At the same time, they're fighting similar elements of Daesh, ISIL, ISIS, whatever you want to call them, that are in Iraq, realizing that the core element within ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, are the Sunnis we disenfranchised, disempowered in Iraq, and forced to go onto the battlefield again. This is a very complicated situation.

I think what I would like to see happening right now, and I do hope the administration is secretly doing this, much the way it started out the secret negotiations with Iran. We're dealing with Moscow and with Ankara, and Tehran, on the basis of okay, what can we do, each of us, that won't look like it's coordinated, at least not initially, until we achieve success that will achieve an interim political solution and we all admit Assad has to stay around, at least for a time, for that interim political solution. We want to stop the killing. We want to stop the now increasing destabilization of some key allies by all these refugees that are heading out of Syria. We want to get the situation under control, stabilize it, and somehow turn it around so it's more positive. It also will impact Iraq. It will impact Afghanistan. And ultimately it will impact this growing rapprochement with Iran, which can handle a lot more of these problems.

So I hope that's what's happening. I hope Tehran, Ankara, Moscow, and Washington are all talking in this vein. I recently had an opportunity to talk to a person at the secretary of state level, on that floor, who indicated to me that that might possibly be going on. I hope it is, because that's the only way we're going to stop this.

And they can't put a public circus on it, just like they couldn't put a public circus on the closed talks with Iran that Bill Burns was conducting originally. They have to do this in secret, and I agree, because there's so many morons in my political party. People who are not interested at all in the national security of this country, but only in their own political power and the advancement and increase thereof, that they'll throw it all in a cocked hat in a heartbeat. They'll ruin it. So I hope that's what's going on, Paul.

JAY: So you're sort of suggesting that perhaps there might even be tacit approval of the Russians supporting, increasing support for Assad. But rhetorically, especially for domestic public opinion because of the Republican position, the Obama administration has to sound critical of it.

WILKERSON: Yes. And you have to think too that, you know, in the back of the mind if you're President Obama and John Kerry and Ash Carter, you're thinking well, now, if the Russians put naval infantry and helicopters and tanks and so forth in Syria, they don't have them to put in Ukraine and the Baltic states and other places where they might be a little more [anemical] to our interests. So I mean, this is crafty stuff, if it's happening the way I hope it's happening.

JAY: The Republican debate and the rhetoric coming out of the Republican candidates, more or less has Russia as the number one foreign policy enemy of the United States, actually, more than ISIS or anything else. Which also leads to why they think over, seems to think overthrowing Assad's more important than anything else. How much do you think this is rhetoric and how much do you think if these people actually were in the White House they would be--they would actually take action on this Russian front?

WILKERSON: You've got to have a bugaboo. If you're a Republican and your national security bonafides are in question for the first time for 30-plus years, you've definitely got to have a bugaboo. You throw out China, you throw out Russia, you throw out ISIS, you throw out everything you can possibly throw out. And that gets people scared, it gets your base all worked up. You exploit this politics of fear, which is a very powerful force. And you get more votes that way.

Are there people in the Congress who really think that Russia is an enemy? Of course there are, because they haven't left the Cold War. They're still in the Cold War. They'd like nothing better than to have Russia loom back and be a big enemy again. Not satisfied with China, they want Russia, too. I mean, they don't--they've never heard of the old theory of international relations called conservation of enemies. You don't need more than you can handle at any given time. They love enemies. Everyone in the world would be our enemy if they had their way, because that way they could get their money that they need for the armed forces. They could get the money they need for all the programs they want to support that relate to national security.

It's that crazy, Paul. It truly is that crazy. That's what happens when you become a national security state. When war and the trappings of war become your reason for existence as a national entity.

JAY: The Obama policy seems to be the same, more or less, as the Israeli policy, which is let Syria be destroyed by many factions. Certainly Israel seems to like the idea that any time they want now they can go in and bomb trucks heading with arms to support Hezbollah in Lebanon. But is this sort of getting out of hand for them? I mean, do you agree with that as a premise, that this is in fact what the Israelis and the Americans have wanted so far out of the situation, which is just let them all kill each other for quite a long time?

WILKERSON: Well, I just described to you what my wishful thinking is about what the Americans might really be doing. Now, as to the Israelis, I think the intelligence people for whom I have some respect, and the--well, let's just say Mossad, Shin Bet, the MI5, MI6 equivalents, if you will. CIA, FBI equivalents. The people who really know what the threats are to Israel and have lived with those threats, some of them, for some time, they're getting worried about it. They're getting worried about it for a number of reasons, not least of which is chaos does not necessarily lead to a prosperous and sustainably prosperous Israeli future. Chaos could finally stumble over the border. It could stumble over the border in a number of ways, and it could bring some of the Daesh, ISIS type of operations to Israel.

After all, the reason a lot of these people existed in the first place, and the reason they continue to have power, is because of their opposition to the Israeli position vis-a-vis the Palestinians and other Arabs in general in the region. Let's face it, go back and examine some of Al-Qaeda's fatwas, or some of their pronouncements, and you'll see that that's at the base of some of it.

So I think the real people in Israel, that is the people who have national security as their daily profession, are growing increasingly concerned about what's happening. And the refugee status, the destabilization of Jordan, the destabilization of Lebanon, I think I told you I recently had one of the royals from Jordan tell me that there was an Iraqi or a Syrian family in every single Jordanian home, or multiple families therein. This is very destabilizing. So that's the peace treaty. Egypt and Jordan, and Jordan could unravel that at any moment. Egypt could unravel that at any moment. I don't think this is a situation in which Israeli mid-term and long-term security is assured. And then you've got the additional problem of the two-state solution is dead. It's completely dead, it's in its grave.

So what are we looking at? We're looking at a one state solution. And on the one hand we're looking at a theocratic state that increasingly is apartheid-like, and that increasingly is isolated in the international community and I'll predict right here won't last more than 20 years. Or we're looking at a single state solution that is democratic, non-Jewish, non-theocratic, accepting of all the people within its ranks. Giving those people equal rights, [inaud.] rights and so forth. Having a decent labor movement. Being a real democracy. And a very different state than we have today.

So I mean, I'm agreeing with the Ayatollah who said in Farsi, if it's been translated properly for me, not that he wanted to see Israel disappear. He predicted the Jewish state as it currently exists will disappear. I think he used the term 25 years. I'll predict it'll disappear in 20 years, maybe 15.

JAY: If you go through the kind of logic of people that can bomb Gaza and kill women and children as part of what they call mowing the lawn, or people have called it that, maybe it wouldn't be so bad to have an ISIS threat on your border. The world's getting a little bit disbelieving and tired of looking at the Palestinians as an existential threat to Israel. People I think are more or less over that Iran is an existential threat to Israel. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, if you want to maintain this kind of militarist, hyper-security state in Israel, to have an ISIS threat on your border and an endless war that can go on for who knows how many decades.

WILKERSON: Well Paul, I mean--the real threat here, if there is a threat, is the civil war itself, and the destabilizing effects it has all around its periphery. And even now as we've seen, in the heart of Europe. I agree with Bill Maher. He had a chart when I was on his show three or four weeks ago, and a chart went up and he showed how there are 4.5-plus million men under arms in the states surrounding Syria. 4.5 million soldiers, heavily armed in some cases. And there may be 30 or 40,000 of these so-called ISIS, ISIL fighters. My goodness. They're outnumbered enormously.

Is this the threat it is pretended to be, or is it just that all these people won't do anything about it?

JAY: All right, thanks for joining us, Larry.

WILKERSON: Thanks for having me, Paul.

JAY: Thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.

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 #31
www.rt.com
September 20, 2015
Putin's consistency on Syria has Washington fuming
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.

It is increasingly difficult to watch the most recent coverage of the Syrian war and not be struck by how utterly illogical and convoluted it has become. But look through the media spin and it's clear: the Russian leader's steady moves in Syria are perplexing the US.

Whether it's the latest neocon claim that the way to 'help' refugees is to drop more bombs and train more Al-Qaeda-linked rebels, or the conveniently-timed mass hysteria over Russia's (never secret) support for Bashar Assad - or even the strange (and completely false) notion floating around that the West has 'done nothing' in Syria, all of this nonsense is becoming very difficult to take seriously.

It's fairly easy to tell when Washington is scrambling to keep control of a story, because two things usually happen: firstly, the media coverage becomes muddled and frazzled, and secondly, the White House quickly looks for somewhere to offload the blame. These days the scapegoat is usually Russia, and hey, why fix what ain't broken?

Obama's fumbling vs. Putin's consistency

On September 11, Barack Obama warned that Russia's strategy of continued support for Assad was "doomed to fail" and a "big mistake." In a patronizing little addendum, Obama said Putin was "going to have to start getting a little smarter."

There's more than a little irony in such statements, given that Obama's own Syria strategy thus far has been an abject failure. However, the vaguely personal nature of his comments betrays a deeper frustration. While Obama continues to scratch his head over the mess that has unfolded in Syria, Putin has not wavered. Right or wrong, Russia's Syria strategy has been consistent and clearly articulated, in stark contrast to Washington's fumbling and bumbling.

While Russia still believes Assad needs to be an integral part of a broader coalition aimed at taking Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) out and that toppling his government would create further chaos and destruction, Washington still seems to believe that it can go after IS and Assad simultaneously. Little thought is given to the power vacuum such a strategy, if it was 'successful', would leave behind. Underlying this policy is an assumption that if they could just get Assad out of the way and force the Russians out of the equation, there would be a nice clean transfer of power - to an American puppet government, of course - and that all would be dandy. Just like it was in Iraq and Libya.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov countered the recent comments from Washington by arguing that it would be "absurd" to exclude the Syrian Army from fighting the jihadists, as it would be "the most effective military force on the ground."

But inconsistency still reigns in DC. One minute we are told Assad is actively aiding Islamic State and the next minute it's the 'common enemy', and John Kerry is talking about negotiating with the Syrian president. Similarly, the intensity of the calls to get rid of Assad has changed numerous times. Sometimes it's vigorous and resounding. Other times it's more timid and reserved.

Barack Obama can't make up his mind. That much is crystal clear.

Media struggling to toe the line

The muddled media coverage we're seeing now is a natural byproduct of Washington's own confusion and shifting priorities. Washington's establishment media - and those across the pond who follow it lockstep - are trying to toe the line, but the contradictions are getting more tangled by the day.

In case you were losing track, here is a quick rundown of the latest narratives we're supposed to be swallowing:

* The West has simultaneously 'done nothing' and needs to 'do even more' to solve the crisis (this ignores the US's sustained campaign of airstrikes and its training of anti-Assad rebels)
* Putin wants to destroy IS, but he's also sending jihadists to join them (oh, and he's also to blame for the crisis in general)
* Russia and Syria are allies, but Russian military personnel in Syria amounts to some sort of new 'intervention'

And let's not forget that for at least two weeks last month we were inundated with stories about how Putin was about to ditch Assad at any moment. Those stories were peddled by some of the same people who are now trying to spin Russia's support of the Syrian president as some shocking new development.

Just over a week ago, the New York Times editorial board gave its full-throated endorsement to the State Department and lambasted Putin's "dangerous" interference in the conflict. The piece was illustrated with a frankly Russophobic cartoon of an angry bear gobbling up a Syrian flag. Crude and disingenuous propaganda, particularly when you consider that the difference between US military involvement in Syria and Russian military involvement is that the Russians were actually invited.

Then, an essay in the Wall Street Journal last weekend managed to simultaneously roast NATO for the failure of its intervention in Libya while calling for deeper intervention in Syria - in the same sentence. It'd take some fairly strenuous mental gymnastics to work that one out.

Another headache for Washington

Perhaps the most striking revelation in the Syria story came this week in a Guardian article quoting the former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, who asserts the West ignored a 2012 proposal by Russia that would have seen Assad step down as part of a broad peace deal. Convinced that Assad was about to be toppled, the West reportedly ignored the proposal.

Fast-forward to 2015, hundreds of thousands of Syrians are dead and millions more displaced. The US is still arming and training Al-Qaeda-linked rebels to overthrow Assad, struggling to convince the world that this is a workable solution and using Russia as the scapegoat to cover its own failures.

This latest piece of the puzzle surely provoked more frustration in the White House, which will not want to be embarrassed by the implication that time and again, it appears to prefer bombs as a first resort rather than a last one. For Russia's part, the response to the Guardian story appeared to be neither confirm nor deny.

However, it's against this backdrop that Washington has now agreed to restore direct military talks with the Russians. On Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry said the new talks would allow some time to "consider the next steps" to be taken in Syria. The talks could be a lifeline for Washington, a chance for Obama to walk his way back from the edge.

The US has overextended itself in Syria. One would think that at this point the White House could begin to admit its shortcomings and stop digging the hole - but as with so many American foreign policy adventures, evidence of failure isn't usually enough to force a rethink of strategy. Still, the fact that Washington has agreed to reopen the lines of communication is a glimmer of hope. At the same time, the calls for Assad to go have been scaled back to something to be 'negotiated' rather than immediate. Another positive sign.

If however, nothing comes of the latest negotiations, we must then begin to seriously question Washington's motives. Is the White House still more concerned with installing a puppet government in Damascus or vigorously fighting Islamic State? Why has the US thus far been so reluctant to partner with Russia to create a strong and broad international coalition that would provide the best chance for weakening this barbaric group and give the suffering Syrian people a decent chance to take back their country?

Writing for RT, Bryan MacDonald speculated that Washington "fears that Russia may get the credit for ending the conflict." It appears, he wrote, "that US leaders think it's more important to show contempt for Russia than to bring to an end a war that has caused such death and destruction."

If saving face against the Russians is a major factor in Washington's decision-making, it spells only more suffering for ordinary Syrian people. European leaders, who have largely supported Obama's Middle East policies, must begin to seriously ask themselves, is toppling Assad worth any cost?

The US evidently believes it is - but then, it's not the one paying the price. It rarely does.

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 #32
New York Times
September 21,2015
Editorial
Mr. Putin's Mixed Messages on Syria

President Vladimir Putin of Russia is trying to have it both ways in Syria. He is dangerously building up Russia's military presence there, while positioning himself as the world's savior against Islamic extremists and holding high-level military-to-military talks with the United States. President Obama should go one step further and be prepared to meet Mr. Putin later this month when the two are at the United Nations. If there is to be a solution to the Islamic State's advance and to Syria's war, both Russia and America will have to be involved.

Mr. Putin is expected to use his speech to the United Nations General Assembly to make the case for an international coalition against the Islamic State, apparently ignoring the one already being led by the United States. But his buildup also serves his effort to save his imperiled client, President Bashar al-Assad, and may also be intended to establish a Russian military outpost in the Middle East.

No one should be fooled about Russia's culpability in Syria's agony. Mr. Putin could have helped prevent the fighting that has killed more than 250,000 Syrians and displaced millions more, had he worked with other major powers in 2011 to keep Mr. Assad from waging war on his people following peaceful antigovernment protests. The brutality of Mr. Assad, a member of a Shiite sect, against the majority Sunni population has enabled the Islamic State, made up of Sunnis, to take control of large parts of Syria. Mr. Assad would probably be gone without the weapons, aid and other assistance from Russia and Iran.

Mr. Obama considers Mr. Putin a thug, his advisers say, and Mr. Putin considers Mr. Obama weak. Mr. Obama has had little to do with Mr. Putin since the Russian leader invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea. Some administration officials worry that agreeing to a meeting, which the Kremlin apparently requested, will play into Mr. Putin's hands. But it would be a mistake for Mr. Obama not to engage, especially on an issue this serious and when tensions are rising. If Mr. Putin does not come to the meeting prepared to be a problem-solver, it will be obvious and Mr. Obama should call him on it.

The truth is, both men are in a bind. America's fight against ISIS is failing; a stark indicator was the Pentagon's admission that its $500 million program to train moderate Syrian opposition forces to fight ISIS has only four or five fighters who are actually on the battlefield. Meanwhile, Mr. Putin's ally, Mr. Assad, is in danger of falling, which would destroy the last threads holding the state together, open the door to a takeover by the Islamic State and jeopardize Russia's last foothold in the Middle East. Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin should be able to find common cause in battling the Islamic State, which is destabilizing the region and training a generation of foreign fighters, some of whom have already returned home to Europe, Russia and Central Asia.

The Islamic State cannot be confronted effectively unless there is a political settlement in Syria between Mr. Assad's regime and opposition forces. The main impediment has been Mr. Putin's insistence that Mr. Assad remain in power. But Russia previously agreed on the need for a transition in Syria and a compromise seems obvious.

Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking in London on Friday, made it clear that America would be looking for "common ground" in Syria, which could mean keeping Mr. Assad in power temporarily during a transition. The Russians should accept that Mr. Assad must go within a specific time frame, say six months. The objective is a transition government that includes elements of the Assad regime and the opposition. Iran should be part of any deal.

America should be aware that Mr. Putin's motivations are decidedly mixed and that he may not care nearly as much about joining the fight against the Islamic State as propping up his old ally. But with that in mind there is no reason not to test him.

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 #33
Reuters
September 21, 2015
When Vladimir Putin looks in the mirror, does he see Syria's Assad?
By Peter Apps
Peter Apps is Reuters global defence correspondent, currently on sabbatical as executive director of the Project for Study of the 21st Century (PS21): www.projects21.com

As Russia ups its game in Syria - apparently supporting President Bashar al-Assad's regime with tanks, naval infantry and air defense systems - Vladimir Putin is deliberately putting the West in a very difficult position.

Moscow and Washington have been at loggerheads over the conflict since its beginning. At its heart is not just spiraling geopolitical rivalry, but a deep-seated ideological division.

The result has been the 21st century's answer to the 1930s Spanish Civil War between Fascists and Communists that presaged World War Two, a grinding, unending conflict fuelled by larger states that just wouldn't compromise.

Ever since he rose to prominence in the late 1990s, Putin's style of government - and his political pledge to the populace - has been relatively simple. Chaos - whether the conflict in Syria now, or the free-for-all and economic collapse that followed the end of the USSR - is dangerous and must be avoided.

That strategy, Putin has always made clear, takes strong leadership and a willingness to sometimes be brutal. It is an approach that, he and many Russians appear to believe, was successful in Chechnya and will now work against Islamic State.

The view from Washington - particularly the White House and State Department - could hardly be more different. Particularly since the "Arab Spring," the U.S. government has argued that dictatorship and a lack of accountability is the problem in Syria. Given all those he has killed, the White House contends, Bashar al-Assad must go.

The problem, of course, is that Washington's policy on Syria has been an unmitigated failure - a position that many current and former U.S. officials now concede. The rise of Islamic State was bad enough. Now, hundreds of thousands of Syrians are voting with their feet, fleeing the packed refugee camps of the Middle East and creating another new crisis in Europe.

Exactly how much the West is to blame for events in Syria is open to argument. Even as violence flared in late 2011, some Western diplomats were concluding that their nations had made matters worse. By encouraging anti-Assad protesters, particularly in the aftermath of the civil war in Libya, they felt the United States and its allies had created an unrealistic expectation that the West might intervene. Signaling that that was not going to happen, they felt, might have taken the edge off the protests much earlier and ultimately saved lives.

For others - particularly in the United States, itself a post-revolutionary country - such talk misses the point. It was Assad and those around him who chose to brutally crush dissent, they say. Assad's survival in office cannot be endorsed. Even if a major military intervention against him is politically and perhaps practically unworkable, supporting a moderate opposition is the only real option.

The problem, of course, is that that approach hasn't worked. Islamic State has taken over much of the country. And while U.S. and allied Arab jets and drones pound Islamic State positions, Assad's forces are using much greater - and much more indiscriminate firepower - against other rebel groups.

For Moscow, the situation in Syria offers both opportunity and danger. Through dramatically stepping up their support for the government in Damascus, they can strengthen their geopolitical hold on their only real ally in the region. It's yet another chance to embarrass the West.

Behind that, though, Russia is more worried by Islamic State than almost any outside nation. If Islamic State gets too much of a hold in the Middle East, Moscow fears, it could help reignite the conflicts in the Caucuses crushed more than a decade ago at such great human, financial and military cost.

For Putin, the ideal would be for Russia to play its part in a broad anti-Islamic State alliance. Under those circumstances, every power would play to its strengths. U.S.-led forces could launch strikes against Islamic State leaders and others. In Iraq, Russian military support - primarily in the form of equipment such as fighter jets - already fits in with support from Iran and Washington. In Syria, Moscow could give new backbone to government forces as those forces did the things Washington would rather not know about.

In Iraq, to some extent, this has already happened. Russian military supplies - particularly Su-25 Frogfoot jets - already bolster the Iraqi military alongside support from the United States and Iran. When it comes to Syria, however, any talk of a broader anti-Islamic State alliance has gone nowhere.

If anything, Washington has stepped up attempts to stymie Russian action, lobbying first Turkey and now Greece to deny Moscow military overflight rights.

But there are some awkward, awful truths. Such action might simply wind up prolonging the war. In the 15 years of the 21st century, Western states have had little or no long-term success with a counterinsurgency strategy based on targeted strikes and attempts to establish rule of law. Several other nations, however, have proved more effective with much more brutal tactics. Russia did it in Chechnya. Sri Lanka did it against the Tamil Tigers.

I covered the Sri Lanka war for Reuters. It was horrible. The government used a strategy of overwhelming indiscriminate firepower backed by human rights abuses. But it's hard to deny it worked and that the war is over.

Moscow seems to have concluded that in Syria, only the government has the capability and will to win.

It's hard to imagine large numbers of Russian troops going on the offensive in Syria. But after Chechnya and now Ukraine, the Russian military has no shortage of specialists who understand the darker side of modern conflict. They could be embedded in a similar way to U.S. advisers in Iraq - but with much less of a tendency to urge restraint.

The West has little moral high ground here. In Yemen - before a withdrawal earlier this year - officials privately say Western special forces deliberately avoided embedding too closely with government troops to avoid being implicated in the inevitable human rights abuses. And in Iraq, Shi'ite militia loyal to the U.S.-backed government have committed so many atrocities that some regional experts say Sunni populations would often rather see Islamic State stay.

For now, the Obama administration is unlikely to switch its Syria policy during its final months in office. Nor is it likely that a President Hillary Clinton would switch policy radically from her time as Secretary of State to allow Assad to stay. Given the ongoing confrontation in Ukraine - with U.S. advisers now working to train Ukrainian forces while Russian troops fight a few hundred miles away - the chances of doing a deal with Moscow may get even slimmer.

For several years, some Western officials have held out the prospect that Russia might sign off a deal whereby Assad leaves but those around him stay. Increasingly, though, officials in both Washington and Europe whisper that keeping him in place might be the simplest option. Earlier this month - shortly before the scale of Syrian migrant numbers prompted Germany to tear up the Schengen Agreement and re-establish border controls - German Chancellor Angela Merkel conceded it was necessary to talk to Moscow about Syria. The Russians may be hoping for more slippage to come.

That would suit Putin fine. He has no interest in a precedent that authoritarian leaders should stand down just because they have been in power too long or killed too many.

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#34
New York Times
September 21, 2015
No Peace in Syria Without Working With Russia
By Ed Husain
Ed Husain is a senior adviser at the Tony Blair Faith Foundation and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign relations.

There can be no peace in Syria without Russia. Alongside Iran, Russia has been the most loyal and steadfast supporter of the Assad regime. No American or other initiative will succeed if the Russian bear is ignored or snubbed. All other options have failed.

For Russia, the Syrian conflict is not a faraway fight. Putin is no shy liberal - he can see the connection between his troubled regions in the Caucuses, the fighting power of the martial Chechens, and the strength of ISIS being a training ground for jihadists who wish to attack Russia, or support separatists. Homegrown terrorism linked to the Middle East is not just a Western concern. Russia has the same fears.

Homegrown terrorism linked to the Middle East is not just a Western concern. Russia has the same fears.

The Russian relationship with the Syrian government goes back to the 1950s and the cold war. Russia trained the Syrian military top brass, and many Russian government experts on the Arab world learned their trade in Damascus. To this day, thousands of Russians live in Syria - many are women who married Syrian men while they trained in Moscow. Russia's last naval base outside the former Soviet Union is off the Syrian coast. Syria's religious minorities, Orthodox Christians, see Russia as a protector of their safety and interests.

President Obama showed awareness of this depth of the Russian-Syrian connection when he agreed to military-to-military talks between America and Russia. Secretary Kerry has been dispatched to facilitate the diplomatic support for this military engagement.

With warmer ties between Iran and the United States, it is an opportune moment to spend some of the new political capital that the Obama administration has accumulated in previously hostile quarters. But Russia, Iran and the Assad regime alone cannot bring stability to Syria. Their guns falling silent will not stop the bloodletting.

America's traditional allies - Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchs that have supported the rebels - cannot be ignored. Turkey is home now to nearly two million Syrians, and over 600,000 Syrians have registered in Jordan. The Saudis will not stop support for Assad's opposition until their proxies have some power and influence in Syria to counter the rise of Iran and Shiite domination in neighboring Iraq.

In the pursuit of peace and stability in Syria; the destruction of ISIS; the ending of the refugee flows and rebuilding a once proud country, the West must cooperate with Russia fully. Our differences over Ukraine, sanctions, Russia's expansionism and Russian anti-Americanism cannot blur our vision and allow for the growth of extremism and terrorism: It will happen not just in Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon, but also in our own cities in the West and in Russia.

It is time to work with Russia respectfully and sincerely to stop war in the killing fields of Syria.

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 #35
The Independent (UK)
September 17, 2015
Despite Putin's threats, war seems a long way off in Kiev now
The mood has changed, as have expectations of the west - and perhaps being out of the international limelight did the Ukrainians some good
By Mary Dejevsky
One of the country's most respected commentators on Russia, the EU and the US, Mary Dejevsky has worked as a foreign correspondent all over the world, including Washington, Paris and Moscow. A former diplomatic editor and chief leader writer at The Independent, she now writes a weekly column and makes regular contributions to UK and international radio and television. She is a member of the international foreign affairs think-tank, Chatham House, the Valdai Group of international Russia specialists and the Franco-British Council. She also sits on the advisory board of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London.
    
A peculiarity of the stand-off between the West and Russia over Ukraine has been the extent to which so much else has remained the same. The status quo trundled on. Opportunities for sabotage were passed up by both sides, but most conspicuously by Russia.

Moscow did not halt the vital transit support it gave to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. It continued as the sole provider of transport to the International Space Station. It did nothing to thwart the nuclear talks with Iran. Nor did the Kremlin markedly alter its stance on Syria; it still believes that it would be irresponsible to cut President Bashar al-Assad off precipitately while there is no day-after scenario and jihadism remains a threat. All the firepower (real, and rhetorical) was trained on Ukraine and its eastern regions - the last battleground, potentially, between Russia and the West. In Kiev, after the revolutionary euphoria faded, the choice seemed an unenviable one between bad and worse: the former a "frozen conflict" in the east, designed by Russia to undermine Ukraine's sovereignty; the latter, the Russian capture of more Ukrainian territory. A new Russian offensive had been confidently forecast for the summer.

So when I set off for Kiev last week it was with a certain foreboding. It had been a year since I last set foot in the Ukrainian capital, a year that had brought the West to the very brink of war with Russia and called into question Ukraine's viability as a state. I was pleasantly surprised. The brilliant autumn sunshine helped; but Kiev felt less backward-looking than it did 12 months ago. Then, the city was still gripped - understandably, but in a strangely macabre way - by the memory of those who died in the uprising that toppled Viktor Yanukovych. There were bizarre incongruities, such as the reality of a war being fought, street by street, in parts of the east, and toy combat helicopters being sold on the souvenir stalls of central Kiev.

This year the capital looked more settled, although it was barely a week since three soldiers were killed in a fracas outside Parliament over the devolution law being debated within. The city's fabric looked better; there were more newer cars. Whole families flocked cheerfully to Cossack Day festivities, posing for photos with huge Cossack swords and costumed atamans, and buying candyfloss in Ukraine's national colours. Any war seemed a long way away.

Could it be that many Ukrainians have accepted that not only Crimea is lost, but the Donbass, too? There were signs a year ago that there was little appetite to recover it by force of arms, at least among those young people who would have to do the fighting. But there was still fierce (albeit impotent) anger about Crimea. There were also totally unrealistic expectations about Western military help and Ukraine's European future. Had its sacrifice not earned it fast-tracked EU membership?

A year on, the mood seems incomparably more realistic and less angry. There is concern, at many levels, that the West in general is losing interest - in part out of frustration that Ukraine's institutional reform is too slow; in part because of the press of other concerns - refugees, Syria, Islamic State.

But perhaps being out of the international limelight has been beneficial, in helping to convince Ukrainians that, in the end, their fate lies primarily in their own hands. The US and the EU can provide - conditional - economic assistance and debt relief. They can supply templates for tax, judicial and regulatory reforms. And they can help to train and equip the country's relatively small, and backward, armed forces.

From last year to this, acceptance seems to have settled that Kiev's early expectations were hopelessly inflated. And the change sounded loud and clear at the conference of the annual Yalta European Strategy forum, which I attended.

The first difference was that few Ukrainian officials voiced any serious criticism of the Minsk-2 agreement. President Petro Poroshenko announced early in his speech that the previous night had been the first in the whole conflict with no shelling. The lull is seen as a chance to extend the ceasefire and fulfil the rest of the agreement, rather than another pretext for demonising Putin.

A second change was on the Western side, where even inveterate cold warriors - such as the ultra-hawkish former Nato secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and the US assistant secretary for European affairs, Victoria Nuland (the official overheard treating Ukrainian government appointments as if they were in the gift of the US and dismissing the EU with a profanity) - were singing a different song. While insisting on Ukraine's right to make its own choices of alliance, they were far less militant than before. Alluding to Russia, Nuland even corrected herself, replacing the word "aggression" with "pressure", as though instructed not to jeopardise the fragile peace. Nato membership was almost universally ruled out. The overall impression was of a wiser West, but a wiser Ukraine - with a young, energetic and well-qualified team of ministers. It is a Ukraine that may finally have understood its eastern lands must be wooed, rather than bombed, back into a more devolved Ukraine.

The country's prospects are excruciatingly finely balanced. Pervasive corruption remains barely tackled, despite a newly trained and equipped police force in major cities. Nor is it clear that the bright, young government can carry public opinion with it on such basics as new tax structures and higher fuel bills. And if it can't, then Ukraine will all too easily sink back into the resigned cynicism that followed independence in the early 1990s, and the Orange Revolution in 2004. Its leaders may plead not to be forgotten, but a period for reflection outside the international spotlight could be exactly what Ukraine needs.

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 #36
Foreign Affairs
September-October 2015
Book Review
Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post--Cold War Order
by Rajan Menon and Eugene B. Rumer
Reviewed by Robert Legvold

Here is a calm, clear alternative to the many emotional efforts to place blame for the crisis in Ukraine on one side alone. In the heat of a historic turn of events, policymakers and analysts often find it difficult to get outside the drama. They tend to join the fray, bolstering arguments favored by one side or the other. Menon and Rumer leave no doubt about the boundaries Russia crossed in seizing Crimea and fueling the war in eastern Ukraine, but they do not settle for the common one-dimensional explanation that attributes Russian actions to President Vladimir Putin's alleged imperial fantasies. Instead, they step back for a wider view, looking at Ukraine's evolution since independence; examining U.S., EU, and Russian policy before and during the crisis; and considering the long-term implications of the crisis for both Russia and Ukraine. From that perspective, the path leading to the present impasse hardly appears simple or straightforward. The modest length of the book and its crisp prose complement the efficiency and restraint of the analysis.

[Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Ukraine-Unwinding-Post--Cold-Originals/dp/0262029049/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1442845931&sr=8-1&keywords=Conflict+in+Ukraine%3A+The+Unwinding+of+the+Post--Cold+War+Order]

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#37
Interfax-Ukraine
September 21, 2015
Ukrainian army's loses total 1,915 people dead, 271 missing

Since the beginning of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) the Ukrainian Armed Forces have lost 1,915 soldiers, Head of the Main Personnel Department of the General Staff of Ukraine Ihor Voronchenko.

"Since the beginning of the ATO and Crimea's occupation, the losses amounted to 1,915 people, 1,757 of them in battle. Medical losses numbered 7,053 people, out of which 5,747 were due to battle [wounds]," he said at a briefing in Kyiv on Monday.

Voronchenko said that 271 soldiers of the Ukrainian army are still missing.

"Unfortunately, as of today 76 soldiers are held prisoners," he added.

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 #38
Reuters
September 20, 2015
In first Ukraine trip, NATO chief tries balancing act on Russia
BY ROBIN EMMOTT

With a troubled peace plan for the Ukrainian conflict nearing its deadline, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg will attempt a balancing act to reassure Kiev of the West's support without antagonizing Moscow when he visits Ukraine on Monday.

Ukrainian diplomats say Stoltenberg's visit, his first there, is symbolic in their quest for Western integration as Russia backs a rebellion in eastern Ukraine 18 months after it seized Crimea.

They plan to sign a new doctrine in Stoltenberg's presence identifying Russia as an aggressor.

"This visit will be a milestone," said Ukraine's acting ambassador to NATO, Yehor Bozhok. "In Soviet times, we were ready for an attack from the West. Reality now demonstrates that the threat comes from the East," he told Reuters.

But Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian premier who a year into the top NATO job has toned down the strident criticism of Russia by his predecessor, is wary of raising tensions. He is highly unlikely to heed Kiev's calls for defensive weaponry supplies.

Stoltenberg sees Ukraine as the most complex of Europe's many crises and backs the 11-step Minsk peace deal signed in February that set an end-year deadline for implementation.

Stoltenberg also sees the alliance's role as mainly limited to helping rebuild the armed forces of Ukraine, which is not a NATO member, after years of mismanagement.

Ukraine dropped its bid to join the organization in 2010 to please Moscow, but now says NATO membership as the only way to protect its territory. NATO wants to avoid provoking Moscow.

Russia opposes any potential expansion of NATO to former communist areas of eastern and southeastern Europe, part of a battle for influence between Brussels and Moscow that lies at the heart of the conflict in Ukraine.

"I am really afraid that the situation can deteriorate," Stoltenberg said in July of the conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed some 8,000 people. "That's something we have to try to avoid because the situation is demanding enough as it is."

RUSSIAN 'ATTACK'

While violence is at its lowest ebb since the Minsk ceasefire was signed seven months ago, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has warned that the decision by separatist rebels to hold their own elections could invalidate the whole peace plan.

Poroshenko is also under pressure from Europe to reform faster to receive potentially billions of euros in donor funds.

"The list of things Ukraine needs to do is endless. You can always do more. But on the other side (Russia), the list hasn't even begun to be filled in," said a senior EU diplomat whose government is among those most critical of Russia's actions.

In another sign of his balancing act during his two-day visit, Stoltenberg will inaugurate exercises between Ukraine and NATO, but they are not military, rather civil protection.

In the pro-European west of the country, they will focus on de-mining, forest fires and a simulated blast at a factory.

Still, Stoltenberg will be the first NATO secretary general to sit in on a National Security and Defense Council meeting in Kiev, Ukraine says, and will likely witness Poroshenko sign the new military doctrine into law.

The doctrine "defines the Russian Federation as a military adversary" and "assumes the high probability of large-scale use of military force against Ukraine," a statement says.

Stoltenberg will also oversee the opening of a bigger NATO liaison office in Kiev with full diplomatic status.

Yet even that gesture brings complications. The office has been described by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin as a new "NATO embassy", underscoring the country's long-term aspiration of joining the U.S.-led alliance.

Many Russians defend Russian President Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea, saying it was needed to stop U.S. ships moving in there if Ukraine becomes a NATO member.

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 #39
Facebook
September 18, 2015
Re Maidan and Odesa massacres
By Ivan Katchanovski
University of Ottawa

A special UN representative [Christof Heyns] confirmed today that most of evidence in the Maidan massacre was destroyed and that the Ukrainian government drags out the investigations of the Maidan massacre and the Odesa massacre.

http://korrespondent.net/world/worldabus/3565156-oon-bolshynstvo-dokazatelstv-prestuplenyi-na-maidane-unychtozheno

His statements about the failed government investigations and destruction of evidence concerning the Maidan and Odesa massacres still refer to the police as suspects in the Maidan massacre and attribute the Odesa massacre to clashes even though the failed investigations and destruction of evidence clearly benefit top government officials and provide another evidence of their involvement in both massacres.

"Maidan Protest

1.With respect to the use of force against protesters in the Maidan protest, most significantly between 18-20 February 2014, I am concerned that more than 100 people were killed as a result of the firing, allegedly by Berkut and other law enforcement officers of live ammunition at participants In addition, thirteen police officers were also reportedly killed. As with any use of lethal force by police officers it is vital that there be a prompt, thorough, and impartial investigation into the events to establish that the use of force was both necessary and proportionate.

2.In this connection, I am greatly concerned by the apparent shortcomings of the investigation into these events. While what process there is seems to be progressing very slowly, having reached court-level proceedings now in a very limited number of cases, there are more systemic failings. The escape of a principal suspect from house arrest, as well as the loss of a great deal of vital physical evidence are both issues that should themselves be independently investigated.

(ii) Events of 2 May in Odesa

1.I have also had the opportunity to hear more about the events of 2 May 2014 in Odesa, where at least 48 people died as a result of clashes between rallies of opposing political opinion to which authorities appear to have reacted in an either deliberate, ill-prepared or negligent fashion. According to the accounts I received from people who were on the scene, the police held a low profile as the crisis was evolving and did not intervene to prevent or stop the violence at the Kulykove Pole square. The fire brigade, which is located very close to the Trade Unions building where many protestors burned to death, failed to respond for 45 minutes to urgent calls that they received. While both pro-unity and pro-federalism groups played a part in the escalation of violence on that day, the subsequent criminal prosecutions for hooliganism or public disorder appear to have been initiated against participants in a partial fashion.

2.I am concerned by allegations of numerous failings in the official investigation into the events of that day. By allowing almost immediate access of the scene to 'pro-unity' protesters, members of the public or to municipal authorities, investigators lost a large proportion of potentially valuable forensic evidence. Meanwhile I am worried by indications that the Government has significantly reduced the size of the team investigating these events in the past year, before it has had an opportunity to report. The slow progress of the investigation and the lack of transparency with which it is being conducted have contributed to a great deal of public dissatisfaction and provided a fertile environment for rumour and misinformation. It is disconcerting that the Special Unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs that investigates the 2 May events cancelled our appointment in Odessa at short notice, without any explanation.

3.I am further concerned that administrative and personal impediments seem to have been imposed to prevent or at least discourage the families of those who died from obtaining the status of suffering or affected persons before the Courts. Meanwhile I am greatly alarmed by reports of the extent to which authorities are tolerating both verbal and physical intimidation both of families attending court proceedings and of the judges of those cases, not only outside the court building, but also inside it and in the court room itself.
4.I welcome the support that the International Advisory Panel on Ukraine, established by the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, is providing to the Government in order to ensure that the investigations into both incidents are in line with the European Convention on Human Rights."

Full text of UN report:
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16460&LangID=E

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 Sputnik
September 20, 2015
Ukraine Stops Food Supply to Crimea

SIMFEROPOL (Sputnik) - Ukraine has suspended food supply to Crimea and initiated a food blockade of the peninsula on the border, Deputy Prime Minister of Crimea Ruslan Balbek said Sunday.

Two leaders of an organization representing an ethnic minority group, the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, who are also lawmakers at Ukraine's parliament, proposed earlier to block the country's border with Crimea on September 20, a move later supported by Ukrainian extremist organization Right Sector.

"A campaign on Crimea's blockade... with the involvement of Right Sector has started. Several hundreds of trucks were stopped at Ukrainian border checkpoints," Balbek told RIA Novosti.

Ukrainian Interior Ministry claimed the situation at border checkpoints was under control, and road traffic was not blocked as of 1 p.m. local time [10:00 GMT].

The deputy minister said assumptions that Crimea could not do without Ukrainian food were groundless, as the peninsula has "almost fully switched to deliveries from mainland Russia."

According to Balbek, the leaders of the Mejlis have initiated the blockade in attempts to gain preferences on trade with Crimea.

Crimea rejoined Russia in March 2014, after more than 96 percent of voters backed the move in a referendum, which was not recognized as legitimate by Kiev and the West. Moscow maintains that the referendum was held in accordance with international law.

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 #41
www.equaltimes.org
September 9, 2015
Objections mount over Ukraine's draft labour code
by Kristina Jovanovski

Workers in Ukraine could see their rights and job security severely threatened if a draft labour code is passed, trade unions are warning.

Although civil society was not consulted on the proposed reforms, draft law no. 2983 "On State Registration of Legal Entities and Individuals - Entrepreneurs and Community Groups" is currently being considered by Ukraine's parliament and is expected to be passed into law later this month.

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has expressed alarm over the draft law, saying that if adopted, it would "introduce changes to the existing legislation on trade unions and their activities inconsistent with the relevant international labour standards and the legal obligations of Ukraine".

For Mikhailo Volynets, chairman of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine (KPVU), the implications of its ratification are clear:

"They believe if they turn workers into slaves they will get [a] cheap labour force".

He says employers are trying to attract investment from Europe by reducing wages but labour costs in Ukraine are already low in comparison to much of the continent with a minimum wage of 1218 Ukraine hryvnia (US$55) per month.

There are also particular concerns around how the proposed reforms will affect female workers. A number of articles in the draft labour code aim to lift the current restrictions on single mothers working overtime or night shifts. However, Volynets is concerned that employers could use these articles to fire single mothers more easily.

For example, if a single mother has a child with special needs, the draft allows her to work overtime but Volynets fears that refusing overtime could be used as grounds for dismissal.

Vitaly Dudin, a legal analyst with the Center for Social and Labour Research, says that while there are already anti-discrimination laws which could be applied to prevent women from being unfairly treated in the workplace, the proposed labour code is still problematic.

"We should not adopt the [draft] labour code which consists of [about] 400 articles...it will be more bigger than the current code and of course it becomes bigger because of new mechanisms of exploitation".

Sergey Kondriyuk, deputy head of the Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine (FPU), says his union also opposes the draft labour code in its current state.

"Our position is quite tough on this question. We are against [limiting] the rights of single mothers".

Instead, Kondriyuk says, labour reforms should address issues of late payment and improving working conditions. Thousands of employees, many of whom work in unreported cash-in-hand jobs, get paid weeks, sometimes months late because of unscrupulous employers. Many also work under unsafe conditions, such as the illegal mines in the east of the country where pro-Russian separatists have been fighting since April 2014 .

"We should not deteriorate the rights of workers which were not really in a good condition during these 20 years. We should not make it worse," says Kondriyuk.

Non-disclosure agreements

Another contentious aspect of the draft law is an article that allows employers to dismiss workers if they violate a non-disclosure agreement.

According to KVPU, the wording is so broad that workers could be fired for simply saying how much they are paid.

It is a similar concern echoed by other trade unions and NGOs - that the ambiguity of articles could be used by employers as an excuse to fire workers without reasonable grounds.

Another part of the draft stipulates that there must be a written agreement of employment between a worker and employer when a job is accepted.

However, Olena Mykhalchenko, a lawyer with the Ukrainian NGO Labor Initiatives, says this article could be abused by employers to institute unfavourable conditions or to give extra responsibilities to employees who are so desperate for work that they will only examine their contract carefully when a problem arises.

But it's perhaps the elements of the draft which significantly undermine the role of trade unions that are causing the most concern.

For Volynets, the "biggest problem" with the draft labour code is that it gives employers too much power over regulations in the workplace, thus allowing them to avoid collective bargaining agreements.

The draft will also make it harder to form a trade union. Under current rules, unions have to provide three documents when they register - following the reforms that number will increase to 14.

"[It] will take around 30 days to register a trade union," says Mykhalchenko. "In this period workers will be more vulnerable to harassment and other violations".

In protest letters sent to the International Labour Organization, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) and Pavlo Rozenko, the Minister of Social Policy, the ITUC described the ratification of the draft law as a "clear violation of Article 2 of ILO Convention on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise No 87, which defines workers' right 'to establish and, subject only to the rules of the organisation concerned, to join organisations of their own choosing without previous authorisation'".

IMF

Ukraine has been going through an economic crisis as it struggles to fund the conflict in the east.

This year it is expected to have the world's worst performing economy as its gross domestic profit continues to nose-dive.

Most of Ukraine's heavy industries, such as coal mines and metal plants, are located in the eastern region, resulting in a 20 per cent loss in the country's industrial capacity, according to the government.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is expected to spend five per cent of its annual budget on defense this year - a "colossal" increase according to one Ukrainian official.

At the end of August, Kiev reached an agreement with a group of top creditors to write-down its debt by US$11.5 billion in a bid to help the country avoid a default.

However, Russia, which is also a creditor did not take part in the deal, leaving a big question mark over Ukraine's economic future. Meanwhile IMF austerity measures, says ITUC economist Carolin Vollmann, will "further economic contraction and contribute to political instability and social injustice".

Ukrainian workers, 56 per cent of which earn a living in the informal economy according to latest figures, are understandably fearful of the future, which is why campaigners are keen to ensure their rights are strengthened by reforms - not weakened.

"Employees are scared to lose their jobs. So, for example, if the employer says you need to go work on holiday or on [the] weekend... they will give their consent," Mykhalchenko says. "Without this mechanism of protection they don't have the real power to negotiate with the employer."

The current labour code was created in 1971 when Ukraine was still a part of the Soviet Union.

It has since undergone several amendments but while most people agree that the current labour law should be improved, they want the process to be inclusive so that the outcome doesn't violate "the balance of power between workers and employers [to the benefit of employers]," as Yuriy Kurylo, the vice president of the All-Ukrainian Union of Workers' Solidarity (VOST), puts it.

"Old doesn't mean bad," Mykhalchenko adds. "We're [not] saying that the code from 1971 is perfect. We're just saying that... this draft labour code will worsen workers' rights, workers' conditions and workers' positions".

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 #42
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
September 21, 2015
'Team Georgia' graftbusters open container of worms in Odesa clean-up
Graham Stack in Odesa

Odesa region governor Mikheil Saakashvili wants to crack down on corruption and the shadow economy in Odesa's ports, and with the appointment to the post of regional prosecutor of Davit Sakvarelidze he now has the power to do this.

After intense lobbying in Kyiv, the former Georgian president got what he wanted on September 16: the appointment of one of his closest associates, former Georgian deputy prosecutor general, Davit Sakvarelidze, to the post of head regional prosecutor for Odesa. Sakvarelidze will now combine the Odesa role with his existing job as Ukraine's deputy prosecutor general.

With another close Georgian associate, Giorgi Lortkipanidze, already appointed head of police in Odesa region, and former head of Georgian customs, Giorgi Tskhakaia, in Odesa in an informal advisory role, Saakashvili and what some have dubbed his "Team Georgia" are now fully weaponised to tackle corruption in the massive entrepot.

Plenty to fight for

And there is a huge amount of business to keep tabs on in the region's four ports, led by Odesa Sea Port, the focal point of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sea traffic to and from Ukraine, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. With capacity to handle more than 900,000 containers and 25mn tonnes of bulk cargo annually, the Odesa Sea Port moves oil and oil products, liquefied gas, ferrous and nonferrous metals, ore, pig-iron, vegetable oils, raw sugar, grain, vehicles and many other cargoes. Its passenger terminal can also serve up to 4mn people a year.

Backed to the hilt by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, an old friend and associate of Saakashvili's, the new governor and Sakvarelidze have vowed to crack down on alleged - and generally widely acknowledged - port business corruption here and in the other coastal hubs.

"We are well informed about the situation in the ports, we know the scale of the problem," Sakvarelidze commented to bne IntelliNews following the announcement of his appointment. "There's a large flow of shadow money, shadow economy, a lot of which goes into the pockets of offshore banks - it doesn't go to hospitals and schools, it doesn't go to buy tanks and APCs for the army."

Dealing with the Kruks

Saakashvili has already taken a run at what is regarded as one of the most powerful port clans in July, when he successfully pushed for the removal of Yury Kruk from his post of the head of Odesa region's Illichevsk port. At the same time, Ukraine's SBU security service detained his brother Vyacheslav Kruk. "But the Kruks are just one clan. There's not just one clan, there's a whole number of them," Saakashvili commented to bne IntelliNews. "In Odesa everyone knows them."

Even Saakashvili's victory over the Kruks was not final. Following Yury Kruk's removal from the post, an open tender was announced for the position - and Kruk is reported by bne IntelliNews sources to be one of the front-runners to get the job, which is outside Saakashvili's direct remit. Moreover, he and his brother are both deputies in Odesa's municipal council, and part of its powerful port lobby, while their father Yury was a long-serving MP in Kyiv.

Favourite schemes

First Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Volodymyr Shulmeister - who hails from the port town of Mykolaiv and has a background in marine engineering and finance in the Netherlands - tells bne IntelliNews of the type of corruption schemes uncovered in Odesa's state-owned port sector, where private interests have undermined state interests.

"One universal scheme is for state companies to place money on deposit with private banks at below-market rates. For instance, Illichevsk port [in Odesa region] held UAH100mn in private banks with an effective stake of only 3% p.a.," Shulmeister tells bne IntelliNews. "Another scheme counts as an open secret in Odesa: A [state-owned] vessel gets leased bareboard charter with a clause that all expenses for repairs paid by the lessor will be offset against the cost of the lease. The ship sets sail and Ukraine receives bills for millions of hryvnia worth of repairs in foreign ports, as a result of which the lessor effectively pays no lease."

Another example is the Odesa port hotel, where a private investor owns 20% and can block all contracts by failing to sign them, Shulmeister says. "As a result of the conflict, the hotel stands empty for a third year in a row and is slowly crumbling."

Some private port operators partnered with the state in joint activity agreements inflate the volume of their investments dozens of times, the official claims. "For instance, a crane costs $1mn, but according to documents it was bought for $10mn - the difference was simply returned in cash to the buyer. This means that gradually the state's share gets diluted in joint activity agreements."

But the most difficult situation to deal with, according to Shulmeister, is created by a large number of "clever and disciplined professionals" who worked for years as officials in ministries and in state companies with miserable salaries and unclear motivation. Asked why they stay in the job, "they mumble something about interesting work and the now fashionable patriotism," he says. "Our analysis shows that these guys are the well-motivated emissaries of large holdings receiving salaries from financial-industrial groups."

View from the waterfront

But down on the wharfs in Odesa's ports, officials see things differently. "There is no corruption in Odesa Sea Port," head of the port Mykhailo Sokolov tells bne IntelliNews, from an office with a view to Odesa's world-famous Potemkin Steps.

According to Sokolov, there has just been one case of corruption in the last two years, leading to the firing and criminal investigation of the official. "Now we run an anonymous hotline to inform of incidents of corruption."

Sokolov has also just implemented government measures on deregulation in ports, meaning the only officials now to board vessels in harbour are from passport control, whereas previously eight or nine state agencies had the right to inspect vessels. "This will now move us a lot close to Western standards," he predicts.

According to Sokolov, the biggest hindrance in the fight against corruption is currently simply the low salaries of state employees. "Salaries were increased by 29% this year, but with the hryvnia collapse to the dollar, people are effectively getting far less now previously."

According to documents seen by bne IntellINews, the basic salary of an entry level government inspector in the state customs service is only around UAH700 per month, currently around $35, to which come bonuses. A departmental head with full bonuses takes home after tax around UAH4000, or $200, per month, according to the figures compiled by the EU Border Assistance Mission to Ukraine and Moldova.

Private operators still the pivot

At the core of the looming conflict in Odesa's ports is the future role of private operators that dominate the portside stevedore business. The private operators hold lease agreements with the state port authorities for their berths, where they have invested significant funds in infrastructure including attracting large volumes of international investment.

Deputy Infrastructure Minister Shulmeister for one believes the private operators have got the best of the deal, and also use their considerable local political clout in Odesa to run a closed shop.

But port chief Sokolov disagrees that it's a rotten monopoly. "Private sector investment into port terminals totals as much as $400mn over the last 20 years, which has gone to build terminals, elevators, warehouses, and other infrastructure," he says. Sokolov reels off an impressive list of completed projects that saw the private sector workforce in the docks swell to three times the number employed by the port authority and the one state-owned stevedore company.

Going forward, the official calls for state-owned stevedores to be privatised, but for port infrastructure to remain in state hands. "This is the way it is done the world over," he says.

Private port operators have indeed built successful businesses and attracted foreign funding. Local operator Brooklyn-Kyiv secured up to $60mn in funding from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to build a grain terminal in partnership with global grain trader Louis Dreyfus. Local operators MB Cargo announced in August a massive $130 deal with commodities giant Cargil to build a grain terminal in Yuzhne Port.

These projects are rare signs of major investment going on in crisis-stricken Ukraine, but they also came under pressure from law enforcement in 2015. Brooklyn-Kyiv called a series of raids by the SBU in 2015 "the work of competitors". Another local operator with ownership links to MB Cargo, raided by security service in July, alleged much the same.

Mind the hornet's nest

Saaskashvili and other vocal critics of the private operators also claim that in cahoots with state officials they are preventing new portside investors from gaining direct access to the waterfront, thereby limiting total potential volumes of investment.

Private operators such as Brooklyn-Kyiv and MB Cargo are regarded as having strong local political representation, including managers and shareholders sitting as deputies in the municipal council. Together with the powerful Kruk family, as well as Odesa Mayor Gennady Trukhanov, they are also often linked to what Saakashvili calls the "port clans". This means that any battle the Odesa governor wages in the docklands will also be a battle for political influence over the city and region, and vice versa.

But upcoming regional and municipal elections on October 25 will come too soon for Saakashvili or his patron Poroshenko to take majorities in the regional and municipal assemblies, let alone win city hall. Opinion polls suggest the existing local establishment will retain their grip on political power, and potentially remain a thorn in the side of Saakashvili and the quest of "Team Georgia" to clean things up, even if if they receive more power, as others are strongly advocating. Some observers also say the Odesa campaign can have repercussions that reach way beyond the region.

"The key to understanding Odesa is to understand that it is a mercantile city. Leave the local clans alone to get on with their port and trading businesses, and they will side with whoever is in power in Kyiv," the widely-read British local blogger Nikolai Holmov tells bne IntelliNews. "But trying to interfere in that business might stir up a hornet's nest," he warns.

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 #43
Interfax-Ukraine
September 21, 2015
Biden denies media reports on warning Ukrainian authorities, believes leadership is making progress against corruption

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk are making considerable progress in fighting corruption in Ukraine, and the U.S. will continue cooperating with the Ukrainian authorities as a part of the ongoing reforms in the country, Special Advisor to the Vice President for Europe and Eurasia Michael Carpenter has said.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and the White House have many times pointed out the importance of efforts to fight corruption in Ukraine as part of economic and political reforms, and President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yatseniuk have made considerable progress, Deputy Press Secretary of the White House Stephen Spector said.

He denied media reports that Biden had allegedly sent a specific warning to the Ukrainian president and prime minister due to the fight against corruption in Ukraine being ineffective.

Despite some media reports, the recent statements attributed to the advisor of the vice president on a special warning to the Ukrainian authorities are false, and there were no statements against specific persons, Spector said.

We continue working with the Ukrainian government to support their economic and political reforms, as well as the security of the country, Spector said.

Earlier, some media reports stated that Biden is frustrated with the scale of corruption in Ukraine and the lack of progress in tackling the issue.

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 #44
The Daily Mail (UK)
September 18, 2015
If Vladimir Putin had Done This, There'd Have Been More Fuss
By Peter Hitchens

The many gullible (or just crudely and ignorantly anti-Russia) journalists and politicians who sided with the Kiev putsch of February 2014 really ought to be more interested in the latest news from Ukraine.

The supposedly heroic new President of the supposedly free and uncorrupt and generally wonderful new Ukraine, the oligarch who doesn't like being called an oligarch, Petro Poroshenko, has announced a ban on lots of journalists (and indeed other individuals).

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/16/ukraine-president-bans-journalists-from-country?CMP=ema_546

These people are accused of promoting 'terrorist activities' (a charge very similar to catch-all offences under the Blairite Terrorism Act which are still, shamefully on our own statute book) or of being a 'threat to national interests'.

The decree is barmy and self-defeating, and in a way laughable. But can you imagine the enormous fuss that would be made if Vladimir Putin were to do the same? Compare, then, and contrast the minimal coverage it has received, because it issues from Ukraine.

Will the vast crowds be back on Kiev's Maidan to protest against this? Will Victoria Nuland and Guido Westerwelle and John McCain and the rest of them be there with them, clutching bags of biscuits and smiling their support? Will all those civil society groups, dedicated to bringing freedom of speech and press to the borderlands, be outraged and working their little socks off to get the ban overturned, setting up the tents and soup-kitchens to house and feed the massing army of protest?  Don't be too sure.

I am reminded by this of the ridiculous claims made by apologists for the putsch that the Maidan was in fact an unstoppable movement for freedom and against corruption, rather than a manipulated mob helping to overthrow a government which had annoyed the 'West' . If this were really so, the crowds would have been almost perpetually back on the Maidan ever since. Somehow, they haven't been. Nor will this shoddy action bring them there.

And so we know all we need to know about the 'February Revolution', its true nature and objectives.

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#45
Kyiv Post
September 19, 2015
Shuster's political show cut off air, raising free-speech concerns once more
By Ilya Timtchenko

Ukraine's top political talk show Shuster Live was cut off the air on Ukraine's leading Channel 1+1 right before the program was supposed to start.

The controversial decision of the channel's administration has received a strident backlash from Savic Shuster, the show's host, who compared the situation to late November 2013, when his show was canceled during President Viktor Yanukovych's authoritative rule that ended on Feb. 22, 2014, with the EuroMaidan Revolution.

"This is an insult against the people, to say the least," Shuster said. "I think this is an agreement between the owner (oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky) of Channel 1+1 and the president's administration. I don't know on what grounds and, more so, for what reasons."

The Kyiv Post is still waiting for a response from the president's spokesperson.

Instead of the show, Channel 1+1 showed Zimniy Vals (Winter Waltz), a Russian melodrama TV series.

"This is like Swan Lake in 1991," Shuster said, reminding of the attempt of censorship control during the collapse of the Soviet Union, where the Soviet Communist Party wanted to take one last chance of restoring authoritarian control. The ballet Swan Lake was shown on television instead of the heated events in Moscow.

The last time Shuster Live was cut off air was back in November 2013 when President Petro Poroshenko, then a member of parliament, and other opposition leaders were being blocked to the show by Party of Regions politicians. The show was broadcast on Inter channel, which abruptly switched to a Russian TV series.

"I understand that, after Vilnius on Nov. 29, when the students were at Maidan, this studio was turned off; but then it was (channel) Inter," Shuster said, pointing out that Inter had "close" relations with Yanukovych. "But right now the owner of the channel isn't close to the president."

On Sept. 18 Channel 1+1 released a press statement on their website saying that the show will not be broadcast because of the highly "intense" and "politicized" events in the country.

"The channel is not ready to heat it up even more," channel 1+1 wrote. "We think that during next week politicians will be able to calm down... and will come back to discuss the question of tariff corruption, especially considering that the topic will be no less relevant."

Shuster Live, however, was broadcast at www.3s.tv, the show's official website, and then, soon after being canceled on Channel 1+1, on channel 112.

During the show Shuster received a letter from Oleksandr Tkachenko, the general director of Channel 1+1, mentioning that Sushter Live does not have the right to broadcast the show on another channel, since it was not in the license agreement.

"We did not have in our agreement that you could broadcast us as you wish, and like some kind of trash, throw us from left to right," Shuster replied. "Tkachenko, you of course are a colleague journalist but I am not your slave, I am not some sort of shit in your hands. Look into the mirror more often - maybe you will see more truth there."

Shuster Live shortly afterwards showed an older video where Poroshenko was interviewed saying that he is a strong supporter of free speech. "I won't necessarily like everything that is being said during the program but I will give my life so that it would exist," Poroshenko said.

But Shuster refuted the statement. "He will not give his life for this program. This is a fact, because we were supposed to be on channel 1+1."

Oleh Lyashko, leader of the Radical Party which recently went into opposition, was one of the guests at the show.

Lyashko believes that the channel was pressured by the president's administration because of his presence at the show. Lyashko was planning to defend Ihor Mosiychuk, a Radical Party member who was controversially stripped of immunity and arrested on Sept. 17 during a parliament session.

He said that the decision to cancel the program was a result of a deal between Poroshenko and Kolomoiskiy.

"An oligarch will go to the president, find an agreement, the president will give a command, and the oligarch closes down the program," Lyashko said.

Member of Parliament Serhiy Leshchenko believes that it was an order from the "top" as well, either from the president's administration or the Cabinet of Ministers.

This means that oligarch Kolomoiskiy "started an active phase of negotiations with the government," Leshchenko wrote on his Facebook page.

But Yuriy Butusov, the chief editor of Censor.net, an online media source, doubts that Poroshenko is involved directly in the decision.

"This is the responsibility, first and foremost, of the channel's owner Kolomoiskiy, certainly this was his command," Butusov said.

"This does not have anything in common with free speech," Butusov added.
 

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 #46
www.rt.com
September 21, 2015
Ofcom fingers RT for using Kiev's words to make it look bad

UK telecom watchdog Ofcom has ruled that three episodes of RT programming were in breach of its code of conduct. One was never aired in the UK and another one drew no complaints at all. However, RT was blamed for citing a UK official's words that made Kiev look bad.

The rulings published in the watchdog's latest bulletin concern two episodes of a now-defunct commentary show The TruthSeeker and a documentary based on eyewitness accounts given to RT by people who suffered during hostilities in eastern Ukraine.

The documentary called Ukraine's Refugees didn't generate a single complaint in the UK, but was investigated by Ofcom on its own initiative. The watchdog said it violated its code's impartiality clause because it didn't sufficiently represent the position of the Ukrainian government. The documentary unambiguously stated in the film that Kiev "denied all charges of crimes against civilians," allegations of which were voiced by witnesses interviewed for the film.

"We are shocked and disappointed by Ofcom's decision. The film about refugees was based entirely on first-hand accounts of the war victims," said RT's editor in chief Margarita Simonyan.

The other judgments pertained to two episodes of The TruthSeeker, a commentary program taken off air in July 2014. One episode was dedicated to the Ukrainian civil war and resulting humanitarian crisis. It was never aired in the UK. Again, Ofcom found it breached the impartiality clause, because the statements from Kiev authorities denying accusations of crimes against civilians were not a big enough counterbalance, according to the watchdog.

"We are being criticized because the show used statements made by Ukrainian politicians - i.e. their own words - because those statements make them look bad. That we, essentially, had picked the wrong quotes. This is a rather peculiar approach to journalism," commented Simonyan.

Another episode of The TruthSeeker probed by Ofcom referred to an independent but unofficial investigation into a BBC report about an incendiary weapons attack in Syria. The investigation said the BBC dropped a reference to "napalm" from an interview with a Syrian doctor, leaving only her speculation that a "chemical weapon" had been used. In Ofcom's view, RT had exaggerated the significance of the inquiry and thus misled the audience.

Ofcom also closed their investigation into an episode of RT's interview show SophieCo on immigrant detention centers in the UK and a news broadcast reporting about victims of the Islamic State terrorist group. It found they hadn't breached the watchdog's code. The rulings mean that all Ofcom investigations into RT programming have now been resolved.

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 #47
Institute of Modern Russia
http://imrussia.org
The Interpreter Report Spurs Fervent Discussion in Washington, D.C.

On September 17, staff members of IMR's The Interpreter project led an impassioned discussion about Western policy toward Russia and Ukraine at the presentation of their new report, "An Invasion by Any Other Name: The Kremlin's Dirty War in Ukraine," in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.

[Report here http://www.imrussia.org/en/news/2414-imr-releases-the-interpreter-report-an-invasion-by-any-other-name-the-kremlins-dirty-war-in-ukraine]

The Interpreter editor-in-chief Michael Weiss and managing editor James Miller opened the event, held at the Atlantic Council, by providing an overview of the 88-page report, which describes in extensive detail Russia's invasion and support of armed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Steven Pifer of the Brookings Institution and Myroslava Gongadze from Voice of America then joined the panel, along with Atlantic Council's John Herbst, to hold a wide-ranging discussion about the U.S. response to the conflict, the current state of affairs in Ukraine, and the Kremlin's possible strategy moving forward.

Weiss outlined the structure of the report, which is broken into two sections, the first of which catalogues the Russian military equipment observed in the Donbass. The second section, titled "Cargo 200," examines proof that Russian soldiers have died in the conflict.

Miller recounted how the conflict began with Russian-backed separatists seizing buildings in towns across Ukraine's east following the Euromaidan Revolution. As Ukrainian forces fought back and the clashes intensified, the Kremlin gradually increased its military support of the rebels. In the summer of 2014, Russian equipment such as T-72 tanks, which the rebels could only have acquired from the Russian army, started to appear on the battlefield, and in some cases Russian servicemen operated the equipment themselves.

The Kremlin's decision to move heavy weaponry into the region led directly to one of the major civilian tragedies of the war: the downing of flight MH-17. "The civilian airliner that was shot down was a casualty of this constant ramping-up of direct, very reckless military intervention on the part of the Russian military," Miller said.

Weiss said the report relied in part on the work of Russian journalists, from outlets including Novaya Gazeta and Slon, who sought out proof that Russian soldiers had died while fighting in Ukraine. Due to the Kremlin's secrecy regarding Russia's role in the war and the frequent dissemination of disinformation, it remains difficult to obtain an accurate picture of Russian casualties.

"It's reached the point where Kremlin denials about Russian presence in Ukraine simply are not credible," Pifer said. "I would go further and actually say it's disgraceful. They demean their own soldiers when they disavow them when they are killed or captured in Ukraine."

The discussion then turned to the approach of the U.S. and NATO toward Russia in light of the Kremlin's brazen invasion of its neighbor. Pifer laid out a three-pronged strategy for addressing a newly aggressive Moscow that he called "deter, constrain, engage."

Deterrence, he said, should come from the U.S. and NATO, who he said must make clear to the Kremlin that the border between Russia and NATO countries is a "bright red line" that cannot be crossed without serious consequences. To constrain Moscow, the West should seek to limit the Kremlin's opportunities to interfere in the affairs of countries he called the "in-betweens," meaning those nations that lie between Russia and "institutional Europe" such as Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. He said this could be achieved by continuing to use sanctions against Russia as long as it remains aggressive, and by strengthening the governments of those "in-between" countries.

The third point, engagement, entails the need for the West to keep an open dialogue with Russia in areas where cooperation makes sense, such as arms control and counterterrorism, Pifer said. In particular, he recommended that NATO and Russia re-open communication on the military level in an effort to avoid accidents between their forces.

Gongadze criticized the West for taking a tactical approach to Russia, selecting a course of action on a case-by-case basis, instead of formulating a clear strategy. "We have to stop seeing Putin as just a badly behaved boy," she said. "He is a criminal."

She also argued that the Donbass conflict would not become frozen, as some analysts have predicted, due to the nebulous borders of the separatist-held territories. But Herbst noted that the current ceasefire, which began on Sept. 1, seems to be holding and could last another month or more as Vladimir Putin tests whether the West can be convinced to ease sanctions.

Weiss warned that the current lull in fighting did not necessarily signal that the war was coming to an end, however.

"Even when there is not an uptick in kinetic activity-a so-called 'hashtag invasion'-it doesn't mean that the Russians have gone quiet," Weiss said. "They are fortifying an ongoing occupation. You can call this many things-I would call it a ceaseless invasion."

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